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Topics - CapnHector

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1
Modding / [0.96a-RC10] Enhanced Sprites v. 0.08 + Hull Livery
« on: September 08, 2023, 05:13:08 AM »
Enhancedsprites + Hull Livery v 0.08 (adds Legion) can be downloaded here: Download (v. 0.08). Now adding 121 new sprites that can be used to recolor Odyssey, Paragon, Onslaught, Conquest, Dominator, Medusa, Eagle (and 2 for Radiant) using 15 hull livery hullmods, as well as making enemy ships use these so that variants of ships look different. Please try it and tell me what you think, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Current future plans: when enough ships are reskinned, give factions wider ship access and make them use their own liveries whenever possible.


https://youtu.be/gnakYNQObs0


Original post follows.



My first mod. Exciting... let's see what you think.

I don't want to write a wall of text so telegram style.

Dream: can select hull livery/paintjob freely from large selection and individualize enemies. Problem: takes infinite time for human to create sprites. Solution: discovered how to sprite using DeliberateV2 @ https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27895#msg411580 . This is using the same method for Eagle and Radiant. Generation details: Stable Diffusion, DeliberateV2+ControlNet Canny, no extra training, no copyrighted things in prompts. Bonus: enhances ship sprites to add lighting or polish. Sprites hand finished. Summary: too good to pass, and by my understanding of rules, permissible.

Current status: This is version 0.01. If it is good, I will develop it at a glacial pace of 0-1 ships per day with a goal of eventually covering all vanilla ships. Let's float it first to see if it's legal and if it makes people angry, because I'm AI generating sprites.

Hull livery change: install hull mod on ship to change ship sprite. Currently available (only for ship Eagle): Persean (Vanilla enhanced), Hegemony, LG, LC, Tritach, Civilian, Pather, Pirate, Phase, Factory unpainted, Special. For Radiant: Vanilla enhanced and Vanilla enhanced-alt. List of permitted ships prevents crashing game by installing on incompatible hull.

Currently available sprites for Eagle:

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ0TP8um1mg
Note: in this demo, radiant_Strike variant has been given liveryAlt hullmod, causing the two variants of same ship to look different.

Credit: LazyWizard's 2013 post describing the sprite change method and Harpuea's Paintjob v003 mod on which this is based. I contacted Harpuea but it appears he is gone, fortunately said in his thread other modders can use too. Thank you GPT-4 for teaching me how to program Java and use Starsector API by writing helpful line by line comments, since I only have a background of R and C++, and also some of the code. DeliberateV2 for making the sprites. Nes for the term "Livery". Diego Delso for taking a great picture of a museum that got me started even though it was not used for these.

Tell me what you think and any advice. I would especially like to use larger sprites (512px wide) but don't know how to make it work so that the sprite stays centered when changing livery. I downsized them mostly for this reason, although it turns out the pixel art is in fact kind of nice.

The sprites are not perfect because the intention is to make them fast and also some AI pseudo-creativity is in fact a nice thing, but if you find something ugly tell me and I will see if I can make a better one. Contrast, if you feel you really want this on some ship tell me this too, so I will prioritize.

2
Suggestions / Forum subheading suggestion
« on: August 25, 2023, 06:36:57 AM »
Hi, the Fan Media and Fiction forum has the subheading/explainer "Share your stories or AARs and discuss the lore here". Since visual arts also belong there but it's not apparent from a literal reading of this explainer/subheading, suggest altering it to something along the lines of "Share your fan media (stories, videos, images) here".

3
Hi,

I got interested in AI art by the Story NPCs AI art thread, so I figured I'd try to create some realistic versions of Starsector Ships using Stable Diffusion and the Deliberate V2 checkpoint. These are from screencaps from my videos and clicking on the image will take you to the video it is a screencap from. This is "centaur" or "cyborg" art, in that I manually edited the screenshot to a more suitable prompt in GIMP including recoloring parts, then fed it to Stable Diffusion, generated lots of images (from 20 for the Odyssey and Executor to over 200 for the Eagle which was almost impossible for the AI to comprehend apparently, or maybe my prompt was bad) and then kitbashed the final product from those in GIMP.

