"totalConversion":"true" "totalConversion":"false",You really should set the "total conversion" flag to true on your mod, its entire purpose is for TCs and that's what this is...Addendum on reasoning: If people want to use other mods with this they should change the TC flag themselves (i.e. poweruser opt-in), until such time as Archean Order is known to be compatible with most/all extant mods.
You really should set the "total conversion" flag to true on your mod, its entire purpose is for TCs and that's what this is...Addendum on reasoning: If people want to use other mods with this they should change the TC flag themselves (i.e. poweruser opt-in), until such time as Archean Order is known to be compatible with most/all extant mods.
Otherwise some users will inevitably fail to note the incompatibility issues, break it and won't know who to look to for help.
This looks super-cool. Bravo! I'll try this out tomorrow :)
A smallish request / suggestion, if I may.SpoilerIt wouldn't take a huge amount of work to get the ships / weapons converted to use FX mod for performance improvements.
If fighters tend to be more numerous, we can expect pretty crawling framerates in big fights, especially as the count of fighters goes up.
At the very least, I'd do Fighter engines and gun flares / explosions; that will save a surprising amount of CPU, I think you'll find, while preserving the Vanilla look of the ship engines and missile trails.
I might just find time to do this initially for you as an optional mini-mod; you'll have to maintain it, though.[close]
As a geologist, I need to ask "why archean?" ;D
By the way, this mod has some really nice sprite, really like them. And its seems to have take a lot of work!
Spoiler(http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/12/aVOSkIC.gif)[close]
Woooo! I am very excited to try this!
Looks very interesting and fresh, will test it in the next year ;)
" - > Smaller weapons, more weapons per ship- designed to mimic a cinematic combat experience inspired by the Star Wars movies."
Me: DOWNLOAD FASTER YOU STUPID POTATO OF A COMPUTER!!!
Wow, great work.Thanks! Hope you are enjoying the mod!
Why not hand place more content, and make the proc gen placement stuff just a small fraction of the overall campaign rig?
SpoilerOk! Review from just an hour of playtime (and reading your manual):
I chose the Wolf and Drone Tender start, and immediately bought a Condor-H and a Steady carrier officer (level 3). A rather nice find in the starting Corvus black market. Skills are Combat 1 with Defensive subsytems and Impact Mitigation.
Loadouts:Spoiler
Drone Tender: Default.
Wolf armed with: Starting set, took off the + burn speed engine mod to add stabilized shields and 2 more caps.
The condor is armed with: A Retribution, a Talon, a mass driver and dual autocannon facing forwards, a salamander and 2 bolas, 1 point defense gun forwards and 2 machine guns backwards. 12 Caps, 5 Vents[close]
First impressions, in no particular order:
I like the long delay, long range skimmer. Weapon placement on the Wolf is nice, as is the Condor - I really like the more, smaller mounts on ships that I've seen. Missile balance is nice - a lot of HE burst from swarmers, but they rely on the target having PD and shields down or they do nothing. Bola SRM's on the Condor are surprisingly effective! Really a nice little missile, and your balance of refire time vs reload speed is really good.
Piloting the Wolf so far is quite boring. None of the weapons on it take flux except the swarmers and my dissipation quickly takes care of that, so I don't need to dart in and out of combat to vent (no flux management). Its 'combat speed' is only 70, so if I'm not travelling (larger 0 flux bonus) its very sluggish. I just kind of sit near an enemy pointing near them until they die, which takes a while due to higher armor and lower dps. And the guns fire slowly, so there isn't much to look at either :P. The enemy, just pirates so far, don't have anything that pressures the (7400 with .85 efficiency) shield very well, and with everything doing so little damage/having a long refire timer I can just vent at 700 range or so and take like 5 armor damage if I'm feeling lazy. Or use a skimmer charge and pop away if I'm feeling like not risking it. The Wolf does have the same deployment cost as the Condor, so maybe its just supposed to be a very powerful ship compared to pirates? Whatever the case, there's just nothing for me as a pilot to do while using it.
I did have one good fight where I was very outnumbered and I was trying to take down a kite - it could dodge every shot from the pulse cannons at medium range and was faster than me so I needed to skim on top of it repeatedly without getting fragged by its missiles. That was a good interaction.
The 'shields up reduces passive venting too' hasn't effected me at all yet, will reserve judgement.
The fighters make things more interesting, and I quite like all of the different kinds you've made. I really like how they have defined roles, and I really like how every cruiser has fighter bays, though I haven't been in any combats with cruisers yet. The fighters themselves are moderately effective, though as with everything their overall DPS is low. Certainly the Condor loadout above can smack around pirates with ease. From reading your manual, I think that the fighter update from a few versions ago pre-empted a lot of your fighter changes - speeds and wing sizes seem similar to vanilla. Balance is a bit better than vanilla imo and the few carriers I've tangled with were not overpowered, perhaps because they didn't have good escorts.
Smaller fighter size + low hitpoints works great! PD weapons are good at their roles without being effective in ship to ship combat, while the slow projectile speed of main guns makes them ineffective unless in a great big barrage.
Weapons:
Visuals, descriptions, and relative balance of power seem good from what I've seen so far (and I already said I liked the missiles and fighters). I am skeptical of having entire classes of weapons with 0 flux - but I also understand that that is how you are differentiating 'assault' type weapons from 'fire support' type weapons. Looking at my starting Wolf, I really think the ship would be a flat 50% stronger if I took out the forward PD and replaced it with another pulse cannon - there's no flux usage to balance around. You did say in your manual that specialization is important, so is this just a manifestation of that? Removing the flux management of SS combat contributes to dull frigate combat, but I'll wait to see how big ship play turns out.
Suggestions:
Hard to make because I haven't played much and don't know the larger ships, but... double frigate offense or half their defense? Higher speed? More weapon mounts for frigates in general?[close]
Quick bug note: Eisheth II has 0 population listed on the map and on the star info page, but is a pop 5 planet. It also has very very few things for sale.
Setup bug?
The safety overrides hullmod says it reduces weapon range beyond null units
I've been getting crashes when selecting some systems from the intel screen map.
Pretty sure the code below is the crash log.Spoiler28316 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.o0OO.void.return$new(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.o0OO.afterSizeFirstChanged(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.sizeChanged(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO0O.set(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.thisnew.super(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.j.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO00.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.O0oO.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO00.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.B.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.B.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.if$7.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.if.setCurrentTab(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.showCoreUITab(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.map.A.super(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.map.Objectsuper.processInputImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.processInput(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.V.o00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)[close]
Right. I have used Console commands to get ships since I am lazy. I also haven't gotten into any decent fights (though I recommend waiting a little on that. After I post this, I am going back in to get said big fight) that actually push my to do more than "Charge in, Murder" with my Pillager. I will say that a swarm of 5+ squadrons of Talon's is...shockingly effective vs my Pillager's PD. It has half of its small slots filled with MG's, and the other half Point defense (and at one point all point defense...which was slightly less effective). One flak at the back too...And I have found a stupid amount of XIV ships in Hegemony markets. o.o
Last thing I want to say before I start getting into fights: I LOVE THE WEAPON SPAM!!! You have truly shown the Star Wars inspired side of this mod with that! ^^
Wait...so Talon span on my 4 falcons and 1 eagle would be useful? (evil thoughts) So the MG's and Talons are no longer useless! BULLET SPAM HERE I COME!!!Right. I have used Console commands to get ships since I am lazy. I also haven't gotten into any decent fights (though I recommend waiting a little on that. After I post this, I am going back in to get said big fight) that actually push my to do more than "Charge in, Murder" with my Pillager. I will say that a swarm of 5+ squadrons of Talon's is...shockingly effective vs my Pillager's PD. It has half of its small slots filled with MG's, and the other half Point defense (and at one point all point defense...which was slightly less effective). One flak at the back too...And I have found a stupid amount of XIV ships in Hegemony markets. o.o
Last thing I want to say before I start getting into fights: I LOVE THE WEAPON SPAM!!! You have truly shown the Star Wars inspired side of this mod with that! ^^
Thank you for your feedback! The Pillager is one of my favorite ships. ;D
The Point Defense Cannon is slightly better against missiles and bombers, the machine gun is slightly better against faster threats like interceptors. So combining the two actually is the optimal way to go since they play off each others strengths! (Also the machine gun is probably best in class at finishing off "almost kills" from larger per shot weapons that fire slowly- so it is just nice to have a couple regardless.)
I have tried to make all point defense options synergize this way-
good at least in some scenarios: investing in additional ordinance points to increase effectiveness- but combining different kinds of weapons increases effectiveness more than only focusing on only one type.
As to Talons being good at pure point defense, since you tend to have a lot more interceptors as a whole to potentially work with, you need an interceptor screen from your own fighter bays defending your capitals as well if you are outnumbered. Otherwise enemy fighters will eventually disable your turrets and keep your engines offline. Then you're in real trouble if a strike ship shows up. Well, that's the idea anyway.
What I am very pleased with is how much the AI seems to understand this. I am always so impressed with this game's ability to just roll with things that way. lol
**Edit** Missed your note on XIV ships! Yes the Hegemony has rediscovered the ability to convert these hulls. ;) All Hegemony ships are now either "XIV" which means modeled after that battle-group with relevant stats or reinforced civilian auxiliaries like the Heg Hound and Cerebus. So most vessels found in Hegemony markets have their mark on it. They are also quite expensive compared to their standard counterparts.
Standard hulls are still found in Heg markets, but also predominantly in the black market and independent markets- since to me that's what would make sense from an immersion perspective.
Don't be fooled, however, that doesn't mean you get the best finds with the Hegemony by any means. Other factions' vessels are just as powerful and can come with their own stat modifiers. Mid-tech and Hi-tech vessels tend to not have these, but factions who use those vessels also can have conversions of lower tech ships to entice you. Not to mention their weapons and fighters.
I'm glad it feels balanced so far! It was the largest and hardest part of development, along with sprite editing. I pretty much had to re-invent the wheel with load-outs.SpoilerWait...so Talon span on my 4 falcons and 1 eagle would be useful? (evil thoughts) So the MG's and Talons are no longer useless! BULLET SPAM HERE I COME!!!
Anyway, got a...decent fight. Gonna use the Spoiler thing to make this a smaller reply.
OnslaughtSpoilerGlad to see the Onslaught can still delete most cruisers...Though I still prefer my TPL's, the Term beams are better for me since I have bad projectile aim. Still need to edit my build, but to do that I need a large kinetic weapon that doesn't have a range of 800 meters. Curse my luck!
Besides that, putting a MG and PD mix into all the small slots, and FLAK in all the medium slots is extremely strong and gives a defense that requires 4 squadrons to last more than 10 seconds against. Who needs a Paragon level shield when you have a stupid amount of armor, a stupid amount of HP, and a stupid amount of guns! I do think I would prefer to have the Burn drive over the AAF however, 90 is okay for speed, but it takes a while to get anywhere. Pretty much have to bring it in first, or not at all.[close]
PD weaponsSpoilerI did some testing, and they seem...pretty bloody balanced,
but seem to have a hard time actually hitting targets that are strafing. This may be a Vanilla problem, but thought I'd say it just in case. Either way, glad to see they are pretty much worthless against anything larger than a bomber.[close]
MissilesSpoilerOnce again fairly balanced. However, it seems that when they are countered, they are countered hard. It is almost impossible to get even large swarms of harpoons through a even larger swarm of...every fighter that has ever been made? Cut me some slack darn it, they look like tiny bloody dots![close]
FightersSpoilerI'm gonna sum this one up easily, and quickly.
(in refit screen)
"I have some pretty good PD across my entire fleet! This should be easy!"
(in battle)
"HOLY F***ING MOTHER OF GOD THAT IS A LOT OF DOT SHAPED FIGHTERS!"[close]
That's all I will say for now. I need to play more in order to give more feedback, but everything I have faced so far has been very balanced......At least the mod is darn fun...GIVE ME YOUR DROID CONTROL SHIP/MEGALITH DARN YOU AI!SpoilerI just don't want to have my entire ship lose all of its PD because the enemy wave of fighters decided to do a bloody flyby of my ship with guns blazing!!![close]
**Edit**
DHDBUS FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT HOW MANY SHIPS YOU CAN BRING IN!!!...And the number of fighters you can get in a battle.
Number of ships you can bring inSpoilerTHAT IS A LOT OF POTENTIAL ONSLAUGHTS I COULD SEND INTO BATTLE...DO YOU KNOW HOW OP THAT CAN BE!? And not just the Onslaught,
Cap ships in general. The Paragon is be far the strongest ship in Vanilla, and my testing showed it carried into here among the Vanilla ships.
I doubt the AI will do Cap Spam, but the player almost certainly will. I recommend keeping the cruisers the same in Deployment Cost, but make the Deployment Cost of the Cap ships more around that of Vanilla...or maybe just double what it is now. That should keep Cap Spam from being AS viable, as the player should face about 4 cruisers per cap ship, with escort. Though that one should be debated a little, as I do go more for effect.[close]
Fighter NumbersSpoilerMy computer is an absolute potato and should never be used to play starsector, but the number of fighters the Falcons can put out is ridiculously overpowered when you think about fleet battles. A Hegemony fleet could have maybe 5 cruisers with around 2 bays each,
totalling 10...Combined with Caps, and other carriers. That is around a Vanilla size fleet...The fleets in this mod have the potential to be bigger, and can easily lag out major computers. I suggest not having any bays for Light cruisers, one for Heavy cruisers, and whatever for Cap ships.[close][close]
I understand not firing into interceptor swarms (Though that explains the suicidal Talons). Problem is, the number of fighters on the field make it hard to see if it is safe to fire or not...That actually bring an idea to mind. Why not make it fire 4 harpoons that individually do less damage, but combined do the same? There is a missile weapon (not sure if Vanilla or not) that fires 4 missiles very quickly, but each one constantly twists and turns to make it more difficult to block/intercept. It does less damage, but I VASTLY prefer it to literally every other missile out there.I'm glad it feels balanced so far! It was the largest and hardest part of development, along with sprite editing. I pretty much had to re-invent the wheel with load-outs.SpoilerWait...so Talon span on my 4 falcons and 1 eagle would be useful? (evil thoughts) So the MG's and Talons are no longer useless! BULLET SPAM HERE I COME!!!
Anyway, got a...decent fight. Gonna use the Spoiler thing to make this a smaller reply.
OnslaughtSpoilerGlad to see the Onslaught can still delete most cruisers...Though I still prefer my TPL's, the Term beams are better for me since I have bad projectile aim. Still need to edit my build, but to do that I need a large kinetic weapon that doesn't have a range of 800 meters. Curse my luck!
Besides that, putting a MG and PD mix into all the small slots, and FLAK in all the medium slots is extremely strong and gives a defense that requires 4 squadrons to last more than 10 seconds against. Who needs a Paragon level shield when you have a stupid amount of armor, a stupid amount of HP, and a stupid amount of guns! I do think I would prefer to have the Burn drive over the AAF however, 90 is okay for speed, but it takes a while to get anywhere. Pretty much have to bring it in first, or not at all.[close]
PD weaponsSpoilerI did some testing, and they seem...pretty bloody balanced,
but seem to have a hard time actually hitting targets that are strafing. This may be a Vanilla problem, but thought I'd say it just in case. Either way, glad to see they are pretty much worthless against anything larger than a bomber.[close]
MissilesSpoilerOnce again fairly balanced. However, it seems that when they are countered, they are countered hard. It is almost impossible to get even large swarms of harpoons through a even larger swarm of...every fighter that has ever been made? Cut me some slack darn it, they look like tiny bloody dots![close]
FightersSpoilerI'm gonna sum this one up easily, and quickly.
(in refit screen)
"I have some pretty good PD across my entire fleet! This should be easy!"
(in battle)
"HOLY F***ING MOTHER OF GOD THAT IS A LOT OF DOT SHAPED FIGHTERS!"[close]
That's all I will say for now. I need to play more in order to give more feedback, but everything I have faced so far has been very balanced......At least the mod is darn fun...GIVE ME YOUR DROID CONTROL SHIP/MEGALITH DARN YOU AI!SpoilerI just don't want to have my entire ship lose all of its PD because the enemy wave of fighters decided to do a bloody flyby of my ship with guns blazing!!![close]
**Edit**
DHDBUS FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT HOW MANY SHIPS YOU CAN BRING IN!!!...And the number of fighters you can get in a battle.
Number of ships you can bring inSpoilerTHAT IS A LOT OF POTENTIAL ONSLAUGHTS I COULD SEND INTO BATTLE...DO YOU KNOW HOW OP THAT CAN BE!? And not just the Onslaught,
Cap ships in general. The Paragon is be far the strongest ship in Vanilla, and my testing showed it carried into here among the Vanilla ships.
I doubt the AI will do Cap Spam, but the player almost certainly will. I recommend keeping the cruisers the same in Deployment Cost, but make the Deployment Cost of the Cap ships more around that of Vanilla...or maybe just double what it is now. That should keep Cap Spam from being AS viable, as the player should face about 4 cruisers per cap ship, with escort. Though that one should be debated a little, as I do go more for effect.[close]
Fighter NumbersSpoilerMy computer is an absolute potato and should never be used to play starsector, but the number of fighters the Falcons can put out is ridiculously overpowered when you think about fleet battles. A Hegemony fleet could have maybe 5 cruisers with around 2 bays each,
totalling 10...Combined with Caps, and other carriers. That is around a Vanilla size fleet...The fleets in this mod have the potential to be bigger, and can easily lag out major computers. I suggest not having any bays for Light cruisers, one for Heavy cruisers, and whatever for Cap ships.[close][close]
**EDIT** As to Harpoons, I'll keep track to see if an increase in hit-points is necessary. It is a finisher weapon for overloaded ships, so ideally it only excels with minimal PD- hence its speed, low maneuverability.
I think I tried to make it more durable and it makes the weapon ridiculously OP due to its speed. A couple hit points can be the difference between it always getting through frigates and destroyer PD... and that makes those ships worthless to large spam of the missile since it hits like a truck.
Advice: try combining it with missiles like the Locust, torpedoes or a couple pd frigates to create some pandemonium first.
Always try and avoid firing into heavy interceptor swarms, however. They actually will suicide into the missile as a last resort to protect their carrier, so even if it get's through the pd sometimes it can be frustratingly denied. Happened to me too many times for it not to be a thing, and the faster ones are shockingly good at it. :-X
I consider it a necessary evil considering all missiles have infinite ammo.
I also definitely get some of your concerns regarding performance due to fighter spam. I have gone back and forth on how many I want per battle a couple times now, and some tweaking and pruning may be in order here and there. I'll look a little more into it, but to be fair, I AM going for: ;D ;)
https://youtu.be/xPZigWFyK2o?t=2m3s (https://youtu.be/xPZigWFyK2o?t=2m3s)
https://youtu.be/hlecG3nYaLw?t=32s (https://youtu.be/hlecG3nYaLw?t=32s)
All jokes aside, though, perhaps a little higher deployment cost for capitals and a reduction in battle size? I don't want to go chopping away at fighter bays just yet, because ships actually are balanced around them. For what it costs to deploy a Falcon, two bays isn't all that much when you consider ships like... the Osprey, for example. The pirate version of that is less than a supply to deploy and its pretty much just a flying, broken, sad flight deck. :P
The reason for the deployment costs being low is actually more to do with economy than wanting a ton of ships per battle. It'ssuper difficulttricky to mess with the price of- say- supplies, so if I want a certain feel to both progression speed as well as the "punishment feeling" of suddenly needing more supplies due to defensive deployments or E-burns, I have to reduce those costs another way.
That was one of the reasons I felt Vanilla really needed a way to requisition aid and resources from NPC fleets. As a newbie I often found myself adrift- or went for a bounty, got stranded or lost a fight and had to flee, and lost everything. It seemed a little unforgiving for new players, even with the tutorial giving you a foot-hold. That was something I intended to address both with lower deployments costs in general (especially to start) and the fleet dialogue features.
Every time, I thought: "Hey look, there's a Hegemony trade fleet, loaded with supplies... but, I'm a nice guy, loyal and all that... so I can't just take them. Why is not a single soul within this organization that I've been fighting pirates for for cycles now friendly enough to help me out or even just sell me some emergency supplies at a mark-up?"
So, I built a system to do just that. Speaking of which... ok, ok, I'll stoop to fishing: Anyone try that out yet? I know Cease-fire is still a little buggy. It's surprisingly hard to get hostile/vengeful fleets to not want to blast you away.
I've been getting crashes when selecting some systems from the intel screen map.
Pretty sure the code below is the crash log.Spoiler28316 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.o0OO.void.return$new(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.o0OO.afterSizeFirstChanged(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.sizeChanged(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO0O.set(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.thisnew.super(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.j.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO00.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.O0oO.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OO00.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.B.advanceImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.intel.B.Ò00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.if$7.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.newui.if.setCurrentTab(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.showCoreUITab(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.map.A.super(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.map.Objectsuper.processInputImpl(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Q.processInput(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.ui.V.o00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)[close]
I understand not firing into interceptor swarms (Though that explains the suicidal Talons). Problem is, the number of fighters on the field make it hard to see if it is safe to fire or not...That actually bring an idea to mind. Why not make it fire 4 harpoons that individually do less damage, but combined do the same? There is a missile weapon (not sure if Vanilla or not) that fires 4 missiles very quickly, but each one constantly twists and turns to make it more difficult to block/intercept. It does less damage, but I VASTLY prefer it to literally every other missile out there.
