Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Alex_P on June 11, 2017, 01:33:19 PM
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I see the payoff/difficulty of the named-baddie bounties ratcheting up over time. Over the course of about a year it's gone from like 60-100k to 150-300k.
What's the mechanism behind this? Is it timed, based on my fleet size, based on previous bounty completion, or something else?
(I'm interested because it looks like bounty-fleet growth is outpacing my own fleet at this point. I'm playing a kinda-leisurely exploration game at the moment, but I like doing bounties on the side and it seems like I'm falling behind. So I'm wondering: am I racing the clock or just putting too many not-so-combat-worthy ships in my own fleet?)
I'm running a few mods, including Ship+Weapons Pack with the special bounties disabled in the INI file. I apologize in advance if this turns out to actually be a mod question in disguise.
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Every two bounties you complete advances the bounties to a higher level. It also takes player level into consideration.
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Cool, thanks!
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by the time I've added a couple of Lashers and another Wolf from slowly grinding system bounties
System bounty just *** for this version for it tanking your level real fast without that much of money compared to salvaging(industrial) playstyle.
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So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Really feels like robbing the poor (newbies) to feed the rich (veteran players), eh? I think it best to make things easier for new players, don't you? Bounties shouldn't be tied to level, or at least have only ONE bounty out of the five that scales with player level, so folks who aren't currently interested in bounties won't feel like they're falling behind if they gain levels outside of heavy combat.
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Now that you mention it, I think I would like a slight more "sandboxy"/"simulationist" approach, I suppose. Spawn a variety of bad guys and have the player choose who's worth going after. Right now it feels kind of odd that the bounties are so tailored (and yet not quite tailored truly, in the sense that I've got a rather middling fleet but the game will be like, "want to take on an Onslaught and two Eagles?") while most of the rest of the universe is an assorted grab-bag of challenges.
I'm willing to wait for that until the next major update introduces some more "endgame" stuff to do for players with big fancy fleets before I go really pushing for that, though.
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So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Really feels like robbing the poor (newbies) to feed the rich (veteran players), eh? I think it best to make things easier for new players, don't you? Bounties shouldn't be tied to level, or at least have only ONE bounty out of the five that scales with player level, so folks who aren't currently interested in bounties won't feel like they're falling behind if they gain levels outside of heavy combat.
Pretty sure people were complaining it took too long to get up to higher bounty levels.
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So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Yes - level scaling done badly.
Until the latest hotfix, minimum bounty level was (character level / 5). If you did the tutorial and/or fought individual pirate fleets until about level 10 or 15, then hunt for named bounties, you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties, even if it is only your first or second. In other words, bounties leveled up faster than you could.
For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties. I do not know the new formula, though.
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you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties
That's not true, there's always going to be a level 0 bounty posted, unless you just did it, in which case a new one will be posted within a few days.
For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties. I do not know the new formula, though.
For levels over 10, it's (level - 10) / 3, rounded down. Note that it doesn't actually increase the internal bounty level, just replaces it for that bounty if the level-based value is higher.
Also, it's 2 completions per level only at the lowest levels. It goes all the way up to 6 completions to go from 9 to 10.
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So let me get this straight here: Alex changed the way bounties work because players @ high level and with powerful fleets (that didn't touch bounties earlier for whatever reason) were complaining about having to fight weak bounties till they completed enough of them?
Yes - level scaling done badly.
Until the latest hotfix, minimum bounty level was (character level / 5). If you did the tutorial and/or fought individual pirate fleets until about level 10 or 15, then hunt for named bounties, you could be facing cruisers and much bigger fleets than yours for all of your named bounties, even if it is only your first or second. In other words, bounties leveled up faster than you could.
For the latest hotfix, Alex tweaked it so that levels under 10 do not scale bounties. I do not know the new formula, though.
Since the main complaint was about bounty not growing fast enough, why not just make bounty grow faster?
