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[Tranquility]

This is something I had in mind for a long while now, but I wanted to address it sooner rather than later.

For context, this is what the tooltip for Iron Mode (also commonly known as Ironman Mode) says:


Searching around for topic threads specifically, it seems like there hasn't been much talk about Iron Mode in recent years. I found both this thread and that thread while searching, but both threads are from before the 0.95.1a patch in November 2021. Now that we are currently in 0.97a, and the 0.98 update is in the works right now, it is possible things may have changed since then. So, I mainly want to ask you all this: How fun would Starsector feel if Iron Mode is permanently on? This is just a hypothethical situation, obviously - especially since I can think of so many good reasons to leave it as a toggle-able option. However, since the tooltip does suggest, with its "intended" keyword, that Iron Mode is meant to be the default option when Starsector will officially release, I do think it's a great idea to start thinking about what Starsector's current Iron Mode experience would be like for the average new player - and if that experience would be satisfying enough to make the mode enabled by default.

[Shinr]

With attention given to Save System in one of the blogs, I doubt that the Iron Mode will be permanent.

[PixiCode]

With attention given to Save System in one of the blogs, I doubt that the Iron Mode will be permanent.

Not necessarily. Improved autosave functionality helps Iron Mode be more reasonable as a default option, while improving the overall save/load UI improves the ability of using multiple iron modes. However, working on the 'Save As' feature does go against Iron Mode, but it's still a useful feature to have for testing mods and playing with iron mode off, like say if you went into the settings to disable it. Who knows!

To answer the OP, personally I don't think Starsector is ready for iron mode being default quite yet. I feel like the officer system, everything that interacts with story points and the colony system could use a few more bits of fine tuning for a new player. Losing your whole fleet is absolutely devastating, especially if you had invested story points into your ships. For a player who knows a lot about the various mechanics, that's just like a hour of grinding for story points and building a new fleet, but for a new player it would probably feel like 'start a new game' to them, which might be unpopular. Investing in colonies takes a long time, a lot of money and can lead to your colonies dying off pretty easily if you're new and inexperienced, despite colonies being the most straightforward way you recoup losses from being a new player. Then, your old officers might not work for your new fleet, or you might've just went and made really bad officers with random skills all over the place that don't fit what you're building, etc. It's a lot of work for a new player to overcome that can be lightened with load/saves, but has no real fun way to solve without load/saves.

But these are just my feelings, no actual real in-depth thought put into it. Wonder how others feel!

[Megas]

If it was permanently on, I probably would use whatever it takes to defeat it, or play much, much more cowardly and slowly which is not fun.

[FooF]

It should never be the default mode, regardless if it is “meant” to be played that way. As an additional challenge, absolutely, but the game shines as a sandbox. I’ve done a few iron man runs and I found myself playing super conservatively. It just wasn’t as fun, though I admit that it made certain fights have more stakes. The only real change was that my ships had a lot more D mods on them. I never completely fleet wiped but I definitely retreated a few times.

[Bungee_man]

It should never be the default mode, regardless if it is “meant” to be played that way. As an additional challenge, absolutely, but the game shines as a sandbox. I’ve done a few iron man runs and I found myself playing super conservatively. It just wasn’t as fun, though I admit that it made certain fights have more stakes. The only real change was that my ships had a lot more D mods on them. I never completely fleet wiped but I definitely retreated a few times.

A lot of Starsector's features only really show up in iron mode. Save scumming all-but-guarantees that the player isn't going to interact with the part of the game that involves recovering after a rough battle, dealing with a D-modded ship, or having to plan for contingencies while exploring. It takes significant inspiration from Roguelikes, in that sense - a lot of the game's fun comes from being able to handle anything it throws at you.

I will say that I agree with the sentiment among other posters that this can over-incentivize excessively 'safe' gameplay - bounties and combat are already not the most profitable way to make money by a long shot, but inducing the player to only take lopsided fights strips away some of the fun. A mechanic where the player can spend a story point to replay a battle as many times as desired (at 100% bonus exp, as a once-off per battle), rather than retreat from it (which might get mitigated in turn; 75% exp, or something similar) would help a lot with this, especially given that the AI making catastrophic and expensive unforced errors would otherwise make it incredibly difficult to make iron mode an acceptable default option for most players. Winning or salvaging a fight that you aren't "supposed" to win is one of the game's best moments, after all.

[Thaago]

I play around 1/2 of my games iron mode. It's my default way to play if I'm not explicitly trying silly suicidal things to see how badly they go, or if I'm not trying to optimize "puzzle fights" where reloading and doing it again (win or lose to try and win better) is the whole point.

Iron mode is nice both because it adds stakes and because it boosts the importance of game systems that, with reloading, rarely matter. Sensor profiles and gaming those for instance: in iron mode for the early game, the whole stealth game is very important and a whole lot of fun. Spoofing relays, firing off sensor pulses from asteroid fields, peeling off individual patrols, etc. Or looking at the bounty intel and actually optimizing ships for the fight.

That said, I don't think it should be default. At this point I've got a pretty good idea of how fights will go before I get into them, and I'm also good at realizing when a fight in progress is going bad before half my ships are dead. That's kind of an old fogey, playing forever kind of gut feel that new players just aren't going to have, and its an important part of playing just as aggressively as in standard mode without taking too many losses. I say "too many" because losing ships and gaining D mods doesn't actually matter up until it starts really cutting into the credit account.

