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16

Suggestions / Re: View Storage on colony or other planets

« on: October 30, 2019, 08:28:06 AM »

A full inventory list seems necessary. I would also like to know in the refit screen if I have own and item, but it is simply unavailable at this location.

17

General Discussion / Gifting AI controlled colonies.

« on: October 22, 2019, 04:22:20 PM »

Hey all, I have a question about gifting colonies. I see that this seems to be a thing you can do, but I am not sure if it requires a mod. I cannot find a way to do it in the vanilla game. (if it is a mod, can I install that mod after the game is started?)

The second part of this question is is there any drawback to gifting an AI managed colony? Do the other factions leave it in place?

As far as strategy is concerned, should I sell off all the local production on the colony? Build expensive industries that consume raw materials? What is the best way to make the colony most profitable to me by giving it away?

18

Suggestions / Re: Character's portrait should not be used for NPC's

« on: October 17, 2019, 03:30:25 PM »

I use a custom portrait, and only have it configured in the player portrait file so it is not available anywhere else. You can easily do the same by removing the reference to your preferred portrait from everywhere but the player file.

Portrait files are added (or removed, as the case may be) to the .faction files in <install directory>\starsector-core\data\world\factions. You will need to add the file path to your portrait file to the "player.faction", under the section "portraits":{ or remove the same from all the other faction files to prevent them from using it. Order does not matter, just make sure the right path is in the list. By default portraits are kept in the <install directory>\starsector-core\graphics\portraits directory, so if you are doing this all manually that is as good a place as any to stick custom images. There is probably a more clean way to do it with proper modding tools, but that is beyond my current skill set. Maybe someone else can respond with a method that does not involve editing core game files.

I have never attempted this with other resolutions or file formats, and I have no idea what the game would do with an image files that is different in those ways, so I just make sure every portrait file I add is a 128x128 .png file.

I am not sure preventing the game from using the player portrait is the best over all solution, because quite a few of the portraits are space suites, and you would expect to find other people wearing the exact same thing flying around. Trying to add all kinds of rules for which ones can and cannot be duplicated would add a lot of complexity without giving much actual utility for the average player. People who find this kind of thing to be an issue can easily modify their files so it is no longer a problem.

19

Suggestions / Re: station AI firing behaviour

« on: October 16, 2019, 08:40:56 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions

Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

Are you disputing the fact that adding an officer to a station increases the combat effectiveness of that station?

I would give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't read the opening post properly, but then you doubled down even after being specifically told twice that an officer wouldn't affect Thermi's observations, so I guess you are just obstinate for the sake of it.

Read my words again, at no point did I claim officer AI 100% impacted the initial observations, just that we knew that officer AI did impact combat performance and that there are other skills that explicitly impact other parameters that are closely related to the observed behavior, and that I could see the impacted behavior also falling into the category of things officer AI would affect. This is why I stated that the observed behavior should be tested with and without an officer AI present so that this speculation can be verified or refuted. At no point did I ever try to pass my claims off as authoritative on the subject, nor did I contradict anyone who presented couterviewpoints (even if no other citations were presented). I merely presented a plausible line of deduction that supported my claim that such an observation should be tested to find out one way or the other.

You are the only one here who seems to be reading more into my statements than that. I really did not want my posts to wind up being paragraphs long dissertations on what I personally do and do not know for a given fact, because most of that information is not relevant to the discussion. Except you seem to be forcing the issue, when there really should be no issue to be found. If you have actual knowledge that show that no, indeed the AI, officer or otherwise, does *not* use station weapons effectively in this regard, and that there is some technical reason for the limitation then fine, I am not going to argue against that. If you *do not* know if that is or is not true then my initial assessment stands, the behavior should be tested with and officer AI to see if it changes anything, because this *might* be a parameter that the officer AI adjusts. I base that speculation on the fact that we know officer AI impacts *other* closely related parameters regarding the combat effectiveness of individual weapon mounts, so it seems plausible and worth the investigation.

Hell, we have explicit confirmation from Alex that officer AI impacts other hard-to-define behavior such a flux-venting timing, so to me that indicated there may be other parameters that were not well documented for the user, like maybe the max number of weapons it will use from a specific weapon group, or how often the AI reassess its target selection. Given the otehr esoteric things the AI can impact this does not seem all that far fetched to me.

