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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 - DeMatt

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31
General Discussion / Re: Shepherd vs... Salvage Rig
« on: April 30, 2017, 09:12:07 PM »
Go to Dune Sindria in Askonia. Those guys have the cheapest fuel in plentiful supply.

It's the only antimatter refinery in the sector if I recall.
There's actually several new refineries in the sector now.  Nachiketa (Naraka), Madeira (Tyle), and Yesod (Zagan) all have refineries.  Sindria's still the king of fuel, though, due to its size.

32
General Discussion / Re: New Pirate mechanics?
« on: April 29, 2017, 04:53:49 PM »
No, Derinkuyu is specifically set to change from Pirate to Independent, shortly after the end of the campaign tutorial.  Your Hegemony contact specifically says that they'd be going in and cleaning up, after you stabilize the jump point, and then tells you that you can either stick around and take advantage of the bounty they just created, or be free to travel elsewhere.

Generally speaking, if you haven't been drawing attention by smacking pirates, and have turned your transponder off, pirate bases will trade with you even if you're at Vengeful.  Just like smuggling onto hostile faction bases.

33
Suggestions / Re: Give AI Cores a greater purpose...
« on: April 23, 2017, 09:36:28 PM »
Add a new equipment slot to ships so you can place an AI Core into them to boost OP or something. So you gotta choose between selling off that Alpha Core or having it enhance a ship in some way.

Enable them to be slotted into the upcoming Outposts to boost production or have them run your own drone defense/guardian fleets.
...and run the risk of having them decide to run off with your ship/the defense fleet?  Space all the crew (they only work for one-third of the day, the pikers!) and replace them and their living quarters with machinery?

I think most of the Sector would be really leery of letting something as alien as an AI have more authority than absolutely necessary.

34
Just in general: I'm ok with the tutorial being breakable in various ways, as long as it's intentional on the part of the player.
Ehhh... the campaign tutorial, sure, but the main-menu tutorials?

Maybe that part should be "okay, now that you know how to shoot guns, keep shooting until it's disabled, then until it's destroyed", and then reset to a fresh state for "okay, now here's what happens when you get shot".  Or even just an "oh dear, we needed that ship for the rest of the tutorial, press ESC and go back to the Main Menu to restart it".

35
  • The movement section of the tutorial suggested I use A and D to turn my ship, and shift-A and shift-D to turn my ship.  With the default control scheme, this is wrong - turn to cursor is on by default, so A and D strafe, and it's shift-A and D to turn.
?  Default control scheme is A/D to turn, Shift-A/D to strafe-and-turn-to-cursor, and Q/E to strafe.  You can toggle "Invert strafe key" on (in the Settings tab), but by default it's off.

36
General Discussion / Re: Dec 5th, c.206 ... seeking tips/advice
« on: April 28, 2016, 12:02:30 AM »
Hmm...
  • Stabilized Shields is really only valuable for ships which want to keep their shields up ALL THE TIME - basically, capitals.  Smaller ships tend to do better with more vents instead.
  • Ships with omni shields (your Brawler) don't need Extended Shields.  That's what "moving the shield" is for.
  • Try adding Hounds to your combat fleet.  If you can fit them with Front Shield Generator and a Heavy Mauler, they'll gladly kite the crap out of everything slower than themselves.  And they're not too shabby on the cargo front, too.
  • Enforcers make good "anvils" to a player-controlled "hammer".
  • You might as well sell that stack of metals.  A bit at a time, into whichever markets are nearest, regardless of whether they demand metals or not.

starting to get the 40k+ bounties posted (do they keep going up over time due to...date, ships you have, your level, bounties collected, your assets/credits?)
They go up as you collect more bounties.

37
General Discussion / Re: Ending a comission
« on: March 05, 2016, 03:08:01 AM »
Quote
Alternatively join a battle and shoot them in the back, possibly with a salvo of reapers.

How one can attack friendlies? And if I'm running with IFF off, it becomes impossible to join any battle.
Just because you don't have a ship targeted, doesn't mean it automatically avoids your bullets.  All you have to do is aim and fire, just like aiming and firing at any other ship.

38
General Discussion / Re: Can't make any moolah?
« on: February 22, 2016, 10:57:03 PM »
Hello! I have been playing this game for a bit and I can't figure out why I can't make money.
...
Anybody able to help me figure out if my game has some sort of space famine or if it is just that I suck at the game lol
It's "you suck at the game".   :P  More generously, it's "you don't yet understand the underlying mechanics behind the game", added to "the start of Starsector is always the hardest part".