It turns out SCC beat my 37 DP vs 824 DP double Ordo record by winning it with just one Doom (35 DP) in a stylistic feat, so now I have to work on beating that. I figured I'd float these at this point although I want to do many more even just for myself, also to see if it's even allowed because the forum rules only have a section on AI art in mods.

Executor:


Invictus:


Odyssey:


Eagle (not happy with this one, apparently the AI just flat out didn't understand what a bulbous bridge or turret domes on a wedge shaped ship means, but I can't really seem to make it better):


Here are the prompts I used:
Spoiler
executor: not recorded, but was at least "manta-like, silver, futuristic, battle damage, energy guns, purple wings painted on it"

invictus: huge boxlike cathedral spaceship and 2 modern fighter planes,enormous battle damaged scarred bronze armor plates in front, steampunk cathedral church, deep recesses,intricate structure, scaffolding, gothic arches, metal pipes underneath, six enormous steel silver gleaming battleship ((cannon batteries)) with three barrels two on each side and two rear, four coilgun railguns sparkling with electricity in front with two on fire, fiery engines, bronze metal, realistic style, high definition, hd, 8k, nebula background

odyssey: futuristic sci-fi battleship with a bulbous design of gleaming silver metal and painted with sky blue details, with energy shields, a hangar on its starboard side, a green painted military missile battery on its front starboard side in front of the hangar, brightly burning blue engine, 5 laser cannon weapons are firing, two enormous plasma cannons crackling with pink flames and electicity, 2 pink photon torpedos, 2 very small space fighters below the ship, nebula background

eagle: a triangular (wedge-shaped) futuristic starship in (gleaming shiny polished mirror silver) with (shiny gleaming polished mirror silver) armor plates, surrounded by an energy shield, ((two crimson wings painted on its shiny armor)), in combat inside a red solar flare, (2 gatling guns miniguns with multiple gun barrels firing ion bolts in front), (((3 bulbous dome-shaped laser turrets protruding from the armor on top glowing with red lightning energy))) on top, resembling imperial star destroyer, ((distinct round dome-shaped command bridge protruding up from between engine nacelles with lights on the bridge only)), two separate large main (engine nacelles) with bright fiery engines, three smaller auxiliary engines on each side with fiery engine plumes, realistic style

negative: cartoon, badart, lowres, blurry, malformed, weird, alien, anime, animated
[close]

4
The title says it all. The AI seems to view Flash Bombers as hyper threatening, which can be exploited by the player when using them but can also be annoying. If this is adjustable then it probably should be toned down.

Picture explanation.

S-modded Extended Omni Shields on a Nova. Why are they this way despite the ship being about to die because of it?


Explanation:


The friendly Nova even went so far as to ram the enemy ship with its hull while keeping the shield towards the Flashes.

5
Suggestions / "Do not auto-assign ships" option
« on: August 15, 2023, 12:05:46 AM »
Hi,

there seem to be two ways to play this game, flagship and RTS/fleet command style. I prefer the latter and the auto-assign system is then often problematic. It has been described using words such as "insane troll logic". Now in ordinary builds it is acceptable although it often feels like you are wrestling with some malicious force trying to override your intended strategy, but it's also occasionally useful such as when you have ships orbiting a "Defend" order. However when you are trying to do more advanced things, such as using one type of ship for kiting and another for fighting things become really difficult as it is unacceptable (and often lethal) for one category of ship to be assigned to an objective intended for another category of ship. Auto-assign works excellent when different categories exist, by the way: "rally civilian ships" is a great order to separate civilian ships from others or give them a default location without fuss. It is in fact so good that the order itself is a strong argument for using civilian ships to grab objectives as they can be reliably given a "grab it and then move away" command by setting a rally point and issuing a capture order.

