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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Aug 2021 06:50

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/454120/

DIME wrote:This game is like a passively abusive parent. You want to love them but they won't even hold your hand. There is ice-cream but you're not allowed any. And even if you do make progress, there's no congratulations. Now shut up and be quiet, Gogglebox is on.


Funny.

Worth pointing out he gives it a thumbs-up regardless.

Also worth pointing out he only has about six hours a week after release, so his opinion isn't worth anything on a game like this. It's just a funny quip.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Aug 2021 03:13

https://steamcommunity.com/id/cumbas/re ... ed/454120/

Cufbas wrote:They released it too early, as evident by the many negative reviews here.

The current rating of 68% is a shame. This game is something truly special. If you're "technically inclined", like to tinker with machines or enjoy pondering what demonic deal the devs made to birth a photorealistic MMO with fully destructable environments, complete object persistence and 10k people on one server all running at 70+ frames on a 4 year old machine, well then this game is for you.

You see those 10.6 hours? Shamed to admit it but that's one sitting. 60% in the ship editor. 40% manipulating the ice market >_< for massive profit

Short list of points:
- I disagree that the tech tree is there to perpetuate the grind, no one player is supposed to be able to do everything. You are meant to specialize. Why do you want to be able to craft everything? Choose a role you like, an arms dealer, a market seller, miner, pirate, programmer, ship designer. If you think mining is boring and grindy don't do it. Fu-ck around with the marketplace instead like me. Anything you can't craft can be bought on the open market. Do people want guns? explosives? plates? You should pursue high value items if you want to make money.

- oh and btw, you don't even need to be able to craft ship parts to put them on your ship. Yeah you heard that right, all ship parts are available in the ship designer the moment you start playing, just pay the assembly cost when buying your custom ship. Unlocking crafting only allows you to craft that item at a crafting bench, i.e away from the origin station for repair and such or if you want to sell it on the market. Removing the research tree would break the economy and ironically make everything more grindy and entirely focused on collecting the ore.
Can't blame the players for not realizing this since the game never tells you this but it does make the people complaining about endless grinding look rather silly.

- It's concerning how little attention this game is receiving atm and I feel it might be too niche and ambitious. Most people want a fast and fun shooting experience (and the trailer does portray it like that) and for this game to click with you the same way it trapped me for 10 hours you have to be a massive fu-cking nerd, the kind that like to look at market numbers for hours on end hoping to make a profit or enjoy learning the ingame programming language so you can build cool new software. I don't know if there's a market big enough for that type of game but if the above sounds interesting I strongly recommend it.

In closing, I have a lot of sympathy for the devs. From the multiple hot fixes released over the weekend and the speed of releases plus the open communication, incame bug report tools and the incredibly ambitious roadmap. I get the honest feeling that Frozenbyte have almost no profit incentive, they just want to make this game as good as it can be. I hope this game adopts some more mass appeal in the future so the project can stay afloat.


Lexe wrote:I think Starbase made an amazing start considering 6 players could crash a SpaceEngineers server for over 5 years.
10.000 people on day 2 and no connection issues or Orange Sidewinders (Elite Dangerous) at all. LOL.
Engineers can win wars in Starbase especially when they copyright the designs in future updates.


Cufbas wrote:I agree dreamseizer24. I don't think they had a choice and simply needed the money but it's just speculation. If they even stick losely to the roadmap and add more social tools like voice chat soonish and maybe a bit of advertising. I mean the game literally has more content than elite even in its current state. How long have we been crying for player run stations in elite?


Being banned from the forum also means I can't post comments in the reviews. I would appreciate someone dropping a link to my GOTY feature in that guy's review comments and telling him that at least one publication is recognizing this game's genius.

