Stars Beyond Reach Release Pushed To Early July.

[topper]

Thanks!  And I just PMed you a key and the instructions.

If anyone else has time constraints of whatever sort, always feel free to mention that!

Thanks! I got into the game and first impressions are good, and it looks great!

I will post thoughts in a different thread.

[x4000]

Great!

[Captain Jack]

I'm going to break Chris's heart by disagreeing re:disease; quarantine options have gone a long way toward improving the disease experience (things I'll never say offline #5239) but it's not quite there yet. The current flow of the game is to do whatever you want until you overreach and get hit by a disease, wait for it to finish cutting your population down, then pressing enter until you're back up to strength. Initial infections still hit nearly your entire population every time, getting that down to where it's possible to stymie major outbreaks if you're fast or lucky should be the next step.

Still a long way to go. Glad you've got the extra month!

This actually doesn't really break my heart or anything so dramatic.  I probably overstated my feelings on the shift.  My feeling is that, during the early game when you're supposed to be weak and struggling, I feel like the diseases are balanced reasonably well.  There's no reason to just hit enter a bunch of times, because despite the diseases you can be pursuing other things at the same time.

I could be wrong, but my expectation i that the real problems here come into play once you start hitting the midgame and the endgame, and I'm not even going to pretend like those are remotely balanced yet.

Sorry, was trying to be funny. Obvious tone doesn't carry through text.

I think you've identified the problem. I've yet to catch a disease in the early game, and whenever I do midgame or later it's just momentum breaking.

[x4000]

All good.

[TheVampire100]

I'm going to break Chris's heart by disagreeing re:disease; quarantine options have gone a long way toward improving the disease experience (things I'll never say offline #5239) but it's not quite there yet. The current flow of the game is to do whatever you want until you overreach and get hit by a disease, wait for it to finish cutting your population down, then pressing enter until you're back up to strength. Initial infections still hit nearly your entire population every time, getting that down to where it's possible to stymie major outbreaks if you're fast or lucky should be the next step.

Still a long way to go. Glad you've got the extra month!

This actually doesn't really break my heart or anything so dramatic.  I probably overstated my feelings on the shift.  My feeling is that, during the early game when you're supposed to be weak and struggling, I feel like the diseases are balanced reasonably well.  There's no reason to just hit enter a bunch of times, because despite the diseases you can be pursuing other things at the same time.

I could be wrong, but my expectation i that the real problems here come into play once you start hitting the midgame and the endgame, and I'm not even going to pretend like those are remotely balanced yet.

At this point I think the redshirts are just so relieved that certain monsters have departed that they don't really notice the acid burns eating through their suits, etc.

Yeah... I think I'll take a little break, go back home get a new acid-proof suit. I read the 0.801 patchnote; many new things are now in reach (new city*, better fighting thanks to range, ...) Maybe I'll be able to recycle into a blueshirt if I let pass some patches without testing them...

However, as a final (maybe) redshirt duty, I'll agree out and loud with Watashiwa. The big point with disease it that it seems to get out of nowhere (when pollution cross an invisible threshold), and that the player doesn't feel in control.

* Yeah, I know, it was functional before, but confusion didn't helped, and with disease explosions, it wasn't easy to reach a state were one got stable enough to think about a second mes... I mean, city.

Absolutely, I think that folks setting it aside for a while and then coming back actually can be equally helpful both to your sanity and to us getting a better view of how things are progressing over time, too.

It's a very good point about the player not feeling in control.  During the very early part of the game, I'd argue that that's part of the general 4X experience: the world is big and scary, and you are in danger from threats that come out of nowhere.  Then you establish a foothold, and you expect for the threats to come out of nowhere but for you to be able to ward them off with great success if you've prepared well enough.  Then by the middle game, your sphere of influence expands outward more, you start really seeing more of the map, and things stop surprising you quite so much.  You struggle with neighbors and other problems, but it's no longer you in the wilderness.  Then finally you hit the point where you are jockeying for some sort of supremacy, and it should still be very dangerous, but your main risk of losing it all is if you overplay your hand.

