Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alex]

Oh, right, I misspoke. It's 1d + 1f or 3f.

[Aeson]

That reminds me, I might need to take another look at the whole "3 frigates or 1 destroyer + 2 frigates to sneak in" rule - might be entirely extraneous now, possibly replaceable with "if no patrols can see you" or some such. There's also the possibility to have different market conditions affect this - i.e. something like "if it's a free port, then transponder-off trade is fine, otherwise, black market only". Definitely going to take a look at all this.

Personally, I feel that 'transponders off for black market trade' is the wrong way to go. The docking authority at a space station almost certainly knows you're there, so flying in with transponders off is a big neon sign that reads "I'm up to no good!" Unless they're being paid to look the other way, this strikes me as a good way to attract attention, not to avoid it, and if they're being paid to look the other way, it seems like it'd be at least as easy to pay the inspectors to look the other way or at least to do a not particularly thorough inspection. Sensor coverage at a planet might be poor enough to allow this, but on the other hand you also need a location at which to land, and they'll probably know that a ship came in that never arrived at an official port (or which took an abnormally long time to arrive at an official port, or whose flight path coming in or leaving from the official port is nonstandard, etc). If you're trying to smuggle something in and you know that the port authority can see you, you try to look like something inconspicuous - say, a day cruiser or a freighter associated with a completely legitimate shipping firm - rather than trying to "sneak in" with the transponder off when everyone can see you flying in from a long ways off.

[SafariJohn]

Is sensor detection going to be by a generalized fleet rating or will each ship in a fleet be revealed individually? Like an Atlas and a Hound in a fleet, is the Atlas shown first or both at the same time? Sorry if you already answered this.

Personally, I feel that 'transponders off for black market trade' is the wrong way to go. The docking authority at a space station almost certainly knows you're there, so flying in with transponders off is a big neon sign that reads "I'm up to no good!" Unless they're being paid to look the other way, this strikes me as a good way to attract attention, not to avoid it, and if they're being paid to look the other way, it seems like it'd be at least as easy to pay the inspectors to look the other way or at least to do a not particularly thorough inspection. Sensor coverage at a planet might be poor enough to allow this, but on the other hand you also need a location at which to land, and they'll probably know that a ship came in that never arrived at an official port (or which took an abnormally long time to arrive at an official port, or whose flight path coming in or leaving from the official port is nonstandard, etc). If you're trying to smuggle something in and you know that the port authority can see you, you try to look like something inconspicuous - say, a day cruiser or a freighter associated with a completely legitimate shipping firm - rather than trying to "sneak in" with the transponder off when everyone can see you flying in from a long ways off.

I'd like to note some locations (e.g. Maxios) don't have an in-universe port authority.

Whether or not you can get away with not using a transponder while docking depends on a lot of lore-based factors.

Just for stations:
How much traffic (including non-hyper-capable ships, if they exist) do stations actually get? Is there a lot of local station/planet traffic? Are stations big enough to get traffic between different parts of the station? Does the port authority actually have enough computer capability to keep track of all (if there are a lot) the ships its sensors are (hopefully) detecting? (Getting a thousand sensor contacts and keeping track of them are two very different things.) Who owns/operates the docking bays/etc.? When are custom inspections performed (if they are)?

These questions barely scratch the surface of the countless considerations that can be given to the issue. Alex may just decide a sweeping generalization is best, and that's fine, but there are many pieces behind every whole.


That said, I do agree that having a cover story (with corresponding transponder) is generally a much better way to sneak in somewhere.

[Megas]

I forgot to mention that patrols are almost always present.  When I need to dock at a hostile station, I almost always need to kill the one or two patrols that angrily swarm around their base seemingly at all times.  Only after I wipe them out can I sneak and dock.

[maximusprime1010]

Great work on the game. It's really starting to move on from just concepts to a... well, game. Seriously, good job.
Anyway I've come up with some in universe explanations for sensors and just wanted to know what you think. That said lets get to some world building.

Sensors: Sensors were invented alongside FTL travel originally as a way to detect jump points. This is done by detecting hyper spatial displacement or to be more precise, the displacement between 3D space and 4D hyper space( the phase). The smaller the displacement the greater the signature. As stated earlier, originally in the early days of space travel the rudimentary sensors could only detect the massive signatures of jump points (areas of space where displacement is 0) but it was soon realised that as every energy body leaves a signature sensors can theoretically detect anything made of matter. After jump points the size of a signature is based on mass, velocity, and radiated energy(flux) though not in any order. In order the largest material signatures are stars, planets, large moons and asteroids, large ships, small moons and asteroids, medium/small ships. The exception to this are ships with cloaking devices which synthetically increase hyper space displacement. (currently only phase ships have the ability to shift hyper space displacement)

Transponders: With the discovery that tachyons act near identically to photons it wasn't long before a form of FTL radar was developed. Low frequency tachyons (as they interact most with matter) are fired periodically in all directions before ricocheting off a material object and returning as a ping. During the federation it became law for all transponders to fire in a binary pattern containing information of the transponding ship, as to be easily detectable by other ships. This custom has outlived the federation as it easily distinguishes rouge and outlaw ships. Though transponders do extend the range of sensors they still struggle to find medium to small ships not using transponders due to their small size and manoeuvrability relative to a planet. they also cannot detect anything in hyperspace (phase ships) as tachyons cannot naturally cross dimensions.

