Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Planet Search Overhaul (07/13/24)
Finally, could take into consideration player-known blueprints.I think this is the most important bit that's left to figure out because it's quite important. In my vision, factions should either harass you for "pirating" their blueprints (unless you legitimately acquired bp's from said faction somehow) or forbid finding some faction-specific BP's altogether. Again, the problem is very clear, I don't want quality of my suggested solutions to undermine its importance.
It would make life for non-commissioned players difficult.I don't see how this is a problem. If you want to proclaim political independence, you're expected to have enough military force to ensure it.
Nine-tenths of mod factions are specifically designed as, and balanced to be, just another polity operating in the Sector. It would be very strange if those factions made you jump through hoops to access their gear that Tri-Tachyon doesn't.The problem is definitely present in vanilla too. But as was said before, the more factions you have, the more obvious it becomes. Vanilla does not have that much tech to be gated behind things. But after installing 1-2 normal-sized faction mods, the market does get over-populated with cheap stuff you don't even need. So in my opinion, the vanilla progression system is not perfect, but that'll do for vanilla itself. But as amount of added content grows, the way player accesses it, needs to be changed too to avoid bloating.
The factions that aren't "just one of the boys" like Templars and Blade Breakers (to name two well-known cases)? Those indeed have specific rules for acquiring their stuff, for this very reason!None of them are updated to the current starsection version. Since I jumped on the bandwagon this version, I can't even try them.
From the OP:I agree that my OP suggestions to the problem are just bad. But the problem is absolutely there. However, over the course of the thread we came with better ideas like making military tech harder to access and the idea of making factions suspicious if you're using their tech without their approval.QuoteWhy don't mods routinely give more and better officers to the hostiles?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, unless this is in reference to whatever specific factions are being addedQuoteWhy don't they send hired assassins after me to reclaim the [redacted] bit of tech that I stole?Not within the scope of faction or content packs, though there's at least 1 mod where their faction officials will confront you over even possessing their faction equipment (the name of said faction eludes me). Vanilla can have the Diktat send some people to try to take the Ziggurat, not quite the same thing as it's quest-related. One Megamod, Nexerelin, introduces Revenge Fleets that are stronger than average and exist solely to try to kill you if you pick on a hostile faction too much. Another Megamod, Vayra's Sector can have factions put bounties on your head for doing similar things.QuoteWhy don't they routinely make my life harder by raiding my colonies all the time?In the beginning, Pirate raids and Pather sabotage were powerful and plentiful. This had made a lot of people very angry and had been widely regarded as a bad move.
Awesome mod btw, thank-you for updating, I've been playing with a friend over Parsec.wait hold on, are you implying it's already working like this for you?
I agree.But isnt this a design mistake? If a game is designed in such a way that once you figure out how to put SO on your destroyers or how to turn your paragon's shield on, you reach its mastery, it's exactly what's called shallow. What kind of depth are we talking about here if everybody agrees that "once you randomly find paragon/astral, the game won't have difficult content left to offer"?Many games have progression dictated by accessing new areas: you can get better loot only in areas filled with stronger enemies. Factorio has progression dictated by the infrastructure, since even if you could build trains right from get go, what good does it do, if you can't actually manufacture them?
Starsector has mechanics that can be used to gate content, but it doesn't use any of them to that end. The closest is that you have to defeat a Radiant or the Ziggurat to get it, no finding or buying it.
Which is to say, you should probably make a thread about progression in the suggestion section of the forum, because it's a vanilla issue.But the amount of content vanilla has is reasonably correlated with the length of progression path one needs to follow to explore it all. It's honestly not huge, but it's alright, especially with the latest [redacted] additions. The problem is that mods vastly increase amount of content you have, but they leave your progression path untouched leaving it as short as vanilla, or even making it shorter due to giving the player more options. Besides, after seeing the changes in the latest vanilla update, I expect to see more changes like that in the future vanilla, but I'm yet to see anything like it in mods yet. Which's the reason why this thread exists.
