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I got this game a while back (around update 80, I think), and kept bouncing off of it because I would end up with no money in a system dominated by a hostile faction, and couldn't refuel or pay my crew, and it would just spiral into everybody leaving. I picked it up again last week and made my own Merchant template with Attributes and Contacts as my top two priorities, did Arbiter Brokstrom's mission to investigate the bombing (there's a "spy for Arbiter points" option when you're in orbit around the planet that I never noticed before), then basically told the prince to gently caress off, and used Estelle and my network of contacts to become a free trader. House Thulun hates me, but I'm at least neutral with everyone else, and have trade permits and military rank for most of the other factions. Obviously, my starting faction is Moklomune, but one of my contacts was a Zenarin fixer. He had a plan to become a Smuggler Prince, which would result in destabilizing "two" worlds (I use quotes because they were both the same world, an Independent Population center), but I needed to go stash a bunch of spice and kill some guys for him first. I made a bunch of money by having stashed a bunch of trade-license-required goods (and some stuff they just had high demand for, like clothes and basic meds) on a nearby wilderness planet. Now I have more rep with Zenarin than I do with Moklomune. I've got a bunch of talents to avoid combat when bribery/acknowledgement won't work (and the "board from anywhere during missions" talent so I can gently caress dudes up from as far away as possible when I absolutely need to fight), and the "free escape" talent for when a xeno ship finds me. I have a mid-range freighter ship (5 officers, 30 crew) that I stripped a couple guns off so I can fit more cargo (up to 90 capacity now). I also have the officer from the grounded star trader guy (the heirloom sword quest) and the smuggler with a fancy hat that I can't take off her (she's not an officer! only officers get hats!). Also, gently caress xenos. I've had two ground fights with them, and they've both ended very poorly, with at most two out of four xenos dead, and at least one crew death for me each time (that might just be automatic if you lose a ground combat). Now that I've actually gotten into it and have a character who actually survived past level 10 (up to 30 now), this is a pretty fun game, now that I'm not struggling for every credit and have more than 25 cargo space (pretty sure those two are connected  ). I'm in whatever era is after the Crimson Pox, I think, and at least one of my contacts is a Coalition Representative, who offers a universal pardon - I might use that to get Thulun off my back once I get a few hundred thousand more credits so I can buy and upgrade a Broadsword.tl;dr: game is good. I probably spelled some names wrong. Fifty Farts fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 18:08
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 10:49 |
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Major new patch dropped today adding in salvaging (Crew of the Serenity type of poo poo)
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Oct 11, 2018 06:16
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I just bought this, started it up and clicked the 'pick all talents' option for advanced users or somesuch. Figured I'm an advanced guy, why not. You start with a ton of people, all of which start with a talent to choose it seems. Should I really be handpicking everyones talents like this?
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Oct 12, 2018 21:23
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It's how I play, yeah, even on my first time. As a general rule though, your first and second skills for most classes should be skills that automatically pass checks. Also, the number of people whom you need to pick skills for can vary wildly depending on the priority your class gives to crew skills and ship size (your starting ship is automatically filled to adequate capacity); you can see this in action when creating a custom class.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:32
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Another thing to keep in mind is that your starting crew members tend to have excellent base attributes, though hiring crew is cheap enough that if you need only 1 replacement in a field? You can hire and fire a few times to try to get somebody with good stats. It can make a significant difference, a crew member with +3 or +5 in a skill, or high attributes (especially for boarding crew) can be far far more effective than a random schmuck.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:47
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It feels initially overwhelming but you'll quickly realise after a couple of false starts that individual skills really only matter for crew combat (and that's easy enough, pick a weapon and pick skills that work best for that position), what you need to keep track of are the skills for the crew as a whole and that while there are lots of different named skills they all actually pool together into a smaller band of groups (ie. free skill checks, ship combat buffs, debuffs etc). Failing a skill check when in space hurts because of the drains on hp/damage/morale so it's good to build up a buffer of 2-3 per check.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:54
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Ravendas posted:I just bought this, started it up and clicked the 'pick all talents' option for advanced users or somesuch. Figured I'm an advanced guy, why not. The autopick default is... Fine. It is not optimal. When I do starts where crew starts at lvl 1 or 2 I keep it default. If I set exp high, then I cherry pick skills for synergies for the next level up. But if it a chore to engage with, picking statsaves is a safe choice.
