You get few merits from a machine, for a larger amount of recycled product (5 merits for a 1 point slag or a 50 point slag) and you only earn like 1/5th the crafting cost of an item and only one resource (so if it took slag, bio and data, you might only get data for recycling it).ĭ] Many Items, weapons, indirects, and devices, are poorly implemented. Honestly, I just avoid them, as they are a waste of ammo.Ĭ] Recycling doesn't seem to be a useful way to do things in the late game. They are basically just a normal enemy with 4x more HP. They don't drop extra loot, they don't have extra special attacks, and they don't even have extra voice lines. There are no 'super Zecs', and there isn't a lategame version of the Juve and Janitor (though strangely enough, the Scribe does have a lategame version).ī] Bosses are pitiful, except for a Boss Trusty Screw that thing can go get Voided. Security elements are terrifying in the Early Game and fairly laughable in Late Game. If you can keep your guy alive in the Early Game, you are basically unstoppable and will not die. So I'll detail them below:Ī] Threats are higher in the Early Game and are Nonexistent in the Late Game. I've also basically played it to its very limits and will probably stop now (unless future DLC comes out for it, which at this point, I doubt). After completing all the achievements, a few of the Challenge modes, and unlocking Foon restriction, I've seen what the game's major problems are with its core gameplay loop. I've played a lot of Void Bastards now.173 hours to be precise. And as a further thought, if you did an Iron Man playthrough, you could have a special game ending, such as your willy convict that survived all sorts of nasty, expects BACS to screw them over and eliminates BACS before turning on the FTL. If you are doing an Iron Man run, you wouldn't have access to this, which would make Iron Man more challenging, while normal gameplay would give you opportunities to reward yourself by getting rid of Clients you don't need anymore. What this would do is when you run out of food, you no longer take damage from moving / resting, but only regain health when you have food. So as an example, a client could be retired, and their brain put to work in a Nutrient Paste Dispenser. Then all future Clients would benefit from whatever function they are performing. So, as an example, perhaps you can retire a Client, extract their brain, and have their brain perform some kind of task onboard the main ship.

Maybe if there was some way to make future clients better than your current client could ever be, would make it so that you are always better off to have deaths in a run, versus one-life to live. Further improvements to this system could be made by using the Gene Machine to reroll any of your three traits, but also turn one into a permanent one, freeing up a slot, say with the secondary merit-paid for usage of the machine. This would also make clients more interesting, as drawbacks you start with, remain in effect always, until you die. So if you start with Smoker and Sticky Fingers, those are permanent and can never be removed, and thus do not affect your 3 trait limit. What would make the game more interesting is if clients had permanent traits, that couldn't be removed. Being restricted to three Traits is quite harsh. And I've done about 12 Hard Bastard runs, and many less difficult runs as well.

On the main menu, you see a variety of cool looking possible clients (like the one with a scouter built into his head), which I've never even seen before.

New Clients aren't very interesting, most of the time.

If there is 20 things of food in the STEV, why would BACS jettison it right? If you keep your built gear, then shouldn't you keep all the things in the STEV? I can understand losing everything if a Void Whale eats the STEV, but dying on a wreck, at worst, would see you lose the ammo of that current loadout. It doesn't make sense why you would lose all your ammo, fuel, and such forth when you die. A Hard Bastard run is significantly harder, if you die more than once, for example. Currently the game is easier if you stay alive, than it is if you die. Or maybe the developers will fix these issues in VB1, who knows, but I'm operating on the assumption that they probably won't, so these are things for VB2. So as it seems that future DLC is unlikely, these are the things I hope VB2 addresses, that are core problems of VB1.

Void bastards ending sucked