Drox Operative

[Mánagarmr]

No shortcuts? Stargates?

[keith.lamothe]

No shortcuts? Stargates?

I think they mean to revealing the system you're in.  "Mowing" the fog-of-war does get old after a while.  It's not a critical thing to me, but it would be a lot better if there were some power tools you could get to do better at it.

Otherwise it's kind of like harvest-moon/rune-factory where you never get a watering can that does more than one tile at once.

[Mánagarmr]

I must be playing the game wrong. Because I never feel the need to "mow the shroud" at all. Maybe I do fly around and look for stuff, but generally I enter a system, fly around the outskirts to reveal the exits, and then the rest of the exploration pretty much does itself as I perform missions in the system. The first populated planet might take a bit to find though.

[Lancefighter]

i end up doing a lot of mowing when I am trying to wage war, or find a planet in the system.

Systems are just so big.. Finding gates isnt too difficult, since you can find them via outskirts fairly easily and consistently (even flying safely off the edge if need be)

[Mánagarmr]

I was referring to the jump-gate thingies though. The ones where you can instantly traverse the "galaxy".

[Lancefighter]

Well, those are pretty hard to find too

[Professor Paul1290]

Usually if I want to know where the planets and starlanes are I watch for where the traffic is going. Ships tend to fly to and from both starlanes and planets with colonies, so in a well populated system you can often get some idea of where planets are pretty quickly.

It doesn't work on empty planets or systems without that many colonies of course.

[Wingflier]

I can see this getting more interesting later on, but the constant exploration with no shortcuts makes me perfer Space Rangers 1/2 atm.

This was actually my complaint. It felt like lawnmowing. There needs to be a way to reveal the map or parts of it at least.

Agreed.  Maybe if you could barter with the races to reveal their planets and any area they've traveled for technology (or if they like you enough they'll give it all free).  I mean hell, you can trade them planet data, why can't they trade you planet data?  It would also be nice if, hidden on each planet somewhere was a "wide reveal" beacon, that just revealed the whole system if you stumbled across it.  Then sometimes you wouldn't have to waste so much time scouting when you'd rather actually be playing the game.  Maybe pirates could guard it to make it more challenging since they know new travelers will be searching for it. At any rate, I'll probably make a suggestion in the Drox forums about this, because I do find it to be somewhat fun-ruining at times, and I've only ever played on TINY systems.  I can't imagine how frustrating it would be on a Huge one.

My only other complaint is that you can't turn up the difficulty of the factions themselves.  Winning the game via the races seems super easy so far.  This is because they are all basically neutral with you at the start.  So you just find the most powerful race (usually Utopian for me), and do some quests for them until you can get into their favor, and then the rest is smooth sailing.  If you can just ally with the top two most powerful races every game, and get them to like each other via rumors, you can basically win every game with no problems.  This is way too easy to do in my experience.  It would be nice if each race had a random disposition towards you at the start, so every game wasn't just doing the same thing over and over.

[Professor Paul1290]

If you're finding the game too easy, then it might help to turn up the pace setting. As with Din's Curse pacing is more or less how you control world difficulty.

[Wingflier]

If you're finding the game too easy, then it might help to turn up the pace setting. As with Din's Curse pacing is more or less how you control world difficulty.

Ah nice.  I didn't realize that's how it worked.  It's nice that you can make the monsters nasty, but I'm looking to make the factions a bit nastier too

[Professor Paul1290]

If you're finding the game too easy, then it might help to turn up the pace setting. As with Din's Curse pacing is more or less how you control world difficulty.

Ah nice.  I didn't realize that's how it worked.  It's nice that you can make the monsters nasty, but I'm looking to make the factions a bit nastier too

I guess more specifically, setting a faster pacing might offset the fact that you're playing on tiny sectors.

Since you mentioned that you're playing only using tiny sectors and you can usually just ally with a powerful race and ride them to the top, it sounds like the game events are going too slowly to have enough of an effect.

The strategy of simply allying with the most powerful race to win is often impeded by the fact that larger and more powerful races tend to eventually get more internal problems over time. Often times factions that control more planets and have more stuff in general will eventually get more civil unrest, spreading conditions like disease, and other forms of internal decay just because they have more stuff to get messed up.
Since your playing using tiny sectors, it could be that this doesn't really kick in quickly enough or often enough to matter just because there's less planets/stuff to be had.

Turning up the pacing might allow such conditions to progress quickly enough to start matter at that scale.

[Wingflier]

So you're saying that I should try "Huge" Sectors first, and see how I like that?  I am a bit disgruntled by the fact that in order to play this mode, I have to do so much pointless exploring which is (in an RPG) a real waste of time.  But from what you make it sound like, the game has its own specific mechanisms to make larger empires more fragile, so in the correct scenario, perhaps the game would be more unpredictable and exciting.

I've got another question though, I sometimes see these "Virus" or "Infection" races, which are like (from the description) barely sentient, anti-life species which usually only start with one planet.  From the description, it sounds like if they ever established a foothold on the game, they would spread massive chaos and simply destroy everything in their path (like a virus), but since they only start with 1 planet, and have bad relations, they typically get wiped out almost instantly.  Has anyone seen one of these races (such as the Talon) be successful? How did it happen?

[Professor Paul1290]

So you're saying that I should try "Huge" Sectors first, and see how I like that?  I am a bit disgruntled by the fact that in order to play this mode, I have to do so much pointless exploring which is (in an RPG) a real waste of time.  But from what you make it sound like, the game has its own specific mechanisms to make larger empires more fragile, so in the correct scenario, perhaps the game would be more unpredictable and exciting.

Not really. I tend to find sectors larger than "normal" to be too large.

Personally I usually play on small sectors, though sometimes I turn up the pacing to compensate for the fact that they're small and that usually works out pretty well and allows more unpredictable things to happen without having to up sector size.

I don't usually play on tiny, but I'm assuming the same "fix" can apply.

I've got another question though, I sometimes see these "Virus" or "Infection" races, which are like (from the description) barely sentient, anti-life species which usually only start with one planet.  From the description, it sounds like if they ever established a foothold on the game, they would spread massive chaos and simply destroy everything in their path (like a virus), but since they only start with 1 planet, and have bad relations, they typically get wiped out almost instantly.  Has anyone seen one of these races (such as the Talon) be successful? How did it happen?

I've had it happen a couple times, but it's not often that they get much of a foothold unless there is other stuff happening at the same time that favors them. I've only seen it happen if they can reach a bunch of free worlds without colonies early on or the other races don't decide to attack them or are weakened for some reason.

Usually, like nine times out of ten, they just end up being a temporary distraction until all the other races gang up on them and kill them off.

On the other hand, when they do show up they can sometimes come back multiple times after they get wiped out, so they do get more chances to get started than a normal race does, especially in longer games. However, as mentioned above the chances of them gaining a foothold each time they emerge is rather low, so they're a bit quantity over quality in that sense.

[Lancefighter]

Yes.. On a whim my group (was 3 at the time) decided to support and babysit one of them. It uh. It steamrolled literally everything after it got a few planets.

[Wingflier]

Yes.. On a whim my group (was 3 at the time) decided to support and babysit one of them. It uh. It steamrolled literally everything after it got a few planets.

Interesting...perhaps a good way to win the game if you can keep them alive.