Starsector > General Discussion

Thoughts and Stuff from my Recent Run

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SafariJohn:
Since I'm finishing up my first Starsector run in a long time, I thought I'd share what stood out to me.

Mod List:
- Hyperdrive 1.0.0
- Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.5.1
- Logistics Notifications 1.1
- Nexerelin 0.9.5f
- Rebalanced Pilums 1.3
- Ship & Weapon Pack 1.10.3
- Starship Legends 1.3.13
- THI 1.2.1a

In addition, I set zeroFluxEngineBoost to 200.

Alright, in no particular order:

SPEED
My time is a big deal to me, which is why I used Sundog's Hyperdrive mod, ran the campaign in speed up (2x) mode 99% of the time, and upped the zero flux boost. These adjustments moved the game speed from unbearable to fun for me.

The Hyperdrive mod is great. It cuts down on travel times a lot and it adds a punchy feeling movement-mode that vanilla is missing. Seriously, even teleporting has no punch to it in vanilla. Sadly I don't think hyperwarp jumps really fit Starsector, so vanilla will have to figure something else out.

My dad dropped by once while I was playing and he thought the campaign movement was kind of slow... then I turned off the 2x speedup. Yes, it's that bad. Doubling campaign travel speeds is too fast, I think, but 60% to 80% faster should be spot-on.

I forgot I could edit this myself until just now - just did +80% (36 px/sec) and it feels better. Acceleration is still lazy, but I'm not sure what should be done, if anything, about that. Emergency Burn should probably get very high acceleration at the beginning (boom!) and then less the rest of the time - that would add that missing punchy-ness I mentioned. Duration on EB seems long, while I'm at it.

Finally I get to the 200 zero flux boost. People have complained about long travel times in combat, too, and suggested things like reactivating the travel drive. Well, 200 flux boost solves that problem. Frankly it really changes the feel of combat - there's a lot less downtime moving from fight to fight and enemies can be upon you in moments.

The main potential problems are shieldless and SO ships, which maintain the zero-flux boost most/all of the time. In my experience, it could get kind of crazy with Hounds sailing by and SO ships zipping in and out of range, but they could all be dealt with. I had a couple SO cruisers (Eagle and Vulture) and they were VERY survivable, especially considering the hopeless-looking situations they would get themselves into (fluxed out next to a midline star fortress, for example). None of my other cruisers (barring my LoA Champion super-cruiser) were quite as survivable, though the SO cruisers went down a few times even with level 20 (reckless) officers, so they weren't invincible.


FALCON P
Because of Nex, I started with a Falcon P as my flagshio. I ended with aforementioned Falcon P as my flagship, though it has gotten blown up a few times, heh. This ship is ridiculously good; IMO it outclasses all other player flagship options. I STRONGLY suggest it be nerfed with Ill-Advised Modifications, short PPT, terrible flux capacity, or SOMETHING.


NEUTRINO DETECTOR
I got this and tried it a bit. Once I got lucky and found a cryosleeper with it, but the sleeper was useless to me by that point. Other than that it was useless to me. Maybe I could have gotten some use by spamming it, but replacing volatiles is expensive and inconvenient (have to RTB to get them usually).


FACTION IDENTITY
Factions rely heavily on their ship selections for their identity. For example, the (SD) ships from S&W Pack, I think, made fighting Sindria distinct from the other factions. Vanilla barely has that, and it feels like it's been moving away from it - the random ship selections are really muddling the factions.

Maybe ship roles need to be revisited? Like system patrols use low tech ships, but straight military fleets focus on midline and high end stuff (high tech for the League, XIV for the Hegemony, as examples). Elitist factions like TT probably do their own things.

I don't know, that stuff gets complicated fast and I don't want to get into it here.


PIRATES
Pirates are best faction. Only complaint is I had to go T-on to join battles with them. Not like I cared, though, since I was hostile with everyone.

The thing is, I was really only hostile with Hegemony, the League, and the Church; TT, THI, and the Society never bothered me since they don't care if you are T-off. I was, of course, friendly with pirates and neutral with the LP, so I didn't have to worry about them.

