[suggestion]Tougher battles, easier economy.

[cephalo]

I started this game on normal difficulty because learning games on easy mode often leads to bad habits. After reading a bit, I'm thinking that I might have more fun on easy, but I wanted to discuss the games pacing on normal so far.

I am finding that, in order to make progress, things have to go very smoothly. I love those battles were you spend more time at the end restoring life support and controlling fires than you did defeating the enemy ship. As fun as it is to win battles by the skin on your teeth, even one such battle early on dooms your chance to win the game. It would be more fun I think if it were possible to enjoy a close victory, knowing that you can still come back economically. As it is, a battle like that means that you miss out on some critical upgrades that you need for continued success, and as a result you get more difficult, knife edge battles until they just become unbeatable.

In order to win you have to position yourself so that your battles are easy, which means that if you play well strategically, you have to give up on some tactical fun. I would like to see a small shift in that paradigm.

[UltraMantis]

...As fun as it is to win battles by the skin on your teeth, even one such battle early on dooms your chance to win the game. It would be more fun I think if it were possible to enjoy a close victory, knowing that you can still come back economically...

I belive you can come back. Though a nasty result can be a setback, it's a temporary setback. Later sectors give much higher rewards so it's certainly possible to make a comeback. It does depend on the ship though. Some ships are guaran-damn-teed to have a hard time in the early game.

There are a lot of stories about runs that had a few very grim moments. Overall the objective is to defeat the Boss and to upgrade your ship for that task. Along the way however, you can meet all kinds of differently equipped enemies and some of them will pummel you into a very fine space dust. So survivng thses encounters if also important, but unlike the Boss where it's kill or be killed, you can and should size up the opponent and if you think they're too strong, survive just long enough to jump out.

Usually survivng until sectors 5 or 6 is harder than the rest of the journey. The oposition is already tough at this point but you got made it, and the rewards are about to pick up making further upgrades easier.

[cephalo]

Psychologically, the real problem I'm having is that once a battle starts to go south, instead of enjoying it and fighting to the bitter end, I want to just quit. Now that I know that it is not enough to merely survive, I'm denying myself even the possibility of what could be a satisfying comeback. It kills my optimism.