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76

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.5

« on: November 12, 2014, 06:45:04 PM »

Are you sure it stays at 11 even if you buy a bunch? (so 100x of them would be 1100 credits)

Yes, they did, or at least damn near it (never increasing above 1 or 2 credits per unit past 11).

Unrelated, but I've noticed a huge surplus of goods on the new add-on sectors. For example, the average cost of supply (in Citadel and Anar) is less than half it is on Corvis (normally the main vanilla Starsector supply producer). Similarly, the cost fuel there is less than half what it is in Askonia (normally the main vanilla fuel producer). Many other items also suffer from this issue.

These star systems usually have stockpiles of goods larger than the vanilla sectors usually have (e.g., with supplies, sometimes 2 or 3 times what Corvis has). I'm not sure what's causing it... maybe it's an overproduction problem, particularly given they have higher populations than the vanilla worlds (10^8, instead of 10^7 or 10^6). Or maybe it's their technologically superior ships which always win battles and prevent pirate fleets from disrupting trade (thus leading to higher average stability and higher production?) This is just speculation on my part.

This all could be an anomaly though since I usually prefer to trade in the vanilla systems more than the new faction ones since I'm familiar with them. Can anyone else confirm pricing anomalies in these new systems?

77

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.5

« on: November 12, 2014, 01:56:04 AM »

How much fuel are they selling? Their stocks should be pretty low if the price is that low.

Standard amount. 100 black market, plus a bit on the normal market (I think 5-30 units usually?) All at 11 credits each.

78

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.5

« on: November 11, 2014, 07:28:05 PM »

Minor bug: It seems some of the very minor colonies (barren-type worlds with nil population or production, like Maxos or Asharu) will sell fuel for rock bottom prices -- 11 credits each. Whereas "real" fuel manufacturing worlds like Sinadra never sell lower than ~35 credits.

79

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.5

« on: November 11, 2014, 04:06:41 PM »

Finally, the Templar patch! I was waiting all day for this. Huzzah! Keep up the great work.

80

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.4

« on: November 11, 2014, 08:38:56 AM »

Can't wait! When are you expecting to release it? This afternoon, evening, or tomorrow?

Also, one other minor balancing issue: the Augmented Engines +100% fuel consumption is absolutely brutal when added on top of the 200% default fuel consumption, to the point I would never even consider using it (at least, not for a measly +1 burn rate). Also makes it practically impossible to use on large ships. You might need to tweak the numbers with particular hullmod.

81

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.4

« on: November 11, 2014, 05:51:27 AM »

Also, any chance you could boost the minimum reserve fuel on the black market next patch? Maybe from 50 to 200 since you've quadrupled basic fuel consumption, thus keeping the same parity as before.

I'm finding myself getting trapped in trade hub systems I visit frequently since I've consumed all the fuel, both on the normal markets and black markets. I have to edit save games just so I can escape.  

82

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.4

« on: November 11, 2014, 05:22:31 AM »

Added Fuel Refinery market condition; placed on various stations to make fuel more plentiful

Do we have to start a new game for this change to apply? I only ask since don't know if basic universe info is checked in the core game files or if each individual save file has its own copy.

83

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.3

« on: November 10, 2014, 11:58:10 AM »

That's typically symptomatic of insufficient memory - the game is very memory hungry, especially when loading saves.  You'll want to swap over to 64 bit java (assuming you're running a 64 bit OS) and increase the amount of RAM Starsector is allowed to use.

See here for instructions on how to adjust the memory / java version.  (On windows.  On a mac, you'll want to right-click, select "show package contents", and then do the relevant edits in the .sh file under Contents/MacOS.  On linux... um... it should be around somewhere?)

I typically run with 1.5G ("-Xms1536m -Xmx1536m"), but depending on how much actual RAM you've got, you might want to go even higher than that.

By Jove, you've fixed it. 
Thanks for a prompt solution, even if I did ask it on the wrong thread.

84

Mods / Re: [0.65.1a] Starsector+ Vanilla Enhancement Mod 2.0.3

« on: November 10, 2014, 11:34:22 AM »

I'm a bit of a newbie to Starsector, let alone to this mod (which I started playing an hour ago), so sorry in advance is this has already been asked before:

I'm unable to load any save games, due extremely slow load times that causes the game to give up and just dump an error log instead of trying to finish loading. This is even on brand new game starts, wherein I've only been playing a few minutes. I'm using all the currently-compatible mods (Citadel, Mayorate, Shadowyards) and the latest version of the Starsector+, game client, and two library files.

Anyone know what might cause this issue?

85

General Discussion / Re: Game is way too complex

« on: November 10, 2014, 04:39:33 AM »

Right, but its context, and thus what it does ultimately mean, can only be gauged with a lot of experience.

As someone who picked up the game less than a week ago, I found the tutorial to cover the basics of combat pretty well. Although its worth noting the tutorial doesn't cover non-combat gameplay very well -- but then again, non-combat tutorials tend to be painstakingly slow-paced, so it's something many of us would prefer to read about from the manual or in-game tooltips as needed.

But all in all, the learning curve for this game was MUCH more gentle than I had come to expect from most space sims. But that's just my anecdotal experience, and may differ for other players.

86

General Discussion / Re: All the money in the world and nothing to spend it on

« on: November 09, 2014, 09:24:43 PM »

I think part of the problem is the game's lack of scaling. In most space sims, working towards bigger and badder ships is usually a chore that takes time, but is ultimately very rewarding.

