Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5

Author Topic: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?  (Read 32093 times)

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #30 on: November 26, 2018, 05:09:31 AM »

I relied on the Stipend in the beginning.  It was useful during my learning experience with my first colony.
Logged

nomadic_leader

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 725
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #31 on: November 26, 2018, 08:36:46 AM »

I think given the Galatian Stipend, it's probably ok to tone down some early/mid-game rewards, as those were mostly set up before that was a thing.

I'd say the reverse. The Galatian Stipend is less interesting and less fun than any other form of reward. Lose the stipend, keep the other rewards that you actually have fun getting.

It feels off too, since most of us skip through the tutorial on subsequent plays.
Logged

Dragon239

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 51
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #32 on: November 26, 2018, 09:13:47 AM »

Why does skipping the tutorial make it feel off?
Your character still "goes through" the tutorial, you the player just skip it. It'd be odd if the game unduly rewarded people who went through the tutorial over those who didn't, IMO.
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #33 on: November 26, 2018, 09:34:59 AM »

Quote
Get rid of the stipend.


I make no secret of the fact I dislike crew and officers leeching your money.
Firstly because it puts an extra burden on what is already the most difficult early part of the game, and adds more hassle where it is most unwelcome and hardest to deal with.
And secondly, once you get into the mid-game and beyond, crew salaries become entirely irrelevant. Even just half-heartedly doing bounties and ignoring the colony goldmines you get more than enough money to not care about it at all.

Crew salaries front-load the difficulty of the game even more than it already is, with no real benefit.
And the stipend does a decent job of mitigating that.

tl;dr - You can take the stipend away, if you take crew/officer salaries away.
Logged

Dexy

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 66
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #34 on: November 26, 2018, 10:01:34 AM »

I do not like the stipend. Move it to easy difficulty or something.
Logged

nathanebht

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 93
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #35 on: November 26, 2018, 01:18:14 PM »

.9a was easy without me doing any trade routes. I just did missions and bounties. Kill pirate fleets in a certain system bounties are fun and rewarding in the mid game.

Tavern missions were very helpful early and mid game. Maybe too helpful.

Without the Galatian Stipend think it would have been more fun. Greatly increase the crew salary. Officer salary is already very expensive. Increase the amounts you can sell ship hulls and weapons for on the open market. The difference between the ask and sell prices are too unrealistic.

It should be rewarding to sell a nice hull you bring back. Not aggravating because that planet is selling that same hull at 8 times the price.
Logged

Tacheyon

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 35
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #36 on: November 26, 2018, 07:10:39 PM »

I think that without the stipend most people would be bankrupt rather quickly especially with all the new salaries and so forth especially for new players which is why it exists. I could imagine the stipend not being a flat 15k but an amount equal to the salaries you have. A net of zero so you don't have to worry about losing money but don't gain either.
Logged

Dragon239

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 51
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #37 on: November 26, 2018, 07:50:25 PM »

What new salaries? Crew salaries have been in for most if not all of the game, as far as I remember.
Logged

nomadic_leader

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 725
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #38 on: November 27, 2018, 01:22:25 AM »

Why does skipping the tutorial make it feel off?
Your character still "goes through" the tutorial, you the player just skip it. It'd be odd if the game unduly rewarded people who went through the tutorial over those who didn't, IMO.

Says who? I don't want to go through the tutorial. That's why a skip it.  And if you look at the cumulative amount of the stipend, it's totally out of proportion with what you actually did.
Logged

Cosmitz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 758
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #39 on: November 27, 2018, 01:30:40 AM »

I like the stipend as a tool for new players to get up to speed, but it really should be toned down, if only in the amount of time it's given. I'd say a few months/a year is more than enough to get someone on their feet. I'd much rather players engage with the content rather than realise it's /profitable/, to sell/storage all your ships minus one, go to some edge of a system with enough supplies to keep a Kite alive for how long the stipend lasts and just keep a brick on the shift key and come back in a few hours to 3 years farmed of stipend money.
Logged

TrashMan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1325
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #40 on: November 27, 2018, 03:49:37 AM »

I'd make ships a LOT more expensive and normalize a bit the rewards.

You really shouldn't be able to buy a fancy new cruiser after 2 trade runs.
Logged

Null Ganymede

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 274
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #41 on: November 27, 2018, 05:15:17 AM »

Credits are kind of the least interesting resource in Starsector.

It's especially noticeable in a modded run. You want blueprints, colony modules, and weapons weapons weapons. Never enough weapons to fit out the hulls you have, until you find blueprints for them... Playing around with fleet compositions and new ships is typically something you would savescum for, or limit experimentation to the emulator. Colonies effectively removing the credit/hull logistics cost lets you mess around with whatever set of blueprints/skills/map location you've got.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12117
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #42 on: November 27, 2018, 05:41:50 AM »

More expensive ships means slower production.  At first, I was excited to obtain XIV blueprints until I saw how much the ship costs over standard model.  Onslaught XIV costs over 400K, more than Paragon.  It will take about three months to produce with a size 7 colony.  Eagle XIV is almost twice as expensive as stock Eagle.  I probably would prefer normal Eagle if I need to produce several for my fleet.

Also more expensive ships does not mean much if primary way of obtaining ships is recovering them.  (I recover nearly all of my ships until I can produce them myself.)

Quote
Colonies effectively removing the credit/hull logistics cost lets you mess around with whatever set of blueprints/skills/map location you've got.
And I love it.  Too bad it is mostly an endgame thing because by the time I can raid planets for missing blueprints, the game is effectively won.
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #43 on: November 27, 2018, 08:49:23 AM »

I like the stipend as a tool for new players to get up to speed, but it really should be toned down, if only in the amount of time it's given. I'd say a few months/a year is more than enough to get someone on their feet. I'd much rather players engage with the content rather than realise it's /profitable/, to sell/storage all your ships minus one, go to some edge of a system with enough supplies to keep a Kite alive for how long the stipend lasts and just keep a brick on the shift key and come back in a few hours to 3 years farmed of stipend money.
You still miss out on the opportunity cost of all the time you wasted. No one will do this because it's not fun and it's not optimal. Also it costs money to store ships now (I'm not sure about the abandoned stations but definitely in faction worlds), and selling ships loses a lot of money, so this may not even be all that profitable. I really don't care about the stipend, it's a little extra money but the player is still going to try and do missions which is what they would have done anyway, so it doesn't change behavior/gameplay at all. It just provides a safety net for players who might make some mistakes learning the game and helps compensate for the new salaries of crew and officers. I think it would be a good idea to add a hard mode with it turned off for those who want a challenge, but it should be on by default.

That being said, I'm sure there will be a lot more added with regards to story based content and more extensive tutorials and nothing that we are discussing right now will even be relevant to the final game.
Logged

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Is Starsector too easy? And what's the deal with hiding the Spacer option?
« Reply #44 on: November 27, 2018, 07:18:09 PM »

Except for concerns of paying crew/officer salaries, I'd prefer having ship insurance instead of the stipend. Helps the player recover from losses from things like randomly running into outsized pirate fleets (and not have to wait for the month to roll over to collect what may only be a fraction of the total losses), without making the early game faster for successful players.

On the other hand it doesn't help with other ways a new player might mess up, like buying the wrong ships or making unprofitable trades.
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5