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[BunnyViking]

Hey all, i've been playing for a few days, started over many, many times and have managed to reach the end game (i.e. colonies and geometry)

I enjoy the core of what the game is, the navigation, combat, the art, all that stuff is pretty solid, but the early game experience in particular is not great. I want to be clear if I didn't like the game, I wouldn't spend time writing a post like this so take this as constructive criticism

Second note - I am playing mostly vanilla, a few things like the speed up mod, autosave reminder, no content mods, no config file changes etc. Also I was discussing this on discord and some of this is copypasta so may be slightly out of context in its wording)

I feel like there are definitely way too many strong fleets floating around in the early game that will aggressively pursue you. The game wants you to play one particular way (i.e. do 'safe' activities until you are rich enough for a big fleet) which is pretty boring/unfun IMO... i've been playing on "easy" and it isn't at all easy (does this setting actually do anything ? enemy ship health ? something ?)... i restarted so many many times within a couple of hours because some academy mission would drive me past a massive pirate or ludic path fleet that I had no chance against, couldn't outrun and couldn't retreat from because I hadn't built my fleet the way the game seems to want you too (i.e. stealth/speed in the early game).

From a game design perspective if you have to start every game the same way, that's just bad game design. If the first few hours is always the same grind, remove that part of the game. Watching any of the current starsector youtubers playing the game they almost all start the same way, either drug trade or safe academy quests grinding until they have some sort of fleet, which is usually small, fast and/or stealthy. Then they'll move onto bounties to grind out more cash as they build a fleet.

I really like the core of the game, it just really, really, needs balancing/early game QoL and also for that matter late game... Random fleets with no chance to fight my fleet shouldn't just keep invading my colony sectors, there needs to be some sort of retribution system where they'll back off if you constantly smash them (or they need to be bound by ship building times or something)

Common suggestions people make:
'just get better at ships' - im in my first few days, i'm not 16 with all day to play games, i'm playing on 'easy' ... and if a professional youtuber can't do some of these early bounties, i sure as hell can't.
'use story points' - they're a finite resource, if you use a story point every time a fleet bears down on your, you won't have any story points, which are also used to claim some of the larger ship or get benefits in conversations.

Thing I would focus on addressing:

Viable alternate playstyles - you should ideally be able to play as a combat, an explorer or a trader (and combos to an extent). This would need to be supported by alternate ways to avoid hostility by either buying your way out (trader style), offering information (explorer style) or obviously fighting. Imagine a pirate fleet wants your lunch money and you say, you know what, i've got survey data on planet X, great place for a hideout, why don't i share that with you and we call it a day ? Oh, and next time, call ahead, maybe we can trade data without you spending all this fuel money.

The combat balance - having the more advaned fleet get more combat points in battle is pretty backwards. I understand the thought process behind it, fancier ships need more points... but its just perpetuating large fleets being able to crush small fleets, both from the attacker and attackee perspective. Early game, you get smashed by pirates or ludics with big fleets, late game you overwhelm anything that isn't... well, anything pretty much unless it's a big fleet hiding behind a star fortress. If I were balancing this id probably err in favor of the player because that's the power fantasy, or maybe make that part of the difficulty settings, on easy you get the advantage in deployment points, normal it's even, hard the enemy gets the advantage.

Mission focus - have more early missions focus around the core worlds but for less money, so if a player wants to be a trader for example they can cruise around the core systems doing 30000cr missions to lug stuff from here to there in safe space until they can build a larger trade empire. Similarly pirate bounties in safe space or even where you hook up with a fleet from a faction to aid in an attack so while you have a small fleet, you can participate in some large actions early game. Trade missions could also be used to tutorialise people in the stock market aspect of the game, you meet some dude in a bar who says X colony is running out of food, take them all these chicken legs and we'll split the profit !

