Ship progression/Pacing -SP

There are 10 replies in this Thread. The last Post () by NucNuc.

    Hi there,



    Firstly, i am really enjoying CF, It looks and plays very nice. Very good job with that!



    I am quite new to CF and Freelancer, And while i had some problems with the difficulty early on, I have now got past the Hair-pulling stage of dieing and loosing my guns. But something i have noticed is the erratic player Progression that CF forces you into. The difficulty and Progression curve in CF seems way too sharp. For instance, You start with a relatively weak ship and engagements are tense and exciting. From there you gain access to Defender, engagements are still challenging, but from there, the Progression curve goes off the chart and misses some crucial steps as you're only options are to go from a Defender to a $4,000,000 ship, while enemies at this stage of the game stay the same.



    So in essence, You go from fun and challenging into a steam-roll god-mode affair. In the original, there was a gradual progression structure, where you were only given access to slightly better equipment and ships that naturally complimented the games difficulty curve, so things would remain relatively balanced. In CF it's either Steam-roll or get steam-rolled and nothing in between. There is not even the option to use the vanilla ships in CF because they don't scale at all with the new difficulty, or at least until late game.



    Of course i'm looking at this in a SP perspective, And can somewhat understand that this system would be viable for MP, but for SP it causes a lot of problems. It may just come down to balancing this mod for both SP and MP was too much work, And that SP was just an afterthought.




    More accurately, the issue here is that there are no medium grade CF ships, they are all super powerful. We need something between 1600 and 9700 armor, and/or many increments up to that of the top tier ships, that are also made available in appropriate sectors of the galaxy. I don't have a problem with giving players access to super strong ships, that's fine, but where are the options for people who don't want to kill the fun/challenge by going from a Butter knife to a Bazooka.

    There are several ships with medium powers, Heavy Fighters (Instead of VHF) and even good Light Fighters, which are placed in tactical places you can visit in the storyline.



    The problem is that later on, the Crossfire added missions in our extended SP campaign makes things much more difficult than in the vanilla part. That issue is only in the last missions of the FL part, but once you get on the Crossfire missions... things will get rough, and you will need the top ships just to survive. You will also need the Armor, Shield upgrades, and such.



    So that's just a little easier part, to enjoy the ending of the Freelancer missions, then it goes all challenging mode again, all up to the very end. Each time harder.

    Chars: [CFPD]Michael~something (x25), [CFPD]~SQMS~{[(store)]} (x3), [CFPD]xfer, Event~Manager~Michael, StarfIier~EM~Michael, Event_Team_2, [GR]Michael[SP] and a blueprint of [CFPD]Sephirothis

    Hi Michael,



    Thank you for the reply.



    There are very few "Medium grade" CF ships, so little in fact that i have yet to find one. The only upgrade from a Defender that is readily available to a player in that stage of the game is a Shade, which is overkill for the type of encounters in those parts, it's effectively 5 tiers better than the Defender.



    I find myself in a situation where the Defender works for me, but i feel i need a slight leg-up to fight Xenos more effectively. There are no ships available to fit this purpose. You can stick with the Defender or buy the Shade which would make you God-like in that stage of the story. Alternatively, you could buy vanilla ships, but anything less than a Defender and you would get eaten alive.



    If there are "slightly" better CF ships than the Defender, then i would believe they are placed incorrectly. Which reminds me, Another instance of pacing issues is how Prisons are placed in CF. From what i can tell, the first Prison a player will have access to is located in Texas, meaning the player will have to jettison approximately $6,000,000 worth of Pods before they have access to a Prison facility as i did. Was this intended ?

    Well yeah, except the Shade, still a Light fighter, there are few other light fighters but in the systems arround X3043 (which is after Custodian, which's gate is in NY behind Manhattan, but there are other ways to get there directly from New London and New Berlin too). There are also Medium and Heavy fighters, but also in the systems arround X3043, not directly on the stations you visit in the SP, or the same systems.


    And, indeed, we never planned or worked hard enough on making many medium ships planned for the storyline to have no "easy" part in the middle of it. But that would be a waste of money for the players, since you will need all your millions for the equipment and the top ships arround so you survive the campaign up to it's end. If you already spend your money on Shade and such, you may end having to trade or hunt pods for more money.

