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16

General Discussion / Story difficulty progression - is it well paced?

« on: July 18, 2021, 06:59:34 AM »

Now that I had time to do the story more than once, it made me wonder if the current pacing of fights feels like a natural progression or not. The two things that stand out a lot are the Ziggurat fight and the phase fleet fight. I realize story points can help a lot in mitigating things here but it just feels weird that the whole Kanta arc that comes later has you facing easier fights if you choose to go through that route, especially since at that point you got the Ziggurat as an option.

I'm not sure about this though so I'd like to hear thoughts on how your battles progressed through the story.

17

Modding / [Mod Request] A way to do saturation bombing with story points

« on: July 14, 2021, 07:33:52 PM »

I'd like to be able to do that using a resource without angering half the sector. It always felt odd to me that the major factions can do it while we can not. I was thinking maybe something that would actually give a rep hit (like -3) to every faction that is against it + 2 story points, with the explanation being diplomatic favors or something along those lines.

18

Suggestions / Enabling and disabling "holding fire" should have different sounds.

« on: July 13, 2021, 02:52:07 AM »

A small suggestion but honestly it can be very useful in ships that toggling that all the time is essential.

19

Suggestions / Add a pathway to reduce restore costs in the late game

« on: April 23, 2021, 01:40:10 AM »

Now that s-mods are prominent and due to the small default battle size, we're constantly having battles in which our most pristine ships are getting blown on the regular, especially against fleets that are fully officer'd and s-mod'd, and restoring said ships costs an arm and a leg. Thus, I'd like to see a pathway for players to be able to reduce that cost in the lategame. These could be:

- A special building that requires an industry slot
- An unique item that goes into Orbital Works
- An unique contact
- Etc

I think it'd fit with the new current balance well.

20

General Discussion / General 0.95a Feedback - My thoughts

« on: April 20, 2021, 11:34:29 AM »

I took a long time with my playthrough which I have been playing since the release, it coming out so close to Binding of Isaac: Repentance certainly didn't help. Anyway, here are my thoughts on several areas of the game. Spoiler alert for those that haven't finished the story:

Contacts and their missions

My first thought when I got the update was to try the new bar missions and to see what kind of unique content I could find. At first the novelty of going through the different bar events was interesting, thought that wore off pretty quickly once they started repeating. Making new contacts is... not the best I think. The random chance of being able to develop one and them being of a random quality was somewhat frustrating. I was going high-tech on my run and I was lead to believe through the blog posts that leveling up a lower importance contact would eventually lead to my character being introduced to a higher importance one, maybe through a special mission or an event. I was quite disappointed when that never happened with the TT medium importance contact that I leveled all the way to cooperative.

The missions themselves were good, but I have major issues with the stealth one about deploying probes. I feel like these were not playtested fully because they can range between easy to infuriating. I was assigned a mission in a Persian League system (I think maybe Madera?) and let me tell you, if not outright impossible it was very much close to it. Constant multiple patrols, fleets pinging every 10 seconds and an absurd sensor range for each fleet. I attempted it for about one hour and it was probably one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had with this game. The bounties are alright, and the multiple options are nice, fitting for many parts of a playthrough, thought they could really use some unique encounters besides the very late one (multiple Guardians/Omega)

Exploration

First let me get the good out of the way: the new loot is nice. I'm happy to be able to find new things for the colonies over having the same exact drops every run, but I gotta say, I'm quite disappointed that this area barely got any new content besides two new structures (the solar shades which is really just a planetary modifier and the shunt). In fact I'd argue it has been on the same state ever since the Remnant were introduced about what, 3-4 years ago? I expected more types of stars, more types of encounters, maybe some quests or missions that could only be found on the fringe. Maybe an isolated market? An unique planet? An unique star system? Anything that would make my journey to the unknown more exciting and varied. Distress calls are still untouched as well from what I can tell. The update that added this feature to the game was my favorite by far and it's a shame that it has been left behind since then, I have high hopes that it's an area that it's going to be improved in the future.

