Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More (04/10/24)
Also there was a new energy weapon which changed how most of high-tech ships play and made them super fun to pilot so great job Alex, even when I'm sleeping you never cease to amaze me.Was it like the Thunderhead Lance? Because dang do I miss that thing. (Escape Velocity: Nova)
This is already true! It's probably not super-notable, but the rate of CR loss is indeed smaller for red giants, brown dwarfs, and the like.Oh, cool. Although yeah I guess without some sort of indicator it's hard to tell (corona tooltip maybe?) but I also understand UI creep and all that.
This post inspired me to suggest that the other route to increasing a fighter's evasion would just be smaller hitboxes. Better than a random-chance "you actually missed" at least.but ultimately adding evasion to fighters might be helpful in balancing them and more feasible than simply making them touhou-capable platforms which would probably melt most CPUs in any large size fight (though i might be wrong about this)
Touhou fighters would be very cool though, even if likely unfeasible.
I think that's more to do with Alex getting better at nailing down fixes post a major release to the point where only a single hotfix is needed.I'd kinda disagree on this point, 0.8.1 had some major enough issues left that show that a 0.8.2 was deserved. Although part of it was the fact that the pattern of releases was different. Other major releases had a minor release 2 weeks after the major and then a moderate release three (or more) months after, while 0.8.x only had a single 6-week follow up.
Regardless of whether the current 'Escort' command gets renamed or not, though, there is definitely a need for a distinct command that encompasses "Stay near this target ship, try to avoid being between it and what it's shooting at, and otherwise just do your own thing."But I don't want it to just hang around and do it's own thing. I want it to (prefer to) shoot at whatever the followed ship is shooting at. (Link is to an earlier topic on this subject. Have another.)
That said, I'm pretty partial to the idea of 1) changing the maximum SB bonus to 10 w/o skill and removing the skill impact on it, and 2) having it scale from +5 to +10 based on the fleet's sensor profile, with larger fleets getting a lower bonus. It has the nice side-effect of also encouraging stealth since a more stealthy fleet would have a comparatively higher SB bonus.With the huge profile on the Ox, is the +1 burn really going to be worth lowering your SB bonus? And similar issues with Augmented Drive Field. (Plus leaving aside the thematic headscratchers.) I think if you want to zip around and outmaneuver slower fleets to score strategically, there are high-burn ships in every size class like the Conquest and Falcon that suit these purposes just fine. If you want to accentuate the difference between high-burn and low-burn fleets (something SB currently negates), I'd just make SB a simple "2x Burn". It's straightforward, it preserves proportional speed differences, and it keeps the +Burn options quite relevant.
Either an intercept course or an interdiction pulse.Yep.So I assume using SB is still quite uninterceptable unless they're far in front of you and have taken action to lay an intercept course?
- Faction hostilities: fixed various issues re: hostilities properly ending and total number/frequency
- Last for at least 6 months, and rarely more than a full cycle
- Hostilities between Hegemony-TriTachyon and other starting hostilities between major factions (i.e. not pirates/pathers) are no longer permanent
That's a good first step to making pirates act like pirates not psychotic serial killers. Although I think this would also be a really good fit for a dialogue option after a successful pirate intercept.
The reverse should also be true though - player pirates should be able to demand cargo from their targets instead of going for straight murder (because a "pirate" that just kills everyone with no demands, or even if their demands are fulfilled is a stupid and unprofitable pirate who won't live long).
I hear what you're saying, for sure. The counter-point is that the game's focus is combat, and campaign-level activities should (generally! not always) funnel the player towards that. A high degree of unprofitable and bad-for-self-preservation behavior is essentially a design requirement.
That's not to say that the specific options you're talking about wouldn't be good. They might be! I'm just saying that stuff like that - that lets you avoid combat - should be evaluated in terms of gameplay and not assumed to be good because it makes the behaviors more believable or realistic. Some of that is good, both because it opens up player options and makes things feel more believable. Too much of it would be bad.
More amusingly, the possible improvement doodad is offset by the fact that D-mods are more likely, offsetting possible player manipulation.Skinner Box 101: Requiring more die rolls for the result you want will not make players roll dice less often.
The other thing you could possibly do is engage, hunt down and kill each of those burn 10 frigates, and then escape the larger ships.
Ok, good to know, though I can't really see a practical situation where it would come up, since basically all fleets have at least one frigate with max burn of 10. So maybe it's okay if it stays hidden, since the player can't really use it to his or her advantage... Bar doing something silly like having a Tempest-only fleet Wink
You could install Augmented Drive Field to all of your burn 10 ships, that would make it work (not against Tri-Tach or Lion's Guard as they near always have Tempest's.
(This is indeed fairly deep in hidden mechanic territory. I really ought to clean this all up at some point.)One thing I could see to make this more transparent would be a "abandon your slower ships in order to disengage cleanly" option. But you'd have to make sure it has a confirmation screen with "These ships are who you're leaving behind. Are you sure?" and possibly an extra "Are you really sure?"
Techhead: Not enough modded factions get along with the Hedgies.
Techhead: Where's the "Although self-governing in practice, [faction_name] overtly supports the Hegemony as the successors of Domain rule" faction?
Techhead: Lorewise, I'd estimate 40% of mod factions are like "I wanna take over most-to-all of the Sector" and 40% are "I wanna be left mostly alone"
Techhead: Where's my intrigue and realpolitik?
(Someone mentions the League)
Techhead: League, in lore, isn't much of a unified anything besides the idea of mutual defense.
Techhead: Too many Hedgie-haters on the scene I think also weakens the concept of the Hegemony as well... a regional hegemon.
