Space Pirates and Zombies

[Padre]

Turned a few stations into burned out hulks untill one of the story side-mission wiped me out. Are these level scaled or something? It's in a level 12 system, I am level 23 and while I went through the escorts like a hot knife through butter the station and warp gates fuck me up. Really, I can hardly dent the shields before they destroy me.

Attacking the in-system UTA base however poses absolutely no problem. Circle and strafe and so on.

Some of those story side missions have weird difficulty curve. I had to grind to around lvl 30 to pass a side mission which was in lvl 10 or so. Also, sometimes have to refit my small ships during an attack on the station because my main ( missile specced ) can't even dent the shields. Then I have to refit them again so that they can destroy the armour of the station while my main ships tries to stop shields from regenerating.

Last time when I played beta the missiles were considered OP and didn't want to use them. Now I tried them and they really feel like shit tbh. Torpedoes are too slow to catch up to anything. Standard missiles aren't doing enough damage eve with lvl 6 missile tech. Those multi warheads often miss 3/4 of it because they fly everywhere but not to the target.

Was really considering changing spec to Beams since it has leech emiter or to Cannonc since one of the more powerful ones got a buff so it is good against shield,hull and armour.

 

[Trash]

Bought the damn thing. If a game keeps me entertained this long (over 8 hours already) and is this cheap (about 13 euro) it deserves a buy. Am also pretty sure that this will be a fun and relaxing game to play in short stints for quite a long time.

Not to mention that I enjoy the sociopath chatter of my crew.

PS: Missiles are shit. Beam seems to work nicely on shields but cannon really fucks them up.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hey, I like missiles! Missiles and turrets help me cover up my inept aiming!

 

[Metro]

Played a few hours of this. Starts out pretty slow, but once I got a ship I liked the feel of I'm starting to see the appeal. It IS grindy as all hell and super simple, but if you're a gamer who enjoys obsessively watching numbers get larger then you'll have a good time.

Small wonder the devs call themselves 'Min Max.'

 

[Trash]

Hey, I like missiles! Missiles and turrets help me cover up my inept aiming!

They just don't seem to do as much damage as beams and cannons. Even at lvl 4 tech they are easily outclassed by a few solid hits from a lvl 3 cannon. Turrets are cool though. Press mouse button to kill.

Small wonder the devs call themselves 'Min Max.'

If you like grinding and gathering equipment you'll love this. Personally I don't really care about that stuff. Blowing up shit with bigger and bigger guns is what makes me love this.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Early missiles are pretty shit. Torpedos and micro missiles you get later can be pretty sweet though.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Steam says 6 hours played so far, and missiles did turn out to be pretty shit. Going entirely cannons now, mostly because I have a specialist that gives +25% cannon damage.

Game is still super SUPER grindy. I'm at least temporarily fairly well off though so I can just breeze through most systems and kill whatever stations I want for tech and rape my way through jump gates. Not sure how much I'm even enjoying the game at this point. Battles for the most part are very samey. Usually been doing the "Blue" (Unique) side missions when I see them, but they just have a few extra text boxes and still boil down to the same shit 90% of the time. Kinda disappointed the game isn't better, but I guess it's ok. Not sure I'll be interested in playing again if/when I beat it.

 

[Metro]

Well let me ask you this: are you actually having fun playing or are you just sort of keeping at it to get Xth additional item for Y additional percentage of improvement to see if only then you enjoy it?

 

[EvilSatan]

Well let me ask you this: are you actually having fun playing or are you just sort of keeping at it to get Xth additional item for Y additional percentage of improvement to see if only then you enjoy it?

I'd say the huge ships you unlock towards the end, and the even bigger space stations at the end you fight make the grind worth it.

So if you don't like grinding gameplay, you wont like this game.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Well let me ask you this: are you actually having fun playing or are you just sort of keeping at it to get Xth additional item for Y additional percentage of improvement to see if only then you enjoy it?

Little bit of both. A large chunk of my play is grinding with a sprinkling of fun moments. It's an abusive relationship.

 

[Ashery]

Decided to pick this up a few days back and I must say that I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. That's not to say that the game isn't flawed in many respects, but it's not flawed to the point where it ruins one's enjoyment.

The grind for gear/relations is probably the main design flaw. This can be sidestepped to some extent, however, by choosing a smaller star count at the beginning. My current game started with 175 and it feels pretty good with regards to the grind for gear, but it'd be difficult to drop it all the way to 150 as the core worlds already have a huge gap (First core I jumped to had a rating of 41 and the only neighbors were 58 and 61).

