Finally logged a little time in Tides of Avarice, tried the new campaign start where you break out of jail and fall in with a pirate crew.
It's an interesting tutorial that wastes no time walking you through hacking stations, developing black market contacts, stealing blueprints, and boarding ships. The next mission, which I was not able to complete in the stock Kyd fighter, is to capture a Cerberus (M), and includes two tips on how to get the crew to bail:
-Strip its shields, which I knew, and
-Don't get hit, which I may not have been previously aware of. I remember demonstrating overwhelming superiority was key, but don't recall being sensitive to whether I allowed the target to drop my own shields.
So potentially a good tip there, but easier said than done with my current ship.
The mission itself is a little frustrating, because your pirate-mentor, Ace, will repeatedly lecture you about not damaging the hull too much while he continues to lay into the thing; but as luck would have it, the system is currently lousy with oblivious Ministry of Finance Cerberi so you can just keep trying instead of having to save scum or reacquire the mission.
The titular system, Avarice, is interesting.
(Seemingly minor spoilers)
The solar energy is like >1300%, but the titular Tides are apparently solar flares that periodically fuck everything up. I assume it functions well enough in low-attention mode, but after watching a few AI merchants get torn apart right outside the dock I was sheltering in,
I'm not sure it's a place I would like to trust my factory merchants to navigate.
Finally logged a little time in Tides of Avarice, tried the new campaign start where you break out of jail and fall in with a pirate crew.
It's an interesting tutorial that wastes no time walking you through hacking stations, developing black market contacts, stealing blueprints, and boarding ships. The next mission, which I was not able to complete in the stock Kyd fighter, is to capture a Cerberus (M), and includes two tips on how to get the crew to bail:
-Strip its shields, which I knew, and
-Don't get hit, which I may not have been previously aware of. I remember demonstrating overwhelming superiority was key, but don't recall being sensitive to whether I allowed the target to drop my own shields.
So potentially a good tip there, but easier said than done with my current ship.
The mission itself is a little frustrating, because your pirate-mentor, Ace, will repeatedly lecture you about not damaging the hull too much while he continues to lay into the thing; but as luck would have it, the system is currently lousy with oblivious Ministry of Finance Cerberi so you can just keep trying instead of having to save scum or reacquire the mission.
The titular system, Avarice, is interesting.
(Seemingly minor spoilers)
The solar energy is like >1300%, but the titular Tides are apparently solar flares that periodically fuck everything up. I assume it functions well enough in low-attention mode, but after watching a few AI merchants get torn apart right outside the dock I was sheltering in,
I'm not sure it's a place I would like to trust my factory merchants to navigate.
Those tips are technically correct, but not the whole story. Getting crew to bail first requires the target's hull below 75% and target's shields below 20%. Then every 30 seconds, if the hull takes damage a chance to bail is calculated. The bail chance is higher the lower the target's hull and shields are. The bail chance is higher the higher your hull and shields are. The bail chance is higher if your maximum hull points are lower than the target's, that is, you being in a smaller ship makes them more likely to bail. Basically, this makes a small fighter fitted with one Ion cannon (large shield damage, minimal hull damage) the best pirate ship to keep plinking at their hull without killing them.
The maximum number of crew that will bail at once is 3. For fighters, this will be the entire crew, but for M and higher it will take many 30 second rounds to deplete their crew. And while their crew will bail, for L and XL ships, the pilots will never bail, you must using Boarding to capture them.
For Avarice, your spoiler is not a particular problem
Yes, the Tide will on the rare occasion destroy one of your ships when the AI gets brave or stupid and ignores the warning. But overall they are pretty good about either docking at a station or leaving those sectors before the Tide. And it's not instant death either, it's a DoT, so large ships can often soak enough damage to escape even when caught in it if they have just one sector left to cross. I've had (condensate shielded) factories and M/L merchant fleets running the Avarice sectors for many hours without ever losing a ship to the Tide.
