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[cqsolace]

Hi,

I've been playing SS on and off for about 2 years now, and I  think it's pretty terrific. With that said, one of the issues I've had over time is what I consider to be a somewhat unnatural reliance on save-scumming. Save scumming is defined (by rock-paper-shotgun) as 'Where something happens in a game that you don't like as a result of your actions, and so you load an earlier save for a chance to undo it. '

As a disclaimer, and to quell any doubt in your mind whatsoever - I am not particularly good at starsector. I'm probably pretty bad. If you watched me play, you'd probably be like 'uhg, dude, why are you doing this'. So keep that in the back of your mind as you consider this criticism.

I think that starsector encourages save-scumming by giving the player insufficient routes, options, or tools to avoid complete catastrophe. These catastrophes might take a variety of forms - but the outcome is the same: you lose your entire fleet, and the game essentially ends. I also posted a vaguely similar complaint back in 2015, probably more evidence that the problem exists between keyboard and chair

Now, to my eyes, there's evidence that the developers have given some thought to this already, and that's why we have features such as distress beacon, range indicator (to estimate fuel), hazard warnings around some systems, and even bounty mission indicators that give you a hint if you're strong enough. This is all good stuff, particularly for people like me who would otherwise probably just do stupid stuff. I still think there's room for more improvement, and yes, that's a euphemism for me saying I'd like more hand holding, please.

The #1 way I end up having to Exit -> Continue is because I've entered an engagement that is completely unwinnable. I understand that I have 'Go Dark' to run/hide, and there's supposed to be actual risk otherwise nothing feels like it has a point. However, sometimes you can caught by surprise (enemy flies in off the edge of the screen and engages), and if they're hostile, 99% of the time you can't disengage.

I think it takes a pretty long time to build up a strong combat fleet (see disclaimer above), and so for most of the game, I'm going to be stomped by most moderate sized faction or pirate fleets. If they engage, I have to Quit -> Continue. I'm going to lose my entire fleet. There's no real half-way measure here. I can't bribe my way out, bluff, threaten retaliation via faction, there's no interaction between reputation at all beyond Friend=Disengage: Enemy=Fight. Full retreat to escape a fight usually just results in them immediately re-engaging afterwards, so I might as well just reload now and save the 5 minutes of fleeing (another point of annoyance).

There's not really any good way to gauge how strong a fleet is just by looking at the tiny sprites other than experience. However, due to the fact that the salvage yield of a small fleet is basically nil (maybe you get 5 supplies, 2 metal, w/e), I feel a real pressure to try to attack strong or borderline too-strong opponents just to get enough loot to continue affording my supplies/fuel.

To wrap up this post, here are some things that I think could help players like me:
- More options to avoid engagements that interact with other game mechanics (reputation, money/bribes, missions, and so on)
- Easier ways to gauge the relative strength of a fleet without having to get to the 'engagement' screen (at which point it's too late)
- Changes that make fleeing/retreating more of a real option, or even the ability to surrender (at some substantial cost)

Thanks for reading!

[Schwartz]

Agree on the general point. I've made this comparison a couple of times before, but it really is like Warband. Where everybody moves across the playing field in real-time and running into an army by accident that you would've tried to avoid spells doom for your army - which you may have groomed for a while, similar to how SS does it with ships and weapons.

I think the most straightforward improvement that can be made to the save-scumming issue is having an auto-pause system with modifiable triggers. Having the game pause and/or sound an alarm when a yet unknown fleet enters sensor range, or when it changes course to intercept. Generally showing intercepting fleets with a visual warning like repeating red pings or another flashing outline would be a big improvement. Likewise giving fleeing fleets some kind of indicator. Making sensor ranges more clearly visible, in general and particularly when you 'Go Dark'.

And there could also be something like a number of stars overlaying fleet icons, with the game assigning relative strength compared to your own fleet.

[Cyan Leader]

Full retreat to escape a fight usually just results in them immediately re-engaging afterwards

I do not agree with this, there are many, many cases that retreating is a legit strategy. Some cases (especially in the fringe) will lead to re-engagements but with the current active abilities you should be able to open some distance after fleeing.

Moreover you have an option of fielding fast ships only if you so wish, that would guarantee escape every time with minimal to no losses.

[Philder]

Different games have different gameplay designs. Some aren't designed around the ideal that any player can play and eventually succeed without having to face any significant loss.

