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1

General Discussion / Great sector for base building in vanilla .98a-RC5

« on: May 10, 2025, 08:21:24 AM »

I know that a lot of folks here play modded so this may not interest any but finally got a sector with some really good systems, and thought I'd share.

Domain sector registry ID is MN-2410668442190083129

Three very good, self-sustaining systems, each with gate and Domain Comms System (my second favorite thing for a system to have): Olgoi-Khorkoi, Blue Crow, Morgoth.  Olgoi in particular is very close to Tia in the core worlds area so it's a quick trip until you get fast travel.

I can spoil the systems in case those of you who've played more have higher standards than I =)

Spoiler

Olgoi-Khorkoi:  5 planets, 2 uninhabitable with no atmo, one desert, one tundra, one gas with +2 volatile.  Also +2 rare ore
Blue Crow:   9 planets including a Terran Eccentric with +3 rare ore.  3 no atmo, 2 gas with +0 volatile.  +3 ore and +3 rare ore (not on same planet)
Morgoth:  5 planets, 3 no atmo, 1 Tundra with +2 food and no volatile/transplutonic

[close]

2

Suggestions / Allow player-faction convoy ships to use jumpgates once they're unlocked

« on: March 10, 2022, 03:12:29 PM »

Maybe a small subquest to replicate the Janus device, or an additional colony building or something built onto the rings themselves.  Perhaps to further limit it, even an additional Coronal Hypershunt-like item and restriction.

The idea of course is a more seamless integration of two+ colony systems if they both/all have gates. So it's less of a pathfinding thing to get to a desired major faction system faster, and more about supporting multiple player systems quickly and with less chance for disruption in Hyperspace.  That would in turn reduce the very strong - and limiting - reward system currently in place for only settling a single star system.  The potential for system defense fleets to quickly provide additional support to colonies getting attacked would also be nice but might be a little much, unless the game world gets a more significant (and, frankly, believable) reaction to the player unlocking the Gates.

Not saying that half-fuel-cost fast travel isn't enough - just saying that it seems there's a lot of yet-untapped potential for in-game consequences of unlocking those gates.

3

General Discussion / Ode To A Tiny, Angry Frisbee

« on: March 09, 2022, 06:25:41 PM »

Shall I compare thee to a cruiser? Yea!
Thou art less pricey, with less DP cost.
Solar winds batter lesser ships all day,
And storms in H-space near Dantalion's Blost.
Sometime too hot thine reactor doth glow
When all around you flares and missiles crowd;
Yet pilots with elite OE do show
How to afford your alpha strike so loud.
With S-mods you've more OP than you should,
And sha'n't become scrap even when destroyed;
Death dares not glance at you from his black hood
Lest tiny angry frisbee grow annoyed.
So long as you can be salvaged or bought,
So cheaply with you is my vict'ry wrought.


[attachment deleted by admin]

4

Suggestions / Combat movement improvement for AI-controlled ships

« on: March 09, 2022, 07:08:52 AM »

This one really is the only persistently recurring problem I've found that has no clearly evident workaround.  All behavior is from the vanilla game.  Easiest to hardest, maybe?

AI will chase after ships it can't possibly catch, when other ships are nearby.
--Maybe use a simple variant of the escort logic that won't attach a slow ship to escort a faster one.  Maybe just a sanity check: is there a slow ship within [fixed_distance or ship_weapon_range]? Then don't chase the fast one.

Burn Drive / Maneuvering Jets / Phase Skimmer ships will immediately charge forward upon combat start and risk getting fragged by the main fleet, rather than keeping apace and pulling their weight.
--Just don't auto-use your speed enhancing abilities before combat is joined.

Half my dang fleet will go run after a single frigate, leaving the other other half to fight the rest of the battle.
--Rough DP check/counter: if enemy ship of X DP value is being chased by friendly ship(s) of >2X DP value, don't add to the chase. (the 2X is just a placeholder, obviously; just represents some threshold value)

There's no gross predictive behavior for enemy motion, even when there really should be.
--Instead of just chasing an enemy to its current location then tucking in behind it to give it the greatest possible chance of getting away, once an enemy ship is retreating, pursuit should be to a point between the ship and its retreat zone.  This is especially important when an enemy ship near the bottom of screen is trying to get away and is pursued by a friendly ship near the top of the screen; it should run a defense, but instead just tries to get in line and conga dance, to roughly equivalent effect.