Cap ship deployment increase definitely, but a decrease in battle size isn't AS necessary as you can put a hard limit to it in the Game options. I don't normally play long enough to deal with the Economy aspect (Command Console FTW!), but I can see what you mean.
I will immediately test to see if the cease fire thingamajig works for me!
Considering Fighters are less Valuable than the ships they are protecting, I can entirely justifying them suiciding.
-----
I've liked the mod so far, however, some issues/comments/suggestions
having trouble telling weapon sizes at a glance. Presumably the icon size scales the same as they do in the refit screen and game screen, but I currently have trouble distinguishing medium from small. I'll get used to it eventually. I also don't recognize half the icons, so yea...
There are only a few small strike weapons. Probably ought to be more. (Found burst lasers early on, quite impressive)
There don't seem to be any small support weapons. I thought the support weapons were the longer ranged, low damage ones. Quite a few, like railgun, were what I expected in this group.
The "Photon Cannon" probably was supposed to be a support weapon, given the tooltip and that it wasn't in vanilla, but costs no flux.
Ammunition limits with regeneration added back in are great. I immediately started using extended magazines again. 24 burst-laser shots are quite nasty. Do most strike weapons use ammo?
Regenerating missiles are also cool. Small clips of 1-3 missiles, holding 1-6 of them is interesting. Given the increase in point defense in general, missiles are a lot more common.
If they don't, ship systems like Flares should also regenerate (and maybe have a cap of 2 instead of 5)
Had fun with a few new weapon types. The shotgun missile is cool, not really sure if it gives anything over alternates.
Zero-flux assault weapons. Interesting approach. However, given that 90% of the weapons I have been able to use seem to be zero-flux, it means that flux is pretty much shield until you have medium weapons, or get lucky and find burst lasers, mortar, etc. Not sure if this is intended. Either way, at least it makes shields stronger in general.
Some frigates, like the hound and wolf seem to have lost their medium weapon slot, which is kind of disappointing. The idea here is to have more, smaller, weapon slots however, so that makes sense. The wolf has more slots in general, and the wolf has those crappy PD drones. Shame that I have trouble finding ships that can carry all the medium weapons around now though, and the lack of support/strike small weapons hurts that.
Found the mining laser. Its medium instead of small now (kinda sensible) and does way more damage. Thought it was a small weapon looking at it (because of the rescale)
Some of the tooltips are wrong as to where they weight their power, I think. Would have to open the game and minimize to get the correct stats, but a doublecheck might be warented.
I'll reread the front page, but I think some of the weapons are too powerful for their assault role.
Assault - Short-Mid range, no flux, low-med damage. (In their face, using all flux for shields)
Support - mid-long range, low flux, low-med damage. (Pressure from a distance, also long-range missiles)
Strike - Short-mid range, mid-high flux, high damage. (Break heavy armor/shielding, requires external power supply from ship)
PD - Short-mid range, no flux, low damage, high accuracy/speed (Deal with missiles/fighters)
As least that was what I got from it when I read it last time.Shield flux alterations. Not sure I understand it. Do shields not allow dissipating any flux? I didn't observe that. How exactly did the flux stats change to make weapon flux a problem if you have shields up vs vanilla?
I see. Shield upkeep is, for every ship, exactly equal to it's base flux dissipation. So, flux vents provide shield dissipation. If you have none, you can't dissipate at all.
More importantly, Stabilized shields are now significantly more powerful, given they have way more to work with. Interesting.
If you are screwing with weapon range, make sure you check Safety overrides base range. It might need to be adjusted, depending.
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Overall, having fun thus far.
Guardian PD laser doesn't seem to be willing to fire unless you do it manually, which defeats the purpose. Not sure why.
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I think the changes to the Flux system were the most interesting out of everything, honestly.
It seriously alters how you run a ship, and build it, for that matter.
In vanilla, while you try and get as many powerful weapons as you can, you also try and keep enough OP left over to get as many vents as you can, such that you, hopefully, have a surplus of dissipation so you can run your shields and fire all weapons.
Capacity helps, but is insignificant compared to dissipation in almost all cases.
Not so here. I actually sometimes go for capacity over vents entirely.
The flux-heavy weapons tend to use a LARGE chunk of flux in a short period of time, and getting capacity lets you unleash a very large attack. This comes at the cost of your shields being weakened. This is normal for starsector, but here, flux is more of a shield meter than a weapons meter.
Flux is far more linked to powerful weapons and shields than vanilla.
Being able to just hold shields up without worrying about it cutting into your normal weapons changes things. On the other hand, the, effectively, massive upkeep for shields forces you to drop them a lot more often. Increased armor stats helps with that as well.
The effect is Exaggerated if you have a flux weapon. Shield goes up, you fire off a powerful attack, your shields will only recover very slowly unless you drop them. In vanilla it can generally recover if you stop firing, or slow down at least. Here, not so much. Forces you to backoff after throwing a powerful blow, moreso than vanilla.
Oh, and run away from the swarm of fighters that jumps on you for daring to attack their charge.
Plus, the distinction between hard and soft flux is significantly reduced.
I would note that some ships have no shields, and since small weapons that use flux are currently very rare, it is quite possible to have a ship that doesn't use flux at all.
I've seen that in other mods, but here it is much more common.
Not really sure how to resolve that part, aside from adding more strike/support weapons, or converting existing ones.
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Missiles are a lot more fun, and feel like an active part of the game instead of trump cards. Being able to sustain missile fire, while it not being silly OP is quite fun.
Hunters are very nice support weapons, throwing missiles at massive flux cost. (Got a pair onto a Kite, which it can only just support)
A lot of missiles go for engines, which I suppose makes sense. Even non-EMP missiles.
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Magazines.
Strike, missile, support weapons seem to have magazines most of the time. If you have the flux to support them, grabbing the expanded ammo hull mods works great.
Missiles just being part of this category makes them less exotic, and being able to burst-fire followed by reloading changes the flow of combat.
I was surprised to learn that the Tachyon Lance now has a 60 second cooldown. Given it's power, I can't exactly disagree, given what firing 4 of them at an onslaught does (in the forlorn hope mission)
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Scaled weapons
I understand how this works better now.
In effect, you reclassified weapons. Small weapons either stayed small and got weaker/smaller, or were reclassified as medium. same as medium to large. And then you added in more extra-small weapons.
Now that I understand that it makes more sense.
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Intimidate
Not sure if intended, but trying to intimidate pirates tends to not work sometimes, because your reputation is bad. As in, hated. They refuse to help you. I'm not asking for help. I am threatening to kill them if they don't give up their cargo. A negative reputation should help there.
I think the changes to the Flux system were the most interesting out of everything, honestly.
"Aw, really, not evil, tribute-demanding vampire barons?! Wink"Uhm, What?
Ah. Vanilla lacks any missile-only weapons, and I kinda assume PD means anti-missile + Anti-fighter.
I think you need to screw with how reputation works for the intimidation to work as such. The whole, Must kill large fleets to get past -60 rep type things, or w.e.
Just killing pirates initially gets you to vengeful. Now, naturally intimidating, taking loot, and THEN killing them too probably ought to have more of a rep cost.
Good to have more strike varients. A large number of weapons with impressive range seem to be assault, while some weapons, like the medium artillery, while technically they have long range, have such crappy accuracy I have to treat them as strike, even vs a capital ship.Quote"Aw, really, not evil, tribute-demanding vampire barons?! Wink"Uhm, What?
Is that a reference?
Or did I not find that part of the mod yet?
Oh, had some fun with Ordeer. Fighting the [Data Expunged] in a full war given they shared a sector. Some *** captain was offended, and I had to run away since bribing wasn't and option, and intimidation, naturally, failed. And then a [Data Expunged] got in on the action, tearing the chasing fleet apart with 6 tachyon lances, while I did a full retreat. And the entire attacking force died. Did... Not expect that. I guess they REALLY hate each other?
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How do I update this mod? I mean, it still says V1.0
Are you actually updating the version number? Cuz it doesn't look like it.
I've been playing SS with this on for the past couple days, I gotta say I really like it. I love how you changed up the weapon mounts and sizes, it makes each ship feel a bit more versatile. I especially like how different variants of each ship (Eg Wolf - Standard, Pirate and XIV) have different characteristics, and that D-hull Wolves have a degraded phase jumper. Speaking of the Wolf, the phase jump feels a lot less overpowered now, it won't necessarily save you from that huge slug flying towards you because your ship hangs around for a split second and might eat it before the jump is complete.
I kinda despise the phase jumper that the lower tech wolfs have now. Not because its not useful, or less mobile or w.e, but because with a lack of landmarks, it can be hard to tell which direction you will teleport in in some cases.
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The pirate buffalo, I think, seems to be considered a combat vessel for autodeploy.
Quite a few ships with different ship systems have charges and a cooldown, which happens to be longer than it takes to recharge one charge..... Can't point any examples from here atm tho, can't access game at this time.
Can't Wait :D
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About the pirate buffalos. Suggest adding that to the tooltip for pirate modded ships, that they autodeploy. Optionally, make it a result of a custom hullmod that the player can remove or something.
Nice update.
I think those new weapons have too high a rarity, balistic-wise anyhow. I haven't actually run into them, even if the codex makes them look reasonable enough.
Admittedly, It took me a while to find my first energy Strike weapon (Gatling Laser) but I can still find them. Haven't seen any of the new Balistics yet in a shop.
Actually, I think they are hidden behind commissions to a large extent. There needs to be a lower quality example without that trait I think.
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Had my first near-disaster with bombers. Caught me with my shield facing the wrong direction in a mule (pirate) Engines exploded, took nearly 60% hull damage. Nasty.
Bad start overall, need to restart the game again. Was trying to figure out how to finish a black-market quest. After a few attempts, A hegenomy fleet decided it wanted to kill me without hating me first, and kept chasing me and disrupting my CR.
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The medium balistic "Artillery Cannon" has far too low accuracy for it's range. It needs either more accurate shots, or else be stated to be specifically intended to be able to hit capitals or cruisers (with a bit of luck)
The spread on it is kinda excessive for the range, so it is far shorter range than stated.
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The Guardian PD system tooltip still doesn't say anything about missiles vs Fighters
Burst PD laser doesn't work vs Fighters either.
I really don't agree with this change. I really, really think PD should always work vs Fighters.
Also, when I say tooltip, I mean the in-game, Refit screen text, not the codex text.
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The Atrepos Single Torpedo does not regenerate.
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I love the Locust SRM. Tears fighters apart pretty well.Extra racks are great on it. Best Anti-fighter weapon I've found.
A couple of them can takes down an entire wing almost instantly.
Heavy, shielded, or gunships get pounded to scrap taking a whole volly or a volly and a half with them, but they die anyway, and dodging only delays the inevitible. The missiles have massive effective range if manually fired (~2-3x their stated range) if you don't need the manuvering as much, so you can prempt bombers if you are paying attention. They also move fast enough that they only rarely get shot down.
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Anyhow, having fun still.
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- There is a new small missile, the Hornet, rather similar to the Locust. The stinger is the less effective version, as well, but both are kind of rare in markets. Working on that. :)
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I know this is a Total Conversion and therefore mutually exclusive from other mainstream mods, but you're aware the Ship&Weapons Pack also has a Hornet missile?
You may want to take notes from this then:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9550.0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TezjLhhemFYX6Dzn6HAQay2CzBCQ-0Rqo7AyxDjpvyg/edit#gid=1857351268
8)
Not really sure if correct. The idea of the strike weapons was to have them be alongside the assault weapons, costing flux to make them more powerful. That said, given they ARE more powerful, I suppose they ought to be a little bit rare-er
I'll try to touch on everything:
- Yeah I noticed the new strike weapons are still fairly rare (no rarity limits in the weapons file at least :( )- in early markets. I may add the low-tech ones to markets manually and add maybe one or two more tier 0 small ballistic strike/support weapons to give better odds of finding one in the next patch.
- Definitely adding at least one tier 0 energy strike weapons that will be widely available instead of locked behind salvage and commissions, maybe more- have to make them interesting and not just copy-pastes.Good to know. Same for Ballistics as well (unless thats the tiny morter, in which case, uhm, I think thats more support than strike)
- Played around with the Artillery Cannon and reduced the spread by about 20%- it's still pretty inaccurate, but I can use forward firing ones to fairly consistently hit an enforcer while flying another enforcer.Awesome. That was what I was hoping for. At least a bit of accuracy. Seriously, the spread was enough to reliably miss a Destroyer. I dropped it and replaced it since I hadn't started fighting cruisers yet.
- I'm still testing, but considering changing the PD Burst Laser, Heavy PD Burst Laser and Guardian PD Laser to attack fighters and ships. A trip to the 'balance lab' indicates that the PD_ONLY flag was set back when fighters used supplies to respawn and so is no longer as necessary. Still, the thing with beams is that if you make them too good, fighters and missiles become irrelevant. They don't ever miss- whereas everything else hits at best like 1/3 of the time. It ends up being a huge difference.What? Do you mean older versions of this mod before you published it? its not like that in vanilla.
- That being said- the only caveat will be a slight reduction in charge regeneration for the small PD Burst Laser as well as the addition of charges (8 to be exact) with regen for the Guardian. All 3 still do not cost flux, however.That is fine by me. The whole point of putting powerful PD lasers on your ship is to keep those darn fighters off of you. More-so now than in vanilla, where it was also largely for missiles.
- The Atropos (single) originally had regen, but that makes the Dagger never go back to the carrier and re-arm. Still, pretty much all the other fighters have built-in versions separating their strike weapons from the equippable ones, so I don't see why I can't add that back in and solve both problems. Done, updated for next release.If that Fighter hullmod disables Missile Regen (Is that even possible? Is ammo regen mutable?) Do fighters stick around or go back to reload?
- There is a new small missile, the Hornet, rather similar to the Locust. The stinger is the less effective version, as well, but both are kind of rare in markets. Working on that. :)Hornet is already taken by another mod. Kinda a sidewinder missile (which is probably the wrong word) that moves in a sinusoidal pattern to throw off non-laser PD. I think you got 8 missiles instead of 3 as well, but less damage.
Glad this update helped things, though!Indeed.
The reserve deployment on the Conquest is kinda useless considering how much flux it generates and that it only has 2 bays.
You may want to take notes from this then:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9550.0
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TezjLhhemFYX6Dzn6HAQay2CzBCQ-0Rqo7AyxDjpvyg/edit#gid=1857351268
8)
Thank you! Will cross-reference!
THAT WAS THE MISSILE I WAS THINKING OF IN A PAST POST!!!I know this is a Total Conversion and therefore mutually exclusive from other mainstream mods, but you're aware the Ship&Weapons Pack also has a Hornet missile?
Shoot, I did not! :( I'll try and think of something else. It gets a little rough with so many names already taken (honestly wouldn't be surprised if that was the only one). I will do the best that I can in that regard, though.
- I'm still testing, but considering changing the PD Burst Laser, Heavy PD Burst Laser and Guardian PD Laser to attack fighters and ships. A trip to the 'balance lab' indicates that the PD_ONLY flag was set back when fighters used supplies to respawn and so is no longer as necessary. Still, the thing with beams is that if you make them too good, fighters and missiles become irrelevant. They don't ever miss- whereas everything else hits at best like 1/3 of the time. It ends up being a huge difference.What? Do you mean older versions of this mod before you published it? its not like that in vanilla.
Yea, Beam weapons trade, generally damage or flux stats, for perfect or near perfect accuracy.
In vanilla, Vulcan cannon vs PD Laser damage is insane. Its Still quite a bit higher if you factor out the frag damage.
- That being said- the only caveat will be a slight reduction in charge regeneration for the small PD Burst Laser as well as the addition of charges (8 to be exact) with regen for the Guardian. All 3 still do not cost flux, however.That is fine by me. The whole point of putting powerful PD lasers on your ship is to keep those darn fighters off of you. More-so now than in vanilla, where it was also largely for missiles.
If you are spending a Large energy slot for PD, I would hope the damage is similar.
Adding charge limits is a reasonable tradeoff. Maybe make it frag damage as well, despite being a beam. That way, its still stronger vs Missiles than fighters, and doesn't need to have the raww power to overwelm shields, tear through armor, and vaporize hull.
I don't mind it having less damage, I just want it to shoot at fighters because PD system.
- The Atropos (single) originally had regen, but that makes the Dagger never go back to the carrier and re-arm. Still, pretty much all the other fighters have built-in versions separating their strike weapons from the equippable ones, so I don't see why I can't add that back in and solve both problems. Done, updated for next release.If that Fighter hullmod disables Missile Regen (Is that even possible? Is ammo regen mutable?) Do fighters stick around or go back to reload?
I think the Fighter Tooltips need a bit more information.
Before the Fighters became weapons instead of ships, they had various stats visible. While you can read the tooltips and get a general idea, A few things might be nice.
Make them in different colors if it supports some form of markup, or at the top at least.
-Shielded/Bubble Shield/Armored/Unarmored
-Fast/Slow
-Short/Medium/Long intercept Range
-PD/Intercepter/Bomber/Special
Just for a quick summery of functionality, Given there are like 5x as many fighter types and I don't know even most of them yet.
Generally I try for shielded ones because they tend to last a lot longer, but that requires me to skim the tooltips and its somewhat irritating. /#FirstWorldProblems
Stabilized shield is GREAT. I almost always go for it over flux dissipation, because 10 flux vs 180 flux for 3 OP is kinda a large difference, and being able to hold your shield up is quite nice. Its almost like allowing a small amount of hard flux disspation (but not really)
The Frontal/Omni conversion changes are also pretty nifty, although I can't recall the exact effects at the moment.
Makes them both more tempting to use at least. (I generally used frontal to get bubble shields in vanilla. Here, sometimes no need to bother)
It took me a while to figure out why my shields deactivated when I used accelerated Ammo feed. Not sure if vanilla or not, but yea....Thanks for the tooltip feedback. Also, another good suggestion on making strike weapons better for ships with this. Made a note!
Don't suppose that can also make Ballistic weapons charge faster? I suppose its feeding into the weapon instead of into the clips, but still.
Went through many of the "Missions". Fighters are BRUTAL.
I really, really wish Guardian PD worked. XD
I still love Tachyon lances. The changes make them very support weapons.
Tachyon lances tend to get stuck instantly vaporizing fighters and then stretching back out.
Managed to sweep one through a few wings when they got in my way. Kinda amusing, if infficient.
The long cooldown, high flux impulse, and massive damage is awesome. Reminds me of Energy Projectors from Halo (at least the books)
And, naturally, strains, tears through shields, breaks armor, EMPS everything, and causes it's target to explode in general.
the increased cooldown and Alpha power (I think) makes it more useful to tearing apart supporting vessels while actively ignoring heavier targets.
I tear apart Carriers first, because fighters. Then Frigates with a single beam (minus wolfs because teleport, they disjunction half the time) to keep them off of the rest of the fleet/myself. (Paragon)
(Always alternating because long recharge time) After that, I work my way up, and leave capitals for last. Because they have shields and generally I need all 4 beams to break the shield. Killing it's support leaves it surrounded, lets allies drain the shield, and once the shield is overworked, THEN I hit it with the horrible death beams of EMP and death.
Heh. I wonder if putting one on the Venture would work. I am pretty sure it has a Large energy slot. Not sure about flux stats, but wow.... (Maybe I should take a commision with TriTachyon?)
The mining Laser and Mining blaster tooltips, given how powerful they are now, Might need an update.
Mining Laser: Something about how it's massive power consumption requires a dedicated power feed, and while not optimized for combat, carving up armor and carving up asteroids have a lot in common.
Blast is similar, except its more blasting things apart.
Both are way more powerful than vanilla. To the point that I used mining lasers in med energy slots over other medium energy because sustained high damage.
Tooltips don't really communicate their surprising power. They used to be like third-rate weapons. Here, no so much...
Some of your default layouts seem to violate weapon rules. I've seen energy in ballistic only slots, and so on.
(Might be campaign specific though)
Saddens me that the hound lacks a medium slot. And for that matter many ships that used to have medium slots. I understand why to an extent, but still....
Trying to find Frigates and destroyers with medium slots is somewhat difficult.
Less a problem now that, hopefully, more small-Strike/Support weapons exist.
Also Love the significantly increased usage of hybrid slots.
haven't seen any omni-slots yet, but I'm sure i will.
The reserve deployment on the Conquest is kinda useless considering how much flux it generates and that it only has 2 bays.
I agree. Only notable thing is that it respawns the fighters instantly, but its not really optimized as a carrier, so the system seems weird.Yeah, you're right. This was a place holder. I need to think of a good midtech system to implement here. Thanks for the feedback! Any suggestions?
If it helps, Meso reminded me that since this is a Total Conversion it isn't strictly as necessary to worry about name clashes. So @Morrokain I apologize for bringing that up without proper explanation there, and in all honesty it's fully up to you what you name things here.
The important bit in this case therefore is whether the name clashes bother you, not anyone else. If it does (or you work on another non-TC mod in future), then that thread and Google doc exist, and if it doesn't then no sweat. ;)
THAT WAS THE MISSILE I WAS THINKING OF IN A PAST POST!!!I know this is a Total Conversion and therefore mutually exclusive from other mainstream mods, but you're aware the Ship&Weapons Pack also has a Hornet missile?
Shoot, I did not! :( I'll try and think of something else. It gets a little rough with so many names already taken (honestly wouldn't be surprised if that was the only one). I will do the best that I can in that regard, though.