For instance, tweak the current "level growth" to "suggested level".
If you beated a bounty below you're player's level suggested, your bounty level grow 1 per fight, or even 2 per fight given the gap big enough.
After the suggested level, the bounty grow go back to normal.
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That's not a level 0, level 0 would be well under 100k reward. Possibly the one that's over was that?
Edit: looking at it, there's also some cases where if you a bounty and the bounty level goes up as a result, it might not actually post a lower one, hmm. So I'm not correct here - in some cases, it might take a few months to get a level 0 bounty again.
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It feels quite gamey that bounty increases in difficulty based on player actions.
The game engine should just spawn a wide variety of bounties of all difficulties, and then the players should decide which ones they should go for, IMHO.
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Elijah you just stated what I couldn't put into words for awhile now. The fact that the Bounties weren't more random with larger and smaller fleets and it feels like game play is pushing the players to ever increasing fleet sizes just to survive. It's less an open world and more arcade game.
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What I would do is keep 2 or 3 of both the smaller and larger bounties around (IE posted) while having 6 to 10 that grow with the player choices.
IE if the player stopped taking current or higher level fleets and started taking low level ones, the adjusting bounties would quickly scale down.
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I agree that its odd that your average bounties scale with your level. The only way it would make sense is if someone was explicitly contacting you with a bounty meant for your skill level. Maybe if you develop contacts they can offer you the scaling bounties?
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I assume this is the level 0 bounty, I guess my five combat frigates could possibly take that Falcon...
Five frigates may be able to do it if it was the only ship. Enemy flagship having a second cruiser almost as powerful as it, plus more smaller ships than your entire fleet? Yeah, that will not work.
That is what I thought when I had two small carriers, a Wolf, a Kite, and three more small clunkers without shields. Tried to fight a Mora bounty worth a little more than 100k, but its escorts included a Falcon and numerous destroyers and frigates. My fleet was outclassed and outnumbered. Every other bounty available was low 100k+, with similarly impossible fights led by enemy cruiser. (This happened during one of earlier 0.8.1 releases.)
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It feels quite gamey that bounty increases in difficulty based on player actions.
The game engine should just spawn a wide variety of bounties of all difficulties, and then the players should decide which ones they should go for, IMHO.
It would be tedious to sort through all the too-low or too-high bounties, though. If that approach were to be implemented, we would need bounty amount filters.
I agree that its odd that your average bounties scale with your level. The only way it would make sense is if someone was explicitly contacting you with a bounty meant for your skill level. Maybe if you develop contacts they can offer you the scaling bounties?
I'd interpret it the other way round: your character or your officers pre-select only the bounties that offer a suitable reward.
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I'd interpret it the other way round: your character or your officers pre-select only the bounties that offer a suitable reward.
By that way of thinking I would rather they pre-select bounties that aren't suicide missions.
And yeah the Flagship thing can be really deceptive. The worst one I have fun into had a Falcon for a Flagship but then had 3 Eagles, a Mora and a Dominator as well.
My Fleet is two Cruisers, three Destroyers and 4 Frigates, compared to almost double or more for the bounties. And while pirate ships aren't up to par there is still something to be said for the sheer number of them.
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And while pirate ships aren't up to par there is still something to be said for the sheer number of them.
In my case, my ships are no better than pirates' due to recovery. I cannot buy ships bigger than frigates if I have neither commission nor reputation.
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And while pirate ships aren't up to par there is still something to be said for the sheer number of them.
In my case, my ships are no better than pirates' due to recovery. I cannot buy ships bigger than frigates if I have neither commission nor reputation.
DEs and CRs are common enough on black markets. It seems that investigations don't happen anymore, so rep loss is not that severe. Plus, since you don't have commission you don't care too much about it anyway, as long as you can dock and receive bounty rewards.
My first Medusa is usually black market bought even when I go for TT commission - grinding rep is simply much slower.
