Is the latest change to port report rewards seen as a positive thing[color=rgb(84, 84, 84)]?[/color][color=rgb(37, 37, 37)] [/color]Because at the moment, fuel is hardly ever scarce once you start bringing them in. Admittedly my games currently tend towards no-lights/high-terror, largely due to a lack of terror critical events.
Mildly related, the admiralty page needs serious love. It’s currently a nightmare navigating through it and I have to double/triple check to make sure I handed in all my reports.
Also mildly related, I really like the focus that has been put on fuel/food/crew and away from echoes. I never got to play the game while the tomb-colonist run was viable, but it feels like the starting game should be more about Faustian deals and all-or-nothing attempts rather than extracting drudgery from the sunless sea. edited by Mortmaer on 1/26/2015 edited by Mortmaer on 1/26/2015
I like it. It frees me up to do exploring early game rather than making echo runs. The tomb-colonist run was horrible, and was rarely worth it. There are plenty of Faustian deals, heh. You simply have to know where to look.
Agreed about the Admiralty page. Stuff gets randomized, but somehow the Submit Port Reports button always ends up just off the first scroll, yet if you click the scrollbar, it’s just above the second.
edit: Also, there are still people complaining about running out of fuel, although I’m not sure if they’re actually new players experiencing the current build or if they’re people who started games some time ago and are unhappy about it. edited by Fretling on 1/26/2015
I’ve been there. At the beginning, when you’re trying desperately to keep terror down to 0, and you’re often hugging the western coast with lights on all the time, it can seem like you’re consuming vast amount of fuel for nothing.
The first major obstacle is adjusting your expectations with how best to get on with things, especially when to turn the lights off. The second is learning about various fuel shops away from Fallen London. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the starting game about how to approach it, since it’s rather freeform right now.
edit: Also, people might not realize you can turn supplies into fuel, people into supplies, and terror into more terror. I went ahead and died several times to learn all that. edited by Mortmaer on 1/26/2015
I figured about “people into supplies” from the eat-your-crew tagline – though I don’t think I’ve actually ever done that – but yeah, it took me a captain or two to learn about supplies as fuel. Which is fine and well, really; perhaps the RPG-ness creates expectations for less death?
[quote=Mortmaer][quote=Fretling]
Also, there are still people complaining about running out of fuel, although I’m not sure if they’re actually new players experiencing the current build or if they’re people who started games some time ago and are unhappy about it.
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I’ve been there. At the beginning, when you’re trying desperately to keep terror down to 0, and you’re often hugging the western coast with lights on all the time, it can seem like you’re consuming vast amount of fuel for nothing.
The first major obstacle is adjusting your expectations with how best to get on with things, especially when to turn the lights off. The second is learning about various fuel shops away from Fallen London. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the starting game about how to approach it, since it’s rather freeform right now.
edit: Also, people might not realize you can turn supplies into fuel, people into supplies, and terror into more terror. I went ahead and died several times to learn all that. edited by Mortmaer on 1/26/2015[/quote]
Terror is a complete non-issue. None of the truly problematic events happen until terror 50+, so having 20 or 30 or so terror is fine.
You do get some small events from 25 terror on up, but all of the ones that I personally have run across included at least one beneficial or neutral option. If you’re not deliberately seeking to increase your terror, however, keeping it as low as possible where convenient is a good thing; keeping a firm rein on it prevents it from slowly building up like tooth-plaque :P edited by Fretling on 1/26/2015
Once upon an alpha build, terror was nearly unavoidable during any real exploration. It was the video game realization of a grim, inexorable toll exacted by reality upon sentient consciousness. Which was…interesting? At that point it would’ve been overly harsh to hit you with random horrors at terror 25, considering you could reach that after a quick walk around the block.
Now terror has evolved into a risk for running with the lights off, which makes a whole lot more sense and meshes well with the improvements to combat. Problem is, people have figured out it’s no big deal until it hits 50; I’d go as far as to say it’s meaningless at values below 100. Terror could probably use some more teeth again.
I agree completely.There is little to fear about terror, and that’s terrible.
That’s part of the reason for my issues with fuel. Running the lights doubles your consumption,but it’s rarely necessary, especially when your apparently naive captain starts off with no terror and you know the right events. And this impacts other areas, including how nonchalant I’ve become about light-negating fog, the initial blitz exploration and repeatable terror events.
One of the most disappointing moments of SS is when you realize terror is so… impotent. It doesn’t do anything until fifty, and London stops it from getting any higher. Especially as London becomes more effective with a sweetheart and child. And nightmares are a complete joke. Just resting in lodgings will fix them the first time they show up, and by the time they show up the echoes aren’t that much of an issue.
Yes. Nightmares should definitely start appearing earlier. I would say to let nightmares start appearing at 30+, but only allow the really bad events (losing a zailor, mutiny, etc) happen at 50+
Er–most people seem to be controlling terror pretty well, then - do you hunt a lot while away from London? I’ve had some captains where the event for reducing nightmares just doesn’t show, and they’ve frequently had to confront the nightmare and gain 50 terror all in one go because their Nightmare’s strength has gotten to 11 or something. I suppose returning to London often helps, but when circumnavigating the map it’s rather hard to control. (I take steps to avoid mutinies generally, soI guess I don’t view terror events as a perk?)[li]
I almost never hunt. For long circumnavigations, stopping by Visage, Mangrove College, and/or a lightship (in addition to eventually getting back to London) can account for up to 25 terror. Khan’s Heart and Mutton Island also have random events that reduce terror, without – IIRC – any random events that force you to gain terror.
I was never happy with the idea that the terror mechanic could be the end of the game, it seemed to me to be something along the lines of the SAN mechanism in Call of Cthulhu, something that tells you that you’re scared rather than giving you something actually scary, the way I see it working is to have things that are actually concerning to captains, and as much as I didn’t like them the creatures attacks that increased terror were infinitely more worrying to me than any amount of physical damage, the idea that your crew might suddenly rebel or you might fall prey to the drownies was far more concerning, and I’d like to see the game get back to that level. I went to frostbound recently and came out with Terror 95 that I managed to get back down by hunting immediately, which I understand the rationale for, but still think that Terror is presently a superflous mechanism.