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1

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (6/12/25)

« on: June 14, 2025, 06:05:00 PM »

Spoiler

Still no idea what the hint or solution is for the shielded planet, so I went and edited the rules.csv instead. The fleet that popped out to fight is far beyond anything I can handle so I just disengaged and left.

Also never figured out the password for the warped structure so I did a file search for "password" and found it. Somewhat obvious in hindsight, but I almost never use AI cores of any kind for anything other than selling to factions for rep/credits so it just never occurred to me. The fleet that popped out when attempting to salvage it is also so far beyond anything I can deal with that I'm just leaving that alone as well.

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Spoiler

The shielded planet fight being unfair is fine as you already get the primary loot beforehand, so disengaging is certainly an intended response. That said, it certainly isn't *impossible* by any means.

The megastructure fight should be less unfair, I'm not sure if you actually went into the fight and found the "environmental hazard" or just looked at the fleet preview, but if it's the former keep in mind that the "environmental hazard" gets more intense as you destroy more ships and resets if you retreat, and it's entirely intended to retreat and re-engage one or two times to reset the hazard.

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Spoiler

I'm sure they're not impossible, but both fleets have the max +500% xp modifier, so unsurprisingly when I tried both it wasn't even close and I got completely wrecked. My fleet does punch well above its weight as far as the game calculates it - the fight for the final concealed station had an xp modifier of over 200% which I still won and I cleared the entire magnetar system from What We Left Behind with a slightly weaker fleet than I currently have, but this wasn't a "let's go reconsider the loadout of my ships and tweak my strategy a bit" it was a "I'm completely outmatched and would need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do these fights completely differently". And given I mostly try not to use buffs or modifications that are entirely unavailable to vanilla factions (ie: I didn't use any of KoL's weapons or super-ships for fighting its hidden bosses, none of the weapons or hull modifications from clearing RAT's abyssal depths, etc) the rewards from these fights probably wouldn't be especially interesting to me anyway.

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2

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (6/12/25)

« on: June 14, 2025, 03:07:46 PM »

Spoiler

I found the shielded planet - did I miss a hint for what to do with the emitters? I've spent the last half hour or so adjusting the outputs and nothing seems to do anything.

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Spoiler

Yes, you definitely did miss a hint (but it may not have been apparent or obvious that it was a hint at the time). 

Spoiler

All the info you need is in the log intel entries...

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Spoiler

Still no idea what the hint or solution is for the shielded planet, so I went and edited the rules.csv instead. The fleet that popped out to fight is far beyond anything I can handle so I just disengaged and left.

Also never figured out the password for the warped structure so I did a file search for "password" and found it. Somewhat obvious in hindsight, but I almost never use AI cores of any kind for anything other than selling to factions for rep/credits so it just never occurred to me. The fleet that popped out when attempting to salvage it is also so far beyond anything I can deal with that I'm just leaving that alone as well.

[close]

3

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (6/12/25)

« on: June 14, 2025, 11:39:26 AM »

Spoiler

* Log #5 with the out of bounds coordinates - I went to the two coordinates it lists and wandered around the general area in the abyss and didn't find anything there. Is this where the shielded planet is supposed to be?
* Log #4 for the admin password which I assume is for the warped megastructure - I'm guessing that the number of stars in the emblem is 7 from the image displayed in the log message background but I don't know what the project name is.

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Spoiler

- Objects in motion tend to remain in motion, check the other logs to see how the message ordering of the logs works.
- For the password, that's the only hint, so you can assume that the project name isn't anything crazy (i.e. should be something you've seen before). Just check the surrounding text for context clues about what they're talking about.

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Spoiler

I found the shielded planet - did I miss a hint for what to do with the emitters? I've spent the last half hour or so adjusting the outputs and nothing seems to do anything.

[close]

4

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (6/12/25)

« on: June 14, 2025, 09:53:33 AM »

How do I find the shielded planet?

Check the logs from concealed stations, they might have hints... (you don't need to fight the defenders to read the logs, only to salvage the station).

I have the achievement for getting all the concealed stations and there are two things actually that I don't know what to do with:

Spoiler

* Log #5 with the out of bounds coordinates - I went to the two coordinates it lists and wandered around the general area in the abyss and didn't find anything there. Is this where the shielded planet is supposed to be?
* Log #4 for the admin password which I assume is for the warped megastructure - I'm guessing that the number of stars in the emblem is 7 from the image displayed in the log message background but I don't know what the project name is.

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5

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (6/12/25)

« on: June 13, 2025, 01:38:25 PM »

How do I find the shielded planet?

6

General Discussion / Re: What is exactly happening to the game?

« on: June 11, 2025, 10:49:23 PM »

The main issue with colonies in my opinion is that it's exclusively a late game activity, and there is no warning about that in the game. There is only the obvious need for extensive exploration before picking a spot to settle.

If you colonise before you have 15 levels and 10-15 million budget minimum, you're either getting bombed or have to comply with other factions, and what they basically want is your colonies to do nothing except being a financial net loss. Not to mention, if you're not aware of all this in advance, shutting down industries also results in a net loss.

