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Suggestions / Gameovers
« on: March 03, 2024, 02:56:22 PM »
I've been a fan of this game since 2012, and I absolutely adore all of the writing and lore that has been added over time. I am in love with the recent missions, and new content that gets added.
In dialogues that are becoming more of a focus in recent patches, I think they are written extremely well such that you can still have interesting sometimes blatantly antagonistic options to say without completely breaking immersion with the immediate question of "how did I get away saying that". As we have more potential ways to come into conflict with various powers-that-be though, after the first playthrough, it is somewhat difficult not to feel invincible. So long as you have a better fleet than whoever you're talking to, no matter the circumstances you more or less know that there's no options you can take that will lead to any immediate consequences.
I'm not calling for a "rocks fall, you die" sort of thing, and with the lack of autosaves it's obviously very dicey to introduce anything where the player character can be assassinated within dialogue menus. So this suggestion is more or less an open question - Could there be, given the fundamental limits of starsector's gameplay, any way to meaningfully add some kind of stakes to particular dialogue choices? I don't think a "You said the wrong thing, causing a tri-tach sniper to take you out" dialogue line would fit really in the current narrative style.
As a starter idea, I think the blackops bounty hunter we encounter in a particular quest line is a good springboard. I think you could definitely add some kind of overwhelming phase fleet encounter after fighting your way out of particular conversations, just because it would be a good challenge for a player used to fighting standard faction fleets.
In dialogues that are becoming more of a focus in recent patches, I think they are written extremely well such that you can still have interesting sometimes blatantly antagonistic options to say without completely breaking immersion with the immediate question of "how did I get away saying that". As we have more potential ways to come into conflict with various powers-that-be though, after the first playthrough, it is somewhat difficult not to feel invincible. So long as you have a better fleet than whoever you're talking to, no matter the circumstances you more or less know that there's no options you can take that will lead to any immediate consequences.
I'm not calling for a "rocks fall, you die" sort of thing, and with the lack of autosaves it's obviously very dicey to introduce anything where the player character can be assassinated within dialogue menus. So this suggestion is more or less an open question - Could there be, given the fundamental limits of starsector's gameplay, any way to meaningfully add some kind of stakes to particular dialogue choices? I don't think a "You said the wrong thing, causing a tri-tach sniper to take you out" dialogue line would fit really in the current narrative style.
As a starter idea, I think the blackops bounty hunter we encounter in a particular quest line is a good springboard. I think you could definitely add some kind of overwhelming phase fleet encounter after fighting your way out of particular conversations, just because it would be a good challenge for a player used to fighting standard faction fleets.