Ewan C.
Posts: 675
6/5/2014
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Looks as though at some stage I am going to have to start a new game to remove the shipyard bug; Ah well. Later in the summer when I have time, I suspect, to properly mourn the 30K Echoes thus lost..
..but in more useful feedback, the change to ports so that all possible event options are shown but most are greyed out really really (REALLY) clutters things detrimentally. If it's at all possible to revert, that would be welcome. [I suspect that it may also allow for some unwelcome ability to predict which of several 'explore' options one will get without actually taking it?]
More to come, but that was a big thing that hit right up front.
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AlexWattsEsq
Posts: 46
6/5/2014
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Really quick feedback:
Amethyst is BRUTAL. I have a quick half hour muck about and...
Life one: Didn't reach Venderbight. Blown up pirates half way there.
Life Two: Misjudged terror and food. Went mad and starved.
Life Three: Strange swirling black thing smashed me into a light ship until my ship was little more than canvas and match wood.
I had time to note that Venderbight had two 'Explore Venderbight' options. Also learned how to fight giant glowing crabs by having A LOT of experience in a short time. Wow. Bring on the weekend.
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Spacemarine9
Posts: 2234
6/5/2014
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I don't! Shuttling a new character with 110 Pages to Port Cecil is an incredible way to get far too many Secrets, but that only works on new characters and not on the established bloke with a frigate, a shiny gun and a full complement of officers. Reliably getting Secrets is kinda hard, I think; visiting new areas tends to give a lot (Polythreme alone is like 150 fragments), but there's only so much to find out there.
--
my rats will blot out the sun
Ratgames
FL lore/mechanics questions and answers
#FallenLondon IRC (irc.synirc.net) Channel! Click to join via Mibbit.
#SunlessSea IRC channel! Like the above, but zee-ier.
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CameoAppearance
Posts: 146
6/6/2014
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My reaction to the update was basically NEW PLACES NEW PLACES I'M GONNA GO TO ALL THE NEW PLACES. I was slightly disappointed by them having either 0 or 1 playable storylets, but I was still delighted to explore all over the Cumaean Canal, Polythreme, Void's Approach, and the Snares. (And get attacked by five or six bound-sharks whenever I go to the Snares.) And, hey, Codex got a description and a picture! I really want to explore Codex properly when it's ready to go, it looks interesting.
I like the new combat system, although the rearrangement of the controls was a bit jarring the first time something attacked me.
WalnutHulls wrote:
I'm not at all fond of the new port circle. I liked the more subtle one that looked like shallow harbor swells. This one takes me out of game because it looks so out of place.
I'm not a big fan of the port circle either. I liked the glowy spot that it was before. (Which was overlookable in some finished ports and only really obvious in placeholder ports out in the unfinished parts of the zee, and that seems like suboptimal design, but... I dunno. I liked it. Maybe if it were up to me I'd just make it glowier.)
I hadn't noticed the reduced potency of feeding Secrets to your officers, I thought I was just getting a bunch of bad rolls from the RNG. That's a change I don't like; it's hard enough to get Secrets with which to upgrade your stats in the first place, so having them give less stats when you get ahold of one is not a thing that I'm enthusiastic about. This might even out when the map's bigger, as more places to chart and get secrets from become available, but right now I don't like it.
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Dr Cameo “Scary Teeth” Thurlow, that toothy androgyne with the wickedly sharp curly quotes
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
6/6/2014
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Woohoo, lots of feedback! Brilliant, chapoids, chapesses and chaplings. Many points:
- Secrets cost / effect. "This might even out when the map's bigger, as more places to chart and get secrets from become available, " <-- this. When we started the beta, you folks had access only to home waters and the near reaches, and we had to pack in the rewards accordingly. We're now retuning for a much larger map and a longer game. Take a look at the map on http://sunlessseagame.com/progress a moment, and savour how much you have to come... we're just about at a third of the world now (and it's not *impossible* we'll expand the map further east). Under the old regime, you'd be maxed out long before you'd found Irem or the Sea of Wings. So, yes, this feels like a pinch now - sorry about that. There are more labels and more reward opportunities with every update - you'll see things ease out a bit.
