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[Nanao-kun]

I found a planet named Tartiflette. Coincidence? I wonder how long it's been in the planet name list.

[xenoargh]

Tested out the new build with my kiddo this weekend.

1.  The Tutorial is great and I wish there were a lot more things like that... but:

A. The "set a course to the debris" wasn't super-clear, because it was well-off the screen.  Might want to reconsider how that is set up.
B.  The Save F5 thing isn't clear.
C.  It's totally unclear what magical thing happened to the Pirate base; wouldn't it have been better to have the player participate in a Station battle with help from the Hegemony, if they chose to clean up the Pirate elements?

2.  Exploration is both good and bad.  It's good, in the sense that there's finally a real need for Fuel.  It's bad in that risk / reward feels a bit off.  To explore the farthest areas for exploration bounties, you basically need lots of Drams and lots of Fuel; this means you're not a combat fleet.  But the rewards for it don't feel quite big enough to make it worthwhile; in the same amount of time spent, we can kill a lot of Bounties instead.

3.  Sustained Burn is great, but the corrections to Burn for the ships never got done and the AI rarely appears to use it, so there are weird things in fleet speeds and all that now.

4.  It's been more than a bit frustrating to have giant piles of Credits sitting around and nothing to spend them on that's worth buying, again.  This has been a problem for ages; having to wait for a RNG to grant me the right to spend a teeny amount of my vast fortune to buy Light Needlers or Railguns is pretty lame and just adds time to grinding, not fun.

5.  I really want the Exploration aspects of play to make the Sector behave in a more dynamic way.  It's cool to survey stuff, but when I find a great planet, I expect something interesting to happen, like a new Market.

6.  The fighter changes are great overall, but I agree with the posters who have noted that they still are too slow to actually run things down, and they tend to stay too close to their carriers when they should be chasing their carriers' targets (if given one) which makes long engagements a drag.

7.  Weapon balance and ship balance is still a major problem, in terms of fun-factor. 

A lot of it's the absurd rarity of a bunch of the weapons and ships, which isn't actually fun, because I don't have anything worth buying to improve my fleet and I've been cruising around markets for well over a game-month now.  This remains a core issue, along with the huge slant towards "everybody has junk ships" model (which is fine, I don't mind paying a huge premium to restore rare ships, but there aren't any rare ships to be found in the first place). 

Right now it feels like Pokemon Completionism, merely trying to equip Hammerheads with their correct weapons so that they're not complete fodder, for example.

The buyable Hull Modspec things are great, but I'd really prefer they were more commonly found, but much more expensive, so that buying one felt like a major purchase decision, rather than "wow, I finally found this important thing I used to level for, after a lengthy, boring search".  Of course that means they'd better be worth the investment, but that's another story.

If you want to keep rarity as a thing, then let players have a way to automatically search for a location that sells <insert thing> rather than all this boring traveling around.

8.  Weapon balance, such as it is, got badly damaged by the nerfs on range and the relative difficulty in obtaining ITU, for Frigates and Destroyers and the relative weakness of Captains.  While some of this was a relatively-welcome change, in the sense that it's harder to assemble a crew that facerolls everything they meet through pure stat superiority... when you finally get the OP guns again, it's even worse than before, frankly, because the AI fleets have no answers.

Vulcans in particular and a few others really got hosed by the changes, going back to their pre-0.6 uselessness as PD.  Heavy Machineguns remain terrible, Flak / Dual Flak is an incoherent mess, etc., etc. 

Until this stuff gets fixed, I feel like I'm playing a game where the real game is just minmaxing the good guns, which has now been made even less fun by having to hunt down rares.  I'd much rather see the weapons all get a good solid balance pass; there shouldn't be junk guns like the Light Mortar (and the new Heavy isn't great, either), etc. in a game like this; (D) variants are nerf-enough.  I'm going to go back to my spreadsheet and see if we can all arrive at some kind of consensus here.

[Dri]

I found a planet named Tartiflette. Coincidence? I wonder how long it's been in the planet name list.

