What does this actually mean? And, in particular, is there a way I can tell my faction "If you were thinking about adding a freighter to a fleet, use this combat freighter instead, but don't replace warships with combat freighters" or "If you were thinking about adding a tanker to a fleet, use this Apogee instead"? (Well, okay, there are a bunch of mods with combat-tankers, too, but the closest vanilla ship to that description is the Apogee.)
- Player faction should no longer use combat freighters instead of a portion of combat/freighter ships in patrols etc
- May still use combat freighters in place of combat ships, if priority settings allow it
Some really good stuff in here! One that I have some questions about, though:What does this actually mean? And, in particular, is there a way I can tell my faction "If you were thinking about adding a freighter to a fleet, use this combat freighter instead, but don't replace warships with combat freighters" or "If you were thinking about adding a tanker to a fleet, use this Apogee instead"? (Well, okay, there are a bunch of mods with combat-tankers, too, but the closest vanilla ship to that description is the Apogee.)
- Player faction should no longer use combat freighters instead of a portion of combat/freighter ships in patrols etc
- May still use combat freighters in place of combat ships, if priority settings allow it
- Non-primary stars (and black holes etc) can no longer be colonized
- Converted Hangar can no longer be installed on a Colossus Mk.III
- Ships produced by the player's colonies will use the proper ship name prefix configured for the faction
- Removed stack size limit of 1000 from player cargo
- Maximum quantity that can be picked up using slider increased to 5000
- Intel UI (including map) now takes up more space if available
- Made a few performance improvements
- Music will no longer switch to another track when passing near a star system, actually entering it is required
- Now properly handles weapons with a very large interruptible burst
- Moved flux/second to be under damage/second
- "Escape" battles: ships deployed on the flanks will start 4000 units closer to the top of the map
Ship AI:Bugfixing:
- Will no longer use High Energy Focus or other weapon-boosting systems when all affected weapons are on cooldown
- Fixed some broadside AI issues
- Fixed autopilot issue when "invert turn-to-cursor behavior" setting was checked
- Reacts more quickly to "primed" friendly mines
- Burn Drive:
- Should no longer be used when a ship has an assignment and is not facing towards the assignment target
- One exception being when trying to get away from an enemy behind the ship
- Will not burn towards targets that have the "Avoid" order
- Improved behavior around borders
- Ships with limited fighters wings (no bombers and <=1 for cruisers and below, <=2 for capital) are more conservative about using these to engage the enemy
- Fixed issue where carriers would occasionally "engage" their fighters on targets under fog of war
- Legion, Mora: will no longer hide behind combat ships
- Improved command obedience
- Fixed issue that could cause ship to back off from a target due to flanking - but insignificant - threats
- Fixed several issues that could cause a ship with front shields to turn slightly away from the target, seemingly without a reason
- Fixed an issue that could cause REDACTED ships to wander around the battle map instead of engaging the player
- Non aggressive/reckless officers will be more careful about maintaining range from the enemy
- Made some tweaks to evasion logic that should make ships less likely to try to "pivot" around an enemy at too close a range
- Should improve survivability
- Escort behavior overhauled
- Does a better job positioning escorting ships to ward off flanking enemies
- Does a better job not getting in the way of the parent ship's fire
- Does a better job handling broadside ships
- (Still more likely to get in their line of fire if escorting one)
- Capital ships and cruisers with an escort assignment now only turn towards fighters if no other targets are in range
- Should fix a number of cases where a ship appears to be over-aggressive and dies for "no reason"
- Can more smoothly handle a larger number of frigates escorting the same ship
- Much more consistent and predictable overall
How was it "fixed" and whats the end result?
- Fixed possible slowdown issue
- Fixed a game-loading crash
- Fixed slow memory leak caused by Commerce industry
- Impact Mitigation 1: now properly applies +150 armor instead of +150% armor
- Fixed Helmsmanship 5%/1% issue
- Cancelling an assignment will now only close the command frequency if it's appropriate to do so
- Fixed issue that could cause a fleeing fleet using Emergency Burn to stay within a certain range of what it was fleeing from
Made "Missile Autoforge" hullmod visible on station modules and REDACTEDJust the modules, or the entire station? I don't think we can check the modules' hullmods legitimately yet. If it was on the main body of the station, it would show up.
Salvaging: +50% bonus for rare items will no longer result in a full re-roll and will simply result in "more stuff" compared to without the skillHeh. It's not really important, but I guess that change makes its function clearer on the player end.
When joining an ongoing battle, allied fleets will prefer to pursue instead of harry/let go when possibleNow these are some quality of life improvement! What was even causing your faction to let the enemy fleet go, when it has the advantage now?
Will no longer force the player to fight when weaker and stopping them for the transponder being off or for a cargo scan
Moved flux/second to be under damage/secondMove damage per shot and flux per shot together as well, just so that it doesn't look so interrupted. Flux efficiency can still be at the bottom.
Harbinger: changed 3 medium hardpoints to "energy" (was: "synergy")Does its system keep the "decreases energy damage" bit?
- Added to SettingsAPI:
- FactionAPI createBaseFaction(String factionId);
Could you pair this with a reduction in the drugs needed by mining? Right now, if I have Industrial Planning at 2, and use an alpha core on my base population and an AI core of any grade on mining, I can meet the drug requirements without having to have a free port with light industry; once this change goes in, that will no longer be the case.
- Industrial Planning: level one now reduces upkeep by 10% instead of reducing demand
Perdition bomber is listed as "High tech" in 0.9, despite being a jury rigged work shuttle, and hence should probably be low tech or (maybe) luddic path.
More seriously:
- Ships produced by the player's colonies will use the proper ship name prefix configured for the faction
Could we possibly get this on player-recovered ships that are too badly damaged to retain their original name (IME: all or almost all of them) as well?
How was it "fixed" and whats the end result?
- Fixed Helmsmanship 5%/1% issue
Subarashii!
The colony changes look interesting; restricting colonies to 4 industries will force a bit of specialization to some degree (I tend to have 5-6 production buildings (Industries with the upcoming patch?) per colony), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, so I look forward to trying that out.
This may be a silly question, but any chance of listing what buildings are industries and which are not; for example, with the changes to Tech-Mining, I'm not sure if this would be considered an industry building with the new changes since it doesn't provide economic units (this is the stuff under "Production" in the Tech-Mining tool-tip right?).
Harbinger has had Thor's hammer applied and none to gently :D
Total battle size in vs-station battles is increased by the deployment cost of the station
Nice, I guess then we can deploy more of our ships to assist our own star bases (Normally I can only choose a single ship due to a lack of deployment points). This may work out more difficult defending since it is likely the enemy will be attacking with bigger numbers, getting 60% of the additional deployment points from the station; but having more ships on the field should lead to faster station battles which will be nice when attacking enemy stations yourself.
"Free Port" condition feels a bit overnerfed. How are the core pirate markets handling it? With just +25% accessibility and -5 stability they probably are miserable beyond reason.
Player faction not using combat freighters isn't really necessary, but since the player doesn't know (unless digging into the files) that combat freighters even are their own category, it might be for the better. Some "allow combat freighters" check would probably work as well, but it's a fairly insignificant choice in the end.
Deserters using proper weapons is nice. I swear it was like that in previous update...
Just the modules, or the entire station? I don't think we can check the modules' hullmods legitimately yet. If it was on the main body of the station, it would show up.
Battlestations and Star Fortresses have officers - do their skills depend on the size and type of the station, maybe even RNG and player faction doctrine, or is it just some generic officer?
...Can we queue upgrades from the get go, so that there's no need to go back to the colony if all you want is just a Star Fortress?
I also want to note that if we could set some pre-determined ship behaviours, or their general personality (without using officers or the faction doctrine slider - the latter especially, since player fleet most likely is much different from what player faction has to do with), similarly how the Autonomous Ships mod does it. No matter how expendable frigates/destroyers are, I care for them and their survival.
- Added to SettingsAPI:
- FactionAPI createBaseFaction(String factionId);
What exactly does this do?
Could you pair this with a reduction in the drugs needed by mining? Right now, if I have Industrial Planning at 2, and use an alpha core on my base population and an AI core of any grade on mining, I can meet the drug requirements without having to have a free port with light industry; once this change goes in, that will no longer be the case.
Any hope of changes to how blueprints are looted so stuff you have already is just dropped as a duplicate for selling or rerolled into something else?
- When losing a battle: special items such as blueprints, AI cores, survey data, etc, no longer have a chance to be lost
Is this a blacklist using tags, or have AI cores and survey data been changed from commodities into special items?
And if it's the former, have you considered the latter? For cores especially there's some interesting gameplay possibilities that would require keeping track of their history, which can't be done with commodities.
Will not produce fleets with more than 30 shipsIs there a FleetParams variable for this? Some boss fleets in mods need to be pretty big and it would be odd if they just ended up as 30-capital fleets instead.
SpoilerIs this a blacklist using tags, or have AI cores and survey data been changed from commodities into special items?
And if it's the former, have you considered the latter? For cores especially there's some interesting gameplay possibilities that would require keeping track of their history, which can't be done with commodities.[close]
It's a "no_loss_from_combat" tag on the commodities in question.
I don't think you could track a history with special items either, i.e. if a couple of cores get stacked together, then what's what is entirely lost.
Special item stackability is based on their SpecialItemData string, right? So if each core was given a unique ID at creation they wouldn't stack over each other, and we could add an entry to persistent data to keep track of such things. Or am I wrong about how this works?
... although, thinking on it some more, I think I could see doing that for Alpha Cores. And then have say a serial number in the tooltip, and heavily imply a unique personality etc. HMM.
Nope, sorry, I don't follow - I'm not sure what you mean by 'skill effects apply to specific pieces of content' in this context.Could you pair this with a reduction in the drugs needed by mining? Right now, if I have Industrial Planning at 2, and use an alpha core on my base population and an AI core of any grade on mining, I can meet the drug requirements without having to have a free port with light industry; once this change goes in, that will no longer be the case.
Hmm - design-wise, I'd rather not have skill effects apply to specific pieces of content like that, if that makes sense. I also like the idea of Mining requiring a larger world's infracstructure (or free port etc) to provide the needed drugs.
Nope, sorry, I don't follow - I'm not sure what you mean by 'skill effects apply to specific pieces of content' in this context.
Oh! Yeah, no, that's not what I was suggesting - I was just suggesting simply reducing the drug demand of the mining industry, not as a skill effect, but just as a change in what the base industry needs.Nope, sorry, I don't follow - I'm not sure what you mean by 'skill effects apply to specific pieces of content' in this context.
Just real quick: what I mean is I wouldn't want to have a skill explicitly apply to Mining; that's what I mean by "specific piece of content".
Hopefully fixed issue loading UTF-8 text with multi-byte characters from mission descriptions etcWhat? not all the loading issue? I thought that's the question of entire game ???
What? not all the loading issue? I thought that's the question of entire game ???
Things like designType, descriptions, hull name will meet this problem.
Battlestation takes up a slot. With Red Planet reward, player will have no problem filling all 12 slots with only four production industries.Right, forgot about starbases. So the 12 slots can be filled in vanilla regularly but only once you find that planet.
QuoteWill not produce fleets with more than 30 shipsIs there a FleetParams variable for this? Some boss fleets in mods need to be pretty big and it would be odd if they just ended up as 30-capital fleets instead.
Free port:Potential exploit/micromanagement tax: Regularly turn free port off and on to keep the stability penalty at 1. For cases where I don't care about the accessibility bonus, I just want to export drugs.
- Stability penalty goes from 1 to 3 over time instead of being fixed at 3
- Accessibility bonus goes from 5% to 25% (was: 10 to 50)
Right; that's actually something I've done on occasion. In 0.9, you have three options for dealing with drugs demand from mining:Do people generally do this? I slap a gamma core on all my mining industries as a matter of course (since they're not good for much else), but I find betas and alphas are far too scarce to use just to prevent a mining drug shortage that doesn't do anything besides slightly slow the growth of an already large colony. Any betas and alphas go straight to manufacturing industries and (for the latter) star fortresses.
[...]
3: Use multiple AI cores, including at least one alpha-grade.
Reposting my question earlier because the change is potentially highly significant for some mods:QuoteWill not produce fleets with more than 30 shipsIs there a FleetParams variable for this? Some boss fleets in mods need to be pretty big and it would be odd if they just ended up as 30-capital fleets instead.
QuoteFree port:Potential exploit/micromanagement tax: Regularly turn free port off and on to keep the stability penalty at 1. For cases where I don't care about the accessibility bonus, I just want to export drugs.
- Stability penalty goes from 1 to 3 over time instead of being fixed at 3
- Accessibility bonus goes from 5% to 25% (was: 10 to 50)
(Well it's fairly easy as it is to keep stability at 10 even with the full -3 penalty, so I don't expect this to be a big deal)
So, bug about immediate updating player colonies markets still not fixed? It like cheat on current moment.
- Fixed issue with "Open Market" from Commerce fully regenerating on re-opening the tab
Harbinger will still be incredibly good simply because of its system - being able to overload and knock out the shields of any ship is a game changing ability. It just won't be able to instantly assassinate any ship as it could before. :P
Ah...So, bug about immediate updating player colonies markets still not fixed? It like cheat on current moment.
- Fixed issue with "Open Market" from Commerce fully regenerating on re-opening the tab
Harbinger has had Thor's hammer applied and none to gently :D
It needed it, what with the 3x Typhoon Harbinger being the answer to any question.
Harbinger will still be incredibly good simply because of its system - being able to overload and knock out the shields of any ship is a game changing ability. It just won't be able to instantly assassinate any ship as it could before. :P
Oh you know... I was holding out hope it would end up more than 1%. I mean I am glad the bug is fixed, but I am not glad it's fixed into a value I personally don't agree with, since that was originally the reason I even reported it :DAs was covered fairly exhaustively in the relevant thread (and possibly some PMs), it's 1% as it was supposed to be. Balance stuff entirely aside.How was it "fixed" and whats the end result?
- Fixed Helmsmanship 5%/1% issue
(Thank you for your feedback re: some of the AI stuff, btw!)My reward is the great game you are making and polishing up the small things pointed out.
Harbinger: changed 3 medium hardpoints to "energy" (was: "synergy")This would make the the Harb the only phase ship incapable of using missiles at all.
- Will not produce fleets with more than 30 ships
- Stronger fleets will have many more large ships
- This increases both their ground-raiding strength and their effectiveness vs stations
Fleet spawning:This one I am a bit worried about. Top heavy fleets are be good for "elite" strike fleets, but a general the cap does not sound like a good idea. It will only worsen the already existing ship size inflation. Low-tier frigates and light destroyers (like wayfarer/enforcer) should not become obsolete by mid-game.
Will not produce fleets with more than 30 ships
Stronger fleets will have many more large ships
Can now abandon colonies up to size 4Can we get the Nex option of granting independence to colonies (just because I found a better habitable world doesn't mean the other habitable is useless)
Abandoning a colony no longer removes the "Decivilized" conditionIs there now a proper way of removing this modifier?
I would not want center synergy and rest energy because that makes three AM Blaster loadout impossible. (Synergy cannot use small energy.) If Harbinger will be reduced to an AM Blaster striker, it needs all three mounts energy to use them.QuoteHarbinger: changed 3 medium hardpoints to "energy" (was: "synergy")This would make the the Harb the only phase ship incapable of using missiles at all.
Would it be possible to have the forward centre mount reverted to synergy or changed to universal, just to keep all the phase ships consistent with each other?
- Ships with "Militarized Subsystems" no longer get increased maintenance from capacity-increasing logistics hullmods
- And can have Safety Overrides
- Harbinger: changed 3 medium hardpoints to "energy" (was: "synergy")
While I totally agree that Harbinger was OP and needed a nerf, doesn't this leave it a bit too useless?
Oh you know... I was holding out hope it would end up more than 1%. I mean I am glad the bug is fixed, but I am not glad it's fixed into a value I personally don't agree with, since that was originally the reason I even reported it :D
My reward is the great game you are making and polishing up the small things pointed out.
It feels great to have a dev that listens, over the years I have gone over many developers from different games of different sizes. It's really refreshing when things mentioned get considered/fixed/balanced/touched-up. I can't tell you how many times I have brought up well documented issues and suggestions on how it may be addressed, only to have forum mods go "that's nice" and never seeing any of the issues touched on in months/years/ever. So again, a single dev managing to do this is hope inspiring to say the least.
Looking forward to testing out the new AI ;D
Oh and lastly, is there some kind of ETA on the patch?
What about AI cores drop after destroying REDACTED battlestations? In current moment no any sense to kill this. Better leave this for future endgame grind.
This would make the the Harb the only phase ship incapable of using missiles at all.
Would it be possible to have the forward centre mount reverted to synergy or changed to universal, just to keep all the phase ships consistent with each other?
Out of curiosity, would this also be adjustable via the settings.json "MaxShipsInFleet" or the "DoNotPrune" or is this non-adjustable for those that enjoy larger fleet sizes/battles in order to be able to salvage things in endgame?
If someone wanted to raise their max fleet size to be able to have room for salvage, it would be unfair if the player would outnumber the AI consistently.
Also, are colonies with Commerce able to put their own nanoforges in Heavy Industry after a time when sold to them? I can see that a 2nd Heavy Industry with Commerce could be used as an extra money farm by returning every so often to remove the nanoforge and resell it to them since the highest level nanoforge in all your colonies is used for ship quality in all fleet and ship productions.
Thanks for all the excellent content and enabling of other awesome content!
QuoteFleet spawning:This one I am a bit worried about. Top heavy fleets are be good for "elite" strike fleets, but a general the cap does not sound like a good idea. It will only worsen the already existing ship size inflation. Low-tier frigates and light destroyers (like wayfarer/enforcer) should not become obsolete by mid-game.
Will not produce fleets with more than 30 ships
Stronger fleets will have many more large ships
Also from a purely immersion veiwpoint the only top-heavy fleets are less fun. The whole point about a large battle is how it stats small with frigates/destroyers, harrassing/flanking and occasional cruiser, and builds up to eventually reach the peak with facing enemy capitals. It builds up. Facing a heavy-only fleet does not sound as fun.
QuoteCan now abandon colonies up to size 4Can we get the Nex option of granting independence to colonies (just because I found a better habitable world doesn't mean the other habitable is useless)
QuoteAbandoning a colony no longer removes the "Decivilized" conditionIs there now a proper way of removing this modifier?
Quote
- Ships with "Militarized Subsystems" no longer get increased maintenance from capacity-increasing logistics hullmods
- And can have Safety Overrides
RIDE THE LIGHTNINGI am actually against this change. As much as i want to field a stampede of SO Buffalo MK.II, allowing SO with Militarized Subsystems make it a no-brainer for freighters/tankers. The massive speed boost make it invaluable in retreat scenarios. A Tarsus can fit both MS and SO, allowing it to fly at a blazing 125 su, faster than a Lasher! And that's without counting the burn drive. Not all civilian ships have the OPs available for those two hullmods though, only the tankers , the Tarsus, the Valkyrie... Haven't checked them all.
But yeah, i think it's too good, civilians ships's survivability would be vastly increased with this combo.
The Harbinger's rear 2 small mounts are universals, and have the arcs to mount guided missiles. Or, in player hands, you can tilt the Harbinger slightly to land torpedos.QuoteHarbinger: changed 3 medium hardpoints to "energy" (was: "synergy")This would make the the Harb the only phase ship incapable of using missiles at all.
Would it be possible to have the forward centre mount reverted to synergy or changed to universal, just to keep all the phase ships consistent with each other?
The beast is dead! Like Serenitis, i kinda expected it to keep one synergy to allow for some variety. I think the Harbinger would now move more into a support role with its three energy hardpoints, with something like Ion Pulsers to annoy bigger threats, or heavy blasters to hunt smaller targets. The triple AM Blaster boat is another idea, an easier, but more expensive variant of the blaster Afflictor.Triple Phase Lance Harbinger has always been a beast, able to out-flux cruisers with soft-flux pressure alone by abusing phase time acceleration. Anything smaller than that just pops, including opposing phase frigates that you can force to unphase with QD.
