You merely hinted about the drawbacks of using AI cores, but I can easily imagine that, aside from the difficulty in acquiring, they can draw more trouble to your colonies and whole faction.
What I want to know more is how colonies and such are managed. Your character has a limited management capacity for Colonies and administrators, who each can manage 1 Colony.
Using the current implementation of ships in a fleet, each Colony is essentially a ship that REQUIRES an officer (or player character) to commandeer, right?
Alpha Core can be assigned to govern an outpost. It has all 3 skills maxed, draws no salary, and is not subject to the normal administrator limit. An option that makes all the other choices terrible in comparison, with no apparent downside? Seems like poor design, if you ask me.
So what I'm getting from that picture is that Alpha cores are susceptible to some combination of theft and/or flight... ("What happened to the Alpha Core that was supposed to be running this place?" "...As near as we can tell, it hacked its own security system, got itself installed on a newly-built cruiser, and took off for parts unknown." Cue bounty mission to hunt the thing down again.)
"Voltaire Collective"
Don't think I'd let that Expanse reference slip by
Ooooh @ ending
- Is the level cap being raised to accommodate the new industry skills available to the player? (I suspect such a thing would mainly serve to make pure combat players even stronger, but I like to dabble in all the skill trees)
- Can we put officers in storage to temporarily reduce salary costs, if we don't need them right now? (For that matter, how are crew in a Storage submarket handled?)
- What happens if the player becomes insolvent?
- Is that colony in the second screenshot on a decivilized world? I guess the -10 stability effect went away.
Is there a benefit to building a colony on planets with one of the Ruin conditions?
- The tooltip of other factions' markets with storages in the list could stand to include the rental fee.
First of all, this is pretty much exactly what I've been hoping for since I bought the game. Super excited!
Are there going to be other ways of obtaining survey data besides surveying planets yourself? In the current version of the game, it feels like a lot of planets that have compelling resources require level 3 surveying skills and that an unskilled player can't really survey anything beyond barren worlds. If you could just buy or steal some surveying data though, I think that would be a reasonable way to extend the content to players who don't choose to take surveying skills without invalidating the skills.
Interesting stuff, but I've noticed you still haven't touched on military markets or manufacturing ships.
Is something like a blueprint mechanic planned for ships? That would be one of my in-game goals in establishing markets to be honest.
Also, can I assume that selling/buying from local markets will incur no tariff from our own stations?
Do outposts have Black Markets at any point? If so, when you buy from or sell to a Black Market on one of your own outposts, does that incur the ire of your own faction? Or is it a just a way to turn stability into some extra money? Or is it forbidden altogether? (Who's gonna sell illegal drugs to the President? Gotta be a trap.)Also, can I assume that selling/buying from local markets will incur no tariff from our own stations?
I mentioned this in the blog post - briefly, if you build a "Commerce" industry, there'll be an independent Open Market you can trade with, with tariffs. Not having tariffs would incentivize the player to only sell stuff at their own market and that'd be annoying to always have to do. Plus it'd just break a lot of stuff as far as prices and what's profitable.
On the other hand, you can take stuff the colony produces for free, from the Local Resources submarket.
Concerning providing colonies with the resources they need-- is it possible for colonies to draw supplies from other player colonies in or nearby a system?
EG, let's say I colonize a planet that needs rare ore, then a different planet nearby that mines the stuff. Will the second planet be able to export it's surplus to the first planet without my intervention, or will it require a connection to an NPC market?
(Who's gonna sell illegal drugs to the President? Gotta be a trap.)
- Can we put officers in storage to temporarily reduce salary costs, if we don't need them right now? (For that matter, how are crew in a Storage submarket handled?)
Can't put officers into storage. Crew will cost the 1% storage fee, same as cargo, no salary.
Not having tariffs would incentivize the player to only sell stuff at their own market and that'd be annoying to always have to do. Plus it'd just break a lot of stuff as far as prices and what's profitable.I was thinking that this actually won't be true in most cases, because of fuel costs. Even if a player-held market is close to/inside the core worlds, it may not have enough demand for the right commodities to compete with other nearby markets.
Can we get at least some form of going over Officer capacity (storage, or just unlimited number of *unassigned* officers). They are narrowly specialized and having to fire and re-train new officers when you want to change fleet composition (no carriers <-> carriers, high tech <->armor based, kiter <-> aggro) is wildly suboptimal.That has prevented me from trying Pilum spam fleet. I could not be bothered to train ten Timid officers for the purpose of assigning them to Pilum Vigilances, then fire them for more replacements later.
From the sounds of Alpha cores administrators, that sounds like "Wish: More XP (and money)" that will result in a fight with major demons or something. In other words, if player wants a fight (or more rare loot), stick an Alpha Core admin in a colony that outlived its usefulness (because player found better), let it take over, then farm the never-ending streams of Remnants for rare items and/or destroy its battlestation.Alternatively, it might *** off the signatories of the Second AI War Treaty and have them knocking on your doorstep.
"Local Resources" is a mechanism for converting cargo-units into economy-units and vice versa, basically, if that makes sense.
On the other hand, you can take stuff the colony produces for free, from the Local Resources submarket.
(Who's gonna sell illegal drugs to the President? Gotta be a trap.)
Yep, that - I'm sure they've got black markets, but what kind of fool is going to tell you about it?
This all looks awesome! Do you have any plans to have missions to acquire exotic components for industries? I've had this longing to hunt down a domain era mothership, scavenge its autofactory, install it on a super rich world, and crank out battleships. For... humanitarian purposes. Kind of like hunting down Redacted's formutinous death robotshelpful AI buddies, only requiring a large cargo capacity.
I've always imagined that alpha AI cores would be quite subtle and long term in their thinking. For example, if there is a system within range with a REDACTED REDACTED in it, perhaps it syphons off some of the outpost's shipping and diverts resources there - suddenly the Redacted are spreading! (Wait a minute, didn't that outpost used to make more money?)
