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1

Suggestions / Alpha Core Admins

« on: February 26, 2024, 07:10:38 PM »

Alpha core administrators should slowly (over 5-10 Cycles) siphon more and more funds/production from the colony output towards funding the AI war machine against humanity. It'd be perfect if it was slow enough that the player would genuinely not even notice until Things happened- befitting of the Alpha-core's lore for plainly being more intelligent than any human.

I'm reminded of a clip I saw for one of Endless Space 2's DLC factions who exist in cyberspace and siphon funds from other factions- the tooltip of which is randomly pulled from a list. One of the most amusing of these is the "Craver Pension Fund" where Cravers in that universe are effectively the zerg (in that they consume everything and there's not really any diplomacy to be had). Doing something similar in the detailed tooltip for the planetary costs would be ideal, though as for what it would actually say I imagine David would have some good ideas.

This could likely be tied into the Hostile Activity system already: Alpha-cored planets would have an increasing risk of a remnant saturation bombardment fleet attacking them in the same way they do so for settlements in beacon systems. The hyperspace journey and production of such fleets would be funded by the goods siphoned from your own colony, with the chance of the event proportional to the amount of goods siphoned in some way. In order to prevent this from becoming a chore with many planets using AI admins, I'd just sum it all just as HA does for other effects and have an attack on any one of the planets being successfully defended solve the fund siphoning on all planets (until a few years have passed again).

2

Bug Reports & Support / [0.97a-RC11] Unfilled "$market" line & Shrine tag resetting

« on: February 22, 2024, 09:18:23 PM »

Hovering over the local Storage tab in the fleet menu for my owned planet, the description states "Storage space for ships and cargo. $market is under your control, and there are no storage fees or expenses."

Obviously, $market should be filling with the name of the planet.

While I'm here I'll also mention that the Luddic Shrine visitation for Volturn seems to reset the tag for visiting it every time you leave. If you visit the shrine, close the planet window, and then re-interact with the planet you'll be able to visit the shrine again- though only in so far as you can go light the candle again. You'll still keep the quest progression and won't repeat the dialog with the shrine keeper. This seems like it could easily be intentional but just as easily be unintentional (although I vaguely recall this happening when it was first added so maybe it's intentional and I've simply forgotten).

I am playing modded, but I don't believe anything should be affecting either of these. (Console commands, a custom mod which adds ship names, another custom mod that edits some vanilla ship values, detailed battle stats, the various library mods, SpeedUp, Automated Commands, and Ship Direction Marker). It is perhaps notable that the last two are fairly outdated but they Just Work(tm) and haven't caused any visible issues so far.

3

Suggestions / Option to Toggle Follow Mouse

« on: February 10, 2024, 05:22:08 PM »

It'd be nice to be able to toggle following mouse instead of having to hold down M1 while in campaign view, in fact I'd argue it'd probably make more sense to be the default and have M1 make it stop following since you spend much more time moving around than you do aiming at things. I can probably use mousekeys to do this (as I do in minecraft nowadays), but it's a bit more convenient if it's just built-in and bindable.

Nice for anyone who is feeling years of gaming catch up to them in their joints.

4

Suggestions / Alter Derelict CR Stats

« on: May 10, 2023, 01:34:16 AM »

In recognition of the glory that is Rugged Construction now (? I think this is from this patch but really it all blends together now) halving repair + deploy supply costs, it would be nice if derelict drones also played into how the CR mechanic exactly works in regards to supplies.

If we look at the Defender-class derelict frigate, it costs 3 DP and nominally 3 supplies to deploy. With Rugged Construction, this becomes 1.5* supplies and the same 3 DP to deploy. However, it has 5% CR per deployment and 5% CR recovery per day. This translates to a full (though of course we're generally not at 100%, but I digress) CR bar consuming 60 supplies. Now, this is also halved, as mentioned, by Rugged Construction: so it only really consumes 30. This would be fine but 30 supplies to fill the CR of a ship that won't survive to use that CR is a significant waste. (It really dies every battle in my experience)
I suggest changing its CR per deploy and CR recovery rates to something crazy like 35/35 or 50/50. That's because the math would work out for repair to cost only 3 (for 35/35) supplies in that case, which would make the full deploy cost 5 supplies compared to Vanguard's 3. What this would do is keep it at the same combat power but make it cost nearly nothing to repair. Now, of course, this would mean you can't chain deploy them but that's totally reasonable given what they are and gives them a particularly interesting niche in the form of a sort of zombie ship, which is what derelicts feel like to me in general (in that they're this decrepit old von-neumann system that's out there building scrap ships from the broken down remains of the previous ad infinitum)

