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Not Online!!! wrote:
That is a lazy excuse for a lack of imagination of solving RPG shooter mechanics. F.e. via introducing higher ammounts of enemies or better AI or higher availability of grenades, as other shooters have done.

Not a baseline military force in Fallout without any lore at all.

This. When the Enclave turned up in Fallout 3, they should have been terrifying to face by using actual squad tactics to take you down, working together as units. Throwing grenades to flush you out of cover, using gatling lasers to pin you down as the plasma gun soldiers flanked you etc. But they weren't, they fought in exactly the same way as any psycho-addled raider you had fought before, just they used laser and plasma weaponry.

F.E.A.R had come out in 2005, 3 years before Fallout 3, and had some pretty damn impressive AI.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That is a lazy excuse for a lack of imagination of solving RPG shooter mechanics. F.e. via introducing higher ammounts of enemies or better AI or higher availability of grenades, as other shooters have done.

Not a baseline military force in Fallout without any lore at all.

This. When the Enclave turned up in Fallout 3, they should have been terrifying to face by using actual squad tactics to take you down, working together as units. Throwing grenades to flush you out of cover, using gatling lasers to pin you down as the plasma gun soldiers flanked you etc. But they weren't, they fought in exactly the same way as any psycho-addled raider you had fought before, just they used laser and plasma weaponry.

F.E.A.R had come out in 2005, 3 years before Fallout 3, and had some pretty damn impressive AI.

Yeah, but we got to remember we are in the stage of gaming were whale hunting from mobile games has infected the mainline games... And what a company didn't learn before, they won't now, marketing budgets are bigger and job offerings for psychologists and psychiatrists are ever more present in the gaming industry.

nvm that bethesda wasn't great to begin with.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


The problem is, as always, that bethesda writes the MQ so badly that it affects the rest of the world.

Small things in F04 like jet in a prewar vault. Add up to Gunners, armed equivalent or better than the Brotherhood without any background at all.

Well balance scaling problems is hardly unique to Bethesda. All RPGs generally have issues once you reach the upper end of leveling and the enemies end up just becoming absolute bullet sponges because nothing would be a challenge otherwise.

Jet in a sealed pre-war vault... Well, its a fairly minor continuity error. But who's to say that you couldn't have people invent Jet independently of each other? Or at least stuff that is mechanically identical and thus just labeled as such for convenience. Some things are just game mechanics and don't have to have lore implications.

Ran into that issue last night. Came across an old ship from before the 'Settled Systems' tech base (grav drives & etc) and while the guns on board were 'old earth shotguns' and the like, the random decorations were modern The 'egg' digital assistant and the like. This was clearly handcrafted content, not procedurally generated, so there isn't any excuse for that.

Speaking of Jet... the background made a big deal about Aurora, the special drug from Neon. Its literally just Jet, with the time slowdown effect. Just another recycled element from prior games (of which there are a lot).
It wouldn't feel so bad if there were any new mechanics in this game. But its all recycled, except for the space turret segment, which is just undercooked and bad. I can see where they improved the lighting engine and there's presumably more on the back end for dealing with crowds and things like that, but the game mechanics are just pure copypasta.

Really don't click spoiler for main quest related things -


----
Edit: slight update. The Entangled quest (which hits the main quest line pretty far along) is fantastic. It doesn't land its moral quandary, but it at least tries to put some weight and reality on the wibbling of the main quest. Plus its just fun and well designed. The buildup actually gets a bit spooky, which gonna be honest, is just straight up missing from this game. I haven't seen much of Bethsoft's usual cannibals, murderous psychos, dangerous creatures or twisted psych experiments. The largely wholesome nature of this universe (even the pirates can be more Pirates of the Carribean than scary space pirates) actually sucks a lot of the the air out of the main quest.(with one exception). Instead its just (big spoiler)

