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 ... 50 51 [52] 53 54 ... 75

Author Topic: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 34) (TC Mod)  (Read 418433 times)

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #765 on: May 14, 2014, 05:17:13 PM »

I think that's fixed, need to test a bit more first but I'm fairly certain.

Also got point capture mechanics working, I think.  So the only major mechanic left for the new Admiral AI is retreating / running away via Escape; I'll try to get that knocked out quickly and get a new build out, so that I can concentrate on the Boss :)
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Ranakastrasz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 702
  • Prince Corwin of Amber
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #766 on: May 14, 2014, 07:32:26 PM »

One thing I really like in vacuum over other mods, is that every ship, in my experience, has a useful, personally useful system. Ships dont just have a simple flare launcher, they tend to have useful things like ammunition feeders, or burn drives, or drones.
Logged
I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #767 on: May 14, 2014, 08:08:12 PM »

Well, if it was useless, why would anybody bother mounting it on a ship?

The flares are a bit of a bummer, though; I like the idea behind them but the Vanilla ones were pretty intensive, CPU-wise. 

Come to think, though, there are some low-lag ways to do them... perhaps I should bring them back at some point.  I doubt it, though; other than nukes, missiles are secondary concerns in the mod and probably it'll remain that way.

Anyhow, fixed the Sniper AI again, fixed a bug in the High Energy Focus AI (this is what happens when you try to optimize a bunch of stuff over a two-hour period and don't test thoroughly, lol) and the Admiral AI is successfully doing things like capturing points and all that; it's still not very "smart" but it's not terribly useless now, and the carriers are hiding in more interesting places and all that.  Still need to fix the Escape version, but it's all basically working like it should now.  I'll get that done and then it's probably time to release it and make sure there aren't any other bugs while I get the Boss done :)
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #768 on: May 14, 2014, 08:56:51 PM »

OK, Escape AI is, I think, going to work.

Kind of tempted to go ahead and include the new wage mechanics and immortal-ships concepts right now; might as well see how people like 'em.  Let's see if the Escape AI works OK first, though.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #769 on: May 14, 2014, 09:32:48 PM »

Escape AI appears to work, wage mechanics are in... now to deal with immortal fleets and do a little more balancing on costs.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Richyread

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 23
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #770 on: May 15, 2014, 06:48:47 AM »

.... I'll get that done and then it's probably time to release it and make sure there aren't any other bugs while I get the Boss done :)

Spoiler
[close]

Richy ;p
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #771 on: May 15, 2014, 12:15:46 PM »

OK, so for the final acts this week, huge game-design changes.  This stuff has been coming for a while; I feel like the overall combat balance is considerably better than where it was before the Great Fighter Rebal builds, so it's time to deal with player power-creep and make the late-game harder.

These changes are broken into a few parts, and probably for this next build, I won't have added a fancy explanation into the Newbie Guide yet, so if you're a regular Alpha-tester, please take the time to read this.


No More Free Lunch.

Players now owe their poor benighted Red Shirts some cash for the hard work they put in every day.  

Every week, players owe their crews wages, that will be deducted automatically from their accounts.

If they run out of funds, there will be penalties, as yet undetermined- either crew will abandon your fleets or I'll go ultra-harsh and let them mutiny and take a few of your ships with them.


Player fleets are (almost) immortal, and the way that CR works is changing fundamentally.

If the player doesn't lose every last ship in their fleet, they'll keep their ships, even if they've mainly been turned into radioactive cinders, and will be able to repair them for a price (expensive, but less than what the ship cost originally).  

They will not heal unless they're repaired, and they can only be repaired (if severely damaged) by putting them into "dry dock" at a Station, where the player will owe a big chunk of change to revive them.

Advantages?

1.  There are no huge changes in the uses of Supplies-per-day after combat to rebuild CR or repair ships.  Supply costs will be quite flat, other than the standard penalties for going over on Crew, storage, etc., which work.

This is something I already pretty much nerfed to oblivion in Vacuum; now it's gone entirely.

2,  Costs to repair physical damage to ships is untied from CR.  There's no "build up CR, then have another type of cost to actually repair the ships".  

I think this is appropriate; "readiness" represents doing the best one can with what one has available; it's makeshift repairs at best, or just checking that the guns are loaded at the worst.  In the real world, a lot of damage means a trip to the dry dock for extensive work; now that's going to be a factor in the game design.

3.  Everybody, no matter what their crew mix is, can have 100% CR.  However, the advantages of same are changing pretty dramatically (see the last bit below)... but the penalties remain.  This works entirely in the AI's favor; they're always going to have 100% CR.

Disadvantages?

1.  Supply consumption per day represents food and routine maintenance, and is a cost on top of paying wages; expect to have to carry around more Supplies (but they'll probably be cheaper).

2.  There will probably be a secondary resource that is used up for any physical repairs, if ships are damaged but not severely; not sure about that one yet and it probably won't make this build.

3.  Ships who aren't at 100% health will get automatically penalized at the start of combat, just like ships with low CR do.  


