Say, if you have a rookie with good stats but not scheme fit, do you upgrade him further as he is, or try to make him scheme fit with upgrade points? Does it impact his OVR or regression somehow across career?
I've been on and off player somewhere since 0.7a, but lately, even with great additions I find hard to enjoy this game as much as I used to, even though it improved MASSIVELY and added tons of stuff, along with story to enjoy. I play it rarely, so it's definitely not the case of burn out.
However, loop gets old very fast. The game is very combat heavy, and while combat itself is some of the best you can find, both in depth and visual/sound presentation. But when you get fights back to back, it feels identical, like every Station fight is pretty much carbon copy of the one before. Same with pirates, remnants, etc.
Another problem is requirement for very fast fleet growth (before you can get the hands on cutting edge tech), which consumes resources like crazy, even with full upgrades. It guzzles your supplies and fuel like crazy, where you pretty much forced to make stops for restock often.
You physically cannot run medium sized fleet, because even far from the living space sectors have extremely powerful enemies, or you can easily meet some armada that you may not be able to outrun, and often have to engage in combat. That, not to mention that far away, combat is pretty much the only way for sustain, to have resources for return and exploration itself. Feels like it's just not balanced properly.
It hurts exploration bad, because not only you need silly amounts of resources to explore worlds, where you need huge inventory space, but big powerful fleet doesn't allow you long-distance travel without going dry very soon. And that with several big haulers and tankers...
And now with Abyssal Hyperspace, which is amazing exploration opportunity, it kinda kills the purpose of it.
Trading is pretty useless, boring and doesn't pay well. Exploration is very fun, but it's very early money making method, that falls off fast for reasons stated above, which leaves combat as the main activity and money making method. It pays well too.
The issue, IMO, is how fast you generally progress and can easily afford getting huge fleet with several capitals. There's no pace in progress at all. And you have to, because game doesn't scale to you. You have to be able to destroy Armadas and very powerful Remnants ASAP.
Combat is great on paper, but it also kinda sucks:
- If you pilot strongest and biggest ship in the fleet, it can get trivial, because while AI is decent, you can constantly abuse with kite and alphastrike, which AI is incapable of.
- If you like more even and fair combat, where you pilot smaller or weaker ship and let AI handle it, combat can drag on literally forever. AI can't push properly. It often goes down till CR goes to zero for both sides. It's pain to watch this back and forth tug-of-war...
- If you come across overwhelming enemy fleet or you attack enemy with stronger forces (which is 90% of actual combat encounters), it is just straight up boring and waste of time, because outcome is set. Sure, fun to watch a few times, but that's it.
I wish there was auto-resolve or something like that...
Totally not interested in colony management side, don't even wanna try, but it's very cool addition.
Probably most fun thing for me in previous versions was building fleets from random ships I salvage or buy somewhere which look cool. Slap weapons and upgrades on it that I randomly find, and go out to salvage, pick some bounties, explore, etc. But now it doesn't work, because against Remnants you must build fleets in specific way to counter them, as well as some other specific enemies, and there's little way around it, because otherwise you're blocked from quite a lot of story and almost all exploration.
Is there a way to have fun as a hobo Scavenger? How do you deal with repetitiveness of combat? How do you deal with constant and huge drain of resources in long-distance travel when you run a big fleet?
P.S. Any mods or game tweaks suggestions are welcome, like rebalances, overhauls, etc., other than Nexerelin. People suggest it often, and while the mod is fantastic, I don't want Starsector to be another Total War for me.
It's less for a doctrines (I know how to edit, don't need to) and more for sense of progression (who doesn't like to level stuff up more?). Checked all files I would suspect have these lines. Nothing. I can't believe it is baked?...
Edit:
Figured out myself, weird no info anywhere. So, for those like me, who want to add more levels to the squad, just open units.xml and add lines under Ranks (not Trooper Ranks, that's extra levels for individual soldiers) with increment you desire.
