About 050 beta

[Fendorin]

What is this this new version

: so hard to begin a new adventure, this universe is so dangerous
always after two gate they kill me

is not possible!!!

and another point of view : spec drive is very uggly i prefer ancient spec !!!!

the command of lama is like a stone -flyer so hard

for new gamer and another people ( don't know ancient vervion)
is like a very hard game !!!

where is a fun!!!!! and hapiness to begin a game!!!

the game-play is so bad


( is just my point of view )

[andreasj]

* Take a look at where you fly. You can see the owner of a system in your nav computer. For the beginning, stay away from the green systems. They belong to the Aere, and they don't like you unless you kill some Luddites, Pirates or attack some human faction.

* You can still use the manual SPEC mode. Press shift+a to activate it. I have however come to like the autopilot, I recommend you give it a chance.

* Yes, the Llama is slow. That's the idea - you start with a poorly-equipped, slow ship, and can improve by gaining money and either upgrading your ship, or buying another one.

Also keep in mind that the reaction of your ship depends on its mass, so added upgrades and especially a full hold can make it slower. And there *might* be a bug as well, somebody complained about slow reactions from his Llama, and I believe I had a similar problem yesterday, with a nearly-empty hold.

* Yes, Vegastrike is a hard game, especially in the beginning. There are also some things that I consider bugs that make playing very hard - just bump into a station while docking, and the station starts firing at you, for example. Balancing for these things needs to be improved. But remember that the game is under constant developement.

I recommend you do some cargo missions, and try to get bounty missions on luddites. That will improve your relations with the other factions, and Luddite ships are not that dangerous. They are difficult to hit, however, so you need some patience to destroy them, unless you can affort autotracking.

[andreasj]

Looks like it was because of the cargo, which had a very high mass per item.

[jackS]

Looks like it was because of the cargo, which had a very high mass per item.

In the old 0.4.3 version, just about all cargo had a volume of 1 cubic meter and a mass of 0.1 metric tons. Needless to say, these were placeholder values. Now that we've had some time to pay a bit more attention to the cargo, one will notice an assortment of sizes and densities for different cargo types (e.g. iron now comes in 10 cubic meter bundles, each massing a stately 70 metric tons). Whereas before, one only needed to be concerned about payoff per item, mass and cargo volume now need to be considered as well.

[jackS]

* Yes, the Llama is slow. That's the idea - you start with a poorly-equipped, slow ship, and can improve by gaining money and either upgrading your ship, or buying another one.

One other thing to note, when trying to avoid being blown up, is that the starting ship is configured as a civilian cargo shuttle - big hold, inexpensive upgrades, light armament suitable for deterring pirates and other domestic threats (i.e. Luds) -- I would actually argue that it's not too poorly equipped for this particular task (although feel free to disagree -- both the nerf bat and buffing wands are still at play all over the dataset).

However, if you try to take a bounty on a group of Military vessels (e.g. Aeran raiding party) while still configured as a civilian cargo shuttle, the results should not be particularly surprising. It would perhaps be nice to have some sort of metric by which a mission can examine the player's vessel and equipment and post appropriately dire warnings for accepting a given mission.

[andreasj]

I used the Llama to fight pirates (heynas and plowshares) and luddites, after upgrading shields and reactors. However, the first upgrade levels are quite cheap, so you can afford them pretty soon. Next thing I got were improved sensors (intermediate, with friend-foe recognition and tracking support), also not that expensive. What really *is* expensive is autotracking, but it saves a lot of time in fights because you hit more often. Now I am thinking about getting tractor capability and then installing a heavy tractor beam, so i can collect the cargo of destroyed ships.

[Drakna]

how about adjusting the missions so missions in the starter system are of a set difficulty (suitably easy/doable) with the basic ship with suitably nerfed/fixed pay