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1

Modding / Re: So, these bladebreaker chappies........

« on: March 10, 2021, 04:24:59 AM »

Dealing with these bastards requires a specific fleet theme. Ballistic-oriented fleets with medium-high armor and either fast speed or sprint get-in-your-face capability are just the ticket. Do NOT attempt to get in a flux war with them; they will outflux you handily. Instead, charge them and pin them down; once you get the shield out of the way, they will go down surprisingly fast.

This is only my second Starsector game, first with the nex mod and few others I installed to go with it. I am still somewhat overwhelmed by the number and complexity of the weapons systems and loadout choices so I'm not sure I fully understand your comment. Seems likee a good time to learn more a bout it. Do you mean something like I need a fleet with:

* a preponderance of anti-shield weapons (of which kinetics are usually good examples)
* fast ships or ones with "charge capability" (meaning many cruisers/destroyers are favoured over fewer slow battle ships and carriers)

I have 70m Cr in the bank and 750k production per month in my colonies and a fair few ship blueprints the "best" of which appear to be:

Capitals: Astral, Zenelograd, conquest
Cruisers: Baikal, Apogee, Knight, Dominator
Destroyers: Tereshkova, Medusa, Tunguska, Scorpion

I can buy any number of premium Blackrock ships too, I already own several including four each of their main battleships and carriers. I have several high end 200% armour ballistic blueprints (Ferrocannon, Gauss cannon, Gale battery, whistler jetfire, dual shard cannon etc) which I can mass produce.

I am unsure what do about carriers/fighters. Should I:

* leave carriers out of it altogether and rely on on PD against these blighter's fighter swarms
* go for anti-shield bombers
* or go for anti-fighter fighters.

 
 

2

Modding / Re: So, these bladebreaker chappies........

« on: March 09, 2021, 04:10:14 PM »

Welcome to hell. I’m the devil.

They use exactly the same code and gameplay structure as Remnants; fleets spawn from bases, kill the bases and you can clean up the fleets.

I’ve tweaked them a fair bit for the next release, but they’re still a bunch of bastards; just slightly more manageable ones.

Aha! The culprit emerges! 

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know that remnants spawned fleets from bases. I've never really had any problem killing off remnants and then hitting their nexuses in one sitting so I've never really noticed the spawning bit I guess.

These bladebreakers buggers are another ball game altogether however. I've got a whole bunch of top of the line battleships and carriers etc but 300 pts worth of any combination of them appears insufficient to easily pacify these blighters.

But thanks for the heads up, clearly I have been following a hopeless stratagem, a veritable lamb to the slaughter stratagem. Suitably enlightened I shall try to figure out a way to find their base (yeah, bases plural I've no doubt from the tone of your reply:P) and attempt to dispatch it/them without getting caught by three or four monster fleets all at once in the process.

3

Modding / So, these bladebreaker chappies........

« on: March 09, 2021, 07:50:30 AM »

[@mods: I don't seem to have posting rights to the mod board. Please move this if appropriate etc]

I've come across this system with a "hardened hard" warning marker and a funny glowing "planet" in it - and hoards of these bladebreaker jokers. Jokers I say, but in fact I would say these blighters are no laughing matter, no laughing matter at all. I have done one full expedition to this system so far and started a second. I have defeated I would say seven or eight of their patrol fleets so far. Having recovered one of their ships and started using it myself I also now know exactly why they are no laughing matter.

My tactic during the first expedition was to defeat a fleet and then skedaddle out to hyperspace to repair up before three or more fleets could gank me. Then go back in and deal with the next one. I've just repeated this process in expedition 2 and.......

The blighters are chasing me around in hyperspace now!  Maybe five or six more fleets of them. BIG fleets of them 

WTF? The remnants don't do this. Not fair I say!

Anyway, I am somewhat unsure as to how to proceed here. Mainly the question I have is whether the blighters have a predefined number of fleets or they are making new ones all the time. And what's with them suddenly coming out of their system in force and terrifying the living daylights out of me?