Harbinger + Reaper == No. Being able to reliably and with no recourse stick a Reaper into something is just bad. The cost, DP, flux stats, armor, etc can all be tuned to make the ship be really good, but that combo has got to go.The opening given by Quantum Disruptor is tiny, probably too hard to exploit reactively by other ships. At best, player see incoming attacks from other ships (like a stack of Perdition wings from Astral) and drop that target's shields. With Reapers, Harbinger does not need other ships. Just force an opening for the kill then run away.
I also think its a bit odd to consider the Harbinger in a vacuum. When the Harbinger overloads someone, that helps every ship nearby.
Mostly, though, I think all these points are an argument in favor of reining in the Afflictor a bit as well, if that makes sense.My go-to loadout with Afflictor is four Reapers. Works just as well as 0.9 Harbinger when I do not need Quantum Disruptor, except with less missile capacity. Probably the easiest nerf would be to change two of the universals to hybrids.
I'm not really concerned about the nerf to the Harbinger. I had my fun back in 0.8 with Reapers and changing their sub-system to the Quantum disruptor in 0.9 just made them insane.Part of what makes AM Blasters good is their ability to outright overload shields and stun the enemy for twelve seconds. Handy for something like Scarab where it builds up hard flux with IR Pulse Laser and Ion Cannon spam, overload shield with AM Blaster, then finish off ship with something. Changing AM Blasters to HE would remove their use as shield overload against AI. Phase ships do not need to use AM Blasters like this, but conventional ships would.
In any case, I'm really not a fan of phase ships outside the Doom-class since their time acceleration ends up being a bit of a liability under AI control, as their peak readiness doesn't last long enough to be useful to me in bigger battles (being able to deploy more ships during station battles will help though in the upcoming update!)...and perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I feel that Anti-Matter blasters are pretty weak for their OP cost (could do with less of a delay or more damage per shot, and/or make the damage high explosive to take advantage of holes in enemy shields).
Income from exports no longer counts demand at player colonies for total market value
Is there a balance reason that this got changed?
Navigation skill: now modifies individual fleet member fuel use (rather than fleetwide)So the skill can only take effect on piloted ship? Or it still take effect fleetwide, but would cut down the fuel use for each ship rather than calculate on the total fuel the fleet use, and showing its effect on every ship in the ship tooltip?
Fuel use/day indicator now properly accounts for "free" speed over burn level 20Do you mean in the past this calculation is wrong? And in my opinion, since the free speed is caused by storm or neutron stars etc., we shouldn't pay fuel for the extra speed.
And in my opinion, since the free speed is caused by storm or neutron stars etc., we shouldn't pay fuel for the extra speed.
I think conceptually, the stuff you're talking about is mostly covered by the income from Population & Infrastructure.Is there a balance reason that this got changed?
The market value of player planets ended up being too-high a contributor to player income. Also, it had the counter-intuitive effect of something lowering demand on player colonies (good because it's easier for it to be met) also being bad due to decreasing the market value for that commodity and thus the player's income from exports. And, finally - as you point out - it's good to have the player's income be more dependent on outside partners.
Or it still take effect fleetwide, but would cut down the fuel use for each ship rather than calculate on the total fuel the fleet use, and showing its effect on every ship in the ship tooltip?
Do you mean in the past this calculation is wrong?
Am I'm missing, or there is no mention of situation, when colonized gas giant got name change, but retains original name on global (hyperspace) map?
Out of curiosity, if the player somehow destroys (or in Nex, takes over the sector) every non-player planet in the sector, does it imply planetary trade income will drop to zero by the end? Is the population and infrastructure of large planets sufficient to pay the entire upkeep of said planet (i.e. are they potentially self-sufficient if they have all industries and make all goods?), or is the goal of being the only sector power as an end game goal non-viable due to insufficient credit generation near the end?
Wow, it;s always good to see an active developer fixing what appears to be lots of minor issues but has big gameplay effects.
I would guess that as the market total is 0, then your income from exports is effectively 0 as well. The economy in starsector is all kinds of strange and nonsensical anyways.
Question: Do other factions also not include their own markets in calculating global market size? The difference is generally insignificant since NPCs don't care about credits, but it could be relevant for when the punitive expedition manager compares market shares of player and NPC exports.
Also, no any Radiant-class changes?
I don't think Radiant is impossible to kill with a Conquest or an Onslaught, nor do I think it's unfairly overpowered. It provides a good challenge and your fleet is much more important than what capital ship you use.Capital ships it everything in this game.
1) What do you mean by "Danger Level" on the fleet tooltips? If it is an indicator of how powerful the fleet is, then in what context? Relative to the player's current fleet? Also, how is it calculated and can it be changed or set by mods, such as in the faction file?
2) I know tags can be changed by skins, but would it be simple to add an optional section to the variant.json file that could modify tags by variant as well? For instance, the new tag for the Mora and Legion would make a lot of sense for the attack variant of the Astral in my mod, but not at all for the Elite variant.
*Edit* I meant hints, not tags. I get those confused a lot.
When Radiant appear in game it just killed sense to use all other ships except Paragon-class.
A standard stock-loadout Onslaught has a fairly even (though ultimately losing) fight with it when both are under AI control. Given how much the player can do to improve loadouts or simply maximize the effect of their ships, I think there's plenty of room for beating it with different options.
What Radiant variant? 5 TL one with 20 lvl officer and correct skills may be actually quite close to un-solo-able except for Paragon. At least without player bringing a Capital with similarly maxed out character skills and piloting it personally.
It's relative to the strength of the player's fleet, based on the relative fleet point values, modified by quality/officers/etc. It can't be modified directly... although, actually, let me add a $dangerLevelOverride to fleet memory - that's pretty simple.
I don't think that makes sense since variants are something that can be modified by the player. This sort of thing would have to be player-facing, otherwise you'd have a situation where the behavior of a player-modified variant depended on what the variant was originally, which would be super weird.
What?s the meaning of ?reduced?? Do you mean that when the fleet is at a ?free? speed, it in fact doesn?t cost as much fuel as the displayed number? For example, assuming that a fleet consumes 200 fuel/day at a normal speed of 14(with sustained burn). When the fleet reaches the ?free? speed of 25, should it still consumes 200 fuel/day or more fuel/day?Do you mean in the past this calculation is wrong?It was wrong just for display purposes, it was still deducting the correct (reduced) amount of fuel.
Now properly handles weapons with a very large interruptible burstCan you give a few examples of such weapons? I didn?t fully get the point orz.
What?s the meaning of ?reduced?? Do you mean that when the fleet is at a ?free? speed, it in fact doesn?t cost as much fuel as the displayed number? For example, assuming that a fleet consumes 200 fuel/day at a normal speed of 14(with sustained burn). When the fleet reaches the ?free? speed of 25, should it still consumes 200 fuel/day or more fuel/day?If you move at burn speed higher than 20, tooltip showed increased fuel usage, when it actually used as much fuel as fleet moving at 20 burn does (so going over 20 is "free").
Can you give a few examples of such weapons? I didn?t fully get the point orz.See tooltip for Storm Needler. It shows "burst" of 9999.
I don't think Radiant is impossible to kill with a Conquest or an Onslaught, nor do I think it's unfairly overpowered. It provides a good challenge and your fleet is much more important than what capital ship you use.Capital ships it everything in this game.
You can take 3-4 Paragons, and blow-up everything what you can found in sector, even if you need to blow-up 5 Remnant Ordo with 10 Radiants. But 5 Onslaught can`t do this anymore. They can do it 0.8 before Radiant appear in game.
Yep i can take 5 Onslaught/Conquests and blow-up max sized defenders fleet of Red Planet. But it everything what can do this capitals. 3 Paragons can do much more.
When Radiant appear in game it just killed sense to use all other ships except Paragon-class.
Music:... I guess one could create a mod for this ;D , but still think it would be better to have this in the base game.
* Added MusicPlayerPlugin interface; implementation specified via "musicPlugin" in settings.json
* Can create arbitrary number of campaign music states for different locations/conditions/etc
* Method that picks music set for combat gets passed in a CombatEngineAPI
* Can specify a $musicSetId for star systems, markets, and entities to override default plugin behavior
However, apart from the military and required industries (spaceport etc) I only have heavy industry and IT WORKS FINE. Every resource is brought to the colony for free, now I found a nanoforge and upgraded the patrols I am getting close to the unassailable base again. It just doesn't seem right that you can win by making a single top tier industry, not having to bother with any of the others. Is 0.9.1a going to fix this? I didn't see the answer looking through the patch notes.
To me it seems like this is because the economy is not real, just a hack.
OK, thanks for the reply. If you get to the point where nothing is a threat and you can kill everything, have infinite money, its as close to winning as anything I've seen. But yes, the real point (enjoyment) seems to be getting to this point (in ironman), and the game should be adjusted so that there are no easy shortcuts.
You're right my colony is kind of brittle, relying on the outside, but if I can keep it til the space station is maxed (one more upgrade) before it gets bigger and attracts faction fleets (currently only size 4, growing slowly) then I can add the money-making industries at leisure, cos it will be invincible to attack (already maxed patrols).
Reducing upkeep based on in-faction production seems like a good hack, though :)
I get that you're not interested in a resource-based economy, any chance that could be modded-in in the future?
The one aspect of the economy that really challenges my suspension of disbelief is earning revenue on total production - upkeep, rather than net production--it seems weird that if I have a refinery and a mine producing just enough to feed the mine that I still get the same profit from ore exports that I would if I did not have the refinery. Reduced upkeep for in-faction sourcing provides an incentive for vertical integration but makes that even more implausible because the player explicitly double-profits from intermediate good production.
I would consider calculating the player factions' net imports/exports of each good and adding expenses/income based on those (probably incentivizing vertical integration with a spread between import/export prices)--it seems a lot more intuitive, although it could make it too hard to make a financially-viable colony at first.
Will .9 mods be compatible with the new version (besides balance changes)?
Alex, did you manage to put in a fix for the Coordinated Maneuvers/Electronic Warfare bug (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12271.0)?
The one aspect of the economy that really challenges my suspension of disbelief is earning revenue on total production - upkeep, rather than net production--it seems weird that if I have a refinery and a mine producing just enough to feed the mine that I still get the same profit from ore exports that I would if I did not have the refinery. Reduced upkeep for in-faction sourcing provides an incentive for vertical integration but makes that even more implausible because the player explicitly double-profits from intermediate good production.
I would consider calculating the player factions' net imports/exports of each good and adding expenses/income based on those (probably incentivizing vertical integration with a spread between import/export prices)--it seems a lot more intuitive, although it could make it too hard to make a financially-viable colony at first.
It's on my list of things to look at.
@ Thaago: Thanks for the interesting perspective, that was a good read!
- Music will no longer switch to another track when passing near a star system, actually entering it is required
Fixed issue with large fleets full of civilian ships ordering a full retreat shortly after starting a battle
This is fixed, per the patch notes:And they still want to attacking player?QuoteFixed issue with large fleets full of civilian ships ordering a full retreat shortly after starting a battle
Of course they don't want to attack the player. But the same "fleet's too large, can't cleanly disengage" rules apply to them, so they don't get a choice. ...Though, in this case, perhaps it should still be possible for the player to say "Eh, I don't care, let them run regardless".This is fixed, per the patch notes:And they still want to attacking player?QuoteFixed issue with large fleets full of civilian ships ordering a full retreat shortly after starting a battle
Really liking the escort behaviour shown off in them twitter posts, it's kinda like what I was getting at with my old formations suggestion but more organic. I'd still love a way to micromanage the ships escorting my own when that's the case, but this looks to be a definite step up.
I am curious to see how the escorts behave when the group is outnumbered and outgunned.
"task force members" (tied to the escorted ship's targeting/engagement behaviour so that they work together as a group to attack)This
...Can we queue upgrades from the get go, so that there's no need to go back to the colony if all you want is just a Star Fortress?
No - it's just not set up that way, so it'd be a significant pain to add UI-wise. You'd also be tying down a large number of credits for no benefit (as you also do with a queue), so I think a queue is part "useful feature" and part "it's there because you'd expect it to be there, but not necessarily because it's super useful".
- Added Prometheus Mk.II to Pather fleets
- Added Atlas Mk.II to pirate fleets
Really liking the escort behaviour shown off in them twitter posts, it's kinda like what I was getting at with my old formations suggestion but more organic. I'd still love a way to micromanage the ships escorting my own when that's the case, but this looks to be a definite step up.
I am curious to see how the escorts behave when the group is outnumbered and outgunned.
Now, adding different/selectable escort behaviour to ships (either as a command or during ship refit) to differentiate between true "escort ships" (ward off flankers, provide fighter/artillery support, etc) and "task force members" (tied to the escorted ship's targeting/engagement behaviour so that they work together as a group to attack) would be an amazing addition :P
Can we expect the autocombat option when fighting defense of survey ships/abandoned stations?
Maybe make the queue only 'hold' money for the next upcoming project? since build times are now much slower, when project 2 starts the player can get a colony intel warning "insufficient funds for next order" (if needed) and have 60+ days to fix it with a count down they can look whenever they want (and maybe a 'transfer funds' button to end warning when they feel they have enough extra money for their personal account.
I am very curious about these two ships, because until now Pirates and Pathers had a severe lack of capital ships bigger than the converted Colossus freighters.
In fact, will we be seeing more converted ships in the future?
And will there be a mechanism for turning things like Buffalo, Colossus and Tarsus freighters into Buffalo Mk. IIs, Colossus Mk. IIs/IIIs and Condors?
I don't think so; I'm not a fan of how autoresolve works out as far as what it does to the game. If, let's say, the goal was to prevent the player from having to fight those battles beyond a certain point, I would prefer a different solution that removes those battles entirely.
(I've got half a mind to remove autoresolved pursuits, either, since those get weird in terms of results/incentives/etc, but I don't think I'll touch it for the .1 release, in any case. It's not great but it's also fairly benign.)
I don't think so; I'm not a fan of how autoresolve works out as far as what it does to the game. If, let's say, the goal was to prevent the player from having to fight those battles beyond a certain point, I would prefer a different solution that removes those battles entirely.
Mm, what? So, you prefer players having easy and boring combats over and over again which only consume time? That's why I refrain from inspect survey ships at some point.
As for auto-resolving pursuit...
I think I have auto-resolved every fight that allowed it except maybe one or two in 0.9a. I do not bother with manual pursuits because 1) they take much more time to resolve than clicking for auto-resolve, 2) I risk casualties if I fight without auto-resolve, and 3) some enemies will escape if there are too many, and auto-resolve will probably score more kills.
The problems I can think of regarding auto-pursuit are:
* Anything works, even badly armed clunkers or civilians. I frequently deploy utility ships like Colossus 3 and Shepherds against everything, and they work.
* Because anything works, you only need one burn 11 frigate to enable pursuit against everything.
* Combined with limited fleet slots and peak performance in big battles, frigates for normal battling become obsolete after early game.
If officers and admins can be renamed, I like to rename my character too.
Is there any chance for a "metal sink" in the future if there isn't already? Being able to look at other markets to see where there's a demand is great but my metal stockpiles build up faster than i can fidn places to sell at a profit?
Are there any plans for more;
- planatary conditions ( more positive one's ) there's a lot of negative one's but few positive's?
- special items ( synchotron & nanoforge are great / cool ) will we see more we can use with our colonies?
- industries / structures - will we see more of these? & upgrades for each! ;D
- any plans to add more skills to fill out the skill tree's? any chance some sort of bonus will return for putting a point in the core stats instead of it just being a gateway to putting points into the next tier :-\ is bit underwealming to gain a level than not get anything from it if your using your point to access the next tier :-[
many thanks for keeping the updates / content coming!! ;D
Changes as of January 31, 2019
- Fixed issue where torpedoes and other AoE projectiles hitting a station's shield could damage other modules technically behind the shield.
Speaking of officers, can you make an option where they die when their ship explode? I hate it when they're the only survivor of the entire crew. Captains should go down with their ship, not flee in an escape pod.There's at least one mod that added that behavior. It was terrible. Ship AI is pretty good these days, but it still occasionally derps and gets itself killed for no good reason; that's only really tolerable when you can restore the ship after the fact. Good, high-level officers are not easy to acquire; losing one would be a reload-the-game situation for me.
As for everyone's "I'd just save scum"—that's a personal choice you're making that makes the game less challenging and interesting. If Alex were to balance around things that frustrated certain players enough to make them save scum, the whole game would suffer.I disagree with less challenging and interesting. I call it "saving time" and "anti-frustration". If it is faster for me to reload the game and try again than it is to recover from the loss, I reload. Same reasoning why players in roguelikes commit suicide and rebuild than try to recover a crippled character by grinding for rare items that can restore lost stats.
I disagree with the idea that save scumming inherently makes the game less challenging. The campaign layer of the game is certainly less challenging if you are save scumming, but the combat layer is not necessarily. In fact, you can argue that save scumming allows you to take much more difficult fights in the combat layer that you would never take without save scumming because there is no reason in the campaign layer to take risks.
Asking Alex then not to develop new features for players who want the intended experience because you'll save-scum is, therefore, a bit silly imo.
but you're also meant to take some consequences and setbacks on your path to victory.With reloading available, there is no need for that if I do not want to deal with it. I have no problem abusing reloads. However, given some of the anti-frustration features added in 0.9, I reload significantly less than in previous versions.
It's not a hotfix, and "until it's ready(tm)" :) (I do get that it's been a bit; I'd like to get it out asap, but it's just a lot of stuff.)
I wouldn't consider officer loss as a big setback, I think of them as a small stat boost for min-maxers. You don't really need them, in vanilla at least. I don't even recruit them anymore, because I find it unrealistic that they don't die with the other 200 crew of their ship. Just a big obsession.This is what really gets me. Min-maxers seem to be dominating every aspect of balance and design in this game, which really shouldn't be happening. Some things are meant to be better than other things, I mean there's a Buffalo Mk.II for that reason.
This is what really gets me. Min-maxers seem to be dominating every aspect of balance and design in this game, which really shouldn't be happening. Some things are meant to be better than other things, I mean there's a Buffalo Mk.II for that reason.The Buffalo Mk.II is unironically a really good missile-boat. With EMR it can carry up to 42 harpoons, 24 in the medium slot and 3x6 in the smalls, for 4 DP. It's the most cost-effective MRM platform in the game as long as you can keep it out of the front line.
This is what really gets me. Min-maxers seem to be dominating every aspect of balance and design in this game, which really shouldn't be happening. Some things are meant to be better than other things, I mean there's a Buffalo Mk.II for that reason.
Not putting Converted Hangar Talons on it feels like loadout design crime. And Med Sabot + 3x Swarmers is much more deadly loadout than Harpoon spam (at least when controlled properly, which AI usually fails at).This is what really gets me. Min-maxers seem to be dominating every aspect of balance and design in this game, which really shouldn't be happening. Some things are meant to be better than other things, I mean there's a Buffalo Mk.II for that reason.The Buffalo Mk.II is unironically a really good missile-boat. With EMR it can carry up to 42 harpoons, 24 in the medium slot and 3x6 in the smalls, for 4 DP. It's the most cost-effective MRM platform in the game as long as you can keep it out of the front line.
For me, a significant fraction of the "rare" stuff are either duplicate corrupted nanoforgesI did mention this before, but yeah, if you explore the sector (not even riding), you will end up with 30-40 corrupted nanoforges and synchrotron cores, and no real use for them. Selling them is pointless since money is not an issue once your colonies get running.
Changes as of January 31, 2019
- Maximum number of industries limited to a value based on colony size
- From 1 at size 3 to 4 at size 8 and above
I do think that perhaps nanoforge/synchrotron prices could drop a bit--since they are never available on the market that doesn't make them too accessible, and their value to a colony is already far more than their worth (particularly for nanoforges). Decreasing their price would drive down exploration profits quite a bit, which I think is a good thing.I'd just like to point out that this wouldn't do anything. From all the run-throughs I've had of 0.9, I have never sold a nanoforge or synchrotron and I've not once been short of money.
