Steam => Starbase description:
===Building and designing spaceships and stations===
Building and designing spaceships in starbase, has an initial learning curve, however once you figure out how ships in starbase work. you will soon find out how limited you are in actually designing your ship.
There are some hard limits, however this isn't what I am talking about, designing any ship to be decent / good looking means your ship will be extremely slow. everything in the game relies on having high speed. This in turn requires you to be forced to spam thruster walls as its the only viable solution in game, and no other methods are possible.
this is an underlying issue in general, all device are static not dynamic, which means that you are required to spam the same device over and over.
building and designing stations / lots in starbase, has been in a terrible state since the beginning of CA, in general it never worked. there is no incentive to build one, as there is no content with them. We can't design them ourselves we can only use specific modules, meaning its extremely limited.
Looking forward to upcoming features, we are getting factories, gas extractors and 3d printers. however If I look more in-depth to the upcoming features, I honestly don't see much interesting gameplay, it mainly comes down to onces you have build it, wait x hours and collect it, its sounds more like a choir then interesting and interactive gameplay.
===Exploration===
Exploration in starbase, in general there is the belt, some Dev stations and some moons. thats it, you got a 5km render distance around you, but there isn't much to explore. Even player stations only render around 2km distance from you, so in general unless you like sitting afk in a ship for IRL days on end to go to a moon, there is nothing.
===Resource gathering===
Resource gathering in starbase, mining at first seems extremely interesting, however the moment you realise any interesting device requires rare resources you are in for some very un-fun gameplay.
there are 4 rare resources in the current gamestate. 3/4th of them are findable in larger quantities arround 250-500km out from origin, however the only way to find them is to go to each asteroid around you and hope its one of the rare resources. basically RNG, there is no scanner or ore detector to help you find the ore you seek.
now the rarest ore is called Xhalium, the ore is basically extremely boring to find, it can take a person days to find a single roid. its mainly found after 750km from origin. at this points it can take several days before a roid is found and its an extremely boring and mundane task.
this resource is requires for all ship weaponry except for one. meaning to do any form of PvP you are required to do this mundane task, there have only been a handfull of people actually obtained this resource in-game. however we are lucky upcoming economy isn't implemented yet and we can purchase the devices without requiring the materials for them.
===Crafting===
Crafting is a thing in starbase?!?
===Trading===
Trading in starbase, honestly trading hasn't really been a thing in starbase. You normally require all resources yourself, so why would you even sell them? In general there are no real incentives to trade your resources, most people just hold onto them, because at some point you will need them, and making credits isn't hard in general. You can sell any or all ore to the station for instant transaction. best possible way to earn fast credits is mine entire asteroids and sell everything to the station.
===Combat===
Combat in starbase, honestly there is none, we got combat events using free ships. but organically there is no combat, in general the game lacks really hard in terms of any PvP.
There are many core issues with PvP in general;
- there are no catch up mechanics, meaning any ship going near max speed is going to be safe. your best defense is having a fast ship, and your best offensive is having a fast ship. in general even if we had the ability to find others, it is still a core issue.
- we have no way to find others, even once we get rad detection, whats the point? inexperienced players (noobs) will have non max speed ships and thus will be destroyed. the people having max speed ships are non possible to catch up to, so in general there is no real way to do anything.
- weapon bug, all weapons are limited to 1km range, meaning even if you have a 5km render distance you can't do anything untill you catch up to you target in order to damage their thrusters and slow them down.
- coming back to the design issue, because all ships have an entire wall of thrusters it means there aren't any effective ways of slowing or disabling the ship, the best way is hitting their generator and making sure their entire ship explodes.
- Another issue is, the O menu, the O menu shows all players in your render distance, combined with their name and faction. In general this means someone keeping track of their O menu can never be sneaked upon. there is no counter play to this, so in general if they check their O menu and respond to your presence, just abort its going to be a waste of time.
PvP in general is completely dependend on your target not being experienced or slacking. Their ship is required to not be max speed, and the person is supposed to not check their surrounding using the O menu or defensive Rad detection.
In general Time of flight has been reduced to arround 1 to 2 hours on avarage for ships. however as there are no catch up mechanics, it means you have a max time of 30 min to 1 hour to fight and kill your target, and to be able to fly back.
in general i have designed my ships to be atleast 6 hours +, to my experience this is not enough and means you will have to resupply very often.
===Gamestate===
they have made it a extremely clear they do not want this game to have the following:
- they don't want to game to be KoS everywhere.
- they you don't want grieving to be a thing.
- you don't want to have insiding / espionage.
in order to accomplish this they have resorted to having players obey by written rules and implemented safeguards into the game.
