Microsoft Starfield - Information Thread, update (09/16): "Shattered Space" expansion deep-dive video

[Ghost_MH]

22 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Im pretty boring with my mods

 

FOV

DLSS

Neutral LUTs

120fps ship reticle and hud

Achievement Enabler

improved HUD to move location and XP notifications to the bottom of the screen

Im probably not going to get into the more creative mods or game changing mods (like removing mass limits) until later play throughs. 

 

Actual gameplay changing mods I try to start away from...with the exception of merchant credits. I found myself sitting on benches for 48 hours, so those mods just save me the hassle without changing much for me.

 

Right now, I have...

 

Clean Record Sight Lenses

Compact Mission

Compact Builder

Enhanced textures

Enhanced blood

Hide spacesuit in breathable areas, again, so save me from having to remove it just to not look like a donkey

Increased space loot distances

Merchant credit upgrade

More populous space

NASA poster replacer

Realistic water

Responsive grabbing

Smooth ship reticle

StarUI

Stop staring at me, makes NPCs only look your way when you get closer to them

Clean face Lin, because our ship has a shower dammit

Wild girl, because my daughter demanded I find pink clothes for my PC and I couldn't find anything in the game that was pink

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

 

From the above interview:

 

Todd Howard says that Starfield's ship AI sucks on purpose so players can actually hit stuff: 'You have to make the AI really stupid' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Not everyone can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

 

Quote

 

Todd Howard agrees that it was a bit of a pain to get right, as he said in a recent interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. "[Space combat] was way harder than we thought … We see a lot of space games where you're gonna have like, derelict ships or other things to fly around, just to get a sense of motion, so the smallest thing like 'what does the dust in space look like?' so you feel like you're moving and it's not too much, not too little."

 

For Bethesda, the snags started happening when it came to designing enemy AI: "It's very easy … to make the enemies really really smart, forever we were just jousting [with them]. It turns out you have to make the AI really stupid. You have to have them fly, then they need to turn, basically like 'hey player, why don't you just shoot me for a while?' … [once we'd] settled on our pace, and how the enemies are gonna move, that's where it came together."

 

 

 

Todd Howard says Starfield's planetary survival systems were originally 'very punitive' but 'we just nerfed the hell out of it' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

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Dealing with afflictions and hostile planetary conditions used to be "a pretty complex" system but it was heavily scaled back.

 

Quote

 

Just getting a single severe illness from all of those alien planets is a little weird, and it's surprising how tame the environments on alien planets in Starfield really are—especially when you get regular warnings for hazardous weather, extreme heat and cold, and radiation. Turns out what we're playing with in Starfield are the remnants of a more complex and challenging planetary survival system that Bethesda heavily scaled back before the game launched.

 

"The way the environmental damage works in the game on planets and on your suit, you have resistances to certain types of atmosphere effects, whether that's radiation or thermal, etc," Todd Howard said during an interview on the AIAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast. "And that was a pretty complex system, actually. It was very punitive, where you get these afflictions."

 

To protect players against these harsh environments, Howard said, all those spacesuits you collect while playing were originally meant to serve a bigger role. Players were intended to swap between different spacesuits for high radiation planets, extreme cold planets, and so on.

 

Apparently, this planetary survival system didn't go over that well during testing, and Bethesda decided to tone down the difficulty so much that it's basically a system you don't even have to think about.

 

"We hit a point where we're [fine] tuning it, and you're having to heal those [afflictions]," Howard said. "And what we did at the end of the day, it was a complicated system for players to understand, we just nerfed the hell out of it."

 

 

[Ghost_MH]

3 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Apparently, this planetary survival system didn't go over that well during testing, and Bethesda decided to tone down the difficulty so much that it's basically a system you don't even have to think about.

 

I am 99% sure this was only difficult for players because dealing with the inventory system was already difficult enough. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I had to carry around several different spacesuits weighing me down and keeping me over encumbered.