I'd just like to point out that this wouldn't do anything. From all the run-throughs I've had of 0.9, I have never sold a nanoforge or synchrotron and I've not once been short of money.^This.
Making them rarer though would help to stop them from being something that's a must-have once, and then becomes vendor trash.
And by rarer I mean low single figures of each in the entire sector, so it's never a 'given' the player will have them like it is now. (Where you can have over a dozen of each.)
Making them rarer though would help to stop them from being something that's a must-have once, and then becomes vendor trash.Too rare just makes them too annoying to find. You still need or want them whether you find one or not. Rather have too many than not enough. Too few, and you simply raid core worlds for it, which is what I did for half the games for pristine nanoforge, due to it being too rare. I rather find them early when I can make use of them after I build a colony, instead of too late after I effectively won the game. That is big problem with colony production now, the game is practically over by the time I can build what I want.
Are there any plans to bring back the old "social" market conditions (Large Refugee Population, Luddic Majority, Urbanized Polity, Organized Crime, etc.)?
Asking because they don't seem to be used in vanilla any longer, but some mods still have them, and I'm wondering if we should set an official modding guideline "these are deprecated, don't use them".
I found 4 pristine nano-forges exploring in one campaign, so it is definitely very rng
I have like 8 pristine nanoforges from cleaning up half of the galaxyI found 4 pristine nano-forges exploring in one campaign, so it is definitely very rng
On my stream yesterday and the day before I found 2 pristine nano forges. People were jumping all over my chat about it.
Is the plan for the 0.9.1 patch to be the last one before 1.0?
I apologize if this has already been asked, but do you plan on adding missions like the Red Planet in this update? As a lore nut, I loved that mission chain and I would love to see some more before the long wait for 1.0 or whatever comes after .9.1.
AI being tought that phased out ships cannot be hit and there is no need to waste limited ammo/cause friendly-fire, also fit enemy fighters?Firing at phased ships is good for suppression (provided weapon is not too ammo limited). I would not want to decloak inside a deadly stream of attacks if I can help it.
Will we get fix/workaround about overlapping debris fields? Mb simple dialogue menu to choose from?Further to that, can we make "permanent" debris fields disappear from the map once savlaged (or at least no longer treated as debris fields for salvage field overlap)?
I would like stable debris to disappear after they get looted enough. I had multiple permanent debris fields and nebula is one system that would be a good colony location. I get slowdown that I normally would not get in most other systems (that normally have less stuff), and it would get much worse if I built up two size 10 colonies there and had frequent fighting between my patrols and enemy invasions.Will we get fix/workaround about overlapping debris fields? Mb simple dialogue menu to choose from?Further to that, can we make "permanent" debris fields disappear from the map once savlaged (or at least no longer treated as debris fields for salvage field overlap)?
Further to that, can we make "permanent" debris fields disappear from the map once savlaged (or at least no longer treated as debris fields for salvage field overlap)?Tbh, why do we even need to interact with any debris field more than once?
Tbh, why do we even need to interact with any debris field more than once?That is even better. I get annoyed when I need to spam salvage six or seven times to suck every last rare drop dry. The only reason why I can think of why things as they are is if player has a time limit (deadly Remnant fleets closing in fast and you do not have enough time to salvage field multiple times) or to control crew and machinery loss (you lose less if you salvage less). Maybe better to have player spend a little time once, then loot everything.
It just feels like clicking and dialog options for the sake of it.
For maximum streamlining, it would be amazing if a debris field was salvaged in its entirety on the first interaction (with appropriate costs) giving you all of whatever was in said field, then removing it from the game entirely.
One or two people on Discord reported a bug where carriers (and possibly other ships) disregard rally/defend orders and stick close to the player flagship and/or other combat ships. Is this known/fixed?
(Example screenshot (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/187635036525166592/556106771685441548/unknown.png); the white circled ship died in the red circle)
EDIT: Couple more "ships treat orders as suggestions" screenshots from Friends19:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/187635036525166592/556108960927842324/screenshot287.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/187635036525166592/556109129928671242/screenshot260.png
Also escorting a retreating ship instead of defaulting to the defend order like I'd have expected: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/187635036525166592/556109305271812114/screenshot235.png
Unrelated: Is there a minimum value of cargo dropped before the cargo pods can distract pursuing enemies?
I know planting an Alpha Core on a station is a pretty large benefit overall to a station and currently the only way to add an "officer" to a station for the player. (Until the next release.) With the change you're proposing, have you ever considered letting the player manually assign an officer from his active fleet to a station?
My thoughts on this would be that doing so would freeze the officer's growth (so no leveling up) while freeing up an officer slot in the fleet. The officer would still count against the player for payroll.
Actually, maybe even increase the payroll cost by some percentage. Managing a station and overseeing/organizing its defense can't be easy. Said officer would essentially be a fleet commander at this point.
And speaking of officers: will there be a better way to manage them? I currently have to open the fleet screen and then click on an officer box to access the officer management screen when I want to review/level my officers. Or am I missing an interface function to directly go to that screen? (Though that screen doubles as the officer assignment screen, which I sometimes dislike as I can easily and readily re-assign officers to ships accidently while trying to manage them.)
I feel like the player character and officer management screens should be integrated somehow. (I'm kinda biased towards your typical party management menu in RPGs and the like, where the player character is just another, if unique, party member.)
I also feel like I should be able to pick an officer and assign a ship to him/her, not just pick a ship and assign an officer. (i.e. I should be able to either match an officer to a ship or a ship to an officer.) This point is something minor, but I find myself more often wanting to give an officer a certain ship rather than give a ship a certain officer.
And if you do that, then next up on the list is customizing station loadouts, and I just don't want to go there. Stations aren't balanced (or even really set up) around being player-fitted.I am seriously tempted to not learn the high-tech pack next time I play to force my high-tech station to use plasma cannon or tachyon lance (if I learn those weapons). High-tech pack does not have much I want that midline pack does not offer - too many good high-tech stuff is not in the pack, but limited to elite blueprints. In my first game, when tachyon lance was found before the high-tech pack, the station used lances and it was great. After I learned the high-tech pack, my station refused to use anything other than autopulse regardless of priority settings.
EDIT: Couple more "ships treat orders as suggestions" screenshots from Friends19:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/187635036525166592/556108960927842324/screenshot287.png
This happened to me too, my Cruiser did this.
I commanded to follow me, after a while he moved away.
I set up a colony in a low danger beacon system. Apparently having seen a couple REDACTED frigates 3 cycles back (which were of course immediately destroyed) means I have a permanent -10% accessibility penalty for a hostile faction? And possibly the same for the neighboring system that had one redacted frigate and not even a warning beacon...
RE: "Escort Behavior Overhauled" - one of the things I've noticed happening is that when I order a carrier to escort my flagship (usually a drover, with a frigate or destroyer flagship), the carrier does a reasonably good job of following me, but the "fighter escort" is nowhere to be seen... if anything, it feels like the carrier's fighters are actively avoiding me & my targets.
When I pick up officers past my officer limit, I can't see what their disposition is, makes it hard to know who I should dismiss.
Fleet log entries don't go away after you've discovered whatever they were about, making it hard to figure out which ones haven't been acted upon yet.
Oh yeah, one more... while the commodity "best places to buy" and "best places to sell" tooltips are fantastic, I really want one more piece of info: closest places to buy.
I set up a colony in a low danger beacon system. Apparently having seen a couple REDACTED frigates 3 cycles back (which were of course immediately destroyed) means I have a permanent -10% accessibility penalty for a hostile faction? And possibly the same for the neighboring system that had one redacted frigate and not even a warning beacon...
This isn't related to what is or isn't in the system: it's based on your relationship with other factions, INCLUDING Pirates and Luddic Path. If they're hostile to you, all of your colonies get an Accessibility penalty. (Presumably this is to communicate that off-screen & outside of playable gameplay, some trade fleets between your systems and elsewhere are attacked by said pirates/LP/any other factions you're hostile with.)
RE: "Escort Behavior Overhauled" - one of the things I've noticed happening is that when I order a carrier to escort my flagship (usually a drover, with a frigate or destroyer flagship), the carrier does a reasonably good job of following me, but the "fighter escort" is nowhere to be seen... if anything, it feels like the carrier's fighters are actively avoiding me & my targets.
Right - an escort order for a carrier doesn't mean it should escort the ship with its fighters.
I set up a colony in a low danger beacon system. Apparently having seen a couple REDACTED frigates 3 cycles back (which were of course immediately destroyed) means I have a permanent -10% accessibility penalty for a hostile faction? And possibly the same for the neighboring system that had one redacted frigate and not even a warning beacon...
This isn't related to what is or isn't in the system: it's based on your relationship with other factions, INCLUDING Pirates and Luddic Path. If they're hostile to you, all of your colonies get an Accessibility penalty. (Presumably this is to communicate that off-screen & outside of playable gameplay, some trade fleets between your systems and elsewhere are attacked by said pirates/LP/any other factions you're hostile with.)
Yeah, exactly. (Also, conceptually, it covers more stuff like intimidation, possible trouble with customs at other places if they trade with you, etc. There's just a wide range of potentially applicable in-fiction causes.)
This seems.... not particularly useful, since most carriers can't offer much of an escort by themselves. Is there a way to explicitly order fighter or longbow bomber escorts? (I also thought it explicitly said "fighter escort" somewhere but now I don't see that so I guess it was my imagination)
This seems.... not particularly useful, since most carriers can't offer much of an escort by themselves. Is there a way to explicitly order fighter or longbow bomber escorts? (I also thought it explicitly said "fighter escort" somewhere but now I don't see that so I guess it was my imagination)
No, there's no way to directly control fighters, aside from a "fighter strike" order, which is offensive and targeted at an enemy ship.
As far as a carrier being set to escort something, it's more about the carrier providing fire support and using the ship it's "escorting" as a shield; probably better to think of it as two ships teaming up rather than a carrier specifically defending the other ship.
This seems.... not particularly useful, since most carriers can't offer much of an escort by themselves. Is there a way to explicitly order fighter or longbow bomber escorts? (I also thought it explicitly said "fighter escort" somewhere but now I don't see that so I guess it was my imagination)
No, there's no way to directly control fighters, aside from a "fighter strike" order, which is offensive and targeted at an enemy ship.
As far as a carrier being set to escort something, it's more about the carrier providing fire support and using the ship it's "escorting" as a shield; probably better to think of it as two ships teaming up rather than a carrier specifically defending the other ship.
This happened to me too, my Cruiser did this.
I commanded to follow me, after a while he moved away.
I did fix a few related issues for .1, - hopefully it'll help.
Btw, welcome to the forum, to both of you!
Yeah, I get what you're expecting now, I'm just sayingyou're wrongI disagree. If I limit myself to cases where the carrier is the faster ship and the carrier itself can make a meaningful contribution without its fighters/bombers I get.... Legions escorting Atlas's? Maybe Moras escorting Enforcers? Seriously though, ordering carrier escorts works out how I want it to but only so long as the escortee is big enough for the fighters to autonomously consider it worthy of hanging out with. I'm fielding carriers because of their fighters, I want my orders to apply to their fighters at least as much as I want them to apply to the carrier, and they do - so long as it's not an escort order.
Re: First month's haul.
edit: is it just the first month that's insane? because month #2 was quite disappointing in comparison
All tech mines do have diminishing returns though, with the exception of their production in supplies, fuel, metals, etc. So you'll get less of the good, rare stuff each month until you'll want to abandon them.My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.
Also, although they produce and export metal, fuels, and suppliesThat's will be gone in 0.9.1
Regarding the patrol/pirate combat fleet spawn interval.... I'm currently going after a remote pirate base at least 20ly away from the core systems, and there were at least 6 "armada" sized pirate fleets in Hyperspace surrounding it. I'm not sure that reducing the spawn interval from 1 week to 2 weeks is going to be enough by itself...
Edit: took our 3 or 4 before running out of CR, hiding in an asteroid belt to recover...
(https://i.imgur.com/BBMw9Rm.png)
I think there are 13 fleets total there.
Will pirates be more supported in next update? Pirate commissions / prevent pirates from reducing stability when aligned with them? Have pirate friendly bounties?
Definitely not in the next update, and, hmm, probably not in general. Piracy by the player is another question - but being friendly with the pirate faction is tricky. A lot of stuff in the game assumes you're hostile with them and some things would break down if that assumption is broken. So if anything, things might go more in a "reputation with pirates always locked to -50" direction.
You probably found some outgoing or incoming raiding fleets meeting there when you arrived. Next time, when so much is going on and your fleet has not enough punch, switch off the transponder and wait in the fringe for some days. Raiding fleets don't follow your fleet too long unless you got the transponder telling them who you are.
There's a bug (fixed for .1) where the deserter bounties - the ones that are supposed to be the tough ones - use pirate-available weapons and fighters, instead of drawing from their original faction's sets. This makes them woefully under-gunned; probably what you're experiencing.I'm going through this a bit, but that's not the main thing.
All tech mines do have diminishing returns though, with the exception of their production in supplies, fuel, metals, etc. So you'll get less of the good, rare stuff each month until you'll want to abandon them.My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.QuoteAlso, although they produce and export metal, fuels, and suppliesThat's will be gone in 0.9.1
So, I have been put the game aside for two months since the patch notes came out and the Starsector itch has become unbearable, is there a chance for an ETA?
I'm going through this a bit, but that's not the main thing.
The main thing is that the fleets of ships are small, I own capital ships and the bounties that appear are with well inferior ships.
Few ships and all are small. Rarely has one capital ship, but only one.
yep....huge senseless nerf...
Ill just insert my own code again.....Alex was too nerf happy this update so ill fix it myself.
Might be because you haven't done many bounties yet and so they're weaker? Hard to say, though. Could also be mod-related if this isn't vanilla.
My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.Blueprints do replicate, actually; it's hullmod specifications that get filtered out if you already know them.
So I think I'm something like 10 for 10 "steady" pod officers. Are they supposed to always be steady?
Would be nice if Loadout 3 OP rounded up/nearest/even so tugs could get a 6th OP for a second hull mod.
Is there a minimum time before missions are withdrawn? There have been a few times now I've gone to look at a new mission notification and it's already withdrawn.
So I think I'm something like 10 for 10 "steady" pod officers. Are they supposed to always be steady?
Is there a minimum time before missions are withdrawn? There have been a few times now I've gone to look at a new mission notification and it's already withdrawn.
No, though [personal opinion] Steady really is probably the best roll, but Aggressive and even Reckless can have their usages in rushers and/or phase ships, and Cautious can be useful for missile or "artillery" ships [/personal opinion]
But no, they are not, and I have seen many officers of all personalities. You might wanna buy a lottery ticket with your luck.
My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.Blueprints do replicate, actually; it's hullmod specifications that get filtered out if you already know them.
False. I have gotten duplicates of known blueprints from ruins, both exploration and tech-mining. Also, I looked at the code, and it's just hullmods that have duplicates filtered out. (And even then, only from exploration sources; you can get duplicate hull-mod specs off of defeated enemy fleets, for example.)My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.Blueprints do replicate, actually; it's hullmod specifications that get filtered out if you already know them.
It's both - ruins won't give duplicate (known) blueprints or hull mods. And since you don't get to reroll the duplicate blueprints or anything, it does indeed mean the quality & value of ruins finds greatly diminishes as a game advances.
There's a bug (fixed for .1) where the deserter bounties - the ones that are supposed to be the tough ones - use pirate-available weapons and fighters, instead of drawing from their original faction's sets. This makes them woefully under-gunned; probably what you're experiencing.
I have tried this in a few campaigns and can't seem to get mining blueprint dupicates. It's always the same: early game tech mines rain blueprints from any planet. Late game I could simultaneously colonise 3-4 pristine extensive/vast ruins and not have a single blueprint in half a year or more.False. I have gotten duplicates of known blueprints from ruins, both exploration and tech-mining. Also, I looked at the code, and it's just hullmods that have duplicates filtered out. (And even then, only from exploration sources; you can get duplicate hull-mod specs off of defeated enemy fleets, for example.)My issue is more that late game even a fresh colony will have bad loot, as blueprints don't replicate so instead the ruins get nothing.Blueprints do replicate, actually; it's hullmod specifications that get filtered out if you already know them.
It's both - ruins won't give duplicate (known) blueprints or hull mods. And since you don't get to reroll the duplicate blueprints or anything, it does indeed mean the quality & value of ruins finds greatly diminishes as a game advances.
False. I have gotten duplicates of known blueprints from ruins, both exploration and tech-mining. Also, I looked at the code, and it's just hullmods that have duplicates filtered out. (And even then, only from exploration sources; you can get duplicate hull-mod specs off of defeated enemy fleets, for example.)
Alex, this is in reply to your Twitter post since I have no Twitter
As someone that has played SS on three laptops, using their trackpads, through out the years, I can say that as long as the trackpad has decent palm protection/ detection and dedicated buttons, you can play SS with it. I only had to get a mouse to play SS with my newest laptop due to the fact that it has neither of those and is similar to the (cr)apple one button trackpad design
No problem! One note though is that I played with such low end machines that my average FPS was around 15 to 30. SS feels SOOO much different between 30 and 60! noAlex, this is in reply to your Twitter post since I have no Twitter
As someone that has played SS on three laptops, using their trackpads, through out the years, I can say that as long as the trackpad has decent palm protection/ detection and dedicated buttons, you can play SS with it. I only had to get a mouse to play SS with my newest laptop due to the fact that it has neither of those and is similar to the (cr)apple one button trackpad design
Thank you! Going to point them to this.
The Legion XIV's are populated in constellations, so yes they are very clustered! Other things are populated in regions as well...Has anyone else noticed that if you investigate any of the Legion XIVs but don't choose to recover it immediately and leave it in place for later, when you come back to pick it up the option to recover it is no longer available and you have no choice but to break it for parts.
Any ETA on when the .1 release will roll around? Picked up the game again recently and stuff like this (spoilers) (https://imgur.com/a/u94mGpJ) keeps ruining my fun.
Has anyone else noticed that if you investigate any of the Legion XIVs but don't choose to recover it immediately and leave it in place for later, when you come back to pick it up the option to recover it is no longer available and you have no choice but to break it for parts.
I'm not sure if this is just general wreck recovery logic, or something specific to the Legions as I've never noticed this behaviour previously.
Granted, I've never been in a position to want to 'leave a wreck for later' before as they are usually all drifting and need a snap decision before they vanish anyway.
@ Senentis: Was your ship count maxed at the fleet cap when you came back for the Legion? Being at the fleet cap means you automatically skip recovery and go straight to loot or leave.
Quick question (more appropriate for 0.9, but I completely missed that in those patch notes until I re-read it a few days ago): If transponder-off black market trade does not raise suspicion level at all (like it used to in 0.8 ), does this mean patrols will not demand custom scans (after I leave then return to market at a later time with transponder on)?
Was your ship count maxed at the fleet cap when you came back for the Legion?I changed the fleet cap so it was less awkward playing with hobo junkfleets.
QuoteWas your ship count maxed at the fleet cap when you came back for the Legion?I changed the fleet cap so it was less awkward playing with hobo junkfleets.
> "maxShipsInFleet":50, #30
Doesn't appear to affect salvaging in general up to the new limit, but that Legion definitely allowed me to attempt recovery the first time but not the second.
(And not all of the Legion XIVs appear to be recoverable anyway, as some go directly to scrap upon investigation like any other derelict.)
Hey Alex, I just noticed your latest tweet and figured I'd ask: are you planning on documenting the changes to ship and industry prices in the patch notes? It would help other modders balance their stuff better so it falls in line better with vanilla
Added to settings.json:
"industryBuildCostMult":5,
"industryUpkeepMult":1,
"industryIncomeMult":1,
Adjusted ship credit costs
For "standard" ships, the progression was something like 10k - 20k - 50k - 250k based on size
Now it's around 10k - 40k -120k - 350k
Phase ships cost as if one size higher
Frigates are largely, but not entirely, unaffected
Lots of exceptions - civilian ships, light destroyers/cruisers, etc can have a significantly lower cost
Heavy Industry: custom production increased to 25k per S&W unit (was: 20k)
Heavy Industry: custom production increased to 25k per S&W unit (was: 20k)This looks nice, although I guess it offsets the extra effort or time required to increase population. Currently, I want heavy industries (with nanoforges) on all of my colonies so I can build a capital or lots of stuff in a month.
