Combat feedback.

[LupisVolk]

predetermined main mission encounters need to be seriously toned down in difficulty, considering you can lose against WWW in his first encounter, against the pirate blockade and it's remnants. This needs to be seriously addressed before launch otherwise the game will fail.

[Kalkara]

I'm a little surprised you lost against him, considering you can just ram him and board him with his crew of three within seconds?

Regardless, hes got the second smallest ship in the game and very few cannons, I'm not trying to say skill issue, but there is not much else they can tone down there I don't think. Unless you don't mean WWW and ran into one of the higher level pirates.

Edit: yeah I just checked, WWW has two small cannons and a combat crew of four. You should not be losing that. Three rockets instant killed him in a single volley.

[Mns2byz]

Originally posted by Kalkara:

I'm a little surprised you lost against him, considering you can just ram him and board him with his crew of three within seconds?

Regardless, hes got the second smallest ship in the game and very few cannons, I'm not trying to say skill issue, but there is not much else they can tone down there I don't think. Unless you don't mean WWW and ran into one of the higher level pirates.

Edit: yeah I just checked, WWW has two small cannons and a combat crew of four. You should not be losing that. Three rockets instant killed him in a single volley.

Ramming to board didnt do anything and it takes more than 3 rockets to take WWW down considering his ship repairs pretty fast.
Its a plain miniboss fight, there was no challenge, its just small, fast and strafes around like other fodder ships. Plus, whats with our big ship with only the firstmate? Wheres the crew?
I had no trouble with WWW, i found it forced and boring. Something I just didnt want to be bothered with. The pirate raids are funner and more rewarding.

[Squaul]

Dude take into account you ships layout and stregnht that's it if you ships is weaker or fragile off course it's hard in the contrary it's easy also the demo have quite few buggs ...

Personnaly apart from story i feel that the combat are just clunky and slow when you came from starsector it hurt alot x')

[Squaul]

But i agree that while ramming "works" it's just a weapon with a different skin in reality the thing just deal little constant damage even if the enenmy ships has 0 crew left like wtf ...

The boarding mechanic should be reworked honestly .

But i advice you to keep fire and put an advantageous layout for boarding exemple : more armor and weapons from the side you use to board. cause apparently everyone keep shooting when boarding wich is semi stupid only little caliber should still firing to kill crew not boths shipslmao.

[Central]

i think they just need to highlight the tutorial about upgrading your ship the moment you finished the first combat encounter. or maybe add in a real scripted tutorial where you are forced to upgrade the ship a bit. once you upgrade your ship properly you should be able to handle the enemies.

i died a couple of time in the course of the game until i started to upgrade the ship.
now i have finished the demo a couple of times, at least once with all the ships, i upgrade the starting ship asap. buying parts, fitting them in the ship, selling parts i take out of my ship and buying more parts with the money i get back from those sold pieces.
basically i enter the buy parts and fit parts 5 times after the initial combat to upgrade (a button to switch between store and fitting parts and back again might be really useful).

toning down difficulty might make it to easy if you do actually upgrade your ship. with proper upgrades some non scripted encounters can die to 1 or 2 shots, i dont want that to happen in the story missions.

[Leanora]

The starting ships have different layouts.
I went for the middle one, whichever that was and changed the cannons. The change of cannons made fighting A LOT easier.

[LupisVolk]

Originally posted by Leanora:

The starting ships have different layouts.
I went for the middle one, whichever that was and changed the cannons. The change of cannons made fighting A LOT easier.

i used the third ship and used steel cannons that worked well till the remnant fight. I used the first ship and loaded it with rocket rails and mana charge disperseres and it worked wonders.

[Princess of Dumbasses]

used the Blue Nation & started with a Mix of Rail/Guided Torps & Steel cannons

they seem to work pretty well but really suck at close range... need to kite all fights

also tried using Rotary for anti-torps but they dont seem to work that well

[Squaul]

Originally posted by Princess of Dumbasses:

used the Blue Nation & started with a Mix of Rail/Guided Torps & Steel cannons

they seem to work pretty well but really suck at close range... need to kite all fights

also tried using Rotary for anti-torps but they dont seem to work that well

Idk why but my first time using the rotary worked 100% killing all the rockect and ealing its ibt of damage then i tried to 1 on each side of my ship and none worked lol ... we really need control on weapons like starsector so you can chosoe the groups but also to put into autofire the weapon you wants by default and in combat ...