- Fuel usage - this will remain rapid, especially with bigger engines. It's taken over from Hunger as a the primary restriction on exploring the map, because the aggressive Hunger rate in the first version just felt daft. Finding refuelling points is a significant concern, intentionally, and underscores the rhythm of returning to London - the 'find your way home' beat. Bigger ships can carry more fuel, but of course to move at the same speed may also need more powerful engines which use up more fuel - it's a tradeoff. We'll keep balancing the numbers.
[sidebar: the Age of Steam came, of course, well after the European Age of Discovery. This made researching the historical context of the game surprisingly difficult, because nearly all the significant exploration history happened with tech that was two centuries older than what we're playing with. No sane person would choose a steamship to explore an unknown ocean, because fuel is so much harder to find in unknown territory than is food and water... unless, of course, they're navigating an ocean that has no wind.]
- Fuel efficiency does work, but it's actually a percentage, so 10% fuel usage isn't visible until you're getting through a lot of fuel. Because later on we'll have more items that stack, and 80% fuel usage reduction would wreck the game economy, it has to be small. I'm looking at ways to make this clearer on mouseover.
- Flensing cannons should damage crew, but a quirk in the randomisation might mean the effect is haphazard. It's on my list to look at.
- We do have a bit of a difficulty spike on some enemies. You can run away from them now! but I'll be tuning this in the near future, and it'll show up in story updates.
- Port circle. This was decidedly an experiment, and the response is pretty clear (we weren't sure about it in-house either). We'll be changing it.
- Land battles aren't anything you can encounter on the map - they show up in some story choices.
- the all-visible-branches is confirmed as an issue that's fixed by checking for new content. It sounds like the update hasn't run cleanly for some folks - if you delete everything in the /entities folder in your AppData/LocalLow/FailbetterGames/SunlessSea folder (or, um, whatever the weird equivalent is with Macs) and run another update, that should fix it.
- "having enemies 'use' their first skill immediately on hitting 'Resume' for the first time puts the player at a small time disadvantage" - I'm guessing you haven't noticed you can issue orders while paused. :-) (If you can't, it's a bug, tell us!)
- New islands are still quite spartan! More content is coming, oh yes. Pigmote Isle should have content - I'll take a look at why it's not showing up later today.
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MEngland
Posts: 18
6/9/2014
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Aesc wrote:
Sadly I still haven't been able to enjoy the latest content update properly. The steering bug where the ship locks up into neutral and refuses to restart OR refuses to steer whilst chugging along at 1 speed has crippled me :/
If this is happening to you between ports, you might be accidentally hitting the R button -- just hit it again to sail on your way.
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
6/9/2014
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The suggestions in (b) are, in fact, on our list, although there's enough of an art burden that it'll be a while before we modify the map.
We'll be releasing a fix for the all-options issue any moment - hold tight, all.
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CameoAppearance
Posts: 146
6/10/2014
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lady ciel wrote:
That pushing sideways thing is horrible. I just tried to undock form Port Cecil, there was a beastie just outside and, I think, because I wasn't out of the docking circle I couldn't fight it and it just kept banging me into the dock. As I was in dock I saved the game and sailed back to London as quickly as possible with a heavily damaged hull.
Edit to add - For some reason saving clears any beasties off the screen. So, in future, if there is anything hanging around I'll just save and reload.
edited by reveurciel on 6/7/2014
I've been shoved into the scenery by monsters a couple times myself. Once there was a close scrape as I was trying to leave Port Cecil whilst being mobbed by three sharks and a lorn-fluke; they bashed me into the dock a bit but I managed to get back into docking proximity, reset my position by docking and undocking, and zipped away around the far side of the dock where they couldn't follow me. (In single file the sharks would have fit through the gap, but they were getting in each other's way too much. And the lorn-fluke was too big.)
IHNIWTR wrote:
another thought: the reduced effectiveness of the officers is a real problem. An example from the previous version - to get the Scarred Sister you had to succeed on two rolls, Mirrors and Hearts. If you had the right officers, the right specialization, and had spent long enough gathering and using secrets properly, you had at least slightly above average odds at actually acquiring her; meaning, you put in the effort, you increase you chances at a reward. The nerfing of the officers means that now the Sister is all but unavailable, requiring if not several playthroughs then a humongous increase in exploration and capital acquisition for content that's literally right outside the starting area, and which (for first time players) manifests itself without previous warning or stating of future requirements.
