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1

Blog Posts / Re: Skill Changes, Part 2

« on: July 20, 2021, 12:56:30 PM »

I’m pretty keen on the new changes, I think the current skill system is decent but I agree that some of the binary choices feel a lot more arbitrary or even a bit contrived than they need to be.  Binning them a bit more loosely per tier feels better.  I am very interested to try the “neural link” perk in particular as well!  Two buffed ships and more battlefield flexibility sounds like a really fun option for wolfpack play throughs of the sort I tend to enjoy (emphasis on frigates and destroyers with swarm tactics).

2

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.6.1c (hotfixed January 13, 2019)

« on: April 14, 2021, 02:48:22 AM »

Hmm!  Sounds like quite a lot of changes!  I’ll keep my final opinion on hold until after I’ve tried the new update when it’s released.  RIP sandcaster Shepherds

I can probably get along alright now with the new story point permanent hullmods, at least.  It was great that the TSC ones had military hulls by default.  (I like playing with frigate-heavy fleets with low sensor profiles for smuggling and base raids, as well as higher fleet burn.)

(Oh, sounds complicated!  Am I correct in my interpretation that you’re basically looking at ways to better identify the before-and-after epigenetic effects of immune system adaptation to an invading virus or vaccine?  Sounds like important work in this weird age we’re all caught up in.)

3

Mods / Re: [0.95a] RotcesRats v0.8

« on: April 10, 2021, 10:58:51 PM »

I seem to have run into some filename capitalization issues trying to run this mod on Linux.  The game was complaining about the Wrath missiles graphic PNG filename; recapitalizing it from “Wrath.png” to “wrath.png” seems to have fixed it.

I suggest you pick a case for your filenames and stick to it to avoid issues like this; a lot of your filenames vary in capitalization with no apparent rhyme or reason.  Windows users probably won’t have issues, as the OS doesn’t distinguish between upper and lowercase filenames, but Linux cares about whether a filename is capitalized or not and treats different capitalizations as different filenames entirely, and apparently your scripts look for “wrath”, not “Wrath”.

Thanks for the mod, this hiccup aside I am looking forward to trying it. =)

4

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.6.1c (hotfixed January 13, 2019)

« on: April 06, 2021, 07:27:18 PM »

Nice to hear from you!  Good luck with the PhD, sounds tough.  What topic in bioinformatics, out of curiosity?

Yeah, I%u2019ll freely admit I wouldn%u2019t know where to start on fixing the mod, I%u2019m no ace programmer.  It%u2019s nice to know the source is included though!

When you have time, even a stable hot fix patch without new content would be appreciated, although I%u2019ll definitely look forward to seeing the new story mechanics integrated as well.  (I miss the sandcaster Shepherds!)  I%u2019m liking the new story point system in 0.95 so far.

Those screenshots look great!


EDIT: Sorry for the weird punctuation but apparently the forum hates my system apostrophe symbol for some reason, can%u2019t seem to fix it at the moment. =\

5

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.6.1c (hotfixed January 13, 2019)

« on: April 06, 2021, 02:19:53 PM »

Incidentally, I tried just running the mod as-is with a version adjustment in the modinfo file, but unfortunately the game runs into errors on startup.  Not sure if there’s some hacky way to work around that in the meantime. =\

6

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Tyrador Safeguard Coalition 1.6.1c (hotfixed January 13, 2019)

« on: April 06, 2021, 02:17:52 PM »

I sure hope not!  This is one of my favourite faction mods.  Would love to see an update.

Machine, wherever you are, I hope things are going well for you!

7

Suggestions / Re: Passenger ferry contracts

« on: February 22, 2021, 11:58:01 PM »

For players I'd rather see rare special missions with more exciting passenger transports, like evacuating people from war zones.

To be clear, I also think this could be a great idea too.  Would work well with sector market impact disaster events and such.

8

General Discussion / Re: What do you think of the black market?

« on: February 22, 2021, 11:54:54 PM »

I respectfully disagree re; the relative unimportance of trade.  I think that the economic challenges of the game are part of what makes it fun.  Yes, the player can eventually overcome these, but I think that they are part of what make the earlier parts of the game more interesting and challenging, as you have to weigh your options and make the most of what you have economically to progress, and it affects your choices for ship hulls and parts as well as the ranges you can reasonably explore on the map (hyperfuel monies).  While combat is arguably a larger part of the game, I don't think the game would be the same without the economic forces that under-gird the acquisition of ship hardware and infrastructure, either.

That said, I would reluctantly agree that if push comes to shove, polishing the combat mechanics is more important if it really does come down to a limited number of dev hours.

