Lots of shiny stuff, but this is the one I'm most curious about; what changed, and why?
- Updated graphics for Falcon, Eagle, and Ox
Lots of shiny stuff, but this is the one I'm most curious about; what changed, and why?
- Updated graphics for Falcon, Eagle, and Ox
...
Added LocationAPI.addCustomEntity()
Entity with custom graphics (can be a sprite, but there's also a custom OpenGL rendering hook)
Entities defined in data/config/custom_entities.json
Would this allow us to, say, make a custom graphic, add it to the location, then scan for interactions using an extension of BaseCampaignPlugin and handle them with InteractionDialogPlugin? Because the ability to add any sprite and have it interact any way we want is going to be absolutely fantastic for modding!
Would this allow us to, say, make a custom graphic, add it to the location, then scan for interactions using an extension of BaseCampaignPlugin and handle them with InteractionDialogPlugin? Because the ability to add any sprite and have it interact any way we want is going to be absolutely fantastic for modding!
Yeah, that's exactly the idea. Since the class is always going to be the same and you can't use instanceof to figure out which type of entity it is, you can base the interactions on whatever tags the entity has instead.
I mean heck, it's been at least 2 years since I drew originals so you'd think I'd grow a bit as in artist in the time right?Yay! The latest stuff you've put out is DEFINITELY awesome. :D Can't wait to see them.
:(
SectorAPI.doHyperspaceTransition() no longer crashes when jumpLocation == null
Added approximate total supply cost to recover from deployment to ship tooltip
The first couple of items (everything under "campaign") are probably... 10x the work of everything else in the notes. But it doesn't read as such, and it's more preparation for more-obviously-interesting stuff to come.
As for the Falcon and Eagle, I feel they were overly greebled in a way that added visual noise rather than signal. So touched them up a bit to read more as overall designs rather than collections of meaningless details. They're still the same ships and look basically the same, mind you, it's just a "this was bugging me more and more as I kept seeing it so I just did it" thing.
What happened to 0.63 and 0.64? Or should I say 0.6.3 and 0.6.4...? :P
I'm hoping for many more details about this in the next blogpost, so we all can "appreciate" (read: drool over) it properly :) Got any teaser pics, maybe?
Would be fun if we could see the sprites. I'm guessing the patch is going to take a while so you could atleast throw us a bone to chew on in the meantime.
The Intel tab is going to be so useful, goodbye the times i lost a text message when tabbing into a character screen.I HOPE this is one of the functionalitys of the Intel tab
Hello,Try MODS you got them under here:
im a new Member buyd the Game two days bevor. Very nice Game. But have the Game only 2 Sectors atm and 3 Stations?
Its a bit booring +i killed so "much" Pirates that not enough Enemys was in both Sectors for me. The Rest was small fleets and no challenge for me. Ok i can attack the orange, grey or blue Fleets but i wish not to lost my Support Stations.
Problem is now im Level 17 and see no Reson Play further. Nothing to Explore, no Enemys, see all ships Weapons etc... and that all with 1 Capital Ship and a Frigatte both from the Technical Faction (blue).
How far was this Game from a Interesting upgrade? More Sectors, Factions, Stations, Missions, Diplomacy etc...?
btw i have a Suggestion add the Feature Exporting a Pilot (with or whithout fleet whatever...).
Hello,
im a new Member buyd the Game two days bevor. Very nice Game. But have the Game only 2 Sectors atm and 3 Stations?
Its a bit booring +i killed so "much" Pirates that not enough Enemys was in both Sectors for me. The Rest was small fleets and no challenge for me. Ok i can attack the orange, grey or blue Fleets but i wish not to lost my Support Stations.
Problem is now im Level 17 and see no Reson Play further. Nothing to Explore, no Enemys, see all ships Weapons etc... and that all with 1 Capital Ship and a Frigatte both from the Technical Faction (blue).
How far was this Game from a Interesting upgrade? More Sectors, Factions, Stations, Missions, Diplomacy etc...?
btw i have a Suggestion add the Feature Exporting a Pilot (with or whithout fleet whatever...).
Yep! (Still "alpha", btw - "beta" to me means mostly feature-complete, which it's certainly not at this point.)
The next update will go a good ways towards making the Sector more alive, as well as adding a couple more star systems.
Good to know thx. Do you have a Realese date for the Patch? April, Mai, June?There are mods that adds systems (not sectors, sector is big piece of space where all* star systems are). Well, if you are bored with your current game and progress and don't want to play any more what is harm in breaking your current savegame? Then again you can make new game with mods on and play it and then you can disable all mods and play your old save game.
@All
Thx i was in the Mod Section but
1) i dont see a Mod adds Sectors
and
2) i dont wish to break my savegame (char) for Vanilla.
Changes as of April 04, 2014
Campaign:
- Added "Intel" tab to keep track other stuff
I hope I'm not the only who noticed this because I am verrrryyy curious on what it may be.It keeps track of how many space burgers the crew has eaten. :PChanges as of April 04, 2014
Campaign:
- Added "Intel" tab to keep track other stuff
Just quick question, are there any chance I'll get my hands in this new updated for the Extra long weekend next week ? =]
Whoo new ship!
I assume this is the one from the blog post? :)
And a buff to EMP weaponry? Now that's interesting.
On a downer note is something I've been expecting for quite a while: all of the old mods are going to really break with this update. Such is the price of awesome progress I guess.
I see that you optimized the save file size in april, and got the zips properly working now; do you know how much this helps the problems that the various large mods have been having with loading save?
(Note: this batch of notes is probably missing some items.)
Wait, there's Harvested Organs as a commodity?
o.O
Damn, the game is now a lot more ominous than I thought. I best watch my back when I'm in the station now. ;)
Were they harvested by organ smugglers?
It's starting to get a bit more sinister, how nice :)
Damn, the game is now a lot more ominous than I thought. I best watch my back when I'm in the station now. ;)
Donated organs are harvested too, so Harvested Organs aren't necessarily acquired through nefarious means. Still, it's a cool idea for a commodity either way.
So, do you plan to add any more major features before release of the next version? Or is it "just" a question of finishing up, balancing and polishing what's on the list?
Yo Alex, when are you guys adding Decoratives to vanilla ships? us modders are way ahead of ya with blinking lights and glowing powercores. ;D
...
Then there's playtesting and balancing, which, given the sheer number of changes and amount of new content, is likely to take longer than it usually does.
...
...
Then there's playtesting and balancing, which, given the sheer number of changes and amount of new content, is likely to take longer than it usually does.
...
Well you could always release it with only minor playtesting and let the community decide what to do. I'm sure we'll reach a nice happy consensus very quickly, with no bickering at all. After all, designing games by committee always works out great!
Note: I couldn't resist. Please don't actually do this.
Are the prices for current items in the game going to be adjusted to better fit the implementation of the economy (weapons, supplies, ect.)?
Are the credit values for ships going to be adjusted?
Is the distance between systems going to be great enough that fuel is actually a factor now?
Is there going to be an option to start off a new game as a "trader", with a ship better designed for freight and a small stockpile of goods?
Re: decoratives - they're not something that's planned. Might end up adding a few at some point, but imo it's something to be approached carefully and with restraint, if at all....
Then there's playtesting and balancing, which, given the sheer number of changes and amount of new content, is likely to take longer than it usually does.
...
Well you could always release it with only minor playtesting and let the community decide what to do. I'm sure we'll reach a nice happy consensus very quickly, with no bickering at all. After all, designing games by committee always works out great!
Note: I couldn't resist. Please don't actually do this.
Got me good, thought you weren't joking for about two or three seconds. Well done.
Ok, now I'm extra jelly for the new update!I don't really see that happening.
I'm looking forward to the economy system and the game universe coming to life.
On a different topic, will there be consideration regarding introducing fanmade factions to the vanilla game? (Blackrock, Neutrino)
On a different topic, will there be consideration regarding introducing fanmade factions to the vanilla game? (Blackrock, Neutrino)I don't really see that happening.
Supplies, definitely yes, since they're a commodity. Weapons currently use the same prices as before; eventually they probably will fit into a supply/demand economy somehow, emphasis on probably. And on somehow :)
Supplies, definitely yes, since they're a commodity. Weapons currently use the same prices as before; eventually they probably will fit into a supply/demand economy somehow, emphasis on probably. And on somehow :)
Wasn't the plan to have everything (ships, weapons, etc) all tied into mining, manufacturing, researching and economics eventually?
Research has a different meaning than the word as it is known to us today. Research, the one done by Tri-Tachyon and others, is a process that involves a couple of things. First, techmining, or retrieving Domain artifacts to locate blueprints or working components. Second, analysis deconstruction and\or integration. Lastly, potential blueprints extraction. That last step is extremely rare though.
Just your emphasis on emphasizing the "probably" and "somehow" is what led to the question.
As for research, wasn't it one of the original features that was outlined when the game was still named Starfarer? I'm talking about 3 years ago or so.
I'm not up to date with the lore, but research seems like it would be right at home with factions and industry: expending resources to unlock better guns / tech / etc which leads to corporate espionage, piracy, economic changes and warfare. Aside from factions and industry, research was the feature I was looking forward to most which makes me a bit sad if it was never concept to begin with.
Yeah, at least in Ivalyo's lore research is pretty much treasure hunting:Research has a different meaning than the word as it is known to us today. Research, the one done by Tri-Tachyon and others, is a process that involves a couple of things. First, techmining, or retrieving Domain artifacts to locate blueprints or working components. Second, analysis deconstruction and\or integration. Lastly, potential blueprints extraction. That last step is extremely rare though.
Research to me is more like "research", i.e. a euphemism for tech mining. It's not something you would do passively and wait on a progress bar for.
Hope it stays that way, it fits the setting perfectly and sounds as if it could be a ton of fun. In that scenario I would imagine a top researcher to be some kind of space Indiana Jones :)
Does this mean we can see whats on the other side of a jump point? Can't tell you how many times I've ran into a templar fleet in starsector + after jumping through a point
This update makes the patch look better and better. cant wait to play. look like it'll be worth the wait
void reportFleetDewspawned(CampaignFleetAPI fleet, FleetDespawnReason reason, Object param);Typo? Or strange new feature?
What does the internal comms mean? Do we have more conversation options?
How many other ships have a pirate version? are they entirely different hulls or can we swap out weapon mounts on ships now?
Wow, wow, wow. This is amazing. Ship skins!
Did Annihilators really need a buff? They're already almost brokenly good. The rest is very interesting. Does the AI changes mean a swarm of Lashers toting Harpoons will now reliably murderize your overloaded ship instead of just spectating?
E: Also, I sort of disagree with the decision to turn Swarmer damage into HE. Doesn't it both contradict the stated purpose of frag damage, already rare within the game, and sort of make Swarmers less interesting, given they used to be safe to ignore while you had armor, but deceptively deadly if you didn't?
Ship skins. Awesome. Was not expecting that :)void reportFleetDewspawned(CampaignFleetAPI fleet, FleetDespawnReason reason, Object param);Typo? Or strange new feature?
Added FleetAssignment.ORBIT assignment
Added CampaignEventListener interface. Methods so far:
- void reportPlayerMarketTransaction(PlayerMarketTransaction transaction);
etc.
This patchnote is the undoing of UsS. All I really wanted, as features, is now built in. I also love the first real balance passes. WELL DONE.
Some questions: Why the change to the tugs? Why do you want to force a player to get Navigation in order not to slog along at a snails pace with any large ship?
And why the removal of the burn speed from the UI mod?
And why make the pirates not trade with the layer at vengeful? To me, I think that the player should ALWAYS have a place to trade, otherwise you will end up creating something like a late game death spiral... Especially since from what you said, getting out of a Vengeful relationship will be almost impossible...
And what about increasing the cargo size across the board that you talked about?
QuoteAdded FleetAssignment.ORBIT assignment
Is there a radius argument for this?
QuoteAdded CampaignEventListener interface. Methods so far:
- void reportPlayerMarketTransaction(PlayerMarketTransaction transaction);
etc.
Love this structure too :) and ship skins! Wow!
