thindil
commented
5 years ago First of all, you don't need to apologize for delay :) It is not a job so here are no deadlines :) Critique - good, constructive critique, like your is always welcome, especially if it points to problems on which I'm blind. Funny fact: many of your propositions are on my very long TODO list :) At least I can better prioritize them :) Some examples:
- Guns in combat:
- I want to made that big guns will require more crew to operate. Less gunners = gun shoots less often.
- Big guns should shoots a much less often than small guns - like in real life. Which mean big guns may need better gunners if you want to hit enemy.
- Different types of ammunition. So one type will better works against armored enemies, explosives for example do less damage but easier to hit, etc.
- Bases and connections between them. I want to connect in any way bases between self - so for example missions will be less random, same as asking for events or new bases.
- Spoiling food, containers, yes, they are on the list :) Generally I want to add that player's actions have more impact on world or even only on his/her future in-game. Just to say something about TODO list - at this moment it have around 400 positions - from very short and simple things like new items to complex like crew personality, etc. I probably should publish it somewhere so people will stop wasting time writing them :)
Bugs, suggestions: of course, I will start fixing them as soon as possible. At least this which are possible (this off-screen rendering tooltips is good example: as far I remember it is bug in GTK which I was trying to fix earlier too). As usual, I'm sorry for the problems.
And one thing: if you don't mind, after fixing all bugs/suggestions I plan to close this issue (but not comments to it). Reason: this general feedback can take very long to reach. I will just add missing propositions to my TODO list :) But of course, I'm open to discussion in that matter too. For now I just start to focusing on this worst things :)
Asmageddon
Hi, I'm sorry that it took me so long, and I'm secondarily sorry for how long the feedback itself got. I tried to organize it some, but... longer trains of thought often elude me.
Also, I tend to be fairly critical, so please don't take the amount of things I find faulty to be an indicator of "your game is no good". I definitely think you've got a neat start of something cool here. Elsewise, it'd have never caught my eye.
Anyway, here it is:
Overarching issues:
The game loop is basically a grind of trade trade trade, upgrade ship/crew roster
The most optimal actions are the least rewarding, e.g. trading
Progression is very linear, there's little choice, mainly just better vs worse, and it all reduces to the single axis of making more money to fund it all
Combat lacks nuance, it feels like there's essentially four possible outcomes: You can beat the enemy, you can escape, you can stalemate(rare, vs melee/with high evasion), you cannot survive. With the likely choice being predetermined based on ship and crew, which, again, is better vs worse, not to mention you have no way of telling how strong you are until you either die or live.
The world isn't very interesting, it's just disembodied bases floating around, without any patrols or traders moving around giving semblance of life, islands, weather conditions...
There's a lot of content that doesn't have a particular niche in the game, or is just a variant of other content.
The UX kinda sucks. Crew/inventory management is very uncomfy, screens reset when you buy/sell/change something, you need to reopen the base menu everytime, the screen takes a while to re-render, there's no time indicator...
General feedback
Progression and combat
I think that what the game needs is, first and foremost, a better core gameplay loop, one that doesn't reduce to straight up farming more money, and where combat doesn't reduce to optimizing the
enemy_ehp / my_dpt >> my_ehp / enemy_dptequation, where progress instead requires some degree of planning and/or opportunity. I'm pretty sure right now Lanchester's Laws describe and predict combat to the letter.I think that can be accomplished by making money important to stay afloat, but instead delegating progression to, say, for starters, faction/station reputation unlocking new stuff, opportunity hunting, figuring out which upgrades to install on your stuff, salvaging different gear from defeated ships from other factions, or just finding it out there in the wild in ruins.
E.g. instead of a single, easily optimized axis, you diversify into different, partially independent axes of progression.
Ideally, you should also make the progression less vertical, and more horizontal, so pursuing one axis doesn't just up your entire powerlevel, but rather gives you different options.
There also needs to be more tactical input from the player, as well as strategical input in planning (currently it's just "more guns and armor = stronger, more engines = survive", perhaps with limit on the amount of guns and/or cargo to facilitate build diversification.
What if you had stuff like food spoiling, and refrigerated cargo for it, higher storage liquid-only tanks, etc. Different calibers being better/worse against armor/part/hull, engines that can use different fuel, parts that do automated processing and/or boost specific recipes or recipe types, self-repairing materials for ship component material, rare upgrades, etc.
I also think that some way to amortize the benefit of "more guns" is needed. E.g. recoil, which reduces accuracy as it accumulates, penalizing burst-firing in the long run, especially if you also have instability from enemy hits to cope with. Ideally, more guns should be a way to fit more variety for adaptability rather than solely more dakka.
The world
I try to avoid just posting ideas as opposed to general feedback, so as to not cramp people's vision, but alas here we are, sorry.
What if instead of nothing but disembodied stations and static ship "events", the world was filled with floating islands of varying sizes (could be done with just background color plus symbols like: ◢◣◤◥◆). Visually, on top of islands, you could place all sorts of things: Forests, mountains, different bg to indicate meadow/desert/water - perhaps even make them possible to interact with(chop some wood when drifting in an emergency with no fuel, gather some dirty water, etc)
Gameplay-wise, I think it'd be neat if stations were significantly reduced in (market) size, with cities being the big time stuff, and perhaps each with multiple "industries", e.g. Agricultural+Industrial, Mining+Refining, etc.
You could eventually also add things like temporary air currents, hidden locations like hideouts, stashes, air creature lairs, ruins.
Also, give the player some sight radius around their position, rather than uncovering one square at a time. Shadows of islands could be visible at 2x the fog of war range, as they're big, noticeably stuff.
