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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 - Sordid

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1
Blog Posts / Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« on: July 16, 2021, 01:07:02 PM »
I think the Neural Link adjustment for the Radiant is very reasonable, because otherwise that might fall into that sort of category. Go Automated Ships, Neural Link, cap Radiant - win.

Go Best of the Best - feel really let down by how terrible it is in comparison.

Yes, but that's a reason to buff Best of the Best, not nerf Neural Link. This comes back to the overarching point of Alex being stingy with player power. He accidentally opened this particular tap more than he intended, saw that it was really fun, and then proceeded to close it again rather than open up all the other ones too. That's just... wrong. On every level.

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Blog Posts / Re: Skill Changes, Part 2
« on: July 16, 2021, 11:48:13 AM »
Another mostly disappointing read. The overarching problem seems to be something that's plagued Starsector for years, stinginess with player power ("but not too game-changing"). A whole +5 top speed? Woo-hoo, that'll make all the difference in a fight! ::) I said it for years, I'll say it again: Starsector is a power fantasy, finding ways to attain excessive power is what makes such games fun, and perfect balance is a detriment in that respect. It seems this realization was almost reached in the Neural Link + Automated Ships section ("it's way too strong but also really fun"), but then a nerf was applied instead. Fun overload detected, deploy emergency nerfs!

Thumbs up for removing colony skills and for phase ship changes, those were sorely needed.

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Blog Posts / Re: Skill Changes, Part 1
« on: July 02, 2021, 02:45:58 PM »
I see some steps in the right direction in there, but overall it's a disappointing read as the destination, while marginally closer, remains very far away.

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General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 03, 2021, 01:16:52 PM »
what is your opinion on Starsector combat movement in general?

Rubberbandy and unresponsive. That's not really what this thread (or your question) is about, but I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to complain.

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50% of combat is closer so you can shoot, running up hard and soft flux, then backing off to vent.  Advance and retreat.  Move to flank to prevent shields from covering all attacks at once.  Is that "dance" somehow fundamentally different from the larger scale "advance" to a point and "move back" if overwhelmed?  What, fundamentally is the difference?

The difference is that there's a lot more factors to consider in combat. Yes, fundamentally it does boil down to "advance to shoot, retreat when threatened". But when it comes to answering the question "should I advance and attack?", the answer requires quickly assessing the current situation, which changes from battle to battle and from moment to moment. "Alright, there's half a dozen ships nearby, and I want to attack that cruiser that's currently having a flux fight with one of my own. My flux is low, so I'm good on that front. That bomber wing over there seems to be going for someone else, and that other cruiser is backing off to vent after getting hammered, so I don't need to worry about those. There is an unoccupied destroyer nearby, but it has no officer and has already expended all its missiles, so I should be able to dart in for a quick salvo to tip that flux fight in my guy's favor and have enough juice left to win against the destroyer when it comes for me." And then ten seconds later, when the situation's changed, you repeat the process. It's called an OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) and it's the heart of what makes combat gameplay fun.

Capping points at the start of a battle, on the other hand, is always the same because the situation is always the same. There's nobody on the field yet, so the answer to the question "should I send fast ships to cap points?" is always "yes". That makes it boring and rote.

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General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 03, 2021, 12:17:59 PM »
I'm just using a wolf and lasher with Unstable Injector and they are fast enough to grab a capture point each on most maps, so I can confirm a high performance speedster isn't required, just something reasonable.

I thought you said you don't do the frigate dance.

6
General Discussion / Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5
« on: April 03, 2021, 09:50:02 AM »
If players are expected to elite skills, then just make changing skills free since elite-ing them back will cost several SP.  I think someone else made the suggestion that once elite, always elite even if unlearned then relearned.  I like that suggestion better.

Or just give the frickin' story point back.

7
General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 03, 2021, 09:40:54 AM »
Can you give some in game examples of what you want to do and how you've actually been limited in a real game run?  With numbers?  Like, after 2 months, I was forced to turn around my fleet of X,Y,Z due to lack of supplies?

No, of course I can't. I don't keep those kinds of records.

The concern about Combat Readiness, amusing that what this topic is about, I have is that it makes it currently hard to use frigates in long battles that do involve larger ship types.

I get not wanting to play ring around the roses for 40 minutes with an enemy phase skimmer because you DARED not to bring a carrier, or have lost it in the actual battle. But when there is still a proper battle to be fought I can't see a good justification as to why my tempests shouldn't be operating for as long as my onslaughts. I do like the idea of the crews getting tired and everything getting run down over an extended battle however.

