Author Topic: Drox Operative  (Read 75859 times)

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #15 on: June 17, 2012, 09:30:31 am »
Yes Eraser, please spend your money for the good of the herd.  I want to hear your opinion first before I try it :D
Yea, I tend to "want" to enjoy certain games and anything from Soldak is like that for me so I'm probably just not noticing a ton of things that would bother other people not deliberately wanting to enjoy the experience.  eRe4s3r, on the other hand, if he says more positive than negative things about a game, it's good ;)
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #16 on: June 17, 2012, 10:31:24 am »
I'm just a poor college student so I have to spend my money carefully.  As an Indie developer Keith, I know you're heavily biased towards the plight of other Indie developers, which isn't a bad thing at all.  In fact, Drox Operative will probably be a wonderful game either way, but it doesn't mean I'll enjoy it.  I tend to be very picky about my games, simply because one small mistake can ruin an otherwise wonderful experience for me.  I've no problem supporting Indie companies btw, I'll most likely get it no matter what, but the question is whether I should wait until it's more polished, as not to ruin the experience.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #17 on: June 17, 2012, 12:49:36 pm »
I almost was interested in it, until I realized that it wasn't really about having a giant space war that you are in the middle of. Diablo in space is not a great advertisement. If you want a hack and slash RPG, or arcade RPG regardless of the setting, space games don't really match up well.
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Offline madcow

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #18 on: June 17, 2012, 01:23:28 pm »
It seems like it has the potential to be either really great, or fairly meh. I guess how beta goes will determine which way it tips. So I'll keep an eye on it, and might even buy it while its in beta (that 25% discount is pretty nice), but I doubt I'll play it until full release even if I do end up buying it while its still in beta so I don't get the game spoiled by a lack of polish/features.

Cyborg summed it up pretty well. If it feels like diablo in space, eh. If it feels like you're part of a war and influencing it as a merc or playing civs against each other (running sabotage missions and blaming it on other races to incite a war for instance) - then that would be very cool.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 01:26:07 pm by madcow »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #19 on: June 17, 2012, 03:25:52 pm »
What I said is that it's more like diablo-in-space than like giant-space-fleet-battles.  Not that it is diablo-in-space.  If you try to play it like diablo in space you'll probably lose because the game doesn't give you the "step a, step b, step c, etc. step z and everyone lives happily ever after (or whatever it is they do in blizzard games, usually not that)".  If you just do every quest you see and/or spend tons of time searching for and killing every monster you can for xp/loot you'll probably wind up with a race that's relatively happy with you but gets crushed by its adversaries who hate you, and you can't stand up to NPC fleets alone (at least I haven't been able to take them head-on in the first 5 sectors). 

That's not to say y'all will definitely like it, just wanting to avoid giving the wrong impression.  It's not giant-space-fleet-battles, but that is not the only possible space game that can be good :)  There's something genuinely new here, and I find it incredibly fun, even in its early beta form (not that there aren't things that would bother me if they never changed in future releases).

To give another concrete example, which may or may not interest you:

In my fourth sector, I started in the home system of the Blunt.  Who may as well be called the Dense, because they couldn't research their way out of a paper bag (constantly have setbacks that reset their tech research).  But they fight well.  I had a decision to make: try to make them my puppet to win the sector with (almost certainly via conquest instead of diplomacy due to their lack of... manners), or search further afield and hope I find another race or relatively stable group of races to work with instead.  I could try to exploit all of them and rake in a lot more xp from doing that many more quests, but that's more risky (perhaps overly so in the current beta) than I wanted.

I decided to back the Blunt.  First thing I did was fly around the first system and scan uninhabited worlds.  Each time I would call up the Blunt on the diplomacy screen and gift them the info on the planet (I could have sold it for credits, but I got more +relation with them this way).  Imagine how you'd feel as a 4X-space-game player if in the first few turns some hero unit shows up and gives/sells you data on nearby planets.  I'd go for that like a shot ;)  The NPCs will scout stuff on their own pretty quick but giving them a headstart is a signifcant boost on the way to getting them to the #1 spot on the power charts (kind of like a 4X, again).

