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61

Suggestions / Re: Higher crew/officer salaries Instead of Supplies

« on: April 05, 2021, 11:49:19 AM »

Haha, that's just a normal part of a video game forum. Players lose, they want the game easier. Players win, they want the game harder. Nothing unusual about that.

There are two main layers to the game, the strategic campaign map and the tactical combat view. Each layer poses unique challenges and would require their own form of balance levers. For the strategic layer, the most important challenge is balancing resources in/resources out. Reducing upkeep across the board (ship maintenance, crew upkeep, fuel and colony costs) isn't too involved and definitely makes things easy. The combat layer already has a difficulty setting that changes global damage for enemies and player.

62

Suggestions / Re: Higher crew/officer salaries Instead of Supplies

« on: April 05, 2021, 11:23:56 AM »

Repeating a suggestion from elsewhere,
perhaps it would be useful to have contacts assist with gathering fuel/supplies? The player shows up to a planet but can only scratch the surface of what's available on the public markets. A contact should be able to dig deeper, finding contracts for major production runs that a fleet captain has no time to go looking for. I mean, it seems like one of the default features worth loading into a contact.

An example contract might look like:
"I found a guy who only accepts big orders. For "ca$h up front" he'll produce "LOTS" of supplies "every month for X months". These supplies enter your possession and go into planet storage to be picked up.
As a downside the player doesn't have complete control over it, but that's the price of shopping BIG.

63

General Discussion / Re: .95a feedback - fuel and supply

« on: April 05, 2021, 10:51:05 AM »

Maybe a private waystation is something we could invest in in the core worlds?

That sounds like a job for a contact! Totally public, no-questions-asked fuel/supplies might be difficult to find, but a contact should have no problem hooking the player up with a major fleet supplier. Whether the bulk supplies end up a bargain or a penalty, who can say! Maybe it is more restricted in terms of forcing minimal quantities, for example a big boy might refuse to sell anything less than 500 supplies at a time.

64

Suggestions / Re: SO nerf/rebalance

« on: April 05, 2021, 09:51:54 AM »

SO ships bleed CR at the same rate as ordinary ships. What if the CR decay and low CR penalties were more severe? For example, a ship could be considered in danger of malfunctions at 50% CR. The ship is pushing itself over tolerances, so minor defects will hit sooner and more severely.  The CR related global penalties(damage/shields) could also be more severe, for example reducing damage by 25% or more at low levels.

I suppose a lot of the CR stuff can be absorbed into a single statistic. Reduce the ship's maximum CR by 20-30% (or 0.5x even), creating a normal limit of 40-50% and eliminating the possibility of CR global buffs. The SO ship will burn out more quickly, it'll struggle against strategic map hazards, and it limits strategies which rely on rapid SO redeployment.

65

General Discussion / Re: Doom AI

« on: April 05, 2021, 07:26:39 AM »

It could be that phase ships are under valuing HE damage and over valuing energy or kinetic damage in terms of risk. As a phase ship, any type of HE damage is extremely hazardous and trivially avoided. But when PD and beams are involved, why be scared? That's why phase ships are loaded in thick armor, after all. Phase ships also don't worry about risk in terms of DPS, because they can phase out of sustained damage at any time. Damage per shot is more lethal and thus far more important for consideration.

Don't forget that damage types multiply TWICE into damage formulas. So HE damage not only gives 100% more numbers up front, it also penetrates damage reduction twice as effectively too. The actual risk is much higher than 2x. Once a phase ship runs out of armor, it can't defer risk to the shields for backup, making it a nasty trade.

66

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Squall. Like, seriously.

« on: April 05, 2021, 07:17:57 AM »

Squall fires a slow, steady stream of white EMP missiles. It's made for punishing shields and can disable turrets via EMP. The missile has poor agility so it is mostly for pressuring large slow targets like capitals. Ideally you should combo a squall with some heavy HE follow up, but heavy HE weapons are usually other missiles.



Players seem more comfortable with stacking up kinetic guns and dealing the killing blow with MIRVs.

67

Suggestions / Re: Can we get a checkbox that lets us choose our gender in character-creation?

« on: April 05, 2021, 07:10:54 AM »

Gender doesn't matter too much in english translation. After all your main character is easily referenced as a genderless "hey you" or "commander", while english verbs and adjectives are inherently genderless. In other languages gender is mixed into far more words, so it is important to know if you are flying(male) or flying(female).

