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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - vagrant

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16
This is so cool! And something i've wanted for a long time. My biggest beef with losing my whole fleet is sourcing and arming a new one, especially before i'm well enough established to have a significant stockpile. I have abandoned so many save games because i know markets are scarce and i've just been kicked back to square one after losing my early bounty fleet.

17
@vagrant

These are 4th-wall-breaking mechanics, so please no. Current bounties are already problematic in this regard - why are they just waiting to be killed at convenient locations? Aren't pirate supposed to be a bit more proactive? How did they even get a bounty being that passive? They just don't look as part of any meaningful simulation.

Target fleets could try to be stealthy/evasive (run from player) etc, but strictly within what game rules normally allow. So a small fleet of fast frigates running silent and avoiding the player is a valid challenge (assuming player gets at least rough location where to look), but despawning/refusing to spawn on some hard condition is not.


call them what you want, but I think optional challenges with artificially imposed limitations add value to the otherwise open nature of Starsector's campaign sandbox. I don't think additional conditions are immersion breaking in any significant way more than current intel.

Also, my point is that these encounters should encourage different play styles. The flavor should follow the gameplay, not the other way around. Starsector's static missions set up situations that can't always be rolled over with superior firepower or numbers. In this way, I want to crib the interesting conditions the static missions present, while adding SOME elements of player agency afforded by the sandbox campaign.


I'm inspired here by how Heat Signature adds wrinkles to otherwise standard missions for additional challenge, but still lets the player choose how to attack the problem based on the equipment they've collected across the game so far.

I think you have a separate issue with how the bounty implementation doesn't match the flavor that goes along with it.

18
I'd really like the idea of soft/hard power capped content that forces players to optimize their fleet and loadouts to tackle, especially against unfavorable odds.

This could provide other fleet optimization goals besides than building the largest strategically viable fleet and using it to crush the biggest enemies.

Bounties or missions could have fleet point, fleet value, sensor profile, burn level, ship class, or tech level restrictions, giving players another thing to consider besides enemy fleet makeup. Maybe even a combination of these restrictions and an additional reward based on the severity.

The restrictions could carry some flavor about why the special conditions are necessary to access the mission/bounty, and it would directly incentivize play at different sizes and configurations.

Not every mission needs restrictions, but having some restricted condition missions generate could open up some sort of scaled content without limiting the player to that play style accross the entire playthrough.


Example might be:

Pirate assasination
Conditions:
Limited sensor profile
Burn 8 required

If a player fleet doesn't meet the requirements, the bounty wouldn't spawn when they jump to the system, and they'd need to rezone with the correct fleet properties.

19
General Discussion / Re: CSV files
« on: November 16, 2018, 05:21:06 PM »
google drive is my go-to for this!

20
Suggestions / Re: Bring frigates back to the late game.
« on: November 02, 2018, 12:39:45 PM »
Given one of the issues with frigates late game is they are fragile in the face of cruiser and capitals, what if you had a way of mitigating that fragility which didn't work for larger ships.  I believe Alex was looking into retaining all weapons on a ship that is destroyed but recovered.  Imagine taking that a bit farther and add a method for recovering a certain number of your lost frigates in pristine condition after combat with a reasonable amount of CR restored?

For example, imagine for every Salvage rig in your fleet, you were guaranteed 1 of your lost frigates back with no (extra) D-mods, no loss of weapons, maybe simply down by deployment x2 worth of CR.  Or if there was a slow, support capital ship which did something similar for all your lost frigates (imagine a carrier but on an even larger scale, like a frigate factory ship).  At which point while there is still opportunity cost in deploying frigates, the annoyance of flying a fleet around to simply restock frigates goes away.

Now the frigate's role becomes that of an expendable ship for dangerous tactics, like distract that Onslaught over there while I finish up this Legion over here.  Would that be sufficient of an end game use?


I'd like it if this was an expensive hullmod and mutually exclusive with converted hangar (or any hangar?) too. Maybe exclude destroyers, as well from equipping it?

Also, a potential limitation could be that the Salvage Rig (or other eligible ship) must select a SPECIFIC frigate in the player' current fleet, and that like installing major modifications to a ship, the process of creating a frigate-backup-on-demand is labor intensive and must occur while docked.

So this way players
a) aren't dependent on only using the salvage rig for this feature
b) can make interesting choices re: fighters vs frigates
c) can't just hotswap their frigate-backup-on-demands between each and every encounter.

21
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Gladiator Society
« on: June 07, 2018, 07:45:42 AM »
Been playing around with this! It's a lot of fun so far. Experimenting with different types of bounties, and it's really easy to prototype and iterate on!


