Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Megas on August 25, 2019, 08:51:22 AM
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Recently, I had a pointer for a -3/-50% pirate base in Penelope's Star. After entering the system, it took about thirty real-time minutes and one month in-game time to find it! Very frustrating!
First, I check all of the planets, but no base. Then I checked the star; no base. Then I checked the asteroid clumps; no base. I captured one of the relays and waited a long time for a pirate fleet to appear. I went toward where it came from. Still no base! The only other place to check was the huge, entire asteroid belt at the edge of the system. Explored about a third of the belt, but no base. During all of that searching, I used Sensor Burst several times, all to no avail.
At this point, I spend one of my unused skill points in Sensors for Neutrino Detector, and loot the ruins at one of the planets for Volatiles. After trying to make sense with the blue aura, I finally found the base after traveling through another third of the asteroid belt, and it was in the fringe asteroid belt. The belt in Penelope's Star is huge!
Finding a base in Penelope's Star is like finding a needle in a haystack if the base is not near any of the planets, and searching all of the planets alone is already very tedious.
Other similar systems beyond core can have similarly frustrating results.
If there was any other way to destroy enemy bases aside from going there personally and killing them, I would have do so and spared myself much grief and babysitting.
Bar events that reveal the system the base is in should reveal where the base is in the system too. Spending thirty minutes finding a needle (base) in a haystack is frustrating and unacceptable.
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Heh you should try having to do this in a neutron star system..... pure pain. :'(
And it wasn't even really by anything for me either, just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere.
It does feel cheap to just talk to the local drunk and find the base just like that, but the effects of piracy are so blunt and aggressive that there is no reason to ever let them live. Sure hit a few caravans and send some little raiders around from time to time, but cutting into my accessibility? Nah mate, that's a declaration of war.
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Neutron stars are annoying without Transverse Jump. With Transverse Jump, frustration varies by system size. In my current game, there is a small neutron star system with only one planet where -1/-10% bases spawn from time to time, next to the two systems where my primary colonies are. Without Transverse Jump, I need to E-Burn through the neutron star twice - very annoying. With Transverse Jump, jump into the planet, kill the pirate base hiding behind the planet, then jump out. At least in neutron stars, guards get blown away. Still more annoying to deal with if player does not have Transverse Jump.
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There's a reason why each time I scout a Neutron system, I create a colony and hand it off to some other faction (Nexerelin) - any colony keeps pirate bases from spawning.
Perhaps actions within the system should give you a (significant) chance of revealing the exact location of the base, with actions being capturing relays and defeating pirate fleets.
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That is not a viable option in a no-mod game.
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Massive asteroid belts that go round from edge to edge of the map are boring and take up too much time to go around.
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Agreed. This whole dynamic seems intended as a blend of exploration meets pest control, but at present its "needle in a haystack" aspect is just excessively burdensome grinding.
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Normally it isn't a problem, but system wide asteroid fields is a pain. It would guess it would take 2 minutes to go round the entire circumference, and then you got to work your way in. Maybe you and sensor burst as you go along, but then that burn 20 has to restart and it seems such a chore. So about 6 minutes to explore a system wide asteroif field. Is there a design goal for a range of time for exploring a system? Afterall, 6 mins maximum doesn't sound too bad, when most ststems will take only 1-2 minutes. It's just exceedingly boring even especially if there isn't much to be found.
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Two minutes to check the asteroid field, or anything thing else to search, for a pirate base is too long. Should not take more than a minute to find the base in the system, given that 1) player already spent much time traveling through hyperspace for the base and 2) pirates respawn almost immediately after a base is killed, and player will need to do it again... and again.
It would not be as much of a problem if there was another way to destroy pirate bases without the player doing it himself, like posting a 200k bounty for an NPC fleet to take care of the problem.
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A quick fix might be to open the settings.json and modify the maxium sensor detection range. Bases have huge sensor radius and by formula may be detectable beyond the standard max detection range of 6000.
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Does the Neutrino Detector not pick up stations or is everyone too used to ignoring it? ;D
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Does the Neutrino Detector not pick up stations or is everyone too used to ignoring it? ;D
It picks everyting in the sistem, but It a false positive problem, so it's the latter here
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Problems with Neutrino Detector:
* Requires a skill point to access. (I already have too few points without getting any Sensors.)
* Requires lugging Volatiles. (I was lucky I had ruins to loot for volatiles.)
* Blue aura is a royal pain to decipher and make sense out of, with or without false positives. The false positives need to go!
After I found the base, I reloaded the game to get my skill point back and go to where the base was.