The bigger gotcha is that all those evacuating ships park right outside the gate in Windfall. And even if you are friendly with them, the Syndicate will occasionally have hostile raiding parties spawn that will attack your ships there. And if your deathball of ships sitting there fights back and drops your rep just enough? The whole Syndicate will unexpectedly come down on you like a swarm of locusts. So it can be a good idea to set an Attack Authorization Override for your ships to not shoot Syndicate ships regardless of what they do to you. At least until you are ready to stomp their face in.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Finally logged a little time in Tides of Avarice, tried the new campaign start where you break out of jail and fall in with a pirate crew.
It's an interesting tutorial that wastes no time walking you through hacking stations, developing black market contacts, stealing blueprints, and boarding ships. The next mission, which I was not able to complete in the stock Kyd fighter, is to capture a Cerberus (M), and includes two tips on how to get the crew to bail:
-Strip its shields, which I knew, and
-Don't get hit, which I may not have been previously aware of. I remember demonstrating overwhelming superiority was key, but don't recall being sensitive to whether I allowed the target to drop my own shields.
So potentially a good tip there, but easier said than done with my current ship.
The mission itself is a little frustrating, because your pirate-mentor, Ace, will repeatedly lecture you about not damaging the hull too much while he continues to lay into the thing; but as luck would have it, the system is currently lousy with oblivious Ministry of Finance Cerberi so you can just keep trying instead of having to save scum or reacquire the mission.
The titular system, Avarice, is interesting.
(Seemingly minor spoilers)
The solar energy is like >1300%, but the titular Tides are apparently solar flares that periodically fuck everything up. I assume it functions well enough in low-attention mode, but after watching a few AI merchants get torn apart right outside the dock I was sheltering in,
I'm not sure it's a place I would like to trust my factory merchants to navigate.
Your dudes will dock or flee automatically as the tides come for what it’s worth
Finally logged a little time in Tides of Avarice, tried the new campaign start where you break out of jail and fall in with a pirate crew.
It's an interesting tutorial that wastes no time walking you through hacking stations, developing black market contacts, stealing blueprints, and boarding ships. The next mission, which I was not able to complete in the stock Kyd fighter, is to capture a Cerberus (M), and includes two tips on how to get the crew to bail:
-Strip its shields, which I knew, and
-Don't get hit, which I may not have been previously aware of. I remember demonstrating overwhelming superiority was key, but don't recall being sensitive to whether I allowed the target to drop my own shields.
So potentially a good tip there, but easier said than done with my current ship.
The mission itself is a little frustrating, because your pirate-mentor, Ace, will repeatedly lecture you about not damaging the hull too much while he continues to lay into the thing; but as luck would have it, the system is currently lousy with oblivious Ministry of Finance Cerberi so you can just keep trying instead of having to save scum or reacquire the mission.
The titular system, Avarice, is interesting.
(Seemingly minor spoilers)
The solar energy is like >1300%, but the titular Tides are apparently solar flares that periodically fuck everything up. I assume it functions well enough in low-attention mode, but after watching a few AI merchants get torn apart right outside the dock I was sheltering in,
I'm not sure it's a place I would like to trust my factory merchants to navigate.
Your dudes will dock or flee automatically as the tides come for what it’s worth
Finally saw this in action. One of my ships lagged behind and docked at a neutral station, and the other sprinted through the gate; then continued to 'flee' well into the next sector until I told them to knock it off. That's erring on the side of caution, I'll take it.
Bonus points for avoiding the potential furball SiliconStew mentioned, I suppose.
Man. Getting a Barbarosa from the Vigor Syndicate is proving exceedingly difficult.
I have plenty of cash, but I've been stalled at ~18/20 rep for most of my playthrough, because while I was fucking around securing access to Split and Paranid technology, the VIG basically outgrew my ability to impress them.
