To be clear, the game does run well on iPhone 6 and even my iPhone 5S, but as the dev says the UI and game sprites are far too small. I play it on a Mini 2, but downloaded it to my iPhone just to check it out...he's not kidding. Perhaps if you have perfect vision and youthful eyesight (I have neither), you may find it acceptable. As for Newtonian vs. "normal" space flight, it's a design choice, and one common to the games Star Nomad is inspired by. If you don't like it, this may not be the game for you. I don't say that to belittle anyone's preferences, but changing a core game system is not insignificant and could have knock-on effects throughout other parts of the design. As an independent dev I would be more likely to give you a refund than to invest in such a huge change for a vocal minority...you can't make everyone happy.
For those having a rough start, make sure you retrieve the weapons and missiles from your storage. There is a reminder in the opening text but I missed it the first time. Watch for events in planetary systems. These will tell you what the planet is buying at up to 2-3X normal price. Look for the giant blue exclamation points in various star systems. These are quests. Once you figure it out, it's unputdownable.
Yeah, it's a very fun game and a battery killer. I played it for an hour and a half straight and it drained my battery 40%. Oh well, it was worth it, now back to kill the remaining 60%.
Agreed. I rage quit the PC version multiple times however I kept going back. Next thing I knew I had put 60 hours into the game. Come to think of it that's the same exact trajectory XCOM 2 is following for me. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment.
Tractor the loot can near your ship? Ok, you still would have to tap it to select which loot you want to take (some loot are contraband in a given faction system). In general the flight system is a mix of Newtonian and arcade. Do you guys use the center of the D-Pad to come to a stop? It may take a little bit to adjust but soon you'll pull nice moves, using the inertia to slide around big ships so their guns can't track you. There's an option to respec skills. It was added to the PC version as a player requested feature. There's an NPC who can mind-wipe you for a fee. Infact, there's a lot of NPCs with useful functions. Those lifepods? There's a drone you can buy from an NPC that auto-picks them all up for you, really handy! There's also the Merchant Guild price database you can get access to, for merchant players, to instantly find the best route for any tradegood.
I optimized it using the iPad Mini 2, I was getting 1 hour ~20% battery. On the iPhone 6 Plus if there's a lot of background activity it consumes much more. I'll look into further optimizations in future updates.
1. You can drag it to the $ icon on the top left to sell weapons or modules. You can also place it into storage by directly dragging it over to the storage. All ships get 25 storage slots so you can save weapons or mods for different situations. 2. Are you on the Pirate worlds? Pirate systems are Black Markets, where they sell lots of things (stolen!), allowing bad guys to bypass the reputation/faction requirements. 3. On iPhone 6 Plus it was draining ~30% in 1H for me, iPad Mini 2, ~20% 1H. I will work to further optimize it, try as best as I can. There's a big underlying simulation, dynamic economies, faction fleet movement & warfare. 4. Turrets are size restricted, if you tap on the ship turret mount, the info description is more specific. S, M, L and XL classes. When you drag a weapon from the shop, the matching turret mount will briefly flash to help ID. Launchers however are universal. An S-Launcher can equip L-Torpedos, just have less quantity. I made this on purpose to allow smaller ships with launchers to pack big missiles or torps and be a major threat to larger ships.
Very cool game. Really enjoying this. It's true for me that once you get the hang of flight it's very good. Went with trader, but I can see my self doing some bounties later on. I assume I can do whatever I want even though I've chosen trader? I've had to kill a couple of pirates already, although there was a lot of support ships in the area. Fun.
Thanks! For more advanced flight moves, you can toggle the boost/afterburners to quickly get out of a turning slide. ie. temporarily disable Newtonian physics so you can do very sharp turns. It's the primary way smaller ships dodge incoming missiles. If you get good at it, missiles are no longer a threat. Your starting career only influence the starting ship/loadout, the rest, is all up to your choices. If you are a merchant, suggest you visit Liberty and talk to the NPC there.
Thank You! 1. That worked like a charm, although the tooltip (drag across to sell) needs some thought. 2. Yes! The lovely pirate worlds. I'm surely enjoying my cruiser and drone swarm. I do all my shopping there. 3. That makes sense. good luck with the optimizations. 4. The problem with asking us to tap on the turret mount is that it is never unoccupied, so the needed info is unavailable. Yes, it flashes, but you only find that out after you've purchased the new ship and now have no money to re-arm it. Of course, it helps that I now know how to sell stuffs. I think the problem some people are having with the game is that it's NOT a mobile game. It's not suited for a few minutes of distracted gameplay while you wait in line at the bank. It's very old school in that It takes time to learn your way around, and there's no hand-holding. Personally, between this and Planar Conquest, I'm in heaven.
It is definitely not a mobile game**, it was designed to be an old-school space trader and combat game with modern features and dynamism. There's no quest log, or active quests check-list. You open your Star Map, take a glance, and those little icons spark some curiosity? Just tap them and bring up info on the event happening on that colony and make your plans. It's great for players who like their curiosity sparked. Random encounters are multi-outcome but they are not meant to be massively game-changing, more a fun side-distraction in your journey. Lots of lore related ones, as well as all the random flight chatter from NPCs, I hoped that made the universe feel alive. Btw, the Black Markets are great, but the best stuff is only available with the major factions. Unique ships, Weapons, Active Modules with unique functions etc. Did you guys find the first squad recruit yet? ** Despite that, my goal was to make it very playable on mobiles with this port. I tried to get the UI to behave so there's no frustration like you feel as though you are missing a mouse or keyboard.