To be clear, I'm not against easy difficulty modes. I like that more people can enjoy the same games that I love.

What I'm completely and irrevocably against, however, are games that cater ONLY to the least skilled denominator. Among the games I like most are those which many people would even call 'perverse' in their level of difficulty. For me, easing up the difficulty of the game often means making the game less fun for me. Games that are too easy don't interest me at all.

Anyway, I'm just saying this so that my 2cents are weighed and to politely suggest that you focus your suggestions towards the balance of the easier game modes rather than the whole game overall. I very much enjoy the volatility of the game. Roguelikes and other brutal loss features have been a favorite of mine since the days of DOS.

[Schwartz]

When difficulty is a result of too much information coming at the player, or the player being forced to pause a lot because he's paranoid that the game will screw him by putting a fast-moving fleet too close to him before he can react, you have difficulty by interface. Which is not a great way to go about it.

Principally I agree that SS is difficult and should stay difficult. But let's talk about the sources of difficulty; about which are good sources and which are a result of, as in my example, real-time mode screwing over a player for not pausing enough, pausing at the wrong time or letting the engine run for a few seconds at the wrong time.

Leaving these problems at the hand of the player makes for tedious gameplay. No one likes to abuse the pause function. But the pause function is there, giving the player the option of a safe but rather tedious playstyle.

Since the game passes a day's worth of time within seconds, it makes sense that the commander has a lot of time thinking about fleet operations. He also learns of new sensor contacts within minutes or seconds of them appearing. Now when the player misses an enemy fleet movement and reacts a second too late, that's hours wasted in-game.

A 'safety pause' if you will is IMO the only sensible solution to give the player an option that he already has, but better implemented. It takes nothing away from strategic fleet ops and the various fleet abilities. It also doesn't take anything away to make ingoing/outgoing sensor radii more prominently or permanently visible. This is less urgent than the other issue, but we're already seeing the info on-screen anyway. Again, merely a change that makes the game tell us more consistently what's going on, and allows the player to react with better precision and timing.

[cqsolace]

Different games have different gameplay designs. Some aren't designed around the ideal that any player can play and eventually succeed without having to face any significant loss.

To be clear, I'm not against easy difficulty modes. I like that more people can enjoy the same games that I love.

What I'm completely and irrevocably against, however, are games that cater ONLY to the least skilled denominator. Among the games I like most are those which many people would even call 'perverse' in their level of difficulty. For me, easing up the difficulty of the game often means making the game less fun for me. Games that are too easy don't interest me at all.

Anyway, I'm just saying this so that my 2cents are weighed and to politely suggest that you focus your suggestions towards the balance of the easier game modes rather than the whole game overall. I very much enjoy the volatility of the game. Roguelikes and other brutal loss features have been a favorite of mine since the days of DOS.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Sincerely recognize that many people really enjoy the feeling of something being at risk - that the ability to hide & evade your fleet, the choice of fleet composition (fast & agile, slow & beefy) is made meaningful through the real possibility of loss.

I imagine that additions around diplomacy, bribes, and general ship-to-ship interaction (outside of combat) are in the works and in the future there will be somewhat more diversity to options than just fight or flight. One way that the risk in the game could be turned into a gradient is by having the difficulty setting also affect the general charitably of other in-game agents. That is, how likely they are to accept a bribe, accept a surrender (perhaps of crew or ships as collateral), and so on. On easy difficulties, perhaps you could get away with making errors, whereas on higher difficulties, perhaps even 'normal', enemies are about as charitable as the void of space itself.

[TaLaR]

Radically countering save-scumming requires very specialized game design and comes at great cost in other areas.
1: Very short playthrough sessions, so that losing does not really matter (classic roguelikes and arcades)
2: Very little punishment for loss (example: Darkest Dungeon, heroes are very expendable and you can always throw more newbie heroes into lowest level dungeon to recover your economy).
Both 1 and 2 lose quite a lot flexibility in game design sense compared to a game that uses classic save/load model.

3*:Games that combine long playthrough and heavy punishment (example: Battle Brothers)... Just make me save/load by manually manipulating save files. That's pointless frustration for player.

Classic save/load allows you to choose almost impossible challenge (fight vs much larger/better enemy) and eventually succeed at it by optimizing the *** out of your tactics.
On the other hand Ironman herds you into direction of avoiding any risky encounters and fighting only safest (thus boring!) fights. This can be somewhat countered by eliminating option of safe fights, by world scaling to player, but that's ridiculous in it's own way.