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CULT LIVE: Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 19 Aug 2021 21:07

We have a billion hours of this up on YouTube, so I'll just link here the opening hours of the game that I streamed in my first two videos, totalling about six hours of play. You can see me struggle through the buggy tutorial, mostly. There is cooler stuff to showcase, but it'd be a mission to find it among the hundred or more hours we've streamed so far. It's not exactly the kind of game where every moment is action-filled, if you catch my drift.

Sci-fi Warfare with icycalm and The Cult
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japTO_qVSAM

Sci-fi Warfare with icycalm and The Cult
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4igHjjbneKg

It is without a doubt the most complex game ever. It also has one of the best soundtracks of all time. It delivers exactly what it promised: Atlas + Space Engineers + Wing Commander + Shattered Horizon. That said, I have only experienced the first two sets of mechanics (Atlas and Space Engineers), because it takes a whole lot of effort to get to the latter two (Wing Commander and Shattered Horizon). For Wing Commander you need to buy very expensive fighter ships and then find some enemies to shoot—which in the vastness of space is an issue; and for Shattered Horizon it takes even more as you need to invade an entire enemy station or capital ship AND somehow manage to board them (there are dedicated ships that punch holes in large structures specifically for boarding). The capital ships aren't even in the game yet, and I am not sure station siege mechanics are in either. But they are both expected shortly, I believe.

Everything I've experienced so far works great. Everything is smooth, everything is enjoyable, and everything is also quite pretty (the game looks much nicer while playing than in screenshots, for some reason; much sharper, above all).

And of course all this complexity comes at a cost, the genre's biggest problem: that it's exhausting to play. I told the devs to limit the server hours to Saturdays, and they didn't listen to me, which is why I'm having a hard time playing beyond the 20 hours I played in the first few days. Thankfully, a bunch of other people have been putting a lot of time in the game, so our efforts as a group are progressing even though I haven't been helping out. But I do plan to jump back into it and see what people have been doing. I just need to set aside an entire day to do so. I don't enjoy putting in two hours here and two there. If I am only going to fire up my computer for two hours, I don't want to spend it navigating an asteroid field for a routine mining run. I want plenty of cool shit to happen, and it won't happen in two hours. That's why I need a full day. Even better a full weekend, or more.

So, I don't know what's gonna happen with this game. First of all, are the devs going to continue developing it, so they can give us the entire Satisfactory mechanics they have promised on top of everything else? Sales don't seem as strong as I had hoped for, and player reception has been mixed because of how tough and demanding the game is. And then, will CULT continue to play? We'll need allies to get anywhere and experience the coolest content, and I believe the guys have made some progress in this regard. I just don't know if we'll have the courage and dedication to keep playing for the many months it will take for the devs to put in all the planned content, and for us to build enough of a presence in the game to experience everything and put our mark on this world. To be sure, more players would be helpful, and I think we have a good number already, but the more the better. And a good half of our starting players have dropped out, and I don't blame them lol. People who've put tons of hours in other games in the genre are balking at this, and that's a testament to how complex it is. One of the reviews I read gave it a thumbs-down and said "Play if you're an MIT graduate" lol.

I kinda agree with that! That is the kind of person this game is made for. And, no matter your personal preferences, I think you ought to respect that.
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Unread postby ChevRage » 02 Sep 2021 14:51

Probably the most expensive and insane mining ship I've seen yet:

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WorldEater - Betatesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfK_CK6s208

Here's how much it costs for anybody interested:

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It's not available yet according to the original Reddit poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/starbase/comme ... soon_here/
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 22 Sep 2021 17:28

That video of the mining ship Chev posted above is pretty cool. I recommend checking it out. It shows off the massive creativity that players can put into this game due to its massive complexity. And we 'aint seen nothing yet as most of the features aren't even in the game.

Speaking of, they just put out a video on moons and mining. These features aren't in the game yet, but they are coming soon, apparently.

Moon Bases & Moon Mining Feature Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47qGhK1mXao

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It looks like you can dig down as far as you want as in Life is Feudal! Not sure if the tunnels persist though, or if you can build underground.

