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Post by ntsheep on Feb 5, 2017 2:40:21 GMT -5
I enjoy the Explorer game.
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Post by Cory Trese on Feb 5, 2017 2:41:58 GMT -5
There are a few concepts missing. There will be a special "unique event" reward progression that is rare, but gives super enhanced rewards.
We will also be adding additional card types, of course, and incorporating your ideas for events and results as we got through the alpha.
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Post by grävling on Feb 5, 2017 2:42:40 GMT -5
Yeah, and then he saddens his friends by beating up on himself when he makes errors, too. You are _supposed_ to say, if you say anything at all, see -- wasn't I brilliant! Deliberately focusing the testing effort onto where the bugs were!  |
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Post by Cory Trese on Feb 5, 2017 2:47:26 GMT -5
That's pretty good reasoning, in hindsight.
We did find the bug, it is true. An important bug to fix.
Plus I was inspired to go over the Awards/Score thing with a fine tooth comb.
And it checked out except that 1 score->award check ... so that's good news too.
A victory indeed!
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Post by Officer Genious on Feb 5, 2017 8:24:22 GMT -5
In true Cory Trese style, the first Award I asked my friends to try to get ... is broken and unobtainable. Classic Cory TreseYou're just collecting tears from your players for your Xeno sacrifices. I know your tricks! |
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Post by johndramey on Feb 5, 2017 23:43:18 GMT -5
Well, having completed those three goals (well, except for the missions one, but that doesn't count because I know I did more than 10), I'd like to post my thoughts.
Planets: I was having a pretty good time blasting around in the Quadrants and checking out planets, it always found like a treat when I found a particular kind of economy I was looking for. I pretty much lived off of high-tech industrial -> population / agriculture trade routes that I could make work. It did seem that uncovering planets was a relatively rare thing, I think I only really uncovered 3 or 4 planets. I didn't exactly scour every inch of every quadrant I went through, but I did make a couple of full-w/f-use trips around my starting quadrant and didn't find much in it. What is the mix of uncovered/covered planets in each quadrant? Is every quadrant supposed to have a couple covered planets, or are they relatively rare?
Trading: Trading was a lot of fun, but it was a little hard to get really good profits out of the system. I think that's mostly down to me being relatively new to it. I will say that I didn't find many A+ demand/supply lines and mostly made use of A+ to D/C for my profits. Certain items turned amazingly good profits even at that level (Crop Harvesters bought ad D on industrial planets and sold at C on ag planets made bank), while certain other products were ho-hum (basic medicine, while a nice safe trade, never really turned more than a couple hundred bucks in profit). Once I unlocked higher level trade goods (advanced medicines were my go-to), I started making good money. I didn't really keep track of anything seriously, but those were my feelings.
Missions: The early game tweak for giving us easy missions was pretty good, although maybe a little too good. I was able to get my reputation sky high and have around $30k after running a half-dozen missions. Not sure if that is a bad thing. On one hand, it sort of eliminates a lot of the difficulty in the early game. On the other hand, it sort of eliminates a lot of tedium of the early game. All in all, I see it as a good thing. Maybe consider reducing/removing the help for higher difficulty levels? I do think that the reputation gains are a little too much though, they should be toned down. I was doing public presentations and, while they ate up more time, they definitely gave me huge rep gains.
Lastly, gaining reputation on a retreat from a friendly ship. Is this supposed to be happened? It wasn't a huge amount, but I was gaining 1-5 rep simply by retreating from friendly merchants. I could see this getting abused later, since we could basically make smaller infractions against a friendly faction (blockade/patrol/taking out friendly merchants) and recoup the rep hit by just retreating a couple times.
All in all, it was a ton of fun. I had no big difficulty getting away from combat, I escaped from 10+ (got an award) naval battles on Challenging by torping twice and retreating with the sharp steering talent (I'm going to christen that the cut-and-run maneuver). I think my captain is going to branch off a bit and do a bit of exploring, I got a retired exo-scout contact and he lets me recruit exo-scout crew. Should be pretty simple to bankroll, and I'm high enough level that making cash isn't a huge issue.
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Post by Cory Trese on Feb 6, 2017 0:50:47 GMT -5
Planets: The game automatically removes the fog around any planet with a decent starport. So it depends on the danger of the area, how much population and thus economy and then starports are found. Most of the places that are covered will slowly be uncovered as you play, however. Any planet you get a MISSION or have a CONTACT will have the fog removed. We need to work on the "exploration" part about finding new planets. Do they come in rumors? Does the player have a long range scanner? Trading: The A+ supply and A+ demand situations mostly come from ... wait for it ... RUMORS (and Conflicts too!) If you're familiar with ST RPG, this will make sense. The Surplus and Shortage rumors are still incredibly powerful -- and they come in generic and specific versions now. Missions: I think the "EZ mode" should also automatically reduce reputation gain. The money is good. The length is scaled by difficulty, much shorter on Impossible. The Reputation reward on retreat is a mechanic I directly stole from ST RPG. The only difference is that ST2 tells you about it  |
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Post by johndramey on Feb 6, 2017 1:00:57 GMT -5
Awesome, thanks for the reply. Cool to hear about the planets thing, as I was starting to think that my map was bugged in some way. I guess that makes sense, as my starting quadrant is controlled by Mok (the only one in my 15 quadrant map) and it's the quadrant I've been spending most of my time and energy on. I have three contacts there, and have probably around 7 or 8 planets uncovered.
The trade A+/A+ thing makes a ton of sense. I wasn't picking up a lot of rumors, but I think that's just because I wasn't spending too much time in the spice bar/didn't really have any rumor perks.
The auto rep thing is interesting, I had no idea!
Looks like all of my questions were answered and all of my concerns have been (or will be) addressed, so I'll go back to playing now.
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Post by Cory Trese on Feb 6, 2017 1:17:59 GMT -5
I did balance the reputation thing just now, added a chance it generates 0 and made the minimal requirement for it slightly higher.
I think that feature will get less use when we get the full preamble services kit available. That +Rep result will be like the minimal one that you get when you don't do something else or use a talent. I think in comparison to what the other options will end up being, +0 to +2 rep won't be that big.
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