Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Suggestions / Cargo and fuel capacity should be a hard cap

« on: February 25, 2024, 02:19:31 PM »

I'm curious why cargo and fuel capacity is a soft cap and not a hard cap.

Is there any situation where you would go over cargo or fuel capacity in the game that isn't just a misclick? The supply cost for being over capacity is so punishing that it has to be a misclick or newbie mistake every single time.

The only situation I can think of where you should go over cap would be at a station where you for example take a trade mission you don't have cargo space for. For that case, I think the excess should go into storage at the station automatically (or you simply cannot accept a mission where you don't have the cargo capacity which is reasonable).

Can anyone give me an argument why cargo capacity is a soft cap and not a hard cap?

2

Suggestions / Founding a colony should require a Cryosleeper.

« on: August 16, 2022, 06:39:01 PM »

- Make Cryosleepers ships that can be salvaged to join your fleet.
- Colonies can only be founded by consuming a cryosleeper
- Cryorevival facilities are automatically available as a building for any colony founded by the player

Here's the reasoning : Starsector isn't a 4x game. Founding a colony should be one of the late game exploration and trade goals, not something that anybody can do with 1000 extra crew and a set of supplies. Furthermore, this change would give a lore reason why the core factions haven't colonized every single class V planet in the sector yet. A player with a modest start can easily colonize 4 planets by a mere 10 years after game start, so why hasn't the Hegemony already recolonized half the sector? And also, even WITH immigration, hazard pay, etc, a colony founded with 1000 people shouldn't be able to grow to millions in less than a decade..

The explanation should be that colonizing planets is hard. The reason every modest salvage fleet in the sector doesn't have their own colony to go back to is that setting up a colony on a new world without advanced domain tech requires thousands of people, years of investment and tons of scarce equipment. All of which is neatly bundled into these giant ancient Domain created arks that are scattered throughout the sector.

Also, in terms of the storyline - shouldn't other factions have more of a reaction to the sudden appearance of a new faction? The first one to pop up in ages, and with tons of advanced technology (that players usually have by this point in the form of nanoforges, synchotrons, etc..) that was supposedly very scarce in the sector? How does every faction respond to this new upstart, do they view them as a threat or a trading partner?

As it stands now, it's like "Meh. We're all gonna raid you or ignore you. Also the Hegemony wants to get into your business, but a few bribes can take care of that easily".

This also opens up possibilities for new and powerful terraforming items. If player colonies are capped at the sector Cryosleeper count, it actually opens up the design space to make individual colonies MORE powerful, since the player now can't drop colonies all over the sector. Maybe items or events can eliminate decivilized / cold / hot / high gravity, etc.. And this suggestion is intrinsically a buff to the first colony, since it means that Cryorevival facility has it's maximum effect on any world the player chooses for their first colony.

Edit : One other thought. If the goal is really to let the player have tons of colonies, gate the first one behind the Cryosleeper. That also sort of makes sense - founding new worlds requires massive effort, the sort of effort that an entire government / planet needs to get behind. Once the first colony is founded, the player has access to the resources and institutions needed to make more colonies work. I kind of think that planting colonies everywhere actually cheapens the mechanic of colonies (since they're a lot less special in that case) but it's an option if that's where the game is heading.

3

Suggestions / Fighter pilots should be treated more like marines are now

« on: June 06, 2022, 03:30:52 PM »

Right now, fighter pilots are treated as disposable. Does anyone ever take recovery shuttles, except for RP purposes? From a gameplay perspective, you're incentivized to just pick up more crew when you run low. There's no reason to try to save pilot's lives.

Contrast with marines, where your elite marines are a precious resource and players don't want to squander them. You actually care about marine losses, because replacing them with novice marines is a big deal. Keeping your experienced marines alive feels like an investment.

I think there's a huge design space open here to make players care about their fighters more. If pilots were a resource that gained experience and became elite over time, players would feel more invested in their carriers. Perhaps pilots ought to be a separate category, like marines, instead of drawing from general crew? It would make sense : A pilot has to be highly trained, and the difference between a novice pilot and an elite pilot SHOULD feel like a big gap.

Having a fleet with elite pilots, the player should want to invest in skills and mods that reduce pilot losses. It also could affect gameplay a lot: Do I want to accept potentially higher losses of throwing elite bomber squadrons against REDACTED or a star fortress? Maybe I want to invest in more expensive, heavily shielded fighters so my elite pilots will last longer, even if it costs more OP / potentially deals less damage? Or I could RP that the sector is just a harsh, deadly place and my pilots will die a lot, but at least now there's a tradeoff where I'll never have elite pilots. The decision space would be really interesting imho.

4

Suggestions / Respec and mentoring should limit combat skills to those the Player has

« on: April 19, 2022, 02:49:30 PM »

My suggestion is that when a player chooses to mentor or respect officers, they should be limited (or expanded) to skills the player has invested points into, plus maybe a random choice.

The fiction is simple. When you respec / mentor an officer, how are they learning new skills? Who's teaching them, if not the player?

This is a buff to combat skills, and a nerf to everything else. Is your player a combat god? They will have total freedom to train their officers to fill any specific role.

Is your player mostly a leadership / logistics captain? You'll have a hodgepodge of random officer skills, plus whatever level 7 officers you pick up in stasis pods.

This could also open up some interesting story / modding choices to find NPCs that can join your crew / colony to allow officers to gain skills the Player doesn't have. Perhaps there are plans for a new colony building, the "Flight Academy" or some other fiction, that lets players that are strategists and not pilots similarly configure their officers after they start a colony.

5

General Discussion / What games were inspiration for / spiritual ancestors of Starsector?

« on: April 05, 2022, 12:27:15 PM »

One reason I love Starsector is that it feels like the natural evolution of games that I enjoyed playing as a kid, but the genre feels like it's been abandoned by AAA studios.

Games that Starsector reminds me of:

Star Control
Wing Commander : Privateer
Starflight
Sundog (this one dates me quite a bit)


They all have in common the top down, 2-d action space combat gameplay originated in Asteroids, with roleplaying, exploration and economy building slowly added later.

I don't know why the genre isn't more popular, but I hope when Starsector goes on Steam it makes a comeback.

Edit: I just remembered Privateer isn't top down at all. My bad.

6

Suggestions / Coronal Hypershunt should gate unique construction

« on: May 30, 2021, 04:09:08 PM »

Right now, coronal hypershunt can't have any meaningful impact on gameplay. The only thing it does is to allow an extra industry after the point in the game where money no longer matters to the player.

IMHO it would be a really compelling endgame reward if some sort of construction was gated by having a coronal hypershunt. For example, if destroying a certain endgame boss caused blueprints to drop, but those blueprints could only be built at heavy industry on a colony with an active coronal hypershunt, or something similar.

Or, to really tease it, have the blueprints drop randomly throughout the game with a big warning that they require a colony with an active hypershunt to be built.

That would make building the hypershunt actually a meaningful reward the player would want, rather than just an endgame roleplaying exercise.

7

Suggestions / Request: Make it easier to move things into and out of storage

« on: September 26, 2019, 09:03:35 AM »

In 0.9.x, you have to click and drag each item from storage to your ship's inventory or visa versa. If you're moving a lot of items, such as loot after a big fight, it feels like an annoying click fest.

It would feel much easier and smoother if just double clicking or right clicking on an item in storage moved it into your inventory or visa versa. I hope Star Sector isn't trying to be an inventory tetris game. It's a great game overall, but this particular point feels rough. My click finger is already quite exercised enough from combat IMO.