 

I feel lol he's this would have been solved by not having such punitive inventory management, but that would have made far too much sense for a Bethesda game.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

More from the interview:

 

To test Starfield, Bethesda gave the team a build that was "basically done" last year and said "this should be the game you're playing over the holiday" | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

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Todd Howard says "the whole team tests"

 

Quote

 

Bethesda boss Todd Howard says Starfield was "basically done" by holiday 2022, and to help test the mammoth RPG, virtually everyone on the development team got a build to play on their own Xbox consoles and PCs at home.

 

In a new Game Maker's Notebook interview with Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price, Howard discusses the final year of Starfield's development and the team-wide polish that came of it. Price asks how you test a massive RPG like Starfield, and Howard says "you take a long time and a lot of people."

 

"Our QA staff is awesome here, and the whole team tests," he continues. "One of our goals last holiday was – everybody went home for holiday break and the game was basically done.

 

There were bugs, but here's a full game, you can play it – we flighted it on the retail Xbox. You can play it at home on your Xbox and your PC, and this should be the game you're playing over the holiday. The whole team, we tested the game really all year just playing it all the time, tweaking it, fixing I don't want to say how many bugs that our games create. We had a lot of QA help.

 

"It does help understanding what kind of bugs your game can create and then seeing patterns, using systems to go through the data. We do use some automated systems that run through every space in the game and then get a report. Here's where it was slow, here's where it crashed, here's where something else went wrong. We can focus more on the systemic gameplay. Here's 10 ways to break this quest. 

 

"We're really happy with where we landed on this release. Given the scale of the game, I think the team did an amazing job. It's not perfect by any means. There are things we're obviously fixing and are gonna continue to fix. But given the scale of it, where we ended up both on a bug that would block you from playing and performance, particularly on the consoles, we ended up in a pretty good place I think."

 

 

[Best]

Jfc I spent over 3 hours on the mission "Sabotage" quest and still didn't beat it. You cannot be detected and you must also manipulate people into doing things for you (you earn this ability later so spoilers) via the Scanner.

 

Well you must do this and you cannot run and gun thinking you're going to kill all the guards. It's impossible to kill all the guards but also necessary to keep some alive to manipulate them to open locked doors etc.

 

I no joke spent 3 hours trying to beat it and had to rage quit.

 

In this type of game this shouldn't be a scenario you should face and you should be able to handle everything on your own. 

 

I'm going to YouTube it and find out exactly what I need to do to beat this. This was frustrating as fuck. Before that event I was having a total blast. 

 

Anyone else struggle with this?

[Kal-El814]

47 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

 

From the above interview:

 

Todd Howard says that Starfield's ship AI sucks on purpose so players can actually hit stuff: 'You have to make the AI really stupid' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

---

Not everyone can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

 

 

 

Todd Howard says Starfield's planetary survival systems were originally 'very punitive' but 'we just nerfed the hell out of it' | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

---

Dealing with afflictions and hostile planetary conditions used to be "a pretty complex" system but it was heavily scaled back.

 

 

 

This is all pretty on brand with what @TwinIon said... there are very obvious friction points that have been sanded down to make the game what it is. That's not a bad thing, but in some places it really stands out.

[Best]

I noticed with my new ship not only does it control better but it does significantly more damage to the enemy craft. I find that really cool. I have no complaints about the ships in general. 

[Best]

5 hours ago, best3444 said:

Jfc I spent over 3 hours on the mission "Sabotage" quest and still didn't beat it. You cannot be detected and you must also manipulate people into doing things for you (you earn this ability later so spoilers) via the Scanner.

 

Well you must do this and you cannot run and gun thinking you're going to kill all the guards. It's impossible to kill all the guards but also necessary to keep some alive to manipulate them to open locked doors etc.

 

I no joke spent 3 hours trying to beat it and had to rage quit.

 

In this type of game this shouldn't be a scenario you should face and you should be able to handle everything on your own. 

 

I'm going to YouTube it and find out exactly what I need to do to beat this. This was frustrating as fuck. Before that event I was having a total blast. 

 

Anyone else struggle with this?

