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1

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Error in sound initialization

« on: August 13, 2021, 09:21:18 AM »

I've had my own experience with this.  It doesn't really make sense but I thought I should document it for others.

step 0: Play starsector the previous day, just before turning off PC. 

Step 1: Next day, I installed the "free web version" of microsoft office.

Step 2: I installed libre office to compare later -- during installation, it claimed nvidia webhelper was using a file so I'd need to restart to complete installation.

Step 3: restart PC.  After a little web browsing I try and run Starsector.  Encounter this error.   Running in admin mode did work, but I wanted to test this out, so I uninstalled libre office.

Step 4: restart PC and boot up starsector.  Works perfectly.

Step 5: Install Libre Office again, this time without Nvidia webhelper forcing a restart.  Starsector still works fine.


I had swapped to an MSI motherboard and reinstalled drivers lately, but as mentioned in step 0 I'd been playing starsector just fine.  Libre Office is the only significant change to my system I'm aware of.

I'm left more than a little confused and can't replicate results, but MAYBE it has something to do with some kind of nvidia sound driver interaction?  I'm using the integrated realtek stuff on my motherboard so that doesn't make sense either, but so be it. 

2

Suggestions / Battle Log

« on: December 25, 2018, 02:29:42 PM »

So, in 0.9 I find myself using a lot more frigates, as it's possible to salvage destroyed ones reliably using reinforced bulkheads/skills.  I think that aspect of the game is in a pretty good place where fleet composition can be fluid, and battle losses can be part of a sustainable strategy- if anything D-mods are a bit too strong (the deployment cost and maintenance skill reduction make me seek them out for a lot of ships) but that's another discussion.  What I've noticed is that my newfound willingness to use packs of smaller ships and a spread of frigates and destroyers in protracted battles has created an issue: it's incredibly difficult to actually track which of, say, 5 wolfs has run out of combat time and needs to retreat, or keep track of damaged ships and order their retreat, keep tabs on ships with different weapon loadouts, or sometimes just finding a ship on the map to give orders can take longer than it should.  This is made worse by the fact that older warnings can be deleted by newer ones and missed entirely in the heat of the moment.

The simplest way I can think of addressing this is to modify the deployment screen, such that ships can be selected and ordered about from there, complemented by some kind of battle log detailing the major events that pop up on the top left of the screen (maybe clicking on them selects that ship?).

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: December 14, 2018, 09:34:59 AM »

It produces 1 "Ship Hulls and Weapons" commodity more and it adds 20% to your colonies' ship quality.

Makes sense! Looks like there's a problem with the description, or I'm just blind .-.

https://imgur.com/a/lRoar3y

4

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: December 14, 2018, 08:25:17 AM »

Liking the update so far, but one thing has me confused: The Orbital Works upgrade description is almost identical to Heavy Industry in every way (maintenance, demands, production), with the exception of a small piece of text saying there's an orbital module.  I'm not really sure what it's supposed to do- or if it's actually bugged in some way.

Edit- The upkeep value shown when selecting a new industry to build also seems off, showing the actual value as base value and an inflated one in the column.

5

Blog Posts / Re: Pirate Bases, Raids, and Objectives

« on: June 15, 2018, 04:46:37 AM »

Will the player eventually be able to remotely orchestrate their fleets and destroy a pirate outpost?  It'd make more sense than having to do everything personally, and the player still has to prioritise what their limited fleets are doing.


"But, you say, why not just build them next to the base, and have everything be defended at the same time? "

Not to be that guy, but why not just build defences around the objectives too? 

6

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 15, 2018, 04:20:46 AM »

How will faction hostilities be decided?  Are there factors for tension like land, trade wars, attempts to destabilize colonies- or  is it just random?  It'd be interesting if all the other factions can (attempt to) band up to beat down anyone that gets too dominant.

It'd also be interesting if the player (or AI) could ultimately subjugate all other factions as a kind of late game challenge, or take missions to help re-establish a faction suppressed by someone else.  Maybe by the power of love friendship threats-of-violence the player could even unite the sector and usher in a new dawn of prosperity!

I guess in a nutshell I'd like the system to allow for a little intrigue, some power plays: tangible player driven changes beyond just being good at killing things.


On an entirely unrelated note, have you been working on starsector full time or are there other projects to keep the bread flowing?  Such a long time working on one game; must feel odd to know you're reaching the finish line.

