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Topics - nomadic_leader

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31
Suggestions / Show CR/PP timer as a bar in the combat overlay UI
« on: February 02, 2016, 08:20:23 AM »
Hi, the rules for when/where the peak performance timer and CR starts degrading are  complicated. This is regrettable, but showing CR/PPT as a bar on the UI overlay of ships would make things a lot easier.

Then instead of memorizing the rules, you could just look at the bars and get a feel for it.

For the player ship its way over on the left of the screen, but it's pretty important so it should be right on the ship along with CR/Flux. It'd also be good with enemy ships to have it right there to look at.

Somehow CR and PPT should be combined into one bar-- like PPT could be a different color that drains first or something. Depleting PPT bar should blink or have some visual cue. I know it isn't as simple as this mockup but the details can be worked. It's possible and desirable to represent these things more clearly.

Here's a mockup. Since CR is basically just a ships stamina or energy, I used the cel phone battery icon. It's something 99% of people would understand right away, unlike the term "Combat Readiness."


Caption: Mockup of a ship with a bar representing CR and peak performance timer.

32
I'm not even sure if this is a problem, and if it should even be in the suggestion thread, but since people will probably reply with suggestions, here it is.

So in campaign when you get close to another fleet you can see the entire makeup of the fleet, and when you get within 'hailing' distance and click on them, you can see their officers, combat readiness, etc of individual ships.

But then when you enter combat with them, they're all stealthed and you can only see what is within your ships' visibility bubbles.

Does that seem right to you? Or a bit strange. Is this a major conceptual problem? Another way in which combat and campaign don't really connect? Or just something that doesn't really make sense without convoluted techsplanations, but works gameplay wise?

Should there be a radical change like removal of stealth from combat; or  alternatively not being able to see the fleet makeup in campaign? Maybe battle would be more interesting if there were nowhere to hide on the battlefield. As it is, with avoid orders you can cheesily bypass the fog of war. If you keep stealth then I think orders should get cancelled when none of your ships have seen that ship for more than 30 seconds.

33
This might be an interesting way to work in lore gradually and reward exploration. Like so:

-The available missions in the main menu depend on which campaign character is currently loaded.

-These menu missions relate to important or interesting historical battles in the sector that are alluded to in planet descriptions, conversations with other characters, etc.

-Main menu missions contain a historical account or whatever in the description, and a little more elaborate scripting in the combat to simulate events besides just two groups of ships slugging it out.

-Some main menu missions get unlocked by character progression: either from levelup, getting a commission, reaching certain cash thresholds, buying a certian ship, or whatever. Just so that the lore gradually unfolds without smothering players all at once.

-Other main menu missions get unlocked by exploration. For example, when you land on Ogygia in Penelope's Star system, the decription says:
Quote
A major impact event has left much of an entire hemisphere of Ogygia a cold lava-sea sunken some tens of kilometers below the mean elevation. Little remains of human visitation except stripped foundations and, oddly, half of a rad-hot Onslaught-class battleship hull at the bottom of a fracture-canyon.
So landing on the planet and seeing that description should unlock a mission wherein you get to see how that rad-hot Onslaught ended up in the canyon.

Anyway this accomplishes two things:
-Rewards exploration
-Makes the menu missions convey lore when and how the campaign designer wants.
-gives players a little interlude from grinding to participate in big battles where they don't have to worry about losing ships.

34
Suggestions / phrase "Skeleton crew" is misused, remove it mabye?
« on: December 27, 2015, 03:22:25 PM »
The game is really challenging and presents the new player with many intimidating stats, so I suggest this as a way to increase up-front clarity.

This term "skeleton crew" in Starsector is not what it means in standard English. Usually a skeleton crew provides only the most basic functionality, i.e a condition that is less than the normal or optimal.1,2,3 For example, the crew needed just to pilot a new ship from the shipyard to the buyer without engaging in combat or anything fancy. Apologies if I'm mistaken here.

So to get the ship's full functionality, you'd have to add more crew.