 

I FINALLY beat this section tonight! I had to use a guide because it wasn't easy and also punishing. It was an extremely long side quest that's for sure. I'm like two sections away from beating the main campaign so that's why I'm focusing on all side quests. I'm roughly 33 hours in plus the 16 initial hours I put in in my first playthrough when I initially got it and decided to start over.

[Ghost_MH]

11 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

More from the interview:

 

To test Starfield, Bethesda gave the team a build that was "basically done" last year and said "this should be the game you're playing over the holiday" | GamesRadar+

WWW.GAMESRADAR.COM

---

Todd Howard says "the whole team tests"

 

 

 

I refuse to believe anyone at Bethesda actually plays these games like normal human beings. There's been this very specific problem in every Bethesda games since they went 3D. NPCs walk at a different speed than your PC, so whenever you need to follow or otherwise walk with an NPC you're stuck either tapping walk or doing that silly run, wait, run cycle. Who at Bethesda is adding sequences where you need to follow an NPC and then have no problem with this walking speed discrepancy?

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I refuse to believe anyone at Bethesda actually plays these games like normal human beings. There's been this very specific problem in every Bethesda games since they went 3D. NPCs walk at a different speed than your PC, so whenever you need to follow or otherwise walk with an NPC you're stuck either tapping walk or doing that silly run, wait, run cycle. Who at Bethesda is adding sequences where you need to follow an NPC and then have no problem with this walking speed discrepancy?

I have suspected that’s kind of the case at many studios. And while it’s probably the case at Bethesda I don’t think it’s a whole picture. I’m sure the animation timing and movement speed is baked into the creation engine. There could be some technical reason they can’t change it, but more likely it’s not broken or deemed important enough that they are willing to spend the time updating it. Some may even excuse it as a design choice made long ago that’s “still valid”. Like it gives the player time to really take in the environment and what’s going on in it. Or some such thing. 
 

but yeah there are times when a community wonders if a company plays their games the way the rest of us do or are they just playing to make sure that certain things are just fundamentally working as intended. Like the UI and menu system sucks, but it’s not technically broken. 
 

I do think eventually you see this kind of “development in a bubble” thing happen. They no longer see the faults because it’s far better than it used to be and they now can’t imagine it any other way. If they get feedback that it isn’t good that feedback can be brushed off as “they just need time to adapt”. One of the highest profile cases of this was Lair on the PS3. Factor 5 even got defense over reviewers saying the controls sucked and were unintuitive. 

[Ghost_MH]

14 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I have suspected that’s kind of the case at many studios. And while it’s probably the case at Bethesda I don’t think it’s a whole picture. I’m sure the animation timing and movement speed is baked into the creation engine. There could be some technical reason they can’t change it, but more likely it’s not broken or deemed important enough that they are willing to spend the time updating it. Some may even excuse it as a design choice made long ago that’s “still valid”. Like it gives the player time to really take in the environment and what’s going on in it. Or some such thing. 
 

but yeah there are times when a community wonders if a company plays their games the way the rest of us do or are they just playing to make sure that certain things are just fundamentally working as intended. Like the UI and menu system sucks, but it’s not technically broken. 
 

I do think eventually you see this kind of “development in a bubble” thing happen. They no longer see the faults because it’s far better than it used to be and they now can’t imagine it any other way. If they get feedback that it isn’t good that feedback can be brushed off as “they just need time to adapt”. One of the highest profile cases of this was Lair on the PS3. Factor 5 even got defense over reviewers saying the controls sucked and were unintuitive. 

 

The number one mod for all these 3D Bethesda games is a UI/menu do over. I won't even touch one of their games until a UI mod is out. There are already 8 mods adjusting your walking speed to match that of NPCs.

