Void Destroyer 2

[ShaggyMoose]

As noted above, you get used to the UI so I guess it depends if you are interested in the story and the other gameplay styles that come later.

I finally beat that mission and decided to leave some detailed tips in the Steam forum, since there didn't seem to be any there already.

 

[Galdred]

OK, I found that bounty hunter faction with Lion base and decided to go the route of buying their ships and doing their missions. I replaced my standard Heavy Fighter with their Heavy Fighter. It seems powerful, comes with shield and when upgraded now has 250 shield.
I started using and abusing anti fighter missiles and instant shield regen abilities. I was able to solo big groups of pirates and scavengers with this. I just dodge and run and fire missiles to take down all the weaker enemy craft and then do dogbattles with the rest.

As for missions, it seems patrol is only mission worth doing. You get decent base reward and there are always easy enemies to blow up during it for even more rewards. And they are fast and don't take a lot of time to do so you can spam a lot of them to get rich faster.

From what I recall, bounty hunter ships are good for player, but weak ish for AI, because they rely more on active systems than other ships. But they are also pretty fast, so they work as your "party", but lack staying power as automated AI fleets(and I think they are rather on the expensive side).
But in player hand, they can punch way above their weight.
I ended up stealing ships from the Reborn pirate factions for the mainstay of my fleet (they also have good capture ships iirc).

Well I am still in phase of doing stuff solo so they are awesome. Atm I don't even know if I want to move into other phases as UI is pretty bad and I might give up on that part of the game.

That's true, you need to play other similar games (like Starpoint Gemini: Warlords) to come to peace with the UI. It is serviceable, though, but it lacks precision for stuff on the galactic map. However, the game is still fun with very large ships, unlike X3, so there is a point to sticking to late game (but the game can struggle and become very unstable if you set the fleet limit too high).

 

[ArchAngel]

OK, I found that bounty hunter faction with Lion base and decided to go the route of buying their ships and doing their missions. I replaced my standard Heavy Fighter with their Heavy Fighter. It seems powerful, comes with shield and when upgraded now has 250 shield.
I started using and abusing anti fighter missiles and instant shield regen abilities. I was able to solo big groups of pirates and scavengers with this. I just dodge and run and fire missiles to take down all the weaker enemy craft and then do dogbattles with the rest.

As for missions, it seems patrol is only mission worth doing. You get decent base reward and there are always easy enemies to blow up during it for even more rewards. And they are fast and don't take a lot of time to do so you can spam a lot of them to get rich faster.

From what I recall, bounty hunter ships are good for player, but weak ish for AI, because they rely more on active systems than other ships. But they are also pretty fast, so they work as your "party", but lack staying power as automated AI fleets(and I think they are rather on the expensive side).
But in player hand, they can punch way above their weight.
I ended up stealing ships from the Reborn pirate factions for the mainstay of my fleet (they also have good capture ships iirc).

Well I am still in phase of doing stuff solo so they are awesome. Atm I don't even know if I want to move into other phases as UI is pretty bad and I might give up on that part of the game.

That's true, you need to play other similar games (like Starpoint Gemini: Warlords) to come to peace with the UI. It is serviceable, though, but it lacks precision for stuff on the galactic map. However, the game is still fun with very large ships, unlike X3, so there is a point to sticking to late game (but the game can struggle and become very unstable if you set the fleet limit too high).

I played previous Starpoint Gemini game, didn't bother with Warlords as people said it is not that good. And I certainly will try to get myself biggest ship possible and try to blow up stuff with it before I decide to quit or suffer the UI.

 

[ArchAngel]

I played more yesterday, did two Base defense missions. I needed to redo both like 4 times as once enemy waves thin out allied craft also defending they all focus on you in last 2 waves. Takes more than one try to survive that with Pride Gunship I bought. I put 4 laser turrets on it and anti fighter and anti gunship missiles and rest into defense. I even got that hull repair ability in the end :D
But each base defense is couple of 100k credits so it is worth it. I just put all turrets on auto and 4 lasers that cannot miss always do good enough damage to any enemy ship in range so I get bounty for it.
But when I die at end of these missions game always freezes and crashes :D

Also I ran into strangest bug in the game. When I press and hold a key game suddenly starts acting like I am pressing and releasing it instead of holding it. I tested in windows and nothing like that happens there...
I could not figure out how to fix it so I moved some functions to my mouse. Thrust forward, back and secondary weapons are now on mouse, when I hold my mouse button down that shit does not happen.
Still not cool, when I want to dodge left or right my already slow ship does not dodge as fast as it could as constant short breaks in holding down the key brings power back down.. maybe I need to start turning off auto thrust power use.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I noticed the same for thrust, in that your HUD indicator makes it look like the thrusters are pulsing on and off. However, I was thinking this is just a discrepency in the display because the acceleration is smooth and constant, at least on my end.