In Starsector, the starting ship (Wolf) can potentially take down destroyers, maybe even cruisers, so you don't really need to burn money on new ships. Particularly since all the combat missions are assassination-style kill-the-badguy, which generally favours small, fast ships any ways. There's not much reason or necessity to buy a bigger, badder ship to take on harder missions. Particularly given the insane piloting bonuses you can unlock from skills (+25% damage, +50% venting, +50% speed, etc) which lets you keep the same starting ship until you start going up against capitals.

And that's another thing. Most games usually have modifications, upgrades, or secondary equipment you can buy for your ship. But in Starsector all your bonuses come from level unlocks, so you don't need to spend money on upgrades either.

Finally, money is very easy to earn. A $15k frigate can takedown bounties upwards of $50k. Likewise, during trade route disruption or food shortage, a freighter can usually pay for itself in a measly one or two trade runs.

So everyone and their mother can easily amass a massive fortune with nothing really to spend it on. Hopefully, we'll at least have base building or industry to sink money into somewhere down the line (but given the rate of development, it's probably at least a year or more away).

87

Suggestions / Faction Relations Hits & Trading

« on: November 09, 2014, 04:41:12 PM »

In my opinion, I think there should be a more restrictive hard cap on minimum and maximum reputation hits. The particular event that brought this about was after getting in good with the Independent faction by saving multiple colonies from starvation, I bought some large weapons on the black market, which after an investigation tanked my standing by -85 to make it inhospitable. In other words, I had saved millions of the faction's citizens, but one illegal trading scandal had made them completely forget about it. 

I've noticed similarly disproportionate reputation hits from being found guilty during food shortage investigation events, even when I had not caused the shortage (or alternatively, did so accidentally by buying all the food on one planet to feed a starving planet elsewhere in the same system).

On the other side of the coin, there seems to be a hard cap for positive reputation for trading -- even when relieving a starving population -- at about 50 points. It strikes me as a bit odd that killing a faction's Most Wanted Criminal can eventually raise you to 100 points, but saving millions of lives stops generating goodwill at 50 points.

So I would make a few suggestions:
- Add a hard cap on the reputation hit for investigation blame events. It doesn't seem consistent if buying 2 illegal weapons nets you a slap-on-the-wrist, but buying 10 illegal weapons gets you banned from a faction's planets entirely.
- Allow trading to boost reputation up to 100. After all, if a particular merchant handles millions of credits of contracts in a faction, you'd think he'd be able to have a little clout (campaign donations to politicians, bribery for officials, etc).
- Potentially add an option to donate (or at-cost) food during food shortage events. Players could forgo profit in exchange for a much larger reputation boost, and grant immunity to food shortage investigation events. Perhaps expanding on this idea of buying reputation, maybe each faction could have a way to be bribed. (Bribe Hegemony politicans, Sindrian Diktat junta officers, fund the construction of Luddic megachurches, offer lucrative discounts to Tri-Tachyon traders, etc). But this might be getting off-topic.

88

General Discussion / Lack of Game Publicity?

« on: November 08, 2014, 05:17:02 PM »

I've always been a big space sim fan, and every once in a while when I'm bored I'll attempt to delve into game databases or recommendation lists for increasingly older, more obscure titles when I've played my fill of the ones I have. However, I didn't discover Starsector until very recently, which I found rather surprising given, what seems to me, relatively high production quality. The game is not listed on Steam Greenlight, on Wikipedia, and there seems to be virtually no press coverage since 2012 (which was minimal to begin with), even among the sort of game sites which normally cover smaller PC game development. There also seems to be little mention of it on other game-related forums that I've been able to find.

This genuinely baffles me given that other games, particularly ones that have been rushed to completion or were of generally buggy and lower-quality, have managed to garner more publicity than this game. Additionally, this game seems to have a very active modding and forum community, in fact it's probably one of the largest and most active I've seen outside a multi-million dollar game production. This only makes the lack of outside publicity even more confusing.

So, my question is, has there been any particular reason for this? Was it because of the game's name change from "Starfarer"? Is it just because game development has been going extremely slow? (I've noticed there have been gaps in release timestamps sometimes upwards of six months, and even a one year gap between 0.65 and 0.62, but I'm not sure if that's just because the way patch releases were merged/recorded...) Or have the developers just not been actively seeking publicity/hype until they feel its fully complete? Or something else I'm missing?

89

General Discussion / Re: Balancing: Do frigates render fighters worthless?

« on: November 08, 2014, 04:52:59 PM »

Haha what, that's definitely not true.

The wing still remain in your fleet even if there are no flight decks available when the last fighter is destroyed.  I love fighters, I know what I'm doing. It might be removed it from the battle for the time being, but it can still be deployed in the next.  They're insanely durable in that sense - so long you have one functioning carrier in the battle, then you cannot completely take the fighter wing out.

On the other hand, Modern epoch frigates can outpower destroyers and even cruisers. A single Tempest frigate with two heavy blasters can break an Eagle cruiser in two minutes (that's fighting the shields head on, rather than trying to flank and shoot the unshielded engines). I don't any fighter wings could pull the same off reliably, even if just against destroyers.

90

General Discussion / Re: Newbie Guide Thread/ FAQ

« on: November 08, 2014, 04:47:45 PM »

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but I had a question: I often see pirate fleets transform into mercenary (independent) ones. What's the reasoning behind this? Does attacking them after they "transform" count as hostility towards the pirate or independent faction? Do fleets ever transform from independent back to pirate?'

Edit: Another question: What are the mechanics on how often ship markets get new stock? Is it based on time? (Weekly, monthly) Or is stock swapped based on distance travelled, or if you've jumped to a different system?