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General Discussion / Re: New player found a big toy
« on: April 23, 2024, 06:19:11 PM »
Now name a Pegasus Executor for added confusion.
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General Discussion / Re: High tech feels like a wet noodle.
« on: April 23, 2024, 06:17:59 PM »What range disparity? HVD and IRAL are both 1000. Phase Lance is, obviously, doesn't match anything.You think so? I would imagine HVDs go passable with an IR Autolance to knock down the shields at range before firing the lances.Why go for the 400 range disparity when you could use the HAC that has better efficiency and for less OP. The Eagle can just use an Ion Beam to make up for the loss of EMP since triple phase lance is a bit too hot even with 0.8 efficiency.
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General Discussion / Re: armoured weapon mounts sets Enforcer's armour to 989???
« on: April 23, 2024, 06:12:36 PM »
It WOULD be a good anti-flanking ship, if the AI knew how to keep it in a flank-protecting position instead of wandering off or getting itself killed. It is, as we all agree, very slow for its weight class, which means if it wanders off, it will never get back into position.
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General Discussion / Re: How large was Opis?
« on: April 23, 2024, 06:08:23 PM »
Well, the color of the planet is mostly defined by "which party is operating the market on the planet". Planets, themselves, are pretty inert things that don't do much of anything. It's the market that the player interacts with. Thus you have places like Agreus, which is a Hegemony planet by description, but the market is independent (Ko Combine). So it is presented as an Independent planet.
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General Discussion / Re: New player found a big toy
« on: April 23, 2024, 06:06:25 PM »He's new. He probably means he doesn't even know what a DEM missile is, lmao. DEM missiles are those missiles that shoot lasers; gorgons, gazers, hydras, and dragonfire.DEM missiles are not great for the player, because they have reduced capacity and generally lower damage. They are much better relatively speaking in AI hands, because the AI is pretty *** at knowing when and where to shoot missiles, and a missile that more or less always works thus performs more reliably in AI hands. As a human player, you are a better shot and will thus get much better results out of regular missiles.
I usually run 2 atlas and 1 prometheus during exploration phase of my playthroughs.I find I generally need about 4 or 5 or else I run out of space for my loot before I run out of fuel and end up forced to return early. You can probably make do with just 2 for trading runs since the amount of stuff you pick up in trading is capped by supply overages and shortages, which rarely exceed about 2K, but for properly exploring things, you're gonna need more than that.
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Suggestions / Re: Alternative story dialogues
« on: April 23, 2024, 04:19:53 AM »I remember playing a game where if the NPC starts to offer a fetch quest and I have the item already, the MC says something like "I already have it", and the NPC says something like "Great..." and skips the quest altogether and proceeds on. Although here, player may not want to hand the PK over to the Pathers automatically.Yes, so in the PK quest, the NPC shouldn't KNOW you have it right away, so should go through the usual motions of asking for it. THEN the player can say he has one in his back pocket. Or nothing, the NPC can just assign you the quest and it's up to you to then immediately call him back to turn it in, as is commonly the case when this happens in other games.
Would be way funnier if the NPC actually reacted to "Already Got One", though.
I ended up doing the whole Galatia academy questline after resolving the PL colony crisis by joining the league with 2 "strong arguments" for Reynard. Doing the parts of the quest involving the League felt sort of jarring and weird, because PL officials were treating my character like some no-name spacer, despite my Commission, max rep with the PL, and being the leader of several colonies within the league!Yeah, this is what we call a "sequence break". I don't think it was intended that you trigger and RESOLVE the League Crisis before completing the Galatia questline.
On top of that all, I had a strong relationship with the literal prime demarchon. My point is that in these scripted interactions throughout the game, the players reputation and the in-universe clout there name should hold isn't represented very well, and not just for the league.It never seems to be, in games. The number of times a game acknowledges that the player has become somebody important is incredibly rare. It's all the more glaring in games where the player can change his stature significantly. Going from a random hobo to a king, for instance. You will never stop being treated like a homeless person.