Sometimes I swear you save the (subjectively) best to last on purpose :D
public static enum FleetDespawnReason {
/**
* param is a SectorEntityToken
*/
REACHED_DESTINATION,
/**
* param is a CampaignFleetAPI
* Both fleets have had getFleetData().takeSnapshot() called right before the battle.
*/
DESTROYED_BY_FLEET,
NO_MEMBERS, // ??
OTHER,
NO_REASON_PROVIDED,
}
void reportPlayerOpenedMarket(MarketAPI market);
void reportPlayerMarketTransaction(PlayerMarketTransaction transaction);
void reportBattleOccurred(CampaignFleetAPI winner, CampaignFleetAPI loser);
/**
* Could be destroyed or simply reached a despawn location. Or had too many accidents
* and lost all of its ships. Or told by other code to despawn itself.
* @param fleet
* @param reason
* @param param
*/
void reportFleetDespawned(CampaignFleetAPI fleet, FleetDespawnReason reason, Object param);
/**
* Planets/stations/etc that are the target of a fleet's assignment.
* @param fleet
* @param entity
*/
void reportFleetReachedEntity(CampaignFleetAPI fleet, SectorEntityToken entity);
/**
* from is generally a JumpPointAPI, but doesn't *have* to be.
* @param fleet
* @param from
* @param to
*/
void reportFleetJumped(CampaignFleetAPI fleet, SectorEntityToken from, JumpDestination to);
void reportShownInteractionDialog(InteractionDialogAPI dialog);
}
Removed speed penalty after winning battleWasn't the point of the penalty so that you can't jump a small fleet next to a big one, pummel it, then get away scot-free?
Unstable injector: removed burn level bonusY u make Unstable Injector useless :(
Ox-class tug: now limited to a maximum of one per shipHmm, Augmented Engines are probably mandatory for capitals now (well I always felt they already were...)
Missile overhaul:Oh God, 0.65 is gonna be known as "Revenge of the Missiles" now isn't it? (and now everyone is going to be absolutely terrified of Buffalo Mk.IIs :D)
- Changed missile behavior to reduce clumping and slightly increase pressure on PD
- Added nicer-looking continuous missile trails (rather than current particle effects)
- Harpoon MRM: significantly improved maneuverability, increased hitpoints by 50%
- Sabot SRM: fires 5 2nd stage projectiles instead of 1. Higher overall damage, much worse vs armor due to being distributed across 5 hits. Fired in a spread, less likely to miss completely.
- Annihilator: increased speed to 400 (from 250), increased acceleration
- Reaper torpedoes: faster, much higher acceleration
- Atropos torpedoes: faster, higher acceleration, very poor tracking
- Salamander MRM: improved maneuverability and top speed; much more reliable.
- Swarmer SRM: doubled ammo, first 4 shots per burst, 75 points of HE damage per missile instead of 300 fragmentation
- Pilum: improved top speed and acceleration. Can still be dodged effectively, just harder. Deadly vs non-omni-shield frigates w/o PD
- All missile pods: increased burst size to 4 and doubled rate of fire
I like the idea of faction relationships, though I would suggest the possibility to actually go beyond vengeful. You can in fact go further - suppressed relationship. That is you have brought down such wrath, destroyed all of their protection fleets, defence fleets, patrol fleets, attack fleets - etc. and they're all dead - then you enter a status of having 'suppressed' the faction to the point where they will trade with you if you have a significant and overwhelming fleet (or possibly performed a base station attack).
While the faction is suppressed they will sell you everything they have at cost price, but their economy will also be in ruin. The 'suppressed' status has a limited time span like an event, and when the event is over all of their fleets will respawn and your status will be back to 'vengeful' until you suppress them again.
While a faction is suppressed bounty hunter fleets are very likely to come after you, paid for by the suppressed faction. This makes suppressing a faction possible - but very expensive and impossible to maintain.
Equally speaking, one faction can suppress another, but there may be an open bounty to destroy the oppressing fleets - which is where you come in. Destroying an oppressing fleet raises would raise your status with the faction significantly.
Anyway...just one suggestion.
I know you recognized missile pods are a bit "insane" a while back, Alex, but I just thought I'd mention that a single volley of harpoons can do 3000 damage. If you wanna nullify their massive alpha potential, maybe they could fire their missiles very slowly, as in one missile launched every 3/4 a second?
Other than that, that's a might fine patch-notes to go along with my chicken dinner. The sweetest dessert, hands down.
Removed speed penalty after winning battleWasn't the point of the penalty so that you can't jump a small fleet next to a big one, pummel it, then get away scot-free?
QuoteUnstable injector: removed burn level bonusY u make Unstable Injector useless :(
I think it needs to have a lower OP cost now (especially if it still has the quad engine damage effect).
QuoteOx-class tug: now limited to a maximum of one per shipHmm, Augmented Engines are probably mandatory for capitals now (well I always felt they already were...)
Oh God, 0.65 is gonna be known as "Revenge of the Missiles" now isn't it? (and now everyone is going to be absolutely terrified of Buffalo Mk.IIs :D)
Is low-level PD still viable? I'm thinking in particular of (LR) PD Laser and (Dual) Light Machine Gun here.
Hmm, I don't see the "doubled crew supply usage" change in there, did you decide not to implement it?
Also, the "skins" for ships confuse me. It's not like it's seperate paintjobs for each faction right? I distinctly remember somewhere that you said it would be a bit crazy to do that.
I hate to sound like an a** but HOW the HELL does that make sense? "not forcing the player to invest in 4 tugs if they want a cap" How long would it take to accrue the 80K (if that) to buy a set of tugs for the cap? If you had offered something else to replace the lost speed, I wouldn't be saying this, but you haven't. Are you TRYING to force people into the wolf pack flotilla playstyle if they want to be combat oriented and want to get anywhere within the next cycle?Some questions: Why the change to the tugs? Why do you want to force a player to get Navigation in order not to slog along at a snails pace with any large ship?
I see it as more not forcing the player to invest into 4 tugs if they want a capital ship.
I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I like it.Also, the "skins" for ships confuse me. It's not like it's seperate paintjobs for each faction right? I distinctly remember somewhere that you said it would be a bit crazy to do that.
(It turns out that we are, in fact, crazy.)
Changes as of September 24, 2014
- Wolf, Lasher frigates: now have frontal shields, to better work with their front-facing firepower
- Pilum: improved top speed and acceleration. Can still be dodged effectively, just harder. Deadly vs non-omni-shield frigates w/o PD
@Midnight Kitsune: The Tug change makes sense to me. The way I see it, the primary purpose of burn levels is to prevent battles that are too uneven. A large capital fleet should be able to take on any opponent, but it shouldn't be fast enough to engage fleets that are hopelessly outmatched. That encourages farming.The problem is this effects anything bigger than a frigate! This doesn't just effect Caps you know. This is going to drastically slow down trade fleets, making them 1: lose money because of expensive supplies. 2: Made a bigger, easier target to catch, especially with the removal of the "burn 1 after battle" part. 3: the prices could end up changing before the fleet gets there... And 4: This is going to bore the player! Do you REALLY think a player is wanna watch their burn three fleet plod along the campaign screen from point A to point B?
I think Alex was referring more to the long-term investment of tugs than the up-front cost. Lugging a bunch of tugs around reduces the number of 'real' ships you can have and increases upkeep costs. It also clutters the fleet screen.
Why have them at all now if they lost most of their main purpose? How USEFUL is ONE more burn speed? Have you ever tried to catch up to a ship when you are one point faster? How long did that take in? With how little burn speeds differ, you need about a +3 difference to reach your target in a reasonable amount of time...
@Midnight Kitsune - The navigation skill is there for a reason. Also the practice of attaching 4 tugs to an atlas or paragon seems a little game breaking/silly. I never use tugs and I have no problem catching things.That still doesn't answer my question: What use are these things if they are only going to provide ONE burn speed MAX? Also, it has already been stated that Navigation is already a must buy skill
Modding:
- Added ship "skins"
- Way to define a slightly different hull based on an existing hull
- Defined in data/hulls/skins
- A skin can:
- Set a new sprite/name/description
- Remove and/or modify weapon slots
- Remove engine slots
- Add/remove built-in hullmods and weapons
Hmm. I think that type of thing might fit in better along with more dedicated mechanics for, well, that type of thing. This feels a little tacked on, since your relationship level doesn't necessarily reflect how "beaten down" the faction is.
@Midnight Kitsune - The navigation skill is there for a reason. Also the practice of attaching 4 tugs to an atlas or paragon seems a little game breaking/silly. I never use tugs and I have no problem catching things.That still doesn't answer my question: What use are these things if they are only going to provide ONE burn speed MAX? Also, it has already been stated that Navigation is already a must buy skill
Modding:
•Added ship "skins"?Way to define a slightly different hull based on an existing hull
?Defined in data/hulls/skins
?A skin can:?Set a new sprite/name/description
?Remove and/or modify weapon slots
?Remove engine slots
?Add/remove built-in hullmods and weapons
...Hell yeah!
Made fleet movement slightly less inertial (2x acceleration)
...
The pips on the weapon arc indicator will glow red when there's a danger of friendly fireThey could glow yellow when neutral objects (asteroids, wrecks) obstruct the fire path.)
Only thing I might suggest taking a look at before the update is the "Stabilized Shields" hullmod. The way it currently works, it sees automatic use on any ship where Stabilized Shields is cheaper than an equivalent amount of vents (like the Apogee or Sunder, for instance). Although it's not OP or anything, it seems a little too easy to get access to, requiring only a 1 point investment into Applied Physics. Maybe move it up a little bit in the skill tree to make it require a bit more dedication to get (like rank 3-5 or something)?
Removed speed penalty after winning battle
QuoteRemoved speed penalty after winning battle
But... why? :-[
That way you can just keep on farming smaller fleets, without fear of a bigger fleet catching you after battle. The way I see it, the hit to burnspeed after winning a battle means you have to carefully pick your targets. Which to me adds to the fun of the game. And from a roleplaying stand point, I think even a victorious fleet first has to get back into formation again, and prepare to fly off at full burn speed. It only stands to reason that such preparations take some time.
- Added chance for an investigation event to be triggered by player use of comm sniffers
missile changes
ship skins
Aww, there goes my justification for always declaring TT to be evil and worth attacking.
- Tri-Tachyon no longer hostile to independents
Any chance of pairing this with a damage increase? Or maybe a slight increase in the armor penetration power of beams in general? The change a version or two ago where armor could get a higher overall damage reduction was mostly good, but really hit beam usefulness pretty hard, especially the HIL (and phase beams).
- High Intensity Laser now fires on achieving full charge (instead of starting to fire at partial effectiveness immediately)
Huh. Can you give us an example of where this makes a difference?
- Fixed bug in StatBonus that was applying the flat bonus after the mult bonus (the correct order is: percent, flat, mult)
Changes as of September 24, 2014
- Wolf, Lasher frigates: now have frontal shields, to better work with their front-facing firepower
Quote from: Alex
- Pilum: improved top speed and acceleration. Can still be dodged effectively, just harder. Deadly vs non-omni-shield frigates w/o PD
You are a terrible person.
Only thing I might suggest taking a look at before the update is the "Stabilized Shields" hullmod. The way it currently works, it sees automatic use on any ship where Stabilized Shields is cheaper than an equivalent amount of vents (like the Apogee or Sunder, for instance). Although it's not OP or anything, it seems a little too easy to get access to, requiring only a 1 point investment into Applied Physics. Maybe move it up a little bit in the skill tree to make it require a bit more dedication to get (like rank 3-5 or something)?
I read the patch notes but I didn't see anything about this, but will it be possible to specialize factions towards certain commodities (for example via average abundance or price)?
And will there be a way for haulers to be nerfed in terms of smuggling capacity in a similar way to how the new hullmod works, ie extra thin cargohold?
And could you make cargoholds discriminate specific items, such that for example my faction's hauler could only carry supplies and fuel but no commodities? Or maybe only supplies, fuel, an "energy cells" commodity and guns?
