Yeah, it's an awakening. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154284616 I usually start in harder planets, but thought I'd try this scenario on easy to acclimate myself to the different rulesets and balance changes. Even so, I initially got my ass handed to me by following a traditional script. My first rude awakening was the first base attack on the initial newb base I made. I dug into a conveniently placed hillside next to the wreck. I put out one cannon on the outside of the cave I carved out, thinking "hey, the first attack is a piece of cake!" WRONG! 4 drones and a dropship... with 1 drone being a missle drone. After digging though the other side, I was able to get to my inner base and constructor, and get enough ammo to finally take out the last 3 drones. In order to get a headway, I had to drop/add a Core to the base to pause attacks. I did that enough to build an open air CV to be the main base. The second bit of rudeness was that space drones patrol all over the planetary grid. So, I'm in the TOP distillery and my small ship gets blown away while I'm clearing the unaligned crates. I had to cheese a POL Scout spawn to get back to the planet. The third thing was I built the MX multi purpose SV to warp to the nearby systems. On the warp back to Haven, I was immediately targeted to 2 of the patrol drones... and realized the balance changes make this SV way too slow to escape them. I evaded as best as I could, but got the cockpit shot out from under me at about 200m from the planet. I did a drop to the surface, got a few resources and motorbiked my way back to the CV. What have I learned by level 15? 1) Need 3 turrets to safely survive even the initial base attacks. 2) Drones are smarter and hurt. 3) Standard blueprint spawns stand a good chance of sucking. I'm having much fun, as this is usually the point where I would be clearing out lvl 1 bases... and that isn't an easy proposition, yet. I don't have the resources to defend the CV. I was able to harden the CV and take out the space drones (thank you SV turret!). I recovered what was left of the MX. I am hand building most things. It is a far more defensive game.
Bruh...I feel ya... Reforged Eden broke me. I'll admit it. I love the technical changes to weapons, and even the ores and tools. But man, there was no room to breathe and get ahead of the curve in my play through. No local neutral systems to finally gather those desperate ores, planets barren and forboding. Drones. Drones everywhere... My character in that playthrough is now sitting on a barren rock of a planet, alone. Maybe ill go back to him someday...but man...
The next project is to rebuild the MX. I've trimmed out the width of it and moved primary items behind the cockpit. For the most part, I will enclose everything in the open space that was the main body. I should be cutting the weight over 1/3. Needs a turret or 2 to screw with the drones. Fortunately, the warp core was not destroyed. My goal is to make this bird a fast defensive warp shuttle to get the more rare mats.
In desparation I used a ship from the workshop. It "worked" in that it would fly and warp...but handled like an epileptic squirrel after an 8ball. Getting in it meant scorching oneself on the engines the whole way. I >should< have taken time and built my own box of doom, or at least tossed on a few turrets before I made my mad dash for escape.
Yeah I know the feeling. I just warped out of a dark rogue system from an "ultra hard" start with hard settings.(except for food & degradation that was set to normal) My second planet is colorful and really nice. The escape from the zirax boundary from the ship was rough. It required a lot of slow travel and cooking food during skirmishes, coupled with drone scouting. Towards the edge of the bo I was in a skirmish but then was ambushed by a ton of praying mantis creatures, a woodwalker, a bunch of other zirax and their dogs. I had to run for it to the border. When I lost them I realized I had to go back far enough to get the woodwalker so I could make some biofuel for oxygen and ammo. I ended up doing some much needed upgrades to my CV on the second system. I flirted with the idea of taking out a zirax outpost. When I saw those missiles and how they ate through those blocks I realized I would be spending far more time preparing my CV before even thinking about trying that little number again. I am building in survival atm and avoiding the use of blueprints. Just a tip for anyone thinking about a dark rogue start. Make sure to loot everything in the ship including all of the secret stashes but do try to leave behind extra copies of weapons and armor, carry capacity will be very important later. Do not forsake the pistols in RE as they are pretty powerful and you'll need all the ammo you can get for your escape. Medium armor + armor boost 2x with its radiation reduction will nullify ambient radiation of the planet. It will make running away a bit tougher though.
Vanilla on regular settings is like eating a peppermint candy...a bit nippy but altogether sweet. Vanilla on hard settings is like eating a fireball candy...kinda tingly at first, but you get used to it, then its just sweet. Reforged Eden on regular settings is like kicking a gorilla in the nards...he gets to decide when the fight is over. Reforged Eden on hard settings is the same as regular, except the gorilla is on fire and you are wearing kerosene underwear.
>7 Cooper rating. Sounds like it has an RCS (or really well placed thrusters) ... you can detune using the rotation sensitivity sliders on the P/Statistics page but (for me anyhow) these changes haven't been sticking so you need to redo them each time.
OK. You owe me a clean shirt and pants. I read this JUST as I has taken a sip of my morning coffee and literally had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep from spraying my monitors and keyboard. Killing one clean shirt and pants I JUST put on. You. Owe. Me. for. this. one! Epileptic Squirrel indeed. F'in hilarious picture.
I tried RE also. I didn't have any trouble with the difficulty, per se. It was the nearly triple cost to build anything that chased me away. Too grindy. I've been meaning to ask if there are some config files I can tinker with to get build costs down?
Template.ecf has the gosintos for stuff (i.e. 1 iron ingot = 5 iron ore) ... of course console "im" followed by sitting on Santa's knee (read: "h") and asking for a pony works too 8^) ... setting constructor speed can influence not only the time to grind but power consumed (and thus promethium & h2 required) because constructor power requirements are measured in device active time vs. items produced.
