Update (11/20/18, 1:25pm EST): hotfix for lack of supplies in tutorial, expeditions staying in system after failed raid, and a few other issues.
Update (11/17/18, 3:20pm EST): hotfix for occasional “random” crash while flying around, and an ability-bar-switching related crash.
Update (11/16/18, 7:35pm EST): hotfix for crash on 32-bit Windows, weapon disabled damage sound effects/visuals/floating text not showing up, and occasional game load issue.
Starsector version 0.9a is now out! Here are some of the new things you can do in this release:
Establish colonies! Build up industrial production to make a profit, improve your colonies, and protect them from many dangers
Visit a portside bar to find missions and other opportunities
Fight alongside – or against – massive orbital stations
Create your own faction and set up its military doctrine
Find blueprints and use them to let your colonies produce ships, weapons, and fighters
Face enemy ships with dynamically generated weapon loadouts
Discover new dangers and derelicts on the fringes of the Sector
Explore planetary ruins
Raid core worlds for plunder or to disrupt your competition
In addition, there are a ton of UI improvements, improvements to ship AI, combat balance changes, and all sorts of miscellaneous fixes, improvements, and bits of new content.
The full patch notes, and the comment thread, are here. You can download the new version here:
Guide to the Wear and Appearance of Uniforms and Insignia
Revision Date pc205.03.20 // by Order of the Ministry of Naval Logistics
“Re-issue of uniform standards document has been ordered to all Hegemony personnel in the Naraka Strategic District due to statistically significant increase in lapse of uniform discipline incidents.”
“Officers are directed to review implementation procedures described herein and are reminded that any deviation from standard uniform to be authorized in written waiver only by commanding officer rank O-6 or superior.”
If you’ve been keeping up with development progress, you’re probably aware that I’ve been doing some playtesting in preparation for making the next release. Sometimes, playtesting results in relatively small balance tweaks or content and mechanics adjustments. Other times, one finds themselves redoing the economy system for – if I’ve been keeping track correctly – the 5th time. So, that’s what I want to talk about today – briefly! – before diving back into the depths of my TODO list.
The good news is, this iteration of the economy 1) is simple, 2) keeps most of the elements of the previous one, 3) is based on colony playtesting, so is likely to actually really stick this time, and 4) as of this writing, fully implemented. This ended up being roughly a week-long detour, by the way, so, all things considered, not too bad.
This is going to be a shorter blog post – I’d just like to talk about refactoring one mechanic to work a little differently, since I think it’s an interesting one, and thinking it through gave me some trouble.
One of the things you do in the game is go to the fringes of the Sector and “salvage” various derelicts – abandoned stations, Domain-era probes, and so on. It’s a good source of valuable materials and lost technology. With the next release, salvaging will become even more important, since it’ll be the primary way for the player to get ship and weapon blueprints that in turn feed into the manufacturing capabilities of their colonies.
First, a quick look at how it works now:
Each derelict has a “salvage difficulty rating”, from 0 to 100%
And based on that, also a required amount of heavy machinery and crew to carry out the operation
A “Salvaging” skill lets the player salvage higher-difficulty derelicts
If the crew of rating requirements aren’t met, the player has the option of blowing up the derelict and scavenging through the resulting debris field
Bringing along Salvage Rigs (a type of ship) increases the amount of salvage by up to the difficulty rating of the derelict
This is definitely workable. The main issue is that the amount of salvage without investing points into the skill is too low, but that can be tuned because it’s just a numbers issue. Or… is it? Read the rest of this entry »
Ever since reading Space Viking, I’ve wanted to add planet-raiding to Starsector. Of course, one simply doesn’t add a feature because one has read about something cool; we need to have good reasons for adding raiding to the game, and in particular for adding it for this release, which already has quite a lot of stuff in it.
What makes it necessary at this stage? The new economy system allows the player to generate a constant income stream by becoming the best supplier of, say, fuel or transplutonics. One way to do that is for them to build up their own operation and improve its accessibility. The flip side is knocking the competition down a peg or two, and raiding is a natural fit here.
So, that’s the main reason – but adding a new feature also presents an opportunity to make other improvements to the overall design.
After establishing the main goals, it’s natural to move on to the question of choices. After all, a game is more or less just a series of interesting choices. “What interesting choices does raiding offer to the player?”, then, seems like a reasonable starting point. Unfortunately, it’s a lazily phrased question, and that could get us in trouble. Read the rest of this entry »
