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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Topics - Tartiflette

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46
In case this hasn't been reported already: you can destroy the weapon module of the [REDACTED] station before the armor module supposedly on top, but that armor stays attached to the station "floating".


47
Mods / [0.95.1a] Unknown Skies v1.00rc2 (2023/03/19)
« on: April 26, 2017, 03:16:23 AM »

Explore new systems, with more varied planets and backgrounds.


   This mod significantly expands the variety of systems and planets you'll encounter while exploring. Adds 69 system backgrounds, 40 planet types and 14 uncommon or unique planetary conditions that can make or break a colonization candidate, as well as a few new ambiance sounds for different terrain types.

   This mod does not affect the amount of "good" or "bad" planets you will find in the sector, only increase the variety of planets inside each vanilla categories.

   To modders: you are welcome to use these backgrounds and other textures in your own mods, please make sure to use the same names and paths for your planets/ring/etc textures as to not needlessly bloat the memory.

Screenshots:

Spoiler




[close]

Changelog

1.0

[RC2]
- Fixed Underground Tunnels tooltip.
- Added save patching code to re-assign the new backgrounds to existing systems.
 > Interestingly, this means US can be added mid-playthrough and it will add the new backgrounds.

[RC1]

- Reworked backgrounds:
   . Now includes 69 backdrops (from 27),
   . They are somewhat more consistent in art-style and darker as to not disrupt gameplay.

- Background list can be expanded through modSettings.json entries with third-party sub-mods,
- All strings have been externalized for ease of translation,
- Very rare planets types and conditions have been made unique, often with stronger effects. (Artificial, Magnetic and Perpetual Storm planets, Parasitic Spores, Xeno-fungus and Lingering Virus conditions),
- Added "Chemical Crystals" uncommon condition that can show up on toxic worlds to give them *some* colonization value from time to time.

0.43
- Compatibility patch for 0.95a

0.42
- Removed 0.9a workarounds
- All planet types have the proper conditions generated
- Special planets in non proc-gen system now get the proper special conditions

0.41
- Fixed effect scaling with Magnetic Crust effect

0.40
- Added two more rare planet types
- Added rare planetary conditions

0.21
- Procgen adjustments

0.20
- Added 12 new planet types

0.10
- Initial release
[close]


Thanks to Serenitis that provided some of the planets maps.

You like the mod? Help making it better: Donations will be used to commission content I cannot create myself, such as illustrations or music.

To whomever it may interest:
As it has become pretty obvious, this past year I for the most part moved on from modding this game. While it may be disappointing to hear I cannot promise to ever returning to the debit of frequent updates I once held. I however do not want to let this mod die. Thus in the case I have yet to show up 3 months after the next major game release, anyone is free to update Unknown Skies and/or change it however they want.

In the meantime, Unknown Skies' code and assets can freely be re-used by anyone without asking with 3 conditions: It must be for a Starsector mod, that mod must have a similarly permissive license, and I (plus Serenitis in the case of the planet textures) am credited.


48
Mods / [0.95.1a] Outer Rim Alliance v0.95rc1 (2023/01/07)
« on: February 27, 2017, 03:44:11 PM »


"We help the poor, lift the desperate, mend the broken, and together, we build a better future."


     

Earliest compatible version: 0.92

Always DELETE the old version before extracting the new one
Requires LazyLib and MagicLib


Having problems running mods?  Visit the Mod Troubleshooting Guide!

          




The Outer Rim Alliance pledge


   Welcome to the Outer Rim Alliance, a growing force of good in these dire times. One of the few groups, if not the only one, able to reverse the spiral of destruction that plagued our Sector since the Great Collapse. Let go of your worldly possessions, give them to the Alliance and in exchange we will give you a purpose. Become an agent of reconstruction rather than destruction, and strive to build a better world, together.

   When a group of refugees found the means to stave off the slow decay of the sector in the form of a working Terraformer ship, they founded the Outer Rim Alliance. A strong-willed but open pact between worlds that don't see a future for themselves among the other warring factions. The greater good prevails in the Alliance, sometimes at the cost of displacing the entire worlds population. But everyone in the Alliance is bound by the same purpose, and the alliance has a purpose for everyone.


Gameplay

   This is a high-tech faction almost entirely composed of broadsider ships. As high tech ships, they mostly rely on energy weapons with a few missiles sprinkled here and there. They favor deliberate fleet tactics, using their numerous weapon emplacements to pummel their enemies with long-range artillery fire, with a few high damage short-range guns to fend off those that managed to get close. Somewhat slow by nature, they usually rely on dense formations of cruisers with heavy fighter support to keep the enemy at range. While not the flashiest, those ships are reliable and dependable.

   On the campaign layer, the Outer Rim Alliance occupies a large cluster of systems with a solid industrial base and a rich history to discover.




Customize your fleet using one of those alternative skin pack mods. Only activate one in the launcher along with the main mod, you can swap them as often as you want without issue. You can also easily make your own skins using these resources.

Alternate skins gallery
   

   

   
[close]



O.R.A. showcase


Spoiler





[close]


Recent changelogs:

0.95

BALANCING:

 - All ships with maneuvering systems now have reduced base acceleration.

 - Sempiternal Repeater: Range increased to 700su from 600.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Eschewal Projector / Invocation Launcher:
   . Fixed a typo that made the slowing effect much more pronounced that it should have,
   . Added a multiplier that increase the effect with skills and systems that increase Energy weapon damage.
 - Prayer Sender missiles are now much smaller, more in line with their damage potential.
 - Fixed an error with the Xeno-Warfare Design hullmod that always gave the max debuff for asymmetric loadouts.
 - The Xeno-Warfare Design hullmod now displays the current engine debuff when using an asymmetric loadout.

0.94

NEW CONTENT:

 - New star system ambience musics courtesy of Mesotronik.

BALANCING:

 - Attitude Jets system:
   . Duration reduced to 3s from 4, added a 2s charge-down,
   . Speed boost increased to 100 from 50, but only applies during the fully active time,
   . turn rate boost applies during the entire charge-up + active + charge-down duration.