The biggest problem with base defense missions is how long they take! Hull repair ability is basically a must for anything that involves this much extended combat. As long as the game is only crashing when you die and not when you succeed, I guess that is the lesser evil.

 

[ArchAngel]

I noticed the same for thrust, in that your HUD indicator makes it look like the thrusters are pulsing on and off. However, I was thinking this is just a discrepency in the display because the acceleration is smooth and constant, at least on my end.

The biggest problem with base defense missions is how long they take! Hull repair ability is basically a must for anything that involves this much extended combat. As long as the game is only crashing when you die and not when you succeed, I guess that is the lesser evil.

I figured out the bug, I had to connect my keyboard to another USB port, not sure why it worked correctly in windows...

As for crashing, I also had a crash when I entered some base after doing missions for a while. But when I ran the game again and clicked load last save it loaded it from inside that base. Seems it crashed just after saving the game... strange that dev could not fix all these crashes connected with saves...

I finally did the line of quests for TSF and got access to their Gunship. Then I took it to some mission and got destroyed inside it LOL... it was me vs like 10 enemies...

I started hiring transport ships to do autotrading. I buy the Catepillar MK2 that has two cargo slots and give it one corvette and one gunship as escort. I got two teams so far, each already earned more than they cost me to put together. I am glad I read in advance that AI never uses active abilities and secondary weapons so I didn't buy them that stuff, only shields and armor. I also read that if you are not part of the combat AI does not even take that into account but only base stats but I might get into situations where I join combat later but I CBA to directly control each so I just left this. But engine optimization is always useful, it makes their travel faster which means money coming in faster.

 

[ArchAngel]

As noted above, you get used to the UI so I guess it depends if you are interested in the story and the other gameplay styles that come later.

I finally beat that mission and decided to leave some detailed tips in the Steam forum, since there didn't seem to be any there already.

Ah I am just doing this mission. Lost my main Frigate on 1st attempt, destroyed enemy Destroyer on 2nd one
I told everyone to retreat once game told me they succeeded but they kept shooting even when I said don't engage and game showing everyone moving back.

It is easy mission if you can just blow up the Destroyer.

EDIT: 3rd time was successful, I found weapons hold command in Tactical screen :D

 

[ArchAngel]

I got my own base now and did a few missions that unlocked new craft to build. Now game wants me to conquer some pirate bases so I can get even better ships. Only everyone seems to have Destroyers except me :D

I had a missions vs TSF Cruiser, where I had to repair it. I had 6 ships doing it and it still took forever, those things are a beast. Probably a good way to take them over when they are solo there (after you beat all the pirates trying to kill them).

 

[ArchAngel]

I just conquered first Pirate base and I can build a Carrier there WOW!!
Only 112 million credits for base ship with no upgrades :D
I need a bigger trade fleet..

 

[Jinn]

Sounds like you're having a really fun time with it, ArchAngel. Game has been on my wishlist for ages, but was never quite sure if I should go for it. I think you and Galdred have inspired me to finally grab it next time I spot it on sale.

On another note, has anyone played the first game?

 

[ArchAngel]

Sounds like you're having a really fun time with it, ArchAngel. Game has been on my wishlist for ages, but was never quite sure if I should go for it. I think you and Galdred have inspired me to finally grab it next time I spot it on sale.

On another note, has anyone played the first game?

UI is just terrible and be prepared to google shit all the time to learn how to use it but other than that, game is pretty cool.
It is a bit like M&B in space but with less options and content but you get to do big space battles.

In other news I finally got myself my first Destroyer from the Pirate base I conquered but I was not able to try it vs enemy fleet.
The biggest problem so far in fleet battles is that I cannot stop myself from trying to do those with minimal loses so I basically don't jump into a ship to enjoy the carnage but keep it in tactical view with time slowed down all the time. Replacing lost ships is too complicate to let myself lose them. At least when I put so much active shit in all that are part of my fleet.
Maybe I should just have a fleet of cheap ships with no active abilities except a few that I want to use and just jump in those during battles and enjoy the carnage.. the problem is that fleets have limits of ships and their fleets are just as big as yours, so to be efficient you must manage the battles. Although it is pretty simple so far. You focus fire their ships (something AI does not do) and try to activate defensive Active abilities for ships that are losing health. And sometimes use movement actives to move your bigger ships outside of range of enemy fire.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Replacing lost ships is too complicate to let myself lose them. At least when I put so much active shit in all that are part of my fleet.

