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1

General Discussion / Re: The problem with ship mods...

« on: June 04, 2023, 08:43:52 AM »

The good news is that once you know which ships are too common for you, it's easy to go into the mod files and change availability. It would be nice to have a mod that would enable us to change this on the fly though. Maybe something with a GUI like what LunaLib does.

For now you can do into starsector/mods/"your mod"/data/world/factions/"desired faction".faction
Open the file with any text editor.
Then change the numbers under "hullFrequency" for each ship you want to change for that faction.
It might take some attempts before you're satisfied with the result. If the number is set to 1 (it can be higher) and you see the ship everywhere, in my experience you might need to go anywhere from 0.5 to 0.1 to make the ship actually rare. Just don't mess with the commas of formatting, or it will cause problems. Might want to backup the file elsewhere first.

2

General Discussion / The hubris of balancing a sandbox with an iron fist

« on: June 04, 2023, 07:43:44 AM »

My problem with the current system of colony management is that despite the game appearing like such a sandbox, it's actually programmed with an iron fist. In fact, i would say the approach of the developer can be evinced from every faction in the game being ruled by some sort of iron fist leadership. Even the pirates now got the narrative version of total overlord Kanta, the freest faction now being the most rabidly restrictive and demanding the player bow to them flat-out. Even the Persean League is commonly described as an alliance of autocracies and near-despotic monarchies. Not criticism yet from me, this fits the narrative well!

But as players, ultimately we all want a benevolent leader delivering us what we desire after an appropriate challenge is won. The idea you can balance(read: control) a player's gameplay experience by spawning narrative and world elements like pirate and ludd bases ad-hoc according to colony stats seems like an overreaching iron fist of despotic design to me, breaking in good measure game and narrative progression for the player(suddenly i'm losing cash until i find that damn base), and punishing the player for his efforts and investments ("I shouldn't have colonized this fast.")

Here's the constructive part of the criticism: what i would have done is simply place Pather and Pirate bases around profitable markets and nearby empty systems at world generation. The pirate ones already exist in populated core systems, in fact. Those bases cannot (and should not) be truly destroyed by player fleets, and would infest the nearest trade routes in a territorial way, requiring increasingly high patrol costs for safe trade, and making colony income a wild swing of gains and losses unless the player patrols trade routes (not so different from now!) Then the player could indeed engage with the leaders of these bases and make deals, but there would need to be no spawning of bases or eternal whack-a-mole, rather a calculation of proximity of markets to existing pirate bases and the relevant costs of ensuring their safety.
A player might as well engineer a market dominance on volatiles, build a favorable relationship with the local pirate leader and enjoy the resulting profits. It then becomes trivial to add a chance-based event where a local pirate base boss the player has deals with gets suddenly replaced by an aggressive newcomer who begins fleecing the newcomer until a demonstration of force is administered. Or perhaps the newcomer is less confident and a better deal can be negotiated in player's favor.

The difference is less in balance (which is maintained) and more in psychology. We all immediately realize the current bases are spawned ad-hoc for us to suffer, infinitely, by an iron-fist algorithm that ensures we don't grow too rich and prosperous too fast. In my static version, the problem exists instead as part of the world, and can be managed before the colony is even formed by getting on good terms with pirate leaders around markets our potential colony might trade with in the future, perhaps even receiving financing from them for later conceding the colony to be used as a transit for "hot" goods. It would be quite simple then that fire-bombing these pirate bases instead would result in the local governments of the systems hosting them lowering the player's reputation, because pirates or not, having unaffiliated fleets blasting away in their home systems in absence of a bounty or commission would be politically frowned upon. And at that, those governments likely have deals on their own.

Finally, i do not think it requires a huge change to the existing codebase. Just a move from spawned bases and relative narrative events to existing static ones. I think it would further organically enmesh the player into local politics, rather than the player fighting his own solitary war against moles somewhere in the periphery of the Sector.

3

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Logistics Notifications 1.4.5

« on: May 31, 2023, 04:29:41 PM »

Agreed, love SafariJohn's mods (and tool)!

4

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Industrial.Evolution 3.2.c - Campaign content expansion

« on: May 31, 2023, 11:58:00 AM »

Take care SirtHartley, thanks for all your effort to date. It's never wrong to prioritize your well-being and personal life, modding should be a pleasant past-time, not an obligation anyway!

5

General Discussion / Re: My Dominator is completely useless.

« on: May 30, 2023, 10:21:07 AM »

After testing, i got a loadout that allows me to fire-and-forget this Dom in my wolf pack frigate-heavy fleet:


Essentially, if the Dom wants to target frigates and destroyers around it, this allows it to, no matter where it's facing. The drones and point defense AI seem to do well enough to keep it protected. I had good success replacing the drone stuff with auxiliary thrusters and the front light assault guns with railguns too.

Here's the result of this solo AI-controlled dom versus a pack (Dom: 25 OP, pack: 38 OP) and it won each of the 5 engagements i tested it with different enemy lineups, up to 45 OP:


The version with auxiliary thrusters (not pictured) likewise stands its own against 3 eagles (60 OP), but a steady pilot won't ever burn drive for the kill for some reason and i haven't tried a reckless. But controlling it personally, it was no problem. Please keep in mind i'm a mediocre pilot.
And finally, it quickly annihilated another stock Dom without taking a single hit, and the AI even destroyed TWO other stock Doms in the simulator, albeit the steady officer took ages to do it. Best of all? Seeing the Dom finally burn-drive to annihilate stragglers on the run from it, as it should be!

