Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Slim_NZ on November 13, 2022, 05:29:54 AM
-
I'm not sure how many new players you get, but the experience sucks! Even on easy, having watched a playthrough, I can't even finish the tutorial section after three goes and I'm close to giving up and calling it a day. One mistake and it is game over. It is very unclear what to do, where to go. Step foot into the wrong system and you get jumped by a fleet that you can't touch. But you didn't know you couldn't go into that system. It is impossible to find enough things to make money. The game throws a whole lot of bounties at you, but doesn't tell you can't reach them, and if you do, you'll die immediately.
There is a real lack of structure that is going to prevent new players from even getting past the tutorial. I was strongly recommend putting some work into the new player experience.
-
Yeah, I feel like the combat/fleet control tutorials should be integrated into the campaign tutorial.
Also:
- Fuel range visual by default toggled on
- Black market profitability/Tarriff costs highlighted early
- Dram/Hammerhead highlighted in Galatia debris pile (pristine? idk)
- Rotate on mouse by default toggled on
-
I can't even finish the tutorial section after three goes
Hmm - I'd *love* to know exactly what is giving you trouble in the tutorial, especially on the easy difficulty. It can be hard for me to step away from the game enough to see what might be a major stumbling block, and I'd really appreciate hearing the specifics of what's causing you problems.
There is a real lack of structure that is going to prevent new players from even getting past the tutorial.
(I mean, I hear what you're saying! And improvements can always be made. But a "lack of structure" is also kind of a key thing with a sandbox game, isn't it? And I'm not sure that putting the tutorial on hard rails would do the player any favors in the long run.)
-
I mean, it isn't like the game is unforgiving to new players per se, I remember my first vanilla character. I did pretty well for my first run, got to level 15, and all that stuff. I think the problem with new players is more getting a feel for the core mechanics of the game, which sometimes aren't elaborated on well, if at all.
I think the help pop-ups are a super good way to educate players on current happenings in the fleet. Low supplies, hyperspace, buying a new ship, etc. It's quick and helpful and is a guiding hand to the main mechanics and functions of the game and the player's choices.
A few of the problems that I encountered as a fresh vanilla player that I now know not to do took me a while to get over.
1. I was unaware of how supply consumption based on ships and burn level based on ships worked. This led to me snowballing my fleet with combat ships I didn't need, and dragging onslaughts to the outer rim of the sector, and wondering why I was always out of supplies/fuel. I was also spending *most* of the credits I earned exploring or doing bounties just resupplying and repairing my fleet.
I didn't know that you could store ships, how supply consumption was affected/calculated, or that burn level was impacted by the ships you had in your fleet. The game didn't do the best job of explaining that, and as a new player, it helps to have a few pointers for common sense. "Don't fly with ships you don't need!" and "Don't deploy more ships in combat than you need to!" or "keep in mind supply and fuel economy when traveling!" and "you can store ships you don't want to carry around!"
2. I had zero clue about the random happenings in the sector that make it feel more 'alive'. Things like smugglers or traders or pirates waiting for you at the end of hyperspace streams, scavengers turning on you randomly, paying tithes to luddic fleets, etc. I had to learn about ALL of these things the hard way. As a new player, I saw these things as flavor or simply decoration to make the sector feel more fleshed out. It wasn't until about 100 hours in that I started looking at every trade fleet as a possibility, keeping a special eye on fleets in hyperspace, or just being wary about what the sector threw at you.
I think that hinting at, or at least acknowledging the existence of the chaotic nature of the sector in a more direct and concrete way would make players feel less helpless when they get jumped by a bounty fleet in a system they were innocently exploring.
Last notes!
The Galatia Academy storyline should be a bit more front-and-center, I think. It would give new players a concrete goal to work towards.
New players (myself included) had very little clue on how to build ships effectively- flux dissipation, weapon types, etc.
The main ways of making credits in the sector (trade, bounties, exploration) should be elaborated on a bit more.
Maybe give the player a Delta-Level AI companion that acts like a friendly face and a helpful mentor? With the option to toggle it, of course.
TLDR: Shortening the learning curve for new players may provide a better experience for them, and make the game seem less unforgiving. Of course, balancing a game and making it less difficult is arguably making it worse, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Thanks for Reading!
-
The one thing I always see screwing new players in every single lets play is autofit. Everyone just presses the button without thinking much (admittedly, that's how it advertises itself), sometimes when not even docked at a market, and ends up with a terrible loadout with half the weapon slots empty. There needs to be a bright red warning flashing all over the screen, screaming that autofit only uses weapons you have in your cargo or can buy from the current market, and those are insufficient for a decent fit 99% of the time.
An even more radical solution might be to create a "stock" variant for each ship, using only open market common weapons, but in a reasonable way, and ensure that every market always sells those weapons in large quantities, so at least autofitting at a market is guaranteed to make a working ship.
In general, it feels like the game doesn't explain the importance of loadout design to new players. People just assume that autofits are sufficient and don't start looking into the system until tens of hours into the game.
-
The one thing I always see screwing new players in every single lets play is autofit. Everyone just presses the button without thinking much (admittedly, that's how it advertises itself), sometimes when not even docked at a market, and ends up with a terrible loadout with half the weapon slots empty. There needs to be a bright red warning flashing all over the screen, screaming that autofit only uses weapons you have in your cargo or can buy from the current market, and those are insufficient for a decent fit 99% of the time.
An even more radical solution might be to create a "stock" variant for each ship, using only open market common weapons, but in a reasonable way, and ensure that every market always sells those weapons in large quantities, so at least autofitting at a market is guaranteed to make a working ship.
In general, it feels like the game doesn't explain the importance of loadout design to new players. People just assume that autofits are sufficient and don't start looking into the system until tens of hours into the game.
Yes. Yes. And a huge yes. All of the little tips and tricks combined don't help out as much as the moment when the player figures out "wait I've been doing this all wrong". Autofit is so bad it brings out heavy backseating in every new player stream I've watched. And of course, I don't blame folks for taking the recommended and easy path, there's already a ton to take in. But too many times I've seen someone 10-15 hours in still using autofit without a single glance at the loadout to check if it's sane. That is genuinely the biggest obstacle to overcome to get better in game but one that you can't simply tutorial through. It would be silly to have a whole hand holding part "take this weapon and put it here, now this one, now take these hullmods, now group your weapons like this...", that's just too much and that's just for a single ship.