In terms of mineral deposits, Windfall I (VIG Shipyard/Wharf) seems to be, by far, the wealthiest sector in the Galaxy. Not sure if they got lucky or that's always the case, but add to this:
- a thriving Scrap economy and,
- VIG contraband laws which allow them confiscate water, food, and medical supplies passing through their sector,
And you've got the most prosperous sector I think I have ever seen.
Supply shortages are non existent, and vertical integration seems to convert the surpluses into the hundreds of fighters ships that police their sectors; especially that one.
The resulting state of sector security makes it virtually impossible to earn rep by interdicting enemies before they do, and even harder to just steal what I'm after.
Possibly as a result of this: Only easy missions seem to spawn now, which won't move the needle on rep.
I still have an outstanding medium bounty against 4 SCA Vulture Sentinels which might do it, but I have had that since the beginning because they're very difficult to find, as they apparently run under false flag and you have to (personally) scan to reveal them (sonce the AI can't scan?).
But I remain patient. I stole my first destroyer last night, which should allow me to start raiding shipping lanes more or less with impunity, and my cash flow should really start snowballing from here.
Barbarosi or no, once I can teleport my HQ, their legions defending Windfall I should make a pretty exciting test for a Deathstar and my PC!
Man. Getting a Barbarosa from the Vigor Syndicate is proving exceedingly difficult.
I have plenty of cash, but I've been stalled at ~18/20 rep for most of my playthrough, because while I was fucking around securing access to Split and Paranid technology, the VIG basically outgrew my ability to impress them.
In terms of mineral deposits, Windfall I (VIG Shipyard/Wharf) seems to be, by far, the wealthiest sector in the Galaxy. Not sure if they got lucky or that's always the case, but add to this:
- a thriving Scrap economy and,
- VIG contraband laws which allow them confiscate water, food, and medical supplies passing through their sector,
And you've got the most prosperous sector I think I have ever seen.
Supply shortages are non existent, and vertical integration seems to convert the surpluses into the hundreds of fighters ships that police their sectors; especially that one.
The resulting state of sector security makes it virtually impossible to earn rep by interdicting enemies before they do, and even harder to just steal what I'm after.
Possibly as a result of this: Only easy missions seem to spawn now, which won't move the needle on rep.
I still have an outstanding medium bounty against 4 SCA Vulture Sentinels which might do it, but I have had that since the beginning because they're very difficult to find, as they apparently run under false flag and you have to (personally) scan to reveal them (sonce the AI can't scan?).
But I remain patient. I stole my first destroyer last night, which should allow me to start raiding shipping lanes more or less with impunity, and my cash flow should really start snowballing from here.
Barbarosi or no, once I can teleport my HQ, their legions defending Windfall I should make a pretty exciting test for a Deathstar and my PC!
It's food rations, ice, and water that are illegal in VIG space. To get those last points of Rep, you might try selling them medical supplies or other wares their shipyards and stations need, even if it's at a loss. The lack of criminal mass traffic around their stations doesn't help when you need to gain rep.
For myself, there was an "incident" with the VIG that made this effectively impossible so now I just pirate Barbarosas they send into non-VIG sectors.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Man. Getting a Barbarosa from the Vigor Syndicate is proving exceedingly difficult.
I have plenty of cash, but I've been stalled at ~18/20 rep for most of my playthrough, because while I was fucking around securing access to Split and Paranid technology, the VIG basically outgrew my ability to impress them.
In terms of mineral deposits, Windfall I (VIG Shipyard/Wharf) seems to be, by far, the wealthiest sector in the Galaxy. Not sure if they got lucky or that's always the case, but add to this:
- a thriving Scrap economy and,
- VIG contraband laws which allow them confiscate water, food, and medical supplies passing through their sector,
And you've got the most prosperous sector I think I have ever seen.
Supply shortages are non existent, and vertical integration seems to convert the surpluses into the hundreds of fighters ships that police their sectors; especially that one.