6

General Discussion / Re: My Dominator is completely useless.

« on: May 30, 2023, 07:09:19 AM »

I might be wrong, but i've been testing my Dominator today. No matter which loadout i use, the Dom remains extremely situational, always risking being surrounded and becoming completely ineffective. I find that in a setup with heavy capitals and by keeping the Dom behind the line, it performs well. But in a setup Where the Dom needs to take center and move ahead, as it tends to do naturally due to its system, the problem is almost impossible to avoid without micromanaging the ship or a very specialized loadout to each type of situation.

I remember threads from years ago about the issue. I think it was connected to the Dom (and a few other ships) having such a different array of weapon sizes other than its main weaponry (the two large ballistic slots) that it results in it preferring to target small ships it has no chance to catch rather than what its large ballistic slots are best suited for. Coupled with its bad shield, it gets immediately exposed and eliminated. And in fact, whenever i see an enemy Dom, it's trivially simple to eliminate it with a single Hyperion or by being sneaky with a Tempest with a strike loadout. Once you're behind it, all the Dom can do is unload missiles out of desperation while its armor is melted away. The AI is decent at managing its frontal shield, but it unavoidably fails to move out of the way and vent properly, so once the shield is done, so is the Dom.

7

General Discussion / Re: Expectations for 1.0

« on: May 26, 2023, 05:55:35 PM »

Colony orders and managing invasions on other factions, maybe some diplomacy system (trade deals/non-aggression pacts/exclusive trading), more quests and colony buildings/colony types.

8

General Discussion / Re: Alex Appreciation Thread

« on: May 26, 2023, 05:49:04 PM »

Yeah nothing to say, Alex fulfills the ideal dev's image! In fact i have the unpopular opinion that Alex deserves to fleece the fans more. A game like Maj'eyal is so much better at taking my cash for what appears to me to be less dev time, or at least far less hours of gameplay i take it from it in return!

9

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Roider Union - Expeditions - 1.4.6

« on: May 25, 2023, 09:59:21 AM »

Just posting because this is now one of my favorite mods.
When i downloaded it, i didn't really look deeply into it, only skimmed through the first post of this thread, and simply thought the ships looked midline and well-sprited and that's it.
But the game integration is spot-on. Each ship, aside from fitting perfectly with vanilla, does something fun or interesting or useful, and is otherwise useful in your fleet without being OP. These ships actually *do* something and don't just shoot bullets. The retrofits from less useful ships make them even more satisfying. In addition to that the added hullmods once again add interesting gameplay. I got mining drones on my hyperions with 2 leftover OP and it's somehow fun to contemplate.
Next, i just discovered that building the first roider structure in a colony generates actual roider fleets, which actually locate asteroid belts in the system and mine them. It's exactly the kind of things that adds to the game's immersion without negatives.

10

Modding / [0.96a-RC10] Diable Armaaonics

« on: May 23, 2023, 09:49:34 AM »

Diable Armaaonics v. 1.1

>>Download<<

A simple update of the previously circulated sub-mod that allows the use of Diable Avionics' Wanzers with the ARMAA Strikecraft system.

Requirements:
Diable Avionics 2.6 (you have to change the mod_info.json to the current version to play) Thread: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10046
Arma Armatura 2.24 Thread: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=18751.0
(+ their respective requirements, Lazylib and Magiclib)

Changelog:
v1.1.0  - fixed missing wanzer descriptions, removed deprecated hullmods and added weapon descriptions for wanzers' in-built weapons

Credits:
FlashFrozen and Tartiflette for their great mod and permission
Shoi for his great mod and permission
Pep for making the original version of this, which i simply fixed up a little for 0.96, and allowing people to edit his work

11

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Secrets of the Frontier (Prerelease 13.2) - indev campaign mod

« on: May 22, 2023, 01:40:33 PM »

I would like to request lowering the sound of Sierra's phase transition a tad, because it's quite dramatic and loud for how often she uses it. Just a personal request, enjoying the mod, albeit it's a bit worrisome to have a trigger-happy AI blasting away at human crews! I guess it really renders how scary the AIs are in-lore.

12

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Illustrated.Entities 1.1.a - Custom colony images and descriptions

« on: May 22, 2023, 04:32:11 AM »

This is really cool, i also don't think the "rip artists" statement is right, because this mod adds art to places where there wasn't, and doesn't intrude on any human artist. Wherever AI art has been prominent until now, we've seen the price of ai art drop very quickly to near zero, while the price of human art generally endures. This makes it great to fill gaps like this one!

13

Mods / Re: [0.9.0a] Fleet Tester 1.0 (2019/02/25)

« on: May 20, 2023, 06:22:25 PM »

How you do it? i tried to operate the mod it doesn't work so far

I think you need to edit the mod_info.json in the mod's main folder with a text editor and make the line indicating the game version say 0.96a-RC10, or whatever the current version is.
This line specifically:

Code

"gameVersion":"0.96a-RC10",

14

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Scy V1.66rc3 (2023/03/19)

« on: May 19, 2023, 06:07:37 PM »

If someone can spot the source of the error in the code, let us know. I gave it a look, but i think it should work. I'll keep using it until i get the error...

15

Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC9] Sequence Fighter

« on: May 19, 2023, 10:25:57 AM »

Compared to vanilla these seem a bit stronger, in that they are very autonomous with the autoloader and also automated, however compared to say, Diable or Armaa mechs, they are pretty much balanced for their high OP cost, if not weaker. The fact they're in rare_bp makes them just right, imo. Nice i'll keep using the Sequence.