The Dawn Star Build #3 (Oxygen)

[Farbs]

Hi!

The builds continue to continue! Despite last week’s kerfuffle I’ve doubly settled on the title The Dawn Star. This time for sure.

Here are the changes for this week’s build:

New exciting low-oxy start
Added Primary Thruster module
A new series of sectors to explore
Double the spawn rate of oxy tanks
Made guardian designs more variable
Made asteroids flicker at least a little on damage > 0
Added key binds for arrow keys
Oxy stations returning as atmosphere stations
SOS marker on some atmosphere stations, including the first
Removed guardians from ~half the settlements
No modules on new game start
Fixed some savegame issues w/ new modules
Added new custom font rendering system & test (Ctrl-T)

Build #3 can be played here


Let me know what you think!

[Admiral Kirana]

The Primary Thruster sounds like a really neat idea. Haven't seem them though.

My one gripe from playing for about 5mins or so is that the bare command module is incredibly hard to control - it might be just my tendency to gravitate to very slow ships, but I had issues trying to line the ship up with the starting OXY station because it turns too fast. Maybe include an option in the system menu for "command module booster strength" so that we can tailor it to our comfort levels with speed?

Also, the first Guardian is quite a bit tougher than the one in the previous builds - it has a pretty hefty laser system versus just the one, which might take new players a little by surprise.

EDIT: Holy difficulty spikes Batman! With the lack of oxygen around every station I was having loads of problems trying to keep the poor pilot from suffocating - I've died twice so far without breaking into Tier 2, which may be a problem.

Or it might just be that I suck at the non-big sector builds. I dunno. Speaking of big-sector builds, are those going to be on permanent leave or will they come back in the future as, say, a game mode?

EDIT II: You might want a different shortcut for the font test - Ctrl-T on Chrome opens tabs and it doesn't matter if the game is focused or not.

EDIT III(see why I like using shoutboxes now? xD): If you're open to taking suggestions, some of us have oodles of content to toss at you to consider/chuckle at!

[Farbs]

That's an interesting point about the bare command module - I'll have another look at it next week. Back in the early days of Forever I tried to balance it so that whatever starting configuration you built it'd fly okay. This was mostly about ensuring it was so heavy that the additional modules and boosters had less of an impact. I didn't balance it for flying entirely module-free though, so yeah I probably should do that. Adding it next week's task list...

By Big Sector do you mean where the entire game is a single sector, rather than the current wormhole approach? I do think about that occasionally, yeah. I liked it, but it brings the overall scope of the game down to a tiny area. There's probably some balance point between the two systems, but I'm not sure I've found it yet.

Good point about Ctrl-T. I'll remove it for the next build anyway.

And yes, suggestions are always very welcome! I actually read every post on the forum, I just haven't been active here for a while is all. Suggest away!

[Uzguz]

I think a midpoint between the two would be the best solution; perhaps have fewer sectors that contain three or four levels each, with slight overlap. That way you can have things like the challenge of jumping a few levels in one hit, which was good fun in Jameson (breaking into Golf straight from Echo or even Delta was always satisfying), without having the huge amount of essentially redundant low-level open space that the old big sectors had, with all those Foxtrot stations that served no purpose.

I'll give the new build a go later tonight. Looking good, Farbs!

Edit: To make that reduced sector scheme really work, perhaps the wormholes should be one level lower than the maximum level of the sector until the end of the game. That way, the most powerful enemies on the field at any time are optional challenges that you can take on if you want to progress faster.

