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121

Bug Reports & Support / Fighter wing casualties calculated based only on final hull values

« on: March 17, 2012, 12:10:19 PM »

It doesn't matter how much damage a wing takes over the course of a battle (how many individual fighters/bombers are destroyed)—if the wing survives, is repaired and refit, and finishes the battle with full health, the player loses no crew from that unit.

(0.51a RC3)

122

Suggestions / Re: Should Alex buff Armor ?

« on: March 17, 2012, 09:31:04 AM »

I don't think armor needs to be buffed across the board, but I do think certain ships need a great deal more of it. For the most part, cracking a ship's armor is something you get a brief opportunity to do—when it's overloaded, when it's venting, when it turns to block a missile volley. Some ships always have their armor exposed, though. For something like the Dominator, which has ample PD covering its weak rear and strong armor to begin with (and shouldn't be flying around without escorts to keep AM-blaster-armed frigates anyway), that's fine; for something like the poor Buffalo Mk. II (which is underarmored even compared to some frigates), it's not. A ship without shields needs something to compensate—if not Hound-like speed, then stronger weapons or tougher armor.

Worth noting: the way armor works right now is a little difficult to understand, particularly for a new player who looks at a ship's stats and just sees a single number for armor. For example, it might seem like applying heavy armor to the Buffalo Mk. II would double its defenses (200 to 400). In reality, that improvement to armor will halve the damage dealt by only the weakest weapons (e.g. the mining laser); it will cut the damage of a mid-range weapon like a pulse laser by a third and barely dent the damage of a strike weapon. All that is fine mechanically (I actually like the system right now), but I hope that somewhere down the line there'll be a thorough tutorial demonstrating the effect of weapon types and armor rating to the player.

123

General Discussion / Re: Correct brawler usage

« on: March 17, 2012, 08:40:52 AM »

Thing is, for one FP more than a Brawler + a Wasp wing (and less cash), you could field a Hammerhead. Same speed, same medium mounts, better in every other respect except maneuverability. I think the Brawler needs a little tweak somewhere—more speed, a better shield, or maybe just a few extra OP.

124

General Discussion / Re: Best Artwork of Starfarer

« on: March 16, 2012, 03:12:55 PM »

All the capital ships are gorgeous, no doubt about it.

My current favorite is the hammerhead. Just something about it.

Agreed! It's got a ton of character—I love the armadillo-ish armor plates around the stern. Really, all of the ships have a remarkable three-dimensionality to them. You can totally see the curve of the armor, the recesses of hangar bays (I love all the carriers), the towering bridges.

125

Suggestions / Re: Who are these lost souls?

« on: March 15, 2012, 04:53:07 PM »

Well, they don't have to earn 10,000 a year. If you were paying your crew that much, they'd all leave after six months and go buy their own Lashers!

126

General Discussion / Re: Eagle-Class Thoughts

« on: March 15, 2012, 10:00:55 AM »

The Eagle is kind of like a mini-Onslaught, right down to the Star Destroyer-y wedge shape. Similar bow-mounted hardpoints, centrally-mounted turrets, PD turrets all around. Trouble is, the Eagle has a totally anemic complement of missiles, it can't take hits on its hull armor the way the Onslaught can, and it generally can't out-punch the ships that are slow enough to get stuck in its sights (Ventures and Astrals, obviously, being exceptions). It's a decent support cruiser, sure, but I actually think the Falcon is better.

I used to think of the Falcon as the poor-man's Eagle, but since the patch I've come around. Try outfitting a Falcon with hypervelocity drivers and giving it an integrated targeting unit—even though it's got speed and an FP cost more like a destroyer, the Falcon gets the cruiser-level 35% range boost, which pushes the hypervelocity drivers' range out to 1350. Cap ships, even with the ITU, can only extend their usual main guns out to 1200, and none of them are as fast as a Falcon, so it can keep up a steady fire from a safe distance. It's a great support ship for a fleet mainly built around fighters or frigates and fast destroyers. Maybe you could actually do the same with an Eagle—augmented engines, leave the medium energy mounts empty (or just put more small PD in them)?

127

General Discussion / Re: Capturing/Enforcer/Time?

« on: March 15, 2012, 09:28:15 AM »

The Enforcer has really grown on me lately. It has more OP than any other destroyer, so you've got a lot of options for how to outfit it. I like going with two flak (far left and far right), a heavy MG (center), and two assault chainguns, plus a mix of missiles, usually Sabots and Harpoons, sometimes Sabots and torpedoes. That leaves, I think, 32 points for whatever else you like—20 vents and 12 capacitors gives you a really versatile, tough ship that can challenge cruisers, or you could boost the engines and be able to run down other destroyers.

128

General Discussion / Re: Resistant Flux Conduits are a bit too good

« on: March 15, 2012, 09:00:47 AM »

Part of the fun of having hull mods is figuring out which ones work best with which ships and loadouts. Do you want hardened shields, or would it be more worthwhile to spend those points on extra capacitors? Are augmented engines worth the loss of flux dissipation? Look at stabilized shields, for instance. On an Aurora, you pretty much always want them; on a Falcon, you never do. Some ships are in between—the Hyperion has a crazy expensive shield, but are you going to have your shields up often enough to make the mod worth it if you're flying a Hyperion?

