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[Dostya]

I get around dealing with save-scumming and other unfun tactics by roleplaying it. The way I see it, if a faction is willing to sell me giant guns and enormous capital ships and I'm a faction hero that knows many higher ups personally, they'll let me commission their shipyards to make things for me at a premium (1x to 2x price, depending on rarity/class). There are limits to this, naturally, but as long as I have access to a sizable faction planet anything common is up for commissioning. Construction time is based off of Omnifactory times for lack of proper lore to work with.

The exceptions are as follows:

1. Prototype/special ships E.G. Excalibur, Snow Goose: Given that these usually have highly sensitive and proprietary equipment, I only let myself commission these if I own a significant faction shipyard (Nexerelin player faction). If I own the shipyard, the answer is "yes your majesty," not "no, you well-regarded free agent."

2. Unbuildable ships E.G. XIV-class, IBB bounties: These ships simply can't be commissioned, since there's no ability to construct them. If I have access to a large, trustworthy, friendly market and the ship is a class (XIV-akin), I'll strip something around to 3x-5x the normal purchase price from my credits, and start rolling low-probability dice each week for my ongoing (presumably advertised) bid to bear fruit. If it's totally unique I'm basically SOL until it comes up for sale somewhere. I don't go in for gamey tactics like buying out a market completely. I can use the bid system for common ships that I can't access shipyards for, but the downsides are obvious.

On the upside, I get guaranteed vessels of classes I want, on the downside it costs money and time. I figure it's fair. With luck there will be a shipyard commissioning ability when industry matures more from regular factions, and an ability to do some construction of your own with high-level outposts and industry commitment. Fingers crossed, anyway.

[stormbringer951]

I think save-scumming is crime and punishment neatly wrapped up in one; you're doing something repetitive and unfun to gain a fractional advantage. Okay; I don't feel like there's productive shaming to be done there.

Heh. Reminds me of what someone once said about pudding farming in Nethack, a unfun, repetitive but extremely advantageous activity: "The DevTeam has arranged an automatic and savage punishment for pudding farming. It's called pudding farming."

[Megas]

If scumming and grinding were not so potentially game-breaking rewarding (or, if the game is sadistic, merely keeping up with the power level of the opposition), then it would be a punishment.  If anything, it is like an investment, and may save time in the long run should you get the overpowering rewards before or at the expected time.  They are like early D&D wizards.  You suffer hardship now in the hopes that you get godlike power later.

Pudding farming is Nethack is usually not worth it because 1) You can still die instantly to a stupid mistake (by overlooking unconventional attacks such as petrification) or dumb luck (hit by someone holding vorpal sword) no matter how overpowered you are and 2) if you are strong enough to pudding farm (you need to be strong enough to kill the things somewhat quickly and painlessly), you are strong enough to kill other things and get stuff.  Pudding farming is something to do usually for amusement, not for efficient power accumulation.  That said, pudding farming is fast compared to grinding for items or high levels in online games.

Online games have taken grinding design to an artform.  They want people to grind so that their games get played as long as possible, and design games with psychological techniques so that people do not want to leave the game.  It is like the One Ring, "My preccccioussss, Gollum!"

Games in which you must hang around and grind for more XP or else the enemies in the next chapter wipe your party are a bit frustrating.  You cannot exactly run away from annoying random encounters that you get once every five steps in your classic jRPG because you will not have enough XP to survive (and even if you do, you might not anyway).

[stormbringer951]

If scumming and grinding were not so potentially game-breaking rewarding (or, if the game is sadistic, merely keeping up with the power level of the opposition), then it would be a punishment.  If anything, it is like an investment, and may save time in the long run should you get the overpowering rewards before or at the expected time.  They are like early D&D wizards.  You suffer hardship now in the hopes that you get godlike power later.

Pudding farming is Nethack is usually not worth it because 1) You can still die instantly to a stupid mistake (by overlooking unconventional attacks such as petrification) or dumb luck (hit by someone holding vorpal sword) no matter how overpowered you are and 2) if you are strong enough to pudding farm (you need to be strong enough to kill the things somewhat quickly and painlessly), you are strong enough to kill other things and get stuff.  Pudding farming is something to do usually for amusement, not for efficient power accumulation.  That said, pudding farming is fast compared to grinding for items or high levels in online games.

Online games have taken grinding design to an artform.  They want people to grind so that their games get played as long as possible, and design games with psychological techniques so that people do not want to leave the game.  It is like the One Ring, "My preccccioussss, Gollum!"

Games in which you must hang around and grind for more XP or else the enemies in the next chapter wipe your party are a bit frustrating.  You cannot exactly run away from annoying random encounters that you get once every five steps in your classic jRPG because you will not have enough XP to survive (and even if you do, you might not anyway).

You've got the meaning of the quote backwards, Megas. Back in the day, the argument to remove/nerf/punish pudding farming was not that it was necessary or the most efficient path to win the game, but that it existed as a way to grind to amass all the resources you can ever want and trivialise the endgame if you were willing to spend large amounts of time doing so. The quoted line was arguing against that view and saying that only people who didn't mind or even enjoyed doing that would be the only ones who would do it.

