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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Topics - CrashToDesktop

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 8
1
Suggestions / Move Shield Flux/Sec Stat in Refit Screen
« on: May 03, 2023, 09:05:18 PM »
A bit of a small thing, but something I've noticed is that flux dissipation and weapon flux/sec are both on the right side of the refit screen, but shield flux/sec isn't in line with it. Could shield flux/sec and shield flux/damage have their positions swapped so all the flux dissipation stats are in the same column?

2
Suggestions / Proximity Fuse vs. Shields Incorrect Damage
« on: April 17, 2023, 11:37:05 PM »
I've noticed some weird behavior when you have a proximity fuzed projectile detonate on a ship's shield. When the ship's collision radius is larger than the shield radius (as it should be) the projectile appears to detonate early and not deal the expected amount of damage. When the collision radius is smaller than the shield radius, the project deals the expected amount of damage.

For example, the vanilla Flak Cannon deals 200 Fragmentation damage. Versus the Conquest and it's 1.4 efficiency shields, you would expect it to deal 200 / 4  * 1.4 = 70 damage, but in-game it barely manages to get 40 damage. If you tweak the collision radius of the Conquest to be smaller than the shield radius, you get the expected 70 damage.

3
Suggestions / Enable Turret Rotation on Beam Chargedown
« on: January 30, 2023, 11:39:55 AM »
The last time I could find this particular thing acknowledged was ~9 years ago. I'm not sure if that same reason still holds up in today's Starsector, but I don't see a reason why it should. If anything, it looks worse than it otherwise would since you see the AI swinging beams off-target all the time for no discernible reason - especially bad on the Tachyon Lance since it's got the longest chargedown time of any vanilla beam.

Could turret rotation on beam chargedown get enabled?

4
Suggestions / Support Fighters - Engage Order
« on: February 04, 2022, 04:38:47 PM »
Support fighter AI is moderately complex compared to most other fighter types. When enemy ships are not near by, support fighters will hang out near the front of the carrier to extend their range and shoot down the occasional fighter or missile the wanders by. Once enemy ships start getting closer, they'll slowly move back behind the carrier to protect themselves. If the carrier vents or overloads, support fighters will immediately move between the carrier and the enemy ship for the duration to attract fire and tank shots for the carrier. However, support fighters do not obey Engage orders.

What if they did? Have support fighters follow the vent/overload behavior when you set them to Engage. That way, you have finer control over what they do, and opens up more tactical considerations, for example sending forward your support fighters and sacrificing them to gain an advantage in the flux battle - something that regular fighters can't accomplish due to their behavior of circling the target and getting shot at by PD rather than attracting attention from the enemy's main guns.

5
Bug Reports & Support (modded) / [0.95.1a-RC6] Burst Beam Targeting AI
« on: February 01, 2022, 06:34:46 PM »
When "beamFireOnlyOnFullCharge" is set to true and the beam is a burst rather than continuous, the AI seems to have difficulty landing the shot due to indecisiveness in target choice. This issue gets compounded when the beam has ammo.

When multiple targets are present, the base Tachyon Lance will have no issues picking a target and shooting it. However, if you add back in "beamFireOnlyOnFullCharge", the weapons will often times pick a target, start charging, then midway through the charge decide to shoot something else and change direction, resulting in a completely whiffed shot between two ships. If ammo is added in onto the Tachyon Lance, the AI becomes extremely conservative in picking shots, resulting in the AI second-guessing it's target choice and dragging the charging beam off target before it fully charges and fires far more often. Adding any of the CONSERVE weapon tags will also exasperate the issue further.

Secondary to this, the AI doesn't appear factor in it's own ship turning when firing weapons with slow turn rates, which means beams will get dragged off target if the ship makes a sudden maneuver as the beams charge. Furthermore, beam weapons have their turning disabled on chargedown, resulting in weapons with longer chargedown times (such as the Tachyon Lance) suffer a considerable loss in DPS (and other secondary effects like EMP and arcing) if the ship makes even small turn at the end of a burst.

While this issue is present in vanilla, I've posted it here in modded since it's particularly debilitating with something I'm working on now. No AI hints were added to the weapon other than SYSTEM. I've added a video for reference - the first shot has both beam weapons completely whiff the target even though the ship wasn't turning at the time. The AI's indecisiveness in picking a target is obvious after, as you can see both beam weapons going back and forth between the Dominators in spite of having ammo, before it finally settles on one and fires a beam that lands. The third shot is whiffed due to the ship turning.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/824910699415207937/938260214208135208/targeting_Trim.mp4

6
Suggestions / Skill Tree Rework
« on: May 18, 2021, 05:34:31 PM »
With a not-insignificant portion of the community dissatisfied with the new skill tree, I thought a fresh set of ideas might be worth considering. I apologize if any of your favorite skills aren't included in this rework, there were only so many places I had to cram in skills. I also don't claim this to be expertly balanced, rather as a showcase of what a new skill layout might be.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17RwOe5-Fq4KyAUpNMFn-Gr01uLkHhvxuX-CklMOQ4V0/edit?usp=sharing

