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31

Blog Posts / Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses

« on: August 20, 2018, 09:45:52 AM »

Re: Military ships should be good at planetary bombardment.

I don't think so. Weapons designed for use against spaceships in a near-perfect vacuum differ greatly from orbit-tosurface weapons used against industrial zones or even population centers situated on planets with an atmosphere. It makes no sense for anti-ship ships to reduce their combat efficiency by bringing extra weapons that are useful only in special situations they'll hardly ever be in, as opposed to just keeping a few specialized planetary bombardment tools stored in a shed somewhere, to break out when needed.

Whether those tools are special weapons, hullmods or entirely specialized ships doesn't really matter; the main point is that you wouldn't outfit every military ship with them regardless of its intended role.

32

Blog Posts / Re: Raids, Bombardments, and Planetary Defenses

« on: August 20, 2018, 01:11:37 AM »

Just chiming in to say that thematically, fuel does make some sense as the bombardment-specific resource.

If you're using lasers, you need to generate lots of energy, which comes from fuel.
If you're using missiles, you need to deorbit them, which costs fuel.
If you're using ballistics, you need to get into the right orbit to start from, which takes fuel.

...then again, that's normal fuel. But Starsector only has magical hyperspace fuel.

33

General Discussion / Re: Matching skills with NPC fleet commander... takes dedication.

« on: August 13, 2018, 05:21:15 AM »

But then you'll want to re-spec every time you switch ships to whatever is ideal for that ship.

IMO skills don't fit the game at all.

34

General Discussion / Re: I need a Development Post please.

« on: August 09, 2018, 12:16:42 AM »

Alex is pretty communicative.

Imagine being a fan of Illwinter games (Dominions, Conquest of Elysium). You hardly ever hear from them until it's done 

35

Suggestions / Re: Customizable Difficulty

« on: August 09, 2018, 12:15:34 AM »

I'm trying to figure out how to make fleets smaller - both my own and all others. Not engagement size, mind you, but fleet size. Micromanagement isn't my thing.

Any good ideas?

36

Suggestions / Re: Aliviating / Nerfing players abilities to change ships

« on: August 02, 2018, 04:01:19 AM »

I feel like this is an over kill fix for an issue that already has a fix. Plus it feels very arbitrary and gamely

This.

Furthermore, we already have objectives on the map, and they really don't work all that well.

IMHO, expanding the existing objectives system is a good idea, but it should be done in a more tangible way - placing visible structures (unarmed stations, essentially) that give proximity-based bonuses; that would be my favourite. Fuel depots that slow peak performance decay, radar dishes that provide an ECM bonus and  something-something that gives the movespeed bonus.

Then give us more stations in-system and fewer in hyperspace, so it feels like it makes sense.

/idea.

37

Suggestions / Re: Price packaging

« on: July 24, 2018, 07:16:39 AM »

Even at their best, expansions or DLC are inferior to continuous development or just making a straight sequel.

Look at any Paradox Game, or AI War - the game ends up cluttered with disjointed systems that work in complete isolation from one another. Menu is heaped on menu, resource on resource, because they can only be balanced by keeping them apart from one another, since you cannot be sure which ones players buy or leave out.

And if the slipperly slope is slid down, necessary maintenance work and rebalancing that should have been in the base game is then moved into DLC, and the vanilla experience degrades over time. And even if DLC is limited to adding content instead of adding systems, what does that say about the content? Is it meaningless padding, re-hashing preexisting content? Or is it actually game-changing? If the latter, why is it not in the base game?

You can make an argument for DLC as massive sidegrades that completely change the nature of the game in ways that not all players may desire and should thus be optional, but then you essentially split the game and the developer's attention in two. Not a good deal, long-term.

A single-seat studio like Alex should not split its attention thus. I strongly recommend that the game be kept in one single piece - and, if it seems sound in terms of marketing, with a sequel in the far future.

38

Suggestions / Re: Price packaging

« on: July 24, 2018, 04:37:32 AM »

DLC is cancer.

DLC forces content to be split into completely disjointed bits that have nothing to do with each other.

DLC makes developers focus on drip-feeding easily rehashed content into their game instead of refining core mechanics or doing necessary but invisible under-the-hood work.

I'd rather Alex just make a cut at some point (shortly before the game stops selling enough, I guess) and work on Starsector 2.

39

General Discussion / Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?

« on: July 17, 2018, 02:19:53 AM »

IMHO Bannerlord was too big in Scope. They could've made Warband in a new engine, or just made incremental improvements to Warband...but right now they seem to be doing too much at once.

40

Suggestions / Re: Discussion of skills

« on: July 13, 2018, 06:18:37 AM »

IMHO there shouldn't even be any player- VS fleet-specific skills. Skills should affect all ships in the fleet equally, regardless of who's piloting them.
Then there'd still be skill trees focussed on frontline or carrier or fire support ships, as they are now, but it wouldn't feel so bad to get one or the other.

That said, the entire skill system is, in my opinion, misplaced in this game. OFFICER skills as a sort of specialization fine, but the player skills turn me off more than anything. Why do I have to permanently lock myself into one doctrine or the other? Why can't I effectively adapt over time? Why can't I hire people that know the salvaging/carrier/tech/frontline business?

Aaand cut. That's my thirty seconds of rant done with.

41

General Discussion / Re: starsector gaming like it's 2018: would you wait, start vanilla, or mod/play?

« on: June 20, 2018, 03:53:17 AM »

I'd say hold off and wait if you can, if not for 1.0 then at least for 0.9a (which is a few months off, AFAIK). There'll be big changes coming up, and the game as it stands right now is little more than a framing device for fights.

So my recommendation is as following: Don't play the campaign yet, but do play the missions.

Oh, and do install mods. Simply no reason not to, many of them are of very high quality. Find them here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=177.0

42

General Discussion / Re: Save-Scumming as Core Game Design?

« on: May 30, 2018, 05:07:05 AM »

Completely agree here. I mentioned this prior to the .7 update but I'd like to state again that a way to make the odds of recovering weapons 100% should be implemented. Moreover, I really dislike that the weapons themselves get dismounted and the groups erased, if you weren't using presets then configuring all your ships again is a huge hassle and another big motivator for me to reload instead.

This. The micromanagement load imposed when replacing ships is pretty heavy.

43

Discussions / Re: The Expanse needs our help!!!

« on: May 17, 2018, 05:37:02 AM »

Never read the books.

I found it meh in terms of storytelling and setting and outright bad in acting.

That said, I would've liked to watch more of it if only because there's not much else hard-ish sci-fi to watch.

44

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.90 (2018/02/17)

« on: February 26, 2018, 08:23:53 AM »

Redownloaded, works now.

I didn't have any Vortices on my fleet, and I don't think the allied ships had any, since that wouldn't have changed through no-drop-no-sell. No idea what did cause it.

45

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Diable Avionics 1.90 (2018/02/17)

« on: February 26, 2018, 04:24:28 AM »

Diable dun goof'd!

Code

207755 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at data.hullmods.DiableAvionicsUniversalDecksUpgrade.advanceInCombat(DiableAvionicsUniversalDecksUpgrade.java:65)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Fairly big battle, lots of different Diable ships involved, keeps happening right at the start.