How does sunless skies properly fit into fallen London without a retcon, out of curiosity. Definitely the theme is on point and it just oozes fail better. Do we know how captains are getting to the sky? I mean, I know that it's there and the winged things can go, but not how it fits in for a captain to explore it.
Darkewolfe on
What is this I don't even.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Probably captains who get to notoriety 13 get to go to the sky.
How does sunless skies properly fit into fallen London without a retcon, out of curiosity. Definitely the theme is on point and it just oozes fail better. Do we know how captains are getting to the sky? I mean, I know that it's there and the winged things can go, but not how it fits in for a captain to explore it.
From what I've read about sunless skies, it takes place I guess 'after' fallen london. Like, from what I recall London itself is also in the high wilderness, having fled the neath for reasons. So it makes sense for captains to be up there because everyone is up there.
Sunless Skies Kickstarter backers got early access today, and I am one. Early impressions:
The game is very pretty. The illusion of depth works very well in motion.
Combat is okay. It's very fluid while still being slow-paced, but I just can't get the hang of WASD in general. Need to investigate playing it with a controller, which is supported by the game.
The writing seems on par with Sunless Sea so far. Haven't really gotten into the meat of any of the ports yet, but I already saw some evolution in the story from a multiple visits. It also feels more interactive in terms of what systems throw up stories as well. Passengers, cargo, and other seemingly straight-forward interactions in Sunless Sea are more likely to turn into quests or events of their own.
The game has already thrown me a few curveballs, including with its mechanics. It has the same way of forcing attention that Sunless Sea did, since something can spring out at you at any moment. The map so far feels more compact and confined than in Sunless Sea, which also means there's a lot less lonely sailing into the void and a lot more surprise and threat around every corner.
It may be even more unforgiving than Sunless Sea. I died early on after barely surviving wandering into a pirate den only to ding off a wreck and explode. That one sucked, because I lucked into finding a cheap item that would have brought me a big haul had I gotten back home. My second captain is now stuck on a far flung port with a bunch of senior citizens due to no money plus not enough supplies after chasing after the same opportunity.
You can opt to save like in a traditional game, but I'd recommend not to unless you can't stand the roguelike element. I got enough of a glimpse of the death and new captain mechanics to make me think there's something deep here that you'd have to hold off until after retirement to discover otherwise. There's something going on with the lineages, and there seems to be more writing around the inheritances.
I'm already thinking of playing this on my TV with a controller. The game is visually stunning, way moreso than Sunless Sea, and the sound design is great.
How does sunless skies properly fit into fallen London without a retcon, out of curiosity. Definitely the theme is on point and it just oozes fail better. Do we know how captains are getting to the sky? I mean, I know that it's there and the winged things can go, but not how it fits in for a captain to explore it.
According to some snippets in the early game, at some point London went north and colonialism ensued.
I backed Sunless Skies in the kickstarter but avoided it in Early Access like the plague. I played Seas in EA a bunch and then regretted not waiting for the real release, so this time I did. Played the backer early-access-to-the-real-deal last night.
To address the 'how does it fit', the other folks are correct: London has left the underworld for a realm amongst the stars. It's possible to start the game as a former Zee captain, though, so presumably it wasn't that long ago. I think the calendar in-game starts at 1905 but I have no recollection of what year it was in Seas.
It is really fucking hard. Most of my early deaths in Seas were due to going insane, running out of fuel, or running out of food. I think I died 5 or 6 times while playing last night and every single time it was because I ran out of hull points on my ship. There are a lot of enemies and a lot of obstacles to bounce your train off of. The train also does not handle like a boat. It drifts a good bit and there's a lot of acceleration-curve-based maneuver going on. You can dodge sideways - and you will need to dodge sideways.
The map is definitely much smaller and tighter. So far I like it quite a bit but I do find that I miss the 'relaxed but also a little bit nervous' periods of Seas where you're just skimming through black waters with an eye on your fuel/supplies/terror gauges.
