Ostranauts Complete Beginner's Guide - Episode 1 - Character Creation (build .13)

[@xfueganx]

Oh my god - Finally someone who plays Ostranauts makes a solid and reasonably divided Beginners Guide. I don't even care if you're really a pro at the game - as long as there's a decent explanation of the mechanics. I've had the game for ages, but never really started playing because of the high barrier to entry. Thanks for that!

[@mochad]

I appreciate the encouragement. I've got to say, Ostranauts has been a different challenge for me. I'm used to doing "play-through tutorials," where you can kind of follow along with your own game, if you choose. Episodes 5 and 6 proved very difficult (and frankly, a little wanting--not my best work). I've decided going forward, I'm not going to try to keep the character "play-through" consistent like I have with other stuff. Episode 7 will probably be about starting to expand your ship. I'm creating a new playthrough to show that, so it won't be the "when we left off last time, we were about to...." style.

[@gerritvalkering1068]

So, worth mentioning on the money At the gig kiosks at the starting station, there seems to always be one courier job that send you from one of the areas to the kiosk at another. It's not a ton of money all at once, and it's a bit boring, but it does remove the need to have the 5k immediately after character creation. If you minmax the clicks, you can get platinum rewards which are actually quite the cash

[@markschlageter3976]

Great video. I started my first character and was fumbling around. Thus has been super helpful. Looking forward to the next videos

[@Seve82]

Just got the game and boy does this tutorial series come in handy. Thx fer makin it!

[@johnwicks4936]

Thanks for doing this. I’ve waited on picking this game up because it seemed very confusing to get started in. You’ve made it all make sense now and I’m enjoying the series.

[@mochad]

That's great to hear! Thanks for the feedback!

[@TEJames-td8zz]

Thanks for your work! Love seeing content about this game. I appreciate anyone who helps increase the popularity and accessibility of it as well, as I'm really hoping to see what else is to come from the devs and they rely exclusively on game sales since they left their publisher. Cheers.

[@mochad]

It's a great game. I'm looking forward to see what comes next.

[@socrates1000]

Thank you for this video series man! Just bought the game, and was looking for a guide just like this. You really nailed this! :)

[@mochad]

Thanks for watching! I'm working on extending this series into the .14 build, which offers lots of new stuff. The vast majority of what is in the .13 videos still applies, with very small differences (that I can think of).

[@socrates1000]

@@mochad Awesome, I'll certainly watch those as well. I just tried to undock for the first time, and was drifting in space for about 10 minutes until I figured out how to redock. I am now going to watch all of these before attempting my first salvage operation haha

[@ChristopherNegretti]

Thank for this guide, it has made things much easier!

[@michaelmiller7692]

Excellent series! Helped me understand a lot of the fundamentals I was missing and I really like the pace of your videos. Subscribed!

[@AdeliaCreates]

Thank you so much! This was super helpful!!!

[@Wytooken]

You can get the free ship from the card game legally if you go into the event with "Skilled in Gambling" then you can select Risk: Call His Bluff. This is of course still only a chance of winning and otherwise you lose all your money. You can get "skilled at gambling" if you do the same event and select "Call him out on technicality" . So in theory if you get the event twice in a row you can leave with a free ship at age 20 ! NOTE: if you win the ship legally it immediately ends the character background dialogue and prompts you to start.

[@mochad]

Thanks for the info!

[@Blxz]

A video on how not to build the character that you will be using going forward. Interesting approach for a tutorial.

[@donterrenoalto4235]

thank you for this bro, i really needed it lol

[@paxton_wulgus]

Hey this is a great guide that really helped me enjoy the game, thanks for making it. I had a question: while salvaging a ship, a random NPC was there too. But then she boarded my ship and just walks around writing home and sleeping. I ordered her to disbembark but she wouldn't do it. How do I get her off my dang ship?

[@mochad]

Honestly, I don't know. I've never had that happen. I have been on derelicts that had non-pirates, but they didn't bother me, or try to board. You'd probably have to knock them out, but that would almost certainly lead to killing them.

[@paxton_wulgus]

@@mochad Yeah I ended up just opening both blast doors. Even though they had an EVA suit they blacked out and expired, then I dragged them off my ship

[@carlsbl]

Thanks for this series! New subscriber.