The Story

Finally the cream of the update. I'll start by saying that the game needs to do a better job in telling the player that there is an actual story path waiting for them in Galatia, I played this update for about 20 hours before finding that out, by reading someone talking about it online no less. Regardless, the content here is very much enjoyable, from the characters to the missions and the choices that we have during them. It really immerses you into the word and it makes me wish the game had a much bigger team making the game because it'd be great to have this sort of content all throughout the sector. My favorite part was the little conversations between your character and your own officers during the several science missions, really helps with roleplaying. I really hope this quality of writing and mission design can reach other areas of the game as well (ie. exploration).

The Skill Tree

At first I was really liking the new Skill Tree but I came to see why it has been a very controversial change. From the blog post I understand that there were two main goals: being less overwhelming for new players and being more interesting on new playthroughs. I'm not sure if it accomplished either goal.

New players might feel that there are less choices at first, but once they understand that they only have 15 skill points they will want to know exactly what every other skill does and how worth they are. This is very taxing and I can't imagine someone being very happy when finding out the skill they beelined towards was not good due to them not understanding the game mechanics very well. Moreover, while the former system had you putting 3 points just to unlock attributes, it at least gave players leeway in choosing other skills inside those attributes if they ended up regretting a decision, so new players wouldn't fall into pitfalls by picking something they later regretted (e.g. regretting getting the Neutrino Detector wasn't a big deal because 3 points in tech was still really food). I feel like they are just going to search for a guide or ask others what they should or shouldn't pick since the pitfalls are, well, much deeper now.

For the latter, well, I'm sorry but there are some skills I'd never get any playthrough, partially because the limitations on the size of the fleet are very, very frustrating. I feel like half the skills are either broken or useless. The one that hurt the most is the Autonomous Ships skill. Prior to the update I was really looking forward to building a fleet mostly of Remnant / Derelict ships but I was really surprised to find out it was incredibly limited. I'd never get that skill over the s-mod one which ends up being incredibly valuable. Industry is another tree that hurts a lot, I used to really like its skills but now I'm forced to get some things that I'd never use in any playthrough (e.g. colony management skills) and it feels like a waste of skill points. The former system also suffered from this a bit (for example sinking points in a skill just for its level 3 effects), but you had so many more skill points that it wasn't as much of an issue and you could beeline for things much more easily.

All in all, I'm not sure the trade-off was worth it. We lost the freedom of choice we had for not much, overall. I'll finish by saying that some of the choices presented are interesting, and the idea of elite skills by using story points is an exciting one. I'm not sure how to improve on it, I feel like the former system wasn't perfect either so I wish you the best of luck if you end up re-tackling it.

Fleet size and balance

Now I have to say I'm a bit biased here since I used to run the previous versions with slightly higher battle sizes, but I decided to go on a pure vanilla playthrough with the current limitations and I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the fact that the enemy can deploy a lot more than we can. The worst case for me was when I fought the two Omegas, I had plenty of ships I've been preparing to fight them off (A Paragon, a Radiant, a Doom, a few Auroras and a few Furies) but I wasn't able to deploy even half of my fleet even though they were all officer'd. Meanwhile the enemy deployed two absolutely broken ships that, if FP was supposedly "fair", they'd be worth 200-300 each. I ended up defeating them by bringing a bunch more ships and just chain deploying them as the previous ones got blown up. It wasn't a very fun way to win. I'm not even sure how we're supposed to defeat their Remnant bounty Omega encounter without losing the majority of the ships brought to the engagement.

As an aside, I feel like there is a step missing here, why isn't there an encounter where you fight a single Omega only? Unless I missed it, it could be a good prep before the player goes to fight their more difficult encounters.