Anyway, if you decide to keep the bee related theme, why not "Vespid"? It's a type of Wasp...I was going to say "Wasp", but there is already a drone called that. Darn you for taking the perfect name Axle!
I think giving it maneuvering jets again would be fine.
Reserve deployment is wasted on a few other ships (Eagle, Falcon, and Medusa). When these ships spot the enemy they automatically activate it, building flux and slowing their advance. It seems to actually make them less combat effective. Additionally, AI captains are far too eager to use the engage order, meaning their 0-flux boost goes unused.
Also, the medusa seems to hang back and behave like a carrier rather than a destroyer.
@Medium Weapons
Its more that I keep expecting to find medium weapon slots on ships that have them in vanilla and they don't, than it is hard to find them.
More because I couldn't find support/strike weapons for the no-shield, small slot only ships, and hence flux did nothing.
Hmm. Does the normal PD AI hull mod actually do anything useful here? I've never found it useful. Does this mod make it effective in more cases?
Might actually make it into a mod that goes, "Laser PD will also attack fighters, -50% damage" or something.
Not really sure though. I just seriously have trouble with High-grade PD not PD-ing. XD.
And I have said that many times.
Haven't been playing Starsector for the past few days, but I have been randomly coming back here. I suggest a hullmod that makes using the engage order for fighters generates no flux, but bringing up shields generates flux like normal...normal for this mod anyway.
Also, a comment about the Wolf: I do remember what hullmods I had and what weapons I had, but putting 3 vents (I think) ended up with me not losing or gaining flux. Not sure if this was intended or not, but I can see it becoming annoying as you won't be able to fire weapons, take any amount of fire, and keep shields up for long. I'd prefer to have a little soft flux dissipation when I am not firing my weapons. :/
How easy would it be to remove the flux generation of the "Engage Fighters" command?
Basically impossible, it's hardcoded.
Ah ok that's what I suspected. Thanks! :)
It took me a while to figure out why my shields deactivated when I used accelerated Ammo feed. Not sure if vanilla or not, but yea....
Don't suppose that can also make Ballistic weapons charge faster? I suppose its feeding into the weapon instead of into the clips, but still.
The various "Systems" hullmods for converted ships are a bit too strong. The "Simple Core Systems" hullmod on the hegemony wolf makes it shields far worse than any low tech clunker, which is a bit odd. Similarly, the "Updated Core Systems" hullmod gives ships shields better than any high tech ships.
Hi there! first of all, i must say i love your mod very much, thank you for bringing us such a new (and wonderful!) take on starsector.
There are 2 things i have noted about the mod that i would like to know whether they are intentional or not (only 2 for now because i am still early in my campaign).
The first is the cargo capacity on the Hermes class shuttle is at 250, for only 1supply/month. Is it normal? This seems like an enormous upgrade in terms of cargo capacity compared to all other freighter available in early game (Hound/Cerberus/Wayfarer), as those are around 100-150 cargo for around 3supplies/month.
The second is the description for the D-mod Faulty Power Grid reads "flux capacity and flux dissipation rate reduced by ONE THIRD". Does this mean the rank 3 of safety procedures doesn't reduce by 50% the negative effects of that D-mod like the others? (from what i could see on some of my ships, it didn't, but i'd like to know whether it is working as intended or not).
Thank you for your time, and once again, thank you for a wonderful mod.
No matter what i do/Have done i can't seem to start a new game past the "Skip/Play tutorial" options as both are grey and cannot be selected :(Ah, I think this is a bug! Very sorry!
I've tried just the 3 base mods and other assortments but nothing helps.
Please assist ;-; :'(
I had the same issue. You just need to start one unmodded game to fix it.Far out thank you :D
I have a reaper on my mule. Easily the most powerful ship in my fleet so far.Indeed. Reapers always hurt. A lot. I just didn't expect 5 of them at once. I expected 2 of them.
Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.
After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......
Fun times.
Indeed. Their ability to wield heavy-duty missiles, which now regenerate make them actually a sort-of sane ship design. Still fragile as h**l, but they now actually have enough firepower to make up for it.Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.
After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......
Fun times.
Mudskipper is now a ship to fear.
You make me want to spawn 20 and fit them all with Reaper launchers just to kill an Onslaught. :)Indeed. Their ability to wield heavy-duty missiles, which now regenerate make them actually a sort-of sane ship design. Still fragile as h**l, but they now actually have enough firepower to make up for it.Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.
After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......
Fun times.
Mudskipper is now a ship to fear.
That sounds fun. Just hope the Onslaught doesn't have Heavy PD and a decent escort.
You make me want to spawn 20 and fit them all with Reaper launchers just to kill an Onslaught. :)
Seems pretty cool. Interesting to get my head around a new style of combat.
I've got a few low tech frigates and a mule freighter but I'm not too sure what to do against enemy fighter swarms. Any suggestions?
I've been finding it difficult to keep some of my frigates alive in the face of enemy cruisers/destroyers al though the same can be said of the vanilla game.
I find that my ships flux out in seconds which does make it challenging when facing enemies with medium sized weapons.
The lasher frigates seem kinda bad in my opinion, they get overloaded and caught almost instantly in battle but this might be due to them not being hegemonic auxiliary or 14th fleet ships. When compared to the wolf frigates/kites/rhinos that I have picked up they seem really lacking.
Looking forward to getting into the bigger battles with proper destroyers!
Whats with the "Stabilized Drive Conduit" mod? What specifically makes a ship have that mod?
So, how would everyone feel about a slight increase in base soft flux dissipation (like 10-15% with shields raised over the current 0%) and a slight reduction in the effectiveness of the Stabilized Shields hullmod? I felt that it was too good before, and as time goes on I am feeling more certain of it.Yes. That would be sensible. 10% innate and +20-30% from stabilized. Or make stabilized give hard flux dissipation? Actually no, Given the flux polorization, hard and soft flux aren't as differentiated as they are in vanilla
The second is the description for the D-mod Faulty Power Grid reads "flux capacity and flux dissipation rate reduced by ONE THIRD". Does this mean the rank 3 of safety procedures doesn't reduce by 50% the negative effects of that D-mod like the others? (from what i could see on some of my ships, it didn't, but i'd like to know whether it is working as intended or not).
Will this break save files?
The Brawler(T)'s tooltip still states that it has manuvering jets while it was replaced with High Energy focus.
I've finally got a Cruiser up and running. Given I still am trying to keep a relatively fast fleet, I am using tugs and Augmented Drive fields.
I looted a wrecked Falcon class Cruiser (which still had full engine power) and gave it plenty of anti-shield assault weapons. Tried a few combos before I ended up using a heavy annihilation launcher to deal with armor. Also gave it Injector for speed.
It is quite nasty. Despite having 3 damage mods, Its extremely effective, and can take a decient amount of fire comapared to destroyers. The fighters help too.
Why not modify the 14th Battlefleet hullmod to add the core-strain effect? It currently says "No downsides", but you can change that to point out the strain on the core.
I did change the description to reflect that there are downsides for the next small release, but I'm fairly sure combining the hullmods into a single one would break saves for anybody with hegemony ships in their fleet or nearby (so most people, I would assume Tongue ). I'm not sure that would be worth it, but maybe for the next major content release- like the tutorial or something that would likely break saves anyway- I may look into it then.
Added a blurb to the hull skin description describing that fact, as well as one to the the Pather version of the hull, which uses an ammofeeder. If I have time, I will do a full check of the skin files for this sort of discrepancy.
- Also, I haven't really heard anything on this so I assume it hasn't been too much of an issue, but how is supply and fuel management in the mod? Is it more accessible? Less? Are people running out often or constantly oversupplied? I lowered the payout for bounty fleets and increased the payout for general bounties, so attempting to ensure bounty-hunting is still profitable.I appreciate the general bounty-hunting boost. I haven't had any serious supply issues yet, but my fleet is growing pretty quickly so it might happen soonish.
- Similarly, do people feel that using the fuel/supply request feature for NPC fleets is mandatory for effective play? Is is too farmable? Are the downsides not potent enough to discourage that, too potent? Etc.I have yet to have to use it. Generally I keep my supplies healthy, and if it gets bad, I drop ships off at Corvus and downsize until I feel I can expand again.
Assuming the combat system is in a pretty decent spot at this point, and most of the pet peeves are eliminated, I am going to start work on the tutorial again, and finally get around to polishing and adding to the Intimidation and Bribery systems since they are far behind the Commodity Request feature in complexity and nuance.
Really? You added hull mods to existing ships, and they changed. Does it break only when removing them?
And honestly, given the game doesn't care if you change OP costs and it goes over, I don't see how this would happen.
Test it anyhow.
I appreciate the general bounty-hunting boost. I haven't had any serious supply issues yet, but my fleet is growing pretty quickly so it might happen soonish.
I have yet to have to use it. Generally I keep my supplies healthy, and if it gets bad, I drop ships off at Corvus and downsize until I feel I can expand again.
(I probably expand too aggressively, honestly)
Combat seems great currently. Only complaint I have is that I can't install the Automous Ships (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13199.0) mod which would help a lot. Not sure exactly why.
Yeah good point. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that because new ids being read on load would be different from missing ids that were supposed to have been there and are absent (causing save incompatibility), but that is making some assumptions based on older builds of the game that are irrelevant now anyway. I will test and get back to you. I have a save file I can use. :)
The mod_info file specifically overrides the hullmods.csv which I assume that mod uses. Not sure if it HAS to, though, if I just did it as a safeguard. I'll test and see. If not, then I don't see why this mod wouldn't work as long as its set as a utility mod.
I think the cruicible missile destroyer is a bit too powerful.
The whole, 18 reapers in 12 seconds thing. Just a little..... Yea..... Its almost a constant stream of reaper missile, one per second sustained (not sure exactly the cooldown on reloading)
Its kinda fun, but I think that's a few too many reaper missiles from one destroyer.
As in, I fed around 20 of them to an Afflictor Frigate (Phase frigate) and eventually one of them connected. Being able to throw reapers at a Phase frigate until it fails to dodge is a little bit silly.
The only downside is the serious cost in CR, but taking out cruisers with almost trivial ease, well....
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Oh, wait, I had it on no-repair. There isn't a large CR cost either.
I think you put the wrong name on the ability. The function is the missile autoforge or whatever it was, while the name is the one that resets the cooldown on missiles so you can fire another volly instantly. Admittedly given how the missile mechanics work in this mod they aren't quite as disimilar, but still.
Unlike the mudskipper 2, It doesn't have a downside (fragile, minimal defenses, slow-ish, flux problems) to go with the extreme strike capacity.
If this IS intentionall, I suggest nerfing it, making it so that it gives a +30-60 seconds of full regen, instead of full 100% regen.
I just noticed that many ships don't have a peak performance anymore. Afflictor at least has it still, and I would expect anything else extremely agile. Hyperion perhaps. Any particular reason?
Do the Adamantian Consortium not pay out bounties? I am not an enemy of them, but there is no message after killing Pirates there. Are they allied with pirates or something?
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Huh, apprently they have No relationship with Pirates. There isn't even an entry between the two. Bug maybe?
Got myself a proper Sunder. It WAS a wrecked version with ill-advised modifications (meaning it loses one of the three medium weapons as soon as it tries to fire) But I repaired it (kinda pricy).
After that, I fed it 3 Phase beams. deals terrible, terrible damage to whatever it catches up to. Overloads shields without too much trouble, And whatever is left tends to melt as well. Very strike destroyer build.
Shame I haven't found any advanced optic mods yet. Would be awesome (even if it would cost 40% more flux, a sensible tradeoff IMO)
Also shame it's shield is now omni and not exactly large....
After the 3 phase beams it's OP is a bit limited, especially if I want it to hold onto some flux for shielding.
Not infinite, silly, its more like 6k DPS. Not infinite at all, just massive for a destroyer :P
Hmm, yeah that was designed when reapers cost flux and were weaker in pd health. Practically infinite is too much DPS. I'll implement a charge based cd, as well, to decrease the amount of times a player can use the system. That shouldn't hurt the use of other missiles, either.
Makes sense. I didn't like it when it was added, but it did help with some serious issues.
I, personally, dislike the peak performance system. It is useful for the ships you mentioned, and I think the Hyperion also has it. I'll double check because it really should. As a whole, I felt that the increased speed and utilization of fighters (especially among all slow capitals) solve most of the "infinite kiting" problems that peak performance was designed to solve. So instead I generally limit that mechanic to phase ships and extremely agile ones. I should probably implement that mechanic to ships who equip Safety Overrides, too, if possible, since that can also stack with Unstable Injector.
I still think they shouldn't have an undefined relationship though. Its entirely missing....
It isn't explicitly mentioned (except through exploration of the faction's colonies in a way I won't spoil), but, yes the Adamantine Consortium is pretty indifferent to pirates. Bounties are most likely for Sci-Corps patrols- who frequently attack Consortium holds because of the barons' reputation for cruelty. (It should pay out if you attack a Sci-Corps patrol)
Saw the hullmod in, I think, a Persian League commission shop. But I have been chasing bounties mainly and haven't hit those systems enough yet.
Nice, I would check Tri-Tachyon and Sci-Corps markets for that hullmod. Their ships frequently use it, and I've seen it there more often.
---------------------------NOOOOOOOOOOOO (http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/)
Updated notes for the next patch. (Not yet available for download, though)
Next Patch Changes: v1.2.1aHmm. interesting. Any specific reason for the downgrades?
Content Additions
- New factions now have custom dialogue when you hire their officers.
- You can now "Rescue" Officers from the Adamantine Consortium if you cannot afford to pay a "hiring" bribe. This will make the barons less than pleased, of course.
- New variant for the Osprey-class light carrier that features Mining Drones - added to independent and scavenger fleets.
Balance Changes
- Tempest-class frigate now has a "small" version of the Wasp interceptor wing wing built-in. This wing has 4 max interceptors instead of 6.
- Acolyte-class heavy frigate now has a "small" version of the Spectre interceptor wing built-in. This wing has 4 max interceptors instead of 6.
Quite nice. Maybe I will get one eventually. No capitals yet.
- Removed built-in Talon wing for the Atlas superfreighter. Now has two open flight decks instead of one, but not enough Ordinance to carry much heavy strike craft. Standard variant adjusted.
I find it amusing how this mod took the junk mining weapons and stuff and made them inefficient, but potent weapons.
- The Mining Drone wing now has a combat assault range similar to other gunships, and Assault AI. Ordinance cost increased to 2 (from 0).
Meaning limited to a smaller radius around the ship, right?
- Built-in Mining Drone wing on the Venture-class combat freighter has been modified to retain its short range support role, as intended.
Vanilla Redacted, right? Not one of the two new factions?
- Redacted heavy fighter primary weapon replaced with something stronger. Was too weak for its number/OP cost.
- Redacted interceptor has had its secondary weapon removed. Was too strong for its number/OP cost.
Bug Fixes
- You can now hire new faction mercenary officers as intended. A bug in Rules.csv prevented the dialogue option to hire them from appearing.
- Removed override of hullmods.csv file to allow power user opt-in of Autonomous Ships mod. (Must still set totalConversion to "false" in the mod_info.json file)
- Fighter wings should no longer disappear from inventory after visiting the refit screen if hulls with built-in versions of the same type exist within your fleet.
- Corrected name error in Mining Drone wing tooltip.
- Redacted heavy bomber will now correctly use its primary weapon.
Not infinite, silly, its more like 6k DPS. Not infinite at all, just massive for a destroyer :P
Which system was it based on anyway? missile autoforge or fast racks? I do think they should be merged for this mod tho.
Vanilla had it have 1 charge and that was it I think at one point.
I still think they shouldn't have an undefined relationship though. Its entirely missing....
Saw the hullmod in, I think, a Persian League commission shop. But I have been chasing bounties mainly and haven't hit those systems enough yet.
Thanks for advise.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO (http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/)
Hmm. interesting. Any specific reason for the downgrades?
Meaning limited to a smaller radius around the ship, right?
Vanilla Redacted, right? Not one of the two new factions?
The sound effects of the repeater and the iridium cannon are a bit too loud. It makes using them annoying and the fighters armed with them are deafening.
I mean it doesn't show up in the Faction menu as a relationship. Every other faction has a link to every other faction (I think)
It's actually set to favorable for Consortium->Pirates, but Suspicious Pirates->Consortium, so that's why it doesn't show up under "ally" or "enemy", since they are technically neither. But its's not undefined. Do you mean you want it to show up?
I mean it doesn't show up in the Faction menu as a relationship. Every other faction has a link to every other faction (I think)
The Condor has a similar issue with it's fast racks. Missiles use a LOT of flux in general, (and their tooltips base flux cost on recharge rate, not max fire rate)
I can either try to use it for missiles, or else get good fighters. Either way, its not exactly good.
Harpoons use 2k Flux/second, not the 150 I previously expected. Kinda a vanilla issue, but still. If that is intended, I think that needs to be more clearly stated in tooltips for missiles.
Ah, nevermind. I see
Not that I can see on my end, just that factions allies and enemies. Pirates just happen to be enemies with just about everyone :)
Rephrase that? Not specific enough, not sure what you are talking about
It uses less flux once it has charges (reduced by 33% over the current build) so hopefully that will help with that.
Uhm, I think it costs way too much flux, at least for the kind of ships it can fit on, and the tooltip should probably state that it costs 2k flux given vanilla tooltip parts don't tell you that.
I don't think I can do anything about the way its weighted, but what would you suggest for tooltip info? Just that it has a very large flux cost per salvo? Or higher than the tooltip?
Rephrase that? Not specific enough, not sure what you are talking about
Uhm, I think it costs way too much flux, at least for the kind of ships it can fit on, and the tooltip should probably state that it costs 2k flux given vanilla tooltip parts don't tell you that.
Its pretty obvious that fast-missile racks are a bit of a problem atm.
Harpoon missile flux costs are actually pretty reasonable given other Medium strike-type weapons, looking at them. I think its mainly the whole fast missile racks that throws it all off.
Any strike/Support weapon with a ROF less than 10/minute (As Clip regen as well as normal cooldown) probable needs a "Flux Impulse" in it's tooltip, stating how much flux it generates in an instant. I spent a long time having useless weapons on some ships that I didn't realize didn't actually have enough flux storage to fire it. This isn't nearly as common as vanilla so it isn't a huge deal there, but here it kinda is.
The math is somewhat simple, but it is still annoying. Especially as it tends to involve parts of 60 AND fractions.
Heh, true enough. I think that sounds reasonable.
Sorry I was typing that response too quickly and didn't proofread enough. It was pretty vague.
What I meant was: Fast Missile Racks in the current build generates 15% of the base flux of the ship per use (not including capacitors, concentrated shields, etc). I have changed that in the next build to only generate 10% base flux per use, a 33% reduction in its cost. It keeps its small cooldown between uses (10 secs) and now only has 2 charges. Charges will take significantly longer to regenerate than the cd (every 100 secs I think).
The charge-based ship system is quickly becoming a necessary theme. :P
The second mainly. Using them with Fast Missile racks. Hence the changes should help with them, Reapers, and so on.
Trying to make sure I completely understand what you mean or would like to see: So you think Harpoons cost too much flux? Or they cost too much flux when used with Fast Missile Racks? Or is it more the issue that I will respond to below, as well, regarding misleading tooltip info?
Also, just so I have a frame of reference for your experience, is this mostly through equipping them on condors, or have you also tried them out on any higher tech ships, if you have them? I can understand what you mean about the condor's lack of flux if you are equipping advanced missiles like the Harpoon or Hunter. Because of its nature as a conversion warship from a freighter, I tried to somewhat limit its combat capabilities in accordance with lore. It's cheaper, and easier to maintain and deploy compared to full combat destroyers, and provides decent fighter support without sacrificing every last drop of combat ability like the Anchorage does- the other low tech destroyer-sized carrier in this category.Ah yes. In vanilla, it is far easier to use all the slots without horrible flux costs. The problem is that there aren't many missiles which aren't flux hungry, and ships like the Condor and Crucible, and honestly most missile-heavy ships tend to have to either use Reapers, anti-fighter missiles, or suffer massive flux costs. There aren't many lighter-weight missiles around. Will try the smaller racks though.
Fast Missile Racks being present is also misleading when outfitting the condor for the AIs use. Since that system will likely be entirely wasted- even in the next build, if you are using advanced missiles that generate more flux than the condor can handle. So you are right in this case that builds for this carrier will likely revolve around: Do I lean more on its combat ability (luddic church, hegemony and pirates typically take this route) or do I give it some heavy-duty fighters, bombers or gunships and use fast missile racks for things like swarmers, trebuchets, bolas and salamanders. Combining the ship system with lighter costing missiles or a combination of heavy flux missiles like the trebuchet and flux free ones like the salamander can really let you see the system shine even on the condor.Yea, it has too few reasonable builds, and it's ability really doesn't fit it since it still doesn't have enough flux to run it all, or even close.
Maybe that ship needs a little more in its description to let players know its missile limitations. Your thoughts? Any counter arguments?I know you can't touch the built-in tooltip, something I asked for as a suggestion a while ago. Would be really useful for a lot of modders.
**Edit: Also, the Harpoon(single) or Sabot(single) version works a lot better on the condor with its system, and saves some ordinance points as well.
I agree that tooltips describing "flux per shot/salvo/burst" are needed. Unfortunately, unless things have changed since I last checked, the U.I is off limits to mods. Otherwise I would add both of those entries below "flux per second."
If it has indeed changed, an API file path to the file that handles the weapon tooltips would be very helpful in this case.
