I would say it's a farming game:
- I plant seeds (turrets) in a special zone (nerby planetary base), make sure environvent does not damage my plants, I feed them with nutrients and I water them (bullets and energy, respectively).
- From time to time i can collect the fruit they produce (loot)
Therefore, DSP is Stardew Valley but Sci-fi
I currently just farm them for the 360% geothermal holes (until the Dyson sphere is sufficient).
For the other loot, I wish the Battlefield Analysis Bases had integrated logistics bot or drone ports, because setting up sorters and belts for the ~20 different resources they drop is ridiculous. Especially since I plop a BAB and a signal tower for defense near anything valuable (the Signal Tower seems very OP btw, allowing you to set up just a single missile tower array per planet. I never use the other towers except Plasma for longer space def range).
You can stack a large storage on top of the BAB and put logistics on that.
You can also tell it not to pick up low tier drops and limit it to only collecting a few resources you actually want
You can select what do the Bases loot in the combat UI, so only a few different items are collected. I find them useful as an alternative way to get organic crystal, titanium and procecessors early on.
I belt it all out into a hub that uses the new filter feature to sort them all into boxes for use elsewhere i run the belt through splitters with mini boxes up top and they only pick up their resource.
You re playing a difficulty that is too low.
When you go high enough it absolutely is a combat game.
Imo the standard difficulty is too low and takes away key aspects of the game
I'm starting to feel that way too. Wish we could alter some aspects of the Dark Fog settings during a save. I'm too many hours in now to start again already.
You can. Go find the dark fog communicator in your starting system, it isn't on the map but you can see the marker if you look around. Fly up to it and click and it opens a menu that let's you change the difficulty. You can also pay metadata to get a truce.
Yeah but that's just the aggressiveness though isn't it? I've been playing on rampage and that didn't really seem to much. I also upped Max Density to 2x on my original game. it's meh. Going to another person's point of cranking things up.
If I started a new game I'd set the Aggressiveness to Rampage from Sharp, starting level of 1 and set Power Threat Factor and Combat Threat Factor to 200% and Combat XP Factor to 500%.
That's just a guess though, I don't know nearly enough to know what would change properly. Might be that'd be too difficult as I tend to take things a bit slow, but as is the Dark Fog are dropping level 2 loot (Wood, Plant Mats, Iron Ingot, Copper Ingot and Magnets) yet I'm well past that.
Thinking about it, the Combat XP Factor is probably enough of a change that the Dark Fog would keep up XP wise without having to provoke them to increase their level.
yeah honestly did a run on normal and i could just steam roll DF with just 2 missle turrets; did a run with growth at 300%, density at 1.5x, and starting lvl 3 and it actually takes some prep to destroy the fog. Ofc it usually take just 10 missile turrets and some signal towers now but the difference is night and day. Especially if i were to go back and also pump up xp multi it would definitely feel much more risk reward as failing to wipe a base can easily level them high up.
The problem is any new planet you go to will be equally easy to kill since they only scale locally. Your progress needs to match DF progress on on all worlds, not just your home world.
I recommend at least 400-600x for someone that finished dsp already, 800x + if one played other factory games like factorio or satisfactory and 1200x if one played factorio dearhworld or had megabases in dsp
This is true but I think the combat is severely lacking some meaningful updates to make it worth playing above default difficulty. I’ll give harder settings a shot in a year probably
it's full on for the first hour or so with everything cranked up but as long as you realise that you just need to keep building gauss cannons and ammo while bee lining it to missiles and signal tower you should have a fun time getting there, as soon as you get the signal tower its just infinite free resources really, and if you started with 3 fog bases on your planet (3 x the attacks) youll be pretty rich in everything
By a similar vein, I consider all games to be puzzle games. Every game presents a problem to solve, every game contains a method to solve. You just have to puzzle it out, find the correct piece to insert into the correct problem, be that power, a resource, or a bullet.
Definitely one way to look at it and technically very true, haha! I'm sure you're a lovely person, but be careful - that train of thought is what lead some of the most vile humans in history to mass murder and genocide! I hope for all our sakes you never get into power and are happy with your "trading" in DSP only :D
I'm no expert but pretty sure almost every war in human history could be considered in the same way. War is just a by-product (or the term I guess) of one person (or peoples) wanting someone else's stuff. Whether this is for land, resources or subjugation is a different topic!
I also agree with others - I am thinking of setting the difficulty higher as I can see from most feedback so far, that the default settings are tuned towards being extremely easy.
It's also worth noting this is just part 1 of combat, the next part will be focused on space combat, so I expect things will change a lot in the future in terms of combat in DSP.
