Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Blog Posts => Topic started by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 04:23:29 PM

Title: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 04:23:29 PM
Blog post here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2018/02/12/blueprints-doctrine-and-production/).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2018, 04:26:29 PM
Need to update that ticker! Also, SQUEE! New blog post!
Edit: Ninja'd...
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 04:27:02 PM
Just did, thanks :) You caught it hot off the press!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Surge on February 12, 2018, 04:39:43 PM
Very exciting stuff, though I have to ask why doctrine priorities are so binary? If part of the reason for priorities is to allow the player more freedom and granularity in controlling their faction why not have priority as a scale, so a player could, say, build a low tech faction with enforcers and lashers as their backbone, but add higher tech ships as rarer assets either for roleplaying purposes (maybe they've made gains against tri-tachyon recently) or just for the sake of fleet diversity without breaking the faction's overarching theme.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on February 12, 2018, 04:43:11 PM
Ooh, exciting!

And don't think I didn't see that teaser for a new low-tech toy...

Also, a suggestion: maybe add some subtle UI to hint that there are two sets of fleet options that are linked? e.g a line under "Phase Ships", "More Ships" and "Ship Size"
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Starasp on February 12, 2018, 04:44:20 PM
Has Great Leader died?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: PerturbedPug on February 12, 2018, 04:51:48 PM
"Solo Nobre, Rocky Metallic World"
Been playing some Brigador?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 05:20:35 PM
Very exciting stuff, though I have to ask why doctrine priorities are so binary? If part of the reason for priorities is to allow the player more freedom and granularity in controlling their faction why not have priority as a scale, so a player could, say, build a low tech faction with enforcers and lashers as their backbone, but add higher tech ships as rarer assets either for roleplaying purposes (maybe they've made gains against tri-tachyon recently) or just for the sake of fleet diversity without breaking the faction's overarching theme.

I can see why someone might want that; in fact there's a setting like this under the hood, to allow some finer tuning of non-player factions. It's functionally not the same as priority, though - priority is binary because the way it works in the ship-picker code is fundamentally binary. Also, binary is more clear and easier to convey.

Anyway, to answer your question: it's because I don't think the benefits of this extra customization are worth the complexity/effort of making the UI to manage it like that, and what you can already do can get you most of the way there in any case (i.e. prioritize one or two high tech ships, and chances are, you'll get mostly what you want, as far as your specific example). It's like, 50% more complexity/work for 10% more customization, with possibly even less actual gameplay impact.


And don't think I didn't see that teaser for a new low-tech toy...

Sharp! Now, can you identify what it is? I have complete confidence in your ability to do so.

Also, a suggestion: maybe add some subtle UI to hint that there are two sets of fleet options that are linked? e.g a line under "Phase Ships", "More Ships" and "Ship Size"

They're grouped together - I *think* that's fairly apparent visually? I did have to squish it a bit more than I'd like to get some extra vertical space, though...

(It looks like there's plenty of room above the "reset" button, but that's 1280x800, where the minimum is 1280x768. Could put reset/confirm side by side, perhaps, but the way it is now mimics how they are in the character tab.)

Has Great Leader died?

... or are they in charge of the Khoros Foundation?


"Solo Nobre, Rocky Metallic World"
Been playing some Brigador?

Possibly. There's only a few Brigador names in the name-gen, but it seems to come up *way* often. E.G. I wasn't trying to make the reference for the blog post, just happened to jump into a system that had Solo Nobre in it.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Morgan Rue on February 12, 2018, 05:21:04 PM
Will subfactions(Knights of Ludd, Lion's Guard) have different doctrine from their primary faction? Will all factions have a subfaction? Will Tri-Tacheon get an elite phase force?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: lechibang on February 12, 2018, 05:21:59 PM
Hah! This is just like the STCs from Warhammer 40k.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 05:29:41 PM
Will subfactions(Knights of Ludd, Lion's Guard) have different doctrine from their primary faction?

Probably, although I'll note that the Knights of Ludd aren't actually present in the Sector at the moment as a distinct source. But the Lion's Guard? Yeah, that's the plan.

Will all factions have a subfaction? Will Tri-Tacheon get an elite phase force?

I'm not sure that *every* faction having that is entirely desirable, that can take things from "interesting" to "commonplace". That said, I'm not entirely against it; it's a possibility, will just have to see what makes sense as far as backstory, where to put content-creation time & effort, and so on.

Hah! This is just like the STCs from Warhammer 40k.

Had to look those up, but - yeah, sounds pretty similar!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2018, 05:34:39 PM
Oooooo BOY! I can't WAIT for this update and to play with what looks like a new high tech toy? Maybe a destroyer or cruiser?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on February 12, 2018, 05:44:06 PM
Sharp! Now, can you identify what it is? I have complete confidence in your ability to do so.
Hmmmm, since the Lasher is a thing and it's really our only current low-tech pure-combat frigate, I'm going to guess that this mystery frigate is a defensive counterpart. It looks like it's got quite a bit of armor on it, although from what I can tell it's a bit lacking in firepower compared to its sister ship (not that it's really possible to make out weapon mounts from that tiny image). It's decently chunky so I'm also guessing it'll get the Heavy Frigate classification, sort of like a low-tech counterpart to the Centurion and Scarab.

Also, did you sneak in a couple of blueprints for fighters we haven't seen before? I think you did!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Sendrien on February 12, 2018, 05:58:23 PM
What. An. Update!!! The next patch is going to be epic.

The blueprint idea unlocks so many interesting possibilities:

1. Finding lost/advanced technology through exploration (otherwise unavailable elsewhere)
2. Opens the possibility for treasure hunts: blueprints whose constituent components also require blueprints to manufacture. (For rare and game-changing tech)
3. Using blueprints to "uplift" a faction's planet/station to a higher tech level.
4. Technology transfer as a diplomacy device.
5. Technological eras: NPC factions can also find their own new technology. Makes each playthrough different.
5.1 As a side benefit of factions being able to acquire new technology, to some extent, there can be a technological arms race.
6. Unlocks the possibility of research. With enough research, a faction can come up with a unique technology, which can then be kept secret, or used in trade/negotiations.
7. Technological theft or sabotage/strategic planets: appropriating/razing a planet that has acquired a valuable blueprint.

I'm sure some of these are beyond the scope of the game, but I wanted to throw them out there for you to brainstorm/mull over.

Ship quality is another interesting mechanic. Of course, it was in the game previously, but now that the player can influence ship quality, I would like to suggest that there be a positive mirror to D mods. If quality is high enough, on rare occasions, perhaps something of exceptional quality could be built? This is similar to the thrill finding XIV battlegroup technology.

As always, keep up the great work, Alex!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Bribe Guntails on February 12, 2018, 05:59:16 PM
I'm just so excited now to see more cool, well-thought stuff added to the game! I got no other words.


Also, a suggestion: maybe add some subtle UI to hint that there are two sets of fleet options that are linked? e.g a line under "Phase Ships", "More Ships" and "Ship Size"

I threw together changes to the Composition & Doctrine segment to make each group more pronounced, spacing and dividers. How's this look Alex?

Edit: I should have added a counter for the number of free points to distribute. Perhaps 7 small boxes along the top of each subsection?

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: FooF on February 12, 2018, 06:10:04 PM
This basically answers my questions regarding how building your own ships will function. I never thought it'd be "free" but half-priced is still pretty good. Is there any way to modify the credit cost of ships, weapons, fighters, etc. that you manufacture? I.e. higher efficiency via AI cores, getting better rates on raw materials, etc.

Also, are fleets that your colonies generate going to naturally assume whatever relationship you have with the other factions? Or is your faction going to operate somewhat independently from *you* the player? (I'm thinking of using a faction as a "front" while you personally backstab the other factions. Plausible deniability and all). In the same vein, will you have any control over these auto-generated fleets, such as ordering an invasion (if some end-game were to appear), or attacking a trade fleet, etc.

I really like the idea of packaging blueprints. As another poster said, it reminds of STC's from WH40k where a rare one can literally launch a billion-man crusade to recover it. I presume there may be some super-secret blueprints out there that are not currently in use by the major factions, hmm...?  ;D
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 06:50:26 PM
Oooooo BOY! I can't WAIT for this update and to play with what looks like a new high tech toy? Maybe a destroyer or cruiser?

:) Which one are you looking at? I don't *think* there's one fitting that description but possibly I'm mistaken.

Hmmmm, since the Lasher is a thing and it's really our only current low-tech pure-combat frigate, I'm going to guess that this mystery frigate is a defensive counterpart. It looks like it's got quite a bit of armor on it, although from what I can tell it's a bit lacking in firepower compared to its sister ship (not that it's really possible to make out weapon mounts from that tiny image). It's decently chunky so I'm also guessing it'll get the Heavy Frigate classification, sort of like a low-tech counterpart to the Centurion and Scarab.

Barking up the wrong tree entirely, I'm afraid. I'll give you a hint: you already have the information.

Also, did you sneak in a couple of blueprints for fighters we haven't seen before? I think you did!

Entirely possible!


What. An. Update!!! The next patch is going to be epic.

I'm just so excited now to see more cool, well-thought stuff added to the game! I got no other words.

Thank you guys :)

I'm sure some of these are beyond the scope of the game, but I wanted to throw them out there for you to brainstorm/mull over.

Yeah - probably as you say, outside the scope, but there are some potentially very interesting levers to push. Half-thinking that just selling a blueprint to a faction makes them able to use it, but not entirely set on that.

Ship quality is another interesting mechanic. Of course, it was in the game previously, but now that the player can influence ship quality, I would like to suggest that there be a positive mirror to D mods. If quality is high enough, on rare occasions, perhaps something of exceptional quality could be built? This is similar to the thrill finding XIV battlegroup technology.

Hmm - I think feel-wise, the "d-mods to normal" spectrum makes more sense, what with the state of manufacturing in the Sector and all. Although, as you point out, some stuff - like the XIV and Hegemony Auxiliaries - do have bonuses. I think those are best kept as special, not something you can pile onto just any hull.


I threw together changes to the Composition & Doctrine segment to make each group more pronounced, spacing and dividers. How's this look Alex?

Edit: I should have added a counter for the number of free points to distribute. Perhaps 7 small boxes along the top of each subsection?

You know, that doesn't look half bad, let me give something similar a shot - what I was imagining (per InventorRacoon's suggestion) didn't look as good as the actual thing ended up looking. I like keeping the dividers roughly in the same vertical space as the text, rather than going straight across.


This basically answers my questions regarding how building your own ships will function. I never thought it'd be "free" but half-priced is still pretty good. Is there any way to modify the credit cost of ships, weapons, fighters, etc. that you manufacture? I.e. higher efficiency via AI cores, getting better rates on raw materials, etc.

At the moment, there isn't. I'm not 100% decided on that, but I'm not sure that as a mechanic, "how much you pay to custom order equipment" is developed/interesting enough to have skill or other tie-ins. It also opens the door to some awkwardness re: it becoming profitable to custom-order then sell if the mechanics are too strong.

Also, are fleets that your colonies generate going to naturally assume whatever relationship you have with the other factions? Or is your faction going to operate somewhat independently from *you* the player? (I'm thinking of using a faction as a "front" while you personally backstab the other factions. Plausible deniability and all). In the same vein, will you have any control over these auto-generated fleets, such as ordering an invasion (if some end-game were to appear), or attacking a trade fleet, etc.

I'd say that "plausible deniability" is what the transponder is for; probably simplest to keep relations the same. Otherwise it gets awkward when your faction fleets join/don't join to help out against an enemy, and so on.

As far as control: I'm thinking about some things here; nothing specific I can commit too. I will say that part of the point of having your colonies launch fleets is for you to be able to fight alongside them, and if, for example, attacking another colony/invasions/etc became a mechanic, then it would make sense to have allied fleets to with you, whatever form actually making that happen might take.

I really like the idea of packaging blueprints. As another poster said, it reminds of STC's from WH40k where a rare one can literally launch a billion-man crusade to recover it. I presume there may be some super-secret blueprints out there that are not currently in use by the major factions, hmm...?  ;D

It'd be a shame if some pirates stole your Hyperion blueprint and took it back to their base, wouldn't it?

(There's actually one blueprint that's not in use, and isn't for a ship, weapon, or fighter, but no more about that! As far as unique ones for ships etc, yeah, that's another contenting nice-to-have; will see if there's time to get to this sort of stuff. Would be super cool, though, no argument there.)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: MajorTheRed on February 12, 2018, 06:56:13 PM
Outpost are going to take a great place in the current gameplay. Have you considered an actual endgame, a clear objective that end the game when reached?
And would the new update (and the ones after) allow several types of gameplay or will it be only focused around outpost? If I take the present version as example, I tend to play exploration fleets, not looking for bounties, or zombie-fleets bounty-chasing, or faction provateer until I kill something big and scary in space. So, different play style, but all very funny.
So, will I be able to have fun without creating outposts? And if I build outposts, can they all be oriented toward, say, trading, or I will have to build a more generic outpost with a little bit of everything (trade, resource, fleet...) to make it work?

Anyway, wow, it getting bigger and better, you're really far from the beginning with just Tibicena, Jangola and Asharu around the lone corvus star (and it was already great at the time!)!  :D
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 12, 2018, 06:56:43 PM
Glazing over the details at the moment, but...  Hopefully, the next update will mean 1) more rare stuff are more common (no more reloading games the moment I lose a ship with any weapon not commonly available in open market or pirates' black market), 2) I can produce and acquire undamaged ships without paying a stiff restoration fee, and 3) ability to declare independence from factions by endgame.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: TaLaR on February 12, 2018, 08:13:18 PM
Being able to customize my faction fleets is interesting and matters when I'm fighting along them, but isn't finer detail mostly lost on auto-resolved battles between AI fleets?
Are there any plans to make more complex/precise auto-resolve to make these things matter more?

Also on topic of player faction AI fleets - how interactive are they going to be?
I mean it's one thing when they just spawn randomly and you do not care what happens to them as long as colony does not get destroyed and you do not need them to support you locally right now. It's quite different if they have costs, maintenance, supplies, bring spoils, interact with local events, etc. That is something approaching 4x.

Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Cyan Leader on February 12, 2018, 08:26:10 PM
Amazing blog post, thanks for this.

You mentioned exploration to help us with colony gameplay, I was also thinking if exploration can help us in making our factions more unique too. Are there any blueprints in the game that aren't used by any factions at all? Such as Remnant blueprints or, say, an old Hammerhead design that was used by the TT a long time ago and has now been abandoned in a fringe outpost. I'm not trying to ask for spoilers here, I just would like to know if I can make my faction more distinct and unique instead of it being a weird mix between Hegemony and TT.

Also, I'm no modder but since you are very keen in making this whole system mod friendly, I suggest releasing the Photoshop files behind the blueprint icons so modders can easily make their own.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Bribe Guntails on February 12, 2018, 08:46:42 PM
I threw together changes to the Composition & Doctrine segment to make each group more pronounced, spacing and dividers. How's this look Alex?

Edit: I should have added a counter for the number of free points to distribute. Perhaps 7 small boxes along the top of each subsection?

You know, that doesn't look half bad, let me give something similar a shot - what I was imagining (per InventorRacoon's suggestion) didn't look as good as the actual thing ended up looking. I like keeping the dividers roughly in the same vertical space as the text, rather than going straight across.

Here's my updated suggestion. I threw in numbers in the trademark yellow, it may be clearer than using boxes in the same color.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2018, 08:56:05 PM
Outpost are going to take a great place in the current gameplay. Have you considered an actual endgame, a clear objective that end the game when reached?

Yes, I have considered it :-X

And would the new update (and the ones after) allow several types of gameplay or will it be only focused around outpost? If I take the present version as example, I tend to play exploration fleets, not looking for bounties, or zombie-fleets bounty-chasing, or faction provateer until I kill something big and scary in space. So, different play style, but all very funny.
So, will I be able to have fun without creating outposts? And if I build outposts, can they all be oriented toward, say, trading, or I will have to build a more generic outpost with a little bit of everything (trade, resource, fleet...) to make it work?

It's hard to say exactly. In general, I'd like to support different playstyles. My guess is having at least one colony would be beneficial - maybe not required, but useful. I'm not sure that outposts are a playstyle in and of themselves, but more something you do alongside whatever else you're doing.

Anyway, wow, it getting bigger and better, you're really far from the beginning with just Tibicena, Jangola and Asharu around the lone corvus star (and it was already great at the time!)!  :D

Oh, wow, Tibicena in the Corvus system! That brings me back.

Glazing over the details at the moment, but...  Hopefully, the next update will mean 1) more rare stuff are more common (no more reloading games the moment I lose a ship with any weapon not commonly available in open market or pirates' black market), 2) I can produce and acquire undamaged ships without paying a stiff restoration fee, and 3) ability to declare independence from factions by endgame.

1) - probably, yeah 2) it'll take a bit of doing to produce non-(D) ships, but it's possible, and 3) I would imagine so!


R E M O V E   T H E   M A R K E D   T A R G E T   T O   A C C E P T   C O N T R A C T

Haha, yeah. Stomp an unarmed guy with a mech and then pretend you're one of the good guys.

Also love that we get WYSIWYG material for setting faction doctrine and other fun stuff previously only available by braving the .json files.

Cool! Yeah, I'm excited about the possibilities here, even if a lot of it is mostly flavor-fun.


Being able to customize my faction fleets is interesting and matters when I'm fighting along them, but isn't finer detail mostly lost on auto-resolved battles between AI fleets?
Are there any plans to make more complex/precise auto-resolve to make these things matter more?

Yeah, the finer detail is mostly lost for auto-resolve, but that's entirely the point! I'll have to make sure that the officers/quality/quantity options all produce fairly auto-resolve-balanced fleets, too. If some set of options was better for auto-resolve, then you'd pretty much have to always go with those.

Also on topic of player faction AI fleets - how interactive are they going to be?
I mean it's one thing when they just spawn randomly and you do not care what happens to them as long as colony does not get destroyed and you do not need them to support you locally right now. It's quite different if they have costs, maintenance, supplies, bring spoils, interact with local events, etc. That is something approaching 4x.

Honestly, not sure at this point. I don't imagine they'd have maintenance costs at a base level, but I could see, say, having to invest credits into larger fleet operations, that sort of thing. A lot of that is up in the air right now, though.

Amazing blog post, thanks for this.

Thank you!

You mentioned exploration to help us with colony gameplay, I was also thinking if exploration can help us in making our factions more unique too. Are there any blueprints in the game that aren't used by any factions at all? Such as Remnant blueprints or, say, an old Hammerhead design that was used by the TT a long time ago and has now been abandoned in a fringe outpost. I'm not trying to ask for spoilers here, I just would like to know if I can make my faction more distinct and unique instead of it being a weird mix between Hegemony and TT.

That's a possibility, but, as I mentioned a few posts up, I wouldn't necessarily count on it. I do think the doctrine controls offer a good amount of opportunity here with the base ships, as does being able to focus on a few specific ship types. For example, mostly-phase or mostly-carrier fleets would already be pretty different from what the vanilla factions offer. As do any of the doctrinal extremes, really. Will have to see how it feels, though. I think this categorization of ships into Hegemony and TT... well, it makes sense given how the game has been, but I don't subscribe to it, and I think the blueprint system takes steps towards clarifying why that's not the case :)

Also, I'm no modder but since you are very keen in making this whole system mod friendly, I suggest releasing the Photoshop files behind the blueprint icons so modders can easily make their own.