This could tie into a sort of mechanic for stations and planets you own that are under attack. An enemy fleet hovers/orbits around a station or planet with the status of 'attacking' or 'suppressing', and you get a notification of the event in progress, and your control over it measurably goes down over time until you fend off the attacker.
Back when .6a was in development you released the WIP starfarer api (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5813.msg108003#msg108003) a bit early so modders could get a head start on supporting the massive changes in that patch. Would you consider doing so again since it's looking like .65a will be an even bigger compatibility breaker than .6a?
Really glad to see that you're still polishing combat, the AI and missile changes should mix things up again. (I'm just afraid that the Cerberus is completely at the mercy of missiles now.)
Oh, and... did you really double weapon end engine health again, so it's now quadrupled? Or did you just forget that you already listed that change in the June update?
Sounds so great.
I am also salivating at the Lasher / Wolf frontal shield change and the impact pilums (pila?) are going to have on their rear ends.
Don't know why that stands out amongst all the other things, but it does :)
Adds interest to the choice of frigate, I guess. At the minute Lashers and Wolves are a safe option in so many ways.
QuoteRemoved speed penalty after winning battle
But... why? :-[
That way you can just keep on farming smaller fleets, without fear of a bigger fleet catching you after battle. The way I see it, the hit to burnspeed after winning a battle means you have to carefully pick your targets. Which to me adds to the fun of the game. And from a roleplaying stand point, I think even a victorious fleet first has to get back into formation again, and prepare to fly off at full burn speed. It only stands to reason that such preparations take some time.
The shielded cargo hullmod makes me think: if the customs patrol doesn't trust you (maybe you've been caught smuggling before, or they've been swamped with illegal goods lately), they should insist on a boarding inspection. Obviously much harder to hide contraband from, and if you decide to fight after letting them on, you've got armed marines on your ship that could mess your crew/CR levels up or even take it over entirely.
Or is that too unfun a mechanic?
Oh, the Shielded Cargo Holds hullmod - how does it work? Does it reduce detection chance per hullmod present in the fleet? Or is it dependent on the cargo space of the ship that has it equipped? Depending on the answer, there could be ways to exploit it, E.G. equipping a bunch of shuttles with it.
- Added chance for an investigation event to be triggered by player use of comm sniffers
Is this a completely random dice roll at each clock tick as soon as the sniffer is online? The problems with such mechanics are 1. Opaque to the player and 2. Utterly beyond their control. This combination may result in frustration. Randomness that you can either affect or predict is good, randomness you can neither affect nor predict is bad.
I suggest the sniffer have a period of time during which it cannot be caught, adjusted by some skill from the character screen. A progress bar somewhere on the intel screen could show how much time you have left on your sniffer(s). After that, if you don't uninstall it (remotely or in person as balance demands) THEN the dice rolls for investigations start.
This is my first forum post. I've got a few other suggestions about current gameplay as well, which I will post in the appropriate subforum.
Any chance of pairing this with a damage increase? Or maybe a slight increase in the armor penetration power of beams in general? The change a version or two ago where armor could get a higher overall damage reduction was mostly good, but really hit beam usefulness pretty hard, especially the HIL (and phase beams).
- High Intensity Laser now fires on achieving full charge (instead of starting to fire at partial effectiveness immediately)
Huh. Can you give us an example of where this makes a difference?
- Fixed bug in StatBonus that was applying the flat bonus after the mult bonus (the correct order is: percent, flat, mult)
Why have them at all now if they lost most of their main purpose? How USEFUL is ONE more burn speed? Have you ever tried to catch up to a ship when you are one point faster? How long did that take in?
These are just a shorthand for defining new hulls. The game takes the .skin file and creates a new hull based on that; for almost every purpose within the game, it's treated as an entirely separate hull. You can't change skins for a ship once you have it, for example. "Skin" might be slightly misleading as it encompasses more than just appearance. Skins can, for example change/remove weapon and engine slots, change the OP/deployment points/price, add/remove built in hull mods and weapons. Skins can not change the bounds or weapon slot locations, and also can't change the ship's system (the latter, at least for the moment).
Quote from: Zudgemud on September 25, 2014, 12:50:16 AM
I read the patch notes but I didn't see anything about this, but will it be possible to specialize factions towards certain commodities (for example via average abundance or price)?
The supply/demand is based on the market conditions your markets have, so yes.
You can't change skins for a ship once you have it, for example.Awww :(
- Revamped new game creation dialog
- More unified UI feel
- More interesting/impactful choices
- Markets will generate mercenary fleets when stability is lower. Some of these may actually turn out to be pirates.
- Missile overhaul
Lastly, now that there are patrols... what about some dynamic military events? When I think of "patrols", I don't think if a large task force on a mission to interdict or destroy another faction's base; that kind of event is something I'd really like to see happen in the sandbox, so that things don't stay static over a game.
- CR/supplies/repairs was always complicated, and we merely got used to it in the patched up form. Uomoz's managed to make the system work and an economy on it, even through the roundabout way it was used as. Will have to see it in play, but a return to the 'arcade' no-penalty flying around seems a bit like a step backwards. If we will have integrated hullmods on ships that make it suck actual supplies when moving around, why not just stick to making it a game element as it is now? Either way, may just have to see it in play.
- Pursuit changes make sense, but a huge issue was always with Burn Drive ships or fighters. You need something that can overcome those, and with the changes, overcome those /now/ before the get off the board, which may prove impossible.
Can I delete/create a ship with specific skin or change the current skin for a ship using API? For example via dialogue options (like conversions are achieved in Ironclads now)?
One more question - I suppose that I don`t have to create a new entry for each skin in ship_data.csv file or specific .ship file for it? If so - how do I define the new OP or price for it - I haven`t noticed any such lines in your example? I currently can`t see the difference between creating a new .ship file + entry in .cvs and making a new skin.
So technically you can specify via supply/demand that a particular market is specialized in producing stuff out of some raw materials (in other words - has higher demands for raws and no demand in produced stuff at all as well as other non-participating in production goods)?
Is this new dialog easier for multiple mods to hook into? I feel that was the major flaw with the old CharacterCreationPlugin system.
Quote
- Markets will generate mercenary fleets when stability is lower. Some of these may actually turn out to be pirates.
Does this mean they will appear to be Independents and reveal themselves once you encounter them, or is it just a random chance that a spawned fleet will be pirates?
I'm excited about these missile changes. I look forward to dying many, many times due to outdated muscle memory. ;)
I've been on the wrong end of this a couple of times. Usually it's, "oh, I've won this, can relax now" then BAM.
You know, even if this is technically a nerf, it makes the Wolf so much more fun to play. The reasoning behind the change was to remove the control conflict that having omni shields on a ship with a significant portion of its firepower on front-facing hardpoints, which is especially an issue for frigates (and other ships that turn quickly).I can agree that this is a nerf. I got used to omni-shields with frigates (that lack 360 shields). It is easier to defend against missiles with omni-shields when PD is weak or not enough.
I don't think it's a death spiral if to enter it you have to literally make everyone in the Sector mad at you, and not just a little mad, but "we will not rest until you're gone from this world" mad.What about "Eliminator" or "Overlord", that is one who wants to fight everyone until their factions are eliminated and the whole sector becomes his, like in Risk? I would like to make my own faction (or hijack an existing faction and make it mine if creating my new faction is impossible) and destroy the rest. After all, one cannot rule the sector with competition (i.e., Hegemony/Tri-Tachyon getting in the way). I am sure all factions would view such an upstart, after revealing himself, as an existential threat.
In gameplay terms, it should add more tangible differences between different playstyles. Smuggler? You can trade with pirates. Bounty hunter? Maybe if you're careful to walk the line, but probably not.
Smaller pursuit sounds good. I almost always keep Hyperion in my fleet solely for pursuit battles. Anything else felt too long before something took damage - so much that I auto-resolved all pursuits if survivors were not a problem.
What about "Eliminator" or "Overlord", that is one who wants to fight everyone until their factions are eliminated and the whole sector becomes his, like in Risk? I would like to make my own faction (or hijack an existing faction and make it mine if creating my new faction is impossible) and destroy the rest. After all, one cannot rule the sector with competition (i.e., Hegemony/Tri-Tachyon getting in the way). I am sure all factions would view such an upstart, after revealing himself, as an existential threat.
Re: Missiles
Do medium pods still have twelve missiles, or were they doubled to twenty-four? Four shot salvos will burn through twelve missiles very fast, and the idea of blowing 10 OP for a three-shot feels like a waste.
Personally, I feel that omni shields have the least issues when the guns you're trying to aim are fixed. Yes, paying attention to where the omni shield is takes your attention away from where exactly the fixed forward firing guns are pointing, but on the other hand, dragging the omni shield to the other side of the ship to intercept some missiles or absorb fire from a cruiser while you finish off something that overloaded doesn't screw up the aim of a fixed gun all that much. It's the player-controlled turreted guns that have major control conflicts with omni shields, as both the turrets and the shield projector aim at the mouse cursor, and I not infrequently want my shield facing somewhere other than at my current preferred target. Missiles, whether fixed or turreted, can avoid the aiming/shield coverage conflict relatively easily if you remember to set a target, although it's still a bit annoying to have the turret facing the wrong way, but direct-fire turreted weapons cannot.Sounds so great.
I am also salivating at the Lasher / Wolf frontal shield change and the impact pilums (pila?) are going to have on their rear ends.
Don't know why that stands out amongst all the other things, but it does :)
Adds interest to the choice of frigate, I guess. At the minute Lashers and Wolves are a safe option in so many ways.
You know, even if this is technically a nerf, it makes the Wolf so much more fun to play. The reasoning behind the change was to remove the control conflict that having omni shields on a ship with a significant portion of its firepower on front-facing hardpoints, which is especially an issue for frigates (and other ships that turn quickly).
Personally, I feel that omni shields have the least issues when the guns you're trying to aim are fixed. Yes, paying attention to where the omni shield is takes your attention away from where exactly the fixed forward firing guns are pointing, but on the other hand, dragging the omni shield to the other side of the ship to intercept some missiles or absorb fire from a cruiser while you finish off something that overloaded doesn't screw up the aim of a fixed gun all that much. It's the player-controlled turreted guns that have major control conflicts with omni shields, as both the turrets and the shield projector aim at the mouse cursor, and I not infrequently want my shield facing somewhere other than at my current preferred target. Missiles, whether fixed or turreted, can avoid the aiming/shield coverage conflict relatively easily if you remember to set a target, although it's still a bit annoying to have the turret facing the wrong way, but direct-fire turreted weapons cannot.
Do you still get the speed penalty for harrying a fleet without engaging it?
If you enter a pursuit battle with an enemy fleet and some/all of them get away, do you get slowed down?
If you're in a frigate - or firing at one - moving the mouse away to shield vs something is pretty much going to make you miss.Not necessarily; because skilled frigate (and Medusa) flagships are fast, player can approach a target via strafing (instead of head-on) and be mostly assured that most incoming attacks from that target will miss (because enemy cannot lead shots at all). While the player drifts laterally and shoots, he can use the mouse to control the shield to block shots coming from elsewhere.
I think for me, it's different as I tend to keep most weapons on autofire and manage that instead of manually firing, so with a ship like the Enforcer, the mouse is mostly free for shield use. If you prefer manual control, you can still keep the manual group on autofire and quickly switch to another group if you need to shield elsewhere but want to keep firing.The only weapons that I normally keep control over are missiles and high-flux weapons like antimatter blasters. Mostly because I'd rather control the omni shield than aim and fire the weapons, especially since the computer cannot do the former and does well enough with the latter. For similar reasons, I don't bother with mouse strafing. I find that I can maneuver the ship well enough with the keyboard that giving up the ability to redirect the omni shield to aim the ship at the cursor isn't worthwhile. If the mouse strafing control conflict is what you're worried about, maybe it'd be good to make the Q and E strafing act similarly to cursor strafing if you have a target selected.
If the mouse strafing control conflict is what you're worried about, maybe it'd be good to make the Q and E strafing act similarly to cursor strafing if you have a target selected.No! I rely on the current implementation of Q and E for my superior combat performance. Q and E work just like strafing in a classic FPS like Doom.