I backed Sunless Skies in the kickstarter but avoided it in Early Access like the plague. I played Seas in EA a bunch and then regretted not waiting for the real release, so this time I did. Played the backer early-access-to-the-real-deal last night.
To address the 'how does it fit', the other folks are correct: London has left the underworld for a realm amongst the stars. It's possible to start the game as a former Zee captain, though, so presumably it wasn't that long ago. I think the calendar in-game starts at 1905 but I have no recollection of what year it was in Seas.
It is really fucking hard. Most of my early deaths in Seas were due to going insane, running out of fuel, or running out of food. I think I died 5 or 6 times while playing last night and every single time it was because I ran out of hull points on my ship. There are a lot of enemies and a lot of obstacles to bounce your train off of. The train also does not handle like a boat. It drifts a good bit and there's a lot of acceleration-curve-based maneuver going on. You can dodge sideways - and you will need to dodge sideways.
The map is definitely much smaller and tighter. So far I like it quite a bit but I do find that I miss the 'relaxed but also a little bit nervous' periods of Seas where you're just skimming through black waters with an eye on your fuel/supplies/terror gauges.
General navigation is the biggest change I've noticed. There's so much solid matter restricting passages instead of open waters. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the heck to get to a place I need to try to find instead of just being able to set a direction and wait to see what I find.
I've only died once so far but I've come close to dying a whole lot more due to hull damage.
Finally had a captain survive long enough to upgrade his train. Went from the starter to the Bediviere Escort so I now have some more breathing room on hull points (I think I've had 3 or 4 previous captains die from hull damage including one where I and my target killed each other with our final salvos) at the expense of being a bigger target.
My weapons still kind of suck though. I'm using the starter cannon and the tier 1 spread gun since I don't have the mirrors for a better long range gun. I'm not sure if I want to try one of the faster firing but lower damage guns as I'm not impressed watching Stovepipe ships use them but I might get better use out of them and I do have decent Veils to meet the stat reqs.
Still have been completely unable to find Lustrum on my map. Every time I get to where I think it should be near I've previously been too low on hull points to want to venture into Curator or other tougher than basic space orca territory or too high on terror to want to keep going.
Also starting to rethink my stat priorities. I started out focusing on Veils since that worked for me in Sea and I tend to play rogueish bastards in games with a secondary focus in Irons before switching the two when I had some deaths from combat but so often do enemy ships created from searching wreckage spawn in right next to you that I don't know if Veils is going to be worth it compared to something else.
firewaterwordSatchitanandaPais Vasco to San FranciscoRegistered Userregular
How does the game speed feel in Skies? I absolutely adored Sunless Seas, but found it nearly unplayable without upping the speed of the game with a mod (which I think was either 1.5x or 2x). Didn't make it easier, since everything drained faster, just made it chew up less of my time.
How does the game speed feel in Skies? I absolutely adored Sunless Seas, but found it nearly unplayable without upping the speed of the game with a mod (which I think was either 1.5x or 2x). Didn't make it easier, since everything drained faster, just made it chew up less of my time.
It's hard to make a direct comparison between the two just because navigation feels different.
There are no engine upgrades so I suspect everything moves at the same speed, just with different fuel economies and if so that means things were balanced around one speed instead of hitting you with sluggish movement at the start.
So far there's just a lot more to pay attention to which makes things feel faster even if they aren't objectively so.
In Sea, you had big open spaces with nothing in them except for enemies and an occasional random event. In Skies, your movement is less open so you have to actively steer and figuring out a route to take is a puzzle in and of itself. Along the way you can encounter visible debris to scavenge, homesteads opening up for visitors, resources to mine/butcher/assay, and fights between trains or monsters. The latter might involve a hostile train and a monster that turn things into a three way fight, a neutral/friendly train against a hostile force so you try to team up, or two trains not hostile to you but hostile to each other so you still need to dodge cannon fire trying to pass on by. A lot more happens on trips and you'll notice most of the deaths we've mentioned so far have been combat related. I've yet to actually run out of fuel or supplies but things feel more tense in space than they did in Sea.
