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Star Control: Origins - Star Control reboot from Stardock

Alpharius

Scholar
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
585
Going a bit away from the conversation: Is this game fun ?
I don't care about the comparisons with the old SCs, the videos make it look like some simple fun game you can play from time to time. Is it so indeed?
Nope. Unless you are really into clicker games, i guess.

Alpharius Are you sure you played UQM at all?
I didn't play it.

Joined: Mar 1, 2018

Fucking newfags, every fucking time.

Every fucking time what? "Oldfags" defending some popamole mobile port while newfags are calling it shit?

What you deserve is piss down your throat.
And you may choke on a dick.
 

tindrli

Arcane
Joined
Jan 5, 2011
Messages
4,465
Location
Dragodol
Going a bit away from the conversation: Is this game fun ?
I don't care about the comparisons with the old SCs, the videos make it look like some simple fun game you can play from time to time. Is it so indeed?

well it is somewhat fun untill you visit a 15 th system.. combats are bareboned but they were in original as well so i didnt expect wonders. still there is sense of exploration at least in begining when you find something to fit on your ship. its fun overall.. not 40 bucks fun thats for sure. what bothers me most is artwork. the whole god damn thing is too cartoonish for my taste. the game needed at least two more years of development to really stand out
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,282
I hope Grampy is up-to-date on the saga and why I call the guy a criminal. Regardless whether it is a troll tactic or not, putting stuff in after making a big fuss about how he would respect the original and would not is fraud. He got the accolades and the kudos and then went back on his word.

My personal read is that Origins ran into the problem that all in-name-only "sequels" run into, and that is gamers do not feel a connection between the "sequel" and what came before. It might as well be a completely new game, especially when there is no similarities at all. No lore, no races, no ships, no visual cues, nothing. Stardick had to do something to tie it in, and hence why the shoehorning in of oblique references and old races started making an appearance.

It is nothing but a cynical grab at the nostalgia money, sort of like a sequel of Fallout 2 being onboard a spaceship and the hero shooting aliens with lazzors and wearing a vault suit. In first person.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
It is nothing but a cynical grab at the nostalgia money, sort of like a sequel of Fallout 2 being onboard a spaceship and the hero shooting aliens with lazzors and wearing a vault suit. In first person.
FO3MZ_Cover.png
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
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Messages
27,088
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I've spent a whole day mucking about with this game.

Broad strokes comments:

# The intro is pants. Alien guy sees Earthling promotional image, sets out in spaceship, roll intro credits. This is something you'd see in an in-game cutscene, not in a game's intro.

# Mistake #1: Not all of the game's control commands can be redefined. Most noticably the functions connected to the 'ESC' and the 'E' buttons... and both are kinda important.

# Mistake #2: Messing up the controls. Star Control 1 & 2 can be played with a NES controller, possibly SC3 as well. Why the controls were made so convoluted is a mystery to me.

# Mistake #3: Spending time pointing out to the player that the Star Control universe is two-dimensional, when we've had three prior games (plus twenty years) where the topic is just glossed over because it's irrelevant.

# The alien graphics and animations are alright, but the human is horrible. That girl looks like she's spent the last 20 years getting plastic surgery. STOP SMILING LIKE THAT.

# All direct in-game references to the original Star Control species have been removed. Lots of indirect in-game references have been added instead. There's an alien species that looks like the Arilou and talks like the Arilou (and you can even hear the Arilou theme in the background) but they're never referenced by name. Also, some alien species are 'switch-outs' for original Star Control species. Tywon = Spathi, Lexites = Androsynth, Scryve = Ur-Quan, or possibly Ilwrath.

# The biggest changes are in the planet lander mini-game. Most of the add-on gameplay elements there feel pointless, though.

# The ship combat is where they dropped the ball, though. Almost every ship in SC1 and SC2 is a close-quarters brawler, and the long-range ships have huge drawbacks to compensate. The most powerful ship in those two games is the Mmrnmhrm X-Form, because it can kite almost every other ship to death. The X-Form is also the most boring ship to play against, especially in 2-player. For Star Control: Origins they seem to have used the X-Form as the starting point and built from there. Consequentually combat is tedious and drawn-out. Stardock seems to have noticed this, but instead of fixing it they just added in some powerups that spawn on the battlefield in the hope that players will actually fly about instead of just sniping one another.