Skill tree - This is the big one... the vast majority of skills are combat related regardless of tree. Have more skills (or give current skills 2 sets of bonuses) that vary gameplay or focus on other parts of the game. More colony skills for late game of course like being able to hire more admins, reduced costs, faster building, etc. You could have other skills related to surveying, trade prices and special abilities like talking or bribing your way out of fights (think what a story point would do only you can use cash, goods, or information), ship stealth, bribing officials (again think smuggler using cash or goods to avoid notice)

Reputation - This is partly swinging late game, but the player should probably have 2 types of rep... the kind of rep we have now which is a broad overview of how a faction feels about you from your actions, and also a notoriety which could be faction based or universal thats how dangerous/powerful/connected you are so when a pirate fleet bears down on you they might think twice or offer you different options, heck maybe offer to sell you contraband based on not your fleet strength but what your rep as a 'mover and shaker' is... so you might have a huge trade fleet full of fuel carriers and cargo ships with only a couple capitals and escorts, but those pirates know, you are THE MAN and hell will rain upon them if they're stupid enough to mess with you... maybe you're known for being big on charity and they know other factions will punish them, stuff like that.

Ok late game - Colonies are pretty basic, that's fine... I hope they get expanded in the vanilla game later but they work and the management is pretty simple. My biggest problem is the constant barrage of enemy fleets harassing my systems no matter how many i explode. There needs to be some system, cooldown, fleet rebuild time, ability to smash the enemy colonies to slow them down, whatever it is based on how effective you are at defending your young colonies... and that system needs to account for you being one player with one fleet even though your empire has autonomous fleet capability. I don't know what for that takes, maybe you can park a fleet at a base in each system and when the enemy attack there you get a message asking you if you'd like to go defend... that could be a skill even.

I don't want to harp on late game too much, I think early game needs the focus to encourage new players to stick around after spending their first few hours getting smashed repeatedly.

[SafariJohn]

I feel like a lot of the early game is still living in the Corvus system - when it was the only system.

Nowadays you have to travel much farther (many star systems), finding faction fleets of a given strength is unpredictable (no regular spawns), you have to find a fleet before you can fight it (stealth in space!), and systems typically don't have any interesting NPC conflict in them to exploit (single-/zero-faction systems & very limited war fleets).

A decade later and pirate fleets still don't extort anybody. Weapons, even common ones, are still comically hoarded just to have enough for a modest fleet. Fuel still mostly exists just to screw you. The supply consumption UI remains barely helpful. Other stuff, I'm sure.

At least we have starts that give you a decent number of ships + the tutorial system has decent ships you can salvage.

[Wyvern]

The game wants you to play one particular way (i.e. do 'safe' activities until you are rich enough for a big fleet) which is pretty boring/unfun IMO...

That sounds like it would be rather un-fun. Which is why I tend to get my start by bounty hunting (with a side of exploration while I'm out there and the occasional cargo delivery mission when they're available).

i've been playing on "easy" and it isn't at all easy (does this setting actually do anything ? enemy ship health ? something ?)...

Easy mode does a lot, actually. (And has a mouse-over tooltip displaying what you get from it; this information is all available in-game.)

• +500 sensor range. Combine with the Sensors skill (and remember to turn off your transponder when you're not in a patrolled system) to make it dramatically easier to avoid those large fleets you've been having trouble with.
  • In fact, I'd recommend taking Sensors over Navigation as just a good thing to do in general; it helps a lot with being able to choose your fights, and the increased 'move slowly' speed makes an enormous difference if you're trying to navigate through hyperstorms without getting all your supplies eaten - and to making 'go dark' actually practical for avoiding enemy fleets.
  • That said, you do still need to pay some attention to your fleet's sensor profile, even with easy mode & Sensors skill. S-mod insulated engines on your civ-spec cargo haulers.
• 25% reduced damage taken by all ships in your fleet. I don't really have much to say here; that's a lot.
• +50% salvage. This part is, imo, very hit-or-miss, and would be better replaced by a reduction in ship supply/fuel usage (including deployment costs). Sure, sometimes the extra looted supplies from this can save you in a situation where you'd otherwise be going bust, or turn a hard-fought battle from a net loss into a net gain... but if you're out somewhere where there aren't supplies to loot, or you didn't realize just how much it was going to cost you from getting ping-ponged by hyperstorms... well, extra salvage won't save you there.
  • Presumably this functions similarly to the Salvaging skill in that it doesn't increase rare loot, though I also won't swear that that's the case.