They also had a few quests for killing some specific space-monsters/raiders/etc in the system.  That can be "uprisings" of a type of monster that if left to themselves will cause bad events on inhabited planets or start other uprisings or just directly attack the NPCs; probably other bad stufff too, I don't sit around and find out.  It can also be named bosses that are quite dangerous (particularly when they form a fleet with other bosses) and who can do all kinds of nasty things if left alone (start uprisings, build nasty devices, send scout or assassin units/bosses to other systems, attack in person, etc).  Anyway, I made a point to kill what they wanted dead and in general I swept the area near the planets to allow breathing room for colonized worlds.

Speaking of, about that time they asked me to colonize a world for them.  They can and do build colony ships and send them out themselves, but it's apparently a lot less costly for them to build the colony module and put it in your ship (displacing either a heavy or medium component, somewhat reducing your combat ability) and have you run it over for them.  Anyway, same-system colony runs aren't too hard, so took care of that for them.  And proceeded to defend the new colony as the nearby monsters took an interest, then swept a bit wider area around it of any monsters so it would have time to build its own defense ships (which are generally quite capable unless bosses or big monster swarms get involved).  I've had some really tense fights desperately trying to keep a new colony alive; that's one of the things that really sets it apart from any diablo-like: you really can lose the planet, the game engine does not care if you get the result you wanted, it just leaves you to deal with the consequences.  Anyway, I win this time and get some major +relations with the NPC race from killing monsters attacking their planet (as well as +relations for the colony quest). 

At this point I'm actively sweeping the outer zone of the system for starlanes to other systems so I can make sure my warrior puppets expand enough to be capable of what I need them to do (namely, exterminate all other sentient life).  Once I find one I pop through, run quickly for the central part of the new system to find and scan planets (and send the data back to the NPC dudes), while fighting off the local fauna.  Then I search for starlanes there and keep an ear out for quests.  One quest type which usually pops up by then is the "help our research" one where you have to gather some material (either from monsters or naturally occurring) and completing it gives the NPC race a new tech (say, Fusion Beam III, which will then be eligible to show up in the shops on that race's planets).  You can also find technology files directly and choose which (if any races) you want to give/sell it to.  Another common quest in this phase is the "terraform" ones which are generally multi-part: buy a device from some planet and sell/give it to the target planet, then gather some resources, and maybe another step.  Early in the game, upgrading a planet can make a big difference for the NPC race's power.

By now relations were high enough to form a non-aggression pact, which gives me some extra assurance that they're not going to turn around and declaration-of-war me midgame (which would really, really stink).  I could have pushed for a mutual-defense-pact or even an alliance (if you and all surviving races are all allied with each other, you win the sector), but I didn't want to commit myself to getting drawn into any of my puppet's hostilities... yet.  Anyway, I've got them data on planets on a few nearby systems and have in general got them off to a pretty good start power-wise.  If I'd been playing them in a 4X game, I'd be really, really happy about how much that NPC hero had just helped me.

Then there was a wrinkle.

While trying to hunt something for a quest in one of the not-yet-colonized systems, I hit an unstable wormhole and got warped clear across the sector.  The higher level monsters were a bit disconcerting (about now I was running into the guys that could jam my missiles and send them back at me, iirc; that led to me discovering that beam weapons really are pretty nice in moderation).  I scanned a few worlds and sent in the data, but probably my allies had no earthly clue how to get anything out there.  I could have used a jump-gate for a one-way trip back to my starting area but wanted to poke around and see what I could see.

Next system over I found... all 5 of the other races in the game.  Not outlying colonies.  Their homeworlds.  The RNG has no concept of a "balanced start" :)

Needless to say, it was an interesting situation.  Relations were degenerating but it was still early enough that no hostilities had started.  I had before me a ton of quests I could do for quite a lot of xp.  Bosses and uprisings and whatnot were really running rampant, and the races had been starting lots of unrest on each others worlds via propaganda and sabotage (which you can do also for money and risk of relations damage), which opens up still more quests to get non-lethal (or lethal, particuarly for actual rebellions) ground weapons to the target planets (and sometimes quests from an opponent race to rush guerrila weapons to the rebels).  Ripe for mercenary pickings, you could say.  I got started, carefully picking quests that wouldn't help any of them too much since they would almost certainly be enemies to me or my main ally at some point.  It was going pretty well.