I'm surprised the idea of gaining XP for trading enterprises hasn't been thrown around yet.
Question: how is experience gain going to be handled with trading? I feel like you need some experience to keep it balanced against a pure combat style, but at the same time that does lead to suddenly knowing how to mount extra guns on all your ships because you made mad moolah selling supplies. Some skills make sense (yeah if you spend a lot of time flying around you should be able to increase your burn drive) but others (mah macrosse missile massacre just got even better!) definitely don't. Curious to see how you balance it
Good question. I don't have a good answer quite yet. I will say that I don't feel strange about XP being used to improve areas the XP wasn't gained through though, that's just how this sort of system works. Systems that force you to use skills (or at least areas of skills) to improve them have their own problems.
Would there be a way of making the shield being AI-controlled (like setting it to AI, same as auto-fire for guns)? As a result you could focus on aiming. Maybe the shield AI could be improved or even the whole function could be unlocked via skill points.Sadly no. This and variations of it have been asked many time and the answer has always been no
I'm surprised the idea of gaining XP for trading enterprises hasn't been thrown around yet.
It kinda has been, but maybe the answer has changed by now :) :Question: how is experience gain going to be handled with trading? I feel like you need some experience to keep it balanced against a pure combat style, but at the same time that does lead to suddenly knowing how to mount extra guns on all your ships because you made mad moolah selling supplies. Some skills make sense (yeah if you spend a lot of time flying around you should be able to increase your burn drive) but others (mah macrosse missile massacre just got even better!) definitely don't. Curious to see how you balance it
Good question. I don't have a good answer quite yet. I will say that I don't feel strange about XP being used to improve areas the XP wasn't gained through though, that's just how this sort of system works. Systems that force you to use skills (or at least areas of skills) to improve them have their own problems.
Are there any questions you expected us to ask about these patch notes that hasn't been asked?
It knows all. ALLLLLL.Dude, you can't contain it all! Release it man, release the update! Release it before it kills you!
Ahem.
It knows all. ALLLLLL.Dude, you can't contain it all! Release it man, release the update! Release it before it kills you!
Ahem.
But then, shouldn't there be a couple of skills that improve trading in some way? Sure, any skill would help, since it would improve security. Especially +logistics skills, they would allow to have more freighters, but I'm thinking something really oriented towards trading.
Sorry, im new to this, but can i download this patch anywhere or isn´t it released yet? ??? ;D
So if i'm trading profitably but I also pick up an atlas kill and a lot of loot from that Do I gain XP for the stuff I had originally or do i gain XP for the stuff and the salvage? Can the game differentiate if its all in the same stack?
So if i'm trading profitably but I also pick up an atlas kill and a lot of loot from that Do I gain XP for the stuff I had originally or do i gain XP for the stuff and the salvage? Can the game differentiate if its all in the same stack?
If I understand correctly the idea is that you get XP for profit not for the sale.
I would imagine this works the same as it does for taxes- cost basis. If that's right, then each discreet item you buy has a cost basis attached to it, and you get xp for selling it based on how much higher than that cost basis you can price it. Salvage could either be flagged as an undefined cost basis and handled separately or assigned a high cost basis.
Now if the game made you pick an accounting method (FIFO vs LIFO, etc), that would make me chuckle. ;D
Will this release before you have to live with not having released an update for a full year?
I appreciate the sentiment, but I'd prefer "smooth sailing" over "downhill" as the metaphor ;)
- Removed speed penalty after winning battle
If we're going this route, it might be worthwhile just to make them take up the same amount of space as their OP.
- Reduced amount of cargo space taken by ship weapons, now 2/4/8 (was: 5/10/20)
- Removed XP gain from losing your own ships
- Doubled the prices for all ships
- Balancing:
- Greatly reduced amount of salvage from battle
- Fighting combat fleets unlikely to result in high profit unless a bounty is also involved
- Best opportunity is to attack trade fleets carrying expensive goods
- Adjusted fuel use and capacity of ships across the board
- Ox-class tug: now limited to a maximum of one per ship
- Removed "send out salvage teams" from post-engagement options; choices are now "maintain contact with the enemy" (functions as "harry" did) and "stand down"
- Made fleet movement slightly less inertial (2x acceleration)
Hrm. "Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you've got something to share."I think this was done to prevent the exploit of purposefully destroying your ships (or sending them against the enemy to die) for more experience. I have been guilty of sacrificing ships for faster experience gain. Hopefully, the double XP gain will more than compensate for that.
If you're not going to go back on this, then may I suggest a Mount & Blade style reinforcement (in a later version, obviously), where in any scenario that you attack an enemy fleet within shooting distance of another fleet, the other fleet can join on the side they want as reinforcements (to arrive at a later point in the battle, rather than as initial deployments)?
Most memorable for me is when made my Odyssey flagship fire its plasma cannons to destroy a couple of my destroyers, just for experience.
QuoteIf we're going this route, it might be worthwhile just to make them take up the same amount of space as their OP.
- Reduced amount of cargo space taken by ship weapons, now 2/4/8 (was: 5/10/20)
From a realism perspective (for whatever good that serves in an environment where Handwavium is perfectly justifiable), I figure this should be based on hull size (hit points) instead. The larger the ship's actual hull, the more tugs it can accept to boost burn. The weaker the ship's hull, even in a particularly large ship (e.g., a high-tech glass cannon instead of a low-tech brute), the fewer tugs it can use to augment its speed.
A single tug per ship smacks of arbitrary things done in the name of balance, which may be acceptable in quick-and-dirty RTSes but aren't as readily accepted in games that have a more rigid simulation bent.
Quote
- Removed "send out salvage teams" from post-engagement options; choices are now "maintain contact with the enemy" (functions as "harry" did) and "stand down"
Is this because "stand down" is redundant, or is this further nerfing of being able to partially recoup your losses in a battle? I hope the former, because as much as trade is going to be "fun" subjectively, combat still needs to be a viable means of income to justify the vast amount of development time that went into perfecting it.
The rest I'll reserve judgement on until I actually see it, but every other tweak of existing features seems to be right on the money! (I'm a pessimist at heart so I focus on negative feedback rather than positive feedback, although at least I think it's constructive criticism. =))
If you're not going to go back on this, then may I suggest a Mount & Blade style reinforcement (in a later version, obviously), where in any scenario that you attack an enemy fleet within shooting distance of another fleet, the other fleet can join on the side they want as reinforcements (to arrive at a later point in the battle, rather than as initial deployments)?
I really hope the planned mechanic that "might take care of this neatly" but Alex is "not prepared to discuss!" turns out to be something along those lines. :)
Most memorable for me is when made my Odyssey flagship fire its plasma cannons to destroy a couple of my destroyers, just for experience.
Yeah, I did that too, and destroying your damaged ships had the added benefit that you don't have to pay for their repairs. I really don't think the "XP for losses" mechanic can work without a bunch of new rules (crew morale?), so it's probably for the best that it got scrapped.
lol, good point. I thought Alex might have just put it there as a placeholder when he started this thread. I can't imagine the entire trade module only warrants a 0.01 increase. =P
Come back HL3, all is forgiven!!!
This is tangential but I just want to point out that Honor Harrington was, at best, a sensationally uninspired piece of milwank with some unsettling undertones that the author probably didn't notice because he was too busy faffing himself off about how the military is correct about everything.
I only read Basilisk Station, the first book in the series, based on name recognition for the main character. I am told it only gets worse from there.
Would there be a Quest Module to formulate multi-layered missions/quests based on random elements of the current condition to make things more alive?Well, that's kind of the nitty-gritty of the trade system; depending on what the player wants to do, they can:
This is tangential but I just want to point out that Honor Harrington was, at best, a sensationally uninspired piece of milwank with some unsettling undertones that the author probably didn't notice because he was too busy faffing himself off about how the military is correct about everything.
I only read Basilisk Station, the first book in the series, based on name recognition for the main character. I am told it only gets worse from there.
The reason I'm asking is most of detractors from the recent Gemini 2 is that the world seemed bland, robotic or just uninteresting - especially paired with your bog-standard kill/fetch quest. Since Gemini 2 sounds awfully similar to Starsector's sandbox elements (trade, pirate, bounty etc), what's Alex's plan on avoiding his game from having the same pitfalls?
Would there be a Quest Module to formulate multi-layered missions/quests based on random elements of the current condition to make things more alive?
Are you going to adjust Fast Missile Racks now that all pods are buffed? Could get ugly out there with mass LRM spam/mixed pods.
Posted an updated version of the javadoc here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/starfarer.api/index.html?overview-summary.html). It includes most of the API requests, with a few notable exceptions (SettingsAPI changes, EngineSlotAPI, MuzzleFlashAPI, some other stuff). Doesn't mean it won't get added, I'll most likely take another look at it - was just doing a "quick" pass over it today, and it's in good enough shape where I'd like to publish the new API now.
Standard disclaimer: any part of the API could change prior to the actual release.
Don't use the word Update without giving us the real update you monster!For modders it's the next best thing! Thanks a lot Alex, lot's of good things have appeared (and we are already dissecting the update potential) ::)
Don't use the word Update without giving us the real update you monster!
I couldn't help but wonder what the heck ShipVariantAPI.get/setQuality is for.
Nice changes, by the way.
For modders it's the next best thing! Thanks a lot Alex, lot's of good things have appeared (and we are already dissecting the update potential) ::)
I'm now very curious to see how the new everyFrameWeaponEffects will be used on vanilla ships ;)
How else am I supposed to generate hype?
I haven't played the game in a long time now, and I've noticed quite a few mods have popped up. I seriously want to try these mods, but at the same time, I know that the update is around the corner and will make them incompatible.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME, ALEX.
And will there be a way for haulers to be nerfed in terms of smuggling capacity in a similar way to how the new hullmod works, ie extra thin cargohold?
And could you make cargoholds discriminate specific items, such that for example my faction's hauler could only carry supplies and fuel but no commodities? Or maybe only supplies, fuel, an "energy cells" commodity and guns?
No to all, though you could probably code around that if you really wanted to. As far as the player, though, cargo capacity is cargo capacity. I can't really imagine doing something like "X of your capacity can only be used on Ore", etc.
Secondly, after reading the above quotes by Zudgemud and yourself it occurred to me that there could be certain cargo ships that were naturally (i.e. permanent hull-mod) better equipped to handle certain types of cargo. Not in a cut-and-dry manner as freighters, fuel tankers and personnel transports are currently. Instead certain ship hulls may reduce the cargo space per unit of a given item, Supplies for instance, by a percentage, and increase the space cost of another item(s) by a percentage. Though, after giving it a few more minutes thought I can't really fit the idea into the game thematically, and I don't see a need for it for gameplay reasons. I thought I would mention it anyway in case it sparked an idea for someone else.
That said, I like the idea of mixed-use as well as dedicated transport types. Tankers, cargo freighters and personnel transports are all great, but just for variety it'd be cool to see freighters that look and function as half built for one purpose and half built for another. For instance a ship that looks half tanker (with the signature orange color and bulbous tanker style) and half cargo freighter (styled like the Atlas or other freighters) with stats to reflect this. No urgency for this addition, of course.
Edit: Specifically for long and narrow ships, the perfectly circular shield shape ends up taking up a lot of unnecessary space, and the larger the ship the goofier it seems. What're your thoughts on the idea of allowing some ships to have more oval-shaped shields in order to better fit the hull shape?
Secondly, after reading the above quotes by Zudgemud and yourself it occurred to me that there could be certain cargo ships that were naturally (i.e. permanent hull-mod) better equipped to handle certain types of cargo. Not in a cut-and-dry manner as freighters, fuel tankers and personnel transports are currently. Instead certain ship hulls may reduce the cargo space per unit of a given item, Supplies for instance, by a percentage, and increase the space cost of another item(s) by a percentage. Though, after giving it a few more minutes thought I can't really fit the idea into the game thematically, and I don't see a need for it for gameplay reasons. I thought I would mention it anyway in case it sparked an idea for someone else.
Consider also that cargo isn't explicitly assigned to ships - this sort of thing would get very troublesome.