I wonder if that's the easter egg Alex mentioned awhile back. Tart is certainly active on the forums here and makes mods.

[CrashToDesktop]

5.  I really want the Exploration aspects of play to make the Sector behave in a more dynamic way.  It's cool to survey stuff, but when I find a great planet, I expect something interesting to happen, like a new Market.

6.  The fighter changes are great overall, but I agree with the posters who have noted that they still are too slow to actually run things down, and they tend to stay too close to their carriers when they should be chasing their carriers' targets (if given one) which makes long engagements a drag.

This is the *very* first iteration of exploration.  Don't expect too much from it - it's already a massive change over what Starsector was last year.  And I'm sure Alex has plans for what good planets might turn into.

Fighters mercilessly chase down whatever I order them to kill.  I've chased down those damnable Wolf-class frigates with their phase skimmers easily enough with fighters this patch.  Do remember that anything with a Flight Deck has fighter options now - "Regroup" or "Engage", a toggle bound to V by default.  While "Engaged" your fighters either chase down the target you have selected or escort a ship if it's friendly.  Also builds up a small amount of flux, akin to raising shields, so you don't get your speed buff.  With "Regroup" your fighters stay near the carrier and you build no flux - useful for, well, regrouping your fighters to send out in waves or if you need to catch up to the battle.  Fighters have a range of 5000 su if I remember from a blog post, so that's more than enough range to keep up with things.

[xenoargh]

Duly noted;  I haven't yet pushed my Drover's Captain up the skill trees to get Fighter speeds up yet.  I can see your point there.  Kind of bad that it takes that bonus to happen, though.

[Thaago]

As a note of my own: The only reason I knew about engage/withdraw was by having read the blog post months ago. And I had to look in the settings to figure out what key it was. That should probably get included in the tutorial (it does give a condor, after all).

[CrashToDesktop]

Duly noted;  I haven't yet pushed my Drover's Captain up the skill trees to get Fighter speeds up yet.  I can see your point there.  Kind of bad that it takes that bonus to happen, though.

Err, bonuses?  There's no bonuses involved with "Engage" or "Regroup" orders - like I said, any ship with a flight deck has that now.  Next time you get a chance to play, go into missions or find a carrier in your fleet and start the simulation.  Press "V" and your fighters will switch to "Regroup", visible just above the fighter icons in the UI.  Send out a Buffalo Mk.II as a sacrifice and watch it close in.  Your fighters won't do anything - then press "V" again they'll switch to "Engage", at which point they'll start trying to pull apart whatever target you have selected.  It's just part of carrier gameplay now, nothing special required.

As a note of my own: The only reason I knew about engage/withdraw was by having read the blog post months ago. And I had to look in the settings to figure out what key it was. That should probably get included in the tutorial (it does give a condor, after all).

Probably as part of the Combat Tutorial - that's a better-fitting place.  The campaign tutorial is more for campaign-stuff, like teaching you how to Salvage, use fleet abilities, pick up derelict ships, trade and interact with ports etc.  All the tutorials were revamped this update, so adding a carrier bit there wouldn't be out of place.

[xenoargh]

Hmm.  That's a bit counter-intuitive; it goes against the mainly-automated grain of the main gameplay.  The main reason this comes up is that when I want fighters to engage something halfway across the map, it's frequently not happening, or they're so slow they don't get there before it's moot.  And Frigates routinely out-run Fighters in Pursuits, which just feels really wrong.

Ah well.

[Thaago]

There aren't any frigates that can outrun the Interceptors. They do have a maximum range though - 4000 units I think?

[CrashToDesktop]

Hmm.  That's a bit counter-intuitive; it goes against the mainly-automated grain of the main gameplay.  The main reason this comes up is that when I want fighters to engage something halfway across the map, it's frequently not happening, or they're so slow they don't get there before it's moot.  And Frigates routinely out-run Fighters in Pursuits, which just feels really wrong.

Ah well.