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Suggestions / Re: Give D-Ships Lower Chance for More D-Mods
« on: April 23, 2024, 04:09:33 AM »I suggest reducing the chance to add d-mods to disabled ships that already have d-mods because the junk spiral feels rapidly kills their effectiveness.Honestly, if your ships gets D-Modded, you're either throwing it in the scrap heap or you don't care because you're going the junk fleet route and therefore want more D-Mods for D-Maxxing, and there's a cap on how many D-Mods you can get.
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Suggestions / Re: AI controlled ships switch targets too often
« on: April 23, 2024, 04:04:19 AM »
The AI should probably have a better understanding of what the axis of advance and the line of battle are. That way it would not constantly try to turn to attack targets far from the axis of advance, which should be SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM. Trying to "avoid being flanked" by targeting a flanking ship that someone else can deal with tends to actually result in getting flanked.
The AI also likes to flank a little too much, even when this is counterproductive and results in becoming isolated and flanked yourself, or when getting behind the enemy is the wrong course of action, like a pursuit battle, where you don't want to be BEHIND the enemy, you want to cut him off by getting in front of him so he cannot leave, so the desired position should always be between the enemy and where he wants to go.
The AI also likes to flank a little too much, even when this is counterproductive and results in becoming isolated and flanked yourself, or when getting behind the enemy is the wrong course of action, like a pursuit battle, where you don't want to be BEHIND the enemy, you want to cut him off by getting in front of him so he cannot leave, so the desired position should always be between the enemy and where he wants to go.
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Suggestions / Re: Special rule for Persean League Crisis resolution [no spoilertags - so beware]
« on: April 23, 2024, 03:57:55 AM »Something that kind of obfuscates this is that the faction homeworlds' in-game defenses are a lot smaller than the story would imply, either as a gameplay abstraction to make smuggling viable or simply because they haven't been updated in a while, and power creep has occurred in the meantime. This makes the power gap between the player's colonies and the major factions look a lot smaller than the story treats it as. The final AI inspection, the League blockade, and the TactiStar mercenaries are what a small, cost-limited intervention against an upstart looks like, but only Sindria has anything resembling a proportionate level of security around its capital.Well, Sindria is a busy place, but we can still manage to smuggle our way in. But I guess most of the fleets are probably landed, as we can see patrols landing on the planet and disappearing from apparent existence as a result. Since ships that have landed don't chew up supplies, this makes sense. They could, perhaps, scramble if a hostile force is detected.
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General Discussion / Re: High tech feels like a wet noodle.
« on: April 23, 2024, 03:46:52 AM »Eagle looks like the most generic cruiser, but it's actually a beam sniper. Which is a terrible specialization in Starsector.And why do you say it is a beam sniper? Something like the Champeen can pack a more impressive beam to snipe with. Hell, even a Sunder has a bigger sniper beam. And why beams? The Eagle has no particular aptitude for beams, having only medium energy slots. It can be a sniper, using the med ballistics to pack HVDs or Maulers, but it's not especially GREAT at being one. Once again, the Eagle shows its mediocre averageness in this role. Like it does in every role.
With IR autolance and phase lances in their current form, I'm not sure it is anymore! Just stay away from HVDs on an Eagle, those are a trap.You think so? I would imagine HVDs go passable with an IR Autolance to knock down the shields at range before firing the lances.
I always felt like Phase Lance should have been a weapon for Eagle and Falcon...You can. I'm not sure why you would. I've seen the AI do it, but it seems to me that phase lances are for Dooms, so that you can fire all your damage in one short burst and then stop being there. Non-phase ships don't have the option to vanish after firing.
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General Discussion / Re: armoured weapon mounts sets Enforcer's armour to 989???
« on: April 23, 2024, 03:38:20 AM »
The Enforcer is tough, but not especially heavily armed, having nothing more impressive than Medium Ballistics. Its name implies its role: Bullying the weak. Unfortunately, by late game, it IS the weak. It is not terribly fast, having the speed of a typical cruiser, and not that well-armed, as mentioned. It is therefore not able to really contest cruisers, many of which are faster than it is, and can outrange it to boot (if you can be both outrun and outranged, you are automatically dead).
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General Discussion / Re: why would Luddic majority increase production and stability?
« on: April 23, 2024, 03:30:49 AM »Why are you trading outside of shortages then?I'm...not? You have to black market DURING shortages. Otherwise the run is just not worth making.