# The only 'original' and likable alien species I've come across so far is the MuKay, though I don't know whether to look forward to or dread meeting the Mowlings.

Opinion so far? It's an OK game. There's nothing really wrong going on here, but the game's not hitting any home runs either.
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
I've spent a whole day mucking about with this game.

Broad strokes comments:

# The intro is pants. Alien guy sees Earthling promotional image, sets out in spaceship, roll intro credits. This is something you'd see in an in-game cutscene, not in a game's intro.

# Mistake #1: Not all of the game's control commands can be redefined. Most noticably the functions connected to the 'ESC' and the 'E' buttons... and both are kinda important.

# Mistake #2: Messing up the controls. Star Control 1 & 2 can be played with a NES controller, possibly SC3 as well. Why the controls were made so convoluted is a mystery to me.

# Mistake #3: Spending time pointing out to the player that the Star Control universe is two-dimensional, when we've had three prior games (plus twenty years) where the topic is just glossed over because it's irrelevant.

# The alien graphics and animations are alright, but the human is horrible. That girl looks like she's spent the last 20 years getting plastic surgery. STOP SMILING LIKE THAT.

# All direct in-game references to the original Star Control species have been removed. Lots of indirect in-game references have been added instead. There's an alien species that looks like the Arilou and talks like the Arilou (and you can even hear the Arilou theme in the background) but they're never referenced by name. Also, some alien species are 'switch-outs' for original Star Control species. Tywon = Spathi, Lexites = Androsynth, Scryve = Ur-Quan, or possibly Ilwrath.

# The biggest changes are in the planet lander mini-game. Most of the add-on gameplay elements there feel pointless, though.

# The ship combat is where they dropped the ball, though. Almost every ship in SC1 and SC2 is a close-quarters brawler, and the long-range ships have huge drawbacks to compensate. The most powerful ship in those two games is the Mmrnmhrm X-Form, because it can kite almost every other ship to death. The X-Form is also the most boring ship to play against, especially in 2-player. For Star Control: Origins they seem to have used the X-Form as the starting point and built from there. Consequentually combat is tedious and drawn-out. Stardock seems to have noticed this, but instead of fixing it they just added in some powerups that spawn on the battlefield in the hope that players will actually fly about instead of just sniping one another.

# The only 'original' and likable alien species I've come across so far is the MuKay, though I don't know whether to look forward to or dread meeting the Mowlings.

Opinion so far? It's an OK game. There's nothing really wrong going on here, but the game's not hitting any home runs either.
Pretty much the same opinion here so far. Played around 6 hours so far, it's passable and sorta, kinda scratches the SC/SR sequel itch. Sadly it has a lot of shortcomings, as is mentioned. It's... okay.

One thing I will kinda say is sort of impressive is the mostly seamless space/hyperspace/planetside gameplay; however, planetside is extremely bare-bone, so they could've honestly just left it to be a scan screen like SR2.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Regarding the recent lawsuit talks, there's a 17-page thread in General Gaming (mostly) about that, try to keep the discussion there: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rom-paul-reiche-fred-ford-legal-drama.118642/

Although there's things that people seem to often get wrong, for one the claim that Stardock owns the Trademark for Star Control, along with the Copyright to Star Control 3 and Fred & Paul own the Copyright to SC I+II isn't really in dispute. Stardock also purposefully tried not to use any of the Copyrighted content from SC I+II, but chose to redesign certain alien races on purpose.