Edit: That all said, this is not meant to be a 'get good' type post. I have not been a new player for a long time, and feedback on game difficulty from someone who is is the sort of thing that's invaluable for a dev. Have you tried playing through any of the main-menu missions? Those can be good places to test your piloting skills, especially since you can refit the ships in them and get access to the simulator.

[BunnyViking]

Haha, man salvage must be AWFUL on normal mode, you still get barely anything resource-wise on easy. I guess if it's giving you a better chance at weapons that's a huge difference.

As far as avoiding fleets, yeah you can avoid them sometimes as long as you haven't built a trading fleet early on and can't outrun them. I imagine most people play in sped-up mode when travelling hyperspace which makes it really hard sometimes to react to a sudden signature. I've also had times where i'd head for a jumpgate in hyperspace and had 2 huge ludic fleets come from different sides... I dont know if that was related to a quest because it seems to have stopped happening but it was CONSTANT for a lengthy part of my game session yesterday.

There's definitely ways you CAN play the game in the state its in, but as the other reply mentioned (and I only just picked the game up so I dont know its history) but that makes sense to me if there's just a lot of legacy left in the game that really needs to be addressed to make it new player friendly.

I didn't take it as a 'get good' post your words are valid and I definitely know the feeling of being good enough at a game that it's hard to judge the early game with any objectivity, just knowing where the colonies are is a huge benefit let alone having combat skill.

[Bungee_man]

Viable alternate playstyles - you should ideally be able to play as a combat, an explorer or a trader (and combos to an extent). This would need to be supported by alternate ways to avoid hostility by either buying your way out (trader style), offering information (explorer style) or obviously fighting. Imagine a pirate fleet wants your lunch money and you say, you know what, i've got survey data on planet X, great place for a hideout, why don't i share that with you and we call it a day ? Oh, and next time, call ahead, maybe we can trade data without you spending all this fuel money.

Combat is what you need to do things, in the game's design, rather than a job in itself. Unfortunately, that's not implemented all the way yet - raiding to exploit shortages doesn't send revenge fleets after the player (with one exception), black market trade is fairly straightforward and safe, and so on. Likewise, payouts for bounties are pretty universally understood to be too low to make them a reasonable source of income.

I think an economic rebalance would help, here. More lucrative bounties, some limitations on trade profit so that you can't make infinite money by disabling some podunk planet's spaceport and selling them weapons, etc..

The combat balance - having the more advaned fleet get more combat points in battle is pretty backwards. I understand the thought process behind it, fancier ships need more points... but its just perpetuating large fleets being able to crush small fleets, both from the attacker and attackee perspective. Early game, you get smashed by pirates or ludics with big fleets, late game you overwhelm anything that isn't... well, anything pretty much unless it's a big fleet hiding behind a star fortress. If I were balancing this id probably err in favor of the player because that's the power fantasy, or maybe make that part of the difficulty settings, on easy you get the advantage in deployment points, normal it's even, hard the enemy gets the advantage.

That's not quite how it works - more officers get you more points, not more ships. It did used to work that way, though.

All in all, officers could be emphasized a bit more in the tutorial/UI. Early on, I had no idea why I was always losing, and only later realized that it was because the enemy ships all had officers that made them twice as strong as mine.

Mission focus - have more early missions focus around the core worlds but for less money, so if a player wants to be a trader for example they can cruise around the core systems doing 30000cr missions to lug stuff from here to there in safe space until they can build a larger trade empire. Similarly pirate bounties in safe space or even where you hook up with a fleet from a faction to aid in an attack so while you have a small fleet, you can participate in some large actions early game. Trade missions could also be used to tutorialise people in the stock market aspect of the game, you meet some dude in a bar who says X colony is running out of food, take them all these chicken legs and we'll split the profit !

