Hardship: Shipbreaker

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FlyingPenguin
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Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Hardship: Shipbreaker is my new Zen, time sink game (in the same way Minecraft, Mudrunner, Astroneer were).

Sit down with the intent of playing for an hour, and the next thing you know, 8 hours have gone by. I'm still a noob and working on easy ships, but it's still a gas. Looking forward to more complex challenges later.

While there's a timeclock with bonuses for early completion, don't let that bother you. You can ignore the clock. You can always come back next shift and pick up where you left off, or just ask for a new ship next shift if you get tired of working on that one. It's very relaxing to just figure out how to cut up the ship, without blowing up the reactor, or fuel tanks, or other volatiles, finding goodies you can keep.

You can be lazy and cut up big chunks with mixed materials, but then you only get credits for the material that the recycler wants (if you throw a panel with aluminum and carbon fiber in the furnace, then you only get credit for the aluminum). Salvaging equipment like the engine and fuel tanks for used parts pays you more than just tossing them in the furnace as scrap metal. You can be as nitpicky as you want. You want to maximize your income, rip the lighting strips and control panels off for used parts before throwing the hull plates into the furnace.

Then there's the problem of touching off a fuel tank with a careless cut, or failing to depressurize a compartment, or any number of hazards.

Early access, but the game is very stable at this point after a year. Very positive reviews on Steam.

"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Review: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/0 ... ly-access/

Just keep in mind this review dates from six months ago. They have added a lot since then. New ships, demolition explosives, lot's of quality of life improvements.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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The default play mode has you do a 15 minute shift, and then you have to come back inside to start another shift. I found that annoying as others have, so they added an "open shift" mode with no shift time limit, and with an option have the normal consumable oxygen, or infinite supply. I kept the oxygen use, but opted for no time limit on shifts. Much more relaxing game that way.... until something goes BOOM!
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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Okay, now that I'm more comfortable with the game, I'm going back to the old profile where I'm working in 15 minute shifts. The shifts were aggravating when I was learning, but now that I know what I'm doing they're challenging, trying to knock off everything on the work order before the shift is over.

Before I switched I just started getting the really big Javelin class ships. They're a maze inside. They require demolition charges to break some sections apart.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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Wanted to do a bit of a gameplay video, but I got careless. I was working on a hard difficulty Mackerel class ship, stuffed full of volatile cargo, and I got careless with sparks from the cutting tool. It go boom. I survived that, but with low health, and then I overheated my cutting tool and set myself on fire. Not a good shift. :)

However it does give you a nice feel for the graphics and physics. When things go boom, they break into pieces. Each of those pieces is still wreckage that can be salvaged, (although a destroyed engine is not worth as much for scrap as the intact engine).

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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by Losbot »

Picked it up. Pretty neat. Ran into a bug though where I'm starting the shift with no fuel. I have quit and gone back in and it still has zero fuel.
Very weird.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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Haven't seen that one yet. Got locked up in the keybind menu once. Some items that I know are nanocarbon (like pipes) that should go to the processor sometimes get tagged as metal for the furnace. Minor stuff like that.

I'm trying to figure out how the hell to remove the massive fuel tank in the freighter version of the Javelin without blowing it all to kingdom come, and without watching a walkthru. I almost had all the framework cut out from around it and accidentally punctured an adjacent compartment that I forgot to depressurize. BOOM!
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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LOL. I've watched that video I posted a few times. That explosion was interesting. You usually don't survive that big a boom when you're that close, and it did leave me with just a few health points. I think maybe being halfway in the airlock protected me a bit. Notice that was where I immediately ran to when things started cooking off in the back. I was trying to get out of the ship, but then I stopped to watch the fireworks, thinking that after the fuel and engine blew, it was all over anyway.

After analyzing it, I think I figured the order of events, and it's a good demonstration of how one explosion can trigger a cascade of secondary explosions in the game. Great physics! I was going to remove a deck plate to get some of those dangerous canisters out of there. I should have moved the canisters off the front pallet before cutting, but I'm usually careful with sparks. You have to watch the direction of your sparks, which you can control, and also the laser bouncing off bare metal and hitting something explosive is possible I think.

Sparks set off the coolant canister on the pallet (aqua marine color with a snowflake icon on the side). Usually not a big deal: a little damage and you can freeze to death if you're unlucky and you don't bought the extra suit insulation. However the coolant tank must have tossed some shrapnel at an electrical panel behind me - the door panel. It's common for explosions to cause panels to short out, and you can see I got zapped by all the electrical arcs. A little more health lost, and suit damage.