Also Brad and Stardock were interested in Star Control as far back as 2009: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...emake-star-control-and-master-of-orion.29230/
Acquired the Trademark and various other rights from ATARI in 2013: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...rgaming-got-moo-and-total-annihilation.84222/ (which was formerly known as Infogrames Entertainment, who in turn wholly acquired Accolade who held said rights for $60 million in 1999 and then renamed themselves to ATARI after a buyout in 2008).
The "licensing" deal people were talking about is actually mostly about a separate matter and doesn't have (that) much to do with the recent legal dispute (since Stardock decided not to use the old story and designs due to that eventuality), but is more about the right of distribution for Star Control I+II, which would have expired if Fred & Paul weren't paid $1000 in royalties yearly, which might have been the case between the bankruptcy of Accolade in ~1999 when the games stopped being sold at Retail and when the games appeared on GOG via ATARI in 2010 (although there presumably was some new distribution contract?). The main reason why you can't get SC I+II on either GOG or Steam is because the main gist isn't about that and they don't want to confuse the matter: https://af.gog.com/forum/general/star_control_1_and_2_being_removed_from_gog/page1?as=1649904300

Suffice to say that it's a complicated legal matter and clusterfuck that a few forum posts aren't going to resolve and various parties seem to often get several facts wrong, including over the last 2 pages here. It'll likely either end in some sort of settlement between the parties, one or both parties drop their complaints or it'll have to be decided by the courts.

I cannot believe this guy still hasn't figured out that Stardock and Brad Wardell are on his side. Do you need us to make you a screenshot collage or something? Dexter
Cael is beyond any sort of help by us mortals, he needs divine intervention or strong medication to be helped, besides he usually quickly adds people on Ignore that don't play along with his delusions.

The game doesnt have the content for the asking price of 40$, this is a 9.99$ game at best
So you're mad that a new, higher-profile release started at an unreasonable price and you didn't want to wait for a Steam sale?
iseewhatyoudid.png
You must get tired ranting in every thread where a game does that.
The funniest thing is that he's Romanian and doesn't usually buy games from what I can tell, yet feels entitled to wage Holy Jihad, not only on the Codex but various other sources like the Steam forums and some of the Chans after he's pirated and played a bit of them, the same thing happened in the ELEX and Kingdom Come threads - he just brings up the price cause he feels it will make people more agreeable to his often overtly autistic and focused on minor parts of the game "dis gaem shit" rants, best thing to just ignore him: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...al-chad-simulator.120418/page-83#post-5495418

I've played SC: Origins for about ~6-7 hours and will share my thoughts on the game once I'm further in, it's hard to tell how it develops from here and there are both good and bad things to say about it, but I'd tentatively recommend it so far.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
The funniest thing is that he's Romanian and doesn't usually buy games from what I can tell

How can you tell that I don't buy games, have you checked my gog and steam accounts and what exactly does that has to do with me being Romanian ? This forum has a lot of idiots, but boy you are one special cookie

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-begging-is-a-minor-offense.78755/page-615

Here's proof that I buy games and I'm actually a generous Romanian, you fucking weirdo:lol:
 

Elestan

Educated
Joined
Nov 8, 2016
Messages
99
The main reason why you can't get SC I+II on either GOG or Steam is because the main gist isn't about that and they don't want to confuse the matter

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I'll quibble with this bit. Since Stardock (presumably) owns the trademark to the old games, and P&F (presumably) own the copyrights (wholely for the first two, and via the use of the pre-existing setting license for the third), selling any of the old games requires authorization from both of them. Once the legal battle broke out, Stardock began trying to claim trademarks on phrases like "The Ur-Quan Masters" and the names of the aliens. Those trademarks, if granted, would give Stardock a huge lever over both P&F's new project, and over the UQM fan project. So P&F withdrew their permission to sell the old games, to keep Stardock from using the GoG sales to strengthen its trademark claims.

since they were interested from 2009 its sad what they managed to accomplish

I'll refer you back to my prior answer on that point.