Also, how will you deal with battles involving player outposts and the player not being there? It can take a good number of weeks to cross from one side of the sector to another after all... perhaps invading fleets are loath to engage planetary defenses, so sieges are relatively common? With the player either attempting to run a blockade or break the siege.
Can we get at least some form of going over Officer capacity (storage, or just unlimited number of *unassigned* officers). They are narrowly specialized and having to fire and re-train new officers when you want to change fleet composition (no carriers <-> carriers, high tech <->armor based, kiter <-> aggro) is wildly suboptimal.
Do you need to be in range of a comm array to assign construction tasks for you colonies?
*Fist Pump* Cause I'm pumped! Also, called the solstice timing! Thanks for the update Alex, looks fantastic!
Wait a minute, are you telling us that AI took 'ur jobs as administrator as well? When will this stop!
I can now look back, reading this, and think about all the initial exploration I did when 0.8 had just come out and how satisfying it would be to tie it together through starting an outpost/faction. It makes me feel hyped up.
I'm really curious as to how deep you are going to sink your fingers into the whole Nexerelin style "faction warfare" with this update, too. Stuff like random events and news between factions, faction alliances, factions invading markets and waging war, stuff like that.
Will something to keep the player from just snapping up all the "pre-surveyed" planets in the core systems be needed? Like the existing factions already claiming them and getting mad at squatters.
Perhaps they're simply economically marginal; would explain why the big factions haven't already settled them.
I was thinking that this actually won't be true in most cases, because of fuel costs. Even if a player-held market is close to/inside the core worlds, it may not have enough demand for the right commodities to compete with other nearby markets.
Once the player conquers the major markets, though...
From the sounds of Alpha cores administrators, that sounds like "Wish: More XP (and money)" that will result in a fight with major demons or something. In other words, if player wants a fight (or more rare loot), stick an Alpha Core admin in a colony that outlived its usefulness (because player found better), let it take over, then farm the never-ending streams of Remnants for rare items and/or destroy its battlestation.
Would be awesome if then None AI admins had a chance of going rogue (turning into a pirate/independent outpost) if things are going too well for your outpost(you have a lot of money being made from a black market and weak and or strong defenses(pirate) or going too bad from mismanagement (colony thinks it can do better on its own because of a lack of admin and there is a over abundance of defenses and or money(Independent).
Economy units go up by orders of magnitude, right? Is it possible to make a market big enough that you could "borrow" enough resources to supply your fleet without tanking the colony's economy?
I don't know what you're talking about. I am but a simple merchant. (https://i.imgur.com/m8Asiri.png)
Also, I am looking forward to this so much. There's something slightly painful about floating above a needle-in-a-haystack, completely-habitable, resource-rich world and thinking "yea, survey data on you will be worth a few hundred thousand to the right buyer, and then I'll never come back here again... what a waste." That'll completely change once this is added.Copy the seed for that sectorgen and store it in a document someplace safe so that you CAN come back to it later!
Will we be able to kill the smugglers who come to our planet without loosing reputation with the independent? Because as it stands, the independent are one of the best ways to get capital ships, given they don't require a commission. And I like having capital ships, but I don't like allowing criminals to undermine my own markets.
Also, I am looking forward to this so much. There's something slightly painful about floating above a needle-in-a-haystack, completely-habitable, resource-rich world and thinking "yea, survey data on you will be worth a few hundred thousand to the right buyer, and then I'll never come back here again... what a waste." That'll completely change once this is added.
-Salaries and newbies: SS already has a BRUTAL start, even with the tutorial that no one ever takes. And now with salaries, I feel like it is going to cause even more death spirals because now the new player is going to have TWO monthly supply drains to worry about at least. Many times I read about players that struggle to make ends meet. Now they are gonna have to worry about packing enough supplies, fuel and now credits.
Also, how will salaries and monthly income be payed out? Per day? Week? Month? I would suggest that both of these be given at once and at the same interval so that newbie players don't screw themselves by spending all their money on supplies and fuel and ships and not saving for when that monthly paycheck comes due
Copy the seed for that sectorgen and store it in a document someplace safe so that you CAN come back to it later!
... especially with aptitudes being a tax that NO ONE ELSE pays.
The aptitude tax is awful, and as Midnight says, no one else gets to pay it.
The main thing I am concerned about is skill changes. There are not enough skill points now, and we will get even less later?!
Meanwhile, I look at my officers' ships with great envy and wish I can pilot them, but cannot because only I am allowed to take the critical buffer skills and not my officers. (And if I do not and get skills like an officer, my character is much weaker.)
Maybe it's worth some thought to implement a mechanic that discourages exchanging administrators too frequently. Without that, I imagine there would be some scenarios where you had to switch them around for every minor shift in military thread or economic potential, if you want to play optimally. Something like a small "settled in" stat bonus that admins get after some time would help with that, as would a severance benefit you'd have to pay them for re-assignment.
I don't have much to add, I think it sounds all rather wonderful :) The beautiful artwork for the structures&industries deserves special mention!
Yo, been a while since i've said anything, but I've been keeping tabs on the development. Game is looking better than ever, and shaping up to be a game i've always wanted to play.
...
EDIT: wow, just looked and it's been over 4 years since i last posted. hard to believe it's been that long.
Anyway, i'm curious whether you'll implement some sort of measures to prevent players from scooping up some of the surplus, then selling it directly back to the market. Would you consider that viable, or would you try to act against that behavior? Didn't see any mention of that sort of thing in your blog posts, so i though i'd bring it up.
I like fighting the fleet battles, but I am going love building something for a change as well.
Can we colonize worlds in the name of, or for a faction? Or is it always as a faction?
How will factions feel about me setting up colonies? Will that be based upon my relations with them before I start playing Dictator?
Will other NPC's found their own factions?
I'm gonna go ahead and ask the question I'm sure we are all wondering: Can we make food illegal? (more seriously, are illegal goods limited to the ~5 that exist for all other factions right now or can we make any good in the game we happen to feel like illegal for our faction?)
At any rate, looking forward to more about colonies and starsector in general. Your blog posts are crack to me, love the way you analyze and plan any mechanic you add to the game: something I think a lot of developers could learn from.
