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Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Grievous69 on August 27, 2019, 05:58:46 AM

Title: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Grievous69 on August 27, 2019, 05:58:46 AM
Playing more and more, it's really starting to bug me out how default fleets are so useless. For me it kinda feels too binary, either you have Venture/Shepherd fleets or best combat ships in the game. I get that not every colony needs a High Command, but currently there's no point in upgrading it if you're not gonna build a Heavy Industry too. I just wish we had more ''starting options'' other than mining ships, just to reduce the frustration of RNG blueprint runs.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 29, 2019, 07:50:24 AM
It is annoying!  Another reason why low profile colonies are only a temporary band-aid before player is eventually forced to build-up all the way.

It is a reason why Orbital Station should be the very first thing your first colony should build (because pirates will raid in only a few months, and you need something to defend it while you are away).  Military Base is worthless without good ships, and you need Heavy Industry for that... which brings down the wrath of most major factions.  Patrol HQ is needed to maintain relay ownership.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: MajorTheRed on August 29, 2019, 09:19:28 AM
That's one of the pit-trap of the current version. There is only two parts in the game: prior to colony building, and after the first colony. Most of the time I enjoy the first part where you explore systems to get a nice place to colonize.
Once you get a colony, you quickly want to build heavy industries, at least to get new weapons and/or ships and upgrade your defenses. But at this point your are falling in the not-so-interesting part of babysitting your colonies against pirates/pathers/jealous factions.
I  would like ships and weapons building to be in separate industries to get the feeling of a more progressive evolution in the game. It could also be interesting to be able to produce small ships at first to fit your current level of progress. For example, get a small colony only able to build destroyer and frigates, just to get access to this much need Valkyrie so you can raid others systems. Or to get an exploration ship. Etc...
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: wtftucker on August 29, 2019, 09:38:20 AM
Agreed.  I think there needs to be a much slower progression overall like a "Long war" mod that draws out everything.  Having more variance in what each industry produces or enables production of (this would be a significant change overall).  Maybe light industry allowing the production of frigates and destroyers or something along those lines. 

Currently there is only early game = making money in preparation for colony

and

Post-Colony = printing money.  If you have the starting capital (1 mil) you can essentially take a sub 200% planet with decent ores and turn it into a 150k to 350k profiting colony in under 8 months while still upgrading the port, GD, Orbital stations etc.  That's a very rapid change in  player income that snowballs in our favor too quickly imo.  I think a more practical expectation on a perfect planet would be more along the lines of 50% increase in revenue annually, not several thousand percent in a matter of months.  Maybe a more dynamic way of managing a colony is needed like assignment of population (colony size 3 gets 3 assigned personal to put in industry or construction of new structures) with each assigned personal modifying construction time, production, growth, etc.  Need a structure quickly, assign all three and stagnate your population growth and mining production but increase the construction time by 30% (not additive) for each colony personal assigned (3 personal = 50.9% increase for instance)

Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Psigun on August 29, 2019, 09:42:20 AM
that's probably the biggest part of the colony-building experience that could be smoothed out. a nice difficulty curve that pressures your colonies in a way that doesn't force you to go all-out 100% right from the jump rushing specific structures.

as it stands, i save up a few million credits and find a system with all the resources and start up several colonies concurrently. generally i look for a farming/organics world for ag and light industry, a ore/rare ore world for refining and heavy industry, and a volatiles world for fuel. lowest hazard rating and best modifiers possible. all that doesn't matter much though, what matters is having money for getting defensive structures spammed ASAP so you don't just deal with constant disruptions and raids, and for getting heavy industry up and running ASAP.

scrappy backwater colonies require an inordinate amount of player intervention from the jump barring spamming defenses and rushing heavy industry. i wouldn't be surprised to see this changed in new versions.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Grievous69 on August 29, 2019, 09:50:23 AM
Post-Colony = printing money.  If you have the starting capital (1 mil) you can essentially take a sub 200% planet with decent ores and turn it into a 150k to 350k profiting colony in under 8 months while still upgrading the port, GD, Orbital stations etc.

