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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - Stuffwriter

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1
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Diable Avionics 2.70rc1 (2023/04/09)
« on: April 10, 2023, 04:17:29 PM »
Fantastic work. This has always been my favorite mod. It oozes with quality and hard work.

I am liking the buffs to the Gust and Light Gust. While I did enjoy the Gust before, the new variant is much more powerful and capable. I think it may be just above the power of ships in the base game.

I think your changes to weapons are excellent overall, but I would like to see the small explosive damage ballistic mount have slightly more armor penetration than it currently does. The old design (like years and years ago before you updated the sprite) fired in short bursts that did heavy damage to armor. I feel like that would fit the doctrine of the faction a little better since Diable ships do NOT like being that close to an enemy, so a short range "get off me" powerful mount would be helpful.

The new destroyer is great. It's a lot of fun to fly and it's effective. I wonder if building in dampened mount and expanded missile racks is maybe a bit to powerful, though. It sweeps away most early game threats without much difficulty due to its greatly expanded range.

The wanzer changes feel great to use. The changes to the Storm carrier make it a much more viable ship now. I wish the raven wanzer wasn't so hard to get! That said, I think the warlust sniper wanzer needs a change in behavior. Despite it's long range gun, it still flies in super close to enemy ships and dies to PD fire.

The versant is still hard to use. Compared to other small "super" ships, it's very underpowered. While it is much easier to get than other ships of its class, it's capabilities are so limited that it is hard to use at all. The shield buff helps it, but it's flux stats are so poor that it can't even use its weapon mounts effectively. I like the high-speed mode and the damage reduction it grants. it would be nice if it could fire all its weapons in this state with the tradeoff being that it can't use its shields. Hit and run with short range weapons would be fun this way.

All in all, great work.

2
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Tahlan Shipworks 0.8.666a
« on: February 16, 2023, 12:40:43 PM »
Ah, fantastic.

Thanks for all your hard work!

3
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Tahlan Shipworks 0.8.666a
« on: February 16, 2023, 02:09:27 AM »
One of my favorite mods. Adds tons of high quality stuff.

That said, I have a minor bug to report.

I completed the story missions after getting the Halbmond carrier, but the message to tell me where the special battlecruiser can be found says it is in the "null" nebula. Like an empty text field or something. There is no such nebula in my game.

I am running Nexerelin with the standard core worlds.

Not sure if that helps.

4
Mods / Re: [0.95a] Weftin's Ship Pack
« on: September 29, 2021, 11:19:39 AM »
A few more things to keep in mind:

Ship Tech
- Low tech ships have poor flux stats and speed, but strong armor, good DP, many weapon mounts, and long deployment times. Their ship systems are almost exclusively offensive with either burn drive straight ahead or improvements to firepower.

- High tech ships have strong shields, good flux stats, and are fast, but are extremely fragile, have a smaller number of weapon mounts, and are generally restricted to energy/missile weapons. They also have low deployment times. Their ship systems tend to be defensive with ship repositioning or improvements to shields.

- Midline ships have stats that fit right between low and high and are defined by their versatility in types of weapon mounts.

Weapons
- Weapon arcs make or break a ship design. Because of the need to focus fire in this game, weapon arcs that cannot all focus on the same point are a lot less useful. Consider the Onslaught battleship. It has 3 large mounts, but none of them can fire on the same target at the same time (unless that target is extremely large). This means that it has a tendency to spray out flux without accomplishing anything useful, so it's important to carefully manage what guns are firing. To compensate for this, the onslaught has a HUGE DP pool and a reduction in cost to large mounts.

- Give the player options in how to lay out a ship. Many of your current designs are so limited in weapon placement and DP that there is no flexibility or creativity in ship layouts. Something to consider.

Ship Systems
- Without recruiting help from veteran modders, you'll have a very difficult time creating your own ship systems. Restricted in this way, your ability to create really cool designs is limited.

- With the existing ship systems from the vanilla game, maneuvering thrusters is an obvious pick for cruisers and capitals for your ships. A few of them would probably shine with the ammo feeder or missile autoforge though.

5
Mods / Re: [0.95a] Weftin's Ship Pack
« on: September 28, 2021, 09:17:31 PM »
I have some feedback if you're willing to consider it. I've played a lot of mods and vanilla and have a decent sense of what "vanilla balance" is. How you decide to balance is up to you, of course. Making a mod is a lot of work, and I appreciate the time you're willing to dedicate to it.

If your intent is to provide ships that approach vanilla balance, you're a little off the mark so far. Let me provide a few examples:

Churchill Class Battleship
- Too many weapon mounts and not enough DP to use them
- Weapon arcs are very generous. Too much ability to focus fire on one spot (even though it doesn't have enough DP)
- Shields are a little on the strong side
It feels like this ship was designed to not be able to use it to its full potential since it is so DP starved. That is a little frustrating as there are no vanilla ships like this. I recommend removing some of the weapon mounts, making some of them smaller, or both. Alternatively, greatly increasing the available DP would help but make the ship dramatically more powerful.

Chaffee Gunship
- Low firepower
- A little small for a destroyer but big for a frigate (if that makes sense)
- A large mount on such a small ship is awkward to use because of flux requirements

Alecto Frigate
- Seems to be missing a medium weapon mount in the center. Looks strange
- Severely lacking in firepower
- Very low DP cost

Humber Frigate
- An adorable little ship that is undergunned for its cost
- I like the idea of a mobile frigate with mostly missile mounts

Challenger Cruiser
- Undergunned and severely under DP'd for a cruiser. Is closer to a destroyer in performance.


