Fun, but tough to love this game

[lostdecade]

ST should come with a disclaimer or tagline that says something along the lines of:

• You're going to die...a lot.
  
• Prepare to die!
  
• More deaths than the first ten minutes of Space Quest 1, guaranteed!
  

Okay, so that last one was a stretch (SQ and just about any Sierra adventure game back in the day was harder...and yeah, that sorta gives away my age, lol)...

I don't hate the game. Far from it. I'm just really disappointed from what otherwise could have been gaming bliss for me.

In all honesty, it's one of the better space trading games I've played in years! Not since games like Starflight and Sundog from WAY back in the day did I have so much fun. ST really got me thinking, and planning, and so deeply intrigued like I hadn't been in years playing a game (too many games these days leave nothing to the imagination). While spotty in some places (in terms of grammar and spelling), the many starports and descriptions of the various locales are a joy to read. The battles (and combat descriptions) are thrilling (I'll get back to that in a bit), and the many different classes, ships, and ways to strike it rich are mind-boggling and a real tribute to the thought and effort that clearly went into ST's game design. Very well done, Trese Bros.! However...

I tried to enjoy ST. I played the hell out of it the last few days since purchasing Elite (it took only 15 mins. in the free version for me to cave in just like I did with CK, also a great game which I may go back to after putting up this post and uninstalling ST). My old school gamer's iron chin was ready to take the Game Over blows just to give ST a real honest chance...but after nearly 30 dead captains spread out from difficulties Challenging to Crazy, and never getting beyond level 8, I just can't take anymore.

It sucks even more when I check these boards for tips (which are all great, don't get me wrong, and I thank you for them ST community!) and see people talking about level 50 and higher characters on Impossible like it's a walk in the park. That, to me, is ridiculous. That's almost as insane as watching someone play the original Legend of Zelda for NES and making it to the final boss without using the sword once!

I played all the classes (save for Spy and Zealot, both of which I always come close to unlocking, but always fall flat at the last possible second, or get killed before completing that many contracts), and I really, really enjoy playing a Pirate (mostly because the starting pilot and tactics bonuses help keep me alive a year or two longer than the others, but also because I used to love playing Sid Meier's Pirates!, both old and new, even on the hardest difficulties). There's some awesome pirate help threads here, and they did nicely sustaining me in ST, but the laws of entropy and Murphy always clobbered me whenever I start to fly high (and I don't mean on spice either).

It comes down to this: regardless of difficulty, or whether I play the Vae Victus or the Picky Beggar, there's always a point where I'm minding my business, looking for smugglers to rob and trying to do the odd delivery or surveillance contract, and out of nowhere, this bastard in either a Dagger Class, Scimitar Class, or some other Fast/Quick ship comes along and rapes the hell out of my boat faster than I can say WTF! Even with pilot jacked up to 12, Stealth around 10, and Tactics at 12 (I even tried pumping up Warrior a bit), and even a pilot officer at one point, I still can't get away or land a torpedo, or take out their engines, and I get executed post-haste EVERY STINKIN' TIME! And even if I survive, then there's the ridiculous costs to repair your ship, even after just taking one solid hit that wiped out all armor (armor is almost pointless in this game, I might add) and some guns and torpedoes...*sigh*

So even after the thrill of unlocking some stuff, and making $100k in loot thanks to a couple lucky random shortages of weapons and then metal, and even unlocking 4 of the starting ships (I can't stand the others that aren't the VV or PB...and I've given up trying to open up Serpent's Tooth or Tempus Fugit), I've about had it. I usually have A LOT of patience for games like this. Trust me, I tried real hard to love this game, but it's clear that it's made for masochists, and not gamers who want to enjoy their successes without dying every couple of hours. If I wanted to lose this much, this often, I'd dust off the old Atari 5200 and play Robotron: 2084 (the ultimate way to punish yourself in gaming).

Now, as I go back to CK: Elite, I can't help but wonder if that game is going to become as merciless as ST is now once it develops its way out of beta...one can only hope not.

[Fenikso]

Hi and welcome to the forum! As you have written there are a lot of great advices on the forum, blog, wiki etc., also Slayerz may be coming in with his excellent advices for you shortly .

So I have just a few advices for you:

• There is nothing wrong with Normal difficulty. Play Normal. When you find it ridiculously easy, move one level up. The game is very unforgiving of mistakes, bad calls, bad choices, etc. You have to learn it one bit at the time.
  