Personally I don't mind all that, printing money and having a safe haven should have a cost, but at least the player should be warned. Right now it's an instant mess as soon as colonies reach size 4 and 2 commodities are exported. Even tech mining, which is insanely unprofitable and looks like a harmless early building, can get you into trouble with the Path.

I don't know why you'd need 10-15 million to colonize, unless you're trying to colonize an entire system all at once. Colonizing a single decent farming world or a lower hazard no atmosphere world should be at least somewhat profitable on its own and rushing a T2 orbital station should give you a decent starting point for only 1.5-2 million credits.

In my experience, a single colony is almost as time consuming as five at once, but without most of the benefits. Upkeep is going to be high without wares produced in faction, especially for heavy industry.

Meanwhile the colony has to be cared for and defended just the same. And as far as I know, the size of crisis fleet doesn't change based on number or size of colonies, so defence is going to be difficult with an early game fleet. Five planets also have the benefit of more patrols if they're in the same system.

It's just more effective right now to fully explore the sector while on commission, making a lot of money, and then commit to 5 colonies.

It's a lot cheaper to only have a single place to defend and unless you're going out of your way to attract the attention of multiple factions at once it'll take at least a couple in-game years for the first crisis to trigger. A low hazard farming world or no atmosphere planet can easily more than pay for itself (especially if you have the colony items already). Add a gamma core to any random industry or structure when the colony hits size 4 and you'll have the Hegemony (and the Luddic Church if it's a farm world) hanging around doing system defense for you for free. The first crisis is also very likely to be the pirates, but since their ships are garbage you should be able to deal with them pretty easily if you have a half way decent fleet and camp your orbital station. Not having a commission can also help since your colonies won't randomly lose accessibility and potentially trade fleets if the faction you're commissioned to randomly decides to go to war with half the sector.

It's obviously not as easy as having 10-15 million credits to immediately build out an entire system, but it's more than doable to have a profitable and reasonably well defended colony fairly early.

7

General Discussion / Re: What is exactly happening to the game?

« on: June 11, 2025, 09:55:59 AM »

The main issue with colonies in my opinion is that it's exclusively a late game activity, and there is no warning about that in the game. There is only the obvious need for extensive exploration before picking a spot to settle.

If you colonise before you have 15 levels and 10-15 million budget minimum, you're either getting bombed or have to comply with other factions, and what they basically want is your colonies to do nothing except being a financial net loss. Not to mention, if you're not aware of all this in advance, shutting down industries also results in a net loss.

Personally I don't mind all that, printing money and having a safe haven should have a cost, but at least the player should be warned. Right now it's an instant mess as soon as colonies reach size 4 and 2 commodities are exported. Even tech mining, which is insanely unprofitable and looks like a harmless early building, can get you into trouble with the Path.

I don't know why you'd need 10-15 million to colonize, unless you're trying to colonize an entire system all at once. Colonizing a single decent farming world or a lower hazard no atmosphere world should be at least somewhat profitable on its own and rushing a T2 orbital station should give you a decent starting point for only 1.5-2 million credits.

8

Mods / Re: [0.98a-RC5] What we left behind 4.3.5a

« on: June 10, 2025, 10:27:31 PM »

What is the IAIIC faction?

9

General Discussion / Re: What is exactly happening to the game?

« on: June 10, 2025, 12:48:01 PM »

I don't think it's really well explained to a new player what they're getting into when founding a colony for the first time, so I could definitely see it being a surprise how quickly the difficulty can ramp up from a wandering mercenary - size 3 isn't too big of a deal, but as soon as you hit size 4 things start getting interesting. That said, the game also makes it fairly trivial to earn *a lot* of money from just repeatedly taking the normal Galatia missions (plus the massive chunk of cash you can get from the Elek quest and its follow up, also from Galatia).

Also for the pirate event specifically, you can usually win that pretty easily as long as you have a few decently kitted cruisers just by camping your orbital station and abusing the fact that you can instantly fully repair your entire fleet after each battle.

10

General Discussion / Re: How many S-mods is too many S-mods?

« on: June 05, 2025, 02:01:40 PM »

I do wish vanilla s-mods were more flexible in general. For example, allow removing s-mods but only at a station and doing so adds d-mods to your ship (and if you're at the max number of d-mods you can't remove the s-mods because trying would literally cause your ship to fall apart), and allowing your to exceed the limit in exchange for other downsides (you also need to choose a reduction in one or more base ship stats, unremovable d-mods unless you remove excess s-mods first, etc).

I don't think removing S-mods is something that even needs a drawback, but if it had one, it should probably be something along the lines of paying cash as if you were restoring D-mods. Although even this seems extra. S-mods are not a punishment, they shouldn't be an inconvenience.

I think it should at least be consistent. IMO there's essentially:

• Minimally invasive changes (free) - flux capacitors, flux vents, weapons
• Moderately invasive (free) - most hullmods
• Very invasive - some hullmods, s-mods (free), and d-mod removal (not free)

So it's not clear to me why installing s-mods is free either, but of the very invasive ones s-mod removal seems closer to d-mod removal.