Today, I tried (a max Combat/Technology) Wolf with Frontal Shields, and the change seems negligible overall. Defending against Salamanders is slightly harder; but for overall fighting, Wolf with frontal shields is slightly easier to use.Did you double the shield arc?
- Ships that are not performing repairs or recovering CR do not consume supplies (previously: consumed 10% of the supply/day value)
- Hyperion: now has "High Maintenance" built-in hullmod that makes it consume extra supplies per day
- Ships that are not performing repairs or recovering CR do not consume supplies (previously: consumed 10% of the supply/day value)
- Hyperion: now has "High Maintenance" built-in hullmod that makes it consume extra supplies per day
Explain.
If the hullmod just increases supply usage while repairing or recovering CR, why not just increase the values on the ship instead of tying it to a hullmod?
Ships consume their supplies cost while 1) recovering CR or 2) performing repairs
...
Ships that are not performing repairs or recovering CR do not consume supplies (previously: consumed 10% of the supply/day value)
What's the reasoning behind skins being able to remove, but not add, weapon slots?
And it's out!
Get it here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/10/20/starsector-0-65a-release/).
Major Update on the games framework and added massive changes to the campaign
0.62 -> 0.65
Congratulations on the release!
And oh, the price went up to $15. Hm, didn't see that coming.
... And on the very justified price increase!
One thing puzzled me, I get the updates about price information for different locales, but where do I actually see the price information?
I'm sorry for being imprecise. I meant if there is a place to compare the collected price (at different markets) information for each commodity?
Can't wait to get working on the wiki!
During character creation (which seems far improved)
- The helmet portrait is shown twice
- "Got your hands >on< some high-value cargo"
- While the loading bar is visible, ships flying in the background appear to jitter back and forth by a few pixel
The Cerberus base hull does not seem to use the new sprite; it's still pointing to the old ships/superhound.png.
Aleeex! Give poor pirates a decent flag man :D
Wait... Umm X is just a placeholder right?
Also, with this release, the new preorder price is $15. Starsector has come a long way since its initial release – I’d been hesitant to change the price until the set of features had expanded significantly, and we’re finally here.This is why I got Starfarer years ago.
-probably everything new , trade , bounty´s , still need to grow stronger the make my influence count :) ... probably Try Tachion will die from starvation or something like that .. ^^
another bug ? : found a station importing/requesting weapons , my relationship is high enough to buy it elsewhere from the same faction but i they don't buy it ( greyed out )
( was Hegemony Corvus --> Hegemony Ragnar )
-probably everything new , trade , bounty´s , still need to grow stronger the make my influence count :) ... probably Try Tachion will die from starvation or something like that .. ^^
Yeah, for sure.another bug ? : found a station importing/requesting weapons , my relationship is high enough to buy it elsewhere from the same faction but i they don't buy it ( greyed out )
( was Hegemony Corvus --> Hegemony Ragnar )
Were you trying to sell on the open market? Trading in hand weapons is illegal in the Hegemony, unless you're trading directly w/ their military, which requires a high enough relationship.
tried both , as i said i had high enough relationship to buy/sell ( access to military ). could only sell them on the blackmarket on Ragnar.
Edit : Says : Illegal to trade hand weapons here even when military is marked ( on corvus , too )Spoiler(http://i58.tinypic.com/nwjyhz.png)[close]
tried both , as i said i had high enough relationship to buy/sell ( access to military ). could only sell them on the blackmarket on Ragnar.
Edit : Says : Illegal to trade hand weapons here even when military is marked ( on corvus , too )Spoiler(http://i58.tinypic.com/nwjyhz.png)[close]
Some need more relationship than others - for example, you need "Welcoming" with the Hegemony to get access to weapons in the Military section.
Aw, hope you feel better soon!
Engines seem to have no health. Even a couple stray pulse laser bolts are able to flame out an Onslaught with Heavy Armor.
Engines seem to have no health. Even a couple stray pulse laser bolts are able to flame out an Onslaught with Heavy Armor.
You didn't put an unstable injector on it, did you?
Engines seem to have no health. Even a couple stray pulse laser bolts are able to flame out an Onslaught with Heavy Armor.
You didn't put an unstable injector on it, did you?
No. It's the default outdated Onslaught in Sinking the Bismarck.
What the hell?Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/r6QmhUm.png)[close]
[Edit] Btw - it seems almost all fleets are entirely green crew?
Is there a minimum amount of time between Hegemony scans because I approached a station, got scanned, docked, bought some supplies, undocked, started to fly away and then got scanned again. Kind of annoying that I've had to pay ~1,800 credits to tolls when I only bought some supplies.
Edit: First scan cost me ~800 and the second ~1000
Related to engines: Salamanders are now scary strong and almost always give a full flameout. Its nearly impossible in a Hammerhead (what I was flying) to stop them, even with 4x lrpd lasers. On the other hand they are finally a weapon to be reckoned with, so maybe its not a bad thing...
Also, on a somewhat related note:
(http://i.imgur.com/r6QmhUm.png)
What the hell?
It's been working for me too, but that's with unstable injector and 5 points in helmsmanship.Related to engines: Salamanders are now scary strong and almost always give a full flameout. Its nearly impossible in a Hammerhead (what I was flying) to stop them, even with 4x lrpd lasers. On the other hand they are finally a weapon to be reckoned with, so maybe its not a bad thing...
Hmm, really? Turning into it to help the lasers aim seemed to work for me, but I haven't tried it in a while.
You removed my favorite character avatar, what gives!? This will not do one bit.I really liked the first version of the old hegemony admiral (portrait_hegemony05), but the new, cranky version is good too. Still, I don't see why he had to be replaced. He was one of the best portraits in my opinion.
Alright Alex, we give up. What do these mean in the ship_data.csv?And while you are answering this: what is the "8/6/5/4%" stat mean?
c c/fp c/l
And while you are answering this: what is the "8/6/5/4%" stat mean?
-Doing bounties on pirates sends the game into easy mode very quickly. Everyone quickly decides they like you, and you start rolling in the bounty money. Speaking of bounties, there are no bounties for anyone besides pirates.
150k from Bounties may seem like a lot but it's amazing just how quickly it disappears.
You're not the only one; I found a whole bunch of these for sale on Tartassus. Quite overpowered if you can afford them, though this makes me wish there was a balanced variant thats equippable for all ships.
- BUG: I found Thermal Pulse Cannons, the Onslaught builtin weapon, for sale. Worth 120,000, but with 0 OP cost plus its other stats, it would be a dream weapon for Sunder, Apogee, and Paragon.
AH HA! I'm not going crazy. Pirate ships are flipping between 'acting as independents' or 'pirates' indentity tags. Alex!
Agh, I can't decide if I should play the new update now or wait for a hotfix if there is one. :)
You have faceless green visor man to compensate!
AH HA! I'm not going crazy. Pirate ships are flipping between 'acting as independents' or 'pirates' indentity tags. Alex!
Yeah, I've noticed that happening quite a bit - usually to smugglers.
I thought that was an intended mechanic.
AH HA! I'm not going crazy. Pirate ships are flipping between 'acting as independents' or 'pirates' indentity tags. Alex!
Yeah, I've noticed that happening quite a bit - usually to smugglers.
I thought that was an intended mechanic.
I forget where the quote is, but I believe it's something to do with low stability meaning the independants are becoming pirates to make a little extra money or something. I definitely was not surprised when it happened in game, something had prepared me for it. now if only I could remember where I saw it mentioned. probably somewhere back like ten pages ago in this thread tbh
Those trails make missiles seem a lot more intimidating - I remember myself seeing some Swarmers come at me (at the time, I hadn't remembered that they'd been switched to HE from Frag damage) and I almost crapped myself at it - seeing 4 missiles converge on me like a Hurricane MIRV was downright terrifying in my Frigate.
As a site note, the Frag Bomb Bays are still available in the campaign.
Two of the Hound skins have the "defective" paragraph in their description despite not actually being defective.
A few skins don't have descriptions (of their base hull).
Alright Alex, we give up. What do these mean in the ship_data.csv?
c c/fp c/l
-It's reallllly hard to be a a smuggler. Trading with the pirates at all sends your reputation through the ground REALLY quickly! It seems absolutely impossible to become friendly with almost any of the factions (enough to buy a ship that doesn't suck) if you are smuggling at all!
-For some strange reason, "pirate" is lowercase for everything. Probably something to do with the .faction.
-I get scanned 2-3 times per system. Often once before I dock somewhere and once immediately after by the same faction (even if they are neutral/favorable!). If I tell them I don't want to pay, they'll simply wait a few seconds then try to scan me again! I mean, yeah it's fine to get scanned every once in awhile, but this is INSANE!!!
My one wish for any future versions of this is to have a "pirate" start at the character selection screen. Right now it takes absolutely forever to make them friendly with you and they'll often try to attack you while you're doing that (which makes it even harder!).
It seems to me, and most people here and on the chat, that the engine's health is WAY too low! You so much as LOOK an an Onslaughts backside funny and he will flameout! And this isn't with Injectors on either! I think you might had inverted their health boost
MissileRenderDataAPI does not seem to offer any way to grab the location of the loaded missiles, which is rather crucial for my purposes. It would also save a huge amount of databasing legwork if it could also return the getProjectileSpecId of the loaded missiles, so I don't have to make yet another csv to cross-reference turrets to missiles.
Also, weapon.getBarrelSpriteAPI() creates a NPE, presumably when used on a weapon that lacks a barrel. It should return null instead.
By the way, the main menu battle does not run renderInXCoords. I don't know if this is by design or not.
There is some inconstant information on the page about the pricing:
Which also brings another question, anyone know the relationship caps for various actions? (smuggling, bounty hunting, trading etc)
Is a tug from Asharu supposed to cost nearly 25,000 credits now?
SpoilerI'd just like to comment about something that might be a bit old news to some, but new news to me, as of this version.
It's a lot of text that looks negative at first glance, so I'll just preface by mentioning that the end result of what I'm about to say is 100% praise, and the wall that follows is to put it all into perspective.
I haven't played this game since before the CR stuff went in, and I've put it off since I heard about it because I absolutely did not like the idea behind the mechanic. I've always been the type of person who most enjoys getting stuck into a game, immersing myself, and going very, very slowly, deliberately, and doing my best to cheat or circumvent the system in order to prolong my gameplay experience in every way possible. That might not make sense, but I'll put it this way- in Starsector, I really, really loved extremely long battles. A lot of times this meant getting the fastest ships and kiting around enemies that were way too big and tough, and that I shouldn't have normally been able to take on. Other times it meant investing everything in a fleet of the most durable and defensive ships possible with weapons that don't rely on ammo, and outlasting the enemies, often with the goal of defeating them in very long engagements where, as a result, I ended up winning without taking any hull or even armor damage. I'm the kind of person who doesn't use consumables in games where it's at all possible to win without them, even (especially) if it means extra grinding to make up or even far surpass the difference, which I greatly enjoy. I always go for unlimited attack methods and resources, even if it means they'd be far weaker than limited alternatives. My greatest joy in gaming is almost always the ability to play indefinitely without stopping, or with as few stops and extra steps of maintenance as possible. I hate item durability. I hate time limits. I hate escort quests where my success hinges on an uncontrollable factor that I can't grind to make up for.
As of this most recent update, I've finally tried the game again, fully expecting to be disappointed by all the new limiting factors both in combat and out.
I was very pleasantly surprised.
The CR system and the way supplies are required and used seems to work just exactly right. It's not even just that I don't mind them. I actually enjoy their inclusion in the game. It almost feels like some kind of rare balance has been struck, where those factors are implemented so smoothly with the gameplay that even I can't help but feel motivated by them, rather than bogged down.
CR drop during combat, especially after prior recent battles, and all that it entails, seems to only serve to make each new fight more tense. The handicaps and risks of rapidly dropping CR are gradual enough that it really just feels like a longer battle has all the more at stake, which is exhilarating. Suddenly, a grueling battle against already overwhelming odds (granted, I've only played as one or two frigates going up against bigger and deadlier forces so far) becomes all the more desperate when that CR timer ticks down and the alarm sounds.