Idea: when a ship that is not using a transponder and is in the range of a ship that is but not it's sensor range it will send out periodic pings.

Phase ships: Ships have devices that can manipulate hyper space displacement by creating/annihilating vast amounts of dark energy.

Tachyons: Every particle has its antiparticle, photons are no different. Anti-photons (commonly known as tachyons) are not particles that travel faster than light (as is commonly believed). They act almost identically to photons, travelling at C and being unacceleratable, instead accelerating space-time. Tachyons do the same but accelerate space-time in the negative. This gives tachyons the appearance of travelling backwards in time arriving at their destination, anywhere in the universe, instantaneously.     

[Lucian Greymark]

Idk if it's crossed your mind, but can we get a way to 'pay off' factions to leave us alone customs wise? It would be nice to ship large amounts of illegal resources around without having to kill all the customs fleets that try to stop me

[Morrokain]

I cannot stress enough how excited I am for this update! I have been patiently waiting for these features for it seems like ages now and even at the initial first pass they seem like very solid mechanics!

I also want to shout out to all the really great ideas present on this thread. I especially like the one about finding and salvaging abandoned wrecks and all the things that come along with that. I have actually held off on exploring all the systems right now since I want to be surprised by things later when sensors are finally implemented hehe 

Now if we could just get hangar space back along with the current fighter mechanics...

[TheDTYP]

I really love this idea, gives a sense of mystery and exploration, like not really knowing what to expect when flying around
I remember I was intrigued the first time I was playing Starsector and I found the Hidden Base in Corvus (like a year ago) and I was thinking "Whoa, that's cool, I actually found where all the pirates were coming from" before realizing it was all on the map the whole time. With this update, that sense of exploration and risk of stumbling into a trap is more prevalent, and I really like that

P.S. I'm loving this streak of frequent Blog Posts

P.P.S. Will there be a way to modify sensors to make them more powerful, via hullmods or something?

[SafariJohn]

P.P.S. Will there be a way to modify sensors to make them more powerful, via hullmods or something?

No.

Modders will probably be able to create hull-mods that can, but Alex has indicated that there won't be any in vanilla (not counting built-in hull-mods).

[Morrokain]

Also, I think refitting should only be allowed at stations unless you have a certain rank in various technology skills or a construction rig and skilled personnel. Taking a starship apart on the fly seems like it would take more effort than it currently does. Refitting at stations should require a mandatory time penalty while you wait for your changes to be carried out by the dockyards (for a fee maybe?). The more in depth changes you make, the more time advances in the universe while you wait.

I really like this idea for a not so obvious reason. Besides doing away with potential min/max swap issues, it would allow modders to design something along the lines of permanent upgrades to your ship that cost credits. Definitely no place for those in Vanilla Starsector as it is now, but depending upon what type of mod you are designing it gives the player something different to spend money on that directly improves ship performance besides just better weapons. Opens up some more rpg elements etc.

And anything that gives construction rigs a little more oomph is good in my book. They are sort of underwhelming right now. Though that probably has more to do with an incomplete campaign than anything else.

[Megas]

Rigs are clunkers that slow my fleet too much if I include one.

[SafariJohn]

The main reason the Construction Rig is unused right now is because there's rarely a reason you'd need your ships repaired right now. When Industry stuff comes it will surely see use there, but about the only way I can see to make it (as is) useful in relation to combat would be to somehow force mid-sized and up fleet battles to take multiple rounds of combat, with campaign time passing between each round. Then the Construction Rig's +50% repair speed would actually have a chance to affect the outcome of a battle.

Deployment points could be used to do that. Right now they just seem to exist so people with low-end computers can limit battle-size. With battle-size set to vanilla max 500 (is 500 default settings value?) only the largest fleets can scrape the limit. Even 100 logistics points worth of Hyperions (the ship with the highest DP to LP ratio) is only 500 deployment points.

But I know I for one like to have huge pitched battles, which can't happen if available DP is tightened. That, in regards to using DP to force multiple rounds of combat, leaves only increasing the size of fleets. Then there could be both large battles and multiple rounds of combat.

Spoiler

And now I will neatly tie this back into sensors :
 - Will battles cause fleets to become more detectable for a while?

[close]

[CopperCoyote]

Will there be room for drones* on the campaign map that function like the crybaby from Firefly? Used to lure other fleets somewhere.

*if not in this release then at some point in the future

[Lucian Greymark]

Question, are we going to get access to stealth ships? I.e ships that don't show up on campaign map sensors and can only be spotted via vfr, or ships that (in battle) don't show up as blips and can't be locked on to. Just a thought.

[DeltaV_11.2]

Question, are we going to get access to stealth ships? I.e ships that don't show up on campaign map sensors and can only be spotted via vfr, or ships that (in battle) don't show up as blips and can't be locked on to. Just a thought.

No stealth ships at tactical level, but phase ships get a hullmod that makes them less visible to sensors.