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1

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 17, 2024, 09:56:26 AM »

The current skills system gives you a common pool of points that you can allocate toward any of those dimensions any way you like, up to the limit of 15 total points. That lets the player explore the widest possible space of possible choices when playing. This is a good thing. Every proposed alternative thus far ends up constraining this space (limiting the player's flexibility) and thus would not take the game in a positive direction:

This is not something you can just claim is obviously true. Constraints and limits are what makes a game a game and not just playing make-believe. Any change to the skill system (short of just granting more skill points without doing anything else) is going to take away some options that previously existed. Should we therefore decide that changing the skill system is inherently bad?


I do like your take on the flag officer thing, though; multiple small officers seems like a pretty solid idea.

2

Blog Posts / Re: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More

« on: April 13, 2024, 10:29:49 AM »

Unless you mark it as important, right?

No, it goes away regardless of that. I'm not sure what the possible use case would be for keeping it around when it shows you nothing, though, so if you had something specific in mind?

The tally intel goes away when you exit the star system, if there are no salvageable entities (that you know of) left.

Looks like the second half of that sentence got missed? So tally intel items that actually have entries will stick around.

3

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 12, 2024, 06:59:22 PM »

A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

Why not? Why shouldn't the player be able to rise to the level of fleet commander without being a strong warrior? History and the modern world are full of examples of people who rose to the top job without being exceptionally skilled as warriors.

Because it's not fun. And because those skills don't need to be yours, necessarily - see the the 'flag officer' notion.

4

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 12, 2024, 02:32:51 PM »

Unless I'm mistaken, wouldn't the 'flag captain' idea be impossible under the proposed leveling mechanic? Or, rather, it would be 'wasting' half of the character's skill points. Builds with all points invested in either personal combat or fleet boosting would both become not a thing, because no matter what the player wants to do, there would be points going into the opposite playstyle.

Well, yes, that's obviously a separate design to achieve the same goal of de-coupling captain-type skills (combat skills) from admiral-type skills (non-combat skills).

Would there need to be 3 branches then? Personal piloting, fleet boosting, and quality of life? Because if the goal of the restrictions is to allow seperate balancing, that gives maximum flexibility. Every player would be a captain, admiral, and logistician instead of some combination therein.

I don't think that's needed. In particular, that's not a division that falls into the 'fun trap' where a player who isn't great at piloting their flagship is going to want to lean towards non-combat skills, at which point their flagship performs poorly, which then feeds back into them not gaining skill at piloting and not wanting combat skills.
(Plus, the difference between 'fleet-boosting' and 'quality of life' can get a bit fuzzy, anyway.)

...Honestly, I'd be happy with nearly any mechanism for setting a floor for player combat skills. A max-level player - even one who's decided to go all-in on non-combat skills - should not be worse in battle than a basic level 5 officer.

5

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 12, 2024, 01:34:29 PM »

And the same people come by and try to shoot this down with the same flawed arguments every time, as if rebalancing skill values and potential character power levels is somehow magically completely impossible and unacceptable.

Yes, something like this is absolutely a good idea. Is it likely to happen? No, the dev has repeatedly said that he likes the system as it is. But separating out combat skills from fleet skills would be very nice.

My personal favorite version of this is the 'flag captain' notion, where your combat skills are just whatever officer is assigned to your flagship. Interestingly, there is a mod that actually implements something like this; there's a pair of special ships you can acquire in the Secrets of the Frontier mod that have an integrated AI core, but don't count as automated ships; you can set one of them as your flagship, and in battle it uses the AI core's skills rather than yours.

6

Suggestions / Re: Hull Restoration is way too overpowered

« on: April 11, 2024, 02:55:05 PM »

My bad, you're right! I believe those are the same restrictions on retrieving ships with officers and S mods, right? Also if you just straight lose a fight and have to run, you can't recover them.

Correct, yeah. All of those are a guaranteed recovery if the situation allows for recovery.

7

Suggestions / Re: Hull Restoration is way too overpowered

« on: April 11, 2024, 01:42:32 PM »

Yup, if there are any S mods or an officer on board, the ship is guaranteed to be recoverable. Reinforced Hull will do the same thing (it says "almost" in the description but that's not accurate in this case).

Actually, that "almost" very much is accurate. 100% recovery chance will work most of the time, under normal gameplay conditions, if you're winning battles.

But it only helps if the game actually gets to rolling the dice - and that's the part that still isn't guaranteed. For example, if you engage a station through the "consider your military options" dialog, lose a ship, retreat, re-engage, and win... that lost ship is gone regardless of your recovery chance. For another example, if you are fighting a large enemy fleet that's 100% equipped with Reinforced Bulkheads - well, no, you won't actually be guaranteed to be able to salvage the entire fleet, because there's a limit on the number of ships that will be offered for recovery.

