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1

General Discussion / This Forum's Stance on AI-Generated Content

« on: June 28, 2023, 12:11:58 AM »

Alright so with the controversy about this stuff going on, I think it would be nice to get some official policy on:

1. Submitting AI-Generated content to the forums
2. The use of vanilla assets or other content to train models
3. The use of AI-Generated content resulting from said models in mods

Considering there are already a couple of posts with this stuff on the forum and how popular kit-bashing is, imo that points to it being approved of, but getting it spelled out in a more centralized and visible topic (maybe in FAQ?) would be nice.

However there are a few more controversial policies related to mod content. Specifically on:

1. Submittinf AI-Generated content not trained on vanilla assets
2. Training models on forum content such as sprite repositories
3. The use of mod content to train models
3. The use of any of the resulting content from said models in mods

This is more controversial, as a lot of content creators consider the use of their art to train models plagiarism. Hell, there are quite a few that consider just about any use of AI-Generated content at all unethical in some way. Yet using mod content to train an AI model means being able to compile a more robust model. It's the difference between a generic model based on "starsector ships" and being able to specifically create models for low-tech, midline, and high-tech ships. Or maybe even models dedicated to nothing but low-tech cruisers.

It also drastically lowers the barrier to create add on content for mods with distinctive art styles. Someone could say, create a model based on the ORA and double the ship count in around a week at most- and the required amount of time will only go down.

So it would be nice to get some official declarations of what is and is not allowed. Also, feel free to speak your mind on these issues. Any potential issues, favored solutions, questions I missed, so on.

2

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: June 02, 2023, 09:55:02 PM »

In the age_gen_data.csv, which lives in the procgen file, there are two values, 'maxExtraOrbits" and 'minExtraOrbits'

What exactly do these do? Because the number of orbits seems to primarily controlled by the 'minOrbits' and 'maxOrbits' value in star_gen_data.csv

3

Suggestions / Please For the Love of God Expand the Character Limit for Player Faction Names

« on: May 27, 2023, 02:07:52 PM »

Basically every real life country has a fairly long name. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Australia, and of course, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Granted, most of them are just "the Republic of X" or similar. The Republic of Poland, the Russian Federation, the French Republic, so on, but those are all still relatively close to the character limit.
I know, I know, it's not actually a character limit so much as it is a space limit, but you get the point.

I want to name my faction something interesting, like the Federation of Independent Systems, or the Front for the Liberation of the Persean Sector, or even the Persean Resource, Industrial, and Collection Kombine.

The point is... the length of my Faction's name isn't nearly long enough. If it's not completely illegible on a shirt I don't want a part of it.

4

Suggestions / Economic Rebalance

« on: May 17, 2023, 06:01:42 AM »

No not ship costs. Not weapons either. I'm talking about macro economy shenaningans.

The thing about Starsector's  economy, is that the system that Alex has devised is phenomenal. Seriously, it does better than most games that actually focus on economics, the only exceptions I can think of are hardcore economic sims. This is not because it's super realistic- it really isn't. Rather, it's because of the way everything is abstracted in just the right way to model Supply and Demand on a macro level in an abstracted manner, without having to get down and dirty with accurate micro. There's a level of emergence between micro and macro economics so most people go straight for trying to model micro economics until they see macroeconomic patterns emerge, which essentially requires modeling a whole bunch of actors making economic decisions- and this is all phenomenally computationally expensive and coding intensive. To the point that it's not really worth it to ever try, and because of this most devs just sort of half ass it into a usable, but easily exploitable mechanic and call it a day.

Not Alex. I consider Starsector's economy to be the gold standard of what a non-hardcore macroeconomic simulation's macroeconomic system should look like.

"So", you ask, "If this guy thinks Starsector's economy is so great, why did he label his topic 'Economic Rebalance' and put it in the Suggestions board? Cause to me it just looks like he's blow-" Ah ah, I'll stop you right there. To be clear, I think Starsector's economy is phenomenal in relation to like 99% of other game based economic systems I've seen. But most game based economic systems are trash, there's plenty of room for improvement.

