Would you mind giving more specific examples?sure, here's a bunch of random mods that I have:
most mods add factions that bring more toys (ships/weapons) that make the player stronger, but they don't add any actual challenge to compensate for this.
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
Mods for most games are designed by and for diehard fans who have finished the vanilla and want more content. Naturally, since the target audience has probably already finished the vanilla, they're probably good enough at it, so that they'd expect modded content to introduce extra challenge. I can't help but wonder why it's not the case with starsector specifically: most mods add factions that bring more toys (ships/weapons) that make the player stronger, but they don't add any actual challenge to compensate for this.
Most faction mods introduce very passive/neutral factions that just provide more stuff for the player to buy.
Even mods that technically buff hostile factions (luddics/pirates) either buff them very little, or if they add any advanced pirate tech, the player always gets all the same and plus some more.
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods.Start picking fights with those other factions, and your game will end up being a lot less easy as those same tools are used against you. One way to go about this would be to take a Commission from some faction (you can nerf commission payouts into the ground through your settings.json if you so wish, and I actually would recommend doing so if you're looking for a greater challenge) and deal with the random war declarations that comes with. Or, for maximum fun, install Nex and do a playthrough as a Pirate.
You can use iron mode, alter settings, install difficulty mods, and (if you have the discipline for it) impose new limitations on yourself for a run (e.g. "no commodity raiding", or "only Tiandong ships may be used").this is exactly what I ended up doing: self-imposing artificial challenges to balance the power creep. like playing only vanilla weapons or not using raiding, etc. but this feels quite arbitrary and artificial.
What I try to do is make mods that self-balance by adding features that make the game harder as well as features that make it easier. Unfortunately, this method is difficult and sometimes problematic, and it's impossible for any mod that alters content or features to be truly difficulty neutral.It is indeed quite problematic (if not impossible) IF you're making a standart-type faction mod. There's practically no way how you can counteract the power creep of adding the player a whole new faction of tech, even if that faction is hostile. I think the way it should be addressed is simply make it NOT a faction mod. Make it a derelict. Make it only communicate to the player if they're friendly with the remnants. Make their tech only available as quest rewards. Make it only available for winning battles (so that you can't just buy it), etc.
I guess my biggest concern is that the content that looks and feels amazing (art-wise and gameplay wise) is given far too easily for the player where they can just buy it. It does not feel rewarding.I see your point. I like Arkgneisis' approach to the problem by offering down-tuned models of their ships for open sale.
I guess my question is: why do most mods have to be just faction mods? Why don't we get more mods that involve questlines with their own challenges that ask the player to search for something or to overcome a high threat battle in order to get something or that give you special goodies only if you manage to become allied with both luddics and the hegemony? I guess my biggest concern is that the content that looks and feels amazing (art-wise and gameplay wise) is given far too easily for the player where they can just buy it. It does not feel rewarding.Ah, ok. Well that mostly has to do with the maturity of Starsector and its API. Prior to v0.95 it was very difficult to add quest-type content because the game hadn't really been built for it yet. It's still far from easy to create that kind of mod, but I know several people are working on it. For example, I'm pretty sure SEEKER will do exactly the type of thing you're hoping for once it's fully-realized. Most Starsector mods are factions because 1- that's what the modding framework supports best, 2- faction mods don't require any advanced scripting, and 3- who doesn't want more baddass spaceships?
Look at the Zig[REDACTED] questline in vanilla: this is exactly what mods DONT have. It's a high value technology that is hard to acquire and that attracts its own hostile attention once you do get it. This feels like the type of stuff that makes vanilla more interesting than most mods.
I guess my question is: why do most mods have to be just faction mods? Why don't we get more mods that involve questlines with their own challenges that ask the player to search for something or to overcome a high threat battle in order to get something or that give you special goodies only if you manage to become allied with both luddics and the hegemony?Did you know that Starsector didn't use to have any quests at all until 2018 and it didn't have any quests more advanced than simple fetch quests until 0.95 dropped two months ago? The reason why mods adding content add it in ways that are easy to access is because those ways are also easy for modders to implement. Quests used to be nearly impossible until 0.9 and are merely hard to make now.
