I really wanted to love No Man's Sky, but even though I picked it up long after it was supposed to have been "fixed," it still felt centered around the most egregious form of "punch trees to make sticks to craft logs to build boards to construct a wall" in any game I think I've ever played, and I couldn't take it after a little while. I keep meaning to go back to see if there's just a hump that I need to get over before it becomes fun, but I have a bunch of other games that are already fun.
It took a 400 mile round trip, but I managed to get my hands on a HOTAS from a brick-and-mortar store, since literally everywhere else is sold the hell out.
On that note, if anyone is in the Atlanta area and needs a HOTAS, the Microcenters in Duluth and Marietta have... actually, dozens of them. If I were less scrupulous, I could make a mint from scalping them.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It took a 400 mile round trip, but I managed to get my hands on a HOTAS from a brick-and-mortar store, since literally everywhere else is sold the hell out.
On that note, if anyone is in the Atlanta area and needs a HOTAS, the Microcenters in Duluth and Marietta have... actually, dozens of them. If I were less scrupulous, I could make a mint from scalping them.
No shit. That's only an hour from me, if I ever wanted to replace my X-56 (I don't). Still I am curious--what models did they have in stock?
It took a 400 mile round trip, but I managed to get my hands on a HOTAS from a brick-and-mortar store, since literally everywhere else is sold the hell out.
On that note, if anyone is in the Atlanta area and needs a HOTAS, the Microcenters in Duluth and Marietta have... actually, dozens of them. If I were less scrupulous, I could make a mint from scalping them.
No shit. That's only an hour from me, if I ever wanted to replace my X-56 (I don't). Still I am curious--what models did they have in stock?
On the shelf, the Duluth store had 6 regular X52s, 5 Pros, and no shit like 40 of the Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Yep, and Galnet as well. They're talking about a six month long narrative leading into Odyssey, with more sketched out beyond that. I wouldn't quite call it exciting times, but it's certainly better than nothing.
I tried practicing piloting in Elite with flight assist off and... whoof, I dunno if I have the coordination for it. I can almost get turning and strafing down, but as soon as I try throwing my forward thrusters into the mix, everything goes wonky.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
FA off requires many, many hours of practice to get anywhere near competent. I reckon I could take off and land with FA off with enough practice, but combat? No chance. My brain would explode.
It's also apparently much easier to do on a not-HOTAS, from what I'm reading.
Yes, KBAM with relative mouse on.
I'm sticking to my happy little pvp-less world for Elite. Which means combat requires very few things for me to keep in mind: 1) mind your heat, 2) where's my heat-sink launch key, 3) fly in reverse, and 4) how much ammo do I have left in my plasma-accelerator.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
So Squadrons launched tonight at midnight on the PS4, and I had pre-downloaded it and was ready to launch as soon as the clock struck 12. My PSVR setup isn't ideal for flight sims, I'm using a hotas flight stick I haven't touched since Ace Combat 7 first launched and I am going to have to relearn all the keys on that stick. But flying the first mission certainly felt good. I will have to remap the yaw and roll though. They put them backwards, at least in my mind. Otherwise good stuff.
It's also apparently much easier to do on a not-HOTAS, from what I'm reading.
Yes, KBAM with relative mouse on.
I'm sticking to my happy little pvp-less world for Elite. Which means combat requires very few things for me to keep in mind: 1) mind your heat, 2) where's my heat-sink launch key, 3) fly in reverse, and 4) how much ammo do I have left in my plasma-accelerator.
For pve, the answer is plasma slugs and 'how big is my fuel tank'
So, I guess Starpoint Gemini 3/ hit 1.0 recently and came out of early access. Annoying player character and janky voice acting aside, it's very much a modern take on Freelancer. I haven't met anyone who has an arrangement with the people who own the place, yet, but I'm only a couple of hours in!
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I rather enjoyed Starpoint Gemini Warlords, so I was curious about SG3.