I try to buy low and sell high but that never works for me. I buy from a place that has 5000 food and sell to a place that has 10 food and I end up losing 28,000 credits.
The idea behind the market system is that most trade happens invisibly - there are megacorporations which have long-term contracts to handle trade, and the goods that end up on the Open Market are merely the leftovers.  Open Market trade, therefore, suffers from a 30% tariff - buy a good listed at 100 credits, pay 130;  sell a good listed at 100 credits, receive 70.  Similarly, that 5000 food, if on a highly-populated forgeworld like Chicomoztoc, might represent much less than a day's worth of rations for the populace, while the 10 food, on a small moon with a hydroponics plant, might be merely the hour's excess production.

Therefore, there's three things you should look for in trying to trade profitably:
  • Watch the prices, not the quantities.  This isn't the X-series, where stock = price.  Particularly watch out for exceeding local demand - any planet will buy any good, but unless there's official local demand, there's a steep dropoff in price as you sell goods.  And even with "official" local demand, there's limits on how much it demands.
  • Keep an eye out for trade disruptions in the news and on the Intel panel.  Just because those megacorps have the contracts, doesn't mean that they ignore piracy and open warfare.
  • The Black Market doesn't charge tariffs, so buying and selling on it can actually be profitable.  But the authorities get annoyed when you refuse to pay them.

Plus the costs for traveling usually end up too high. Though that may just be because I am using a modded faction(Or several ;))
Mods shouldn't affect travel costs;  if they are, I suggest you dump the mods and play "basic" Starsector.

I have tried killing pirates but that does not get me anywhere, the repairs usually end up costing me more than I make.
Unless you're a super-ace who can solo system defense fleets with a single frigate, combat is not intended to be profitable in and of itself.  Planetary governments sometimes offer bounties;  these can make combat profitable with some skill and luck.  It's worth noting that Corvus (the starting system in unmodified Starsector) starts off with an active bounty.

39
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Starsector Streaming Channels
« on: December 31, 2015, 04:55:17 AM »
Ye gods, do any of these non-forumite streamers get past the single-frigate stage?

40
Suggestions / Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« on: December 31, 2015, 04:52:38 AM »
My thought is that is not enough vents and capacitors for AIs. They are not players and plan their vents and capacitor usage, they are reactive users.

Having low venting meaning they often will end up not shooting and sitting there with shields up.
Having low capacitors means they will get easily overloaded by deciding to shield tank stuff like LMG and autocannon shots.


Atlest 7-8 capacitors are needed to prevent lashers from instea gibbed from getting hit by a kenitic volly from destoryers and above.
Atlest 5 vents are needed so they can shoot without baisically getting themself overloaded within a second and various disaters happening.
True enough, but the only design here that doesn't have passive dissipation exceed shield maintenance plus all weapons is the Buffalo-2.  And that one doesn't have a shield to worry about.

Putting the Lasher-L-Assault into the simulator, it won 2 out of 3 matches one-on-one against both the Lasher-CS and the Lasher-Standard.  A fourth match against the Lasher-Standard got aborted after the Lasher-L-Assault decided to reverse into a map corner... not because the enemy was pressing it, but just because.

To acoomadate for this I can say you can drop the missles and magazine mods.
If, as with the existing Luddic Path variants, SO gets moved to a permanent hullmod (and I thus didn't have to spend OP on it), then those 15 OP I assigned to SO can easily be reallocated to capacitors and vents.  But I think being able to easily overload a shielded Luddic Path ship is a good thing.

They are made for long engagements that 1. low tech ships are not made for, and 2. goes aginst the doctrine of ludd and hegenomy.
Given the low ammo counts and high refire rates on most small missiles, I disagree.  In these cases, it's less "long engagement" and more "bigger punch".

Your Bralwer-L assualt is a underuse of the Brawler class frigates. Brawlers are designed as fire support as they carry alot of weapon mounts with acclerated ammo, as the flaw is the terrible shield coverage. With an unstable injector its going to act as a comical relief ship as it will gurantee to be a spinning wreck flying off into space right at the start of the battle.

Also Brawlers themselves are expensive and rare enough that they should have better weaponry.
It's supposed to be "thematic", not necessarily "powerful".  I did start running it through simulations, and it seems that the Thumper underperforms even more than I thought it did, so I swapped out the Hammers for LMGs and lost the Unstable Injector to pay for it.  That got it winning, hopefully not by too much.

