Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Tartiflette on March 24, 2019, 02:48:50 PM

Title: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Tartiflette on March 24, 2019, 02:48:50 PM
While the option is there, I don't think I ever played with anything but Mixed... And I'm wondering if that option is necessary at all in the end. If most player end up playing like me, maybe it would be more interesting to have a different set of options, like a choosing between larger and more isolated constellations of start or smaller more numerous ones for example. Or setting the amount of Derelict/remnant presence.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Alex on March 24, 2019, 02:51:31 PM
Yeah, I've actually got a couple of options in mind to replace these :)
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Tartiflette on March 24, 2019, 03:18:22 PM
A slider between uniform repartitions of stars and large isolated constellations would something I would love to play with (especially the later)
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Alex on March 24, 2019, 03:46:26 PM
That could be interesting, yeah. But what I'm thinking about is moving the settings away from the physical characteristics of the Sector and more into directly gameplay affecting things. For example, if say a global "Sector Decay" rating was a thing, then choosing the starting level of that could be a combination difficulty-and-feel selector - I think that sort of thing is more impactful and a more interesting choice that someone might want to play around with and select different values for on different playthroughs.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: SCC on March 24, 2019, 03:49:35 PM
I played with mixed for some time... Then I realised I don't care about non-habitable planets at all and switched to old stars.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: goduranus on March 24, 2019, 08:26:43 PM
I think the Old Sector option gives you the most research stations for salvaging tech
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Cyan Leader on March 25, 2019, 04:28:17 AM
Maybe having sliders for the amount of findables and the danger of the sector?
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Tartiflette on March 25, 2019, 05:19:13 AM
That could be interesting, yeah. But what I'm thinking about is moving the settings away from the physical characteristics of the Sector and more into directly gameplay affecting things. For example, if say a global "Sector Decay" rating was a thing, then choosing the starting level of that could be a combination difficulty-and-feel selector.

If you want to push things a bit further, there could even be a timeline of fixed major events and you get to choose when you want to start the game. Events like
Third AI War
Great AI Plague
Great Black Plague
Sindria/League war
Anti-Remnants Crusade
etc, that would change the "decay" of the sector, but also the factions relationships and markets allegiances, as well as the prevalence of derelict/remnants.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Morathar on March 25, 2019, 06:38:16 AM
I switched to using Old Sector in 0.9 because it's supposed to increase the number of habitable planets. Based on my experience so far, this option does give me the best chance of having a few useful systems (relatively) close together to create my budding star empire.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Alex on March 25, 2019, 09:32:26 AM
If you want to push things a bit further, there could even be a timeline of fixed major events and you get to choose when you want to start the game. Events like
Third AI War
Great AI Plague
Great Black Plague
Sindria/League war
Anti-Remnants Crusade
etc, that would change the "decay" of the sector, but also the factions relationships and markets allegiances, as well as the prevalence of derelict/remnants.

Hah, as much as that sounds interesting, it also sounds like an amount of content work that would be more in tune with something like "an expansion" rather than "a Sector config setting" :)

... I do really like the idea of getting historical, though, hmm.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Tartiflette on March 25, 2019, 09:45:43 AM
Oh yeah for sure! But you could look at it as a way to get a ton of fresh replayability for comparatively little new content required. It would require new descriptions, some tweaks to the core systems that could mostly be done using existing assets for the visuals, tweaks to the sector generation, and at least a few unique quests. Certainly not an insignificant amount of work, but I'd say it would be some very cost effective work in term of new gameplay offered.

If the changes are large enough, it would certain fit the bill for some post launch content.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Vayra on March 25, 2019, 09:50:50 AM
I found I was never getting habitable planets on Mixed -- we're talking tens of systems surveyed without anything below 150% hazard, and tons of completely empty systems as well. Everything seemed to work much better on Old, though it sort of swings the other way (too many habitable worlds!) especially with Unknown Skies active.

Edit: Ah, Unknown Skies doesn't modify world habitability distribution -- must have just been RNG messing with me then.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Tartiflette on March 25, 2019, 10:45:20 AM
Unknown Skies doesn't change the repartition of any particular biome. It just makes more planet types available to each existing biome. Ie there will be the same number of lava, habitable or barren worlds generated regardless of US presence.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Megas on April 15, 2019, 06:31:21 AM
All of my serious games were played at default settings, I think Normal and Mixed.  If I was inclined to change settings, I probably would pick Old for better planets.  (Habitable planets have the best hazard ratings and can still have all of the resources.)  Balanced seems like another Mixed variant, and Young seems to imply lots of useless high hazard death traps (although good habitables can still be found).  As for Sector size, in theory, I prefer bigger sizes because of more planets and more loot, but fringe systems are a pain to explore when there is not much time to explore between colony threats, especially if the best colony world I claim is far in the fringe for a given seed, and the quests are at the opposite sides of the sector.  Because of babysitting annoyance, smaller sector seems useful to bind maximum travel time and distance to places.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: The2nd on April 15, 2019, 02:19:12 PM
Hah, as much as that sounds interesting, it also sounds like an amount of content work that would be more in tune with something like "an expansion" rather than "a Sector config setting" :)

... I do really like the idea of getting historical, though, hmm.

