It is very underwhelming on high gravity planets, but on planets or moons with low gravity it’s much more like a jet pack (including changing direction mid-flight).
Another thing to note is that the effectiveness of the jetpack can vary on the jetpack. There are basically 4 kinds… The “standard” one which just kind of sucks, the “powerful” one that gives you a lot of lift, the “skipping” one that doesn’t boost you any higher but recharges very quickly, and the “balanced” one which gives both a moderately higher boost and slightly faster recharge than the standard one.
The boost is useful for two different things in my experience, and the different pack styles will have varying degrees of effectiveness for those exercises.
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Getting to higher places. If you time your boost to the apex of your jump (which takes some practice) it can help you reach things that would normally be too high, even on standard gravity worlds. The powerful boost packs do the best job at this, but even the balanced ones help.
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Getting across gaps. If you take a running start then jump, you can boost as you start to descend and it sort of “bounces” you further. If you get the timing right, you should be able to do this a couple of times before you run out of boost. The skipping packs really help with this, as they recharge fast enough I can often bounce four or five times before it runs out, though again the balanced packs also help to a lesser degree. This works extremely well if you are trying to get from one elevated spot to a slightly lower but still elevated spot; you can almost sort of “glide” a bit by waiting until you fall a bit before boosting again, giving yourself even more change for it to recharge. I found this really useful on Neon when missions had me climbing up onto roof areas where there are sometimes gaps between spots, or in big open spaces with lots of catwalks.
There are two other things that boost can help regardless of the pack. One, is that you can jump from a great height and then boost shortly before you hit the ground, it will stop the fall, and then you gently drop. Sort of like a parachute. Falling damage can really suck in this game, because you can suffer a leg injury that really hurts your mobility until you visit a doctor or use the correct healing item.
The other neat thing I discovered is that when you are boosting, your oxygen level doesn’t drop. So, say you are just trying to get from point A to point B and things are flat. If you run, then boost, then “skip” so that you sort of bounce without hitting the ground, you’ll be traveling really fast (sprinting speed) and your oxygen meter doesn’t go down. This can be really useful to get around quickly without having to pause to catch your breath. And it is absolutely essential if you find yourself overloaded, and anything faster than a crawl depletes your oxygen. In that situation, you can travel so much faster for a much greater length of time. Even on a normal gravity world. On a low gravity world, you can practically fly around at great speeds without using up oxygen, even when burdened.
It takes some practice to get it right, but once you do you’ll probably find yourself boosting around everywhere to the point of absurdity. (Okay, maybe I’m the only one who does that.)
There’s a supposedly abandoned Ecliptic base on Podius, not all that far from where you find Heller. Boosting is essential for getting to the top of that base without dealing with the toxic gas in the tunnel.
You’ve probably guessed that it’s not really abandoned. Boost jumps are great for picking off those who remain while your companion distracts them; which should also count toward ranking up the boost skill.
Yeah, I need to bump up the difficulty level to whatever is above normal. A major quest had me having to engage in battle with some major character that was presented as being scary, and I blew up his ship in fifteen seconds. A fight with Terrormorphs that was a major plot point and, again, storywise presented as a critical, scary event was effortless.
Fallout games always feel hazardous; I always felt as if death was close at hand whenever I was in the field. In this game I have not been in any danger of dying at all since the first missions. I keep checking to make sure the difficulty really is at Normal.
That is just about the point realized the same thing. At the beginning I was having a good bit of challenge. But then I figured out the equipment system( I was using legendary Base-level guns, instead of refined/calibrated ones for way too long ) and the game became very easy.
I don’t even comprehend why that’s a problem - I just choose the weapon with the best range/damage combo for the battlespace - and it seems to not matter.
I’ll be going to Hard when I fire it up tonight.
Ran into an odd bug. Was trying to level Ship Command, and was doing fine up to rank 3. The next rank required “Either board or destroy 50 ships with at least six crew or more.” An annoying grind, but whatever. The trouble is that it didn’t work, despite me having six crew onboard. Destroyed a bunch of ships, but still 0/50. And although the text is sorta ambiguous, it does not mean that the enemy ships have six crew.
Others have run into the bug and reported that “story ships” don’t have the problem. So I switched to the Star Eagle (Ranger reward ship), which actually only supports 5 crew, but with Sarah onboard can support 6… and bingo, I can now level it just fine. Just massively more annoying since it’s pretty weak compared to my main ship.
I suspect the problem is actually not with story-vs-not ships, since I was able to previously rank up with my non-story ship. Instead, I think there may be a crew size somehow embedded with the ship at creation. Suppose you build a ship out of a captured pirate vessel or something with a crew of 4. Even if you add modules later to support a crew of 6, somehow the game is still thinking the max is 4, and so doesn’t count for rank progress. The story ships have good stats to start with, and people are less likely to make major mods to them, so it seems like it works better with those. Well, just a hunch. The workaround does work.