An example of difficulty that I havent seen pointed out in my short time posting and slightly longer time lurking is Aurira 4x. I believe this game is special for our case in that most of the complexity seems to be in ship systems and the actual combat. I havent put much deep thought into this, but Im wondering what concepts could or should be transplated, with minimal overhaul, leaving the question of researching individual modules aside, maybe research can stay with 4x style games (Which with Nex it totally could be but...). Could hull mods replicate individual ship systems, like a life support module adding crew capacity, while other modules add to the minimum required crew capacity. I dont know off the top of my head how much hull mods can effect, or whether you can duplicate them on the same ship, guess I could work at it or something.Honestly in my opinion, this game's combat system already has enough depth. And mods do a good job already expanding its breadth by adding more content to it. I think by far the weakest point is how the player gets access to all of it: too easily, too randomly, in an unrewarding fashion. Second weakest point is what you're expected to utilise this combat system on: I guess, expanding your fleet? But hitting the cap of your fleet size is not only trivial, you don't even need a fleet for it to start with, when you can just buy everything you need or produce it if you havent randomly stumbled upon it already.
It takes some time to find the most overpowered builds but once you're rocking SO frigate/destroyer, heavy fighter spam, Macross missile spam, or just Paragon/Astral, the game won't have a lot of difficult content left to offer. No amount of depth getting TO the endgame can prevent a player from eventually reaching it and gaining the experience necessary to make the next run a stomp. It's how game mastery works in a game that allows mastery.But isnt this a design mistake? If a game is designed in such a way that once you figure out how to put SO on your destroyers or how to turn your paragon's shield on, you reach its mastery, it's exactly what's called shallow. What kind of depth are we talking about here if everybody agrees that "once you randomly find paragon/astral, the game won't have difficult content left to offer"?
Factorio, Rimworld, Starsector, heck no game can maintain progression parity when you replay it unless you fill it with a metric ton of rng. You can't control progression without limiting the game to the point of reducing depth, or otherwise rendering it pointlessly inconsistent to the whims of lady luck. Adjusting your own difficulty isn't for everyone I get that, but it's one of the few viable alternatives if you really want to play again while still utilizing everything you've learned.This is just not true. Random aspect has next to no effect in factorio. You can play the same exact seeded run twice and you can build vastly different bases that scale in vastly different ways. And modded content multiplies that tenfold, so that even if you try to build the same type of base twice, you'll probably end up with something entirely different because of a tiny perturbation and butterfly effect. And even after knowing exactly what to do it'll probably take you at least 100+ hours to reach the end of a good mod's content (as in, you stop seeing new things) and you'll probably learn even more than you learned from your previous run.
Ultimately, I think when any highly replay-able game gets old and easy, you should step away from it for a while. Good thing about games like Starsector is that the modding community adds on so much more content over time, and even if it isn't "depth", one of them may turn up or get updated to eventually wow you enough to come back and realize you can still have a blast playing through the game.Well, yeah! But also no. I definitely have not put that much time into this game to even call it "highly replay-able". I did a vanilla midtech playthrough, vanilla high-tech and then sort of a carrier run. Then I tried heavily modded playthrough and discovered that I hit the end of the power curve even faster than I used to in vanilla. This is why I also created this thread, because I installed mods hoping they'll provide me with a longer playthrough but I got the opposite instead.
It does make it simpler but only because the vanilla game does not have this seemingly basic functionality to start with. Like, I find it hard to imagine a distant future where I have to physically travel from planet to planet to check what wares each of them provides instead of looking up some sort of online catalogue. In my opinion, the game should give the player a perfect knowledge of all open market wares and should be balanced around it to start with. In other words, having bad trading tools is not a good way to balance trade.Quote from: MadskillsPS btw I love the idea of your stellar network mod. it feels like something one would expect vanilla to have.
Hah, but that mod makes the game much easier (especially Market searches as it lets you cherry-pick ships and weapons easily).
I only have to propose specific solutions because time and time again people give me advice like "just increase number of pirate spawns 5 times" and "just bump tariffs to 50%", so I have to provide examples to show that bumping tariffs is absolutely not what I'm calling a deeper progression.Are you saying that in order to form an opinion on existing mods I must be one of this game's most prolific modders? It does not really take a master sushi chef to form an opinion on sushi.Right, except you didn't just form an opinion. You were trying to tell two sushi chefs how they're supposed to prepare their dishes, to stick with your example.
If theres an option to add a civilian tag to weaponry, the jank mining stuff and low op drones, thatd be reasonable, right?Honestly having to fight with civilian "weapons" because it's the only thing you have access to at first? -- sounds amazing from both meta-progression perspective as well as RP perspective.
