Almost all of the threads here are asking for new categories to be made. I want to start off by celebrating the creativity on display here! These are fun threads to read, and completely fine. I'm excited to see lots of folks interested in speedrunning Astroneer while sharing new ideas for challenges and speedrun categories!
Being that Astroneer is a sandbox adventure at its core... there are plenty of ways to start and stop a timer! The trouble comes down to the fact that there are only a handful of runners actually recording their attempts, and most of the categories we already have are quite inactive.
As moderators, our stance has been that we're not very interested in maintaining categories that would potentially only ever have 1 run. I'd encourage anyone to share playthroughs featuring a new category or challenge like that on a personal Youtube channel or even here in the threads!
The conversation is a lot more productive if you've already completed a recorded run before suggesting that a new category be made. More so if you're not the only person doing so! We definitely want to encourage new categories or runners. But we're simply not going to add a category if there aren't any runs at all... that would only clutter the board.
This won't guarantee that your category will show up on the boards here... but will help create a starting point to help others join in the competition for the new category itself as we identify rules and criteria.
If you're a new runner just getting started, I'd encourage you to try running Core% and Orbit%, as they're fast and easy to pick up before reaching out to suggest a brand new category of your own.
TL;DR: If you would like to request a new category be made, we ask that you pair the request along with your own attempt.
Thanks y'all!