You also can take longer trips from the outset as you don't pay through the nose for restocking on supplies and fuel at ports away from home base so that's a good chunk of regular return trips now gone.
Albion is a lot more open than the Reach, there's not much preventing you from going in a straight line from point A to B. I think I prefer the twisting passageways of the Reach through the writing is still top notch no matter where I go. I found Perdurance to be the right mix of interesting, plausible and utterly horrifying.
Albion is a lot more open than the Reach, there's not much preventing you from going in a straight line from point A to B. I think I prefer the twisting passageways of the Reach through the writing is still top notch no matter where I go. I found Perdurance to be the right mix of interesting, plausible and utterly horrifying.
I like the more involved navigation in the Reach but it also means there are corners I struggle to find a reason to bother visiting if they're blocked off from my normal routes and have no ports.
Albion is a lot more open than the Reach, there's not much preventing you from going in a straight line from point A to B. I think I prefer the twisting passageways of the Reach through the writing is still top notch no matter where I go. I found Perdurance to be the right mix of interesting, plausible and utterly horrifying.
In early access the reach was basically completely open and 2x as large
There was just a lot of time spent going back and forth between places due to the sheer amount of physical distance in between and I'm glad they pared it down
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
by the way, the latest exceptional story is really good
it's a tale of cricket, espionage, cricket espionage, and espionage cricket
I've only played Sunless Skies for a little bit so far, but I'm really digging the level-up system. You're not just putting some points into some stats, you're choosing what your characters past was like. The stat-boost is almost incidental.
So I've decided to roleplay my level-ups. Comrade Judith started out as a Revolutionary who spread the ideals of the revolution through art and I intend to use levelling up to flesh out that character more.
Am I min-maxing? Am I making a rounded character? I don't know. I don't care. I'm not looking at the stats. I'm telling the story of Comrade Judith.
Which, hopefully, won't end in too premature a death.
I've only played Sunless Skies for a little bit so far, but I'm really digging the level-up system. You're not just putting some points into some stats, you're choosing what your characters past was like. The stat-boost is almost incidental.
So I've decided to roleplay my level-ups. Comrade Judith started out as a Revolutionary who spread the ideals of the revolution through art and I intend to use levelling up to flesh out that character more.
Am I min-maxing? Am I making a rounded character? I don't know. I don't care. I'm not looking at the stats. I'm telling the story of Comrade Judith.
Which, hopefully, won't end in too premature a death.
I ran into an event in the reach where a background level up story I had chosen was an unlock key for a story choice.
I just about spat out my coffee I was so shocked and delighted.
I think I found an economy bug because I keep finding trade bounties where the thing the port is requesting is the same thing they're selling at a discount? Pretty nice to pick up 5 of the wood thing for 500 and then immediately sell it back for 1500.
Is there a difficulty progression to the post-Reach regions in Sunkess Skies? Because I’m just about ready to head to Albion and the game has started handing me Blue Kingdom quests. Am I good to pick between these places or is one actually a death trap?
Ended up securing enough funds for a Moloch liner from the Reach by running bazaar requests while I tried to map out as much of the region as I could. I wasn't exactly planning on this but a few contracts were extremely lucrative such as a request for 7 Bronzewood units so I decided to just finish the process.
Only just got to Albion and London after that. No guarantee I'll stick with this train long term but it seems to offer a good balance between combat durability and utility. Plus it's very shiny.
The Incognito Princess isn't actually very good at being an incognito princess, is she?
Also, I think she might cause a lot more trouble on the locomotive than the actual devil who's also aboard.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Slight bug that seems to be a known issue: some larger monitors/resolutions cause text popups and important things (like levelup card choices) to be pushed off screen. Setting resolution down to 1920x1080 appears to fix this temporarily but is otherwise annoying.
