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Messages - LarvaLounge

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1
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: October 26, 2014, 04:05:12 AM »
It might be an 'issue' with ISA fighters specifically, if it's really an issue.  I know ISA is meant to have the best fighter squads.

The ISA Heavy Fighter Wings (the ones with 3 ships, 2 Auto Blasters each, and shields) completely wreck other fighter squads, and I've watched a single fighter wing kill frigates without taking any losses.  Even if they did take losses they'd be replenished by a carrier, whereas the frigate they killed is just dead.
Plus, fighters have the advantage of being effectively immune to friendly fire and collisions.  They never get in the way, like frigates do.

That said, maybe frigates are just early game ships.  Once you can field a carrier, fighters are the way to go and it's working as intended, i don't know.

The ISA Heavy Fighter wings don't appear in the Simulator so I can't test them against a variety of frigates in a more controlled environment.


As for frigates, the Order-Class frigate is absolutely a beast with a good setup.  It's a really fun ship, but they can die when the AI flies them, unlike fighter squads with carrier support.
After flying the Order for a bit, my beloved Kentucky-Class Cruiser seems so sluggish.

2
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: October 26, 2014, 01:37:07 AM »

Deploying everything at the start would be a bad idea; what you could do then is deploy a frigate, retreat, force the AI to stand down to avoid a huge CR loss, and then disengage because it would be unable to pursue after standing down.


I thought that the 'Harry Enemy Reserves' option solved the problem of enemy fleets under-deploying and retreating, for both the player and the AI.
Deploying a full force should not be a risk, due to mechanics already in the game, namely 'Harry Enemy Reserves'.

I'm still playing the previous version... maybe something changed.  Or maybe I misunderstand the problem.

3
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: October 25, 2014, 04:10:09 PM »
@Okim:
I realize that.  However, I have an embarrassing amount of time and energy invested in my current campaign, so I am not all that anxious to start over, haha.
I guess I need to get used to the idea.  I'll probably try out the new Vanilla game, as well.

Out of curiosity, are you planning to do any balancing of ships, weapons, or hull mods with the update?
I've spent tons of time testing out different load-outs.  Certain weapons are, I would say, about twice as good as anything else you could put in that slot.
I don't want to suggest that my favorite guns get 'nerfed', but I think others could be brought more in line.

Also, and I think this might be a Starsector issue more than Ironclads, I feel like fighters and bombers are too good compared to frigates.
I fly an ISA fleet and there's no point fielding a frigate unless I feel like flying it myself.  Fighters and bombers are just plain better, and FAR less trouble to deal with.




4
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: October 25, 2014, 05:09:10 AM »
I recently started flying the Order-class frigates from the green faction in Plex starsystem, whose name I forget.

I have been checking there often and they don't seem to resupply ships for sale there.  It's been something like 6 months of in-game time and no new ships.

I noticed something else strange, while frequenting Plex Starsystem looking those frigates.  When I buy up all the fuel there, and hit escape to exit back to the station menu, 250 fuel appears in their stock again.  I can keep repeating this for as much fuel as I want.  Is it supposed to do that, or am I encountering a bug?



5
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: September 15, 2014, 06:27:10 AM »
Ahh OK, I think that when you are in the Pirate Station and hover the mouse over the Scrambler Device, the description is different than the description you see when you actually own one.  Before you buy it, it seems it is only meant to help you escape tough fights, or something... also it says it only works for fleets less than 60 fleet points, which isn't true, unless I don't know what a 'fleet point' is.

Anyway that thing feels like cheating, haha.  I might get rid of it and face the consequences of my terrible actions.

And yeah I've killed Alien Motherships and Rock Flies.  My current game is level 52.  I've pretty well explored all the systems, and killed anyone (or anything) there that wasn't polite. 

Well, actually I didn't try to communicate with the Rock Fly...


Anyway, once again, fantastic mod.  And thanks for the helpful replies.  Keep up the nice work.  I'm sure I'll still be playing Ironclads for some time.  Cheers.

6
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: September 15, 2014, 01:35:54 AM »
Cool. Thanks for the info! 

It pains me to go crazy on the other factions.  They are all so darned polite when I 'communicate' with them, but alas, I need more ships to blow up. <shrug>

7
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads TC 7.2 (7/8/2014) [for 0.6.2a]
« on: September 14, 2014, 08:36:06 PM »
I have to say that I love this mod.

I originally discovered Starsector something like a year ago, while looking for a game similar to EV Nova.  I got into Exerelin at the time, and despite being a great mod, it doesn't exactly give me the experience I'm looking for.  It basically plays out like a giant RTS (in which you are only one 'unit', out of the hundreds of fleets that eventually start spawning), rather than a persistent sandbox type world.