The resulting state of sector security makes it virtually impossible to earn rep by interdicting enemies before they do, and even harder to just steal what I'm after.
Possibly as a result of this: Only easy missions seem to spawn now, which won't move the needle on rep.
I still have an outstanding medium bounty against 4 SCA Vulture Sentinels which might do it, but I have had that since the beginning because they're very difficult to find, as they apparently run under false flag and you have to (personally) scan to reveal them (sonce the AI can't scan?).
But I remain patient. I stole my first destroyer last night, which should allow me to start raiding shipping lanes more or less with impunity, and my cash flow should really start snowballing from here.
Barbarosi or no, once I can teleport my HQ, their legions defending Windfall I should make a pretty exciting test for a Deathstar and my PC!
It's food rations, ice, and water that are illegal in VIG space. To get those last points of Rep, you might try selling them medical supplies or other wares their shipyards and stations need, even if it's at a loss. The lack of criminal mass traffic around their stations doesn't help when you need to gain rep.
For myself, there was an "incident" with the VIG that made this effectively impossible so now I just pirate Barbarosas they send into non-VIG sectors.
I've had a freighter topping off the medical supplies and food for a while, but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle any. I've spotted a few Barbs in the wild, but I don't want to risk the rep hit because I'm so close to getting that blueprint.
The one thing Windfall doesn't have is sunlight, so plan G might be going to war with Avarice to blockade it.
*excitedly clicks to find out what kind of awesome space sim he's making next*
Loki is a genre hybrid, with a lot of inspiration drawn from our past collective experiences working on titles like League of Legends, Overwatch, Halo, and VALORANT - and...
About the only other thing you might try is to check signal leaks for additional missions that might randomly pop as for the Syndicate.
But for myself, after several days of trying everything legitimate and it still not moving, I'd just edit the save and change the rep. Though my games are also already flagged modified since I run mods.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Hey cool kids, Chorus is on the Xbox gamepass now. I started playing it yesterday. Some of the early story elements are a little weak, but it’s an overall solid experience so far.
Finally, someone made a space sim about the most exciting part of space travel: transporting goods.
I love how the videos on the steam store page show barely controlled spacecraft belly flopping on landing pads and careening through the air. It looks like a blast!
Finally, someone made a space sim about the most exciting part of space travel: transporting goods.
I love how the videos on the steam store page show barely controlled spacecraft belly flopping on landing pads and careening through the air. It looks like a blast!
Love that it just continues all "totally planned it liked this."
Hey cool kids, Chorus is on the Xbox gamepass now. I started playing it yesterday. Some of the early story elements are a little weak, but it’s an overall solid experience so far.
I started playing it on Xbox Series X, but then took a crack at in on PC (with an RTX 3080 TI and a high refresh rate monitor); either way, it looks beautiful, and coming from a smaller-scale developer I was immediately impressed by the technical fidelity and the handling (I'd compare both of them very favorably to Star War Squadrons, which is the last game of this sort I played on console). The game looks much better than Squadrons did, though that's not saying that much. The gameplay hook--"space drifting"--is surprisingly easy to pick up (the game was entirely designed around gamepad controls), and it's a solid Everspace style upgrade mechanic.
The story is weird--different, but weird--especially given that it's exclusively a single-player narrative experience, rather than a multiplayer game pretending to have a story campaign. Like Hellblade in a spaceship.
So I saw someone on my friend's list playing X4 not too long ago. I was kind of in the mood, but as is typical in the last few years when I think of X4 my brain also cycles to "should I play X3 instead? which version?"
Really no wrong answers now it seems like. I looked into giving X4 another spin, got close, but despite X3's interface being....what it is, it's something that I put the work into learning long ago and it's still stuck in my brain in a way X4's interface and systems aren't. I also didn't pick up the last two expansions on sale like I considered, aand it looks like a decent amount of the cooler mods need those.