Ships this applies to:
Warden
Defender
Picket
Sentry

and to a lesser degree
Bastillon
Berserker
Rampart

While we're on the subject of derelicts, I think the Picket deserves an OP buff to 75-80, in order to broaden its builds a little. Maybe the berserker, too, but I haven't used it much. The Rampart is pretty good as-is but I wouldn't be averse to giving it 15% CR/deploy just as a little buff similar to the frigate problem, though it's pretty ok given it eats enough damage in a fight that repairing it makes it worth it, and it's a cruiser with actual firepower whereas the picket is, simply, not.

*Rounded to 2 in the display, I think, but it is actually accounted for in the total recovery cost since it goes from 60 to 30 instead of 60 to 40.

**After applying its own Rugged Construction (66 supplies nominally; 16 DP w/ rugged and 12% CR/dep -> 8 supplies/dep and 8.33 deploys per 100% CR

Edited to update the affected vessels list (I missed a couple frigates; spotted them when I was making a custom mod to play around with these changes myself). Really appreciate Rugged Construction, especially for the Vanguard. I think these CR stats are holdovers from when the Explorarium drones were first implemented which was many years ago now.

5

Suggestions / Add gates overlay to general sector map

« on: December 20, 2021, 03:23:39 AM »

Once you finish the campaign and get the janus device for the fleet it would be nice if there was an additional tab on the normal sector map view which would give you the same display as the intel screen's Gate mode. Same vein as the "Display fuel range" and "Exploration" modes.


Obviously the intel screen gate mode exists already but putting that in the normal map would be a nice convenience since I find myself tabbing to the normal map then realizing I can use gates/need to make sure there aren't any unactivated ones near me which I saw earlier in the playthrough, and tab back to the intel view. Part of the benefit here is that the map view would just save its toggle setting, which I wouldn't really change around, while I do tend to tab around in the intel view. As well, since you use the map to, well, route yourself around since it's the map it makes sense to have Gates, which greatly affect your pathing, be directly visible once they're applicable.

If this were added, I think it's important that this tab would not show up until after the player acquires the janus device since just having the intel tab for gates is already suggestive of their future importance, while having a tab on the map view basically says "you'll eventually be using these!" to a new player, imo.

At the end of the day this is really a super small QoL thing in that it saves me like 2 seconds for maybe every hour of play time so y'know, still be nice though.

6

Suggestions / Make Claws uncrewed (and other fighter musings)

« on: December 13, 2021, 05:38:57 AM »

I could have sworn they used to be but even if not I really think claw wings should be crewless. They're made of paper and there's 5 per wing. They're like worse talons in terms of coffins per battle I'd imagine, and they don't even get the talon benefit of *potentially* being directly dangerous- they only get the danger of EMPing you until something else hostile actually kills you. I find myself wanting to use them a lot but for some reason thinking of the crew I'm likely to lose as a result makes me never actually want to.

This would also mean Scintillas can equip them, which would be nice (speaking of please add more drone fighters/particularly bombers in general. Both for remnants to bully us with and for us to equip stolen legitimately acquired Scintillas with)

While on the topic of fighters:
Gladius wings have become disconnected from their description over time (?). They're described as "fast, deadly, and well-armored" but they have less armor and hull than Broadswords (when they have 2 per wing instead of 3), a single-use Decoy flare (ok, fair, not their role) but all they get instead is more speed and a high-delay IR. It's sort of fair since they're only 6 OP but I'm not sure when I'd ever need a 6 OP fighter with this stat spread.. if one of the MGs was removed so they had a full IR pulse instead of a high-delay one along with buffing their HP to be on-par with broadswords then I can maybe see it. At least, that's my take on this wing. If anyone has some statistics from testing their actual efficacy I'd love to see it, I can never tell if they're actually being useful or not.
*Just occurred to me after doing a check before posting, they're probably supposed to for increasing the survivability of *talon* groups, not broadswords. That makes a lot more sense, though I'm not sure if that really makes it any better since I don't use talons, as they largely (intentionally, and that's fine) suck. If I'm gonna use 2 OP on a talon wing I'd rather use 0 OP on a mining wing and put that 2 OP into flux stats. Point being Gladius wings don't deserve, or need to have, the same fate.