I have seen an option on the overworld ship menu that says "replace on loss" or something similar. I haven't experimented with it yet because I assume you need a base for it to work, but maybe this is what you are looking for. You can also use standardisation controls to quickly customise large ranks of identical ships.

I am on hiatus from the game while I wait for the developer to investigate a bug with my save.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

On another note, has anyone played the first game?

Haven't played it, but I understand its mission based rather than sandbox.

 

[ArchAngel]

Replacing lost ships is too complicate to let myself lose them. At least when I put so much active shit in all that are part of my fleet.

I have seen an option on the overworld ship menu that says "replace on loss" or something similar. I haven't experimented with it yet because I assume you need a base for it to work, but maybe this is what you are looking for. You can also use standardisation controls to quickly customise large ranks of identical ships.

I am on hiatus from the game while I wait for the developer to investigate a bug with my save.

Replace on loss is for AI controlled fleets. I am not yet at level of having few huge war fleets. I tried Standardization button, it just gave me some random error on the button and like 90% of the things it is not explained what it means. Dev could solve a lot of UI issues if he had some tooltips to come with this one word reasons why button does not work...

 

[ArchAngel]

Eh game froze mid battle with my Destroyer and crashed

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I haven't had any problems using the standardisation feature; you customise one ship in your fleet, select the multipler (e.g. 5x) and then hit "standardise". It should then automatically upgrade all ships of that type in your fleet up to the specified count.

The developer deployed a patch for my save game issue so I will get back on the horse. Dedicated indie developers are the best.

 

[ArchAngel]

I haven't had any problems using the standardisation feature; you customise one ship in your fleet, select the multipler (e.g. 5x) and then hit "standardise". It should then automatically upgrade all ships of that type in your fleet up to the specified count.

The developer deployed a patch for my save game issue so I will get back on the horse. Dedicated indie developers are the best.

Ah so that is how that button works :D
I was hoping it saves one version of the ship so I can always buy that one from shops anywhere... Duplicate kind of works but only if you got one of the kind you want in fleet (which does not help much if you need to replenish forces after battle and you lost all of that kind).

As I said, this game has UI issues, this standardize does not help much. I would just buy one ship, customize and then use duplicate to buy as many of that kind as I want. Or just use duplicate to buy more when I got some of them already. Easier and better than this standardize.
What we really needs is a way to permanently save ship designs.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Yeah, that would be nice. Unfortunately, I suspect the way that you should treat fleets is driven by how the UI helps you manage them, not how you would ideally want to do it. Ultimately though, you can pretty much ignore customisation for any ship that you are not fighting with directly.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah, that would be nice. Unfortunately, I suspect the way that you should treat fleets is driven by how the UI helps you manage them, not how you would ideally want to do it. Ultimately though, you can pretty much ignore customisation for any ship that you are not fighting with directly.

None of my ships are default. At worst they get better engines and fuels so they travel faster on overmap

 

[ArchAngel]

You know how I complained about UI from the start?!
All my complaints are nothing compared to trying to use a Carrier :D

Oh man...

 

[ArchAngel]

Let me go into a bit more details because I need to vent about it :D
1. You cannot tell the carrier to join your Fleet, at best you can tell it to follow your Fleet and it will be part of battles.
2. To actually use it properly you need to switch your main ship from (probably Destroyer) to Gunship or Fighter and fly into its Hangar. It took me a while to even find it next to my whole fleet. When you enter it with your ship you can Pilot it from inside and then it can dock with bases so you can upgrade it and you can transfer Ore to it so it can also build its own ships. At this point you can mostly use it as a main ship that you never want to leave.
3. Now the fun part, if you want to do a mission that needs a craft that is neither Carrier or Gunship/Fighter you used to enter it good luck :D Now you need to exit it and as result you also leave the fleet and you are now a solo ship. For example I got a mission where I could only take gunship and 10 fighters. I could not even accept it while I was piloting Carrier. So I had to exit, fly into base with solo ship, take mission. Then I figured out that Gunship I used was not best one I had in fleet and I missed those 10 fighters. So I had to disband fleet and then tell everyone to join my new fleet and tell the carrier to follow it. Then I could go do mission and after finishing it, I had to fly into Carrier so again it becomes leader of the fleet.
When Destroyer was my leader of fleet (and all the times before), to do all this was one click in base that says change ship, then take mission, exit, do mission and game automatically removes all extra ships from fleet for mission and after mission one click to make your strongest ship your main again..
4. Best part.. you get to have one less Destroyer in your fleet battles as normally your main ship is not counted into fleet limits for battles.. this makes it so it is still worth more to have Destroyer as main ship while telling your carrier to just follow your fleet.. but if you do that you cannot make him build ships unless you manually fly into it each time with Gunship/Fighter (so more UI "fun" changing from Destroyer and back)
5. If you want to have multiple Carriers, you need to fly manually into each, then bring them to bases to upgrade them..