 - Ships:
   . Many sideways energy turrets are now synergy,
   . Many spinal synergy turrets are now energy.
 > Ships have more missile-capable mounts overall.
 > Given that having projectile weapons in spinal mounts is important to make the AI broadside properly, this should eliminate pitfalls new users fall into.
   . All broadsider ships' Omni shields now have variable arcs, they get wider when pointed to the side and narrower to the front to catch fewer unnecessary shots.

 - Harmony destroyer:
   . System switched to Plasma Jets from Plasma Burn.

 - Grace destroyer:
   . Speed increased to 90 from 70.
   . Deployment/Maintenance cost increased to 13 supplies from 11.

 - Communion carrier:
   . Speed increased to 50 from 35.

 - Beatitude cruiser:
   . Speed increased to 65 from 50.

 - Elevation cruiser:
   . Speed increased to 75 from 65.

 - Revelation cruiser:
   . Shield changed to a Front bubble, from a 300 degrees Omni.
   . Now has built-in Accelerated Shields.

 - Discernment super-carrier:
   . System switched to Coordinated Engagement (+30CR to nearby ships) from Acausal Disruptor,
   . Deployment/Maintenance cost increased to 60 supplies from 50.

 - Choir Emitter:
   . Damage per shot increased to 25 from 10 (125 dps from 50)
   . EMP per shot increased to 80 from 40 (400 dps from 200)
 > This won't change much it's efficiency against missiles since most of the effect is scripted, but it might make it better than soaked porridge vs fighters.

 - Recital Deliverer:
   . Base fire-rate increased to 240 rpm from 120. Maximum fire-rate unchanged.

 - Litany Thrower:
   . Proj speed increased to 400 from 300.
   . Fires in bursts of 3 instead of having 6 ammo with regen.
 > Might be worse in player hands, but should work a lot better with the AI.

 - Eschewal Projector:
   . Now has a constant turn rate while firing or not.
   . Proj speed increased to 450 from 400.

 - Echoes Caster:
   . No longer affects friendly missiles.
 > Kind of necessary now with all the new missile mounts.

 - Calling Scatterer:
   . Proj speed increased to 350 from 300.

 - Incantation Horn:
   . Proj speed increased to 300 from 225.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Xeno-warfare hullmod is now displayed to the top of all built-in hullmods

0.93

BALANCING:

 - Recital Deliverer:
   . Damage per shot decreased to 45 Energy damage from 60, flux reduced accordingly.
   . Rate of fire increases more rapidly to reach its full potential in 10 shots from 20. (4.5s of sustained fire from 5.6s)
   . Stat-card clarified.

 - Litany Thrower:
   . Burst firepower lowered to 600dps from 750.
   . Sustained firepower raised to 150dps from 75.

 - Eschewal Projector:
   . Range increased to 900 from 850.
   . Now fires in bursts of two shots.
   . Speed dampening effect now fixed to 25% from 0/20/40/60/80% depending on target size. (similar to cruiser effect if both projectiles connect)

 - Incantation Horn:
   . Range increased to 1000 from 900.
   . Firerate increased to 20 rpm from 17.

 - Sempiternal Repeater: Turn rate increased by 50% but added tag to not benefit from the idle turn boost.

 - Echoes Caster: Turn rate increased by 100% but added tag to not benefit from the idle turn boost.

 - Fervor-wing gunship:
   . Now only has a single Recital Repeater on a 360deg turret instead of two in 180deg turrets.
   . The fighters will now try to maintain some range off of their target's PD weapons instead of rushing in.

 - Communion-class carrier: System changed to Active flares from Long Range Fighters.

 - Felicity-class carrier: System changed to Sensor Drones from Entropy Amplifier.

 - Discernment-class carrier: System changed to Quantum Disruptor from Interdictor Array.

 - Attitude Jets system: Increased the speed boost to 50 from 25.

 - Commisioned Crew:
   . Removed the drawback of Alliance Conservation Methods.
   . Effect is now -15% or -4 supplies per month (whichever is smaller) instead of -25% or -2.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Fixed ORA system spawning in Nexerelin random mode.
 - Calling Scatterer no longer uses its secondary PD function while phased.
 - Added the new Fury-class to ORA's spawn tables.
 - System's blue giant stars are now proper blue giants.
 - Solid State Capacitor system description adjusted to better reflect the effect.
 - Externalized a couple of strings that were missing.
 - Added missing fighter weapons descriptions.


0.92

Barebone 0.95a compatibility update

0.91

NEW CONTENT:
 - Added Incantation Horn large artillery:
   . 900 range energy weapon that packs a massive punch,
   . Abysmal fire-rate,
   . Laughable projectile speed,
   . Storm-trooper level of accuracy.

BALANCING:
 - Sanctuary-class destroyer:
   . Flux capacity reduced to 6000 from 6500,
   . Flux dissipation reduced to 300 from 350,
   . Supplies/month - supplies/deploy raised to 11 from 10.
 - Litany Thrower flux efficiency improved to 1.0 f/dmg from 1.2.
 - Harmony-class destroyer:
   . Mount types shuffled around,
   . OPs raised to 110 from 100.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - FINALLY fixed the weapon availability issue in ORA markets.
 - Valis' binary star now properly show up in the planet list.
 - Fixed Bliss-class frigate miss-aligned mounts.
 - Fixed Discernment-class carrier weapon render order.

0.90 pre tournament version

NEW CONTENT:
 - New interaction music courtesy of Mesotronik.
 - Many new skin packs available as stand-alone downloads.

BALANCING:
 - Sempiternal Repeater chargeup shortened to 0.5s from 1.2.
 - Awareness fighter speed increased to 130 from 120.
 - Fervor fighter speed increased to 140 from 130.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Elevation-class' troublesome COMBAT CARRIER tags removed.
 - Eschewal (slow) is now a medium fighter weapon (no longer affected by the built-in IPDAI).
 - Fixed some outdated weapon stat cards information.
 - Solid State Capacitors system now has a proper custom AI and is no longer tied to shields.
 - Fixed Harmony-class' miss-placed ship center.

