Difference Between Difficulty, and Just Plain Bad Luck

[Reddestiny]

Here's my proposal for keeping the 'difficulty', a portion of the RNG, while also allowing for player reaction to events, as opposed to just outcomes slapped in the face.

Don't be daunted, there's a TL;DR sentence at the end.

Scenario 1: Distress signal with a mad man.

Option 1: Take aboard ship.
Outcome 1A: Mad man attacks, and kills a crewman. This outcome is completely random. If the game chooses this, there is NOTHING a player can do. The crewman WILL DIE.
Option 1B: Mad man joins crew.

Option 2: Leave mad man alone.
Outcome 2: You move on, nothing changes, except maybe -1 fuel lol

Instead of just rolling the dice, and you either gain, or lose a crewman, I propose this:
Outcome 1A: Mad man attacks, but instead of insta-killing a random crew member, have the Mad Man be a 'boarding party'. The Mad Man can have increased health, it can be a Mantis, whatever. My point here is that it gives the player a fighting chance to react, and to do something about the Mad Man.

Instead of just insta-killing a member based on a hidden dice-roll beyond the player's control, allow the player to rally their crew and fight off this Mad Man. It adds more to gameplay, can be coded relatively easily, and does not take away from the player experience.

Imagine playing basketball, then having team members taken off the court until you're the only one left. There were no fouls, everyone played 'within the rules', but the referee just decides that random players should be removed from the game. Would that be fun? Challenging yes, but it is challenging because you are being artificially handicapped with absolutely no way to fight back. Some may argue that you can adapt, but when it's only you vs. the whole 'enemy' team, that challenge boils down to frustration.
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TL;DR

Keep the RNG, but make the negative consequences into something that the player can fight if they tried, instead of handing down instant, and unavoidable punishment.

On another note, OH MY GAWD the accuracy in the later sectors is horrible. Either give a way to increase accuracy, or give 'glancing' blows that do half-damage. Seeing entire volleys miss on a GIANT flagship, again, and again, is fustrating. This is just a pet peeve, not as serious as the above-mentioned issue.

[Marbozir]

Ugh. Totally agree. Randomly losing a crew member to an event, with no way to fight the outcome, is very frustrating. I don't mind punishing events at all and I actually enjoy the randomness of the game a lot, but randomly taking away a crew member is just extremely harsh and makes me completely avoid event choices where that's possible (as long as I remember which ones those are).

[Techercizer]

Disagree. Random losses keep you on your toes; if everything was a boarding party, I could just throw my crew in the med bay and vent the ship every time.

Sometimes, the dice and gods are just not in your favour. Welcome to roguelikes.

[Marbozir]

Disagree. Random losses keep you on your toes; if everything was a boarding party, I could just throw my crew in the med bay and vent the ship every time.

Sometimes, the dice and gods are just not in your favour. Welcome to roguelikes.

/shrug
Different roguelikes deal with that quite differently. Overcoming bad luck is actually one of the more exciting parts of roguelikes for me. However, I just don't feel that in case of this specific event the potential reward is in line with the risk you're taking. Out of all events I remember from the game, this is the only one I just completely avoid (there are also quite a few other events that aren't a boarding party, just saying).
We can agree to disagree, I'm fine with that.
And thanks for the welcome, but you're only about 20 years too late with that. =P

[Reddestiny]

@Marbozir:
Exactly how I feel. Choices that potentially insta-kill crew members are completely avoided, and I actually have to memorize which elements of the game I have to avoid.

@Techercizer:
There is a boarding-party event by Slugs, in nebula encounters (that's where I faced it), where the Slugs disabled my medical bay. Then they proceeded to teleport into my oxygen room and attack it.

If you are afraid of sitting in the medbay, and depressurizing the whole ship, you ignore the fact that subsystems are being destroyed on top of the enemy ship that is shooting at you. If you encountered the scenario that I did, where the medical bay is disabled, or maybe another scenario where you O2 is disabled, it forces you to adapt via gameplay. Everytime I lose something due to an RNG, I picture a troll-face.

