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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 - cerberusti

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1
General Discussion / Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« on: October 05, 2022, 02:59:47 AM »
To be fair, sensibilities have changed over time, and autosave is something many will simply expect in 2022.

I do not personally find it a big deal (having developed a habit of hitting F5 regularly at appropriate times over the years), but not doing something about this before a steam release would be a bad idea, as a nontrivial number of people will likely assume it saves for you and not do so manually.

It is really more of a polish feature though, and may be somewhat annoying without some optimization of the save process.  Background saves are also likely enough work that there is incentive to have a complete game before doing this.

That is extra true if it is related to the memory leak, and a save routine like this is a very obvious place a reference to an object can persist too long and cause what is essentially a memory leak.  Running the base game with the only changes being to settings to disable the flash on kill and allow 240fps (which it works fine at), and pausing and tabbing out rather than closing it, I can get through most of a campaign before it must be restarted.  That is not bad at all, but if there is a 15 minute autosave and that contributes, it may come much sooner.

Compression is likely to be part of that as well.  It can be done in two different ways, either generating text and asking that it be compressed, or internally maintaining a compression table and using binary tokens (I tend to use a standard here, so you can get json with gzip decompression or similar, but custom formats are also common).  While the latter is much more efficient, it is also the kind of thing that programmers tend to like to do last if the specs are not very clear going in.

My guess is this is part of the full release, but we see better save handling after saved games start having an expectation of being compatible through releases.

2
Even better, get the missions from the plot station, and take any survey missions which pop up in the area.

If you do the repeatable core missions first it will frequently add more exploration missions without a time limit, and they tend to group up.  You can easily get three to five repeatable plot missions and a couple of time limited faction exploration missions all in the same area.

It rapidly makes a lot of money.  It can fund an early colony if you keep at it and do not attract much attention as well, although it is easier to wait a bit on the colony until you have the cash.

Hmm?  The Galatia missions are massively overpaid compared to everything else.

Try taking exploration missions sometime.  You will just barely break even at best after fuel, supplies, and crew costs.  Mostly, you will operate at a loss.  You will only remain viable via bounties, commissions, and smuggling.
Exploration missions can very much be worth it. They're basically the bread and butter of my playthroughs.

You're going to have to be more specific, because I can only imagine this works if you're only moving from objective to objective, not actually exploring the systems you stop in, which can take months by itself.  If you're able to survey a gas giant, you've likely got 10k in expenses, which will add about 30k to a modest trip outside the core.
Not only do they pay a lot, you can get several in one area.  They seem to try to assign them nearby, but you can get more than just a few by doing the pirate ransom, artifact buy, and vip missions then going back and getting more.  Eventually you have a stack of those missions far from the core but near each other, plus whatever you pick up out of the normal exploration on the way as you decide to go.

I like the lack of a time limit especially as it allows you to explore systems and pick up more missions, with the one or two normal exploration missions being the first targets on the way out.

You come back with a chunk of the map explored, many blueprints, and a bunch of cash from stack of missions you turn in.

3
General Discussion / Re: No autosave? Seriously?
« on: October 04, 2022, 02:38:42 AM »
Random idea: Make autosaves happen in background (i.e. game continues running).

I think it would be a good timing when player travels through a jump point, making a snapshot of current game state then do the slow file IO part in the background afterwards.
A traditional C approach to saving state without interruption involves marking page table entries which control the mappings between virtual and physical addresses as read only, then handling the resulting page fault if something tries to write to it by copying the information to a new physical page, updating the address, and marking it able to write before transparently allowing the write to continue.  The best example of this in practice is fork() on unix systems, but windows has substantial support through several methods as well.

A quick check of related terms says background saving without interruption is likely not easy to do in java, and would probably need to be handled by the application logic (which means it is potentially a lot of work to implement and debug, and may increase required memory).

My favorite suggestion so far is the warning message (maybe if it has been more than an hour since the last save). 

4
Even better, get the missions from the plot station, and take any survey missions which pop up in the area.

If you do the repeatable core missions first it will frequently add more exploration missions without a time limit, and they tend to group up.  You can easily get three to five repeatable plot missions and a couple of time limited faction exploration missions all in the same area.

It rapidly makes a lot of money.  It can fund an early colony if you keep at it and do not attract much attention as well, although it is easier to wait a bit on the colony until you have the cash.

