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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 - Terethall

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106
General Discussion / Civilian Transports
« on: April 14, 2020, 05:52:50 PM »
What even is their point? Are they just filler? Is someone out there running 5 Nebulas (Nebulae?) in their fleet and shooting their crew directly at the enemy fleet (I assume this is a Fragmentation damage weapon type)? Are you guys founding three colonies on every trip to the outer rim? If it were just a couple ships that (arguably) have other purposes, like the Valkyrie and small early-game ships like the Hermes or Mercury that are there just to fill slots and get you to the point where you can do survey missions. But the Nebula and Starliner just feel totally extraneous and like two more interesting ships that had more of a role in a fleet would have more value.

Maybe they are good in some kind of Talon spam fleet comp? But basically all ships, and especially carriers, have tons of spare crew capacity such that extra in a special logistics civilian ship isn't really ever needed. Were they more needed pre-9.1 and maybe they'll have their day in the sun again? As is, they feel like filler, but there are so many and they have lovely sprites... I just want to find a home for them in my fleet. Maybe MkII variants would give them a purpose and save on assets (as mods have already done)?

107
General Discussion / Re: End game
« on: April 08, 2020, 08:43:45 PM »
Colonize every last rock.
Depopulate the entire sector.
Experiment with weird fleet designs; try picking a random ship, making a fleet of 30 of them, and putting SO on all of them.
See how many [redacted] ordos you can take on simultaneously.
Restart the game and see if you can make it on salvage-only pirate nomad mode.

108
I ran into an issue (?) with the unique bounty manager. I am running both Vayra's Sector and Vayra's Ship Pack (and also Next and others). I had the Gal Paladin  high value bounty in my Intel, but then after a while it disappeared. I noticed that it had disappeared right after I accepted an IBB bounty, but after doing that bounty it didn't reappear. So at first I thought maybe there was a limit to active unique bounties but I'm worried I've permanent lost the chance at this bounty now; normally I wouldn't really care but I'm doing a unique-ships-only playthrough at the moment. Will the bounty re-trigger? Am I right that it went away because I accepted too many simultaneous unique bounties? If so I'll avoid that in the future.

109
General Discussion / Re: New Commerce
« on: April 04, 2020, 04:49:40 PM »
Honestly there's already enough money
This. Military defense against pirates and expeditions is way more valuable, so you don't get your s*** stolen.

110
General Discussion / Re: Economy is still weird
« on: April 04, 2020, 04:40:46 PM »
3. Before the hypermap updates, being a trader was bad, but possible, now it is not possible anymore either, because shortages or oversupply is extremely rare because of how the trading mechanic now works, often you press F1 on a random commodity, the lowest buy price, and highest sell price, is almost the same, always, everywhere.

I am wondering if it CAN be fixed at all, with a mod... I tried before but tried to go in a route where I would simulate too much. Maybe making the economy simpler is the solution.

I think this helped out a lot by Nex. I see many more shortages and surpluses due to the much more aggressive warmongering among existing factions with Nex installed. Nex and Vayra also add options for the player to destabilize the sector, leading to trading opportunities.

111
Random events in space (like an argument between members of your crew) or while visiting a planet ?

My own personal fantasy is Paradox-style event chains in Starsector, along with expanded crew morale/management systems.

112
I actually was just thinking about making a thread about this. My pinky gets tired of holding shift literally 99% of the time in the campaign mode. Combat is fine due to SpeedUp, but the campaign map slowness is infuriating. Honestly the campaign speed just needs to be double speed as a baseline, with an option to double it again, or slow down by 50%, depending on what the player is up to (trying to chase/run from something where tiny mistakes mean death, vs exploring and salvaging where you want get inside debris fields and click on a bunch of small derelicts etc., vs traveling from system to system or market to market where you just want to get there and there is a 98% chance nothing will happen on the way).

113
6.4% chance ... apply a cap
Greater than 1/20 chance does feel pretty high to me... even if it's unlucky, it means 1 out of 20 people who install the mod will generate 4 fleets their very first encounter with hyperspace [redacted], unless they know to edit the spawn factor in the config file; I really like the idea of capping and/or ramping up the fleets kind of like ow bounties work. Generally, though, I still really like the mod. It is called Ruthless Sector, so this is kind of what I get for installing without reading everything it does and deciding whether I'm up for it or want to fiddle with settings first. I just ended up setting the extra fleet chance to 0 and starting a new game, and now it's perfect.