On your suggestion: By tooltip do you mean the description in the tooltip? That, I can edit at least. I can try and add that information, but it will kind of look weird and out of place. Guess its better than not having it though, and so likely necessary, especially considering ships just wont be able to use certain weapons, like you said. Still, it will take a little time to get all that information into the descriptions. There are quite a few weapons that fall into that category. :)
Heh, true enough. I think that sounds reasonable.
Wasn't it a x cost per missile slotted before? Or am I recalling that wrongly?
The second mainly. Using them with Fast Missile racks. Hence the changes should help with them, Reapers, and so on.
Most missiles cost a lot more flux, and there are not a lot of "Assault" variants. (As in, low-no flux cost) Mainly there are those PD missiles. Which excluding assault mostly makes sense, It is hard to find a reasonable missile to use.
I know you can't touch the built-in tooltip, something I asked for as a suggestion a while ago. Would be really useful for a lot of modders.
I mean the description, like how you did for fighters. (Something that got lost from vanilla when they became weapons and you couldn't read it's stats anymore)
Just something like: 2,000 Flux/shot, and 2,000 Flux/sec for 3 seconds would do it. It says 60 shots a second peak, and you got 3 ammo? Easy to calculate by brain.
That just says 2k minimum flux storage, and 6k or 8k to unload all the missiles.
I wonder... Can you hack the cooldown on those missiles, such that after firing it sets the cooldown to 1 second? Or for, like, any strike type weapon?
I mean, being able to unleash 3 missiles in seconds which do terrible, terrible damage is one of the perks of a Harpoon, and even with the flux cost that is the purpose. Just that 450 flux is not quite 6k flux.
The big problem though, is that I looked at the missile, saw 150 flux/second, and said, Yes, I can equip that. I have 200 or so flux dissipation, so it will be a bit tight, but no issue. However, once I try to actually use it, the serious flux impulse shows that is not really the case.
Concentrated Shield Emmiter's tooltip says it reduces shield damage taken by 25. you forgot the % there.
Its more that the LRM or other stronger missiles use so much flux that ships that have one of them have trouble running it, regardless if military or not. Most ships with one or two small missile slots can run a pair of hunters, but only if they don't use the flux for anything else. It just seems a little TOO much flux is spent on those larger missiles compared to the size, if not effect.
Ok yeah we will see how the changes go for that system.
On missiles, I can see what you mean here. But some may seem to cost more than they really do. Part of that may be just because the condor's flux capabilities are quite weak. I am buffing its flux while nerfing its shields (similar to the lasher in the last update). There are the two torpedoes, the two anti-fighter missiles, annihilator rockets, frag bombs, bolas and swarmers that should all be very condor friendly. Even more so after the next buff.
I'll continue to monitor this though and if this doesn't help let me know.
Probably worth it admittedly. Just a thought anyhow.
Hm, sorry not sure what you mean by this. The cooldowns, themselves are too long? Or trying to fool the tooltip calculation by an everyframe script?
If the second, not really worth the memory, imo, when I can just add the relevant info into the description. I'm not 100% sure that would even work, though that's only an early presumption.
Concentrated Shield Emmiter's tooltip says it reduces shield damage taken by 25. you forgot the % there.
Thanks, I'll correct.
Wow. I just got a Dominator XIV, and gave it two Mark IX Cannons and two heavy railguns (among other lesser weapons)From a realistic standpoint, Cruisers are faster and easier to maintain than a Capital ship (Carrier, Battlecruiser, Battleship). However, they pack more fire power than a destroyer and can take a bigger beating. So it WOULD make sense that they would be the main "killing force" of any good sized fleet. I'd say 1 cap ship for every 5-7 cruisers is a good center force.
The amount of firepower that brings is horrifying. Tears apart lesser cruisers in seconds. I suppose that is to be expected from an actual military cruiser.
I mean wow.. The range and damage on that....
I can't wait till Capital ships are inside my price range :D
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Salvaged a Pillager Class capital ship from a pirate bounty. Even more nasty. Shame it has wrecked armor and hull, but it's ability to focus 3-4 large cannons on a target is scary. Plus it can take quite a bit of punishment. Never got close to losing it, although cruisers do tend to take quite a bit more fire.
The idea of Cruisers being a huge force multiplier is clearly accurate from what I've seen. While They can and do get taken down, they take a lot of damage and have massive levels of firepower, thanks to those medium and large slots.
I am clearly having a lot more fun than vanilla Starsector. I haven't previously gotten this far before. I think I might have gotten an Onslaught a while back, but that was many Starsector Versions ago.
That said, I think the part when I went after a bounty, saw two fleets, paused, and realized that the second one had a pair of Paragons was the point I realized that A, I should run away, and B, I need more firepower before I am confidant in my having "Won" the game.
I do not want to face a Paragon quite yet....
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Did you change any of the missions? Sinking the Bismar has a different set of ships that I remember. It might be vanilla, but it might be this mod.
Its more that the LRM or other stronger missiles use so much flux that ships that have one of them have trouble running it, regardless if military or not. Most ships with one or two small missile slots can run a pair of hunters, but only if they don't use the flux for anything else. It just seems a little TOO much flux is spent on those larger missiles compared to the size, if not effect.
Wow. I just got a Dominator XIV, and gave it two Mark IX Cannons and two heavy railguns (among other lesser weapons)
The amount of firepower that brings is horrifying. Tears apart lesser cruisers in seconds. I suppose that is to be expected from an actual military cruiser.
I mean wow.. The range and damage on that....
I can't wait till Capital ships are inside my price range :D
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Salvaged a Pillager Class capital ship from a pirate bounty. Even more nasty. Shame it has wrecked armor and hull, but it's ability to focus 3-4 large cannons on a target is scary. Plus it can take quite a bit of punishment. Never got close to losing it, although cruisers do tend to take quite a bit more fire.
The idea of Cruisers being a huge force multiplier is clearly accurate from what I've seen. While They can and do get taken down, they take a lot of damage and have massive levels of firepower, thanks to those medium and large slots.
I am clearly having a lot more fun than vanilla Starsector. I haven't previously gotten this far before. I think I might have gotten an Onslaught a while back, but that was many Starsector Versions ago.
That said, I think the part when I went after a bounty, saw two fleets, paused, and realized that the second one had a pair of Paragons was the point I realized that A, I should run away, and B, I need more firepower before I am confidant in my having "Won" the game.
I do not want to face a Paragon quite yet....
From a realistic standpoint, Cruisers are faster and easier to maintain than a Capital ship (Carrier, Battlecruiser, Battleship). However, they pack more fire power than a destroyer and can take a bigger beating. So it WOULD make sense that they would be the main "killing force" of any good sized fleet. I'd say 1 cap ship for every 5-7 cruisers is a good center force.
As for the Paragon's: Good choice. I never fought against or alongside a Paragon in this mod, but in Sim it was still a very strong ship. 2 Paragons are almost a fleet on their own.
Did you change any of the missions? Sinking the Bismar has a different set of ships that I remember. It might be vanilla, but it might be this mod.
What are the exact values on fast missile racks?
Very nice. I now have respect for exactly how much power those strike weapons take. Its a lot more than I previously assumed (until I did the math manually)
Explains exactly why Hunters cost so much flux, and other stuff.
Is it clear that "Flux per Salvo" means all possible ammunition? (not including expanded mags of course)
- > Fighters are smaller, faster, more numerous, and can deal extra damage to ships' weapons and engines.How much exactly? double damage? How is it done? EMP? some kind of damage modifier effect?
Though the weapons they carry are the same ones (visually/sound/lore) as the ship-based versions equipped on combat vessels, all fighters have a built-in hullmod (visible by title only in the in-game codex) called Fighter Systems that Reduces missile ammo by 50%, Beam range by 50%, Energy Weapon Damage by 33% and Energy Charges(if Strike) by 66%. This is so fighters can be more numerous without making carriers/cruisers/capitals overwhelmingly powerful. As it is, they are very strong.
Some weapon niches are harder to find.
Is there a small energy strike weapon similar to the Antimatter blaster in vanilla? Long cooldown and high impulse damage?
Medium ballistic assault like Assault chaingun (current version is very burst fire instead of the constant stream gattling cannon I like)
Where is the vulcan cannon? is it Small or medium now?
Why did the hammerhead have its missiles and ballistic slots swapped? It just looks sooooo wrong..... I don't know why it bugs me soooo much.
I much preferred the original "Sinking the Bismar" mission. Mainly because it let you try out the Hyperion without actually finding one. Expensive, fragile (1k health?), high upkeep, and horrifyingly good at flanking and strikes, as well as the fastest ship in the game. It is probably still quite a bit faster than fighters too.
More importantly in this mod, at drastically higher risk from fighters, such that new tactics may be required, and heavier point defence mounted.
S.O. gives 100% constant flux venting in effect, and speed too (and you plan to make that give them a peak performance limit?)
Supports are harder to build, because its generally not feasible to get enough flux to fill out all main turrets with LR support weapons. If it goes to near flux-overflow and can sustain it with minimal venting, its great, but... yea.... And missiles like Harpoons are full-fledged Strike-Support weapon hybrids, with the missile trait. Homing and support-level range, and hits like a proper strike weapon, but it's flux cost is intense. its not a finisher like vanilla, or rather it is, but the flux cost makes it a serious strike weapon.
The makeshift carrier deck hullmod seems unnessesary in this mod. Almost every you might consider using it on already has fighter slots. Maybe make it an "expanded Fighter Deck" hullmod, which gives +1-2 extra fighter slots (at the cost of even less OP to spend on anything else)
The civilian star-liner ship has a tooltip from vanilla claiming it lacks a fighter deck. this is no longer the case.
What were the justifications for the fighter hull mod's changes.
I would note that the other half of Peak performance was to balance shield and armor-based ships. Shield ships tended to have far lower performance, so neither armor nor shield based ships could last forever. Shielded ships would malfunction, so their theoretical infinite damage resistance doesn't really apply.
How much exactly? double damage? How is it done? EMP? some kind of damage modifier effect?
Makes sense. Frustrating, but I will just have to figure out a way to handle it. That was also what the whole peak performance was about.
My strategy for support vessels is to generally focus on a single damage type, maybe two on more capable ships, and emphasize that until at peak flux efficiency, then fill out the rest with cheap PD since fighters tend to focus on support ships more anyway. Then synergize my assault vessels to emphasize the complementary damage type.
There was a build, at one time, that had cheaper fire support costs. Support ships were, hands down, the best ships in that build. They could kite almost infinitely with their dissipation giving them speed boosts faster, or at least as fast, as the assault ships under fire. So the assault ships would never close the distance. They would eventually reach critical flux levels from fire, and begin retreating- completely wasting the entire charge in the first place. Overwhelming numbers were required, and even then if you had enough support ships focus fire ensured there would still be heavy losses from the assault.
I also tried increasing the time it took to fully vent flux to counter the first problem, and combat became sluggish and dull. Half of the time, a player would be waiting for flux to vent so they could catch things. The AI was also noticeably worse at deciding when it was a good time to do this.
I will continue to monitor this for potential improvements, however, and thank you as always for the feedback!
Sort of, yea. High-tech ships tend to have lower CR time than low-tech, and I feel that is partly to balance the armor-vs-shield equation. Shields regenerate. Armor doesn't. The CR means that if it comes down to attrition, instead of shields always winning, armor based ships will keep their peak performance longer.
So, you mean without peak performance, shielded ships have too much of an advantage since they can kite and vent more easily?
Good to know it's noticeable though!
Coded into the hullmod to deal more damage to turrets and engines specifically- not EMP, since I didn't want hullmods reducing the effect.
Actually, I double checked and it is EMP, after all. 33% more damage from Talons, 100% more from Gladius and Broadsword. I had made a note to convert it to the hullmod for a base 50% increase, instead, and thought I had. Whoops, I'll see about correcting that! It may be that I ended up not being able to do that with the API and just don't remember.
Oh, also meant to say that the manual is now a little outdated with the changes since the mod's release and honestly since .8 (I wrote that manual before the fighter update was live and fighters were sub-optimal in vanilla)
Makes sense. Frustrating, but I will just have to figure out a way to handle it. That was also what the whole peak performance was about.
Hmm. So flux venting thinggy would resist it. Why the different values for different ship types? Seems like something to just make linear. Does the talon weapon have more raw damage because fragmentation, so a lower value is needed? If it is a hullmod, do the different fighters have different versions?
Ah, well, may want to put an OUTDATED warning on it. Its the main reason I tried the mod out honestly.
Is collision damage modified, or is it normal to have ramming damage tear away 20k armor and half of a pillagers health on impact? I never really had burn-drive capable ships in vanilla.
Yea. I never said Peak Performance was a good fix, more of a patch. It just feels like it kinda sorta balances out Shields, Kiting, and long range support. It doesn't do a good job, and since you found another way to do it, its great, but..... That just happens to be the way that I feel about it. What do you think?
Well, peak performance wouldn't really help here since the issue is that assault ships basically become obsolete. Besides, if the only way to deal with support ships was to tank their damage until they malfunctioned, would it really be all that fun anyway?
Is it certain ships you really feel are underwhelming in this role?
Also, it may be useful to go off of existing variants, when possible, for support builds to start. They don't seem to suffer from ineffectiveness on my end (so far, at least), and can give you a sense of how to outfit them successfully. The difference between having a couple of Bulls with Artillery Blasters or a Wolf with a LRM or two can be significant, from what I've found. Increasingly so when equipping larger ships. The elite Astral, for instance, can maintain fire of several separate Missile Batteries, projecting enough firepower to outright eliminate most vessels below a cruiser in a single volley.
If the issue is that you, yourself, are trying to pilot a support ship, remember that by design you need assault ships as a defense screen. Using the escort command can be key to this tactic. Otherwise assault ships will eventually close into combat range and you will be very vulnerable and unable to even strike back due to your high flux levels.
Fire Support weapons compliment well with PD, or, in certain cases, a longer range assault weapon or utility missile.
It was originally based on the number per wing and the effectiveness in combat trials, but yes, the idea of the hullmod is to make it linear at 50% for simplicity. That kind of nuance is no longer needed, and I did not want any emp-reducing hullmods or skills to factor in- only armored weapon mounts and automated repair.Don't forget Insulated Engine Assembly :p
Going to update it with the next release. Also, thanks for your notes. They catch many of the changes already. :)Heh. Nice. I just had an hour and felt like complaining. Its always nice to be able to complain constructively.
Huh. Rammed my pillager into one of those... Uhm.... Archean Order Cruisers (I think)..... I would suspect it was the death explosion, but still...
:o What did you hit??
Could be based on mass, but nothing should be out of the ordinary there.
Yea. I never said Peak Performance was a good fix, more of a patch. It just feels like it kinda sorta balances out Shields, Kiting, and long range support. It doesn't do a good job, and since you found another way to do it, its great, but..... That just happens to be the way that I feel about it. What do you think?
As for my personal experience, Its pretty much, I build a LR support ship by putting as many LR missiles on it as will fit, and the rest is PD. When a ship can't handle that, it feels wrong.
I haven't really bothered piloting a support ship, because assault and strike ships are more fun, and it feels like it adds more to my combat potential.
Don't forget Insulated Engine Assembly :p
Heh. Nice. I just had an hour and felt like complaining. Its always nice to be able to complain constructively.
And again, that manual heavily implied to me that you put a lot of thought into the TC, hence why I Tried it out. Making it better can only help, surely?
Huh. Rammed my pillager into one of those... Uhm.... Archean Order Cruisers (I think)..... I would suspect it was the death explosion, but still...
And just because my armor and hull were reduced shouldn't have caused that, although admittedly i DID ram a cruiser. However, it was a high tech cruiser. You would think low-tech pillager, with ramming drive would be built for that.
In vanilla it rarely did much even to armor, although I never scaled up to cruisers, let alone capital ships. Given it was a lethal ramming, intended mainly to force the shield to overload and hopefully put a hole in the armor, I am not sure what happened.
The Gods of Ram may have given you extra power. I heard it happens from time to time.Yea. I never said Peak Performance was a good fix, more of a patch. It just feels like it kinda sorta balances out Shields, Kiting, and long range support. It doesn't do a good job, and since you found another way to do it, its great, but..... That just happens to be the way that I feel about it. What do you think?
Well, peak performance wouldn't really help here since the issue is that assault ships basically become obsolete. Besides, if the only way to deal with support ships was to tank their damage until they malfunctioned, would it really be all that fun anyway?
Is it certain ships you really feel are underwhelming in this role?
Also, it may be useful to go off of existing variants, when possible, for support builds to start. They don't seem to suffer from ineffectiveness on my end (so far, at least), and can give you a sense of how to outfit them successfully. The difference between having a couple of Bulls with Artillery Blasters or a Wolf with a LRM or two can be significant, from what I've found. Increasingly so when equipping larger ships. The elite Astral, for instance, can maintain fire of several separate Missile Batteries, projecting enough firepower to outright eliminate most vessels below a cruiser in a single volley.
If the issue is that you, yourself, are trying to pilot a support ship, remember that by design you need assault ships as a defense screen. Using the escort command can be key to this tactic. Otherwise assault ships will eventually close into combat range and you will be very vulnerable and unable to even strike back due to your high flux levels.
Fire Support weapons compliment well with PD, or, in certain cases, a longer range assault weapon or utility missile.
As for my personal experience, Its pretty much, I build a LR support ship by putting as many LR missiles on it as will fit, and the rest is PD. When a ship can't handle that, it feels wrong.
I haven't really bothered piloting a support ship, because assault and strike ships are more fun, and it feels like it adds more to my combat potential.QuoteIt was originally based on the number per wing and the effectiveness in combat trials, but yes, the idea of the hullmod is to make it linear at 50% for simplicity. That kind of nuance is no longer needed, and I did not want any emp-reducing hullmods or skills to factor in- only armored weapon mounts and automated repair.Don't forget Insulated Engine Assembly :pQuoteGoing to update it with the next release. Also, thanks for your notes. They catch many of the changes already. :)Heh. Nice. I just had an hour and felt like complaining. Its always nice to be able to complain constructively.
And again, that manual heavily implied to me that you put a lot of thought into the TC, hence why I Tried it out. Making it better can only help, surely?QuoteHuh. Rammed my pillager into one of those... Uhm.... Archean Order Cruisers (I think)..... I would suspect it was the death explosion, but still...
:o What did you hit??
Could be based on mass, but nothing should be out of the ordinary there.
And just because my armor and hull were reduced shouldn't have caused that, although admittedly i DID ram a cruiser. However, it was a high tech cruiser. You would think low-tech pillager, with ramming drive would be built for that.
In vanilla it rarely did much even to armor, although I never scaled up to cruisers, let alone capital ships. Given it was a lethal ramming, intended mainly to force the shield to overload and hopefully put a hole in the armor, I am not sure what happened.
Edit: Hmm...is it possible to get a start with a closer relation to the newer factions, or maybe with the vanilla ones? Not saying to start me out with a bloody cruiser like in Nex, but it would be nice to have a head start going into one of the factions.
It works fine. Been using it since I started this mod.
Hmm. Well, I'm willing to give it a try and add it back in with a higher timer, especially now knowing the mod is compatible with Autonomous Ships. The main reason I dislike the mechanic is because I can't avoid taking additional CR damage in any prolonged fights without serious micromanagement. The global warnings are insufficient for me, or I miss them completely in the heat of battle. I may also see if the combat chatter mod is compatible. That may help things as well.
As a programmer and game modder (Factorio, Warcraft III) I get into the habit of finding things that need improvement or that I don't like, recording them, and fixing them.
Absolutely! I really appreciate constructive feedback, irregardless if I happen to agree with the proposed change. In this case, I certainly think its important to have the manual up to date for new players or those still adjusting to the combat changes. The input so far has already greatly improved the mod experience, imo, so keep it coming whenever you feel like it! :)
Hmm, could be the ramming weakened the armor and the explosion caused the hull damage. The larger the ship and the higher the speed the more damage collisions deal, as far as I can tell. Also, you battle rammed an Archean heavy cruiser? A bold move, indeed. ;)Heh. Yea, How much of a bang do death bangs actually deal? I have wonderful memories of using a wolf with 4 reapers (expanded missile skill), ramming other frigates or destroyers, unloading death, raising shield, and being overloaded for like 15 seconds. Sadly reapers now have an arming time so they aren't functional in that situation anymore. Which is probably a good thing, given how silly powerful that combo was.
I was actually thinking having a start that was similar to that, but all the other new factions. It doesn't need to be like that with the vanilla factions as there would be less new stuff with them, and they are more familiar to players.Edit: Hmm...is it possible to get a start with a closer relation to the newer factions, or maybe with the vanilla ones? Not saying to start me out with a bloody cruiser like in Nex, but it would be nice to have a head start going into one of the factions.
If you start as a Mercenary Captain you will have some starting rep with the Trader Guilds as well as a small fleet under your command, though you will be suspicious with some other factions.
I can add more starting options pretty easily, however, which faction did you have in mind, or what sort of scenario?
You could take roughly vanilla times and increase them by 5x or so. It would still only apply in rare cases, but you could them use that for the hullmods, like SO and High Maintenance and Phase Field which cut it down to a more vanilla level.
As a programmer and game modder (Factorio, Warcraft III) I get into the habit of finding things that need improvement or that I don't like, recording them, and fixing them.
Its only a small step from there to sending suggestions to the actual developer, or suggesting to the people who wrote the game.
Its highly satisfying when my suggestions or reports are responded to.