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Oct 12, 2018 22:08
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Ravendas posted:I just bought this, started it up and clicked the 'pick all talents' option for advanced users or somesuch. Figured I'm an advanced guy, why not. Honestly, if you're just starting out I'd call it a bit overwhelming. It is better for future playthroughs when you know what you actually need. A spy character is going to have different needs from his Gunners, Pilots and E-Techs than a straight-up pirate, for example.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:02
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I honestly feel like 25% of my talent picks are wasted due to being too situational and specific, then not doing those activities those talents are for. My framing sevice to pick talents is to ask myself "will I actually do the mechanics of this action now or in the next two hours". With that in mind, jumping skills, landing skills, specific ship manuvers I will use in the first 3 turns of combat, and skillsave talents. Retrain your engineer to give you the cheaper ships or upgrades immidiately befors you purchase the thing, then retain back to something useful later.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:47
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Okay, thanks all. It was overwhelming, when the first thing you do before anything else is go through and set a few dozen talents for things that you have no idea what they're referring to. I'll spend a bit more time with it and puzzle them out, then quickly die and try again.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:17
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Ravendas posted:Okay, thanks all. It was overwhelming, when the first thing you do before anything else is go through and set a few dozen talents for things that you have no idea what they're referring to. I'll spend a bit more time with it and puzzle them out, then quickly die and try again. Eventually you just start to remember names and what they are for solely because "oh right that's what hosed over my last guy  " so this is the correct approach
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Oct 13, 2018 00:29
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So I'm getting started in this game, I made an Explorer and started out with a Frontier Liner that seems to have decent weapons. I made 10k doing the first story mission (plus a cool 1.6k on some cargo) and I'm thinking I'll just do some story missions quick since I've heard they expire. Any good scrub tips you guys might have? I notice I'm failing a good number of the random checks that happen when you're travelling, how meaningful is that? Is it possible to pause time? I'm expecting to die with this captain in shortish order and make my own with a custom template instead of the pregenerated guy I took this time, but until then I'm just trying to learn the systems. Quite an interface too, I like it but there is definitely a lot of stuff happening and I had a hard time figuring out you had to leave planets to save.
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Oct 13, 2018 15:01
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Frog Act posted:So I'm getting started in this game, I made an Explorer and started out with a Frontier Liner that seems to have decent weapons. I made 10k doing the first story mission (plus a cool 1.6k on some cargo) and I'm thinking I'll just do some story missions quick since I've heard they expire. You'll be failing a lot of the skill checks while traveling early on, but as your crew grows more competent and you get more skill save perks it'll get better. Just make sure to heal your crew whenever possible, and keep their morale up.
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Oct 13, 2018 15:23
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Frog Act posted:So I'm getting started in this game, I made an Explorer and started out with a Frontier Liner that seems to have decent weapons. I made 10k doing the first story mission (plus a cool 1.6k on some cargo) and I'm thinking I'll just do some story missions quick since I've heard they expire. Time is paused any time the ship isn't physically moving or playing a card game. You can land on a planet or stop navigation and level up crew / swap crew weapons at will. Engine safety rating affects how many of the skill checks you get while in space. A 60% rating engine has (1/60%)= 167% of the skill checks than a 100% safety engine, while a 120% safety rating has 83% the checks. Engine speed (not agility, that's for ship battles range 1-3) also gets you across systems faster so you can complete more missions in less time (Great for explore/spy chains). Big UI tip - you can click on the small box in the top right of a big box when landed (like spice hall big box) to select individual components/ crew to heal/replace/refuel, handy when low on money.
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Oct 13, 2018 21:34
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For skill fails just keep an eye on them and when you see a particular kind coming up often enough to notice get new crew to address the lack.
