Zitchas' Thoughts and impressions on a brand new playthrough

[Zitchas]

The last few days I've been focusing my Endless Sky time on quite simply playing the game. Trying my best to just start up a new pilot, and experience it, without any fore-knowledge about alien factions or focusing on specific mechanics or anything. Just sit down, and play.

Parameters:

• Playing 0.9.17 alpha (aka latest continuous build as of 2022-Nov-29)
• Updating regularly (last updated on 2022-Dec-03)
• No plugins (high-dpi added on Day 5)
• No edits to data
• No assuming previous knowledge (for instance, not trying to get to Hai or Remnant space, no effort to acquire JD/Korath outfits until my character has legitimately run into them in the course of regular activities.)
• No guides.
• No focused pre-conceived strategy (ex. Not looking up the best mining system and going straight there. No trade fleet snowball.)
• Solo playthrough. Having other ships parked is OK, but I must fly to them to change ships. No remote summons, no fleet (ships carried on my flagship are acceptable, as are mission provide escorts, nothing else)
• Exploration playthrough: No purchasing maps.

Player goals:

• Play the game.
• Think about what is fun in where I am at. For example, at the start of the game, my goal is to pay off the loan and try fighting in a sparrow.

This is basically a "stream of consciousness" list of ideas, thoughts, and bullets points - basically unedited (the few edits are identified as such, and the vast majority were done same day as it was written). I don't have any expectations that this will match anyone else 's experience, or that this will have any radical impact on the way the game is developed or balanced or anything. I'm just putting this out here in case anyone's interested and in case it is useful. I do hope/plan to use this experience to guide future efforts; especially in regards to how the Ember Waste content. Yes, I do wax philosophical on a few things here and there. As I said, this is just a stream of thoughts that occur to me as I play.

My general plan is one "Day" (aka, one play session) per post. Feel free to comment/reply on individual posts, but I'd appreciate it if people stuck to replying to specific posts so that the main posts in this discussion are each successive day.

I will make every effort to keep this in-character.

I also reserve the right to hide posts that are off-topic and/or likely to lead to argument.

[Zitchas]

Day 01:

• I can actually dodge missiles!
• Pretty stars!
• My ship only has 3 jumps worth of fuel, the other two ships I could be in have 3 and 4 jumps of fuel respectively. Why are all the jobs I can get to start with way off at what I'm guessing is probably 8+ jumps away?
• I did a few rush deliveries in my Sparrow that involved going ~8 jumps, with the last 5 jumps begging for fuel each step of the way so I wouldn't run out of time. It was immersive, and interesting, and the hassel paid off. I wouldn't get rid of it; but it did leave me wishing there were some rush deliveries that were only 3-4 jumps away.
• We need more short range jobs. Sure, they won't pay well, but having something (other than James) that I can pick up and then drop off the next system over would be great for getting into the hang of how jobs work.
• Can we do jobs that have 0 range (as in, they have a destination that is off-world but not necessarily out of the system? Thinking Earth-Mars jobs, for instance)
• Ditched my reactor for a bigger battery. Seems to work fairly well. Only ran out of power once.
• No starfield parallax? I can see the haze vs starfield parallax, but I thought we had stars too for some reason.

[mOctave]

I think there might be Earth-Mars jobs already. More would be useful, but I'm pretty sure some already exist, at least in Sol.

[Zitchas]

I tracked them down in the data files, and sadly they are all hardcoded. Those are a handful of specific jobs hardcoded between two points in the system. No filters on either location or destination at all.

[Ferociousfeind]

The only way we can do zero-distance jobs right now is hardcoding source and destination, unfortunately. Te game doesn't really consider jobs that fine-grainedly. Entire star systems are as fine as the economics system gets, and entire planets are as fine as the jobs system gets (so long as they are planets in different star systems, of course!)

Maybe we could consider some support for intra-system work? On top of figuring out how the UI can handle more than 3 landable planets in one system.

[Zitchas]

Yeah, I'd like to see a lot of the economic stuff focused a bit to per-planet instead of per-system. It opens the door to more variety in challenges.

For example, one of the EV games had a lucrative system where the two planets in the same system formed a fairly high profit trade route, so it was possible to just go back and forth between the two. I don't recall it being a super-high profit margin, a big trader would go elsewhere, but it was a great one for small traders. The two caveats were that
a) they were a fairly large distance apart, and
b) the system had a fairly strong pirate presence

It was honestly harder to navigate that trade route than the average 5-7 jump trade route, due to the pirate risks.

Thinking about it, being able to have that sort of situation opens the door for a combat & avoidance challenges that can't be solved merely by fleeing to hyperspace, which for most of our escort type stuff, acts as the great reset / home safe button.

Anyway, the start of this is adding a keyword or other mechanism to allow for random jobs to be specifically told "not the source planet" so that we can use range 0 filters without having stuff return to the source. As per the request in #7789

[Ferociousfeind]

I'd like intra-system stuff because I want to have a well-populated system with like a dozen destinations, like moon bases around multiple different gas giants for example. A forward moon base has different needs from an established homeworld.

[Zitchas]

Day 02:

• Mostly deliveries and passengers, a few pirate hunting missions. Learned the hard way that I can't take on the 50k ones (didn't die, but had to run away and abort the mission). Even some of the 25k ones are beyond the capabilities of a sparrow with a pair of lasers.
• If one is doing an exploration playthrough, it is frustrating trying to get from Paradise worlds into the Syndicate. It feels almost as isolated as the Deep, but the Deep is in a line so it is obvious where the connection point is, while the Syndicate is a lump that looks (to the very limited amount I can see and guess) like it should have more connections than it does.
• It might be helpful if jobs identified the region their destination is in, especially when I haven't seen the system in question or even anything connected to it.
• Got more shield regen, and swapped some power stuff around, and now have have a solar panel for safety. Saved me a bunch of times.
• Drifting along with all my power being sucked up by sheild regen wasn't fun. Wished I could have turned off the shield regen temporarily.

[movingpictures]

"Along the same lines, I detest how our maps work. "
This.
I can obtain maps - now - for some section of Yugoslavia that I've never been to. Or Uraguay. In 2300, surely to heck i can fork over a few thusand credits to obtain up-to-date mapping. What may NOT be up to date are the trade prices.

[niloc132]

Coming to this as a brand new player, but I also wanted to speak up for not being handed a full map (as much as it annoys me as a player) - I enjoyed getting a bit lost following chains of missions, and then "discovering" I was near New Greenland, an early waypoint, and suddenly bits of the map clicked for me.

[Zitchas]

Always good to get feedback from new players on how they are experiencing the game. Thanks!

[niloc132]

As I've read further through the discussion, I see you're coming from an EV background too - I played that extensively as a kid, and recently got them running on a modern machine. It is very hard to not draw very direct comparisons ("really? even caps-lock for double speed?") - in fact this game was suggested to me as a more modern EV-like I might be interested in...

I definitely come down on "why on earth is there auto-jump/land?!?" Between that and the "And here's your loan's terms" kickoff, it definitely feels like "oh good, spaceships as a proxy for spreadsheets, just what I wanted to do after work, more work...". Fuel is free, sure, but I want to get out and explore and feel like I'm there, not watch a, uh, 2-d spaceship have stars streak behind it, while I think about all the maps and commodity prices I'll get to stare at to pay off this ship when they calm down. Oh good we're here, I can hit L.

Probably doesn't belong here, and comparing against EV might be a bit unfair, but here we are. I'm still planing.

[Zitchas]

Well, we're still working on improving things and adding more mechanics and stuff. Some day we might reach feature parity... :)

[Zitchas]

Day 03:

• Escorting is a joke. Just got 20k for a 2 jump trip escorting a star barge, being tailed by a berserker.
• They finished paying off my loan, though.
• Escorting needs more appropriate opposition. I can't take on a standard Berserker, for instance. On the other hand, it also needs "can't abandon my escortee" mechanic too. For instance, during escort missions, perhaps the player no longer gets full control of hyperjumping, and instead can only hyperjump when the ship they are escorting is ready to jump. So the player is accompanying the ship, not blazing a trail in front of it. (Blazing a trail is acceptable too, just don't call it escorting)
• Uh... I think I accidentally sold some mission cargo, maybe? Or did my escort die? I thought I had a job for one jump farther, but it's gone now.
• Replaced my lasers with blasters. Hopefully the extra range helps.
• With the extra space got a couple more solar panels. Hopefully less drifing while waiting for shields to regen.
• Now that I am actually saving up money, what should I spend it on? Not seeing any clear upgrades so far. Wish I could make my ship turn faster. Feels kind of slow.
• Buy a new ship? The wasp looks a little deadlier, an overall upgrade, but less cargo and less passengers. I don't feel sufficiently confident in combat for the meager improvements the Wasp offers over the Sparrow to be worth the decrease in delivery + passengers. The Beserker is an overall upgrade, but it's slower, and I seem to be running from a lot of stuff. I guess I could just forgo the combat and focus on the cargo+bunks, but I still want to make a go of combat. I see the Quicksilver, but that's laughably far out of my budget and a lot slower... Except it turns faster? What? (edit: Yes, I know the Hawk is out there somewhere. I haven't seen anywhere it is for sale yet, thus so far my choices for an upgrade basically boil down to wasp, beserker, and quicksilver. None of which are anywhere close to purchasable yet. Although I could get a loan... Anyway, I'm playing based on the info I've seen, and trying to ignore what I know as a developer)
• I wish I could sort the shipyard (or the ship list in the map) by price.
• Just got a passenger job to take a pair of mill workers to New Greenland. Just looking at the map, that's heading back to where I started, which made me realize I've gone in kind of a circle-ish pattern, and going back will finish the loop.
• Just exploring a bit, found Reunion. It has an Asteroid scanner! But I can't fit it. Oh well.

Map snapshot taken sometime during Day 3

Map date: 3014-03-02
Map snapshot of where I've been, taken sometime during day 3:

[vitalchip]

I missed this at the time.. I wonder what happens to the cargo when you didn't deliver it on time? It's in your hold right up until you land (anywhere) and then it's gone.

I think something else should happen, maybe a second deadline to deliver it for no money but also no repercussions?

Maybe we should have some sort of 'TrustPilot' (yeh I did) rating? Late deliveries push your rating downwards with a reduction in jobs and pay until you get it back up? Failing to deliver at all would get you a zero and no work (or very poor work because I don't know how you'd reverse the situation without the chance to earn a better rating).

Cargo just vanishing and nobody cares seems like a loose end.

[Zitchas]

Well, then there's also the fact that most stuff doesn't have any deadlines at all, so passengers booking a trip to the next system over (presumably they're packing for more than a day trip?) might end up spending months onboard as I wander the galaxy... And then there's stories of people keeping James (or other named characters) onboard their ship for years because they aren't ready to continue the story, or just like the humor in kidnapping James for a grand tour of the galaxy including sights he may never have seen before instead of letting him go to retirement...

Your mention of "trustpilot" kind of reminds me of EV that had a reputation system that was affected by doing jobs. Just over the course of doing jobs one could watch one's standing across the regions where one was doing work slowly increase one's reputation. It always struck me as fitting that one of the best ways to get a strong positive reputation and that warm-feeling that comes from being labelled a "Pillar of society" was something one could achieve purely by doing lots of regular jobs across the galaxy.

Not to mention, in EV all jobs came with what we'd call "clearance." As in, finding a job to somewhere was a good way to get onto a planet if it was, say, an outfitter with rare stuff but the planet wouldn't let you land until you were sufficiently reputable (or, apparently, if you have goods to deliver that they are waiting for). On the one hand, a regular delivery shouldn't get the pilot into somewhere where they are actively hated or if there's a security clearance required, such as a military installation. On the other hand, it should get you onto a lot of places where they merely don't want you to visit if you don't have business being there. (like non-sensitive military bases, exclusive communities, etc.)

[SimulatedKnave]

...I have determined that next playthrough, James will come meet the Hai before retiring.

[Hurleveur]

You can take out even 1-2 gunboat from a dropship using sidewinder missiles, I dont think blasters on a sparrow will get you far

[bene-dictator]

Blasters on a Sparrow are bad, but if you want an edge over other Sparrows that use lasers then the blasters are a good bet because of the range. It's actually pretty neat.

[Zitchas]