Mods for most games are designed by and for diehard fans who have finished the vanilla and want more content. Naturally, since the target audience has probably already finished the vanilla, they're probably good enough at it, so that they'd expect modded content to introduce extra challenge. I can't help but wonder why it's not the case with starsector specifically: most mods add factions that bring more toys (ships/weapons) that make the player stronger, but they don't add any actual challenge to compensate for this.
Most faction mods introduce very passive/neutral factions that just provide more stuff for the player to buy.
Even mods that technically buff hostile factions (luddics/pirates) either buff them very little, or if they add any advanced pirate tech, the player always gets all the same and plus some more.
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
The more different options you have, the more fine-tuning you can perform. In vanilla, you can only choose between 450, 700 and 1000 range HE medium ballistics, meaning that you have to sacrifice something to be able to fire HE at a range of, say, 800, but many mods plug that hole, which decreases the trade-offs you have to do. Optimisation of loadouts is pretty important for combat performance.I guess my question is: why do most mods have to be just faction mods? Why don't we get more mods that involve questlines with their own challenges that ask the player to search for something or to overcome a high threat battle in order to get something or that give you special goodies only if you manage to become allied with both luddics and the hegemony?Did you know that Starsector didn't use to have any quests at all until 2018 and it didn't have any quests more advanced than simple fetch quests until 0.95 dropped two months ago? The reason why mods adding content add it in ways that are easy to access is because those ways are also easy for modders to implement. Quests used to be nearly impossible until 0.9 and are merely hard to make now.
-snip-
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
Mods for most games are designed by and for diehard fans who have finished the vanilla and want more content. Naturally, since the target audience has probably already finished the vanilla, they're probably good enough at it, so that they'd expect modded content to introduce extra challenge. I can't help but wonder why it's not the case with starsector specifically: most mods add factions that bring more toys (ships/weapons) that make the player stronger, but they don't add any actual challenge to compensate for this.
Most faction mods introduce very passive/neutral factions that just provide more stuff for the player to buy.
Even mods that technically buff hostile factions (luddics/pirates) either buff them very little, or if they add any advanced pirate tech, the player always gets all the same and plus some more.
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
why dont you play nexereilin random sector custom scenario: derelict empire and choose pirates as your faction?
that should provide plenty of challenge
there is also a starfarer mode that ramps up the difficulty
hot take on Nex random modeThat was exactly the problem
Nexerelin random sector removes mod event chains
This specific mod gained too much popularity and since it removes event chains from mods there is no point in making any.[close]
i remember back in .5~ there was an excellent total conversion that had onlythree factions in one really large solar system, two of which didnt use shields at aal (and were no less effective in that world for it)
Just... don't use those mods then? Aside from that, if you're looking for super challenging gameplay I don't think this may be for you. I know I don't play SS for difficult gameplay.
I can't help but feel that practically every mod that I have, gives me more tactical options and if it adds any challenges, they're always optional. The main challenges that I'm facing are almost all the same as vanilla: money, pirates, luddics, I just get more tools to deal with them from mods. Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles? Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole? Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?
Self imposed challenge is no scapegoat for terribly balanced mod, if not outright cheating.
We're talking about baseline difficulty when a player attempt to beat the game taking every advantage a player can possibly get.
Too many exploits would render the game itself cheap and poorly crafted.
Only few hardcore players would do those self imposed challenges just for the bragging rights and self fulfillment, but regular player would just find the game boring and stop playing.
How many of you beat dark souls with only beginner weapon when you talk about "self imposed challenge"?
The purpose is to make acquisition of high-end equipment feel like a greater achievement.I don't think you're replying to the same idea that I was getting at. The Ziggurat's downside is everyone knows who you are and wants your shiny toy. Otherwise, it's not that hard to get. I was questioning the wisdom of making more than perhaps a rare couple of things work similarly.
> This really feels like you've got a solution in search of a problem.
This is really not the case. The end-user problem is quite simple: after finishing starsector for the first time, I went on the modding forums to get more content to extend my playtime for the next playthrough. But instead my next playthrough was even shorter because I got to the same point (being incredibly overpowered compared to the rest of the galaxy, reaching the end of the storyline) even faster. So instead of getting more playtime, I got less, because the game became more inflated sideways rather than becoming deeper. So I just get more ways to get to the same depth in the end.
If you think that my reasoning as to how to solve this problem is inadequate, you're free to come up with your own vision of how it should be solved, but the problem is definitely there.
