
The next Starcom patch apparently will help with the feeling of being lost.
Found what I was missing.. had to go to the wiki. It was an early mission and it was just a wandering ship. I had been to that sector a few times, but either not long enough or in the wrong part and never saw the ship. I blame the "mercator" projection
So I was playing Starcom Unknown Space this morning, checking to see if I could make progress on any of the highlighted places, then I decided to just fly off in a semi-random direction (large expanse of nothingness with an already-known set of stars at my destination), to see if there was anything in the middle. I've done that a few times in the past and been rewarded. This time, the crew said something to the effect of "hey, this nebula we're flying through is pretty weird - it's messing with the void surfaces and will make us fly suuuuper slowly." Captain Merphle declared "I don't care, we're going that way no matter how long it takes because there's surely something interesting in there." Indeed, flight speed dragged to a proverbial crawl, but then deep in the heart of the nebula I spied a star. "Huzzah!" I shouted, "see? This was definitely worth it!" And we changed course a bit to veer over to it. As we shuffled slowly towards the star, one planet popped up in view. We eventually made it into range, then surveyed and sent a lander down.
Goddamn it, game.
Fabulous.
It is a lot of fun.
I finished Starcom: Unknown Space in the wee hours this morning, with almost 33 hours on the clock. An excellent space game from start to finish (with a couple of minor annoyances / potential areas of QoL improvement). And then I read the credits and realized that it was made entirely by a solo developer in Unity, along with a handful of artists and musicians. Damn dude, you go!
I think think my craving for a space game has been satiated for now.
I'm tempted to pick up the older Starcom Nexus since it's so cheap and on sale. Watched one of Veloxi's videos and it looks like some relaxing pew pew that I would enjoy.
I'm tempted to pick up the older Starcom Nexus since it's so cheap and on sale. Watched one of Veloxi's videos and it looks like some relaxing pew pew that I would enjoy.
Yeah that scratched just the right itch last night. Stayed up way to late blowing up enemy bases. Took out the one that the neutral/friendly race asked me to after just a handful of ship upgrades. That was brutal though, it had some drones and I lost 4 or 5 crew from the battle.
After that I was able to upgrade to a medium surveyor load out that was using 11/12 slots with 3 engines and 4 turrets.
I got to one system that had an entrance wormhole but no exit.
And I used a warp gate to go to a new gate I had found coordinates for. Then I used the wormhole there to head towards my dead end. And that was a dead end too. But there was still a star in between on the map.
So I looked closer at the map. That star was 8k AU away. And the system I was in had 2 planets 1k AU away from each other that I had just scanned both. So yeah I can fly that far...
And I did! You get a speed boost when you get outside the Oort cloud of a system I guess. And then between systems I had some cool scanner discovery. So I guess manually exploring outside the wormholes might be worth it sometimes?
When I got to that in between system, it had 2 enemy bases on 2 planets. One kinda tough station like I had run across before with missiles and turrets, then another with the drones. And dozens of ships launching from both. Eventually I was able to thin out the ships and take out the missile base. Then finally the drone base. And I got some research popup for how to make drones.
At that point it was was after bedtime, so I called it. But looking forward to getting back to base and trying things out today
Moved up to a Light Fighter at lunch. 5 turrets, 4 engines, 2 reactors at default. Also got flak cannons unlocked from some planet. And I met another race that did a tech exchange with me. They gave me some kind of quick warp jump thing. Seems like a great "oh shit" button to run away. But I didn't have enough materials to craft one yet I think.
I ran into a seemingly robotic race last night too. Attempted to communicate and was fired upon and nearly destroyed. Loaded save, tried again, was destroyed. So now I'm like 2 ship upgrades further.... but still I ran into one of their ships, it lasered the crap out of me, and I was down to like 20% hull and reloaded to run away instead. Not sure what's going on there, but right before I quit, I captured a probe that might have been from their race. Don't know if that will help communicate or if it's just more research points.
So now I have 2 hostile races and 2 friendly races. The aquatic friendly race trades from the start. But the lizard ones didn't. But I destroyed the hostile race base for them and now when I went back to my base, the commander said she signed a trade pact with them. So now a 2nd race to trade with. Not sure how many there are. I also found one quest of an abandoned ship and then later found where the ship came from. So that's another race, but they are not currently space-faring. Still a very cool story moment.