0.89 post tournament patch

Added support for Industrial Evolution

NEW CONTENT:
 - Awareness-wing:
   . Assault bomber.
   . 2 crafts per wing.
   . Launches 5 Calling shots each, for 5x500 Energy damage.

BALANCING:
 - Choir emitter no longer creates EMP arcs on hits, firerate and raw EMP damage slightly increased.
 - Fervor-wing gunship:
   . Choir emitters replaced with Recital Deliverers + IPDAI.
   . Litany Thrower replaced with Eschewal Projector (half firerate)
 - Enlightenment-class deployment/maintenance costs raised to 55 from 45.
 - Invocation Launcher:
   . Tracking weakened.
   . Shockwave propagates to the front of the projectile instead of directly toward the target.
 - Allure bomber wing:
   . OP cost raised to 30 from 25.
   . Bomb payload doubled.
 - Ascension-class frigate:
   . System is now a proximity-based time dilation, has a higher ceiling but scale more linearly with the number of enemies in range.
   . Weapon arcs and types tweaked.
   . OP reduced to 50 from 55.
   . Deployment cost increased to 12 from 8.
 - Commissioned Crew hullmod now reduces the maintenance cost by 25% from 10, but is capped at 2 supplies per month per ship.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - ORA markets should provide a lot more of their weapons and fighters.
 - All normal maps have been redone, some maps that had minimal benefits have been removed to very slightly lower the VRAM load.
 - Minor description tweaks.

0.88

BALANCING:
 - Prayer Sender:
   . Range reduced to 800 from 1000.

 - Invocation Launcher:
   . Reduced armor penetration.

 - Newtonian Slinging:
   . Buffed duration, range and effect by 25%

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Calling Scatterer:
   . Hopefully fixed a very rare crash when the target gets destroyed the same frame as the weapon is firing.

 - Alternate skin pack now provided as an Addon mod, and now includes weapons.

 - Externalized all strings to facilitate the work of translators


0.87

 - Added Starship Legend compatibility.
 - Added Ruthless Sector compatibility.
 - Added New Beginnings compatibility.
 - Added Vayra Sector compatibility.
 - Added Commissioned Crew compatibility.
 - Improved Nexerelin integration.
 - Added market music, courtesy of Tomatopaste.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Economy slightly reduced in regard to other larger factions.
 - Added a few custom portraits.


0.86

BALANCING:
 - ORA blueprint packages prices lowered to vanilla levels.
 - Ascension-class Newton Slinger system effect significantly stronger.
 - Invocation Launcher EMP damage raised to 2500 from 1000.
 - Eschewal Projector flux to fire lowered to 360 from 500 (0.9 f/dmg from 1.25).
 - Calling Scatterer:
   . Range increased to 900 from 700.
   . Projectiles slightly faster.
   . Projectiles slightly harder to shoot down.
   . Sustained fire-rate doubled (1000 dps from 500).
 - Sempiternal Repeater:
   . Initial flux/shot reduced to 66 from 75, maximum flux  per shot now 200 (1 f/dmg).
   . Accuracy slightly improved
 - Elevation-class cruiser system changed to Micro Burn from High Energy Focus.
 - Revelation-class cruiser OP amount raised to 170 from 150.
 - Beatitude-class cruiser OP amount raised to 195 from 180.
 - Enlightenment-class battleship:
   . Hull points raised to 20000 from 16000.
   . Flux dissipation raised to 1400 from 1200.
   . Flux capacity raised to 30000 from 22500.
 - Recital Deliverer now less accurate during sustained bursts.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Added New Beginnings compatibility.
 - Shuffled around the systems, added a bit more content to them for a more dynamic experience.

0.85

BALANCING:
 - Ship prices raised to 0.9.1 levels, some fleet points and deployment costs reductions.
 - Choir Emitter flux per shot lowered to 15 (83 fps) from 25 (139 fps).
 - Solid State capacitors:
   . Conversion rate improved to 1/3 soft flux to hard flux, from 1/2.
   . Cooldown raised to 18s from 15.
 - Recital Deliverer:
   . Ammo limitation removed.
   . Firerate increases slightly faster.
   . Damage per shot reduced to 60 from 67.
 - Prayer Sender:
   . Range reduced to 1000 from 1500.
   . No longer collides with allies but the autofire AI won't use it that way.
   . Minimal salvo set to 5.
 - Changed many mounts to Synergy from Energy.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Variants optimized for AI use.
 - Fleet compositions adjusted for a tougher end-game challenge.
 - Ascension frigate now much more available for everyone.
 - Adjusted Industries.

0.84

 - Added Vesperon Combine compatibility
 - Added Prayer Sender medium missile: A reloading Energy rocket launcher.

BALANCING:
 - All weapons prices adjusted to match 0.9 vanilla values.

0.83

 - Updated compatibility with Nexerelin.

BALANCING:
 - Fighter changes:
   . All fighters get the "no_weapon_flux" hullmod like vanilla, flux stats adjusted accordingly.
   . Fervor gunship shield nerf.
   . Wisdom interceptor hull buff.

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:
 - Added spaceport to Lu'men station.
 - Downgraded Marble's nanoforge to corrupted from pristine.
 - Added missing turn rate information to the Calling Scatterer.
 - Shuffled some blueprints, neither BP package contains any capital ship like vanilla.
 - Deactivated the "material maps" for GraphicLib, that had only a minor visual impact but significantly increased VRam usage.

0.82

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Changed the faction colors for something farther from the League's gold.
 - Fixed Calling Scatterer secondary PD firing at nothing.

