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1

General Discussion / Re: Hellbore Cannon art issue

« on: March 26, 2013, 04:37:17 AM »

It does look pretty bad right now, especially on the Onslaught's turrets. But, for me at least, the asymmetry is only part of that; I don't really like the supports on the outer sides of the weapon at all.

That said, if it's the asymmetry alone that bothers you, it would only take a very simple mod to fix that (for instance, this one).

2

General Discussion / Re: NEW! Steam Early Access seems perfect for Starsector!

« on: March 21, 2013, 04:57:27 AM »

I think the biggest problem with something like Early Access is that it's definitely possible to harm a product's sales by creating too much publicity too early ahead of release. An actual release is all about building enthusiasm/hype/excitement near to launch, and when you start that process too early, the (usually large) group of people on the margin of purchasing - but unwilling to risk a pre-order - will likely lose interest by the time that the game is out. It's much harder to get people interested in a product again that to get them interested in the first place: you can't make the same pitch twice with equal effectiveness, since the appeal of the product hasn't changed, only its ability to fulfil its appeal. Naturally, the more paths to finding out about  - and pre-ordering - the game there are, the more this effect comes into play, Early Access being one such path. The second, much simpler reason is that at least some people will inevitably judge the game based on its current state, and won't necessarily re-evaluate it on release.

Now, of course, there is one very good reason to use Early Access, and it's the same reason for the success of Kickstarter: specifically, it's a good idea if you need money simply in order to complete the game. So, yes, if Alex absolutely needs that money to work on the game now, then it's a good idea. If not, it might still be worth considering; it's just not without cost.

3

Mods / Re: Ascendency (Beta 2 Released - .54a Compatible)

« on: January 01, 2013, 04:24:12 PM »

Something is wrong with the faction system, in that at least some faction information from an existing character is carried over when a saved game is loaded.

The problem doesn't occur if, rather than merely exiting to the main menu or loading from within a running game, you quit the game entirely. I would guess that the faction information isn't initialised when you load a save, or when you exit to the main menu, but only when you start a new game entirely. Anything more specific than that, I can't say: I know nothing about Java generally, or Starfarer specifically.

To reproduce:

• Start a new game as one faction (tested with Okouth, Thiiei, Coalition).
• Save and exit, but do not quit the game.
• Start a second new game as a different faction.
• Save and exit, but do not quit the game.
• Load the first savegame you created.
• The message "You have betrayed your faction..." will appear and your dockyard will be sequestered.

4

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.54a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 13, 2012, 01:16:46 PM »

I'm so glad to see some RTS-style controls appear in the command UI again! I always missed that from 0.33. I agree that it did make you spend too much time controlling other ships, but I think that since then the UI has gone too far in the other direction, and assigning a specific ship to a specific task has been rather unwieldy.

5

Mods / Re: Blackrock Drive Yards - First version release!

« on: August 29, 2012, 01:55:05 AM »

Going to echo what Alex et al. said about the squall cannon being a bit too powerful right now, but otherwise the mod is very well-balanced, fun to play, and aesthetically appealing. Nice work!

6

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.53.1a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: August 22, 2012, 01:41:35 AM »

I'm looking forward to the questing, mining, story aspect more than anything now. And of course the lvling process of the captains. When it's done, when it's ready, no matter how long it takes, I will be so happy

I do wonder though, will the skill/level/mastery cap be high? Cause i'd hate for Alex to put in all this work and we all "beat" the game in a few days or hours

Cause if its endless and all that and we have a star-map thats covered up with our systems, enough is enough.

So hopefully we'll start out in the middle of a massive star-map, where small time pirates and cargo and mining ships will roam, and getting our first destroyed will actually mean something and not just be like, okay, now to get into my cruiser. Then after we get either a small fleet of fighters, frigates, and destroyers the next couple systems will have cruisers, better weapons, better minerals to mine, more pirates to attack you. And so on and so on till you get far out with huge fleets of pirates, massive mining and fuel barges and big, tanky, groups of "defender types" for the weaponless miners and such.

Then maybe we can go back into the center and start buying some small stations with the wealth we accumulated on the outer rings. And slowly make a name for ourselves, either fighting pirates, being pirates, being traders, miners, or whatever we want.

