Sunrider: First Arrival Free on Steam!

[Alex Heartnet]

My weapons do sometimes do more damage than I would expect.

And I have figured out why.

When ships take damage, their armor rating is reduced accordingly.  A healthy PACT cruiser is unfazed by the Assault Gun.  A badly damaged PACT cruiser has a much-reduced armor rating and will take close-to-full damage from the same Assault Gun.  But other then this stats do not decrease with damage - the crippled cruiser still has perfectly good guns and shields.  Finish it off!

For example, I once attacked an enemy PACT Mook with Blackjack's Assault gun, and it had 0 armor but the gun did something like 11 damage

Either you attacked at the far limit of the Assault Gun's range or the RNG decided it hated you.

With a single-shot weapon, 50% hit chance = either full damage or none at all.  With a rapid fire weapon, 50% hit chance = half the bullets hitting and the other half missing.  A 5% hit chance is having a single bullet hit, maybe two if you're lucky.

When using missiles the above still applies, but with the additional factor of flak defenses.

Longer-range weapons are simply the ones that have greater accuracy.  Upgrading weapon accuracy means you can achieve the same hit% against the same enemy while standing further away.  If the enemy has a high evasion, then you'll have to get in closer to achieve the same hit%.



LOL

[relmz32]

Why/How is the game free?

It looks great, just want to know what I am getting myself into. (The iOS F2P models have left me very skiddish about "free" games)

[Alex Heartnet]

Why/How is the game free?

It looks great, just want to know what I am getting myself into. (The iOS F2P models have left me very skiddish about "free" games)

No, this is 100% free, as in "free beer".

[Coppermantis]

My weapons do sometimes do more damage than I would expect.

And I have figured out why.

When ships take damage, their armor rating is reduced accordingly.  A healthy PACT cruiser is unfazed by the Assault Gun.  A badly damaged PACT cruiser has a much-reduced armor rating and will take close-to-full damage from the same Assault Gun.  But other then this stats do not decrease with damage - the crippled cruiser still has perfectly good guns and shields.  Finish it off!

For example, I once attacked an enemy PACT Mook with Blackjack's Assault gun, and it had 0 armor but the gun did something like 11 damage

Either you attacked at the far limit of the Assault Gun's range or the RNG decided it hated you.

With a single-shot weapon, 50% hit chance = either full damage or none at all.  With a rapid fire weapon, 50% hit chance = half the bullets hitting and the other half missing.  A 5% hit chance is having a single bullet hit, maybe two if you're lucky.

When using missiles the above still applies, but with the additional factor of flak defenses.

Longer-range weapons are simply the ones that have greater accuracy.  Upgrading weapon accuracy means you can achieve the same hit% against the same enemy while standing further away.  If the enemy has a high evasion, then you'll have to get in closer to achieve the same hit%.



LOL

I already knew that first part, but that second one I just realized while I was brushing my teeth this morning. I'd assumed that the %hit stat was referring to the entire attack like in, say, XCOM (EU at least), not being applied to every shot of a rapid-fire weapon.

Judging by the dialogue in your screenshot, you've passed me in the story by this point. I swear, Teal_Blue, whoever told you this game was short must have cruised through it on VN mode or something. Those Ryuv-something ancient battleships are giving me a run for my money. Might have to go in with nukes again. I always speak too soon. With the nukes and a little tactical adjustment (namely smarter use of Claude and Icari) I beat it quite handily.

Why/How is the game free?

It looks great, just want to know what I am getting myself into. (The iOS F2P models have left me very skiddish about "free" games)

The game was entirely funded by kickstarter backers or out-of-pocket from the developers. It and all future installments of the story will be 100% free. From Steam:

Back in early january 1'217 people backed this project on kickstarter pledging $44k with which the game is funded.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1500482054/sunrider
the game itself is free thanks to these backers and will always be free. no microtransactions, no fees for this installment or any of the following ones.

from the kickstarter page:

* Sunrider is FREEWARE.  The game will be released for free upon completion.
* Obviously, Love in Space has an absolutely zero DRM stance.
* You are free to modify, translate, mod, and/or expand upon Sunrider is any manner you choose, so long as you do not charge other people money for any of Sunrider's assets.
* Love in Space gives you the right to use Sunrider in any other manner you want, with the only condition being you do not charge other people money for any part of Sunrider.

Keeping Sunrider free is made possible largely through the generous contributions of people like you.  I expect to carry the majority of the production costs myself.  However, any donations you make will go a long way in making Sunrider a great game.

[zespri]

Let me troll a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C3B1VjC7X4

[Coppermantis]

I feel like that guy is trying too hard to be Totalbiscuit. Imitating his fixation on graphics options, emphasizing "first impressions," generally complaining about ridiculous crap. I'm surprised he didn't demand an FOV slider--it's a visual novel, it doesn't need an in-depth options menu. Even Totalbiscuit gets that, come on.