Very cool stuff. But also extremely time-consuming. Not sure how I'll ever be able to get back into this game again, now that I am running D&D full-time. I do have some ideas though. I'll talk about them soon.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 28 Sep 2021 22:57

Steam rating is back down to Mixed again, and the playerbase is reportedly declining. Same exact fate as all games in the genre, but far quicker decline here because of far higher complexity and grind requirements.

Steam review (I am on my phone and don’t have the link):

I feel that i need to define very clearly, i never cheated, exploited, griefed or was banned. I played solo and observed and am leaving this game permanently.
Starbase has public relations problems and developer mindset that is unhealthy for the potential growth of the game. The devs appear to be resistant to criticism and not very objective with regard to their declining population. They are convinced that they have the right recipe to bring back their following through perpetuation of anti griefer policies and a "exploit reward reporting" system that encourages banning people who engage in griefing or "unhealthy pvp".
The big issue with these policies is there is little measure (or method thereof) for fairness in the arbitration. That simply reporting a PVP player who tracks players coming out of safe zone and attacks them is bannable. Its pure insanity, their numbers are falling fatally and they are oblivious to constructive criticism, labeling anyone who debates these points on their forums a "cheater", "griefer" , "basement dweller" or worse. Worse yet, their PR developer LauriFB is in lockstep with these narratives and is encouraging more restrictive measures, not less.
Right now the PVP is near non-existent, and the player base that was excited for pvp combat is walking on eggshells. Since EA launch i accumulated 531 hours and made 5 YT videos with plans for releasing a free ship and continuing a series of videos to promote the game indefinitely. Given the response i've received from their community and devs on the forum. I've given up. In complete seriousness, barring a serious change in their policies, i don't see how this game has any chance of success. There is a carebear mob shouting their accusatory and repetitious talking points into an echo chamber that LauriFB is funneling straight into his/her ears. Seems like he/she is not concerned at all.
I am utterly gutted here. Such a great gameplay and building mechanic are being completely wasted here.


I told their president. Scroll up in this thread and you’ll see it, I told him. But he can code include statements and he figured that makes him an expert on art too.

Now it’s getting to two months after release and they have not released even a SINGLE of the tons of features they had announced for August and September. They are rowing up a creek without a paddle, or whatever the expression is. The players are asking for some PVE and it never occurred to them to add it, so who knows how many months it will take them, assuming they listen to the criticism, which is doubtful. Even Life is Feudal had some PVE, and Atlas has tons. Rust has a bit too.

I could turn this boat around in 24 hours. That’s all it would take me. Wipe everything, reduce the grind to 1/10th, and open the server only on Saturdays for four-five hours.

Best game ever right there. And with zero extra coding.

But they are not hiring me, or even just listening to me, because I know what I am talking about.

Enjoy shutting your game in a few months like Life is Feudal then. Maybe you can pay your rent by making Trine 5 next.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 27 Jan 2022 16:39

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Starbase development has devolved completely. They haven’t delivered a single thing promised for last summer, and their updates have been getting less and less consequential, until finally this last one has tuned to parody.

One time when we were working with Robo on the PA 4-tier mod, he told me “I fixed a bug today”. So I asked what the bug was. And he said it was a comma he himself had misplaced the night before.

This is what always comes to mind now when I hear programmers triumphantly boasting about bugfixes.

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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 05 Feb 2022 01:29

Major update in the PTU (the test branch): https://steamcommunity.com/games/454120 ... 6482291624

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This will make the game a LOT more playable, so you no longer have to have a friend spend half a week repairing every ding you put to a ship. That said, it dumbs down the game of course. A solution would be to make Repair Terminals MUCH more expensive than repairing the ship yourself. That way you make the game deeper instead of shallower. Not sure exactly how they are balancing this.

Tons more changes in this update, but I am not versed in the game enough to evaluate them. The above stood out to me immediately, and it must be the biggest change which is why they put it first.

