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

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Author Topic: 0.95- First Impressions  (Read 15787 times)

xenoargh

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0.95- First Impressions
« on: March 26, 2021, 10:57:02 PM »

I kind of hate to start this critique off with some negatives, but I am going to, because it's important to give it straight.  Overall, I like a lot of the changes.  The game definitely feels more finished; there's more good than bad here.

1.  The new skill system.  Man, IDK.  On the one hand, skills matter a bit less overall; this is probably a good thing.

However, the way it's set up is... weird. There's no flex, it's all about being in the right pigeonhole... and the 15 levels mean you can get 37.5% of the total skills.

Soooo... all the skills need to be pretty amazing, frankly (or equally meh).  I already dislike the, "you can only pick B if you've taken A in the chain" mechanic; it's even more irritating than the, "burn 3 points to be able to max any skill" in the old system.  It's almost the epitome of how to make an open-world game feel restrictive. 

If the fifth items on each chain were amaaaaaazing capstones, it'd at least offer a reason for this, but that's not how it works.  I mean... case in point: Missile Specialization is one of two capstones of Combat?  Really?

The flavor texts are also an unfortunate example of where that's not actually a good idea.  They simply aren't very informative, and new players will be confused.  I get what you wanted there, but the right answer is to describe the general mechanics, then provide some flavor, not the other way 'round.  The mechanics, meanwhile, are in teeny-tiny script that's dark and hard to read.

Lastly, the "oh, but this doesn't work if you have X FP of Y stuff" just gives me a headache.  I get why it's there, the whole, "try and limit player power in a soft way", etc., etc. and that's fine, but frankly... it's just un-fun to read it and try to understand the mechanics.

So... buying skills has gone from a moderately-annoying exercise in choice anxiety to "wow, I need to whip out a calculator and read some forum-dude's calculations about how to use it, and then build to a precise meta", and I'm not honestly sure that's an improvement, despite the obvious amount of time that went into making this system. 

Like, if this was the goal, why not have explicit character classes?  Because this amounts to a class system, only with a rather confusing presentation.

2.  The Hard-Flux Beams; 50% range on a PD Laser means that it's basically not a thing now, and Tac Lasers are... uh... 500-range weapons that trade 1:1?  Wow, sign me right up, lol.

It's a cute attempt at a tradeoff, and frankly it's great that Beams finally got some love... but this mechanic might need some work.  Also, the OP cost is like, "whaaaaa" for what you get.  At 1/2/5/10, I would at least think about it (and probably be disappointed).

3. I really like the Assault / Escort Hull Mods.

4.  I think the change to the Annihilator Pod is very interesting.  I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but it's interesting that it's basically a flux-pressure hose that mainly eats the opponent's Soft Flux reserves, rather than doing real damage.  David's rework of the art is nice, too. Heck, the work on the art for this version, in general, is really nice.

5.  Is it just me, or did Talons get a buff?  They felt rather vicious against Pirates.  I mean, I'm OK with that; Talons should be worth their 2 OPs, lol.

6. It looks like System Bounties were increased a bit.  Thank heavens, they're almost worth doing now.

7.  The perma-mod mechanic is really cool.

8.  The "miracle worker" mechanic is also really cool, and will be heavily abused to farm rare ships and weapons mounted on same, lol.

9.  I haven't even done any of the new missions yet, but I know I'll enjoy them. Knock out ports for Pirates?  Sign me up.

10.  The mercenaries are... interesting.  I need to understand the new Officer limits, but if they skirt those, they'll be actually useful... but frankly, I'm expecting a lot of them to not be, because they don't have the right combination of skills to minmax their meta pigeonholes.  This feels like a Newbie Trap, frankly.  Maybe they'll turn out to have rational hard-wired sets of useful skills rather than RNG; I haven't stared at enough of them yet.  But the one in Galatia was kind of a mixed bag and I passed her up.
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Stuffwriter

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2021, 12:48:58 AM »

I think it's a bit early to say certain skills or mods are bad.

The mod that shortens beam range but makes them deal hard flux damage is more effective than I first thought when I tried it. It definitely seems weak from the description, but keep in mind that some beam weapons do heavy damage and are generally flux efficient. The interaction is strange with the ion beam though: hard to tell if it does anything. It seems that you get the full 200 range from focusing lenses regardless of the range reduction.

