I have seen the odd case where a fleet that retreated from me in combat thought it was strong enough to take me on for round two once it got out of combat - but I've never seen a case where such a fleet didn't get crushed on the second go-around; I'm curious - what ships are you fighting that are even capable of retreating over and over? And what ships are you using?
For that matter, what ships are you trying to get that you have to fight over and over for? Most things are available for sale sooner or later; and - it being still an alpha - I personally feel no guilt at all about modding in more ships available for purchase if I really want to play around with, say, an Omen, or an Astral, or the like.
As far as starting fleet: all the current ships are workable; it's not like the previous build, where if it rolled brawler, you just sold it and bought something else. You do have to be careful early on, though - both in picking what you fight, and in picking where you fight it, so that victory doesn't trap you into a battle you can't win. However, if this really bothers you, go looking at mods - there are some out there that grant better starting fleets.
It was a wolf, usually I would end up fighting 1-2 lashers and a couple of bombers or fighters. The lashers would usually fire all their missiles and then retreat, and the fighters would usually retreat after only one went down. Because of this I ended up having 3 fleets at once harassing me and due to a quirk of the mechanics, once the battle against one fleet ended the one from the previous fight would forget they were retreating and attack me again. I couldn't actually get away due to them always being faster than me. Also, for whatever reason whenever a battle ended the enemy fleet would almost always have restored the health of all their ships by the time they would forget they're retreating.
The thing is that the game shouldn't require mods in order to make it fun to play, if that occurs than it's failed at it's task of providing entertainment and instead relies solely on it's community to make it fun.
I don't think Corvus is going to be indication of the final product. Theres so many things not implemented yet right now theres nothing to do in campaign but grind from battle to battle.
The reason your ship doesn't shut down when you lose crew can be explained very simply, it wouldn't be fun if your ship just shut down for a reason you can't measure.
I've seen plenty of AI fleets without enough crew to keep all ships functioning and very rarely have i ever had myself run out of crew to pilot my ships.
Save often and save regularly, game doesn't force you to save to exit you can always reload before the battle that was terrible for you.
Well if the experience feels grindy than that should be addressed. So far it's only felt more and more grindy with every release. Removing the surrender mechanic, adding in the random chance mechanic 'accidents', etc.
Then why is it suddenly more fun the second the battle ends? I also save often and regularly due to the save scummy nature of the game.
Personally I enjoy the beginning of a game rather than the end, when I only have one or two ships. I feel the difficulty is right where it should be, and I also don't believe in reloading my game when the *** hits the fan. I just take the Hound and start all over again.
I feel that is exactly how any game should be. Any game I've ever played, when it stopped challenging me to be better, it stopped being interesting for me. I'm sure there are mods out there that could make this game much easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if the full release had some difficulty slider to make the game a little more forgiving.
Fun for you =/= Fun for me.
Well, let me first ask since you like difficulty. Do you play Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be The Guy, Dark/Demons Souls, Kingsfield the Ancient City, Touhou, or any of the other incredibly difficult games? Because that logic that the game must always be challenging is only fun to those who enjoy power gaming and speed runs and all those sorts of things. However those people are in the tiny, tiny minority of people. Most people want a happy medium between challenge and flow. If a game's so difficult that you start the same segment over and over or otherwise have to play it dozens of times to get anywhere it breaks pace and becomes grindy. Now I don't think that the game super incredibly hard, just that the difficulty doesn't blend well with the progression curve. A hard battle is more likely than not to be detrimental to you rather than being beneficial. That means that it's all about picking on fleets that are smaller than you which doesn't make the game difficult, just more grindy.
For example's sake, it's like there's a miniboss monster you could fight that gives tons of experience. However if you get hit by it's best spell you end up losing a level. So you don't bother, you just spend all your time grinding on the weak-but-reliable boars in the area. Progression is screwed up in that respect.
Well there's already one piece of difficulty you can increase or decrease in settings.
Your ship takes half damage/You ship takes full damage.
And it definitely is harder at the beginning compared to the end. Basically once I got my first capital ship, it was game over for every other fleet I fought.
I realize that, but all the hours of time you have to put in to get to that point is quite simply so grindy that I don't have the patience for it.
You may have jumped the gun a little bit, and I think that's putting it lightly. There is no campaign to comment on yet. What you are playing is a persistent wrapper for combat in a game in it's alpha state. The fact that the game world engaged you at all when there is actually no game world to be engaged in yet should be a testament to how good this game is.
And if you are having problems with difficulty then turn either a) get better, or b) turn player damage taken to 50%. There is no shame in either option.
It's not that I don't like the game, I do quite a lot in fact. I just feel that it's not fixing the main problems and that's the ability to hold someone's interest rather than simply generate a lot of initial interest that wanes rapidly.
This isn't about getting better, there's a certain point in a game where you cease being able to get better and then it simply comes down to luck, grind or exploitation. A boss that could only be killed with a horrible accuracy spell that only had a .01% chance of success and the boss always kills you in one hit doesn't make the boss difficult.
