RC5 - First Thots

[Vastin]

Just starting out on RC5 tonight. The universe feels a good bit more alive and active, but I haven't made it very far. Had a promising start with a wolfen (full ceralloy armor in 3rd system!). Getting used to the new interface elements (I really like the armor data displays!), and trying to figure out what the new weapon and armor bits are good for.

Alas, I got promptly wiped out on my 5th Korlov escort run when a fully loaded pirate frigateand missile escort showed up. I hadn't even seen a MK II corsair up to that point...

Yeah, I should have payed more attention to the size of the escort they offered me, and just run when the frigate appeared, but it would have been pretty glorious if I'd managed to take him down!

Alas, I find myself still terribly frustrated by the commodity pricing system that was introduced a few versions ago. The logistics of ferrying and piling up goods outside a station and not being able to sell unless I'm ready to leave the system is boring and pointless, but the mechanics encourage you to do it in order to get full price for your stuff, which is pretty important early in the game.

Wouldn't a flat out purchase limit be a more effective barrier to excessive farming in any case? It would certainly be a less logistically annoying play mechanic to get the same basic effect. I would much rather spend time exploring the galaxy and blowing stuff up than playing a glorified logistics officer... It doesn't even make any sense economically. The station master is going to pay me 30% more because I unload 20 barrels of rice on him all at once, than if I sold them to him in batches? I don't get it.

If you guys REALLY want a pricing curve, then have the system calculate the total sale price for a pile of stuff as if they were each sold individually, then there's no benefit to stacking stuff up for one big unload to dodge the pricing system.

Anyway - Gritting my teeth and bearing with it for the time being, as I really want to see the cool stuff I'm hearing about later in the game. My last full play through was .99c and it looks like a lot has changed.

[Psycholis]

just finished RC4 and the whole end is different. i agree on the pricing thing but it's less of an issue for a freighter cause you can just hoard everything you loot anyway. i don't even remember why the pricing changes were implemented - i think it was to discourage hoarding money - but now it's just as you say. you just end up hoarding stuff before selling instead of selling whenever you reach a station. i have to keep track of what item i sold to who so that i don't get the pricing penalty from my loot. i have a system of maxing out the first systems and then moving outwards but it's a lot of back tracking and time wasting on systems i've already cleared out completely.

[Vastin]

The Arena is much, much cooler than before. I like the 'intro' free for all matches, and the way the difficulty graduates upwards much more steadily is really nice. It also seems to get much more difficult than before? Does it scale all the way up to the end game so you can keep coming back as you upgrade your ship? We'll see.

Interesting graphical improvements to St. K's too - now to go back and clear out Charon - needless to say, the Karlov station did not survive this pass.

[Vastin]

Shields appear to have changed a whole lot. I was feeling pretty stylin in my fully outfitted omsk shield/armor - until a single salvo from a Huari station blew straight through it and took a sizable bite out of my aft segment.

Yipe, yipe yipe yipe off to the dry dock I go.
Time to start looking for more shield or armor upgrades. Something with blast resistance I think...

Overall the game is quite a bit more challenging than .99c from what I've seen so far. Normally I'm content to play through in IronMan mode, but this time I'm rezzing now and then just to keep making forward progress as I learn what's changed. Such important safety tips as 'Sung Forts now explode', for example... (boom!)

The weaker shields make the Xoanthropes and higher level raiders a lot more dangerous, as there is a much more realistic chance of them breaching your shield and landing some ion hits - on the other hand the armor is so much tougher that there is a fair chance you'll recover now.

The RNG was unkind to me this game. I'm starting to encounter Huari, and I still don't have a targeting computer upgrade! Argh!

[Vastin]

A few systems further on and now I'm encountering a couple ventari cruisers, and a smattering of Ranx (no dreads yet tho).

The Ventari appear to be immune to my peashooters, and my shielding only offers modest protection before they start burning away systems. Lost a couple devices and a reactor dueling with them before I took the hint and gave up.

Finally a major stroke of luck tho - a pair of Ferian nests apparently pissed each other off and their warriors burned both of them down - just a couple light minutes away from a stargate to a system with a ringer exchange. Now outfitted with full octocarbide so the ventari can't fry any more stuff, but I still can't kill them.

In other news, still no targeting computer, nor have I found a single corporate trade post to order one from. That's fantastically annoying, as it turns out, because it can be impossible to dock at stations with wrecks on them.