For example, I'm currently trying a formation where Monitors defend an objective and Prometheus Mk. II hunt isolated enemies on the other side of the map. However, terrible things keep happening due to auto-assign where members of one group are assigned to objective intended to another, causing death, unless I am vigilant enough to prevent it.

I think some players might appreciate a "do not auto-assign ships" option in settings or even the config file, where instead of being auto-assigned to an objective ships that do not have an objective revert to the normal "search and destroy" behavior and ships can only be assigned to objectives manually. I can also understand if this is such a core gameplay concept that it shouldn't exist though, but figured I'd float the idea.

6
Suggestions / No SO allowed on Monitor (or increase DP cost)
« on: August 10, 2023, 08:54:53 PM »
The Monitor is extremely strong for its price tag in overdriven form and can be used by the AI as well as the player. As evidence, here's a video where I take out 2 Ordos with 2 Legions and 3 Monitors under AI control. Note that the Monitors take the fire from most of the Remnant fleet, while dealing shield damage, and only die due to running out of CR near the end of the engagement (and in fact it takes only 2 Monitors to tank the entire fleet, 1 is used mostly as a spare)


Now it is not the strongest thing in this game at all, but it's really silly. I'd suggest that the Monitor shouldn't be able to install SO (flavor it as being incompatible with Fortress Shield or its unique hullmod maybe). Alternatively it should at least cost 8, same as a premium frigate.

7
This is a thread about beating double Ordos with the least DP possible, using anything that is available in the vanilla game, aka. Hiruma Kai's challenge (the original challenge was for me to beat 75 DP vs double Ordo under AI control).


Updates on the challenge!

AI control:

37 DP vs 824 DP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZZKWI08Ajk

59 DP vs 711 DP under AI control
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvEyhsW9cCM

68 DP vs 652 DP under AI control (no Omega weapons)
https://youtu.be/I-aO4jITvcg

Player control, with Omega weapons:

SCC: 35 DP solo Doom vs 824 DP epic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK0ez0iPjHs

SCC: 41 DP vs 816 DP with player flagship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-oBrmdR7sc

Hiruma Kai: 66 DP vs 814 DP with player flagship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1kJbr1PwO8


Original post follows.

Hiruma Kai posed the question of whether I could beat his record of defeating 2 Ordos under player control with the Ziggurat with my fleet playstyle, in DP terms. It took me a while to figure out how, but I did. Here's the video!

https://youtu.be/I-aO4jITvcg

I could solo two Ordos at a time with Ziggurat (three last release), but I cannot solo five Ordos with it - not enough PPT, and Z can only be deployed twice at most because of -50% CR per round.

I'd love to see a 75 DP no player flagship fleet handle a double Ordos (with battle size set to 400) to be honest.  I don't think I've ever seen that, although perhaps I've just missed it.  Given a 75 DP solo ship fleet is a very different fleet from a 240 DP fleet.  AI is fine when it's even up in numbers, but when it gets surrounded, it starts having issues.  Given these are all self-imposed challenges, which do people think is harder for the AI?  75 vs ~640 DP (double Ordo), or 240 vs ~1600 DP (5 Ordo)?  Assuming 400 deployment point limit.

...

CapnHector, once you're happy with the Astral quintuple Ordo challenge, you might consider going the other way - what is the least amount of DP under AI control you can use to beat a double Ordo?  Can you get to or lower than 75 DP , the level of a human running a solo Zig?  Feel free to use Tesseract dropped weapons and/or the Zig under AI control.

More accurate terms: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27461.msg408602#msg408602

Now you may have noticed the 9 Medusa fleet I posted earlier, but once I added D-mods to it the ships became unable to defeat a double Ordo. However, at the end of that thread, I turned my attention to the most balanced ship in the game, Monitor. It turns out that with this ship - and some careful micro, hence my presence on the battlefield - you can control the engagement. After that, Legion is the ship to do it all - excellent firepower, control, EMP from Claw, good defense.