Ok let's not exaggerate right now, what you said right there is impossible. The speed at which colonies grow is perfectly fine, anything slower than that and it would feel infuriating. Although I can see it seems way too fast for new people with posts everywhere saying ''I can't stop playing this, send help''. If I played 10 hours a day, I would also feel that late game comes quickly.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 29, 2019, 10:28:02 AM
What would be nice is if you have a commission with a major faction, that faction's ships/weapons/fighters become available for importing for your patrols.

* * *

As for colonies, due to how expensive ships and colonies are, I find myself having to choose between upgrading my fleet (so it can kill ten capital death fleets more easily) or colonies during the transition from mid-game to late/endgame.

I personally prefer the power and convenience of the (late) colony game, but the constant babysitting needs to stop.

Speaking of babysitting, even if I have no colonies, I still need to babysit core worlds that are incapable of defending themselves from the zombie pirate horde that never stay dead for more than a day.  Easier to babysit while I have my own income and my own colonies to draw resources from.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: wtftucker on August 29, 2019, 10:31:11 AM
Post-Colony = printing money.  If you have the starting capital (1 mil) you can essentially take a sub 200% planet with decent ores and turn it into a 150k to 350k profiting colony in under 8 months while still upgrading the port, GD, Orbital stations etc.

Ok let's not exaggerate right now, what you said right there is impossible. The speed at which colonies grow is perfectly fine, anything slower than that and it would feel infuriating. Although I can see it seems way too fast for new people with posts everywhere saying ''I can't stop playing this, send help''. If I played 10 hours a day, I would also feel that late game comes quickly.

That wasn't an exaggeration.  A 200% hazard cyro planey with +2 trans ore +0 ore +1 volatiles generates 30k as soon as your mining and starport are done.  That's 60 days.  With monderate attempts to make some income doing exploration missions while that builds you can easily have enough to build ground defenses and upgrade those, upgrade to megaport, and build refining and a waystation.  That puts you at 10 stability and depending on your access RNG from proximity to the core worlds 220k profit roughly a month after 8 months.  From that point on you can snowball additional colonies for exponential returns just running off the profits of the starter colony.  All of this is with a 200% Hazard planet, find a 75% or 100% with a special modifier for added growth, access, etc and it only gets better. 
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Grievous69 on August 29, 2019, 10:46:42 AM
JUST mining and refining on a colony that's been founded 8 months ago giving you 220k, negro what? Either I'm doing something wrong or you fiddled with some mods. Do you maybe have like 10 Alpha cores available or something?
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: wtftucker on August 29, 2019, 11:09:53 AM
JUST mining and refining on a colony that's been founded 8 months ago giving you 220k, negro what? Either I'm doing something wrong or you fiddled with some mods. Do you maybe have like 10 Alpha cores available or something?

That's with no cores and no modifications to any of the core files.  I'm playing on Nex but I don't believe that modifies anything with income levels from colonies.  After 8 months I have roughly 4% market hold on items produced by the Refinery.  This is on a planet 12ly away from the nearest core worlds which is something like 16% access bonus a far cry from what it could be if it was closer.  By the time your colony is level 4 and you build your second industry you should be making at least 200k easy. 
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: SafariJohn on August 29, 2019, 11:15:24 AM
Looking at the core worlds, 200k seems barely in the realm of plausibility. Transplutonics and volatiles are really valuable. Also, no orbital station, I think? That saves a lot of money/build time.

A screenshot would help back up your claims, wtftucker.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: intrinsic_parity on August 29, 2019, 11:28:12 AM
My size 7 cryovolcanic world (175% hazard, 14 ly from core) with +1 +1 +1 mining and refining makes a little less than 100k from ore/rare ore/volatiles and 70k income from metals/transplutonics (I took these straight from the income tab). It does have an access penalty from a pirate base right now, but it seems fairly implausible that a size 4 colony could be making more than that, even in optimal circumstances.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: intrinsic_parity on August 29, 2019, 11:39:58 AM
It occurs to me that playing with mods adds planets which should increase the total market value. I have 4 faction mods in my game, but I’ve also captured 4 AI worlds (two of them being very major worlds). Not sure exactly how that would compare to vanilla.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: wtftucker on August 29, 2019, 12:07:33 PM
Now that's entirely possible that the increased number of planets might alter the income calculations. I'll be home in a little bit and can upload a screen of the colony.  Last I recall is that it was at like 65% population through level 4 just finished the refinery 2 months ago and is currently building an orbital station.  Right before bed I started a second colony with all structures still in construction, again a simple screen shot should be sufficient though. 