Having always available "stock" weapons is a good idea, I even believe Alex made some changes to markets, so they have more things, just in lesser quantity. Another idea would be that autofit outright won't work unless you have all the materials, so it forces players to experiment, but that's too harsh. Maybe if the ships bought from markets already come with a basic loadout could help out? That still leaves ships you recover from battle though. It's honestly a super hard topic since to me it seems almost impossible to balance experimentation with hand holding here. Players will either get overloaded with information or keep using autofit since it's faster.
-
I've tried to introduce the game to a couple of people and every one of them stopped playing pretty fast because of how hard the early game is to conceptualize.
Some of my perceived problems and fixes:
1. Combat is hard: Not really a problem. It's to be expected, and early game fighting dmodded pirates can just be brute forced usually, but when you are stuck with trash fits on dmodded ships fighting enemies you have never encountered, compounded by the other problems I will get to and the massive punishment you incur if you fail, it can be pretty hard, or even discouraging. I would fix this by making it impossible to get Degraded Drive Field on spawn, to prevent players from being stuck with an extremely slow fleet, without even knowing what that means, and improving the early game fits. I mean, do you really expect a newcomer to do well with all downsized apogee? And the worst weapons on those downsized slots too.
2. Better tutorial: Combat tutorial is nice and all, and I know that the game was initially a combat sim, and the entire game is structured around combat, but to even get there you need to survive the campaign. This seems to be the big issue and even last week I saw people complaining about the campaign holding them back from combat on USC. I'd suggest a longer form tutorial of some kind. Endless Space 2 does a good job of it IMO, by slowly introducing mechanics as you unlock them, accompanied by lots of tooltips and reminders, but never actually entering a real "tutorial". I get that it's harder in an open world game, where part of the appeal is doing what you want, but at least showing them where the missions tab is, or maybe letting them choose a mission, and then walking them through it could be helpful. And then follow up with a second mission they can do on their own. Making multiple tutorials for the different mission types is a lot of work but I think if you want the game to be more than a niche thing for weirdos that's the best thing to do.
Also there shouldn't be a tutorial mission and a tutorial within the game. It's confusing and weird and people miss it and it makes things detached.
-
Also there shouldn't be a tutorial mission and a tutorial within the game. It's confusing and weird and people miss it and it makes things detached.
True, I've seen most straight up dismiss the main menu tutorials because in some game, those are just textual hints or something. So imagine starting up the campaign without knowing how to pilot your ship or command your fleet. I understand why that part is in the main menu, but the player should somehow be forced to it if they immediately try to launch the campaign.
-
I think a workable approach is to add a selection of optional dedicated tutorial missions to the Galatian academy, unlocked after the initial campaign tutorial (and explicitly tell players to go check those out instead of sending them to Corvus). So instead of a huge linear tutorial you have multiple smaller quests, each explaining some game aspect in detail, which can be done in any order or skipped entirely. To an extent the academy already works like that, but I would suggest doubling down and having these tutorial missions be more blatant and leaning on the 4th wall with hints and explanations, like the initial linear tutorial.
-
Even on easy, having watched a playthrough, I can't even finish the tutorial section after three goes
Just to offer an alternative subjective opinion: after watching some playthroughs my first game ever was on Normal difficulty, Spacer start. Never had any issues.
-
my first game ever was on Normal difficulty, Spacer start. Never had any issues.
I went through the tutorial missions first, myself, but never watched any playthroughs. Normal difficulty, wayfarer/shepard, which resulted in a very stupid first fight in the campaign tutorial.
Other than that, though, I've never had any serious difficulties with the game. I also never, ever used autofit. That might not be a coincidence.
-
Have an option to cut fuel and supply costs to 50% or 25% of normal. The game snowballs against you if you're fighting fights, but losing ships and you keep going without save scumming (Pyrrhic victories, but you're new so you don't know!). You'll end up with dmods AND burn your supplies repairing ships so you end up broke or stranded with a fleet crippled by dmods.
"Easy" really needs to ease people into the logistics part of the game too.
Also, starting ships should have some sustain with some lethal burst damage that isn't missiles. If your killing blow / alpha strike is missiles a new player WILL use them at the wrong time then be unable to finish their first fights and think combat is awful. That was my experience with Starsector starting out. Others can suggest better ships & load-outs than I can for how to fix this.
-
To be honest I miss my first experience with this game when I had to figure everything out. ;P
It's an indie game that's supposed to be hard and I hope it stays so. My first hours I was completely destroyed, but I really enjoyed it. Problem is that people are too used to modern gaming experience which makes everything sooooo easy. Take Skyrim for example - you've got fast travel, compass that always tells you where to go and environment levels up with you, so you will never meet an enemy that outmatches you too much, but for me it completely takes away fun of getting better at the game and makes whole experience shallow.
I agree that there are some issues. Maybe easy difficulty should actually be easier for people that want to enjoy other aspects of the game. However it's important to understand that it's am indie project without huge studio and every setting has to be written and tested separately which takes away time from other game mechanics.
One thing that lacks for me is some indicator that supplies or fuel are low. Preferably sound indication and popup like when your system is about to get raided, so I could pause and check what's happening. I played this game a lot and still forget to fuel up sometimes. Especially in the late game, when I feel too confident because of amount of fuel and supplies I usually have.
-
Having introduced this game to a couple of friends and dozen or so of my students, the new player experience is indeed horrible.l
The primary problem is ship combat is unlike any other video game out there. On top of that it is heavily knowledge and decision based instead of reaction based.
The second problem is the inverse difficulty. Letting the kids play with my saved games with an end game fleet they can go in with no experience and have a great time. But you throw them into a wolf and tell them to fight a hound half of them will fail on their first try.
I think the solution is simple. Have players play a support role in many battles first for them to learn the game, before throwing them into the dog eat dog jungle of the open world format.
Start the campaign with an option to have them as a officer somehow and have the player participate is as many battles as they want. When a battle is lost the player loses no progression and the system continues.
-
Start the campaign with an option to have them as a officer somehow and have the player participate is as many battles as they want. When a battle is lost the player loses no progression and the system continues.
That kind of sounds like the main menu missions to be honest. Personally, I think it's a good idea to have new players at least try all the main menu vanilla missions, if not win at them, before going to the campaign.
-
I just want to point out that there's a difference between "the NPE sucks" and "game is complex".