If you want a light assult Brawler capable in AI hands I suggest:

1x Heavy machine gun, 1x Chain assault gun. SO, Automated repair, and durable engine assembly.
That's too powerful, it'll eat players all day every day.

If you want a more "primitive design"

How about a Cerberus with a chain assult gun and a dual light autocannon in the front.
Feel free to spec it out.

Baisically, I want to warn you putting Unstable injector on AI ships, as they are nutoriously bad at keeping their engines out of harms way that once they burn out, they are dead, espechially friagates. (as they cannot keep formation and distance, allowing maximise shield arc protection and limiting firing options on them)
I wanted speed and more speed on them, so it's either Unstable Injector or Augmented Engines - and Augmented Engines would increase the burn speed and make the fleet harder to avoid.  If that makes their engines a weak spot, so much the better.

Also on your Luddic Path hullmods. The Ludds are well known to be food producers and supporting large populations, so people might be a cheaper resource then ships.

So how about we reverse that Reduce crew to something similar to :

Increase minimum crew required, increase hull and armor values (better maintain work cuz more people), also no flux increase as that is TECH STUFF, AND TECH STUFF IS BLASHPEMY. Also crew accomidation on ships are increased as you know, they might get along better with one and other and you can fit more people without problems arising. Also faster weapon and engine repairs, cuz also, more people.
Luddic CHURCH is about the rural, ascetic lifestyle.  Luddic PATH is the destroy-all-technology type.  I don't see Luddic Path fanatics as being interested in such fripperies as "showers", "medical stations", or "additional bunks", not when they can fill the space with more HOLY EXPLOSIVES.

41
Suggestions / Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« on: December 30, 2015, 02:20:33 PM »
Just putting these out there, so as to not let them simply fester in the dank recesses of my mind.

-General Luddic Path hullmod:  increased armor and hull integrity; reduced crew capacity, flux capacity, and flux dispersion.  Need to debate whether LP ships should be variants of D-variants, or variants of the originals.

-Lasher-L Strike:  2x Hammers, 2x Standard Bomb Bays (fixed mounts), 1x Dual Autocannon (fore turret), 2x Vulcans (flank turrets);  SO, Expanded Magazines, Expanded Missile Racks, 2x vents.  It should come as no surprise that the stock AI is hilariously incompetent with this design, thanks to the Bomb Bays, but a player in the simulator can take down an Atlas in under ten seconds just by flying straight at it and unloading on the way.

-Lasher-L Assault:  2x Hammers, 2x Mortars (fixed mounts), 1x Single Autocannon (fore turret), 2x Single Machine Guns (flank turrets);  SO, Expanded Missile Racks, Unstable Injector, 2x vents, 2x capacitors.  This design is intended to use all the most primitive weaponry available, thus no dual-mounts and Mortars instead of LAGs.  It makes up for the crappy weapons by having a top speed of 260 before officer skills - something which the AI can quite happily use.

-Brawler-L Assault:  2x Thumpers, 2x Hammers;  SO, Unstable Injector.  I think the Brawler design is well-suited to the Luddic Path idea;  this design is just meant to be primitive as opposed to the stock ACG design (or an ACG/HMG mix, which I think would be best).

-Buffalo-II-L Strike:  3x Hammers, 1x Typhoon, 2x Vulcans (side turrets), 1x Dual Machine Gun (bow turret), 1x Dual Autocannon (fixed mount);  Expanded Missile Racks, Unstable Injector, 9x vents.  This one was hardest for me to test because of the change to the mount types, which meant I needed to create a new .skin, a new .variant, and then add that variant to the Random Battle mission.  The AI's no good with it, thanks to the broadside mounts, but it makes for a very amusing poor-man's Gryphon in player hands.  I'd have preferred to use the Proximity Charge Launcher instead, but it's too futuristic-looking for something lobbing big bombs around.  I couldn't justify SO here - it doesn't need the flux, it does poorly with the extra engines, and reducing its deployment time to all of 40 seconds just hurts it too much.

Thoughts, additional ideas?

42
Suggestions / Re: More Carriers and Destroyers
« on: December 15, 2015, 10:07:29 AM »
With the change to "Hybrid" small mounts, I think the Hammerhead is almost to the right power level, as that lets you slot in more ballistics to take advantage of your Ammo Feeder.  I think, if I was going to make any changes to it, it'd be to tweak up its Ordnance Points.  85, I think, would be about right.