The end-user problem is quite simple: after finishing starsector for the first time, I went on the modding forums to get more content to extend my playtime for the next playthrough. But instead my next playthrough was even shorter because I got to the same point (being incredibly overpowered compared to the rest of the galaxy, reaching the end of the storyline) even faster. So instead of getting more playtime, I got less, because the game became more inflated sideways rather than becoming deeper. So I just get more ways to get to the same depth in the end.Wouldn't that simply be caused by having more experience with the game and already knowing what to do?
You installed mods that didn't promise anything of the sort. Traditional faction mods offer more ships and weapons and planets, not a longer playtime. People install them because they want variety, maybe a different flavor or playstyle, not because it's literally going to add story content. It's not a problem if a project's goal doesn't align with your vision of what it should be; that's merely a difference of opinion.This is not my personal opinion by the way: we're playing starsector with a bunch of mates (parallel, independent playthroughs with different mod sets) and there's also a bunch of youtube let's players that have a similar opinion. So it'd be fine if I was a single lunatic with a weird taste, but it does seem to be a trend.
Another reason, often powerful ships introduced in the mods instead of being used by NPCs regularly are used as optional challenge, like boss battles in Seeker mods, HWB and IBB bounties and such, they don't attack in their own. Remants also optional challenge since they wont leave their systems, their raids in Nexerelin is rare, they only being threat in Ruthless Sector mod where they appear in hyperspace.I agree. It's understandable that SEEKER's bosses are not made to be recoverable by the player due to obvious reasons (which is good), but it's also sad that they're completely passive and there's absolutely no reason to actually fight them aside from bragging rights and some loot opportunities. I also don't really have an amazing alternative solution how to do it instead.
Wouldn't that simply be caused by having more experience with the game and already knowing what to do?This is certainly true to some degree. But it's definitely different from many other games. Take factorio for example: a vanilla playthrough of factorio takes me at most 5-10 hours. However, installing a single "Space Exploration" mod extends amount of content to at least 200 hours or so. Because SE not only makes vanilla goals way harder to reach, it also adds way more content after actually reaching vanilla endgame (it's where technically the mod starts). And this is the way most factorio overhaul mods work: they add more endgame content and/or make vanilla goals more challenging to reach. Krastorio, Industrial revolution -- you name it. And it's de-facto how mods in other games work, they are typically designed for players who already know the game as the back of their hand and they provide them with more content and challenge.
I agree. It's understandable that SEEKER's bosses are not made to be recoverable by the player due to obvious reasons (which is good), but it's also sad that they're completely passive and there's absolutely no reason to actually fight them aside from bragging rights and some loot opportunities. I also don't really have an amazing alternative solution how to do it instead.
About mods, authors often overnerf their stuff, they rarely introduce Paragon level of power ships, adds many weaker weapons, and it makes game easier, since NPC load-out get more bloated, and for example remnant have chance instead of Heavy Blaster, or Phase Lance get some weak weapons like Degraded Particle Beam, or another unefficient weapon.The other aspect for weaker mod factions is the conventional faction sequence: If you start with a single faction design it's gonna be fairly straight-forward and anything you add afterwards will have to differentiate by adding new tricks and lose some conventional strength in return so the initial faction ends up being the pure strength one.
Another reason, often powerful ships introduced in the mods instead of being used by NPCs regularly are used as optional challenge, like boss battles in Seeker mods, HWB and IBB bounties and such, they don't attack in their own. Remants also optional challenge since they wont leave their systems, their raids in Nexerelin is rare, they only being threat in Ruthless Sector mod where they appear in hyperspace.
I understand that sandboxy nature of starsector is different from said factorio and the same rules don't apply exactly the same way. However, the problem is definitely there and it feels like barely anybody even attempts to address it.This is the crux of the matter: a significant part of your complaints go against some of the core mechanics of the base game. Almost no content is gated behind skill, progression or time checks. There are no "impending doom" events with a ticking clock to not alienate the players that want to play at their own pace. If you know how the game works, you can reach the vanilla end-game in three hours flat and mods have nothing to do with that. If you need more challenge, you'll have to set your own rules.
It sounds more that you have an issue with vanilla progressionI don't think vanilla progression is bad itself. It's just very basic/shallow. It's when people add content, they often add it in one and the same direction instead of expanding the game in all directions, this is where it gets sub-optimal, I think.