And one more thought to consider; if I indeed profess to have specific knowledge on this exact topic, why would I have led with "you should test it with officer AI and see if it changes", instead of just outright stating "officer AI fixes this"? So far we only have one person here who outright states that the AI does not change anything about actual target selection/weapon group usage regardless of officer level, and that was only two posts ago.

And now that I have indeed provided a paragraphs long dissertation on the topic, can we please put this whole kerfuffle behind us, as it server no useful purpose for advancing the topic at hand? intrinsic_parity has stated with apparent confidence what the answer is, so the next point would seem to be evaluating solutions, not arguing over what perspective we were all looking at the issue from, and how we each interpreted those perspectives as we read them.

20

Suggestions / Re: station AI firing behaviour

« on: October 15, 2019, 11:02:59 AM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions

Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

Are you disputing the fact that adding an officer to a station increases the combat effectiveness of that station?

21

Suggestions / Re: station AI firing behaviour

« on: October 14, 2019, 07:21:23 PM »

If you had read my comment you would see that that I made nos such assertions, and my suspicions about the possibility were qualified as such. This Is also why I suggested *actually testing* to find out if it makes a difference.

What was asked, and I answered, was if skills impact auto-fire accuracy. Since there are skills that explicitly call out stats directly related to auto-fire it seems like the answer is "yes, they do for at least some aspects of ship weapon use", followed by postulation about other stats that *may* be related to other aspects of the observation, like target fixation or effective weapon group usage.

Again, let us run a test to see if that is indeed the case, and maybe we can suss out exactly *how* officer AI enhances ship (and station) performance since it clearly does so in some way.

22

General Discussion / Re: Colonizing Core Systems

« on: October 13, 2019, 10:28:31 AM »

Ok, I tested this myself. I gathered up enough cash and materials to blitz the system; six colonies set up as fast as I could fly between the planets (I figured if I was going to sit and babysit I would get the most value out of the time. . . ). I decided to forgo any econ development until I had a system that could take care of itself, so my build order for each colony was patrol HQ>High Tech Station>Ground Batteries. I upgraded the Patrol HQ on 5 of the 6 planets first, so that was their first industry.

The Independents did send a (single) bombing expedition, but that arrived *after* I had my first two HQs upgraded to "military base" (they finished 10 days before they were scheduled to arrive in system). I camped right next to the targeted colony and never saw the expedition; it got jumped as soon as it got there and was wiped out (-5 rep, nothing I cannot make up later).

There have been no other expeditions yet, and my colonies are now nearing size 5. I am now working on econ to make them super profitable.

It is my understanding is that is the cutoff for generating bombing fleets, but even if it is not they are more than capable of handling themselves now, what with having high commands and battlestations (soon to be star fortresses as soon as I can scrape together the cash, building six colonies at ones if a bit of a drain on resources as they all wind up needing about the same things at about the same time).

I am off gathering AI cores to help things along, and I will not be rushing back even if the system is targeted.

Thanks everyone for the help, I felt confident enough in this course of action I did not even make a backup of the save file to test with.

23

Suggestions / Re: station AI firing behaviour

« on: October 13, 2019, 10:08:17 AM »

Does an officer affect how the targetting works? I am not aware of it doing such except when CR is increased enough to change autofire accuracy. That shouldn't change any sort of observed behaviour in regards to firing weapons.

I highly doubt that station AI have been purposefully programmed to be dumb, but removes that malus with an officer.

It does with ships, there are even a few skills that explicitly state it as so: "Ordnance Expertise" impacts projectile speed, which indirectly affects accuracy, and "Gunnery Implants" impacts lead calculation accuracy. Looking at it from the other way, those are definitely "maluses" that the officer AI "cures"

Since we know stations can have officers it makes sense they would be using the exact same calculations. I can see "officer AI" tuning up the speed at which some other things that matter happen too, like how often they re-evaluate their current target, which could drastically change "target fixation" behavior. I know for 100% sure that officers increase the combat survivability and effectivness of ships (so long as you properly pair their "personality" behaviors with the proper ship type) so I cannot imagine why it would be any different for stations.

I would definitely test with an Alpha AI core before coming to any conclusions.

