If you’d like to mine some asteroids – and I can’t think why you possibly wouldn’t – you can do so right now. That is, you can do so right now if you’re a captain forever supporter. If you aren’t, you can rectify that right now also!
<3 Farbs
If you’d like to mine some asteroids – and I can’t think why you possibly wouldn’t – you can do so right now. That is, you can do so right now if you’re a captain forever supporter. If you aren’t, you can rectify that right now also!
<3 Farbs
Little help please, its not clear how to mine asteroids..
Heh, yeah I think I might make a video tutorial.
For starters, shoot at the smallest asteroids you can find.
Thank you. Probably ingame help would be the easiest place to describe new functionality.
The game is cool, you do a great job! Made my supporter payment just to appreciate you work.
Did you considered to improve VMEDS usability, for example, to enable mouse clicks for vmeds buttons?
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, you stole that tagline from Captain Monaco!
Hi,
I’ve only had a short amount of time to play around with this new update yet, although instantly I love the crosshair/orientation mechanic =D
Some kind of quick FAQ on mining may be handy. I’m not sure what other people’s experiences have been like, but I jumped straight into the mining bonus sector (because I wanted to test the mining) and couldn’t figure out how to get stated.
I did then come here and took the advice to start with a small asteroid, but it took me a fair amount of time to break it (I then realised I’d have to bump the ore to a refinery station and gave up =D )
I went and did the same thing on the non-bonus map after getting some better weapons/girders, and really liked the mining feel – had a Hardwar like vibe (A game I absolutely loved).
So in summary, mining great, but unless I missed it, could do with a little nudge instructing you, maybe an info buoy?
Farbs, I am a long time supporter, I’ve been playing Captain Forever for a long time, and purchased supporter status when captain Successor came out, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I played a bit of Jameson when it came, thought it was alright, and figured I’d wait until some updates improved it. I recently got back into it, and I’m really enjoying it, but Farbs: I have a bone to pick with you.
Let me set the scene. I’m piloting a medium sized ship, mostly Echo and Foxtrot parts, with an array of five Hotel Sniper blasters and a handy bubble shield I snagged a while back protecting them. It’s a ship that took me about two hours to build. I’m heading out from a station and I stumble on a group of India level vessels, and engage them in a daring fire fight, and when the smoke clears I am alone on a grid littered with softly glowing cyan girders, boosters and blasters.
Looking more closely at my ship, I notice that many of the modules have suffered a lot of damage, and there’s actually some Delta parts still tacked on. I decide to strip my ship bare and rebuild from square one, with my beautiful new India parts. But as I’m putting the finishing touches on my sweet new ship, one of the best I’ve ever built, a warning pops up in the middle of my screen.
Oxygen levels critical.
Fuck.
I’d missed the notification that oxygen was at half in the heat of the firefight, and I knew I was too far from my station to make it in time. I considered stripping off everything that was weighing me down and dashing to the station with a ship made mostly of boosters, but once I’d refilled my oxygen, that would be a pretty useless ship.
So my problem is this: I get that oxygen adds another dimension to gameplay, I get that it gives that player a reason to explore and defeat bosses and return to their homebase and everything, but I can’t fucking stand it. All the things I love about the game, long drawn out dogfights, desperately whittling away at much stronger opponents with a tiny underpowered ship, deep space exploration, everything is cut short by having to turn around and head home every five minutes. It even detracts from the feeling of danger from enemy ships, because asphyxiation is now the most dangerous enemy of all.
I’m not asking you to take the oxygen mechanic out of the game, as I know many players and you personally are fond of it, but I’d like if for the sake of the rest of us, you included a game mode that did away with oxygen altogether. Or, alternatively, made the oxygen time limit something ridiculous like half an hour, I could live with that.
Before I go, I’d also like to let you know that asteroid mining and the new AI are fucking awesome.
Affectionately yours, Kittens
I have been loving the new mining and all but there seams to be a bug that is just annoying the hell out of me, a few hours ago I went to save at the station and just now when I started the game up again and I was expecting my old ship to come out of dock but all I got was the base command module……
Wtf?
