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[JimboM12]

odyssey's pretty decent so far. the ground exploration is pretty cool, stumbling upon deserted mining colonies is a cool feature and i like the ambiance of being able to scan a settlement from orbit, dropping near it and embarking in a vehicle to drive in.

i feel the ground conflict zones pay out generously for a new player, tho. i went from broke in a sidewinder to flush with a decently kitted keelback within a day.

also ive been participating in local conflicts and im hoping they expand into the grand powers fighting over major settlements. imagine the powers that be fighting over a research lab; inviting players to fight in both the sky and on land, it'd be damn cool. or at least npcs doing it, and players coming in to tip the balance. honestly its within the games power to do now with these additions so im looking forward to future patches and expansions.

[Dunamisdeos]

I am unfortunately one of the people that it was (and remains) broke AF for.

Like, unplayable broke. I'm giving it a month or two before I go back to it.

[JimboM12]

don't worry, you're not missing too much. so far it feels like Horizons but the added ground stuff feels like a framework for future expansion.

for starters the ground equipment is simple, 4 suits (including your default flightsuit) which provide different capabilities, like a cutter for opening maglocks or a scanner for alien life you might find. the guns work like weapons for ships: laser for anti-shield, kinetic for anti-armor, and plasma for anti-everything. so far the kinetic and laser weapons only come in smg, rifle and pistol formats but the plasma comes in rifle and shotgun, judging from what ive seen the ai use. ive been roaming the local star systems for a plasma rifle of my own but no luck.

the ground wars are basically a mini-CoD or battlefield style game with simple "kill enough enemies" and "capture the points" gameplay. not bad overall: the AI is functional, it works, it pays well and it has its moments of being fun. its just repetitive and so far has no effect on anything except your rep with local factions.

a cool thing is that most stations have a merc coordinator who can chart you a shuttle to the battle, paid for by the faction you're merc-ing for. so all you have to do is suit up (you have to bring your own equipment) and board and it'll fly you in real time to your battlefield. or you can fly manually to the place with your own ship: it works the same either way.

ground settlement exploration is alright as well, you can find abandoned settlements to scavenge goods from with no consequence or you can land at a corporation owned facility and infiltrate it. the guards will stop and scan you (i only tried this at a lab that was open for trading but im guessing there are places not open to the public) for your bounty and if you don't have one they'll let you on your merry way. you will be stopped by the natural security barriers that are doors with tiered security clearances, which the npcs have, and you can "clone" their IDs to open them. the tutorial for the ground features does a pretty good job of teaching you the basics.

all in all, while i find things ok with it (it helps i got it on discount from Fanatical, i got the sites mixed up), i can completely understand why its getting negative reviews between technical issues and the fact that its fairly detached from the main game. people really wanted ship interiors, planets with weather and grinding for ground equipment upgrades is absolutely terrible.

[Dunamisdeos]

I've gotten to play with it for a few hours, and I enjoyed the parts that worked.

The technical issues are what break it for me. Lookin forward to it when it works.

[Rolan7]

How are things?

I've been playing a lot lately.  Picked this game up like 3 years ago and I've played it off and on.  Lately I really like it.

So far I've mostly done travel contracts.  Old-me apparently killed, but I have no idea how.

I like shutting my brain off and listening to a podcast as my computer makes pleasant noises - until the shift completes and I adjust the next bearing.  Very captain.

Edit: It's basically Freelancer but with social effects.

[Akura]

I haven't played in a while. I was thinking about it though.

Last I played, I was busy doing silver runs. Not as profitable as platinum apparently, but easier to find a good, single-jump route. Load up on silver at a mining system, jump over to a refinery system, offload silver and pick up something for the way back. Was making over a million credits per 15-20 minute trade run. Would have made more, but that's as much cargo I could load onto a Type-6.

[Dunamisdeos]

It is functional now. The ground missions are still kinda shit, IMO. Still feels like groundwork for something later, but at least it's not bugging out.

I've landed my ship at a place I was going to infiltrate, stealthed the whole place, got all the loot plus extra, and left scot clean. I've also landed, found that due to semi-random guard patterns that it's almost physically impossible to sneak into a place, got spotted on the other side of the base, and then 4 dudes blow up my ship with small arms fire in 2 actual minutes, that being my hyper-tuned combat vessel that can go toe-to-toe with a military corvette and had its shields up. Then the mission fails because it had a stealth requirement, and my choices are now to suicide and face a 20-30m series of shuttle rides back to where my ship is parked, or spend 20 minutes killing every fucking thing on the base for zero profit, xp, or benefit of any kind, and then call a shuttle for a shorter ride back.

I'm not currently playing.

[fatcat__25]

I don't spend hardly any time on the ground. The missions and ground gameplay just aren't very interesting. To me, the graphics look a lot nicer, though, and that makes launching Odyssey over Horizons worth it.

[Rolan7]

I haven't played in a while. I was thinking about it though.

