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Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: May 05, 2023, 11:22:52 AM »
To wait for mods to be updated or not to wait...
Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More (04/10/24)
I appreciate the feedback! This in particular - overwhelming the player with too many new ships - isn't something I was thinking about, and I'll keep it in mind. That said, one of the goals of the tutorial is to introduce the idea of using junk ships that don't matter too much one way or the other - how they're outfitted, or ultimately if they even make it through the fight.
Nevertheless, what you ask is barely possible. It is theoretically possible to fit all vital information in proper tutorial and give it to player in small pieces one by one. But that would be longest and most boring tutorial ever. And I doubt it helps.
It would be "boring" to a veteran, maybe, but not a new player completely unfamiliar with the mechanics - unless the actual content of the tutorial was boring and didn't scale correctly.
I think "easy" difficulty should really be easy, to give player time to understand how it works.
When did you last time talked to casual players? There ane no such thing as "too easy" for them. And if player thinks game is too easy - he probably not that casual and should change difficulty.
Best extended tutorial is to dive into sim from missions and not come out until you can reliably pilot whatever and beat most ships 1 size larger in duel (outside non-combat/semi-combat ships or particularly bad match-ups and preferably without relying on SO/Sabots).
It might be worth considering divorcing the tutorial from the game entirely, and have it as it's own self contained "module" that can be invoked from the game menu as required.
Part of the reason I think the tutorial doesn't scale well currently is the transition from a couple of frigates (and the associated costs of deployment, maintenance and hazard impact) to a moderately sized fleet right before the tutorial ends. So there is no real example for the newbie player on how this affects them until they are thrust into the "real sector."
I don't think there needs to be an explicit tutorial for a lot of mechanics, sometimes it is cleaner to just highlight the feedback for a mechanic the first time it occurs.
I think the two core mechanics that really need some serious tutorials are outfitting and sensors/stealth.
I suppose outfitting could be explained with warning messages like 'this load out lacks shield/armor damage' or 'this load out has high weapon flux relative to dissipation' along with suggestions in the tooltip about how to improve that (add kinetic/flux efficient damage, add HE/high damage per shot weapons, add vents or use less flux intensive weapons etc.)
try reading some blog posts...
Not everyone knows about Alex's Twitter. Or maybe poika simply doesn't have time to read everything. No need to bash them.
Pointing out that someone should maybe bother to do a little research first isn't browbeating them unless they'rementally challengeddifferently abled. Which I would have no way of knowing over the internet, unless it is made patently clear. But thanks for putting words in my mouth.
Hi.
Currently when you're proposed a mission targeting a certain planet (starport raid, smuggling, prison break etc.) you get a text something like this:
The problem is you cannot easily see which faction the targeted planet belongs to. The only way to do this are to:
1. Have every planet memorized.
2. Back out of the dialogue, check the map, find the planet manually.
3. Accept the mission, go to intel screen, abandon quest if it's against a faction you don't want to anger.
This is literally being fixed with some new extra code in next/new update due SoonTM; try reading some blog posts... or at least the code is being added, should also affect missions like this.
Not a good idea tbh. I don't have my hands actively on the keyboard while playing the game most of the time. Typically I only do so when i'm accepting a lot of missions at once, or i'm in combat.
You realise you're replying to a person that wrote that 8 YEARS AGO? Btw necroing is against the rules.Nothing fundamental has changed in terms of rebinding keys on a system level in the past eight years. I'm not replying to the person that posted the message, I'm replying to the content of the message. I couldn't care less if he sees my reply, I'm pointing out that is this is not a sufficient solution to a problem that still persists to this day.
Fleet movement in the main view and setting course on the map are pretty different in terms of player interaction. One is a real-time control, one is a much less frequent longer-term decision. FWIW, what I think is a general "rule" type thing to get out of this - consistency is important for UI interactions for performing similar actions, but not necessarily when working with similar concepts.
Well you could go into the Keyboard control panel and change keys to output other key outputs.