Titan Outpost Release Thread

[The_Mask]

So yeah, if you're talking about the first mission, I just got here, and it does mark it down as explored, but he will not give you anything else until you build a (first) computer room.

 

[MF]

If the nexus has landed but you haven't built and powered a computer yet, you'll need to deal with that first before Horst will talk about anything else. I added some dialogue way back to make that clear, but there's still a couple of paths where reporting on your survey during this time is not an option. If you ask about minerals, he'll tell you about Menvra Crater again and the first entry of the survey mission will reset.

So you'll have to build and power the computer room first, then visit Menvra Crater. You don't have to survey all the areas again, just leave and enter the rover.

Getting into that situation is an oversight, I'll fix it it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

On sale.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Sorry if this has been addressed earlier in the thread, but how long can one expect a full playthrough to last?

 

[Butter]

Sorry if this has been addressed earlier in the thread, but how long can one expect a full playthrough to last?

10-15 hours, depending on which ending you take.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Just finished Titan Outpost. Got it for 15€ in the last sale. Feels a bit clunky but worth it! It's a really big game and has a lot of different quests. I'm not even a hard scifi fan and liked it, so if you are a hard scifi fan you should def buy it.

Spoilers ahead.

In my search for my next Age of Decadence fix and an RPG that would be 8-15 hours long, I stumbled upon Titan Outpost. I read a little bit in this thread and it seemed interesting.
At first the game felt really clunky and I didn't like it because I was confused how to do stuff. It's a weird trend for me that I seem to dislike new games in the beginning and take a few hours to like them. I got through that initial phase and grew to really like it when I saw how many options there were. At that stage the game felt also a lot less clunky.
The characters are really memoriable. Some felt a bit over the top. I got 24 of the 43 achievements and did get the singularity live like a king ending, reloaded, killed the chinese, got bombed, reloaded, and got the rutger ending (free enterprise) later! In the end it took me 11.5 hours to complete it. There are still some bugs but the dev seems eager to fix them!

 

[MF]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

The game recently got a couple of negative reviews on Steam from people who apparently didn't get past the initial hurdle you're describing.

Decided to take a couple of days off from Jovian System development to improve the documentation for TO. Any suggestions on how to smooth out that feeling of clunkiness in the beginning are welcome. A large part of the issue is that it's a pretty massive game with a lot of mechanics. The player has to take in a lot all at once even though the pacing is relatively slow in the beginning. That's not going to change at this point, but I think informing the player on certain aspects of the game would help.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Game got a new update today https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/944180/view/3182366126807424587

Lots of minor fixes.

Changelog

• Changed some wrong colors of yellow to the consistent amber.
  
• Amount tag for items during transfer no longer misaligned on widescreen resolutions.
  
• Various typos fixed.
  
• Searchable Area box text bottom margin corrected on some resolutions.
  
• Changed ugly terrain cutoff in Throat of Kraken that would be visible on certain screen resolutions.
  
• Fixed some janky pathfinding in some of the lakes
  
• If you have multiple crashed drones, hovering over a crashed drone location on the rover world map no longer highlights the location of the first crashed drone.
  
• Global prices are no longer affected by striking a deal with a single vendor. You need to negotiate prices down for each trade.
  
• Negotiating a price down successfully with an NPC with whom you have a negative relation value will now properly reflect it if the relation is too bad for the price to effectively drop.
  
• Can now properly equip Ling's transponder.
  
• Drone repair alerts now always show the correct drone ID.
  
• Metal footstep sounds in Sotonera Lacus changed to rock.
  
• Added missing audio for Daisuke dialogue line in one of the endings.
  
• Talking to Yat-sen after he helps you with the investigation no longer locks the mouse

 

[Late Bloomer]

The characters are really memoriable. Some felt a bit over the top.

From the steam trailers and a couple of lets play videos it appears the various NPC's have a good deal of diversity. Is there various factions to join that take into accout ones origins? Do the range of characters have personalities? Is the game preachy?

 

[The_Mask]

From the steam trailers and a couple of lets play videos it appears the various NPC's have a good deal of diversity. Is there various factions to join that take into accout ones origins? Do the range of characters have personalities? Is the game preachy?

The game is diverse in the sense that some nations will end up in space in the future. The most obvious ones are there. This makes sense logically.

"Faction" choice is related to your choices only. The game is strong on C&C.

The game is far from preachy. You can end up being 1 guy alone with 3 (hot) women, which is absolutely great.