[Foohman]

I'm thirding the idea of considering a 0.5.1 approach to the sectors. I have no gripes at all with the current, wormhole-based layout but that's not to say I prefer it. As Uzguz said, it's satisfying grabbing those modules from higher tiers. It also allows you to find those groups of ships that give you just the modules you need; the biggest ship I ever made was on 0.5.1. Perhaps several HUGE sectors that make up The Dawn Star: Alpha-Echo, Echo-India and a final massacre, India-Juliet style. I'm loving the new introductory sequence too, perhaps a wee marker saying "Dock here, quickly!". New players will probably click the docking station, so perhaps an emphasis on what to do? When recharging oxygen, perhaps a UI that states "Charging Oxytanks" to remind players of this mechanic?
Kirana's observation on control I agree with as well, perhaps if they were even halved? Also, perhaps a more considerable 'design' of the command module to allow players to feel more significant? Kirana has somewhere in the region of a billion designs ;D

Either way, loving the approach! I can't wait for next week's build (I'll be able to play as University will be over for the summer yaaaaay)

[Vaconcovat]

Yeah I agree, in the interest of new players i'd like to see this intro sequence fleshed out a bit more. Not a tutorial per se, but maybe some sort of transmission or additional message (like the info buoys) that tells players that they're running out of oxygen and need to dock and renew the atmosphere asap. As it is, it seems like players will accidentally dock with the station while figuring out the controls and not exactly realize what they've done.

I know you were trying to add an additional layer of difficulty (or just give an old-school feel) when designing the nav systems but i feel they they are a bit hostile to newer players. I must say i've found the game to be more enjoyable now that some stations can give off SOS signals to give some sense of direction. Getting hopelessly lost is fun and is a part of the feel of the game, but after a while i felt that navigation started to become more of a chore. I feel that expanding on the SOS system would be a good idea. (I'm not too entirely sure what that means)

EDIT: Perhaps having multiple sources of SOS signals could help players expand and explore their sectors more instead of just jumping to the next SOS signal that's closer than anything else. I think players might just only follow the SOS signals if they're not exactly in the bigger picture and may find themselves trailing away from the beacon or not understanding it's purpose when they get there.

You could have multiple SOS (or distress) signal sources of different strengths, and you only pick up a SOS signal if you're within range of whatever is sending the signal. The wormhole would have the greatest strength, basically having range over the entire sector. Stations (only one per cluster) would have a large signal radius, allowing you to have some sense of direction towards your nearest station clusters. There could even be ships that can emit weaker SOS signals, leading to traps or just looking for fights.

Either way, i feel that both the navigation system and the method of interacting with stations is currently a bit hard to instinctively grasp if you are a newer player.

EDIT EDIT: I can only use my scroll wheel when i'm fullscreened. I remember this being a issue before, just letting you know it's still here. I'm on chrome.

[Ozzatron]

May 9, 2014 13:38:09 GMT 10 Admiral Kirana said:

EDIT: Holy difficulty spikes Batman!

Yeah, seconded on this. It wasn't unplayable, it was just... unforgiving. Yeah, unforgiving's a good word. It was really frustrating to be wandering around, following an SOS signal, and then killing a guardian, only to NOT be greeted with a calming, refreshing bubble of oxygen. I do like atmosphere stations, and I think they're deserving of a return, but quite frankly, a station set with no atmosphere loses 90% of its value. But at the same time, that gets back to why you removed them way back when: if every station set should have an atmosphere, and therefore every station set needs an oxygen station, what's the point of having them?

I dunno, you figure it out.

On the other hand, and I'm surprised no one else mentioned this: the quirkiness of the map interface aside... I CAN'T SEE MYSELF ON IT! And that means when I'm close to a station I can't tell whether I'm to the right, or left, or a bit up-left, or down down right, or what have you. Multiple times when playing the game I flew in circles around a station for over three minutes without being able to find it. Perhaps I'm just an idiot and can't see where the center of the ASCII map display is, or perhaps I'm whining too much, but this was a serious gripe for me.

The inability to see yourself on the map relative to stations, combined with the fact that those stations may not have oxygen bubbles around them to make them easier to see from offscreen in the actual game, made them frustratingly hard to find for me, even when they were already unlocked and visible on the map. Hell, the ones that were pre-unlocked were harder to find, because I didn't have an SOS marker to point my directionally challenged self straight towards.

Continuing my ongoing ramblings, I've gotta say -- docking at a scrap station to sell is quite annoying. Logically, it shouldn't be necessary to dock at a nav station, but it SHOULD be necessary to dock at a repair or upgrade station. Scrap... I don't think you'd need to.