Crew Leveling is going away.  Welcome the four Horsemen of the... er, four types of Crew.

I realize most players of Vacuum have probably noticed that their Crew don't ever level up for some time now.  This was actually a goof on my part that turned into a feature; I didn't give out Crew experience for battles in my after-battle code, which you have to do, since that's not the same as character experience.  

But after playing it a bit, I decided that was a feature; having to buy all-Elites had a lot of appeal, in the sense that it slowed down power-creep a bit while otherwise being pretty harmless.

It made me think that I should replace all of the Crew leveling system with something else again.  

I've mulled that one over for well over a year now, and I've finally decided what I want to try out.

Crew will have four distinct types; each gives the player some advantages, which are determined at the start of combat:

1.  Gunners make your ships more shooty, by adjusting the dakkas, or something.  The higher the percentage of Gunners you have, the more damage your ships' weapons do.

2.  Pilots improve your ships' speed and handling.  Have a need for speed?  Improve your ratio of Pilots.  They may also influence strategic-map speeds.

3.  Flux Technicians will improve your ships' performance in a variety of situations- passive Flux drain, Venting speeds, and resistance to EMP and Neutron weapons (more on that later; basically, they're getting a semi-nerf).

4.  Engineers repair ships, both in combat and out of combat.  Without Engineers, you cannot repair anything but CR.  Engineers do a smallish amount of in-battle repairs, stacking on top of other bonuses.


This is, imho, a much more interesting presentation of crew; they actually have differentiation and there are good reasons to have different types... and, once it's balanced, it should be very interesting to play out.  Different Factions will get different ratios of the four types, depending on how they're geared; that gives me another balance tool to help make each Faction unique without giving the player a great way to be OP.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyhow... that is the plan.  The only part that isn't done is that the new Crew system is just a bare sketch, otherwise it's functional.  

Balanced?  No.  I've tried to keep it easy right now, but I'll probably get it wrong in various places and have to revamp later.  Player feedback on this stuff would be very, very helpful; I want to get this big part of the difficulty curve set up right.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2014, 12:37:25 PM by xenoargh »
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Ranakastrasz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 702
  • Prince Corwin of Amber
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #772 on: May 15, 2014, 12:56:33 PM »

I approve of these changes., but don't understand the crew system
Unless you have a custom distribution system, I can't think of how you will manage those crew types. Will they always be evenly distributed, or is there a way to give your speedboats speed boosts, and capital ships gunnery boosts?
Or, does it just evenly spread your crew composition across the whole fleet?
Logged
I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #773 on: May 15, 2014, 01:04:15 PM »

It evenly spreads across the whole fleet.  So if you want a super-shooty fleet, you'd have a high percentage of Gunners, for example.  I may make that work in more complicated ways later, like making the bonuses stack more heavily for some classes than others, but that's how it's going to work initially, to keep it simple :)
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Draginea

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 27
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #774 on: May 15, 2014, 03:00:59 PM »

You have changed the game so much that after development of Starsector is finished, you could probably release Vacuum as a sequel.
Logged

Thule

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 580
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #775 on: May 15, 2014, 03:15:53 PM »

Hi Xeno, might i ask where and how exactly your ingame boarding mechanics come to work. And maybe i should add, i only played the missions of your mod, not the campaign.
I guess in the campain? ;)
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #776 on: May 15, 2014, 04:44:05 PM »

Actually, you can see them in the Missions; there are a couple that have Boarding Shuttles in them. 

But it mainly matters in the campaign; boarding is a one of the easiest ways to make a bunch of money :)

There's another boarding technology coming- the Transporter Ray- if I can ever get around to finishing it.  It didn't make the last major build, because I didn't feel it was polished enough yet, but it'll probably make it over the next month or so.

Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Nanao-kun

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 829
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #777 on: May 15, 2014, 04:45:02 PM »

Actually, you can see them in the Missions; there are a couple that have Boarding Shuttles in them. 

But it mainly matters in the campaign; boarding is a one of the easiest ways to make a bunch of money :)

There's another boarding technology coming- the Transporter Ray- if I can ever get around to finishing it.  It didn't make the last major build, because I didn't feel it was polished enough yet, but it'll probably make it over the next month or so.


Heh. Mook Beam.
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #778 on: May 15, 2014, 04:56:56 PM »

Well, that's better than the Mook Missiles- I really felt sorry for those guys in SPAZ, lol.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Draginea

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 27
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 21) (TC Mod)
« Reply #779 on: May 16, 2014, 04:55:29 PM »

Bug: My capital ships that have things like mega beams and heavy plasma cannons will not fire them, ever. I have tested the ships, and they can all use those weapons with minimal flux impact.

Also, how on EARTH do you take a station? I cheated and gave myself infinite cash and a fully upgraded character. I bought about 50 wings of fighters and 7 capitals with good mods and weapons. I went into battle. At first everything went fine, but when i got close to the center everything i had died. Then i tried again, the same thing happened 6 times.

EDIT: I finally took my first station from Exigency. Finaly.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2014, 05:36:37 PM by Draginea »
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 50 51 [52] 53 54 ... 75