Was messing around with equipment, and decided to give (with edits of course) Martyr's Armor to SWAT Militia. Initially I though it's a meme, and well, they do run fast with it, and it definitely has some uses, but that suppression thing isn't, because they keel over after first shot long before suppression can even kick in.
Just waiting for some battle honors to give Militia those SAPI Vests.
What are your thoughts on Martyr's Armor? Would you ever equip it on any SWAT troops for actual efficiency, rather than just for laughs?
Aside from that, what are your armor preferences in general, maybe for class or role, outside of SWAT too?
Been playing mostly missions so far, tried some normal Campaign runs in-between with fully trained Rangers, and had variable success, but it was more like a quick test.
Now when I'm done with missions, I created fresh Nowheraki SWAT squad, no doctrines, all level 1 and sent them in Tour of Duty on Ironman. Well, I got my ass absolutely slaughtered...
The problem isn't the fact that maps are too big, or objectives (which some are very hard, not gonna lie), while I'm perfectly fine with the idea of losing people, permanently, but my guys literally lose engagement all the time even when I technically have an advantage, like 2-3 guys covering a door, 4th kicks the door from the side, enemy stands back to 3 guys, slowly turns around and kills all 3 who've been firing at him. It happens regularly.
After few days of trial and error, better gear and doctrines didn't seem to make much difference. I did try SWAT in missions, occasionally, and they did pretty good, but it seriously feels like Campaign enemies are overtuned.
I literally had situations, where some habibi in rags runs past 3 of my guys, who dump full AK mags into his body, and he falls only when all 3 went dry. Probably due to lead extra weight than anything else...
When you go in mission generator, you can actually select difficulty, and since Campaign doesn't have that, I assume it uses pretty high preset.
So the question, do any of you manage to survive even a week with doctrineless, level 1 SWAT Squad? How do you generally have fun in Campaign? Because concept is insanely good, and I'd like to keep playing on Ironman (fuck restarts), but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. And idea of having fully levelled and trained squads in Campaign doesn't feel fun to me.
Are there any mods or options to switch enemy difficulty? Or make it gradually increase farther you go? Something like that?
Gotta ask:
How many of you beat every single mission in this game with 3 stars AND with all challenges done? I just finished with Rangers, but it feels like some maps would be literally impossible for me to get all challenges, don't think I'm even gonna try...
As a side question, did you manage to 3 star every mission with CIA or SWAT too?
And he ruined me...
I understand Font of Power, which is pretty good, but not sure about second mastery.
Running petless magsorc glass cannon. Can't choose between Static Reverberation and Calculated Defense. With Reverberation I assume not having pets cuts down quite significantly on the proc chance? And kinda lost with Calculated Defense one... Does 0.5 sec Shield actually block any damage? Is max health scaling a joke?... If I understand correctly, this passive is basically a +6% damage bonus for 20 secs? How significant it is, when Weapon and Spell damage stat exists to be buffed around +20% by other skills, passives, gear, etc?
The rest of passives seems like not suitable for my build at all. Any input?
...CPU opponents' Franchise X-Factor quadruple superstar 99 QB gets injured and taken out of play, to be replaced with 65 OVR backup rookie, that starts utterly slaughtering your secondary asses much harder than the main QB?
I swear, if you're unfamiliar how Madden works with player ratings, especially on All-Madden, it will make you pull hairs out, but if you know, you're just gonna be laughing your ass off at this, eh.
Last night was playing my beloved HC Lite and noticed some wild shit, like bots somehow took down 2 of our choppers?! They also been blinding me with flashbangs pretty actively, and generally shooting more rockets and explosives our way. Also seems like they call support more often now? That did so before, but very-very rarely.
Anyone else noticed something weird like that?
I've been dodging excavation and scrying for quite a while, because it seemed quite boring and didn't really feel like it, but recently I figure there's not much left to do in ESO and started getting into it.
