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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 - Zudgemud

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1
Modding Resources / Re: [0.97a] MagicLib v1.3.9 (2024/02/02)
« on: February 04, 2024, 09:01:00 AM »
Yeah my magicbounties does not show at all after the update :(

2
Hey! Since I see you're back, I thought I'd mention a very small detail I've noticed in the faction's star system: while the description of Tolp I describes it as a radioactive inferno due to its very close proximity with its star, it lacks either conditions in practice. Same for Tolp III, which apparently is supposed to be mostly radioactive yet lacks the condition. Might be intended, but just in case it wasn't...
This is indeed wrong and should be fixed in the next release, thank you for pointing it out!

If a high attack power ship or fleet engages the P9 it will rip through the shield and one shot most of the ships in less than a second. Since the AI can't pilot many of these ships it's extremely difficult to play the faction due to their weakness. I already changes all the stats for my game to give them the same stat averages as base ships but retain their class identity.

Look at any base game ship in the same class and you'll see the P9 ships need a 50% increase in some stats to compete.
I have tried tweaking the stats with increasing the hitpoints and/or increasing max flux, but then all ships felt quite OP without also seriously nerfing flux dissipation, making the ships just fly like normal high-tech ships which felt somewhat boring.

If you have a ship_data.csv file with ships with stats you think works for while still having the same characteristics it would be great if you could send it to me via PMs and I could try it out myself.

The turn rate stat on many ships is way too high. You need to set it around 30 instead of +100 or the ships don't have momentum and will act strange when turning, sometimes bobbing left and right in a weird way.
True, this is something that I should probably change in a couple of ships. Especially the Korlo looks a bit dumb with manuvering increasing pilot skills. The silverfish at least looks to have that agility due to the dumb engine design with the enormus lateral engine thrust.

The spright for the silverfish is backwards.
While turning the other way would be fun as some custom pirate bounty I like it the way it is currently. The ship might get some medium energy slots though because now it's most useful for butt-whipping enemy ships.

The T1,T2,T3 are too similar.
They are supposed to look somewhat similar due to being designed around the same base model. I would say the T1 differs quite a lot from the other two both visually and in function, the T2 and T3 are however very similar in roles and in general playstyle.

I personally added the tachyon laser from the capital ship to the ...T3? I think?
The big shield popper on a relatively cheap highly mobile destroyer? How did it work in practice because it sounds a tad bit overpowered.

I added the minestrike back to the capital ship and gave it a cooldown.
You gave minestrike to the Samaa-DSI? Must be an even more annoying ship to fight.

I played 1 vs 1 skirmishes and fleet skirmishes for hours testing everything. They just seemed weak or more difficult to play than every single faction and faction mod released.

It's not bad but I'd suggest realignment closer to the base game ships stats but a large amount.

Thanks a lot for your diligence in testing and feedback :)


Also, a chinese translation made by SOSmayday can now be found in the OP.

3
Thank you for the mod and hard work!

Many of the ships feel very, very weak compared to even base game ship counterparts and may be some of the most under powered ships in the game.
Compare the Cyz-C HP to the Harbinger class phase destroyer.

I'd recommend a large buff to many ships.

Thank you for your comment, it would be helpful if you write down which ships that are terrible and why they are so.

Most ships are specialist ships that are not made for slugging it out (with a couple of exceptions), but for fulfilling some specific role or gimmick, not all of them are fun to fly but are made to fill out the faction lineup (boring player ships = all point defence ships, haulers and carriers). The Cyz-C HP for example has quite low firepower but a nasty long range EMP that does good damage to enemy ships too, so it does not have the same "submarine" role as the Harbinger, more like that a pestering wasp that wont leave your alone, which is admittedly not a fun playstyle for most players. A couple of gimmick ships simply cant be handled by the AI and I cant make the AI handle them well either (Silverfish-MPK, the Spore minifighters) or has the AI do dumb things with them that get them killed too fast. However, when I fight the faction's fleets myself they still provide a challenge comparable to a vanilla faction, despite being made out of cardboard and pink balloons, so I'm hesitant on buffing the individual ships too much as they still fulfill their intended roles and work well in a fleet setting. A revision of the deployment points might be in order though (and OP cost for some guns...) because that has changed the last few patches and I have simply been too busy and lazy to rework that.