The idea of renewing oxygen licenses sounds excessively weird, especially because there's an administrator of the oxygen station... who's alive, with no oxygen (?), yet refuses to give oxygen out to his or her fellow ships and stations... without having one of them pay money? I don't get it at all! And if there's people living on apartment stations, how are they getting their oxygen? And why can't I take a few liters? They surely have thousands!

If you don't mind a far-out suggestion (wow, this post is getting way too long and rambly), why don't you change oxygen stations so they're like gas pumps? You pay maybe 1 credit for every liter of oxygen (save the spawn point, where it's free). Except instead of you docking and getting your tanks filled directly, putting money in the oxygen station makes it emit an atmosphere which can refill up to that many liters before it runs out. You can keep pumping money into the station to get a thicker and longer-lasting atmosphere. The question remains about other stations and the in-game logic behind oxygen entirely, but the thing I really like about this method is that you can let players spend some money to establish "safehouses" for themselves, where they know they can always come back and get a breath of fresh air. The price could go up for higher-tier stations, too -- that Factory Hotel waaay over to the west isn't very practical to use unless you can refill while you're there, but it's gonna cost ya!

All right, I'll stop now. >_<

::edit:: I lied about stopping. Because I realized I had two more things to mention!

One, I did manage to get my hands on a Primary Booster, and it did nothing, no matter where I mounted it and no matter what direction I was trying to move in. The only thing I didn't try is Cruise Control. Is the Primary Booster some crazy device that only works in Cruise Control?

Two, I'm not sure if this has been rectified/fixed/addressed, but I'm still playing on a 64-bit browser (Waterfox), so thanks to Adobe's quirky random numbers, I'm playing a different Dawn Star than the rest of you.

[Perez]

Dear Ozzatron,

You mentioned the Primary Boosters; the way I believe they work, is more of a Sprint Booster module type. They will only active when using W, S, E or Q -- depending on where you attach it -- due to the fact that turning would be insane. And, not to forget, when clicking the module, a menu shows up, which displays the amount of time it takes before it blasts you off into eternity.
I'm experiencing no problems with this new invention, however, I do play it on Chrome, not on Mozilla Firefox. That could possibly be the problem.

I just wanted to let you know. Have a nice day so forth.

[Ozzatron]

Wait, huh? "Blast you off into eternity"? Is this a booster that only activates after a specified time, as an exact opposite to the Sprint Booster? Damn. I didn't try holding down the throttle for more than a brief moment, because I was pressed for time, drifting in between asteroids with low oxygen and all.

[Admiral Kirana]

Hm. For some reason, I think I might have an idea for an introduction that would be neat (because combat) but I'm not sure if you'd be able to make the player appear as a Guardian-esque ship during it. Apologies for my rambling in the post, but I don't want to flood the shoutbox too badly. xD
Basically, you'd start off defending a station (Warehouse, maybe, so the player can learn module equipping and docking at the same time?) as a guardian, without too much to worry about at first (maybe just some alpha merchants or something), but a massive ship approaches and completely demolishes your ship - you launch the small command module you use in the game to escape, with a glimpse of the large ship starting to jam the station you were defending, and then the game begins proper with the current oxy-station scenario.

But anyway, enough daydreaming - I have the feeling that there should be a few difficulty modifiers you can apply before you begin (e.g. will all station complexes have atmosphere or not, guardian frequency, stuff like that) since there's people who pick it up real easy and have a great time and then there's people like me who can hardly get to Tier 2 without being completely ravaged in the process.

[Ozzatron]

Following some things Kirana has been saying in the shoutbox, I'm going to ramble on a bit more about oxygen, and try to look intelligent and knowledgeable as I assume I know how players in general would react to the current oxygen system.

