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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 - Kahnmir

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1
General Discussion / Re: What do you hope to see in 1.0?
« on: October 08, 2021, 12:53:47 PM »
Quality of life changes. Would be nice if the intel map and the MAP were combined, would make it easier to find things/navigate. A way to leave notes on the map would be good too.

More interesting map generation, along with more stuff to find. I like exploration, but space can feel really empty at times. And before someone says "but space IS empty,"
First off, this is a sci-fi game >.> Also, even if you just go by what exists in IRL there will always be that weird planet with a atmosphere that smells like strawberries, or a comet that's green for some reason or something like that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... More weird mysterious stuff please. IMO that would be better than scripted quests because it lets the player make their own story.

2
You can finish the tutorial with 300k+ simply by taking advantage of price differences between Ancyra and Derinkyuu mining station.

Maybe there should be more risk involved with such obscene profiteering, I dunno.

Does feel kind of weird how easy it is to access the black market though. I mean, black markets are supposed to be hidden right?
Maybe this is something story points could be used for: finding/accessing black markets.

Missions are a totally different ball of wax, and one element that should be noted aside from material costs is the time cost associated.
If it takes you a month or two to finish a mission in-game, that's actually quite a lot of time you could spend doing other things; like being a badass space captain, or founding a colony. It may not be a big time cost for you IRL, but I personally find it weird to make it to the end my Galatia stipend and realize I've been nothing but an errand boy for 2 years in game time.

3
General Discussion / Re: High Scatter Amplification's impact?
« on: June 14, 2021, 08:47:39 PM »
I think in order to get the value out of the hull mod you need two things:
a ship with lots of energy weapon mounts
a brawler that can get up close and personal.

A pretty narrow criteria I think.

one potential candidate is the scarab:
Mount a bunch of tac lasers and use it as an anti-frigate ship?
If you have the op you could even try install integrated point defense AI, I imagine it would be pretty good against fighters, especially shielded ones.

I suppose you could also try something involving an eagle and three graviton beams, trying to capitalize on that (combined) 600 hard flux DPS.

But the problem with both of these, would it be better than what you would ordinarily do with these ships? Probably not.

4
General Discussion / Re: Some thoughts on phase ships
« on: June 12, 2021, 04:23:15 PM »
You can do it through default_ship_roles.json, if you want to contaminate everyone's ship lists with phase ships. What I think is a better approach is making a mod with modified pirates.faction file, where you would change ship distribution from 5 in warship, 1 in carrier, 1 in phase ship to 1/1/5 or 3/1/3, and maybe give pirates the Harbinger as a known ship.

Thanks, I'll have to try that out!

Ideally there would be dedicated phase theme pirate fleets, but for testing purposes this should work.

5
General Discussion / Re: Some thoughts on phase ships
« on: June 11, 2021, 10:16:31 PM »
Well, if there were small phase ship fleets and nobody could make it past the early game without getting wrecked, that would prove you correct.

Now that I think about it, does anyone know if custom sections can be added to the default_ship_roles.json? That would make it really easy to make a mod to test exactly that, if my understanding of that file is correct.

6
General Discussion / Some thoughts on phase ships
« on: June 11, 2021, 04:21:32 PM »
So I was going through the main storyline, and encountered a certain rather infamous fight that has a lot of people wondering if phase ships are balanced, or if they even can be balanced:

The triple doom fleet. I was curious to see how bad it actually was since I actually had never encountered it before.

Aaaannndd... I got creamed. Absolutely creamed.
Typically I play Iron mode, and when I lose that hard I usually just start over, but given this fights infamy I decided to cut myself some slack and reload

2nd time around I won, it won't say it was easy, but it wasn't too terrible either. I think one of the things that made the fight hard was I was so restricted by deployment points that I couldn't field my full fleet.

