Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

There is a Community of Planets Edition with all current DLC.

The low price of $32 was before the last expansion so $40 is the cheapest it's been since then, at both Steam and GOG I think.

DudleySmith wrote:

So, after watching Perun play it on YouTube at the same time as a Steam sale, I've made the foolish decision to buy X4 and the expansions.

I started as a Terran Cadet so I'd see some of the same things as Perun. I've made several dumb errors - I tried to build a solar power plant in Mercury, but built the wrong dock (the one for ships much bigger than I can afford), then I built the wrong one again (because it was a cheaper but alien design that needed different stuf), and then I didn't give it enough money. To expand at this point I need to start building factories I think, which I understand means enormous outlay for blueprints (or I steal it somehow using an EMP bomb - I'm not sure how to do that and not tank my reputation with the factions)

Is there a way of getting my rubbish pilots to mine in one sector and sell in another using the repeat orders thing? I am aware I can buy seminars to make them better pilots. I have a bunch of mining ships in the Oort Cloud who can do this, but Hydrogen seems to be in different sectors to the factories that actually want it.

IMO don't bother buying the seminars. Your pilots will rank up in skill fast enough that you'll be able to set them to autotrade outside of the same sector. It'll be a fairly short range at first, but enough for what you want. You can also recruit better pilots in the various stations, they're literally just standing around the landing pads and whatnot.

As far as station building, the blueprints for the lower tiers of most factory/dock/station modules aren't terribly expensive. Higher end stuff is, but you'll be able to buy enough of the basics to put together say a silicon wafer factory pretty cheaply.

You can also steal the blueprints without needing an EMP. You have to listen for a signal leak, find it on the module (will look like a little red flashing light with an electrical short circuit around it), and then get close enough to it to read the data. You may have to do it in your spacesuit instead of your ship, I can't really remember to be honest. Once you interpret the data, there's a chance it will be a blueprint, but more often it is data on a limited time sale, or a surplus of inventory somewhere, or a trade secret like that.

The EMP bomb option just lets you force a data leak, and I believe it is then either guaranteed to be a blueprint, or has a much higher chance. There IS a way to drop an EMP bomb without incurring a faction hit as well. Something about dropping the bomb from your ship but not triggering it, then getting out of your ship and triggering it from your space suit or something like that. I did it a few times so I know it's possible, but it's been long enough that I don't remember the exact sequence.

master0 wrote:

Oh and there is one set of story missions that are super easy to miss. Started by picking up a signal from a station. Think there's an email too. Unlocks a big chunk of content.

If you’re thinking of the

Spoiler:

PHQ missions

, DLC makes that content way easier to find than it originally was.

Either following the Terran plot missions or just exploring the map should get you there. (I’m a little fuzzy on how the changes from the Boron DLC interact with the changes from the Boron DLC.)

Picked up x4's dlc over the holidays and got another 30 hours into it. I love the economy/faction building side. Building up your station and managing you ships as they expand. The system is fiddly and obtuse but honestly my favorite bit. The actual spaceship part I only ever found to be okay. Traveling was fun and the universe is lively but the combat always felt a little weak compared to other games. The missions especially the story ones always felt a bit rubbish though. They range from boring to really annoying. With at best some interesting stuff rarely sprinkled in.

Overall I like the game but always felt that it was as wide as an option but as deep as a puddle. If that makes sense. Needs a bit more content and structure. Though I am surprised how much I love the fact that you can walk around and leave your ship. I didn't realize how immersive that is.

I tried elite dangerous as well since I had it for free. But that one is very much not for me. It's more a spaceship sim then a space sim and I found it rather boring. Very pretty though.

Hey, so Reality Break is a lot of fun. 2d twin-stick shooter roguelite - with a story that's entirely centered around it being a roguelite, and Weird Stuff going on. There's elements of the UI that are clearly marked, but labeled only with question marks, so I don't know what they do - and this is on my second "run", with 2 hours clocked.

Does it work well with mouse and keyboard?

Robear wrote:

Does it work well with mouse and keyboard?

There's a demo.
WASD for movement. Firing follows the mouse with a nice red cursor, secondary weapon on the right click.
I could see myself struggling to keep the mouse centered, but the clunkyness of the WASD diagonals seems to be offset by the mouse accuracy. It works well.
I tried it on the deck and the fonts were too small to orient myself properly. Moved to a bigger screen but plugged in a controller. Had lots of fun and discovered that the equipment descriptions could be more or less ignored if you used the arrows as a guide and learned what shapes/colors provide what kind of fire-power.
Lots of loot with different stats and perks and traits and reading fatigue sets in because you don't have any context for what does what yet.
I now have a hold full of warship parts and I'm not sure how I use/sell them without leaving a mission area. I've had to eject dozens of items to make room for new bits. There's a "Scrap" option, but just seems to mark the item while in flight.
Definitely fighting the urge to throw another new game against my lack of free time. Hopefully the demo sates me until I finish another game or three first.

Ah, that's the good kind of control scheme. Thanks for this!

Reality Break is f*cking amazing y'all. Get it.

