Does anyone else think the game it stacked against you?

[Jak Dilan]

I've been playing Co-op with a couple friends (which is hard enough thanks to the constant desync), and there have been several things that we've been hard locked out of, without any warning.

Like Foulstone. Chapter 4 we go to get Foulstone, only to find out that a choice from Chapter 2, that we though was a minor choice, locked us out of getting Foulstone, which locked off several things we could build, and tons of great equipment. Would have been fine as long as there was a different option for being locked out. But we are basically being punished for playing a certain way.

Then there is the fact that we got locked out from being able to recruit a certain character because a choice in Chapter 2 that made it so we had to kill him in Chapter 3. Which also locked us out of more gear.

Then there's the Colony Stats. Security means NOTHING! "Affects the ability of the colony to cope with negative events on its own," yet we still need to go deal with their issue ever other void jump, and the options to deal with it are always terrible. And this is all at max Security. One Reddit comment I saw made a good point. If a colony is under attack, and I am made to go to the planet to deal with it, why can I not provide aid myself? Am I incompetent as a protector/ruler?

As for resources. Why is it that if a water supply is poisoned, and I spend PF to get the emergency water, why am I unable to get the PF back? Am I permanently supplying them with emergency water, for a temporary problem? Oh, and I have a factory producing weapons, but giving weapons to my colony causes the factory to no longer produce anymore?

I just can't understand the logic behind a lot of this stuff. I understand the concept that the amount of resources you have is actually how much you are producing. So I can understand excavators add a small amount, and removing the excavators will remove the same amount. But I don't understand why you lose resource production when dealing with a temporary problem. And since these events are random and can happen more than once, it means that you are constantly spending resources with no way to regain them.

When I look to see how often people complain about this issues, I just see people praising Owlcat for these things, by saying "What quirky choices. Never change."

[Aranador]

if there was no consequence for your actions, no changes in the story in reaction to what you do, then you might as well be playing a visual novel, a mobile clicker game, or even watching a movie.

I found great pleasure in discussing with my friend how different our play throughs were.

As for conceptual issues - like profit factor - I can understand why it might not mesh with you. It is a different idea to buying and selling, to represent just how meaningless buying and selling is to someone who has command of many systems worth of resources.

An example is your water - the emergency water is negigable cost to you. The reputation loss, the loss of faith in your ability to do something as 'simple' as provide water infrastructure - it's like the stock market in a way - your promises carry a little less weight for it.

Anyway - if you are totally bothered and can not accept things - firstly dont ever play chess, the knight moves in a stupid way - and secondly - get the Toybox mod, and 'fix' your profit factor and change the game flags so you can have foulstone and anything else you want.

[Jak Dilan]

I can understand what you mean about consequences. And you're right, there should be consequences for the actions. Like the fact you can lose a really strong character be being the opposite alignment. And that makes sense, since there is no what they would work with someone that is doing everything they stand against. However, with Foulstone, not being able to colonize it for wiping out the original population doesn't quiet makes sense. You could easily send new people to colonize it. And I'm sure that even if the action left the planet inhabitable, that the Imperium should have the ability to build localized cities with life support. After all, that's basically what a Void Ship is.

As for the point about Profit Factor, it's contradictory. In the description provided by the game, your Profit Factor acts less like a currency, and more like a threshold. With the logic provided by the game, things that require upkeep, or reduce reputation are reasonable actions that would reduce Profit Factor. Even buying mutants makes sense, not because of their value, but because it would cause a negative impact on you reputation. But in the case of the water situation, it's not a permanent upkeep and the need for extra water should not warrant a reduction in reputation. And if it's a case of not being able to provide water, then not sending emergency water should cause the reduction.

And then their is the fact the resources are treated in the same contradictory way of not actually being how much you have but rather how much you produce, yet temporary events reduce the amount you are producing. Using the thing your producing should not reduce how much you are producing. I would say it makes since if the reduction to production was temporary, but it's a permanent loss that can not be regain.