If he'd complained about the combat lag, (which is an engine issue) then fine, but he hadn't even gotten to combat by that point.

-Complains about unskippable text, misses the "skip" setting in the options menu (after griping about its limitations) and in the game's interface itself.

-Demanding everything have voice acting. Yes, because indie companies releasing their games for free can afford to narrate everything. Do you want someone to read books aloud to you too, or is that also too much work?

-This is just painful to watch. He ignores the text instructions and then royally screws up, then blames the game for it. "I don't know if that's the way it goes, I really don't know." Well, maybe if you spent less time griping about the lack of voice acting and read the damn text then you would.

-"I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment whatsoever, because you were just destroying a piece of cardboard. That's what it looked like, anyway" What? You're playing the tutorial mission, and blew up one ship. Unless you're griping about the graphics, in which case **** you.

"So attack then, pony! It's not doing anything." Oh, I dunno, how about you try CLICKING ON THE ENEMY.

"So that tiny ship has thousands of missiles, and yet, I have run out." Well, yeah, it's a missile frigate. All it has are missiles, you're carrying ammo and power for flak, lasers, artillery, and the Vanguard cannon. Also, your ship was under construction and unfinished, if you had paid attention to the flavor text. Also, gameplay balance. Not a difficult concept

It does seem like he's playing the version without tooltips. That's an actual problem, but he doesn't even mention it, instead complaining about trivial and subjective "problems." And that one's been fixed, anyhow.

There are legitimate things to complain about in this game. His grievances are not among them. Most of his complaints boil down to "I don't like this genre, ergo this is a bad game" or are totally irrelevant altogether. What a terrible "review"

[keith.lamothe]

With some reviews I get the impression that the reviewer considers "disliking a game" to be an accomplishment worthwhile in itself

[Coppermantis]

This game remains quite difficult. I had to actually drop the difficulty to beat Wedding Crash. Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure what I'm playing on. When I was trying to beat Agamemnon, I thought I was on hard but the game said medium. Then, at WC, I checked the difficulty again and it said I was on hard. I don't know. Maybe I'm just forgetful.


There's a lot more tactical depth than I'd anticipated when I first started, especially now that I have all the units available. The battle that I'm on right now, Far Port, is reportedly the hardest mission in the game, so we'll see how that goes. Probably going to need nukes again. The cutscenes before big events (Wedding Crash, Far Port) are pretty badass, I've got to say. I think this is one of the last missions in the current release, though the closed beta apparently has additional missions after Far Port. The way I hear it is that the next installments of the story will be released as updates (with every major X.0 representing another major part of the story.)

Also, the Alliance cruisers that I get to control in Far Port have male captains. An unprecedented occurrence! I was starting to think I was playing Touhou


A valuable expenditure of command points. I regret nothing.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, the Alliance cruisers that I get to control in Far Port have male captains. An unprecedented occurrence! I was starting to think I was playing Touhou

Tac Officer: "Sir, the enemy fleet of one thousand dreadnoughts just entered firing range!"

Admiral: "Just keep the shields forward, we'll be fine."

Tac Officer: "We're picking something else up... it looks like a nine-year-old girl?"

Admiral: "GET US BACK INTO HYPER RIGHT NOW!"

[Teal_Blue]

Also, the Alliance cruisers that I get to control in Far Port have male captains. An unprecedented occurrence! I was starting to think I was playing Touhou

Tac Officer: "Sir, the enemy fleet of one thousand dreadnoughts just entered firing range!"

Admiral: "Just keep the shields forward, we'll be fine."

Tac Officer: "We're picking something else up... it looks like a nine-year-old girl?"

Admiral: "GET US BACK INTO HYPER RIGHT NOW!"

Haha, perfect!!

[Coppermantis]

Episode 2 of Sunrider just came out on Steam. It's a fairly buggy release, so be warned--verifying the game cache is usually necessary to start, and old saves don't seem to work anymore, so you'll probably have to restart a campaign in order to have choices carry over into EP2.



But, on the plus side, the battle grid has hexes now, and other cool stuff.

[Histidine]

Oh, you guys haven't seen the new PACT Support ryder have you? Prepare to tear your hair out.
(Hint: Short Range Warp, Disable and the Seraphim are your friends)

Also, people getting it through Steam will probably want the de-censor patch here.

[Coppermantis]

Assault carriers are worse because not only do they have brutal Kinetic weapons, they make MORE support ryders. No bueno.

I'm liking the new features a lot. Support Ryders using restore crashes the game, but other than that, it's pretty sweet.