5
General Discussion / Re: Enemy doesn't attack my ship
« on: October 02, 2022, 05:41:57 AM »
This sounds like a contact bounty against a merc(?) fleet with nothing but frigates with s-mods.  They are deceptively strong.
Strong contract bounties with small ships tend not to do this.  They tend to have the advantage and a fair number of total deployment points, and press it well.  Individual ships will cycle in and out, but the pressure will stay on your ships, so you will not get to a CR out position in a conquest.  It will be resolved before this in most cases, and the remaining ships will flee the field once you kill enough.

This happens when the fight cannot really get started.  In my experience this happens if you fly a ship which has long range weapons, and is fast but not fast enough.  If they are faster and shorter range, and you approach in a way where they cannot cleanly engage you (meaning you are strafing and not entering their forward cone of fire), they can run until everyone is out of CR, without any weapons being fired (or only missiles).

The general behavior is effective at preventing a player from soloing a fleet (it prevents you from quickly picking off enemies one at a time without much risk), but has the side effect that if you try this, the battle ends with everyone out of CR.

6
General Discussion / Re: Enemy doesn't attack my ship
« on: October 02, 2022, 05:18:51 AM »
This game both benefits and suffers from a very long development period.  The AI especially has had a lot of work invested into it, and the behaviors have many rules. 

Some piloting styles cause the AI to never engage, and how I am naturally inclined to pilot most ships causes this as well (especially small ships).  If I just go try to design and fly a ship without accounting for how to deal with runners, nearly all of my battles end as yours do, with zero CR ships trying to kill each other during engine out periods if they have functional weapons (even if I chase them the entire time).

I reported it as a bug a while ago once some of the methods of soloing fleets were removed, thinking it may be an unintentional issue, but I do not think it is, the AI just prioritizes survival.

The key is that the AI will rarely suicide into you, so if you pilot in a way where it never has an opening, and if it closed it would die, it will just back off until it runs out of CR or you do.  If they have multiple small ships, that can actually be a winning tactic for the AI, even if very frustrating for the player as they kite you to the time limit and a loss or a stalemate.

The last few games this has not been much of a problem for me, as I never have a fleet without a counter to this issue.  The options I have found, in order of effectiveness and ease, are:

1) Be faster.  Early game safety overrides and unstable injector are a very good idea, later you still want a couple of small ships built for speed which you can call in to chase something.  A hound or hyperion are good choices for this.  You simply catch it and kill it or make it stay and fight while you catch it with something larger.

2) Have fighters.  A single condor can make you immune to this in the early game, a larger carrier works for later.  Most fighters are pretty fast, and nothing can effectively run long term with fighters on it.

3) Greatly outrange the enemy.  You may need to disable weapons and target something else, but eventually the AI will nerve up and engage.  If it comes well within your range, and you are a larger ship, once you switch to it and open up it will not be able to get far enough away to live.  This is mostly a large ship tactic.

4) Massive burst.  Same idea as above, but with shorter range and enough dps to wreck small craft very quickly.  Just sit, wait, open up, and instantly wreck smaller craft before they can even move away.  Be sure to only fire upon a ship if you think you can get a near immediate kill with burst damage.

5) Remain at very high flux.  If you can load out a Paragon such that you can survive long periods at 80-90% flux (especially hard flux), the AI becomes very aggressive as it tries to push that advantage.  This is a late game tactic where you wreck everything as it closes, and everything tries to close fast (so it is very time efficient).  Set the bait, and try to push enough damage to rubble everything before it can hurt you.  Many frigates or destroyers at full flux will happily close with you and resolve the fight one way or another if you are at high flux in a large ship.

7
General Discussion / Re: Beam weapons need a buff
« on: April 09, 2021, 12:39:08 PM »
Again, beams are supposed to be support weapons, not main damage weapons. Other some fee exceptions like the tachyon Lance, beams are mainly used to support main damage weapons at low flux cost. I have an eagle with 2 gravitons and 1 ion beam and they do their job pretty well as a long range pressure weapon
If they cost more than they do AFTER you consider the effect of spending that same OP on vents, they are worse than useless: they hurt you more than they hurt the enemy.  Remember that.  The OP matters as part of their flux cost, because it's vents you won't have.  If you're filling slots with beams theres absolutely no way you are going to max out vents/caps, even without including the flux hullmods.
If you plan to win on flux, you have minimal shield damage to you, full vents, a flux distributor in most cases, and still need to get flux down a bit so that you are not at a deficit with the shields up and most guns firing.  Gravitons are amazing in that context.

I leave slots empty if I cannot support them as well.  That is a better idea than a gun you cannot afford to fire much.