And Omega isn't that hard, nor are its weapons that good, anyway.Sure, it's not. But it's also something mods practically don't have? There's like 1.5 mods that even attempted this sort of exploration-style progression as opposed to the classic walmart-style progression.
Try raising the tariffs to 50%, and lower the amount of XP received if you want to lengthen your campaign. These settings are there to accommodate players like you.ok, imagine logic like this applied to factorio:
It sounds like Madskills' first name may be Karen.
I'll leave this low-effort (128 LoC) of mine at making the game more interesting: https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse (https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse)Just saw this on discord and I look forward to trying it for my next run. Good idea!
Personal view: by not being able to (easily) cherry-pick the best weapons and ships the game becomes much more challenging and deep - feels more like roguelike where each run is different as you work with what RNG (salvage et al.) gives you.
I'll leave this low-effort (128 LoC) of mine at making the game more interesting: https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse (https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse)Just saw this on discord and I look forward to trying it for my next run. Good idea!
Personal view: by not being able to (easily) cherry-pick the best weapons and ships the game becomes much more challenging and deep - feels more like roguelike where each run is different as you work with what RNG (salvage et al.) gives you.
I'll leave this low-effort (128 LoC) of mine at making the game more interesting: https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse (https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse)I actually like where this is going. I had ideas in a similar direction too, like making factions suspicious if they end up spotting you with one of their high-tier ships from out of the blue (read: you are not under their comission and have not bought them from their military market). Sure, maybe not all factions, but I certainly would expect Hegemony to become suspicious seeing you sporting an Onslaught or TT seeing your paragon. Basically in my opinion in order to have a Paragon in your fleet, you need to become either Tri-Tachyon's ally (and buy it) or their enemy (and defend it).
Personal view: by not being able to (easily) cherry-pick the best weapons and ships the game becomes much more challenging and deep - feels more like roguelike where each run is different as you work with what RNG (salvage et al.) gives you.
-Mods adding ships or weapons that are categorically better than the median make the game easier, because the player can prioritize them while AI autofits will only occasionally land on them.Even though it's sarcasm, it's actually largely true. I agree with your formulation of the problem, but I disagree with your conclusion: it's certainly possible to add player-accessible content without making it easier. I also do agree that just randomly buffing pirates, luddics or remnants is arbitrary, anti-thematic and boring. However, not addressing the problem at all is not a solution either. In my opinion, best solutions come from limiting player's access to modded(and maybe even vanilla) content. Also making tech harder to acquire makes it more rewarding too.
-Mods adding ships or weapons that are categorically worse than the median make the game easier, because the player can neglect to ignore them while AI autofits will still take them.
-Mods adding ideally balanced ship ships or weapons make the game easier, because the player can utilize their specific strengths and weaknesses to yield a slightly more min-maxed ship, while autofits may or may not apply the new weapons very well.*
Though I do love the fact that he's trying to educate two of the game's most prolific modders on how to create a mod with proper "depth".Are you saying that in order to form an opinion on existing mods I must be one of this game's most prolific modders? It does not really take a master sushi chef to form an opinion on sushi.
I'll leave this low-effort (128 LoC) of mine at making the game more interesting: https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse (https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypse)
Personal view: by not being able to (easily) cherry-pick the best weapons and ships the game becomes much more challenging and deep - feels more like roguelike where each run is different as you work with what RNG (salvage et al.) gives you.
If theres an option to add a civilian tag to weaponry, the jank mining stuff and low op drones, thatd be reasonable, right?Honestly having to fight with civilian "weapons" because it's the only thing you have access to at first? -- sounds amazing from both meta-progression perspective as well as RP perspective.
Are you saying that in order to form an opinion on existing mods I must be one of this game's most prolific modders? It does not really take a master sushi chef to form an opinion on sushi.
PS btw I love the idea of your stellar network mod. it feels like something one would expect vanilla to have.
Thank you. This is what I am after, reasonable difficulty and a real reason to scavenge. Although...If theres an option to add a civilian tag to weaponry, the jank mining stuff and low op drones, thatd be reasonable, right?
It does make it simpler but only because the vanilla game does not have this seemingly basic functionality to start with. Like, I find it hard to imagine a distant future where I have to physically travel from planet to planet to check what wares each of them provides instead of looking up some sort of online catalogue. In my opinion, the game should give the player a perfect knowledge of all open market wares and should be balanced around it to start with. In other words, having bad trading tools is not a good way to balance trade.Quote from: MadskillsPS btw I love the idea of your stellar network mod. it feels like something one would expect vanilla to have.