I think you may still need to do some tuning of the numbers for your ships. Compare the values you're using against other ships of similar sizes. Your DP point values are a little low across the board, and your flux dissipation and maximums are all over the place.

I recommend trying to think of a theme that these ships will fit to.
- Are they slow and fragile, but perhaps wielding above average flux stats?
- Are they flux starved but durable? (Think low-tech)

To me, these ships are (generally) long and thin with overlapping fields of fire. To me, they appear that they should be slow moving, decently durable, and reliant on a gun line. Ships like that would have good flux dissipation, good DP values, but poor max flux and slow speed. This would give them an edge at mid range but be vulnerable at close range and long range.


6
Mods / Re: [0.95a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.9.1 [4/5/21]
« on: April 12, 2021, 03:58:13 PM »
Ah, got it.

Thanks

7
Mods / Re: [0.95a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.9.1 [4/5/21]
« on: April 12, 2021, 10:14:26 AM »
I figured that I would report a crash.

I was putting weapons on the new battleship in this mod and when I went to auto assign weapon groups, the game crashed.

I noticed that you released a new version with some bug fixes, tried again, and experienced the same crash.

I don't know if this helps you, but this is the crash log from my game:

java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.refit.wgd2.ooOO.updateCheckboxes(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.coreui.refit.wgd2.WeaponGroupDialogV2.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.k.buttonPressed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oooO.new(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oooO.processInput(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.V.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.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.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

8
General Discussion / Automated Ship AI
« on: March 29, 2021, 11:58:05 PM »
There's reckless and then there's suicidal.

Salvaged AI ships are very difficult to use because they dive straight into the enemy fleet and die no matter what the situation is.

The REDACTED ships don't do that when they fight me!

9
General Discussion / Re: 0.95- First Impressions
« on: March 27, 2021, 12:48:58 AM »
I think it's a bit early to say certain skills or mods are bad.

The mod that shortens beam range but makes them deal hard flux damage is more effective than I first thought when I tried it. It definitely seems weak from the description, but keep in mind that some beam weapons do heavy damage and are generally flux efficient. The interaction is strange with the ion beam though: hard to tell if it does anything. It seems that you get the full 200 range from focusing lenses regardless of the range reduction.

I prefer this skill system to the old one. At least there's an actual choice now and a variance in builds for different playstyles. If the goal was to make me want to try multiple runs with different skills, I think that goal was met.

The green skill points are an absolutely amazing system, but I worry that I'm getting too many points. This may require additional tuning, but the concept is fantastic.

The only disappointment I have so far is in using AI ships. They just aren't really that much better than regular ships and they come with the additional cost of requiring cores.

10
Bug Reports & Support / Re: (0.95a) Free D mod removal
« on: March 26, 2021, 08:41:53 PM »
I can confirm this bug as well.

11
Modding / (Mod Under Construction) Awakened Empire
« on: April 16, 2020, 12:17:19 AM »
I am in the process of constructing my first mod. I decided to use one of my favorite series as the basis for this mod, Panzer Dragoon. I am seeking feedback on my sprite building and concepting at this point, so please leave a comment.

The ships of the Awakened Empire are (at least by my intent) based on the ships of the resurgent empires that are common in the Panzer Dragoon games. The general idea is that an ancient weapons production facility is rediscovered by nomads, and this leads to the creation of a new empire. This empire is cruel, dangerous, and metastasizes across the world very rapidly, crushing all in its path with new soldiers and old weapons.

Naturally, such cruelty would fit right into the persean sector. It's not hard to imagine some ancient facility being uncovered that can produce super weird ships.

There is hope, however. Legends speak of an ancient dragon a from before the first domain ships even arrived, a heroic presence that will rise to meet the resurgent empire and bury it in the ashes of history, like those that came before. 

Ship Visual Design
The ships of the Awakened Empire don't look like anything else in the sector. They appear to be hulks of stone and scrap metal, and at first glance they look even more rickety than pirate ships. In reality, these vessels are incredibly difficult to destroy and far faster than they appear.

Faction gameplay specifics

Strengths
- All Awakened Empire vessels are durable. This means high hull points and armor for their size across the board
- Despite the huge bulk of stone and metal, their vessels are surprisingly quick - just above low tech speed
- Awakened Empire ships have the most powerful shields in the sector for damage absorption, but their shield coverage is awful. The intent is to block the most damaging attacks with the small shield and let others bounce off the armor
- higher than average cargo and fuel holds

Weaknesses
- Very small radius shields making protecting the vessels from multiple attackers difficult
- Weakness with flanking in general
- These ships don't have many weapon mounts for their size or have poor arcs of fire due to their strange construction
- High deployment costs


What I have done now
- Several ships are playable. They are depicted below. Note that I have not made this ships available because it's simply too early in the process. There are no guns, they use ship systems from the original game, and the sprites are likely not final.


Goals
- More ships (a whole fleet)
- Custom weapons and fighter wings
- Custom hullmods
- An event where the dragon, an ancient frigate with absolutely absurd combat capabilities, will attempt to eliminate the Awakened Empire from the game


12
Quick question: How do you modify how many flux vents and capacitors you can put on a ship? I can't find the stat in the .csv

13
I finally managed to diagnose the problem...

I had my folders arranged incorrectly and an errant capital letter was confusing the game. Modding is hard, apparently.

I've got it working now.

14
Can you recommend something?

15
Unfortunately, I had already tried all these fixes before posting this.

This one's a real headscratcher. I was excited about making a mod, but I can't get any further than this.

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