So I picked this up a bit over a month ago. An ESO streamer I follow was going to give it a try after not having touched it in a while, and I'd been considering both this and Elite Dangerous for a while as a dedicated Space game, since Star Trek Online is fairly slow about actual new content and I've done pretty much everything in it. It turned out to be interesting enough, and between that, Twitch drops that gave me a couple free A-class ships and an A-class Multi-tool, and a half-off sale, I jumped in.
The tutorial itself turned out to take at least 5 hours... less than 16 anyways. There's no clearly defined line, really, but once I was able to get to the Anomaly and collect all my free stuff, that was good enough for me. Since then I've clocked over 100 hours on my main normal save and finished most of the story, ran the expedition(think of it like a Diablo 3 season with a changed story) and actually started a Permadeath save.
Permadeath means that if you die, the game deletes your save files, like how that one Xbox mecha simulator did if you didn't eject. I have yet to die on either of my previous saves, and there's an achievement that unlocks a title for making it to the center of the galaxy on Permadeath, so I figured I'd go ahead and do it.
Despite almost screwing up yesterday, I'm making good progress there. In short, I was hopping to other player's bases so I could hit the space station in their system and expand my suit's inventory(as you can only buy one upgrade per system from the main station, and one from the anomaly there). This base's portal dumped me a ways away from the actual base, on an extreme world, in the middle of an extreme storm, and I was still running only barely upgraded hazard protection. I started to run for the base, then noticed the landing pad with my ship was a ways up, so I turned and tried to find someplace to dig down and wait it out. My hazard protection was gone and my shield was 2/3 of the way down by the time I found someplace to dig and got deep enough to no longer take damage. And this took place over like 30 seconds, if that.
Not sure if it was a troll or a bug, but I survived and got away with it. Now I'm turning to roaming my home base's planet for cargo/backpack slot upgrades and collecting nanites to fill out my protection so I can keep on moving ahead.
My main save on the other hand is fairly built up now. I'm still mostly using the blue Hauler I got from Twitch, but nearly maxed out - just need to expand the cargo hold. I've got a solar ship though I'm planning to move to once I get it built up properly.
It handles like a dream already. Only downside is it has a smaller cargo hold, but I can summon the hauler if I need it. I've also built up a freighter as my mobile base too:
Still needs work though - I've only gotten the functional equipment in, none of the extra decoration to make it feel like a proper ship. I think I've got maybe 16 frigates at the moment for the frigate missions too. Somewhere around there. This planet is also where I've decided to make my main planetary base of operations until I'm ready to head for the center on this save. It can look very pretty at night.
And this is the look I ended up with for this save:
Unfortunately since I got it on Steam it uses my Steam name, so I can't use different names for different characters.
I was afraid before I wouldn't like it since it leans heavily on being a survival game and none of those had really interested me before, but this one hooked me - I think in part because of the exploration aspect.
And while there certainly wasn't 16 people posting in the thread about it before the old board died, I know there was at least a few. Any of y'all still playing?
The tutorial itself turned out to take at least 5 hours... less than 16 anyways. There's no clearly defined line, really, but once I was able to get to the Anomaly and collect all my free stuff, that was good enough for me. Since then I've clocked over 100 hours on my main normal save and finished most of the story, ran the expedition(think of it like a Diablo 3 season with a changed story) and actually started a Permadeath save.
Permadeath means that if you die, the game deletes your save files, like how that one Xbox mecha simulator did if you didn't eject. I have yet to die on either of my previous saves, and there's an achievement that unlocks a title for making it to the center of the galaxy on Permadeath, so I figured I'd go ahead and do it.
Despite almost screwing up yesterday, I'm making good progress there. In short, I was hopping to other player's bases so I could hit the space station in their system and expand my suit's inventory(as you can only buy one upgrade per system from the main station, and one from the anomaly there). This base's portal dumped me a ways away from the actual base, on an extreme world, in the middle of an extreme storm, and I was still running only barely upgraded hazard protection. I started to run for the base, then noticed the landing pad with my ship was a ways up, so I turned and tried to find someplace to dig down and wait it out. My hazard protection was gone and my shield was 2/3 of the way down by the time I found someplace to dig and got deep enough to no longer take damage. And this took place over like 30 seconds, if that.
Not sure if it was a troll or a bug, but I survived and got away with it. Now I'm turning to roaming my home base's planet for cargo/backpack slot upgrades and collecting nanites to fill out my protection so I can keep on moving ahead.
My main save on the other hand is fairly built up now. I'm still mostly using the blue Hauler I got from Twitch, but nearly maxed out - just need to expand the cargo hold. I've got a solar ship though I'm planning to move to once I get it built up properly.
It handles like a dream already. Only downside is it has a smaller cargo hold, but I can summon the hauler if I need it. I've also built up a freighter as my mobile base too:
Still needs work though - I've only gotten the functional equipment in, none of the extra decoration to make it feel like a proper ship. I think I've got maybe 16 frigates at the moment for the frigate missions too. Somewhere around there. This planet is also where I've decided to make my main planetary base of operations until I'm ready to head for the center on this save. It can look very pretty at night.
And this is the look I ended up with for this save:
Unfortunately since I got it on Steam it uses my Steam name, so I can't use different names for different characters.
I was afraid before I wouldn't like it since it leans heavily on being a survival game and none of those had really interested me before, but this one hooked me - I think in part because of the exploration aspect.
And while there certainly wasn't 16 people posting in the thread about it before the old board died, I know there was at least a few. Any of y'all still playing?