 

4

General Discussion / Re: Thoughts on coming to the end of my first game

« on: March 07, 2020, 03:03:25 AM »

I will definitely be trying out the Nex mod next time I play a game of Starsector (which I'm sure I will). It sounds pretty interesting. Any other must have's go along with it (aside from the cosmetics, I already got a few of those installed)?

5

General Discussion / Thoughts on coming to the end of my first game

« on: February 28, 2020, 06:13:10 AM »

I have thoroughly enjoyed the last three weeks or so with Starsector, a total blast. Obviously I loved the combat/fleet mechanics, as everybody here already knows it's extremely good, and I felt the sense of danger was excellent. It's terrifying for the new player. I particulalry liked the structure of the game which I would say is pretty unique, unlike any RPG, open world or strategy game I've played which I would say has the following stage structure:

1. Initial survival and establishment - the main objective being to assemble a fleet capable of...... (rating: excellent in every way)

2. Full survey of inner ring systems - the main objective being to identify the best system to colonise (rating very good as I felt there is an element of repetitive grind about this stage owing to the difficulty of finding the perfect single system to colonise)

3. Colony system bootstrap - main objective being to make enough money to pay for three/four planets worth of industrial and military development (rating: excellent in every way)

4. Financial independence and military supremacy - main objective being a colony income of say 200k+ per month after fleet/staff costs and a fleet of 6-8 top of the line capital ships plus a selection of high quality support ships. (rating: good but I felt the attrition from Pirates, Path and factions was somewhat contrived, mechanical and repetitive, too easy to deal with by simply paying them off or blowing up their bases, and the lack of any alternative responses)

5. What now? - the main objective would be to find something else to do given you are now master of all you survey. It's not fair to give this a rating 'cos I guess this stage hasn't really been fully developed yet.

So getting to stage 5 is really a sort of ending the game with a whimper rather than a bang for me. This may be 'cos for me fighting is always a means to end in games, not an end in itself. To give three genre examples of my favourite games they would be Distant Worlds: Universe, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and XCOM2. All three have excellent combat aplenty but they also have clear reasons for that combat in terms of ultimate objectives and win conditions, in the first two cases multiple win condition options.

In Starsector at the moment I can see no point in beating up the Hegemony, the Diktat or the Church just because I can and it seems eradicating the Pirate and Path menace is technically impossible. Nor can I see any point in colonising more planets/new systems since there is no reason to make more money and all it would do (as I understand it) is double the aggro from factions, pirates and path alike.
 
So I guess what I would be looking forward to in future Starsector releases is a stage 5 scenario to match the first four. It feels like it needs to go either in an RPG direction in terms of narrative or a 4X direction in terms of faction diplomacy and warfare with win conditions attached. One space game staple that could potential answer to both descriptions of course is the sudden external threat, Space monsters from hell via wormhole or long hidden Dominion survivors complete with death stars and storm troopers led by a Darth Vadar clone.

One last comment on a couple of things I think is questionable about the current game design:

* the overlapping and stacking properties of planetary defenses makes settling colonies in a single system an overwhelming no-brainer. I feel this is possibly over-restrictive going forward. Making space based defense capability system rather than planet based would change that equation I would think leaving players free to colonise multiple systems in practice as well as in theory.

* The one-fleet-per-player restriction would I feel impede any further development of what I was referring to as a stage 5.

6

General Discussion / So......what do I do now?

« on: February 22, 2020, 04:51:08 AM »

The situation is I have three colonies in one system where I've pretty much maxed out everything I can build for now (two size 6's and one size 5 so waiting to get them all to get to size 7 for more room, slow) and which yield an income of about 250k per month. I haven't used any of my stock of alpha cores on anything yet. My fleet comprises four Paragons, a Legion and sundry auroras, apogees, various smaller ships and support ships, I can make as many more as I like but since I can only have one fleet and battles are limited to 500 deploy pts there doesn't seem any point in doing so. I can do any 300k+ jobs I feel like. I already have 4m in the bank, it doesn't seem like I need any more money. I can just kill the pirates and Path bases whenever they have the impudence to (futilely) attack my system and I just pay off the regular factions and do a few jobs for them for fun and profit to curry their favour.