Next up is Warthogs which I never use either. It feels like they should be frigate/destroyer killers (bombers are for killing cruisers/caps especially since you need higher hit strength to threaten their armor) but they only have 130(!) speed, meaning they can't reasonably catch up to frigates. They're slower than all bombers, and that's kind of sad. 160 speed, maybe 180 would be nice. I'd go so far as to say give them 200 but lower their hull to 500-650 range (while leaving the armor)

Generally I think Broadswords are actually too good but not in the way that they need a nerf: rather, in that everything else should be brought to their level and Claws, Gladius, and Warthogs would offer viable (if slightly niche) alternatives to Broadswords if they were given the chance to compete.

7

Bug Reports & Support / [0.95.1a-RC5] Cryorevival always max distance

« on: December 11, 2021, 09:48:39 PM »

The cryorevival facility seems to be taking the cryosleeper as always being the max distance of 10 lightyears away, even when it is not. Specifically, it's in the same system as the planet but only providing 10% of the bonus. Looking at the "other factors" mode for planets in nearby systems also says it is 10 LY away (even though the systems in question are ~3 LY apart). Checking planets outside the 10 LY range correctly states it is outside the revival range.

MN-6975814518516035888
New Marmara Nebula (bottom left corner)
New Marmara Star System; Cryosleeper is in/near the 2nd ring around the star

I colonized the Tundra world and built a cryorevival facility (hoping just the display was bugged when I saw the 10% effectiveness) but it seems to be following through on its predicted output and is only giving 3 growth (the resources are being met).

8

Bug Reports & Support / [0.95.1a-RC3] D-mod text says "reduced by null"

« on: December 10, 2021, 04:49:28 PM »

It seems like the localization is missing part of the entry or something as Erratic Fuel Injector states "Supply cost to recover from deployment reduced by null"
Notable that only some of the d-mods have this issue, so far I've spotted two of the ~5 (types) I currently have in my fleet.

Problematic d-mods:
Erratic Fuel Injector
Faulty Automated Systems

I will try to update this post as I find more (just started a new campaign and spotted it- why must all my ships have erratic fuel injector )

9

Suggestions / Officer Skills: Permanent Ordering in UI

« on: December 01, 2019, 05:08:14 PM »

I think it would greatly help the readability of officers and their skills if all of the combat skills they could get had permanent locations/orders in their UI rather than being listed in the order they were attained. If you're trying to find that one captain you gave skill x you can just look down the list and see which one has that skill highlighted.

Something like this:

10

Suggestions / View PPT on Ship Selection in Combat

« on: September 28, 2019, 07:28:40 PM »

Currently, as far as I know, the only way to view Peak Performance Time remaining on one of your ships is to transfer command to it and read the display on the side. This is, obviously, fairly annoying to do for such a simple piece of information. It would be fairly useful and simple if it showed the remaining PPT when you selected a ship on the map view somewhere on the ship's UI display. Maybe a new bar, above Flux? Or shift Flux/Hull up and put "Peak Performance : [x seconds]".

I'd like this information to be readily visible because it matters quite a lot when I want to retreat a ship early so that it doesn't run down on CR getting off the map, particularly if it is either slow or I've pushed up to the enemy deploy zone. Admittedly the cause of me wanting this is a current battle with Nexerelin where I'm fighting two Diable Avionics expedition fleets involving some 15 capital ships. I had to retreat and re-deploy to refresh PPT but I didn't realize how long the retreat was going to take and now I've got very low CR values and thus want to ensure the CR doesn't end up dropping into malfunction range before I give them retreat orders.

Alternative idea: A variation of the Retreat order (maybe just Full Retreat does this?) where both PPT and CR stop decaying because the ship is entirely in "escape" mode and the order cannot be rescinded.

