Subset Games Forum

The differences between normal and easy are:
- more difficult enemies (higher budgets for enemy generation)
- less scrap rewards

So I think: why restricted to predefined settings? There could be 2 numeric settings corresponding to these two parameters. Want epic battles between heavily armed ships? Crank enemies to max and scrap to max. Want economic challenge where rag-tag ships fight over every point of scrap worth it's weight in gold? Set enemies to min and scrap to min.

The point is: it's difficult and time consuming to balance out the difficulty settings. So the devs could just shed the responsibility and give players independent values to manipulate.
Gamer can't take the game on enemies 10/scrap 0 ? Well, it's his problem. You-get-what-you've-dialed.

Of course, it would be next to impossible to make score comparisons between different settings. But I think ppl rarely care about score and more about overcoming a challenge. So Custom may get away without scores at all, or with flat scoring meaningful only when given with difficulty settings.

I would like this for sure.

Maybe sliders? Everyone loves sliders.
Like a slider for the amount of max scrap you get per enemy (Max 50), their weapon damage, max hull, etc.?

The only problem with custom difficulty is that you get players that set everything to hyper-easy or hyper-difficult, and then complain the game is too easy or too difficult, respectively.

This can be somewhat remedied by giant pop-up messages saying 'OMFG UR DIFFICULTEE SETTINGS ARE FUKED UP', but even then you always have ignorant players.

Of course, the flagship's layout would be constant across games, rendering it anywhere from trivial to impossibly difficult depending on your settings. But there should be more than enough possible settings in which the flagship would be a reasonable challenge; this seems like a clear win.

I do seem to recall reading that the enemy AI is also a bit smarter on Normal -- it targets important systems more often, or something like that. I may be misremembering though.

I can see this as some kind of challenge mode as in Binding of Isaac... enemies not generating scrap rewards would definitely spin things differently.

MushrooMars wrote:The only problem with custom difficulty is that you get players that set everything to hyper-easy or hyper-difficult, and then complain the game is too easy or too difficult, respectively.

This can be somewhat remedied by giant pop-up messages saying 'OMFG UR DIFFICULTEE SETTINGS ARE FUKED UP', but even then you always have ignorant players.

Indeed, the sole fact of clicking "custom" should void all warranties.
And, of course, disabled achievement unlocking.

zJack7331 wrote:Maybe sliders? Everyone loves sliders.
Like a slider for the amount of max scrap you get per enemy (Max 50), their weapon damage, max hull, etc.?

I think it's more like multiplier than max. Eg. setting max would have no effect in first sector, while making all last ones basically the same.

Yeah, sliders like volume would be best, but even writing to settings.ini and then having "easy" button replaced with "custom" would work for me.