[Princess of Dumbasses]

Originally posted by Squaul:

Originally posted by Princess of Dumbasses:

used the Blue Nation & started with a Mix of Rail/Guided Torps & Steel cannons

they seem to work pretty well but really suck at close range... need to kite all fights

also tried using Rotary for anti-torps but they dont seem to work that well

Idk why but my first time using the rotary worked 100% killing all the rockect and ealing its ibt of damage then i tried to 1 on each side of my ship and none worked lol ... we really need control on weapons like starsector so you can chosoe the groups but also to put into autofire the weapon you wants by default and in combat ...

yes an auto fire on AA/Anti-torps would be really nice!

[Squaul]

Originally posted by Princess of Dumbasses:

Originally posted by Squaul:

Idk why but my first time using the rotary worked 100% killing all the rockect and ealing its ibt of damage then i tried to 1 on each side of my ship and none worked lol ... we really need control on weapons like starsector so you can chosoe the groups but also to put into autofire the weapon you wants by default and in combat ...

yes an auto fire on AA/Anti-torps would be really nice!

Tbh on all weapon cause 1 im lazy 2 im the freaking commander for good sake 3 some weapon fire quickly .


All things said tho i don't understand why we cant clearly aim and control our weapon and so their projectiles or at least like i wanna say having the coice to choose wich part we want to aim and lock like some sort of a preset template stwitchable and "manual" targeting too !
The auto targeting is okay but weird sometimes.

[Squaul]

Also to come back a bit more on the core of the topic right now i tested a loadout with full missile i oneshot everything and the things i cant well i just need to kite them by going away and reloading then getting close or letting them getting closer then fire again .

Also try to see if you can't "separate" the ennemies for exemple the AI is really silly so if their ships are faster than their allies they will chase alone leaving the rest behind .
Etc ... eventually isn't floating rocks as protection but they are so scarce that i didn't try that yet .

[Vodnikus]

I thought WWW was comedic relief, his tiny little ship was vaporized before he even fired his first volley.

[jay.ss]

This is getting very interesting indeed. There has not been a lot of tutorial in the game because of all the things being said here, I and everyone else in the studio have not been able to agree on what exactly needs to be taught and how players would want their targeting to work. We have run 4 test sessions so far and this is probably the first thread that discusses these issues. So, here's my 2 cents on how I interpret your problems into potential solutions:

1. Upon arriving at the SilberblumHQ, force players to go through a shipyard tutorial. Where they would have to fit all the guns they had onboard from the beginning, onto the ship.
2. Make it clear that the pirate remnant is actually a side quest and not a part of the main quest.
3. Make it easier to skip conversations at the start of the battle. xD
4. Ramming is bugged and somehow didn't trigger at the moment but we believe we've found out why... So we're fixing it.
5. Based on the conversation, I've come to realize that even though there is a person icon and bar on top of the ship while boarding takes place, it is still very difficult to find out how many crew there are onboard the ships. Please feel free to drop some ideas here on how to make this more obvious.
6. Guns fire automatically when you have a gunner officer onboard, you would also be able to pick how you want them to aim with navigators providing intel of the target. Sadly this is behind the demo barrier, maybe we will extend the demo to cover these points in the future.
7. When boarding takes place, if you do not want your target to take further damage, you could turn off your guns. And we don't have a plan for enemies to stop firing when they were boarded, they are trying to survive, hence they wouldn't want to stop firing. But one of many things not being communicated well enough is that the lower the crew and the morale of the ship, the slower the reload speed. At a later point, we would also introduce guns that zap away the target's energy, knocking weapons out as well.
8. Improve auto-targeting so that it would not fixate on a certain part of the ship at all times.

Please feel free to propose alternative solutions. They will get implemented if, of course, the folk on Discord agreed. I do pitch and run future/changes through them quite often.

PS. The reason ships full of missiles and kiting/baiting works in the game at the current state is because we allow it, for now, so please enjoy it for the time being, and congrats on getting farmed up! :D

[Ziggurt]

Originally posted by jay.ss:

6. Guns fire automatically when you have a gunner officer onboard, you would also be able to pick how you want them to aim with navigators providing intel of the target. Sadly this is behind the demo barrier, maybe we will extend the demo to cover these points in the future.
7.
(...)
At a later point, we would also introduce guns that zap away the target's energy, knocking weapons out as well.
8. Improve auto-targeting so that it would not fixate on a certain part of the ship at all times.

Now, I have never released a game (but I have been behind number of successful and more importantly - failed software launches) and while I fully understand that demo will always be limited in some way how it showcases a game, I think you should inform potential buyers of the game how a more evolved combat will look in the game.*
After all - it is something we will do a LOT in the game (a repetitive activity).

I went from from slightly interested to meh when experienced combat in the demo and to interested again, once I talked to friend who had participated on your discord. So by chance I found out that this is something I would be interested in after all.

As to number 7 - will that increase the enjoyment for the end user when AI does that (again, I don't know, I never played beta)


*Maybe on that play with devs thing you plan which you can then use SOME for marketing.