Random thoughts

- Gates unlocking were a really cool reward for progressing the story, the game really needs more things like this, such as the Red Planet mission.
- If you want spice up new playthroughs for players, you need to up the ante in the random elements. Terraria is an excellent example for this. Unique enemies and items for each world (Corruption/Crimson), unique backgrounds, different aesthetics for each world, etc. There is a lot that can be done to make each sector more unique.
- The new ships were alright, but the showstopper ended up being the Hyperion. Really cool redesign.
- Cryo weapons are fun to use, I'm glad that we're getting some interesting endgame content and rewards.
- I'm not so excited that I'm still fighting pirates for 80% of the game, and their samey fleets do get tiring. I feel this hasn't been addressed since the Derelicts were added.
- The early game goes by way too fast. It didn't take me more than a few hours to be fielding a fleet with multiple Tempests and Omens. In fact finding a single good Omen for sale can really skyrocket your fleet power. I'm not sure exactly why that is the case, maybe it's the low ship prices or maybe the cash influx is too high.
- Story Points are overall a great addition
- Just to reiterate, great writing during the story missions.

I'm sorry if it feels a bit harsh, I appreciate the hard work everyone involved with Fractal has been putting into the game. Keep up the good work!

21

General Discussion / Your first 0.95 run - what will you do?

« on: March 15, 2021, 10:27:40 PM »

As the release gets closer, let's have one of these threads. What are you plans for the next version? How do you plan on flying? What do you plan on focusing on?

I feel like hitting the unexplored systems as soon as possible, I hope we can find a lot of the new content there and have opportunities to use the story points. Probably going to run a few high tech ships with no dmods, hopefully with some AI cores helping me with Remnant ships. Never been a fan of the carrier gameplay so I'll probably be avoiding that as well, though I'm curious on how fighting them has changed.

22

Suggestions / Make it more obvious that a ship you lost is available for recovery

« on: March 01, 2021, 02:08:38 AM »

I have on occasion lost a ship in battle without noticing. You'd think the green message would be enough but sometimes when I'm really focused on a fight I miss the notification completely. Then, on the post battle screen, I don't even check the recovery option and lose a ship forever when I could have easily recovered it.

Would it possible for when our own ships are recoverable to make that option either a different color or have something like a [!] to indicate that? I could also see a pop-up for when leaving the post battle screen, something like "There is a/are still [player name]'s ship/ships waiting to be recovered. Continue and discard?".

23

General Discussion / Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?

« on: August 15, 2020, 06:56:16 PM »

I like having large, 50vs50 ships battles which I know the game is not designed for, but are quite fun for me. The problem is that my FPS drops to like 10 when that happens. Which aspect of the computer does Starsector rely on the most in those scenarios? Is it the CPU or is it the GPU?

24

Suggestions / A plea for better saving options/ui

« on: August 01, 2020, 11:56:10 PM »

A while ago it was requested to Alex to allow us to make multiple saves of one play session, which lead to the implementation of the "Save Copy" button. While at the time I was pleased with this implementation, I knew it wasn't ideal and now I recently lost about 5 hours of gameplay (PC crash, not the game's fault) which could have been prevented if we had a better system. Simply put, it's too costly to use "Save Copy" all the time due to how heavy the save files can get, so I only use it every once in a while. Thus, when I had this crash the last time I had copy'd was 5 hours prior.

What I plea for is a save system which most PC games have. Basically you'd press "Save", be taken to a list of your current saves, decide to either overwrite a previous file or create a new one and then finally save. The core difference between this system and the current one is the ability to choose which file you'd like to overwrite. In many games I use a pattern with, say, "Save 1", "Save 2" and "Save 3" and then alternate between them so I'd always have a backup. Alex, please consider adding this.

Thank you.

25

Suggestions / Officers should stealthily modify ships' FP in some way (AI)

« on: August 01, 2020, 08:54:05 PM »

As your fleet gets stronger and you are running ships with multiple level 20 officers, you still get some pirate armadas that try to fight you only to be completely destroyed due to how much officers and skills can impact a battle, they can't even dent the shields of a defensive officer on a decent ship. Since the FP is the main tool that the AI uses for fleet engagement decisions, there should be some sort of hidden modifier for each officer ship FP value that the AI would take into consideration. This could be applied to enemy scaling as well if the game is going to use that system further.

