Kaeladin

Copy and pasted from the Discord that I also posted in it. I apologize for wordcount, but I hope it helps! I really tried to capture the spirit of "just play through the game from start to X" as best as I could. Hi Boxelware team! First off, wanted to give y’all a huge thank you for all the hard work and new features for us to playtest! Been having a lot of fun exploring the new game systems + the revamped ones, and wanted to offer some of my overall impressions with 2.0 so far. First, settings/context for my beta playthrough to give you some idea of how I approached it: Difficulty: Veteran Mods: None (outside of the EVE Online music; good stuff!) Playtime: 110+ hours (full transparency: at least 25-30 of those hours were spent with the game running in the background while I slept/did other stuff. This was mostly for my passive industry, such as mines and factories. In practice, this was almost never necessary on the credits-end especially due to Trade missions, which I’ll describe my experience with later) Typical playstyle/approach: I’d describe myself as an industry/mining-based semi-core rusher. I spend a good chunk of time in the iron/titanium region earning credits (typically through some light trading/resource shortage missions), get some basic industry running (e.g. two mines, maybe a medical supplies factory), then use that industry base to transition me into the mid-game (which is typically a light stint in the naonite region just to get shields, then spending a good chunk of time in the trinium/xanion regions and setting up r-mining operations + more industry). From there, it’s a straight shot to the core after farming up the Xsotan relics. THE EARLY GAME EXPERIENCE (Iron/Titanium): Growing Pains Big picture first; it’s slower, resources feel more scarce, and this was definitely where I experienced the most acute “growing” pains as I grappled with the new captains, mission-based systems, and the consequent reduction of ore-based income as the initial mining missions felt much less rewarding (which they were, given that I was mining mostly in core faction areas). It took me quite a bit longer to earn enough credits to start (minorly) snowballing into more lucrative resource shortage missions. Immediately, as an industry-focused player, I saw that my typical playstyle was not going to work at all due to the 4-slot limit of this early game. Combined with how a lot of my favorite player ship designs from the workshop had ballooned in terms of how many system slots they offered, I felt more constrained in terms of what I had to work with. My early game experience felt very subsistence-like in terms of getting enough resources to get a decent ship, earning enough credits to purchase the more expensive/lucrative captains, and setting up my first one or two AI controlled mining ships. I won’t lie that it felt a bit brutal at times; I’ve done 400+ hours of playthroughs pre-2.0, and this was definitely the slowest start that I’ve experienced in awhile. I also feel Avorion’s early game is where it struggles a bit at times with attracting new players. The QOL features that typically come later (e.g. increased loot range, increased warp ranges, less cooldown on warping, increased docking ranges) are one of the major reasons why I want to get into the Trinium/Xanion range ASAP. System slots come at a big premium as you’re trying to get some of these QOL features, and the 4 slot limit was really felt here and not necessarily in the best way. The Good: Captains (once I got them) are super nifty and feel quite impactful, missions are nice for reducing number of active sectors that I need to worry about (the reduction in immersion is a different topic but I can deal with it). The increased in-sector speed with the 200% mechanic cap is really quite nice! Also, once I figured out how the travel command worked at this stage, it was nice (although very slow at first since it seems to be based on the ship’s hyperdrive cooldown). The Bad: Warping still feels pretty rough, and the drastically reduced jump range was a VERY persistent and notable problem for me throughout the entirety of my playthrough. Even though cooldown on warp was reduced at base, the sheer increase in loading screens (if manually warping) or sitting in a mining drone/another ship while setting up moves orders meant that the task felt drudgerous. The resource scarcity in the early game was very notable, and losing basic industry-building as a real option in the early game meant that I felt more shoe-horned to utilize limited credit-making options early on. Overall Verdict: Definitely slower, some nifty QOL features, but this is where I think I enjoyed the playthrough the least. It was a more limited sandbox experience due to the combination of resource scarcity, system slot cap, and increased travel time (due to the large increase in loading screens for short jumps). THE MID-GAME EXPERIENCE (Naonite/Trinium/Xanion): Getting to grips with missions + (Processor) Trade Missions are OP I went to the naonite region and spent a bit more time here than normal as I worked on getting a good 6-slot ship with some shields, and (slowly) warping between turret factories trying to find some decent weapon rolls that I could make to arm my ship. Industry was still not really a viable option with a 6 slot limit, although some small mines were doable at this stage (the main limiting factors being how assembly blocks and increased storage will skyrocket your processing power). My goal was to book it to the Trinium/Xanion regions ASAP so I could benefit from the increased system slot caps and the QOL features of being able to put in more modules (increased loot range, increased docking range) as well as being able to actually build some basic industry. As soon as I unlocked that 10 slot limit cap, I knew that I had a lot more options on the table to make dedicated r-mining ships, medium-sized bases, and ships that could actually deal with the (seemingly increased in frequency) pirate sectors where you’d have to mow through 16-20+ pirates in sequence with a backdoor jump point always ready to go. Mining missions started to feel much better at this point. Scavenging missions also felt (almost) as good as mining missions, with the added bonus of throwing tons of loot (and junk) your way for credits and usage! With proper captains, ships with good cargo capacity, and