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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: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 639134 times)

Nanao-kun

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #45 on: December 03, 2016, 11:25:13 PM »

Nice. A lot of interesting stuff in the current changelog. Is it possible to create custom scavenged hullmods that can only be installed per ship, requiring a person to collect more of them if they want their entire fleet to have it?
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #46 on: December 04, 2016, 05:43:41 AM »

Quote from: Alex
That's assuming a lack of range-boosting hullmods and skills, both of which would not help with SO. Also, kind of glossing over the other downsides of SO
It does, especially with the severe peak performance cut, but if the ship works best with Safety Override due to min-max reasons, like current Lasher, then that is what will get used, despite the drawbacks.

Quote from: Morgan Rue
Fast ships don't need range as long as they can close the distance without dying and then outperform their longer ranged enemies in close range combat.
That may be a bit of a problem high-tech ships have when fighting low-tech or other ships with ballistics.  High-tech ships get close, then overload because an exchange between flux-hungry energy weapons and efficient longer-ranged kinetics (or very efficient, high DPS, and short-range machineguns) means ballistics win.  Low-tech ships probably will not have a problem - just use the long-ranged stuff.  High-tech ships will have even less range if they use Unstable Injector to keep up with other ships that use Unstable Injector.

If non-beam energy weapons will keep short range, they need more damage and/or much better flux efficiency to match ballistics.  Having stats comparable to HE weapons except with damage type and shorter range is not cutting it.  (Of course, that may make Hyperion and Paragon - if it gets the special range mod - even better.)
« Last Edit: December 04, 2016, 05:46:16 AM by Megas »
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Spoorthuzad

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #47 on: December 04, 2016, 05:46:15 AM »

Oh, YES!
This looks amazing Alex. :o
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Vind

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #48 on: December 04, 2016, 06:52:06 AM »

Nice changes but "Removed crew experience levels" means ships without officers will be unable to improve accuracy and CR. I will miss my elite crew.
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HELMUT

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #49 on: December 04, 2016, 07:18:43 AM »

I like those changes, the obnoxious ships (Heron, every Damper Field-ers) got a slight nerf to what makes them annoying to fight.

The Omen got further buffed with the much stronger EMP emitter, that thing is going to be a fighter's boogeyman. By the way, does the "Flamed-out missiles now have a 50% chance to bounce off harmlessly on impact" affect EMP'd missiles, or just the ones out of fuel?

A question about the Tempest, does the drone reload its blaster when recalled? Hopefully not, the Tempest is already at the top of the foodchain, it doesn't needs a near instant reloading, flux-free AM blaster on top of that.

Also glad to see an armor buff for the Astral, maybe this will even allow some brawler builds. Gotta find a reason to use that new torpedo launcher.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #50 on: December 04, 2016, 07:44:26 AM »

It occurred to me that if hullmods will be potential loot, and the only way to get a particular one is killing friendlies (for example, if Paragon is the only ship with Hardened Shields, and you are commissioned with Tri-Tachyon), then player can travel with transponder off and kill friendly ships, then laugh evilly after scooping up desired loot, and maybe board a rare ship that shops could but refuse to sell.

I have ran with transponder off to do some relatively violent shenanigans occasionally to game the system.
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #51 on: December 04, 2016, 08:20:37 AM »

It occurred to me that if hullmods will be potential loot, and the only way to get a particular one is killing friendlies
I don't think the modspecs are ship specific (might be wrong tho).
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Vulpes

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #52 on: December 04, 2016, 08:24:26 AM »

Nice to see you're still improving the AI.  I'm hoping one of the "big content additions" will be the long anticipated addition of industry!
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #53 on: December 04, 2016, 08:32:37 AM »

Maybe ships are drop modspecs they use, just like weapons.  For example, if you want Maulers and HVDs, you fight Enforcers, not Auroras.  Some may be common, but others are not.  In case of Hardened Shields, Paragon uses it, but I do not know if other ships do.  If Paragon is the only ship that uses that hullmod, they the only way to get it by looting is to fight one.  If other ships use Hardened Shields, then they would drop it too, assuming modspec loot varies by what ships use.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #54 on: December 04, 2016, 09:22:29 AM »

Needless to say there's a lot of cool stuff in this patch which represents a bit step forward in the game development, like the exploration which I've been anticipating a while. Good work.

However:

-Loss of crew experience levels
This is sad, because leveling up the crew felt extremely rewarding, and losing your elites (ie when you put them in a fighter wing) added jeopardy and a more human touch to combat. The losses meant something, when they were crew you'd trained up from greens. I hope that more gameplay with officers, including the ability for them to actually die, will supplant the elimination of crew experience levels (which I nonetheless urge you to reconsider carefully).