I prefer this skill system to the old one. At least there's an actual choice now and a variance in builds for different playstyles. If the goal was to make me want to try multiple runs with different skills, I think that goal was met.

The green skill points are an absolutely amazing system, but I worry that I'm getting too many points. This may require additional tuning, but the concept is fantastic.

The only disappointment I have so far is in using AI ships. They just aren't really that much better than regular ships and they come with the additional cost of requiring cores.
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TaLaR

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2021, 12:56:41 AM »

The only disappointment I have so far is in using AI ships. They just aren't really that much better than regular ships and they come with the additional cost of requiring cores.

And that's without taking into consideration the fact that AI-ships skill competes vs the single strongest skill in whole tree (+1 built-in hullmod)...
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Flying Birdy

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2021, 01:04:35 AM »

I second your feedback on the new skill system. It has thus far felt limiting. That said though, my feelings on this might change once I start to play around with skill reassignment a bit more.

That said, I have found some of the reworked/newly introduced skills to be very interesting. Skills like flux regulation, systems expertise and wolf packs are fascinating to theory craft builds around.

I also second your comments on the new perma mod system. This has been by far the most fun new feature in the game. I always spent a lot of time figuring out how to build ships - now the customization options are even more awesome.

The new bar missions feel...underwhelming. I think it just lacks proper rewards (or maybe I'm not doing it right). Compared to smuggling drugs, organs, and heavy weapons, missions are just lacklustre in pay and I'm thus far not very inclined to do much more of them.
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Modest

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2021, 01:34:49 AM »

Sadly I have to agree with notion that missions aquired at bars feel underpaid. And that strongly encourage me to fully ignore them and just concentrate on old good activities tied to exploration. All other aspect of them are interesting as far as I am concerned.

It is important to note also that this is my reaction on "first expirience" and this opinion may (and likely will) change as my expirience goes.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2021, 01:37:04 AM »

Sadly I have to agree with notion that missions aquired at bars feel underpaid. And that strongly encourage me to fully ignore them and just concentrate on old good activities tied to exploration. All other aspect of them are interesting as far as I am concerned.

It is important to note also that this is my reaction on "first expirience" and this opinion may (and likely will) change as my expirience goes.
Aren't the credits just a bonus, the main point being expanding your contact list?
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Flet

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2021, 01:59:07 AM »

what exactly are the formulas for the skills whos effects decrease if you go over thresholds?
Looking at the carrier skills and just contemplating it for a while it struck me that it could potentially be smarter not to take carrier skills if you want to run a more carrier-focused fleet, and that the smart time to take those skills is when you dont want to use many carriers. This would create a counterintuitive opposite situation where you take them when you plan to focus on gunships and you skip them if you plan on focusing on carriers. Moreover it seems like there are too much deployment points to allow a balanced approach to benefit from any of these skills.
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Modest

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2021, 02:00:33 AM »

Sadly I have to agree with notion that missions aquired at bars feel underpaid. And that strongly encourage me to fully ignore them and just concentrate on old good activities tied to exploration. All other aspect of them are interesting as far as I am concerned.

It is important to note also that this is my reaction on "first expirience" and this opinion may (and likely will) change as my expirience goes.
Aren't the credits just a bonus, the main point being expanding your contact list?
That is possible. Like I said, I am sharing my "first expirience" reaction that is subject to change as it goes. But when we talk about contact I do feel that they happen way too rarely after finishing missions for bar people. So far I got only one contact and it was a trader - so I dismissed him instantly. Since then I did above 20 bar missions and not a single contact occasion happened. All in all that may be just bad RNG for me (or it is supposed to be that rare situation) so I wouldn't worry too much. But it doesn't give good taste if you ask me. Once again - I did not play long eoungh to give strong and valid point here. So I should not be treated too seriously untill I get to play it more and see how it works. Also, if they do have more uses then just source of work and income - please, no spoilers.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 02:05:50 AM by Modest »
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Eji1700

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2021, 02:40:09 AM »

Decided to full out play straight vanilla on a wolf + shepard start.  I've never been great and am still very much in the EARLY game so some thoughts-

1. I'm mostly ok with the skill system.  Capstones might need tweaking, but I like that it's "build a character" not "grind whatever you want", and you can respec in game.  I personally dislike skill systems that just become "Grind long enough and get EVERYTHING!".  I think they should encourage playstyles, and i'm hoping we see more of that.

