Starfield - No Man's Bethesda
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Forcing the corpses of my fallen enemies into the coin slot of the Trade Authority terminal. We're gonna be rich!
I would maybe invest in a large blender and some sort of funnel.
Every ship I steal seems to have a blender! We are going to be millionaires (which, in this game, appears not that impressive).
I'm going to say I'm not a huge fan of the weapon / suit quality system.
They seem to have quality levels: [base] - conditioned - refined - ? (???). As you level up, you'll need to junk the old stuff you got because the old stuff will be unlikely to keep up (which is quite upsetting, as I got this totally awesome Orion which I guess is going to approach obsolete in not that long). Plus the welter of damage types. In fact, it seems Bethesda also wanted to have a Borderlands-style loot system. Personally, I think it would have done better without.
They seem to have quality levels: [base] - conditioned - refined - ? (???). As you level up, you'll need to junk the old stuff you got because the old stuff will be unlikely to keep up (which is quite upsetting, as I got this totally awesome Orion which I guess is going to approach obsolete in not that long). Plus the welter of damage types. In fact, it seems Bethesda also wanted to have a Borderlands-style loot system. Personally, I think it would have done better without.
Played a bit more, one positive and one negative.
At the start of the game you can pick traits and one of them is that you have parent, and they're just parents, haven't been killed by the big bad one or secretly evil or anything. Two ordinary people who are enjoying their retirement. You can bump into them at most major city where they're just taking vacation and once in awhile they can gift you stuff. It's a fun nice touch.
I also started dealing with the second major faction, freestar alliance. it's supposedly the equal of the first faction you encounter, which is located in this massive modern city and has multiple factory all over. But the second faction is literally just a couple of stone house in a desert, it's a cowboy town! They're major problem is wolf outside the city, for which they're main defence is a stone wall! It's incredibly pathetic, they feel like they're supposed to be the boondock town middle of nowhere, not the second major power. They barely have enough people to man the wall against wolf but are also somehow able to fight toe to toe with the other major power.
At the start of the game you can pick traits and one of them is that you have parent, and they're just parents, haven't been killed by the big bad one or secretly evil or anything. Two ordinary people who are enjoying their retirement. You can bump into them at most major city where they're just taking vacation and once in awhile they can gift you stuff. It's a fun nice touch.
I also started dealing with the second major faction, freestar alliance. it's supposedly the equal of the first faction you encounter, which is located in this massive modern city and has multiple factory all over. But the second faction is literally just a couple of stone house in a desert, it's a cowboy town! They're major problem is wolf outside the city, for which they're main defence is a stone wall! It's incredibly pathetic, they feel like they're supposed to be the boondock town middle of nowhere, not the second major power. They barely have enough people to man the wall against wolf but are also somehow able to fight toe to toe with the other major power.
Yes - after you've experienced New Atlantis and Akila, it seems odd how the Freestar Collective could ever stand up to the UC.
I think this was a slightly poor design choice on the part of the developers: they wanted to create this "cowboy" vibe for the FC without thinking that hard about how it looked. However, you'll later find out that the FC have more impressive cities and facilities than Akila.
I'm also not sure that they are really "equals". The histories suggest that the UC conducted the war purely with its military where the FC used both military and citizen militia with guerrilla tactics, and that the UC was forced to sue for peace because the war was so unpopular with its people. Thus you could sort of imagine that the UC and FC in terms of strength are a little like the Union and Confederacy in the US Civil War: the UC possibly is a lot more powerful (economy, population, etc.) overall, but cannot convert that to clear military advantage and so the FC is powerful enough to resist effectively.
Well the first war was UC crushing the alliance, but the second war the alliance somehow managed to destroy most of the UC fleet. Even assuming they used civilian ship, it feel like the UC could have rebuild its fleets while the alliance would have been licking their wound. It's true that other alliance town are more impressive, but that just double down on the boneheaded decision to make Atila the capital, maybe if its was Neon I could have bought it.
I think another issue is that the game tries to pretend that the UC is some sort of overbearing dictator state that people are fleeing to the alliance in order to be free, but nothing about the UC actually feel like it, New Atlantis is a free and prosperous town, while Neon is the totalitarian hellhole. There's even a couple of former UC citizen who live in Neon slum who are getting harassed by corrupt cop and you can ask them why they don't just go back to UC space and they say they went to Neon to get away from "being under the UC boot" and I'm just wondering why they would ever choose that.
