Jan 3, cycle 213 is the point where I ended my first 0.9.1 campaign, last Thursday. I have enjoyed it, and it was certainly better than any 0.9.0 campaigns I've played - which were already good. Here is an hopefully not too boring feedback of the full campaign. Ahem, sorry about the post length.
The first thing I want to point out is: in the past, playing 0.8.1 or 0.9.0, vanilla or modded, a campaign would have a much shorter duration. I think the reasons for this are:
- I haven't played for 2-3 month, so that could be a factor.
- With previous versions I would reach the point where I consider the run done much quicker.
- The bounty difficulty and reward progression changed, especially after early game. Now I need to fight more battles in order to afford fuel, supplies, crew and colony build-up. And some battles are harder.
- Another factor related to the previous point : recovered ships tend to have those new logistic-related D hullmods, this increases the overall fuel and supplies requirements.
- And of course the colony progression : more time and money required to build.
I consider this run duration and progression change a good thing. It feels a bit more "organic" now, there is much less of the typical early to late game quick jump I had before. In short:
- 0.8.1 - 0.9.0 : good early game, with a short mid game while building fleet, and late game that could be even shorter
- 0.9.1 : similar early game, a proper mid game, a late game where there is still some challenging battles
A few words about the way I played:
- 0.9.1 RC6 and RC7, no mods, battle size set to 500
- mostly bounty hunting
- no commission, no raid, no trading except selling loot obtained from battles and exploration
- recover ships that are not too damaged after battle, it's been my main method to obtain "new" ships
- some exploration, especially early-mid game, in order to find suitable system(s) for colonies and gather those precious blueprints and artifacts
- reload save if a battle turns really bad
- 6 steady non-carrier officers, 1 timid carrier officer, 1 aggressive non-carrier officer
- player skill points went mostly into logistics, fleet-wide benefit stuff, and colony management skills; something like 7 points went into the combat skills (in addition to Gunnery Implant)
- on a typical battle I would set 2 defend orders so that my ships form the line
- up to 3 colony administrators each having 2 out of 3 skills, they got replaced by alpha cores mid-late game
- 6 colonies, all in the same system, no ground defense structure was built
- used a bit of colony growth incentive, 30K per colony, twice, when it seemed necessary
Early game
- started with 1 Wolf and 1 Shepherd
- typical early game: tutorial, then established base in the Asharu abandoned platform
- after tutorial fleet was something like : 2 Wolf, 1 Hammerhead, 1 Condor, 1 Dram, 1 Shepherd
- a few system bounties
- 3 named bounties in a row, then 2 or 3 more bounties in a row, it's interesting how bounties are kind of clustered
- fleet building with Enforcers, Shepherds, a Phaeton, a Buffalo, a Kite, a Wayfarer
- also I bought 2 pristines Tempest in an independent market (probably Asharu) and 1 Pirate Shrike, I kept them all in my fleet until the end !
- initially I piloted a Wolf with heavy blaster, then switched to the Pirate Shrike with heavy blaster and medium sabot launcher
- Shepherds where surprisingly good at surviving, either by themselves or by being put as guards to the carrier(s), I used this approach until they got retired
- did 1 or 2 exploration missions
- recruited officers
- got up to 5 Wolves, a few Hammerheads, and ...
Mid game
- ... at some point I recovered a Mora and a Griphon, much welcome to do heavy damage on big ennemy ships / stations and reduce battle duration
- recruited more officers
- started to use Augmented Drive Field and Surveying Equipment on bigger support ships to replace the Shepherds
- more exploration and more named bounties, discovered a suitable system to build colonies - with green-level warning
- among other things, while exploring I got : Onslaught and Legion blueprints, 1 corrupt nanoforge, 1 pristine nanoforge, 1 synchroton, a bunch of good hullmods specs, many AI cores
- got up to 5 Hammerhead, 3 Falcon, 2 Mora, 3 Griphon, 1 Apogee; still using frigates in some fights, retired some frigates as I was close the the ship number limit, also the 2nd Mora replaced the Condor
- faced capital ships, defeated an Onslaught and recovered it in pretty good condition !
- pirate station bounties
- at some point I quickly built 2 colonies in the same system, then added more, I had this idea of having a self-sufficient system
- at some point I recovered a Conquest, which I piloted until the end
- while exploring I entered a yellow-level warning system and ... fought 1 or 2 isolated fleets, then while trying to avoid the other fleets, I saw the station all by itself ...
