So, I’d taken a bit of a break halfway through Steel, while the Steeliness was in flux and it was starting to feel like I was retreading a lot of old ground.
And then I came back! And everything made me super happy.
Combat feels really good now! Especially against other ships; the relative agility of the enemies and the available vessels really make it just…feel really good.
Fighting zee-monsters still feels a little weird, if only because of the continued emphasis on backpedaling. I wonder if it might make sense to do the following:
Sharply decrease their turn radius while charging? So it’s more potentially possible to dodge them at close-ish range.
Increase their likelyhood of submerging rather than charging when at long range, to encourage hunters to get close.
I do think that damage received seems a touch low, especially with the large HP totals of the non-starting ships. It feels weird to have shots from a Khanate war-vessel just kind of harmlessly plink off, you know?
But it definitely seems to be in the right ballpark.
I’m using the Corvette for the first time! Because of the slot changes, which seem like a pretty good idea - it really does make the warships seem more distinct from the cargo vessels. And having the low cargo capacity makes fighting things and looting for supplies seem like a necessity, which…feels like a playstyle that’s challenging and distinct from the more "carry a lot of supplies and avoid combat" style of the cargo vessels.
Which is cool!
Content-wise it’s really nice to see Customs finally making an appearance! It seemed a bit weird to be running all that contraband around without them having a say. Also, the Fathomking! And other stuff I haven’t even seen yet!
Things I find myself wanting:
Now that the basics of combat seem more settled, I find myself wishing I had more options of Things To Put On My Ship.
Both mundane junk like armor plates and expanded cargo, and weird inadvisable stuff like weird devilish weaponry and offensively-repurposed Ratsenders (or Guinea-senders?) that let you lob tiny marines onto enemy vessels to do crew damage over time. Or attachments that let you render zee-monsters down into fuel. Or complex devices involving mirrors that let you teleport short distances at a terrible cost.
(Notably, the fact that you pick up far less Terror from traveling now means that abilities with a Terror cost now feel like they’d be a lot more viable! A also super like how Terror has ended up, by the way - not just that it’s slower, but because the decay from being in a lit area is much slower, it’s now a lot less "all or nothing.")
A warehouse in London to store stuff! Especially with the addition of Customs, since I’ve found myself with a crate full of romantic literature that I’m not sure what to do with and that I have to keep sneaking in and out. And especially since the combat changes encourage the use of ships with smaller holds.
I loaded up my game after the Carnellian update to be greeted by…
"Your ship has been lost beneath the waves."
Rest in peace, Captain Avery Toomes, veteran of every update until now. No one knows why you drowned while sitting in Port in the Khanate, but you will not be forgotten.
The new changes to tomb colonists cause some… problems in Savior’s Rocks. Namely I can’t even try to deliver tomb colonists to them because I can never get any.
So uh, I think maybe the spawn mechanics could use a little bit of work.
Under the old combat system, I would have thought ‘Hey, lots of free lunch.’ Now though that’s a fairly significant threat just hanging out in the same general area where stuff will respawn.
Curious why the Denouncement does less base damage than a gun less than half its price, by several points of damage. Is that meant to compensate for the Cannon stat?
I love the change to Lifebergs rewards - very useful and I am so pleased that they are not bugged anymore. Though one of the options was more generous than I expected and I had to dump a load of stuff overboard :)
Also loving the new shops, I must say that the items available at Khan’s Shadow and Apis Meet are very useful. There are also some intriguing items listed to sell in other places and I look forward to finding out where to get them.
A note about the Lifebergs. I’ve regularly gotten a storylet option that has nothing you can pick, forcing you to restart the game since you can’t close the Gazetteer in the middle of a storylet.
I think the update a couple of days ago fixed that bug. At least I haven’t had a problem since and they are correctly identified as Lifebergs not Tyrant Moths as they were when I was getting the blank storylet.
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[color=#0066ff]They’re an utterly charming and very small team; I imagine them all having Thanksgiving dinner together around a little table. But yes, we suspect the same reason for the slightly-longer-than-usual delay in the Humble update. :)[/color]
I’ve actually been really super happy with the game since I started playing again in Carnelian, which I started writing a thing about a couple of times but never quite got around to.
A minor request, though: now that the Journal page has been reorganized, would it make sense to have an additional category for “Objective” qualities like An Admiralty Commission or Collecting Cargo for the Cheery Man, who’s status gives you information about something you’re supposed to do?
Since they’re the thing I find myself most having to double-check, and hunting them out from the grid is often a little onerous.
Thank you, Nocculi. This is excellent. I too search for that kind of thing, and have been killed by the Bruiser due to simply being unable to find where I’m supposed to bring the thousand echoes to!