Space Pirates and Zombies

[Janster]

Love it when I use a bomb, and the second I fire it, the AI takes over my ship, and flies it directly into the enemy dying instantly....

Annoys me how useless my AI wingmen are.

[Foxstab]

I haven't finished the game, but i got pretty close to it i think and at that point i only had one escort big enough to equip a bomb.

Well, I haven't even crossed the titan gates yet but I do have one medium hull wingman hangar, I'd expect you to have two since you're so far ahead and your mothership should be upgraded like a Macross at this point. And in medium hull both the Gull and the Pounder have medium bomb payloads. So I'd think you can have two wingmen with bombs on them.

Love it when I use a bomb, and the second I fire it, the AI takes over my ship, and flies it directly into the enemy dying instantly....

Annoys me how useless my AI wingmen are.

Have you tried, before or after firing the bomb, to switch to tactical and issue the ship orders to fly in the other direction?

[Marcin]

I just got the Mule. Boy, does the game change when that happens :) Suddenly goon farming becomes rather simple, and mining (1400 capacity! good grief) is just ridiculous. I went back and killed one base for blueprints, but I still can't crack a level 2 UTA base on a gate that's 12 levels behind. They're tough!

I ended up using the Hound the most. I tried the Yacht for the extra armaments, but having to aim oh-so-precisely with those two very close-set beams ended up costing me engagements. The twin turrets on the Hound are just fantastic.

I restarted in a small universe, and it is still going to be a long haul, I think. The blueprints now all seem to require 2-3 copies to unlock, so I'm still rocking blue stuff for almost everything, and my only fancy weapon are the SRM missiles. It really needs to get to this point a little faster, when you have some real variety starting to unlock. I mean, I have points in drone, cloak, bombs and torpedoes, and I have no blueprints for any of that.

Some great value in this game, though. :D

[Teiman]

I remember people comenting that a big universe could get you less grind in this game. I think your restart in a small universe could be a bad idea. Lets wait for other people opinions.

[Hanacker]

How do the ratings compare between ship classes? Cargo space and hull integrity obviously increase with size, but is a maximum speed tiny ship the same speed as a max speed large ship?

[Teiman]

I have absolutelly no idea. What I can tell you, is that is true that weight (mostly armor) make ships slower. Also cargo. And that boosters can make a very fast ship ultrafast.

[DeepT]

I do have a suggestion for the devs if they are still watching this forum:

The crew technology line should be boosted to give the crew combat ability a very significant boost, like 500% or more (similar to other tech boosts). It would then make a fine investment of points once you get to the zombie stage to help your crew deal with zombies on board.

[Foxstab]

How do the ratings compare between ship classes? Cargo space and hull integrity obviously increase with size, but is a maximum speed tiny ship the same speed as a max speed large ship?

While generally yes, it is possible that it is not necessarily so.
Effectiveness of (any of the) modules vary according to their size.
You can easily measure this by a ship that has a huge and large/medium slots and equipping a shield booster on one of them then switching to the other. You'll notice the amount of shields you receive increases, natch, as the module size grows.
As such, I'd imagine a ship with least possible hull mass and highest possible maneuverability with a huge engine module will be able to achieve far greater speed than a smaller ship.

[krayzkrok]

I finally got this game working last night, thanks entirely to the devs who are officially awesome. As a number of us were having serious problems with the Impulse GOO DRM, after after a month of Impulse being unable to resolve the issue, they sent me not one but two keys for their new direct purchase version. Works like a charm.

So now I'm at the stage you guys were at around page 5 or 6 in terms of SPAZ enthusiasm.

One thing I'm curious about though - the radio chatter that everyone talks about. Um. Where is it? All the sound options are turned on, but there's definitely no radio chatter in the four systems I've played so far. I also remember the tutorial text in the demo being read out by a narrator, but it's silent for me (music only). Am I missing something here?

[Teiman]

One thing I'm curious about though - the radio chatter that everyone talks about. Um. Where is it? All the sound options are turned on, but there's definitely no radio chatter in the four systems I've played so far. I also remember the tutorial text in the demo being read out by a narrator, but it's silent for me (music only). Am I missing something here?

Do you have, maybe, your system configured to mono audio?
Some games send voiced to different channels, It could be this is your problem here. It sounds like a problem in your end. Jacks poorly connected, etc.