But in starsector skeleton crew is the ship's full functionality, and adding more crew, up to the maximum crew, provides no increase in functionality.

As a result, the term in-game conveys misapprehension to the new player, because it alters the meaning of an established phrase. I suggest replacing the stat "Skeleton crew required" with "Base Complement" or something like that.

Also, since additional crew provide no benefit, it might be wise to rename the stat "Maximum crew" to "Passenger capacity" and split up the two numbers.

Sources:
1. My memory
2. Survey of online dictionaries and wikipedia
3.Google survey of the phrase's use on public domain sources from gutenberg.org; mostly histories of specific ships.


35
General Discussion / most fun was exploring the abandoned systems
« on: December 22, 2015, 09:05:09 AM »
seriously even though I didn't see a single fleet in the Penelope's Star system, it was fun exploring it. It was interesting to 'unlock' the history of the system piecemeal by going from planet to planet, and I felt like I achieved something when I found that wreck of a "rad-hot" Onslaught at the bottom of a canyon.

The Mexican system was good too (almost uninhabited). That reference to the iraq war/iran nuclear deal also amused me, though I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out what, if any, political point was being made.

Next update hoping for references to Thucydides' Melian Dialogue on a barren pock-marked moon.

36
Suggestions / Sprite critique. Erase weapons mounts!
« on: December 21, 2015, 09:23:17 AM »
Look at this tweet, I'm glad they're thinking about this.
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/678681755067502592

Summary:
-Sprites should continue to be streamlined and given more visual 'pop'
-Weapons mounts are ugly, hand remove them from most sprites.
-Draw weapons mounts over sprites in the refit dialog
-Make cockpits much more visible, possible via glow maps.
-Consider "blink maps" to give sprites pulsing nacelles, cargo ship style blinking lights, or red/green port/starboard lights.


Intro to the problem:
The planet, terrain, and incidental graphics in Starsector are really quite good, but honestly some of the sprites don't do it for me.Efforts to remove greebles have paid off and ships like the eagle and the enforcer (formerly a sort of volumeless space raspberry) now look like they have volume at least. Even if it's realistic for a ship to be just a weird jumble of junk, gameplay wise if a ship is to be more effective than just having a triangle with the word "SHIP" underneath it, the sprite has to convey some kind of information about the ship to the player such as: What the ships role is, how big it is (and therfore more about the role),  what it's overall strengths and weaknesses are, etc. Also they should look cool.

Things that make a sprite effective:
1.  Indicators of scale like a cockpit
2.  Indicators of function, ship role, or general characteristic
3. An overall  form that isn't totally overwhelmed by greebles and weapons mounts. This makes them look cool.

Some good sprites.
Here are my favorite sprites from the game, with a numbers for which of the above points they win on.
Spoiler

1 (cockpit), 3 (clear wedge-like form)


1 (runways), 2 (runways), 3 (nice curves)


1 (Cockpit), 2 (Wedge shape and many engines indicates role as zippy harrasser ship) 3 (Despite small size, weapon mounts don't obstruct shape much. Love this one)


1 (windows, shuttlebay on starliner)
2(windows!, cruise ship style colors!)
but they fail 3, since the greebles on the sides for weapons mounts should be better integrated into the composition.
Still love these though.


2 (fuel bubbles.)


2. (Looks like what it is)


2/3 (looks sleek and fragile, is sleek and fragile)


1 (Visible cockpit, but should be brighter)
2/3 (Looks sturdy and tough, is sturdy and tough)
[close]

Examples of some sprites that don't quite work:
Number indicates which of the three points it fails on
Spoiler


1,2,3 (Much improved since last version, but its shape/overall form indicates nothing about its role, nothing indicates scale, and the mounts/greebles still too obstructive. There are transperant squares in the middle... what are they supposed to be?)


3. This is supposed to be hightech, but all the weapons mounts and greebling stand out and make it look like a lumpy freighter with a runway attached)


1 (can't tell if there is any cockpit)
3 (Looks like the borg assimilated a chocolate chip cookie because of those ugly empty mount graphics.)
2( Looks like a fat freighter.)