Also the most unique system I found so far had a rotating pulsar at the center. The bursts actually took a chunk out of my ship when I didn't move fast enough. And one planet was right on the edge of the burst, and we were able to get a survey team in and out around them. Pretty wild.
Starcom Nexus is really scratching the combat/exploration itch perfectly for me. Just what I needed right now. And I think long-term I need to find some of those lasers for myself. They seem very deadly.
I haven’t played Nexus, and reviews seem to indicate that Unknown Space is better in like every way, so I’m not sure I’ll ever play it. But I’ll sure as heck look out for DLC or the next game in the series.
Enjoying your enthusiastic writeups Stele.
I am also enjoying getting my Privateer (you never forget your first love) itch scratched vicariously through your write-ups.
Eventually some enemies surprise attacked the base last night. Holy crap. Luckily I had just upgraded my ship again, mostly through research on the guns.
I did finally get enough drops to get missiles. But I didn't have enough materials to craft one of the missile ships. I think I do now but I still haven't went back to build a new ship and try them out. The turrets are doing very well so far.
I found a 3rd neutral race... but they demanded materials to pass through a sector and then shot me when I didn't cough them up. Gave them the goods the next sector and they went back to neutral. And then mostly tried to avoid them until I can complete a quest I think.
Also saw a comet and now have some comet tracking scans I researched? Not sure what that's about but hopefully lots of good materials. I'm in the biggest of the medium ships now (6 turrets, 6 engines) but lack of material is the only reason I can't move up to some of the larger ones at this point.
Another Starcom update for y'all...
So there's one race of enemies that you have to collect some macguffins for. Found 2 of them, not sure how many I need. But 1 of them was underwater on a planet and there was radiation. Went back to base and they had something to counteract but it breaks down in 5 game hours. So it was a race to get back to the planet.
Failed miserably the first time trying to jump 5 systems to get there. But the was one system 20k AU away and I thought maybe I could just jump once and fly between. I dropped down to just a couple emergency weapons, threw on 9 or 10 engines and just gunned it. Also did research upgrade to my between systems speed. So I was going right at 200 per whatever the speed display is in the corner. And I made it!
Then I took time to explore that nearby system I had jumped to and there was a planet with some array in orbit that I could activate. Hm. Turns out...
it was a slingshot and threw my ship at super high speeds to another nearby system. But I think the intent was that you turn the array around and use it to shoot you to the radiation planet in time.
Anyway just think it's cool that there are multiple solutions to problems. I basically did the brute force speed solution but could have used my brain more and solved it a different way.
Still kind of amazing one person made all this.
Anyway other big news is I finally got lasers unlocked. They are a much bigger energy drain than turrets but they really pack a punch. I'll have to try a few more fights but I think I like them and might use more research points to improve them.
I tried missiles also but was mostly disappointed. They mostly miss the target. I see I could upgrade speed, distance, number of missiles, etc but I just don't feel they were effective and worth the effort. Maybe someone has made a missile build but it won't be me this game.
Lastly, I finally did have enough material to craft the little havoc jump engine. It's neat but the starting jump is only 360, basically across your screen. It's probably slower for travel than my engines at this point. It does do some explosive damage on jump or reentry. So maybe it could be a weapon too if you upgraded a lot. But I've seen a lot of sectors with friendly and enemy ships in close quarters so it might be too risky to hurt allies. Another thing probably won't invest too much research in either.
Tomorrow, more lasers!
Starcom: Unknown Space is now 20% off for the next 11 days! Haha
Get an extra couple dollars off since I own the previous game
Maybe I'll try to finish the first one first but probably buying the 2nd in 9 or 10 days at this point.
Also I found this last night Starcom Nexus postmortem He talks about all that it took as a single dev to get the first game to market, through EA to release, etc. A man with a dream who succeeded. Pretty solid read, although lengthy. Sometimes wish I could do the same and make an X-Wing/Freespace style game.
You love to see it.
Been a few days... I didn't play a ton this weekend but I did play more Starcom.