Oh, excellent - the icons are actually rendered using the ship and weapon sprites, with various effects and overlays, so no extra modding work is required. That it doesn't look like it at first glance is a good sign :)


Here's my updated suggestion. I threw in numbers in the trademark yellow, it may be clearer than using boxes in the same color.

Oh, hey, yeah - sorry I forgot to respond to this part of it! The "free points" display isn't necessary because the points just get reassigned as necessary, as you adjust the levels. There's some logic to make sure it doesn't do this in "annoying" ways, undoing things you just did.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: FreedomFighter on February 12, 2018, 09:14:17 PM
I want to say that if i didn't know that SS is combat orientate before, i might think this is some kind of 4X game since the management UI look a lot like those. You fit in a lot of detail and info, yet, the UI itself doesn't look like complete pile of mess like Paradox's game. Impressive, Alex.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: CrashToDesktop on February 12, 2018, 09:36:29 PM
Hey, a new blog post. :)

Out of curiosity, did you (or rather, poor David) go out of your way to create a new icon for every weapon, ship / fighter, and package blueprint or did you make it so the game does that for you?  I can see it becoming a bit of a pain in the butt for everyone involved if you had to make a new icon for everything, and automating the process with a pseudo-procedural generation of such icons might streamline that process.  Even using an outside program like ImageMagick would be a nice help compared to handmaking everything.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 12, 2018, 11:58:53 PM
Now that the terms are actually player-visible, have you consider renaming the "Low-Tech/Midline/High-Tech" classification system and/or reclassifying ships? eg. Having "Tri-Tachyon" with all the canonical TT-designed hulls and sliding the remaining High-Tech ships into another category.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Cyan Leader on February 13, 2018, 12:57:25 AM
Hey, a new blog post. :)

Out of curiosity, did you (or rather, poor David) go out of your way to create a new icon for every weapon, ship / fighter, and package blueprint or did you make it so the game does that for you?  I can see it becoming a bit of a pain in the butt for everyone involved if you had to make a new icon for everything, and automating the process with a pseudo-procedural generation of such icons might streamline that process.  Even using an outside program like ImageMagick would be a nice help compared to handmaking everything.

They did automate it, see Alex's last reply to my question.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: King Alfonzo on February 13, 2018, 02:05:44 AM
So you can tailor your faction fleets in ship type and armament? That does sound awesome, but would it have a major impact on the campaign layer? Like, would having a high aggression fleet type be better in some circumstances than a cowardly fleet type? I feel that while the system might be cool from a lore-wsie standpoint, it doesn't really have  astrong effect on the campaign level.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Draba on February 13, 2018, 02:25:17 AM
Ship quality is another interesting mechanic. Of course, it was in the game previously, but now that the player can influence ship quality, I would like to suggest that there be a positive mirror to D mods. If quality is high enough, on rare occasions, perhaps something of exceptional quality could be built? This is similar to the thrill finding XIV battlegroup technology.

Hmm - I think feel-wise, the "d-mods to normal" spectrum makes more sense, what with the state of manufacturing in the Sector and all. Although, as you point out, some stuff - like the XIV and Hegemony Auxiliaries - do have bonuses. I think those are best kept as special, not something you can pile onto just any hull.

I like the d-mod approach better.
Very rare things can be a pain since you really want to use them in battle, but losing them is frustrating.
Really liked when junkers/recovery were added for this exact reason, you get to shoot things without worrying about losses too much.

As always, really excited for the changes!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: WastedAlmond on February 13, 2018, 03:05:29 AM
Aww yeah! The next update seems really nice! And uh, excuse my excited suggestion but: As a big fan of really endgame upgrades/customisations, could it be possible to find object(s) similar to nano-forges, that would allow you to create your very own faction specific hullmod? Similar to what has already been suggested, but aimed at player fleets exclusively, as we want to keep "elites" special (and as we know the player is super special and they like to feel like it). Would be really awesome to push the envelope with a hull by just a few more percents towards your preferred playstyle. (An atlas with less OP but more cargo space? Load and pray indeed. Or a combat ship with a few more OP & speed, but less armor)

Imagine finding a domain era "advanced materials" database allowing you to design a hull mod, with some set amount of points OR selectable archetypes. Of course applying this hullmod would require an advanced shipyard and cause a significant price hike, as the factory would have to implement nonstandard advanced materials etc. As a final note on this, maybe they shouldn't be as powerful as XIV, as a trade off for that customization. Plus I'd hate it if XIV ships would end up devalued by player made creations, even if expensive. Could even tie it in with AI cores or some rare materials that would need to be bought from around the sector, to facilitate such exotic upgrades.

In the end, this is just me wanting to have more cake, but being able to finetune juuuuust a little bit in the end game would be very fun. Sorry for my ramblings and thanks for the update, very exciting!  ;D
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 13, 2018, 03:27:12 AM
Oooooo BOY! I can't WAIT for this update and to play with what looks like a new high tech toy? Maybe a destroyer or cruiser?

:) Which one are you looking at? I don't *think* there's one fitting that description but possibly I'm mistaken.
Top row second item on the first image. Looks like a high tech ship but I just noticed that fighters have the same BP look as ships so it could be a fighter... Also, will be be able to find BPs in wreckage of ships? How about [REDACTED] fighter BPs? Will they be able to be found?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Histidine on February 13, 2018, 03:29:53 AM
Does this mean... vanilla implementation of randomized variants?!

I dunno how I feel about the "it could take a full month to get a couple of Light Machine Guns delivered". I guess the player should get used to ordering things ahead of time and buying off the open market if something is needed in a hurry.

Quote
For example, there’s a “Low-tech Blueprint Package” that lets the player learn a couple of the more common ships and weapon from that design period. It’s not going to include the Onslaught-class Battleship, but it will include the somewhat less exciting Dominator (cruiser) and Enforcer (destroyer). Unlike the rare single-item blueprints, these will probably be found for sale – more or less reliably, to avoid having to repeatedly sift through markets looking for one.
Runtime generated lootboxes?

(not entirely serious)

Quote
The monthly production capacity depends on how much Heavy Industry the player’s colonies have.
Does availability of ship parts, metals, etc. affect capacity?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Embercloud on February 13, 2018, 03:51:53 AM
Will it be possible to alter the appearance of your ships?

For instance, the wolf exists in various different sprites (TT, hegemony, neutral, damaged to various degrees and pirate)

Will you be able to swap between these or alter the appearance of your ship sprites somehow?

A color variable area on ships would be nice so that you can change the color by a palette
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Jonlissla on February 13, 2018, 04:08:48 AM
Starsector blog posts are the best blog posts. It feels weird seeing all this new stuff since it's been ingrained in my mind as "distant future" content. Now there's exploration, outposts, officers, ship and weapon manufacturing, missions and who knows what else. It's a gigantic leap you've made and it's hard to believe how far the game has come. I'm also quite curious as to what's next, all the stuff that has been added lately and this future update is what the community has requested the most since the game was publically available. The only thing I can think of would be expanded diplomacy and dialogue.

Dare I say that Starsector is going towards the status of feature complete?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Althaea on February 13, 2018, 04:19:41 AM
Dare I say that Starsector is going towards the status of feature complete?

I mean, the version numbers aren't decorative.  :P
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: WastedAlmond on February 13, 2018, 04:36:48 AM
Will it be possible to alter the appearance of your ships?

For instance, the wolf exists in various different sprites (TT, hegemony, neutral, damaged to various degrees and pirate)

Will you be able to swap between these or alter the appearance of your ship sprites somehow?

A color variable area on ships would be nice so that you can change the color by a palette

A tint mask would be really nice to have. It would require the devs to go through every sprite and mask in the tint able areas and could, depending on how its executed, require the masked areas to be grayscale. Though there are games that tint colored surfaces quite well also.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Schwartz on February 13, 2018, 04:55:15 AM
This is shaping up nicely.

And yes, while a personal faction hullmod might be a bit much, a choice for a faction paintjob along with a banner would be a very cool thing.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 13, 2018, 05:22:31 AM
It'd be a shame if some pirates stole your Hyperion blueprint and took it back to their base, wouldn't it?
If pirates can steal stuff from our colonies, can we do the same to others' (that are our enemies), either by subterfuge or direct combat?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Cyan Leader on February 13, 2018, 07:10:54 AM
Adding to Megas question, is colony and faction interaction (as in, attacking other stations, taking over colonies and being able to dominate the sector) a feature planned for this release at all? This sounds more like something for 1.0 while this release would only cover the basis of the system.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on February 13, 2018, 07:11:01 AM
Top row second item on the first image. Looks like a high tech ship but I just noticed that fighters have the same BP look as ships so it could be a fighter... Also, will be be able to find BPs in wreckage of ships? How about [REDACTED] fighter BPs? Will they be able to be found?
Protip: fighter blueprints have a slightly different exterior and a triangle in their background. Also, that's a Claw blueprint.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Tartiflette on February 13, 2018, 08:36:37 AM
Interesting, I expected something different for the blueprints. In particular the fact that they can be learned and effectively "duplicated" in every player owned shipyard seems to go directly againt the premise of the blog:

Copying these is difficult-to-impossible, and their dwindling supply contributes to the gradual decline of the Sector.

I was expecting something more like "shipyard loadouts" akin to the carriers, where blueprints are an object you have to mount in production slots of the right class or above, and balanced by a similar system as Ordinance Points. (And obviously upgrading the shipyard would have raised the amount of "OP", the production slot sizes and their number). Blueprint packages would have fitted such system perfectly.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Igncom1 on February 13, 2018, 08:50:03 AM
Well the player character is special.

Maybe we have a domain era copy-paste tool, the only one in the sector.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Clockwork Owl on February 13, 2018, 08:50:24 AM
I was expecting something more like "shipyard loadouts" akin to the carriers, where blueprints are an object you have to mount in production slots of the right class or above, and balanced by a similar system as Ordinance Points. (And obviously upgrading the shipyard would have raised the amount of "OP", the production slot sizes and their number). Blueprint packages would have fitted such system perfectly.
Yeah I was expecting the same thing.maybe something more abstract than OP system(max quality rating?) but treating blueprints as mountable items.

I mean the lore serves to support the mechanics and not the other way around, but in some point the lore becomes premises and ties with the mechanics to become one and I think this is one of such instances.

A blueprint, any blueprint, should be rare and precious to player, which current system doesn't support at all. Like that second/third/nth ITU modspec I find now and then not getting the awe and respect as much as the first one :P
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 13, 2018, 08:58:13 AM
If the number of player-owned colonies, let alone shipyards, can be counted on both hands, one-blueprint-for-all is probably is not much of a problem.  From the looks of administrators, player probably will not be able to own enough colonies for magical blueprints to be a big deal.  (I expect the 1-UP Alpha core administrators to steal your bases sooner or later, and if true, that would be useful for devious purposes, though not for long-term governing.)

That would put a damper of taking over enemy colonies, if player already has max colonies.  Just take all the rare shinies you want and burn the rest of the enemy colony to the ground.

Another question:  If player grants a colony autonomy, or if an enemy steals one of your colonies, does your formerly-owned colony use your blueprints and resources to produce items, or do they immediately swap to the new owner's pool of resources?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Tartiflette on February 13, 2018, 09:25:15 AM
That also goes my way though: If colonies are just a money-to-ship converter, loosing one might not be such a big deal. But if they also have some rare and shiny blueprint chips loaded in their factory, now you may want to protect them at all cost or at least long enough to extract them and retreat!

I would also prevent having many "cheap" colonies just there to churn out weapons and that one ship you were lucky to find the blueprint of.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 13, 2018, 09:37:18 AM
I dunno how I feel about the "it could take a full month to get a couple of Light Machine Guns delivered". I guess the player should get used to ordering things ahead of time and buying off the open market if something is needed in a hurry.
Well... the Size 3 world pictured has a production capacity of 60,000c/mo, which is enough to make dozens of LMGs.
Interesting, I expected something different for the blueprints. In particular the fact that they can be learned and effectively "duplicated" in every player owned shipyard seems to go directly againt the premise of the blog:

Copying these is difficult-to-impossible, and their dwindling supply contributes to the gradual decline of the Sector.

I was expecting something more like "shipyard loadouts" akin to the carriers, where blueprints are an object you have to mount in production slots of the right class or above, and balanced by a similar system as Ordinance Points. (And obviously upgrading the shipyard would have raised the amount of "OP", the production slot sizes and their number). Blueprint packages would have fitted such system perfectly.
Yeah, I assumed similar but I'm guessing that it was abstracted away to reduce the amount of fiddly-ness. Well... I didn't expect finite production slots, I had imaged just having shipyard database and they can pull whatever blueprint they need this week out of storage on demand.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: WastedAlmond on February 13, 2018, 09:43:11 AM
Interesting, I expected something different for the blueprints. In particular the fact that they can be learned and effectively "duplicated" in every player owned shipyard seems to go directly againt the premise of the blog:

Copying these is difficult-to-impossible, and their dwindling supply contributes to the gradual decline of the Sector.

I was expecting something more like "shipyard loadouts" akin to the carriers, where blueprints are an object you have to mount in production slots of the right class or above, and balanced by a similar system as Ordinance Points. (And obviously upgrading the shipyard would have raised the amount of "OP", the production slot sizes and their number). Blueprint packages would have fitted such system perfectly.

I'd "headcanon" it so that there is indeed only one factory producing the blueprints, but it is able to supply many shipyards with its hulls/weapons/components.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Cyan Leader on February 13, 2018, 10:38:22 AM
From Alex's twitter:

Quote
Realized I glossed over an important point in the new blog post - namely, AI fleets' ship weapon loadouts in the campaign are now dynamic, using what's available based on blueprints and production quality.

So the variant system is gone? Does this affect all factions or just player owned ones?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 10:42:41 AM
I want to say that if i didn't know that SS is combat orientate before, i might think this is some kind of 4X game since the management UI look a lot like those. You fit in a lot of detail and info, yet, the UI itself doesn't look like complete pile of mess like Paradox's game. Impressive, Alex.

Hah - I actually kind of like Paradox UI's, in as much as I've played their games :) But in any case, thank you!


Now that the terms are actually player-visible, have you consider renaming the "Low-Tech/Midline/High-Tech" classification system and/or reclassifying ships? eg. Having "Tri-Tachyon" with all the canonical TT-designed hulls and sliding the remaining High-Tech ships into another category.

I don't think that'd make sense; the in-use-by-TT hulls are (mostly) not something designed by Tri-Tachyon and frequently available to other factions. See: Wolf (H) for the Hegemony, for example.


So you can tailor your faction fleets in ship type and armament? That does sound awesome, but would it have a major impact on the campaign layer? Like, would having a high aggression fleet type be better in some circumstances than a cowardly fleet type? I feel that while the system might be cool from a lore-wsie standpoint, it doesn't really have  astrong effect on the campaign level.

Right, as I mentioned a few posts above, doctrine settings are almost entirely combat-layer-focused. I could see adding a setting or two for something campaign related, when/if it becomes clear what that something might be, but that's something to be careful with, so that some settings don't become clearly-best.


I like the d-mod approach better.
Very rare things can be a pain since you really want to use them in battle, but losing them is frustrating.
Really liked when junkers/recovery were added for this exact reason, you get to shoot things without worrying about losses too much.

Wasn't thinking about that, but that's a very good point.


Aww yeah! The next update seems really nice! And uh, excuse my excited suggestion but: As a big fan of really endgame upgrades/customisations, could it be possible to find object(s) similar to nano-forges, that would allow you to create your very own faction specific hullmod? Similar to what has already been suggested, but aimed at player fleets exclusively, as we want to keep "elites" special (and as we know the player is super special and they like to feel like it). Would be really awesome to push the envelope with a hull by just a few more percents towards your preferred playstyle. (An atlas with less OP but more cargo space? Load and pray indeed. Or a combat ship with a few more OP & speed, but less armor)

Imagine finding a domain era "advanced materials" database allowing you to design a hull mod, with some set amount of points OR selectable archetypes. Of course applying this hullmod would require an advanced shipyard and cause a significant price hike, as the factory would have to implement nonstandard advanced materials etc. As a final note on this, maybe they shouldn't be as powerful as XIV, as a trade off for that customization. Plus I'd hate it if XIV ships would end up devalued by player made creations, even if expensive. Could even tie it in with AI cores or some rare materials that would need to be bought from around the sector, to facilitate such exotic upgrades.

In the end, this is just me wanting to have more cake, but being able to finetune juuuuust a little bit in the end game would be very fun. Sorry for my ramblings and thanks for the update, very exciting!  ;D

Hah! This sounds neat, but again, an optional, maybe-later extra. There's a lot of cool ideas for endgame things, and I've got a list :)


Top row second item on the first image. Looks like a high tech ship but I just noticed that fighters have the same BP look as ships so it could be a fighter... Also, will be be able to find BPs in wreckage of ships? How about [REDACTED] fighter BPs? Will they be able to be found?
Protip: fighter blueprints have a slightly different exterior and a triangle in their background. Also, that's a Claw blueprint.

Right, yes, Claw. (I've got a todo item to see if I can make fighters render on blueprints as a full wing, but it might turn out to be unreasonably tricky and I don't want to spend too much time on it.)


Does this mean... vanilla implementation of randomized variants?!

Yes! I should've made that explicitly clear in the post.

I dunno how I feel about the "it could take a full month to get a couple of Light Machine Guns delivered". I guess the player should get used to ordering things ahead of time and buying off the open market if something is needed in a hurry.

Hmm. Will have to see how it plays, but could see making mini-orders near instant, for example, if "ugh, waiting a month for a few extra weapons to slot in" became an issue.

Runtime generated lootboxes?

(not entirely serious)

Hah! No, the blueprint packages are hand-made and not randomized. Although if you wanted to, there's nothing to stop you from making it that way. ... other than a few laws, regulations, and common decency.


Does availability of ship parts, metals, etc. affect capacity?

Inasmuch as these shortages affect "Ship Hulls & Weapons" production - "production capacity" is based on that.


Will it be possible to alter the appearance of your ships?

For instance, the wolf exists in various different sprites (TT, hegemony, neutral, damaged to various degrees and pirate)

Will you be able to swap between these or alter the appearance of your ship sprites somehow?

A color variable area on ships would be nice so that you can change the color by a palette

As far as custom colors - I don't think so. We gave it a shot a while ago and, long story short, it was hard to make it actually look good.

As far as using different versions of a ship like the Wolf - yes, you can decide which (if any) you want to prioritize, once you have the blueprints.


Starsector blog posts are the best blog posts. It feels weird seeing all this new stuff since it's been ingrained in my mind as "distant future" content. Now there's exploration, outposts, officers, ship and weapon manufacturing, missions and who knows what else. It's a gigantic leap you've made and it's hard to believe how far the game has come. I'm also quite curious as to what's next, all the stuff that has been added lately and this future update is what the community has requested the most since the game was publically available. The only thing I can think of would be expanded diplomacy and dialogue.