I would be nice to almost have a way for larger ships to prop up smaller ones as long as they exist to keep them going during a battle. Like a buff to their CR time when a larger ship type is present that counts down before their own timer. That way mixed size fleets, combined arms if you will, become a little better then 90% of an AI's fleet going limp after a while among the perfectly fine battleships.

Yes, that's what I'm talking about when I say there's no way to avoid the punishments that CR imposes. The game pushes you to bring the minimum force necessary, but if you do, the battle drags on and your ships start running out of CR. Not just frigates, I've had this problem even with destroyers. It just feels like crap when you've been fighting an exciting battle for a while, balancing on a knife's edge, and then the game goes, "A'ight, that's enough fun for now, time to lose." Like... no, I was going to win that, but you yanked the rug from under my feet, game!

I agree that being kited by the AI is about the most unfun thing that can happen in a game, but surely that would be better solved by just making the AI not kite the player? The dev can do that. That's fully within his power. IIRC, cowardly AI only started being a problem in version 0.8.

That's actually a great idea. Just make the PPT of all ships equal to the longest allied PPT on the field (in the same way that the speed of the fleet is the speed of the slowest ship in it).

8
General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 03, 2021, 12:23:23 AM »
I mean, I guess I could get more of them? Still, that might solve my personal supply issues, but it wouldn't really expand the range of viable playstyles.

9
General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 02, 2021, 11:35:07 PM »
The other major issue with removing CR is that its a base mechanic of the game. First, CR functions as the main "you took damage on the campaign map" meter. Of course you could just replace all instances of CR damage with hull damage but that both shifts the game's balance and complicates things. What happens if the hull reaches 0 on the campaign map? CR damage has roughly equal effects across ship type, but the impact of less health differs drastically between ship types.
Speaking of balance, CR is a huge part of that too. What do you add to balance out high tech ships/SO, etc.? Your proposed safety mode seems rather unjustifiable lore wise. Removing CR would essentially require a total rebalance of every ship in the game, which seems rather overboard.

Well yes, CR should've been removed seven years ago, properly reversing that now would require adjustments to everything that has been build on top of it. Not that I'm expecting that to realistically happen, but a man can dream. Nevertheless, I think balance issues that would be caused by a simple removal of CR without doing an extensive redesign would still be less severe than the issues the presence of CR causes.

As for gameplay mechanics being unjustifiable lore-wise, in games where harmonizing lore and mechanics is a concern at all (which is a minority of them), lore is written to fit mechanics, not the other way around. Retconning the lore is the easy part.

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I don't really understand this argument. Past the early game supplies are cheap, you salvage more from fights, and you have oodles of cargo space to carry extra.

Maybe if you take the extra loot skill, but with the severe level cap, I find that unjustifiable.

10
General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 02, 2021, 11:07:31 PM »
What logistical challenges are there? "Out of supplies -> buy some supplies" seems to be about it as far as I can tell....
You know the answer to your own question:
The issue with CR is that it threatens to punish you if you don't use as small a force as possible and then punishes you for using a small force (because a small force takes a long time to chew through the enemy fleet, so it runs out of CR). It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and that just doesn't feel good. Which is a problem in an entertainment product. With no CR, you'd have no reason to ever even try solo frigate other than curiosity and self-imposed challenge.
This is exactly the stuff I'm talking about when I say logistical and combat challenges. The game is a multi-objective optimization where you're trying to maximize combat power while simultaneously minimizing resource costs on the campaign layer. You can't just 'use less ships to save resources' or 'use more ships to be stronger', you have to find a balance. A major enjoyable aspect of the game for me is selecting ships and outfitting them to solve that multi-objective optimization problem and finding the right balance between multiple factors (which is substantially more complicated and interesting than just trying to make the most powerful fleet).

This made me realize we're actually both complaining about the exact same thing, which is trading real-life time for in-game power. You don't like the idea of using a single frigate and grinding away at enemy fleets for hours with it, while I don't like deploying everything and then traveling for ages to replace the supplies that wasted. And while neither of us does that exact thing, the problem is that there's no satisfying middle ground to be found. "Fighting with a small force is a slog" blends right into "using a large force requires tedious resupply runs". There's no place on that spectrum of strategies where you're not receiving either of those punishments; if you move away from one, you receive more of the other. That just feels  like crap. Like I said earlier, negative motivation is bad in general, and that's especially true when you can't avoid the punishment, only mitigate it. In other words, you've just made me more certain than ever that CR is a cancer and needs to go.

