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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - SpacePoliticianAndaZealot

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1
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 10, 2024, 03:35:22 AM »
Hopefully this is not (too) belated of a feedback post, considering I've been playing first on 0.97-RC6, then updated to RC7. I haven't updated my game to RC8, but I *did* read the relevant changelog, and I've put close to 40-ish hours in my game so far - I've reached cycle 227 ingame. With that out of the way:

First of all, huge, huge kudos for the skill tweaks and new hyperspace topography content! The former has some very interesting changes and it's made the game dramatically more fun for me. That's not to say that I wasn't having fun in prior Starsector versions, quite on the contrary, but I generally cease my playthroughs sometime after finishing the Galatia Academy storyline and reach level 15, and don't quite delve into exploring the fringe worlds or developing colonies, usually around cycle 212-214 ingame. This time around, I believe I've fought and beaten every kind of combat encounter there is, including that unique Remnant bounty. I think the disparity speaks for itself  :D As for the hyperspace topography abilities, the whole event feels feature-complete to me now, with rewards well worth the points grind. I hope it stays the way it is, I'm really happy with how it's turned out!

Likewise, my impression of the colony crises system is very positive - my issue with colonies so far has been that they've felt out of place and out of character (the latter is a minor personal gripe admittedly, but I've always felt that commanding and managing both a fleet and several colonies with potential population of millions would be too overwhelming for any one person, even when taking into account the adjutant role of hireable officers and administrators, respectively), but, frankly, I've just about done a 180 on my stance after playing through the colony crises. The system as a whole just fits like a glove from a ludonarrative perspective - not only is there lots of fun new fights to do (The Tactistar mercenary fight is a personal highlight, I believe it's the single best combat encounter in the game which manages to be challenging without requiring cheesy tactics/loadouts to easily beat) or avoid fighting (I appreciate the implementation of non-violent solutions to some of the crises a lot!), I finally have the impression that, I, as a colony-owning player, actually exist in the game's world as an entity to which other, established entities, react to and interact with. I suppose the colonies are now, in a word, beliveable? I hope I've managed to get my point accross  :)

I like the Abyss content too, though I haven't gotten around to fully exploring it yet! It's quite cozy, I'm enjoying it.

As a closing thought, I'd say that Starsector now definitively has fleshed-out early, mid and late game content (quite the journey so far, huh?) Apologies if it's still too early to ask, but I don't suppose some more narrative content would be in the works for the next version? With the game having shaped up to having well-rounded, mostly fleshed-out content from start to almost-finish, the foundation has definitely been laid for some sort of a final quest arc, a true end.
In any case, big thumbs up for all the work over the years! It's heartwarming to still enjoy a game I've enjoyed lots since I've first played it many years ago :)

2
Echoing a lot of the other posts already written here, I likewise do not use the Neutrino Detector at all, and haven't since it was introduced to the game. Not only do I dislike the fact the skill requires volatiles to function (it's a muscle memory thing, admittedly, took me a while to "accept" that I need to have a portion of heavy machinery in my cargo holds, too, back when scavenging was first introduced.), it's not even reliable - the readouts tell me virtually nothing. I could think of one niche use case where it'd come in handy - when I'm looking for a hidden pirate/pather base in a huge star system and I'm pressed for time - only I'd never even remember to pack some volatiles for the trip. They're also fairly valuable as far as commodities go, which further incentivizes me to just sell them off as soon as I find some.
The skill definitely needs an overhaul of some sorts - this thread just confirms my assumption that the skill sees basically near-zero use.

