Basically I haven’t played this game in like forever, I remember I touched it twice while it was free to play years ago, I remember liking the idea of going through corridors just to find my ship and how realistic it was, I like the scale of it.
However it might be cause of my ADHD but I don’t like when games have like a hundred things you have to grind, my favorite thing to do was just delivering packages for credits, how much has it changed since like 2022 or 2023.
Just a few things I haven’t seen mentioned yet. They’ve been focusing on bug fixes this year, it’s not bug free, but compared to years ago hauling is in a far better state.
- Server Meshing - I can’t remember the last time I saw a 30k (server crash). They’ve been replaced by a “Server Error” message that appears for a brief moment. The game will appear to be in a “paused” state for everyone for about a minute, but then it will start working again. Even then, I haven’t seen a server error in a while because we now have server meshing (to the point where you won’t even tell that you’re being passed from one server to another). You can actually stand on one edge of the border between servers, see players on the other side (even shoot them). Basically, every time you load into the game, you’re entering a “shard” with up to 600 players where each main area around different planetary systems is run by at least one server.
- Crash Recovery - Even if your game crashes while you’re in the middle of hauling. Just load the game back up within a few minutes and the game will put you right back on your ship with all of your cargo intact. Well, hopefully intact. Your character stays in-game, and if you were under attack or your ship had cruise control while you were heading in the direction of the ground, you might be dead in those cases.
- Cargo Missions (and reputation) you can now take on cargo hauling missions. No need to risk your own aUEC (unless you want to, as it’s still an option).
- Skipping the grind - Fly out to any outpost and find a big abandoned ship (that’s not Soft/Hard deathed). Shoot open the ramp, go to the pilot seat, unlock the ship and fly away with it. Just be sure to store it at your home hangar location at the end of the day and you can keep on using it from one game session to the next (note: I haven’t tested this out in a while, but it should still work).
- Inventory is localized and only accessible at inventory kiosks, or at your freight elevator in your hangar. For cargo hauling you’ll be using those freight elevators a lot.
If you like just doing cargo delivery then you’ll still really enjoy the game. The grinding is just if you want to buy another ship or something, but even then it isn’t like you need to grind 100 different things, you just pick a profession you want to grind and keep doing that. If you get bored of it you can always choose another path like salvage, mining etc etc… You don’t have to grind anything you don’t want to unless you want money.
As far as how much has changed, a lot has, there are 3 star systems now!
I remember I was trying to get to a large city, and I did then I stopped playing though that was years ago, but yeah I love cargo delivery. and a chill podcast game I guess, Has the performance improved at all?
Yes and no lol the servers will more than likely suffer as they always do with free fly events, but their server meshing tech is implemented at least in it’s first iteration so that has made things generally better. I haven’t played in a couple of months so it could have gotten better since, but even when I was playing it wasn’t really awful.
I remember the performance was fine on my i7-10700/rx6700xt. I know what the updates are about and I’m not here to complain or “shit” on the game since what I liked about it was just one simple thing I enjoyed doing, I guess I’ll just look for the patch notes and see what changed in like 2 or 3 years.
To name few of the changes:
- Already mentioned 3 systems (with manual flight through wormholes between them).
- Player controlled capital ships are a thing.
- Multiple new activities:
- Hathor sites (reactivate old orbital laser, open a cave complex on a planet for mining).
- ASD facilities (investigate huge underground complex swarmed with enemies, very atmospheric).
- Multi system cargo hauling.
- Space patrol missions (fly between 3 point of interest, you can end up fighting, scanning or just making sure nothing wrong is going on).
- Physical cargo (un)loading.
- Animals exist!
- Many new ships to play around with.
- Performance is mostly better - not to a point of a finished game but it improved quite a lot.
There’s more, obviously, but that’s some of the things that came to mind.
Well, you’re in luck! Another free-fly just started and will be available until Dec. 3rd, I believe. Perfect time to try again.
Small package deliveries were temporarily removed due to technical reasons (incompatibility with reworked server architecture). They might have been restored with this week’s patch though I’m not sure as I haven’t checked on that yet.
There’s a smaller alternative about moving packages in a single space station but that’s a bit less interesting than being sent to different locations. Other than that, there are cargo missions - they come in different sizes and volumes so perhaps they could fit your play style?
Ah I see, you are from the other thread as well. I didn’t know there was a Free fly, I’ll give this a go.
Yeah I just like imagining myself being a Delivery guy in space, shoving my cargo on my spaceship and stuff.
Yup, that’s me! Also, I forgot to mention in my original comment but this free-fly coincides with Intergalactic Aerospace Expo, in-universe space ship expo. This means you can rent and try A LOT of ships, completely for free. Available ships change every two days with all of them returning during the finale (Nov. 30th - Dec. 3rd).
Good luck and have fun!
This game has 0 grinding lmao. You just do stuff or do what you want to do.
