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1

Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles

« on: November 03, 2015, 08:22:56 AM »

Way late to the party here and didn't have time to read through everything, but just wanted to comment on the officer portraits. I thought it might be nice to have a rank insignia corresponding to their level and/or faction importance followed by the officer's name in place of the portraits.  They seem a bit too large, even taking them into stock for that being a busy screen.

Even with a revamp, I think it could get pretty burdensome to have enough character portrait variety to convey personality, and then if the portrait is distinct enough, say on a faction leader, then it would end up as a picture the player would probably never take as the faction leader would own that face.  Maybe if there were a modular system of face portraits.

I think just putting the name in there with a rank or icon, growing in size and detail to represent how badass he is, would go a long way. You will ways remember "Gen P. Burnman"'s onslaught overdriving into and demolishing your flagship, rather than face 17 of 50 from the list.

Either way, the more campaign stuff brought into the combat the better, and seeing the people you interact with at fleet level directly in game really, really goes a long way in connecting the two phases of the game together.

2

General Discussion / Re: Idiotic flight pathing

« on: October 09, 2013, 12:32:32 PM »

It's actually always puzzled me how the AI seems at times completely unaware of the existence of asteroids.

For maneuvering, it ignores asteroids below a certain mass (relative to the ship's mass and armor state). The evasive actions it takes are relatively drastic, and this is necessary so that it can function at all inside a dense asteroid field. Hmm. It might make sense to only ignore these if there are a lot of asteroids about, or just consider the heaviest nearby asteroid, or some such. Added to list of things to take a look at.

I don't know if varying AI ship captains are still going to happen, but this could open the way to some fun AI variation that would show up.  One type of captain could fly optimal and ignore asteroids if they aren't a threat, another could always choose to wildly dodge around them, while another might blast any asteroid that crosses its path.

3

General Discussion / Re: Combat Readyness isn't fun..

« on: September 26, 2013, 07:59:32 AM »

So I would somewhat consider myself a 'new' user though I have been around a bit...just I drop in and check out the game and play a bit from time to time without a huge investment in learning and playing for too long.  The CR patch I only put in about an hour with or so, I had been following the patch notes but found it somewhat confusing to figure out what was going on with everything as I didn't quite remember what does what.

My first thought was that really it is something that could be optimized and explained via UI improvements and a short tutorial somewhere, so no big deal about my confusion. Really the thing missing right now is a campaign context for everything. The game is still in a just dump you in a testing ground sort of state. I dislike the preliminary grind a lot, but I imagine a fleshed out game will allow me to kill a few buffalos and do some trading or join up with some larger faction base for some alternative start strategies.

I think honestly it is too early in the game to judge CR, as it can obviously be tweaked pretty easily, but really the good thing about it is that you have some mechanics to connect the two 'games' together as well as forcing support ships on fleets, which will add a lot to the diversity of fleet composition and introduce scenarios where you have ships that are liabilities floating around out there in the combat portion.

I think right now it just feels off because the only thing to do in the game is combat after combat after combat, and anything that slows that down or gets in the way of just doing that is going to make the game less fun. When there are more things to do, and combat is a means to some sort of end, it may be a bit more fun having to rejig your fleet for long range exploration or massive cargo hauling vs a pure combat campaign.

So some small tweaks that are going down to it are good, but CR and the numbers/things going into it can not be really constructed until more of the campaign and its focus are planned out and created. So it is really my belief that the anti-fun part of CR is really due to the game still being in development with many more gameplay systems still to go.

4

General Discussion / Re: People seem to be down heartened :(

« on: September 06, 2013, 12:54:56 PM »

I tend not to get involved with SP game communities too much for some reason, probably since I'm not playing the game with those people nor does the way we play affect one another as it would in a MP game.

I payed in to this game because I love the game being built here, but I can play it rather than watch the occasional video. I honestly think that they should think about 0 seconds on PR and just worry about the game system. Probably go do a PR or blog post when they have to downshift and walk away from the game for a bit.

I mean TBH I don't think it is a big deal when a modder leaves, you can only kinda bang your head against a changing platform for so long before you are blown out, and honestly I'm kinda here for star sector and alex's game design, not any of the modder's game designs, though many are excellent and high quality.

I dunno, it's kinda like the alpha game is a gift that keeps on giving, I might have gotten a completed starsector played it for 80 hours and got bored and shelved it, instead I'll get a new patch, play for 10 - 20 hours, give some feedback, shelve it, then get another patch and add another 10 or so hours a bit later on, and probably have a greater respect for how the gameplay evolved while a much gentler learning curve as mechanics are slowly added to the game over time.