That being said, I don't think modeling a financial system complete with monetary policy and credit is within the scope of Starsector, and I'm not a good enough programmer to make a mod for it myself. Hell, I'm not even a good enough economist to figure out what that would mean! (I'm not actually an economist at all you see, no college degree for me)

So the problem I see is as followed: the demand for goods is f*cked. Namely, domestic goods, luxury goods, supplies, heavy machinery, and basic ore basically aren't worth the effort, rare metals, food, organics, rare ores, Hulls, and heavy weapons to varying extents are, and fuel, recreational drugs, harvested organs, and to a lesser extent volatiles are king. This is exemplified by the chart linked to in this topic: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14796.0 which demonstrates this.

What's more, the more mods you play with the worse this gets, with the greatest shift generally being that basically everything but volatiles, metals, rare metals, drugs, and organs becomes near worthless.

If you're wondering why this is a problem, it's because 1. This means the economy isn't very dynamic and 2. consumer goods are at the literal core of modern economics for a very good reason, and any model that doesn't see this happen is by it's nature, cursed.

To put it simply, starsector calculates supply and demand weird. Market value irl is just the price you can expect any given good to fetch on the open market, in game it's the aggregate of the local demand (the highest demand value for a planet across all it's buildings) for any given good, times their price- which is only possible because starsector doesn't actually calculate dynamic prices except for on the micro level. This is decent. It is, at least, better than 99% of games on the market that flub this horribly. It does however, mean we don't have dynamic prices on the macro level and you have to be extremely careful about balancing the supply and demand for any individual good. To be clear, it is possible, it's just not worth the effort to do because the effort required would be great enough that you might as well just rebalance the economic system.

Hint hint.

Anyway, this is only one half of the problem. The second half is how supply is calculated and how these two systems together translate to income. Market Share irl is the amount of revenue any given business has from sales in a given industry relative to the other businesses in that industry, expressed as a percentage. So if I have a 10% market share, that means that 10% of all the revenue in this industry is going to my business.

In Starsector, it's more complicated. It's the amount of a good supplied by a single planet (calculated by multiplying that planet's highest production value by it's access value) relative to the amount of that good supplied by other planets, expressed as a percentage. So if I've got a 10% market share of ore, that means I'm selling 10% of all ore sold. The amount of money generated by a building is determined by market share times market value. So if the market for ore is 100,000 credits, and I'm supplying 10% of all the ore sold, then I get 10,000 credits a month.

These are not the same thing.

Now, this system does one thing really well, and a second thing sorta well: it ensures that the player can't just spam a single industry endlessly to make unlimited money by ensuring each additional industry has diminishing returns- even eating into the profits of the other industries. It also has a vaguely dynamic cap on that income- but to be honest this is irrelevant because the player's colonies do not add to aggregate demand (which is ridiculous) so we are dependent on AI planets to expand this income for us. And we all know how good the AI is at growing their planets.

So all of this combined with the fact that only the highest demand or production value counts towards demand or supply, means that luxury goods will always be worthless because Chicomoztoc has the highest single demand of 5, and yet is also the highest supply of 7. To put it simply, the demand for luxury goods is just too damned low compared to the ease at which they can be supplied, so there's never a significant market for them.

Anyway, I was going to try to figure up a different system but... I guess I'm just too lazy. I'll just give a few general suggestions then.

1. Make the macro prices more dynamic, compare aggregate supply and aggregate demand against each other and go from there
2. Adjust the supply and demand for certain goods so it's easier to make an actual profit off of them
3. Make it so player colonies contribute to the Market Value calculations. Right now, we're forced into running a 17th century Mercantalist economy, but in space. Adam Smith proved this is ridiculous in 1776, get with the times old man.
4. Consider dividing luxury and domestic goods into a few more types so I can stop crying myself to sleep
5. Colony wealth levels that increase the aggregate demand of certain goods so we aren't so dependent on absolute population to determine all of supply and demand

Alright that's all I got. You may now Discuss

5

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a]Changing Nexus - Hullmods and factions - 1.1.0

« on: January 13, 2022, 03:42:20 AM »

So is no one going to mention that the Bushido symbol is directly ripped from NFS: Carbon? Is this even allowed?