• You cannot win every time. Learn when it is better (and safe) to surrender. I do not feel suited for a real fight until I reach Pilot 15, Stealth 15, Tactics 15 and I keep really low profile until then.
  
• By design the game is getting harder with time (turns passed). Keep that in mind and do not waste it. I use the "Enemy ship levels during the course of gameplay" table to keep track if my progress is good enough: Table on Wiki
  

[boeu]

Ive been playing this for nearly a year and the highest ive gotten is lvl 43 on crazy before getting hulled. On insane ive managed a lvl 23 but he too was short lived. Eventually i will get a lvl 50 but depends on what lvl i play again till i work out some of the kinks in my gaming style

[Fenikso]

BTW: All my "Impossible cakewalk" posts are no longer applicable from version 4.0.0 balancing and later. So I hope those are not the ones you are referring to ;D.

[boeu]

That tables handy too :-)

[HarryKILLSworth]

Ah, yes that takes me back.... The many, many captaing spauldings that were turned to space vapor. I think I had 20 or so before I realized the name was cursed and moved to captain black beard and red beard. Both which are also cursed and eternally space vapor on the hulls of aliens ship or various body partsleft over the surface of planets dewp in space desperately searching for water and the mysteriously missing crew only to be vaporized by violent volcanieruptions and aliens attacks.
For now Capt. Jack Me Boy is holding strong on demanding at level 12. I had to down level from crazy since my crew were just plain scared to leave the planet surface cuz of enemies abundant. Stick to a comfortable difficulty till it becomes impossible for enemies to kill you on that level of difficulty.

[cyberangel]

I say demanding level and hard is pretty fun, when I start, I don't carry anything to atract attention, as I get stronger then I start to carry electronics, artifacts,and guns, playing on hard, I.have no shame to surrender, it my captain life we talking about here.. when I do surrender, I have nothinig they want of need, and.continued my mission. At the moment I am having fun on the demanding level, I keep dying on hard, because I am just testing the waters, even thou I am pure Cadar, I learn to humble myself and value my crew life. I use what I learn from playing shadow run and D&d table top games to manage around ST RpG Elite.

[slayernz]

Hey Lostdecade ... and welcome to the forums.

I definitely hear what you're saying loud and clear. The difficulty curve between different levels is significant and so many people underestimate it. My first captain started out on Basic level and funnily enough, 10 months later, I still have him there. Do I play him much now? not really, but it was by playing with that character for several weeks straight that I got to grips with the fundamentals of game play. If I had leaped into Crazy ... or even Challenging, I would have been too frustrated with the deaths and the strength of opponents to want to continue.

So when Captain Slayer reached level 30 with $3million credits and nothing could can stand in his way, I decided to try out my luck at higher levels. Instead of having Slayer II, then Slayer III, then Slayer IV etc, I took the approach of Captain A (Adam), Captain B (Bob), Captain C (Charlie) etc. In my first attempts at Demanding, I got up to Captain Ian before I managed to survive long enough to the feeling of invincibility of Slayer.

In Crazy, I went through the alphabet and got to Captain "Crazy Chip" before I was happy

On Impossible, I'm on "Impossible Eric" (31 attempts in Impossible). If I hadn't learned as much from all my previous captains and didn't spend most of my waking life in this forum, I think Impossible would have been ... well impossible.

So coming back to the beginning comments ... yes, you die a lot, but you die less often if you actually use the basic/normal levels to get to grips with the game. If I were asked for 5 tips to help survive they would be:
1) Focus on Pilot, Tactics and Stealth until they are at least 15 - 20. These three skills will stop you from being hit and boarded, and will allow you to retreat/advance and hit your opponent.

2) The higher the difficulty, the more important it is to play diplomatically, at least at the beginning. Surrendering is not a bad word when you are just starting on Crazy level. Just remember the captain's name for when you are more of a killing machine

3) Rumors are critical ... at least for me. Shortage rumors for standard commodities (Crystals, Spice, Metal) will get you cash quickly and relatively easily. It's not impossible to get a million credits within the first few years of your captain's life, just by keeping your nose clean and trading a bit at the beginning. It's a lot easier buying that Javat Cutter than it is trying to limp back to a star dock on only one engine after a battle. Also, you end up paying so much for repairs after a battle that you need the cash anyway.

4) Get a good ship as soon as you can afford one. That means either buy one (Javat Cutter, Honor of Javat, Honor of Thulun), or have the credits in your bank that will allow you to cover repair costs of capturing one. In other words, don't go capturing a Royal class ship if you've only got $30k in the bank. You'll go bankrupt before you know it.