good r-mining/salvaging lasers that I crafted from the best possible turret factory in the region, I was finally building up resources at a rate that felt satisfying (I had 3 dedicated r-miners and 1 r-salvager at this point in the playthrough, all mining in no man’s land regions for maximum resources). Then I discovered trade missions. Direct trading have always been lucrative, but trade missions brought this to a new level of accessibility and seems to scale proportionally to the cargo space of your ship and the amount of credits you have on hand. With trade goods that carry abnormally high value per-storage space (processors probably being the biggest culprit), it can scale out of control. When I made 1 million+ credits profit in 15 minutes utilizing my current assets to fund a mission, it felt great. When I made 10 million (then later 30 million) credit profit in 15 minutes with a larger ship, it felt pretty awesome. The first time I made 1 billion+ credits profit in 15 minutes utilizing my incredibly ramped up assets, focusing on processors, and 40k cargo space trade ship, it felt utterly busted. I think my record for a single 15 minute trip was 1.7 billion credits profit in 15 minutes with a few left clicks. I know this is a bug you are aware of, but one time my ship was ambushed in its trade route. When I came to it, I was refunded my initial investment...and was suddenly looking at a ship that had a cargo hold of 312k+ processors (that’s about 2.45 billion credits worth assuming average market price). The region the ship was trading in didn’t even have the capacity to produce that many processors even if almost all of its industry was focused on them! Note that this progression all occurred within two days of regular play. I made more credits in those two days, via trade missions, than I did with my home system of accelerator factories, research stations (to increase demand), antigrav unit factories, and processor factories that took me almost a week of dedicated effort to put together. And this was with a 10 slot limit still in play, with a single trade ship! This unfortunately, and immediately, dashed any industry ambitions I had as credits simply were no longer a factor in gameplay. Ironically enough, I was still sub-300k in most resources but sporting 5 billlion+ credits early in the Xanion region. I resorted to hopping across resource depots and buying out their stock ad nauseam until my r-miners/salvager could be properly built up. The Good: Properly built-up and captained ships can run lucrative mining and scavenging missions at this stage, a big part due to access to r-mining/salvaging lasers I’m guessing. I don’t exactly know how much it directly equated to pre-2.0 r-mining operations, but the resource intake started to feel sufficient for what I was doing. I’ve already made my spiel about trade missions; I think they’re fantastic for their accessibility, but perhaps a certain cap/upper limit of what you can achieve might be worth consideration as credits can rapidly become a non-factor even in very safe regions (e.g. iron/titanium) once you have a good trade ship. THE VERY GOOD: THANK YOU for making the Operation Exodus mission not a complete chore to do! I cannot even describe how relieved I was to get it done in minutes; I was dreading doing it with the drastically reduced warp ranges. The Bad: Despite increase system slot cap, warping still felt pretty awful. I could get cooldowns down to mere seconds, or even 0 (if I dedicated enough slots), but the drastically reduced jumping ranges meant that I spent most of my time setting travel commands or multi-jump commands and not actually piloting the warping ship. I never felt incentivized to use travel hubs simply due to their awkward placement in terms of when they’d be useful; a system like that would be most useful in the early game, but credit/material cost makes it not very worthwhile. In the later game, you can simply use the travel command with a low cooldown ship to accomplish something similar. There also seemed to be the specter of equipment bloat; I’m reasonably certain there are more modules out in the galaxy now (with the inclusion of auto-turret modules + fighter squadron modules), but proportionally I felt much less able to get important modules such as trade systems, better loot tractors, shield modules, etc. The equipment dock might need a much larger selection, or another way for us to be able to access modules more reliably (turret factories often solve the problem for us in terms of weapons, at least in the moment). Overall Verdict: While still feeling somewhat slower than pre 2.0, especially due to warp ranges and system slot caps, the overall experience was quite a bit more pleasant. Missions felt much more lucrative when jumping into larger ships/r-weaponry, and the game was much more enjoyable than the early stages. General Feedback Combat: Enemies are more challenging for sure. Their drastically increased mobility means I have to work harder to keep weapons in range, which is kind of neat. However, despite the increased speed of both enemies and our own ships (assuming we’re using engineers to go up to 200%), there’s one area where this loop does not feel good at all, and that’s handling your ship. Note that I don’t typically drive slow kill bricks; I typically prefer ships that sacrifice a little bit to gain more mobility (whether through additional thrusters, intertia dampeners, etc). However, while our own speed and combat speed has drastically increased, weapon ranges and (seemingly) our blocks’ properties to improve our handling have not proportionally increased enough to compensate. The result is very “drift-y” and unresponsive combat, especially at the speeds you need to go now to catch up to enemy ships in the later regions, with lower range weapons (e.g. chain guns, teslas, bolters) feeling much more penalized to use effectively. This is even with mid-sized ships (e.g. 7-10 slots), not necessarily a function of piloting only super capitals. One area where the game has definitely improved is weapon variety. Torpedoes feel far more readily usable as weapons, even in the early game, which is cool. The increased variety of weapons, in general, is really nice. It’s just difficult right now to utilize short/mid-range weapons, especially with slower projectile speeds, with the way combat flow currently feels.