I'm not sure what to do next:

* Is there any point in starting a new colony system, what would that achieve?
* I could conduct a full survey of all the outer systems - but to what end, what am I likely to find?
* I could decide a faction I don't like, the Church for instance, needs to die. Can you actually kill a faction and is there any point in doing so aside from ***** and giggles?
* Is there some official end point or win condition for the game I am ready to go for now?
 

7

General Discussion / Re: What is everybody's favorite weapon

« on: February 21, 2020, 12:43:34 PM »

.......but being a new player I'm trying to get a grasp on which weapons work and which don't.

Being a fellow noob player my 2c are:

1. Any weapon used in the right way in the right context on the right ship is going to be x10 as effective as any other weapon used in the wrong way in the wrong context on the wrong ship.

2. As a rookie pilot you are guaranteed to start out using the wrong weapons in the wrong way in the wrong contexts on the wrong ships 90%+ of the time.

Realising this, eventually, I implemented the following survival strategy (which seems to working out  OK so far):

1. Hired all the merc pilot's I could find that weren't timid or reckless, mostly steady with a one or two aggressive.
2. Took skills exclusively from the Technology, Industry and Leadership sections, ignored the combat tree.

[The principle behind this is that I have 10 merc pilots with 20 combat skills each, so what do I need combat skills for? Whereas the Industry, Technology and Leadership trees amplify my whole fleet's power, all my colonies' profitability and my scavenging efficiency.]

3. Just collected and stored as many different types of weapon as possible and let the game choose loadouts form all the ships other than my own on the principle the game knows better than I do what should go on what ship and my merc pilots will know how to use them.
4. Started playing with different loadouts and personal tactics on my own ship. I fly an Eagle at the moment but I own four Paragons. I don't fly a Paragon 'cos I have no combat skills and my merc pilots have 20 each so it would be a waste even if I was any good. I've tried different loadouts on my Eagle until I found a combo that enabled to to make reasonable contribution given my pathetic piloting skills and learned how to manage flux on it by switching certain weapons on and off as required so I could actually survive through the majority of battles.

If you are interested the Eagle has three big hardpoints on the front and a couple of big turrets. The game selects "finisher" type weapons for the front guns and some lasers for the offensive turrets. "Finisher" weapons are situational and require split second timing to be effective or so it seems to me. A pilot of my level of incompetence  can neither recognise the situation nor execute the timing. Consequently I fitted two anti-shield guns and one anti-armour gun on the front and left the big lasers on the turrets. Now my lasers do a reasonable job helping out dealing with fighter, bomber and missile attacks on my Paragons on auto-fire but I switch them off when attacking enemies with my front guns as they use a lot of flux it seems, so this way I can duke it out with enemies toe-to-toe far longer, stripping off their shields and armour to help ease their passing even if I don't finish them off myself. I'm sure this is far from optimal but for me at the moment it's manageable and survivable. 

8

General Discussion / What do you set the max battle size to?

« on: February 21, 2020, 04:03:16 AM »

I've been playing on default since I started which is apparently 300 pts divided between both sides. Now I have a big fleet I'm finding it annoying that I can't really field my fleet, I can only field a couple of capitals and my own ship and maybe one or two cruisers and frigates. In the end a Paragon may be 60 pts and an Apogee 18 pts but when push comes to shove I'd take two Paragons over one Paragon plus three Apogees any day of the week. Which makes things feel a bit one dimensional.

I am curious as to:

* what folk like to set max battle size at
* why the devs set the default to 300, what the intention was

9

General Discussion / Re: Harder than darksoul games

« on: February 18, 2020, 04:55:09 PM »

When i should start first colony?

From my understanding so far the short answer to that is when you've found it.

What you are looking for is one system with at least one and preferably two high habitability planets (<=125%) one with +1 or better farming, a good mining planet ideally with +2/+3 in both ore and rare metals and a gas giant with +2 volatiles. The reason is that planetary defenses/bases overlap and stack with each other turning a system like this into a fortress. This system also needs to be reasonably close to the core so you have a cheap and speedy commute to get supplies/jobs etc. So it needs to be in the inner ring of star systems around the core.