I also tried Remote Interface from a base.. that a story for another time.. lets just say you enter base with your fleet, go into remove interface and your fleet can no longer exit that base lol.. designer of this game was on some heavy drugs when he was designing these systems..

EDIT: I forgot to mention that maybe all this would be worth it if carriers were actually a beast (and maybe some from another faction would be) but you have less weapons than a Destroyer and get to launch 10 free weak fighters and you can make up to corvette Pirate ships that are all kind of crap and they are basic versions (also you cannot launch them during battles from what I have seen, you can only launch the free crappy fighters)

 

[ShaggyMoose]

That sounds very messy... The "change ship" key (V) doesn't work while piloting a carrier?

 

[ArchAngel]

That sounds very messy... The "change ship" key (V) doesn't work while piloting a carrier?

Change ship is only for temporary change, also a bad way to do it with V key. Better if you enter tactical mode, select ship you want and press button that this is ship you control in ship mode.

I played more yesterday, I just did as I said above, I used Brig as main ship and had Carrier follow my fleet. Except for one battle vs Outsiders I only did main missions that only have you use limited number of ships anyways. Lost all Frigates I brought into one of those mission
There is no way around it (unless you give them gravity well ability).

 

[Galdred]

Let me go into a bit more details because I need to vent about it :D
1. You cannot tell the carrier to join your Fleet, at best you can tell it to follow your Fleet and it will be part of battles.
2. To actually use it properly you need to switch your main ship from (probably Destroyer) to Gunship or Fighter and fly into its Hangar. It took me a while to even find it next to my whole fleet. When you enter it with your ship you can Pilot it from inside and then it can dock with bases so you can upgrade it and you can transfer Ore to it so it can also build its own ships. At this point you can mostly use it as a main ship that you never want to leave.
3. Now the fun part, if you want to do a mission that needs a craft that is neither Carrier or Gunship/Fighter you used to enter it good luck :D Now you need to exit it and as result you also leave the fleet and you are now a solo ship. For example I got a mission where I could only take gunship and 10 fighters. I could not even accept it while I was piloting Carrier. So I had to exit, fly into base with solo ship, take mission. Then I figured out that Gunship I used was not best one I had in fleet and I missed those 10 fighters. So I had to disband fleet and then tell everyone to join my new fleet and tell the carrier to follow it. Then I could go do mission and after finishing it, I had to fly into Carrier so again it becomes leader of the fleet.
When Destroyer was my leader of fleet (and all the times before), to do all this was one click in base that says change ship, then take mission, exit, do mission and game automatically removes all extra ships from fleet for mission and after mission one click to make your strongest ship your main again..
4. Best part.. you get to have one less Destroyer in your fleet battles as normally your main ship is not counted into fleet limits for battles.. this makes it so it is still worth more to have Destroyer as main ship while telling your carrier to just follow your fleet.. but if you do that you cannot make him build ships unless you manually fly into it each time with Gunship/Fighter (so more UI "fun" changing from Destroyer and back)
5. If you want to have multiple Carriers, you need to fly manually into each, then bring them to bases to upgrade them..

I also tried Remote Interface from a base.. that a story for another time.. lets just say you enter base with your fleet, go into remove interface and your fleet can no longer exit that base lol.. designer of this game was on some heavy drugs when he was designing these systems..

EDIT: I forgot to mention that maybe all this would be worth it if carriers were actually a beast (and maybe some from another faction would be) but you have less weapons than a Destroyer and get to launch 10 free weak fighters and you can make up to corvette Pirate ships that are all kind of crap and they are basic versions (also you cannot launch them during battles from what I have seen, you can only launch the free crappy fighters)

Indeed, CV felt more like mobile bases.
That said, replenishable fighters were pretty strong over time, and it gave a bit more control over the units taking part in battle. You can also get Cruisers from the military faction (the ships they let you buy as friendly faction are pretty small and outdated iirc) by boarding them.
These are a definite upgrade over Destroyers, but you need to attack them to get these. You even get a larger ship later in the story, but it happens quite late.

 

[ArchAngel]

Now that I reached endgame in campaign, the game is just a drag and its bad tactical and other UI just makes it worse. I am thinking just restarting in sandbox and roleplaying a pirate :D
I've unlocked everything except a Dreadnought but I have seen one during story missions so I don't really care.

In Mount and Blade II I have to do hundreds of battles per campaign but they don't become boring, here they become boring fast. Especially since they are all the same. I always have very similar fleet and enemy always has identical fleets unless someone else killed part of it.