Gotta say, grind till purple leads is absolutely gruelling and so slow, even with best grind methods from guides... but after that, it becomes really fun and varied, plus levelling becomes significantly faster. No idea why they had to make it so.
For now I just dig literally everything I have leads for in every region, making a good progress. It seems not only fun, but quite profitable. Posts I came across mention some leads are painful to get because of RNG. How bad is it, really?
Does any stuff you dig up sells well at guild traders? Haven't come across anything worth to sell just yet, but wondering.
And lastly, are there any of you who dug up every single lead in the game? If yes, how long did it take you by rough estimation? Is there much reason to keep digging when you got all you needed? Are there many of you who do this regularly just for fun?
Any tips for novice antiquarian are also very welcome.
Literally it was the first thing I modded in DD1. So happy it is a default option in DD2, where with it combat not only goes faster, which is convenient, but also feels more impactful and sharp IMO.
Please, share why you do or do not use this.
I've been living in Vivec City since I started playing, which was years ago, because that's absolutely most convenient city to live in. Bank outside, shrine is very close to crafting and bank zone, plus stables if you run fresh character. Very convenient and close proximity to Outlaws Refuge with Fence basically few steps away from entrance. But I got bored loading in the same city every time, and honestly, place looks like a dump... One whole district is in the state of infinite construction. Environment around activity zone looks pretty trashy and unfinished too. I love Vvardenfell, since TES 3. Balmora looks WAY better than Vivec city, wish it was the main hub, but oh well...
So I started looking for new home city. I don't understand why bank outside isn't a common thing in other city hubs? It's so inconvenient going inside, and I constantly need bank. Close proximity between shrine, crafting > storage, bank is basically non-existent outside of Vivec.
Been looking at Leyawiin, it looks very beautiful, crafting, storage and shrine are more or less compact, but bank is not very conveniently placed, not to mention Outlaws Refuge...
I personally would love to live in Necrom or at least Apocrypha, but placement is so inconvenient, it hurts...
What are your home city hubs? Did you trade convenience of Vivec City for other hubs? If yes, why and where?
As a preface gotta say that I liked original The Crew very much, spent a lot of hours in the game. It still has probably best cop chases of any openworld arcade racing games, sad they didn't continue with in 2 and TCM.
During playing original TC, I participated in TC2 beta, which, gotta say, was absolutely horrific experience. I lasted maybe an hour and it was very fast uninstall. Car handling felt absolutely terrible, boats and planes were even worse. Street races with ramps everywhere that was in intro I still remember and was a huge turn off. Also ran very poorly, especially compared to OG TC.
Eventually Ubi shutdown TC and I was very upset with them. Kinda wrote off the series and forgot about it. A while ago, there was huge promo when they were selling TC2 for $1, which I bought just for collection, without any intent to ever play.
Like a month back, was bored, seen news that Ubi added Hybrid mode in TC2 and decided to check it out, with full confidence it will be fast uninstall. Oh boy, how wrong I was... I think I have over 100h in just a month of play, and I honestly can't get enough of it. Suppose will be stuck with TC2 for a loooong-long time.
Gotta mention I play only in Hybrid. Online was never interesting for me. Even in TC1 I was cruising solo, doing Faction Missions, Crates, participated in every Summit I could, getting high on LB sometimes, but mainly because I just liked the game, free drive in the world, chases, etc.
TC2 wins in content over original TC quite massively, though. I think it will take me several more hundreds of hours before I complete at least biggest part of it. To be honest, I think TC2 currently wins in content over ANY openworld racing ever released.
We have massive USA map, even though it's heavily scaled down, the world is HUGE. And it contains vast number of biomes with various conditions, which is very impressive. Day/Night cycle, rain, even occasional winter with snow, it's crazy! And literally every square km is used, highway, city, desert, forests, mountains, country trails, hell, even water and air is in full use!
