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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Anubis-class Cruiser (12/20/24)

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Messages - Alavaria

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1
General Discussion / Re: Is there a point to colonies?
« on: December 13, 2022, 08:39:41 AM »
It's also funny if you've built up in their important systems and then one day you say "no" to them and suddenly your factions super fleets are trashing their home as you raid/bombard their stuff.

2
General Discussion / Re: Is there a point to colonies?
« on: December 12, 2022, 03:36:52 PM »
The old pop-up Waystation gas pump is a classic. It's definitely good to remember that actually it's ok for the less critical ones to occasionally take a hit, particularly if your super powerhouse of industry is a foundation that's bedrock solid and mulches people.

Also, the population-based component sure is a great basis for your economy when everyone gets angry at you for "reasons" and mass-sanction your faction.

3
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] ED Shipyard 1.9.7 (updated 28/11/2019)
« on: November 29, 2019, 08:12:18 AM »
Right now the Pugs seem to be very interested in spamming their Wisp launchers but not actually shooting at things, even when their parent ship is very close to the enemy.

It might be worse on larger ships, if their leashing range is calculated from the middle of the ship, as their own carrier's sprite is itself occupying a lot of their useable range. At least when they are being used by an AI-controlled ship (since a lot of those like to stay with a little bit of distance, this is very obvious, since the ship will be shooting with its forward weapons while its Pugs just sit by the side).

4
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v2.0.2)
« on: November 28, 2019, 01:50:35 AM »
Cryovolanic and frozen planets have no immediate changes, but two cycles later are terraformed to a water planet. I will update the tooltips to make it clear that there should be no immediate changes to frozen or cryovolanic planets when a mirror array is built.
That is interesting since I have a frozen planet that is 11 months away from finishing the terraforming, but already "lost" 75% worth of hazard, presumably Poor Light (25%) and Extreme Cold (50%) as it's only remaining conditions are its ore/volatiles.

Your Stellar Mirror/Shade building tooltip says that things like Toxic or Irradiated are fixed by terraforming, though those show up on Toxic and (I think) Barren Irradiated worlds, which aren't terraformable by the mirrors/shades?

5
Strength calc gets the estimated patrols' number/size in the target star system, and the strength of the target market's orbital station (including officers). It then creates fleets with enough total fleet points (hidden measure of ships' strength) to match an underestimate of that defensive strength.

However, there's also a random modifier (Gaussian distribution) which can rarely produce huge positive/negative multipliers to the invasion force's strength. I'll cap it at max +/- 40% in next version.

Launching big invasion fleets in the first place will delay the next invasion event for that faction, but after that killing the fleets does nothing. It might well make the difference between the invasion succeeding and failing, however.
Can even a tiny faction launch an arbitrarily large attack if your system is say crammed full of large Fleet HQed up colonies? 10 of them at say size 7 would be uh 30 pickets, 30 medium and 30 heavy at 200% size or something.

6
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v0.9.1)
« on: November 02, 2019, 10:16:28 AM »
(2) My understanding of the economy in this game is that adding demand to structures will actually generate money for the player because the demand will be increasing the size of the global export market, which increases the player revenue if they have a share of that export market. Is this correct?
It does not, your markets' entries in the "consumer" side are just "----" instead of say 3000. Only other factions' contribute.

This is presumably since the trading in-faction is represented by upkeep reduction.

7
I had three storytellers, in three planets in the same system, tell me about the same person, using the same Siegfried dreadnought in the same system.

But in each of these, the special notable traits of the ship were different. Will go there and see if the game has spawned three fleets for me to kill.

Spoiler
[close]

Update: Changed my plans and immediately ran over. Killed 1 fleet, and all the entries disappeared. Looked around the system, didn't seem to be any other fleets.

8
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v0.9.1)
« on: October 30, 2019, 08:13:13 PM »
Interestingly, when frozen planets get terraformed, they become vastly better. eg: a 100% hazard from 175% because it removes the usual "Extreme Cold" but also a "Poor Light" condition. This is better than an originally-water world (which was also at 175%) which had other negatives like storms etc. Clearly we should shade the water world so it freezes and then warm it back up so there's no storms.

Also, Organics shows up (standard quality) which is handy since food (water world) and organics deposits are a bit rarer than say volatiles and the two ores.

Do all water worlds spawn with organics in them?

In this case, I think upkeep cost would work better than initial cost as a balancing mechanism. At 3 cycles, 10m credits, and 1 structure slot, terraforming is something people won't bother considering until they're just looking for an excuse to spend money. I have nothing against money sinks, but 10m would seem out of place, and I think such high initial costs would make terraforming non-viable for practical purposes, especially with such a long delay before seeing any benefit.
Agree, compared to vanilla structures, the time on these at 1080 days is much longer so that a "full up-front" seems less of a match to the "it's a long process" feel of it.