Oh yeah for sure! But you could look at it as a way to get a ton of fresh replayability for comparatively little new content required. It would require new descriptions, some tweaks to the core systems that could mostly be done using existing assets for the visuals, tweaks to the sector generation, and at least a few unique quests. Certainly not an insignificant amount of work, but I'd say it would be some very cost effective work in term of new gameplay offered.

If the changes are large enough, it would certain fit the bill for some post launch content.

Oh yes please, mark this somewhere with three red explanation marks for after 1.0 (if you plan post launch content at all ofc)

I love the idea. A combination of more refined player starting options together with sectors time/status options would be very neat indeed. With unique starts for certain time periods and maybe a different prevalence of certain ship types during different times ect.  ;D   

Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Thaago on April 15, 2019, 02:41:18 PM
Hah, as much as that sounds interesting, it also sounds like an amount of content work that would be more in tune with something like "an expansion" rather than "a Sector config setting" :)

... I do really like the idea of getting historical, though, hmm.

Oh yeah for sure! But you could look at it as a way to get a ton of fresh replayability for comparatively little new content required. It would require new descriptions, some tweaks to the core systems that could mostly be done using existing assets for the visuals, tweaks to the sector generation, and at least a few unique quests. Certainly not an insignificant amount of work, but I'd say it would be some very cost effective work in term of new gameplay offered.

If the changes are large enough, it would certain fit the bill for some post launch content.

Oh yes please, mark this somewhere with three red explanation marks for after 1.0 (if you plan post launch content at all ofc)

I love the idea. A combination of more refined player starting options together with sectors time/status options would be very neat indeed. With unique starts for certain time periods and maybe a different prevalence of certain ship types during different times ect.  ;D   



In the vein of 'post launch ideas that are a lot of work' that go with this: this provides a natural way of doing a 'new game plus' or 'legacy' type game. The different historical scenarios can actually have win conditions, and what the player ends up doing (faction relations, quests completed, etc) could then be saved and imported into a new game as part of the sector gen.

As an example, if one scenario/historical period was the founding of the Sindrian Dictat, then games started in a later period, with a new character, would have the option of importing the choices the player (who played Andrada, presumably) had made.

I mention this because 1) it adds replayability and 2) 'legacy' games tend to be extremely popular.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Hellya on April 15, 2019, 04:02:26 PM
I did 30 or so games and used command console to surveyall. It seemed like the difference between the types was minimal.

Only with old galaxy, which I tried the most, there were a two maps with a hazard 50 planet. That would be the only one that I would select with that 10% +/- chance of getting a 50 hazard planet. Between all 4 types there was always a handful of 75 hazard planets with a range from excellent to low resources and food. Claimed planets were not selected as they would be core systems and static with each game.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Sy on April 16, 2019, 07:25:10 AM
one option for physical sector generation that i think could be interesting, and have some effect on actual gameplay, would be about hyperspace cloud generation:

on one end of a slider (or of a set of choices) would be almost the entirety of the sector (except around starsystems) covered in clouds, but with long, continuous (though not necessarily straight) tunnels between the systems.

the other end of the slider would have much less hypercloud density, but with more random spread and size of patches of clouds sprinkled around the place.

the idea here is that for people who don't really enjoy having to pay close attention to hyperspace terrain and prefer to just plough right through most storms (whether it's beneficial to do so or not) would have an option to reduce the overall coverage of clouds. whereas for people who do enjoy paying attention to terrain (and maximizing speed or supply efficiency), there would be clear paths to follow between constellations, for long journeys.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: ahrenjb on April 30, 2019, 01:28:49 PM
For some time I played exclusively with Mixed, but rececently I've made the transition to Old and am enjoying it. Not a very scientific observation as I'm playing with some mods that affect these things now, but I have the impression that Old sectors provide somewhat more interesting exploration on average.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Igncom1 on April 30, 2019, 01:34:23 PM
I'm playing with a young age right now and I honestly can't tell the difference.

Maybe there are less habitable planets, maybe, but from what I can see I still get just as much surveying drones, remnants, and ruined colonies/salvageable stations as my last game in old age.

And seeing as you aren't likely to really be wanting more then one mega colony anyway, i'm not sure that's really much of a change.

I just wish I could turn the clouds down, they just annoy me to no end. Get caught with a BB in a storm and you may as well save scum to save time/supplies/effort and so on. I honestly kinda preferred when it simply nuked your CR over being propelled out of the sector, assuming the clouds are large enough.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Megas on April 30, 2019, 02:24:31 PM
I like to have at least two mega colonies per system, for overlapping defenses, and I like multiple systems for convenient pit stops along the way of exploration.  Colonies should be big for 1) more income from population, 2) bigger patrols from colonies' High Command, and 3) higher production limit for Heavy Industry.  (It would be nice to produce an endgame fleet with capitals in only a month instead of several.)

Storms in 0.9 are a vast improvement over pre 0.9.  If my fleet gets paralyzed in a storm before 0.9, it was reload time.  Now, my fleet rides them most of the time for the extra speed.  That said, clouds can be excessive at times.
Title: Re: What sector age to you usually play with?
Post by: Sfaus on May 04, 2019, 12:12:12 PM
I also would like to see "circle galaxy" instead of a rectangle one.