Just finished main storyline (Icarus build)

[Gazeboist]

I've got a few outstanding anomalies to investigate, one of which I expect to hold a Talonian piece. Still, I think I'm ready to give my main thoughts on the current state of the game, and what I feel is missing or could be improved. First, though: I had a lot of fun, and I'm interested to see where this goes narratively and mechanically. There's definitely some Heaven's Vault vibes from the Chariot jumping to your home system...

- The endgame is currently quite abrupt. After the Chariot jumps to near the first wormhole, Cmdr Yu tells you to go investigate, and then suddenly a new tech is available with very little context, which allows you to go enter a black hole in a completely different area. The Chariot thread is dropped; there's just a small swarm of outdated Devout ships hanging around it. I assume this is because parts of the story just haven't been written yet, but even so the lack of transition was jarring.

- Speaking of that black hole, the proximity to the shield upgrade that requires pushing around unstable cores to it, and the fact that the objects you break to get the upgrade are nigh invulnerable, suggested to me that the shield upgrade was what I needed to enter. Being wrong didn't set me back much, but I'd have appreciated some dialogue to the effect of "the solution isn't going to be a shield upgrade" to warn me off.

- The storyline of the remnant-equivalent species that you steal a Talonian part from could use some expansion, I think. Maybe something connected to the CTXA, whose narrative also sort of vanished? Again, I wouldn't be surprised if you said more was planned in that area that just hasn't been written yet.

- It'd be nice if there was a way to close out the Nimion/Kyrnan war in a more definitive way. Having sided with the Kyrnan, I've pushed this about as far as it seems to go and completed all the missions, but since there are still hostile Nimion ships hanging around the battle areas, it feels like it's missing a conclusion. The upgraded raider stuff also seemed to kind of just fizzle after I turned off a couple more factories without connecting to much of anything, but maybe I just missed or failed to understand some dialogue.

- The early-midgame Locoan storyline also feels a bit off to me. I'm always nervous about advancing the quest after I get the request for aid from the vassal planet, because that dialog implies that it's possible to fail and make the problem worse. Then when I go back much later, all I have to do is pay off the Locoan and that solves the quest (or at least that step). Maybe the vassals could suggest that option first? Also, the connection to the "gentle giant" planet is unclear. I would suggest breaking this into two missions, one of which is just about the vassal planet, and the other of which is solved when you get to the system that the "gentle giants" are pointing you to.

- A way of collecting, marking, or otherwise separating out artifacts associated with a quest, rather than just dumping them in the general artifact inventory, would be a nice bit of QoL. I don't know if that's something that should just be automatic for certain artifacts (maybe the Celaeno could collect the tech-unlocking artifacts and the Talonian pieces?), or if it would be better if there was a player-controlled set of tags/notes, but I think one of the two would simplify things a lot, especially when dealing with the Guild in the late game, where the need for Iridium makes a big jump that encourages selling artifacts.

- Quests and other events that involve looking for or being in proximity to objects in deep space (I'm thinking here of the comets, the CTXA derelect, and the Evacuations storyline, mostly) can be pretty finiky. I'd like some sort of utility module or other tech that would help narrow down the search areas in those cases, beyond just the dialogue cues. I think you could use something similar to the exploration fog utility, and maybe even integrate it with other aspects of how things show up on the map to give a clear notion of what a "system" is to the game,

- The way the game currently encourages a player to level their crew seems at odds with the way late-game anomalies expect the crew to be leveled. Currently, each crew member has a specialty skill that gets one point automatically, and then the whole crew gets six more points that can be spent freely. The crew technologies all say that you get a bonus for each crew member with at least 1 or sometimes 2 points in a certain skill, with explicit diminishing returns for further investment on individual crew members, and all the early anomalies only check one skill, which encourages the player to leave the specialist skill(s) alone and mostly just make sure every crew member has 1-2 points in every skill. But then there's an abrupt spike in the lategame difficulty ratings that leads to a sudden increase in the number of failed skill rolls for characters that haven't invested heavily in their specialty, and one late anomaly seems to have expected the player to build a character focused on three skills, rather than loosely spreading their points around. Finally, every skill check is single-character based, so it feels like building two characters with a shared specialty is redundant. I would suggest two fixes. First, retool the crew technologies to encourage hybrid specialties and discourage having a set of six crew members who all have 1 point in each of 5 skills. You could do this by having the bonuses use the skill ratings of your top three crewmembers with a given skill, and/or by having a secondary skill enhance the bonus from the primary skill. Second, some anomalies should require splitting up the crew, encouraging the player to form subteams for particular kinds of tasks that use multiple different skills, where crew members' strengths can cover for each others' weaknesses. I think that would make the crew system a lot more interesting, and encourage more investment in the away team mechanics generally. I think there's some potential there to make Xenoculture a more useful skill, especially. Oh, and a minor point: at the end of the Evacuation storyline, when you get the offer to pass a bonus to a crew member, it'd be nice to see the statlines of the crew members getting the bonus.

- Finally, on ship design: I find myself having a lot of issues with heat dissipation, especially when I'm building larger ships. Maybe that's because I prefer to keep the ship as a solid mass, rather than using bulkheads and connectors to make a segmented design, but this issue also interferes with my ability to use armor. I'd really appreciate some more module options for manipulating and removing heat. I think adding heat-adjustment tradeoffs to lategame armors and bulkheads would be a nice little thing to add to the game that would do a lot to solve this problem. Heat spreading to nearby modules in a clearer way could also be useful, so that you could for example have a heavily armed and armored front that spreads heat back through bulkheads and then dissipates it with vents at the more vulnerable back.

Woof, that ran long. Hope this helps!

[OKOK]

How does heat impact your play. I never bothered to investigate

[Gazeboist]

Originally posted by OKOK:

How does heat impact your play. I never bothered to investigate

Overheated modules are less efficient. Weapons do less damage, engines give less thrust, etc.

[justkevin]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, added to my notes!

[StellarSkys]

honestly i find heat to kinda be annoying with the current module limits, and its more effective to ignore it and use an extra thruster instead of trying to heat vent my current ones and get better stats.

and honestly i'm not really fond of the crew points in general. theres always going to be a "Way" to do it. you either get skill check buffs with the points, or you get stat buffs with the points. stat buffs can be overcome with slapping a extra gun on, or a shield gen. skill checks don't. so i feel like theres no reason to ever split the points up. i think the entire system could just be removed honestly and it'd just be a benefit.

[OKOK]

What module help to remove him