Sincerely, a loyal fan.
P.S. Now excuse me, I have a ship to rebuild and a ton of asteroids to mine again.
Did you
Did you quit the game while docked? ‘Cause if you don’t, that’s what happens.
Also, I apologize for the accidental double comment
Yes I docked before I quit. I had freed a couple stations and emptied the warehouse at the first base also, but when I came back the stations where grayed out and the warehouse had the starting gear in it.
@Kittens
I think the oxygen feature is great and shouldn’t be changed.
However I think a decent compromise may be to add a “oxy tank” item that maybe can be “Pruchased” from home bases or harvested from other ships. That way if you want to travel further without having to get oxy, u just have to have a heavier ship with well protected oxy tanks.
What do ya think?
There are oxy tanks you can get…. I have found several through my various games, I haven’t found any lately though.
The amount of oxy tanks seem to depend on your luck on the random seed affecting the groups of enemies around. Some games i’m having hours of game play without so much as a single oxy tank, and once adding insult to injury seeing the only ones on the guardians which conveniently explode.
Some other times, i find plenty of them, sometimes even 3-4 ships at a cluster carrying doubles of them, totalling over 100, even over 200 of oxygen reserves once i fully equip myself.
I’m fine with the way it is, i like my games bitterly hard to master.
However, the way guardians explode does kind of defy any useful logic; if they do have to disintegrate violently, a workable alternative could be adding random 10-100% damage to the unmounted modules so that some of them could be salvaged and repaired later at player’s own cost later on.
For what i care, once doing away with any an enemy, i’d find more interesting to receive randomly damaged parts on every occasion. This would make mining actually worth while, as you’d either purchase new modules or repair salvaged ones. At present, i have found detonating asteroids out of the way more useful than trying to hunt for any minerals for money.
Later on, it would be possible to add some logic on how the dislodged modules would receive damage on command module explosion. This could happen either by blast radius (modules further away would receive least damage) or by their connection (modules attached to 100% healthy modules would receive no damage, modules attached to damaged modules or a disintegrating command module would receive proportionally more damage)
Love the new update, you should make some mining specific parts, like controllable tractor beams, switchable gates, and stuff like that. One bone to pick, though, why can’t we assign weapon groups yet? I’m getting annoyed with running into my own torpedoes while beaming lasers at someone in pursuit. Been a supporter for a while, best purchase I ever made.
I agree, Guardians dropping nothing is “harsh”
I often manage to lose a substantial amount of my ship in these fights and what do you get for it? a radio station? maybe some other random station and an atmosphere.
It would be great if there was SOME other bonus to defeating guardians, It really sucks when you kill one, lose most of your weapons/thrusters and are left with a new com station and a useless ship.
I agree about the Guardians drops also. I pretty much always lose 50% or more of my ship fighting one. and get no real payout (other than OXY and Nav stations)
Not that i’d find it too hard to survive without any loot from the guardians – for as long as the guardian isn’t littered with homing missile turrets facing every direction, a nimble ship with a couple of prismatic lasers and enough oxygen can fight off any guardian 2-3 levels higher than its own configuration level. Just seat your ship next to the big, slow guardian’s command module and blast the helpless giant to its bitter end. This is even easier now that there is a single guardian to beat, and you’re rewarded with an all encompassing oxygen bubble saving you from asphyxiation.
Just behavior and game logic-wise; i find it odd for the guardian to disintegrate as it does now. Granted, its command module happens to be a 3×3 sized unit behaving like any other station construct/module that propagates its destruction to every other connected module. Since the earliest versions I have been in the understanding that command module destruction is supposed to be non-destructive to any connected modules, and this one particular ship type behaves out of line.
This could even happen at random – a critical hit chance if you will – that could trigger a ship wide explosion. This would naturally have to be the case with any other ship in the game.
However, the lack of scrapyards is now somewhat more challenging – as the usual runs to india/juliet areas for scrap don’t give you the wealthy end-game as before … especially after heading for a delta level chrono gear factory with some 150k+ in credits and returning with a ship made of chrono gears, a translocator+rotator and a few now-death-star-grade weapons of choice.
