Posted June 12, 2017
So I'm a bit of a stick-in-the mud who feels the story, and several mechanics introduced with the Giraffe series of updates (Namely Cheerful, which introduced the sodding protectorate), sort-of ruined the feel of the game. Rather than being an individual who strikes out on their own to discover and decide to save the cosmos on their own, you're now some designated hero character, and there's a designated mission system, rather than summoning the bosses to you on your terms.
But I can't say completely ruined, as I finally and actually bought the game this sale. and have been playing it quite a bit.
With this in mind, I have some thoughts on the recent update to 1.3.0.
In no particular order...
Mechs:
I'm not sure about these. as a deployment vehicle, they kinda suck and space combat isn't balanced around them.
The encounters I've had in space seem to have ranged from comically easy to quite implausibly hard. Thanks to the developers of Starbound being lazy about enemy difficulty and not even bothering to recolor monsters at higher levels, or just making them spiky, this means the same asteroid monster you kill with one shot in an easy sector kills your mech in 3 bumps in an Extreme. (This is only a slight exaggeration, with laser gates in Extreme sectors doing 1600 damage a pass.)
Bu the thing is, I'm using a Mech body that's a Solarium rated body (with four pips in both stats), so it should be able to handle most of this, and yet most of the time, the mech beefs it and dies in most encounters. I've tried several weapon combinations which doesn't tell me much because there's no testing range or live swapping to test weapons with. So thinking that the Tesla weapon is really cool, only for it to turn out to be a glorified peashooter is a bit of a letdown.
For a spotlight feature, what I'm saying is that Mechs kinda suck. They're slow on land, (rendering them useless as high power scouting platforms) they're pretty crap in space, and there's no way to tell which weapon is good, because some are obviously better than others.
Space Stations: These are pretty alright. I just have a few issues. For one, there is no way to remove a section once you place it. I was experimenting with the design, and I built myself into a slight corner in one expansion, leaving me with a stub that nothing can be built upon. And a bit baffling, the windows in the background don't actually count as proper background tiles, so if you're trying to set up a colony without knowing this, you'll be as baffled as I was as to why the colony wouldn't set up.
Speaking of...
Colonies: With a stable ans safe environment to set up shop in, I decided to finally give colonies a try. The implementation is sound, in that you place a chair, a light and a door somewhere along with walls and themed items to attract tenants who then act like regular NPCs. The execution needs work. See, in Starbound in order to make a living space, you need a colony deed, which you slap on the wall and it scans the area. If you meet the conditions for living, presto! A NPC teleports in and starts living it up.
The problem is, if you don't quite meet the needs for that, it gives a vague error image without actually telling the player what is wrong. Even Terraria does better than that.
Once a colony is set up, the NPC will pay you in various items ranging from incredibly useless (wheat seeds) to actually useful. (Weapons which can be hawked for a pretty penny.) The problem comes in that you have to go to each colony deed you placed, and interact with them so the NPC can throw the trinket at you. Rather than say a collection box that you can check on entering a colony, and a suggestion box for the minor quests such as building new homes for wanted tenants.
Some tenants decide they like you so much that they want to join you on the stars. That'd be great if any of them were of any use. With the changes to crew in 1.3.0, Engineers no longer increase fuel capacity and mechanics cannot increase fuel efficiency any longer, rendering both positions fairly useless. Nothing in the game tells you of this change. The other problem is that at most, you can carry a dozen crewmembers.
Performance:
...Seriously. There are problems that have been persistent since the Beta, and not once have I read a blog post that reads, "And we'll be taking a couple of weeks to polish code, remove spaghetti loops, and generally make the game run better!"
Crew addendum: There's no easy way to manage the crew, nor an easy overview. All you get is a tiny box on SAIL (which they really should change back to the unique ones.)
The Grind: So you know those neat stations? You won't ever build them in vanilla. Too costly and too time consuming. Those fancy new mechs? Prepare to scrape the very last inch of every anomaly and ship to get some of the better parts; both the blueprint and the resources.
