Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: whoopWHAT on April 28, 2017, 10:43:10 PM
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I think there might need to be some adjustments made to the start of the campaign. Even on Easy, the game is frustrating to start; even the weakest of enemies can kill you in short work. You start of with AT BEST a Wolf class, which is far and away one of the weakest frigates in the game. 2 lashers? Dead. 1 bruiser and a shuttle? Dead. 2 Brawlers? Ded. Even the weakest of fleets can crush whatever you have, no matter how skillfully you play it because you don't have a ship good enough to take them on.
Coupled with that is the fact that purchasing a new ship from a star-port is a matter of blind luck as to whether they'll have something decent for purchase. 70% of the time, they'll only have crap ships or damaged ships, or both, and anything decent is gonna be black market 100% of the time. Anything not damaged/legal is too expensive or requires faction allegiance to purchase off the bat. Not only that, but most stations have a crap supply of weapons for purchase, making refitting into a good spec for your ship a pipe dream.
Plus, no joke, but Jangala is kinda dull starting out. There's a lot of stuff going on, sure, but not a lot of ~interesting~ stuff, unless you have a good enough ship to start some fun stuff off on your own.
Just my thoughts on it. Starting cash seems fine, and the salvage mechanic is good(if a bit on the unrewarding side) you just need a better ship it seems. Hell even a destroyer or just a better frigate or something, I dunno.
Edit: Fixed 2 Cerberuses to 2 Brawlers because I am bad with keeping track of the names sometimes.
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Starter Wolf is actually a decent ship, but it needs Heavy Blaster to be good. Which you are unlikely to have.
But even without it 2 Cerbers/etc are not a problem. 2 Lashers may be.
However, Lashers are the most common frigates, and one is usually available for sale. SO Lasher needs only commonly available LMGs + Annihilators/Swarmers and easily destroys anything pirates in Jangala can deploy.
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You start of with AT BEST a Wolf class, which is far and away one of the weakest frigates in the game. 2 lashers? Dead. 1 bruiser and a shuttle? Dead. 2 Cerberuses? Ded. Even the weakest of fleets can crush whatever you have, no matter how skillfully you play it because you don't have a ship good enough to take them on.
Umm.... I think you're doing it wrong. :-\ The Wolf is a great frigate: it's powerful, customizable, fast and has a versatile and forgiving ship system that you can use either to catch up to escaping enemies or jump out of a sticky situation. You should not be losing a fight to two Cerberuses as the starting Wolf, especially not on Easy mode. I hate to say it, but you may need to double check your combat skill.
There's genuinely no other advice I can give, and I feel a d**k for it, but you might be able to find specific assistance on the Discord channel. Also check out some YouTube gameplay of Starsector if you haven't already, and try ships in simulator mode to get a feel for combat.
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For easier early game combat, I'd do one or more of the following:
- "Companion" destroyer at start (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11379.0)
- Steiner Foundation (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10398) features: Insurance on ship loss; access to discounted military-grade ships without a commission for low-level players
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AxleMC, I've been playing StarSector a lot longer than you have. A frigate with 2 swarmers, 1 pulse laser, a few PD lasers, and a phase jumper is only 'powerful' by 1v1 frigate standards. Any kind of fleet with any kind of bite can eat a wolf for breakfast. Also, I meant Brawlers, not Cerberuses(I'll making an edit fixing that shortly since it seems I've mucked up a bit there and gotten multiple people getting onto me about that.) Cerberuses are no problem, no matter their numbers(as long as its not enough to blanket the screen) simply because its lack of shield make it easy pickings for pretty much anything.
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Wolf is the easiest ship to fly because of phase skimmer and can easily take down 2 lashers. MPL alone can down lasher as it cant tank its damage for long and a little bit of maneuvering will always block line of fire for second ship. Only concern is not to overload. Starting ship load out is pretty decent as it is works good vs any threat. If wolf start with heavy blaster ship will overload frequently and die as blaster is very skill dependent weapon. First thing of business on starter ship is to swap blast doors for hardened subsystems.
