How many ERAs are there? Is there an end?

[Isisius]

I know this is an open ended game, but it would be good to know when the scripted story content is done.
I think the problem with making a game like this open ended is that it lacks any end game challenges or goals.
Territory cant change hands, you cant form your own fleet of mercs, you cant found a kingdom (ala Mount and Blade).
Taking part in faction conflicts doesnt seem to have any notable effect on the map.

As such, theres only a certain amount of value (to me at least) in playing after there is no more content.

Im not saying i have any issues with how the game is, i love it, got like 100 hours of playtime.
But i think if you arent going to add any "End Game" objectives, or any way of impacting the map, it would be cool to have a way to finish the game once the story is done (and give people the option of playing on for as long as they like).

I finished the Crimson Pox and those alien slugs, and Ive been flying around for a bit and nothing seems to be happening. Is that the end at the moment?

[wilky]

This page lists the following: https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Eras

1 Faen-Char Conflict
2 Second Founding
3 Early Coalition Era
4 3rd Century
5 Plague Era
6 Coalition Dissension
7 Jyeeta Brood Awakening


So you're getting pretty far into the story / pretty close to the end. You haven't had the Jyeeta Xeno show up yet? Be warned, they're coming. :D

[JimmysTheBestCop]

There is no end. No grand campaign. There are big era stories and many little side stories. Nothing is mandatory. You don't even have to pickup Estelle when you start a game. I've played countless games where I have never done 1 single story or 1 single mission.

It is a game that plays better over multiple runs. Each one of my runs is probably < 20 or 30 hours and I got like 500 hours. Sometimes a run might only be 5 or 10 hours. All depends what my goals for that character are.

STF is a tabletop throwback. It really is the best when you role play different captains/careers out. It's not a grand campaign rpg, its not a map painter, its not about the player being a hero or anything important in the universe. You are just another captain in a sea of captains. If you can't do the job someone else will.

The game doesn't dictate player objectives. The player does. Its old school. Nothing will tell you what to do or force you to do anything. We as the player use our imagination to define objectives for our characters play through.

I might have had over 2 dozen completely different captains with completely different objectives that played out completely different from one another.

Or some players might do the same exact thing ever play through and see how they can improve upon their last run.

[Isisius]

Originally posted by wilky:

This page lists the following: https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Eras

1 Faen-Char Conflict
2 Second Founding
3 Early Coalition Era
4 3rd Century
5 Plague Era
6 Coalition Dissension
7 Jyeeta Brood Awakening


So you're getting pretty far into the story / pretty close to the end. You haven't had the Jyeeta Xeno show up yet? Be warned, they're coming. :D

They are the slug things right.I got them before the plague. ANd i assume the coalition Dissension only happens if you pick a certain story choice.

[Isisius]

Originally posted by JimmysTheBestCop:

There is no end. No grand campaign. There are big era stories and many little side stories. Nothing is mandatory. You don't even have to pickup Estelle when you start a game. I've played countless games where I have never done 1 single story or 1 single mission.

It is a game that plays better over multiple runs. Each one of my runs is probably < 20 or 30 hours and I got like 500 hours. Sometimes a run might only be 5 or 10 hours. All depends what my goals for that character are.

STF is a tabletop throwback. It really is the best when you role play different captains/careers out. It's not a grand campaign rpg, its not a map painter, its not about the player being a hero or anything important in the universe. You are just another captain in a sea of captains. If you can't do the job someone else will.

The game doesn't dictate player objectives. The player does. Its old school. Nothing will tell you what to do or force you to do anything. We as the player use our imagination to define objectives for our characters play through.

I might have had over 2 dozen completely different captains with completely different objectives that played out completely different from one another.

Or some players might do the same exact thing ever play through and see how they can improve upon their last run.

I do understand what you are saying, but usually in a game that lets the player write their own stories they are able to affect the map a little more.
They dont let that happen in this game, which is totally fine, and makes sense from a lore point of view.
I dont think "its old school" really means anything lol.

RPGs tend to come in two kinds.
Either you are the protaganist, the centre of that universe and the story warps around you.

Or you are just another nobody and you have to make your way in the world.

