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[Morrokain]

Since the Adamantine Consortium is an evil faction, lore wise, I'm not 100% set on where to keep them, power-wise. Iirc, I believe I made them aggressive and tend to make war with everyone in the nex config, so giving them a slight advantage as a tier 3 enemy might be the way to go there. I just don't want them rolling over the whole sector every campaign, either.

Are you familiar with Boggled's station building mod?  It's current incompatible with AO, but if you wanted to make it play nice you could turn the AC into a group of super-pirates with that mod.  By this I mean instead of planets give them orbital structures spread out among asteroid belts and gas giants on the fringes (map edges) and have them work their inward while everyone else is working their way outward.  This would make them hard to locate for starters, and with their focus on fuel production (i.e. gas giant orbitals) they would have much longer range in Nexerelin than their rivals.  While that doesn't translate to fleet size, it would allow them to launch raids at victims that may not be able to muster together an invasion fleet with that kind of counter-range to put them down.  Thus they would continue to be a pirate menace for a long, long time, raiding and pillaging with impunity until someone is willing to build out in their direction (and have those new colonies survive long enough to become any kind of threat to them.)

And yes, I stole that idea entirely from Distant Worlds.

Well, I was told that there were no issues from that mod so I added it to the mod compatible list recently. I'm sorry if I was wrong. I did not check personally.
---

The AC already exhibits pirate behavior iirc, so should have a place there. There is some nuance here, though. For one, inspired by games like Fable and Overlord, etc, I want to give players an option to commission themselves with Adamantine Consortium and eventually Pirates (has been on the backlog) whilst also giving them a harder playthrough for being the enemy faction. That can be fun, so I want to retain that feature if possible. In Starcraft, you can still play as the Zerg after all!

Also, there is lore to consider. I have spent quite a bit of time giving some very detailed lore background to the AC. Inspired from the multiple renditions of the Dracula legend (Bram Stoker, Castlevania, Nosferatu, Vampire Hunter D- anime rendition, Fate: Apocrypha- rendition of Vlad Dracul, etc), the Scholomance barons of WOW, the Joker from Batman, zombie apocalypse fiction and the mind control parasite from the Clone Wars, there is a lot I hope to do with the faction as far as story purposes go. Taking away their planetary markets would be counter to that goal.

I am working on mini-shorts regarding the lore I've mentioned, and I hope to post them in the lore section once they are done, but I would expect most of that to not be ready until 1.0 of Starsector as I am very particular on proofreading and reworking things to get the right atmosphere. (Read as I am obsessive compulsive in that regard.  )

I'm very close to the Adamantine Consortium short's conclusion in particular, but modding community concerns have greatly overshadowed any progress on that front. The technical must come before fluff in this case.

[TaylorItaly]

To the Topic , if the Station Building Mod and AO are compatible :

Yes, they are . I am playing with both and have no problems.

[DatonKallandor]

On the micro repeaters, I've found they excel at short-term PD better than anything else regardless of target. That's fine, they're magazine based and generate flux, they should be good while ammo lasts. But their sustained damage is also very good - as good as the 5 OP and faction tech pulse laser and they get the benefit of having a burst when needed on top.

Burst for PD is also very good because it lets it deal with fighter waves extremely well as long as they're under critical mass - and when the sustained damage is as good as real PD even when out of charges, it deals just as well with swarms above critical mass. Admittedly they do have that 2.5 second window of vulnerability while they reload that could let a missile sneak through - but I've found in practice it's not nearly as big of a deal as it would seem.

The single barrel version is probably fine for 2 OP (although you get an awful big upgrade vs the 1 OP Pulse Beam), but the double barrel version seems a little good at 3 OP. Especially when compared to the 5 OP, faction tech Pulse Laser. They're also technically common tech (although I've found them to be pretty rare) and I don't know if that factors into the balancing decisions. I do get the feeling faction tech and rare tech is supposed to be a little bit better than the common stuff.

[Morrokain]

You would be correct regarding faction tech vs commonly available tech. The Dual Micro Repeater is a bit in between those, I'd say. I think I made it so that the Trader Guilds and the Sindrian Diktat tend to use it the most.

My initial thoughts:

- Look at the Pulse Beam and see if a slight damage increase is warranted.

- Reduce the sustained dps of the Dual Micro Repeater.

- Reduce FX size of both Micro Repeaters.

[th3boodlebot]

is there a way to lower the amount of ships that spawn in fleets?

[Morrokain]

I believe Alex is working on that for the next update, but you can also go to:

Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4f\data\world\factions

The faction files there have a numShips entry that can be from 1 to 5 I think. So you can mess with that and see what effect it has.

[NephilimNexus]

Taking away their planetary markets would be counter to that goal.