6

General Discussion / Re: Calculating the Population Size of the Core Sector

« on: May 19, 2021, 01:43:58 AM »

You guys are really, really underestimating human population growth. The only reason we sat at a billion people for so long was infant mortality, we kept dying off before we could grow up for thousands of years. The moment we hit the twentieth century, the population started climbing, and in little over a hundred years it's hit 7.9 Billion. You might be tempted to point out that we're living in a time of relative peace, but that's actually inconsequential to my point since the greatest areas of population growth are third-world countries that live in conditions much worse than The Persean Sector. Mogadishu is so bad every two weeks I ask someone "Hey have you heard about that terrorist attack in Mogadishu a few days ago?" Without looking at the news and I've yet to be wrong.

Even with epidemics, being ravaged by war and genocide, and a phenomenally low life-expectancy, the population of Africa went from 177 million to 1.2 Billion in Fifty years The biggest reason for that was infant mortality rate dropping so suddenly. And that's still not hitting the resource cap. It's expected to hit 4.7 billion in 2100. That's more than half our current population on one continent.

You all seem to forget that when the going gets tough, humans screw like rabbits. The worse conditions are, the more children people have. Even though we might not have as many children at a time as other species, female humans are capable of pumping out a kid every year starting at like sixteen until their fifties (depending on the individual). Go watch the Duggars if you want to see what that looks like with any kind of access to modern medicine. Of course, that's not taking safety into consideration, but as life gets more dangerous and harder, people start to care less about the 'safety risks' of things like pregnancy. Even with access to birth control, regions with less wealth and less safety still have higher birth rates, as exemplified by every ghetto in the US.

For the Sector to be sitting around a billion people after two hundred years, either conditions are bordering on 'Antartica in the middle of a blizzard with medieval level medicine' bad, or every major population center is enjoying the kind of success of a first-world country while also having hit their resource caps. As long as people aren't getting nuked, it doesn't really matter how many fleets get blown up, it's inconsequential to the population.

To put it in perspective, if we average it together, our population is currently growing at an average of a bit over 1% per year, compounding annually (and decreasing as we approach our resource limit). Even if the Persean Sector's population grew at the same rate, that's at least 1.7 million up to 17.7 million people a year. That's 590 to 5,900  3000 person fleets being destroyed per year with a hundred percent mortality rate. Despite what you might think, humanity just doesn't have the economic prowess to wage a war that can outpace our birthrate unless you specifically target population centers with intent to wipe them out, as evidenced by, once again, Africa, which I will remind you has basically stayed in a perpetual state of war since the turn of the century.

To put it simply, the numbers are in, and Alex got his wrong.

7

General Discussion / Re: Limiting player options is the antithesis of a good sandbox game

« on: April 25, 2021, 03:04:50 PM »

When Alex originally brought up "Meaningful Choice" in regards to the skill system, I was all for it. But looking back, I've realized that terminology is vague and honestly kind of useless. What makes a skill "meaningful" (ie, has a significant impact on the experience) or a "choice", isn't really up for debate, but sets such a low bar that it doesn't really have significance in of itself. Sure, limiting the number of points a player can have makes each one more significant, but so would making each level a struggle to reach, or making each skill exclusive from a set.

Skyrim has a system where you can be great at everything, and yet perks/skills are still significant there. You can only level a skill you are using, so you can't level two-handed and one-handed at the same time. Each takes investment, though you can switch at any time and level them both it takes twice as long and a concerted effort on you part. Plus, attempting to level literally everything at once would weaken you to the point that the game becomes impossible (as long as you're playing on higher difficulties at least). So you still have to focus on a core set of skills at least until you hit really high levels.

