Hidden Mechanics - Bigs&Trivials

[The Colonist]

I'm a mystery-searcher. I will, almost every time, and with every game
be on a quest to find secrets and hidden flavours of a game system.
My observations could be either luck/bad luck/random/bugs. but
I hope, they will be useful.

CREW
(1) Firefigting/Low oxygen
It looks, as difrent races put an end to a fire quicker than others.
Humans seems to exell on this. Low oxygen is also diffrent factor
to races. It would be logical to implement "I am tough at" mechanics,
which gives flavour.

(2) Joint Repair/Combat
It seems, that during repairs or boarding fight there is
"primary" and "secondary' crewmember, and primary
matters most on the outcome - with secondary get
nothing (Skills).

(3) Name Generator
I witnessed randomization in new crewmembers' names - usually
every race has few names of theirs, and rest is from "Charlie's List"
(consult the screenshot). Having 4 (!) Charlies on board really
makes a mess, and destroys a lot of my fun. I strongly recommend to
change generator. It would be nice if also rename of new crew could be
possible. I understand "flavour" (after getting rid of Charlegion),
but it should be some way - paying 2 scraps for rename, for an exaple.
Names (along with skills) are important factor, and I also miss option
for moving crewmembers on list (sorting Sole Crew and Boarding Party
for an example).




(4) Race Affinity
It's something of a continuation of Section 1, but still, I've got a feeling
that some races learn particular skills faster (and I don't mean racial
specials). If Engi, which repair ultra-fast and I'm using him all the time,
got Mastery Level quick, I understand. But why Human seems to be the best
Engines-Controller, and Rock the worst Repairer?

(5) Skills Stuck
I had situations in which crewmember with Mastery Level Skill (Weapons)
was fighting numerous boarding-fights but never got a single Fighting point.
It is some kind of gaining Proffesion/Specialization?

(6) Shops Stuff
I had a feeling (many times) that shop's wares are in some part generated
to help Player, in some part random, and in some part - story-linked.
It would be cool if shops could be less random - having always some
techs and crew for personal style of play. I'm not talking about Repair
Drones and Engi Crewmen on every shop, but to balance - some offence
(lasers/combat drones/missiles/etc), some defence (def drones/def modules),
some utility (Ion weapons/Engi/Slugs, etc). Also, it would be nice to sell Fuel/Missiles
in every shop - not only on events.

Thanks for reading!

[fall_ark]

(2) Joint Repair/Combat
It seems, that during repairs or boarding fight there is
"primary" and "secondary' crewmember, and primary
matters most on the outcome - with secondary get
nothing (Skills).

Only the one putting on the "finishing touch" will get exp. This means that in a mixed boarder group your Mantis will tend to gain exp faster as they can finish their opponent first and have a 50-50 chance on the second enemy exp gain. It's a good idea to drag those you don't want to gain exp away from the combat/repair so that no one will be "steal" the exp.

(3) Name Generator
I witnessed randomization in new crewmembers' names - usually
every race has few names of theirs, and rest is from "Charlie's List"
(consult the screenshot). Having 4 (!) Charlies on board really
makes a mess, and destroys a lot of my fun.

"Charlie" is actually a fixed name, not randomly generated - There are a few "finding a stranded person/madman/survivor" events. All of those people are named Charlie. You must have come across some of these events a lot.

I agree this needs to be changed.

(4) Race Affinity
It's something of a continuation of Section 1, but still, I've got a feeling
that some races learn particular skills faster (and I don't mean racial
specials). If Engi, which repair ultra-fast and I'm using him all the time,
got Mastery Level quick, I understand. But why Human seems to be the best
Engines-Controller, and Rock the worst Repairer?

There's probably none. Rock is slower than other races so they're unlikely to have repair jobs a lot. Humans don't have any other specialties so they are likely to be stuffed in unimportant places.- Also, it's incredibly fast to level up Engine and Pilot when you've upgraded Engine a bit, because they only gain exp with successfuly dodges. The pilot you have at the first few sectors will hardly gain any pilot/engine exp at all, but whoever sit there in late game can gain 2 exp bars in maybe a single sector.

