f13.net forums - So, what're you playing?

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
May 17, 2024, 10:36:32 PM

we're back, baby

I picked up Wildermyth and the basic Talisman board game on the Steam RPG sale. Haven't tried Talisman yet, but really enjoying Wildermyth. And apparently I though it looked cool in 2019 when Falc and others described it and even put it on my wishlist but completely forgot about it! LOL Very relaxing game. I like the Crusader Kings aspects better than Crusader Kings even because you experience much of the story, not just the combat.

Picked up Inscription and Wildermyth.

Haven't even bothered with Wildermyth yet because Inscription is a fucking masterpiece.

INSCRYPTION, stupid phone

What annoys me about the new Pathfinder is that the difficulty levels--even if you fiddle with custom settings--have a weird boundary where melee goes from "yay, my frontliners are surviving long enough to keep the heat off my spellcasters" to "half my spells have to be expended on keeping the melee barely alive and the melee aren't really doing all that much damage in the meantime." Like, nothing that's sort of in-between where you say "oh this particular one will be bad for melee" or "on this particular encounter, I need to do something else". It's either "fuuuuuck here's another encounter where maybe one person will be left alive" or "roflstomp".

I was going to hold off on GotG but GMG decided to give it a day 1 20%, which is what I expected for a black friday steam sale, so the heck with it. Just finished Risen 3, and honestly soundtracks are motivating.

My expectations were set pretty low for gameplay (the usual AAA formula), but for stuff like that the IP, sound, visuals, etc matter. It looks good, sounds good, the writing is entertaining and the soundtrack is amazing. The intro is almost too nostalgic for me, Quill's bedroom is almost exactly my bedroom as a kid. It kinda freaked me out, tbh.

Anyway, gameplay is pretty stock AAA, run through the linear levels, jump and find hidden stuff. Control the pals through a kind of clunky 4-ability per pal system, that thankfully can be fully paused through the pretty nice accessibility menu (auto-complete QTE is one of my favorite options in any game that has that crap).

The weirdest thing to me is the overall pacing. It's paced like a modern AAA action game, where you are pushed to rush ahead but they also litter levels with tons of little side paths, exacerbated by the (actually good) dialog. There's a LOT of it, and at first I was missing a lot because it seemed like I needed to move along quickly and the team is chatty af. Started slowing down and letting them chew the scene and I dig it.

But when you do your first little 'huddle up' where Quill inspires the team during combat, he busts out the walkman and Def Leppard's Rock, Rock blares out....that's my kind of gaming moment. I wish music weren't so expensive to license, it's one of my favorite things about the GTA series, too.

The official Spotify playlist for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (includes the game soundtrack): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IaaDKR0912vGUrrRxtTV9

Seems incomplete, I know I heard some Maiden at one point (and Quill has a Steve Harris wristband on his nightstand).

Age of Empires IV is out on Steam. Enjoying the campaign so far.

Also free on Game Pass.

Thoroughly enjoying GoTG. It took a bit of getting used to, but well worth it.

Grabbed a few cheapos from the sale.

For the King - Refunded. I like the game, but for some reason having my characters move independently and basing combat on who is in close proximity just killed the HOMAM vibe for me.

Iratus - I liked it. Darkest Dungeon is better at just about every level, but at least initially Iratus seems less finicky and has some nice gameplay additions. I doubt I'll get the same hours as I did with DD but it should land within the decent value range.

How to Survive 2 - For less than $3 I've already gotten my money's worth out of it. I enjoyed the heck out of the original up until some point I've forgotten and then never played it again. I'm sure this will be the same, but there's just something that click for me...for a while.

Forza Horizons 5 is pretty good. By that I mean it's Forza 4 but a bit prettier. I have it cranked up to ultra with HDR on and it's just beautiful scenery everywhere.

Some new cars is great - I couldn't help but buy the 2018 Honda Civic Type R, Honda CRX and Acura Integra Tyoe R first... just so I could compare them to the cars in my driveway. My thoughts... I hate the fact that the Integra ITR is branded as an Acura and has the silly US steering wheel and seats. I do wish that you had the option for the cars to be RHD - as with any car game, I have issues with driving on the wrong side of the road. The CTR interior is a pretty faithful replication of the FK8, and the Integra and CRX are similar as a carry over from FH4.

Can't wait for Horizon 5. I mean, I have not been willing to give it an extra 40 euros to get in four days ahead, but I am so super excited about this. Horizon 4 definitely ranks pretty high in my gaming all-time chart.

FF14 (crystal/goblin, RDM@80, SCH@80) ShB is really good. The delay on Endwalker is great as I'll get to do more of the content I wanted to do before it drops now.

