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31

General Discussion / Re: Do Capitals need a rework?

« on: April 18, 2022, 12:16:15 PM »

Capitals are not good vs Doritos, fighter and phase ships are. Not a good metric to judge how good something is based on a 1-5 time event in the whole playthrough.

Like someone said, capitals are slow, back them up with carriers and they become much better.

32

General Discussion / Re: What happened to AI?

« on: April 12, 2022, 06:34:36 PM »

There is a two-fold behavior that I have noticed that is making player AI look stupid compared to the enemy AI.

The first the orders. The enemy usually defaults to having small ships guard large ships, this kind of tethers the small ships and prevents them from going rambo and dying.

Then speaking of rambo, the second behavior is that once a enemy ship has high flux or near overloading, the opposing AI kind of do go rambo on that target. This happens alot more with the player AI as the player often will damage a ship till near overload before that ship decides to back off, thus dragging player ships with them. Making the player AI go get themselves killed as they in-evitable charges into the enemy group.


The player can kind of abuse this too, with a fast ship and high hard flux you can bait enemies into your formation quite reliably as well.

33

Suggestions / Re: Salvaging needs an expansion.

« on: April 12, 2022, 06:02:55 PM »

First of all, it's kind of gamey and immersion breaking (I'm in the middle of nowhere and haven't seen a soul in days, and have flown around this system without seeing anything, but if I salvage something, a pirate fleet shows up without fail? Where did they come from?).

Well, just like how every fleet that is spawned in the game currently is out of approximation. Simply do calculation of distance from other colonies or bases. By using the salvaging skill, you can simply have a snippet of text by saying something in the lines of "By setting up a proper salvaging operation, the operation will emit lots of signals that any sensor in the system can pick up, thus altering whoever is running them."

Also, there are implementation issues, for instance, should the pirates scale with your fleet so that the combat is relevant? If so, then you will have to have massive pirate armadas constantly showing up out of nowhere in late game. If no, then you just add another chore to salvaging.

That's all in the spawn algorithm. If player is in habited system with lots of fleet presence, then don't spawn fleets that are enemies to who is already there. The whole process might most of the time not even spawn any enemies and that is fine.

Also, when you kill the fleet that shows up and salvage it, does that spawn another fleet?

Again, in the algorithm. If a fleet has spawned recently then simply don't spawn another one.

Also, I don't mind explicit salvage traps, like where you salvage and then get a message that it was a trap and a pirate fleet is inbound, but that can easily be done with existing mechanics IMO. No need to make me sit for 5 seconds doing nothing every time I salvage something.

The whole thing is sitting there for 5 or more seconds builds tension in that any moment, a fleet might appear to attack the player. The attacking fleet size could be equal, or even greater, depending on who is sending the fleet.

 Say, the player is salvaging the remains of a huge battle in the system right next to Jangala while hostile to the Hegemony? Big kill fleet comes after the player. This is a chance for extra loot followed by a hard battle, perfect gameplay mechanic.

Again, I feel that this might be a great addition to the trade/bounty/exploration way to play the game. I mean salvaging should fit the whole, sector in decline feel of the game right?

34

Suggestions / Re: Salvaging needs an expansion.

« on: April 09, 2022, 03:43:42 PM »

Well that's why I said during salvage time, the game can spawn in fleets to attack the player. Of course there has to be a counter so you can't infinite loop the thing.

This basically makes it an actual game mechanic that has interaction. A smaller salvage fleet might be able to run away or disengage etc etc.


Or like megas said, buff salvaging action and skill so that playing scavenger (not exploration scavenging) actually is worth the time and an alternate playstyle.

35

General Discussion / Re: Exploration, combat, and why I eventually stop doing either

« on: April 08, 2022, 11:18:57 AM »

Not really. Combat is simply not rewarding compared to other stuff the player can do in the campaign world. Trading and building an colony can get you to rich-unstoppable status way faster than combat.

36

Suggestions / Salvaging needs an expansion.

« on: April 08, 2022, 11:15:43 AM »

As of the current build salvaging is very lack luster. There is no deeper gameplay aside from a simple stat and some button presses to get the loot. The end result is just more chore than fun, having to hit salvage after a battle has no gameplay behind it.

The salvaging skill in the campaign should take longer, forcing the player to sit still while other events may happen. Be it pirates or other scavengers spawning (Redacted or Drones as well), or multiple stages of risk vs reward as the player spend more and more time in the debris field.

Because we currently already have salvage directly post battle. Another salvage menu to dig through seems pointless.

37

General Discussion / Re: Afflictor and Doom

« on: March 31, 2022, 02:05:36 PM »

The thing with mines is that you can teleport them behind targets. You can pair that together with EMP + AMB to bypass shields when your close enough.

The trick is to not play doom like a stand-off type of ship where you duke it out face to face at long range. Mines most of the time can instant kill frigates, when they are moving fast in one direction you can plop one down in their path and often the frigate cant maneuver fast enough to dodge it. Also phase anchor hull mod recharges ammo by 2x speed while phased, then with the phase it self that is 4x the ammo regen!