The skill trees have been redesigned to be more combat-oriented, along with organizing them around fleet compositions instead of generic ideas like "Combat", "Leadership", or "Technology".  Five trees are present - 4 combat-oriented paths along with 1 fleet-oriented path. With the addition of a fifth skill path, at least 5 additional skill points are needed to get a basic sense of the tree. Each path continues to be laid out in the new skill tree method - 5 tiers, 2 skills each, with wraparound feature. However, the way the paths are laid out has been changed - each path has a general fleet theme to it, but their layout is more predictable. Tiers 1, 2, and 4 have personal combat skills to the left, and fleet combat skills to the right. Tier 3 has Nav skill on the left, and ECM on the right. Tier 5 has Raiding skills on left, and Colony skills on the right. The Tier 4 fleet combat skill is also the capstone skill of the tree, which provides a large bonus for playing to the strengths of the tree.

ECM has also been reworked slightly - it does away with the friendly ECM rating vs. enemy ECM rating, ECM is now an activated effect based on what skill you're running, where both you and the enemy can suffer from ECM disadvantages at the same time. Each path also includes it's own unique Nav and ECM-boosting skills on the third pick, so no matter which way you go, you will always be able to get at least one form of each.

Grand Battlefleet focuses on engaging and destroying the enemy fleet in a single, extended engagement. Receive bonuses to survivability, peak operating time, and combat readiness, while sticking together with Defend and Escort orders provides more bonuses. Use the capstone skill Decisive Battle to end the enemy fleet rightly once their peak operating time runs out.

Cruiser School focuses on the battle of maneuver and creating opportunities to exploit through the judicious use of overwhelming firepower. Receive bonuses to raw damage, speed and maneuverability while your ships follow orders. Use the capstone skill Task Force to overwhelm an enemy with combined arms of different ship sizes.

Interdiction focuses on rapid strikes against isolated enemy targets. Receive bonuses to damage, speed, and phase vessels while your smaller ships dogpile larger ones. Use the capstone skill Commander Profiles to take advantage of the Clean Disengage feature to pummel your enemy to pieces through deadly short engagements.

Carrier Primacy focuses on use of massed fighters to solve battlefield problems. Fighters receive a number of bonuses to their survivability, damage, and speed while engaging the enemy. Use the capstone skill Carrier Group to give a wide buff to all fighters depending on what's currently deployed.

Fleet Management, the fleet-oriented path, condenses many of the previously important skills that weren't directly combat-oriented. Many have been combined with others, or had new effects applied. Includes bonuses to salvaging, campaign movement, combat readiness, officers and administrators, and ship loadouts.

Each path also includes one Raid-buffing skill and one Colony-buffing skill, depending on theme. Grand Battlefleet and Cruiser School focus on larger fleets and the use of Heavy Armaments in Raids, Interdiction removes the Free Port stability penalty and gives bonuses for the first time you Raid a location, and Carrier Primacy boosts accessibility through military assets and increases Raid power through fighter wings. Administrators can get any of the four Colony skills from any tree, though only the player can get the Elite bonus, which applies to all Colonies.

That covers the general aspects of this proposed skill tree rework. Hopefully the goal is clear, and hopefully that goal looks better than both the current and preceding skill trees.

7
Bug Reports & Support / Buggy Regroup Fighter Behavior
« on: May 11, 2021, 01:54:07 PM »
Playing around with different ways to use fighters, I've come across some wonky behaviors with how fighters behave when under the Regroup order. When an enemy is very close to the carrier, within roughly ~500su, your fighters will automatically start attacking it. However, they won't attack it in the normal fashion - they'll instead adopt an orbit attack pattern regardless of what they normally do under the Engage order.

This affects FIGHTERS and INTERCEPTORS, BOMBERS are unaffected, and SUPPORT fighters ignore Engage and Regroup orders completely (see here for that issue). This video uses the vanilla Warthog (the only mod present in this video is Tart's target practice mod) and showcases the change in behavior as you toggle Engage and Regroup, but you can also spot the lead Warthog fighters offsetting themselves from the target when set to Regroup. Here's a video using a mod to better illustrate the issue - you can see the gunship's beam firing straight ahead, but the gunships themselves are offset by a considerable margin. Other fighters in the same wing, if any, are unaffected by this issue. The lead fighter angle offset appears to be the same regardless of what weapons they use, and the smaller the target, the longer the range, the worse the issue becomes, so much so that the lead fighter may not be able to fire it's weapons at all. Fighters with only one or two per wing with hardpoint weapons are hit particularly hard by this.

This is a fairly niche issue that affects almost nothing in vanilla, but for what it's worth, a few mods make these issues more noticeable.

8
Suggestions / Support Fighter Control
« on: May 10, 2021, 07:38:56 PM »
I've been playing around with different carrier builds since the release of a few mods that support a wider variety of them. However, in my testing I've discovered that trying to get support fighters to engage the right target in a fleet setting is like trying to herd cats - they just won't do what I want them to do! Support fighters with 0 engagement range (like the vanilla Xyphos, or the Roider's Dragline and Torchship's Firespitter) completely ignore Engage orders - this also extends to mods that remove engagement range, like the Bastion Carrier Core from the Modern Carriers mod, except in this case all fighters mounted to that ship will act like support fighters, ignoring Engage orders.

