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[Rman88]

Ok, hear is a bit of an annoying thing i dealt with so far.

Leaders, specifically administration seems to be a bit lacking. More so in the amount you can use. Now i am the type of guy who wants to expand his empire bigger and bigger. And i wanted to do this with as little annoyance from the other fractions as possible. So spamming alpha cores and Getting the jihad called on me. Meanwhile every other "Jellos" fraction sends wave after way of ships at me. (which their still doing regardless if i use an ai or not) is not that appealing.

Lets just say i rather just use Flesh and blood people to manage my planets. Just keep things simple you know? That and i am all ready making 200k a month. So what do i need ai for?

For some dumb reason your limited to 3 administrators. Now this could be just because the ones i have were not that amazing.(i found them all in random pods) Or that some Skill in this over simplified skill tree is eluding me. (heard of a fabled skill that lets you manage more planets but i can't find it) But i have no idea how exactly i am suppose to expand further without getting penalized for over-expansion.

And yes i know AI cores do not "count" for this. But should their be a limit to begin with? Like hear lets compare a Human administrator to a Ai.

Human,
20k per month.
generally worse then an AI.
Dose not anger other fractions.
Harder to acquire. Need to colony hop and check the bars or coms to find them or get lucky when opening pods.
Only get 3 slots, each one able to manage as single planet.

AI,
Free
Better at managing and improving a colony.
Angers other fractions either due to religious reasons or space anti trust laws.
Easier to acquire due to farming remnants for cores.
You can have an infinite amount of cores managing planets.

Why is the human main drawback is that you only get 3? Forcing you to either give up on expansion or farm ai cores. Like dam you don't even have enough slots to conquer the core sectors. i don't know why you put such a limit on these. like sure officers i can understand. they give huge buffs to ships they command. But why administrators? They don't even have the ability to level up. their just their so you don't get a ton of rebellions.

[Candesce]

Now i am the type of guy who wants to expand his empire bigger and bigger. And i wanted to do this with as little annoyance from the other fractions as possible.

Tri-Tachyon has five planets total, none larger than size six.

The Sindrians have three worlds total, and while two of them are sevens, Volturn is less than fully industrialized.

The Luddic Church has four worlds total, two sevens. Both of the sevens are intentionally pure agriculture and light industry.

The only factions the player can't outsize entirely through human administrators are the Persean League, which is a league and thus not at all equivilent to the player, and the Hegemony, which is the shattered remnant of the Domain and running off legacy infrastructure the player doesn't have access to.

That the player's empire can get as big as it can without one of the existing factions deciding to squash the upstart is already playing nice. Starsector isn't a 4x.

[Rman88]

Dude, i could literately compare this to X4...which is Literately a 4x game set in first person where you command ships, build stations, trade and wage war.. Like the only difference is you command ships in first person instead of overhead. Star sector is a 4x game. it been so ever sense they allowed you to control colonies. 

That said, i understand the fractions don't have a ton of planets. It is the space apocalypse after all. Much of the core worlds have been bombarded and plenty have went neutral was well. issue is, i still couldn't control them without using AI cores. like you only get 3 administrators and 2 planets you can command yourself. You get less planets then half of those fractions.

Also, i know i could just wage endless war on the core sectors.  whip out all fractions that are not associated to mine. But i would rather just expand my empire into the farther reaches of the galaxy and be left alone. Can't exactly do that when the only way is threw AI cores. Which wouldn't work either as it will just anger everyone. Because guess what the "Redacted" was the reason the domain got kicked out of the sector.

Also come on, without colonies to spend money i wouldn't have any reason to even play the game. As i am at the point where the only ships i buy are capital ships. and finding those from the core sectors are like trying to find a needle in a haystack. i rather just build them as its 100% easier.

Also, just so you know if you wanted to "conquer" the core sectors. IT would require a total of 70 Alpha cores. purely impossible to due with the current limit of human administrators.

[TheFreind]

I do agree that being able to control only 3 human administrators to be strange. What, the Tri-pad can only take 3 contacts and no more? Then again, 5 colonies is all I ever really need. If you really want to increase the limit, you can go into the Starsector files following these directories and edit them:

  starsector-core/data/config/settings 
  CTRL+F and search for "baseMaxAdmins" (found on line 592) and you may command as many human administrators as you want.
There's also a setting for the stability penalty per planet over admin capacity, you can set that at -1 for a more balanced run.