I went for the much maligned HephAG again, not for a lack of trying other things. I spent a few days perfecting the build, mainly different variations of Mjolnir. Mjolnir x 2 was running the ship too hot, while Mjolnir x 1 Mark9 x 1 was very promising and I almost got there (to the final Apexes in fact) but it turned out to be slower in killing smaller ships, because that build does not fit S-ATG but instead S-Flux Distributor. I also spent a while trying S-Omni Shields instead of S-Extended Shields, but accidents keep happening when the AI has to decide which way to keep its shields, so this ended up being my preference.



The officer skills are irreplaceable in my opinion. I would love to have Field Modulation, but can't afford it.



Detailed Combat Results:



Note that losing the Monitors matters not a bit, they have 5 D-mods including Structural Damage already.

This fleet does not need a Ziggurat, or Omega weapons, but does require you to grind / savescum / save edit for D-mods that do not affect your weapons or CR. Of course, if you're not doing this challenge, just doing 3-4 Ordos with 5 Legions will likely get you experience faster and easier.

Oh, to answer the question of which is more difficult, 75 DP vs 600 DP of Remnants or 240 DP vs 2000 DP of Remnants: hard to say. The 75 DP fleet was more challenging to build than most of my 5 Ordo fleets. The 240 DP vs 2000 DP battles, however, are harder.

8
Just a minor thing, but the option "Uh, nothing actually. I misspoke" does not seem to actually get you out of the conversation. .96a-RC10, no content mods (graphics mods and Detailed Combat Results only)


9
This is in response to https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12565.0 but I can no longer reply to that thread since it's locked. While we wait for Alex to allow more characters, you can edit the name fields in your save file and it doesn't crash the game.



Although it may not work neatly with the interface...



Also works for naming ship variants at least.

10
Suggestions / Add a crew hiring cost / wages up front
« on: August 04, 2023, 08:14:14 AM »
Hi,

In the current version crew is just a cheaper form of supplies and caring about losses only makes sense for roleplay purposes. Even an exploration fleet would optimally lose all extra crew on the trip to avoid paying wages. This is a regrettable state of affairs since many players apparently like to preserve crew.

If not bringing back crew experience, I would suggest the player needs to pay 12 months up front for a crewmember (120 cr) who is then free for 1 year, thereafter normal salary. Standard contract to align crew and commander interests. Rescued crewmembers should likewise ask for salary after 1 year, not immediately. If not too complicated, could refund for time remaining if crew sold to a market early before the 1 year of service is completed.

11
Suggestions / Reduce Wasp from 5 to 4 OP per wing or make it Support
« on: August 03, 2023, 10:00:07 PM »
Edit: nevermind, my mistake about the CH rounding here.

Wasp is still terribly overcosted though, and the large wing size is actually a downside since it leads to replacement rate drain. Hard to ever pick it over Talon. A fair price would be 0 or 1 OP most likely, since empty hangar is probably better for carriers and Talon for converted hangars just because the RR is better though both have low survival and little effect.

Alternatively making it a Support Fighter would be great because sending these to fight enemy ships is just minus replacement rate.

12
General Discussion / Elite: 9 Medusa vs Double Ordo (video)
« on: August 02, 2023, 01:08:06 PM »
This is in response to Hiruma Kai's challenge to be able to beat a double Ordo with less than 75 DP. The original statement:
I could solo two Ordos at a time with Ziggurat (three last release), but I cannot solo five Ordos with it - not enough PPT, and Z can only be deployed twice at most because of -50% CR per round.

