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[TangoAlee]

I'm a 100% newbie to the game but am a seasoned strategy gamer. I bought this game looking forward to the trading/building my power up aspects with a bit of fighting etc. Maybe I have bad expectations of the game.

I wanted to highlight that I've now failed the tutorial twice due to running out of supplies. I'm still working on beating it.

I started on "easy" mode, with explorer previous job. I've recovered all ships possible, and went salvaging whenever it wasn't a LIKELY possibility of issue. Ran out of supplies & money - started scuttling/selling ships - still ran out of supplies.
I started on "easy" mode as a mercenary and didn't recover ALL ships possible but most. I killed all the pirates fleets and sold off all the extra ships. Still ran out of supplies.

I didn't think it was possible to fail a Tutorial but I've done it now twice. I'm all for hard games but this is a bit ridiculous and will turn off new people very quickly if they can't get even through the tutorial.

I'm going to give it another shot but having a tutorial the can be failed simply by being slower than what a designer expects or by exploring etc. in a game that is supposed to be open world/sandbox is poor game design.

Trade is the first thing highlighted on the trailer - except all the trade routes in the tutorial system is net negative.

[SCC]

A crude solution would be to disable trading for Derinkyu entirely, until it turns back independent at least. More elaborate bandaid would be to also have a small patrol go after the player's fleet and nag it to get back to work and to make some hidden industry that ensures Ankyra doesn't run out of supplies and fuel.

[Alex]

Was just thinking about this - the thing is, even if Ancyra never runs out of supplies or fuel, the player will eventually run out of credits.

Though one thing that should be noted: there's a bug where, if you arrive to Ancyra with the recovered ships and they're mothballed, they don't count for the supplies you get, and they don't get repaired, so that's a massive supply sink. This is fixed for the next release - mothballed ships will get automatically unmothballed and fully repaired on this tutorial step. I suspect that this might be the likely cause of the issue, and/or recovering too many ships.

When starting with one of the faster starts, I'd suggest only recovering 2-3 of the better ships - you only really need more when using the start options that give you a pair of frigates, and more ships = more supplies used. If you basically follow the tutorial instructions and don't get too sidetracked, you should have enough supplies.

(On a side note, "make sure your supply situation can handle your activities" is a valid lesson that applies elsewhere in the game. Yeah, it's a sandbox, but supply-based time pressure is part of the game, you know? But that doesn't necessarily means that the tutorial is tuned right with regards to this, and, right, there's also the aforementioned bug.)

Hi, and welcome to the forum, by the way!

[SCC]

I forgot galatian stipend doesn't come right from get go in tutorial. While it can be changed, then you would have no reward for completing the tutorial...

(On a side note, "make sure your supply situation can handle your activities" is a valid lesson that applies elsewhere in the game. Yeah, it's a sandbox, but supply-based time pressure is part of the game, you know? But that doesn't necessarily means that the tutorial is tuned right with regards to this, and, right, there's also the aforementioned bug.)

Part of the issue is that there are people who see the "open world" part and forget about everything else.

[TangoAlee]

Was just thinking about this - the thing is, even if Ancyra never runs out of supplies or fuel, the player will eventually run out of credits.

Though one thing that should be noted: there's a bug where, if you arrive to Ancyra with the recovered ships and they're mothballed, they don't count for the supplies you get, and they don't get repaired, so that's a massive supply sink. This is fixed for the next release - mothballed ships will get automatically unmothballed and fully repaired on this tutorial step. I suspect that this might be the likely cause of the issue, and/or recovering too many ships.

When starting with one of the faster starts, I'd suggest only recovering 2-3 of the better ships - you only really need more when using the start options that give you a pair of frigates, and more ships = more supplies used. If you basically follow the tutorial instructions and don't get too sidetracked, you should have enough supplies.

(On a side note, "make sure your supply situation can handle your activities" is a valid lesson that applies elsewhere in the game. Yeah, it's a sandbox, but supply-based time pressure is part of the game, you know? But that doesn't necessarily means that the tutorial is tuned right with regards to this, and, right, there's also the aforementioned bug.)

Hi, and welcome to the forum, by the way!

Thanks! I first experienced the out of credit situation in my first play-through so it is very possible! (Yes I'm that bad apparently )

I definitely understand the design intent of having a scarcity of goods as an mechanism to push players forward but given the learning curve of the game, I think the tutorial is missing the mark. Especially given I can fail a tutorial simply by taking too long to read an objective or misunderstanding something and go to the wrong place (happened in both times). Plus your recommendation on recovery makes total sense now but the person straight up tells you to go get ships as you're extremely outnumbered, so can't really fault a newbie for recovering 100% of the ships.

Supply scarcity is a good mechanism to push the player - supply scarcity to the point where one needs to always know what is happening next is not good and especially punishing to the newer people. So I'd tune down the tutorial - or overemphasis the fact that the system is supply constrained and time is of the essence or both.