I just cant stress enough how slow I want the progression to be, because meaningful games that bring you back time and time again are the ones you had feelings for. When you get that first big ship fully outfitted its a "*** YES" moment, when you lose it to an accident its a "oh god no..." moment. Instead of just, well restart! only took 20 min to get my cruiser!

I know im ranting but
TL : DR
I really hope the progression is meaningful and slow and emotion producing.

I'd just like to add my support to basically the entirety of this post. I imagine quite a few people here will have played the X series of games (if not, they're pretty good space sims!), which do things roughly this way. That sort of rate of progression is sometimes a little tedious, particularly at the start, but I would certainly say that it's much more satisfying in the long run than just being able to get a destroyer in 10 minutes.

I do vaguely remember Alex writing quite a while back that he wanted the acquisition of a new ship to feel like a significant victory in the actual campaign. But I might be taking that out of context, and I can't even find that quote now.

7

Bug Reports & Support / [0.53.1a] Weapon Duplication

« on: August 18, 2012, 09:23:33 AM »

This bug seems to be unrelated to all earlier duplication issues that I could find, but if this has already been reported, I apologise.

Bug: If a ship is docked at a station and the refit screen is used, the refit screen will load weapons from both the ship's cargo and the station's; and, if these are removed, it will return them to their origin unless the user exits the refit screen. If a ship variant is loaded, equipped weapons that already match the variant will not be removed - and those that do not, will. However, if weapons are equipped from a station using the refit screen and, without leaving the refit screen, a variant using these weapons is then loaded, weapons will both be left equipped on the ship and returned to the station.

To reproduce:
1. For a given ship variant, store the required number of each weapon in the Abandoned Storage Facility.
2. Load the desired ship variant via the "Manage Variants" list.
3. Without leaving the refit screen, load the same variant again.
4. The ship's weapons will be added to the station's cargo, as if they had been removed from the ship, but will not in fact be removed from the ship.

8

General Discussion / Re: on impossible missions

« on: August 18, 2012, 03:42:31 AM »

Nothing Personal isn't so bad. It's the Aurora and the Tempests that will win it, everything else just needs to be used to tie up enemies until they can be dealt with. As others have said, it's important to hold the points as best you can and to deal with fighters and Hounds quickly.

Dire Straits really is hard, though. I haven't been able to win it with a decent score for a few versions, which is in itself an explanation for its current difficulty. The fleet compositions haven't really changed since .35 (the mission was introduced in .34a), which was back when the Hammerhead had two Hyper-Vs, two dual flaks, and two pulse lasers plus missiles. It's been getting harder since .51, when the Hammerhead got nerfed to its present state. Since then, there have just been tons of AI improvements, and the addition of ship systems mostly favours the opposition in this mission (particularly with phase skimmers and EMP). So, honestly, I just don't think Dire Straits was designed for the game as-is. That, or Alex is just a sadist.

9

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.53a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: August 03, 2012, 02:00:04 PM »

I have to say, I've really changed my mind about phase ships now that I've spent some time using the Doom cruiser. It has decent cargo space, and more armour than you'd expect. But what really makes it work wonderfully is its performance when equipped with an all-Annihilator front set of missiles. It can take down just about anything without worrying about running low on ammo, missing shots, building up flux or having shots diverted by flare launchers. The large number of missiles also discourages ships from approaching into weapons range, allowing you to lose flux without taking hits. Effectively, it turns a strike craft into something more like an assault craft. Phase ships also have plenty of advantages I didn't think of - for example, whilst a few squadrons of Piranhas mean trouble for even an Aurora's shield, a phase ship can just avoid the damage completely.

10

General Discussion / Re: .53a First impressions

« on: August 02, 2012, 04:06:38 PM »

Personally I feel that whilst phase ships are good, they're not exactly what I was hoping for. They function excellently with a fleet around you to distract opponents, but otherwise they'll eventually be swarmed - which, I suppose, is to be expected of any strike craft. They also have horribly small cargo bays in campaign, which I wasn't really expecting. All of those seem like reasonable design decisions, just not the ones I wanted: and the end result is that none of the phase ships perform very well solo. Though of the bunch, the Shade is probably the most usable as such; though even that has problems with larger ships.