I bought a big ship and didn’t notice it only had 200 cargo room. Oh well.
I did manage to run into a slightly more exciting firefight with some Ecliptic assholes; it was a quest, and they had some guys around level 40-50 (I’m level 26) so that required the expenditure of a lot of ammo, anyway.
I guess my next thing will be to build an outpost. I have no idea how to do that. I’ve made a few small efforts to use workbenches but with little output.
It’s pretty similar to building a base in No Man’s Sky: mark the location where you want to start the outpost then place parts if there are enough resources in your ship’s hold. Just one thing: you can’t build in extreme environments until you have the skill required to do so.
I started an iron/helium-3 mining outpost on Io – just the marker, helium miner and three solar panels so far.
Quick tip–if you press R to place the outpost beacon, but don’t immediately place it, you can look in the upper left for the available resources, and then run around the area to get optimal placement. The listing will change as you move around. Depending on the area, you can often get 3-4 resources this way. You can also move the beacon out quite a ways (again, before actually placing it) to test if the resources are better in some more distant place.
So this is tricky because it’s minor spoiler territory but also important information about how New Game+ works vis a vis sinking time into stuff like building.
Proceed at your peril, but also ignore at your peril.
New Game+ in Starfield isn’t just “starting over from scratch.” It’s actually woven into the plot of the game. It’s the only way (I think) that you can get all the Space Dragonborn powers, and supposedly there are chances of seeing wild iterations of certain elements if you loop enough. You can also do future loops pretty quickly relative to your first run, including choosing to skip straight past the main questline.
When you loop, you keep your level and skill ranks, but you do lose everything else. You start from scratch in terms of resources, bases, ships, etc. Which kind of sucks. I think you should get the option to retain as much or as little as you want. I hit the end of the game, looped, and was really bummed at the idea of starting resource collection from scratch.
In other words, if you think you’re going to have a kind of sandboxy “hang around and build lots of stuff character,” you shouldn’t start it until you’re done looping.
I have decided to make the Razorleaf my main ship forever. I just love when I get into a fight and people scream, “It’s the Mantis!” So fun. I’ve been upgrading it constantly as I improve my Piloting and Starship Design perks. Both are now maxed, and I’m just limited by what parts show up as I level.
Yeah, when people run away I might lose some loot and XP. Though that only happens every now and then. But that is balanced by my Scoundrel trait, which makes bounty hunters show up randomly to attack me in space. (And they clearly don’t care who I am, they just want my head.)
I like the idea of that, but at the same time I kinda want to leave the ship untouched. The scoundrel trait sounds fun.
I’ve filled out a good portion of the ship/tech skills, including both starship design and piloting. Ship command was annoying because I didn’t really want to put so many points into that tree, but it’s a master-level skill so I had little choice, and I like the benefits of a large crew.
Minor late-game spoiler:
Somehow, I managed to capture a Starborn Guardian ship. It landed, and usually some Starborn pop out, but leave the door inaccessible. But this time, I just waltzed right in and flew it away. I’m still on my first run (i.e., not NG+). I didn’t think that was possible.
As one might expect, it can’t be modified. The planetary ship techs seem to think it’s pretty cool.
That’s good information; thanks. Close to what I was expecting.
I don’t care much about the resources. I’ve collected a crapton of them, but frankly I don’t know what to do with it. No big loss.
I’ll probably miss the money the most. I have something like 1.3M now. I can stand losing my ships if I was able to buy a new one right away. Maybe I should put some points into some of the moneymaking skills to speed that part up.
How about research? Does that stay unlocked?
I don’t specifically remember, but based on everything else I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.
Delete! My browser loaded the wrong thread. My bad.
AFAIK, they’re only really useful for crafting and outpost construction. They can also be sold and some can be turned in for source & return missions – one of the first things I did was check out the mission board at New Atlantis and one wanted a few hundred units of nickel.
I’ve already started an alt to explore a different background. Main is a female space scoundrel from Neon who recently completed the Freestar Rangers questline and married Sam Coe. Alt is a male long hauler from New Atlantis whose parents live there as well; he recently acquired the Razorleaf and will join the Vanguard upon return to the Lodge.
Had to redo a lot of quests because
As part of the sequence of quests involving being undercover in the Crimson Fleet I had to break into Generdyne, the Neon power company. A security guard saw me so I had to shoot my way through. Regrettably, SecDef heard I’d murdered a bunch of people and declared me a criminal and the dude said I was going to jail, so I had to murder everyone aboard UC Vigilance. Of course that makes me an enemy of SecDef, and would probably infuriate everyone else, so I just went back a bunch of saves.