Post by TeeWee on Feb 10, 2019 8:34:25 GMT -5
Well, after a long hiatus from Trese games, I've come back for ST Frontiers! Received my Google Play key from my Kickstarter support, so I've gone and installed it on my phone. So, here's my first impressions, not quite a review, but a bit on how my journey of a few days has been.
Wow. That's a lot of complexity in there. Fortunately, this is not the first Trese game I've played, so I know a bit about how all the different things interact and concepts like strong and standard dice are known to me. I've also played the original ST, ST4X and TBF (as well as HoS), so the lore is not entirely new to me. This helps a lot, or I may well have felt completely overwhelmed. It's a lot to be thinking of as it is.
I took it out for a few test runs to figure out the balance and some core mechanics. And with crew management (I refuse to let the AI take care of that for me
it's a lot to take in, but I'm getting a few successes and failures. Escorting the arbiter around is easy, but my first planetary landing and meeting some Xeno not so much. That's ok, that's what those first few runs are for anyway.
I also start customising my ship a bit, first by adding an officer's quarter, later by replacing weapons for stuff modules that improve my ship skill pools. Had a nasty surprise that that also increased the requirements on the skills of the crew, instead of just adding to the stats. But I figured out how that worked as well (confirmed with a quick question here), so I can now play around with that as well.
The storyline of the Faen is coming along, I'm running some missions for them to find out what happened. And with a reasonable crew I'm able to complete a few of those missions with good skill rolls or a skill save talent or two as well as having an away team that's can handle the first few gun fights. Managing faction reputation is a lot harder though, as I quickly fall into heavy minus-reputation for everybody but my home faction. Doesn't matter, we can attempt to repair a bit, by playing faction politics. Contacts are valuable too because they give missions and therefore easy ways to improve faction relations. I have a contact who does not offer missions though, and his influence is low so his services aren't active now. That's weird. I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that. Probably by doing other things that will improve his faction are see if I can find a friend of his to do stuff for.
Up till now, it's been a fun game. Definately more ambitious than I've seen before. I haven't had an indepth in all the skill trees yet, but that may follow after a few more test runs. I already had a few things that haven't synergised as well as I would've thought, but that's part of the journey. Also having some difficulty balancing "power gaming" and "role playing" but that will come in time. For now, I'm more about understanding some of the basic mechanics.
Also, I'm happy the community support is as good as I remember. The usual suspects are still around, providing a lot of information and helping new users. And the brothers themselves are still very active on the forums. The vibe is still very much here and I'm enjoying that as well.
A few points that do concern me:
The amount of information that yopu need to keep in your head to play effectively is a bit mind boggling. Everything is interconnected, so it's difficult to gain reputation in multiple factions. Also, getting a feel for the layout of the systems and the galaxy is hard, with all the world names and the system types. The atlas is ok, but that's not quite enough to help my own mental map of the playing area. I don't know how to improve this though, except playing some more
Also, I'm playing on a Moto Z Play. That's a 5.5" screen in 1080p resolution. I find the interface right on the edge of usable. Everything is rather small, especially the text. I'm not sure how to solve it, because there is simply a lot of information to convey and splitting it more reduces the overall clarity and coherence of all the different things. I find it quite strenuous to read the text. I'm seriously considering to buy on PC, but Steam is a bit of a problem. I don't mind Steam on my home PC, but this would be an excellent game on the laptop during my daily commute. But that's a work laptop. I wouldn't mind installing a single player game on it, but I won't install the Steam client itself onto that machine, which is a pity. I understand getting the game on GoG is a problem for you (I've read some previous thread where they bounce the submission back) but that would solve it for me personally.
Thanks for a wonderful game. I'm debating whether or not to get it on Steam. Still a day to think about this to make use of the sale
Wow. That's a lot of complexity in there. Fortunately, this is not the first Trese game I've played, so I know a bit about how all the different things interact and concepts like strong and standard dice are known to me. I've also played the original ST, ST4X and TBF (as well as HoS), so the lore is not entirely new to me. This helps a lot, or I may well have felt completely overwhelmed. It's a lot to be thinking of as it is.
I took it out for a few test runs to figure out the balance and some core mechanics. And with crew management (I refuse to let the AI take care of that for me
it's a lot to take in, but I'm getting a few successes and failures. Escorting the arbiter around is easy, but my first planetary landing and meeting some Xeno not so much. That's ok, that's what those first few runs are for anyway. I also start customising my ship a bit, first by adding an officer's quarter, later by replacing weapons for stuff modules that improve my ship skill pools. Had a nasty surprise that that also increased the requirements on the skills of the crew, instead of just adding to the stats. But I figured out how that worked as well (confirmed with a quick question here), so I can now play around with that as well.
The storyline of the Faen is coming along, I'm running some missions for them to find out what happened. And with a reasonable crew I'm able to complete a few of those missions with good skill rolls or a skill save talent or two as well as having an away team that's can handle the first few gun fights. Managing faction reputation is a lot harder though, as I quickly fall into heavy minus-reputation for everybody but my home faction. Doesn't matter, we can attempt to repair a bit, by playing faction politics. Contacts are valuable too because they give missions and therefore easy ways to improve faction relations. I have a contact who does not offer missions though, and his influence is low so his services aren't active now. That's weird. I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that. Probably by doing other things that will improve his faction are see if I can find a friend of his to do stuff for.
Up till now, it's been a fun game. Definately more ambitious than I've seen before. I haven't had an indepth in all the skill trees yet, but that may follow after a few more test runs. I already had a few things that haven't synergised as well as I would've thought, but that's part of the journey. Also having some difficulty balancing "power gaming" and "role playing" but that will come in time. For now, I'm more about understanding some of the basic mechanics.
Also, I'm happy the community support is as good as I remember. The usual suspects are still around, providing a lot of information and helping new users. And the brothers themselves are still very active on the forums. The vibe is still very much here and I'm enjoying that as well.
A few points that do concern me:
The amount of information that yopu need to keep in your head to play effectively is a bit mind boggling. Everything is interconnected, so it's difficult to gain reputation in multiple factions. Also, getting a feel for the layout of the systems and the galaxy is hard, with all the world names and the system types. The atlas is ok, but that's not quite enough to help my own mental map of the playing area. I don't know how to improve this though, except playing some more
Also, I'm playing on a Moto Z Play. That's a 5.5" screen in 1080p resolution. I find the interface right on the edge of usable. Everything is rather small, especially the text. I'm not sure how to solve it, because there is simply a lot of information to convey and splitting it more reduces the overall clarity and coherence of all the different things. I find it quite strenuous to read the text. I'm seriously considering to buy on PC, but Steam is a bit of a problem. I don't mind Steam on my home PC, but this would be an excellent game on the laptop during my daily commute. But that's a work laptop. I wouldn't mind installing a single player game on it, but I won't install the Steam client itself onto that machine, which is a pity. I understand getting the game on GoG is a problem for you (I've read some previous thread where they bounce the submission back) but that would solve it for me personally.
Thanks for a wonderful game. I'm debating whether or not to get it on Steam. Still a day to think about this to make use of the sale