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A lot of things require a skill point to access. Plus, it's not a requirement, as you can still manually find the station as before, it's just not optimally efficient; you spend a skillpoint to make it moreso. And if you're going out to hunt a station, it's not so hard to stuff a few volatiles in cargo along with the supplies and fuel for the journey.
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I like the neutrino detector, It's really not that hard to use once you understand how to identify false positive. I often times turn it on while I fly between planets in an unexplored system and on many occasions, it has found me stations in weird places I otherwise wouldn't have looked. I wish it did not cost a skill point though. Hopefully it can be unlocked in a quest or something in the future.
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A lot of things require a skill point to access. Plus, it's not a requirement, as you can still manually find the station as before, it's just not optimally efficient; you spend a skillpoint to make it moreso. And if you're going out to hunt a station, it's not so hard to stuff a few volatiles in cargo along with the supplies and fuel for the journey.
Except volatiles is not something stocked by a waystation. Crew, fuel, supplies are everywhere. Metal and machines, I loot from whatever I kill. Volatiles, I need to go somewhere where they are produced to buy them, and they are expensive. (I may not have many colonies with Mining and Volatiles.)
Did you not read the OP? I spent thirty real-life minutes in Penelope's Star searching for the pirate base. I grabbed Neutrino Detector as an absolute last resort. I did not want to use it, but I get tired of spending more time searching for a pirate base I could not find. (It was in the huge asteroid belt at the fringe.) I did all of the tricks that normally reveal pirate bases, but they did not work this time. It is not like I could give up and ignore the pirate base (even though I wanted to). It needed to be dealt with.
I really did not want to spend a skill point on Neutrino Detector, something I only used as an absolute last resort at finding pirate bases in gigantic systems when they are not next to planets. I already do not have enough points to get all of the combat skills I want or high Officer Management. (I already have points in colony skills, which was a mistake, but I am not restarting the game.)
I like the neutrino detector, It's really not that hard to use once you understand how to identify false positive. I often times turn it on while I fly between planets in an unexplored system and on many occasions, it has found me stations in weird places I otherwise wouldn't have looked. I wish it did not cost a skill point though. Hopefully it can be unlocked in a quest or something in the future.
It takes time to reveal the false positive, on an aura that is already a pain to read. Meanwhile, I am burning up volatiles as I move around and try to make sense out of it and eliminating false positives.
The skill point AND volatiles requirement makes Neutrino Detector something I want to avoid. However, I grudgingly take it because it has been the only way to find pirate bases that are too hard to find with conventional means. I am already short on skill points getting other things I want more.
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It takes maaximum 20 seconds to work out false positives most of the time. False positives always point to the same direction. It's not helpful if the system has lots of points of potential interest, or there are two bodies fairly close to each other. Then it is possible that a lot of time is needed to work out false positives. Finding and buying volatiles shouldn't be a problem if you need to go find a pirate base targeting your system. You only need max 50 volatiles generally, and you will certainly be able to afford it.
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The real annoyance is that pirate bases respawn almost immediately due to how they are hard coded, so you have to do this hide and seek routine over and over and over again.
Mods fix this, but in a vanilla game, it makes colonies a absolute chore.
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I think if you fight an kill a pirate fleet in a system, you should be able to get the exact location of any bases in the system. (Either from interrogating survivors or just from the flight logs in the destroyed ships black box, depending on how you want to justify it in terms of RP.)
I think this would be a good compromise. It gives you another option, but it's not just giving you something either. Plus it feels like something that could realistically happen.
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Mods fix this, but in a vanilla game, it makes colonies a absolute chore.
It makes defending core worlds an absolute chore too, whether player has colonies or not, unless he does not mind letting them decivilize sooner or later.
I thought killing all of core worlds would stop that. Instead, I got pirate activity non-stop (from -3/-50% bases) instead.
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I've never encountered this decivilised core worlds business before. How many years do you have to be in game before it happens?
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Mods fix this, but in a vanilla game, it makes colonies a absolute chore.
I thought killing all of core worlds would stop that. Instead, I got pirate activity non-stop (from -3/-50% bases) instead.
I found that out too I gave up on my second playthrough after I realized it would be never-ending even after colonizing everything in the core worlds that wasn't a part of the faction. it was just a never-ending slugfest.
I honestly thought it was Poetic Justice considering I named my character Robert E. House As I deleted my save I played the song something's gotta give by frank sinatra
When an irresistible force such as you (Human Greed)
Meets an old immovable object like me (Money Making Machine)
You can bet just as sure as you live
Something's gotta give
Something's gotta give
Something's gotta give
(RobCo Industries was my first colonial empires name.)