[Vastin]

Well, I've rarely wasted quite as much time and effort on nothing as I did on missiles today. I figured after picking up a bunch of high-end ordinance in Point Juno that I'd outfit myself with a heavy launcher and some lvl X missiles. Took a good hour and a half playing with the fabricators, and voila, a rack of 50 or so M5's, or whatever they're called.

These. Things. Are. Useless.

I'd do more damage with a base particle gun than these pieces of junk. I tried deploying them in the Huari/Sung plot battle - I figure, hey, most of those little sung fighters have zilch for hull and not much thermo resistance, so this should vaporize them.

No.

Not only did class X missiles that I'm lugging around at .5 ton apiece fail to entertainingly wipe out class V swarmers, but unloading about 20 of them into massed enemy formations killed nothing while the sung proceeded to stomp all over the Huari. I'd like to request a look at missile balance in the mid-late game, because, holy crap do they suck.

[Vastin]

It looks like my current game stalls out at the very end.

Upon reaching Heretic my wolfen is equipped with:
1.2G reactor
Plasma shield (+40%)
Full Octocarbide (+20% each)
NAMI Heavy Launcher (w/M5 Nemesis missiles - ie, junk)
FusionFire Howitzer (+30%)
Ferian Plasma Cannon
Omni Tev7 (+40%)
Hyperdrive
Patch Spiders

...and that's going to be it. The RNG never spit out a Ringer Shipyard, and in this version it appears that no-one else can install lvl X weaponry - though the only class X weapon I've found to date is a basic Plasma Cannon. The only remaining hope for a weapon that might carry me through Heretic is the Lamplighter, assuming I ever find the Antarctica - and assuming I can beat her, given that this ship build hasn't even been able to take out a Phobos or Ares Shipyard yet. ALSO assuming that a CSC can even equip the damn thing if I get it.

As it stands, this ship is quite survivable, but its offense is completely ineffective against enemies like the Ares capital ships. I even had to use a Domina power to take out the Dragon.

[Atarlost]

It looks like my current game stalls out at the very end.

Upon reaching Heretic my wolfen is equipped with:
1.2G reactor
Plasma shield (+40%)
Full Octocarbide (+20% each)
NAMI Heavy Launcher (w/M5 Nemesis missiles - ie, junk)
FusionFire Howitzer (+30%)
Ferian Plasma Cannon
Omni Tev7 (+40%)
Hyperdrive
Patch Spiders

[snip]

As it stands, this ship is quite survivable, but its offense is completely ineffective against enemies like the Ares capital ships. I even had to use a Domina power to take out the Dragon.

Um. You have a ferian plasma cannon, what are you complaining about?
You can easily do Heretic with that.

[Vastin]

You are quite correct as it turns out. I wasn't expecting the opposition in Heretic to be so short ranged - also, they at least did me the favor of dropping a functional iocrym veil, which helped a bit.

After I got the veil, I ended up going back to pick on phobos dreadnaughts for a while. Head on confrontation was still utterly suicidal, but I was able to beat several by pulling them into asteroid fields and ambushing them. Eventually I got them to cough up a pair of Ion repeater turrets, and cranked them up to +90/+90. That along with the plasma torch was sufficient to wrap up heretic.

I only succeeded with 3 or 4 of the final missions, and lost everything except the Domina shrine. The guardians seemed weenie initially, but rapidly got out of hand.

I loved the end missions! Though I didn't quite get what was going on with the archive virus one... I think my favorite was finding the gravity distortion. That was very cool.

One suggestion - the Heretic base could really be a little more 'full featured' - namely, it'd be really nice if it could install equipment. After I got the uh, <spoiler> at the end, I had to leave Heretic, run back 3 systems to equip a CPU, then run all the way back - then do the same run again to re-equip my regular load out before the end fight. That kind of sucked.

[Psycholis]

you play a hardcore game. if i hadn't gotten a targeting rom by st. k's, i'd have restarted. and no ringer shipyards? that's some terrible rng luck.. even my bad games have a few shipyards in the last 5 or so systems past pt. juno.. good job though.

[Vastin]

I never did roll a targeting ROM.

I finally had to order one from a commerce base - and I didn't get one of those until my first system with Ranx Dreads... <headdesk>

Fighting Ventari destroyers with an omni-particle weapon that you can't even lock on target past 45ls or so is a losing proposition btw. I advise against it.

So, yeah, overall the RNG was seriously out to get me this game. My one huge break was finding a pair of Ferian bases that had burned each other down, letting me scarf enough ore for a full octocarbide set, and picking up the Ferian Plaz Cannon in the bargain. That was it for easy breaks tho.