I'd probably recommend adding a grace period at the start of the game where you don't have to pay salaries (or add a temporary source of income like the inheritance you mentioned, that runs out after a couple of months)
All things well done!
But, how about the optimization? There is too much OOM now while playing game with lot's of mods. (have to restart the game regularly to prevent savings's failure) If added more new features, the memory is at risk.
@Midnight Kitsune: I mean, no matter the design, even if it's absolutely amazing, there are still ways to screw it up in the execution. I'll do my best to avoid the various pitfalls!
-Salaries and newbies: SS already has a BRUTAL start, even with the tutorial that no one ever takes. And now with salaries, I feel like it is going to cause even more death spirals because now the new player is going to have TWO monthly supply drains to worry about at least. Many times I read about players that struggle to make ends meet. Now they are gonna have to worry about packing enough supplies, fuel and now credits.Hmm, I strongly disagree here. Anecdotal evidence suggests lots of people do the tutorial and that it - alongside other things - has helped *massively* with the early game difficulty. Of course, some people still have trouble, but that fraction of people that does seems to be far less.
... especially with aptitudes being a tax that NO ONE ELSE pays.The aptitude tax is awful, and as Midnight says, no one else gets to pay it.Hmm - I have to be honest, I don't really get the "no-one else has to pay it" sentiment - they're just different mechanics. Maybe the reason for a level cap of 20 is to represent that they do have to invest in aptitudes etc behind the scenes, but it's not something the player needs to be bothered with. But even that I think isn't a great way to look at it because, again, just entirely different mechanics. Apples and oranges, you know?
Your "30 player level = 30 officer level" has some fallacious math in it. As you have it:Hmm - I have to be honest, I don't really get the "no-one else has to pay it" sentiment - they're just different mechanics. Maybe the reason for a level cap of 20 is to represent that they do have to invest in aptitudes etc behind the scenes, but it's not something the player needs to be bothered with. But even that I think isn't a great way to look at it because, again, just entirely different mechanics. Apples and oranges, you know?
That's the issue though: Officers are basically slightly weaker PCs that get to pick the fun skills. Their effective level is 30 (because no aptitudes and the bonus starting skill) and are able to get 7 of the 15 possible skills, spread out across 3 trees of skills. Meanwhile the player's effective skill level is anywhere between 36 (min. 2 aptitudes minus the two bonus points) to 30! which is EQUAL to that of the officers! Combine this with no player respec (can respec officers by spacing them and getting another) and HALF the skill tree being filled with three trees of worth of fleet boosting skills that only the player can pick. And even IF aptitudes were removed, players can't pick all of the fleet based skills... Not just this but ENEMY fleets also don't have to deal with this stuff
I don't know, it just never made sense to me that not only were aptitudes stripped of their skills but the player was given a level cap AND officers (not to mention enemy fleets) don't care about alot of stuff that the player has to (now with salaries being another nerf to the player)
I'm just hoping that concept of colony element to the game remains as an extension to the base game because over the years my will to play strategy and do math has withered almost to zero. I have more fun in SS when I steamroll over fleets of ships with one modded-in god-like commando ship than looking at pages and pages of micromanagement that'll drive me insane sooner or later.
If anything I'll probably still will just set up one colony for my own in-game fellow aliens and hopefully keep it going with Console Commands plus some light modding to make it all as much stressless for my brain as I can. Too much strategy has only driven me away from doing strategy to point of hating the very idea of strategy and use a proverbial sledgehammer to nuke the opposition and call it even. x_x
Oh I do agree that many players were helped by the tutorial however for every one or two that might have issues here, there are 4, 5 or 10 on other forums (4chan, Something Awful, Discord) that have issues as well. And in many of these places you can post anonymously and it allows people to be quite a bit more open and forthcoming, if a bit crude and crash. I see many complain about the early game and many modders also agree that the early game is quite brutal and that the game has an inverted difficulty curve (that is no doubt caused by in part the game's incompleteness)
That's the issue though: Officers are basically slightly weaker PCs that get to pick the fun skills. Their effective level is 30 (because no aptitudes and the bonus starting skill) and are able to get 7 of the 15 possible skills, spread out across 3 trees of skills. Meanwhile the player's effective skill level is anywhere between 36 (min. 2 aptitudes minus the two bonus points) to 30! which is EQUAL to that of the officers! Combine this with no player respec (can respec officers by spacing them and getting another) and HALF the skill tree being filled with three trees of worth of fleet boosting skills that only the player can pick. And even IF aptitudes were removed, players can't pick all of the fleet based skills... Not just this but ENEMY fleets also don't have to deal with this stuff
I don't know, it just never made sense to me that not only were aptitudes stripped of their skills but the player was given a level cap AND officers (not to mention enemy fleets) don't care about alot of stuff that the player has to (now with salaries being another nerf to the player)
I'm really exited for this, the outpost system will open quite a few new possibilities. I'd be curious to see how far a player faction can grow and what would be the effects on the global economy. While it seems unlikely the player will be able to reach something the size of the Hegemony or the League by fair means, i'd like to see the effects of some console command induced growth just for the hell of it.
As for the early game "nerf" that MK is talking about, whether or not the salary drain will have a noticeable effect on the actual gameplay, it will definitely add an intimidation factor for beginners.
An easy solution would be giving the aptitudes points a small bonus, similar to the old skill tree. Even a small percentage increase in whatever feels like progression to the player, instead of a "tax". That's also the occasion to condense further some of the current skills.
Oh also... Can i offer AI cores to other factions in the hope they'll cause mischief? Gifting murderbot magnets should totally be a thing.
So, could you talk a little about what kind of challenge colony building provides for the player, Alex? The blog post gave me the impression you can either do a good or bad job at it, but right now I don't quite see how you could mess it up. Base building challenge is typically dependent on thoughtful placement of stuff, even if just abstractly on a grid. From what I see positioning of does not seem to be a factor here. Other cases I can think of where positioning is irrelevant (like Heroes of Might and Magic) use bases more as a externalized "skill tree" where you just have to decide what to upgrade first. Aside from AI-core shenanigans, can a colony fail in any way?