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If you remove CR, but not upkeep and fuel costs, then you can maximize combat power with any single ship that can solo everything (there is no way to be stronger than 'I can kill everything by myself'), but resources cost is minimal with as few ships as possible (as discussed extensively). If you completely remove the resource cost, you make it into a much simpler and less interesting single objective optimization problem, i.e. there are no tradeoffs between combat power and resources in your decisions anymore, you just spam paragons or whatever. Sure you can use whatever fleet you want, but there's no interesting optimization anymore. I don't have fun trying random fleets for the sake of trying them.

Sure there is a way to be stronger than "I can kill everything". "My fleet can kill everything faster than I could alone." In the absence of an explicit motivating factor, time becomes that factor. In fact, time is a factor always, which is why those time-wasting strategies feel so unsatisfying. CR is the only reason to ever trade time for power, which is why it needs to go. That is also why I don't think Paragon spam would become the meta either. You may have noticed Paragons are quite... slow.

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It's not like fighting those fleets in a single superpowered frigate would be faster.

Which is exactly why I wouldn't do it and why I don't believe you would either.

People already did it, that's why CR was added in the first place.

So what? Let 'em. Why does it matter to you what some other people do in their single-player game?

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I could probably make the game much easier by abusing broken mechanics like that, which is unsatisfying to me.

Like I said earlier, I don't buy this "I'm too weak-willed to stop myself from ruining my fun by abusing exploits" argument. Even if it were true, I don't think designing games meant for a general audience around the needs of a tiny minority that suffers from that level of obsessive compulsion is a good idea.

11
... thats like all wrong. If a fleet doesn't kick ass, then its not a kick ass fleet. By definition. If the game is changed so that all cap fleets aren't as good, then they aren't as good.

If a fleet doesn't kick ass, then it shouldn't seem like it would.

12
General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 02, 2021, 12:15:09 PM »
That frigate can kill everything so I don't have to think about how to counter the enemy fleet, and I don't have to spend time developing loadouts for those ships, either.

You could do that if you wanted to, I guess. I wouldn't. You say you don't want to use that playstyle, so what exactly is your argument here? That you have so little self-control that you'd switch to a playstyle that you hate just because it uses a bit less fuel (which is even cheaper that supplies in the current version)? I don't buy that for a second and I think you should stop underestimating yourself.

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The fact that people are coming into this thread to actively say they enjoy the resource management aspect of the game is clear evidence that this change would hurt other peoples enjoyment of the game. It's fine if you don't care for that aspect of the game, but at least acknowledge that other people do...

I do acknowledge it, my point is that that aspect of the game would not be lost. Unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to understand that. I have yet to see a well-thought-out argument, all I'm getting so far are knee-jerk reactions.

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Every game in existence? No way. Maybe a significant portion of action/combat games have some element of this. But even in those games, there is an effort to actively design them to prevent strategies that trade IRL time for success, even if that is unavoidable to some degree. Just think about how much people hate turtling/camping/defensive play in most games. Many strategy games have no element of this at all, i.e. they are not real time and cautious and aggressive play take the same amount of time, and are differentiated by risk/reward factors.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but the only exception I can think of is the recent Doom remake. That does go out of its way to encourage you to play aggressively. The key word here being "encourage". One of the general overarching issues Starsector has that I've been harping on here is that it doesn't encourage anything, it shapes the player's experience predominantly by punishments and penalties.

And no, not even turn-based strategies are immune to the choice I described. On the contrary, they are far more susceptible to cautious play than real-time games, since you can spend hours mulling over your moves in a single turn. Unless there's a time limit on turns, but as I pointed out earlier, those tend to be optional in games that have them.

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Sure but there are a lot of different ways games can be challenging. For me, fun games present a mental challenge, like solving a puzzle. I don't find games where the challenge is in the perfect execution of simple but difficult task to be compelling. I like the parts of starsector that make me think, and I find that most of the thinking I do revolves around solving/optimizing logistical challenges, and solving/optimizing combat challenges by choosing ships and loadouts. CR creates those challenges for me to solve. The enjoyment I get from piloting/combat is only one part of why I like the game.

I understand optimizing combat challenges, but logistical challenges? What logistical challenges are there? "Out of supplies -> buy some supplies" seems to be about it as far as I can tell. If anything, removing CR and therefore not having to deal with resupplying would leave you more time to engage with those far more complex and interesting combat challenges. Even from your point of view and for your playstyle it would be a net positive.

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CR was implemented to prevent grindy gameplay, where you spend hours in a single frigate slowly killing capital ships, so claiming that removing CR prevents grinding makes no sense to me.