0.81

rc2: Removed Lu'men trade restrictions entirely due to infrequent bug

BUGFIXES/IMPROVEMENTS:

 - Proper running economy and planet conditions.
 - Updated interaction dialogs.
 - Added proper Commission dialog.
 - Added second and rarer blueprint package.
 - Added individual ship wing and weapon blueprints.

0.80

rc2: Fixed AM bomber CTD.
rc3: Fixed Calling Scatterer flux issue.
rc4: Fixed Lu'men interaction.

   Barebone 0.9.0 compatibility update.

[close]


You like the mod? Help making it better: Donations will be used to commission content I cannot create myself, such as illustrations or music.
Additionally if you would enjoy playing with a custom paintjob, I also take commissions for a reasonable rate. PM me for more details.





To whomever it may interest:
As it has become pretty obvious, this past year I for the most part moved on from modding this game. While it may be disappointing to hear I cannot promise to ever returning to the debit of frequent updates I once held. I however do not want to let this mod die. Thus in the case I have yet to show up 3 months after the next major game release, anyone is free to update ORA and/or change it however they want.

In the meantime, ORA's code can freely be re-used by anyone and the sprites can freely be kitbashed from without asking with 3 conditions: It must be for a Starsector mod, that mod must have a similarly permissive license, and I am credited.

49
General Discussion / Starsector 2nd Fleet Building Tournament FINISHED
« on: January 05, 2017, 12:37:28 PM »


RULES:
Spoiler
[close]

The Second Fleet Tournament is finished,



Helmut, using P.A.C.K, won at the end of a fantastic run, only one loss away from a perfect score.



Carroy, using Diable Avionics, finished second thanks to his incredibly creative use of Shield Bypass and aggressive loadouts.

Abyz, using D.M.E, end up third with a razor thin margin, having to fight an extra match against Borgrel to break a tie.

Borgrel, using Mid Tech, finished fourth despite a strong surge near the end, and only conceding to Abyz after a tie breaker match.


You can watch the finals here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123999653

Play all the matches on your end with this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hred09fqxkdzmns/SecondFleetBuildingTournament.7z?dl=0

 Congratulation to all the participants, and a big thanks to our two shoutcasters FallenShogun and Nemo for their fantastic comments these past weeks.

 There will certainly be more tournaments in the future, but probably not too soon. Depending if the 0.8 takes time to be released there could be some fun events in the meantime, maybe in a couple of weeks.

Spoiler
How to play:
Spoiler
   First MAKE SURE YOUR MODS ARE ALL UP TO DATE! USE VERSION CHECKER.

   Then you need to download the initial mission mod:


   Once installed, you will find inside a folder named tournament containing a lot of "player" files:



   There is a pair of them for each participant. You can find your assigned number in the  tournament's brackets here.

   Do NOT rename those files! You have to use a code editor to modify their content in order for the game to read your fleet. I recommend using Notepad++ or Sublime Text as it won't modify the files' layout, that could potentially corrupt them. DO NOT use Word, DO NOT use Excel/Open Office and such unless you know how to configure them to not corrupt these files. Using the default Notepad is not recommended either.

    playerX_data.csv contains all the general informations about your fleet. by default it look like this:




name,tag,prefix,startCrew

#name: Your forum name.
#tag: The name of the fleet.
#prefix: What will precede the name of your ships.
#startCrew: The crew experience of your new ships, refers to the inscription sheet to get the right level for the tournament. 0=GREEN, 1=REGULAR, 2=VETERAN.

#DO NOT RENAME THIS FILE, DO NOT CHANGE THE TOP LINE.

"Player 1","Player 1 fleet","P1",0



   And should be pretty self explanatory. Then there is the playerX_fleet.csv that contains the actual ships for your fleet, looking something like this:




rowNumber,round,type,variant,personality,value

#rowNumber: A unique number for the ship/wing, only used to read the file and won't appear in-game
#round: The round this fleet has been purchassed. Do not change for variant reffit.
#type: "SHIP" or "WING".
#variant: The full ship variant or wing name. Remember to prefix them to avoid name conflicts.
#personality: The captain's personality. Can be "timid", "cautious", "steady", "aggressive". Mandatory but only used with "SHIP" types.
#value: Only used with "WING" types, the value indicated in the relevant wing_data.csv.

#DO NOT RENAME THIS FILE, DO NOT CHANGE THE TOP LINE.

1,2,SHIP,lasher_Assault,cautious,
2,1,SHIP,lasher_Assault,aggressive,
3,1,WING,broadsword_wing,,13000



   Again everything is commented to avoid any confusion. Be mindful of typos, SHIP or WING must be capitalized, while the personality must not! Sadly the values of fighter wings cannot be determined from within a mission, that's why you need to enter their cost manually. Every other cost will be computed automatically: A couple seconds after launching the mission, the game will automatically pause and display the current total cost of your fleet.

   Note that these files can be edited while the game is running and the changes will be reflected when the mission is refreshed (ie, just click on it again).
The usual method for creating a fleet is to start by adding ships with default variants (you will find them in the variant folder of vanilla or the relevant mod) until the budget is getting filled. Then from the mission you can edit them and fine tune your fleet. Once done, you can get those variants in the mission's save file. You will have to rename them and reflect those changes in the fleet file, and you are done. Remember to use your name or your player number as prefix for your variants to avoid name clashes.

   Small reminder: you can choose to submit a secondary set of variants for your fleet (using the same ships), and elect to use that second one when the number of enemy ship is revealed. You cannot pick which variant to use for each ship, it's all or nothing.

The final step will be to submit your fleet:



   Doing exactly this would make my life really easier. There are a lot of participants and I wont edit everyone's misnamed file so be sure to double check everything. You can use your forum name for the archive and as prefix for your variant files names. Please only send the required files. You can either PM me a link here or send them directly through our Discord server. All the updates on the tournament will be posted there in priority.

Happy fleet building!

[close]
Having troubles? Here is a more detailed step-by-set guide.