Both can be heaps of fun in their own way.

But you tend to need external challenges to put pressure on the character in the "just another nobody" kind of game, otherwise it just becomes an endless series of fetch quests.
And as you get stronger and stronger, those external challenges should become more interesting. Bad games do this by just levelling, good games throw different things at you.

I thought the Jyeeta Brood Awakening, the Plague and the Coalition were all super cool story hooks. It made the galaxy feel alive, and i was able to either partake or ignore it. But either way, something was happening.

Without those "eras" it tends to feel a little static to me. You basically just get fetch quests that have no impact on the world. Stars dont become more prosperous becuase you trade with them, your contacts dont do cool things because you raised their influence, etc etc.
Star systems changing hands was just an example of affecting the map, it doesnt have to be a "Paint the map" game either. Building up your own trading fleet could be interesting, having more ships under your command, not nessecarily in battle, but maybe you can send them patrolling, and this affects the safety and thus prosperity of a star system.

This is just my personal opinion, but i think that to keep things interesting you either need to allow the players to affect the map in some way, even if its just they become governer of their own planet or settlement and can sink money, time and resources into it, or they can assemble a fleet of traders or warships, or whatever.

Or there needs to be a bunch more story eras, and possibly even different effects/outcomes depending on how you involved yourself in them. The way you can screw the coalition is super cool. Would love to see more reactivity. And even if they end up making enough eras have some of them only fire off some of the time.

Again, i think this game is super cool, and i can see myself playing it again at some point in the future. The mechanics are super fun but for me it falls short of infinite sandbox replayability like Crusader Kings, or Mount and Blade, or (which have no set stories, but it lets you affect the characters and map), or games like Sunless Sea, Port Royale or Sid Meirs Pirates, which let you stuff around but throw stories at you every now and then to challenge you and keep you progressing.

[davea]

To me, the interesting thing is not playing through all the eras once. It is trying different captain types and crew focus. A spy run is very different from a merchant run, a torpedo loadout plays differently from a boarding loadout, etc. The eras go by, and some of the same events have happened, but that's only background to whatever focus I chose for this run. For me, and others, a particular run can last up to 40 hours but I've done many dozens of them, all different.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by davea:

To me, the interesting thing is not playing through all the eras once. It is trying different captain types and crew focus. A spy run is very different from a merchant run, a torpedo loadout plays differently from a boarding loadout, etc. The eras go by, and some of the same events have happened, but that's only background to whatever focus I chose for this run. For me, and others, a particular run can last up to 40 hours but I've done many dozens of them, all different.

Yeah I like many runs with many different captains and ship purpose.

It's also a sandbox. The most fun I usually have I don't ever do a story or a mission. Lot of players feel the need to constantly accept missions/stories and follow it like it's some kind of quest that gets checked off in your rpg logbook. It's not really like that. The beauty is you don't have to do anything.

It's very much like GTA. No one finishes the campaign/story in that game. They just do their own thing.

I actually wish that the achievements went further into the sandbox aspects. Like achievements for never taking a mission, never taking a story. Different random types of things you only get by flying off and doing your own thing in the game world and not following some kind of quest list.

Typically you don't drop 100 hours into 1 play through of STF. Yes it's a sandbox, yes it's an rpg, but it borrows/inspires a lot from rogue-likes. That is what sets it apart from other games in the genre.

Some play throughs I might not even see every era. Some runs last 70+ years while others maybe 30 years.

The flipside of the argument is if STF was like those other games then the other half would think it was boring. Pathfinder took me like 300 hours to do completionist run blind in my first attempt. I liked it very very much. But I would never do another run through that game. I also expect completely different things from those rpg's then a game like STF.

The games you list of course are terrific games. But the concepts are different. Those are like 1 campaign type of games. When you replay them its because you love doing basically the same thing again. I've played through Baldurs Gate 1&2 countless times. Even with different characters its plays basically the same.

While STF you could do countless runs and they would all be mostly different. You are only limited by your imagination.

[Trese Brothers]

All eras happen eventually in all games. They last 3 are not in a fixed era. You can ignore the story of consolidation/dissension, but it will go on without you based on the simulation state.