1,2 (What is this supposed to be? a transport has so many opportunities for indicating scale/function with windows, but this just looks like a crude space phallus... and it isn't since it's just a weak transport)


1 (cockpit not clearly visible) 3 (looks like deformed fetus from a jar due to large hardpoint, which distracts from engines and millennium falcon style setup)


1. (The cockpit has too many windows so it actually looks like a big ship) 2 (role is not really clear, could be a warship)


2. (The flight deck doesn't stand out at all due to ships coloring)
3. (there is no shape or composition to this ship.its just random greebles. Looks like something starving refugees from Maxios would make in a junkyard to fly into the EU)


1. (Nothing to indicate scale)
2. (nothing recognizable on this, except I guess a ton of weapons mounts. Has a funny little white spot in the middle that looks like a little man wearing a gasmask, which confuses things.
3 (Much improved since last version but still that bit of confusing greebling)


1/2/3 (This is supposed to be a high tech ship but its all greebles, has a boring shape, nothing recognizable on it, and just looks like the inside of my 1996 Inkjet printer)


Basically almost all fighters fail to look like anything to me. They have too many greebles which doesn't work on such small sprites. None of them really indicate anything about their role except the wasp. The dagger has the big red missile sprite, but they just look like little Rudolphs.
[close]

TAKEAWAYS FROM ALL THIS

For point 1 indicating scale:
The obvious thing is to make cockpit glows stand out more, either by just making the pixels bighter and more prominent, or using glowmaps. Other than sprite size, there isn't much which can indicate scale except wings or engines, except flight decks. These also should 'pop' out more either from glow maps or just brighter coloring.

Another idea is animated sprites with little sequences of blinking runway lights on flight decks to make them more stand out more.


Point two ship role:
Cockpits are important. Fighter type bubbles: combat ships, etc. square windows, shuttles, etc.

Play to peoples' connotations by using sharp edges and bold shapes for warships, and blockier/boxier/uglier stuff for freighters.

Blink/light maps for sprites: White or red/green lights flashing in sequence could indicate role and also help indicate scale. small white lights flashing in a pattern like "blinkblinkblink--long pause-blinkblinkblink" could make a ship seem like a big ponderous freighter. Whereas just a simple red and green light on port and starboard of a ship might indicate its a smaller vessel like a hound. Gradually pulsing lights going from high to low intensity on engine nacelles could also indicate a high tech ship or something.

Point 3, overall composition:
Keep getting rid of greebles in favor of volumetric shapes. REMOVE THE WEAPONS MOUNTS.  There is no reason to see them when they aren't bearing a weapon. Even sprites that kind of work now are much improved by this. See a mockup of a tempest:


Left: mockup without weapons mounts. Right: with weapons mounts
The left one really shows off the cool alien curves of the tempest a lot better.

Why do we need to see empty weapons mounts really? It seems a bit pedantic.
The codex graphics are too small and blurry to see mounts on many sprites, so people usually look down and read the specs as it is. What you want is an overall first impression of the ship. Plus many loadouts don't utilize all the mounts in a ship so it would be nice if the empty ones weren't part of the sprites.

The only place you'd really need them is in the refit dialog. So you could either just draw mount socket graphics (same mount sprites used by all ships) over the ship sprites in the refit dialog, or you could just forget the mount sockets and have refit dialog draw overlay colored circles indicating the positions/size of mounts on the intact hulls. Could activate this in the codex also with a hotkey or something, if you ever plan to make the codex sprites non blurry/interlaced.

FIGHTERS
Why do i dislike so many fighter sprites? They just don't look like anything to me. Just pixels. The amount of pixels you have to work with is so small, that there is really no room for greebles and fancy stuff. You need a cockpit that pops out, and a very recognizable, primitive, geometric shape. That's all you have room for, at max zoom they get pixellated anyway. So stick to very simple shapes that somehow indicate their role. Probably by playing to people's connotation with modern fightercraft is the way to go. 

