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Post by jayce on May 31, 2011 1:18:03 GMT 10
Thought I'd share my experiences with my first few Jameson flights: Flight #1 Read manual/text file, read everything available. Undocked. Redocked (I really like the animation and landing lights/strip thing) Flew around checking out controls/Asteroids (I was scared of hitting them until I remembered they didn't do damage ^^), let myself run out of Oxygen to see what happened. Nearly shed a tear when my ship died. Flight #2 Paid a bit more attention to the map, turned on all the layers so I could see what goods were on offer. Visited all of the stations in the starting area to examine what I could do/what they did. Filled up Oxygen a few times just to enjoy the animation/sound. Examined the rate of Oxygen escape to see if it was linked to speed/movement. Elected to go exploring a  area of the map; arrived at a factory without paying attention to my Oxygen (excited exploring) docked and sprung a pirate/trap (also love the hacked/jammed radio transmission animation). Boldly fought and killed the jamming ship and restored power to the factory. Unfortunately I had 5% Oxy left and no credits so all I could do was die and make a mental note to plan better next time. Flight #3 Undocked and decided to have a more strategic approach, filled up Oxy and decided to go and find the nearest Alpha craft. Killed it, grabbed all it's thrusters and pelted it back to the Oxy station. Decided to go and see a on the map, turned out to be an Oxy station but I was paying attention to my Oxy level and decided I couldn't kill the pirate/trap ship without dying so I legged it back to the starting base (made it with 1% Oxy remaining). Thought I'd have to improve my ship before doing too much exploring, so embarked on a campaign of killing the nearest low level ships and returning to the home base, selling off the excess modules. Decided to quit the browser after docking to check saving worked for me before I go too invested =D Reloaded the game and undocked (which destroyed one of my damaged big thrusters) and set off to find more ships... Carrying on with that game later! Tried to keep that brief, also doesn't mention the sheer delight I'm having playing it, awesome job Farbs! |
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Post by Farbs on May 31, 2011 1:25:23 GMT 10
Oh wow, it sounds like you've really got the hang of it. Nice.
Can you elaborate on what happened to your thruster? That sounds like a bug.
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Post by jayce on May 31, 2011 1:40:31 GMT 10
The thrusters themselves were a bit weird, I'd killed a bravo ship and hit both of it's big thrusters a few times (so they were damaged I assume, the remaining one looks lik 1000/3000J. They were both shaking around a bit, which I assumed is just a damage animation? Ship design was like this one: i54.tinypic.com/2jafbx2.jpg (forgive the image, I think the game captures my printscreen key output so I had to photograph it with a phone). but with another Bravo thruster mirroring the design. You can see the Bravo thruster is shaking a bit. I docked, and quit the game, then came back and launched, I thought maybe since the launcher pushes you backwards slightly it might have had issue with the shaking thruster, but I can't replicate it with the remaining one o.O I'm in love with the retro modem/connect sounds, my girlfriend has branded them "annoying", she'll probably not enjoy the soundtrack to the rest of the evening  Edit: Oh, whilst I remember I stumbled across another bug I think (or unintended cruise control!). If you're holding down a key (easy to see with Movement/fire) and you press a VMEDS button, the game will think your key held down until you press it again. Only a minor niggle as it's easy to reset. Excellent work, enjoying it all! |
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Post by banjaloupe on May 31, 2011 2:35:47 GMT 10
My first flight was similar to yours, although when I noticed oxygen was low I frantically started flying around trying to locate the oxygen station. I saw it on the nav, but panicked me forgot to zoom out and take a slower look around, or use VMEDS to check. I barely managed to find it and connect in time! I then had a few disastrous forays to other stations, as I hadn't picked up any parts and was blown up, and then suffocated. Just now I managed to get enough parts to destroy the Discovery's Gap oxygen guardian, limping my half-destroyed ship, 1%-oxygen over to be refilled just in time. The combination of fighting + exploration + low oxygen has been working very well, I think I'm hooked  |
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Post by kingoftaurus on May 31, 2011 7:17:46 GMT 10
ive actually gotten pretty far. after discovering the importance of oxygen, i persistently pursue oxy stations. opening up the nav menu and making sure that the ?? is selected, you can see where other stations are. Ive gotten at least 15 stations so far uncovered. 300 credits, and i got lucky enough to find 3 repair modules. im pretty invincible right now at charlie level. almost ready to head to delta areas. Also, i prefer this forum for some reason. wish i could expand my oxygen capacity |
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Post by banjaloupe on May 31, 2011 7:29:31 GMT 10
>wish i could expand my oxygen capacity
That would be cool-- maybe a ship part that increases oxygen capacity, or slows the rate it decreases?