Flux efficiency is very important in a weapon to be fired at targets with shields, although it does not matter as much for your anti armor weapons, so long as they are under manual control.

8
General Discussion / Re: Beam weapons need a buff
« on: April 08, 2021, 04:40:18 PM »
To each their own I suppose.

I default to graviton for slots which can hold it, and high intensity lasers are a real contender for large slots. 

Flux generated by gravitons makes their offense much less.  Most ships are not balanced with more flux dissipation than their weapons generate, and so they do much less shooting when under fire.  It also helps keep anything entering somewhat long range under fire, with its shields up, for very little flux cost.

The HIL is murderous in player hands, I can win against a mighty fleet with a sunder and a HIL.  It opens up armor very easily, has long range, and is easy to aim perfectly.  Soft flux does not matter so much as I generally do not fire it at targets with shields up.  In a turret it clears fighters and small ships very quickly, assuming you can power it.


9
It does slow them down, you are just not blasting the right planets.

It spawns bases well before they affect you I think, and if you find the base you can take it out before it does anything.  They will build new ones though, so you can never entirely get rid of them, and it is mostly not worth it to spend all your time path and pirate hunting.

It would be nice to be able to commission an admiral (or AI core) to take a fleet out and continually hunt pirate and path bases for you.

10
General Discussion / Re: Super Distant Colonies (100+ LY)
« on: January 12, 2020, 05:38:48 AM »
They are good even with an industry limit.  You really just need to harvest there. 

In my vanilla game I set up my colonies on three moons of the same gas giant, about 20 ly from the core.  It was the best spot in my opinion out of the approximately 40% of the map I have explored.

Cryovolcanic - moderate rare ore, moderate ore, diffuse volatiles (tectonic activity, extremely cold, low gravity)
Cryovolcanic - ultrarich rare ore (+3), abundant ore (+1), abundant volatiles (+1) (tectonic activity, extremely cold)
Arid - Extensive ruins, adequate farmland, sparse ore (-1), abundant organics (+1) (inimical, hot, habitable, decivilized subpopulation)

Every need is satisfied in faction by a very nearby moon.  Decivilized has a population bonus, although not a huge one.  My criteria were first to be able to satisfy every need in system, and second the best ruins I could find.  I liked the convenience of having everything so close as well, it won out partially for that reason.  Three colonies is enough for all industries and all colonies to have a high command. 

11
General Discussion / Re: Abandonware?
« on: July 21, 2018, 09:33:08 AM »
I dislike level scaling in Starsector now because it is too fast.  I level up faster than I can get more ships and weapons.  (I reach level 40 while still limited to pirate Eagle and Dominator clunkers and Open Market weapons, no way ready for max level deserter fleets.)  It was toned down slightly last release, but not enough.  It was better without the level scaling in the first 0.8 and before.  I read that it will be tweaked again so that level scaling will not be as ridiculous.  (Max level 5 from level scaling alone.)

As for bounties in general, they require significant resources (fuel and supplies) to travel to.  Having kill-steals is a huge blow.  Early game, player is living from paycheck to paycheck, or bounty to bounty.  Before 0.8, bounties were fairly close, and kill steals were not a problem.  Now, bounties are far away and need lots of fuel and supplies to reach with a proper war fleet.
It is very fast.  Last time I played I came back from my first trip out at max level, with loads of cash.  I had access to buy basically nothing.  It was not even like I barely hit it, I hit it before I even started the return trip, and the amount of real time was very low.  I think I liked the soft cap more really, although xp required to level could probably be increased by a factor of 5 or even 10 across the board.

I got a little lucky and with my dram and wolf combo managed to salvage a degraded Sunder, a HIL, and a freighter pretty early on that first survey trip.  From there it was over, domain era anything falls to that ship hard enough that any fleet is fair game, even the larger ones.  I could easily sustain a fleet on combat and other looting (which was not all that small by the time I got back, although also note that I do not even touch the combat talents).

That brings me to the more general topic of difficulty and balance.  This is going to be highly subjective because the game has a high skill cap, and there is a fair amount to know on top of it.  Some of us have been playing for quite a while off and on.  If you give me a sunder, a HIL, and a sector of the map which is full of unshielded craft, I am aware that I have won the game for all intents and purposes. 

A new player would not know that, and probably would not push out at that point.  They may not even try that combo.  If they did, the required precision piloting may cause them some issues.  The game has been in development long enough that things which pose a minor challenge to many players can be a serious challenge for someone new to it.  I imagine it can be pretty brutal, especially if you are expecting to just go in and kill everything every time without breaking a sweat, as in so many games.

