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1

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

« on: October 16, 2020, 04:01:28 PM »

Goodbye, Drover, I hardly knew ye.  Let's welcome our new star, Heron!  (kidding, I'll have to try it out.)

I'm really excited about almost all of the changes - lots and lots of irritants removed (like hunting down tiny evasive fleets).  Not sure about Needler/Railguns, though.  And I suspect that without a reduction in OP the nerf to Deck Crews might be a bit harsh, and just lead to dropping it altogether (which is fine with me).

Piloting REDACTED ships sounds like fun, too.

2

Suggestions / Re: Additional column "available" in custom production tab

« on: October 15, 2020, 01:32:25 PM »

Good idea.  I'd also like to see "owned" split into "used" and "free"; currently "owned" does not count "used".

3

Suggestions / Re: Please add an "open mod directory" button to the launcher

« on: October 13, 2020, 02:35:14 PM »

Oooh, I like this (though honestly a path string would be fine).  It would also prevent a bunch of Google searches for "Starsector install directory".

4

Suggestions / Re: Achievements ideas for starsector

« on: October 13, 2020, 12:18:25 PM »

I've never cared about achievements.  They actually have them for nonbranching visual novels on Steam, which is pretty funny.  However, I did like Badass Points in Borderlands 2, aside from the ones that were co-op only.  There were never necessary and only marginally useful, but always made "just playing the game" feel like progress even when you didn't find any good loot.  And many of them, like dealing X damage with an elemental shield, made you play the game in interesting alternative ways that you might have otherwise ignored or overlooked as "not optimal".

5

General Discussion / Re: Best exploration fleet?

« on: October 13, 2020, 10:18:37 AM »

In my experience, putting any sort of combat equipment on logistics ships ends up being self-defeating; not only could you have given them more storage or a buff to your surveys or salvaging, but if I have to deploy a colossus or a prometheus, things have gone horribly, horribly wrong.  After I've seen to their logistical use with expanded holds, efficiency or whatever, I tend to give them unstable injectors, armor mods and such; anything that keeps them alive and helps them disengage faster is worth far more in my opinion than whatever minor contributions they might make to combat.

Phaetons are kind of a special case, because they only need to start full of fuel, then they become a liability, like early rocket stages that are discarded during launch.  Once you get to your destination and you're half-empty, it doesn't really matter if you lose one, and they're easy to replace once you get back to civilization.  Furthermore, +30% cargo for +50% cost is not hugely compelling to me on a civilian ship except when you're at the fleet size cap.  Anyway, carrier AI plays it pretty safe.  I have lost a Colossus this game, but not a Phaeton.

In terms of "What is the best exploration fleet", it would not surprise me if primarily Tarsus/Phaeton carriers plus a handful of frigate/destroyer escorts was optimal.  If you lose some, you have extras.

A note on salvage gantries: I'm pretty sure they only increase the amount of regular loot you find, such as metals, fuel and supplies; I don't think rare things like blueprints are affected.

Yep, but considering the OP is running out of fuel and supplies, that's exactly what he needs.  They have diminishing returns though so I don't bother with more than 1 (destroyer-size) in a fleet.

6

General Discussion / Re: Starsector has ruined Mount & Blade games for me

« on: October 13, 2020, 10:04:27 AM »

I fully support indie devs and smaller dev companies such as Tale Worlds, sunk thousands of hours into Warband and Viking Invasion, yet was utterly dismayed with the quality of launch of Banner Lord.

When it was in development for 10 years, I really didn't understand how it could possibly be unfinished at release, but there you have it...

Another game to watch out for is Subnautica Below Zero.  I waited a year after it became available on Steam, then started, assuming maybe some of the end-game content was incomplete.  Then after a couple weeks (fortunately I had not played much), they invalidated save games by completely dumping the original start and storyline and who knows what else (and this is for a game with a lot of voice-work).  I don't recommend touching it until final release, "Very Positive" reviews notwithstanding.