Heh. Yea, How much of a bang do death bangs actually deal? I have wonderful memories of using a wolf with 4 reapers (expanded missile skill), ramming other frigates or destroyers, unloading death, raising shield, and being overloaded for like 15 seconds. Sadly reapers now have an arming time so they aren't functional in that situation anymore. Which is probably a good thing, given how silly powerful that combo was.
Pillager's main turrets spread a large arc, and there isn't a point where it gets full coverage, If you get the angle right you can get 4 cannons running however. Kinda reminding me of the Fatboy from Supreme Commander.
Oh god, the BEES
I was actually thinking having a start that was similar to that, but all the other new factions. It doesn't need to be like that with the vanilla factions as there would be less new stuff with them, and they are more familiar to players.
With the scenario's: I can't actually think of many, but maybe a raiding party for the Consortium (Frigates and a destroyer with a freighter), Science related fleet for the Sci-Corps (couple frigates, destroyer, freighter or tanker), and a combat fleet (couple destroyers and either a few carriers or frigates) for the Archeus?
I may also see if the combat chatter mod is compatible. That may help things as well.I am about to do some testing on that for you, but I can confirm that Combat chatter does NOT cause any crashes or problems at the very least.
I may also see if the combat chatter mod is compatible. That may help things as well.I am about to do some testing on that for you, but I can confirm that Combat chatter does NOT cause any crashes or problems at the very least.
Currently I am using Autonomous ships, Autosave, Combat Chatter, Common Radar, Leading Pip, and Upgraded Rotary Weapons (which I have no idea if it does anything here)
I am about to do some testing on that for you, but I can confirm that Combat chatter does NOT cause any crashes or problems at the very least.
Edit: I did some testing, and Combat Chatter works perfectly fine! I have noticed no difference when I use this mod and when I use other mods, so it's definitely safe.
No problem. The only thing I have noticed through more testing is that there is no random chatter like "Engaging hostiles" or "Could use some help here!". So far they have only been "Overloading", "X% hull left", and stuff like that.Currently I am using Autonomous ships, Autosave, Combat Chatter, Common Radar, Leading Pip, and Upgraded Rotary Weapons (which I have no idea if it does anything here)I am about to do some testing on that for you, but I can confirm that Combat chatter does NOT cause any crashes or problems at the very least.
Edit: I did some testing, and Combat Chatter works perfectly fine! I have noticed no difference when I use this mod and when I use other mods, so it's definitely safe.
Thanks for the confirmation! Much appreciated!
No problem. The only thing I have noticed through more testing is that there is no random chatter like "Engaging hostiles" or "Could use some help here!". So far they have only been "Overloading", "X% hull left", and stuff like that.
Still extremely useful and all you actually NEED to know, but still worth mentioning considering that is a part of the mod.
I have not messed with it at all, and I get them when I don't have this mod running.
No problem. The only thing I have noticed through more testing is that there is no random chatter like "Engaging hostiles" or "Could use some help here!". So far they have only been "Overloading", "X% hull left", and stuff like that.
Still extremely useful and all you actually NEED to know, but still worth mentioning considering that is a part of the mod.
Are you sure that's enabled? I seem to recall some of the stuff being disabled by default. Although its been a while.
I have not messed with it at all, and I get them when I don't have this mod running.
No problem. The only thing I have noticed through more testing is that there is no random chatter like "Engaging hostiles" or "Could use some help here!". So far they have only been "Overloading", "X% hull left", and stuff like that.
Still extremely useful and all you actually NEED to know, but still worth mentioning considering that is a part of the mod.
Are you sure that's enabled? I seem to recall some of the stuff being disabled by default. Although its been a while.
If it's my fault that those are not showing them I take back what I said, but I don't think it is.
Alrighty, so I have an update to current dev progress. As stated before, I've slowed down development a bit, in preparation for a new professional position, but I'm still working on cool things! :)Yea, I don't do Dialog much, and my ability to "Feel" is really lacking. So I can't really have an opinion there at all.
Specifically, improving the fleet encounter dialogue mechanics takes a lot of trial and error. The scripts have random components that are supposed to generate a certain subjective "feel" and that can take a while to get right.
I really wanted to make bribes more mainstream if the player wants to avoid a battle, even if heavily outnumbered (or sometimes, specifically in that case). Currently in the available build, bribes only occur when prompted by the enemy commander. This just doesn't feel complete to me, so I am in the process of adding upfront bribes, and increasing the volatility of the results between the various factions.
This, of course, also presents a fair workload in dialogue- faction specific responses, etc. But I think it will feel much more natural and provide some interesting choices for the player in the end.
I've also worked on another small balance pass, and added in previously requested content: new missions, start scenarios and the reintroduction of a peak performance time.No Comment
Here's a summary of current progress. Asterisks* indicate W.I.P status:
Content Additions
- *Improved Bribery mechanic: Now also allows for bribery upfront- greatly increases the chances of a successful ceasefire negotiation.
- Can include several increments of bribes(with varying levels of cultual implications per faction) to increases chances of success- the highest bribe almost guarantees success with certain factions.
- Should the player choose not to bribe upfront and the negotations fail, the player will have a second opportunity to bribe the enemy commander at a higher cost.
- Improved Cease-Fire mechanic: Now can successfully negotiate a ceasefire with Vengeful rep Pirates (was guaranteed to fail before) and new bribery mechanics allow for more controllable, consistent results for the player, should they really want to avoid a battle.
- 2 new missions featuring the Hyperion-class Experimental Frigate as a flagship.Yay. Can't wait. Hyperion is always fun :D
- Added 3 new starting options for new factions- now consolidated with the former two additions under "Advanced Start".Well, that could be nice, although I don't start new games often.
- Consolidated "Normal Start" options (containing the basic start options and separating the destroyer-sized starts more clearly)
Good. Make sure tooltips on those hullmods explain exactly why they cut the PP so much.
Balance Changes
- Peak Performance mechanic implemented back into all vessels. Timers greatly increased for all but phase ships, and ships with High Maintenance from their experimental nature, such as the Sunder, Hyperion etc.
- Safety Overrides' Peak Performance reduction now greatly limits prolonged combat performance as a downside to balance out its benefits. OP to install reduced by 33% as a result. This will also make Pathers less annoying to fight in prolonged engagements where the player doesn't happen to have any pursuit or interdiction vessels.
- Reduced Flux per Salvo of Trebuchet LRM by 33%, missile speed reduced by ~20% (This should make the missile less of an issue when massed and allow it to be more easily added to load-outs. It was also too powerful/useful for its tier and in comarison to the advanced Hunter LRM).Could make it more usable. Flux costs on those hurt, xd. Those Low-tier LR missiles, honestly, I could go for them having that kind of change overall, maybe except for the single Hunter varient (which is powerful for it's size)
- Nova Cannon damage increased by 25% to compensate for loss of EMP component. It should now properly take its place as a top tier PD option with a secondary assault role.Hmm. I missed Nova cannon losing EMP damage. What does EMP damage do to missiles anyway? If anything at all?
- Added the Refit Time effect of Damaged Flightdeck to Civgrade Hullmod.Sensible enough. Hmm..
- Op Cost of Operations Center hullmod reduced by 33%.That makes it way more usable.
- Converted Hangar hullmod now increases the number flight decks on existing carriers by +1/+1/+2 on destroyers/cruisers/capitals in addition to its normal effects. This hullmod can now also be installed on existing carriers.Oh, so you downgunned it before, and made it medium again? And isn't it's Maintance harsh enough? :p
- Significant buffs to Hyperion and now has medium universal hardpoints at each wing. Increased cost and supplies to maintain/deploy.
- Reduced flux use of Phase Teleporter by 15% and increased its range.Would prefer a lower cooldown personally, or maybe a 3-charge system with cooldown on recharge.
- Decreased Tyrant-class Battleship's turn rate by 60%. It was too inaccurate with beams otherwise.No Comments
- Liberator Heavy Fighter has had one of its Icer Guns removed, and Limited Range Finders hullmod is now built-in.
- Ion Torpedo projectile hitpoints reduced by 40%.
- Changed starting variant load-out for Medusa.
Heh, awesome
Bug Fixes
- Fixed description for civilian Star-Liner to include its built-in, yet poorly operating fighter bay.
- Correctly implemented extra damage to weapons/engines from fighters- normalized this stat to 50% extra damage in order to reduce combat layer complexity. Removed EMP component from all small PD weapons.Hmm. What effect does removing EMP do anyway?
- *Updated and corrected Tactics Manual to reflect changes since release.Is that deployed on the front page? Want to READ!
- *Fixed bug with Adamantine Consortium Comm-Relay encounter not taking priority over Tribute requests.No Comment, yet.
- *Added story text to "The Great Restructuring" mission.
EMP against Missiles will cause them to flame out. They can still detonate, but they can't maneuver...Best used against missiles that actually have the ability to turn.Quote- Correctly implemented extra damage to weapons/engines from fighters- normalized this stat to 50% extra damage in order to reduce combat layer complexity. Removed EMP component from all small PD weapons.Hmm. What effect does removing EMP do anyway?
The Vengeful part of reputation level, I do think that a different approach to reputation might be sane.
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9786.0
Old suggestion, and might not be quite correct, but a tiered reputation system might be sane given your intention of an RPG-like system.
Essentially, each level of reputation is harder to get, like vanilla, but much more clear cut. Allied/Vengful specifically would take serious, deliberate effort to obtain, via Quest/Killing capital fleets.
Hmm. I missed Nova cannon losing EMP damage. What does EMP damage do to missiles anyway? If anything at all?
Oh, so you downgunned it before, and made it medium again? And isn't it's Maintance harsh enough? :p
Is that deployed on the front page? Want to READ!
Please snip the quote down to the part you are replying to.Sorry, got distracted IRL and forgot to do that. :-\
I'm sure this has been asked before, but what is the author's philosophy on having the features and content aspects of this mod separate? I've now played several hours of the mod, and I enjoy its features, but between using it and playing the base game and all its addons, vanilla and other mods win out. I would love to include this mod's campaign features alongside the version of the game that I play. Not to mention Nexerelin... :)
I'm sure this has been asked before, but what is the author's philosophy on having the features and content aspects of this mod separate? I've now played several hours of the mod, and I enjoy its features, but between using it and playing the base game and all its addons, vanilla and other mods win out. I would love to include this mod's campaign features alongside the version of the game that I play. Not to mention Nexerelin... :)TBH, I'd be able to play this mod forever if Nex was compatible. As of now, I end up needing breaks because I am use to the weapon ship and style variety that comes from having multiple mods, and the stuff that Nex provides.
I'm sure this has been asked before, but what is the author's philosophy on having the features and content aspects of this mod separate? I've now played several hours of the mod, and I enjoy its features, but between using it and playing the base game and all its addons, vanilla and other mods win out. I would love to include this mod's campaign features alongside the version of the game that I play. Not to mention Nexerelin... :)
TBH, I'd be able to play this mod forever if Nex was compatible. As of now, I end up needing breaks because I am use to the weapon ship and style variety that comes from having multiple mods, and the stuff that Nex provides.
Quote- Reduced flux use of Phase Teleporter by 15% and increased its range.Would prefer a lower cooldown personally, or maybe a 3-charge system with cooldown on recharge.
That being said, if you have time, do you mind breaking it down for me a little?
It's pretty hard to surpass the collective mastery and efforts of the mod community as one person working on a TCConsidering how you are one person, I think you are 80-90% matched in the awesomeness.
If Histidine doesn't mind, in the future I will look into adding Nex-like features into this TC
True that.It's pretty hard to surpass the collective mastery and efforts of the mod community as one person working on a TCConsidering how you are one person, I think you are 80-90% matched in the awesomeness.
If Histidine doesn't mind, in the future I will look into adding Nex-like features into this TC
Either way, I don't think Nex would be hard to make compatible. Not like you are trying to get Blackrock or Dassault-Mikoyan compatible. Nex doesn't add weapons or ships.
Sure, let me expand a bit. When I said content I meant to refer to the new things (ships, factions, stat changes), when I said features I meant new actions (bribing, intimidating, etc). The big draw your mod has over others is in characterization. You've got lots of flavor in your lore, lots of consistency in your ships, and lots of interaction with your characters. These, and in particular the last one, are very hard to find in regular Starsector. There's obviously only so much you can change outside of a TC, but I still long for a middle ground where you could bribe and extort other fleets and so forth in the base game (only using more generic dialog out of necessity).
Unfortunately it goes both ways; you've clearly put a lot of thought into your work, and it's really distinct... but it's really distinct. I don't have any major suggestions for you because you seem to be following a vision of the game very closely and very well. There are little things, like how Archean ships are in a whole different class of speed compared to everything else, but that's barely a blip.
Considering how you are one person, I think you are 80-90% matched in the awesomeness.
True that.
As for Nex: The only thing I think would be a problem is the Asgard Station. Even then, it's just the weapons that are the problem...Although it wou-I am going to stop there so I don't ramble on possibilities.
Either way, I don't think Nex would be hard to make compatible. Not like you are trying to get Blackrock or Dassault-Mikoyan compatible. Nex doesn't add weapons or ships.
The difficulty is that this mod doesnt just add stuff, it changes everything to do with game balance. While yea, you could probably easily integrate it with nex, it would be extremely imbalanced. Bring fighters from another mod here? No idea of op or not. Slow, but way more firepower, so probably act like cheap gunships.
All vanilla and Order ships have heavier armor and tougher shields, zero flux boost. Most of these weapons cost no flux. Missile spam. Etc, etc. You could do it, but i suspect balance would be difficult.
The iridium cannon, Icer gun, and micro repeater have issues with their sound. They are louder than other weapons and their sound effects seem to drown out other effects.
Sorry for all the nitpicking, I like this mod and want to help make it better.
One minor issue, the pulse laser costs too much OP for what it does. It is about as effective as the machine gun is an anti-fighter weapon and outclassed by the pulse beam against missiles. For an example of this, load up the first Condor (P) in the simulator.
The burst PD laser has the same problem, being slightly better than the pulse beam against fighters and larger missiles, only decisively superior against rocket barrages and swarms of light fighters.
If the intent was to make energy based PD worse, than the pulse beam is in need of a nerf, probably to range. If not, the pulse beam and burst PD laser are in need of re-balancing.
Edit: The void driver seems to have this issue as well, but is a passable ship-to-ship weapon. I would suggest reducing its OP cost to 5. (also, its desc. mentions losing burst damage rapidly but the stats don't reflect this.)
One minor issue, the pulse laser costs too much OP for what it does. It is about as effective as the machine gun is an anti-fighter weapon and outclassed by the pulse beam against missiles. For an example of this, load up the first Condor (P) in the simulator.
The burst PD laser has the same problem, being slightly better than the pulse beam against fighters and larger missiles, only decisively superior against rocket barrages and swarms of light fighters.
If the intent was to make energy based PD worse, than the pulse beam is in need of a nerf, probably to range. If not, the pulse beam and burst PD laser are in need of re-balancing.
Edit: The void driver seems to have this issue as well, but is a passable ship-to-ship weapon. I would suggest reducing its OP cost to 5. (also, its desc. mentions losing burst damage rapidly but the stats don't reflect this.)
One bug I found, adding the converted hanger seems to add thousands to the skeleton crew requirement.
The Hegemony Auxiliary Condor has 20 less OP than the standard Condor. Bug?
The Hellcat fighter doesn't seem to require crew, and its description doesn't say it's a drone. Is this a bug?
It seems the converted hanger hullmod only adds 1 flight deck to the Atlas despite it being a capital ship. Is this because it is also a civilian ship or actually counted as a cruiser?
I just finished all the missions with 100%. The balance is pretty good. They are hard, but not impossible. The only one that I have an issue with is The Captain's Gambit. It's fairly easy if you outfit all the ships with sparks, xyphos, renegades, and daggers. The issue is getting all the carriers to actually engage the tyrant. After killing all the other ships, they just kited away from it. Only the fighter only carriers sent their wings against it, doing almost nothing. I had to run the tyrant out of CR and then switch to a carrier to bomb it.
I was flying around Askonia and saw this...SpoilerThe gate's orbit might need to be extended a bit :P(https://i.imgur.com/FeDToOr.png)[close]
You might want to change Hybrasil a bit, at the moment the Tri-Tachyon-Archean Order fighting continually creates debris fields and high tech derelicts. It can make the early game easy if you snag an Aurora or Doom.
Hmm. A hullmod, probably that delicate machinery one. Gives a 90% chance of breaking up. :p
If the conflict is intended, you should buff up the spawnrate of TT fleets. Whenever I show up in the system 2-8 huge Templar fleets with multiple megaliths swarm Eochu Bres.
Penembrous and Eochu Bres get pretty damn close.Spoiler(https://i.imgur.com/UmaFCLg.png)[close]
Quite late, got a fleet of 2 paragons and a few Auroras.
Ran into an issue. Tried to start a game. Got 3 shipping orders to another system, took them. Got to the stations, the person requesting them wasn't there. Maybe he went out for a smoke break?
Hyperion doesn't seem to have delicate machinery hullmod. Not sure why.
Weapon shipments, 3x 10 each. From Jangala in the Corvus system to Sphinx and Tigra City in the Samarra System. Sphinx shipment worked fine. Tigra gave me the route (autopilot to the dock) but once I docked, couldn't complete as the person wasn't there. Quartermaster had a different name. Also, no yellow excelmation point indicating it.
Spelling might be wrong, XD
Hyperion doesn't seem to have delicate machinery hullmod. Not sure why.
Upcharge is the spool-up time, how long between deciding and firing, and actually firing. So less delay and fires faster?
Reduced upcharge, increased recharge of Iridium Cannon. -This will allow Hellcats to combat interceptors a little better. Before they could almost never effectively target them. They are still inaccurate at it, just less so.[/li][/list]
Replaced one of the Drover-class Light PD Carrier's Hydra Gunship wings with a Hercules Gunship wing to give it a fair amount of assault potential for an insiginifcant loss in overall PD strength.No comment
Increased Peak Operating Time of Megalith and Tyrant.
All Interceptors/Fighters/Bombers/Gunships of the same tech level will have the same combat range. (Should solve AI issues with carriers and allow for more diverse fighter-type combinations).Good. AI issues always a pain, at least if they are on your side.
Fixed min crew requirements of Hydra, Renegade, Liberator, Cyclops and Hellcat fighter-craft.Difference skins had different Stats too? I mean, quality might say different stats, but did not expect that.
Fixed OP of Hegemony, Pirate and Luddic Church Condor skins. Variants adjusted accordingly.
Atlas now correctly read as a capital ship, so Converted Hangar hullmod will add 2 fighter bays, as intended.Heh. Oops
Corrected Askonia Gate orbit to match nearby entities' orbit speed (now they shouldn't collide in the late campaign).Don't worry Warp gates are all equipped with phase shift drive coil thingies, so they can go through planets with no ill effects XD
Corrected late-game campaign issues with Archean Order and Tri-Tachyon in Hybrasil. Archean Order strongholds are much, much farther away from the system's star. (There should be less hi-tech debris and the markets should hopefully be a little more stable.)Heh. In those systems, there is only war.
Hyperion-class frigate now has Delicate Machinery hullmod built-in.Heh. I would note that Hyperions have an above average chance to be vaporized due to their low health already.
Slight re-work of Wolf (Arc) skin sprite.No comment
Patch is up.I guess I will review and add more
Phew, that was a lot of work to re-update the manual and document the dialogue mechanics. :) It took way longer than expected.
This is a pretty big balance pass, as well, and the update version is a little misleading as there is actually quite a bit of new and revised content for such a tiny update in the version id lol.Hmm. Can't say much yet. I don't bribe as a matter of course, only when I am certain it is better than trying to fight.
I also spent a good amount of time refactoring older scripts and improving existing features. I'm especially excited for bribery to be more fleshed out. The faction specific responses haven't been implemented yet, but I wan't to make sure the "base case" is working as intended before going down that rabbit hole.
Improved Bribery mechanic: Now also allows for bribery upfront- greatly increases the chances of a successful ceasefire negotiation.
- Can include several increments of bribes(with varying levels of cultural implications per faction) to increases chances of success- the highest bribe almost guarantees success with certain factions.
- Should the player choose not to bribe upfront and the negotations fail, the player will have a second opportunity to bribe the enemy commander at a higher cost.
Good. Although I would far prefer my idea of the Rep system, that is a good stopgap. The whole, Vengeful requires you to be an existential threat to the faction, and/or become well known for breaking your word (They surrender, you accept, get loot, and then you kill them anyway)
Improved Cease-Fire mechanic: Now can successfully negotiate a ceasefire with Vengeful rep Pirates (was guaranteed to fail before) and new bribery mechanics allow for more controllable, consistent results for the player, should they really want to avoid a battle.
2 new missions featuring the Hyperion-class Experimental Frigate as a flagship.
Added 3 new starting options for new factions- now consolidated with the former two additions under "Advanced Start".
Consolidated "Normal Start" options (containing the basic start options and separating the destroyer-sized starts more clearly).
New skin and variants for Archean Order's Wolf-class frigate.
Peak Performance mechanic implemented back into all vessels. Timers greatly increased for all but phase ships, and ships with High Maintenance from their experimental nature, such as the Sunder, Hyperion etc.Do those ships also have the new higher timers, which are cut by the hullmod? If not, adding/removing that hullmod later would require extra work.