I've been messing around with it. Some comments -

1.) The game *really* railroads you hard. It doesn't even try to pretend it's doing otherwise. I don't think I've ever seen a Bethesda game so blatantly railroad you during the early stages of the game.
2.) There's a lot of stuff that could use better explanations. For instance, I didn't realize that you could rotate between the different options with digipicks. I thought you had to go through them in order. And that basically meant that it was largely impossible for me to open the first several locks I tried to pick, even though they were listed as easy.
3.) I'm a little ways into the game, and it seems... aimless? I've collected I saw someone mention that they were told the main quest doesn't even really start until you're fifty hours into the game. Maybe that's true?
4.) One of the options to continue a main quest involved swiping an item when the owner was being distracted by my companion, and I did that. And then I finished the quest and went on my merry way. And that was fine until I tried to return to UC space. See, the quest item was still in my inventory, and it had a stolen flag on it. But I had forgotten about it, and hadn't realized that it would be a problem. And then when I jumped back to Jemison, I was warned that the UC customs scan would turn something up, but the warning didn't tell me *what* was going to get me in trouble. It only told me that I had something illegal on my ship. So I had to go back to a prior save, look through my equipment, figure out what the illegal item was, and realize that it was the stolen quest object. Which is something that likely wouldn't show up on a customs scan anyway, making the situation even more ridiculous. In reality, my NPC companion probably should have automatically taken it off of my hands. What a nuisance.
5.) I'm a new member of Constellation who just came from a mining job, and has a background in surveying... but apparently myself and one other companion are more than enough to take out dozens of spacers and Ecliptic mercenaries who are currently infesting a derelict space station. Am I playing a CRPG? Or am I playing Doom?
6.) The game is a bit confused by the whole space suit thing. You can get poisoned by poison gas even while you're wearing the suit. And you still have to worry about CO2 build-up from over exerting yourself, even if you're in open air. People occasionally make comments if you're running around on Jemison (which has a breathable atmosphere) in your space suit, but the game doesn't really otherwise seem to encourage you to take it off. Even though your companions automatically remove their suits, and yes, you probably look silly running around in yours.

There's definitely some potential here. Despite all of the above, I intend to continue playing it for now.

But one of the ironies of the game is that it really makes me appreciate the working elements of Star Citizen (which - keep in mind - is still an incomplete, buggy mess right now) quite a lot more. Starfield just feels shallow in comparison. Of course, the depth of the working elements of Star Citizen is probably one of the reasons why that game is still very incomplete...

1) Maybe Bethesda finally feels weird about people spending the first three hundred hours on side quests before they even see a minute of the main quest, and decided to do something about it?

2) Yeah, it occasionally feels like good to know information isn't imparted very well or even at all. I figured out lockpicks right away, but I wasn't happy with how quickly the introduction to flying happened. Basically I had to wait until after the first battle to figure out where my shields were even displayed. I had to figure out how space suits are supposed to work the hard way. Some other things as well. I still haven't figured out what my ship's fuel actually does. And I am very unhappy with how quickly popup messages vanish. Oftentimes I don't get past the second or third word before they're gone. If I want to check how many credits I got for a quest, looking at the display in the upper right corner leaves me with no time to check how much XP I got in the upper left corner. It's all done kind of... unprofessionally.

3) I'm about as far along the main quest.



4) Was that contraband? I've had one stolen item with me from early on. That shouldn't be cause for trouble with scans. Never has been for me. I haven't tried smuggling yet, but apparently scans for contraband on your person always succeed in finding the item. If it's actually just stolen, I guess that makes it one of those famous it just works moments?

5) Eh, you're the protagonist in a Bethesda game. That makes you pretty awesome even without the ability to shout dragons out of the sky. I can appreciate that when I select "normal" difficulty, there's actually a bit of a balance to the difficulty level. I still need medpacks during fights. I still go through ammunition too fast for my liking. But it's not crazy lethal as a baseline. Feels like there's been a lot of games I played lately where normal difficulty wasn't aimed at relaxed players like me but easy/story difficulty lowered difficulty way too far. I'm pretty happy with how Bethesda deals with this, generally.

6) Yeah, the way you have protection that gets worn down by exposure without visual feedback is a bit opaque, especially since your protection can be gone in an instant if the environmental hazard is bad enough. I find it doesn't help that your scanner display is static for planetary conditions. Last night I got frostbite the moment I stepped outside my ship, but the scanner tells me it's a cozy -16°C outside. I'm getting the impression that the temperature is the expected temperature in a temperate region, whatever that may be on the planet I was on, and a polar night alters the temperature without anybody bothering to tell me? That either doesn't work as intended or the mechanic was implemented without any thought. Either way, it feels terribly counterintuitive to get that while wearing a damn space suit.