11

Suggestions / AI Ease-Of-Use Idea (for allied ship designs)

« on: September 12, 2019, 02:58:46 AM »

Assuming it doesn't already (which I'm posting this off of having just tried fitting an Odyssey only to watch the AI literally not fire its two large energy weapons when at 0 flux, for probably 90% of the fight), the AI should prioritize lining up the firing arcs of Weapon Group 1 (and likely descending to 5/maybe ignoring PD group arcs, or increasingly ignoring weapon groups with little to no overlap).

I think? this would be relatively simple but make the AI generally more competent, as well as easier to control and predict for the player (when making variants for allied use).

As a related note for the Odyssey, I'm pretty sure its behavior resulted from trying to get the 3x Medium Missile and 1x Large Missile (synergy) arcs closer to the target because it perhaps saw them as better DPS but in reality it was A) wasting missile ammo (Locust v Dominator with full armor) and B) could have at the least fired a few plasma rounds just to strip the armor off before trying to make use of Locust's admittedly superior raw DPS.

I will say that it would make sense if it currently focuses on DPS output, and can respect that it seemed to be trying to ensure all of its missiles were hitting, but given they are all tracking missiles I'm not sure if it should put as much value in positioning their arcs over its primary and infinite-ammo energy armament.

Fair to mentioned this post resulted from only one sim test but the issue resolved itself after my guess at what it was doing lead to removing the rear-most missile pod and it immediately started making more use of its main weapons. Although, it still does that weird thing where it burst forward then reverses slowly away, bursts forward.. ad infinitum, instead of actually staying out of the Dominator's Large arcs and just circle strafing it: however, another post touched on this and I can agree that always trying to flank wouldn't be ideal and is more of an Odyssey-specific issue.

12

Modding / [0.9.1a] Vanilla Tweaks

« on: August 27, 2019, 04:19:55 AM »

A mod that changes stats for vanilla weapons/hulls/fighters and also adds a couple new hulls.

Core reason I'm uploading is because the AI doesn't understand something about the Atlas MKIII. It refuses to fire its Hammer Barrages even when the enemy is almost overloaded and doing so would simply overload and mostly kill/outright kill them. Best guess was it didn't want to fire them off-target but even splitting the control group so it could individually launch didn't work, and it was fighting a Dominator. (and an Onslaught, though in that case I think it never got close enough/was scared to approach given how rapidly it dies).

Download:https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Lix1eTzruHFA3j7ECih8xFu6vuVGmv3R
Ships:

Spoiler

Atlas MKIII
(The 4 hardpoints are built-in Hammer Barrages)
Lotus
(drawing from scratch is so much harder)
Euryale
(It's a modified Medusa)

[close]

Changelist (V0.32):

Spoiler

Fixed missing Variants resulting in crash on load (woops)

Added Embargo-class Control Carrier
Still a WIP; Won't spawn in fleets yet. Have plans for a custom hullmod and ship system for it.

V0.31:
Added Codex description for Atlas MKIII. Increased Fuel/LY from 10 -> 12

[close]

Net Changes (First Version to Current):

Spoiler

Additions:
   Euryale-class Phase Cruiser
      derivative of the Medusa-class
   Lotus-class Phase Cruiser
      a phase ship designed to brawl rather than assassinate
   
   Atlas MKIII (Pather-variant)
      You better bring a lot of point defense
      
   Embargo-class Control Carrier
      Unfinished as of V0.32, have plans for a custom Hullmod and Ship System
      
   (To Be Removed) Aurae-class Exploration Cruiser
      (First attempt at drawing a ship from mostly scratch; Not happy with how it turned out, but learned a lot)
   

Vanilla Ship/Weapon Changes:
Atlas
   Fuel/LY 10 -> 8 (fuel per cargo efficiency up, so the upgrade is more reasonable vs spamming Colossus)
   
Prometheus
   Fuel/LY 10 -> 8 (see Atlas)
   
Legion
   Fuel/LY 15 -> 12
   (More of a personal change given Legion is fairly strong but I don't think it deserves to guzzle as much fuel as an Onslaught)
   
Falcon
   Flux Dissipation 350 -> 375
   Fuel/LY 3 -> 2 (ripping out 1/3 of the ship doesn't make it use less fuel? Puts it on-par with Apogee)
      Good thematically imo- light cruiser that's good for exploration fleets when they need a little more firepower
      
