Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: My 0.9(.1) suggestions  (Read 2365 times)

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« on: July 02, 2019, 05:14:56 AM »

Spaceport
I argued against someone else's ridiculous rationale for it in another thread, but there is a balance problem with the degree to which a spaceport is a market's Achilles heel. Among other things, when you have a choice to disrupt
1) Spaceport
2) Literally any other structure or industry on the market

then 1 is almost always the objectively superior choice, because it is effectively equivalent to disrupting all the other industries as well; they can neither import needed raw materials nor export their output.
In fact, raiding the spaceport can be cheaper and better for lowering a market's defenses than using a tactical bombardment (especially when preparing for an invasion in Nexerelin, where you'd like to be able to use the defense buildings afterwards). This is especially true given the severity of commodity deficits on the military base/orbital station/ground defenses' stability bonus: 1 point shortage = -1 loss of bonus, rather than being pro-rated or such.

I'd recommend lowering the -100% no-spaceport penalty to -50%, which is what I've set it to in Nex. The spaceport is still perhaps a more attractive target than it should be, but its disruption isn't utterly debilitating to the affected market, as it can still import a small amount of commodities in-faction.

Luddic Church, independents' heavy industry
(mentioned here before but I think it went unnoticed)
I get that they needed heavy industry to enable the player to raid for their blueprints, and to make their ship quality not abysmal. But was it really desirable to give them both an Orbital Works with corrupted nanoforge? That puts them on par with Tri-Tachyon (which is supposed to be the second-tier industrial power in the Sector). I'd either take away the nanoforge or downgrade the industry to Heavy Industry.

Small synchrotron cores
Poorly thought out idea:

Synchrotron cores are important for the player to be able to access, but may be a bit too common as a jackpot item at present. Also, unlike nanoforges, there's no granularity between no bonus item and the +3 bonus item.
I was thinking we could have a "synchrotron sub-core" item that gives a +1 bonus, and when you have a number (3-5) you can combine them into the full-scale core. The full core could be made very rare in exploration, but you could still raid for one, or just accumulate sub-cores in the course of normal exploration.

Ships on open market and black market
People have pointed out the narratively improbable degree to which you can find military-grade ships up to battleships, often pristine or nearly so, outside the military submarket (including on stability 10 black markets). (famous illustration here)

It's nice to be able to buy good ships, but the current state may be taking it too far. Among other things, commissions become meaningless for acquiring ships (since everything in the military submarket can be procured elsewhere for a fraction of the effort) and serve largely as a source of cash income.

Idea: ship availability on open market is limited to lower-FP ships within that size class, adjusted by number of D-mods and things like Civ-grade Hull. So pristine Falcons or degraded Auroras might infrequently show up, but not stuff like intact Dooms. For black markets, the limit would work similarly but be tied to local stability (lower stability = more chance of high-end military stuff "disappearing" from official inventories).

Hegemony inspection and changing hostility state
There's an issue involving the following scenario:
- Hegemony is hostile to player
- Hegemony launches inspection, action is fixed at "resist" so player takes no action
- Player stops being hostile to Hegemony
- Action now defaults to "cooperate"
- Player doesn't notice until inspection comes and goes, "WTF my cores!!!"

Not sure how to solve this, perhaps the default hostile state should be remembered when the event is started while Hegemony is hostile?

Core world procgen planets should be less good
Otherwise you have weird cases where factions haven't colonized highly attractive locations in their own systems. This also applies to Duzahk, which often has a terran-grade world in it that the player would have to be nuts not to settle at first opportunity.

DTC/ITU nag
There are still some revealed cases (and who knows how many undetected ones) where new players don't know that Dedicated Targeting Core/Integrated Targting Unit are almost mandatory for cruisers and capitals. I think the only place this is even explained are in the hullmod's tooltips, which you certainly can't count on people reading.

Idea: If you refit a cruiser or capital and it doesn't have DTC/ITU, display a help popup explaining that they probably should be fitted outside of certain specialized builds (like how there's a popup if you've changed the weapon loadout without changing weapon groups). Then we just have to hope the player doesn't close it without reading.

Pirate Activity condition tooltip should display actual base's location if known
Currently it just always says "The pirates most likely have a base somewhere relatively nearby." (even when the base is not actually nearby, as per the intel text)
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23989
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2019, 07:37:04 AM »

Thank you! Read through it; made it a note to have another look when I'm in a place to do something about it.
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #2 on: July 02, 2019, 09:32:31 AM »

Regarding raiding the spaceport and penalties due to shortages: perhaps there should be a ramp up and delay before penalties kick in? Cutting off a colony's ability to import/export should have a major effect, but its not like the security services and station are going to fall apart instantly, it takes time for them to run through their stocks of items and shortages to take effect.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23989
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #3 on: July 02, 2019, 10:15:38 AM »

Hmm - I'd rather keep it as simple as possible; having a ramp up/down to explain would mean one more thing that someone might not "get". There *is* already a stockpiles mechanic - in Local Resources - which could do basically this, though, but AI colonies don't use it, in part iirc for performance reasons. Plus it takes away from the player's ability to influence colonies...

