Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: goduranus on April 29, 2019, 07:57:16 AM
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Starsector's been around for a long time, there's been alot of features and fun bug that were later removed. Do you remember some of them? Please share.
For me, a funny one is back around Version 0.6, when character skills were first introduced. For some reason losing ships gave you ridiculous amount of extra XP, so every battle I put unarmed freighters in front to get blown up, and levelled up really quick:P
Some other ones:
V0.9 : Black hole colonies that causes tons of pirate fleets to get stuck
V0.8 : Torpedo Afflictors that kill everything
V0.7 : ? I didn't play much around this patch
V0.6 : suicide ships to level up
V0.5 : Enemy ships will break and run and surrender if they shoot at you but couldn't inflict hull or armor damage for a while, causing funny situations like Onslaughts surrendering to Tempests
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My favorite: Capture a ship, outfit it, go to simulator immediately, and your captured ship spawned as an enemy. Great in-game way to test custom loadouts on an enemy ship. Wished that ascended into a feature.
For some reason losing ships gave you ridiculous amount of extra XP, so every battle I put unarmed freighters in front to get blown up, and levelled up really quick:P
That was intentional (Alex had a reason - learn from your losses) until guys like me abused it to level up faster. I have shot and destroyed my own ships to speed up level gain and get more skills. It was removed, but XP gained was raised to compensate... at least during fights I did not autoresolve.
During 0.5.4, I autoresolved every fight to extend soft cap by 10 to 20 levels for that coveted 10-10-10 skills.
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Money printing via Crew levelling
Money printing via Food shortages
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V0.8 : Torpedo Afflictors that kill everything
Still a thing.
Admittedly, to kill a Paragon or Radiant way more practical solution would be to use Reaper Afflictor to soften target down to few % hull, then switch to AM Afflictor and safely finish with it.
Bypassing accelerated omni-shield with Reapers without QD takes semi-suicidal tactics (but you survive just fine as long as you don't finish off the target).
Also, v0.9 : Reaper Harbinger that kills everything (and with much larger torpedo stockpile for extra fun and profit)..
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Anyone else remember when the Tachyon Lance had 5000 base range? Throw an ITU on your ship and - combined with the old mechanic where deployment points were based solely on how many objectives you'd captured - you were able to spend your initial deployment points to send in a single Odyssey or Paragon to snipe the enemy's fighters and frigates from across the entire map before they could capture a single objective, preventing them from deploying larger ships and winning battles without even coming within visual range of the enemy.
Good times, good times. Completely broken times, but good. :)
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Anyone else remember when the Tachyon Lance had 5000 base range? Throw an ITU on your ship and - combined with the old mechanic where deployment points were based solely on how many objectives you'd captured - you were able to spend your initial deployment points to send in a single Odyssey or Paragon to snipe the enemy's fighters and frigates from across the entire map before they could capture a single objective, preventing them from deploying larger ships and winning battles without even coming within visual range of the enemy.
Good times, good times. Completely broken times, but good. :)
This was very fun (for a little while)! It also gave a unique role to the independent fighters: artillery spotters. A Talon wing backed up by 4 tach lances is nice.
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I came too late for 5000 range Tachyon Lance. I started on the last version before skills were added, and Tachyon Lance had 2500 range among other nerfs.
But... that reminds me of another absurd one: Unlimited Salamanders and Fast Missile Racks some time during the mid to late 0.6.x era. Stuff like Condor, Venture, and Doom (when it had Fast Missile Racks instead of Mine Strike) can spam unlimited Salamanders and kill everything from beyond fog-of-war. At first, Salamanders did 500 (frag) damage. Then it was toned down to 100 damage, but even nerfed, ships could still kill everything beyond fog-of-war. It took charges to Fast Missile Racks to end that game-breaker combo.
Others...
No CR and no peak performance before 0.6a.
All ballistics had ammo. A later 0.6.5 release gave them charges like autopulse. After that, ballistics became unlimited.
Maneuverability Jets (on Eagle and Conquest) kept their boosted top speed after the system ends as long as ship does not try to change velocity.
Vent cancelling on ships with Burn Drive.
Vent spamming.
Fading shots hit for hard flux beyond their listed range.
Fighters were treated as ships before 0.8.
Pre-0.7.2 Aurora was a better Gryphon than Gryphon, with large missile mount instead of medium synergy.
Gryphon on its debut release had Missile Autoforge that costs CR% to use, instead of one charge only. That version was used for that infamous pic of Reaper spam against Onslaught. Also, first release Gryphon had better stats, at least more OP.
Pre-0.8 Hammerhead was awful, with terrible stats, and Accelerated Ammo Feeder was suicidal back then, with no flux use discount to compensate for faster fire rate, meaning AI flux capped almost instantly.
