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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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121
Suggestions / Re: Salvaging
« on: March 03, 2020, 10:21:16 AM »
I generally agree with this. Sitting on the sidelines of big AI fleet action catapults you to midgame instantly. Industry skills mean that the D-mods are practically a plus. The game is more fun at the small to medium fleet stages, and the way colonies, commissions, markets and salvage propel you out of frigates and into cruisers is a little strong right now. Limiting the number of ships you can recover to make them feel a bit more special would be nice. What's the purpose of being able to name our ships if we're not supposed to build a connection with them?

122
Suggestions / Re: Officer Slot Pet Peeve
« on: March 03, 2020, 10:12:41 AM »
I honestly don't mind that combat skills are less useful for low skill players and more useful for better players. That makes sense. I just want to be able to have my best shop count as the "flagship" without gimping it by denying it one of my officers. Being able to place my character independently of whether an officer is contributing skills to a ship would be nice, and makes flavor sense. Picard didn't fly the Enterprise himself.

123
Suggestions / Re: Tuning fleet composition balance by progression
« on: March 02, 2020, 12:44:24 PM »
My first playthrough, I got a commission and bought all the best ships, and made a colony and then printed paragons and tach lances. I was bored after like 15-20 hours. My second playthrough, I added a handful of extra ships in mods and played salvage-only (no commission, no market purchases except fuel, crew, and supplies, no officer hiring from markets, and no colonies). It was a hundred times better because I was forced to use a wide variety of ships, and when I lost them,I couldn't just buy or print more (reinforced bulkheads was a good friend). D mods everywhere. Hunting fleets with capitals in them on the chance of being able to recover them was huge fun. I 100% support the suggestions here about having an option that heavily restricts markets and access to the top tier ships. Otherwise you miss out on a lot of content. New players don't have any kind of reference telling them that using markets and colonies and commissions will make the game stale much faster.

124
Suggestions / Officer Slot Pet Peeve
« on: March 02, 2020, 12:28:43 PM »
I'm one of those players who can't fly ships in this game, but loves it nonetheless due to autopilot. I also care a lot about flavor. Because I can't fly ships, and also because the only way to get fleetwide logistics skills is by speccing into them as a player character, I tend to hit max level with very few combat skills and instead just logistics skills. This means i put all my officers in my important ships and my character just chills in one of my logistics ships, like an Atlas or Prometheus. Consequently, my player doesn't make sense to deploy in battle, which 1) kind of ruins the flavor, because why wouldn't my character ride along on the bridge of my paragon, even if it's an officer flying the ship and contributing skills to it? And 2) when you're not personally in the battle, you constantly have to remember to go to the command map, then use f to watch the battle from one of your ships. Also the combat speedup mod requires you to go back to the command map to activate and deactivate it if your character isn't flying a ship in the battle. I know these are minor complaints -- but all the extra trips to the command map and the awful flavor of not being able to ride into battle because my player character is dead weight as a ship pilot really sucks. It's like, I suck as a pilot due to my IRL skills, and then because I can't use them effectively I skip combat skills and I pick fleet skills, but then that means I also suck in the game's fiction as a pilot and might as well not even be present in the battle... it's like the game is rubbing it in and telling me I might as well just pick autoresolve. But I want to watch the explosions and imagine myself commanding my fleet.

TL;DR: players should be able to assign an officer to pilot (apply skills to) their flagship, while still having that ship count as the flagship for the purposes of the command center mod and the default camera center during battles, etc.

125
General Discussion / Re: How Much is a Credit Worth?
« on: February 14, 2020, 06:25:23 PM »
The question now is how exactly do credits keep their value?
Not very well. a player can actually pull credits out of CPUs that didn't " blow up quite enough " after a battle.

Yeah, I dint understand how an entirely virtual currency works. What's it backed up by?

Bitcoin.

126
Suggestions / Re: Hullmod thoughts
« on: February 05, 2020, 05:24:00 PM »
I just want to chime in to agree that carriers are extremely prone to specialization and increasing marginal returns, meaning it's better to go all or nothing both on individual ships and also fleetwide, and even in terms of character skill points. Specializing in general (not just carriers, gunboats too) feels like a first-order optimal strategy in the game currently, at the character skill, ship build, and fleet composition levels.