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Post by jayce on May 31, 2011 11:10:44 GMT 10
Pootling along nicely now, got some tasty shields and chrono gear on the go, starting to chip away at the Delta stations =D
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Post by moth on May 31, 2011 23:01:41 GMT 10
I now can't quite recall everything that's happened to me, but i'll share a couple of high and low lights.
I fairly quickly worked out what i needed to do to get oxygen, but was slower to comprehend how to turn on the extra features of the Nav stations, so i did a lot of my early exploring blind. It was tough, but actually really enjoyable. It might be nice to delay access to all the Nav functions by some mechanism other than player ignorance.
With my first life i made a few sallies to +x +y, killed a couple of weak pirates, then got brave and tried to fight the disruptor guarding a charlie oxy station. Got crippled. Ran out of oxygen while limping away.
Think i might have lost one or two more pilots before i started to get some breaks. I had a very close fight with the guardian of an oxy station somewhere -y. I'd been reduced to my command module and had burrowed into him, and it was a very close thing that i managed to wear him down before i ran out of air.
Once i'd got that group of bravo stations on-line i could sell bravo scrap and buy charlie lasers and i was well away. I captured two bravo chrono units and managed to build up a very powerful ship. With it i got one group of delta stations working quite easily, but my luck ran out when i attempted a second group of deltas.
By this time i'd got several groups of bravo stations up, fought and salvaged a few pirates, discovered that banks don't pay interest, and had a fair few desperate runs back to the oxygen station - a couple of times i was down to my last %. But i still hadn't worked out that nav stations could show more things, and it was only near the end of this life that i'd realised you don't need to be very close to connect to them. All this time i'd been navigating my remembering the coordinates of station groups and exploring blind.
Also, because i'd not accomplished much before my earlier deaths, i hadn't realised that the world persisted beyond my death. (hence my confusion over the purpose of banks)
I took a break, commented on Farbs' blog, got the hints about nav stations and world persistence, and have just finished having another go.
Despite having left myself a little credit and a good number of active stations, i've found it a lot harder to get going this time around. Pirates are starting to feel less like vermin to be exterminated and more like a scarce resource to be mined with care. Having cleaned up the space around the active stations on my previous life, i found it really hard to build up again.
The most heart-breaking moment so far was just after i'd killed a large but mostly thrusterless delta pirate with my small bravo/charlie level ship, then had to abandon all my spoils and even strip my ship down to make it back to oxygen in time. Needless to say the modules were gone when i went back to look for them.
I have a bit of a love-hate feeling for oxygen. It creates some brilliant moments, but it also feels like it gets in the way of a lot of cool things too. It definitely needs work, but please don't get rid of it.
Some oxygen ideas:
girders could add a little to your oxygen capacity, so that large slow ships become viable. (Need to balance it carefully so that small fast ships still have an advantage for scouting).
What do pirates breathe? Can we steal it? If girders held oxygen, then picking up scrap could help you breathe a little longer, and provide an incentive to risk staying to finish the fight when you get low on air. The flicker rate could be used to show how much air each girder holds.
Oxygen is a strong limit on the rate of exploring. The above ideas keep that by letting you have more oxygen for things that aren't exploring quickly (flying big slow ships and fighting). In the other direction you could allow easier long-distance travel while keeping the time pressure on other tasks by adding suspended animation to cruise control: as time compresses the apparent rate of oxygen use remains the same.
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Post by pieman on Jun 2, 2011 18:21:05 GMT 10
im actually in favor of oxygen being removed and more enemys/pirates to kill .. in my first leap i took all the bravo stations south of the alpha group .. but the distance between things makes it damn near impossible to get a foothold on the beginning of the game . fun as it is .. i still like how successor works and the range of mods available .. but seriously , the oxygen thing is just not needed to increase the fun of the gameplay . kinda distracting actually
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Post by Vaconcovat on Jun 2, 2011 19:04:47 GMT 10
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Post by pieman on Jun 2, 2011 20:34:29 GMT 10
i used the hit and run strategy to get as far along as i have . but ive hit the wall on some of the clumsier aspects of the limitations in aquiring boosters and lasers and still being able to get back to the o2 in time to fill up. id at least enjoy living long enough to get to delta clAss befor some spinning asshole works me over . its not like ya can afford to hang around .. but i still have sucsessor ( which is by far the most playable imho) tho forever will forever be the best game i ever played online as a whim . making it free sold me on the purchase of succsessor .. and i do believe this new side of the coin has the potential to be one of the best " low tech " simulation platforms . the concept is a 10 even with the bugs .
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Post by Arachne on Jun 3, 2011 3:07:31 GMT 10
After finding my first few Alpha modules in the area surrounding the starting dock, I found the tiny gap between the asteroids hilarious. I felt very much like a kid with my hand stuck in the cookie jar. I managed to redesign in a hurry, get through and sell the parts, but then I got lost in the asteroid field and died shortly after. On my second attempt, I got lost in an asteroid field again and died, so I learned to stay clear of them after that.
