Post by sfsdfd on Jun 1, 2011 11:14:51 GMT 10
OK, I played up to about the Charlie level. Quick synopsis:
* I flew around a bit and scrounged some Alpha parts.
* I managed to find myself in a few Beta fights and scrounged some parts from that. I acquired and then lost some guns. I scouted local space and found the few nearby clusters of stations. I managed to activate a few stations by trapping a Guardian in crossfire.
* Eventually, I found myself in a battle with a basic ship having a significant design flaw, exposing a serious weakness - and managed to score four Beta-level shield modules! I crowded all of them around the fore part of my ship, making my (solitary) Beta laser nearly indestructible. That made the fights easier
... but without that great bit of luck happening across the shield modules, I would have been mired in a very slow, steady progression.
* Thanks to my shield-reinforced gun, I reached the point where I could take down most Beta-class guardian ships without trouble.
Initial thoughts:
* It's good to be back in the Captain universe.
* Yeah, oxygen depletion is a bear. I think it's fine for the initial stages, but nothing seems to improve it for the latter stages... which just seems crippling. The only things that you can do to cope with the hard oxygen boundary are 1) getting bigger engines that will get you to your destination faster, and 2) using cruise control (which seems to cut down on your oxygen consumption significantly).
* The ASCII animations and the 8-bit sound effects are terrific! Love the asteroids, too - a nice touch. Wondering if later stages of Jameson involve mining... but doubting it.
* The tech curve is AMAZINGLY slow. It's much worse than Forever/Successor because space is really sparse. I managed to make four consecutive sorties through different parts of space, burning through nearly my entire oxygen supply, without seeing or even *hearing* anything nearby. I get that space is incredibly sparse, but this makes the initial stages (where handling is lousy and you'd be happy with scoring *anything*, even one beat-up structural module, from a battle) tedious and painful.
* Engaging in a battle with a Guardian, managing to find an edge and destroy this goliath ship, and then NOT EVEN SCORE A SINGLE MODULE OR CREDIT was a real pisser.
* The notion of spending hours building up a ship, only to have it demolished in a heartbeat with nothing to show for it, is outrageously unpleasant. Past a certain point, the extremely long learning curve makes one VERY skittish about engaging in battles, going near most ships, or even flying fast (and thereby running headlong into a full line of torpedoes from an oncoming ship).
* No save-state export and no Ctrl-C = sadness.
* At least in the early stages, the minuscule credit for scrapped modules (Alpha booster + Alpha structural module = 4 credits!), coupled with the significantly annoying process of collecting them, make the entire concept of salvage feel like a waste of time at these early stages.
* Overall, there just isn't much of a draw to these early stages of the game. The risks of combat are high; exploration is very limited and also risky; and other than oxygen stations, most new stations don't seem to do much good for you. (Scrapyards pay too little in the initial stages to justify the hassle. Nav stations simply show more areas where you can't go. Banks are practically useless because building up money is slow. And factories are pricey, requiring a lot of salvage for a SINGLE module that you want.)
* The same "universe of random weapon availabilities/preferences" principle of Successor is definitely in effect here. However, this is a bit of a bummer... you may happen to find yourself stuck in a universe that prefers spikes and missiles, leading to lots and LOTS of very clumsy battles with little/no/worthless salvage. As your first order of business, you may want to fly a few sorties to check out what weapons this particular universe stocks, and re-roll if it isn't to your liking.
Bugs:
1) The "Sorry, <name>, this scrapyard can't accept level <x+1> parts; please remove them from the yard" message referred to me not by my pilot's name, but by MY name - i.e., my farbs.org registration name! Immersiveness fail...
2) I activated four Nav points, but other than the first one, each Nav point failed to locate itself or any surrounding stations on the sector map. That's weird, right?
That's it for now - more later.
Regards,
David
* I flew around a bit and scrounged some Alpha parts.
* I managed to find myself in a few Beta fights and scrounged some parts from that. I acquired and then lost some guns. I scouted local space and found the few nearby clusters of stations. I managed to activate a few stations by trapping a Guardian in crossfire.
* Eventually, I found myself in a battle with a basic ship having a significant design flaw, exposing a serious weakness - and managed to score four Beta-level shield modules! I crowded all of them around the fore part of my ship, making my (solitary) Beta laser nearly indestructible. That made the fights easier
... but without that great bit of luck happening across the shield modules, I would have been mired in a very slow, steady progression.* Thanks to my shield-reinforced gun, I reached the point where I could take down most Beta-class guardian ships without trouble.
Initial thoughts:
* It's good to be back in the Captain universe.
* Yeah, oxygen depletion is a bear. I think it's fine for the initial stages, but nothing seems to improve it for the latter stages... which just seems crippling. The only things that you can do to cope with the hard oxygen boundary are 1) getting bigger engines that will get you to your destination faster, and 2) using cruise control (which seems to cut down on your oxygen consumption significantly).
* The ASCII animations and the 8-bit sound effects are terrific! Love the asteroids, too - a nice touch. Wondering if later stages of Jameson involve mining... but doubting it.
* The tech curve is AMAZINGLY slow. It's much worse than Forever/Successor because space is really sparse. I managed to make four consecutive sorties through different parts of space, burning through nearly my entire oxygen supply, without seeing or even *hearing* anything nearby. I get that space is incredibly sparse, but this makes the initial stages (where handling is lousy and you'd be happy with scoring *anything*, even one beat-up structural module, from a battle) tedious and painful.
* Engaging in a battle with a Guardian, managing to find an edge and destroy this goliath ship, and then NOT EVEN SCORE A SINGLE MODULE OR CREDIT was a real pisser.
* The notion of spending hours building up a ship, only to have it demolished in a heartbeat with nothing to show for it, is outrageously unpleasant. Past a certain point, the extremely long learning curve makes one VERY skittish about engaging in battles, going near most ships, or even flying fast (and thereby running headlong into a full line of torpedoes from an oncoming ship).
* No save-state export and no Ctrl-C = sadness.
* At least in the early stages, the minuscule credit for scrapped modules (Alpha booster + Alpha structural module = 4 credits!), coupled with the significantly annoying process of collecting them, make the entire concept of salvage feel like a waste of time at these early stages.
* Overall, there just isn't much of a draw to these early stages of the game. The risks of combat are high; exploration is very limited and also risky; and other than oxygen stations, most new stations don't seem to do much good for you. (Scrapyards pay too little in the initial stages to justify the hassle. Nav stations simply show more areas where you can't go. Banks are practically useless because building up money is slow. And factories are pricey, requiring a lot of salvage for a SINGLE module that you want.)
* The same "universe of random weapon availabilities/preferences" principle of Successor is definitely in effect here. However, this is a bit of a bummer... you may happen to find yourself stuck in a universe that prefers spikes and missiles, leading to lots and LOTS of very clumsy battles with little/no/worthless salvage. As your first order of business, you may want to fly a few sorties to check out what weapons this particular universe stocks, and re-roll if it isn't to your liking.
Bugs:
1) The "Sorry, <name>, this scrapyard can't accept level <x+1> parts; please remove them from the yard" message referred to me not by my pilot's name, but by MY name - i.e., my farbs.org registration name! Immersiveness fail...
2) I activated four Nav points, but other than the first one, each Nav point failed to locate itself or any surrounding stations on the sector map. That's weird, right?
That's it for now - more later.
Regards,
David
.