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31

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.87 (27/09/2017)

« on: September 26, 2017, 02:52:30 PM »

Eh, in my opinion, the Wolf and Tempest are much better. They have both very strong shield (high shield-damage-to-flux conversion ratios), and on top of that can engage at very long ranges with their medium and missile mounts to stay out of fire. Both of these lets them survive on the battlefield far better than the Versant... especially considering the Versant's 700 firing range, by the way, almost always leaves it in the instant-kill radius of cruiser explosions.

The Versant dies too quickly for its high cost (27000 base price, which is a about a cheaper destroyer or 2-3 standard frigates) and how hard it is to find in shops (meaning you can't replace them if lost). It's not really worth using as a fleet frigate given cheaper and more common frigates can endure battle a lot better. Even a few destroyers with even better attack and defense can be employed for what the Versant costs.

Even if we only look at quality and ignore the price/quantity arguments it doesn't do well. The Tempest, by comparison, at 36000 credits has double the shield-damage-to-flux conversion ratio, has 85% the speed of the Versant does (when the Versant is in speed form), and a drone fighter bay with a high quality drone on top of that. So the Versant doesn't stand out in either quality or quantity. And that's assuming you're using vanilla balance, and not playing with other mods which introduce even better frigates.

If I hadn't modded up its stats in my own game, I would never use it except for catching fleeing ships after combat. It's too expensive, too rare, and too fragile to use in real battle, in my opinion. But at the end of the day, this is your mod, so if you think the Versant is perfectly fine as it is, then it's ultimately your call to make.

32

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.87 (27/09/2017)

« on: September 26, 2017, 01:17:11 AM »

Wait, you don't think the Versant is elite enough already? ? ? ? ? ? ?

In my opinion, no. All it has to make it exceptional is damage output. But its survivability is no better than many other existing frigates.

- Its lack of hardpoints and ordnance points prevent it from sniping beyond typical weapon ranges.
- It can't phase cloak.
- It can't hit-and-run very well with its transforming ability due to the time delay (which strips off your shields immediately, but still makes you wait a second before the speed bonus kicks in fully), along with the maneuvering penalty the transformation gives you.
- It shields are pretty bad due to the fact its main weapons (Harvest x2) will fill its flux capacitors in just a few seconds by themselves... not even taking into account additional flux from firing secondary weapons or taking shield damage. This makes it very easy to overload your ship unexpectedly in a split second when your shields take an unexpected hit.
- Compounding the shield issue is the fact its main weapons are locked into the ship (meaning you can't boost your shield performance by changing over to more flux-efficient weapons), and it's unremarkable shield-damage-to-flux conversion ratio of 1.
- The final nail in the coffin is it low ordnance capacity. You lose about a third to flux vents, another third or so for secondary weapons, leaving almost nothing left for shield hardening/armor/speed hullmods to increase survivability.

It would be a fantastic elite frigate if it addressed one of these issues to increase its survivability: if it could swap out its guns so it could engage at longer ranges, or had a more durable shield tank, or if its transformation ability was near instant, or if it could phase cloak. But as it is right now, it's only major selling point in my opinion is its sheer damage output (which, by the way, can be matched by many other frigates, particularly those with medium mounts). So it's not more elite than the Tempest or Wolf, in my opinion. Though given how much love you put into the design, it should be far better -- though again, that's just my opinion.

33

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Re: Game crashes early or freezes lategame

« on: September 25, 2017, 11:54:21 PM »

Well, I can't speak for him, but after two days of testing... editing out that aforementioned section of the code has not only appeared to eliminate ALL freezes my game was experiencing, but also drastically reduced memory/non-heap footprint increases over time (e.g., memory leaks). Since many players have used DynaSector, it should be a more widespread issue if it was DynaSector alone. I think instead it may be player settings, hardware, or an unexpected interaction with other mods that may be causing DynaSector's bounty system to suck up memory like a hoover.

Unfortunately, I didn't keep my saves since I didn't see a point in keeping broken ones around at the time.

34

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.87 (27/09/2017)

« on: September 25, 2017, 03:13:57 PM »

Forgot to add a possible bug: Is it me, or is the Versant's "Heavy ILIS" not working on autofire? I've never seen it fire on its own, except maybe for a very short window after the ship overloads and it returns controls to you. But otherwise it never fires. Makes the thing easy pickings for fighters, unless you're willing to give your only two mounts up for PD instead of missiles.