26

Modding / The game seriously needs a mod manager/downloader

« on: June 07, 2020, 08:48:14 PM »

I know this can be a controversial topic but my exhaustion got to a point that I just got to say it. Over the last few months I thought of picking up the game again for a modded run in a few different occasions, and every time I did so I had to spend over 30 minutes to an hour going over mod pages, downloading files, replacing folders and updating my current mods. This takes like 5 minutes with other games like Terraria and Factorio (or any game with Steam Workshop support, though the aforementioned two use their own solutions). I understand that some of those can create extra burdens on modders and that auto updating is no good for Starsector, but at least a button to manually update the mods (instead of a forum link page as the Version Check mod does, which still requires you to launch the game) would be greatly appreciated. Not to mention that some very good mods get buried in Page 3/4 of the forum pages because of the way forum threads are sorted, even if it got updated recently, so you gotta go looking for them. And then on top of all that a lot of really good mods are restricted to Discord only, making it even more of a pain to find everything interesting before you start a new run.

I've given up starting modded runs multiple times just by how bothersome this whole process is. I'm not calling on Alex to handle this or any specific modder. If you don't like it that's fine. But if you ever felt similar frustrations and want to the game to appeal to more people, please consider this. Thank you.

27

General Discussion / What point of the game could we consider the game cleared?

« on: April 10, 2020, 09:07:37 AM »

This is a weird one but bear with me. I want to recommend this game to some people that never played it before but due to some special circumstances we need a clear condition. Razing all factions would take too long so what accomplishment would be a good? What point of the game? Vanilla only please.

28

Suggestions / Please give us the (optional) ability to see the mod id when hoving items

« on: March 07, 2020, 03:28:19 AM »

I think I mentioned this in other threads before, but I believe this bears repeating, especially now since there is still some time before the next release. With many mods it can be confusing to know what is from where, and it hurts when giving feedback. I was hoping that the "manufacture" field would have helped with that but with so many mods making additions to vanilla factions, it's just impossible to use it as such in many cases. So, just like many games with very active mod communities like Minecraft and Factorio, please let us see which mod each item (or ship) is from when hovering them, by showing the id in one of the fields. I don't mind if we have to toggle that in the config file.

29

General Discussion / Starsector not being on major distribution platforms is legit hurting its growth

« on: August 04, 2019, 09:39:25 AM »

We all heard this question a million times when recommending this game to others. "Why isn't this game on Steam?". While I understand Alex's stance on it since he's worried about negative reactions from people disliking EA games with few updates, I legit believe this stance is hurting the game more than it is helping at this point. Take Sseth's wave, for example. I'm sure it has been great for the game, but I can't help but wonder how many people that would have bought the game due that video didn't since it's not available on a platform that they can purchase things on, and are now just using the "trial" option. I made this argument before on the Epic Games thread but I'll make it here again, the number of people that rely on Steam's international payment solutions to purchase games is not insignificant. 

Moreover, the game is far more complete now than it was before. These types of games have proven to be successful on Steam even if they seldom receive updates, granted they are good. I can think of no better game to compare to than with Factorio. It is still in EA, very rarely gets content updates (though frequent bugfixes) and it's sitting at 98% positive reviews due to people's trust in the development team.

Finally, what people want these days is not necessary constant updates, but communication. Alex has proven to be very active on both Twitter and here, and the blog posts are more than enough proof for people to know that the game is being worked on. Just link the blog posts to the Steam community and the reputation will be fine.

It's time to reconsider.

30

Suggestions / Don't limit recoverable ship selection based on the 30 ship limit.

« on: June 06, 2019, 07:16:17 AM »

This is an extension of the other topic on mothballed ships, but regardless of what happens to the fleet cap, I believe a good idea would be to simply disconnect the fleet cap from the number of available ships for recovery. I played the game a lot trying to salvage an specific ship only to realize that the reason why I couldn't salvage it was because I only had a few slots left in my fleet. I changed my configuration to 90 (but still don't fly more than 30) and voila, I'm now seeing 12+ ships each big fleet battle instead of 2. In order for this to not be necessary, why not make both things unrelated? Have something like a cross on top of the ships if the limit has been reached or if the player selected enough so that it reached the limit. This would give the player choice while not sacrificing the cap.