Thank God for the workshop

[MAKAIROSI]

Seriously the core limit is so bad. Like, why limit the design of the ship? If I wanna become the next empire of the universe, why limit me?

But thank God they've allowed the workshop and there's an item there that raises the limit to more than you could possibly need (from 9 to 667 or something).

But seriously, this should be vanilla. Make a building that raises the core limit, which simply costs end-game resources, like the quadronics thing (the purple one). Make it so that it needs some difficult to get end-game research. But for the love of whoever is up there, don't limit us.

Or at least make it a setting? Like, play the game without this, or play it with a limit. Sorry I just don't like such limits in my designs, I mean turrets cost points! If points are limited, then so are turrets!

[Death Approaches]

no. wrong. incorrect.

look, I'm guessing you're new. you're gonna think what you think. and that's fine. that's just how humans work. if you had 100, 500, 1000, 2000, more, hours in SH of learning and loving SH all through the development, all the changes, tweaks to playbalance... you'd probably feel differently.

you know that the limitations, the rules, the defines of the game world construct, in EVERY game, by the way, not just this one, are what make the game a 'game' - otherwise you could just simply overcome all challenges, overpower all enemies. enable god mode, whatever... but... no challenge, no risk? no fun.

you don't really learn how to play SH well in a few hours. not even a few dozen hours. it's a long, slow burn kind of thing. you're expected to fail miserably and be up against seemingly insurmountable odds.

how does one with 15 starfighters, who has to give up having a strong hull or lots of shields or more than a few turrets, even survive combat with 3 enemy vessels, much less more!?! this seems impossible! but, hey check that out, it's not. once you put your mind to it.

everyone, myself included, has done one of the various trickery to exceed the limits of core and system points. and hey the saves are just text, you are about to starve to death a 7th time and getting bored and want to see what's out there? you can just give yourself some food. (or enable Sandbox mode after-the-fact, and just plop more food down inside the leisure area or in front of an empty storage bin.)

but the limitations, the rules, are what make games actually enjoyable. giving yourself more than are intended is one thing when looking to see what's possible, what can be done, to make a truly impossible thing - like being in the 5th or 8th galaxy where you should have died long ago, doable... well... that's different. but in the 1st galaxy? it just makes it so easy it's just watching a sure thing play out on the screen in front of you. so where's the challenge, the fun?

you will play your way, of course. it's not like it's a mortal sin to do it. just make sure you don't get so used to it that, without it, you don't have a chance. because you'll never actually learn to play SH, and you'll eventually stop playing sooner than you would have, naturally... because it won't be any fun, seem extremely repetitive, and you'll move on and probably not even recommend it to others.

and that's not fair. to you, to others. :-)

[MAKAIROSI]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

no. wrong. incorrect.

look, I'm guessing...
...and that's not fair. to you, to others. :-)

I agree with you, a little bit, but not entirely. I like challenges, and tbh, I haven't really utilized the workshop content yet, I'm still at the amount of cores I was supposed to be at. I just don't like designing my ship, then finding out that it won't work because I'm missing like 1-2 cores, and now it's gonna be asymmetrical.

I don't need 1000 cores, I'm not gonna copy paste a thousand turrets. But I played until the mid-game (I'm almost done with all researches, so maybe end-game?) without any workshop content, and that didn't really feel challenging (the start was, but once you overcome that, it's no longer challenging).

But now I got all the things I needed to get, and I just wanna make a cool ship. I actually only lack the researches that require you to dissect androids. My ship is self-sufficient, I'm only really lacking storage, I can make plasma weapons that shred enemies, all this without the workshop. I've fled pirates, struggled to find energium, had to jetisson stuff because I didn't have enough hyperion, had my people all be infected by parasites and suvive them against all odds. I rescued refugees from alien prisons, etc etc. All that with pistols and rifles with scopes lmao.

Tbh, I'd prefer research to be more nuanced. I think I got to the end too fast.

[neo5apien]

Losing and dying is fun actually. I have a better time losing than I do winning in games.

[MAKAIROSI]

Originally posted by neo5apien:

Losing and dying is fun actually. I have a better time losing than I do winning in games.

I mean, I don't wanna win necessarily, all the time, for no reason, but I also don't wanna lose all the time for no reason. The point is to be presented with a challenge, and win if you manage to overcome the challenge - that's what triggers the dopamine hit too.

Like, when I first got parasites in the ship, my dumb ahh thought I could overcome it by making all my crew force-wear suits and then open the airlocks, depleting the entire ship of gases (therefore the spores). lmao as you may know this doesn't work

But I mean, after you get the advanced bed you can safely forget about the parasites, which isn't that cool imo. I don't like an auto-win button lmao.

For example, I love Rimworld, because of this. There will be no point in the game where you have this auto-win. Right when you think you're now owning the game, something happens and slaps the hubris out of you lmao. And that's the thing, it presents you with a challenge there.

But this gets me thinking, how tf would I even solve this issue? Maybe make some things inescapable. For example, you find a way to treat parasites, but just the seizures/spread. Like, they still happen, but not infect anyone else. You can't ever entirely heal the crew.

Or tie some technologies to major events. For example, there's some alien ship that has the parasite panacea, but you have to steal it from them, in order to research it. And to steal it from them, it's insanely difficult. That would be cool.

There's many things that could be improved imo, but I don't know how willing the devs are to add some changes. I mean, the research tree is very very small. You get from medical bed to advanced bed too fast for my taste. You get the rocket tower without even experimenting on explosives. It should have more steps towards a research, for example one branch could have "reinforced hull" -> "structures outside hull" -> "turrets" / "cargo" / "airlock" (yes, airlock should only be buildable at that point, if you lose your original airlock it's game over before that point). Then another branch would be explosives -> rocketry and along with turrets you could get a rocket turret. Instead the "energy turret" should be tied with the X1 converter, which also should be more nuanced. I mean as it is, the X3 converter is like X1 -> X2 -> X3 lmao. There's no difficulty in getting the final reactor whatsoever.

There's also other stuff too. Like, there's no way to stop the haulers from charging at you. It would be cooler if you could use an item as a decoy. I'd also make the battles be turn-based instead, for a more tactical approach. Breach charges could be more utilized by having collapsed hull at places, to stop you from advancing. I literally never used any item or secondary item at any derelict, because I never had to. Flamethrowers could have a large bonus against eggs (like, preferable from even plasma) so that you want to take it with you even in late-game. Explosives against robots. You get me?

Sorry for the long post. But I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do with the base game to improve it, by simply adding more nuance, not an incredible amount, just not as straight to the point as it is right now.