Seems like appropriate thing for translation support.

68

General Discussion / Re: Doom with skills: "I am growing stronger"

« on: April 05, 2021, 05:53:15 AM »

You had me at 604 PPT.


I guess the hesitation on antimatter blasters is due to the vastly increased PPT efficiency of phase ships. The old DOOM could launch antimatters at every opportunity and still run out of PPT before AM ammo. Now there's PPT talents and double cloaking top speed, so far less PPT is burned in general. Also, it looks like ammo doesn't recharge in chain engagements, which makes preserving shots more important on that end.


I'm not really sure what the four burst PDs are for. Phase cloak and mines take care of most problems, and burst PD can't help while venting. I found good success in the old doom using 6 frontal AMs and supporting with 2 pilum launchers. The pilums are more defensive, since they soak up a few enemy attacks.

69

General Discussion / Re: 4K Starsector Fix (Windows 10)

« on: March 28, 2021, 09:46:56 AM »

I really blame windows for this one. So many applications get borked by windows UI scaling. The setup is like this:
- Application says 4k resolution
- Windows UI goes "Sure, 4k * 150% scaling"
- App says "place in center of screen"
- Windows UI goes "sure, center of screen * 150% scaling"

I don't know if the Starsector app can solve this problem on its own. But a combination of Windows manual override and the new UI scaling will take care of it.

Looks pretty good.
https://imgur.com/a/5BkHE28

70

General Discussion / Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5

« on: March 28, 2021, 08:23:33 AM »

Phase corps does seem a little sad. It's only good for 2-3 tiny ships or 1 big ship. Meanwhile, the 20% flux boost ALSO helps phase ships along with everything else.

Derelict contingent looks like a lot of fun for meme runs. 75% chance to take 0.1x hull damage? That's goofy AF, can't wait to try it.

71

General Discussion / Re: How do we balance fighter spam?

« on: March 06, 2021, 04:12:25 AM »

Fun things are fun.

Fighters do benefit from snowball syndrome. Once you have enough to overwhelm point defense, the best thing to do is stack on more fighters. The same is true of missile(pilum) spam. But there are other ways to "break" combat as well. It's more enjoyable to have a multitude of strategies that get out of control, rather than guiding players down the balanced fleet composition every time.

72

General Discussion / Re: Smuggling exploit: dump all *legal* goods before search

« on: December 11, 2020, 08:15:20 AM »

The local patrols aren't going to take kindly to cargo being dumped all over the place. That crap needs to be strapped down properly.

73

General Discussion / Re: Quick question: Does Advanced optics increase ALL energy weapon range?

« on: December 03, 2020, 03:57:43 AM »

A 6 second cooldown for blasting away a heavy fighter works out okay. A 6 second cooldown for popping a spark interceptor is less so.

There are a wide range of strike craft and I don't think any single weapon is meant to be a 1 stop shop for countering everything that comes out of a hangar. Except for Locusts, nothing can survive the swarm.

74

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: November 22, 2020, 04:58:35 AM »

Fear not. Level cap mods are the sort of thing that happens within a week of release.

75

General Discussion / Re: Conquest is bad - change my mind

« on: November 20, 2020, 08:00:31 AM »

Conquest has good flux, squishy shields and okay armor. Where it really excels is having amazing mobility for a capital ship, thanks to its skill. I've had really good success using it with gauss cannons. Don't let the inefficiency of gauss fool you. The Conquest doesn't need shield power at gauss range, and it can safely vent at range for extra shooting. Gauss cannons can punch holes through moderate armor, even despite being a KE weapon. This lets the Conquest do pretty well as long range ship, punishing opponents while denying them the ability to advance or withdraw.

The main weakness of gauss cannons is due to talents. The combination of Advanced Countermeasures 1 (-50% KEpwr/dmg), impact mitigation (+150armor, 90% DR, -20% armor dmg) and evasive action 3 (+50% armor 'weight') is a triple threat of armor bonuses vs. a gun weak against armor. It is several times more difficult to punch through talents, and HE weapons don't suffer half as badly. That makes it a rough against high level enemy officers, but their talent choices tend to be more random and it's not too common to see all the defense talents stacked up.