Some notes about my second attempt:

* I turtled HARD and was careful to make sure the AI didn't get caught out of position
* I didn't plan on this, but I had a lot of weapons that happened to be good against phase ships: beam weapons, locust srms, and fighters.
* the fight ended when they ran out of CR, which I think reveals that turtling is perfectly valid tactic to use against phase ships. You don't have to kill them, just outlast them and they'll just fall over dead at some point  ;D

My fleet comp: 1 Paragon, 1 aurora, 1 astral, 2 apogees, and I think some tempests or shrikes, maybe an omen? (I wasn't able to deploy most of my smaller stuff so I don't remember how many of them I had exactly, they didn't contribute much anyway) oh and the brilliant vow class from arsenal expansion, which was the only modded thing I used.
All weapons were vanilla weapons.

Anyway, the fight got me thinking: I think I only lost the fight the first time because it was the first time I had ever fought any significant number of phase ships. I don't think phase ships in general are overpowered (not touching the issue with dooms, I know the arguments, but I frankly don't have enough experience with or against them to weigh in on that).
I really just wasn't prepared, and didn't know what tactics to use. I quickly learned, but it was a nasty surprise regardless.

Thinking about it more, beyond the occasional gremlin, phase ships are rare to face off against.
I think in all my playthroughs I faced off against... maybe 1 pirate shade, and I don't think I've even seen a pirate afflictor except in shops.

Point is, the player doesn't really get a chance to face off against phase ships and learn what tactics to use: you can't just try to outshoot them, you lose if you do and that's fine. Having to turtle it out was an interesting change of pace.

So, what I'm suggesting is that there should be more phase ships. Maybe some small pirate fleets composed mainly of phase ships, and more bounties that make use of them.
The first time that the player encounters phase ships in any meaningful quantity should not be the triple doom fight. Some smaller scale, less dire fights that the player can afford to make a few mistakes in would allow the player to learn and experiment.

7
General Discussion / Re: Exploring how to command the AI
« on: June 09, 2021, 09:18:18 AM »
The avoid command is an interesting one, because while its a fantastic way to keep your frigates from wandering up to that luddic path promethean,
It also makes them avoid just about everything else even remotely in the vicinity, which makes it really hard to get your ships to do anything.

I think like the range that the AI avoids ships at currently is only appropriate if the avoided ship has a burn drive or a phase skimmer (yes I know LP Prometheans have burn drive), but could otherwise stand to be tightened up a bit. This would make Avoid a lot easier to use because your ships would be more likely to engage other things.

What would be really nice is if a little adjustable bubble/circle popped up around the avoided ship on the tactical screen that allowed you to adjust the avoid distance manually by shrinking or enlarging the bubble, but maybe that is asking for too much and would change the command from "avoid" to "avoid at a radius of 500 units" or whatever.

Actually, what IS the default radius that ships avoid at for the avoid command, does anyone know? Is that in the game files somewhere? can its be adjusted manually (in the game files)?
Would be interesting to play around with.

Man this topic could get extensive because there is a lot to say about every command.... I'm still trying to figure out exactly how the escort command works

8
General Discussion / Re: I'm having a blast!
« on: June 09, 2021, 01:40:06 AM »
Negative stuff can get repetitive too.

And if it gets too repetitive it can end up being blown out of proportion.

9
General Discussion / Re: I'm having a blast!
« on: June 08, 2021, 11:12:38 PM »
Well, If we're saying nice things about the game I've got one:

In most other games, like minecraft or skyrim, I find that I have a hard time playing vanilla anymore once I've gotten used to mods,
but in starsector I find myself going back to vanilla because the base game is so solid it really doesn't need the help.

10
General Discussion / Re: i dont think OP ships should be nerfed
« on: June 08, 2021, 10:06:20 AM »
I'm sorry, but if I recall the blog post was titled "a tale of two tech levels" not "a tale of specific problematic ships." Perhaps I have missed a forum post somewhere, but Alex hasn't been particularly clear on how many high tech ships are getting nerfed.

You are assuming an awful lot about my position; which is, has been, and always will be that flat nerfs are not a great balancing tool and should not always be the first resort.
I am, for instance OK with the tempest changes, they sound OK on paper, but we will have to wait and see.