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Oct 14, 2018 01:09
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Thanks dudes. I'm a little confused about character creation - so you start out making a template, and there doesn't seem to be any way to have starting skills (it always says over budget if you try to put any points in anything) but two of the premade templates have like 5-8 points in command and tactics starting out, and what look, at a glance, like maybe more attribute points? Are the premade templates just...better? Should I try explorer again? Right now I'm making a character to give a legit playthrough a try and I'm thinking I'll take Military Commander/Merchant for myself, an officer with Doctor/Combat Medic, another officer with Engineer/Mechanic, and then two combat officers focused on rifles. Anything I'm missing vis-a-vis important character creation stuff? also how do you view a character's skills in-game? If they don't have any + to a skill is their relative ability at skillchecks (presumably derived from attributes I gues) shown anywhere? I guess what I'm getting at is like, for a character that doesn't have any bonuses to rifles, how does that effect their rifle rolls? My first game I got absolutely, brutally owned by a pack of xenos on an ice planet where I was supposed to surreptitiously pick up a Spy who was stuck there, but ran into some pirates and then aliens while exploring and while I managed to take down the pirates, the aliens killed everyone.
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Oct 14, 2018 15:02
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For character creation I recommend getting the best ship and dumping your starting level and contacts (xp comes fast, if you are doing the main plot there's plenty of missions without you needing more people to give you some).
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Oct 14, 2018 15:16
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Frog Act posted:Thanks dudes. I'm a little confused about character creation - so you start out making a template, and there doesn't seem to be any way to have starting skills (it always says over budget if you try to put any points in anything) but two of the premade templates have like 5-8 points in command and tactics starting out, and what look, at a glance, like maybe more attribute points? Are the premade templates just...better? Should I try explorer again? You can change the priority for certain traits in character creation, you probably go overbudged when altering skills because it's set as E priority. Personally I recommend giving attributes the A treatment because it is very rare to increase them in-game, but the rest depends on what kind of play you have in mind.
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Oct 14, 2018 15:24
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Frog Act posted:Thanks dudes. I'm a little confused about character creation - so you start out making a template, and there doesn't seem to be any way to have starting skills (it always says over budget if you try to put any points in anything) but two of the premade templates have like 5-8 points in command and tactics starting out, and what look, at a glance, like maybe more attribute points? Are the premade templates just...better? Should I try explorer again? You were getting the over budget message for skill points because the template you were working with probably has Skills rated at D or E priority. You can change that to be higher at the cost of something else being lower. High Attributes+Skills is good for the long term since you have few ways to increase those once the game starts, high Ship+Starting XP will give you an immediate leg up to survive. Combat-focused officers will do good work, but keep in mind that there are some jobs that are annoying to find in the galaxy, and officers can train in those immediately. You can view your crew by pressing the helmet button. Skills are in there, only wrinkle is any skill with a value in [] is telling you the value if that crewperson is made into an officer. Regular crew don't get access to those increased values. This is also the way you'd access job and talent selection if you set those to manual at the beginning of the game. Skill checks are run off the Skills on your total crew, so if you get a Piloting check, your Pilots and anyone else with a Pilot rating from their job would contribute to trying to pass it. In combat, Skills are of course only derived from the individual trying to do a thing, and random crew without a weapon skill or Evasion will be very easy to fight. Related, this is why trying to board ships can be a good way to disable them. Once you get to Range 1 your Advance turns into Boarding and most ships only have 4 combat crew. The 2nd fight and beyond will start carving into their regular crew and eventually you can either kill their captain for an immediate stop to the fight or just get rid of enough crew that they can't man combat stations.