Lost Ark (tech beta, twitch for key, on steam) just derping around a little with some friends, hoping that you unlock pvp @ 27 which some parts of google say might be true. Idk. So far the pve against huge bosses is great, against trash packs the effects and abilities feel good, the sfx are ok, enemies are w/e. The loot can't carry the game but the pve quality is miles above anything diablo has ever done. Feels like an odd cross btwn Tera and Diablo.

TFT, new set, its the best one they've done.

Apex Legends, new season, same buggy fucked up game. Fuck EA. Fun tho.

Been obsessed with FF14 since mid August.

Got through all of the main story content to be ready for the expansion a couple weeks ago and have been busy catching up on all of the other content I missed. There is just so much.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint was updated with a whole new plot and basically a whole new PvE game that makes it much more like Wildlands. The patch is 45Gb so basically a whole new game.

It's actually good and I think I'm gonna play this for a bit now.

The original had a weak plot where you were a solo operative in a high-tech island utopia gone wrong (bad guys repurpose the tech for killing). There was a really annoying central hub/safe zone that required many visits to progress the main plot and buy upgrades. Eventually they added AI teammates like in Wildlands, and an option to make gear upgrades work more like Wildlands.

Now what they've done with "Operation Motherland" is say the main plot is over, but the islands have been invaded by a sinister force (from a previous Ghost Recon plot) that wants the technology. Your handler in Wildlands, Karen Bowman, returns to steer you through taking back the islands sector-by-sector, starting from zero and running destabilisation missions Widlands-style, until you discover who's in charge of each sector Wildlands-style, and take them down Wildlands-style.

This might be almost a No Man's Sky level of comeback.

Wait, can we still play the original campaign? I've been slowly getting into it and enjoying it more than Wildlands (I mostly just hated the setting, northern forest > tropics imo).

I was debating Forza Horizon 5, since I have a zippy new pc and no racer on it. Then Wreckfest went on sale again and I decided to give it a whirl and was immediately in love. It's janky, but holy shit is it the racing game for me. I've just begun to dig into the racing parts, rubberbanding is a thing as usual, but it doesn't seem to bad and has some of the best tools ever invented to deal with it. I was enjoying the early races (the lawnmower stuff aside, meh).

Then I hit the first track with a crossover. Some interesting moments, things in general get a little crazy with the destructibility of cars and roadside stuff. Then I hit the first tight figure 8 course and it's fucking mayhem, just burning cars and wreckage and you still need to place (it's not a demo derby event). I thought the game had taken its shot there and I liked it. Lots of 'oh shit' mixed with maniacal laughter as you take out the leader by bumping them ahead into traffic while you skid around the wreckage and take the win kind of stuff.

THEN I got to Crash Canyon. This is such a beautifully simple course that creates so much insanity. Two tight turnarounds with a long straight between them. Dirt track, no lane seperation other than a couple pylons, three dirt ramps in each direction. Looks like two discreet lanes in the layout image, it's not, just one wide strip of dirt. The only different is the direction of the jumps in each direction.

Early on you can drive on the 'wrong' side to get ahead of the tight pack, but as soon as it loosens at all, you get cars literally flying in both directions and some of the most insane driving experiences I've had. Split second decisions as to whether you can jump over the car careening from a wreck or do you have to go into the oncoming traffic to get around him.

It also pulls me in due to the basic setting of coming up through small tracks and state fairs, with a bunch of old beaters. My dad was small circuit NASCAR when I was a kid, so I grew up in the pits, and my stepdad was on the board of the county fair, so I had to work it every summer and saw more than my share of junker races and demo derbies. Some of the courses here (and there's a lot, each with several configurations and reverse layouts) are lifted straight out of my childhood.

Anyway. Overall a fun racing game with a great wrecking component that I feel elevates it over the somewhat sterile racing genre. Watching the Forza footage, it looks like a great game with lots of stuff and pretty visuals, but the thing that stood out to me after a weekend of navigating around wrecks and whatnot was just how slick and fast everything was. I prefer the slow and dirty :)

Quote from: Sky on November 08, 2021, 07:22:19 AM

Wait, can we still play the original campaign? I've been slowly getting into it and enjoying it more than Wildlands (I mostly just hated the setting, northern forest > tropics imo).

Yes, Operation Motherland is a "toggle" which switches the world between the pre-Motherland state and the Motherland state and you can swap back and forth whenever. Stuff you unlock in Motherland is carried over to the pre-Motherland world-state so you can play with the new toys in the original campaign and its expansions.

Quote from: Tale on November 07, 2021, 06:00:32 PM

Breakpoint was in a good state after the "Teammate Experience" update which added AI teammates like Wildlands. The "Ghost Experience" update which allowed you to play without the goofy RPG-like gear score loot drop system that the game originally launched with came out before the Teammate update. The Ghost Experience update also added a lot of switches and knobs for customizing the "rules" of the world, more than what is available Wildlands.

