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1

General Discussion / Re: Only female faction ?

« on: April 29, 2020, 12:56:56 AM »

Caparice Trade Co does this iirc. But its...

Spoiler

A n I m E

[close]

I like to think that it's just a bunch of guys with anime profile pictures.

2

Suggestions / Re: No Survivors!

« on: October 11, 2019, 12:25:30 PM »

Would the distance from the core worlds matter? Blowing up a massive trade fleet inside hedgy space is suspicious even if there are no survivors. Would nearby fleets be able to investigate after witnessing a battle? Just because the victim can't report a battle, doesn't mean no one else saw it. Gigantic explosions and burning hulls have a way of showing up on space sensors, after all.

Sensor range indeed does factor into it:

- System has working comm relay: rep loss no matter what you do, since the enemy fleet transmits distress signals and other information about the battle
- System has no comm relay, some enemies escape: rep loss due to survivors reporting back
- System has no comm relay, no enemies escape: reduced or no rep loss
  - Nonzero rep loss could result from rumors leaking from your crew
  - And if we want to overengineer this, the chance of such leaks is based on your fleet size/crew count

I would say nearby fleets definitely factor into this calculation, provided you account for factional issues (e.g. if you were witnessed by pirates killing their enemy, they probably would have no incentive to either look at the fight closer nor report the findings back to the victim faction, meaning virtually no change to the rep calculations other than maybe a slight boost to the chance of "rumors"). If, on the other hand, you were in sensor range of another fleet of the same faction the risk of "rumors" or even outright discovery goes way, way up, unless you also manage to "disappear" that fleet before they get back within coms range too.

Picking off every single ship to the last man is also not a trivial affair. Fleet pursuit battles involve a pile of fleeing ships, but some of them can still get away. Are any escaped ships an automatic failure? Are your crew guaranteed to keep their mouths shut in the space bars? Rumors have a way of spreading around, even if there weren't any survivors there is always a circumstantial trail of evidence that will make your own fleet suspicious.

already accounted for in the original comment. Yes you need to get every ship, and yes, there can still be minimal rep loss even if you are 100% successful due to other factors. If you want to put all that under more direct player control you could invent skills for things like "sec ops" that minimizes own-crew rumors and needing to clean up the debris field (as someone else salvaging it cold reveal your misdeeds). Some of these would invite whole new mechanics be added to the game, which I am not opposed to in the slightest, but the suggestion seemed to be made withing the bounds of the current game scope.

I think the idea brings up more questions than it does answers. Also, chasing down a shattered fleet to shut them up doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

The mechanic is aimed squarely at people who want to play the "clean pirate", who maintain high rep yet prey on targets of opportunity out beyond the range of civilization. It enables a very specific play style that should not be easy. It also allows players with a more normal play style a somewhat-less-than-ethical option for dealing with certain problems the game presents so long as they are willing to see it through to the end (i.e. mopping up any survivors before they find someone to report back their folly). This could be a very attractive "out" for use in these rare situations that are currently not handled well within game.

It also certainly opens up the door to other ideas like espionage and double agent styles of play, as well as things like secret trade wars and such. Giving the player the ability to hunt fleets for a potential zero rep loss with the targeted faction opens up a whole host of opportunities that do not exist with the current simple fixed-rep-hit for transponder-off attacks, and allows for more flexibility with the attack setup (you could, for example, attack with the transponder *on* and still suffer no rep hit, so long as you were committed to 100% cleanup of the mess both during and after battle. This means maybe you do not have to chase down a faster fleet, but also means bigger risks if something does escape). 

It would also allow for the implementation of other good ideas from mods to take a more sensible foothold (like infamous ships, for example). If you had escapees from a fleet of well know ships your rep hit would be *much* higher due to you being easily recognized as the culprit regardless of your transponder status, but a fleet composed of a bunch of scrap yard salvage would bring you virtually no rep hit with or without survivors due to no one really having seen any of those ships before. And such a mechanic would invite a tie in to things like espionage, where players and AI entities would attempt to mimic infamous ships to frame each other for crimes, which itself would open up whole game-pay loops where the player, for example, needs to hunt down an impostor fleet to clear their good name and restore any rep hits it caused (and maybe also avail themselves of the ability to commit a crime or two to blame on that same impostor when they do bring them to justice).

This mechanic really leads to a nesting doll effect for other ideas and game-play styles and is a great foundational mechanic for that reason. It is so much more nuanced than the simple "fixed rep hit for attacking a fleet (smaller if transponder is off)" mechanic we have now, and that ultimately means greater player agency (which is a very good thing to have in this context).

This sounds like proper stealth mechanics.

I feel like it could be interesting if your crew acted like their own faction (a faction that starts at cooperative but can decrease as you do immoral things and can rat you out if they like you too little) which'd probably be able to extend into some kind of "rebellion" feature where your own faction hates you.

3

Suggestions / Re: Paragon OP

« on: September 17, 2019, 08:05:27 PM »

remember kids: drovers exist, and they are always stronger

4

General Discussion / Re: Favorite tech level?

« on: September 14, 2019, 05:15:43 PM »

Although XIV armour is really nice, nothing beats speed and maneuverability for me, especially when combined with high tech's shield tanking meaning that they are incredibly hard to punish properly (and the big flagship being basically immune to anti-shield weapons with fortress shield) high tech is just too useful to really be worse.

5

General Discussion / Re: [REDACTED]-hunting fleet?

« on: September 13, 2019, 10:44:11 PM »

I generally find just spamming paragons with tachyons or plasmas works fine, the sheer tankiness means that you shouldn't get much losses except from big engagements (like that 4-5 ordo combat someone posted earlier) and assuming they stick together they dont tend to die. id go with an odyssey if you want something to hunt individual radiants with, the phase teleports can be annoying sometimes, but you should be fine with just paragons. although they are expensive, 800k a month in planets probably means your at the point that you can build/buy them with (relative) ease.