Mining still doesn’t compete with gaining modules via looting – something could be done to either or both to balance this out nicely. This does feel a bit like abusing the game logic, but remains an unbeaten super ship strategy. Reducing chrono gear coefficient down further only made it a bit messier to build as just more gears were required for light speed rides and weaponry.
Captain successor had a neat (albeit easily solved) end-game problem that matched the player’s level – Jameson would benefit greatly for a similar gloomy fate that would present itself at intervals, matching the player’s level.
Siege? Ambush? Clones? Virus? A beam-of-death one hit kill weapon -equipped boss? Module erosion over time?
Generally, if all the ships on a given sector of a specific configuration level would team up against the player when provoked, the bee swarm effect would create a formidable foe, even if you were several levels higher than the mob.
Feeling good about yourself with your new echo level lasers and shields? Saw that charlie-level, randomly malconfigured long stick of a ship with those shiny oxygen modules on its side for you to claim your own? Oops, it had friends, 15 of them running circles around you teaching you some manners with their prismatic lasers…
The sectors could also apply different AI scripts, forming either individuals or groups of aggressives, indifferent or even friendly ships that could attack any ship attacking the player.
I ran into a guardian which had spawned itself on top of one of the stations it was protecting. It was incapable of moving, so I killed it crazy easily.
Farbs,
Ive pretty much played the hell out of 0.5.1. i played it more than diablo 3 this week i think. after running through the 3 beacons and getting pretty much all the stations up and running i wouldn’t mind throwing my 2 cents in.
Oxygen: I love the mechanic but i feel the oxy tanks you can find need to be more common, over 10+ hours of play i came across only a single tank. When i did find that single tank it was an india class and still only provided 5 liters of air. it seems silly to me that i can have a massive Juliet class ship and still only be able to make short jumps into the unknown.
Shields: Having all of the shields die when only one of them has been overloaded is a huge pain in the ass. I know it kinda breaks the game to have multiple layers of shields making you almost invulnerable. it seems like some balancing could help here. Perhaps the max power of all the shields is cumulative so you have a higher damage absorption but they still all shut down when the Power reaches zero.
Mining: I really want to like mining but it just doesn’t make sense to waste time doing it when there are other methods of making money much faster and easier. Moving the asteroid chunks around is a pain, selecting them like ship parts would make things a bit easier. Maybe some Mining specific ship parts like tractor beams and drills?
Guardians: Like others have mentions getting something in return for taking out a guardian seems like a good idea, maybe an info buoy comes over with a letter of thanks from the stations along with either a gift of credits or ship parts. This would help get you back up to speed if you took a lot of damage fighting the guardian.
TELNET/VMEDS: I love the feel of the menu system but in use its fairly clunky. have the mouse be able to select things in the menus would be amazing, it would keep the aesthetic but increase usability. Right now dropping parts into warehouses and doing ship repairs is rough.
It would be cool if on the “COM: ________” line at the bottom of the screen you could have a message pop up from a known station saying something like “CHARON WE HAVE YOU ON RADAR, SIGNAL STRENGTH xx.xuV, BEARING +xxxx +xxxy +xxxa” when you come within range. This would help when you’re kind of lost and you think your heading in the right direction, would keep you from having to constantly launch the TELNET to check for nav stations.
Stations: How about the ability to upgrade stations, even if its only your starting stations the ability to add different types and to increase their levels would make gaining a lot money make more sense (i could see never spending money and still getting all 3 beacons). Clearing the asteroids away from the starting stations to make room for new stations would be cool.
Factories: multiple parts per factor? If you do the upgrade idea from above maybe make it so you can add on research modules so you can invest in new parts, Maybe a research station on its own so you can modify your command module to add more base oxy or a shield or a faster/more powerful laser.
NPC Ships: More variance in the ship construction of the computers side. seems like i come across a lot of ships that are either sticks, “normal” or junkers with everything piled up on one side flying around all crazy. maybe add in some non-violent freighters hauling around warehouse modules that expel their contents when destroyed. also Juliet level ships seems to come in about 3 varieties; missiles, snipers and combos with a few shield generators.
