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Author Topic: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 276586 times)

icepick37

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #390 on: June 04, 2017, 11:05:01 PM »

Been too long since I last played. Never even made it past the tutorial before. Oy. Been fun tooling around, though. It's right in that sweet spot of hard, but doable. Makes it nice and interesting.

It's great cruising out of the tutorial with a fleet of rustbuckets. I decided to co all in salvage on this first runthrough and I love that feeling of poking around in space for fun things to find. I also love that I have three officers and I only had to hire one with money.

It's so great coming back to this game and seeing how much it's grown. It's getting so good! And it already was so good!  :)

Now to sleep and dream of all the stuff I'm going to buy with my sweet derelict scan bounties.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #391 on: June 05, 2017, 02:39:32 AM »

If Warthogs gotta be nerfed, I'd rather you bump their OP cost up to 13 or 14 rather than gut their stats/weapons.
agreed. overall i feel we have too many fighters balanced around 8-12 OP, i'd prefer to have more balance adjustments done in a way that creates options below or above that. and high OP cost would fit the heavy Warthog style, imo.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #392 on: June 05, 2017, 06:09:06 AM »

Shielded Hounds and Cerberus are nice.  As much as I dislike the speed reduction on Makeshift Shield Generator, it makes shielded Hounds and Cerberus easier to fight.  Fighting shielded Hound at full speed would probably be like fighting a Remnant frigate.

Did another early playthrough, this time skipping tutorial.  Storms seem infrequent enough that they can be dodged without much difficulty (still prefer 0.8 storms where they can be mostly ignored).  Bounties scale too fast.  I had to put my fleet in storage because the bounties are too big to handle, and took exploration missions with Wolf and Dram to raise enough money to buy more ships and weapons.  Character level below a certain threshold, say... 20, probably should not affect bounty level.

I think I have seen enough.  Will probably cheat up an endgame fleet because I do not want to spend days or weeks grinding up another game.

Warthogs are too strong when compared to other fighters, but it would be nice if they simply cost more if they otherwise stay the same.  Warthogs already flux cap with mortars quickly, so lowering guns may not be enough.  Probably need to lower wing size to two, and maybe tone down the flares to a single.  Their biggest weakness is speed.  Even with Wing Commander 1, many frigates can outrun them, which means Astral cannot rely on them to kill a bunch of frigates in the simulator when trying to kill the simulator.  If Warthogs get weakened, I would like to see them go faster to compensate.  It is annoying that they are so slow, but the power they wield makes them worth using.

Piranhas need their LMG (or Swarmers, if going old school) back.  If not, their OP cost needs to go down - way down, like 5 OP.

After playing fighters more, Xyphos is not very useful.  The main reason to use fighters today is for fighters to run down and kill ships, but Xyphos cannot do that.  Small carriers need interceptors and the like to hunt enemies.  Most, if not all, effective carriers built for brawling and can theoretically use Xyphos as auxiliary ion beams, outrange them.  Legion with 900 range ballistics plus ITU or Odyssey with Tachyon Lances plus ITU and Advanced Optics want to snipe from maximum range, and Xyphos does not have as much range.  Xyphos is more useful for a brawling Odyssey with Autopulse or Plasma Cannons, but new 1.0 shields made those classic configurations less attractive.  Destroyers or Aurora with Converted Hangar can probably make good use of Xyphos, but it costs so much OP and with slower rate recovery (from Converted Hangar and no Expended Deck Crew), rate will probably fall in big fights and Xyphos will probably get killed off soon.

P.S.  When I installed 0.8.1 for the first time, I failed to set combat speed to 2f and... UGH!  1f is so agonizingly slow!  I quickly set it to 2f and the game felt much better.  Still wish game could handle faster speeds while maintaining fidelity.  2.5f would be ideal.  Wish there was a way to set game speed without digging into settings.json.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2017, 06:15:13 AM by Megas »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #393 on: June 05, 2017, 09:27:27 AM »

It's so great coming back to this game and seeing how much it's grown. It's getting so good! And it already was so good!  :)

:D Glad you're having fun coming back to it.



Re: Warthogs:
I was thinking - tentatively - of bumping up the OP cost and reducing the range to 2000 or so. But playtesting etc.

Re: bounty scaling:
I'll have to take a look at it at some point, then. When I was testing that out, I didn't have any trouble, but I went straight from tutorial garbage ball to 2x railgun 2x heavy mortar Hammerhead (with combat skills) + carriers and that's probably one of the stronger starts at the moment.
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FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #394 on: June 05, 2017, 09:50:31 AM »

Re: Warthogs:
I was thinking - tentatively - of bumping up the OP cost and reducing the range to 2000 or so. But playtesting etc.

Re: bounty scaling:
I'll have to take a look at it at some point, then. When I was testing that out, I didn't have any trouble, but I went straight from tutorial garbage ball to 2x railgun 2x heavy mortar Hammerhead (with combat skills) + carriers and that's probably one of the stronger starts at the moment.

Yeah, I'm in the camp of nerfing the Warthog through unconventional means, if it's necessary.

And yeah, "annoying" wasn't the right word to use...more like "a new kind of distraction." They aren't difficult to kill but you can't just use Beam Wolfs on them.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #395 on: June 05, 2017, 10:19:15 AM »

Re: bounty scaling:
I'll have to take a look at it at some point, then. When I was testing that out, I didn't have any trouble, but I went straight from tutorial garbage ball to 2x railgun 2x heavy mortar Hammerhead (with combat skills) + carriers and that's probably one of the stronger starts at the moment.
My first 0.8.1 start, with a tutorial start, was this too, and my first bounty was large (full of destroyers and frigates) and required the entire fleet, and I had to retry a few times.
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Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #396 on: June 05, 2017, 11:16:43 AM »

I'm really enjoying the bounty difficulty myself - the fights are hard, which is good. If I'm spending the time to hunt down a bounty, I want the fight to be exciting and need my whole fleet, not to be an autopilot fight.