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IanatorGaze upon my works, ye mightyand facepalm.Registered Userregular
Dunno if 2D games are talked about much here but I just went back to EV Nova for the first time in a while and boy does it still got it
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg) Backlog Challenge List
Ok, finally made it to Jaques station. Got to elite in exploration and decided to upgrade to a Phantom. Getting al the modules how I want them and with no engineering, I'm at about 35 LY jump range. Now to take the long way back to the bubble to check out what I have to do to get some range increases.
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IanatorGaze upon my works, ye mightyand facepalm.Registered Userregular
Ok, finally made it to Jaques station. Got to elite in exploration and decided to upgrade to a Phantom. Getting al the modules how I want them and with no engineering, I'm at about 35 LY jump range. Now to take the long way back to the bubble to check out what I have to do to get some range increases.
In addition to engineering your FSD for jump range, you can scavenge Guardian Structures for the materials to unlock Guardian FSD Boosters. Be warned, it'll test your patience with SRVs.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg) Backlog Challenge List
Ok, finally made it to Jaques station. Got to elite in exploration and decided to upgrade to a Phantom. Getting al the modules how I want them and with no engineering, I'm at about 35 LY jump range. Now to take the long way back to the bubble to check out what I have to do to get some range increases.
In addition to engineering your FSD for jump range, you can scavenge Guardian Structures for the materials to unlock Guardian FSD Boosters. Be warned, it'll test your patience with SRVs.
cheesing the guardian landing areas by dropping your ship very close (have to get it juuuust right to land usefully near) so that your top mounted point defense turret takes care of the big missiles saves a lot of hair.
So, I guess Starpoint Gemini 3/ hit 1.0 recently and came out of early access. Annoying player character and janky voice acting aside, it's very much a modern take on Freelancer. I haven't met anyone who has an arrangement with the people who own the place, yet, but I'm only a couple of hours in!
People still playing this? I've been tempted to pick this up.
Main one is probably crew training time reductions. It takes a long time to acquire crew. And it’s worse if you’re not smart about it*.
After that is probably officer training time reductions. It takes a long time for your pilot you hire to not suck and like... be able to do things. And certain activities are a lot worse at it than others.
*specifically the crew generation rate is static per station. So if you make a station that does two things it effectively has half the crew generation.
The only other thing is a word of advice.
Mine in a sector if you want to help a faction. The game runs on base resources but credits are free for the AI.
Buy ships from a faction if you want them to be weaker. Ship production time isn’t free. And so if you order ships you take their base resources and use it for yourself.
Ok, finally made it to Jaques station. Got to elite in exploration and decided to upgrade to a Phantom. Getting al the modules how I want them and with no engineering, I'm at about 35 LY jump range. Now to take the long way back to the bubble to check out what I have to do to get some range increases.
In addition to engineering your FSD for jump range, you can scavenge Guardian Structures for the materials to unlock Guardian FSD Boosters. Be warned, it'll test your patience with SRVs.
cheesing the guardian landing areas by dropping your ship very close (have to get it juuuust right to land usefully near) so that your top mounted point defense turret takes care of the big missiles saves a lot of hair.
What it doesn’t prevent, I discovered recently, is Guardian materials getting stuck on building geometry when you blast them loose.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Space Sim thread! I'd forgotten about you!
I've been playing some Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, and if you've been waiting for a worthy successor to Wing Commander: Privateer, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is it!
It's a western-themed space sim with vaguely WW2-inspired ships where you're building up from a garbage scow to a deathbringer or space semi as you advance the plot.
In contrast to Wing Commander series, everything is relationship-driven. The game starts with you on the hunt for the man that killed your husband, which is such a huge and welcome change from universe-ending threats.
To build up your ship requires money, and lots of it. You can haul cargo, salvage cargo from points of interest, hunt bounties, run missions, or mine. There are also a Merchant's Guild and a Mercenary Guild which require money to enter that will provide additional missions with higher payouts (just like Privateer!).