They've also started a series of community updates, patterned after Rust's probably:

Starbase Community News: January 2022
https://steamcommunity.com/games/454120 ... 6478656196

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Stunning stuff. More pics at the link, and tons of videos too.

I have to say I had given up on the game before seeing this stuff, but now I want to play again. Let's give it half a year and see what they've managed to put in by then.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 01 Mar 2022 21:21

Some crazy stuff in the latest community news.

Starbase Community News: February 2022
https://steamcommunity.com/games/454120 ... 7559628798

They have player-built spaceships that look cooler than ones made by developers in other games.

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The awesome thing is that unless these teams are selling their designs, there's no way for you to buy them or recreate them. You can only look in envy. Not to mention if they are at war with your team and they simply have superior ships and there's nothing you can do about it. "Engineers will win wars in this game", someone said in the Steam reviews.

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They also have a video promoting a Halo-style assault, station to moon, with full FPS mechanics etc., and full destructibility. It looks good, but note it's a staged event. This basically can't happen in the real game because the director is a programmer and has no idea how to design games.

Dropship Station Assault on the Moon - Starbase Community Event
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGduezw-Xo

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And another crazy-cool ship:

Starbase EA - Kondor Mk2 - Bomber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8fuEYpawAY

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I love the camera going under it and showing how all the hardware fits. It's such a sexy piece of hardware you almost don't want to take it out for a spin in case you damage it. Like a Ferrari or something. I don't get this feeling in other games because you don't have to build anything or buy anything or risk losing anything for good in other games. Not to mention the hardware in other games seems fake because it can't break up into pieces and is not made out of countless little modular pieces.

There's more stuff in the link, I just picked out some highlights.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby Robomoo » 26 Apr 2022 23:44

It's GG.

Starbase Update News
https://forum.starbasegame.com/threads/ ... -news.3088

KaiFB wrote:The reason for this rather sudden major update is that Starbase’s sales performance hasn't been the strongest, and thus we need to prioritize other projects for some time in the interest of ensuring the game’s continued development and long-term future. Starbase’s server costs are low so they aren't in any danger, but its development will be slowed down and updates will be less frequent for some time.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 26 Apr 2022 23:45

I read that earlier today and was going to post about it. I didn't get the impression it's GG. I got the impression they are just shifting gears for the long haul...
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby Robomoo » 28 May 2022 02:39

Some Frozenbyte devs have been posting a bunch of previously unreleased concept art.

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ArtStation links:
https://www.artstation.com/versaali
https://www.artstation.com/obi-bram

RIP
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 07 Sep 2022 04:45

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 1787957631

Jacko wrote:I've seen genius people invent wacky concepts in the ship building editor, such as orbital infantry drop pods, craft carriers, self destruct mechanisms, autonomous mining setups, etc.


I might go in and play during a lull of Star Citizen updates. Apparently, it's impossible to get much done outside the safezone without a personal bodyguard now. You rarely see anyone, but when you do see someone, it's war. Sounds fun in a way.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 12 Dec 2022 20:02

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 8571327473

Doge Star wrote:
LumberingTroll wrote:I want to play this game, I like the building, but there is just nothing to do but gather resources and build..


What did you expect from a group of people who thought "Yolo" was cool?


This is so true lol. YOLOL is the in-game programming language.

Very cool that a game has its own programming language, but not good that programmers with such bad taste as to name it YOLOL were in charge of the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 8570530461

0xbaadf00d wrote:People kept telling them that having a persistent world from day 1 would not work, also that having no PvE content would not work... yet they insisted and failed. Quite sad, I had high hopes for this one.

Look at EVE online for example, AFAIK it has the most player driven content of all games. It has PvE content so that people can play when they want to, and not wait for some community event.