I'm not bothered by the CO2 thing myself. That's just three layers of stamina with a different name slapped on it. Personally I would have just called it stamina, but I guess they thought CO2 sounds more spacey. Mechanically it's sensible to have it.

I wish there was a way to favorite your space suit and just take it off or put it on as a whole or just take off the helmet with losing the combination of equipment you want to wear. Mark it and get it some protection from accidentally selling it while we're at it. I know you have a toggle for automatically hiding it in whatever the game deems a colony or whatever, but I find it just more interesting if I get to select if I want to wear the suit or not. Not the least because it provides armor and a lamp, and a jetpack if you're wearing one, so just visually hiding it feels terribly fake when all the functionality remains while you run around in your undies.

 Geifer wrote:
1) Maybe Bethesda finally feels weird about people spending the first three hundred hours on side quests before they even see a minute of the main quest, and decided to do something about it?

The problem isn't so much that there's railroading. That's more or less expected in an open world game. The problem is that it feels like blatant railroading, and there doesn't appear to be any attempt to disguise it.

4) Was that contraband? I've had one stolen item with me from early on. That shouldn't be cause for trouble with scans. Never has been for me. I haven't tried smuggling yet, but apparently scans for contraband on your person always succeed in finding the item. If it's actually just stolen, I guess that makes it one of those famous it just works moments?

The starter ship might have some sort of scan blocker on it. Now that I think about it, I captured a ship by sitting in the pilot's seat, and then went back to the starter ship and flew it to Jemison. No issues. But when I went to the space port, the ship I'd captured wasn't there. So I reloaded, flew the captured ship to Jemison, and promptly got the alert about contraband.

Which reminds me... there's another annoying thing that I ran into. Somehow early in the game - and I haven't a clue how - I got Freestars upset with me, and had a bounty imposed on me without my knowledge. I took off from Jemison, and got attacked by a random Freestars transport while in orbit (all while the local UC forces stood back and watched, mind you). You apparently can't jump while you're in combat, so I targeted it's engines and destroyed them. Then I started flying away, trying to get enough distance between me and the transport to break the engagement range. But the damaged ship apparently repaired its engines very quickly, and came after me. So I blew it up, but that ticked off my companion at the time. I reloaded, took off again, and got attack by another random Freestars ship in orbit. So I reloaded again, tracked down a bounty payment terminal on Jemison, and discovered that I had a 650 credit bounty on me, which I paid off. Annoying, and I've no clue how I got the bounty to begin with.

5) Eh, you're the protagonist in a Bethesda game. That makes you pretty awesome even without the ability to shout dragons out of the sky. I can appreciate that when I select "normal" difficulty, there's actually a bit of a balance to the difficulty level. I still need medpacks during fights. I still go through ammunition too fast for my liking. But it's not crazy lethal as a baseline. Feels like there's been a lot of games I played lately where normal difficulty wasn't aimed at relaxed players like me but easy/story difficulty lowered difficulty way too far. I'm pretty happy with how Bethesda deals with this, generally.

Fallout 4 at least put you in power armor before sending you up against those odds, so there was a rationale behind it. This just seems forced. And there's no way to bypass them, either, as you would expect in a game that allows for non-combat builds.

The thing that stands out to me about Starfield is the lack of innovation.

Morrowind was one of the first fully 3D open world games and had unique setting and strong narrative with somewhat interesting discussion about the nature of prophecy, godhood, and truth. It was released about a month before NWN and looks dramatically better.

Oblivion introduced physics, you could wield a 1H weapon and spell at the same time, and it had one of the earliest character creation systems that allowed editing of facial features. BG3 forces you into various presets and CP2077 doesn't have the breadth of options that Oblivion had. It was ugly, but there was at least ambition.

F3 was the first 3D open world Fallout game and the first time BGS tried their hand at gunplay at the very least.