... but the stations mod doesn't take away markets at all.  Orbital stations work just like the vanilla ones - they're basically planets that (usually) lack resources of their own, have a fixed 100% habitability and grow, build & produce stuff just like normal.  All the station mod changes from that is conditional resources for those stations - if they're over asteroids, they get minerals and if over gas giants they get fuel gas.  The only thing orbitals can't do at all is farming (though I'm sure someday someone will make a mod that adds hydroponics as an industry - hint hint).

So yes I can totally see a pirate faction living entirely on orbital stations and raiding everyone else for food, because that's the one thing they can't do for themselves.  Also gives them a good reason for raiding and makes farms into preferred targets - something we've never seen before, to be sure.

[Morrokain]

Taking away their planetary markets would be counter to that goal.

... but the stations mod doesn't take away markets at all.  Orbital stations work just like the vanilla ones - they're basically planets that (usually) lack resources of their own, have a fixed 100% habitability and grow, build & produce stuff just like normal.  All the station mod changes from that is conditional resources for those stations - if they're over asteroids, they get minerals and if over gas giants they get fuel gas.  The only thing orbitals can't do at all is farming (though I'm sure someday someone will make a mod that adds hydroponics as an industry - hint hint).

So yes I can totally see a pirate faction living entirely on orbital stations and raiding everyone else for food, because that's the one thing they can't do for themselves.  Also gives them a good reason for raiding and makes farms into preferred targets - something we've never seen before, to be sure.

Right yeah I'm not saying I wouldn't implement those alongside Mordreath, Isirah, etc, but what I was saying there, was that the specific names (by id on the technical side) and environments of the planets themselves (so they can't be stations or it wouldn't make sense when reading the descriptions) are heavily tied to the lore of the Adamantine Consortium. So what I meant by not removing their planetary markets was that the specific planet types, locations and technical definitions are required both thematically and because the differing text descriptions for docking with these markets relies upon the ids being the same and other varying conditions to change the docking description.

Implementing the AC with the station mod alongside the core world markets would be useful for further supporting random generated Nex campaigns though, so that is something I definitely like about it.

As far as reasons for raiding, the AC raids pretty much all colonies for people more than food (their bosses, at least, are mostly vampires) because people are food to them at best, or an utterly dispensable commodity at worst. Food is actually illegal cargo in their territory because they ruthlessly control its distribution to keep their "servants" demoralized and unable to rebel against the dreadlords (not necessarily vampires, but still incredibly cruel and mostly completely amoral - typically lesser vampiric familiars and so only partially transformed, etc) since the servant population tends to be a lot higher on any given AC world.

In the sector's history, the AC didn't start out that way, so that is part of the fun of telling the story. Stuff like how did it get this bad? Whereas you have examples like the Hegemony, Luddic Church/Path and Persean League in the historical background of the sector's collapse, and their differing reactions to it, I wanted to create something much darker and full of sci-fi horror elements based upon the idea that the great technology of the Domain's past was a tool that could be used for good or evil. What happens if, in one part of the sector, evil wins?

[th3boodlebot]

I believe Alex is working on that for the next update, but you can also go to:

Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4f\data\world\factions

The faction files there have a numShips entry that can be from 1 to 5 I think. So you can mess with that and see what effect it has.

thanks! do you know if there is a setting for this in other factions/ the starsector core files?
i havent looked anywhere yet im replying before i do. thanks again!
as it turns out, theres not much to be done about this, considering the variety in scale of fleets based on the size of the market, among other factors, spawning said fleet.
it really is a moot point though as the upgrade parts for my pc (so that i dont bottleneck my graphics card so heavy, i actually took it off because its a waste of power until i get my new motherboard) will be here the 27th or 28th
still cool to know i can modify this factor some.

[NephilimNexus]

As far as reasons for raiding, the AC raids pretty much all colonies for people more than food (their bosses, at least, are mostly vampires) because people are food to them at best, or an utterly dispensable commodity at worst.

I assume you mean like The Family from Fallout 3?

[Morrokain]

I believe Alex is working on that for the next update, but you can also go to:

Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4f\data\world\factions

The faction files there have a numShips entry that can be from 1 to 5 I think. So you can mess with that and see what effect it has.

thanks! do you know if there is a setting for this in other factions/ the starsector core files?
i havent looked anywhere yet im replying before i do. thanks again!
as it turns out, theres not much to be done about this, considering the variety in scale of fleets based on the size of the market, among other factors, spawning said fleet.
it really is a moot point though as the upgrade parts for my pc (so that i dont bottleneck my graphics card so heavy, i actually took it off because its a waste of power until i get my new motherboard) will be here the 27th or 28th
still cool to know i can modify this factor some.