Thank you! I know just what you mean about the "distant future", sometimes it feels absolutely surreal to be finally working on this stuff.

(As far as what's next, well, :-X)

Dare I say that Starsector is going towards the status of feature complete?

I mean, it's been doing that since the first release, so :)


If pirates can steal stuff from our colonies, can we do the same to others' (that are our enemies), either by subterfuge or direct combat?

A very good question, and definitely something I've been thinking about. I will say that if one was possible, then the other would likely be too, but we'll see.


Adding to Megas question, is colony and faction interaction (as in, attacking other stations, taking over colonies and being able to dominate the sector) a feature planned for this release at all? This sounds more like something for 1.0 while this release would only cover the basis of the system.

Hard to say - I'll have to get a bit further and then make some decisions about what mechanics to make "real" and what things to stub out with placeholders.


Interesting, I expected something different for the blueprints. In particular the fact that they can be learned and effectively "duplicated" in every player owned shipyard seems to go directly againt the premise of the blog:

Copying these is difficult-to-impossible, and their dwindling supply contributes to the gradual decline of the Sector.

I was expecting something more like "shipyard loadouts" akin to the carriers, where blueprints are an object you have to mount in production slots of the right class or above, and balanced by a similar system as Ordinance Points. (And obviously upgrading the shipyard would have raised the amount of "OP", the production slot sizes and their number). Blueprint packages would have fitted such system perfectly.

Backstory-wise, I figure blueprints get moved around on courier ships if needed (rarely!), and plugging one into an autofac/nanoforge/whatever lets it make a short-lived copy - good for cranking out a few Hound (A)'s or whatever. In a setup like that, handing physical control of a blueprint to another faction would be something that Just Isn't Done. (Could be fun to intercept courier ships though, hmm.) Might also be possible over hyperwave, in some very specific circumstances. Naturally, the "how it works" is fluid and will be mercilessly hacked to make it work in-game.

I did initially consider a system where you had to put the blueprints where you want them to be used, but... I think it's another one of those "using realism as a starting point" things that gets way overcomplex unless it's used as a starting point to simplify from. In most cases you'd just want to stuff them into the same heavy industry anyway (unless there's a slot system like you're talking about, which imo raises the level of "overcomplex" another few notches).

Basically, I don't want the player to have to micromanage potentially a ton of blueprints and manually move them around between colonies. While packages and so on cut the number down significantly, that's "good enough" for the current system, but I suspect would *not* be good enough for a system where you have to manage them in more detail. Plus it's one more potentially fairly complex UI to handle this. Also, modspecs already work this way, so it's in line with an existing mechanic.


A blueprint, any blueprint, should be rare and precious to player, which current system doesn't support at all. Like that second/third/nth ITU modspec I find now and then not getting the awe and respect as much as the first one :P

Huh? I think you're saying that the *second* blueprint of a rare thing you get isn't as interesting, but that's not even in the same ballpark as "doesn't support at all". That's crazytalk :) And besides, a second master copy could have major impact, depending on whether "sell to a faction to let them build it" was in the game, and it would likely be a large chunk of credits in any case.

Another question:  If player grants a colony autonomy, or if an enemy steals one of your colonies, does your formerly-owned colony use your blueprints and resources to produce items, or do they immediately swap to the new owner's pool of resources?

I'd expect "autonomy" would work differently from "taken over". "Autonomy" is intended to be a limited-autonomy; something you do to stop governing directly, without assigning an admin - you lost most of the benefits of controlling it, but retain ownership of it, and it's nominally still part of your faction. So I'd expect it to have access to your blueprints in this case, vs being actually taken over. But that's hypothetical since the "grant autonomy" button doesn't actually do anything yet :)


That also goes my way though: If colonies are just a money-to-ship converter, loosing one might not be such a big deal.

Hmm - I'm not sure that developing heavy industry everywhere would be great, necessarily. Have to see how it plays out, but what I'm imagining is the production queue being idle a good portion of the time anyway. And certainly not being utilized to the point of it being the primary point of colonies.


Well... the Size 3 world pictured has a production capacity of 60,000c/mo, which is enough to make dozens of LMGs.

There may be a few AI cores involved in achieving that level of production in a size 3 world. But LMGs are what, 50 credits each? No problems there regardless.


I'd "headcanon" it so that there is indeed only one factory producing the blueprints, but it is able to supply many shipyards with its hulls/weapons/components.

Hey, yeah, that's another way to think about it - other heavy industry shipping pieces that don't require a blueprint (armor plates, bulkheads, fuel tanks, etc), to a production center that has the blueprints and makes all the fiddly stuff. I like that!


So the variant system is gone? Does this affect all factions or just player owned ones?

The stock variants are used as "goal" variants when outfitting ships with available weapons; this affects all the factions (but can be gotten around easily by mods, if they need to do that).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Clockwork Owl on February 13, 2018, 11:11:39 AM
So the loadouts are actually dynamically autofitted? Ooooooh. Sounds like another mod will be dying a most glorious death.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 13, 2018, 11:50:04 AM
Now that the terms are actually player-visible, have you consider renaming the "Low-Tech/Midline/High-Tech" classification system and/or reclassifying ships? eg. Having "Tri-Tachyon" with all the canonical TT-designed hulls and sliding the remaining High-Tech ships into another category.

I don't think that'd make sense; the in-use-by-TT hulls are (mostly) not something designed by Tri-Tachyon and frequently available to other factions. See: Wolf (H) for the Hegemony, for example.
The example was based on some extrapolations from all the light blue similarly-styled hulls, similar colors used in TT livery, and the descriptions of a few of them that mention TT specifically. I had assumed that ships in the hands of other factions were based on pre-collapse TT designs shared across various Domain worlds, or similar.

Anyway, my thought was that the different categories each have a bunch of similar ships and then a few divergent ones. When it's under-the-hood stuff the oddballs don't matter so much as when the player sees "here's the ships in X, here's the ships in Y" and it cements the categories in their mind.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 11:58:36 AM
Anyway, my thought was that the different categories each have a bunch of similar ships and then a few divergent ones. When it's under-the-hood stuff the oddballs don't matter so much as when the player sees "here's the ships in X, here's the ships in Y" and it cements the categories in their mind.

Yep, I hear you. I'd like to do the exact opposite, though, and point to the hulls - though being largely in current use by TT - as being something more general-purpose and not faction-tied. That said, there *are* a few TT-specific blueprints, just not all the general high-tech stuff.

So the loadouts are actually dynamically autofitted? Ooooooh. Sounds like another mod will be dying a most glorious death.

They are, yes, but there's always an opportunity to improve on what vanilla does.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on February 13, 2018, 12:08:43 PM
O.K, a final guess - the new low-tech ship is the phase ship with a circular anchor that we saw in the latest [REDACTED] tweet.

Also, do non-player factions suffer from the random d-mods we do or do they still have all-flawless ships (apart from pirates and independents using premade (D) skins)?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: PCCL on February 13, 2018, 12:10:44 PM
Quote
Hmm. Will have to see how it plays, but could see making mini-orders near instant, for example, if "ugh, waiting a month for a few extra weapons to slot in" became an issue.

Maybe a "rush-order" option that completes the construction at the minimum time but costs extra?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 12:18:01 PM
O.K, a final guess - the new low-tech ship is the phase ship with a circular anchor that we saw in the latest [REDACTED] tweet.

Good work :)

Also, do non-player factions suffer from the random d-mods we do or do they still have all-flawless ships (apart from pirates and independents using premade (D) skins)?

They have d-mods too, yeah, based on the same factors - doctrine, nanoforges, etc. The d-mods are now shown on the fleet tooltip, so you can see what you're getting into as far as actual fleet strength.

Maybe a "rush-order" option that completes the construction at the minimum time but costs extra?

Right, yeah, that could be the way to go. Have to be careful that it's not a "be bored for 5 minutes or spend X credits" choice, though. Could work if time becomes important enough that waiting has a real, non-boredom cost as well.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 13, 2018, 12:45:53 PM
And don't think I didn't see that teaser for a new low-tech toy...

Sharp! Now, can you identify what it is? I have complete confidence in your ability to do so

It’s a phase frigate.

Edit god damnit someone guessed it while I was eating
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: zakastra on February 13, 2018, 12:46:30 PM
Perhaps anything that is a small enough fraction of monthly production (say total purchases no greater than than 5%) are always available instantly, either as a case of being trivial to manufacture (HMG's, low complexity fighter LPC's) or ubiquitous to the point of spares always being on hand for requisition (Hounds and Buffalos). This would avoid waiting long periods for trivialities like filling that one weapon slot on your recovered flagship or picking up a quick replacement frigate whilst keeping the realism of waiting for a complex order of many weapons, or that spiffy new astral you ordered.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Wyvern on February 13, 2018, 01:23:28 PM
Right, yeah, that could be the way to go. Have to be careful that it's not a "be bored for 5 minutes or spend X credits" choice, though. Could work if time becomes important enough that waiting has a real, non-boredom cost as well.
This sounds like a good time to (re)suggest an option that lets the player wait at a colony - whether it's to let a pirate fleet go away, or just pass the time until their new flagship is finished building.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 13, 2018, 01:23:40 PM
Some thoughts on Warships/Carriers/Phase Ships:

1. Can we say "I don't need any phase ships, gimme more other stuff" and set it a category to 0?

2. Ships like the Venture and Odyssey have fighters but aren't especially fighter-focused. Are they slotted into Warships or Carriers?

3. Warships feels like a huge category compared to the other two, but I also know it a hard thing to draw the line down the middle of. Best delineation I came up with was separating out support ships like that aren't really one-on-one fighters.

3a. Examples of ships that popped into my head when I was thinking of "Support" ships: Vigilance, Sunder, Buffalo Mk.II, Mudskipper Mk.II, Omen, Kite, Gryphon
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 13, 2018, 01:44:21 PM
Right, yeah, that could be the way to go. Have to be careful that it's not a "be bored for 5 minutes or spend X credits" choice, though. Could work if time becomes important enough that waiting has a real, non-boredom cost as well.
This sounds like a good time to (re)suggest an option that lets the player wait at a colony - whether it's to let a pirate fleet go away, or just pass the time until their new flagship is finished building.

That is pretty easy to achieve. Just store your fleet and equipment then undock in a shuttle.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Kyuss11 on February 13, 2018, 02:32:43 PM
I can't freaking wait for this update,I'm so excited. I didn't see anything on actual construction needs for stuff besides credits.
Will there be resources needed like metal plates or ore for construction of ships,weapons etc?
Will we need to feed our colonies with food and fuel them with energy?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 02:40:51 PM
Perhaps anything that is a small enough fraction of monthly production (say total purchases no greater than than 5%) are always available instantly, either as a case of being trivial to manufacture (HMG's, low complexity fighter LPC's) or ubiquitous to the point of spares always being on hand for requisition (Hounds and Buffalos). This would avoid waiting long periods for trivialities like filling that one weapon slot on your recovered flagship or picking up a quick replacement frigate whilst keeping the realism of waiting for a complex order of many weapons, or that spiffy new astral you ordered.

Yep, something like that sounds like it might work. Would just have to work out the details. Or, possibly, a "rush order" button that doesn't cost anything, can only be used for orders below a certain percentage, and can only be used once a month.

This sounds like a good time to (re)suggest an option that lets the player wait at a colony - whether it's to let a pirate fleet go away, or just pass the time until their new flagship is finished building.

Yeah, I see what you mean. It's a bit of a crutch design-wise, though, isn't it? And having it in-game tells the player that they're supposed to be waiting around. Stuff like "wait out pirates" could be entirely gotten around by, say, a station being able to assist you in combat (and pirates therefore avoiding stations in the first place). And waiting for other things might be less of an issue if there's time pressure.

The other issue, though, is that a speedup beyond 2x (and even 2x, on occasion, really) is not very doable while maintaining a reasonable framerate.


1. Can we say "I don't need any phase ships, gimme more other stuff" and set it a category to 0?

You can't, no. For very small fleets, a setting of 1 will likely result in none of those types of ships being added, but for larger fleets, it's more likely that it'll be a mixture to some degree, though, again, a setting if 1 makes it fairly likely not to have any ships of that type. It just doesn't rule it out completely.

2. Ships like the Venture and Odyssey have fighters but aren't especially fighter-focused. Are they slotted into Warships or Carriers?

Warships.

3. Warships feels like a huge category compared to the other two, but I also know it a hard thing to draw the line down the middle of. Best delineation I came up with was separating out support ships like that aren't really one-on-one fighters.

3a. Examples of ships that popped into my head when I was thinking of "Support" ships: Vigilance, Sunder, Buffalo Mk.II, Mudskipper Mk.II, Omen, Kite, Gryphon

Hmm - I'm not sure that it needs to be a balanced breakdown in terms of "number of ships in each category".


I can't freaking wait for this update,I'm so excited. I didn't see anything on actual construction needs for stuff besides credits.
Will there be resources needed like metal plates or ore for construction of ships,weapons etc?

From a previous reply:

Does availability of ship parts, metals, etc. affect capacity?

Inasmuch as these shortages affect "Ship Hulls & Weapons" production - "production capacity" is based on that.


Will we need to feed our colonies with food and fuel them with energy?

You'll need to make sure those are available - i.e. there are accessible markets to import those from, whether someone elses or yours. Generally this means 1) building a spaceport and possibly 2) building a waystation somewhere along the way, for markets on the far fringes.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Voyager I on February 13, 2018, 03:00:36 PM
So it looks like even a minor manufacturing center is enough to provide a lifetime supply of Light Needlers and other premium weapons.

Frankly, that's a pretty big game-changer for ship loadouts.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Morgan Rue on February 13, 2018, 03:09:24 PM
Will we be able to make our own "goal" variants for our colonies fleets?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 04:11:55 PM
So it looks like even a minor manufacturing center is enough to provide a lifetime supply of Light Needlers and other premium weapons.

Frankly, that's a pretty big game-changer for ship loadouts.

While I'm pretty sure there'll be a balancing pass on weapon costs, yeah, I wouldn't expect that to change drastically. Of course, one still needs to acquire the blueprint somehow. Ideally, which blueprints you end up with early would add some variety to the early/mid game.

Will we be able to make our own "goal" variants for our colonies fleets?

Player fleets have a decent chance to use one of the "goal" variants for that ship in autofit, so some custom variants can end up there, but it's not something you can explicitly control. That'd be far too much micromanagement for my liking.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: funkycaribou on February 13, 2018, 04:24:06 PM
Sorry if this has been asked, but what is the in-universe explanation for blueprints being difficult or impossible to copy? I can understand them being valuable and protected, but presumably they are just information, in a universe with access to digital technology.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dri on February 13, 2018, 04:50:52 PM
I do hope there will be an option to observe player-made fleets when they engage in battle. Things are quite a bit more personal now that your own colonies can build fleets, so hopefully there'll be something like a "Remote Battle Feed" type option to see their battles play out properly, if you so choose.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 05:03:35 PM
Sorry if this has been asked, but what is the in-universe explanation for blueprints being difficult or impossible to copy? I can understand them being valuable and protected, but presumably they are just information, in a universe with access to digital technology.

Probably some form of DRM, employed by the Domain as part of its policy to keep developing Sectors dependent on central authority. Also, I wouldn't necessarily make the assumption that they're just information.

I do hope there will be an option to observe player-made fleets when they engage in battle. Things are quite a bit more personal now that your own colonies can build fleets, so hopefully there'll be something like a "Remote Battle Feed" type option to see their battles play out properly, if you so choose.

Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dri on February 13, 2018, 05:40:30 PM
Well on the other hand having your fleets go snap, crackle and pop and then disappear like everything else would be quite an underwhelming letdown. When one of your more impressive allied fleets gets into a big battle, you'd probably want to watch it anyways, yeah? For battles that are more ones-sided you'd still autoresolve.

Seems like a real missed opportunity to not allow the player to see these fleets engage in real battle, again, if they choose to.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Sendrien on February 13, 2018, 05:41:27 PM
Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)

Yes, what you say is true, for a small segment of players who are trying to get optimized results in their games. Very likely, those guys will save-reload to get a result. However, you have to balance that with the joy that the average player will have just watching his faction's ships at work. Also, don't forget that being able to watch the battle grants the player a LOT of important information about how to improve their fleet.

In this case, I think the pros outweigh the cons, Alex. Please reconsider this. Thanks!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Morgan Rue on February 13, 2018, 06:14:59 PM
Would be cool to watch a "simulated" fleet go against a "simulated" enemy. A "run in Simulator" button by the "Typical Heavy Patrol" thing would be very cool. Doesn't let you change the outcome of anything, but does let you test your theoretical AI fleet against an AI enemy and see how they preform.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Sendrien on February 13, 2018, 06:28:07 PM
On a separate note about blueprint groups, now that you have an easy way of grouping which factions use which equipment, I'd like to point out something I've noticed in my multiple playthroughs over the years. In all this time, despite the steady increase of new factions, I've always felt there were only three "real" factions in the game: Tri-Tachyon, Hegemony and Independent.

The reason is actually quite simple: each of these three factions have a faction-unique technology tier. Pirates are a weak fourth, if you count damaged tech as a "tier". All the other factions seem like a slapdash hybrid of these three(four) factions.

I'm not suggesting that you create a tech tier for each new faction, but there are certainly some ways to improve uniqueness and faction identity. And now that there are blueprints that group technologies together, it opens the door for a logically consistent way to differentiate factions, and give each one something iconic, in the same way that the Paragon is iconic of TT, and the Onslaught is iconic of Hegemony.

A lot of blueprint groups can be common to multiple factions, for instance, a low-tech frigate and destroyer blueprint group can be shared across all the factions which use them as their workhorses. But you could also add a single rarer blueprint for the same faction with a ship that ONLY that faction uses, whatever kind of ship it may be. In fact, it need not even be a ship. It could be a weapon, or a hull-mod (although this is less visible in combat).

Therefore, with the addition of only a few new ship/weapon blueprints that are unique to each faction, you could give combat against each faction a very unique identity and feeling.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Drokkath on February 13, 2018, 06:45:10 PM
Nice upcoming features. I'm still not that excited about being a leader of a faction despite spending time in SS with Nexerlin. But, however; the idea of having a small quiet faction of my own just so I have a hideout, a vault, an auto-factory and a storage all-in-one and have it highly guarded seems worth the effort and then some.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 13, 2018, 07:23:48 PM
Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)

Yes, what you say is true, for a small segment of players who are trying to get optimized results in their games. Very likely, those guys will save-reload to get a result. However, you have to balance that with the joy that the average player will have just watching his faction's ships at work. Also, don't forget that being able to watch the battle grants the player a LOT of important information about how to improve their fleet.

In this case, I think the pros outweigh the cons, Alex. Please reconsider this. Thanks!

No more information than you already have from watching your own fleet perform.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2018, 07:35:46 PM
Well on the other hand having your fleets go snap, crackle and pop and then disappear like everything else would be quite an underwhelming letdown. When one of your more impressive allied fleets gets into a big battle, you'd probably want to watch it anyways, yeah? For battles that are more ones-sided you'd still autoresolve.