Now, actions that affect the citizen's view of you makes sense. A negative view from those that would be using or producing the resource could cause them to use more or work less, which would affect how upkeep and production.

Essentially the issues I have are that the resources operate in an inconsistent manner, and you are heavily punished for you choice in game path. If you are offered more than one path for the story, but are punished for choosing a specific one, then normally that would cause people to be upset.

I think that happened with Skyrim's Dawngaurd DLC. If you choose the route of the Dawngaurd, you get a very lackluster story, and basic gear. But if you go with the vampires (the route they want you to pick) you get a long and fulfilling story line, and high end gear. And if I remember right, plenty of people were, and still are upset that the Dwangaurd route denies you most of the DLC.

[Shahadem]

I agree about Foulstone.

It was just stupid. There is NO reason why you can't colonize Foulstone with brand new colonists or colonize one of those other habitable worlds you see. This was just terrible railroading whose purpose was punishing players for choosing one line of dialogue instead of the other two.

And you had NO WAY OF KNOWING WITHOUT HINDSIGHT that choosing the third option would lock you out of a fifth planet.

And yeah, profit factor makes no sense.

If it is supposed to be your INCOME then it makes no sense that one time purchases or one time sales would reduce it or increase it.

What really makes no sense is that the game does not punish you for taking actions which significantly reduce the amount of skilled workers on your ship and planets. For some reason WH4K writers believe that the population is infinite even though people are constantly dying by the thousands while very few if any new people are being born and trained. It can take 30 years to produce a skilled craftsman. And if you can kill them all before they can teach someone else their craft you just ran out of craftsmen.

Seriously. How many hundreds of people die on your ship every week? 500?

How many are born every week? 0?

See the problem?

If you start with 2500 people, by week 6 you will have 0 people on the ship. Maybe the writers shouldn't have such an impossibly high death rate that vastly outpaces any believable birth rate.

Like sure, if you want to write about a very short war with super high causalities that's fine. But it has to be short and super infrequent. It cannot be an everyday occurrence for 4,000 years because you are going to run out of people.

[Gorwe]

OP, welcome to Owlcat(and to 40k as well), enjoy your stay!

[Green Knight]

Sweet, sweet summer child... is this your 1st Owlcat game? Don't overthink it. Play and have fun. Then play again with foreknowledge and enjoy it again.

[Aranador]

Your ship has an estimated 26,000 souls aboard - number straight from the game. Your ship has families and children and entire clans who live their lives aboard your ship (which you get to discover in the game through various side conversations and quests). And every time you pull into port, there are people desperate for some sort of job that provides regular food who will take up the spacer life. Yes, living in a ship is a better life to some !

WH40k is a universe of quadrillions of humans. You can kill the entire population of Earth, and it isnt even a blip in the daily birth rate. The numbers for this setting are insane.

If you can not accept the setting, that's OK, because frankly it is a little nuts.

[n#n#m#]

Originally posted by Jak Dilan:

Then there's the Colony Stats. Security means NOTHING! "Affects the ability of the colony to cope with negative events on its own," yet we still need to go deal with their issue ever other void jump, and the options to deal with it are always terrible. And this is all at max Security.

I'm also interested in this matter. Seriously, what point is there to colony stats other than Efficiency? I thought the issues will stop to come out when I'll max out Complacency and Security, but it doesn't seem to be the case. If anything, I get more events with all sorts of issues now rather than in Act 2 when stats were at their lowest. It's not annoying, thankfully colony management is pretty light in this game, I just want to understand how stats work.

[Jak Dilan]

With my play through, the events seem way to frequent. We've got the Security stat up either pretty high or max but still have to stop what we're doing to go help. And when we do, almost all options are negative. And the one time we pick the option to see what the officers think, Jae turned the best option we had into a a worse one. I think it's neat to get a new option by asking the followers for their view, but the fact that asking for an opinion locks out different option is ridiculous.