There are absolutely trade missions like that, that work roughly as you describe. Colonies with shortages/surpluses generate missions where you get sold items at a discount or bring in items from another colony.

Skill tree - This is the big one... the vast majority of skills are combat related regardless of tree. Have more skills (or give current skills 2 sets of bonuses) that vary gameplay or focus on other parts of the game. More colony skills for late game of course like being able to hire more admins, reduced costs, faster building, etc. You could have other skills related to surveying, trade prices and special abilities like talking or bribing your way out of fights (think what a story point would do only you can use cash, goods, or information), ship stealth, bribing officials (again think smuggler using cash or goods to avoid notice)

The yellow tree is the place to go for non-combat skills, and it barely gets used because increasing your combat power is a lot more valuable than doing something more cheaply/easily at the campaign layer. Might be fun to give some combat skills out-of-combat effects, though.

Reputation - This is partly swinging late game, but the player should probably have 2 types of rep... the kind of rep we have now which is a broad overview of how a faction feels about you from your actions, and also a notoriety which could be faction based or universal thats how dangerous/powerful/connected you are so when a pirate fleet bears down on you they might think twice or offer you different options, heck maybe offer to sell you contraband based on not your fleet strength but what your rep as a 'mover and shaker' is... so you might have a huge trade fleet full of fuel carriers and cargo ships with only a couple capitals and escorts, but those pirates know, you are THE MAN and hell will rain upon them if they're stupid enough to mess with you... maybe you're known for being big on charity and they know other factions will punish them, stuff like that.

I've seen other suggestions to make the reputation system multi-layered, but I think it'd be better served by streamlining it. Right now, Colony Crises use some other idiosyncratic method to compute how much factions dislike you, some dialogue options rely on commissions to determine whether you're close with a faction, and reputation only touches a small handful of things. If most of what all of these things entail was tied into reputation, the system would be much more intuitive. For example:

 - Commissions no longer trigger dialogue options that shouldn't logically require them, but not being commissioned caps reputation at 70, and dialogue options around commissions are replaced with a requirement for ~80 reputation. This means that taking a Hegemony commission at 10/100 reputation three days ago doesn't suddenly make you a trusted compatriot.

 - Crisis growth rate scales with faction reputation, and periodically adjusts reputation while active. While reputation is positive, no growth occurs, but monthly reputation hits occur instead until the crisis's cause is resolved. Factions like Tri-Tachyon, which act with plausible deniability, could be exempt from this. This would solve the issue of factions that supposedly love you sending inspectors that deliberately harass and slight you, while also solving the issue of that faction still loving you even as you become a major nuisance for them.

 - Reputation itself could be balanced a little, so that it's less painful to grind without exploiting pirate bounties but also less beneficial to exploit pirate bounties. For those not in the know, you gain +1 through +3 reputation for winning a battle in a bounty system, with a fairly low threshold for +3, so it's better to repeatedly chase a pirate fleet and autoresolve against it with one frigate than it is to fight all the pirates at once and win a major battle.

I should note that reputation changes already fall off at the higher/lower ends of the scale, achieving what you describe. Mild slights won't get you to -100/100, and occasional favors won't get you to 100/100.

Ok late game - Colonies are pretty basic, that's fine... I hope they get expanded in the vanilla game later but they work and the management is pretty simple. My biggest problem is the constant barrage of enemy fleets harassing my systems no matter how many i explode. There needs to be some system, cooldown, fleet rebuild time, ability to smash the enemy colonies to slow them down, whatever it is based on how effective you are at defending your young colonies... and that system needs to account for you being one player with one fleet even though your empire has autonomous fleet capability. I don't know what for that takes, maybe you can park a fleet at a base in each system and when the enemy attack there you get a message asking you if you'd like to go defend... that could be a skill even.

I don't want to harp on late game too much, I think early game needs the focus to encourage new players to stick around after spending their first few hours getting smashed repeatedly.