Sparks in first 0.8 release had two burst PDs. Six on Astral can solo everything except the simulator (barely).
Phase cloak before 0.7.2 did not have time shaft, and did not have cooldown. It was basically a ghost variation of Fortress Shield.
Phase cloak before 0.9 had invulnerability frames. Afflictor (and other phase ships) can kill ships point-blank while decloaking and not take damage.
Pre-0.9 hyperspace storms were terrible, slowing your fleet to a crawl and gobbling up supplies. Good riddance.
Pre-0.9 light needler has 800 range. Not sure if lowered flux use will be enough to make it worth using over Railgun in 0.9.1.
Current, but soon to become the past once 0.9.1 breaks out: Perdition wings. Overpowered for their cost. Khopesh was nerfed in 0.9, only for equally priced Perdition to replace them seamlessly.
P.S. More...
Flux overcharge for energy weapons. Weapons on ship grew brighter and stronger the higher flux was. (Base stats of energy weapons were weaker, but their main advantage at the time was unlimited ammo, while ballistics had limited ammo.)
Hellbore fired twice as fast before 0.8. It was a top-tier weapon at bargain OP cost (and could be bought at Open Market). Ammo lasted longer than HAG while ballistics had ammo.
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Phase cloak before 0.7.2 did not have time shaft, and did not have cooldown. It was basically a ghost variation of Fortress Shield.
I hope that we will eventually get some phase ship that works like that again. Not all phase ships have to be assassins.
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I prefer the old phase cloak ships because the AI does not know how to use the new time shift phase cloak. Old phase cloak ships can brawl (or tank in case of Shade), but all the new phase cloak ships do is flit about until they run out of CR much faster than other ships. New cloak is fine for strike bomber loadouts under player control, but terrible for general AI use. An exception is Doom, because it can attack while phased (through mines) and it can be made a bit tanky.
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Anyone else remember when the Tachyon Lance had 5000 base range?
<holds up hand>
I also remember it being pretty weird / mysterious to use, because it was literally the only weapon in the game where you used the "target enemy view" specifically to snipe with it, lol. When the AI used it well, it was actually scary.
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The black hole thing still exists. Not often, but I have had a few Pather/pirate bases get setup next to blackholes and I show up to find half a dozen fleets stuck in the pit. Never fails to get a giggle outta me.
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Yeah, black hole colonies are not gone yet, haha.
Btw, I miss the old crew level up feature. Feels good to get that message of green crews leveling up after each battle.
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Mercury was called Shuttle. It was smaller and only had the two front mounts.
Old Falcon did not have the two small energy mounts ahead of the mediums (and less OP)! It was rather crappy. It had to give up either firepower or PD.
More greebly artwork on most ships.
Older portraits. Most of them appeared cartoonish and silly. Default Hegemony officer (at upper left) had a strong resemblance to Ryu wearing drab gray Hegemony uniform instead of the white gi and red headband. Doomguy looked like a stoned dude wearing a fishbowl, and old nasty Adama or Q3 Sarge lookalike looked like sickly creepy Palpatine with bad teeth and wearing a Hegemony uniform. David's old avatar was one of the few (if not only) that looked better than the modern portrait. Old David merc was a bit handsome. Modern David merc looks like Dracula.
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The one mechanic I loved and still dearly miss is the 0 flux boost straffe runs, back when you didn't slowed back to regular speed if you didn't accelerated. That allowed you to coast at high speed while firing.
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I think I really miss the high-flux bonus to energy weapons. Made running hot Sunder builds really fun.
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V0.7 : ? I didn't play much around this patch
Speedy speed boy Conquest.
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All ballistics had ammo. A later 0.6.5 release gave them charges like autopulse. After that, ballistics became unlimited.
Ha, I'd forgotten that one! I remember thinking it was a disappointing change because I thought it would make weapons too same-y. Funny, in hindsight, because I find the trade-offs I have to weigh when choosing between weapon types now far more compelling than I did back then.
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Phase cloak before 0.7.2 did not have time shaft, and did not have cooldown.
Who's the sleek black ship
That's a time machine to all the fleets? (Shaft)
You're damn right
I sometimes still catch myself trying to do that flickerphase thing to avoid being hit.
As you can imagine, a reminder of the current mechanics quickly follows.
Infinite sensors. Or rather no sensor mechanics implemented yet.
You can see every fleet that exists. And even before most of the systems existed, it gave you a good impression of just how busy the sector really is.
It'd be interesting to see how the 'modern' sector looks through this lens.
No movement inhibition. Aka Interdiction Pulse not existing.
Fleets are isoloated entities. No joining behaviour.
Hostile fleets could be 'herded' with a little effort, allowing you to pick off straggling fleets and potentially harvest ships for your own use.