Rezzy wrote:

I now have a hold full of warship parts and I'm not sure how I use/sell them without leaving a mission area. I've had to eject dozens of items to make room for new bits. There's a "Scrap" option, but just seems to mark the item while in flight.

Sometimes you’ll find a shop (traveling merchant ship) in a zone, which is useful for offloading stuff. The “scrap” command just marks things as scrap, for easy selling en masse once you get to a shop. I suspect there’s going to be an upgrade that allows breakdown of junk in the cargo hold directly, but for now I’d suggest not getting too attached to stuff - just eject the lower quality stuff when you need to make room.

I really like how they put the placeholder [ ? ] boxes in the UI. Other games would just surprise show a new button once it’s relevant, but this way makes it more intriguing - “what could that box possibly be for??” It’s almost like looking at a “Legacy” style board game and seeing all the [ Place sticker X here ] boxes.

Its a fun game. I too tried it on Steam Deck.. its playable. The fonts didn't really bother me, though I wish they were bigger. Will have to futz with the settings a bit though. I didn't expect it to play like my PC, but definitely not as smooth.

On PC, its a whole lot of fun. I'm not sure I have my head around the whole equipment upgrade system. Is an upgradeable common worth keeping over a non-upgradeable rare or "yellow" item? Inventory management a bit of a pain, but maybe there's something in the options to help with it.

Carlbear95 wrote:

nventory management a bit of a pain, but maybe there's something in the options to help with it.

Heh well I guess just play more and that solves the issues!

Spoiler:

- On each run, there is a purchaseable upgrade to increase mineral stack size. Unfortunaltey not persistent between runs.
- One of the upgrades on the Reality Point board is the ability to filter loot. this is persistent between runs, but you do have to reset the filter when you start a new one as it defaults to show everything.

Also this non-gameplay feature kinda floored me

Spoiler:

Allocating reality points, and I guess after point like 25 or something suddenly like 20 more paths/upgrades open up!!

As far as the game goes having a lot of fun with it. A lot of the ARPG features are locked behind upgrades (I spoilered a few of those above). I was thinking the game was getting kinda easy.. oh.. now we have overall difficulty levels unlocked (not just the ability to rewrite challenges). Every run I've been trying different primary/secondary weapon combos. Turbo Laser and Phaser seem a bit OP right now.. I'm currently trying a Scatter Gun run. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just wish it ran better on the Deck.. going on a business trip in a week, and would love to be playing this. Will see if folks start to post some optimizations.

Yeah I initially hated the scatter gun (I usually dislike shotguns in shooters, too), but my third run ended up using one, to spectacular effect! I think I ended the run with a whopping 96 reality points.

After I logged in to GMG, Reality Break was only $17.99, plus I could use my monthly 3% off bonus... kinda hard to pass up for $5 cheaper than Steam intro deal.

Y'all made it sound fun, so I'll give it a whirl.

It also seems to be a solo dev. Very impressive.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Also this non-gameplay feature kinda floored me

Spoiler:

Allocating reality points, and I guess after point like 25 or something suddenly like 20 more paths/upgrades open up!!

.

So wait a second.. I just did my first voluntary reality break.. over 200 RPs!! and...

Spoiler:

There's a whole second page of reality point allocations?

Reality Break very cool. I am still on my 2nd run, waiting for another reset point in the story I guess?

Tried lasers, gatling, and scattergun so far, from various drops. Prefer the first two. Tried nova, missiles, and railgun secondary... hate the railgun, like either of the first two.

Have a lot of 2-inventory slot drops that only work on warship. If it's not too much of a spoiler, when the heck can I use those? Half my vault storage has those. And of course I don't even know if vault storage carries over until I finish this 2nd run, so am I wasting time and space or not?

Weird game with the individual upgrades on the rarer items, plus the examine/discovery bonus on them too... I had a weapon that discovery gave it a huge shield bonus... I went from like 400 to 900 shields by equipping that. Was impossible for me to use anything else for a few hours.

But the core fighting loop is very fun and I'm intrigued where the rest is going...

Stele wrote:

Have a lot of 2-inventory slot drops that only work on warship. If it's not too much of a spoiler, when the heck can I use those? Half my vault storage has those. And of course I don't even know if vault storage carries over until I finish this 2nd run, so am I wasting time and space or not?

They need to be Rewritten to be equippable by your fighter (default Y button on the xbox controller). I believe they usually take 8-14 Fate Pulses for most gear. I believe the purple armors take like 30 or so as they're actually two "classes" above Fighter. So you're next question is.. I have max pulses of like 8. Highly suggest you invest in the Reality Point skill that increases that maximum.

Oh, and Vault storage does not carry over.. nothing does AFAIK except your reality points. I found no value in storage except for the mined ores. They don't actually need to be in your hold to use the upgrade station. More unlock-able systems will come later for you, maybe there's better use with those but I've yet to see it.

Ah I didn't even think about rewriting. Is there no chance to upgrade to a warship or whatever? I saw the ship upgrades beside the station, and those were like extra energy, drone slot, etc. Some nice stuff, but no ship change that I could find yet.

Yes I noticed ores for upgrades could still be used from the vault. Very helpful.