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AxleMC, I've been playing StarSector a lot longer than you have. A frigate with 2 swarmers, 1 pulse laser, a few PD lasers, and a phase jumper is only 'powerful' by 1v1 frigate standards. Any kind of fleet with any kind of bite can eat a wolf for breakfast. Also, I meant Brawlers, not Cerberuses(I'll making an edit fixing that shortly since it seems I've mucked up a bit there and gotten multiple people getting onto me about that.) Cerberuses are no problem, no matter their numbers(as long as its not enough to blanket the screen) simply because its lack of shield make it easy pickings for pretty much anything.
Ah, yeah that might be why I was so horrified by that. XD A pair of Luddic Path Brawlers (since those are the only Brawlers that will attack you in the early game...) are more than a match for a single early wolf. I apologise if I came on a little strongly there - I let my confusion get the better of me.
The Wolf is a good ship, no doubt, but you're right, if it gets surrounded and it doesn't have an opportunity to escape it will die pretty quickly.
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The Wolf is a good ship, no doubt, but you're right, if it gets surrounded and it doesn't have an opportunity to escape it will die pretty quickly.
This.
The wolf is one of the better frigates due to it's flexibility and firepower. It's only real downside is that in order to use it at anything approaching it's potential capability demands a very specific playstyle that some people might not like, or even be capable of.
I love the wolf. But I am beyond horrible at flying it as it's simply too "twitchy" for me, and even a single mistake will hurt. I've still picked it every time so far though, so I can give it to a cautious AI buddy.
A greater variety of ship choices at the start of the game, each with a tiny bit of blurb describing a little about the ship might be nice to have.
And maybe allow a selection of lesser destroyers as well to allow a finer control of the difficulty in the event the tutorial is skipped.
It would also be nice if the ship graveyard in the tutorial could have a more randomised selection.
Some things would have to stay, such as the condor. But the hammerhead, wolf and kite could be a <select from list of similar ships> on spawn instead of <put one of these there>.
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I think that having a selection of some of the lesser destroyers are the perfect middle ground. They aren't flattened by most starting fleets, they are by far the easiest ships to get used to in the game, and they pack a solid punch for any captain worth his salt. Starting out with a single paltry frigate ~as a bounty hunter~ makes it look like you're a pretty *** bounty hunter and kinda makes the early game into farming scavenging and surveying until you get the money to get a ship with a little punch.
Also AxleMC, I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude. It was uncalled for on my part. :/
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Also AxleMC, I'm sorry if I came off a bit rude. It was uncalled for on my part. :/
Don't sweat it. :) I misunderstood your original point, so I'm the one in the wrong.
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I think that having a selection of some of the lesser destroyers are the perfect middle ground. They aren't flattened by most starting fleets, they are by far the easiest ships to get used to in the game, and they pack a solid punch for any captain worth his salt.
There were destroyer start options in the last version (or the one before?), for exactly the reasons you describe. It didn't work out very well. Destroyers are weak enough that you still can get easily overwhelmed by pirates, but unlike frigates, they are too slow to run away. With a Wolf you can always turn tail when you're outnumbered, with a Hammerhead you're screwed.
And if destroyers are easier to pilot or not depends on player preference. They require more battlefield overview and thinking ahead, without that they can get easily swarmed by frigates and eaten alive. Frigates require more quick reactions.
(And yeah, you can take out two Lashers with a Wolf, but it's not trivial.)
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I personally loved starting with a Centurion and the Kite in the previous version. Made for a really solid start without being too easy for a beginner. Really taught me the fun and importance of loadouts. The Centurion even has the same amount of small hardpoints as the wayfarer, so they "look" balanced as options.
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Frigates require more quick reactions.
Which is itself a barrier for some people. Which is where choice is good.
With a Wolf you can always turn tail when you're outnumbered, with a Hammerhead you're screwed.
Enforcer. So long as it doesn't have degraded engines it will work fine. As it did in the accelerated start previously.
I really don't get why you'd say it didn't work very well, because it really did.