I also don't understand your attachment to not having commission. Getting all important hullmods without TT (or maybe PL) commission is close to impossible.
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It feels quite gamey that bounty increases in difficulty based on player actions.
The game engine should just spawn a wide variety of bounties of all difficulties, and then the players should decide which ones they should go for, IMHO.
Agreed. The only foreseeable issue is getting a chain of low-tier bounties with a high-level fleet, or vice-versa - but such is life in the sector, the same sort of thing happens if you get a chain of bounties from hostile faction. And in the first case (Low-tier bounties, high-level player), there's nothing stopping you from storing your millions of cruisers, going with a frigate fleet and hunting them down. It just stifles player choice and freedom otherwise imo.
I've not yet experienced it myself, but I remember reading in the patchnotes that past a certain point, the bounties you get will almost exclusively be the "Deserter" type. I don't like this either - While a group of pirates as powerful as such a fleet would be rare, it'd still be more variety.
I'd also like to see bounties placed on "active" pirate/deserter fleets, ie they're raiding a system and causing chaos, so as to play into the market dynamics a bit more and put a less-than-arbitrary time constraint on dealing with them. Could even have turncoat fleets, ie commanders belonging to one faction and joining another, then hanging around in that new faction's systems - these would be very interesting because of the reputation impact it'd have on you, as well as the challenge of getting out of the system if that faction then turns hostile, or getting in in the first place if it already was.
It feels quite gamey that bounty increases in difficulty based on player actions.
The game engine should just spawn a wide variety of bounties of all difficulties, and then the players should decide which ones they should go for, IMHO.
It would be tedious to sort through all the too-low or too-high bounties, though. If that approach were to be implemented, we would need bounty amount filters.
I agree that its odd that your average bounties scale with your level. The only way it would make sense is if someone was explicitly contacting you with a bounty meant for your skill level. Maybe if you develop contacts they can offer you the scaling bounties?
I'd interpret it the other way round: your character or your officers pre-select only the bounties that offer a suitable reward.
Both are valid arguments, but I feel both are outweighed by loss of player agency. What bounties the player goes for should be their decision to make, not the game's mechanics. As for the first, imo they already need filters - what faction posts them, how far out they are, whether they're pirates or deserters, and obviously the reward.
If I've made an enemy of the Hegemony and my fuel range doesn't extend beyond the core worlds, I'm not going to care about the 200k bounty they've placed on a guy hiding out in a system it'd take 10x my fuel capacity to reach, because I can't get there and even if I could, I wouldn't get the reward. But let's say Tri-Tac post a bounty on a small deserter fleet that's a comfortable hop away - even in a high-level fleet, and even as an enemy of the faction, this could be attractive because of the possibility of coming out with a few high-tech ships as salvage.
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Agreed. The only foreseeable issue is getting a chain of low-tier bounties with a high-level fleet, or vice-versa - but such is life in the sector, the same sort of thing happens if you get a chain of bounties from hostile faction. And in the first case (Low-tier bounties, high-level player), there's nothing stopping you from storing your millions of cruisers, going with a frigate fleet and hunting them down. It just stifles player choice and freedom otherwise imo.
I've not yet experienced it myself, but I remember reading in the patchnotes that past a certain point, the bounties you get will almost exclusively be the "Deserter" type. I don't like this either - While a group of pirates as powerful as such a fleet would be rare, it'd still be more variety.
I'd also like to see bounties placed on "active" pirate/deserter fleets, ie they're raiding a system and causing chaos, so as to play into the market dynamics a bit more and put a less-than-arbitrary time constraint on dealing with them. Could even have turncoat fleets, ie commanders belonging to one faction and joining another, then hanging around in that new faction's systems - these would be very interesting because of the reputation impact it'd have on you, as well as the challenge of getting out of the system if that faction then turns hostile, or getting in in the first place if it already was.