Seems like a real missed opportunity to not allow the player to see these fleets engage in real battle, again, if they choose to.
Yes, what you say is true, for a small segment of players who are trying to get optimized results in their games. Very likely, those guys will save-reload to get a result. However, you have to balance that with the joy that the average player will have just watching his faction's ships at work. Also, don't forget that being able to watch the battle grants the player a LOT of important information about how to improve their fleet.

In this case, I think the pros outweigh the cons, Alex. Please reconsider this. Thanks!

I feel like being able to join the battle alongside your allies is about as far as this should go. Being able to remotely watch battles your faction fleets are involved in raises the question of why you couldn't participate in it; I'd like to keep the feeling of the player being in a specific place, rather than entirely omniscient. In addition, ship AI is designed with one ship being piloted by the player in mind, so "you can watch AI vs AI battles" is not a feature I want to explicitly push. That's not an experience the game is made for.

Finally, this is very much something that affects most players, not just a small subset that really want to optimize. How much it affects any given player is going to be variable, but the rules of a game naturally shape the way the game is played. Putting in rules that encourage one thing and then expecting the player to do something else that's actually fun is bad design, period; thinking that this only affects the hyper-optimizer style of player is imo a fallacy. It's a pretty well known fact that given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out. (I'm not saying that there's nothing like that already in the game or that its design is perfect, but those are things to fix, not add more of.)

So, for several reasons, I strongly feel this would be a bad idea. Apologies! :)


Would be cool to watch a "simulated" fleet go against a "simulated" enemy. A "run in Simulator" button by the "Typical Heavy Patrol" thing would be very cool. Doesn't let you change the outcome of anything, but does let you test your theoretical AI fleet against an AI enemy and see how they preform.

Hmm, yeah. I'd been half thinking about that already; mostly it's just a pain (i.e. could be time-consuming) to implement. But something like "your flagship plus the sample fleet, vs the simulator" could be fun.


On a separate note about blueprint groups, now that you have an easy way of grouping which factions use which equipment, I'd like to point out something I've noticed in my multiple playthroughs over the years. In all this time, despite the steady increase of new factions, I've always felt there were only three "real" factions in the game: Tri-Tachyon, Hegemony and Independent.

The reason is actually quite simple: each of these three factions have a faction-unique technology tier. Pirates are a weak fourth, if you count damaged tech as a "tier". All the other factions seem like a slapdash hybrid of these three(four) factions.

I'm not suggesting that you create a tech tier for each new faction, but there are certainly some ways to improve uniqueness and faction identity. And now that there are blueprints that group technologies together, it opens the door for a logically consistent way to differentiate factions, and give each one something iconic, in the same way that the Paragon is iconic of TT, and the Onslaught is iconic of Hegemony.

A lot of blueprint groups can be common to multiple factions, for instance, a low-tech frigate and destroyer blueprint group can be shared across all the factions which use them as their workhorses. But you could also add a single rarer blueprint for the same faction with a ship that ONLY that faction uses, whatever kind of ship it may be. In fact, it need not even be a ship. It could be a weapon, or a hull-mod (although this is less visible in combat).

Therefore, with the addition of only a few new ship/weapon blueprints that are unique to each faction, you could give combat against each faction a very unique identity and feeling.

Hmm, I see what you mean. But if one faction was the only one that (say) had access to the Apogee - it wouldn't even be guaranteed to show up in every fleet, right? The Onslaught/Paragon stand out because they're the pinnacle of power and so they matter because they *will* show up in the most powerful fleets and will matter there. Smaller ships seem unlikely to have the same impact unless they're prevalent. Still, it won't hurt, and it's more or less how I'm going about things in revamping what blueprints are available to what factions. If the Apogee was the main Persean League cruiser, that might be enough to help them stand out a bit more.

I'm also hopeful that the doctrine settings will help differentiate the factions more. For example, if the Hegemony and the Luddic Church have access to mostly the same kinds of ships, but the Church favors larger numbers of smaller and lower-quality ships, with a higher proportion of carriers, that should be very distinct despite them potentially sharing most of the hulls.

Also: this is a small thing, but I think "low-quality ships" will feel a lot more distinct in the next release, because the orangy-red bars that show the number of d-mods are now shown in more places. In particular in the fleet tooltip, the interaction dialog, and in the combat map, so it'll be extremely visually apparent.

Nice upcoming features. I'm still not that excited about being a leader of a faction despite spending time in SS with Nexerlin. But, however; the idea of having a small quiet faction of my own just so I have a hideout, a vault, an auto-factory and a storage all-in-one and have it highly guarded seems worth the effort and then some.

*thumbs up* I'm personally partial to the idea of having my own hideout somewhere, and being able to crank out some equipment there really makes it feel more useful, doesn't it?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Nanao-kun on February 13, 2018, 08:08:06 PM
Oh man, this future update looks amazing.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Drokkath on February 13, 2018, 09:14:24 PM
*thumbs up* I'm personally partial to the idea of having my own hideout somewhere, and being able to crank out some equipment there really makes it feel more useful, doesn't it?

Indeed, come to think of it; It reminds me quite a bit from X-Com games and I still play that old X-Com with OpenXcom program along with mods sometimes as it is a type of strategy and tactics game I can manage and deal with due to slower paced gameplay that let's me process info in my head.

I've noticed that in SS with Nexerlin (along with Console Commands for convenience and for fun ship testing), in some way I can keep a small but high quality fleet going and fortify invaded places just enough to make them stand on their own for a while and it made me realize that this game doesn't feel like just being some ruler of a space-faring government of sorts but rather being more of as someone who makes a giant ripple in time to turn the tides of life in the sector for the better or for the worst, depending of how one plays the game.

It's what I love about this game as there's no world-ending stuff to deal with like in almost any other game. Just different factions of humans trying to re-discover what has been lost while the player is an anonymous entity intially who can carve his/her/its own path and story in the sector with whatever faction if ever and/or whenever. All proverbial roads are open and paths lead to different outcomes even if they are just minor outcomes.


Thanks by the way; For developing this game, seeing its development through still to whatever is the "end" point of the "final" fruits of labor of this project/program/game (I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO). Thanks to all the good folk here who brainstorm with ideas to this game and to its mods and those who test the game to find bugs and issues to fix and thanks to all of them who have done/doing amazing mods for this game.

I have a lot of respect for Alex and for the modders because I myself, I can't code a script but I can mod the game due to easy to access game files that make sense enough to freely fiddle around to make something new to use in the game after some couple of hours working on that thing and finally seeing it actually flying or shooting or doing something one intended to make it a working thing.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Sendrien on February 13, 2018, 11:19:44 PM
Hmm, I see what you mean. But if one faction was the only one that (say) had access to the Apogee - it wouldn't even be guaranteed to show up in every fleet, right? The Onslaught/Paragon stand out because they're the pinnacle of power and so they matter because they *will* show up in the most powerful fleets and will matter there. Smaller ships seem unlikely to have the same impact unless they're prevalent. Still, it won't hurt, and it's more or less how I'm going about things in revamping what blueprints are available to what factions. If the Apogee was the main Persean League cruiser, that might be enough to help them stand out a bit more.

I'm also hopeful that the doctrine settings will help differentiate the factions more. For example, if the Hegemony and the Luddic Church have access to mostly the same kinds of ships, but the Church favors larger numbers of smaller and lower-quality ships, with a higher proportion of carriers, that should be very distinct despite them potentially sharing most of the hulls.

Also: this is a small thing, but I think "low-quality ships" will feel a lot more distinct in the next release, because the orangy-red bars that show the number of d-mods are now shown in more places. In particular in the fleet tooltip, the interaction dialog, and in the combat map, so it'll be extremely visually apparent.

I agree that doctrines can help differentiate in terms of fleet composition and fighting style. In fact, carrier fleets and phase fleets should definitely stand out. But I disagree that the Battleship class vessels are the only ones that can give a faction an iconic ship. For instance, if one faction had exclusive access to the Hyperion, that would instantly make their fleets recognizable.

Ship systems/weapons that have a very unique gameplay mechanic are what truly differentiate ships, big or small. The reason why Hyperion and Scarab stand out just as much as Paragon and Onslaught clearly has little to do with their size or power. Teleportation, Time Dilation, the Fortress Shield mechanic and the Thermal Pulse Cannon all add so much identity to their respective ships.

Perhaps when you do your next revision of ships, you could revisit some ship systems with unique mechanics and look for opportunities to add a few more built-in weapons similar to the TPC on the Onslaught? (scaled for power, naturally). TT is a very unique faction because each of their ships is so special. I think the other factions deserve the same degree of love as TT.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Draba on February 14, 2018, 01:06:59 AM
(I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO)

The art style also helps a lot, it's not something that'll look bad in 10 years.
My guess is once everything is done SS will be right up there with Transport Tycoon Deluxe in replayability.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Gothars on February 14, 2018, 03:27:00 AM
Very nice, I like the breakdown with the ship packages and the doctrine settings.

Right, as I mentioned a few posts above, doctrine settings are almost entirely combat-layer-focused. I could see adding a setting or two for something campaign related, when/if it becomes clear what that something might be, but that's something to be careful with, so that some settings don't become clearly-best.

I'm not quite clear on this: Are equivalent-tier fleets from all the factions supposed to be of equivalent strength? So e.g. a heavy TT patrol has a 50% chance to win against a heavy pirate patrol? That would feel odd, I think. If true, then how are varying  faction/colony strengths represented by their fleets? Do stronger factions just produce more/higher-tier fleets? Or is it about nanoforges?

I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.

Another thing: Maybe as a player wins more of a faction's favor, he get's a say in their fleet composition? When they like you, you get to look at their Doctrine & Blueprints tab, which would be interesting. And once they really trust you, you could re-assign one or two of their points. Makes you feel more involved, especially if you don't plan to establish your own faction.
Combining that with the idea above, maybe even upgrade the number of points they have. If you become a pirate king, you could have the influence to improve their organization and strengthen their overall fleet power from six to seven points.



*(Btw, shouldn't start "blueprints" with a capital B after the ampersand?)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 14, 2018, 05:48:32 AM
The first standard faction I tend to eliminate in Nexerelin are Luddic Path because their ships are weak (plus with them mostly SO, I can win by waiting out their death clocks), probably weaker than Pirates.  One-on-one, Colossus 2 is weaker than Hammerhead!  If Luddic Path equivalent of other factions' cruisers are weaker than Hammerhead, they should be easy pickings.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Defertos on February 14, 2018, 08:13:59 AM
Well that's another high quality blog post, great job as always.

Other than pure praise I though I'd drop a small suggestion on the "Fleet Doctrine™"

Have you thought about having a small rock-paper-scissors type relations between different fleet doctrines and ship types?

For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, the system would tune the results to favor the relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

This would add extra immersion & strategy to the campaign layer since players would be able have somewhat solid idea on power relations between factions and also allow them to make educated guesses on outcomes of 2 fleets auto-resolving.
In addition this would give players other options to think about before actively going to a war with a faction, like changing doctrine to favor carriers if enemy likes to field lots of warships. (Or going to war with a faction when it is already fighting against a faction it is in disadvantage with)
Also the whole thing could easily be explained in tool tips when hovering over different doctrine options: "Warships generally have the armaments to easily defend against sneaky Phase ships, but struggle when targeted by enemy carriers", "Higher quality ships easily outmatch several lower grade ships, but they can not outperform skilled Officers".

For last having an ability to give "quirks" to certain factions that modify the doctrine benefits and penalties like Luddic Path having "Daredevils" that increases power against civilian ships, or Persean League having an "ion focus" making them more effective against low tech but less effective against high tech.
Above could also generate a more diverse modscape when it comes to campaign interactions between factions.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: TaLaR on February 14, 2018, 08:22:26 AM
For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, it would tune the results to favor that relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

I'd rather have them auto-resolved as closely as possible to what actually fighting it out would produce. Last thing we need is auto-resolve that is wrong-by-design.
Disconnect between auto and happens when you join a fight would be totally immersion breaking. Like potential situation where your patrol is wiped by auto, but can easily win same fight if you just join and sit in the corner.

Would also lead to outfitting fleets in all kinds of weird ways (as long as I max out abstract bars that win over competition it does not matter that resulting fleet can't do anything in a real fight). So it becomes a question of how to get bars into position at minimum cost (if costs are involved at all).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 14, 2018, 09:52:33 AM
I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.
That probably works for officer quality/ship quality/number, since the values are independent scales, but probably not warships/carriers/phase ships since that scale is about proportions of different ship types in a fleet. You can't make a combat fleet 60% warship 45% carrier 10% phase ship.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Blothorn on February 14, 2018, 10:23:59 AM
For example:
Warships > Phase ships > Carriers > Warships.
Officer quality > Ship quality > More ships > Ship size > Officer quality.
Low tech > Midline > High tech > Low tech.

When 2 fleets auto resolve, it would tune the results to favor that relations graph above based upon ships present in fleet. (This could also be used in deciding war results between factions by simply comparing doctrines and tech type +possible modifiers players may or may not have ability to affect).

I'd rather have them auto-resolved as closely as possible to what actually fighting it out would produce. Last thing we need is auto-resolve that is wrong-by-design.
Disconnect between auto and happens when you join a fight would be totally immersion breaking. Like potential situation where your patrol is wiped by auto, but can easily win same fight if you just join and sit in the corner.

Would also lead to outfitting fleets in all kinds of weird ways (as long as I max out abstract bars that win over competition it does not matter that resulting fleet can't do anything in a real fight). So it becomes a question of how to get bars into position at minimum cost (if costs are involved at all).

Aye. Not to mention that RPS tends to be a terrible mechanic unless both sides have access to most or all of the options and some power to influence which matchups actually fight. For fleet composition, where all a side's fleets share strengths and weaknesses, I see this as either a slightly tedious "I win" mechanic for the player (if the AI never adjusts fleet composition, so the player just needs to adjust to whomever he is fighting at the time) or a source of endless frustration (if the AI does adjust to counter, requiring a constant cycle of updates).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 14, 2018, 10:45:46 AM
Thanks by the way; For developing this game, seeing its development through still to whatever is the "end" point of the "final" fruits of labor of this project/program/game (I put quotes because gem games like SS with modding-friendly features age usually exceptionally well, IMHO). Thanks to all the good folk here who brainstorm with ideas to this game and to its mods and those who test the game to find bugs and issues to fix and thanks to all of them who have done/doing amazing mods for this game.

I have a lot of respect for Alex and for the modders because I myself, I can't code a script but I can mod the game due to easy to access game files that make sense enough to freely fiddle around to make something new to use in the game after some couple of hours working on that thing and finally seeing it actually flying or shooting or doing something one intended to make it a working thing.

Thank you! I'm glad you're having fun doing some modding; I remember enjoying that a lot myself for other games.

(And, indeed, I'm also very grateful to everyone that chimes in with feedback or suggestions!)

For instance, if one faction had exclusive access to the Hyperion, that would instantly make their fleets recognizable.

Ship systems/weapons that have a very unique gameplay mechanic are what truly differentiate ships, big or small. The reason why Hyperion and Scarab stand out just as much as Paragon and Onslaught clearly has little to do with their size or power. Teleportation, Time Dilation, the Fortress Shield mechanic and the Thermal Pulse Cannon all add so much identity to their respective ships.

Yep, I hear what you're saying. It's not that something like the Hyperion isn't unique, it's that it's not widespread in a faction's fleets, right. So if a fleet doesn't have one, then the Hyperion technically being avaialble doesn't do much. The battleships/capitals kind of get around that because they're almost always present in the larger fleets, the ones you're most likely to remember encountering. There's just more hull variety the lower the hull size is - a faction might have access to a couple of capital ships, but like 10 frigates. Since there also tend to be a lot of frigates in a given fleet, specific ones can get lost in the shuffle a bit, too.


I'm not quite clear on this: Are equivalent-tier fleets from all the factions supposed to be of equivalent strength? So e.g. a heavy TT patrol has a 50% chance to win against a heavy pirate patrol? That would feel odd, I think. If true, then how are varying  faction/colony strengths represented by their fleets? Do stronger factions just produce more/higher-tier fleets? Or is it about nanoforges?

Right, yes - differentianting campaign power is the job of larger colonies, stability (which affects production quality), nanoforges, having the demand for ships & weapons be met, and so on.

I think it could be interesting if the more disorganized factions could only spent, like, six points on the warships/carriers/phase ships and officer quality/ship quality/number selectors. While well organized, powerful factions could spend eight. Then the player faction could start with a low number and get additional points as the campaign (and their industrial strength) progresses. That would make the Doctrine & Blueprints tab* more interesting too, since then it would not just be cosmetic.

Hah! Already planning to do something similar (great minds, etc?); I suspect pirates will probably get something like 1 in officer/ship quality, and maybe 2 in quantity. Doesn't make sense to do that with warships/carriers/phase ships, though, since that's just relative proportions, not absolute quantity.

As far as industrial strength progressing, the way it's set up now means that if you stack on ship quality in every way possible, you end up with some diminishing returns and an "extra" point or two to play with, since you'd only need 4 or 3 in ship quality to mostly get pristine hulls.

Another thing: Maybe as a player wins more of a faction's favor, he get's a say in their fleet composition? When they like you, you get to look at their Doctrine & Blueprints tab, which would be interesting. And once they really trust you, you could re-assign one or two of their points. Makes you feel more involved, especially if you don't plan to establish your own faction.
Combining that with the idea above, maybe even upgrade the number of points they have. If you become a pirate king, you could have the influence to improve their organization and strengthen their overall fleet power from six to seven points.

Hmm. So yeah, that's interesting. I'm not sure how "join a faction" mechanics would play out; this sort of thing may be worthwhile but it also seems like a bit of a pain to implement (the idea of how far you can stray from the base doctrine, UI support for that, letting the player know that it's even something they can do, and so on).

*(Btw, shouldn't start "blueprints" with a capital B after the ampersand?)

I've been leaning towards only capitalizing the first word in a button title in these kinds of tab buttons. It's a bit weird - in some places, that feels good, and in some cases (such as in the main menu, i.e. "New Game") having only the first be capitalized would be weird. I'm not sure whether that's just a "me" thing or if there's some larger principle here that I'm unaware of, but it certainly feels like consistency in this doesn't produce good results across the board. Although, if I had to pick one, then "capitalize everything" would be the better option.


Well that's another high quality blog post, great job as always.

Thank you!

Have you thought about having a small rock-paper-scissors type relations between different fleet doctrines and ship types?
...

I'm sure there'll be some of that naturally as far as the battles the player actually participates in alongside their fleets, but for autoresolve, I think it wouldn't be great. As others have mentioned, RPS works when it's a dynamic situation; if factions have fixed doctrines (which they need to, since that's their personality), then there would always be the same right answer for facing a particular faction, and that's not very interesting.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: SCC on February 14, 2018, 01:20:14 PM
Here comes the meat of the 0.9 update... Starsector DIY is so much simpler than the real one!
I've seen somewhere here that there are blueprints of more than just ships and weapons, neat! Do the packages come always in ship only or weapon only varieties?
In the Doctrine screen you have categories sorted alphabetically - wouldn't it be better if top row was occupied entirely by all, low, medium and high tech options? Wouldn't lose them in a bunch of modded factions then.
Custom production is where you miss the appeal of manually ordering machines of war - it's not that it's cheap (not when it comes to the multimillionaire player, at least), nor that it's yours or fast... It's that you buy exactly what you want and it's delivered to a specific place - do I have to go on a shopping spree to find that rare weapon or ship? Nope, it's here, or will be here in a month, 100% guarantee! No worry! Thus, I advise you to have prices for custom production be equal or even more expensive than normal buying, because player shouldn't be incentivised to always/often do custom production, because sometimes going out of your way to buy yours can make it actually more expensive, if you factor supplies and fuel.