I'm still enjoying it so far! Looking forward to getting better!

[kenwth81]

Was just thinking about this - the thing is, even if Ancyra never runs out of supplies or fuel, the player will eventually run out of credits.

Though one thing that should be noted: there's a bug where, if you arrive to Ancyra with the recovered ships and they're mothballed, they don't count for the supplies you get, and they don't get repaired, so that's a massive supply sink. This is fixed for the next release - mothballed ships will get automatically unmothballed and fully repaired on this tutorial step. I suspect that this might be the likely cause of the issue, and/or recovering too many ships.

When starting with one of the faster starts, I'd suggest only recovering 2-3 of the better ships - you only really need more when using the start options that give you a pair of frigates, and more ships = more supplies used. If you basically follow the tutorial instructions and don't get too sidetracked, you should have enough supplies.

(On a side note, "make sure your supply situation can handle your activities" is a valid lesson that applies elsewhere in the game. Yeah, it's a sandbox, but supply-based time pressure is part of the game, you know? But that doesn't necessarily means that the tutorial is tuned right with regards to this, and, right, there's also the aforementioned bug.)

Hi, and welcome to the forum, by the way!

Those recovered ships has no or low CR in the first place. Mothballing them shouldn't matter, they still cost a lot to fully repair them either way. Let say each supply cost 100 credit and you need 100 supplies, you would need $10k credits. 50 supplies is given to you after recovering the ships though. Then you need a crew to pilot them. Let say each crew is $40 credits and you need an extra 150 crew to pilot those ships. That another extra $6k for the crew. Let's not forget about the Taxes. There is a fairly high cost repairing and fielding those ships.

Contradictory to your belief, Faster starts should have no problem recovering all the ships. They start with $20k credits. Other starts might have a problem. For example bounty hunter or scavenger starting with a wolf or wayfarer initially only has $2k credits. They might have difficulty fully repairing and fielding those ships.

It has nothing to do with mothballing... I would say automatically unmothballing and fully repairing recovered ship is unorthodox... I would suggest increasing the initial credits or increase the supplies in the storage that was given when they recovered the ships instead.

[Vercinger]

Those recovered ships has no or low CR in the first place. Mothballing them shouldn't matter, they still cost a lot to fully repair them either way. Let say each supply cost 100 credit and you need 100 supplies, you would need $10k credits. 50 supplies is given to you after recovering the ships though. Then you need a crew to pilot them. Let say each crew is $40 credits and you need an extra 150 crew to pilot those ships. That another extra $6k for the crew. Let's not forget about the Taxes. There is a fairly high cost repairing and fielding those ships.

If you look earlier in the tread, it was discovered that ships are automatically repaired for free at that step of the tutorial, but only if they're not mothballed.

You're quite right about crew cost possibly being an issue for low money starts though.

[Vercinger]

Regarding the main topic of the entire Galatia system running out of supplies if the player takes too long with the tutorial: The first thing I did with the game, before even finishing the tutorial, was to mod Ancyra so instead of Light Industry it has Refining and Heavy Industry. The system's economy makes zero sense otherwise, even when it's connected to the rest of the Sector.

I also added ore and rare ore conditions to Derinkuyu, because its Mining industry produces absolutely nothing in the vanilla game!

And I made Ancyra and the mining station part of the same EconGroup, so now production can continue indefinitely. Although the mining station keeps getting cut off from imports because the Ancyra defense fleet keeps intercepting its smugglers.

Curiously, I had to use the console commands mod to give the mining station the ore conditions, because adding them in "...\scripts\world\systems\Galatia.java" is bugged somehow. No matter what conditions I add, the station shows no conditions in-game, and the Mining industry continues to produce nothing. But when I use the console to add a condition that I've added via Galatia.java, I get an error that the condition is already there. So I use the console to remove it and add it back, and now it works! Really strange. Even stranger, this only happens with Derinkuyu, conditions from Galatia.java work just fine on Ancyra!

[Megas]

Giving Ancyra Heavy Industry means it becomes the target of choice to raid for blueprints soon after game start.  It is probably less defended than even the one in Valhalla, let alone Chicomoztoc.

[sector_terror]

I will likely get into this more, especially with Alex chiming in that the numbers are off(honestly, I dont understand the raw numbers enough to disagree or agree) but I do want to add one of the biggest tutorial "failures" isnt even a failure it's responsible for. No quick tutorial can prep you for proper combat. a very in depth tutorial can but not this one. If Alex or anyone is looking for the kind of tutorial you'd need, look up Excitbike 64, which has practical lessons step by step for everything from drift controls, to exact details on jump mechanics, and then a section test for each one. It be a nightmare to program but it's the level of tutorial you'd need for a fighting system as knife edge complex as Starsector IMO.