Subset Games Forum

Don't worry sometimes the mad man only damages the ship for something between 10% to 25%.
I can't remember if I my ship was damaged already when I tried to help that crazy bastard for a second time...

Always remember if you find a madman naming himself Tom H. talking to a ball named Wilson...
Either smack the s*** out of him or ignore him.

I know he might join your crew... but honestly all he brings me is chaos and death.
After reading here that he might also join the crew I tried it two more times,
making it five times total...

No way, I'm not going to ever again talk to him.
Not until I get a brig and twenty klingon, bath'leth armed, warriors to guard him.

Peo01 wrote:Don't worry sometimes the mad man only damages the ship for something between 10% to 25%.
I can't remember if I my ship was damaged already when I tried to help that crazy bastard for a second time...

Always remember if you find a madman naming himself Tom H. talking to a ball named Wilson...
Either smack the s*** out of him or ignore him.

I know he might join your crew... but honestly all he brings me is chaos and death.
After reading here that he might also join the crew I tried it two more times,
making it five times total...

No way, I'm not going to ever again talk to him.
Not until I get a brig and twenty klingon, bath'leth armed, warriors to guard him.

Or you could use the blue option provided by a T2 medbay or a slug.

I kinda partially agree, bad luck streaks are annoying, but you get good luck streaks aswell. At the end of the day its all part of the experience. Got some bad luck? Try again and maybe you'll get some good luck and defeat that god-forsaken boss.

My problem is that bad streaks will make it nearly impossible to win the game. The fact that good streaks can also happen, making the boss into a cakewalk, means that I'm not the captain of a ship, I am a slot machine addict at a casino.

If I play once, I might win, through no skill/thought of my own (hyperbole).

I could get the EXACT sequence of 'events', do EXACTLY the same things/same choices, and if I get lucky, I win.

Imagine playing an FPS (again ), where if you fire at a person, even if your aim is perfectly on target, all the bullets can just decide to miss.

The next time you face the enemy, your aim is perfect again, but all the bullets hit for an overkill. That sums up how I feel about the current luck-based system.

Well maybe you should find a different genre. Sometimes you find a +11 longsword of rampant destruction on dungeon level 3 and sometimes you don't.

These games (roguelikes) are about adapting to unpredictable situations. If you don't, well, better luck next time.

I seem to find most people don't understand the concept of risk vs reward.

Most people think that if its a coin flip you should either always try or always avoid,and then they complain that you have to risk it otherwise you will be underpowered.

What they don't understand is that while they can't control the outcome your current situation is different.

Having 1 crew member or 2,3,4,5 as well as there overall experience make the situation different.

If you 1-2 you might want to risk it,if you have 4-5 you might afford to risk it.

In the special case of 3 you would probably always want to avoid.

The only real bullshit is the Red ! Blue! Fuck!

SPOILERS HERE, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

The madman is part of a sequence, however if you have the correct equipment, you have a 100% chance of getting a crew member.

It appears the distress beacon is coming from the surface of a nearby moon. Your sensors are picking up a single life form.

Option 1: Go down to the surface to investigate.
Option 2: Ignore the signal.

If you decide to investigate, there are two events that can happen, one of them involving the madman (the other is always beneficial).

You find a man living alone in a cave. From the appearance of his wrecked ship, it seems he's been here for many years. He looks healthy, but his mental state is questionable.

Option 1: Bring him back to your ship in hopes of finding some help for him.
Option 2: Leave the madman to his ravings, he's not worth the risk.
Option 3: (Medbay) Bring him to your medbay.
Option 4: (Slugman Crew Member)"Sir, allow me to assess his mental state."

Note the blue options here, they require specific equipment or cremembers for you to be able to use them.

Option 3 required a level 2 medbay, and is a 100% guarantee to give you Charlie as crew member.

However, if you don't have that medbay, Option 4 still gives a 50% chance of a human crewmember, without any downsides

If you haven't got either, Option 1 gives:

- 25% chance to gain Charlie
- 25% chance to lose a crew member
- 25% chance to get damaged.
- 25% chance to gain nothing.

END OF SPOILERS

Thought to myself: "Heck, changes aren't coming anytime soon unless I make them."

Thus:
http://imageshack.us/f/809/ospreymodlayout.png/

Obviously, I don't expect to get the full 'roguelike' experience with this stacked setup, but as someone once said:

"The only wrong way to play a game is if you're not having fun."

Going to stop arguing, going to start playing with mods.

P.S. TY to the creators of the packing/unpacking program. Cheers!

I think people are talking past each other here.

There are a number of qualities of rogue-likes, and randomness is one of them, but I don't think that this one element is an absolute requirement. And even if you want random rolls, they can be handled in a lot of ways. I don't see why player agency (controlling your fate) and randomness have to be at odds.

A couple of ideas:

Risk-reward balance: The balance could be tweaked to make it feel like a high-risk & reward choice. Or it could be tweaked so that the particular encounter varies, sometimes high risk & reward, others moderate or low. As it is, several of the crew killers seem to have too little payback.

Event tweaking. The madman event could result in several or all of your crew getting injured, combined with a random jump to another sector, and possibly partial damage to the med-bay. This could create a tense and possibly deadly situation, but still give the player a chance, and also make it feel like you have some control over the outcome.

I personally like the use of random rolls, but I feel like they could be balanced better, and could be adjusted to give a better feeling of player agency.

Okay, so here's my 2 cents.

Almost all the random events are totally fine. Boarders, disabling systems in a fight, random hull damage, what have you, they're all fine.

Random crew events are not. Any event where you can lose a crew member is almost certainly not worth it. Unless there's a blue option, I almost never take them. You may call this an overreaction, but here's my risk vs reward line of thought:

Hull Damage vs scrap:
-If I'm undamaged, may as well. Hull is reasonably cheap to fix and can be fixed at all shops.

Disabled systems:
-If I've upgraded the system, it cannot be totally sent offline. Fine, that's my fault for not upgrading.

Crew events:
-If I have 5 crew, I have equal chance to end up with 6 or 4 (unless it's spiders, which is never worth it). Crew is fairly hard to obtain and almost always involves a fair amount of scrap or winning a battle. No way.

It's just too much risk. If crew was available at every shop, it'd be worth it. If crew was easy to get, it'd be worth it. If the chance to lose a crew member was much less than the chance to get one, it'd be worth it. None of these are true though. Now, if it was a boarding event, it'd be too easy - you can just juggle crew around as I'm sure everyone knows by now, thus meaning that unless you're in a battle or only have 1 crew member, there's never any real risk. So, what if instead of insta-kill, it disabled the med bay and did some hull damage, then sent a random species boarder? Well, then crew death ISN'T guaranteed, a crew of fighters doesn't die in combat and you're left with almost nothing that's too high risk. It's still a risk, just not "you died, get more crew by praying to RNG". I understand people like the randomness - I do too. It just seems silly to me having these events (spider, madman, escape pod) that are almost never worth doing as they're TOO penalising.