Hah, but that mod makes the game much easier (especially Market searches as it lets you cherry-pick ships and weapons easily).
I only have to propose specific solutions because time and time again people give me advice like "just increase number of pirate spawns 5 times" and "just bump tariffs to 50%", so I have to provide examples to show that bumping tariffs is absolutely not what I'm calling a deeper progression.Are you saying that in order to form an opinion on existing mods I must be one of this game's most prolific modders? It does not really take a master sushi chef to form an opinion on sushi.Right, except you didn't just form an opinion. You were trying to tell two sushi chefs how they're supposed to prepare their dishes, to stick with your example.
Guys, I found something new outside called Sun and Grass.Can I mod it?
An example of difficulty that I havent seen pointed out in my short time posting and slightly longer time lurking is Aurira 4x. I believe this game is special for our case in that most of the complexity seems to be in ship systems and the actual combat. I havent put much deep thought into this, but Im wondering what concepts could or should be transplated, with minimal overhaul, leaving the question of researching individual modules aside, maybe research can stay with 4x style games (Which with Nex it totally could be but...). Could hull mods replicate individual ship systems, like a life support module adding crew capacity, while other modules add to the minimum required crew capacity. I dont know off the top of my head how much hull mods can effect, or whether you can duplicate them on the same ship, guess I could work at it or something.Honestly in my opinion, this game's combat system already has enough depth. And mods do a good job already expanding its breadth by adding more content to it. I think by far the weakest point is how the player gets access to all of it: too easily, too randomly, in an unrewarding fashion. Second weakest point is what you're expected to utilise this combat system on: I guess, expanding your fleet? But hitting the cap of your fleet size is not only trivial, you don't even need a fleet for it to start with, when you can just buy everything you need or produce it if you havent randomly stumbled upon it already.
It takes some time to find the most overpowered builds but once you're rocking SO frigate/destroyer, heavy fighter spam, Macross missile spam, or just Paragon/Astral, the game won't have a lot of difficult content left to offer. No amount of depth getting TO the endgame can prevent a player from eventually reaching it and gaining the experience necessary to make the next run a stomp. It's how game mastery works in a game that allows mastery.But isnt this a design mistake? If a game is designed in such a way that once you figure out how to put SO on your destroyers or how to turn your paragon's shield on, you reach its mastery, it's exactly what's called shallow. What kind of depth are we talking about here if everybody agrees that "once you randomly find paragon/astral, the game won't have difficult content left to offer"?
Factorio, Rimworld, Starsector, heck no game can maintain progression parity when you replay it unless you fill it with a metric ton of rng. You can't control progression without limiting the game to the point of reducing depth, or otherwise rendering it pointlessly inconsistent to the whims of lady luck. Adjusting your own difficulty isn't for everyone I get that, but it's one of the few viable alternatives if you really want to play again while still utilizing everything you've learned.This is just not true. Random aspect has next to no effect in factorio. You can play the same exact seeded run twice and you can build vastly different bases that scale in vastly different ways. And modded content multiplies that tenfold, so that even if you try to build the same type of base twice, you'll probably end up with something entirely different because of a tiny perturbation and butterfly effect. And even after knowing exactly what to do it'll probably take you at least 100+ hours to reach the end of a good mod's content (as in, you stop seeing new things) and you'll probably learn even more than you learned from your previous run.
Ultimately, I think when any highly replay-able game gets old and easy, you should step away from it for a while. Good thing about games like Starsector is that the modding community adds on so much more content over time, and even if it isn't "depth", one of them may turn up or get updated to eventually wow you enough to come back and realize you can still have a blast playing through the game.Well, yeah! But also no. I definitely have not put that much time into this game to even call it "highly replay-able". I did a vanilla midtech playthrough, vanilla high-tech and then sort of a carrier run. Then I tried heavily modded playthrough and discovered that I hit the end of the power curve even faster than I used to in vanilla. This is why I also created this thread, because I installed mods hoping they'll provide me with a longer playthrough but I got the opposite instead.
