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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 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 468557 times)

Deshara

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #420 on: October 26, 2018, 02:54:00 PM »

In most cases I've noticed with hull-mods there is a pretty good explanation or buff for the increase in OP cost that comes with different sizes of ships. eg
-Blast Doors (more crew, bigger ship)
-Reinforced Bulkheads (bigger ship, more volume to cover)
-Integrated Target Unit (better range)
-Unstable Injector (bigger engines for a heavier ship)
-Hardened Shields (bigger shield emitter, more volume to encapsulate)

If the hangar's is identical whether it is on a Destroyer/Cruiser/Capital Ship, what is causing the additional OP cost?

All right I guess this is where game balance comes in (rather than rationalizing the changes with what you expect in reality or the rules of a made up one), and if I'm a bit more honest there are some hull-mods that do this (eg Expanded Missile Racks depends on ship size rather than how many missiles you are using).

Right, it's gameplay/balance driven. But it's fun (and usually easy!) to come up with some in-fiction reasons, too. So, let's see: it's a conversion of the ship's main hangar, right, or at least a portion of it. Presumably, for a larger ship, messing with its hangar disrupts the ship's operations more because, well, there's more to disrupt. It may have a larger hangar, meaning a smaller portion of it is converted, but that's not necessarily linear with the amount of disruption caused. More stuff has to be put on hold while those Talons are whizzing out of the hangar, or being repaired, you know? Can't just carry on regular operations with live ordnance being loaded in 10 feet away. Therefore: a higher OP cost.

bigger ships have bigger hangers, but need more of their hanger for critical operations.
Semi trucks might have more tires than a pickup truck, but that's because it needs more tires and using those increased amount of tires as storage space (to smuggle) comes at an increased risk of mechanical failure and therefor increased operational costs which is then offset by an increased focus on repairing tire & axel wear by the maintenance crews who are already going to be seeing this truck anyway (and therefor doesn't increase the operation cost) but does accrue a opportunity cost in that there are fewer work-hours for them to work on other areas of the truck, such as streamlining it for performance and efficiency over long-hauls, or increasing the turning rate of its guns or equipping it with shielding for flying thru the outter sphere of the sun
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zeno

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #421 on: October 26, 2018, 06:52:58 PM »

imo Apogee losing frontal coverage on the medium mounts make them pretty much useless.  I wouldn't even put PD in them, because the return for OP cost is just too low (not to mention Flare + Locust is more than enough PD for any reasonable fight).  Instead, I'd just leave them empty and use the OP savings for Hardened Shield to make Apogee's already efficient shields near impenetrable.  Perhaps consider making the two mediums asymmetric and leave frontal coverage on one of them so putting in a support weapon like ionbeam or graviton is still an option?

RE: salvage expedition starting scenario
This is a change that I never knew I wanted, and I couldn't articulate why at first.  After thinking about it for a bit, I realized what this effectively does is shine a spotlight on a ship that's very interesting on paper, but in reality is seldom used, because by the time the player can find/field an Apogee, he's no longer in a phase of the game where using it as a flagship is powerful.  But by having access to it from the get-go, the player now have good reasons to use it and really learn to love it.  This is the same reason why folks disproportionally like the Hammerhead, even though objectively it's merely a decent destroyer.  But because it's available right from the tutorial, it just tears through everything as a flagship.

If possible, I think this is something that's at least worth a little bit of further expansion to give the same treatment to a few other rarely used ships.  A couple of candidates I can think of would be Scarab and Shade.  Back story can be something like a Pirate Raider start, where you just stole a rare ship from TT, who's now hostile to you from day 1.  The twist is that you start in orbit around Culann Starforge, and the first order of business is to take your stolen ship and get out of Hybrasil, alive =D
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #422 on: October 26, 2018, 07:17:03 PM »

There used to be a "privateer" Scarab start at v0.7.2, with hostile Tri-Tachyon.  Repairing reputation took a long time, up to about midgame and higher levels (about high 20's or low 30's).
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Linnis

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #423 on: October 27, 2018, 06:28:22 PM »

If Apogee could have the two frontal small mounts placed closer to the large that would be so awesome.
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Algro

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #424 on: October 28, 2018, 11:13:01 PM »

This just came to mind, but wouldn't it be a 'thing' to face long-range enemies with the back of the Apogee (which the two mediums now converge) and then turn back to the front after the large energy finishes recharging or comes into range?
Sounds stupid but actually makes the mediums worthwhile after the change...

