This game has finally broken me.

[CatKingPlumpkin]

First I love Trese brothers games.  I started playing 5 or 6 years ago with Star Traders 4X Empires and have purchased every game since… often on multiple platforms.  There’s a moment in the introduction missions of Templar Battleforce that still gets me every time I start another play through.

Second I love this game.  Love it.

Third, I have learned something really fascinating about myself by being non stop terrible at this game.  I have died during my first Xeno ship encounter literally dozens of times (honestly probably 70+ times).  Each time I start a new game and tell myself… “This time will be different.  This time I’m going to trade more.  This time my ship will have the necessary upgrades.  I won’t be caught flat footed THIS time.”  Year 5 rolls around and I’m feeling pretty great with my third nav upgrade and my newly purchased weapon locker lvl 6… patrolling has been going well, nobody too angry.  I’ve got this!  Bam.  Xeno.  Game over.  Rinse, repeat ad infinitum.

Occasionally I change my focus.  Forget patrolling.  I don’t give a damn how Thulun feels about the missions I’m running.  They can be angry as hornets.  I’m gonna focus on this ship and it’s going to ****Xeno**** (though to be fair sometimes a bounty hunter, mutiny, space storm, meteor shower, zealot, abomination, or military captain gets me first)

Oh.

Ever so rarely… One of my navigators makes it to level 11 before I get blown up.  Skip off the void time baby!!!  This is my game!  I’m doing it, I’m really doing it!  I’m gonna explore this sexy little planet.  (combat crew dies) - no problem I’ll just head back to ***Xeno*** This is it!!  Skip off the void!  My fully equpped crew will deal with this lab experiment… (They die).  wait what am I doing?  Why am I suddenly failing all my ship ops rolls!!  I’ll just ***mutiny***.

I’m terrible at this game.  Set it to easy, wander the galaxy haphazardly surviving executions, ship explosions…get bored and set to hard again.  Die.  This was the last game genre I could pretend competence at.
I love permadeath, I love space sims, I love the feeling of hard difficulty, I love the lore, I love THIS GAME.  Unfortunately I guess I’m just… accurately portraying my ship captain. I actually AM the space captain who can’t quite keep his books, falls behind on his ship payments, and then gets mutinied by his otherwise reliable crew, or pisses off the wrong potentate, or gets harvested for his organs by aliens, or wanders into a storm.  Is it possible to fly my ship into the center of a dying star?
I want to play with the big boys… but I just don’t have the necessary focus.  I’m the Rodian sitting across from Han Solo thinking “I’ve finally done it!  This will show all those idiots who said I’d never make it as a bounty hunter!  I might be 40, but I knew hard work and tenacity would”  Han shoots first.

Thank you for custom settings.  It feels like cheating, but I want to survive to see what happens after the coalition.  After 300 hours of in game time maybe I will!  I’m going to see if I can build a custom setting with permadeath, spicy challenge, but survivability for fools.  Goodbye unlocks.  I never wanted to fly a Larimar Battlecruiser anyway. *sob*

[fallen]

Glad you are still exploring the void after 300 hours!

There are a lot of veteran players on discord who could lend you some advice:
discord.gg/tresebrothers

[catkingplumpkin]

Thank you for the response - and I know there’s a lot of awfully helpful folks. I want to be clear that this is NOT a complaint about this game. I think this game is brilliant… like all Trese brothers games. It just also reveals an interesting personality quirk in myself. I know the thing I SHOULD be doing, but I’m just having trouble making myself do it! This is a game that I think rightfully benefits a meticulous approach (particularly as you get into the permadeath modes). This is NOT a “You are the chosen one and thus fundamentally unkillable unless you wander into the demon’s lair too early!” This is not even a “you start off as a peasant but by building this combo of skills and items you will be able to steamroll every possible opponent with an absolutely unstoppable combo move!”

I think the main reason I’m losing games is that I’m waiting to trade too long because of the trade bans, and then I’m building a habit of not trading when I should be. I keep waiting to make the big score… like a sucker. It’s putting me behind in the most fundamental game mechanic (COLD HARD SPACE CASH). I can fix it. I will fix it. THIS time… will be different.

…but that early orbital is just so tempting…
maybe I’ll try with just a 20% chance of double Xeno, but if I can hit that…
***XENO***

[Khalil]

catkingplumpkin. You should swing by the discord. We have tips a plenty.