Handling of all transport felt massively improved from what I remember in Beta across the board. Also, I either didn't notice, or Pro Settings wasn't a thing back then. The fact that arcade game has such deep tuning for every single land vehicle, air and water transport, that has very significant effect on handling is pretty impressive. When turned off all assists and tuned cars for personal preference, driving feels some of the best I've seen in arcades ever.
Then there's very important factor that many devs seem to miss, but Ivory didn't:
What makes arcade racing game fun? I've played lots of sims, and enjoy them massively. But arcades have extremely dumbed down handling, regardless of the game we're talking about. They made purposely easy and comfortable to drive on most devices, particularly gamepads, which lack precision and correct FFB to feel the car. Without its quirkiness this gets bland and eventually driving becomes very boring, because car basically drives itself. This is a massive problem in games, such as FH series in particular. There's basically no depth whatsoever.
In TC2 we have nitros, we have massive number of various classes, including bikes of all kinds, even frigging Hovercrafts. We have boats and planes that provide their own types of handing and extra layers, like Extreme Mode for planes and Trimming for boats. Knowing when, how and what to use gives certain depth to otherwise dry handling.
This is funny to mention, but I really like motocross and free riding dirt bikes. TC is the ONLY game on the market where you can actually free ride on motocross bikes, where you have kitted out rally bikes, which are an absolute BLAST, and you basically have supermotos for street racing. This is insane, because there are no other sims or arcades that give you these types of vehicles all at once, and that aren't absolute trash in handling, but actually very fun and even somewhat realistic, at least in how they should feel on the road.
Other than that, Scavenger Hunts were so much fun to do, with cool structure and rewards. A little bit sad they are oneshot. Wish there were more. Sometimes I just launch the game and play Contractor Missions. Either Taxi or Offroad, which is super chill and fun experience.
Seems like Ubi still adding stuff to TC2 even for Hybrid mode, wish they keep adding even more stuff! But as it is, the game is an absolute blast anyway. Gotta mention, on PC some mods are really good too.
Hope when I'm done with TC2, TCM will go Hybrid and I'll dive in it as well, it looks magnificent. But I don't think I'll be done with 2 for a good while, and even then, map size, vehicles and activities are too perfect for me in TC2 to switch over something else. Maybe only wish I got into TC2 a bit sooner.
How do you, folks, like TC2 compared to other similar open world arcade racers? Did you switch over to FH games, NFS or TCM? If yes, why?
God, I love her, so cute!
I have pretty slow tablet that I just use as a reader and music player only.
What I need is for app to be able to compile .PDF and maybe .EPUB into a readable format (but preferably PDF only), where you just turn pages instead of scrolling around.
Preferably free app working offline, but paid will do too, only not one overloaded with ads and in-app purchases or stuff like that.
Tried a few, too overloaded with features, too heavy overall. In some didn't like design.
Any recommendations for something light, fast and easy would be very welcome. There are just too many to install and try all...
Collect X resource. Why not just collect ANY world resource? Requirement is pretty steep, as to max it you need 90 of single resource. It's doable, but quite a pain, especially if you don't play very actively and don't particularly hunt specific resource type. For average zone playthrough, 90 of random resource would be alright, no? Comparing it to Loot Chest, for example, which you need just 6 for max, that are everywhere and even any group event chests or thief troves count towards, why such a huge disparity?
Kill X and Y World Boss. Just why? I think everyone who tried seen like 100 players camping each boss. Spawn times are insanely long, and few times I didn't get the kill, because speed at which maxed ~100 players melt boss it pretty insane, you can legit not be able to fling one attack before he is down. Wouldn't it be better to just have challenge of killing ANY World Boss in X zone? Players would more evenly spread out and with some hopping would be far less idle wait time at least. Not to mention more zones could be made active more easily, less of a PITA for event coders too.
Are there any hopes of changes? And what are your gripes with those challenges?