Perhaps anything that is a small enough fraction of monthly production (say total purchases no greater than than 5%) are always available instantly, either as a case of being trivial to manufacture (HMG's, low complexity fighter LPC's) or ubiquitous to the point of spares always being on hand for requisition (Hounds and Buffalos).
Make an "apocalypse-proof storage" building to increase this bonus! Think US and no M1 Abrams made since the cold war, just retrofitted.
Now the bad news...
Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)
I feel like being able to join the battle alongside your allies is about as far as this should go. Being able to remotely watch battles your faction fleets are involved in raises the question of why you couldn't participate in it; I'd like to keep the feeling of the player being in a specific place, rather than entirely omniscient. In addition, ship AI is designed with one ship being piloted by the player in mind, so "you can watch AI vs AI battles" is not a feature I want to explicitly push. That's not an experience the game is made for.

Finally, this is very much something that affects most players, not just a small subset that really want to optimize. How much it affects any given player is going to be variable, but the rules of a game naturally shape the way the game is played. Putting in rules that encourage one thing and then expecting the player to do something else that's actually fun is bad design, period; thinking that this only affects the hyper-optimizer style of player is imo a fallacy. It's a pretty well known fact that given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out. (I'm not saying that there's nothing like that already in the game or that its design is perfect, but those are things to fix, not add more of.)

So, for several reasons, I strongly feel this would be a bad idea. Apologies! :)
You were the chosen one! You were to make the perfect space RTS, not leave the genre in darkness!
Well, maybe kinda not really. I just hoped there'd be a way to actually experience uneven, close or panic-inducing battles. In campaign I just use whatever exploit I fancy to jumpstart my way out of early game and then I just... Pick my fights too well. I feel like RTS on SS-engine (with obvious option to autoresolve some battles, do manually the rest) would be VERY good, even if majority of mechanics bar battles were simplified. And the interface was a bit different than from normal mode. Oops, that's unpaid work.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 14, 2018, 01:35:35 PM
I've seen somewhere here that there are blueprints of more than just ships and weapons, neat! Do the packages come always in ship only or weapon only varieties?

They can have both - or, rather, all three - ships, weapons, and fighters. Several of the packages (i.e. low/midline/high) contain all three; there's also a separate "missile weapon package" for the more common missiles, since they're not as tech-level specific.

In the Doctrine screen you have categories sorted alphabetically - wouldn't it be better if top row was occupied entirely by all, low, medium and high tech options? Wouldn't lose them in a bunch of modded factions then.

I don't think it makes sense to emphasize these; as far as this screen is concerned, it's just a set of tags. They could be more or less important than other tags depending on various factors. I.E. if a mod adds a bunch of ships and you're interested in them, then that mod's tag is probably more important. I don't think these three are that special. Could make sense to sort based on the number of items under each tag, though, hmm - since that *is* indicative of importance. Let me make a note - I wonder how other similar tag-based UIs work. Alphabetical does have the advantage of the user having a better idea of where the tag is going to be, though.

Custom production is where you miss the appeal of manually ordering machines of war - it's not that it's cheap (not when it comes to the multimillionaire player, at least), nor that it's yours or fast... It's that you buy exactly what you want and it's delivered to a specific place - do I have to go on a shopping spree to find that rare weapon or ship? Nope, it's here, or will be here in a month, 100% guarantee! No worry! Thus, I advise you to have prices for custom production be equal or even more expensive than normal buying, because player shouldn't be incentivised to always/often do custom production, because sometimes going out of your way to buy yours can make it actually more expensive, if you factor supplies and fuel.

That's a great point, thank you for bringing this up. "It should be cheaper" was kind of an unquestioned assumption on my part; but in messing with it so far, it does feel like some of the ships and weapons are too inexpensive. Heck, even at 1x the base cost, it'd still be cheaper due to not having a tariff, and, as you mention, supplies and fuel being factored in. I'll keep an eye on this balance-wise, also depends on how much income the player ends up getting from colonies.

Well, maybe kinda not really. I just hoped there'd be a way to actually experience uneven, close or panic-inducing battles.

Hah, I don't know what that has to do with not being able to observe AI vs AI fights! I'd expect more desperate battles to come about due to needing to defend colonies - unlike your fleet, they can't run, so that's a qualitative difference as far as being able to pick your fights goes.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: SCC on February 14, 2018, 01:43:14 PM
I thought of my dream RTS mode as, let's say, hand-picked series of mission battles.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: PCCL on February 14, 2018, 03:17:08 PM
How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Ranakastrasz on February 14, 2018, 03:34:14 PM
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

Oh wait, I already bought the game. How do I make it come faster?

------

Looking forward to it.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Kirschbra on February 14, 2018, 04:32:32 PM
It's a pretty well known fact that given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out.

Guilty
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 14, 2018, 06:16:04 PM
Guilty as charged, too.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 14, 2018, 06:30:39 PM
How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?
My guess is that you start building a Tarsus/Buffalo/Mudskipper/Colossus, skip a few steps, and then start installing refit systems.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 14, 2018, 07:15:03 PM
How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?
My guess is that you start building a Tarsus/Buffalo/Mudskipper/Colossus, skip a few steps, and then start installing refit systems.
It might also require you have both BPs but many of those "base" BP's look like the ones we will start off with. Speaking of which, hey Alex, will we need both the normal AND the XIV BPs in order to make XIV ships (and other "skin ships")? Let's say I get lucky and find an XIV Onslaught BP really early but I don't have the original BP, can I still make it?

Also, will battles ever cough up BPs or "parts" of one? Or will a system be put into place for modders to add something like that in?
Another thing: Will the codex list what a ship is classified as for both BPs and Fleet Doctrine?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dri on February 14, 2018, 07:39:13 PM
So just to be clear, ALL production is based purely on credits and time? You won't need 400 units of metals and 200 heavy machinery in a stockpile to produce an Onslaught?

I dunno, part of me seems like this would be a good way to give commodities more...oomph!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on February 14, 2018, 07:41:28 PM
So just to be clear, ALL production is based purely on credits and time? You won't need 400 units of metals and 200 heavy machinery in a stockpile to produce an Onslaught?

I dunno, part of me seems like this would be a good way to give commodities more...oomph!
Seems like you'd need a source of those materials if you wanted good production quality. Forcing the player to ferry commodities over to outposts every time you want to build something isn't much better than needing to scour every market for the ship you want.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: PCCL on February 14, 2018, 07:48:32 PM
Should XIV ships even be buildable? The description specifically says it is one of the original survivors of the battlegroup....

Gameplay-wise, I like the idea of the Hegemony, being the ancient "empire" figure that they are, have some long lost technology that no one else can ever get. Lore-wise, I think at least there should be a rewriting of the XIV description
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Clockwork Owl on February 14, 2018, 08:00:47 PM
The description says that an XIV modification requires drydock facility of Domain-era tech level, yeah
But maybe auxilliaries?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dostya on February 14, 2018, 08:29:26 PM
I like the plan that blueprints are learned faction wide, and aren't stored anywhere that the player has to worry about. If they were planet by planet, bound to those planets and could be lost, that would create certain incentives. I think my initial plan would involve maximized planetary defense, maximized heavy industry/shipyards, and a few expendable resource colonies in or out-system to feed it. I'd also make sure to plant several (ideally 5+) more mostly self-sufficient colonies around the system to spam more defense and patrol fleets out to bog down attackers further. I'd gamble on the fleet output by the high end planet to provide enough backbone for the spam to make the system largely self-defending, or at least enough to manage to defend itself for me to return to handle especially problematic sorts. Also, no AI Cores allowed in that system. Even in storage. Mostly because losing all my hard-gained blueprints would be an...unacceptable outcome.

Speaking of, patrol fleets. It seems that larger planets don't send out patrols to aid more isolated planets in other systems where they probably should. It'd make sense, or be appreciated depending on Alpha Core RNG doing Bad Things (TM) to colonies, to be able to have one colony send patrols to another's defense (ideally to be done automatically, really, especially with same-faction colonies in the same system). Also, on that note, it'd also make sense if the player faction goes carrier heavy, factions at war with them would increase the number of anti-fighter ships in their compositions. And vice versa for capital ships, etc. Maybe something to think about for two or three releases from now since fleet composition is going to be adjustable in-game. Granted, each faction would have 'preferred' fleet comps to default to even if they change in response to enemy doctrine, but it'd increase vanilla variety especially after the AI factions have fought a few wars with each other.

The apparent continued existence of marines alongside Alpha Core administrators doing *something* to colonies leads me to suspect that there'll be a reconquest mechanic implemented on Alpha Core colonies. Couple that with a population loss during the rebellion and an immigration malus for a time afterwards, and it'd be a proportionate disincentive to simply slap Alphas on everything. Permanently losing colonies with Alphas in play on, what seems to be sold as, bad RNG just seems a bit too harsh to be plausible to me. Or I'd find a way to mod it out, because that would just be uncool.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 14, 2018, 08:31:22 PM
So just to be clear, ALL production is based purely on credits and time? You won't need 400 units of metals and 200 heavy machinery in a stockpile to produce an Onslaught?

I dunno, part of me seems like this would be a good way to give commodities more...oomph!
From what I can gather, I think that the Orbital Works facility turn Metals and Heavy Machinery into "Ship Parts and Weapons" (seen in recent development screenshots as the little Hound symbol in the commodity list) which is in turn converted into the faction's fleets (and players' custom orders).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dri on February 14, 2018, 08:53:01 PM
Ah, okay, so commodities to build ships do indeed need to be sourced from somewhere but they go through a layer of abstraction that the player has little control over. So a colony with zero access to metals will never be able to produce ships and weapons then.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Igncom1 on February 14, 2018, 09:08:49 PM
Probably not, but that's up to the player.

A world without access to trade for metals is also likely a world without access to trade for anything, which would be very bad for taxes.

To begin with you might want a colony within range of the core worlds, or to use a waystation to link you to them so you can get imports.

The overtime build up your economy utilizing the blueprints that you can copy but the other powers can't to the point of eclipsing them and eventually removing them entirely. Assuming that will ever be possible.

The just colonize the whole rest of the sector and rule as the emperor of the second great human domain!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Thaago on February 14, 2018, 09:30:01 PM
Aaah, I'm so excited for all of this!

Question: will the aggression rating we put in our doctrine effect the officers available for hire? I would love to have a staff of loyal officers coming from my own colony, all trained to be fearless in battle.

Another question about aggression: you mention that it effects the default, non-officered ships of that faction. Will that be true for my fleet as well? So by setting my aggression all the way up I can sacrifice wave after wave of suicidal multi-D mod ships?

Also, whats this Paladin PD system weapon I see? Rework of the Guardian?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: MesoTroniK on February 14, 2018, 10:32:53 PM
I personally think that 14th ships (and similar things) should not be able to be constructed by the player. Fitting lore wise, and also making it so that maybe some faction ships can only be bought and scavenged, not manufactured by the player creates consequences for choices made.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: David on February 14, 2018, 10:39:31 PM
Also, whats this Paladin PD system weapon I see? Rework of the Guardian?

*code orange alarm goes off in Hegemony COMSEC field office*

The supervising colonel scans the datanet logs pulled by the breach algorithm (sub-gamma, of course). Key words glow in accusing red blocks; his face hardens. "Dispatch clean-up immediately."
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Igncom1 on February 14, 2018, 10:42:35 PM
I personally think that 14th ships (and similar things) should not be able to be constructed by the player. Fitting lore wise, and also making it so that maybe some faction ships can only be bought and scavenged, not manufactured by the player creates consequences for choices made.

Wasn't most of the really good 14th fleet stuff lot during the first AI war? I suppose you could find some of it out in the dark corners of the sector guarded by things that aren't supposed to exist any more. Assuming you live that long!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Thaago on February 14, 2018, 11:04:17 PM
Also, whats this Paladin PD system weapon I see? Rework of the Guardian?

*code orange alarm goes off in Hegemony COMSEC field office*

The supervising colonel scans the datanet logs pulled by the breach algorithm (sub-gamma, of course). Key words glow in accusing red blocks; his face hardens. "Dispatch clean-up immediately."


<3 You guys are great.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 15, 2018, 05:03:38 AM
I think the XIV hullmod description says something that it was made with pre-collapse technology.  If so, that does not necessarily mean the ship itself was pre-collapse, just made with pre-collapse tools.  Of course, Alex can change the description to fix that plot hole.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: FooF on February 15, 2018, 05:23:10 AM
I think scarcity/rarity of certain ships and weapons will give the player incentive to continue relations with the major factions. "Yes, you might be able to find a Paragon blueprint but all things considered, you're surest bet is to ally yourself to Tri-Tach." etc. The (XIV) ships could fall into that category, as could many of the ships that require "Cooperative" relations to purchase, as a general rule. If you find a blueprint for one of them, you can circumvent the relations (and get it at half price), which is a major incentive to acquire them.

Along with the doctrine info, there's the option of "officer quality" but it begs the question if you will be able to recruit officers from your own colonies. Will their quality/cost differ from other markets, etc.

I also had the impression that metals, heavy machinery, and other commodities would be necessary to construct ships to give those items inherent value beyond credit price. Does the "Heavy Industry" that supplies the "Ship Hulls and Weapons" commodity require those raw materials? Or have I been stockpiling 10,000 Metals from my bounty hunting exploits for nothing? ;) To put it another way, without it becoming an optimization exploit, is there any reason for the player to keep less valuable commodities (metals, ore, etc.) over more valuable commodities because it will directly improve their colonies/colony management? A "short-term loss, long-term gain" kind of scenario?


Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 15, 2018, 09:07:34 AM
I guess player can dump vendor trash in local resources or whatever so that the colony can use them up.  That is what I plan to do, instead of sticking them into storage to rot or selling.

Hullmods being locked behind factions is annoying enough.  It seems like if player wants commission, the best factions to join are Tri-Tachyon or maybe Persean League.  Luddic Church is rubbish.  The only good thing Sindrians have is cheap fuel and few A ships.  Hegemony has little more than A and XIV ships and cheap supplies.

I guess I can farm cores and turn some in so that I can undo Vengeful relations from factions I become hostile with due to juggling commissions with the best factions.  If the only way I can get the best stuff is through commission, then manipulating relations with cores seems like the (tedious) way to go.  So far, I have not bothered with that, but if I wanted all the hullmods, that is what I would do.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: TaLaR on February 15, 2018, 10:00:03 AM
I guess player can dump vendor trash in local resources or whatever so that the colony can use them up.  That is what I plan to do, instead of sticking them into storage to rot or selling.

"Ship production is based off importing a “Ship Hulls & Weapons” commodity produced by Heavy Industry"
"The key simplification was to take one step back in terms of abstraction and express production costs directly in credits."
It seems that having access to “Ship Hulls & Weapons” commodity by producing/importing it is the only thing that matters beside money spent.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 15, 2018, 10:05:31 AM
How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?

Hacks of existing blueprints for the base hull. Presumably, such hacking is relatively common, though the results are naturally less than ideal.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

That's what I like to hear :)

It might also require you have both BPs but many of those "base" BP's look like the ones we will start off with. Speaking of which, hey Alex, will we need both the normal AND the XIV BPs in order to make XIV ships (and other "skin ships")? Let's say I get lucky and find an XIV Onslaught BP really early but I don't have the original BP, can I still make it?

They wouldn't require a base, no - that's too fiddly for my taste; the way BPs work is zoomed out a bit to avoid dealing with just this sort of thing.

Should XIV ships even be buildable? The description specifically says it is one of the original survivors of the battlegroup....

Gameplay-wise, I like the idea of the Hegemony, being the ancient "empire" figure that they are, have some long lost technology that no one else can ever get. Lore-wise, I think at least there should be a rewriting of the XIV description

Yeah, it doesn't say that anymore :)

That said, I don't think you'd be finding XIV blueprints just anywhere, if you can even acquire them at all. But in terms of gameplay, a limited supply of any kind of hull for an AI faction just doesn't work well.


Also, will battles ever cough up BPs or "parts" of one? Or will a system be put into place for modders to add something like that in?
Another thing: Will the codex list what a ship is classified as for both BPs and Fleet Doctrine?

Probably not. For fleet doctrine, I think it's fairly clear to begin with, and the "typical" fleet display can answer any questions. For whether a BP for a ship is rare or not, I don't think that's good information to show the player.


I like the plan that blueprints are learned faction wide, and aren't stored anywhere that the player has to worry about. If they were planet by planet, bound to those planets and could be lost, that would create certain incentives. I think my initial plan would involve maximized planetary defense, maximized heavy industry/shipyards, and a few expendable resource colonies in or out-system to feed it. I'd also make sure to plant several (ideally 5+) more mostly self-sufficient colonies around the system to spam more defense and patrol fleets out to bog down attackers further. I'd gamble on the fleet output by the high end planet to provide enough backbone for the spam to make the system largely self-defending, or at least enough to manage to defend itself for me to return to handle especially problematic sorts. Also, no AI Cores allowed in that system. Even in storage. Mostly because losing all my hard-gained blueprints would be an...unacceptable outcome.

I think there'll be some incentive to centralize production in any case - but then, that's part of the reason for this system, is that adding more detail to blueprint handling doesn't really change *that* much.

Speaking of, patrol fleets. It seems that larger planets don't send out patrols to aid more isolated planets in other systems where they probably should. It'd make sense, or be appreciated depending on Alpha Core RNG doing Bad Things (TM) to colonies, to be able to have one colony send patrols to another's defense (ideally to be done automatically, really, especially with same-faction colonies in the same system). Also, on that note, it'd also make sense if the player faction goes carrier heavy, factions at war with them would increase the number of anti-fighter ships in their compositions. And vice versa for capital ships, etc. Maybe something to think about for two or three releases from now since fleet composition is going to be adjustable in-game. Granted, each faction would have 'preferred' fleet comps to default to even if they change in response to enemy doctrine, but it'd increase vanilla variety especially after the AI factions have fought a few wars with each other.

The apparent continued existence of marines alongside Alpha Core administrators doing *something* to colonies leads me to suspect that there'll be a reconquest mechanic implemented on Alpha Core colonies. Couple that with a population loss during the rebellion and an immigration malus for a time afterwards, and it'd be a proportionate disincentive to simply slap Alphas on everything. Permanently losing colonies with Alphas in play on, what seems to be sold as, bad RNG just seems a bit too harsh to be plausible to me. Or I'd find a way to mod it out, because that would just be uncool.

RESPONSE REDACTED BY HEGEMONY COMSEC


So just to be clear, ALL production is based purely on credits and time? You won't need 400 units of metals and 200 heavy machinery in a stockpile to produce an Onslaught?

I dunno, part of me seems like this would be a good way to give commodities more...oomph!
From what I can gather, I think that the Orbital Works facility turn Metals and Heavy Machinery into "Ship Parts and Weapons" (seen in recent development screenshots as the little Hound symbol in the commodity list) which is in turn converted into the faction's fleets (and players' custom orders).

