1.7 Beta 4 and Part II Alpha Test

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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Song
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I do agree about the weapons on the new ships being awful compared with Lamplighter. And that's a weakened lamplighter at that...the Part I weapon is significantly better.


The other balance issue is that right now Mechanist ships are flat out better.....because you can buy or loot a basic tracking weapon right off the bat. With biotech you don't get that for a long time (albiet it's insane when you do)...and since I've never managed to play Archeotech I wouldn't know how that works. Grome gunships are an absolute joke in a mechanist ship with one of the Grome tracking weapons installed (because of the range issue, which honestly? I'm fine with), but incredibly deadly to a similar-level Bioship.
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JohnBWatson wrote:I think the profit from exploration in part II will involve the subsentient fauna we've seen. The stealthy asteroid - based life is easy enough to kill when you find it, but isn't all that easy to locate. Similarly, Hadrotherium herds are incredibly lucrative, and will likely continue to be worth hunting even after the inevitable nerf to their loot.
This is why new targeting behavior hurts so bad. In part 1, the new targeting behavior was very annoying but barely tolerable (although I still dislike very much, to the point that I will likely add OnFireWeapon events to all of my mod weapons to emulate old targeting behavior). In part 2, tracking and Omni weapons are almost useless because they do not work against many of the galactic creatures the player may want to farm.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
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JohnBWatson
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Shrike wrote:The other balance issue is that right now Mechanist ships are flat out better.....because you can buy or loot a basic tracking weapon right off the bat. With biotech you don't get that for a long time (albiet it's insane when you do)
That's more due to the fact that there are only about three weapons for each path right now.
...and since I've never managed to play Archeotech I wouldn't know how that works. Grome gunships are an absolute joke in a mechanist ship with one of the Grome tracking weapons installed (because of the range issue
The range issue probably shouldn't be happening, given that the Grome howitzer is specified as a long-range weapon, and it uses ammo just like the T1. I'd chalk it up to the AI range glitch, which should be pretty easy to solve once George gets around to it, assuming the cause we've decided on ends up being the real one.
but incredibly deadly to a similar-level Bioship.
Have you tried evolving your bioship? After two or three times it's basically impervious to damage from anything in the game.
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Song
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JohnBWatson wrote:
Shrike wrote:The other balance issue is that right now Mechanist ships are flat out better.....because you can buy or loot a basic tracking weapon right off the bat. With biotech you don't get that for a long time (albiet it's insane when you do)
That's more due to the fact that there are only about three weapons for each path right now.
...and since I've never managed to play Archeotech I wouldn't know how that works. Grome gunships are an absolute joke in a mechanist ship with one of the Grome tracking weapons installed (because of the range issue
The range issue probably shouldn't be happening, given that the Grome howitzer is specified as a long-range weapon, and it uses ammo just like the T1. I'd chalk it up to the AI range glitch, which should be pretty easy to solve once George gets around to it, assuming the cause we've decided on ends up being the real one.
but incredibly deadly to a similar-level Bioship.
Have you tried evolving your bioship? After two or three times it's basically impervious to damage from anything in the game.
I evolved it right up to the end state fairly quickly. Still got killed, and then had the problems of finding fuel. Levelling seems to really screw you over if you do it at the wrong time, and is currently cheaper and easier than finding repairs or refuel points.
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Huh. Took a pretty long time for me. Maybe George altered the rates between our attempts.
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Hi, I've been playing this game for years now and thi is my firs post.
So I have played part II to the end or what looks like the end for now and it does look promissing. As it was said by George there is obviously a lot of content mising and it is wildly unbalanced with a bug or two here and there. Here are some thoughts and observations so far.

First of all, it is too bad you can't start with the ship you finished part I with, the one you painstakingly built over time. Maybe it is so just for now and will be possible in later versions when part II gets more worked on. The Saphire should probably be reserved as a starting ship only if you play part II separately but if you played all the way from the begining, the ship you end with should be the one you start with.