I spec'd "get wrecked"

So even though he's clearly engaging in limited specific nerfs to set ships you felt it was safe to hyper generalize it as the entire High tech roster getting nerfed?

I'm not assuming anything, your entire premise is a massive unreasonable assumption that don't follow in any way shape or form with the games patch history and drawing comparisons to League of Legends that profits directly from cancerous practices like creating imbalance. Which is absurd. You talk about "industry standard" like this game has no long history and just some random devs are making it rather then a specific person.

His lack of clarity is your excuse. Clarity in a specific list of ships only.

Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This lazy theory also works in reverse. If he buffs everything else to to play catch up (actual power creep) then something will get overbuffed resulting in an endless circle of more buffs too correct it. 

"And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Because it creates the exact same problem you are pretending is avoided.

But again this, everything you are posting, is entirely based around the idea that Alex is nerfing the entire High tech ship roster and not buffing Low tech at all. He's clearly buffing Low tech and if you bothered to read the thread you say he's "unclear" about you'd know Low tech is getting buffed.

So why are you posting stuff like this when you imply you actually read it? Your theories don't have a connection to anything that is actually happening based on the information we have.

I expect your posts to become more and more generalized rather then specific, because the details don't support what you are pushing.


You caught me, this was all part of a secret agenda to ruin the game, nerfs are always good and great, there is never a reason to be worried that a dev might go overboard, and there definitely isn't a contingent of people very rude people (if this thread is anything to go by) who are extremely emotionally invested in seeing high-tech nerfed into the ground just because they don't like it.

You win a 1000 internets and have my permission to go jerk off to yourself in the mirror or something. And no, internet points are non-refundable, in case you were wondering.

11
General Discussion / Re: Can officers die? And if not, why not?
« on: June 07, 2021, 10:30:32 PM »
Quote
Well, This is something could be really easily cleared up with some lore, which I have been wondering about myself:

Do escape pods or some sort of escape shuttle exist in the starsector universe? I mean, if they do then you can assume that your officers (and yourself, when your ship gets blown up) make use of these, If they don't then yes, it is a bit of immersion breaking plot-hole.

They exist, you can see them every time you change command ships, a small shuttle pops out and flys to the ship you've selected.

Right, the shuttle pod, there's even an entry for it in the codex. I guess I'm just curious about the specifics. For instance, if a ship is destroyed, does the hanger still function? It probably would if the ship is only disabled, but if the ship is blown apart, do they just hope the shuttle is in one piece? (and it conveniently always is!?!?). Or maybe, maybe the command deck IS the shuttle pod, now that would be smart! Really silly bookkeeping I know, and I don't think this should be a mandatory part of the game, but it might make things interesting on a hard mode if one ever gets added.

That said, does the rest of the crew have escape pods they can potentially reach? Maybe some kind of cryostasis escape pod? Would explain why I occasionally find crew floating around in debris fields.

12
General Discussion / Re: i dont think OP ships should be nerfed
« on: June 07, 2021, 10:18:13 PM »
I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.
But I spec'd into passive aggression!?

You proposed a scenario where high tech gets nerfed, so midline stood out, so midline got nerfed, so low tech stood out, etc ad infinitum.

Such a scenario only works in the case of balance only being obtained via debuffs, rather than the mix of buffs and debuffs we have repeatedly seen to be used.

No. No such condition exists. I never stated it in my scenario, nor do I accept it. That is something you came up with on your own, and you have not made an argument on that would be the case; sure, buffs can change the equation, but they do not necessarily invalidate the scenario.


Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.


This is the position in question, which seems quite similar to how Yunru understood it.

The blog post has most of it's content covering low tech mechanical and roster buffs - the one hightech nerf is a mechanical change that expands gameplay options.

Nothing in the blogpost suggests excessive flat stat nerfing.

