Octopus Overlords

I'm still tootling around in my initial playthrough. I keep finding new side projects that I want to take care of before pulling the trigger on NG+.

For example, I just finished what should be the final refit of my Razorleaf. It's fast, manoeuvrable, has terrifying firepower and can jump from one end of the Settled Systems to the other without stopping for refuelling:

Here's what's in the new update that is live now, in case you're curious:

Starfield 1.7.36 Update - Fixes and Improvements
General

FOV: Sliders are now available in Settings that allow players using first person or third person to adjust their FOV.

Performance and Stability

[PC ONLY] Improved stability for Intel Arc GPUs.
Various additional stability and performance improvements.

Quest

Echoes of the Past: Addressed an issue where tunneling creatures could pick a location that would prevent progression

sigh, there are a few side-quests that need some support - would have liked to have seen more than 1 listed.

Dear Bethesda: Save these up and release them as an actual patch, rather than three-item updates.

Sincerely,

Anyone who plays Starfield with a mod to fix your problems.

As long as they don't stop companions from running through a door when I open it and continue running until they hit a wall. Also, the way they blink in and out of existence fits the multiverse theme of the game.

Oddly, just like Cyberpunk 2077, I managed to play through the entire game without running into any significant glitches. Just lucky I guess.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:33 pm Oddly, just like Cyberpunk 2077, I managed to play through the entire game without running into any significant glitches. Just lucky I guess.

With Bethesda games, it's rarely significant glitches. It's usually a thousand minor bugs, interface issues, and "Bethesda jank" - yes, it's actually got a name (general weirdness, physics glitches, NPCs walking into walls, characters appearing without heads, heads appearing without characters, weird animation problems, that sort of thing.)

The jankiest thing I've run into is that if I take Andreja along as my active companion, she fails to spawn in about have the time when I load into the game. It seems to be a known companion bug, but for some reason it only happens with her, but not with Sarah.

I guess the bug where the crews for random NPC ships stop spawning could also be considered on the janky side as well. It's a mixed bag, though, since it means no stealing ships on the ground, except for Starborn ships of course.

Just from memory:

Vasco always spawned halfway through my deck.
Sara often floated out through the wall and off of the ship.
I had one NPC that was permanently hanging out on my ship and wouldn't leave, despite the quest associated with her being finished.
Sara got stuck in 'radio voice' mode, with whatever filter they use for voice comms being active in face-to-face conversations.
Environmental protection effectively didn't exist (it drained instantly.)
NPCs kept shooting at each other through bulletproof windows.
I was attacked (and repeatedly hit) through a wall by an enemy inside a building.
Enemies embedding themselves in ceilings.
I fell through the deck of my ship and ended up on a different deck.
A couple of NPCs vibrated during conversations.
Ship techs charged me for repairs, but didn't perform said repairs.

And then there's the generic jank (just weird microbugs, physics oddities, design decisions that apparently were never really thought through - like every NPC staring at you with bug-eyes if you were anywhere near them, or features being implemented incorrectly, like the sharpening that caused all textures to be unnecessarily blurry.)

Is it possible to be a loner and not having any crews at all?

If it is buggy like that maybe being a loner is a better choice?

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:53 pm...characters appearing without heads...

Sarah did this to me.

Brian wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:40 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:53 pm...characters appearing without heads...

Sarah did this to me.

Check your inventory. I've read that if your relationship with Sarah is strong enough she will give you head.

Brian wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:40 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:53 pm...characters appearing without heads...

Sarah did this to me.

At least she wasn't walking around with floating eyeballs and teeth.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 12:04 pm

Brian wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:40 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Oct 09, 2023 10:53 pm...characters appearing without heads...

Sarah did this to me.

At least she wasn't walking around with floating eyeballs and teeth.

I'm still chuckling at the last part.

Sit-n-Spin Corpse: "If you're wondering if the killing gets any easier, the answer's yes."

Unagi wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 4:09 pm Has anyone else noticed some of the companions' comments with 'missed idioms'... like:

"Waste not, need not"
or
"Any adventure you can take off from..."