But dear holy god is this much harder than I remember. Combat seems decent enough at dodging to be interesting though, until I ran into a:
At a bronzewood kiosk the superintendent examines your papers minutely, sticks them on a spike, then signs and stamps a small booklet for you: your new transit permit. "Union Jack blue," he says of its cover, as if it were something to be proud of.
Geez. Sunless Skies getting all political up in here. I approve.
Woo upgraded to the first 'cargo' ship for 3500. Then saw two very lucrative trade bounties pop up that I can't afford to supply right now. Time to quickly turn in Port reports! I've also now gotten like eight officers? Really happy that everyone's story is easier to follow in the journal that they were in seas.
So many things I want to use...in Auxiliary slots that share a slot as Cargo Holds
A lot more options to tweak your ship open up depending on what sources you have access to and your stats.
Right now I have the butcher tool that has some cargo slots and a mining tool that has some cargo slots in the auxiliary slots of my ship and one bridge slot is a cargo increase.
Posts
From what I've read about sunless skies, it takes place I guess 'after' fallen london. Like, from what I recall London itself is also in the high wilderness, having fled the neath for reasons. So it makes sense for captains to be up there because everyone is up there.
The game is very pretty. The illusion of depth works very well in motion.
Combat is okay. It's very fluid while still being slow-paced, but I just can't get the hang of WASD in general. Need to investigate playing it with a controller, which is supported by the game.
The writing seems on par with Sunless Sea so far. Haven't really gotten into the meat of any of the ports yet, but I already saw some evolution in the story from a multiple visits. It also feels more interactive in terms of what systems throw up stories as well. Passengers, cargo, and other seemingly straight-forward interactions in Sunless Sea are more likely to turn into quests or events of their own.
The game has already thrown me a few curveballs, including with its mechanics. It has the same way of forcing attention that Sunless Sea did, since something can spring out at you at any moment. The map so far feels more compact and confined than in Sunless Sea, which also means there's a lot less lonely sailing into the void and a lot more surprise and threat around every corner.
It may be even more unforgiving than Sunless Sea. I died early on after barely surviving wandering into a pirate den only to ding off a wreck and explode. That one sucked, because I lucked into finding a cheap item that would have brought me a big haul had I gotten back home. My second captain is now stuck on a far flung port with a bunch of senior citizens due to no money plus not enough supplies after chasing after the same opportunity.
You can opt to save like in a traditional game, but I'd recommend not to unless you can't stand the roguelike element. I got enough of a glimpse of the death and new captain mechanics to make me think there's something deep here that you'd have to hold off until after retirement to discover otherwise. There's something going on with the lineages, and there seems to be more writing around the inheritances.
I'm already thinking of playing this on my TV with a controller. The game is visually stunning, way moreso than Sunless Sea, and the sound design is great.
According to some snippets in the early game, at some point London went north and colonialism ensued.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
To address the 'how does it fit', the other folks are correct: London has left the underworld for a realm amongst the stars. It's possible to start the game as a former Zee captain, though, so presumably it wasn't that long ago. I think the calendar in-game starts at 1905 but I have no recollection of what year it was in Seas.
It is really fucking hard. Most of my early deaths in Seas were due to going insane, running out of fuel, or running out of food. I think I died 5 or 6 times while playing last night and every single time it was because I ran out of hull points on my ship. There are a lot of enemies and a lot of obstacles to bounce your train off of. The train also does not handle like a boat. It drifts a good bit and there's a lot of acceleration-curve-based maneuver going on. You can dodge sideways - and you will need to dodge sideways.
The map is definitely much smaller and tighter. So far I like it quite a bit but I do find that I miss the 'relaxed but also a little bit nervous' periods of Seas where you're just skimming through black waters with an eye on your fuel/supplies/terror gauges.
General navigation is the biggest change I've noticed. There's so much solid matter restricting passages instead of open waters. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the heck to get to a place I need to try to find instead of just being able to set a direction and wait to see what I find.