    Chars: [CFPD]Michael~something (x25), [CFPD]~SQMS~{[(store)]} (x3), [CFPD]xfer, Event~Manager~Michael, StarfIier~EM~Michael, Event_Team_2, [GR]Michael[SP] and a blueprint of [CFPD]Sephirothis

    Hi again,



    I just wish there was more diversity for the CF ships, especially early on where you can linger about seemingly for ever. While i adore most of the CF ship designs, it seems that 90% of them share the exact same stats, which reinforces my opinion of CF ships being designed and balanced purely for MP. Still i am thankful that SP was not ruled out entirely.



    I'm currently 12 hours into this game, at level 5, so i don't have access to much right now. I just need to hold in there with my trusty Defender until i unlock areas with more variation. Those Xenos are driving me nuts though, It's like trying to hit a fruit fly with a hammer lol.




    Thank you kindly for your help Michael.

    You are welcomed, try finishing the whole extended campaign, then you will know more about the mod, newer Sectors with even better aspect ships, and you will have a view of the difficulty in the entire storyline. Then you can post your general idea about them :D



    You did brought a good point with this, so it's possible that it can be fixed in the future, but no one really seen that as a problem so far. At least not big enough to post it. Anyway, good feedback :)


    -Mike

    Chars: [CFPD]Michael~something (x25), [CFPD]~SQMS~{[(store)]} (x3), [CFPD]xfer, Event~Manager~Michael, StarfIier~EM~Michael, Event_Team_2, [GR]Michael[SP] and a blueprint of [CFPD]Sephirothis

    It is correct, the ships are balanced for the MP part of the mod.
    But there also should be several pretty cool medium fighters in the game.


    Problem with balancing is that you can not speperate SP from MP... so the only choice is to decide for one of them. Since the multiplayer folks kept this project running and supported it the choice was pretty easy.


    With CF2.0 which introduces a harder mission system and more dangerous systems the difficulty curve looks different. But to be honest i can not say if it will be perfect... thats what we will find out when playing the game for a longer period of time.

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    Hello Atticka,


    welcome! :) ... For ship placement: maybe for 2.0 will be done "small" change for ships location .. are many very nice ships which can be used for SP, but majority of them is placed in systems where you can't go during SP.


    For ship placement (but it can spoil you play) you can take a look to Lexicon

    Hi guys, I appreciate the feedback and welcome, thank you. :)



    CF-2.0 sounds like it's going to be fantastic. I am really loving this game and Mod right now. Please let me know if i can help with testing and/or balancing for the next release.



    All the best!

    Hi,
    I'm having similar issues.
    just starting out, have just got the jump gates opened (mission 2 finished I think).
    Worked out where I could get a reasonable ship, don't have much cash so not a million dollar ship, just a middle of the line hf or vhf.
    Unfortunately I couldn't jump that far.
    Finding it very difficult at the moment so i'm going to reduce the difficulty level.
    Maybe adding a "slightly" stronger light fighter to New York system (not Manhattan or a story line location, make you go out to get it) then a heavy fighter & a VHF in other surrounding systems (1 or 2 jumps only.
    I understand people need to save there money for the later/harder missions, but honestly modding the game or rage quitting are better options?
    Please don't think i'm just here to criticize, I love the mod & am grateful for all the work you guys have put in.
    Just giving my opinion on how it may be better for crappy pilots like me lol.

    Edited once, last by nads: bots/bats change might anger some ops ().

    If you've finished 2nd mission there is a VERY nice so called "light" fighter in one of the Liberty systems available ;)
    Just look around a lil' bit.
    With this baby you would be able even to finish the "vanilla" story line. But keep in mind : for the extended storyline you need something REALLY VERY HEAVY.


    About the money 'n prices for ships counting in millions .... there is ONE special item to collect with tractor after each fight, that can be sold for HUGE amounts
    of money at the according stations, that ...erhmm "care" for those "passengers" of the criminal kind. :D


    Or try trading. After you've visited all the stations you will be able to set up nice trading routes with (almost) no harassement, that will let you make easy, legal
    money. ..(though abit boring perhaps).


    And DON'T make the NPCs easier. If you ever plan on playing on the server, this will make things worse.
    Take the tip from above : try playing MP for a bit.
    After your47th death there :D you will wonder HOW much you've advanced compared to the single play NPCs. ;)


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