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

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Messages - DelicateTask

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1
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 03, 2024, 10:33:36 AM »
Cracked open this new version and was pleasantly surprised, as always, to see some new portrait options. I also happened to notice some portrait revisions. This was not unexpected exactly; art is always a work in progress and the portraits have often been modified. However, the overarching theme of these revisions seems to be that every character's life has gotten, on average, about 30% worse. I know the sector is crumbling and society as we know it is on the decline, but man do these people look miserable or grumpy or both.

Are you ok, David?

Note that none of this is intended as criticism, just an impression that I got while perusing the art during character creation. And, uh, maybe it would be nice to encounter the occasional citizen who's having a good day, or at least is unreasonably cocky for the circumstances. Maybe I would like to be able to play such a character. Not everyone needs to be so dour.

2
Bug Reports & Support / Re: Error in sound initialization
« on: July 14, 2019, 06:10:46 AM »
I'm also running Win10, and I don't think my computer has updated in between playing. It's odd that it just suddenly happened.

3
Bug Reports & Support / Re: Error in sound initialization
« on: July 13, 2019, 04:45:03 PM »
Me and my GF just booted up the game today and we both got this error. Admin mode gets around it, but it's really weird that we've been playing this game for months with no problem, then POW, problems. Super strange.

Edit: also, in reply to Xeno, I tried setting up an exception and it didn't work for me, but you can always right-click on starsector.exe, click Properties, select the Compatibility tab, and select "Run this program as an administrator" and save. Then you don't have to intentionally run it as an admin every time.

(It seems that adding an exception only prevents the excepted item from being included in virus scans and such, not necessarily granting it any privileges.)

4
Suggestions / Intel Screen Exploration Clutter
« on: July 06, 2019, 07:59:32 AM »
I take a lot of missions to survey planets, analyze derelicts, etc. These intel items show under the Exploration filter in the Intel screen. However, after doing a fair bit of exploration, it gets clogged up with all the locations of other ships or resource locations. If I fly through the core and gather a bunch of intel for exploration jobs, I want to be able to look at the intel screen and be able to see what exploration jobs are grouped together so I can plan an expedition to a corner of the sector. However, the screen is instead cluttered with all that other information I've picked up and I can't tell what's what.

Some of this is that I don't think intel items for resource and probe locations goes away if you salvage the probe or survey the planet (although now that I think about it I've never tested that directly and I feel stupid.)

Could exploration jobs potentially be split off from general exploration information like resource locations, domain probes, distress calls, etc?


[attachment deleted by admin]

5
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: January 05, 2015, 03:16:35 PM »
I think the ballistic weapon changes (and the timers added to ships) is more because you could cause fleets to waste all their ammo with a ship like the Medusa or the Wolf, and then easily destroy them, rather than any weapons being especially imbalanced.

I remember a year or so ago when some guy took a frigate and soloed a Hegemony SDF with it. That seemed to be the main inspiration for the addition of CR, because Alex didn't want people to play the game like that (at least that's the impression I got). I wonder if it was ever considered that maybe some people enjoy doing things like that. Maybe there's too much effort being put into forcing people to play a certain way. The addition of CR loss to all but capitals feels like we're being forced to make our battles quick. I really enjoyed picking a fast flagship and using it to capture objectives and chase down escaping ships over the course of a long, hard fought engagement. I don't think there's anything wrong with someone choosing to kite a ship for half an hour trying to waste all of its ammo because that's the player's choice. I sometimes like to push the limits of what's possible in the game and other times I just want to win quickly, but either way I like to have the option to do what I feel like.

6
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: January 05, 2015, 12:20:35 PM »
I've only read the first 3 pages of replies to this, but things usually repeat after that much time anyway, the only difference being that people start to get in fights over it. That said, I'd like to mention some things that don't seem to have been covered (in what little I've read).

This whole patch (or at least the part people are going crazy over) seems to revolve around balancing. There is an attempt here to make weapons more equal and remove obvious advantages. However, I think that this may not always be a good path to take. Right now, what I'm seeing is a bid to make all weapons viable by removing extraneous systems and simplifying groups of weapons. As an alternative, four in-game systems that can offer balance solutions are Credit cost, OP cost, CR/Logistics, and scarcity/rarity.

Cost in credits:
If we're going to make all weapons equally effective, then shouldn't they all cost the same? Why even bother with pricing? I think that there is room for ineffective and overpowered weapons if prices reflect that. Maybe the zomglaz0r is far more powerful than the failcannon, but if I can only afford failcannons then I will equip them. Later, if I have lots of money, I'll have the choice between buying a new ship, weapons, and crew for it, or a zomglaz0r for my flagship. I should be able to buy power. At some point, if I'm rich enough, I should be able to afford the best. It wouldn't make much sense if I was fabulously wealthy and my famous fleet had the same mediocre weapons as every pirate rabble in the system.

