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1

General Discussion / Re: Expectations for 1.0

« on: May 23, 2023, 10:11:33 PM »

I think there needs to be one more balance pass to the in-game economy, before 1.0 is released. As it stands, black market trading is overpowered, relative to all the other economy options. If it is so profitable, black market use should also have greater downsides (greater relation penalty, fines if you get caught by patrols, etc).

Alex could do more to introduce more unique starts to add variety. Starfarer mode is interesting and should be in the main menu. Maybe a pirate/pather mode (permanent hostile relations with all factions).

The late-game definitely needs a patch as well. The current colony threat system is excellent and could be used to implement some kind of crisis mechanic. As the sector starts becoming more chaotic, a crisis bar ticks up in progress towards another AI war, economic collapse (like a bronze age collapse), or Pather terrorist events.

I think contacts and faction reputation need another look. Contact don't feel very important right now. Faction reputation also feels like a grinding chore with very little strategic choice. Both systems just involve repeating fetch quests for reputation gain without a sufficient reward at the end. Maybe one way is to tie faction relations to relations with contacts? For instance, maintaining high relations with very high/high importance contacts can lead to gradual faction reputation gain over time. The current agreement with the Pathers and Pirates could result from having very high reputation with a very high/high contact with either Pirates or Pathers.

More ships! I like the current roster, but it would be neat to get more ships in Vanilla.

2

General Discussion / Re: Been playing for about 40 hours, is there much left for me to do?

« on: August 07, 2022, 03:24:42 PM »

Have you found the special type of remnant that guards the hypershunts (the ones that drop the special weapons). Those are interesting pieces of late-game content.

3

General Discussion / Re: How do you fight difficult battles ?

« on: July 24, 2022, 02:53:08 AM »

1 ship wont make too much different in a huge battle, like 20 vs 20 ships.

A player-piloted ship is so much more powerful than an AI one. I simply don't see how it's possible to play the game without personally piloting a ship and destroying 10+ ships per battle. Like half the time my AI controlled fleet is just my cannon fodder, stalling for time while I pick off the enemy. And even if the AI is capable of taking down an even weighted enemy, half the time its not worth it because the AI takes too many losses over a long fight. Better to just pilot a battlecruiser and do 80% of the damage while cheap disposal frigates stall for time.

4

General Discussion / Re: My new shield shunt monitor build breaks the game

« on: May 03, 2022, 04:44:19 PM »

That just looks like an expensive crew suicide vehicle to me.

5

General Discussion / Re: Administrator Wages

« on: April 19, 2022, 08:37:55 AM »

Administrators get a discount if they aren't being used on an actual planet. What you might be seeing is the cost of admins while governing versus not governing.

6

General Discussion / Re: what's your go-to fleet compossition?

« on: April 04, 2022, 11:04:35 AM »

I use a pretty low-cost fleet 90% of the time.

The piloted ship is usually an Aurora or an Odyssey.

And then 10-15 tempests and as many tankers and cargo hulls as needed.

7

General Discussion / Re: SatBombing the Hedge

« on: March 22, 2022, 12:07:52 PM »

so how do i get rid of the Hedge(or any faction)? permanently without having to capture every planet they own.

You can actually decivilize some planet without suffering much reputation penalty with anyone.  Raiding doesn't create a reputation penalty with other factions. Planets decivilize after a whole cycle of being destabilized - so you just need to raid them repeatedly to lower the stability to 0 and keep the stability at 0 for a while. One quick way to keep the stability at 0 is to disrupt the spaceport; this will always create a massive shortfall of basically every commodity causing massive stability loss.

Interesting note, you can even decivilize a planet without making the faction hostile. Stealth raids (raiding with transponder off and with the planet having not recently seen you with transponder on) have a reduced reputation impact with the faction you are raiding; you don't immediately get hostile relations from a stealth raid. So if you repeatedly stealth raid, you can actually decivilize a planet without triggering hostilities.

8

Suggestions / Re: Revert Aurora nerfs from 0.9a

« on: February 21, 2022, 01:23:46 PM »

This is the main reason for my post. Both Aurora and Odyssey are not common ships, they both play similarly as a flagship, but Odyssey is actually worth it and it doesn't even slow down your fleet. Fury still has a place as an early game flagship tho, 9 burn, cheap, easy to get. Aurora is basically an elite version of the Fury, but made lame in comparison to Odyssey which is a straight-up upgrade.

I think the one sentiment that is repeatedly echoed is that, by the time you get the Aurora, it's functionally outclassed by something else (Odyssey, Ziggurat, or any capital class) given its DP.

Maybe the issue isn't so much with the ship's stats, but rather is the ship's rarity. Aurora is an elite, player-piloted 8-burn ship that absolutely clobbers every other cruiser and lower class ship. But most other capital ships also does that. By the time you get the Aurora, there's already a lot of better options for killing cruisers/destroyers/frigates so the Aurora becomes a kind of rarely used ship.

