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1

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: February 01, 2019, 12:26:29 AM »

Harbinger has had Thor's hammer applied and none to gently

It needed it, what with the 3x Typhoon Harbinger being the answer to any question.

Harbinger will still be incredibly good simply because of its system - being able to overload and knock out the shields of any ship is a game changing ability. It just won't be able to instantly assassinate any ship as it could before.

Except for ships with slow-to-deploy shields (ie. wide/full arc omni-shields), the duration of the knockout is fairly hard to exploit. Typhoon was the predominant build because it was the main weapon that could exploit that short window consistently. Guided missiles have variable flight times which meant you couldn't trust them to 100% land in that window (and the harpoon pod outputs less damage than a typhoon), phase lance burst was longer than the window, mining blasters spike your own flux super-hard (3600 flux!), and AMBs weren't available since you can't downsize synergy mounts. That puts second-best burst weapon at the heavy blaster at 3x500 damage. To me, Typhoon felt like the *only* option for comboing with QD.

2

Suggestions / Re: Phase ships shouldn't have instant offence abilities

« on: December 10, 2018, 04:40:03 AM »

Applying constant arming delay for MS is going to make it completely useless.
It will make mines way too easy to destroy or dodge.
I'd vote for dynamic arming delay for mines check hull(s) near it's LZ. Gets no delay if against big ships and somewhat more significant delay (1 sec?) for smaller ships, viewing it as mine not very sensitive. Against fighters, just let every single fighter (EXCEPT terminator drone!!!) count as 1 frigate should be enough to make no-delay mine popping into fighter swarm, serving it's one of original design purpose.
A would-be-nice formula is counting all hulls in 200 su radius and apply delay 2s/(sum(hull_score)) where frigate count as 1 up to capitals count as 4.

I'd just give it a flat timer, somewhere between half-second and a second. Long enough to be fair, short enough to be useful.

3

General Discussion / Re: Unused weapons

« on: December 09, 2018, 09:41:00 AM »

Better armor cracking alone is not enough to save Mining Blaster.

The point of my post was that... 700 damage actually cracks less armor than 500 + 500. On a sustained basis, its worse. (Firing rate is 0.5/sec vs 1/sec) On a "flux spent to chew through 2k armor", it's worse. It's only actual advantage is in engagement windows shorter than a second. Which basically means... Hyperion and Harbinger.

4

General Discussion / Re: Unused weapons

« on: December 09, 2018, 09:31:33 AM »

A lot of people don't realize this, but the mining blaster is actually superior to the heavy blaster vs armor (because it does more damage per shot). It also consumes a little less flux.
Mining blasters + ion cannons on a safety-override Aurora will chew up any hegemony fleet.

Even with the higher-per shot damage, it still has worse DPS than the Heavy Blaster against armor at any armor level. The less flux makes it only marginally more flux efficient against armor, but on a high-tech SO cruiser you don't really care much about marginal flux-efficiency, you have soft flux to spare.

Hyperion might be the one ship I might prefer the MB on given a choice between the two, since it can pop in and blast, pop out and vent, repeat.

5

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Oga Portrait Pack

« on: December 08, 2018, 01:17:32 PM »

They look really nice! Good for you for making what I think is the first black starsector character.

SCY actually has two black character portraits.

Vanilla also has its fair share of black portraits as well. I was kinda curious exactly how many, so I went and counted. There's 16 of them in the current version.

6

Suggestions / Re: Blueprint Missions

« on: December 07, 2018, 09:33:14 AM »

It doesn't seem quite right to me that factions would give up their precious blueprints as a reward for a commission.  Blueprints require Orbital Works to make use of and if you have one of those, you are likely competing with the faction in question economically.

A tangent thought... perhaps the possibility of having your commissioning faction shipping their not-crappy hulls to your colonies? In other words, removing some of that quality penalty and throwing a bit of their tech into the mix. (Assuming they can meet your colony's demand.)

7

General Discussion / Re: Unused weapons

« on: December 07, 2018, 12:04:19 AM »

The HMG gets labeled a SO weapon, but as long as your ship is fast enough, it's so flux-efficient you don't even need SO to use it.

On the Mining Laser and Blaster, I wonder if they'd have more of a niche for themselves if they were HE weapons. Mining Blaster would be solidly established as an armor-cracker, and Mining Laser would have its niche chewing up armored fighters that other HE weapons have issues hitting.

I find the single-shot missiles are more useful for threatening the AI into keeping its shields up than actually firing. Although sometimes you really do need that one armor-crack, so go ahead and pull the trigger.

8

General Discussion / Re: Player controlled phase ships, not a bit unfair, but extremely unfair

« on: December 05, 2018, 11:58:53 AM »

I actually think that shortening the QD time was a mistake, but not for power reasons.

Firstly, it makes it harder for the AI to use effectively since you really have to tightly sync up the timing with attacks. And the AI has enough problems with phase ships as is.

Secondly, the short window heavily favors short burst patterns with reliable time-to-target. Patterns like unloading 3 Reapers at once, which was strong before and (in the right hands) minimally affected by the change. While at the same time, it leaved both energy loadouts and other missile loadouts severely hampered. Phase Lance barely gets a full burst out, Heavy Blaster only gets one shot in, and the Harpoon's flight patterns means they don't always land at once.

9

Suggestions / Re: Give AI worlds administrators

« on: November 20, 2018, 03:21:28 AM »

This would probably help with the noted "why do AI planets run at a huge loss?" issues too.

