[quote=Alexis Kennedy]Oh, sorry, folks, it’s not live yet - my mistake. Thorough apologies for getting you all excited - I’m not getting much sleep at the mo.
Correction: there will be a non-random way to get it before final release, which blah blah lore blah.[/quote]
[li][li]
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook][quote=Alexis Kennedy]Oh, sorry, folks, it’s not live yet - my mistake. Thorough apologies for getting you all excited - I’m not getting much sleep at the mo.
Correction: there will be a non-random way to get it before final release, which blah blah lore blah.[/quote]
[li][li][/quote]
Missed that bit, clearly. Well, makes more sense than having a super secret method on top of the super rare one.
I feel like the main issue for new players is that, yes, you’re meant to have to die a lot before you get the idea… but new players don’t necessarily know that. Usually dying in a game means you’ve done something quite wrong. Maybe it could be made more clear that that’s how this game works, that you will die and start over a lot, so that people don’t get as frustrated and stop because they think they’re missing something vital.
(I also want a way to play multiple games without sacrificing the invictus token so you can save manually! And I’m a bit ambivalent about the effect on the chart when you die and start a new captain who is ostensibly connected to the old one. Unless you take the option to keep the chart, the map resets, which seems weird to me. I assume it’s because if it stays the same people can just remember where everything is and keeping the chart doesn’t necessarily have the same advantage, but when you’re technically playing the same game file having all the locations move around is pretty bizarre, logically speaking.)
The islands moving around is actually an intended story element - you’ll see it mentioned here and there. Long story short, the Neath is a weird place.
Actually, the fact that the islands stay in the same place for one captain is what’s weird! Going off the in-game stuff, places in the Unterzee are supposed to be shuffling around ALL THE TIME, and I guess it’s just convenience/magic cartography that keeps things together within a single captain’s tenure.
I definitely agree that an intro/helpscreen/tutorial ought to emphasize to new players that YES you will die and YES you should fling yourself into the unknown if you want to get anything done. Players don’t seem to have this kind of problem with other roguelikelikelikeliklsidfjalwg games, but I guess something about the context or atmosphere of SS catches them off guard and leads them to have clashing expectations?
edited by Fretling on 1/14/2015
So, after the most recent update, I filled my three Mirror-Catch Boxes on Aestival at the cost of two Wounds, which is a high cost, yes, but understandable with the Echoes you can make and the fact that you’re a Neather playing with real live sunlight.
I then proceeded on my merry way, bound for all ports south before heading back to London. Not FIVE MINUTES of zailing and all three Mirror-Catch Boxes have been opened by curious zailors, the sunlight lost, and me faced with the decision to lose a crewmember or gain Terror. Am I just INCREDIBLY unlucky, or is everyone’s crew a bunch of undisciplined thieves and miscreants? I appreciate the inclusion of the possibility of crew theft (as it is more realistic) but losing 1500 Echoes worth of cargo AFTER gaining Wounds to acquire it AND either losing crew or gaining Terror seems like an awfully harsh turn of events for this sun-runner…
Granted, I’ve only transported sunlight twice and only one of those times was from Aestival, but I’ve never run into any of those calamities. I had no idea that collecting sunlight at Aestival could inflict wounds, or that your zailors could open the boxes, huh. What if you had a secure storage? Would that prevent those events from happening?
edit: Is it Aestival only, or does getting it from the Surface carry the same risk? And is it one wound at a time or two at once? Do you have a chance at not losing a zailor if the at-zee event with the prying zailor comes to pass?
edited by Fretling on 1/15/2015
Wounds from Aestival’s sunlight and zailors stealing Mirrorcatch Boxes are something that were just added today.
Having a Secure Storage helps reduce the frequency of mirrorsnatching, but doesn’t totally eliminate it. You can choose to be lenient or to jam the miscreant in the brig, but being lenient upsets the crew.
Filling a box on Aestival has a 50/50 chance of giving you one Wound… although the Surface is totally safe, somehow.
[quote=Spacemarine9]Wounds from Aestival’s sunlight and zailors stealing Mirrorcatch Boxes are something that were just added today.
Having a Secure Storage helps reduce the frequency of mirrorsnatching, but doesn’t totally eliminate it. You can choose to be lenient or to jam the miscreant in the brig, but being lenient upsets the crew.
Filling a box on Aestival has a 50/50 chance of giving you one Wound… although the Surface is totally safe, somehow.[/quote]
These changes are certainly welcome, as they make the Secure Storage useful in the endgame and induce some risk in just boating between Aestival and the Isle of Cats. Mind you, I never did that anyways because I kept getting transported to Irem whenever I tried to make such a run. And I see we now have a possible source of "prisoners" to hand over to the Isle of Cats or Wisdom - most interesting. I had wanted to make my next character a total bastard and so wished to wait until such "morally dubious" mechanics were smoothed and polished.
edited by Owen Wulf on 1/15/2015
Oooooh, the promised update did hit then!
