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Messages - Wyvern

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46
Suggestions / Re: Officer promotions
« on: March 11, 2024, 10:05:06 AM »
Yeah, the current promotion mechanic is mostly just bad. Sometimes, if I get one early-game, at a point where I'm low on bonus XP, I'll take it anyway.

...But it's absolutely not worth it otherwise. Especially when you consider that the actual cost of it is two story points, since you need to promote and then mentor them.

The only worse officer hiring mechanic in-game is the one where you can spend a story point to recruit a pather, giving you a level... I don't remember, two or three I think, officer, whose attitude and skills can't be seen until after you've chosen to hire them.

47
Suggestions / Re: Let your faction be able to claim a core system
« on: March 10, 2024, 04:13:26 PM »
I normally colonize Crocodile in the Kumari Kandam system. I don't mind that the Pathers think they own the place; that gives me more enemy fleets to blow up.

As for why? It's an ideal manufacturing world, with no atmosphere to allow the best use of colony items (nanoforge with no pollution, catalytic core, synchrotron) and low gravity plus being nearly dead center on the map for maximum accessibility. Also it's in a star system with three stable points and a gate, as well as three other non-player colonies you can potentially sell stuff at.

I wouldn't complain if I were to officially be considered to have claimed the system when Crocodile hits size six. But I also don't really care that I currently don't; it's not a concern for me.

48
Mods / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Mirror 1.4 & DecoLib 0.3
« on: March 10, 2024, 03:55:52 PM »
next version should include mining lasers and ion beams
...And somehow I still forgot to include these in Mirror 1.3, so now we've got a Mirror 1.4. Hopefully that's the last update Mirror will need for a while...

(DecoLib, by contrast, is still actively being worked on. I want space dragons with articulated wings and tails, darn it! And while I'm not there yet, I do have all the base pieces I need for it... just need to actually do the trig/matrix calculations, wire it all together, and actually build some ship graphics...)

49
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 10, 2024, 01:54:45 PM »
Annihilators Dominator fans rise up with their Hellbore, Railgun combo.
...? No, I'd rather not use annihilators on my dominators. Hellbores? Yes. Railguns? Also yes, though in a proper mix with other weapons including a pair of light assault guns so that the dominator can just straight up kill cheeky frigates/destroyers that think they can flank it and live.

50
Suggestions / Re: Carrier-Specific bonuses for elite skills
« on: March 10, 2024, 01:34:16 PM »
The problem with fighters being tuned a little weak is that it makes it un-fun to pilot a carrier (and to some extent, a battlecarrier) yourself.

As such, I'd want to see some fighter-specific skills that are in some fashion limited - maybe you get a (choice of?) unique combat skill from some quest somewhere, and it's just not available to your officers. Or perhaps there's a unique variant AI core with special fighter-specific skills, and which can't just be farmed in unlimited supply. That sort of thing.

I would also suggest that fleet-wide fighter skills should scale based on fighter bays (that have fighters in them!) that are deployed, rather than total bays that exist across the fleet.

51
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 10, 2024, 11:06:39 AM »
To reiterate AGAIN, I never said you don't need HE against the Remnant. I said that if you have a large ballistic slot, filling it with explosive damage weapon is almost certainly not what you want when you're going to face a bunch of super fast ships with 0.4 shields.
And you'd be wrong. A lot of setting up ballistic ships is picking the right weapons for each job - and why would you mount large kinetics and smaller HE weapons when you could, instead, mount small kinetics and a large HE weapon? The small kinetics will generally do a better job of anti-shield than the larges will, and the large HE will do a better job of anti-armor and anti-hull than the small would.

So yes, when facing a bunch of super-fast ships with 0.4 shields, I do in fact want an HE weapon in at least some of my large ballistic slots.

52
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 09, 2024, 10:17:23 PM »
Yes, it is. It's absolutely a more powerful weapon than either the Hellbore or the Devastator, in terms of killing things that aren't swarms of fighters (where the Devastator edges it out due to AoE damage).

It's less of a chaingun-like armor-stripper, and more of ballistic's answer to the HIL - except that, unlike the HIL, it does hard flux, and also unlike the HIL, it can actually hold fire on-target against mobile opponents.

In general, if you're short on large ballistic slots, need anti-armor and/or anti-hull, and are not critically short on flux, take a HAG.

(Now, some people are going to come in here and tell you that you should always use the HAG over the Hellbore. I don't find that convincing; the Hellbore's low cost and dedication to its role make for a very useful weapon. But, for example: if you're building an Onslaught for forwards firepower, use a HAG in the central turret, not a Hellbore.)

53
Mods / Re: [0.97a-RC11] Mirror 1.3 & DecoLib 0.3
« on: March 09, 2024, 04:39:28 PM »
Mod is updated for Starsector 0.97.

Instructions for a modder wanting to mirror weapons in their mod:

Case 1: The weapon in question does not already have an EveryFrameEffectPlugin attached to it.
 • Add an appropriate dependencies entry to your mod's mod_info.json, like so:
Code
"dependencies": [ { "id":"wyv_decolib","name":"DecoLib" } ],
• Add an everyFrameEffect entry to the .wpn file using one of the two completely pre-built weapon-mirroring classes in DecoLib:
Code
"everyFrameEffect": "data.scripts.wyv.MirrorQuadLeft",
Or
Code
"everyFrameEffect": "data.scripts.wyv.MirrorQuadRight",

Case 2: The weapon does have an EveryFrameEffectPlugin, or you want different mirroring behavior than the default quad-left or quad-right.
 • Add a dependencies entry to your mod's mod_info.json, as per case 1.
 • Do whatever steps you need to do to get your IDE to recognize DecoLib.jar as a referenced library.
 • Make your existing EveryFrameEffectPlugin extend MirrorQuadLeft, MirrorQuadRight, or just Mirror.
 • If your class doesn't implement its own init or advanceAfter methods, and you extended MirrorQuadLeft or MirrorQuadRight, you're done!
   • If your class implements init, or you extended Mirror, then you need to call super.init() from your own init method - setting isMirrored first if you're extending Mirror.
   • If your class implements advanceAfter and the weapon is animated, then you need to call super.advanceAfter() from your own advanceAfter method.