After period of "should I go down this wormhole at all?" I finally settled on X3. Buuut damnit I wanted some big faction wars and cool 4X vibes, and there are so many good mods out there that I had to go that direction. I've done Litcube before, it's great, but it still doesn't really do much in the way of dynamic faction wars and territory changing hands back and forth which felt necessary.
Soooo despite initally being terrified of the learning curve, I of course went with a mod of a mod of a mod of X3.
That is, X3 Mayhem Zero Hour, a mod built on top of Mayhem 3, which is a mod built on Litcube.
It's awesome! The combo of mods (Zero Hour is really just a continuation of Mayhem 3) changes the entire economy to be "real" and use the same scripts and rules for players and the AI. Ships and stations consume resources to build, the production trees have changed (which was scary), but all in a way that's really intuitive and makes a lot of sense. Ultimately all of your ships, stations, weapons, shields, and missiles are built at a single station (with the right addons) -- your Outpost. The old stations now serve that production chain to build one of those things, but no more individual stations for individual types of weapons and shields and such. The focus is now on taking and controlling territory -- it's definitely 4X X3 (which is fun to say) -- and the scope is much more on the macro level as a result. No complexes, no saturn stations, because the game wants you to go out and control sectors to expand and progress your fleet.
Of course it offers a ton of really useful scripts to make that work. You don't have to micro every step of the chain, you can trust your AI traders and agents to do what you want them to do, tweak their behavior at the macro level, and focus on building stations (which also can be semi-automated) and ships for fleet combat. It has research stations and a tech tree for unlocking basically every ship in the game for production, and even a procedural map generator that you can tweak as you see fit.
I'm having a blast! It can be damn hard at times, but has difficulty options to tweak, and it really feels like a living galaxy. Constant wars, you can pop in a friendly sector and watch the AI factions duke it out with eachother, and taking out enemy supply lines actually has a lasting effect and affects the enemy's ability to build stations and ships.
My slow build-up continues! Since I know everyone loves a good proc gen map, here's my setup:
That map is as of the start of the game. I staked my claim in the empty NW sector, and currently have that corner of about 15 sectors locked down and building up. The SW corner is now completely overrun by the OCV/xenon, aaand basically all of the other empty sectors have been taken over by the nearby powers. The Terrans are wrecking the Split, the Paranid have a ton of territory in the SE, and everything else fairly stable.
I have a few M7s, a handful of M6s, and 30 or so M3s. Not enough to duke it out with the another faction yet, but enough to have a bit of fun while I finish researching an M2 and start to get the big guns online. The mod disables jumpdrives, but you can setup your own network of jump beacons that makes it fairly easy to get around the galaxy (these can be hacked by the xenon and used by them, so you have to be careful!). Since everything was calm in my sector, I decided to hop down to the SW and blow up a Xenon station:
Just a couple of M6+s and M6s to blow up on the way, which I handled without much issue. Not too long after, a much larger Xenon fleet popped up with a couple of M2s, but luckily were pre-occupied with flying over to blow up the Argon:
They blew up a few stations before the Argon managed to get a response fleet over. It looked like they were proobably going to blow up that fleet, so I decided to bring my M7s in (not pictured) and help them out. I lost about a dozen M3s but all of my heavy ships survived:
Aaand that's my good deed for the day. My production is starting to come online, I'm no longer super poor, and I'm excited to get a few M2s online to start taking some rival faction territory in the northwest.
i played a lot of X3 but X4 triggered me because the graphics I felt looked terrible even compared to 3.... like it has a lot of "fancy" effects but they didn't feel done right, the picture was always so dirty
i preferred the clean look of X3... that trailer makes it look like maybe they fixed it, but... trailers...
I like X4, but ironically X3 seems to be a better 4X than X4 right now with the right mods (Litcube Mayhem Zero Hour), and that's what I've been craving more so I've stuck with it.