Day-04

• So much auto-stuff in here. Am I actually piloting at all? I feel more like a captain that just issues orders and controls the thruster. The AI aims, the AI shoots, the AI handles the entire landing sequence, the AI handles the entire travel sequence from start to finish. I just have to hit "land" in the destination system to transition from the hyper-nav automation to the landing automation. I'm getting none of the satisfaction of actually flying my ship, I don't feel like I'm actually learning how to fly or manouver.
• Alright, disabled the auto-aim. That's an improvement. How do I disable the rest of them? I'm the pilot, by gosh and golly, I want to feel like I'm actually piloting!
• Automating the entire jump sequence is something that should rightfully be a mid-game outfit/upgrade/unlock; not a baked-into-the-starter-ship feature. Why enable - nay - force everyone to blindly streak across the galaxy ignoring everything along the way?
• Why go to such lengths everywhere to disconnect the player from the flight experience?
• Why does turning seem to take so much more energy than thrusting? I'm careening off through space, having run out of energy while running from a pair of furies. Now that they've broken off and I want to jump out, it takes a painfully long time to turn around to oppose my path of movement, but promptly has enough power to generate enough thrust to come to a complete stop. Seems a weirdly balanced to me. (still running stock propulsion for a Sparrow, if anyone cares to check)
• Why do I bring up EV/O/N so much? Because they are better games. Yes, they are older. Honestly, if I could get them to run as nicely on Win 10 as ES does, I'd probably never have played ES in the first place. That's not a critique of ES: EVN is the third iteration in the trilogy. It is also a complete game. The third complete game in the series. There's no shame in being bested by the third completed game in a series. But there's a lot we can learn from it. One of the really obvious things is that EVN in particular had a really good early-game, one where the player felt both capable of and rewarded for sticking with a small ship. Big ships were awesome and satisfying too, but I always felt like there was a purpose to flying small ships, and finally stepping up into bigger ships was bittersweet. Yes, they could take more damage (and dish out a lot more) and carry more, and fit more stuff, but there was a lot I was leaving behind, too. In Endless Sky, I have not once, ever, regretted moving up to a bigger ship. There is nothing, not one single thing, that small ships do better. Oh, I guess I lie. Small ships usually have lower crew costs. That's it, that's all. Anyway, back to the point. EVN was released six years after Escape Velocity was published. So, after Escape Velocity was published as a fully complete game, they had two years of experience and feedback with a broad player base to release Escape Velocity Override, which was a much bigger world and more complex variation, and then another four years of experience to create EVN, which had a whole set of almost completely independent storylines, vastly different factions, and more varied things to balance than EV and EVO combined. And they managed it, and did so to the extent that they basically established the genre. Yes, there are others, but this is my experience, and I never even heard of any of the alternatives, let alone played them. Anyway, it seems very foolish to just blindly disregard the lessons learned from an entire trilogy of completed games that - twenty years after the initial release of the third installment, still manages to be a captivating game. Ship balance, early game challenges, the basic mechanics that incentivize and reward a player for paying attention and actually, well, being the pilot & captain and not just the person who plots the hyperjumps, hits jump, and goes for a snack. Despite the lack of automation and additional detail, and one really nasty hardlock scenario, it overall felt vastly more forgiving, easier to play, and just all around more fun. Instead of bristling at a mention that EVN did something, maybe we should look at why EVN did something, and see what we can learn from it. But we also need to think about where we're going, what the goal is. Vitalchip said something the other day that we've got a dichotomy of sorts: Some people are here to play an arcade shooter, some are here for a more strategic game. I guess I'm more the latter: I want the Firefly experience. I want to pay attention to the story of each world, each passenger. How much fuel I have left in my tank should matter. Not something that can be ignored as being just a slight risk of wasting a little time, but actually matter. Heh. That's kind of weird, actually. The EV series didn't have energy as we know it. Just fuel, shields, and armor. At least in EVN what we call fuel they called energy. So it seems really weird that we denigrate fuel into oblivion as something free, no hard consequences attached to it, so little purpose that we could almost get away with just erasing it from the game entirely; and then at the same time we introduce a new resource to consume, and then make almost everything consume it. Shooting weapons, regenerating shields, moving... All stuff that was basically free in EV/O/N now costs energy. So it just seems really weird to complain about the hardships of the complexity of the previous game's fuel, while adding two new resources (I forgot to mention that heat didn't exist in those games either) that are considerably more complex. It's a really weird stance, to be honest.
• Back to the actual playthrough.
• Mining seems akward. I know that it is, theoretically, possible to use mining to absolutely crush the early game economically speaking in no time flat. So far, it's provided me a few incidental hauls to supplement my income, but nothing sufficient that I'd want to stop running jobs in order to mine. Since I'm trying to avoid outside knowledge, I don't want to look up where I should go. I kind of failed, though. I looked up a guide, and it listed a specific system and how to get to it, where I should be able to make boatloads with my sparrow. I've conveniently forgotten the exact name of the system, only that it is within 3-4 jumps of our starting system. So, since I'm back in the area already, I'm going prospecting to find it. And I picked up an asteroid scanner, too. Ditched most of my solar panels for it. But that also means I'm now mining with a pair of energy blasters... My outfitting is definitely not optimum for mining.
• Scratch that. Somebody's lawyer wants me to deliver legal papers for the deceased to Starcross down in the Rim for 100k. That sounds far more appealing than wandering around looking for asteroids. I've searched 14 of the systems around Rutilicus searching for the ellusive place to make me wealthy, and no luck yet. Lots of iron, some aluminum, a bit of lead and tungsten. Really need to scrap these blasters if I want to do some mining, they are slow. But first, some legal papers to deliver!
• And stopping for fuel on Deep, and I run into Freya recruiting for the Southern Defense pact, and the thousand eyes mission. Cool.
• Sheesh, the asteroids in this system are crazy. Can't keep up with most of them, they're just spinning blurs across the screen.
• Sure, now that I want them, I can't find fuel tank outfits anywhere. I suspect I'm going to have to beg for fuel repeatedly to get this mission done on time. No ramscoops, either.
• Visited Skymoot. I've actually got a bit more time than I expected, so I can actually land to refuel instead of repeatedly begging. I must say, though, I'm really disapointed that Skymoot is named what it is instead of being called Pern. Missed opportunity for a reference to a great series.
• Ditched my 22 ton shield regenerator in exchange for some bunks and a solar panel. Also sold my blasters in exchange for lasers so I can mine again. And ditched my big battery for a little battery, and now I have 4 solar panels.
• Huh. A random passenger job that gives a dialog about whispering passengers? Odd...
• And once delivered, they ask me to land away from the spaceport and run away to who knows where after paying. Odd.
• Made it all the way out to Thule. Interesting place. Smuggled some hygrometers back to twinstar, and somebody with battle trophies to Dancer. Profitable, didn't see any risk there. Interesting. Staying away from the drug ones.
• I wish there was a way to keep track of what asteroids I'd seen in which system.
• Just for fun, I'm trying to do away with using the hyperspace AI and the landing AI. No hitting "land" until I'm already on the planet and pretty much stopped. Also, coming to a stop manually before hyperjumping. And not plotting out routes.
• It adds enough to the game that I think I'll post an issue asking it to be made a gamerule.
• I really like these new indicators highlighting rush deliveries. Much appreciated. The sorting is very useful too, especially the "sort by distance" option.
• I thought the South was supposed to be the pirate area? Getting around in the South? No problem, zero deaths. Flying up and down along the Rim and Western part of the South? No deaths. Trying to get through Aldhibain back up into the Dirt Belt? Died 4 times.
• War! Bombings! Two places I've never heard of and have zero impact on anything relevant to me have been devastated! The Tears, the emotional scarring! Woe is me! Alright, break time is over, back to hunting down this illusively good place to go mine. I finally got back through Aldhibain (lured by a rush delivery to New Austria), so I'm going to ditch these bunks for a cargo expansion, and see if I can find some minerals and finally strike it rich! My rumor indicates within 4 jumps of Rutilicus. I've already searched 14, how many more haven't I visited yet? Don't know. I can see at least 5 connected grey dots and 4 more disconnected ones.

Map snapshot taken just after having escaped the South/Rim area, taken when war started

In game date: 3014-07-11:

• Oh, apparently I have to go all the way up to Sol in order to pick up the cargo expansion. Ah well, at least one, maybe two of my unexplored dots are that away.
• Using that little pop-up mini-map to navigate: I really, really wish that it showed links connecting beyond the edge of what it displays. Right now, everything looks like a dead end. And it vanishes really quickly, too.
• The slowdown when flotsam, well, grinds to a halt in space, seems really abrupt. The slowdown itself is really useful, but maybe it should be linear instead of abrupt?
• Uh, is it normal to have a major delay beween entering the spaceport and having a mission pop up? I just checked into the Spaceport on Earth, and had time to read the entire "news" thing about lemonsausage and start on reading the actual spaceport description when I got this mission conversation about someone winning a twelth division lottery of a couple day's pay.
• I was just blown up by aliens in Shangri La! Too bad I won't remember... Wow. Flotsam everywhere. A couple of those big freighters getting blown will do that. The Korath raider was, eventually, however, destroyed.
• Just got that vaccine delivery mission down to Covert. Cool, nice to help people be healthy.
• And I finally found another interceptor. One that looks like more of an upgrade as opposed to a sidegrade-with-tradeoffs. On covert, lol.
• So, brand new Hawk. trade my asteroid scanner over, and put the cargo expansion into my cargo to install later when I can downgrade the battery a bit.
• I take off... And die.
• I take off, and run to the right to explore that systen, and die. Fast.
• I take off and try to run, and die again.
• it seems that the slight speed I gave up to get the hawk really wasm't worth it, as apparently that 130 speed does far more for keeping me alive than almost doubling my hp does. Go figure, an interceptor needs speed to stay alive. lol.
• Installed an afterburner. I've only got 3 jumps worth of fuel, so that's risky. but might give me the edge I need to get out of here.
• I think I'm going to make a snapshot here, so if this doesn't work out, I can revert to this point and go buy back my sparrow. So far, despite the advertising, the Sparrow is better for my life expectancy than the Hawk.
• Looking around, I note that I have been somewhere with atomic engines. If I can get out of covert alive, I can save up to replace these greyhound thrusters with atomics. Not sure if the power system can handle atomics, but... I guess we'll see. Might be especially problematic if I try to install that cargo expansion. The whole point of this was to get a better mining ship, after all. So far, it is looking... lackluster.
• Wow. Well, the afterburners helped me get out of Covert, but the ships in covert decided to follow me to Persian, and so they came out of hyperspace right behind me and toasted me while my HD was spinning up for the next jump. So that's... Uh, 5 deaths within the first 2 in-game days of owning a Hawk. I have yet to make it beyond my second day of owning one.
• 6 deaths within 2 days.
• 7 deaths within 2 days.
• 8 deaths within 2 days of purchasing my new Hawk.
• At least I can get out of covert, now.
• Yeah! Made it to Alnair!
• And then to Furnace!
• And that's where I have to end it for today. Succesfully escaping Covert in my new Hawk, that I am already regretting buying, but I'm going to try to make a go of it anyway. So, all in all, I've had maybe a dozen reloads (all from deaths, no getting stuck anywhere). 8 of which were immediately after buying the Hawk, and the other four in Aldhibain trying to go North (going south through there went just fine...). I really think I had another death in there somewhere, but not remembering where.

Map snapshot taken just after having escaped Covert

In game date: 3014-09-01:

[bene-dictator]

I'd like to see an 'advanced mode' in the gamerules that goes in between this. You want what Michael Zahnhiser intended: free fuel and repair, automated landing and jumping? You can have it. You want to have something more? Go and activate the advanced mode in the game rules, or for the gamerule that disables the automated jumping and adds the outfit for it.

The only problem is, a lot of people are just used to automated flying. The extra work might not be worth it to the players and coders... which is why I'm very sad about never being able to play any of the Escape Velocity games. I want to see what it's like. I also might look at Finite Galaxy even though it's been inactive.

[Zitchas]

Not sure when it will actually be released, but there's Cosmic Override, which is a full "from the ground up" remake of Escape Velocity Override (with support for the total conversion plug-ins for the original and EVN), so you should get that opportunity at some point. The way the kickstarter posts go, it sounds like it ought to be released sometime in 2023.

Back on topic, though. I think we're "doing it wrong", basically. Right from day 0 we're giving people access to a job list where the vast majority of jobs are 5-to-infinity jumps away; and virtually none of them are within the jump range of any of the standard ships. I just did a PR that added one job of each type (passenger, cargo, bulk, rush) whose main novelty was that they'd actually be within said jump range.

So, right from the start, we're telling people "you're in the middle of a vast republic, you've got a starship, you can't buy a map that shows any reasonable amount of area, and virtually all your jobs are far enough away that you'll probably have to refuel 3-5 times in order to get to the destination, depending on how often you make wrong turns in your route-finding and have to backtrack. Have fun!"

I mean, go buy a map. On average, it'll show... what, about 2 jumps distant from where you are? That's about half a starting ship's range. And if that's what the local map shows, that kind of implies that about 2 jump range circumfrance is where most of that planet's business is going to be. So, there should be a lot of traffic there. Jobs, missions, etc... Instead, all that map ends up being is a "insurance to make sure you don't jump into a dead-end right off the pad." That's it, that's about all it does.

a) New players shouldn't feel like they have to take 9 jump rush deliveries in order to get started.
b) If there were actually meaningful missions and jobs that took place within the player's maximum operating range (so, about <=4), players wouldn't be getting bored by having to hit "jump" and twiddle their thumbs for several minutes while they wind their way across the galaxy.
c) Having missions whose journeys are routinely going 3+ times the average fuel for a ship at we expect them to have at that point in the story is just problematic design, plain and simple. The occasional mission that long? Sure. But they should be the exception, not the rule.
d) having 15 jump travels is just fine once the player has a ship with 8+ jumps worth of fuel. Awful when they only have 4 or 5. And by the time they have a ship that has that much fuel stock, they should be able to buy the auto-nav device that automates it.

And as far as that goes, I've decided, in my attempt to do a fully manual playthrough, that I'm fine with the auto hyperjump line up. As in, the autopilot manouvering to bring the ship to a stop to line up with the next jump. I enjoy doing it myself, but I'm fine with that. I still detest the "auto nav the full sequence" thing and the auto-lander, though.

[MasterOfGrey]

So, evidently I'm not following this discussion closely, but I feel I should respond to this.

a) New players shouldn't feel like they have to take 9 jump rush deliveries in order to get started.

Agreed, but I also never felt like that when I started in a shuttle doing mixed jobs and trading while wandering through space and exploring.

b) If there were actually meaningful missions and jobs that took place within the player's maximum operating range (so, about <=4), players wouldn't be getting bored by having to hit "jump" and twiddle their thumbs for several minutes while they wind their way across the galaxy.

I'm not sure where you get several minutes from. Jump navigation in ES is fast. Blindingly so compared to other titles. It's one of the principle selling points of the early game.
But also, if you're trading in addition to taking jobs, you should be stopping to trade and check for more jobs at wherever looks promising around when your fuel runs out. If you're carrying goods further than that you're erasing your profits with crew costs. It's pretty accessible early gameplay to make stops along the way for profit.

c) Having missions whose journeys are routinely going 3+ times the average fuel for a ship at we expect them to have at that point in the story is just problematic design, plain and simple. The occasional mission that long? Sure. But they should be the exception, not the rule.
d) having 15 jump travels is just fine once the player has a ship with 8+ jumps worth of fuel. Awful when they only have 4 or 5.

I do agree that there should be a greater focus on missions with only ~2x the fuel requirements of most basic ships - which fits in with the courier ships having about 2x the fuel of most basic ships.
Having said that, we don't need to remove the longer jobs. The longer jobs give you a goal once you've explored most of the human area. While you're meandering across the galaxy, trading and doing jobs as you go, you can collect the jobs on your route to a distant destination.
Sure, this family of 4 farmers wanting to go 15 jumps probably wouldn't be worth you taking if you only had 4 bunks, but once you've got a few more than that, or a second/third ship to pad out your capacities, that family gives you a target. Somewhere to aim at in your search for work and profit.
There's nothing quite so satisfying as stopping 9 times on an 18 jump journey and being able to unload 10+ jobs at the end that you've collected from all over along the way.

And by the time they have a ship that has that much fuel stock, they should be able to buy the auto-nav device that automates it.

Again, disgusting, a feature that, if included as an outfit required for auto-nav would result in one of two outcomes:

1. I make a plugin that gives me auto-nav from day 1.
2. I never start a new game of Endless Sky literally ever again.

I stress again: Jump navigation in ES being fast and non-fiddly is one of the principle selling points of the early game.