However this basically limits your gameplay to either abuse these safeguards or be hunted down by more experienced players. They want players to be able to have no risk in order to PvP, however because of the safeguards in place to ensure this gameplay loop. in means PvP loses any meaning, there is no risk involved as you can safeguard all your belongings.
In general this will turn out to grieving, as PvP now has little to no meaning its means I will just PvP anything I can. which results into grieving, as they only people being vurnable in general will be the inexperienced players (noobs).
forcing them to either play this exact same gameplay in order to ensure complete safety.
===multi crew===
multi crew in starbase, there is no multi crew in starbase, starbase has shown its currently not possible at all, in general the game will be played using a ship for each person.
After almost a year of Closed Alpha we finally have to ability to stay on another person their ship, before we would almost always get yeeted.
However looking at upcoming updates the only thing being added are Tri-pods, however I do not consider this to be multi crew. it means your players will be sitting afk doing nothing on your ship untill there is something to shoot, as previously stated if you ship is being max speed I doubt you will see any pvp in general.
in general this all comes down to engine issues with hosting issues. the person hosting the ship can do anything with the ship, however the people whom aren't the host in general can't do anything.
====================================================================
This is the end of my post,
I am very sad to say, I do not expect this game to succeed while its continueing this direction, its main focus is non-pvp and safeguarding gameplay from any PvP interaction. I personally have lost trust in their ability to make the game towards a fun and enjoyable state, I do truely hope they regain my trust.
Overall the game has only gotton worse over the state of Closed Alpha, this has been adressed by the community several times. however they keep going with their same direction, which to me feels has changed around November / December.
Mining has become less fun, PvP has become less fun, Space ship design has become less fun.
I personally have spend over 2.1k hours into the game, with the main focus of testing their features and providing the best possible reports, I have found many exploits and bugs which thanks to my help got fixed relatively quickly. as much as it pains me I will not be buying the game and will maybe check back on the game in 1-2 years time. I do really hope the game survives for this time and doesn't end up having no playerbase.
The game is not Ready for an EA release nor are the upcoming features going to "fix most of our issues" as stated by the developers.
===================================================================
It has proved that the only way to force them to take action is by extensively over abusing a game mechanic. they even had a fix ready for a bug in the game, however this wasn't shipped to alpha build for some unknown reason. so I was abusing this game mechanic in order to despawn ships in a dev station. which forced them to actuallu ship the fix for that bug in the upcoming patch. they don't seem to understand what can be abused and only take action when absolutely neccesary. this saddens me deeply.
===Building and designing spaceships and stations===
Building and designing spaceships in starbase, has an initial learning curve, however once you figure out how ships in starbase work. you will soon find out how limited you are in actually designing your ship.
There are some hard limits, however this isn't what I am talking about, designing any ship to be decent / good looking means your ship will be extremely slow. everything in the game relies on having high speed. This in turn requires you to be forced to spam thruster walls as its the only viable solution in game, and no other methods are possible.
this is an underlying issue in general, all device are static not dynamic, which means that you are required to spam the same device over and over.
building and designing stations / lots in starbase, has been in a terrible state since the beginning of CA, in general it never worked. there is no incentive to build one, as there is no content with them. We can't design them ourselves we can only use specific modules, meaning its extremely limited.
Looking forward to upcoming features, we are getting factories, gas extractors and 3d printers. however If I look more in-depth to the upcoming features, I honestly don't see much interesting gameplay, it mainly comes down to onces you have build it, wait x hours and collect it, its sounds more like a choir then interesting and interactive gameplay.
===Exploration===
Exploration in starbase, in general there is the belt, some Dev stations and some moons. thats it, you got a 5km render distance around you, but there isn't much to explore. Even player stations only render around 2km distance from you, so in general unless you like sitting afk in a ship for IRL days on end to go to a moon, there is nothing.
===Resource gathering===
Resource gathering in starbase, mining at first seems extremely interesting, however the moment you realise any interesting device requires rare resources you are in for some very un-fun gameplay.
there are 4 rare resources in the current gamestate. 3/4th of them are findable in larger quantities arround 250-500km out from origin, however the only way to find them is to go to each asteroid around you and hope its one of the rare resources. basically RNG, there is no scanner or ore detector to help you find the ore you seek.
now the rarest ore is called Xhalium, the ore is basically extremely boring to find, it can take a person days to find a single roid. its mainly found after 750km from origin. at this points it can take several days before a roid is found and its an extremely boring and mundane task.
this resource is requires for all ship weaponry except for one. meaning to do any form of PvP you are required to do this mundane task, there have only been a handfull of people actually obtained this resource in-game. however we are lucky upcoming economy isn't implemented yet and we can purchase the devices without requiring the materials for them.
===Crafting===
Crafting is a thing in starbase?!?
