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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Transponder  (Read 27650 times)

Hari Seldon

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #15 on: April 30, 2015, 09:29:36 PM »

I hope there will be some sort of warning that pops up such as
If you activate your transponder now your relationship with the Hegemony will be hostile are you sure you want to do this?

It'd really suck to raid a food convoy think you got off and reactivate the transponder only to discover now you're hostile to the hegemony because there was a hound you didn't detect.

Umm isn't the transponder double the radius than your sensors?  So if there are unidentified sensor blips at the edge of your sensor range, they are well within your transponder range but you don't know who they are so you cannot know if it is safe to turn on your transponder.

Even worse, even if you turn your transponder where no one sees you and go to a destination that saw your unidentified fleet with no transponder in the past few weeks, they will go "I remember that guy" and you will lose those points for what they now know you did with your transponder off.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2015, 10:14:50 PM by Hari Seldon »
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Die_Schweiz

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #16 on: May 01, 2015, 12:51:13 AM »

An idea to solve Bounty Hunters whom want to have their transponders off to catch pirates, that being having a Letter of Marque system.
Essentially if you have high enough rep from a faction, you can gain temporary permission to have your transponder off, a Letter of marque, as to let you hunt pirates better. So when a patrol comes up to see who you are, you just show them the letter and as long as your not doing anything illegal you continue as you were
And if you get caught doing something illegal you still get the rep hit etc. etc. and then have the letter revoked
« Last Edit: May 01, 2015, 01:23:13 AM by Die_Schweiz »
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Hari Seldon

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2015, 04:26:36 AM »

I am not sure how could you earn bounties with your transponder off.  They are not sure who you are.
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #18 on: May 01, 2015, 04:30:51 AM »

I am not sure how could you earn bounties with your transponder off.  They are not sure who you are.
You send a combat data and whatever evidence you can send online. They send you Credits, which is digital currency and able to be transferred via communications. Profit.
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orost

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #19 on: May 01, 2015, 04:46:22 AM »

Will bounty fleets be revamped? The idea of turning off the transponder and exploiting sensor ranges to sneak up on one, or lie in ambush, is exciting, but it won't matter if all they do is sit passively in one spot and wait to be attacked.
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #20 on: May 01, 2015, 07:01:08 AM »

Will bounty fleets be revamped? The idea of turning off the transponder and exploiting sensor ranges to sneak up on one, or lie in ambush, is exciting, but it won't matter if all they do is sit passively in one spot and wait to be attacked.
How about making the player guess where they are, give them 2 or 3 system names instead of exact one when they recieve a bounty broadcast, and give them more hints when they entered correct system(should be vague; there are only a few places they can hide) like some guys in the comm channel remembers seeing a large fleet moving past them.
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Cycerin

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #21 on: May 01, 2015, 08:46:46 AM »

This is going to add so much to the campaign gameplay. Like, way more than it seems like it would.
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Doom101

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #22 on: May 01, 2015, 09:21:12 AM »

Every bit of info I hear makes me that much more excited.

On the idea of persistent patrol captains and such.

When their current patrol ends and they are reabsorbed by a station could their data just be stored as a Patrol captain?
For example you mentioned before that if a station needs a quartermaster for a quest it will look at it's own files and if it finds a quartermaster it uses  them, but if it doesn't it makes one.
Could it not do something similar for patrols and other fleets? Such as the market decides it needs a patrol so it puts the ships together and then looks to see if it has a patrol captain standing by, and if it doesn't it will either wait for one to re-dock or make a new one. And if a patrol is sent out and destroyed by something ( pirates/enemies/player/event) then it's captain it has a small chance to make it back alive to the station that launched them. ( after all the player has an escape pod)

Also it should definitely be possible for the player to have say a high standing with the hegemony but for some reason ( possibly somehow influenced by player actions) that a particular captain despises them and is the metaphorical pebble in the shoe, I feel like that would add a bit more character and give the player some more genuine reactions to seeing particular AI.

This next part may be too complicated period, as well as probably being  too much for the next update.

What if that patrol captain catches the player smuggling, or some pirates smuggling, or straight up kills an enemy/pirate/player commander Could that be tracked as a type of experience for the patrol captain, and if they get to a certain level of experience they could gain a promotion? and instead of being a Patrol captain, they become a level 2 captain and only get picked for patrols that involve bigger ships, and maybe eventually end up commanding fleets like Armadas or attack forces, or even a defense fleet. Along with gaining the respective title increases Lieutenant - Fleet Admiral(? not sure how each faction organizes it's ranks)

Edit: this seems a bit too much for a blog post thread, im going to go put this in suggestions instead.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2015, 09:27:11 AM by Doom101 »
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Alex

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #23 on: May 01, 2015, 11:33:43 AM »

It would be excellent if you could somehow get the player to ask themselves: "Am I actually sneaking in right now, or did that patrol ID me and is just waiting for me to get close before springing the trap?"