 

Ever play Mario Maker on the Wii U, 3DS, or Switch? Sometimes you play a level in those games and it becomes very obvious it only makes sense to the creator of the level because they already know what you're supposed to do and where you're supposed to go. The Bethesda games are the only AAA games I can think of that give me that same feeling. On PC, walking speed is adjustable from the settings INI. These games feel like they're missing blind testers. Like vendors in Starfield have limited budgets. The Trade Authority in The Den will buy anything off you but only has 11k credits on hand. If you're willing to chill and dork around on your phone for 30 seconds, you can just sit at the stool just a few feet from storefront, wait 48 hours, and continue to sell your stuff. There's no point to limiting how much money a store has to buy stuff if that limit can be ignored at the cost of waiting around for less than a minute.

 

As much as I enjoy Bethesda's games, they're just full of these sorts of jank decisions.

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I refuse to believe anyone at Bethesda actually plays these games like normal human beings. There's been this very specific problem in every Bethesda games since they went 3D. NPCs walk at a different speed than your PC, so whenever you need to follow or otherwise walk with an NPC you're stuck either tapping walk or doing that silly run, wait, run cycle. Who at Bethesda is adding sequences where you need to follow an NPC and then have no problem with this walking speed discrepancy?

Again, it is clear that BGS is unaware of or indifferent to the notion that millions of their players approach their games like hoarders. 
 

I KINDA get how that could happen in the Oblivion or Fallout 3 era? MAYBE early Skyrim? But they’re obviously aware of what the popular mods are since they’ve taken steps to incorporate some of them into their games themselves. And people stream this stuff all the time, so there’s no real excuse. 

[Ghost_MH]

56 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Again, it is clear that BGS is unaware of or indifferent to the notion that millions of their players approach their games like hoarders. 
 

I KINDA get how that could happen in the Oblivion or Fallout 3 era? MAYBE early Skyrim? But they’re obviously aware of what the popular mods are since they’ve taken steps to incorporate some of them into their games themselves. And people stream this stuff all the time, so there’s no real excuse. 

 

I only had to hear Sarah berate me for carrying so much shit a dozen times before I get the idea that Bethesda doesn't want players looting everything. I guess my point was that Bethesda is really only half assing the approach here. They could have made it so merchant cash resets once every real time hour. Instead, they set it to 48 hours, in-game, and put benches for you to pass the time at. Maybe they figured this was too burdensome for most players, but I've got a phone and I can reset that money timer before I get through a second YouTube short.

[Kal-El814]

20 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I only had to hear Sarah berate me for carrying so much shit a dozen times before I get the idea that Bethesda doesn't want players looting everything. I guess my point was that Bethesda is really only half assing the approach here. They could have made it so merchant cash resets olevery real time hour. Instead, they set it to 48 hours, in-game, and put benches for you to pass the time at. Maybe they figured this was too burdensome for most players, but I've got a phone and I can reset that money timer before I get through a second YouTube short.

This is part of their assy approach though… she’s given me shit for picking up medkits right after we’ve both been shot, or after picking up crafting materials.

[brucoe]

I haven't used any mods so far (probably will after a year or so playing). As for what I'm doing right now: I fly to a random spot on a random planet, search for short while, find a building, and then kill all of the spacers hanging out there. Then sell all my loot. Then go back to the same planet, pick a new spot and repeat.

[TwinIon]

Starfield is a game about options, but the weight capacity is so low that it dramatically limits those options in ways that continuously hinder gameplay and seem at odds with other game incentives. Starfield wants you to be happy to find that new gun or armor or rock or goo that you need for crafting, but my excitement was always tempered by concerns about my carry capacity.

 

If I leave my lodge/base/ship out on a mission, I think it would be reasonable to carry:

• 2 spacesuits + 2 Helmets (a combat set and another for exploration or stealth or resource gathering)
• A full set of weapons (Somewhere around 5-10)
• A ton of healing and throwables items
• Some empty space for loot (20+ mass at minimum, but ideally much more)

Anything less than that and you're really having to micromanage your stuff and make gameplay sacrifices all the time.

 

I usually only carried a single helmet / spacesuit because they were so heavy. When doing some quest lines I kept a stealth suit on, but otherwise I basically kept to the set with the best cargo capacity. This meant that even though I had sets for combat  / stealth / resource gathering / exploration, I hardly ever swapped to them because it would be another 20-30 mass. So already, my gameplay experience is compromised.

