Game Balance Thread

Sunless Skies
21

I think the ‘recurring condition’ point is covered in the ‘Known Issues’:

You can reduce Condition at Magdalene’s more than once but the quality requirements are currently hidden. To reduce Condition again you’ll need the following qualities:

  • Condition 2 (minimum)[/li][li]Moment of Inspiration 1 (number required increases each time you reduce Condition)[/li][li]Unlicencsed Chart 1 (number required increases each time you reduce Condition)
22

Ah, I missed that bit. Where do you get Moments of Inspiration, though?

23

You get one moment of inspiration the first time you visit Titania. Maybe more with the upgraded buildings, I haven’t seen them all yet.

24

Where do you get Unlicensed Charts?

25

You can pick up two unlicensed charts if you choose to help ferry a certain someone away from Port Carillon

26

Three hours and an half into the game, more like randomly exploring and testing features than going deep in the storylines they’ve released: here’s my penny on this EA.
There’s a minor thing to be fixed, a few complaints and some lore questions that are yet spinning in my mind; in order:

  1. From the second time that you open the chart, the sound effect will be extremely loud; I consider this a bug since the first time opening the chart every playthrough it’s way more quiet.
  2. The font for the major text is, personally, really clunky and I hope it will get fixed later; also, I can’t help but feel the storyline windows to be empty, maybe 'cause they’re way larger than the Sea ones.
  3. The economy is, as Nanako said, to the point of being unsustainable on a long run: I remember previous Kickstarter articles about a storage system for each port to better manage commerce and avoid the “you can’t play fast till you buy the Cargo Ship” situation - which everyone has an habit for but seems rather silly to me - that when implemented will probably make things more straightforward.
    3bis. The starting ship cargo is so small, compared to the Sea one, it’s actually difficult to do more than a thing at once; considering the actual game state the thing might seem way worse to me than it will be in the complete version, since it forces boredom when you need to travel to distant ports without a chance to stop along the road for more missions.
  4. On the lore side: since I’m intuitively thinking of the four circular regions as Judgement’s (or previously Judgement’s) domains, where is the Reach Judgement? Is New Winchester able to emanate some kind of power or the Judgement power in Skies is significantly less than what Sea and FL let us guess?
  5. Do you think there will be ports or any content outside of the main regions, since we can safely go out of them and brave the unknown space? It would be neat, maybe in a future DLC akin to Zubmarine.
27

The reach judgement is dead, and the queen has an artificial sun working for her.

28

Damn me, months of inactivity have made me lose the touch on things.
Do you know where I can find about this topic and others as such? I need to get back in the Failbetter loretrap.

29

Damn me, months of inactivity have made me lose the touch on things.
Do you know where I can find about this topic and others as such? I need to get back in the Failbetter loretrap.[/quote]

I’m afraid not, but there was a passenger I picked up in New Winchester that went through the basics.

30

the only real problem I have with the game atm is the economy and cargo capacity. Fuel doesnt feel like it lasts much longer than in SSea, but the price is doubled, the distances to travel are a lot longer, and you can carry 1/4 of the stuff before.

This leads to the game losing some of the epic sense of exploration, in favour of being very timid, and having to game the system (ie the quest that gives 800) in order to actually do anything. It just seems incredibly punishing to new players, even compared to SSea.

31

well since its confirmed that the lesser options at magdalene’s aren’t meant to reduce condition, i think they need to be buffed.

Right now they each use ~75g worth of materials to reduce terror by 25. And its not just the value, but the fact that these are situational, non-purchaseable items that take some additional effort to get.

This does not seem reasonable, given that you can reduce 5 terror for 5g in lustrum, and reduce all your terror for free simply by docking at New Winchester

So what should be done? I’d say two things:

  1. First of all, at the very least, these options should remove ALL terror. Because terror removal is cheap in this game. But it’s so cheap that even that isn’t worth much, so

  2. For some period after - maybe one realtime hour, or some quantity of ingame days, you should get a buff that reduces terror gained from all sources. Say, by 50%. So that visiting magdalene’s temporarily inures your crew against future horrors, and can be something you do before going into a potentially scary situation

32

[quote=FeralJim]You can pick up two unlicensed charts if you choose to help ferry a certain someone away from Port Carillon[/quote]I chose this option an definitely DIDN’T get any unlicensed charts. What do I do with the devilish passenger? How do I get unlicensed charts?

33

The rewards on the research quest at L&S Nature reserve seem unreasonably low. I got 15 gold for bringing back pus from hybras, a location on the other side of the map. This payment doesn’t even begin to cover the cost incurred in retrieving it.

30g for bee wings, but its mostly the same deal

34

since hull repair costs were recently reduced (massively), the hull repair options from defeated trains should be looked at again too. They don’t give much value considering the current repair cost