24

Suggestions / Re: station AI firing behaviour

« on: October 12, 2019, 11:42:50 PM »

Are you testing this with a alpha AI core? cause it is my understanding that base level stations are a bit dumb and can really benefit from the use of an officer, and the alpha core give a level 20 officer. . .

25

Suggestions / Re: No Survivors!

« on: October 11, 2019, 03:29:37 PM »

I feel like it could be interesting if your crew acted like their own faction (a faction that starts at cooperative but can decrease as you do immoral things and can rat you out if they like you too little) which'd probably be able to extend into some kind of "rebellion" feature where your own faction hates you.

The only problem I have with that is the mechanic ignores the fact that huge pirate fleets exists, and the fact that faction fleets will saturation bomb upstart colonies in inconvenient locations. . . "crew morality" does not seem to be a thing the game cares about tracking, and instead abstracts it out and just assumes you will hire people who are "morally compatible" with your leadership.

If the game ever does decide to go the rout of allowing crew rebellion and such, there will need to be mechanics available to select "morally compatible" crew, and/or have other mitigation options. I do not find that a very compelling game-play mechanic, but I understand if others do and will not mind it so long as it is not a huge burden to deal with (I think flying through a dozen systems to gather a dozen or so "morally compatible" crew at each system would be too much of a burden, for example. I would settle for some kind of filter that slightly adjusted the price of crew at a single station though).

The next major hazard comes from now needing to track the morality alignment of each individual crew item, which might get computationally burdensome, then there comes questions about assigning crew with certain moralities to certain ships. . . To do this properly gets complicated fast. I am not sure it is worth the hassle and we should probably just stick to leaving it an abstract concept, as embodied in the fact that "crew" are treated as a comity that can be bought and sold at will (which is a whole other wrinkle that we have not even explored. Maybe that 1000 crew you bought just to trade did not want to be offloaded on some podunk corner of the sector, did you ever think of that?).

26

General Discussion / Re: Colonizing Core Systems

« on: October 11, 2019, 08:32:02 AM »

So no one knows if the independents employ "legal" saturation bombing in "their" systems?

27

Suggestions / Re: No Survivors!

« on: October 11, 2019, 08:19:01 AM »

Would the distance from the core worlds matter? Blowing up a massive trade fleet inside hedgy space is suspicious even if there are no survivors. Would nearby fleets be able to investigate after witnessing a battle? Just because the victim can't report a battle, doesn't mean no one else saw it. Gigantic explosions and burning hulls have a way of showing up on space sensors, after all.

Sensor range indeed does factor into it:

- System has working comm relay: rep loss no matter what you do, since the enemy fleet transmits distress signals and other information about the battle
- System has no comm relay, some enemies escape: rep loss due to survivors reporting back
- System has no comm relay, no enemies escape: reduced or no rep loss
  - Nonzero rep loss could result from rumors leaking from your crew
  - And if we want to overengineer this, the chance of such leaks is based on your fleet size/crew count

I would say nearby fleets definitely factor into this calculation, provided you account for factional issues (e.g. if you were witnessed by pirates killing their enemy, they probably would have no incentive to either look at the fight closer nor report the findings back to the victim faction, meaning virtually no change to the rep calculations other than maybe a slight boost to the chance of "rumors"). If, on the other hand, you were in sensor range of another fleet of the same faction the risk of "rumors" or even outright discovery goes way, way up, unless you also manage to "disappear" that fleet before they get back within coms range too.

Picking off every single ship to the last man is also not a trivial affair. Fleet pursuit battles involve a pile of fleeing ships, but some of them can still get away. Are any escaped ships an automatic failure? Are your crew guaranteed to keep their mouths shut in the space bars? Rumors have a way of spreading around, even if there weren't any survivors there is always a circumstantial trail of evidence that will make your own fleet suspicious.

already accounted for in the original comment. Yes you need to get every ship, and yes, there can still be minimal rep loss even if you are 100% successful due to other factors. If you want to put all that under more direct player control you could invent skills for things like "sec ops" that minimizes own-crew rumors and needing to clean up the debris field (as someone else salvaging it cold reveal your misdeeds). Some of these would invite whole new mechanics be added to the game, which I am not opposed to in the slightest, but the suggestion seemed to be made withing the bounds of the current game scope.

