Fighting and jumping

[MAKAIROSI]

Hello all, i just started playing today, and i have to say a few things about fighting and jumping.

First of all, fighting is really not an option for me. I thought it would be kinda like freelancer so i thought, pirates. Soon enough i was proven correct. I got sparrow thinking i wanted the guns, i wanted to fight pirates!

In the first escort mission in the tutorial two small enemies appeared so i stayed to fight them. Then i discovered the marvellous fighting system this game has. In the beginning my ship would do nothing. Then i found out i had to select a target by clicking (which is impossible) or by pressing R, so i did that. Then you have to hit TAB to fire your main weapons. However once the enemy was out of range, the ship wouldn't even turn towards him, so when he got back into range, it would take ages to do that. Also, i had no idea how much damage i was doing, or if he was close to dying, and i think that should be obvious since my ship is supposed to be equipped with scanners.

So my first tutorial fight was a blast, and i thought, are all the fights really gonna be like that? No dogfighting since it's extremely difficult to navigate, aim (even with auto-aiming), chasing, dodging, nothing like that is in this game.

The only thing there is, is trading, and the storyline which i must admit i haven't seen yet (apart from some mentions of a civil war and the quarg which i've met already - though i haven't progressed the main mission - i don't know how tbh - but i don't mind that i like exploring open world games)

So no more fighting for me. I started doing jobs here and there, even escort missions - you can finish them without fighting at all - and bought a bounder (or some name like that) - and now i've paid everything and get 100k for easy transport missions.

But if i DO need to fight, or WANT to, why not make that a fun experience? Why not make it either tactical - turn-based - or action -wasd,strafing,mouse aim, etc- but instead we get this weird really-old feeling that we're playing asteroids, with the arrow buttons and a key for firing.

Anyway. There's also that thing about the jumps. It's not clear if it's possible to change systems without jumping (by just flying) and i'm assuming it's not possible since i've tried it. But then why not tell us? Tell us, not to waste time trying to fly to a different system with zero jumps left, just load and play differently. I even went to the FAQ and didn't find that info there.

Another thing that kinda bothered me about the jumps was that the ship had to be at a specific "position" or "speed" in order to jump. "Position" i understand, but why "speed" ? You're supposed to be able to jump even at high speed, or at low speed, as long as you're facing the direction you want to travel to. Sometimes the ship has to go to a full 180 degree turn just to slow down, then another turn to get back to the position it was originally, to jump again. Either introduce "backwards" flying (like "brakes") or put specific "stations" through which you can jump, so the ship has to go through those.

Now i'm gonna go talking about other stuff apart from fighting and jumping (those two were really tiresome) so you can skip these.

Outfitters. I go to a planet, i select outfitter, i get to a menu with ALL the things that i can get, but i can't buy anything and i wonder why. Later i discover that these aren't available there. So why am i seeing them? Also, at that specific planet, NOTHING was available, and i was just seeing where they were available on the map. So why do they have an outfitters' if they don't have anything to outfit you with? I understand that that's supposed to help you understand where each thing is, but it's more confusing than helpful. Maybe make some sort of help station that tells you where each thing is. Same thing happened with shipyard. Seriously, more help station, less empty shipyards and outfitters.

Refusal to land. Ok, i get that maybe i belong to a faction they hate, or something. However the game doesn't tell me what's wrong with me. They just refuse landing. And it's not even something like a pirate base, it's just a planet that refuses, and the planets in the systems next to it don't refuse. So i've no clue why they refuse.

Fixed trading prices. This makes zero sense. I mean, it makes sense from the coder's viewpoint, like i read in some thread, "they are fixed so that the main story doesn't break". But it really doesn't make any sense. Demand and supply everyone. You demand 1k tons, i bring you 1 mil tons, it doesn't make sense that you will pay me the same. And then, after that mil, i bring another mil, and your demand, and payment, remains the same. Again, i understand that the story might break. But you can make it so it doesn't. For example if a planet is supposed to suddenly need a lot of luxury goods so the story can progress, you could look at where its price is and if it's a - say "it already needed luxury goods but now it needs a lot" or if its price is a + say "it didn't need luxury goods but now it needs a lot" et voila, problem solved.
However it's quite *difficult*, i imagine, from a coder's viewpoint, to make a "breathing" space economy with fluctuating prices and demand/supply. But it has already been done ages ago, so what's the big deal? The trade routes could be fixed, because that isn't a day-to-day contract, it's a year's or decade's contract. So even if they didn't have any more demand, the trade route would still be in effect. But as long as the player is concerned, the prices should fluctuate. At least, make the - become a + for as long as 9 jumps or something. Then it could return to its original "hard-coded" price.

Anyway that's all at least for now, i hope i gave you valuable insight. And i hope you make the fighting system better because right now it's, or at least i find it to be, really not user-friendly.

