Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sundog]

First of all, thanks again for another amazing update. I would give detailed positive feedback on 0.9, but it would end up being a massive wall of text. Suffice it to say, I think just about everything that isn't mentioned in this post is a good change or addition. So, on to my one significant gripe:

In every previous version of Starsector, money could only be earned by actively playing, but in 0.9 you can earn so much passive income that money becomes trivialized (along with all the things you do to earn it).

Passive income is a bad thing because it's all reward and no risk. It rewards players for wasting time and makes it unnecessary to do anything risky, challenging, or fun.
Consider this guide for reaching endgame:

Spoiler

• Use a fast, minimal fleet to run analyze missions and salvage tech until all $540k of the Galatian stipend has been paid. Get a commission as soon as possible.
• By the end of the Galatian stipend you should have several million credits, a great reputation, several blueprints, and a decent stockpile of colony-boosting items, so it's time to settle any half-decent, 100% hazard world near the core.
• Rush defenses and always keep growth incentives topped off. Don't do anything that might turn a profit. That would attract unwanted attention. Your commission stipend should cover any colony deficits.
• Once your defenses are maxed, focus on economy. Feel free to use AI cores and Free Port. Your fleets and star fortress should repel the vast majority of expeditions. Resign your commission at this point, because hostilities are bad for business.
• Settle as many colonies as you like. One is enough to support anything you might want to do since you can always go AFK to get more money, but more colonies will speed things up.

I see no reason why this strategy wouldn't be viable, but nothing about it is fun or challenging because it relies on passive income to avoid conflict. In fact, with a little luck I'm pretty sure this could be done without ever engaging in battle. I'm all for pacifist runs, but they should be fun.

[close]

Suggested changes for passive sources of income:

Galatian Stipend

Spoiler

Galatian stipend should be removed from normal difficulty, and on easy be reduced to something like $2500/mo, enough to help new players support a modest fleet, but not enough to encourage them to orbit Jangala til the end of the month so they can buy the Wolf they saw on the black market. I think the Galatian stipend is a good way to soften some of the survival aspects of the game for new players, but it's simply too generous.

[close]

Comissions

Spoiler

The stipend should be removed from normal difficulty and drastically reduced on easy. A commission stipend is a good way to make survival easier for new players and to compensate them for the increased hostility of having a commission, but, like Galatian stipend, it's generous enough to encourage passivity.

[close]

Analyze Missions

Spoiler

Yes, analyze missions aren't passive, but they're pretty close considering the low investment requirement for a small fleet with low fuel/supply use and the speed to escape from anything. To make these missions more interesting and less grindable, analyze missions should have fleet sensor range requirements on which the payout is scaled. Missions with sensor strength requirements of 300 would still be there for players to start exploring early, but the payout would be much lower than sensor strength 1050 missions.

[close]

Colonization

Spoiler

Colonies of all stages should occasionally be faced with serious, tangible threats to profitability that require player intervention to fix. I know that's already the goal, and there's already a great deal of discussion here about economy exploitation and the problems with colony defense, so I won't go into detail about it. I have full confidence in FractalSoftworks to fix these issues. However, I would like to suggest replacing expeditions with blockades in the case of friendly factions. Blockades would be very similar to expeditions, except instead of disrupting your spaceport, a blockade fleet would park on top of your colony, warding off traders and imposing a market condition that greatly reduces accessibility. Blockades could be averted or lifted by agreeing to the faction's demands (e.g. making monthly payments to them), destroying the blockade fleet (which would initiate temporary hostilities), or "using your contacts." The effect would be largely the same as expeditions, except:

• The player wouldn't have to be at the colony at a specific time to fight a blockade in person, unlike expeditions.
• Even if colony defenses can destroy a blockade fleet without trouble, other means of dealing with it might be more appealing just to avoid hostilities.
• Blockades would be more thematically intuitive. It doesn't make sense for friendly factions to attack you, especially without making demands first.
• Due to the temporary nature of a blockade, and the fact that it's not an "attack," they would be less intimidating than expeditions, in spite of being potentially more disruptive to income.
• Blockades would provide an incentive for players to engage in temporary hostilities with other factions.