Both are valid arguments, but I feel both are outweighed by loss of player agency. What bounties the player goes for should be their decision to make, not the game's mechanics. As for the first, imo they already need filters - what faction posts them, how far out they are, whether they're pirates or deserters, and obviously the reward.
If I've made an enemy of the Hegemony and my fuel range doesn't extend beyond the core worlds, I'm not going to care about the 200k bounty they've placed on a guy hiding out in a system it'd take 10x my fuel capacity to reach, because I can't get there and even if I could, I wouldn't get the reward. But let's say Tri-Tac post a bounty on a small deserter fleet that's a comfortable hop away - even in a high-level fleet, and even as an enemy of the faction, this could be attractive because of the possibility of coming out with a few high-tech ships as salvage.
It would also be appreciable to bring on low-bounty targets on times of scaling down to conserve supplies and fuel for the bigger fleets. It may be as few as 10k of credits for elusively notorious smugglers to the 200k bounty for deserters and high-profile pirate raiders, but that fistful thousands of credits is enough to get by if someone prefers not to hop on a Hound-Dram pair for multi-chain survey missions.
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DEs and CRs are common enough on black markets. It seems that investigations don't happen anymore, so rep loss is not that severe. Plus, since you don't have commission you don't care too much about it anyway, as long as you can dock and receive bounty rewards.
My first Medusa is usually black market bought even when I go for TT commission - grinding rep is simply much slower.
I also don't understand your attachment to not having commission. Getting all important hullmods without TT (or maybe PL) commission is close to impossible.
Investigations are gone, but are custom scans too? I do not want to deal with custom scans at a bad time (e.g., bringing home tons of AI cores). I think Free Ports do not bother with customs, but what about the rest? Are custom scans gone from them too?
The worst disadvantage of TT commission is loss of Hegemony bases, especially that size 8 market in Aztlan with relatively cheap supplies. That place and Sindria are the places to load up on supplies and fuel.
That said, I have considered getting TT commission much for the shield hullmods (and Augmented Drive Field for Atlas/Prometheus) and more Tachyon Lances. PL would be good for more Mjolnir, although that weapon is not very good for the unskilled anymore.
Currently, the main reason not to get commission is once I tire of it, I need to grind a lot of cores to undo the reputation damage.
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Investigations are gone, but are custom scans too? I do not want to deal with custom scans at a bad time (e.g., bringing home tons of AI cores). I think Free Ports do not bother with customs, but what about the rest? Are custom scans gone from them too?
The worst disadvantage of TT commission is loss of Hegemony bases, especially that size 8 market in Aztlan with relatively cheap supplies. That place and Sindria are the places to load up on supplies and fuel.
That said, I have considered getting TT commission much for the shield hullmods (and Augmented Drive Field for Atlas/Prometheus) and more Tachyon Lances. PL would be good for more Mjolnir, although that weapon is not very good for the unskilled anymore.
Currently, the main reason not to get commission is once I tire of it, I need to grind a lot of cores to undo the reputation damage.
Well, you can always reload if get super-unlucky with a customs scan (I don't think that's common occurrence).
I also don't play much past reaching max character level.
- Patrol stomping in core systems -> done.
- Killing max remnant station -> done
-> there are no challenges left to do on this save in vanilla game...
There is more to do with Nexelerin + Factions, but for that I'd like to wait till all 0.81 mod issues have been worked out.
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I am the opposite: I do not consider the game truly started until I am at endgame with an endgame fleet and enough extra to replace it if it gets wiped. The time before that is boring tutorial-like play with weaksauce. I want to wreck the whole world and I cannot do that if my fleet is not strong enough. That said, I do not play endgame for very long because of other things competing for my time.
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I am the opposite: I do not consider the game truly started until I am at endgame with an endgame fleet and enough extra to replace it if it gets wiped. The time before that is boring tutorial-like play with weaksauce. I want to wreck the whole world and I cannot do that if my fleet is not strong enough. That said, I do not play endgame for very long because of other things competing for my time.