I also had the impression that metals, heavy machinery, and other commodities would be necessary to construct ships to give those items inherent value beyond credit price. Does the "Heavy Industry" that supplies the "Ship Hulls and Weapons" commodity require those raw materials? Or have I been stockpiling 10,000 Metals from my bounty hunting exploits for nothing? ;) To put it another way, without it becoming an optimization exploit, is there any reason for the player to keep less valuable commodities (metals, ore, etc.) over more valuable commodities because it will directly improve their colonies/colony management? A "short-term loss, long-term gain" kind of scenario?

To elaborate a bit: right, production is based on your colonies' production of the "Ship Hulls & Weapons" commodity. That, in turn, requires that demand for metals, transplutonics, and iirc a few other things be filled. So, production requires either 1) that the colony be hooked into the economy and supplied with these (i.e. it's accessible enough that this stuff can be imported), or 2) that the resources be hand-delivered, but that's the much more tedious and less practical option, considering the relative ease of the first one.

Now, you *could* have a colony on the fringes that relies on the player for its supply. There could possibly be some benefits to this (say, being safer in some way?), but that's entirely speculative, and I'd want to avoid encouraging the player to do this; for the usual "safe and boring" reasons.

The more useful and reasonable thing to do with commodities like metals and so on (aside from selling them) would be to dump them into an industrial colony's "Local Resources" submarket. They'll stay there until needed to make up a shortfall, which could be caused by the loss of a trade fleet or something else affecting supply.


Aaah, I'm so excited for all of this!

:D

Question: will the aggression rating we put in our doctrine effect the officers available for hire? I would love to have a staff of loyal officers coming from my own colony, all trained to be fearless in battle.

Yes! The hireable officer personalities are based on the faction doctrine, but with some variance - i.e. a flat chance for the personality to be anything at all. (Possibly why they're hireable now, rather than still working for the faction...)


Another question about aggression: you mention that it effects the default, non-officered ships of that faction. Will that be true for my fleet as well? So by setting my aggression all the way up I can sacrifice wave after wave of suicidal multi-D mod ships?

It will affect your fleet, yes.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 15, 2018, 10:19:49 AM
@ TaLaR: It is not for ship production only.  If I need trash to fuel other parts of a colony, I could dump stuff as a buffer for any shortage.  Ships and guns are not the only thing I want my colonies to make.  I also want to produce fuel and supplies.  Maybe other commodities too if they are an income generator.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Dri on February 15, 2018, 01:30:47 PM
Has Alex confirmed that colonies can actually provide you with monthly stacks of fuel and supplies, though?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 15, 2018, 02:15:23 PM
I have not read an answer, but I imagine if we can build Light Industries and whatever the Fuel industry is called, I imagine they would produce the goodies, provided they get a supply of raw materials.  Finally, a use for the likes of Volatiles or Organics aside from vendor trash.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Igncom1 on February 15, 2018, 03:16:58 PM
The colonies have a surplus store of resources that you can pull from right?

Of course the colonies might need them in case of a short fall but it should feed your single fleet rather handedly.

That said I'm a casual git, so I only play on easy for maximum loot.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 15, 2018, 04:30:16 PM
I'd imagine colonies will produce some amount of supplies and fuel (provided they have the relevant industry, i.e. Heavy Industry), though I'm not sure whether the amount produced should be sufficient to keep a large fleet going, and what the opportunity cost of taking advantage of this would be.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 15, 2018, 05:08:56 PM
Probably better to do away with quantities on stations and just have stations sell for a fixed price.

In those case you don’t even have to care about how it all works out. Your station has a production cost would you must pay, this  production cost being commensurate with other planets sales price, and income with you always receive.

The net is always the same (whether you take the raw production and use it or buy the raw production) but it’s easier for the player to understand and manage.

I know that for one hate being rich and not having enough fuel to buy to run an expedition
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Igncom1 on February 15, 2018, 05:27:33 PM
I know that for one hate being rich and not having enough fuel to buy to run an expedition

I used to have that problem until I learned where some of the decent fuel facilities were located.

The league colony on the left side of the sector is in my opinion the best of low cost and high quantity fuel.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Eji1700 on February 15, 2018, 06:28:26 PM
Late to the party but I do have some questions:

Will we be able to convert ships/modify ships?

There's quite a few ships which are converted into battle variants according to their flavor text,  and I personally really like the idea of taking the various freighters and being able to jury rig them into their combat worthy(ish) versions.  I personally hope this will help give more reason to care about freighters as right now a large majority of them are nothing more than passive upgrades to your cargo/fuel at the cost of speed (and i really like the idea of a sort of weaponized mega corp with powerful freighters).

To add to this I kinda like the idea of some hull mods being a bit better than the current batch (or even some from the current batch) but they require use of specific facilities, and thus cannot be done at all in flight, and only on some planets, which would give incentive to have your own outposts with these facilities.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: knogleknuser on February 16, 2018, 12:44:33 AM
One of the things i was looking forward to was investing a *** ton of money into a bunch of colonies in the far fringes of the map, to allow the mass production of supplies and fuel in said fringes, so I could explore the area with a closer fall back point. (Late game thingy.) I strongly urge you to make it possible to mass produce just about any commodity that other factions can mass produce, provided you have the resources, credits, workforce, industry and knowledge to do so. So i REALLY hope you reconsider your current approach regarding supplies and fuel.

I really also hope there will be an import feature, as in you can request to keep a specific amount of things stockpiled at the colony you desire. Said colony will then import it for a hefty price tag  especially if the colony has low accessibility (Transport fees, fuel cost. Later on one could rely on ones "own" trader fleets to lower the price a bit, if the colony is large enough).

This would allow the player to for example. Create really expensive resupply points, even if the colony isn't that developed. (Of course if the colony is in the core systems its just a semi expensive resupply point). Or keep some specific guns ready for reclaimed hull, ect.

Btw, i don't expect any of this to be profitable or cheaper than the alternatives (actually the opposite at least for the first 50 years or so).

P.S. I made an account just to write this post.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Linnis on February 16, 2018, 01:17:45 AM
I do hope there will be an option to observe player-made fleets when they engage in battle. Things are quite a bit more personal now that your own colonies can build fleets, so hopefully there'll be something like a "Remote Battle Feed" type option to see their battles play out properly, if you so choose.

Wasn't planning on this sort of thing, to be honest. It seems like asking for trouble in various ways, design-wise. (Just one quick example: suppose watching the battle usually makes it play out more favorably than autoresolve, due to the specifics of ships and loadouts. Oops, now you have to watch every battle.)

I can feel the excitement in everyone's posts at this point.

Anyways, could there be some kind of battle report after an battle involving the player fleets? Stuff like what happened and where, with an adjustable filter for what kinds of fleets are involved and minimum battle size to be displayed?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Draba on February 16, 2018, 01:58:23 AM
I'd imagine colonies will produce some amount of supplies and fuel (provided they have the relevant industry, i.e. Heavy Industry), though I'm not sure whether the amount produced should be sufficient to keep a large fleet going, and what the opportunity cost of taking advantage of this would be.
One of the things i was looking forward to was investing a *** ton of money into a bunch of colonies in the far fringes of the map, to allow the mass production of supplies and fuel in said fringes, so I could explore the area with a closer fall back point. (Late game thingy.) I strongly urge you to make it possible to mass produce just about any commodity that other factions can mass produce, provided you have the resources, credits, workforce, industry and knowledge to do so. So i REALLY hope you reconsider your current approach regarding supplies and fuel.

I also think it'd be nice if great colonies could potentially be enough to maintain even the biggest fleets.
It gives the player the option to shift the action from the big core producers and is a nice convenience feature later in the game.

Some guesses on how it could be balanced:
- supplies not sold reduce trade income, the reduction is higher than the price you could could manually sell them at(if you really want to make it higher than what you could buy at)
- stockpiling supplies is a negative growth modifier
- big stockpiles attract raiders, especially on worlds far from the core
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Gothars on February 16, 2018, 09:57:09 AM
Will we be able to convert ships/modify ships?

As I understand it, converted ships come from converted/hacked blueprints. They are not handcrafted modifications of already build ships (anymore).
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 16, 2018, 10:45:26 AM
Probably better to do away with quantities on stations and just have stations sell for a fixed price.

Interesting idea; definitely outside the box :) That does get weird, though - suppose one colony needs metal, and another one supplies a tiny bit. You would, for example, be able to by infinity metal to hand-supply your other colony. I think the idea just goes against a lot of assumptions that govern how other things work, so it'd break a bunch of things.


To add to this I kinda like the idea of some hull mods being a bit better than the current batch (or even some from the current batch) but they require use of specific facilities, and thus cannot be done at all in flight, and only on some planets, which would give incentive to have your own outposts with these facilities.

On the flipside, could get a bit tedious having to go to a specific location to refit. Doesn't seem like it's related to blueprints/ship production (except maybe tangentially); more in the "extra incentives to have colonies" box, but hopefully that won't require too much extra incentivizing.


Will we be able to convert ships/modify ships?

As I understand it, converted ships come from converted/hacked blueprints. They are not handcrafted modifications of already build ships (anymore).

Functionally, yeah. In terms of backstory, much of the ship production involves human labor - e.g. welding on armor plates, putting the superstructure together, and so on. So I'd imagine some of the hacks for a Condor blueprint involve something akin to a "modspec" - i.e. altering the instructions for what to do manually. Sort of, a hacked base blueprint with an added instruction manual/assembly instructions.


P.S. I made an account just to write this post.

Welcome to the forum :)

One of the things i was looking forward to was investing a *** ton of money into a bunch of colonies in the far fringes of the map, to allow the mass production of supplies and fuel in said fringes, so I could explore the area with a closer fall back point. (Late game thingy.) I strongly urge you to make it possible to mass produce just about any commodity that other factions can mass produce, provided you have the resources, credits, workforce, industry and knowledge to do so. So i REALLY hope you reconsider your current approach regarding supplies and fuel.

Hmm - so that's a bit backwards, isn't it? You need to explore the area first, to find good worlds and systems to colonize, and *then* invest a ton of money into said colonies. Not to say that there wouldn't be some exploration left to do after you've established colonies in the area, but "heavy investment into colonies" doesn't seem like a sensible first step to exploring an area. Just in the general arc of play, "exploration" is not primarily a late-game activity.

I really also hope there will be an import feature, as in you can request to keep a specific amount of things stockpiled at the colony you desire. Said colony will then import it for a hefty price tag  especially if the colony has low accessibility (Transport fees, fuel cost. Later on one could rely on ones "own" trader fleets to lower the price a bit, if the colony is large enough).

This would allow the player to for example. Create really expensive resupply points, even if the colony isn't that developed. (Of course if the colony is in the core systems its just a semi expensive resupply point). Or keep some specific guns ready for reclaimed hull, ect.

I do totally get the appeal of being able to establish a resupply point, though. Let me think on that a bit.

Btw, i don't expect any of this to be profitable or cheaper than the alternatives (actually the opposite at least for the first 50 years or so).

Yep. Colony-produced resources having a cost of some kind is I think pretty important, even if it's just so the player doesn't feel like they have to go around collecting everything and selling it to get the most value out.

- big stockpiles attract raiders, especially on worlds far from the core

I like the way you think!


Anyways, could there be some kind of battle report after an battle involving the player fleets? Stuff like what happened and where, with an adjustable filter for what kinds of fleets are involved and minimum battle size to be displayed?

Something along these lines seems probable, though probably that extensive. Will have to see if the volume of those kinds of reports warrants filtering etc.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Kirschbra on February 16, 2018, 11:39:24 AM
So just to be clear, ALL production is based purely on credits and time? You won't need 400 units of metals and 200 heavy machinery in a stockpile to produce an Onslaught?

I dunno, part of me seems like this would be a good way to give commodities more...oomph!
Seems like you'd need a source of those materials if you wanted good production quality. Forcing the player to ferry commodities over to outposts every time you want to build something isn't much better than needing to scour every market for the ship you want.

But it would be a good reason to build mining outposts and stuff.  I think giving commodities more than just something to sell would be better
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 16, 2018, 11:52:54 AM
Interesting idea; definitely outside the box Smiley That does get weird, though - suppose one colony needs metal, and another one supplies a tiny bit. You would, for example, be able to by infinity metal to hand-supply your other colony. I think the idea just goes against a lot of assumptions that govern how other things work, so it'd break a bunch of things

Well only if the economic model is nonsensical. In a full economic model a colony will have a demand and supply curve for metals. This is a set of total quantity which would be purchased and sold at any given price. Imports would modify the demand down until the import price and domsestic supply price were equal. (The import price being roughly the supply cost at the importers location plus the fuel cost to fly it)

So you could buy infinity metal to hand supply your colony and make no income* under an indeterminate quantity scheme. Or you could not and NPCs would supply that metal. In the end it doesn’t matter to the player since they aren’t looking at quantity numbers for their planets production facilities. There is no way to design a sensical economic model and get continual shortages. Even if everything produces at CRS and consumes at constant utility per unit, prices and import relationships will stabilize**.

The fact that this is true is what why indeterminate quantity is ideal in video games while dependent price is not. We can have determinate price without determinate quantity but not the other way around. And we don’t care about having determinate quantity because the player never has to see it.

*economic profits but if labor time value is zero for NPCs then these are the same things. But you could also set a labor/time value and so generate consistently profitable supply lines for players. Note also that the value is not infinite but rather indeterminate. A player cannot supply more metal than they can ferry over in any given amount of time.

**more typically production should follow CRS(explaining this is a more involved argument) and should be flat while consumption would follow DRS and so should slope downward. That gives determinate quantity and prices, but in a video game we don’t care about stuff we can’t see and so final price is all that matters.  

Edit: will take it to the economy thread for a better explanation of how it works
I know that for one hate being rich and not having enough fuel to buy to run an expedition

I used to have that problem until I learned where some of the decent fuel facilities were located.

The league colony on the left side of the sector is in my opinion the best of low cost and high quantity fuel.

Sure so you can either be a league or diktat commission and then set those colonies as your home base or you can fly around to them before every expedition. It’s unwieldy. I want to pay an independent to shuttle fuel from diktat to TT headquarters so that I don’t buy the entire yearly supply of fuel in one go.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 16, 2018, 12:30:33 PM
Even if everything produces at CRS and consumes at constant utility per unit, prices and import relationships will stabilize**.

This is exactly the sort of model I want to get very far away from. "Everything will stabilize" in theory; in terms of implementation in any reasonable run-time given the number of markets and commodities, it's not viable. Also arguable whether it's desirable gameplay-wise.

So, perhaps: any suggestion that's based on this sort of dynamic, price-matching equilibrium model, while it might be of theoretical interest, is not super useful because it's pretty much unappicable. Also, there are a *ton* of details here that any such "overhaul" type of approach is going to miss.

I do see what you're saying about indeterminate quantity, though. Again, I think it's interesting but goes against the grain of what's already there (and what's there is there for specific reasons).

Edit: I should say, I appreciate the suggestion! It's just, well, not going to overhaul the economy yet again, you know?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: SCC on February 16, 2018, 12:55:16 PM
Well only if the economic model is nonsensical. In a full economic model a colony will have a demand and supply curve for metals.
The problem with full economic model is that it's expensive in work hours and CPU cycles, especially a dynamic one.
I do totally get the appeal of being able to establish a resupply point, though. Let me think on that a bit.
Way stations (or whatever they were called) maybe? Though I don't remember if they count for full in economy or if they're just range extenders; in the latter case they could work just fine if they had some supplies and fuel in stock by default and you could build a building to increase them.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 16, 2018, 01:04:08 PM
Way stations (or whatever they were called) maybe? Though I don't remember if they count for full in economy or if they're just range extenders; in the latter case they could work just fine if they had some supplies and fuel in stock by default and you could build a building to increase them.

Yeah, just have to make all the numbers work, so that e.g. building a waystation is not a "free supplies and fuel" fountain, that you couldn't use a partially-supplied waystation's supplies to more fully supply itself, etc. Thinking some of this through as we speak :)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 16, 2018, 01:22:40 PM
Even if everything produces at CRS and consumes at constant utility per unit, prices and import relationships will stabilize**.

This is exactly the sort of model I want to get very far away from. "Everything will stabilize" in theory; in terms of implementation in any reasonable run-time given the number of markets and commodities, it's not viable. Also arguable whether it's desirable gameplay-wise.

So, perhaps: any suggestion that's based on this sort of dynamic, price-matching equilibrium model, while it might be of theoretical interest, is not super useful because it's pretty much unappicable. Also, there are a *ton* of details here that any such "overhaul" type of approach is going to miss.

I do see what you're saying about indeterminate quantity, though. Again, I think it's interesting but goes against the grain of what's already there (and what's there is there for specific reasons).

I understand that its against the grain of whats there already, but i would be shocked if it took more calculations than what you're doing already. Because the number of calculations that this should take is going to be pretty close to the minimum calculations in order to supply markets with half of the information you're suggesting they need to be supplied with.

There is only a "dynamic" price matching equilibrium when quantity is determinate*. If quantity is indeterminate then there is a corner solution price matching equilibrium.

That is, each market is only making a check against what the smaller of its own production price(which is a fixed value per unit) and the import price of other planets are (which is the sum of their production price plus the travel cost multiplied by the tariff, all of which are fixed values per unit) and then using that as its buying and selling price. This is consistent with a full economic model only if in that model supply and demand are both horizontal lines and never the two shall meet. I.E. quantity is indeterminate and price is equal to the supply price per unit. You're looking at the calculation under the assumption that a full model provides determinate price and quantity. But we don't need determinate quantity because we don't care.

As for whether its desirable? Yea its totally desirable. It abstracts an entire trade system in such a way allows players to pay the price to ship goods to places they want it, essentially creating contracts for NPC's to do grunt work they don't want to do without preventing them from doing that trading if they want to.


*It would not ever need to be dynamic. It would rather be solving static simultaneous equations. (linear or otherwise). That would be at least O(n^3) per good ***, which is ***. In this case we are solving static non-simultaneous equations which is O(n^2) per good which should be pretty much minimum theoretical big O notation for this considering there are n planets and each one needs to do a calculation which involves n number of entries)**.

**I am actually not that proficient in understanding big O notation structure I know that some calculations are easier/harder so its not quite right for me to call this O(n^2). A minimum check should be faster than a multiplication but slower than a sum (each one essentially has its own big O value which is on a different scale than the final algorithm. As an example solving a simultaneous linear equation is O(n^3) for small matrices. There are n^2 multiplications and sums to solve which makes n^3. But if those values are large each multiplication itself is technically in n^2 you're just on different n scale and here is where the technicalities of the definition get beyond the point where I care because i don't expect the individual values of any matrix i want to calculate to be large enough where the difficulty of doing the multiplication matters compared to the number of them i have to do given the size of my matrix n). My assumption is that min(1,2...n) is O(n) and so doing that n times is O(n^2). Min(1,2....n) could for all i know be O(n^0) and so the whole thing would be O(n)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 16, 2018, 02:31:13 PM
I understand that its against the grain of whats there already, but i would be shocked if it took more calculations than what you're doing already. Because the number of calculations that this should take is going to be pretty close to the minimum calculations in order to supply markets with half of the information you're suggesting they need to be supplied with.

