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Well, I'm certainly no expert myself. Each time I fired up Randy I failed miserably :-). I haven't played enough of the others so I can't really say anything about them. I think I'll give Cassandra a go and see for myself how does that feel like.

No pop cap is not the reason for Randy to me. I like the unpredictability and occasional (well... more than occasional :-) ) chaotic mess. You need to be wary all the time. And so far it was far from being "fair" or "middle difficulty". It was actually really challenging. Again I don't know how does it compare to the others but I wouldn't call it "mediocre" :-).

Pretty self-explanatory. What storyteller do you prefer most and why?

I haven't played the game that much but for me, as a Dwarf Fortress-grown player, Randy all the way! Last time I got a buffalo herd mass-charge followed by two simultaneous raider attacks (each worth about 10-15 men). After a glorious battle I ended up with demolished base and three badly hurt survivors (out of ten initial population). And mysterious blight. Fun enough for me :-D.

Right now I'm testing stuff with Callie.

(If similar topic was already there I apologize - haven't found anything in Search.)

I've played the game a bit and liked it so far. But there is too much people wandering around: random passengers passing by, guys crashing nearby and tons of pirates (which means tons of corpses to deal with which takes far too much time). Even the trader ships seems quite frequent. It doesn't feel like discovering an unknown world in the rim of a galaxy but rather like planned establishment of a base in a spotlight of the whole galaxy.

Here are some thoughts on how to improve the survivor/pioneer feeling:

1. Simply reduce the frequency of people appearing around.

"Where we would get new people then?"
2. Add more pirate raid mechanics (plenty of suggestions across the forum - factions, kidnapping, friendly visitors, ...). I thought about negotiations when you can convince some of the pirates to join you instead. They are probably as stranded as you are, anyway. Melee attacks should lead to incapacitation only instead of death which means more chances of catching prisoners during a raid.

"This would make raids much easier. What would be the main challenge then?"
3. There are many possibilities but now I'm thinking about deeper world interaction. More particularly having some sort of native intelligent inhabitants to interact with (like Fremens from Dune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremen). They could just pass by or even camp on the map. They may trade with a player, demand something or attack right away. If the player tends to attack their camps for resources, they'll be more likely to attack the base instead of peaceful approach. Inversely, if the player has good relations with them, they'll be less likely to attack. Maybe they could be dispersed into, let's say, three factions (tribes) randomly allied and in war with each other. Good relations with tribe A will upset tribe B (enemy of A) and it would be much more difficult to negotiate a peaceful solution during an encounter with tribe B. This is just an example that crossed my mind - the natives aspect can be viewed from many different angles and has so much possibilities but, honestly, I think every newly discovered world needs its inhabitants. Ultimately this would allow to reduce the number of 'outside' people you come across. These encounters should be much more scarce, imho.

These suggestions may not be viable but what I'm aiming at is the feeling of loneliness, uncertainty, insecurity, mystery about discovering a whole new environment (imagine Spanish colonists discovering America for example) and also getting attached closer to the colonist.

Cheers,
Kubouch