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Author Topic: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 355158 times)

Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #270 on: February 26, 2016, 09:06:56 PM »

for some reason my Harpoons seem to frequently ignore my target and go after another enemy instead. just had two of a salvo of three fly after some Broadswords, rather than take out the overloaded Wolf in front of me, which was set as target.

somewhat related, the AI still seems to have some trouble judging how many Harpoons it should fire at a vulnerable enemy, at least when there are allies nearby doing the same (screenshot).
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DanJSC

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #271 on: February 26, 2016, 09:11:39 PM »

The officer you start with doesn't count as an officer it seems. Accidentally put myself in his ship and when i put myself back in mine he'd vanished. Reloaded the save from an earlier one, when trying to reassign him he's just nonexistant.
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Toxcity

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #272 on: February 26, 2016, 09:14:43 PM »

for some reason my Harpoons seem to frequently ignore my target and go after another enemy instead. just had two of a salvo of three fly after some Broadswords, rather than take out the overloaded Wolf in front of me, which was set as target.

somewhat related, the AI still seems to have some trouble judging how many Harpoons it should fire at a vulnerable enemy, at least when there are allies nearby doing the same (screenshot).

Just had the same thing happen to me.  :-\

Might have something to do with the changes made to the missile ai for phase ships.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #273 on: February 26, 2016, 09:20:58 PM »

@ Alex:  My monitor is a widescreen, 1920x1080.  Instead of disabling sound, I can reduce resolution (and disable fullscreen), and can run the game (maybe not extended play).  Like no sound, lowering resolution is not fun either (I have grown used to a bigger screen), but probably not as bad as no sound.

I have problems when I run 1920x1080 (or close to it) AND sound.  Did not have problems before 0.7.2 (without mods); do not have problems if I downgrade something (not fun).

That's odd. I'm seeing the same memory usage when running at 1024x768 and 1650x1080, and that's what I'd expect, more or less. Certainly not a major difference. Unless the video card you're using uses RAM instead of dedicated VRAM, but even that doesn't make much sense since that'd be fine to go over what's allocated to Java.

What exactly is OpenAL?  The host site gives almost no details on what it is, or what it does if I install it.

It's the sound library the game uses. Sometimes, on a windows machine, the OpenAL.dll on your system will end up being used instead of the one shipped with the game, for Windows reasons. And if that one happens to be an old/bad version, problems occur. Installing OpenAL from that link should ensure that the OpenAL on your system is a working version.


Alex did you release this patch just for little ol me? Time ships and API assistance for hiding TWIGs? You even wrote a 'temporal' shell ship system for me!

:)


A very quick thought: how's "Dynamic" sound compared to "Synergy" for energy/missile mounts? Synergy sounds nice but seems a bit out of place (it almost implies you can use two weapons in one to "synergise"), Dynamic sounds more "versatile" while retaining a high tech feel.

My opinion of course.

Hmm. Will think about that; initial thought is to leave well enough alone - to my mind it's kind of a sidegrade.


Hey Alex, here is a screencap of what I was talking about. This is right after doing a new game
Spoiler
[close]

Aha, right, this is not offered by Jangala. If you wait a few seconds in the campaign view you should get a new bounty posted from Jangala.


I right-clicked my officer to remove him from a ship and transfer to another ship, and he disappeared entirely?
The officer you start with doesn't count as an officer it seems. Accidentally put myself in his ship and when i put myself back in mine he'd vanished. Reloaded the save from an earlier one, when trying to reassign him he's just nonexistant.

Bug; reported earlier and fixed for the hotfix that'll be out... probably in a couple of days.

Edit: A Mudskipper with a Large Ballistic Mount? What?

Glorious madness, that's what!


1) Sometimes friendly AIs will get stuck in a corner of the combat map, no order can debug them. You need to physically move near them and ask for escort.

How often/under what conditions are you seeing this? What exactly are they doing? Are enemy ships nearby? Are any "Avoid" orders in play?


2) The Onslaught has a new stock loadout that's quite "special" to say the least. It's called "Standard" like the other one, but it's most certainly not standard as it mounts missiles nearly everywhere, which of course isn't even possible. It works though.

Did you see it in the campaign? If so, where?


