The lighting symbol is a fuel rod for your hyperdrive. You only get one per trip. Every space station gives one free one per pilot each time they dock at a station. That's why when you go to a sector you can't jump anywhere else out of the sector.
That is until we find out where to buy them I'm too addicted to this game. My stats say I've been playing for more than 18h... Now that I have the Orion, 75k and reach every single planet of the GalCON system, what can I do? I've just become a pirate attacking every single ship I see. Hopefully it'll open new paths. Now all the cargo I trade with is achieved through piracy
Well, of course I like animations, they add immersion. But I also want to be able to skip them, if I've just been shot down for the 50th time in a row and just want to go to space again, fast. And yeah, I am terribly bad at this. The most credits I ever managed to accumulate was 2000. On the very next run they shot me down again and I lost half of that. I've deleted the game out of sheer frustration more times than I'd like to admit.
I started a new game after getting my butt shot off constantly as usual, in the hopes that a fresh pilot would have an easier time. No, does not look like it. Lost my first cargo three times in a row. I played for about an hour straight, trying to figure out what the problem is. Overall difficulty aside for a moment, two things: - At least two of the three starting systems should be a bit safer. Talos appears to be the most dangerous, fine with me. But even shuttling cargo between Rubecula and Staeg I constantly get attacked by pirates in pairs, up to 4 times per flight. Tad much in my book, right at the start of a new game. - Controls sensitivity: I don't know how you other folks do that, but I constantly oversteer and shoot over my targets. Maybe it's just my large fingers, but the joystick doesn't seem to have a deadzone. One tiny twitch and I'm going "whooo, 180 loop!" (only slightly exaggerated for effect ) . Absolutely impossible to keep a steady aim So, a deadzone control, and an overall sensitivity control would be great. And for the wishlist: A toggle that you do not stop for convoys. That gets annoying really fast: having to stop, maybe decline an escort job, and then take up flight again. Also, what netmute says: option to switch off all transition animations. Three, option to switch off the auction minigame and simply do normal buy/sell trading at fixed prices. I find it extremely frustrating to spend quite a few minutes auctioning, only to get shot to bits less than a minute after a jump.
Update and a good laugh Apparently all you need is some luck. Went for a final "if it doesn't work this time, I'll delete" try. Took me less than an hour to get the Weevil, and with 1:40 on the clock I have another 5k in the bank already. Finally starting to enjoy this Minor nitpick: The Weevil's laser is really bright and flashy. Hurts my eyes a bit. But even worse, makes it really hard to see anything while you are firing. Helmets with glare suppression visor, please?
Got another one for the feature wishlist: Be able to set your own defaults for Energy distribution and speed. Right now, it always returns to the hard default values , e.g. after a jump. First thing I do after arrival is direct all energy to shields, and pull the throttle all the way up. Would be really nice if I could set that as my personal default.
I wonder if this was a conscious design decision, maybe the Captain can shed some light here: Trading yields a lot more money than e.g. shooting down pirates. With the cash I can make from a good trading run (easily 2k now, and I'm still not far in) , the rewards for shooting down pirates (~25-50 cred per ship), protecting convoys (highest so far ~200, average is more like ~100) and doing missions (highest 600, average maybe 150) seem very small. Did you deliberately design this so that trading is the only lucrative career choice? I'd think to have an equally valid option to, say, pursue a career in law enforcement (aka shooting down pirates) or "bodyguarding" convoys would open up more paths to follow. However, with the tiny payouts for this, I just skip by any convoy that asks for help. Well, for now at least; I still need boatloads of creds to get the bigger ships...
Not sure if this helps, but at the very beginning, don't stuff your hold chock full of valuable cargo just to maximize profit. I have a feeling that you make a much more tempting target that way, and attract pirate attention. Try for more numerous (but less profitable) trade runs, slowly increasing your funds. Also, really manage your power shifting even a small portion of power to your lasers for a few moments can help chew through a target's shields, and help even the odds when there's a lot of enemies.
Bodyguarding in Viper sector can be up to 1.5k per protection or even more. Then you have the option of attacking the convoys and picking up the loot. This makes you go up and down the good-bad scale like a rollercoaster If you are uber-good, no pirates will offer you to perform raids with them. If you're uber-bad... I don't know what happens, I took the light side of the force The game is great, but I admit that on the long run possibilities are scarce. In the end, I'm going from planet to planet seeking missions, which are nearly inexistent after 20h of gameplay (Yeap, that's what the stats say...), and depending on my mood I protect ships or go the pirate way. I've only found 3-4 side missions yet. I want to think there are more, but I guess I have to find them. Nonetheless, I have to say that the 5 I paid for this game have given me much more entertainment than I expected. I would happily pay another 5 for an IAP with new content if I got as many hours of joy as I did with the game. Btw, every time I enter Rubecula I see a message saying "secondary objective completed". Has this got to do with those side missions? Is there a side mission in every planet?
