Sticking to one ship is a missed gameplay opportunity

[sun1404]

Starting from mid game you would require mid game equipment. If just reaching a start point means you can start from there, someone could rush through systems with the starting outfit, to a start point ie. St. Kat. It's not that hard to just go around, find the gate, go through, and repeat until you reach St. Kat, without upgrading your equipments. Then one could do so, and then start a new game at the new start point, and rush again, then start a new game at the new start point. It would be easier than going through the game as it is designed for, for some people.

Requiring them to reach a point with permadeath would make the above scenario much harder, and also be a kind of reward for survival skill on the first game/any game until you reach the end.

[pixelfck]

I think there is a risk of upsetting the balance of the game. But maybe the solution is simple. The current player ship are the most overpowered unit in the game. If you would limit, for example, their maximum reactor size, they would no longer be able to outclass the high level (capital) ships, it could make the early game nice and challenging while still providing a decent spot for the higher level ships.
For me, it would be a lot more immersive to accept that I can wreak havoc in Eridani while flying a Britannia-Class Gunship, than when I do the same in a low level freighter.

All in all, I think it would be a step forward.

~Brigand

[PM]

This is one reason why I made Playership Drones.

There's no point in putting in late game ships that aren't better than early game ships.

Except as status symbol or player wants to look at that ship. It is like alternate character skins that must be unlocked in other games.

[PM]

I think that most ships only have something like 24 directional facings rendered whereas the player ships have a lot more. This is an artifact of the early development stages of the game when all ships had reduced rotational frames, including the player ships. Quite a few ship sprites have been in the game since v.0.7, which was 12 years ago! Back then, dial-up was still common and keeping download size small was a priority.

It's pretty frustrating to play a ship with so few facings because fine maneuvering is difficult. George has stated that increasing rotational frames for all ships is a future goal. I believe that George made the 3D models for many ships available a couple years ago and there were a few high-frame ships mods made back then.

Also, before 1.3, frames and rotation speed were linked. Back then, if you added more frames to the Wolfen, for better aiming fidelity, it would rotate slower!

[JohnBWatson]

Starting from mid game you would require mid game equipment. If just reaching a start point means you can start from there, someone could rush through systems with the starting outfit, to a start point ie. St. Kat. It's not that hard to just go around, find the gate, go through, and repeat until you reach St. Kat, without upgrading your equipments. Then one could do so, and then start a new game at the new start point, and rush again, then start a new game at the new start point. It would be easier than going through the game as it is designed for, for some people.

Requiring them to reach a point with permadeath would make the above scenario much harder, and also be a kind of reward for survival skill on the first game/any game until you reach the end.

The best way to setup starting points, in my opinion, is for the player to reach them from Eridani without dying, and complete the quest for that point without backtracking. A sample array of starting points:

Eridani (Default)

Rigel Aurelius (Complete Arena)

St. Katherine's Star (Liberate Charon)

Point Juno (Defend Point Juno)

---

Except as status symbol or player wants to look at that ship. It is like alternate character skins that must be unlocked in other games.

Difference is not necessarily imbalance. Look at Star Control, they've got some of the most wildly different ships in existence and there's still no 'best' or 'worst' one.

This is arguably even easier in Transcendence. Little things like the Manticore's armor regeneration can give a ship strengths and weaknesses, making it interesting and desirable to have without it being outright 'better' than any other playership. The Adventure portion of gameplay adds the factor of practicality to the mix, with dedicated combat ships being desirable in target rich environments but less so when trade or survival is a priority.

[PM]

Star Control is not a paragon of balance. Thraddash in Star Control 2 is overpowered, even if it takes all day to kill ships with the blaster.

[JohnBWatson]

Star Control is not a paragon of balance. Thraddash in Star Control 2 is overpowered, even if it takes all day to kill ships with the blaster.

It's by no means perfect, but it's quite close.

[neogoliath]

Why only up to Britannia tho I want a Charon frigate or a Tripoli destroyer...

[Song]

Why only up to Britannia tho I want a Charon frigate or a Tripoli destroyer...