 

[Nutria]

It's not preachy at all. On Titan you'll meet all kinds of people from different countries with different beliefs but none of them are made out to be strawman comic book villains to push the dev's agenda.

 

[Trojan_generic]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

The game recently got a couple of negative reviews on Steam from people who apparently didn't get past the initial hurdle you're describing.

Decided to take a couple of days off from Jovian System development to improve the documentation for TO. Any suggestions on how to smooth out that feeling of clunkiness in the beginning are welcome. A large part of the issue is that it's a pretty massive game with a lot of mechanics. The player has to take in a lot all at once even though the pacing is relatively slow in the beginning. That's not going to change at this point, but I think informing the player on certain aspects of the game would help.

Just finished this. It was a different and therefore a very interesting game. I also know more of Titan than ever before. I did not feel disappointed after the ending, which normally is the case - I felt like I got what I deserved. Even better that I could try a few different endings without replaying a large part of the game again. Also, motives of people were quite well and logically explained and written.

The bad: the pacing. Start of game: nothing happens, some slow-paced exploration, lot of charging and sleeping and waiting. Mid-game: everything happens at once. Towards the end: you are told you have to wait for a year (fortunately in-game) until something happens.

If you want to still improve the 'clunkiness' for noobs, you could make the AI give some advice without asking. I forgot about the existence of the whole AI 5 seconds after starting the game, and only found it back by accident later. On the other hand, it was a better experience to me like this. You are forced to face the fact that you have to decide yourself what to do next, and take some trips into the unknown.

I think a part of the clunkiness is that there is not much happening at the start, and it requires just passing time to get forward. You need to sleep often, which interrupts what you were doing and makes any chore seem to take ages.

Also, just a sidenote that Codex might be a bit biased on the comments here, because most of us want to be a wizard (i.e. a scientific mad hacker).

 

[MF]

Thanks. Great feedback. Glad you found it interesting, educational even!

The pacing deliberately ramps up so that improving your situation and character actually means something, but most people tend to try to do too much before things start to unfold.

Another problem is that following orders and hooking up all the lakes to make quota is something that you can keep doing until the midgame starts. Rather than being driven towards more interesting parts of the game as intended, some people actually prefer to grind that. Which is a perfectly valid way to play and finish the game, but for players who don't even realize there is more to it, it doesn't always seem like a choice. I could put some sort of arbitrary limit on that to force passage of time, but taking choice away from the player is anathema to one of the core principles of the game.

Keeping the feeling of mystery and exploration intact while telegraphing to the player what the game can and cannot be is tough. Having the AI actively present itself with suggestions is an interesting idea. I'm afraid it would backfire, but maybe I can come up with some subtle ways to do that. You need the AI to help you when the rover breaks down, which is a friendly reminder that it's there, but that is a random event. More likely to happen early on but not guaranteed to.

How much did you do before the satellite crashed?

 

[Trojan_generic]

Thanks. Great feedback. Glad you found it interesting, educational even!

The pacing deliberately ramps up so that improving your situation and character actually means something, but most people tend to try to do too much before things start to unfold.

Another problem is that following orders and hooking up all the lakes to make quota is something that you can keep doing until the midgame starts. Rather than being driven towards more interesting parts of the game as intended, some people actually prefer to grind that. Which is a perfectly valid way to play and finish the game, but for players who don't even realize there is more to it, it doesn't always seem like a choice. I could put some sort of arbitrary limit on that to force passage of time, but taking choice away from the player is anathema to one of the core principles of the game.

Keeping the feeling of mystery and exploration intact while telegraphing to the player what the game can and cannot be is tough. Having the AI actively present itself with suggestions is an interesting idea. I'm afraid it would backfire, but maybe I can come up with some subtle ways to do that. You need the AI to help you when the rover breaks down, which is a friendly reminder that it's there, but that is a random event. More likely to happen early on but not guaranteed to.

How much did you do before the satellite crashed?

I kept up with the methane requirements until the end, in case I need the money from Van Hoorn; only started sharing methane to Van Hoorn after 3 deliveries. I expected these to soon reach a level where I cannot keep up anymore, but when there were only the computers to build, I could have harvested the whole planet without problems.

I did not play until the very end i.e. the ~half a year it would still have taken, but I had researched already everything except the Rover 'faster charging'. I simply hated the annoying green terrorist too much to see that story till the end - I did not see a future together for us. Low charisma, so the romancing was limited to some desperate but firmly rejected passes at anything that resembled a woman in this playthrough. Realising that your only chance is: 'Look at this photo, your husband is dead, so how about...?' was probably exactly what I would do in real life in that environment...

