I don't think the game was ever advertised as something ultra realistic, like an immersive sim or alike.im saying not ultra realistic, im saying realistic or semi-realistic, i dont think that for my crewman to make 47k he needs to work 391 years is believeable if 47k is so easy to make, the fact that he will never be able to get that money because he cant even afford the shietest of ships, speaks a lot. apart if you consider someone making the equivalent of 0,0001$ a month fair by today standards.
10 credits a month!? If anything, they are severely over-payed! Let's set some standards here: A Vulcan cannon cost 200 credits. Now a Vulcan is a shipboard rapid-fire close-in anti missile/fighter cannon, a close real-life equivalent is the Phalanx CIWS. One Phalanx costs about 10 million$. So, assuming that the cost of these weapon systems are comparable, a crewman would make the equivalent of 500.000$ a month!thats not how i make the counts, you need to take into account cost of manufacture also we are in the future a CIWS is probably a piece of *** and obsulute by that time, its the equivalent of buying some bow or sword, soo no they arent overpayed, also is a vulcan expensive to you?no?then you are extremly overpayed
10 credits a month!? If anything, they are severely over-payed! Let's set some standards here: A Vulcan cannon cost 200 credits. Now a Vulcan is a shipboard rapid-fire close-in anti missile/fighter cannon, a close real-life equivalent is the Phalanx CIWS. One Phalanx costs about 10 million$. So, assuming that the cost of these weapon systems are comparable, a crewman would make the equivalent of 500.000$ a month!To be fair, I imagine serving on a ship gives a lot of hazard pay. Those guys die at the drop of a hat.
the fact that he will never be able to get that money because he cant even afford the shietest of ships, speaks a lot.The initial cost isn't even the biggest hurdle here. A Kite will still cost 2 supplies of maintenance per flight-month, equivalent to 200 credits/month if it were to be constantly flying, which is obviously not sustainable on a 10 credit/month salary.
The player is effectively the head of a corporation that employs hundreds of people (more or less, depending on the stage of the game). The amount of money that a corporation gets for contracts is vastly different than what an individual gets, and the amount that private military contracts garner is higher still. Even for an 'easy' pirate bounty, we're talking about the effort of about a hundred people for several weeks with a high chance of death and significant risk to capital investment (as Megas is fond of pointing out, losing a single ship sort of costs an entire contract (it doesn't thanks to amelioration after recovery, but mercenaries can fool others by presenting the sticker cost)). In terms of realism: hundreds of billions of USD were spent on private military contracts in recent wars; the gpd/capita in afganistan is 508 USD, in iraq is 4200.the diference is that private militarys pay a lot, like they make 500k you are probably gonna get a big chunk of that, a crewman doesnt get any special treatment, we making 200k credits? you get 10 , we going in suisice mission to the edge of the sector?10, same for marines, likehood of dyign extreme?here is your 20 bucks dude, though you are true the player is a corp/criminal syndicate,and the people of the sector probably live in poverty, also there is a lot corporatism probably in the domain, just by the power that tri-tachyon had we can guess that the doman has somewhat a ultra capitalist hell, where corps probaly saturated each other worlds just for an increase on the stock market, also i think i read something about tri-tachyon executives being ejected of the airlock, so yeah the domain and the sector probably are very *** super capitalist nations, and has such the population is probably abituated at living in such bad conditions
Is 10 a lot? Depends on the thing.i compare it to how much you get of income in colonies, the price of ships and how much you make in contracts, simply speaking if im making 47k on killing some weakling pirates and the average crewman has 10 bucks monthly salary it probably means that the factons in the sector must get they're money from taxes and other stuff, but primamrly from the populace, it would require thousands of people to pay for that, and they often give out huge payments
Kuwaiti Dinars? A decent chunk of change (~$32 USD equivalent)
Iranian Rials? May as well be nothing at all. (~$0.00024 USD equivalent)
One of the issues with declaring that the small number for crew income is unrealistic (besides the prior observation that Star Sector simply isn't a sim) is that we don't have actually any good references to the effective purchasing power of 1 credit for the average Star Sector crewman, or even a civillian. Perhaps you could compare something like the cost of food to a crewman's income, but there's a problem with that: The commercial goods you purchase are all sold in bulk, sold for tens to hundreds of credits per cargo capacity.
And what is one cargo capacity? We don't know that either, other than a few bits of insight, such that some military equipment (large weapons, for instance) are so large that they can take up multiple units of cargo capacity. We don't even know which capacity it's measuring: Is Cargo Capacity a function of available mass or volume for a ship? It's the same story with Antimatter fuel and capacity, for that matter. Pretty much the only parameter that is spelled out is colony size, measured on a 10^X scale, and I absolutely would not be surprised if that is also axed eventually and replaced by a single abstract number.
