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Starsector 0.96a is out! (05/05/23); Blog post: Colony Crises (11/24/23)

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Messages - AcaMetis

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1
Blog Posts / Re: Colony Crises
« on: November 28, 2023, 10:46:24 AM »
Ground defenses, if we're being totally honest, I'm not sure that they have too much of a role right now. They're neat conceptually but would much be lost if planets just had certain baseline ground defenses built-in with no industry to represent that? I don't think so. I could see reworking that at some point. I guess the only thing they really do is make certain core worlds that don't have them more vulnerable to raiding.
Maybe they can use a balance pass, but for what it's worth I do think it's a useful lever to have insofar as making a planet not a sitting duck without having to make it a minor fortress with an Orbital Platform/Patrol HQ.

2
Blog Posts / Re: Colony Crises
« on: November 25, 2023, 05:50:29 AM »
Interesting new system for sure, curious to see how it plays out.

That said, RE: League,
Spoiler
there really should be a way to threaten(/bluff?) those "enforcer" fleets with you, as representative(/unquestioned dictator) of your faction, making deals with other factions if they don't leave you (and/or the rest of your faction?) alone - pointedly calling the Hegemony the actual authority of Domain space and saying you'll ask them to patrol your volume if there's a need, some kind of business agreement with Tri-Tach "safe travel and freedom of commerce is our raison detre" Corporation and how the League is disrupting their precious commerce, parlaying with Kanta to keep pirates out of the local volume in the first place (with an underlying threat that those pirates will be turning their attention elsewhere in such a case, which a less savvy player might not realize is the reason the enforcers really don't like that particular option ;)), maybe even the League itself depending on which League sub-faction those Enforcers belong to and who they really don't want to end up reporting to/being replaced by. And, of course, it could be especially interesting to threaten/bluff to make a deal with the Sindrian Diktat, since they're allies of the League. And, you know, the Sindrian Diktat. There's a line of thought that's just going to go every kind of nowhere possible if the PC tries it, I feel like.

And yes, threatening to make deals with factions the League doesn't like absolutely should escalate their crisis. Even more so if you end up threatening a deal with a faction that's particularly not liked, and especially if you end up making good on that threat ;D.
[close]

3
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: September 02, 2023, 05:38:10 AM »
I'm sure there will be absolutely zero unexpected consequences to directly connecting the core worlds to a high threat [REDACTED] system down the line :).

4
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: August 31, 2023, 12:48:38 PM »
Quote
Hah, yeah. Might be kind of fun though, honestly; just imagining the visual of a bunch of enemy fleets coming out of slip-burn all around you.
I'm now imagining Pather tithe collection fleets blasting in at Mach 20, overshooting their target and coming to a stop several lightyears away...right next to a Hegemony patrol fleet in the core ;D. All the player sees is a weird blur in hyperspace, probably being dismissed as a sensor ghost.

Actually, that might be a good way to handwave other fleets ostensibly having this ability, but the player not seeing it used by them ingame - super fast sensor ghosts flying past so quickly you can't make out what they are before they're several lightyears outside sensor range.
Spoiler
And than it turns out those super fast sensor ghosts were never other fleets all along when one does end up coming to a stop next to you when you're in the abyss, instead revealing something else entirely ;).
[close]

5
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: August 31, 2023, 10:49:08 AM »
Oh, this is definitely player-only stuff.
For what it's worth I'm actually glad to hear this, because when I read "up to burn level 900+" my first thought was Pathers setting up hyperspace cannons to slingshot tithe collectors to every random fleet within a ~10 lightyear radius. Definitely looking forward to trying these things myself, though ;D.

6
Mods / Re: [0.96a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v8.4.5)
« on: August 16, 2023, 10:07:47 AM »
RE: The station faction information bug, something you can do is manually set your faction information after founding a station first by "renaming" your faction in the colony screen. If you do that the game will still bring up the faction naming window when you colonize a planet, but the information you put in earlier will still be there, so you can just click confirm.

7
General Discussion / Re: N00b questions
« on: August 06, 2023, 03:04:28 PM »
The Sensors skill gives you a x0.75 modifier to your Sensor Profile, a x1.25 modifier to your Sensor Strength, and adds +3 maximum Burn level to the speed at which your fleet is considered "slow moving". A slow moving fleet is harder to detect in certain types of terrain, and is able to avoid certain hazards when travelling through them.