Since then, I've gotten to know the places pretty well. I'll navigate back and forth between two or three station clusters to work up a good credit reserve before I buy some engines and guns and move on from there. I underestimated my chances against a guardian once, which cost me my ship, so now I make sure I have the firepower I need before I try to unjam a station. The first Foxtrot guardian I came across gave me a bit of a scare since I mistook the station for an Echo station because of the similar colors.
Having a nice ship is so much more satisfying now. At one point, I was able to unjam station after station, haul off huge amounts of scrap and explore the sector at blazing speeds. Of course, this also makes losing a ship much more of a loss, but with some credits strategically deposited, I could get back where I started soon enough. I think I'll be OK as long as I take the time to grind a little every now and then.
I feel that the current oxygen level keeps the game from being too easy. I also really liked Captain Impostor, so I seem to have a thing for the trickier Captain Forever games. I've had a few scares, but usually from playing with the sound muted and being inattentive. That the last few percent of oxygen deplete at a slower rate has saved me at least 3 or 4 times so far. Buying a few sprint boosters helps a lot, and I'll always plan my trips carefully so that I always have an oxygen station nearby. The oxygen shortage helps remind me of how vulnerable I am so that I'll take the time to sell my scrap, deposit credits and plan my journey, so I like that. I got cocky at one point and lost 900 credits to a bug, so I think I'll be a little more careful in the future.
In a sense, I think it's a bit like Spelunky, really. In that game, you can get a wide variety of really fun items. However, if you linger too long in the level, a ghost will appear and kill you. Rushing through a level is likely to make you die horribly as well. In other words, you get items you can have a lot of fun with, but you're not really allowed much time or chance to play with them. I think this keeps the game from getting boring, since I'm not allowed to do something long enough to tire of it, and I'm always hoping for that particular fun thing to happen again. However, Spelunky is a little too frustrating for me, since it feels like the difficulty lies mainly in things catching me off guard. In Captain Jameson, I can see the dangers and I sometimes choose to take risks in order to hasten my progress, so if I die I feel like I only had myself to blame.
My constant need to check the map has started to bother me a little, though. I've tried to use the map export feature more, but I haven't really found it that useful for in-game use, since what I want to know is usually the current location of boot/jackers or my ship's location in relation to the nearest oxygen station. However, it does make me want to free the nav stations right after the oxygen stations, and I don't imagine I'd care that much if map reading wasn't so important. Being out of range of nav stations is unnerving, so I think that makes it feel a little more like I'm really exploring uncharted territory.
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wad67
Alpha Rank
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Post by wad67 on Jun 4, 2011 1:15:56 GMT 10
Any Idea on how you unlock a station before running out of oxygen? My oxygen runs out by the time i find a way through the asteroids and make it to a station, It was an oxygen station(Lucky!) But it was being jammed by a very large ship that is impossible to destroy without running out of oxygen, it is obvious that i am doing something wrong here, do i need to purchase an oxygen tank at the junkyard or something like that |
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Post by moth on Jun 4, 2011 1:20:00 GMT 10
you have to kill jamming ship.
It might be better to try and kill some pirates first and upgrade your weapons. Connect to a nav station and change the key to show more things and find some a or b pirates that are in oxygen range.
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wad67
Alpha Rank
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Post by wad67 on Jun 4, 2011 1:26:38 GMT 10
I have managed to kill a pirate, unfortunately, the spikes were too large and i got stuck in between 2 asteroids trying to get back to the oxy station with 1 oxygen left...
Edit
What are credits for?
Edit
I have also noticed that running out of oxygen makes you lose the game and have to start over, i think i'm going to stick to dwarf fortress untill this is fixed.
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Post by dalaranj on Jun 4, 2011 2:25:57 GMT 10
Wait. Please tell me which one of these two statements is actually true. 1. You experienced an incident of emergent gameplay which caught you by surprise causing you to lose the game, so that you were forced to start over. You don't like when that happens. 2. You enjoy playing Dwarf Fortress. |
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robodoggy
Charlie Rank
Affirmative!
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Post by robodoggy on Jun 5, 2011 12:59:29 GMT 10
Wait. Please tell me which one of these two statements is actually true. 1. You experienced an incident of emergent gameplay which caught you by surprise causing you to lose the game, so that you were forced to start over. You don't like when that happens. 2. You enjoy playing Dwarf Fortress. lol, loosing is fun, no? |
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area of the map; arrived at a factory without paying attention to my Oxygen (excited exploring) docked and sprung a pirate/trap (also love the hacked/jammed radio transmission animation). Boldly fought and killed the jamming ship and restored power to the factory. Unfortunately I had 5% Oxy left and no credits so all I could do was die and make a mental note to plan better next time.