Talking more seriously though, I would be sad if this change makes the Apogee a non-late-game ship. This change generally makes it more available and cheap, but I've always associated it being a state of the art technological gem -- rare, expensive and extremely potent. Therefore, I would strongly go against it being a beginner ship, punishing the Apogee for being the only explorer in the game and instead make another ship to fill the 'early scout' role.
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TaLaR

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #425 on: October 28, 2018, 11:30:42 PM »

Apogee after the changes seems logistically effective (compared to combo of combat ship + cargo hauler + fuel tanker), but that's about it.
It's still badly threatened by single Hammerhead less than half it's supply cost (which is faster and has more effective range).
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #426 on: October 29, 2018, 08:33:25 AM »

re Apogee:

i actually really like the turret arc change, because it feels like a ship that should be good at going on long solo voyages without much in the way of escorts or additional logistics ships. and the new stat changes further reinforce that (even if the vanilla Apogee start does give you escorts too).
but one of the biggest issues with large ships going solo is that they are very vulnerable to being surrounded by a bunch of smaller ships, even if those are individually quite weak. Apogee now having medium turrets that cover its rear and flanks, combined with the efficient 360° shield it already had, should help mitigate that vulnerability. and against larger threats, it still has decent frontal firepower.

range could still be an issue though. even as a cruiser with DTC/ITU, its medium energy turrets will only have ~800 range with anything that isn't purely a support weapon, and can easily be outranged by most destroyers with ballistics, even Derelicts.. i have a couple ideas that could help with this, but all of them would probably be significant buffs, which i don't think it needs, especially with the improved logistics stats and lowered costs. :/
the large missile mount can help with this as well, but it will generally only be either good at pressuring shields, or at breaking through armor, and still relying on non-missile weapons to fulfill the other role.

overall though, with the more interesting terrain effects, and surveying becoming much more meaningful, i'm really looking forward to doing a solo Apogee exploration run! :]
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #427 on: October 29, 2018, 12:17:48 PM »

The easiest way to solve the range weakness for Apogee is turn the large energy to hybrid so it can use Mjolnir instead of crappy energy and maybe give it a flight deck whether naturally or Converted Hangar or the like.

With its overhead costs decreasing and its capacities raised, it is moving away from a tanky warship to a high-tech hybrid.  With less cost, it cannot stay on par with Dominator/Eagle/Aurora.
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ArkAngel

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #428 on: October 29, 2018, 03:52:37 PM »

Considering the Apogee’s original design was as a exploration ship, I think making it less combat oriented and more pointed towards survivability/exploration was a good moce. I’ll still miss it as my favorite combat flagship though.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #429 on: October 29, 2018, 10:26:45 PM »

Giving the notes another glance, I see that the Luddic Path are getting "cells".  Does that mean there's going to be more blasted Pather bases throughout the sector?  Does that also mean reputation is different between the cells?  And if they are, how will that be represented on the UI?  Or am I completely wrong?  Same idea with Pirates getting more bases - just more bases or is it something more?

Also, in regards to sector generation, this type of stuff feels a bit odd at times.
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While exquisitely beautiful, that ring system is just far too large and too close to the parent star. :)
« Last Edit: October 29, 2018, 10:29:18 PM by The Soldier »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #430 on: October 29, 2018, 11:11:15 PM »

I think that relates to the new pirate base and pirate raid mechanics. Pirate bases can spawn randomly and send raids to nearby outposts but they can also be destroyed (June blog post), so I imagine pathers will do the same. I think pirate rep is now hard locked at hostile, so pathers might be the same in that regard as well.
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Embolism

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #431 on: October 30, 2018, 01:25:25 AM »

The Path doesn't see eye-to-eye with the Church, but I feel if you do a Church playthrough you should be able to at least be Neutral with the Path.
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Linnis

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #432 on: October 30, 2018, 02:54:50 PM »

The Path doesn't see eye-to-eye with the Church, but I feel if you do a Church playthrough you should be able to at least be Neutral with the Path.

The path could be friendly if you have church friendly and TT and HEG unfriendly?
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #433 on: October 30, 2018, 05:04:30 PM »

It would be cool if there was some special event that could alter your relationship with pirates/path. I like the idea of fixed relationships, but maybe with the addition of more narrative based content, there could be some special event that causes your relationship to change to neutral. Maybe bombarding a core hegemony world, or assassinating a hegemony admiral gains you respect within the pirate community. I'm remembering the escape velocity Nova stories fondly while thinking of this.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« Reply #434 on: October 30, 2018, 10:14:59 PM »

Is it just the Pirates and Pathers establishing new bases to go raiding?  Seems like there should be more than that to it.

Hm, I'm a bit concerned over the -33% Speed that Converted Hangars and Defective Manufactory give to their fighters.  Some of the slower fighters already struggle to keep up with faster carriers like the Heron and Drover, let alone faster combat ships that you might install Converted Hangars on.  All the non-REDACTED vanilla bombers plus the Warthog, for example, would be completely unable to keep up with a Drover that has the 0-flux boost going if it had the Defective Manufactory d-mod.  If any ships have speed modifiers, then the gap becomes bigger and some more fighters might lag behind.  Having the Wing Commander skill solves most of these issues, but I feel like this is an important enough thing to point out.
« Last Edit: October 31, 2018, 09:16:13 AM by The Soldier »
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