And yes, further follow-ups on the legal battle should probably go to the other thread.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,282
since they were interested from 2009 its sad what they managed to accomplish
Chances are, stardick was trying for a cuckdog style rape of the SC franchise and got stymied by the negative publicity from the lawsuit. So he just released what he had and try to claw back as much as he could before quietly abandoning the project.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,282
How can you tell that I don't buy games, have you checked my gog and steam accounts and what exactly does that has to do with me being Romanian ? This forum has a lot of idiots, but boy you are one special cookie

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-begging-is-a-minor-offense.78755/page-615

Here's proof that I buy games and I'm actually a generous Romanian, you fucking weirdo:lol:
There are good reasons why he was amongst the first I put on ignore. I see that he is still butthurt over that.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Nice feedback especially from Unkillable Cat ! After all this I personally I feel like I should leave it for a sale but that it does have some potential for a bit of fun
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
The final post of the "prelude" series is about modding feature, which is coming in early October: https://www.stardock.com/games/arti...-prelude-13-of-13-the-modding-of-star-control

Star Control: Origins Prelude 13 of 13: The Modding of Star Control

Greetings! This is it! The very last of this Prelude series. I hope you've enjoyed them.

So now let's talk about modding.


To understand modding in Star Control: Origins, you need to understand how the game is structured.



Everything that matters is in the \Assets directory.

Meanwhile on your machine, in your documents folder you have:



Each universe is equivalent to the Assets folder.

If I want to create a whole new universe, then my changes would go into the universe folder (which ultimately gets its own unique name when downloaded by others in order to prevent file conflicts).

The Multiverse
So how does the game know which universe folder to use? That's based on how you launch the game:



Universes

To use mods, you need to launch from the upcoming "Multiverse" option (instead of "new game"). So selecting a universe and launching the game will launch the game with that universe.

Saved Games and Mods
But you might now ask: how about saved games? How do I use mods with them?

To answer that, we need to not think of "saved games," but characters.



At any time, in a game, you can click on the Characters tab and then create a character based on your current (most recent) game save. This character is then uploaded to our servers.

Mod directory structure
So like I said, mods mirror what is in the \assets directory structure.

So if I want to modify planet classes to have more or fewer minerals:



Copy one of them over to here:



Then modify it. And then the game will replace the file of that name with yours when the game loads.



That's basically how it works. The game looks at what files you have in the appropriate game universe folder, then it looks to see if it's a new file or a replacement. If it's a replacement, it replaces the one that is in the Steam directory.

If you look at the root of \Assets, you'll see a bunch of interesting files - but here are the ones you'll care about:

  • gameparameters.xml
  • meleeparameters.xml
  • planetparameters.xml
  • roverparameters.xml
You'll be able to play with the parameters in those files. A lot of them are pretty straight forward, but others will take some trial and error.

Maps
So what about making your own maps? If you just want to add your own star to the game, you can create your own map:



This is the base one. But you can create the same directory structure and just add MyStar.xml and it will add just your star to the existing universe. Try opening that file and looking at it. In the upcoming modding bible we'll go through the editors and such for this.

Adventures

So how about making your own adventures? Adventures are a superset of the rest of what we've talked about, but also include:

  • ..\MyUniverse\Dialog\(XML files)
  • ..\MyUniverse\Characters\(XML files)
  • ..\MyUniverse\Localization\English\Origins\(CSV files)
We'll talk about Adventure Studio in the modding bible, but the files you will be creatingwith it will go into those folders. We'll be making our own examples and uploading them.

To turn them on and off you would go to the Mods tab and select which adventures you want.



Keeping it together
Controlling what mods are in use and what aren't is handled by the Mod Manager itself.



So when putting together your adventure you are making 3 basic choices:

  1. What character (saved game state of your character) are you using?
  2. What universe are you playing in?
  3. What mods do you want active?
From those 3 choices, you then press the Launch button and off you go!

When?
This feature will be turned on with version 1.1, which is due in early October.

Between us and the community, we hope you will have an endless supply of worlds to discover and adventures to have thanks to this system.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,088
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Star Control Origins Day 2:

# While I still consider the Star Control games not to be RPGs, Star Control: Origins actually takes a step into that direction: Some quests have multiple solutions. An early example is a MuKay colony that is being bombarded by the Drekend. You have three options: Kill the Drekend ship (it's a big one), help the MuKay get a planetary shield up and running (that requires a risky planet landing elsewhere) or fly all the way over to the Drekend homeworld and get them to stop the bombardment. No way to tell if there's an optimal solution to this that gives more rewards than the others, though.