I mean, however you want to play it. I see the journey as more fun than the destination in this case, it's just an unfortunate fact that once you get to that end-game, sustainable fleet you wanted, there's not an awful lot to actually use it for. I think that's SS' biggest problem overall, fortunately Nexerelin does something to solve that.
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The answer is simple: Crush bugs with full power like a god of war. The destination is more fun than the journey; otherwise, there is no point to the journey for me. The journey is simply the means to the end I want. This is why I say the game often begins at endgame for me.
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The answer is simple: Crush bugs with full power like a god of war. The destination is more fun than the journey; otherwise, there is no point to the journey for me. The journey is simply the means to the end I want. This is why I say the game often begins at endgame for me.
I completely agree.
The most fun battles for me are the fleet battles, which is far to costly and risky in the early game.
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I just started a new save and realized how bad the bounty mechanism currently is. It quickly goes on a runaway - my fleet mostly consists of a Falcon, a Heron, and a bunch of wolves and at the same time the only bounties I see are 100-250k "large fleet" bounties with "numerous skilled subordinates", and flagships like the Onslaught or an Aurora, for example. It progresses much, MUCH faster than my fleet does.
IMO the most sensible solution would be to provide a wider selection of bounties. Why can't WE, the players select what kind of bounties we want to take? There should be weakling bounties, for those fleets in poor condition, and the more powerful options for those who feel good enough to attempt punching above their weight.
The current system is very problematic for me, as I kinda went bankrupt and suddenly all of the options to make more money are gone. I can't do bounties, because targets are too powerful and would curb-stomp my fleet easily. I can't do procurement missions, unless I get lucky and find merchants that particular stuff to rob, since I got no money to buy the commodities with. I also can't do derelict analysis missions, since I don't have enough fuel to get anywhere. So oops.
This could be easier if I could just drop all my big ships at the storage, leaving myself with only a few frigates, and hit some easy bounty to work back cash for the fuel, but there are no such bounties, since the game just thinks I'm flying a fleet of Dominators all the time or something.
That makes me wonder, what happens when you lose all your ships in a battle? Does the game just reset the bounties to level 1, or are you stuck being completely unable to do any of them, since you only got two puny little ships after respawn?
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I think deaths drop down the bounty levels. Or at least they did in .72
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@ Midnight Kitsune: They did, but it was gradual, not drop multiple levels down to level 1 after respawning. It bit me somewhat when I exploited last ship scuttling for easy money (or get a Centurion without commission) somewhat early in the game.
Except now there is a minimum based on character level. I do not know if respawning after fleet wipe bypasses that.
Even during 0.8, I was still playing with cruisers when I hit the level cap. It took some time later before I recovered my first capital in that game.
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I think deaths drop down the bounty levels. Or at least they did in .72
@ Midnight Kitsune: They did, but it was gradual, not drop multiple levels down to level 1 after respawning. It bit me somewhat when I exploited last ship scuttling for easy money (or get a Centurion without commission) somewhat early in the game.
Except now there is a minimum based on character level. I do not know if respawning after fleet wipe bypasses that.
Even during 0.8, I was still playing with cruisers when I hit the level cap. It took some time later before I recovered my first capital in that game.
So it seems that when you're out of money and the bounties are far more powerful than your fleet, storing all your stuff and then suiciding with a cheap ship is a viable tactic.
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You cannot scuttle your last ship anymore, but I suppose the player can always store everything then fly around as a Kite with nothing until it self-destructs.
That is what I would do if I cannot make money any other way. Spend my 2000 credits, strip the Kite, store the Wayfarer and as much else as I can, fly around with in the empty Kite with no supplies, no personnel, and no fuel, and wait until it dies. Repeat a few times. Maybe sell the excess Wayfarers?
Doing that too much would kill your bounty level before 0.8.1, but if minimum bounty level is set by character level, then repeated wipe and respawn is no penalty other than time if character is at the level cap.