It's like ordering your weapons to Hold Fire - it's not really going against anything.  Also, fighters (not bombers) can and will outrun everything in the game and catch up.  More times than not I've seen a Talon wing catch up to a Wolf on the retreat with it's Phase Skimmer and kill it.  The range limitation doesn't come into effect too often, just keep your carriers close to the front - no reason not to anyway, you get more bang for your buck if they're closer because faster time to get to the frontlines and back.

[RickyRio]

brief thoughts on the new skill tree:

• 42 skill points does not feel like enough
• The "unlock (tree) level 1,2,3" points feel terrible
• We need a way to respec points (Possible abuses with ship OP)
• Officer skills need to be more deterministic

[intrinsic_parity]

2.  Exploration is both good and bad.  It's good, in the sense that there's finally a real need for Fuel.  It's bad in that risk / reward feels a bit off.  To explore the farthest areas for exploration bounties, you basically need lots of Drams and lots of Fuel; this means you're not a combat fleet.  But the rewards for it don't feel quite big enough to make it worthwhile; in the same amount of time spent, we can kill a lot of Bounties instead.

I've found 100% the opposite. I'm rolling in cash from exploration, currently sitting on 5mil+ trying to get my rep high enough with TT so I can buy their capital ships. AI cores and level 4 and 5 survey data easily net me 500k on every single expedition. A couple tankers and fuel are a small price to pay (definitely get bigger tankers and freighters though so they don't eat up all your fleet slots). Also REDACTED drop pretty nice loot and research stations are the best way to get high level tech. In my opinion, the game is shifting away from combat. The survey and salvage skills are just as valuable to me now because they can get me more money with less risk.

[mav]

brief thoughts on the new skill tree:

• 42 skill points does not feel like enough
• The "unlock (tree) level 1,2,3" points feel terrible
• We need a way to respec points (Possible abuses with ship OP)
• Officer skills need to be more deterministic

I completely agree with RickyRio and would put an emphasis on the terrible feeling of skill tree unlocks. Also hiding the ability to survey planets with a specific hazard rating behind skill points doesn't feel right.

[FooF]

Also hiding the ability to survey planets with a specific hazard rating behind skill points doesn't feel right.

Easiest fix for this, I believe, would change how you improve your Salvage/Survey rating. I believe you should get Salvage XP or Survey XP whenever you do those respective actions. The appropriate industry skills would give a multiplier to this number. Without skills, it's a grind but still possible. With skills, you'll be able to access the high-level planets and salvage much, much sooner. Something like 2x, 5x, and 10x XP. Hull mods would still be locked behind skills.

As for the Aptitude points, here's my beef: out of 42 total points, potentially 12 (29%) are doing nothing to directly improve you. I could see a few possible solutions to this:

• Give Aptitude-only points every 5 levels. This offsets 8 of the 12 points and doesn't increase the player's power creep by that much early. If you elect to fill aptitude levels with skill points, any "Aptitude points" turn into skill points if there are no aptitudes left to fill.
• Alternatively, give 2 skill points on levels 10, 20, 30, & 40 for a weaker and more straightforward version of the above
• Give each aptitude level its own bonus
• Automatically increase aptitude level for every 3 points you spend in the tree. More difficult to achieve with Industry/Technology (unless you reduce it to 2 for these trees). Discourages bee-lining for a high level skill, which may not be a good thing.
  
• Synergy Points: While not giving the player more points directly, certain skills synergize with each other and increase skill levels elsewhere (regardless if you have aptitude/skill points there). Likely complicates the whole thing but skills that add synergy points would be those that are generally considered "weak" or "non-competitive" with other skills in the tree.
  

[Megas]

I agree with RickyRio, except possibly skill respec.

I like to see aptitudes abolished.  More points for skills without any need to mess with XP charts or stuff.  We will need the points when outposts and their inevitable skills come.  Scratch that!  We need the points now, and even more later when more skills appear.

I distrust synergies.  They encourage one-trick ponies as seen in Diablo II.  Most characters had to over-specialize to be good at one thing instead of being bad at everything.