I feel like a slight buffing of the officers might help the matter: instead of having them give 1 point in their selected stats, maybe 2-3, instead of the 5 they gave before Amethyst.
edited by IHNIWTR on 6/10/2014
Maybe instead of twiddling the officer stat gains up and down to keep pace with how much of the map you can map (and thus gain secrets from), it'd be a better idea to lower the difficulty of gaining the Scarred Sister. After all, Hunter's Keep being right next to London does pretty much make its content early-game content, so if ninety-something percent of noob captains can't get the Scarred Sister then she effectively just becomes an Easter egg for players who either got lucky, ignored Hunter's Keep at first and came back much later, or found a way to get their Mirrors and Hearts anomalously high in the early game. Or maybe increase the number of times you can visit Hunter's Keep before everything goes to hell over there; if it's preferable to keep both the stat gains and the difficulty of the challenge the same, that would make it less likely for players to exhaust the Hunter's Keep storyline early on and miss out on the Scarred Sister forever because they weren't tough enough at the time.
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Dr Cameo “Scary Teeth” Thurlow, that toothy androgyne with the wickedly sharp curly quotes
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Deskairn
Posts: 8
6/11/2014
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I know how to work around the inability to re-enter the Neath after going to the surface. Once you're stuck on that Cumaean Canal dialogue, switch over to the tutorial box, then tell it to let you explore. This will close the Gazeteer and make it possible to continue.
Bit of an ugly workaround, but hey, this is not a finished product.
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Tara Dresbach
Posts: 59
6/11/2014
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Still having the "see everything" bug on my old saves. I've been able to integrate it onto Steam without trouble.
There's also a new quality in London that I'm not sure how to use.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Tara~Dresbach
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Hierophant
Posts: 782
6/12/2014
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[spoiler]crypto-Marxist twaddle. [/spoiler]
As long as he prefers the rest of us as Your Lordship or similar, I think we'll do splendidly. 
edited by levineg85 on 6/12/2014
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Head Writer
Zero Summer
zerosummer@outlook.com
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CameoAppearance
Posts: 146
6/13/2014
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I've updated to 0.1.4.1274 and I'm still experiencing the all-choices-visible bug. Is this happening to anyone else? (I updated my game with the Check for New Content feature before I installed the new build, if it makes a difference...)
On a completely unrelated note, I'd like it if there was some way to get a reminder of where the Admiral's asked you to retrieve Strategic Information from, because I have a commission but I have no recollection of where he wanted me to go and there appears to be no way to look it up. I'll just have to keep going to different ports until I find the right one, I guess.
EDIT: I found it - it's at the bottom of the Journal page. I tried scrolling with my scroll wheel, and it worked, even though that page doesn't display a scrollbar. It probably should have a scrollbar.
edited by CameoAppearance on 6/13/2014
--
Dr Cameo “Scary Teeth” Thurlow, that toothy androgyne with the wickedly sharp curly quotes
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
6/16/2014
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I'd have thought they'd go ashore to dine! I mean, I'm not suggesting they have a table booked at The Bridge Without, but I'd have suspected they'd find the food and company of the docks more congenial than sitting in the hold and going through my hardtack.
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
6/16/2014
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An earlier version of the design needed you to pay zailors as well as feeding them; had them deserting individually if unpaid; had different experience levels for crew with different levels of pay; had promotion to officer status; had food costs reduced when you were in shore but an increased chance of desertion; ...
You can probably see why we ended up abstracting crew costs into a simple number with a basic ongoing Supplies drain. :-)
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
6/17/2014
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Today, we're going Early Access! The GOLD version will be out as soon as Humble Bundle set it live. We'll be sending a KS email out to all backers - anyone who backed at £10 or above will have access straight away through the Humble Bundle Key Resender. The Explorer's Beta build is now offline - the SS build will come online shortly.
Thank you so much for your help, feedback, patience, enthusiasm, good humour, terrifying attention to detail, opinions, informed opinions, intuition, suggestions, passion, reason, empathy and above all your extraordinary charm and good looks. They have all been monstrously useful and have shaped Sunless Sea into the game it's become.
More when the game's live! I'll put up release notes in a moment, though.
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