Another thing which you can make use of as a player is that the ships have a 15% constant hardflux dissipation. This goes very well together with the fact that they have really high flux dissipation and pretty good shield efficiency. If you then add the field modulation skill that allows you a 35% constant hard flux dissipation (38% if you are commissioned with them and have the commissioned crews mod). This allows even rather fragile ships to tank a surprising amount of punishment. Also, their ships work best with high rate of fire guns or constant damage beams, low rate of fire guns generally eat away too much flux per shot and just makes you susceptible for overloads. 

4
Download link fixed!

Thanks all for notifying me  :)

5
So I updated the mod to 0.96a-RC10 and everything seems to work fine, no time for extensive playtesting however so there might be some bug somewhere.

I also added a russuan translated version by WhitePulsar which also seems to work fine.

You can find both new versions in the OP and if you encounter any issues please post them here so that I can attempt to fix them.

Some minor fixes:
-Added a normal EMP to the RS EMP drone.
-Added normal built in expanded magazines for the EBM because that is functionally mostly the same but allows one to build it in with story points for extra bonus recharge.

6
So, a new version is out which you can download Download here or from the first page.

Fixed:
Korlo-SKT now has a normal phase drive, the old one was bugged since the phase changes and I just forgot to change it in the live version.
Spore MkIII fighters have been nerfed, they are still quite potent but now their guns do not have the firepower of a large mount.
T3-support cannon is now actually a dedicated PD weapon and will act like it.
Yet again I tried to fix the Linux issue, someone with Linux tell me if you still crash due to that naming issue.

I also added another dedicated PD ship because I think they are fun, I'm sorry if you dont feel the same way.




There's an issue with the P9 Starliner-Mod: It still counts as a civilian-class ship in spite of being suitable for combat, meaning it might as well have a Timid officer in combat.

Give it militarized subsystems or stick an aggressive or reckless officer in it and it should work like a more normal ship, might also work if you change your fleet doctrine to agressive or reckless.

It was originally made to exploit the old synergy between civilian hulls and the PD-skills and escort hullmod while still shoring up a hole in the P9 lineup (no spare crew). But I think those skills and hullmods has been reworked in this version and now the main benefit is that is has a bunch of crew, counting as a civilian ship for skills while still being an excellent PD platform.


Hi, I wanted to ask a quick question. So, I found one of those phase cruisers (the Korlo) the other day, and while looking at it's stats and everything, I noticed that it's Phase Boost ability didn't have any description to it. While testing the ship in sim, it looked like a simple phase cloak but I'm still wondering: is this really all it does, or is there something more that I didn't see?

This has been bugged for a while because it used to give a burn drive-like speed boost while phased, but it was broken by the phase changes and made the ship incompatible with the relevant skills and hullmods, so I changed it in my own dev version some time back and forgot about it, whoops.

7
Found the bug and squashed it.

Updated version available here and in the OP.

Fixed the custom phase systems bugging out by simply giving them the vanilla scripts and system parameters.

Again I tried to fix the pn_dsi_turretbase59.png issue for Linux users, this time by opening the file in a text editor and saving it as a .png file, so hopefully that works instead?

Made the projectiles of the following guns easier to see.
SK-S
SK-M
SK-L
P9-vulcan
P9-EMP vulcan
P9-double vulcan
PEXP launcher

Not extensively playtested in the latest version of the game so please tell me if when something breaks so that I can fix it.

Thanks for the feedback!

8
Anyone else noticing issues with the korlo maxing out at speed 1 after using the phasing system once? Haven't tested with the other phase ships, but it happens with and without phase skills, on player and when ai uses it as well.

I never tested that phase system in the newest version of the game so there might be something fishy with it and/or how it interacts with skills. I'll investigate and post an update if needed.

9
New version available for download here.

This version is mostly bugfixes and some other mod compatiblity that expands on the faction fluff.

Added compatiblity with the commissioned crews mod: P9 crews gives a slight passive shield dissipation bonus.
Added compatiblity with magic bounty from magiclib: Mission for a custom ship that can be found in P9 bars at level 10 assuming you are very friendly (+55 rep) with the P9 Colony group and unfriendly with Tri-Tachyon (-20 rep).