[close]

[Alex]

Hmm. So I get what you're saying, but does this really hold up?

An experienced player isn't going to wait around for the stipend to tick while doing analyze missions - not because it isn't fun, but because they can ramp up way, way, way faster by using those analyze missions as starting points for salvage expeditions. Or by doing something else (bounty hunting etc) to get going.

So, yeah, technically it's reward with no risk, but it really just acts as a mitigator for the calculated risks you can take while it's ticking. This covers "analyze" missions, too; grinding them is slower than the alternative, even if you factor in the risks not paying off sometimes.

For a less experienced player, they're not going to have "how to get to endgame in an easy, slow, and boring way" mapped out (due to being inexperienced), so again, this stuff ought to act as a mitigator, analyze missions will naturally lead them into salvaging ("hey, what's that other sensor contact nearby?"), and so on.

I feel like "all reward and no risk" is indeed dangerous, but primarily if it's not passive. Then the player may feel forced to do it instead of doing more interesting, higher risk/reward activities. When it's passive - and comparatively minor, to boot - it's just a backdrop to other stuff they'll be doing.


I do like the idea of blockades. Ideally, the player would also be able to do them, though, which right now wouldn't be possible. Even so, it'd be a nice change of pace from expeditions - I don't think I'd want to replace expeditions with these, but adding them into the mix could be good, provided the possible ways of dealing with them were solid.

(And, yeah, colony income needs nerfbat, since it does trivialize everything else.)

[intrinsic_parity]

I think a big problem with colony defense is that it is too binary right now, both in consequences, and setup. Once your defenses are strong enough, they don't require any supervision, but if they get broken, your income is crippled for half a year. Forcing the player to defend the colony too frequently is also bad, because it prevents you from doing anything else like bounty hunting/exploring etc. I think the impact of raids should be less binary something like:
no disruption
a minor disruption for a week
a significant disruption for a month
a major disruption for 6 months
a catastrophic disruption for a year

Maybe with even more granularity than that. This allows you to sometimes actually make a decision like 'I'm going to continue exploring and lose this months profit' instead of 'I have to go home because I will be losing money for the next 6 months if I don't' (or 'who cares my defenses are too strong'). Instead of your defense winning or losing, you would have some degree of damage done by a raid which would rarely be 0 but also rarely be really bad unless you are behind on defenses, in which case you deserve to sit around defending your colony.

I like the idea of blockades, but maybe in addition to raids rather than replacing raids. Fighting 6 giant diktat fleets can actually be pretty fun from time to time. It would add some more flavor to have different kinds of threats, and maybe faction raids could become less frequent but more dangerous. This could also add a way for faction relationships to matter more/make sense (factions will generally blockade you if you are not hostile, but they would send large raids if you are hostile).

I'm 100% sure colony scaling will be significantly toned down in the next patch so there's no point discussing that further, it's already been beaten to death on this forum.

With regards to exploration missions, I think a sensor requirement is a good idea. I also think just making the player fight probe defenses before being able to scan (and beefing up defenses on mission targets) would help a bit. I'm hesitant to too drastically reduce rewards because then things get grindy.

With regards to commissions, I think there should be more requirements, rather than just reducing income. Maybe something like you are assigned to some system and responsible for preventing pirate activity in that system, and you can get monetary bonuses for increasing stability/ destroying pirate bases there and lose your commission if pirates activity increases too much. Also having semi-frequent mandatory missions to destroy pirate bases/stave off hostile fleets could be a good way to make commissions more significant. I prefer this because it feels more like you are a part of the faction rather than just getting free money.

With regards to the overall gameplay arc and the late game, I think Alex wants the late game to be less focused on directly making money (i.e. getting paid to do specific actions) and more focused on doing cool things like interacting with the factions and the economy. I personally really like that concept. I think what it's missing right now is all the other stuff to do (which will almost certainly be added). You also get there a little too fast, but that's a balance concern rather than a core gameplay concern.

[zaimoni]

The current commissions are more like letters of marque.  An assigned district would have a very different feel; I could see it as an "alternate"/"upgrade" from the current commissions, but not a replacement.