If people want to turn that off in some kind of optional advanced mode, then more power to them, but...
This game has an playerbase that was, at least in part, brought in by that early-game experience.
And it is distinct from other games.
It doesn't do us any good to reform ourselves into just another version of something else.

[Zitchas]

Some good points there.

I must say, though, that I felt pressured to take long stuff. The loan payments eating away 2k+ per day will really do that. I'm not really sure they're a positive start to the game, honestly. They are a neat mechanic to have, but to force the player into it? Not sure.

With those payments, I felt I had to take the biggest payouts I could get my hands on, which was always the rush deliveries a dozen jumps away. Once I had the loan paid off, though... Then the game was much more interesting: More relaxed pace, I felt I could actually take small things and do the long trips were I slowly stack up jobs like that. And yeah, it is really satisfying to do.

[MasterOfGrey]

I must say, though, that I felt pressured to take long stuff. The loan payments eating away 2k+ per day will really do that.
[...]
With those payments, I felt I had to take the biggest payouts I could get my hands on, which was always the rush deliveries a dozen jumps away.

At the end of the day, if you're paying 2k per day, what you need is whatever will pay you the most per day.

An 80k rush job that takes 12 jumps and 2 stops is only paying you 5.7k/day.

A 32k job that takes 4 jumps with no refuel stops pays 8k/day.

Now it's been a while so idk how well I recall what the balance of long/short and rush/not rush jobs are. Maybe the rush jobs do pay more per day pretty much all the time - in which case, I suppose that's the risk/reward challenge for trying to pay off your loan quicker. Teaches you to make a judgement of whether or not it's worth the risk to chase a quicker payback, or whether you can make more efficient daily profit some other way.

Personally, I (and the people I recommended the game to who chose to actually play it) find that to be a far more engaging early game challenge than any form of early-game difficulty artificially added to ship navigation and flight controls.

[vitalchip]

Q:Why go to such lengths everywhere to disconnect the player from the flight experience?
A:Because coming to a stop and lining up with a specific angle is not actually fun gameplay?

I think this just about covers what I said before, depends how you view the game.

Almost 40 years ago I played 'Elite' and until you could afford an auto lander you had to manually land and it could be rough Many times my ship was destroyed on landing, you could graze the space doors and survive but anymore and it was game over.

You had to fly past the station, turn 180 (space doors always faced the planet) line the ship up in two planes and then accelerate towards the letterbox spacedoor using thrusters to contol your roll rate and match the rotation of the station.

The point is that an auto lander was something brilliant to have and the sense of achievement at being able to afford one was enormous, same with auto fuellers, cargo catchers, radar upgrades etc. The joy comes from the experience of operating without these facilities, start with too much automation and you've actually taken that joy out.

[Zitchas]

I'm not sure about locking away boarding entirely (or the extremely short range "fudge" factor), just the long range "hit 'board' and forget doing any piloting for however long it takes your ship to get there and dock" aspect.

Manual landing, though... That sounds good. Really good. (Even better if we can have an auto-landing module later on that does do that. Then we can have our sense of achievement and unlock QoL later on when we're flying giant heavy freighters and it's a lot more important than in the early game when I'm zipping around in something small.

[SimulatedKnave]

Manual landing will also, oddly, make it easier to land a ship when you're short on crew, because the damn game won't try to take control of the process and overshoot the planet.

[Zireael07]

+1 to having an ability to do manual landings (e.g. when autopilot borks up) and +100 to not having auto-continuing routes. All the times when I tried ES, I was caught out by that auto-continuing thing...

[Ferociousfeind]

Of slight note, Elite: Dangerous plays this the other way around. All the small-size ships have autodock and supercruise (which are analogous to auto-landing, the close-range and far-range versions) installed stock, and medium- and large-size ships don't. They're also dirt-cheap credit-wise and take up the smallest size outfit spaces (ED has a different outfitting system from ES so it's not quite comparable to a 1-ton outfit...)

If you're new and not privy to this, your first medium ship will not respond when you request docking, and you'll get that sinking feeling- "oh god, do I have to do it myself?". You'll learn how to do it eventually, all the little things you have to watch out for, and you'll attain mastery over docking and launching like a pro, but that first moment is quite disconcerting. AND, landing is on a time (a 5-minute timer, but still a timer) so you're pressed for time too.

[Zitchas]

That's an interesting variation.

[Zitchas]

Day 05 (2022-12-03; in game date 3014-09-01)

• Well, an unexpected but profitable wa to spend time: Hang around Alderamin, let Syndicate destroy pirates, and just fly around scooping up flotsam and trying to stay out of the way. Not super profitable, but not bad, either.
• Oh, neat. I just discovered that the asteroid minerals I've sold are listed in the outiffter list on the map, and that selecting them highlights where they can be mined. I'm curious if this is listing where I have mined them, or is it where I have seen them, or, once I have mined one, does it just show everywhere that I have been that has them?
• Lucked into mining in Caph. Surprisingly good system to mine in, given the safety and centralness of it. Lots of Tungsten, which takes a bit to mine, but pays well. Being able to pick up 35 tungsten gives a really good payout.
• Looks like the map just records which systems I've actually identified asteroids in. At least, jumping to a new system shows zero asteroids there (clicking down the list shows none of them being present), but after I target one or two of them, then the map does show those that I targeted as being present.
• Platnium! Terribly quantities, but it does pay well. That was a nice find.
• And a random escort job takes me off to New Britain in the Dabih system, which gets the distinction of my first siting of a Quarg ship appearing. I've heard of them (James mentioned them), but heretofore I have never seen one.
• Cool! Fun to watch Quarg ships vanish and appear out of nowhere. Would like to learn more about them.
• I started off shooting rocks that looked different and remembering where they were. Then I picked up an asteroid scanner so I could pick out specific rocks. Then I learned my map would track where I had mined or identified specific rocks. I like this progression. It makes sense, starts witht the basics, and then I gradually increase my capabilities. The logical next step would be to have some kind of an "auto-cataloger" outfit, perhaps as an add-on to the asteroid scanner? that automatically logs the asteroids present in a system as they pass through my scanner's range without me having to click on them. I definitely wouldn't want this to be the starting state; but it would be a really nice quality of life upgrade to be able to purchase if one wished.

Map as of Day 5, ending on 3014-10-30

Ship Info Screen for the *Second Step*

Total listed playtime is 1d 1h 34m; however quite a few hours of sitting paused on planet or info screens while I typed thoughts or wasn't on the computer at all.

[Zitchas]

Day 06 (in game date 3014-10-30 to 3015-03-21)

• Well, Ascella seems to be the place. Enough Uranium to fill at least half my hold, and enough Titanium to fill whatever space is left. Not to mention ocassionally a bit of loot from pirates. As far as that goes, in one day of mining I made over 130k from disabled ship boarding missions alone: 2 disabled pirate ships had 50k caches on them, and two merchant ships paid me small sums for repairing them. I may have had a hint (A rumor, I'll call it) about there being a good system to mine in within 4 jumps of Rutilicus, but that actually seems fair enough, really. If I'm counting correctly, I prospected (as in mined some interesting looking asteroids, and later flew around scanning them) through 24 systems before finding this one. Now, I'd read that guide and actually remembered the exact directions to this system and its name (and saw a picture of what uranium looked like so I didn't need a scanner to pick it out), then I'd consider this kind of broken. Not broken, but a little on the "overly profitable" side of things. But with this amount of effort to get it (including the hint)... This feels about right. A good payoff for a lot of time and effort spent searching.
• Hmmm, there's a system that we can't access located in an empty space between Vega and Zeta Aquilae... I wonder how I can get there?
• Taking advantage of dual monitors, I've gotten into the habbit of taking snapshots of my map showing my current location and mission indicators, then leaving that up on my secondary screen so I can navigate around in-game without pulling up my map so often. Really makes jumping around organically instead of using the routes and auto-jumper a lot nicer. Feels... I don't know. Both feel right and feels like an unfair advantage, like I'm experiencing the game the way most people can't. Not sure if that's fair or not.
• It also feels like the way that little map that pops up when hyperjumping should let us do, except that has a bunch of problems: First off, that little map doesn't show any connections outside the, what, two system radius? As in, it will show the system I'm jumping to, and it will show each system that system connects to. But it doesn't even show any connections those systems might have, let alone the actual systems they connect to. Which makes it look like all the potential jumps I can get to from my destination system are all dead-ends. I know some of them probably aren't, but which ones are the dead ends, and which ones aren't? Also, there's no way to pull up that little minimap just to look at it. The best I can do is hit the hyperjump keep, then quicklyi move to break the autopilot's control. Repeatedly, as the minimap will be gone within a fraction of a second after the jump is cancelled.
• Taking some peole to Glory to consult a terraforming consultant.... Succesfully delivered them there, but instead of getting any kind of description or text or anything, I just got a message about how the next mission requires an additional bunk. Talk about anticlimactic. Well, no getting another bunk here. Do I care enough about this mission and these people to re-arrange my ship to get another bunk?
• Speaking of which, I got a crew member when I got this hawk. Who are they? Some gun-lover like Jayne? A brilliant mechanic like Kaylee? A bright young doctor? A naive but loveable pilot like Wash? Or a rough and ready co-captain like Mal? What do they do? What are they like? Do they even have a name? For now, they will be Jane Doe, the nameless general-purpose starship technologist. Aka someone with a diploma in starship crewmanship: Capable of running all manner of systems competently, but not a specialist or any particular skill with any of them. Why do I even need them? In all honesty, this hawk feels just as much of a one-person ship as the Sparrow did. Same number of guns, same range, basically the same stuff just slightly more.
• Well, since I'm up here, might as well go trade in these Greyhound engines for some atomics, so a run up and down the Deep. Fairly profitable, and interesting bits and pieces of stories.
• I'm really curious as to what all these mysterious packages are. The "Mystery package to X" ones. They're not missions, just jobs, but they have dialog that is kind of intriguing.
• I keep getting Deep security confused with pirates. In the last battle, the Deep ship had more red on it than the pirate did.
• I don't know what that ship was shooting, but it was annoying. It shot as as if they were dumb-fire rockets, but they fired surprisingly fast. No chance to dodge.
• Oops. I forgot I had a rush delibery down South, and went exploring this little corner of systems that were still unexplored. I have now found Mekalinan, Alhena, and Castor. So, I've now finally (over a year into my career as a Captain) found one of the "major cornerstones of the Republic", aka Geminus Navy Shipyards. I'm rather curious as to how many people actually do visit one of these - or even here of them - before the bombing. I don't even remember what the name of the stock market world was. Haven't seen any planet descriptions referencing either the stock market or the bombing.
  -Oh, hey, I have a logbook! Maybe I should look at it. The Free Worlds entry does, in fact, reference the possible connection to the attacks on the Navy Yard and the Galactic Stock Exchange, but doesn't actually mention where they were. So, not useful.
• And now I've found Martini and the former home of the stock exchange on my way south. (just visiting everything to look for jobs heading the same way). I've been through this system before, but apparently hadn't visited Martini. Doesn't appear to be worth noting, though.
• Hmmm... Intentionally destabilizing a planet's climate by crashing asteroids into it and then strewing it liberally with seads from plants adapted to the new cooler climate. What could go wrong? (I can almost hear the biologist screaming. So is the conservation worker, and the environmentalist, and the infrastructure planner, and the emergency planner, and the climatologist, and the social worker, and...) The ripple effects of this are huge. And I just casually helped them do it. Fun times!
• Just thinking back on the state of the galaxy at this point in time, 3015-03-21. We've been in a state of war for... I'm not sure how long. A while now. No visible consequences, I'm just chugging around, doing stuff. Who needs war?
• I rather think the war happens too soon, honestly. I'm only just starting to get a feel for the different political groups and why this war even happened at all. Still no interest in taking part, but I'm starting to get a little of why it is a thing.
• Also, having trouble aiming. It feels like, unless I zoom in really close, my ship turns in arbitrary blocks of rotation. I don't know exactly how much, but it's like even a tap of the turn key will turn my ship 5 degrees. Tracking fast targets and fast asteroids feels like I jump from pointing to the left of them to pointing to the right of them. Is there a minimum turn amount or something? Or a minimum input duration or something? Also, seems weird to not have any angular momentum, or acceleration. Even if it just simulated angular momentum by ramping up to full turn speed (based on the turn force and mass, just like acceleration) and then decelerated as fast as possible when the key was released... That'd really make it easier to do tiny correctional aiming changes; rather than the current "still, or turning at max turn rate, nothing in between" options.
• Now that I have a hawk with atomics, well, my power suffers, as expected, but I finally feel like I'm in something that is actually an upgrade from the Sparrow, not just a sidegrade. I'm still not particularly useful in combat, but at least I can confidently take on Sparrows, now. And those missile furies. Those are pathetic and amusing. They, and they alone, make me want to get some extra crew, just to capture and sell those missile furies. Since I can dodge the missiles easy enough, and once those missiles are gone, they just sit around waiting for me to kill them. They even conveniently stick close to me to let me know they're ready to kill at leisure. Awesome, no? Of course, that assumes I can actually kill them before they run away once their shields are gone, anyway.
  Anyway, I think that's it for today. Explored the whole Deep, and a fair bit more of the paradise Worlds and Earth area. Still some unexplored grey dots, though. I ended off flying a Hawk with atomic thruster+steering, two heavy lasers, a cargo expansion, and asteroid scanner, plus some power stuff. Overall, fun to fly. Probably going to install some more power stuff with the bit of outfit space I have free. Maybe more battery, although more generation would be nice too. Painful to do long missions in, though, due to how often I have to refuel. There really isn't many short missions, is there? We really need more short missions; especially ones that are less than 4 jumps long. Anyway, fun times were had!

Map of my explorations as of 3015-03-21

My ship, the Second Step, as as of 3015-03-21

[Ferociousfeind]

I'm envisioning a situation where the player's inputs get abstracted a little- when you press the right turn key, you begin incrementing what the game reads as the right turn command, from 0 to 1 (100%) over some amount of time, probably a few seconds, and then when you release the key or press a key against the current direction of movement, your come to a no-rotation very quickly, perhaps twice as fast.

I don't know how to do this though. It might mess with the AI too..... It's not rotational inertia though.

[Zitchas]

That could work. So long as it is predictable and consistent so it feels like ramping up / overcoming inertia, that could work quite well.

[vitalchip]

I've got ctrl as a 'half' modifier but honestly don't use it a lot. From time to time it's handy.