Skyrim added dual wielding, shouts, and was the first BGS game in 3D to have at least decent character graphics and animations for the time it was released. Not great, but they weren't awful like in the past. The bodyweight slider is still a rarity in RPGs. The mod support for Skyrim is also second to none.

F4 had somewhat odd faces, but it did introduce base building to the BGS series and improved upon Power Armor.

What did Starfield improve upon? The NPCs look awful despite the obvious technical improvements. The animations, particularly the jump are terrible. AI is still bad. Many false physic animations (shooting water for example) are worse. The narrative is only notable for the NG+ gimmick, other than that it's not good. The setting is poor. At least Skyrim benefited from prior TES lore and FO:4 had interesting historical points. Starfield has none of that, but it does have Teletubby dancers in the club, I guess.

CP2077 had issues on release and still does, but at least it showed ambition. Elden Ring's open world is inferior to that of Skyrim and FO:4, but it was also Fromsoftware's first attempt at that and there are at least other features that improve upon prior entries.

I haven't seen any of this ambition with Starfield. I don't know what they were doing. The game is also apparently strangely inoffensive. Even the pirate faction comes across like something out of a Disney cartoon.

trexmeyer wrote:
The thing that stands out to me about Starfield is the lack of innovation.

One could argue that the innovation is space. But space is kind of lackluster in this game. It's the place you visit when you're transferring (because you always instantly fast travel, unless you intentionally don't - which apparently can be done if you've got a *lot* of time on your hands...) between planets, and you often have to fight other ships there. Apparently you can asteroid mine by blowing up the asteroids that you frequently come across. But other than that, it doesn't seem to really serve any purpose.

While I wouldn't expect a full-on space sim experience like with Elite or Star Citizen, it's still disappointing.

Has anyone actually tried to see if its possible to "slow" travel between planets in the same system? IE: Can you not fast travel between POIs and just hold throttle to get there.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Has anyone actually tried to see if its possible to "slow" travel between planets in the same system? IE: Can you not fast travel between POIs and just hold throttle to get there.

Someone did travel between two celestial bodies in the same system. I can't remember if it was planet to moon, or between two planets, but they did do it. It took hours, though, so it's not something I would recommend unless you really, really want to do it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Has anyone actually tried to see if its possible to "slow" travel between planets in the same system? IE: Can you not fast travel between POIs and just hold throttle to get there.

People have tried. Its... not 100% conclusive that you can't do it if you've got hours to devote to it. But its so far beyond practical that for all intents and purposes, the answer is no.
Which makes the devs being evasive about it during Gamescon interviews kind of crappy. Slow travel, even to space stations in orbit of a planet (unless they're at the default arrival point, like the Eye), is simply not part of the game design.

Eumerin wrote:
I've been messing around with it. Some comments -

1.) The game *really* railroads you hard. It doesn't even try to pretend it's doing otherwise. I don't think I've ever seen a Bethesda game so blatantly railroad you during the early stages of the game.
2.) There's a lot of stuff that could use better explanations. For instance, I didn't realize that you could rotate between the different options with digipicks. I thought you had to go through them in order. And that basically meant that it was largely impossible for me to open the first several locks I tried to pick, even though they were listed as easy.

The game is very shy about telling you things. That actually gets worse as things go along
And yes, it railroads hard. You can ignore it, but IMO you're better off not.

3.) I'm a little ways into the game, and it seems... aimless? I've collected

Spoiler:

my first superpower, and it's obvious I'll be collecting more, but so far there isn't even a hint of what I will eventually use them against. And I can't imagine that they have you collect superpowers without intending for you to use them against someone or something.

I saw someone mention that they were told the main quest doesn't even really start until you're fifty hours into the game. Maybe that's true?

It isn't. You'll probably struggle a bit diving right into the main quest, but its available immediately. You'll want to build up skills, gear and healing items. And ship/ship skills for one part.
As for the spoiler... For real spoilers

4.) One of the options to continue a main quest involved swiping an item when the owner was being distracted by my companion, and I did that. And then I finished the quest and went on my merry way. And that was fine until I tried to return to UC space. See, the quest item was still in my inventory, and it had a stolen flag on it. But I had forgotten about it, and hadn't realized that it would be a problem. And then when I jumped back to Jemison, I was warned that the UC customs scan would turn something up, but the warning didn't tell me *what* was going to get me in trouble. It only told me that I had something illegal on my ship. So I had to go back to a prior save, look through my equipment, figure out what the illegal item was, and realize that it was the stolen quest object. Which is something that likely wouldn't show up on a customs scan anyway, making the situation even more ridiculous. In reality, my NPC companion probably should have automatically taken it off of my hands. What a nuisance.

