#It’s a brilliant game but

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

silent fjord
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Just seeing if it’s me, what are other people’s experiences? I find on any difficulty below Hard the game is too easy, particularly once you’ve got that next level ship. But on hard or above the lack of saves makes the game a total waste of time. I’m finding I play for 2-3 hours, slowly build my ship and crew up. Carefully makes sure I don’t take missions which upset more than a couple of factions, start getting the crew nice kit….

……and then the game is over to a random event. I meet a ship that I can’t retreat from or advance against that just blows my ship up. I have a crew battle where I suddenly find all my crew are missing and the enemy isn’t, or the enemy one-shot my captain.

End result, another 2 hours down the drain.

I’d really love there to be a bit of balance, maybe I’m just unlucky - but even if I could save once every 100 turns on hard it would make the game worth trying.

At the moment it gets a total thumbs down for sheer waste of time and effort.

Which is really frustrating as I really enjoy the game

tight gate
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Well, you can turn off perma-death on Hard.

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Which you can save freely then.

hallow juniper
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It's possible to do custom difficulty that's as hard as hard or harder and turn the permadeath off - kind of like a Bronzeman XCOM run.

Hard gameplay gets more reliable with experience - getting a good chunk of saving talents helps prevent failed event spirals

silent fjord
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Thanks for pointing that out - missed it 🙄

I think by removing the “randomly you’re dead” element the game will go back to being brilliant 😃

hallow juniper
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One of the things that isn't immediately apparent is the skill test dice counts scale both with quadrant danger but also with your ship's dice count so having a bunch of dice at a 100% staffing rating is gonna see more failures than a bit less at 150% or 200% staffing - piloting and ship ops and electronics being tough to staff up at first

silent fjord
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For some reason I find its electronics I lack 🤷‍♂️. I usually run with 6 pilots in the crew from the start.

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Thanks both for pointing out the blindingly obvious solution I had totally missed 😂

hallow juniper
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Yeah Spies, Engineers, Explorers have good electronics dice turns out so they offer good specialist routes

valid dirge
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Yeah, I often start with about 6 e techs, but later I try to trim that down to 2-3 as they gain levels and I take on other crew with electronics skill.

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For random ship encounters, the navigator skip off the void talent is good.

You can hire them from the judge in Eric Faen's first mission. Do a couple missions from her and she should offer high level navigators for recruiting.

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About the permadeath:
Once you've played a few rounds, then the game is more about seeing how far you can take it. No one complains about starting pacman over from the beginning, but this game has a lot more into it: each run is hours instead of minutes.

Still, death is generally avoidable. It can be hard to pause and think about what could've been done differently to avoid the death.

Also, some maps are harder. I think map difficulty balance can be fairly skewed. Some maps are very hard, others are quite easy. --- at least in my expertise

silent fjord
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ach, I don’t mind permadeath, I do mind totally random permadeath. If I wanted that I’d go play something like rogue.

A game which asks you to invest 2+ hours to build your crew up shouldn’t then just randomly decide to kill you.

I’ve been killed by a zealot in a system with safety level 4 and no planets belonging to the zealot. It just popped up, offered nothing but fight and then was a sword class when I was in a starter ship. And my rep with the zealot clan was only -10.

But I have a solution - permadeath off, difficulty levels turned right up 😃

(I love skip of the void, but I keep getting killed before I get it)

muted plinth
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I think the "random permadeath" elements here are less rogue/nethack and more Zork style "I didn't know my game state was in a losing position and now I have to start over".

That is, you're making moves that strategically don't protect you from all of the bad things that can happen, but until they actually happen, the game is letting you proceed.

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It's definitely a downside to the game. All but the most masochistic want there to be some kind of tighter feedback loop.

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But yes, permadeath off with saves might be the way for you to go.

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SotV is hard to rush with just raw levelups, but it's doable. (There's much easier ways, but I bet they've been detailed already.)

dawn ravine
tight gate
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But any of the achievements that require Normal difficulty, if you do Hard baseline, but turn off perma-death, you'll still get the Normal Difficulty Achievements.

dawn ravine
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Yeah, those are the ones. Can never unlock those achievements cause the game is not fun at all for me with permadeath, and no saves. Just hours and hours of wasted time and frustration, and still have yet to unlock a single hard achievement. I know, I suck, but I still enjoy the heck out of the game on normal difficulty. 👍

muted plinth
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What I would do is run the modded version to unlock all achievements (supposing you're not on mobile)

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If you wish to manually track when you've unlocked them but on softcore, you could. The game gives an "award" which is worth a bunch of XP for the crew alongside each of the achivements anyway

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So it wouldn't be impossible to track

tight gate
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Not a bad idea, actually.

muted plinth
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Just need a printable spreadsheet with each one noted down and its associated unlock.

valid dirge
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There are a couple goals with the build:

  • get merchant and diplomat introduction talents and buy introductions from starting contracts
  • recruit high level E Tech and get the contact introduction talent
  • Keep eyes open for any other contact introduction events. Maybe close to the 2 year mark, the merchant talents might work.
elfin shell
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@silent fjord don't forget to update your review

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I'm forgetful, so I'm just tossing in a reminder. 🙂

wise gazelle
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If you do a lot of missions for Faen and purchase military rank 3, you should be able to get a level 16 soldier as officer to spec into whatever talent you need. That's how to rush skip off the void. If zealots are an issue, a Military Officer's Stiff Solute guarantees you safety.