As far as disrupting the Spaceport being too good... the tradeoff there is you might decivilize the colony and will in general do more damage to it. A more targeted raid - say on production - won't do that. So yeah it's "better" but then it's straight up intended as the "do more damage if you don't care" option so that checks out.

(In the context of Nex, I'm sure it makes sense to tone it down. But I'm not sure whether there's a similar rationale in vanilla; it doesn't seem to be that big a deal either way.)
Logged

SCC

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4112
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2019, 10:41:15 AM »

All of these ideas are good, but space port issue is the most important. It's just way too good.
As far as disrupting the Spaceport being too good... the tradeoff there is you might decivilize the colony and will in general do more damage to it. A more targeted raid - say on production - won't do that. So yeah it's "better" but then it's straight up intended as the "do more damage if you don't care" option so that checks out.
Just give them everything they lack down the road, that colony isn't important for some time anyway.

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23989
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #5 on: July 02, 2019, 10:54:24 AM »

What's the actual "spaceport issue"? That is, what's the gameplay it creates - in vanilla - that's undesirable in some way? I feel like I'm missing something here. I mean, I get that it's something that can really kneecap a market. But what's the problem with this?
Logged

Recklessimpulse

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 116
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #6 on: July 02, 2019, 12:26:59 PM »

I for one would not want to be warned about about DTC/ITU yeas it's almost mandatory but I don't want to press another button if I decide not too.

I for the Core worlds issue I've always assumed the lore bit that people have flat out forgotten how to colonize is actually how the situation is and our ability to colonize from the get go is there just for balancing the game and will get locked behind story in the future if that's the case good worlds could get colonized after said story event.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #7 on: July 02, 2019, 02:41:12 PM »

Quote
Luddic Church, independents' heavy industry
(mentioned here before but I think it went unnoticed)
I get that they needed heavy industry to enable the player to raid for their blueprints, and to make their ship quality not abysmal. But was it really desirable to give them both an Orbital Works with corrupted nanoforge? That puts them on par with Tri-Tachyon (which is supposed to be the second-tier industrial power in the Sector). I'd either take away the nanoforge or downgrade the industry to Heavy Industry.
If anything, Tri-Tachyon should get pristine nanoforge.  Orbital Works is merely an upgrade any established faction should have, and corrupted nanoforge is nothing special.  If anything, Orbital Works plus corrupted nanoforge seems like the baseline, not the exception.

Quote
Small synchrotron cores
I would not mind a lesser core for +1 fuel, but only because we lost old Industrial Planning 1.  If we still had old Industrial Planning 1, I would prefer to see corrupted nanoforge disappear and only have pristine nanoforge, much like current synchrotron.

What could be an incentive for using corrupted items is less pather interest.  I have no reason to use corrupted if I have better.  But if corrupted nanoforge and this small fuel core only adds +2 interest instead of +4, I could see using corrupted items when trying to avoid Pathers.

I do not think synchrotrons are too common.  Few games, I only found one when I needed it.  I may have found more later, but long after I needed that one to get my fuel plant going.

If I do not find a rare item after completely exploring one half of the entire sector, the item is too rare.  So far in 0.9.1a, it appears frequency is normalized, and I can find one or two of each after I explore enough.  Corrupted nanoforges are not so common, and pristine nanoforge is not a huge pain to find.  Good thing given how babysitting core worlds from pirates (and decivilization) dominate gameplay.

Quote
Hegemony inspection and changing hostility state
I want to be able to set the default to "Bribe" so I can completely ignore inspections.  Default to "Comply" means the biggest risk of using cores is missing the alert then discover your cores are gone after Hegemony steals them away.  I would like to default to "Resist" if I wanted to fight wars with everyone.

Quote
Core world procgen planets should be less good
In the relatively few games I played, all of the core worlds were mediocre or rubbish.  I read such posts that verify they do exist, but I have not yet played such a game.

What's the actual "spaceport issue"? That is, what's the gameplay it creates - in vanilla - that's undesirable in some way? I feel like I'm missing something here. I mean, I get that it's something that can really kneecap a market. But what's the problem with this?
Knock spaceport out, and it effectively knocks the whole colony out.  If I wanted to kill a planet, I would knockout spaceport then repeatedly stealth raid the colony to the ground, instead of sat bombing it.  I kill the planet without making anyone angry.  (Aside:  This is why I wish bombing of any sort was not so punishing.  Why do the awesome but impractical way of bombing when boring but practical way of raids to decivilize a planet works?)

If the colony stockpiled extra commodities and enabled usage during shortages, they could be immune to spaceport head shot raid for a while.
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #8 on: July 02, 2019, 02:49:47 PM »

I agree with a lot of this analysis; the degree to which Markets can get crippled via taking out the Spaceport is pretty egregious, in particular.