I'm guessing, but I think it's a pretty good bet, that the electrical discharge set off a fuel line in the wall behind me (I hadn't yet turned off the fuel valves) and that may have set off a fuel tank in the back by the engine, which probably damaged the engine. I can definitely hear the engine cooking off, which it will do if you damage it, or try to remove it, without first purging the fuel lines (I hadn't yet). When an engine cooks off, it shoot plasma jets in 2 or 3 directions, and usually busts the engine out of it's mounts and sometimes blows it up.

I guess one of those plasma jets, or the engine exploding, damaged the nuclear reactor, which in that ship was located in the ceiling right above and in front of the engine. That big white flash and major explosion at the end was definitely the reactor going critical.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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Okay. Having too much fun now. I tried freeplay mode, which just lets you play in a sandbox mode. Good for examining a new type of ship and trying to figure out the best method to take it apart.

So I was working on a HUGE Javelin tanker. And decided that I wanted to see if I could use the fuel tanks to maximize damage. I removed two of the tanks from the structure and towed them between the rear ion drive ring and the hull - and adjacent to the reactor and engines. Planted some demo mines on all the fuel tanks, and watched them blow.

Then what was left of the rear of the ship got sucked into the maw of the processor and jammed on the ion ring, so some more mines and instantly fixed the clog. ROTO ROOTER!

NOT the recommended way to take apart a ship as this wastes massive amount of material, but lot's of fun. The demo mines are a blast.

There's 7 minutes of me moving fuel tanks into position and planting the demo mines. If you want to cut to the chase, skip ahead to the 7:00 time stamp and watch the fireworks.

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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Working on my level 7 ticket. Scrapped my first Gecko. Damn those ships are hard. Harder than the Javelin, even though nowhere as big. There's just a lot of complexity to the hull, and the separated sections are large and ungainly. The bigger reactor is a bitch. Lot's of stuff to cut away to clear a path for it. Much more complicated process to disconnect everything. You need to disconnect the coolant line to remove it, and as soon as you do, it starts counting down to a meltdown. I figured it all out myself except the reactor removal procedure. Kept blowing things up so I finally watched a video on how to do it.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by Losbot »

I'm at level 6, half way to level 7.
Definitely have blown myself up a few times now. LOL
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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The hard level Geckos with their big reactors are challenging. My technique is: shut down fuel system (right now there's no real penalty to buying a key if you can't find one) -> pull thrusters -> clear a path downward for the reactor -> pull fuses (skipable, but you risk an electrical cascade when you pull the power generator or the reactor) -> pull generator -> cut fuel lines under reactor (very easy to accidentally damage a coolant line when you do this) -> pull the coolant canisters out of the ECU to drain the coolant lines -> cut the coolant lines under the reactor -> tether the reactor to the barge (greatly helps to pull it out straight or mayhem ensues).
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by FlyingPenguin »

New update with a lot of fixes, and a warning that progression will get reset with the next upgrade:
The next update (0.4.0) will include Act 1 of the Story, as well as completely overhauled Certification and Work Order systems.These changes will come with a complete Progression reset! Visit the Steam Discussions for more info.
Discover the 0.3.1 Update!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 8786037080
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

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Details from the discussion page. Looks like if you want, you can stay on the 0.3.1 version if you want, to avoid the reset for now:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1161580/ ... 752656116/
An important part of this update (and something that we knew might happen at some point in Early Access) is a full progression reset.

Why do we need to reset progression?

There are two big reasons:

The Campaign is tied directly to progression, and we’ve had to completely rebalance significant parts of the game (such as when Upgrades and Ships get unlocked)
Progression systems (Certification & Work Orders) are getting a complete overhaul to be simpler and clearer

We’ve avoided progression resets up until this point, but so much of the core game is changing that old save files simply won’t be valid. This is an unfortunate pain point that many Early Access games encounter.

We completely understand how frustrating it feels to lose your progress in the game, but we hope that revisiting that progress within the context of the new story is fun and rewarding.

What if I don’t want to lose my progression?

Starting when 0.4.0 goes live, we’ll be adding a Steam branch of the 0.3.1 version of the game. Using the password CutAboveTheRest will give you access to that branch. There you can continue to play the game as it is today, or switch back to the main branch at any time.
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Re: Hardship: Shipbreaker

Post by Genom »

Looks fun. I'll give it a shot
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