I'd love it if jack-of-all-trades ships didn't feel like a stepping stone to a better, more specialized fleet, but more like a valid playstyle with meaningful advantages. For example the Odyssey really struggles to feel as useful as more specialized capitals, like the Paragon, Onslaught, Astral, or even the Legion (which only has two specialties, ballistics and strikecraft, instead of being an exploration/fast/energy/missile/strikecraft/PD boat). Similarly the Gemini is garbage and only useful until you have something better.

128
General Discussion / Re: Good AI ships
« on: February 05, 2020, 05:11:12 PM »
Really any ship with a time- or direction-limited movement ability, and low armor/shields will suck in AI hands, as they have a tendency to, eventually, overcommit and get eaten alive. Even if it only happens once every three or four battles, losing ships is hella expensive and even just one or two lost ships can e.g. make a bounty mission a net loss of credits after supplies and fuel and time are considered. For this reason the AI really struggles in late game battles to use destroyers IMO -- they are too slow to get away if they get flanked, but not so big they can hold on long enough for the rest of your fleet to dive in and rescue them.

129
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Mundane Sector Things
« on: January 30, 2020, 11:14:50 PM »
Luddic Church Mercantile Cathedral
----------------------
* The speed limit of approaching space lanes is very low
* You get the sense you don't want to get stopped by a patrol if you're not from around here
* Docking is free, but donations are "encouraged"
* There are no advertisements, of any kind
* There is only one bar, where all you can purchase is organic milk and naturally-pure spring water
* The elder who collected your "voluntary" docking donation is also in charge of "blessing" all of your cargo, in person, before you leave, surrounded by armed "peacekeepers"
* Everyone is infuriatingly friendly and wholesome, but you're sure beneath it all they're buying and selling as many recreational drugs as you are
* You try to find shady deals by striking up conversations in private comm links but everyone just ends up asking if you've heard the Word of Our Ludd and Savior
* Everything smells like your grandparents' house
* If you talk to anyone too long you end up finding out they believe Ludd is going to return and destroy all anti-matter technology within the year, or the Collapse never happened and the Domain is a myth invented by the Hegemony to turn folks away from Ludd, or Ludd died and ascended to Heaven after fighting the great artificial intelligence Enemy who still lingers in the far reaches of the sector waiting until the day of the final battle with the Church; weirdly, they all still live normal lives despite claiming to believe these things
* Cows literally everywhere

130
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Mundane Sector Things
« on: January 30, 2020, 10:38:29 PM »
Sorry for the thread necro, but this inspired me and it's been long enough that I feel like there's no harm in blatantly ripping off the concept.

Hegemony Secure Market Facility 0754
----------------------
* "Welcome to Hegemony Secure Market Facility 0754. It's safer here."
* "In order to meet docking protocols, please ensure your fleet's transponder is fully functional and active before queuing for market access. Violators will be prosecuted. Hegemony military fleets and paramilitary commissioned fleets may queue in the priority lane using State Affairs Expedited Docking Application Form 503-2B."
* 107 Auto Pulse Cannons are pointing at your cockpit
* "Remember: all goods in Hegemony space are subject to inspection. Any contraband items are subject to confiscation. Every individual is subject to the Hegemony."
* After waiting in the queue to dock for 5 hours, you find yourself at 2,481st place in line to register for a 24-hour H7 Gamma Temporary Trading Visa
* Entire station appears to be made of nothing but plain concrete and steel grates
* After receiving the visa you discover that the most recent regulatory guidance allows only 85,000 credits in market activity within the prescribed 24-hour trading window before mandatory renewal application to the Office of Alien Subjects
* You can appeal your visa decision, but the wait time for appeal response is 6-36 months
* Leave
* Deactivate Transponder
* Dock using a shuttle under a 6-hour tourist visa
* Email the local Hegemony requisition officer
* A man with one robotic arm answers
* "Comrade, you have medical shipment?" He looks at you with deadly intensity
* Sweat begins to bead on your forehead
* "Yes, the legally donated organs and prescribed medical painkillers for the terminally ill are being transferred to docking bay zero-alpha-one-four-niner. Per protocol they are stamped with inspection QC pass ID zero-beta-niner-four-four."
* The comm transmission ends
* 1,478,280 credits have been transferred from an account registered on Kazeron to your personal Tri-Tachyon CreditoTM P2P cryptocurrency wallet
* 107 Auto Pulse Cannons are pointing at your cockpit
* GOING DARK


