Introduction
Game difficulty is selected at game start. Some Steam achievements are available only on Hard and Very Hard difficulty settings. Difficulty chages were discussed during the beta, here*.
Although the setting can be changed at any time (Settings Menu), switching to an easier difficulty may prevent <player> from obtaining difficulty-related achievements in the current save.
Effects of difficulty settings
| Difficulty | Skunk damage dealt1 | Skunk damage received1 | Mission payments | Enemy composition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 150% | 75% | +15% | normal |
| Normal | normal | normal | normal | normal |
| Hard | 75% | 150% | -15% | Increased wing/escort size2 |
| Very Hard | <75% | >150% | -30% | Increased wing/escort size2 Additional pirate capital ships |
1. Changes to damage dealt and received by the Skunk are not reflected in the Encyclopedia stats (Easy and Hard stats noted here).
2. Affects pirate, Xenon and friendly factions (see here and here*).
* (Please note: You must be logged in into the Egosoft forum to be able to access this forum thread.)
13 Comments
Moderator (English)
Could add a column here to show the relative Skunk weapon firepower; I'd do It but I can't remember where it was DEV posted (prollly in /beta but may be in /spoilers)..
Anonymous
Might be also worth clearly noting if the difficulty scaling of damage affects the player's ships and not just his Albion Skunk. This would make a huge difference in difficulty.
Moderator (English)
Pge updated, thanks. I can't remember where the Dev (CBJ?) post about damage is either but I'm confident it applies. Not sure what the % changes are.
- Sparky
Anonymous
In this post CBJ mentions the damage percentage modifier values for the different difficulty settings.
-X2
Anonymous
Is this link correct? It currently points to the Public beta topic by j.harshaw explainig the changes to difficulty settings in version 4.00 beta 5. Neither does it list nor does it explain all the difficulty settings being available in version 4.00, as the quoted sentence suggests. It's also rather unclear, whether the changes mentioned in the topic only reflect the beta state or apply to the release version as well.
As a general note with regards to external links, somewhere else we also discussed the necessity to mark external links somehow. I feel this is especially important with links to forums or websites like the Patch Public Beta forum, as you need to be logged in into the egosoft forum to read that topic. So it's infact not publicly accessible.
-X2
Moderator (English)
I've adjusted the sentence a bit so it is clearer that it retains a link to the beta discussion thread.
I think the hyperlink in the table covered confirmation of the larger spawns that 4.0 introduced. I've moved that link, and added a 2nd link to the 4.0 guide, to table footnote 2 to make it a bit more robust.
- Sparky
Anonymous
I cannot confirm but from my experience playing hard so far it feels like the increased wing sizes are resulting in overall increased combat loot amounts to pick up when compared with normal difficulty. This would make sense as if drop rates remain the same then having more stuff to kill per unit time will mean receiving more drops per unit time (linear increase) . This would mean that finding some rare combat drops should in theory be easier at higher difficulties as long as the player can cope with the harder combat. This effect might even be magnified further because the larger pirate wings might kill more NPC ships which also drop loot to be collected.
I am reluctant to add that to the page because I have no evidence that drop rates are not adjusted by difficulty to compensate for more ships. It could be that I am just getting lucky with so much loot after large fighter wings are destroyed.
-IG
Moderator (English)
As far as I know, drop rates are determined by ship type and not affected by difficulty. (drops.xml has no properties regarding difficulty)
so more ships -> more loot
-- solntcev
Anonymous
I just noticed the second link goes to the Difficulty settings article (i.e. the one on this page). I guess, this was not intended.
-X2
Moderator (English)
Oops, thanks. What probably happened was while trying to link a forum address, the "Recently Viewed" option may have been selected. Added a link to the beta discussion thread but I am not sure now if that was the originally-intended destination.
- Sparky
Anonymous
The beta discussion thread is behind a login wall, possibly even a non-disclosure agreement. As such not everyone can see it and so it is not that useful as a reference resource. If it mentions anything not covered by this page it would be very useful to copy it out.
-IG
Moderator (English)
All users are able to gain access to the beta forum through sepecting an option in our forum Profile pages. All info in the beta forum is considered public information (full name is "X Rebirth - Patch Public Beta") so I don't think it's necessary to elaborate (and in this case, the link is to a long post and pages of discussion so not easy).
- Sparky
Anonymous
You don't even have to do that. To access the Patch Public Beta forum you just have to be logged in into the Egosoft forum. I added a note to the article above saying that.
-X2