Hyperspace remnant fleets should never spawn surrounding you. They should always spawn ahead of you far enough away that it's impossible for you to detect them at first. Are you sure that wasn't the case? If so, it's a new bug.

Would you mind sharing a few more details to help me get an idea of exactly what happened?
  • What was the burn level of your fleet at the time?
  • Was sustained burn active when the encounter started?
  • Did you use emergency burn?
  • Did they hit you with an interdiction pulse, and if so, which of the above abilities were active at the time?

1. I was at 30 burn pinballing through a hyperspace cloud full of storms, and the second that I was flung out of the cloud, 4 fleets appeared immediately around me (all of us in non-cloud hyperspace, as I had just been flung out of the cloud) in kind of a three-quarters circle arc, where the opening was directly behind me. I paused the game the second I saw them, hit E-burn, and tried to make for a gap between them, but one of them hit me with an interdiction pulse while the others pursued. My fleet's base burn was only 9 at the time.
2. Yes, it was.
3. I did, and tried to get through a little hole between the fleets, but...
4. they interdicted me.

The way the fleets suddenly popped into existence around me makes me feel like maybe the game has a slight delay from the point when it says "the player fleet is coming, think about spawning some Remnant, and do all the RNG necessary to create them" and the point when those fleets actually appear on the screen?

Another alternative to mention is that my fleet was only 3 ships and had a small sensor range, so maybe I just couldn't see them until I was right on top of them? But I feel that doesn't quite make sense, because I was literally millimeters of screen space from one of them when it appeared, and some of the other 4 fleets were further away, but they all appeared perfectly simultaneously; there weren't multiple pings as I got closer to them. Maybe it's a combination of this and the above though? Probably a niche situation, but more likely to impact players running their intro fleet in the first ~30 minutes of gameplay.

Also, I run plenty of mods; Nex, Vayra's Sector, 10+ mods that add ships, one or two faction mods, three or four quality of life interface mods, etc., if that matters (the game is still buttery smooth with them installed though, and my PC could generate targeting solutions for a Paragon, so I don't think it's a performance issue).

114
This is a great mod, but is it normal to have two multi-brilliant ordos and two more small sub ordos spawn literally surrounding the player while traveling through hyperspace, so that there is no way to avoid them in any direction, and you get Piper Perried instantly during your first exploration mission 5 minutes after installing the mod? Looking at this thread maybe I need to turn down the ability for more than one fleet to spawn, or maybe the distance? Two is reasonable. Four spawned in on top of me is too many in the immediate early game.

115
Suggestions / Re: Sensor Mechanics
« on: March 24, 2020, 11:39:55 PM »
I wonder if HRS could maybe provide a bonus to sensor range regardless of whether it's in the top 5 or not, similarly to how the Salvage Gantry works, with diminishing returns. And then phase ships might do the opposite to sensor profile. That way some ships could still be special enough to matter outside the top 5, but in a constrained enough way. Hmm. Might be worth thinking about.

I always thought it was weird/pointless that phase ships can hardly operate without logistics support ships, which tend to have high sensor profiles...

116
Suggestions / Challenge Mode/Next Wave Options
« on: March 23, 2020, 10:26:08 AM »
Given the sandboxy nature of Starsector, and the way the game kind of ends when you get bored, I found myself looking for ways to increase the challenge and make the game more interesting on a strategic level for playthroughs subsequent to my first. After slowly cutting out everything I feel like makes the game boringly easy and that results in loops that avoid combat, I present the following challenge mode: Eat What You Kill.