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Back then, I think that was during 0.6x when Navigation gives lots of burn speed to frigates and little to everything else, the main reason destroyer start hurt was burn speed. Frigates had much more burn speed, especially with Navigation. With a destroyer, your fleet was too slow to run away from stuff - or catch small scouts - on the map. Now, Sustained Burn fixes that weakness and frigate burn is not so much faster than everything else.
That said, destroyer start was great because starter Wolf back then had no PD whatsoever, but the Hammerhead did, and I stole the LR PD lasers from the Hammerhead and gave it to the Wolf, and stored the destroyer so that burn speed was not slowed too much.
Heavy blaster is powerful, but it is too flux hungry. The speed in 0.8 is not there anymore. Having a SO Lasher start can be nice.
With the gameplay changes, destroyer start may be viable.
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So my friend has the same opinion, that the game is brutally hard and you need to have numbers to win. He gave me a save, on Easy in the tutorial that he thought he was completely stuck in.
That was me winning with his save: https://streamable.com/6mi0q
At this point SS was never, in its entire lifetime, easier to start in.
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Hmm. A couple of comments:
A destroyer to start with is troublesome. If you pilot it yourself - and don't quite know what you're doing, and sometimes even if you do - some frigates will kite you and either wear you down or run out of CR. This is going to be frustrating and/or tedious. Destroyers are also more expensive to maintain etc, raising the bar of what you need to accomplish to make a profit, let alone break even.
In contrast, a Wolf has mobility, good-enough firepower, and a high skill ceiling. If you make mistakes, you may lose quickly, but that's better than a long, boring wear-down-the-enemy-CR win. The "try something, get feedback on your mistakes, try again" learning cycle is faster.
Perhaps most importantly, if you go for the most combat-capable ships, you start with a Wolf and a Kite with an officer. A single Wolf may struggle vs 2 undamaged Lashers etc, but paired with a Kite, the fight is fairly easy once you figure out how to work with your wingman. A destroyer wouldn't be able to work nearly as well with an ally, not when facing almost mostly frigates, as you are in the early game.
The Wolf/Kite combo is effective vs frigates that have no d-mods, which is a good step above what you're mostly facing in the early game. And Luddic Path raiders, well, there's a reason you can pay the tithe to avoid the fight - but they can also be defeated with the Wolf/Kite combo. Just gave it a quick try - Wolf/Kite vs a Pather Lasher + Brawler - and it's not too tough, even without any combat skills.
That said, yeah, piloting a ship well takes some figuring out. I just know how it can be made any easier - sticking a destroyer in the fleet will hurt more than help, the Wolf is already one of the best frigates, etc. There's always the mostly-non-combat to build up a bit, too.
Ah, on a related note: these settings in settings.json can be tweaked to adjust the difficulty of "easy":
"easyPlayerDamageDealtMult":1,
"easyPlayerDamageTakenMult":0.75,
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I am not a big fan of the Wolf start. The Wolf is high mobility and high potential but unforgiving of serious errors and overloads owing to its fragility. I feel the Lasher would probably be the most forgiving starting frigate owing to its toughness, adequate point defense, and strategic advantages (such as low cr/deployment).
Nor am i a fan of the Wolf being a very common early game opponent. The Wolf is perfectly suited to the AIs preference for kiting tactics, making it very frustrating to fight against if you arn't flying something extremely mobile (for instance, if you take the Wayfarer start). Even when you do catch them out, many times they will be able to phase skimmer out. The annihilator rocket spam and the ion cannon make it impossible to ignore as well- there's no concept of balancing your defenses, the ion cannon is devastating to frigates since it can shut down all their weapons in short order. And the rockets are as useful against frigates as they are against anything else. You HAVE to shield.
The old Cerberus start had particular trouble with the Wolf, although at least its burn drive and medium mount let it control the engagement better than the Wayfarer.
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Before 0.8, starter Wolf with Unstable Injector was good. Player could hit-and-run easily. Now that Unstable Injector guts shot range of pulse lasers and the like to Safety Override range, that hullmod is not worth it anymore for small ships. For the unskilled Wolf, it handles somewhat clumsy. Maybe less clumsy than other frigates, but still clumsy.