Yeah, the enemy fleets that spawn directly in your systems during crises are definitely not fun. I'd rather they had to spawn in at faction colonies, and physically travel over to yours - maybe one fleet from a random crisis faction could spawn every few weeks, sticking around for a month and generating some kind of penalty until destroyed.

[MasterLorian]

The learning curve of the game can be quite brutal, but the claim that you have to play the same way every time just because large fleets exist is simply false. Almost every activity is available from the start just on a smaller scale depending on your starting ship. Dead drop missions, stealth operations, hunting small pirate fleets, trading between planets, exploring the sector (probes and shipwrecks), developing contacts, or simply doing Galatia quests are all viable options.

The game's progression allows you to expand these activities on a larger scale, unlocking bigger opportunities. That’s not bad game design—it’s the natural progression of a game with simulation elements. This is balanced by the fact that most large fleets are slower than smaller ones, unless you're carrying a lot of slow ships. While slower fleets can yield better results in trading, exploration, or combat, they also leave you more vulnerable creating a nice risk/reward situation.

Removing large fleets would serve no purpose other than undermining the game’s progression and degrading its simulation elements. If everything scaled with the player, there would be no real sense of advancement.

The common suggestions people give reveal the real challenge: the game has a steep learning curve and can be brutal for newer or more casual players trying to understand how to use the tools effectively.

The real solution would be better tutorials, clearer indicators, and improvements to ship combat AI to make the mechanics feel more intuitive. Starsector is inherently a complex game that rewards patience and engagement, but perhaps a 'Power-Fantasy Mode' could work for those who simply don't have the time or desire to master its systems.

Still, I believe the focus should be on making the game more understandable, because there is real value in the systems already present.

[BunnyViking]

I largely disagree with the premise you've made here. While all those activities are available early, they're in a couple of broad categories, and can be all over the place aside from a few exceptions. The time constraints, chance of running into things you can't deal with, having enough fuel, enough cargo capacity, enough free capacity are all factors that restrict what you can actually accomplish early on and/or prevent you from playing in a non-optimal way.

I would also argue there's not really a whole lot of simulation going on... or rather that the simulation is far too abstracted from the reality of the universe the game seems to be set in... in this cut off factionalised hellscape how do all these giant fleets keep magically appearing ? Especially when every planet of that faction has no functioning industry because accidents happen. I can't make giant fleets unless they're all frigates and I have the alpha ai running my pristine nano forge empire now. Ok bit of a rant but hopefully you get my point. From a game design perspective, the illusion of a living world falls apart pretty quick, but that's not really an early game problem.

I definitely agree with your points about education, the game does a decent job of teaching you the very basics of getting around but then basically throws you into the wilderness. It probably took me 8 hours or so after building heavy industry to realise there was a whole other tab to click to order stuff... still haven't figured out how to set a bounty with my markets even though they say that's a thing.

[Megas]

I definitely agree with your points about education, the game does a decent job of teaching you the very basics of getting around but then basically throws you into the wilderness. It probably took me 8 hours or so after building heavy industry to realise there was a whole other tab to click to order stuff... still haven't figured out how to set a bounty with my markets even though they say that's a thing.

You build Commerce on your planet, and technically, the Indies that squat on your planet and run said Commerce set the bounty, not your faction.  The bounty is like a minor system bounty.  Probably not going to see enough hostiles around your systems much to make it worthwhile.

[MasterLorian]

I didn't really see a disagreement aside from the simulation/immersion standpoint. You agreed that there are a ton of different activities available early on, each with its own challenges whether it's fuel and cargo capacity, burn speed, combat ability, or sensor profile. You can create small fleets tailored to different tasks and slowly scale up to increase your profits.

You mentioned running into threats that the player can't deal with. This simply isn't true unless you believe that the player should be able to beat anything right from the start. The tools to outmaneuver and avoid stronger enemies are there from the beginning. The fact that this feels like a roadblock suggests that you haven't yet found an early game fleet composition that works for these challenges, which ties back to the game's learning curve.