I've only died once so far but I've come close to dying a whole lot more due to hull damage.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
gotta say, the new UI looks pretty great and i'm looking forward to the new weapons
My weapons still kind of suck though. I'm using the starter cannon and the tier 1 spread gun since I don't have the mirrors for a better long range gun. I'm not sure if I want to try one of the faster firing but lower damage guns as I'm not impressed watching Stovepipe ships use them but I might get better use out of them and I do have decent Veils to meet the stat reqs.
Still have been completely unable to find Lustrum on my map. Every time I get to where I think it should be near I've previously been too low on hull points to want to venture into Curator or other tougher than basic space orca territory or too high on terror to want to keep going.
Also starting to rethink my stat priorities. I started out focusing on Veils since that worked for me in Sea and I tend to play rogueish bastards in games with a secondary focus in Irons before switching the two when I had some deaths from combat but so often do enemy ships created from searching wreckage spawn in right next to you that I don't know if Veils is going to be worth it compared to something else.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
It's hard to make a direct comparison between the two just because navigation feels different.
There are no engine upgrades so I suspect everything moves at the same speed, just with different fuel economies and if so that means things were balanced around one speed instead of hitting you with sluggish movement at the start.
So far there's just a lot more to pay attention to which makes things feel faster even if they aren't objectively so.
In Sea, you had big open spaces with nothing in them except for enemies and an occasional random event. In Skies, your movement is less open so you have to actively steer and figuring out a route to take is a puzzle in and of itself. Along the way you can encounter visible debris to scavenge, homesteads opening up for visitors, resources to mine/butcher/assay, and fights between trains or monsters. The latter might involve a hostile train and a monster that turn things into a three way fight, a neutral/friendly train against a hostile force so you try to team up, or two trains not hostile to you but hostile to each other so you still need to dodge cannon fire trying to pass on by. A lot more happens on trips and you'll notice most of the deaths we've mentioned so far have been combat related. I've yet to actually run out of fuel or supplies but things feel more tense in space than they did in Sea.
You also can take longer trips from the outset as you don't pay through the nose for restocking on supplies and fuel at ports away from home base so that's a good chunk of regular return trips now gone.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
it made doing some of the delivery or fetch quests feel like a huge chore
also the new intro is very nice
I like the more involved navigation in the Reach but it also means there are corners I struggle to find a reason to bother visiting if they're blocked off from my normal routes and have no ports.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
In early access the reach was basically completely open and 2x as large
There was just a lot of time spent going back and forth between places due to the sheer amount of physical distance in between and I'm glad they pared it down
it's a tale of cricket, espionage, cricket espionage, and espionage cricket
not necessarily in that order
So I've decided to roleplay my level-ups. Comrade Judith started out as a Revolutionary who spread the ideals of the revolution through art and I intend to use levelling up to flesh out that character more.
Am I min-maxing? Am I making a rounded character? I don't know. I don't care. I'm not looking at the stats. I'm telling the story of Comrade Judith.
Which, hopefully, won't end in too premature a death.
I ran into an event in the reach where a background level up story I had chosen was an unlock key for a story choice.
I just about spat out my coffee I was so shocked and delighted.
Only just got to Albion and London after that. No guarantee I'll stick with this train long term but it seems to offer a good balance between combat durability and utility. Plus it's very shiny.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Also, I think she might cause a lot more trouble on the locomotive than the actual devil who's also aboard.
But dear holy god is this much harder than I remember. Combat seems decent enough at dodging to be interesting though, until I ran into a:
at which point I needed to reevaluate my tactics.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
She should be trouble if they didn’t change her character completely.
Geez. Sunless Skies getting all political up in here. I approve.
At least I have a backup for that position.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
It's a specific tool that you might only be able to get once you get to London in Albion
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I just supplied a 9 item quest and a 5 item quest on the same trip though, omg so nice
A lot more options to tweak your ship open up depending on what sources you have access to and your stats.
Right now I have the butcher tool that has some cargo slots and a mining tool that has some cargo slots in the auxiliary slots of my ship and one bridge slot is a cargo increase.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Horrifying . . . ly good scones.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772