So is 10 credits a little or a lot? For the protagonist of the game (effectively a freelance fleet admiral), it's pocket change. For large governments in the Persean sector like the Hegemony it's certainly not even that; they must make a killing on those insane trade tariffs alone! What about for Jane Doe, the Jangala resident? How about John Smith, the Buffalo crewman? Well, we don't really know. We can't really say one way for sure that they're making slave-level wages like you're implying, or if starship crewmanship is a quick path to become a Persean Sector's equivalence to a millionaire, as Gothars jested. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if standard groceries and such cost merely several milliCredits for people planet-side, with single-family housing ownership costs around the realm of low 100 credits for economy level, and 1000-ish credits and up for luxurious mansions and such.Quotethe fact that he will never be able to get that money because he cant even afford the shietest of ships, speaks a lot.The initial cost isn't even the biggest hurdle here. A Kite will still cost 2 supplies of maintenance per flight-month, equivalent to 200 credits/month if it were to be constantly flying, which is obviously not sustainable on a 10 credit/month salary.
This doesn't seem unrealistic at all. I'm fairly well off, but I won't realistically be able to purchase, store and maintain a Cessna on top of all the other financial obligations I have now and will acquire in the future, such as various loans and upkeep on automobiles, housing, necessities, hobbies, etc. Kites, obviously, are going to be much more complex, luxurious, and naturally more expensive than that!
I've always taken it as Credits being a currency for intercolonial trade, not something you'd buy a pack of toilet paper for. I imagine that each colony has at least one local currency. Though seeing how cryptos are used in real life, I wouldn't be surprised if inhabitants of Tri-Tach worlds were used to buying TP for some millionth of a Credit.credits seem to be used for everything, you buy/hire crew for credits, get payed by people with credits, and the domain currency semms to be credits, so its probably all made in creadits
not even talking that being a crew man and a pilot get payed the same stuff, like you are a pilot and going to a big battle in a *** low tech fighter, leats just say you are dead.10 credits a month!? If anything, they are severely over-payed! Let's set some standards here: A Vulcan cannon cost 200 credits. Now a Vulcan is a shipboard rapid-fire close-in anti missile/fighter cannon, a close real-life equivalent is the Phalanx CIWS. One Phalanx costs about 10 million$. So, assuming that the cost of these weapon systems are comparable, a crewman would make the equivalent of 500.000$ a month!To be fair, I imagine serving on a ship gives a lot of hazard pay. Those guys die at the drop of a hat.
there isnt a lot of realism at least if the player is your average parsean sector admiral or captain, i has looking at the salaries and found out that each crewman makes 10 credits per month, and they are working on a spaceship! imagine someone living in a colony what are they making? 2 credits a month? i just did an easy pirate bounty for 47k, it would take the poor crewman 391 years of working to get that. HOW da heck is the player making so much money? and how do the factions and people who pay for missions have this type of income, i also would like to see more smaller cheaper ships for civilians so that at least it would be realistic, like a easy pirate fleet with 4 small frigates with 4 d mods may be to hard for some cheap 500-1k civilian ship that a bunch of friends managed to buy but that doesnt exist, right now the game feels extremly unrealistic.
"Enough is enough. Anyone who cracks another joke about 'black magic' must contribute ten centicredits to the lab party fund."
You transfer a fractional credit over to the thug running traffic control, enough to cover a generous meal or a round of cheap drinks.
"Eh, here's one to brighten today," control says enthusiastically, "Me, I like going halfsies with the fry, bit-a each. Shuttle, you're cleared to land at munitions bay 12."
10 credits a month!? If anything, they are severely over-payed! Let's set some standards here: A Vulcan cannon cost 200 credits. Now a Vulcan is a shipboard rapid-fire close-in anti missile/fighter cannon, a close real-life equivalent is the Phalanx CIWS. One Phalanx costs about 10 million$. So, assuming that the cost of these weapon systems are comparable, a crewman would make the equivalent of 500.000$ a month!
credits seem to be used for everything, you buy/hire crew for credits, get payed by people with credits, and the domain currency semms to be credits, so its probably all made in creaditsHave you noticed what currency does your character buy your drinks for? I haven't, though I remember quite a few moments where drink pricing is mentioned. I mean you probably don't pay for your TP with US dollars in real life, even though USD is the standard currency for most international trading and some currencies are anchored to it.
