Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: MatthiB on September 30, 2015, 06:48:07 AM
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Sounds like most of your issues come from the game being an Alpha. A lot of those features you named doesn't really work by themselves, but they will with further updates.
In the meanwhile, you should try Nexerelin.
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I think HELMUT caught the gist of what I might reply by pointing out that the game is still in alpha, AKA feature incomplete, but this part caught my eye:
So it seems the only way to get some decent loot is to grind supply convoys. Now nearly every battle is two battles. One where you defeat the combat force and the 2nd where you must pursue the cargo ships to get the loot. I don't know about you, but I find the 2nd part boring and unnessecary. It's always the same. Man what kind of fun is it to shoot helpless freighters or tankers in the ass over and over again!
Never deploying civilian ships is a natural response to the deployment mechanics - and that means you always have to run down the freighters in a second "battle" if you want their loot. IMO that's too tedious. You can order your second in command to take care of it, but he's really unreliable. Or perhaps reliably bad. Second in command failed to catch a Dram with a Wolf - that's pretty incompetent.
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Talk about being late to the party; the last major release was, oh... last October. These issues are all basically known, and this is a discussion that's been had before, albeit spread out over a number of different posts.
Beyond that, the game is still in development, as HELMUT noted, and more specifically in the stage of development where most of what is being added is necessary infrastructure. Moreover, because it's feature set is incomplete, the games balance is not yet final, so many of the things you're taking issue with may be far less intrusive or even removed altogether. Ultimately, Starsector is not fully featured; it is possible that the end result of all of the games moving parts may turn out badly, but I think it's a little too early to call it. 0.7 should be releasing relatively soon, so we'll be getting a better view then, I think.
Please calm down.
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Sounds like most of your issues come from the game being an Alpha. A lot of those features you named doesn't really work by themselves, but they will with further updates.
In the meanwhile, you should try Nexerelin.
Pretty much this. Have you looked through the blog posts about what's getting added?
EDIT:
Actually, considering your last three words, seems like you're gone. Might as well just leave the thread since it's pointless to persuade him, he's just given up and left after one post. :P
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Sounds like most of your issues come from the game being an Alpha. A lot of those features you named doesn't really work by themselves
While this statement is true by itself, it seems like you folks are missing the main point of OP, which is not about the game not being fun because it's unfinished, but about recent releases of the game being less fun then those from 2 years ago. Actually, I agree with the OP somewhat.
I remember playing Starsector when it contained only 1 system, with 2 factions, pirates and may be neutrals (if memory serves). Yes it was too little space, too few factions, too few ships and so on, but game mechanic itself promoted pure lighthearted, relaxed joy: you started at the bottom, you killed stuff, you grew bigger, you killed bigger stuff. Not much, I admit, but it was easy, fun and enjoyable.
Right now we have more space (cool), more factions (cool) and more ships (yay, best thing evar!), but along these definite improvements gameplay got ridden with *questionable* things. I hate it when I had to prepare to a hyperspace travel as if it was a trip to the north pole, I hate that not only I am unable to replenish 100% of my supplies by looting my enemies, but that I further could dry the whole system of supplies, and what is next? But most of all, I hate customs fleets which sole excuse for existence seemed to be to ruin my hard earned standings with a faction. Now this all might be, indeed, parts of greater plan we just not see yet as a whole, but I do agree that right now, as in today, the game became less funny, less lighthearted, and less satisfying than 2 years ago.
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Maybe Starsector just isn't a game for you. I don't think it's supposed to be funny, lighthearted or casual.
Also, it's about the least surprising thing ever that some very unfinished features are worse than useless, it doesn't really mean anything at all about how it'll work out once they're finished.
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Well, it seems to me that he was burned by the raised difficulty and didn't tried to go further. After a while you realise how to use events to your advantage, or hunt bounties for heaps of money, and then the supplies cost is a non issue. As for tolls, unless you are trying to really improve your relation with a faction, just ignore them! I escape inspection fleets 90% of the time (though it's more due to the tedious process of paying them) and never had a problem...
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Well, it seems to me that he was burned by the raised difficulty and didn't tried to go further. After a while you realise how to use events to your advantage, or hunt bounties for heaps of money, and then the supplies cost is a non issue. As for tolls, unless you are trying to really improve your relation with a faction, just ignore them! I escape inspection fleets 90% of the time (though it's more due to the tedious process of paying them) and never had a problem...