37
Suggestions / Officers: Swap reduces CR; renaming; unassigning yourself
« on: December 15, 2015, 05:12:30 PM »
1. Swapping officers should reduce CR like swapping hullmods. If you hunt around, you can buy 10 different officers with level 10 in only 1 skill, and then just swap them depending on what you need right before a fight, as though you had 1 really powerful officer you'd lovingly leveled up, instead of 10 disposable cheap ones. This feels sleazy and unrealistic. Get a job in an office and swap one department's bosses once a week and see how that department does.

2. Let us rename our officers. After our friends, enemies, relatives. that way when they screw up or die it will be amusing. Why not have this feature?

3. I want to un-assign myself from a ship command. I am a fleet officer all my skills are in navigation etc. I want to put my officers in the fight instead of me. Fine with me if my char doesn't get XP from that fight. I get XP from trading etc.

Also why don't we have to pay them salaries or shares of the salvage or anything?

38
Suggestions / CR hits for campaign abilities/terrain: often meaningless
« on: December 11, 2015, 12:12:33 PM »
I can emergency burn myself down to zero CR as much as I want, and bathe in solar coronas as long as I want, with absolutely zero consequence except the loss of fuel from burning.

Oh how, you ask?

I simply suspend repairs on all my ships. I'm playing a smuggler, so I always avoid combat. So I just don't need CR most of the time. I'm not interested in fighting. Combat isn't too hard to avoid unless it's late at night and I glaze over, or if I enter hyperspace where things can get a bit dicey in some places. So my CR goes to zero, but my supplies don't zero out, so I never suffer any malfunctions/losses from staying in a corona for weeks on end, capering about like a firefly.

Does that seem right to you?

CR is getting a bit grey haired in this new age of more campaign centric gameplay as it tries to do triple duty as both combat exploit preventer, stamina level, and campaign-thing-balancer.

I think it may need to be rebranded/retooled slightly as some kind of more universal "energy level" or "reactor battery" type stat.

39
Suggestions / Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« on: December 10, 2015, 03:02:41 PM »
Pirates should take your stuff until you've really vexed them, and you should be able to take money from other people. I've been thinking about this more, because the rep hit you get from fleeing pirates irks me. If somebody is so angry they chase you down and kill you, why in heavens would they care whether you fight or try to run? As a pirate playtester I tell you this is truly vexing.

Also being punished with a rep hit for something done to you rather than something you did is a gameplay problem that causes various difficulties. For example see this post.

We already have similar mechanics with the patrol captains and Luddic path, so why not pirates. It'll make campaign even richer, and give a couple chances to avoid death for newbies.

Pirates want money. It makes no sense to kill you and get 10 tonnes of salvage rather than 40 tonnes of intact cargo. Every pirate who catches you should first demand value from you. The value depends on the ratio of your respective fleet strengths.

They demand one of the following:
-Some/all of your cargo
-A bunch of cash (if you don't have enough cargo, of if they haven't enough cargo space)
-One of your ships (if you are trying to be sneaky by not having cash or cargo)
-Your ship, sorry (if you have only one ship and no cargo/cash)

So they catch you and tell you what they want. Then you have some options:

a) Comply and give them whatever.
This results in no negative rep. You get positive rep with the pirate captain. Maybe even +1 rep with pirate faction, but not beyond inhospitable? (not sure about this though). i.e. if you're  good dupe and regularly pay out like you're told, they accept you a little bit. You come to arrangements.

d) Haggle
Try to bargain them down. This may or may not work depending on your relative fleet strengths and the personality types of the pirate officers.

if it doesn't work you can:

b) Run (or entering combat and retreating)
This results in the -2 rep with pirates. But you get negative rep with the pirate captain so that he'll kill you next time he can catch you.

c)Fight
This gives you like only -10 with the pirates since they're so loose knit, / modified by your transponder status. But that particular captain will become your sworn enemy (if you both survive the combat. if you die and go into the escape pod he won't care).