No amount of NPE tweaking will get rid of the simple fact that all the game systems, tokens, etc. need to be learned by the player. At some point you just have to sit down and read the wiki. The only alternative is to remove 90% of game's content and I hope no one wants to do THAT.
-
That kind of sounds like the main menu missions to be honest. Personally, I think it's a good idea to have new players at least try all the main menu vanilla missions, if not win at them, before going to the campaign.
Yeah, but new players will not be thinking of doing those first. Its normal nowadays to think that the normal "campaign" will offer a gradual difficulty curve, as it should.
I am of the strong opinion that this is a HUGE problem that needs to be fixed before its shown on steam or any platform.
-
The second problem is the inverse difficulty. Letting the kids play with my saved games with an end game fleet they can go in with no experience and have a great time. But you throw them into a wolf and tell them to fight a hound half of them will fail on their first try.
So true. The recommended start should be a pretty large fleet for new players imo. And I don't think easy mode solves anything. I'd sooner quit a game than start a new save on a game I wasn't enjoying just to try the easy mode.
Start the campaign with an option to have them as a officer somehow and have the player participate is as many battles as they want. When a battle is lost the player loses no progression and the system continues.
I like this idea. I don't think the menu missions accomplish this nearly as well because they are not in the environment you will be dealing with, and again a lot of people will skip over the missions. I know I did.
No amount of NPE tweaking will get rid of the simple fact that all the game systems, tokens, etc. need to be learned by the player. At some point you just have to sit down and read the wiki. The only alternative is to remove 90% of game's content and I hope no one wants to do THAT.
You only have to sit down and read the wiki because many of the mechanics are left unexplained. Plenty of complex games don't leave new players stranded.
-
Let's all just remember what type of game this is. The joy of being a new player is exploring new things, figuring out stuff and strats for yourself. I don't disagree that the new player experience could be improved with better information and hints during the tutorial, but some people here are really overreacting. If someone took my first time with this game by constantly showing me "do this, take that, don't take on this fight...", my experience would be much poorer and less exciting. This is a subjective opinion but throwing a manual at players basically does the opposite, it ensures most people won't bother to read through it all.
And starting out with a big fleet is a dumb idea for new folks. You won't learn proper resource management and how the fleets scale, you're immediately thrown with a dozen ships, so even less chance someone take a shot at manual refits. Not to mention they'd already be expected to be good with managing a fleet of multiple ships with officers. And slow fleets tend to get caught more often. There's just so much wrong there.
So please keep in mind we're talking about an indie open world space game here. The last thing it needs is neon light pointing in every direction.
Btw there's nothing wrong with using the wiki for help, it's much easier to get the information you want fast. I played many games like that and I wouldn't call them bad or tedious experiences. If anything it would be worse to have everything cluttered in game.
-
There's no way any game can be successful without holding the player's hands, just imagine if Minecraft had no instructions or directions, and you had to look at the wiki to even know to punch tree, get wood - Oh wait.
-
Mate you contradicted your own point... And there is a huge number of games that don't hold your hand and are successful.
Unless you count success only if it's a AAA game developed by Ubisoft, EA or some other cesspool company.
-
The second problem is the inverse difficulty. Letting the kids play with my saved games with an end game fleet they can go in with no experience and have a great time. But you throw them into a wolf and tell them to fight a hound half of them will fail on their first try.
So true. The recommended start should be a pretty large fleet for new players imo. And I don't think easy mode solves anything. I'd sooner quit a game than start a new save on a game I wasn't enjoying just to try the easy mode.
I would tend to disagree on the inverse difficulty curve. Let me ask Linnis this, did the kids refit the ships from empty with a pile of weapons at a colony, or did they use your already at end game fit ships? If they are not fitting from scratch, then I don't think this proves the game has an inverse learning curve. I'm guessing the fact they are finding success is because you are playing the hardest portion of the end game for them, the fitting screen. It only seems easy because you're an experienced player discounting the fitting step as not being part of playing at end game. Fitting is arguably harder and more important than having average piloting skills. Especially for full sized end game fleets.
I think the appropriate comparison to the Wolf and Hound fight at the start of the game would be handing the kids infinite credits, a level 15 character with no skill points spent yet, 100 story points, and a set of colonies that can build anything in a month, and seeing if they have just as much success against an end game fleet such as a late stage Ordo, the double Tesseracts, or the Tesseract bounty. My guess, which I admittedly have no evidence to back up, is they would have difficulty coming up with good fits and a good end game fleet composition without any prior experience that would have anywhere near the same level of success as your pre-fit fleets.
Hmm... Let me talk to my spouse about gathering evidence.
As for starting with a larger fleet, I'm going to guess that just leads to a tendency for a new player to over deploy which in turn results in logistics issues. If you don't know how to fight the easy fights with a minimal deployment, you really shouldn't have moved onto a big fleet which lets you win simply by virtue of over deploying and thus running into logistics issues on the campaign layer. Personally, I would recommend any new player start with the Wolf and Kite and do the tutorial which will add in enough ships through salvage to have a reasonable fleet for a new player to run. I tend to think the faster starts + tutorial is perhaps a tiny bit too big for a brand-new player.
Start the campaign with an option to have them as a officer somehow and have the player participate is as many battles as they want. When a battle is lost the player loses no progression and the system continues.
I like this idea. I don't think the menu missions accomplish this nearly as well because they are not in the environment you will be dealing with, and again a lot of people will skip over the missions. I know I did.
So, are we suggesting this play as an officer in a larger fleet (that they do or do not have fleet command over?) be forced? Or if this is an option, why wouldn't your typical player skip over it just like the tutorials, missions, and the easy mode option which people in this thread suggested they or other players do now?
Do we just need to ask if the player wants to try missions from the new game questionnaire?
1. Do the combat tutorial
2. Jump to missions screen to learn without penalty
3. Begin a normal campaign
Would this proposed officer in an AI fleet just be a similar question?
1. Start as an officer with fleet decisions made by AI to learn without penalty
2. Start a normal campaign where you decide everything
Would simply having the last option greyed out until you've done a sufficient amount of the prior options work?
Actually, would renaming new game to new campaign (and load game to load campaign), help at all to make it clearer that there is more to the game than just the campaign, and would that result in a higher percentage of players going from top to bottom on the menu (i.e. tutorial, then mission, then campaign?. I'm pretty sure they are in that order on the menu for a reason.