You'll find the cost is mostly higher on CV construction. It's not significantly more grindy since the resource yield from ore is higher and more consistent. Salvage return is also higher (vanilla 66% return vs reforged 75% using T2 multitool).
Also lots more wreckage in space. If you do factory builds throwing in steel plate vs. iron ingots and similar can reduce the build time to literally nothing.
I do Masperon starts on RE and I can do it without dying not even using cb:survival. Just get to a lake, swim 20m out right before first nightfall, and start digging under the lake (the water doesn't fill in), then drone attacks don't matter as much as they can't hit you.
After a hard day at work, reading this post had me laughing out loud for several minutes. Thank you!! I needed that!!
My GoTo strategy used to be to build a "CV Mobile HOme" (CV starter block, then just a plastic and glass box with no propulsion or attitude control or weapons) . . . use this to level up, get a farm going, get the better constructors, then build an SV, then eventually an actual starship CV and just skip the planet-side. But I saw a post from Vermillion (author of half the mod) taunting that he had figured out how to get base attacks to target CVs too, so I guess my exploit is probably bust. I like to play "Dead is Dead," meaning: unless you have a clone chamber, if you die, you erase file and start over, so figuring out means to get past early game crux was always a fun challenge. Before I adopted this ploy, here was how I used to handle starting and it worked on the mid-tier starter worlds fine (the snow planet whose name presently eludes me was always a fav). 1. Get the damaged hoverbike and put an enclosed cockpit on it. 2. Level up and get some decent loot going. 3. Find a wide open plains area. If there are some minerals at hand no problem, if not also not really a problem. On that snow planet, there tend to be at least a few areas with almost completely flat for a kilometer or more and then some mountains in the distance. With all the trees these are ideal areas for a starter base. 4. Plop down a starter block and get at least one additional block down. Ideally a cargo box, a gen and a fuel tank, but that is kind of optional. Then just delete the starter block. You can continue to expand the framework of the base all you want and even add devices and turrets to it without a core in it, and the core can be made in a portable or HV constructor. 5. Now setup two or more portable constructors near your new base site. Use your hovercraft to harvest resrouces, bring them back to the build site and turn it into materials. You cannot build the bigger guns, you'll have to put down the higher level constructor into the actual base to do that, but you can have a lot of the other materials to build the thing all prepped. 6. What you want for your base's INITIAL defenses are: at least one flak cannon, at least 2 auto-cannons (I think 30mm?? Maybe only 15mm). The ideal would be one flak, and two each of the rapid fire 15mm and the slower 30mm cannons. 4 to 8 sentry guns are also a plus for dealing with dismounted infantry, though if it comes to that, then something isn't working quite right. 7. Estimate how big your initial box will be in order to mount all of your weapons and offer enough space for storage power, etc. and build an appropriate number of building blocks. Concrete is probably the best bet. 8. In addition to blocks, and any devices you want to have in the base immediately (the T1 or T2 constructor . . . not the most advanced one, but the medium sized one for BA/CV, you'll want one of those running IMMEDIATELY on putting in a new core. 9. Double check you have all the materials to build the weapons cached separately and have a plan in mind to build those weapons and deploy and load them (with ammo!) asap after you place down the new core. I'd recommend placing: flak, then 15mm, then 30mm, then 2nd 15mm, then 2nd 30mm, then sentries. With all the changes that have been made to the computer opponent behavior in Vermillion's mod, I'm not 100% sure this design will still work, but it probably maybe should . . . The flak is brutal against any slower-moving flight craft and the 15mm should be able to take out the rapid moving ones. ADDIT: one point I didn't clarify: the idea is to build a completely above ground base and to place your weapons (the larger ones) on top. Flak highest in middle, then the other larger weapons lower than it and in a ring around it. The sentries down at ground level or use upside down to be able to hit ground level. The large flat area is ideal for this and the flak in particular shines. It will open up on them almost as soon as they spawn into the cell. Again, this design was effetcively a version or two or three ago (before some of the more recent buffs to computer opponents in the Zirax base attacks), but back in the day it literally made base attacks a completely non-issue.
I tried Reforged Eden and while I like harder content a lot of the changes he makes made the game unbearable for me. I like the harder and more situationally aware NPC soldiers. I like the new weapons and longer progression system. I like space being deadlier. I don't like the shield changes and making every POI a death star. The biggest thing is he made SV/HV's nearly completely worthless. Everything has 50 percent less shields so you get destroyed trying to take out even the most basic POI's unless you heavily out-tech it. The current spin to win CV meta is awful. All this does is encourage exploitation behavior. I had to tunnel under the base and break into it from under. I doubt this is the game vision the developers envisioned that players would just ignore the top of the base.
If you are trying to play it solo, and trying to just wing it, it seems like they've definitely taken it way too far on a lot of the POIs (I'm speaking here from experience prior to 1.6. I've only tried 1.6 for about 30 minutes now . . . only died once!). You are also correct that: if you are playing it solo and, for example, trying to either (a) NOT DIE at all; or at least to (b) not die until you have a clone chamber, then yeah, you've got to be very resourceful, careful and endure some tedious "gamey" play to succeed. However, I think this is the point of the scenario. It is supposed to force players to think, and figure out clever ways to stay alive and/or to succeed at any given task. Also, if you play coop, it is bound to be easier (as long as you use teamwork and don't just run around like chickens). It is possible to get quite far along in the scenario and not die at all, though once you start facing some of the mid- and late-game threats that becomes quite problematic.