Scans don't pick up stolen items (red icon), you just can't sell them to most shops. Scans pick up yellow icon contraband. Which... isn't worth the headaches. Just sell guns.

5.) I'm a new member of Constellation who just came from a mining job, and has a background in surveying... but apparently myself and one other companion are more than enough to take out dozens of spacers and Ecliptic mercenaries who are currently infesting a derelict space station. Am I playing a CRPG? Or am I playing Doom?
6.) The game is a bit confused by the whole space suit thing. You can get poisoned by poison gas even while you're wearing the suit. And you still have to worry about CO2 build-up from over exerting yourself, even if you're in open air. People occasionally make comments if you're running around on Jemison (which has a breathable atmosphere) in your space suit, but the game doesn't really otherwise seem to encourage you to take it off. Even though your companions automatically remove their suits, and yes, you probably look silly running around in yours.

Yes, you're doom guy/girl. Space suits (and helmets) can be toggled to hide in settlements. Companions default to that, but its 100% cosmetic and townies will still react to your space suit.
You can also get biological infections through your space suits, so... yeah.

Just some other follow ups -

you can (and should) leave space combat with jump drives. But you can't fast travel. Yes, that's weird, obnoxious and confusing, because it involves interacting with the map in just a slightly different way. going back to the space screen and having energy allocated to the jump drive. Also be aware that there are things you can and can't do depending on if you have your scanner up or not. Targeting (assuming you've unlocked it) requires a scanner. Interacting usually means you can't have the scanner active.

You can find out you have a bounty if you hover over a system owned by that faction on the star map. If that star is shown to be owned on the star map (which... the star map has all sorts of issues).

Geifer wrote: I still haven't figured out what my ship's fuel actually does.

Fuel determines your maximum range. Which you'd think is determined by your jump range, but... no.
If you've visited a system before, you can automatically chain jumps from that system, so fuel determines how far you can chain.
And if you have an outpost that produces Helium-3 in a system, it resets your jump range automatically.

But fuel is refilled automagically when you come out of a jump, so it never feels like you're using fuel at all. It just breaks up travel while exploring a new 'region' of stars. There's a color coding to the map that isn't obvious (beyond 'filled in red stars means no')

Also, some systems can only be visited from other specific systems (which would probably show if the map were 3D, but as is, just looks questionable).

Voss wrote:

Scans don't pick up stolen items (red icon), you just can't sell them to most shops. Scans pick up yellow icon contraband. Which... isn't worth the headaches. Just sell guns.

They do pick up stolen items when they scan. Once I got rid of the specific item in question, I stopped having contraband issues. However, I subsequently realized that you can bypass the customs scan by fast traveling to your destination on the surface. So, for instance, if I'm in space in a different star system, and I fast travel to the Lodge entrance, then I don't get scanned by the UC customs ships. Which meant that when I later rolled back to an earlier save that still had the stolen item in my inventory, I was able to fast travel to the lodge, stick it in the safe in my room, and stop worrying about it. Problem solved!



I just got my first outpost up and running. Mining Aluminum, Iron, Helium-3, and Beryllium. I don't have a use for the last one, but I've built a manufacturing device that will combine the iron and aluminum into lots of adaptive frames that I can either use, or resell. Not worth much individually, but in bulk is another matter. Unfortunately, outpost building doesn't provide much experience. So I'll need to find more Ecliptics to slaughter en masse.

Voss wrote:
You can also get biological infections through your space suits, so... yeah.

I've resolved that I feel much better about it thinking that Bethesda created the space suit mechanics in anticipation of bikini space suit mods.

Voss wrote:

Geifer wrote: I still haven't figured out what my ship's fuel actually does.