It's difficult to describe, but if someone with my extreme preferences for non-limited gaming mechanics finds them compelling, then you guys must have done something very, very right, or at least are on the right track.
Also, The sound effects seem to have largely changed since the last time I played. I liked them fine before, but they're better by leaps and bounds now. Kudos all around.[close]
AH HA! I'm not going crazy. Pirate ships are flipping between 'acting as independents' or 'pirates' indentity tags. Alex!
Yeah, I've noticed that happening quite a bit - usually to smugglers.
I thought that was an intended mechanic.
I forget where the quote is, but I believe it's something to do with low stability meaning the independants are becoming pirates to make a little extra money or something. I definitely was not surprised when it happened in game, something had prepared me for it. now if only I could remember where I saw it mentioned. probably somewhere back like ten pages ago in this thread tbh
It's not a bug, its a feature!
The pirate targets seem to dry up pretty fast too. I don't know what the others are doing differently, but i'm having a hard time as a bounty hunter. Buying combat ships is tough due to the standing hit i took. Also hurray on marines being useful finally. Those stupid fees and tariffs also make it hard to turn a profit. For every scan i'm subject to it ends up negating the profit from at least one combat victory. Sometimes more.
The (D) ships' negative hull mods seem to be mostly -3 burnspeed. Is this intentional, or have i just gotten bad rolls? I had one at -1 and another that had flux problems (a cerebrus so it didn't matter too much). The loss of burnspeed renders them useless to me because i have to be able to catch the non penalized pirate ships. If i can't i'd starve for sure.
On a side-side-note, Cluster Bomb Bays are in the campaign too.
haven't played much into it yet, but I wonder if siding with one faction at the cost of others might be something worth considering
Dunno if it was already mentioned, but you can get pinged for scans after you've already put in the command to enter a warp gate, causing you to lose faction standing without being able to take any action to prevent it. People should be able to tell when the irreversible process of starting up the warp drive has begun, and know better than to expect you to sit still for a scan when it is impossible. Better that than making it possbile but only a tiny window of split-second-reflex-game-pausing to interrupt your warp jump so you can get scanned, if you ask me.
Am I missing something?
In the intel screen, a bounty was posted on December 8th. 10,000 if the target was killed (presumably?) within 60 days. I found the target in the system and destroyed the enemy fleet on Feb 2nd. I haven't gotten paid. How do I get paid?
Also, I think I must be missing something else too: my intel reports about prices list several items, but I can't find the actual values anywhere.
Is there a post explaining Destabilization? How to do it/how it works?
Also, I think I must be missing something else too: my intel reports about prices list several items, but I can't find the actual values anywhere.
Both excited and worried by the new character creation stuff. I'm unsure whether the new scripting language in rules.csv is capable of doing all the things CharacterCreationPlugin can do (mostly basic arithmetic!) and also how you'd go about over-riding just the creation rules (for a total conversion) and not the others. If either of those aren't possible, it would be nice to be able to fall back to the old plugins.
(http://i.imgur.com/r6QmhUm.png)
What the hell?
I did notice however, that if you run out of fuel in hyper space while using a hound, and get followed by a pirate fleet larger then you, the pirate fleet won't force an engagement. It only seemed to want to harrass my retreat despite the fact that I had 0 CR.I had the same happen and I think it was because my burn would have been fast enough to easily outrun them.. if I had fuel.
Are you sure? There's code specifically to abort the inspection if the player jumps out before they get the notification about the scan, and as far as I can see, it seems to work. Can you describe exactly the sequence of events?
Is there a better way to handle the ship skin system (especially the D models)? Currently they tend to clutter the codex with lots of largely redundant entries, and the damaged versions are all the same.
It'd be nice if the damage hullmods were randomly assigned to a ship marked as defective, so you could have one Hammerhead (D) with broken engines, another with missing weapon mounts, etc.
I also recently chased down a single pirate ship, some kind of smuggler, engaged it, used the "pursue" option, ran it down, destroyed it, and when I came out of combat I saw a notice of losing -156 faction with independents, and since the game was paused, I got to see that the now empty pirate fleet (of one ship) I had just killed had turned independent after I engaged it.
Oooh, update. I only played a bit today but one piece of feedback I have is this: The Intel screen is completely missing any kind of info on which factions control which systems. I looked at that screen thinking to myself, "I wanna get in bed with Tri-Tachyon, let's see which system I need to go." Eventually I just had to fly around and find them the old-fashioned way.
There's a bucketload of tugs, repair rigs and shuttles, but there's at most one or two available ships of a kind concerning other classes. black market is almost all damaged frigates and even the faction military tabs do not appear to refresh stock like it used to. (back before trading was implemented, new ships would occationally refill with the supply convoys, now they don't).I too have noticed this. High and even some med tech ships, especially larger ones are very hard to find, along with high tech weapons. I think this is mainly because we have several low tech factions (Heg, pirates, Ludd) but only one mid and one high faction. And what is worse is that the pirates rarely ever get any high tech ships, which means you have to buddy up with the TT in order to get your odyssey, paragon or hyperion
Which leads me to another point, While the diktat now sells onslaughts. Conquests do not appear in any port and odyssey has only appeared once in any market, on my end.
Is it restricted what they keep in stock, and if so, what is the refresh rate?
Fortunately high tech ship's reliance upon energy weapons means they all suck anyway, so nothing lost ;D
Seriously though, energy weapons have been lackluster for so long, I can only conclude that there's a mechanic yet to go into the game that'll offset their poor range and pathetic flux efficiency.
Energy weapons also tend to be equipped on ships with great speed and flux dissipation (wolf, medusa, eagle) and don't use any ammo.
Energy weapons also tend to be equipped on ships with great speed and flux dissipation (wolf, medusa, eagle) and don't use any ammo.
The nontrivial exceptions of the antimatter blaster - plus all burst-style energy weapons - politely disagrees with your last phrase.
Energy weapons also tend to be equipped on ships with great speed and flux dissipation (wolf, medusa, eagle) and don't use any ammo.
The nontrivial exceptions of the antimatter blaster - plus all burst-style energy weapons - politely disagrees with your last phrase.
The antimatter blaster has so much ammo as to be effectively limitless; a battle must be very long indeed for it to run dry.
Finally got the opportunity to delve into the game a bit deeper today, and I am very happy with what I found there. Especially the atmospheric density is impressive, the game world feels so alive and dynamic. Trading is actually really quite entertaining (which is no something I'd say about many games that have it), though not yet quite as convenient as it could be. Combat is much more fun too, mainly due to the missile changes. Looking forward to spending more time in the Sector in the coming weeks.
There's one lovely detail I want to mention because, I think, nobody else did yet: The individual, fitting sound each commodity item makes when dropped is just perfect. :)
- The ship/weapon information tooltips could use a 'tier' entry. This would make it easier to judge what's available to you while browsing through the Codex.
- When you can't fit a weapon in the market refit screen it's always black. A lot of the time you'll go to this screen to shop for upgrades while already at max OP, so perhaps it should retain a bit of the red tinge if it's black market?
- When you're stopped for a toll and they tell you the price, it should probably also display how many credits you currently have. ;)
So I guess we can't get Odysseys or Apogees anymore? Haven't found any over the whole sector, checking both Tri-Tach and Independent markets.
I agree that ammo isn't a very important consideration.
I think your point on DPS/OP is wrong because it does not consider the types of ships that mount energy weapons. They tend to be more mobile than their ballistic counterparts - capable of hit and run tactics where alpha strikes, overwhelming an enemy, and raw damage output are most important. These are ships that can control the pace and range of engagement. Yes longer range weapons will shoot them a bit on the approach (maybe!), but in general they can get in, overwhelm, and get out to vent. IMO the only real failure in this role is the Aurora, though with the missile tweaks it may re-emerge as the premier missile ship (if only large mount missiles were better!). Of course if an Aurora with 3 Heavy Blasters actually catches something, it tears them to shreds...
- The ship/weapon information tooltips could use a 'tier' entry. This would make it easier to judge what's available to you while browsing through the Codex.
- When you can't fit a weapon in the market refit screen it's always black. A lot of the time you'll go to this screen to shop for upgrades while already at max OP, so perhaps it should retain a bit of the red tinge if it's black market?
- When you're stopped for a toll and they tell you the price, it should probably also display how many credits you currently have. ;)
Noted! Not entirely sure on exposing "tier" as a player-facing property, though.
Hmmmmm... I'm getting tons of Odysseys at Tibicena. No Apogees though, which is just as well because I always feel forced to buy it if its available (seriously, best cruiser in the game...).So I guess we can't get Odysseys or Apogees anymore? Haven't found any over the whole sector, checking both Tri-Tach and Independent markets.
Your best legal bet is Tibicena in the Magec system - it's the only Tri Tachyon military base. Also, any unstable Tri-Tachyon markets have a chance to have military craft on the black market, so they might be worth a check. It's not super likely, though.
I have yet to see any non pirate cruiser or larger ship hull in the BMSo I guess we can't get Odysseys or Apogees anymore? Haven't found any over the whole sector, checking both Tri-Tach and Independent markets.Your best legal bet is Tibicena in the Magec system - it's the only Tri Tachyon military base. Also, any unstable Tri-Tachyon markets have a chance to have military craft on the black market, so they might be worth a check. It's not super likely, though.
Also, can't find any Conquests. Not sure if this is because I can't trade with Pirates (I'm already at -100 rep, oh well), or if I just can't find it anymore.
Super close to just destabilizing the whole place by buying up huge warships and raiding Eos for giggles.
Dear Alex,
I love you. In a very manly kind of way :-\
From me.
Seriously though, I have been checking the blog every day for many a month now, this is the update I have been waiting for. I couldn't even play after I downloaded it till now, just too excited. Its good to know there is a dev out there that does things right. I am loving the new music, also everything else about it. Going back to playing now..
More stuff!
Though less so worries than compliments, this time.
The sounds are great, the events are interesting (seeing as not all of possible food shortages, etc, result in actual shortages). The new systems look -beautiful- and I am not entirely sure but I think the little drone frigate skiff was added this patch?
The one that spawns mining drones.
I love those things.
The sound choices are great, the music too, and I hope we get more like this in the future.
This update also hooked some of my friends... xD
Not quite sure on the "Shielded cargo holds" mechanic. Does having this one ship in my fleet mean all illegal cargo will be counted as shielded? Hows this work.
You could put words to the numbers; "common", "licensed", "restricted", "forbidden" for example. Although how that'd make sense across all factions is a problem.
For a Conquest, I think your best (and possibly only) bet is the black market on an unstable independent world.
I didn't want to make a new thread for it, and I know it's been mentioned already, but I felt like I had to add my voice to the fray and say what is with engine damage?
I swear I get twice as many or more flameouts than I used to. It feels like if anything so much as gives the engines on my Falcon a moist glance they go out. I never remember having this issue in previous versions.
- love the new main menu music
- love the new character creation dialog system
- love the new missile trails
- feels like there's more activity in the universe / feels more alive
- intel screen feels initially complex, but later feels just right
Not just ships, but weapons too. The starter heavy blaster I got for my starter Wolf has been FAR more valuable than the meager extra cash or superior crew. I found my first (non-starter) heavy blaster in a black market after I surpassed level 30. Even if I found a blaster earlier, I probably could not have bought it until I reach cooperative with a faction that sold it.
Protip: If your starter options include better weapon, always take it! Money and crew experience will come quickly enough, but that quality weapon you can get may not.
i get the feeling a lot of ships and items have vanished from the world. I have 100 reputation with hegemony, tritach, and independent and access to the other 2 factions military markets and have yet to see an omen, an apogee, conquest, odyssey, hyperion, astral, venture, tempest, an aurora, affliction, or a doom. I stumbled onto a shade at the black market of a tritach non military planet, not a clue why it was there, doesn't seem to be any reasoning to it. Why have all these ships if you cant find and use so many of them, if you do manage to find one and it dies your fleet composition is screwed too, because you won't see another. Judging by the general discussion threads everyone's using mostly the same ships because they're the main things available.