I'll leave this low-effort (128 LoC) of mine at making the game more interesting: https://github.com/jaghaimo/starpocalypseI actually like where this is going. I had ideas in a similar direction too, like making factions suspicious if they end up spotting you with one of their high-tier ships from out of the blue (read: you are not under their comission and have not bought them from their military market). Sure, maybe not all factions, but I certainly would expect Hegemony to become suspicious seeing you sporting an Onslaught or TT seeing your paragon. Basically in my opinion in order to have a Paragon in your fleet, you need to become either Tri-Tachyon's ally (and buy it) or their enemy (and defend it).
Personal view: by not being able to (easily) cherry-pick the best weapons and ships the game becomes much more challenging and deep - feels more like roguelike where each run is different as you work with what RNG (salvage et al.) gives you.
-Mods adding ships or weapons that are categorically better than the median make the game easier, because the player can prioritize them while AI autofits will only occasionally land on them.Even though it's sarcasm, it's actually largely true. I agree with your formulation of the problem, but I disagree with your conclusion: it's certainly possible to add player-accessible content without making it easier. I also do agree that just randomly buffing pirates, luddics or remnants is arbitrary, anti-thematic and boring. However, not addressing the problem at all is not a solution either. In my opinion, best solutions come from limiting player's access to modded(and maybe even vanilla) content. Also making tech harder to acquire makes it more rewarding too.
-Mods adding ships or weapons that are categorically worse than the median make the game easier, because the player can neglect to ignore them while AI autofits will still take them.
-Mods adding ideally balanced ship ships or weapons make the game easier, because the player can utilize their specific strengths and weaknesses to yield a slightly more min-maxed ship, while autofits may or may not apply the new weapons very well.*
Though I do love the fact that he's trying to educate two of the game's most prolific modders on how to create a mod with proper "depth".Are you saying that in order to form an opinion on existing mods I must be one of this game's most prolific modders? It does not really take a master sushi chef to form an opinion on sushi.
It sounds more that you have an issue with vanilla progressionI don't think vanilla progression is bad itself. It's just very basic/shallow. It's when people add content, they often add it in one and the same direction instead of expanding the game in all directions, this is where it gets sub-optimal, I think.
And Omega isn't that hard, nor are its weapons that good, anyway.Sure, it's not. But it's also something mods practically don't have? There's like 1.5 mods that even attempted this sort of exploration-style progression as opposed to the classic walmart-style progression.
Try raising the tariffs to 50%, and lower the amount of XP received if you want to lengthen your campaign. These settings are there to accommodate players like you.ok, imagine logic like this applied to factorio:
You installed mods that didn't promise anything of the sort. Traditional faction mods offer more ships and weapons and planets, not a longer playtime. People install them because they want variety, maybe a different flavor or playstyle, not because it's literally going to add story content. It's not a problem if a project's goal doesn't align with your vision of what it should be; that's merely a difference of opinion.This is not my personal opinion by the way: we're playing starsector with a bunch of mates (parallel, independent playthroughs with different mod sets) and there's also a bunch of youtube let's players that have a similar opinion. So it'd be fine if I was a single lunatic with a weird taste, but it does seem to be a trend.
Another reason, often powerful ships introduced in the mods instead of being used by NPCs regularly are used as optional challenge, like boss battles in Seeker mods, HWB and IBB bounties and such, they don't attack in their own. Remants also optional challenge since they wont leave their systems, their raids in Nexerelin is rare, they only being threat in Ruthless Sector mod where they appear in hyperspace.I agree. It's understandable that SEEKER's bosses are not made to be recoverable by the player due to obvious reasons (which is good), but it's also sad that they're completely passive and there's absolutely no reason to actually fight them aside from bragging rights and some loot opportunities. I also don't really have an amazing alternative solution how to do it instead.
Wouldn't that simply be caused by having more experience with the game and already knowing what to do?This is certainly true to some degree. But it's definitely different from many other games. Take factorio for example: a vanilla playthrough of factorio takes me at most 5-10 hours. However, installing a single "Space Exploration" mod extends amount of content to at least 200 hours or so. Because SE not only makes vanilla goals way harder to reach, it also adds way more content after actually reaching vanilla endgame (it's where technically the mod starts). And this is the way most factorio overhaul mods work: they add more endgame content and/or make vanilla goals more challenging to reach. Krastorio, Industrial revolution -- you name it. And it's de-facto how mods in other games work, they are typically designed for players who already know the game as the back of their hand and they provide them with more content and challenge.
