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1

General Discussion / The Fractal Softworks Website

« on: March 04, 2012, 10:49:22 PM »

So, I was just looking around the website again recently, and I was wondering if there are plans to update the pictures and FAQ. We could really use updated photos of ships and gameplay, and it wouldn't hurt if the FAQ informed you that there are actually 61 weapons, not 31. I understand if you don't want to update things until 0.51a, but I just wanted to bring this to your attention, so you could at least make a note of it.

2

General Discussion / Supercharging

« on: March 03, 2012, 09:53:57 AM »

As you know, energy weapons' damage increases as you gain more flux. When you have more than 50% flux, the HUD says "Supercharged". Well, this is nice, but not helpful if you don't have energy weapons. Well, I think that supercharging should do more things! I was inspired by a confused player in this thread: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=1374.0

I think it would be cool if your ship gained a speed increase as you gained flux, but this is completely counter to the idea of getting an engine boost when you have no flux. Do you have any other ideas for what supercharging should do?

3

Suggestions / A rethink of ship acceleration and top speed

« on: February 29, 2012, 07:23:25 PM »

The one extremely frustrating thing to me is how ships accelerate in battle. Currently, ships accelerate at a fixed rate, and abruptly cease to accelerate at their speed limit. It is completely unrealistic and obnoxious. Now, you may say: "But Catattack, it is hard on both developers and the game engine to make this game that realistic. This isn't a simulator!" Well, I completely agree, but I propose a method that is just one level above this system in terms of realism, and hardly more taxing on the game engine.

My Proposition:
Ships should have an acceleration curve, to represent their engines providing less and less thrust as they approach their listed "top speed". I don't propose removing speed limits at all, and don't take it that way! Ships should have an acceleration curve based on their top speed and their mass. Also, it would make sense that low-tech ships would have a steeper acceleration curve (meaning that they reach low speeds faster, and high speeds slower), and high-tech ones would have a flatter curve (meaning that their acceleration changes less). This would represent the differences between older propellent-based rockets and newer ion-engine-like thrust devices.

Benefits:
- More realistic, doesn't break immersion like current system
- Instead of reaching max speed and coasting, the player can feel the tension mount as they keep their engines on to eke out every ounce of speed they can (until floating-point rounding cuts them off)
- Makes ships realistically more maneuverable at lower speeds
- Just generally gives more character to the engines (and therefore to the ships)

Drawbacks:
- Ever so slightly more taxing on game engine
- Takes some time to code (although my experiences with coding an acceleration curve tells me that it isn't that hard)
- Makes the game more realistic (This is a drawback if you hate reality)  

EDIT: Link to post with my original idea: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=1332.msg13876

4

General Discussion / Starfarer Icons!

« on: February 29, 2012, 05:11:30 PM »

Alrighty folks, this is a call to pixel-artists! What we need is some more artwork for the little icons that we see all the time, but don't pay the most attention to. I am talking about the mission icons. And, even more importantly, the game icon itself!

I want to make this thread the unofficial icon artwork thread! If you want to try your hand at making little images to represent the game or the missions, post your work here, and let the people decide!

The icons should be PNG files, and roughly 64x64 pixels.

5

Suggestions / High Explosive Energy Weapons

« on: February 26, 2012, 06:39:12 PM »

This is a simple suggestion, but it still needs to be said.

Currently, we have no energy weapons that deal high explosive damage. What if we had a weapon that shot beams of radiation that caused cascading combustion of particles that it impacted, similar to nuclear weapons? I'm just pulling this out of my ass here, and I don't know if my attempt at reasoning how the weapon could work is accurate at all, but that's not the point!

We need energy weapons that deal High Explosive damage! (And probably more that do kinetic!)

6

Suggestions / Configurable Point Defense

« on: February 26, 2012, 03:33:46 PM »

Currently, weapons are either labeled as "Point Defense" or not. Weapons best suited for PD are designated as so, but weapons that are less-suited to the job have no option of being PD weapons. While this is a quite reasonable system to prevent missiles from being ignored/shot at by everything, it doesn't allow the player to change the designation in-game.