I didn't try Ironclads back then because I was hooked on my beloved Tri-Tachyon ships.  I recently decided to give Starsector another try, but was disappointed that the Vanilla game hadn't developed much from where it was.

Finally I tried out Ironclads and I do not regret it.  Fantastic work.

I am playing as ISA faction and I do wish I had a bigger variety of enemy fleets to fight against at high level.  I noticed that pirate fleets adopt ships from the faction's space they inhabit.  Maybe the pirate factions could occasionally send out a full battle fleet akin to the Military defense fleets, with battleships (not mothballed).  It could be a rare occurrence, but would give a non-pirate player the chance to fight the various factions' full strength fleets once in a while.

Related Question:  If I go renegade in my current game and start attacking friendly and neutral fleets, is there a way to pay them off at some point to become friendly/neutral again?  And will I be able to get back into the ISA Military if I choose to?  Or is it a one-way trip to being total outlaw?  If so, I'll want to get a ton of those experimental phase-jumping destroyers made before I do it.

8
Suggestions / Automatically re-assign escort leaders
« on: October 23, 2013, 02:20:42 PM »
I use the escort function constantly to keep groups of ships together and fighting the same enemies.  It's a very useful command.  If I want 5 frigates to take and hold a point, I select them all and make them follow one frigate, then assign that one frigate the order.  It keeps them in a tight formation, rather than one or two going off and doing their own thing, and getting killed.

If the squad leader gets popped though, the other ships go a little haywire, trying to figure out what to do next.  That's probably realistic, I guess.

I'm wondering though if a new leader can be automatically assigned the rest of the escorts, and continue with whatever the disabled leader's objective was.


It should be the same type of ship, when available... or the next largest ship type, if not.  So if a Cruiser is leading Destroyers and Frigs, one of the Destroyers takes over if the Cruiser dies, etc.

9
Suggestions / Re: Assignments showing roaming area of ships
« on: October 23, 2013, 02:11:19 PM »
Well, the point of the long leash is not so much to protect that specific area. It's more like maneuvering space for the ship so it can still evade fire and flank enemies. If it were smaller, I imagine that the combat value of any ship (maybe with the exception of the Paragon) with an assignment would be significantly reduced.

I see what you mean, but the ships always seem to rush to the edge of their allowable area to meet any nearby enemy, anyway... so at that point, their maneuverability is just as limited, really.  The current area is huge, I think an alternate one half that size might be useful without restricting the ships too much...

It's just as much about the AI behavior, as it is the length of the leash though.  If a ship is guarding my Sensor Array... I don't want it flying half way across the map to try and engage any nearby enemy... I want it sitting on that point protecting it.  Even if the 'leash' were just as long, in theory, it doesn't mean the ship has to be tugging at the end of the leash any time there is an enemy nearby.

Perhaps different waypoint types that give the ships different types of behavior would be a better solution.  A Guard WP might cause the ships to hold position until attacked, or an enemy enters an area that is smaller than the length of the leash for example.  A Patrol WP might let them move and attack freely within a larger area.

10
Mods / Re: [0.6.1a] Exerelin - Dynamic Sector and Faction War - v0.61
« on: October 22, 2013, 02:40:52 PM »
Are Prisoners and Agents meant to keep appearing in the storage facility?  I had 3 Prisoners and 2 Agents there since pretty early in the campaign.  I remember seeing the messages about them being put there, at least once or twice.  Long ago I used all 3 prisoners and one agent and no more have ever appeared.  This is over many years of game time.  Currently my home station is occupied by those rotten Hegemony folks, i don't know if that effects it...

11
Mods / Re: [0.6.1a] Exerelin - Dynamic Sector and Faction War - v0.61
« on: October 21, 2013, 10:25:36 PM »
@Zaphide:

I am running 64-bit Java.  I used the 'copy my own Java folder into the SS folder' method.

I set the memory allocation to 2048-6144.  I had it lower but upped it each time the save got too big to load.  It seems to have stabilized here.  Saves got up to 800 megs at one point (I have Zorg Hive installed and un-compressed saves) but they seem to stay around 600-700 most of the time now.

The game runs a little choppy when flying around, not in battle.


It has occurred to me that I am assuming that the system I found is the Zorg Hive home system.  I think it must be, because I rarely saw their fleets the entire game, or got messages about them taking or losing stations, and everything else seems occupied.  But maybe I am wrong.

