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

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1
General Discussion / Hypershunt Scout Fleet
« on: February 11, 2024, 09:55:35 AM »
Hi.

I remember that discovering the Hypershunt once spawned a small fleet that attacked you to prevent you escaping with the location intel.

The last times I discovered a Hypershunt, the fleet didn't appear anymore. Has this been removed?

2
Hi.

My fleet consists of 2 Hammerheads, 3 Sunders, 5 Omen, 3 Tempests, 2 Monitors and 1 Hyperion (flagship).

All officers have a 'steady' personality.

Despite no attacks orders are given, ships frequently and consistently perform point-blank Kamikaze attacks against the Remnant Battlestation I am fighting.

For example, the Sunders are equipped with non-PD weapons of a minimum range of 800, yet they consistently hug the station.
Frigates are eager to ram the station as soon as possible.

My guess is that it has something to do with targeting sub-structures and/or attempting to assist other ships.

3
Hi Alex.

Deciding not to deploy the previously selected flagship, or forgetting to deploy it, causes an ill-defined UI state with the camera floating in the middle of nowhere, which is extremely confusing particularly to new players and ugly in general.
You can observe the acuteness of this problem in this segment of CohhCarnage's stream.

I don't want to remind about this in order to nag but rather as an indication that it is a truly bothersome to players like me: For example I have already reported on this issue in 2019

Thanks for getting this fixed.

4
Hi Alex, thanks for keeping an eye open for suggestions.

I was watching CohhCarnage's stream and was reminded on how unintuitive, unergonomic and pointlessly limiting the combat deployment screen is.

  • Novices have no intuitive insight that it's possible to deploy ships in flanking positions in pursuit engagements.
  • Due to the repetitiveness of the dialog it is often even overlooked by experienced players that the it's a pursuit engagement. (at least that's a mistake I make too often)
  • Ship selection for deployment positions is very unintuitive and has poor ergonomics. Multi-mode selection click cycles are objectively bad.
  • Command ship selection is cumbersomely segregated in the combat dialogue.
  • Why shouldn't we be able to control the starting positions of ships precisely, so that a slow Mora doesn't block our fleet?

My suggestions to fix this:

  • Ship deployment should happen directly on the combat command screen, without a toolbox hiding what's happening (e.a. seeing that enemy ships are running).
  • The fleet should be listed as drag & drop item list at the bottom of the screen.
  • The possible deployment positions should be highlighted as areas, with a simple AA grid for drag & drop ship positioning. A 6×2 grid should suffice I think. It can be made vertically (bottom) and horizontally (flanks) scrollable for extreme fleet sizes.
  • An auto-deploy button (e.a. frigates to the flanks) could skip obvious and tedious selection, leaving the player the option for fine-tuning like positioning individual ship in the deployment positions and just removing ships depending on confidence. Less clicks all the time, because it's optional.
  • Command ship selection should be toggled with a simple right click on the same deployment screen.
  • As for everything, descriptive & instructive text for the state of the game / active menu should be displayed at an unobstructive position with a hide button, not just interrupting infoboxes which are  dismissed too quickly out of haste/excitement/carelessness, let alone those random infoboxes.

I think that this would greatly improve the experience for new and experienced players alike while even adding a tiny bit of gameplay depth.

Thanks!  :-*

5
Suggestions / [0.95.1a-RC6] Sabots are Extremely Underprioritized by AI
« on: February 04, 2022, 06:13:34 AM »
An AI controlled Gryphon with Cyclone Reaper Launcher (large) and Sabots (medium & small) fires the Reapers first instead of the Sabots.

This can be repeated with other ships too. Ships like the Manticore simply fire Sabots way too reluctantly, even when no Kinetic weapons are mounted, the enemy ship has 0 flux and the Sabots are in range and ready to fire.

6
Hi.

When playing with some ships which utilize Time Compression and/or Phasing, I have noticed that the lack of delay of AI turning off shields when I deliberately bring my guns out of alignment, allow unintentional gameplay exploitation.

So there needs be some delay when it is determined that enemy guns are out of reach.