I also rush the stability perk in Leadership and the + Colony income/Colony upkeep perks which is a compounding benefit. 
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 29, 2019, 01:17:35 PM
I also rush the stability perk in Leadership and the + Colony income/Colony upkeep perks which is a compounding benefit.
Colony skills also mean fewer skill points for combat (or fleet or QoL) stuff.  This hurts once your fleet is powerful enough to kill Ordos fleet one after another for an alpha core drop about one every two fights.

I have buyer's remorse for spending nine points in Industry for colony skills.  I could have held off until I farmed enough alpha cores and have them run several or even dozens of colonies.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: VoronJyl on August 29, 2019, 02:36:23 PM
To come back to the original topic (As in, having a defense fleet without industry, which imply not having a full fledged economy) -And sorry if this is something already discussed somewhere else or in the game under another form, i'm a new player-, why not just being able to give ships to a colony ? Maybe in the form of another tab aside from storage, just like you'd allow a colony to take from their own stocks.

Is there any way to commission mercenaries ?
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: TrashMan on August 29, 2019, 02:40:12 PM
The entire colony gameplay mechanics is ... unsatisfactory, to say the least.
Too easy, too simplified, too binary.
I doesn't help the universe is static and the factions dumb.


I'd tie production (and ship size production) to colony size and completely re-do colony size designations, and make size growth MUCH slower without a patron faction.
Or tie ship production with upgrades to heavy industry/orbital works/shipyards. So a lvl 1 shipyard can only produce frigates. Lvl 2 can produce destroyers. and so on.

The fact that starships are spawned from thin air by everyone (your tiny colony that you just built that earns maybe 20k a month is pumping out starships worth millions).
There should be some system that simulates logistics, even if terribly simplified, and determines the number of ships and rate of ship/fleet replacement a faction can have (with special modifiers that can be applied in emergencies)
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Plantissue on August 29, 2019, 03:06:15 PM
The fact that starships are spawned from thin air by everyone (your tiny colony that you just built that earns maybe 20k a month is pumping out starships worth millions).
No. It's 25k worth of production per Ship Hulls and Weapon commodity. Even a 10^4 colony can easily give 20k a month but will only give 50k worth of ships a month.

In fact to even achieve a ship output of a million a month you need to produce 40 Ship Hulls and Weapon commodity a month.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: AspirantEmperor on August 29, 2019, 03:14:57 PM
I agree the game changes when you build a colony, though I suppose I never considered just building farming and then not caring if it got raided. The main reason I want a colony is the ability to make specific ship hulls and weapons to order, which requires heavy industry.

I think it's the cycle you get stuck in. If you want to advance your colony the limiting factor is money. But the easiest way to get money is from that same colony.

In my current run, I have one colony. I set it up with 1.8 million initial investment. I have all of the colony skills. The colony/planet is size 6, hazard 100%, +4% accessibility from distance to core worlds, no noteworthy resources.  And it's earning me 250K/month. It took a few in-game years to get this big, but the silly thing is that from the day I founded it, my only income has been those few credits you "recover from computers" after combat, and this colony. (no bounties, survey/analyze missions, salvage, trade, etc.)

Once I had the colony, the easiest way to get money was to sit back and wait. If I tried to leave and do something else, I would usually get a "pirates are attacking in 20 days" message that would force me to abandon whatever that was. I was raided because I built heavy industry. I built heavy industry because I wanted custom weapon orders. I then had to chose whether to put my money toward my fleet or my colony defenses. Because defenses are more cost effective, and because I know major factions would send forces before too long, I chose colony defenses. This meant I didn't have a strong enough fleet to go after the pirate base that kept sending the 20-day-notice attacks. And so, between them and at least one fleet from most major factions, the babysitting was more or less constant for a couple in-game years. I eventually dusted the pirate station around the same time my star fortress came online, and have yet to face a serious threat since, though more pirates have stated a new base somewhere else.

