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Topics - whatdoesthisbuttondo

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1
Modding / Ship balance feedback thread
« on: March 07, 2017, 12:58:11 PM »
Since we have a dedicated thread for spriting, I thought I'd start one for the other half of the job,
the stats balancing against vanilla.

----------

I'll start off with a ship that currently has me stumped on where to go with it, it is a modified Wolf
frigate, intended to be kind of an elite raider variant refit.

The slot layout changed compared to the vanilla Wolf:

- 3 small turrets removed, and replaced with 1 medium energy (210 degree frontal arc)
- 2 small missile hardpoints changed to universal

The stats change compared to the vanilla Wolf:

fleet pts: 6 (+1)
ordnance: 45 (-5)
max flux: 2400 (+150)
dissipation: 165 (+15)
top speed: 165 (+15)
acceleration: 135 (+5)
deceleration: 110 (+10)
max turn: 65 (+5)
turn accel: 130 (+10)
shield arc: 120 (-30)
baseprice: 13500 (+1500)

-------------

When compared against vanilla Wolf, it doesn't feel significantly stronger, in some respects even weaker, which is a good thing I guess.

The PD capability is, apart from mounting a heavy burst PD in the medium turret (good enough in 1v1 or 1v2), pretty much gone, no
more IPDAI tac lasers, while it gains the ability to mount a fully dedicated tac laser / graviton harassment fit (works nicely in packs, but
then again, what doesn't?).

A normal heavy blaster / graviton / harpoon combo performs as one would expect from a similar vanilla Wolf fit, maybe a tad bit better.

Flux stats and armor do not really allow for a dedicated effective close range energy fit, and close-range HE projectile configurations
share that issue somewhat.

Both of the above are still options, but overall having the hardpoints universals isn't that big of a deal, missile/energy would suffice I guess,
but I kinda like the theme of side-mounted machine guns for the ship.


Edit: Some more in-game testing, and I've found railguns combined with the forward-leap ability of the phase skimmer do make the universal
hardpoints a pretty big deal together with a heavy hitter or ion pulser in the frontal hardpoint.

Overall, I feel like it is in a good place already balance-wise, but needs a little something to spice it up.

Having the medium turret hybrid I think would be over the top regarding flexibility, I've been thinking about 'soft' bonus like say
built-in phase field hullmod to reduce the sensor profile.

Would make little difference in combat, but fit nicely with the raider theme.

Thoughts? Maybe ideas for variants I didn't think of that are issues balance wise, or stat changes that could give it a little
extra?

2
Modding / pixel dimensions of turrets/hardpoints vs. weapon sprites
« on: February 10, 2017, 12:35:54 PM »
Something odd I've noticed while looking closely at countless sprites...

The hardpoints and turrets all seem to be even numbers of pixels, while actual weapon sprites are odd numbers of pixels.

Now I can perfectly see the reason with the actual weapon sprites, they basically need to be able to turn around
a center, so you'd want that a single pixel, hence odd number of pixels or else the animation would be off-center.

But then I don't understand why this isn't the case with hardpoints and turrets. Shouldn't these follow the same logic, i.e. the
'center' pixel of the weapon sprite should sit dead-center on the center 'swivel' pixel of the turret hardpoint?

Is there some magic reason, like is the ship editor able to place the actual swivel point in half-pixel steps, e.g. perfectly center
even with even number of pixels in hardpoints?

Or am I just suffering from OCD here, and nobody really cares about a pixel left or right?

The reason I'm asking is I'm looking at a particular design line of ship sprites where the weapons are supposed to look fully
integrated when mounting them. If you imagine a front hardpoint, it isn't supposed to look like an installed weapon, but like
a basic version of the hull that had a whole section completely replaced.

From experiments so far, this really needs to be pixel-perfect, or the effect won't come out like I want it to.

3
Modding / Weapon side-effect on own ship, what is possible?
« on: April 22, 2015, 10:12:44 AM »
For a ship that is basically built around a giant hull-integrated weapon, I'm curious if the following is possible.

The ship itself will feature standard weaponry, and an extreme burst-damage energy beam weapon, basically a doomsday device capable of one-shot killing a capital with considerable AoE splash at the impact site.

Now I'd like this to have a spool-up time before firing, and a couple of side-effects on the firing ship:

1) During spool-up, successively deactivate ship systems: first drop shields, then deactivate all other weapons, then engine flameout

- if the player decides to stop the firing process here, bring these systems online again -

2) When the weapon is fired, immediately put the firing ship in 'overloaded' state, and put all ship systems offline for a set duration, then activate them again in this order: shields -> weapons -> engines


Is something like this possible?

4
The mod selector dialog in the launcher does not draw properly.

When first opened, it appears all white and cannot be interacted with.

After switching to another window and back (e.g. the terminal I started Starsector in), it is still all white, but randomly clicking inside will reveal controls by forcing a repaint as you hit them. With the bottom buttons, just hovering over where they're supposed to be works as well, as the hoverstate does force a repaint as well.

Not a show-stopper and possible to work around. No stacktraces on my terminal window, let me know if I can do anything to provide more useful debug info.

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