- ... fought the station, it had no supporting fleet, it was an "easy one" - without armor pieces or shields, I lost a few ships and got an Alpha core
- first pirate raid was probably the biggest colony threat out of the entire run : 3 small fleets and 1 big fleet with capitals and cruisers, my fleet was ouside of home system to intercept them, the small fleets "jumped" on a trader, so I faced the big one 1v1 - then jumped to the other fight, in the end it was not a hard fight because my fleet was already strong, but I guess they could have done some damage to my colonies had I not intercepted them - only defense at home was 2 patrol HQ
- I didn't use AI cores early, I think I waited until I got 4 or 5 colonies with patrol HQ and maybe 1 or 2 stations
- resisted the first Hegemony inspection by ... intercepting their small fleet in hyperspace outside home system, with transponder off; this fleet and the later ones were all quite small
- destroyed pirate and ludic path bases as they threatened my colonies - I'm not sure whether the difficulty changed in 0.9.1 or I didn't let the bases grow, but I found those fights quite easy
- got a few raids by core world factions as my colonies grew, all pretty easy fights as I used the same "intercept in hyperspace" approach; one fleet managed to enter the system but was intercepted by a bunch of patrols - then my fleet was able to join and destroy them
- did the fringe planet quest, the guarding fleet was smallish and the capital ship had an average loadout, so an easy fight
- fought a lot of pirate bounty fleets, with more and more Atlas Mk2, these can be quite dangerous early on as they spam missiles from the dual large missile launchers; over-extending or even failling to back away under missile / fighter pressure translate into a quick ship loss ... on the other hand these enemy ships were easy prey for my reaper-shooting Griphons, especially once the enemy missile spam is over
Late game
- more pirate station bounties
- more named bounties - from 200K to 381K
- upgraded colonies; got around 200K profits from colonies each month after they got to size 4
- built a single ship in the entire run : a pristine Legion, it replaced the 2 Mora (while not being really equivalent)
- at some point I recovered another Legion and 2 Conquest
- retired some of the smaller/weaker ships while keeping some of all sizes
- one challenging named bounty had 1 Paragon and 3 Astral among other ships, the Paragon had a bad loadout (4 Mining Blaster on the large slots, 2 Heavy Needlers, beams) - dangerous but manageable as I had strong capital ships ... the Paragon never was in a position to fight mid-close range so it acted mostly as a support ship, on the other hand Astrals and fighters were crazy dangerous
- I think I did retry the previous fight (or maybe it was another one) 4 or 5 times; I ended-up bringing 5 more cruisers that were otherwise in storage ... so I could deploy 1 additional cruiser (the Apogee) in the battlefield
- I recovered the Paragon and an Astral; the Astral had a cripling (D) hullmods so I fully repaired it - that's the only full repair of the entire run; worth noting : in 0.8.1 I used the full repair on almost every ship I intended to keep, back then we certainly had too much credits
- another challenging named bounty had 3 Astral, 2 Doom, 7 Heron, 1 Harbinger, 9 Drover, 2 Afflicator; keeping all ships together and using good fighter strikes was critical ...
- ... oh and let's not ignore the small Afflicators ! these managed to hit my ships with torpedoes while my ships had their shields raised to protect againts fighters; I had the same problem with enemy Gremlin in another fight
- 2 red-level warning system station in a row, the 2 systems were close to each other, no supporting fleet - station is hard enough as it is, I had to retreat some ships during battle, no loss; of course Paragon and heavy fighter bombardment was important here
- last bounty : 5 Legion (with officers on 4), 8 Dominator, 2 Mora, 2 Enforcer, 3 Condor, less important ships; impressive on paper but not as dangerous as the high tech fleets mentionned above
My end game fleet (two third of these ships have 1 D hullmod, one third are pristine)
- 1 Paragon
- 1 Astral
- 1 Onslaught
- 2 Legion
- 2 Conquest
- 1 Apogee
- 3 Eagle
- 2 Hammerhead
- 1 Pirate Shrike
- 2 Tempest
- 2 Wolf
- 1 Colossus
- 2 Prometheus
- 1 Ox
Colonies
- Manuela, Terran Eccentric World: size 5, 130% Access, 125% Hazard, 76K revenue, Megaport, Farming, Battlestation, Military Base - started with this food producing colony
- New Pendera, Gas Giant: size 4, 110% Access, 200% Hazard, 53K revenue, Megaport, Mining, Orbital Station (being upgraded), Patrol HQ (being upgraded) - then added this one for volatiles, I was already planning to produce fuel
- Lamya, Desert World: size 4, 110% Access, 175% Hazard, 41K revenue, Megaport, Mining, Battlestation, Military Base - this one gets common metal ore and rare ore
- Lilin, Tundra World: size 4, 120% Access, 125% Hazard, 92K revenue, Megaport, Light Industry, Fuel Production, Battlestation, Patrol HQ
- Boone, Barren World: size 4, 120% Access; 175% Hazard, 54K revenue, Megaport, Refining, Battlestation, Military Base - produces common metal and transplutonics
- Dazog's Perch, Terran Eccendric World: size 4, 120% Access, 150% Hazard, 101K revenue, Megaport, Mining, Orbital Works, Battlestation, Patrol HQ - mining is usefull here because it extracts organics
Last, a few random notes, ideas and suggestions
1. in the ship recover screen, I'd like to have a [?] icon with a similar look and behavior to the one in the fleet screen (mouse-over to display info), the reason for this being I find existing UI finicky when I want to review ships available for recovery