7.0 looks like a sweet update though! I'm always cheering it on either way, and it's cool that they've stuck with it and have been able to keep development going for this long.
I played a LOT of X4 last year, but when I got my new video card the game made it run very hot. Part of it was just that particular card by default running with the fans off/low until it got up close to a certain temp (I forget what, exactly), but even once I changed the fan settings so they kicked on much earlier the game still ran pretty hot so I just sorta stopped playing.
IIRC the Freelancer source code got "lost" so it will never see an updated release. I still have a CD copy kicking around somewhere. The positive view of Freelancer these days is kind of surprising, it's was a fun game and I definitely played the heck out of it, but it is very flawed and I recall a lot of disappointment online upon it's release.
Starlancer was...not great.
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Guess I'll grab Underspace after payday then!
Also wondering what the easiest sim to mod is. Been playing around with "plugins" in an Escape Velocity clone but want to make the jump to 3D.
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It's an interesting tutorial that wastes no time walking you through hacking stations, developing black market contacts, stealing blueprints, and boarding ships. The next mission, which I was not able to complete in the stock Kyd fighter, is to capture a Cerberus (M), and includes two tips on how to get the crew to bail:
-Strip its shields, which I knew, and
-Don't get hit, which I may not have been previously aware of. I remember demonstrating overwhelming superiority was key, but don't recall being sensitive to whether I allowed the target to drop my own shields.
So potentially a good tip there, but easier said than done with my current ship.
The mission itself is a little frustrating, because your pirate-mentor, Ace, will repeatedly lecture you about not damaging the hull too much while he continues to lay into the thing; but as luck would have it, the system is currently lousy with oblivious Ministry of Finance Cerberi so you can just keep trying instead of having to save scum or reacquire the mission.
The titular system, Avarice, is interesting.
(Seemingly minor spoilers)
I might be getting it confused with terminus or tie fighter
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Those tips are technically correct, but not the whole story. Getting crew to bail first requires the target's hull below 75% and target's shields below 20%. Then every 30 seconds, if the hull takes damage a chance to bail is calculated. The bail chance is higher the lower the target's hull and shields are. The bail chance is higher the higher your hull and shields are. The bail chance is higher if your maximum hull points are lower than the target's, that is, you being in a smaller ship makes them more likely to bail. Basically, this makes a small fighter fitted with one Ion cannon (large shield damage, minimal hull damage) the best pirate ship to keep plinking at their hull without killing them.
The maximum number of crew that will bail at once is 3. For fighters, this will be the entire crew, but for M and higher it will take many 30 second rounds to deplete their crew. And while their crew will bail, for L and XL ships, the pilots will never bail, you must using Boarding to capture them.
For Avarice, your spoiler is not a particular problem
The bigger gotcha is that all those evacuating ships park right outside the gate in Windfall. And even if you are friendly with them, the Syndicate will occasionally have hostile raiding parties spawn that will attack your ships there. And if your deathball of ships sitting there fights back and drops your rep just enough? The whole Syndicate will unexpectedly come down on you like a swarm of locusts. So it can be a good idea to set an Attack Authorization Override for your ships to not shoot Syndicate ships regardless of what they do to you. At least until you are ready to stomp their face in.
Your dudes will dock or flee automatically as the tides come for what it’s worth
Finally saw this in action. One of my ships lagged behind and docked at a neutral station, and the other sprinted through the gate; then continued to 'flee' well into the next sector until I told them to knock it off. That's erring on the side of caution, I'll take it.
Bonus points for avoiding the potential furball SiliconStew mentioned, I suppose.
I have plenty of cash, but I've been stalled at ~18/20 rep for most of my playthrough, because while I was fucking around securing access to Split and Paranid technology, the VIG basically outgrew my ability to impress them.