I played Wildlands first but didn't get very far initially. After the Teammate update came out I picked up Breakpoint during one of Ubisoft's many sales and then played both for a bit and I like Breakpoint more. I've got about 40 hours in Wildlands but around 160 in Breakpoint on two different characters with different World settings making it easier to switch between casual and "hardcore" modes depending on my mood. The story and characters are far better in Wildlands but the gameplay is better in Breakpoint IMO, particuarly if you prefer a more stealthy-style of open world gameplay.

Operation Motherland, which I briefly tried out last night (after figuring out Vulkan mode is broken), looks to be a very nice update, but I think the Teammate update version of the game, is the version people were hoping for originally -- i.e. that would be the "comeback" version. No Man Sky is well-beyond the comeback state with all of its updates which have been substantial and much more frequent. It took Ubisoft almost a year and a half to add the AI teammates which is pretty slow and presumably they only have a small team still working on it while NMS has had 17 "Expansions" in it's 5 years post-launch and about 30 major updates (including the Expansions) in total during that time.

Speaking of No Man's Sky, I just played through Expedition 4. Pretty fun if only for the chance to see the giant sandworms so much they become background noise. Unlike Expedition 3 which was a shitty bugfest for a completely unappealing (to me) prize, 4 was smooth. As always with NMS, the first hour or two was the most fun, while you're first getting your feet under you and before it gets a little grindy. Once you can fly there are lots and lots of other players bases to collect resources to bypass the grind if you wish. I think the final prize is a (miniature) giant sandworm pet, but I haven't bothered with it yet. The Expedition is only available for less than two weeks now, but I finished it over a single weekend, and I tend to poke around and putter and take my time.

I am playing Pioneers: The Rule of Land. Its been a surprisingly good Indie title so far with great replability and am almost done with the unlock chain. Personally I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the survival base building genre. I have had a great time with it.

Ungh, I want to be done with Wrath of the Righteous. It's really annoying after you come back from the Abyss. I went to Iz and I couldn't even tell what the Storyteller was trying to tell me about how it all turned out in the end. I played through the whole Abyss at Normal to Core and every damn encounter took mind-boggling close attention and planning. I'm just running on Casual now, I want to fucking steamroll stuff and finish. Also the companions are kind of annoying, even when I think about the possibility of a second playthrough some day as a Lich, Swarm or Trickster.

For what it's worth, I've played through Wrath of the Righteous a few times now and Lich was by far my favorite path (as a Sorcerer focused on Necromancy for maximum magical carnage). I'm trying Trickster now and the path is kind of underwhelming.

My first playthrough was Azata, which was a bit content-light (I imagine most of the dev work went into Aivu DRILLING AND MANLINESS

), but there were some pretty fun moments. The Azata plot involving the demontown market was super worth it, though. I imagine that path synergizes decently well with a bard what with all the bard songs (the last one making the entire group literally unkillable against 99% of the enemies until it wears off).

My second playthrough is a divine caster Angel, and the merged spellbook is insanely powerful, some bosses literally die in less than a turn (on Core). I imagine it's a similar story with Lich and arcane casters...

After 5 years of waiting the sole reason why I bought a Switch has finally been released. Shin Megami Tensei V is here and it's all I am playing. My biggest complaint so far is the Switch itself.

Quote from: Falconeer on November 12, 2021, 11:01:09 AM

After 5 years of waiting the sole reason why I bought a Switch has finally been released. Shin Megami Tensei V is here and it's all I am playing. My biggest complaint so far is the Switch itself.

I got the OLED version recently. The Joycons are my biggest complaint. I ended up buying the Hori clip on controllers as they give a far better feel, then went one step further and bought the Nintendo Pro Controller. I hate the shop the most - it's slow and clunky and the prices are ridiculous for older games. Otherwise, I'm happy with it.

I just wish what is probably my favourite franchise ever did not get a 2021 release in such low resolution and overall production value, due to being a Switch exclusive.

Played through the original Legacy of Kain, what a trip. Weird and janky and baffling. I heard it described as "like Zelda but with Vampires" which is kind of like calling the original Deus Ex "like Mass Effect but in the X-files", it's kind of broadly accurate in some ways but playing it just feels nothing alike. Combat in LoK is almost broken, enemies are able to combo you against walls and take a million hits to kill and don't flinch and you have no dodge or parry move, so you'd think it would be the hardest game ever, but the game also gives you a small mountain of spells and trinkets and weapons and powers that seem pretty balanced except for one little thing that breaks the entire game over it's knee. I think I spent the entire last third of the game going "am I supposed to do this? Did they not realize this was possible?"