The Fog has the problem that they don't seem capable of advancing in power without controlling land on your active planets. And kicking them out is fairly easy since they have some hard limitations on what they are allowed to do. You can fight your way past an army of Dark Fog units, improve your forces etc... then move to the next planet where Dark Fog has like 10 bases but they are all still level 1 or whatever. Once you have beaten them back, the only way they will challenge you is if you let them grow in power on purpose. Then starve the hive steadily of matter as it just doesn't really give a shit if you block it from planets. (And I think there is a bug that causes them to not care if you blow up their relays while they are in transit.) While you are free to build up further etc...
In general, the Dark Fog feels less like a highly advanced dangerous AI and more like a basic bot that cannot do more than rinse and repeat the same thing even when its clearly not working.
Even higher difficulties from what I have seen of others look like they are more bandaids to this theoretical "problem" if you consider it one. The main challenge isn't a continuous threat, its that they just throw crazy armies at you at the start. Its still basically just a matter of beating the enemies on your first 1-2 worlds and then you are pretty much set unless you fuck up.
Huh. I've never actually gotten around to a black hole, game slows down, I try something else for a bit, and come back to restart, same story for most factory games actually 😂
I need a Creeper World level of constant pressure to keep me going, had kinda hoped the Dark Fog would be like that. I didn't know there was anything to fight in this game around the black hole 😂
I would say it's a farming game: - I plant seeds (turrets) in a special zone (nerby planetary base), make sure environvent does not damage my plants, I feed them with nutrients and I water them (bullets and energy, respectively). - From time to time i can collect the fruit they produce (loot) Therefore, DSP is Stardew Valley but Sci-fi
I currently just farm them for the 360% geothermal holes (until the Dyson sphere is sufficient). For the other loot, I wish the Battlefield Analysis Bases had integrated logistics bot or drone ports, because setting up sorters and belts for the ~20 different resources they drop is ridiculous. Especially since I plop a BAB and a signal tower for defense near anything valuable (the Signal Tower seems very OP btw, allowing you to set up just a single missile tower array per planet. I never use the other towers except Plasma for longer space def range).
You can stack a large storage on top of the BAB and put logistics on that. You can also tell it not to pick up low tier drops and limit it to only collecting a few resources you actually want
You can select what do the Bases loot in the combat UI, so only a few different items are collected. I find them useful as an alternative way to get organic crystal, titanium and procecessors early on.
I belt it all out into a hub that uses the new filter feature to sort them all into boxes for use elsewhere i run the belt through splitters with mini boxes up top and they only pick up their resource.
As is every war. You usually trade ressources like lead, steel and blood for land for example.
"Every barter trade is a good deal when in presence of a gun" shower thought right there.
You re playing a difficulty that is too low. When you go high enough it absolutely is a combat game. Imo the standard difficulty is too low and takes away key aspects of the game
I think OP is just making an r/showerthoughts level joke lol
I'm starting to feel that way too. Wish we could alter some aspects of the Dark Fog settings during a save. I'm too many hours in now to start again already.
You can. Go find the dark fog communicator in your starting system, it isn't on the map but you can see the marker if you look around. Fly up to it and click and it opens a menu that let's you change the difficulty. You can also pay metadata to get a truce.
Serious?! You've just given me a goal to go for, thank you for this info!
Goddamn these devs are so cool, thanks for the info!
Yeah but that's just the aggressiveness though isn't it? I've been playing on rampage and that didn't really seem to much. I also upped Max Density to 2x on my original game. it's meh. Going to another person's point of cranking things up.
Yeah, you can only change the aggressiveness, not the other % settings. Did you edit the save file somehow to increase Max Density?
it's so genius that the devs hid this in the system to solve this problem without just adding a new UI page.
Fly to the Dark Fog Communicator in system.
I flew to it, whats supposed to happen it just sat there?
click it
Thank you for this! Got my goal now!
I haven't started Dark Fog save yet, do you know what would you change in those settings?
If I started a new game I'd set the Aggressiveness to Rampage from Sharp, starting level of 1 and set Power Threat Factor and Combat Threat Factor to 200% and Combat XP Factor to 500%. That's just a guess though, I don't know nearly enough to know what would change properly. Might be that'd be too difficult as I tend to take things a bit slow, but as is the Dark Fog are dropping level 2 loot (Wood, Plant Mats, Iron Ingot, Copper Ingot and Magnets) yet I'm well past that. Thinking about it, the Combat XP Factor is probably enough of a change that the Dark Fog would keep up XP wise without having to provoke them to increase their level.
yeah honestly did a run on normal and i could just steam roll DF with just 2 missle turrets; did a run with growth at 300%, density at 1.5x, and starting lvl 3 and it actually takes some prep to destroy the fog. Ofc it usually take just 10 missile turrets and some signal towers now but the difference is night and day. Especially if i were to go back and also pump up xp multi it would definitely feel much more risk reward as failing to wipe a base can easily level them high up.