The fleet has absolutely no coherency; ships clearly aren't aware of what other friendly ships are doing, and so quickly devolve into a Brownian distribution of uselessness in combat. I understand how horrifying a mesh becomes in very short order so I don't expect full awareness, but broadly speaking ships should tend to prefer to seek shelter together.
--A circle of mass would be easy to calculate; give ships some point value and have the biggest few (perhaps non-carrier?) ships in a fleet make the backbone.  Have a "home" area that falls off with distance from the center of those ships; any friendly outside that circle prefers to return to it.  This could profoundly limit the problem behavior of ships to meander off on their own and get picked apart.

Obviously these are all automatic behaviors and wouldn't and shouldn't override direct player orders, but I really do think each of these things would make the "strategic" part of the combat game much less painful.

5

General Discussion / Is there a lore reason for no XIV Mora?

« on: February 20, 2022, 04:58:50 PM »

The description makes it clear it operated at the same time as ships that do have XIV skins.  I don't think the Mora necessarily needs an XIV alternative, but it also seems an obvious omission given the ship description - so I wonder if there's a good reason that I didn't notice.

6

Suggestions / Some suggestions after playing enough to "get it"

« on: January 31, 2022, 10:57:51 PM »

Exploration UI:
- It would be nice to see reinforcement radius. It can make all the difference in the world as to whether a fight is winnable, knowing if it's going to be one group or three. Over time you get an idea but it'd be nice to see it, at least for stationary targets like bases.
- Hyperspace nebula/storm layover. Can't really tell if the hyperspace terrain is stationary once spawned into the map or not, but it looks like it might be.  If so, got to imagine that safe travel lanes would be of utmost importance to folk. Being able to see where clear paths are just out of screen bounds would be nice.  Even at max zoom out, there's not enough time under sustained burn to maneuver, making those storms/nebulas/whatever more hassle than they should be.

combat UI:
- On "strategic" screen, would be nice to see fleet ECM/Nav ratings
- Show current order when a ship is selected, like "moving to nav point" or "escorting ISS Pegasus" or whatever
- For ships with officers, show officer skills when ship is selected

combat AI:
- Have a different move command, like "move at normal speed" so you don't have two of your ships teleport/burn drive ahead of the rest and get instakilled by the massed enemy fleet, or use up their charges and be unable to move usefully once battle is joined
- More aware pathing. Right now when a ship goes after another, it pursues the current location, which results in "get behind and chase" which is a poor approach.  Especially once enemy fleets have been broken and are moving to retreat, a pursuit should run to interception at the retreat point rather than the highly inefficient get behind and chase
- Keep a cohesive center of battle.  Right now the AI will gladly spread fleets all over everywhere (and watching four cruisers decide to chase after an overdriven Hound while the escort ships run to the other side of the map and headbutt a battleship gets old real fast) during normal combat or full assault, only keeping together if the player has enough command points to order them to do so (and even then the fleet is at best barely half obedient).  Shouldn't be hard to run a simple triangle or square of mass and teach the AI to prefer to move toward it, keeping a fleet or battlegroup at least somewhat cohesive and thus at least somewhat alive
- Implement a "JFGT" command so ships will Just F'ing Go There. Watching two cruisers bounce off an invisible wall just because an enemy frigate drifted between them and their waypoint is excruciating
- More rigorous leashing to waypoints. Currently, there's no way to stop an AI controlled ship from leaving its assigned waypoint, officer or no, to chase after one tiny enemy ship, which leads to...
- Formations. Seriously. It's a game breaker.  Your combat pathing AI is just not good enough to not have some sort of user override.

general stuff:
- Lack of difficulty information creates a death spiral mechanic. It's very easy to be grossly outclassed and unable to win the plot point fights.  Those who've played a whole lot will act like that's not a concern but the vast majority of your players will be first-time players, and setting someone up for failure is a lot different than allowing them to overreach and fail.
- Certain unclear rules. What determines how much slowdown a fleet suffers in nebula? No way to tell in game at present, though it's clearly some combination of fleet size and also ship size.  When does game world scale up?  How fast is "slow enough" to avoid hyperspace storm damage? That sort of thing; the sort of thing a proper game manual would probably cover.
- Is there something more after Baird gets upset and cuts the player off? Feels like there isn't, but also doesn't feel like anything's resolved at that point either. Some sort of clarification would be better than meandering with no quest log info at all
-There should be a way to fully extricate Pather and Pirate cells from player worlds; just popping a base and getting a year's reprieve from raids doesn't feel like any sort of accomplishment