As for the 'welcome to roguelikes', the randomness applies to map creations, so no map is the same to another. That increases replayability, and that is fine. But to put my point in an extreme example:

Example Scenario: Your ship systems were hacked, and a self-destruct sequence begins.

My Option 1: Destroy enemy ship to stop the hack, and abort the self-destruct sequence. If successful, the player then retrieves a powerful weapon/scrap from the enemy wreck.
This gives the player a fighting chance.

My Option 2: Jump away quickly enough to get out of range of the hacking computers, and abort the sequence.

ROGUELIKE Option 1: Beg for mercy.
Outcome: 50% chance that the enemy will show no mercy, and your entire ship explodes. If the RNG falls on this, you insta-die: game-over. You could have 1000 shield points, and 9999 hull points, with enough weapons to kill the end-game boss starting in sector 1, but if the RNG rolls on this, you die.

Or 50% chance that the enemy shows mercy and gives you the self-destruct codes to the final boss, meaning you can insta-kill the boss at the end.

ROGUELIKE Option 2: Simply jump away to avoid the hack.
100% chance of getting away, but no chance of getting the almighty self-destruct codes for the end-game boss.
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^ that is an EXTREME example of how I view the current options. 50% chance crewman insta-dies, or 50% chance that I get an extra crewman.

Or I could run away, and lose nothing, but gain nothing. I have no problem with this, but it's the troll-face RNG that frustrates me. With the options that I mentioned, you could run away and 100% live, or stand and fight for 50% win/fail ratio.

[beef42]

OP, your entire post is assuming that these events always kill your crew. They don't, you can always choose to back off and not take the chance.

Ergo, I don't see a problem.

[Durus]

OP I found the mad man when I had a Slug crew member. They were able to Telepathically screen him for problems. I think with a lot of these types of events, there's a ship component/crew member type that can remove the random component. Without it/them you're trying your luck (which I usually do).
I've managed to lose every crew member on a ship once to these types of events. I think I was still in the first or second system too. I laughed and spun the sad tale of the crew of the red tail for my wife. All of them destined to die!

[Maze1125]

The biggest problem with the event is how it's entirely arbitrary.
I could have a crew of zoltans all trained in engineering, and if the roll goes wrong one of them will die.
But
I could have a crew of mantises all trained fully in melee combat, and if the roll goes wrong then one of them will still die.

How does that make any sense? How can a madman overpower a crew of mantises as easily as a crew of zoltans? Why can't I assign a specific crew member to guard him?

Some more blue options would help:

"Mantis: Assign your mantis crew member to guard him."
Here the options where he dies or joins the crew stay the same, but if he tries to attack then the mantis kills him.

"Rockman: Assign your rockman crew member to guard him."
Same as the mantis, except if he tries to bomb the ship you get a dialogue explaining that he was able to run away from the slow rockman for long enough to plant the bomb, so you still take the 5 hull damage in that case.

"More than 5 crew members: Your crew is large enough that you can assign 2 guards to watch the madman, just in case he does something."
Same as the mantis.

[Reddestiny]

@beef42:
If you avoid ALL possible, bad, events, you reach the final boss with the equivalent of an eggshell. If the RNG is going to screw me over, at least give me a chance to fight back instead of: NOPE! RNG SAYS SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS, SO IT DOES.

Imagine playing an FPS where there was a hidden dice-roll every 5-seconds that would take away all your guns, and force you to use a knife.

@durus:
Oh GAWD, ty for the tip! If the game can make it so that even randomly, bad, events can be fought against with good tactics/player gameplay, then it would be golden.

@Maze1125:
YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES!

You could have the entire friggin' Federation Army, and the whole Mantis Homeworld crammed onto your ship, throw in The Rock, Gandalf, and Superman, and STILL be unable to stop a bad diceroll from having the Mad Man kill your crew.

In addition to your proposal for more blue choices, I would suggest that the fight with the Mad Man be turned into a boarding action. It adds gameplay, and allows for the player to fight against the negative consequences of the bad diceroll, as opposed to: "NOPE! RNG GODS SAY DIE!"

Might as well flip a coin everytime you start the game to determine whether or not you make it.

[Plazek]

Hyperbole-Strawman!

Nice one!