But isnt this a design mistake? If a game is designed in such a way that once you figure out how to put SO on your destroyers or how to turn your paragon's shield on, you reach its mastery, it's exactly what's called shallow. What kind of depth are we talking about here if everybody agrees that "once you randomly find paragon/astral, the game won't have difficult content left to offer"?Many games have progression dictated by accessing new areas: you can get better loot only in areas filled with stronger enemies. Factorio has progression dictated by the infrastructure, since even if you could build trains right from get go, what good does it do, if you can't actually manufacture them?
I agree.But isnt this a design mistake? If a game is designed in such a way that once you figure out how to put SO on your destroyers or how to turn your paragon's shield on, you reach its mastery, it's exactly what's called shallow. What kind of depth are we talking about here if everybody agrees that "once you randomly find paragon/astral, the game won't have difficult content left to offer"?Many games have progression dictated by accessing new areas: you can get better loot only in areas filled with stronger enemies. Factorio has progression dictated by the infrastructure, since even if you could build trains right from get go, what good does it do, if you can't actually manufacture them?
Starsector has mechanics that can be used to gate content, but it doesn't use any of them to that end. The closest is that you have to defeat a Radiant or the Ziggurat to get it, no finding or buying it.
Which is to say, you should probably make a thread about progression in the suggestion section of the forum, because it's a vanilla issue.But the amount of content vanilla has is reasonably correlated with the length of progression path one needs to follow to explore it all. It's honestly not huge, but it's alright, especially with the latest [redacted] additions. The problem is that mods vastly increase amount of content you have, but they leave your progression path untouched leaving it as short as vanilla, or even making it shorter due to giving the player more options. Besides, after seeing the changes in the latest vanilla update, I expect to see more changes like that in the future vanilla, but I'm yet to see anything like it in mods yet. Which's the reason why this thread exists.
Even though it's sarcasm, it's actually largely true. I agree with your formulation of the problem, but I disagree with your conclusion: it's certainly possible to add player-accessible content without making it easier. I also do agree that just randomly buffing pirates, luddics or remnants is arbitrary, anti-thematic and boring. However, not addressing the problem at all is not a solution either. In my opinion, best solutions come from limiting player's access to modded(and maybe even vanilla) content. Also making tech harder to acquire makes it more rewarding too.Underlined portion is not within the scope of content packs or faction packs. It's generally good form for content/faction packs to follow vanilla conventions unless there's a good reason to aberrate. It'd be bad form for a faction mod to mess with general vanilla mechanics such as weapon availability in markets; it's far better to have a mod specifically designed to do change things like that. (Also, not everyone agrees with the thread's premise in the first place)
Why don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, unless this is in reference to whatever specific factions are being added
Why don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, though there's at least 1 mod where their faction officials will confront you over even possessing their faction equipment (the name of said faction eludes me). Vanilla can have the Diktat send some people to try to take the Ziggurat, not quite the same thing as it's quest-related. One Megamod, Nexerelin, introduces Revenge Fleets that are stronger than average and exist solely to try to kill you if you pick on a hostile faction too much. Another Megamod, Vayra's Sector can have factions put bounties on your head for doing similar things.
Why don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?In the beginning, Pirate raids and Pather sabotage were powerful and plentiful. This had made a lot of people very angry and had been widely regarded as a bad move.
QuoteEven though it's sarcasm, it's actually largely true. I agree with your formulation of the problem, but I disagree with your conclusion: it's certainly possible to add player-accessible content without making it easier. I also do agree that just randomly buffing pirates, luddics or remnants is arbitrary, anti-thematic and boring. However, not addressing the problem at all is not a solution either. In my opinion, best solutions come from limiting player's access to modded(and maybe even vanilla) content. Also making tech harder to acquire makes it more rewarding too.Underlined portion is not within the scope of content packs or faction packs. It's generally good form for content/faction packs to follow vanilla conventions unless there's a good reason to aberrate. It'd be bad form for a faction mod to mess with general vanilla mechanics such as weapon availability in markets; it's far better to have a mod specifically designed to do change things like that. (Also, not everyone agrees with the thread's premise in the first place)
Potential exceptions include things like boss factions and normal factions with a shtick of being unusually particular on who possesses their faction-specific stuff. However, these factions employ mechanics specific to them, not in-general
From the OP:QuoteWhy don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, unless this is in reference to whatever specific factions are being addedQuoteWhy don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, though there's at least 1 mod where their faction officials will confront you over even possessing their faction equipment (the name of said faction eludes me). Vanilla can have the Diktat send some people to try to take the Ziggurat, not quite the same thing as it's quest-related. One Megamod, Nexerelin, introduces Revenge Fleets that are stronger than average and exist solely to try to kill you if you pick on a hostile faction too much. Another Megamod, Vayra's Sector can have factions put bounties on your head for doing similar things.QuoteWhy don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?In the beginning, Pirate raids and Pather sabotage were powerful and plentiful. This had made a lot of people very angry and had been widely regarded as a bad move.