Thing is, the only bounties out there are against the Pirates. So you always need to hunt down pirates to get money, which truth be told, is possibly the only way of getting money ATM without doing massive food runs Megas-style. With the new update, you can actually turn off your transponder and kill friendly fleets without too much of a penalty to your relationship. That's going to make the game a lot more interesting, so you can send an entire system into chaos by hunting down trade and relief fleets while simultaneously being able to trade with those suffering systems to get mounds of cash. A lot more in-depth then the current system with just one addition.
...Although I still want factions to impose captain bounties on other factions instead of just against the Pirates. Sure, they can put up general bounties for number of ships destroyed on any faction, but having a target is usually a lot more profitable (and expands on what you can do between factions).
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I think it's pretty normal that a game in development goes through some phases were you see too many unfinished mechanics that, for now, distract from the fun. A gangly teenager with a breaking voice won't be a cute as a baby, but its necessary to go through that phase to mature.
And due to the many improvements in combat AI and content I think the current version is much more fun than anything we had two years ago. I just hope the sensor mechanic of the next update will be complete enough to add to the fun, not detract from it.
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@ The Soldier: I usually refrain from food runs until about level 40. Before then, I still build up Combat and Technology before getting Leadership. Massive food runs for me are a late-game option. Someone like the OP might not even get that far.
I understand some of the OP's grievances. For me, addition of CR (until ammo became unlimited) was a major killjoy. More comments from me may come later.
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...Although I still want factions to impose captain bounties on other factions instead of just against the Pirates. Sure, they can put up general bounties for number of ships destroyed on any faction, but having a target is usually a lot more profitable (and expands on what you can do between factions).
I might be wrong here but I'm sure factions already do this.
Once you get a high enough rep for them to give you access to their comm relays you start seeing assassination contracts for captains of rival factions.
OP does have a point buried under all that bile though.
It would be nice if civilian ships sometimes offered to surrender if you defeat thier escorts.
It would be nice if customs scans were conducted in port where it doesn't matter instead of in space where it is just an irritant.
It would be nice if the boarding mechanic wasn't quite so.... Frustrating.
It would be nice if the trading system wasn't quite so.... Punitive.
It would be nice if fighters were not more supply and crew intensive than actual ships.
It would be nice if the CR timers went away. Far away. :P
Time will tell.
Until then: Just stay calm and shoot spaceships.
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I might be wrong here but I'm sure factions already do this.
Once you get a high enough rep for them to give you access to their comm relays you start seeing assassination contracts for captains of rival factions.
Faction bounties are in SSP+ only iirc.
Also in regards to surrendering, any sort of fleet to fleet interaction besides fight (and occasionally pay fine) would be nice.
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In standard game, all named bounties are against Pirates, although end-game deserter fleets are only Pirates in name and allegiance. General bounties can include non-pirate enemies of the faction issuing the bounty. That said, losing 100+ reputation and more for mere chump change (by say, killing Tri-Tachyon ships for Hegemony in the Valhalla system) is idiotic.
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I agree with OP, just with out the teen rage. Especially with the 2nd battle part it is tedious and annoying. Tho most of them are half finished tie-ins with features not here yet.
Tho the topic title is completely different then what he says...
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I usually cannot even have a second battle to get at the survivors because the -5 reputation from that sends reputation below -75 for Vengeful, and that results in permanent ban from markets, which is crippling, or at least irreparably harms your powergaming options. There is a reason why I post "pursuit is obsolete" in 0.65.
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So it seems the only way to get some decent loot is to grind supply convoys. Now nearly every battle is two battles. One where you defeat the combat force and the 2nd where you must pursue the cargo ships to get the loot. I don't know about you, but I find the 2nd part boring and unnessecary. It's always the same. Man what kind of fun is it to shoot helpless freighters or tankers in the ass over and over again!
yes it's a byproduct of every fleet being a little icon over HERE, and then in combat you become actual ships over THERE. And because it's all abstracted, you get to pick and choose which ships to "deploy" and then they can have some ships "escape" or something while you fight some other ships. Ok it's part of SS now but it creates these ineluctable gameplay problems that sometimes make me wonder. In a normal game without ghetto-ized combat, you have to do the same thing and then pursue freighters after getting the big threats, but it's less boring since you don't have to exit and reenter combat with all the tedious window dialogs and clicks.
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The latest version put many additional systems into the game that add flavour but take away from the pure arcade combat experience by making it expensive. This doesn't mean the game is worse. It just means that there are now actually other parts to the game.