Options are always good and having a chance at safety near London makes sense, people have been asking for this and it seems reasonable.
Someone who hasn’t accidentally locked themselves out of that particular port test go test if it’s A Dream of Smoke-related after all!
Oh shit, so it’s not just Mirrorboxes at risk… nagdabbit.
Absolutely sensical!
edit: Also, does the quote about Stone means that Stone’s Curse is a thing now? That is, I was under the impression that only Salt’s Curse was in the game so far; maybe I was wrong and you already could be cursed by any of the gods.
edited by Fretling on 1/15/2015
As I said, I appreciate the possibility of theft by crew. It’s a nice touch of realism for cargo-hauling. It’s just the startling regularity that shocked me. Literally made it one port over from Aestival before all three Mirrorcatch Boxes were empty. Are these zailors doing nothing save rooting around in the hold for items to pilfer?! Does my ship LOOK like a thrift store?! Get back to work, you lazy buggers!
Is a Hearts check involved at all? Because that would make total sense. If your crew loves you and you’re a total inspiration to them, there ought to be less chance of them deciding to turn thief on ya. Especially if "tempting cargo" means "expensive cargo" – might or might not be a different situation if it means "stuff that zailors might want to personally use on a long zee-voyage". But then again that’s probably where the inspiration and so forth come in.
edit: Also, is it just me, or does the new phrasing on the secure storage/secure compartment seem to suggest that other ways of increasing the "Cargo Security" stat may be added in the future? Or is it like the ratsender, where "pneumatic delivery" seems more like a basic binary check for whether you can or can’t sling rattus faber assistants around for repairs?
edited by Fretling on 1/15/2015
[color=#0066ff]We came to the same conclusion, and gave the Steam store page a spring clean when we updated to Diamond. Frequent death should be less of a surprise to the new player now. :)[/color]
[color=#0066ff]We came to the same conclusion, and gave the Steam store page a spring clean when we updated to Diamond. Frequent death should be less of a surprise to the new player now. :)[/color][/quote]
My only problem with the game is that the "you will experience frequent death" part quickly becomes "you will very rarely if ever die" once you are no longer ignorant of the game mechanics.
So, rebellious crew…
Should there not be an option to punish them in there, as there was of old?
“Men should be governed, not all the time and not often wisely I grant you, but they should be governed, anything less and your ship is not yours, but theirs.”
First departure from port following new update, lost all mirrorboxes within a minute, after getting a new one, lost that within a minute as well, when crew imprisoned, I lost crew in a fight that reduced me to just below full speed capacity and with hearts 90, released the other one to try and make up the speed deficit, only to find in addition to getting salts curse for letting him loose (what’s that about, why is salt getting involved because I let him out), I also lose another crew member when he goes nutty…
Ah the Admiral gives favours for VI now! I can finally stop gambling with Dawn’s rise! Much appreciated, Failbetter. :)
I concur with RHJ. This is a game about suffering at sea, in a setting that pays homage to a time when wooden ships and iron men plied the oceans of the real world for king, country and exploitation. If I can murder and devour my crewmen regardless of race or gender, why can’t I give them a good ol’ flogging for transgressions as well?
Humble suggestion: Could we request our Surgeons (Haunted Doctor, Campaigner, Lilac, Scarred, even Mr. Plausible) to help patch our captains up with a hearts/iron test when they get a wound instead of only being given the random option of sleeping it off while out at Zee? Perhaps success chance/stat check difficulty could even be decided by who’s doing the treatment?
edited by Bardigan on 1/15/2015
He used to give a favour for VI, every now and then, even before the last update. Did you hand him multiple VI or are you basing this off a 1 time observation?
Oh believe me, I checked. He used to not give any favours even if you succeeded in raising London’s supremacy level. Only recently did I receive 1 favour for every VI that successfully raised supremacy on him, which is why I tended to give them to the Diplomat and hope it didn’t raise the Machine’s supremacy. I’ve asked the devs twice during this period if the lack of favours was a bug or an oversight, and Admiral Brighteyes only began giving favours off somewhere in the last two patches.
edited by Bardigan on 1/15/2015
I’ve given the Admiral multiple VI before and noted the oddness of him not giving any Favour when the Diplomat did.
Also, was there really any risk of raising Dawn Machine power by turning it in to the Diplomat? On my end, it only raises S:tDM up to 2 and then caps with a little message that it’s over 1 and thus doesn’t change, so I’ve just been sending it all thataways these days – though I’ve got to lose me some Favour and check out how much the Admiral gives now.
edited by Fretling on 1/15/2015
I’m glad for the additional officer stories - I did wonder if we could get a clarification on the random bouts of dialog between the officers themselves while zailing: is that still happening? do you plan to expand on it?