More seriously though, this basically describes how Pirate raids (and to a lesser extent, Pather cells) operated prior to 0.95. Rather than making the game harder in an entertaining way, it just meant you had to babysit your colonies and play whack-a-mole with Pirate Bases, which when left unchecked would decivilize even core worlds. 0.95 is quite recent in Star Sector terms, and there's currently no interest from modders to return to that state of affairs.
Also not within the scope of faction or content packs, unless of course said faction is a Pirate-esque raider group.
Almost all faction mods ignore what vanilla has to offer and asserts an entire alien lineup that hardly fits into vanilla theme, and allows players to just walk up and obtain them. If a faction mod were to introduce completely alien lineups they should be more like omega faction that are hostile, or at least somewhat isolated away from core world and be a hidden faction. It is also fully faction mods’ responsibilities to balance the interactions at least against vanilla factions. It is the faction mods’ ignorant of responsibilities that lead to shallow game experience.
I think that’s what makes me hate faction contents so much.
I think that’s what makes me hate faction contents so much.
I feel there's a stunningly simple solution to that, just don't use any of them...
I think that’s what makes me hate faction contents so much.
I feel there's a stunningly simple solution to that, just don't use any of them...
Which is exactly what I do. I am not paid or forced by some supernatural force to suffer.
I just feel them wasting the potential to provide more depth to the experience, a mis-opportunity if you will. It’s also generally not a good idea to build a mod upon another mod so there is no way I can use those assets.
And as I said, it’s MOST, not ALL. Some of them did deliver some good story along with unique storyline quests which I enjoyed; Some provided actual challenges before getting to lucrative rewards, similar to how Ziggurat and omega work in .95.
There should be a borderline to claim a mod to be a faction mod or a content mod. The ones I dislikes are mostly content mods slapping a few proc gen worlds and call it a faction. Maybe my bar is set too high but that’s my expectation of what a faction mod should deliver.
The factions that aren't "just one of the boys" like Templars and Blade Breakers (to name two well-known cases)? Those indeed have specific rules for acquiring their stuff, for this very reason!
From the OP:I agree that my OP suggestions to the problem are just bad. But the problem is absolutely there. However, over the course of the thread we came with better ideas like making military tech harder to access and the idea of making factions suspicious if you're using their tech without their approval.QuoteWhy don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, unless this is in reference to whatever specific factions are being addedQuoteWhy don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, though there's at least 1 mod where their faction officials will confront you over even possessing their faction equipment (the name of said faction eludes me). Vanilla can have the Diktat send some people to try to take the Ziggurat, not quite the same thing as it's quest-related. One Megamod, Nexerelin, introduces Revenge Fleets that are stronger than average and exist solely to try to kill you if you pick on a hostile faction too much. Another Megamod, Vayra's Sector can have factions put bounties on your head for doing similar things.QuoteWhy don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?In the beginning, Pirate raids and Pather sabotage were powerful and plentiful. This had made a lot of people very angry and had been widely regarded as a bad move.
Nine-tenths of mod factions are specifically designed as, and balanced to be, just another polity operating in the Sector. It would be very strange if those factions made you jump through hoops to access their gear that Tri-Tachyon doesn't.The problem is definitely present in vanilla too. But as was said before, the more factions you have, the more obvious it becomes. Vanilla does not have that much tech to be gated behind things. But after installing 1-2 normal-sized faction mods, the market does get over-populated with cheap stuff you don't even need. So in my opinion, the vanilla progression system is not perfect, but that'll do for vanilla itself. But as amount of added content grows, the way player accesses it, needs to be changed too to avoid bloating.
The factions that aren't "just one of the boys" like Templars and Blade Breakers (to name two well-known cases)? Those indeed have specific rules for acquiring their stuff, for this very reason!None of them are updated to the current starsection version. Since I jumped on the bandwagon this version, I can't even try them.