Safety Overrides' Peak Performance reduction now greatly limits prolonged combat performance as a downside to balance out its benefits. OP to install reduced by 33% as a result. This will also make Pathers less annoying to fight in prolonged engagements where the player doesn't happen to have any pursuit or interdiction vessels.Good. Is the range modifier adjusted in any way from vanilla?
Reduced Flux per Salvo of Trebuchet LRM by 33%, missile speed reduced by ~20% (This should make the missile less of an issue when massed and allow it to be more easily added to load-outs. It was also too powerful/useful for its tier and in comparison to the advanced Hunter LRM).Awesome. Those two missiles were too similar imo, this gives a less powerful and more useable LRM.
Nova Cannon damage increased by 25% to compensate for loss of EMP component. It should now properly take its place as a top tier PD option with a secondary assault role.No comment, not Familiar enough with said weapon. Still, a PD/Assault hybrid is cool.
Added the Refit Time effect of Damaged Flightdeck to Civgrade Hullmod.Cool. I will have to note the effect that has on those civilian carriers that were treated as dedicated carriers/Freighters. Can't recall which ones those are atm, but yea.
Op Cost of Operations Center hullmod reduced by 33%.Yay. More Command points... In most cases.
Converted Hangar hullmod now increases the number flight decks on existing carriers by +1/+1/+2 on destroyers/cruisers/capitals in addition to its normal effects. This hullmod can now also be installed on existing carriers.Nice. Does it stack with expanded flight decks?
Significant buffs to Hyperion: now has medium universal hardpoints at each wing. Increased cost and supplies to maintain/deploy. Variants adjusted accordinly.Such a legendary ship, now with more customization... And upkeep.
Reduced flux use of Phase Teleporter by 15% and increased its range significantly.Which one was Phase teleporter again?
Decreased Tyrant-class Battleship's turn rate by 60%. It was too inaccurate with beams otherwise.Huh. What if you had given it built in turret Gyros instead :P
Liberator Heavy Fighter has had one of its Icer Guns removed, and Limited Range Finders hullmod is now built-in.As a fighter hullmod, I have no idea what that does. Sounds like a double nerf, but I can't be certain.
Ion Torpedo projectile hitpoints reduced by 40%.Don't Ion torpedos work through shields (direct impact, either way dumps flux into the buffer?)
Changed starting variant load-out for Medusa.Can't say much, aside from Medusa no longer being the Wolf II from vanilla I recall, and this doesn't change that
Redistributed success rates for some dialogue features- now that bribery is a more mainsteam feature.No details, only vague understanding of mechanic, so no comment.
Minor tweaks to deployment costs across all ships (couple exceptions of "minor", like Scarab, that were pseudo bugs), Fleet Points in ships and across skins now properly correlates to deployment cost for calculations in some scripts.Fixes are always good.
But we can still go for joyrides, right?
Fixed description for civilian Star-Liner to include its built-in, yet poorly operating fighter bay.
Correctly implemented extra damage to weapons/engines from fighters- normalized this stat to 50% extra damage in order to reduce combat layer complexity. Removed EMP component from all small PD weapons.Good. Although, wasn't that EMP on small PD weapons mainly to overload fighters? Not complaining, but yea.
Updated and corrected Tactics Manual to reflect changes since release. Also greatly expanded the manual, including non-technical documentation of dialogue features and mechanics as well as tips for tactics against certain factions for new players.Will be around to
Fixed bug with Adamantine Consortium Comm-Relay encounter not taking priority over Tribute requests.Huh. So you refuse Tribute AND are trying to hack their Comm-Relay. I guess they ought to just try and kill you?
Added story text to "The Great Restructuring" mission.Fluff! Yay!
Corrected a few scripts that had incorrect IDs for the Tri-Tachyon corporation.What kind of scripts? Code scripts, Dialog Scripts, or what?
Bribe calculation in Cease Fire requests now stems from enemy fleet strength, as intended, rather than player fleet strength.Wait, so was it looking at ratio between your fleet and your fleet, instead of their fleet and your fleet?
Corrected fleet strength calculations in Cease-Fire and Commodity request features. It was too punishing when severely outnumbered (almost never happened).Well, If you are seriously outnumbered, attempting to Surrender (with a bribe) should be an option, but just a cease fire (to conserve resources on both sides) should be reasonable.
Refactored code of several scripts to run more efficiently and have less redundancy.
Next up, planning on looking into Nex-like feature implementation, if possible.Cool. I still think Reputation system is more important :P
Sorry I've been away for a while. I didn't want you to think I had forgotten about this.
Hey thanks for the feedback! :) Rest assured I am responding but that's a lot to go through so it may take a day or two to get to everything.No problem. I've been busy, College and Internship, so, like, less free time.
Edit: I do want to respond to this, first, though.Sorry I've been away for a while. I didn't want you to think I had forgotten about this.
Oh no worries I too take breaks from things I play but thanks I always appreciate it! :D
I have been slacking a little on development after the move, but still working on things slowly. I will probably pick up speed again soon once things at work settle a bit.
Fighters are smaller, faster, more numerous, and far more dangerous. They still get hard-countered without too much difficulty, but have a dramatic effect.
The majority of ships have fighters of some kind, And fighters have a drastically increased role in the combat meta.
Missiles are something of a combination of Strike and Support weapons (Below) and have limited ammo capacity and use non-trivial amounts of flux. The ammo regenerates over time.
Basic scheme with vanilla examples.
Point Defense - Short range, anti-fighter/Missile. Low damage, often fragmentation. Uses no flux.
-Machine gun, Burst Laser, Flak, Guardian PD laser.
-Deals with Fighters and missiles, and can somewhat damage frigates/stripped armor
Assault - Shorter ranged, common weapon type. Uses no flux.
-Assault gun, Autocannon, Pulse Laser.
-Short range guns, goes with SO and UI well. Large versions often have a flux cost, but generally you can fire freely. Makes fast and High DPS ships.
Strike - Shorter range, stronger weapon with heavy alpha strike. Significant flux cost, limited ammo. The kind of thing that tears through shield or armor in a single shot. Some missiles use this as a subtype.
-Antimatter Blaster, Phase Lance, Plasma Cannon. Rocket Pods, Harpoon(Ish), Reaper, Hammer.
-Assasin/Duelist ships. Focuses on large alpha strikes. Should it fail, massive flux costs can be lethal, so often requires assault ships to assist. Horrific vs smaller scale ships.
Support - Longer range, Normal damage, uses significant flux. Often has limited ammo. Allows engagement from out of normal range, but costs flux (and costs speed boost) as a result. Not good on it's own, but can interdict or support other ships from a distance. Missiles tend to be of this type.
-Needler, Mauler, Hypervelocity Driver, Tachyon Lance, Pilum, Mirv, Locust, Sqall.
-Artillery/Missile ships. Uses large amounts of flux to get high range. Damage is subpar, but supports other ships from a longer distance.
Many weapons and ships have changed loadouts, and some even have different roles.
Medusa is now a high-tech carrier, instead of a teleporter, and the Hound lost it's medium weapon slot for point defence drones.
Weapons as well. Many weapons have been bumped up an extra size. Harpoons are considered medium or large, and Heavy mauler is large. A lot of new small weapons were added (or are left as is, like the machine gun) Some weapons changed roles (Swarmer missile is more anti-frigate than anti-fighter, and the Locust/Hornet/Stinger family takes it's place) Salamander is a medium missile, with a smaller Bolo missile replacing it.
As such, read descriptions before buying.
As a consequence, Many ships will have far lower tier weapons, (but more of them) and as ships get larger, they will be decidedly scarier. (Especially because of the range advantage with size)
Most ships have fighter wings. Frigates have them a bit more often, destroyers often have at least one. Cruisers almost always have at least 2 wings, and Capitals have at least 4.
Some are hardcoded(DRM broke civilization, so it isn't too surprising), so you can't swap PD drones out for bombers, but many more let you customize.
Flux mechanics are quite different from normal.
Hard and soft flux are less distinguished in general.
Shield upkeep is massive, 70-90% of default flux. As such, simply raising shields will cut flux disipation by a massive amount.
Strike and support weapons, especially missiles, use large chunks of flux up instantly, or at least per volly, ranging from trivial 50 to 5k flux instantly.
So, make sure that you have enough flux to cover the cost of firing AND enough vents to maintain constant fire. If you don't have much give, expect shields to not help you much.
As such, in addition to flux vents, capacity is extremely important, just to let you fire powerful weapons.
Magazines and Missile racks give a +50% to capacity, which corresponds to a 50% increase in instant flux used. (But not sustained, since it doesn't effect regeneration)
Zero-flux bonus is a 5% bonus, so ships with shields up or only using PD/Assault weapons will always get a significant boost to speed. Correspondingly, Support and strike ships will suffer in speed, in exchange for their alpha-strike/Range advantage. As such, Assassins and Sniper/Kite builds will be more difficult or impractical (At least without support)
So, you can make an assassin (Strike, Speed, but fragile and may strain flux. Or use torpedos, which recharge very slowly but use no flux)
Assault Brawler (Assault focus, maybe with a but of strike/support) which is fast, short range, and has plenty of flux for shields.
Assault/Striker (Unloads strike, but sticks around, relying on armor and assault weapons to win, or uses assault weapons and then strike to overload the target.)
Support (Long ranged weapons/Missiles. Flux heavy, so will need to be covered with fighters/Assault ships to protect it) Is likely to spend most of it's flux on periodic vollies, and it's speed and shield suffers as a result.
Carrier - Many ships of many types count as carriers, although their OP budget can suffer.
PD - Carriers lots of PD weapons to ward off fighters, and/or plenty of intercepters/PD drones. Surprisingly useful, given that just covering most angles with 1-2 PD guns tends to be insufficient. Intercepter missiles are especially effective.
Can seriously wreck swarms of fighters or the heavier, but still agile fighters.
Outlasting ships by just kiting them until their CR runs out is far less practical.
Assault ships tend to be fast but short lived, so it doesn't take long, but they will catch any ship that tries to kite, or fail rather quickly.
Support/Long ranged ships tend to suffer from a lack of zero-flux, so cannot run effectively. Both speed boosting mods (Injector and SO) cut range drastically, so they can't really use them.
Fighters are faster than you, and love to damage your weapons and Engines (Built in EMP) so fleets will generally have intercepters/Interdictors around. (Forcing you to take at least 5% shield damage or breaking your engines)
As such, avoiding combat is much harder. Even the Tempest itself will have trouble.Upcharge is the spool-up time, how long between deciding and firing, and actually firing. So less delay and fires faster?Yes, the spool-up time was long enough that by the time the weapon would actually fire its first shot the targeted interceptor had moved out of the firing arc and so the AI stops charging the weapon until a new target is found... and rinse and repeat. It made it rare to even see them fire in some cases. Its much more visually accurate from a fighter dogfight perspective now, and the heavy fighters can at least somewhat combat interceptors without being able to hit an interceptor with a full salvo of their weapon.
Now we just need them to send fighter escorts to the correct person....I think I saw somewhere that has been suggested and fixed for the next update? Not 100% sure.
Difference skins had different Stats too? I mean, quality might say different stats, but did not expect that.Yup! At least 70% or more of the skins come with stat modifiers. Faction skins, especially, tune the ship towards that faction's doctrine, weapons, built-in hullmods and ship systems.
Don't worry Warp gates are all equipped with phase shift drive coil thingies, so they can go through planets with no ill effects XDThis issue was you couldn't click on the base when it was encompassed by the planet, so you couldn't dock there for a time. It also looked quite messy. :P
Heh. In those systems, there is only war.*Sad face* Well, more extreme measures may have to be taken and a script to remove cruisers and up from wrecks may be necessary. I thought distance mattered more. Oh well.
Heh. I would note that Hyperions have an above average chance to be vaporized due to their low health already.Cruiser sized shields though! If you don't have major flux using weapons slotted it can take a serious beating when its shields are up.
Good. Although I would far prefer my idea of the Rep system, that is a good stopgap. The whole, Vengeful requires you to be an existential threat to the faction, and/or become well known for breaking your word (They surrender, you accept, get loot, and then you kill them anyway)I would actually like to redo the rep system at some point, but it may already be happening in the next update since so much is changing on the campaign layer with faction colonies and blueprints. Since there are other equally cool and pressing things to do, such as Nex features, Tutorial (there is some really cool stuff there being backlogged by a single encounter not working as intended), more customize-able officers through mercenary recruitment centers, and talking to your officers on the campaign level for advice on engagements and nearby points of interest, I am taking a "wait and see" stance for now. I feel the same way about the current dialogue system implementing escorts from friendly factions and assaults on strongholds. Why take the time to build that when I will likely get a working (and probably better designed :D ) version of it when .9 comes out? If not, well, then I'll tackle that with the likely new API I'll have access to at that point.
New missions? YAY:)
Do those ships also have the new higher timers, which are cut by the hullmod? If not, adding/removing that hullmod later would require extra work.I think they were boosted, but I can't remember to be honest. I know at the time I had a certain balance in mind. You should never be able to always outlast CR in one of those ships compared to one with normal timers. I think I was factoring in skill boosts and hullmod boosts to that stat, so phase ship timers are probably pretty low, and ships like the Sunder and Hyperion. If not, those ships would be pretty broken since they can either move around unhindered due to speed, or attack from a seriously long range.
Also, Yay!
Good. Is the range modifier adjusted in any way from vanilla?I think its either 400 or 600 (plus 25% original weapon range, so weapons like the trebuchet actually still have a bit of range to them)
What is Pather anyway? Obviously slang for something.
Nice. Does it stack with expanded flight decks?I don't see that hullmod. I know I renamed the original hullmod this is based on, so maybe that is what you are thinking of?
Such a legendary ship, now with more customization... And upkeep.It's pretty darn fun to fly now, imo. :D
Which one was Phase teleporter again?The ship system the Hyperion uses. Long range teleport.
Huh. What if you had given it built in turret Gyros instead :PIt's accelleration was pretty high considering you also have phase acceleration and the time warp ship system to increase. It kind of needed it, and the AI is much scarier with that ship now. Much, much, scarier.
As a fighter hullmod, I have no idea what that does. Sounds like a double nerf, but I can't be certain.It is, and it was needed. Massing them was way too optimal against almost everything. Having the ability to keep many ships at high flux from long range is a big deal.
Don't Ion torpedos work through shields (direct impact, either way dumps flux into the buffer?)They do equal damage to all defense types, but they don't penetrate shields. I nerfed their hit points because massing Renegade fighter-bombers could kill almost anything regardless of point defense. They feel adequately strong now.
If so, yea, I approve. Otherwise unsure.
No details, only vague understanding of mechanic, so no comment.Essentially, I reworked NPCs to ask for bribes less often, and only when a player has not offered a bribe themselves. I also made it harder to negotiate a cease-fire without a bribe, but the bribe tiers give a lot of customization to how much you are willing to invest to end hostilities and avoid a fight. It's not fully fleshed out yet, but there is also some political ramifications to certain bribes for certain factions, but I'm not telling there... ;)
But we can still go for joyrides, right?Always!
Good. Although, wasn't that EMP on small PD weapons mainly to overload fighters? Not complaining, but yea.It was so fighters would do more damage to weapon and engine hardpoints. It had the side effect of making PD better against fighters, but that was unintended and actually caused me to have to build in the anti-emp hullmod in a few cases of the higher-tech fighters and bombers that don't have shields.
Huh. So you refuse Tribute AND are trying to hack their Comm-Relay. I guess they ought to just try and kill you?Have you tried it? I believe that is likely how that would end, haha. They are far less forgiving than any other faction.
Fluff! Yay!:) more of that in the future for sure!
What kind of scripts? Code scripts, Dialog Scripts, or what?Code scripts. Technical explanation: some of my nested loops in certain calculations were redundant and could be reduced to a single loop higher up in the script. It causes the script to run and load a bit faster. Probably not noticeable for most, but optimization is always good.
Wait, so was it looking at ratio between your fleet and your fleet, instead of their fleet and your fleet?No, but your own fleet size played too large a role in how much of a bribe was required, rather than how many enemies you would theoretically be paying off. This just feels more intuitive.
Well, If you are seriously outnumbered, attempting to Surrender (with a bribe) should be an option, but just a cease fire (to conserve resources on both sides) should be reasonable.Try it out. I think you will find bribing while outnumbered is possible if you are willing to pay a large amount to do so. Cease-fires without a bribe would be pretty rare unless dealing with a nice faction and a generous commander. As for requesting things, its actually pretty complicated. Allies typically are more willing to help in general, but there are a lot of variables. Commanders who are more aggressive are less likely, and not every faction treats fleet strength the same way. Warlike factions are swayed by strength far more (almost 4 times more influenced if I remember) and greedy factions will often agree only if you pay an exorbitant amount for the goods. There are definitely many patterns and trends to discover in how different cultures will react to things, but I wouldn't expect or rely on the same result in the same circumstance each time. Its meant to be as unpredictable as real people would be.
As for requesting stuff, well, Allies should be more willing if you are weak, enemies if you are strong. Maybe.
Cool. I still think Reputation system is more important :PNoted. :) See above explanation for why I am not tackling that just yet.
Ah, the whole, Open fire, they are out of range, then the projectile is released. Yea, that ruins accuracy. Do guns track while spooling up? And do their turn speed slow down when spooling up? Either way, I can see the issue.
Yes, the spool-up time was long enough that by the time the weapon would actually fire its first shot the targeted interceptor had moved out of the firing arc and so the AI stops charging the weapon until a new target is found... and rinse and repeat. It made it rare to even see them fire in some cases. Its much more visually accurate from a fighter dogfight perspective now, and the heavy fighters can at least somewhat combat interceptors without being able to hit an interceptor with a full salvo of their weapon.
I think I saw somewhere that has been suggested and fixed for the next update? Not 100% sure.Hmm. In the command screen, there isn't a distinction between telling the carrier to escort and fighters to escort. Mainly because fighters are missiles now. Or something.
Yup! At least 70% or more of the skins come with stat modifiers. Faction skins, especially, tune the ship towards that faction's doctrine, weapons, built-in hullmods and ship systems.Like Pirates, which always fight. Is it possible to make that a hullmod you can remove?
This issue was you couldn't click on the base when it was encompassed by the planet, so you couldn't dock there for a time. It also looked quite messy. :PAh, selection box issues. Yep. I remember that from Warcraft III.
*Sad face* Well, more extreme measures may have to be taken and a script to remove cruisers and up from wrecks may be necessary. I thought distance mattered more. Oh well.Haven't seen a full on battle there yet, although I AM trying to provoke one.
Cruiser sized shields though! If you don't have major flux using weapons slotted it can take a serious beating when its shields are up.I meant that if you break through the shields, the Hyperion doesn't have much health behind it, so it highly likely to be overkilled enough it would just disinitigate into fragments instead of being potentially recoverable.
True that. Wait and see, given we have upcoming patch notes.
I would actually like to redo the rep system at some point, but it may already be happening in the next update since so much is changing on the campaign layer with faction colonies and blueprints. Since there are other equally cool and pressing things to do, such as Nex features, Tutorial (there is some really cool stuff there being backlogged by a single encounter not working as intended), more customize-able officers through mercenary recruitment centers, and talking to your officers on the campaign level for advice on engagements and nearby points of interest, I am taking a "wait and see" stance for now. I feel the same way about the current dialogue system implementing escorts from friendly factions and assaults on strongholds. Why take the time to build that when I will likely get a working (and probably better designed :D ) version of it when .9 comes out? If not, well, then I'll tackle that with the likely new API I'll have access to at that point.
I think they were boosted, but I can't remember to be honest. I know at the time I had a certain balance in mind. You should never be able to always outlast CR in one of those ships compared to one with normal timers. I think I was factoring in skill boosts and hullmod boosts to that stat, so phase ship timers are probably pretty low, and ships like the Sunder and Hyperion. If not, those ships would be pretty broken since they can either move around unhindered due to speed, or attack from a seriously long range.Eh, not a huge deal either way. Will report if any actual issues are visible.
I think its either 400 or 600 (plus 25% original weapon range, so weapons like the trebuchet actually still have a bit of range to them)Ah. Right. Makes sense. Using that from now on.
Ha, "Pather" is slang for Luddic Path. I think I saw it used in a blog post somewhere once upon a time. David maybe? You know I'm not sure at this point, I've been following this game for so long... maybe I made that up?? :P
I don't see that hullmod. I know I renamed the original hullmod this is based on, so maybe that is what you are thinking of?There are two hullmods in vanilla. One that gives better flight deck stats (faster rearming and respawning) and one that adds flight decks to ships without them.
It's pretty darn fun to fly now, imo. :DOh yes. Its so clearly a hero's customized super-frigate that you might expect from an RPG. But it still hates fighters, and isn't THAT durable.
The ship system the Hyperion uses. Long range teleport.Theres Phase teleporter, whatever the wolf has in vanilla, whatever it has in this TC, (Phase skimmer and something else) and possibly a few others. I can never get them straight.
It's accelleration was pretty high considering you also have phase acceleration and the time warp ship system to increase. It kind of needed it, and the AI is much scarier with that ship now. Much, much, scarier.Yep. Just pointing out that Gyros also could resolve that problem. Faster turret turning speed and all.
It is, and it was needed. Massing them was way too optimal against almost everything. Having the ability to keep many ships at high flux from long range is a big deal.Uhm, I was asking what it does. What all the fighter hullmods do while I'm at it, since you can't exactly view them ingame.... Should be part of the codex imo.