I'm personally amazed at the level-headed response you're getting here considering the tone of your post.
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I think murdering a hundred of crewmembers and civilians by attacking a small convoy is a perfect reason to get space-Interpol on your back and get banned from a faction. If anything I wouldn't mind it being the case without pursuing them. What the game lack cruely imo is some form of surrender that avoid needless bloodbaths, with a smaller reputation hit (Instant inhospitable for example) and the option to disengage without opening fire with large fleets.
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The latest version put many additional systems into the game that add flavour but take away from the pure arcade combat experience by making it expensive. This doesn't mean the game is worse. It just means that there are now actually other parts to the game.
I'm personally amazed at the level-headed response you're getting here considering the tone of your post.
This community is surprisingly docile. Might have to do with the simple forum background, heh.
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I admit that I got Starfarer/Starsector mostly for the pure arcade combat experience, with the campaign as an excuse to powerup my ships and facilitate combat. (I do not play missions anymore because no skills make ships too slow and too weak.)
This is why I loathed CR until it effectively became the new ammo count in the last release. (It would be nice if high-tech ships cost less CR to deploy now that low-tech and midline ships effectively have more ammo than high-tech.)
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You took the exciting features out
What features were removed? The only ones that come to mind are relatively minor elements (ballistic ammo, hangars, travel speed).
The current vanilla game is so worn down like a spaceship beyond repair.
This simile makes no sense that I can discern.
There is enough high quality faction mods out there with unique feel. Why do you work against them with your own clumsy attempts?
wat
(Also, it's not Alex's obligation to work with mods, quite the opposite)
harassment
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
And b/c of that supply-mania, you now have to go through the deployment menu for each and every battle, which is just more useless administration.
You now have (more like "ought") to take 5-15 seconds to think about what ships you want to use, to commit just the right amount of force you need, instead of just hitting "deploy all" and steamrolling everything. SO USELESS. MUCH ADMINISTRATION. VERY BUREAUCRATIC.
what I can sense is laziness
Laziness by what metric? Perhaps you should present the game(s) you've made, so we know you have a proper benchmark for such things.
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I admit that I got Starfarer/Starsector mostly for the pure arcade combat experience
/snip
Same sentiment here; I bought it because of the combat engine.
It's somewhat disappointing that this aspect of the game has seen little change in the past 3.5 years.
I suppose it's a testament to how good the combat engine is, that I still find the game interesting.
That's not to say I've given up on the campaign, just that I can't see what direction it's headed in.
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This community is surprisingly docile. Might have to do with the simple forum background, heh.
One answer: Not On Steam (yet)
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Having more time to read and contemplate the OP, here goes:
Factions
So far, whether Alex likes it or not, factions are defined by the ships they use. I agree that factions are too similar to each other, and it is glaringly obvious if I play Nexerelin and add a mod faction or two such as Blackrock. Before 0.65, Hegemony and Pirates were low-tech, Tri-Tachyon was high-tech, and the rest were midline. Now, all standard factions share most ships. Tri-Tachyon use almost as much midline as high-tech, and they even use the low-tech Lasher. Independents use everything. Pirates use (D) ships and a few others. The remaining factions share the same ships, which is a mix of low-tech and midline, plus the high-tech Wolf.
Reputation
So far, the problem is optimal play requires that you have unlimited access to all markets and merchandise. For that, you need cooperative relations with all factions except Independents and Pirates. Independents, due to lack of military market, only require minimum relations of Suspicious. Pirates will trade as long as relations are not Vengeful. The only way to get high relations with everyone who matters is to fight Pirates only. Furthermore, you cannot pursue survivors when relations are below -70 because the -5 from pursuit will send relations to Vengeful, and that means permaban from that faction's market, and you have ruined, I repeat, RUINED your character. Also, Valhalla is a trap. Big system with puny markets, and doing anything useful there (except killing named Pirate bounties) will hurt your reputation with one of the factions.
Quest for supplies
The problem with this so far, combined with AI fleeing from large fleets, is it pushes the player into using small and elite fleets (and soloing battles with chain-flagships) for much of the game, if he wants to play optimally. Combat will yield enough drops if you can solo fleets with a few frigates. This is most easily achieved with an aggressive Combat and Technology focus.
Boarding is awful because it is too random and your best chance of success for boarding is under 50%. Chance is low enough that even with save scumming, it is possible to have more than ten failures in a row before you succeed. Such a worst-case scenario of fight-board-fail-reload will take more than hour. So far, boarding is only useful for acquiring rare ships at the endgame.
