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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Exploration & Salvage  (Read 49835 times)

Alex

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Exploration & Salvage
« on: July 17, 2016, 06:09:36 PM »

Blog post here.
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Lanvrik

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2016, 06:54:24 PM »

Must say I'm continually pleased by everything I see coming out of these blogs. I hope everything pans out or at least leads to interesting new possibilities. I like the idea of running in after a Hegemony defense fleet saves me and rescuing some of the stranded crew.
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sycspysycspy

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2016, 06:55:12 PM »

 :-[ guess this means we can not have 0.7.3a sooner. Still I am glad to see more contents being added up to the game. I am just wondering how many differences does it make compare to what some mods have added to the game.
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Orikson

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2016, 07:06:57 PM »

Oohh, shiny! (New items in salvage screen).

I'm really curious what this will turn out to be like (and how will mods have to be modified to fit these new systems. Guess I'll work on basics first.)

Also, is that a dark star I see in the first pic? Or a jumpgate?.
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gruberscomplete

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2016, 07:16:28 PM »

Updated radar in pictures!

Cool new systems with two suns, a black hole, and a tiny planet --> would never happen in vanilla  :) .

Exciting salvage and "free stuff" at every planet!

Eventually leads up to outposts ... will we encounter outposts of other factions?
Do the outposts make factions stronger?
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TheDTYP

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2016, 07:18:45 PM »

"In Starsector, Derelict salvages you"= WIN
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Dri

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2016, 07:20:54 PM »

Sweet! Looks like Starsector development is getting into that super fun 'more content, more assets, more meaty stuff HOOOO!' phase. I also spy an official radar map, yay!

Debris fields are a great idea to help ease early game supply/money woes! I also love that exploration can have you running into unique enemies/defenses/whatever else! Procedural generation can work, but only if you've got enough unique content to seed it with, yeah. Repeating the same 5-10 chunks of content across 100 star systems is hopefully not the route you intend to take for exploration...
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FasterThanSleepyfish

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2016, 07:22:57 PM »

Awesome! Seeing some lore flesh added to the bones of this game is great.  ;D

An FTL: Faster than Light total conversion is looking more and more possible with the addition of a salvage system! Custom wrecks simulating random events and randomly generated sectors... hohoho.
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Nick XR

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2016, 08:15:53 PM »

I have nothing useful to add other than the more I read, the more excited I get!!!

Alex

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #9 on: July 17, 2016, 09:00:39 PM »

Must say I'm continually pleased by everything I see coming out of these blogs. I hope everything pans out or at least leads to interesting new possibilities. I like the idea of running in after a Hegemony defense fleet saves me and rescuing some of the stranded crew.

I don't know about finding crew in debris fields, but maybe.


:-[ guess this means we can not have 0.7.3a sooner.

Yeah, it was always going to take a bit. I'm super excited about the new stuff - the ratio of, ah, immediate coolness to dev effort is pretty high - but it's all so interrelated.


Also, is that a dark star I see in the first pic? Or a jumpgate?.

It's a black hole. When alone or in a black hole binary, it also (usually) gets an accretion disk, but in a close trinary situation, there isn't one.


Cool new systems with two suns, a black hole, and a tiny planet --> would never happen in vanilla  :) .

Huh? :)

Exciting salvage and "free stuff" at every planet!

I don't know about every planet, but let's say at "most systems".

Eventually leads up to outposts ... will we encounter outposts of other factions?
Do the outposts make factions stronger?

Ahh, not really prepared to talk about them. They're certainly the elephant in the room, though, as all this stuff is building up to them, isn't it.


"In Starsector, Derelict salvages you"= WIN

:D


Debris fields are a great idea to help ease early game supply/money woes! I also love that exploration can have you running into unique enemies/defenses/whatever else! Procedural generation can work, but only if you've got enough unique content to seed it with, yeah. Repeating the same 5-10 chunks of content across 100 star systems is hopefully not the route you intend to take for exploration...

Yeah, that's very much the plan. There's a pretty long list of "things you can find" I've got somewhere; will see how far along it I manage to get. Kind of a question of spending time on content here vs time on more related features, but the content here is very important and arguably part of the feature. Like, it's hard to get away with an "exploration" feature if it's stubbed out with only a few things you can find. The "specials" really help mix things up, though - the same "derelict probe" can have at the moment something like 4 or 5 different things going on, I think. Or nothing at all.


An FTL: Faster than Light total conversion is looking more and more possible with the addition of a salvage system! Custom wrecks simulating random events and randomly generated sectors... hohoho.