To me, that's the arc.  Right now I think that diseases fit with the point up until you've established a foothold but you are not yet expanding your sphere of influence.  There need to be more tools and safeguards and so forth past that point.

I just want to add something. I had two games lately that I played VERY different because I wanted to see where it brings me. The first one was as Skylaxian, playing very careful, always looking at what I need. I unlocked the infection cure facility as soon as I could and built some. The result was that I was very well prepared for any disease that hits me. Even when I was struck by 5 diseases at once from war I had no problem at all with dealing with them.
My other game was with the Fenyn. I didn't care very much with hospitals, police, hazmats or anything that prevents disasters. When my first disease struck I ddin't even had a Major Trauma Center so I couldn't research a Vaccine. The Quarantine system however allowed me to stay in the game. Yes, it is annoying that you have to wait until the disease dies out but on the other hand you aren't helpless any more.
For me this is the significant difference. Before quarantine dieseases meant most likely your death. Now they can be fighted even if you are ill prepared. And if you are prepared you will have a godd chance anyway.

[Pumpkin]

Interesting to have different opinions. Maybe you're right and Watashiwa and I are wrong about the need of further softening disease.

Maybe a good way to solve the diseasplosion would be to let the balance as it is but solve the "control" feeling. If TheVampire says it's fine both ways, after all, why not ceasing hammering this poor disease and letting it be a little nasty, after all. Maybe, just displaying somewhere how does the diseases strikes and at which threshold. I guess there is a computation involving pollution and population behind the hood; displaying it as a manageable threshold would make the player "in control". A situation that I can think would be good for this control problem would be:
I have a few hazmats and research labs and my pollution is maintained below the disease threshold; if I want more labs/military/industry, I need to prepare the ground for disease (researches, graveyards, trauma centers, etc), makeup my city, and endure the disease.
or
Very early game is behind me, now I want to get all the economy/military/science that lies behind the disease wall; am I ready to trigger the pollution switch and cross the disease threshold?

[x4000]

Another thing that I'll add to this mix is that in some ways the game may not be able to please everyone per se.  Having disease be a really major threat and something that is hard is a legitimate way to play, as TheVampire100 noted, but it's probably not best for your very first outing.

Right now the game has a super simple difficulty system, with all the variables being centralized on the actual difficulty.  What I want to do is move to something more like 7 Days To Die (except even moreso) where each individual factor _can_ be adjusted if you wish to expand into those areas and tweak them, but then the overall difficulty level setting is just a macro that does nothing directly, just sets all those other variables.

Anyway, that's on my list of things to get to, heh.

[crazyroosterman]

honestly all the disease I get infect all my population at once so quarantine usually isn't a thing for me its more for me a waiting game of out birthing the mortality rate of the disease.

[x4000]

There are things there with percentages of initial infected that definitely need to be looked at, I think there is either a bug there or a design issue.

[crazyroosterman]

although one of the cases was were id survived 2 diseases as the peltians and then the evuks thought it would be funny despite my attempts diplomacy with them to infect my race with 6(or 4 I cant quite remember) different diseases at once so that was probably intentional.

[x4000]

Ahahaha, oh man.  They shouldn't be hitting you with diseases that frequently, but that's pretty funny and very much in character for them at least.

[crazyroosterman]

after I managed to vaccinate those disease I don't think they tried again although I did get enoughour one after that the evuks havetn tried again I don't know if its because I exsated  their amusement or because they didn't have any more.(and enoughour one after I think?)

[x4000]

It may also be that they just aren't angry at you again at the moment.

[ptarth]

The Evucks weren't mad at you. Those are house warming gifts. You move into a new neighborhood and you get a neighborhood potluck, flowers,  Ebola, Syphilis, and Tuberculosis.

[crazyroosterman]

that sounds more like it I did nothing to make them angry apart from maybe saying the wrong thing in greeting to one of their elders because my lin wasn't high enough.