[SafariJohn]

Agree on the general point. I've made this comparison a couple of times before, but it really is like Warband. Where everybody moves across the playing field in real-time and running into an army by accident that you would've tried to avoid spells doom for your army - which you may have groomed for a while, similar to how SS does it with ships and weapons.

I think the big difference between getting wiped in M&B and in Starsector is how reliable (and free) recruiting new troops in M&B is. If there were always lootable derelict fields like the one in the tutorial in reliable places (say, near markets with the Shipbreaking Center condition), I think restarting after a fleet wipe would feel much less painful.

[Anysy]

Its notable that in mount and blade, you always leave a fight with almost all of your personal gear (and the gear of your companions), which in the early game means a defeat is almost meaningless (a good thing), and in the late game means a defeat can only take away men, the likely most easily replaced asset you have.

The equivalent in starsector would be being able to escape with your flagship, (and comparing companions, your officer's ships). This doesnt exactly hold up entirely, but at the same time it probably does suggest that the player should be given a little more useful gear than a shuttle on a defeat.

Maybe, given that the player has a commission, they could at least be given a couple options on fleet restarting by their empire (maybe even with associated costs to make banking money more viable as a recovery). Even just being given like a destroyer and a frigate per officer would go a pretty long way.

[Alex]

Hi - thank you for your feedback! More options to avoid an engagement sounds reasonable; I've actually got a "to look at" item for this specifically regarding pirates.

I think also colonies will help with this in general, due to you being able to produce ships fairly easily once you get a colony with heavy industry started. They won't be *good* ships for a while, and they'll still cost you some credits, but it should still take a lot of the sting out of having to re-start your fleet. So, ultimately, I think it'll make more sense to look at this with colonies in the picture - which, I mean, they sort of are in the dev build, but it hasn't quite come together to the point where I can playtest this.

However, sometimes you can caught by surprise (enemy flies in off the edge of the screen and engages), and if they're hostile, 99% of the time you can't disengage.
...

Full retreat to escape a fight usually just results in them immediately re-engaging afterwards, so I might as well just reload now and save the 5 minutes of fleeing (another point of annoyance).

Hmm. Your fleet is large at that point, right? A small-enough (roughly below 150 total supplies-to-deploy) fleet can always disengage, which then means (assuming your ships manage to get away in the in-combat retreat scenario) the enemy fleet is standing down for a while and you can make an easy getaway. This is definitely unclear and that's an issue. In the next release there's a fleet-screen indicator showing whether your fleet is small enough to be able to disengage or not.

Its notable that in mount and blade, you always leave a fight with almost all of your personal gear (and the gear of your companions), which in the early game means a defeat is almost meaningless (a good thing), and in the late game means a defeat can only take away men, the likely most easily replaced asset you have.

The equivalent in starsector would be being able to escape with your flagship, (and comparing companions, your officer's ships). This doesnt exactly hold up entirely, but at the same time it probably does suggest that the player should be given a little more useful gear than a shuttle on a defeat.

Maybe, given that the player has a commission, they could at least be given a couple options on fleet restarting by their empire (maybe even with associated costs to make banking money more viable as a recovery). Even just being given like a destroyer and a frigate per officer would go a pretty long way.

(I think this is a very good point in general, and a good analysis, but getting stuff for free is dangerous because it could encourage the player, to, say, repeatedly stash the free stuff and keep respawning, unless it's done very carefully. It'd also be nice if it didn't require a commission.

Edit: and you do mention costs, but, hmm. Then what happens when the player is out of money? Or if they convert their money to non-liquid assets?)

[Goumindong]

Different games have different gameplay designs. Some aren't designed around the ideal that any player can play and eventually succeed without having to face any significant loss.

To be clear, I'm not against easy difficulty modes. I like that more people can enjoy the same games that I love.

What I'm completely and irrevocably against, however, are games that cater ONLY to the least skilled denominator. Among the games I like most are those which many people would even call 'perverse' in their level of difficulty. For me, easing up the difficulty of the game often means making the game less fun for me. Games that are too easy don't interest me at all.

Anyway, I'm just saying this so that my 2cents are weighed and to politely suggest that you focus your suggestions towards the balance of the easier game modes rather than the whole game overall. I very much enjoy the volatility of the game. Roguelikes and other brutal loss features have been a favorite of mine since the days of DOS.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Sincerely recognize that many people really enjoy the feeling of something being at risk - that the ability to hide & evade your fleet, the choice of fleet composition (fast & agile, slow & beefy) is made meaningful through the real possibility of loss.