Take 10,000,000. Say 1 mil is your upfront (like the battle station -> star fortress) then your upkeep would be 9mil over 36 months or 250,000 a month. Now, might have to adjust though, since you have 1. hazard, 2. upkeep bonus from faction-supplies and 3. cores.

Then again a lower hazard world would be easier to make stellar shades in the orbit of... maybe? And I can see how using in-faction supplies and cores would work. Also, borrowing from the Waystation, perhaps making the structure demand various goods, with a steep upkeep penalty for shortages would also work. Like a lot of metals, transplutonics, (building) crew, heavy machinery and ship hulls (building in space) etc

Perhaps not make the goods requirements change with size (would be odd) but high so that you need likely player production or very high accessibility (though if the AI factions suddenly can't send enough, it will hurt) which again makes sense.

9
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v0.9.1)
« on: October 27, 2019, 08:41:08 PM »
While Cryovolcanic says the volcanos mostly erupt ammonia, do the Ice Giant type plants have water, like a Frozen one?

Feels a bit odd that you can't shade a place to solve its heat problem unless it has a jungle or something underneath it. Is there a limitation such that you can't have the removal of Hot take place over several cycles, while still leaving it as a Barren, but now less hot planet? Because once it is shaded, it can radiate away its heat on the other side and potentially cool down as far as you want, taking time though. Volcanic a bit different, probably (though the volcanos themselves usually have the tectonic condition).

Similarly for rocks that are Cold, though it makes sense that if there's a lack of light you would also be unable to heat it up.

10
Because a group of ships like the Valkyrie can use fighters to kill frigates (ie: score hull damage) and they don't have a "conventional" rating, it seems rather easy for them to get good traits due to the rule about not getting bad traits if your rating rose. (and they show up in the report with a rating like "- (+5%)"

11
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v0.9)
« on: October 27, 2019, 04:04:24 AM »
I added more information about this to the top post. You can safely add the mod to a save in progress, but I don't think you can remove the mod from your save once you start building structures.
Thanks, yeah it wasn't a savegame problem then, just that I had exactly 0 terraformable planets in my list of colonies.

12
Civ ships do get ratings. It's just slower on them to get it is all.
They get traits, are ratings hidden though? It also shows up as just a "-" in the battle results screen, so I can't tell if they're effectively at 50% for getting traits or not.
Spoiler
[close]

As for the save stutter, did you modify the game files to use more RAM if you can?

And do you use other mods?
Yes, though only 2Gb since the computer has 4. A few other mods, but I think only FDS has a faction in it, the rest are a couple of ship mods, no nex or anything else.
But since I haven't crashed/locked up, it's hard to say if that's the same as the others had.

13
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] ED Shipyard 1.8.2 (updated 21/10/2019)
« on: October 25, 2019, 08:22:38 AM »
It's this gap that looks odd when you notice it.
Spoiler
[close]

14
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] ED Shipyard 1.8.2 (updated 21/10/2019)
« on: October 25, 2019, 03:31:59 AM »
Checked it out, pretty interesting. Couple of thoughts:

There's a very large and obvious gap between your fixed shield module and the arc of the larges. If the explanation for the no-frontal-weapons was that they couldn't shoot through two shields it doesn't quite work when there's a clear space that shouldn't apply to. The AI has a bit of a desire to turn sideways as well, which doesn't help as it actually makes things easier for a ship trying to get into the gap. However, if you give it an order like eliminate it does tend to face the target and does use the shield bash, so that's nice. Can the shield bash be made anti-small craft or something, feels odd when frigates are running up and not getting bashed by the AI (which is hilarious to watch, great fun even if it messes up the battlefield somewhat).

Feels like the frontal shield module is too narrow compared to the angle of the shield bash that supposedly comes from it. The player-controlled shield also feels narrower than it should be, since even when you extend it, the thing barely touches the edge of the Large arc, which should anyway be able to shoot through a single-layer of shields. (Also missile that curve even a bit easily go around the shield, which feels odd for a ship that supposedly went so all-in on its shields.)

A wider front shield that matches the arc of the Larges and the Shield Bash wave, and a wider still player-controlled one would probably do better. Unlike say Monitors and Paragon, there's still plenty of rear section that is not covered, but having people in front of your "battle line" able to shoot directly past shields feels like a major design oversight of the ship designers. Though the very forward-positioned center of the shield arcs might make that look awkward due to being so far ahead of the center of the ship's sprite.


The point defence specialization, combined with an Integrated Targeting Unit results in hilarious ranges for devastator turrets, granted they're devestator turrets but still. Having one of these anchoring against the enemy's top ship would be interesting. Also I guess ITU extends the range of the Shield Bash.

15
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Boggled's Terraforming Mod (v0.9)
« on: October 25, 2019, 02:03:13 AM »
Does this require a new game to work? On adding the mod, it is possible to see and build the Ismara's Sling, but not any of the other ones.

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