If SO Lasher was available as a starter option, I might be tempted to take that instead of Wolf in the 0.8 environment. In short-range fights, kinetics rule and win the flux war.
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If SO Lasher was available as a starter option, I might be tempted to take that instead of Wolf in the 0.8 environment. In short-range fights, kinetics rule and win the flux war.
It usually is available at Jangala. And you start with 32k $ (if skipped tutorial), which is more than enough to buy it.
SO Lasher is much better than Wolf until you find Heavy Blaster and is competitive even after.
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Well how about this. How about we give the players a certain number of points when they start the game depending on the difficulty, and then let them pick whatever they want from the points available to them. Don't let them change weapon systems, but have every ship available to the player at the get go. Like on Easy you could have the player start with the equivalent fleet power of a cruiser, or a destroyer and a frigate, or a 2 utility ships and 2 frigates, or whatever.
The idea is to have a point system at the start of the game that lets players spend points to get a starting fleet they feel comfortable with. That way we don't have this one-size-fits-all thing that's been going on. It'd allow you more room to balance the start of the game instead of just picking what 4 possible combinations of ships they can have at the start, and it'd allow players more room to experiment on their own.
Hell, I could get into a whole 'nother rant about how the start of the game doesn't adequately teach players the combat skills they need to survive and thrive, but that's not really the point.
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Well how about this. How about we give the players a certain number of points when they start the game depending on the difficulty, and then let them pick whatever they want from the points available to them. Don't let them change weapon systems, but have every ship available to the player at the get go. Like on Easy you could have the player start with the equivalent fleet power of a cruiser, or a destroyer and a frigate, or a 2 utility ships and 2 frigates, or whatever.
The idea is to have a point system at the start of the game that lets players spend points to get a starting fleet they feel comfortable with. That way we don't have this one-size-fits-all thing that's been going on. It'd allow you more room to balance the start of the game instead of just picking what 4 possible combinations of ships they can have at the start, and it'd allow players more room to experiment on their own.
Actually, I wouldn't be against this, at least as an experimental method to see if it works. It almost certainly won't be appropriate for the game itself, but perhaps a mod could give players the opportunity? I might still limit the options (I don't think giving the player the option to start as a Hyperion is a good idea in any way...) but nowhere near as much as they presently are.
If I was doing it (theoretically), I'd have points be equal to the ship's [unmodified] Deployment Points (or "supplies to recover after combat") cost, and give the player, what, 10 points? That's enough to field, for example:
- Two Wolves
- A Hammerhead and a Kite
- Two Hounds and a Cerberus
- An Afflictor or a Shade as well as a small shuttle like the Kite or Mercury (probably a challenging option because phase ships have an insane logistics profile, and without a proper transport, you'd run out of supplies pretty fast)
- An Omen and a Vigilance
- Five Hermes shuttles
... Or whatever.
You could even expand on that by having "Easy" mode give the player a larger number of points - 12 or 14 perhaps - to give them more options to start with a slightly larger fleet.
On an unrelated note, I feel we do perhaps need more options for starting ships. Having just the two flagship and two secondary options is definitely a much simpler choice - and I have tried most combinations and found none to be particularly a bad idea - but it does feel somewhat limiting. Personally I feel that, even without adding a third flagship option, having specifically a Dram loaded with fuel as an alternative second ship would be a great addition to the lineup, and definitely one that I wouldn't be against having in the early game. With exploration such a huge thing, getting a Dram is now just another item on the early-game checklist, and doesn't make for an exciting gameplay adventure. Giving the player the option to start with a Dram would be a concise addition that could help focus playstyles and make early-game just that little bit more exciting.
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I see your point, and I think it might be a good idea to limit the pool of ships available to players at the start(since yea, I didn't think about the Hyperion), but I feel a system like this would be perfect for the game. We don't exactly have character customization(for the most part) and the thing we interact with most(the fleet) we only have 4 options of at the start. Game design-wise, I say it should be one of two directions as far as the start goes:
1 - Make the starter ship 100% fixed.