Rule 1: The only thing you can purchase from markets is Fuel, Supplies, Crew, and Marines. Crucially this means NO ships, NO weapons/LPCs, and NO modspecs. It also means no commodities for easy smuggling cash, but you could relax that portion of the rule if you are struggling to find cash for salaries. Also optionally, no restoring your ships. Best invest into the Industry tree.
Rule 2: No salvaging other fleets' battles. This means no looting Conquests from the sidelines of a battle between two factions you're neutral with. Optionally, you may allow yourself to loot procgen debris fields and derelicts. You can salvage and recover derelicts spawned by battles you instigate.
Rule 3: No completing exploration or survey missions. The only missions you can complete are bounties or other missions that require direct combat. Optionally you can let yourself accept delivery missions, but you have to just sell the goods (or keep them, in the case of fuel and supplies) and deal with the rep hit and retribution fleet.
Rule 4: No colonies.
Rule 5: No storage. Free, or paid. Equip it, sell it, eject it, or spend some precious OP to slap Expanded Cargo Holds on one more ship.
Rule 6: No commission. Optionally, you can commission with Pirates or Pathers, but you have to play with Ruthless Sector.
Rule 7: No recruiting officers; you've got to find them via salvage. I like this rule because no exploration/survey missions, and no colonies means exploration is a lot less valuable, but if that's the only way to find officers, it makes it worthwhile again.
Rule 8: No raiding markets. You can ignore this and raid if you want, because it's in the right flavor, but it's not combat... just looting with extra steps.
Rule 9: Pirate/Pather faction start (Nex or Vayra) or immediate saturation bombardment of Jangala in Vanilla. Optional, because if you do no missions and prey on mercantile fleets for cash, you'll eventually be hated by everyone.

If you put this all together, what do you get? Well, the endgame catapults of Colonies, sideline salvage, and Tri-Tach/Hegemony commissions aren't available anymore, so you stay in the early to midgame a lot longer, which imo is way more fun than watching your 6 capital ships evaporate Atlas MkIIs and Low Tech stations over and over. You also end up using a much wider variety of ships and loadouts, because you can't just beeline to buy Tempests, Omens, Drovers, Eagles, Falcon (P), and Thunder, Gladius, Longbow, Khopesh, and Hypervelocity Driver, Sabot, Harpoon, Tachyon Lance, Plasma Cannon, Phase Lance, Heavy Needler, Heavy Mauler, etc. and you have to figure out a way to make things work from the loot you get from the ships you kill. You're incentivized to pick hard fights with strong factions for a chance to loot their ships. No purchasing hullmods means the free hullmods that come with skill points are a lot more useful, and you may end up using some hullmods you normally wouldn't otherwise, due to being starved for options.

Also, exploration becomes less about flying a 245 speed, infinite range, 0-cost Dram around from star to star until you have 10 million credits and 100 rep with all factions, or looting and hoarding AI cores, forges, and synchrotrons for your colonies, and more about finding and selling phat lewt on the black market, including blueprints, which then show up in pirate fleets for you to destroy and collect.


117
Suggestions / Re: Incorrect Scale in System Map
« on: March 18, 2020, 05:35:44 PM »
This is a space game that takes place entirely in 2 dimensions where habitable planets exist within star coronas, and we are talking about a unit label on a map?

118
Discussions / Re: Gaming's Worst Mechanic
« on: March 06, 2020, 09:28:26 AM »
I think Alex should add paid lootboxes that grant the player uberships with powerful randomly generated hullmods, but over time those ships degrade and their guns jam (you can pay real money and wait for 48 IRL hours to pass in order to unjam them), and also in order to deploy them you need a CB and permission from the Luddic Church and also it will increase your fleet's war exhaustion.

119
This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.

Agreed. There's not as much risk-reward with smuggling right now as I would expect.

Also, IDK if this is a bug, but I've never had authorities confiscate anything from me, including AI cores etc, even when I've been caught with them and taken the rep hit. I just don't even care about being caught by patrols since the rep hit is offset by an exploration or bounty mission.

did you happen to have any of those ships when you were caught by the patrol:
any Hound;
any Cerberus;
Mule(P);
Buffalo(P).

all of those ships have the shielded cargo holds hullmod, which makes x amount of cargo much harder to detect using the standard method, x being the sum of cargo from all the ships which have this hullmod in the fleet

Nah, but my 5 Paragons with quad tach lances and 10 Tempest + 5 Falcon (P) pursuit death squad might have given them nerves about causing a fuss.

120
This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.

Agreed. There's not as much risk-reward with smuggling right now as I would expect.

Also, IDK if this is a bug, but I've never had authorities confiscate anything from me, including AI cores etc, even when I've been caught with them and taken the rep hit. I just don't even care about being caught by patrols since the rep hit is offset by an exploration or bounty mission.

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