Last I played, I was busy doing silver runs. Not as profitable as platinum apparently, but easier to find a good, single-jump route. Load up on silver at a mining system, jump over to a refinery system, offload silver and pick up something for the way back. Was making over a million credits per 15-20 minute trade run. Would have made more, but that's as much cargo I could load onto a Type-6.

Yeah when I posted I had just done some nice gold-silver runs between a planet and its orbiting refinery.  Not as easy as it sounds... arguably, I might have saved time if I was leaving the atmosphere for another system (if it happened to be in the sky).

30k or more per unit for the first run or two, though!  I came back later with a type-7 but the values had evened out.  Still, I made some cash, and got more experience with the specific angle the game wants you to approach at.

Too direct?  drop from shiftdrive with 5 minutes at realspeed to target.
Too far?  "Gliding" for about the same amount of time.

also I sometimes see a blue indicator flash by my "radar" as I'm approaching surface settlements.  I assume the indicator is... indicating... something I could use an SRV for?  I don't have an SRV.

SPEAKING OF SRV
Having throttle-up and throttle-down being q and e seems really stupid, but after launching myself off several cliffs in training-mode, I sorta get it.  You need WASD to right yourself.

Tangent: I switched from AD yaw to letting my mouse handle yaw.  I liked the weird mouse pitch-and-spin, but then I did the combat exercises.  There's no way.  I need to mouse myself towards target.  When I need to spin - very often, as I'm approaching the mailslot- I will use the keyboard.

Still haven't done any real combat this year.  I do like the idea of using the last few days of grind to pick up a decent ship for PvE.  ...In Open, because trading in Solo is one thing, but I find it unsporting to do combat against PVE that way.

Kinda looks like I need to do at least a little combat to get the Federation to properly.  IDK if they offer promotion quests as delivery runs, but I understand if they need a few ships destroyed to prove loyalty.

[Dunamisdeos]

I have a bounty hunting ship and that's basically my bread and butter.

I still enjoy the space combat immensely. Krait II all souped up is a thing to reckon with. I generally make 10-20 mil per mission run for bounties. Only problem is that grinding federation rep is so goddam slow. And I hear they're gonna revamp engineering too, which is a relief.

[Xardalas]

I wouldn't get your hopes up. They've messed with engineering before and all they seem to do is make it more Grundy or worse.

[Rolan7]

Unless I'm mistaken I've built up a lot of Federation rep by doing tourism jobs for their minor factions, but I need to complete specially-marked jobs for the Federation itself to actually get promoted.  Which is a lot easier if I have *any* combat ability, looks like!

I still prefer the tourism jobs, going about 100-400 LY and stopping by a few POI.  What I don't get are the absurd ones which involve going ~2000LY to one place and then back.  They don't seem to pay nearly enough to be a better deal, particularly since you can do a little commodity trading during a tourism run.  Maybe they expect you to make cash on the side by honking or signal-scanning the uninhabited systems?  Or maybe it's because inhabited systems are a lot more dangerous... in Open. 

In solo play I've never come close to failing an interdiction, even playing tired, but presumably players can make interdiction more difficult.  Closest I got was miscalculating my distance to a few stars when I upgraded to an Orca...  I'm pretty sure that I can't max out my fuel-scoop on certain star types without dropping out of frame-shift.  Sorta annoying since I keep a close eye on my heat and fuel-rate when scooping, but this is purely distance, so I get it.

[Shooer]

Tourism jobs are the #1 way to grind fed or empire rep.  In fact each faction has a kind of super efficient/short "cheat" route.  These routes are short, easy to stack and are predictable.  They sometimes change after updates.

Rank up missions can be nearly anything and randomly generated.  Courier, cargo hauling, bounty hunting, passenger, ect.  Any faction under emp or fed has a chance to give rank up missions as well.

If a mission to rank up is something you can't do or don't want to do you can wait for a new one to pop. 

[Dunamisdeos]

I've never done a tourist mission, I'll look into that. Good tip. I have a dolphin, would an orca etc be preferable?

[Rolan7]

I'm still a newbie but I'd say no.  Tourists do have retainers but total group size is usually 6 or less.  I'm using a size-6 Luxury just in case I EVER see a luxury job, justifying this whale-line of a ship   Or I care about my customers or whatever.  Anyway at size-6 I think it holds eight people which is enough for any tourism.

The main thing is that you have to specifically target each Point of Interest then wait for a scan to complete.  I had some trouble figure that out because I'm not usually scanning things.

It can involve a LOT of in-system flight time, sometimes even visiting a planetary POI, but it's largely hyperspace and that's fun.  I use my nice 5A fuel scoop to avoid any real fuel concerns.  I had been using it on my hauler but I decided it was easier to just buy fuel when I'm only making a jump or two.  Whereas tourism trips can be like thirty jumps total, and I'd rather not stop.  I guess a fuel tank module might suffice for that, but getting a quick scoop is pretty convenient while preparing each jump.

Edit:  So I guess the Dolphin is almost as good, since you don't need more than one cabin, and is much cheaper.  Just has smaller jump distance and I guess resilience.