Fixed the Tartif jelly ship:
   Ship now has a rightclick EM pulse to pop incoming missiles, weapons, engines and fighters.
   Ship now has resistance to nearby hull explosions so you ramming that damaged Buffalo II is not as likely to also pop your ship, boink capitals at your own risk though.


Added a P9 converted Wolf (a Wolf but better flux and even more fragile!)


Added a P9 converted Buffalo (for fluff reasons, it is still just a Buffalo)


Samaa DSI shieldpopping laser is now more visible, but sadly still as unreliable as before. This has been somewhat clarified in the weapon description.
Added description for several things that missed it, for example the faction itself.
Adjusted existing descriptions to fit faction lore.
The AI is now more prone to use Pexp launchers.
Put P9 weapons in their own category.
Gave P9 phase ships the phase tag.
I think I fixed the linux crash bug related to .PNG instead of .png, but I cant check it myself.
More minor bug fixing and minor tweaking that I cant remember.

Not extensively playtested in the latest version of the game so please tell me if something breaks so that I can fix it.

Thanks for all the feedback so far!

10
Thanks a lot for the very nice investigation and bug listing, I'll look into it all. The Raala rayblaster is a weapon for their heavy fighter and is thus not supposed to be aquired by the player (real reason why it is inaccessible for the player is that I made the animation too long for the AI to handle and very prone to be unsynched with the actual firing time). Pretty fun how the blueprint issue interacted with the bounty though. :)

11
Not sure if anybody has pointed it out yet, but I have been having issues with one weapon on a specific ship. The DSI Tachyon Ray on the Samaa-DSI. Neat ship, but I can't seem to figure out how the ray "works". I noticed that the AI will collapse and immediately re-opens right before it "goes off" based on sound cue. Annoying, but oh well(other times it would decide to overload the ship even after the sound went off). Nothing to do with the weapon. What I don't get is sometimes it just doesn't do anything to shields(aside from maybe 100 soft flux). Other times I can swing it around and disable 2-3 enemy shields in one go after the sound cue goes off. Now... I really tried to figure it out. I tested if it was because missiles are in the way, or if it had to be 100% of the beam on the shield for it to work, but neither of these led to consistent results. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is irritating when you are banking on that particular ship being disabled for a bit, but then it fails on you. Ships die, less support. You die. Not very fun.

On a different note, but on the topic of the same weapon, there seems to be some odd interaction with high tech stations. I haven't tested it much(since I hate fighting high tech stations specifically), but whenever I would disable the shield segment, it would overload as normal, then overload again shortly after putting the shield back up. One segment did this continuously throughout the fight. I didn't have to shoot it each time, it just kind of happened on its own seemingly. Kind of confusing, honestly. It also didn't always do this.

First of all, I don't know what is causing the issue. The lasers script should simply multiply the damage done by 10000 or so when the beam reaches full power. I think the beam also runs at full power for a second or less. It is really a very simple script which is why I managed to make it work. The sound cue and current gun animation/visual cue are completely unlinked to the weapon script. I just made a sound and gun animation that is somewhat synched with the fire rate of the laser. This means that if a skill or something increases the fire rate enough the laser will become unsynchronized with the sound and animation.

A thing that likely is one of the causes for the bad AI use is that the charge up time messes with the default AI. As to what is causing the inconsistent shield braking one guess could be that the beamtime at full power is too short and this messes with hit registration or something, or that the script only works if you click to fire but not if you simply fire continuously.

12
I've noticed that the AI is pretty good at avoiding the damage pulse of the beam but I've had cases where there were no obstructions and no shield pulsing that still failed to cause the overload. The distortion effect on the shield hit (graphics lib?) is really big in that case but the target's flux level remains steady. Doesn't happen too often, I'd guess something like one out of four or five attacks.

Might also be useful to add some visual effect to the beam when it does its overload pulse? Since the AI seems pretty aware of that it would seem fair for a player to see it too.

I don't know why it wont overload the ships then, but I'll look into it.

Regarding the visual effects for reaching full charge, I have wanted to implement it for quite some time, but I have simply not been skilled enough to do so. However, I know some other mod had a similar thing implemented so I'll look around and see if I can copy something like that.