This is a little counter-intuitive, so hear me out. With a single "fine-tuned" ship and loadout, you can craft much better scenarios and tutorials based around it at the start. This lets you LASER FOCUS on exactly how you want the start of the game to play out, and will allow you to go so far as designing the starter area around what the player has available to them, to show them how to learn the game and experience it without pop-up text boxes. Sorta like the starting area for Sid Meier's Pirates. It integrates seemlessly with the rest of the world, but it is a microcosm of all the things that you can do in the game, to the point were you can learn all the mechanics of the game without venturing out into the rest of the seas at all. Albeit, this is a lot harder to pull off game design-wise, it will work much better than my later suggestion if done correctly.
2 - Give the player as much freedom as possible in the bounds of game balance to customize how they start.
This is easier than the former by orders of magnitude, and it comes with numerous benefits, many of which I have previously stated. It allows players a lot more agency at the start, it gives brand new players a way to test the waters AND look at all the cool ship designs before they can access all of them together, and it doesn't have a lot of the issues the current system has. (IE, loads of people disagreeing on whether or not changing the starter ships is a good idea because it won't let them use THEIR favorite starter ship, none of the presets being fun or interesting to use for some people, causing them to quit when they can't do anything, ETC.)
Even if not the points system I'm advocating ~something~ should be done to improve the game start, I think that much is fair to say.
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If SO Lasher was available as a starter option, I might be tempted to take that instead of Wolf in the 0.8 environment. In short-range fights, kinetics rule and win the flux war.
It usually is available at Jangala. And you start with 32k $ (if skipped tutorial), which is more than enough to buy it.
SO Lasher is much better than Wolf until you find Heavy Blaster and is competitive even after.
In my game, Jangala had nothing but Vigilance for sale. Not that it would matter. If I already started with a Wolf, I do not need to buy Lasher. I will grab a clunker from the pirates. They use plenty of Lashers, and they are disposable.
Without powerful skills and no useful speed hullmods, Heavy Blaster is more of a sidegrade. Wolf needs to constantly back out and vent because blasters are short-ranged and horribly flux inefficient.
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Without powerful skills and no useful speed hullmods, Heavy Blaster is more of a sidegrade. Wolf needs to constantly back out and vent because blasters are short-ranged and horribly flux inefficient.
With pulse laser, you have to stay within engagement range for too long. Effective kinetic weapons will always win such battles.
With Heavy Blaster I just pump all my flux bar into them in few seconds, back off, vent and repeat. AI is not aggressive enough with venting near a threat that close (and even if they were, their vent time is usually longer then my optimized Wolf's, so I'd still get an opening).
Heavy Blaster Wolf can also bypass shield (like Hyperion). It's a rarely usable tactic, but for example, allows to defeat otherwise superior simulator Medusa.
Aside from that, Wolf is only good as beam boat. But that's too slow at killing for player-ship.
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Without powerful skills and no useful speed hullmods, Heavy Blaster is more of a sidegrade. Wolf needs to constantly back out and vent because blasters are short-ranged and horribly flux inefficient.
With pulse laser, you have to stay within engagement range for too long. Effective kinetic weapons will always win such battles.
With Heavy Blaster I just pump all my flux bar into them in few seconds, back off, vent and repeat. AI is not aggressive enough with venting near a threat that close (and even if they were, their vent time is usually longer then my optimized Wolf's, so I'd still get an opening).
I know. Wolf loses the flux war either way. And pumping flux bar high, then retreat and vent is risky. They can launch missiles. Few times, I get close to winning, then they sometimes launch. I lost a few battles for being overeager to finish off the enemy quickly.
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I know. Wolf loses the flux war either way. And pumping flux bar high, then retreat and vent is risky. They can launch missiles. Few times, I get close to winning, then they sometimes launch. I lost a few battles for being overeager to finish off the enemy quickly.
Yes, you have to measure distance/time to vent/missile approach time precisely. But that's what Wolf is about.
I am especially happy when I catch incoming Harpoon on shield/skim in last second.