# There seem to be a lot of side quests in the game, most of them related to finding specific types of worlds for specific aliens. As this ties into the exploration aspect of the game, this is a Good Thing, as you don't need to land on the planet - only scan it.

# I've run into a lot of 'mini' alien races. They don't get a full-blown screen image when you talk to them, at best you get a unique character portrait while conversing with them. Most are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, though a couple of them only want you dead. This is an interesting departure from standard SC canon as every race you met was relevant somehow - these are just filler.

# Despite running into plenty more hostile aliens, my words about all the ships being kiters has proved to be true, with the exception of a Scryve vessel that packs a powerful but short-ranged beam weapon.

# Predictably to some, the Wolf 359 system has a lot of Star Trek references in the planet names. Trekkies will instantly know what I'm on about, most others will only realize it by visiting the place.

# There's a HUGE flaw in the mechanics of the solar system map. In SC2 there were three levels of "zoom" available (plus a fourth one when approaching a planet) and they changed by a flick-screen mechanic. As a result everything was static. In SC:O this is a constant, real-time zoom mechanic which looks kinda neat but makes it hard to get an overall view of the system. Worse still, the ship remains the same size while the celestial bodies keep moving due to the zooming camera. This makes it needlessly frustrating to approach a planet, as they tend to zip out of your intended flight path.

# Another problem with the solar system map is that 'contact' with a planet is determined by its edge, no exceptions. SC2 purposefully ignored this once you were leaving a planet to make it easier to move about, especially when moving short distances between moons. This is one instance where Stardock chose ultra-realism over practical gameplay design, and the game suffers as a result.

# For SC2 fans that are also astronomy buffs there are some interesting news regarding the Sol system. Ceres is now a location, while Jupiter has a fifth moon added. Saturn and Uranus have two moons, while Neptune's moon Triton is now the place to meet Captain Fwiffo Navigator Wymdoo. Pluto is not present, though a large gas giant named Artemis at the edge of the system is more than a little suspicious.

# From what I've seen, there is no reason to harvest biologicals on the planets. That may come later, though. There's still a need to shoot those pesky drones, as the eggheads won't investigate interesting sites on the planet if there are still drones about.

# Exploit of the day/stupid oversight from Stardock: Starbases charge you for the fuel (even on Earth) but if you visit friendly alien colonies (not their homeworlds) you'll get free fuel just by asking.

# There are a LOT of abandoned ships lying around on planets. If you investigate them they'll be added to your fleet. Some of them are quite good, so it's worth checking them out.

# Potential bug in regards to autosaves: I visited a system in MuKay territory and was immediately attacked by a Scryve ship. I lost three ships in that fight and decided to reload and see if I couldn't do better the second time round. Strangely enough the autosave assumed that I hadn't met the Scryve ship, but I was still missing my three lost ships. Conclusion? Save Early, Save Often!

# I've also come across some interesting graphical glitches, but they tend to fix themselves soon enough. One of the more memorable ones was when Commander Skyla stood alone against a black background. (I should stop being too lazy to screencap things I see.)

Probably more later.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Okay, I'm nearing 20 hours playtime now and thought I'd share my experience so far.

  • The few CGI movies and background images/animated movies used for various ruins on planets are high quality like customary in some of the late Stardock games, remind me a lot of GalCiv games:
    starcontrol_dx112018-6xi6a.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-fkfjz.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-khimp.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-92e4j.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-9nigz.png
  • Characters/races and fully voiced dialogue seem rather good, interesting and endearing so far. Story also seems presentable and makes you want to know and explore more
    starcontrol_dx112018-hbdbc.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-7ie2a.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-lidzx.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-gaf9a.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-uoeli.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-mliz6.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-3kenw.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-i3dqs.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-ztcj0.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-c5dxv.png
  • Some of the dialogue is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, haven't had this for some time in games, liked the Tywom and Menkmack most so far in that department
  • Explored most of the stars around Earth, most of the Tywom and Mu'Kay systems West, fought my way to the Drenkend homeworld to talk to them and expanded East to the Menkmack so far - Met So Far: Tywom, Mu’kay, Menkmack, Drenkend, Trandals; Haven’t Met Yet: Measured, Mowlings, Phamysht, Greegrox, Pinthi
  • Unlocking additional Starbases on the map you can Hypergate between unlocks further equipment for your ship and it unfortunately costs a shitton, there’s no way you could get all of that together by just “doing quests” like Brad says, early game at least seems to be grinding intensive so far to Upgrade ship parts to an acceptable level, against protestations the game even tells you to do this when you ask Star Command "What Do?":
    starcontrol_dx112018-iyc3m.png

