This fricking game. So I have decided I probably can grind up the Fed rank and still have fun (almost all mili missions in war states give good rank). I have a terribly good tolerance for combat farming and doing odd jobs, I'm up for it
. This game really doesn't help itself as an open world experience though. My game session went:
- The war I'd stacked some missions for has abruptly ended. (They would have gained me 10mil + decent rank. Meh. You know it's going to end, but nothing in-game tells you how or when...)
- I find another system at war. Everything looks sweet. Until... the mission board is greyed out, because the station's being UA bombed. (I get groups can mess with the sim and each other like this, via ferrying rare banes & antidotes huge distances, but what a killjoy mechanism ultimately. Ugg)
- I find the last Fed warzone in the vicinity. Everything looks good. But I can't find the Combat Zone. Like I check every planet. I even go to the Nav Beacon to be given a 'You'll have to find it yourself Cmdr' message from the very bastard who sent me to fight. (Have they lost the warzone, and he's too embarrassed to say? Is it taking place in a cupboard? Makes... no.... sense....). So I left that place.
And that's without mentioning the deserter assassination yesterday that had no time limit beyond '24 hours', yet auto-failed on arrival because I was 'too late'. Or the mission that needed repeating because it didn't take first time, despite showing as completed. Or... actually there's too many buggy things from two play sessions to mention them all...
So I stopped trying to rank, and just had fun. Zapped some fools in this ice ring which seem particularly tight-knit and chunky. Took on so many wetwork jobs that I was wanted in three system. Threaded my way through them all, having a laugh, and even killing the same evangelical twice. Because... this fricking game...
(Honestly, the travel times wouldn't be half as bad if you thought the game would at least follow its own rules, not end half your freeform ventures in arbitrary failure. Guaranteed A-to-Bs are nailed on, but dull. Taking a punt should be fun because it could fail when you mess up, or mis-plan, not because the game fell over again, or communicated itself like a man with an oatmeal bag over his head. I still think they'll slowly improve many of these things, and that having to find stuff out is a good thing, and that you can have fun with it in its current state. But damn you do have to try really hard
...)