Saying that the current system is better because each of the choices is more "meaningful" is true only if we assume that the skill system's quality is solely judged based on a very technical and rather arbitrary definition of the word "meaningful". By this definition, why not make it so you only get one skill point, accessible exclusively by killing some ungodly powerful boss? That would make the skill system even more meaningful, and by that definition, categorically better.

In the end, it really doesn't matter if the new system is technically more "meaningful" if it just isn't as fun and that's subjective. While the new system is marginally more fun to some people that specifically like to test the confines of the system itself, it's significantly less fun to people who just want to play the damn game and have a sense of progression.

That's ultimately where I feel the new system fails by the way, in the sense of progression. Really, Starsector has this problem in general. The usual fantasy of an RPG is to start out small, then work your way up until you can kill god or something. While the skill-curve and early-to-mid game in Starsector do that fine, it drops off hard in the end game. At some point, you're facing fleets that no matter what you do will always be stronger than you. The [REDACTED] will always have better ships than you in terms of sheer stats and officer quantity. The only advantage you can have over them is by min-maxing your builds (your skills, officer skills, and ship fits) and just sheer player skill. That's it. And once you reach that point, you have to play as hard as you can every time unless you use some kind of exploit. You literally hit a progression wall, where no progress you make will ever be "Meaningful" again. Oh sure you can overcome the challenge, for whatever that's worth, but there's not a meaningful reward behind it, just... more of the same. It's why the most popular mods focus on endgame activities, and people are feeling the lack of HVBs and IVBs really, really hard right now.

All in all, perhaps I went off-topic a bit, but this is more of a "yes and" to the OP than anything else. I completely agree that the game is constricting player choice as it continues to funnel the player into more and more combat, and I agree that's a bad thing since the game refuses to actually reward you for it to any degree of significance. I also agree the new skill system is a part of that problem, thought I also argue it's a result of... well there's just no way I can put this nicely, but what I think is simply poor design choice. Sorry Alex. I love you, and I appreciate all the work you put into this game, but I also think that your decision for the direction of this game is wrong. Of course, I'm not a developer, this is not MY game, and I don't have any right to tell you what you should or should not do, but I also feel that I would regret it if I didn't express my opinion.

8

General Discussion / Re: Conquest is bad - change my mind

« on: November 19, 2020, 08:43:47 PM »

The problem I've always had with Conquest apologists is that they inevitably defend it by insisting it's a playership that is hard to use and must be built right to be effective.

Like, I'm sorry but those are all points against it.

Ease of use is not something that can be ignored. Being harder to use makes a thing worse, regardless of how good you are with it. Why? Because if it was easier to use you would be better with it. Being 'hard to master' doesn't make something immune to criticism as so many people seem to think. It is precisely because of the difficulty involved in piloting it that makes it bad. Every bit of effort that you have to spend carefully managing the flux buildup is less effort you can put into managing your fleet. Every second it takes to properly position the ship so that it can both fire and not get immediately destroyed is another second it spends being dead weight.

The fact that it needs to be 'built right' to take on an Onslaught tells you all that you need to know about it. The default loadouts are always trash to mediocre, so if you have to 'build it right' to take on it's equivalent in dp, that means it is limited specifically to its role and/or 1v1ing against the specific loadout you built against in sims.

And if you call it a playership, that makes it even worse. You get 200 dp but only one playership, making it one of the most valuable ships in your fleet. What's more, the most valuable position for the player to take is a flexible opportunistic one. While the player can certainly see some success with long-range fire support, that's honestly better left up to the AI in the form of a carrier. If you absolutely must have ballistic support, the Dominator has plenty and is lower-dp.

So the role is set as a flexible opportunist. So what do you need? Bursty dps, enough flux to bail out a ship that's made some grave mistake, and rapid relocation. While the Conquest may fulfil this role in theory, in reality it does so very poorly.