Watch the streams:

ALL ROUNDS PLAYLIST:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi9_tXwdXOljJFy3oMSA_7h9sXa3pup1f

Individual twitch links:
[close]


The First AI Fleet Building Tournament results:
Spoiler
Cycerin playing the Interstellar Imperium's "Goldenboys"


He won after facing

Abyz playing the Scy Nation's "Scybyzian Navy"


You can (re)watch the finals on FallenShogun's channel:

https://youtu.be/wRBQpCd6RVY

Or you can grab the AI mission there,
Required mods:
SS+,
AI Battles,
Blackrock,
Diable Avionics,
GraphicLib,
Interstellar Imperium,
Knights Templar,
LazyLib,
Scy Nation,
Shadowyard Reconstruction Authority,
Ship/Weapon Pack,
TwigLib,
Underworld,
Upgraded Rotary Weapons
[close]

50
Modding / How to make AI-friendly broadside ships
« on: January 04, 2017, 02:46:43 PM »
   While updating Scy I accidentally stumbled upon a weapon layout that, depending on the loadout, could lead the AI to use the ship as a broadsider, and be very competent when doing so. Now that I had a bit more time to explore further how this happened, I think I found a simple way to make AI-friendly broadside ships.

May I present to you the ORS Enlightenment, flagship of the Enlightenment-class battleships from the Outer Rim Alliance.



*Sprite and stats still WIP*

This is an upcoming high tech faction I'm making that will be exclusively composed of broadside ships.

So what is special about this weapon loadout? Well, it's the firepower repartitions between the sides coupled with the weapons overlaps:


   As you can see in the ship editor, a significant proportion of its weapons (one large and a medium) are actually directed rearward, with arcs wide enough that they can be used while broadsiding. And this is the secret: Usually when designing a broadside ship most of the firepower would be put in front and on the sides, without much overlap. The problem is that with equivalent sides, the AI cannot seems to decide which one to use, and will apathetically face the enemy until one side get damaged giving the other priority. Here is a typical example of a ship not working with the AI.
   In this configuration however, the AI will always turns to the side with which it can bring the rear weapons to bear the fastest, one could say it is an unstable design when comparing sides. Since the Autofire AI will try to turn the rear weapons one way or another, one side will always get the priority.
   With always a preferred side, the AI will constantly point it toward its target, turning around quite competently whenever weapons get disabled or the armor get compromised.

Thanks to that trick, that ship is extremely deadly in AI control, and may actually be better flown with autopilot rather than in a player's hands!


51
Mods / [0.95.1a] Lightshow 1.41 (2021/03/27)
« on: December 30, 2016, 04:00:09 AM »





   Ever died to a High Intensity Laser beam that looked just like a much tamer Graviton Beam? Ever got all your weapons disabled because the Ion Beam also look like it? Didn't liked that? Well this is a pretty straightforward utility mini-mod that changes the look of all vanilla beams to better differentiate them. They are now color coded for their damage type rather than for aesthetic choices. They might seem odd at first, but it will make your life in the sector slightly easier.




   If some of the new colors aren't to your tastes, you can go in the mod's data/weapons folder and simply delete the weapons you want to keep unchanged.
*Click to enlarge*

*Click to enlarge*

52
General Discussion / Starsector Unofficial Discord Server
« on: December 10, 2016, 02:21:02 PM »




Starsector has a lively discord server open to everyone. Chime in to share stories, get advice, give modders feedback, ask questions, meet Youtubers, engage in wild
speculation or simply have a relaxed discussion about anything from the game. Our @Support team is also available to help solve any technical issue you may have with the game or its mods.

                                                       See you soon!



WARNING, due to a recent tide of bots joining the server the moderation team has setup a basic captcha test to protect everyone's privacy against data harvesting. Instruction to go through this very simple process will be messaged to you upon joining the server.

The rules are fairly simple: Be nice, keep it Safe For Work. That's it.

Should you need to contact the moderation team for a suggestion, any topic that does not require their immediate attention or to appeal a moderation action, you can do so using this form.
Should you appeal a ban, remember to include both your full Discord nickname#number and a way to contact you (via forum PM for example) to get notified about the outcome.

53
Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Temporal Shell can stack with Phase ships
« on: December 05, 2016, 09:40:45 AM »
Maybe a bug, maybe a feature, but the Temporal Shell system do not get disabled when a ship phases out, and the effects stack.

[edit] It's hilarious though. With SO and Augmented engines that ship peak at 1200 effective speed.

54
   Feels a bit weird to report an issue so late, but I couldn't find if this bug had been noticed before. So the title is pretty much self explanatory:

   A lone Pather destroyer engaged a fleet of mercenaries that was jumping away and stayed stuck in hyper while "in battle". That status never left and the ship kept drifting away into storms and such. When engaged I could see the long gone other fleet, but the battle never ended by itself. The background indicated that the battle was considered occurring inside the nearby system even if I was engaging the ship in hyper.

   It was a heavily modded game but I don't think they are to blame on this one.

Here is a save file in case you want to inspect it.

55
Modding / The Toybox
« on: November 15, 2016, 10:32:48 AM »
This is a hub for all of my resources, tutorials and smaller mods on the forum, that were cluttering my signature.






Unknown Skies: Essentially implementing into the randomly generated sectors a good part of the Texture Pack down bellow.




Target Practice: A small collection of passive simulator meat-ships to test out your ship loadouts againt.




Fleet Tester: Another utility mod this time to test whole fleets in easy to setup and modify battle scenarios, without restarting the game each time.




Upgraded Rotary Weapons: An utility mod modifying the vanilla rotary weapons with a smoother animation and spin-down.




Lightshow: An utility mod modifying the vanilla beams to better differentiate them.




Seeker: A wip mod that ultimately aims to add some mystery to the Sector by adding unique and very scripted encounters with unknown objects.




Kitbash database: A collection of some weapon-less vanilla ships for easier kitbashing.




Spriting Timelapse: A collection of sped-up recordings from some spriting streams.




Texture Pack for New Systems: A collection of planet, ring and background textures.
Also includes a tutorial on how to convert space pictures into painterly somewhat Starsector-friendly backgrounds.