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Oct 14, 2018 15:26
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Thanks dudes. So I'm wondering about crew combat - what determines whether or not a character can use their weapon from a position? It is very irritating sometimes - like last match I had 2 pistol wielders (captain and officer) and then an officer with a sword and an officer with a rifle, and the pistoleers were in slots 1/2 the whole time and couldn't shoot from the back, and since it takes all their ap to move, it effectively knocked one out of the match except for heals. Should rifles always be in the back, with pistols in the middle, and swords in front? I also got brutally owned by a pirate, even with the difficulty significantly reduced, so I guess my Frontier Liner is a sort of poo poo ship. What would you guys replace it with? Any preference re: first ship upgrade? I was thinking about picking up something small but militarily capable, since I'm not making most of my money with cargo so far.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:05
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Frog Act posted:Thanks dudes. So I'm wondering about crew combat - what determines whether or not a character can use their weapon from a position? It is very irritating sometimes - like last match I had 2 pistol wielders (captain and officer) and then an officer with a sword and an officer with a rifle, and the pistoleers were in slots 1/2 the whole time and couldn't shoot from the back, and since it takes all their ap to move, it effectively knocked one out of the match except for heals. Should rifles always be in the back, with pistols in the middle, and swords in front? Each weapon and ability shows you which ranges it can be used at.
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Oct 15, 2018 15:56
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E: quote is not reply I've put 20 hours into the game. Some observations: Faction rep is really important. There doesn't seem to be a downside to having positive rep with everyone whereas negative rep with even 1 faction is a huge liability. Space combat is to be avoided at all costs early on. Surrender if your hold is empty, otherwise just run. The experience and monetary rewards aren't worth the risk especially if you're playing with permadeath. Skills that let you force a draw in an encounter are nice to have. Crew combat, otoh, is very useful and always worth investing in. You need it to explore. You need it for random story events. You can use it to win ship combat without firing a shot. The gameplay is actually kind of fun. Always spec for crew combat imo. Game is ok but the balance is... Bad
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Oct 16, 2018 21:55
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Typical Pubbie posted:E: quote is not reply Curious what you're basing that on? You're comments identify some of the early pitfalls - getting bad reputation, unnecessary combat. I haven't felt like balance has been an issue across gameplay mechanics.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:49
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Is there a way to speed up the space combat in this? I've enjoyed what I've played, but the combat seems to really drag on. Crew combat is pretty fun though.
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Oct 17, 2018 21:04
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ProfFrink posted:Is there a way to speed up the space combat in this? Yeah I've been wondering the same thing, I enjoy this game a lot as a contemporary more complex escape velocity but I've been having a hard time getting really into it on account of the slow, unpredictable difficulty of space combat
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Oct 17, 2018 22:03
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Following the main plot and supporting prince cadagan tanks the crap out of your game, it's quite instructive.
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Oct 17, 2018 22:30
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I paid 1.7mil to reset my -600ish faction with Steel Song so that I could do the next phase of the Cadar storyline where I had to make nice with a SS prison warden and impersonate a bounty hunter/prisoner transporter. The best part was the original Cadar guy who gave me the quest had already hosed off since it took me so long to fix my rep. By the time I finished up I couldn't go on to the next step even though the actionable part of the quest had not expired. Luckily I got -100 faction with Steel Song again and I now get random Bounty Hunter events that aren't avoidable (it was only nearly a bad thing one time when I got one while limping back to port after popping a Xeno). All that said, the Cadar Sword Cutlass is legit a good ship, so at least there's that. I think the main storyline is actually pretty good, but there's definitely still some bugs to work out.
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Oct 18, 2018 03:49
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aparmenideanmonad posted:I paid 1.7mil to reset my -600ish faction with Steel Song so that I could do the next phase of the Cadar storyline where I had to make nice with a SS prison warden and impersonate a bounty hunter/prisoner transporter. I ran into something similar when doing arbiter quests, where I started as steel song and Cadar was my foe. I followed the main storyline which cratered my rep with Cadar, then the arbiter wants me to go ask a favor for them to join as the military wing. It’s kind of bullshit to have your starting for random, and later storylines faction locked. I can summon the $7.9mil it’s gonna take to get them back to zero, just so I can help your rear end build space UN. Wouldn’t mind seeing more options for that quest, versus just monoklune and Cadar, in case you broke one already.
