My 0.5 Suggestions/problems

[orinn]

Just finished my first play through Jameson, clocked in at about 5 hours. Its great game but I do have some suggestions/problems

*the piston thread, for the love of god please, so many new designs with that part addition.

* Auto mapping as mentioned in other threads. Encourages me to explore the unknown instead of trying to find a map online to see where I can go next and lose the joy of discovery.

*Magnet to haul goods, adds the weight to the ship but allows me to haul junk easier. Attracts the floating pieces, can pull more the higher the class goes.

*Thruster balancer part so uneven thrusters scaled thrust so you could fly straight.

*oxygen modules all give 5 liters, no matter what class. They gain more armor and weight per class. This leads to me hanging around alphas class ships to find them because I want the lightest oxygen tanks since I heavily protected them. This is counter intuitive to game design, they should give more air, even if it is just 1 liter, and there weight/armor should just be a constant.

*The upgrade ship screen should be color coded per the part class, would make it easier to spot what I want to upgrade. (probably do the same for the repair)

*Gaurdain effect did not seem to match my screen size when I made it bigger.

*Snipe Laser looks amazing now, but the laser does not appear until the module does, this allows for Juliets to snipe you out before you ever knew they were there, this beam showing would let you know ahead of time.
**Snipe Laser should stop on objects/asteroids/otherships instead of just passing through them

*The radio distance on the larger stations is too short. I would have to park my giant ship right next to the giant juliet station, closest to the main part to make contact, its annoying.

*Being able to have multiple ships in the dock. Sometimes I want to have a fast flier, sometimes I want my battle ship, and sometimes I want my trash collector ship so I can gather cash. This code would even allow for there to be used ship dealership stations to buy premade ship designs.

*A modification to how pulling parts works just in the vicinity of the scrap yard, or make a construction yard but scrap yard works better. The way I play, I put my ship in the scarp yard, pull the parts and build it clean, sell the rest. It would be nice if I could pull off an entire section, and not have every piece fly off unless I let go of it. If I could attach it else where. This allows me to upgrade a piece on the spine of my ship without me having to complete rebuild it from scratch.

*scrap yard should auto remove or just ignore parts it wont buy.

*Just an opinion I think the homing missiles need more range and more initial speed. I want to use them but they always end up being less useful then a laser. Either when I'm maneuvering they run into my own ship as I turn because they did not pull far enough away, or they seem to disappear just before the hit the enemy because they made a couple turns. There range is the same of the laser, but fire slower, do less damage, they should have more range to account for the fact that they do chase and thus travel farther, even if the target is right next to my ship they can miss. I feel they can get the upgrade. without being over powered.

**I see ships spawn with prismatic lasers that take out there own ship, I think this is a bug

My first time posting but I have playing since captain forever. I hope I have presented some good ideas and not just stuff that has been discussed before. Thank you for taking the time to read.

[Vaconcovat]

I agree with you on most of theses points, except...

The colour coding of the ship parts in menus. It won't fit the aesthetics, just sayin.

[bigjohnpalmer]

I hold the same opinion as Vaconcovat.

I disagree with thruster balancing though. That is part of the skill of building a balanced ship. Even if you are hauling scrap there is always a way with which to attach modules in order to maintain a decently straight flying ship.

I particularly like the idea of a construction yard station or a modification to the scrap yards. Sometimes I just want to add a chrono gear at the base of the spine of my ship that has all of my weapons attached. Pulling off the base truss/gridder module and leaving everything that is attached essentially "glued together" would make a world of difference.

[10tativ]

I've always thought that that frustration factor is part of what makes the game good!

[debbielou]

Hi, here comes my first post.

As I can't find a single general idea thread, I'll dump one which has just popped up in my head here.

The pulsating colours. It is beautiful, it is awesome. But why not add a mechanic that would, or would make the player to, switch them off from time to time?

What I thought of is that: you spot, or see on the radar, a ship. A powerful ship, which has a powerful radio-waves sensing equipment, but can otherwise barely see you. You know about him, he hasn't yet found out about your presence. You need to stay put. You switch everything off, disable your engines, and wait. You don't emit a sound, you don't emit a wave, you don't emit an electrical impulse. Your ship is grey and quiet. You wait.
If the guy just sails past you, you wait some time more, just to be sure, then slowly power each circuit up, and cruise on. If he spots you , and is about to fire his mega-uber-Juliet-class hypercannon at you, then you smash every circuit-bound key on your keyboard, make all the engines and systems abruptly turn from dead-silent to doing an increasingly loud "vhooooooom", and you charge the frick off of there. Somewhere safe. Hopefully.