I want to take a moment to complain that AFAIK there is no in-game way to tell if a faction doesn't care about transponders without testing them. Free ports have the same problem, I think.

One of the great things about the pirates is they are one of the few factions that you can make better. They have crap to start with, so you can give them nanoforges and synchotrons to boost their stuff, and they use blueprints you sell on the black market so you can see those ships and weapons appear in their fleets.


RETREATING CARRIERS
I hardly used carriers in this run because they would set their fighters to engage during escape battles and get themselves killed. I tried using Full Retreat and setting the carriers to direct retreat, but they kept doing it. Never had problems with fighters, though, even when I fought Remnants.


D-MODS
It felt like d-mods were too harsh without skills. The player can get skills to mitigate that (and the maintenance saving perk is probably too good), but the AI doesn't get those skills, so they are stuck with suck. And that means the player isn't as challanged as they should be. Especially since the player can steal a faction's nanoforge (or just blow the colony to smithereens) to permanently cripple all their fleets.


HUGE FLEETS
I know this has been hammered, but I wanted to mention that the huge AI fleets are crazy. I saw a large patrol-sized fast picket with a capital ship in it, for crying out loud! (Admittedly it was from my own faction with all relevant stuff maxed, but still.)


MID-GAME CASH STRUGGLE
In the mid-game there is a cash struggle between expanding your fleet to handle bigger stuff and investing in your colony so it can defend itself and pay you back. On the one hand, investing is fairly safe and leads to big rewards later. On the same hand, expanding your fleet in the mid-game is risky because you can easily lose your most expensive ships if you get in over your head. Nex has insurance payouts when you lose ships and missions that fit in the mid-game (disrupting industries and the like), but it still wasn't enough to get me to risk expanding my fleet.

I think it might help if it didn't require so much investment for a colony to be reasonably safe from raids. ATM you really have to get patrols and a station up and going to be safe; ground defenses are only good later. I think if ground defenses were better on small colonies (by providing a flat bonus AND a (smaller) multiplier), then picking between patrols/stations and our own fleet would be more of a choice.

It might also make nuking big colonies before raiding less of the go-to option, since flat bonuses to ground defense are less powerful than multipliers when the size-based defense becomes large.


PLAYER FLEET BUFFS VS AI
Finally, I want to mention fleet buffs. The player can get:
+20% speed
-20% enemy range
+10% OP
-50% D-mod effect
+15% CR
4 to 10 lvl 20 officers

I don't remember what all the AI can get, but they don't usually have all of it, while there's good odds the player will. This is massive powercreep on the AI. It's probably one of the main drivers of how ginormous AI fleets have become over the versions.

I don't even know what to say. It's crazy.


That's all I have right now. The speed stuff is the most important to me, since I wouldn't have even played this run without it, but discuss whatever you want. Thanks for reading my rambles.

Morrokain:
Still unpacking everything you've said, but in general I like the detail you've brought to your play through.

Sundog:
I'm glad Hyperdrive worked out well for you  ;D
Any suggestions for improving it? Did you ever notice NPCs using it in an unfair or senseless way?

I need to try increasing zeroFluxEngineBoost next run. I've been using SpeedUp to reduce idle time in combat, but a high 0-flux boost might be more fun!

SCC:
400 speed burn drive certainly sounds interesting. Onslaught might accidentally become the best flanker.

SafariJohn:

--- Quote from: Sundog on December 07, 2019, 06:12:38 PM ---Any suggestions for improving it? Did you ever notice NPCs using it in an unfair or senseless way?

--- End quote ---

I wish it were easier to control the direction and distance, but I have no ideas how to do that. :P The most I saw NPCs using it was they'd sometimes happen to drop out near me in hyper when I was near the core worlds, so I can safely say I didn't see any unfair or senseless use of it, heh



--- Quote from: SCC on December 08, 2019, 01:56:53 AM ---400 speed burn drive certainly sounds interesting. Onslaught might accidentally become the best flanker.

--- End quote ---

Sadly, Burn Drive creates a little flux, so you'd have to have that one combat skill to stack it. You know... that would explain how that officer'd Onslaught I had in my fleet was getting around the battlefield so fast when I wasn't looking.

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