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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: The game became too hard  (Read 7625 times)

Asherogar

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #30 on: April 07, 2021, 07:22:17 AM »

I wouldn't call the game too hard at the moment, just not really that balanced for the player against the endgame threats. When I ask for fleet compositions to take on the hardest threats in the game all I ever get are "just use the
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", or just phase spam", or "just abuse Derelict Contingent or Safety Overrides with story points". It should be possible to take on these fleets without abusing obviously broken game mechanics, and with a wider variety of fleet compositions provided they're well built and heavily story-pointed.
This.
I'm not very good with formulating my thoughts especially on different language and obviously salty after all the games attempts to force me into playstyle I don't like but this greatly sums up how I feel about balance in this patch. 0.9.1a was way more forgiving in terms of playstyles, heck you was able to beat Ordos with frigates only even considering they were pretty weak. I think there was too much focus on frigates, they were buffed heavily, everything posing a treat to them was nerfed and we ended up in a situation where we have frigate meta and whole endgame balanced around you abusing said meta. I just want to have fun, not become a meta-slave in single-freaking-player game.
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Dex

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #31 on: April 07, 2021, 07:37:37 AM »

I get what Locklave posted.  Just because I can win a fight or struggle with it does not necessarily mean it is fun.  Last release, even though I could kill fleets with too many phase ships, fighting them was annoying and I avoided them in favor of more straightforward fights (that my AI can do well in without micromanagement).

Worst were enemy Timid officers in one of the 0.7.x releases.  Easy strategy to win?  Camp on an objective with max skilled Onslaught and wait until Timids run out of PPT and CR, then kill them.  (Everyone else just died to Onslaught.)  Fights took close to an hour.  (And fleet cap was 25 ships back then... for the player only.)

I understood the guy, i just dont understand the guy. Particularly his ridiculous inclusion of reductio.

Conversely, just because i ROFLstomp a fleet does not mean it was fun. Well it means it ISNT fun in 'Dex's Big Book of Fun' toilet edition.

I can only infer we are speaking from opposite sides of a river called FUN. We both want to cross it, but i want to build a raft and others want to phone in a helicopter.
love silly analogies.
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Rauschkind

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #32 on: April 07, 2021, 10:05:25 AM »

merc officers. lots of merc officers.

Come on, I can't earn 10 story points a year just to keep up with AI fleets. And even if I can I don't want Starsector to become my second job. Games should be fun, not frustrating. And even if some people like frustrating, Dark Souls exists.

well, tbh i have yet to figure out how hard it is to get 10 sp per year. i figure if you fight a lot its trivial. also whats the xp bonus for hiring the mercs? if you get 100% there is a huge refund.

but yes: i think there absolutely NEEDS to be a way to suspend merc contracts so the player can have times off to do things that give little or no xp.
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furl

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #33 on: April 07, 2021, 11:31:03 AM »

also whats the xp bonus for hiring the mercs? if you get 100% there is a huge refund.
When you first hire them it's 100% but when you prolong the contract it's 0%.
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Locklave

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #34 on: April 07, 2021, 02:19:17 PM »

I understood the guy, i just dont understand the guy. Particularly his ridiculous inclusion of reductio.

I'd argue your unqualified statement it was equally absurd.

You can win so everything is fine. Effectively that's your statement.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 02:23:02 PM by Locklave »
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Dex

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #35 on: April 07, 2021, 02:29:03 PM »

Well it wasnt really now was it....

'oh no! im struggling in the end game but this dude seems to enjoying it! Better talk about punching myself in the goolies!'

Bit silly this isnt it.

Youre doing a bit of the strawman now.... we working our way down the logical fallacies? What fun!
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Locklave

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #36 on: April 07, 2021, 02:37:08 PM »

Well it wasnt really now was it....

'oh no! im struggling in the end game but this dude seems to enjoying it! Better talk about punching myself in the goolies!'

Bit silly this isnt it.

Youre doing a bit of the strawman now.... we working our way down the logical fallacies? What fun!

Who's struggling endgame now? I don't believe any posts I've made in here say that.

I have no clue what you are on about.
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Dex

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #37 on: April 07, 2021, 02:43:48 PM »

Yes lets segue back into what may amount to a decent conversation WITHOUT resorting to any... somewhat repressed masochistic tendencies?