Fuel determines your maximum range. Which you'd think is determined by your jump range, but... no.
If you've visited a system before, you can automatically chain jumps from that system, so fuel determines how far you can chain.
And if you have an outpost that produces Helium-3 in a system, it resets your jump range automatically.

But fuel is refilled automagically when you come out of a jump, so it never feels like you're using fuel at all. It just breaks up travel while exploring a new 'region' of stars. There's a color coding to the map that isn't obvious (beyond 'filled in red stars means no')

Also, some systems can only be visited from other specific systems (which would probably show if the map were 3D, but as is, just looks questionable).

Well, alright then. Thanks. I guess somebody at Bethesda thought that makes sense.

Automatic refill was a bit of a dud when I figured that out. The plan was to go to Jemison immediately to see how all this space travel works and how much fuel is going to cost me, but nope. Should have seen that coming, I guess.

Eumerin wrote:
I just got my first outpost up and running. Mining Aluminum, Iron, Helium-3, and Beryllium. I don't have a use for the last one, but I've built a manufacturing device that will combine the iron and aluminum into lots of adaptive frames that I can either use, or resell. Not worth much individually, but in bulk is another matter. Unfortunately, outpost building doesn't provide much experience. So I'll need to find more Ecliptics to slaughter en masse.

I'm partial to bounties myself. Not sure how it stacks up if you try to do them by the dozen, but I like to have a bounty open in the region I'm going because jumping into a system and blowing up a lone ship isn't much work but hands out something like 150XP? Missions in general seem to pay that much and seem to pay better than non-main quests and random activities, although of course blowing up a ship is way quicker than surveying a planet.

Yeah. Someone started with an L-ship (Just do a normal ship and stack habs or structure components on top and in a line to the left), and others have been refining the idea until it gets to... that.
I cheesed the main quest climax with one, because it forces a ship battle and I disliked the ship stuff enough to completely avoid it until that point.

-----
The short version is: the enemy attacks always go to the center of mass. If you offset it enough, the center of mass is empty space. So every shot against you misses.

I've seen people complain that its an AI problem, but it strikes me as a game physics problem. Especially after messing about with the targeting system on the player end- what matters is what system you have targeted, not where you shoot on enemy ships. As long as you get the enemy ship's hit box, you'll damage what you selected.

Weirdest moment so far:

realizing the temperature gauge in the Space Game is in Fahrenheit.
I'm on a complete ice ball of a moon, and look down at the HUD and it reads 25 degrees. Wait...

40k aside for being backwards and more space fantasy than sci-fi, I'm boggled by the idea of a sci-fi game opting for the dumb American option. Even Paizo switched measurements from Pathfinder to Starfinder.

Though at least distances in Starfield are metric...

Voss wrote:
Weirdest moment so far:

realizing the temperature gauge in the Space Game is in Fahrenheit.
I'm on a complete ice ball of a moon, and look down at the HUD and it reads 25 degrees. Wait...

40k aside for being backwards and more space fantasy than sci-fi, I'm boggled by the idea of a sci-fi game opting for the dumb American option. Even Paizo switched measurements from Pathfinder to Starfinder.

Though at least distances in Starfield are metric...

As I've seen others note elsewhere recently, Fahrenheit is designed around people. Celsius is not. Mock it all you want, but I'll stick with the "dumb American option". I find the idea that 37 degrees is blazing hot to be laughably silly. 100 degrees, on the other hand, *sounds* hot.

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:
Weirdest moment so far:

realizing the temperature gauge in the Space Game is in Fahrenheit.
I'm on a complete ice ball of a moon, and look down at the HUD and it reads 25 degrees. Wait...

40k aside for being backwards and more space fantasy than sci-fi, I'm boggled by the idea of a sci-fi game opting for the dumb American option. Even Paizo switched measurements from Pathfinder to Starfinder.

Though at least distances in Starfield are metric...

As I've seen others note elsewhere recently, Fahrenheit is designed around people. Celsius is not. Mock it all you want, but I'll stick with the "dumb American option". I find the idea that 37 degrees is blazing hot to be laughably silly. 100 degrees, on the other hand, *sounds* hot.

Celsius is based on 0 being when pure water freezes and 100 when it boils.