Anyways my progress feels hindered more by lack of ship availability than by lack of money, jobs or exp. omg alex why do you do this.
Game is great right now. The only thing missing is the ability to take stations and found your own faction. No doubt we'll have mods for such soon enough.
Great work, Alex. There are so few games that I play year on year and Starsector never fails to recapture my imagination with each patch!
After playing for about two hours, I'm still hooked. The new campaign adds a lot to the startup, whereas in previous games I could simply grab a mercury, refit it with some reapers, and take out a buffalo to get money quick. Amazing work, probably won't sleep tonight to try master this new version :D
Keep up the good work, Starsector is, and probably always will be, my favorite game ;D
I have 100 reputation with hegemony, tritach, and independent and access to the other 2 factions military markets and have yet to see an omen, an apogee, conquest, odyssey, hyperion, astral, venture, tempest, an aurora, affliction, or a doom.Tri-tachyon guys have none of them?! Wonder what happened to their blueprints...
i get the feeling a lot of ships and items have vanished from the world. I have 100 reputation with hegemony, tritach, and independent and access to the other 2 factions military markets and have yet to see an omen, an apogee, conquest, odyssey, hyperion, astral, venture, tempest, an aurora, affliction, or a doom. I stumbled onto a shade at the black market of a tritach non military planet, not a clue why it was there, doesn't seem to be any reasoning to it. Why have all these ships if you cant find and use so many of them, if you do manage to find one and it dies your fleet composition is screwed too, because you won't see another. Judging by the general discussion threads everyone's using mostly the same ships because they're the main things available.
Anyways my progress feels hindered more by lack of ship availability than by lack of money, jobs or exp. omg alex why do you do this.
I get what you're saying, especially about feeling hindered. Making specific ships reliably accessible without making it too easy is a tricky proposition, though, and being forced to make do with stuff that isn't the best or what you'd want to have in an ideal world is a very large component of the fun. I think all in all, the game would be worse off if every faction reliably had their best stuff for sale. On the other hand, I'm not saying the current situation is ideal, either. Just that I don't see a simple solution. I'll definitely keep this in mind, though... it was already something I was aware of before the release. I think maybe more pieces need to be in place before this can be satisfactorily resolved - perhaps production (i.e. market X has the Tempest blueprint, and so is much more likely to have it for sale), perhaps people you can talk to that can procure the stuff you really want, but at a premium. There are possibilities.
For now, your best bet is probably starting trouble with the factions that has the stuff you want, and then getting it that way - especially for weapons, though boarding is of course an option too.
I'm enjoying the new patch. I'm being a pirate, and everyone else is Vengeful towards me. I think it would be nice if the player had more options after they *** everyone off, as it's kind of annoying that there are only 4 stations that I can dock at. Perhaps it could interact with the stability system - if a station gets to 0 stability, you can dock there and interact with the markets (open and black) whatever your reputation with the owning faction. I think it's a bit weird that I can't find anyone to trade with me on Maxios (a government-less independent wilderness) despite all the freighters I have blown up.There are pirate planets out there, so the stations aren't the only place to trade. I think there's one in Askonia, for example. There's usually at least one pirate place to trade with in each system, so explore them a bit.
It would also be fun if bringing lots of booty back to a pirate station to sell (on the open market) increased that station's stability, and perhaps resulted in more ships and weapons on the market there.
So here are my questions: Will there be any reason for the player to use D ships? Because as of right now there's no reason to pour the same amount of supplies in an inferior ship.
Or are they just for lore/content purposes?
Will there be upgraded/modified versions of ships?
There are pirate planets out there, so the stations aren't the only place to trade. I think there's one in Askonia, for example. There's usually at least one pirate place to trade with in each system, so explore them a bit.
Funnily enough, I think my favorite thing has been all the new faction and place descriptions. Absolutely loved all the tid-bits in Sindria, the refugees etc. First thing I did was get enough money for fuel to fly around and visit everything to read the descriptions :D
SpoilerSo I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.
This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.
I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.
The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.[close]
where is tri-tachyon main base?
and how to increase the reputation?
SpoilerSo I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.
This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.
I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.
The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.[close]
The AI tries to avoid over-deploying due to CR concerns, though it'll ramp up *very* quickly once it starts taking losses. For medium sized fleets, though, I suppose "very quickly" still isn't quick enough, if it basically needed the entire fleet to overwhelm you, and has now lost some of it before realizing it.
While this isn't intuitive at first glance, I think the behavior does make sense given the how the rules work (and given that the AI is playing by them).
I too ran into this with my AI Apogee! No matter what I gave him as weapons or orders, he would ALWAYS end up with 3K+ hull damage or flat out destroyed in "fair" fights!SpoilerSo I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.
This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.
I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.
The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.[close]
SpoilerSo I've been playing this new update a lot and I've noticed something a bit weird. I'm not sure if this was the same in previous versions or not, but it seems the enemy deploys his ships based on the ships that you yourself deploy, which can change the difficulty of a battle in really strange and counter-intuitive ways.
This is what happened: I had two destroyers against a pirate force of several frigates, destroyers, and a cruiser. I kept reloading the game over and over trying to defeat this superior force, but no matter what I did I never managed to defeat the pirates without losing the AI-controlled destroyer. There were just too many enemies, despite my best efforts they always managed to overwhelm and disable the other destroyer. Finally I grew frustrated and thought to myself, screw you, stupid AI Hammerhead, you're just a liability, I'll do this on my own! And so I went in alone and to my utter surprise and bewilderment managed to handily defeat the entire enemy force right away.
I went back again to figure out what had happened and it turns out that I was getting beaten because the pirates were deploying their entire force against my two destroyers, which enabled them to easily overwhelm me. But when I only deployed one, they sent out only a smaller force that I was able to easily kill with my high-level character and very powerful flagship. The first wave of enemies was dead before the reinforcements made it to the fight, and the first wave of reinforcements was dead before the second one arrived, etc. Where the entire enemy force was able to easily overwhelm and kill my two ships, when I only deployed one I was able to defeat them piecemeal.
The point is this: I was at a disadvantage, outnumbered and outgunned. I find it very strange that putting myself at even more of a disadvantage by only deploying half of my force made the battle easier.[close]
I too ran into this with my AI Apogee! No matter what I gave him as weapons or orders, he would ALWAYS end up with 3K+ hull damage or flat out destroyed in "fair" fights!
Yes, the all-seeing AI cheats! I cannot see what the AI deploys, neither should it. For now, I take advantage of this by soloing everything with a single frigate or destroyer.
Once player gets Combat 10 and Technology 7, a single Wolf with a heavy blaster can solo almost any pirate fleet.
Well you say that, but the way the rules work is that you can't see what the other side is deploying. The AI can see what I'm deploying, so that means the AI is outright cheating, which aside from being a bad thing in and of itself also creates this weird dynamic where putting myself at even more of a disadvantage made the battle significantly easier. If anything, the AI should have no reason to think I'd deploy only one of my ships instead of both. I'm outnumbered and outgunned after all. The logical thing for me to do is to deploy everything I can to maximize my slim chances of victory. Deploying only one ship is a really counter-intuitive thing to do in that situation, and the result is equally strange. Surely putting myself at even more of a disadvantage should result in the battle being even more difficult.
This would all be solved by just making the AI not cheat. Then it would have to operate based on the above assumption that the weaker side will deploy everything precisely because it's weaker, and the exploit of deploying only one ship wouldn't work anymore.
Removed XP gain from losing your own ships
Oh yeah, forgot about that part of it. I suppose it's technically cheating, but if it didn't do that, the optimal thing to do would probably be to send out a single small ship as a scout, run away with it (not retreat, just run away/not engage), and deploy "for real" based on what it saw. To avoid that (boring and complicated) mess, it knows what you've deployed, but doesn't take advantage of it in any way aside from basing how much to deploy itself.
Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.
While I generally agree that the AI shouldn't cheat as a matter of course, I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. Cheating by, say, increasing weapon range or damage artificially would be a bad thing. This? Not so much; it's not doing this to manage difficulty, but to smooth out the flow of the game. Even if it didn't do this, the same scenario you describe would play out (deploying a single ship making the fight easier by forcing the AI to deploy less), it'd just be more awkward with a scouting phase.
QuoteRemoved XP gain from losing your own ships
I am very sad to see this go. This game has very little in the way of narrative, but the experience gain from the combat losses served to be turning points for my characters, and gave me an incentive to not just say "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."
Now combats gonna go back to "Well that's 4 hours down the drain, reload."
sad to see that go.
Yeah, I had a feeling addressing this exploit would just create more exploits. Still, if the AI did start using the single ship scouting method you described, the player's response to that would probably be to bring up one ship, wait for it to be scouted, then bring up the rest when the scout ship leaves, which would effectively make the AI just as blind as if it wasn't cheating or scouting.
I've been thinking about this some more and I'm not really sure how to address this exploit, at least not if the solution involves making the AI cheat less. Any ideas I come up with involve radically overhauling the core systems of the game (i.e. how deploying works, fight phases, CR, all that sort of thing). So I think you should simply make the AI cheat more. Don't just look at the type and number of ships the player deploys but also at their actual strength. The AI would then look at my one destroyer and go "okay, it's just one ship, but it's commanded by a high-level captain and upgraded to ridiculous levels, we gotta deploy tons of stuff to take it down". On reflection, that's really where this exploit comes from. The AI sees one destroyer and deploys accordingly, but it doesn't take into account that it's a heavily upgraded destroyer that can disable any other destroyer in like five seconds and go toe-to-toe with cruisers.
Then again, I do love playing this game as more of a space shooter than a strategy, so maybe don't go overboard on the fix? ;)
The AI would then look at my one destroyer and go "okay, it's just one ship, but it's commanded by a high-level captain and upgraded to ridiculous levels, we gotta deploy tons of stuff to take it down". On reflection, that's really where this exploit comes from. The AI sees one destroyer and deploys accordingly, but it doesn't take into account that it's a heavily upgraded destroyer that can disable any other destroyer in like five seconds and go toe-to-toe with cruisers.With maximum Combat and Technology, a Medusa flagship can single-handedly take out any standard fleet in previous versions of the game. Medusa was good enough to slaughter defense fleet equivalents of Gedune and IFed in Exerelin too. AI needs to throw everything it has against a fully upgraded destroyer. If frigates did not have peak performance, I suspect the lowly Wolf can solo fleets.
Then again, I do love playing this game as more of a space shooter than a strategySame here. What interested me in Starfarer in the first place was the shmup action.
Another possibility to help solve the deployment issue is to "roll" for brashness of the fleet commanders. Some may send in a scout, while some may send in partial or full deployments. This could add a good scope of randomness and personality to combat.
Yeah, that's exploitable. The catch is that whoever deploys last would have the advantage of knowing what they're up against.Explain how that's exploitable, please? Whoever deployed first could, y'know, just deploy more ships if they needed to.
I fought a few named fleets with skilled captains and... they are barely any harder than non-skilled fleets. The only one I noticed was an Onslaught with high Missile Specialization (Annihilators were much faster than normal), and my max Combat/Technology Wolf still had no trouble killing it.
I think it's due mainly to the fact that every AI fleet has nothing but Green crew, who actually have a negative modifier with target leading, if I remember correctly.That was before CR. Now they just set the limit to 50%
In any case, every ship has green crew, so it's not going to be as effective compared a Regular or Veteran crewed ship.
There seems to be a glitch of some kind the number of ships in the variety of them is much more limited than it was last version.
Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.
Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.Now that you mention it, what happened to the "can still pursue after stand down if recovery rate was 100%" thing?
I really like what the patch has done to the general tone of the player's financial progression. With the end of the Buffalo Supply Pinata, combat for its own sake is no longer profitable. You will probably need to buy supplies at least some of the time just to keep your combat ships running, and the addition of significant fuel expenditures and hefty extortions tolls means you now have substantial operating costs just running a fleet. It's not at all hard to keep yourself in the black, which is probably a good thing, but it means the game is now requires you to actively look for sources of income instead of parking on top of the pirate homeworld and grinding through plunder fleets. Having some kind of pressure to keep moving and earning does a lot to contribute to the game's survival atmosphere.Later in the game, after a combat focused character gets high Combat and Technology, it is possible for a small fleet of frigates with the best equipment to kill nearly any pirate fleet and use less supplies (and fuel) than what is dropped by said pirates. Until then, what Voyager I wrote is true.
why you removed ships like tempests and apogee class??? cant find them
Trading seems kind of limited at the moment, since outside of the black market, it appears that only food and organics for to planets suffering from famine seems to offer the potential for profit.
Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.Now that you mention it, what happened to the "can still pursue after stand down if recovery rate was 100%" thing?
Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.
I thought that the 'Harry Enemy Reserves' option solved the problem of enemy fleets under-deploying and retreating, for both the player and the AI.
Deploying a full force should not be a risk, due to mechanics already in the game, namely 'Harry Enemy Reserves'.
I'm still playing the previous version... maybe something changed. Or maybe I misunderstand the problem.
why you removed ships like tempests and apogee class??? cant find them
So yeah...Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/eZvLT5c.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/SjHJ6pn.png)[close]
So, uh... how long till hotfix release? :3
Missing from this picture is the part where the Diktat wants to nail you to the wall for causing the shortage. The only way you'd get the shortage amount to be that high is by buying up tons and tons of food on Sindria, don't think that went unnoticed! You shameless profiteer, you.
... actually, wait. They'll just be mildly upset. I need to fix *that* :)
it looks like it's going to take a bit longer.
The "trade or hire personnel" and "buy and sell ships" are an an understatement now as a title name of what you get from accessing those station panels.
I agree that it would be nice to have some kind of "hey, you're flooding the market" warning, but I don't think a pop-up is a good idea. There's plenty of room on the screen where such a warning can be displayed without requiring a click to dismiss it. Like so:Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/hfBTZpi.png)[close]
When I try to load a variant and have the needed parts in my supply pile the game elects to buy the parts from the market rather than use the ones I have in storage. Having to manually build every ship to use my collected weapons is only a minor inconvenience, but it is annoying.
Question: Do enemy ships with skilled captains give more experience than the same ship without its captain?
Maybe not tie it to the event at all? Just relate "quantity of cargo" versus "size of market", and if the ratio is too large, pop up the warning "That amount of <cargo> you are <buying/selling> is enough to distort the market. The authorities may look unkindly upon such activities... click here to dismiss." Then the warning can apply to the possibility of provoking a glut (or a shortage) too.I agree that it would be nice to have some kind of "hey, you're flooding the market" warning, but I don't think a pop-up is a good idea. There's plenty of room on the screen where such a warning can be displayed without requiring a click to dismiss it. Like so:Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/hfBTZpi.png)[close]
I like the idea, and how that looks in the UI. Unfortunately, it's a bit involved (structurally, the food shortage event would have to have a way to control the UI like that; what if multiple events want to do this for different commodities; that particular area in the UI isn't empty in smaller resolutions; etc). I'll keep it in mind for the future, though.
I like the idea, and how that looks in the UI. Unfortunately, it's a bit involved (structurally, the food shortage event would have to have a way to control the UI like that; what if multiple events want to do this for different commodities; that particular area in the UI isn't empty in smaller resolutions; etc). I'll keep it in mind for the future, though.
Maybe not tie it to the event at all? Just relate "quantity of cargo" versus "size of market", and if the ratio is too large, pop up the warning "That amount of <cargo> you are <buying/selling> is enough to distort the market. The authorities may look unkindly upon such activities... click here to dismiss." Then the warning can apply to the possibility of provoking a glut (or a shortage) too.
Hmm, yeah, this is interesting. It would also be a good place to put warnings such as "selling hand weapons on the black market will severely destabilize the market", which is a thing but I'm willing to bet not many people know about it, because it's not explained anywhere, really.
For bonus points: where would multiple warnings coexist if they needed to? :)
This is good: I like the idea of changing warnings in the flag area (relevant to last change in the transaction), and then adding more info to the tooltip makes sense. I'm not sure an exclamation mark on the icon is even necessary, unless perhaps the info is market-dependent and not specific to the commodity.
(Not saying I'll necessarily be able to get to this right off the bat, but still, good stuff. Thank you!)
I may have missed it, but is there a reason units sold over the shortage amount can't just be dropped to the stable market price?
I'd imagine that you're selling to the open market, i.e. to many different intermediary distributors. Which all jump at the opportunity to buy scarce goods, unaware that you're secretly selling to their competition at the same time.
What about if you just had a red box saying 'Warning' where the whole message is displayed now. On mouse-over, it would list all warnings being issued.I agree that it would be nice to have some kind of "hey, you're flooding the market" warning, but I don't think a pop-up is a good idea. There's plenty of room on the screen where such a warning can be displayed without requiring a click to dismiss it. Like so:Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/hfBTZpi.png)[close]
I like the idea, and how that looks in the UI. Unfortunately, it's a bit involved (structurally, the food shortage event would have to have a way to control the UI like that; what if multiple events want to do this for different commodities; that particular area in the UI isn't empty in smaller resolutions; etc). I'll keep it in mind for the future, though.
*though I feel this direction is an error; the aspect of starsector that I fell in love with the combat engine, all this effort directed at the campaign isn't improving this aspect of the game at all - in some ways it detracts from it.
*though I feel this direction is an error; the aspect of starsector that I fell in love with the combat engine, all this effort directed at the campaign isn't improving this aspect of the game at all - in some ways it detracts from it.
This should probably go in a general discussion thread, but how exactly do you feel the combat engine still needs improved?
As for the exclamation marks, it's just a small QoL thing. It would be a bit inconvenient to be told by the list on the left that there's a problem with a commodity and then having to hunt through the inventory grid to find the commodity in question. The exclamation mark would let you find it very easily. Plus if you're going to include extra info in tooltips for certain commodities, it would be good to let the player know this or that commodity has some extra info they can view.
There's one other thing I wanted to mention in relation to this whole warning system. See, when I was learning the ropes of how shortages work and (accidentally) flooded a market that was suffering from a tiny shortage with a huge amount of goods and made an absolute killing, I thought to myself, cool, I've found an exploit that I can use to make massive profits. And then the investigation message popped up in my intel feed, basically a way for the game to say "oh no you didn't", and my thoughts immediately turned more along the lines of "oh crap, the dev had thought of this, I'm going to prison". Which was so cool! The warning system will make life easier for the player in the long run but it will also remove this jawdroppingly awesome moment when you think you've found a way to exploit the system and get away with it, and then thirty seconds later the game goes "nope, I know what you did, and there will be consequences". Just something to think about.
I played as a bounty hunter a bit longer now, and I've got one major gripe.
It is quite disappointing to go after a 70 000 credit fleet and find but a handful of surviving, badly damaged frigates, at best. The time I need from the jump point to the target fleet is enough for local patrols to tear it to shreds (I'm under the impression they only act when I'm in the system). What should have been a glorious battle becomes little more than a fetch quest. And that happens more often than not. That I still get the full bounty should maybe be a consolation, but it only makes me wonder why I'm running a battle fleet in the first place when a hunter-killer frigate would suffice.
I don't see an obvious solution to this. I would hope for the whole bounty hunter mechanic to be expanded, so that information gathering and actually finding the target becomes part of the challenge. Then targets, as should be expected, could be only found far off from normal patrols and faction fleets.
Second some minor problems. This doesn't happen often but my game seems to crash when I save especially if I achieve a lot or leave it along time between saves. There also seems to be a lack of ships available in campaign I can only find about 3 different variants.
Again great work, thanks for the update and keep it up :)
I played as a bounty hunter a bit longer now, and I've got one major gripe.
It is quite disappointing to go after a 70 000 credit fleet and find but a handful of surviving, badly damaged frigates, at best. ...
Yeah, this is definitely a problem, and one I was aware of but also didn't see a quick/easy solution to (these were a very last-minute addition). I'd say the "proper" solution is either smarter AI for these fleets, or more unpopulated star systems to hide in.
Hey all! I've just started playing vanilla 0.65 (great so far btw!), and saw a weirdest thing happening. I was after a pirate smuggler fleet (consisting of a single Hound, so not exactly a fleet per se), when it suddenly changed it's allegiance from "pirate" to "neutral", changing both title and fleet circle. This got me baffled: it was clearly pirate when i set course to intercept, but what will happen if I attack now anyway: will I drop my stnding towards neutrals or pirates? Are NPC fleets ever allowed to do this at all? I have senn nothing on the matter in changelog, so any insight on the matter would be welcome :)
My take on the bounty hunting mechanic here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8520.msg144714#new).
The market condition "Headquarters" increases market power. What is market power, though?
Hey all! I've just started playing vanilla 0.65 (great so far btw!), and saw a weirdest thing happening. I was after a pirate smuggler fleet (consisting of a single Hound, so not exactly a fleet per se), when it suddenly changed it's allegiance from "pirate" to "neutral", changing both title and fleet circle. This got me baffled: it was clearly pirate when i set course to intercept, but what will happen if I attack now anyway: will I drop my stnding towards neutrals or pirates? Are NPC fleets ever allowed to do this at all? I have senn nothing on the matter in changelog, so any insight on the matter would be welcome :)
Yeah, I've been wondering about that too. Is that a bug or is that meant to represent pirates broadcasting fake ID codes and posing as legit traders? IIRC they usually change from pirates into smugglers, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in that respect. Surely if you're going to use a fake identity to avoid being harassed by the law, you'd pick one that wouldn't also get harassed by the law?
Hey all! I've just started playing vanilla 0.65 (great so far btw!), and saw a weirdest thing happening. I was after a pirate smuggler fleet (consisting of a single Hound, so not exactly a fleet per se), when it suddenly changed it's allegiance from "pirate" to "neutral", changing both title and fleet circle. This got me baffled: it was clearly pirate when i set course to intercept, but what will happen if I attack now anyway: will I drop my stnding towards neutrals or pirates? Are NPC fleets ever allowed to do this at all? I have senn nothing on the matter in changelog, so any insight on the matter would be welcome :)
Yeah, I've been wondering about that too. Is that a bug or is that meant to represent pirates broadcasting fake ID codes and posing as legit traders? IIRC they usually change from pirates into smugglers, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in that respect. Surely if you're going to use a fake identity to avoid being harassed by the law, you'd pick one that wouldn't also get harassed by the law?
Right, smugglers transmit different identification codes when they're about to dock with pirate bases. In large part this is just necessary so that smugglers *can* make their runs without getting killed on either end of the route. As far as a "fake identity", the "smuggler" label represents more what you think they are than what they're actively broadcasting. I mean, surely, no smuggler would say they're a smuggler, but if all the fleets said "trade fleet" or "trader", that might not communicate what's going on.
So your character is able to somehow identify that another ship is smuggling just by looking at it? That doesn't really make a lot of sense either, and it raises the question of why exactly we're privateering instead of selling our services to one of the factions, who would surely pay highly for such an amazing talent and could then dispense with all this tedious customs scanning. ;)
Right, smugglers transmit different identification codes when they're about to dock with pirate bases. In large part this is just necessary so that smugglers *can* make their runs without getting killed on either end of the route.
id:"independent_smugglers",
"color":[150,150,150,255],
"displayName":"independent",
Right, smugglers transmit different identification codes when they're about to dock with pirate bases. In large part this is just necessary so that smugglers *can* make their runs without getting killed on either end of the route.
A new sub-faction could solve that:CodeSmugglers look just like independents, but aren't hostile to pirates. This way blowing up smugglers wouldn't decrease relations with independents... as long as they're actually smugglers.id:"independent_smugglers",
"color":[150,150,150,255],
"displayName":"independent",
This could also open up the possibility of giving the black market a more appropriate faction than pirates. Black market trading could increase standing with smugglers, and black markets could refuse to trade with you if you get a reputation for smuggler killin'
I'd assumed that the player character, or rather fleet intelligence, is inferring the nature of different fleets based on available data. And, since there is no legal responsibility, he can do so more indiscriminate than faction patrols. As in, just labeling every lone, over-conscientiously in-suspicious ship as a smuggler. Same with pirates.