The only other real flaw that I'm aware of (Start of Ch 3) is that the balance is pretty fucked up at the moment. Lasers get shafted for the most part as they don't obtain decent armor penetration until they acquire the fusion beam at rank eight, while cannons cover their shield weakness at fucking rank four with the ion cannon. Sure, it's nice that things aren't completely symmetric, but such a design completely screws over beam users. That last fight of Ch 2 against the Hammerhead took me nearly a dozen tries on veteran with my beam/launcher setup and I ended up having to abuse the hell out of mines. The fucking Hammerhead would just drift over my mothership and take down a solid 15-20% of its hp with each burst. Decided to redo the campaign on insane with a smaller galaxy and I managed to do it on my first try with cannons and stealth. Can't mention balance issues without going into how much mines completely fuck over the AI, either. Those things need to have dramatically reduced hp and have equal resistance to all weapons.

The cannon/stealth combo is hilariously overpowered, actually, as I managed to take down the station for that first sidequest with a lone dart equipped with dual disruptor cannons. Might be able to do the same without stealth, but that added damage bonus is probably the only thing that let me overcome the shields. The one downside to stealth is when I enter an already hostile map and a single bomb takes out my portal thanks to the increased damage for AI units on insane.

 

[Norfleet]

My current game started with 175 and it feels pretty good with regards to the grind for gear, but it'd be difficult to drop it all the way to 150 as the core worlds already have a huge gap (First core I jumped to had a rating of 41 and the only neighbors were 58 and 61).

Realistically, the rating stops mattering at that point. Once you get to the point where you're packing enough heat to take down 40+, you can take down anything.

Lasers get shafted for the most part as they don't obtain decent armor penetration until they acquire the fusion beam at rank eight

Isn't that kind of a joke weapon, what with its effective range of an inch and a half, which basically means it's like a ramming forcefield rather than an actual gun?

My experience is that most weapons are completely ineffective, as beams are unable to overcome even their favored target, shields. Enemy shields simply regenerate faster than beams actually do damage, until you get to at least the yellow and red weapons. Yellow weapons being more overly specialized, capable of doing one thing right, but not being a complete package, which brings us to "Particle Cannons are the only real weapon in the game".

 

[Ashery]

Lasers get shafted for the most part as they don't obtain decent armor penetration until they acquire the fusion beam at rank eight

Isn't that kind of a joke weapon, what with its effective range of an inch and a half, which basically means it's like a ramming forcefield rather than an actual gun?

My experience is that most weapons are completely ineffective, as beams are unable to overcome even their favored target, shields. Enemy shields simply regenerate faster than beams actually do damage, until you get to at least the yellow and red weapons. Yellow weapons being more overly specialized, capable of doing one thing right, but not being a complete package, which brings us to "Particle Cannons are the only real weapon in the game".

If that range comment is true, it just makes the branch even worse (I've yet to actually use them). I was primarily going off of numbers when I made that comment as I abandoned my beam playthrough almost immediately after reaching Ch3.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I admittedly haven't played since the beta, but back then, the basic lasers had obscene range (Like, murder a station without suffering return fire range, once you got a medium~large ship and some levels in beams) and leech beams regenerated enough energy that you could fire them non stop on anything you could keep in your sights (While keeping said enemy unable to use their own weapons)

Size matters more for beams at any rate. They aren't something you want to mount on multi turrets, since the size downgrade causes you to lose a lot of range. Better to have straight mounts as large as you can get so you can blast shit from a mile away while their shitty slow moving projectiles can't possibly hit you.

 

[Ashery]

But their damage once the shields went down was so fucking terrible that they were useless against mobile targets in defense missions (End of Ch.2 being the big one). Maybe I hadn't gathered enough blueprints to do a beam build properly, but they seem horribly underpowered compared to cannon spec. Doesn't help that nass drivers are just horribly broken against zombies. Hell, the final missions were easier than the god damn tutorial chapter and I didn't even have a set of specialists that synergized well. I had most of the bases covered, but none of the +100% cannon damage and +50% stealth damage shit that I've seen on the SPAZ boards.

Actually, most of the last chapter was pretty damn easy with a star cruiser equipped like mine (2x huge mass drivers; particle cannons on all other weapon slots; 2x huge, 1x med cannon booster; 2x large engine booster). Hell, it felt like I was flying around like I was fucking drunk and just holding down the button during many of the missions in that last chapter.

Still, it was certainly an entertaining game for the most part, just not without some pretty bad faults. Some of which can be fixed (balance), while others not (grinding).

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Beat this a few days back. Got insanely easy by the time zombies rolled around. I just rolled around in whatever big ship I had with some mass drivers and ground my way to the end.

Pretty much agree with Ashery's summary. Not a bad game.

 

[Eyeball]

Tried demo. Boring.

Play Ninjastarmageddon instead - more retarded, more fun and has an awesome soundtrack.