Some gameplay issues from the demo

[Mike]

Overall I've enjoyed the demo. I like that you've kept many FTL mechanics the same while adding interesting changes. I like the atmosphere, the music, the art style, and the writing.

I found it ludicrously easy on the initial difficulty, and still very easy on Torment 6, which is the only higher difficulty setting available in the demo. On Torment 6 using the starting ship, I barely took any hull damage at all.

Naturally the highest difficulty setting will be harder, and perhaps the later sectors are harder too -- though I doubt it. This game feels like skilled players will out-scale the enemy progression in the second half, just like FTL, and there are indications that the snowballing effect could be even stronger in Void War.

With that said, I'm probably not the best person to balance the difficulty around, as I know FTL extremely well and play at the absolute highest standard.

There may be some balance issues with crew and boarding. The ability to deal guaranteed system damage using boarders, just by killing crew in the system, is extremely strong.

Let me put it in context. In FTL I have concocted elaborate boarding techniques to give my boarders a way to damage weapons. These are advanced techniques and they are not always possible, depending on your ship and the enemy ship.

In Void War, you just get this for free. With decently strong crew, you can board weapons and rapidly take down multiple levels just by killing some weak crew. And the risk of boarding is all but eliminated, as you can recall your crew at any time for free.

Due to the limited healing and heavy crew combat focus of the game, you have a high incentive to obtain crew who are strong in combat anyway -- even just for defending your own ship. And once you have them, you might as well get an assault sled too.

Defending your ship with strong crew seems much more important than in FTL, especially as some enemies are immune to suffocation. Of course this is true with the Lanius in FTL too, but those are only in one sector type, and FTL enemies stop boarding you after two cycles of "board, retreat". In Void War, enemies can just keep spawning from spells and other sources.

Just like FTL, Void War gives improved rewards for crew kills. And then it adds even more, with the "treasure chests" that you can loot. These are easy to grab even if the enemy crew is too strong to be worth fighting.

The most egregious balance issue I've encountered, however, is remote crew killing. Sometimes an enemy ship cannot hurt you, and you either have no assault sled or would lose too much health fighting a powerful enemy crew. But you still have a psychic power, say from the Witch commander.

This is a problem, because the "correct" play is to painstakingly kill all the enemy crew with your psychic attack ... which does a small amount of damage on a long cooldown. This is not fun.

... although you can at least sometimes attract four of them into one room with damage, which makes it a lot faster. Still not optimal, as hull damage means the enemy might start running.

Anyway, the game looks good. Good luck with it.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

People who use meta's will always be able to beat the game, because when push comes to shove unless they make the game unfair (see un-fun) then the player is always going to walk into a situation better prepared than the randomized A.I. enemy.

[Mike]

Originally posted by The Seraph of Tomorrow:

People who use meta's will always be able to beat the game, because when push comes to shove unless they make the game unfair (see un-fun) then the player is always going to walk into a situation better prepared than the randomized A.I. enemy.

Well ... yes and no.

When you're designing a game, you may want to balance it so that there isn't a single overwhelming right answer.

I say "may", because hacking in FTL is pretty much always correct to take, and that works out fine because you still have plenty of other choices and hacking combines with other mechanics (e.g. boarding) in interesting ways.

I don't think it's fun to be forced into either hamstringing yourself, or picking one option that is always best. It's more satisfying to have multiple options that work about equally well, where the right choice will depend on what's happening in the individual run. That's what adds strategy into a game.

I'm not necessarily saying that boarding is overwhelmingly the best choice. I don't know yet, because I've not played enough. I'm just flagging it up as a potential issue.

They've already made some decisions to remove "un-fun" aspects, such as automatically refilling oxygen when you jump, so you don't have to sit there and wait for it. Maybe they can also come up with a solution to the "slow spell casting crew kill" issue.

Even just adding a speed up button would help a lot. This is a feature missing in FTL, which many players supplement using CheatEngine's speedhack (which for some reason wasn't working with Void War for me).

Fun isn't the same for everyone. I get a lot more fun playing FTL "optimally" for win rate, because it makes my decisions strategically meaningful. And this is part of the long-term appeal for many players.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by Mike:

When you're designing a game, you may want to balance it so that there isn't a single overwhelming right answer.

In my experience (so far) there are 3 general tactics that work well in no particular order.

- DAKKA
(Lots of firepower to overwhelm shields, such as Storm 2's and 3's targeting enemy weapons and shields. Tears apart enemy ships quick, though energy weapons are good as well.)

- Boarding
(If you have a summoner build to swarm the enemy crew or just a few very tough units you can cripple enemy systems while you gun the enemy down.)

- Psykic Powers
(The ability to ignore shields is crippling if you have a few psykers target the enemy shields so your weapons can gun down the enemy ship. Else you could just have anti-crew psykers kill the crew to cripple the ship.)

- Missile Boat
(Some missile systems have nasty effects that when used properly can disable entire systems or set fire to a ship which can get out of hand if you kill the enemies husks.)