Hmm. That does sound kind of neat! Traveling through some randomly generated systems/constellations, entirely dependent on salvage to progress.


Nothing motivates me to buckle down on modding like knowing more about how you're going to break whatever I work on with the next update :).

Yeah, I do apologize about breaking things, though :) Just totally unavoidable.


This is really good; having more stuff to do than cruise around looking for fights with other fleets and trade is compelling, especially salvage.

Hopefully, yeah. With the caveat that it's not all in place yet, I'm optimistic about how especially the new early game is shaping up. Start with some scavenging, build up to salvage, but fight automated defenses in the process, too. It just seems like it'll be a muuuch smoother curve, and one that can be taken at the player's discretion, as well. You can spend more time scavenging, decide which fights with defenses to pick, etc. And it feels like it'll be more varied! Will have to see how it pans out, though. The best laid plans and all that.


I have nothing useful to add other than the more I read, the more excited I get!!!

Same here! :)
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PCCL

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #10 on: July 17, 2016, 09:01:12 PM »

interesting point about the implied parity between players and other fleets, and how adding a weak AI faction helps with the game's difficulty curve. I feel like, as of now, the implied parity the other way is more concerning (that might just be due to me having played a lot of SS though)

What I mean by that is currently there's no real end game challenge that relies on anything other than numerical advantage, and numerical advantage doesn't really hold up well when the player can solo defense fleets with a single frigate. The implied parity between AI ships and player ships then fall apart simply because the player becomes too good for the AI. That, to me, is the source of a huge disconnect.

I'm not really sure how one goes about addressing that, short of having better AI which can only go so far, but something to think about, I suppose. Another possible solution is having a domain era "boss faction" of really good ships that's unavailable to players, though I imagine that carries with it its own series of problems
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Alex

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #11 on: July 17, 2016, 09:12:20 PM »

What I mean by that is currently there's no real end game challenge that relies on anything other than numerical advantage, and numerical advantage doesn't really hold up well when the player can solo defense fleets with a single frigate. The implied parity between AI ships and player ships then fall apart simply because the player becomes too good for the AI. That, to me, is the source of a huge disconnect.

Yeah, this is a very good point, but I think this will be largely addressed by the skill revamp.

For example, hypothetically speaking, let's say the revamp involved 1) increasing all base ship OP by 10%, and 2) limiting the OP gain from skills to 10%. And then optionally giving access to that 10% bonus to some AI fleets. That by itself would go a long way towards bringing some parity back - the player is always going to be better, right, but the goal is just to make sure that deploying allies is a good option.

And then if you emphasize defensive skills a bit more in the revamp, while scaling the total impact of skills back a bit, it helps with that (allied ships survive better), and it also helps rein in the amount of damage a lone player ship can do, while at the same time making high-end combat a little slower-paced and more tactical.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #12 on: July 17, 2016, 09:50:38 PM »

FYI Alex, close black hole binaries (that being two black holes orbiting each other) are probably extremely rare due to their short lifespan (they tend to merge due to gravitational waves) and relative scarcity of black holes compared to other stellar bodies.
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Alex

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #13 on: July 17, 2016, 10:13:34 PM »

The odds of that are... hmm. Something like 1 in a 1000 systems generated, maybe even less likely than that. So not likely to show up every often :)
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Exploration & Salvage
« Reply #14 on: July 17, 2016, 10:18:24 PM »

I wonder how much of a challenge the procedural generation is being for you Alex. I mean, when I install mods that makes my game have over 30 systems it already makes the journey between one end of the sector to another take forever, even with time dilation. If procedural generation is going to allow us to have hundreds of star systems, are you looking into changing the speed in which the player traverses hyperspace? I can't imagine forcing myself to go really far off to established outposts in order to defend them. It might take a full month to get there especially if I'm fielding capitals.

Another thing is, have you addressed the memory and performance issues of having too many populated systems? Again, if we have hundreds of systems and players decide to make an outpost in every one of them, wouldn't the economy and fleet simulation boggle down?

Now what makes me the most excited about what you showed is the possibility of exploration elements inside the combat gameplay. You've already shown defense mechanisms, I suppose they fly out like ships (?), but part of me wishes that in the middle of the field there is this huge derelict ship with a few active guns with their own HP and you have to go there shoot them down. This would be great in scenarios like defending or attacking outposts, I would love if those battles are different from regular battles. As in, if I'm assaulting the station, I want to physically shoot at it and its defenses during combat, not just deal with defense fleets. Kinda like SPAZ in that regard but I always felt that their stations were too small.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2016, 10:20:07 PM by Cyan Leader »
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