Why the new gameplay feature? It would be fun. Puts a variable where a constant was - the vivid pulsating of your ship, the symptom of it's life, is no longer a given. This surely puts a slight thrill of anxiety somewhere in the back of your mind. What's more, you get another way of manipulating your ship, which gives you a sense of control over it. And enhances the immersion.

Actually, I've just remembered that we have this mechanic already in the game - simply when you run out of oxygen, the ship goes grey and silent. I like this very much. There surely are even more ways of incorporating it in the gameplay.

What do you guys think?

[orinn]

Nov 14, 2011 7:16:42 GMT 10 bigjohnpalmer said:

I hold the same opinion as Vaconcovat.

I disagree with thruster balancing though. That is part of the skill of building a balanced ship. Even if you are hauling scrap there is always a way with which to attach modules in order to maintain a decently straight flying ship.

Is thruster balancing really a skill? It forces you to mirror your ship at end game, and up until that point it seems simple to me to just put the same amount of thrusters on both sides, an extra one or two if you have a higher level booster on one side then the other. The balancer would allow for new ship designs.

Nov 15, 2011 3:28:42 GMT 10 10tativ said:

I've always thought that that frustration factor is part of what makes the game good!

No challenge makes a game good, frustration does not. A head shot in an FPS is challenging, being auto headshotted by someone hacking or a perfect computer is frustrating, and not fun.

Off the top of my head, I like the idea of stealth parts, it seems to easy to exploit, just make a tiny ship with a strong laser, go find a juliet ship under cloak, and line up to one shot there core. It can be done right, but there is a lot of balancing to be done there

[10tativ]

Nov 22, 2011 15:40:31 GMT 10 orinn said:

Nov 15, 2011 3:28:42 GMT 10 10tativ said:

I've always thought that that frustration factor is part of what makes the game good!

No challenge makes a game good, frustration does not. A head shot in an FPS is challenging, being auto headshotted by someone hacking or a perfect computer is frustrating, and not fun.

Maybe frustration was the wrong word - I don't mean frustration to the point where you ragequit (I would in your scenario), but rather the slight annoyance of not being able to build quite as quickly as you'd like. After all, you've never found the current building system so intensely annoying that you've decided not to play Jameson anymore because it's "not fun", have you?

[10tativ]

I'd like to add an extension to the hauling magnet idea - if the magnet's pull can outweigh the weight and the "away force" of a nearby ship, it would be nice to have it pull them right up to you as emergency defence/offence if you lose your girders/lasers - or perhaps if the AI became particularly advanced, you could use it to take hostages. If the pull force is too weak, you travel towards the ship instead, which would be handy for hiding behind big ships or if you lose your boosters.

[orinn]

Nov 25, 2011 8:46:10 GMT 10 10tativ said:

Maybe frustration was the wrong word - I don't mean frustration to the point where you ragequit (I would in your scenario), but rather the slight annoyance of not being able to build quite as quickly as you'd like. After all, you've never found the current building system so intensely annoying that you've decided not to play Jameson anymore because it's "not fun", have you?

Actually right now it is. I have a lot of other games on my table, and while I was trying to build by super ship my browser refreshed and I lost it all. I simply dont want to spend all those hours rebuilding it. It takes to long to gather the scrap to sell and then rebuild my ship with new parts, I rather go play something else.
In the bigger picture, a game is about being fun, is it actually fun to have your ship need to be rebuilt from scratch so you can add one piece to it? I think the answer is no. Its like the oxygen recharge change. The old way was fine, did not keep me from playing the game, the new way is smooth and I enjoy it a lot more. Its an improvement to the system. I think construction could use an improvement.

Nov 25, 2011 8:52:59 GMT 10 10tativ said:

I'd like to add an extension to the hauling magnet idea - if the magnet's pull can outweigh the weight and the "away force" of a nearby ship, it would be nice to have it pull them right up to you as emergency defence/offence if you lose your girders/lasers - or perhaps if the AI became particularly advanced, you could use it to take hostages. If the pull force is too weak, you travel towards the ship instead, which would be handy for hiding behind big ships or if you lose your boosters.