If you kill a lot of pirates and become vengeful, your name is known among them and they just try to kill you.

You taking stuff:

On the flipside, whenever the player catches a pirate fleet they should be able to demand money from them. Or from the fleet of any faction they aren't favorable with. The rep hit for doing this is adjusted by your transponder status, however its more than smuggling, but less than fighting/killing.

Once you get down to vengeful status though, everyone assumes it is no quarters given and people don't even trust you enough to bargain with you, and its just fight or flight.

40
General Discussion / Does shielded cargo holds do anything in .71?
« on: December 09, 2015, 08:26:11 PM »
I mean there are no toll shakedowns. Does it do anything at all? Does it have any effect on smuggling and trading on the blackmarket? The game gives no indication of this whatsoever.

41
Suggestions / If stationary in terrain you should orbit with terrain
« on: December 07, 2015, 07:19:50 PM »
Another suggestion from my attempt to be a small time smuggler in RC5.

I'm trying to avoid patrols to sneak into a planet with transponder off. There are dust rings near the planet that only reduce my profile when I'm stationary. However the ring is around a planet so as the planet orbits the sun, the ring moves and for whatever reason, in defiance of all orbital mechanics. I don't move with it. So after like 1 second I'm exposed again, and my profile jumps up again and the patrols catch me.

I think if you're stationary and you're close enough to any ring to have it effect you or if you're close enough to any planet to land on it, you should just move with the planet or ring but still be considered stationary.

Maybe this leads to impossible physics contradictions of being stationary but not stationary?

42
Suggestions / turn off rep loss for fleeing/disengaging attackers
« on: December 07, 2015, 06:20:11 PM »
Please, I think people have complained about this for about a year.  Does anyone like it? What is the rationale behind this?

Additional punishment for the player for something done to them rather than something they do just seems frustrating and perverse.

Here the only choice is flee and lose 2 rep, or fight and lose like 50 rep. Honestly it is probably the most irritating thing in the game for people trying to build up rep with pirates or whomever.

43
Suggestions / no low quantity cargo missions; no XP (RC5)
« on: December 07, 2015, 06:07:25 PM »
There are hardly any small cargo missions in RC5. In RC2 (or whatever it was). It seems like 1 out of 20 maybe.

They all seem to be for 100, 200, 2,000 etc.

With the smuggler start hound this is useless.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Also you still don't  get any XP for these missions.


44
Suggestions / officers should die in iron mode
« on: December 05, 2015, 11:42:57 AM »
This is what the people who play iron mode are here for. RPing in the immersion sense of the word. If you don't like it don't play iron mode.

-If their ship gets destroyed (definitely)
-If their ship gets disabled (maybe, depending on the recovery of disabled ships skill and crew casualty skill stuff)
-Also if low CR, solar flare, etc causes you to lose the ship in campaign layer.

Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of super-powered officers. Having them die sometimes forces you to switch them up, try new personality/skill combos, and keep things dynamic.

Also it creates good 'stories' and drama when you have some beloved loyal officer die heroically in a big battle; or  tragically in a  meaningless skirmish where everything should have gone smoothly.

If you assign an officer to a ship and the ship blows up, you expect that officer to be dead. I sure do love starsector but it's the only game* where there are so many counter-intuitive implementations for the sake of balance or to appease plaintiff minmaxers. Cf. the  convoluted explanation for fighters that I still can't fit into any but the flimsiest in-world logic.



*probably not really but you get the idea

45
If I select any one frigate or destroyer, or if I select a mismatched group of ship types, and then I right click on a space on the map, instead of setting up a rally task force for those specific ships, it takes EVERY ship in my fleet that doesn't have another assignment and has them "defend" at that waypoint. If i select say one bomber, and click somewhere on the map it does a rally strike force for ALL the bombers I have.
 
I hope this is just a bug, it's super confusing.

Also you can set waypoints off the limits of the map which is a bit counterproductive.

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