The another wrinkle: declarations of war started flying between the races in that system, and then the Lithosoids declared war on me.  Annoying rocks.  Anyway, I was sailing into port at the Cortex's homeworld to sell them some weapons to calm down some unrest (or was it terraforming gear, I forget), and just as I'm about to establish contact they declare war on me.  My shield indicators promptly change from a nicely full bar to the message "Not Cool!" (not really, but you get the idea).

I get away with my skin and consider my options.  Not all the races in that system had declared war on me so I could probably still squeeze some opportunity out, but I didn't think that was going to last long.  Also, even helping a friendly race would often help all the races there if it was a kill-boss or whatever quest.  But I also didn't know how to get home from where I was.  Again, I could have one-way-jumped back but then it could take a while to find a way to get my friends out there to clean house.  And if any one of the races there took out the others they might build up enough power to defeat my intellectually-challenged buddies.  So time was kind of of-the-essence.

So I scouted my way through a few uninhabited systems but hit a deadend and found I was in a branch not connected to my starting area (except through the hornet's nest).  Not so great.  So I took a one-way jump back home.  A little concerned about the time but it turned out to be a good thing that I hadn't been able to "harvest" more of the quests in the 5-race system: all those bosses and nasty guys were doing a number on that system.  Uprisings and assassins all the time.  To their credit those races held off the monsters effectively, but it was taking a lot of their time and resources to do so.

That's another thing that made the game feel really new to me: I've seen games where monsters can "attack the town".  I've seen games where the monsters can actually destroy the town.  But I've never seen a game where it was a critical advantage (and delight) that the monsters attack (and preferably destroy) the town.

Anyway, from there on it was relatively smooth sailing: eventually I scouted a path from my allies to the 5-race system, and helped my allies (now truly in Alliance with me) expand in that direction, and between the infighting among those races killing off some, and my allies attacking, and a little discrete "orbital nuclear-missile bombardment of a densely inhabited planet" of my own, victory was mine.

None of that gets into how cool the gear system is (a really satisfyingly complex set of interlocking requirements for using better stuff, possibly the part I most like about the game actually), but I think it covers why I say it's not really diablo-in-space (just closer to that end of the spectrum than as if you were a hero in the middle of a big fleet fight in AIW or whatever).


Um, so, kind of a long post there ;)  For numerous reasons this will probably be my last in-depth attempt to explain what it feels like.  Still not interested?  Wait for the demo.
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Offline madcow

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #20 on: June 17, 2012, 04:17:20 pm »
Very in depth post Keith, thanks! And I think we know how you've spent your weekend. :D

It sounds very interesting, so I'll likely give it a shot and maybe try it out in beta, but hold back on any serious playtime for the full release.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #21 on: June 17, 2012, 04:25:08 pm »
Quote
I've had some really tense fights desperately trying to keep a new colony alive; that's one of the things that really sets it apart from any diablo-like: you really can lose the planet, the game engine does not care if you get the result you wanted, it just leaves you to deal with the consequences.
I think of everything you've said so far, this is what I like the most about the game, and possibly what sets it apart from all other RPGs.

RPGs are famous for forcing questing upon you, with some empty utterances about impending doom should you fail, but which in actuality have no consequences at all.  It's nice to see a developer really immersing the player in the Universe by immediately starting him out with a real sense of danger.

This is one of the things AI War did so well.  When you open up your galaxy map and see your one little green dot surrounded by all the red dots, you're kind of like "holy shit, this is bad".  It's a hilarious feeling to have, and really makes you get involved in the game.  It's actually something I was rather disappointed that AVWW didn't have.  I never felt in-danger with that game, or felt like there were major consequences for my decisions.  Even if I died I just resurrected, maybe the worst punishment was a time sink but nothing more.