Gladius
   Hitpoints 500 -> 750 (way too squishy; why were Broadswords tankier?)
   Armor 75 -> 125 (possibly too much overall but there's only two per wing so I think it's fair for OP cost)
   
Warthog
   Speed 130 -> 150 (get into the fight a bit faster rather than lag behind the interceptors further than bombers do)
   
Dominator (It just felt too weak all-around for its cost)
   Fuel/LY 5 -> 4
   Flux Dissipation 450 -> 550
   Max Speed 30 -> 35
   
Gryphon (it does have 3 normal weapon mounts and it IS a cruiser, after all..)
   Flux Dissipation 200 -> 300
   
Pilium LRM
   Speed 125 -> 200
   Hitpoints 50 -> 75
   
Proximity Charge Launcher (make it into a long-term(ammo recharges) PD weapon, similar to flak)
   Ammo 30 -> 15
   Ammo/s 0 -> 0.2
   Speed 50 -> 125
   
Plasma Cannon (Harder hitting, gotta charge up that plasma POWER. Same DPS but flux eff went from 1.1 -> 1.25)
   Damage 500 -> 900
   Flux/Shot 550 -> 1125
   Charge-up 0.33 -> 1.2
   Burst Size 3 -> 1
   Charge-down 1.01 -> 0 (acts like a railgun only much slower)

[close]

Known Issues:
The Aurae-class' eventual removal will make the next version non-save-compatible. I'm simply lazy so I haven't yet; Not too worried given the mod's state, anyway.
Atlas MKIII AI issues
Lotus-class AI issues (much lesser; primarily needless cowardice and trying to fly it like conventional phase vessels)
Lotus-class glow layers aren't done (placeholder glow layers ripped from Euryale)

13

Suggestions / Deep Hyperspace

« on: August 16, 2019, 11:47:39 PM »

What if instead of slowing your fleet's burn across the board deep hyperspace instead just slowed your turn rate? I think this would lessen the impact of large walls of deep hyperspace that block off constellations and generally slow travel.

It might just result in not steering at all and just flying straight, though, since the point at which you boost off storms is generally with large fleets (which are also slow, and slowed by hyperspace more) that can take the supply cost while you go around when you're a small fleet which is already otherwise fast. More specifically, it might end up punishing small fleets for going around while large fleets just fly straight to their destinations every time without fail (as they're no longer slowed by going through deep hyperspace and already boost off storms while small fleets don't currently care about deep hyperspace but do care about storms).

Just throwing an idea out there.

14

Suggestions / Surveying Equipment Tooltip

« on: July 21, 2019, 03:21:44 AM »

It would be nice if Surveying Equipment's tooltip listed the maximum cost reduction your fleet was providing in the same way that the Salvage Gantry tooltip does. Mainly, I'm lazy and don't want to add up all the ships in my fleet but this also results from me swapping out ships/autofits depending on whether I'm aiming to survey or fight and if it directly told me the total itself it would be far easier to realize I forgot to change a variant or a grab a certain ship.

15

Suggestions / Commission as Alternative to Player Planets

« on: July 05, 2019, 02:12:29 PM »

It has been a while since I've gone through the effort of grabbing a faction commission so I apologize if this is already the case (I'm currently doing a playthrough using one but I'm not very high in rep yet).

It would be pretty great if having high-rep with your commissioning faction allowed you to use the faction's orbital works the same way you can use the ones you built yourself. The blueprints available would be those which your commissioned faction has along with the possible addition of those that the player has unlocked themselves. I think it would also be interesting if we could let our commissioning faction use the blueprints we have unlocked- I know we can sell them blueprints but I think it's better for the player if they can simply unlock them as normal and let the faction use them (so that the player can still break off and build their own faction if they so choose; simply because punishing that by forcing you to sell the blueprints sounds unfun).

Unless you break your commission, settling new planets should make those planets be part of the faction you are already a part of- but doing so should require fairly high rep as well. This might be overly complicated to do as, preferably, the player should be able to break ties and retain control of the planets which they personally settled. This has some ramifications for allying with the Hegemony (or Luddic Church) whilst covering your planets in AI cores... so I can see some arguments for this not being a thing, I just think it would be neat if it isn't too hard to do.