Just spent some time on Jameson 0.4. It’s pretty slick – I like the new atmosphere stuff. The one thing that stops me playing for more than half an hour or so is the sparseness of it. I appreciate a challenge, but the grinding aspect is a little too severe – you trek all the way out over endless space to unlock another Oxy station, then use your battered craft to fend off the boss from the nearby Scrap station, then you have to trek light-years out into space with just a booster and a laser to try and find some other ships to scavenge components and scrap off’ve.
I think what I’m missing is the sense of population found in Captain Forever / Successor – I’m finding that one tank full of oxy is usually only just enough to see you through one or two encounters, since they’re so far apart.
I guess there’s two ways to combat this – one would be higher population. The other would be a ‘lanes’ system, like that found in ‘Freelancer’, that fire you around the void when contacted over TelNet. Nodes in the lanes could even be unlocked like the stations are, only with smaller bosses (maybe ones that drop rather than destroy their parts when killed?).
Anyway, I trust you’ll get the balance right once all the features are in place, so I’m not too worried about the final product. I thought I’d just let you know how I’m liking it :)
Sponge
]]>What would I change? Exper from the first post has my favorite suggestion for a fundamental game play change:
“6)Another weapon, a drill bit. Whenever it’s in contact with a ship, it deals constant damage. Kind of the like the ramming spike, except you have to be touching the ship.”
Ramming spikes are practically unusable due to low damage, high weight and time-consuming ramming approaches that have a dismal chance of success. Drills could lead to a new paradigm in ship designs that are on par with lasers.
Also, add the ability to save & quit at anytime as well as port saves between browsers. Quicker/efficient telnet interface navigation will be greatly appreciated. The current time delays and number of keystrokes for routine actions kill the game flow and add essentially nothing to the experience. I would suggest having a single key press for frequently used actions. How about this setup?
#1 key) same as current
2) execute main function of station that ship is within radius of -> single keystroke to fill O2
3) map from closest NAV station
and wishful thinking…
4) unified macro level map like: http://hollowpointpuffin.com/toys/CJM/mapgenerator.php?mapID=3
I would keep the everything else in the existing menu system.
Sorry for the novel length comment. This game is just so good that I get fired up about it.
]]>SELECT HOST TO CONNECT
KEY- STATION – SIGANL
F9 – nav.localhost – ∞
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I like that idea
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