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[Farce]

This game basically refuses to load and freezes when I try to start up a game.  I'm assuming it's something to do with this being a laptop, but it's still pretty lame.

[Kagus]

Goddamn, do the enemies just keep spawning nearby the entire time? I couldn't let go of the wheel long enough to run and do any repairs before another stupid firebreathing flying thing came charging in. And then a whale showed up. And then two enemy ships started shooting at me. No matter where I went, there was no peace, no downtime. I just wanted to explore a bit, not constantly be shoving things into my propellers and dodging projectiles.

The platforming is very wonky. The controls are floaty and low-friction, making platforming very difficult. The camera swings around like drunk-o-vision which ended up making me feel ill.

I really wanted to like this game. Terraria-like and Steampunk? Sounds like a match made in heaven, but the execution is pretty terrible.

Yeah, the "own two feet" controls are generally pretty terrible.  I've almost entirely given up on walking, jumping and the like; my current mode of transportation is almost exclusively grappling hook-based.  The camera has its own issues both when just walking around and while piloting a ship.

As for creature spawns, yes...  Things spawn constantly.  However, the spawn rates and types are determined by whether or not you're currently at the controls of a ship or not.  For example, you'll very, VERY rarely get any enemy ships spawning while you're walking around, and similarly there won't be many, if any, bandits or SoC enforcers hopping about the islands when you're in a ship.

Also, sadly, there's a very game-y thing to take note of that will make your life so, so much easier...  Because of the unfinished, unpolished and hamfisted nature of the current state of development, yes...  Your ship is absolutely going to get dinged up.  A lot.  But more importantly...  It doesn't matter.

Anything and everything you place on your ship, from components to rare armor plating to windows to random decorations, barring a whole 6  blocks in the game (3 of which are just the background variant of the other three) can be repaired fully for no cost from any state of damage...  Including utter destruction.

The way some people play (I still make an effort to avoid this) is to basically just smash your ship hard into whatever temple or island or whatnot you want to explore, hop out, do your stuff, and then radio in the free "instantly transport me to the nearest city" service.  Yes, it's absolutely free, the radio is a permanent item, and you can call in a tow from anywhere...   I was taking a stroll through THE MOLTEN CORE OF THE WORLD (armor fire resistance over 100...), and they picked me up and plunked me back down in town, where I could freely and instantly recover my ship via the dockmaster (if it wasn't already floating there at the dock).

Unless they've changed something else in the latest patch, it should be even more of this style since they just recently added in the ability to fully repair all damage to your ship when anchored at a dock.  I haven't played since that was introduced, but I can only assume that it's a free service as well.


Yes, the controls and physics and a few other things are all pretty horrible...  But they "make up for it" by providing a lot of severely cheesy safety nets and tools.  That's because this thing is unfinished, drastically so.  They never should have released without the "early access" tag, but now it's too late and they have to find a way of dealing with the bad reviews they've gotten, since they put themselves up to being judged by a finished game's standards.

Heh...  So, while a guy making potato salad gets some $50,000 over his $15 goal on Kickstarter, Windforge just baaaarely got $15 over their $50,000 goal for development costs.  It's really kind of amazing that Windforge exists at all, so the fact that it actually runs without crashing TOO often is...  Well, kudos to the hard-working devs.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, the spawns seem kind of erratic.  Sometimes I go four or five screens without seeing a ship, sometimes the sky's so clogged I end up bumping into them.

I feel like it's the kind of game you gotta make work for you a bit.  The radio is cheesy and even if you don't have the radio, if you die you go back to base and repair for free, so you could really just do what you came to do and then kill yourself and come back, but you certainly don't have to do it and if you do it and then complain about it...

Like the dismantling thing, a lot of stuff in the game works best if you kind of set your own goals and rules.  If I wanted to I could stand on my ship and use the dismantle tool to remotely strip a ship, but that's not my idea of fun, so I pull out my grappling hook and risk the propellers and the blown-out hull to scavenge what I can (sometimes repairing components to recover them, sometimes leaving them since they're technically destroyed) and jump to safety before it falls.  That's fun.

[Ygdrad]

This game seems to have a story and an end to it, how is the replayability? The systems here look like they would lend themselves to a freeform/open world system pretty well, can the game be played in such a way?

[Ygdrad]

I ended up giving the game a try, so far the mechanics can be fun aside from the random insane bouncing to death. Sadly though, the AI is just not up to the task of posing any real threat once you figure a few things out and I'm not sure how long the game will remain fun after novelty wears off.

After making a small wooden fortress and being disappointed by how weak reinforced wood was, I got working on steel armor plating and made a small efficient steel fighter, it later sported an extra set of artillery and wrecked most things it ran into aside from those black whales further up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Having exhausted my resources due to various projects and the need to craft better gear, I decided to give grinders a shot to see how much faster they could make things. My first attempt at a grinder ship was horrible and slower than doing it by hand, my second attempt turned into the blubber space program but still serves its original purpose magnificently as it can fly right through island. I tried to see how high i could take this thing just to be bounced back at the top. Flew right through several islands, a few ships and even a black whale on my way up though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[etgfrog]

I would have thought the point of flying through an island is to collect the stuff. Speaking of...where do you get the recipe for grinders or rope for that matter?