Toll trolls are obnoxious. For now, the most painless way to deal with them late in the game is to let them start a scan, then run away and take the -3 rep.
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Couple of points.
Optimal play for you is not optimal play for everybody. I do not require access to every market just to gimp the system and suck up ships and other stuff. Perfection is utterly boring and grind for its own sake is likewise dull to me. I've never chained flagships or kited exclusively, and the thought of playing the game like this just to be lean on supplies and minimize risks puts me to sleep, honestly. Fleet action is where it's at.
The problem is that SS is currently in a transitional phase. The universe has had flavour added, but at the core is still profit. Gaining XP, gaining money, gaining ships and winning fights. Soon we should have other motivators, and the landscape will change. But: Some mechanics currently in place need tweaking, yes.
The balance of relation boosts and relation hits is too tight and too restrictive. Docking with a remote pirate base should not become news that travels all through the system. The player is a free agent, and relation hits for something as insubstantial as a bit of trading feel petty. Since profit soon entails picking fights with juicier targets - and faction targets are juicy - the penalties will come soon enough.
Boarding needs an overhaul too. Supplies are still a little too tight. Some energy weapons are still underpowered. I don't play vanilla SS much anymore, so I don't feel some of these shortcomings in play.
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You do want maximum market access if you want to purchase the most rare weapons and ships. If you want to powerlevel, you also want to be able to visit markets to sell your merchandise. You cannot participate in commodity runs if you are banned from markets, after all.
Fleet action is nice, and I deploy all in endgame when level is over 50. Deploy all is good as it speeds up combat and enables more chain-battling by enabling 50% CR back on standing down. More ships eat more supplies, and it is a good idea to have stockpiles everywhere. For players who are struggling with having enough supplies, playing lean with small elite fleets may be the way to make do with poor access to supplies.
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Factions
So far, whether Alex likes it or not, factions are defined by the ships they use. I agree that factions are too similar to each other, and it is glaringly obvious if I play Nexerelin and add a mod faction or two such as Blackrock. Before 0.65, Hegemony and Pirates were low-tech, Tri-Tachyon was high-tech, and the rest were midline. Now, all standard factions share most ships. Tri-Tachyon use almost as much midline as high-tech, and they even use the low-tech Lasher. Independents use everything. Pirates use (D) ships and a few others. The remaining factions share the same ships, which is a mix of low-tech and midline, plus the high-tech Wolf.
I'm staying largely out of this, but I want to note this bit, which really resonated with my impressions of the factions as a new player. In combat, all the core game factions feel pretty samey. I'm not in favor of each faction having a completely different set of ships, but I think each one should have have a 'core' ship or two in each size category that is either exclusive to them or appears much more prominently in their fleets than in others. Thr bias towards high tech in Tri-Tach and low-tech in Hegemony fleets isn't enough right now - they need ships that are 'theirs' (like their capitals).
Actually, it feels strange lore-wise that most of the new factions (from mods) have totally unique ship sets. They all have justifications for this, as speciality ship yards or long-lost asteroid colonies or whatever, but it feels like those sort of factions should be the exception and factions like the Interstellar Imperium and Tiandong Heavy Industries (who use modified versions of standard designs) should be the norm. This is not to knock on existing mods, but I hope to see future content for the core game that goes the route of Interstellar Imperium, etc.
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For players who are struggling with having enough supplies, playing lean with small elite fleets may be the way to make do with poor access to supplies.
For once, this seems like a bit of advice everyone can accept, heh. I usually stick like that my first few in-game months, running with maybe 3 or 4 frigates (and getting logistics for the crew EXP modifiers, to balance out the pretty high casualty rates frigates can have - but that's not for everyone) before I start getting upgrades.
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You now have (more like "ought") to take 5-15 seconds to think about what ships you want to use, to commit just the right amount of force you need, instead of just hitting "deploy all" and steamrolling everything. SO USELESS. MUCH ADMINISTRATION. VERY BUREAUCRATIC.
Yes, that is the problem. What I bought, and what I loved, was quite another game. Newer releases removed my pure spinal fan of growing big, fielding 4 Onslaughts eventually and bloody shred them buggers to pieces by the sheer awesomeness of the iron fist. Without ability to eventually steamroll everything that moves into the dirt there's left pretty much nothing to aspire for in unmodded game.