EDIT: The Heavy ILIS seems to only respond to missiles, and ignores fighters.

Also, could you consider rotating the two small hardpoints to both point forward by default? It's a bit of a pain having to wait 1-2 seconds before firing with them while you wait for them to both rotate to face forward. Not all that good for what is supposed to be a high-speed combat ship... and it's probably the reason most frigates have turrets pointing forward by default.

35

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.87 (27/09/2017)

« on: September 25, 2017, 11:08:11 AM »

First off, I have to say I love the mod. And the Versant is such a cool ship! I love flying it.

But I'd like to offer a suggestion. By chance could you consider making some elite versions of the Versant? While it is a very nice ship, its feels like its locked into an anti-frigate role due to its lack of medium mounts and outfit space, which in turn means it doesn't remain relevant as long as ships like the Tempest or Wolf (which you can keep flying as you move up into fighting destroyed and even cruiser-based fleets). While the Versant can be used in other roles... typically other ships can do it better. As a result I found myself modding your mod, to increase the Versant's stats so I could keep flying it without ditching it for better or bigger ships.

So I'd love to see a much stronger elite variant (with an appropriate price tag, for balancing purposes) that myself and others could keep flying it much later in the game. Or possibly specialized variants like the Wanzers LPCs get (artillery, close combat, heavy, etc). Hell, even adding more ordnance points could go a long way to increase the Versant's longevity (by allowing a wider array of hullmods) -- though adding custom hullmods wouldn't be that bad of an idea either. But I'm getting ahead of myself now. Anyways, keep up the good work!

36

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] DynaSector 1.3.2

« on: September 25, 2017, 02:15:17 AM »

DynaSector doesn't do anything with StarSystemActivityTracker, since those are from the system bounties that pop up every now and then.  All DynaSector replaces is named bounties.

Hmm... well, regardless, I was having game freezes (which increased in frequency the longer a campaign had been running, in in-game time). By the 2nd or 3rd in-game year the freezes were occurring every 15-30 minutes.

They stopped completely when I went into "\DynaSector\data\campaign\events.json" and edited out (deleted) the following section:

Code

    "person_bounty": {
        "probabilityMult": 1,
        "script": "data.scripts.campaign.events.DS_PersonBountyEvent"
    }

So I suspect something in the referenced script is causing the issue. There are others in the mod help forum reporting a similar freeze issue while running DynaSector (among other mods), so it's not an isolated incident. But I don't pretend to know the mod's code well enough to what specifically is causing the problem... all I know is that I went from game freezes every 15-30 minutes to absolutely no freezes even after playing several hours thanks to removing that section of code.

37

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Re: Game crashes early or freezes lategame

« on: September 24, 2017, 06:18:15 PM »

I think I may have figured out the problem. Possibly. At least, I haven't suffered a freeze in several hours, where before I could barely manage 30 mins. So it could just be a lucky streak... but I think it actually did help.

In Starsector/mods/DynaSector/data/campaign/events.json, there are two sections. One concerning "faction hostility" and one concerning "bounties". I just deleted the one about bounties.

Try it out and let me know if it works for you.

38

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] DynaSector 1.3.2

« on: September 24, 2017, 01:25:24 PM »

Is there a way to reduce the number of these events the game runs?

Code

INFO  com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.shared.StarSystemActivityTracker  - Increasing system bounty probability for ...

I've been running into a lot more hanging/freezing games if a campaign has been running for so long. And in the game log, 90% of the last 50 entries before a game freeze are all bounty probability calculations... so I suspect they are the cause of my game freezes.

I know DynaSector has a setting for limiting the number of bounties active (default: 6), but I can't find any options for reducing probability calculations for bounties.

39

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Re: Game crashes early or freezes lategame

« on: September 24, 2017, 01:13:34 PM »

[Having Problems]

The mods that I've always had in common with your lineup are: Dynasector, BRDY, Interstellar Imperium, LazyLib, Nexerelin, Shadowyards, Version Checker, and GraphicsLib.

I've been having the same issue as you concerning the late game. At a campaign's start I can go multiple hours without a freeze. Later on, I can barely manage 30 mins. From my testing the cause has been campaign-map related, and that it tends to occur at certain intervals rather than just randomly at any time (for example, one save I had a 75% chance of crashing in the next minute... but after that, absolutely no crashes for the next 10-20 minutes past that one minute).

