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1

Suggestions / Re: Request fighter and bomber wrecks be made less lethal.

« on: January 30, 2014, 02:48:43 PM »

Why can fighter and bomber wrecks even collide with othe ships? I always understood that fighters were so large because a) so you can see them and b) to conceptually represent the fact that they were flying over other ships. Why does it make sense then for them to suddenly drop down to the same plane as other ships when they are destroyed?

Making fighter wrecks not collide with anything would fix this problem.

2

General Discussion / Re: So, 3 years later...

« on: December 18, 2013, 07:36:28 PM »

If you can't catch the enemies you must be fighting with a shuttle, which is woefully slow. Although there isn't much than can catch a hound when it runs. Missiles work. Try starting with a Wolf (pick the second option at both character creation screens. I forget which other combos work), which is fast and powerful with its hax starting range advantage.

Also, do you know there is an autofire option? Put as many weapons (except massively high flux/shot weapons) on autofire as possible. Then you can concentrate more on controlling your ship rather than trying to aim weapons. The wolf works best if you set all the beams to autofire and manually control the missiles.

As far as smooth turing of ships, they do turn smoothly, the small ships just turn extremely quickly. I find this makes them hellish to control with the a and d keys personally (one of the biggest reasons I die is when I accidently turn the ship, putting my shield and all my guns in the wrong place). I normally end up strafing everywhere. You can change a setting in one of the config files which will allow you to lock the turn to cursor button, meaning you dont have to hold it down. Unfortuantely I don't remember where it is, but this is a setting that should definitely be more transparent.

I finid the hardest part of controlling small ships is strafing to cursor all the time, then having to stop strafing to cursor (but keep moving without turning the wrong way at the wrong time) so I can move my shield to block salamaders and the like. I hate salamanders.

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 13, 2013, 05:27:40 PM »

I don't think that's so bad. It IS a captial ship after all.

I think either capital ships are too expensive or we do not get enough base Logistics.  Before v0.6, the player had exactly enough base fleet points (25) for the biggest ship, the Paragon.  Of course, Astral plus fighters cost more.  Now, player needs Leadership and Fleet Logistics 2 to pilot the biggest ship with full crew.

It actually needs more, because running a solo paragon is hard now so you usually need a supporting fleet. I think it just seems like a problem at the moment because capital ships are so readily accessible. My understanding of the final vision of the game is that capitals will be extremely rare and uber expensive, most definitely end game ships, so logistics shouldn't be a problem then.

Which is a shame because personally I think they look a little underwhelming.

4

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Out of memory crash

« on: December 12, 2013, 02:02:44 PM »

You need to download and install the 64bit java client, then replace some files in the starsector folder with some of the new java files. I don't remember which ones sorry, but it's all on the forum somewhere.

That will give you 64bit java and basically an unlimited amount of memory to address at once for most systems so you can set the vmparams to whatever you like. Of course, this is only relevant if you have more that about 4gb of ram and if you set it too high it still might not work because there might not be enough unallocated memeory.

5

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 12, 2013, 01:55:54 PM »

I don't think that's so bad. It IS a captial ship after all.

6

Suggestions / Re: On frigate timers and ammunition.

« on: November 05, 2013, 03:37:28 PM »

I personally feel that it's not that frigates are too stong, it's that the larger ships are too comparatively weak because they offer no signifcant advantages over frigates.

Whenever you have a situation where one ship is significantly faster than the other with similarly ranged weapons, you enable kiting as a valid mechanic.This is exacerbated by the ship systems that greatly enhance your ability to get in and get out quickly and can not be fixed by adding in arbitrary mechanics ot limit the presence on the battlefield. The kiting still exists, you just need to be more efficient or use more ships.

Another solution that I would look at would be increasing the range of weapons as they are fitted to bigger ships. Something like a -20/0/10/20/40 % increase in range for fighters/frigates/destroyers/cruisers/capitals (numbers are arbitrary). This completely eliminates frigate kiting as a mechanic, with the exception of the Hyperion but then it was always the exception. That's what happens when you design a super ship.

As for the original suggestion, the ammo counts on frigates would be reasonably small. I don't see a problem with a Hyperion being able to destroy an Onslaught, that's what it's built to do. It wouldn't have enough ammo to destroy the entire SDF though.

AS to the beams OP thing, I've been getting the vibe that lot of people think beams are currently underpowered anyway, so I thought this would act as a kind of indirect buff.

7

Discussions / Re: Battlefield 4 - Released Oct. 29th

« on: November 04, 2013, 06:19:14 PM »

I might get this when I go back to uni and have regular access to my PC. Don't particlarly like all the map pack BS though.

8

Suggestions / Confirm leaving refit screen.

« on: November 04, 2013, 02:29:35 PM »

Would it be possible to get a conformation box (Are you sure? Yes/No) when leaving the refit screen after pressing escape?

Either that or discard any changes made when pressing escape, because I've accidently left the refit screen before and ended up with stuff I didn't want. It was annoying.

9

Suggestions / Re: On frigate timers and ammunition.

« on: November 04, 2013, 02:21:05 PM »

This suggestion is not about enabling or limiting certain playstyles though. I'm just proposing a less abstract and "gamey" mechanic than the arbitrary timer.

10

Suggestions / Re: On frigate timers and ammunition.