3
General Discussion / Re: It's been 10 years already
« on: January 19, 2024, 07:41:12 AM »
I've been here for almost ten years myself - since 2015. I know more or less the exact point in time when I found out about the game, but sadly I cannot verify it since the youtuber whose Starsector gameplay I watched back in the day had privated or deleted those videos. Still here, still playing. I goof around with mods, but I don't go too crazy with them (I avoid having more than 30 or so at once and majority of them are utility mods or some of the longstanding vanilla+ classics, which is still a lot of mods by my standards but I've seen peeps play with 120+ mods enabled which is just insane) There's definitely some things that I miss from older Starsector versions (mods, mainly) but I like the current version's configuration and QoL features too much to downgrade - I do keep an older starsector version installed just to play Ironclads from time to time, though. It's a one of a kind game, just the nearest and dearest to me and it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I intend to keep playing and lurking on the forums for the foreseeable future, as well.  :)

4
Mods / Re: [0.96] Arma Armatura v2.3.6 BETA [1/1/24]
« on: January 08, 2024, 12:53:46 AM »
If you're still looking for feedback on your HVBs (this is all for v2.3.4, will update when I'm finished with my current run, as the updates break my save, hopefully this is still relevant!):

I finally got around to doing the Hegemony HVB, I was sadly unable to recover the XIV mech,  but I managed to get the Corsair(H). If it's meant to be a (very) souped-up Hammerhead, I'd say it's right on the money - the lack of overlap on small mounts make them subpar for PD considerations, but outfitting the large ballistic slots with the right ballistic weapons - namely, Gauss Cannons + ITU turns the mech into an excellent close support unit. Performance in said role increases even further with investment into skills and hullmods which increase flux dissipation, naturally. I haven't been able to figure out any other good loadout for it.

5
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: January 01, 2024, 01:02:36 PM »
Very interesting changes and additions across the board! I'm glad to see Reverse Polarity getting added - getting stuck on the wrong side of slipstreams was a frequent issue for me, and I'm happy to have a way to deal with that now. Thank you for this  :)
Also, Cybernetic Augmentation looks very interesting now! Truthfully, that was the one skill I never picked in any of my runs so far, looks like that's about to change. Can't wait!

6
Arma Armatura v2.3.4 Beta
I need more feedback.
First of all, thank you for making and maintaining this mod - ever since I began playing Starsector again (relatively recently), it's quickly become my favorite.

Personal impressions:
Spoiler
  • Having tried out the unique Valkazard start, I welcome the difficulty ramp-up by buffing the tri-tach fleet composition for that initial fight. The previous iteration felt comparatively underwhelming, now the player has to both use their wits and utilize the SILVERSWORD system to its full potential to survive. Starting at level 1 with a point in Helmanship, I managed to defeat everything except the two Hyperions, which was just enough for me to cleanly disengage. Afterwards, I made it to the MRC station and safety.
  • While I'll miss the old Aleste's dual Rynex pulse rifle loadout I've used to roll with most often, I welcome Valken X's overhaul. I've found it to be the weirdest of all the AA mechs - the mech itself was bulky and unwieldy, the inbuilt Valken wing was little more than crew drain that didn't even work as a distraction most of the time, and the phase skimmer system felt ill-fitting for a mech. In fact, after close to a dozen hours of playtime, I've found the current VX to be a much neater fit for my preferred mech loadout gimmick of a pure-energy generalist. Very, very fun to pilot, got bumped from near-bottom tier to near-top tier for me.
  • On that note, the Cataphract hullmod being s-moddable is an unexpected, but nonetheless welcome addition as well. There's not much I can say about this, except that the bonuses fit like a glove for my preferred playstyle of piloting a mech personally, with the bonuses and penalties feeling just right.
  • I haven't had the opportunity to try out the newly added mechs yet, so I can't comment on those.
  • The MRC are awesome, I love them. I've always felt Starsector could do with a few pirate (sub)factions that actually behave like the vanilla pirates, instead of just being a generic faction that has an "evil" tag buried somewhere in the Nexerelin faction config file. I like how New Meshan received some fleshing-out as well. The faction soundtracks are good and feel fitting, and I'm looking forward to seeing MRC getting fleshed out further!  :)
[close]

