So when last we left off we met some species of oracles, and scanned the other planet in our beginning system. I also set us up for some resource gathering, and I think it's time to find out what the other planet's cache has got for us.
And we're off!
Not a bad haul, now that I've done this I decide to head back to the first planet again to do the same.
Eh, not really the radioactives and strange particles we were hoping for, but I'm sure these materials will come in handy.
I think at this point I decide to just hop back and forthe between the planets collecting materials. While I'm doing this I'll be toggling people on and off research to balance their stress as we try to build our knowledge base. Some of the people we've picked in particular seem extremely vulnerable to stress. The psych, security, and astrogation picks in particular seem to be pretty good at handling stress. Anyway, I decide to hop back to the second planet...
Nothing... ok, so maybe I actually do need to wait a while before checking a cache. Luckily there's a time burst function, I decide to give it 24 hours before changing planets again, and wait until...
Are these the same guys as last time?
Ermm no, no they are not, turns out these are the scavengers. As I understand it these are supposed to be the game's big baddies, but hey maybe they won't attack us right away.
Apparently these scavengers are so primitive in their language, it causes our translation matrix to misspell "read".
Wait, they're talking about harvesting our brains aren't they? I'm not sure I like where this is going, but let's see what else we can find out from these guys.
Why do I get the feeling that might have been a bad idea to do?
Ermm joy?
Pain?
Ermm yikes?
So I don't think there is very much else to say to this guy, I try various other conversation paths but none of them are really enlightening. I get the feeling maybe I should put some distance between us and this scavenger.
We get a journal after leaving the conversation.
So I finish reading this, read the part about getting attacked at the end, and decide to leave the planet before this becomes a reality.
So we're back safely on Primus, when suddenly.
So I may not have actually gotten far enough away as we're now in combat. I might have needed to use the runaway button in security instead of just flying off to another planet.
Ok, so I'm pretty sure some of you will want an explanation of how the combat screen works, since not all of it is obvious. The big screen in the centre is the combat plane, it's purpose is to show you the positions of the enemies ships in relation to your own, this should be pretty obvious. So the blue and red arrow buttons in the bottom right are your thrust control, pressing them will take you in the direction indicated, the blue ones are horizontal controls the red ones are vertical controls. You can zoom in/out the battle plane using the small circle and the big oval respectively.
I
think the plus and minus buttons on the top right will control how fast time passes. I'm not entirely sure though.
The three red bars on the right are the hull damage, auxiliary power, and shields respectively, I don't actually have shields so I can't say how they control, but the manual says that you control shields by clicking the shield bar, and that to the right of the shield bar you should see a notch showing how high your shields can be set at maximum.
The bits just below those three bars are the statuses of the ship's various subsystems, they have different effects when they get knocked out.
The various weapons you have are shown in the slots in the lower middle area, you click the buttons running down the middle of the rows of slots to switch these weapons on/off, weapons take time and cost power to power on/off, so it might be useful to switch some ones you don't want to use off. The two buttons below "ACTIVE" are the active fire and active scanner buttons, you can see if they're currently on or off by the large bars above and below the weapon slots.
Active fire automatically fires the weapons as soon as they're powered up and the enemy is in range. Active scanning gives you a 20% bonus to hit, but also gives the enemy a 20% bonus to hit, which might be useful if you've got better range, or if their weapons are weak.
Finally on the bottom left we have the target box, which tells you about the currently selected target, this is controlled using the prev/next buttons and the ALT button at the very bottom of the screen, towards the right. ALT changes the data mode shown above tells you about the current statistics of the ship (stuff like shield and hull status), and visual mode gives you a bit more information about the ship in general.
I think that's all the bases covered so let's get on with this.
So your computer apparently classifies the enemies ships for you to give you an idea of how strong they are, what we're up against are a shuttle (absolute weakest), a figher (slightly stronger than a shuttle), a heavy cruiser (pretty far onto the stronger side of the spectrum), and a flagship (two steps removed from strongest category).
We have no shields, and one basic weapon. I don't think we can win this, the trouble is I don't think it's possible to escape a battle once you're in it. Nonetheless I immediately start moving away from the enemies.
It seems at the very least we're faster than out enemies, and we manage to start putting in distance between us and them.
Hmm, nope, it does look like we are stuck in combat. Also I apparently do have shields to turn on, though I thought I didn't have any shields. Perhaps I was mistaken.
In any case, it's probably time to face our enemies, fortunately running away has made them line up from fastest to slowest. The heavy cruiser is at the front, so it looks like it might be time to turn around and try to take on the heavy cruiser.
And it doesn't go well.
Our singular weapon barely dents their shields, which is something their shield immediately recover from, meanwhile theirs tear through whatever shielding we have like paper, and gradually eat away... eventually the screen turns red and we get returned to the main screen, I was expecting some kind of fancy losing screen, but nope.
So I'll let you guys decide from here what to do.
We can restart the game using a hopefully more competent crew, or I can reload the save I made at the beginning of this update. We don't exactly have much progress to lose. Or I can just give up on this, it's sort of an interesting game, but it seems a bit borked.
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Topic: Let's Figure out Ironseed (Read 6151 times)