The terrible shield and mediocre flux stats combined with broadside firing-arcs means if you don't have god-like positioning you will always be choosing between positioning yourself to tank hits and retreat or do damage and retreat, and you will rarely have the option of switching. This means that if something goes wrong, you always have to retreat. If you're positioned for firing, then no you can't save that dumb cruiser that didn't retreat in time. And if you position yourself for tanking, then you can't take advantage of that capital's unexpected overload. You can rarely salvage the situation because you must be positioned properly before taking action, and that means giving up quite a bit of flexibility.

And even if you do want to use it for tanking, you have to be extremely careful. The ai is very prone to retreating behind you despite having empty flux when you have nearly-full-flux, especially if you are a non-carrier capital ship. I've lost quite a few battlecruisers to my allies leaving me to die like ungrateful cowards, so I value speed on my battlecruisers, and the Conquest just isn't fast enough considering the speeds of most cruisers or burn drives.

In fact, the Conquest is so bad, that the Onslaught is better at it's role for the sheer fact that it's armor is so thick it can kill-confirm whenever it wants and has equivalent or better firepower. Though the Onslaught may only have one forward facing large ballistic, it's easy enough to just turn it slightly to get one of the other two on board, and the bevy of medium ballistics is honestly plenty otherwise, plus the TPCs. The Onslaught is the more valuable player ship because the burn drive allows for rapid-repositioning with about as much planning as a Conquest, and it doesn't matter if stuff abandons you to die because they can't kill you anyway. With one ship you can also fulfil the role of fire-support with the TPC's, and mainline battleship.

But that's not because the Onslaught is somehow a really good vulture, it's just that filling the same role with the Conquest is more risky and demanding and it can't do anything else worthwhile unless you gimp that role.

Honestly, the Oddyssey is a better playership in the same role, as despite it's lower firepower, the insane maneuverability and sufficient defense means it still wins out. And that's not even counting it's fighters. If you don't want to spend the extra 5 dp (which is worth what, a wolf?) then you can just use a damn Aurora, which still does the job better than a Conquest despite it's (mostly) inferior stats and firepower simply because it's firepower is on demand and the maneuverability and speed are more forgiving. Not to mention that an Aurora is also a good AI ship.

9

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 20, 2020, 06:28:01 AM »

Mh, I think you are confusing "every person that plays Startsector" with "many that play Startsector and are actively discussing it on the internet". The latter is a self selecting group that does not represent the whole playerbase, a vocal minority of of sorts.

I believe most players are simply picking options that seem fun or exciting to them.

You're right. I can't speak for people who don't actively discuss their opinions. However, its the same both ways. Calling the 'many people that actively discuss the game online' a vocal minority with no proof the majority is unlike it is probably even less like to be correct than my assumption that they at least speak for a great part of the player base.

Perhaps I should limit it to "Almost everyone that voices their opinion on Starsector shows munchkin tendencies". I suppose I should also specify what I'm talking about.

When people pick options 'for fun' in games like Star Sector, they usually must also pick options that are optimized to counter balance it unless they don't care about making progress or essentially running their saves into the ground. Most of the things that I'm talking about, most people wouldn't event think about as Min-maxing, like picking a Buffalo over a Tarsus... which is totally min-maxing the logistical profile of your fleet. Or settling in a system with lots of moons to stack your defenses.

Lots of the stuff that people consider 'just the thing you do', like take Transverse Jump asap, is Munchkin min-maxing. The fact that not doing those things is considered either new-player behavior or an intentional role-play/difficulty increase is proof enough that most people that play this game are, to an extent min-maxing munchkins, even if they don't take every opportunity to be as optimal as possible.

This is supported by just about any discussion related to ship fitting that isn't a meme, as well as the fact that probably half the time most people play the game is spent there. Even if they aren't breaking out calculators and looking at graphs, they tend to be min-maxing so that they can support some kind of cool option.