7
Modding / Did Someone Try to Implement Custom Station Loadout?
« on: January 20, 2022, 08:40:15 AM »
Hi.

I was just thinking how cool it would be to do a custom loadout of player built stations.
Since a custom loadout of the Cathedral in Dark.Revenant's S&W-Pack mod is possible, this doesn't seem so far stretched.

Thanks for any input.

8
Suggestions / Use a Base of 100 for Range Circle Distances, Not 125.
« on: January 14, 2022, 06:05:36 AM »
When I was trying to check if the range modifier of mod's hullmod was working properly, I have noticed that those circular range indicators are not multiples of 100.

It appears that the distance between each circle is 125 units? Holy crap! I have always assumed that it is 100, since, like most humans, I was born with 10 fingers and not 12.5.

So why not use a base that makes it convenient to check the range?

9
Hi.

Frigates, destroyers and perhaps even cruisers align the front to face single fighters despite large ships approaching from the other direction.
I have repeated this several times when facing a larger Remnant fleet.

10
Hi,

the old bug, that the autofire loadout config for the flagship and fire mode (linked/alternating) for fleet ships is randomly ignored, even for the same battle after loading.
This happens to vanilla ships like the Aurora and Tempest and others too.

This is quite annoying, to be frank.

Thank for getting this fixed finally.

11
I have repeatedly noticed that enemy fighter wings spawn in close to the player's entry area (south) of an combat assist engagement, despite the enemy carriers being located out of engagement reach.

Unfortunately, this can't be replicated consistently via a game save.

12
Occurred several times after playing for a few hours (with excessive, caffeine induced alt+tabbing).

13
Bug Reports & Support / RC12: Escorts Excessively Cover Rear Positon
« on: April 03, 2021, 05:01:56 AM »
Even when there is no enemy behind the escorted ship, which is attacked from the front, the escort (without officer) is sitting idle behind.

14
Bug Reports & Support / RC12: Stable Location (Nav Boy) Inside Star
« on: March 31, 2021, 01:51:50 PM »
Saw this in a system with a lot of loot and one more but unoccupied stable location.
There was also a derelict ship inside the (orange) star.
The star map was generated with the first public RC.

15
The skill based challenge to overcome/outsmart/avoid superiorly powerful enemies is one of the most entertaining aspect of any game. In Starsector, fundamental challenges like the progression of the skill to pilot the flagship, sneakily navigating the fleet through star systems, commanding the fleet and to wisely equip ships are undermined by the pure chance of finding high price loot early on.

Vast portions of the game are spoiled by the possibility of (not unlikely) luck to obtain overpowered ships, like the Tempest, or large fleets via lucky finds early on.
Even with average RNG, the aforementioned core gameplay challenges are rendered close to void too quickly in my opinion.
Simply just reducing the price of valuable items is not addressing this sufficiently and is solely diluting or even destroying the opportunity for more gameplay dynamics based on those things.

I have read and watched multiple times how new players were catapulted into the mid- to late game within 2-3 hours after trying the game for the first time.
Too many players never experience the joy of overcoming a more powerful enemy with low-tech ships and weapons and have the game reduced to dull resource management, almost from the start.

For avoiding this issue and to improve the gameplay experience, I suggest the implementation of military force licenses.

Just like in real life, random people are not allowed to cruise around with high tech fighter jets without a license.
Factions should hunt down a player in their systems who potentially threatens their existence with high tech/powerful ships and large fleets, if they didn't build up a certain reputation and have acquired a sufficient level of military force license.

Acquiring such licenses could involve story missions and/or meeting specific faction requirements, which would be a great basis to expand game content and depth.
One could perhaps still utilize a powerful fleet without a license when avoiding the related faction. And perhaps, getting licenses from all factions isn't possible.
It would be an extension of the commission system, with a far better and significant gameplay impact, since ship sourcing isn't truly a significant limitation in game anyway.

PS: In my opinion, those who refute the issue of hyper-progression and claim to have the greatest fun by defeating almost every enemy fleet (particularly with imbalance mod's) are a very loud minority here. Those people are typically the same who "enjoy" playing games with cheat codes/exploits, just want to a quick rush with ever larger explosion's and overpowered ships by installing some low quality mods. I think the those views should be avoided when considering the fine nuances to tweak the existing into an even better game.

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