Persean League Duty-Free Mayasuran Economic Opportunity Zone
----------------------
* Everyone in the docking queue is armed to the teeth
* Can't tell if the fleet right behind you are pirates or just an Indpendent salvager
* Prerecorded automated traffic controller
* "Welcome to Mayasura, EXCEPTION: TARGET TRANSPONDER IDENT IS NULL. As you prepare to dock, please consider reviewing our automated clearinghouse for recently posted requisitions and bounties. Remember: Time is money, friend!"
* Automated clearinghouse is full of ads like "LONELY? BBY I AM RDY 4 U ALL NITE! HEAVY ARMAMENTS ACCEPTED" and "GENTLY USED TACHYON LANCE, 8-PACK, 249 CREDITS, LIMITED TIME OFFER, 100% FACTORY DIRECT, HIGHEST QUALITY GUARANTEE"
* Any commodity listing within 10% of the rolling median 3-month average price of historical listings is auto-purchased by one of 3 bots that operate in the market
* The bots have the lowest prices, so everyone buys from them
* The bots use an API that is not available to the public
* They don't ask any questions when they buy your armaments, though
* Overall 9/10 shopping experience

131
General Discussion / Re: Lost my activation key
« on: January 30, 2020, 08:28:13 PM »
You will never receive this level of customer support anywhere else in your entire life.

132
Suggestions / Re: Addressing Early - Endgame progression
« on: January 23, 2020, 09:47:03 PM »
Bar bounties that generate against a wider variety of targets, including merchant fleets, is a cool idea. Generally, I honestly just don't play with colonies. They are boring to babysit/manage, there's no interesting choices to make, and they catapult you into the boring endgame where you just lug your paragons around killing everything until bored.

The game is best while you're still making risky prospecting/surveying trips to the outer constellations and grabbing some delivery contracts and bounties on the way to and fro to help ends meet, checking markets for juicy ships, weapons, and mods to buy, and smuggling illegal cargo because you've run out of ways to pay your crew through legitimate means and you need money for more supplies yesterday. I'm sure plenty of people like colonies, and I get that they serve as a reward to exploring and finding nice planets, and that they can (via Nex) do other cool stuff. But they're not fun, at least for me. I'd love to see more support/content for the exploration gameplay loop of planning expeditions. A mode where the focus was survival and there were no markets, just a journey through unexplored systems, trying to collect enough resources from random drops and avoid patrolling danger fleets of pirates, Redacted, etc. and make it from one side to another of a giant sector in one piece is probably my optimal SS experience. Add in some more crew management and it's basically Battlestar Galactica mode.

133
Suggestions / Re: Make Personnel More Expensive
« on: January 23, 2020, 08:19:11 PM »
I've wanted the crew to matter more since I started playing. This game has so much potential to capture a lot of the spirit of e.g. Battlestar Galactica and having more focus on thinking about your crew and caring what happens to them and managing them could be compelling. Higher impact to their death would be useful. Currently I've never even considered the mods that reduce crew deaths because they just don't matter; they're a commodity and a cheap one -- the only goal is to have just enough to meet your needs, like fuel and supplies.

134
Suggestions / Re: Cryosleeper
« on: January 23, 2020, 08:12:27 PM »
1. Harvest the Cryosleeper for an epic haul of organs

Only thing it needs. 5% chance it'll boost your colony, 95% chance it improves meme value.

135
General Discussion / Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« on: November 13, 2019, 06:35:28 PM »
...there *may* be a bug where it occasionally backs off a venting ship? I'm not 100% sure; haven't been able to reproduce this myself but saw it reported maybe two or three times. But since there are also legitimate reasons to back off, it's basically impossible to say w/o seeing the exact situation...

When I started out the game, I also would get frustrated by small ships backing off too -- until I learned to really analyze their alternatives by pausing and zooming out, and realized usually the backing off ship was some combo of very near flux cap (such that the next shot would put it close to overloading), out of or nearly out of missiles/AM blaster charges, or feeling flanked. The only time it really doesn't make sense is when the flanking ship isn't a serious threat, but I can understand why the AI would struggle to know that being flanked by tac lasers and salamanders isn't really a serious problem without any other threats around, compared to being flanked by a frigate with a reaper.

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