 

For a game that lets you set hot keys for a dozen guns, it's pretty expensive to actually carry all of them. The limited ammo economy and variety of guns pushes the player towards playing with different weapons all the time, but actually carrying a bunch of guns all the time is a problem. This gets even worse in the late game as some gun types are really heavy. At least ammo doesn't have mass.

 

I got through most of the game not realizing that I was carrying a bunch of dead weight in the form of aid and throwables that I was never using. I think these items should be free like ammo, so you never have to think twice about picking them up. Instead I had to be more careful about what I was grabbing so I didn't end up with 20 mass of mines or food I was never using.

 

I understand not wanting to give the player enough space to grab every gun, suit, helmet, and decorative item not nailed down in a space station. I understand that pricing item value and the economy would be affected by increasing carry capacity. I also think that sometimes making inventory choices can be good for a game, like we see in Halo or even Cyberpunk. Still, I think that the limited space they give you is detrimental to player choice in ways that lessen the experience.

 

Starfield is constantly throwing loot at you with different capabilities and compromises, and finding that better loot is much of the fun. Sometimes I might have three different shotguns and would be unsure which I like the best. I want to be able to carry all of them and change my mind as to which one is my favorite, but with the capacity the way it is, doing so meant making sacrifices in what else I could carry or how much loot I could pick up while I'm out.

 

When I started I kept making the encumbered walk of shame back to my ship because I found a cool, but situational, piece of gear. Maybe I'd find a gun that was an upgrade as long I was fighting robots, or some armor that would reduce resource weight at the cost of my combat bonuses. I'd slowly make my way to my ship, throw them into the hold, and hardly ever actually use them because I wanted enough empty space to carry my next batch of booty back home. That's a failure of the inventory system impacting moment to moment gameplay.

[brucoe]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

The Trade Authority in The Den will buy anything off you but only has 11k credits on hand. If you're willing to chill and dork around on your phone for 30 seconds, you can just sit at the stool just a few feet from storefront, wait 48 hours, and continue to sell your stuff. There's no point to limiting how much money a store has to buy stuff if that limit can be ignored at the cost of waiting around for less than a minute.

 

As much as I enjoy Bethesda's games, they're just full of these sorts of jank decisions.

The first mod I will use when I start using them is one that decreases the time you physically have to spend during the waiting process.

[Best]

I keep getting trashed in ship battles even with my brand new one. I'm close to beating this but this shit is holding me back unfortunately. Also, this game isn't as massive as I initially thought. 36 hours in and I could beat it today if it weren't for the ship issues I'm having. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

3 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

. The Bethesda games are the only AAA games I can think of that give me that same feeling.

Menu and controls wise I felt that way about Elden Ring. I don’t know how anyone plays that game with a standard controller. That’s probably the highest profile game I can think of in recent memory. 
 

But QOL and UI/UX mods have always been common and popular with games. I do wonder though, I wonder if there is ever talk inside Bethesda that they don’t need anything more than a bare yet functional set of things because they know modders will improve it. I said it about the writing and missions, but so much of the game feels like “first draft energy” and that seems to for menu and stuff too. 
 

it is interesting that the things Todd Howard keeps talking about are ares where they scaled something back or dumbed it down. He’s not saying “we didn’t far enough so we decided to rework and improve/upgrade XYZ”. He makes it seem like SF is a game that only got better by subtraction and not refinement. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

47 minutes ago, best3444 said:

I keep getting trashed in ship battles even with my brand new one. I'm close to beating this but this shit is holding me back unfortunately. Also, this game isn't as massive as I initially thought. 36 hours in and I could beat it today if it weren't for the ship issues I'm having. 

the brute force method is through upgrading the ship, but eventually that means investing points into ship building and being able to fly a better ship. System targeting is also good and helps turn space battles into easy mode. Especially when combined with C class shields, weapons, and reactors. 
 

