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1

Suggestions / Re: suggestion: soft cease-fire key - stops firing all non-point defense weapons

« on: March 11, 2018, 04:45:39 PM »

(Moved to suggestions.)

I could definitely see this being nice, but I'm also hesitant to add more controls. Every button around WASD is already taken up by something, and I'm not a fan of either cycling through 3 states or different behavior on holding a button vs tapping it, at least for these sort of "action" controls. For example, if you're holding X, it's going to be tough to maneuver at the same time, and chances are you really want to be maneuvering if your flux situation is such that you shut down everything but PD.

Almost wondering if a per-group setting to ignore "hold fire" status might be an alternative approach... hm.

Add it to the options but don't bind any key by default? This way it doesn't bloat a new player's controls while giving experienced players a choice.

2

Blog Posts / Re: Zen and the Art of Battlestation Construction

« on: March 02, 2018, 07:54:03 PM »

Obviously still waiting on the next part, but a few things came to mind:

Will there be major variations on stations? One may have an XXL cannon in the middle (but very slow turn rate?), while another may have several overlapping directional shields? To differentiate them.

On the subject of station identity, i thought of various ways to specialize a station:
* One mega cannon in the centre that favours fleets with multiple smaller ships than fewer larger ones.

* "Infinite" fighter squadrons being thrown at the attackers ad nauseum.

* Multiple overlapping directional shields (and respective FLUX bars) that favour splitting up the fleet rather than concentrating on a single point.

* R&R berthing arms for smaller defending ships to restore ammo and readiness,

* Asteroids orbiting the station providing a platforming hazard.

* A solar collector on a station placed close to a star that periodically vacuums up star material for power. Any ship caught in the stream will get pushed into the station.

* Asteroid stations - instead of having those fancy circular stations perhaps have a rocky asteroid with station modules sticking out of it (*whispering* these can be procedurally generated).

* An agglomeration of smaller stations into a space favela.

That said - I imagined the stations to be WAY larger, like, a third of a station spanning the entire battle map from left to right with us fighting our way into it, with frigates/fighters going inside and blowing up the core or something. These just feel like very large battleships that happen to be circular.

3

Blog Posts / Re: Drawing [REDACTED] Battlestations, part 2

« on: July 27, 2017, 07:56:46 AM »

Honestly, i haven't played much since the last patch. I find it too dificult or obfuscated as to how am i supposed to progress in the game. I keep bashing my head against Combat Readiness and Supplies, always wasting whatever money i earn on it and never being able to get on my feet. This station sounds like a lot of fun to encounter but tbh, unless the CR situation changes significantly i'm not playing this game. Maybe when it launches ill just use some cheats. The game used to be fun before CR.

4

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 22, 2017, 07:17:31 PM »

I'm not going to read through 70 pages of comments so sorry if i repeat some stuff:

- I somehow managed to fail the tutorial. The hegemony fleet just killed me for no reason, nothing i could do. After a few tries the tutorial managed to trigger for some reason and i got the transponder button. Are the triggers actual areas in the map?

- I couldn't Restore D ships' penalty hullmods one by one, having to do all at once. Let me do one at a time please.

- Salvaging seems like a waste of time, i barely get anything worthwhile. Is it possible for salvage points to be a single event with the entire loot given at once?

- Is it possible to get the TLDR of patch notes?

- Readiness is still annoying to deal with. Any way to disable it or turn it to 9999?

- Clicking on anything on the map automatically goes into Show Info, i have to hold the mouse to Lay in a Course. Any way to swap those two around so it lays a corse by default?

5

General Discussion / Re: Will we see at some Point Prototype Technologie or Alien Technologie

« on: March 06, 2017, 03:14:57 AM »

interesting, I wonder if Alex ever toyed with the idea of random loot like Diablo or WoW? It's the same weapon but would have quasi-random stats such as higher range but higher flux cost per shot?

6

General Discussion / Re: max player character level

« on: March 06, 2017, 03:09:58 AM »

Yeah i'll be changing that value on day one to increase level cap and reduce exp penalty so i can get all the skills.

7

Blog Posts / Re: Cartography

« on: November 27, 2016, 03:02:56 PM »

Very interesting, can't wait for the patch. I do have a few ideas:

1) Map exploration could be expanded dramatically by simply playing around with the map itself, with example such as:
1-a) Stars show the real colour unless the player has the star charts for that planetary system. Otherwise the player has to manually explore and scan the star and planets within the system. Charts can be gained from missions, hacked out of beacons/buoys, loot from fleet fights, etc...
1-b) Brown Dwarves or Rogue Planets could be discovered by gaining secret star charts from special loot/rewards, these are normally undetectable and can be a great way to procedurally generate "dungeons" with secret bases/fleets inside
1-c) Perhaps allow it as a mod: restrict hypertravel to point-to-point only, no free-flight within it and to unlock new systems you need those star charts (and getting them is part of the effort/challenge).

2) Introduce fog-of-war into the map, perhaps a fancy line-of-sight-based "scan-flavoured" exploration of it, players wouldn't know where they are going and they have to properly explore the map. Lore-wise this would be explained as "astronomical observation is restricted to the major factions and is otherwise illegal".

3) Hyperspace Wind - occasionally some wind would blow your fleet out of the way into the unknown, beware! This is a new hazzard.

4) Would it be possible for mods to massively expand the map into a much larger collection of planetary systems?

8

General Discussion / Re: Just got the game! My opinion!