Some folks are so eager to opitimise everything into pretzels of effort when you can just do <x> and still get most of the benefit for considerably less hoop-jumping.That'd be the idea behind just unloading the intentionally created problem planet on the church and taking the passive income forever, instead of having to manually micromanage shortages and haul the cargo yourself, yes.
You do you tho.
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General Discussion / Re: How large was Opis?
« on: April 23, 2024, 03:25:38 AM »It's pretty difficult guess how many people were on Opis based off of the refugee crisis it created because we don't know how many people lived on the various worlds of Askonia before the crisis, and we don't know how much of a forewarning there was for refugees to be able to get off the planet, or how long it took for the PK to actually kill the entire planet - both of which would very drastically change the rate of survival.Even if they had plenty of warning, there would not be much they could have done. Consider: The largest passenger liner available to the sector, the Starliner, holds a measly 1500 people. If the population grows at rate comparable to Earth at about 1% per year, and Opis was a size-8 planet, then anything between 2-15 fully loaded Starliners must leave every day...for the population to not grow at all. The numbers only get sillier if Opis was size 9. I've never quite seen this many Starliners anywhere.
Planetary evacuation is functionally impossible.
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General Discussion / Re: why would Luddic majority increase production and stability?
« on: April 22, 2024, 09:58:31 PM »Or, if you want to keep the colony - build Commerce.The problem is that the Independent market this creates is useless as there is no black market, making the profit margin practically nonexistent. If you want to create a colony with a permanent shortage of everything, demolish the spaceport. Then since the colony is useless for you to own anyway, go ahead and let the Church have it, so it will now have a black market.
The Indepedant market this creates will buy goods the same as any npc colony, and pay a premium if there's a shoratge.
This also enables you to create shortages by installing/building certain things, and get paid for supplying your own colony.
And any rng shortages can also be treated the same, but temporary.
But you're really better off creating demand sinks rather than outright broken colonies, because this generates passive income rather than you having to haul the goods yourself. After all, where are the Spaceship Fights in this? None. Boring!
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General Discussion / Re: High tech feels like a wet noodle.
« on: April 22, 2024, 07:35:47 AM »
The Eagle isn't really very specialized, unless you count "Being The Most Generic Cruiser" a specialization. In fact, most midline ships are extremely specialized. Except the Eagle. The Eagle can do everything you'd expect a combat cruiser to do, not exceptionally well, but not exceptionally badly.
Every other midline is very specialized:
Gryphon, Pegasus: Missile Boats and nothing else.
Conquest: Battlecruiser, a controversial ship type from the real world made for bullying cruisers, that costs as much as a battleship, but can't actually fight battleships toe to toe without going boom.
Hamsterhead: Gunboat Destroyer
Sunder: Big Energy Gun.
Monitor: Pure Defense, no meaningful offensive capacity. Extremely annoying when the AI gets obsessed with trying to kill one for no good reason since it is not real threat.
But the Bird Cruisers are the Genericest of the Generic for their Heavy and LIght Cruiser types. You can build anything from a standoff sniper to close assault brawler. They offer a bit of everytihng: Some energy weapons, some ballistics, some missiles, with no particular focus in any, so you can do a bit of everything. They're decently fast, but not fast enough to make speed a defining characteristic in their weight class.
Every other midline is very specialized:
Gryphon, Pegasus: Missile Boats and nothing else.
Conquest: Battlecruiser, a controversial ship type from the real world made for bullying cruisers, that costs as much as a battleship, but can't actually fight battleships toe to toe without going boom.
Hamsterhead: Gunboat Destroyer
Sunder: Big Energy Gun.
Monitor: Pure Defense, no meaningful offensive capacity. Extremely annoying when the AI gets obsessed with trying to kill one for no good reason since it is not real threat.
But the Bird Cruisers are the Genericest of the Generic for their Heavy and LIght Cruiser types. You can build anything from a standoff sniper to close assault brawler. They offer a bit of everytihng: Some energy weapons, some ballistics, some missiles, with no particular focus in any, so you can do a bit of everything. They're decently fast, but not fast enough to make speed a defining characteristic in their weight class.