I put auto turrets facing my aft. This helps me to focus on the fight ahead while damaging any ships coming at me from behind. They’ve destroyed a few ships on their own, and when they don’t the ships are a bit easier for clean up. 

[Ghost_MH]

1 hour ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

it is interesting that the things Todd Howard keeps talking about are ares where they scaled something back or dumbed it down. He’s not saying “we didn’t far enough so we decided to rework and improve/upgrade XYZ”. He makes it seem like SF is a game that only got better by subtraction and not refinement. 

 

See, my take from these interviews is that they had some really interesting ideas that absolutely could have worked, but were butting up against some of their legacy gameplay mechanics.

 

All these spacesuits have ratings for different environmental variables, but none of it really matters. I would happily carry more suits for different atmospheres if they weighed nothing, but they do so I won't. Why do spacesuits have to weigh anything? Well, we've always given armor a weight rating and if it weighed nothing people would loot every spacesuit they find.

 

@TwinIon is right. This game acts like it wants you to have different weapons and different items for different scenarios, but then punishes you for doing exactly that.

 

The carry limit has always been annoying in previous games, but I've always worked with it. This is the first game where I'm actively contemplating modding it out.

[Best]

55 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

the brute force method is through upgrading the ship, but eventually that means investing points into ship building and being able to fly a better ship. System targeting is also good and helps turn space battles into easy mode. Especially when combined with C class shields, weapons, and reactors. 
 

I put auto turrets facing my aft. This helps me to focus on the fight ahead while damaging any ships coming at me from behind. They’ve destroyed a few ships on their own, and when they don’t the ships are a bit easier for clean up. 

 

I refuse to upgrade my ship to continue a mission. Upgrading is an option not a requirement nor do they even explain the process of upgrading. 

 

I'm getting trashed on a freelancer ranger mission which is early on and I find that ridiculous. I played 3 more hours today and from what I saw on a guide, I'm pretty damn close to beating this. That includes me doing a lot of side quests, too.

 

I still really enjoy this game but I'm kinda ready for it to be over so I can start up a new playthrough of Cyberpunk 2.0 and the liberty dlc. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

1 minute ago, Ghost_MH said:

@TwinIon is right. This game acts like it wants you to have different weapons and different items for different scenarios, but then punishes you for doing exactly that.

 

The carry limit has always been annoying in previous games, but I've always worked with it. This is the first game where I'm actively contemplating modding it out.

I wonder if either the carry limit was much higher in the older versions of SF or suites and weapons weighed nothing. So when they changed the game they either reduced the carry limit of the player or added weight to items that didn’t have it so you now hit the limit much faster. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

1 minute ago, best3444 said:

 

I refuse to upgrade my ship to continue a mission. Upgrading is an option not a requirement nor do they even explain the process of upgrading. 

 

I'm getting trashed on a freelancer ranger mission which is early on and I find that ridiculous. I played 3 more hours today and from what I saw on a guide, I'm pretty damn close to beating this. That includes me doing a lot of side quests, too.

 

I still really enjoy this game but I'm kinda ready for it to be over so I can start up a new playthrough of Cyberpunk 2.0 and the liberty dlc. 

could be your approach to combat. Like I said, that’s the brute force method. My friend is still using the starter ship and is also refusing to upgrade it. Outside of what you can spec into with character points. He’s been saying the space combat isn’t even challenging him. I told him where to find a legendary ship that I hope wrecks him, but we shall see. 

[Best]

18 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

could be your approach to combat. Like I said, that’s the brute force method. My friend is still using the starter ship and is also refusing to upgrade it. Outside of what you can spec into with character points. He’s been saying the space combat isn’t even challenging him. I told him where to find a legendary ship that I hope wrecks him, but we shall see. 

 

Where can I find a legendary ship? 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Where can I find a legendary ship? 