As an example of how much the sensor profile reduction does, take a look at the screenshot. Normally my Sensor Profile would be 300 (base value) + 450 (the sum of the five ships in my fleet with the highest Sensor Profile) * 2 (from having Sustained Burn), +1000 (from having Sustained Burn) = 2500. The Sensors skill brings that down to 1875, which is little more than a Domain-era Sensors Array, or little over a quarter of a map square, taken off. Obviously not an especially relevant example if you're doing smuggling runs in the core, but while exploring that difference can save your life.

In the other extreme case, where I'm going dark in an asteroid belt with phase ships in the fleet, you can see the sensor profile reduction doesn't make too much of a difference - ~31 instead of ~42. However in that scenario the +3 maximum burn level when moving slow comes into play. Without Sensors I'd be limited to Burn 4 if I wanted to keep a low sensor profile, since the slowest ship in my fleet has burn 8, and your maximum slow moving speed is half that. The +3 from Sensors pushes that up to Burn 7, meaning I can move nearly twice as fast while maintaining a low Sensor Profile. Needless to say that makes dodging patrols a lot easier, especially when you can see said patrols coming from further away thanks to the sensor strength bonus.

If you want to run a stealth fleet I'd highly recommend the Sensors skill. Mainly for the +3 burn level at which you're considered slow moving, but the combination of higher sensor strength and lower sensor profile shouldn't be underestimated either. Especially if you don't have Phase ships in your fleet to give you their bonus to reducing your sensor profile.

8
Suggestions / Re: What should the Historian ramble about?
« on: August 03, 2023, 06:08:40 AM »
I remember the historian talking about most major factions (or at least a topic central to said faction, I.E. Ludd for the Luddic Church), but I don't remember the historian saying anything about the Persean League. You do get to interact with the League a few times during the game's various missions, but I'm sure there's something the historian can add.

9
As far as I know the only way to get contacts is to do bar missions (bar the story contacts, though none of those are Pirate/Pather associated as far as I know). Some might require you to annoy one of the other factions, yes, but usually you can mitigate the damage a lot by managing to do the job with your transponder off.

Which can be hard for the "spawn a giant death fleet around this market while this mission is active" missions, but, well, let's just say you learn to tune those out sooner rather than later.

10
Contacts can offer you a steady supply of jobs that raise your rep with either faction, without costing you reputation with another faction. The Path (and other factions except Pirates, I think) also accepts AI cores in return for rep, although their monetary bounty on them is anaemic at best ;).

11
General Discussion / Re: Highest value S-Mods for Logistics ships?
« on: July 17, 2023, 08:15:11 AM »
Insulated Engine Assembly, Solar Shielding, and I rarely have the story points to burn on giving Logistics ships a third S-mod. If I did probably just Aux Fuel/Expanded Cargo as appropriate, though.

12
Trying to remember why the change was made; I think there were some issues where retreating ships would leave the side of the map and be impossible to fight.
For what it's worth that rang a bell in the back of my head, so I went through old screenshots and found this. I can't remember the context of the battle or whether that save was modded in any way, but it's a thing that happened on version 0.95a-RC12.

13
General Discussion / Re: Distance between player colonies
« on: July 14, 2023, 02:44:51 AM »
Colonies get an Accessibility bonus/penalty depending on how close to/far away from the Core worlds they are, and Accessibility determines up to how many goods a colony can import/export both in-faction and to outside factions. Distance between player colonies isn't a factor, only distance to the core worlds.

14
General Discussion / Re: Fleet management issue
« on: July 11, 2023, 04:21:48 PM »
Quote
I can't recall the others off the top of my head (maybe someone else can chime in if they remember?)
Mayasura and Yma, IIRC.

15
General Discussion / Re: Pirates.....
« on: July 10, 2023, 02:43:24 PM »
For the record it's indeed not unusual to see swarms of pirate fleets like that in a system that's being actively raided by pirates, and they do tend to cluster around jump points, pirate colonies, and (to a lesser extent) gas giants as well as hyperspace right outside the targeted system. Weakly defended systems like Galatia have an especially hard time clearing those pirate fleets out, since there's only few defence fleets active and they're weak enough to get ground down by repeated engagements with pirate fleets. Though even in a system like Askonia you're not guaranteed not to get jumped by a half dozen pirates the moment you jump into a distant jump point.

If you know roughly where a pirate base is located (either by discovering it, a bounty being posted on it, or going to a bar in a system being raided and buying someone there "something more palatable") the intel screen can tell you what system that base is actively raiding, and where to either avoid going or where to look for opportunities.

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