[@mochad]

Thanks for joining! I hope to have some content on .14 very soon.

[@buckcherry2564]

I struggle to start without a MOUNTAIN of skills. A lot of them are not implemented in any heavy way. Hacking, a combat skill, EVA Suits, and blackmarkets are EXTREMELY important. The rest are flavor with minimal impact (FOR NOW). A critical point with black markets is that they CAN trivialize the "best" part of the game, the early-game struggle. They sometimes buy Reactors for 100k+, if you save 6-7 reactors for that big sale, it completely solves money and that is the driving force of the game. There is no reason to go on when you are rich (yet) outside of playing the SimSpaceship part of the game. While I adore building and kitting out my ship to a fully customized personal spacestation....there is nothing you can do with it at this point. You just look at it and go ooooh aaahhhhh...then dock with wrecks and hunt for reactors and rare items...but minimal gameplay remains. The AI is not fleshed out enough for me to trust them on my ship either. This is a handy little series and a dude on the Steam discussions pointed it out. I'll give it a watchthrough for the views and likely comment because I am that guy anyway. Good stuff!

[@mochad]

Hey there. Appreciate the thoughts and comment! I agree with you about the early game struggle being significantly mitigated by things like the black market. I don't love doing games that require a significant grind before you can start to do your own thing, though, and I feel like once you've done "the struggle" in this one, you're kind of over it. And, I agree that once the struggle is over, you're stuck with a "now what?" sort of situation (which is why this is not currently a "go-to game" for me). I sort of wonder if the devs feel that some of the allure is, "could I make it with THIS set of skills instead of THAT set of skills?" But, there isn't enough fleshed out to make much of a difference. I've seen vids where the presenter talks about "I never trade with the black market if someone else is in the room," and things like that, and I've never understood that--it hasn't been an issue for me. Regarding starting with a mountain of skills--I think the fact that you don't improve skills leads to this sort of issue. But, you could also think of it as some of the fun (with a serious caveat, mentioned in the next paragraph). As a kid, we'd play DnD, and everyone would have 4 of their stats at 17 or 18, because A) we were 12, and B) it seemed important. As an adult, I learned that the "fun" of those kinds of games was not in what I was good at, but what I was not good at. It isn't interesting if you're going to be successful no matter what. The challenge is compensating for what you're bad at. The caveat--this game seems to penalize you in one way only--time. And, not in-game time. Don't have the "best" mechanical skills? Well, it'll take you 20% (real time) longer to install that battery. That's a bit painful, because it just draws things out for the sake of drawing them out. It definitely doesn't improve the game, in my opinion. (Admittedly, my recollection of what skills do what is probably off--I haven't opened Ostranauts in a few weeks at this point.) At the very least, it makes replayability a grind that many (myself included) aren't all that interested in. In making my videos, I tend to play through to understand what I want to talk about, then go back and record a second (or third...or fifth) playthrough. That literally became painful in this series. I'd grind through in my initial play through, then go back and have to repeat that grind...a couple of times sometimes. With all that said, my intent is to continue the series when there is more material to show. The game is fun, and has great potential and promise. Time will tell if those are carried out well by the development team. Thanks for watching!

[@buckcherry2564]

@@mochad The skills and traits issue of feeling rather locked in and permanently punished for being Feeble or not having mechanical engineering, from what I have heard Devs say, is meant to be solved in two ways. One, you will hire a mechanical engineer, or a bodyguard to fight for you. Crew is intended to be a thing, but as of right now, it is too janky for me (and I prefer solo anyway) so it becomes a "weakness of the system or game" rather than a feature of "I am a skilled pilot, but I need an engineer" instead. Two, the time in this game can be incredibly long, but we are puttering around a tiny salvage station that is intended as "the newbie area" in the Dev's grand vision for the game. A whole playthrough of the game as is, is the entrance to the actual intended game. When you go in as a feeble ship breaker that knows little about engineering, but have to do a two month burn to another station, you will be using the workout machines and maintaining a ship constantly. Your character will be learning from your engineer, or the 'internet' on how to maintain ships, you will be using the 0G treadmill an hour or two a day just to fight off boredom As a player, this will be happening behind the scenes as we fast-forward a two month trip into a couple minutes of gameplay with it stopping time-dilation as emergencies corp up and random events ruin our peace. OOOOR, you can run the 2month trip in realtime...the game will support them both. I too only pick it up now and again. I play from handicaps or with strange goals, but often I make my first million and just bail for a while. I fully agree with the overwhelming level of potential here. To use the same comparison as before, it is like looking at pre-biome minecraft and being wowed then seeing how far it could go as more was added and redstone (signal boxes) opened up worlds of interesting options (and then hopefully they stop before it gets sold to M$ and becomes crap like modern minecraft LOL). Here's to hoping!