Cost in Ordinance Points:
People occasionally bring up OP when discussing balance, but it doesn't seem to be much of a focus. I think OP is another fantastic way to balance weapons while maintaining diversity. If the zomglaz0r costs 25 OP to mount and the failcannons cost 4 each, then I'll have to make another choice. Do I equip a single super weapon to my ship and use it to punch out enemy ships, or do I equip several smaller weapons to provide more coverage or defense? OP is the great equalizer because if you want top-of-the-line weapons then you can't have as many hullmods or vents or capacitors or what have you. On the other hand, you could have a ship with loads of bonuses but only average weapons. If your weapons are well balanced in regards to OP, then you should have good balance overall because nobody is going to leave OP unused. They will always to so some purpose.

CR/Logistics:
"It would be un-balanced if you could crush everyone with those superior weapons!" Thanks to CR and logistics, I can't have too many battles in a row without suffering a lot. CR is a good way to rein in players and prevent aggression without consideration for consequences. Maybe objectively better weapons could have additional upkeep supply cost. If I don't keep those superconductive quantum-plasma diffuser matrices oiled, we're going to have some problems firing the zomglaz0r. Or maybe they cause ships to use more CR on deployment. Those dilithium crystals provide extra power, but they need longer to recharge. When CR was first introduced, Alex made a point of how it would provide a tie-in between the campaign and individual battles. By causing equipped weapons to have an effect on CR, you can further tie player choices into this system and make them feel the effects of their decisions. The greatest fleet in the universe would need lots of logistical support to keep things running smoothly, after all.

Scarcity:
If a weapon is considered unusually powerful compared to others, don't dumb it down or raise everything else, make it rare! I can't create an unstoppable fleet outfitted with ultimate disintegration blasters if I can't find more than two of them. I remember when Tachyon Lances were terrifying and a Paragon would make me think twice. Now the TL is situational at best and the Paragon is no longer as scary. The TL got "balanced", you see, and now it's not worth using. It was considered overpowered, and now it's nothing. It was exciting back then because it was powerful and if I wanted one, I'd have to shell out a ton of money for the only one in stock or go toe-to-toe with a Paragon and hope I lived long enough to have it drop one.



Everyone seems concerned with how these changes in 0.65.2a will affect things/ruin the game forever, but I think that these changes may be an overcomplicated attempt to bring balance without instead utilizing some of the great mechanics which are already in the game. Don't homogenize things in an attempt to bring balance, embrace diversity! Use OP and Credit costs to balance superior weapons. I don't want to play a game where my "superweapon" is as lackluster as a pirate's pop-gun. I enjoy the early-game when I don't have enough money for light autocannons so I have to buy arbalests and hope for the best. Make things unequal and force me to improvise! Make me work hard for better rewards so that they are truly rewards.

7
Bug Reports & Support / [0.65a] Can't set auto fire while paused
« on: October 30, 2014, 09:31:16 PM »
Okay, I went through the last few pages of bug reports, and I didn't see anything about this (although I probably just missed it because I'm tired).

While the game is paused, it is impossible to manually set auto fire on or off in battle. It can be set while unpaused, so it's not breaking anything, but I really don't like trying to set my weapons while being shot at. ;)

8
Blog Posts / Re: Faction Relationships
« on: August 14, 2014, 11:44:58 AM »
All I've gained from this blog post is that everyone's a circle in space. ;D Every single faction's banner is a circle in the middle except for pirates. Not complaining, just noticing. Also blah blah, great post, new stuff blah. I'm really excited about it, actually, just don't have much to add to the discussion.

However, I would like to say that the positive faction relation names are not as obvious to me as the negative ones.
  • Favorable - a good starting point.
  • Welcoming - I find that to be a stronger term than friendly. I imagine a big welcoming hug as opposed to:
  • Friendly - Simply being friendly, at least to me, means maybe a smile and a wave, maybe a little polite chat. Friendly =/= being friends.
  • Cooperative - Not a measure of favor. I can cooperate with someone regardless of whether or not I like them.
This merely expresses my opinion, and I am aware that I may be the only one who thinks this. Still, there may be others who were confused by the designations at first glance.