You could run orbits around Sindria with various Lion's Guard fleets following you like a scene from Benny Hill, while you swoop down on targets as they appear in a effort to steal thier delicious Tempests.
The last grand age of clown piracy was 0.6.5.
Boarding/Salvage mechanics were a horrible mess of micromanagement and (lack of) luck.
Carrying marines around all the time, just in case.
Capricious RNG deciding whether to make anything recoverable at all.
Either a fleet full of disposable shuttles, or the biggest clunkiest most up-armored heap of trash you can make for carrying the marines over and docking. (Or not care and dock with your fleet ships and just try to work around your moon-sized balls I suppose.)
Because boarded ships have a chance to explode and maybe take the docked ship with it. Why? Because RNG loves your misery.
P. glad this nonsense is gone.
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Individual fighters. Man, I loved how a single Gemini and an assortment of fighters can take on a fleet of 20 Pirate ships.
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Although, at one point fighter wing took hundreds of supplies to recover, and I was like wtf was eating all my supplies?
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-Loadout Design giving a total of 30 or even 50%! more OP
-Navigation making your fleet nigh uncatchable
-The OLD .54 style of boarding
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-Loadout Design giving a total of 30 or even 50%! more OP
Technology Aptitude = +1% per AP
Computer Systems = +2% per SP (later +1%)
Mechanical Engineering = +2% per SP (later +1%)
That did not include Optimized Assembly from Ordnance Expert 10, for OP discount on weapons and effectively have even more OP to spend. Ordnance Expert alone was worth Combat 10, and that was not the best Combat perk. In-combat hull regeneration from Damage Control 10 was the biggest enabler of soloing fleets.
Loadout Design came in 0.8 after that first skill revamp.
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Few more from pre-0.6:
Rock-Paper-Scissors type choices before fighting to determine how much DP you and the enemy started with. Pointless since experienced player always knew the correct option (because the AI was totally predictable).
If your fleet was small enough, the game automatically deployed all of your ships. Only after your fleet gets big enough that you can choose what to deploy.
Pursuit was almost identical to normal battle, except player could only retreat at the enemy's side of the screen (at the top) instead of your side at the bottom. Trying to flee in a pursuit means you cannot retreat at the bottom of the screen where you spawn, and you must travel to the enemy's side of the border to leave the arena. Therefore, the best way to flee is to select a normal fight option then retreat at the bottom of the screen. Fleeing from a non-pursuit fight gave your ships a small chance of being automatically lost to the enemy (either captured or sabotaged), but it was still better than watching your (outmatched) ships getting picked off trying to flee across the screen to the top. In other words, player would probably lose more ships fleeing (to the top) via pursuit instead of simply start a normal fight then immediately turn and run away at the bottom.
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I miss crew veterancy levels. It was a little overdesigned as it was, but I'd actually love to see it come back in a limited form like maybe just having regular crew and Elite crew, which couldn't be bought and would provide a little (+5%?) max CR bonus.
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Fighters being independent of ships. Yeah, the new carrier mechanics are better, but I miss being able to pick up 2 wings of talons at the right at the star and throwing them at the enemy to get splatted.
Or in a pursuit, deploying 4 wings of daggers (with reapers) and watching whatever big target I wanted dead just blowing up.
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I miss crew veterancy levels. It was a little overdesigned as it was, but I'd actually love to see it come back in a limited form like maybe just having regular crew and Elite crew, which couldn't be bought and would provide a little (+5%?) max CR bonus.
I liked that as well. I would take them even if all crew types were equivalent in all crew-requiring situations and more experienced crew was barely profitable to sell. I just liked my whole fleet getting better, even ships with no officers. But, well, I guess it's gone now.
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I miss crew veterancy levels. It was a little overdesigned as it was, but I'd actually love to see it come back in a limited form like maybe just having regular crew and Elite crew, which couldn't be bought and would provide a little (+5%?) max CR bonus.
Yeah, I miss this as well; it gave a bit more meaning to hullmods like "blast doors", as crew become more valuable and worth protecting over time.
A mod by sundog: "Starship Legends" that Alex posted about on his twitter looked like it might make crew a little more interesting albeit a bit more indirectly:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15321.0
I haven't tried the mod (waiting for 0.9.1a first and a vanilla play through), but it looks promising at a glance.
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I am glad crew levels are gone. No more crew Tetris. Also, less inverted game difficulty thanks to green crew early (too low CR) and elite crew a given by endgame.
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In-combat hull regeneration from Damage Control 10 was the biggest enabler of soloing fleets.
This was an amazing ability. I genuinely miss being able to come back from the brink / recover from a mistake like that.
I've been half-heartedly trying to replicate that ability on a modded version of the automated repair unit, but I'm bad at java and don't really have the time/motivation to learn.