I imagine that additions around diplomacy, bribes, and general ship-to-ship interaction (outside of combat) are in the works and in the future there will be somewhat more diversity to options than just fight or flight. One way that the risk in the game could be turned into a gradient is by having the difficulty setting also affect the general charitably of other in-game agents. That is, how likely they are to accept a bribe, accept a surrender (perhaps of crew or ships as collateral), and so on. On easy difficulties, perhaps you could get away with making errors, whereas on higher difficulties, perhaps even 'normal', enemies are about as charitable as the void of space itself.

The inability to extort and similarly be extorted is definitely fixable and almost certainly on the list of things to be fixed.

However i think that a lot of the "oh noes I lost everything" tends to come from an over-reliance on carriers as a general fleet ship and an imbalance of fast destroyers/frigates.

Fast Destroyers/Frigates can definitely punch above their weight and are generally immune in retreat actions. Fleets that have them, while definitely at risk of losing their slower components have much better chances in retreat actions (the fast ships can clear the way and run interference for the slower ones) and also recover better from such losses.

[cqsolace]

However, sometimes you can caught by surprise (enemy flies in off the edge of the screen and engages), and if they're hostile, 99% of the time you can't disengage.
...

Full retreat to escape a fight usually just results in them immediately re-engaging afterwards, so I might as well just reload now and save the 5 minutes of fleeing (another point of annoyance).

Hmm. Your fleet is large at that point, right? A small-enough (roughly below 150 total supplies-to-deploy) fleet can always disengage, which then means (assuming your ships manage to get away in the in-combat retreat scenario) the enemy fleet is standing down for a while and you can make an easy getaway. This is definitely unclear and that's an issue. In the next release there's a fleet-screen indicator showing whether your fleet is small enough to be able to disengage or not.

Hi Alex, thanks for your reply! I'm a bit hazy on terminology here.  So there's a few possible outcomes of being aggroed:

(a) I select 'Attempt to disengage' at the prompt that occurs and I see a result like 'The enemy fleet harasses your forces a bit, but ultimately does not pursue'. I take a small combat readiness penalty, and the enemy fleet is 'standing down' for a time, and I run away.

(b) I select 'Attempt to disengage' at the prompt, and see a result like 'The enemy fleet pursues your forces'. This triggers a combat encounter where my choices are to flee to the top of the screen, or fight. If I successfully flee, the enemy is supposed to be in a 'standing down' state, according to what you're saying, right?

When you are saying that a small-ish fleet should always be able to disengage, which scenario do you mean? I find that in most circumstances what happens is option (b), even with small fleets, but I feel like I don't observe the 'stand down' behavior, although that's possibly just down to my perception of the situation, if I even play it out that far.

[Alex]

Ahh, gotcha! There's also a scenario (c), which is where it says something along the lines of "your fleet is too large to disengage" and you simply don't have that option, at least until you fight head on and lose some ships. That's the one I was talking about as far as it being unclear/confusing.

When you are saying that a small-ish fleet should always be able to disengage, which scenario do you mean? I find that in most circumstances what happens is option (b), even with small fleets, but I feel like I don't observe the 'stand down' behavior, although that's possibly just down to my perception of the situation, if I even play it out that far.

The stand-down should happen in of these scenarios, and as far as I can confirm right now it does (though it's possible there's a bug somewhere, of course). If you're being attacked by multiple fleets, then the ones you didn't actually get involved in combat with won't stand down, though.

But, yeah, the entire point of the stand-down is to allow you to get away after retreating; not much point to having that option if you just get re-engaged immediately with no room to breathe. It ought to give you enough time to sustained/emergency burn out of there.

[cqsolace]

Ah, I understand now, thanks. I'll have to play around with being a little less loss-adverse and trying the combat-flee -> escape route rather than just reloading, as a matter of attitude shift. Looking forward to more dialogue options in the future, too!

[SafariJohn]

Hi - thank you for your feedback! More options to avoid an engagement sounds reasonable; I've actually got a "to look at" item for this specifically regarding pirates.

Please make the game force us to choose whether or not to answer when a fleet tries to contact us. I doubt most players ever notice the "You're being hailed" line when a LP fleet intercepts them.