10

Bug Reports & Support / Re: 0.9 Startup crash.

« on: November 16, 2018, 02:30:01 PM »

Launches just fine now. Thanks a bunch, I know legacy systems can be a pain to deal with.

PS: Sorry for not mentioning system info upfront.

11

Bug Reports & Support / Re: 0.9 Startup crash.

« on: November 16, 2018, 02:06:25 PM »

Emptied directory, reinstalled. Crash at the same point, same error message in log.
CLASSPATH does not appear to be set in Environment variables, vmparams should be clean an fresh but is as follows in case it is not.

Code

java.exe -XX:CompilerThreadPriority=1 -XX:+CompilerThreadHintNoPreempt -Djava.library.path=native\\windows -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -Xss1024k -classpath janino.jar;commons-compiler.jar;commons-compiler-jdk.jar;starfarer.api.jar;starfarer_obf.jar;jogg-0.0.7.jar;jorbis-0.0.15.jar;json.jar;lwjgl.jar;jinput.jar;log4j-1.2.9.jar;lwjgl_util.jar;fs.sound_obf.jar;fs.common_obf.jar;xstream-1.4.2.jar -Dcom.fs.starfarer.settings.paths.saves=..\\saves -Dcom.fs.starfarer.settings.paths.screenshots=..\\screenshots -Dcom.fs.starfarer.settings.paths.mods=..\\mods -Dcom.fs.starfarer.settings.paths.logs=. com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher

12

Bug Reports & Support / 0.9 Startup crash.

« on: November 16, 2018, 01:26:56 PM »

First time launching new version, progress bar reaches full and crashes to desktop.
Last entry in log is this:

Code

ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/thoughtworks/xstream/io/HierarchicalStreamDriver
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/thoughtworks/xstream/io/HierarchicalStreamDriver
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.Object.updateContinueButtonState(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.Object.oõO000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.Object.<init>(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.new.<init>(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.createUI(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.prepare(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.HierarchicalStreamDriver
	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	... 11 more

My guess is either a bad install or a compatibility issue. Will be attempting a clean reinstall and will post results.

13

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

« on: October 20, 2018, 04:47:14 PM »

What will happen to the Doom's old Interdictor Array? With the new Mine Strike system, and the two other phase ships system swap, i kinda expected the Shade to inherit it.

It's not used by anything in the game at the moment. I think putting it on a ship that there could be many of could get too annoying to deal with; plus I'm quite partial to the Shade having the EMP emitter. It can really put it to good use.

I know the idea got bad reception last time I proposed it, but I still think it's a really good thematic fit for the Medusa, and with adjustments to the system and ship to fit each other I think it'd be fun both to pilot in mid-game or add as support to a late-game fleet. Especially that the current Medusa will kinda be competing with the new Shrike in a similar "speedy high-tech destroyer" role, a "lock-down-and-kill destroyer" sounds like a cool place to put it in.

14

Suggestions / Re: MORA - Or Damper Field as a whole.

« on: October 11, 2018, 11:43:10 PM »

My take on damper field has always been that % reduction is too binary, and it'd be more interesting as a mechanic if it was a +armor effect instead.

Basically, damper field gives just enough oomph to reduce the hurt when the ship is pristine, and when the ship is heavily stripped it can use it as a last-ditch attempt to stop itself from getting chewed by LMGs.  50% damage reduction on the mora, for instance, means that it would double its already capital-grade armor.  Giving it a simple +400 armor, however, would make relatively little difference against dedicated armor cracking weapons like hammers, reapers, or hellbores, but it'd make the ship a LOT more capable of shrugging off inconveniently timed fighter or frigate strikes while its armor is already low.  Unless they use harpoons.

it's an idea, and I'd be happy to let people tear it apart.

Interesting idea but I think you would need a lot more than 400 armor to make it comparable to the effectiveness of current DF. Percent damage reduction actually interacts with armor non-linearly.

-snip-

Essentially the point of all this is to say that you would need very high armor values to get similar effectiveness to damper field. It does scale inversely with ship size though, low armor value ships will see a larger % damage reduction than larger ones for the same extra armor values. Maybe if tuned correctly, it could work, but smaller ships also have less hp so improved damage reduction means less (.65*400 is gonna get through a centurions armor/hp much faster than .5*400 will get through a moras armor/hp).

Additionally... this doesn't include the 15% damage minimum, bumping the armor to crazy values does nothing against high-RoF high-DPS weapons which have already hit the minimum. An Assault Chaingun will always do at least 120 dps, boosted armor or no.

15

Blog Posts / Re: Once More, with Feeling

« on: October 07, 2018, 06:31:50 AM »

Re: bombardments etc -

It's not a symmetrical situation, so mechanical symmetry as a default would be strange. Imagine if everyone became hostile to the Hegemony because they stamped out a slightly-bigger-than-usual nest of pirates somewhere out on the fringes.

It might make sense in some cases - say if it were possible for you to take over a core planet, and then *that* got bombarded - or if you became really well established, with a huge colony - but those seem like a good fit for special cases and not the base mechanics.

Would scaling the rep penalty to planet population make sense? A few thousand dead is some ruffled feathers (and TBH, numerically equivalent to blowing up a large fleet), a million dead is a major diplomatic incident, hundreds of millions dead becomes casus belli. It means that if you do build up the population of your pet colony to the 10^8 level, then when it gets bombarded you may console yourself in the fact that Diktat fleets are getting ganked by Hegemony and Luddic patrols across the sector.