I think the idea brings up more questions than it does answers. Also, chasing down a shattered fleet to shut them up doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

The mechanic is aimed squarely at people who want to play the "clean pirate", who maintain high rep yet prey on targets of opportunity out beyond the range of civilization. It enables a very specific play style that should not be easy. It also allows players with a more normal play style a somewhat-less-than-ethical option for dealing with certain problems the game presents so long as they are willing to see it through to the end (i.e. mopping up any survivors before they find someone to report back their folly). This could be a very attractive "out" for use in these rare situations that are currently not handled well within game.

It also certainly opens up the door to other ideas like espionage and double agent styles of play, as well as things like secret trade wars and such. Giving the player the ability to hunt fleets for a potential zero rep loss with the targeted faction opens up a whole host of opportunities that do not exist with the current simple fixed-rep-hit for transponder-off attacks, and allows for more flexibility with the attack setup (you could, for example, attack with the transponder *on* and still suffer no rep hit, so long as you were committed to 100% cleanup of the mess both during and after battle. This means maybe you do not have to chase down a faster fleet, but also means bigger risks if something does escape). 

It would also allow for the implementation of other good ideas from mods to take a more sensible foothold (like infamous ships, for example). If you had escapees from a fleet of well know ships your rep hit would be *much* higher due to you being easily recognized as the culprit regardless of your transponder status, but a fleet composed of a bunch of scrap yard salvage would bring you virtually no rep hit with or without survivors due to no one really having seen any of those ships before. And such a mechanic would invite a tie in to things like espionage, where players and AI entities would attempt to mimic infamous ships to frame each other for crimes, which itself would open up whole game-pay loops where the player, for example, needs to hunt down an impostor fleet to clear their good name and restore any rep hits it caused (and maybe also avail themselves of the ability to commit a crime or two to blame on that same impostor when they do bring them to justice).

This mechanic really leads to a nesting doll effect for other ideas and game-play styles and is a great foundational mechanic for that reason. It is so much more nuanced than the simple "fixed rep hit for attacking a fleet (smaller if transponder is off)" mechanic we have now, and that ultimately means greater player agency (which is a very good thing to have in this context).

28

General Discussion / Re: I need your help with the deploy system (or how to change it via game script)

« on: October 11, 2019, 01:32:18 AM »

That will certainly reduce the scale of fights, much more drastically than just reducing DP. The AI can use the same reinforcements function as the player, deploying in new ships as old ones are destroyed. Limiting them to only 15 ships total without changing DP will meant they will basically start with 100% of available combat ships every time. This will make things significantly easier for you, so if that is your goal have at it, just know that you are taking an advantage since you will have ships to reinforce.

Incidentally fleet size and DP are one of the easiest ways I find tweak the combat difficulty in the game, so long as you are open to tactics and fleet compositions that can capitalize off the changes.

29

General Discussion / Re: I need your help with the deploy system (or how to change it via game script)

« on: October 10, 2019, 09:26:10 PM »

You want to hit up "settings.json" in <install directory>\starsector-core\data\config. You will find a few useful settings there, most notably the "BattleSize" settings (min, default and max). Use a text editor and the search feature to find them (they start on line 528 in my file). These settings change the deployments costs for battles, which is sort of tied to the number of ships (obviously smaller and less powerful ships cost less to deploy, so if you go with "swarm tactics" you still may run into problems with FPS). I have no idea what happens if you set the number to something less than your largest ship (60 for the paragon).

30

General Discussion / Colonizing Core Systems

« on: October 10, 2019, 07:12:50 PM »

I have spent the last little bit clearing out the Hegemony from some rather choice real estate. I have let the sit fallow for some time to clear out any detrimental effects from the eviction, and am now ready to colonize them. Unfortunately the systems now say they are claimed by the independents, who I am very friendly with. I tried to get a commission with them but that option does not seem to exsist (forum posts indicate that is possible, but the wiki does not include them in the list of commission giving factions).  Is there a way for me to keep them in the system without *** them off? I know they have some behavioral differences from the other "more normal" factions, does that include not getting *** off about co-colonization, despite what the flavor text says? I wold even be willing to take a rep hit, but only if it is temporary. . .