Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: StarScum on February 11, 2020, 11:06:52 PM

Title: System Administrators
Post by: StarScum on February 11, 2020, 11:06:52 PM: Is there a mod that allows the player or an Administrator or AI to administer all colonies in the same system without penalty? Is such a thing even possible?

When i colonize a system, I want to do it thoroughly as I take great pleasure at seeing a previously uninhabited system fill with traders, smugglers and patrols. However, I can't really do that with so few admins to work with. I think a solution like this would work quite elegantly.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: KCR on February 12, 2020, 01:58:55 AM: Well, technically, you can put Alphas on every planet in that system and pretend that it's one big Pentium that rules them all. Or you can go even higher and put Alphas on all your systems and pretend that this one supercomputer is now ruling the galaxy. But, ye, i've come across the same problem. After capturing markets (with Nex), i some time forget to rearrange administrators for them and it's strikes me after. It will be cool enough to make 1 administrator rule some system/s (like in Stellaris, where you can create a sector and arrange one guy to rule a bunch of planets).
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: geminitiger on February 12, 2020, 03:21:46 AM: Honestly the NPC Administrators are basically the shallowest bit of Starsector. They have zero or two related skills, while many PCs will have maxed the three relevant skills. It makes the PC look like the only capable person capable of great administration in the universe. I would love to hack this part out of the game or otherwise make it irrelevant.

Check out my dead thread on the subject. ;D
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17713.msg278495#msg278495
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: StarScum on February 12, 2020, 11:08:29 AM: Just to be clear, I dont want admins to pretend like they run all the planets in a sector, I want them to actually manage an entire sector.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: ranprieur on February 12, 2020, 02:51:23 PM: Quote from: geminitiger on February 12, 2020, 03:21:46 AM
Honestly the NPC Administrators are basically the shallowest bit of Starsector.

This is number one on my wish list for mods or future versions. If human admins could uplevel like ship officers, they would become truly competitive with AI admins. AI's would be better at first, but if you invest in humans, they should eventually surpass AI's.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: Plantissue on February 12, 2020, 04:24:37 PM: That's pretty unrealistic if you think about it. Today, with modern technology, AI far surpasses the capabilities of any one human to administrate and appears set to increase as more and more information is processed by the likes of China and Google and Amazon and Facebook.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: geminitiger on February 13, 2020, 03:36:02 AM: Quote from: Plantissue on February 12, 2020, 04:24:37 PM
That's pretty unrealistic if you think about it. Today, with modern technology, AI far surpasses the capabilities of any one human to administrate and appears set to increase as more and more information is processed by the likes of China and Google and Amazon and Facebook.

Are those AI cores? Seriously though, while "big data" is made available by fancy computers, it's clever humans that have to interpret that data. Also using AI cores forces you to go to war ultimately with certain factions, limiting your options late game, every game.

Starsector has great bone structure, but it needs more meat.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: Plantissue on February 13, 2020, 05:37:47 AM: Well, no they aren't AI cores, because AI cores is a work of fiction.

So what's your point? That AI cannot possibly interpret data but humans can? Already for interpretating data like facial recognition, are AI used with little oversight by humans, precisely because that AI is better and faster than any one human, and better than employing teams of humans.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: bobucles on February 13, 2020, 06:01:26 AM: Well. In the game lore, humanity has already reached the stars and developed tech that's even FASTER than hyperspace (the currently broken down gates). Many of their expansion efforts were pioneered by autonomous drones, utilizing the early ages of general purpose artificial intelligence. So by default, general purpose AI already exists. Trytachyon took things further, creating tech that matched the human brain. After reaching human intelligence, it's not a huge leap to surpass it by making the same thing but bigger. That led to a whole bunch of AI wars, spawning a few video games of the same name and shaping the current sector in game.

As fun as it is to wank humanity's superiority, this sci fi world explicitly states that a smart enough AI is superior to human intelligence. Even the dumbest ones are better at math of course, but the superior ones can analyze much stranger data such as fads, market predictions and design algorithms to both make better decisions and ultimately provide better administration than a human possibly can.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: Aereto on February 13, 2020, 02:56:53 PM: Quote from: geminitiger on February 13, 2020, 03:36:02 AM
Also using AI cores forces you to go to war ultimately with certain factions, limiting your options late game, every game.