For experienced players, I'd say give it a try and, on purpose, don't play more conservatively/cowardly. Go for the same fights as always. It's liberating to not care about losses and winning with no safety net is great.

[SCC]

I think I would only play ironman, if there was a way to retry battles. Battles almost too difficult to win I tend to lose a couple of times before I finally get it and it's very satisfying to do so.

For experienced players, I'd say give it a try and, on purpose, don't play more conservatively/cowardly. Go for the same fights as always. It's liberating to not care about losses and winning with no safety net is great.

Heh. I think a fight is typically worth it if my flagship (if I like it and it's a rare find at this stage) and about half of my fleet make it out alive and don't feel the need to improve after that already. It helps I more often buy ships than salvage them, so they don't start with many d-mods in the first place.

[Spyro]

I think I would only play ironman, if there was a way to retry battles. Battles almost too difficult to win I tend to lose a couple of times before I finally get it and it's very satisfying to do so.

Same here, I like the idea of iron man mode in games, but hate that it would force me to subconciously play too safe. Because by far the most fun I have in games is hitting my head against the wall, until one particular strat shows me the way which can be beat.

Don't know how many relate to this but in every campaign I have a couple of 15 or so tries fights where I give it my all to win. Sometimes it's just impossible and I give up but sometimes that dopamine rush hits hard.

[Amoebka]

Save scumming all-but-guarantees that the player isn't going to interact with the part of the game that involves recovering after a rough battle, dealing with a D-modded ship, or having to plan for contingencies while exploring. It takes significant inspiration from Roguelikes, in that sense - a lot of the game's fun comes from being able to handle anything it throws at you.

The problem is that there isn't, in fact, a part of the game that involves recovering after a rough battle. There's no clock, no enemy scaling with time, nothing to actually make the setback meaningful. The only punishment is more grind, and since credits can be farmed infinitely with zero risk via trading/smuggling/exploration, there's not even an incentive to take more risks to recover faster.

In proper ironman games, ther's a limit to how many mistakes you are allowed to make. Roguelikes have food clocks and/or limited XP for that reason. Games like x-com have enemies becoming stronger with time. If you suffer a setback, you now need to take more risks to get back on the schedule, or you will fall behind and lose. In starsector, you just need to mindlessly grind risk-free moneymaking missions more.

[Vanshilar]

I've always interpreted that as meaning that the game is balanced around iron mode, as in "this game should be playable on iron mode" as opposed to "I intend for people to play this game in iron mode". And thus the various "outs" like using SP to get away from battle, etc., so that the player doesn't have to reload saves, so that iron mode is more doable.

[ithis]

There's not really any point in removing the toggle for iron mode, it works perfectly fine. If people prefer a roguelike feel over savescumming or vice versa, all power to them.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

A game is ready for Ironman when there aren't many bugs that could end a run, so Starsector has been ready for it for years.

[Megas]

I already had my fill of permadeath games years ago.  They are okay if the game is short, like DoomRL/DRL.  Starsector is too long a game to suffer honoring permadeath or massive setbacks.

With stingy combat rewards, the game already encourages avoiding combat unless player can steamroll it flawlessly (or has Derelict Operations plus guaranteed recovery to laugh at ship losses) for "a few dollars more".  The game needs more rewarding combat (in general) to make taking losses acceptable.  Until then, player should only fight when he can win flawlessly like a boring invincible isekai protaganist in a power fantasy.  There are few battles where the rewards are valuable enough to be worth taking losses.

[Thaago]

...

With stingy combat rewards, the game already encourages avoiding combat unless player can steamroll it flawlessly (or has Derelict Operations plus guaranteed recovery to laugh at ship losses) for "a few dollars more".  The game needs more rewarding combat (in general) to make taking losses acceptable.  Until then, player should only fight when he can win flawlessly like a boring invincible isekai protaganist in a power fantasy.  There are few battles where the rewards are valuable enough to be worth taking losses.

I have to disagree with this. Starsector has high rewards for combat; between multiple sources of bounty money, the loot/computer core credits, AI cores for sale/rep, recovering ships for their own fleet, and most importantly XP gain (!), fighting is a way to rapidly gain power. Taking losses in combat (and then recovering ships) goes from a default of "cheap" all the way down to "almost free" if going the industry branch. The reason why I often say that industry is underpowered is because taking losses is so not punishing that free D mod removal is useful, but not essential.

I don't estimate the cost of losing a ship, recovering it, and it having 1-2 D mods as the cost of hitting the restore button (which is in 98% of cases a luxury money trap, not something the player should use). I'm going to keep using the ship with the D mods for many more fights, and probably more losses, so the cost is spread out over more than 1 loss. Then I'm going to eventually scrap the ship (recovering bonus XP), and buy a new one, which is again lower price than restoring (and it is explicit in game that this is the way factions behave as well. Ship graveyards are there because restoring is not worth it, and those who read the tutorial text around Tetra will hopefully notice...).

Only pursuing flawless wins is not only boring as you pointed out, but unrewarding and slow.