You explore the 40 systems connected via warp points (just like Privateer!) populated with 70-odd stations you can visit (just like Privateer!). In those stations you can go to the bar, which is where you'll advance plotlines, get intel on shipping convoys (if you're going pirate) or bounties (if you're hunting them), or play any one of half a dozen minigames like pool, dice poker, or Asteroids StarVenger. Stations are also where you can buy new ships, repair or replace components on your existing one, purchase cargo, take missions.
The flight model is very Wing Commander 1. Speeds aren't too fast, accelerations are low (though nowhere close to IWar low), and the roll/pitch/yaw accelerations are equal in all directions, unlike some of the later games. Guns have vastly differing speeds, which means you'll need to lead your target differently depending on which kind of guns you have equipped, and can complicate the firing solution for high-deflection shots. Which is great! It's just like Privateer! Missiles are your usual dumbfires, heatseekers, image recognition, and swarm image recognition missiles, plus another missile type that pops up later on following one of the plot threads, but which isn't actually all that useful. Some ships have turrets are useful for punishing hostiles that get too close, but aren't effective enough kill the way they would on a Wing Commander 2 Broadsword. You can adjust your energy to guns, shields, or engines, as well as dump a reserve of energy into one of the above.
There's a difficulty adjustment which impacts how easy it is to hit what you're aiming at. At the most difficult level, there's no aim assist (guns will automatically fire at the ideal aim point within a radius around the reticule) and no flight assist (automatically track a target and match speeds, albeit with a slower maximum yaw rate then if you did it yourself). Decreasing the difficulty level turns on flight assist, then aim assist and enables the third person view. If you want the Privateer experience, go with Old School difficulty. Normal/Generous works well with a mouse if you don't feel like breaking out a flightstick.
There are a variety of ship models that cover fighting, hauling, and a reasonable middle-ground between the two. You get additional ship models that IMO are better than the base ones if you follow a commercial on the radio about owning your own station.
Just like Privateer, there are different model radars that give you differing abilities depending on how much you're willing to spend. The three variables are: lock-on, color-coding of hostiles, and multiple aim indicators (for when you have guns with different projectile speeds). If you start with the cheap start, you get a basic radar that can't tell friend from foe, won't lock on, etc. Easier starts will give you the second-best radar in the game, so everything starts off color coded and you have lockon available. You'll have to buy a jump drive to get out of the starting system, as well as purchase upgraded shields, generators, and cargo expansions. A word of warning: the 5 MJ/s repair robot is a trap. You're better off using that extra power to avoid damage rather than slowly trying to repair it afterward.
Let's talk about the radio for a second! You can either turn the radio off and listen to the ambient music like a typical space sim, or listen to the radio, which has a variety of stations and some fun ads on it. I personally ended up doing both; the default radio station fits the aesthetic they're pushing and I appreciate that.
There's a few irritations:
* Combat difficulty can vary widely and you don't necessarily have the ability to run away easily early on, and you often won't realize you're outgunned until you're space dust in the early and midgame
* The design of the universe and the ship designs means it doesn't quite have the feeling of there being different sectors the way you could in Privateer when you approached unexplored territory, Kilrathi territory, etc.
* It's easy to outwit contraband scans without even using the smuggler's hold, and the way you do it is pretty silly!
* The HUD damage indicators aren't very useful. While you're taking hits, you can't see your shield level, and the shield levels are just shades of the same color instead of a more obvious red/orange/green type indicator with levels on top. Armor is similar.
* Armor still allows bleed-through damage instead of acting as another damage layer before your systems get fucked up. I'm not convinced this makes the game better, though it does mean you pay for it (literally) when you fuck up enough that they're hitting your armor.
* Even with a shielded jump drive, the autopilot won't plot you through damaged jump points, so if you're mindlessly following a long jump chain via autopilot, it will take you out of your way since you need to go the long way around
* The rarest weapons in the game are strictly inferior to the stock weapons against the enemies you actually fight. Why would you do that?
A few other notes:
* Unless you find a fence, you can't get rid of black market goods if you aren't a pirate, so explore to find Black Market stations!