Paint-job Tutorial: A presentation of a Photoshop technique allowing to easily create various paint jobs for a ship.
Also provides a lot of tips and spriting techniques.




Animation Tutorial: An tutorial about the specifics of sprite animation in the context of Starsector.

56
Modding / New Map of the known Modiverse
« on: October 19, 2016, 04:07:28 AM »
Current map of the known moddiverse. Any modder can check, add or modify their own systems using this Edit link, and the map will reflect it after but a second.



57
Modding / [0.7.2a] Torchships v1.0 (06/09/2016)
« on: September 06, 2016, 04:23:49 AM »


A little experimentation around fleets movements on the campaign map, trying to ease the early game experience.


Require LazyWizard's LazyLib


   Maneuvering a fleet of torchships isn't mundane: make the wrong formation adjustment when changing direction and some of your ships get cooked by weapon-grade thrusters exhaust plume. While large fleets shouldn't be slowed down by their numbers, they should however be more cumbersome to fly around.

How does this translate:

 - Fleets get a debuff to their acceleration the more ships they have, weighted by ships sizes.
 - Ships that have the slowest burn of the fleet count double, as faster ones can leave more margin to the slower ones without holding them back.

 - Emergency burn ability changes:
   . dramatically reduce maneuverability,
   . reduced CR impact,
   . increase the speed by 4 burn levels instead of 5,
   . last two days.

 - Added Emergency maneuver ability:
   . greatly increase acceleration,
   . raise burn level by 7,
   . large CR cost,
   . small fuel cost,
   . last only a quarter of a day.

   So overall large fleets will get outmaneuvered by smaller ones even at the same burn, Emergency burn springs behaviors are less prevalent and you have more options to evade a pursuer or ambush a target. However AI fleets can't use the emergency maneuver ability yet.

   It should work well with any other mods, however it require a new game and cannot be removed from an existing save.

   Tell me what you think!

58
General Discussion / Factions colors, 2016 edition.
« on: July 01, 2016, 02:29:01 AM »
   A little experiment to represent the color space used by the current factions. More accurate than the old 2D one there, and up-to-date as of July 2016.

RGB edition:

https://youtu.be/VlHQYlh7Y8o

With each axis representing each color channel.
The camera start in the grey axis.
HSV edition:

https://youtu.be/bDA6nI1DxRA

Luminosity is mapped on the height, radius is the Saturation and the azimut represent the Hue.
The greys are plaecd on the cylinder's axis.

You should also check Dark.revenant's awesome per-ship average color chart...

59
Modding / Broadside ships are still not viable
« on: May 02, 2016, 09:54:42 AM »
So after probably too much Battlefleet Gothic and remembering this:

  • Improved broadside AI:
    • Will now turn more into a broadside if its frontal firepower is significantly lacking
    • Will pursue (by turning towards enemy) less

I decided to mod in a low tech broadside equivalent to the Dominator.


(Still quite WIP)
 

   And I ended up with this HSS Siegfried, Attrition-class Cruiser.

   I though I did everything right. The hardpoint is a missile slot, the large turret has a 360 degrees coverage, all small turrets can reach the sides and all mediums have 90 degrees arcs. It also have an Omni shield and better maneuverability than the Dominator.

   Oh boy was I disappointed when I tested it.

   That ship wouldn't turn on it's side until the front armor had been obliterated and it had to start spreading the damage like any frontal based ship. I tried with a short range weapon in the turret compared to the side without better result. And without any weapon in the turret you say? Let's check that out.

Webm of how it went. (full 15MB gif in spoiler)

Spoiler
[close]

   So without any frontal weapon at all, the ship would still face the enemy. After a while it veeeryyy sloooowlyyy turned one side to it for some reason, but after a couple of shot remembers it preferred not shooting at all by squarely facing it's target. It's only when half its starboard weapons got disabled that suddenly the AI became alive, quickly maneuvered and started to slug the enemy with its other side. I sadly cut the recording, but as soon as the weapons got repaired the AI went brain-dead again, returning to its "I want to watch you in the eye even if it kills me" behavior.

   From that I get that the AI can only choose to broadside if one side if significantly more powerful than the other. But that completely defeat the purpose of a broadsiding ship: The point is to be able to say "Oh you wrecked my port side? Big deal! My starboard side is good as new and ready to finish you off". I would also love seeing broadside ships circling their target instead of just standing in front of them, but that is a whole new can of worms for the AI.

   That ship is still quite fun to fly, but if the AI can't deal with it there's no point really.


60
Modding Resources / Paint-Job Tutorial
« on: April 28, 2016, 05:09:10 PM »



   Making custom fancy paint-jobs for your ships is always fun: Who wouldn't want to fly a fleet where all ships sport your blazon across their hull to bring fear into you enemies' mind and inspire your crew. It is however not as straightforward to make as it sounds, at least not if you want to make something that looks a bit more sophisticated than a color layer on top of the original sprite.
   Here I'll try to explain a technique using nested masks that allows more control and easier adjustments than the direct painting method, plus a couple of tricks that will help obtaining what I think are better results. Note that it won't be quite as good as a full hand-painted skin, but even if you want to go that route it could still be used as a basis to polish manually.

   This is a Photoshop tutorial, but the general idea is applicable to any software. I also assume you have a working knowledge of adjustment layers, fusion modes, masks, etc. If not, there are plenty of tutorials available to cover those parts.



Some basic theory


You can't escape this part although it will be pretty short for the purpose of this tutorial.


 
   The first important rule is that light has trouble to reach the bottom of cavities making them appear darker (duh!) but also less saturated. This is important because several tools that change the luminosity of an image tend to increase the saturation of dark colors.


 
   The second rule, that conflicts a bit with the first because it wouldn't be fun otherwise, is that paint ages less in cavities. Meaning that the coating get scratched and weathered faster on exposed surfaces, particularly on the edges of a plate or the top of a sphere. This is partially compensated by the fact that cavities tend to accumulate dirt.