Laziness by what metric? Perhaps you should present the game(s) you've made, so we know you have a proper benchmark for such things.
Really, has it comes down to such a lame argument? Truly, pathetic.
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Well, you can always just mod the game to make it the game you want...so yea. It's flexible.
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@Creepin: I think you're confusing "the game is being developed in a direction I don't like" with "the game is being made worse". It was never intended to be an arcade blow-em-up, it just happened to play like one in a particular stage of its development. If you want that, that's fine, and there's nothing stopping you from playing the game like that (give yourself max rep, adjust some values in a config file to make earning money easier, go ham ramping up and blowing everything up - I do that sometimes), but that's not what the game is intended to be and you're not going to convince the author that he should abandon his vision and turn development around because you like it some other way.
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@Creepin: I think you're confusing "the game is being developed in a direction I don't like" with "the game is being made worse".
Hey, I never claimed I judge things from POW of omniscient and omnipresent being, so any of my judgements comes with an invisible tag of "IMHO", much like any of other peoples judgements. With that being said, for me, as a person, "the game is being developed in a direction I don't like" is perfectly, precisely equals "the game is being made worse". Fair enough?
but that's not what the game is intended to be and you're not going to convince the author that he should abandon his vision and turn development around because you like it some other way.
That much is obvious and never was my goal. I just wanted to a) rant and let off my frustration and b) support likeminded folks.
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How did this ever get to a page three?
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Laziness by what metric? Perhaps you should present the game(s) you've made, so we know you have a proper benchmark for such things.
Really, has it comes down to such a lame argument? Truly, pathetic.
Lame, how? I'll grant that it comes across as... ad hominem, perhaps (that's the closest term I can think of).
But ad hominem is exactly what the claim it responds to is hard to interpret as anything other than, and more to the point, one the OP has shown no basis for making. I submit that someone who has not participated in the making of a game is in a much weaker position to make claims on a game dev's laziness. And while one could still marshal evidence from elsewhere, MatthiB has not indicated that they even have any such evidence beyond "features X, Y and Z do not have a complete implementation" (next to useless for the purpose unless placed in context).
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Well, he changed the title and the contents of the post to "---". Wonder why. Did he feel embarrassed or something?
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Well, he changed the title and the contents of the post to "---". Wonder why. Did he feel embarrassed or something?
Maybe it was the two dozen or so politely worded "NO U" replies that tripped the stropswitch.
re: Faction Identity.
I don't think we have a massive problem as it stands. Sure we could use a bit of a tweak to emphasise certain ships in fleet compositions, but the overall feel of all these groups essentially using whatever they can get hold of does okay.
For example - I don't think I've ever seen a faction Onslaught outside of a neutral or Hegemony fleet. Nor a Conquest outside of a Sindrian or Luddic fleet.
(I'm not counting pirate/bounty fleets.)
All the rest seem to be a mish-mash of whatever was available and not full of holes, which could probably use a bit of tidying up but it's not the sort of thing that really screams PRIORITY.
I wonder if each ship had an entry in the .csv to declare that this ship is high/mid/low/some other category tech, like how some are marked as civilian.
And then use this to build faction fleets by requiring a minimum of x% to be one of those categories.
Not sure if this is something that would be worth the effort (for now) - Adding an extra column to a csv is trivial, but I have no idea about the code side.
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Nice backpedaling. I guess he expected a heavily opinionated monologue to not generate discussion.
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Too bad the OP didn't stick by his post. Honest feedback from a variety of players expecting different things should be welcomed as it is. Not likely appreciated by everyone but certainly useful for generating discussion as evidenced here, even when it's filled with some strongly suggestive opinions.
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I was avoiding this thread up until now for reasons that should be quite clear to anyone who's been here long enough, But now that the OP has completely backed down from this thread i feel i want to point something out.
If you're going to make an inflammatory post, and yes anything that bashes a game in it's own forums is considered inflammatory even if you have genuine criticisms to make, you should stand by it, take all the advice, criticism, even the hate(which luckily this forum doesn't do so much as others)
And then apply what was said to make a proper response, most of the time community members would be and are willing to help you fix your issues, or at the very least reach an agreement, and help you seek the proper response. Such as oh "Well X game does the Y feature you're looking for much better, have you tried playing that?"
making a post like this and then disappearing, and then trying to erase all evidence of it, ( which won't work, nothing on the internet can ever be deleted) will only shun you from that community for a very long time.