Short story time:
I tried to move some wounded personnel from mars high to R.S. Hutner for the first time. I've never done this befoe and i was there with my type ten anyway, so i picked up all 7 missions and headed to luytens star. I was interdicted by a scythe; i've killed a few in other scenarios before and it seemed a reasonable foe. However, ot my horror, it simply stole about 1/5 of the pods and took off before i could kill it with 2 ax missile racks & 4 L AXMC turrets. Apparently thargoids have hatch breaker limpets? i digress.
Now, that's fine, i can mess up and try again, learning new mechanics is a cool challenge. Here's my problem: I now have been fined 14 times - in excess of 17M credits - and sent to prison the next time i died (during titan bombing, some time later). All my station access to sol has been supposedly revoked until i pay all these fines. All because i partially lost to the aliens on my first try. (which i'll imagine is the intended experience)
This was, tbh, an awful experience. I will not ever be repeating it as it is.
I would suggest drastically reducing the risk upon failure for this type of encounter. The penalty should not be (14M credits in my case) greater than the maximum possible reward, which was indeed truncated hugely for partial delivery.
It is definitively ridiculous to have fees based on the value of the ship involved here at all. Why does investing more into the safety of passengers actually place considerably more risk than it's worth on the player? why are we forced to effectively rebuy a ship, be fined separately (a whole second set of fines appeared in my messages, wholly unrelated to the ship-based fines), have a bounty put on us, then finally be unexpectedly sent to prison some time later... for (a 4/5ths success but) "failing" while trying our best?
I think it should be the opposite. It feels very much like we're being personally held responsible for the actions of aliens simply for volunteering to help.
I tried to move some wounded personnel from mars high to R.S. Hutner for the first time. I've never done this befoe and i was there with my type ten anyway, so i picked up all 7 missions and headed to luytens star. I was interdicted by a scythe; i've killed a few in other scenarios before and it seemed a reasonable foe. However, ot my horror, it simply stole about 1/5 of the pods and took off before i could kill it with 2 ax missile racks & 4 L AXMC turrets. Apparently thargoids have hatch breaker limpets? i digress.
Now, that's fine, i can mess up and try again, learning new mechanics is a cool challenge. Here's my problem: I now have been fined 14 times - in excess of 17M credits - and sent to prison the next time i died (during titan bombing, some time later). All my station access to sol has been supposedly revoked until i pay all these fines. All because i partially lost to the aliens on my first try. (which i'll imagine is the intended experience)
This was, tbh, an awful experience. I will not ever be repeating it as it is.
I would suggest drastically reducing the risk upon failure for this type of encounter. The penalty should not be (14M credits in my case) greater than the maximum possible reward, which was indeed truncated hugely for partial delivery.
It is definitively ridiculous to have fees based on the value of the ship involved here at all. Why does investing more into the safety of passengers actually place considerably more risk than it's worth on the player? why are we forced to effectively rebuy a ship, be fined separately (a whole second set of fines appeared in my messages, wholly unrelated to the ship-based fines), have a bounty put on us, then finally be unexpectedly sent to prison some time later... for (a 4/5ths success but) "failing" while trying our best?
I think it should be the opposite. It feels very much like we're being personally held responsible for the actions of aliens simply for volunteering to help.
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