I have a question about how mission generation works. It seems like bounty posting is related to the reward value compared to the size of your fleet. If I have a large fleet, all the bounties will post for me, but I have a small fleet, I won't see bounties posted for above a given value. Is this intended?

For example, the RandomGuys bounty will show up pretty much all the time regardless of fleet size given a few days of waiting, but the RandomGuys2 bounty, even when the needBounty flag taken off, will only spawn when I have a large fleet. When I lower the reward of RandomGuys2 to 50000 from 300000, it spawns every time.

Is this intended?

22
So i might be missing something simple here, but is there a way to limit which barrels on a weapon fire in alternating mode / skip over barrels if that's not possible?


I'm designing a weapon with 2 barrels, but the weapon usually only has 1 ammo in the magazine, and I only want it to use the first barrel, unless the user puts extended magazines on the ship, in which case it will have two ammo and use both barrels to fire.

23
The problem is not because AI has not big enough fleets, it is that they do not have good composition.

Large fleet battles revolves around fighters and long range shootouts where frigates and destroyers are only good in an support role. Meaning they either can endure and wipe out fighters in short order or has long range weaponry to support fighters in destroying cruiser and larger sized targets.

ATM the AI fleets just have random variants splayed all over their fleets where 3/4 of the ships are useless and a lot of frigates will kill one or two fighters before taken out.

Simply have larger fleets spawn with less ratio of frigates and destroyers and more frequency of fighters and cruisers.


Is there any easy way to tweak this without having to manually change every faction file? Perhaps possible with dynasector? I'd kill for easily accessible global ship class weight settings.

24
Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Mayasuran Navy 8.0.1
« on: February 02, 2018, 09:00:55 AM »
These are awesome!! I love the vanilla look and mid-tech sensibilities.

I especially love the Mako Heavy Bomber in both concept and execution. The bombs not only emphasize the momentum and energy of piloting the ship but also have a variety of creative uses beyond striking big ships with shields down.

Although, after playing a bit of a campaign where my fleet was primarily comprised of them, I find myself wishing for a torpedo variant that could capitalize on openings more quickly / reach through (some) point defense.

25
Suggestions / Re: Terrain avoidance
« on: November 27, 2017, 02:07:26 PM »
honestly I would take multi-waypoint / destination pathfinding through the map over any kind of intelligent pathfinding. I like planning the route I take especially to distant analysis missions.

26
General Discussion / Re: Average ship stats
« on: August 25, 2017, 01:20:59 PM »
I'd be interested in speed and acceleration averages, as well as cargo, fuel and fuel/ly. Shield type and shield arc would lend interesting (if not very useful) data too i'd think.

Z-scoring the data in each column and summing them could give us a sort of general performance index for ships too. Though, the index would more be an indication of how much above or below average a given ship is against it's class, it couldn't tell the whole story when it comes to balance.

27
I'm not sure how to go about this but would a kind of movement only autopilot be possible? sort of the inverse of weapon autofire, where the ship moves like it would with the autopilot setting, but leaves weapon and shield control to the player, and isn't turned off by interaction.

There are times, especially when piloting a larger ship on my craptop, where I'm content with how the ai handles spacing and engagement distance, but I prefer to handle the shot timing of things (especially torpedoes and longer range ballistics) myself.

28
General Discussion / Re: A Sad Day for a Craptop User
« on: July 08, 2017, 11:01:40 AM »
I'm in a very similar boat as Achataeon, I've got a late 2009 model white macbook (I believe this was the last year they made the white plastic model) that's been my main starsector machine. My solution for a while was to use nexerlin to generate a cluster of only one to two systems, and it seemed to stave off the memory issues for a while when running mods.

I have tried 0.8.1 vanilla and it seems to run well, but adding mods eats up the little memory I have very quickly, and often ends in a crash.

I wish apple would come out with a line of macbooks reminiscent to this one, because it's a tank, and I've used it for university work and games constantly since I got it.

29
General Discussion / Re: New player feedback and intro.
« on: May 08, 2017, 08:29:43 AM »
We need an option to demand cargo or capture the vessels as pirates. Blowing thing up and collecting scrap is not piracy.

I was thinking this too, a system like how the Starlight Cabal in the Underworld mod interacts with the player perhaps?

The ability to

-demand credits, supplies, fuel, etc. (not crew, though.)
-demand a ship in the fleet be turned over
 
in the pre-battle (or post battle, pre-pursuit?) dialogue would be pretty cool.

I'm not sure how the chances to give in to / defy demands should be determined,
-fleet size difference, player officer nature, cr / hull status of both parties, pursuit or not, etc.
-enemy officers of higher levels more resistant to demands / more willing to fight?
-maybe a player leadership skill could boost chances of demands succeeding?

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