Missile stuff:
Spoiler
Centurion isn't the most exciting ship, even though it does fill an unexplored niche and is ridiculously hard to kill for a frigate. I can see the overarching idea behind it, but the end result is that you'll probably outfit it as a long range tac laser/gyro/ipdai ship almost every time, unless it's at the very start of the game. Need to test more though, it might be a funny unflankable point capping ship with a set of long-range ballistics on it, or as a "tank" with an aggressive officer to generate flanking opportunities.

What's the deal with the missile power creep, by the way? Missiles offer lower TTK and a higher degree of randomness than a few years back, and most patches have continued the trend in some way, although the Locust and Squall are good. (is the squall supposed to have 750 proj HP?)

Missile Specialization is the biggest culprit, but there are a few other changes too. The new Atropos isn't really fun to deal with, and it feels fairly brainless to use. If the enemy fleet has a few, you basically can't overload near those ships ever, or you die, forcing you to play extremely cautiously. This was already the case thanks to Harpoons and missile specialization, but now there's an added dimension to it. They're thankfully quite rare in vanilla, but I find it tedious. I wonder if the idea of a homing torpedo is inherently flawed.

Harpoons have become better against frigates over time. Frigates like to use Harpoons as equalizers against bigger ships. Bigger ships can never dodge harpoons reliably anymore due to the veering, but even frigates can struggle due to the fact harpoons will flip around and accelerate back if they miss on the first run. Maybe harpoons should commit more to their heading and instead try to predict based on the target's current vector, so that a frigate that reads the incoming missile's projected hit location can pull off a last-minute dodge, and to make the initial firing position more important.

The best defense against missiles is to crush the enemy ship so hard that you're never vulnerable in the first place.

The redesigned Hurricane MIRV is also not very interesting. It tends to mostly ignore PD except for flak, leaving you shielding the submunitions until the ship runs out of ammo, because it's too risky to engage while it's still launching them unless you vastly overpower the enemy. In the end, you just game the ammo out, and if you can't, you'll probably get punished hard for it. Might be a side effect of how liberally the AI uses the weapon.

I would like to expand upon this, I strongly dislike the entire flight profile of most vanilla missiles.

Evasion is essentially ineffective as the missiles have so much acceleration and turn ability that they just loop around and then hit the rear of the ship. Even more bizarre is how often they weave and sidewind around a stationary target effectively missing on purpose then hitting the rear! I would prefer a flight profile that relies on interception rather than massive maneuverability, where the weapon is fast and sets up a pass at the intercept point, if you evade it? Kudos, it is unlikely to be able to make a return pass on all but the largest targets. The weaving behavior would also taper off as it approaches the target at a faster rate than it does now which would fix the missing on purpose issue.

I feel that Salamanders are ok, Locusts are ok, Swarmers are ok, Annihilators are ok, and Squall are ok but every single other missile weapon uses distasteful mechanics. In the previous paragraph I described what I do not like about the agility and AI of standard guided missiles. But what of the others?

Why is the Sabot second stage projectile essentially hit scan?


 
So that mod missile weapon has a reasonable second stage, the primary missile actually aims the shot at an intercept point so its accurate while retaining a "fair" speed for the submunition. This is similar in a way to what I mentioned before about normal guided missiles, that a system that is smart instead of just boosting all the stats like crazy makes for a far more fair and balanced game.

What of torpedos and rockets? Same issue really, the AI is terrible at aiming them so to fix that they all have insane acceleration and top speed. You cast the finger of death and there is almost no possible way to defend against it via simple movement and PD has almost no response time. If the AI actually aimed rocket weapons properly then they could have reasonable speed and acceleration.

Bassically, I believe in the theory that every play should have a counter play but with how most missiles work right now there are few options to deal with them and they just are not fun. The way the AI works I don't agree with, most all of them are too agile and too fast, and the alpha strike is completely out of control and I am only talking about level 0.

A bit of a rant there, but it is what it is. Most mod missiles that use custom AI work similar to the theory I described that I believe makes for a better game.
[close]

Nerfing the Hurricane is on my TODO list.

The Atropos is expensive OP-wise, but, yes, I generally agree with the analysis. Had similar thoughts when trying to balance it, a guided torpedo is a weird niche. Ended up giving it a short range to somewhat compensate. The saving grace, as you say (and that I definitely considered) is you don't encounter it much at all as a player. If you did, it would be very problematic. As it is, I'm still not happy with it.