10

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 20, 2020, 04:59:32 AM »

There was something you said earlier in the ball-park range of it seeming like some of us just want more colony size because its more pluses, and that's not entirely wrong. In fact, it's probably, at least three fourths correct. But you have to understand something Alex. I hate to break it to you, but just about every person that plays Startsector is, to some extent, a munchkin that will number crunch the game until they can glass the entire sector with the exhaust fumes of their fleet full of cheese. I don't know how you've not noticed this in the decade-ish time that you've been working on the game, but it's the truth.

I'm not saying you have to, or even should give in to the munchkin hive-mind, but you should be aware it exists at least.

Now onto my thoughts.

Personally, I feel like capping colony size is just a solution looking for a problem. Essentially, the only problems of large Colony sizes that I can see, are the lore conflict, the lack of "realism", and the thematic issues, all things you've previously said should move out of the way for game mechanics. Those three things could be more easily 'fixed' just by reducing the population number of each colony size, or giving certain core worlds specific conditions that, for lore-reasons just state they have larger populations than what their size would otherwise state.

On the other hand, limiting colony size loses granularity. While there aren't currently any mechanics that take advantage of having specific sizes of worlds other than industry limitations, you lose that potential by getting rid of it. Also having more stages just gives players a better sense of progression and... well people tend to like it because we're munchkins. My point being that it seems like a choice that has nothing but disadvantages while the current system is just kind of... fine.

As far as mining colonies go, you're talking about trying to fundamentally work against concepts that have been implemented in the colony system. There are four reasons to have colonies: ship/weapon production, storage, tech-mining, and money. Two of these are enhanced by having larger colonies, and the rest have nothing to do with colony size. Bigger colonies make more money and more stuff. They get more market share, export more goods, and you can stack more buffs on them.

Plus, production doesn't matter beyond the profits they make. Sure, you have to make sure your colonies have access to all the goods they need for their structures/industries to function, but that's really just an extention of the profit they make. In service to this, mining (ore, organics, and rare ore) isn't even close to the highest income products, Metals Transplutonics, and Volatiles are. The income you make form ore, and rare ore are basically trivial, to the extent that you should only ever need at most one ore and one rare ore mining world to supply the rest of your refinery empire. And even that still mandates that your mining colonies have large populations for the large resource supply.

Basically, you are never going to get 'high-hazard small mining colonies' organically. Unless you hamfist it in some way, it's just not happening. It just doesn't work with the mechanics. The only option I can think of is either a fundamental change to the mining system so that more population doesn't improve goods produced, a massive increase to mining profitability just for having the industry, or effectively some kind of 'mining colony' button that limits the colony growth, but gives massive bonuses to accessibility and production (and either prevents or doesn't benefit volatiles, farming, refineries, etc).

As for requiring items to bring income up to pre-nerf, or rather '0.95' levels, once again, it feels more like a solution looking for a problem. While currently colonies can quickly make money a non-issue, that's not because they're unbalanced but because the game has a fundamental lack of resource sinks in end game. Most money is spent on maintenance through labor costs, replacement ships, supplies, and fuel, or investment through buying more ships/weapons or colony stuff. Getting a stable source of passive income fundamentally changes this, and it will always be either too much or not enough as long as there isn't something else to sink it in. Basically all you're doing is stretching out the mid game and kicking the problem down the line. It's not going to change the fact that, eventually, I'm going to have a bunch of colonies, covered in alpha cores, each planet a fortress unto itself, spitting money at me faster than I can spend it. It's the munchkin way.

I can't tell you what end game should be, as I don't know what your plans are, but I can tell your right now that farming [REDACTED] for AI cores, raiding, and colony shenanigans ain't it. That stuff all feels like gearing up for the final boss, like the Loyalty missions in Mass Effect, or getting the Master Sword. It feels like a rollercoaster about to come to a hilltop and instead of going over and finishing the coaster, you're just trying to make the hill bigger.

I'm not trying to demand 'more content', I'm saying that the current game crescendos in a way that suggests there is something unfinished waiting at the end, and that it seems to me the problem is not that the mechanics haven't been tweaked 'just right', but rather that it either needs to be changed in a fundamental way or an ending given.