Like, for example, as a vampire, you get the ability to turn in to mist maybe about halfway through the game. This makes you invulnerable to physical damage, which is supposed to be used for passing over spike floors (but not spike PITS, those still block you) through cracks and grates, and walk over water (which normally hurts vampires in this game). Except that the game seems to kind of forget that it gave you this power, the last dungeon (and pretty much every dungeon) has long "get through this corridor full of Indiana Jones type booby traps" sections which you CAN try to time, running and stopping and weaving around spinning blades, but you can also just... turn on mist form, and hold left. And, OK, you think "maybe they're just trying to make mist form look useful, but not mandatory," except that all the enemies in this dungeon (the last dungeon in the game, mind you) are badass elite human soldiers who attack with physical weapons, so being in mist form makes you basically invulnerable to everything in the entire dungeon, you barely have to fight anyone. And that's just one power, you have an entire library of these things. I didn't even think of the whole "mist form makes you invincible" thing until about halfway through the dungeon, because since the enemies were all human, I was just using the axes with the goofy continuous spin attack + armor that steals health from humans and blitzing through the level like an aristocratic Tasmanian devil. I can't decide if it's genius in simulating the power tripping nature of being a vampire, or broken playtesting missing how bent the difficulty curve is.

The story is the same way... weird. You get the quest early on to kill all the members of the circle of the nine to cleanse the nine pillars, so you go to the first dungeon, kill the first boss, cleanse the first pillar, and think "OK, so this is like Zelda, where each dungeon gives you one medallion / sage / triforce piece / whatever." But then you can't kill the second boss, you have to run from him, and you go through a bunch of dungeons without meeting any bosses, and then you have to fight three at once and the unkillable one from before is killed off screen by someone else in the meantime... it's weird. There's a bunch of towns, and they have a bunch of buildings with rooms in them, but there's no reason to go in to most of them, they just house generic NPCs walking back and forth on short loops. There's shops and smiths and inns but you can't actually buy anything or rest anywhere, it just feels.... weird. Game is weird, man.

Quote from: Count Nerfedalot on November 10, 2021, 06:43:18 AM

Speaking of No Man's Sky, I just played through Expedition 4. [snip]

I keep trying to get in to that game, and end up getting buried in systems. Is there a quick newbie guide out there explaining WTF is going on? Like, I keep running out of inventory space and I'm never sure what (if anything) I have is valuable and what I should junk, or how upgrades work, or how the teleport system works, etc. If I remember, my last time trying to play I was following the main quest line and it sent me to this big spherical space station with a bunch of other players and tons of NPCs selling all kinds of stuff I have no idea what it is for or what to do with it, like a giant egg hatching machine and an alien who told me my space beans were not good enough for... something, I guess, and it's all neon lights and people swearing at each other in Portugese and I have no idea what I'm even supposed to be doing there.

Quote from: Kail on November 14, 2021, 05:17:52 PM

Quote from: Count Nerfedalot on November 10, 2021, 06:43:18 AM

Speaking of No Man's Sky, I just played through Expedition 4. [snip]

I would also like a newbie guide, or more accurately a returning player's guide. I played it at launch and so I've never wanted to restart, but the game just kinda drops you in there without a clue even if you've been gone for a year or more.

Well, here's some scattered thoughts on newcomers/returnees to No Man's Sky (from memory so probably not completely accurate!):

The wiki at https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/No_Man%27s_Sky_Wiki is pretty darn good. You can look up just about ANYTHING you have a question about there, be it the name of something in your inventory you want to know what it's good for or a line of text from a quest or NPC to probably find out more about it. And it stays very up to date and references some good information on other sites. I always have it open in another window while playing.

https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Beginner%27s_guide is a (very) basic starting guide.

Start in normal mode first until you learn the game. Try the other modes later if it gets too easy for you. A given save will always be in the same mode, you can't decide to play your normal mode character in hard mode one day. Except Expedition saves which get converted to Normal mode saves when the Expedition ends.

The first 15 minutes when you start are pretty much hectic panic mode, especially when you're trying to learn the controls. The first hour is also arguably the most fun! The most important things are to learn how to move, learn how to scan, learn how to mine (and find a couple critical resources), and find a cave. If you can't find a cave in the first 10 minutes or so, God help you unless you have at least a little experience in the game or just started running for your disabled ship the moment you stood up and it's not too far away. You will ALWAYS start on a planet with some hazard, cold, heat, radiation or toxic and the timer will be ticking on your hazard protection and then life support. And there WILL be storms where those will plummet really fast until you get some protection upgrades. Which you almost certainly won't until you get your starship capable of flight. Do note that using your jump jets depletes your life support pretty quickly (it gets better later once it and the jets get upgraded) and you can't jump very far yet so save them for getting across hole or surviving unexpected falls. Running may do the same but it's much slower if so, so run when you need to. But you have to walk a bit after running as that has it's own stamina bar that winds down (and refills) pretty quickly. That also can be improved later.