[@Sombre____]

I don't see the point of making money during the character creation since you can get the same amount of money by doing quick delivery gig at the station. You should focus on making traits like leader and all. Feeble and unfit can be remove by doing exercise in game.

[@Bigskitch]

When should you “stop” the character creation? I’ve never quite understood what age is good to start looking around for a ship and what age is “too old”.

[@mochad]

It's a good question. I try to start fishing for a good ship at 30. Others insist on being in very early 20s. One of my current play-throughs is 41, and he has several negative side effects. I think it comes down to balancing what you feel you really need, skipping the rest, and starting young. I think 30 is considered mid-life, based on some of the text you get during char creation.

[@Bigskitch]

@@mochad that makes sense. Thanks!

[@MontePlaysGames]

Thanks for the series. Just getting into the game myself. Curious how things work out with the enemies you made.

[@Horashi32]

loving this video!

[@FunFactFreaks]

good tutorial

[@jakkrit6910]

i can't say i like character creation in this game. like ill just redo it untill i get what i want anyway why force rng on player?

[@mochad]

I can't speak to the design decisions, but it feels heavily influenced by Traveller. In earlier editions of Traveller, you could (and often did!) die in character creation. More recent editions aren't quite as brutal, though you can still lose limbs, develop chronic health issues, etc. With that said, it introduces some variability and prevents some min/maxing. However, you can use the debugger to add/remove just about anything you want.

[@Soulsphere001]

I'm not going to watch any of your other videos on this until I've played the game a bit. I like to see new things are figure them out on my own, since that's part of the fun of gaming. Great video though, so thank you, though one minor complaint is that you didn't really go through which ships are good and/or bad. I did find a video that goes over the ships though.

[@maxstr]

This game has been EA for years. Do you guys recommend it yet? Like are the major features in and it's all playable?

[@mochad]

From my (uneducated) perspective, this looks to be one of those labors of love that may never be completely finished. There does appear to be a roadmap, and my sense is the developer (it's a small team) remains active, and seems to communicate with the player base pretty regularly. There is a loyal player base that is very active on Discord, and provides tons of help. The game is not complete, but it is very playable, and new major milestones seem to come out once or twice a year. I've got over 200 hours in the game at this point and still enjoy it quite a bit. I continue to learn some new things, especially from the Discord convos. My understanding is the next major release will include other destinations in the system. Currently the centerpiece is a single station. There are others you can visit (I have not yet), but more than anything they are placeholders--not a lot of activity. I can see where this will eventually become a significant piece of how the game plays (depending on how they build it out), but the game is enjoyable even without those pieces in place. Maybe better put--they could stop development on the game today, and I don't think there would be a lot of complaints from the player base, with regards to "bang for the buck." Obviously, the fan base wouldn't be happy, but the state of the game could be considered complete, and is far more complete than a huge percentage of "out of EA" indie games. And, just so it is said (though, it should be clear from my opening statement here), I have no affiliation with the developer, and I did purchase the game.

[@maxstr]

@@mochad thanks. My only reservation is that I'd put in 100 hours, and move on. And when it releases to 1.0, I'd be burnt out on it. For example with Sons of the Forest, by the time it hit 1.0 I was long done with it.

[@Wytooken]

Definitely worth playing now, definitely still unfinished. Seems like the devs are adding new features all the time, even as they polish up existing ones. 1.0 seems a ways out but I love complicated games that are worth the time

[@TalonBrush]

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