[Darkdecipl]

Originally posted by Aranador:

if there was no consequence for your actions, no changes in the story in reaction to what you do, then you might as well be playing a visual novel, a mobile clicker game, or even watching a movie.

I found great pleasure in discussing with my friend how different our play throughs were.

As for conceptual issues - like profit factor - I can understand why it might not mesh with you. It is a different idea to buying and selling, to represent just how meaningless buying and selling is to someone who has command of many systems worth of resources.

An example is your water - the emergency water is negigable cost to you. The reputation loss, the loss of faith in your ability to do something as 'simple' as provide water infrastructure - it's like the stock market in a way - your promises carry a little less weight for it.

Anyway - if you are totally bothered and can not accept things - firstly dont ever play chess, the knight moves in a stupid way - and secondly - get the Toybox mod, and 'fix' your profit factor and change the game flags so you can have foulstone and anything else you want.

maybe stop meat riding the game so hard and actually read and reply to his questions

[Taifun_Vash]

The security for a colony gives you better choices for events happening on them, it doesn't stop events from happening, there are good events and bad events and you don't even need to do them if you don't want to.
You should have enough PF at the end to buy everything three times over.
Who says the contract isn't a permanent contract where the production value gets constantly deducted, you see it as a one time thing.
Foulstone, why do you see it as a punishment you made your choice, which ever it was, it will give you an ending which you wouldn't get if you got Foulstone. Yes, you wouldn't be able to get certain items, or you would get them early because you plundered it, maybe need to plan how to build your colonies, so you can reach the tier 5 or fail to do it. It isn't a punishment, you will have an ending that you otherwise wouldn't get.
If we talk about colonizing Foulstone after wiping the original settlers out, what is stopping you from settling on every second planet in every system? It isn't a city builder, live with your choice. Do a new playthrough after and see one of the possible endings when you took them under your protection next time.
I think there will be other colonies in other systems in the future, there are certain possible candidates for that.

[Darkdecipl]

your using info that a new player wouldn't have to make those choices for a new time player first playing they won't even know that colonizing is a thing for planets when they first encounter foulstone we are not looking to replay the game we are stating issues from a first initial playthrough experience and how it sucks to draw players into the game as a whole and while the game works with the PF sure 100% game wise it mechanically works but lore wise it is making 0 sense if I pay for 100 gallons of water for temporary relief for example and lets say thats 1 pf why am I still paying 1 pf forever when I am not getting that water forever

[Jak Dilan]

Alright, so, if Security gives better choices for an event, why were all the choices for an event extremely negative when Security for the colony was 10, which I believe is the max.

For PF/resources, somethings don't makes sense. For example, if one of the events is a battle, and the cost is weapons, why is it permanent? It's a single one time battle, and there is a factory producing weapons. A single battle should not suddenly reduce the amount of weapons a factory on another planet is producing.

As for the situation with Foulstone, it feels like a punishment because things are locked out with nothing for the chosen path being unlocked. Usually, it would be that picking one path opens up an option for that path, while locking out options for the opposite path. But with Foulstone, you are not just locked out of one things, but multiple things, and get no other options. It's basically saying, should have picked this thing and get the points for your chosen path another way. Which is something you couldn't have known unless you've already played through it, which is fine for some people, be no everyone is happy with being punished for not having played already. Foulstone was basically made to be a requirement for many things, but is easy to accidentally hard lock yourself out of. But the other colonies, which are not required for other things, are impossible to be lock out of. To add insult to injury, there is a quest the requires you to settle Foulstone, but if you're locked out, the question doesn't let you know. Unless you look it up, you'd be flying all around the expanse looking the the colony you need to establish, never to find it.

[Taifun_Vash]

Originally posted by Jak Dilan:

Alright, so, if Security gives better choices for an event, why were all the choices for an event extremely negative when Security for the colony was 10, which I believe is the max.