What would make me worried about the game are if the dev posts and blog updates sound like they are *** the game up or changing it's direction, but every one pretty much steers this game towards something I would write if I had the fortitude to stick with one project for the years it takes to make a game of this scope.

The sprites and style of this game are timeless, trust me even if you forget about this game and it is finished 10 years and you pick it up then, it'll be just as much fun as if you had played it now. Game development iterative, tedious, and time consuming, small teams will take a longer time than large teams.

5

Blog Posts / Re: Hyperspace

« on: July 28, 2013, 05:05:59 PM »

Will there be a way to estimate ranges for your fleet with the current fuel you have or will you just sort of have to watch the rate it dips as you travel? Would seem to make sense for travel between busy sectors that you would be able to factor how much fuel you need ahead of time.

Also, it might not be worth it to put too much into the out of fuel scenario. I don't see players good enough to build a large fleet making a simple mistake like not taking enough fuel for a trip. I honestly don't see it occuring too much short of your first few trips and exposure to the mechanic. It might come up if you get caught up in a chase and aren't paying attention maybe, but I see tense explorers doubling back when they are past their halfway point.

Well maybe again if you can get attacked and lose fuel tankers or something that might leave you out in the woods, but yeah, I just don't see it as something that is going to catch players often, not that it won't add tension to exploration, just the fail case probably won't happen too often.

6

Discussions / Re: crystal clear?

« on: July 23, 2013, 07:29:35 AM »

Zenscape explains the nice weapon particles effects starsector has

7

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.6a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: July 15, 2013, 08:44:42 AM »

Hyperspace combat is totally going to have way different properties, right...right!?!

Like, super flux regen, or maybe shields don't work, or everybody is slower, or, weapons that only work in hyperspace etc etc?

Anyway really cool the big game is finally taking shape and the world building can begin. It will be interesting how you start dealing with systems that are 'off screen'.

I can picture something like each system it has resource outputs and growth based on the outputs of surrounding/linked systems as you go, or perhaps there just needs to be a bit of a bit of a catch up function that can speed through several years of updates just as you are arriving at it.

Can't wait to figure everything out again with all the changes when the next patch is released.

8

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.6a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: June 05, 2013, 04:19:04 PM »

For the autoresolve, probably just going to echo what others have said. Through out all my years of gaming on 4x and whatever else that had auto resolve functions I have ALWAYS avoided it when I cared about the results, and that is 95% of the time. Usually that stems from not knowing what autoresolve will do and not trusting it to account for it to play style of my units.

But having the button there for endless fly swatting missions is really good, like other's said, you are either huge with many armies/fleets (not sure if there will be multifleeting ) or you bumped into an army that is going to get smashed. It is sort of annoying to load up the battle sequence, deploy fleets, wait for them to close, start shooting them and chasing them down after, basically it offers no rewarding gameplay in any capacity.

But yeah having them AI know when they are outgunned via CR / Logistic points etc accurately and then fleeing 100% of the time (except if they are suicidal faction as you said) during those trivial encounters and then auto resolving the fleeing scenario only it would hopefully get rid of those painful situations.

Even if the lud faction there or whatever is crazy like that, that might contribute to the PITA of navigating their areas with having to constantly fight them, or you can perhaps keep their fleet sizes high enough that it won't ever be a boring smash fest, eg swatting3 scout ships is boring, but 10 of them, well, that is probably some fun fireworks.

For autoresolve values, I always thought it would be interesting to leave a spare pc running 24x7 putting together random fleet / loadouts/crew levels, running the fight sped up, then recording results. Then have it continue on forever in a monte carlo style simulation, eventually taking all that data during fight time such that you can find the closest match of the fleet loadouts in that data.

Since that would take forever, we really aught to set up a seti-online / folding@home distributed starsector autoresolve generator and put the world's computers to work crunching this important data. Clearly this is worth a couple month pause in development to get up and running, right?

9

General Discussion / Re: Not a list of planned features

« on: June 01, 2013, 07:03:57 AM »

Nice work!

For the open lanes vs explore... I like the idea of exploring a lot, I play a lot of games for that, but I also like the tactical gameplay that lanes provide. Maybe a good hybrid is to have space lanes as man made objects, hyper accelerators either at end points, or like a highway, they dot the entire highway, either a series of poles or rings that make up a lane.

Have special rules for traveling in them, maybe you need special engines to enter and exit at will, else you can only enter at pre built points. Or have a device that can pull a passing ship out of the lane to engage in combat.

When flying in them you can have different combat scenarios, maybe some ships are better made for fights in the 'warp'.

The gates could have a maintenance cost associated with them, or, there could be some faction that builds and controls the gates (like battle tech commstar for their comms).