As far as ramping up (and down) goes you could add a variable to keep track in MovePlayer, increment thrust by .1 every frame which has a turn command decrement by .2 every frame which doesn't. Same in negative for a left turn catch the zero point either way.

Not sure how that would feel to be honest.

Full rotational inertia a little bit more work, ship would do the heavy lifting but you'd probably want Ai to be the inverse where it starts hard and tails off.

Either way, Ai controlled ships already have proportional control of steering so they'd be unaffected by the first change and need a few tweaks for the second.

[Zitchas]

half, as in it halves your turning speed? That could work as a quick method.

[vitalchip]

Halves all thrusters. ctrl isn't a viable choice really, On aa mac ctrl + arrozs shifts windows around so they conflict. I turned it off just to try out the idea (I use hot corners anyway) but setting anything up which clashes with any OS standard keys is bad.

I would have used shift but I've too much muscle memory for shift-back as stop.

[Zitchas]

Day 07 (3015-03-21 to 3015-04-19)

• Well, apparently I'm to go to court to face charges of "unlawful use of an asteroid."
• That ended humorously. Kind of surprised there's no laws about it, though.
• Also, I find it weird to see the Deep commenting about "being surprised that some student would think of using asteroids." It's not a hard concept. We've got an entire series of books that talk about doing it, various TV shows have mentioned doing it, lots of other media have talked about it. A board game includes it. Other computer games talk about doing it too. The surprise should be that a student managed to pull it off so well; not that they thought of it at all. Unless this comes up elsewhere and is setting up something.... I'm going to PR a change to this someday to tweak the wording to be less insulting. But not until I've played a lot more to see if it is setting up something first. If it's an intentional choice to make the Deep guy sound insulting, well, that's acceptable writing.
• Anyway, off to the Deep again.
• And, enroute, got interviewed about the Free Worlds. Made a comment about how parliament should consider even those opinions that they don't agree with, which got shot down. Makes me curious how the other options could have gone. Seemed very much like a non-event.
• Bought my third ship, a Headhunter, named it "Third Step." I know, creative it is not. I uninstalled most of my Hawk's stuff before selling it so that I could sell off a lot of the headhunter's brand new stuff and swap my old stuff back in. Saved a bit of money that way, I think. Anyway, I have four heavy lasers now, for extreme mining power! And a size 55 cargo hold, so no more cargo expansion. Not sure how long I'll be making a pont of mining. The lure of job running is strong... Also through an outfit and cargo scanner on there because... Why not? Maybe I should try scanning stuff? I wanted to get an afterburner in there, but that wasn't quite in the cards.
• And that marks the end of my gameplay running around in Interceptors, I guess. Kind of dissapointed. Didn't really do a whole lot of combat. Some small time escort missions, fought off some sparrows and a few furies, stayed away from hawks and berserkers because they can aim a lot better than I can and that little bit of difference is enough to spell my doom on a pretty regular basis.
• Thought: Governments have "inacuracy", which usually translates as a bit of a random factor in how shots travel, giving governments a high inaccuracy gives them scattergun weapons that are, ironically, harder to dodge. A person standing still will get hit less often, in theory, but in practice the scattershot effect isn't predictable, so it makes it harder to anticipate or dodge and leads to a higher hit rate than if they'd had a steady stream. What if we removed the inacurracy from the guns and instead applied it to the ship? As in, more inaccurate governments don't aim their ship as well, altering their turning and thrust application to be +/- a random percent up to their inaccuracy value? Less "inaccurate governments just have scattershot guns" and more "inaccurate governments don't fly as precisely or aim as carefully at you." As another idea, what if higher "inaccuracy" translated to an enforced reaction time. So, for instance, a ship with 0 inaccuracy reacts instantly, as appears to be the case. A ship with 10 inaccuracy has a .05 second lag time. A ship with 40 inaccuracy has a .2 second lag time in reacting to whowever it is targetting. This would reward players for better flying, especially against opponents who aren't tained combat pilots. Also gives us mere mortals a chance to keep up with the machine-driven perfect accuracy. It's hard to duck and weave against an opponent with a 0 millisecond response time; and probably contributes to the "Meh, just get a fleet and let the AI handle combat" attitude.
• Anyway, calling it the end of the day there, I think. A short day, but I got started late.

[Zitchas]

Perhaps unconsciously that is one of the reasons I keep wanting to shrink drones, fighters, and interceptors. Making them smaller kind of indirectly increases the scale.

But yeah, I also kind of think our two beam weapons just don't really fit very well. To use EVN's example, human space only had a single beam weapon, the thunderlance, and it was basically a heavy laser, except with a range of ~100 or so. Not a viable option for capital ship anti-fighter defense, or for any kind of ranged combat, really. It was highly effective, just with the caveat that one has to basically get up close and personal. There was no pretense. It was literally the proverbial knife in the gunfight. No-one gets a thunderlance with any expectation of it being anything but a ramming close-quarter-combat weapon. In contrast, our two lasers are long enough to feel like they should be usable in general ship manouver based combat, but they are about as useful as upgrading from the knife to bringing a sword to the gunfight. Don't get me wrong, they can be very effective, just that they are kind of deceptive as to their combat usefulness. So they're kind of deceiving to new pilots, honestly. One can't kite enemies with them either, which is one of the dominant ways for people in small ships to actually achieve meaningful combat victories. Although I suppose that being said, so many of our small ship variants are loaded for bear with missiles or higher-end weaponry that the player may never have even seen before with much longer ranges, such that kiting doesn't seem like it'd be as useful as it has been in previous games.

Makes me miss the type identification in EVN. Flying around in my starbridge, if I saw a pirate starbridge, that's a great target, I can take that. But if I see a Starbridge D or E, I know that's been modded and loaded with high end gear and I'm probably dead if I go up against it. Now, I don't want such clear "flagging" of variants. But this is the sort of thing that outfit scanners should be useful for, and perhaps even tactical scanners if they provided more info.

The problem with outfit scanners is that their effective range is shorter than most weapons. If I'm already close enough to the pirate that they're shooting me, I don't have time to be worrying about scanning them because they're already starting to kill me. I don't have the health to calmly scan them before deciding if they're too tough for me to take on or not. And let's be honest: A sparrow does not have the space to have the multiple outfit scanners required to be able to get a scan from outside basic blaster range. None of the interceptors do. I think this comes back to the question posed elsewhere: What do we want from scanners? Are they information to inform the battle and use for a few missions? Are they a separate stand-alone mini-game that we expect people to dedicate their ships to on par with the effort put into combat? If it's the former, then we need to situate scanners as things that are easier to use, easier to have onboard ships as a general thing. Perhaps still costly to truly specialize in, but not to the point of crippling a ship's combat potential. If it is the later, then we need a lot more scanning based missions and situations to use them, and probably a lot more variety of outfits relating to them.

Regarding tactical scanners, they just don't provide enough info to provide useful tactical info. Their main use currently is a) being a tape-measure to show how far away the target is, and b) showing how close to overheating they are while I'm trying to do so. Now, if they showed, say, total shields, and total hull, regen for each of those, and weapon count (just a basic "how many guns, and how many offensive turrets does the ship have installed and functional), how many ships they have onboard in bays.... Those details could be put together to give the player enough details to use it to actually ID ship variants and figure out if it's something that I can take on or not. That'd actually be really neat to see a fury list "4 guns active" in the tactical info, and then after it has exhausted all its missiles, that changes to show "0 guns active." Basically acting like we see so many sensor suites in TV shows and what not that might not be able to give a lot of info on the weapon itself, but can at least determine if it is ready to shoot or not. (looking specifically at the weapon, not just a generic count of hardpoints).

[SimulatedKnave]

Frankly, I think ships should come with basic scanners automatically. You can upgrade, but basic ones. Especially given most outfits are apparently external to the hull, at LEAST a minimal outfit scanner should be default.

[Zitchas]

A) Theoretically, they do. We can target other ships, right? That reveals a bunch of info about someone, just not technical info. Presumably that's our universal scanners at work.
B) That is also, in part, why the Remnant are the way they are, with built-in scanners in everything.

[bene-dictator]

Makes me miss the type identification in EVN. Flying around in my starbridge, if I saw a pirate starbridge, that's a great target, I can take that. But if I see a Starbridge D or E, I know that's been modded and loaded with high end gear and I'm probably dead if I go up against it. Now, I don't want such clear "flagging" of variants. But this is the sort of thing that outfit scanners should be useful for, and perhaps even tactical scanners if they provided more info.

Just read this... I'm wondering if we could give each variant a "role" designation in variants.txt, which the Tactical Scanner would identify and show you. For example, the Heavy Rocket Hawk would be given the "Bomber" designation, the Gatling Sparrow would get the "Rapid Strike Craft" designation, the particle Vanguard would be given the "Battery" designation, the Meteor Missile Vanguard would get a "Bomber" designation. It would be implied that the tactical scanner scanned the weaponry of the target and gave you what it thought the ship's role would be. One ship might have multiple variants that have the same designation, so it wouldn't be totally clear, but it would help you know what ship would be best to take on first or to keep away from (like those Heavy Rocket Hawks...)

[Zitchas]

I'm not sure it's possible to tie to the tactical scanner right now, but that would definitely be interesting.

[Zitchas]

Day 08 (3015-04-19 to 3015-06-05)

• Ran into that old fellow that I gave a lift to in order to visit his family. Now that he's made his peace, he wants to go back and go to work. I am happy to give him a lift.
• With the caveat that I've got a rush delivery to Reunion first.
• I don't know what it is, but I'm liking the headhunter. It's a nice balance of thrust vs turning, with a good sense of being. It isn't a very concrete thing, but it feels good. Haven't actually fought anything with it yet, but it just feels nice to fly. I know it's not as fast as my Hawk or Sparrow were (although I think it's faster than the Hawk was initially before upgrading it). Kind of gives me the same sort of vibes as the Starbridge, honestly.
• Flew around the Deep and Earth space a bit, dropping off that old man back to his home and various secure deliveries and stuff. Nothing too spectacular. Not a whole lot to talk about. He was an interesting breath of difference, the rest of these are just nameless people. All in all, kind of a boring session. I keep checking the spaceports, and, well, nothing interesting comes up. I out-of-character know there is massive amounts of stuff out there that I haven't done, but it's not cropping up for me. No, I'm not avoiding the FW. I've still got a pirate reconnaissance mission that I need to drop off down there, actually. I just haven't had a reason to go back.

[Zitchas]

Day 09

• Just puttering around the Deep. There's missions to be hand, and I want to see them. So far, they aren't cooperating.
• Got a stack of missions for down here Tarazad, so heading down that a way. Maybe there might be missions near there?
• Out-of-character, there's a bunch of missions I know are there, and I'm trying to trigger them. Not sure exactly where they should be triggering, so I'm trying my hardest everywhere. But they're just not triggering.
• I've had more than one instance of random spaceport jobs triggering a good 20-30 seconds after I enter the spaceport.
• Not much else to say.

[Zitchas]

Day 10

• It'd be fun to attend a concert, right? I hear there's a band somewhere in the South that is touring... hint, hint, game.
• Yeah, not much to say today except that I can 100% understand why new player's don't bother going to the starport. Because nothing happens. Well, not nothing. But I'd say, overall, my experience in this playthrough is that, so far, going to the starport has a general "something happens" ratio of <10%. And that includes several generic "Hey, I've got a package for X but something happened, can you deliver it?" jobs. If one doesn't count those, the "something happens" ratio is, I think, somewhere below 5% for this playthrough. Of course, statistics being what they are, it's entirely possible that for someone else, they get TIMBR within their first week, and have missions show up in the starport over 50% of the time. It's just the way random stuff can roll, sometimes. But on the flip side... This is why I keep telling people that we need more small missions. Not a couple more, not a few more, not a dozen more. No, we need hundreds more. I think we'd be getting into the right ballpark if every single person on the discord sat down, right now, and wrote out a simple, single mission, and PR'd it. I don't care if we got a dozen clones of the Pookie mission except with a dozen other animals and equally as many variations of owners, it'd be massively better than the unending silence that I'm currently getting. I suspect that, ideally, somewhere around half of all spaceport visits should get something happening, like that lottery winners one. It doesn't really involve the player, it's just something going on there. And about a quarter of spaceport visits should get something that is a potential mission/job. Maybe that's too high. Not really sure, honestly. But it definitely needs to be far higher than the ~10% I'm seeing right now.
• What's this? A unique job from Zug for some "Han Sizer" month? No clue what that is, a shame I don't have the passenger capacity to take it, because it looks different and like there might be story attached. Going to go drop off this militia officer and come back and see if it is still here.
• And of course, it's not here.
• But with some taking off and landing again managed to get one. Didn't get any story about it, though. It appears the only info on Han Sizer is actually the planet description for longjump. Well, too bad that to get that info I had to google it, then read the ES fandom page, which then looped me back in-game to longjump. Bugged me enough that I made a PR to change it.
• Another random delivery spaceport job, that took two paragraphs worth of text reading to appear. (the news entry and the first paragraph of the spaceport description.) This seems to be a trend. Nothing else in the game appears to be lagging or slow or unresponsive. Just this delay for finding spaceport missions.
• Just saw an air defense raid practice on Alkaid. Neat!
• I now have a mug. Not sure what to do with it, but I've got one. Out of character, I know I've seen a picture for a mug floating around on discord. Why don't we have it in game yet?
• Alrighty, just did the "scan the Republic Warship to see why it can move so fast." My first real experience with the new scanning system. Initially, it was annoying. I got the cargo scan easily enough (since I have both installed). My first few tries were poor, trying to scan it as it flew by and not managing to get more than a quarter scan. I eventually managed to figure out its movement patterns and match it to fly back and forth side by side, and that worked. And was fun, actually. Took me less than 2 minutes to figure out that the old "fly at it and hit scan" doesn't work, and develop and execute a tactic to succesfully complete a scan. Could be frustrating to try to do a scan on anything moving faster than this, though. I mean, I'm flying a headhunter with atomics. My top speed is 630 and my acceleration is 238, with 102 turning. I ought to be able to keep up with most things at those speeds. Anyway, my first experience with the scanning mini-game, and I think I like it.
• And my reward for taking a shipment of food to the pirate world of Men is the opportunity to help Joe and Maria with their daughter Jesse escape to Ascella. That's the most adventure I've had... uh.... this whole game so far? Very much like that. We need more cloak and dagger stuff.
• And now a choice between offering to take them to millrace or leave them here and hope for the best. Wish I could ask them what they thought/wanted, instead of getting what feels like a "take them onwards or abandon them" option.
• Interesting. Ran into an inquisitive Navy official without a nametag asking questions about my work for the militia. Interesting conversation.
• And helped start a volcano on Tundra. Fun times.