(5) Skills Stuck
I had situations in which crewmember with Mastery Level Skill (Weapons)
was fighting numerous boarding-fights but never got a single Fighting point.
It is some kind of gaining Proffesion/Specialization?

As with (2) - there are probably other crewmember with better combat ability than him, so they finish their respective opponent first and stole his exp.


The game engine is pretty straightforward/transparent so there aren't too many secrets lying around. Would be nice to have some surprises here and there though.

[Gorlom]

1: engies put out fire and repair faster then other races. Rockmen doesn't take damage from fire so they excel at fire control as well.
Mantis repairs slower then other races and I think they are slower at putting out fires too.
I do not think Humans have any particular affinity for putting out fire.

4: Rock probably seems the worst at repairing for 2 reasons. a) he's slow getting there. b) his animation and sound effect while repairing sounds as if he is destroying the machinery instead. A psychological trick if you will.

Now that fall_ark has explained the answer to 2. you may realize that is probably the reason for a lot of what you are seeing

[fall_ark]

1: engies put out fire and repair faster then other races. Rockmen doesn't take damage from fire so they excel at fire control as well.
Mantis repairs slower then other races and I think they are slower at putting out fires too.
I do not think Humans have any particular affinity for putting out fire.

And Zoltans are too puny for biological hazards so you usualy don't send them there. Plus you don't want your battery wandering around.

[The Colonist]

"Charlie" is actually a fixed name, not randomly generated - There are a few "finding a stranded person/madman/survivor" events. All of those people are named Charlie.

I had a lot of this events, it's true, but I've got other names than "Charlie" few times.

Only the one putting on the "finishing touch" will get exp.

I was thinking the same thing at first, but I had situation, that in hole game,
no crewman had even a milimeter of Combat skill bar. And I had fought a lot,
with 1 dedicated Board-combatant who'd participated in every combat in game.

Rockmen doesn't take damage from fire so they excel at fire control as well.

his animation and sound effect while repairing sounds as if he is destroying the machinery instead. A psychological trick if you will.

From my personal experience, Rockman does just jump on fire, and with
his resistance, he can do it forever , but in numerous situations,
when my ship was on fire, and all crew was stopping flames, Rockman always
was the last one to put out the fire.

[fall_ark]

"Charlie" is actually a fixed name, not randomly generated - There are a few "finding a stranded person/madman/survivor" events. All of those people are named Charlie.

I had a lot of this events, it's true, but I've got other names than "Charlie" few times.

Sure, there are random crew member events. Charlie stands out because it has two non-unique, repeatable events (lone survivor of a recently attacked colony + Mad Man). Other fixed name characters are far too uncommon to populate your ship.

You may have come across the slug fixed name: Slocknog. I know I have.

Only the one putting on the "finishing touch" will get exp.

I was thinking the same thing at first, but I had situation, that in hole game,
no crewman had even a milimeter of Combat skill bar. And I had fought a lot,
with 1 dedicated Board-combatant who'd participated in every combat in game.

Really? I know that some position only gain exp when in combat (so you don't get shield/pilot/engine exp simply sitting in an asteroid field). Maybe you were in such a situation when their boarding party is on your ship and their ship has already been destroyed?

You can move your cursor to the skill icon and read the exact number of exp points to check if they earned xp or not.

From my personal experience, Rockman does just jump on fire, and with
his resistance, he can do it forever , but in numerous situations,
when my ship was on fire, and all crew was stopping flames, Rockman always
was the last one to put out the fire.

Fires are tricky. We don't even know how many "health" they have and have no way to monitor. Rock might get a late start because he moves slower and arrives the last, allowing the fire to "grow/expand" on his way there. But honestly there's just too many unknown variables at hand in fire-extinguishing.

