You don’t know how many times I shouted in my head “NO! NO! TURN YOUR TURRET!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING BRIAN!!!”.
Pffft
So, I recorded 7 five star runs using a new profile, and then discovered that they looked terrible because I hadn’t increased the bitrate from the default maximum of 1000. So now I need to start over.
Eventually, I’m sure I’ll run into a mission where I need to grind money before I have the equipment I need to get a 5 star run, or worse, a mission that’s just not possible to do 5 star until you’ve unlocked equipment with a better reputation. But so far it appears that if you know exactly how the game works, you can do straight perfect runs. I’ve done the first two Brown Beard missions thusly. Mostly it’s a matter of buying enough thrusters early to give yourself a time cushion.
I’m making solid progress, barring another SNAFU, though I haven’t tried adding narration yet. Now I think that the game really needs a checkpoint system like Defense Grid more than it needs a pause key. I find that I often have to re-play the start of a harder mission the same way multiple times just to get to the point where I’m having difficulty.
I’m deliberately aborting imperfect runs before I finish to avoid scoring credits. I want to see if the hardest missions require that you grind old missions for credit to unlock gear. So far I’ve managed 5 star runs on everything without intentionally repeating anything. I did screw up and accidentally finish one mission, so I’ve got a little more money than I should.
I sunk an hour in tonight, and I really like it, the moments when all hell break loose and you have to rotate guns and repair and collect cogs is pretty sweet.
Finished recording 5 star runs for all missions. Now I need to add narration and upload them. Let me know if there is one you really want to see, the narration is proving time consuming because I flub a lot of takes.
Very Impressive Gus, overall did you enjoy the game? :D
First video is up. It’s a walkthrough of Chaotic Run, the 2nd hardest mission after Destination Void. I just finished the Destination Void editing and narration, but haven’t uploaded it yet.
Oh very nice. I’ll wait for a deeper sale if possible. I’ve ran through my gaming budget for this month and I’m well deep into next month’s budget. But I really like the way the game looks and plays.
Ill wait for them to put in a tactical pause.
I think a pause would take a away some of the hecticness from the game , that gives it a charm of its own.
Maybe a pause in casual mode or something.
Anyways the game is great, and everyone should at least add it to their wishlist for an upcoming sale.
I’ve found that the not-tactical pause of hitting the Escape key to bring up the menu is enough. Generally speaking, if I have a good idea what I need to do, there’s plenty of time to do it. The rub is that if I don’t hit Escape a lot, the game runs away from me. So I’ll hit Esc, think hard, do it, and then hit Esc the next time something changes.
I’ve been editing those thinking times out of my videos. It’s deadly dull to watch a pause screen for 20-30 seconds while I figure out how I’m going to position stuff. I’ll leave in stop, but edit out most of the length.
It’s true that in the later boss battles, I’d like a way to fire off all the relevant special abilities at once. In practice, though, I don’t need to. I usually kill the bosses in a few seconds just with straight, unmodified firepower. Preparation is usually enough. The very last boss pretty much demands that you fire off a bunch of special abilities to kill him quickly, but most don’t.
It does mean that I rarely used the special abilities of the low-level components. If I had time, the Overload ability on the basic power plant could be a nice bump, but I never have time to fiddle with the small stuff.
I liked this game at first, and then, unfortunately, less and less as I play it more. For me the two big flaws are:
First, the aforementioned lack of a pause key. It is, then, at least as important that you are able to click really fast as it is that you design your ship well.
Second, it is a necessity that you play a level over and over, learn the sequence of enemies you’ll fight, and use that prior knowledge to plan your ship. You can’t just design a ship that’s going to survive whatever gets thrown at it, you MUST have foreknowledge from previous attempts and use it well.
I’ve also really been digging this. Highly recommended.
Personally I really like that you CANNOT give orders while paused. The tension between improving the layout of your ship and operating your existing systems is one of the main tradeoffs in the game. I appreciate the pacing of games like FTL as well, but for Space Run, it seems like a really key piece of the game to give you that inherent conflict. If you could pause, I think the ship operations stuff would need a lot more depth.
This game really does make me want a digital version of Galaxy Trucker…
This turns out not to be the case. Yeah, that was my impression at first as well, but if you watch the videos I’m creating, it’s not at all important that you click quickly. As I said in my last post, ESC is your friend. I’ve made a few mistakes in those videos too, items I ended up recycling and repositioning, and still ended up with 5 stars.
Sort of. If you want a 5 star run, absolutely. However, you can survive anything and play it by ear just by neglecting speed. Don’t build any thrusters, pay attention to the warnings, and you’ll live, and probably do so with 100% delivery.
The only exception is Asteroids On Steroids. Your cockpit is exposed on that mission, instead of deep in the center of your ship, and shields don’t help against asteroids so if you let too many through you can die. Mass-repair helps some, but that’s still the only mission where I died regularly rather than just getting an iffy victory.
EDIT: By the way, I’m up to 20 walkthroughs posted now.
Gus I don’t have time to watch them all!!!
Well, obviously, you only watch the videos for missions where you need ideas.
With 25 videos up, from Galactic Armada to Destination Void, I think I’m going to stop. I’ve got a couple of early ones that I haven’t narrated, but they’re not that hard, and the existing videos aren’t getting that many views, so I don’t think there’s a lot of demand for this sort of thing. Doing it was educational, though, I’ve never done video walkthroughs before.
I fired up Defense Grid 2, which I haven’t touched because I knew it was still just a couple of demo levels. It’s very slick, but it feels shallow after playing Space Run. Enemies don’t fight back, and the primary draw is figuring out how to make a really long maze. Relative placement of towers matters little, beyond being near a Slow (“temporal”) tower. I barely care about what kind of enemies I’m facing, beyond wanting an area-effect tower up front to weed out swarmers.
Do you recommend going for more stars immediately after completing a run for the first time, or going back later? I guess I as this for a couple reasons. In other games if you go back immediately and play for a better rating you get rewards which may make later content too easy. Also in other games it is expected to come back later after getting more components unlocked so you have better or upgraded equipment. What is the case for Space Run? I just finished the first mission and don’t want to get too far in before realizing I made the wrong choice. Maybe you always have the same equipment available for a given mission so it doesn’t matter?
My advice is to do whatever you feel like doing. You don’t need to optimize the meta game.
This isn’t a game where you have to go back with better equipment to get 5 stars. When I did my walkthrough videos, I started with a completely fresh profile, and did all the missions with 5 stars in order. If I failed to get 5 stars, I aborted rather than take the stars and cash rewards, because I wanted to show how to get 5 stars without grinding for either.
You can’t ruin missions by grinding, either. Hull size and shape is a major limitation in this game. Even if you have powerful equipment available, you pretty much have to use smaller, more basic stuff in earlier missions because there’s no room for the bigger, more powerful stuff. Generally speaking, you should be unlocking equipment faster than you can fit it on the available hulls.
There are a few functional exceptions in the early missions, mainly unlocking angle-change abilities on various turrets. You want to make your existing equipment more versatile by unlocking those before buying new equipment.
The main thing you gain from re-running a mission where you didn’t get 5 stars is personal skill. You get more money for equipment, of course, but you mainly gain an idea of when you should be investing in additional thrusters to get that Lightning Delivery goal.
The first time I played through, I had to re-run a lot of missions to get 5 stars, but mostly that was about learning what worked and what didn’t for a mission, not because I had better equipment. Note that stars do not unlock missions, just equipment. If you hover over an unavailable mission, it tells you what you need to unlock it, and it’s always about finishing an earlier mission with at least 1 star.