Yeah, I remember playing Frontier: Elite 2 with the Newtonian physics, which, admittedly were a bit of a nightmare at first. Can't go back to that game after playing Elite: Dangerous, lol. Played a bit of Star Nomad 2, and almost got enough money for the Katana frigate, and let me tell you, bounty hunting wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Soft target lock+killing blow bounties+fast moving cruisers and capships=a recipe for disaster, especially with these controls.
Nice to see the thread is picking up steam @Greyskull: Apple never offered a way to exclude certain devices (which is pretty moronic in my opinion). The only "workaround" you have is to exclude certain device features, see e.g. here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/DeviceInformation/Reference/iOSDeviceCompatibility/DeviceCompatibilityMatrix/DeviceCompatibilityMatrix.html . I guess this is getting harder, as the newer stuff pretty much has the same features across the board. And if you do something drastic like requiring Metal support (iPhone6/equivalent and up) , you exclude a lot of iThingies where you app might still run perfectly fine. Not to mention that people will bitch like no tomorrow (waawaa, why doesn't it run on my Touch 1? 1-Star review, take this dev!) .
Use the active pause feature! If there's some ships zipping about too fast, pause, and analyze the situation. Later when you have squad mates and drones, it gets a heck of a lot easier, as you can order them to chase and focus fire on your target. Also pay attention to the Left/Right shields on enemy targets, sometimes they are on fire, low health, but one shield is still good so your missile salvo from that direction is wasted.
@Saucepolicy (nice name, btw): Sure it's a design choice, but so far I am not convinced it is a good one. razorracer's comment "...especially with these controls." made think about it a bit more. It's very possible that the problem isn't the Newtonian, but the implementation. Examples: I find it very hard to grab the lifepods, stop my ship just in the right spot to dock/travel, and - the worst offender - to get away from the map edge. Sometimes I'm stuck for close to 30 seconds until I get the ship to move away from the edge; worst is when you hit one of the corners (e.g. because I stopped a half-second too late for that jumpgate in the bottom-right). And I most definitely wouldn't get or accept a refund. Even if I throw it out in rage in the next hour or so, I still feel good about support AH_Phan, mostly because he's always aiming high and trying really hard to deliver great games. So yes, despite my "complaining" I like what he does @AH_Phan: Yes, I do use the red button to stop my ship, but it's extremely frustrating to get things right. You could be right on that. Personally, I don't make the platform distinction. iOS is my only gaming platform for years now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. So at least I for sure want "full-blown" games on my iPad. E.g. Planar Conquest really rocks, that one definitely stays on my device to get back to when I have time. Game progress wise I got my first wingman before I went to sleep: Spoiler You can find one at Ionus, costs 15k. Which leads me to another nitpick: I'd like to see beforehand what ship a wingman has, and with which faction(s) his allegiances are. E.g. I decided I don't want to associate with pirates (I really like that you can make this kind of decision, by the way); so I most definitely do not want to hire someone who's good buddies with the pirates. And almost got enough money to buy a Cruiser, pretty sure I'll go for a Droneship.
And last for now, two more nitpicks about the UI: 1) The screen where you pick up cargo loot does not seem to have a direct option (aka button) to back out of it. My workaround is to bring up the starmap and then dismiss it again, couldn't find any other way to do it. 2) Some of the UI elements are really hard to see. Best examples: The weapon slots on the ship, those are almost invisible. The confirm button to land on a planet/station can be really hard to see, even more so when the background (e.g. the planet you want to land on) is in the green color range too. Quite often the message text at the bottom covers the speedup button or other elements on the lower left side. With the amount of messages coming in, I don't see any way to improve that easily. Non-UI related: Some of the "flavour" messages from other pilots are extremely juvenile (like that silly "prepare your anus, pirates do it from behind" one) . If you like this kind of humour, all fine. Me, I'd prefer an option for "switching off the poop and buttjokes", they get old really fast; not to mention that for me they don't fit the overall tone and setting of the game, they stick out like a sore thumb.
Yes I admit those lifepods are the most annoying thing when you're not used to mastering the ship flight. By the time you get good though, the lifepods aren't worth much credits anymore to bother chasing them down individually, which is why there's an "Ambulance Drone" you can get that does it auto! Your wingman have no allegiance, besides to you and making credits. They will reveal their story as they rank up and you'll understand soon what I mean. Drone Carriers are really effective, I have no bad things to say about them. The reason they are so damn effective is the drone AI is something I'm proud of, if left alone they will prioritize the major threat to you (if there's enemy drones, they will engage in "dogfights" to distract them), or you can sic them to focus fire. Importantly, when they get damaged, they boost and return to dock with your carrier for repairs and re-launch, go back to their prior target.
1. That's a good point. I meant for users to toggle their cargo to "close" the cargo bay. But the Star Map also works. 2. I'll add the suggest to the list for updates, making the turret slot and docking icon more visible. Yes, sometimes a lot of random events pop up, I could make them less verbose so the text fits better. Ack, that line shouldn't be on the iOS build, some of the taunts was added to the PC build as beta players suggestions. But they usually say some strange things... space can make people weird, and pirates are a strange bunch to start with. If you ever want to change direction quickly, like over-shooting a jump or on the edge, cycle the afterburner/boost quickly and your ship will break the Newtonian to quickly change direction the opposite way.