I played Star Control and Star Control 2 a lot as a kid and really hoped this would be a sort of spiritual successor, but there's no charm here.  It feels like you're building the game toward the feedback of a handful of min/maxer veterans and it just doesn't capture a sense of exploration or fun, instead getting mired down in fleet optimizations and FedEx runs to fund battle recovery.  Combat is either trivial or a slog with almost no area in between, and the dreadful AI and movement mechanics add frustration to the part of the game that should be fire and forget.

Still, it's a lovely game.  Good luck with it.

7

General Discussion / Formations

« on: January 11, 2022, 04:18:26 PM »

Are there any mods that let you set them? Is there some special hidden setting in the vanilla game that will let you set them?  I know how to move tactically better than the AI, which is only a problem if, as it appears, there's no way to keep the AI from screwing everything up every time.

Is there a way to set formations and have them stick hard?  This is going to end up being the game-breaker for me, I'm afraid; there's no fun to be had in watching my fleet do the wrong thing time and again and suffer casualties for it.  This isn't about loadouts - the last thread I made, the high post count folks immediately wanted to ignore the topic and make it about how min/maxed my ships were.  I don't need that tutorial again.  I need to know if it's possible to control the game or if it's just Space Lemmings once you hit "deploy".

8

General Discussion / Is there a stealth FAQ? Or a good video you all know of?

« on: January 09, 2022, 09:12:37 AM »

Can't for the life of me plant the bug in Aztlan for the academy plotline.  Even tried dropping my entire fleet into storage except for two phase ships, and respeccing for that stealth boost in Tech.  The orbiting fleets just don't allow enough space to get in and plant the bug, even with a sub-150 radar cross-section with a "gone dark" move speed of 7. Tried waiting to see if the pattern opens; no joy. Tried going in guns blazing; no joy.  Tried talking to contacts on the nearby planet to see if there's someone to bribe; no joy.  Tried hacking the Hegemony sensor relay to make the patrol fleets break off; no joy.

I don't especially want to scroll through potentially hundreds of pages of forum posts - and a few targeted Google searches (like "fleet stealth" and "Aztlan stealth" with the site:fractalsoftworks.com/forum target) haven't gotten me enough help to succeed - but if scrolling is required then that's what I'll do.

This one's pretty opaque.

9

Suggestions / Allow spending of story points on character skill points

« on: January 06, 2022, 06:37:17 AM »

You can improve colonies with story points; 2, 4, 8, etc.  The cost increases so that within reasonable timeframes, there's still a scarcity in play.

Maybe allow something like that for players?  By level 15, unless I just want to spend story points bribing Hegemony inspection fleets or doing some random thing, there's not a lot to keep the sense of character progression going.  I don't think allowing for a few additional character skill points would break the game.  Especially not since each officer elite skill costs a story point - there's always going to be something else attractive to spend those SP on, but at least with some value of SP -> CSP there'd continue to be meaningful choice in play during the later game.

10

General Discussion / The space battle AI is absolutely ruining this game for me. Tips, please?

« on: January 05, 2022, 07:09:43 AM »

Unless I have absolute dominance over the enemy fleets, I don't have a chance of winning a fight without substantial casualties...and it's not that the fleet doesn't work well together, and it's not that my ships aren't good enough, and it's not that my officers are reckless.  It's that I can't keep my fleet together, no matter what I do.  It takes seven command points just to tell my fleet to stay in formation for 60 seconds while the enemy closes.  And once it does, my ships immediately split up and act like they've never heard of a formation in their life.

There has to be a better way.  There has to be a way to keep ships together so that, for example, my cruiser guards the unshielded rear of my Onslaught.  There has to be a way to keep my GORRAM RADIANT from teleporting away from the main group to chase a single droneship frigate that it will never catch anyway.  There has to be some way to keep my speed-boosted Paragon from going off on its own and getting torn to shreds by three cruisers, instead of sticking close and just roflstomping them as a group with the fleet.

How?  Or is there no how, and this is just how bad the tactical game is?