12
Mods / Re: [0.6.1a] Exerelin - Dynamic Sector and Faction War - v0.61
« on: October 21, 2013, 09:14:14 PM »
I have some suggestions and observations, based on my time playing Exerelin.  
My campaign is 24 systems, up to 5 stations per, 9 total factions (4 Original, Zorg Hive, Gedune, Junk Pirates, Kadur Theocracy, Qamar Insurgency).
My character is level 51, TriTachyon.  The game just started cycle 216.

First of all, as we talked about before, I think Factions need to spend more resources on defense and less on invasions.
I think it needs to scale, percentage wise, based on how many stations they own.  If you only have 1 station, then spending 50% or more of your resources on taking another station makes a lot of sense.  If you have 10 stations, then spending 50% on offense means your attack force will be 10 times bigger than the force defending any one of your stations... which is why we get dozens (or more) of fleets attacking a station defended by 1 or 2.  The bigger the faction gets, the more % of resources they should put toward defending what they have.  

I wouldn't want to sway it so much that stations never get captured, but as it is now, they never fail to capture without the player's intervention.


Next, I'm noticing some odd behavior with where (and IF) factions send their Boarding Fleets.

I'll give examples:

While defending a station from an overwhelming invasion in my home system, the station suffers a catastrophic accident and goes neutral.  While I continue to hold off the enemy Boarding Fleets and my CR is rapidly dwindling because now I can't land to repair, I watched several of my faction's Boarding Fleets cruise by, headed to some system we don't occupy, and shouldn't care about while our home system is being invaded by a hundred enemy fleets.  It was infuriating.  It seems like targets for Boarding Fleets are random and nonsensical.

Now that my faction is down to 1 or 2 stations , I notice some other odd behavior.  Our long time enemy, Hegemony holds most of the system that one of our stations is in.  One of the Hegemony stations went neutral several days ago.  Nobody has taken it after, I'd say, years of game time.  Hegemony ignoring it does not surprise me.  They have a huge empire and are at war with Sindarian Diktat, another huge empire.  But TriTachyon (my faction) has practically nothing, and seems quite content with it.  I saw a TriTachyon Boarding Fleet flying by the station, and thought "Finally!"...  but the Fleet says "Patrolling System" or something like that, and won't take the neutral station.

It seems like, in both those first 2 examples, Fleets get an objective when they are created, and won't change that objective if a more 'important' objective comes into play, even if that 'important' objective is literally right next to the fleet (I say 'important' because it's my opinion only.... but one's home system should be priority, no?) And what's more, it won't change it's objective even when the original objective is complete, or becomes impossible for whatever reason.

I also notice that Boarding Fleets will chase enemy fleets around rather than heading straight toward the objective, which is foolish.  I don't know how much control you have over some of this behavior though.


The one Ally my faction has had nearly the entire campaign, has been the Zorg Hive.  I haven't seen them much, but I finally today found their home system.  They are in a little cluster of 3 stars that are in the corner of the sector map pretty far from any other systems.  These 3 stars are right on top of each other.  If you are in hyperspace, it's just one big glob of planets/suns.

What's strange is that Zorg Hive have a 5 station home system...  they own 2 stations there, Pirates have come and taken 2, and there is still one neutral station.  The other 2 systems are completely unoccupied. No wonder I haven't seen Zorg much, they never expanded.  Something stopped them from ever taking more than a couple stations and it wasn't the Pirates, because the Pirates only went out there recently.  I don't know if it was just RNG silliness, if they got beat down by their own Rebel Dissenters, or what.


Anyway, sorry for the long post.  Hopefully there's something useful here for improving this fine mod.


13
Mods / Re: [0.6.1a] Exerelin - Dynamic Sector and Faction War - v0.61
« on: October 21, 2013, 07:03:27 PM »

Hah I think that is from Kadur Theocracy (could be wrong though). Regardless, that mod has some great ship names :D



Oh, the crazy ship names are coming from mods?  I wasn't sure about that.  I really should probably play Vanilla for a while.

14
General Discussion / Re: OOS simulation
« on: October 21, 2013, 05:19:02 AM »
This is an issue I've thought about as well.

I'm no programmer, but...
reading "Explore hundreds of star systems" on the front page...
and playing a 24 system Exerelin campaign...

Yeah, something will have to change.

15
Suggestions / Re: Assignments showing roaming area of ships
« on: October 21, 2013, 04:20:21 AM »
+1.

Would also like to have some way to put ships on a much-shorter "leash" than we can now.  I'd really like to be able to use my CR to set up decent tactical arrangements :)

I agree with OP.
I agree with having option for shorter 'leash'.  The current area they cover is pretty big.  Sometimes that's ideal, sometimes it's not.

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