More mechanics and rules solely for the sake of balance, with little/no intuitive in-world logic Starsector has been developing itself into this corner for a long time and probably the die is cast in this regard, but every once and a while like to point out the limitations of this approach.

For example:
-Hyperspace slows small fleets more than big fleets.
-Random effects of hullmods e.g. Unstable injector reducing weapons range
and old favorites:
-CR/PPT, of course
-Ship has campaign burn speed, and separate combat speed which is different. (so you have ridiculous situations where one ship can have a faster burn speed and keep catching another ship, but the other ship has a faster combat speed and can keep getting away, necessitating a bunch more pre/post combat dialogue box CR rules)

There are two kinds of games (for the purposes of this discussion anyway):
-Simulation games (flight sims, space world sims, mario sims, etc)
-Abstracted games (board games, chess, go-fish, etc)

In abstracted games, you memorize a bunch of arbitrary rules designed to be conducive to smooth gameplay. Bishops move diagonally, rooks move horizontally. Spades are trump cards, whatever.

In a simulation, you memorize the in-world characteristics of different items and entities, like how fast your character can jump. The game sets a few premises (you can run, you can jump, you can shoot a small gun, you can shoot a bigger gun, you get tired) and everything should follow more or less logically from those, if you just are willing to remember the distinction between different entities in the game.

I know I'm simplifying things a bit but there is at least a kernal of truth to the distinction.

Starsector is obviously trying to be a simulation since it has you memorize a bunch of weapon and ship stats, keep track of planets, and so on, but then it is also acting like an abstracted board game- with the mechanics mentioned above that really don't follow logically from the world premises. ("After combat you take a x% CR penalty if you do something or other. Because balance. Bishops move diagonally") They are arbitrary purely for the sake of balance. For an abstracted game this is ok, but for a simulation style game it's sub-optimal, since then players are forced to memorize both abstracted rules and in-world characteristics. It's a big mnemonic burden in addition to breaking the logic and believably of the simulated world. The two approaches aren't very compatible.

The "sustained drive" mechanics would actually not be an example of what I'm talking about, if the fx are done right. When you engage the drive their would be some 'hyperspace drive charging up' sounds for a few moments and the ships engines would start glowing intensely until finally jumping, and this would make immediately clear the in world logic behind the balance dictated rule of having fleets stop for a few moments before the drive starts.

Long story short please try to find balance motivated mechanics that have an in-game logic instead of being arbitrary and non intuitive.  Though this would require overhauling the CR system and the combat vs campaign speed disparity issues however.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2016, 09:24:39 AM by nomadic_leader »
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #55 on: December 04, 2016, 09:58:50 AM »

More mechanics and rules solely for the sake of balance, with little/no intuitive in-world logic Starsector has been developing itself into this corner for a long time and probably the die is cast in this regard, but every once and a while like to point out the limitations of this approach.

For example:
-Hyperspace slows small fleets more than big fleets.
-Random effects of hullmods e.g. Unstable injector reducing weapons range
and old favorites:
-CR/PPT, of course
-Ship has campaign burn speed, and separate combat speed which is different. (so you have ridiculous situations where one ship can have a faster burn speed and keep catching another ship, but the other ship has a faster combat speed and can keep getting away, necessitating a bunch more pre/post combat dialogue box CR rules)
IIRC in-lore explanations(or at least attempts at handwaving) were done for all of the things you mentioned, and most of them are in-game.
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #56 on: December 04, 2016, 10:09:14 AM »

Starsector is a space opera, it should be able to technobabble justifications for anything if the game balance benefits from it.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #57 on: December 04, 2016, 10:18:22 AM »

i think i failed to articulate sufficiently. yes of course there are in game hand waves. what i want are actually intuitive mechanics that don't require these incredibly strained explanations which nobody buys anyway; you may as well just type 'BALANCE' in the in game description.
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Cik

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #58 on: December 04, 2016, 10:28:18 AM »

i never minded CR, but perhaps at least we can get a burn-derived in-combat speed, so that the infinite chase thing doesn't happen anymore(?)

not sure it can be done though, with how coarse burn is in general. but it would benefit the game.

also i'm a simulation kind of guy so i agree with what you are saying in principle, but CR doesn't offend me that much.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #59 on: December 04, 2016, 10:34:58 AM »

For crew levels, I say good riddance.  70% baseline will certainly make things easier for early-game (unless malfunction level was shifted upward too).  50-60% CR for your very first combat meant your ships may start breaking after one fight!  I would miss elite crew only because 80% became the baseline by endgame, and 70% is less than 80%.  Well, there was also the option for training greens to elite for selling, if character built for it.  (I never did it, but I could if money was more valuable than stronger combat skills.)  Now, Combat Aptitude will be more important for chain-battling or endurance fighting, if it gives +3% instead of +2% per level.
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