There is only a "dynamic" price matching equilibrium when quantity is determinate*. If quantity is indeterminate then there is a corner solution price matching equilibrium.

That is, each market is only making a check against what the smaller of its own production price(which is a fixed value per unit) and the import price of other planets are (which is the sum of their production price plus the travel cost multiplied by the tariff, all of which are fixed values per unit) and then using that as its buying and selling price. This is consistent with a full economic model only if in that model supply and demand are both horizontal lines and never the two shall meet. I.E. quantity is indeterminate and price is equal to the supply price per unit. You're looking at the calculation under the assumption that a full model provides determinate price and quantity. But we don't need determinate quantity because we don't care.

Ahhh, gotcha, thank you for elaborating. Yes, I was indeed thinking of quantity being determinate (and that making it unfeasible). There's an added factor where the supply of one commodity feeds into the supply of another - i.e. need Ore to make Metals, need Metals to make Heavy Machinery, and... also need Heavy Machinery to mine Ore, which makes a quantity-based model pretty much not reach an equilibrium.

So! The new economy system (that is, the one in the dev build) is ... basically what you describe. Quantity is indeterminate, but there are tiers, i.e. a supply of 4 Ore can't satisfy a demand for 5 Ore, and this just acts as an extra filter when finding the best supplier. "Accessibility" maps pretty directly to "travel cost" in what you describe.

But for player-facing stuff, not dealing with quantity I think goes against the player being able to, say, have some sort of impact by bringing in a commodity if there's a shortage, that sort of thing. They could still make money by bringing it in, right, but not actually end the shortage - quantities have to be involved there - and then it gets weird since they could, say, just buy the theoretically in-shortage good from that very same colony. Or from a tiny market nearby that couldn't reasonably provide enough, in theory.

It's also nice to be able to say that, for example, "bringing X units of Y to your colony will keep it supplied for Z months". If everywhere has unlimited everything and it's just a matter of price... well, I could definitely see it working, it sounds like a reasonable system. I'm just not sure I like the feel of that for Starsector specifically.

(Also, say you need supplies: create a colony, instantly buy what you need. Then abandon it. Could be worked around, of course - but the point is, there are complications to this system as well, much like the stuff I'm working through now, just of a different flavor.)

But, yeah - thank you for the idea and elaborating on it, I'll keep it in mind as I'm thinking these things through.


**I am actually not that proficient in understanding big O notation structure I know that some calculations are easier/harder so its not quite right for me to call this O(n^2). A minimum check should be faster than a multiplication but slower than a sum (each one essentially has its own big O value which is on a different scale than the final algorithm. As an example solving a simultaneous linear equation is O(n^3) for small matrices. There are n^2 multiplications and sums to solve which makes n^3. But if those values are large each multiplication itself is technically in n^2 you're just on different n scale and here is where the technicalities of the definition get beyond the point where I care because i don't expect the individual values of any matrix i want to calculate to be large enough where the difficulty of doing the multiplication matters compared to the number of them i have to do given the size of my matrix n). My assumption is that min(1,2...n) is O(n) and so doing that n times is O(n^2). Min(1,2....n) could for all i know be O(n^0) and so the whole thing would be O(n)

(Yeah, I think you've got a good handle on it. One would just use a different letter than "n" for a different parameter. For example, the price calculation as you outline it could be called O(m * n^2), where m is the number of commodities, and n is the number of markets. But if the number of commodities is considered a constant, then as far as big O notation is concerned, it's the same as O(n^2). But of course for practical applications, the constant factor *does* matter.)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: SCC on February 16, 2018, 02:42:58 PM
Yeah, just have to make all the numbers work, so that e.g. building a waystation is not a "free supplies and fuel" fountain, that you couldn't use a partially-supplied waystation's supplies to more fully supply itself, etc. Thinking some of this through as we speak :)
I thought about, like, 50 to 100 of each for a barebones and maaaybe 500 for "upgraded". Player pays opportunity cost twice (to set up and to upgrade), maybe has to buy or find a blueprint, and even after that supplies, fuel and the way station itself cost money still, right?
Way stations have storage or not? I think that storage would help both with preparing for prospecting (dumping tons of supplies, especially in the late game) and after you return with salvage. Though I feel like it starts eating into "stabilise orbit" mechanic...
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: knogleknuser on February 16, 2018, 02:53:54 PM

P.S. I made an account just to write this post.

Welcome to the forum :)

One of the things i was looking forward to was investing a *** ton of money into a bunch of colonies in the far fringes of the map, to allow the mass production of supplies and fuel in said fringes, so I could explore the area with a closer fall back point. (Late game thingy.) I strongly urge you to make it possible to mass produce just about any commodity that other factions can mass produce, provided you have the resources, credits, workforce, industry and knowledge to do so. So i REALLY hope you reconsider your current approach regarding supplies and fuel.

Hmm - so that's a bit backwards, isn't it? You need to explore the area first, to find good worlds and systems to colonize, and *then* invest a ton of money into said colonies. Not to say that there wouldn't be some exploration left to do after you've established colonies in the area, but "heavy investment into colonies" doesn't seem like a sensible first step to exploring an area. Just in the general arc of play, "exploration" is not primarily a late-game activity.

I really also hope there will be an import feature, as in you can request to keep a specific amount of things stockpiled at the colony you desire. Said colony will then import it for a hefty price tag  especially if the colony has low accessibility (Transport fees, fuel cost. Later on one could rely on ones "own" trader fleets to lower the price a bit, if the colony is large enough).

This would allow the player to for example. Create really expensive resupply points, even if the colony isn't that developed. (Of course if the colony is in the core systems its just a semi expensive resupply point). Or keep some specific guns ready for reclaimed hull, ect.

I do totally get the appeal of being able to establish a resupply point, though. Let me think on that a bit.

Btw, i don't expect any of this to be profitable or cheaper than the alternatives (actually the opposite at least for the first 50 years or so).

Yep. Colony-produced resources having a cost of some kind is I think pretty important, even if it's just so the player doesn't feel like they have to go around collecting everything and selling it to get the most value out.

Another big reason I think that it is important for the player to be able to mass produce all common commodities at some point, is that if we can't create supplies and fuel by ourselves, then we are forced to always build our main hub near the core, as we need fuel and supplies in quantities that we would only be able to buy/acquire at the other factions core worlds. 
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 16, 2018, 03:45:32 PM
I understand that its against the grain of whats there already, but i would be shocked if it took more calculations than what you're doing already. Because the number of calculations that this should take is going to be pretty close to the minimum calculations in order to supply markets with half of the information you're suggesting they need to be supplied with.

There is only a "dynamic" price matching equilibrium when quantity is determinate*. If quantity is indeterminate then there is a corner solution price matching equilibrium.

That is, each market is only making a check against what the smaller of its own production price(which is a fixed value per unit) and the import price of other planets are (which is the sum of their production price plus the travel cost multiplied by the tariff, all of which are fixed values per unit) and then using that as its buying and selling price. This is consistent with a full economic model only if in that model supply and demand are both horizontal lines and never the two shall meet. I.E. quantity is indeterminate and price is equal to the supply price per unit. You're looking at the calculation under the assumption that a full model provides determinate price and quantity. But we don't need determinate quantity because we don't care.

Ahhh, gotcha, thank you for elaborating. Yes, I was indeed thinking of quantity being determinate (and that making it unfeasible). There's an added factor where the supply of one commodity feeds into the supply of another - i.e. need Ore to make Metals, need Metals to make Heavy Machinery, and... also need Heavy Machinery to mine Ore, which makes a quantity-based model pretty much not reach an equilibrium.

So! The new economy system (that is, the one in the dev build) is ... basically what you describe. Quantity is indeterminate, but there are tiers, i.e. a supply of 4 Ore can't satisfy a demand for 5 Ore, and this just acts as an extra filter when finding the best supplier. "Accessibility" maps pretty directly to "travel cost" in what you describe.

But for player-facing stuff, not dealing with quantity I think goes against the player being able to, say, have some sort of impact by bringing in a commodity if there's a shortage, that sort of thing. They could still make money by bringing it in, right, but not actually end the shortage - quantities have to be involved there - and then it gets weird since they could, say, just buy the theoretically in-shortage good from that very same colony. Or from a tiny market nearby that couldn't reasonably provide enough, in theory.

It's also nice to be able to say that, for example, "bringing X units of Y to your colony will keep it supplied for Z months". If everywhere has unlimited everything and it's just a matter of price... well, I could definitely see it working, it sounds like a reasonable system. I'm just not sure I like the feel of that for Starsector specifically.

(Also, say you need supplies: create a colony, instantly buy what you need. Then abandon it. Could be worked around, of course - but the point is, there are complications to this system as well, much like the stuff I'm working through now, just of a different flavor.)

But, yeah - thank you for the idea and elaborating on it, I'll keep it in mind as I'm thinking these things through.


**I am actually not that proficient in understanding big O notation structure I know that some calculations are easier/harder so its not quite right for me to call this O(n^2). A minimum check should be faster than a multiplication but slower than a sum (each one essentially has its own big O value which is on a different scale than the final algorithm. As an example solving a simultaneous linear equation is O(n^3) for small matrices. There are n^2 multiplications and sums to solve which makes n^3. But if those values are large each multiplication itself is technically in n^2 you're just on different n scale and here is where the technicalities of the definition get beyond the point where I care because i don't expect the individual values of any matrix i want to calculate to be large enough where the difficulty of doing the multiplication matters compared to the number of them i have to do given the size of my matrix n). My assumption is that min(1,2...n) is O(n) and so doing that n times is O(n^2). Min(1,2....n) could for all i know be O(n^0) and so the whole thing would be O(n)

(Yeah, I think you've got a good handle on it. One would just use a different letter than "n" for a different parameter. For example, the price calculation as you outline it could be called O(m * n^2), where m is the number of commodities, and n is the number of markets. But if the number of commodities is considered a constant, then as far as big O notation is concerned, it's the same as O(n^2). But of course for practical applications, the constant factor *does* matter.)

Practicalities are easy to work around. Fixed colony creation costs, delayed market supply, colony growth requirements, Probabilistic supply structuring. Like, if it costs 1000 troopers to settle a colony and it starts at size 1 no one will haul around multiple starliners so they can drop new colonies down.

With regards to “ending a shortage” you could always tie a shortage into a supply run by a player. If the planet gets supplied by the regular fleet NBD you don’t calculate the amount of quantity. But if the player wants to end a shortage they need x units of materials at once depending on planet size. If quantity is indeterminate then quantity can be fixed just as well as it can be variable. But instead of calculating “this planet needs x more amount of goods” you just state “this planet needs x amount of goods”

That would be slightly gameable(you could end a shortage then buy the materials back... but this won’t generate a profit compared to simply selling them, so is only applicable if you’re going to hit multiple shortages planets in a row).. But no-moreso than simply buying all the commodities in a station and putting them into storage until their is a shortage is gaming the system

Wrt: input based production this also abstracts easily since you’re not just adding prices instead of adding quantities.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: gforce360 on February 16, 2018, 09:22:52 PM
Keep up the blog posts! Every time I see a new one it makes me pick up the game again. Can't wait for the next update. Forgive me if I missed something, didn't read through all 10 pages.

One thing occurred to me when reading about occurrences of ships and numbers of d-mods-

If we don't get any "positive mods," it really seems like d-mod free ships should be awfully few and far-between. Right now, a beginning player starts out with an immaculate ship. While there should be some impetus to try to prevent your ship from exploding around you, having an immaculate ship really makes salvaging less appealing (after all, those are d-mod ships).

Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: restore on February 17, 2018, 06:12:34 AM
Sorry for this classic spam, but could you just briefly name what core parts of the game are yet to be done/redone before next patch? No dates or promises, just a simple roadmap to know what to be exited about
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Zhentar on February 17, 2018, 08:08:35 PM
A suggestion on the 'quick' custom armaments orders: you could keep a military market stocked with an assortment of the same armaments & hulls being used for the faction fleets, representing surplus/spare parts that could easily be diverted without meaningfully impacting fleet operations. If they player has set up their faction fleets along the lines of their personal fleet, then the occasional incidental replacements will be readily available without having to order them.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 18, 2018, 10:12:54 AM
Practicalities are easy to work around.

(In my experience, that's about 80% of the work :) I'd probably even define the most elegant solution to a problem as one with the smallest number of things to work around.)

Wrt: input based production this also abstracts easily since you’re not just adding prices instead of adding quantities.

Yep, gotcha, I just meant that was an extra issue with a quantity-based system.


If we don't get any "positive mods," it really seems like d-mod free ships should be awfully few and far-between. Right now, a beginning player starts out with an immaculate ship. While there should be some impetus to try to prevent your ship from exploding around you, having an immaculate ship really makes salvaging less appealing (after all, those are d-mod ships).

I sort of see what you're saying, but since you're not limited to one ship and aren't just looking for straight upgrades of it... Also, a larger ship with a d-mod or three can be appealing as a flagship (see: salvaged Hammerhead around Tetra for a good first example of that, depending on the d-mods it gets.) That said, I'd probably expect the majority of the ships you run into to have at least some d-mods. The player's starting ship not having any, though, is part of the "edge" that a new player needs to be successful.

Sorry for this classic spam, but could you just briefly name what core parts of the game are yet to be done/redone before next patch? No dates or promises, just a simple roadmap to know what to be exited about

Ah, but if I did that, that'd take away half the fun of writing new blog posts to reveal them :) (There *is* an internal roadmap, of course. But I still haven't decided on exactly what set of things will make it into the next release; that depends on how well/quickly some of the other items come together.)


A suggestion on the 'quick' custom armaments orders: you could keep a military market stocked with an assortment of the same armaments & hulls being used for the faction fleets, representing surplus/spare parts that could easily be diverted without meaningfully impacting fleet operations. If they player has set up their faction fleets along the lines of their personal fleet, then the occasional incidental replacements will be readily available without having to order them.

Hmm - yeah, I'll keep that in mind, it's not a bad idea. Where it gets potentially awkward is, if this stuff is free, then you kind of want to always grab it and sell. And if it's not free, it's a place where you can sell off your loot - which I guess isn't necessarily bad? But then it raises questions re: tariffs and so on. Not unworkable, right, just could get messy working out the details.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 18, 2018, 11:31:37 AM
I don’t think he was suggesting “free”. But the problem with say fielding 10 lashers is that you expect a few to die in a large engagement. The cost, lateish game, is NBD. If you lose 4 lashers in a high value bounty to expedition you’re still ahead. But then you have to replace them... the problem isn’t buying 4 lashers for 25k ish each it’s finding 4 lashers to buy.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 18, 2018, 02:40:14 PM
If we don't get any "positive mods," it really seems like d-mod free ships should be awfully few and far-between. Right now, a beginning player starts out with an immaculate ship. While there should be some impetus to try to prevent your ship from exploding around you, having an immaculate ship really makes salvaging less appealing (after all, those are d-mod ships).

I sort of see what you're saying, but since you're not limited to one ship and aren't just looking for straight upgrades of it... Also, a larger ship with a d-mod or three can be appealing as a flagship (see: salvaged Hammerhead around Tetra for a good first example of that, depending on the d-mods it gets.) That said, I'd probably expect the majority of the ships you run into to have at least some d-mods. The player's starting ship not having any, though, is part of the "edge" that a new player needs to be successful.
Quote
That said, I'd probably expect the majority of the ships you run into to have at least some d-mods.
I feel like D-ships in more NPC fleets (and I suspect, likely also in markets) is actually kinda a big deal for campaign, both for theme and gameplay. Thematically, it reinforces the whole "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Imperium of Man Domain" thing. In gameplay, it means that players can be much more comfortable picking up a few D-ships to round out their fleet.

Or at least I myself will be more comfortable settling for less than peak performance.

Should we expect to see a spattering of D-mods among [REDACTED] fleets, possibly having gone decades to centuries without maintenance? Or is this answer spoilers?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Blothorn on February 20, 2018, 11:44:24 AM
My biggest reason for not playing D-mod heavy is that Degraded Engines seems very common (almost every black-market D ship I have seen, and the majority of recovered ships), and it is a killer--the burn level reduction means that it is very awkward on ships not already above your target fleet burn level (requiring Augmented Drive Field), and the combat speed reduction is a big issue on many ships.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Megas on February 20, 2018, 12:13:46 PM
Degraded Engines is a killer on capitals and/or whatever is the slowest ship in your fleet.  Atlas and Prometheus with Degraded Engines do not get recovered and are scuttled for supplies.  On the other hand, Degraded Engines is only a minor nuisance if it is on a faster AI ship armed with Open Market junk (i.e., if it dies, who cares - more where they came from).

Augmented Engines seems like a Persean League commission exclusive hullmod.  (Maybe Tri-Tachyon has it too).  I want it badly for my civilian capitals, but I never got it in non-cheat games.

Hopefully, D-mods will not be common everywhere (to the point of choking out good ships in markets).  Pirates, sure.  Major factions not named Ludd-whatever, probably annoying.  I see clunkers and Open Market as an early game thing before player graduates to Neon Knights with new or restored ships and fights endgame enemies at their best.  With that said, I tend to use mostly clunkers at endgame because restoring them costs too much, and I do not want to reload the game every time I lose a rare ship (or any ship with rare weapons).

If shops end up selling too many clunkers, might as well just stick with recovery... or make the ships ourselves since we can have colonies.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 20, 2018, 02:00:26 PM
I don’t think he was suggesting “free”. But the problem with say fielding 10 lashers is that you expect a few to die in a large engagement. The cost, lateish game, is NBD. If you lose 4 lashers in a high value bounty to expedition you’re still ahead. But then you have to replace them... the problem isn’t buying 4 lashers for 25k ish each it’s finding 4 lashers to buy.

Yep, makes sense. This should be pretty much covered by stocking a few replacements for what you're using ahead of time, though; I wouldn't imagine a "rush order" would be able to crank out a bunch of ships instantly in any case.

I feel like D-ships in more NPC fleets (and I suspect, likely also in markets) is actually kinda a big deal for campaign, both for theme and gameplay. Thematically, it reinforces the whole "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Imperium of Man Domain" thing. In gameplay, it means that players can be much more comfortable picking up a few D-ships to round out their fleet.

Or at least I myself will be more comfortable settling for less than peak performance.

Yeah! Both things that would be nice to achieve.

Should we expect to see a spattering of D-mods among [REDACTED] fleets, possibly having gone decades to centuries without maintenance? Or is this answer spoilers?

I'm not sure - maybe? Will have to see how the balancing pass on that goes; it's pretty trivial to go either way in terms of the implementation.

My biggest reason for not playing D-mod heavy is that Degraded Engines seems very common (almost every black-market D ship I have seen, and the majority of recovered ships), and it is a killer--the burn level reduction means that it is very awkward on ships not already above your target fleet burn level (requiring Augmented Drive Field), and the combat speed reduction is a big issue on many ships.

Is it actually that big a deal? I keep feeling like an extra level of burn here and there doesn't matter quite as much as I see players expressing they feel it does.