And that's it for the bare-bone absolute minimum necessary for our purpose. (See? I said it would be short) If you want to read a more extensive and VERY well done tutorial about general painting, I can only direct you toward the excellent Niklas Jansson.


Preparation




 
   So lets get started. For this example, I'll make a XIVth battle-group Gryphon, because why the hell not! It's a good vanilla sprite that alternates busy areas with flat ones. That will come in handy to show the subtleties this technique offers.

   The gist of my technique is to use and abuse nested masks to be able to change the paint-job on a whim without having to redraw everything. Thus, we need to prepare them.


 
   And the first mask you'll need is the one that will keep unpainted parts clean. This is the only mask that usually needs to be painted by hand so there isn't many shortcuts to take here.

   I usually create a layer with a solid color clipped on top of the sprite, add a black mask, then paint it white to reveal the areas I need masked. Unlike painting directly this layer, this allows me to switch between black and white colors within the same brush tool by pressing a unique shortcut; instead of alternating between the brush and the eraser.


 
   The second required mask is the one that will isolate the most exposed surfaces of the ship. This will be the parts that will be the most painted, and the most saturated.

   It is actually very easy to make thanks to a little tool in Photoshop called Color Range, that you'll find it in the Select menu. What it does is that when you pick a color on the sprite, it will select all the pixels with a similar color.
   Unlike the Magic Wand however, it does a very good job at fading the selection the farther from the original color the pixels are. You can also change the range of the colors selected afterward instead of changing the wand tolerance and having to select your colors again.
   You can also accumulate different sample points with shift in one selection if the ship has more than one hull color.



It worked particularly well on the Gryphon given its uniform hull.


How much better is the Color Range compared to the Magic Wand? Well, that much:


Color Range
 


Magic Wand


 
   Depending on the sprite, it is sometimes more useful to isolate the cavities, or use both for different effects. Low tech ships for example have a lot of different hull colors. Those can be tricky to isolate while the space between plates are often closer in color and create better masks.


 
   Finally you'll need to create the nested folder hierarchy. This one works for all cases but depending on the effect you are looking for, some of those folders might not be needed, or the order changed.

   The "Ship Mask" is just a copy of the alpha of the base sprite. Remember to check if it has any holes or stray pixels as David's sprites are not always perfectly clean (insert death_stare gif here).

   The "Paintjob Mask" will be the mask you'll paint to create the actual paintjob, while everything inside will be applied to the whole sprite. You'll need one copy of these folders per color you want.



The Actual Paintjob


   Since the Gryphon shares the same hull style with the Eagle, I'll make a similar XIVth paint-job, thus let's start with the black and white parts:


(Click to enlarge)
 
   For simple darkening/brightening with little color change from the original hull, I try to not use anything but Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. The reason is that using a Color or Overlay layer completely crushes the color variations present on the sprite and usually destroy some of the contrast information. Additionally, adjustment layers are non-destructive and can be changed at any time.

   Here I started by de-saturating the entire hull (bottom yellow layer) and shifted the color toward something a tad orange. Then I darkened it via a Curve adjustment layer. In the cavities and exposed folders I did some minute adjustments to the colors and saturation to add more variety rather than having an uniform hull.

   The entire time I kept an eye on the Eagle, comparing the tints by boosting both ships' saturation and contrasts to ludicrous levels. You can also see that I used the (currently deactivated) paintjob mask to check both the painted and unpainted hull next to each other.

   The white part was done with the exact same setup, except instead of sticking to the same white as the Eagle, I decided to stay closer to the existing white part of the ship.


(Click to enlarge)
 
   Now the orange part of the Eagle skin is very saturated. As a matter of fact it the most saturated decently sized chunk of hull of any vanilla sprite. While shifting the color or de-saturating a sprite does not pose any issue, raising the saturation is another matter. All the small variations in hue will get exponentially more flagrant, creating a lot of unwanted color noise. This is the only case where I directly use a Color/Overlay layer, and even then I try to limit their impact.

   I started by shifting the color of the hull to the closest value and only slightly raised its saturation. I then color picked the exact tint of the Eagle and used that as layers in Color and Overlay fusion mode with low opacity. As mentioned before this is to keep some of the original color variations instead of getting a flat tint. This is also important in the case of the Overlay layer as it change the contrast quite a bit.

   Then I de-saturated the shadows and re-saturated the exposed surfaces. Again this is due to the way the Overlay works: it tend to saturate darker areas a lot more than bright ones, which is the opposite to what we want. I also added some slight color shifts between the two. This is the case where the cavity and exposed masks are the most useful.

   Note that I used an Overlay fusion mode for the orange layer to match the Eagle's specific aspect, but for my own paint-jobs I often prefer using the Soft-Light fusion mode that do not increase the saturation as much in the darker areas. More on that in the Tips and Tricks section to the bottom.

And now we have all three colors needed:

   



The Fun Part



(Click to enlarge)
    This is when the work done with the masks pays off. I started with the orange paint, drew the mask I wanted, and then using that as an exclusion selection, I painted the other two in seconds. I finished by adjusting the saturation of the engines nacelles that kept a bit of the over-saturation present on the original sprite.

   The trick now is that if I want to change the paintjob style, I can do that extremely fast given I only need to change a couple of masks that don't even require precise painting. Iterating on a style (or making something completely different) is now a breeze:






Polish Pass



 
   Despite trying to use only non destructive methods, the new sprite is usually cleaner than the original. Furthermore a XIVth variant is supposed to be an old ship that predates the collapse and saw countless battles since. This is time to apply the second part of the Theory bits: Adding dirt and scratches is usually done directly via a Normal layer on top of the paint-job layers, using a 1px round brush. Additionally each Paint-Job masks can be "dirtied" to leave unpainted spots, or areas where the new coat of paint was worn off and the original hull is starting to show. It doesn't need to be very visible, just a couple of scratches are enough to convey the idea.