About that, I took a more clandestine route and sabotaged the military to ruins, and that prevented them from organizing fleets entirely. So lawful factions won't discover you were using AI in colonies when they can't even send a fleet.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: StarScum on February 13, 2020, 04:14:48 PM: Quote from: Aereto on February 13, 2020, 02:56:53 PM
Quote from: geminitiger on February 13, 2020, 03:36:02 AM
Also using AI cores forces you to go to war ultimately with certain factions, limiting your options late game, every game.

About that, I took a more clandestine route and sabotaged the military to ruins, and that prevented them from organizing fleets entirely. So lawful factions won't discover you were using AI in colonies when they can't even send a fleet.

What do you mean by you sabotaged their military?
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: Mordodrukow on February 13, 2020, 08:44:13 PM: A little offtopic but still about admins.

Whats the chance to find an admin with all 3 skils? Never seen any in my runs.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: SCC on February 14, 2020, 10:13:06 AM: Zero percent.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: DDwarrirofire on February 14, 2020, 01:37:53 PM: Quote from: Mordodrukow on February 13, 2020, 08:44:13 PM
A little offtopic but still about admins.

Whats the chance to find an admin with all 3 skils? Never seen any in my runs.

They can only have 2 of 3 skills. Why AI beats them so bad, they don't have 25k upkeep either. Course you have the curious invaders knocking on your door.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: DDwarrirofire on February 14, 2020, 01:39:27 PM: Quote from: StarScum on February 11, 2020, 11:06:52 PM
Is there a mod that allows the player or an Administrator or AI to administer all colonies in the same system without penalty? Is such a thing even possible?

When i colonize a system, I want to do it thoroughly as I take great pleasure at seeing a previously uninhabited system fill with traders, smugglers and patrols. However, I can't really do that with so few admins to work with. I think a solution like this would work quite elegantly.

If I understand, you want increase your planet management cap? It's pretty easy, just an edit in the settings file I believe.

Admin cap is also in the same file.
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: Aereto on February 14, 2020, 01:57:57 PM: Quote from: StarScum on February 13, 2020, 04:14:48 PM
What do you mean by you sabotaged their military?

While my rep with the factions are in good standing, I raid colonies containing military bases from a specific faction I want to silence. The attack starts with port disruption, followed by disrupting farms or heavy industries to effectively cripple their stability modifiers. I keep their stability to 0 as long as possible through disruptions or raids, do missions for that faction to ensure they don't have a good enough reason to enter hostilities, and sustain until the colony decivilizes and render the base inoperable. This an operation that normally takes more than 1 cycle alone, but shorter when I perform in conjunction with pirate raids in a system. I don't bombard since that is not covert, and knowing when and where to approach in between patrol gaps with the transponder off is rough without pirates distracting them.

The Hegemony and the Persean League has a lot of military bases, so I just plan accordingly by effectively decivilizing their heavy industries while pillaging their blueprints.

Spoiler
With the Hegemony's military colonies gone, they cannot deploy AI-Inspection fleets to colonies where I liberally use AIs.
[close]
Title: Re: System Administrators
Post by: StarScum on February 15, 2020, 03:56:17 AM: Quote from: DDwarrirofire on February 14, 2020, 01:39:27 PM
Quote from: StarScum on February 11, 2020, 11:06:52 PM
Is there a mod that allows the player or an Administrator or AI to administer all colonies in the same system without penalty? Is such a thing even possible?

When i colonize a system, I want to do it thoroughly as I take great pleasure at seeing a previously uninhabited system fill with traders, smugglers and patrols. However, I can't really do that with so few admins to work with. I think a solution like this would work quite elegantly.

If I understand, you want increase your planet management cap? It's pretty easy, just an edit in the settings file I believe.

Admin cap is also in the same file.

Not exactly, more like I want admins to rule over systems and not individual planets. So if the player manages two colonies in the same system the game only recognizes them as managing one colony. Administrators can be assigned to multiple planets as long as they are in the same system.