@irowboat: As I wrote in my next post, I started another game and things went a lot smoother. Because at least one other poster mentioned it: I wonder if even when starting a new game, the previous difficulty due to rank is used. First and second restart were a total disaster. Then I deleted and redownloaded, and suddenly everything was good. Easy runs, weak pirates, under an hour to get the 2nd ship for 7k creds. And with cargo filled as far as possible for every run. Could always be that I just hit an extremely unlucky streak on my first 3-4 plays, but I don't think it was only (bad) luck. Now I have almost enough to upgrade again for around 23k, need to check the clock to give you the playtime, though. Once your are out of the starting ship, it's much safer to pump 50%+ power into lasers and blast away. Since I upgraded to the Weevil, I didn't die once. Knock on wood
@VBF: But I guess when you can reach Viper, you don't really need the money anymore, right? Way to go for me, 3h 20m on the clock. Did anyone figure out yet what to do with personal cargo? I have 3 different datacubes, but can't seem to find a use for them yet.
Well, not really, unless you want the last ship of all the list. To buy that one, you need 50k extra credits when you have the Orion spaceship. I got those 50k really fast, but I think Orion is much better than the other spaceships, so now I'm gathering money just in case an update brings something cool to buy or I discover a hidden easter egg. I thought that all the game ships where purchasable (not big transporters, but small fighters), but I've been attacked by pirates who have a spaceship which isn't purchasable. Details like this one are what make me think that the game has hidden easter eggs which I haven't seen yet. Atm I can remember two spaceships I've seen which I can't purchase: one that looks like a gem (kinda the pentagon of the Superman logo, but in 3D) and another one that reminds me a bit to the Eurofighter 2000. What I'd like to see in a future update is another system and missions between one system and another. Atm we only have Sol, and we can't even travel to Sol itself because it's "out of reach" (even though Viper is further... ) EDIT: I think that "personal cargo" and "expansions" are things which haven't been 100% developed yet, and are in the game for (hopefully) future updates which includes them. I have probes and datacubes in "personal cargo". Maybe in the future I'll find where to sell them, but atm they are there for decoration purposes only (At least that's what I think, but I'll stand corrected though).
Review from the best and notorious videogames site in Italy: http://multiplayer.it/recensioni/148835-rogue-star-predatori-delite.html
The review is very good. I think it highlights quite well what this game is all about, its pros and cons. Similar to Pocket Gamer's review, which gave it a 8/10.
Hey, does anyone know what are the secondary objectives in missions? It seems I have completed some and failed others, but I've got no clue as to how to complete or fail them. AFAIK, they were standard delivery missions. I didn't notice any secondary mission in the mission brief...
Didn't see those yet, I just started doing missions in earnest. Will try to remember and pay attention when I reach that point. By the way, my kid likes the graphics especially the Shipmenu Robot and the Alien that sticks its tongue out.
I've reached veteran rank and has anyone else noticed the pirate missions are way harder than escort ones? The multiple waves of 3 or 4 fighters with multiple cargo ships seems insurmountable at this level I can't imagine what troubles ace rank will bring.
Just noticed: when jumped in near a new planet, distance count 30000 km. This is not realistic. At the distance depicted when jumped in, I think that the distance count must ne at least of 300000 (5 zeros instead of 4) km. Just saying... Anyway: what a great game! Keep playing and never get tired of it!!!
You could easily add another zero to that I always liked the Battletech approach, that safe jumping takes the Lagrange points (where gravity of nearby planets and star cancels each other out) as target points. Looked up some numbers for Earth: Geosynchronous orbit is at ~35k kilometers, high earth orbit at 100k+ kilometers, and L1 Lagrange point is at ~1.5 million kilometers (~1% of 1 AU, the distance Earth - Sun) . As some planets in Rogue Star seem to be gas giants or similarly large bodies, I looked for L1 of Jupiter-Sun as example, but couldn't find any numbers right away. Not even sure if it exists, I could only find mention of L4 and L5 for Jupiter. If we take the above Earth numbers and apply the same ratio to Jupiter - Sun L1: Average distance between the two is ~780 million kilometers. 1% of that gives 7.8 million km for the L1. Well well, guess we have to settle for artistic liberties with those distances, dogfighting at under 100m ship distance would be a bit ridiculous.