[Megas]

I like the stipend and/or commission as a fallback in case combat gets too hard, too fast.  Currently, I considered getting commission to speed up gameplay and get out of early-game grind fast, but by the time I can get enough rep for Tri-Tachyon, I may not need the commission anymore.

What I hope all of the money making that colonies will do is you will need it for something bigger later.  Currently, all of industrial might and ship-building the player can do after he gets blueprints he wants and money to build as much as he wants feels more like reward for winning the game (like getting Massive Iron Crown and 'Grond' after killing Morgoth in Angband), not something that helps you during the game, or to help you prepare for an overwhelming endgame event like a demon attack from beyond.  I may expand on this if I post my big feedback post soon, maybe.  I stopped my first game to play another.  More to come for another time.

EDIT:  One thing the stipend and/or commission does is pay for crew and officer salaries for a while.  We did not have salaries to pay before 0.9.

[Vind]

Colony skills and cores must be nerfed or penalties for AI increased - basic colony without free port/cores/and player skills makes around 90k at level 7 with AI industrial planning administrator. Sounds reasonable as end game fleet will consume great amount of fuel only not to mention supplies.

[Sundog]

I do like the idea of blockades. Ideally, the player would also be able to do them, though, which right now wouldn't be possible. Even so, it'd be a nice change of pace from expeditions - I don't think I'd want to replace expeditions with these, but adding them into the mix could be good, provided the possible ways of dealing with them were solid.

I like the idea of blockades, but maybe in addition to raids rather than replacing raids.

Yeah, you guys are absolutely right. Variety is the spice of life, and there's nothing wrong with expeditions that can't be fixed by tweaking numbers afaik. Honestly I should've made the blockade suggestion in a different post.

Hmm. So I get what you're saying, but does this really hold up?

Not for the vast majority of players, no. At least not to the extremes of going AFK to collect stipends or grinding 30 analyze missions in a Dram at the beginning of the game. Very few people are that careful and patient. I only meant for the little guide I wrote to demonstrate the worst case scenario of how these mechanics could be exploited. Few people would exploit passive income and analyze missions that much, but most players will quickly realize that they could, and I think there's something extremely disheartening about realizing that it's not necessary to do anything challenging in order to beat a game.

I think it's important for Starsector to offer safety nets and risk mitigation because other players want them, but I absolutely do not. In previous versions you had to manage money wisely or risk not being able to support your fleet. I know this bothered plenty of people, but I think it's one of the things that makes the game great, so I think such effective safety nets should be optional based on difficulty setting. Speaking of, I greatly enjoyed dealing with the obligation from my past - but I never talk about that...

I feel like "all reward and no risk" is indeed dangerous, but primarily if it's not passive. Then the player may feel forced to do it instead of doing more interesting, higher risk/reward activities.

I'm inclined to agree, but doesn't this describe analyze missions? The way I see it, sensor strength requirements would not only enforce investment (and therefore risk), but also encourage people to bring fleets more capable of other activities.

By the way, I'm very satisfied with your solutions to the SB problems I posted about here. I love how hyperstorms can knock you off course 

[TaLaR]

A player can easily fix this issue by choosing spacer start (that has debt instead of stipend). Though having option of neither would be nice too.

[DatonKallandor]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the stipend or commision payments. The ways to cheese for money you describe are so obscure that no player who's trying to get money in a cheaty way is going to figure them out before they just resort to outright cheats and modding and so mindnumbingly boring that they won't bother doing it even if they did figure it out before cheating and modding. If you're actually playing the game, especially newer players, both the stipend and commission payments are fine.

[Megas]

I like colony skills being powerful.  Otherwise, why take them when I can get even more combat, and 42 points alone is not enough for that and fun skills on the side?  In my case, colony skills are my fun skills on the side.  Not what I had in mind back in 0.8, but whatever.  The main problem is it is too easy to avoid the downsides of Free Port and cores.  In case of Free Port, what downside aside from -3 stability (when you can stack enough to offset that)?  Adding the Church of weak fleets to the pool of belligerents make things better.

Also, you want a good spawn of planets.  My second game has a great system in the fringe, but put it away and started a third game.  Third game had a crappy planet spawn, with no good planet near the core, and most of the better worlds near the fringe, and none had a low hazard planet with great resources.  I went back to game #2.

