Drox Operative 2

I have enough fear in my sector that I should be triggering a fear victory, but it’s not triggering. I don’t have any unfinished Drox quests holding me back, any idea what I might need to do to win? I’m sort of on a timer in the game because every second that passes the very last remaining player that isn’t at war with me inches closer to declaring war on me because they pretty much hate me too.

That’s strange, could you email me your save game (character and world files)?

Absolutely.

Unfortunately I don’t think I have a save from before the last player decided to war with me, so you’ll see us in a ceasefire that probably about to expire any minute. I’m sure whatever the problem is, at this point it’s just me and the fact I’ve let things go to far and although fearful, I’m not at war with the whole sector. I was hoping to slip in a fear victory just before that happened, but I failed to do so.

The save will be in the (e)mail shortly.

Steam tells me I have 26 hours in this game so far. I’ve probably started and finished 5 or 6 runs so far, my human Drox Operative is level 27 or so:

Oh, I forgot I could post a stats screen with hard numbers:

Stats

…but after all this time, I don’t think I’ve won a game any other way than the Fear or (more commonly) the Legend victory conditions. Military, Economic and Diplomatic victories have so far been pretty far out of my reach, because by the time I start making headway with a race, the game ends.

Given the amount of time I’m spending per run, I don’t feel like Legend or Fear victories are arriving too soon, but that the other victory conditions are taking too long to earn. Along with my seeming inability to do more with certain races than simply ignore them until they inevitably decide to declare war on me (because their opinions of me falls much faster than I seem capable of competing with with via quests, patronage, or other things), I’m not convinced that quests are all that important to focus on, just about ever.

I seem to have better luck just flying around randomly, scanning planets, and killing high level named monsters for legend wins, or just finding one of the predictably hateful Ancient races and blasting them to hell one ship and planet at a time until a fear victory flashes up on my screen. I don’t have to worry about alienating anybody by focusing on them because everybody else hates them, and there are so, so many of them (units and planets per faction), that there’s plenty of opportunity to raise my fear score this way. I think the biggest time sink for me at the moment is simply my crappy DPS compared to dreadnought(?) or battlecruiser(?) armor, but only time seems to be my biggest hurdle there.

Every time I try to avoid direct conflict and focus strictly on the diplomacy options I start running out of money faster than you can say Springy Night Tide Toes because diplomatic and sabotage type actions cost $$$. And when I run out of money I find myself returning to exploring & hunting (it’s much more profitable than questing, but not as rewarding in the experience department). I don’t mind hunting for cash at all, but again, as soon as I start to make enough profit to afford enough individual diplomatic/sabotage actions to make some small difference at all, the game ends because I’m either scary enough or a legendary hero.

I find myself not wanting to waste money on sabotage, espionage, rumors, etc, because even if I hammer out ten successful ones on the same race over and over, the return on my investment seems just about nil. I feel like I can blow tens of thousands of credits in an effort to manipulate some race or other and never quite see a return on that investment, at least nothing so nearly as significant as killing something, somewhere. And while that should be fine too (this is an ARPG after all), I would prefer that more than 2 of the 6 (or 5 if the currently-disabled Drox victories never return) win conditions be obtainable or serve as mere road blocks to the others.

I haven’t played the first game in so long that I don’t remember any of the exact details as it relates to how these particular things panned out there, so I don’t know if these are carry-over problems from Drox 1, or just balance issues popping up because of new systems being integrated. I honestly can’t tell the difference between this and the first game in any way shape or form (other than ship speed), so it’s possible I’m just rattling off concerns that have been with the series since the first game came out 7 or 8 years ago, or maybe this stuff is getting a major overhaul when actual sequel content shows up and starts affecting how the game plays.

Either way, I enjoy grindy ARPGs, and I’m really looking forward to this one being fleshed out.

This is a common issue with Drox 1 as well.

There are a few potential factors here. First of all, you can’t make much diplomatic progress by completing quests for everyone. If you turn in quests to one race, races that dislike that race will dislike you more. This even applies to trading. So you have to be selective with your interactions to make any headway. This part is working as intended.

Additionally, if you ever piss off the Cortex, it’ll be very hard to get in their good graces ever again. They’re designed that way on purpose.