Anyway, from what you've said so far this game sounds like it has a lot of potential and I hope to see more RPGs heading this way in the future!

edit:  Oh, one thing I forgot to ask.  How are the difficulty levels handled?  I'm not sure how a game this complex could be made more or less difficult easily, other than possibly making the races inherently more hostile to you, or the monsters more dangerous.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 04:28:31 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #22 on: June 17, 2012, 04:53:15 pm »
It's actually something I was rather disappointed that AVWW didn't have.  I never felt in-danger with that game, or felt like there were major consequences for my decisions.  Even if I died I just resurrected, maybe the worst punishment was a time sink but nothing more.
Yea, we experimented with a lot more brutal options for that.  For the first part of the beta if you died enough that there were four "loose" vengeful ghosts out there they would actually band together into a group on the world map that would advance one square towards your settlement each strategic turn.  You could fight them out in the wild, but if you didn't get them and they reached the settlement... "slaughter" wasn't really an adequate term.  You could fight them there too, and probably "win", but not much would be left.

But, frankly, the players did not like it, so it was removed.  Same with the later experiment where the overlord would actually destroy the continent if you didn't kill him in time (time measured by number of missions done, since strategic turn had already been removed by that point).

Lots of stuff I was excited about (in general Chris wasn't behind any of the more obviously DM-like ploys like those... just the raptors that stalk you from lava), but in practice the players really did not want to be in the game.  So they're not in the game :)


Quote
Anyway, from what you've said so far this game sounds like it has a lot of potential and I hope to see more RPGs heading this way in the future!
It's a welcome form of variety.  I think the pre-scripted storyline ones are great to have too, as long as the story is compelling enough (which, admittedly, is rare).  I prefer ones that at least have a branch-point or two for if the player somehow actually beats the overwhelming odds at some key point that normally they would lose... but even just a straight-up linear story can be a lot of fun.  But it's definitely good to have some games out there that scratch the itch of "I want my decisions/performance to matter".

Quote
edit:  Oh, one thing I forgot to ask.  How are the difficulty levels handled?  I'm not sure how a game this complex could be made more or less difficult easily, other than possibly making the races inherently more hostile to you, or the monsters more dangerous.
The main "difficulty setting" is the base level you choose for a sector when you create a new one.  It defaults to about 2 levels lower than yours, which is a moderate but satisfying challenge to me (so the monsters in your starting area aren't too hard, but at further-out stars can be pretty tough).  Or you can crank it up (all the way to the top of the current "tier" of the game you've completed so far: the level cap is 100 and each 25 is a new tier, though I don't know exactly how it's handled as I'm only level 21 right now) and really have to fight for your life more.  Or you can drop it to a lower level for an easier time; potentially really low if you just want the fun of running roughshod over a dynamic world of bugs you can squish at will ;)  Either way, it naturally affects the amount of xp and quality of loot you can expect.

You can also change the pacing of the game so that monster-respawn and quest-escalation is slower or faster (escalation is things like unrest turning to rebellion, power-grid-outage causing other problems, unkilled bosses forming fleets, bosses building nasty devices, NPC ships needing rescue getting killed, etc).

There's also other set-at-the-start (of the career) settings like hardcore, semi-hardcore (you lose 5 points of your base vitality/structural stat each death, and if it hits zero it's permadeath), and in Din's there was stuff like "can only use epic/artifact/set gear", "can only use cursed gear", etc, but most of those rules don't translate easily into Drox so I dunno what we'll see there.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #23 on: June 17, 2012, 05:05:23 pm »
Quote
Yea, we experimented with a lot more brutal options for that.  For the first part of the beta if you died enough that there were four "loose" vengeful ghosts out there they would actually band together into a group on the world map that would advance one square towards your settlement each strategic turn.  You could fight them out in the wild, but if you didn't get them and they reached the settlement... "slaughter" wasn't really an adequate term.  You could fight them there too, and probably "win", but not much would be left.

But, frankly, the players did not like it, so it was removed.  Same with the later experiment where the overlord would actually destroy the continent if you didn't kill him in time (time measured by number of missions done, since strategic turn had already been removed by that point).