For PF/resources, somethings don't makes sense. For example, if one of the events is a battle, and the cost is weapons, why is it permanent? It's a single one time battle, and there is a factory producing weapons. A single battle should not suddenly reduce the amount of weapons a factory on another planet is producing.

As for the situation with Foulstone, it feels like a punishment because things are locked out with nothing for the chosen path being unlocked. Usually, it would be that picking one path opens up an option for that path, while locking out options for the opposite path. But with Foulstone, you are not just locked out of one things, but multiple things, and get no other options. It's basically saying, should have picked this thing and get the points for your chosen path another way. Which is something you couldn't have known unless you've already played through it, which is fine for some people, be no everyone is happy with being punished for not having played already. Foulstone was basically made to be a requirement for many things, but is easy to accidentally hard lock yourself out of. But the other colonies, which are not required for other things, are impossible to be lock out of. To add insult to injury, there is a quest the requires you to settle Foulstone, but if you're locked out, the question doesn't let you know. Unless you look it up, you'd be flying all around the expanse looking the the colony you need to establish, never to find it.

The first time you arrive in act2 you get a questline to create a new settlement, for my first run I just did the Iconoclast route, through that got lucky and found out I could settle there. I did multiple playthroughs since then, in some I didn't reach tier 5 even with all colonies and reached tier 5 without foulstone, I have never seen it as a punishment.

Your PDF would need weapons and armor for every new recruit why do you see it as a one time fitting? It isn't a one time battle they would need to be constantly ready for such battles, even if they never happen again.

The events and what events you get are random, I had plays where I only got good events and some where I constantly got bad events, if you wait this bad events got worse, but again I can leave an event open. I'm not obliged to do them if I don't want to, maybe Owlcat will change that in the future, but for now you have no consequences.

Could they make it better certainly, there is always room to improve the game and how all things work with each other.
And threads like this will certainly help them for future references on how to improve things for new players.

[Jak Dilan]

I've heard that no going to help has negative consequences. And if you're half way across the expanse when one of those events pop up, it's impossible to get their fast enough to prevent trouble.

As for the weapon thing, it makes sense for new recruits to need the equipment to get outfitted, and when a particular instance comes up it makes sense to requires extra weapons, but when that instance happens, and the extra weapons is in constantly needed and the same event happens in the same colony and takes even more weapons, then it stops making sense. If they decided to use more weapons to prevent similar events, then why would they need more to stop the same event if they already are prepared?

The issue with resources is that the expenses keep increasing, but you can only increase production so much. Now if production could be continually increased (Say if the extractors have a timer, and completion did not reduce production, allowing you to eventually gain a stacking increase from the same spot) then the constant increase of expenses wouldn't be a problem.

As for why I feel the issue with Foulstone is a punishment, it's simply because you are given options based on alignment path, but the heretic is treated like the wrong option. It's like being told "there are no wrong answers and every answer leads to something" but then the answer you pick was actually wrong. It feel like I'm punished for believing their lie.
In the Playstation game Infamous, you can pick the Good path or the Evil path, and neither are treated as wrong. They just alter the story, and maybe give different powers.

When you find Foulstone for the first time, you are given 5 options, 1 that gives extra lore, 3 based on alignment paths, and 1 that is just ignoring the situation. If you decide to ignore it, you ruined you chance of having the colony. If you are playing as heretical, even if you take time to look at what option gives what, you'll think the heretic options is the best one since it give PF, a Weapon, some cargo, and heretical points, and never know that you locked yourself out of a colony. You are making a meaningful choice, without knowing that it is meaningful.

In most cases, when you find Foulstone for the first time, you have no idea that it can be a colony. It's not even clear that the choice concerning Foulstone is going to have major impact until it's far too late.

In short, you are given options that have a hidden outcome with major impact to the story and mechanics of the game.

[spammdc]

Yes at times I have thought that.
I do think more info provided by the Game Dev's in specific situations would help but it is also how the W40K universe is presented.