Bugs and potential issues I've encountered so far:
Spoiler
  • The mech Takeoff ability (the mech equivalent to Full Burn, which happens when ships enter or exit the battlefield) sometimes erroneously triggers when I'm already a significant distance away from my side's retreat zone - most of the time it cancels itself immediately in that situation, but once or twice I had my mech "takeoff" straight into an Aurora or a similar ship that was engine boosting towards my fleet, unable to defend myself since my shields were disabled. The issue seems to exacerbate itself when I delay deploying my mech so that I do it strictly after I've deployed a carrier. I will need to test this further, though.
  • This is probably a Nexerelin issue, but any rep change with Pirates sets MRC-Pirate relations to -60. Since their starting relations are +10, I assume this is unintentional. I eventually got around this by adding an exception for MRC from the pirates' blanket -60 default relations setting. On that note, MRC-Legio Infernalis relations seem to be capped at 0, and Hegemony-MRC relations start at 0, when I expected the latter would start out as hostile, given MRC's faction description stating how they're anti-Hegemony as well. Unsure if these are intentional.
  • I've also had the Nexerelin's Antiwar Protests diplomacy event trigge one time for MRC with regards to tri-tachyon - unsure if this is meant to happen since MRC doesn't accumulate war weariness, and neither of the vanilla pirate factions (that is, Pirates and Pathers) ever get these kinds of diplomacy events, as far as I am aware.
  • Dawn refers to herself by name when greeting the player, instead of actually saying the player character's name.
[close]

7
Blog Posts / Re: Skill Tweaks
« on: December 13, 2023, 06:44:39 AM »
Impromptu writings are the best - they always offer a detailed insight into one's thought process  :P

More seriously, though, this is much, much more that I'd expected when I saw prior mentions of a skill rework, and reading about it all is hugely unexpected for me.

First I'd like to note, re:
Quote
...A player that’s better in piloting will get a lot of mileage out their flagship being stronger. A player that’s not so good at it – or one that just elects to command their fleet and doesn’t even try to pilot a ship themselves – won’t...
I would argue that this "mileage gap" is not nearly as large as this statement (presumably) makes it out to be. I've first played this game in ~2015 and, unless a player plans on never flagshipping a combat ship (or, at least, one that would never see action outside getting pursued), investing into combat skills had always been a worthwhile investment, as even the "first tier" of bonuses would go a long way to make the player's ship more survivable and more effective, especially if it's on autopilot. A player skilled at manual piloting can make do with their overall piloting ability, knowledge of controls and knowledge of AI behaviours and quirks, while combat skills go a long way to compensate for AI's shortcomings. The performance difference between an officer-less ship and the same one with, say, a level 7 officer is very noticeable, but a sufficiently skilled player in an appropriately-equipped ship (i.e. which doesn't simply get hard-countered and shut down, but is actually able to deal damage - the specifics of which are not the point of this post) will be able to overcome and defeat both. One will just be a harder/more time-consuming process than the other.
To clarify, I do understand that the Combat skill tree will hold the most appeal to players who prefer to manually control a (souped-up combat) ship, I just believe there's also significant appeal for it for players that elect to let autopilot handle it. I apologize if this comes off as too hair-splitting.

As for combat skills themselves? This is what surprises me the most, out of everything mentioned in the blog post. I thought combat skills were strong enough as-is, and that the focus of the rebalance would be on other skill trees. Still, I don't have any gripes with it, either - now I'm looking forward to revisit the viability of soloing enemy fleets a lá certain older versions of Starsector, like back when Augmented Engines was just a better Unstable Injector  8)

I'm glad about the ECM rating changes! You're definitely right, the binary nature of the system definitely makes investing into ECM skills not very appealing, if I'd rather get some other skills instead - the 15 level limit is too restrictive to have players go "oh, I'll just pick up ECM skills along the way as I level up trying to achieve my desired build". I believe the added granularity will go a ways to have more people consider getting the EW skill now. I also agree with your assesment of the Gunnery Implants skill's elite effect - have you considered making it so it gives you an effect akin to a lesser s-modded ECCM Package? I think something along the lines of conferring a partial (not full, we wouldn't want to make the aforementioned mod obsolescent) negative ECM effect negation and/or enabling autofiring weapons to ignore flares? (preferably not both at once, same reason as before) Otherwise I agree that further range increases would be overkill - but I believe something along the lines of my suggestion would be more interesting than simply dividing the existing bonus between regular and elite skill tiers.

