I’ve been playing almost daily through the ILW and got to experience both the usual loops I tend to do (search and rescue, hauling, transport) as well as some I’ve pretty much gave up on (space combat). The latter is something I wasn’t particularly keen on trying again but considering the theme of this event I decided to give it a fair shake, hoping to find out I’m just being a stubborn loser.

With ILW finished and 4.2 already in wave 1 of PTU I thought it’s a good time to look at the current state of the game again.

I’m not going to go super in depth since ain’t nobody have the time or interest in reading a wall of text (still ended up writing one, huh) so here are the main takeaways about my time with this patch:

  • Med gun change is as stupid as expected, guess I won’t be using pistols ever again (or at least until devs don’t change their mind again).
  • Most of my player interactions consisted of helping folks via chat (common) and transporting them between landing zones when they couldn’t spawn their ships (rare).
  • I got to do a single space SAR operation. Got pretty exciting as my patient forgot to mention it was an active combat zone. Really fun, too bad these happen so rarely in my experience.
  • Bunker missions are still extremely easy, even with NPCs working as intended.
  • After playing around with more personal weapons I came to an unfortunate conclusion: I love using guns that look like crap (in my opinion obviously) and hate the ones I find to be the coolest.
  • Static ILW hall sucks, if not for the rental terminals there would be absolutely no point in visiting the convention centre. I hope they’ll go back to rotating displays next year.
  • Servers held up pretty well for the most part, only the last three or so days treated me with 20 or even 30+ second inventory delays.
  • I tested various ships throughout the event but didn’t really find anything I’d like to work towards. Also, despite feeling like medical Terrapin should be a perfect fit for me I still like Connie Cutty Red more (even as a primarily solo player).
    I thought about Starlancer Max (the biggest ship I’d be willing to go for with my playstyle) but the belly cargo hold was so frustrating to unload it completely turned me away from even contemplating it.
  • I went through a good chunk of the combat gauntlet missions to familiarise myself with the current combat experience, even using multiple ships to vary it up a bit, and… yeah, I still hate it. All the changes that came with master modes (not just switching) killed this part of the game for me.
  • I hope the work on ATC rewrite goes smoothly, those queues can get ridiculous at times.
  • Barely anyone seemed to touch “Hunt the Polaris”. I tried it twice (after that my thoughts about space combat took over) and every time I’ve seen it mentioned in chat was people asking if anyone is doing it (the answer was always “no”).
  • Vulkan is still unplayable for me. It just hammers my GPU into a pulp, no matter the settings, while presenting me with glorious 3-5 FPS at major landing zones. And yes, this was after shader compilation. At least we got some info about planned optimisation efforts on Spectrum recently so there is still some hope for me.
  • Ship UI needs a lot of optimisation work as looking at MFDs can shave a third of my FPS in some cases.
  • On the other hand, some of the ships (mainly Cutty Red and Terrapin) had their MFDs improved to a state where I’m almost willing to play without the advanced HUD. All that’s missing are physical altitude displays.
  • Driving ground vehicles is still terrible. Good thing I decided to rent an STV before committing to buying one.
  • Interaction prompt changes are an improvement but I still had to deal with multiple instances of game trying to interact with things other than what I was aiming at.
  • I REALLY dislike the fact we have multiple different versions of radial menus depending on what we’re trying to do. They have varying amount of animations on use, some lock/magnetise the cursor to each option while other work more smoothly. Just pick one style and stick to it, please.

All in all, 4.1.1 is a bit rougher but still playable in the technical terms. Gameplay wise not enough changed to make a difference - it’s still fun on a good day.

So that’s me. How are you all finding the current patch? Any fun or unfortunate experiences?

  • Kickforce
    3·
    2 days ago

    I’ve mostly found endless waiting lines for hangars in Area 18, so I decided to wait out the end of the event. Before I got stuck in Area 18, I did hunt the Polaris and even though my Corsair barely made a dent in that ship, completing the event with the rest of the server felt nice.

    Aside from that I did a few space combat bounty missions which were ok. But after getting hotel California-ed by area 18 I didn’t log in much. Oh well CIG has gathered data from this and will make improvements no doubt.

    Development continues and I look to the future.

    Oh what is a Connie Red? Is it a typo or a Constellation carrying a Nursa?

    • Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      I don’t think CIG needs data to help with the queues. If I recall correctly this is a problem with the ancient ATC system being unsuited to work with server meshing (that’s why LZs don’t use all the hangar entrances at the moment). That said, it would be nice if they reworked all the landing areas to support higher number of players in general.

      Oh what is a Connie Red?

      It’s my tired as hell brain trying to write Cutty Red, thanks for letting me know. I really need some rest (´ω`)⌒)_

      • Kickforce
        2·
        23 hours ago

        Outside the event the hangar waiting lines were sometimes a bit annoying, but not really problematic. Now with everyone going to and from the same port it was literally a bottle neck.

        And I agree on the Cutlass Red, it’s a great rescue ship. I haven’t used the medical Terrapin yet and can imagine the sturdiness helps, but even with that you aren’t going to bear the fire from base turrets for long, so it’s kind of moot.

        • Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          17 hours ago

          Terrapin’s armour would be mostly interesting for space combat extraction missions for me. I feel like landing at a safe distance when approaching a hostile territory is a reasonable (and probably intended) approach anyway - don’t even give the turrets a chance to graze you.

          • Kickforce
            2·
            14 hours ago

            Indeed, and you can park a ptv in the back of the red to go retrieve patients. It works quite well if the terrain is not too bad.

              • Kickforce
                2·
                13 hours ago

                Sadly the ranger is huge. I hope they scale it down but in concept it’s enormous, almost like the drragonfly.

                • Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.worldOP
                  1·
                  13 hours ago

                  Dunno if there were any updates on that but both wiki and the store page show a pretty significant difference between the two (Ranger: 2 x 3.7 x 2 vs Dragonfly: 2.5 x 6 x 1.5). Granted, this can change but that’s the only info we can work off for now.

                  I also have some hope that after making Pulse they finally figured out how limit wasted space on ground vehicles.

                  • Kickforce
                    2·
                    12 hours ago

                    Yeah the Pulse is a great size for a space bike. I love the Dragonfly but they cut cut the length in half, it would be just as cool and fit in a Cutter, that would be nice.