I do also think Missile Spec is the main problem here, and that'll be addressed.



What of torpedos and rockets? Same issue really, the AI is terrible at aiming them so to fix that they all have insane acceleration and top speed. You cast the finger of death and there is almost no possible way to defend against it via simple movement and PD has almost no response time. If the AI actually aimed rocket weapons properly then they could have reasonable speed and acceleration.

I can't really agree with this. Without missile spec, I still find Reapers pretty dodgeable - you just have to maintain awareness of ships that have them.

Before the buff to top speed, the only reliable way to get Reaper hits was to launch them point-blank. Anything shot from afar was either shot down or reliably dodged by ships up to cruiser size. Sure, the odd one got through, but it felt very luck-based - just fire it off and hope the AI messes up, basically.

(is the squall supposed to have 750 proj HP?)

Yes, in theory most of the projectile is just a lump of metal but... it's weird. I kind of want to rework the Squall at some point - I like the overall idea (a long-term stream of kinetic damage allied ships can play around) but not the specific execution.


Bassically, I believe in the theory that every play should have a counter play but with how most missiles work right now there are few options to deal with them and they just are not fun. The way the AI works I don't agree with, most all of them are too agile and too fast, and the alpha strike is completely out of control and I am only talking about level 0.

Minus the ones you've mentioned as being ok, and minus the torpedoes, that leaves what - the Harpoon and the Sabot, right? Assuming missile spec is out of the picture - sabots are slow, and long-range PD can take them out. They can also be moved away from by many ships. Harpoons are very susceptible to flak, and can be dodged by frigates. I'm not saying these are *bad*, but it seems like you should get some value out of 4 ordnance points, right?

I mean, if we were talking about these at Missile Spec 10, I'd pretty much agree with what you're saying, so it seems like a matter of degrees. I definitely haven't, in playtesting, felt like level 0 missiles were unfair, uncounterable, or even a particular pain to deal with. On the other hand, if a missile spec 10 enforcer unloads 10+ Harpoons and just erases one of your ships that had the audacity to get to 80% flux, that's a whole other story. So: will definitely keep an eye on it.


All in all, I feel like the TTK for ships has gone up too much in recent updates. Scaling that down is a big item on the TODO list, and missiles are certainly part of that.


The Conquest's engine flare alignment is messed up.  No screenshot because it should be obvious if you look at it.
Same with the Hammerhead, though that ones a bit harder to see.

I'm okay with the turret layout of the Centurion, Scarab, and Wayfarer. They first two have Omni shields and ship systems that either mitigate/ let you more easily avoid incoming damage.

Uhh, how'd that happen? Thank you, let me fix that up.


Wasn't the Doom supposed to have its Medium Missile mounts changed to Synergy? Don't think this has been mentioned yet (or perhaps it has and I'm just blind).

It wasn't. I do remember seeing some talk about this on the forum, but I'm not sure where people got the idea that that happened.

somewhat related, the AI still seems to have some trouble judging how many Harpoons it should fire at a vulnerable enemy, at least when there are allies nearby doing the same (screenshot).

Thanks - I'll note that down as something to look at. It's supposed to consider that (though not perfectly). Could be just an edge case where it's within expected parameters for it to mess up, could be something I did messed up the code that figures this out.

for some reason my Harpoons seem to frequently ignore my target and go after another enemy instead. just had two of a salvo of three fly after some Broadswords, rather than take out the overloaded Wolf in front of me, which was set as target.

Right - more or less "how it works" now; phase breaks missile lock and phase skimmer/teleporter actually does phase out the ship briefly.
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Embolism

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #274 on: February 26, 2016, 09:28:55 PM »

  • Doom:
    • Changed medium missile hardpoints to "synergy"
    • New ship system, "Interdictor Array"

That's where we got the idea from. ;D
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David

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #275 on: February 26, 2016, 09:31:01 PM »


The Conquest's engine flare alignment is messed up.  No screenshot because it should be obvious if you look at it.
Same with the Hammerhead, though that ones a bit harder to see.


Uhh, how'd that happen? Thank you, let me fix that up.