I'd love to see a 75 DP no player flagship fleet handle a double Ordos (with battle size set to 400) to be honest.  I don't think I've ever seen that, although perhaps I've just missed it.  Given a 75 DP solo ship fleet is a very different fleet from a 240 DP fleet.  AI is fine when it's even up in numbers, but when it gets surrounded, it starts having issues.  Given these are all self-imposed challenges, which do people think is harder for the AI?  75 vs ~640 DP (double Ordo), or 240 vs ~1600 DP (5 Ordo)?  Assuming 400 deployment point limit.

...

CapnHector, once you're happy with the Astral quintuple Ordo challenge, you might consider going the other way - what is the least amount of DP under AI control you can use to beat a double Ordo?  Can you get to or lower than 75 DP , the level of a human running a solo Zig?  Feel free to use Tesseract dropped weapons and/or the Zig under AI control.

More accurate terms: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=27461.msg408602#msg408602

The 9 Medusa fleet that I figured might be able to do it, video:
https://youtu.be/m7wcjdNaQaE

This is not, in fact, my best combat. I am still learning to use this fleet, so we lose one Medusa to just issuing a Direct Retreat order, as that causes it to charge the enemy, then direct retreat - I didn't know that's not allowed (yet). I've been able to beat a double Ordo with only 1 Medusa lost.

Getting all optimal D-mods on this alongside Derelict Operations would reduce it from 117 DP to 81 DP, so we are very close. I think we would be fine with just 8 Medusas, beating the challenge. Needs tweaking to fit Combat Endurance, however. I'm not sure if/when I have a chance to do that, so I figured I'd post it because it's pretty cool already.

The build:
Cryoblaster variant (helps taking down Radiants, x 4 in fleet)

Heavy blaster variant (it's probably just better vs ships other than Radiant, x 5 in fleet. 1 does not have Front Shields as a mistake due to autofit front shields issue, I would recommend it)

Officer skills (for all officers):

Character:


Weapons are just all in their own group.

Short writeup:
Spoiler
The Medusa combines the agility of a frigate with 2/3rd the dissipation of a battleship, .37 shields 360 shields and significant (though not overwhelming) firepower. It beats the Hyperion in PPT and also DP. So, I think it's the one for this challenge. I had some other ideas such as a pair of Dooms, but this would seem to leverage fleet skills best. Its most significant weakness is that the AI has no appreciation of the EMP component and range of the Tachyon Lance, requiring care on part of the player.
[close]

13
The Odyssey is a very interesting ship. Beautiful in design (though I wish I could have it in other colors), it is the ship that has a little bit of everything: fighters, missiles, firepower, agility, flux stats, built in ECCM and high resolution sensors. The only thing that seems to be lacking is the OP to take advantage of all of these. However...

https://youtu.be/WkGpvjDuxgE


Writeup:
I was fascinated by the Odyssey and inspired by a quote
Now, if there were some tactic that kept the Ody pack moving, rather than lining up with long-range weaponry like Executor or Legions, I bet that could really chew through a lot. Perhaps some sort of tactic where the pack circles the battlefield capturing points and picking off stragglers? Or even just an avoid order on their massive death ball. Two Ody at the top to pick off reinforcements?
But, it would probably take longer and be more order-intensive; would the Ody even have the PPT? Could it backpedal fast enough to avoid getting jumped by, say, a Nova and a Brilliant straying from objective? Can AI handle shields well enough to survive that kind of pressure? What if the two Ody at the top get pinched against the top wall by the death ball, or reinforcements come in while they are still at full flux? Seems iffy. And I don't think there is any mono-fleet non-Omega Ody build that could handle even five ordos in a line battle. The ship is made to move, darnit!

In other games, fleets that focus on firepower and speed at the expense of defense are my favorite thing. So why not here? It turns out that this was extremely difficult to make it work. First of all, the ship is nearly unusable with the current iteration of Plasma Burn, and Alex has already said he will change it for next version so friendly collisions do not cause Plasma Burn flameouts. See link for video - the ships will just spontaneously die. So after a few days of trying (and I really tried, and made it to the final Radiants, but oh is it unreliable) I decided to set collision flameout chance to 0 in miniburn.system. So, this is a slightly modded run. I don't consider the ship usable otherwise. When it no longer causes the ship to randomly suicide, though, Plasma Burn becomes a huge asset as you see in the video.