7

Blog Posts / Re: Economy & Outposts

« on: October 14, 2017, 03:59:14 PM »

It really seems  quite an odd concept that outposts can supply an infinite number of other outposts and I think is less intuitive than a limited production split up between demanding worlds.  It also forces you to arbitrarily limit outposts to 1 supplier per resource.  I think this generally detracts from the feeling of a bunch of people trying to scrape by however they can in a post-domain system.

I understand that you're trying to simplify things a bit for the UI but this seems rather drastic.  Would there be performance issues with implementing a more production/demand based system and letting outposts have multiple suppliers?  Maybe I'm not representative of the average player but I don't think it's something people would get bogged down in.

8

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 04, 2016, 08:24:26 AM »

Nice to see you're still improving the AI.  I'm hoping one of the "big content additions" will be the long anticipated addition of industry!

9

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.7a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: April 28, 2015, 11:38:55 AM »

For travel time, how about the equivalent of random encounters?  Wormholes that could take you anywhere, the remains of a scrapyard, a trade fleet limping home without any fuel and... well.  There are no aliens, but you could have pre-collapse drone fleets that were sent to explore the universe with conventional drives.  Just a bunch of interesting/dangerous things the player has to actively grab at; superfleet type things would also make the endgame more challenging. 

Some people suggested what surprises that basically amount to *traps*.  This seems a bad way to deal with travel time; normal travel should be fun or just be reduced, rather than ending up frustrating/tedious.


Also, SS is now approaching the magic 1.0; are there any plans for more exploration oriented gameplay, like randomly generated/hidden systems and content: stuff like tech mining, digging up autofactories and making/finding hidden bases in uncharted regions (such pro pirate)?

10

General Discussion / Re: Revenge of the Armor Plates (experimenting with armor rebalance)

« on: April 08, 2015, 05:38:08 PM »

I've always wanted the ability to slowly repair armour (e.g up to 25% of maximum strength) during combat, or have it continue to give some damage soak/reduction once it's blown away and the hull is taking damage.  It'd give low tech ships a fighting chance at staying in longer battles and encourage more aggressive play (take a few hits, I won't be left with nothing).  To me this would be more fun, without all the messy balance work of simply giving ships more armour...

When I first started playing I noticed the glowing armour damage effect was and wondered if my armour could "recover" a bit if left to cool before taking more damage.  'twas rather disappointing to learn this is not the case

11

Suggestions / Re: How to get a non-exploitable time pressure on combat

« on: December 18, 2014, 10:54:23 AM »

Yeah, the reactor isn't hooked up to dominion wifi_(tm).  Clearly ships in the fleet communicate with one another 

Blatantly or not, I'm sure it'd be possible to tamper with communications.  What I don't see is how it would impact CR, or how it would still happen every battle.

12

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 18, 2014, 08:01:34 AM »

Snip

I'm not really sure where you're coming from.  In fleet vs fleet ammo will be less of a constraint, so what is the purpose of removing it all together?  It still serves a function, and the CR loss discourages actually relying on ammo regeneration to have long battles.

As for fleet VS fleet, allies might be more worthwhile but solo flagship will still be a thing.  The skills we have now offer more offence than defence (means fights will stay shorter) and if someone can out-play the AI they will make better use of combat skills, so yes it'll be harder to solo things but still perfectly doable regardless of how many skills the AI has.

13

Suggestions / Re: Vent delay

« on: December 18, 2014, 05:38:46 AM »

I can see a few solutions, which I'm sure were already brought up:

1) Add a minimum time period between each vent
2) Make the minimum vent time = 1/2 maximum vent time for a ship (flat values penalise ships made to vent quickly)
3) Minimum flux level required to vent, say 30%... can't "dump" if there's nothing there!
4) Weapons don't reload during venting/take a few seconds to come back online.  *

I rarely use accelerated shields, but 1,2 seem like an indirect nerf.  4 addresses the (main) cause of vent spamming more directly and doesn't really penalise more conventional venting.  3 makes some sense, but I don't really see the need for it.

*I'd say (4) has my vote, seeing as it directly addresses the behaviour in question and has less impact on other venting tactics.
We could start mixing things together, but if one works that's less work for alex and less unnecessary complexity... we'll always find things to exploit against the AI, so trying to foolproof everything just to thwart a minority of players is silly.

14

Suggestions / Re: How to get a non-exploitable time pressure on combat

« on: December 18, 2014, 05:01:44 AM »

Cyber warfare doesn't really make sense to me.  With all this amazing technology, why would domain engineers design ships that can remotely be hacked to cause reactor malfunctions?  Trying to hack the comm system I can see, but surely in combat they'd employ the 100% fail-safe method of not connecting anything else to the outside world. 