The 10% dissipation aspect of resistant flux conduits fits perfectly well into this whole question of cost and benefit. The only thing I don't like about the mod is that it makes high-tech ships likely to be highly resistant to EMP damage. Shouldn't sophisticated hulls full of robotics and AI cores and lasers and whatnot be more susceptible to EMP attacks?

129

General Discussion / Re: Sabotaged!

« on: March 08, 2012, 08:16:24 PM »

i dont know why but this thread made me think of this

Not ?

130

Suggestions / Re: Suggestions & Feedback regarding the Campaign

« on: March 01, 2012, 06:17:17 PM »

You've got some decent ideas. I think this is a good one, for instance (it can be very hard to tell, at a glance, which of your weapons have been knocked out of commission):

It also would be a good idea to make weapons permentally destroyed or out of ammo turn RED, while temporarily disabled weapons or reloading ones appear yellow/orange.

These are interesting possibilities as well:

Purple Nebula:  This is a flux-charged nebula, when entering it your flux steadily rises at a constant rate.  They also block vision into it, but not out of it.

Blue Nebula:  This is a flux-draining nebula, when entering it your ship loses flux at a steady rate.  They block vision into it and lower the sight of ships in it.

Electromagnetic Storm:  This is a special dust cloud that fires out electricity.  When inside the storm your shields don't work, when nearby but not inside one it might shoot you with a lightning bolt that shortly overloads your ship.

This, however, is remarkably rude and presumptuous:

Developers aren't perfect, they make mistakes.  They can't catch anything, nor can they think of all the wonderful possibilities that everyone else can.

In a different context, that wouldn't be so bad, but in this context—you just tried to completely redesign their game for them! You're calling them out on "mistakes" that don't exist, or treating features and planned features as if they were mistakes. You propose space monsters, a pirate society, and an inter-factional war as though there weren't already an elaborate backstory in place (which has been in the works for years, I believe). You propose gameplay and graphical choices (no restrictions on weapon types, the ability to play the game from a completely zoomed-out perspective) they've explicitly said they don't want as features. You've asked for things that are already in the game (e.g. graphical indicators of damaged armor) or that are obviously planned (it should be entirely obvious that 200 FP is the intended cap for fleet size in the campaign right now).

And jeez, before you complain too much about the difficulty, you might want to practice a little more. The autopilot should not autoperform you, and losing one or two ships from your fleet should not be a crushing blow (nor should it happen very often).

131

General Discussion / Re: Tachyon Beam

« on: March 01, 2012, 11:38:34 AM »

If you want to fly the ship you've mounted your tachyon lances on, target an enemy ship and then press Z to switch to a view of your target. If you've got a hardpoint-mounted lance (e.g. on a Sunder, or the Paragon's default configuration), you can turn with A and D, while in target view, to line up your shot. If you've got turret-mounted lances, it's actually super easy to score hits—target view keeps the enemy in the center of your screen, so you can hit even small, fast-moving targets. It's surprisingly effective for picking of fighters and bombers from across the map.

132

Suggestions / Re: Fighters, Fleet Points, and Crew Management

« on: February 29, 2012, 12:41:44 PM »

Check out the patch notes for the dev build—"Assault Chaingun, Heavy Mauler, Hellbore Cannon, Hephaestus Assault Gun, Mjolnir Cannon - increased range."

133

General Discussion / Re: What's your favorite ship?

« on: February 29, 2012, 12:39:51 PM »

I'm totally crazy about the Odyssey—love the artistic design, love the practical design (maybe the best use of asymmetry on any ship), love the flight deck, love the pew pew. Also, the Tempest is totally OP (and getting nerfed, for the greater good).

Just looking at the art, I like the Astral, the Onslaught (all the little detail on the armor plates and the pipes and stuff) and most of the mid-tech ships (especially the Conquest and the Falcon), but I think my favorites might actually be the Gemini and the Apogee. Each looks different from anything else, and there's just tons of cool detail in those designs.

134

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.5a (In Development) - Live Patch Notes

« on: February 29, 2012, 12:10:47 PM »

• Changed retreat and surrender mechanics
  • Retreating ships have a chance to surrender based on how damaged their hull is
  • The chance is always lower than the chance to repair a disabled ship - letting a ship retreat never gives better odds
  • Retreating ships take some extra damage, unless the fleet had the "Escape" tactical goal
  • Ships left in reserve are treated as retreating, unless the tactical goal is "Escape", in which case they're all automatically captured
    • This means that any ships without enough crew to deploy can never escape and will always be captured

What would happen if, faced with a much larger fleet, the player chose to engage (attack/defend instead of escape) but then just deployed one ship, retreated, and waited for the enemy fleet to take all the objectives? Would that potentially be a safer way to get a fleet out of a bad situation than actually trying to escape?

135

Suggestions / Re: Fighters, Fleet Points, and Crew Management

« on: February 29, 2012, 11:53:48 AM »

Also, one thing that will address this - to a degree - is fleet points and hangar capacity, none of which are enforced now.

I've actually been holding myself to both limits, both because I wanted to see what kind of fleets I could put together under the 200 FP limit and because, well, I guess I'm a little OCD? That red bar just makes me feel guilty or something.

Just wanted to say thank you for your feedback.

Thanks for reading it! I've been really impressed, reading the blog and poking around the forums, at how responsive you guys have been (you in particular) to the community, and how willing to engage in dialogue. It's a great feeling to know that all of us can have a hand, however small, in guiding the development of such an awesome game.