Yeah, and Yunru inserted the idea that some how buffs invalidate the entire thesis, when I didn't mention them at all in said thesis.
Your 'thesis' doesn't mention buffs because the existence of a nontrivial number of buffs straight up disproves it by contradicting any notion of an endless cycle of nerfs, and your claim that buffs don't "necessarily invalidate" said thesis is nothing but petulance.

Were it modified to describe the actual past and predicted scenario of some things getting nerfs and some things getting buffs (not even necessarily in the same amounts), it would have read like:
High-tech gets nerfed and low-tech gets buffed, then... then what? Is midline still the predicted outlier, or low tech? Or do they end up balanced with each other and HT is now the outlier in the other direction, so HT gets buffed and nothing gets nerfed? And after we've applied this cycle of balance changes, the endless nerfs prediction diverges even further from what actually happens.

Somehow a cycle of "some things get nerfs and some thing get buffs" hardly sounds as horrific as a cycle of things only getting nerfed.

Well, if Yunru had (politely) made this argument I may have conceded that he had a point and just taken my ball and gone home; because my original statement did not factor in buffs at all and was assumed a very specific scenario which I will admit I did not elaborate on much. Quite frankly I didn't expect it to cause people to lose their *** minds otherwise I would have. But instead he just said my statement was disproved by the existence of buffs (which do not, and you're wrong about this) without making an argument. Given how rude you are and how I've also been rudely dogpiled, I will instead point out the flaws in your thinking as a middle finger to you in particular, and I will do so in excruciating detail, also as a middle finger to you, in particular.

So first some givens:
* Alex has made a few offhand comments about nerfing hightech outside of the blog post not all of which I have seen, but as far as I know, he has only gone into specifics about the tempest and has not been very clear on how other nerfs will be approached
* I am not and have never made comments about dooms, which seems to be the source of a lot of this.... hatred. I was not evaluating them in my thesis because I frankly just don't *** use them. I am much more concerned with ships like the tempest and the playstyle of high-tech in general, which could very easily be made garbage if not handled gently.
* This thesis deals primarily with flat nerfs/buffs, I have already said I approve of the tempest changes, and have argued for sidegrade changes
* My main concern is not that nerfs are never warranted, but that they are frequently overdone, also I am really concerned why so many people seem to HATE hightech and are emotionally invested in doing so, as is illustrated by how out of control this discussion is getting.
*perfect balance is unachievable. Some things will simply always be better than others.

Thesis version 2.0 "I'm actually trying this time." or "why you're wrong and your father was a hamster" edition, if you prefer.

Games can get into a cycle of endless nerfs because in many way "power" or how good something is in the game is relative amongst the game elements. In otherwords, a ship is only good or bad depending on how good or bad it is relative to other ships. This causes changes in numbers to have an affect similar to squeezing a waterballoon, wherein if you squeeze it, the water simply shifts. likewise, the relative "power" of the ships changes, Ergo when something gets worse, something else gets better, even though only the nerfed ship is changed.

Regarding how buffs affect this, There are two scenarios to consider them under; which is where your thinking does not work because you seem to consider buffs under both scenario's simultaneously, which does not work and is contradictory.

Scenario 1
if we theorize that flat buffs =  flat nerfs in their impact on the game, then the according to the theory the cycle simply gets shifted, since you are still just squeezing the waterballoon.
spelling it out for you: the relative strength of the ship is still changed, and making something better makes something else worse. Essentially, because the "power" is all relative it turns into something of a zero-sum game. This is what you almost understood from my original thesis, and made some decent points regarding it, mainly that buffs can potentially counter nerfs. but this is very difficult to do if you are simply shifting the waterballoon (now you're squeezing two points of the waterballoon!) rather than making a structural change.

But because you are petulant or simply wanted to score internet points (or both), you moved the goalpost and shifted to:

Scenario 2: buffs =/= nerfs
In this scenario it is theorized that buffs fulfill a different role from nerfs, and is where the idea that buffs cause powercreep most likely comes from.
This gets really complicated because you have to go into specifics about how nerfs and buffs actually interact with each other, if at all. But I've run out of patience and time though so wrapping this up:
Scenario 1 does not disprove the thesis at all. But you seem to want it both ways in your assertion that buffs somehow disprove my thesis.

