Soldak's new game (TBA)

[aganazer]

I'm thinking maybe radar should increase the amount of fog of war you uncover as you fly about, or does it do that already?

There is a Radar stat on some computer equipment. I've gotten the equipment, but never tried it to see how much difference it makes. The equipment didn't show up till level 6-7 and was rare.

I've also heard there are some medium slot weapons, but I haven't seen any of those yet.

I tried a pure armor tank with armor regen modules. It seemed really strong early on, but I have no idea how it will scale. Shield regen can be painfully slow and I haven't seen any shield regen modules. I am hoping that a combination of a small shield with lots of regenerating armor will be good.

[KevinC]

Radar increases the range that stuff will show up on the minimap, my suggestion is that it uncover more of the fog of war from the system map as well. It'd make it easier to explore and track down quest objectives. There's complaints about those two areas and I think the radar stat is the perfect way to address it. The better the radar the further away you can be when you get a quest waypoint you can follow.

[Malcolm Tucker]

I really, really hate the way getting new ships works.

[Brian Rubin]

I really, really hate the way getting new ships works.

I'll admit that is a little funky. I kinda get it though.

[Fenris99]

Why am I not being prepared for this misery? What happens?

[Brian Rubin]

Misery? It's not misery, it's just...different. You start with a small ship, and when you invest enough points in "Command", you get a slightly bigger one.

[Xemu]

It takes a lot of skill investment to get more slots and unlike all the other stat increases you get nothing incrementally on the "way" to the bigger ship. I kind of thing you should just have an increasing variety of ship types to pick from that are unlocked by level; thus freeing up the crew points to be just what kinds of equipment you want to specialize in.

At a broader level it seems like you HAVE to invest very heavily in the weapons-related stat that increases your DPS, everything else is secondary to that.

[Fenris99]

So whats the smart way to invest points on the level up?

Obviously as a beta it's subject to change.

[KevinC]

I think Command should work like any other stat, i.e. you need to have enough in order to meet the Command requirement of a new ship. The new ship should be equipment like any other, though. You should have to either build it or have a race build it for you or... something. That way you could do cool things with the ships as well, such as Dryad ships having built-in regeneration, Shadow ships having cloaking, another race has ships with bonus medium slots, etc. That would give you more reasons to want to be friendly to a particular race, as well, if you really wanted one of their ship types.

Along with the stash, you could then also have a Hangar. You could keep your smaller/more agile ships here so you could go back to previous ships. That would alleviate the "Oh crap, I put points into command now I'm stuck with a big ship with no thrust" problem.

All in all, I'd like to see ships become a little more central than they are right now. I'm thinking along the lines of SPAZ or EVE or something like that. A ship should be a piece of equipment and a consideration in what you want to bring to the gameplay session.

[Brian Rubin]

New Patch!!!

http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative...s/Changes.html

[Brian Rubin]

ANOTHER new patch!!

http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative...s/Changes.html

And I am playing the HELL out of this game. Soooo fun!

[Xemu]

I'm super impressed with the patching speed. Some really good fixes in this one too, like fixing fighters vs enemy races & more sensible component UI.

[Jab]

I have a stupid question. Each time you upgrade command enough to get a new ship, is it supposed to increase the amount of one of the component types you can equip? With my human ship, I've had two command upgrades which have made the ship bigger, but the # of components hasn't gone up.

Also kudos for the last patch that allows you to get destination way-points for finding enemies.

[Steven Peeler]

Each time you upgrade command enough to get a new ship, is it supposed to increase the amount of one of the component types you can equip? With my human ship, I've had two command upgrades which have made the ship bigger, but the # of components hasn't gone up.

Most ship upgrades will give you another slow, but a few of them don't. The ones that don't increase your structure though. The tooltip for command will tell you what you will get with the new ship.

[Harkonis]

I still really wish upgrading command unlocked the ability to get a bigger ship, but didn't lock you into a bigger ship. There are still reasons to want a smaller one imo.

[Nephrinn]

I still really wish upgrading command unlocked the ability to get a bigger ship, but didn't lock you into a bigger ship. There are still reasons to want a smaller one imo.

It doesn't realistically work both ways. You want more component space, you're going to have to deal with a bulkier ship.

[Brian Rubin]

I think he's saying he wants a choice as to whether to get the bigger ship or not.

[Harkonis]

Correct Brian, I also want the ability to go back to the smaller ship. Purchasing a ship upgrade was something I fully expected in the game. Not to 'magically' be a bigger ship all of a sudden.

[KevinC]

Yea, I really would like to see the ship become a piece of equipment in the game. I just think it'd be a much better fit... they already have different models out there for the various races, so each race should have ships with custom stats and slot allocations. Each ship has it's own command requirement, so raising that gives you more options of what you want to fly. It'd especially be cool if certain ship frames gave you a bonus ability (regeneration, stealth, afterburner). At that point, you could keep your various ships in your stash/shipyard and swap around depending on what you'd like to fly at any given moment. I posted that suggestion on the forum but it got zero traction, so perhaps I'm in a very tiny minority. :)

[Bluddy]

Yea, I really would like to see the ship become a piece of equipment in the game. I just think it'd be a much better fit... they already have different models out there for the various races, so each race should have ships with custom stats and slot allocations. Each ship has it's own command requirement, so raising that gives you more options of what you want to fly. It'd especially be cool if certain ship frames gave you a bonus ability (regeneration, stealth, afterburner). At that point, you could keep your various ships in your stash/shipyard and swap around depending on what you'd like to fly at any given moment. I posted that suggestion on the forum but it got zero traction, so perhaps I'm in a very tiny minority. :)

No it's a really good idea and I quoted it on the forum without remembering who came up with it (sorry).