..... Any single ship in Starsector would represent millions upon millions of dollars.Although, thinking about it, would ships in Starsector cost the same as they would for us? Constructing them seems relatively easier (once you have the design chip) and may be as simple as shoving the raw materials into the auto-factory. That would certainly play havoc with our concept of manufacturing costs.
Im not sure if the thing when you go to the planetside bar and pay for a drink to someone is vannila or not, but the drink costs 5 credits, also knowing how the people live somewhat in starsector, its more likely those supposed 120k you are making a year are going to pay for the beds and food the player and any faction is providing their crewmenthere isnt a lot of realism at least if the player is your average parsean sector admiral or captain, i has looking at the salaries and found out that each crewman makes 10 credits per month, and they are working on a spaceship! imagine someone living in a colony what are they making? 2 credits a month? i just did an easy pirate bounty for 47k, it would take the poor crewman 391 years of working to get that. HOW da heck is the player making so much money? and how do the factions and people who pay for missions have this type of income, i also would like to see more smaller cheaper ships for civilians so that at least it would be realistic, like a easy pirate fleet with 4 small frigates with 4 d mods may be to hard for some cheap 500-1k civilian ship that a bunch of friends managed to buy but that doesnt exist, right now the game feels extremly unrealistic.
going off a quote in the desc of the rift cascade emitter & a line in rules.csv from when you visit kantaQuote from: Rift Cascade Emitter desc"Enough is enough. Anyone who cracks another joke about 'black magic' must contribute ten centicredits to the lab party fund."Quote from: Rules.csv lineYou transfer a fractional credit over to the thug running traffic control, enough to cover a generous meal or a round of cheap drinks.
"Eh, here's one to brighten today," control says enthusiastically, "Me, I like going halfsies with the fry, bit-a each. Shuttle, you're cleared to land at munitions bay 12."
we can figure that one full credit is probably around 1k USD (or a vaguely equivalent amount; it's a lot for planet-dwellers but not much when you're running a fleet), that puts crewmen at making the equivalent of 120k per year, which is a pretty nice salary to send home or save with, even if it does come with a pretty high risk of injury / death.
This topic has me thinking of an idea for a fun little mod; track the life of each crew member on each ship in your fleet individually.that would be interesting, but it probably would make the game be a bit laggy having to calculate all the crew, imagine having 10k crew
Whenever someone dies, randomly pick a crew member from the ship.
See how long you can maintain some element of the original crew, and generate stats such as mean life expectancy aboard each ship in your fleet.
This topic has me thinking of an idea for a fun little mod; track the life of each crew member on each ship in your fleet individually.that would be interesting, but it probably would make the game be a bit laggy having to calculate all the crew, imagine having 10k crew
Whenever someone dies, randomly pick a crew member from the ship.
See how long you can maintain some element of the original crew, and generate stats such as mean life expectancy aboard each ship in your fleet.
Im not sure if the thing when you go to the planetside bar and pay for a drink to someone is vannila or not, but the drink costs 5 credits, also knowing how the people live somewhat in starsector, its more likely those supposed 120k you are making a year are going to pay for the beds and food the player and any faction is providing their crewmen
i just did an easy pirate bounty for 47k, it would take the poor crewman 391 years of working to get that. HOW da heck is the player making so much money?That bounty fee is paying for you to provision an entire starship with supplies and antimatter fuel.
That bounty fee is paying for you to provision an entire starship with supplies and antimatter fuel.
In real life, $10,000 a month is a very comfortable income. But that money only covers about 2-3 hours of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter's operating costs. Look at your own income and then consider how long it would take you to amass enough money to buy a basic freighter ship, an airliner, or an entire hospital complex.
Even a simple Lasher isn't a few friends scraping together funds to go on adventures, it's a ship with a crew of 25-50 that absolutely dwarfs anything modern humans have managed to launch into space.
For realism we have ships coming in, firing off Anime levels of missiles, shooting down enemy missiles, shooting lasers at each other, and massed hangar units dominating the skies. Between the fleets is a no-man's land of hangar units and missiles crisscrossed with lasers. Offensive ballistics would be the god weapons at close range that pierce through entire ships and run down a column of ships dealing massive damage.Gonna disagree on one thing here, fighters are not at all realistic without pulling some shenanigans in the rules of your setting. To quote tv tropes:
So, Starsector doesn't make realistic sense. It doesn't need to. It is a game. The design of how combat and trading works has evolved to be more fun to play.
Oddly enough, you can do something that is an approximation of realism with Mora mono-fleets. They're insanely deadly. I've tried them with massed reapers. I just tested them with massed Pila, and they're taking down 5 star remnant fleets more easily than with torpedoes.