No amount of NPE tweaking will get rid of the simple fact that all the game systems, tokens, etc. need to be learned by the player. At some point you just have to sit down and read the wiki. The only alternative is to remove 90% of game's content and I hope no one wants to do THAT.
You only have to sit down and read the wiki because many of the mechanics are left unexplained. Plenty of complex games don't leave new players stranded.
I'd be really curious to see how new player experiences are done well in a complex sandbox game with multiple game layers. If a player goes through the combat tutorials, some missions, and then the campaign tutorial, I think it should be pretty comparable to explaining the mechanics in other games. It then becomes a question of convincing players it's worthwhile to do those first rather than just jumping right in.
And I don't want that jumping right in option taken away for experienced players. Certainly, I don't want a gradual ramp up of difficulty in the overall game as a veteran, since that just becomes busy work in a sandbox game. I just want to play the game. After playing the campaign a dozen times, I'd rather just add a mod that skips it, because well, it's relatively linear and only so many branches.
Don't get me wrong, the campaign is great, but David can only write so fast and so much. :)
I think the campaign tutorial and pop-ups could definitely be expanded upon by touching upon more mechanics, perhaps a more depth in places, and a more direct pointer to the main campaign, but I'm not sure the overall format really needs to be drastically overhauled. It is a sandbox game, and at some point, you've got to just be cut loose. You will not always have a clear arrow pointing to the next place to go (other than in the main campaign).
-
The thing with the tutorial is that it's both on-rails (you can mess that up) and covering things that are just plain not easy, like sneaking around and kiting (you can mess that up, too). Afterwards there's ample opportunity to drive your fleet nowhere good and either get killed or supply-starved there. Logistical planning is integral to how you play the game, that's why we get fuel estimates on the map. You have to hustle at the start of the game.
Even as a veteran, I messed up the tutorial before. Force-repairing your salvage instead of getting free repairs through dialogue. Forgetting to bring crew or not hitting "suspend" before you're dry. Getting in between the two guard fleets with a fleet that can't handle them. Plenty of things to go wrong. So it's not "Baby's first tutorial" like so many games do, but I consider that a positive.
Going into a core system and getting nuked by a big fleet is kind of a rarity if you're not hostile to the system faction. It can happen when there's a pirate raid there, but then you get told beforehand via Intel. You can go dark and sneak in, have a look around first. A lot of grief can be avoided and it's often down to the player acting care-free when he should have paused and taken a moment to consider things.
-
The second problem is the inverse difficulty. Letting the kids play with my saved games with an end game fleet they can go in with no experience and have a great time. But you throw them into a wolf and tell them to fight a hound half of them will fail on their first try.
So true. The recommended start should be a pretty large fleet for new players imo. ...
I strongly disagree with that. After I played the tutorial mission, I immediately started a new game with only two ships, because the big fleet you get for the last fight of the tutorial was for me an overwhelming amount of data/information.
I really prefer to ad one ship after another, so I can understand the capabilities of each ship and so learn the game step by step.
Giving the player more options for a small start, instead of just 4 different ships, that's something I would really appreciate.
-
Mate you contradicted your own point...
That was the point.
-
It may be a good idea to put a mission with bare bones hulls needed to be outfitted and a selection of weapons - to emphasise the importance of fitting.
All that with autofit disabled.
-
I can't even finish the tutorial section after three goes
Hmm - I'd *love* to know exactly what is giving you trouble in the tutorial, especially on the easy difficulty. It can be hard for me to step away from the game enough to see what might be a major stumbling block, and I'd really appreciate hearing the specifics of what's causing you problems.
There is a real lack of structure that is going to prevent new players from even getting past the tutorial.
(I mean, I hear what you're saying! And improvements can always be made. But a "lack of structure" is also kind of a key thing with a sandbox game, isn't it? And I'm not sure that putting the tutorial on hard rails would do the player any favors in the long run.)
My biggest issue is that all of the quests in the early game are so far away that you don't have the logistics to get there. I couldn't find anything worth doing in the initial sectors. The first time I actually used the emergency beacon, the fleet that turned up refused to help me and then smoked me in a fight. I've just had a playthru that I got to level 6, but AGAIN, got trapped doing a bounty that was too far away. I assume that there will be some resources in the outer systems - but there is literally nothing in EVERY system. No fuel. No one to steal or buy fuel from...
No sandbox game ever just throws you into the sandbox with nothing you can do early game. There should be enough pirates in the first couple of sectors to farm and build up. The initial bounties shouldn't be so far away that you will lose the game going for them. The game never explained that there is NOTHING in the outer systems. The only reason I even got to level 6 was because I stumbled across a space station that gave me a $300k item to sell.
I don't know exactly what you do, but I feel like you need to do something to keep players in that first 1-4 hours because at the moment it is deeply frustrating. If this were on Steam I would have refunded to be honest.
-
Yeah, the importance of tankers should really be highlighted. Some will assume you'd only need those to trade fuel but they enable you to go outside of the core casually.
-
I dislike early-game combat (especially with how bounties spike faster than player can build-up). In my last game, instead of diving into fights immediately as I have done over the years, I took Apogee start and abused the infamous black market loops until I had millions, a fleet with close to twenty ships, and enough xp from trade to reach level 6 and Hull Restoration to get pristine ships from loot and lower victory threshold from flawless to several ships lost. All of that before my first real fight.
Does not help that after about two in-game years, the easy trade loops become rarer (and harder to exploit regularly), so I am incentivized to abuse black market trades as often and early as possible.
I prefer to overdeploy when possible and finish fights quickly, especially against the (post-0.8 release) cowardly AI. Player can save money by deploying overwhelming force for fast flawless victory instead of losing money by losing ships and/or burning CR beyond deployment costs because too few ships could not kill the enemy fast enough before PPT timed out.
-
I dislike early-game combat (especially with how bounties spike faster than player can build-up).
The difficulty scaling for the intel bounties is probably faster than what a new player should be expected to handle, although military contacts can mitigate some of that problem for bounty focused playthroughs. If you can get a military contact (or even better a few of them in a locallized area), that can help make a combat only playthrough smoother for a new player.
Personally, I think there needs to be more breadcrumbs pointing to the guaranteed military contact on Coatl. If you progress through the campaign (which a new player will likely do, assuming they realize it is there), you get handed the option to grab 1 military/trade contact guaranteed, and another depending on your choices, so that is at least something.
