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Author Topic: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 34) (TC Mod)  (Read 418476 times)

xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 10) (TC Mod)
« Reply #495 on: February 17, 2014, 03:26:34 PM »

I have the endless-battle bug fixed; that didn't take too long :)
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Chaos Farseer

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 10) (TC Mod)
« Reply #496 on: February 17, 2014, 08:42:21 PM »

Well, played for a bit as Independents. The starting Boom-class didn't last through the first pirate battle; I should've put more armor on it. The Space-Tank-class is real nice, though, and for those I stacked Armor Regen, Heavy Armor, and Hardened Shields + Flux Shunts just for kicks. They have a really high base vent rate, and if you go with only ammo weapons you don't even need any capacitors for good shields. I had a fleet of 3 space-tanks, a frigate-sized fuel tanker, and a Gemini and I was safely mining asteroids when I got attacked by a massive Tri-Tachyon fleet (3 Paragons, Atlas, and all the fighters - Daggers are terrifying now). They destroyed most of my fleet, and then marked me as hostile with the Hegemony who were the only friendly people in the first place. Sigh.
My best bet from that point would be to hope that I can kill enough pirates to become friends again before running out of supplies. Or I could restart.

Conclusions:
 - Is it me, or do Needlers suck (against anything which can vent decently)? If I stack Hardened Shields and Flux Shunt with a decent venting capability, they just don't do anything. Naturally they're just bad against armor with their low per-hit damage.
 - Shard Guns! That's what I was using. The fact that they slightly damage past shields, plus high DPS, decent accuracy, 0 flux generation and nice per-shot damage makes them much better than all the other medium ballistics I got to try out. The Heavy Bolter was nice, but it's harder to hit with, has a lower DPS, and isn't too good at dealing with armor afterward. Shard Guns are just good at nearly anything, and I put them on all of my Space Tanks.
 - Found out what the Neutron Gun does. Seems kind of like a special case weapon, but it was pretty darn satisfying to watch something melt in the simulator.
 - Space Tanks are really nice for their three Vulcan IIs, impressive flux capabilities, and high hull and armor values. Stack on Armor Regeneration, Hardened Shields + Flux Shunt, Automated Repair Unit, and they're hard to kill with what you'd find in an asteroid ambush.
 - Speaking of which, I think Armor Regeneration might be the overpowered hull mod. The armor often regenerates faster than the DPS of enemy guns, making you effectively invincible (and it gets better with a higher armor rating). I've been putting it on all of my ships, and the fact that it's a no-brainer is kind of a problem. The only exception has been something like the Gemini where it didn't have much armor to begin with.
 - Battles changing faction relationships is a good idea, but so far it's only made me an enemy of my 'home' faction by accident. I don't have a better alternative, but this kind of thing can be really harsh before you get to late-game fleets.

Still, though, that was a lot more fun now that I can see that there are consistent rules. Last time I got confused because the Shard Guns somewhat bypass shields and I assumed all weapons did.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 10) (TC Mod)
« Reply #497 on: February 17, 2014, 10:05:59 PM »

OK, I got the main bugs / issues dealt with.  

I think Glaug are perfectly beatable now that I've toned Armor Regeneration down quite a bit (it's still powerful, but not invulnerability); if anything, they're feeling a little UP again atm, but I have only fought them in small battles and watched epic AI-vs-AI battles in the sim so time will tell.  In player hands, they're probably very hard to kill, but that's OK.

Diplomatic results are handled a little better.  One of the issues was that each Faction's relationships weren't, er, terribly clear; the typical example of having to fight Tri-Tachyon just to see your relationship with Hegemony go in the toilet was probably pretty frustrating and un-fun. 

So here's how it's going to work:

In the Fleet dialog, from here on out, it'll tell you which Factions they're Allied with (i.e., those Factions will also dislike you attacking this fleet, for sure).

Each Faction will be Allied with one other Faction and will be enemies with two other Factions, and neutral to everybody else.  This relationship isn't perfectly mirrored; one faction may hate a faction that is neutral to it (although I haven't made any of them like a faction that hates them). 

If they're neutral to the player, they'll react according to whether they're allied or enemies with that faction, generally going in the player's favor (if neutral to the Faction but friendly to the player, rep goes up).  That will keep things simple.  If it turns out that this is making it too easy for players to make all their relationships positive by playing games with attacking certain factions (which shouldn't work, but I haven't triple-checked all that logic) then I'll fix that; generally, engaging a new faction should be fraught with peril, in terms of poisoning your relationships- that this can lead to a game being lost if players act like brigands and just attack whatever factions they feel like instead of thinking about the consequences is not a bug.

Other stuff:

 Factions will not be able to capture Stations quite so frequently through the abstract battle process, so that the beginning of the game isn't "ooh, all the Factions are dead, now what"; new Stations cost 200,000, since 1,000,000 appears to be a fairly grindy target with the changes to money, and will give players some credits every week, so that they're good for something besides irking all the Factions in that system and helping to win the game.  Lastly, this isn't "fair", but when a Faction only has 3 Stations left, the AI will never defeat it, ever, unless it's local.  So no more "oops, I just won" nonsense; players will have to go win on their own.

Oh, and since the Boarding Shuttles are awesome (bringing dead ships back to life, as it were) I've decided to make a weapon that can be bought that does something similar, called the Transporter Device.  

I'm also going to make the Boarding Shuttle AI available to players as a custom AI and will probably make more boarding craft at some point so that other factions besides the Pirate Kings can have them.

Yes, that means you can have a Destroyer or fast Frigate whose job is to resurrect dead ships, whose AI will act appropriately.  Same principle will apply to healer ships when that's done; I'll probably also make a shield buff ship that drains Hard Flux or something.