At least a couple of others I heard before I thought to pay attention.

"ahhh, the spoils of victory..."

These all sound like things that Vladimir might say.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 9:05 am These all sound like things that Vladimir might say.

It's all Andreja (in this case)

Ah, I should have clued in to "companion"...

Andreja did not find my little joke funny.
(spoiler = early Andreja lore)

Okay, this is getting weird.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 10:25 pm Okay, this is getting weird.

It gets weirder when you realize that he doesn't have a reflection.

It gets really weird when you realize that nobody on New Atlantis does.

Space vampires.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 10:30 pm It gets weirder when you realize that he doesn't have a reflection.

It gets really weird when you realize that nobody on New Atlantis does.

It would be cool if all of a sudden the hallucination started to fade away, and in its place, I was alone in a deserted hulk of a city with a dog at my side.

Starfield: The Line

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2023 10:25 pm Okay, this is getting weird.

For a while there was a specific security guard in New Atlantis that I always saw patrolling near SSNN with nothing but his skivvies and his rifle.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 10:43 am For a while there was a specific security guard in New Atlantis that I always saw patrolling near SSNN with nothing but his skivvies and his rifle.

Yeah, I have a guard in Akila who's walking around in her undies as well.

Did your guard eventually get dressed?

Libertarians weigh in on the Starfield universe.

A Bethesda role-playing game is best understood not as a linear series of pre-determined events with some player interaction but as a place, a territory, a country—or, given the political divides one encounters, countries. It tells not a single story, but a series of interlocked stories in the same sprawling setting; playing through one of these games is something like reading a massive volume of short stories set in the same universe.

All of this is true for Starfield, but even moreso. At heart, it's a game about the fragility and contingency of state power, competition between forms of government, and the unexpected ways that private, non-governmental power steps in to fill the gaps and voids left by state actors. And, too, it is a showcase for the influence of individuals—their quirks, choices, and tradeoffs, some of which prove more powerful than the systems in which they are embedded.

But Starfield doesn't slot everything into a simplistic political binary. There are always other forms of governance, or quasi-governance, hovering at the fringes as well, many of which are more loosely organized. Early in the game, the player encounters LIST, the League of Independent Settlers, a ragtag group of settlers who find even Freestar's political structure too overbearing. They've struck out on their own, but without security infrastructure, they've found themselves beset by attacks from lawless rogues. As a LIST farmer explains, "The promise is freedom. True freedom. If you can fend off all the spacers and pirates the settled systems can throw at you."

But even more than that, Starfield, like Bethesda's early games, simply insists that people are different—delightfully and terribly and bizarrely and amusingly different. And those infinite, irreducible differences are what ensure that any putatively comprehensive system of human organization or political control will have gaps and limitations. Whether it's a democratic government, a pirate clan, a settler collective, or a monied corporation, no one system can capture and organize it all. But Starfield, like all of Bethesda's RPGs, comes about as close as anything.

And dead bodies. Lots of dead bodies.

Amoli didn't seem all that impressed with Gerhard's Casual Friday attire.

After 299.9 hours (Steam time) I finally pulled the trigger on the MacGuffin and jumped to NG+ at level 105.



I'm going to miss that ship...

Apparently I still have a few hours of Starfielding left in me...

Max Peck wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 4:15 pm

Unagi wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 4:45 pm

That’s awesome!!!

It wouldn't be a real Bethesda game without some stuffed toy tableaus sitting around, waiting to be found.

Ha!
I totally saw that box too.

It looked like spin the bottle.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 4:41 pm I think some of the conditions / notifications are bugged. I've had the orange circle / black water drop icon for over a week now (real Earth time, not Mercury time) in the game.

(I know it's way late for you - but for anyone else, going forward...)

I've found a way to clear this bug in the game every time it's shown up for me (4 times now).

I go to the Lodge, and quit/save the game - restart/reload, and the condition warnings (orange circle/black water drop, etc) that were stuck are all cleared up.
I'm not sure it's specific to the Lodge, as once I discovered that fix I didn't try anywhere else.