[Gorlom]

Rockmen doesn't take damage from fire so they excel at fire control as well.

his animation and sound effect while repairing sounds as if he is destroying the machinery instead. A psychological trick if you will.

From my personal experience, Rockman does just jump on fire, and with
his resistance, he can do it forever , but in numerous situations,
when my ship was on fire, and all crew was stopping flames, Rockman always
was the last one to put out the fire.

Another case of psychological trickery I'm sure.
I've noted that even the same character can take different amount of time to put out fires. So I think the hidden mechanic lies in how the fire propagates or how much health it has rather then the speed at which races puts them out.

I would expect that the dev team hasn't secretly made rockmen slower at putting out flames then written an encounter where you (if you pick the blue rockman option) send a rockman over to a station on fire and marvel at how quickly he/she/it puts out the flames. I think they even use the phrase "you have never seen anything like it" in regards to the speed.

[geldonyetich]

A lot of these observations strike me as "psychological trickery" coming from our natural tendency to find patterns in random things.

• In terms of fires, it's hard to see how severely the fire is raging, and fires actually will naturally put themselves out when they burn up all the oxygen in the room. Because if this, it's easy for there to be coincidences where some races seem better at putting out fires than others. I could see rockmen seemingly taking a long time to put out a fire due to their slow movement speed and your lack of hesitation to send them into a fire resulting in better-oxygenated rooms.
• In case of hull breaches and system repairs, you should be able to better gauge the severity of what's being repaired, but the pacing will still be quite random because you'll not notice your crew member's actual repair skill will vary from instance to instance, which will radically vary the repair speed. Further muddling things are mantis being bad at repairs and engie being good at repairs, which makes you wonder if other races are good at things.
• Primary/secondary crew member effectiveness observation could be created by the above.
• If there's randomness in skill gains, that could cause all sorts of strange theories as to how it happens. I've seen "Lets Plays" where all the boarders of a four-crew boarding party seem to max out their skills at the same time, so it's hard to believe it's based on last hits, because of the randomness in which enemy crew arrive, and because you would think more experienced fighters would steal most of the last hits. I suppose it's possible, though.

One thing I've noticed that I don't think a lot of people do is that there's a difference between fighting in melee and fighting at ranged. It's not just an animation difference: crew who are fighting in melee cause whoever they're fighting to only engage them. You could potentially use this to, for example, force the enemy to hit your rockmen instead of your zoltans.

[The Colonist]

then written an encounter where you (if you pick the blue rockman option) send a rockman over to a station on fire and marvel at how quickly he/she/it puts out the flames. I think they even use the phrase "you have never seen anything like it" in regards to the speed.

I dont't see any real corelation. Rockmen are immune to fire, so they could use manual-activated
fire extinguishing system, take civilians on his back, and lock station fuel cache, even if it's blocked
by the wall of fire, etc. We can imagine hundreds of applications of his toughness. It's story and fantasy.
But fighting fire, before your own eyes, in real-time, and with some comparison, can be the real deal.

A lot of these observations strike me as "psychological trickery" coming from our natural tendency to find patterns in random things.

I agree - it can. But if something is observed few times, in similar conditions, you begin to wonder.
I'm perfectly aware of Rockman's speed, yet still, he was less capable of ending similar fires, in comparison
to humans. It can bee sheer luck, glich, bug or anything. But it's good to discuss such observaitions.

[geldonyetich]

You know, it could be rockmen do everything slowly, not just walk, which would explain the observations about their repair speed and putting out fires.

What if this a universal rule of the game is that, when something is sped up, it does whatever it does quicker as well? This would have interesting implications:

• Drones being affected by the drone speed booster, not just the ones whizzing around on the inside of ships but the ones outside as well, would be doing their job faster (e.g. defence drones shooting down incoming shots more often, repair drones repairing faster.)
• It may even apply to mantis men being affected by pheromones. They'll still repair slower overall, though: take something at half repair speed and increase it by 50% and you end up with 75% repair speed.