Ah well.

medusae

YEEES
PROPER ENGLISH FTW

Pedantic classicist note: that's more like proper Latin. Of course it would be unfair of me to ignore the fact that English has something of a tradition of using Latin plurals for words that didn't begin with Latin, but that's not to say that the Latin plural is the "proper" one - only a reasonable choice. The English plural Medusas would serve just as well. Of course, if you'd rather use the original Greek, you could go with Meduses (or Medouses, if you're feeling particularly determined to be "proper" in your transliteration). But there's no particular reason to prefer the Latin plural unless you just like the sound of it.

11

General Discussion / Re: My First Impressions of Starfarer

« on: July 12, 2012, 01:25:16 PM »

Much of what you're talking about regarding faction relations, planet interaction and general empire-building is essentially planned to be added in at some stage. Probably not in the forms you've suggested, but in some sense or other - Alex, as you can see from the site's front page claims, very much does intend for you to be able to have a lot of influence on the universe. You must realise that the current release is an alpha; and so all it's really meant to do is show off the basic gameplay. Even the sector sandbox itself is relatively new; which is also why you have only one star system, and easy access to every ship and weapon in the game. As for the rest of your points, many of these are design choices that are purely up to Alex, but a few have answers that are already within the game universe. So in no particular order,

• The command screen is something that's really difficult to get right, because it's supposed to be quite limited without being clunky. Alex has said before that he doesn't want players to be spending half the battle in there, and giving the player too much control goes against design choices that have already been made. The general idea at the moment seems to be to enable strategy, but not micromanagement; and I think creating your own groups of ships would give you a little more precision than is really desirable.
• I seem to recall Alex saying something along the lines of AI behaviour being to some extent determined by officers, when those eventually are implemented. I very much doubt that you'll ever be able to set hard behaviour thresholds, though - it's rather artificial, and, like the above change to the command screen, gives rather too precise control over AI decisions. The only thing like that statement I can find is http://fractalsoftworks.com/2011/08/03/captain-personalities-fleet-control-update/ - which isn't what I was looking for, but says a fair bit about the general approach to AI, though it's a rather outdated post now.
• Long range combat by missiles isn't really a feature of starfarer; it can be done, if you equip enough ships with Pilums, but it's usually a bad idea. Honestly, I suspect that this is a design decision; LRMs are effective in a support role if you're keeping the AI too busy to dodge them, but LRMs that are effective on their own would be rather unstoppable. As for fighters, well, I don't get the complaint that they're ineffective. Broadswords are probably the strongest ships of any size, point-for-point, in the game. Are you using enough carriers? Or are you using the slow mid-range gunship-style fighters? Because, honestly, those are a bit rubbish.
• As regards asteroids, there's also very little penalty for colliding with other ships. It seems like a gameplay decision, frankly; and given that the AI already has a hell of a time avoiding asteroids in larger fleets - and, indeed, often inadvertantly rams my ship - I think it's probably a sensible one.
• The Codex predates the fuel/cargo/crew system, and as such those figures simply haven't been included yet. In fact, if I recall correctly, they aren't even assigned via the ship files at the moment, but assigned in sector generation. Then again, it's been ages since I looked at the moddable files, and I may well be talking complete nonsense.
• Combat "terrain" variety isn't a bad idea. I don't know if you've already found them, but there are also sometimes planets in the combat field, I believe in one of the scenarios, which boost your speed dramatically as you go past them.
• As regards "A fleet of craft should move only as fast as its fastest ship", do you mean slowest ship? Because that's roughly how it works at the moment, with an added penalty for extremely large fleets, presumably due to issues of movement co-ordination.

12

Mods / Re: Interstellar Federation v1.10

« on: April 24, 2012, 10:45:50 AM »

Just fyi, the download is missing a generators.csv file, so the campaign integration doesn't work at all right now (outside of Uomoz's collection, at any rate) without creating one.

13

General Discussion / Re: Am I the only one who thinks the Hyperion is overpowered?