Alternatively, one might be able to add a nice perk to commissions - a guaranteed liaison officer contact like how we have Alviss with the academy. Maybe turn whoever you ask for a commission into a contact? A typical first playthrough might then be pointed towards a start with a hegemony commission and a military contact in Jangala. If you leave the commission and come back, the same liaison should be assigned to avoid spamming contacts. Alternatively, any faction that offers commissions might have a designated and fixed liaison officer (perhaps with unique dialogue and unique faction specific missions like Alviss?). Text from the Jangala mission might indicate the commission means having a liaison officer assigned that can provide you combat missions. You might even imagine one of the offered missions being a return to the academy to do a quick patrol of Galatia or drop off a Hegemony officer at the academy.
Edit: I will point out it is a bit rough when you take a commission, say with the Hegemony, and it goes to war with Tri-Tach, which makes the one guaranteed campaign contact hard to reach. By ensuring a commission comes with a contact like Alviss, it guarantees you have at least one accessible contact when your faction decides to declare war on the entire sector at random. The problem with RNG only contacts is that some new player somewhere will statistically not get one for a while.
As a veteran player, I will note it is possible to do intel bounty only runs all the way up to end bounties, but yeah, I wouldn't say it is an easy thing to do or expect a brand new player to be able to do so. On the other hand, as a veteran player I like that scaling, but I'm probably in the minority there. Expecting a new player to skip early game combat is probably doing them a disservice (unless they've become accomplished at combat outside of the campaign via missions), given just throwing them a bunch of money from trade and saying build an effective combat fleet without experience with smaller fleets or what various ships do isn't necessarily going to work out. So I think the pick your difficulty contacts are the way to go, but need a bit more of a guarantee that you actually have that as an option as a new player.
-
The problem with the scaling of classic intel bounties is the big spikes at certain thresholds.
50k is about five frigates.
80k-100k is about ten destroyers and frigates.
~150k is multiple cruisers plus everything before.
~200k is classic Hegemony Systems Defense Fleet strength, with one to three capitals plus everything in 150k bounty.
250k+ is endgame, with several capitals and max level officers.
Up to 100k is fine. After that are the huge spikes.
I simply do not get enough cash (and access from shops) quickly enough to make the jump from several destroyers and frigates to get multiple cruisers as fast as they do, if I focus on bounties. By the time I get some cruisers much later, they are packing capitals in their fleet. Also, they may have better weapons than my fleet does.
In older releases, player could live on bounties alone and keep up with bounty progression. In recent releases, bounties upgrade faster than the player can.
Also, base bounties are never worth doing for the money. They are about 150k+ difficulty for only 50k to 80k - what a rip-off! The only times I finish base bounties recently is either to save a zero-stability core world from decivilizing (by removing -3 stability from pirate activity) or to clear the system for me to colonize. Otherwise, the helpless backstabbing core worlds can simply live with their pirate overlords.
Personally, I think there needs to be more breadcrumbs pointing to the guaranteed military contact on Coatl.
Does that guy have medium importance? If so, he is worthless because he cannot offer the Omega bounty.
If I am dying for guaranteed military contact, I grab Rayan Arroyo at Eochu Bres along the main questline. Of course, that is not a good option for those commissioned with a faction hostile to Tri-Tachyon. (I avoid commission because I build my first colony early and I do not want accessibility lost because of faction politics.)
-
There's hundreds of tutorials/tips videos on YouTube as well as a comprehensive Wiki/forum. Half the fun is making mistakes and learning from them. The game doesn't need dumbing down. If you want an easy space game there's hundreds on Steam, try Avorion, it walks you through the tutorial like a baby.
-
There's hundreds of tutorials/tips videos on YouTube as well as a comprehensive Wiki/forum. Half the fun is making mistakes and learning from them. The game doesn't need dumbing down. If you want an easy space game there's hundreds on Steam, try Avorion, it walks you through the tutorial like a baby.
Why does every community manage to produce the condescending "gitgud" jack ass. You're a cancer in gaming.
The idea of this game is to make money. If you don't look after new players and create a satisfying experience, you get mass refunds and loads of negative reviews.
Also, if your game design necessitates a new player to go to a third party to try and work out what the hell is going on, then maybe there is a flaw in your game design?
-
Guys chill it out with extreme views. Having more info available for new folks isn't "dumbing it down".
Also, if your game design necessitates a new player to go to a third party to try and work out what the hell is going on, then maybe there is a flaw in your game design?
Damn, then I played so many "flawed" games that I absolutely loved.
-
While noting that I've read through this thread and appreciate the feedback:
Why does every community manage to produce the condescending "gitgud" jack ass. You're a cancer in gaming.
Please familiarize yourself with the forum rules (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0) and treat other members with respect.
-
Guys chill it out with extreme views. Having more info available for new folks isn't "dumbing it down".
Also, if your game design necessitates a new player to go to a third party to try and work out what the hell is going on, then maybe there is a flaw in your game design?
Damn, then I played so many "flawed" games that I absolutely loved.
I do agree with your intention to calm this discussion a bit down, but I also agree with the view of Slim_NZ that such a game, which demands you to read wikis/external articles, has not an optimal game design.
A game that demands you to explore to discover new things and understand what up around you? That's great. But still, the mechanisms which let the game work the way it does, these should be explained somewhere in the game.
But so far I can't remember a problem there with Starsector. Truth, I played it last time in May, but in my memory it was a lot fun exploration and sometimes a bit of "try and error", but still self-explanatory.
-
There's hundreds of tutorials/tips videos on YouTube as well as a comprehensive Wiki/forum. Half the fun is making mistakes and learning from them. The game doesn't need dumbing down. If you want an easy space game there's hundreds on Steam, try Avorion, it walks you through the tutorial like a baby.
Why does every community manage to produce the condescending "gitgud" jack ass. You're a cancer in gaming.
The idea of this game is to make money. If you don't look after new players and create a satisfying experience, you get mass refunds and loads of negative reviews.
Also, if your game design necessitates a new player to go to a third party to try and work out what the hell is going on, then maybe there is a flaw in your game design?
I wasn't saying get good, I was saying if you're having trouble with a particular thing there are tutorials on all aspects of the game. It's not too out of your way to watch a ten minute video to find out where you've been going wrong?
Bear in mind, most people are well beyond the tutorial so it's do-able, if no one could get past it I would think you had a point.
