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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 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 351600 times)

Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #870 on: August 27, 2019, 07:27:46 PM »

(Just wanted to say I've been keeping up with this.)

[/b] I'd very much prefer to play phase chess with shield-bypass aware AI...

Yeah, I saw your other suggestion thread! It sounds neat, but it's veeery much the sort of thing the AI is going to fail at no matter what. It trying to do that would have the effect of it being weaker overall or more easily gamed in most situations, and periodically just acting "weird" for no player-discernible reason... long-term planning is just really difficult to pull off. It's the whole "the failure mode of the AI trying to be smart is it looking dumb" thing.
Just please don't nerf/ patch out the few viable loadouts for the smaller phase ships... I'd rather see the BS phase ship systems tweaked or replaced than to lose even more loadouts. Hell, without access to AM blasters, you might as well remove the smaller phase ships as they are designed are high alpha damage, especially with the current cloak system
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #871 on: August 27, 2019, 07:33:00 PM »

Right now I'm thinking of upping the flux cost - and range - of Entropy Amplifier, making it better as support and less synergistic with a mass of AM blasters (while also changing at least 2 of the hardpoints to hybrid). That should hopefully open up more options then there are now! Support, mix of torpedoes and AM, full AM...
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #872 on: August 27, 2019, 10:30:40 PM »

If Afflictor is supposed to be more of a support ship, can you create a hullmod that will make phase ships less likely to phase? If I'm bringing Afflictor just for the damage bonus, I want it to stay on the battlefield for as long as possible.

Euripides

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #873 on: August 28, 2019, 11:16:14 PM »

I tend not to play with any player skills nowadays for the "pure" experience. Which is basically false purity anyways, because many fleet skills are bonuses to player piloted ships anyways.

Ohase ships are good even without missiles. For instance an Afflictor with 2 Antimatter blasters and 2 Light Assault Gun is similar enough to reaper afflictor but with more staying power. Likewise with Shade. They can all point their guns forwards. Though it can be argued that in this case it is AM blaster that which makes it similar in style. Shade is almost an Afflictor. It's supposedly a little weaker, but EMP Emittor ship system is simply brilliant. Who needs Ion Cannons when you have EMP Emitter.

Personally I like to see Afflictor or Shade variants not as phase ships but as normal ships with shields, but I suppose we don't really need yet another specialist rare frigate to chase down other normal frigates.

I tend to stay away from a lot of skills simply because they make the game too easy and don't change the gameplay enough. Which is really my biggest issue with the current skills as they are: Instead of increasing my gameplay options, the skills are largely just "Vorpal Sword +3" buffs.

Skills I like:
Navigation 3 because it gives you transverse jump
Sensors 1 because it gives you neutrino sensors
Safety Procedures 2 because it makes fighting in alternative terrain like the corona of a star more viable

Skills I don't like:
Salvaging - Just trivializes the loot mechanics and prints money for you
Combat skills - Virtually all of them, as they just make your piloted ship overpowered (the exception for me being combat endurance)
Loadout Design - Like the combat skills, it's just large buffs that unbalance a lot of ships which are fine otherwise

Combat endurance is quintessentially the skill/buff I think officers should be applying to ships - they can fight longer with fewer malfunctions and get minor bonuses to a few stats when the CR is at a high level. I think that works a lot better for balance and makes more sense with "elite" ships run by an actual officer.
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Plantissue

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #874 on: August 29, 2019, 02:28:47 PM »

I like combat skills. Afterall this is a game where most of the time what the player does which his ship can have the biggest impact in a battle. I just think that by the time you have 10+ frigates, fleet skills are much better and I've traditionally played with player skills, so I now want a "purer" experience so I have a better feel of player ship balance.

What skills should be intended to be used for could probably be an essay all in itself.
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TaLaR

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #875 on: August 29, 2019, 09:09:15 PM »

Well, from what I've read 'fleet skills' will become specifically 'small fleet skill', with effects scaling down to insignificance (relative) for proper endgame fleets.
Which makes them dubious - in a small fleet player ship is the most important part, so might as well concentrate on piloted ship skills instead.

But in the end it really depends on how scaling will work. Linear scaling for carrier skill would mean:
6 * 1.5 = 9 (3 extra bays worth of regen)
12 * 1.25 = 15 (same 3 extra)
24 * 1.125 = 27 (same 3 extra)

As long as you have no logistics with bays, no converted or built-in bays, no reserve carriers you'd get the same non-scaling benefit.
Is such benefit worth restricting composition of large fleet? Maybe...
« Last Edit: August 29, 2019, 09:36:35 PM by TaLaR »
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #876 on: August 29, 2019, 11:40:33 PM »

From what I understand, "large fleet skills" are in industry tree, which might be alright in the future, but now it's not hard to have many non-trash ships, especially once colonies get involved. Then colony-related skills become large fleet skills, just because you need more money to make more ships, I guess...?

Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #877 on: August 30, 2019, 06:26:20 AM »

Remember Logistics from the 0.6.x releases.  Unused logistics gave extra bonuses.  In practice, that did not matter, bigger fleet was always better, sometimes even if you exceed Logistics and took penalties.

We will see if diminishing returns will have enough impact to matter.
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Plantissue

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #878 on: August 30, 2019, 02:33:14 PM »

Well, from what I've read 'fleet skills' will become specifically 'small fleet skill', with effects scaling down to insignificance (relative) for proper endgame fleets.
Which makes them dubious - in a small fleet player ship is the most important part, so might as well concentrate on piloted ship skills instead.

But in the end it really depends on how scaling will work. Linear scaling for carrier skill would mean:
6 * 1.5 = 9 (3 extra bays worth of regen)
12 * 1.25 = 15 (same 3 extra)
24 * 1.125 = 27 (same 3 extra)

As long as you have no logistics with bays, no converted or built-in bays, no reserve carriers you'd get the same non-scaling benefit.
Is such benefit worth restricting composition of large fleet? Maybe...
Source? What happens for 1 ship? In any case what this will likely encourage is an "optimal" number of ships of a certain type, then another "optimal" number of ships of another type. Depending on a lot of factors.
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TaLaR

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #879 on: August 30, 2019, 03:11:31 PM »

Source? What happens for 1 ship? In any case what this will likely encourage is an "optimal" number of ships of a certain type, then another "optimal" number of ships of another type. Depending on a lot of factors.

I don't know if it's going to scale linearly or not. That was just a 'what if'.
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Dornam

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #880 on: August 30, 2019, 11:52:24 PM »

So, I'm new to Starsector, but the way that expeditions against your colonies work seems really dumb to me. You bribe them, use rep to stop them from forming, or you beat them, but have to take a hit to rep. The first 2 options make sense, but it seems really dumb that defending my own colony makes me lose rep with a faction that's literally trying to sabotage me without "declaring war"

I feel like you'd have to constantly be trying to grind rep with the factions that attack your colonies if you don't want them to turn hostile. Which can lead to a really dumb cycle of basically asking forgiveness from that faction by doing missions for them, just because you defended your colony, or your colony defended itself.

Is there some setting in the files to change how much rep I lose when I defeat expeditions or a mod that does that?
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Innominandum

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #881 on: August 31, 2019, 10:45:06 AM »

Is there some setting in the files to change how much rep I lose when I defeat expeditions or a mod that does that?
Not in the base game as far as i know, but I'm new too.

But the mod Nexerelin has this line in its config  "enablePunitiveExpeditions=true", me thinks setting it to false would stop those expeditions.
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Lucky33

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #882 on: October 01, 2019, 01:17:20 AM »

Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.

I mean obviously - but there's only so efficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.

You can do any bounty at vanilla fleet size (120 DP while outnumbered) and no phaseships/carrier spam whatsoever.
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STOLKAH

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #883 on: December 24, 2019, 03:10:07 PM »

 ;D THANK YOU! <3 <3 <3! enjoying every single second of this Classic!

:) cant thank you all enough for this! appreciate all your effort! #cheers! & merry Christmas!
« Last Edit: December 24, 2019, 03:11:58 PM by STOLKAH »
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RedHellion

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Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #884 on: January 07, 2020, 10:44:23 AM »

Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.

I mean obviously - but there's only so efficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.

You can do any bounty at vanilla fleet size (120 DP while outnumbered) and no phaseships/carrier spam whatsoever.

Also, it helps if you wait out bounties until there are a few in the same constellation or at least the same general area - then you maximize your efficiency by doing multiple in a single trip out from the core worlds.
I regularly lug around a fleet of 4 capitals + 4-6 cruisers + 14 destroyers/frigates (plus fleet supply train of cruiser and capital-sized tankers and cargo haulers) for bounties, and even deploying my entire DP allotment for each combat I still almost make back all of my spent supplies. I have to buy most of my fuel again when I get back to the core worlds, but that only eats up around $100k of my $600k+ profit (plus maybe another $50k on a replacement destroyer if one gets disabled in combat and isn't worth recovering after).

It's not as efficient as possible, but I enjoy having and using a larger fleet to crush my opponents - at least I still make a tidy profit from bounties even with a large fleet. I also play with a larger combat size of 500.
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