[SimulatedKnave]

...I'm using the Steam version, and scanning that Cruiser was easy (it slows down near planets, so just fly after it and wait for it to turn). WTF has been done to scanning range in the update? Alternately, how drunk are you when flying? :)

[bene-dictator]

Scanning is very different in the continuous version, and a bit harder. Steam version is not up to date with the changes here.

Before it was 'fixed' I had to fill my argosy with about 30 scanners to do the mission. It still took me 5 minutes.

[Zireael07]

Is there anyway people w/o coding skills (or time) could read up on how missions work in ES and/or submit mission ideas?

[bene-dictator]

Check the wiki. It isn't too hard to write missions yourself, although it can be pretty confusing to get the whitespace right first, and don't forget the backticks (`). You could also post a suggestion to the issue tracker, or on the discord.

[Ferociousfeind]

Took me less than 2 minutes to figure out that the old "fly at it and hit scan" doesn't work, and develop and execute a tactic to succesfully complete a scan.

This makes me very happy. This was the goal! Force people to think! I got you to think!!! And you did!!! And then you completed the scan and didn't hate the entire experience!!

[Zitchas]

Day 11

• There's been a few updates, so time for a new executable and updating the data files. The data actually gets updated on a daily basis-ish, but the executable I tend to only update every week or two, or whenever something big gets merged.
• I'm carrying 4 of these twin blasters, which are... alright, I guess? I've been using them for a fair while now, actually, and overall I like them. But they just don't seem to stand up against ships with lasers. I mean, the whole point I got them was because of that extra 110 range advantage that they have over heavy lasers (that's over 25% longer range!) and yet, it feels like that range advantage doesn't even exist.
• Case in point, I just got out-manouvered by a clipper mounting heavy lasers. Seems odd that a light freighter that is packing heavy weaponry can also out-manouver me.
• Anyway, large part of that is probably a skill issue. Not the top pilot of the year, here. Probably not even in the top 25%, even. I couldn't even manage to kite the stupid thing.
• Is kiting even a thing anymore? Just did some testing: When I'm at a standstill, my shots reach to about 5cm from the bottom or top of the screen. Then I accelerate to go straight up at max speed, and measure again, and my shots continue to go to about 5 cm from the bottom of the screen and from the top. So regardless of how fast I'm going, my shots have a consistent range of never going farther from my ship than their range. I do note that while accelerating shots shooting ahead got compressed a little, but I don't have reverse engines to test if they get lengthened out at all. In any case, based on this, it is impossible to kite a ship with similarly ranged weapons; with the possible exception of if one can maintain a constant long-term reverse acceleration one might be able to kite for a short duration. Which, given that basically all ships can reach their max speed within a few seconds, is basically nill. Something seems wrong about this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I think that this means that all shots are being treated like bullets that add the ship's velocity onto their own. Which makes sense for some things, but doesn't make sense for things like lasers or other types of energy that don't meaningfully benefit from the speed of whatever they launched from. I'd be inclined to include blasters in that, as they throw bolts of energy.
• Went back to Menkent for a second run at scanning those cruisers. Apparently I didn't manage to scan them all last time. Didn't even know there was a message for when I completed doing so.
• And taking a family of people and their livestock off to sundive. I don't mind a few livestock on my ship. So long as they stay in the cargo hold.
• For the sake of seeing how hard it was, took one of the "illegal pharacuetical" delivery missions. This one from Sol to Vail. I don't think I had anyone even attempt to scan me. Wasn't very interesting, or exciting, or, even, frankly, risky. Don't do drugs.
• On the plus side, on Vail I met this archeologist investigating the Deep. I don't approve of vandalizing historic sites, wish there was an alternative, but the mission itself is interesting.
• On my way to Midgard stoped by Gomera and stumbled across an ice exploration adventure company. Very amusing litle story. Fun times were had by all (except Brunhilda, RIP. I hope they manage to recover her and put her to work again.) And we even got a scene! Very appropriate image. Can't tell if they are generated or if those are photographs of somewhere, but they fit perfectly.
• Ooh, lots of text, lots of lore. This is the sort of thing that pulls me into the world and makes me enjoy it. I don't know (in character) what I'll have to do to help these people (and the archeologist too. Too bad he wasn't along, he might love this), but it's certainly more interesting than helping the Free Worlds.
• Exploring the Deep to track these mysterious things was fun. So was getting samples from the planet. Wish I'd come across this last time I was here.
• And stumbled across a "Riley" who needs help getting to the planet in the system next door. I'm sure I can fit another person in my ship, so off we go!
• Well, that's interesting. I just got soft-locked by a pair of bounty-hunters and the Deep Security ships. The bounty hunters keep disabling me, and the Deep Security keeps repairing me, without even asking.
• Anyway, it's amusing that after such a dry spell of story missions, I got Deep Archeology, Riley, The wormhole researchers, the people on the tundra world, and the asteroid-terraforming follow-up all basically at the same time. That was almost too intense. (almost, but not quite). I wonder if it'd be possible to weight the random factor, based on how long it has been since the last time the player had a mission pop up? Basically just have the random limit (ex, the <15 part) boosted by 2 for all missions that could have triggered wherever the player is for every time they visit an eligible spaceport but don't get anything there. This would then reset to the mission default as soon as the player got something there.

Me getting softlocked by a pair of sparrows with a trio of Deep Security constantly repairing me

My ship, the Third Step

[Zireael07]

I wonder if it'd be possible to weight the random factor, based on how long it has been since the last time the player had a mission pop up?

That's a very good idea. Would probably help with Kathy, too

[Ferociousfeind]

We usually use random < X, so the weighting would be making random return something more likely to be closer to 0 the longer it has been since a mission has been offered. Maybe a mission "that uses random", depends on the composition of our missions. I don't know how we should transform the uniform distribution of random to make it work in a good way.

[Zitchas]

Just in case it is of interest to anyone, here's my pilot file as of this point: This is on Bounty, having just finished talking to Ivan about his scientific probe.

Rebbia Rampart.txt

[AriDross]

Had a thought about the issue with beam weapons, figured I'd chime in: What if more beam weapons worked similarly to Korath Slicers, where the "beam" is interrupted periodically and works more like a projectile?

You'd end up with three-ish categories of weapons:

1. True "Beam" weapons, the way most current weapons work, with their effectiveness on a gradient from medium range/low damage to low range/high damage.

2. Projectile weapons, as they currently exist. Range tends toward the long end, damage tends toward the low end, and high-damage guns should roughly meet in the middle with low-damage beams.

3. "Stream" weapons, similar to the current Slicers, mixed in with "Spread" weapons that fire multiple projectiles at once. These should generally have a pretty middling range, with some variance upward or downward, and the main factor to balance their damage around should be the size of the "stream", or the number of projectiles in a spread, since their shots have more opportunities to strike a target than any individual projectile from a normal projectile weapon.

This all gets more complicated if you try to factor turret turn rates, of course... Curious what people think about this, though.

[Zitchas]

Day 12

• Went out to find the science drone and deal with a few pirates. That went... poorly. Although one fighter did bite the dust, I also took enough damage to have to spend a decent while just floating through space. Tried kiting, didn't work, really. About the time I actually started doing damage we hit the fence and they turned around. My blasters continue to feel like they don't meaningfully out-range the lasers and heavy lasers.
• Hmmm, so Ivan feels that making a comment about how the Deep has created small wormholes to be something sufficiently trivial to speak about loudly in Bounty's spaceport? Interesting. And a mention of a stable wormhole somewhere outside of the Republic's borders! That most definitely attracts my attention. I'll have to see about filling in some of my unexplored areas. Not that I have many left. There's some near Tarazad, and a bunch in the South. So that's probably the first place to look.
• Just took the Star Research team to Ildaria. Seems kind of odd to not have any kind of on enter message. I should fix that.
• Ambush a drone, steal its surveillance pod, and run. That sounds like a job tailor made for an interceptor or a speed-oriented light warship. Which, funnily enough, is what I'm flying. Too bad that everything is built for speed so being a speed oriented ship is redundant. Like saying that this is a combat ship built for combat. In the balance department, it's fine, even good, to have a few ships that are built to be exceptional in something. But when it feels like everything is "oh, this version was outfitted for speed." then we have a problem. It's the whole "if everyone has super powers then super powers aren't super anymore" thing. Not everything should be built such that one can swap out its ion engines and slap in a full complement of atomics. Some things just shouldn't have the structural capacity to handle that. And that, in fact, is probably a balance problem with engines: There's at least a few cases where atomics are the same size as the equivalent plasma, and even smaller. But it goes a little deeper than that, and probably part of the balance problem: We're basically saying "Every engine mount can take infinite amount of thrust. If you can fit the engine in there, it can take whatever amount of force that engine can give. Doesn't matter if the engine mount was designed for a gentle ion drive, you can yank that out, and throw in the biggest alien thrust-monster you can find, and it can take it, no problem." The simple solution, of course, is just to ensure that engines go up in size within the same size range. So the small ion is at least slightly smaller than the small plasma, which is smaller than the small atomic. In some ranges, this is already the case. But not all.
• Also, it is problematic when so many of humanities ships seem to be built around the idea that they must be well-optimized and take advantage of everything humanity has to offer across the width and breadth of human space." Which is punishing to players, because it basically means that if the player isn't flying a ship that is well-optimized for combat using everything available anywhere in human space, they are automatically at a disadvantage. I don't think we should be punishing players for, say, having an outfit scanner. Or having an extra set of bunks. Or a fuel tank. Sure, more than a small amount of sub-optimal stuff should impact performance. Sure, perfectly optimized ships should be out there, that's good. But they should be rare. Not what feels like the standard. Right now, every fight against anything feels like a challenging battle against someone who is just as good if not better than me. Every, single, fight. This is draining. Exhausting. There should be at least some fights - even for new players - that they can confidently step up to and go "yeah, that's a sparrow. I can own this fight, easily." (for the record, I can't easily dominate a fight against most sparrows. I will win 100% of the time now, but it'll be long, drawn out, and I'll be losing most of my shields in the process. And a lot of the time the sparrow will escape. So I drove it off, but I didn't actually destroy it. In large part because the extra range of these blasters does not make up for the pin point instant-accuracy of the lasers. The sparrow will hit me the instant I am within range of it, instantly, every time, zero misses, ever. I'll miss a significant portion of my shots, especially at long range.)
• This drone mission is annoying. I can't find a drone alone. In inhabited systems the drones land and vanish, so no chance of waiting for a brief gap when there isn't a gunboat or something around; and the uninhabited systems I've tried in don't seem to have those cruisers show up. I've died a bunch of times trying, so this is just getting frustrating. Thinking I'll be just abandonning this mission. Not aborting. Just forgetting about it for a while. Makes me tempted to get a fleet, just to give the Republic something else to shoot at. I can't outrun or out manouver them, can't outwait them, I guess that means waiting until I'm in something heavier so I can take the hits. Maybe wait until I'm in a Falcon? Doesn't feel like that should be necessary, but... Bah, whatever. There's a lot more interesting stuff out there.
• So, back to the Deep to drop off these star researchers. Simple mission, but I enjoyed it anyway. Also got interrogated by someone from Deep security about my work with Albert. I get the impression I'm missing a bunch of conversation here, although I chose to be cooperative.
• And I think I just concluded the "Stones of our fathers" and the people of ice whose name I have forgotten. Anyway, ferried the stone and people back and forth, learned a lot of fun lore. Then arranged transportation for the people to go to Windblain. That was also awesome. I really enjoyed it. Don't have words for it, but it was great.
• And got cleared / recruited to handle more sensitive deliveries for Deep security. Looking forward to seeing what happens there.
• Anyway, with all that good story and events and stuff, I think I'll end here on a high note. Not sure what I'll be doing next, but probably going hunting for drones again. sigh. And more importantly, missions. Because story is what keeps me coming back. So seeking out story is where I shall go. Might finish off exploring the South and SouthEast areas, and I see some unexplored areas near the Syndicate I might go explore too.
• So, it's been over 3 years of in-game time since I started. Time flies, even if the war and events don't. lol.

Map at 3016-Dec-06

And my pilot file on this date:

Rebbia Rampart.txt

[vitalchip]

Weapon range is very low and causes all sorts of problems, often discussed, but in the context of a 2D game with low minimum screen resolution and the expectation that you'll be able to see both your ship and any attacker while using a reasonable zoom level.. there isn't much leeway. Looking at a couple of early weapons you might have 400v v 510, giving a margin of 110 which is hard to work within. Triple the respective ranges and you get a margin of 330 which is very workable.

[SimulatedKnave]

Even doubling or 1.5 seems like it'd be wise.

I find I end up zooming out pretty far to maintain situational awareness, (though it carries the obvious problem that everything's very tiny. And that my ship tends to blend in with the rest of my fleet).

Of all the games people mention here, I'm most surprised to not see Space Rangers brought up.

Honestly, I think this game needs pausing that lets you actually look at what's going on. And ideally give orders to your fleet. It's not realistic, but it would be very handy for a bunch of reasons (including just "I need to zoom out to see what's going on, but I need to zoom in to tell which little blob is my ship).

[Zitchas]

If you build the game with debug options, there's a pause button.

[Zireael07]

Pause button should NOT be limited to debug options IMHO

[Zitchas]

Even doubling or 1.5 seems like it'd be wise.

I find I end up zooming out pretty far to maintain situational awareness, (though it carries the obvious problem that everything's very tiny. And that my ship tends to blend in with the rest of my fleet).

I have found that the recently added red "hostile missile" highlights to work really well with the extremely long range zoom, as does the status overlays.