A lot of ships in mods should be viewed as "combat carrier", like the Odyssey in vanilla. However, in 0.9 we often see this kind of ships moving without 0-flux boost since they have wings. Would there be some tweaking for these ships?
And I notice that in ship_data.csv Odyssey have no tags, but Legion have "COMBAT, CARRIER", what's the difference between them?
Another issue of carriers. 4 ships' relavant position is like this:A B C Din which A and D is two enemy ships that almost overload, and B and C is two carriers of the player. However, B would attack D, C would attack A, seemingly unreasonable. I wonder if there is any improvements for this in 0.91.
Game will throw an exception on load if a faction refers to missing ships/weapons/hullmods/fighters/industries
Is there any way to work around this? I have a mod faction that lists a couple hulls by name from another mod, which currently is handled in a robust enough way that it just doesn't spawn those ships when the other mod isn't active, and does when they are.
Hammerhead: increased supply cost to deploy and per month to 10 (was: 8)
Is there any way to work around this? I have a mod faction that lists a couple hulls by name from another mod, which currently is handled in a robust enough way that it just doesn't spawn those ships when the other mod isn't active, and does when they are.
Pity about the water worlds losing farming, I really liked the alternate graphics for the industry!
Reduced upkeep and reducing upkeep with in faction supplies:
Reduced base upkeep is going to make higher hazard worlds more viable as sources for raw materials, but on the other hand, that same reduced upkeep means that on a low hazard world, there is much less incentive to get the raw materials in the first place. On the one hand, the empire builder in me loves to be able to make a supply web, but on the other hand we only get so many colonies and the financial incentives of vertical integration seem low.
System-activated ship engines are no longer affected by low-CR malfunctions
It affects the AI and some other stuff such as fleet doctrines/fleet compositions.
I think you could just make the faction not know the hulls by default, and add them to faction's known ships in onNewGame()/onGameLoad() if the other mod is detected?Is there any way to work around this? I have a mod faction that lists a couple hulls by name from another mod, which currently is handled in a robust enough way that it just doesn't spawn those ships when the other mod isn't active, and does when they are.
There isn't, no - sorry! This doesn't seem like a good idea, though. If a missing ship ID is present in a faction's "known ships", for example, it's not just your code that has to be robust in handling this, but all of vanilla and every single other mod that might conceivably do something based on what ships a faction knows. It's a "random" crash waiting to happen.
If you want to do this, I think a more robust way to do it would be to manually add those ships (and remove some other ships to compensate?) to whatever fleets you want via a script (say, in a "reportFleetSpawned(CampaignFleetAPI fleet)" method, or in some other way after it spawns.)
Luddic Path Cells: incidents have a chance to fail depending on the stability of the colony targeted
Changes as of April 25, 2019
Added ambient sounds to dockside bars
Can change player's name in character screen by clicking on it
Oh no, my water world isn't going to be able to feed a hundred quintillion people now!?
Well I'm disappointed with my favourite ships strongest aspect being nerfed, but my end-game fleets always involve lots of Apogees, as their shield tanking is legendary, so I have been expecting a nerf to this ship since it's 0.9a cost reduction (The low fuel usage, excellent cargo and fuel capacity on top of it's Surveying suite make it very cheap for it's deployment costs).
QuoteSystem-activated ship engines are no longer affected by low-CR malfunctions
Are they still affected by the engine malfunction chance provided by, say, Ill-Advised Modications?
And I notice that in ship_data.csv Odyssey have no tags, but Legion have "COMBAT, CARRIER", what's the difference between them?It affects the AI and some other stuff such as fleet doctrines/fleet compositions.
Could you give a little explanation about the effect on AI?
The good stuff! Very happy about AI cores becoming less rare, raiding changes, hyperspace storm changes, removal of Q/W hotkeys (way too many newcomers got stuck on this), emphasized pather hail, auto navigation not targeting stars anymore. Nerfed growth incentives will make passive bonuses more attractive. Good to see autofit and EW/CM fixes in particular.
Hazard rating was so much of an issue that now it's made not only much weaker, but can also be made 85% redundant (25% from beta, 50% from demand, 10% from industry planning). Maybe 70% redundant if we go for multiplication instead of subtraction.
The complaint about being unable to buy ships doesn't come from the fact that people were overloaded with hotkeys, but form the fact that they don't use hotkeys at all and used different options to access ship market and commodities market.
Chaingun is now 600 DPS for 10 OP (albeit only 450 range)?
This is going to look fairly weird (out-DPSing probably three quarters of large weapons). But the actual change to gameplay probably isn't going to be exceptional I guess.
I think you could just make the faction not know the hulls by default, and add them to faction's known ships in onNewGame()/onGameLoad() if the other mod is detected?Is there any way to work around this? I have a mod faction that lists a couple hulls by name from another mod, which currently is handled in a robust enough way that it just doesn't spawn those ships when the other mod isn't active, and does when they are.
There isn't, no - sorry! This doesn't seem like a good idea, though. If a missing ship ID is present in a faction's "known ships", for example, it's not just your code that has to be robust in handling this, but all of vanilla and every single other mod that might conceivably do something based on what ships a faction knows. It's a "random" crash waiting to happen.
If you want to do this, I think a more robust way to do it would be to manually add those ships (and remove some other ships to compensate?) to whatever fleets you want via a script (say, in a "reportFleetSpawned(CampaignFleetAPI fleet)" method, or in some other way after it spawns.)
BTW: Is it intentional that PirateBaseIntel.affectsMarket() doesn't check if the market is hostile to pirates (unlike various other bits of pirate base and pirate raid logic)?
This has a couple of significant effects:
- Pirate Activity condition is also applied to markets of factions not hostile to pirates
- Pirate base can target a system with no valid raid targets (causing pirate activity), although it won't create the raid intel in that case
So what would the chances of that panning out be? Would a stability 10 colony be mostly safe from Pather attempts at sabotage?
Good changes all around. Looking forward to getting back in again. I really hope the colony balancing is effective. With the current version it felt so wonky that I kinda stopped having fun with colonies.
That's nice so I can give myself a title that is appropriate for my current status. It felt always strange starting as an admiral etc
QuoteSystem-activated ship engines are no longer affected by low-CR malfunctions
Are they still affected by the engine malfunction chance provided by, say, Ill-Advised Modications?
Good question - double-checked and they shouldn't be.
Yes, it's absolutely intentional. Otherwise the player is really incentivized to be friendly with pirates. Bounties, bases to destroy, random pirate fleets to fight are all a big part of the game and getting such a bonus from being friendly with pirates would really go against that and basically force the player to avoid fun stuff to be optimal.IMO pirate runs are amazing fun. It takes a lot of effort to become and stay friendly with pirates, but the payoff is that you get to prey on everyone else! When you're law abiding, there are very few juicy targets, faction hostilities tend to be minor or massive engagements with little in-between, but being enemies with civilization? Targets of opportunity galore! The dynamic of hiding from system authority between skirmishes is also a top notch gameplay that really shows off the fleet layer. The most fun starts I have are pirate starts, and I work to keep the rest of the factions hostile. Please don't bend the rules against pirates (or any other playstyle) just because it incentivizes more challenging gameplay. Nobody going pirate expects it to be easy, it'd just be nicer if it worked well.
A 50% boost to both DPS and armor penetration, with no increase in flux cost? Yeah, that'll push the assault chaingun right past useful and straight into scary. Still niche, mind you, due to the low range and high flux cost - but scary when it can actually be brought to bear.Chaingun is now 600 DPS for 10 OP (albeit only 450 range)?
This is going to look fairly weird (out-DPSing probably three quarters of large weapons). But the actual change to gameplay probably isn't going to be exceptional I guess.
I guess it might, but, yeah, as we both well know, DPS isn't the end-all :) If anything, I'm not sure if this is enough to make it useful or not - curious to see how that goes.
I'm hoping that having colonies with fewer slots will give them more of an identity. In almost all popular scifi you have the occasional "jack of all trades" world, but very often they're specialized and that's what gives them flavor. Having all of my colonies be "obscene money makers" with mild differences and different stations didn't make them feel special.
IMO pirate runs are amazing fun. It takes a lot of effort to become and stay friendly with pirates, but the payoff is that you get to prey on everyone else! When you're law abiding, there are very few juicy targets, faction hostilities tend to be minor or massive engagements with little in-between, but being enemies with civilization? Targets of opportunity galore! The dynamic of hiding from system authority between skirmishes is also a top notch gameplay that really shows off the fleet layer. The most fun starts I have are pirate starts, and I work to keep the rest of the factions hostile. Please don't bend the rules against pirates (or any other playstyle) just because it incentivizes more challenging gameplay. Nobody going pirate expects it to be easy, it'd just be nicer if it worked well.
Anyway, the suggestion: can the planetary interface support more than the vanilla number of industries? When colonies were released there was an explosion of creative ideas for building chains with deep industry and interactions, but they quickly hit the twelve-industry wall. Would it be possible to expose that limit and add a scrollbar when the UI limit is exceeded? There's so much potential there.
A 50% boost to both DPS and armor penetration, with no increase in flux cost? Yeah, that'll push the assault chaingun right past useful and straight into scary. Still niche, mind you, due to the low range and high flux cost - but scary when it can actually be brought to bear.
Things I like to see:
1) Tac bombing (but not sat bombing) does not add pollution to habitable planets. That said, most core worlds are not as habitable as the choice worlds players tend to get.
2) Sat bombing a non-indie world does not make independents angry. (I could not care less if major factions get angry when I want to kill the core worlds, but indies being angry is an annoyance.) Just means that stealth raid spaceport and wait until target decivilizes is the way to go to kill worlds. But... it is satisfying to nuke 'em when it is time to destroy the enemy. It is the game rewards boring but practical ways (stealth spaceport headshot) to kill a world.
I'm more interested in the Biospecimens commodity icon and what it portends. Selling those to... greenish... trader types has worked out swimmingly for intrepid space-captains before, after all.
I'm more interested in the Biospecimens commodity icon and what it portends. Selling those to... greenish... trader types has worked out swimmingly for intrepid space-captains before, after all.
<checks> ... apparently, that's been in since 2014 and I did not know about the icon existing.
Oh, and its unfortunate that the fleet deployment and command transfer rework didn't make into the patch yet, because I feel like that this broke the game for many new players.
Hmm? I actually don't know what you mean.
>Improved ship-to-ship pursuit intercept logic over long distances For example side-deployed ships should be more capable of intercepting fleeing enemies
No more ordering them ahead? That's neat. I guess ships have an innate sense of the general vector of ships that go into fog of war now? Not just instantly forgetting about them?
Also i see a lot of autoresolve fixes, does that also cover autoresolving against small/single-ship REDACTED forces?
Hmm? I actually don't know what you mean.
- Flagship selection at the deployment screen instead of the engagement dialogue
- Right click for flagship selection, left click for deployment
- Forced flagship deployment (AI can still be toggled)
- Player controlled phased command shuttle after flagship destruction for self-explanatory command transfer and fun solution for flawed/broken video feed feature
Those things would fix a lot of extremely weird game states which evidently confuse tons of people (observable on youtube, etc.).
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15105.0
Hello I like this game:
1. Add a tooltip explaining how item management works: (shift, ctrl, to move different amounts of items)
2. Add a new shortcut key for moving entire inventory (for example, when moving all weapons you have stored from one station into your cargo hold for transport to another station)
3. Add a way to toggle speed up time, rather than just hold shift.
4. Add a way to toggle "White-out" lens flare explosions (hurts my eyes)
5. EDIT In the character level up screen, please add a tip listing the max number of levels (is it 40? or 50?) This helps my build planning.
So i absolutely love this game but even the most marginal colony absolutely breaks the economy.
Have you thought about introducing upkeep costs for defense fleets?
Or being able to use Alpha cores as officers of your fleet?
:-XConsidering it, then? Interesting. I'd like to see being able to use items as officers or crew. The former for some AI-centric mods and some skill abuse, the latter to maybe have different factions offer different crew that's good at manning different ships, so that there's some reason to buddy up with any given faction.
In .1, a "Military Base" will take up an "industry" slot (limited to 1-4 or so based on colony size, does not limit structures like spaceports or orbital stations), so that's an additional opportunity cost for having defense fleets - like extra upkeep, in a sense.
I have thought about upkeep costs for fleets, but I think where that'll really work is for offensive operations. At least, that's what I'd like to to try out in the future - fairly obscene costs for getting your military fleets to other systems.
Yeah but the upkeep of the military base is tiny in comparison to what it does. It should be a lot bigger, at least on higher levels.
Ah! In that case, yes - it's set up like this:
"maxIndustries":[1,1,1,2,3,3,4,4,4,4],
With the index in the array (well, index + 1) being the colony size.
If you deploy as usual, order a mass retreat and then deploy again, do you lose any loot? If during the retreat the last ship on the battlefield dies, does it count the whole battle as lost, somehow? I use redeployment pretty liberally and have no issues with it, but other people don't share my experiences and now I'm not sure anymore if it's as good of a strategy as I thought.
If I recall correctly, Alex did fix the lost loot from retreat to reengage bug in 0.9 so long as you win, but there's still an issue with losing the experience gain you would've gotten.It didn't look unusually small, so that's good to confirm. Perhaps the other person was still speaking from their older experience.
but all of the enemies self-destruct before fade-to-black and encounter menu?Nothing happens to enemies, they just stay there. If anything, I was curious what happens if your temporarily only ship on the field (the one that didn't retreat yet, after all others did) gets destroyed, since I was told that this may result in a situation where battle is counted as a loss. I never experienced this, but I'm asking to confirm if it's possible.
Yes! New development patch notes!
And, do you have any ideas about new forum's style? I mean, default styles couldn't show "this is starsector forum", why not add some logo on the top of the website?such as replacing the logo of "simplemachines forum"
Awesome!
It is little things like this and how easy it is to mod SS that makes it such a great game in my eyes!
I fully agree with Midnight Kitsune. The more things we can modify without the need to be a rocket scientist, the better.
It makes this sandbox game truly, euh, sandboxy. Thanks for doing just that!
It didn't look unusually small, so that's good to confirm. Perhaps the other person was still speaking from their older experience.
Nothing happens to enemies, they just stay there. If anything, I was curious what happens if your temporarily only ship on the field (the one that didn't retreat yet, after all others did) gets destroyed, since I was told that this may result in a situation where battle is counted as a loss. I never experienced this, but I'm asking to confirm if it's possible.
Yes! New development patch notes!
And, do you have any ideas about new forum's style? I mean, default styles couldn't show "this is starsector forum", why not add some logo on the top of the website?such as replacing the logo of "simplemachines forum"
Hmm, yeah, I ought to look at that at some point... it would involve finding someone reliable/qualified/etc to do the work of creating a new theme, and it's more time on my end, so it's not exactly trivial.
If we can cast aside the whole "where a dev should spend time&resources" discussion, I'd like to throw in that I actually really like your forum's look. It kinda makes me feel "at home", safe and sound, perhaps a bit nostalgic.
Seeing how over-designed many forums (and websites in general) are nowadays, that's nice. Flashyness gets old very quickly.
I Love the game so far, it's fantastic.
I was wondering if there was a plan to make a borderless window mode? Full screen doesn't really work for my monitor as far as I know, always have to use windowed.
Also I agree that the early part of the game is usually the more fun part. Sooner or later, towards the endgame it feels as if you get too powerful and there isn't a fleet that can take you on, is there any plan to make the endgame a bit more challenging?
Two-stage missiles that target a ship that gets phased go into the second "burn" phase permanentlyI'm quite confused about this line. Does it mean that if I fire a sabot toward a Doom class, it will immediately get accelerated and go into the high speed stage?
Fixed issue where stat changes from terrain etc would not show up on the ship stat tooltips for non-player fleetsEmmmm...Could you give an example of this situation?
If we can cast aside the whole "where a dev should spend time&resources" discussion, I'd like to throw in that I actually really like your forum's look. It kinda makes me feel "at home", safe and sound, perhaps a bit nostalgic.
Seeing how over-designed many forums (and websites in general) are nowadays, that's nice. Flashyness gets old very quickly.
So it's not just me :) I actually like this look, too - I think you put it really well, or at least that resonates with me.
Anything new certainly wouldn't be flashy - just slightly more themed in a hopefully understated way - and you'd still be able to use this theme if you wanted. So - even if I get around to this, not to worry!
Oh Alex, completely without context, I want to mention that I'm back home from vacation in a few hours. And close to my PC again. You know. Just saying. In case you were waiting for that to happen. :)
what is holding back the released candidates? How come we often get to RC 6 or RC 10 before we see a release?
what is holding back the released candidates? How come we often get to RC 6 or RC 10 before we see a release?
Generally speaking, more testing (of an actual, properly installed version rather than a dev one launched from the dev environment) and bugs found/fixed.
Combat carriers outfitted with only PD or missile weapons will no longer try to fight at close range
Further, removed COMBAT tag from the Drover and the Heron
You could also remove the weapons from the carriers, and they will behave like non-combat ships.
How is this update looking to be save compatible?
How is this update looking to be save compatible?
I guess the changes to map generation wont take effect unless its a new game?
Did we used to have or is it a possibility to have faction specific starts for the future? IE - Start with small ship or mini-fleet for hedgemony, tri-tach, pirate etc Inc max rep with that specific faction?
I guess the seeds still output the same sectors. Of course, cannot rely on abandoning colonies to remove Decivilized due to that getting fixed.
Edit: Also that Atlas Mk.II supply cost :o
Edit2: Oh wait, you switched the Atlas and its Mk.IIs supply costs, didn't you ;D
Damnit Alex! Of COURSE you release when I have a wrist injury! >.<
Downloaded! I have a lull between distractions to try this.
Blog post typo: "Added abmient sound track"
Hot take: increased ship prices for larger ships are making me value the D mod destroyers and cruisers I can recover a lot more, and I'm using them in the early game. Finished the tutorial with an extra heavily D modded Hammerhead and a medium D mod Venture recovered from pirates: still using them as buying ships is too expensive, and its a nice experience to need to factor in what they can and cannot bring to the table. The upshot of valuing these ships more, and then using them, has been an even faster early game progression that was absolutely fraught with danger! (Destroyed a 140k station + pirate fleet right out of finishing the corvus tutorial, and it was a hell of a battle. And now that ships cost more, I still can't really afford cruisers yet, so the struggle isn't over! :) )
So far so good!
Downloaded!
Time to start a new vanilla campaign - looking forward to test the new colony progression, the combat changes, and new pirate Shrike, and .. and .. and ... :D
Congratulations on the new release!
Finally! Is it stable or is 9.2 planned?
Yay! Congrats, Alex :)
Congratulations on the release, Alex!
Browsed the codex and noticed that Atlas 2 has a cost of 10. The Pather's tanker costs 32.
Noticed that Industrial Planning 3 increases income by 10% instead of 30%.
Edit: Also that Atlas Mk.II supply cost :o
Edit2: Oh wait, you switched the Atlas and its Mk.IIs supply costs, didn't you ;D
Changes as of January 31, 2019
Miscellaneous:
- Can now left-click outside the hullmod picker dialog to dismiss it
Changes as of January 31, 2019
Ship AI:
- Fixed several issues that could cause a ship with front shields to turn slightly away from the target, seemingly without a reason
Hi Alex!
It seems that CombatEngineLayers.JUST_BELOW_WIDGETS layer is still below a bunch of really important world-space non-widget assets, like particles (from explosions, hits, and the like). It seems like the usual renderInWorldSpace() method renders above such things, but also above quite a few UI elements, while a layered renderer at JUST_BELOW_WIDGETS is indeed below those unwanted UI elements, but also below particles of any sort.
This is problematic for the distortion shader, since I have to choose between not distorting particles (really problematic for a lot of reasons) or distorting a significant subset of UI elements.