Fahrenheit is the same except it's not based on pure water. It's some dumb combination that doesn't generally occur naturally and so has no actual bearing on the real physical world. thats why "freezing" isn't 0.

Celsius makes sense. The dumb american option is incredibly dumb.

 Lance845 wrote:

Celsius is based on 0 being when pure water freezes and 100 when it boils.

Fahrenheit is the same except it's not based on pure water. It's some dumb combination that doesn't generally occur naturally and so has no actual bearing on the real physical world. thats why "freezing" isn't 0.

Celsius makes sense. The dumb american option is incredibly dumb.

Fahrenheit is based around what's more or less comfortable for humans. Given that I'm a human - and not water - I don't find anything dumb about that.

Eumerin wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Celsius is based on 0 being when pure water freezes and 100 when it boils.

Fahrenheit is the same except it's not based on pure water. It's some dumb combination that doesn't generally occur naturally and so has no actual bearing on the real physical world. thats why "freezing" isn't 0.

Celsius makes sense. The dumb american option is incredibly dumb.

Fahrenheit is based around what's more or less comfortable for humans. Given that I'm a human - and not water - I don't find anything dumb about that.

1) No it's not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

Several accounts of how he originally defined his scale exist, but the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt).[2][3] The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F (about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale).[2]

2) Let's pretend for a second that it was. Okay. Then why isn't 50 comfortable human temperature? (roughly 70 degree Fahrenheit would be set to 50) with 0 being freezing and 100 being boiling. Why the feth is 90 the (incorrect) average human body temp? Why is 32 freezing?

You are just used to Fahrenheit because you were raised on it. It's a terrible system for measurement based on ill defined parameters to start with.

Both are arbitrary systems derived from arbitrary parameters to define their bounds. The only true advantage Celsius has is that it has a simpler definition of its top and bottom scale. But it does have a slight problem in terms of every day use, from the perspective of someone who mostly used F in every day use. Celsius degrees are significantly larger than Fahrenheit degrees, so using the latter is a little cleaner in every day use. You can discuss and use temperature changes in whole units rather than fractions most of the time without the rounding error being statistically significant.

Also, its not the Dumb American option. Its a Dumb British option.

Frankly, a new system would probably be useful. Make it like Celsius where the upper and lower bounds are freezing and boiling of pure water at 1 atmospheres of pressure, but have boiling water be 1000 degrees instead. This would align better with the Metric system.

Temperatures are in Fahrenheit? No wonder the numbers are complete bs.

The obvious solution here is to have a scale toggle in the options. You know, like other games that have figured out that you don't have to insult the rest of the world just to please the American market. Everyone wins. Apparently that's too hard for Bethesda.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Both are arbitrary systems derived from arbitrary parameters to define their bounds. The only true advantage Celsius has is that it has a simpler definition of its top and bottom scale. But it does have a slight problem in terms of every day use, from the perspective of someone who mostly used F in every day use. Celsius degrees are significantly larger than Fahrenheit degrees, so using the latter is a little cleaner in every day use. You can discuss and use temperature changes in whole units rather than fractions most of the time without the rounding error being statistically significant.

Also, its not the Dumb American option. Its a Dumb British option.

Frankly, a new system would probably be useful. Make it like Celsius where the upper and lower bounds are freezing and boiling of pure water at 1 atmospheres of pressure, but have boiling water be 1000 degrees instead. This would align better with the Metric system.

The point of the metric system is that it operates in multiples of 10. Doesn't matter if your scale is 0 to 10, to 100, or to 1000. The numbers remain the same. Only the decimal point changes.

I'd suggest that if you're looking for a new system, you use Kelvin like a proper science gigachad. But since that's Celsius with a different starting point, that's probably not to your liking either.

Kelven would be a better choice for a space game. Then you'd have no negatives.

Now I'm sad that there's no billboard in the game that advertises a Kelvin model science vessel.

Kelvin. Accept no negatives.

 Geifer wrote:
Temperatures are in Fahrenheit? No wonder the numbers are complete bs.

Well, the other part of that is the game mechanics. 'Deep Freeze' and 'Inferno' worlds are a minor inconvenience. They'll blaze through your suit protections in moments, and then there's a small chance of an slightly annoying burn or frostbite and that's that*. Other than that, all it means you need to invest points in a high tier outpost skill to build there.