Also, check if your version is updated. One of the updates is make the rebuilt of ships very fast if theres no attack. Before this patch, waiting for big ships to rebuilt was really boring ( 1, ... 1, ... 1, ....2,.... 2, .....2,..... ).

[rezaf]

I hope you are paying attention. There will be a quiz after.
_____
rezaf

PS: Sorry for being totally unhelpful

[Foxstab]

Say no to cannibalism, zombies are real!

[Teiman]

You can always vent all the tripulation to space... If the captain is still alive.

In SPAZ shit gets real.

[Hanacker]

How do you increase faction standing in a system if there are no missions with them and you are already hostile?

[Murbella]

How do you increase faction standing in a system if there are no missions with them and you are already hostile?

Short answer: you don't.

Long Answer:

A recent patch made you gain a bunch of reputation with the a side if your destroy their enemy's space station.

Also, I think they increased the min reputation you could bribe at to be everything but the very most hated. I think this reputation level MIGHT be "hatred" and not hostile, but i don't really remember too well.

Realistically though, forgetting about it is probably your best choice. If you really need some tech from them, just blow up their station and take it.

[Hanacker]

Is beating Level 20+ gates with a medium and two smalls mostly just a matter of attrition and throwing a lot of money and goons at them or is there a strategy I'm missing? A Right Hook is surprisingly easy to take down with a three small, fast ships once you've cleared its escorts, but other stuff tends to eat me up pretty quick.

[MarinusWA]

If you are hated by both factions you can blow up a station, which will bring you to disliked with the opposing faction. From that point you can bribe them to neutral and beyond.

Just keep in mind that they still shoot at you when disliked so dock asap.

[Foxstab]

Is beating Level 20+ gates with a medium and two smalls mostly just a matter of attrition and throwing a lot of money and goons at them or is there a strategy I'm missing? A Right Hook is surprisingly easy to take down with a three small, fast ships once you've cleared its escorts, but other stuff tends to eat me up pretty quick.

Honestly, to date, I've been using sheer brute forcing. I'm told that it works until you hit the zombie cores. I'm in a rather large universe, since I like to go for the long haul instead of a speed game, so it'll take me quite a while before I've cleared all available systems and moved on through the Titan Gate (even though I already have it available for me). Currently I'm level 50. I figure by the time I breach to the core worlds I'll be 70ish with some nice sweet spot tech-wise.

[Murbella]

I don't know if it stops working really, but there are 2 HUGE difficulty jumps in the game:
1) entering the core systems for the first time
2) entering the zombie areas for the first time

Eventually you outpace the normal encounters where you are until you hit one of these points and then you need to work up from a little fish in a big pond until you outpace the normal encounters... repeat

The ai just has more tech points than you i am guessing since their ships all eventually have super high tech in armor and some other stuff, resulting in them having WAY more hull/armor than your ships of the same class. This means that fights will start taking longer and longer, meaning more time for your shields/armor/energy to drop against a large number of enemies.


As for brute forcing gates, if your tech is above the curve, you can do it. If not i recommend trying to split the enemy up by kiting with your capital ship and having your escorts suicide. Obviously this strategy works better if you have missiles, but it works even if you're a drone carrier. Just be sure to have some money if you just hit one of the difficulty spikes.

The problem with brute forcing is that realistically, your ships have no sustained endurance unless you way outrank the enemy in every category, so situations where the fight doesn't end quickly will see you taking losses. Under sustained fire, your shields/armor will fail. There is just no way around it. In my opinion, offensive tech in the SPAZ universe is vastly more powerful than defensive tech. The only real exception to this is if the defender's tech level is WAY above the enemy or if the defender is a huge class against smaller enemies.

This isn't to say that defensive tech is useless or you can't make ships that are hard to kill, but unlike some other games, you can't make a defensive juggernaut that can repair/recharge its armor/shields faster than a decent enemy can damage them. This means sustained engagements can wear you down.

[Foxstab]

In a nutshell: Having two colts with 5 weapons pumping simultaneously each with a weapon type maxed is better than yacht with couple wimpy missiles or shield boosters and lots of armor/shields tech (unless you're out for harvesting).
Id est: the faster you can kill shit before your own shields are down, the better.
Two colts focus firing on an enemy gets high damage done VERY fast.
Trying to out-tank enemies rarely works. Especially whence assaulting stations - you want to hit hard as fast as you can before you have to reconstruct.