7

General Discussion / Re: Best exploration fleet?

« on: October 12, 2020, 06:15:48 PM »

I normally slap survey equipment and fighter bays on my cargo/fuel ships.  High-resolution sensors plus survey equipment can fit on a Mule since it doesn't need Militarized, and Pirate ones also have shielded holds, making it a decent utility freighter despite the supply cost.  Alternatively, Hegemony civilian ships are pre-militarized, allowing extra logistic mods (sensors, efficiency, militarized, augmented field drive, expanded cargo/tanks, survey module are all useful for exploration but you can only pick 2 excluding built-in ones).

Personally, after prioritizing logistic skill perks, I don't have much trouble with supplies/fuel, and I lug a Legion around with my 45-ship fleet.  Normally I find most of what I need salvaging.  Salvage gantry ships are helpful there.

Incidentally, Tarsuses and Phaetons are extremely efficient carriers, at 3DP and 2 fuel/LY for 1 wing, with decent armor and 4 small ballistic slots.  Crew costs 10 credits/month and converted hangars add 20 minimum crew, so there's that too, but they still compare well to a Condor.  You can give them Wasps or Broadswords to minimize crew losses.  In my current game I've been routinely deploying a Phaeton as a carrier and it's racked up an impressive amount of damage dealt (same with the Colossuses, but they are not really efficient enough to use that way).

8

Suggestions / Extended Weapon Specs

« on: October 12, 2020, 04:08:53 PM »

The in-game weapon specs are already quite informative.  There are just a few things that are not covered, which would be helpful:

1)  Numeric projectile velocity.   For missiles this is listed as fast/slow/etc, which is marginally useful.  But for guns it's absent, which makes it hard to determine what is useful for point defense, for example.
2)  Turret rotation in degrees/sec.  Again, this is sort of there, but unquantified.  This would also be useful for missiles.
3)  Explosion radius, for anything with a radius, like flak and torpedoes (?).
4)  Burst duration for burst weapons (not very important).
5)  Weapon HP, if it's different for different weapons (?).
6)  Whether it will target/prioritize fighters.
7)  Whether it will target/prioritize missiles.

If these were programmatically derived, rather than Strings (which seem to be the case for most fields, given the way burst count, damage, and DPS values are displayed very differently in different mods) then it should be pretty easy to include the exact values.

9

General Discussion / Re: There should be some ways to make having high armor worth it

« on: October 09, 2020, 10:02:12 PM »

Base armor is very significant on the ship with the highest armor in the game, for which IM1 is least relevant, and even then IM1 is what decides damage once armor is stripped, rather than base armor.  On other ships with less armor, IM1 is even more important.

10

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Re: [Late Game] Battles & Colony Management ruin FPS gradually & permanently.

« on: October 09, 2020, 09:35:10 PM »

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but the one time I had a massive permanent slowdown - which was solved by saving (which took a long time), exiting, and reloading - was when I put a whole bunch of stuff into storage.  The game was fine; I pushed a bunch of stuff into storage, and while doing that, it got extremely sluggish...  and never recovered.  Since people mention this sometimes happening after a big battle or visiting a colony, I wonder if inventory management could be involved.

This was a modded game with Nexerelin and various others...  specifically:

{"enabledMods": [
  "raccoonarms",
  "automatic-orders",
  "lw_autosave",
  "alportraitpack",
  "alibportraitpack",
  "alrnportraitpack",
  "blackrock_driveyards",
  "CombatAnalytics",
  "DisassembleReassemble",
  "Imperium",
  "lw_lazylib",
  "ArkLeg",
  "luddenhance",
  "MagicLib",
  "nexerelin",
  "ORA",
  "TAR",
  "SCY",
  "shadow_ships",
  "swp",
  "speedUp",
  "Sylphon_RnD",
  "THI",
  "transfer_all_items",
  "US",
  "lw_version_checker",
  "yrxp",
  "shaderLib",
  "prv"
]}

11

General Discussion / Re: There should be some ways to make having high armor worth it

« on: October 09, 2020, 08:38:16 PM »

Armor is great already. High Armor is already massively better than low armor due to the 5% rule.