No problem! In case you don't already know this, you can also adjust battlesize to be lower and that may help with performance. I believe the minimum is pretty low in this mod, but you can adjust it further if needed by editing the settings file at: Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4e\data\config

As far as reasons for raiding, the AC raids pretty much all colonies for people more than food (their bosses, at least, are mostly vampires) because people are food to them at best, or an utterly dispensable commodity at worst.

I assume you mean like The Family from Fallout 3?

I didn't play much Fallout 3, but I looked it up. From reading about The Family on the Vault wiki, no not quite.

I don't want to spoil too much, so some spoilers ahead for those waiting on the story to be released:

Spoiler

They aren't cannibals masquerading as vampires- they are the very literal definition of a vampire- with all the perks: enhanced strength, night vision, mesmerizing capabilities, and for the strongest of them even shape-shifting. To make matters worse, they carry few of the downsides from vampiric lore. For instance, they don't like the light from a yellow star- but it doesn't kill them- it's just distasteful. They don't need a bed of dirt to sleep in (they don't sleep), don't fear any symbols, etc. They are very, very scary beings that scarcely even age.

Their bite causes a viral infection that decays the body and mind to a frenzied, violent and hunger-ridden state if one does not get the antidote in time. If one is fed upon, and then receives a transfusion of the hosts DNA- usually through blood- over a certain period of time, that person will likely bond that DNA to their own- with the infection acting as a catalyst toward breaking down and remaking the victims DNA using the host's structure as a template. As a result, this person begins to exhibit the same traits as the original host. Typically, this results in a slight weakening of the DNA's integrity, and so the source (Head vampire) is the strongest.

Since Starsector is a mostly realistic-esque sci-fi setting, you may now be wondering with a skeptical look upon your face: How the heck is that possible?? Vampires don't actually exist! You would be correct. They didn't exist before, but their legends did:

(This is not from the short, I just wrote this on the fly- just a quick fun exert from an "old forgotten datfile in the Hegemony's archives")

"...And then humanity created technology that could terraform planets, conquer the stars, and edit DNA to a very precise detail. This technology was mostly used to replace vital organs, cure hereditary diseases, and even decrease aging to allow an individual to live for over a hundred years sporting a modestly youthful appearance.

Still, the enterprising titans controlling the industry soon caught on to the idea that such technology could be marketed for targeted mutation of the human genome for enhancement purposes. This particular feature was reserved for only the most well-connected and wealthy clientele. None alive in the sector today know exactly how the first vampire was created (or they aren't talking about it if they do), but historians have determined that this gene-editing technology had to be the method used. Those who believe the rumors anyway. The denials of the High Hegemon administration continue to mask what really happened- and at the dire peril of the whole sector! Only a few mega-corporations had access to the most advanced editing equipment, but most of them have since died off in the scramble for resources when the gates shut down. There is no way to know which one is responsible. A few scholars have made a noteworthy discovery of a very minor correlation between the first documented cases of vampiric-like deaths at various colonies and the collapse of a Hegemony installation in the Psion system many cycles ago.

The navy claims that a technical failure caused the explosion that vaporized the station, but eyewitness traders at the time reported an anomaly- several Onslaught-class battleships entering Psion with a Prometheus-class fuel tanker days before the incident.

Rumors of increasing instability in that system these days have caused a minor panic and they had to send in the Space Marshal to contain the flood of refugees before they overwhelmed nearby markets. They swear its pirates operating from a hidden base nearby since the navy has been absent so long and the Persean League refuses to intervene there, but I know better. What can I do but document this and retire?"

[close]

[th3boodlebot]

I believe Alex is working on that for the next update, but you can also go to:

Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4f\data\world\factions

The faction files there have a numShips entry that can be from 1 to 5 I think. So you can mess with that and see what effect it has.

thanks! do you know if there is a setting for this in other factions/ the starsector core files?
i havent looked anywhere yet im replying before i do. thanks again!
as it turns out, theres not much to be done about this, considering the variety in scale of fleets based on the size of the market, among other factors, spawning said fleet.
it really is a moot point though as the upgrade parts for my pc (so that i dont bottleneck my graphics card so heavy, i actually took it off because its a waste of power until i get my new motherboard) will be here the 27th or 28th
still cool to know i can modify this factor some.

No problem! In case you don't already know this, you can also adjust battlesize to be lower and that may help with performance. I believe the minimum is pretty low in this mod, but you can adjust it further if needed by editing the settings file at: Fractal Softworks\Starsector\mods\Archean Order TC v1.3.4e\data\config

ok good to know there is another option
like i said though im upgrading my motherboard to a one that supports ddr4 with a single 16gig ram stick and ill be running an i3 9100f with a 1050 ti so my problems running starsector should mostly dissolve. might need to get a ssd at some point..... eventually