I enjoy when games make me rampantly paranoid. Snipers in Halo 2 and their single blue pixels of death come to mind.

Hmm, yeah. I'm not sure that specifically would work out mechanics-wise though, as seeing other fleet's sensor ranges is pretty important.


I hope there will be some sort of warning that pops up such as
If you activate your transponder now your relationship with the Hegemony will be hostile are you sure you want to do this?

It'd really suck to raid a food convoy think you got off and reactivate the transponder only to discover now you're hostile to the hegemony because there was a hound you didn't detect.

Right now, the transponder flashes red and there's info in the tooltip. Might also add a confirmation dialog, we'll see.


Umm isn't the transponder double the radius than your sensors?  So if there are unidentified sensor blips at the edge of your sensor range, they are well within your transponder range but you don't know who they are so you cannot know if it is safe to turn on your transponder.

Even worse, even if you turn your transponder where no one sees you and go to a destination that saw your unidentified fleet with no transponder in the past few weeks, they will go "I remember that guy" and you will lose those points for what they now know you did with your transponder off.

It doubles the radius at which you're detected, not your sensor radius.

Either way, it's not an issue. You know whether or not you'll lose standing from the transponder widget's state, and there's no "I turned it on and then later ran into someone that recognized me" type of thing going on. Once you turn it back on "in the clear", you stay in the clear.


An idea to solve Bounty Hunters whom want to have their transponders off to catch pirates, that being having a Letter of Marque system.
Essentially if you have high enough rep from a faction, you can gain temporary permission to have your transponder off, a Letter of marque, as to let you hunt pirates better. So when a patrol comes up to see who you are, you just show them the letter and as long as your not doing anything illegal you continue as you were
And if you get caught doing something illegal you still get the rep hit etc. etc. and then have the letter revoked

I feel like that may be trying to solve an issue that may not exist, or be an actual problem if it does. Turning the transponder off is of more use when you're trying to avoid detection, and if you're waiting in ambush, you'd probably have a pretty easy time not being seen by patrols, either.

Beyond that, the conflict between "want transponder off for improved hunting" vs "want transponder on to avoid problems with patrols" could be a good thing, adding more considerations to the decision-making.


Will bounty fleets be revamped? The idea of turning off the transponder and exploiting sensor ranges to sneak up on one, or lie in ambush, is exciting, but it won't matter if all they do is sit passively in one spot and wait to be attacked.

I'm not sure this makes sense to me, that is, why they'd need to be revamped. "Feature X doesn't apply to content Y in every possible way" isn't by default a problem, right? Hiding out in one place is kind of what the named bounty fleets *do*, with everything that comes with that. There are some interactions that come from that, too - for example, you might want to sneak up on them to evaluate if you want to take them on or not.


Spoiler
Every bit of info I hear makes me that much more excited.

On the idea of persistent patrol captains and such.

When their current patrol ends and they are reabsorbed by a station could their data just be stored as a Patrol captain?
For example you mentioned before that if a station needs a quartermaster for a quest it will look at it's own files and if it finds a quartermaster it uses  them, but if it doesn't it makes one.
Could it not do something similar for patrols and other fleets? Such as the market decides it needs a patrol so it puts the ships together and then looks to see if it has a patrol captain standing by, and if it doesn't it will either wait for one to re-dock or make a new one. And if a patrol is sent out and destroyed by something ( pirates/enemies/player/event) then it's captain it has a small chance to make it back alive to the station that launched them. ( after all the player has an escape pod)

Also it should definitely be possible for the player to have say a high standing with the hegemony but for some reason ( possibly somehow influenced by player actions) that a particular captain despises them and is the metaphorical pebble in the shoe, I feel like that would add a bit more character and give the player some more genuine reactions to seeing particular AI.

This next part may be too complicated period, as well as probably being  too much for the next update.