[Cthulhu]

Recipes seem to be random.  The abandoned forts you find scattered around are a good source of recipes.

My first custom ship is basically finished but I've run into some challenges.  Despite the nature of the game I decided to set mine up in a horizontal kind of traditional ship arrangement with a bridge at the back.  My rear guns have turned out to be a problem though.  My propellers are on the back and I didn't want the back wall of my command room to be a gun, so I added a turret sticking out of the roof of the bridge with an artillery cannon on it. 

Problem is if I'm moving backwards and firing, the propellers suck the shells into them.  Hrm.

[lastverb]

I never had much luck with upward pointing grinders. My mining ship is L shaped with grinders put on | pointing to the right while _ platform catches stuff (use support blocks just on top of actual platform so falling blocks (dirt, gravel, sand) won't build up. With 10-15 grinders you won't be complaining about lack of resources. I do not use baloons for my ships either and keep up with propellers only (and cloudstone later). Keep in mind that if you have propellers with different thrust (material, quality) game won't be able to float your ship in place unless you exit control panel.

[Kagus]

Recipes are lumped into various categories.  Each individual vendor will have 2-3 small sets of recipes that they will sell, with recipes related to their given profession.  New sets will be unlocked by advancing through the storyline, but you'll need to check all the cities to find all the recipes for sale in a given profession.  If you're wondering why something just isn't available when you feel it should be, it's probably because you haven't progressed far enough in the main quests.

There's also one set of recipes that is available via drops from searching bookshelves and desks (found in towns and wilderness buildings).  These don't change throughout the game, but some of the dropped recipes are ones that are also sold, so make sure to snoop through recipe drops before shelling out cash on something you might not need (unless you want to, of course).

There are also a few specific quest-reward recipes you'll get, but these should be relatively obvious.  They're highly exotic materials and weapons you won't see anybody else using.


Also, one VERY important thing to note in regards to ship construction...   Explosives will deal damage in their area of effect THROUGH existing walls.  What this means is that if you have a solid wall with, say, one-tile-thick steel plating on the outside with an insulating barrier of 3-tile-thick wood behind it, an explosive shell will carve out the wood from back behind the wall since its damage isn't reduced by the fact that it hit the steel plating "covering" the outside.  The best defense against explosives is open space.

Another thing to keep in mind is whether or not a particular ship design is supposed to handle the gas layer down below.  If so, be aware that there is a lot of environmental acid damage, and that the game does check to see if individual parts of your ship are properly sealed against the outside atmosphere, including backwalls (which can sometimes be a real bitch to patch in fully).   And, well...  It's rather stupid and cheesy, buuut...  Krakens are apparently allergic to propellers.  If they run into a ship and hit a prop without destroying it, the propeller will carve directly through their shell and kill the kraken within seconds.  I don't think that's intentionally design.

[Ygdrad]

Is there any place to buy resources in large quantities? each time I try to buy something the shop only has a handful of units.

[Ygdrad]

Here's a boarding ship prototype, hasn't been tested yet. It is meant to ram and lodge itself inside the enemy ship and offer me cover to fire from.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Edit:
My test boarding flight was successful and everything went smoothly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Cthulhu]

I see those fist nuts in your item bar.

Fist nuts kind of trivialize the game.  Unless it's instant you pretty much can't die because fist nuts are so easy to stockpile.

[Ygdrad]

I see those fist nuts in your item bar.

Fist nuts kind of trivialize the game.  Unless it's instant you pretty much can't die because fist nuts are so easy to stockpile.

With the shitty armor my character currently has, everything in boarding action is instant kill, those shotguns just kill me outright and the miniguns kill me faster than I can eat those nuts, there's also 11 of those shotgun/minigun guys on some ships all coming at me guns blazing... the nuts don't help. They're there to top me off after a hard fight behind cover if I failed to duck fast enough a few times too many.

Ships like these:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also tamed a whale and flew it right into the starting city's castle and its king who refuses to talk to me, it was then sadly put down and turned into a large pile of blubber and meat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Flying whales into enemy ships is pretty fun, but I had the whale die in a funny position which resulted in my legs being fused to it, unable to move, I just watched and laughed as the whale and I fell ALL THE WAY from the Tradewynde Route layer to the core of the planet without hitting anything on the way down. There was a spectacular explosion of lava and meat on impact, a shame I didn't get a screenshot of that

I learned the hard way that even if propellers are obstructed, they still apply their wind pushing/pulling effect, I then put this untapped power to use for some !!SCIENCE!! and created a prototype railgun cannon. the shots come out of it pretty wildly

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Many townfolks perished and the the immortal dockmaster was grievously harmed as she was used as cushioning so I wouldn't destroy the dock when flying backwards to propel the shots. Next I will have to test to see if layering obstructed propellers under the armor of a ship can be used as an artillery deflection shield.

[Sergius]

Sorry 'bout the 1 month necro but I'm currently playing this game so I'll PTW.

[Ygdrad]

Sorry 'bout the 1 month necro but I'm currently playing this game so I'll PTW.

1 month for a specialized thread is not a problem. Make sure to post your builds and cool moments