  • There's some funny Easter eggs throughout, like Unkillable Cat already said some Star Trek stuff, but you can also find shit like a crashed Tesla or Soviet probes and similar:
    starcontrol_dx112018-h3fqp.png
  • The game supports Controller movement so I can play on my TV, the navigation around star systems and fights seem to work a lot better/smoother with Mouse and Keyboard though, you can actually turn the ship much more precisely and sensitively to fly directly towards that planet or hit the target while it can be a problem on Controller and some of the menus where you have to scroll through various elements (especially the sell menu) aren't the most controller-friendly
  • Fleet battle minigame is overall workable: You pick a ship out of your fleet of scrounged together/found on planets and repaired or bought ships (that have either one or two weapons equipped) and let it battle it out with the ships in the enemy fleet, if it blows up you pick the next. The battlefield is usually a limited circle that damages your ship if you get pushed out of bounds, you pick up upgrades by flying over them that translate to your entire fleet for the duration of the battle and there's also stuff like asteroids or wormholes. Small and large ships generally handle differently, you can pick a small ship and try to outmaneuver a large one, shooting at it from the sides while it's trying to turn or you can pick a large ship and try to nuke it to death. It's unfortunately not anywhere near the action-y fun of SPAZ or Beat Hazard and not close to approaching any tactical depths like Stellaris or GalCiv. There's usually not that much of it and it's over rather fast though if you didn't pick an especially bad match-up and are trying to nuke a really small and nimble ship.
  • Navigating your ship gets much easier once you acquire and upgrade to better drives & shit, it becomes much more maneuverable and less sluggish
  • I wish there were more systems with their own story like the refugee situation in Proxima Centauri, the resettlement situation in the Sirius A system or the Halgoth – Hurnia conflict in the Altair system, since those are a lot more fun than nearly empty systems
    starcontrol_dx112018-6tfel.png

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
  • Ingame graphics don’t exactly seem up-to-date, especially the "planetary exploration" part is disappointing in that department and it additionally makes my 1080 GTX lag at 4K:
    starcontrol_dx112018-5jeed.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-gvez1.png
    starcontrol_dx112018-grcse.png
  • Landing craft game reminds me of the worst parts of Ass Defect 1, usually kinda boring and empty busywork/timewaste/grind – you just drive along a sphere-ish object and collect marked resources, for higher-level planets you also have to avoid storms/tornados or fireballs. Not sure if the game wouldn't overall be better without it or with a less boring/grindy gameplay mechanic for that part.
  • There are too many systems that are either entirely empty or contain just a single ruin or crashed spacecraft you can add to your fleet
  • LONG Loading times, fortunately you don’t need to load too much (usually just when resuming a Save after booting the game can last almost a minute), there's also sometimes short loads when starting a conversation
  • Not many bugs that I could find, fell through a planet with the lander once but was fixed by taking off, crashed once while exiting a star system but thankfully there was an Autosave right before exiting so I didn’t lose anything
Some tips for people beginning the game:
  • Do the three Training missions on Ceres to get two helpful early game weapons
  • AI Fleet Coordinator is absolute SHIT, don’t buy/equip it - it might end up killing you, fight yourself
  • Get Lander Module Upgrades asap (Cargo, Jump, Collector), it makes the landing more bearable, although ultimately not less boring, also don't forget to use your boost for longer distances
  • Don’t sell your Hyperdrive if you find an Upgrade!
  • Keep your Francium
  • Run out of fuel on purpose once
Some Features I'd really like the game to have to improve exploration:
  • Grey out text that one already went through in conversations, would also makes it easier to see if there’s any new dialogue in any of the Subtrees when visiting Earth or any of the alien homeworlds again
  • Note which Star systems have already been visited somehow, maybe how many planets have been scanned there
  • Have an indicator what kind of materials are still left in a system after scanning the planets / displaying potentially unvisited “sites” from the galaxy map. Could be done via simple Pop-up while checking the systems