12
General Discussion / Re: The point of survey missions
« on: May 16, 2017, 10:54:53 AM »
You might be scanning it to verify the loss for an insurance claim, that would explain all the repeat business as well.

13
General Discussion / Re: What Kind of Ship do you Pilot?
« on: May 09, 2017, 08:48:42 AM »
With a 40 level cap in .8 i reached it twice now with the only non-frigate ships actually used being some Scintilas and Flugents (had enough destroyers and cruisers, just no motivation to use them). Playing without mods maybe i would have used some more larger ships, not because they are actually needed at this level, but because there are no suitable frigate/loadout combinations to cover some gaps. With mods however you have frigate for every role (including escort carrier). Your officer development covers pretty nice for enemy development and you can run from anything to powerfull (BTW: I was able to beat without loses fleet with 3 Brilliants, 4 Flugents, 2 Scintillas and some frigates with 10 officer piloted frigates and cargo fleet reinforcements when some of them had to retreat).

I think this level cap is just to low. It's easy to reach and only suitable because current lack of mods and save transfer utility force you to restart often. I always preferred quick start and loved some fleet action, but hate to lose ships. With extensively modded 0.7.2/Nexerlin the game constantly forced me to take risks, but development really payed off. With the so well balanced 0.8 there are no risks and surprises, especially given the early game ability to run from any sector without having to find jump point and the AI cores that allow you to befriend any faction instantly. Actually the thing that managed to make my third playtrough really challenging was not intended game feature, but a bug that lowered by 150 points my reputation with independents

It is still possible to make one use large ships in .8 even with the level cap. Make far exploration unavoidable, change rules to prevent one from keeping most core factions non-aggressive. Make the more authoritative amongst them disallow military grade ships and various hull mods and weapons in fleets without own/ally issued commission. Add certifications/permits for various activities like salvaging and trading in factions like Hegemony (maybe even ad licensed legal and non-licensed contraband goods). Aside for being quite immersive such changes will make one hide in the shadows of the law in the start, then form own power against it...

Of cause when enough mods are ported to break completely balance in game fun will be back and one won't be able to rely solely on frigates.

I just changed my level cap since I wanted it to be higher too, see page 101 of main announcement topic.

I am flying a sunder with safety overrides, unstable injector, and a plasma cannon.  The rest of the fleet is mostly flying carriers, with a few enforcers and eagles in there for when I want more of a line.

I gave this a go but with autopulse since plasmas are non existent early game - loved it. Have to say I've always favoured giant missile barrages and long range weapons so I've never tried a safety overrides build.

An autopulse is usually better if you do not have a large fleet backing you, but I like the plasma to open up armor on targets for the rest to exploit.  It has enough OP if it is the only weapon (I do use extended shields to provide full coverage, if not you can mount a bit more).  You have enough speed to outrun missiles to some degree, but I usually let the cloud of fighters that is inevitably swarming me provide pd coverage.

My battle with the red station ended up with me hiding behind the onslaught and darting out to get the occasional shot off with the sunder (until it took the onslaught out and I ran out of CR, but by then I had taken out a side, and that made the astral I had restored for this fight and called in with a bunch of drovers able to finish the job). 

I mostly watched from that point on as they chewed it up, as I have no skills which buff my specific ship, so it is hard to justify flying something larger myself.  I think I will probably change the level cap as well, I liked it more with the soft cap (and that will mean I can get at least some combat skills).

14
General Discussion / Re: What Kind of Ship do you Pilot?
« on: May 06, 2017, 08:26:58 AM »
I am flying a sunder with safety overrides, unstable injector, and a plasma cannon.  The rest of the fleet is mostly flying carriers, with a few enforcers and eagles in there for when I want more of a line.


I just decided I cannot take a red level 20 battle station with a carrier fleet (or at least not this fleet, fighters get annihilated), so I guess I will drive back out there with some onslaughts and heavier gear (or wreck somebody up and see if I can salvage something better). 

15
The setup I am running with at the moment:
2 capacitors (20055 capacity)
100 vents (2068 dissipation)

Aug engines
ITU
Armored mounts
Advanced Gyros
Flux Distributor

2x mjolnir on the sides
storm needler in the front
4x dual flak in the center mounts
2x heavy machine gun on the side back
3x heavy maulers in the front
4x rocket pods
light dual machine guns in all small slots (not enough flux to support anything else)

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