For realism we have ships coming in, firing off Anime levels of missiles, shooting down enemy missiles, shooting lasers at each other, and massed hangar units dominating the skies. Between the fleets is a no-man's land of hangar units and missiles crisscrossed with lasers. Offensive ballistics would be the god weapons at close range that pierce through entire ships and run down a column of ships dealing massive damage.Gonna disagree on one thing here, fighters are not at all realistic without pulling some shenanigans in the rules of your setting. To quote tv tropes:
So, Starsector doesn't make realistic sense. It doesn't need to. It is a game. The design of how combat and trading works has evolved to be more fun to play.
Oddly enough, you can do something that is an approximation of realism with Mora mono-fleets. They're insanely deadly. I've tried them with massed reapers. I just tested them with massed Pila, and they're taking down 5 star remnant fleets more easily than with torpedoes.SpoilerWhile there are advantages as well as disadvantages to space fighters when directly compared to larger ships, a good look at the concept from the very base upwards is necessary. The first question shouldn't be "What advantage does a fighter have over a big ship?" but "What can a space fighter do?" Because we're talking about military ships here, the answer is generally to bring some sort of weapon payload (bullets, lasers, blaster bolts, missiles, bombs) in contact with a target. But the conditions of combat in space make fighters pointless for that. On planet, fighters are needed to extend the range of whatever deploys them (an airforce base or a carrier). If the base were to shoot the guns or the missiles that a fighter carries directly, it wouldn't have nearly the range that a fighter can achieve. The horizon on planet prevents direct targeting beyond a limited range. The friction of the air slows down bullets and missiles so they drop to the ground short of the target when they have been slowed down enough or their fuel has run out respectively. The engines and shape of an fighter allow far more efficient travel in atmosphere than those of a missile (or bomb or bullet).
Not so in space. There is no horizon, so everything can be targeted directly. There is no friction, so ranges are not limited. There is no need for aerodynamic design, so missiles are far more effective than fighters. For comparison: if one were to use a missile that is the same size as the fighter i.e. using the same engine and same amount of fuel, it would have four times the range of a fighter, because the fighters needs a lot of fuel to brake and return to base again (and this is before you take into account the fact that using a missile instead of a fighter also frees up space that would be otherwise taken by the pilot and whatever equipment he needs to both stay alive and control his craft). So, unlike in an atmosphere, where mounting missiles on a fighter extends the effective range of the warheads, in space it would seriously limit it.
As for guns, those are even less effective. Unless there is some sort of magical technology at play that makes 5 tons of gun components, propellant and bullets somehow capable of more destruction than just 5 tons of warhead (not the case with real physics) then carrying a small gun close to a target to shoot it is a colossal waste of time.
Targeting is another thing that potentially looks like a reason for fighters to exist. But it is again not the case. Getting closer to the target does exactly the same thing as using a bigger lens (because there is no horizon) so the bigger lens wins. (It does not get closer to danger, doesn't need refuelling, etc.)
Intercepting incoming missiles works pretty much the same as launching attacking missiles, and attaching a space fighter makes it worse, not better. For that matter, anything that can destroy an incoming missile will probably be just as effective against a fighter, too.
In the end, while one can point out plenty of advantages that a space fighter has over a larger ship (in a universe with real physics), there just is no task that a space fighter is best suited to perform. Either a bigger ship will outperform several small fighters, or one or several missiles will outperform one fighter.[close]
So if anything, the most realistic you can get in starsector is gryphon spam ;D
Of course that is before we get into the issues that space travel is more like being in a plane then a ship so if anything we should ONLY have space fighters and not battleships. But perhaps I am digging too far into stuff that I already wasn't qualified to discuss ;DThat's certainly another feasible future, if it only takes a couple crew to operate a ship and it only takes 1 or 2 shots to disable a ship regardless of size or armour then there would only be fighters. Even today battleships have been phased out because armour can't sufficiently protect them from bombers or missiles, so instead we have a "real world meta" of carriers, missile boats, and point defense. Well that and naval guns have far too limited range to compete with missiles, but anyways the point is that bigger space ships are no good if a single hull breach is a big deal.
If we're talking realism, space combat would involve radar so using fighters which would have a much smaller cross section would make it a lot easier to deliver stealth torpedo strikes. There's also range and turret traverses: fighters would also enjoy greater range than within an atmosphere just as large vessels do, firing from closer than their host carriers but still from a great distance, meanwhile larger vessels would struggle to lock them up with fire control radars, let alone have fine enough turret traverses to hit something that small moving so quickly with such a weak radar return.Stealth in space is a lot different from on a planet. The main thing you need to hide isn't your radar cross section, it's thermal emissions, which as it turns out is really hard to do in space.