However, someone on the steam forum diagnosed the problem: when empires are small, they simply don’t generate enough quests for you to do to improve relations with them – more planets mean more things can go wrong. Natural degradation at that point should be smaller with you, but it stays constant. This seems to be worse in Drox 2 than 1 for some reason that I’m not sure of – it’s possible some quests just aren’t spawning enough.

This is a major issue that needs to be corrected IMO. As in Drox 1, all of the main victory conditions don’t encourage you to do anything interesting in the 4x layer, and yet the level of engagement of the game skyrockets when you are involved with the 4x layer. I suggested an alternative victory-point based mission system.

Currently the differences are minor: better graphics; more complex planets and moons; extra random races; and new diplomatic relations (which are currently firing way too often) such as protectorate, vassal, tributary and federation.

In Drox 1 I almost always got military victories, and in I-don’t-know-how-many games never saw a Legend victory at all. Maybe it’s just a playstyle difference.

If you have to work hard to make that strongest race dominate, you’re likely to be killing a lot of races’ ships along the way. So a Fear win is very likely to kick in before you’re done.

You’d think, perhaps, but that was simply never my experience. Maybe it’s because I was ruthlessly cynical and often just rode the strongest military power to victory?

It’s possible. Either way, I don’t think those victory conditions hold up. The game needs a more Paradox-style mission system, with rewards based on that (which is what I suggested in the link above).

Version 0.802 is out: changes.

This patch fixes several treaty issues, fixes higher rarity components not dropping, fixes problems with espionage & rumors, fixes some sound controls not working correctly, balances win conditions better, and fixes a ton of other more minor issues.

Version 0.803 is out: changes.

This patch improves multiplayer connectivity and optimizes traffic better, makes young races much more interesting (random services and they can show up in future sectors), makes Military & Diplomatic wins easier to obtain, and fixes several other more minor issues.

Looking good! Enjoyed what I’ve played so far but also waiting to play too much while it’s in early access.

Willpower caved the past couple evenings and I spent a few more hours with the game. Having a lot of fun, switched to a Drakk ship instead of a Shadow as I think fighters are more fun than cloak. Won my first sector (Fear) and am working on the next, allied with Cortex and a couple minor races. Good times! I’m still trying to get used to the concept of ramming and that bumping into ships is going to cause some damage. I like it overall but it can be hard to avoid when missiles and projectiles are flying all over the place. I think it’s cool, I just need more time to adapt.

I’m still frustrated by loot, it sucks finding rare orange and purple drops that are inferior to gray or green crap I find littered around. I mean sure, maybe that power plant has 28% credit find and a boost to radar but that’s irrelevant if it only puts out 150 power grid compared to 220. There aren’t enough slots to sacrifice that loss in powergrid/thrust/shields/whatever for tertiary stats because that’s going to be my ONLY source of that stat. I need my thrusters to thrust, period. I need my power plant to generate power. Everything else comes as a very distant second and it’s made the majority of my orange or better drops garbage. I really feel like this needs to be addressed in a game like this, rare qualities should have the floor of their stats be higher than what grey/green stuff can give. Anyone else feel that way or is this just a “me” thing?

This is definitely a thing. In Drox 1 as well, the rarity system (which relates to bonus modifiers) was simply inappropriate given the systems. Once you have enough slots, it becomes more relevant, but that’s a different balance problem, where after you have around 6/6/6 slots, every ship can do anything. And the max slots are 10/10/10, which is around 3 normal ARPG characters’ worth! So that whole command/slot system needs to be changed radically.

I’d strongly concur with that, I recall it being a problem in Drox 1 at times too.

Interesting. I’m not far enough along, only L14 or so, so my slots are something like 3/4/4. Pretty cool I found this purple reactor with some bonus stats but it’s 25% less powergrid than the gray one I currently have equipped, so off to the garbage pile it went. Just feels totally off, so I’m glad to hear it’s not only me.

In case you guys are interested, the discord peeps wrote a suggestion for replacing Command as it is in the game right now here. It links to a google doc since the forum was too limiting.

Oh, interesting. Thanks for the link!

EDIT: Big +1 on the suggestions made in the document.

Same. I support this fully. Command is unfun.

Also +1 to the suggest of higher rarities being better. Perhaps the highest two rarities should have distribution like the next highest tier?

Those are great suggestions. I’m not a huge fan of Command either, but I get why it’s there.