* Missiles cost money to replace, so don't just blindly fire heat seekers whenever you get a lock early on. On the other hand, missiles are cheaper than repairs so you'll have to find a good balance
* I like keeping most weapons at the same velocity since it simplifies the firing solution
* There are optimal weapons in terms of DPS/energy and effective DPS; they are not at all equivalent.
TL;DR: if you enjoyed Privateer, you should buy Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.
I had a good time with regular Rebel Galaxy, I'm waiting a few years or so for Outlaw to go on sale.
Keep in mind that they are very different games, the only thing that ties them together is the universe they are set in (and Outlaw takes place prior to the OG Rebel Galaxy).
X4 Question: How well do Turrets works now in 3.0? I vaguely remember them being horrible when the game was first released.
Not sure about 4.0 but in 3.0 it Depends on the turret and what it’s there for. In general it’s better to go for dmg rather than tracking because turning enemies will put turn your tracking regardless of what you’re doing. That is, until you have enough logistical capacity to support shooting a lot of homing missiles out of missile turrets
there's something about the movement of everspace 2 that I don't really enjoy - part of it is just a bit of motion sick-inducing, but outside of that it feels like the lateral movement is too fast compared to your forward momentum - I'm not sure if there is something I can try to adjust to dig into it more, but the ship is basically just a cursor your floating around the screen and not actually a ship
X4 Question: How well do Turrets works now in 3.0? I vaguely remember them being horrible when the game was first released.
Not sure about 4.0 but in 3.0 it Depends on the turret and what it’s there for. In general it’s better to go for dmg rather than tracking because turning enemies will put turn your tracking regardless of what you’re doing. That is, until you have enough logistical capacity to support shooting a lot of homing missiles out of missile turrets
Whoops, 4.0 is in beta still. Looks like I'm still on 3.x branch.
@Goumindong any chance you remember how to set up autotraders? I have a kitted out mercury with a 3 star pilot. I can set his default behavior to auto trade, but everything I'm finding online says I should be able to select that ship, right click anywhere in a sector, and select something like "auto trade" or "auto trade (galaxy)". No such luck for me...not sure what I'm missing.
I think, but am not sure that you have to set the default behavior and then set parameters.
Set a default order for autotrade and there should be info that pops up for which goods you want them to trade and which sector to trade in, and the range.
In general it’s far better to trade specific goods locally than set global auto trade orders. The economy is stable enough that you’re unlikely to have issues and the open ended auto trade algorithms can have some issues which I will detail after I have a shower
Remember to set up satellites at stations that buy/sell the goods in range so your trader can get up to date trade info
The open ended trade algos have a lot of issues and are generally not worth it. In fact traders in general are, IMO, not worth it. Miners are worth it and stations are worth it. The open ended trade algos will get caught with dead cargo in their hull. They need satellites everywhere in order to get updated price information and without them they’re dumber sector traders. They commonly fly through dangerous space unless you black list sectors and if you do they will not take a black listed sector into account for a trade distance. So they will fly around the highway making a c in order to make a “fast” trade. Additionally the larger traders cannot use the highway but do utilize the highway in their travel time calcs, making them fly huge distances at low speed.
On top of these issues traders aren’t good because the general economy runs pretty well at getting goods where they need to go. It’s worth taking some time to look at how X4 is constructed. In order to reduce calculations and to make things more smooth the game abstracts and removes a lot of information that might seem essential. Things like “how much money does a trader have”. This only matters to you. Every other trader has infinite money. This is good because otherwise it’s really easy for bankruptcy to bring the economy to a halt. It’s not worth simulating a legal system to deal with this or to have a scaling price level for when the amount of money is not sufficient to deal with the economic activity. Or to try and manage a central money supply. Things necessary when every actor has money.
Instead every actor tries to maximize profit... but the profits go away as soon as they’re realized. Stations have set price scales they pay and sell for based on the quantity of goods they have available and this does not go away. As a result you can pay more in order to get goods faster and sell for cheaper to move them faster. But as long as there are goods... the AI will move them.