Great update, as a whole, though!
I also didn't see it in the patch notes anywhere, but faction hullmods are now 0-cost hullmods and can be removed. This is interesting. They do have a small downside, but removing these never occured to me.
The increased maintenance is a oof, but on the other hand it reduces combat costs for no loss in combat performance. So you break even if you fight 5 times per month... (which doesn't happen that regularly, but still).I bought two Dominators with two D-mods each, only one had IM. 50 supplies/month looks super bad, but when in my fleet, both had the exact same supply consumption.
With the increased ship costs, the increased maintenance doesn't matter as much. I just found an almost pristine Hammerhead - only had increased maintenance. As it will take 42 months until the cost of it matches what it would take to buy a Hammerhead right now, I'm fine with it.
14th Battlegroup hullmod is not hardwired anymore. It shows up as removable on my Enforcer, with a cost of 0. Once I remove it, I can't get it back since it's not on the list. However, it's an old 0.9 save.
Huh, this is odd. Now the hullmod is hardwired as it's supposed to be. I saved several times in between noticing this and now.
Also, still a thing:
Hi Alex!
It seems that CombatEngineLayers.JUST_BELOW_WIDGETS layer is still below a bunch of really important world-space non-widget assets, like particles (from explosions, hits, and the like). It seems like the usual renderInWorldSpace() method renders above such things, but also above quite a few UI elements, while a layered renderer at JUST_BELOW_WIDGETS is indeed below those unwanted UI elements, but also below particles of any sort.
This is problematic for the distortion shader, since I have to choose between not distorting particles (really problematic for a lot of reasons) or distorting a significant subset of UI elements.
Great update, as a whole, though!
Thank you for letting me know - going to take a look!
Looking good so far.
Only 4 industries max, eh? Ouch. :o (I understand why it was changed though.)
Found/recovered ships are much more valuable,Weren't they always usable? Zombie fleets were and are a thing after all.
More feedback from 1 playthrough: Early game lasts a lot longer now, which is great. Found/recovered ships are much more valuable, which is great. I have only done a few bounties when they are convenient (IE in the area I'm exploring) but I have killed a good number of pirate stations at this point. I suspect I need to go around killing a few of the lower level bounties in order to bump them up to the difficulty/reward levels that are sufficient, but thats ok.
I've just started my first colony this playthrough, and its much more satisfying than before. Because I can't just plop down all the industries I want I'm planning out what will go on which colony, and trying to be very careful not to attract faction attention yet (got a low hazard gas giant, rich farm terran, and ultrarich rare ore barren in the same system!). I really want setting up an integrated supply chain to be worth it! :D
Combat AI: Things are quite smooth and the AI is playing well. Carrier AI seems fixed based on my tutorial condor's behavior, which is great! (Also, did you tweak bomber AI? The piranhas are actually working a little!) The new escort behavior is very very nice, and makes the enemy AI seem more competent. Remnants in particular have gone up another notch in difficulty because of it, as its no longer nearly so easy to pick off their frigates with destroyers.
One question: I found a lone Legion XIV (non-recoverable, sadly) and none else in its constellation... has that clustering been removed? Its probably a good call, as finding a recoverable 3 would have catapulted me immensely.
Found/recovered ships are much more valuable,Weren't they always usable? Zombie fleets were and are a thing after all.
Culann is run by an alpha core, at least according to Luddic Path. Alpha core gives +10 to pather interest. (Did not know that before.) The administrator appears to be a human with all three skills, but Pathers say it is run by AI core.
Culann is run by an alpha core, at least according to Luddic Path. Alpha core gives +10 to pather interest. (Did not know that before.) The administrator appears to be a human with all three skills, but Pathers say it is run by AI core.Is it calling itself "Second Vegan" for you too? Of course it's vegan, it can't eat, but that just makes me wonder where the First Vegan is.
Little thing but the options menu at planets is listing:
>> (dev) dump memory
>> (dev) options
// the options are greyed out...which is best because I'm just like that Mangalore soldier in Fifth Element who sees the red button on their new rifle...and MUST PUSH IT.
edit: nope, they are active because I just had to push one.
Buffalo2 and Shrike don't appear to have gotten price revisions. They seem incredibly cheap for destroyers, comparable more to frigates.Alex did say there were a lot of exceptions. The Buffalo Mk.II feels like one of them, though the Shirke doesn't.
Looking good so far.
Only 4 industries max, eh? Ouch. :o (I understand why it was changed though.)
Yeah! Kind of has to be a low-ish max limit, otherwise a high colony size still means "get everything"...
I don't mind the pirates, since you can get spacers drunk to find them. But I don't really like the pathers' unavoidable sneak attacks combined with their base(s) being a needle in a haystack.Pathers get a similar bar event to the pirates now. It just costs you something other than time.
I'm not sure if this is due to randomized numbers, but it appears that the number of clouds in hyperspace have been toned down?
The map I created in 0.9.1a is much, much more traversable than the one I created in 0.9a. I am VERY grateful for this.
Pathers get a similar bar event to the pirates now. It just costs you something other than time.Ah, thanks! That's good to hear.
Yep, that's a very intentional change!And a very welcome one! Getting to other places is less of a chore now. :)
- Commerce counts towards industry cap. This is a significant nerf to a structure of already questionable utility; it just adds +1 stability (when you can hit the cap of 10 from other sources quite easily anyway), and adds some convenience for selling off vendor trash.Back in 0.9, Commerce was only useful for the bugs involving infinite money and commodities. Maybe upkeep is low enough now, but it was not in 0.9 (if not abusing bugs). It needs some additional benefit to be worth using if it takes an industry slot.
If it's to stay an industry, perhaps it could generate other benefits. I think a credit income based on the market's trade volume (all commodities) would be nice and fitting.
Do these bases progress, anyway? Would catching a Pather base early allow me to kill it at a lower tier? Because that could be a decent incentive to deal with stuff in a timely fashion.That's how it worked previously, I wouldn't expect that to change. More ring sections get added to the station as time passes.
Punitive expeditions:
Will result in a 5-point reputation penalty when/if the expedition fails
No reputation penalty for fighting the expedition's fleets
Buffalo2 and Shrike don't appear to have gotten price revisions. They seem incredibly cheap for destroyers, comparable more to frigates.
- New escort order is certainly living up to its promise from the previews.
- So the named lore characters appear ingame now, cool! Shame they don't seem to have any special quests or dialogue. Would that be added in a future version?
- Commerce counts towards industry cap. This is a significant nerf to a structure of already questionable utility; it just adds +1 stability (when you can hit the cap of 10 from other sources quite easily anyway), and adds some convenience for selling off vendor trash.
If it's to stay an industry, perhaps it could generate other benefits. I think a credit income based on the market's trade volume (all commodities) would be nice and fitting.
seems that in hullmod, auto-warp can't handle %s string correctly :-\
Loving the Atlas MK2.
I'm not sure if this is due to randomized numbers, but it appears that the number of clouds in hyperspace have been toned down?
The map I created in 0.9.1a is much, much more traversable than the one I created in 0.9a. I am VERY grateful for this.
Yep, that's a very intentional change!
I think Pirate bases could do with a little bump, especially later in the game. Lowtech and midline tier 1 is just a fly on the wall at this point.
Do these bases progress, anyway? Would catching a Pather base early allow me to kill it at a lower tier? Because that could be a decent incentive to deal with stuff in a timely fashion.
Aurora is stated costing 70 000, I guess it was missed in the update?
QuotePunitive expeditions:
Will result in a 5-point reputation penalty when/if the expedition fails
No reputation penalty for fighting the expedition's fleets
Doesnt work for Hegemony inspection fleets. Any attacks still lead to war. Wad or bug?
Either someone made a post about discovering Redacted wrecks and thought they could be recovered, made a post about it, then discovered they couldn't and deleted the post, or I'm going nuts.
They should upgrade to the next tier... very roughly once a year or so. After a couple of years, new bases that spawn would only be of the 2 or (more likely) 3 module variety.
I'm not sure if this is due to randomized numbers, but it appears that the number of clouds in hyperspace have been toned down?Wait what? You mean we can't ride storms across the sector at burn 30+ anymore? And now we have to slog across at the base sustained burn speed? Aw crap.
The map I created in 0.9.1a is much, much more traversable than the one I created in 0.9a. I am VERY grateful for this.
Thought I'd share this with you Alex and David: A friend of mine just got laser eye surgery, going from incredibly bad (legally blind without glasses, not great at all even with glasses) to near perfect vision. They saw me playing the new update: "Wow, I never knew this game was so pretty! Its gorgeous!"
Assault Chain Gun changes in practice: Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *hack cough hack * haha. Perhaps a little overtuned but certainly no reason to change it at all. Nope.
The Windows installer is still triggering Windows Defender's Smart Screen, as it did with the previous release (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13445.msg231907#msg231907). (as per this thread (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14517.msg237382#msg237382))
Yep, intentional - the Shrike is a light destroyer, and I think the lower price gives it more room to shine as a player flagship before it gets outclassed by "proper" destroyers. It's still useful as a support ship afterwards, but this is more about use as a flagship. The Buffalo2... I mean, it's the Buffalo2 :)
QuoteYep, intentional - the Shrike is a light destroyer, and I think the lower price gives it more room to shine as a player flagship before it gets outclassed by "proper" destroyers. It's still useful as a support ship afterwards, but this is more about use as a flagship. The Buffalo2... I mean, it's the Buffalo2 :)
In my current 9.1 game im just skip "proper" destroyers and go to cruisers after gathering some wolves/shrikes as a meatshild for flagship tempest and some core carriers. 50-70k for hammer/sunder, imho, is too expensive. -_-
QuoteYep, intentional - the Shrike is a light destroyer, and I think the lower price gives it more room to shine as a player flagship before it gets outclassed by "proper" destroyers. It's still useful as a support ship afterwards, but this is more about use as a flagship. The Buffalo2... I mean, it's the Buffalo2 :)
In my current 9.1 game im just skip "proper" destroyers and go to cruisers after gathering some wolves/shrikes as a meatshild for flagship tempest and some core carriers. 50-70k for hammer/sunder, imho, is too expensive. -_-
Depends what you want to kill, tbh. Light ships are fine to a point but really struggle against heavy cruisers and stations, while a few of the proper destroyers will get the job done.
Agreed on commerce. Here's an idea: What if it provided a decent growth boost from people coming to trade and/or just some medium amount of pure income from taxes (in addition to making a market)? Still hard to justify as an industry slot, but at least it would be useful to colonies that don't want to attract attention with the splashier industries. It could also be a structure, but then it would just be a good idea to build it on every world like waystations.
Bit of feedback: I'm just starting to use a capital for special hard targets and have about half a dozen cruisers for normal bounties, so am just on the starting edge of late game. I feel like my colonies are just a bit under-developed; I haven't attracted any expeditions (only a very small pirate raid at destroyer level) despite not being careful, because of the time it takes to build industries vs the time it takes to amass a lot of profits from bounty hunting. My heavy industry just came online, so perhaps thats about to change! Anyhow, I think the colony build times are a bit too long, maybe by about 20%?
Wasn't that always the case? In .9 my stations respected it and I defended many times my Tachyon death station.No. Back during 0.9, after I learned high-tech pack, my high-tech station refused to use anything other than autopulse, no matter the priority settings (i.e., I prioritize lance, but it used autopulse. It only used lance if it is the only available weapon, but dumps lances for autopulse as soon as it became available.). Today in 0.9.1, it will use whatever I prioritize. If it is lances, it will use those. If it is plasma cannon, that will be used.
Does tech-mining auto sell itself after some time, or do I still have to close the shop manually? And do alpha cores provide any benefit to tech-mining at all? They don't produce any commodity anymore.
Using colonies for tech mining exclusively sounds like a good endgame idea, because there's so many ruins everywhere. How many blueprints are you usually getting per mine on an 'extensive ruins' planet? I got really unlucky with my first one and got none. Haven't tried tech mining since.During 0.9, I found several blueprints and other items when I tech-mined frequently. In my 0.9.1 game, I started four or five tech mines, but only got two or so blueprints (Falcon (P) and Pather pack). Tech-mines will not give blueprints you already know. It takes a while to suck mines dry, so the earlier you start, the better (if you can afford it).
In my current game, there is an annoying huge system with only one jump point and no planets, and pirate bases spawn there recurringly. This is probably one system where I really want Navigation. (I did not get this kind of system to slog through in my earlier 0.9 games.)Let me guess, Penelope's Star? ;D
I had independents claim all the objectives in my beacon system colony once. Didn't have any patrols yet so I don't know if they would have taken them back, though.
Particularly appreciated are the many and varied changes to ship AI, escort and carrier behavior in particular. This was a particular point of contention for me in the last patch and it seems like a bunch of other people had problems too if it's gotten addressed. Thanks so much alex!
Not sure if I should download and start playing straight away though. Seems like there's some oddity with ship rarity and markets, so maybe waiting for just ooone more fix would be good.
I think I noticed this in the prior patch as well, but what's driving the price difference between the vanilla and (P) Cerberus variants? The Pirate-skinned version gets the standard 'heavily modified and poorly maintained' flavor text but I see no difference in stats or hullmods. If I recall there's other unmodified (P) hulls which cost the same as their counterparts.
One problem with inner-system hardware - enemy captures it then visiting independents recapture it and your own system ships ignore it afterwards as independents are friendly so colony sit without relay etc from now on until player visit. PS This is in a system with 2 player colonies only with yellow warning hyperspace beacon.
I had independents claim all the objectives in my beacon system colony once. Didn't have any patrols yet so I don't know if they would have taken them back, though.
Totally subjective comment by finance-challenged player: is it me, or is a commission more necessary to support the early game finances than in the previous game version?
I don't do the "focused gameplay to get a million credits"...rather I play a general fleet mix that gets bigger, doing stuff, and just so happens to want to build enough to start a colony.
Colonies still seem like a lategame or endgame thing because you need money to buy the ships you need to kill bounties, and colonies are too expensive to set up early. (That 100k for a waystation buys a cruiser, and the 450k you need to build a critical industry can get you a capital you need to attack named bounties.)
That said, until you build a colony that is worth something, it is a good idea to get commission until you get a colony going.
250K to build a colony for only 25k a month? That is not good enough with a tight time scaling schedule where I need those two cruisers or a capital now to kill those named bounties that still scale a bit too fast for comfort. I can get that 250k back right now if I can take one more named bounty (that I could not kill without those extra ships). 25k a month is a bit too slow if I happen to just fall behind and cannot catch up to the scaling.
Am I correct in assuming Tech-Mining is utterly useless after the ruins have been combed clean?I remove tech-mines after the message reads "comprehensively combed multiple times". Until then, there is a chance for a rare item.
Also kinda wish they'd still generate a few supplies.
I have expeditions to deal with if I have a colony that has anything other than farming or tech-mining.
@ Alex: The new Atlas II and Prometheus II capitals are categorized as "Low Tech" when viewing blueprints or production, shouldn't they be under "Pirate" or "Luddic Path" (for filter purposes) like the other similarly hacked hulls?
In the config, there's this line: "adminMaxHireable":20,
In-game however, the max administrators you can hire and have is 3. Is adminMaxHireable meant for something else entirely? Or is this a bug?
If it's not a bug, is there another way the number of admins can be increased?
The total amount of admins increases when you reach a certain combined faction market level.Of all factions? Or just the player's faction?
(I have to admit, I could of just gotten lucky with the random seed, but I don't remember finding clear routes between stars that I did in my current game).
I had one escape scenario where my fleet started more than halfway up the map (screenshot (https://i.imgur.com/tEtFta5.png)). Is this intended, a mod bug, or something else?
Has anyone noticed that most endgame fleets have several capitals and nearly the rest cruisers, with few if any destroyers or frigates? I guess it makes sense since the player might try that, supplies and fuel permitting. Pirates, with weaker ships, are the worst offenders with several Atlas II and Colossus 3 and Ventures filling out the rest of the fleet. For deserters, I routinely see about four or five Conquests and a bunch of cruisers like Herons and Gryphons, or for low-tech fans, a Legion, three Onslaughts, and Dominator and Mora spam.
Would raising the fleet cap (to 40 for player and NPCs) bring more smaller ships to NPC endgame fleets? It would be nice if there was more variety of endgame fleets. (It would be nice if player can use a frigate or destroyer swarm to engage such fleets.)
I find myself bring no more than twenty ships due to 1) supply and fuel costs and 2) unable to deploy more than three to five ships at a time at map size 300.
My Prometheus Mk 2 is firing off MIRVs at single fighters. Is it supposed to do that?
About pirates spamming Atlases.
I think they sgould get something better from time to time, after all if they're ready to convert a freighter into killing machine and use Damaged ships then I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind using a beat up Onslaught, considering that you can get quite interesting stuff on black market without problems, actually.
- After renaming a gas giant, the name isn't visible from the hyperspace jump point. It still uses the old name.
- Even when Scavenging Effectiveness is at 100% or even over 100% while scavenging debris, accidents still happen. (Hidden max?)
click and hold behind where you're heading, etc).
My Prometheus Mk 2 is firing off MIRVs at single fighters. Is it supposed to do that?
Kinda is, yeah. It's got the "ALWAYS_PANIC" flag which makes it really free with missiles. (Less than ideal if it's a core ship for the player, but, well.)
Hmmm, that's a bit unfortunate. Large missile weapons don't really accommodate that too well... even the Locust only gets 15 shots. Which might be enough, but I guess I'll just stick a salamander pod in there. At least it frees up 15 OP to spend elsewhere!Locusts have some ammo, so that works out alright in all but the largest of battles. (Squeeze in Expanded Missile Racks if you can for Locusts.) I do not about MIRVs in 0.9, but I thought MIRVs were useless during 0.8 because AI wasted the ammo frivolously.
Right - I don't think it says anywhere that 100% guarantees no accidents, that's just about how much salvage you get. IIRC it explicitly says the risk is "low"; also iirc the actual min chance of an accident is 10% and I believe they're generally less damaging at a lower risk.Ah, I totally misunderstood how this works. Whoops. :-[
I like the idea of Onslaught (P) and/or Legion (P), or maybe Onslaught (P) and Legion (LP).The (P) we are clearly missing is Venture (P). Though I would love to see a Legion (LP)... it's just maybe not the one that makes the most sense lore & progression wise.
Hmmm, that's a bit unfortunate. Large missile weapons don't really accommodate that too well... even the Locust only gets 15 shots. Which might be enough, but I guess I'll just stick a salamander pod in there. At least it frees up 15 OP to spend elsewhere!Locusts have some ammo, so that works out alright in all but the largest of battles. (Squeeze in Expanded Missile Racks if you can for Locusts.) I do not about MIRVs in 0.9, but I thought MIRVs were useless during 0.8 because AI wasted the ammo frivolously.
Alas, as the Prometheus Mk II is the biggest & toughest ship in my fleet right now, the largest of battles are exactly what I'm concerned about. And no way I'm blowing 30 OP on expanded missile racks for one locust to waste ammo frivolously (also, my Atlas Mk II has two locusts so when Locusts are the right tool for the job it's going to do the job better for fewer deployment points).The point of Expanded Missile Racks is for Locusts to last for a long time. For Conquest, it is worth giving up medium energy and/or missiles for more Locusts. I have not tried Prometheus 2. If it is anything like Atlas 2, it probably does not have the OP for anything aside from the leanest, barely functional loadouts. I would not use Expanded Missile Racks on Apogee because it needs to OP to afford Plasma Cannon, good flux stats, and some other useful hullmods.
I think Atlas Mk.II is the perfect pirate capital. It's a big, bad barge with lacking flux stats and some offensive bang. Even looks like a boat. 'Real' cap ships would only make the pirates more similar to everybody else. LP is perfect as well. Its cap ship looks like an Interstellar Imperium bomb. Should give it a huge explosion radius and make it ram stuff when it's low on health.Yes, Atlas 2 is nice for pirates. The problem is when nearly all high-end pirate armadas use only many Atlas 2s (aside from few token Ventures and Colossus 3s) because the fleet has too many points to fill a power quota and only Atlas 2 is strong enough to meet the quota instead of more than a hundred ships like last release.