Annoyance: It happened several times that messages appeared on the top of the screen with crew members saying something like “The Tywom homeworld says...” or “The Mu'Kay homeworld says...” but I couldn’t really read it cause I was headed right towards a planetoid and the scanning process began. There doesn't seem to be any Log for these type of messages like there is during conversation.

Would upgrade my Tentatively Recommend to Recommended so far. I went through three phases with the game:
1. Front-loaded exposition, exploring the Solar system, discovering the game systems, meeting first alien species, most of the things look fresh and rather promising
2. Disillusionment as the exposition kind of abruptly ends after the first 2-3 hours and you're pushed to farm resources on various planets to upgrade your ship and buy new/better weapons/drives/tank/modules to get to farther off worlds
3. The game opens up and you meet a lot of cool new species that have their own character and storylines/quests. Relying less on grinding and more easily collect resources with Anti-Grav Thrusters, Enhanced Collector and Lander Cargo Pod.
 
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Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
Are officers just for exposition?

The Menkmack guy gives you a 25% discount on ship upgrades. Follow the Drenkend quest.

all the ships being kiters

The mu'kay tentacle ship is a brawler too.

From what I've seen, there is no reason to harvest biologicals on the planets

Corpses are worth 25 RU, live specimans worth 50 at normal shops. Also, try traveling to Vega if you haven't yet......

there’s no way you could get all of that together by just “doing quests” like Brad says

I've found Jewel worlds and Treasure worlds but they are generally too dangerous to land on without 3-4 protection levels in all hazards. Then I found a rainbow world that was prefectly safe and had 12k worth of resources on it. I did the side quest for the Proxima Centauri nomads, they send you to another planet with a "valuable ship" that has a whopping.... 1000 RU. Barely worth the fuel cost. The Mu'kay quests though give 5000 each plus 2000 for each ice planet you find so that's something. Overall it's hard to say what's the better activity but it does seem at least 75-25 grinding/quests to me. I think Brad just wanted people to stop mass-harvesting common 1RU resources.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
# There's a HUGE flaw in the mechanics of the solar system map. In SC2 there were three levels of "zoom" available (plus a fourth one when approaching a planet) and they changed by a flick-screen mechanic. As a result everything was static. In SC:O this is a constant, real-time zoom mechanic which looks kinda neat but makes it hard to get an overall view of the system. Worse still, the ship remains the same size while the celestial bodies keep moving due to the zooming camera. This makes it needlessly frustrating to approach a planet, as they tend to zip out of your intended flight path.
Afaik you can switch between three zoom-levels, it's 1,2,3,4 on Keyboard and bound to the D-Pad on Controllers. The problem then is indeed that it gets much harder to hit really small planetoids while seeing the entire system, which is generally much more of a problem with the imprecise controller controls rather than WASD with W as the thrust key and A/D for turning. I think the option where it automatically zooms in is preferable.
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# From what I've seen, there is no reason to harvest biologicals on the planets. That may come later, though. There's still a need to shoot those pesky drones, as the eggheads won't investigate interesting sites on the planet if there are still drones about.
There's a Bazaar space station at the West-mostern end of Mu'kay space (I think Eta Wendigo). You can sell meat, drone parts, trapped animals and offload similar stuff there.
 
Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 29, 2010
Messages
17,867
Location
Ottawa, Can.
I knew it would be a good game, Stardock always delivers.

The other two has beens can keep reassuring themselves that they are still hardcore gamers when staring up at the ceiling in bed late at night, after having peddled complete and utter bullshit for 25 years.
 

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