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[a1s]

I meant space combat. wow, that's good to know.

also, is alien holokeycard a valid mineral? I was hunting pirates in asteroid belts and my science officer found an "asteroid containing high amount of alien holokeycard"

my final question is this: are there specialists of rank above 4?

[Neonivek]

1) The critter needs to be next to you (and can bite you)

Yeah but you can only really get 1 or 2 shots off before they close the gap anyhow. (Ignoring the fact that it is technically miles away)

It just doesn't make sense for a combat knife to defeat space age weaponry in raw damage.

One possible balancer is that Ranged weaponry may not have consistant fire but melee weaponry will always strike.

Or possibly that super strong individuals and aliens can use melee weapons to such a degree that they can match weapons that can melt through a square kilometer of solid rock in a single blast.

Really your method of balancing ranged to melee is odd to me. Is this how your going to do it or is this just to balance it currently until you can add more?

[magellan]

oh... that's a wierd asteroid. That *is* a bug...

Officers can be up to level 5 and there might be some level 6s running around.

ranged vs nonranged...
I see your point of course.
Of course there is no reason not to shoot just because it stands next to you either. (in fact in close combat they chose the better of the two weapons) And also of course i don't imagine them as butterknifes either.
I guess one could adjust the prices a little to be closer to ranged weapons and add some description about superheated, single molecule width blades or somesuch. (and add some more so that we have 8 ranged and 8 close combat weaps)

*goes hmmm*

[BishopX]

you can also find adaptive body armor on asteroids.


Perhaps melee weapons shouldn't be able to hit fliers (or at least have a penalty)?

Another balance issue is the science officer. I feel that right now high level (skill 4 or 5) science officers are probably the single most important thing you can buy. The reason being that they drastically increase the amount of money you can gain from exploring a planet. Pilots and gunners have essentially binary tasks (at least from the players perspective), landing on planets, taking on asteroids, navigating gas clouds and hitting enemy starships all have you or no outcomes. Science officers on the other hand seem to have a multplicative effect on the amount of biodata you collect. A science officer 5 will take in 5 times as much biodata as a science officer 1. This leads to a tremendous increase in income.


In terms of future direction, I would love to see radio contact in space combat (the ability to surrender?)

[Candlejack]

How do you get more fuel, get better equipment, and make money as a pirate?

[wallish]

Don't think it's been mentioned, but there have been several times on many-cratered mountainous planets where there are creatures stuck in the four corners, stuck on the mountain tile in the corner.  Flying creatures, gas-blobs, whatever they are they're stuck there (I can kill them though, just not walk onto their bodies)

[magellan]

@ candlejack: You start in a system with a pirate base if you start as a pirate. They offer all a station does (besides company offices) and are friendly.

[a1s]

actually even though you supposedly start in a system with a pirate base, I for one could never find it. maybe that planet should start out fully mapped? it's not like we were going to explore it anyway...

[BishopX]

I've been able to find it, but could only find the ship repair shop.

[magellan]

Yap. I thought so too a1s. Going to do that soonish.
Did you check all the buildings at the landing pad bishopX? Last time i checked (i confess that was a while ago) they were 5 different ones. And just checked again: Still are, fuel, bar, armor, ships and modules.

But yeah, pirate life is pretty harsh, maybe too harsh. I am considering adding a guy who pays for raw materials (read: resources)
(and of course i need to add a pirate boss who gives out quests and who you can kill to become the pirate boss)

A sidenote: I just did something i haven't done in ages: I played it! And, Hey! this is fun!
 There was this huge gas cloud between station 1 and 2 and to fly around it you pretty much had to use a whole scout tank, but at one place it was only 2 squares wide. I tried to cross it there with a L2 pilot .... bad idea...

[a1s]

I want to see YAVPs!

now for the bugs, I did not actually lose 10k trading, indeed that's how I earned the money for my explorer, and a good chunk of the money for my Destroyer.
also, the line "made all his money with honest hard work" is odd, as I played the casino a few times, did a lot of trading, and earned the rest hunting pirates for bounties, the one thing I did not in fact do was prospecting work.
finally, while bounty hunting I killed over a dozen space aliens, which are not on the list.

and, you probably already handled this one, but some asteroids have "high amounts of ." as well as "adaptive armor" and "disintegratior".

