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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 468344 times)

Flow_Rate

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #975 on: November 24, 2018, 06:29:55 AM »

How would I do that?  I remember searching the screen and nothing jumped out to indicate drop location.  It could be hiding in plain sight for all I know.

Similarly, if faction name and stuff can be changed later, I have not found the settings to do that.
Top left corner of the screen. There should be a planet, click on it and change it to something else. I thought it represented the planet I was on because I kept going back to my main base but then realized that it was an option.
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Drokkath

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #976 on: November 24, 2018, 06:59:11 AM »

I'm starting to warm up to this update now for sure because I finally got to bombard my first Luddic place out of starmaps and out of existence for good. You have no idea how great it felt as I've been wanting to do just that years ago to them now. Seeing one of their planets getting bombarded by my ship was pure bliss and satisfaction.

Thank you Alex and the rest of the dev team! And don't mind my initial thoughts here, I tend to be over cautious these days.
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For I dipt in to the future, far as my gazer eye could see; Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.

Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #977 on: November 24, 2018, 07:02:57 AM »

>>Big wall of text.<<

Short version: I want the game to hold my hand the entire time, otherwise how am I, the player, supposed to make decisions on my own? Also I'm blind, sorry guys for yelling that the tutorial is horrendous, who knew putting weapons on ships would be beneficial.

Seriously tho, if someone is being that oblivious, not paying attention, and not even trying to figure stuff out on your own, then this maybe isn't the best game for you. Judging from your view on the tutorial, it would seem mobile games might suit you better.
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #978 on: November 24, 2018, 07:13:02 AM »

Short version: I want the game to hold my hand the entire time, otherwise how am I, the player, supposed to make decisions on my own? Also I'm blind, sorry guys for yelling that the tutorial is horrendous, who knew putting weapons on ships would be beneficial.

Seriously tho, if someone is being that oblivious, not paying attention, and not even trying to figure stuff out on your own, then this maybe isn't the best game for you. Judging from your view on the tutorial, it would seem mobile games might suit you better.
The issue is that typically people try to play with certain conventions in mind. Screwing around with the game comes eventually, but at first you're trying to find out what you're allowed to do and what you can do, what is screwing with the game/tutorial and what isn't.

Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #979 on: November 24, 2018, 07:27:40 AM »

@Grievous69
Well that was incredibly rude. What would posses you to write something like that?

@StarGibbon
Thank you very much for giving another post with more details. We are normally more civil than this.

It seems to me that the main problem going on here is expectations and UI, not the actual fight difficulty. As you've seen by the productive responses, there really is a reason for the difficulty and toning it down too much on 'normal' is going to cause even worse experiences later. I think that as long as the fight is advertised as a "boss fight" then its ok for it to be challenging, even in a tutorial. After all, there are two combat tutorials outside the campaign which are of the 'no difficulty' variety and many missions which have no consequences for failure. But it shouldn't be an insurmountable challenge - the fact that you got so frustrated means there is room for improvement.

This isn't the first time I've seen people complaining about weapon mounts being invisible, and tbh the same thing happens to me with mods all the time when I'm not familiar with the ships. A strong highlight on unfilled mounts would be really good here, and possibly also an info box ("You have unfilled weapon mounts! Is this on purpose?") that you can check to not show again would be good.

The dialogue in the tutorial does say that the enemy guarding the gate is strong, and the whole point of salvaging more ships is because they are tough, but it could be a little clearer about when it is giving supplies/weapons to the player and that they should probably salvage all the ships they can, regardless of D mods. I've seen it mentioned a few times (maybe just in discord?) where people have said that they couldn't salvage the ships because they don't have enough crew/supplies: I think the tutorial could be better about mentioning the "mothball" feature. Heck, it could even be explicit in the tutorial to salvage ALL the ships, and then once one comes up that puts the character over the crew limit it pops up a dialogue window explaining mothball, and how to turn it on/off.

I played through the tutorial again and did the final fight a few times - depending on how the fleets are orbiting it can sometimes be quite difficult to separate them (and other times easy, but if a player gets unlucky a few times that could be a quite bad experience). This isn't helped by the fact that the salvaged player fleet has a not-so-good sensor strength ratio. I think maybe the orbit of the two ships could be tweaked to be a bit larger, so they have more distance between them, and their own sensor strength could be toned down by adding more civilian ships?