At the beginning (mostly the same whether regular start or expedition, except storms don't seem to be scripted in expeditions) look for a cave as you head in the general direction of your ship. While looking for a cave, grab every glowy red (oxygen) and especially glowy yellow (sodium) flower you can see, as well as any blue crystals (di-hydrogen). Carbon is less critical than it used to be, due to a recent change as it no longer can be used to recharge your life support. But it's still needed for running your portable refiner. You really want oxygen to recharge your life support but it's often really hard to get when you start. Sometimes the toxic flora in caves will yield it, and always(?) the toxic flora above ground will so use your mining tool on any and all of those you see! Also mine rocks for lots of ferrite dust and plants for carbon and oxygen. And you REALLY want to find a cave to hide in during the first couple (scripted) storms. Duck into the cave during the storm(s) and spend the storm mining cobalt. Hundreds of units if you can. Also carbon and oxygen from the hazardous plants and sometimes other stuff and ferrite dust if there is any. You can make Ion Batteries from Cobalt + Di-Hydrogen to charge up your hazard shields so if you have enough of those you can survive out in the storms and just the general hazard of that planet for much much longer periods. If you can't find any caves you need to be making a hurried beeline towards your ship, pretty much only stopping to grab yellow flowers to refresh your hazard shield.

Inventory limits is the single biggest headache throughout most of the game. Before you get off your first planet there's not much you can do to expand it, BUT there's only a few things you really need to save. You want to hoard all the oxygen, carbon, sodium, cobalt, uranium (if on radioactive planet - it's easier than making launch fuel), ferrite dust, di-hydrogen (you should be slurping up everyone of those blue crystals you run across for a long time, at least until you can afford to buy di-hydrogen jelly and break it down as needed). Pretty much anything else is disposable until you're able to get off planet, and have ways to expand your inventory as well as often just buy what you need. As you run out of space, sell/use/discard things like any animal products, gasses (nitrogen, radon, etc), junk items like Rusted Metal (as long as you don't need it to make Ferrite dust!) Viscous Fulids, Living Slime, etc can be discarded. You *can* theoretically cook those up to make nanites, but it takes lots of boring time for not a lot of reward. Keep any high value stuff to sell once you get to a Galactic Trade Terminal. Sell anything that only says Trade on it. Alien doohickys with the purple background (Vy'keen dagger, etc) have some use later on but it's not huge and you can buy them from other (NPC) pilots so they can be sold/given to alien/discarded early on if you need the space. High value items like Storm Crystals, dinosaur bones,

Once you've arrived at your disabled ship, use it to recharge your hazard shield/shelter from storms, and follow the prompts to find the stuff you need to repair it. You're going to need Chromatic Metal soon so that means you want to get a couple hundred copper unless you can buy it somewhere. I *think* you get enough to get off the ground from the quest line, but not sure.

Generally best to follow the main questlines as it will give you some focus as you learn stuff and it will intoduce you to lots of things and give you many free recipes.

As you follow the initial questlines in your starting system you will get a mission to talk to the people on the station to find. BE VERY CAREFUL to NOT talk to any of the vendors there OR any weird guys that look like bad hologram images until you finish that quest. Every alien you talk to during it will be locked and never talk to you again, and it can be a royal PITA to lose access to some of them in what is your initial home system. Talk to any of the other random guys wandering around on the station instead.

Recipes you might want to get early include the personal refiner for your exosuit and the first couple of vaults to offload less used stuff from your inventory.

Modules you might want to prioritize are a single hazard protection for each of whatever planet type(s) you are spending time on, scanner upgrades, particularly with high bonuses for fauna, as scanning critters is by far the fastest way to get early credits, some suit shield and life support modules, and hyperdrive range extenders for your starship. Also a better weapon and it's upgrades for your ship, but you can delay getting a weapon for your gun for a while if you are short on salvage modules (for the weapons recipes) or nanites (for their upgrade mods). My favorite weapons are the scatter blaster for hand and positron ejector for ship, the shotgun stuff. They have slightly shorter ranges but do the most damage up close by a significant margin. Both of them really really need a couple upgrade modules to boost the ammo capacity and reload times to not be annoying though.

Dig up and save any buried tech you find as you wander around planets. You'll need a lot of salvage modules to buy recipes (on the Anomaly/Nexus black spherical space station.

