Challenge games

I just finished a playthrough in which I permitted the use of only found weapons. (I added one missile launcher at the start of the game, then sold it when I found a projectile cannon.) No equipment at all unless I found it or won it on the battlefield. No selling and re-buying equipment so that I had upgrades just the way I liked them, either.

What about you? What rules have you imposed upon some of your games, to challenge yourselves?

You won? Wow. Was it on easy?

It was on easy, and with luck, I got a celestial ion cannon quickly afterwards, both near the start of the game. I've been trying to replicate that win, without success.

An easier version of this challenge is to disallow upgrades on anything you built yourself. These challenges unfortunately forbid fighter bays, as they don't drop from anything. Light guns are similarly difficult to fully outfit a ship with, as they drop more rarely than heavy guns.

Great work there, Commander! You need some more challenge, obviously.

Maybe that Endless Mode coming in the beginning of 2016 will be something for you!

I will appreciate Endless Mode. Particularly, it'll provide more chances to pick up weapons you can't get otherwise - celestial, etc. I do wish that some of those weapons were more rewarding though, for the difficulty and rarity in obtaining them, though.

Right now all weapons seem similarly balanced. I feel like weapons won in battle should be more rewarding, to feed the loot frenzy, and weapons found, being yet rarer, should be yet more rewarding.

Or at least they should drop more often. I almost never see celestial weppons.

I see your point Lurkily, but I feel like the more power we give to the weapons, the less difficult the game becomes, taking away from the intensity of the game. Personally, I enjoy having to repair my ship after every engagement. It shows the game is in fact increasing in difficulty as I progress through the campaign. If I were able to wipe the screen of enemies within seconds of warping into each sector, I would grow bored of the game very quickly, as would many others I'm sure. Maybe they could increase the number of times you can upgrade an aspect of a weapon or hangar, but I feel like increasing their base stats would make game too simple.

Here's the thing - loot frenzy is fundamental to an equipment based game. Diablo and all its clones proved that loot is a mechanic that can be foundational to a game successfully. A good loot system can feed the gambling urge, creating addicts to your game - developing veterans into word-of-mouth advertisers.

To have a loot system in place that is weak, or even worse, a system of loot drops that can only very rarely outperform what you make yourself, is a serious disservice to the game, and your business model.

As for overpowering things . . . how often do you see weapon drops that you can't build, and aren't common on enemy ships? I almost always see only one per game, and have at most obtained two - the shield-drain laser, and the celestial ion cannon - the gold orb shooting thingy. And every time, I use them for novelty, because energy cannons and projectile cannons outperform them.

A note on difficulty: I actually think repair costs are too low. I almost never forgo repair to save money for weapons or ships. I think the decision to repair or not repair has minimal strategic consideration, because it's outweighed so easily by income. Most of that strategic value is also limited to the early-game, when scrap is harder to come by.

I think the repair costs should be more heavily impacted by difficulty levels, if they are currently impacted, but also raised somewhat at easy. (Haven't done a careful comparison.)

On the point of repair costs, you are right, they become irrelevant after a short amount of time. However, if we were able to upgrade the ship's hull integrity, giving it more hp, the repair costs would have a legitimate reason to increase.

As for the loot, I strongly believe that's one of the things they are working on as we wait. Either that, if they are adding more buildable and tradeable options. Regardless, I feel like we will have a lot more freedom with making new strategies and we will not be limited to the rapid fire projectile cannon strategy we've all become accustomed to.