The babysitting is over. And I can now produce a new legion carrier every few months.

But all I had wanted at the start was a couple railguns to put on my new Hammerhead without having to search several markets to find them.

I feel like I skipped much of the game.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Sarissofoi on August 29, 2019, 03:26:58 PM
This meant I didn't have a strong enough fleet to go after the pirate base that kept sending the 20-day-notice attacks.

Even if you had(and level one bases are easy to drop dead) it would respawn in few days again.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: AspirantEmperor on August 29, 2019, 03:37:57 PM
I probably had a weaker fleet than most people would by the time they have a couple million credits. I focused my early game on trade and smuggling for profit and avoided most combat. When I set up the colony, I had 1 Falcon, 1 Hammerhead, 1 Tempest, 2 Centurions, and 3 Wolves, plus non-combat ships.

I also didn't realize at first that if you're not quick to destroy the base it gets much harder to do so.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 29, 2019, 04:00:09 PM
I do not have a fleet much better than that when I build my first colony.  I usually have one Apogee, and a bunch of damaged Enforcers, Mules, and Shrike (P)s taken from pirates.  The Apogee is one of the starter ships.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Nysalor on August 29, 2019, 04:59:46 PM
Uh. . . colony defense fleets seem to spawn just fine in systems without Heavy Industry? I mean, probably you need Heavy Industry in SOME colony, but I have a colony with no Heavy Infantry that's built a Patrol Base, and it spawned a Fast Picket fleet consisting of a Mora, a Drover, a Centurion, and two Vigilances plus five fighter wings. I have a highly productive colony elsewhere with Orbital Works and a Nanoforge which is fulfilling my colony's demand for Ship Hulls, which I think is what's relevant.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Tackywheat1 on August 29, 2019, 05:43:52 PM
I created my first colony with one apogee, 4 destroyers and 2 frigates + 1 phaeton + 1 valkyrie + 1 Colossus(might've been something else)
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: SCC on August 29, 2019, 11:49:31 PM
Or tie ship production with upgrades to heavy industry/orbital works/shipyards. So a lvl 1 shipyard can only produce frigates. Lvl 2 can produce destroyers. and so on.
I really like this idea. In general industries could use having upgrades, but Heavy Industry is the only industry that doesn't just make money, so it's doubly important. Level 1 could make only frigates, weapons and "ship hulls commodity", level 2 could be destroyers, fighters and supplies, cruisers and heavy machinery for level 3 and finally heavy armaments and capitals only at level 4.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: TrashMan on August 31, 2019, 09:47:46 AM
Playing more and more, it's really starting to bug me out how default fleets are so useless. For me it kinda feels too binary, either you have Venture/Shepherd fleets or best combat ships in the game. I get that not every colony needs a High Command, but currently there's no point in upgrading it if you're not gonna build a Heavy Industry too. I just wish we had more ''starting options'' other than mining ships, just to reduce the frustration of RNG blueprint runs.

It's even worse when you play with Nexerelin, since factions do not build a new heavy industry/orbital works if they lose a planet with it, and thus die immediately.

It's just WAAAY to binary.
There should be more levels to it - to buildings and to fleet builds.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 31, 2019, 10:14:32 AM
I mean, probably you need Heavy Industry in SOME colony
Not if my fleet is too weak to fight against endgame fleets even with battlestation help.  That is the point of low profile colonies, which is building the bare minimum for modest income and an orbital station plus some defenses to stop pirates from -1/-10% bases from raiding your base.

I only build heavy industry when either I can take on endgame fleets or if I let my colony grow to size 5 and cannot lower production or abandon it.  Heavy Industry produces enough to attract major factions, and I do not want that if my fleet is too weak to fight them.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Nysalor on August 31, 2019, 10:50:10 AM
I mean, probably you need Heavy Industry in SOME colony
Not if my fleet is too weak to fight against endgame fleets even with battlestation help.  That is the point of low profile colonies, which is building the bare minimum for modest income and an orbital station plus some defenses to stop pirates from -1/-10% bases from raiding your base.

