bearcat33: Where is the patch to tone down the overwhelming, insane and game-ruining OVERpowering of the pirates and Dominators?
UK_John: If your being overpowered by Dominator's and bandits, you are in the wrong areas at the wrong time, you haven't traded enough, you haven't hired a co-pilot to help, you chose the wrong race or wrong ship, you were too impatient and tried to do too much too early and a million other things.
It's not a patch you need. What you need is to google FAQ's and Walkthrough's for this game and get some knowledge, because in this game it's you that makes the game hard and the enemies too strong! :)
Call me crazy, but I expect an "Easy" setting to actually BE EASY.
1. Wrong area at the wrong time.
It's impossible to know where the pirates or dominators will be, until it is much too late. The rare exception is an occasional report in the news. Since you can't look at the map at the same time the news is up, it's all meaningless blather. I have no desire to memorize seventy or eighty star names, and keep their relative locations in my head. The news is therefore useless.
2. Haven't traded enough.
Insanely, there is no function to record commodity prices on planets, so you either scribble notes ( a drag, a major drag) or you memorize prices (hyper boring pain in the ass, not gonna happen, ever). What trading I've tried, the profit is more than outweighed in fuel cost and most of all battle repair costs.
3. Wrong race or wrong ship.
If the choice exists as an option, it should be possible to at least survive, otherwise, what's the point of offering that combination? It appears as if all of the starting ships have a fatal shortcoming, or even multiple fatal flaws. None of them have enough SLOTS. You can have equipment to survive, or you can have cargo space for trade. NOT both. Thus, fatally flawed game design, as just trying to kill pirates does NOT work to earn you a living, and BEing a pirate is clearly going to prevent you from having anywhere you will be admitted to trade. You can't salvage the pirate cargo, because in order to have the equipment to kill them, you have to sacrifice all your slots for weapons and shields and engine.
4. Haven't hired a co-pilot to help.
I'm not sure what a "co-pilot" is......do you mean I can get another person on board MY ship? If so, how?
During the Drone task, a newbie appears and asks to learn by watching me, and I always agree to let him join me after the drone is destroyed. I have never had any opportunity to HIRE anyone, however. This newbie is pretty useless because he always fails to keep close enough, and frequently outright disappears when I jump to another system. After only a handful of battles, he's smoked by the pirates, every time. He's a huge pain in the ass to manage, having to be told to do every single little thing.
5. Too impatient, tried to do too much too early.
After attempting this game about twenty times now, it's obvious that it's an unfair race against time. YOU MUST do "too much too early" because the Dominators are snapping up star systems at a game-unbalancing frantic pace, cutting lanes. It is literally impossible to survive going into a Dominator controlled zone, just suicide. Also, every single day, the pirates become more numerous, stronger, and more aggressive.
Like all too many of these "Good Old Games" the difficulty is much too high. NYAH NYAH the game screams, you said fifteen thousand names, but you didn't say RUMPLESTILTSKIN!
Having to come up with the mathematically perfect and exact choices in this game is both unlikely and a huge drag. games should have more than one way to win.