The Venture needs more of a buff, I'd say, to make it stand out in the cruiser range.  In this case, I'd increase the size of the cargo hold - 750 would seem to be in the right range, and would make it more of the "mobile base" I think it's intended to be.  Bumping its burn speed would be too much of a buff.

43
Suggestions / Re: Civilian Hull Debuff: Why?
« on: December 15, 2015, 10:01:59 AM »
Quote
For some civilian ships you can get Skins that cancel out the civilian mod: 'hegemony militarized'.  I'm not sure it's available for the Venture, but I know it is for the Buffalo.
"Militarized Hegemony Auxiliary" doesn't "cancel out" or even "offset" the "Civilian-grade Hull" penalty.
Yes it does.  I mean, not directly, but it's consistent for the Auxiliary skin.  Here's the code.

Code
{
"baseHullId":"buffalo",
"skinHullId":"buffalo_hegemony",
"hullName":"Buffalo (A)",
"baseValueMult":1.5,
"ordnancePoints":22,
"descriptionId":"buffalo",  # optional
"spriteName":"graphics/ships/buffalo/buffalo_hegemony.png",
"removeWeaponSlots":[], # ids
"removeEngineSlots":[], # indices, as engine slots have no id in the .ship file
"removeBuiltInMods":["civilian_hull"], # hullmod ids
"removeBuiltInWeapons":[], # weapon slot ids
"builtInMods":["heg_militarized"],
"builtInWeapons":{
    },
}
A) my point stands - the "Militarized Hegemony Auxiliary" mod, on its own, does nothing to sensor functionality, while the "Civilian-grade Hull" mod does nothing else;
B) if the Buffalo-A is supposed to remove the base Buffalo's "Civilian-grade Hull", well it doesn't.  Buffalo-A's have both mods.

44
Suggestions / Re: Civilian Hull Debuff: Why?
« on: December 15, 2015, 09:18:48 AM »
I just don't get this debuff at all. I mean, civilian ships are common enough to be sold everywhere. If it's so common, why would it arouse MORE suspicion?

From a reasonable perspective it also makes no sense: a smuggler, spy, or other clandestine persons disguise themselves as civilians to stay hidden. Why does a peashooting paper-dingy arouse more suspicion than an armor-clad bristling-with-gunboat?

From a gameplay perspective, it means you can't use these ships because it's a giant "HERE I AM, COME KILL ME WHILE I'M TOO WEAK AND VULNERABLE TO USE ANYTHING BETTER.". Civilian ships WANT to get by unnoticed because they're being targeted by pirates.
Eh... the way I see it, "civilian" ships have less efficient scanners, which means A) they're less sensitive, thus the reduction in sensor range, and B) they put out more power to try and offset point A, thus the increase in sensor profile.  Add on less stealthy engines, reflective instead of absorbent hull plating (think the difference between radar-reflective steel and radar-absorbent carbon fiber), and you get the ingame penalty.

It's not so much that they're suspicious, it's that they're detectable.

For some civilian ships you can get Skins that cancel out the civilian mod: 'hegemony militarized'.  I'm not sure it's available for the Venture, but I know it is for the Buffalo.
"Militarized Hegemony Auxiliary" doesn't "cancel out" or even "offset" the "Civilian-grade Hull" penalty.

In the description, it is implied that during the time of the Domain, the Tarsus is a military supply ship that travels in convoys, making it odd that it wouldn't be built to the same stealthy standards as military ships. It wasn't intended to be used by civilians.
The Tarsus was built tough, not sneaky.  A freighter suitable for operations within e.g. a solar storm or an asteroid belt.  That it often expected to travel in convoys, rather than singly, would make it more likely to be LESS sneaky - why try and hide the convoy, when you can use it as bait for raiders?

45
General Discussion / Re: Trident and Longbow... EVER?
« on: December 11, 2015, 04:38:23 AM »
Had a look through the factions files... apparently not even the Tritach use Tridents at the moment.  So no, they don't spawn.

I suppose part of the reason the Longbow is inactive is because of the fighter AI's habit of spamming missiles immediately.  Thunders, for example, will promptly fling their Harpoons on sighting any non-fighter, heedless of such niceties as "point defense", "shields", "flares", or even "occluding rocks".  And while Thunders can continue to contribute with their Ion Cannon and Swarmers, Longbows are stuck with just a Burst PD Laser once their Sabot is fired.

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