« on: August 24, 2016, 05:10:53 AM »

The problem with the start is that most frigates and destroyers are crappy. Also they're probably balanced for fleet fights as opposed to solo even tho most players fly solo until the midgame (i ALWAYS fly solo). Couple that with the lack of skills, lack of good weapons and mods and you're looking at a very underpowered ship compared to the NPCs that never evolve with the player and have to remain strong for endgame. What the game needs is some additional "faction" of malfunctioning/abandoned drones, such as mining or survey drones, that have subpar weapons and simplistic AI that reward less experience and loot but server as an avenue for new/starting players to get their ropes.

9

General Discussion / Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad

« on: July 19, 2016, 05:54:34 PM »

But then i have to keep clicking it

Ummmm what?

Well i used to set it to dev mode then hitting... K i think?, to give me 25k. I don't remember, i haven't played in a while.

10

General Discussion / Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad

« on: July 19, 2016, 01:12:21 PM »

At this point i i think i just use CheatEngine to keep my supply up so i don't worry about it.

Just use the console mod. (Someone linked it earlier)

But then i have to keep clicking it

11

Blog Posts / Re: Exploration & Salvage

« on: July 18, 2016, 08:25:34 AM »

I can't wait to be my own faction, set up my own bases and research lost tech.

12

General Discussion / Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad

« on: July 18, 2016, 08:17:56 AM »

At this point i i think i just use CheatEngine to keep my supply up so i don't worry about it.

13

General Discussion / Re: In-battle CR Timer - Why It's Bad

« on: July 05, 2016, 04:51:35 AM »

I don't like CR. It's an abstract mechanic that feels like it's artificially limiting the fun. I understand why it's there but i think i'd rather play in a game that can counter the exploits rather than curb it with another mechanic.

Is it then not possible to translate the CR mechanic into actual ships? Instead of having this Readiness mechanic why not have actual ships that cover that? For example: each ship has its own ability to recover, but that ability is limited and the player would want to get a logistics ship that handles that. This ship would be deployed in combat to provide repairs, rearm and drain hardflux. The more ships you field the more/bigger logistics you want to field alongside. This also "fixes" the solo-kiting of deathball fleets by letting the AI retreat and rearm/repair while your single frigate runs out of ammo or gets hardfluxed.

A few things logistics could provide:
- Rearm drones - drones would fly from the logi into the friendly ship to add a flat amount of ammo.
- Repair "fighters" - flies to friendly ships and "deals negative damage" to repair the ship. Note how this is a fighter and uses up deployment. These are also suicidal so you would need to spend Supply to build new ones during a battle to provide more repairs. Visually it would look like a canister of nanobots that gets used up to repair the ship.
- Flux drain "weapon" - a turret that targets friendly ships and deals negative hardflux, effectively draining flux. This also generates flux on the logi ship inefficiently so you would be trading efficiency for effectiveness between the two.

The above mechanics could provide an interesting oportunity for players to have protracted fights while "paying" for it. it is more efficient to be out of a battle and let Supply repair and rearm your ships but you still have the option to repair in a battle by pay more per repair. This also lets players to play "the healer" and let AI fly the fleet while the player focuses on logistics (which ship to repair, which to rearm, which to deflux, etc...). Logi ships are also vulnerable since they don't usually feature any weapons aside from a couple of PDs similar to fuel tankers.

I am always the fan of emergent game mechanics that drive behaviour from the set mechanics rather than make mechanics to fix specific issues. I probably sound like i'm trying to teach Alex how to design games and i'm sorry it comes off like that (armchair gamedev yay) and i'm sure he already thought about this and has a reason to design it like that; i'm just sharing my opinion and how i feel. I also don't know the big picture and how the game is going to be in version 1.0. I'm just saying that i don't like CR and i would prefer the ships themselves to handle the problem CR wants to address (whatever it is).

14

Blog Posts / Re: Planetary Surveys

« on: June 10, 2016, 04:17:17 PM »

What if each condition like "rich ore deposits" was a bar the player had to fill up? Each day of the survey the player would make, say, 10% survey progress to any random condition the planet may have.

Higher skill levels would improve the quality of surveying without impacting actual effectiveness. Here's an example:

Level 0: 10% progress to a random condition. Progress is random and alternates between conditions.
Level 1: Lists all conditions as "Uknown" until surveyed. Lets you see how many the planet has. Progress among them is still random
Level 2: Shows unsurveyed condition's category such as "Minerals" or "Volatiles" or "Gases".
Level 3: Shows the actual conditions without surveying. The player still needs to survey them to make use of.
Level 4: Lets the player choose which condition to survey first and focus on them instead of spreading the effort.
Level 5: Lets the player survey from a large distance away, with dimishing effectiveness based on distance. The fastest way is to orbit the planet but if for some reason you want to stay away you can still survey it at a much reduced speed.

None of these impact the actual effectiveness of surveying a planet while giving plenty of reason for someone to invest skillpoints into it if they want to.

On a separate note i would like to see survey "weapons" and different hull mods (not just one). Asteroid belt/ring survey could be done in the battle screens and have players orbit and dodge a hail of asteroids while the "weapons" survey them. Survey "weapons" would also double as target painters or scanners that increase accuracy or missile tracking against that target, including a higher chance to ignore Flares/Chaff.

15

General Discussion / Re: Totally delayed 0.7.1 reaction

« on: February 27, 2016, 01:36:54 PM »

Actually i run a Pulse Laser and 3xLR PD Lasers with no missiles and stack speed hull mods and overpower all the ships in a methodical battle of hard flux. Then switch to the Tempest with 2xPulse Lasers and overpower everything in my path. Unfortunately it gets boring after i get into capital ships because all fleets can just run away from me :|