They've been drip feeding community events for months now, one every two-three months or so. These events seem so sparsely attended that, at least to me sitting on the outside, they make the game seem more depressing than if they hadn't held them at all.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 29 Dec 2022 23:24

Official word that more updates are planned: https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 0347624869

KaiFB [developer] wrote:We will continue with proper development when it is financially possible. Let's just say we had a solid roadmap and plans that we were building towards last Spring, but unexpected things happened and we had to scrap those plans. Not a situation that anyone wanted.

You can shout dead game all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that we have a ton of folks still very interested in continuing to develop Starbase at Frozenbyte. While we wait for the chance for a proper return, we'll continue to support player-run events like Eos Con, and I'm making a few events here and there myself.

Some people enjoy the game, so let's let them do that.


You can trust these claims because this dev wouldn't otherwise be bothering to post in the comments so long after the project went on hiatus. Moreover, they wouldn't be bothering to still run events in the game in the first place. So they certainly intend to update the game more when they can. Whether they'll be able to is another story, and an even OTHER story is whether the updates will do any good.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 0347658697

MAGNUM wrote:I'm happy that there's effort being put into it in the future, but the roadmap isn't super promising. PVP is super rare, and there are really no mechanics to help actively encourage it. Large safezones are only one of the problems, and anywhere that there's a small safezone only means people will camp for hours just to find one person that exits the safezone incorrectly. New players that forget to turn off beacons arent fun to shoot at, and of course there's no PvE, not even to salvage or loot. No natural OR easily accessible PvP, no PvE, and no players really make this game's fate look sealed.

Hope you guys start with PvE despite not wanting to, at least then population would get big enough for pvp changes to matter. Good luck to everyone at Frozenbyte, I'm sure most love the idea of starbase, just not its current state.


https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 0348026902

Austism wrote:Bad launch with nothing to do killed this game. I spent 150 hours in the SSC for nothing. Guys should of waited on the EA release for 2-4 more years. If you did I bet this game would of been an absolute blast with all kinds of players. Sadly you can't keep players in a PVP-based MMO with nothing more than a ship making system and nothing to do with your made ships. I'll keep looking on here now and then, hoping that one day this game may see good progress but currently it looks like most of the interested parties have given up.


In short, there's no reason to think that these programmers have learned how to design games in the meantime. In fact, every post of theirs I've seen suggests they haven't. I would have said this makes me sad if I wasn't too busy enjoying Star Citizen to care much these days.
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Re: PC Starbase

Unread postby icycalm » 23 May 2023 16:50

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 4608827080

Aloctor wrote:36 Average players in the last 30 days according to Steamcharts. 39 in March, 44 in February. Please just let this project die. It was a pretty tech demo with a singular gameplay loop and a ship editor that had people spending more time in it than the actual game. Leaving this up for purchase at this point is immoral.


What happens when programmers insist on directing games.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/454120/e ... 4608841280

andreykl wrote:I do agree that it needs pve, but I don't think just 'pve' will cut it.

Travel time is extreme. Mining for solo players looks like: travel for 20 minutes, mine for 5 minutes, travel back for 30... If feel like either ships should have some form of ftl or it should be possible to deploy personal cheap capitals whose purpose is to carry player and mined resoruces around.

Variety also has significant issues. While it's possible to do diffrent 'shapes', it has only one power source, only one type of battery, engines are fairly uniform (no distinction between engines for manuverability, efficiency and power, like an engine that drinks fuel like water but provides incredible acceleration for short period). Short of engines that consumes fuel and reactor needing coolant, game doesn't leverge this 'flexibility' for anything else (admitedly I didn't get far on the tech tree so I might be wrong and there is a chemical laser somewhere or a gun that requres cooling for faster firerate).

Tech tree is just pure grind. May be it was made to promote trade, but on practice everybody wants to unlock everything and that means producing a lot of useless things. And more importantly you need to get into unsafe pvp area to get some of the resources without having any combat capacity yourself.

And of course bugs... Small ones ones like ship disappearing to storage while you are trying to reach a platform to gamebreaking ones like ship not appearing from storage at all.
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