In terms of mineral deposits, Windfall I (VIG Shipyard/Wharf) seems to be, by far, the wealthiest sector in the Galaxy. Not sure if they got lucky or that's always the case, but add to this:
- a thriving Scrap economy and,
- VIG contraband laws which allow them confiscate water, food, and medical supplies passing through their sector,
And you've got the most prosperous sector I think I have ever seen.
Supply shortages are non existent, and vertical integration seems to convert the surpluses into the hundreds of fighters ships that police their sectors; especially that one.
The resulting state of sector security makes it virtually impossible to earn rep by interdicting enemies before they do, and even harder to just steal what I'm after.
Possibly as a result of this: Only easy missions seem to spawn now, which won't move the needle on rep.
I still have an outstanding medium bounty against 4 SCA Vulture Sentinels which might do it, but I have had that since the beginning because they're very difficult to find, as they apparently run under false flag and you have to (personally) scan to reveal them (sonce the AI can't scan?).
But I remain patient. I stole my first destroyer last night, which should allow me to start raiding shipping lanes more or less with impunity, and my cash flow should really start snowballing from here.
Barbarosi or no, once I can teleport my HQ, their legions defending Windfall I should make a pretty exciting test for a Deathstar and my PC!
Anyone know what dude did afterwards?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
It's food rations, ice, and water that are illegal in VIG space. To get those last points of Rep, you might try selling them medical supplies or other wares their shipyards and stations need, even if it's at a loss. The lack of criminal mass traffic around their stations doesn't help when you need to gain rep.
For myself, there was an "incident" with the VIG that made this effectively impossible so now I just pirate Barbarosas they send into non-VIG sectors.
I've had a freighter topping off the medical supplies and food for a while, but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle any. I've spotted a few Barbs in the wild, but I don't want to risk the rep hit because I'm so close to getting that blueprint.
The one thing Windfall doesn't have is sunlight, so plan G might be going to war with Avarice to blockade it.
*excitedly clicks to find out what kind of awesome space sim he's making next*
Oh
But for myself, after several days of trying everything legitimate and it still not moving, I'd just edit the save and change the rep. Though my games are also already flagged modified since I run mods.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/nemesis-bundle-xi
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Love that it just continues all "totally planned it liked this."
I started playing it on Xbox Series X, but then took a crack at in on PC (with an RTX 3080 TI and a high refresh rate monitor); either way, it looks beautiful, and coming from a smaller-scale developer I was immediately impressed by the technical fidelity and the handling (I'd compare both of them very favorably to Star War Squadrons, which is the last game of this sort I played on console). The game looks much better than Squadrons did, though that's not saying that much. The gameplay hook--"space drifting"--is surprisingly easy to pick up (the game was entirely designed around gamepad controls), and it's a solid Everspace style upgrade mechanic.
The story is weird--different, but weird--especially given that it's exclusively a single-player narrative experience, rather than a multiplayer game pretending to have a story campaign. Like Hellblade in a spaceship.
Still, a lot to like.
Really no wrong answers now it seems like. I looked into giving X4 another spin, got close, but despite X3's interface being....what it is, it's something that I put the work into learning long ago and it's still stuck in my brain in a way X4's interface and systems aren't. I also didn't pick up the last two expansions on sale like I considered, aand it looks like a decent amount of the cooler mods need those.
After period of "should I go down this wormhole at all?" I finally settled on X3. Buuut damnit I wanted some big faction wars and cool 4X vibes, and there are so many good mods out there that I had to go that direction. I've done Litcube before, it's great, but it still doesn't really do much in the way of dynamic faction wars and territory changing hands back and forth which felt necessary.
Soooo despite initally being terrified of the learning curve, I of course went with a mod of a mod of a mod of X3.
That is, X3 Mayhem Zero Hour, a mod built on top of Mayhem 3, which is a mod built on Litcube.
