I do get what he was going for though, maybe it is worth capping to threat level 1-2.
And i do kind of appreciate what he was going for - seeing a sea of 3's as a piddly little guy is knowing you're up sh*t's creek without a paddle.
Threat level 3 is too much at the beginning of the game but it's the appropriate difficulty after about halfway through the first sector. It's harder to balance the first sector than the others because the ship goes from a bunch of empty slots to having a bunch of components installed in it very quickly. Later on, its components get replaced with similar components of just barely higher quality. Going from 0 evasion -> 20 evasion is a much bigger difference than going from 20 evasion -> 25 evasion with no drawback on the component.
This is what I've implemented for the next update. Let me know if this sounds good
- Sector 1 is 75% threat level 1 and 25% threat level 2
- Sector 2 and above, is random 1-3
- On each Enemy Interception or Enemy Flag (when fuel reached 0)
- POI Area threat increases
- Enemy Hull increases, (resets to base on next sector)
That still doesn't work unless you alter the elite and the boss. Like I was trying to say before, the boss and the elite are both very, very big difficulty spikes. I haven't gotten out of sector 1 yet because I couldn't find an item build that will do it, so I'm stuck getting myself killed repeatedly in order to grind XP. Threat level 3 IS appropriate for ~halfway through sector 1. If you think threat level 3 isn't appropriate, then the boss and elite are not tuned appropriately either.
I started over from the beginning in Roguelike Mode. Those changes are an improvement but the game doesn't feel polished yet.
I only recall seeing threat levels 1 and 2 in sector 1, and threat level 2 is enough to barely chip my hull through my shields a small percentage of the time. The elite is too strong the first several runs. So you still have the problem of sector 1 being long stretches of unlosable punctuated by unwinnable encounters.
Then, somewhere around the sixth or seventh run, I was able to beat the elite after taking about 60% hull damage. I thought I didn't have enough hull left for the boss, but somehow the boss melted so fast I didn't even see it die because I was focused on a derelict. Now I'm 5 sectors in and the game isn't challenging me at all. All I had to do was pick Electro Wake and Rebound Field and now it doesn't matter how many enemies there are - they're always dead before I finish harvesting the derelicts. Now that most of my items are undamaged, I'm not seeing anything worth looting after combat. When I go to stores, I rarely see anything worth purchasing. I could reroll the stores more often than I do but it's not worth it because the fights aren't challenging me anyway.
Your drop tables don't have enough rare items in them. By sector 2-3, I should see a tier 5 item in the store about 50% of the time I visit, and by sector 4-5, I should see a tier 6 item every once in awhile.
Also, some UX issues:
- When I click and drag on the upgrades screen to scroll it and release the button while the cursor is over an upgrade, the game interprets that as a click on the upgrade and uses up my credits or free upgrade.
- When I click on a derelict just as combat ends, I might go too slow and accidentally pick an item to loot instead of locking onto the derelict.
I don't even like clicking on derelicts. It's the least interesting part of the game and I'm annoyed that several sectors in, I still haven't found the upgrade that lets me turn on auto-harvest.
Hi there, please dont think that I'm ignoring your post. I'm silently addressing some of your concerns.
Please check out the new update
https://bohfam.itch.io/void-salvage/devlog/1399890/demo-with-major-update-082