Difficult to say what had been done when the satellite crashed, but I already had Daxia at the base and all the survey missions done. So I helped the Chinese and got out of there the 'get rich and famous' way.

By the way, I got stuck with the mud at Shangri-La, it just said 'you have no idea how to do this', so I supposed my construction skill was too low to clear the quicksand or whatever it was. I think I would have had enough girders and spare parts with me there - but was something else needed as well?

Edit: I agree that any hand-holding by the AI should be very limited in this kind of an exploration game. But especially younger people have gotten used to extensive tutorials so they are lost without.

 

[MF]

Very interesting. Always cool to read what paths people have taken and how story experiences are unique. Valuable insight, as I expected some players to do the Chinese quests before the main story advances and calibrated for that, but finishing all survey missions before that leaves a gap. I rebalanced some research and construction to be more difficult when I learned players would finish them too early, but doing those missions early anyway can turn them into a chore.

Val is a polarizing character but you can mellow her out a bit if you're playing a talker. Yeah, getting laid is gated pretty hard by charisma because romancing in games can be a recipe for cringe. Characters are either DTF or they're not. Getting a higher relation with an NPC lowers the charisma threshold a bit, but not by much.

For the slush dig site at Shangri-La, you need spare parts and girders and at least 2 in construction. If you have at least 4 in construction you don't need the items.

 

[The_Mask]

When you process Uranium, you have a typo at "generator".

 

[MF]

When you process Uranium, you have a typo at "generator".

"genrator"...classic.

Thanks.

 

[The_Mask]

When you make the jump at Shangri-la, you can end up upside down. If you choose to exit the vehicle like that, your character ends up upside down and you can't move. I suggest some kind of "reset" method, but... it's up to you. I had to reload.

 

[Butter]

Started playing this again after watching Fluent's LP. This is probably beyond the scope of what you're willing to patch into the game, but it would be cool if you could queue up construction and research jobs, like how Starcraft lets you queue up drones and zerglings. It sucks when you finish a research, go out to set up a pump, come back, and you realize the research station has been sitting idle for days.


Edit: I just saw that new perks were added to the game. That's pretty cool. It seems like Torque Master is broken though. I took it while I was driving (don't know if that's relevant) and the rover power shot up to full really fast and stayed there while I was driving. I thought it would simply reduce the rate of power drain, but it seems like I'm forever at max now.


Edit: I found a bug. When talking to Karl about Aiguo and Bai, his voice line kept repeating "What can I do for you?". The text was updating properly.

 

[MF]

I designed the game with restricting certain activities to being at the Outpost in mind. If you don't have enough reasons to be there, some mechanics would become irrelevant. Queueing up construction would still be restricted by materials, but queueing up all available research takes away a meaningful decision from the player and replaces it with deciding in which order to click everything. Which is still important, but has less weight. I realize it seems like it would be a good QoL feature and I have thought about it, but I don't think it would make the game better.

I'm doing queues in the Jovian System because it makes more sense in that game. You basically take your base with you, after all.

Torque Master tends to reduce power consumption enough to be less than the trickle charge if you've done the relevant research, but 'really fast' sounds like there's a synergy I haven't anticipated. I'll look into it.

Thanks, looks like a couple of missing audio files. Will fix.

Edit: I'm skimming the LP you mentioned right now. Really interesting. I really need to make the tutorial even less obtrusive.

 

[Technomancer]

MF do you know if Awareness buffs scale past 10? Like I have 10, another point from coffee and another one from scanner. So when I for example search rocks, does 12 perception make faster?

 

[MF]

Situational buffs are not capped, so yes.

 

[Technomancer]

And what about construction speed? 11 Awa affects it too? Coz I don't see it in the formula I found online.

(1/((8640*Difficulty)/constructionmodifier * (construction skill +1) * workmodifier)) percentage per second.

I assume Awareness directly affect work modifier?

 

[MF]

No. Awareness does nothing there, not directly.

The construction modifier is a global construction value derived from companions tasked to construction based on their skill, for example (*1.2 for Jade and Val and *2 for Daxia, cumulative). The workmodifier is just the construction skill multiplied by a certain value (2 by default but based on buffs and debuffs) if you selected the PC to actively work on it in the timelapse panel.

There is also a surgefactor for if you hack the generator and boost the system (in this case construction), which is *1.5

 

[Technomancer]

Awareness does nothing there, not directly.

Wdym? Game says Awareness gives "boost to exploration, logistics and construction." What exactly this boost does?