This got me thinking, once this gets added wouldn't the game reach its 1.0 stage? What other major feature would be left after Colonies/Late game?
Missed this, but...From the sounds of Alpha cores administrators, that sounds like "Wish: More XP (and money)" that will result in a fight with major demons or something. In other words, if player wants a fight (or more rare loot), stick an Alpha Core admin in a colony that outlived its usefulness (because player found better), let it take over, then farm the never-ending streams of Remnants for rare items and/or destroy its battlestation.Alternatively, it might *** off the signatories of the Second AI War Treaty and have them knocking on your doorstep.
Ahh, that makes sense - there's more room for a minor bonus here if skills overall increase in power. Made a note to consider this. The one thing I don't like about it is it muddies the water as far as it being apparent what the function of aptitudes is. I mean, I can totally see "buff the Combat aptitude please, it's really bad compared to the skills" threads pop up.The reasons Combat is bad...
Today, Medusa with Combat skills struggles against an Eagle almost as much as an unskilled Medusa.
SpoilerThe reach for one colony to trade with another, doesn't that depend on the trader more then the location? Small trader NPC's who don't have any fuel tankers are much more limited in fuel range for travel then a massive salvager fleet with strategic level fuel tankers.
So wouldn't reach or range from one colony to another just affect the volume of traders willing to make the trip rather then some kind of yes/no value?
Not to mention travelling a long way only for the destination port to have no fuel, which is a mistake I frequently make.
I would suppose way stations might be more like a fuel depot where weary travellers can resupply and refuel before continuing their journey. Which would need a source of fuel, local or import in order to act as a reach extender.
Connecting to the central fuel refineries of the sector might be enough for a fuel leap frogging scheme for the players faction to encourage traffic down their interstellar highway. But a player owned source would likely be so much cheaper as to be a viable source of income from sales. All before you set up the space tourist traps.
Assuming I am making any sense whatsoever.[close]
I did, and you are right. Not only Attack Medusa, but also a couple custom configurations I use for the 0.8.x environment. Actually, two Heavy Blasters and Railguns does not have much more trouble, Medusa just does a bit more hit-and-run and venting, but the Eagle is dead very fast. What I like to use is Needlers, one Heavy Blaster, and one Ion Beam. Needlers for shield damage, Ion Beam for piercing, and Blaster as a finisher, and that works too. (Without skills, Eagle was too hard. Almost got it with the Needler, Blaster, and Ion Beam combo while unskilled once, but one mistake on unresponsive shields blew that attempt.)Today, Medusa with Combat skills struggles against an Eagle almost as much as an unskilled Medusa.
Hmm - I think you may want to take another look, maybe you're assuming a few things about what's optimal that no longer quite hold up? A max-combat-skilled "Attack" Medusa variant (let alone one that includes the tech skills as well) easily mauls an unskilled Eagle while taking no hull damage. A loadout with Heavy Blasters etc has a lot more trouble, though, but that one is more of a "team player".
I mean, I think you definitely have a point as far as forcing engagements etc, but the Medusa/Eagle thing just doesn't seem at all accurate.
I'm just hoping that concept of colony element to the game remains as an extension to the base game because over the years my will to play strategy and do math has withered almost to zero. I have more fun in SS when I steamroll over fleets of ships with one modded-in god-like commando ship than looking at pages and pages of micromanagement that'll drive me insane sooner or later.
If anything I'll probably still will just set up one colony for my own in-game fellow aliens and hopefully keep it going with Console Commands plus some light modding to make it all as much stressless for my brain as I can. Too much strategy has only driven me away from doing strategy to point of hating the very idea of strategy and use a proverbial sledgehammer to nuke the opposition and call it even. x_x
Fair enough :) Hopefully not much math would be required in the first place.
I did, and you are right. Not only Attack Medusa, but also a couple custom configurations I use for the 0.8.x environment. Actually, two Heavy Blasters and Railguns does not have much more trouble, Medusa just does a bit more hit-and-run and venting, but the Eagle is dead very fast. What I like to use is Needlers, one Heavy Blaster, and one Ion Beam. Needlers for shield damage, Ion Beam for piercing, and Blaster as a finisher, and that works too. (Without skills, Eagle was too hard. Almost got it with the Needler, Blaster, and Ion Beam combo while unskilled once, but one mistake on unresponsive shields blew that attempt.)
Later, I tried skilled Medusa against SIM Onslaught then SIM Paragon. Onslaught was dead soon enough, but Medusa was overpowered by Paragon. (I did not spend too much time trying to kill capitals.)
It is likely that either I used a more 0.7.2 style loadout, tested it against a different ship, or I did not have all of the Combat skills when I did that first test long ago.
That is the thing. For my flagship to have that much Combat power, I need to give up everything else - fleet, carrier-and-fighters, exploration, and various QoL, including all-powerful Loadout Design 3. My combat monster is a one-trick pony, and unlike pre-0.8.x, my combat monster is not all-powerful. (I also remember trying full combat Paragon against the simulator, and Paragon was helpless against frigates due to them refusing to engage until thirty or so could swarm and attack at once; no way Paragon can defend against that many assailants.) I do not need to make such a sacrifice with other archetypes like carrier specialist. With a carrier specialist, I might not be able to get everything to qualify as a generalist, but at least have few leftover points to grab exploration, QoL, or some combat skills to round out a bit more.
The main problems with Combat or personal-only skills is it costs too much to get enough to matter (unless player can avoid junk perks) and more officers can probably do much of that job instead of player.
To clarify what I meant a bit more is that I'm still able to do minor amounts of strategy more than math aka I guesstimate instead of doing math so essentially when it comes to math I think of numbers as tetris blocks. In strategy games, usually somewhere at late early-game to stressful mid-game to (especially) infuriating end-game are all risky areas where my proverbial fuse gets shorter due to stress and inability to play any further. Hence why I can't never finish 90% of the mission campaigns in SS still because by the time I find something that gets me further a bit I'm just too unstable to progress any further as that part of the game becomes exercise in extreme frustration.