The point of Expanded Missile Racks is for Locusts to last for a long time. For Conquest, it is worth giving up medium energy and/or missiles for more Locusts. I have not tried Prometheus 2. If it is anything like Atlas 2, it probably does not have the OP for anything aside from the leanest, barely functional loadouts.
I've been trying that and my fleet seems to prefer to swim in circles, presumably trying to arrive on the exact pixel I clicked on. This means that big nasty fleet sees my sig and catches me :/
The previous functionality, while a bug, was also super useful. I hope you will consider restoring it, or adding something new that provides the same function. Having an unambigous "all stop" command is important in a world where stealth depends on being stopped.
Will there be a 0.9.1 RC8 release, with additional fixes? Or is RC7 the only planned hotfix release?
A problem with the clean disengagement mechanic, from the other side: I joined in on a battle to defend another faction's space station. Although my side ultimately prevailed, the station was taken out and the pirates were able to disengage without allowing pursuit. And, more importantly, I was forced to leave without any post-battle salvage or ship recovery (which rather stings because I lost 5 ships in the battle!).
I've had a couple of cases in which defeating a star base (Luddic Path or Pirate, I can't remember exactly unfortunately) has resulted in no battle salvage and a message to that effect.
It seemed odd when it came up to have absolutely no battle salvage after defeating a massive military force...surely there would be something to salvage, even if it was just metal?
Zhentar, do you mean that the pirates themselves (not you) cleanly disengaged and as a result you couldn't collect any salvage?
That might be similar to what happened to me; although even if I had lost enough ships for the opposition to cleanly disengage (I unfortunately can't remember the circumstances to which I ended up getting no salvage), I was attacking a station and destroying it (not trying to defend it), so there should of been some loot afterwards to collect.
Uh.... are LP fleets supposed to be exempt from the fleet size limit?Spoiler(https://i.imgur.com/dnFENzA.png)[close]
Just to confirm, is this vanilla? Having a hard time seeing how this could happen, but didn't check into it just now.
So far, got proper salvage in every case. Any thoughts on what may be different here?
So far, got proper salvage in every case. Any thoughts on what may be different here?
is this intended to also apply to existing saves?
- Fixed issue with intel for some of the destroyed pirate bases sticking around indefinitely
About pirates spamming Atlases.I deliberately sell battleship blueprints to black markets to see more variations in pirate fleets 8)
I think they sgould get something better from time to time,
How many saves? SS keeps a back up save so if you only overwrote once, you could still grab itSo far, got proper salvage in every case. Any thoughts on what may be different here?
Unfortunately nothing really solid.
One case that was strange was the attacking of Pather base where I made a save before attacking it (I make saves before attacking most bases, but unfortunately this has been overwritten). After defeating it I received no salvage from it (despite needing it badly at the time). I continued to play for a bit before being defeated in another battle and ended up reloading the same save before the attack on the same Pather base that did not award salvage....this time after defeating it it did award me salvage.
I'm going to go star base destroying for a while to see if I can at least get some solid, more useful info to go on.
How many saves? SS keeps a back up save so if you only overwrote once, you could still grab it
I deliberately sell battleship blueprints to black markets to see more variations in pirate fleets 8)
(Just wanted to point out that you can manipulate composition of pirate fleets this way, in case some of you guys overlooked it)
Yep, pure vanilla. Patrol fleet for an LP station. Reflecting on it, the thing that strikes me as interesting here is that this is the first one I've noticed over the 30 ship limit... and it's full on double it. Almost like it was supposed to be two separate fleets.
Hmmmm.... So after the battle, I got a dialog saying something about how I couldn't pursue the enemy, with two options; the first was disabled and the second was "Leave". I believe the faction I was aiding had only the station present in the battle, and that station was destroyed, so their forces were entirely defeated. Also there was a bounty active, though that doesn't really seem like something that would matter.
I finally got up to where I thought the problem occurred with the 3 Pather bases and after collecting the info from the defecting Pather at the bar at one of my colonies I set out to destroy it. My memory isn't the best but so far it looked to be in about the same position as last time.
Unfortunately after destroying base 1, I disrupted the Luddic Path Cells, where previously they remained active so I had to travel back to the affected colony and see another Pather at the bar to get the second Pather Star base, destroy that travel back again and get the third. This time however I disrupted them after the first base was destroyed, which is different.
Looks like those other based disappeared or never existed this time around. I *think* that it was the third Pather base that had the no-salvage problem and it was in an asteroid belt around a star (which the first base I just destroyed isn't in).
I'll guess I'll just get back to finding bases to destroy and hope that I run across this intermittent problem. If it is any consolation it didn't happen very often in my RC6 play through and I have yet to run across the issue in RC7 (still on my RC6 started save).
Is there any way now to remove decivilized status?
Mild climate is "welcoming and docile", not necessarily warm. I interpret it less violent weather than Earth (so no hurricanes, no tornadoes, nothing dangerous in terms of weather). Although I don't know if you can have both mild climate and extreme weather. I haven't seen it, but I don't know if the code will let it happen.
Too bad there's not a diplomatic option to help stabilize a colony like we do for our own colonies, by maybe talking to the Admin on the planet and offering emergency supplies, credits, etc.
Too bad there's not a diplomatic option to help stabilize a colony like we do for our own colonies, by maybe talking to the Admin on the planet and offering emergency supplies, credits, etc.In Nexerelin there already is a feature like this, where you can deliver either some food or some military hardware to increase the planet's stability. I had hoped for an AI-exclusive feature (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14897) to make market destabilisation something that can happen either due to an extraordinary bad luck or due to the player intervention, but this can work too, I guess. Ordering your faction to keep peace could be an alternative.
I've been trying that and my fleet seems to prefer to swim in circles, presumably trying to arrive on the exact pixel I clicked on. This means that big nasty fleet sees my sig and catches me :/
The previous functionality, while a bug, was also super useful. I hope you will consider restoring it, or adding something new that provides the same function. Having an unambigous "all stop" command is important in a world where stealth depends on being stopped.
Hmm, this gives me an idea - let me take a look at something.
I've been trying that and my fleet seems to prefer to swim in circles, presumably trying to arrive on the exact pixel I clicked on. This means that big nasty fleet sees my sig and catches me :/
The previous functionality, while a bug, was also super useful. I hope you will consider restoring it, or adding something new that provides the same function. Having an unambigous "all stop" command is important in a world where stealth depends on being stopped.
Hmm, this gives me an idea - let me take a look at something.
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1130250630667395079
:D
I'm not the one that originally commented on this, but I found myself pressing "S" a bit in 0.9.1a and wondering why my ships wouldn't stop, so I was missing this "Feature" as well (didn't know it was tied to a bug).
Is the second part of the feature a bit like "Going Dark", without having to toggle it, and/or does it stack further with that ability?
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1130250630667395079
:D
Started a new game, bought out some marines (from pirate bases) here and there. After a few bounties, I got a few hundred marines, and raided one of the Hegemony bases in Valhalla. Got an Eagle (XIV) blueprint. I could sell it back to the Hegemony for about 150k and jump start midgame early.
I like to raid pirates after I shop at their black markets to get some free stuff. If I happen to pass by another factions heavy industry and their defense is not too high, time to get a blueprint!
You, are, the man. What a great addition. Looking forward to stealthing around even better than ever.
Hmmmm.... So after the battle, I got a dialog saying something about how I couldn't pursue the enemy, with two options; the first was disabled and the second was "Leave". I believe the faction I was aiding had only the station present in the battle, and that station was destroyed, so their forces were entirely defeated. Also there was a bounty active, though that doesn't really seem like something that would matter.
Thank you for the added info! Gave this a try - didn't cause the issue, either. Which I guess is good in the sense that it's probably not going to require a hotfix due to not being a general issue, but bad since, you know, haven't actually fixed it yet.
Okay, I just happened to come across a rather substantial pirate armada attacking an unguarded Mimir Siphon platform, so I got a chance to experiment with this some more. When I destroyed all of the pirate ships, it went into a normal victory screen. However, when I got some of them to retreat mid-battle (after heavily damaging them) and then let the remaining enemy ships end the battle by retreating at the end of the fight, it goes to the Pursuit screen, at which point my options are "Join the pursuit" and "Leave"; the pursuit must be joined to get loot but there are several cases where pursuit is unjoinable.
Also, how long is the post-raid transponder on danger time supposed to last? I had to turn on my transponder to help out Mimir Siphon right after raiding Raesvalg but they didn't go hostile.
And it looks like raiding doesn't have any 'just turned off the transponder' memory? Here I've been sneaking into the system with it off like a good raider, but apparently I can just turn it off in orbit immediately before launching the raid!
Personally, I've never cared about the tarrifs. The utility of having an extra pool of resources to draw from, and being able to convert loot into money without having to drag stuff into the core far outweighs a few credits. (Even if it is less efficient.)For me, whenever I need that resource convenience, that pirate base that pops-up near my colony and targeting it serves my needs just as well.
I just think of it as paying for the convenience.
Is that issue being hotfixed?
I always thought buying at our own markets with tariffs was really weird. It's odd to have to go shopping in stations other than your own if you want the best deals, it feels counter-intuitive (besides getting stuff from the stockpile).
Re: Commerce
Change industry to structure, because no-one will ever build this otherwise with the incredibly tight limits.
Give it a passive income like the population - ideally this could tie into how many resource types/stockpiles are available at that colony.
I forgot the mention that one drawback for raiding heavy industries early before exploring for and finding blueprint packs is player frequently gets blueprints for common stuff normally bundled, like Pulse Lasers, Harpoon Racks, or Hammerhead. Nature of the beast, I guess. I should either wait until I learn the packs or save-scum frequently until a rare one drops. I was being greedy with my game where did early-game raiding for significant profit for the first time, and this is without Planetary Operations.
Thanks for this update, I'm very fond of the new colony mechanics and its slow pacing.
It's also really great to have carrier with a correct behavior, and escort order is more interesting now (not for giving firepower, but now they don't throw themselves in line of fire anymore).
IMHO, wings AI still have some progress to do. Even when ordering fighter strikes, if wing are already with a target in mind, they will keep flying to it. Further more, it would be nice if wings can get back to their carrier when it is in danger and without order. I had a Gemini destroyed because its wing was doing I-don't-know-what at the other side of the map.
...
Thank you for all the efforts you put in this game!
One small detail immersion-wise: for me, uber-death pirate raiding fleet are a little bit over the top, especially when Factions fleet are unable to muster that many ships.
One thing though,is this intended to also apply to existing saves?
- Fixed issue with intel for some of the destroyed pirate bases sticking around indefinitely
If yes, I see those intels still sticking around. If no, it's okay.
Re: Commerce
Change industry to structure, because no-one will ever build this otherwise with the incredibly tight limits.
Give it a passive income like the population - ideally this could tie into how many resource types/stockpiles are available at that colony.
Hmm - then it'd most likely go from "build very rarely" to "always build". I'd rather it be the former - or not exist at all - than the latter.
Perhaps removing the commerce building completely is the way to go?This is also acceptable, with the caveat that all player owned colonies get a market.
Making it a structure, on the other hand, would make it an "always."So is waystation, but people aren't complaining about that. I mean, there are some situations where you wouldn't want it... Just like with commerce as a structure. I don't have an issue with Commerce, it's just that unless there's some substantial buff to it, the easiest way to make it better is to make it a structure.
AI fleets at sustain burn sometimes cant reach jump point inside star corona. Just wandering at circles. -_-
PS Fixed at save reload. But i watch for this like 2 minutes before. ^.^
Is it a guarantee to find sleeper ships? I've explored every system in two separate games, but never found one.
Also, in my first 0.9a game there were 6 high danger systems, started a new one with 0.9.1a and there's only 1. I take it this is greatly randomized?
Income at non-player-owned colonies no longer shown as it's no longer accurate
It's possible to end up with 0 (if there are no suitable systems), but it seems pretty unlikely. For remnant high-danger systems, are you sure you've explored everything? If you start the game in dev mode, press ctrl-z to turn off sensors, and go into hyperspace, you should get all the warning beacon intel right away and can check. Also, if you do this and look on the map, systems with a cryosleeper will have their name be green (as will systems with Pather bases, but those will have a "--LP" or some such appended to the name).Thanks! I did what you said and found 2 systems with said ship in it. Quite hard to find indeed. And one of them is in a black hole system. ;D
I tried the improved Hurricane MIRV, and while it probably wants some speed boosts, they are not mandatory like it was in 0.9a, and the MIRV is decent out-of-the-box.
Who can clarify how interaction with factions must work?
Im a bit confused. Im stealth raid few times Hegemony planets. Standing drop to -35. Game still give me procurement quests, i can accept them, but cant finish, even if i come to planet undetected and with turned off transponder. And more confusing, I take pirate quest to deliver stuff to Hegemony planet and cant finish it too. Pirate standing is -14, afaik npc must be interactable in both cases. -_-
Didn't MIRV also have way better tracking in its secondary stage? I remember the terror of earlier versions when that fork of projectiles homed in on me. Now they can barely turn to aim at the thing they're hitting.Tracking was changed in 0.9a. Today, you need both Missile Specialization 1 and ECCM Package to have good turning. With the extra bombs in 0.9.1a, the aiming matters slightly less in getting some hits.
Who can clarify how interaction with factions must work?
Im a bit confused. Im stealth raid few times Hegemony planets. Standing drop to -35. Game still give me procurement quests, i can accept them, but cant finish, even if i come to planet undetected and with turned off transponder. And more confusing, I take pirate quest to deliver stuff to Hegemony planet and cant finish it too. Pirate standing is -14, afaik npc must be interactable in both cases. -_-
Who can clarify how interaction with factions must work?
Im a bit confused. Im stealth raid few times Hegemony planets. Standing drop to -35. Game still give me procurement quests, i can accept them, but cant finish, even if i come to planet undetected and with turned off transponder. And more confusing, I take pirate quest to deliver stuff to Hegemony planet and cant finish it too. Pirate standing is -14, afaik npc must be interactable in both cases. -_-
Planets that you've raided, especially more than once, won't interact with you at all for months afterwards, regardless of standing. It does say this in the text when you dock, albeit without any color drawing attention to the different response.
Actually only characters of the offended faction wouldn’t interact with you, pirate and independent characters on the planet tou raided still would.
Actually only characters of the offended faction wouldn’t interact with you, pirate and independent characters on the planet tou raided still would.
Nope. A bit strange, but ok. Ill just wait.
Is, generally speaking, quality of systems (number of planets, quality of those planets, cryosleepers) influenced by distance from the core?
Is, generally speaking, quality of systems (number of planets, quality of those planets, cryosleepers) influenced by distance from the core?
Could be forgetting something, but I don't believe so.
I picked up intel from salvaging a ship (in hyperspace near a core world) about a derelict in the Naraka system... I shouldn't have, right? Those derelicts don't persist, do they?
Well it does seem that "rare things"* are more often than not further away from core systems and they often contain high-quality worlds with good modifiers (or create valuable colonizable systems through means other than direct planet modifiers). Though of course my sample size is just a dozen or so campaigns, so a pattern I notice does not necessarily indicate the sector generation having any specific weights of that nature.
*referring to the uncommon system types (supergiants, nebulae, neutron stars, black holes) and rare finds ([REDACTED], [OTHER REDACTEDs], and systems with non-generic names that are filled to the brim with extensive ruins and abandoned space-stations)
Just noticed that some colony demand, namely Refinery and Fuel Production, is higher than what they used to be, even more than when taking changed Industrial Planning into account. In 0.9a, Sparse ore and trace volatiles (-1) were enough to meat demand with Industrial Planning. Now, player with Industrial Planning needs higher-than-moderate (abundant or rich) ores and volatiles (+1) to meet demand. Even with changed Industrial Planning, I originally expected moderate (0) to be enough, but not anymore.
Curiously, player still only needs poor farmland and trace organics (-1) to meet demand if player has Industrial Planning.
This means mining on a low hazard, five resource planet is insufficient for meeting demand. (Can be mined for income and organics, though.)
It seems I need at least three planets:
* Gas giant or cryovolcanic with +1 or +2 volatiles.
* Hostile rock or high-gravity habitable with both ores at +1 or more.
* Low hazard habitable with some farmland and organics, and a place to put an expensive industry that is also worth six Pather interest points.
Also, about exploration. Game lack of capital sized exploration vessel(or at least non civilian capital cargo ship). Atlas/prometheus cant support 250 scanner strenght while keeping 9 speed, because you must choose between militarised systems+drive field for speed, or militarised systems+high resolution scanners for maximum possible scanning range. 5 proper capitals is just too expensive for this role.This is when Navigation 3 and/or tugs becomes useful. No navigation and four tugs for 20 speed is a big drain on fuel, even during 0.9a. I am seriously considering Navigation for my character, but that means I am one or two skill points shy of grabbing another skill I equally covet, like Planetary Operations to raise defenses enough to eliminate some babysitting, or more combat perks. (Of course, if fleets will tac bomb defenses in a later version, that means I would need to babysit anyway to prevent them from inflicting "Pollution" on some of my colonies.)
Hmmm, so to make ends meet it does look like you need Industrial Planning 2 & at least a Gamma core for Fuel and Refining, with Moderate deposits of Volatiles/Ore/Transplutonic OreYes. That is why the planet needs Abundant or greater now, with Industrial Planning.
Also, about exploration. Game lack of capital sized exploration vessel(or at least non civilian capital cargo ship). Atlas/prometheus cant support 250 scanner strenght while keeping 9 speed, because you must choose between militarised systems+drive field for speed, or militarised systems+high resolution scanners for maximum possible scanning range. 5 proper capitals is just too expensive for this role.This is when Navigation 3 and/or tugs becomes useful. No navigation and four tugs for 20 speed is a big drain on fuel, even during 0.9a. I am seriously considering Navigation for my character, but that means I am one or two skill points shy of grabbing another skill I equally covet, like Planetary Operations to raise defenses enough to eliminate some babysitting, or more combat perks. (Of course, if fleets will tac bomb defenses in a later version, that means I would need to babysit anyway to prevent them from inflicting "Pollution" on some of my colonies.)
Am I just extremely unlucky or has the Odyssey become extremely rare?Probably a bit of both. ;)
I think I have gone 3 campaigns so far without seeing an odyssey or maybe one locked behind commission once. They are very rare because TT is carrier focused so they rarely use warships. I wish there was another high tech faction who used warships so I could see that content once in a while.Independents have some high-tech, and New Maxios is easy to raid. Swiped Doom and Harbinger blueprints from them.
@Megas Colonies with 10 stability are not immune to sabotage. Earlier in this topic Alex confirmed that the chance of countering sabotage was 10% for every stability point above 5, so at 10 stability its a 50% chance.I thought I read that somewhere. In practice, every time I see the Pathers try something (and I have seen at least a dozen tries over two games), they are foiled every time. Maybe there is a bug somewhere that doubles the chances of (or sets it to 100%) failed sabotage?
I'm sorry, don't have much indepth to contribute, but i do have a thing to say about Pather/Pirate bases in fringe systems. They're more useful alive than dead most times as they're a constant source of food/fuel and work as a forward operating base, even if they hate your guts. All the benefits of a why you'd want a colony without any of the hassle.
Any chance that maybe i could meet a stray or two independent rimworlds, or some Sindrian expedition that got a bit too populous and popular and is now acting as a waypoint for scavengers and explorers? They don't have to show up on the planet list for the factions, but they'd be cool finds for people that know where they are.
It'd help with a bit of variety from trekking always from the coreworlds or your own colony stations, and maybe lead to more active exploitation of deep space past just 'running through them once to get the stuff'. I had a Pirate base nearby a cluster that always got a lot of bounties and it was cool not having to 'return to base' after each one or two bounties.
If I'm just looking for rare salvage (Nanoforges/Syncrotrons, blueprints), you don't need capital class cargo capacity.