Final Sprite and Techniques Comparison


   So here is the final result using nested masks. After some last minute fiddling the darker part contrast's has been brought closer to the original XIVth Eagle. Compared to it, it's not far off and the sprite has a nice life of its own (at least to me  ::) ); not bad for something that could be done in twenty minutes.

   

   But what are the benefits compared to more straightforward techniques.


Nested Masks

Direct Color

Flat Hue Shifts

   The Direct Color uses a couple of layers in Color fusion mode to shift the hull tint. While the hue matches exactly the one from the Eagle, the result is something that has no variations at all in the various color zones. In addition to that, given that each part is painted without mask, it is very difficult to alter if you want to try something slightly different. That also means it is quite handcrafted, and time consuming to do right.

   The Hue Shift uses some masks to shift the hull tint via Adjustment Layers rather than an opaque Color layer, that allows it to retain some original's color variations, especially on the white and dark areas. For the orange part however it had to fall back on Color+Overlay layers for a result almost uniform, like the Direct Color one. With some handiwork it could be improved to match the Layered Masks one, but would still be impractical to change.

   Again, the greatest strength of the Layered method is that while it takes a bit more time to put in place at first, then you can make an endless stream of different paint-jobs with very little effort:


Firecracker

Goffs

Ravager

Blue Angels



If you want to take a closer look at it, or have fun and make your own Gryphon paintjobs, here is the PSD with all three techniques.


Here is a timelapse video where I use that technique to make a bunch of Conquests paintjobs:

https://youtu.be/jjnGG8UDjeM


Tips and Tricks


- Refine Masks.

   I showed the not very well known Color Range tool, but there is another often overlooked tool in Photoshop that really shouldn't be: The Refine Mask in the Select menu. This allows you to combine smooth, blur, contrast, etc in a single tool rather than using several different ones one after another without any preview of the final result. The Smooth slider can be extremely handy against jagged lines when combined with a very small feather and contrast.




Color Range output
 


Refined mask



- 180 degrees color rotation.

    Sometimes you want to take a relatively highly saturated ship, and make a skin that is very far from it on the color wheel while maintaining the saturation. The issue is that while hue adjustment works really well for small-ish shifts, on larger offsets it changes the contrast and luminosity and sometimes even create artifacts (especially with jpeg compression, so not that much a problem on vanilla sprites but it can become one on ships kitbashed from another source). One solution would be to desaturate a bit the sprite, then create a Color layer to the hue you want, but as I showed before it completely kills all the color variations of the original sprite. Unless you are willing to hand-paint them back of course.

   But there is an easier solution to that: You can use a negative of the original sprite as a Color layer. Completely inverting the image will conserve all the small hue variations of the original sprite, but it won't change the relative contrast or create any artifact either since it is a simple math operation.



Original
 


Hue Shift
 


Negative layer
in Color mode
 


Negative Layer

Here is a telling example based on a jpeg image:



Negative layer in Color mode, versus 180 degree Hue Shift.

- Color Noise.

   That one is mostly useful for sprite painting but can come handy for skins too. A recurrent problem with sprites that tries to emulate vanilla is that they often are too clean. They don't have gritty rough metal look because they lack noise and high level details. The often used solution is to add a layer of noise on top, but that is too uniform at best, completely artificial at worse. What I do however is setting up my brush to apply a very small color noise directly. That way I have a lot of control over the amount, frequency and the location of the noise: Low tech ship? 1px brush with 2% noise, plus I change the brush color a lot. High tech smoother ship? 1-3px brush with 1% noise and pen pressure-dependent opacity.




- Soft Light.


   One of the most commonly used fusion modes to colorize a sprite despite the obvious Color mode is Overlay. But as I mentioned earlier, it tend to increase a lot the saturation of darker areas. There is however a mode that almost does the same job while not changing the saturation so much, and that is the Soft Light mode.



100% opacity
 
   To the left a blue 100% opacity blue layer in Overlay, to the right the same layer in Soft Light. The Enforcer sprite has been almost completely desaturated to better show the issue. As you can see the contrast changed quite a bit on the left side compared to the right side. The color also got applied very unevenly depending on the area's saturation and luminosity. The two sides having a very different effect it might be difficult to judge though...



70% Overlay
2x50% Soft Light
 
   But even when scaling back the Overlay's opacity and using two Soft Light layers, the former still affects disproportionately darker areas than lighter ones compared to the latter. While I insist a lot on keeping the source's color variations, this is not the case here: the Overlay create new variations along the luminosity or the sprite while still crushing the existing ones.


 
   And the last thing to keep in mind is that Overlay affect more the colors that are already closer to the layer applied. Notice how the left side lets more red pass through. This can become a serious issue when using that fusion mode: if in this instance you want to change the color of those red-ish parts the same way the Soft Light layer does, the rest of the sprite will be solid blue and much more contrasted due to the layer needing to be more opaque.

   So I'm not against using Overlay, but the Soft Light fusion mode often yields better results. And if you really need to use it, it should be done tastefully while knowing its caveats.


- Cutting back on Opacity.


   If you are making a Paintjob without something to compare it to, your last step should always be to try reducing the opacity of your layers. When working on something for a long time, your eyes get accustomed to it and you'll tend to increase the saturation and contrast little by little without realizing it. Or you can get the desire to "show the effect" more than it is necessary to communicate your idea. There is also often the matter of contrast between the sprite and your work environment that can be very different from the background it will be displayed on in-game, changing the perception of your work. This is why it is a good idea to rest your eyes a few minutes before making the final adjustments. You can also look at your sprite flipped horizontally (or vertically if it is symmetrical, or turned 90 degrees on its side, etc): our brain is very much lateralized and just doing that will give you a whole new look on your work and help spot mistakes. As a rule of thumb, I often end up with my layers anywhere between 90% and 50% opacity on the final output.

   For example, in the tutorial a large part of the difference between those two comes from cutting the opacity of some layers in the second one.

 

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