11

General Discussion / Re: How many S-mods is too many S-mods?

« on: June 05, 2025, 12:56:27 PM »

My recollection (from before I started adding mods) is that BotB was something I really wanted but could never quite justify getting, since even though it's a great capstone skill the other trees were overall better for how I played (aka no fighters). So as great as an additional s-mod slot was, I could never justify putting enough points in that tree to actually get it.

I do wish vanilla s-mods were more flexible in general. For example, allow removing s-mods but only at a station and doing so adds d-mods to your ship (and if you're at the max number of d-mods you can't remove the s-mods because trying would literally cause your ship to fall apart), and allowing your to exceed the limit in exchange for other downsides (you also need to choose a reduction in one or more base ship stats, unremovable d-mods unless you remove excess s-mods first, etc). I do definitely think the AI factions should take that sort of system into account though - even when playing modded I try to avoid things that exclusively give a power boost to the player.

12

General Discussion / Re: Difficulty Trend

« on: May 27, 2025, 01:06:46 PM »

QoL stuff integrated into the game is somewhat lacking. For example, the first time you find or hire an administrator just have them give a quick (few paragraph) summary of how incredibly important hazard rating and accessibility are, what industries are most profitable, maybe have them take a look at all your surveyed planets and call out any that look especially good, etc. Add https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17379.0 or something like it to vanilla. That sort of stuff.

Also for the very beginning: have pirates ignore the player for the first several months at least on Easy difficulty. Few things will kill enthusiasm like heading towards a jump point 2 months in and getting repeatedly jumped by pirate fleets you can't possibly win against because the system you're in happens to be having increased pirate activity.

13

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (5/25/25)

« on: May 26, 2025, 09:19:51 PM »

Not that I know of, though I generally don't use ships from mods in my own fleet (Sierra and Inky from SotF being the exceptions). I do see a couple Knights of Ludd ships in the enemy fleet at least though, and a few others that don't look familiar at all. FWIW my modlist is:

Code

  "PAGSM",
  "advanced_gunnery_control_dbeaa06e",
  "animated_items",
  "nes_buns",
  "chatter",
  "lw_console",
  "demandIndicators",
  "DetailedCombatResults",
  "kaleidoscope",
  "knights_of_ludd",
  "lw_lazylib",
  "LobsterCruiser",
  "logNot",
  "luddenhance",
  "luddenhanceied",
  "lunalib",
  "MagicLib",
  "Mayasuran Navy",
  "particleengine",
  "assortment_of_things",
  "second_in_command",
  "secretsofthefrontier",
  "shipmasterysystem",
  "US",
  "niko_morePlanetaryConditions",
  "astroidships",
  "shaderLib"

14

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (5/25/25)

« on: May 26, 2025, 08:14:25 PM »

I'm getting this error early in a battle:

Code

java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.ShipSystemAPI.setFluxPerUse(float)" because the return value of "com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.ShipAPI.getSystem()" is null
	at shipmastery.mastery.impl.combat.shipsystems.MissileAutoforgeExtraCharge.applyEffectsAfterShipCreation(MissileAutoforgeExtraCharge.java:23)
	at shipmastery.hullmods.MasteryHullmod.lambda$applyEffectsAfterShipCreation$1(MasteryHullmod.java:72)
	at shipmastery.hullmods.MasteryHullmod.lambda$applyEffects$3(MasteryHullmod.java:111)
	at shipmastery.util.MasteryUtils.applyMasteryEffects(MasteryUtils.java:143)
	at shipmastery.util.MasteryUtils.applyAllActiveMasteryEffects(MasteryUtils.java:192)
	at shipmastery.hullmods.MasteryHullmod.applyEffects(MasteryHullmod.java:110)
	at shipmastery.hullmods.MasteryHullmod.applyEffectsAfterShipCreation(MasteryHullmod.java:70)
	at com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.intsuper.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.intsuper.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.loading.specs.intsuper.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatFleetManager.new(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatFleetManager.deploy(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.admiral.G.new.super(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.admiral.G.ÖO0000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.admiral.G.õO0000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.admiral.BaseBattleStrategy.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.ai.admiral.AdmiralAI.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatFleetManager.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.o00000(Unknown Source)
	at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Spoiler

It happens when fighting one of the ? fleets in the hidden system with the Warped Megastructure. First happened with 1.0.4, so I updated to 1.1.1 and it's continued happening, though it's not common - I've fought a dozen or more battles against this faction without it happening. A picture of the enemy fleet is attached.

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15

Mods / Re: [0.98a] Ship Mastery System (+Miscellaneous Features) (5/15/25)

« on: May 18, 2025, 08:49:07 PM »

Users on the unofficial discord encountered a similar error. It was resolved by reinstalling SotF.

I'm not sure how, since it's supposedly the same version as I already had and I always make sure to delete existing mod folders before installing an updated version, but this worked.