Controls: Assignable weapons groups and the ability to trigger certain thrusters would be awesome. im not sure how that would work but maybe the number keys (Right hand number pad) could be used?
Worm Holes or black holes: Would be cool but might piss people off getting compressed into a singularity.
Ship parts: some new parts that augment others in the game would be pretty cool. much like the way the chrono gear speeds up other modules having some things that can boost radio reception or increase laser/thruster power. maybe just having them on the ship makes them work over all, i dont know if that would be very balanced but some clever ways of increasing your abilities would be neat.
Beacons: Im not sure what your plan is with them, but maybe your told to activate them by someone but it starts a calamitous situation that ushers in the “second act” of the game, dealing with whats been unleashed.
Overall the update was great and i look forward to what you pump out next. Thanks!
I was blasting through some asteroids when I came across a smallish, completely darkened-out guardian that was not moving or firing at all. It was completely motionless and didn’t make anything show up on my COM. I destroyed it and the pieces fell off as they would on a regular ship, and the Blurst shields I salvaged were slightly damaged. Maybe a glitchy or in-development guardian?
I didn’t get the coordinates because I was rushing for a station, but I just wanted to know if anyone else noticed this, and if Farbs could please clarify what it was for.
Also, after finding all the beacons, the flashing [SOS] notification will keep flashing dead-center on your screen unless you find a Guardian, whereupon it will begin flashing in the corner of your screen.
Hey!
So I’ve really been enjoying the new version! I’m really glad I waited for a few versions to come out before I really delved into the new game.
However there are 2 issues I’d like to bring up…
1) some SOS’s a GREAT distances seem to override much nearer ones. This has lead to my death more than once.
2) The game just crashed… I’ve been going southwest quite a ways, until I hit a white boss caught in his base. I started shooting and the game stalled. I waited a while and tried pressing Esc and F1… But nothing. Then I tabbed and it went to the menu; but now it won’t exit the menu. I’ve been going at this run for about 4 hours now and really don’t want to just abandon my game. I’ll leave it up whilst I sleep and see if anything comes to in my rest.
However crashing is something I’ve never come across in your game, and I wonder if it’s something others have come across as well.
Lots of great ideas up there ^, especially from Ryan. Thanks everyone!
Dave, it sounds like you found a derelict. They’re like a treasure chest in space! They’re also quite rare, so others might be keen to hear where it was, if you can remember.
The SOS thing is a known bug. Should be fixed for the next build. Thanks for reporting it. Honestly I’m surprised so many people have found all the beacons. I guess the SOS marker helps a bit.
Khoogyra:
1) Yeah, they show the location of the distant beacons unless your quite close to a station. If they just picked the nearest point of interest I figured you wouldn’t get that lovely gripping fear from being lost out in the black. I wanted to try to keep that.
2) Ow. I think the physics engine hits an infinite loop if pushed hard enough, and impaling a guardian is going to help make that happen. There have been a lot of reports of impaled guardians this build, which makes me think I might have messed up somewhere in their new spawning code. I’ll have a look.
I second Ryan Sargent on the concept of a network of wormholes. Visually, the ship could scale down a bit and kind of dip below the plane of normal space, then a tweened pan to the other location, so you retain a sense of direction. A “warp module” would be sweet, as well. Same concept, but you arbitrarily pick your destination coordinates.
Hey there Farbs, Love the game, and I have played all the alphas since 3. Before I played Jameson I was worried about how it would feel based on the things you said before the alphas came out, however, I love the game, and I think its my favorite of the Forever series. And I can’t wait for alpha 6 or maybe some beta soon since the game is really quite awesome as it is now.
Anyways, I have some thoughts, and since you listen to your fans, it can’t hurt to tell you about them:
1. Why doesn’t translocation work on minerals? If I want to get a good mineral to a station and cash it in, I usually have to reconfigure my whole ship into a big scoop like shape or I will never get it back, I’ll just struggle till I die of lack of oxy.
2. I had an excellent idea for a new station the other day, here it is: A Clone Station, drop a module into one end, pay the fee, and a new one pops out the other side. We know from Captain Impostor that the technology exists, why not base a station on the same tech?