It's awesome! The combo of mods (Zero Hour is really just a continuation of Mayhem 3) changes the entire economy to be "real" and use the same scripts and rules for players and the AI. Ships and stations consume resources to build, the production trees have changed (which was scary), but all in a way that's really intuitive and makes a lot of sense. Ultimately all of your ships, stations, weapons, shields, and missiles are built at a single station (with the right addons) -- your Outpost. The old stations now serve that production chain to build one of those things, but no more individual stations for individual types of weapons and shields and such. The focus is now on taking and controlling territory -- it's definitely 4X X3 (which is fun to say) -- and the scope is much more on the macro level as a result. No complexes, no saturn stations, because the game wants you to go out and control sectors to expand and progress your fleet.
Of course it offers a ton of really useful scripts to make that work. You don't have to micro every step of the chain, you can trust your AI traders and agents to do what you want them to do, tweak their behavior at the macro level, and focus on building stations (which also can be semi-automated) and ships for fleet combat. It has research stations and a tech tree for unlocking basically every ship in the game for production, and even a procedural map generator that you can tweak as you see fit.
I'm having a blast! It can be damn hard at times, but has difficulty options to tweak, and it really feels like a living galaxy. Constant wars, you can pop in a friendly sector and watch the AI factions duke it out with eachother, and taking out enemy supply lines actually has a lasting effect and affects the enemy's ability to build stations and ships.
That map is as of the start of the game. I staked my claim in the empty NW sector, and currently have that corner of about 15 sectors locked down and building up. The SW corner is now completely overrun by the OCV/xenon, aaand basically all of the other empty sectors have been taken over by the nearby powers. The Terrans are wrecking the Split, the Paranid have a ton of territory in the SE, and everything else fairly stable.
I have a few M7s, a handful of M6s, and 30 or so M3s. Not enough to duke it out with the another faction yet, but enough to have a bit of fun while I finish researching an M2 and start to get the big guns online. The mod disables jumpdrives, but you can setup your own network of jump beacons that makes it fairly easy to get around the galaxy (these can be hacked by the xenon and used by them, so you have to be careful!). Since everything was calm in my sector, I decided to hop down to the SW and blow up a Xenon station:
Just a couple of M6+s and M6s to blow up on the way, which I handled without much issue. Not too long after, a much larger Xenon fleet popped up with a couple of M2s, but luckily were pre-occupied with flying over to blow up the Argon:
They blew up a few stations before the Argon managed to get a response fleet over. It looked like they were proobably going to blow up that fleet, so I decided to bring my M7s in (not pictured) and help them out. I lost about a dozen M3s but all of my heavy ships survived:
Aaand that's my good deed for the day. My production is starting to come online, I'm no longer super poor, and I'm excited to get a few M2s online to start taking some rival faction territory in the northwest.
Some of the changes include new big ships for Kha'ak and Xenon, some pilotable Xenon ships, endgame crisis, improved graphics and AI performance.
But the biggest changes for people who have been on the fence about the game are probably:
Edit: 6, not 8 years old.
Aren't they AI? Those ships would have no interior for organics.
Steam | XBL
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Would I play Docking Simulator 2022?
Of course I would, I am a ridiculous person with ridiculous notions of fun.
But maybe not for $30, yikes.
The overall visual punch-up, on what I already thought was a gorgeous game, is pretty impressive.
Edit: Whew, I was right. It's actually 6 years old.
There is no way that X4 is 6 years old.
6 years ago was... 2018? Nah, that was 3 years ago, tops.
...right?
Steam | XBL
i preferred the clean look of X3... that trailer makes it look like maybe they fixed it, but... trailers...
7.0 looks like a sweet update though! I'm always cheering it on either way, and it's cool that they've stuck with it and have been able to keep development going for this long.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1111930/Underspace/
Underspace
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
Its not ....... available....I think
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Starlancer was...not great.
Also wondering what the easiest sim to mod is. Been playing around with "plugins" in an Escape Velocity clone but want to make the jump to 3D.
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
I guess it depends if you want to do. Make missions? Model new ships?