OK, so I've been through the Unity a few times now and gotten more familiar with shipbuilding, though it takes a while to build the ~350K you need to make my preferred ship (I like ones that are reminiscent of the Eagles from Space: 1999). The annoying thing with going through the Unity is you get a cool spacesuit and ship, except the ship isn't THAT great (except for having the max grav jump range straight out of the gate - the base universe ship the Frontier only goes 16LY per jump). You can't count on doing the final battle against the Hunter and his pals at Masada III in the Starborn ship. I've made a habit in each new universe of quickly swinging down to Vectera and grabbing the gun and ammo, plus medpacs and a digipick. Then to Kreet - in NG+ the facility where you used to take on the Crimson Fleet is empty, so you can loot it freely - usually a halfway decent weapon and more resources and digipicks. Freaked me out when I hit the CoraVerse (where a Starborn Cora shows up at the Lodge looking to kill you for "letting" her Dad die) - this replaces the Constellation members, so even Barrett isn't around... meaning Vectera was EMPTY when I went down. No miners, no Lin, no Heller, no Barrett. And wrecked equipment... so I guess the Fleet killed them all in this reality? But no bodies....
Lucky! I've been through the Unity 126 times and have yet to come across a scenario like that. My favorite ship is the Shieldbreaker. Looks great, flies great, great jump distance, lasers go pewpewpew.
Boo! Don't buy ships, make them!! Or design Walter's ship for him - but getting the kitchen sink is key there. And it's ugly as fuck. But very capable. The Mantis is shit considering it's meant to be the Batmobile of this game. But you can delete all of it and rebuild as a Class C battlecruiser and it'll retain the "pirates sometimes lose their shit and run when they see it" special feature.
I made a few but got tired of it. Honestly, the Shieldbreaker is pretty much what I would make anyway.
I made a Class B ship today on that assumption and the Masada III fight was the toughest yet. Fuck pew-pew Class B lasers, you want choom-choom class C, plus particle beams. 126 Unity trips? You must be maxed out on powers and Starborn suit/ship by now, or do you not bother visiting Vladimir after you get the extra artifacts from the Hunter and Emissary? I still find new stuff though. Found Ecliptic's main base (Vulture's Roost) today and shot my way through it. I killed the Va'ruun Starshroud legendary ship last universe, and found the clone colony (where you can recruit Amelia Earhart but not fuck her) the one before that.
Yep, more new stuff. Another reality where I don't have Constellation to help me. Andreja stayed loyal to Va'ruun in this one and slaughtered all of the others, then tried to kill me. Ouch. At least I was able to talk Vengeful!Cora down (since I'd genuinely never let Sam die in any prior universe). No such luck here. Only had an Advanced Grendel. Phased Time power helped a lot.
So, I started playing again. I don't agree with all the hate this game is getting, but it definitely has its flaws. In real life, Goodsprings is a few miles from I-15. In Fallout New Vegas, I-15 is right outside town. The roundabout path the game takes you on chasing Benny: Goodsprings, Primm, Nipton, (close to) Searchlight, Boulder City, Vegas... In real life, that's over a hundred miles. In the game it's like, what, three miles? That's shorter than the actual distance between Goodsprings and I-15. They took hundreds of square miles and crammed it down into about six. There's a reason for that. Walking through miles of empty desert is boring. Starfield has shit tons of empty desert to walk through, and if you're lucky, you might see a herd of elephant-anteater-tortoises or something. With Elder Scrolls and Fallout, everything is close together with just enough empty space between that you get the idea that you're leaving one place and going to another, and it worked pretty well. Anyway, if Shattered Space doesn't add land vehicles, hopefully some modder somewhere will. Or at least let me ride the elephant-anteater-tortoises. I tried. Just phased right through them. Not that it matters: Nerds: "We're tired of sequels, prequels, reboots and adaptations, give us something new!" Bethesda: "Here's something new." Nerds: "What? Why would you think we want something new? We want Elder Scrolls VI!" There's no winning.
After all the bitching I've done about a game I like overall... Things Starfield Did Well: - By far the least buggy Bethesda game. - The persuasion system. Instead of just a skill check or the terrible mini game in Oblivion, you... actually try to persuade them. Sometimes it's possible to learn things about people and get an idea what kinds of arguments they'll find convincing and what things won't. I'll give the lockpick system an honorable mention. It's annoying, but better than everything else they've done, and it's somewhat similar to how actual lockpicking works. - The existence of the ship builder. My biggest weakness is that I can be easily distracted by a pile of Legos, no matter how many flaws said pile of Legos has. (Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not "Legos" it's "Lego® Brand Construction Blocks" and you people who say things like "pile of Lego" and "it's not called 'pop,' it's called 'soda'" sound like insufferable dipshits.)
Forgot... another honorable mention, I guess: Surveying planets/the Constellation job board survey missions: At first it seemed boring and tedious, but just exploring and scanning shit is oddly relaxing, and more options for XP/coins are always a good thing. Could have been better executed but I definitely appreciate the attempt to expand on quest/loot/kill. Actually, that's probably the only real flaw this game has: Good ideas and effort, but not quite there on the execution. I think we all think Starfield was a nice idea. But, not pointin' any fingers, it could have been done better. ... just like every other Bethesda game. Comparing Starfield to Bethesda games that have been patched and modded like hell for 8+ years, yeah, it's crap. Comparing it to Skyrim or Fallout 4 at launch, it's at worst a solid par. That being said, the faster Bethesda gets to releasing the Creation Kit, the faster they can get to this being an awesome game.
Every time I feel like installing it, I think about all of the loading screens and I decide it's not worth firing up again.