Last but not least, regarding changes to Neural Integrator, there's a lot on my mind about this, and my post is already getting fairly long, so I'll try and keep this short.
Quote
So: instead of having an extreme OP cost, let’s change NI to increase the ship’s deployment points instead, say by 20%.
Could you clarify how not-extreme the OP cost would now be? Does this also mean this mod can be built-in, or has that stayed as-is?

Also, more pressingly, would you please consider retouching the skill's effect prerequisites so that the player can transfer command to the neurally-integrated automated ship pre-battle, and not need a non-automated ship with neural link deployed alongside it? (Or, make it so that the player can just permanently assign themselves to a neurally-linked automated ship, should they have both the prerequisite skill and hullmods installed? Could handwave it that the player character is physically present on another, non-automated ship.)
My personal gripe with this skill is that, while the Radiant is indeed incredibly powerful in player hands, the effort and resources required to actually get to the point of being able to pilot one are rather enormous - and while the currently described changes to the technology tree alleviate a part of this cost, I believe this entire setup is still, frankly, underwhelming because of the requirements for this hypothetical neurally-integrated Radiant build to work. I could handle the severe OP penalty neural integrator placed on the Radiant itself, but needing your 'regular' flagship deployed on the field as a controller proved too harsh a requirement for me. Deploying a Radiant already takes up a large amount of points, even moreso with these changes, and whatever else I deploy alongside the required 'controller' flagship just isn't going to be up to par to defend itself against the inevitably overwhelming enemy ships, the dealing with which is, frankly, the sole consideration for me to go through the process of acquiring a pilotable Radiant in the first place. And, if one could manage to defeat a Radiant and all the other Remnant ships accompanying it in a fleet, I believe it's not a stretch for a player to reach the conclusion that they don't really need a pilotable Radiant in their fleet at all, as there's very few combat encounters in the game more dangerous than defeating such a fleet. (and if a player, manually piloting their flagship, was able to beat such a fleet, then they could just keep on flying that fleet, with their skill points spent in skills of their choosing, instead of reserving a large portion of points in skills they might not want to get otherwise (again, subject to change with the described changes which I'm very much looking forward to! But which also doesn't touch on the sheer effort needed to get to the point of actually owning a Radiant) for this one very, very specific, niche, ultimately entirely optional thing!)


8
Suggestions / Re: Exploration needs to be a challenge again
« on: June 03, 2023, 08:11:50 AM »
Slipstreams are close enough abyssal hyperspace when they get in the way.  Same with storms when my fleet with low supplies cannot afford to take a hit.
I honestly wish emergency burn got buffed to facilitate easier brute-force crossing through inconvenient slipstreams, to prevent the "get launched by slipstream into a chain of hypsespace storms" doom spiral.

I wonder if you (and others) are missing something about slipstreams - they take me like 2 seconds to cross with E-burn, and I will only deviate from my course by a tiny amount, about the size of my fleet circle. You have to hold the mouse button down while you cross, though!

I've mentioned emergency burn here for a reason, please re-read what we've wrote. Also, the deviations end up being quite larger than a singular fleet circle, because hyperspace storms exist, slipstreams are inside deep hyperspace most of the time, and there's no "buffer zone" or anything between the slipstream edges and deep hyperspace itself to safely decelerate into in order to prevent my fleet getting slingshotted light-years off-course and get significantly damaged in the process - all of which makes slipstream crossing an annoyance.
Flipping go-dark on and off to avoid getting smacked by hyperstorms is enough busiwork as-is (It'd be great if slow movement was a toggle instead of having to press and hold S), and crossing slipstreams upstream of your destination is more often than not an unwelcome annoyance. Your suggestions would only exacerbate these issues, and more.

Edit: After some more deliberation and playing, I admit I was wrong about slipstream crossing - it's nowhere near as much of a peeve as I once believed it to be, however I still believe exploration is fine as-is, and does not need to be made more "challenging" - more variety with regards to encounters in non-core systems and such would be always welcome, but as far as logistics go, I'm perfectly fine with dealing with hyperspace storms, coronas (coronae?), pulsar beams and the occasional event horizon.