S class ships are nice, have longer range and more storage space, but again, kind of rare. I'd suggest getting the first A class you find that you like and get an S class when you happen upon it or have your feet under you. The buy price of a ship doesn't cover buying all the upgrade modules you'll want to make it actually better than what you have, so you probably want to buy instead of exchange whenever you get a new ship, especially if you don't have enough modules and/or nanites stockpiled to kit it out reasonably well. Fighters are the most maneuverable and weapons do the most damage but have a bit less cargo capacity. I usually go with one anyway because I like their looks the best. Explorers have the most range. Haulers have by far the most cargo capacity but handle like dump trucks and have pretty limited visibility. They are nice as extra portable inventory containers you can summon to your location on any planet, but I never ever fly them. Shuttles are amazingly cheap for their cargo space, and are otherwise acceptably decent across the board so that's a good early choice.

Teleporter addresses for space stations are only learned if you actually land in the station. just cruising around a system without doing so will not record it. Station addresses are only remembered for the last 50 or 70 or so stations you've been to. They seem to usually be ordered from the most recent first, but I'm not entirely sure that's always true. You will always have access to any teleporters you have at your bases and can teleport to them even if they are not powered. You cannot teleport out from a base teleporter if it is not powered. You can also see (some? all?) of the bases other players have built in the system you are currently in. But it seems to be inconsistent and not even always showing a base you just came from. Once you have afreighter and build a teleporter on it you can teleport out from it just like the station, but you can never teleport TO your freighter.

When you win one of the big(ish) setpiece space battles which trigger upon entering a system, you can land on the rescued freighter and talk to the captain and he will offer it to you for free. Decline the first one and take the chromatic metal reward instead. That first one is a wimpy version with less cargo slots and range than ALL the freighters you will subsequently rescue. Every time you win you will get offered the ship as long as you didn't hurt any friendlies (freighters of fighters) in the dogfight. Once you've accepted a free freighter you all subsequent offers will be for a hefty fee, so it's not an irreversible choice but it might be awhile before you can afford to swap. It's best to hold out for the best class you can, the maximum jump range and i think cargo space increases quite a bit with each step up. But you might want to settle for an A class of whichever design you want. There are two designs with three different sizes (stretched versions) each. The interiors are identical and you can relatively easily change the colors to what you want. Super easy if you don't mind hoisting the jolly roger and shooting up a few friendly freighters and cargo containers for the Salvaged Frigate Modules you need to buy all Freighter upgrades. You lose some faction with whichever race owns that system but it's a trivial amount, not worth worrying about. S class freighters are the nicest to have but are super rare. You can only get them in systems with a three star economy and even then only rarely. Once I found the design I wanted I ran that battle between 150 and 200 times before getting an S class. Once you start roaming the galaxy freighters are incredibly useful for two things. You can build a base on it that does just about anything you need a base for (except mining of course), and for hauling your vaults around everywhere you go. The very first freighter tech I aim for is the matter teleporter thingy that lets you access the vaults on your freighter from ANYWHERE as long as your freighter is in the same system. Not only is that one of the two best inventory extensions you'll get (adding slots to your exosuit being the other but buying those gets pretty spendy pretty quickly and chasing down drop pods can be quite a chore), it also is by far the easiest way to access and manage your vault storage, even allowing you such exotic functionality as putting an item in the exact slot you want it or rearranging the items. Those functions are NOT available when you access the vault by clicking on it directly, I guess because, consoles.

Vaults are numbered 0 through 9, each requiring a different recipe (using the same ingredients though). You can only have one of each number at a given base, but all of a given number share the same storage space no matter where they are, even in a different system or galaxy.

Upgrades are a bit complicated. There are recipes you buy in the Anomaly (trading Salvage Data for them) or get as quest rewards which give you new components like different weapon types, upgrades for those weapons, hazard shields, etc. Once you have a recipe you can build that item in as many of the appropriate systems as you want. So each time you buy/upgrade to a new multitool for example you will have to build most or all of the components you want in it from those recipes. Then there are upgrade modules which you buy from station vendors (using nanites) or get as loot from various things. The upgrade modules work to enhance existing components. You can install a Heat Shield mod in your exosuit but it wont do anything if you don't have the heat shield component installed (that's the one you build from the recipe). S class modules are generally the only ones worth buying. Lower class modules you get as loot may be useful early, but if you can live without, sell them to any of the vendors that will sell modules to you for much needed nanites you use to get the better S class modules you want. Note some things like weapons have both upgrades from recipeis as well as upgrade modules. And once installed you can't really tell them apart except by name. The recipe upgrades you are limited to one of each in a given device. The upgrade modules on the other hand you can install 3 for each component they upgrade PER TAB. Installing a fourth will overload them and none of them will work until you scrap one/. By tab I mean the starship and exosuit main inventory tab and the equipment tab. You can't install components in the cargo tab. You can install 6 total copies of any given type of module in any given Starship or your exosuit, 3 on the main tab and 3 on the equipment tab. Most modules get a boost to their effectiveness is you install them adjacent to each other and to the component they are enhancing. Generally you get the optimum performance with a lopsided plus configuration with the component itself in the middle, the three upgrade mods on the primary axes, and any recipe-built component upgrades nestled in the corners. Move them around to play with it and check the total scores (like your damage score or warp range) to see which arrangement works best. Obviously the plus only works on one of the tabs, the extra 3 modules float by themselves (adjacent to each other) on the other tab. You can scrap components and modules you don't want anymore for a couple handy ingredients.