I tried many loadouts, including videoing combats using S-Exmags-2x APL-IRPL, Pilum loadouts, HSA+2x Tachyon+TL, Plasma + TL, different fighter setups including Warthog, Warthog+Flash, Broadsword+Flash, 2x Sarissa, and I think it took all of my gaming time for three days, but here it finally is, the best build I could come up with, and after having created it it is in fact very good; to my surprise I won this one on the first try. You need to really learn how to use this ship though: essentially the ship having no orders means Plasma Burn charges. Any orders turn them off or limit them. That is why I cancel the Eliminate on the Radiant: to make the ships more aggressive.

Enjoy the show! And oh, I know it's a very weak 5 Ordo. I think this could do more, but I don't know how much. It's not as strong as the others, but it's possibly the coolest, since this is the one where we outmaneuver rather than outgun the Remnants.

Build:


Fighters are 2x Talon.

DCR:


14
Title contains my modest suggestion. I would suggest instead the ship slows down to its regular maximum speed and then flames out, if crashing into something during plasma burn.

Actual issue because I'm trying to play a multiple Odyssey fleet and just lost my third combat to ships plasma burning in close quarters, crashing into each others' shields and flying to the enemy side as if shot by a cannon. One made it literally through the enemy fleet from the bottom deployment zone to the enemy deployment zone which was... cool but probably not what this should do.

15
With all the new ships, it may seem like the Onslaught is not as powerful as it once was. This is not the case. It is incredibly powerful. Here's my showcase of 200 DP of Onslaught (XIV) vs 2200 DP of Remnants including 6 Radiants and 5 Novas. No retreat, no Onslaughts lost. Did lose civilian auxiliaries playing it safe, probably didn't have to since these ships are quite capable of dueling Alpha Core Radiants on their own.

The biggest weakness here are frigates with EMP, since we couldn't afford decent protection, so we start the battle with a little unusual strategy. Enjoy the show, it'll start as soon as video is uploaded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j6-h-h-eUw

My build:


Hey look, I even put PD on it this time! I originally even had vulcan facing the rear but I took that out when it shot down like 9 missiles during an earlier 6 Ordo try, I am not paying 4 OP for that. We use the flak to turn on true autofire.



Officer skills:


My skills:


DCR page 1


DCR page 2


1v1ing Radiants


Writeup in form of PAQ:
Spoiler
Q: Where is Heavy Armor?
A: Couldn't afford it. Also all the armor in the world won't stop these levels of missile spam. Shield tank or die. I would have it though, but it's too expensive in OP or maneuverability.

Q: Why 3x Hephag?
A: I have previous excellent experience of Remnant farming with Omni-LAC + 3x Hephag builds from .95.1. We need the killing speed to deal with the insane number of ships coming at us in a reasonable amount of time is about the long and short of it, even more than any defense Devastator could provide.

Q: Isn't this a little overfluxed?
A: Only if more than 1 Hephag is firing.

Q: Thumper?
A: I know right? First use of Thumper in history? It's there to shred frigates and turns out it does it well. At least I couldn't come up with anything better for the same OP.

Q: What are all the civvie ships?
A: This was inspired by Draba's 6 Ordo Legion. They provide 43% ECM so after the frigate phase (I monitor ECM to tell when it is over by the way) where we measure up to a ridiculous >90% ECM, we start actually winning the ECM war. You could basically just deploy whatever random civilian ships you have around for this, although Colossus is probably optimal and Kite for officers since it is also an excellent objective grabber.

Q: Seriously your engine is disabled half the time, do you know there are hullmods for that?
A: I really wish I could afford RFC or Insulated Engines, but I need the caps to be able to duel Radiants. So the solution is micro and keeping a good formation.
[close]

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