So what is your beef, dear sir?

You just arrived, oddly suggested no-one liked to self harm, which i agree with, drew a parallel, which was surely a tangent, to a comment i made and slunk off.

And your are pleading ignorance? You are a troll, surely!
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Radicaljack

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #38 on: April 07, 2021, 02:53:46 PM »

is there any hint of tweak patches to the terrible DP and officer spam issues? This makes playing seem pointless as you inevitably run into the same boring fun killing issues.
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Rauschkind

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #39 on: April 07, 2021, 03:23:06 PM »

also whats the xp bonus for hiring the mercs? if you get 100% there is a huge refund.
When you first hire them it's 100% but when you prolong the contract it's 0%.
this does not sound right to me. why would that be? if anything it should give a higehr xp bonus (though obvioiusly this is not possible)
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Hamakua

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #40 on: April 15, 2021, 06:16:13 PM »

End game should not be balanced against the optimum pigeonholed talent tree selection.   It should be balanced against the worst possible trio of tree selections (15 points).   If the worst possible trio of tree selections cannot manage in end game it means either end-game is imbalanced or those trees are poorly constructed and under powered (and should be re-worked).

Especially since you cannot respec (end tree permanency)

A different methodology is fine - for example, lets say industry facilitated zerg spam of fleets/units where the player wins against "end game" via attrition.  Fine, no uber pristine ships with max tip-top officers - but a general doctrine that "wins."

As it stands now,  unless you spec/build and play into a very specific skill tree vs. doctrine vs. fleet comp - "end game" is frustrating at best, broken and unmanageable at worst.

Or, I could just go back to PPT sabotage with a rolling stack of dooms that solo deploy over and over.   "Yay, fun!"
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Ad Astra

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #41 on: April 15, 2021, 08:05:33 PM »

Especially since you cannot respec (end tree permanency)

Are you running the newest version? 0.9.5? Asking just in case, because in this last update respec through Story Points was added, some skills are marked as permanent and can't be unlearned but those are few.

Regarding everything else I agree quite a bit, I haven't found any explanation about what the general design philosophy behind the skill tree is. While the first three trees are generally (not entirely) cohesive in what they mean, industry seems like it doesn't know what it actually wants to make out of salvaged ships.
If red is "victory through weapons", green is "victory through strategy", blue is "victory through technology", then yellow should be "victory through money". And saving money is what's behind salvaging ships, skills regarding D-mods should be aimed towards either repairing them or making them substantially cheaper by being in that state (making d-mods less punishing is also cool). If we think that taking pieces out of a ships hyperdrive let it transverse jump (as explained by academy questline), then surely there are modifications that have minor impact on a ships performance yet make it more cost efficient.
Derelict contingent should instead let you apply unique d-mods that make a ships maintenance a percentage lower than what they are when in mint condition, you want to fly a bunch of space hot rods, not a zombie fleet that refuses to die for reasons beyond comprehension. In fact you might willfully take pieces out of a pristine ship just because your spacer nutcase of a captain doesn't want to take care of a paragon's marble columns and extinct jungalan leopard leather seats.
Tier 5 skills should be fun, being space Dr Frankenstein is fun I don't want colony management as tier 5 (ew)

Tl;dr: Space Hot Rods. Nuff said.
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Nameless

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #42 on: April 15, 2021, 09:41:27 PM »

The game feels just right now in terms of difficulty, barring a few questionable implementation.

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TuxedoCatfish

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Re: The game became too hard
« Reply #43 on: April 15, 2021, 11:11:14 PM »

I don't think the game is too hard right now, but it feels like it's balanced around a) relative mastery of game systems and b) the top-tier of ships in the game. Like, with proper preparation and experience you can absolutely crush even the biggest Remnant fleets or secret super-boss fights in the game easily, but there's way more pressure to do it with ships that have crazy over-generous fitting stats, get to break the game's normal rules somehow (e.g. phase ships), or exploit the AI somehow (phase ships again, especially the Doom.)

On the one hand, I like that there's actual pressure to optimize -- I find that rewarding, and much more engaging than "use whatever you want because trying to figure out what's best stuff is overkill."

On the other hand, being pushed like that makes balance issues much more obvious, and it's still not as good, or as interesting, as a situation where you're pushed to your limit but there's greater variety in terms of what's strong.
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