[magellan]

Nice! Congratulations.
Very nice to see that playing a pirate hunter/trader is obviously entirely possible.
You are of course right. those space beasties should count towards kills. No idea where it could have messed up the trade accounting. I will have to look into that.
The "honest work" line refers to the fact that you didn't resort to piracy. I Guess the wording there could be a little less ambigous.

[BishopX]

this is YAVP!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

                   Heavy Explorer Cortez MISSION SUMMARY: 219242 pts

  Made a profit of  110916 credits in 3681 turns.
  Earned  2242 Credits in trading goods. ( 2%)
  5000 Credits were from bountys for destroyed pirate ships ( 4%)

  Discovered 34 Systems and mapped 146 of 169 Planets. (42%)
  Defeated 238 Aliens.
  122 casualties among the crew.                         Alien Artifacts:
                                                         Scanner
                                                         1 Ion canon
  Discovered :                                           Teleportation device
    A world covered in jungle
    A very rich world covered in oceans
    An ancient city
    A world without water and huge sandworms
    A lost scoutship
    A casino trying to cheat
    A dying world
    The Blackmarket
    A planet with immortal beings

Mission type: Explorer

  Hullpoints(max 20): 10      Crew Summary
  Shieldgenerator(max 4): 4
  Engine: 4(5 MP) Sensors: 5  Pilot          : 5
                              Gunner         : 6
  Weapons:                    Science officer: 5
  LR Launcher
   R:5 D:5 A:5/5              Total bunks  : 25
  Gamma Ray Laser
   R:2 D:4 A:0/0              Cryo chambers: 0
  Disintegrator               Security personel: 21
   R:6 D:6 A:0/0
  LR Launcher                   Elite    : 5
   R:5 D:5 A:5/5                Veterans : 3
                                Green    : 13
  Cargo:
3 x Empty

Found and recruited the best gunner in the sector


Equipment:
22 p. forcefields
21 plasma rifles
2 laser guns
4 flood lights
6 helmet lamps
set of binoculars
2 sets of adaptive bodyarmor
3 laser drills
gauss rifle
6 pieces of alien art
laser rifle
11 sets of combat armor
imp. air filters
5 mining drills
navigational computer
2 vibro knifes
13 grenades
rifle
2 hover platforms
28 jetpacks
11 combat gloves
4 alien holokeycards
2 seismographs
ship detection system
4 protective suits
2 anaesthetics
mechanical lockpicks
ECM II system
primitive handgun
medpack II
gauss gun
9 aux. oxygen tanks
3 medpacks
2 portable sensorsets
2
2 strong anaesthetics
2 vibro sword
imp. ship detection sys.
combat blade
disintegrator
electronic lockpicks
5 fusion grenades


End mission summary

On balance I think that jetpacks are overpowered. It just stops being fun when you can go everywhere. perhaps they could have a limited number of jumps without going back to the ship?

Also, I bought about 10 satellite with this captain, none made it through .

I'm not sure asteroid mining is working right, or if it is it's underpowered. Namely I could go out and mine asteroid for about 50 fuel and get relatively little in the way of resource. I've also mined significantly more adaptive body armours than my inventory displayed (I found two on planet). By my estimation there is either a bug in the code which transfers your sucess at mining into resources, or your just giving 1 thing of resource per asteroid which is seems to be too low given the risks inherent in scanning asteroid belts (which are very cool btw).

[Calvin]

That was gay.


I started in a gascloud, and died before I got out.
Best starting game ever.

[magellan]

@calvin: plz tell me you started as a pirate when that happened? (because yes, he doesn't check if those are in a gas cloud. I wonder if checking them too would make it too easy to find them?)
@BishopX: I will look into the asteroid mining thing. ... what do you mean with non of your satelites made it ... please dont tell me they did disappear? (I was so certain that i had solved the mystery of the disappearing items