Here's a video to illustrate this particular issue. They try to shoot the closest enemy, whether it's a fighter that's just buzzed the command deck or some frigate off to the flank that's not the priority target. I set them to Engage partway through, but they continue targeting the Borer drones. This makes coordinating said support fighters exceedingly difficult.

All fighters should heed Engage orders - for 0 engagement range fighters like the Xyphos, ordering them to Engage should make the carrier's target their target as well, so you can at least tell your herd of cats to shoot the same thing. When not set to Engage, the normal behavior works fine.

9
Bug Reports & Support / Setting ship to Autopilot changes Autofire
« on: November 24, 2018, 11:09:38 AM »
When you enter combat and set your ship to go on Autopilot, the AI will seemingly at random toggle Autofire on your weapon groups.  This also includes ships that aren't under your command at the moment, as Transferring Command to that ships will show it's weapon group Autofire will also have been toggled.

10
Bug Reports & Support / Orbital Station Won't Repair
« on: November 17, 2018, 12:12:32 AM »
Plain and simple, my Mindline Orbital Station got caught in the middle of a raid (well, 3 actually at the same time...) while it was still being built and refuses to repair itself, even after many months it still reads as having 30 days left.  Here's the save file if it helps.


11
Suggestions / Jump Points on Red Supergiants
« on: September 24, 2018, 08:03:03 PM »
So, might be a good idea to move Jump Points to be outside the corona of particularly large stars, like Red and Blue Supergiants.  It gets quite toasty trying to move in or out. :)

Spoiler
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12
Bug Reports & Support / White Flashing Graphics Glitch
« on: September 22, 2018, 12:12:14 AM »
So, for about a month now I've been getting white flashes appearing on my screen while playing Starsector.  They appear as any size or shape of rectangle, from small squares to long thin lines going vertically across my screen, and multiple can appear at once, but they only last for a frame or two before disappearing.  This really started to become a problem partway into a game of mine, and happened rarely (if any at all) during the first few cycles.  I'd like to capture video of it, but the problem seems to elude me when I start recording.

I should add that I'm only running two mods - Lazylib and Console Commands - so this is either a GPU issue or something with Starsector.  I have a GTX 1070, an i7 6700k (neither OC'd) and 16 GB of ram, giving Starsector 8 GB of it.

13
Bug Reports & Support / Allying with the Remnant
« on: September 19, 2018, 11:57:21 PM »
Not sure if this is intended behavior or not, but it seems like I can fight alongside the Remnant if they get into a battle and my Transponder is off.  In this particular situation, I entered a system with my Transponder off to find a Bounty target pursuing a small, "Dormant" Remnant fleet (and ignoring me), at which point the two fleets engaged.  When I entered the battle dialog I expected to be rejected by both sides - but instead I was greeted with the Remnant fleet of all things offering to aid me in battle.

Spoiler
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(Just to be sure)
Spoiler
[close]

14
Bug Reports & Support / Infinite Restore
« on: April 29, 2017, 10:57:01 PM »
So, ran into an odd bug just now.  I salvaged PLSS Free Enterprise, a Tarsus (D)-Class Freighter, a while ago from the Persean League (as in, a couple in-game cycles at least - it's a good hunk of the way through cycle 218 in that save with a good hunk of the sector explored, still my first game from when 0.8 launched), then shoved it in my mothballed fleet at Jangala until I needed it.  I just picked it's lucky number to be withdrawn as one of the freighters to go on my next expedition, so I wanted it in tip-top shape.  I went ahead and Restored it - when you're rolling around in 8 million credits you can do that - and it got rid of the D-mods, but the sprite didn't change, so I just cycled the refit screen and - wait, why is it still using the (D) sprite?  And is that Restore button back to being clickable?  So, just tested it, apparently I can just Restore, cycle the refit screen, and keep on doing that ad infinitum and nothing will happen to the ship.  No idea what could possibly cause this, I've been Restoring ships for a while now and never run into this.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pc0jn4e1z8zzk61/save_WalterHampton_4875743803883959471.zip?dl=0

15
Bug Reports & Support / Opposing Fleets - Friendly Engagement?
« on: April 20, 2017, 06:28:57 PM »
So, something funny happened on this test run.  I started a new game, spawned in (skipped the tutorial) and immediately went to Barad to watch the fireworks and vulture around for the inevitable debris fields and ships floating about.  Of course that happened, did a couple of salvage runs while the battle was going on, picked up 4 frigates, and then headed off to the secret pirate lair.  Flicked off my transponder just before I entered, then sold my loot, and after I exited flipped my Transponder back on.  Then, all of a sudden the Hegemony fleets that I'd picked up loot from start chasing me endlessly.  They'll engage me, but I'm never forced into a battle - I can just Leave or open a Comm Link with no bad result.  However, the engagement text pops back up after I Leave, and I have to spam Escape for a little before it kicks me back out to the campaign screen.  But the Hegemony fleets keep on pursuing me.  Save file provided.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dj8v4nilifmgcek/save_CameronFour_9181002238393741547.zip?dl=0

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