Cicobuff is further than me, so things can change for me.
I enjoy the game, but i think it is a severe step back from the first game.
I feel like the ship/fleet customization is not as meaningful as the first game, and not by a small amount. This may change later on, but i don’t think it has changed where cicobuff is from what i can see.
The over world is bland, at the start at least. Just flying around looking for a bandit to fight or gathering scrap.
I need to know that there is a good reason to not just have a long, one core width ship that broadsides the whole game. I like that that is an option, but in the previous game i had many gameplay choices for both my mothership and my entire fleet. In fact my favorite was drones, which i’m not sure are even present in this game.
It was a serious mistake to convert the fleet management and customization of the first game in to just buying escort ships from stations.
To escape from battles when someone much higher level gank you, zoom out and run for the escape portal. It is a round white circle with a stargate icon. Rush there as fast a you possibly can and then hang around for about 10-20 seconds. You will get teleported away if you can survive the barrage from the enemy.
Downside is that you will lose your active fighters.
Bug/Overlooked issue: If you finish clearing the sector, dont go near the escape portal. You will be teleported away, losing all your gains and salvage!
I may have the wrong impression (I plan to fire it up again today) but my impression of the early game was there was limited things to do and a whole lot of grinding them to get perhaps unlock something else. A lot of the ships I’d try to attack myself would wreck me (I’m in a crappy ship and new, it’s to be expected and is not a problem for me), so I would join in other’s fights. These would then provide no challenge at all, as I’d pretty much just hit the afterburners to race to the enemy ships as they explode from NPC allies. Then rinse and repeat. A lot of rinse and repeat.
I’m not slagging the game, it was just a first impression and it’s Early Access. Definitely gave me pause if I want to play this game now instead of waiting until this time next year, though!
An interesting way to get easy experience I am using. When war happens, the starbases get destroyed and rebuilt quite often. Basically they give free risk-free XP because the 1st 2 levels of Arenas are reseeded in a new starbase.
Some of the bigger ships in the arenas are configured very differently with a lot more fire power. And the current top end modules available to my (low) level I see contain a lot more weapons. E.g. A Nose component can contain 4 cannons instead of just 1.
The “tilt” that occurs when you bank your starship definately expose the LOS to fire OMNI type weaponry. So both your farside and nearside weapons can fire when you bank into a turn. I find that quite interesting and opens up possibilities.
Regarding whether the cores does other interesting stuff. I think we’ll need to scour the discussion boards. But it may be an interesting suggestion you can put up for the developers. I am sure they can add it in if not already done so.
I see this “rarity” rating on some cores and modules. I am not sure what it means. Anybody has any clue?
I don’t think the ship customization can have any depth/options unless cores can do more stuff, but i’ll have to check out the arena later to try out different ships.
One of the arenas had a ship that was asymmetrical - heavy plasma cannons (or something that looked like plasma cannons) on one side, and short-range guns/point defense on the other. It was absolutely impervious to missiles if you had the point defense side facing your opponent, and when banking close to the enemy ship, it would have enough of an angle to make the other side have a line of sight, enough to fire at the enemy ship. It was really cool.
The idea is the same as a long ship in that you have the side facing the enemy full of direct fire weapons and then every other space has non direct fire weapons (read: missiles). Maybe miniguns on the single wing spot on each side.
My gear sucks now as i just did it on a whim and had to use 1/3 junk parts, but i think it should be pretty nice once i get real gear going.
i want to eventually try something like this i think:
N N
MXNNNXM
SXXXXXS
EEEEEE
N: nose
M: minigun
X: core (one being the bridge)
S: SRM
E: engine
Still, i want there to be a reason to do more than just have ships that are one block wide or one block long.
I restarted a sandbox mode so that I dont have to go past slow story mode progress barriers.
Murbella, your fears about thin long line ships are unfounded.
You get to play with 2 connector parts (Medium Sized) that will force players to be more creative with ship designs.
The big parts will require 3 connector parts. See diagram below.
When we have more engine parts, moving in the battle have a HUGE difference.
I am using the L-shaped design with 6 cores. That gives me 3 engine parts and my ship can now travel much faster.
NOTE: The key assignment for engine boost is broken. I need to reassign the default key (from left shift) to something else for it to work.
Big engine. Moves fast in battle. Recommended that you try out at least 3 engines to get to and from enemies much faster.
Even with junk parts, you can travel much faster.
I read in the forum that there are some CORE parts with “THRUST” on them. So the core may have attributes.
And someone suggested to the devs to make the parts in different shapes and sizes like Tetris, and have weapons on the cores. Which I thought was really cool. The suggestion was very well received. So we can hope that the game ends up like that!
Yes, that is what i want. I don’t want cores to just be stat bland sticks because i fear if they are we are going to continue seeing ships which all focus around having one side which has a ton of guns on it.
I ended up playing a lot. It is fun and pretty addictive.
I finally got my starbase. Sadly not in the place i wanted because someone took it. I entered a battle against the place i wanted, owned by an empire we had been at war with nearly the whole game. I though i was going to have to reload because it was 2+starbase vs me and they were stronger, but i managed to kill the ships and was starting on the on the base when… CRASH. I guess it happens in early access though.
The equipment is still boring. What is the difference between cannons, multi cannons and now quasars? Similar deal with lasers.
There NEEDS to be a cooldown on being attacked. Most of the time when i get in a battle i get CONSTANTLY attacked after the battle ends, making it impossible to get any loot because i keep getting attacked before i can complete.
I have major problems with rez. Maybe this would be less of an issue if my base had rez on it, but it doesn’t. If you’re over weight at all, you MASSIVELY burn rez and combined with the previous issue, you burn a lot of rez without much ability to get it back. Even if you just throw out stuff, you still burn a decent amount of rez once you start to get bigger and you don’t really seem to gain it faster.
Also while doing arenas i noticed that Line of sight on turrets is quirky at best. If you’re turning more than a little in EITHER direction, weapons on either side can fire to either side, even in ways that are shooting through your ship. I am probably going to to try to take advantage of this in my next ship as you can in theory bring a ton of guns to bear on a target.
Also also, once you get a base, scrap becomes less of an issue so you can buy most things without too much trouble.
I found that when you are in the thick of things. Dont get greedy. Hightail it to the nearest base and retool. Sticking around for the salvage is asking for trouble with a damaged ship.
When you have bases later, goons scrap and rez can be collected. Just place your base far behind the conflict zones. Head there to collect once in a while. No more resource issues if you place your base right and the game allows you to concentrate on fighting.
Edit: Collection at resource nodes can be opted out when the base is safely behind enemy lines. The collection is done at the base with 1 click and is instantaneous.
If you’re playing story, most of the spots will be taken by the time you can place. Obviously that depends at least somewhat on how fast you’re pushing it though.