Anyhow, that isn't done yet, but I'll push out a release pretty soon to address the stuff regarding faction relationships and the balance stuff as soon as I've gotten a chance to test it out reasonably thoroughly.  I think that gets rid of a lot of the yucky bugs and "oops, I've just lost, why" issues.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 10) (TC Mod)
« Reply #498 on: February 18, 2014, 07:36:23 PM »

Alpha Build 11 is now out.

Fixes:

1.  Armor Regeneration, Automated Repair Unit and Exigency's Biological Hull have all been nerfed considerably; I'm not sure if Glaug are now UP or not, but it doesn't feel massively OP now.
2.  Boarding shuttle bugs have largely been fixed.
3.  Endless-battle bug has been fixed (I think).
4.  AI Factions will no longer auto-win a game for the player.

Changes:

1.  Rewards for battles have been tweaked for better cash / xp rewards per kill.
2.  Early-game fleets have been nerfed to make the start a lot less rough.
3.  Relationships between the player and the Factions made a bit clearer; if attacking a Faction, the Faction's Ally will be shown, so that players know who's going to also get bent out of shape if they start a fight ;)
4.  Buying a Station now costs only 200,000 credits!  Enjoy an earlier start to the strategic game.  Each Station also pays the player 1000 credits per week.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 11) (TC Mod)
« Reply #499 on: February 18, 2014, 08:26:37 PM »

Well, I think I just set a record for time between release and new release.  Alpha 12 is now available.

I think I've finally fixed the issues with AI ships not deploying Drones all the time (which for certain ships is a huge nerf).  You'd think that was the easiest thing in the world to solve, but no.  Looks good in testing, hope it's really fixed :)
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Debido

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #500 on: February 18, 2014, 11:30:00 PM »

Sounds great, I'll test it on the weekend.
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drakhades

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #501 on: February 19, 2014, 01:12:59 AM »

!!!  awesome!   I'll give it a try now!
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drakhades

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #502 on: February 19, 2014, 03:38:29 AM »

much better, i played as tri-tachion and at least didn't die in the first 10 seconds this time :)

i only was able to play about 10 min, but here's my info:

looks like the diplomacy isn't so accurate.  i fought vs the exgenecy guys who were hostile to me, it said they were allied with exgenecy (themselves).  however after fighting them the hegemony were hostile to me.  and then running into a hegemony fleet i see that they are allied with exgenecy.   i didn't fight exgenecy again so i dunno if they now show hegemony friends.

when fighting tiny fleets, the battlefield is way too small.  seems like because of this my command ship bumps into the side and won't go further, but the AI ships seem to be able to pass that barrier.  so i'm fighting enemey ships out to the sides / top/bottom of the map.

i fought 3 battles, and lost 1, won 2, though lost 1 ship in each of my "wins".   ...   so I won...   but my wins i got no salvage?  so i ended up running out of money so couldn't continue. that game.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #503 on: February 19, 2014, 12:34:18 PM »

Bug noted; I put in some code that makes sure that the Factions like themselves; will filter that out.
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drakhades

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #504 on: February 19, 2014, 07:08:23 PM »

notes from playing an hr or so:

1)  i see now that you get credits for winning battles, not salvage.

2) The boarding shuttles are OP, at least during the early game with small fleets.   I didn't get to capital ships yet so dunno how they will impact that.   Maybe to nerf them you can make captures temporary?  (change to not join your fleet after the battle)    also maybe make their boarding chances go up, but also make them disapear after a successful board.

3) Not enough small fleets in early game, and there are zero medium sized fleets. 

4) small fleets seem like they should give more credits for victories.  right now, I get maybe 2000 per battle.   maybe you can add +5000 for all victories?

5) it would be nice if asteroid mining random battles were scaled to your fleet's points

6) a lot of the weapons you can pick seem rather useless.    fyi i tend to pick weapons that have at least a 10:1 ratio of flux to damage.  so IR Laser is good, also so is shard cannon. 

7) related to #6, it's hard to tell the use of a lot of the weapons.  like i assume ball lightning can hit multiple targets.....

8) there's some nuke missile?  it sometimes spawns on tiny pirate fleets and will instant-kill multiple ships

9) seems that a lot of the missile weapons are under-powered.  (though it's the same with vanilla starsector).   I personally only use the flux-cost missiles just because they don't run out.  (but they never seem to do much damage)

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Chaos Farseer

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #505 on: February 19, 2014, 07:28:33 PM »

8) there's some nuke missile?  it sometimes spawns on tiny pirate fleets and will instant-kill multiple ships
Just a quick note - those are probably Reaper torpedoes. I think they do 60k damage? Bring some good point defense.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #506 on: February 19, 2014, 11:51:04 PM »

With a little bit of help from Alex and LazyWizard, I've figured out why we're seeing so much slowdown in large battles.  I don't have the fix 100% done tonight, and I need to sleep now, but I will get a new release with this fixed as soon as I can, probably tomorrow, for a much less laggy experience in large battles :)
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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #507 on: February 20, 2014, 09:22:04 AM »

you probably want to fix "if (doneOnce = false) {" line in all ship ai scripts.
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #508 on: February 20, 2014, 09:42:40 AM »

Ooh, good catch, that.  It compiles but that's definitely not right.  Anyhow, I have a little time today, will definitely get this done :)
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xenoargh

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Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 12) (TC Mod)
« Reply #509 on: February 20, 2014, 11:23:39 AM »

Build 13 is up. 

Fixes:

Huuuuge speed improvements in battles.  Auto-aim in general is massively faster and structured more efficiently.  This should not require a restart, if you've been playing build 12; I highly recommend upgrading to this version asap :)
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