[Zitchas]

Day 39

• "Time to rout some pirates, baby!"? Really? Well, whatever, can't realy object to the option, I suppose, so long as I do have the option of picking the much more in character "I'm here to reinforce you. What can I do?"
• "Your cabin by far seems to be the best place to not be bothered." By who? I'm guessing the mysterious hooded figure that falls into step beside me.
• So, using a furry TV show as cover? That's amusing. And entertaining.
• Flying the Emerald Sword into combat against swarms of human pirates (mixed fleet of falcons, firebirds, corvettes, and other smaller ships) feels weird. On the one hand this dragonflame cannon can devastate anything it touches. And my turrets do fairly well, too. But on the flip side, I have trouble dodging, and I'm used to doing that. And the poor shield regen and lack of hull repair at all combine to make this a very fragile ship. Although in many respects, it's more a problem of being swarmed than it is a problem with the stats. More chaotic lots-of-ships-swarming battles. The sort of things that my Osprey would be good for but this ship, despite its size, just doesn't have the durability for.
• Investigating kidnapped Hai. Found three sets of them, and managed to evacuate all of them.
• On my way back, came across a station I didn't recognize near the wormhole in ultima thule called MOuntaintop. It was hostile, and wouldn't accept bribes. Weird.
• Recruiting Hai! Sounds... interesting. Definitely different. (out of character, at least some of these recruiting sessions should probably be dialogs. 1 sentence does not a conversation box merit.)
• My character does not seem to be too enthusiastic about this recruitment campaign. Why don't we get a choice as to how we respond instead of forcing us to find it tiresome?
• Uh... the dialog is starting to complain about how I've done this more times than there are planets in Hai space. Did I not need to visit all the retirement home stations too? They did get dialogs...
• The Free Worlds and the Hai had better be generous like the Syndicate. I've spent probably about half what the Syndicate just paid me in bribes to the various Pirate worlds to land and check for leads. That's over 5M in bribes.
• Alondo just sent me a message that he has a potential lead, so I ran back to Hai-Home to meet with him. I keep getting this message about how I haven't found Scar's Legion yet. Yeah, yeah, I know. Where's Alondo?

edit: Since I have to visit every Hai world, that means I can accept every (non-timeline restricted) job, right? And I'm flying the hugely distinctive Emerald Sword, with vast amounts of passenger and cargo space, so I pretty much can take every job, at least at the start. Of course I don't take any jobs for anywhere I've already been. (and just for the record, I did go to every inhabited Hai place. Planet, moon, station, retirement home... Every single last one of them. Even most of the uninhabited stations, although those didn't trigger anything.

[MasterOfGrey]

Not sure when you last updated your continuous game, you seem to have run into a couple bugs that should be fixed.

[Zitchas]

My "playthrough" installation is a week or two old. (just for the amusement of having steam track hours-in-game, I overwrote my steam installation with basically everything related to playing the game from continuous (As in deleted everything but the libraries out of the steam installation, and copied in fresh from my continuous, with the latest exe at the time), and have manually updated it a few times, most recently a couple weeks ago. This side of the new year, but yeah, it hasn't been kept as perfectly synchronized as my working Dev version of the game. )

[Zitchas]

And I'll admit, that this is at least in part intentional. I haven't been following HR related PRs too closely, because I haven't played them yet and I don't feel like I can really comment on the feel or content until I've actually played through it. But I get the impression that some of the more... unusual... content is being replaced / heavily revised, and frankly, I want to see it, even if it means that I'll have to go back to my start-of-HR snapshot and playthrough this stretch again later. The rather large set of snapshots I have is intentionally set up to enable me (or anyone) to just pick an appropriate spot out of the timeline and jump in without needing to edit anything.

[Zitchas]

Day 41

• The pace of events is quickening. Almost too fast to keep a good log. So much excitement.
• I've long been curious about the Hai. It is interesting to get to see their politics in action.
• Science:tm: & Plot:tm: have teamed up to find a small hidden system with a red wormhole near Syndicate space. How intriguing. Looks like the Ember Waste wormholes.
• They say that I'm just supposed to explore the system, and even go a step farther to give me a message stating that I really should go back after trying out the wormhole. But I just can't resist exploring 3 jumps beyond it.
• Hmmm... Found something called a "Pincer Beast" belong to the "Forest". It's not hostile, though, so I let it munch away on rocks.
• Much excitement ensues, leading up to leading an invasion fleet to invade Devil-Eye. Looking forward to this.
• uH.... Choot'k's Ship doesn't seem to be moving much... Reloaded, and now his ship is working just fine. Not sure what was going on there.
• Also ran into a weird refueling glitch where a ship that needed fuel just stopped doing anything when one of my ships went to refuel it. Trouble is, it didn't come to a stop. It just coasted off into space. Fortunately, it was coasting slower than the ship trying to refuel it. Once the refueling was complete, they both returned to the fleet.
• Failed once when the carrier was destroyed. These pirates have a Raider?! The raider wasn't the problem, it was the combination of Raider with a couple of Leviathans and a few other ships.
• Failed again when one of the ships got killed by something.
• Failed again because of some fleet ship getting killed by something.
• Failed because a carrier decided to sacrifice itself to take all the heavy laser fire from a couple ships from the planetary defense that were actually trying to shoot me, but it got in the way.
• So, that's 4 failures so far, no deaths.
• sigh the fact that all my escorts have JD is going to make this a bit more tricky to strand them like I did the FW fleet. They all have ramscoops and these systems have a lot of fuel,too.
• I am developing a strong dislike of any mission that has a fleet that a) needs to stay alive, or b) is carried on to other missions.
• I AM THE EXPEDITION COMMAND!!! OBEY MY ORDERS!!!
• I would rather do this battle 100% unsupported by anyone than deal with having all these ships that won't obey my instructions.
• Failed again because someone got heroic and thus blown up.
• "Do you know the definition of a Hero? It's someone who gets their friends killed." - Zoë Washburn, Serenity

[Zitchas]

Day 42:

• By request, playing Hurleveur's PR with the updated Kratos, flying an Emperor Shield Beetle (unique ship) with a new and improved loadout.
• Try B1: I die. First time for this mission!
• Try B2: Danforth bites the dust
• Try B3. Got to demanding tribute, and then Danforth dies again. Dreadnought gets disabled, too.
• Tenth try, finally defeated the defensive forces, and land on the station with everyone still alive. (The dreadnought is disabled again, though...)
• Neat, meeting people from the three races working together.
• The reason they're all here makes sense, too. I love all this writing and exposition.
• The only thought I'm left with: I'm fairly sure I couldn't use a JD to jump to this wormhole... Why couldn't I? That's never really explained, and doesn't make sense. If anything, the Korath and the few JD equipped pirates ought to be using it as a pass through point, with the later carefully using keystones to use the wormhole in secret. That'd effectively block the Korath from using the wormhole, and keep the place secret from the main JD equipped faction.
• I am amused they think this place secret from the Archons. It might be. But the Archons seem to be very aware of things, so I wouldn't bet against them.
• Returning to Foundry, then heading to Stormhold... And I have to pay 700k bribe to land? What's going on here? On the surface, looks like we're still in control of everything.
• The amount of navy ships in Ultima Thule, and the amount of hai ships in the far end, is verging on comical. It's like a conveyor belt of ships. I could probably ship-surface across the surface of them. Or just get them all to make a bridge by welding them together end-to-end so people could just walk from the station to the wormhole and jump through.
• To Hai-home, Teneep is a True Hai now, talking about convincing the fettered to join their cause, hmmmm.
• Back to Mountaintop one last time. There appears to be a constant stream of pirates coming through the wormhole. Small ones. Furies and the like. Who die instantly to a storm of Hai Tracker confetti. It's like a party. And apparently the Navy aren't doing their job.
• Mountaintop appears to be transforming from a tourist trap to a dignitary trap. How fitting. lol.
• Rescuing the Hai and tracking down Terry, a loose end.
• Somewhere out of the way, hmmm? Alright, went to go check out the Devil Hide planets again. Nothing turns up there.
• Off to freedom, where I have a casual conversation with a lady with a lot of guns at her disposal. Apparently it's Terry's mother.
• Hey, look, yet another invisible system that I can't see until someone mentions it is there. Weird how the universe works, huh?
• Good conversation with Terry. I appreciate her candor, and her motivations. Definitely a "terrible actions for a good cause" sort of thing.
• Uh... I decided to spare her, and tell her to live here, and instead I say I'm going to end her, point my gun at her, almost shoot her, and have a change of heart? That's not what I picked.
• Reloaded. Very carefully selected that conversation option (number 3) using the number pad. Same result.
• Reloaded, very carefully picked a different spare her, and got the same result.
• Kidnappings Wrapped Up pilot snapshot.
• All in all, I very much enjoyed that storyline. Great addition to the game.

And since I haven't uploaded a save in a while, here's one for here, on 3031-09-20:

Rebbia Rampart~3031-09-20 Kidnappings Wrapped Up.txt

[MasterOfGrey]

For those reading along: we ID'd in discord that there's a display bug for the Terry convo, and possibly Hurl tracked it down (this has been an elusive bug report for >1 month).

All in all, I very much enjoyed that storyline. Great addition to the game.

I'm really glad you've enjoyed it! (Fleet battle quibbles aside.)
I'll have to make sure you're involved in the discussion when Derpy gets around to putting forward whatever changes he's been sitting on.

[Zitchas]

Day 43

• Very quite, overall, Picked up some keystones for Ivan, did some big colonist delivery jobs, then headed back out to the Remnant. Think I'm going to be spending some time with them. Ferried most of my stored outfits and stuff from around the galaxy on Viminal, and moved my Black Diamonds (that I have never used) there too.
• I've now completed the electron beam, catalytic ramscoop, heavy laser, plasma cannon, and shield delivery missions for Taely. These logistics delivery jobs are kind of pathetic. 11k has never been worthwhile since I reached Remnant space.
• Went Korath hunting. Realized the Emerald Sword is great at driving off the Korath... But bad at disabling them.
• Decided to go exploring. I remember seeing a bunch of unreachable systems when I went and visited the Gegno, and now I have a way to reach them.
• Exploring is awesome. I wish I could land on more of these planets, though.
• A mini-black hole! Cool!
• And a pulsar!
• Got some weird jitteryness going on when my display started jittering when I moved fast. Disabling vsync fixed it. Enabling vsync did not bring it back. Odd. It came back a little when I went back to the black hole, then came back to see the pulsar.
• Cool alien ship cruising around here. I wonder what it's story is?
• Kept on exploring, and found some creature that glow. I decided to name them the Jje. Why? Because that seemed like the thing to call them. I can only see them realy well when they go in front of the sun. Seems like just a pair of them here, just drifint in front of the sun.
• Hmmm... Some of these systems have reducd jump ranges. Interesting. Some make sense (the black hole, the pulsar, etc.) Some don't. MC-42 seems perfectly normal other than the JD change, for instance...
• More systems with Jje in them. including one with a pair of tiny suns. I thought it was spiraling energy or something until I realized it was just two Jje twisting back and forth infront of the suns.
• Found a big creature that I have dubbed the Ayym. Because it looks yummy? It looks like it is carrying one of the Jje. Fun!
• The jittery returned a bit in V-2189, no apparent cause.
• Fun times exploring the galaxy. Wish there was more of this sort of stuff. Although as an aside, it'd be better to have more opportunities to do ~10 systems worth of exploring instead of virtually nothing everywhere and then one area with 26 uninhabited systems all in a block, even more so when attached to a block of another 30ish systems that are mostly uninhabited to explore.
• Oh, found one last system hidden in the background graphic, even has a planet I can land on. Gara Pvu. Interesting. There used to be a civilization here, too. Cool!
• Explored everywhere I could find to explore, saw cool sites, now back to Viminal to find some missions.

[Zitchas]

Day 44

• Decided to ask someone to teach me sign language. Done a few courses on it, and can manage enough to very slowly make basic statements and ask simple questions. Not much, but it still opens doors. Looks like I'll need to practice for a couple months, though.
• Did some Civil logistics jobs for the Remnant, just to say I had. The pay is terrible. I mean, it's paying amounts that I haven't bothered to accept jobs doing in Ancestral space since practically the begining of the game. 11k for a delivery? I'll do that a few times just out of a desire to be helpful, but that would barely cover my crew costs if I didn't have this salary and tribute income.
• I'm liking these Remnant, and want to get to know them better, so I'm parking the Eighth Step (What I renamed the Emerald Sword) here on Viminal and switching to a Starling. (out of character, it's intended that the Remnant missions should be feasible in the available Remnant ships with their outfits Starling is the most combat capable of the starting ships. Although I'm considering removing the capital ship designation from the Ibis so that there's some progression capability instead of having it unlock at the same time as the Albatross. Most people are probably going to go to the Albatross, I feel.)
• Wow, the space on this Starling is tight. 5 gunports and two guns to pick from: Inhibitor and Thrasher. I pick inhibitor, I start with 3 and can't put anything in those other gunports. No thrasher, no EMP launcher, nothing. With the stock three inhibitors I have a total of.... 2 weapon space free. Which seems awfully little. I rearranged my other outfits so I've got 52 free outfit space... (although I'd probably run into energy problems in a long battle). If I sell all the inhibitors I can get 5 thrashers. But they're such short range. Just looking through my outfit list of what I've seen, and the thrasher is shorter range than everything except the regular beam laser and the "Guile Pulse Laser." Even the "Heavy laser" has longer range, more hull damage, less energy per second to fire, and is an insta-hit. It does have slightly less shield damage and double the firing heat, though. The biggest limiter, though, is space: With 5 thrashers at 10 space each, I have exactly... Zero free weapon space. So the grand total list of guns that I can fill all the hardpoints with comes down to: Beam laser, Energy Blaster, Modified Blaster, Thrasher. While it is the highest damager of the lot, it's also by far the highest energy consumption. I like range, and sniping things. I explicitly want to stay away from the "close and blast" deathball "strategy."
• OK, with 3 inhibitors I can take down a crippled Palavret. It's not a fast fight, does require a little finess, and some tracking-them-down once they run. Made easier by the fact that they overheat. I don't think I could take on a full-strength palavret, not with the weapons I've got available and a Starling, anyway.
• Going to do a second one, then switch to 5 thrashers and see how I do with them, just to compare.
• Huh... So the Remnant have been using my transponder codes to tap into the hyperspace relays to place orders for keystones that they would like me to pick up? Interesting.
• Passing through waypoint, and Wooah! What's going on here? Is the pirate invasion back?! In very short order there's a couple splinters, a firebird, several sparrows, a hawk, and a bunch of other pirate ships swarming around. It started with just a couple furies, and quickly built up to this. And there's more - that's just what I've got attacking me. I saw a Hai Shield Beetle off that away fighting some others.
• Then I jump to Io Lowe, and have a pirate corvette appear about the same time as me too.
• Amusingly, the Bank says I don't qualify for loans at this time. Making 13'400 credits a day with 111M credits store away... Yeah, I probably do not need a loan now.
• Back to drop it off, then help with some research, studying the properties of these keystones as compared to the Key Stones.
• Got a request to pick up a copy of the historical archive the Deep was building back in the day. Fun fact: The history of Humanity is only 39.99
• While I was there, Ivan got in touch, and asked me to help some more with their research. In this case, doing some studies on the wormhole train; and then scanning the Void Sprites. I figure if I keep them focused on that, less likely that they'll have other ships wandering around and getting where they shouldn't go. Or at least they'll be sending less experienced ships that will run afoul of the Ember Waste's hazards.
• This big "defend Viminal" fleet battle is fairly challenging. Died once, second time the Remnant won, barely. I didn't contribute much if anything to either battle. I did, however, get 2 JD, 2 fuel processors, and some assorted other loot. (Out of character, it hasn't been rebalanced since the Palavret's got upgraded...) This doesn't exactly match the "no ships lost yet" comment in the next mission start.
• I help move some wounded Remnant, and transport replacements back; to find out that the Prefects have decided to give me a Capital Ship license. The Pelican and the Ibis look good, but just going straight to the Albatross is very tempting...
• Despite kind of wanting to go with the Ibis, I also want to finally, for the first time ever, actually be able to pound on things. So, Albatross it is.
• Had an interesting trip taking Dawn to go observe the Quarg. Had a lot of trouble scanning the Quarg. It was basically impossible. I've managed to do other scanning challenges in the past, but it was impossible to do here. Never even got it past about 40% before the Quarg changed direction and zoomed off in another way.
• Got my Remnant Capital Ship License
• Suddenly have access to some of the Remnnant salvage! Some neat options here, including small heat shunts.

