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« on: January 01, 2021, 08:46:28 AM »
The skill based challenge to overcome/outsmart/avoid superiorly powerful enemies is one of the most entertaining aspect of any game. In Starsector, fundamental challenges like the progression of the skill to pilot the flagship, sneakily navigating the fleet through star systems, commanding the fleet and to wisely equip ships are undermined by the pure chance of finding high price loot early on.
Vast portions of the game are spoiled by the possibility of (not unlikely) luck to obtain overpowered ships, like the Tempest, or large fleets via lucky finds early on.
Even with average RNG, the aforementioned core gameplay challenges are rendered close to void too quickly in my opinion.
Simply just reducing the price of valuable items is not addressing this sufficiently and is solely diluting or even destroying the opportunity for more gameplay dynamics based on those things.
I have read and watched multiple times how new players were catapulted into the mid- to late game within 2-3 hours after trying the game for the first time.
Too many players never experience the joy of overcoming a more powerful enemy with low-tech ships and weapons and have the game reduced to dull resource management, almost from the start.
For avoiding this issue and to improve the gameplay experience, I suggest the implementation of military force licenses.
Just like in real life, random people are not allowed to cruise around with high tech fighter jets without a license.
Factions should hunt down a player in their systems who potentially threatens their existence with high tech/powerful ships and large fleets, if they didn't build up a certain reputation and have acquired a sufficient level of military force license.
Acquiring such licenses could involve story missions and/or meeting specific faction requirements, which would be a great basis to expand game content and depth.
One could perhaps still utilize a powerful fleet without a license when avoiding the related faction. And perhaps, getting licenses from all factions isn't possible.
It would be an extension of the commission system, with a far better and significant gameplay impact, since ship sourcing isn't truly a significant limitation in game anyway.
PS: In my opinion, those who refute the issue of hyper-progression and claim to have the greatest fun by defeating almost every enemy fleet (particularly with imbalance mod's) are a very loud minority here. Those people are typically the same who "enjoy" playing games with cheat codes/exploits, just want to a quick rush with ever larger explosion's and overpowered ships by installing some low quality mods. I think the those views should be avoided when considering the fine nuances to tweak the existing into an even better game.