I missed Reenu fighters in the game, you can see them in the main screen, so their bases are just target practise for now.
Missed the Iocrym as someone pointed out an an earlier post.
Green vespids are for me as they should be, not easy and not that hard once you upgrade a little, but do avoid them in the early stages.
Grome are lacking in variety, at least a different looking base for the fortress. Otherwise they are quite easy up untill the fortress which is unproportionaly tougher than lower level bases. But if you just sit on the fortress then you just suffer a small amount of damage, blow it up and then take care of the ships. The Monitor is quite a resilient ship, but if you manage to tail him constantly, you can get him with almost no damage since it is so slow, especially with a tracking weapon.
No coment on flora and fauna (Hadroteriums, Ceramic trees,...), a very nice adittion.
Jax are clearly bugged, take out the station first and the ships stay motionless waiting for you to shoot them one by one. When bug free they will be a fearsome oponent.
Wyron adult seems a bit lost for now, let see what he's up to.

As far as the ships are concerned, the only useful option for me is Tor Quan, everithing else is more or less useless but interesting in a way, I guess it has to do with the imbalance of settings. An interesting aproach would be to give each type of ship some weapon or characteristic that would make it superior to other two in one field, so that you would need to compromise, gain one thing loose something else. The ships need to be competitive, now they are not. You almost don't have to refuel Tor Quan once you're on adult (further upgrade does not work yet as mentioned by another poster, so keep it at adult, it is more than enough) and with weapons to match, well... My final setup for weapons was the Jaxii al level 17 doing close to 1700 of damage (level 16 at ~1200 damage was not bad either, did most of the game at this level) and combined with adult ''self-healing'' armour, there's not much out there that can chalenge you, a Monitor requires around 7 hits to be done with, everithing else are more or less sitting ducks.

One bug I noticed was with the bigger stations, Ahns if I am not mistaken, one got destroyed by a single Hadrotherium. The problem was that the Hadrotherium was shooting at the station from within its limits and just kept doing circles and since it was ''inside'' the station it could not be shot at without hiting the station. Maybe a bug or maybe not.

I really like the ''nonlinear'' progression of star systems and it is good to have a few ''main'' systems to go quickly from one point to the other and explore the ones on the side on the way.

Obviously there needs to be more weapons, merchendise and all that, it is kind of empty right now. Since Olam Haz seems to be a very important trading station, maybe it could be positioned in one of the ''main'' systems later on, like st. Kat's in part I.

The system before Contempaton pount should be hard to get through if the Contempation point is to be something special and if so, Contempation point really needs to be special in all ways, not just another system to go through (Iocrym back with a vengance maybe, blach hole if it's the center,...).

So far great start and setup for part II, when all the missing content gets filled in and ballance issues balanced it will be great. Keep on the good work!
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Yeah, the Tor Quan ship is definitely a bit OP at the moment. I would suggest adding a secondary limiter for growth points, so that the player can't just sit and wait, throwing off balance in the process.

I was thinking of a hard limit for total growth points that increases every time the player shows the ship a new system, kills an enemy the ship hasn't killed before, or installs a symbiote that the ship hasn't interfaced with yet. Other roguelikes use a similar system for recharging particularly strong abilities, so it's a well tested mechanic.

Regarding stations, some of them definitely need their own weapons. I already tagged the Grome turrets' lack of noFriendlyFire.
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JohnBWatson wrote:Yeah, the Tor Quan ship is definitely a bit OP at the moment. I would suggest adding a secondary limiter for growth points, so that the player can't just sit and wait, throwing off balance in the process.

I was thinking of a hard limit for total growth points that increases every time the player shows the ship a new system, kills an enemy the ship hasn't killed before, or installs a symbiote that the ship hasn't interfaced with yet. Other roguelikes use a similar system for recharging particularly strong abilities, so it's a well tested mechanic.