I only build heavy industry when either I can take on endgame fleets or if I let my colony grow to size 5 and cannot lower production or abandon it.  Heavy Industry produces enough to attract major factions, and I do not want that if my fleet is too weak to fight them.

Ok, but that wasn't what I was saying. My point was, colonies without Heavy Industry can still spawn high-end defense fleets including advanced military ships; I've seen it happen plenty. You just need Heavy Industry SOMEWHERE in your empire, and the appropriate blueprints.

I currently have 8 colonies, all being supported by one highly developed colony with an Orbital Works with alpha core and pristine nanoforge - I'm in the process of building a second one now.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Megas on August 31, 2019, 11:33:14 AM
Sure, you only need one Heavy Industry (or other production industries like Farming, Mining, and the like) to support all of your colonies.  All more do is 1) redundancy in case one gets knocked out and 2) add to production limit (for Heavy Industry).  I like to build extra Heavy Industries just I so can crank production limit higher and build lots of stuff in a month.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Innominandum on August 31, 2019, 01:00:56 PM
Yeah the Colony management, the Fleet creation, the industrial sector and Economics in general need some serious additions and adjustments for the game to keep being interesting after the initial getting to know phase.

For those who haven't shot their gaming ring and still have the cpu power to handle massive cpu cycles i advise you to give x3 ap + Litcubes universe + Jourabes Mayhem overhaul for litcube a chance for the time being. It pretty much has all a lot of those features one would want to see in starsector (there is no colonization per se but you can claim sectors, build military bases, defense Platforms, Factories and supply chains, it even has a solid skill and research implementation not to mention a cool boarding and expedition system ... sigh) already.   

Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Tackywheat1 on August 31, 2019, 04:34:46 PM
Yeah the Colony management, the Fleet creation, the industrial sector and Economics in general need some serious additions and adjustments for the game to keep being interesting after the initial getting to know phase.

For those who haven't shot their gaming ring and still have the cpu power to handle massive cpu cycles i advise you to give x3 ap + Litcubes universe + Jourabes Mayhem overhaul for litcube a chance for the time being. It pretty much has all a lot of those features one would want to see in starsector (there is no colonization per se but you can claim sectors, build military bases, defense Platforms, Factories and supply chains, it even has a solid skill and research implementation not to mention a cool boarding and expedition system ... sigh) already.   
Starsector is still in alpha... It is by no means a complete game
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: Innominandum on September 01, 2019, 03:11:24 AM
Starsector is still in alpha... It is by no means a complete game

No one disputes that. Considering how well written its foundation is and how easy(relative) it is to mod even the bigger aspects of it, i have high hopes for it. To clarify the sentiment of my last comment, for the time being as there is not much use in complaining about stuff that ain't there yet and if those ppl who complain don't want to actually invest their time in realizing those changes(which is purely optional and even has its own pitfalls) they want to see themselves adopted, they can look up another thing that already established some if not all of those things they want to see and experience.

Also regarding x3,TC release 2008 (ive still got the dvd albeit its pretty much eaten up by fungus), AP came out early 2012 and it was all still a mess which didn't get much better until a solid LU universe version mid 2016 came out and now by 2019 thanks to jourabes continuous efforts it has become a totally different beast of burden.
Title: Re: Colony defense fleets without Heavy Industry
Post by: TrashMan on September 02, 2019, 02:39:45 AM
Yeah the Colony management, the Fleet creation, the industrial sector and Economics in general need some serious additions and adjustments for the game to keep being interesting after the initial getting to know phase.

For those who haven't shot their gaming ring and still have the cpu power to handle massive cpu cycles i advise you to give x3 ap + Litcubes universe + Jourabes Mayhem overhaul for litcube a chance for the time being. It pretty much has all a lot of those features one would want to see in starsector (there is no colonization per se but you can claim sectors, build military bases, defense Platforms, Factories and supply chains, it even has a solid skill and research implementation not to mention a cool boarding and expedition system ... sigh) already.   

X3 has that charm and feeling.
And a great soundtrack. Took a few tracks for Steelclads.