Regarding the simulation disagreement:

The deployment point (DP) system is primarily a gameplay and balance mechanic, not a simulation one. You're still able to build large fleets, but the system enforces restrictions to maintain balanced gameplay. Whether the system is good or not is up for debate, but it's not tied to the simulation argument.(depending on the level of simulation that we are talking about).

Every game has gamey elements if you look hard enough. Large fleets respawning is one of them, but it's far from the worst offender.

My argument remains that the game isn't gating content and playstyles. it's offering challenges that need to be overcome. The combination of ships, hull mods, player skills, and active abilities allows you to complete the activities I mentioned from the start, as long as you're willing to learn and adapt. The perception that certain tasks are impossible stems from not yet mastering the tools the game provides.

Removing large fleets wouldn't just harm immersion (at least from my perspective) it would damage the game's progression, balance, and sense of risk and reward. The high-risk, high-reward situations are part of what makes the game interesting. Stripping them out would push the game toward a more player-centric, casual RPG experience, something fundamentally different from what Starsector aims to be in my understanding.

[kaoseth]

I feel like there are definitely way too many strong fleets floating around in the early game that will aggressively pursue you.

Avoid them.  There's lots of ways to increase your stealth.  "Quest fleets" usually have

The game wants you to play one particular way (i.e. do 'safe' activities until you are rich enough for a big fleet) which is pretty boring/unfun IMO... i've been playing on "easy" and it isn't at all easy (does this setting actually do anything ? enemy ship health ? something ?)... i restarted so many many times within a couple of hours because some academy mission would drive me past a massive pirate or ludic path fleet that I had no chance against, couldn't outrun and couldn't retreat from because I hadn't built my fleet the way the game seems to want you too (i.e. stealth/speed in the early game).

The only thing Easy does is start you with a larger fleet. 

The game isn't intended to be a trading sim.  You play a shady quasi legal fleet.  If you want to be a trader, it's sneak in and sell on the black market.  Regular markets can only make money when they are stressed... which you should be the one doing the stress by disrupting industries then reaping the profit. 

Common suggestions people make:
'just get better at ships' - im in my first few days, i'm not 16 with all day to play games, i'm playing on 'easy' ... and if a professional youtuber can't do some of these early bounties, i sure as hell can't.
'use story points' - they're a finite resource, if you use a story point every time a fleet bears down on your, you won't have any story points, which are also used to claim some of the larger ship or get benefits in conversations.

They aren't really though. 

One of the unsaid and non-obvious things in this game is story point economy.  There aren't many things in this game actually consumes story points.  Most only temporary consume them then give you bonus XP worth enough to get the point back. 

Every story point action you see has a % after it.  That % lists the the % of a story point back in the form of bonus XP.  That bonus XP doubles your XP gain till it's expended, there by getting you back the story point you spent. 
 
When you put a S-mod on a frigate, you get 75% back.  Basically this means frigate's S-mods are 1/4th the cost.  When you scuttle said frigate, destroying it, you get the remaining 25% back as bonus XP.  When you spend a story point to dodge a fleet, you get 100% back. 
 
Mentoring an officer is 100% bonus XP back.  Retraining skills is 100%.  Making your skill or an officer skill elite gives no bonus XP.  That's a permanent loss.   
 
Certain fleets are meant to be avoided or a tough fight as part of the quest.  You must avoid or be strong enough to kill them.  Or you lose a story temporarily. 
 
This can be communicated better. 
 

From a game design perspective if you have to start every game the same way, that's just bad game design.

It's not though.  Vanilla is more about the journey you chose to take than reaching the end.  There's multiple paths you can take.  Somehow you have been convinced there's only the fastest two.  If you are watching youtubers, they sprint forward to find the "end game" because they are mostly about achievement.  Also, most use the Nerellin mod to transform vanilla into an explore, expand, exploit, exterminate strategy game to conquer the sector, which really does force you to into a race because a different faction can "win" if you are slow, and it's game over for you if they do. 

Vanilla isn't like that.  Vanilla is about the story of you exploring the galaxy and having daring fights.  And more recently, creating and defending your home colonies.  Do you pick the hardest route and go it alone? Or do you join a faction and get help? 