The perfect system like this is rare however and in practice you may have to compromise a bit but you will want the best compromise available. To that end you want to conduct a survey of all the systems in the inner ring systematically. To do that efficiently and profitably you need a decent fleet including at least one ship with surveying modules, some salvage rigs/shepherds to maximise loot proceeds and a reasonable array of decent combat ships plus tankers and freighters. It is also advisable to make sure your fleet's burn speed is 9+ as you will likely come across stuff you need to escape from (mostly you can do this by installing military subsystems mod in freighters/tankers etc and taking the level 3 navigation skill that gives you +1 burn across your fleet).

I found by doing this most of the other requirements for starting your first colony in terms of fleet composition and cash at hand look after themselves from the proceeds of this expedition.

10

General Discussion / Re: Harder than darksoul games

« on: February 18, 2020, 04:27:09 PM »

The flux system is not really that much unfamiliar to the shield/health regeneration in many FPS games nowadays.

Yes, I don't play FPS games at all. I found out about this game via my main Steam Group, eXplorminate, which is a 4X/Grand Strategy group. It's of interest to us 'cos it has some similarities to space based 4X games like Polaris Sector, Stellaris, GalCiv and Distant Worlds (the game map is quite like Distant Worlds map) and a lot of us are total space game junkies from a strategy point of view. But these games don't have any such combat systems.

My other two main genres are (mainly TB) tactical squad combat games such as Battle Brothers and XCOM and classic D20 style cRPGs from BG thru' Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Again, there are no similar systems in these games although I have remarked that XCOM on legend difficulty has some similarities with respect to the cat and mouse fighting model in that managing pod activation genenrally makes discretion the better part of valour if you don't like your soldiers biting the dust.

So I guess reaction to these systems is probably going to be somewhat dependent on the direction you came to the game from.

11

General Discussion / Re: Harder than darksoul games

« on: February 17, 2020, 10:51:49 AM »

The biggest issue for new players is the fleet management. It's hard to eyeball how a particular ship in shop will do without trying it out first. Same goes for weapons. I'd say the missions in main menu almost feel like a tutorial after the actual tutorial, unless you're a fan of reloading saves in campaign. And the best/worst thing is the autofit. I can see the use for new players but how can he/she know that the autofit build is actually doing something in combat. To me autofit just seems like something you use when you have multiple of the same ships or just wanna put literally any weapon on a clunker ship. If I were a new player, I'd rather experiment with everything so I don't get the ''I obviously need more ships'' feel some new players get when they use bad builds and fleet comps.

Speaking as a noob with about, I don't know I ain't got Steam to count it for me here, maybe 50 hours in this game although you are right that it is virtually impossible for a new player to know how a particular ship could or should perform looking at in the shop (I still can't do that, I rely completely on watching them in the field) I don't think this is the biggest issue for learning how to play.

I think there are two bigger ones which are very much related:

1. The flux/overload/shield/armour system and the resultant necessity (usually) for cat and mouse combat. I am not aware of any previous game that uses a system like this and any new player is most likely to be completely stumped as to why they are getting their arses handed to them to begin with ("begin with" equating to three or four times more play time than the average AAA action title takes to complete). It's not just complicated, it's totally unfamiliar.

2. The plethora of confusing weapon types and variants. Many games have a rock, paper, scissors model which is usually quite simple and familiar, but this one is more like (rock, paper, whatever)^2 except that a rock looks like a sheet of paper, the paper is scrunched up to look like a rock and whatever is just, well, whatever. The new player has no hope whatever of understanding what all these weapons do and how they should be used, certainly not until they've played for three or four times as long as the average AAA title etc. But the real kicker is the way these weapon specs interact with the flux/overload/shield/armour system. That's were the ^2 comes from.