They do equal damage to all defense types, but they don't penetrate shields. I nerfed their hit points because massing Renegade fighter-bombers could kill almost anything regardless of point defense. They feel adequately strong now.Energy damage missiles eh? Huh. Might have been a different mod that had Ion torpedos that on impact added flux to the target directly.
Essentially, I reworked NPCs to ask for bribes less often, and only when a player has not offered a bribe themselves. I also made it harder to negotiate a cease-fire without a bribe, but the bribe tiers give a lot of customization to how much you are willing to invest to end hostilities and avoid a fight. It's not fully fleshed out yet, but there is also some political ramifications to certain bribes for certain factions, but I'm not telling there... ;)Yep. I haven't had to mess with bribes for a bit, but the flexability might well help.
Always!XD
It was so fighters would do more damage to weapon and engine hardpoints. It had the side effect of making PD better against fighters, but that was unintended and actually caused me to have to build in the anti-emp hullmod in a few cases of the higher-tech fighters and bombers that don't have shields.Yea. I suppose that makes sense.
Have you tried it? I believe that is likely how that would end, haha. They are far less forgiving than any other faction.Naw. Com relays are basically useless atm. Sure, it tells you the prices, sometimes, but you can't find planets with resources you need for a mission, or anything useful.. Maybe with the intel revamp they will be useful though.
:) more of that in the future for sure!Am a programmer, and I prefer being able to trace where the code goes. Usually you can goto the definition of a function easily, but notepad++ or w.e. can't do that. I guess if I was serious about Starsector modding, I might try to setup a proper environment.
Code scripts. Technical explanation: some of my nested loops in certain calculations were redundant and could be reduced to a single loop higher up in the script. It causes the script to run and load a bit faster. Probably not noticeable for most, but optimization is always good.
*As a side note for those technically inclined, my code in this mod is purposefully not isolated in classes so that players new to coding can find everything that's manipulated in a single script. I find it amusing that when I started out it was easier to read "bad" code. I could more clearly see how the data was manipulated downstream in the code's workflow since it was contained in a single file and not passed into new classes all the time. I obviously won't go too crazy with that for readability, but for those that were wondering that's the reason.
No, but your own fleet size played too large a role in how much of a bribe was required, rather than how many enemies you would theoretically be paying off. This just feels more intuitive.Ah. So the larger your fleet, the more of a bribe it cost, when it really ought to be kinda the opposite. to an extent. Maybe.
I haven't been caught in a bad spot in my current game, but I will certainly attempt it if needed.
Try it out. I think you will find bribing while outnumbered is possible if you are willing to pay a large amount to do so. Cease-fires without a bribe would be pretty rare unless dealing with a nice faction and a generous commander. As for requesting things, its actually pretty complicated. Allies typically are more willing to help in general, but there are a lot of variables. Commanders who are more aggressive are less likely, and not every faction treats fleet strength the same way. Warlike factions are swayed by strength far more (almost 4 times more influenced if I remember) and greedy factions will often agree only if you pay an exorbitant amount for the goods. There are definitely many patterns and trends to discover in how different cultures will react to things, but I wouldn't expect or rely on the same result in the same circumstance each time. Its meant to be as unpredictable as real people would be.
Noted. :) See above explanation for why I am not tackling that just yet.Indeed.
At first this mod was not flagged as a totalConversion in the mod_info file, then some folks commented on it and then it was flagged as such.
But now it appears the latest version is again not flagged as a TC when it really should be.
Well, trying to run it along side pretty much all mods will break said mods brutally. This is a headache for other modders, resulting in a nearly infinite number of both obvious and anomalous issues.I'm pretty sure some mods may not be affected. Mods like Music mods, Combat chatter, Combat Radar, etc etc should be fine. (Been months since I last played with this mod, so I forget which mods I tried, and which ones worked and which ones didn't)
Archean Order *is* a TC, and not flagging it as one is illogical to say the least.
Awesome mod! I can't sleep -_-
At first this mod was not flagged as a totalConversion in the mod_info file, then some folks commented on it and then it was flagged as such.
But now it appears the latest version is again not flagged as a TC when it really should be.
Ah, the whole, Open fire, they are out of range, then the projectile is released. Yea, that ruins accuracy. Do guns track while spooling up? And do their turn speed slow down when spooling up? Either way, I can see the issue.Yes to both.
Hmm. In the command screen, there isn't a distinction between telling the carrier to escort and fighters to escort. Mainly because fighters are missiles now. Or something.Yeah, you as the captain can do that by clicking an ally and pressing "z" to send fighters to escort, but the A.I is autowired in how it handles fighters other than explicit "send fighters to attack this ship" command. I think its called Fighter Strike. The AI is pretty good most of the time, but in the largest battles I do feel it often has the tendency to start a giant fighter furball that marauders across the battlespace like the loony toons' Tazmanian Devil. XD
Like Pirates, which always fight. Is it possible to make that a hullmod you can remove?Probably? I'm actually not 100% sure if I can edit that attribute with a hullmod instead of a skin file. I'll look into it.
I meant that if you break through the shields, the Hyperion doesn't have much health behind it, so it highly likely to be overkilled enough it would just disinitigate into fragments instead of being potentially recoverable.Oh! Yes that is very true. That prototype may be difficult to obtain until blueprints. Even then, if I have it my way it will take an epic quest chain and access to a crazy amount of resources to get that blueprint and manufacture one. :)
And missiles don't really get effected, aside from autofire range.A.I won't fire them until "within range" so it effects allies more profoundly than it does the player.
There are two hullmods in vanilla. One that gives better flight deck stats (faster rearming and respawning) and one that adds flight decks to ships without them.The first one(deck stats) is unchanged. The second one now adds one flight deck to all ships regardless if they already have one. The exceptions are frigates and phase ships of course, but it adds 2 flight decks to capital ships!
I actually can't recall exactly what you did with them.
Yep. Just pointing out that Gyros also could resolve that problem. Faster turret turning speed and all.Oh right yeah. I just don't want to over-saturate built in hullmods for something like that. If it affected the vessel's ability to effectively engage smaller, faster targets too much then I would reconsider that approach, but so far it doesn't appear to be the case. To be honest, I often die in The Captain's Gambit from losing track of the Tyrant then suddenly getting hit with concentrated Atronarch Beams after it uses its ship system to zoom up and close to firing range. I'm certainly no pro pilot or anything, though, so I don't know how much that counts for. ::)
Uhm, I was asking what it does. What all the fighter hullmods do while I'm at it, since you can't exactly view them ingame.... Should be part of the codex imo.Agreed on the codex part, but then they are equipable in the refit screen in missions, I'm pretty sure. Can't have that.
Energy damage missiles eh? Huh. Might have been a different mod that had Ion torpedos that on impact added flux to the target directly.I haven't dug into weapon scripts just yet, but they certainly aren't off the table!
That... Is a scary thought.
Do fighter weapons still deal EMP, and as such the EMP resist hullmod effects it? If not, how does it work again?The ship system makes all fighter weapons deal an extra 50% damage to engines and weapons built-in. Most weapons that had an EMP component for that sake have had it removed. If the weapon still has an EMP component, however, the fighters who have that weapon will still also cause EMP damage on top of the extra 50% (so gunships like Xyphos (has an Ion Pulser) are pretty nasty).
Am a programmer, and I prefer being able to trace where the code goes. Usually you can goto the definition of a function easily, but notepad++ or w.e. can't do that. I guess if I was serious about Starsector modding, I might try to setup a proper environment.Me too at this point, but I am more speaking to the higher percentage of casual modders who only want to get as technical as editing text files and maybe a spreadsheet here and there. That was how I started, and I stuck to those waters for a couple years, even when already coding C++ in VS. That in no way means an IDE like IntelliJ is not waaaaaay better because it is! But, "setup" is the key element here. You can't just install IntelliJ, open starsector with it somehow and get to work. It can take a fair amount of configuring and even then the IDE is just a finicky beast sometimes. Looking at you, Maven Dependencies. :P
For a user-friendly thing, could make two copies, or have a readme explaining how to change it, or something.Yeah I think a readme would be a good idea while not causing problems for the rest of the modding community. I'll probably take that approach.
The "Heavy Shockstorm Launcher" appears to have a massive knockback in some situations. Not sure exact condutions, but....I think it may be the high speed and a high impact? It also has to do with flameouts, but I'm unclear on the specifics. It's not completely intended, but makes sense with the weapon as a high end kinetic rocket. I'll add a blurb to the description.
Saw this in the "Ambush" Mission.
Is this intended? if so, the tooltip should reflect it.
It doesn't seem to be the enemy's ship system or anything, so yea.
Huh. I've seen said furballs myself, but it tends to just be between the two fleets, and acts as a projectile shield... Well more of an Anti-beam shield actually. Beams get stuck on fighters constantly.
Yeah, you as the captain can do that by clicking an ally and pressing "z" to send fighters to escort, but the A.I is autowired in how it handles fighters other than explicit "send fighters to attack this ship" command. I think its called Fighter Strike. The AI is pretty good most of the time, but in the largest battles I do feel it often has the tendency to start a giant fighter furball that marauders across the battlespace like the loony toons' Tazmanian Devil. XD
Oh! Yes that is very true. That prototype may be difficult to obtain until blueprints. Even then, if I have it my way it will take an epic quest chain and access to a crazy amount of resources to get that blueprint and manufacture one. :)
Agreed on the codex part, but then they are equipable in the refit screen in missions, I'm pretty sure. Can't have that.That clears things up. If you ever add hullmods to fighters, it has to be documented somewhere, because it ain't in the codex, and it ain't available ingame anywhere.
Fighter-class Systems reduces energy weapon charges by 40%, lowers energy weapon damage by 66% and beams by 50%, and increases the fighter's damage to weapon and engine hardpoints by 50%
Warp Field prevents the engines from ever flaming out
Limited Range Finders reduces all weapons to 50% range past a 400 range threshold (similar to overdriven ships)
I haven't dug into weapon scripts just yet, but they certainly aren't off the table!I just recall an "Ion Torpedo" that did that. Don't recall what mod that was though.
The ship system makes all fighter weapons deal an extra 50% damage to engines and weapons built-in. Most weapons that had an EMP component for that sake have had it removed. If the weapon still has an EMP component, however, the fighters who have that weapon will still also cause EMP damage on top of the extra 50% (so gunships like Xyphos (has an Ion Pulser) are pretty nasty).Huh. So you can just add damage to weapons/engines without EMP trait, and you removed the usage of EMP for that.
I think it may be the high speed and a high impact? It also has to do with flameouts, but I'm unclear on the specifics. It's not completely intended, but makes sense with the weapon as a high end kinetic rocket. I'll add a blurb to the description.Hmm. Do projectiles have a Mass? Admittedly the physics simulation is weird anyway, or at least engines make a lot of it be partly ignored.
Huh. I've seen said furballs myself, but it tends to just be between the two fleets, and acts as a projectile shield... Well more of an Anti-beam shield actually. Beams get stuck on fighters constantly.Once upon a time, I fiddled with piercing beams (through fighters) because of that issue in larger fights. It didn't go well. Either it simply didn't work, or it created an error that I couldn't solve. I may revisit it to see if it's now possible at some point.
A few of those are actually already in the tutorial (an more extended and story-based version of the stock tutorial with defined characters and player choices leading to different outcomes). But I need to better learn the battle context before I can lay the finishing touches to things. In my knowledge, I don't think it's been done quite like this in a mod before, and I'm really exited to release it.Dear god why.
Yes, Quests and other stuff like that would be awesome.
That clears things up. If you ever add hullmods to fighters, it has to be documented somewhere, because it ain't in the codex, and it ain't available ingame anywhere.It's 500x the health and 90% damage reduction. I've never seen a claw flame out. Destroyed in one hit maybe...
Warp field. Huh. Does that work by adding like 100000% more health or is there an actual invulnerability flag?
Rangefinders. That makes sense. Cuts half of the range past 400 range, but a 450 range will go to 425, not 225, right?
Huh. So you can just add damage to weapons/engines without EMP trait, and you removed the usage of EMP for that.With a built in hullmod for fighters, yes. EMP implementation was weapon-specific, which made it necessary to give balance trade offs that weren't strictly necessary without the EMP component. A hullmod allowed me to separate those two dependencies.
Hmm. Do projectiles have a Mass? Admittedly the physics simulation is weird anyway, or at least engines make a lot of it be partly ignored.
Kinetic damage is not kinetic energy, so yea.
I will try and see if a flameout was involved.
Huh. According to the wiki (https://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Tactical_Laser) The tactical beam penetrates missiles without being disrupted.
Once upon a time, I fiddled with piercing beams (through fighters) because of that issue in larger fights. It didn't go well. Either it simply didn't work, or it created an error that I couldn't solve. I may revisit it to see if it's now possible at some point.
It's 500x the health and 90% damage reduction. I've never seen a claw flame out. Destroyed in one hit maybe...Well, you clearly haven't fired enough ION blasts at one.
I don't know for sure, but flamed out missiles and ships/fighters are a different "hit class", so that may be why the collision behavior is different than what you would normally expect.Yea, The simulation is complex, and I don't really know the rules.
The Template A class appears to have the Phase field hullmod, but uses shields instead.The Eagle A also has the hullmod and is clearly not a phase ship. The hullmod only states the ship is capable of running a low grade phase field not fully phase cloaking.
Bit of a necro here (sorry to everyone excited thinking it's been updated) but I wanted to ask if there were plans to update this for .9, as it was one of my favorite mods recently. Thanks!
Given op has been offline for a while, it will likely be a while. I too cant wait.
I would honestly prefer a quick and dirty update followed by a few months of polish. But if you prefer to delay for good content, not gonna blame you
Wow, just found this and it looks amazing, I love the rich story you have created. Looking forward to seeing it in 0.9.
I also kind agree with Ranakastrasz. A compatability patch should be the priority.
I finally got around to trying your mod.
I seem to have run into an issue early on though, I accepted a delivery mission (350 domestic goods) at the second station I visited and proceeded to fly to the destination (Sci Corps Directorship HQ), the problem is they don't seem to want to receive the goods. I've double checked the mission and its definitely this location.
Am I missing something obvious? I've played vanilla starsector lots so im used to the trading
The heavy shocklauncher missile probably has too much mass - if they hit something between flameout and fadeout whatever they hit gets launched away at ludicrous speeds. This might also be true for other missiles, but the shocklauncher one is where I noticed it (because of the starting sunder).
I finally got around to trying your mod.
I seem to have run into an issue early on though, I accepted a delivery mission (350 domestic goods) at the second station I visited and proceeded to fly to the destination (Sci Corps Directorship HQ), the problem is they don't seem to want to receive the goods. I've double checked the mission and its definitely this location.
Am I missing something obvious? I've played vanilla starsector lots so im used to the trading
Hmm, I haven't checked missions yet for new factions in this build. It could be the Rules for those have changed, and so it is not picking up the mission return rule in the dialogue. If you have a second, more information would be great. Do you at least see the person you are supposed to drop the goods off to? Is the issue that you talk to them and they don't give you the correct dialogue to finish the mission, or absolutely no contact and the market just looks normal?
And is this happening with all missions or just that particular one?
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will investigate.
No idea if it happens with other missions as I'd only just started a new game and played for 15 minutes and I haven't played since I encountered the issue :)
Btw you should ask them to update the mod sticky as it still says your mod is not 0.9 compatible.
Fun mod, nice change of pace.
A few bugs/issues Ive seen:
Wolf seems imbalanced, I started with 80 of 50 op....also it feels like it has too many mounts given its OP.
I bought a hammerhead and it had ghost mounts ballistic/hybrid, and i could add a weapon to one mount and it "teleported" to another spot? Weird...
I seem to be getting negative faction hits alot from just carting around normal pirate drops. (from bounty hunting)
What operating system are you using? These sound like file merging issues with mod_info.json's replace array.
If you aren't on Windows, maybe even specifically Windows 10 (what I test on), that may be a base Starsector bug that is going to be corrected in the next official update. I will double check on my end to be sure, however. There are.. a lot.. of files to replace and it is very possible I missed some.
If time, what start did you choose? The standard bounty hunter? Or was it a wolf variant in one of the faction start's fleets? This will help me narrow it down and confirm if it works on my end or not.
Ah thanks for the update, i'll wait until this is fixed then. Good luck! :)
Hmmm I noticed these on my Macbook Pro so OSX. I haven't used those ships on my desktop (Win 10) so that sounds pretty likely.
Standard bounty hunter start. But maybe it's related to the above merge issue.
I'll have to play some more to see if I can get better repro steps on the faction hits. It just stuck out to me because I had no illegal cargo and less then 150 units of space, so i was barely carrying anything. (lotta small weapons i guess, not sure how that system works))
So looking at the mod_info.json...
I looked at replace and noticed \\ was being used as a separator for file paths.
I replaced them all with / and it appears to work fine now. (Weapon slots match the .ship info)
Not really sure what that means....something is probably horribly broken somewhere....
75435 [Thread-4] INFO com.fs.graphics.TextureLoader - Cleaned buffer for texture graphics/particlealpha32sq.png (using cast)
75466 [Thread-10] INFO sound.public - Creating streaming player for music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
75467 [Thread-10] INFO sound.H - Playing music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
79774 [Thread-4] INFO com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager - Reading save data from [..\saves\save_OsirisLee_8077689570174871142\descriptor.xml]
81265 [Thread-8] INFO sound.public - Cleaning up music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
81475 [Thread-10] INFO sound.public - Creating streaming player for music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
81475 [Thread-10] INFO sound.H - Playing music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
81635 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.Object.int.o00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.checkSplit(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Ed: Ignore, did a fresh install and it's all good
Alright, couple real issues this time.
In attempting to speak to a mercenary officer on Ilys, the only option I get is "A former Templar of the Archean Order? Interesting...". I cannot exit the dialogue, and it says IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 1, Size: 1 three times. I am running with Common Radar, Leading Pip and LazyLib (All latest versions).
Another issue I had earlier was in accepting a bar quest to deliver food to the same planet, I get no option to deliver the goods on reaching the destination. Job was to deliver 80, it gave me 80.
Not sue if it's anything to do with the planet or what.
What faction start or starts have you tried, and what would you define as early game? -Anything before a cruiser, for instance, or anything before high faction rep/commission, etc. That will tell me how widespread this is and whether the above solutions would be sufficient.I'd define early-game as the period before the player's able to sustain at least one cruiser and a handful of destroyers - which usually necessitates either a colony or a commission.
QuoteWhat faction start or starts have you tried, and what would you define as early game? -Anything before a cruiser, for instance, or anything before high faction rep/commission, etc. That will tell me how widespread this is and whether the above solutions would be sufficient.I'd define early-game as the period before the player's able to sustain at least one cruiser and a handful of destroyers - which usually necessitates either a colony or a commission.
As for faction starts, I've not tried any. I've only done the basic start that begins with you orbiting Jangala.
But the biggest issue I have overall, is it seems to make battles much more about the comparative size of your and your opponent's fleets and how many ships are able to field fighters; they severely limit how much the player's decision-making within a battle can influence its outcome. In other words, the threat of ships being mobbed by fighters is much greater than the firepower of any one ship alone. So it becomes more about countering that threat with PD or matching/exceeding it with your own fighters, than out-maneuvering or isolating parts of the enemy fleet.
Typically the player finds themself fighting fleets larger than their own, so more often than not you'll be fighting battles where the enemy has more fighter wings than you have ships and fighter wings, more or less incapacitating your fleet; they're either equipped well enough to counter the swarms in which case they won't stand up well to the enemy's non-carrier ships, or vice-versa. So the only optimal solution there is to ensure you have many more fighters than your enemy can deal with.
To sum it up even further, compared to vanilla it's much less likely you can win (without cheesing) against a numerically superior enemy, or lose against a numerically inferior enemy, simply because of the effectiveness of fighters per-OP compared to any other weapon, and how prevalent they are in this mod.
The idea behind built-in PD was a bad one really, like you say it'd probably end up railroading those ships into anti-fighter roles. So instead; A point-defence hullmod. For ~8OP (Frigate), the ship's hull is fitted with several small-calibre PD weapons (less effective than any given weapon-mount PD turret) at the expense of increased crew requirements. There could be several different variants of this - Beam (Energy) weapons with high accuracy and good damage, but weak ROF and flux generation; Ballistic weapons with area-of-effect, but a long reload time between magazines (Flak); Smaller ballistic weapons with weak damage and middling accuracy, but high sustained ROF (CIWS); EMP weapons with high flux generaion and weak damage, but a decent ROF and accuracy.
Another idea is a weapon-mount PD that's an "active" countermeasure; It spits out explosives (or an EMP variant) in a 360deg arc and detonates them after they reach some distance from the ship.
Something else is the fact that fighters are able to shoot down most missiles. Again not sure as to the feasibility of this, but rendering them only able to destroy (Not just target, but actually hit) torpedos would help balance them out.
I'd define early-game as the period before the player's able to sustain at least one cruiser and a handful of destroyers - which usually necessitates either a colony or a commission.
As for faction starts, I've not tried any. I've only done the basic start that begins with you orbiting Jangala.
But the biggest issue I have overall, is it seems to make battles much more about the comparative size of your and your opponent's fleets and how many ships are able to field fighters; they severely limit how much the player's decision-making within a battle can influence its outcome. In other words, the threat of ships being mobbed by fighters is much greater than the firepower of any one ship alone. So it becomes more about countering that threat with PD or matching/exceeding it with your own fighters, than out-maneuvering or isolating parts of the enemy fleet.