*Cough* Maybe I updated the sprites - for the Conquest at least - without fixing the engine glows? Or was that the patch before? Pretty sure I didn't touch the Hammerhead at all however.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #276 on: February 26, 2016, 09:32:13 PM »

  • Doom:
    • Changed medium missile hardpoints to "synergy"
    • New ship system, "Interdictor Array"

That's where we got the idea from. ;D

... well, I got sat down pretty hard here.

(Played around with that at one point but didn't like it; thought I'd removed that from the patch notes before publishing them. Apparently not.)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #277 on: February 26, 2016, 09:33:11 PM »

*Cough* Maybe I updated the sprites - for the Conquest at least - without fixing the engine glows? Or was that the patch before? Pretty sure I didn't touch the Hammerhead at all however.

Are you really sure? Because it looks super messed up, like, not the kind of messed up that could've gone overlooked for too long. (Fixing now, about to check in.)
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #278 on: February 26, 2016, 09:40:13 PM »

i love how the Mudskipper variant that's armed with a Gauss Cannon has to vent after every single shot. xD

shouldn't the MK.II have significantly worse logistics stats, though? seems weird to me that forcing a large mount and military sensor systems on that little thing doesn't come at the cost of cargo and passenger capacity, or maybe increased maintenance requirements.

Right - more or less "how it works" now; phase breaks missile lock and phase skimmer/teleporter actually does phase out the ship briefly.
oooh, i see. i had no idea that this change applies to all phase-related stuff. that's actually pretty cool!

on a completely different note, i've started subconsciously trying to shift+scroll to speed up in things other than Starsector, because that's such a useful feature, and it doesn't work! frustrating. >_<
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David

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #279 on: February 26, 2016, 09:44:17 PM »

*Cough* Maybe I updated the sprites - for the Conquest at least - without fixing the engine glows? Or was that the patch before? Pretty sure I didn't touch the Hammerhead at all however.

Are you really sure? Because it looks super messed up, like, not the kind of messed up that could've gone overlooked for too long. (Fixing now, about to check in.)

(... okay, maybe not then. I did not, in fact, check to see how messed up it was. *straightens invisible tie, classily*)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #280 on: February 26, 2016, 09:48:23 PM »

i love how the Mudskipper variant that's armed with a Gauss Cannon has to vent after every single shot. xD

That one actually required an AI change - a special case of "if you've only got one weapon, and a non-offensive system, then just vent when the weapon is cooling down if it's beneficial".

shouldn't the MK.II have significantly worse logistics stats, though? seems weird to me that forcing a large mount and military sensor systems on that little thing doesn't come at the cost of cargo and passenger capacity, or maybe increased maintenance requirements.

I think they just put the passengers/cargo inside the barrel of the Hellbore. I don't see the problem, it's very roomy in there.

(Ok, honestly, it should probably have really awful cargo/passenger capacity.)

on a completely different note, i've started subconsciously trying to shift+scroll to speed up in things other than Starsector, because that's such a useful feature, and it doesn't work! frustrating. >_<

I've done that before :)
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Cik

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #281 on: February 26, 2016, 09:54:02 PM »

fighter changes rabble rabble  >:(

cool patch though. every time i come on to the forum i check the top and i've missed it too many times.

maybe you should make the announcements in big bolder text for my poor mind :^)
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icepick37

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #282 on: February 26, 2016, 09:57:49 PM »

shouldn't the MK.II have significantly worse logistics stats, though? seems weird to me that forcing a large mount and military sensor systems on that little thing doesn't come at the cost of cargo and passenger capacity, or maybe increased maintenance requirements.

I think they just put the passengers/cargo inside the barrel of the Hellbore. I don't see the problem, it's very roomy in there.
Alternatively I'm imagining the pirates literally just bolting the guns on top of the cargo space, ha! Silly pirates.
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StarSchulz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #283 on: February 26, 2016, 10:05:14 PM »

The scarab is so weeeeiiirrrdd!   :o

Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #284 on: February 26, 2016, 10:06:15 PM »

That one actually required an AI change - a special case of "if you've only got one weapon, and a non-offensive system, then just vent when the weapon is cooling down if it's beneficial".
i was actually a bit surprised to see it! "wait, the ai recognises it should just vent when it has only one weapon and no shield? huh, neat."

Alternatively I'm imagining the pirates literally just bolting the guns on top of the cargo space, ha! Silly pirates.
they could be offering special tours that let customers experience the thrill of battle and force of heavy weapons like never before!
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