Quote
Bonus:
I'm sorry, but if I recall the blog post was titled "a tale of two tech levels" not "a tale of specific problematic ships."
Imagine having an entire blog post and still trying to read deep meaning into a Literary Reference title.

Do you talk to people like this IRL? Perhaps you're a Sperg? Would explain a lot.

Anyway, Think I'm done with this thread, too many of you are just here to score internet points rather than have a discussion.

13
General Discussion / Re: i dont think OP ships should be nerfed
« on: June 07, 2021, 05:53:47 PM »

Case in point, I predict that once high-tech gets nerfed, midline will simply take its place, then everyone will switch to whining about midline being overpowered, than midline will be nerfed, then people will start whining about low-tech being overpowered, then low tech will be nerfed, and THEN high-tech will be overpowered again. And what will have been accomplished out of all this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.


This is the position in question, which seems quite similar to how Yunru understood it.

The blog post has most of it's content covering low tech mechanical and roster buffs - the one hightech nerf is a mechanical change that expands gameplay options.

Nothing in the blogpost suggests excessive flat stat nerfing.


Yeah, and Yunru inserted the idea that some how buffs invalidate the entire thesis, when I didn't mention them at all in said thesis.

Look, I think things will be OK -probably, I think that giving low-tech more options is a good way to go about it, but people are right to be nervous when Alex makes comments about using the nerf bat. Its doesn't exactly envision a subtle approach to to a nuanced problem.

Quote
Yeah... maybe before saying you've never said X, make sure you've never said X.

Yeah... maybe get some reading comprehension skills.

did I upset some kind of clique here? Is there some forum saint that I've questioned that no one is allowed to question?

14
General Discussion / Re: Can officers die? And if not, why not?
« on: June 07, 2021, 03:22:50 PM »
I’d be fine with it being optional, but ships dying isn’t optional so I’m not sure why officers dying would be.

Well, This is something could be really easily cleared up with some lore, which I have been wondering about myself:

Do escape pods or some sort of escape shuttle exist in the starsector universe? I mean, if they do then you can assume that your officers (and yourself, when your ship gets blown up) make use of these, If they don't then yes, it is a bit of immersion breaking plot-hole.

15
General Discussion / Re: i dont think OP ships should be nerfed
« on: June 07, 2021, 03:19:43 PM »
I think you need to buff your passive aggressiveness there bro, I *think* you were trying to strawman me into saying something I didn't say, but I'm not sure.
But I spec'd into passive aggression!?

You proposed a scenario where high tech gets nerfed, so midline stood out, so midline got nerfed, so low tech stood out, etc ad infinitum.

Such a scenario only works in the case of balance only being obtained via debuffs, rather than the mix of buffs and debuffs we have repeatedly seen to be used.

No. No such condition exists. I never stated it in my scenario, nor do I accept it. That is something you came up with on your own, and you have not made an argument on that would be the case; sure, buffs can change the equation, but they do not necessarily invalidate the scenario.

Quote
He's also ignoring the fact that the nerfs are extremely targeted at specific problematic ships and not all high tech ships. Apogee for example is not on the hit list just because it's High tech. The ones making attempts to paint it as nerfs to all high tech ships are the people building straw men in here.

I spec'd passive reckless.

I'm sorry, but if I recall the blog post was titled "a tale of two tech levels" not "a tale of specific problematic ships." Perhaps I have missed a forum post somewhere, but Alex hasn't been particularly clear on how many high tech ships are getting nerfed.

You are assuming an awful lot about my position; which is, has been, and always will be that flat nerfs are not a great balancing tool and should not always be the first resort.
I am, for instance OK with the tempest changes, they sound OK on paper, but we will have to wait and see.

I spec'd "get wrecked"

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