First Vanguard mission was really cool.
[Reply]

So realistic...


[Reply]

They have Taco Bell in space, now?
[Reply]

Pirate bitches beware. I gots the lasers.....


[Reply]

Still waiting for an autopilot before I jump in heavily, I can wait and for some great mods too :-)
[Reply]

Game has gotten infinitely more enjoyable once I discovered you can effectively fast travel to the mission markers you want to do. Really hope Bethesda or a mod community eventually incorporate maps that are actually useful down the list ne, because as it stands the 'exploration' is a HUGE whiff.
[Reply]

One huge positive is the missions are actually quite a bit better than the fare from past Bethesda games. They would've been much better off condensing the planets they actually bothered developing into a few systems and filling them with stuff to do instead of what they did which is a bunch of copy paste moons that only serve to farm resources and grind out 'abandoned' facilities that are literally the same everywhere except if you're fighting spacer or pirate.
[Reply]

I finally got around to starting this up tonight and frankly all these decisions about character build choices, optional attributes, and skill trees give me "skill tree anxiety." I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the patience to go back and start over if I'd gotten to level 20.

The game doesn't tell you shit and I'd like to blame it on me being jet lagged, but I'm really struggling to figure out much of anything. (For example, a big goose egg on my first lock picking attempt, still don't understand that at all. ) I don't remember Fallout being this hard to figure out. Youtube has been my constant companion tonight.

I think I'm getting too old for this shit. I definitely don't have the patience for the learning curve. :-)
[Reply]

Lockpicking is relatively straightforward once you figure it out. So at least for novice locks, you'll have 4 different options on the right, and 2 circles with different gaps on the left. What I do is cycle through the 4 options and match them up to the gaps then just insert them all one after the other.
[Reply]

But yes, the game more or less throws you out into the world with a pat on the ass and not much else. And apparently the more you play the worse the bugs get. There's probably a memory leak in the code.
[Reply]

I'm right there with you, brother. I'm 58. I learn slowly and forget quickly. And yes, this game basically throws you into the deep end and gives you the finger as you're drowning. Stick with it, though. It is worth the slog.

I'm finally starting to get somewhat competent in the shipbuilding department. I found a good video about upgrading one particular ship and followed the instructions exactly. Later I was able to improve on it by swapping out/adding components, and came away with much more maneuverability and power. Later tonight I think I'll do a complete rebuild of one of the pirate vessels I captured (you delete every component and then start from scratch) and see if I can create something useful. I've watched enough videos that I should be able to.

After I get the ship stuff down, I'm going to start dabbling in creating outposts and modding equipment. The problem is you have to unlock multiple skills by leveling up, and when you get to higher levels it obviously takes much longer to do that.
[Reply]

Yeah I was thinking I was just a bit older than you, 62. And yeah I get it on the learning things. One of my problems is I didn't have a lot of patience at my best, and the aging thing is NOT helping with that. AT ALL. LOL

I was just up to Level 2 and i decided to restart, and I still think I probably have made a lot of really dumb mistakes. Hopefully nothing too impactful. I'm up to 4 now, I'm in the first space port. It is addictive but I get frustrated easily.
[Reply]

I did go ahead and restart, and I've actually now successfully picked two locks and . . . I still don't really know exactly how I did it. LOL I kind of get it, but not really. But I will plug on.
[Reply]

Took me a while but here is how you solve the locks:



You have to match your available locks on the right side to have them fit the open slots on the left in the correct order. Sometimes it's better to solve the rings from the inside out. So to solve this one, use the 3rd digipick (on the right) to solve the outer ring as the open holes are the two on opposite ends. The order of the last two won't matter as they will both be used to slot in the open slots on the inner ring (2 rings on this one overall).
[Reply]

The first 10 levels or so are a struggle. You'll likely have to reference the internet to figure out what should be relatively simple stuff. There's a bajillion different items in the game, and it's not clear what's necessary and what's junk. Storage space will be incredibly limited at first. There's a thousand different skills in the tree, and some of them are confusing as hell. (Gastronomy? Why the fuck am I grinding this game to master gastronomy? WTF is Xenosociology? Botany?)

Upgrading your weapons, gear, ship, etc. is really satisfying, but man is it complicated. Want to do something as simple as add a scope to your gun? Well, you have to level up to unlock the weapon engineering skill, then kill 5 bad guys, then go to the Research station to unlock the ability to use optics. But wait! First you'll need 40 different elements to unlock the research, and they weigh a ton so you can only carry 2 at a time. And now look, fucking Sarah is using the weapons bench, you'll have to wait your turn.

Ship design is just as complicated.

But then, after you hit level 20 or so, you turn into something of a god. By that point, you'll have a collection of unique guns that just slay fools with ease. I wouldn't bother trying to level up many of the combat skills, because they simply aren't necessary. Other than the real heavy hitters like the Terrormorphs(fuck those guys), you'll be mowing through waves of pirates and spacers with ease. I actually bumped the difficulty up to Hard because it got to easy.

The spaceship combat was the only aspect I really had any trouble with. At first it's confusing as hell juggling your energy allotment to all the various categories. Took a while to get a comfortable key binding config that worked. Every time I was matched against 3 enemy ships, I'd die right away. So, I went and did the Vanguard mission and used the training simulator multiple times(Thanks, Fraz). Went grinding out the necessary requirements to bump up skills related to starship combat. Now with my upgraded ship, I'm pretty much untouchable in space as well.
[Reply]