Either way, have the player or factions be able to build gates / lanes, at not a trivial cost to build and maintain. That way support would spring up along established highways and see increased traffic, but then you could still stock up on supplies and venture off the beaten path and maybe even establish your own travel lanes (or sell your charts to ai factions who might build routes to them).

Since that would let you have a huge world at one scale, you can also include some more eclectic exploration engines than do things sort of like 7 league boots style jumps or accelerate you to high speeds but give you little steering and things like that.

I alway thought that was the best way to handle jump points between sectors while still making you feel like its a big world out there. At the end of the day you want to speed up repetitive travel times and draw players and the ai into common areas, but you also want space to feel vast and empty at times too.

10

Blog Posts / Re: Logistics & Fleet Management

« on: May 31, 2013, 06:42:36 AM »

I always knew this man was a genius

11

Blog Posts / Re: Logistics & Fleet Management

« on: May 30, 2013, 02:16:21 PM »

UI suggestion that I probably don't need to ask for but just wanted to check... is there a tool tip or window of some sort near the LR of the fleet that breaks down all the factors that pop into it?

Like I see say LR 5% in red, so I know I need to fix it. I mouse over it (or maybe is already shown) to see all the things contributing (which already I can't remember ) but like Marine supply use 25%, crew supply use, loss from CR, loss from repairs etc.

Ideally you just want to visit that number, see you need to take action, then at a glance see a summary of problem areas so you can decide you want to say eject some marines into space, mothball a ship or two and halt repairs so you can limp back to base with your phat loot.

It also will help players see all the factors that lead into the LR rating so they can better think on how to form their fleet.

Also color coding of red/yellow/green on number values help people know whether a number is "good" or not, like if I had not read the posts here, seeing a repaired ship at 50% CR with my green crew would make me think the ship needs a lot of work, but if it's colored green it at least hints to me that 50% is OK.

Maybe calling it "+50% CR" would work too, just something to throw my brain off 50% being "at half" and instead more along the lines of "50% more", if that makes sense.

Anyway, interesting updates as usual, I like the LR idea a lot and I can see how those factors again drag more supply ships into fleets, which I like a lot.

12

Blog Posts / Re: Fleet Encounter Mechanics, Part 2

« on: April 10, 2013, 07:52:57 AM »

I can think of a few reasons

Good points, so perhaps early on it won't really be the best option, but as the size of fleet battles increase it will become more and more a balanced tradeoff.  Sounds about right, it will of coarse all come down to the numbers, but thinking of it that way it doens't seem as one sided a choice as I originally thought.

13

Blog Posts / Re: Fleet Encounter Mechanics, Part 2

« on: April 09, 2013, 07:07:30 PM »

Was wondering about the two boarding options, why you would end up picking the 'ships at a safe distance option', it seems that when you have smaller ships you probably couldn't afford to throw expensive marines away and risk them getting lost in space, so you'd want to dock up closer.

When you do have marines to throw away, you would probably be in a state where you have lots of money and bigger ships, which would nullify the risk of boarding due to the ship size/armor, or even the cost of losing a ship by the target exploding.  I have a feeling option two will be underutilized.  But either way seems like the numbers are probably tweakable to make it more so, but at first read it feels like the tradeoffs might hurt too much and you will always want to hard dock.

Also, could you leave some hooks in the API so someone can write a boarding combat game as detailed as the current space combat portion of the game?

14

Suggestions / Re: Keybindings are important [problems with strafing]

« on: April 05, 2013, 12:17:06 PM »

Not sure if worth mentioning at this point but keyboards do actually have different wiring under them as Alex said. I forced myself to switch to esdf and liked it a lot better for the more keys around in addition to having my hand stay on the home row while playing. I did this switch while into mmo's so I needed a lot more keys.

I eventually had to switch back though when I got a new keyboard ( a logitech gaming one no doubt which i thought would be fine) because it was crapping out when I was pressing 3 or 4 keys at the same time...it was just fine up to the D, but anything past that did not have the wiring it needed to not step on itself.

It is very possible this will cause issues with controls and vary keyboard to keyboard.

15

Blog Posts / Re: Fleet Encounter Mechanics, Part 1

« on: March 31, 2013, 05:55:54 PM »

Excitedly waiting for part 2

Harry was a recognized word for me. I think whether you say harass or harry it is equally confusing as to what it will do in game, even if you know the definition of the word. You will have to read a tool tip to know what is actually going to happen, and that in turn should help define what "Harry" means via the context of its affect on the fleet.  Hence, leaving harry in gives the two fold benefit of expanding the users vocabulary without sending them to the dictionary.