The starsector log always ended with around 50 "updating bounty probability" events after the game froze, which has led me to conclude it's too many bounties probabilities being processed at once. (I don't know if other events are calculations occur at the same time as these bounty update events, so I can't say if it's the bounty probabilities themselves or another type of event that gets calculated at the same time).

I suspect -- and this is purely speculation -- if you could figure out a way to greatly reduce the number of "updating bounty probability" events in the universe at once, it may solve the problem. Unfortunately, the DynaSector only has an option for reducing the number of active bounties (default: 6), and not the maximum number of bounty probability calculations.

40

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Nexerelin v0.8.2c "Pillage, then Burn" (hotfix2 2017-09-17)

« on: September 21, 2017, 07:48:47 PM »

Sounds like you are using the Thar Be Dragons mod from Xenoargh. I (and many others) would suggest that you avoid his mods due to how they don't interact well with other mods and or are buggy.

Ooooh, so that's what it was. I do indeed have it installed. Thanks for the help.

41

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Nexerelin v0.8.2c "Pillage, then Burn" (hotfix2 2017-09-17)

« on: September 21, 2017, 04:46:32 PM »

I'm not that experienced in the mod, so please correct me if this is an issue from vanilla Starsector or DynaSector rather than Nexerelin.

Anyway, when traveling through nebulae, sometimes a fleet of several huge fleets spawns in a circle around your current location. However, the spawn rate seems extremely high given the number of ships and time spent in a nebulae. In one instance, after loitering around a nebula trying to salvage wrecks for a number of days, upwards of 100+ fleets had spawned and were all duking it out with one another.

This all seems a bit detrimental to good gameplay since:
- Several fleets spawn at once, meaning a battle is usually a guaranteed game over rather than any semblance of a realistic challenge
- When fleets from warring factions appear, they often engage one another. Between spawning tons of derelicts and the massive battles themselves, I can only imagine it puts a lot of stress on the game engine's stability
- These spawns don't seem to have any decent cap. Loitering in one location can spawn literally hundreds of ships.

If this isn't a bug, is there some sort of mod setting I can modify to prevent these super-fleet spawns?

42

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.3.0 (updated June 15, 2017)

« on: September 20, 2017, 11:00:48 AM »

I thought the targeting/autofire issue might be related to the shield since there are hints the game considers them two independent entities (i.e., when you retreat, your shield gets its own retreat message as if it were a ship). So I thought whatever AI controlled the automatic shield might also be controlling the autofire, and subsequently messing it up.

After some testing, I figured out the culprit: the AI overhaul mod. Remove it, the autofire works fine now. So take note in case any future users of your mod encounter a similar issue.

P.S., love your mod. Keep up the good work.

43

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.3.0 (updated June 15, 2017)

« on: September 19, 2017, 12:31:24 PM »

I've started trying out the ships from this mod and have encountered something odd.

The Lance Cruiser seems to have twin shielding: one AI-controlled fixed shield, which raises and vents on its own (separate from a ship-wide vent), and a regular omni-shield controllable by the player).

Adding onto this odd behaviour is the fact that auto-fire does not seem to function on the ship. Hardpoint mounts, front turrets, rear turrets, small, large, etc. Even with auto-fire enabled for that weapon group.

Do these sound like working-as-designed and/or known issues? Just wondering if it's the mod itself or a possible (known) mod conflict causing this stuff.

44

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] ICE Faction

« on: November 21, 2014, 07:37:49 PM »

In all fairness, most vanilla factions have the ability to avoid reputation loss due to trading by simply choosing a non-disputed sector. (And rightly so, since the reputation loss for trading with an enemy faction is something like 300% of what you actually gain by trading with the faction.)

But the only Luddite world is confined to a single system, and it is the only major food exporting system. So it's not really very parallel to the other vanilla factions in that: 1) You lose the only major source of food, and therefore forgo all future food shortage trade routes. 2) Losing rep is mandatory, and cannot be avoided by trading in other Luddite systems (there are none).

Meanwhile, players who prefer combat instead of trade still get the same perks of universal reputation gain with all factions in the system for killing pirates.

Of course, if the author feels this is acceptable, then so be it. But I just thought I'd point out that it skews the game balance much more against trader players than combat players.

45

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] ICE Faction

« on: November 21, 2014, 03:04:37 PM »

A mod is forcing you to make actual meaningful decisions??!?! The horror!

Except it only penalizes trader-type players. Combat players can blast up pirates, etc. and raise reputation with both at once, so don't have to make that choice.