Finally, I think the idea of being able to change to easy mode from the campaign is a good one, especially if it is advertised in the tutorial script. Given that it changes fleet compositions this might be a little tricky, but it would at least give a frustrated player an option to get through the day.
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Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #980 on: November 24, 2018, 07:42:44 AM »

@Grievous69
Well that was incredibly rude. What would posses you to write something like that?

Shi*ting on game mechanics and the game in general without even trying to learn something and just expecting to be showered with solutions is the same as insulting a person you don't personally know. It's childish and stupid. I just hate those kinds of people that's all.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #981 on: November 24, 2018, 07:49:10 AM »

I think the midgame difficulty spike is worse than the brutal tutorial.  The tutorial can be better, but it will be for naught if early game challenges mostly disappear too quickly and player is stuck with fights he cannot win once the enemy spikes in difficulty.

I still find it impossible to separate the two fleets, so if I fight one, I fight the other.  The best I could do was reach the gate when the two fleets wandered too far from it, then activate it, then avoid the fight entirely if I wanted (but why do that after the base commander puts a bounty on their heads).
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BillyRueben

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #982 on: November 24, 2018, 07:52:00 AM »

@Grievous69
Well that was incredibly rude. What would posses you to write something like that?

Shi*ting on game mechanics and the game in general without even trying to learn something and just expecting to be showered with solutions is the same as insulting a person you don't personally know. It's childish and stupid. I just hate those kinds of people that's all.

He wasn't *** on the game mechanics at all. He was trying to give a point of view as a "new" player. There are a lot of things in this game that are trial and error, and since a lot of us on this forum are vets, many of the things that cater to new players trying to get the hang of things don't get anywhere near as much play testing in newer versions. Having some hand holding at the start of the game for new players is important. This game throws a lot at you in the beginning, and it can be very overwhelming.
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StarGibbon

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #983 on: November 24, 2018, 07:56:16 AM »

@Thaago

Thanks for not being a chum nozzle. I appreciate your reply. I realize admitting any kind of weakness on the internet is an excuse for low self esteem types to tee off on you, so I appreciate the high road here. I want to stress that I am in no way arguing for a reduction is game difficulty. Like most of you, I want the game to be a challenging sandbox that rewards experimentation and creativity. And I want to stress that I am an experienced player [hundreds of hours], and am sailing along quite nicely now that I made it past that little stumble. But there are certain realities about the market that must be faced, no matter one's feelings on the way things *should* be. It's in all of our interests that the game be successful on a wide commercial launch, and not faced with a bunch of "I refunded this crappy game in the tutorial" reviews on the steam page.

1) To address a general point made above, yes I am proposing more hand holding. In the *Tutorial.* Hand holding is what tutorials are supposed to *do*.  For those unfamiliar with the term:
Quote
A computer tutorial is an interactive software program created as a learning tool. Tutorials help people learn new skills by using a step-by-step process that ensures the user is following along and comprehending the material.

The difficulty of the tutorial should be whatever the developer thinks it should be, but that difficulty should be deliberate. There are too many opportunities in the current tutorial to vary that difficulty wildly.


2) Secondly, I *AM* blind, in the sense that like a lot of people, I dont have perfect vision--and yet I still buy games. Again, I'm assuming the developer wants to sell games. This game started development before the advent of modern high resolution monitors. You ever try zooming in on a wolf  in the refit screen on a monitor rez greater than 1080p? It's tiny. This is the drawback to raster graphics.


In the end it doesn't matter if you think I'm stupid, or a bad player, or someone who should only play mobile games  ( I mentioned Ive logged hundreds of hours in this game in previous versions, right?). The fact that I as a returning player can screw this up means that plenty of new players can do it to.  And this is not good for you if you want to see challenging games that reward experimentation succeed.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2018, 09:06:04 AM by StarGibbon »
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #984 on: November 24, 2018, 08:01:16 AM »

So this, I think, is my issue with the tutorial. There are too many *variables*.  A player can blunder into fighting both fleets at once, or only one. A player can severely bungle their loadouts, like I did.  If not paying attention, or overwhelmed with learning a new game, miss the notice about the weapons storage entirely. All these things can lead to drastically different experiences from player to player.