-
I would tend to disagree on the inverse difficulty curve. Let me ask Linnis this, did the kids refit the ships from empty with a pile of weapons at a colony, or did they use your already at end game fit ships? If they are not fitting from scratch, then I don't think this proves the game has an inverse learning curve. I'm guessing the fact they are finding success is because you are playing the hardest portion of the end game for them, the fitting screen. It only seems easy because you're an experienced player discounting the fitting step as not being part of playing at end game. Fitting is arguably harder and more important than having average piloting skills. Especially for full sized end game fleets.
I don't think they could come up with any good builds, but they could certainly use autofit, which would produce better results than autofit in early game with no hullmods or weapons.
I think the appropriate comparison to the Wolf and Hound fight at the start of the game would be handing the kids infinite credits, a level 15 character with no skill points spent yet, 100 story points, and a set of colonies that can build anything in a month, and seeing if they have just as much success against an end game fleet such as a late stage Ordo, the double Tesseracts, or the Tesseract bounty. My guess, which I admittedly have no evidence to back up, is they would have difficulty coming up with good fits and a good end game fleet composition without any prior experience that would have anywhere near the same level of success as your pre-fit fleets.
To be honest, after thinking about it a bit more, an equal 240 dp vs 240 dp fight with autofitted ships that doesn't abuse the OP stuff like hyperions could be harder than an equal early game fight where you can just savescum once or twice and get lucky.
1. Do the combat tutorial
2. Jump to missions screen to learn without penalty
3. Begin a normal campaign
That could work, although missions to campaign is a bit jarring, as you have a whole new skillset you need to learn, and your skills of fitting a large fleet of elite ships with every weapon available are no longer going to help you. I don't think missions should be recommended to new players. They are disconnected from what a new player will face at the start, and they force you to learn information like memorizing every weapon that just isn't helpful in campaign. For instance you will almost never see a proximity launcher.
IMO if you do the tutorial, yes you should slowly unlock features as you go. An automatic fleet command AI till the game explains that to you sounds good.
I'd be really curious to see how new player experiences are done well in a complex sandbox game with multiple game layers. If a player goes through the combat tutorials, some missions, and then the campaign tutorial, I think it should be pretty comparable to explaining the mechanics in other games. It then becomes a question of convincing players it's worthwhile to do those first rather than just jumping right in.
To be honest, I don't know, but just because others do it poorly doesn't mean you need to. And yes obviously you should have an option to skip.
Also, early game bounty hunting is fun, but it's also a bit ironic that it's only really done in challenge runs. Even late game bounty hunting is not all that profitable. The only times where combat is truly profitable in the base game is stealing colony items and fighting AI fleets. There's a mod that really fixed this for me, which just saturates the sector with an obscene amount of high level bounties. I had a blast not giving a damn about money and just being funneled into fight after fight. I can understand that Alex wouldn't want to add this since the sector is run down after all, but just making more bounties could solve the problem.
There's hundreds of tutorials/tips videos on YouTube as well as a comprehensive Wiki/forum. Half the fun is making mistakes and learning from them. The game doesn't need dumbing down. If you want an easy space game there's hundreds on Steam, try Avorion, it walks you through the tutorial like a baby.
To be honest, most of the tutorials are bad, and lead to a self perpetuating loop of bad information. It's not helped by the fact that all the advantages the player has + the free pick of ships and weapons means the game is really easy in the core once you get past the hurdle of learning the mechanics. It can kind of lead to these resources not being all that good and making new players flounder even more.
Also, if your game design necessitates a new player to go to a third party to try and work out what the hell is going on, then maybe there is a flaw in your game design?
I think it can be argued that such a game has a bit of a charm to it? The two biggest video games in the world: minecraft and League of Legends really throw you into the deep end and it is basically necessary to use third parties if you even want to have a chance. For Minecraft it kind of builds on the preexisting feel of the game you could argue, and it's virtually impossible to condense League of Legends into a digestible tutorial. I don't think it's completely unfair to say that Starsector falls into that unforgiving game design genre like Minecraft, but I guess that's really a choice for Alex to make.
I wasn't saying get good, I was saying if you're having trouble with a particular thing there are tutorials on all aspects of the game. It's not too out of your way to watch a ten minute video to find out where you've been going wrong?
Kind of going back to the minecraft example, in minecraft you really just need to know how to punch wood and kill a sheep to get going. It's a hell of a lot more info for starsector if you want to survive, and 10 minutes of some youtuber dropping info dumps onto you so you can actually play the game is asking a bit much from a brand new player IMO.
-
In recent releases, cost of ships bigger than frigates went up, but the bounty payoffs stayed the same. It is stupid to even think about fighting a bounty for cash only unless the player is either overpowered enough to crush it flawlessly or has an Industry capstone to true resurrect lost ships or exploit d-mods.
Bar missions that pay less then 100k for completing it then send a revenge fleet that is about as powerful as 200k bounty and persistently hunts your fleet across the sector are even worse. You can run, but you cannot hide. In effect, the mission is actually fighting a 200k bounty (which already underpays the moment a casualty is taken) for 80k (after completing the little side quest). Makes those missions schmuck bait.
Contact bounties are more reasonable, provided they do not send your fleet at the edge of the sector for massive supply and fuel drain. They pay about double of a classic intel bounty, which should be the minimum any bounty should pay, not just contact bounties.
-
I don't think bounty rewards are too low, its just that bounty hunting gets harder and requires more game mastery as the player advances through bounties. It has a "normal" difficulty curve as opposed to the inverse curve of most of the rest of the game.
The bounties available if the player has not done any yet require a single player frigate for on the order of 50k reward. Combining with other missions in the area, exploring, etc makes for a very profitable run for no investment. The 100k ones need a player fleet on the order of what they leave the tutorial system in (destroyer or two, maybe a carrier, a few kiting frigates), so again decent profit for no investment. Losing a ship in these fights is just fine: it is much less costly than buying the same ship because there is a high likelihood (or guaranteed if there is an officer or s mod) for recovery. This can make D mods, but D mods are a marginal cost much lower than the cost of the ship (no skills needed).
Later bounties at the 150k+ level get harder, but at the same time the player has detailed knowledge of the enemy fleets before going to do the mission: its reasonable to not do ones that look too hard or to refit the fleet to counter the expected enemy. These missions aren't quite as profitable as they were in past versions because it takes more skill investment to recover pristine/near pristine ships, but for a player that wants to go the industry route these bounties have "bonuses" on the order of 200k to 1 million credits depending on what ships they recover.
