Don't understand SPAZ at all

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
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Cornwall
Quick thread because I'm totally not getting this game and want to give it a fair chance before giving up on it. I've been playing about five hours and basically didn't get into it at all. Which is odd, because I *love* EVNova.

I've played EVNova a lot and was expecting it to be something like that. In that game, you work really hard to get new ships and it's almost like a game over if you lose your ship.

SPAZ seems to be more like C&C, only I'm limited to 3 units at this time, and I can fly one of them (badly).

All the battles, including the tutorial, have so far involved me spamming "build ship" and sending an endless stream of over-matched future-space-junk on suicide runs against superior enemy fleets.

Playing this way it doesn't appear that you can "lose" very often, but you end up spending endless amounts of the games currency to "win" battles without any strategy whatsoever. Thankfully the enemy can't send for reinforcements (unlike C&C).

I'm just finding the whole thing very silly and unrewarding. I get into a fight, spam "build ship" until everything dead or I'm out of money. Sadly the flight controls are awkward (seriously, mouse and keyboard to pilot a ship in a 2d shooter game is not used often, probably a good reason for that as it turns out!)

And I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be able to beat the zombie ships or not. There are some just after you leave the tutorial, but they could not be beaten even spamming the brand new ship type I'd received from the previous mission. They immobilise my ships and take them over, adding to their own numbers like the Borg.

Basically, if that's all the game is about, alternately build-spamming through fights and then mining for cash, I think I'll go back to FPS :p
 
I don't remember the game requiring that much resource gathering. I did do plenty of the easier side missions if i was getting a bit low and I generally used the largest of my vessels so it didnt matter a great deal if my smaller craft were suiciding as they cost less. Saying that, I only seemed to lose a lot of resources on the harder missions, I generally managed to atleast break even

From what I remember you could jettison all the crew members if there were too many zombies onboard and it was about to be taken over. This would stop your ship adding to one of their number. I dont recall any zombie ships until much later in the game. Maybe that was changed in a later patch?

Maybe you should try changing your ship builds and find more effective ones? This game is also one of the few where it doesnt pay to be a jack of all trades on the levelling screen. It works better if you specialise.
 
OP, I feel the same way as you. I bought the game blind because it looked like just my kind of game, but I was left quite bitterly disappointed. Like yourself, I find it's just a game of spam-the-ship against superior enemy fleets. Repetitive and boring, with way too much emphasis on combat.
 
I didn't have that issue when I played it, the zombie ships where all located in the inner section which you go to later on in the story. The universe is randomly generated each time you start a new game so maybe you just got unlucky with it's layout.

The game is an old school space shooter so there's not much else to it, you need to get good at flying ships as you can do a lot better job than the AI. Each size of ship has a best one depending on how you fly them, make sure to upgrade all the bits as well. Hunt out areas to try to find all the upgrade blueprints. Some of the upgrades are very nice like the double/triple turret mod and the particle cannon.

I think for the ships I was using these:
tiny: dart & gyro
small: boomerang & colt
medium: hound & saucer
large: crawler & right hook
huge: hammerhead & sunspot

To start with I was giving the AI the largest ship availible to act as a bullet magnet, then flying around in something maneuverable like the saucer ones, you can then pick off the highest threat ships first.
 
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Must admit my initial enthusiasm for this "retro" style game has tailed off. The destination I've got to aim for (I think it's the third mission I was given, soon after I started playing) is buried behind level 20+ gateways which eat me for breakfast. And the upgrading process is painfully slow.

That hasn't stopped me wasting 8+ hours while half watching Xmas TV trying to get somewhere, but I think I ran out of patience. With only one halfway decent ship I'm getting nowhere slowly. I keep feeling I'm missing a trick, but I suspect I just generated a rubbish universe and the game engine's given me an almost impossible target. I should start again, but I'm stubborn. :->

The demo originally put me off, but for the money I paid (about £1.75?) I'm not complaining.
 
Just bought this as it was on offer at steam for £2.80. Yet to give it a proper go so far but it seems fun, I would imagine its a bit of a grind towards the later levels. I was hoping for a higher level of customisation of the ships really but for 2.80 I cant complain.
 
Since you necro'd my thread I'll just add that the game is a huge grind. There's so little story, and the game is so repetitive, I lost the will to complete it somewhere around level 30.

Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind!
 
FoxEye said:
Since you necro'd my thread I'll just add that the game is a huge grind. There's so little story, and the game is so repetitive, I lost the will to complete it somewhere around level 30.

Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind!
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Sorry id rather necro a thread than start another one. I did get the impression it would be a bit of a grind :(
 
Andrew_McP said:
Must admit my initial enthusiasm for this "retro" style game has tailed off. The destination I've got to aim for (I think it's the third mission I was given, soon after I started playing) is buried behind level 20+ gateways which eat me for breakfast. And the upgrading process is painfully slow.

That hasn't stopped me wasting 8+ hours while half watching Xmas TV trying to get somewhere, but I think I ran out of patience. With only one halfway decent ship I'm getting nowhere slowly. I keep feeling I'm missing a trick, but I suspect I just generated a rubbish universe and the game engine's given me an almost impossible target. I should start again, but I'm stubborn. :->

The demo originally put me off, but for the money I paid (about £1.75?) I'm not complaining.
Click to expand...

Got to the level 36 galaxies and then realised that the generator hadn't created ANY level 37,38,39, or level 40 galaxies. Getting bored of all the grinding now and now even the lower level galaxies have PACs which are broken and render most of the weapons useless.

Can't complain too much since I paid peanuts for it though.
 
Lots of people seem to love this game, I found it a boring grind-fest with long periods of dull easy combat followed by a crazy difficulty spike. I'd just suggest moving on to a different game and put it down to different tastes.
 
Borrish said:
Can't complain too much since I paid peanuts for it though.
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I must admit that after realising you have to sacrifice ships to proceed I managed to get further with this game. A lot further, actually... which I'm half ashamed of. It is very grindy, and yet it scratches some kind of gaming itch, or I wouldn't still be playing.

Overall, it's great value for money. It's just not worth a lot of money. :-)
 
Andrew_McP said:
I must admit that after realising you have to sacrifice ships to proceed I managed to get further with this game. A lot further, actually... which I'm half ashamed of. It is very grindy, and yet it scratches some kind of gaming itch, or I wouldn't still be playing.

Overall, it's great value for money. It's just not worth a lot of money. :-)
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I don't mind sacrificing ships but the entire game is just frustratingly based around grinding. I mean to tech up you have to just randomly travel around looking for a station that has the blue print you need. For the good parts repeat this three times. Even then you have to grind some more to get the reputation / rez to buy it and you then might have to grind for data to get the tech to use it.

I mean I'm at a stage now where I need PACs to get anywhere but I can't find the damn blueprint and I really can't be bothered to travel around 300 sectors looking for the part.
 
Borrish said:
Even then you have to grind some more to get the reputation / rez to buy it and you then might have to grind for data to get the tech to use it.
Click to expand...

You can also blow the station up to get the blueprints, much quicker and easier than grinding for rep/res.
 
Some blueprints don't show up until waaaaaaay after you could use them too. Like in my game, the third tier of lasers only showed up at level 40 ish, and I could have used them since level 25 or something (not exact numbers).
 
I like it, it's a bit grindy in places and there is a humungeous difficulty spike if you don't unlock the huge ships quick enough (and unlocking ships is quite random)
 
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