2. in addition to the current ship list tiles, have an alternative view for the fleet screen, with one ship per line, columns being used to display relevant ship stats; it would then be easier to review/compare ships; user can toggle between classic view (existing ship tiles) and alternative view (one ship per line)
3. thinking about point 1 and point 2 above, I think it would be neat to display both current fleet and ships available for recovery in a unified screen; this would then be similar to the comodity/weapon market/storage screen; also user can choose between a classic view (existing ship tiles) and a table/list view (one ship per line); it would then be easier to review/compare ships
4. following this train of thought, how about a unified ship buy/sell/store screen (without tabs) ? diplay both current ships, and ships available on the market/storage; the buy/sell/store icons would then be replaced by drag and drop, just like with comodities/weapons; it would bring the same benefits as previous points in addition to some UI consistency
5. recap of the previous ship list screen ideas :
- default display is player's fleet ships, fullscreen
- if in a recovery operation, also display recoverable ships
- if in a market/storage place, player can toggle between either (a) only fleet ships or (b) fleet ships + market ships or (c) fleet ships + storage ships
- player ship list is displayed top, secondary ship list is displayed bottom
- player use drag and drop between both lists, player can confirm/cancel, UI is now similar to comodities/weapons
- also, player can toggle the way lists are displayed between classic view (existing ship tiles) and alternative view (one ship per line)
what do you think ?
6. there is (what looks like) a trap with some exploration missions : if the target position is not clearly explained (such as "is orbiting a barren world"), then player may spend the rest of his fleet's supplies trying to find it - and never find it, this happened to me and I had to reload last save (and I tried the same mission twice), I guess this is where the sensors skills would have helped - how do you handle this ?
7. [I wrote down this one 2 weeks ago, and ... don't remember the details, so I'm trying to interpret things here - sorry if this is confusing] "display the difficulty rating icons in the personal bounty section of the intel screen" - I think currently the difficulty rating icons are only displayed on the "campaign screen" when player does mouse-over a fleet, it would be neat to have these difficulty ratin shown for bounties in the intel screen
8. minor thing, I'd like to hear some music / ambient sounds in the Asharu ATP and similar places
9. visiting Eventide I had the opportunity to compare the prices of the regular Falcon (=102250) and the XIV version (=174250), I find the difference too high (maybe it was already the same ratio with 0.8.1, I don't remember)
10. in the colony infrastructure UI, I find the click-to-remove action strange
11. AI inspection : unless I've missed something, the colony will always comply by default, I'd like to have persistent choices like "always resist"
12. in the intel screen map, when several events are displayed with "arrows" (such as the one showing the origin of a raid and it's target system), I find it a bit messy; it would be helpful to have some sort of persistent visual accent (bigger arrow, lighter color, visual effect, anything) that would clearly show what the currently selected event on the left side actually is on the map
13. at several point during the campaign I noticed enemy ships with average or plain bad loadout, I don't know what mecanics are involved under the hood (randomized, fixed variants, weapon priority, ...), but I'm sure there is room for improvement of the end result - the good thing is, it made some hard battles a bit easier for me; a few month ago I noticed this with 0.9.0 too, but I don't remember with vanilla 0.8.1; I certainly remember facing ships with good loadout in 0.8.1 + DynaSector mod
14. I like the big 0.9.1 combat changes : carrier behaviour is much better, escort order is now good; for me battles are now smoother, with less micro management; though I had a Mora come once in close range of an enemy station, I had to retreat the ship to save it while it had 30% hull, but doing it once in a full campaign is certainly much better that having to give specific orders for every battle as in 0.9.0 - also in this occurence the Mora was actually helpful by eating all that damage at a point where the whole fleet was struggling
15. the Pirate Shrike, given the way I used it in 0.9.1, didn't feel much different from the regular Shrike as I played it in 0.9.0, yes it had a Railgun; I haven't done a comparison in 0.9.1; anyway I like them both - it is a closer situation to, say, the Pirate Enforcer being identical to the regular Enforcer, compared to the Pirate Falcon being much different than to the regular Falcon
16. didn't see any Medusa or Aurora in battle, these are really rare since 0.9.0
17. last but not least (for me): it would be much more comfortable to have some sort of UI scaling option (like in RimWorld where I use 1.5x scaling) - eyes being 1 meter away from a 27 inches display, playing in 2560x1440; but I have to admit I've somewhat gotten used to it - I probably tend to avoid reading text in Starsector without even thinking about it anymore; obviously there are clear benefits for me to play in 2560x1440 (larger view for hyperspace travel and for battles) so I'm thankful to have that option but would love to have bigger UI/text