Lots of stuff I was excited about (in general Chris wasn't behind any of the more obviously DM-like ploys like those... just the raptors that stalk you from lava), but in practice the players really did not want to be in the game.  So they're not in the game :)
I'm actually really disappointed to hear that.  As you said, it's fun to have linear storylines (or even open-world storylines), but there's something special about the feeling of challenge and danger; the stakes are so much higher.  Ah well, I understand your need to cater to your players after all ;p

Maybe someday in the future you'll get another opportunity (perhaps a "feature" for an expansion).  Lord knows AI War v5.0 is barely recognizable compared to the first release.

Quote
It's a welcome form of variety.  I think the pre-scripted storyline ones are great to have too, as long as the story is compelling enough (which, admittedly, is rare).  I prefer ones that at least have a branch-point or two for if the player somehow actually beats the overwhelming odds at some key point that normally they would lose... but even just a straight-up linear story can be a lot of fun.  But it's definitely good to have some games out there that scratch the itch of "I want my decisions/performance to matter".
I agree with you.  You certainly feel more like the hero of the story when your decisions actually do make the difference between victory and annihilation.

Quote
The main "difficulty setting" is the base level you choose for a sector when you create a new one.  It defaults to about 2 levels lower than yours, which is a moderate but satisfying challenge to me (so the monsters in your starting area aren't too hard, but at further-out stars can be pretty tough).  Or you can crank it up (all the way to the top of the current "tier" of the game you've completed so far: the level cap is 100 and each 25 is a new tier, though I don't know exactly how it's handled as I'm only level 21 right now) and really have to fight for your life more.  Or you can drop it to a lower level for an easier time; potentially really low if you just want the fun of running roughshod over a dynamic world of bugs you can squish at will ;)  Either way, it naturally affects the amount of xp and quality of loot you can expect.

You can also change the pacing of the game so that monster-respawn and quest-escalation is slower or faster (escalation is things like unrest turning to rebellion, power-grid-outage causing other problems, unkilled bosses forming fleets, bosses building nasty devices, NPC ships needing rescue getting killed, etc).

There's also other set-at-the-start (of the career) settings like hardcore, semi-hardcore (you lose 5 points of your base vitality/structural stat each death, and if it hits zero it's permadeath), and in Din's there was stuff like "can only use epic/artifact/set gear", "can only use cursed gear", etc, but most of those rules don't translate easily into Drox so I dunno what we'll see there.
Ah yes, I'm very glad to hear this.  I loved all of the "difficulty" options that Din had.  It reminded me a lot of AI War in that way - having so many options to make the perfect experience for each person.  I'm glad he's put so much thought into this.

Thanks for all your help!

edit:  By the way, how do you lose?  If all the races turn against you is that defeat, or just defeat in terms of getting destroyed over and over ;p
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 05:08:59 pm by Wingflier »
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #24 on: June 17, 2012, 05:11:33 pm »
Well that wall of text convinced me to at least jump in ahead and pre-order it, it's sufficiently discounted for that. We'll see what comes of it, game is only 200mb for now ;)

Just as a heads up, payment is handled via bmt-micro so Europeans have to pay 19% VAT which pushes the price into the 16€ range. Likely Soldak doesn't know this, which ends up only being a 6% discount (still cheap enough)

Gonna be posting my impressions when I have some ;) One thing Soldak should improve is sending me an actual personally written thank-you email when I buy (not manually, but at least something other than BMT-Micro standard mails), BMT-Micro's standard emails are like a robot caller. Feel very uninvolved. I have a very drastic contrast to that too, when I bought Kerbal Space Project I got an obviously honest "thanks for supporting us with your donation" email. It's small stuff like that that matters. Not for me, because I just notice this, but others might not buy from you again if it feels like a robot handles their orders and no human ever sees it.
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #25 on: June 17, 2012, 05:33:26 pm »
@eRe4s3r: whatever you do, don't watch the intro movie ;)  It's his first attempt at one and... ahem.  Not an indicator of the game's quality.  I think the game would be better without it.  But perhaps it will be improved.  I'd rather he put the time into the game.


edit:  By the way, how do you lose?  If all the races turn against you is that defeat, or just defeat in terms of getting destroyed over and over ;p
If they all declare war on you and you stay in that state for 10 straight minutes (I dunno if it totally resets if any one of them stops being at war with you, haven't been in the countdown phase before), then you lose.  You can die as much as you like (assuming not hardcore) though you gain xp more slowly for a bit after dying and if you have no friendly NPC planets to repair your broken armor that can be hampering.