...unless you have Impact Mitigation 1, which makes it irrelevant.  But I agree that armor (on un-captained ships) is most relevant once it's been stripped, which is a bit counter-intuitive.

12

Suggestions / Re: Flares should be usable during venting and overload

« on: October 09, 2020, 08:33:41 PM »

i like the idea i also kinda wish there was a flare launcher you could add.. like a small ballistic slot or something as for the ammo count.. i think ammo should be on a slider where more ammo costs more OP and perhaps a "ammo 3d printer" ship mod that let ammo slowly regen

Well, there are mods for that. Limited ammo, and doesn't regen though.  But at 1 OP, it's pretty handy.

13

General Discussion / Re: There should be some ways to make having high armor worth it

« on: October 09, 2020, 06:20:32 PM »

I feel like this whole thread can be simplified into either (A) AI don't use armour to its advantage thus armour sucks. (B) Armor should stack better when going into extreme values, though only really applicable to onslaught or stations.

You forgot (C) Heavy Armor is bad because it has a huge disadvantage and a temporary advantage for a big OP cost while Hardened Shields and Reinforced Bulkheads are both better, cheaper, and strictly positive.
and
(D) Armor-tanking shuts down your weapons, so you need a bunch of hullmods to mitigate that.
and
...well, whatever, you're ignoring the thread.

14

General Discussion / Re: There should be some ways to make having high armor worth it

« on: October 09, 2020, 04:27:53 PM »

Spoiler

If the detriment were removed and Heavy Armor made cheaper, plus HA increasing residual armor fraction, I'd definitely take it sometimes.  Except for the fact that Impact Mitigation 1 makes residual armor completely irrelevant for any ship with a captain.  Armor is still slightly useful on ships without captains, but those are the ships you don't care about.

[close]

Armor-related skills truly need a revamp as they either don't make sense or make the already iffy armor modspecs redundant. Not even my 35k HP 50FP flagship that's able to defeat a quad lance paragon without a shield uses heavy armor and that's saying something.

Also, I did a pretty sizeable edit to the post you quoted, it's a bad habit of mine to think up more stuff to say after I post a comment, sorry 

No problem, I post and then edit frequently until I'm satisfied, so quotes rarely reflect the final state anyway.  I'm happy as long as people read it.  Your posts are worth reading, BTW.

15

General Discussion / Re: There should be some ways to make having high armor worth it

« on: October 09, 2020, 04:05:19 PM »

Could be radical, but why even have armour be reduced when taking damage? Onslaughts might be invulnerable to all but the biggest HE weapons, but that could be cool. Like the "paragon" of armour tanking.

I half-agree, and I think my "lossy armor" suggestion serves the spirit of that without the downside of armor boats becoming invincible.  Currently high armor gives armor*6.66 HP in damage absorption, while low armor gives more like armor*1 HP.  With lossy armor, all armor would be useful and extra armor for high-armor ships - which is currently mediocre - would actually become useful.  And for low-armor ships, increasing armor would actually increase damage mitigation, which it currently does not do, effectively.

It's critical for armor to be reduced when hit, so eliminating that mechanic is a no-go.  But the rest is negotiable.

That's actually a really good approach and it's got me thinking.

What if we raise the residual armor value to a stock 10% and expensive armor retrofits like Heavy armor actually increase both armor and residual armor percentage?

If the detriment were removed and Heavy Armor made cheaper, plus HA increasing residual armor fraction, I'd definitely take it sometimes.  Except for the fact that Impact Mitigation 1 makes residual armor completely irrelevant for any ship with a captain.  Armor is still slightly useful on ships without captains, but those are the ships you don't care about.