There's lots more stuff to learn, feel free to ask specific if you need help with something I haven't covered. The main quests do teach you a lot in a reasonably useful order. And yes, returnees really should restart, at least until they've relearned the (new) game.

Edit 11/16/2021 to correct a couple errors

That's an awful lot of words, which seem helpful, but I did not enjoy the "I am a mook stranded on a planet" phase of the game and have no desire to go through it again.

Quote from: Rendakor on November 16, 2021, 02:24:16 PM

That's an awful lot of words, which seem helpful, but I did not enjoy the "I am a mook stranded on a planet" phase of the game and have no desire to go through it again.

Fair enough. And yes, way too many words. I kept trying to trim it and every time I did it got longer! And I didn't even get into the three different currencies (four counting the cosmetics shop).

More words.

Speaking of currencies. there are 4 (that I can think of). Credits and Salvage Data are big limiters in the early game, add Nanites in the middle game, and less Salvage Data in the late game (except now I need lots and lots of them again to get all the newfangled construction recipes). I don't remember what the cosmetic currency is called and haven't messed with it though I have accumulated some.

There are shortcuts to get all the credits and nanites you'll ever need which aren't even exploity. Some folks think they detract from the game, others think they're good for leapfroging the boring grind. But for Salvage Data you need to just keep digging them up untill you've bought all the recipes you want.

One way to get billions (and billions and billions, but the most you can hold at a time is something like 4.5 or 5 billion) of credits is to build yourself some resource collection sites to make Products. the farther down the product tree you go the higher your yield in credits for time spent. The biggest effort is the farms, both building them and doing the harvesting. Bio-domes are much easier/faster to harvest than open fields or hydroponic trays, but more expensive to set up. I did have a lot of fun setting up collection bases for various minerals and gasses, mapping out resource points to get 3 or 4 different ones at each base plus an electromagnetic power station at each. You do also have to get all the recipies which requires raiding a lot of manufacturing facilities.

By the way, trying to be a space trucker/trader is super low return and not much fun really. The Galactic Trade Terminal is "Galactic" about as much as Virgin Galactic is. The GTT is completely local to the system it's in. There are some exploits for manipulating the markets but they're super cheesy. It can get you some fast cash in the early game at the cost of a cheesy grind, but it was too cheesy and grindy for me.

Another completely legit way to get lots of credits is to set up an Activated Indium (AI) mine. You can do this fairly easily in the early game by getting yourself sent to a blue system and finding any stormy planet there via a mission from the Nexus. At least I think you can without an Indium Drive, otherwise you have to get that first. It's faster and cheaper to get going than the production setup but maybe harder to get the highest rates of return, and not nearly as much fun, at least for me. AI mining also skips the crafting steps required by the production option. You build your mining facility, turn it on, and go do something else. Come back a few hours or a day later, empty the storage of AI and teleport to the station with the best price, or better yet sell it to an NPC pilot ~~to a trading post in~~ that system so you don't crash the station economy, sell them and boom! you're much richer. Production requires collecting all the resources from half a dozen or more facilities, then assembling up to a couple dozen different steps building several As and Bs to make Cs which you combine with Ds to make Es which you then combine with Fs which you made from Gs and Hs, etc, then go sell the final results (again to an NPC pilot, preferably with a favorable Price bonus) and boom! you're much MUCH richer.

Other early money makers (yielding hundreds of thousands up to a couple million credits instead of hundreds of millions or more) are gathering things like Storm Crystals, Larval Cores, Ancient Bones, or Salvageable Scrap.

By far the fastest way to get nanites is to find a natural spawn of "curious deposit"s which are green spheres on the ground which yield Runaway Mould when mined. The mould can be refined directly into Nanites in a single pass. You can easily get a thousand nanites from a single harvest, and teleporting away and back again makes them respawn so you can accumulate nanites very quickly. There is no easy way to find these deposits other than just walking on planets a lot, but it looks like they spawn on any kind of planet (not sure about vacuum planets, but I have found them on one of those weird anomaly planets). So any time you do find some you should plant a base on them so you can get back there. You'll really want them in the middle to late game when you need thousands and thousands of nanites to max out your ships and you'll kick yourself when you realize that yeah, you'd found and mined (or even skipped not knowing the value!) a couple of those deposits earlier in the game but have no clue anymore which system/planet it was on much less where.