So the thing was I kind of reached what looked like the end of stars. I have 4 or 5 of the things I need for main story, and most of the upgrade trees unlocked, but I was finding there was nowhere else I could go. So I looked and I hadn't unlocked the biggest scanner range research yet. And then I started heading around to previous planets, just real quick, to see if any stars were off the map.
I found one that was actually really close but it was early on when I didn't fly away from wormholes as much. And it had the shield technology! So I went back and researched that. Super handy. I really wish I had found that planet earlier, although I might not have had enough adamantine for even one shield for a while. But that alone makes me a lot more survivable. Some of the mid-game fights I struggled with would have been easy to overcome with a shield taking a bunch of missile or drone hits for me.
I did finally get more parts for drone research too, but I haven't delved into it yet. Mostly I'm running with a 9 laser build or something just annihilating everything at this point.
So I continued the exploration and finally found a star like 50k AU off the path. Took a few minutes to get there, but it turned out to be the Araona home planet. So I can finally stop bribing or fighting them to pass through sectors now!
I guess I need to reset and search, possibly look for guides. I have several quests that are find the planet between these stars, or find the planet that looks like this, and I thought I had found them, but nothing triggered. Or maybe I need to go talk to one of the Sentinel ships and try to trigger more story? I'm just not really sure. I feel like I've explored almost everywhere I can and I'm missing something.
Still quite fun. But if I don't get over this hump I might drift away and never finish the game. It's been too good to abandon so far, so I don't want that to happen.
Well I don't even remember what started it, but I found something, went back to base, and they gave me a new warp waypoint. From there, there were 5 more systems in that chain, and one of them was named in a quest, so from that I found more stuff. Then finally I got the background radio reading... and base sent me somewhere else. And there was A THING! Spoilery thing. But I couldn't access it. So now I'm back to a little bit stuck but at least some ideas and more areas to explore. Think I got closer to the end at least.
Have 6 or 7 of the macguffin crystals I've been collecting forever but not sure how many there are still. Maybe I'm close?
I did try out some drones on the ship finally. They are fun enough but kinda slow.
Added a 2nd shield and most fights are laughably easy now with the 8 or 9 lasers, whatever setup. I have maxed out ship size but there's no more new ships to unlock it seems? Or at least nothing I've found yet, unless the story opens up something bigger. So I feel combat ready for the end, if I can find it.
Accessed the THING last night and progressed the story to near the end. Now I know where and when my ship is and WTF is going on mostly.
Hopefully can finish it up in the next day or two.
Distant Worlds 2 is on discount on all the stores this weekend, is it worth picking up? Mixed reviews on Steam, but I've been tempted/curious since it was released.
Yes it's worth it. It had a rough launch, but numerous patches and new DLCs have made it pretty great.
That's what I was figuring. I see that the new expansion is out so that explains the base game being discounted. I think I'll take the plunge and give it a go!
I'll second the recommendation. Quite a few interesting new approaches to the genre in the DW games.
What if I love space games but suck at 4X / grand strategy? Like, I bounced hard off Stellaris.
What if I love space games but suck at 4X / grand strategy? Like, I bounced hard off Stellaris.
Depends. If you like 4x but are just bad at them distant worlds has a crazy amount of automation. Which helps a lot.
That said if you didn't like that style of game it probably won't change your mind.
Yeah, the automation systems in DW2 are a way to ease into the game. You can turn most everything on automatic and just make the big decisions - "Build this ship y/n?" "Investigate the anomaly y/n?" that sort of thing, and then you can get used to the UI and the game pace at your pace. Then you can add in control of various systems (research, ship-building, exploration, development, etc) as you feel like handling them.
IMO, the only reason to play it over Distant Worlds: Universe is that the UI scales nicely to 4k. If you’re playing at a lesser resolution, the original game is still better in every other way.
When was the last time you tried DW2, bill?
What if I love space games but suck at 4X / grand strategy?
It's unlike other 4X/grand strategy games in which, as other have said, thanks to the automation you can play it as a much higher level than games like Stellaris.
When was the last time you tried DW2, bill?
It’s probably been a year since I really put time into it. I’ll be giving the latest expansion a chance because I want to like it more than DW:U.
I'm not real sure what DW:U has that DW2 in its current form does not, except for more extensive and robust mods and multi-order. They need to get multi-order in soon, please.
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