I agree that my OP suggestions to the problem are just bad. But the problem is absolutely there. However, over the course of the thread we came with better ideas like making military tech harder to access and the idea of making factions suspicious if you're using their tech without their approval.Former has been done very recently through a miscellaneous mod. Latter's not really done except for specific faction packs, as Vanilla factions don't harass you for that (and it wouldn't be particularly practical to implement as most of the vanilla factions share the same pool of technology to a vast extent anyways).
Latter's not really done except for specific faction packs, as Vanilla factions don't harass you for that (and it wouldn't be particularly practical to implement as most of the vanilla factions share the same pool of technology to a vast extent anyways).
(Neither are within the scope of standard content/faction mods)
The faction would harass you for having a ship which you could not buy at any Military Market that could sell it. Since this takes into consideration the faction blueprint pool, it would not cause harassment over common designs provided the player had good enough standing with at least one faction (and for higher tier ships, was commissioned).
Finally, could take into consideration player-known blueprints.I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.
It would make life for non-commissioned players difficult.I don't see how this is a problem. If you want to proclaim political independence, you're expected to have enough military force to ensure it.
I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.Except none of them are "their" blueprints, they're all just from before the fall that they happened to have access to.
I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.Except none of them are "their" blueprints, they're all just from before the fall that they happened to have access to.
Vanilla's actual endgame doesn't exist yet, so any mod that attempts to add its own version of an endgame now is going to be in a world of hurt (i.e. redoing everything) when vanilla finally gets around to it. If it were trivial to make pressing, player-driving endgame content, it wouldn't be such a big deal—but that kind of content is extremely challenging and time-consuming to create.Thanks for your great efforts. I think many people would be happy with a compatibility update of the Ship/Weapon Pack with the quests temporarily disabled.
For reference, I work full time. I can work on Starsector mods maybe a couple of hours at a time, if I get to it at all on a given day. So it has taken me well over a month to only get about one third (maybe charitably 2/5) of the way through a full-sized story quest. Just one quest. It's not even an endgame quest and doesn't really add meta-level game mechanics; it's just a standard content quest, albeit a large, particularly open-ended and dynamic one. And I'm hardly what one could call a novice modder.
As a result, it's a matter of extreme impracticality to focus efforts on most types of endgame content. Doing it anyway, knowing that you're going to have to throw away months of work, is a measure that few are willing to take.
I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.Except none of them are "their" blueprints, they're all just from before the fall that they happened to have access to.
By that logic most of the planets and stations the various factions hold aren't theirs either, they just snatched them up when everything went to ***.
I don't think historical accuracy is of any importance for a faction claiming a BP as theirs, all that matters is if they can enforce their claim.
Not that I think this would work particularly well. If I'm fielding enough ships of a type a faction considers theirs to make them go after me I'm probably powerful enough to shrug off whatever they send. Still, it could add some flavor and probably wouldn't ruin the experience for anyone.
I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.Except none of them are "their" blueprints, they're all just from before the fall that they happened to have access to.
By that logic most of the planets and stations the various factions hold aren't theirs either, they just snatched them up when everything went to ***.
I don't think historical accuracy is of any importance for a faction claiming a BP as theirs, all that matters is if they can enforce their claim.
Not that I think this would work particularly well. If I'm fielding enough ships of a type a faction considers theirs to make them go after me I'm probably powerful enough to shrug off whatever they send. Still, it could add some flavor and probably wouldn't ruin the experience for anyone.
Except a lot of the ship are not build, they are salvaged. What is the hegemony going to do, shoot every shmuck that drag a hull from fringe space to the core? From what we see in vanilla, the core peace is tenuous as best, corruption is rampant and piracy is everywhere.
It would be better to make it a positive mechanic- something like AI Cores, where you can "donate" salvaged hulls to factions for a rep/credit boost, based on their condition/outfitting/subtype and such. A generic little shuttle that's half-beat up won't net you much, but if you turn in a pristine XIV Onslaught to Chicomoztoc then the Hegemony will be very grateful. It could also give you a reason to salvage the ships of deserters and haul them back rather than break everything.This actually sounds like a great mechanic, restoring old wrecks and bringing them back to their respective factions in exchange for some credits and reputation.