[Brainstorm] Difficulty Levels?

[ThePrivateer]

I was wondering, would it be possible, or even feasible to have difficulty levels for Transcendence? As in, the usual, 'easy', 'normal', 'hard', 'you're insane' levels.

I know that Trans is supposed to be like Nethack, but its becoming more than that and I'd like to see something that would allow players to have different set ups and encounters.

I assume at the current stage, it would only be possible via Adventure Extensions, which would be cumbersome to build to say the least, but is it at all possible to implement in the future?

[alterecco]

There is something like this if you use Weapons Extended 3... not sure if it works with 1.01 or newer though.

[Ttech]

This is also actually be extensively discussed on the forums, where we got into an interesting discussion on how it would be to implement increasing difficulties.

[ThePrivateer]

This is also actually be extensively discussed on the forums, where we got into an interesting discussion on how it would be to implement increasing difficulties.

Ahh, well I didn't see the thread around here, and even if I had, I wouldn't want to resurrect a necro thread.

In any case, I believe it would add to a community vibe and make it easier to actually complete the game because some of us haven't yet....

And also, there will then be the people that complete the game on insane difficulty, without using any weapons or trading anything and call themselves Masters of Transcendence.

[asam3]

The randomness of the game makes it hard.

For me I only got to see the light of the tinkers from 5-7 galaxies away from St. Kaths.

[Drako Slyith]

What you could do is create a series of adventure extensions, where the topology is edited so instead of Eridani being level one you have it as level two for hard, and level 3 for insane. For easy, have level one extended for several more systems than normal. For insane, also maybe add a few more weapons to enemy stations to make up for the level 10 ceiling. Then edit the Iocrym ships to have more weapons for harder difficulties, less for easy. It could work.

[ThePrivateer]

What you could do is create a series of adventure extensions, where the topology is edited so instead of Eridani being level one you have it as level two for hard, and level 3 for insane. For easy, have level one extended for several more systems than normal. For insane, also maybe add a few more weapons to enemy stations to make up for the level 10 ceiling. Then edit the Iocrym ships to have more weapons for harder difficulties, less for easy. It could work.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

The randomness of the game makes it hard.

For me I only got to see the light of the tinkers from 5-7 galaxies away from St. Kaths.

Me too. What I actually want is "easier" levels....but when you are doing difficulty levels, it's always fair to add harder ones too.

[Ttech]

What you could do is create a series of adventure extensions, where the topology is edited so instead of Eridani being level one you have it as level two for hard, and level 3 for insane. For easy, have level one extended for several more systems than normal. For insane, also maybe add a few more weapons to enemy stations to make up for the level 10 ceiling. Then edit the Iocrym ships to have more weapons for harder difficulties, less for easy. It could work.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

The randomness of the game makes it hard.

For me I only got to see the light of the tinkers from 5-7 galaxies away from St. Kaths.

There are mods that can cut down on the power of early ships so you don't die so easily, I was originally going for a difficulty multiplier

e.g.

Kronosaur is 5*1 difficulty without making the game harder you make it harder to like 5*2 which is double the difficulty.
How would this play out in game, I'm not sure but it would likely involve rewriting quite a bit of the AI.


Me too. What I actually want is "easier" levels....but when you are doing difficulty levels, it's always fair to add harder ones too.

[alterecco]

Me too. What I actually want is "easier" levels....but when you are doing difficulty levels, it's always fair to add harder ones too.

What Weaapons Extended does, and what really makes a difference, is randomise the loadout of npc ships. This means you can have a system with wastly underpowered or overpowered weaponry. It works surprisingly well as a dificulty scale. Perhaps it is a good and straightforward strategy to pursue.

[Ttech]

What the heck, where did my post go, its just a quote...

[SpongeJr]

Alterecco posted the following in a foreign accent (emphasis mine):

What Weaapons Extended does, and what really makes a difference, is randomise the loadout of npc ships. This means you can have a system with wastly underpowered or overpowered weaponry.

"Kiptain!"
"Yes, Volkov?"
"These wessels are wastly overpowered!"
"···"

(sorry, I just had to... no offense)

[Prophet]

If we assume that current vanilla game is normal difficulty...

Easy mode:
Add more items to stations for the player to buy, including higher level items
Modify the buy/sell scripts to allow easier credit & rin profit
Tweak item availability such that higher level items appear earlier

Hard Mode:
(Essentially the opposite of easy mode)

Hardcore mode:
No trading. period. Survive on looted items (including fuel)

Perhaps even have some conduct modes like: pacifist, hornet race (play a hornet), forced no-backtrack, etc.


Of course, all of this would be much easier if an adventure was able to display a dockscreen BEFORE the game started, before ship selection even, in order to set some global variables to initialize the game mode....(**cough George cough**)

Otherwise, it could be hacked in immediately after game start.

[alterecco]

Alterecco posted the following in a foreign accent (emphasis mine):

What Weaapons Extended does, and what really makes a difference, is randomise the loadout of npc ships. This means you can have a system with wastly underpowered or overpowered weaponry.

"Kiptain!"
"Yes, Volkov?"
"These wessels are wastly overpowered!"
"···"

(sorry, I just had to... no offense)

ROFL, I enjoyed that one :D... thx ;)

[Ttech]

Alterecco posted the following in a foreign accent (emphasis mine):

What Weaapons Extended does, and what really makes a difference, is randomise the loadout of npc ships. This means you can have a system with wastly underpowered or overpowered weaponry.

"Kiptain!"
"Yes, Volkov?"
"These wessels are wastly overpowered!"
"···"

(sorry, I just had to... no offense)

ROFL, I enjoyed that one ... thx

We need a add to quotes button on the forums.