For bar missions, you can run/hide/dodge away from 'revenge' fleets. Its not even particularly unusual to dodge fleets that are too big for the player - isn't that the standard gameplay in any hostile system or when doing any transponder off mission/trading?
-
The only reason you would ever take multiple bounties is for a challenge run. The system bounties are decent if you are really tight on money, but trading is almost always gonna net you more money. Instead of that 50k reward bounty you can haul drugs for 100k revenue and 50k profit. Instead of that 100k bounty you can run 300k drug runs for 150k profit. The 300k+ bounties are actually decent enough to give you an ok profit, and they can drop you some nice ships, although you will either have to fix them up for a high cost or take the newbie skill, but at that point there are far better ways to make money, like remnant hunting for 450k per alpha core, or raiding spaceport and making 3 million+ per month of profit.
Also aside from in game time, bounty hunting is also less efficient in IRL time. Even if it takes me the same amount of time to go to a bounty and kill it as it takes me to trade in the core, I will still be making more money per real life minute if I am not engaging with combat at all, which is a bit sad.
-
Later bounties at the 150k+ level get harder, but at the same time the player has detailed knowledge of the enemy fleets before going to do the mission: its reasonable to not do ones that look too hard or to refit the fleet to counter the expected enemy. These missions aren't quite as profitable as they were in past versions because it takes more skill investment to recover pristine/near pristine ships, but for a player that wants to go the industry route these bounties have "bonuses" on the order of 200k to 1 million credits depending on what ships they recover.
For bar missions, you can run/hide/dodge away from 'revenge' fleets. Its not even particularly unusual to dodge fleets that are too big for the player - isn't that the standard gameplay in any hostile system or when doing any transponder off mission/trading?
The 150k fleet is the first big spike, and when it happens, every bounty is like that except for the one 50k bounty that is forced occasionally once every few months. There is practically no choice for anyone interested in fighting intel bounties if the player does not have a fleet that can trivially defeat them. Going from destroyers and frigates to several cruisers plus all of the destroyers and frigates before in the 80k-100k weight range for only about 50k more is a massive spike. It does not matter if the player has advanced knowledge when all bounty options are more or less the same in difficulty. If every bounty becomes too hard (because enemy progresses too fast), then the player hits a brick wall. Yes, player can get money and ships another way (with black market trade abuse), but it does not feel good to stop all of the sudden because bounties power level much faster than the player can.
Like I wrote about revenge fleets, player can run from them, but the revenge fleet is persistent and will catch up eventually. It is annoyance if my fleet is too weak to kill them, and most core fleets are either not enemies or too small to munch on the revenge fleet. (Relying on NPCs to kill them easier said than done, and when it happens, it is a lucky break.) If my fleet is strong enough to fight them, I do not need to waste time on those kind of bar missions. The one time I tried one of those missions, I had a colony with a battlestation, and I lead that revenge fleet to its well-deserved death at my colony. After that, I never took another similar schmuck bait mission.
-
Personally, I think there needs to be more breadcrumbs pointing to the guaranteed military contact on Coatl.
Does that guy have medium importance? If so, he is worthless because he cannot offer the Omega bounty.
Well, if we're discussing this in the context of early game bounty scaling, I would say he's not worthless. He's a replacement for intel bounties, which now that I think about it, also don't get you any closer to the Omega bounty. You only need a single high or very high contact for that bounty. I personally am happy when I can get multiple military contacts in one station, or at least systems next to each other, as that helps me grab 2 contracts at the same time, with a tiny bit of control over direction (i.e. either more difficult or same difficult mixtures). May only go out with 1, but I get 4 possible locations, and sometimes I get lucky with 2 in the same direction.
If I am dying for guaranteed military contact, I grab Rayan Arroyo at Eochu Bres along the main questline. Of course, that is not a good option for those commissioned with a faction hostile to Tri-Tachyon. (I avoid commission because I build my first colony early and I do not want accessibility lost because of faction politics.)
Yeah, that's what I typically do, and run into the same problem if I'm not doing a Tri-tach or no commission run.
I don't think they could come up with any good builds, but they could certainly use autofit, which would produce better results than autofit in early game with no hullmods or weapons.
Fair point, autofit would likely get them something useable with an end game pile of weapons.
Although depending on how early is early game we are talking, autofit can get you something, as it's a bit of an exaggeration to say you start with no hullmods and no weapons. All planets stock some small weapons (light autocannons, machine guns, a smattering of small mount missiles), so auto fit on something like a Lasher or Centurion usually comes out at least usable. Wolf might be stuck with a Mining Blaster as it's medium energy mount though. Although, against typical early game pirate fleets, a Mining Blaster will work. Might even be a better choice against an Enforcer led frigate pack of Cerberi . You also start knowing some key hullmods, including Safety Overrides, Hardened Subsystems, Unstable Injector, Reinforced Bulkheads, and for cruisers and capitals, Dedicated Targeting Core.
Destroyers start to be a bit more iffy with medium mounts, especially missiles, which are RNG to find in the blackmarket. Although Arbalests and Heavy Mortars are very common, so an Enforcer or Hammerhead can likely be autofit without too much trouble. Something like a Manticore, less so. Mid-game cruisers and capitals are definitely where an autofit without a pile of saved weapons is going to potentially start under fitting badly.
To be honest, after thinking about it a bit more, an equal 240 dp vs 240 dp fight with autofitted ships that doesn't abuse the OP stuff like hyperions could be harder than an equal early game fight where you can just savescum once or twice and get lucky.
Perhaps I misunderstood what people meant by playing around at end game. If we're talking about trouncing 200k bounties/only 240 DP worth of NPC faction ships or pirates, then yeah, I'll admit that is a bit of reverse difficulty curve since you can simply deploy an equal quality fleet and player decision making will probably make up the difference. Since 240 DP fleets start popping up at the 200k bounty level. On the other hand, that's at the level of deploying a Hammerhead, Drover, and 2 frigates to take out a pair of frigates (i.e. fast start versus an initial pirate fleet in Corvus). Complete over deploy effectively in both cases. At the 300k bounty level you're looking at something like 350-400 DP in the opposing fleet total. So it's not just 240 DP vs 240 DP, but 240 DP with half again as many reserves.