P.S. I think that the AI cheats and doesn't run out of energy, so having tons of weps on an AI-flown ship is a plus.

[Murbella]

The AI does indeed run out of energy as far as i know. If you use the energy leach beam weapon you will quickly turn those enemy right hooks in to slowly moving targets that can't fire back.

Zombies don't seem to use energy though of course, or at least my energy leach beams weren't effective against them.

Beams can certainly be annoying at times, but the energy leach and emp laser are damn good weapons. Near late game i had one of each on every one of my ships, to great effect, but of course, neither one works on zombies from what i can tell (or at least not as effectively as against human ships).

I need to get back to my cannons playthrough i think. Sadly i've been distracted by other things, but i would still like to actually finish this game. I'm also dying to see what some of the high end cannons can do against zombies.

[Hanacker]

What do I do with data? I feel like this should be obvious but I have no idea.

[Teiman]

What do I do with data? I feel like this should be obvious but I have no idea.

DATA = XP.

F(XP) = levels

F(levels)= number of points in science

F(number of points in sciences)= make things faster, stronger, better [Soft NSFW]

==>

F(DATA)= faster, stronger, better

[Hanacker]

So when my advisor said I need to spend my data on upgrades, he meant science points. I see.

[Foxstab]

faster, stronger, better [Soft NSFW]

That's some amazing choreographic talent.

So when my advisor said I need to spend my data on upgrades, he meant science points. I see.

Press F4 and go distribute the joy like happy (my advice: pick up a weapon tech - beams or cannons - and pump it, next shields, then hull; might want to put at least 1 point into sub-systems if you intend on using a booster module as it provides 10% efficiency increase).

[Hanacker]

After failing miserably a few times when I got to the mission at the end of Chapter 2 to defend the Clockwork, I finally realized I could build a large ship. The T S M being the only letters lit up on the hangar screen made me think I could only build up to medium. No wonder those level 30 gates were so hard.

[Blorfy]

Hi Everyone,

I am one of the two devs working on SPAZ, and I wanted to give you guys an update. First of all, it is great to see all the activity here. If any of you have any issues, please email our contact address (I cannot yet post email addresses to QT3) and we will do our best to fix you up. I noticed krayzkrok is having an audio issue above. If it is still persisting, we would be happy to try to figure out a fix.

On to what we have been up to. Well, PR and contracts. We are happy to announce that very soon you should be able to buy SPAZ from all the online distributors. We are at the end of our contract negotiations with everyone now, and barring unforeseen circumstances we will be available on Steam and D2D mid August when we hit final. We have also confirmed in the past with Steam that we will be able to transfer keys from other services over, so everybody wins.

It has been a struggle to find time to get actual work done with all the PR etc, but here is a list of what we are up to. Aside from the regular tuning and optimizing based on forum posts, we are also about half way finished adding specialists (think diablo items), Arenas (big ladder challenges with rewards up top), Bounty Hunters (they track you down if you are in one place for too long, oh and they have new ships with wild configurations.) And Side quests to flesh out the story and characters. So it is pretty much a free expansion pack that we are working on.

It is unlikely that we will get it all done by aug 15, but we plan to continue to free patch SPAZ for months after release so no worries. The game will just get better and better.

Thanks so much for all the activity here. Word of mouth is huge for us and this forum really helps us out.

Blorfy.

[Marcin]

Sounds like you guys are doing great, which is awesome to hear.

As are the expansion pack plans; that sounds like it will flesh out the game quite a bit!

[Murbella]

Fix drones please.

Sounds like some good stuff. As someone who likes to tinker with things, more ships is probably the most welcome. I don't care for them personally, but i'm sure the bomb/mine fans would love a huge hull with a slot for them.

If i'm reading it right, a way to improve your ship through drops from enemies (specialist) would also help fix the "improvement gap." The "improvement gap" being my name for the period of time late game where you have maxed most of the most influential skill lines and have the best items, thus leaving you with nothing else to upgrade for a noticeable increase/change in power.

LOVE the news about steam. i have a bunch of games on steam and the only reason i installed impulse was to buy SPAZ, so if i could transfer my key over from impulse, it would be slightly more convenient.

[Destarius]

Yes, if I could activate my copy on Steam that would be great. Other than that, this is really great stuff! Have you considered going mobile with this?