2. Early game is still..rough.  I think for beginning players Hammerhead/Apogee should just be labeled "normal" start and wolf/wayfarer should be labeled "hard" or something.  I know we can nitpick all day about how true that is, but for a beginner who doesn't want to put the game on "Easy" and miss out on content, labeling it that way probably cuts down significantly on growing pains and lets people start out in something that's more robust and less likely to evaporate.

That said I don't find the "build my fleet" phase all that enjoyable still.  This comes down to a few things.

First-

Combat is REALLY punishing.  I was just cleaning up a pirate wolf after a tough battle, wasn't paying attention, and ate a reaper to the face on my shrike and welp that's probably a save reload.  Early on resources are tight enough its not that fun to play through a major ship loss, and it's sooo easy to get out of position and die as an actual beginner (as opposed to my laziness) that i can imagine it happens a lot.  It might not actually be that punishing, but it can feel like a setback. 

Now i'm NOT saying change the combat.  It's great.  I also had a wonderful moment where my shirke had to zoom over to save my stupid pirate carrier and managed to only just block the shots in time leaving it on essentially 0 hull, and in the mid/late game the "dance" combat feels like is so rewarding.

That said I still wonder if "early game", for a beginner, should be under the wing of some company/group.  Given ships that aren't yours and will be replaced as a way to make it go smoother and expose a first time player to some of the larger ships, and what they should be thinking about (and how screwed they're going to be on the other side of this equation).  Just kicking around ideas though.  Don't think any of this is "right now" content, and the apogee/hammerhead do enough.

Second-
RNG shops continues to bug me.  "oh cool i've got 100k credits and am heading to a large hegemony military world, i have no commission, and meh rep but that base shop should have......nothing i want....welp lets roll the black market...which has WAY more stuff at a higher quality for some reason.....and yet still nothing great". 

I'll probably have a larger topic about that later since i'm always harping on the economy though, and i think just numbers tweaks can fix a lot of that (even ignoring some of the more substantial changes I advocate for).  Some of this is also just the lack of ships in vanilla.  Getting a decent destroyer ASAP is so vital to getting the game rolling (although i haven't messed to much with the new skill and escorts so maybe that's changed), and so you're kinda rolling for a few specific ships.

3. Quests help a lot.  It's a much more obvious way for a beginner to make money and it works pretty well.  I've only done a few but "do the thing, get paid, oh also look loot along the way" was some of the signposting the game had been struggling with.  There's always the bounties and missions that are randomly given out, but I think this works well.

4 THANK GLORIOUS GOD THE GAME IS FASTER.  I instant picked navigation as my first skill just because i'm so used to always getting it in the old game because of how slow everything is.  I think the map game in general is an area that could use more love, but it helps soooo much that i'm not forced into taking skills just for the sake of my IRL time.   Might repsec and test sensors instead (especially since i'm still in frigate/destroyer territory).

5. Story points are great-  It's a very good idea, and while you may need to tweak them to be more scarce, i think it's much better if you're handing them out like candy, at least early on.  As with any "limited" resource it's almost always going to be instinct to hoard it and that's a huge waste.  Maybe an obvious hard cap, say of 15, to encourage beginners to really test them out?  Built in hull mods are CRAZY powerful, and probably the best use i've seen, but i love some of the other options so far (disengage, talk your way out, etc).  I think some of these should be locked behind skills maybe to put some more depth on that?  Or perhaps some skills upgrade them, so you can spend 1 story point to disengage from an enemy fleet, but with the right skill you can spend 2 and force a lower point engagement so you can peck at their forces a bit?  Stuff like that.

So yeah, rambling thoughts.  As always super happy to see a new version and love the quality improvements.  Very curious to see what's been done with colonies and some of the spoiled content.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 02:45:05 AM by Eji1700 »
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Eji1700

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #9 on: March 27, 2021, 02:42:49 AM »

derp, missed the edit button.
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Serenitis

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2021, 03:11:19 AM »

So... buying skills has gone from a moderately-annoying exercise in choice anxiety to "wow, I need to whip out a calculator and read some forum-dude's calculations about how to use it, and then build to a precise meta", and I'm not honestly sure that's an improvement, despite the obvious amount of time that went into making this system. 
Basically this.
You can tell a lot of effort has gone into producing this system, but lets's be real here. Not many people are going to be interested in 'working things out' to see if they should pick A or B. They're just going to want to pick something and get on with playing the game.
Some parts of the new skills are legit interesting choices. Others are non-choices. And yet others are annoying.