I thought about that when adding the magnets. It seems like a good idea that would just need to be tested. My biggest fear is jackers with magnets. They attach themselves to my big ship and start blasting away in one location, how do I get rid of them? Though the idea of having to pull parts off your ship to ditch them is semi amusing.

[10tativ]

Hmmm, I suppose so.

I imagine if this idea did turn up in the game, there'd be a magnetising animation, which is your cue to blast them as much as you can before you get there, or flee outside of the magnet range.

[10tativ]

I reckon you've got it right with your ideas, especially requesting an increase in station range, oxygen level class increases and the addition of bigjohnpalmer's stroke of sheer genius.

[10tativ]

Debbielou, I've probably just never been in the right place, but I've never seen spaceships in Jameson travel anywhere, Forever-style - the ones near me just stick to one place. As fun as it would be to do that, it seems like you'd be better off in Jameson by just checking where the ships are at the NAV station and, er, not going there!

[ransico]

I agree with orinn - ship building does need a bit of work.

The building system worked well in captain forever, probably because that was a much simpler game. CJ has a lot more aspects to it, so there should be a way for a player to expediate the building process if they so wish.

I loved the idea above to keep modules glued together until the mouse button is released... that alone would just make the game less frustrating (yes, I use that word correctly).

Also for the love of god, closing a browser window/losing internet connectivity/laptop battery dying/... should not cause me to lose everything. I know that the game is trying to get a bit meta... but there is a limit, and it really does make it hard for me to come back to the game sometimes.

[abewell]

Have been playing .5 now for a few days and just wanted to chime in on my thoughts.

Does anyone use the factories? I stopped even attacking the guardians to get them after a while. I haven't seen a reason to use them since if I want a part I'm just going to go and kill an enemy to get it. Is this just me or are others using the factories often? Also, this kind of makes scraping parts less useful. What am I to do with the money? Maybe they would be more useful if they offered 2-3 parts instead of just 1 per station. Or if the parts bought from a factory offered some extra bonus that you couldn't get from killing. Like if I buy a booster from a factory it has 1.5x the thrust as a normal booster at the same level.

I feel like the upgrade stations are too few and far between. I would use them a lot more if there ever were any around me at a high level. I have only explored the greater NE part of the map, but looking at the map generator that someone had posted it seems that they are pretty few all over the map.

I love the way the oxygen works, it's much better than having to dock and watch the meter go up. I don't remember what version I played where that was the way you had to do it. Also, I enjoy that we can find oxy-modules, it makes flying around much more reasonable. Also, the docking/saving is awesome. It's not too rare to find a docking station, but you don't see too many of them either.

Lastly, I know that this has been discussed in several other threads, but something should be done about part building/rebuilding/scraping. It is a pain to have to click and drag each individual piece. Later in the game when I am doing more frequent rebuilds/upgrades it would be nice if I could drag-select (like selecting a bunch of files at once) a bunch of parts to be scrapped instead of clicking each one individually. Or if there was a hotkey that automatically placed all floating parts into a near by scrapyard?

Overall I love the Jameson project. It is a fantastic addition to the series.

Stay cool farbs

Abewell

[Farbs]

Cheers all. I agree that keeping module chunks glued together would make many things easier, and have had it in the back of my mind for ages. I'm not sure how complex it would be though, or when if ever I'd get around to it. No promises here unfortunately.

I'm glad that the new oxy system is working for people. One of my goals for Jameson was to streamline the RPGish bits, so it's great that some of that is working out.

Factories are optional, of course, but I find them quite useful. They sell parts one level higher than themselves and their guardians, so they provide a safe means of upgrading without risking a higher level fight. You can also use credits to repair your ship, which may be especially useful if you're upgrading your parts rather than salvaging new ones.

I usually scrap by flying my entire ship into the scrap yard, then removing all my scrap parts while I'm there. This stops them from floating away, and means I just have to detach things rather than place them somewhere. Since I tend to connect all my scrap via a single girder it's pretty easy to disengage that and have the rest of the parts all fly off.

[Captain Michaela Nul'dolaer]

All of these ideas are ancient treasures!