Back in 0.5.1 (my home version, nostalgia abound, where I thoroughly explored and mapped both 32-bit Haynesport and 64-bit Moranport), oxygen was just part of every station set. Unlimited. Oxygen was what made it so you had to visit stations every once in a while just because. It made it so you had a maximum range you could safely fly out to. Oxygen was the rejuvenating feeling of safety that literally washed over you every time you killed a guardian -- sure, it didn't repair your modules, but you knew you were somewhere safe, where you could stay.

Now oxygen is something different. Firstly, oxygen is something you have to pay a little money for. Okay, that's not a problem, because it's "a one time fee of 20 credits!" The real issue? Oxygen is now something that's not a guarantee. When you kill a guardian, there is now a fat 0% chance that you'll immediately get oxygen. Rather, there's a good chance that you'll look at the stations you just unlocked in the map window... and realize there is no oxygen station in that set. Unless you're swimming in oxygen tanks (and I do realize you've upped the frequency of those), then you make a mad beeline to wherever you came from, because you aren't safe where you are now. You were trying to advance in the game, and then the game didn't reward you by giving you another stepping stone towards further advancement. A set of stations without oxygen is about as useful as a million bucks inside of a locked vault, especially if it's far away from a place that does have oxygen.

I think that oxygen should be a guaranteed feature of every station, however you implement it, as it gives you safety nets to fall back on, and stepping stones to forge forward from. Without oxygen, stations lose a lot of their feel of safety, if not all of it. You can't sit still at a station set with no oxygen. You can't look over your ship in peace and rearrange modules, move around a few weapons maybe, totally redo things now that you got your left wing blown off, or what have you. Some stations become totally inoperable... imagine trying to drag all the pieces into a scrapyard, and then dock with it to sell them, all without oxygen.

Now, I might just be complaining because it's different than 0.5.1, but I really think there's something wrong here. As Kirana said, the only viable ship designs seem to be small and quick, because in the event that [404 Oxygen Not Found], they have to be able to dash back to where they came from at rapid speed.

[Farbs]

Wow, there's really a lot to reply to here. I think the best I can do is just blast out thoughts on the main topics.

Exploring the huge sectors (like 0.5.1 etc) was a lot of fun, and I miss it too. The tricky thing about them was that, despite being large, they didn't actually give you all that much space to explore. If the game shipped with just that much explorable space we'd all be finished pretty darned quickly. Too quickly, I think. The wormholes on the other hand, because they branch from each branch, quickly add up to an insane amount of space, however exploring each one is less fun. I've been thinking about how to get the best of both, and I'm now considering a model with large sectors _and_ wormholes. So, you could start the game somewhere like Haynesport and just play that, or you could use wormholes to go further afield and find other challenges or another large sector to call home. I'd have to restrict entry to ships with lower level modules (since high tech equipment can't withstand the tumultuous unstable wormhole transit) - so an alpha wormhole might go through to somewhere with the full alpha->juliet spectrum, and a charlie wormhole (no modules higher than charlie permitted) might go somewhere that is charlie->golf, or even just charlie->charlie, or maybe even a dead end completely with nobody there. To make this whole thing work I'd also need to implement some sort of ship storage, so that you didn't have to destroy your behemoth dreadnaught megaship to explore a lower level wormhole. I expect I'll probably roll this out by re-introducing large sectors first, then adding ship storage, then re-introducing wormholes.

Wow that was long. Hmm. What else are we talking about here?

Atmospheres. Ah yes. I'm actually quite fond of the new atm setup, because I love interacting with stations w/out atmosphere. They feel like ghost towns. I don't want to do that all the time though, since like people have been saying it's great to have safe spaces in the game. The idea of safe spaces is why I want to keep atmospheres at a single price for unlock rather than pay per use. Rushing to get out of an atmosphere is too stressful and not fun at all. People need somewhere to take a break. In the previous builds though I felt there were just too many places to rest though, and making one guardian after another go pop just felt like a chore. I find the new atm system makes this a little more interesting.

I also miss the big fireworks moment of the atmosphere cascading out after you destroy a guardian, however I think that could be handled by a flurry of broadcasts from the stations as they come back online. I'll add a note to do that.