*the injury system is general is terrible. Most seem to inflict penalties on things I don't do anyway (like punch people), make noises that people can detect when your sneaking, but the space suits make sneaking hard anyway. Most are minor. The worst one so far knocked my carry capacity down. After a while injuries just go away, or there is medicine that insta-heals injuries.


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Also, same old Bethesda mistakes are in the game. People have already found 'merchant chests' where you can just take things from shop inventories. No cost, and isn't stealing.
Useful for NG+, since you give up all your stuff.

Yeah, game mechanics seem odd at times. I'm not surprised about afflictions. I don't remember Morrowind all that well anymore, but from Oblivion onward that stuff was a nuisance at best, if it ever came up. It's outright annoying how quickly you get diseased in Fallout 76, but most of the effects can be reasonably ignored without detriment. I think the most impactful "affliction" was vampirism in Oblivion due to frying in daylight, but you wouldn't accidentally catch that. It's a weird situation where the developers seem to want the RPG element of it, but are terrified to commit to making life harder for the players even just a little bit.

I had burns once that made sprinting lose me health, was low on health and really needed to run for cover. That was about the only time where there was meaningful impact from an affliction. Even then I let it heal naturally instead of bothering with finding the right cure in my inventory. I would have postponed doing sneaky stuff due to a cough twice, but both times I got into a conversation as part of the activity and by the time it was done, I was cured. Anything else just happened without impact.

The most bogus thing I've seen so far was a system labeled level 20, and being level 28 myself I was surprised to find a level 40 pirate boss whose automatic weapon drained 90% or so of my health in one burst. Not sure if the spawn was bugged or if it's working as intended, but I'm not sure how I would win that fight with normal means. Luckily with superpowers I could fus ro dah him and keep him on his back and unable to fight indefinitely, so that was a lot easier than it feels it should have been. Bethesda like their stagger effects, and I really hated the degree to which they happened in Oblivion. But perpetual stun lock is something else, swinging the situation from one extreme to the other. Not something I'd consider good game design, really. It's not very enticing gameplay either, yelling stay down, empty my magazine in the helpless guy, reload and repeat until his bullet spongey ass is dead. I actually feel bad about something like that.

Well, at least boost packs are fun in anything lower than 0.3G environments. I could skip around like that all day.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, its not the Dumb American option. Its a Dumb British option.

Really?

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (/ˈfærənhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʁn̩haɪt]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736)[1] was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. Born in Poland to a family of German extraction, he later moved to the Dutch Republic at age 15, where he spent the rest of his life (1701–1736)

Us Brits can rightly take the blame for a lot of things, but this isn't one of them.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, its not the Dumb American option. Its a Dumb British option.

Really?

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit FRS (/ˈfærənhaɪt/; German: [ˈfaːʁn̩haɪt]; 24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736)[1] was a physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker. Born in Poland to a family of German extraction, he later moved to the Dutch Republic at age 15, where he spent the rest of his life (1701–1736)

Us Brits can rightly take the blame for a lot of things, but this isn't one of them.

Its part of the Imperial system. You're why we use it in the first place. Thats on you Brits


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Voss wrote:

Also, same old Bethesda mistakes are in the game. People have already found 'merchant chests' where you can just take things from shop inventories. No cost, and isn't stealing.
Useful for NG+, since you give up all your stuff.

Interestingly, some Merchant chests do count as stealing, like the bar in the spaceport in New Atlantis. Not sure what determines that. They're not in normally accessible areas. Maybe they forgot to put an Owned tag on most of the chests. Granted, nobody can see you take stuff so its down to other factors if you get caught.

Also, the ship technicians always seem to have 72k. No more, no less.

Honestly the only real dumb decision was the puddle chest in Akila city. Like, just sink it a little further down. Surely you could tell it was accessible through the ground?

Other empires were available.... Most used 'Imperial' to some extent.

And Metric appeared afterwards, so most of us moved on

But, that's drifting wildly off topic.

What percentage of the population can actually discern anything meaningful from Kelvin without looking it up?

I can guarantee that there will be a temperature selector mod out if there isn't one already.