9
Suggestions / Re: How I'd design an economy (long)
« on: June 22, 2014, 02:00:13 PM »
Been catching up with this game after ignoring it for a couple of months, and after reading ALL OF THE THINGS (blog posts, resultant threads, etc.) I came across this post. First off, I'd like to say that this is quite a lovely starting model for a game economy in that it is simple and understandable, as well as balanced and dynamic.

While I understand that there is no relation between your economic model and the actual game, I'd like to speculate about how your model would fit with the game's lore, not just the mechanics of it. One thing to consider is the overall dark, sort of fatalistic tone of the game. Human civilization as we know it is falling apart. Various factions are trying to capture their own share of the resources, yet there is no growth. Some factions can keep enough order to sort of barely keep the status quo, but that's about it.

In the light of this setting, it looks like there would be a few planets with relatively high order (main bases of operation for the Hegemony, etc.), but that most worlds would have low stability. How would you cause these few planets to have high stability within your model without simply hard-coding exceptions for them? In other words, what would make them successful and relatively immutable without drastic outside influence?

Also, as far as colonization, I get the feeling there would be very little colonization as there is almost no growth in the sector. Resources merely replace that which is destroyed by war. Metal makes ships which get obliterated. People are born and get blown up with their ships or killed in raids. Food, of course, is just eaten.

10
Bug Reports & Support / Installer automatically deleted [Win8]
« on: January 01, 2014, 12:53:57 PM »
I'm trying to install Starsector on my Windows 8 machine and it keeps deleting the installer as soon as it downloads. Windows Defender says it's shut off, and Firewall is being managed by Norton Internet Security (which is obviously installed and running). Thing is, I don't think Norton is deleting it, because Norton usually just says if a download is trusted and notifies me if it quarantines something.

11
General Discussion / Re: Best Mod?
« on: November 14, 2013, 07:14:19 AM »
Spoiler
I tried some total conversion mods and mod compilations, and I'd suggest that you actually NOT download one. Not because they're not good, because they are, but because they're overwhelming. I tried Uomoz's half a year ago, and there were so many mods and cool things to see, I couldn't fully appreciate them. However, recently, I installed Shadowyards Heavy Industries and really enjoyed getting to know all the ships. Once I'd learned their strengths and weaknesses, I went out and downloaded Blackrock Drive Yards and ran it alongside Shadowyards, with my goal being to create a Blackrock fleet capable of defeating the largest Shadowyards fleet and using my knowledge of their ships to do so. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I've really gained an appreciation of the nuances of each faction.
[close]

TL;DR
Maybe start out with a few mods and get to know them before grabbing a compilation or total conversion.

12
Bug Reports & Support / Re: [Mac OSX 10.6.8] Whitescreen on exit
« on: October 28, 2013, 04:31:24 PM »
Thanks. I will try to break it so I can attempt your fix. Good to know I'm not the only person experiencing this as well.

13
Bug Reports & Support / Re: [Mac OSX 10.6.8] Whitescreen on exit
« on: October 25, 2013, 03:03:46 PM »
Hey, it's back! I seem to be the only person this actually happens to, which is strange. Same computer, nothing's changed. Now it's happening quite frequently with 6.1a. It only seems to happen in fullscreen. Windowed works fine. I can't force quit it in any fashion and still have to do a hard reboot. This happened three times in a row yesterday, and I can't figure it out.

Technically, it's fake 'fullscreen'. Borderless window, hidden toolbar, native screen resolution. I can still mouse down to the application bar and it pops up over the game window, but when the whitescreen crash happens, suddenly I can't get the bar to show any more. I can't do anything at all, and I've tried everything I know about macs to get a response.

One thing does work that shows the computer is still operating, even if the screen is unresponsive. I was running some music in the background and it kept playing, changed tracks just fine, and responded to keyboard commands to play/pause/change track.

Perhaps the only option is to play at a smaller resolution, but that's where something strange happens. If I try using any resolution other than 1024x768 it just forces 1280x800 (my native res). Even when I use resolution override or force aspect ratio, it will only do native. I can't run it at, say, 1240X800.

14
General Discussion / Re: Buffalos, what're they good for?
« on: October 09, 2013, 09:24:20 PM »
At first I was thinking, 'okay, here's another person complaining that the ship's useless,' but I lol'd hard once I realized that you weren't complaining that the ship exploded, but that it didn't do it in a useful fashion!  ;D

You sir, made my evening. (Also, does anyone get the Pinto reference anymore?)

15
Bug Reports & Support / Re: F1 To Expand.
« on: October 08, 2013, 01:25:20 PM »
Just some more confirmation, it works for me using Fn-F1 as well as setting my function keys to act as function keys in my settings.
MacBook Pro, OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard

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