Furthermore, factions need to be expanded on somewhat: Currently you essentially have two: "Poleis" and "who cares", because they're simply too insignificant. What if instead you had regions with a dominant faction, plus some bases/embassies/etc. from other factions?
You could gradually give factions some randomized traits(like warlike, thrifty, scavengers, high-tech) to vary them beyond their names.
Activities
First off, is the hierarchy of what's the most worth doing - ideally, it should align with what's fun, and vary from time to time to prevent monotony.
Second, I think currently they're mostly unengaging: For trading, I liked what Starsector did, namely: It had a base unit of each resource (though it was (almost?) always 200), in which the "markets" operated. E.g. every 200 below demand is a shortage, every 200 above demand+some safety margin is a surplus, which affects prices, mainly in increments of the supply/demand being filled/drained. Of course, your trading, as well as that of supply convoys(which you could raid to further affect things) affected these.
For combat, a big part of what made FTL work was that while the hull health kept ticking down, you could repair individual sections, which enabled their destruction and tactical depth - what do you keep down on enemy ship, what do you keep up on yours? Steamsky doesn't have that crew/repair management, and I really think it should.
For mission, simple text adventure kinds of games, perhaps using crew's skill checks, cargo or modules, etc. could be nice, albeit also a lot of work.
Content
I think you should streamline items and ship components. E.g. no repair kit items, just material, instead of 1000 ship parts, have the general type(small/medium/large, caliber, type) with upgrade slots for material/ and part-dependent subcomponents/upgrades. Instead of presenting all at once, have randomized selection at bases so there's an aspect of opportunity hunting.
For example, you could have it as: Raw, Processed, Product, Scrap items, maybe with extra generic components of various kinds.
Also do something else than weaker/stronger with materials: Give them unique benefits and drawbacks, like say, reduced/increased efficiency in terms of: visibility, weight, module function, special properties like really cheap/fast repair, or even self-repair(living wood?), reactive defense against larger calibers, etc. etc.
Individual feedback
Bug: Standstill battles(e.g. melee that can't hit you or out of ammo vs broken gun) should end eventually, perhaps in any case when a battle takes too long, it ends because of, say, "low combat readiness"
Bug: Crash when hiring someone tied to the line
Hide(Gtk_Widget(Get_Object(Object, "negotiatewindow")));at 235 inui/bases-recruitui.adbBug: Crash when delivering medicines for a price and you're out of cargo space. Another point in favor of credit/higher denomination currency?
Bug: If you move while the Dock/Close dialog is open, it remains open when away from the base
Bug: I got ambushed by an undead ship, went into ship screen, enabled second engine, set to escape, and ran away, the next turn button disappeared, but I did not otherwise go to map
UX: there needs to be a way to travel using the mouse that doesn't involve having to move to the faux-numpad, and of waiting without setting destination to current tile. Also, setting with speed set to full stop should wait, just show buttons in red
UX: Columns in install/remove module for type/size/material
UX: Don't automatically reset category/search when buying/selling. Also don't disable the close button(As in clicking it with mouse)
UX: Exiting a station screen should go back to the station menu
UX: Top bar buttons for going to the station menu(same as location of "Close [Escape]" button), second for going back to the last visited station screen,
UX: Tooltips can be rendered partially offscreen when hovering over UI items near the left or bottom sides of the screen
QoL/UX: "Buy all" button
QoL/UX: If you cannot buy/sell all, the button should be replaced with "Buy"
QoL: The ability to set certain goods as auto-stock, e.g. buy up to and don't sell below X food, Y water, Z charcoalium and V repair kits, also reserve cargo space for them.
QoL: What about a trade window column with colored Unicode symbols for whether the current base is an importer, exporter, producer, consumer of a good. E.g. all stations consume food/water, most probably have some use for ammo/etc.
QoL: Add convenient display of derived stats, such as:
Content: Skillbooks should be rare, individual items, where buying one is notable, not just yet another thing to buy in bulk
Balance/QoL: The currency taking cargo space makes for some... uncomfortable trading until you figure out that you need to buy adamantite saw/sickle to compress your charcoalium 1:25 by weight. I propose either/both of two solutions:
Balance: The profitability of different actions in the game should be the other way around: Why would piracy exist if trading was 1000x more profitable? Why are limited opportunities like missions not vastly more profitable than trade? Why are profit margins on trading still so high when realistically everyone would jump on the opportunity? Why is there no taxes/tarrifs that might dig into the profitability? You can basically buy anything and sell anything anytime for profit or worst-case breaking even, there's little to no nuance
Balance: IMO, crew hiring costs need to be adjusted: Basic, no-skill crew should imo be mostly affordable to a player who just started, and crew with a ton of skills shouldn't scale in cost with all of them - you usually only use 1-2 skills per crew member, so what if their contributions were something like 100% for top skill, 60% for 2nd, 40% for 3rd, 20% for the rest each?
Balance: Shouldn't variation in price be higher for goods that are more valuable? Or at least ones that are both valuable AND heavy
Balance/QoL: Station should have goods that they don't produce for sale, just in more limited quantities, at less favorable prices, and less reliably in case of less common goods
Instead of having the "Profit" column be set to the good's price or where it as bought by default, show how much the current price differs from the base price, to more intuitively indicate whether a good is cheap or expensive at a given place.
Custom difficulty needs a custom formula for evaluating point gain. How is 1% enemy damage in any way offset by setting upgrade costs to 200% when now the only thing you need to get upgrades is time? \^\^` I think it'd be better if you had Very Easy/Easy/Medium/Hard/Very Hard with fixed values, IMO. Maybe over a few axes like: Economy, Combat, Politics/Reputation.