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Oct 19, 2018 01:28
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Dalaram posted:I ran into something similar when doing arbiter quests, where I started as steel song and Cadar was my foe. I followed the main storyline which cratered my rep with Cadar, then the arbiter wants me to go ask a favor for them to join as the military wing. Agreed. The faction minimum is also just too low. The only meaningful difference between being -1000 and -50 is that you have to pay millions more to reset it at -1000. I actually like the initial slide where engagements become a gamble or a guaranteed fight depending on the ship, and then they start to cut off planetary services, etc. But once you can't even buy gas, what's the difference? -400 or even -200 would be a more appropriate minimum with how quests and other stuff are set up currently. "Redemption" missions with heavier faction rewards but less cash might be an interesting way to help this aspect of the game as well.
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Oct 19, 2018 03:43
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aparmenideanmonad posted:Agreed. The faction minimum is also just too low. The only meaningful difference between being -1000 and -50 is that you have to pay millions more to reset it at -1000. I actually like the initial slide where engagements become a gamble or a guaranteed fight depending on the ship, and then they start to cut off planetary services, etc. But once you can't even buy gas, what's the difference? -400 or even -200 would be a more appropriate minimum with how quests and other stuff are set up currently. "Redemption" missions with heavier faction rewards but less cash might be an interesting way to help this aspect of the game as well. Post this to the Steam forums. The Terese bros dont read this thread, but they read EVERY thread on the game page.
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Oct 19, 2018 05:11
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Or comment about it on their official Discord (link is in every single news update, can't grab it now), they are really quite responsive. I really think you have a very good idea with that.
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Oct 19, 2018 07:56
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Trying to flee from a pirate did absolutely nothing and I died.  Also, the tooltip was wrong about the range I was trying to reach with the Retreat action.
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Oct 19, 2018 08:26
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This game owns and I keep losing because I insist on playing it with permadeath, but eventually I’ll get good. People mentioned stiff salute and it’s really good, but early on if you keep a crew slot empty you have a chance of getting a stowaway event that lets you recruit a smuggler. Now a high level smuggler talent is one that lets you get out of any type of ship combat at the cost of one item in your cargo hold. So if you’re carrying various stacks of 1 item (biomass, scrap, wheat) then you have a good chance of not throwing anything valuable.
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Oct 19, 2018 10:52
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Demiurge4 posted:
Merchant gets this at level 5
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Oct 19, 2018 12:45
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Is it weird that one thing that annoys me more than almost anything else about the Xenos is their complete lack of death animation compared to the humans at least kneeling before they fade out? It's really unsatisfying to get the kill-shot on the Xeno that thashed your entire crew and then just have it blip out of existence. Weird gripe for a game that has so much depth, but it's one of the few places where I feel like there's just a glaring lack.
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Oct 24, 2018 20:18
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Got this game yesterday and I'm struggling a bit. In my first game I followed the storyline and supported Prince Faen, almost every faction that wasn't Cadar turned hostile to me and I ended up in tedious fights every ten seconds. Going to start over, how are you guys making so much money? What's a chill build/strategy for a new player?
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Nov 14, 2018 16:26
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Phlegmish posted:Got this game yesterday and I'm struggling a bit. In my first game I followed the storyline and supported Prince Faen, almost every faction that wasn't Cadar turned hostile to me and I ended up in tedious fights every ten seconds. Yeah that's a trap, I did that too. Eventually I couldn't even refuel.
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Nov 14, 2018 18:31
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I don't think the storyline is a trap at all. It's hard to stay afloat during it if you're really new to the game, but otherwise it's no big deal. Also, one of the biggest things to learn about the game, in my opinion, is reputation management. You need to get yourself to a place where you can stay neutral or mildly positive with most factions. You're gonna want stuff like rep loss mitigation talents, and talents that let you avoid fights. Eventually you'll get to a point where you're slowly building rep with basically everyone just by doing normal poo poo, and will only have like a couple of serious enemies.
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Nov 14, 2018 19:09
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My only beef is that I sincerely dislike the ship to ship combat in this game. It feels too random.
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Nov 14, 2018 19:10
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Getting involved in the Caen family missions will always at least tank your reputation with their rival faction. Keeping a positive/neutral reputation while doing quests is easier if you go with the Arbiter, as she'll help you develop contacts in a multitude of factions while not offending any too much.
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Nov 14, 2018 19:15
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