Thank you for all of this. I've made a lot of corrections based on your feedback. The masochist in me is also liking the idea about the escape abuse punishment, but I want it to have predictability, to be a litteral escape jump, especially in the next update I've added a roguelike mode. You'll see what i mean when I upload the update tonight.
WIN070
I see what you mean about the Roguelike, Progressive and Hybrid modes.
I’ve yet to gain traction in the roguelike state, but will report if prestige has significant effect.
=== meow:
Been using [C]ANCEL to run down the fuel and generate extra fodder to [F]LAG.... This (combined with the menu bounce) seems to be my preferred way to complete more missions/jobs in a sector than normally possible.
Noticed that while I may run out of fuel before arriving, I can coast into the POI anyways (and [F]LAG extra enemies in while the locals are jumping in (if I’m quick). but…
If I [F]LAG ENEMIES immediately on arriving at a POI, the interesting part might be lost -(not yet duplicated)- . Apparently this ended the asteroid hazard, dunno if bug caused by crudely modding out the Steam dependancy/entanglement.
=== bugs and oddities:
While spamming the pause key (imitation slow-motion/bullet time) with the [E]SCAPE engaged to get out of the asteroid hazard POI, I encountered a temporary glitch state when the emergency jump fired in during a pause. – I’ve not characterized -(or duplicated)- this state, but have had PAUSE emblazoned across the screen during a battle.
I had to mod out the Steam integration to run the game (outside of the mod/dev tools), because it kept loading (or focusing on an already loaded instance of) Spacewar instead, after it insisted on me logging in to install Spacewar (default appid). (I dunno if this is a specific anti-piracy response by Steam as Spacewar was used/abused by previous Steam DRM unwrappers.)
The integrity system does seem to encourage swapping out modules/drones/augments frequently, leading to more variety.
Were tier upgrades intended to add integrity, or is there no mechanism to recover it?
Also; I guess the Derelict Ships refilling with salvage when they loop around the screen wasn’t intended as a minigame. :I
edit 5: sometimes the POI icons stop being clickable. bouncing from the Main Menu works around this by replacing them with new POI’s. ( Also exploitable )
Suggestions:
Change “Your first upgrade is free.” to “Your first upgrade was free.” after spending the {voucher/coupon/garuntee/instrument/bonus (?)}. And maybe lightly-shadow/hint the most expensive item avail.
Edits 3+:
[ALT] to toggle between {level} and {cost or unlock requirement) in upgrade screen?
If a player enters an unidentified “tier upgrade” POI without an upgrade-able drone or module, instead offer them the least effective weapon upgrade (by “-wins- DPS above replacement” ?)
win070 (Mew;)
I gathered that there was/is an intended way to restore derelicts; I was exploiting the wrapping (previously seeming to be accomplished by) cloning the old derelict by running them all down to minimum scrap (and only destroying the last one targeted), then only destroying them when they’ve refilled.
(edit 3/4: Strike this, couldn’t reproduce. edit 5: Wait, I just did need to run out of fuel 1 ly before bumping into the system, but wait for the rocks to start to fade in before [F]LAG. ) I think the uninteractable POIs are happening when I [F]LAG an attack at the start of an asteroid hazard (‘drifting’ into the edge w/ low fuel ?);
The hazard logic is disabling the POI’s while enabling the emergency [E]SCAPE, but the [A]TTACK is going to “EXPLORATION” mode instead of back into “HAZARDOUS”, causing the POIs to reappear without enabling them. (I think … )
It could be ‘!fun’ if instead of going straight into ‘combat’;
Enemies jump in as a group and fatally collide (allide?) with the asteroids;
Then as opponents randomly {start shooting the asteroids, try to initalize a jump out but are vunerable to (one shot) being smashed by the hazards, or take shelter behind the player};
Then (take turns) jumping out while the survivors try to keep the asteroids back… (random player turns = smashy smashy) …
… all while the player gobbles up the spilt scrap and fuel w/ the option to start ‘normal’ combat early by manually targeting the opponent ships …
But that sounds like alot more effort than having them all jump in, crash, mostly jump out. (free fuel, and lol).
===(edit)
Also, exploiting running out of fuel, to bait fodder to feed on the XP.
WIN070 (0.7.3)
=== Bugs and oddities:
Last Download file name is not synchronized with version number.
Had to delete steam dll files to run without Steam getting in my way. Did not check to see if Spacewar or not. Deleting is much easier than modding the game code to ignore it.
Drone Fire Rate overlaps with another upgrade.
Arriving at the ‘edge’ of a POI that opens a loot screen with no fuel will not pause the ambush timer while the loot screen is open. This can result in the player’s main weapon being disabled while the enemy ship is unfrozen upon exiting the loot interface. This is would be exploitable with an attack drone, because the player shields regenerate quickly (as if not in battle).
With no upgrade all POI’s get the resource icon, even when the text+colour distinguish other destination types.
_ suggest still applying the distinguishing icons for readability/QOL reasons.
Sockets are gate-kept by the first boss; I was confused by the resource locations not rewarding the expected orbs.
_ Perhaps substituting/occupying the socket icon on the HUD to indicate they are disabled would make it less confusing.
_ Reloaded after defeating first boss, no bonus modules!? sockets re-locked on load?
Scan enemies don’t count torwards the (optional) difficulty total; This is time consuming and enough of a PITA to make it unviable as an exploit path for me.
_ By the same measure, I found myself save scumming (even when that sacrificed desirable POIs) to avoid the ambush timer. Perhaps it should be made much more forgiving for players late on activating the [B]EACON (edit: while still hard on those who gleefully seek more fodder)
ie (many edits due to markdown weirdness...):
global.difficulty_pursuit_flagged_count = max(
global.difficulty_pursuit_flagged_count,
max(1 + min(
global.difficulty_pursuit_flagged_count,
(global.fodder_killed / 3) + global.elite_killed + global.boss_killed
))
)
Also, what is the LY distance between sectors? And should it count torwards Mission/Job/Quest completion?
Not yet had opportunity to see if [G]ATHER should work after defeating boss.
First boss frequently called reinforcement waves of size 10! ( Even if I accidentally replaced random function call with my bias mod version, the limits would have been unchanged. ) Should reinforcement wave size be scaled to how much damage the player could have done?
=== Remarks:
I’ve taken {4 hours, aggressive save scumming/POI regeneration, and one extremely cheating/biased random mod} to defeat the 0.7.3 progressive boss;
compared to the previous 8 hours to prestiege in WIN070 with the exploitable [F]lag enemies option.
I dunno what the intended progression curve looks like, but clearly (its actual) trajectory has shifted dramatically.