I am wary with "nerf colony skill" because that just sounds like "I want all points in combat and the way to encourage that is the make all of the non-combat skills crappy.  That said, Industrial Planning is must-have because it turns planets with multiple resources with -1s into a gold mine.  (I rather have a planet with four -1s than one or two +3s.)  The only choice is how to acquire it.  Get the skill yourself, hire an admin, or install an alpha.

Profits from colony are high if we are not building capitals left and right, but by the time we can use that money, we have effectively won the game.  I would like some endgame challenge where I need that money to meet it.  Part of the point of colonies is to do strategic-level things that one fleet cannot do, but we really do not have that kind of challenge that requires it yet.  Making a million credits per month?  Great!  Now I can post three or four bounties for freelance hunters to take care of the problem while I assemble a doom fleet to personally nuke the core worlds or to deal with a demon attack from beyond.

[Sundog]

A player can easily fix this issue by choosing spacer start (that has debt instead of stipend).

Yeah, I really like the time pressure created by the spacer debt (starting out with nothing isn't the greatest, but that's another matter). You can also set the factionCommissionStipend options to 0 in the settings file, but I prefer to give feedback on the default experience.

@DatonKallandor - While I think you're right about most players not taking things to such extremes, I still think it's problematic. Did you read my reply to Alex? He said something similar to you.

@Megas - I agree on all counts. I don't think the best way to bring colony income under control is to nerf skills, but to fix the inverted difficulty of expeditions and make other factions more economically competitive. I also think late game 4X content would help quite a bit, but I assume that's already planned. I don't think great planet spawns are necessary to make far too much money. My main colony is a size 7 100% hazard with adequate farmland and common organics, but it still managed to bring in 775k last month.

[Deshara]

I do like the idea of blockades. Ideally, the player would also be able to do them, though, which right now wouldn't be possible. Even so, it'd be a nice change of pace from expeditions - I don't think I'd want to replace expeditions with these, but adding them into the mix could be good, provided the possible ways of dealing with them were solid.

(And, yeah, colony income needs nerfbat, since it does trivialize everything else.)

I've noticed sometimes factions will park patrols onto jump points and I love that they do that -- it's such an obvious abuse of the universe's function, and winds up giving a lot of interplay with the transverse jump (which is otherwise just a jumppoint to the market you want to get to). I think there's a lot of possibility space with that

[Thaago]

I do like the idea of blockades. Ideally, the player would also be able to do them, though, which right now wouldn't be possible. Even so, it'd be a nice change of pace from expeditions - I don't think I'd want to replace expeditions with these, but adding them into the mix could be good, provided the possible ways of dealing with them were solid.

(And, yeah, colony income needs nerfbat, since it does trivialize everything else.)

I've noticed sometimes factions will park patrols onto jump points and I love that they do that -- it's such an obvious abuse of the universe's function, and winds up giving a lot of interplay with the transverse jump (which is otherwise just a jumppoint to the market you want to get to). I think there's a lot of possibility space with that

This is also what Remnant fleets often do, so if you want to loot a triple ping system early game, transverse jump makes it possible.

[Alex]

... and I think there's something extremely disheartening about realizing that it's not necessary to do anything challenging in order to beat a game.

That's a fair point. I'll just say that right now what "beat the game" means is... not exactly well-defined.

I'm inclined to agree, but doesn't this describe analyze missions? The way I see it, sensor strength requirements would not only enforce investment (and therefore risk), but also encourage people to bring fleets more capable of other activities.

Is it really no risk? It seems like there's some baseline risk regardless, and bringing more ships along to take full advantage of the salvage is only incrementally more risky.

I could see reducing the base reward and adding a component based on the fleet's base sensor strength, though. Encouraging the player to take a larger fleet there sounds like a good idea, since it'll play into the "salvage other stuff" aspect nicely (as you say).

By the way, I'm very satisfied with your solutions to the SB problems I posted about here. I love how hyperstorms can knock you off course 

Excellent

[SCC]

Is it really no risk?

The only time it wasn't was when I had to scan a derelict in orange beacon system. Thank God for transverse jump. Yeah, scanning missions really are on the easy side, it's really unlikely to get in a dangerous system.