3. Also, another station idea: how about a configuration station? For a [very high] price, you can save your ships configuration in a station (only if there are no modules higher than the stations level) and if the ship is destroyed or you die of asphyxiation, then you can fly back to the station and restore your old ship as it was when you saved, possibly for another fee. This still keeps the Dock stations as a necessity, but provides just a little extra buffer to prevent some frustration in some cases. For instance, when I had unlocked a ton of stations and had a great all-golf ship, and didn’t want to dock because I wanted to keep playing, then my computer locked up and I lost it all. It would be nice to be able to save (for a fee) but keep playing in case something unforeseen like that occurs, while not actually changing the saving mechanics.
4. I disagree about guardians dropping parts, since they have so many excellent parts on them, yet can sometimes be really easy to defeat, I really think its best for all their parts to vaporize. I like it best that way.
5. I like the idea of something like chrono-gear for thrusters, I personally always thought that it would be cool if something like that existed for shields, or possibly even just using chronogears to make shields recharge faster or repair modules repair faster (although, this usually isn’t an issue for me)
I have also seen a lot of impaled guardians in this build.
Cheers Philip!
I’ve been thinking over alternatives to the savegame system, especially with flash crashing all over the place. Will continue to think on it, but as always am happy to hear suggestions.
Ok, that’s cool. To be honest, I really like the way that the game gets saved now, and I love the no-mercy deaths. It’s really just frustrating when flash crashes, which doesn’t happen as much anymore since I added more RAM, and installed a program to monitor RAM usage levels at all times. Anyways, if it could be made completely reliable, then I wish other games would adopt systems like this.
I have a couple more suggestions that I forgot to mention before if you are interested.
1. I love VMEDS, but sometimes I feel like it should be a little bit faster, I find myself frequently pressing the key before the option becomes active in VMEDS, especially to get out of the “no station found” dialog, although that might be intentional to increase suspense when you are out of range of stations.
2. The only time I ran out of oxy was one time when I was racing back to the station and just barely ran out before I made it. It was close enough that my (pretty awesome) ship drifted into the station’s atmosphere immediately after running out of oxy, at which point I believe the tanks refilled and it even made the cute little “beep-beep” oxy-full sound, however, my pilot was still dead. So, what do you think about maybe allowing the player to continue in situations like that? Perhaps the pilot can hold his breath for a little while after the oxy runs out. (note that this happened to me on 0.5, not 0.5.1)
That’s all I got for now. I found a derelict by the way, but it was only delta level.
I love Philip’s suggestion, the edge of your seat “Am I going to make it back to the bubble before the number runs out” style is never going to make me leap out of my chair and say “YES!! PHEW!” quite like a huge ship I’ve invested hours into just barely managing to drift back into the oxy zone will.
Now I think there needs to be tractor beams, which could either get those pesky rocks that fall in crevices or create interesting unique combat techniques (like using spikes to ram into other ships without letting them go).
Oh yeah and I was thinking there should be another close range weapon, like a saw. Personally getting up close and personal seems to be my favorite play-style, and spikes don’t always do it for me. Sometimes I try to pin myself right up close to a ship and shoot so I avoid the weapons, but if I shoot while doing this it destroys my own guns. So I think if theres a saw which does contant damage to whatever it touches, it would suit the play-style awesomely, be a unique and new item, work with the tractor beams I mentioned above, and make more sense with the chrono gears than spikes.
My scroll mouse is not working with any of the games on Caption Forever. It works fine on the site, like scrolling the page, but when I click inside the game it wont zoom in and work :C.
Arg. This has always been flakey with Flash. As different versions appear, and as the browsers containing it update, it frequently breaks and un-breaks. So frustrating.
Which browser and OS are you using?
I’m having the same issue as Cpt. Williams. I’m using Windows XP prof. and Chrome as a browser. I tried windows explorer and had the same issue.
I have an idea for mining. Maybe a tether with a magnet that can be turned on and off to capture ore. lower class mags could only handle so much mass and higher could pull more. you could fly through your newly mined ore and attract what you have mined.