Or track total movement.
Regarding stations, some of them definitely need their own weapons. I already tagged the Grome turrets' lack of noFriendlyFire.
Especially the Reenu Outpost and Commune.
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Yeah, they don't seem like they'd have turrets - just the guard ships that aren't quite working yet.
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Tried both the archaeo ship and the biotech. The former was basically impossible; the lowest tier gun does okay damage on the slowest fire rate, but has no range and the ship's armour is suicidally thin. The second weapon does no damage, and theres basically no ammo for the third. 'Recharge weapons' feature didn't seem to do anything either, so I'm assuming it's just the least finished ship type so far. Not much to comment on in that cast.

Biotech ship was more interesting. Two main points here:

1: Have the ship evolution discard the weapon you grew as well is a major sucker punch, and basically makes growing that weapon a total waste of time.

2: The growth mechanic needs to be tied to something more fun to do than simply expending energy. As it is, the most effective way to play this ship involved simply floating around doing nothing far away from any enemies while you spend energy and get growth points. Needs to be tied down to something like rare items, exploring star systems or fighting (dangerous) enemies.
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You're absolutely right on the first part. Archaeotech is just not quite complete enough to be balanced. He mentioned in the stream that it's the least fleshed out right now.
Stormlock wrote: 1: Have the ship evolution discard the weapon you grew as well is a major sucker punch, and basically makes growing that weapon a total waste of time.
The growth points spent on a weapon should probably transfer to the new one, but I like the idea of weapons metamorphosing as the ship matures. It makes things more interesting and dynamic. Perhaps this could even be randomized, as long as none of the options were undesirable.
2: The growth mechanic needs to be tied to something more fun to do than simply expending energy. As it is, the most effective way to play this ship involved simply floating around doing nothing far away from any enemies while you spend energy and get growth points. Needs to be tied down to something like rare items, exploring star systems or fighting (dangerous) enemies.
Absolutely. At the moment, this is my biggest issue with the new mechanics.
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The Erebien Metropolis is spectacular. The tan color and texture is great along with the up and down nature of the curved structures on the edge. This gives great depth and shading to the station. Also like the radial spokes and the 'creases' in the top internal arc of superstructure. Nice touch.

And the green vespid ships also have great depth. It's fun to watch them turn.

The drive effect on the Efreet Explorer looks great. I expect that will appear in a few mods.

The star system designs and the Galactic map background look good too.

Great stuff.

==============
Some stuff I've noticed.

Not sure if this is important but I'm seeing a lot of "Warning: Ran out of tries in FillLocations" notes and a "Warning: Not enough appropriate systems to create 1 Tinker gathering [08040080]" note in the Debug logs.

White lines between systems on the Galactic Map aren't that easy to see against the whitish background at some zoom levels.

At a Tor Quan station (the one with the four long thin arms) and in the 'Sell Items' dockscreen, malachite and cerusite crystals and Bariani olive oil came up but the station "is not interested in buying" them. Not sure if they should appear if the station doesn't want them.

Ships for sale don't have information on installed weapons or armor in Ship Broker dockscreens.

The Efreet Explorer Ship Systems dockscreen has an 'Install' action which is enabled even when you have no items to install (playership in debug mode).

Armor repairs are free.
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NMS
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relanat wrote:Not sure if this is important but I'm seeing a lot of "Warning: Ran out of tries in FillLocations" notes and a "Warning: Not enough appropriate systems to create 1 Tinker gathering [08040080]" note in the Debug logs.
Ha! Didn't I say the minimum encounter numbers should be part of the adventure, not the station type? Or, at least they should apply only to specified adventures.
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NMS wrote:
relanat wrote:Not sure if this is important but I'm seeing a lot of "Warning: Ran out of tries in FillLocations" notes and a "Warning: Not enough appropriate systems to create 1 Tinker gathering [08040080]" note in the Debug logs.
Ha! Didn't I say the minimum encounter numbers should be part of the adventure, not the station type? Or, at least they should apply only to specified adventures.
It shouldn't be occurring in part 2 - Tinkers should be in the Human Space Library. Means there's a bug somewhere.

I'm not seeing it in my debug output though.
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Well, I stand by my suggestion, but you're right, that's odd. Maybe they're coming from modded part 1 games or mod adventures?
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