Not that I'm in any way complaining, it's what makes this game great, sets it apart, but IMHO if something quite imaginative is not done to ease understanding of all this stuff when it gets released on Steam it is not difficult to imagine the cacophonous whining and avalanches of -ve reviews that will ensue.

Dark Souls may have been difficult, but the principle behind it, monsters having specific attack patterns you had to avoid and specific weaknesses you had to to exploit is hardly new or unique. You could argue that that's all that's really going on here but the difference is in Dark Souls you are just trying to whack your foe with a sword, not rocket science, whereas here it's much more complicated or certainly seems to be to the new player.

12

General Discussion / Re: I'm nervous about when to start heavy industry

« on: February 17, 2020, 06:01:17 AM »

And on that note I really wish someone would have a "just give up already" game mechanic that tells a faction that after three failed attacks to just stop trying, at least until they can buff their own fleet sizes first or something.

I am guessing that you couldn't care less about the rep hits you get from these failed raids then?

Honestly, not really. It's the same rep hit as if a patrol catches you and scolds you for being a bad boy and using the black market, a couple of Gamma cores and it's all forgiven.

Well in response to this issue I decided it was high time I had access to some **** off battleships (which I had no blueprints for yet, and why I was freaking out about this rep business) so instead of tugging the forelock to these factions for some measly rep boosts I headed out into the badlands beyond my colony system in search of some tech. I stumbled across a Colossus blueprint first and then a Paragon one. With all my upgraded military bases and orbital heavy industry and pristine nanoforges and whatnot I seem to get an elite Paragon raider for a measly 500k Cr.

That appears to fit the description of a **** off battleship to me, I've just ordered a second one in fact, so I'm feeling even less inclined to tug the forelock at this point, more inclined to inquire who wants some.

13

General Discussion / Re: Harder than darksoul games

« on: February 17, 2020, 05:38:13 AM »

Not sure what devs want? but it seems the game is unplayable.. Tried 3 times now but its allways the same, no money,no fuel,no suply.

As one fellow noob to another all I can say is.........put the effort in to get gud. The game is EA and it can be unforgiving but that's why it's so good. You will have to persist and learn how to a) avoid death, b) avoid bankruptsy and then c) keep ahead of the power curve but the rewards for putting the work in are big. When you succeed/make progress it feels very good. The combat alone in this game makes it worth the effort.

It's a complicated game and given it's still EA it's not set up to be particularly noob friendly. However there are some good Youtube tutorial runthroughs which I have watched to get the basics of how to play down. I strongly advise you to do the same 'cos, as I say, this game is big fun and exiting plus a sense of achievement when you get the hang of it.

These are some of the tutorials I found, all of which demonstrate somewhat different play styles which is another indication of the depth of this game and all of which are packed with tips, tricks and howto's.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHqSuWJSw8SDcF86-v9IH9jqRiZm6YsvG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzQOwp13MHw
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTfuCvvESV3MgDO52IT0hzwBHusy4bcDH
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeN2w4mIzUWWNvZLJqdnCQPbSOcIHUgcA

14

General Discussion / Re: I'm nervous about when to start heavy industry

« on: February 17, 2020, 02:03:54 AM »

And on that note I really wish someone would have a "just give up already" game mechanic that tells a faction that after three failed attacks to just stop trying, at least until they can buff their own fleet sizes first or something.

I am guessing that you couldn't care less about the rep hits you get from these failed raids then?

15

General Discussion / Re: I'm nervous about when to start heavy industry

« on: February 15, 2020, 11:34:22 AM »

I afraid I'm losing the will to continue with the game 'cos of these continuous expedition raids and the unavoidable -5 rep hits you get for them. It's demonstrably unfair and puts you in a position of having to run to stand still since you can't really do enough jobs to counter it and drive it in the opposite direction. Running to stand still is not fun. Progress is fun.

Pirates and the Path OK, but the inevitability is you end up at full scale hostilities with these regular factions no matter what you do. If the game is designed to set up a you against the universe war then it should say so plainly IMO and it certainly shouldn't lie and tell you defeating an black op expedition fleet won't hurt your rep with a faction when it actually does.