5) If you die, swear a little, learn a lot, and try again.

[Cory Trese]

I agree, that a good strategy to minimize death during the early part of the game is to raise Pilot, Stealth and then Tactics.

Looking at some recent test Captains I find that by Level 10 on Impossible I have Surrendered as many fights as I have Won.

The FIRST thing you should do when you get a big pile of Credits is buy a second ship.

I cannot stress how important a second ship is.

A) The difficulty curve is exponential. If difficulty is a single number it goes 1-2-4-16-64-128-256-1024. Impossible is supposed to be a "short, brutal tour of the quadrant with little hope of survival."

3) Rumors are critical. All aspects of the game are critical on Impossible.

Here is what I have found. On Basic or Easy you can play the game and do very well using only one strategy -- fight ships and take stuff. The design of the game requires that the player adopt / use additional mechanics to survive at the higher difficulty levels. So for each difficulty level you go up, you need to add a new "mode of play" to your strategy.

So when you go up to Demanding, maybe you need to be using Rumors effectively. Moving up to Hard you add skillful negotiation of Conflicts to gather Reputation and XP. The next level, you start using caches to avoid conflict, maximize Rumors and manipulate trade. Another difficulty level requires determining an optimal mix of upgrades and officers for your preferred play style. By the time you are "playing all the buttons" in the game, you're ready for impossible.

4) I agree 100%

5) If you have ST RPG Elite, you can use the free version to make incubator characters. I have several Level 5 characters in ST RPG Free who got lucky and hit a shortage, racked up 200,000 credits. I just left them alone and make copies into Elite as needed. One way to get around my (developer's) failures to code an effective SD card solution from the beginning.

[Cory Trese]

Nov 17, 2011 14:05:50 GMT -5 Fenikso said:

Hi and welcome to the forum! As you have written there are a lot of great advices on the forum, blog, wiki etc., also Slayerz may be coming in with his excellent advices for you shortly .

So I have just a few advices for you:

• There is nothing wrong with Normal difficulty. Play Normal. When you find it ridiculously easy, move one level up. The game is very unforgiving of mistakes, bad calls, bad choices, etc. You have to learn it one bit at the time.
  
• You cannot win every time. Learn when it is better (and safe) to surrender. I do not feel suited for a real fight until I reach Pilot 15, Stealth 15, Tactics 15 and I keep really low profile until then.
  
• By design the game is getting harder with time (turns passed). Keep that in mind and do not waste it. I use the "Enemy ship levels during the course of gameplay" table to keep track if my progress is good enough: Table on Wiki
  

Fantastic post, +1

[Cory Trese]

and when I say second ship I actually mean Ships #2 to #6. I think once you have 6 solid ships, you're pretty good and anything after that is just safety net and the ability to have them nearby. With 16 ships you can have one on almost all the good indy world's and your Faction's planets.

Escape Shuttle +1
Switch Ships a lot

[Cory Trese]

CK on high difficulty levels will be very bit as merciless as ST, maybe even worse.

BUT:

Difficulty levels in CK are totally customization-ready and features like death, handicap, challenge, toxicity and game cruelty are all configurable.

So I think that will mean that CK is even more to your liking, no matter how brutal the highest difficulty levels get you can always set up a game that is exactly the way you like it.

[slayernz]

Funny ... I don't have large numbers of ships stashed. I do have an escape shuttle, but I don't switch unless I am forced to because my ship is destroyed.

If I had the ability to tow another Royal Class ship back to a dock, then I think I'd have more stashed, but otherwise, I've got so much disposable cash stored up, if I lose a ship, I go and buy one from Thulun or Javat, and begin the hunt for a Royal again.

[Cory Trese]

Ah. I find and buy Royal and Military ships (using large Elite map Starports during solar war or starport expansion.)

I think the advantage of buying a ship ahead of time is pre-upgrading it. You see something you MUST have -- go grab your new Cutter and fly it over for upgrades.

If it get badly hurt I have a ready-to-rock ship at 2 nearby ports.

My strategy on Impossible is not to be invincible but to bounce back from near death rapidly.

[blackgauntlet]

Nov 17, 2011 17:55:27 GMT -5 slayernz said:

5) If you die, swear a little, learn a lot, and try again.

Is it okay if I swear a lot and learn not to be stupid instead? That's what I did.