The facsimile works pretty well but it means that some aspects of the game work “too well”. Trading is one of those. While AI traders attempt to make a profit they don’t have to worry about money and so all trades get filled eventually. And the good trades get filled first. And it’s far easier for the AI to find them because they have fewer constraints than you do.
Additionally because of that money thing? So long as there are enough base supplies the economy will supply plenty of traders.
The hiccups in the economy are almost always material supply. If not enough resources are mined they cannot trickle up to be ships. If there are too few base stations for a type of produce... they cannot trickle up to be ships.
Ships can only be produced as fast as base materials exist to become them and as fast as production slots are available.
So the most profitable sectors are
1) ships
2) ships
3) specific components in the supply line that are in low supply
4) mining. (Nvidium*)
5) mining (everything else)
And then, and only then, trading. And you would be far better off setting a ship of yours to trade for your station than to have them trade as a sector trader.
As an aside, can you guess why ships is number 1 and listed twice?
remember how the AI has no money until it needs it? It creates money out of thin air in order to pay for goods and destroys money into the void as it sells them... well ships are not goods that are sold, and so production orders will not be diminished as a result of high prices. Production orders come in as fast as you have base materials to produce them so you can slam the profit margin in order to make that dosh
*nvidium mining is one of the only set demands in the game. As of 3.0 it doesn’t do anything but is still in continual demand at trade stations. It’s a very good way to make early cash but later on you should ignore it because having your miners mind nvidium instead of base resources will reduce overall production.
remember how the AI has no money until it needs it? It creates money out of thin air in order to pay for goods and destroys money into the void as it sells them... well ships are not goods that are sold, and so production orders will not be diminished as a result of high prices. Production orders come in as fast as you have base materials to produce them so you can slam the profit margin in order to make that dosh
I don't understand what you are doing to make money off of building ships. Are you building a ship at a player built station, then selling it to a ship dealer?
Interesting, that's good info. I remember in X3 relying on Galaxy traders for money. They required a bit of babysitting but it wasn't awful. I never really got into building stations and all of that. I guess I should finally learn
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
remember how the AI has no money until it needs it? It creates money out of thin air in order to pay for goods and destroys money into the void as it sells them... well ships are not goods that are sold, and so production orders will not be diminished as a result of high prices. Production orders come in as fast as you have base materials to produce them so you can slam the profit margin in order to make that dosh
I don't understand what you are doing to make money off of building ships. Are you building a ship at a player built station, then selling it to a ship dealer?
If you own a shipyard, the AI will create orders for building ships just like you can at theirs. As long as you have the materials available, your shipyard will automatically create them when the AI pays for them.
Seeing all of the success and heaping praise that has been dumped on Everspace 2 got me to play Everspace 1 for the first time a couple weeks ago.
I have been hooked ever since.
Funny story: I own Everspace 1. Apparently I have owned it for a really long time. But as sometimes happens with Steam games, I have no memory of buying it. It has just been wallowing in an unplayed state in my Steam library for however long.
But I changed that a couple weeks ago. And boy oh boy. Everspace 1 is such a treat.
Out of the 4 ships, so far the first one has clicked the most with me, as I feel it is the most balanced during combat and the general combo of Lasers to deplete shields and then Ballistics to deplete hull seems like a solid strategy. I saved up and bought the scout and the gunship, but neither of them really clicked with me. Especially not the gunship. I feel that one has way too much reliance on nanobots, which sometimes just don't drop.
Anyway, I'm having a blast with it and the rogue-lite addictiveness of "just one more run" has definitely set in. I can play this game for hours.
I'm also very terrible at it. Best I've done is maybe the 4th quadrant(?). I get to a point where I just get overwhelmed in combat and my shields and hull just don't last long enough in the dogfights.
remember how the AI has no money until it needs it? It creates money out of thin air in order to pay for goods and destroys money into the void as it sells them... well ships are not goods that are sold, and so production orders will not be diminished as a result of high prices. Production orders come in as fast as you have base materials to produce them so you can slam the profit margin in order to make that dosh
I don't understand what you are doing to make money off of building ships. Are you building a ship at a player built station, then selling it to a ship dealer?
