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1

General Discussion / Re: Help in locating a youtube video of lone tanker exploration

« on: September 28, 2020, 08:13:53 PM »

yeah phrasing the challenge of game design in that way, to me, is broken on its face - as I am one who specifically always finds the most optimal way to play to also be the least appealing.  Doing what has already been done by everyone else never really is exciting to me.

Whenever a friend or acquaintance goes about starting a game by googling "what is the best way to play this game", it leaves me stricken with horror and malaise.

Exactly what I'm saying. Optimal ways to play are rarely fun, but humans have an instinct to optimize, or at least, a tendency to try to succeed due most people preferring the feeling of success to failure. Optimal ways to play result in more success, yet often less fun. Thus the challenge.

2

Suggestions / Re: "Next" could possibly go to the next page

« on: September 28, 2020, 08:11:26 PM »

I've never been to an online VBA-style forum that didn't share this infuriating feature.

3

General Discussion / Re: Help in locating a youtube video of lone tanker exploration

« on: September 26, 2020, 07:03:26 PM »

The perpetual challenge of game design is making the optimal ways to play the most fun ways to play....

4

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Vayra's Sector 3.1.5 - seizing the means 2020-01-24

« on: August 29, 2020, 02:13:31 PM »

This is an error with VersionChecker.

5

Modding / Re: [0.9.1a] Commonwheat Additions

« on: August 23, 2020, 02:55:48 PM »

Phase tanker, phase freighter, phase carrier... Finally, a fleet that makes going full phase 0-sensor profile a real possibility. I'm wondering if it's even possible to lose a ship in a pursuit battle...

Anyway, lots of cool ideas here. Looking forward to trying it out. Thank you for posting this.

6

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Ship/Weapon Pack 1.11.0

« on: August 17, 2020, 05:07:44 PM »

There are a lot of good ideas in those suggestions, including the vanilla tweaks, JohnVicres. Do you feel like making a mini-mod with those, dependent on having a SWP install? I'm betting other users would enjoy those changes as well.

7

Modding / Re: [0.9.1a] Faceless - vanilla and mod portrait removal

« on: August 15, 2020, 06:24:58 PM »

I'm trying to imagine a more niche mod, but I can't. Still, I'm sure you just made someone's game vastly better.

8

General Discussion / Re: AI, something like AlfaStar in StarCraft II.

« on: August 10, 2020, 06:15:19 PM »

If you donated Fractal Softworks the ~$13m that replicating AlphaStar would likely cost to create in compute alone, I'm sure they'd at least consider it. Unfortunately players would need more than a GTX 960 to play StarSector if they wanted to run that AI in a single-player, standalone application. The whole game would have to be rebuilt and operate in an always-online subscription model where the AI can be run on an external server and networked in, and players could pay for the compute used by the AI when they battle it, so I'd throw in another $10m for the setup/rebuild costs. Plus a subscription cost of $32/hr during battles.

Spoiler

https://medium.com/swlh/deepmind-achieved-starcraft-ii-grandmaster-level-but-at-what-cost-32891dd990e4

[close]

But the real reason it isn't feasible? Hegemony inspectors would not approve.   

Edit: Also, the AI is the most impressive aspect of the game, considering the whole thing is written in Java by essentially a single person. Why change the best part? $13m would go a much longer way, spent on story content, art assets, QoL features, etc...

9

Suggestions / Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive

« on: August 05, 2020, 04:52:40 PM »

Yes -- I don't know that the feature has a proper name in the campaign layer, but what it sounds like everyone has been referring to in this thread so far is the automated fleet navigation on the campaign layer, activated by clicking to lay in a course, and thereafter reactivated by pressing the (default bound) 'a' key. With larger fleets, when activated while sustained burn is active, it often misses its target (especially small targets like jump points) by failing to adjust its heading to face the target directly. It seems like that is due to limited turning speed while sustained burn is active. Rather than halting (or deactivating sustained burn, or reducing speed at all) the fleet will often do multiple loops around small targets during auto-navigation, which is a little awkward. That said, turning sustained burn off or slowing the fleet might also result in suboptimal behavior, and so might not be worth the benefit given the effort it would take to make fleets never loop awkwardly around their target.

10

Suggestions / Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive

« on: August 04, 2020, 04:38:19 PM »

I think Autopilot does turn when it misses a jump point or destination with sustained burn on, and then makes these super wide loops and keeps missing, when just turning sustained burn off and back on would let it bee-line for the destination.

11

General Discussion / Re: Ship Explosion are to brigth

« on: August 03, 2020, 06:16:06 PM »

GraphicsLib is a mod that defaults the whiteout to false as well, and it's a great mod for beautifying the game as well -- but it's only strongly recommended for non-potato PCs.

12

General Discussion / Re: Any solution for UI scaling?

« on: July 29, 2020, 06:22:58 PM »

So short of an "HD" release of the game (which would need to update all the assets to 2x the resolution; a massive undertaking), what you're already doing is about equivalent to what I would do if I did scaling in-game.

I'd pay $30 for the 4k texture pack DLC, but I suppose I can't prove how many other starfarers would.

13

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Luddic Enhancement Mod 1.2.2

« on: July 24, 2020, 07:57:58 PM »

Thanks, I love it.

14

Modding / Re: [0.9.1a] Missing ships mod

« on: July 17, 2020, 10:53:15 PM »

I figured it was punishment for the fact that I overuse it in my own fleet since it's strictly better than any hauling option in Vanilla due to the ability to add two logistics hullmods on top of the free +1 burn.

15

Suggestions / Re: Consistent Campaign Controls

« on: July 17, 2020, 10:44:50 PM »

Why not have right click function the same as left click on the campaign layer? That way people can just default to right click if they want a consistent button? Everywhere else in the game (intel and regular map, tactical map, market, colony management, etc.) LMB selects things and right click is laying in a course or a battle waypoint. It's just the campaign layer where movement becomes the primary action and jumps from RMB to LMB, and RMB becomes free look. That's what's weird. Free look should be on a hotkey or in the menu and in the campaign layer both mouse buttons can be movement, so people can just get used to RMB to lay in a destination on any point, just like the map, while LMB can be movement that doesn't override the currently laid-in destination. So it's a primary form of movement, an "I want to control my movement closely, and particularly, right now" while RMB remains a higher-level, less-used "I want to pick a destination" button.