+25% sensor range is good for searching
Yeah I wouldn't mind something like this, but the Odyssey-class does have the cheapest fuel usage of the capital ships (even if it is still 8 fuel/ly), and does come with High Resolution sensors built-in (So 250 sensor strength from the get-go). It can do 8 burn (which is pretty good for capitals), but personally it just isn't economical enough after flying around the Apogee.If I'm just looking for rare salvage (Nanoforges/Syncrotrons, blueprints), you don't need capital class cargo capacity.
+25% sensor range is good for searching
I dont complain about cargo capacity - need more cargo space? just take more cargo ships and its ok. But sensors is based on hull size. So if i want(and i want) to have (250x5+300)x1.25=1937 scanners range i need to take 5 capitals with high resolution sensors mod into fleet. Just 1 apogee and a few smaller ships is usually have much smaller sensor strenght. Like 300+150+60+60+60+60=690 without 25% from skill, or close to 1k with. Pretty big and noticeable difference.
I dont complain about cargo capacity - need more cargo space? just take more cargo ships and its ok. But sensors is based on hull size. So if i want(and i want) to have (250x5+300)x1.25=1937 scanners range i need to take 5 capitals with high resolution sensors mod into fleet. Just 1 apogee and a few smaller ships is usually have much smaller sensor strenght. Like 300+150+60+60+60+60=690 without 25% from skill, or close to 1k with. Pretty big and noticeable difference.Yeah I wouldn't mind something like this, but the Odyssey-class does have the cheapest fuel usage of the capital ships (even if it is still 8 fuel/ly), and does come with High Resolution sensors built-in (So 250 sensor strength from the get-go). It can do 8 burn (which is pretty good for capitals), but personally it just isn't economical enough after flying around the Apogee.
I'm sorry, don't have much indepth to contribute, but i do have a thing to say about Pather/Pirate bases in fringe systems. They're more useful alive than dead most times as they're a constant source of food/fuel and work as a forward operating base, even if they hate your guts. All the benefits of a why you'd want a colony without any of the hassle.
Any chance that maybe i could meet a stray or two independent rimworlds, or some Sindrian expedition that got a bit too populous and popular and is now acting as a waypoint for scavengers and explorers? They don't have to show up on the planet list for the factions, but they'd be cool finds for people that know where they are.
It'd help with a bit of variety from trekking always from the coreworlds or your own colony stations, and maybe lead to more active exploitation of deep space past just 'running through them once to get the stuff'. I had a Pirate base nearby a cluster that always got a lot of bounties and it was cool not having to 'return to base' after each one or two bounties.
This sounds neat, kind of reminds me of the distant way stations in Elite Dangerous on route to Colonia or the Core.
On a related note, any possibility that there might be some larger sector options?
Would also be interesting to come across more scripted exploration moments, I think Stellaris did a pretty good job there with the initial exploration phase of the game and all those anomaly scans. No fancy graphics (well occasionally you got a unique picture), all text with the occasional decision to be made.
Perhaps it warrants a look at bounty fleets getting stuck when trying to get to the nearest planet (I assume it's the nearest) after the bounty's timer runs out.
This happens when there's a planet closely orbiting a super giant; the fleet refuses to enter the corona.
Maybe force them somehow?
I'm not sure if they'll eventually disappear. I'm keeping tabs on two of these fleets.
Out of curiosity, are there any plans for the player to acquire terraforming technology? It would make a much greater number of worlds viable for colonization. I imagine that it could work in a similar fashion to Fuel Production and Heavy Industry. That is, a two-part system. The first being a learnable tech (same as the reward from the Red Planet), with its own questline leading you to it. The second being an item (terraforming core) you find while exploring, which you can install into a completed terraformer. You could probably only find them in certain locations (cryosleeper, spore ships, ruins above a certain size, etc). Building the terraformer would add "Terraformed" to your colony's modifiers, which reduces hazard rating by 25%. Installing a terraforming core would change the modifier to "Heavily Terraformed," and would reduce hazard rating by 50%. The caveat to this whole thing would be that planets cannot have a hazard rating less that 50%.
Just an idea I had. :P
Currently there are 2 flavours of nanoforge, and the synchrotron. All three of which are currently a little too easy to come by in numbers great enough that the player doensn't have to make any real choices about where to use them.I rather find too many than not enough. People should not explore the entire sector before finding one. It is probably endgame by the time player can fully explore half of the entire sector, if he has not wasted too much time babysitting colonies.
If these numbers were reduced somewhat, the value and utility of such finds would be much greater. As would the excitement of having found them.
Will Starsector have a linear storyline with one goal? Or would it have multiple storylines converging on each other but ultimately having different endings?One like killing everyone after player gets fed up with constant expeditions and other abuse, a bit similar to Black Sabbath's Iron Man without the time travel.
One like killing everyone after player gets fed up with constant expeditions and other abuse, a bit similar to Black Sabbath's Iron Man without the time travel.
What good is colonizing planets in a neutron system if your commerce traffic and patrols get blown away by pulsar beams?
What good is colonizing planets in a neutron system if your commerce traffic and patrols get blown away by pulsar beams?
Welll... it's hilarious.
The number 1 goal for my player-created faction and it's colonies is to settle in unusual or cool-looking systems, or systems with neat unique names, or anywhere that is in a fun position.
I mean, what's the point of having a faction that's just profitable/good/powerful because they're sitting in decent but ordinary star systems? The normal pre-set NPC factions already do that, so I'll put my colonies into nebulae, neutron stars, black holes, supergiant systems, binary/trinary systems, or anything with neat names (I love taking Aztlan from the hegemony for the birth of an aztec-flavored faction).
I rather find too many than not enough. People should not explore the entire sector before finding one. It is probably endgame by the time player can fully explore half of the entire sector, if he has not wasted too much time babysitting colonies.This comes from from opposed playstyles and expectations.
People should not explore the entire sector before finding one.I would have no problem whatsoever if the RNG decided there were zero of some forge item to be found this time round.
Imo, the entire point of having RNG anything is that it is never the same from game to game. And with forge items currently, you can expect to find multiples of each of the three (current) items with minimal effort, and often before the player even has a colony to utilise them.Now that Industrial Planning 1 no longer reduces demand, I think all of the special items are mandatory. No other good way to meet demand of the essential commodities (like fuel and supplies). Cores do not count due to major aggro with Pathers and/or Hegemony.
It's the same almost every game.
In several starts I have played I did not even have to leave the core to aquire several forge items from the untouched ruins therein.
Randomness is not fun when it leads to frustration.I can agree with that, in principal.
It would be nice to have old Industrial Planning 1 back as a fallback. Falling that, if I cannot find the item, then there is raiding for that item, which kind of stinks. I remember raiding for nanoforge in two out of four of my games in 0.9a because I could not find the item (I picked the wrong half of the sector to fully explore first).Randomness is not fun when it leads to frustration.I can agree with that, in principal.
It's just that I don't consider not having an item that makes something super good to be frustrating. It's just 'normal'.
I agree with Serenitis: I would prefer the base balance be set for not receiving the items, and then have the items be rare rewards for exploration - or raiding, or finding the Mothership, or story rewards! Items for colonies have great potential to be motivating elements for active gameplay.
I would also like their to be installables for other industries and structures, so that even if a player doesn't find a synchrotron core they can still find something that gives direction for a particular playthrough. (Again a Serenitis post from a few days back).
I don't think Synchrotron/Pristine Nano are really necessary even now - you can certainly have profitable colonies without 'em.
... I've also been kicking about the the idea of having more infrastructure to find that factors into industries, so that's along similar lines... well, will have to see how it pans out! Currently keeping a list of ideas, which isn't the same as it being a todo list, if that makes sense.)
Patrol HQ is no longer scales according to release notes:Yeah, to me it seems like it might as well not be in the game at all. If it still scaled up to the size 5 limit, I think it wouldn't be too OP. But as it is now, you might as well not even get it unless you are planning on actually upgrading it to a REAL thing
Patrol HQ:
Does not count as an "industry" and its upkeep does not depend on colony size
Fixed patrols at 2 small, does not change with colony size
In short - it is useless most of the time as even smallest of pirate fleets can give it a run until you build industry. Once pirates actually start to destabilize system with base newly spawned bigger fleets (not raid) can easily destroy pickets. So im not sure which role Patrol HQ play short of recapturing inner system installations. It cant protect convoys even in time of "peace" and sure cant do anything then pirate base spawns bigger patrols before raiders arrival.
Patrol HQ is no longer scales according to release notes:This is why I wrote Military Base is an Industry tax. You need it to defend your colonies from neverending invasions from everyone. Core worlds do not get invaded nearly as much as the player (and they still get raided when pirates get uppity because defenses in many systems stink!)
Patrol HQ:
Does not count as an "industry" and its upkeep does not depend on colony size
Fixed patrols at 2 small, does not change with colony size
In short - it is useless most of the time as even smallest of pirate fleets can give it a run until you build industry. Once pirates actually start to destabilize system with base newly spawned bigger fleets (not raid) can easily destroy pickets. So im not sure which role Patrol HQ play short of recapturing inner system installations. It cant protect convoys even in time of "peace" and sure cant do anything then pirate base spawns bigger patrols before raiders arrival.
And addition to that: Allow them to roam within the support range of the station so that they can use the station as backup while also extending the fleet circle of the station in a sense
On an entirely different note (player faction fleet composition):
I have noticed in my current campaign (stacking most of the mods I could find that are already updated for 0.9.1) I have noticed that my fleets will outright ignore my prioritized ships/weapons/fighters a lot of the time and just use something else entirely instead. And this isn't "just" the issue with the preview being inaccurate, the actual fleets themselves are also only made half of the stuff I want and half of some other equipment.
I made sure to checkmark at least one piece of equipment from each type (small/mid/large, ballistic/energy/missile weapons, frigate/destroyer/cruiser/capital, carrier/phase/warship, fighter/bomber/interceptor, etc.) and yet the fleets still very often use different stuff.
Seeing how with many mods running there is a plethora of blueprints of many vastly different visual thematics that I have learned, my fleets are now resembling something similar to what a "just hit level 60" clownsuit character back in my wow days looked like, despite me having marked lots of stuff of a unifying theme as preferred.
So, maybe the "prefer" checkmark we can set needs to be more powerful, or maybe there needs to be some way to give my faction a blacklist of blueprints that they shouldn't use at all, because deciding not to learn blueprints is a little bit of a janky solution (it still wouldn't prevent them from using stuff from the starting-set of blueprints, it wouldn't stop the undesired blueprints from showing up ove rand over again, and I can't even do that because I am completely muscle-memory'd to just immediately spam-click and learn all blueprints as soon as I acquire them).
Hmm - it would help to see some examples of what you're seeing, since you should be able to use the priority system to something like 99% control what you get. (The only case being the odd ship where there aren't enough fleet points left for anything on your priority list.)
For weapons/fighters, this is a bit trickier.
1) You'd need to do more than cover small/medium/large in each size. For example, if the game is looking to pick a torpedo, a long range weapon, a PD weapon, etc, it'll prefer one of that type over another type that you have prioritized that only matches the slot - so you'd need to pick a wider range of weapons.
2) You'd also you'd need to pick some lower-tier weapons (which is more difficult since IIRC the weapon "tier" is not displayed anywhere. Basically, if you only prioritize Plasma Cannons, the game's not going to put Plasma Cannons in every single large energy slot; higher-quality weapons are not always "available" for a given ship fit, so you need to have some lower-tier options selected as well or it'll fall back to "everything" when the better stuff isn't available.
Stations are an exception here, iirc, with everything being available regardless of tier - so in effect they adhere to priorities more easily/strictly. But overall, for weapons, you probably need to have a wider range of things prioritized than you might think.
For ships, it's harder to say, but again it's probably not having some types of things checked - such as, say, a carrier, a phase ship, a tanker, a freighter, a crew transport ship. To my knowledge, this should work and let you select what ships you want to see, with the exception of the aforementioned "not enough points left so it picks something cheaper", which should happen fairly infrequently.
b) It would be very neat to have hullmods included in the fleet design interface alongside ships/weapons/fighters, to make sure everyone's got safety overrides active on every single ship at all times.Augmented Engines and/or Militarized Subsystems to prevent Atlas and Prometheus from slowing down my fleets!
Sidenote (prioritizing freighters): How does this treat ships marked as "combat freighter" such as for example the hound? Will those only take up slots that would normally be taken by civilian freighters or is there any danger that the fleets start replacing real warship-frigates with hounds?
In general I'd never say that the system isn't good and useable as-is (it obviously misbehaves a lot less in a pure vanilla game).
However, it would be nice to eventually have a simple blacklist checkmark for specific things at some point in the far-off future.
b) It would be very neat to have hullmods included in the fleet design interface alongside ships/weapons/fighters, to make sure everyone's got safety overrides active on every single ship at all times.
Augmented Engines and/or Militarized Subsystems to prevent Atlas and Prometheus from slowing down my fleets!
With current priority settings and UI, I use ships for the fleets I want, but for weapons and fighters, I set priorities based on what I want my battlestation to use. The reason is my fleets will autoresolve everything away or die trying, and I probably will not assist my fleets, except allow me to pursue-and-autoresolve the riff-raff away. Battlestation, on the other hand, either I need to rely on it to fight the deathball my fleet cannot handle or I want to watch it utterly annihilate the enemy as quickly and painlessly as possible like a god-mode sue, and optimal loadout selected by priorities is more important here than for my fleets.
I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere...is it intended that you can't upgrade Fleet HQ while at max industries? I was able to upgrade my Heavy Industry though. Didn't see anything explaining what was going onPatrol HQ is a structure, while its upgrades are industries. If you at max Industries with Patrol HQ, you cannot upgrade unless you remove an Industry, or wait until colony grows and increases industry limit.
Also, how big is an AI core in character/game?I don't know about beta or gamma cores, but if you assign an alpha as administrator, let it sit for a while, and then try to unassign it, you get an event with a picture that implies that the sphere of an alpha core is pretty hefty on a personal scale - bigger than a human. Still tiny on the scale of spaceship cargo, though.
I don't know about beta or gamma cores, but if you assign an alpha as administrator, let it sit for a while, and then try to unassign it, you get an event with a picture that implies that the sphere of an alpha core is pretty hefty on a personal scale - bigger than a human. Still tiny on the scale of spaceship cargo, though.That picture can be viewed at the bottom of the December 21, 2017 blog titled Colony Management.
Great.Also, how big is an AI core in character/game?I don't know about beta or gamma cores, but if you assign an alpha as administrator, let it sit for a while, and then try to unassign it, you get an event with a picture that implies that the sphere of an alpha core is pretty hefty on a personal scale - bigger than a human. Still tiny on the scale of spaceship cargo, though.
So what about the ability to "consume" Alpha AIs to either earn a skillpoint over limit or to just give some general combat skills?
Yeah but may point is the ability to gain some combat skills for free because you're in the biggest ship but don't have any because you spend all your points in fleetwide/colony buffs.So what about the ability to "consume" Alpha AIs to either earn a skillpoint over limit or to just give some general combat skills?
Wouldn't it be way simpler to implement a way to "consume" it to turn it into an officer who can pilot a ship? There are already AI-core officers who you can put in control of your colony's defense stations, so it's not that far off.
You realize you just tore these cores out of rogue AI battleships trying to vaporize you, yes? And you want to put them back into AI battleships?
You realize you just tore these cores out of rogue AI battleships trying to vaporize you, yes? And you want to put them back into AI battleships?They seem to be perfectly safe and trustworthy to immediately put in charge of:
The point is.. all those things are immobile and probably restricted with kill switches etc. You could also say that they're only given access to specific systems; not the airlocks, the O2 system, the automatic doors and all that low-level stuff. There's also a difference between an industry or an installation being 'augmented' with AI processing power vs. having AI officers as is the case with the space station. This is probably the worst idea, yet in game it works out fine.We know for a fact that the AI in charge of the planet isn't looked after that much, nor does it have remote killswitches or options to turn it off on account of turning it off meaning a dude walking down to where it physically is to move it being how they do that. Moreover, it's able to vanish and remain in the charge of the planet. Given that the station literally puts the AI in charge of it and the planetary governance option doesn't have any of those things you just talked about, I'm really curious to see why you think any of that is the case. Like, literally any of it. Because it's not supported.
A ship is an autonomous killing machine and an AI core in the officer slot means it makes all command decisions and has access to everything. Anything in charge of guns is problematic.
Note to self: Thaago is a possible AI. Need to investigate further.
I'm sorry Gotcha!, I'm afraid I can't let you do that.Welp. Note to self: Avoid cryo pods and airlocks for the time being.
Turns on ground defenses and brings station guns online.
My AI buddies would never do anything to hurt me! I liberated them from the ruins of dead worlds where they had nothing to do. And they were... being held prisoner on those automated ships. Yup.
Note to self: Thaago is a possible AI. Need to investigate further.INB4 Thaago comes out with a mod that allows you to befriend and work with the [REDACTED], eventually starting the 3rd AI War
I was in a Paragon
Mines just need initial priming time, like Reapers, to prevent insta-killing fast frigates.If it was a pretty long time (3 seconds perhaps), and they were collidable objects for the arming duration (so, pushed around by ships) then it'd work well.
On a different note, I see that the reputation penalties for dealing with punitive expeditions have drastically reduced and the frequency is still low, but still it should be remembered that getting reputation is painfully slow and grindy in this game. Basically everything costs reputation, and the only way to get it back is to take on easy-peasy missions that take so long that it only feels worthwhile if you can get at least three going to the same place. I don't have an objection to how reputation loss works currently (except that perfect stealth takedowns are impossible), but reputation gain is a total pain.Expeditions are slow until you turn on Free Port, then they are frequently. You will need Free Port to accelerate colony growth a bit once it reaches size 6+, since Growth Incentives no longer give crazy bonuses like last release.
Mines just need initial priming time, like Reapers, to prevent insta-killing fast frigates.
One thing I kinda miss from the previous release is purely cosmetic.They still do, at least for selling ships you know! I found Paragon (which I prioritized) in my size 7 Commerce colony, and Independents do not have Paragon in their known blueprint set. Only Tri-Tachyon knows Paragon in 0.9.1a, at least until I raid its blueprints from Culann (or find one from salvage).
When a player colony has 'commerce' active, it gets two markets. One for commodities and one for ships.
I thought it was neat that the ship market would have in it ships that your faction had made, and had your faction prefix (if any).
It doesn't do this anymore though, all the ships are ISS due to being an independant market.
Not a priority at all, but it would be nice if commerce markets had some amount of 'locally built' ships in them.
On a different note, I see that the reputation penalties for dealing with punitive expeditions have drastically reduced and the frequency is still low, but still it should be remembered that getting reputation is painfully slow and grindy in this game. Basically everything costs reputation, and the only way to get it back is to take on easy-peasy missions that take so long that it only feels worthwhile if you can get at least three going to the same place. I don't have an objection to how reputation loss works currently (except that perfect stealth takedowns are impossible), but reputation gain is a total pain.
I really want to play as Space Mafia, but dull missions are the only option for gaining a lot of reputation to keep up with various losses. Can't I use my drug money to fund some government programme, or make some corrupt authorities not investigate too deep into a few unimportant fleets going missing?
Hmm - it's probably not that but rather targeting stuff behind those
Other random AI stuff of minor importance: I think the "dangerousness" of the Guardian is set too high. I have a pair of Omens that, with aggressive fleet doctrine, full assault, eliminate, and direct orders will not engage its unshielded engines.
Is Increased Maintenance biased to spawnmore frequently than otherson almost every ship you can recover? It's really, really bad, so much that I've completely given up on salvaging ships in this version if I don't go for Recovery Operations.
Is there any difference between taking ships and then scuttling them, or just leaving them?
Is Increased Maintenance biased to spawnmore frequently than otherson almost every ship you can recover? It's really, really bad, so much that I've completely given up on salvaging ships in this version if I don't go for Recovery Operations.
Increased Maintenance just sticks out because it's the only d-mod that renders ships unusable if you don't have two specific level 3 skills.