[Wyvern]

As far as avoiding fleets, yeah you can avoid them sometimes as long as you haven't built a trading fleet early on and can't outrun them.

I generally don't go up to Atlases. The Colossus is efficient enough, and - when combined with Bulk Transport's speed boost - also fast enough to not need Augmented Drive Field. My usual starting skill investments are Sensors -> Gunnery Implants, and Bulk Transport -> Ordnance Expertise... though Ordnance Expertise isn't quite as compelling a skill choice as it used to be.

I imagine most people play in sped-up mode when travelling hyperspace which makes it really hard sometimes to react to a sudden signature. I've also had times where i'd head for a jumpgate in hyperspace and had 2 huge ludic fleets come from different sides... I dont know if that was related to a quest because it seems to have stopped happening but it was CONSTANT for a lengthy part of my game session yesterday.

Yeah, this does happen sometimes. Save often, and/or burn the story point to avoid; at least it's a 100% bonus XP usage so you'll get it paid back eventually. (The worst are the occasional quest-related fleet that will literally just spawn in your path; several of the Galatia Academy quests will do this. Sometimes the only practical way to avoid them is to save-scum and know exactly when and where they're going to appear. Personally, I do prefer blowing them up... but if you don't yet have the fleet/skills for that, then avoid, however you need to accomplish that.)

[TheLaughingDead]

Regarding story points: I actually sympathize very heavily with OP regarding not having them in reserve. Although technically you get that bonus XP back thereby rendering the story point "free", in practice by level four or five you will have more bonus XP than you will catch up to by cycle 212; essentially ultra-lategame (at least it is for me, but perhaps I am slow). Just mentoring officers and s-modding the rare hullmod will leave the player with millions upon millions of bonus XP that they have to churn through to get those points back; and that isn't even accounting for using them on escaping massive fleets catching you out in nowhere, or using SP in quests, or spending them to get pather base info, or improving a trading contract, ororor. A new player, not knowing how to avoid half these situations and having no clue as to the value of the other half (or lack thereof with regards to finding a pather base), will find themselves perpetually story-point starved unless they really spent a couple in-game years grinding out major faction bounties/ordos. The unfinished endgame is not exactly riveting.

But that is just how I use my SP. I know lots of other folk use them in their own ways, like Megas using them on colonies.

[BunnyViking]

Regarding story points: I actually sympathize very heavily with OP regarding not having them in reserve. Although technically you get that bonus XP back thereby rendering the story point "free", in practice by level four or five you will have more bonus XP than you will catch up to by cycle 212; essentially ultra-lategame (at least it is for me, but perhaps I am slow). Just mentoring officers and s-modding the rare hullmod will leave the player with millions upon millions of bonus XP that they have to churn through to get those points back; and that isn't even accounting for using them on escaping massive fleets catching you out in nowhere, or using SP in quests, or spending them to get pather base info, or improving a trading contract, ororor. A new player, not knowing how to avoid half these situations and having no clue as to the value of the other half (or lack thereof with regards to finding a pather base), will find themselves perpetually story-point starved unless they really spent a couple in-game years grinding out major faction bounties/ordos. The unfinished endgame is not exactly riveting.

But that is just how I use my SP. I know lots of other folk use them in their own ways, like Megas using them on colonies.

Thank you, yes this echoes my sentiment pretty closely. Not only does the new character have limited options (which is fine to an extent) but the new player doesn't know to save all their limited points for running away. After restarting enough times the save I'm currently playing I did just save them for emergencies (like when you spend 60k on the market then 10k on the black market and suddenly you're the scum of the galaxy or the aforementioned giant fleet looks at you funny) and I'm running around colonising and crushing the crisis by letting them f around and find out.


And to talk endgame for a moment, I very much appreciate that the game lets you know when and where one of your colonies is going to be in danger so you can prepare for it, whether it's a crisis or not. That's some player focused thinking in a game with a lot of spinning plates.