As a person who plays Stellaris and Civ religiously, I don't think it's in the best interest of Starsector to become a 4X strategy game. I have the most amount of fun in combat, managing my limited resources in the early game, building up a fledgling fleet, exploring the galaxy, enjoying the story the first time around, telling sailor stories about epic moments, finding incredible loot, and planning my colonies. These are primarily RPG elements with a healthy amount of strategy infused with them. The kinds of stories you can only tell by having a first person view, and not one that's distant and unattached. 4X Strategy demands a different perspective altogether - one where you are a "God in the sky," commanding smaller units to do all the aforementioned tasks. A proper 4X game needs this, but that will change Starsector down to its core. And what if it follows this path, keeping a Captain-based perspective? I'm just not sure what you can add more to it to make it a genuinely fun 4X game that can compete with the bigger, more specialized strategy games.

Starsector is still a game in development. It's an RPG game front and center, one where your decisions should have consequences and you may transform the galaxy the way you see fit. We'll most likely get options for making a galactic peace, re-connecting with the Domain, or subjugate it all as an evil emperor what-you-have-it once the game is released. So I say we should be patient and wait for that.

[Rman88]

Well i all ready edited it threw the settings ini. So pretty much crisis averted their.

That said, ehh you guys must really be missing out. because it is clear to me that the devs are pushing everything toward the Colony game. Blueprints and colony upgrades are the 2 most important things you get for exploring. as finding weapons are easy enough and all other loot is just something to pawn off. and mind you, you will be doing this 90% of the time. As the only other thing you can do is buy and sell *** from the core worlds or kill ships for x cash bounties. Everything else forces you to explore outer reaches of the sector.

Now, mind you this is still a game. You can play it however you want to. Like hear is another 4x game. Mount and blade warband, sure you may not be building a civilization. But you can still Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. Or you can just decided to run around hunting bandits. That is freedom of these types of games. Like hell you don't have to build a empire in starsector. You can just fly around and explore until you grow board. But in the end it is an option.

This is why this game is already a 4 x game. Because if it wasn't it would be more like Elite dangerous. Least a top down version of it. where your only options would be to just do missions and eventually join up with one of the major fractions. the fact that you can make colonies any planet make it a 4x game. And i already know their has been people who Literately colonized every single planet in the sector. Sure they needed to use a ungodly amount of Alpha cores to do it. But hey if you want to do that you can do that.

But ya this might be a hybrid game, But it is still a 4x game.

[SapphireSage]

The question's already been answered, but with respect to whether Starsector is a 4X or not, Alex has already stated multiple times that they're not interested in turning StarSector into a traditional 4X and wish to remain fleet-scale focused.

Sure you eXplore, but that's mostly because colonies came hot off the heels of the addition of exploration to the game. You can eXpand, but only to a limit without Alpha cores. You Exploit sure, that's a fair given, but eXtermination only comes about indirectly via satbombing the complete destruction of a colony and then recolonizing it afterwards and dealing with the de-civilized malus. Not to mention that completely destroying everyone in the sector and taking it over would ironically drive you into deep debt as there would be no factions for you to export to leaving you with taxes as income from your colonies which won't pay for all the running costs. Wars, borders changing, and capturing enemy stations for your own faction only comes about via Nexerelin mod and has been that way since at least the 0.6 era and it was Exerelin before that. Vanilla StarSector is certainly a lot closer to 4X mechanics than it has been before, but the stuff that allowed you to go full 4X-style has been around in Nexerelin for a long while.

Speaking of Alpha cores though, they could really do with a nerf imo. As has been pointed out it really makes little sense that you're limited to 3 human admins who are also inferior in quality while being allowed an indefinite amount of alpha core admins where their only real downsides are having to deal with a minor, ignore-able nuisance in the Pather terrorists (ignore-able because you can operate on such a scale with alphas that losing one of X refineries doesn't really matter in the long run) and the Hegemony who can be completely ignored once your colonies are strong enough to take down their fleets on their own. Its pretty much a given for a player to start spamming Alpha-run colonies once they've reached the point where those two things are true in the endgame unless they choose not to for RP reasons. Or for the fact that you really don't *need* more than 4 or 5 colonies tbh.

[Hiruma Kai]

That said, ehh you guys must really be missing out. because it is clear to me that the devs are pushing everything toward the Colony game. Blueprints and colony upgrades are the 2 most important things you get for exploring. as finding weapons are easy enough and all other loot is just something to pawn off. and mind you, you will be doing this 90% of the time. As the only other thing you can do is buy and sell *** from the core worlds or kill ships for x cash bounties. Everything else forces you to explore outer reaches of the sector.

Actually, finding an Aurora or Odyssey hull floating in space can be more valuable to me than say, an Eagle blueprint, to be honest.  Or locating a red warning beacon system for alpha core farming (which sell for a pretty penny to Tri-tach if you're not hoarding them for your colonies). Currently, the only ships which can't be purchased off a military market somewhere but do have a blueprint I think are the Revenant and Phantoms, which are merely nice to have but in no way necessary.  Also, I think high end merc bounties from contacts tend to have them as logistics ships, so you can scavenge them after battle.