Now I realize that (hypothetically) mods could fix most of the problems I have and enhance the game. But that shouldn't be an option I should have to turn to, especially for code optimizations.
But I can't say completely ruined, as I finally and actually bought the game this sale. and have been playing it quite a bit.
With this in mind, I have some thoughts on the recent update to 1.3.0.
In no particular order...
Mechs:
I'm not sure about these. as a deployment vehicle, they kinda suck and space combat isn't balanced around them.
The encounters I've had in space seem to have ranged from comically easy to quite implausibly hard. Thanks to the developers of Starbound being lazy about enemy difficulty and not even bothering to recolor monsters at higher levels, or just making them spiky, this means the same asteroid monster you kill with one shot in an easy sector kills your mech in 3 bumps in an Extreme. (This is only a slight exaggeration, with laser gates in Extreme sectors doing 1600 damage a pass.)
Bu the thing is, I'm using a Mech body that's a Solarium rated body (with four pips in both stats), so it should be able to handle most of this, and yet most of the time, the mech beefs it and dies in most encounters. I've tried several weapon combinations which doesn't tell me much because there's no testing range or live swapping to test weapons with. So thinking that the Tesla weapon is really cool, only for it to turn out to be a glorified peashooter is a bit of a letdown.
For a spotlight feature, what I'm saying is that Mechs kinda suck. They're slow on land, (rendering them useless as high power scouting platforms) they're pretty crap in space, and there's no way to tell which weapon is good, because some are obviously better than others.
Space Stations: These are pretty alright. I just have a few issues. For one, there is no way to remove a section once you place it. I was experimenting with the design, and I built myself into a slight corner in one expansion, leaving me with a stub that nothing can be built upon. And a bit baffling, the windows in the background don't actually count as proper background tiles, so if you're trying to set up a colony without knowing this, you'll be as baffled as I was as to why the colony wouldn't set up.
Speaking of...
Colonies: With a stable ans safe environment to set up shop in, I decided to finally give colonies a try. The implementation is sound, in that you place a chair, a light and a door somewhere along with walls and themed items to attract tenants who then act like regular NPCs. The execution needs work. See, in Starbound in order to make a living space, you need a colony deed, which you slap on the wall and it scans the area. If you meet the conditions for living, presto! A NPC teleports in and starts living it up.
The problem is, if you don't quite meet the needs for that, it gives a vague error image without actually telling the player what is wrong. Even Terraria does better than that.
Once a colony is set up, the NPC will pay you in various items ranging from incredibly useless (wheat seeds) to actually useful. (Weapons which can be hawked for a pretty penny.) The problem comes in that you have to go to each colony deed you placed, and interact with them so the NPC can throw the trinket at you. Rather than say a collection box that you can check on entering a colony, and a suggestion box for the minor quests such as building new homes for wanted tenants.
Some tenants decide they like you so much that they want to join you on the stars. That'd be great if any of them were of any use. With the changes to crew in 1.3.0, Engineers no longer increase fuel capacity and mechanics cannot increase fuel efficiency any longer, rendering both positions fairly useless. Nothing in the game tells you of this change. The other problem is that at most, you can carry a dozen crewmembers.
Performance:
...Seriously. There are problems that have been persistent since the Beta, and not once have I read a blog post that reads, "And we'll be taking a couple of weeks to polish code, remove spaghetti loops, and generally make the game run better!"
Crew addendum: There's no easy way to manage the crew, nor an easy overview. All you get is a tiny box on SAIL (which they really should change back to the unique ones.)
The Grind: So you know those neat stations? You won't ever build them in vanilla. Too costly and too time consuming. Those fancy new mechs? Prepare to scrape the very last inch of every anomaly and ship to get some of the better parts; both the blueprint and the resources.
Now I realize that (hypothetically) mods could fix most of the problems I have and enhance the game. But that shouldn't be an option I should have to turn to, especially for code optimizations.
Post edited June 12, 2017 by Darvond