Quest 188 - Into the Fray expense

Taravangian

I'm a new player to Starmourn and I just thought this quest maybe needed to brought to administrator attention.

I have heard from some experienced players that they still haven't approached that quest because of the expense associated with it and at level 10, it's more than I could get.

I had one failed attempt which cost me my astromech, and all my repairkits when I ran out of ammo.  At this point, I had about 800 marks, which was only enough for one astromech, and ammo.

I attempted it again despite the fact that my hull was only at 80%, which was unwise. I could have done a lot of steps of this better. I used strategies to only engage one ship at a time, but eventually enough shots bypassed my shield to shoot me down. I've now lost all of my supplies on my ship and I'm completely out of marks from the second attempt.

It takes me about an hour to hunt enough stuff to drop enough junk to earn 50 marks. I estimate it will cost me at least 1500 marks to fully supply for this quest so at my current rate that's about 30 hours of hunting to be able to afford this quest. I'm sure as I level up I'll earn marks faster, so maybe I could do this level 10 quest by the time I'm level 20.

My point is only this, This quest is -extremely- punishing if you make a mistake that then just compounds on itself due to lack of resources. I know two other people at the same level struggling to complete the quest as well due to the cost. Would it be possible to re-evaluate the quest either giving discounted rates for materials for that quest (like making a temporary station within the space of the quest that sells you supplies that then disappear once the quest ends) or making it so that deaths in the quest return your ship to your pre-quest status so you can try again without losing all your marks?

I'm sure there are lots of people that one shot this quest, but when experienced and new players are both facing cost prohibitiveness on a level 10 quest I think there is a problem.

Kax

Somehow I missed the important point that weapons have an optimal range at which they do more damage. If I'd known that when I did the quest I probably could have saved a ton of repair kits and kinetic batteries. To a lesser extent it would also have helped to know that you can set weapons to autofire...

That said, that quest is the first serious ship battling you do (unless you start doing incursions right away) and requiring people to maneuver to maintain optimal distance is probably too much at this point in the game. 

Rkansas

Yeah, I got creamed the first go around on this quest and took me almost three days i think to get enough marks to try again. I knew about autofire, I just forgot to turn it on, but I didn't know about the optimal range. I either had them too close or too far away. I found that if you can pretty much have them in the center between the beginning of the green cone and the end of the array of the green cone, you are at the correct distance to do some decent damage.

I didn't start being able to make decent marks till almost lvl 15 and I was, I think around lvl 12 when i finally finished that quest.

Slander

I've done it three or four times now. First time I absolutely got slaughtered and disheartened. After the first completion, though, I haven't had trouble. Maybe make so if you get blown up your ship comes back with an astromech, repair kits and ammo.

Tecton

Definitely on our radar! We're going to boost up the marks before this point and look at perhaps some ways to save on restocking.

Soksivatera

Quick question, @Taravangian , how many marks did you have prior to purchasing the needed supplies (ammo, astromech, repair kits) for the quest? Just so we can get a general feel for how much people have earned prior to attempting the level 10 quest.

I did the quest last night right after I hit level 10 and I had a little over 3k marks. I bought 1 astromech, 40 repair kits, and enough ammo to round the costs out to about 1500. So even if I failed, I would have had enough to at least do a full take two.

Ziazapojira

@Tecton why not just have this quest reward your personal ship? That way this quest can be a loaner by an npc who bitches at you for using up supplies, instead of the character having to out of pocket them.

Xeorm

To add my experience, I went in last night and used 3 batteries and ~20 repair kits. That comes out to ~750 marks in costs. By this time I'd already experimented with incursions and so had some experience with ship combat. For comparison by that point I had maybe 4000 marks. Fairly large comparative cost.

As suggestions, perhaps have a loaner ship of sorts so the player can experiment without losing money? And perhaps offer a refresher course at the start if the player wants it. By now it's been a good number of hours since they did the first tutorial. A ship that moves some and potentially messages about getting optimum firing shots would go a long way in smoothing out that learning curve.

Taravangian

@Soksivatera I had about 800 marks, however I and a few others missed out on 500 marks from a previous bugged story quest, and I had died a few  times which cost me around 600 marks. I later died and it said it didn't cost until level 11, so I don't know if it was a bug that I was being charged for clones before that or if it was recently changes. If that hadn't happened, I'd have about 2k marks.

Eukelade

The quest immediately preceding Into the Fray has been given a substantial boost to its marks reward. There is also a new NPC stationed in the faction docking bays eager to share a helpful document full of tips and tricks with those looking to fly into battle.

Indi

For the people that have done this quest, do you recommend practicing on some incursions first?
I can start this quest any time but I'm low on marks and not in any particular hurry.