I mean, Sustained Burn and E-Burn almost qualitatively override it, and especially if AI fleets are also dealing with degraded engines in many of their fleets...


If shops end up selling too many clunkers, might as well just stick with recovery... or make the ships ourselves since we can have colonies.

Honestly, that doesn't seem like a bad outcome! Being able to reliably get the ships you want, plus (likely) lower costs already incentivize ship production; purchasing would be for while you're getting up and running, and for things you don't have blueprints for. Or, I suppose, for things you need *right now*, never mind the cost.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 20, 2018, 03:10:58 PM
Yep, makes sense. This should be pretty much covered by stocking a few replacements for what you're using ahead of time, though; I wouldn't imagine a "rush order" would be able to crank out a bunch of ships instantly in any case.

From a realism standpoint no. But from a gameplay standpoint having minor things be easily replaceable makes a lot of sense. There is a level of micromanagement that people will be comfortable dealing with (what is equipped to my ships, what are the main ships of my fleet, i have to go replace ships) and a level of micromanagement that people won't want to deal with (what materials do i need to build this ship, how do i set up a supply line to keep my fleet ready to go). These secondary considerations are things that people are unlikely to want to deal with and its not realistic to force people to do so. Middle management exists for a reason.

Such the "immediate purchase" just simulates having a ship in stock without the need to go and buy it ahead of time. If i am a space admiral in charge of a colony that has 100,000 people on it surely one of them could have figured out that i will need some replacements and would have some ready. The price is the price and all charging me at the end point is doing and then immediately "making" the ship is doing is transferring the point at which the payment happens from when the ship was built the simulated months ago to when it was delivered.

A decent middle ground might allow you to set a "ship stock" where the auto-forges will produce ships at the standard price until they meet the minimum stock as set by the player. This way you would not have to re-order every ship and every time you took a ship another one would automatically be produced (unless you had redefined the minimum stock down)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Blothorn on February 20, 2018, 04:16:50 PM
My biggest reason for not playing D-mod heavy is that Degraded Engines seems very common (almost every black-market D ship I have seen, and the majority of recovered ships), and it is a killer--the burn level reduction means that it is very awkward on ships not already above your target fleet burn level (requiring Augmented Drive Field), and the combat speed reduction is a big issue on many ships.

Is it actually that big a deal? I keep feeling like an extra level of burn here and there doesn't matter quite as much as I see players expressing they feel it does.

I mean, Sustained Burn and E-Burn almost qualitatively override it, and especially if AI fleets are also dealing with degraded engines in many of their fleets...

Granted, I have not been playing very long, but in my limited experience: emergency burn frequently cancels out--it can help catch or avoid a faster fleet if you catch them with it on cooldown, but in general I cannot reliably catch a fleet without a speed advantage or escape at a speed disadvantage. If you are hunting Luddic mining fleets, dropping a burn level is not a big deal; with a newish career trying to avoid fast destroyer fleets, dropping to 8 from picking up a destroyer with degraded engines definitely makes a difference.

Sustained burn (especially with the skill boost) does negate the travel-speed disadvantage, so if you never want to initiate combat and are strong enough to fight whomever catches you (plausible for mid/late game exploring) I agree it is not much of an issue.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Techhead on February 20, 2018, 04:46:16 PM
I'm not especially worried about the production time. On cheap things (relative to your production capacity), it'll probably be relatively low and I suspect that if you order it while not-at-home it'll probably be done by the time you get home or shortly after. On expensive things... well, they're expensive and I wouldn't expect them to fall into the "we made sure you had one lying around in case you wanted it" category.

On Doctrine: Will NPC factions have officer/ship/fleet-size doctrines that add up to numbers besides seven? Numbers below seven might make sense for scrub factions... but that opens the box for "why don't elite factions have more?" which in turns asks "why can't the player unlock more?"

On Restoration vs Production: One thing that just occurred to me... is that if restoring D-hulls remain expensive there no longer exists much point to restoring any ship you can replace. Scuttle it, pocket the resources, and bang out a new one. Obviously... this doesn't apply to ships you lack blueprints for, but for anything else it just feels wasteful. Plus a bit of busy-work for the player as you recreate the old loadout on the new ship. My thought on this: Noticeable discount on restoring hulls you have the blueprints for. Makes a certain amount of sense with "let's see if we can figure out how to put this back together" versus "I know exactly how this goes together, I just need the parts".
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: TaLaR on February 20, 2018, 04:52:41 PM
My biggest reason for not playing D-mod heavy is that Degraded Engines seems very common (almost every black-market D ship I have seen, and the majority of recovered ships), and it is a killer--the burn level reduction means that it is very awkward on ships not already above your target fleet burn level (requiring Augmented Drive Field), and the combat speed reduction is a big issue on many ships.

Is it actually that big a deal? I keep feeling like an extra level of burn here and there doesn't matter quite as much as I see players expressing they feel it does.

I mean, Sustained Burn and E-Burn almost qualitatively override it, and especially if AI fleets are also dealing with degraded engines in many of their fleets...

Granted, I have not been playing very long, but in my limited experience: emergency burn frequently cancels out--it can help catch or avoid a faster fleet if you catch them with it on cooldown, but in general I cannot reliably catch a fleet without a speed advantage or escape at a speed disadvantage. If you are hunting Luddic mining fleets, dropping a burn level is not a big deal; with a newish career trying to avoid fast destroyer fleets, dropping to 8 from picking up a destroyer with degraded engines definitely makes a difference.

Sustained burn (especially with the skill boost) does negate the travel-speed disadvantage, so if you never want to initiate combat and are strong enough to fight whomever catches you (plausible for mid/late game exploring) I agree it is not much of an issue.

E-Burn cancelling out each other is important point, yes.

It's not too important to have the strongest fleet overall - but being strongest at certain Burn level is quite nice. Having just 1 higher than enemy means that as long as you don't run into disruption they can almost never catch you. Though AI can use a smaller tackler fleet, so going below 10 (full frigate fleet without degraded engines) is an especially important breakpoint.

I very much do not like compositions like 1 cruiser and few frigates for example - that's not good enough to fight a fleet of cruisers, yet makes me exposed to such risk. Same for having a Capital - if I have one, it's gotta be capable of beating multiple enemy ones - so Onslaught/Paragon or similar from mods.
I do grudgingly make exception for a single DE + frigates composition though. Medusa is just good enough to be worth it, in vanilla. Plus there are no really efficient cargo frigates.

Though I guess a lot of that is more relevant for Nexelerin. In vanilla you start hostile only to Luddites (very small fleets) and Pirates (weakest faction and any large fleet will be slow due to d-mods). Bounties are not going to run anywhere either.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 20, 2018, 09:02:44 PM
From a realism standpoint no. But from a gameplay standpoint having minor things be easily replaceable makes a lot of sense. There is a level of micromanagement that people will be comfortable dealing with (what is equipped to my ships, what are the main ships of my fleet, i have to go replace ships) and a level of micromanagement that people won't want to deal with (what materials do i need to build this ship, how do i set up a supply line to keep my fleet ready to go). These secondary considerations are things that people are unlikely to want to deal with and its not realistic to force people to do so. Middle management exists for a reason.

Such the "immediate purchase" just simulates having a ship in stock without the need to go and buy it ahead of time. If i am a space admiral in charge of a colony that has 100,000 people on it surely one of them could have figured out that i will need some replacements and would have some ready.

Yeah, that makes sense. The same logic as for "Supplies" covering every conceivable set of requirements, through the magic of delegating it to a logistics officer. But here it might feel a bit weird, especially if the "gathering point" is far away from your production centers. Still, some suitably small fraction of production being allowed to be "rushed" would probably feel ok. Not sure it'll be necessary, though - only going to "fix" this once it becomes a problem in playtesting, if that makes sense :)

On Doctrine: Will NPC factions have officer/ship/fleet-size doctrines that add up to numbers besides seven? Numbers below seven might make sense for scrub factions... but that opens the box for "why don't elite factions have more?" which in turns asks "why can't the player unlock more?"

Pirates will probably have less, yeah. And a few one-offs like the Lion's Guard may have more. (Why doesn't the player unlock more? The player's fleet is the Lion's Guard equivalent for their faction, I say.)

On Restoration vs Production: One thing that just occurred to me... is that if restoring D-hulls remain expensive there no longer exists much point to restoring any ship you can replace. Scuttle it, pocket the resources, and bang out a new one. Obviously... this doesn't apply to ships you lack blueprints for, but for anything else it just feels wasteful. Plus a bit of busy-work for the player as you recreate the old loadout on the new ship. My thought on this: Noticeable discount on restoring hulls you have the blueprints for. Makes a certain amount of sense with "let's see if we can figure out how to put this back together" versus "I know exactly how this goes together, I just need the parts".

Well, since restoration is explicitly there for ships you *can't* get in pristine condition otherwise, and is meant to be entirely uneconomic, this state of affairs sounds perfectly fine :)

(That said, producing pristine ships will take some doing. Producing them reliably will take some more doing.)


Granted, I have not been playing very long, but in my limited experience: emergency burn frequently cancels out--it can help catch or avoid a faster fleet if you catch them with it on cooldown, but in general I cannot reliably catch a fleet without a speed advantage or escape at a speed disadvantage. If you are hunting Luddic mining fleets, dropping a burn level is not a big deal; with a newish career trying to avoid fast destroyer fleets, dropping to 8 from picking up a destroyer with degraded engines definitely makes a difference.

Sustained burn (especially with the skill boost) does negate the travel-speed disadvantage, so if you never want to initiate combat and are strong enough to fight whomever catches you (plausible for mid/late game exploring) I agree it is not much of an issue.

Hmm, I do see what you mean. Another way of looking at it - which doesn't go against what you're saying, really, just another perspective - is that if you're relying on a +1 burn difference to run away or chase something down, that's often indicative of something else having gone wrong in the first place. I.E. if you're cruising on Sustained Burn at a near-tangent to likely hostiles, you're not dependent on +1 burn. Likewise if you're going dark and moving carefully. And for chasing enemies down, sneaking up, using an Interdiction Pulse, and then E-burning is a hard-to-avoid combo. Finally, enemies tend to come to you unless you're chasing small fry for some reason.

Of course, there's still a lot of utility in not having to rely on ability use like that and to be able to brute-force the chases and escapes. I guess I just don't personally see it as such a deal-breaker, possibly because I tend to rely more on abilities regardless of my fleet's burn level, since that's a playstyle that I enjoy.


It's not too important to have the strongest fleet overall - but being strongest at certain Burn level is quite nice. Having just 1 higher than enemy means that as long as you don't run into disruption they can almost never catch you. Though AI can use a smaller tackler fleet, so going below 10 (full frigate fleet without degraded engines) is an especially important breakpoint.

I very much do not like compositions like 1 cruiser and few frigates for example - that's not good enough to fight a fleet of cruisers, yet makes me exposed to such risk. Same for having a Capital - if I have one, it's gotta be capable of beating multiple enemy ones - so Onslaught/Paragon or similar from mods.
I do grudgingly make exception for a single DE + frigates composition though. Medusa is just good enough to be worth it, in vanilla. Plus there are no really efficient cargo frigates.

Though I guess a lot of that is more relevant for Nexelerin. In vanilla you start hostile only to Luddites (very small fleets) and Pirates (weakest faction and any large fleet will be slow due to d-mods). Bounties are not going to run anywhere either.

Yep, all of this makes sense. I think it's also a very good point that this may be more important in a modded game, with more fleets flying around, and more of them being hostile as well. It's harder to use abilities effectively if the density of enemy fleets is high, and it's a lot easier to mess up.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: jupjupy on February 20, 2018, 11:09:42 PM
Surprisingly, managed to miss out this post.

Another one very well done, though! And one I am certainly highly interested about.

Most of my questions have been answered by reading all 10 pages of this thread so far, but...

If colony/outpost capture will be in game, how will the production work in such a case? Will captured shipyards gain immediate access to the player's current blueprints but not those of the previous faction? Do non-player factions even use blueprints in the first place, or is it simply by faction 'ships' they have access to?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 21, 2018, 05:43:07 AM
Will we be able to stack stuff like corrupted nanoforges to get better quality ships or will it be one per type or one item total?
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Goumindong on February 21, 2018, 11:13:19 AM
But here it might feel a bit weird, especially if the "gathering point" is far away from your production centers

One thing you could do would be to have a ship production center that would stock ships to a certain level and then pay shipping costs to bring the ship there. The “shipping” would be what was “rushed” rather than the production.

This would also have the side effect of making long resupply points potentially less efficient than short ones.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Zhentar on February 21, 2018, 11:47:30 AM
Yep, makes sense. This should be pretty much covered by stocking a few replacements for what you're using ahead of time, though; I wouldn't imagine a "rush order" would be able to crank out a bunch of ships instantly in any case.

My biggest concern with a self-managed stockpile would be making sure I actually have the right things stocked; in a large fleet there can be lot of hulls and armaments to keep track of. Being able to order a variant instead of a hull and a list of weapons could help a ton, and would be quite convenient in general. Being able to order weapons to be built from the refit screen could be helpful as well.

Hmm, I do see what you mean. Another way of looking at it - which doesn't go against what you're saying, really, just another perspective - is that if you're relying on a +1 burn difference to run away or chase something down, that's often indicative of something else having gone wrong in the first place. I.E. if you're cruising on Sustained Burn at a near-tangent to likely hostiles, you're not dependent on +1 burn. Likewise if you're going dark and moving carefully. And for chasing enemies down, sneaking up, using an Interdiction Pulse, and then E-burning is a hard-to-avoid combo. Finally, enemies tend to come to you unless you're chasing small fry for some reason.

In the context of degraded engines engines specifically, sneaking up isn't usually a practicable strategy. Although I've never had much luck with that strategy anyway, the few times I've tried... Don't get many opportunities to practice it, though, because it's almost never viable for me - either I'm in/around a colonized system, hunting bounty targets, in which case I can't turn off my transponder without *** off allies, or I'm exploring the outer systems and the supply cost of e-burning is too risky.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 21, 2018, 12:17:53 PM
If colony/outpost capture will be in game, how will the production work in such a case? Will captured shipyards gain immediate access to the player's current blueprints but not those of the previous faction? Do non-player factions even use blueprints in the first place, or is it simply by faction 'ships' they have access to?

Other factions use blueprints, and ship production is based on the faction controlling the market. There'll probably be a bit of nuance as far as, say, "independent fleet spawning at other-faction market"; still working through some of these.

Will we be able to stack stuff like corrupted nanoforges to get better quality ships or will it be one per type or one item total?

You can only install one, yeah.

One thing you could do would be to have a ship production center that would stock ships to a certain level and then pay shipping costs to bring the ship there. The “shipping” would be what was “rushed” rather than the production.

This would also have the side effect of making long resupply points potentially less efficient than short ones.

Yeah, makes sense, but that much detail is too fiddly for my liking, if that makes sense. I'd sooner just have a rush order insta-produce things, no questions asked - at least that's simple and doesn't add hard-to-convey/learn/interpret behind-the-scenes mechanics...


My biggest concern with a self-managed stockpile would be making sure I actually have the right things stocked; in a large fleet there can be lot of hulls and armaments to keep track of. Being able to order a variant instead of a hull and a list of weapons could help a ton, and would be quite convenient in general. Being able to order weapons to be built from the refit screen could be helpful as well.

While you can't order a variant, the hulls you produce do come equipped with something; it picks a random variant and then autofits with what's available. The idea is to reduce the amount of hassle if you just want to bulk up your fleet and don't particularly care about the specifics.


In the context of degraded engines engines specifically, sneaking up isn't usually a practicable strategy. Although I've never had much luck with that strategy anyway, the few times I've tried... Don't get many opportunities to practice it, though, because it's almost never viable for me - either I'm in/around a colonized system, hunting bounty targets, in which case I can't turn off my transponder without *** off allies, or I'm exploring the outer systems and the supply cost of e-burning is too risky.

Yeah, fair enough. In vanilla, anyway, it's mostly applicable if you're trying to deal with a named bounty that won't fight, or if you're sitting in ambush somewhere. The "E-burn costs no CR" skill effect is a big consideration here, too. Though if you're trying to engage a stationary target, a Sustained Burn can do the job too.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Thaago on February 21, 2018, 02:06:24 PM
...
On Restoration vs Production: One thing that just occurred to me... is that if restoring D-hulls remain expensive there no longer exists much point to restoring any ship you can replace. Scuttle it, pocket the resources, and bang out a new one. Obviously... this doesn't apply to ships you lack blueprints for, but for anything else it just feels wasteful. Plus a bit of busy-work for the player as you recreate the old loadout on the new ship. My thought on this: Noticeable discount on restoring hulls you have the blueprints for. Makes a certain amount of sense with "let's see if we can figure out how to put this back together" versus "I know exactly how this goes together, I just need the parts".

I actually like this, because it matches the in game existence of ship graveyards: the major factions already do it!
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: ahrenjb on February 27, 2018, 02:01:54 PM
Alex, these lasts several blog posts have got my hype pumped, not to mention the forum and Twitter activity. I've been lurking increasingly heavily as the buildup to the new release drops, and I don't think I've been as excited for an update since we got our first glimpse of Corvus. At this point, most all of the nitpicks I've had about features or changes in the past have proven to be good game design decisions in the larger scope of the final product. It's refreshing to take a step back in this age of early access and community involvement, and just enjoy watching an artisan at his craft. Following the development of Starfarer *ahem* Starsector, has felt like watching one of the old masters work a mammoth monolith of stone. The true form of the work being slowly revealed as the stock is carved away, the contours expressing themselves first as roughly hewn geometry, only later resolving into the flowing and lifelike form of a genuinely inspired piece.

All that tripe aside, looking forward to playing the new build. When its ready, of course.
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Alex on February 27, 2018, 02:42:00 PM
I actually like this, because it matches the in game existence of ship graveyards: the major factions already do it!

Hah, nice, that makes sense :)

Alex, these lasts several blog posts have got my hype pumped, not to mention the forum and Twitter activity. I've been lurking increasingly heavily as the buildup to the new release drops, and I don't think I've been as excited for an update since we got our first glimpse of Corvus. At this point, most all of the nitpicks I've had about features or changes in the past have proven to be good game design decisions in the larger scope of the final product. It's refreshing to take a step back in this age of early access and community involvement, and just enjoy watching an artisan at his craft. Following the development of Starfarer *ahem* Starsector, has felt like watching one of the old masters work a mammoth monolith of stone. The true form of the work being slowly revealed as the stock is carved away, the contours expressing themselves first as roughly hewn geometry, only later resolving into the flowing and lifelike form of a genuinely inspired piece.

All that tripe aside, looking forward to playing the new build. When its ready, of course.

Oh, jeez, thank you! I'll do my best to deliver :)

(I will say I've also been feeling more and more like things are taking shape - super excited about that, myself!)
Title: Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
Post by: Histidine on March 09, 2018, 07:02:40 PM
Random nonserious idea that people on Discord nevertheless seemed to like:

Ships the player sells to a market should be randomly incorporated (one-off) into a fleet spawning from that market.

Not because this would be a practical way to manipulate patrol composition or anything, but I want to be able to sell a Paragon (D) I just salvaged somewhere to the open market, and make some lucky NPC commander's day and see that my baby found a good home.