So yeah... that is pretty much why I don't bother playing SS like everyone else and instead resort to doing some modding and cheating to turn things in my favor ten-fold because I like a lot how the combat feels in the game, especially when things are in my favor. Mind you, as far as difficulty goes I'm not suggesting an easier way to play here as I already know how to mod in an altered ship and a few super weapons for it to feel awesome playing in normal difficulty. It's just the upcoming colony system that got me wondering about how it could affect me. :-\
So, since we can assign cores to manage colonies, when can we expect the ability (or the APIs) to bolster up our ships capabilities by having wAIfu Cores manage certain components of the ship? Like, i dunno, the flux conduits or the engines?
So, how's that for a second comment? Please excuse me while I never type again.
Just want to chime in, as a new-er-ish player, the most challenging part is the information dump. It takes you time to learn about the world. You need to see how tariffs make trade-based profit difficult, and then how food shortages, etc, provide opportunities to profit anyway. You need to learn from hard experience that unnecessary, reward-less combat is a bad thing. You need to realize how important it is to keep that last 5-10k in the bank and not spend it on a new ship. You'll need it for repairs, fuel, product for trade, etc, before you make more. The tutorial helps massively with teaching you some basics, and for telling you what you can do. And it leaves you in a much better starting place than you'd be in without it. But you still need to learn what you should do on your own. Once you know that, Starsector's start - even sans tutorial - isn't that bad. I've started 6 games now (most haven't gone far), and I'm now quite confident I can get up and running.
SpoilerWhen it comes to skills, I think compressing each branch to six skills will probably help combat, since combat has the most skills to compress down. But may I propose a solution I haven't seen here yet? You could nerf officers. I was really surprised when I saw they could learn up to 7 skills (I was expecting 4 or 5), because with 7 an officer is as good at their job as anyone could be (barring player skill). And you could make an argument that combat skills are more valuable on the player than on officers because player skill acts as a multiplier, but a player comparing the stats of their ship under their command to under their officer's won't feel that way. Besides,
1) As the game goes on, fights tend to get larger. And as fights get larger, the player's ship becomes a smaller part of the overall fleet, and skills that benefit only their ship become less valuable.
and 2) As ships get larger, they become less mobile. Less mobility means less ability to capitalize on an opportunity, and so player skill becomes less important (not worthless, just less important). Personally I think this is a good thing; I like that there's an incentive a player might fly a cruiser or maybe a top-notch destroyer even when a fight has capital ships. However, it does mean that officers become more powerful relative to the player as the game progresses and ships get larger.
As the game goes on, a combat-focused player will probably feel progressively weaker. An officer has seven skills, which is more than just a noticeable improvement over an officer-less ship; it's enough to get everything relevant to the officer's role. Even a player that gets more combat skills than the officer won't feel stronger, because the additional skills they have are ones that wouldn't benefit the officer much anyway. It gets even worse for a player who wants to build half-and-half combat and utility, because if he does want to fight he's still outclassed by officers and if he's never going to fight, he may as well have picked up more utility instead.
By comparison, Fleet Logistics and Fighter Doctrine stay steady in power, no matter how large the fleet. Loadout Design may even become better as ships become more specialized and ordinance points allow that (10% better overall becomes ~20% better at your job & no change in irrelevant stuff). I expect these will keep a non-combat player relevant even if the officer level cap is lower.
But I've gone on longer than I meant to. I just wanted to say that for a combat build (or half-and-half build) to be useful, a player must be able to out-perform an officer at their own job (or tie them, in the case of half-and-half). If we move to a system with 8 combat skills (6 in the combat tree and the 2 currently under technology) I'd be worried if an officer could learn more than 3.[close]
(That all seems to come from dominion-era tech. Though, two-birds-one-stone, a dominion antimatter fuel assembly would be a hell of a thing to loot from a dominion mothership. Also, if you did loot one, there's almost no way the other factions wouldn't take interest in your colony and its valuable, irreplaceable strategic resource.)
Which leads to the next threat: conquest. I'd imagine a new, lightly-equipped colony would be a prime target for small pirate fleets, at least until its first defenses came online. That would mean you could only establish a colony once you had the ability to fight for it. And I'd imagine the fighting is harder the closer you are to the core worlds (and by extension, most pirates). This is the trouble that replaces stretched trade - which is not a problem so close to core worlds. Though I picture pirate raids largely dying out once the colony has some way to defend itself. You wouldn't want to make the player stay there forever.
Of course, other parties might become interested. The Hegemony may want to preempt a strong faction that might side with the Persean League (because that went so well last time.) The Ludds might take issue with heavy industry, doubly so on a Terran or other god-given wonder-world. I think it's just a reality that having a prosperous planet means you'd need to defend it once in a while, even if it can handle any non-noteworthy threat itself. I just hope it's not frequent enough to make the long travel time to go defend remote settlements feel like a drag.
I don't find the early-game to be too difficult (although I haven't been a brand new player for a long time), but I agree that the game becomes too easy in the mid-late game. I'm hoping that, with the advent of faction-building, growing your faction quickly draws negative attention from existing factions. I'd even like to see most/all factions uniting against the player faction as the player becomes too powerful in the very late game. I think the player should have to plan carefully in order to survive the hostility they will face when they start claiming planets and drawing immigrant populations away from other factions.
I wonder how many of the skills are really necessary to make a difference. For 1v1s, the defensive skills may be important if you can't outrange, but in a fleet setting, I think just getting the offensive skills may be enough to get most of the benefit, and that starts to be more affordable point-wise.Combat is viable because no skills is viable (at least in 0.8 ) given a sufficiently large fleet. In a fleet setting, combat is less important. Combat for the flagship is probably most useful for players who want to solo fights against enemies with traditional gunships.
Yep, I gotcha. My patience for certain types of games is also more than a bit low. The important part is to have fun, and I'm glad the mods let you do that.