9
Suggestions / Re: Exploration needs to be a challenge again
« on: June 03, 2023, 12:31:44 AM »
I really have to disagree with OP on a fundamental level here. To be blunt, fringe world exploration is a chore. While calling it "bad" would be going too far, it's definitely my least favourite aspect of campaign gameplay, primarily due to hyperspace topography. I've never been a fan of hyperspace storms, but right now they're fine as-is. Slipstreams are a whole another story, though - having missions appear almost exclusively upstream of most of the sector's slipstreams is, well, not very fun. I honestly wish emergency burn got buffed to facilitate easier brute-force crossing through inconvenient slipstreams, to prevent the "get launched by slipstream into a chain of hypsespace storms" doom spiral.

Loot-wise as well, I just don't stand to gain a lot from exploring in regular circumstances. There needs to be a mission of some sorts to incentivize me leaving core worlds in most cases.

10
Blog Posts / Re: Narrative in 0.96 aka Movie Night With David
« on: June 02, 2023, 11:13:42 PM »
Weirdly enough, I've never caught onto the whole "Jaspis being the luddic equivalent of Provost Baird" thing, it didn't seem obvious to me at all. I definitely enjoyed getting roasted for picking cynical dialogue options when visiting the Shrines, though - it's not very often that I witness an NPC calling me a jerk - and that it feels completely justified!

I'm also surprised to read that the entire Jethro questline wasn't originally in plan, given how significantly fleshed out it is, I assumed that this was a set-up for a Galatia-equivalent questline, a sort-of a separate faction-based main quest line, not unlike, say, Fallout: New Vegas' system.

In any case, I wish you the best in cooking up that narrative payoff for Galatia and other questlines! Starsector as a game has always been very dear to me, ever since I bought it all the way back in 2016, and I'm always looking forward to seeing where will it go next!

11
I'm not sure if this belongs here, but due to the fact that I've encountered this bug as a direct consequence of doing Midnight Dissonant missions and having Remnants not be hostile to me anymore I thought I'd post here for posterity's sake: While hunting for a bounty fleet I've encountered the target fleet engaged in battle with a damaged remnant nexus, and since remnants were neutral to me I was able to join the battle on their side. I've joined in with my flagship, however my character was unassigned from my flagship upon loading into the battle, and had to select my flagship on the map screen and hit X so I could assume manual control of my flagship. After taking care of the fleet, another pirate fleet nearby decided to engage the nexus and I again joined the battle on its side and the exact same thing happened again.

12
Blog Posts / Re: Hostile Activity
« on: September 01, 2022, 10:57:57 AM »
Very interesting system! I can already see how this could be utilized for creating organic-feeling endgame occurences  :)

Are there any plans for this system affecting non-player colonies? More specifically, could a player get "Events" like these affecting the colonies of a faction they're commisioned for, maybe with a slightly changed up set of options to reflect the fact? If not, could something like that be feasibly modded into the game?

13
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 02, 2022, 12:47:39 AM »
Hello, long time no see! Just wanted to say that I love what you've done with the Ordnance Expertise skill - it has always been my go-to skill in previous Starsector versions, yet it's still a top-tier skill in this update. Getting extra flux dissipation and capacity per OP spent is a really great idea, and I love that you've reshuffled some of the skills around to make the Industry tree a more viable pick when selecting which combat/survivability skills to learn. Cheers and thank you for everything you're doing with the game! Bought it in 2016 and still playing to this day <3

14
This shouldn't happen (my first thought was that the vultures pulled in another independent fleet to help them and you killed ships from that fleet, but a glance at the code suggests it shouldn't affect the matter).
Do you remember if the rep loss to hostile state was shown within the battle dialog, in the campaign GUI afterwards, or did it just happen silently?
It happened silently. No rep change message was present anywhere, the only way I figured indies were suddenly hostile to me was by viewing the Intel tab after I got attacked.

15
Hello, I haven't really been up to date with the latest Starsector developments, so I'd like to just ask: I noticed that the new Vulture fleets give me the message that hostile actions against that fleet would result in a lower rep drop. I was at like +25ish rep with independents before I got intercepted and attacked by one said vulture fleet after scavenging through a debris field. After the battle I noticed that my rep with Indies dropped to -56. Is this intended behavior?

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