[vitalchip]

You could halve the price of the Remnant fighter and people would still complain that fighters are too expensive to use. There's an entire eco-system working against small ships, not least because damage to large ships is repaired for free.

You can buy 8/9 Petrels for the price of an Albatross but when you spread any damage around it's likely the fleet of fighters will bear a lot of that damage as losses where the Aalbatross will simmply bear it a totally reversible damage, repaired completely free.

Agility should be an advantage to the small ship, but it isn't. The Albatross can accelerate at 82% the rate of the Petrel, it can turn at 84% the rate and it has a higher top speed. The Ibis can out turn its fighters by a significant amount. These are not capital ships and these are not fighters.

There are many more reasons why fighters are simply not viable but at the most basic level, for small ships to be viable they have to offer something large ships cannot do.

[Hurleveur]

The Unfettered upcoming fighters will do smth other ships cant, by being bombers

[Zitchas]

It's kind of sad when the current best trick for making fighters survive and be useful is to cripple them. Namely, strip their ability to turn as slow as it can possibly go, while ramping up the speed. This forces them to do strafing runs with long run outs so they end up going out past the range of their target's weaponry to turn around. Like many things in ES, it's counterintuitive that the best way to keep fighters alive and effective is to cripple their ability to turn...

[Zitchas]

But yeah, regarding the Ibis, I've already PR'd (and had merged) a change dropping the capital license requirement. I certainly don't expect players to use the fighter complements regularly, but I feel that they should at least have the option of doing so.

[Hurleveur]

If you use missiles on the fighter then it will be useful as well, you just need to trigger the missile boat AI

[Zitchas]

Day 45 (2023-Mar-02, in game: 3033-Mar-02. Amusing coincidence)

• As Plume requested, I have tracked down and eliminated the Korath ship that was hunting the Void Sprites. Of course, before I blew it up I looted it and stole its jump drive, a fuel processor, and its haul of void sprite parts. Not sure what the point of these parts is, but perhaps the Remnant will know.
• After dropping off that, I got a request to go find a missing scoutship, somewhere in the Ember Waste. After checking the usual areas, I have extended my search beyond this hithertoo unexplored wormhole.
• And now I have found a whole collection of ships I've never seen before. They kind of look like armored eggs. Most of them attack me, but my scanners indicate that they are going to fight to the death, and I have no problem with them, so I just cloaked to hide. I did try disabling one of the ones that had the red mark on the targeting info... But once its shields went down, it cloaked and ran. It stayed visible for a while thanks to the slow effects on it, but between my weapons pushing it and its engines, it just kept going faster and faster and I eventually lost it. Disapointing, but oh well. I'm not actually here to hunt these, so it's a distraction. It was fun to see something actually use cloaking to run away. I've never seen that before (with this pilot, anyway).
• Found a planet with a massive city and a huge tower, maintained by four legged robots. Totally uninhabited, no services... Just a perfectly intact but empty city on a world that can only be accessed via jump drive.
• And then after having explored the entire Ka'Het territory, I found the scoutship while passing through the rest of the Ember Waste, where it was hidden amid the distraction of the star in Caeculus. Just goes to show that you don't need cloaking to be hard to find.
• I recall that the Unfettered wanted to buy Jump Drives from me. Having stocked up a few, I think I'll go see what they are using them for.
• Hmmm... Seems that they're planning on invading the bunch of systems I explored a while ago where I couldn't land anywhere except one planet, and couldn't talk to anyone. Interesting.
• These tribute collection missions seem quite profitable. Nice! Too bad I can't quite manage to fit the bigger "express" tribute collections.
• The money's too good to resist. Put my Banisher Grav-Turret and a small heat shunt into storage here on Greycloak, uninstalled my two outfit expansions, and installed a cargo expansion. Now off to collect medical tribute for them!
• I'll probably do a handful of these to get my credit balance up over 100M again. (Out of character note. I think I burned up several dozen millions while testing stuff basically out-of-character, but it's easy enough to build money back up, so I'm just doing that.)
• Did a silver resource collection job for them too, just to say I had.
• Helped a homesick Unfettered go back to Hai-Home. That was touching.
• Well overall, some nice new lore, but nothing terribly exciting from this excursion.
• Huh... The Remnant didn't want to talk about this thing I discovered from the set of systems in the Ember Waste, and the Hai couldn't make sense of it either. The Quarg, however claim it as from one of their ships, and told me about the Builders and what happened to them, and about the Quarg war with the Pug, and how they lost. Also hinting at losing a ring there, too.
• Uh... I just stopped by Wayfarer on the way back to the Remnant, and got accosted by a Republic officer who wanted a chat, and who then goes on to tell me about the Hai-Human secrecy thing. I guess he's been under a rock for a few years, since the whole Mountaintop station thing has definitely blown the lid off of any hint of secrecy about the Hai...
• I was heading back to the Remnant, when I was looking at my map and noticed my nav system had identified a few new systems near the systems where the faction I named the Gegno live. I think I'll go check them out.
• Found these cute little creatures that my computer's random name generator decided to name "Vyrmeid." Cute little things.
• I think my computer's naming databse got stuck or something: It's named three different creatures "Vyrmeid", despite looking completely different. Odd.
• Found this system that had glowing asteroids. Ae II M-77, I think my nav system designated it. Super massive spread out system.
• Heading back towards the Remnant, and found more systems I hadn't seen before. Including aliens! I presume, anyway. My science officer hasn't told me they're humans, at least.
• Huh Got atacked by this "Tekkan" ship. Ended up disabling it and capturing it. My scanning computer is trying vainly to identify things, and is now assigning them naes based on bugs and ancient weapons. I think. Weird what the computer comes up with, but I guess it works. Not sure what I'll do with this captured ship, since I needed a jump drive to get here...
• Ow! Not sure what that swarm of bright yellow dots was, but it hurt. Anyway, running is good, as the Remnant say.

[bene-dictator]

Uh... I just stopped by Wayfarer on the way back to the Remnant, and got accosted by a Republic officer who wanted a chat, and who then goes on to tell me about the Hai-Human secrecy thing. I guess he's been under a rock for a few years, since the whole Mountaintop station thing has definitely blown the lid off of any hint of secrecy about the Hai...

Oops. Maybe the southern planets aren't clued in on it yet and think it's all a Republic conspiracy.

(Time to make a new PR to fix my PRs hahaha)

[Zitchas]

In case it's relevant, I did the entirety of Hai Reveal before 0.10 was released. a month to several weeks before, I think (you can see dates up above), so it's possible I didn't get conditions set that have since been implemented or something of the sort. I haven't been keeping track.

Rebbia Rampart~3033-05-05 Off to give JD to the Unfettered.txt

I think this was my last snapshot before this happened, but not 100% sure.

clarification: This is my last snapshot. I'm not sure if it was before or after I had the chat with the Republic officer or not, but it should be pretty close to it

Yes, this snapshot is just before I went North to give JD to the unfettered. So it's definitely before I had the run in with the Republic officer on Wayfarer.

[bene-dictator]

Before, the mission was never offering, and the PR where I fixed it didn't consider Hai Reveal then and it looks like it still doesn't now. I don't think the mission was ever touched until I did that PR. But thanks for the save file, because it would be helpful for testing.

[Zitchas]

Oddly, it kind of feels like I've gotten this mission twice. I'm glad the save helps. It's one of the reasons I'm doing this.

[Zitchas]

Day 46 (2034-Mar-02. Exactl a year later. Amusing)

• (Out of character note: This playthrough is making me aware of just how much time passes in game. Between finding the Korath ship that was hunting the Void Sprites and leading this expedition to kill the hunter fleet, an entire year has passed. Which is a miniscule amount of time in terms of the life of civilizations, interstellar travel, and the motions of stars. But for a person or group? A year is a long time.)
• We went Korath hunting with a fairly impressive fleet. Two Albatrosses, two Ibisses, a full complement, and a handful of Starlings. In was fun watching the Starlings vanish into space here and there during the battle.
• Succesfully eliminatd the hunter fleet, and even got a spare Jump Drive off one of them. And a lot more Void Sprite parts.
• On the way back we paused for a moment to regroup in the Peragenor cluster, as that one Albatross keeps falling behind, and an Ion Storm hit. Lo and behold, the Ember Waste continue to surprise me, as the Ion Storm intensified these strange manta like creatures faded into view. They were only visible briefly before vanishing again, but they were beautiful to watch. All these dozens, probably over a hundred times through this system, and never seen them before.
• Plume wants a ride to check out Nasqueron. Off we go!
• Wow, Void Sprites can be vicious! I just watch a flock of them tear a Palavret to pieces. Literally, full health to blowing up in maybe a dozen seconds or so. There was a lot of them, and the thing just couldn't figure out which one to target. Talk about a deathball.
• I kill the other Palavret while the Void Sprites take care of that one.
• Right. Plume wanted to visit Nasqueron, not just look at it from orbit. Have to head back to Viminal and switch to the Shadow Step (my penguin) so that we can do so.
• After taking off from Nasqeron, there was a pair of Palavrets waiting for us. Had to cloak and run. But that's worrysome. There never used to be Palavrets in this system.
• Just stopping by the Spaceport, and had a chat with Dawn about her latest research project. Now she'd like transportation to the center of the galaxy! Time to visit a blackhole! (Note to self, out of character. I should implement the recently added to display thing to this conversation to check if the player has visited Sag A* before and hide that option if they haven't).
• And I just discovered that the Remnant have some kind of Symbiont attached to them. Sounds neat. Dawn described getting it as "waking up and finding the world is brighter than before" and "that everything seems to move slower, as if I have the time to take a good hard look at everything." That sounds rather useful for a researcher. For a lot of people, actually. Wish I could get one.
• Meanwhile, I've been asked to investigate some new systems that have appeared. Sounds like an adventure!
• Oooh, an ancient station for some unknown purpose that is still operational. Neat!

[movingpictures]

I'm working through 0.10 yet, haven't got to the hai reveal stage - actually, backing into it from the Remnant storyline for giggles and grins. i will report back if this error crops up.

…

On Sat, Mar 4, 2023 at 6:10 PM Zitchas ***@***.***> wrote: Oddly, it kind of feels like I've gotten this mission twice. I'm glad the save helps. It's one of the reasons I'm doing this. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#7766 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASNL3RA53OPSFXLRA6JJQ53W2O4VPANCNFSM6AAAAAASSY5HNA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.*** com>

[Zitchas]

Day 47 (2034-Jun-5ish)

• An alien creature my computer has named "Ember Node" followed me back to Viminal. It seems friendly, so I informed the Remnant of it. They seemed curious, but ready to blow it to smithereens at the slightest provocation.
• I followed its gestures and led it to Nenia. The Void Sprites seemed excited to see it.
• Something talked to me, in my head. Telephathically. Not sure what it was: Something completely different from the Archons I've met before. Hundreds of different perspectives staring at me...
• The Ember Node followed me back to Viminal (out of character note: Not supposed to happen. The Ember Node is supposed to stay there)
• Interesting. learned a bunch about how the Remnant make decisions. They have an interesting perspective on balancing executive vs communal authority.
• And then learned a bunch about history. Rather amusing set of ancestors to have.
• Taking Dusk and an expedition to Ssil Vida, explored a bit on the way there. Three new wormholes and a handful of systems.

[Zitchas]

Day 48

• Need to deliver an Aeon cell to Ssil Vida to supplement the station's failing reactor. Obviously that's not going to fit in the hold of my merganser, nor even my Albatross. I only have one ship that can fit that: The Emerald Sword. So time to park the other ships, and pull this beauty out of storage again.
• While I'm out here, Prefect Chilia has asked me to take a look througgh the Korath systems and see if I can spot a ship with three Olofez.
• Found it! Couldn't scan it, though. It was going to kill me before I could finish the scan. So I disabled it, scanned it, then looted it, and then returned to report. Impressive ship, though.
• Flying around on the Merganser is so much fun. Would love to have a whole bunch of missions designed for this nimble little ship.
• A bunch of fetch and carry missions. Torza's training a small expeditionary force to go work on Ssil Vida it feels like. Well, they're all technicians, but pushing them to train by running 10km in their environmental suit and carry emeregency maintnance gear? That's hard. And they did it in 37 minutes, which is very impressive. (I looked it up. For context, 37mins to do 10km in the present day would put them squarely in the upper end of professional runners. Not elites (elite times are generally <30min for men and <35 for women), but definitely the high end of professional runners. Average runners generally come in at around 60min, with fast walkers doing it in about 90min. So 37mins is not an inhumanly fast time, but they're definitely very fit.)
• Apparently that Aeon reactor I brought them isn't holding up, and the whole place is likely to lose power soon. And they want fuel from Clink to get the best possible match.
• Wow. I think I'm in love. This Peregrine is beautiful. And fast. And moderately deadly, too. Not as tough as I would like, but for this kind of speed and capabilities... I can live with a bit less shields. And it's gaslined, too, so I don't have to keep switching back and forth to the penguin, puffin, or merganser.
• Delivered the fuel, and the whole universe changed. Completely. Went outside to take a look around... and yeah, I would think I was in a different system, if the star charts did not match. So much life. And these embersylphs in particular... I don't know what to make of them, but they look beautiful.
• Time to go take a look around.
• The Remnant figured out how to do a controlled shutdown of sorts, so I'm off to report back to people, assuming that this works and we didn't, in fact, destroy the universe.
• Yep, they're still there. More evidence for the pocket dimension theory.
• Ad-hoc neural networks, hmmm? That explains a lot. Seemed to be more going on than hand gestures would account for.
• Time to do some exploring, I recall seeing a system or two Jump range in the South that I didn't have the time to explore last time...
• Wow. These aliens look like they're gearing up for war. Maybe invade humanity? I jump in (cloaked, of course), and there's what I'd call a warfleet just wandering around. And when it jumps out, another replaces it shortly.
• I landed on a planet, and met a centaur, spider, and beetle that told me to go meet with their leaders, some "Heliarchs". Apparently they already have translation devices that speak human.