[Jan Zizka of Trocnov]

Fighting: gets easier with turrets
Jumping: if you jump while speeding in a different direction, you'll miss your target or fly right into a star or planet.
Refusal to land: raises your rep through missions
Trading: I don't see what's wrong with dynamic economy

[toilethinges]

Actually, there is dynamic trade. That's really all I can say, other than thanks for feedback on the game.

[Avior]

Originally posted by MAKAIROSI:

In the first escort mission in the tutorial two small enemies appeared so i stayed to fight them. Then i discovered the marvellous fighting system this game has. In the beginning my ship would do nothing. Then i found out i had to select a target by clicking (which is impossible) or by pressing R, so i did that. Then you have to hit TAB to fire your main weapons. However once the enemy was out of range, the ship wouldn't even turn towards him, so when he got back into range, it would take ages to do that. Also, i had no idea how much damage i was doing, or if he was close to dying, and i think that should be obvious since my ship is supposed to be equipped with scanners.

R to select the ship. Its shields and hull are displayed on the circle on the far left. Yours are displayed on the circle in the upper right corner.
Go into preferences [ESC], button on the left side of the screen.

[Anima]

1) If you dont like the controls, change them. Like you do in every game. Look at the radar to see where your target is, your target will be colored white. Below the radar, you can see your target ship's health and shields.
The game is supposed to have a sort of old feel because it is the "Spiritual successor to the old Escape Velocity games"

2) there are reverse thrusters you can buy to fly backwards, a scram drive which will let you jump at higher speeds.

3) You were either looking at the outfits list on the map screen, or were too oblivious to see the outfits for sale because there is never an outfitter without something for sale. You can see more things than are available because you see the outfits that are installed.

4) you cant land on some planets for the same reason you cant walk into government facilities, because they are restricted because they dont trust you.

5) The commodity prices arent fixed, the change. Thats just a fact. The outfit and ship prices dont change for a reason that is unknown to me, but there is a reason.

If there is anything I missed in your wall of text, please, tell me and I, or someone else will be happy to explain.

[Ker]

1: Welcome to the game and community, we're glad to have you.

2: It sounds like a couple of your issues are the control scheme, which you can change the keybindings of (almost) everything in the game by going to the Preferences screen (Esc > Preferences.) It also sounds like you already discovered this, as you have discovered auto-aim.

3: This is a storytelling engine first and not a combat simulator. I advise you think of the 2d plane as a "Sensor and main control terminal." You tell your ship who to target, what to shoot at, and then either the rest of your crew or your ships on-board computer takes care of the rest, simplifying the 3d combat of real space to something you can easily manage. It takes a little imagination, but it really tends to help people. So if you *do* want to fight and master combat you will want to get a warship, toss some turrets and main guns on it, and just play around with it. It will take a bit of trial and error to get comfortable, but combat is really intuitive after a bit of playing with it - the main thing is just getting used to the controls or setting your own

4: as for jumping between systems, your sub-light drives would take you literally years to get from one star to another. That's why hyperspace is a thing. That's the lore behind it. In game, the reality is that each system is its own "scene" or "level" and jumping is loading the new scene/level.

5: Some planets will refuse to let you land because of their lore, like weapons testing facilities and the like. Target the planet with L or by clicking it, then hold shift and press T to talk to them. Many planets allow you to bribe them, even hostile planets.

6: Fixed commodity prices. TBH I personally don't like this either, but really. It is downright unrealistic to think that a regular merchant captian such as yourself could have such a huge effect on commodities just by trading them to have their prices change. I mean, unless you were sinsling and tried to build a fleet of freighters capable of literally carrying the entire planet earth.

7: As for the story, this is an important one. There will be a pop-up that tells you about a few terror attacks and a few systems in "The South" will turn green. When this happens, head there and spam "Spaceport" every time you land. Generally speaking it is *always* a good idea to click spaceport, anyway. That is the main point of the tutorial.

I hope you continue to play and continue to enjoy the game and, hopefully, me addressing these things will help.

[warp_core]

If you're targeted on a ship, on the left of the screen, you'll see an outline of it with 2 circles around it. The inner circle is its hull and the outer is its shields. When the hull gets to 1/2 on smaller ships or some number (not certain what exactly) on larger ships, it'll be disabled and you can board it to capture or plunder it (don't plunder outfits and then try to capture because you'll end up with a ship that doesn't have important outfits so won't work) (also, disabled ships will get destroyed by other factions. It's for balancing reasons because capturing and looting is too OP for making money). You can also turn on auto firing in the preferences menu.
The ship has to be moving slowly to jump because that's how the hyperdrive works. There is another outfit, a scram drive, you can buy on some planets, that allows jumping at higher speeds.
The outfitter menu in the map will show you what planets sell what outfits. If you land on a planet without an outfitter, the button won't be there on the planet panel. If there is an outfitter, the button will be there. Some outfitters only sell ammo for secondary weapons (mainly missile/torpedo launchers) so that might be why you're not seeing any outfits. The categories are also collapsible in the latest (0.9.5 if you're on the beta) version of the game so that might be why.
You won't be able to land on some planets for story reasons, for example, the one that got bombed won't let you land. Others will require higher reputation with that faction than you have. If you've got a planet selected to land on it, press <shift+t> to hail them, in some story missions, this will be a requirement. Pressing 't' with a ship selected will allow you to hail them as well. For Friendly ships, you can request fuel if you don't have any left or they will repair you if you've been disabled and you can potentially bribe hostile ships to leave you alone.
For the story: land on planets in the area labelled 'the South' and press the spaceport button. There is a random element so be patient, you'll be offered the missions eventually.
Edit: too many ninjas.