1) in mid flight (as opposed to terminal approach) evasive action a missile takes is wasted dV, so wasted range and less velocity when getting into firing range (so more time available for PD to shoot it down). So it would be beneficial to have small craft between the place where humans are mothership is and the place where the missiles are coming from, both to shoot the missiles down early but also to force them to evade and/or use countermeasures (defense in depth)
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Errr you seem to have ignored/misunderstood my whole point there. The drones I'm talking about never attack an enemy major combatant/ship, nor do they want to, or even get close to them: they want to make the space between major combatants a more difficult place for the real weapons (missiles of some sort/terminal guidance projectiles) to exist in, either by wasting their fuel with evasive actions or preemptively locating and shooting them down. They don't need lots of dV to do that: just enough to loiter and keep up with the main ship maneuvers. With lasers being so short ranged (in space combat terms) and potential missile warheads like bomb pulsed xray lasers having quite a long range itself while not needing to worry about heat issues (as its 1 use/exploding), having active interdiction drones seems like a good idea! Not to mention all the other uses I pointed out.
In terms of defense, surface area/volume ratio only matters if armor matters, which is highly dependent on how future technology develops, but it honestly isn't looking good for armor. Heavy armor is already obsolete in modern warfare when it comes to naval engagements; whether the analogy holds in space warfare is an open question depending on tech. I suspect yes: it is far easier to scale up a missile to penetrate a given amount of armor than it is to scale up armor, to the point where without some revolution in materials science I don't see how armor can compete. There might be some balance of light armor vs "shotgun" style weapons I'll admit.
Cross sectional area matters somewhat and in that case a larger ship has an advantage in terms of amount of equipment brought to bear vs exposed size. However, that in turn depends a lot on the guidance/accuracy of weapons. For unguided projectiles its critical; for missiles and terminal guidance projectiles? A lot less critical, depending on the ratio of weapon maneuverability vs ship maneuverability (which is heavily in favor of the weapon). I think that active countermeasures and ECM/spoofing are going to matter a lot more than putting the nose to the enemy.
Point 2 is accurate! But at the same time, the most efficient and strongest shape for rotating quickly would be a sphere.
While yes the crews only get paid 10 Credits (Say 1 credit is 100 USD) That means they get paid 1000 USD each month. That's still low, but consider this: A Hammerhead cost ~55k. Thats 5.500.000 USD. A supply crate costs ~100 credits which is 10.000 USD. a liter/gallon of fuel costs ~24. That's 2.400 USD. Point is, the 47k is COMPANY FUNDS where you have to distribute it between you, officers, your ships, logistics, fuel, and weaponry & modules refit. The Crews get to eat food, receive fresh clothing everyday, safety inside warships, free trips to wherever colonies and planets the admiral goes, and all they have to do is work on ship duties. For 1000 a month. That's good enough. Also keep in mind that planetary supplies and fleet supplies are different, what makes ship supplies super expensive is components, and space-worthy equipments and processed space MRE's. If it were regular planetary meals it would've costed around .001 credits or 1 dollar, or for clothing 0.5 credits, or 50 dollars. It makes sense.a crewman makes 10 credits a month, a officer makes 3k a month, also price for goods are abstract yk the 1x10 stuff in colonies makes it a bit complicated, also free trip? when did any of your crewmen ever abandon your ship after landing in a colony? never because you didnt pay for the upfront fee. marines put their life on often suicidal missions, they get paied 20 credits a month. if 20 credits a moneth is considered good enought to put yourself in life danger situations, then people in the sector have extreme horriable lives, where the rich keep getting rich, and the poor keep getting dirt poor
Is there an actual complaint here beyond "massive income inequality and concentration of wealth in private ownership is unrealistic"lord if only that were true
Is there an actual complaint here beyond "massive income inequality and concentration of wealth in private ownership is unrealistic"we are less arguing about weather or not this is realistic and more on, the *** life of living in the sector and probably the domain
That's literally just canon, though?Is there an actual complaint here beyond "massive income inequality and concentration of wealth in private ownership is unrealistic"we are less arguing about weather or not this is realistic and more on, the *** life of living in the sector and probably the domain
The Domain of Man is no more. Their countless fleets and innumerable armies have been shattered and lost. The comforts of their civilization are a distant memory. Cut off from the Star Gate network and scattered in isolated pockets throughout the galaxy, humanity is trying to recover from the great Collapse.Doesn't quite give off the feel of a Star Trek style post-scarcity utopia, eh?