I probably would be annoyed if I need to spend hours, days, or even months grinding enough XP for one level or replay a fight many times before a rare and powerful item drops. ...Or if I need to play long enough to check off a list of numerous frivolous achievements before I unlock desirable game features.
You need to see how tariffs make trade-based profit difficult, and then how food shortages, etc, provide opportunities to profit anyway. You need to learn from hard experience that unnecessary, reward-less combat is a bad thing.
We already have two skill tracks: individual ship boosting skills (those officers can take) and fleet boosting/ability adding skills(those officers can't take). I propose chopping the skill system apart along those lines.
More on topic of far flung outposts, I think it would be cool if there were a few small, independent colonies strung out in the outer systems that the player could find. I often see groups of scavengers all mining the same resources in a far off system, so if they had some hidden base that I could tail them back to and then trade with it would be really cool. And then it would be on my map to plan future expeditions around.
It would make things feel a bit more alive. On the other hand, it would upset that "far away from any civilization" feel the outer sector has at present.
More on topic of far flung outposts, I think it would be cool if there were a few small, independent colonies strung out in the outer systems that the player could find. I often see groups of scavengers all mining the same resources in a far off system, so if they had some hidden base that I could tail them back to and then trade with it would be really cool. And then it would be on my map to plan future expeditions around.
It would make things feel a bit more alive. On the other hand, it would upset that "far away from any civilization" feel the outer sector has at present.
I personally think finding small pockets of civilization far out in the empty expanse is the single most exciting thing to have in an exploration game. As long as they aren't all over (I think 1-3 per map) this would be amazing. Also finding a secret tritach research base with cool tech would also be really cool. Basically the feeling of stumbling on something secret and valuable in the middle of nowhere is incredibly intriguing.
At the same time, if the single ship boosting skills are too powerful it skews combat greatly towards just deploying ships with officers, max combat skills, and then always picking the same few 'must have' other skills (see .7.2 skill balance).
I'm on the fence about aptitudes - I get that they are supposed to make player specialization more optimal, but I don't think they work as they are right now.When the best build maxes all (or spends more than nine points into) aptitudes, and the suboptimal ones spend less, aptitudes do not work for their intended purpose. Instead, aptitudes serve as a tax, they suck up enough aptitude points that player is inferior to officers after player invests points into few fleetwide and/or QoL skills.
Some personal input on combat skills: they are more viable than a lot of players give them credit for. To me, the difference between flying a ship with no skills and with even just a few points invested in Combat is fairly noticeable. It's not that I'm looking to solo enemy fleets or neglect the rest of the fleet in favor of my flagship. Rather, Combat helps me dive into the thick of battle and direct its flow, protecting allied ships and killing enemy ones quicker and more easily. However, the game can be quite punishing to the reckless. I would speculate that a large part of Combat's reputation is that new players tend to get bitten badly while trying it, as a bunch of major stat boosts won't keep a new player from fluxing out their Wolf on kinetic damage and being annihilated by harpoons, while more experienced players who understand the game better tend to go for more optimal builds, which a combination of leadership/technology certainly is.
At this point, I'm not even sure that killing smugglers would have a positive effect. I do want to take another look at how reputation works especially re: independents and pirates, though.
One other thing I was thinking about for a skill revamp is adding an extra "mastery" effect to all the combat skills, unlocked at level 3 for each skill, that would apply to all ships in the fleet (including the flagship). It wouldn't add up to anywhere near having an officer on board, but it'd be something the player can't get without investing into the skill personally.
... But if an ally is fighting 3 to 1 and I have a couple of frigates nearby I can give my best shot at turning it around. Not to be callous to my allies, but when I'm not directly paying for their replacements, a brutal fight that can come down to only a handful of survivors per side can still be something I gain from, where if I did own the whole fleet, the best case scenario would still cost a fortune to rebuild from. I'm hoping this means we get more fights like that.
I think its fundamentally unsatisfying in a game focused on flying our spaceship and blowing up enemies for the individual ship boosting skills to be suboptimal - the player should not be worse than the officers at boosting their own ships unless the officer is higher level than the player. "Officer Envy" is real and bad.
I like the notion of "masteries", or something of the sort. Something like, a fleet commander who used to be (and still is) an excellent captain can make use of that knowledge to revise fleet SOP or train his subordinates and their crews accordingly?
More on topic of far flung outposts, I think it would be cool if there were a few small, independent colonies strung out in the outer systems that the player could find. I often see groups of scavengers all mining the same resources in a far off system, so if they had some hidden base that I could tail them back to and then trade with it would be really cool. And then it would be on my map to plan future expeditions around.
It would make things feel a bit more alive. On the other hand, it would upset that "far away from any civilization" feel the outer sector has at present.
Alex, would it be possible to add a feature allowing you to rename Officers and Admins? I always had fun doing things like that in DF and Rimworld and naming various sims and dorfs after my online friends and whatnot, thought it'd be fun here too.
Will we be able to build a shipyard of sorts on these colonies, to construct various ships and weapons? One of my biggest gripes with the mid game is after raising your reputation and killing a few pirate bounties, going from planet to planet to see if they've got any new weapons you can use, or in one unfortunate run no one was selling sunders. It would be great to invest in your colonies to being able to craft ships and equipment, to have some better control over the fleet you use.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13018.0
an idea for how a new reputation system could work
Firstly, I want to ask - when Alex says Combat should be weaker because it's cheaper, he means the idea that you would use less ships because you rely on your flagship more, correct? If that's the case, I don't think that's correct. I enjoyed Starsector before the combat skill changes and I still thoroughly enjoy the game! However, as it stands now I wouldn't call a combat path cheaper. If you want to face end-game fleets, it's impossible to do a combat-focused player build without investing in a large fleet or investing in a very long, drawn out battles.
I had that happen a lot when playing as the Knights Templar using only those Crusader cruisers, trying to save on supply costs by only deploying a cruiser. There would only be like two frigates and one destroyer left, but they would refuse to fight until their CR got low. That was a pretty special case, what with playing a mod not even designed to be played by the player, but yeah it's really frustrating.