Spoiler
My most recent was a 120k enemy pirate fleet with multiple cruisers, a legion, and the usual crap frigate spam vs my 3 hammerheads, condor, drover, 2 wolves, shepard, and afflictor. I piloted the afflictor (with hardened subsystems but no combat skills) until it ran out of AM blaster ammo (and was starting to lose CR), then retreated it and piloted one of the Hammerheads. I ended up losing the Hammerhead I was piloting to the Legion (5x torpedo barrage to the face after broadswords softened me up... the AI pilots were much smarter than me!) and the Shepard to frigate spam, but recovered both with only 1 D mod each (lucky as I have no industry skills). Thanks goodness for 'avoid' and 'eliminate'!
[close]
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Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #397 on: June 05, 2017, 11:34:14 AM »

At what level do bounty fleets cap out at these days?

I've been fighting bounties that reward around ~330k credits, have level 20 officers and can have 1-3 capital ships. That about the max end of things?
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #398 on: June 05, 2017, 11:52:45 AM »

I've been fighting bounties that reward around ~330k credits, have level 20 officers and can have 1-3 capital ships. That about the max end of things?

That sounds like the top end of it, yeah. Out of 5 bounties posted, one should also be higher level - so even when you max out the bounty level, one bounty out there will be above that, potentially by quite a bit.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #399 on: June 05, 2017, 12:29:05 PM »

I do not mind hard bounties, but all of them scale up too fast.  In my first 0.8.1 game, when I saw some pirate destroyer as the flagship reported by intel.  I thought maybe no bigger than my fleet, but it was.  After that meat-grinder, future bounties I read in Intel appeared no easier.

Next 0.8.1, game, I skipped tutorial and started with Wolf and Kite (A).  Salvaged two Hounds and a Lasher.  First two bounties were low level, and I could take them without much trouble.  Back to core, I get two carriers, and bounties spike to about 100K, give or take a few K.  The nearest one was Mora.  Others were cruisers that my small ships had no chance of killing.  I went to the Mora, and found Mora, Falcon, several destroyers, another carrier, and frigates.  Bigger and stronger than my fleet.  No chance of winning.  All of the bounties were like this.  Had no choice but to store my fleet and do exploration missions with Wolf and Dram.

Chasing bounties burns a lot of fuel.  My fleet cannot afford to come home empty handed.  My early-game fleet must win or it goes into financial ruin.  My first 0.8.0 game come close to this by midgame, when I did not make enough money to upgrade my fleet.  Now, I need to grind exploration missions because bounties level-grind faster than I can.
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orost

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #400 on: June 05, 2017, 01:48:54 PM »

When bounties are easy enough that you can chain them without doing anything else, people will complain that exploration is unnecessary and useless.

When bounties are hard enough that you have to do other things in between them for money to keep up, people will complain that they have to grind exploration.

There is no winning as a game developer  :P
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #401 on: June 05, 2017, 02:13:48 PM »

Hmm. Well, there's always going to be a level 0 bounty (posted within a few days or so) to fall back on.

I think also investing in combat skills makes a huge difference here - just did a 130k bounty (Falcon, Eagle, Hammerhead, 7-8 assorted frigates) with a fleet consisting of a Sunder (D), two Drovers, and the two starting frigates - and having vs not having combat skills takes the battle from "tough, but winnable" to "pretty easy".

I'll also note that this 130k bounty was the "high-reward, high-level outlier" and not the average bounty level I'd got to from doing bounties, and afterwards I had about 200k saved up, meaning, what, 2 cruiser-sized carriers? Which would take the fleet to a whole new level of power entirely.

That said, though, will definitely keep an eye on it.

Another random observation - part of what makes carriers so powerful seems to be that they are more available than other combat ships, probably because pirate fleets have non-D versions of carriers and so they're easier to acquire on the black market. A pair of good combat destroyers with the right weapons would do pretty well too, I think, but it's just much harder to get than a pair of Drovers or a Heron or a Mora. Heck, I wanted a destroyer to pilot but had to settle for a 2-dmod Sunder from a previous bounty (faulty grid, comp. armor). Which did well enough, honestly, but much too fragile for using en masse.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #402 on: June 05, 2017, 03:17:40 PM »

In my first game, I had just the starter fleet from Galatica, plus a few more frigates I scooped up along the way.  Was lucky that I got Heavy Blaster and two Railguns in the tutorial.

In my second game, I just had Wolf, Kite, Hound, Hound (LP), and Lasher.  When I upgraded, I added Drover and Condor with good fighter wings, but they were just outnumbered and outclassed when bounties spiked.  That fleet will not take on Mora, Falcon, several destroyers (including another carrier) and several frigates.  It was only about 100k, and the other bounties appeared no easier than that (flagships were cruisers on the other bounties).

Sometimes, getting ships is not a problem, but getting weapons are.  In my second game, I found a Sunder, but had to scuttle it because I did not have medium weapons for it, and I could not afford to support it.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #403 on: June 05, 2017, 03:27:49 PM »

Yes I have noticed bounty fleets go very quickly up to cruiser size which tend to outclass early game fleets. They also usually have a full compliment of destroyers+frigates.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #404 on: June 05, 2017, 04:14:12 PM »

A cruiser alone would be doable, but a cruiser plus escorts, where the escorts alone are a bigger fleet than yours is a bit ridiculous.  And this is only the second or third bounty fight.  It is like ramming an SNK boss fight down your throat on stage 2 or 3.
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