That stuff would be better suited for an expansion. Ship availability needs to be balanced both numerically and thematically. In terms of numbers...those ships, with upgrades (which, to be fair, would be extremely expensive), would be absolutely overpowered for much of the game. But that's not that hard to fix....you can always run numbers to make stuff work. The thematic stuff is harder though....for the pilgrim, there are very few reasons to have a fully functional Charon warship (or maruader, for that matter). PM's PSD mod scratches that itch reasonably well I'm told, but for vanilla content....there needs to be a reason why the player can change to a certain ship. Whether it's "It's commerically available" (Eg. The three vanilla starting ships) or "The military are willing to sell to their privateers" (Centurion, Britannia), or "Captured in combat" (Which a frigate would have to be unless the player is a pirate, but the plot requirements would be....heavy.....since dead ships are really not in good enough shape to patch up in vanilla) or whatever.


Plus vanilla doesn't have playership mechanics for capital ships as of yet, so they'd be a bit clunky.

That being said, capital ship gameplay in future versions could be pretty awesome, if it could be balanced and justified. Slow though.....large ships aren't exactly speed-machines.

[Xephyr]

If just reaching a start point means you can start from there, someone could rush through systems with the starting outfit, to a start point ie. St. Kat. It's not that hard to just go around, find the gate, go through, and repeat until you reach St. Kat, without upgrading your equipments.

It takes me less than 3 minutes on average to get to St K's, but that's at speedrunning speed. My best run places me in Heretic at just under 5 minutes.

It's trivial for advanced players to reach late systems, so I kind of wonder how it would be useful to have a late start option.

[Song]

Hmm.

One thing that might be cool to add is another page to the pre-game selection page.....after selecting your ship, you would be able to select your startpoint from a set of options that would vary depending on what you had installed, and what ship you'd chosen (and maybe progress, but as we've already discussed, this is tricky to implement). Starting nodes would be defined by the topography specified by the XML.....so if you were running pure vanilla, you'd have Eridani (Unlocked for the classic ships), St. Katherines (Unlocked for mid-level ships eg. Medium IAV or whatever...and everything below it) and Point Juno (Unlocked for britannia and everything below it). Tweaking the low-level ships to have passable setups when starting at later nodes could be useful as well, but it might be considered a challenge, especially if the game flashes a warning. It's also a good opportunity to show off the galactic map. Extensions would add to this....so if you had Corporate Command installed, you'd also have the Tau Ceti node, and the three CC ships with their own allowable starting node criteria. It adds some complexity to the coding, but it could be rather nice. Stuff like the Near Stars might get a little complex...you'd need a special starting node for people who are not playing EP, but have selected it as a starting node. Probably Shipyard Kibo.

[Ultimate Chicken]

I'm all for changing ships mid-game, if only for appearances' sake. :3

If this is done like Wing Commander Privateer and limited to the Starting 4 (3 + Osaka) , +3 for Corp Com - I'm not sure I see how balance is a problem. The ships are currently designed such that you'll remain in them for the whole game - swapping them out isn't for a better ship, its technically trading one set of tradeoffs for another. You're not going to get anyone's starting equipment... are you?

There are certain technicalities (Sapphire can't have Dwarg Holochroal, too heavy - and what if we have one less valid device slot?), but the feature as it is sounds reasonable by design.

Expanding it to the other ships in the game is a different kettle of fish, tho I would like the chance to legitimately fly around in a Killer Battlepod or Phobos Frigate in an unmodded game ;3

[NMS]

It takes me less than 3 minutes on average to get to St K's, but that's at speedrunning speed. My best run places me in Heretic at just under 5 minutes.

That's really fast. What version is that on, and what's your best time for actually completing the game?

I set a new record recently (on version 1.2 for the text rollover glitch) with 20:31.

On topic: More diverse balanced options for player ships sounds cool. Giving the player access to the advantages of capital ships (many armor segments, compartment health, omnidirectional/swivel/linked fire slots) would be pretty hard to balance, as well as inconsistent with those ships apparently requiring large crews to operate.

[Xephyr]

That's really fast. What version is that on, and what's your best time for actually completing the game?

I set a new record recently (on version 1.2 for the text rollover glitch) with 20:31.

I play on the most recent version, but I think my best runs were pre-1.5. I killed the ICS and got through the stargate in an incredible 17:32 (or close to that, I'm going off of memory). I was only able to do it because a Ringers shipyard torched a Phobos Dreadnaught, leaving an intact kaidlun and APA. I don't think the RNG was ever that kind to me before or since.

I've been trying to record a speedrun so I can show off but I haven't had time to sit down and get good runs in in a while.

[NMS]

We should stop derailing this thread and move here:
https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... 9&start=30