Oh, and though I appreciate rolling the story points and streamlining the skill system, I disagree with the design choice to limit the number of skills a player can have (even though that isn't a new addition). Mainly because it doesn't accomplish your goal, i.e. adding a meaningful choice. A fundament problem with the system is that there will always be a 'best' skill out of every choice. You can get those skills infinitely close, but you can never truly make them equal. Because of this, there will always be a 'best' build, and players will always gravitate towards it.

To give an example, let's take that navigation skill example. The one that increases overall speed is better. Why? Because it's an overall speed boost, vs making up for a penalty. I can just limit the times when I need to 'slow-move', which I will be used to anyway beforehand. In contrast, the slow-move buff only helps in situations that are sub-optimal to begin with, and no matter how fast you go when slow-moving, I assume it's never going to overtake someone going normal speed. The choice is between lessening a penalty that happens when you essentially screw up positioning in the map, or buffing everything else. It's especially egregious because neither really defines your gameplay, it's not a meaningful choice, it's a nobrainer.

If you really, absolutely, want to provoke different builds, in my opinion, the only real option is to make it so either each choice has nothing to do with each other, or fundamentally changes the way you play the game. An example (But not a good one) would be something like Transverse Jump or Emergency Escape Jump (that gives you a way to escape battles), or 20% extra OP vs extra administrators. Again those are not suggestions, just examples of choices that I feel would be truly 'meaningful'.

What's more, it's more than likely, that the industry/general/utility skills will be, once again prioritized over the combat skills because as always, generally speaking, it's not the player's combat performance that matters most. That's... one more thing that's sort of fundamental to the game as well.

My logic is that making it either a choice that defines the way you play, or some kind of Apples to Oranges thing obfuscates the 'best option'. Despite that, it still doesn't eliminate the problem of there being a 'best choice'. And quite a few players will feel compelled to take the 'better' choice, even when they would prefer something else. Again, cause we're all kind of munchkins.

As a word of caution, any game like this that constantly drains at your resources tends to provoke min-maxing. I hate to say it, but your idea of balance tends to drag the game out and make things more difficult than they absolutely have to be. It's not a bad thing in of itself, but it does naturally discourage the organic feel you seem to be chasing. The less wiggle room people have, the more they tend to gravitate to things that they 'know' work, and the less they are inclined to actually explore mechanics. This leads into the base-bounty nerf. It's just going to further squeeze margins tighter for people. As a source of stable income decreases, the number of risks you are willing to take decrease. The less you want to buy that ship you haven't used, or try out a new fleet composition, because if you do lose something you can't afford to replace it, or the time spent to do so will set you back too far.

In other words, it means it attracts munchkins and breeds munchkin tendancies into the non-munchkins that stay.

Regardless, I hope my comments don't come off as... pushy or demanding. I believe that I don't necessarily disagree with what you're trying to accomplish. It's just that I think the way you're going about it won't get the results you want. While I certainly have my own desires for what I would 'like' from the game and perhaps I'm projecting my own desires onto you, I'm trying to go on what you've said in the past.

In the end, I'm an opinionated person, and as I write things like this, I tend to get defensive as I pick holes in my own comments. Also its been a few days since I've checked the patch notes or followed the conversation, so maybe some of these have been addressed, or are misunderstandings. I apologize in advance if this is the case.

Have a nice day.

11

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.5)

« on: August 23, 2020, 07:22:46 PM »

The fix for the DIY bug is simple, just copy planetgen.csv from Starsector-core/data/campaign/procgen, create the same path in the mod folder, paste planetgen.csv there, and add the arcology id to Terraforming and Station Construction/Campaign/procgen/planetgen.csv. You can easily set the spawn rates to 0 so it won't actually appear in procgen. Also, if anyone is ghetto-ing this fix, make sure not to add it to the vanilla version of the file, since you'll need to remove it anytime the arcology id changes, or if you disable/uninstall Terraforming and Station construction.

Of course, it's also possible that this fix causes some other problem I've yet to encounter, but so far it hasn't for me.