While you're right in saying that at the point someone can viably pudding farm, you're already past the most difficult part of the game and should win with correct play, some dedicated pudding farming can get all the intrinsics you want, all the spellbooks, scrolls, lamps, magic markers, and whatever other equipment you need via drops and polypiling. Most of the things you want to pudding farm for are ascension kit items that will avoid those instadeaths you mentioned (e.g. getting the vorpal blade and disposing of it yourself, getting hold of enough tinned lizards to feel comfortable about not getting petrified, or even just finding enough amulets of life saving to survive any mistakes you do make :p), although in the process of getting them you are likely to get hold of absolutely everything you thought it might have been nice to have.

Anyway, I'm getting a little off topic...

[Megas]

@ stormbringer951: Oh, sure.  If the player can pudding farm without doing something stupid, he can get more fuel to his winning fire.  I think the one time I tried to farm puddings seriously was to sacrifice a bunch of meat on an altar.  The main problem with pudding farming in Nethack, and grinding easy monsters in Angband, is the player can get into a mind-numbing procedure, then get instakilled when something unusual and deadly interferes and player dies because he was too mind-numbed to notice the killer threat.  Both Nethack and Angband have permadeath, and grinding for too much power can harm you if it means the chance of pilot error goes up.

Lizard food does not help against instant petrification, such as falling down while holding a cockatrice, or attacking said cockatrice while polymorphed as a mind flayer (and since normal precautions do not apply, player may not notice until he gets stoned).

I have no problem with pudding farming in Nethack.  It is nice that it is not optimal to do it, though it is an option.

P.S.  If pudding farming happened to be rewarding and optimal, and someone wrote that "the punishment of pudding farming is pudding farming", I would laugh that off as foolish nonsense.  No different than a trash-talking opponent trying to win a game (or a game designer trying to cover up his mistakes) by trying to convince or shame the other player to give up because he is playing the game wrong.

[Mini S]

I think everyone's arguments have been said some may like it some may not but going on with this argument is a bit childish because Starsector is a single player not an MMORPG.

[ChaseBears]

I think you missed the thread? The point was that instead of save scumming you might as well cheat.

[Megas]

The point was that instead of save scumming you might as well cheat.

That is an option, unless you do not want to cheat, then you save-scum instead (if allowed by game - not all games allow save-scumming) if that is optimal because cheating is not an option.  If cheating is acceptable, then save-scumming is moot.  Even faster is to say "I WIN!" and not play (because you won).

[Cik]

that doesn't follow at all

presumably:

>you have fun playing the game
>you think the game might be more fun to play with a hyperion instead of whatever you are using
>hyperion is impossible to get without either
1. save scumming, which takes 6 hours and is """"cheating"""""
2. spawning the ship which is "cheating"
>you spawn the ship and save 6 hours
>have fun playing the game with your new ship to get around the broken ship spawning system

if you don't have fun playing the game, you might as well skip to the end, but i assume if you are playing the game you gain utility FROM PLAYING THE GAME ITSELF. not just from beating it. if all the enjoyment you gained was just from beating the game, you may have some form of addiction.

[Megas]

1. save scumming, which takes 6 hours and is """"cheating"""""

I already posted why I completely disagree with this, at least for Starsector, and will not repost here.

The only reason for me to add ships, weapons, xp, or other stats via mods or developer mode is I want to try new content, but do not have two weeks to spare for grinding.  I did this to test a maxed out Centurion and Ion Beams (and more) sometime back.  If all I care about is beating the computer or just simply playing the game, especially the first game of a new version, I will want to play by the rules, warts and all.  No third-party stuff (i.e., mods), no running game in dev/debug mode, no editing settings.json (because it is too easy to abuse).

The point of playing a game is to achieve the victory condition while following the rules.  If ye or I do not want to win or play by the rules, why bother playing (barring amusing lose conditions like cruel and unusual deaths in adventure games like Shadowgate or killing Lord British or equivalent in some RPG)?

I have not played Starsector much lately because I have mostly solved the game until next release, and I have other games or content I like to play and/or develop.

[whatdoesthisbuttondo]

>hyperion is impossible to get without either
1. save scumming, which takes 6 hours and is """"cheating"""""

Why should that be anymore cheating than replaying combat over and over until you are
satisfied with the result?

The game allows you to save prior to combat, which is essentially allowing you to access
a different timeline if you will.

When does cheating start?

When you reload because you lost 5 crew?

When you reload because you lost a battleship?

What about when you reload after losing a frigate, play the same combat again and not
reload after losing a cruiser the 2nd time? Is that reverse-cheating?

[Cik]

Why should that be anymore cheating than replaying combat over and over until you are
satisfied with the result?

it isn't different

The game allows you to save prior to combat, which is essentially allowing you to access
a different timeline if you will.

no

When does cheating start?

when you start exploiting things that aren't built into the game for an advantage

When you reload because you lost 5 crew?

yes

When you reload because you lost a battleship?

yes

What about when you reload after losing a frigate, play the same combat again and not
reload after losing a cruiser the 2nd time? Is that reverse-cheating?

reloading itself to circumvent losses that you deserved* (IE, that were because of mistakes made by you during the game) is cheating regardless of the result
reloading to circumvent bugs, glitches, or other things is not cheating.

[Thaago]

* Smashes head into desk *