My suggestion is that PD weapons are designated in the "Weapon Groups" option. It could be renamed "Weapon configuration", and each weapon could have a toggle button for PD designation. Weapons that are labeled "Point Defense" (when PURCHASING) are designated as PD by default, for simplicity. Also, much like selecting weapon groups, shift-click would change designation for all weapons of one type (let me know if you think it should be all weapons of one weapon group instead of type).

This freedom would let players use, for PD, weapons other than the few that are set as PD (needlers might make good unconventional PD weapons). Also, it would allow for players to turn OFF the PD designation on weapons that they would rather have prioritize ships over missiles. As an added bonus, it would let people make zany choices for PD (such as Mjolnir Cannons) that would be hilarious to watch.

NOTE: This would most likely involve the change/removal of the Integrated Point Defense AI hullmod. Personally, I don't understand why we have pay extra to make weapons target missiles, when they can target fighters that aren't much larger.  

EDIT: If you select "Other" in the poll, PLEASE post your idea! It doesn't help me if you don't share your thoughts!

7

Suggestions / Testing Out Loadouts

« on: February 26, 2012, 01:56:03 PM »

One thing I would love is the ability to test out my weapon load out (in campaign). Currently, to get an idea of what my ship can do requires me to either:
A) Guess, based on previous knowledge and stats, and hope for the best
B) Chase down and attack a weak enemy (which is near-impossible with larger fleets/ships) to get time to mess around
C) Create/use a mission involving the ship that I am testing, which doesn't take crew skill into account.

Optimally, I think we should have the ability to run practice fights. It would be nice to fight against one of my own ships (AI-controlled), to test out my weapons or shield.

If the fight were explained as being in a computer simulation, then we wouldn't have to deal with the feasibility of shooting at our own troops, and causing expensive damage to our ships. Besides, even the most primitive factions have the technology to run a computer game. I mean, we can run said simulation on our home computers!

8

Modding / Mod Request - Minimap

« on: February 20, 2012, 11:43:12 AM »

So, I am pretty sure I share the sentiments of many when I say that I wish we had a minimap in deep space! While the map brought up with tab is nice, it pauses the game when you have to bring it up. I am not very good at navigating, and also like to keep tabs on the little Pirate patrols that I can attack, so I use the map a lot.

Since the next version of Starfarer may be a while off and may not include a minimap, I was wondering if someone could mod a semi-transparent map into the corner of the screen. My idea was that it might be the entire star system map, but if that is too compressed, maybe a quarter of the map. Also, if there was a little box on it showing what you are viewing, that would be awesome.

I understand this may probably will be a headache to mod, but if someone is up for the challenge and knows their stuff, this request is to you!

9

Suggestions / AI Collision Tweaks

« on: February 17, 2012, 01:38:08 PM »

So, it seems to me that the AI blatantly ignores ship collision if it wants to get somewhere. I discovered how self-harming this could be when I was running around in a modded Atlas (I called it the Atlas 2-class FreighterFighter). I had ramped up speed and mass and a hell of a lot of other things, but the important one is mass. I was tearing through a large group of Hegemony ships by ramming them to death at a speed of 400 with a mass of 400000, and they were now trying to flee. For fun, I decided to block an Enforcer from fleeing by sitting in its way and not firing, as I didn't want to kill it (it was nearly dead, and had no front armor left).

Okay, I need to cut to the chase, here. The enforcer proceeded to run into my ship to try retreat, and in doing do killed itself on my shields. When I tested this with dozens of other ships, they all did the same thing, like I wasn't there at all. The AI really should account for how lethal a ram will be, and maybe even use it to their advantage. It is not at all far-fetched to say that they could judge your mass by your size, so it wouldn't be bad to factor in your mass when they decide the consequences of ramming.