9

Suggestions / Obstacles in the tactical map?

« on: February 22, 2021, 08:37:33 PM »

I think it would add to the combat to sometimes have larger asteroids,  larger space debris, or similar physical obstacles in the combat field at least some of the time.  Perhaps things that cannot be destroyed or moved, at least not easily.    I enjoy the combat a lot, but I do feel like sometimes having some obstacles to hide behind, ram, and otherwise maneuver around could add interest to battles, especially for smaller ships.  The waypoints help with this to an extent, but the fact that they have no impact on firing paths and only moderate influence on ship positioning leaves some room for improvement I think.

I'm not sure if the AI is well-equipped for this idea to be implemented, but I thought it'd be fun regardless.

10

Suggestions / Re: Passenger ferry contracts

« on: February 22, 2021, 08:24:10 PM »

I think passenger transport fleets would be nice for fluff if it happened automatically, but for players it seems rather boring to do, no? If autogenerated, it could be a good visual indicator for (inter)planetary stability, as mass passenger transport would only happen between high stability planets. Then, should the sector eventually decline, these transports stopping would be a visible consequence (and the other way round).


For players I'd rather see rare special missions with more exciting passenger transports, like evacuating people from war zones.

Although not especially dramatic, this would offer a relevant alternative to goods-shipping contracts, especially for players tight on trade options, up-front cash, or cargo space.  Having a low-risk, modest-reward mission option that allows players to get out of a tight spot financially (e.g. lost your fleet in a fight, too poor to buy enough hyperfuel, etc) is not a bad option to have, as the player can always just ignore it if they prefer. 

Also, the missions could have some risk of pirate attack.  The battle style could be different from outright combat encounters, with NPC ships fleeing the tactical map while you try to defend them and cover their asses.  This would offer some variety against other fights since destroying the enemy ships is not the true goal, merely slowing them or blocking their shots would be enough.

Also, it's not bad to have some more chill mission options available sometimes.  Having more relaxed mission options can be good for when you're in that mood.

There's my two cents.

11

Suggestions / Black market risk/reward could be adjusted, not very challenging at present

« on: February 22, 2021, 08:15:01 PM »

Using the black market carries low risk versus the high reward it offers.  Most of the time when I play, I virtually never use the official market.  I also find it's not too hard to avoid the negative consequences of doing so, most of the time.

While this does not really break my enjoyment of the game, it does trivialize the "official" markets into near irrelevance.  Taking the 30% discount is virtually always the superior choice, and using the black market feels like a no-brainer rather than an impactful decision 95% of the time.

I think a couple ways to potentially make the black market decision matrix more interesting would be to make black market transactions require story points, as per the coming update.  This way, the player must choose between saving story points at a 30% credits cut, versus saving 30% of their credits, spending story points, and risking reputation and confiscation.  Another approach might be that you can get up to a limited number of "charges" of black market access from quests or via special encounters, which mean you can only use the Black Market as many times as you have charges.  This way, the player must be far more strategic about what trades they make and whether it's worth saving some charges for later.  (e.g. you can only carry 5 black market access charges/tokens at a time, and you can recharge them via quests which restore one or maybe two of them at a time; so you can only use the BM 5 times in a row before needing to get more charges to use it again.)  This would help emphasize that the Black Market is a risky, exclusive resource that is not freely accessible on a whim, and requires some preparation and luck to access.

I also think that confiscation risks and possibly penalties could be higher, or perhaps that recon sweeps should be more suspicious of abrupt ship upgrades with equipment not on the local official market.  As it is, I can almost guarantee that I avoid reputation and confiscation completely after the early game, so they become non-issues and black market trade is effectively risk-free.

These are just some of my thoughts on how it could be re-balanced, perhaps someone has a better idea?

12

General Discussion / Re: What do you think of the black market?

« on: February 22, 2021, 08:00:45 PM »

I have to say that I don't find the black market particularly hard to access and in fact I tend to end up basically never using the "official" markets at all most of the time.  I don't find this to be a huge issue in terms of my overall enjoyment of the game, but I do agree that the risk/reward threshold for the black markets is not really high enough to feel like an impactful decision.  Saving the 30% tax is virtually always the superior choice, and the drawbacks/penalties are generally avoidable.  Gotta hustle that bustle

I agree that if reputation loss were more of a threat - or perhaps even if your reputation could be capped at some lower threshold until you cleared your name - or if loss of goods or ship parts to confiscation were a larger risk, the decision to use black markets might feel more impactful.

Another possibility might be to somehow worsen the quality of markets where there is consistent active black market activity, especially with large transfers of funds.  Surely those taxes you and other smugglers are dodging are being used for something by local government, no?