Regarding the new player experience, yes there is still a lot of work left for me to do there. I'm sure there are lots of useful hints and guides I could add, but I'm trying very hard to only make these sorts of changes based on playtesting data rather than gut feeling. It's really, really hard to get into the mindset of a new player - our brains just don't work that way. When I get back to this part of the project I'll schedule some time to sit down with new people and properly identify the issues / test potential solutions.

One last thing, while I'm rambling - this is going to be a short week for me. I have a few general life organisation things to do, which will limit how much I can get done before the next build and video. I expect I'll at least have a large sector opened up for you all though.

Anyhow, thanks for all the feedback, ideas, criticism and support. It is _much_ nicer building a game when you know that people are playing it, and that they give a damn. It's very much appreciated.

<3

[Admiral Kirana]

That "one big sector with smaller sectors branching out" actually sounds like a really neat idea! Perhaps the ship storage code could be also re-purposed as a ship-saving system if we want to share our vessels with others?

Now for some more ideas for you. The first one is probably going to sound a little silly, but I'm kind of drunk on coffee at the moment, and you know how brains handle when drunk on coffee...
Perhaps you could make the big sectors a little bit larger by opening up Kilo tier to regular ships (why was it removed from Jameson anyway?), and adding in the 4hz level for tier 4, Lima? I always wondered why there was a 1hz, 2hz and 4hz level for each tier, but not for Tier 4.

Also, here's a not-quite-as-silly idea to alleviate the problems of not every station having atmosphere, while still keeping your ideas intact and additionally providing a use for the Apartment stations. If you dock with an apartment station, you can buy small quantities of oxygen (say, 10% of your total or 5L, whichever is more) at the cost of some credits. It wouldn't replace atmosphere stations by any means since it'd likely be quite a bit more expensive in the long run, but then it wouldn't be the end of the world if you killed a Guardian with 4L of oxygen left, there's no atmosphere station in the new complex, and the closest station is 2500 units out.

[Ozzatron]

I'm going to learn from my mistakes and divide my post into sections, which should help alleviate the rambling. I hope.

---

ATMOSPHERES:

---

Here I'd like to say that right now there's no difference between "atmosphere" and "oxygen", although a lot of what we're saying, such as Kirana's apartment proposal, could change that. I can see Farbs' perspective on the "ghost town" appeal, but I think that a station set completely devoid of oxygen is impractical to use. Perhaps docking at any station could refill your oxygen? That lets you return to an atmosphere area if you want while keeping the act of idling in a no-atmosphere station set... tense. You can use the stations in a no-atmosphere set just fine, but getting oxygen actually takes some time, so you can't trust the bubble to give you that last-second breath.

---

WORMHOLES:

---

Wormholes, to me, give me the inherent idea that my ship's going to be moving with me. If it doesn't, I feel cheated. Here's my take on the wormhole scenario... be warned, it might make the size of save files skyrocket. I don't know.

Wormholes are very finicky and super complicated devices. In order to safely transport ships from one sector to another, wormholes require three specialized high-power spatial beacons in the vicinity of the destination. Without three such beacons activated, the wormhole's quantum computing devices are unable to accurately triangulate the destination coordinates to any degree of precision. Using an unattuned wormhole is foolish, as it would inevitably tear your ship asunder and spray its components far and wide across the universe. To properly attune the wormhole, you'd need to... we all know how it goes, heh.

To be more precise, you'd use the wormhole's computers and ultra-long-distance communication power to establish a link to the target sector's local governmental outpost (i.e. Haynesport.gov) and, from them, purchase a command mod for a reasonable price. Once you've properly liberated that sector, or at least gotten all three beacons working, you can exit the remote pilot interface and activate the wormhole with your real ship, transporting your Juliet Dreadnought wherever you like.