I think the game is modelling futuristic societies of technocratic welfare capitalist (UC) versus libertarian (FC), but trying not to load them as good or bad.
It is evident all is not well in UC. Firstly, citizenship is restricted, "Starship Troopers" style, in return for public service. That's a hard comparison to miss. New Atlantis looks shiny, but has urban slums full of graffiti indicating police brutality. (Listening to conversations in New Atlantis will reveal a mission where you have to investigate a power anomaly - this will send you to one of these blocks, which are otherwise very easy to miss, shut away.) One can also note that the UC is kind of ruthless: the dodgy xenowarfare research, aggression towards the FC. You'll also find that they have a rather nasty secret hiding in one of their basements... This does not necessarily gel well with the fact that when you meet their leadership, they seem quite reasonable and well-intentioned. Although I suppose you can make the argument that even a more benign leadership are stuck with the system they inherited.
Interestingly, you'll come across people who also have harsh words to say about the leadership of the FC: that they are basically a bunch of self-interested twerps enriching themselves at the cost of their people: and indeed, some of them don't exactly seem very ethical. Elias Cartwright is a sort of "old money" snob, who wants traditional families to continue dominating Akila. Bayu appears to be little more than the top mob boss in an utterly corrupt city. Ron Hope... I haven't come across that much of him, but he seemed more interested in his company making money than anything else.
I think the game is telling us that it sucks to be poor no matter where you are. The UC poor are oppressed and denied even the vote. The FC poor vary depending on the local governance: the Akila poor live in shacks in the mud, begging the rich for hand-outs. The Neon poor are all exploited and victimised by what is essentially a corrupt state where the ruler is just the criminal with the biggest gang. Not sure I've been to a city in their other major system, but I'm sure it's just as shit.
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It just doesn't really work when life in UC seems to be just as good if not better than anywhere else. Yeah there's slum in new Atlantis, but there everywhere else and New Atlantis one seems far better than Atila (small brick shed) or Neon (gang infested container or literal hole in wall). Citizenship being restricted isn't a crazy idea either, most nations do it with some visa/permanent residence/citizenship system, so if that's the totalitarian example its pretty weak. And its ultimately restricted because of all the perk they bring (discount on service and some sort of universal income), neither of which seem available to alliance citizen. People complaining about their country leadership is pretty normal, I think the only countries in the world where leader aren't routinely openly criticized are crushing dictatorship or populist government gaining popularity by oppressing minority, beside Neon leader is far worse than anything UC has. So it's just weird that anyone would leave the UC for FC.
Another "they didn't put much effort into this" example, eventually you encounter a new faction who has a completely different technology than regular human, from this point on you can randomly find they on planet when they land their ship. If you kill them all, their ship just stay on the planet, and yet there's nothing you can do with those abandon ship. The scene after you encounter them, everyone in constellation is just raving about the ship you just randomly saw in space, yet here's a fully functioning ship and no one gives a crap.
Ag3ma is talking about how citizenship is handled in Starship Troopers, it’s less about restricting granting citizenship to an immigrant and more that it denies citizenship to the people born and raised on its soil until they complete some form of service to the State.
What’s that expression again? No taxation without representation?
You say that now, but I've just bought more ship guns. UC is going down, just as soon as the rest of Constellation start talking to me again.
I'm not sure if that's how it work in UC, I thought it was just a path to citizenship for non current resident. Even if it isn't, its not like non citizen are really discriminated against, at the very least there's no sign of it in the city and plenty of people mention getting their citizenship trough other non military method. It just seem like being a non citizen in UC is much better than being a citizen anywhere in the alliance.
You are right that you don't see the UC police brutalising the poor. But the graffiti the poor put up suggests they do (or did until relatively recently).
It seems likely to me that the poor in the UC don't have many options. The path to citizenship, for instance, depends on the government having posts to fill, and they've got plenty fewer posts than people. The FC, however, offers much more opportunities for advancement - even if that is sink or swim, some would prefer it to treading water.
A parallel might be the emigration from the UK in the colonial era. The UK was richer than any of its colonies overall, but for the poor, there was nothing but drudgery and poverty. Emigration to colonies held out possibilities for people to make something more of themselves, or at least to be poor and free rather than poor and a wage slave making money for someone else's farm/factory. The same could apply to the American frontier - people left relatively settled areas and took on lots of risk to get away, or make it big. Part of this is the "grass is always greener" effect. People think there's a world of opportunity out there to make it, but the reality is much harsher than they imagined.