When you say "I want to have separate trees for combat and fleet skills," I hear "I want a combat skill build but I'm going to choose the best build available to me, and that build's a support/utility role with officers doing the actual fighting. So can you please force us to get some combat skills so that I can play how I want to without feeling like I'm using a sub-optimal strategy." But for me, a support player by choice, that sounds like being forced to take half of a build that I really enjoy and put it toward a playstyle I don't much want.
How about a stat like "intimidation" or "reputation" that grows with each point invested into combat skills. It would give a bonus to certain negotiaion related things like bounties, probability of smuggled goods being found or even prices of fuel and supplies.
It even makes sense that personal combat/badass skills that are not directly related to your qualification as a leader are still recognized. Just think of Teddy Roosevelt.
Hey - yeah, I did see that! In brief: I get the idea, but I think it suffers from "makes sense behind the scenes, total pain to actually convey to the player" issue.
You know what I mean? "Your Hegemony reputation in Corvus may or may not change by a couple of points in one or the other direction in a few days, which may or may not be enough to enable|stop you from being able to buy a ship that requires a certain reputation level" etc.
My pc goes out of commission for a week and I miss some of the best news I've read in a while... Late to the party but wow this looks great! Looking through the thread I have nothing to add that hasn't been said already.. I will just say that I am extremely pumped ;D
Quick question: If we build a military base, does the colony get a military market (for us to buy ships) or is such hardware (if produced) for Local Resources?
Can you build a colony in a REDACTED system?
Question, is there any notion of having a "capital world" for the player faction, or are all player-owned markets equally "colonies"?
I'm not necessarily advocating that there should be such a notion, as we could legitimately say that the player's fleet is the executive and administrative center of the faction. But it could be interesting for both roleplay and gameplay to have the option of naming a market as the faction's capital.
This is really looking great, Alex! I like pretty much everything I see in these changes and I am really looking forward to seeing how the "combat funnel" gets implemented :)
B. Late-game, the problem is largely that the player has resources, and nothing to spend it on. I know we're about to see big changes to that, and I'm glad, but I think I should maybe make it clear where the issue is. It's not just "my income vastly outpaces my expenses"; it's also, far too often in Vanilla, "my income has absolutely nothing worth being spent on"; ...
I'm not really a fan of the current system, where we shop endlessly in RNG hoping that something we actually want will drop. It lacks that nice feel Blizzard achieved with Diablo II, where you might have those problems with the shops, but you had the Gems to keep pushing you forward, etc.
3. The one big worry I have, given the outlines of the current system as you're developing it, is that AI Cores sound like a show-stopper resource. Please, tell me that, if we're willing to spend outrageous amounts of money, we can get more, even if all of the Domain stuff is scraps and every single Remnant has been hunted down? I really dislike the idea that we'll be purposefully farming Remnants in late game just to get Cores because it's the only way; I can <shudders> imagine having to build a Core Farming operation where I've built powerful defensive bases in all the nearby Systems just to keep the Factions away.
With the addition of all this monthly income/expenses, how is the overall economy (from the player's standpoint) being affected? Are bounties relatively unchanged? I know that if I want to level up and score the most credits, named bounties are the quickest way for me. I can easily get hundreds of thousands of credits and 20 levels in rapid fashion. Is this going to translate into "easy" colony building for me since I have the start-up capital early or are there other factors, beyond sheer credits, that will slow down my empire building? Once the colonies are up and running, will I need to supplement my income with bounties, etc. to continue making money or will good colony management be "enough" to fuel further expansion?
TL;DR: Will colonies provide enough income (not just credits but ships, weapons, etc.) to begin focusing on other stuff down the road? At what point, if ever, will a player be self-sufficient?
If you've got five fires to put out, you're going to be less inclined to do this sort of thing.Hmm. The Mount and Blade experience says otherwise; people eventually figured out how to break the economy, spent literally weeks playing out years of time building up millions of denars to spend, and then spent aons building up the huge forces of optimized Huscarls needed to win.
In Vanilla, this is considerably easier to reach (the balance changes I've made generally make this a lot harder on the player, because there aren't a lot of things that can be easily abused, now that I've adjusted Variants to take advantage of the changed things).I mean... have you seen my videos on your modpack? Your rebalances are INCREDIBLY abusable and turn the game into a "nothing matters" arcadey explosion generator.
I don't think any of what I'm saying here applies to Average Joe Player, mind you. Based on what I've seen on streams lately, there aren't that many people doing this kind of thing well; sometimes I wish I had enough spare time to make videos on How To Break Things. But be aware that if the game's played right, the power-curve is still not quite tuned right in late-game.
Hmm. The Mount and Blade experience says otherwise; people eventually figured out how to break the economy, spent literally weeks playing out years of time building up millions of denars to spend, and then spent aons building up the huge forces of optimized Huscarls needed to win.
I mean... have you seen my videos on your modpack? Your rebalances are INCREDIBLY abusable and turn the game into a "nothing matters" arcadey explosion generator.
I don't really wanna be that guy - broken record, and all that - but seriously, using the rebalance mechanics you designed I literally beat Forlorn Hope without dropping shield or activating the paragon's ship system a single time, and that was using exactly 4 weapon slots out of the entire ship's arsenal.
I know that this is sort of off topic for the thread in question, but I feel it needs to be said when you make posts of that length trying to argue redesigning major elements of the game.
What I mean by "fires to put out" is situations where sitting around doing that lets them, to take the metaphor further, burn stuff down :) So, yeah, time pressure is the main component of that - i.e. if a pirate raid is coming to colony X, you don't have the time to go look for some light needlers, etc.Unless the pirates themselves have light needlers on their ships.
Maybe the world is in a close orbit a particularly violent star/gas giant/star cluster which has deposited an enormous and deep transuranic dust layer (which obviously also breaks down into the good stuff you mine nickel-iron asteroids for such as the platinum group metals, niobium, tantalum, rhenium - all things going into first through third generation superalloys). Exotic places with exotic resources, ranging the gamut from high energy atmospheres/environments that are suitable for producing lots of research components to sell to market (particle research or fancy batteries), deathworlds with fascinating biological products (medicines, drugs, food), etc.