I think a solution might be just to make the ship more accessible early on when fleet battles are smaller and the Aurora can be very powerful. Maybe make the Aurora a rare derelict drop from some quests or something like that so players can reliably get one into their fleet early.

9

General Discussion / Re: Do people use small and/or medium burst PD for more than PD?

« on: February 03, 2022, 03:52:43 AM »

Hmm, I wonder how good burst pd would be for assault stacking AO and elite PD? I think both apply after ITU/gunnery implant range boosts, but an extra 400 range with its fast beam extend and accuracy is interesting!

I kind of want to try kinetics + burst PD + heavy burst PD on an eagle/falcons with an officer and see how it does now. Maybe with arbalests to save on OP/be efficient? On the other hand the extra range and dps from HACs is probably better.

I think adding expanded magazines will help a lot with that skill set. A full burst from 3x small BPD and 3x medium BPD deals only 3368 energy damage. That's just barely enough to kill a frigate that's fluxed out. Expanded magazines brings the damage up so that, even accounting for shots wasted (on shields or other stuff), an eagle can reliably burst a frigate.

10

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Starpocalypse 2.0.0 - more apocalyptic settings

« on: December 30, 2021, 03:51:26 AM »

Is anyone finding that the download from github is missing the mod_info.json file? The download doesn't contain it and my launcher doesn't detect the mod.

11

General Discussion / Re: The State of Phase in 0.95.1a

« on: December 17, 2021, 07:12:00 AM »

I hadn't used any phase ships before. Started a new game with the current version with the idea of making a stealth phase fleet. The first ship I tried was a Harbinger and I don't even know what it's supposed to do other than waste supplies. It just constantly goes in and out of phase when it's not near any ships, meaning most battles it never makes it into combat and just causes the battles to take longer because of the slow motion effect. When it does get into battle, it just sits there and eats damage and dies. It can't 1v1 a ship half its size.

It's not really an AI viable ship - Harbinger too under armored to effectively kill ships out of phase. It's really a ship for player pilots to cheese with. Reaper Harbinger is one of the best builds - I cheesed the redacted fights easily using 5 suiciding reaper harbingers in 0.95. Haven't tested it yet in 95.1 tthough.

12

General Discussion / One or Two Radiants

« on: December 16, 2021, 05:36:36 AM »

Curious as to what everyone's thoughts are of whether to run one or two radiants in their fleet.

With all the available CR buffs for AI ships and the combat endurance skill, player fleets can field either two radiants (with a gamma core in each) or one radiant (with an alpha core). Obviously, there is a tradeoff here between quantity and quality - but does the extra +4 skill really make up the difference of having another radiant in a player fleet? I've been playing around with missile-heavy radiant builds and I'm personally leaning towards having two radiants with gammas. However, that just might be because missile builds benefit a lot from hitting a critical mass of missile spam with lots of missile boats.

What does everyone else think?

13

General Discussion / Re: Slipstreams and skill tree changes spark joy

« on: December 16, 2021, 03:42:04 AM »

I think slipstreams would be less annoying if you could tell the main direction they were going before you planned your expeditions, like maybe have a circular slipstream in the core. Another thing that might help is if the "wheel spoke" streams always went towards the core - getting stuck out in the fringe sucks.

I second your suggestion. It's practically impossible to make use of slipstreams with any amount of regularity since you can't really plan ahead to take advantage of them. I think Alex needs to just make the slipstreams visible on the stellar cartography at all times (or give the player a way to easily get a complete updated map through gameplay).

14

General Discussion / Re: Eradicator

« on: December 15, 2021, 11:57:43 PM »

Actually this is very much intentional:

Now, having an accelerated ammo feeder on that might be a bit mean. And the pirate version of the ship has some red it in, so it stands to reason that it would go faster. With that in mind, the (P) version of the ship has burn drive! Since for this particular ship this is a bit of a nerf, it’s also got reduced deployment points. Though, to be fair, “this isn’t as powerful as the baseline version of the ship” is unlikely to be much consolation when it’s coming at you full-burn.

https://fractalsoftworks.com/2021/05/28/a-tale-of-two-tech-levels/

Haven't used the AAF one so can't comment on its effectiveness. But right now, on paper, I prefer the cheaper/faster Burn Drive one. I guess the AAF one is a better fairly mobile line ship, with an already good 70 max speed considering its robustness and firepower.

The AAF version Eradicator is quite literally an up-gunned hammerhead (with the same burn speed and everything). You get, well, 1.5x of the mounts you can have on a hammerhead. SO AAF Eradicator is pretty amusing to use, to say the least.

15

General Discussion / Re: Frustrated with Quantum Disruptor for Harbinger

« on: December 14, 2021, 08:37:02 PM »

First, I tried the butt Reaper loadout, but it is awkward to use, and only two or three shots.

Try the reaper loadout but inverting your WASD controls. Makes flying backwards a lot simpler.