Keep in mind, I'm talking about totally redoing wormholes here. Rather than having individual wormholes with specific destinations, what if we had a near-infinite number of sectors (one for every 32-bit signed integer) and each government spawn station had a Global Wormhole in it? Once you've activated the beacons at a specific destination, that destination becomes available for transport from any sector! The Global Wormhole station (perhaps X_ or just the current () ) would be accompanied by a Interstellar Telnet node, perhaps T_, that lets you buy command mods in other sectors and use them. That way, your ship will be docked somewhere specific in every sector if you're actually playing somewhere else.

Some issues and notes I've realized while typing this:

1) You'd have to deal with multiple player ships in each sector, unless the wormhole swapped the ships docked at its Interstellar Telnet stations or something.
2) With the lack of banks, beacons could be B_.
3) Sectors don't have to all be giant 0.5.1-esque areas. They could be small. But keep in mind that the player /is/ starting with a lone command mod, so tier restricting would be difficult. The easy way out might be to make the starting modules in the warehouse be of the appropriate tier, the lowest in the sector's range. Needless to say, all the stations in the government spawn outpost would be the lowest tier in the sector's range as well.
4) Each sector's 32-bit random seed could be transformed into an IPv4 address and labeled as the sector coordinates or something.
5) The Wormhole menu would be a simple vertical list and would give you the option to transport to any sector you've already attuned to, opening the current wormhole prompt when one is selected. That is, it shows you the characteristics, name, etc. of the target sector.
6) The Interstellar Telnet menu would let you enter a specific sector address, or pick one at random for you. Either way, it displays the characteristics of the target sector and lets you accept or decline buying a command mod and remotely piloting it.
7) When in a new sector, even if you haven't attuned it yet, you can return to the Interstellar Telnet station to exit the "ssh" and return to your home ship. The Interstellar Telnet menu for your HOME ship lets you choose between which of your deadheads to control.
8) Every new game starts in a random Alpha-bottom sector. But with sectors being represented by IPv4 addresses, we can call specific sectors our pseudo-homes!
9) You might need to implement ship renaming for this, given that the player will have several ships.
10) Yes, I am aware that players could randomly pick new sectors until they found one that went from Juliet to Juliet and then use that ship wherever, defeating the game's progression. Perhaps you could make the price of purchasing a command mod increase proportionally to the sector's base tier? And that's on top of a hefty base price, like 500 for an Alpha command mod. You could also restrict the Interstellar Telnet by other means, such as by the tier of your command mod. That way, you'd have to bring back a ship from each consecutive tier to get to the next one.

[Foohman]

The way I see it is the stations you liberate are, by and large, industrial/military installations - the Apartments are housing for workers and labourers who work in Scrapyards, Factories and Refineries. There are no 'Cinema' stations, no commercial sections to any installation at all, implying these people live to work. Now, their station has been commandeered by terrorists or someone to that effect and then here you come, lasers blaring, Guardian goes pop and the lights come back on:
Jubilation! Huzzah! Our liberator! (Our well-toned hero!) a veritable torrent of broadcasts assault you from each Apartment and other complex, and you feel all fuzzy inside. Well done you.
These people, however, probably subside in an essentially war-torn and dingy location, and they need feeding. How does one acquire food? With credits, of course! And for a small fee, the citizens of each sector will sell you some of their Oxygen supply! How kind.

Ozzatron, you've got some awesome ideas, personally I'd like to simply see the Triangulation stations more than anything - it prevents the player from rushing around, blitzing this, blitzing that, and adds more of a challenge. Maybe something other than Guardians guard these stations, but you need to activate them before zooming off!
For the sake of gameplay though, there has to be a balance between faffing around and an actual challenge.

[Ozzatron]

I'm also going to support the "broadcasts of joy" upon freeing stations, just for the sake of having something happen when you kill a guardian other than the large kaboom. Unfortunately that would make the in-universe depiction of the stations quite a bit more convoluted and possibly contradictory. I don't know what stations are right now. They apparently have administrators, but no people are ever seen, and the interfaces are (in my mind) run by a computer. There aren't apartment stations in every set, but there are administrators of every station... so where do those people live? Not every station set has oxygen, but still, there's someone living there.

I don't know.

