#Hardcore mode

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

plucky shuttle
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Now, I've never lost a dive, so I don't know the exact experience here. However, I've een informed that doing so simply makes you reload a save.

Whilst this is a valid means of handling this, another one would be to have the player returned to enceladus Station, their ship destroyed and their Crew gravely injured, necessitating either flying a new ship, or buying one if none is available- possible having to take out a loan even.

That said, in my opinion, this kind of hardcore mode should be a setting to be enabled at the player's leisure, and should NOT prevent you from loading the save anyways if you feel like it- though a seperate iron-man toggle could also be added to make this impossible.

I'm proposing this because I've had my fair share of close calls, situations where through sheer skill, decision making, or tactics, I managed to make it out just in the nick of time, and having learnt that dying just makes you reload a save kind of feels like it takes away from those achievements - whats the point in just barely making it out if the punishment for not pulling it off is getting to start over?

However, I also understand that this game attracts more casual players and people that maybe don't wanna have to worry about that, hence proposing that this mechanic be added as a toggle, default set to off.

fair frigate
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I usually try to avoid this kind of punishing gameplay.....ironman, roguelike etc. especially when rng is involved, but with THIS game I am more willing to try this hardcore mode you suggest. maybe we an rename this level of difficulty Real life Space Mining. People dont seem to understand how much dangerouw mining asteroids actually is. We can talk more about the dangerous situations, but yeah, i would looove to try it. Good idea

flat orchid
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Personally i think that losing the real time invested into the dive is punishment enough. For me the value of saving a dive is in saving the money i already made and just need to take home.
But as a toggle i'd be ok with that.

jovial ledge
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The game needs to be perfectly stable at all times in order to attempt this.

plucky shuttle
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I don't think so? My proposal of a hardcore mode doesn't preclude loading a save, so if something breaks the player could just... load a save.

jovial ledge
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ah, so no standard rougelike approach of "save is deleted while you are playing it to block you from alt+f4 save scum" then?

plucky shuttle
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No, none of that.

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You could add an iron-man mode on top that would work like that, that could be chosen in addition to hardcore mode, but my vision of hardcore mode does not prevent save scumming... it really just adds a way to continue playing after a complete disaster and havingto live with it (unless you chose not to and save scum ofc), instead of undoing it by default.

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If the player choses to save scum, with hardcore mode enabled, there'd be no consequences - similarly to how there wouldn't have been any if you would've died with hardcore mode off, either.

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Lemme illustrate in concrete

Hardcore mode off: player dies -> game over screen -> load save

Hardcore mode on: player dies -> SAR picks up escape pod -> return to enceladus, ship is gone, crew is injured. If no replacement ship available, player has to buy a new one (going in debt if necessary). Savescumming is possible - load the save and it'll return you to before the last dive. Maybe add an option to exit without saving, in this case, so people that are just done after the encounter can exit the game without saving, if they so choose

Ironman mode: player dies -> SAR picks up the pod -> return to enceladus, autosave -> ship is gone, crew is injured, as before, but if a save is loaded, return player to AFTER the last dive they died in

fair frigate
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yeah but when player dies it should be GAME OVER. It is completely different when mining craft is destroyed, equipment is destroyed, minerals lost, maybe a couple of the crew died, escape pods are picked up, player and the remaining crew spends time in hospital, debt is accumulated, player needs to start mining again. THAN player dies but miraculously wakes up in station. How, but he died.

plucky shuttle
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Dying in this case refers to the ship as the player's avatar. We never really see a specific player character tbf, but like, we seem people effectively ejecting from vessels suffering nuclear detonations... all the time really.

jovial ledge
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Yeah, but I get what you are suggesting

plucky shuttle
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I'm not proposing to turn this game into a roguelike or roguelite :>

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I don't think that'd work well... roguelikes and roguelites both have dying at the core of their gameplay loop, this game really doesn't

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But that's beside the point tbf

fluid glacier
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Now that I've seen the game over screen, I do think it's a little immersion-breaking. Blown up pirates get a lifepod and I bring it back to Station, I think same should apply to me. I second the above suggestions of randomized crew deaths. Also could get a ship wreckage waypoint as a way to recover some equipment/money and help the player recover/get out of debt

jovial ledge
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We had this idea at the very beginning, that if you get blown up, you get to get back on the station without a ship.
Unfortunately, the game doesn't support "player without a ship" as of now, and the "my ship got blown up" event is really rare, so I don't think it's justified to expand the game to cover it, possibly introducing new bugs, for just that.

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What I can see implemented without much effort is to change the game over to be game over only if you don't have other ships; if you do, you'd get to the Enceladus with a first ship in your garage. Would that work?

plucky shuttle
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I think that'd certainly be a move in the direction I'm hoping for, yea.

fair frigate
plucky shuttle
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Also, that.

jovial ledge
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Of course, I did however find, that answer of "we discussed it and we found...." is always preferable to "no" 🙂

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for starters, it might bring new arguments to the discussion

plucky shuttle
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Thats fair!

fair frigate
jovial ledge
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I mean when I say "no" people will still argue, and then I need to repeat the previous arguments, so it's not really any shortcut. It just wastes more time and agitates people, which might be good for ||social media clickbait||, but not here 🙂

fair frigate