« on: November 03, 2013, 08:59:20 PM »

I think any ship that can outlast sustained fire long enough to have another ship run out of ammo is a problem in the first place honestly.

But as to your point, the timer is there so you can't infinitely kite a large ship and wait for just the right moment to zip in and fire a few shots before retreating. Especially in the Hyperion, this was a pseudo-exploit that made it possible for frigates to take out capitals singlehandedly. When you consider the cost and maintenance of a capital... this should never ever be possible because capitals would cease to be a worthwhile investment. They would actually become a detriment to the fleet.

I already feel frigate swarms are a little too good right now for this very reason. They are far easier to maintain and are cheap in comparison to capitals and even cruisers yet they can beat the SDF.

Just my two cents.
 

I'm aware of the reasoning behind the frigate timer, I'm not asking for it to be removed but be replaced with something less abstract. With the current mechanics it is still possible to kite the SDF to death with a hyperion and heavy blasters, it's just a lot harder and takes longer. With an ammo limit it becomes impossible to destroy everything.

As to frigate swarms, the strategy is still entirely possible if you can afford to bring eveything back to max CR. You just need lots of frigates and cyclicly deploy them. For best results max leadership.

11

Suggestions / Re: On frigate timers and ammunition.

« on: November 03, 2013, 04:04:52 PM »

You can already do that in the current version though.

I'm aware the frigate timer is changing in the next update to constantly tick down when enemies are in sight, but it has no effect on the Paragon, which is the only ship with fortress shield and can already outlast enemies ammo supplies if you wanted to.

12

Suggestions / On frigate timers and ammunition.

« on: November 03, 2013, 03:01:28 PM »

So I was playing around in some frigate v frigate battles and I can't help noticing how artificial the frigate timer feels.

When playing as a hound the time is so long that you run out of ammo before the timer runs out so the timer is sort of pointless anyway. When playing as a shuttle (which, incidentally, I feel needs a speed boost) or other high tech frigate the times are much shorter, which means you have to get in and destroy the target quickly.

This says to me that high tech frigates are considered objectively better than low tech frigates, since they are expected to do the same amount of work in less time. This is obviously true for the hyperion but since it needs a support fleet to keep it in action I'm not really thinking about it. When you have a slow frigate like the shuttle the problem is compounded because you are forever chasing things that can easily kite you in the early game (I only ever go after pirates to start with, so lashers and hounds. Also, I probably suck with the shuttle).

The thought that came to me while I was playing was: why not use ammunition supplies as the frigate timer.

This would require two things:
    1) giving all energy weapons ammo (with the exception of beams, which would suit them perfectly).
    2) making ammo pool scale with hull size, not be fixed with each weapon.

This in turn would mean that capitals would get so much ammo that they should easily last an entire SDF battle, but your frigates will only last a few minutes depending on how involved in the battle they are.

I think this is advantageous because it is less abstract than the frigate timer, makes conceptual sense and places a greater reliance on player skill.

13

Suggestions / Re: Meson beams: beams that make explosions!

« on: October 22, 2013, 08:03:45 PM »

They would have to be slow turning mounts, otherwise they would domiate fighters even more than beams already do. They would also be exceptionally efficient at killing heavily armoured ships with the ability to poke a needle hole in the armour.

14

Suggestions / Re: Large Reaper Torpedo Launcher

« on: October 22, 2013, 07:58:03 PM »

My problem with torpedoes is not that they are easy to dodge, but that they are so vulnerable against PD. It's mostly useless to fire a torpedo against anything but an overcharged target, even if it has only mediocre PD.

Well, that's what makes the torpedoes feel very unreal here.  IRL, a torpedo like this would use a stand-off munition and would be guided and fast.  Or they'd use a Phase engine and keep it Phased until it got really near a target (which can be done with modding btw).

Anyhow, I agree that they're just encouraging face-hugging, like a lot of the other weapons are atm.

Phase torpedoes would be the scariest thing in the universe. This would make them awesome. At the very least, if being guided is deemed too OP, reapers should have the ability to proximity detonate near big ships. Fighters setting them off would be very annoying.

15

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 22, 2013, 07:55:07 PM »

I fully agree, some sort of automatic or manual rationing would be very welcome. The other side of hat idea would be to allow the distribution of extra supplies to boost CR for a short time.

Nevertheless, this is not the right place to discuss that idea further. Maybe make a suggestion in the appropriate subforum?

You maybe right. Maybe another button is needed in the fleet screen. Sort of the opposite of "logistics priority" - call the current rate of repair, CR recovery and supply drain something like "crash repairs" and give the option for a slower less supply intensive repair and recovery rate. So if you notice it's getting hairy you can stretch your supplies at the cost of recovery time - not something you'd do when there's still hostiles around, but hey. Tradeoffs. Plus it'd give an explanation for why we can repair huge ships, while flying, within a day or so.

I think a slider of some sort would be the most effective solution, giving you the option to set it to absolute minimum usage which might be just enough to keep the crew alive but not recvoer any CR or repair, maybe even slow the fleet down; or set it to absolute maximum usage which uses as much as possible to get everything up to working speed as quickly as possible (and the crew might get start getting fat).

Or anywhere in between. Depending on how micro intensive fleet management is meant to be you could have several sliders.