I personally think you should be able to choose a ship per sector. Giving too many ship choices per sector would become confusing -- one of the things ARPGS are good at is giving you a sense of how your character is doing right now and what you need to upgrade. If you let the player switch ships at random, that kills the feedback that is so essential to making you focus on what you need to upgrade next.

My idea (based on yours) is that there should be a Drox ship trader at the end of every sector. You'd save up money to upgrade your ship or buy a new one. He would have every ship available all the way up to flagship, but you'd only be able to command (and afford) a ship of a certain size.

You could then choose with which ship to enter the sector. Advanced small ships would have more light slots and large ships would favor heavy slots.

[KevinC]

I like it, Bluddy, that sounds fun! And no need for apologies, I just want to something like that added to the game. I care not for attribution. :)

[aganazer]

No it's a really good idea and I quoted it on the forum without remembering who came up with it (sorry).

I personally think you should be able to choose a ship per sector. Giving too many ship choices per sector would become confusing -- one of the things ARPGS are good at is giving you a sense of how your character is doing right now and what you need to upgrade. If you let the player switch ships at random, that kills the feedback that is so essential to making you focus on what you need to upgrade next.

My idea (based on yours) is that there should be a Drox ship trader at the end of every sector. You'd save up money to upgrade your ship or buy a new one. He would have every ship available all the way up to flagship, but you'd only be able to command (and afford) a ship of a certain size.

You could then choose with which ship to enter the sector. Advanced small ships would have more light slots and large ships would favor heavy slots.

I like it as well, but I think I'd rather have a "Ship Hanger" that is always available to me right next to the Stash and Shared Stash.

Limit choices by forcing the player to buy the ship upgrade. Maybe even limit the upgrade choices by forcing both a Command requirement and make the ship purchase something special like requiring 100 reputation with a race before you can buy one of their ships.

Once you buy the new ships its then available in your Ship Hanger which is the only place you can change out ships.

[Brian Rubin]

Just as I was gonna take a break, they release a new patch:

http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative...s/Changes.html

DAMMIT.

[KevinC]

Those look like some nice changes. Willpower to hold off playing more until release weakening...

[Jarrodhk]

It was obvious in hindsight, but, if you are trying to maintain good relations with a race, don't do quests (or at least don't turn them in) for races they hate.

Wasn't sure why I kept losing goodwill with the race I was focusing on helping until I noticed the drop after turning in a quest for someone else.

Oops.

[KevinC]

Woohoo, new patch!

Spoiler: Patch 9.05

• races now have up to 3 race specific slots (1 crew and either 1 heavy or 1 medium/1 light)
• player initial loadout is now race specific
• starting components now start with full durability/health
• added support for race specific components (right now only used for race specific component slots that don't have components available at level 1)
• every level up now get a free component from the Drox Operative Command (one of your race specific slots)
• fixed heavy fighter bays icon (fluffybot)
• fixed lightning field status effect icon (fluffybot)
• fixed LeachesXPowerPerHit translation (fluffybot)
• improved brute force text (fluffybot)
• fixed an occasional crash when creating level 100 sectors (Shadowy Figure)
• made it so trying to load .tga doesn't result in a critical error (Shadowy Figure)
• fixed a couple shield icons
• fixed the command points needed for heavy titan ship (Shadowy Figure)
• rearranged create ship screen to fit everything better (Castruccio)
• improved the look of the health bars on the selected entity menu
• improved the look of the power bar on the equipment menu
• fixed power load text spacing
• decreased crew requirements on major components from 2.0 to 1.5 per level
• decreased crew requirements on minor components from 1.5 to 1.125 per level
• use slot outlines no longer flash when you pick up a component
• now show treaties when highlighting a race icon
• now show which cargo bays are open (RoboAV)
• improved create ship screen look a little
• fixed background texture of turn off help menu (Valgor)
• increased ReuseTime of Emergency Energy from 10.0 to 60.0 (twice as long as status effect)
• now deselect jump gate when shutting the jump gate screen (gornova)
• fixed the lose time description (ScrObot)
• now can highlight Drox icon on relation screen to see all races relation towards Drox (Steve)

[LowComDenom]

Those look like some nice changes. Willpower to hold off playing more until release weakening...

Yah same here. I have a policy of not playing games that are designated by the developer as in beta cuz it's not finished quite yet, ya know? (rushed releases that should have been cooked more don't count with this rule).

The point-oh releases are getting up there though, slowly but surely...

[Jarrodhk]

I like the new race specific slots, just wish I had better power generators right now.

Have noticed that the tool tips for xp and the power load seem to be broken.

[sahornback]

I like the new race specific slots, just wish I had better power generators right now.

Have noticed that the tool tips for xp and the power load seem to be broken.

Yeah, I broke'em. Sorry, they'll be fixed in the next patch. Added some overlays but forgot to add the line blocksMouse 0 to the texture widget. Stupid artists!

And working on the UI a bit. Hope the Create Ship screen, Journals, and Shipyard look a little better in the next build. Everyone knows the UI needs some work. <sigh>

[Nephrinn]

The game is looking better and better with each update, both visually and mechanically. Very impressed. :)