new game and current captain

[alexiamchugh]

Hi i have major trouble advancing a new captain in challenging difficulty lvl so i was hoping if u could create a update to allow someone increase the difficulty in game once the new captain finds the easier difficulty to easy and wants to keep advancing a captain and being able to access certain upgrades only available in higher difficulty levels, instead if need to start a brand new game.

[athios]

The start-up phase is the most challenging phase a character will face (until very late in game) regardless of difficulty level. It is common for a couple to get killed until you get things just right. If you are finding it too difficult, perhaps it has to do with your strategy.

Can you tell us what problems you are getting? Running out of credits, mutiny, too many hostile encounters, etc.

[slayernz]

Hi alexiamchugh, and welcome to the forum!
You ask a great question, and strangely enough it was one of the first I asked about when I first started (Feb 2011). Here is that thread with Cory (and other player) comments

startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wish&action=display&thread=286

The biggest issue is that changing difficulty means you could effectively achieve challenges/unlocks when you haven't really earned them because you did it in a much safer environment. Further, the game's difficulty levels are designed (in my opinion) very intelligently, where there is an expectation that you have tried the lower levels, learned from them, and built up the skills appropriately to cope with the increased difficulty. I'll have to hunt for one of the posts Cory wrote that outlined what he feels you should know/learn by the time you take on each difficulty level. It's really important to know that unlike a lot of casual games, you can't just leap into a mid-high level difficulty and expect to survive.

There is a learning curve, and if you're having problems with a difficulty level, reach out to the amazing people in this forum. There are people like Starfixer who have spent many many many MANY days worth of analysis on most of the game mechanics. As an aside, he is also our foremost expert on successful boarding strategies!

I have to say that Proboard's search isn't optimized for content created years ago! sorry, can't find that gem of Coryism that was created. I'll keep hunting though.

[alexiamchugh]

look iv had a game in normal difficulty and i thrived as a captain i had a flagship great crew and high level captain both in personal lvl and clan rank but i found the game to easier i then tried the next difficulty level and i died by about the sixth contract and thats happened over four dozen times i can not get anywhere in the slightly higher difficulty level i keep dying and all iv wanted was to be able to transfer a captain that id worked on fir so long to the next difficulty level and im not askung to transfer my ship and crew just my higher leveled captain similer to the transfer of captain they allowed for startraders to startraders elite iv tried every type of career and available ship and clan i can think of but i die everytime within the first 1 1/2 hours of gameplay and iv played theses.games fir over ten years so i should now plenty of stratagies to use.

[slayernz]

Hi alexiamchugh,
I see your frustration and felt exactly the same when I started playing the game. Yes, ST is very similar to many other games out there, but like all complex games (and ST is probably one of the more complex Android games around), there are nuances that you need to discover. Because of that complexity, and the game engine itself, it is a significant amount of work to add the ability to migrate captains up in difficulty, along with restricting the ability to claim rewards, etc. It could be a valid enhancement request for the future-planned StarTraders 2.

For your current game, the biggest advantage of Basic and Normal is that you can't actually die. You can go into encounters pretty aggressively, and if you are defeated, you've got a bit of ship damage, maybe some loss of cargo and cash, but otherwise you're good to go.

When you move to the next level up, you're expected to understand the basics of getting a captain up and running, and additionally know factional conflicts and reputation. At Challenging level, the game is still heavily weighted in favor of the captain. There are a ton of guides on this forum that provide very successful strategies on how to get started with, say, an explorer, a pirate, a spy, a merchant, etc. Those strategies work really well even on the much higher difficulty levels.

Let us know what type of captain you are trying to create, and we can help you get over that first hurdle of getting established, and you are using a solid strategy. You'll find that once you are started, Challenging, and even Demanding difficulty is actually only marginally harder than Normal.

I'd strongly recommend pumping your first amounts of XP into Pilot and Stealth. Make sure you are aware of conflicts, and if unsure, get yourself a political officer (found when you check for "exchange closed" or "political officer stranded" rumors). If you have even moderate Pilot and Stealth (and you haven't pissed off every faction), you shouldn't die, and should be able to get well into the longer-arc of the game.

[fallen]

alexiamchugh - welcome to the forum! Thanks for posting. Because of the way Star Traders is built (our first game, no custom difficulty), changing the difficulty mid-stream is impossible.

I too struggle with harder levels, but it is the real challenge of ST to "climb the difficulty ladder," so I hope you enjoy it!