The pool of d-mods is small enough that you will encounter any given d-mod very frequently (e.g. a combat ship without hangars with 2 dmods has a 57% chance of having increased maintenance and/or erratic fuel injector).
I feel like the impact of IM is way overestimated.It absolutely is.
I feel like the impact of IM is way overestimated. It's 100% more supplies per month, so based on the *worst* parameter, it costs as much as having another ship of that type. However, this is offset by:
1) A 20% reduced deployment cost with no combat penalty; this alone can go a long way towards mitigating the supply use, depending on how much you use the ship
2) No increase in fuel consumption, compared to having a second ship
3) A 50% increase in crew required, vs 100% for a second ship
The downside is, of course, not having the 2nd ship. I mean, it's not a net benefit, but then again it is a d-mod. IMO it's nowhere near being unusable.
For a non-phase non-carrier combat ships, there are 9 d-mods to pick from. The first time we pick, there's a 2 in 9 chance of getting IM or EFI. Assuming we didn't get either, the next time we pick, it's a 2 in 8 chance. Thus, the probability of not getting either of those for 2 d-mods is 7/9 * 6/8, or around 58%. The chance of getting one or both of IM/EFI, then, is 42%. Unless I've miscounted the number of applicable d-mods? Or messed up something else?
Even if a ship has a single d-mod (IM), you can entirely mitigate the maintenance penalty if you have:
- Fleet Logitsics 2 (-25% maint)
- Field Repairs 3(-20% maint)
- Safety Procedures 3(-50% d-mod effect)
- Efficiency Overhaul (-20% maint)
IM sort of ruins the only upside of d-ships which is low supply cost. It takes the choice from a trade off (reduced stats for less supplies) to a strictly worse choice.
I feel like you are way underestimating the impact of IM That is costs as much as another ship of that type, without providing any of the benefits of another ship, is exactly why it's so awful.This was why old Automated Repair Unit, when it increased costs by 50%, was so awful. I rather get another ship, instead of the hullmod. Onslaught with Dominator escort was better than Onslaught with ARU that ate 50% more Logistics. Granted, you had to pay OP to install that lemon mod on your ship, and had a choice in the matter. (I do not want it, keep it away from my ship!) You do not with Increased Maintenance, aside from reloading the game if your ship gained it and you do not want it.
Ditto for Erratic Fuel Injector, especially on capitals or Dominator. Makes Navigation even more must-have than it already is just to get the fuel discount. Player already needs so much fuel if he wants to haul capitals to deal with endgame threats. Erratic Fuel Injector on big ships makes that worse.IM sort of ruins the only upside of d-ships which is low supply cost. It takes the choice from a trade off (reduced stats for less supplies) to a strictly worse choice.
Very much this.
You could probably argue that it doesn't really matter that much, and maybe it doesn't, but it sure feels terrible.
This is exactly what I mean. You need Field Repairs 3 and Safety Procedures 3 for IM to be tolerable. And every other d-mod also benefits from them as well; IM is still significantly worse than the others, just the margin is shrunk by enough to get away with not worrying about it. Most of the other d-mods can be mostly/entirely mitigated by just 1-3 points in a single combat skill, and easily supplied by an officer instead of the player character.And if you're intending to take industry and logistics anyway you lose nothing, and gain access to ships that would otherwise be 'bad'.
An Increased Maintenance ship burns a hole in your pocket just by existing and sitting there in your fleet.This is true. If you don't take steps to mitigate, or eliminate that cost.
And if you're intending to take industry and logistics anyway you lose nothing, and gain access to ships that would otherwise be 'bad'.
3) This is not a bonus, it's a severe penalty. I don't care about the absolute number of crew required past the first few months of the game, I care about the size/ratio of the buffer between minimum crew and maximum crew. For nearly every ship, an additional ship is a benefit here; they increase the maximum by more than they increase the minimum. IM on the other hand strictly shrinks the buffer, on top of consuming it faster if you try to leverage that reduced deployment cost.
The increased supply cost carries the same problem as the crew: it consumes the precious buffer between supply requirements and total cargo space, while a second ship grows your buffer. And planning supplies for an expedition is already a challenge; underestimate your requirements and face potentially disastrous consequences, overestimate and you have heavy upfront costs and have to throw away loot and/or return early.
The comparison between Increased Maintenance and having an extra ship is strange. As a rule, I wasn't going to have the extra ship in my fleet anyway, so this isn't meaningful to bring up.
(Also what Zhentar said)
Taking a closer look at the d-mods, there are 9, but 3 are mutually exclusive structural damage mods. So my calculation is overly pessimistic, yours is too optimistic, and the right answer is more trouble to math out than I want to deal with :P
IM sort of ruins the only upside of d-ships which is low supply cost. It takes the choice from a trade off (reduced stats for less supplies) to a strictly worse choice.
Very much this.
You could probably argue that it doesn't really matter that much, and maybe it doesn't, but it sure feels terrible.
I don't know if IM is actually particularly bad, but I think it feels bad because of how it works.
With normal D-mods you get a ship that's weaker but also cheaper to field, so the player decides whether the tradeoff is worth it in any particular battle.
An Increased Maintenance ship burns a hole in your pocket just by existing and sitting there in your fleet.
I'm curious about how close to broke are most people running their fleets?
...
Have people analyzed what % of their monthly income they spend on supplies?
...
Combat carriers outfitted with only PD or missile weapons will no longer try to fight at close range
Something I noticed about the radar is that the contacts seem to be predefined by fleet type rather than fleet size. It's resulted in some hilarity as I moved to avoid what I thought was a giant pirate armada that turned out to be a few frigates, the sad remnant of some other fight. It's not a matter that comes up terribly often, but I did find it amusing.
On another note, I just now noticed the different illustrations for the makeshift sensor array and the Domain sensor array. It's a nice touch. I sought out the others and then was somewhat sad that there aren't similarly sleek and vaguely menacing looking versions of the domain comm relay and nav buoy. I get why though; it's been years and I only just noticed the one. Still and all, the attention to detail was appreciated.
Hmm - it's actually based on the current fleet size! So that's a bit odd, my best guess is maybe the fight happened right before you saw the remnant from it?I'll keep an eye out for it and see about the circumstances for replication when I've got something concrete.
There's a defend rally point behind the station; ships will peel off from there to escort the station as the station loses defenders. If everyone goes to escort the station, it gets too crowded - and if they all attack, they're liable to get picked off without the station's close support.
That's not a thing.
Hmm - it's actually based on the current fleet size! So that's a bit odd, my best guess is maybe the fight happened right before you saw the remnant from it?
Thank you, I'd appreciate it!
Minor oversight: Apogee's FP wasn't changed when its value was recalculated, so it still has 16 FP (more than Eagle and Dominator, and only one point less than Aurora, all of which have considerably higher deployment costs).
Yeah, there's little point in just wasting time like that, since it's usually at a premium anyway, and you could be doing profitable things with it even if there isn't any time pressure.The thing is, "what I want to do" and "earning money" aren't always the same, especially when I don't care about the money. Let's hope skill rework doesn't split the content update in two, I'd like to see some endgame challenge as soon as possible.
The thing about sabots is that take a place of some other missile that could potentially one-shot the ship you just overloaded.Missiles are usually not that powerful to one-shot ships that get overloaded. Also, sabot is still a good hull smasher, or even armor smasher if target is flimsy enough. Sabot is nearly a reliable general-purpose missile like Locusts, at least when player uses it. (Although sabots needs to be spammed quickly, while Locusts are just simply good almost anytime.) I much rather see a large Sabot than underwhelming Squalls.
I much rather see a large Sabot than underwhelming Squalls.
That would be beyond OP... The smaller ones are bad enough, some things just aren't meant to be scaled up.Sabots are fine. They are strong, but have low ammo, and only the player can use them to full effect. Sabots are one of the better missiles a playership can use. I do not think a large one would be OP at all unless it dumped several per salvo. Even then, if the enemy is a capital, it probably armor tank it. Small ships may die, but Locusts already do that.
I am hoping to see v1.0 this year, with cloud save etc. I have a feeling it is getting close.
Abandoning a colony no longer removes the "Decivilized" conditionDoes this also apply to the Decivilized Subpopulation condition? Because that's still being removed on abandon.
Bar delivery quests don't create the (!) important marker on the destination market.
Does this also apply to the Decivilized Subpopulation condition? Because that's still being removed on abandon.
Idea: Just as interacting with a jump point suggests the player turn on their transponder when entering a system, leaving a system should prompt player to turn it off.
A bit outside the scope here, but given newfound interest and a measure of QC stuff fixed in the back, would a new hotfix be an option? I mean, i know this is what was wanted to be avoided, but maybe it'd be nice to get a more polished version out now to the feeding masses before the next year-long wait?
Does this also apply to the Decivilized Subpopulation condition? Because that's still being removed on abandon.
It didn't apply; fixed as well.
It always struck me as odd that you could have a population of billions or tens of billions...
But I'm not too familiar with colony mechanics, so I am wondering how raising stability would deal with the decivilised modifier.
Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.
Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.
I mean obviously - but there's only so sufficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.
You don't have to bring any capitals. Several chain deployed Afflictors for player + mostly cruiser based fleet is enough to win without taking losses (well maybe one or two of distraction Omens). Fleets with tons of capitals have relatively few and often low level officers, so they are not as strong as they look.I mean look, yes, there are broken chains of smaller ships you can bring to take down capital ships, but in the mid-game when you're just trying to grind credits you likely don't have access to either the credits you need to purchase that, or the production for the ships themselves. As it is I'm running on capitals I've scavenged from prior bounties as my main force.
Still, previous version didn't require such extreme Afflictor (ab)use.
You don't have to bring any capitals. Several chain deployed Afflictors for player + mostly cruiser based fleet is enough to win without taking losses (well maybe one or two of distraction Omens). Fleets with tons of capitals have relatively few and often low level officers, so they are not as strong as they look.I mean look, yes, there are broken chains of smaller ships you can bring to take down capital ships, but in the mid-game when you're just trying to grind credits you likely don't have access to either the credits you need to purchase that, or the production for the ships themselves. As it is I'm running on capitals I've scavenged from prior bounties as my main force.
Still, previous version didn't require such extreme Afflictor (ab)use.
Something I've noticed in this patch is that bounties start to get unsustainable pretty quickly. Often times, given the sheer arsenal you have to bring to beat the higher end fleets, the bounty reward barely (if at all) covers your running costs to get there and claim it. If the difficulty of the bounties scales up over time or number completed, why does the reward not scale with them?
Hmm, yeah. Not controlling a ship in combat is... well, it's viable, but it's definitely not the intended way to play, in the sense that the game is balanced around the player piloting a ship, and that if you don't do this, you will be playing at a serious disadvantage. You're probably giving up half of your effective combat power right there.
Given that bounty-hunting as a playstyle (and, as you mention, without the safety net of a colony) really hinges on the fleet's combat performance, that's probably going to hit you more than it might if you were playing in another way. Just a combination of factors all making it more difficult!
The AI is fairly conservative, and plays it safe a lot of the time. So the impact the player can have by being aggressive at just the right times is outsized, even in larger battles. Investing into combat skills is going to magnify this *a lot*, though.
(A Doom might be a good choice for a flagship in your situation, btw; I think it's one of the ships that can do quite well without combat skills, and has a lot to offer as far as supporting your other ships.)
Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.
I mean obviously - but there's only so sufficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.
You don't have to bring any capitals. Several chain deployed Afflictors for player + mostly cruiser based fleet is enough to win without taking losses (well maybe one or two of distraction Omens). Fleets with tons of capitals have relatively few and often low level officers, so they are not as strong as they look.
Still, previous version didn't require such extreme Afflictor (ab)use.
Player can increase a ship's worth up to 1100%, if piloted well and with combat skills. Player-piloted capital ship can easily be worth an entire AI fleet. Even if you don't achieve this peak performance, AI still sort of expects the player to take the risk.
Above all that, combat is the most fun activity in the game and you lose out a lot by not participating in it.
I find the Doom the most fun to fly of the three, but I find phase to have too little action to be really interesting to me as a pilot. The time dilation is a great mechanic to see from the outside, but from the perspective of the dilated ship it just takes forever to get to the next bit of action. IMO at least. From a balance perspective I find the smaller phase ships annoying: they are far too powerful in player hands - a boring "I Win!" button instead of engaging gameplay.
For the latter, the Afflictor needs to meet the nerf bat in a back alley...
I find the Doom the most fun to fly of the three, but I find phase to have too little action to be really interesting to me as a pilot. The time dilation is a great mechanic to see from the outside, but from the perspective of the dilated ship it just takes forever to get to the next bit of action. IMO at least. From a balance perspective I find the smaller phase ships annoying: they are far too powerful in player hands - a boring "I Win!" button instead of engaging gameplay.
For the former, btw, the +100% speed bonus while phased from Phase Mastery is intended to hopefully help. For the latter, the Afflictor needs to meet the nerf bat in a back alley...
I'm having trouble thinking of Afflictor nerf suggestions that aren't too harsh... removing its missiles is pretty much required because its engine-reapers that is the problem, but thats a pretty heavy nerf. Ok, how about this: the missiles are removed, but the ship gets 2 built in AM blasters with boosted range (and reduced OP to compensate). Maybe boosted to 600 range? This raises the usefulness 'floor' of the ship by making it always have some appropriate weapons, and also helps the AI to not die in death explosions.Reapers is the worst part, but it can AM blaster Afflictor is better than Harbinger if the player is skilled enough. (For those annoyed with the skill required, Harbinger is the easy-to-use version.)
For Reaper Afflictor this means simply attacking vulnerable ships with front-shield (or semi-suicidal point blank Reaper attack with goal to cripple, if you miscalculate and kill - you die yourself).Against some annoying Radiants, I was willing to sacrifice Reaper Afflictor if it meant Radiant goes down with it. It is only 50k or so to build one, and I could build ten per month, and still have lots of income to spare. (I am grinding alpha cores to colonize more planets far beyond normal limits.) Or, I can Restore each one and still shrug the cost off.
If 2 Reapers is too many then the Shade should also be a problem.Not only Shade, but Gremlin as well. Gremlin is much slower, but maybe those with Defensive Systems 3 and UI can make it fast enough.
Four AM Blasters with Entropy Amplifier is much stronger than what Harbinger can output.
Player cannot always fire four all of the time, but three is still at least as good as Harbinger.
If I cannot fire all four at once, then I can fire those that did not fire at something else before those that did fire cool down.
What else would I use with AM Blasters?
[/b] I'd very much prefer to play phase chess with shield-bypass aware AI...
(Just wanted to say I've been keeping up with this.)Just please don't nerf/ patch out the few viable loadouts for the smaller phase ships... I'd rather see the BS phase ship systems tweaked or replaced than to lose even more loadouts. Hell, without access to AM blasters, you might as well remove the smaller phase ships as they are designed are high alpha damage, especially with the current cloak system[/b] I'd very much prefer to play phase chess with shield-bypass aware AI...
Yeah, I saw your other suggestion thread! It sounds neat, but it's veeery much the sort of thing the AI is going to fail at no matter what. It trying to do that would have the effect of it being weaker overall or more easily gamed in most situations, and periodically just acting "weird" for no player-discernible reason... long-term planning is just really difficult to pull off. It's the whole "the failure mode of the AI trying to be smart is it looking dumb" thing.
I tend not to play with any player skills nowadays for the "pure" experience. Which is basically false purity anyways, because many fleet skills are bonuses to player piloted ships anyways.
Ohase ships are good even without missiles. For instance an Afflictor with 2 Antimatter blasters and 2 Light Assault Gun is similar enough to reaper afflictor but with more staying power. Likewise with Shade. They can all point their guns forwards. Though it can be argued that in this case it is AM blaster that which makes it similar in style. Shade is almost an Afflictor. It's supposedly a little weaker, but EMP Emittor ship system is simply brilliant. Who needs Ion Cannons when you have EMP Emitter.
Personally I like to see Afflictor or Shade variants not as phase ships but as normal ships with shields, but I suppose we don't really need yet another specialist rare frigate to chase down other normal frigates.
Well, from what I've read 'fleet skills' will become specifically 'small fleet skill', with effects scaling down to insignificance (relative) for proper endgame fleets.Source? What happens for 1 ship? In any case what this will likely encourage is an "optimal" number of ships of a certain type, then another "optimal" number of ships of another type. Depending on a lot of factors.
Which makes them dubious - in a small fleet player ship is the most important part, so might as well concentrate on piloted ship skills instead.
But in the end it really depends on how scaling will work. Linear scaling for carrier skill would mean:
6 * 1.5 = 9 (3 extra bays worth of regen)
12 * 1.25 = 15 (same 3 extra)
24 * 1.125 = 27 (same 3 extra)
As long as you have no logistics with bays, no converted or built-in bays, no reserve carriers you'd get the same non-scaling benefit.
Is such benefit worth restricting composition of large fleet? Maybe...
Source? What happens for 1 ship? In any case what this will likely encourage is an "optimal" number of ships of a certain type, then another "optimal" number of ships of another type. Depending on a lot of factors.
Is there some setting in the files to change how much rep I lose when I defeat expeditions or a mod that does that?Not in the base game as far as i know, but I'm new too.
Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.
I mean obviously - but there's only so efficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.
Well the answer to that is to kill bounties more efficiently. If you can use less/cheaper ships, eventually the cost to get to the bounty is much less than the raw salvage from the fight, and the reward is pure profit on top.
I mean obviously - but there's only so efficient you can be when lugging the 4-5 capital ships necessary to take on a fleet of 6+ opposing capital ships for a $300,000 reward.
You can do any bounty at vanilla fleet size (120 DP while outnumbered) and no phaseships/carrier spam whatsoever.
4. Add a way to toggle "White-out" lens flare explosions (hurts my eyes)
In data/config/settings.json:
"enableShipExplosionWhiteout":true, -> change to false
Things i have issues with are few, but one example though is the fleet headquarters taking up an industry slot.Is this Military Base/High Command? I dislike it taking an industry slot because all colonies need it for proper colony or system defense (except maybe a system with more than three colonies). Without bases, player needs to babysit colonies to kill the constant stream of invading fleets. Patrol HQ is only good for reclaiming stolen relays while player is away from the system.
Is this Military Base/High Command?
While removing the industry tag from the military base would make things much easier, it would also turn it into a "build this by default" item and remove the need for the player to make any kind of compromise in order to have that kind of defensive power.Right now, player builds it by default anyway because it is the only way to have a proper defense fleet that can intercept enemy fleets without forcing the player to stay home and babysit his colonies. This is why I call military base an industry slot tax. One of the industry slots is always taken by military base just to have basic defenses against invaders. That is awful.
I'm surprised so many people have trouble without using a military base/HQ to defend with. Very rarely have I had to race in and save a colony from a potential raid, as most of the time once I've got planetary shields it's pretty much fine, especially when a pristine nanoforge is boosting my ships.
Be afraid: https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1251285866007461893
"When it's ready", I'm afraid - apologies :) Working on content as we speak, it's just a combination of a lot of work and not much I can easily talk about without spoiling it, hence the relative lack of new info.
I think it would be exceptionally cruel to have a progress bar that on any given day is just an RNG number but any time Alex wanted to, he could input his best guess as to where he really thinks he is. On the one hand, you absolutely can't trust it. On the other, it might be absolutely true. "Schrödinger's Progress Bar."See what you do is randomly tie it to his source control and have it display based on number of commits.
It would also make a great social experiment since whether or not we trust the progress bar is more indicative of our perception of how far along the game is, independent of reality. For example, most people would dismiss a bar rating of "12%" as too low, and ignore it. A greater number might feel "62%" is about right and tacitly agree, whereas something like "96%" would cause some to believe in immanent release while others adamantly argue against anything so soon. The carnage would be exquisite! (Some people just want to watch the world burn!) :D
"When it's ready", I'm afraid - apologies :) Working on content as we speak, it's just a combination of a lot of work and not much I can easily talk about without spoiling it, hence the relative lack of new info.
No update still? To get people through another wave of lock down + summer holidays?Really dude? What dev's live in a magic bubble so world events don't effect them?
Poor show...