[lumbar527]

• Flying around on the Merganser is so much fun. Would love to have a whole bunch of missions designed for this nimble little ship.

The Merganser is the best small ship. You can kite anything with it.

[Zitchas]

Day 49

• Note: Apparently while testing a PR I apparently missed backing up this save and ended up undoing my foray into Coalition space. So, I'll have to redo that.
• So, groundhog day. Time to do some exploring, I recall seeing some systems South of "The South" that don't have hyperdrive access. Now that I have a Jump Drive, maybe I should go explore them.
• Hmmm, I'm flying a Peregrine, and I don't know who might be in these systems, so I'm going to cloak and see what I can find before I reveal myself.
• Lots of activity here. More ships in flight than... Basically anywhere else in the galaxy except human space. Busy place.
• There's what appears to be a ringworld here, looks like a Quarg one, too, but no Quarg ships. Odd.
• And another ring next door?
• Ring of Wisdom in Ekuarik, Ring of Friendship in Quaru, and then Ring of Power in Ki War Ek, although that one appears to be unfinished with a planet in the way. What happened here?
• Made it all the way to a system that my nav computer has named "14 Pole". I do not know how it picks these names. Seems to have had a seasonal theme going lately. In any case, this was the last unknown system that my nav computer has documented in this part of the galaxy.
• Based on preliminary scans and passively acquired data, this region is inhabited by people that go by the names of "Coalition" and "Heliarchs." The former have three different varieties of ships: Some spiky, some round and bulbous, and others angular and kind of prismatic. The Heliarchs, by contrast, are universally spiky and heavily armed. At a glance, to me it looks like the Heliarchs must be some kind of Imperialist group that conquered and disarmed the other three. Four different alien races in an area that is... what, maybe 60% the area occupied by humanity?
• I have not seen any Jump Drive use, and no hyperlanes to connect to humanity or the Ember Waste, so I will land on the next planet that will let me land. Also need to reset my time loop landmark so I do not lose this exploration if something untoward should happen to me.
• 5 Summer Above appears to be the closest place I can land, so be it.
• Well, my guess was right: Three alien races here, and they tell me that they can not tell me anything, but instead direct me to go speak with the fourth alien race on "Ring of Friendship." The three aliens that met me here are, respectively, centaurs, spiders, and beetles. They call themselves Saryds, Kimek, and Arachi. They appear to have no autonomy whatsoever, and cannot even tell me about themselves without prior authorization of their conquerors. Although they do have tones of reverence, and speak of them as being their saviors who drove off some oppressor. Maybe they've got a cultural history of dictatorships or something? (In-game date: 3035-05-21)
• Huh. Somewhere along the way I picked up 5 cubic meters of lead. Sometimes it can be disconcerting to have an automated loading system and a ship that enjoys catching things...
• The Coalition outfitter doesn't really stand out much. The idea of having modular engines is kind of neat. And these solar arrays looks like they could teach humanity a thing or two about using light to power ships. Not bad equipment, very practical. Not flashy, though. Which is just fine.
• It seems these Heliarchs, or at least their representatives that met me on the Ring of Friendship, are the elite of the other three races; not actually another alien race. Interesting.
• Hmmm... They consider the Quarg oppressors because the Quarg don't freely give everyone their Jump Drives. That is definitely some serious entitlement there. I mean, sharing is good. Sharing should be encouraged. But feeling oppressed and ruled over because someone did not want to share? That strikes me as more greedy and self-entitled than oppressed.
• And then they somehow "drove out the Quarg?" lol. Their military ships look impressive, particularly the Punisher. But if I were a betting captain I would be betting on the Quarg in any kind of a matchup between the two. Every single time.
• Strange that they talk about the Quarg manipulating our technology and stuff. The Quarg have been reluctant to share anything. They pretty much have a rock solid reputation for just being the aliens that sit there, watching us, sometimes talking, but never sharing.
• Now, the Pug on the other hand... It really sounds like these Heliarchs are talking about the Pug. It matches perfectly.

Rebbia Rampart~3035-05-21 Mapped all Coalition now going to Ring of Friendship.txt

[warp-core]

You seem to have missed the part where the Heliarchs talk about the Quarg restricting jump lanes, not allowing the various species to interact much. "Imprisoning" them within "boxes." It's not actually they they don't give out jump drives, it's that they prevent others from going places, jump drives are just the way around that. The box comparison is actually along the lines of what the Unfettered Hai tell us, but they put it down to the Drak. Evidently, the Coalition have never done anything that violated the Drak's rules and led to an Archon involving itself in their affairs directly, or otherwise, word of that has not spread.

Also, from the perspective of humanity, or someone actually playing the game for the first time, the Pug are responsible for actual advancements in human technology, at least, if you talked to Edrick about them. They are certainly manipulative, but their is nothing supporting the idea that they have limited humanity's development.

In fact, people playing the Wanderer story will see the Pug actively manipulating things in a way that ends the stalemate between the Mereti and Sestor, removing those entities as a threat to their immediate neighbours, something the Quarg have apparently not been interested in doing. There are some other consequences of that, but from a technological standpoint, humanity also gains from it, though the Quarg did make some contributions to that.

[Zitchas]

I will just re-iterate that this is my pilot's perspective. My pilot doesn't know who the wanderers are. There's some weird bird aliens in the North she can't talk to and don't let her land anywhere other than one place.

Yes, my pilot does appear to have missed a few pieces of information, and yes, she also has picked up some of the Remnant suspicious nature. That's why I'm trying to do this playthrough blind, and see what impressions I get. So far, the Quarg are pretty neutral. I mean, I wish they'd share their stuff, but whatever. Right now, as far as Rebbia is concerned:

Quarg:

• Don't get involved in things
• Don't do anything.
• Don't share their stuff.
• Don't stop me from doing anything.
• Are pretty much the epitome of "Never the source of anything newsworthy, ever."

Pug:

• Manipulate human tech development.
• Cut off human systems in order to make them part of the Pug empire.
• Hints that they've been meddling on a regular basis in humanity for millennia.
• Openly attacked me and human ships.

Yes, these Heliarchs that seem to have total dominion over their population have said that the Quarg pruned the hyperlanes, but Rebbia's personal experience is that the only people out there that prune hyperlanes is the Pug. Lived experience takes precedence over myths of actions taken longer ago than the sum total of human history.

The only "proof" that the Quarg were ever involved here is the rings... And the Pug have shown themselves to be excellent builders and illusionists, capable of creating entire cities suited to others.

So, ignoring appearances and just judging based on actions, Rebbia judges that it is significantly more likely that the Heliarchs are talking about Pug than Quarg. Perhaps just translator error; perhaps it was Pug disguised as Quarg. She doesn't know, just that the story she's hearing matches Pug quite strongly, and Quarg very poorly.

As far as the limiting human development goes, I can't prove they have limited human development, but it's impossible to prove a negative. I have no idea, in-game or out of it, where humanity would be without Pug interference. Many people have pointed out oddities like the fact that we have rudimentary in-atmosphere capable laser weapons today. In space, half a millennia from now, we shouldn't need aliens gifting us magic tech to suddenly acquire laser weapons. So for all either I or Rebbia knows, the Pug stunted human tech along certain lines specifically so that they could appear to be generous benefactors giving us laser weapons in our hour of need. All we really know is the Pug play the long game.

[Zitchas]

Even if the Quarg did prune the hyperlanes to prevent contact... We know nothing of context. So far, seems right up there with parents telling their kid they can't cross the road to play with the kids on the other side. Maybe it's just a quite dead-end lane that they could probably play on without risk. Maybe there was something dangerous about that would have killed or otherwise had strong negative impacts on everyone that crossed it. Maybe those hyperlanes were attracting hostile entities from other dimensions or something. I don't know. Maybe it was as simple as "we don't think they're ready to meet other aliens yet." I don't know. All I know is that the faction that's says it has met lots of different aliens and has vastly more technology than any of the Coalition races, and a lot more experience with the galaxy, decided to do something. Just condeming it out of hand as being jailors seems about as short sighted as a ten year old telling off their parents for not letting them cross a road to play with strangers. Maybe they were right, maybe they weren't. Untiil proven otherwise, I'll trust the parents.

(This is all from an in-character perspective of my Pilot.)

[Zitchas]

Day 49B

• For doing jobs and exploring and landing everywhere, though, I think I should switch to a higher capacity ship and actually make some money here. Off to get the Emerald Sword!
• Passing through Caeculus, and spotted something weird. A really big ship, just coasting around out there that was not responding to transponder pings. Off to investigate!
• Scans don't reveal any cargo, but are not able to get good readings of the outfitting. Of course, the ship is transparent, so I already knew something was going on here. They do identify it as a "Modified Dromedary" and suggest that the Remnant will want to hear about this.
• As we suspected, Taely is definitely interested in this. Coalition can wait, I want to know what is going on with this weird ship.
• And Taely introduces me to a... retired prefect? Well, not really retired. It sounds like she retired from actively designing ships to teaching people how to design ships. She is just as eager to leap onboard and head off into the Ember Wastes to scan this ship, though.
• The ship is not in Caeculus anymore... checking a few other systems, finally found it in Levana. Looking a little more solid than it did the first time.

[Arachi-Lover]

what, maybe 60% the area occupied by humanity?

It's 70 systems total for the Coalition vs ~190 for humanity.

They appear to have no autonomy whatsoever, and cannot even tell me about themselves without prior authorization of their conquerors.

Curious as to how did you come to this view; I never got the sense that they couldn't tell you as in they weren't allowed, just that they were directing you to the seat of government and location with those most well equipped for greeting you and answering your questions on their group and region.

Ring of Wisdom in Ekuarik, Ring of Friendship in Quaru, and then Ring of Power in Ki War Ek, although that one appears to be unfinished with a planet in the way. What happened here?

It's both the Ring of Wisdom and the Ring of Power that are unfinished, both systems they're in with a remainder planet that wasn't used up for the rings until them.

Yes, these Heliarchs that seem to have total dominion over their population have said that the Quarg pruned the hyperlanes, but Rebbia's personal experience is that the only people out there that prune hyperlanes is the Pug. Lived experience takes precedence over myths of actions taken longer ago than the sum total of human history.
Even if the Quarg did prune the hyperlanes to prevent contact... We know nothing of context.

The Quarg don't have the ability to make/destroy hyperlanes, and that's not something the Heliarchs claim. Them saying the Quarg kept them locked in boxes is reference to the fact the three Quarg rings are in the trio of chokepoint systems that interconnect the pockets of the Coalition species.

The only "proof" that the Quarg were ever involved here is the rings... And the Pug have shown themselves to be excellent builders and illusionists, capable of creating entire cities suited to others.

Uh, it'd be extremely costly of the Pug to make 3 rings as some con, and something we don't know whether they can do or not given how time consuming a task it is; not to mention we don't have it confirmed they even can do that currently.

[Zitchas]

Curious as to how did you come to this view; I never got the sense that they couldn't tell you as in they weren't allowed, just that they were directing you to the seat of government and location with those most well equipped for greeting you and answering your questions on their group and region.

Just straight up impression from the conversation. This isn't analyzing the text or anything, just a post-action impressions of what happened.

The Quarg don't have the ability to make/destroy hyperlanes, and that's not something the Heliarchs claim. Them saying the Quarg kept them locked in boxes is reference to the fact the three Quarg rings are in the trio of chokepoint systems that interconnect the pockets of the Coalition species.

She's a starship captain, and she can look at a map. Seeing two long stretches of space next too each other with no hyperlinks, then have someone say that aliens tried to keep them apart, when she's lived through an alien invasion that specifically did just that? She's just making assumptions that they meant cutting hyperlanes. It's nothing wrong about what the Heliarchs are saying, just that Rebbia's got her own life experiences and baggage that they have absolutely no way of knowing about, and that changes perspectives a lot.

Uh, it'd be extremely costly of the Pug to make 3 rings as some con, and something we don't know whether they can do or not given how time consuming a task it is; not to mention we don't have it confirmed they even can do that currently.

To Rebbia, the Pug are magical beings who, for all she knows, can make stars pop in and out of existence. She's a textile worker and a starship captain. She knows nothing about engineering a ringworld, only that people who can make hyperlinks and warfleets appear out of thin air are vastly more powerful than anything she can comprehend. The only difference between "invasion fleet out of thin air" and "ring world out of thin air" is... Well... nothing, really. Once one has done one impossible thing, adding to the list is easy.

[Zitchas]

I'm marking that one post as off-topic, because this isn't the place or time for it. This is a travelogue of Rebbia's in-character personal opinions and observations, based on her life experiences in-game. Not factual statement about them, nor a place for debate about how she may or may not have understood anything.

[Amazinite]

This is a discussion forum, and the OP and title say nothing of this being some sort of "in-character captain's log." Even if it was billed as that from the start, this is still a discussion forum, so either such an "in-character captain's log" isn't appropriate for being posted here, or if it's appropriate to have here then people are free to respond to what you post. You even say yourself in the top post that people are free to comment:

Feel free to comment/reply on individual posts, but I'd appreciate it if people stuck to replying to specific posts so that the main posts in this discussion are each successive day.

Sure, you ask that people reply to your posts instead of making new replies to the OP, but that isn't a requirement, and others have made replies to the OP before that you took no issue with. Just because you have the ability to hide people's posts as a consequence of being an organization admin doesn't give you the right to pick and choose who's comments stay up.

I've unhid the comments in question.