I guess I was thinking things like fully farmed (so leveled up) Ordos from a red system, Double Tesseract, or the Tesseract bounty as typical end game fights. Tesseract is like 320 DP worth of all alpha core Ordo plus the Tesseract on top, against your initial 160 DP fleet deployment (which could go up to 240 DP if you realized you needed to add fast point cappers to your fleet, and how to fit those point cappers, but that takes experience). That bounty fleet could certainly be a rude awakening for players used to NPC faction fleets or even some mid-level Ordos with only a single Radiant, even with experience.
I will also throw out there that there are no safety override Hyperion autofits. Possibly Alex wants people to stumble upon that particular combination instead of being handed it. So you kind of have to know about the SO + teleport interaction to realize why it's so survivable.
1. Do the combat tutorial
2. Jump to missions screen to learn without penalty
3. Begin a normal campaign
That could work, although missions to campaign is a bit jarring, as you have a whole new skillset you need to learn, and your skills of fitting a large fleet of elite ships with every weapon available are no longer going to help you. I don't think missions should be recommended to new players. They are disconnected from what a new player will face at the start, and they force you to learn information like memorizing every weapon that just isn't helpful in campaign. For instance you will almost never see a proximity launcher.
IMO if you do the tutorial, yes you should slowly unlock features as you go. An automatic fleet command AI till the game explains that to you sounds good.
Hmm. I would have thought doing the missions first would count as unlocking game features as you go as opposed to being a jarring whole new skillset. I see it as a feature instead of a bug. :) You have all the campaign skills locked away, and focus on "unlocking" understanding how combat works without any worry about deploying too much and running out of supplies, or having your ships completely destroyed, or getting completely off script and flying around in the upper right of the map and running out of supplies.
Also, you don't need to do any fitting at all to complete all the missions. You just have to understand how to use your ships. All of the missions can be completed with default fits. In fact, I would expect most beginners to jump straight to the big Play Mission button instead of the smaller refit button. Or perhaps check out refit, mess with it a little bit, and then hit reset afterwards, since they're not sure of what they are doing, and then hit Play Mission. The fact you can play with fits is merely a great bonus, not the primary point.
An automatic fleet AI controlling a much larger fleet around my ship would be a terrible learning experience for me. What would you expect me to take away from piloting, say, a Wolf in a much larger fleet that is ensuring my side doesn't lose? What is the lesson you're trying to communicate to me? I suppose if I get out of position in a Wolf against a much larger fleet, I'm dead. Maybe that is the takeaway? Don't fly far in front of your fleet and then take the enemy fleet alpha strike? Although I suppose if I know what I'm doing, I can bait a first volley of missiles and fighters that way - but that means conserving my phase skimmer charges for the retreat instead of for the closing. Perhaps an advanced concept?
In my opinion, the best place to learn how to pilot a ship is in a small 1 on 1, or even a 2 on 1 with the 2nd ship on your side being purely a distraction as opposed to a kill ship. Anything else is just adding un-needed distractions to what the player should be focusing on to get better at the game, or even worse, doing the killing before the player has a chance to do or learn anything. If you can complete the tutorial by walking away from the computer, my guess is it isn't teaching much. I'm wondering if that is why Alex doesn't explicitly introduce the autopilot button, as far as I can remember.
At some point, you are going to have to turn fleet control over to the player, and at that point, I feel small is better, like a 1 or 2 ship fleet, so as not to be overwhelming. If you do the 1, 1, 1 start (Wolf with Kite and officer into tutorial) this is what you get out of the campaign tutorial. A 2 on 1 situation. Then later, it's 2 on 3 really terrible unshielded ships. Then you jump up to 6 ships. Which are fighting better equipped and larger opposition. Which if you haven't had issues with the first two fights, is not an unreasonable thing to do. It is also the same progression the missions go through.
The way the missions scale up look along the lines of what I'd want from a fully fleshed, hand holding combat tutorial. They're not perfect, but they are certainly not bad. And they are very easy to change at this stage if people have suggestions.
The very first mission from the menu is literally 2 frigates on your side versus a destroyer. So that is a 2 on 1 situation, although arguably a bit harder than the campaign start. No need for an automatic fleet command here though. It just relies on the base AI to flank. Which is the entire point of the mission. To introduce the concept that two fast ships can flank a slower, more powerful ship, and one can back off and vent while the enemy ship is busy with the other one. This is a fundamental concept that would potentially get lost in a large fleet furball. The mission also starts with the ships completely fit and usable. You can refit them if you want, to experiment or whatever, but it's totally optional and not expected. In fact, I'd be willing to bet most players would just hit the big PLAY MISSION button instead of the reset and refit buttons first when put on that screen.
The second mission introduces the benefit of having a strong but slow anchor ship (in this case the Venture) which your Hammerhead can retreat to or behind as a safe place to vent, and also teaches the importance of staying together and not venturing off alone in a faster ship. Again, only 2 ships, so no need for a fleet AI. It also introduces capture points for the first time (prior mission had none, this has only 2 to fight over).
The third mission adds more ships now (instead of 2, now you've got 6), but keeps the primary ship the same as last mission, so you don't need to learn anything new about your own ship - just learning to command the new ship type, carriers with bombers, as well as how to take out a much bigger ship through superior maneuver. It also shows the importance of the placement of your bombers relative to the target. It also kind of shows how important it is to pick off frigates first (and that Piranha bombers work against Dominators, not so much Tempests). At this point you might say, a fleet AI could be handy, while you pilot the Hammerhead, but that was kinda last mission. At this point, it should be about learning how positioning on the macro level affects a fight on the micro level.
The fourth mission introduces completely new ship types, and a new type of battle - a retreat battle. It show cases a couple different mobility systems, in a relatively low stress environment where you're just trying to chase things, which is another important concept. Chasing can also pull you out of position as well to catch other ships.
Note to Alex: Should 4th mission talk about a fleet wide search and destroy order (which is not a thing) but instead about a full assault? Also, this would be a great mission to mention deploying frigates on the left or right side with multiple clicks.
Anyways, I could keep going down the list, but I feel the missions currently are hand crafted encounters designed to teach the player core combat concepts and make them better at the combat portion of the game, irregardless of whatever bonuses or over deployments they might be able to do in the campaign. If you can pull off every single mission, you will have no problems with the combat portion of the game. Like if you can beat the Last Hurrah without refitting, 175 DP vs 236 DP, that should mean you're fine in almost any NPC faction fight once you get to that point. And it lets you try each of the lessons as many times as you like without any pressure until you can exploit the thing it's trying to teach you.