I’ll have to check my missions. I forget which system it is in. I ran into it looking for ships to fight. I jumped into a system and on the starmap for the system it showed the icon of a ship. I traveled to it and picked a fight. Got wrecked a few times and then left it alone until I could come back stronger. 
 

im not sure if you can capture a legendary ship. I hope so. That thing was massive. 

[Best]

2 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I’ll have to check my missions. I forget which system it is in. I ran into it looking for ships to fight. I jumped into a system and on the starmap for the system it showed the icon of a ship. I traveled to it and picked a fight. Got wrecked a few times and then left it alone until I could come back stronger. 
 

im not sure if you can capture a legendary ship. I hope so. That thing was massive. 

 

Please report back if you find out where it is. Thanks for your help. You've been very helpful to me. 

[Biggie]

2 hours ago, best3444 said:

 

Where can I find a legendary ship? 

I took my starter ship added some missiles and some type of big gun. Upgraded ships skills using my skill points and I’m doing pretty good now holding my own. 

[Best]

1 minute ago, Biggie said:

I took my starter ship added some missiles and some type of big gun. Upgraded ships skills using my skill points and I’m doing pretty good now holding my own. 

 

Yea, but I was given a more powerful ship that I thought would improve combat and it did slightly but I'm on two missions where my ship explodes being overrun by the enemies. I need to beat these sections to get very close to beating the game. 

[Best]

@Xbob42 did you beat this? If so, What did you think?

[Xbob42]

7 minutes ago, best3444 said:

@Xbob42 did you beat this? If so, What did you think?

I did. I think the missions actually started getting pretty cool right at the end, and I'm always a sucker for weird cosmic space mysteries and such. Unfortunately when it comes to the NG+ stuff I fell deeply into the camp of "wait that's it?" I'm still wondering what the hell those pre-release reviews talking about how it "changed everything" and was "super cool" were on about. Like, it's vaguely neat, I guess? But I just didn't have the motivation to do multiple NG+s to where it actually started to get weird, and since I never cared about any of the characters very much I bet even when it does get weird I'd barely notice.

 

The game has some fun ideas, and plays better than I expected, but the constant loading screens made it really hard to get absorbed into the world or feel like I had any sort of sense of place. When you play Fallout or Skyrim, you start understanding where everything is in relation to other things, but that just doesn't happen here, so it feels very compartmentalized in a way I found super disappointing.

 

I really think just compressing space down (with super fast BS drives that don't trigger load screens or teleports) so you could actually explore space and land wherever (with preset points for POIs) would have done wonders for alleviating this.

Overall the game was alright, I didn't have to force myself to beat it or anything (although I was heavily motivated by "space mystery" and not at all by the weirdly sedated characters) but I also never felt like anything really got rolling into something greater. You just kinda flop around for a long time, then the space mystery is solved super fast and you're done. Well, at least part of the space mystery is. Maybe it wraps up the more big picture stuff in NG++++++++++++.

 

Anyway, I didn't hate it, and it didn't play like trash, so as far as I'm concerned it's overall an upward trend in terms of gameplay, a bit of backslide on world exploration --which I don't think will be a problem in their future titles as I doubt they'll have multiple planets outside of maybe weird magic teleports rather than space flight-- so... not bad?

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

3 hours ago, best3444 said:

 

Please report back if you find out where it is. Thanks for your help. You've been very helpful to me. 

Nirvana II-A is where my mission says it is. 

[Best]

12 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Nirvana II-A is where my mission says it is. 

 

Awesome. Thank you very much!

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

20 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

Awesome. Thank you very much!

it may not be there. I just noticed that where the mission I have says it is there, I do not see it when I actually go there. It may be RNG. 

[Best]

6 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

it may not be there. I just noticed that where the mission I have says it is there, I do not see it when I actually go there. It may be RNG. 

 

Ok, thanks for the heads up. No biggie if it's not there. I currently have the Rambler and I am sure to allocate my controls efficiently especially having shields high but there are two quests where I get destroyed within 2 minutes. I even use ship parts to fix the ship but I get trashed before the gauge fills up. Any suggestions in how to handle these situations better? I need to beat these sections to advance the story.