But basically you're fine as long as you make sure one race really, really likes you (fairly easy to do if you've put your life on the line a few times to establish/defend colonies for them and that kind of thing) and then make sure that one race never dies, and then work on picking off the other races by genocide or alliance.  At this phase in the beta that's basically the optimal overall strategy, which I hope will change, but it's certainly a fun one for all the sectors I've played thus far, since there's plenty of variety inside it.
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Offline Castruccio

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #26 on: June 17, 2012, 06:42:06 pm »
A new beta patch is up on the soldak forums.  There are some bugs with it but it's worth grabbing before you try the game because it adjusts the speed of your starting ship.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #27 on: June 17, 2012, 06:43:17 pm »
Ok I am positively surprised ;) The game is essentially like a improved DoP in space. Progression only happens via a single stat however, which I find VERY weird. There is absolutely no incentive not to put points into command at all times because a 4th heavy module makes all the difference in the world, if you can field 4 modules in each you are already superior even with bad equipment to most enemies. Secondly the other races advance very quickly and there are no mission indicators, something that they really need to fix. In Din you didn't need them because a level wasn't large, but here a sector IS large and you can essentially never even run into your quest objective because it moves every now and then. This is realistic, but not fun. Movement is also pretty heavy as a large ship should be, however.. we don't fly a large ship at the beginning.. some more diversity and a new stat for turning rate boost is needed.

Hehe, as for the Intro movie, I skipped it and didn't notice it had one  :D But yeah, I don't care about intro movies, he might be well advised to improve that (also in ogv is a perculiar codec choice) but he can only work with what he got ;P

Ships are looking OK effects are good, my first ship to level 5 i accidentally messed up really badly with the Cortex, and they don't take a sorry once they declare war, with them being totally 100% allied with the only other surviving race (I messed up with them to prevent extinction of Hive ;p) I ended up restarting ;p Was my own fault though, and I love that one can actually lose by making *very* bad calls.

However, the game needs, as expected, a lot more GUI tweaks. Mission location indicator for one, a proper indicator where the fog of war is and where it isn't in the game view, a better (larger) minimap that has directional ring indicators to locations, and most importantly planets you discovered. Lastly, the game needs a "set location as waypoint" function. In space it is a bit of a huge hassle to "guess" the direction based on the minimap.
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Offline Castruccio

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #28 on: June 17, 2012, 06:51:46 pm »
You might post some of this on the Soldak forum, if you are so inclined.


Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Drox Operative
« Reply #29 on: June 17, 2012, 08:17:11 pm »
There is absolutely no incentive not to put points into command
Two words: max speed.

Or do you like flying a snail? ;)

The higher you upgrade your ship, the higher the base weight gets, the lower your thrust/weight ratio gets, the lower your max speed gets.  I find the max possible of 200 pretty workable, but anything less really cramps my style of getting stuff done fast (and being able to get away in combat, though the thrust consumables can work there too).

So you need more thrust.

To get more thrust you need better thrust modules.

To use better thrust modules you need a higher Helm stat.

You also need more power-load, past a certain early point, particularly in conjunction with more powerful weapons and actually _filling_ your slots (unless you're filling all the extra ones with more power-load, and in that case are they really a big help compared to not having them?).

To get more power-load, you need better reactor/solar-panel modules (reactor is a lot better on power-per-slot, but it's a heavy slot as opposed to medium).

To use better reactor/solar-panel modules you need a higher Engineering stat.

And this doesn't even get into when you need better armor or structure modules (Structural stat), etc.



I say all that because I really hammered command at first, and regretted it until I finally caught up in other areas :)
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