This is where I'd enjoy roleplaying my faction's proclivities - instead of robots, do you send down waves of augmented 'humans' who are ever more adapted? (Revelation Space ultron style like Diamond Dogs), an army of corpses controlled by an AI (Ancillary Justice(Don't betray the AI, you won't like it when an unfeeling utterly rational entity gets stuck in a fleshly body and must take matters into its own hands)), or perhaps that's all too expensive for you and the number of lives lost in the mines is just an item on the expense report as you fuel the war machine keeping your unwashed masses safe from the terrors out there.
I love exploring the different solar systems and seeing all the neat stuff, looking forward to the next update, and thanks for the great work!
Self-sufficiency, as defined by FooF, would be one of my late-game goals. Before I start destroying enemy factions, I cannot have them stop my war machine by pulling the plug.
-snip-
Things along the lines of a floating armored orbital slab in which you have a small standing population supervising and remotely controlling a team of robots.
-snip-
P.S. would like to be able to play a hard mode faction that ditches planetary bodies as anything but resource sources and colonizes space like in the maple syrup wars (Troy Rising by John Ringo)
I wonder if it's possible to build a cluster of colonies that form a self sufficient circle outside of core world.
That is to say, your colonies basically fulfill their own need (and sometimes even some surplus product) by trading to each other and no trade to main factions.
Theoretically this can be done given you find a good place that you can obtain all kinds of resource in the limited numbers of planets.
You might not earn a lot of money doing this but your system(s) can be safer from hostile factions' invasion.
Can the player establish multiple instances of the same industry at a market?
I noticed some markets in current releases had something like Light Industry (2). I guess that the market had two of the same, and it was compacted to indicate that it had more of the same production.
It would look silly on the management screen, much like that one image with twelve Population and Infrastructure, but... if that what it takes to exploit an abundant resource, well... then it gets done.
Can we order colony defending fleet fighting alongside us
Sr my english is bad
Can we order colony defending fleet fighting alongside us
And i don't understand what different between colony and outpost
Can we drop the station from orbit to devastate the planet below
Jokes aside, will we be able to build our battlestations?
1. Will other factions be able to establish outposts, or is this really involved in terms of coding for AI.
If so, could surveying planets and then selling on the data create interest in the planet (e.g. a planet with rich volatile deposits and Class IV Survey data would encourage the Hegemony to setup an outpost there?)
2. Will there be a way to 'secure' AI cores.
3. Will comms and intel be changed in anyway?
4. I'm assuming that outposts are in the form of colonies on the surface of planets or am I wrong. Following on from the above post, can we construct shipyards and the like and orbital dockyards for extreme resource cost? Or are they simply too bug and too complex such that they would take a few cycles to build.
@TheEndstoneGolem: thank you, glad you like how it's shaping up :)No, thank you!
Probably not - I could see this happening as a one-off "special event", maybe, but I don't want to have factions acting as if they were playing a 4x game, actively colonzing and so on. This is more about the player carving out their spot.I guess that makes sense, plus Nexelerin will likely pick up on it too so that we have the choice as I imagine this would be fairly CPU-heavy :).
I wouldn't imagine so. The uncertainty about whether something might happen (and what, if it does) is part of the charm of using AI cores.D:
Probably, but I can't speak as to exactly how right now - still undecided on some points.Can't speak because teasing or just generally unsure as to which direction to head in with them? ;)
(See above re: outposts vs colonies.) As far as shipyards and such - yeah, you'll be able to construct them. The cost and time to do that are up in the air, pending actual playtesting.Will you be able to customise what they produce? Or is it again something to be found in settings and files and things.
Can't speak because teasing or just generally unsure as to which direction to head in with them? ;)
Will you be able to customise what they produce?
Yes, to some degree.
There's really no "sure" until something is done, and even then it can change, so I try to avoid talking about things until I have what feels like a reasonable degree of certainty. It's too easy to get excited about speculative things, and I really don't want someone getting excited about something that might not happen. I mean, ultimately a lot of things I present will change anyway, but I still want to keep that to a minimum.Yeah I guess this makes sense, especially seeing as it is going to become a more important game mechanic?
(The flipside is if someone *doesn't* like a potential approach, and in that case a likely discussion about it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but would probably happen anyway...)
So, basically: I know roughly what direction I want to take it in. I don't know whether it will work out when, as they say, the rubber meets the road.
In regards to shipyard production customisation, will this also include (in the future) overall fleet customisation?
I don't want to ask the question, but I have to....
Current progress towards next release? :3
This has probably been explored already, but what if...
What if officers could gain all skills, and not just the combat ones? This way, a combat player could settle with slightly less powerful officers that take care of the "macro" buffs. One could even keep non-combat officers, for the salvage skills and such, at the trade-off of other officer skills.
What if officers could gain all skills, and not just the combat ones? This way, a combat player could settle with slightly less powerful officers that take care of the "macro" buffs. One could even keep non-combat officers, for the salvage skills and such, at the trade-off of other officer skills.It would make Officer Management the no-brainer must-have skill, much like Loadout Design 3 and Electronic Warfare 1 are today. One point for two officers? That is like spending one point for a net gain of up to thirty-nine more points.
Unless you got to pick their skillsYou can with save-scumming, unless officer already knows a carrier skill and there are more left, such that there is always a carrier skill to pick (which is why I do not let my generalist officers learn carrier skills until level 16, when I want to choose only some carrier skills instead of all - to avoid junk carrier perks). Level up officer, and if the next level-up has something I want, save. If not, reload and try again. Repeat for every level. Scumming like this gets annoying, and I sometimes do not bother leveling up officers due to the hassle, but it is faster than leveling then firing and replacing officers.
Selecting skills for officers like players do for themselves (within the officers' subset) would be much nicer and eliminating the hassle of save-scumming.
I have some REDACTED thoughts on the matter :)