Sounds like the tutorial should explicitly walk you through using the autofit tool and also combine with the concepts of check marks for buying from market/black market/taking from storage?  That would naturally direct you to your weapons storage for example.  For a new player, using autofit to demonstrate some full builds might also be instructive.  As well as maybe showing how to make new custom autofits.  That particular tool certainly makes maintaining large fleets of scavenged D-mod ships much easier and I think is an important to be made aware of, and might have helped in your case.

On a related note, the change where your ships keep their setups when recovered I think is a really good one on the micromanagement end of things.
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Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #985 on: November 24, 2018, 08:19:44 AM »

I LOVE that recovered ships keep their weapons/setups. Not only does it make losing ships more sustainable but it cuts down on so much tedious micro.
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Shad

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #986 on: November 24, 2018, 08:31:18 AM »

I LOVE that recovered ships keep their weapons/setups. Not only does it make losing ships more sustainable but it cuts down on so much tedious micro.
^This. While losing weapons was "realistic", it was just a chore from mid game. Also cuts down on save/loading.

I have noticed some occasional autofit glitches though, which outfits ships in a different ways than saved despite having weapons in storage.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #987 on: November 24, 2018, 08:37:50 AM »

from a discussion in the discord: we looked at profits from Light Industry and Heavy Industry, and the numbers on these two seem really off.

Light Industry makes way too little. on my 100% Hazard, 146% Accessibility, and 10 Stability world, my LI exports goods for about 18k credits. it's upkeep is 12k, and that's with a 50% reduction from a Beta Core! it's *slightly* profitable with all those 4 positive modifiers, but only just. on most worlds, or even on that world but without AI Core, it's not even close to being worth building.

meanwhile, Heavy Industry seems overpowered. with all the same modifiers as above, as well as a Corrupted Nanoforge, mine makes 65k from exports, and costs 18k upkeep. if it was just a for-profit industry, i'd say these numbers would be fine. a bit too high maybe, especially considering how common Corrupted Nanoforges are, and that it would be even more profitable with a Pristine Nanoforge. but not by much.
but it's not just another for-profit industry, it has the absolutely crucial function of allowing ship production for both my faction's fleets, and custom orders. even if it would make zero income of any kind, every player should still build at least one HI at some point, that's how important it is. combined with big export profits, it's a bit crazy how valuable this industry is.

the main issue here, i think, is that LI produces only 2 goods that both have rather low total sector profits, whereas HI produces 4 goods that have pretty good sector profits.

so one easy way to at least make the numbers a bit more reasonable would be to simply remove the Supplies production capabilities from HI, and add them to LI instead. for Heavy Machinery and Armaments, and obviously Ship Hulls, it wouldn't make much sense for them to not be produced by HI, conceptually. but for Supplies, which are also needed by many civilian industries, and even basic infrastructure, i think LI would actually fit pretty well.

with my numbers from above, moving Supplies from HI to LI, LI would have an export of 36k (assuming it would produce the same amount as a HI with CN), and HI 47k. HI would still be significantly better, but not quite as good anymore, and LI would make a decent profit.

i know the colony numbers in general will still probably get a lot of adjustments in future patches, and my suggested change might not be enough to balance out these two industries, but it would be a very simple change that reduces the main issue of why their export numbers are so skewed.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #988 on: November 24, 2018, 08:43:22 AM »

I have Light Industry only so I do not need to import their produce from another faction and keep my people happy.  One such industry from one of my colonies should be enough.

Heavy Industry is critical.  It can be pig and eat into profits much, but you need it to build your own ships and weapons, not to mention produce supplies that you need to maintain your fleets.  I prefer to build my own ships over restoration given the choice, assuming building pristine ships is reliable.
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Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #989 on: November 24, 2018, 08:45:59 AM »

Light industry is a major money maker on free port planets. Drugs are profitable.
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