Until you find some Curious Deposits, a slower but fun way to get nanites is to go into the salvage business. Convert Navigation Data into maps to find crashed ships to scrap. Scrapping A and S class ships will give you a couple A and S class mods which can be sold for several hundred nanites each, if you don't use them yourself.

Overall there are two grinds which, if you do them early in the game, can make the rest of the game vastly less grindy/frustrating. One is expanding your inventory. You can go from system to system and buy two inventory slots at each, one from the station and one in the Anomaly. But those get spendy fast so unless you have lots and lots of credits you aren't going to get too far that way. Maxing out your exosuit slots by buying them costs somewhere in the millions to 10s of millions if I remember correctly.

The other is the credits production grind. You use credits to max out your Exosuit, buy better/different starships and muli-tools, or a different freighter if you want to upgrade/change the style. An S class starship with max cargo slots can be as low as 6 or 7 million for a 28-slot shuttle to as much as ~130 million for a 48-slot hauler. A 34-slot S class Freighter will run you 178 million. S class multi-tools range from ~1.2 million for a 10-slot pistol to 7.5 million for a 24 slot alien or experimental. Upgrading a starship can cost billions. Which means if you ARE going to buy any slots, you should do the early ones when they are cheap and go for drop pods when they get into the hundreds of thousands per slot. Unless you've built your credit generation facility up and can gather hundreds of millions with an hour or so of labor. It is nice to have a hundred million or so credits in your pocket when that cool exotic ship or S-class Fighter with the perfect color scheme and model lands next to you, or you find a sweet S class alien multi-tool for sale.

If you can get to a blue star, mining activated indium is by far the fastest way to get a good chunk of credits. Initially you can just find a deposit and mine it with your multi-tool. But that is slow and gets old really fast, so it pays off to spend a little time surveying out a resource node and building an extraction facility on it that you can turn on and let it collect while you do something else. And once you have some AI to sell it might be worth checking the price at all the systems you can teleport to. Most have a 5-8% penalty on the price paid, but if you can find one with a 3% bonus or more it can make a decent difference. Ideally you want an electromagentic hotspot nearby as well for power generation, but if the surveying game bores or annoys too much you can always use solar cells. It takes a lot more resources though, and don't forget you need batteries at night. Roughly one battery per two solar cells will keep the power flowing full time, as long as you are generating enough surplus to charge the batteries while powering the base.

Edit 11/17/2021: corrected exosuit upgrade prices and collected the related scattered thoughts.

Added 11/17/2021: If you find a good (better than 2% bonus to sell price) market for Activated Indium or your production product (generally Stasis Devices or Fusion igniters) it's probably a good idea to build a little base somewhere in that system. This will allow you to teleport there from anywhere in the universe and you will never lose that ability to the system scrolling off the end of your teleporter list. But you will then have to fly up to the station from your base/ Note that it's better to sell to a pilot on the space station than at the Galactic Trade Terminal (GTT) itself. Selling a commodity in large quantities to the GTT will crash the market for that product in that system, and they will only offer you a fraction of the value of the item for a long time after. GTTs at trade posts and the like have different price bonuses/penalties from the space station, but pilots landing there all seem to have different bonuses as well!

Added 11/17/2021: Another steady and easy source of nanites is from scanning. Scanning all the flora or fauna on a planet and uploading the data will get you a nice nanite payout. But usually finding the last couple critters or plants is a real PITA and not worth the time and effort. BUT you get nanites for selling the data from whatever you scanned, complete or not, to two guys on the Anomaly station. Weird looking dudes on the right when facing the Anomaly from the landing area.

This is useful to read. Makes me almost want to start over--I've never bothered with the tanker, that's way back in my first system I guess. I just putz around not really making stuff at a major scale.

not sure what you mean by tanker. if it's a ship you own, either a freighter or a hauler, you can summon it to you. Assuming you're talking about freighters, those are capital ships and if you didn't take the first one you were offered you'll get more chances. Just need to be online I think 3 hours and make 5 jumps and you'll get another combat and opportunity to get (or buy) another. Or at least that's the received wisdom of the internet. I'm positive I've gotten the combat on my 3rd jump after only being on an hour. But I've been positively sure and wrong before so who knows.

If you've gotten off your first planet and didn't enjoy the survival game then don't restart. You can pick up everything you need to learn as you go from wherever you are. Might need to ask around if there's something you don't understand or can't find. But in some ways one of the best things about this game is there are so many things to do, few of them absolutely mandatory (once you can warp anyway).

Base building was meh to me until there was actually a reason to do so. My first base was a shed next to a minor outpost, basically the minimum required by the starting questline. Then I abandoned it and built everything I needed on my freighter. And didn't really do bases any more until I started the industrial scale mining. Then I built a bunch of bases that actually served a purpose, and that was much more satisfying.