Extra step for decorative weapons:
 • Add "NEVER_RENDER_IN_CAMPAIGN" to the "renderHints" field in the .wpn file. Something like this:
Code
"renderHints":[NEVER_RENDER_IN_CAMPAIGN],
• This is needed because weapon mirroring does not work in campaign contexts; setting this renderHint makes the game simply not show the weapons in such contexts.
 • This is not needed for non-deco weapons, as they don't naturally show in campaign contexts in the first place.

And that's it! Simple, right?

If you want to see examples of how this works, take a look at the Mirror mod.

Now, is there more that you can do with DecoUtils? Yes! For example, you can use the ManagedWeapon class to have your weapon read mirroring behavior and custom sprite centerpoint offsets from a json file. But that starts to get beyond the really simple basics, here; if you've got specific questions (or specific things you want DecoUtils to do that it doesn't), feel free to reach out to me via PM or post in this thread.

54
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 09, 2024, 03:00:28 PM »
It's pretty clear that that's talking about the back of the onslaught i.e. the part of it that's in combat. You spend 40DP on a ship and only 4 medium mounts can fire (and they receive fire without a shield).
As a largely-disinterested third party, that was not clear at all.

Also, it's wrong. An Onslaught should always be deployed with at least one, if not two or three maneuverability boosts (helmsmanship, elite impact mitigation, auxiliary thrusters), which easily covers that particular weakness against anything short of phase frigates or pather SO swarms.

And then it's wrong again because ships don't exist on their own - you can assign ships to an escort task, keeping the Onslaught's rear arc free-enough that things can't just camp there and giving a chance to at least bring its broadside to bear.

And then it's wrong a third time because actually, there are anywhere from two to eight medium mounts that can fire at targets behind the ship, depending. If you mounted rockets or torpedos, and the enemy ship is relatively small and close, then only the two rear-most ballistic turrets can fire on it. Against larger ships, the rear-side turrets get into play. And, of course, homing missiles; a pair of AMSRMs on an Onslaught can make short work of sneaky little frigates, if you're genuinely having issues with those.

Oh, and the omni shield conversion hullmod exists and is good value on the Onslaught, too.

That all said? I'm not much a fan of the Onslaught myself. But claiming its value is limited to four mediums and no shield is absolutely the sort of thing that's going to get you called out.

55
Bug Reports & Support / Re: Onslaught missiles possibly mis-aligned
« on: March 09, 2024, 01:24:20 PM »
Having looked closely at the sprite, and then tested how that looked compared to what I see when I correct the values, I believe this is an actual bug, if a subtle one.

56
Bug Reports & Support / Onslaught missiles possibly mis-aligned
« on: March 09, 2024, 12:53:08 PM »
The two missile mounts on the right side of the ship are both a single pixel further forwards than the two mounts on the left side of the ship, when looking at the onslaught.ship file; and, as best I can tell, the actual mount locations on the sprite are not.

57
Suggestions / Re: Cryosleeper Buff
« on: March 08, 2024, 04:52:05 PM »
Hm. With the Gate Hauler being mobile, I actually don't see a good reason to keep the Cryosleepers immobile. I mean, sure, maybe they need expensive repairs before you can get them moving, and you can skip that if they're already in a decent spot, but still. It should be an option.

(And the Hypershunts shouldn't have a measly 10 light year range, either; they're supposed to be capable of feeding power into the sector-wide gate network, why are they limited in range for their colony benefits at all?)

58
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 08, 2024, 04:38:44 PM »
Yeah, no. I've found the Onslaught to be just kinda meh. Five large weapons, sure! Can it actually fire all of them at the same target? No. Can it fire all of them without over-fluxing itself? Also no; not even remotely close.

IMO, it's propped up by the four medium missile turrets more than anything else; that's just a lot of flux-free firepower that most other ships can't really match.

In most cases, I'd rather have a Conquest, or a Paragon, or a Legion (XIV or regular), or even an Odyssey.  In most cases I'd rather have a good cruiser, actually; Aurora or even a Dominator (XIV) works better for me than the Onslaught does.

59
I am absolutely in favor of a zero-tolerance policy regarding actual malware, such as mangling saves, sending messages over the internet to the mod author (without explicit and opt-in decisions by the player to do so), etc.

Just bailing out instantly when loading, however? That's not malware. I don't feel it's particularly good design unless there's an actual mechanical reason for it (like, say, I might add such code to my planetary shield generator mod if I knew there was another mod out there that messed with planetary shields in an incompatible way), but even if it's just that the mod author doesn't like mod X and doesn't want their faction to have to deal with things from mod X? That's still not malware. Problematic, sure. Grey area, sure. Deserving of instant zero-tolerance banning... no, it's not.

(Context: This is regarding the OP's definition of "malicious code", which I feel is problematically over-broad.)

60
Unsure. I remember seeing this, but couldn't say with certainty that I've seen it in 0.97. Will put up a bug report thread if I come across it again.

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