I don't agree about the "lucky worlds" issue; sure, that happens, but that's a minor issue to fix at best, if it even needs fixing at all (writing some code that says, "if you're generating near the Core Worlds, you will not pick XYZ good stuff" is trivial).  I don't think it's a good idea, however; I'd think that, if the empires are dynamic, those worlds will get picked up by a Faction long before a player can deploy there.

I'm not sure I agree about the issues with Corrupted Nanoforges per se, but this gets a little deeper into the philosophy of constructing a viable sandbox. 

I think that what we're talking about here is one of the tricky bits of final polish (and for now, I'd suggest playing with the starting conditions and running a sim to see results if the player doesn't intervene; if there aren't ways to run the strategic game-state headless, you may want to build one at this point to provide yourself with simulation data).

Clearly, we don't want the "lesser powers" to be crippled, in terms of good-quality ship output, especially if there is some sort of invasion mechanic in the final game that allows the empires to take Colonies over.  This has to be judged carefully; it's really easy to set up tipping-point problems where, short of some massive intervention by the player or RNG event, things will proceed fairly deterministically, with a little room here and there for RNG noise.

To put it another way:  you're building what starts as a static world, like Mount and Blade, that then operates more-or-less deterministically, with some room for statistical freaks.  From my practical experience there, I can tell you that it's pretty predictable what will happen, with some margins of errors as to timing.

I don't think you want to mess with that now, however; don't solve for these problems until the mechanics are in place and you know where the leverage is.  There's also no need for inherent stability; it's all right if the Sector is owned entirely by <faction> or falls apart due to <events> over a period of game years, provided that there are tools the player can deploy to alter either outcome.  That would be best; a sandbox where the player's agency is fully respected will feel better in the end.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2019, 02:52:45 PM by xenoargh »
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Dexy

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 66
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2019, 11:46:34 PM »

The issue with the pristine nanoforge and synchrotron core is that you can find them on mining/research/habitat stations and retrieve them with just 1-2 frigates. It's possible and quite profitable to run exploration missions very early on with just a wolf and a light tanker. If you accept the missions that send you to scan some station then you'll soon get items like alpha cores, pristine nanoforges, synchrotron cores, or battlecruiser blueprints. In my games, I usually have a pristine nanoforge or synchrotron core well before I can even install them.

I think this is one factor that in the previous patch contributed to the feeling that the game was over before it had really started. The main problem was the rapid colony development but also this one. Another factor is also that once you have a colony up, very soon you'll have to defend against pirate fleets. This is a very drastic change in pace and I think it should occur more gradually somehow.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2019, 11:48:59 PM by Dexy »
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2019, 05:51:02 AM »

I rather have the items too early than too late.  They can sell for decent cash, but then player cannot get them back until they install it and player can raid for it... with difficulty.  I hoard all special items because they are non-renewable resources.  (Cores are renewable, but they do not drop that easily.)

Colonies are still mostly an endgame thing.  Sure, it is possible to build one early, but there is not much that can be done without attracting huge deathballs from major factions.  Until player can kill anything, all he can do is build a little waystation and maybe farming... and orbital station to keep pirates at bay.  Mining too if size is small and output is not too high.
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #11 on: July 05, 2019, 03:53:51 AM »

I rather have the items too early than too late. 
And I'd rather have the items be actually valuable and meaningful, rather than become the baseline and expected minimum.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #12 on: July 05, 2019, 05:59:41 AM »

As implemented, items are the "baseline and expected minimum."  Every faction has a nanoforge, and you need an item to meet demand.  If items are not to be the baseline, then old Industrial Planning 1 needs to be restored and not every last faction should get nanoforge.  Also, there should be another way to raise ship quality so that you do not get clunkers when building ships.  Without nanoforge, the best player can get is 95%, which is not high enough for guaranteed pristine ship production.
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3786
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2019, 12:39:54 PM »

Honestly, I'm okay with not being guaranteed pristine hulls.  It's nice when you can, but it's not vital when you can't - at worst, I treat it as being a random chance that manufactured ships cost extra (from restoring them or just building a second one to roll the dice again).
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Nick XR

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 712
    • View Profile
Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2019, 01:23:34 PM »

Current game I've explored the whole sector and had more than a few tech-mining only colonies and have found 12 syncotrons and 6 pristine nano forges. I had more than two of each before I had even thought about starting a colony and getting them that early sort of ruined a feeling of progression or reward.    Syncotrons should be much more rare since they aren't necessary for survival in any fashion, the nanoforge does help a lot with a colony's ability to protect itself.  But the problem with that isn't the nanoforge, it's that there's no other good way to keep a colony from getting BBQ'ed other than playing goalie or doing everything in your power to crank up the fleets in the hope that you can be more than 15 days away and go back to playing the game :/  To really fix this the player needs more options for setting up defensive fleets for a colony.  Maybe the ability to use a bunch of the garbage ships you collect/recover and dump them into a fleet that you pay a large one-time fee to have that fleet only orbit its home base.
Pages: [1] 2