What I want to do is get a pile of ships full of survey gear and get as far away from all the nonsense in the core so I can explore stuff for a while and not have to do lots of boring back-and-forth travelling.
But I don't feel like I can do that because I just don't have access to the things that make it work anymore. Or at least I haven't found anything to do that yet.

It also feels like the player is being 'herded' into playing in a set way, with everything that isn't that having (soft) limits put on it as discouragement.
Soft limits are better than hard ones for sure, but the game just doesn't feel as 'sandboxy' any more.
And I'm not sure that's a good thing.
This might change, but for now it's not something I'm enjoying all that much.

On the flipside, things like hard-flux beams are legit tantalising.
I'm just thinking about how much of the sector I could melt with a pack of Sunders.
Or Odyssey. Probably harder getting one now, but this mod basically 'solves' the one issue a disco build has.


I personally dislike skill systems that just become "Grind long enough and get EVERYTHING!".  I think they should encourage playstyles, and i'm hoping we see more of that.
I'm the exact opposite.
I want everything eventually. Especially if it has a significant (especially QoL) effect on gameplay.

Even when you do have access to everything, the order you get it still matters quite a lot.
I think xeno has the right of it in this instance - this feels like character classes with extra steps.
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Grievous69

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #11 on: March 27, 2021, 03:27:51 AM »

I'm just sad the fuel and supply saving skills are on the exact same tier, and it's the third one on Industry meaning you HAVE TO pick the two before even if you absolutely don't need them like I don't. I was very sceptical in the beginning about the skill tree rework and honestly it wasn't that bad, I really like some of the choices. But there's a couple of thing that are truly annoying, including the one I already mentioned.

Also I saw some twitter discussion about the two tier 5 Tech skills and holy hell they're not even close. +1 built in hullmods for all ships is insaaaane, along with the ability to slap extra vents on everything. Versus a skill that lets you have one Radiant or equivalent in DP, which won't even have average CR and which you can't even pilot. This seems exactly like a type of skill that only has the "cool" factor going for it.

Oh yeah and tier 5 Combat skills don't seem that crazy judging from the other choices we have.
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #12 on: March 27, 2021, 03:47:14 AM »

The mechanics, meanwhile, are in teeny-tiny script that's dark and hard to read.

I feel the same on this. I find the text too dark, there is a disturbing lack of contrast. This is currently my main and only complain about the new skill system.

This, IMO, is bad UI. Text should be equally readable wether a skill is learned or not. When the skill is not learned, there is a higher chance the player wants to read the text. The way it is currently displayed makes it harder to read.

I think it's a bit early to say certain skills or mods are bad.

Agreed. Especially as the system seems to be designed to encourage replay with distinct play-styles.
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Destructively Phased

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #13 on: March 27, 2021, 04:09:37 AM »

For me, what really annoys me with the skill system is how 2 skills that a player is going to want are right next to each other and mutually exclusive, like sensors and navigation on tech. Navigation is great at all times during the game, and sensors if of particular use for early game “the target is in the heart/edges of a system” missions. Yet to get both, I have to wait until level 6 at the least to get both.

The two level 5 perks of command are really good for colonies and building up your industrial base. But to get both you have to run through the command tree twice. This has a nice synergy with Tier 4, as you get more and better officers. Thats actually good. Tiers 2 and 3 are a mess, as your forced to spec into frigate focus and carrier focus. So to optimise your colonies, your forced to waste skill points on specializations that at least one of which you’re probably not going to use (unless you are a massive fan of the Shepard).

Because picking a Tier 1 skill means I’m locked out of the other Tier 1 skill for 5 levels, it’s now extremely hard to pick even starting skills. Yes there’s respec, but I feel like continuously switching my skill between navigation and sensors is extremely exploity and not at all how the system was intended to be used.

Upside though, I’m glad I no longer have to invest 6 skill points in salvaging before I can salvage research stations and the like.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 04:17:40 AM by Destructively Phased »
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Tartiflette

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Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« Reply #14 on: March 27, 2021, 04:29:47 AM »

Maybe a solution for the skills would be to unlock the second skill after the player picked both in the previous tier? That way you can either rush to the last skill, or slowly build up within a tree. Mechanically it would be similar to the loop-around, except you can start double stacking from the start.
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