I will note it is quite possible to put together an end game capable fleet without a single colony.  The passive income stream from a colony comes with a significant upfront cost, which could alternatively be sunk into ships and maintenance thereof.  Also, just selling everything from exploration rather than putting it towards a colony can act as a short term cash infusion to further your own fleet and allow it to jump up the bounty ladder.

This is why this game is already a 4 x game. Because if it wasn't it would be more like Elite dangerous. Least a top down version of it. where your only options would be to just do missions and eventually join up with one of the major fractions. the fact that you can make colonies any planet make it a 4x game. And i already know their has been people who Literately colonized every single planet in the sector. Sure they needed to use a ungodly amount of Alpha cores to do it. But hey if you want to do that you can do that.

I think that makes it a sandbox game.  It doesn't necessarily make it a 4x game.  As noted, you can play the entire game without ever setting up a colony.

You can sign up with a commission, which at max level is I think ~95k credits a month passively?  So the elite dangerous option is there and provides the equivalent income of a size 4 or 5 colony for no upfront cost.  Colonies merely exist to let a player reach a point where they don't need to worry about credits anymore.  Alex may have some further plans on what to do with all those credits or potential player faction fleets, but it's not in yet, and Alex is keeping his final plans for the sector under wraps.

The fact that there is an administrator limit I think is one of the hints that this is in fact, not a 4x game, but rather a spaceship combat game with some economic considerations (supply, fuel, credits, etc).  The game vision is not to have players distracted running some giant empire, but focused on destroying spaceships in combat.

In addition to the administrator limit, there's the fact that profits have a ceiling based on the demand from NPC planets.  At some point, more planets with the same industries just won't make more profit.  They'll be each getting a smaller and smaller slice of the same overall demand.  So it is quite possible 10 planets worth of industries makes as much revenue as 100 planets worth of industries.  If players do colonize every planet, it is in spite of the road blocks Alex has put in, not because of any incentives the game rewards you with.  The game is trying to drive you towards more combat, not more spreadsheet empire work.

Sure, you can go over the limit with Alpha cores, but that means going out there and actually blowing up Remnant ships with alpha cores in them and playing the combat half of the game for each one of those new colonies.  If the administrator limit is raised or eliminated, then you can run 100 colonies without ever getting into combat by just making a loop of all the inhabited worlds every month and just hiring more administrators.

[Rman88]

First of all, i can't help but critique the devs a bit. Sure they said they didn't want to turn this into a 4 x game. But in the end they kinda still did. Sure this is a hybrid game focused more on the fleet combat then the colony. But everything they released was focused on the colony game. Which is pretty much the end game.

Sure you can farm alpha cores to your blue in the face. Make millions of of gold but for what? To colony hop to buy 1 single capital ship that cost 400k. Like i am at the point where money isn't really a driving point anymore. I don't need to make colonies or do missions. I can just sit back and let 200k roll in every month. The only real thing that makes me want to explore or play the game is just playing the game. Maybe at some point i will unleash living hell upon the core worlds. but for now i am just happy to expand to the outer reaches of the stars.

This game isn't one with a set goal or story line. you do what you want to do. And if this is conquering the universe, i don't see any reason why the game should limit you. Just in a vein of saying this isn't a 4 x game when it is. Sure its not the only thing that it is. but come on, you can argue this to your blue in the face. But even with the administrator cap being so low. you can still conquer the entire universe.

i don't see why you guys keep insisting you cant...

[Schwartz]

I think it was a natural progress there. It started as just a neat combat simulator - I always offer the comparison to Mount & Blade, which started the same way and then the devs slapped a strategy/RPG system on top of it.

As far as additions go, Starsector is by far the more polished of the two. Everything fits together well, just that there's a couple of design choices that we can critique.

I think the 3 admin limit is just something that has not been 'updated' yet. Almost everyone is using AI Cores and they're clearly the superior choice, but 1) we may see more downsides to using them in future releases and 2) I do expect the human limit to be raised too. 3 colonies is the sweet spot to more-or-less become self-sufficient. One metal planet, one organics planet, one volatile planet. So 3 admins doesn't strike me as an arbitrary number. But the player gets visits from just using AI Cores in industries, so there's no downside to using them everywhere.

Indeed, it could be a fun idea to also introduce a new kind of officer that does the same as AI Cores in Industry slots do, just weaker or juggling some up- and downsides. It's not really any more micromanagement than switching out AI Cores in these slots, but could add some variety.