Perhaps it might even be beneficial to make black market transactions require story points, as per the coming update.  That way there would be a kind of cap on how often they could be used, and the option to save credits vs. save story points could be a meaningful decision.

13

General Discussion / Re: this is the greatest game ever made

« on: February 15, 2021, 12:56:41 AM »

Just gonna hop on the good feels train and say I'm really looking forward to the next 0.95 update!  I enjoy Starsector a lot, and really appreciate the thought that went into the scifi setting and the different factions; I also think that Starsector really emphasizes economic pressures on the player to a degree I haven't experienced elsewhere (trying to pay back Tri-Tachyon loans on a timer can be surprisingly tense!  I would actually like to see more of these higher risk-reward loan style missions added to the game).  A big +1 for the combat too.  The layered tactical mechanics and intricate ship loadouts work well, and keep the game from feeling like just another generic 2D space combat game.

I am anticipating the story content fill-in and also the revamps to the character and fleet management mechanics.  I'd love to have more to do with AI cores as part of ship customization also.

I get that it's done when it's done, but I hope I don't have too much longer to wait!  I'm trying not to read too many spoilers in the recent story focused blog posts.


P.S. Thanks also to all the mod developers out there, the vanilla game is great but I have had a lot of fun with your work as well!

14

Bug Reports & Support (modded) / Starsector with mods randomly locks up and freezes on Linux

« on: September 21, 2019, 01:02:47 PM »

I have been playing Starsector for a while on a Linux box running Arch, which has run without problems on my machine with no mods, and I recently decided to give some of the well-established mods a try.  So far, it's been fun, but I've run into a problem.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what is causing the problem, but apparently one of my mods (or some interaction between them) is very sporadically causing the game to freeze somehow.  In fact, on my system at least, the mouse and keyboard become completely unresponsive, and so far as I've figured out the only way to resolve the situation is to hard reboot the machine.

The freezes seem to happen most often when menus are open, funnily enough (e.g. inventory or hull salvage menu screens so far), and I think during ship selection for combat as well.  Ingame music continues to play with no notable disruption.  I am not sure if there is a consistent amount of time that the game is open before a lockup occurs, it seems to be somewhat variable and there is no warning before it happens.  It can take some time though (even a few hours) before it happens.

I have given my Starsector 4GB of RAM in Java, and also tried it with more RAM.  I am also running on a relatively weak graphics card, so I have disabled some of the heavier GraphicsLib functionality.  I have good FPS with no real stuttering, I would have thought I had it running perfectly if not for these random and abrupt lockups.  As far as I know I am not running any mods that are incompatible with the current version of the game (0.9.1a RC8).

Is there a logfile somewhere I can check to figure out what is happening at the time of the freeze?  My modlist is;

{"enabledMods": [
  "$$$_lightshow",
  "$$$_trailermoments",
  "anotherportraitpack",
  "raccoonarms",
  "blackrock_driveyards",
  "CombatAnalytics",
  "chatter",
  "lw_radar",
  "diableavionics",
  "DisassembleReassemble",
  "fixallemptyplanets",
  "sun_fuel_siphoning",
  "gs",
  "sun_halved_fuel_efficiency_and_cost",
  "HA",
  "Imperium",
  "lw_lazylib",
  "leadingPip",
  "luddenhance",
  "MagicLib",
  "nexerelin",
  "wyv_planetaryShieldAccessControl",
  "portrait",
  "$$rebalanced_pilums",
  "sun_ruthless_sector",
  "SCY",
  "shadow_ships",
  "swp",
  "speedUp",
  "sun_starship_legends",
  "StopGapMeasures",
  "sd_sundiving_1.1",
  "Sylphon_RnD",
  "tahlan",
  "TS_Coalition",
  "underworld",
  "US",
  "URW",
  "vayrasector",
  "vayrashippack",
  "lw_version_checker",
  "toggleWeapons",
  "audio_plus",
  "shaderLib"
]}

Thanks for any help in tracking this issue down.

15

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] High Tech Armada

« on: September 21, 2019, 12:38:22 AM »

@Snrasha; Hi, I like the work you've done with your mod.  The ships look cool and I'm giving them a go in my current run. =)

I'm wondering if you'd like some help cleaning up the English text though; your translations are pretty decent overall, and certainly do convey the key intent of what you're trying to say; but they definitely feel a bit choppy to my eyes as a native speaker.  I believe I can help make them cleaner without changing the intent too much.

If you're interested, send me a PM and we can go from there.  If not, no worries.  Thanks for the mod.