Typically the player finds themself fighting fleets larger than their own, so more often than not you'll be fighting battles where the enemy has more fighter wings than you have ships and fighter wings, more or less incapacitating your fleet; they're either equipped well enough to counter the swarms in which case they won't stand up well to the enemy's non-carrier ships, or vice-versa. So the only optimal solution there is to ensure you have many more fighters than your enemy can deal with.
To sum it up even further, compared to vanilla it's much less likely you can win (without cheesing) against a numerically superior enemy, or lose against a numerically inferior enemy, simply because of the effectiveness of fighters per-OP compared to any other weapon, and how prevalent they are in this mod.
The idea behind built-in PD was a bad one really, like you say it'd probably end up railroading those ships into anti-fighter roles. So instead; A point-defence hullmod. For ~8OP (Frigate), the ship's hull is fitted with several small-calibre PD weapons (less effective than any given weapon-mount PD turret) at the expense of increased crew requirements. There could be several different variants of this - Beam (Energy) weapons with high accuracy and good damage, but weak ROF and flux generation; Ballistic weapons with area-of-effect, but a long reload time between magazines (Flak); Smaller ballistic weapons with weak damage and middling accuracy, but high sustained ROF (CIWS); EMP weapons with high flux generaion and weak damage, but a decent ROF and accuracy.
Another idea is a weapon-mount PD that's an "active" countermeasure; It spits out explosives (or an EMP variant) in a 360deg arc and detonates them after they reach some distance from the ship.
Something else is the fact that fighters are able to shoot down most missiles. Again not sure as to the feasibility of this, but rendering them only able to destroy (Not just target, but actually hit) torpedos would help balance them out.
i can agree with this i just played this mod its hard to get income as well during the start. the pirate bounties are really tough with all those fighters. I was hoping a bit like the starfarer days where ships gain exp.
you are saying fighter strength is the number one factor in any given battle and you feel that ship load-outs almost exclusively revolve around that layer of combatYep, that's the long-and-short of it. Re: PD, in many cases I don't feel as though they're effectie/efficient enough either.
when recruiting new officers it get error message null with three lines. i don't have any other mods on.
i see there was a defector girl she seemed to have a nice backstory sadly i crashed without saving lol.... a bit annoyed haha
Beams get stuck on fighters constantly.
when recruiting new officers it get error message null with three lines. i don't have any other mods on.
Lore wise, Isn't the Paragon cut off from support and has to hold the line, heroically? Despite being set for support fire?
True enough. Also, I can't see any reason to use missiles over tachyon lances, given their sheer efficiency. Seriously, the missile is pretty easy if you replace pretty much any of the large slots (except maybe the rear ones) with a tachyon lance. They are just so powerful. And un-dodgeable. Seriously, cores a frigate in one shot, when a full volly from two squalls can't match that (Admittedly EMP, so w.e.) or you have to flush at least 3 of the medium hunter launcher thinggies. The lance has all the advantages of missiles, and none of the counters. The only downside is it requires Line of sight, but, well, that isn't nearly enough of a downside.
Hold the line heroically? Yes. But equipped specifically as Fire Support? Less clear to me based on the mission description. It could be possible even now to use that variant with the general Paragon buff though. It's pretty substantial.
-----------------------------------------True enough. But you can't really build missile-boats, or even get close to them. The flux costs are just too extreme, and you end up at the point where you can't keep up constant fire even with venting after each volly. And it gets worse for those ships with Missile autoload, since that also makes flux.
On Missile Flux:
The reason that most missile flux costs are high in the case of long range missiles like the the Hunter was originally because ships can mass equip and focus fire those weapons even over allied ships guarding them. Ballistic or energy strike weapons, by contrast, must have a direct line of sight to the target or they will cause friendly fire, so more allies in front to guard have diminishing returns. Those weapons also still cause a lot of flux build up too, but yes the impulse is generally lower that full missile salvos.
Fighters also accomplish massed strikes, however, and they are more effective in their strikes since they stick around and keep firing. Limited ammo will help a little bit, but missiles do seem a little weak in comparison. Consider though that missile slots are far more common than fighter bays (It may not seem that way but it is true. :P) and so they can be massed more easily and don't have a built-in limiting mechanic like fighters other than flux and regen.Missile slots are more common, yes, but the flux to run them isn't.
There are some other reasons, too, like ensuring long range missiles generate a lot of flux to avoid too much kiting from full salvo bursting then 0-flux boosting until you can do so again. In large fleet encounters this is less effective because there are so many fighters to screen against missiles, but in small engagements missiles become overwhelming and cheap when used this way.True enough, but, well, its more extreme than is needed. I mean, a frigate, except maybe the Hyperion, can't launch a hunter missile without losing it's zero-flux bonus. A destroyer, maybe, a Cruiser, almost always, and a Capital absolutely. But, well, It doesn't need to be that extreme.
That being said, the Hunter and a few other missiles could use a re-evaluation after the power creep of fighters when trying to diversify their weapon loadouts. Vessels firing them should still find themselves vulnerable, but maybe not defenseless as is the case sometimes.Yea. A hunter ought to eat 10-30% of the flux budget, maybe. Not 50-200%.
True enough. Also, I can't see any reason to use missiles over tachyon lances, given their sheer efficiency. Seriously, the missile is pretty easy if you replace pretty much any of the large slots (except maybe the rear ones) with a tachyon lance. They are just so powerful. And un-dodgeable. Seriously, cores a frigate in one shot, when a full volly from two squalls can't match that (Admittedly EMP, so w.e.) or you have to flush at least 3 of the medium hunter launcher thinggies. The lance has all the advantages of missiles, and none of the counters. The only downside is it requires Line of sight, but, well, that isn't nearly enough of a downside.
True enough. But you can't really build missile-boats, or even get close to them. The flux costs are just too extreme, and you end up at the point where you can't keep up constant fire even with venting after each volly. And it gets worse for those ships with Missile autoload, since that also makes flux.
Strike and support weapons have a similar problem, but nowhere near as extreme.
Missile slots are more common, yes, but the flux to run them isn't.
Also, hanger conversion, plus they relaunch without flux (Although fighter replacement tweaks might make the decay more notable)
True enough, but, well, its more extreme than is needed. I mean, a frigate, except maybe the Hyperion, can't launch a hunter missile without losing it's zero-flux bonus. A destroyer, maybe, a Cruiser, almost always, and a Capital absolutely. But, well, It doesn't need to be that extreme.
If you can only throw one hunter, then shields/pd can probably handle it, even on a frigate.
The volleys are what matters.
Yes, Having lots of frigates shooting one missile while kiting is a problem. But, the flux cost is such that you can't safely even shoot a volly from a single frigate without nearing overload. It doesn't need to be that extreme to avoid hitting the kiting point. Also, as a ship gets larger, the issues with kiting should be smaller, so they don't need massive flux costs either, and probably shouldn't have to slow down to shoot a few small missiles.
Yea. A hunter ought to eat 10-30% of the flux budget, maybe. Not 50-200%.
But I need to look at the math and figure out what I think should happen to get good answers. After you fix the PD thing ofc.
Buggy Mercenary Officer Hiring?
Cant seem to hire mercinaries of any of the new factions
Every time i talk to one i just have the 1st option that would be (in vanilla) "interesting, what are your skills" to press over and over
on the bottom of the test it says "IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 1,Size 1"
Tried reinstalling and turning all of the mods off, it didnt help
Cant seem to find anyone mentioning this bug in the replies
Am i the only one with this problem? Am i missing something?
Thanks so much for a fast reply, glad to know its not just meBuggy Mercenary Officer Hiring?
Cant seem to hire mercinaries of any of the new factions
Every time i talk to one i just have the 1st option that would be (in vanilla) "interesting, what are your skills" to press over and over
on the bottom of the test it says "IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 1,Size 1"
Tried reinstalling and turning all of the mods off, it didnt help
Cant seem to find anyone mentioning this bug in the replies
Am i the only one with this problem? Am i missing something?
Hey there, welcome to the forums!
Yes that is a known bug that is already fixed for the next update, sorry!
I have something I am going to try to solve the other known bug (some market procurement missions aren't able to be turned in) and if that works I may update later today. I've been fighting a severe illness the last two days and that has slowed me down considerably.
I've read around a bit, are you planning on adding the rest of the blueprint later? I got an Archean phase-tech blueprint with nothing on it, wondering if it's either a bug or something not yet added.
sickness thats sad please get well
Thanks so much for a fast reply, glad to know its not just me
Hope you get well soon and good luck in your future work
A few others have mentioned this bug in here, but I might as well mention it too. I've run into a bug with delivery missions where occasionally after arriving at the destination it will not turn in. I have confirmed it is the correct location and that I have the required number of resources and that there is no specific NPC I need to contact. This particular mission was to deliver Ore to a Sci-corps station, and I know that I have had the same problem when delivering to an Archean Order world. It does not happen with every delivery mission, but both times it has happened have been with ones where you only need to dock at the location, but not every mission where you need to dock is bugged like this.
Sounds good! I haven't noticed any other bugs in my playthrough after about 20 cycles.
More specilized fighters, and crappy pirate fighters are good.
Campaign Changes/Additions
- New/replaced stations for many major factions strongholds. Now there should be a lot more tactical diversity even among tech tiers.
- Adamantine Consortium has a capital-class carrier and a unique heavy fighter(skin) added to their fleets.
- Nightmare-class heavy fighter is now unique to the Archean Order's fleets.
- Pirates have unique fighter(skins) added to their fleets.
Well, trader guilds are notorious for aggressive :P
- Increased Adamantine Consortium aggression, reduced Archean Order and Trader Guilds aggression.
- If not already present in the last patch, added Adamantine Consortium strongholds to the list of player colony threats.
Good. Pirates should be newbie's first target. Derelicts second. Everything else third. I thin?
- Derelicts have increased in difficulty to match pirates. Pirates have had their fighter numbers considerably weakened.
Sounds good
- Increased the starting player fleets for any new game start to roughly match early pirate bounties in size.
- The two changes listed above should make either salvage or bounty hunting a good starting option for any new game.
- Added most of the new game starts available to the base game from .9 to the Normal Start option list.
Still can't fix the PD issue? Does tweaking rarity/tier not help? Maybe it has to do with OP cost?
- All new starts now contain a cargo freighter of some kind and a small supply of pd weapons.
Die pirates die. Less overwhelming fighters will help.
- Pirates now have unique fighter craft. These are considerably weaker than standard fighter craft, but can be deployed more easily.
How is pirate version nerfed?
Station Battles
- Balanced most factions' station style to match their respective technological access and doctrine.
- Upgraded the tier of some stations, and added some where none existed. The purpose was better faction balance.
- Unique station looks and/or loadouts for Hegemony, Pirates, Sci-Corps and Luddic factions
Blueprint System
- Added Blueprint Packages for Adamantine Consortium, Trader Guilds, Persean League, Sci-Corps and Tri-Tachyon Corporation.
- Further separation of tech tiers with more base strike craft available at the start.
- Higher tier versions of some base strike craft bp available as single drops or in the various tech/faction bp packages.
- Added icons to all blueprint packages.
- New legendary blueprint packages.
Balance Changes
- Increased OP cost of Talon to 2 from 0. Its combat effectiveness remains unchanged. Pirate version has 0 OP requirement.
General fighter specialization and rebalancing.
- Hegemony now has slightly better fighter craft with a tactical focus on anti-ship weaponry. They no longer use bombers very often.
- Luddic Church and Luddic Path have new fighter craft skins with unique loadouts.
- Higher tier fighter craft has increased the Luddic factions' military potency by a noticeable degree. Not to the degree of the highest tier military powers, however.
- Slightly adjusted sprite for Perdition to match its role as a Luddic heavy bomber. Now has two side-turret Machine Guns to support against interceptors.
- Tri-Tachyon Corporation now has a heavy interceptor to support their advanced interceptor drones.
- Hercules-class Heavy Gunship has had its primary turreted weapon upgraded to a dual cannon, and has an updated sprite.
- Hydra-class Gunship has an updated sprite.
Rocket Launch? is there a generic rocket launcher weapon, or is this for all dumbfire missiles, or what?
- Added shield modules to the sides of Trader Guilds' battlestations. They were slightly weaker -defensively- than intended.
- Changed rocket launch behavior. Only a minor adjustment in overall functionality, but a different start-up to full speed. (Reduced launch speed but greatly increased proj acceleration).
Not sure exactly how blueprints work, so yea....
- Marauder, Warthog, and Gauntlet are now base bps.
- Vanguard is now a low_tech bp (tier 1).
Can't wait to try.
- Rebalanced Luddic Church Condor variants.
- Increased Paragon's max flux by 8000, flux dissipation by 300, and armor by 300. It was slightly too weak compared to similar tiered vessels and sometimes couldn't make use of all its weapons when surrounded.
Less fighters, so use them smarter.
- Reduced fighter replacement rates across the board. I put an extra special emphasis on drones and interceptors that seemed to spawn continuously, and tended to only slightly increase bomber deployment rates.
Yea, beams vs missiles as opposed to beams vs shields. Or hull honestly. Makes sense to not get as much out of PD. Linear range boosts are massive on short ranged weapons.
- Increaed PD Beam damage by ~40%-70% accross the board. This won't interfere with missile effectiveness (other than make them better against torps which is their intended purpose).
- Changed Advanced Optics hullmod to only increase PD beam weapons by 200su (down from 500su) to balance the large damage increase for those weapons.
- Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Super Computer hullmod by 10%.
- Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Advanced Targeting Core hullmod by 20%.
Awesome. Lets see if this makes them too powerful now.
- Reduced the flux cost of all Fire Support Missiles by ~50%.
Snerk. How did this happen anyway?
Bug Fixes
- Corrected issues with rockets sending flamed-out ships launching away at large speeds.
This is why you increased PD beam damage I assume.
- All assault and strike beams now pierce fighters. Fighters now take 60% less damage from beams.
Can't say much here.
- Fixed Templar Strike variant's weapon groups.
- Corrected Hegemony and Adamantine Consortium ship size in fleet doctrine.
Is it possible to enable the raider/escort variants as default loadouts so I can try the Raider variant again?
- Forlorn Hope mission's flagship is now the Escort variant of the Paragon instead of the Raider variant.
- Corrected OP of Condor(A) variants.
Hurray! No more out to lunch persons.
- Fixed bug when hiring faction officers, added text for faction administrators.
- Fixed bug with procurement missions not able to be turned in.
- Fixed bug with some bar missions not able to be turned in.
Wages? Ha. You are a slave now. Get back to work! Mutiny? What do you mean? ARGHHH NOT THE AIRLOCK! AGGH><...... *Sufficates*
- Fixed bug where your crew would not leave even if you owed them considerable debt.
Well, more blueprint stuff I haven't gotten into.
- Corrected issue with Tri-Tachyon blueprint package adding Persean League ships, fighters and weapons.
- Fixed bug where blueprints of higher tiers were empty of hulls, weapons or wings.
Good. Pirates should be newbie's first target. Derelicts second. Everything else third. I thin?
Still can't fix the PD issue? Does tweaking rarity/tier not help? Maybe it has to do with OP cost?
How is pirate version nerfed?
Rocket Launch? is there a generic rocket launcher weapon, or is this for all dumbfire missiles, or what?
Snerk. How did this happen anyway?
This is why you increased PD beam damage I assume.
Is it possible to enable the raider/escort variants as default loadouts so I can try the Raider variant again?
Wages? Ha. You are a slave now. Get back to work! Mutiny? What do you mean? ARGHHH NOT THE AIRLOCK! AGGH><...... *Sufficates*
Well, more blueprint stuff I haven't gotten into.
too funny...killed myself saving for one of those...
The high resolution sensors hullmod says it increases "sensor strength by null for capital ships".
I encountered an odd bug. The echo proximity mines given to the player at the start of the game don't appear when refitting ships.
....lol i brought 2 weapons in black market i get scanned by templar and they instanly attack lol.
Running into the following crash after a second or two at the main menu. Doesn't happen in vanilla, no other mods installed. Let me know if I can do anything to help reproduce/test fixesSpoiler30455 [Thread-10] INFO sound.H - Playing music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
35912 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.Object.int.o00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.checkSplit(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)[close]
Running into the following crash after a second or two at the main menu. Doesn't happen in vanilla, no other mods installed. Let me know if I can do anything to help reproduce/test fixesSpoiler30455 [Thread-10] INFO sound.H - Playing music with id [MainTheme01.ogg]
35912 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.Object.int.o00000(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.checkSplit(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.missile.MirvAI.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)[close]
Thanks for the report, I will investigate. It may be an issue with dropbox not uploading all the files if I had connectivity issues while performing the bulk upload, or I may have missed something. I'll pull down the latest version and run some tests later tonight to try and reproduce it.
Anyone else having this issue? Sorry if I did not realize this was happening commonly with the latest update.
I'll redownload the file and test it, but I am on windows yes
Fired the latest mod version up today and some quick impressions:
1. I like that pirates are:
a) A fairly significant threat due to their fighter swarms. If I bring fair amount of PD they lose their bite once the initial squadrons masses are thinned out. Thankfully they think that weaponized tankers can act like cruisers.
b) Yet the number of d-mods (five on average) means that they aren't a cheap and easy way to get early ships. There has to be a reason to fight pirates (hi system bounties)...I think this is exactly what a pirate should be: annoying and worthless all at the same time.
2. Zero flux weaponry? Tasty. Collecting these is almost a mini-game in itself. Then I salvaged this immense horseshoe shaped carrier with tons more weapon mounts than it could possible power....ah.
3. I got overwhelmed trying to sort/order all of the ballistic weapons. Choice is good...but my goodness.
4. Regarding this mod: the force is strong in this one.
Yea, zero flux weapons are a huge perk, but don't forget to compare that to the sheer punch a good strike weapon, artillery support, or a missileboat can provide.
But yes, zero flux weapons are wonderful. Just remeber the tradeoffs.
I'm hoping that AI loadouts won't take advantage of free slots like this...and there is at least one flagship that I've seen that would really, really take advantage. Good thing I'm not actually posting this where the mod meister can see it. Um.
Well anyway: some feature requests:
a) elite groups that fill the post-flux-budget slots up with flux-free weapons.
b) perhaps hide a few of "elite deserters" in AI fleets (esp. pirates) who follow this "max slot" (I guess what I'm really aiming for is a feature that adds uncertainty to farming pirates).
Second game in the current version, now just getting into the cruiser "era":
a) find it really hard to grind rep with Archean Order...is this intended? Mostly I've been able to gain rep with other factions via the system bounties.
c) ...however my ships are tending towards large missile loadouts. I find that I worry the most (and do my killing the most with) missiles. Venting flux gets REALLY interesting when my opposite number suddenly flings harpoons and trebuchets at me. And a dual setup with heavy rapier batteries...oh my. Got to know those in the simulator against the patrol Hammerhead...had to have me some.
c) Never thought I'd want a bunch of laser machine guns so badly. Front batteries of PD with the point defense ship mod have become top priority for missile defense first, and fighter defense second. Energy PD hard to come by. Ranged PD is really really desirable now to shut down the various missile threats.
d) The pirate battlecruisers are worthy opponents...great addition to their fleets.
Turns out leaving an unzipped folder of the old version was probably responsible. Worked fine the second time.
Milterized Subsystems doesn't negate all penalties from Civilian grade hulls. The effect of having a second logistics hullmod, like expanded cargo bay isn't removed. Is this intended?
Milterized Subsystems doesn't negate all penalties from Civilian grade hulls. The effect of having a second logistics hullmod, like expanded cargo bay isn't removed. Is this intended?
I took a look at the script for this and it looks like it just removes the penalties on sensor strength and sensor profile, does it also have more hidden effects in standard Starsector? If so, it isn't clear how that happens, at least at the moment.
Snuck in some gaming during work today (ssssh):
1. Known bug? On my shiny new Revenant cruiser, I have built in "Advanced Targeting Core" that is supposed to disallow installation of an ITU...yet I was able to add an ITU.
More padawan-learner impressions:
1. Archean flux war:
a. a heavy missile loadout and a bit of excess flux budget worked great for general pirates swarms or working the edge of a mid-game sized battle line hunting and killing smaller ships. However this ship setup does poorly when stuck into the middle of a battle line (the above Revenant cruiser) and having to "hold"...way too long delays between salvos. Now moderating to solid beam with solid missile salvo...AND a fair amount of overhead to deal with the hard flux coming in from...let's see: a billion fighters, missiles, debris, beams, lasers, and kitchen sinks.
So back to the simulator...and: Gauss cannon, artillery blasters, max flux capacity/distributors, and some burst pd means I can duel an Onslaught (slowly). Sure great for duelist config...will have to see how it does in the "Archean mid-game threat environment"
b. It was horrifying when I booted up the simulator against a Paragon and the thing blasted me from outside visual range. And then proceeded to hound me off the field like a Man Mountain the Sumo wrestler. However since I have just joined the Archean Order, I shall pay back these Tri-Tachyon Paragon on the field of battle...eventually.
Weapon availability at colonies:
Ensures weapons for several different roles (PD, anti-shield, etc) are available if possible
So I thought I would try the mod and I am getting the following error. Fatal:Ship hull Spec(Legion_Hegemony not Found! I am currently using Starsector 0.9.1a-RC should I be using something different.
Well thanks for looking into it. The funny part is I updated just before trying the mod. If it makes any differences the game would load and let me make all my choices and the when it was building everything it would get through about 3/4 of the bar and the give me the error. I am going to play the game I started and then come back and give this Mod a go. Looks fun.