===Trading===
Trading in starbase, honestly trading hasn't really been a thing in starbase. You normally require all resources yourself, so why would you even sell them? In general there are no real incentives to trade your resources, most people just hold onto them, because at some point you will need them, and making credits isn't hard in general. You can sell any or all ore to the station for instant transaction. best possible way to earn fast credits is mine entire asteroids and sell everything to the station.
===Combat===
Combat in starbase, honestly there is none, we got combat events using free ships. but organically there is no combat, in general the game lacks really hard in terms of any PvP.
There are many core issues with PvP in general;
- there are no catch up mechanics, meaning any ship going near max speed is going to be safe. your best defense is having a fast ship, and your best offensive is having a fast ship. in general even if we had the ability to find others, it is still a core issue.
- we have no way to find others, even once we get rad detection, whats the point? inexperienced players (noobs) will have non max speed ships and thus will be destroyed. the people having max speed ships are non possible to catch up to, so in general there is no real way to do anything.
- weapon bug, all weapons are limited to 1km range, meaning even if you have a 5km render distance you can't do anything untill you catch up to you target in order to damage their thrusters and slow them down.
- coming back to the design issue, because all ships have an entire wall of thrusters it means there aren't any effective ways of slowing or disabling the ship, the best way is hitting their generator and making sure their entire ship explodes.
- Another issue is, the O menu, the O menu shows all players in your render distance, combined with their name and faction. In general this means someone keeping track of their O menu can never be sneaked upon. there is no counter play to this, so in general if they check their O menu and respond to your presence, just abort its going to be a waste of time.
PvP in general is completely dependend on your target not being experienced or slacking. Their ship is required to not be max speed, and the person is supposed to not check their surrounding using the O menu or defensive Rad detection.
In general Time of flight has been reduced to arround 1 to 2 hours on avarage for ships. however as there are no catch up mechanics, it means you have a max time of 30 min to 1 hour to fight and kill your target, and to be able to fly back.
in general i have designed my ships to be atleast 6 hours +, to my experience this is not enough and means you will have to resupply very often.
===Gamestate===
they have made it a extremely clear they do not want this game to have the following:
- they don't want to game to be KoS everywhere.
- they you don't want grieving to be a thing.
- you don't want to have insiding / espionage.
in order to accomplish this they have resorted to having players obey by written rules and implemented safeguards into the game.
However this basically limits your gameplay to either abuse these safeguards or be hunted down by more experienced players. They want players to be able to have no risk in order to PvP, however because of the safeguards in place to ensure this gameplay loop. in means PvP loses any meaning, there is no risk involved as you can safeguard all your belongings.
In general this will turn out to grieving, as PvP now has little to no meaning its means I will just PvP anything I can. which results into grieving, as they only people being vurnable in general will be the inexperienced players (noobs).
forcing them to either play this exact same gameplay in order to ensure complete safety.
===multi crew===
multi crew in starbase, there is no multi crew in starbase, starbase has shown its currently not possible at all, in general the game will be played using a ship for each person.
After almost a year of Closed Alpha we finally have to ability to stay on another person their ship, before we would almost always get yeeted.
However looking at upcoming updates the only thing being added are Tri-pods, however I do not consider this to be multi crew. it means your players will be sitting afk doing nothing on your ship untill there is something to shoot, as previously stated if you ship is being max speed I doubt you will see any pvp in general.
in general this all comes down to engine issues with hosting issues. the person hosting the ship can do anything with the ship, however the people whom aren't the host in general can't do anything.
====================================================================
This is the end of my post,
I am very sad to say, I do not expect this game to succeed while its continueing this direction, its main focus is non-pvp and safeguarding gameplay from any PvP interaction. I personally have lost trust in their ability to make the game towards a fun and enjoyable state, I do truely hope they regain my trust.
Overall the game has only gotton worse over the state of Closed Alpha, this has been adressed by the community several times. however they keep going with their same direction, which to me feels has changed around November / December.
Mining has become less fun, PvP has become less fun, Space ship design has become less fun.
I personally have spend over 2.1k hours into the game, with the main focus of testing their features and providing the best possible reports, I have found many exploits and bugs which thanks to my help got fixed relatively quickly. as much as it pains me I will not be buying the game and will maybe check back on the game in 1-2 years time. I do really hope the game survives for this time and doesn't end up having no playerbase.
The game is not Ready for an EA release nor are the upcoming features going to "fix most of our issues" as stated by the developers.
===================================================================
It has proved that the only way to force them to take action is by extensively over abusing a game mechanic. they even had a fix ready for a bug in the game, however this wasn't shipped to alpha build for some unknown reason. so I was abusing this game mechanic in order to despawn ships in a dev station. which forced them to actuallu ship the fix for that bug in the upcoming patch. they don't seem to understand what can be abused and only take action when absolutely neccesary. this saddens me deeply.
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