Ion Pulsar sustained damage thus goes from 180 -> 720! Recued to maybe 650ish after you calculate the time you spend shooting that is not in phase.

AMB goes from  137 -> 548.

That is a lot of DPS, not to mention it is also bursty, does emp aswell. Add in the mines and the paper DPS of the doom hits onslaught levels.


With doom and phase anchor, the point is to just go in the front and eat damage while dishing even more of it out. Then with timing your phase in accordance to incoming anti armor hits you can last even longer than an onslaught can in close range. Plus with phase anchor you never really worry about LOSING the ship. In the hands of the AI its still powerful because without being inside the time speed effect you can really appreciate just HOW MANY MINES the doom can pop into the battlefield.

38

General Discussion / Re: Afflictor and Doom

« on: March 31, 2022, 11:48:49 AM »

Most of Doom's fire power comes from mines, then using phase to quickly recharge them.

Also don't use needless, use that emp pulse cannon thing and antimatter blasters.

39

General Discussion / Re: Neural Link... again.

« on: March 27, 2022, 12:43:47 PM »

To me, I feel while ziggy is no doubt the most powerful, radiant is the better ship in end game. Ziggy's inability to deoply back to back really limit what you can do campaign wise. Also radiant with plasma cannons can burst down any target that's not a paragon in moments, tanky enough with 360 shield to simply let the the enemy frigates stick on your butt. The phase with system expertise makes it faster than most desotryers but much more mobile aswell.

While Ziggy is amazing as solo ship, radiants firepower and mobility allows it to abuse distracted captials while ignoring smaller threats. If you teleport to the side of the enemy captials and get a quad plasma cannon burst in you have already won that engagement, enough to snow ball the fight.

Radiant with neural definitely feels like the new conquest. Mobile with massive firepower, except better in both aspects.

Ziggy on the other hand is boring and end fights too slow. Horrible campaign stats also ruins it for me.

40

General Discussion / Re: Exploration, combat, and why I eventually stop doing either

« on: March 26, 2022, 11:58:55 PM »

I remember Alex saying that the design goal was to "all activities leads to combat".

Except right now it doesn't happen (as of this version). Unless you install NEX and try to mine an asteroid, then an pirate fleet of equal power spawns and rushes at you, engaging in balanced and fun combat. Trading, raiding, smuggling, and exploring, should all perhaps have this kind of enemy spawn that comes at you. I understand that spawning fleets by the player is "cheap" but I feel like we are stuck in between this 4X and RPG gameplay and campaign combat occurrences has fallen to the wayside.

41

Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 1

« on: March 20, 2022, 02:22:44 PM »

The lack of shields seems like a major downside for fighting stations. Even such a large amount of armor, won't really compare to shields against star fortresses with HIL/Tac Lance/hellbore etc. It might be possible that the overwhelming damage output could be enough to simply knock the station out before it can do too much damage, but that just seems unlikely to me.

I would have thought so as well before doing a pirate only playthrough. If the player is willing to lose a couple hundred of supplies and crew, simply ordering all ships to aggressively engage a station works wonderfully well. Instead of trading efficiently, the player can simply overwhelms the station defenses with pure numbers.

Thematically this makes sense too.

42

General Discussion / Re: Skill system encouraging frequent respec is annoying when it is not cheap.

« on: March 06, 2022, 09:09:41 PM »

Whole skill system is stupid on a "sandbox" game. It would make sense for a game that is "play-throughs" based rouge-likes or strategy games. Just mod it yeah?

43

General Discussion / Re: Recommendations for fighting against Ordos?

« on: February 05, 2022, 04:50:08 PM »

If your looking to beat ordos with radiants using only low tech or non "cheesey" ships or tactics you just going to have do it through in-efficent attrition.

DP points never made sense and always gets changed so I have no idea. The default battle size is also horrible to play with mods so I always changed it to 800 where 2v1 fleet battles could always deploy everything at once. This way it makes the faction more threatening instead of ordos or doritos

44

Suggestions / Re: If you ever decide to make Starsector 2, steal the 3d combat from Homeworld

« on: February 05, 2022, 03:17:01 PM »

Right, because the ultimate aim of every hobbyist game dev working on a passion project is to totally lose control of their own work and become just another employee of a larger company.

That's the dream.

No, its to upsize till you have a dozen of employees making your dream come true. When you get bought usually there is a year or some other time where you are contracted to work for them, then you can take the money and form a new studio. Quite common practice. We worship directors of movies and don't care about movie studios, that's better for artistic direction and quality of the movies. While we worship videogame studios and not directors, go figure how quickly the large end of the industry went to ***.

The dev is not the studio. Gamers need to start differentiating and follow talent, not brand.

45

General Discussion / Re: What's a good ship for fast hunt/pursuit? (AI pilot)

« on: February 05, 2022, 02:37:56 PM »

Thunder wings on a condor or something. Target the stragger and hit fighter strike order.
No officer needed!

450 speed ion cannons demons they are. Very good a supressing and disabling ships. Not very good at frontal large battles.