If you own a shipyard, the AI will create orders for building ships just like you can at theirs. As long as you have the materials available, your shipyard will automatically create them when the AI pays for them.
And they pay top dollar
If you make it for yourself and then sell it to the AI they pay minimum dollar
Posts
On that note, if anyone is in the Atlanta area and needs a HOTAS, the Microcenters in Duluth and Marietta have... actually, dozens of them. If I were less scrupulous, I could make a mint from scalping them.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
No shit. That's only an hour from me, if I ever wanted to replace my X-56 (I don't). Still I am curious--what models did they have in stock?
On the shelf, the Duluth store had 6 regular X52s, 5 Pros, and no shit like 40 of the Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Yes, KBAM with relative mouse on.
I'm sticking to my happy little pvp-less world for Elite. Which means combat requires very few things for me to keep in mind: 1) mind your heat, 2) where's my heat-sink launch key, 3) fly in reverse, and 4) how much ammo do I have left in my plasma-accelerator.
For pve, the answer is plasma slugs and 'how big is my fuel tank'
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
In addition to engineering your FSD for jump range, you can scavenge Guardian Structures for the materials to unlock Guardian FSD Boosters. Be warned, it'll test your patience with SRVs.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
cheesing the guardian landing areas by dropping your ship very close (have to get it juuuust right to land usefully near) so that your top mounted point defense turret takes care of the big missiles saves a lot of hair.
People still playing this? I've been tempted to pick this up.
After that is probably officer training time reductions. It takes a long time for your pilot you hire to not suck and like... be able to do things. And certain activities are a lot worse at it than others.
*specifically the crew generation rate is static per station. So if you make a station that does two things it effectively has half the crew generation.
The only other thing is a word of advice.
Mine in a sector if you want to help a faction. The game runs on base resources but credits are free for the AI.
Buy ships from a faction if you want them to be weaker. Ship production time isn’t free. And so if you order ships you take their base resources and use it for yourself.
What it doesn’t prevent, I discovered recently, is Guardian materials getting stuck on building geometry when you blast them loose.
I've been playing some Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, and if you've been waiting for a worthy successor to Wing Commander: Privateer, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is it!
It's a western-themed space sim with vaguely WW2-inspired ships where you're building up from a garbage scow to a deathbringer or space semi as you advance the plot.
In contrast to Wing Commander series, everything is relationship-driven. The game starts with you on the hunt for the man that killed your husband, which is such a huge and welcome change from universe-ending threats.
To build up your ship requires money, and lots of it. You can haul cargo, salvage cargo from points of interest, hunt bounties, run missions, or mine. There are also a Merchant's Guild and a Mercenary Guild which require money to enter that will provide additional missions with higher payouts (just like Privateer!).
You explore the 40 systems connected via warp points (just like Privateer!) populated with 70-odd stations you can visit (just like Privateer!). In those stations you can go to the bar, which is where you'll advance plotlines, get intel on shipping convoys (if you're going pirate) or bounties (if you're hunting them), or play any one of half a dozen minigames like pool, dice poker, or Asteroids StarVenger. Stations are also where you can buy new ships, repair or replace components on your existing one, purchase cargo, take missions.
The flight model is very Wing Commander 1. Speeds aren't too fast, accelerations are low (though nowhere close to IWar low), and the roll/pitch/yaw accelerations are equal in all directions, unlike some of the later games. Guns have vastly differing speeds, which means you'll need to lead your target differently depending on which kind of guns you have equipped, and can complicate the firing solution for high-deflection shots. Which is great! It's just like Privateer! Missiles are your usual dumbfires, heatseekers, image recognition, and swarm image recognition missiles, plus another missile type that pops up later on following one of the plot threads, but which isn't actually all that useful. Some ships have turrets are useful for punishing hostiles that get too close, but aren't effective enough kill the way they would on a Wing Commander 2 Broadsword. You can adjust your energy to guns, shields, or engines, as well as dump a reserve of energy into one of the above.
