Is this really a rogue-like than RPG?

[Gildongs]

I've just started playing for a few hours and while I enjoy the open ended exploration of the game, I feel like the game is trying to push me towards the main quest with the expiration date on it and enemies getting progressively harder. I really don't like it when a game forces you to progress. I feel like I'll build up a captain and after maybe 10-20 hours, have to start over.

[Gilmoy]

0. All narrative vignettes are optional. None are mandatory.

You can chase all of them to see their dev-scripted cutscenes, once each.
Or you can ignore them all, and let them quietly expire without you.
Eras will advance regardless.

1. AI ship captains on Normal level up at roughly the same speed you do.
That's the rising power curve. Don't fall behind.

You may perceive this as getting progressively harder, if you haven't learned to upgrade.
Learn to upgrade

• Learn how to plan, assemble, and build 1 crack crew-fighting team.
  The strongest crew-fighter is an Officer stacking all 3 jobs into 1 weapon.
  The strongest fighting crew is 4 Officers (or Captain + 3 Officers).
  This tends to require a 5/30 ship or larger, so it dovetails with your ship upgrade path.
  Also template, or go find, 1 Contact each who sells Weapons, Armor, and Gear.
  
• Learn how to stay alive, earn, plan, and execute, a 2nd ship + full upgrade plan.
  For your 1st ship, you can upgrade a few cheap + quick components, but nothing slow.
  So we earn to buy a 2nd ship, and plan to fully upgrade every slot with good stuff.
  
• Learn to avoid fights until both parts of that plan are fully ready.
  An unprepped starter ship, or one that Never Upgrades, falls behind badly.
  Your fully-prepared 2nd ship leapfrogs weak AI Captains. That's the trick.

The rising power curve urges you to Always Have a Plan.
Don't stay weak for 20 hours, and then restart with an even weaker 0-hour Captain.

Getting strong is more fun. Make it so.

[Gildongs]

Thanks. What do you mean by "stacking all 3 jobs into 1 weapon"? And also, by what you suggested, the idea is to focus on specific role play, not jack of all trades? Meaning, dont do orbit patrol or salvage if I'm playing a fighting oriented shock trooper type?

[J.B.King]

Officers (and the Captain, of course) can and should train in 3 different jobs, while crew are limited to one job each.
For a fighting role, you can opt to select 3 jobs which all get the same type of weapon skill, like Rifles, for example. This means the bonuses from all 3 jobs to the rifle skill of your character add up and you end with a higher skill in it.
If, instead, you had chosen 2 jobs with Rifle skill and one with Pistol skill, then in combat you would still be forced to fight with either one or the other, but you cant enter the fight with both at the same time and so part of the skill bonuses in your build would go to waste.

Take note this is just an easy way for beginners to look at it, but it isn't strictly necessary.
For some combat builds, one can also choose just 2 combat jobs that synergize well with each other and a third role that is very good at something else, like buff, for example. This works even better if not too many levels need to be put into the third role in order to get those buffs online so your combat dice pools dont suffer too much.

Another thing you may want to watch out for is the amount of skill bonus a job gives, and take an especially good look at the defense skills for combat roles.
Going with the example of a rifle user again, A soldier gets very high Rifle and Evasion skills compared to many other rifle users. A Bounty Hunter only gets mid Evasion bonuses and comparatively low Rifle skill. A Xeno Hunter gets mid level Rifle but no Evasion at all.
Combining 3 jobs for a combat role which all have low or no defense skill is definitely NOT advisable, even on normal difficulty.

Also, take a look at the type of active combat abilities the job gives and what position your character needs to be in in order to use them. Their weapon choice also determines whether the weapon can even be used from that position.
Going with Rifle skill as an example again, sniper rifles, heavy MGs and assault rifles can never be used from the front aka Position 1, while shotguns can be used there but cannot be used in Position 4, the rear of the formation. All of these weapons use the rifle skill though.
Similiarily, some jobs specialize more for a front row position, some more for a back row one. Therefore, although both of them get the Rifle and Evasion skills, it doesn't make sense to combine the Sniper job with the Shock Trooper - one is designed to work in the front, the other in the back.

As for your question about specializing versus jack of all trades: yes, specializing in specific activities and optimizing crew dice pools, crew active skills and ship modules for that makes you a lot better at it.
That said, you are still learning the game and should try different activities to test them out and find what you enjoy and which playstyle suits you. Also, on normal difficulty, being highly specialized isnt really required because the difficuly is really much much lower and you can save and reload in case something goes really catastrophically wrong.

The super efficient highly optimized builds are needed more on hard difficulty and above, where you have permadeath and cant save the game past turn 120.
There the game simply does not really allow for mistakes to be made much anymore without risking entering a downward spiral ending your run or even instant death.

edited for my usual amount of typos

[KoboldUtopian]

There's no force to progress. Time will pass and a few major events will still happen, but what you do has almost no influence on it. At best, your efforts to support one faction or another will shift a few mostly-unimportant numbers in their favor. So just wander around doing what you like.

[Tyrax]

I have the same question, help me understand - is this a traditional RPG with saves that you can load, or a rogue-like where if you fail you have to start a new run?

[Trese Brothers]

Originally posted by Tyrax:

I have the same question, help me understand - is this a traditional RPG with saves that you can load, or a rogue-like where if you fail you have to start a new run?

That decision is up to you, depending on your difficulty level or custom difficulty settings.

The game is an RPG. If you are skilled enough or disable permadeath, you can feasibly run a captain for 200+ years (we've seen the save games). If you choose, you can play without premadeath and play forever. If you pick permadeath, one death, done, restart, as you'd expect.

There are also permadeath settings where you captain can never die but officers or crew can.

Hope that helps!

[Gilmoy]

It's a hybrid of both.

• You can have any number of Captains at the same time, and alternate their runs.
  I always have 5-10 (before I do my own file management and move them around).
  Some players have 1,000+.
  
• Each Captain's save file has 4 save slots.
  You must manually use Menu => Save Slots to access your 4 slots.
  
• On non-Permadeath difficulty modes, your 4 save slots are valid all game long.
  So you can save/load as much as you want, like any RPG.
  These difficulty modes are:
  
  • On Basic and Normal difficulty, your Captain and Officers never die.
    
  • On Challenging and Demanding difficulty, your Captain never dies.
    
• On Permadeath difficulty modes, your 4 save slots are valid until turn 120.
  10 turns = 1.0 week, 52.0 weeks = 1 game year.
  So 120 turns is 12.0 weeks, or slightly less than 1/3 of Year 1.
  Up to this turn limit, you have infinite save/load.
  After this turn limit, you can never save/load again, only play 1-file permadeath.
  
  • On Hard, Brutal, and Impossible difficulty, everybody can-die (including Captain).
    

Even on Impossible difficulty, you have ~2.8 months of crew prep with checkpointing.
Dismiss a few surplus crew, cultivate a Contact, hire/fire some crew, assemble a team.

Some Guides will baldly tell you to exploit this by (ahem) saveslotting.
(Before turn 120, it's not savescumming )

• save to slot 3
  
• roll a random spice hall recruit, or hire 1 Doctor from a Contact
  
• if stats suck, reload from slot 3
  
• repeat until his stats don't suck, etc.

If you play on permadeath and die in year 5, or year 30, gg, that's your run.
You may exit the movie theater through the front door behind the screen.
Try again next week, and start all over.

Anyways, starting new Captains is kind of fun, so it's not wasted work.

[Tyrax]

Okay that's good to hear - I'm not really interested in a rogue-like, I just want a traditional RPG where you follow a story and save game etc.