« on: April 04, 2012, 03:16:34 AM »

Certainly at the moment I'm inclined to agree that it's overpowered, but bear in mind the state that the game as a whole is in. The Hyperion might well be made extremely difficult to acquire once we have a proper economy - as opposed to what amounts to a placeholder system, with three stations which conveniently sell almost every ship in the game. Alex has said before that he intends to make acquiring ships in general more difficult as time goes on, and I strongly suspect that the Hyperion is powerful simply because you're not supposed to be able to get it as easily as you can at the moment.

This is, after all, a single-player game: there's nothing really wrong with an overpowered ship provided we don't get it too easily and thus miss out on every other ship for lack of an incentive to use them. I'm reminded a little of X3: Reunion, which had a sort of Frigate-type ship (also, incidentally, called a Hyperion) that was so ridiculously overpowered that there was no real reason to use much else. But by this point in the game, you'd probably seen and used most other ships anyway; it was also a bit of a pain to get hold of and, without reverse-engineering it and constructing more over a matter of days, you could only have one.

All of that is, of course, pure speculation.

14

General Discussion / Re: Phase/VLRM/Repair Station etc.

« on: March 19, 2012, 11:22:03 AM »

I noticed these a while back, when they turned up in a blog post with a huge set of other ship designs ( link ) - even more than are actually included in the "graphics" folder. But for anyone that wants an attempt at explanation, wild speculation BEGIN:

The phase ships are pretty clearly all designed around the main "glowy bits", so they're almost certainly specialised; but they still have weapon mounts and are named as "assault" and "strike" frigates, so they aren't purely utility ships in the same way that freighters, tankers and munitions ships are - they're meant for combat, but they're still doing something differently. Now, whilst phase stuff has been around for a while, in 0.5a we got the Phase Charge Launcher, which is "excellent at p-space ship hunting" and has a "p-space microcloak". With that in mind, I'm pretty sure these ships have cloaking devices or travel in some sort of "alternate dimension"-y thing called p-space.

As for the munitions ships, Alex has said before that these are supposed to provide ammo in combat - but, for reasons that aren't too hard to imagine, they aren't particularly easy to balance: as things stand, such ships take up deployment and fleet points, but ammo isn't a pressing concern very often at the moment (and certainly not worth the cost of slowing your fleet down with an extra ship). I imagine the repair drone does what it says on the tin - repairs ships; but this, too, seems hard to balance, and probably wasn't added in because it's not ready yet. The construction rig seems different, though, and even less combat-ready. Personally I imagine this being used to set up outposts: but I could be wrong, and it could just be a giant repair drone. Likewise the Ox, which has the mining/repair look, but lacks any further clues.

As for the weapons/missiles, most of these are either old sprites or unknowable. It's also worth noting that there are about 6 unused crew sprites, too.

15

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.51a (Released) - Live Patch Notes

« on: March 12, 2012, 01:45:03 PM »

I agree that PD is largely ineffective - but whilst increasing its lethality would be one solution, that puts the player at a bit of a disadvantage, in that fighters are a significant investment, and losing a squadron of anything less disposable than Talons is certainly well within "reload and try battle again" territory. Reducing their chance to survive a battle any further would probably be quite frustrating, and a real reason to simply use fighters less. Likewise, I'm not sure I'd want to see PD gain a big advantage versus missiles as-is. Certainly, it should be very difficult to shoot down Harpoons or Salamanders, given the low ammo counts of each; and Pilums are already fairly easy to destroy.

I think a better option would be to give fighters significantly weaker weapons, and perhaps also make them cheaper. As things stand, a single squadron of broadswords is a greater threat to a high-tech ship reliant on shields than an average destroyer or a Venture-class cruiser - and they actually don't cost that much less than the former. Neither of these things makes any sense at all. The strength of fighters should be in their numbers, speed and maneuverability; a single squadron of all but the most expensive fighters shouldn't be a credible threat or a significant contribution to a fleet. Flanking is already a pretty huge advantage against most larger ships, as the newly-buffed Hound proves. Decreasing the damage output of fighters reduces their overall effectiveness against the AI, which is what we really want, without incurring the same costs to the player that an increase in PD effectiveness would result in.