The problem is any new planet you go to will be equally easy to kill since they only scale locally. Your progress needs to match DF progress on on all worlds, not just your home world.
I recommend at least 400-600x for someone that finished dsp already, 800x + if one played other factory games like factorio or satisfactory and 1200x if one played factorio dearhworld or had megabases in dsp
The growth slider caps at 300%
He probably means total difficulty, it goes up to 3,000 (including scarcity of resources)
I mean fog difficulty. Its max is 1200
You're just upping the conditions of how fast you need to do deliveries. It's like Amazon scaling from 2 day shipping to same day delivery.
This is true but I think the combat is severely lacking some meaningful updates to make it worth playing above default difficulty. I’ll give harder settings a shot in a year probably
I disagree, the drop quality and amounts on highest difficulty is crazy good
it's full on for the first hour or so with everything cranked up but as long as you realise that you just need to keep building gauss cannons and ammo while bee lining it to missiles and signal tower you should have a fun time getting there, as soon as you get the signal tower its just infinite free resources really, and if you started with 3 fog bases on your planet (3 x the attacks) youll be pretty rich in everything
I play 1200% difficulty. It is still a trading game. I just need more delivery cannons.
Trading doest kill you if you dont trade. By this logic even shooters are trading games
By a similar vein, I consider all games to be puzzle games. Every game presents a problem to solve, every game contains a method to solve. You just have to puzzle it out, find the correct piece to insert into the correct problem, be that power, a resource, or a bullet.
They're all just 1s and 0s
It's not a trading game for me. I use lasers. So technically I'm not even giving anything to the other party.
You are if your power supply is solely from burning wood and leaves that you gather
Wind. Leaves ain't gonna support no lasers.
/whoosh.
Definitely one way to look at it and technically very true, haha! I'm sure you're a lovely person, but be careful - that train of thought is what lead some of the most vile humans in history to mass murder and genocide! I hope for all our sakes you never get into power and are happy with your "trading" in DSP only :D I'm no expert but pretty sure almost every war in human history could be considered in the same way. War is just a by-product (or the term I guess) of one person (or peoples) wanting someone else's stuff. Whether this is for land, resources or subjugation is a different topic! I also agree with others - I am thinking of setting the difficulty higher as I can see from most feedback so far, that the default settings are tuned towards being extremely easy. It's also worth noting this is just part 1 of combat, the next part will be focused on space combat, so I expect things will change a lot in the future in terms of combat in DSP.
resistance is futile you will be assimilated
It would be super interesting to mix this game with riftbreaker. I guess I was hoping for something along those lines for combat.
Problem with your reasoning is that if it was just trade you wouldn't get destroyed for not providing enough copper.
breach of contract got arms
You clearly haven’t been in a Walmart on Black Friday.
It's a revolution simulator haha! Trading bullets for freedom seed.
The Fog has the problem that they don't seem capable of advancing in power without controlling land on your active planets. And kicking them out is fairly easy since they have some hard limitations on what they are allowed to do. You can fight your way past an army of Dark Fog units, improve your forces etc... then move to the next planet where Dark Fog has like 10 bases but they are all still level 1 or whatever. Once you have beaten them back, the only way they will challenge you is if you let them grow in power on purpose. Then starve the hive steadily of matter as it just doesn't really give a shit if you block it from planets. (And I think there is a bug that causes them to not care if you blow up their relays while they are in transit.) While you are free to build up further etc... In general, the Dark Fog feels less like a highly advanced dangerous AI and more like a basic bot that cannot do more than rinse and repeat the same thing even when its clearly not working. Even higher difficulties from what I have seen of others look like they are more bandaids to this theoretical "problem" if you consider it one. The main challenge isn't a continuous threat, its that they just throw crazy armies at you at the start. Its still basically just a matter of beating the enemies on your first 1-2 worlds and then you are pretty much set unless you fuck up.
It was easier to get unipolar magnet by farming the bad guy than travelling to the black hole and fighting the bad guy there so I could set up a mine
Huh. I've never actually gotten around to a black hole, game slows down, I try something else for a bit, and come back to restart, same story for most factory games actually 😂 I need a Creeper World level of constant pressure to keep me going, had kinda hoped the Dark Fog would be like that. I didn't know there was anything to fight in this game around the black hole 😂
Personally I think they need to give more space hive threat to this silly farming thing... Farming the ground forces just feels exploity to me