I'm not offhand aware of other situations where you can lose 100% recovery chance ships, but I'm confident that some mod out there has managed to add some. And that "almost" does important work in setting the expectation that, yes, there can be exceptions.

8

Blog Posts / Re: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More

« on: April 11, 2024, 10:20:27 AM »

About leaving loot behind:
I usually leave derelict ships behind because I know some bar encounters (flashy guy, historian) use them to stuff their goodies in, and factions use them for scan missions (for rep gain).  I do not want to remove their markers or spawn points by looting and removing the non-renewable objects that have relatively common loot (because I can always make more through fighting or whatever).  I can probably see a lot of "Salvor's Tally" from all of the goodies I leave behind because they are more useful left alone as targets for missions.  I think once or twice, I might have had a mission target an object in one of my colony systems because I intentionally left salvageables behind as decoration or a piggy bank of sorts.

Ah, glad you mentioned it! Changed the historian/bar blueprint missions to require the target derelicts to be undiscovered, since it's creating weird incentives like this.

Hm. What happens if you're out of undiscovered targets, but discovered targets still exist? (I feel like I remember something about these missions creating new derelicts if needed, but I could just as easily be making that up...)

9

Blog Posts / Re: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More

« on: April 10, 2024, 10:55:52 AM »

So here's another thing I'd want to have automatically marked on the map: any time there's a timed-out mission to scan a research station or mining station. (Why timed-out? Because there's no need for a separate marker if the mission is still active, and definitely no need for a separate marker if the mission gets accepted. But if it's timed out, I do want to know "There is definitely a research station in star system X".)

10

Mods / Re: [0.97a] Nexerelin v0.11.1b "Clausewitz Protocol" (update 2024-02-11)

« on: April 06, 2024, 11:41:01 AM »

Is there any way I can update my save to make it completely compatible with 0.97, as that is the version I am running now, or am I just sort of out of luck on it?

Just out of luck, mostly. You can use something like console commands to re-grant yourself XP, credits, ships, blueprints, etc., but are largely out of luck for colony development, officers, and plot progression. (Well, okay, colony progression has some useful console commands, too, but unless you did something like colonize a fixed planet in a core system - I recommend Crocodile - you'll still need to find a new place to call home.)

11

Mods / Re: [0.97a] The Knights of Ludd

« on: April 05, 2024, 04:55:38 PM »

So, for future reference, windows will lie to you about file names unless you tell it not to, dropping the last period and whatever's after it. So the file that was showing as "starsector" was actually "starsector.log", and the files showing as "starsector.log" were actually "starsector.log.1" and .2 and etc.

I highly suggest turning this windows "feature" off; it'll save you some confusion the next time you need to actually know what a file's name is.

12

General Discussion / Re: Looking for a list of vanilla-like mods

« on: April 05, 2024, 04:43:52 PM »

Interstellar Imperium is a good one, particularly if what you want is vanilla-balanced content.

I'd also recommend Secrets of the Frontier and Legacy of Arkgneisis (though I don't think the latter has a 0.97-compatible version out yet. Still, it's one to watch for updates.)

And I'll second the suggestion of Underworld and Ship & Weapon Pack.

13

General Discussion / Re: Speed of ships/fleet - asteroid belts

« on: April 05, 2024, 01:24:30 PM »

If you are holding 's' down, and have an explicit destination set (i.e., autopilot is on), then it'll cap your speed at whatever your move-slowly limit is.

If you click somewhere in empty space, and then hit 's', it will bring you to a stop.

If 's' is making you stop, then you need to either click-and-hold somewhere in empty space (which will keep you moving towards the mouse cursor), or click on a specific nav target (such as a planet or station), or hit 'a' to resume a course that you set on the map, or go to the map and right-click to set a course (note that you can use the map to set a course to empty space without 's' stopping your fleet.)

There is, unfortunately, no toggle-based move-slowly option without side effects; it's hold s (and keep holding it), or toggle on 'go dark' which will force your transponder off.

14

General Discussion / Re: Question on Fighter Uplink and Carrier Group skill

« on: April 04, 2024, 09:31:59 PM »

(And it's worth noting that the Point Defense elite benefit does not apply to a ship's fighters.)

15

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Mods not showing in mods in game

« on: April 02, 2024, 06:27:09 PM »

Wow, what a mess - looks like you've extracted one-or-more mods directly into the mods folder (which won't work), and as for the rest - hard to tell for sure, but I'd bet that you've managed to extract them into a folder in the mods folder, which also won't work.

What you want is something like this:

Code

mods
|->SomeMod
  |->mods internal stuff goes here
  |->including the "mod_info.json"

Neither of the following will work:

Code

mods
|->mod internal stuff like "mod_info.json"

Code

mods
|->SomeMod
  |->SomeModLayerTwo
    |->mod internal stuff