I initially mostly played the first half of 2020. When I came back I found my old company had been deleted and needed to make a new one. Not a huge deal, so I got to it. After a few days I figured I might as well record my observations on returning. Obvious caveats that this is a sample size of one and such, but moving on.
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It’s kind of frustrating to not be able to see what’s in demand in the markets before making a company still. Obviously creating, observing, COLIQing, then remaking is possible, but COLIQ is limited and it’s a clunky answer to the issue. This will be even more true in a new universe where we may not even know where a lot of stuff is initially.
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Shipping being a supported role accelerates early growth for low risk and low capital investment. When I previously played, I wasn’t one to call older players using older players to ship goods as exploitative, but rather a transfer of who bears the risk. Buying from outposts on contract and moving goods to a CX for sale was something I used to do before shipping contracts. This was also a decent early game accelerator as well but required me to bear the risk of market fluctuations myself and required a higher investment. When I started I actually sold several base building materials to have the initial capital to do this. So at this stage of the universe, being able to get shipping contracts and build a base at the same time is nice.
Obviously this won’t be the state of things for a while after the reset, so I consider this more an observation of a developed universe.
3. I left before population was an issue, and so it tripped me up early on when I came back. I asked a few questions, got answers, and was able to proceed. That said, overall, the game feels pretty familiar to how it was 8 months ago so it wasn’t like my old knowledge of how to play the game has been lost.
4. In the current state of the universe, I’ve calculated ship damage as part of my costs and it’s pretty reasonable to repair. That said, I didn’t see anything in the handbook tutorials about how to handle ship damage or how to repair it. Thankfully I got answers on the Discord, but I didn’t readily find the answer on my own. Or rather, the answer makes enough sense to someone used to PrUn, most likely, but to a new player it could be confusing and I didn’t find many answers in the Handbook or in my initial attempts to find it on my own. I suspect ship damage in the new universe will be more of an issue at some point before someone gets to the point where they can make BHP at a widely accessible price point.
5. Overall, I’m remembering why I enjoyed PrUn in the first place.