Also, regarding the lore and ship aesthetic I also started to rewrite some of it to make a bit more sense.
Spoiler
They are now a faction designed by and partly controlled by an AI collective of gamma cores left behind on Tolp IV after Tri Tachyon blew up Tolp II. The faction basically stays on Hegemony's good side by doing all AI requiring activities for them, that and the low grade AI cores not really having an understanding of ambition. The AIs likes the ample energy available within the P9 faction but cares less about the long term well being of humans, which is why the ships are all radiation hazards.
[close]

13
Thanks for the feedback!

The Samaa-DSI can, when paired with the elite shield skill, maintain its fortress shield indefinitely even under heavy fire as the hard flux dissipates faster than the system builds it up. Yes, it has that vulnerable gap in its shield at the engines (if you use the frontal conversion) but the AI can't exploit that, dunno if that's because it doesn't know or because in a regular fleet battle that area tends to be covered by other ships. I've parked the Samaa in the face of a boss Remnant from either HMI or Seeker ("false omega", not sure which mod did that), tying it up for minutes while my fleet dealt with the rest of its retinue and I only took damage from the boss's huge fighter swarms occasionally shooting that shield gap.


Yes, this is a problem that is even more pronounced in my current unreleased beta version as I added commissioned crews which add a further 5% hard flux dissipation and 5% shield resistance. I have thought about simply lowering the 15% passive hard flux vent for the faction ships too but the 15% bonus stacking with shield modulation is not really a problem as heavily investing in specific high tier skills is rewarding for the player even if they kinda break many ship setups. In my own trial run I have shield modulation, P9 commissioned crews, accelerated shields, stabilized shields and hardened shields on my Kaala flagship, and I admit it's kinda ridiculous at shield tanking.

Aside from the flux dissipation I also agree that one of the main problems is the shield coverage. Too large shield coverage on large ships with good shield tanking leads to invincible ships. So limiting shield coverage, in part by removing frontal conversion is one way to do it. Another one is to limit accelerated shields which is also really fantastic on good shield tankers with Omni shields.

I have also had plans on adding a weaker version of the fortress shields to the Samaa ships, one which also increase ammo regeneration. Maybe I should just try to actually implement that now...

Quote
the Samaa-DSI is a wacky ship anyway with next to no weapons and that strange instant-overload beam (that doesn't seem to trigger consistently?).

In my experience this is due to the target ship lowering shields right before the beam reaches full charge or the beam drifting over to hull while firing. Also, I think I have forgotten to increase the flux cost of actually firing the beam.

Quote
Also I think the P9 freighters are considered combat ships by the game and the AI will happily send them into battle. I believe they don't show up in the Civilian filter in the construction menu either. Plus the Silverfish is still classified as a Phase ship in that menu.

The freighter issue is fixed in my current unreleased version, I had forgotten to place the civilian hullmod on all civilian tagged ships, only tagged them as civilian in the ship file.

The silverfish is classed as a phase ship because the right click speed boost is based on the phase system. I have no idea how to modify that classification to something else without breaking the ship.

Quote
Gotta say the P9 aesthetic is far too unique to go with a "Tri-Tachyon splinter group" background, they look more like a completely different tech lineage than most of the rest of the sector and their unusual ship configurations also suggest a far more alien origin (or at least a high degree of separation from the rest of the sector).

I agree, the lore was not even a tertiary concern when I made the mod, and the faction lore and aesthetics does not really gel that well with the current game lore. I guess I could add things about most of the weird designs being made by AIs as a solution for making ships compatible with pink glowing reactors or something.

14
Any plans to add commissioned crews support?

Yes, it is included in the coming update, which is basically just bugfixing, some balancing and that.

15
so I apologise for asking, but i do not understand what is going on. by the lore the colony got wiped out, yet there exists some faction using these ships?(i never used the mod yet, looking trough the mod index rn)

The lore is that the main population center in the system was scuttled by Tri-Tachyon as a power move when the gates fell, the remaining P9 faction is from the survivors that were in the minor colonies or managed to evacuate in the limited timeframe. The lore is mostly just an excuse for why this minor high tech faction buddied up with Hegemony (which wields lots of kinetic weapons, which is extremely effective against P9) and hates Tri-Tachyon (who wields beams, which is mostly crap against P9).

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