[MAKAIROSI]

So i'll start answering as best as i can, as i got many answers to what i wrote.

Before i begin, i don't want to be hostile to this community. If i didn't find the game fun i wouldn't have written anything. I did find the game fun to play and i think it gets minus points from things that could be changed really easily. That's why i took the time and wrote.

So. First of all many things escaped me, like the fact that i honestly never saw the hp of the enemy when, like you said, it's clearly visible when you select him. I'm new so i never got to see back thrusters - however even here, my point would be, so they sold me a car without reverse. Actually you could make a humorous statement, that yeah, we forgot to mention, these ships don't come with reverse, that's why they're cheap. However even the 1.5 mil one doesn't have reverse xD

I still find this fighting system not user-friendly, and it would be fun with just a few tweaks. I'm not gonna say "make 'em turn-based" since that would need a lot of new coding and also, that could be just me finding it fun. But aiming with the arrow keys (even if i change them, it's still two keys) seems to me a bit old- but not in a good way. Obviously, if everyone else agrees that they love this fighting system then my bad. And i'm not saying this to be lazy and not master a new system either. This "asteroid" feel has come back in other titles but with modern improvements. One of which was mouse-aiming. So if when you entered battle, mouse controlled your aim, that would suffice.

If you were travelling at some speed and then hyperjumped you wouldn't land on a star or a planet, because hyperjumps aren't fixed, because star systems' distance is not equal. So basically the ship's computer would calculate the ships speed and fix the hyperjump value accordingly. If hyperjumps were fixed then yeah, you would have to stop still each time you jumped. Are they?

Yeah, i understand travelling without jumping from one system to the other would take ages, but my point was not to "implement that" but to tell the player he can't do it. Even if it's obvious theoretically, it's a game, and many games feature travelling between systems without jumping, so it's most possible this game features such a thing too. Telling the player could be in the form of a warning, for example "save your jumps because if you can't land and refuel you can't escape".

I assume that by "commodity prices" you mean the materials you trade. Like luxury goods. I personally (again maybe it's just me) find it as if i'm exploiting a bug when a planet sells something and the next star system buys it for more, and that's happening no matter how many times i do that trade run. I personally find that unrealistic. Even if it changed by, say, 10 points each time, then it would give you the feel that "see, they wanted that, i sold them many of that, now they don't want it anymore for the time being" that shows a living economy.

If you meant ship prices and outfits then yeah, that should be fixed. Maybe it could change depending on the planet (if it's the planet that makes them it's cheaper, if it's the planet that buys and sells them it's more expensive) but again, that's an option.

Concerning the storyline, yeah, i haven't got to that yet, we'll see. Concerning the landing refusal, i understood the reasons but only because i've played similar games in the past. However what i meant was that they don't tell you in-game why they refuse. You just have to guess. And even if they don't wanna tell you, maybe some sort of tip could explain that.

Again, that's all from me, i hope you guys find some of the stuff i'm saying sensible.

[Sinsling]

So, I can address some of your points.

The first is the reverse flying. The ships in this game are so far designed such that weapons are in the front, engines are at the back, and thrusters presumable line your sides. The only current in game reverse thruster require you to use weapon space because that is exactly what is on front of your ship... weapon space. There isn't room up front for an engine block to let you fly backwards. This is more comparable to sea faring vessels than a car, and its shouln't be too hard to see why a starship wouldn't be able to reverse its thrust the way a sea-faring vessel can.

As for hyperspace, it isn't about accelerating to the next location. The way the current forms of interstellar travel work in ES is by using the gravity well of stars as focal points for their method of pulling the ship from one location to another. There are hyperdrives in the game that are capable of allowing the player to "jump" while traveling at higher speeds at the cost of extra fuel.

Me personally, the commodity value bounce was never really a problem. Maybe it isn't just high enough to destroy the routes I take. Mostly because I line up jobs instead because they generate ~ twice the revenue per ton if not more.

I do believe having enough hyperspace fuel is addressed by the tutorial if I am not mistaken. Would have to replay it some time to find out though.