There's a difficulty adjustment which impacts how easy it is to hit what you're aiming at. At the most difficult level, there's no aim assist (guns will automatically fire at the ideal aim point within a radius around the reticule) and no flight assist (automatically track a target and match speeds, albeit with a slower maximum yaw rate then if you did it yourself). Decreasing the difficulty level turns on flight assist, then aim assist and enables the third person view. If you want the Privateer experience, go with Old School difficulty. Normal/Generous works well with a mouse if you don't feel like breaking out a flightstick.
There are a variety of ship models that cover fighting, hauling, and a reasonable middle-ground between the two. You get additional ship models that IMO are better than the base ones if you follow a commercial on the radio about owning your own station.
Just like Privateer, there are different model radars that give you differing abilities depending on how much you're willing to spend. The three variables are: lock-on, color-coding of hostiles, and multiple aim indicators (for when you have guns with different projectile speeds). If you start with the cheap start, you get a basic radar that can't tell friend from foe, won't lock on, etc. Easier starts will give you the second-best radar in the game, so everything starts off color coded and you have lockon available. You'll have to buy a jump drive to get out of the starting system, as well as purchase upgraded shields, generators, and cargo expansions. A word of warning: the 5 MJ/s repair robot is a trap. You're better off using that extra power to avoid damage rather than slowly trying to repair it afterward.
Let's talk about the radio for a second! You can either turn the radio off and listen to the ambient music like a typical space sim, or listen to the radio, which has a variety of stations and some fun ads on it. I personally ended up doing both; the default radio station fits the aesthetic they're pushing and I appreciate that.
There's a few irritations:
* Combat difficulty can vary widely and you don't necessarily have the ability to run away easily early on, and you often won't realize you're outgunned until you're space dust in the early and midgame
* The design of the universe and the ship designs means it doesn't quite have the feeling of there being different sectors the way you could in Privateer when you approached unexplored territory, Kilrathi territory, etc.
* It's easy to outwit contraband scans without even using the smuggler's hold, and the way you do it is pretty silly!
* The HUD damage indicators aren't very useful. While you're taking hits, you can't see your shield level, and the shield levels are just shades of the same color instead of a more obvious red/orange/green type indicator with levels on top. Armor is similar.
* Armor still allows bleed-through damage instead of acting as another damage layer before your systems get fucked up. I'm not convinced this makes the game better, though it does mean you pay for it (literally) when you fuck up enough that they're hitting your armor.
* Even with a shielded jump drive, the autopilot won't plot you through damaged jump points, so if you're mindlessly following a long jump chain via autopilot, it will take you out of your way since you need to go the long way around
* The rarest weapons in the game are strictly inferior to the stock weapons against the enemies you actually fight. Why would you do that?
A few other notes:
* Unless you find a fence, you can't get rid of black market goods if you aren't a pirate, so explore to find Black Market stations!
* Missiles cost money to replace, so don't just blindly fire heat seekers whenever you get a lock early on. On the other hand, missiles are cheaper than repairs so you'll have to find a good balance
* I like keeping most weapons at the same velocity since it simplifies the firing solution
* There are optimal weapons in terms of DPS/energy and effective DPS; they are not at all equivalent.
TL;DR: if you enjoyed Privateer, you should buy Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.
It was on the Steam Holiday sale so keep an eye out!
Keep in mind that they are very different games, the only thing that ties them together is the universe they are set in (and Outlaw takes place prior to the OG Rebel Galaxy).
Not sure about 4.0 but in 3.0 it Depends on the turret and what it’s there for. In general it’s better to go for dmg rather than tracking because turning enemies will put turn your tracking regardless of what you’re doing. That is, until you have enough logistical capacity to support shooting a lot of homing missiles out of missile turrets
It’s weird Outlaw should of been an instant hit with me, but it didn’t quite click.
I really enjoyed the first game though.
Everspace 2 was great though, and that’s even less of a traditional dogfighting space sim.
Whoops, 4.0 is in beta still. Looks like I'm still on 3.x branch.