That's not what I said. It wouldn't prevent solo frigate battles, but it would remove any mechanical incentive to use that playstyle. The issue with CR is that it threatens to punish you if you don't use as small a force as possible and then punishes you for using a small force (because a small force takes a long time to chew through the enemy fleet, so it runs out of CR). It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, and that just doesn't feel good. Which is a problem in an entertainment product. With no CR, you'd have no reason to ever even try solo frigate other than curiosity and self-imposed challenge.

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It's not like fighting those fleets in a single superpowered frigate would be faster.

Which is exactly why I wouldn't do it and why I don't believe you would either.

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I think that's a fair question. Basically... it's really, really easy - once you have money rolling in - to just stack a bunch of Paragons (or whatever the highest-DP battleship happens to be) and to basically just roll everything with them, outnumbering the enemy on the battlefield. It's a way to win, for sure. Is it a playstyle that's interesting? I don't think so.

Okay, you don't think that's fun. Fair enough, but you're not designing the game just for yourself. Some people do find fun and satisfaction in working hard to assemble a kick-ass fleet and then using it to kick ass. The issue is that you allow the former part of that but not the latter, and it's not clear that step 2 is not possible until step 1 has already been completed, so the player ends up feeling shafted and their work wasted. If you insist on enforcing your own preferred fleet composition on everyone, it would be a lot more palatable if it was made clear ahead of time what that composition is supposed to be. You could for instance cap not only the total number of ships in the fleet but also individual types, so a fleet could be limited to 2 capitals, 4 cruisers, 8 destroyers, and 16 frigates (or something, exact numbers TBD). And importantly, enemy fleets need to be limited in the same way.

14
Field Repairs can do this in theory, but it takes too long for more than one or two casualties with one d-mod each.

It's mind-boggling to me that that skill is four ranks deep in the industry branch, only procs once every two months, and doesn't even work reliably. A "chance" to remove d-mods? What chance? 90%? 25%? 1%? As far as I'm concerned, it needs to be available at the start of the branch (much like transverse jump, thumbs up for making that easily accessible!) and read "remove a d-mod every week". That in and of itself would go a long way to mitigating the combat balance issues; to solve them completely, remove the word "almost" from skills that boost ship recovery chance. Tough fights where I lose half my fleet would be a lot more palatable if I could bounce back from them without having to run around half the sector visiting every planet to see if they happen to have the ships I need in stock.

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General Discussion / Re: Complaints about CR and game design
« on: April 02, 2021, 04:41:41 AM »
If a single frigate could kill everything, it would be optimal from any in-game resource point of view (credits,fuel,supplies,burn speed,sensor profile,range etc.).

I don't think this is true even if no other change is made besides removing CR as a mechanic. Larger ships have more sensor strength in addition to a larger sensor profile, so while a single frigate is easier to sneak around with, it also can't see much on its own. It can't carry a lot of cargo/loot or fuel either, so you'd want some freighters and tankers with it, and those have lower speeds and larger sensor profiles. Since those advantages of the frigate are negated anyway, you might as well take some larger warships too, since they won't make any difference at that point. Basically, solo frigate is a battle playstyle, not an overworld playstyle. The removal of CR would result in slightly smaller fleets, yes, but only in the sense that you wouldn't need to rotate tired ships out of the battle and replace them with fresh ones, so you could get away with not having those reserves with you. If that's not a thing you do, I don't think it would make much difference at all.

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You have to remove most of the campaign mechanics (sensors, fuel, supplies etc.) to make a single frigate non-optimal from a resource perspective.

I would probably remove supplies completely, yes, since replenishing/maintaining CR is the only purpose they serve.

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The only argument you could make is that it takes less IRL time, but I think balancing gameplay around any IRL factor is a terrible idea all around. Pay to win is the worst case of this, but grind to win is just as unfun. It's just a question of how much annoyance/unhappiness you're willing to put up with to succeed in the game. Might as well have 'stub your toe to win'. Why make it so you have to be unhappy to do better in the game?

But... every game in existence is balanced that way? Gameplay in any game is always a choice between playing cautiously and taking longer or being more aggressive and quicker, especially so in combat-focused games. Balancing around real-life factors can't be avoided because there's always a real-life person playing the game.

As for having to be unhappy to succeed, that is, paradoxically, what makes games fun. You put in effort and you get satisfaction in return. If you've ever typed in a cheat code, you know from experience that the fun of winning without having to overcome obstacles is very short-lived. That's not to say that games should be grindy or overly tedious; mitigating that problem is precisely the goal of removing CR. I agree that pay-to-win (and pay-to-skip) is cancer, but I don't think that's really applicable here; thankfully Starsector didn't go down that path.

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