What if that patrol captain catches the player smuggling, or some pirates smuggling, or straight up kills an enemy/pirate/player commander Could that be tracked as a type of experience for the patrol captain, and if they get to a certain level of experience they could gain a promotion? and instead of being a Patrol captain, they become a level 2 captain and only get picked for patrols that involve bigger ships, and maybe eventually end up commanding fleets like Armadas or attack forces, or even a defense fleet. Along with gaining the respective title increases Lieutenant - Fleet Admiral(? not sure how each faction organizes it's ranks)

Edit: this seems a bit too much for a blog post thread, im going to go put this in suggestions instead.
[close]

Right, yes, that's roughly how I've been thinking about it as well. The system for keeping track of "important people" was designed with very much this sort of thing in mind, but I haven't really spent much time on delving any deeper than I had to for officers and missions.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2015, 11:45:43 AM by Alex »
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miro

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #24 on: May 01, 2015, 12:01:40 PM »

This is going to make the universe feel so much more majestic and real. This is probably the most excited I've ever been for an update. Besides that one where we all made whiny posts. :P
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ThePirateKing

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #25 on: May 01, 2015, 04:25:01 PM »

Will bounty fleets be revamped? The idea of turning off the transponder and exploiting sensor ranges to sneak up on one, or lie in ambush, is exciting, but it won't matter if all they do is sit passively in one spot and wait to be attacked.

I'm not sure this makes sense to me, that is, why they'd need to be revamped. "Feature X doesn't apply to content Y in every possible way" isn't by default a problem, right? Hiding out in one place is kind of what the named bounty fleets *do*, with everything that comes with that. There are some interactions that come from that, too - for example, you might want to sneak up on them to evaluate if you want to take them on or not.


The thing is you can already do that simply by staying at a distance; the fleets are usually pretty slow, at least relative to the speed of the fleets I build, so there's not much chance of a named fleet catching me off guard.  Unless sensor range is going to be really really short across the board, it doesn't seem like the new mechanics will have any affect on my approach to the named fleets, which is unfortunate because the named fleets are currently the highest bounties and the toughest fights in the game. 

One thing I might find interesting would be to have high bounties on named pirate / smuggler fleets which travel from system to system, trading and harassing civilian traders.  Tracking them down could be a challenge in and of itself; it would be a lot more interesting, in terms of the new mechanics, than attacking the stationary fleets.  It would also make sense in-world given the way the reputation system will work now; pirates and smugglers would want to keep moving to avoid being recognized by patrols.
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Alex

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #26 on: May 01, 2015, 04:37:38 PM »

This is going to make the universe feel so much more majestic and real. This is probably the most excited I've ever been for an update. Besides that one where we all made whiny posts. :P

Ha!

The thing is you can already do that simply by staying at a distance; the fleets are usually pretty slow, at least relative to the speed of the fleets I build, so there's not much chance of a named fleet catching me off guard.  Unless sensor range is going to be really really short across the board, it doesn't seem like the new mechanics will have any affect on my approach to the named fleets, which is unfortunate because the named fleets are currently the highest bounties and the toughest fights in the game. 

I'm not sure if you've read the post on abilities - if not, you might want to take a look. (The TLDR version is it'll be much harder/more risky/expensive to avoid fleets you don't want to fight.)

One thing I might find interesting would be to have high bounties on named pirate / smuggler fleets which travel from system to system, trading and harassing civilian traders.  Tracking them down could be a challenge in and of itself; it would be a lot more interesting, in terms of the new mechanics, than attacking the stationary fleets.  It would also make sense in-world given the way the reputation system will work now; pirates and smugglers would want to keep moving to avoid being recognized by patrols.

Yeah, that could be interesting. Just not really looking at that sort of thing right now - more putting down the base mechanics. I could see adding something like that in the playtesting phase, though.
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orost

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #27 on: May 01, 2015, 04:51:40 PM »

Is anyone else excessively excited about what this update will do for the modding scene? Starsector has a huge number of incredibly talented modders whose creativity has been, so far, constrainted almost completely to the combat layer of the game. With so many new mechanics to play with and to create content for, I'm sure the result will be something spectacular.
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doofball13

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #28 on: May 02, 2015, 01:26:06 AM »

To be clear, there are areas where the player would not have to fear patrols hounding them for having the transponder off, right?

If I have my transponder off well outside of Hegemony territory, into pirate territory, and some lone Hegemony patrol/pirate hunters just happen to pass by, will they take interest? Will they understand I just wanted to slip past pirates? Is it an instant rep hit in all situations, or is there context in terms of whether I'm in that patrols' system or otherwise under their authority?
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Gothars

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Re: Transponder
« Reply #29 on: May 02, 2015, 03:40:19 AM »

If I have my transponder off well outside of Hegemony territory, into pirate territory, and some lone Hegemony patrol/pirate hunters just happen to pass by, will they take interest?

When a patrol encounters a unidentified fleet within pirate territory, they will surely assume it to be pirates. Hm, and you can do little to prove otherwise.

Maybe no rep hit when you have a very good relationship with the Hegemoney or the patrol commander?
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