As part of my ongoing fountain of ideas, I'd like to point out that you could easily link the Metroid-style intro ("You have all the cool stuff! OH NO! IT'S GONE!") with my wormholes. You run away from whatever's blowing up your warehouse and use an unattuned wormhole, throwing you somewhere random and almost killing you because most of the oxygen in your ship disappears.

[arien]

Really enjoying the updates btw. Just died on the Sco sector (Hotel/India) so I might post my thoughts.
Feeling the rage, so should probably calm down first...but whatevs. It IS very frustrating to get so far after being so careful
only to run into a super wide ship and get blown to bits in 5 seconds cus you can't reverse fast enough. What I liked about Jameson is at least
being able to squirrel some essential bits away to collect next time, so not all hope was lost. I cheat by saving in FTL otherwise I just wouldn't play it. Just TOO punishing to be enjoyable. But that's me. Still, I keep burning many hours on this stuff so I must love it

As for the "build specific" details...
1) Oxygen gets quite pricey. I can see what you're going for though, the risk/reward factor of really being strategic of where you
buy your oxy. And it does add an extra reason to farm for scrap. But yeah, when I was in the SAIF sector I felt like I was just aimlessly
bumbling around, whittling away my money on oxy and the odd upgrade. It felt like I needed to just do mining, but that leads me to the next point...

2) (Seinfeld voice) WHAT is the deal with mining?? In Saif Sector it was obviously the only thing to do there, but mining has never been fun to me, and I think it's because it's just super not worth it compared to scrapping. Scrapping is FUN. The joy of hitting that sweet spot
and scampering away with the goods "ohh a truss!" etc. Everytime I try to mine I'm like "is THAT all??" and go back to scrapping. The shiny white bits need to be worth more, and everything else. Am I missing something here? I want to like mining, I just felt slightly violated when I spent 20 minutes on it and only got like, $2k when the oxy stations around me cost $10-20k. **end rant**

3) In the Alta Aquarini Sector I found an INDIA laser in the charlie warehouse at bogus base. It was like OMG SCORE!! Is this random or what?

4) Oxy tanks! I only ever saw one at alpha level early on, and that was it. Same with those nice new boosters. Which work only after warming up on a continuous thrust (in case anyone was confused).

So yeah, keen to see where you're taking all of this. I guess I imagine a more whole "world" where there's quests, more specific goals etc.
That would be quite far off I imagine. But I'm wondering, Farbs, what YOU envision an actual release would look like?

I'm still really enjoying playing through these overall. Jameson 0.5 was my "heyday" as I painstakingly mapped out the entire sector
in Photoshop, complete with color coding. I was hopelessly hooked on that until I conquered and mapped it all. Much enjoyable.

I think I'd mainly like to see ways to save your ships, or at least parts at a warehouse. Like, being able to withdraw parts at any
of those stations. And yeah, being able to see a sector map when you're jumping (like FTL) so you can see your progress. And being able
to backtrack, as well as jumping to the furthest place you reached. And having it not be "instadeath" of course, like Jameson 0.5 where you
could withdraw some vital bits you stored to work your way back.

So yeah I think that's all my rambling out of the way. I appreciate that everyone enjoys different aspects of gameplay. I'm just
very careful and calculated in general. It's a great world where I can really see it developing in a way that could cater to many
different approaches and play styles. Pirate? Miner? Freedom fighter? Explorer? Oh the possibilities!!

In closing I made a "Fan music" track based on the sounds the guns make...it's HERE>> soundcloud.com/therealarien/forever-captain

Look forward to the next installment!

[Farbs]

arien - Forever Captain is great! could I use it in the next video? If so I may need you to send me a copy ([e-mail]), since I don't seem to be able to download it.

[Foohman]

Arien, that song is amazing! I'm feeling some serious Tron here, also with a bit of FTL - nice job!

[arien]

Thanks man! Tron was a big inspiration. I also love Disasterpeace and C418. It's just a hobby but I have a lot of fun messing around in Reason4.0. I'd like to do a battle theme, I feel like the guardians deserve some music.