On the other hand, enemy/player reinforcements would be fun.  It could also add some risk to chasing retreating enemies, because it'd give reinforcements time to catch up.  Right now there can be 5 system defence fleets with overwhelming combined power that someone just comfortably duels 1 at a time.

15

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 18, 2014, 04:05:34 AM »

I thought I'd divide this between my play style and thoughts on the change, incase anyone found it relevant.
Play style:
Early game I usually end up as a solo flagship for cost reasons, because the AI just can't handle being vastly outnumbered (or I'm bad at making ships for it to use) and either dies or isn't useful enough to justify risking ships.  At this stage I'm usually in a frigate decked out to quickly pick off enemy frigates (or whatever I can kill quickly) and then start wearing down larger ships; this is when I might actually start deploying reinforcements, either to help catch retreating ships or take apart destroyers/cruisers... strangely enough this is safer than fighting frigates, because if the AI does something stupid I can usually jump in front and save it before ordering a retreat.

If I have any particularly rugged frigates I'll sometimes send them out first to help split tough enemy fleets and let me get a few kills before they retreat.  I don't really like daisy-chaining flagships and find it unneccessary unless picking fights I really shouldn't have- the AI has real problems working out when to retreat (or pursue) 1 player frigate, so I can pretty much dictate what it'll do and receive another free combat round by simply retreating and being "chased"...
This pattern really doesn't change much unless I get a bunch of fighters and a carrier- fighters are cool because my flagship can charge in whilst they distract things (in a cheap, easily replaced fashion!), or chase and kill weaker enemies.  Large support ships are nice things to have, but I don't really end up *needing* them: if I've got my hands on a capital ship I can pretty much solo anything anyway.  I mention this because I tried ignoring the combat tree in some games but found that just doing the same thing with more fighters worked well anyway

I usually like ballistic weapons for their efficiency and play a juggling act (especially with mid line ships) to preserve ammo during solo fights, where I find their raw power normally outweighs ammo limitations.  Energy weapons are interesting because they offer "reliable" dps whilst at the same time encouraging some very aggressive plays at high flux rather than backing off and venting, as I'd usually do with low tech ships/ballistic weapons.

Thoughts on the changes:  As a player I liked the flux damage boost.  It lead to some cool moments where in-game where I realised I could press a high flux "advantage" rather than vent, but can see that it was difficult for the AI to actually use properly; rather than remove it entirely I'm wondering if it could be replaced with some other mechanic the AI would be more adept at using?  Off the cuff I've only really come up an "overcharge" mechanic: Basically a distinct mode/feature where shields are disabled, energy damage is buffed, EMP overloads are actually possible and maybe costs a chunk of flux to activate and deactivate.  It's fairly similar to high energy focus and idk if the AI would end up using it properly, but it's an idea so I'll throw it out there!

To me, infinite ammo seems like a weird concept and takes away from its charm; sure ammo constraints can be an issue for certain ships/weapons during lengthy engagements (and make machine guns OP), but that seems more like the consequence of a few ships trying to take a larger/tougher fleet.  It also doesn't really address armour damage, which I'd say is more of an issue for low tech ships in protracted battles: they are meant to both take and give beatings yet have poor shields, once the armour is gone they end up playing like gimped high tech ships.  I think a nice way of dealing with this would be making it possible for some armour/ammo/missiles to (partially) regenerate at the cost of CR.  After all, it has to come from somewhere  

As for lasers, I'm not sure there's actually enough variety to make them all 1k range and feel like it'd break tactical lasers a tad; maybe instead of this we could have more range modifiers, like a cruiser/capital version of "advanced optics" that gives more range to small lasers?  Or I suppose just adding more lasers could work, but tactical laser would still have abnormally high range... without the flux damage boost I think lasers will just decimate fighters/frigates and annoy everything else, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see
I've never really liked the larger burst lasers because I don't need that much PD and they can't compete on the dps/range front, so in my mind they could do with a little boost- especially if everything else is getting more range and lower fade times!

Edit: A quick question for Alex: I love how the game is shaping up, but it's quite a while to reach this stage.  Does a lot of time go on tweaking things and trying to decide what would make the game *great*, as opposed to actually coding stuff that ends up in the game?  I ask because that's what I'd imagine myself doing (not that I'm trying to diminish your undertaking or the technical wizardry involved).