@Goumindong any chance you remember how to set up autotraders? I have a kitted out mercury with a 3 star pilot. I can set his default behavior to auto trade, but everything I'm finding online says I should be able to select that ship, right click anywhere in a sector, and select something like "auto trade" or "auto trade (galaxy)". No such luck for me...not sure what I'm missing.
Set a default order for autotrade and there should be info that pops up for which goods you want them to trade and which sector to trade in, and the range.
In general it’s far better to trade specific goods locally than set global auto trade orders. The economy is stable enough that you’re unlikely to have issues and the open ended auto trade algorithms can have some issues which I will detail after I have a shower
Remember to set up satellites at stations that buy/sell the goods in range so your trader can get up to date trade info
On top of these issues traders aren’t good because the general economy runs pretty well at getting goods where they need to go. It’s worth taking some time to look at how X4 is constructed. In order to reduce calculations and to make things more smooth the game abstracts and removes a lot of information that might seem essential. Things like “how much money does a trader have”. This only matters to you. Every other trader has infinite money. This is good because otherwise it’s really easy for bankruptcy to bring the economy to a halt. It’s not worth simulating a legal system to deal with this or to have a scaling price level for when the amount of money is not sufficient to deal with the economic activity. Or to try and manage a central money supply. Things necessary when every actor has money.
Instead every actor tries to maximize profit... but the profits go away as soon as they’re realized. Stations have set price scales they pay and sell for based on the quantity of goods they have available and this does not go away. As a result you can pay more in order to get goods faster and sell for cheaper to move them faster. But as long as there are goods... the AI will move them.
The facsimile works pretty well but it means that some aspects of the game work “too well”. Trading is one of those. While AI traders attempt to make a profit they don’t have to worry about money and so all trades get filled eventually. And the good trades get filled first. And it’s far easier for the AI to find them because they have fewer constraints than you do.
Additionally because of that money thing? So long as there are enough base supplies the economy will supply plenty of traders.
The hiccups in the economy are almost always material supply. If not enough resources are mined they cannot trickle up to be ships. If there are too few base stations for a type of produce... they cannot trickle up to be ships.
Ships can only be produced as fast as base materials exist to become them and as fast as production slots are available.
So the most profitable sectors are
1) ships
2) ships
3) specific components in the supply line that are in low supply
4) mining. (Nvidium*)
5) mining (everything else)
And then, and only then, trading. And you would be far better off setting a ship of yours to trade for your station than to have them trade as a sector trader.
As an aside, can you guess why ships is number 1 and listed twice?
*nvidium mining is one of the only set demands in the game. As of 3.0 it doesn’t do anything but is still in continual demand at trade stations. It’s a very good way to make early cash but later on you should ignore it because having your miners mind nvidium instead of base resources will reduce overall production.
If you own a shipyard, the AI will create orders for building ships just like you can at theirs. As long as you have the materials available, your shipyard will automatically create them when the AI pays for them.
I have been hooked ever since.
Funny story: I own Everspace 1. Apparently I have owned it for a really long time. But as sometimes happens with Steam games, I have no memory of buying it. It has just been wallowing in an unplayed state in my Steam library for however long.
But I changed that a couple weeks ago. And boy oh boy. Everspace 1 is such a treat.
Out of the 4 ships, so far the first one has clicked the most with me, as I feel it is the most balanced during combat and the general combo of Lasers to deplete shields and then Ballistics to deplete hull seems like a solid strategy. I saved up and bought the scout and the gunship, but neither of them really clicked with me. Especially not the gunship. I feel that one has way too much reliance on nanobots, which sometimes just don't drop.
Anyway, I'm having a blast with it and the rogue-lite addictiveness of "just one more run" has definitely set in. I can play this game for hours.
I'm also very terrible at it. Best I've done is maybe the 4th quadrant(?). I get to a point where I just get overwhelmed in combat and my shields and hull just don't last long enough in the dogfights.
And they pay top dollar
If you make it for yourself and then sell it to the AI they pay minimum dollar