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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

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Messages - landryraccoon

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1
Suggestions / Re: can we... Upgrade Gamma and Beta cores a bit?
« on: February 09, 2025, 08:29:00 PM »
FWIW I agree with TK.

AI cores are busted in vanilla already. They don't need any buffs. If you're in a highly-modded environment where AI cores are somehow not good enough for your colonies, mod in better AI cores.

My argument is that if players pretty much always try to use an item despite the drawbacks, they don't need buffs. I'm willing to guess that in vanilla unless you are RPing as Luddic, you put the best core you have into the best industry you have always. They don't need to be more powerful when it's already a no brainer to always use them.

2
Suggestions / Re: Reworking colony economics
« on: October 29, 2024, 03:33:33 PM »

I already wait long enough before colonies become worth having, beyond being able to build as many meta weapons as I want.  I do not want to wait even longer.

I build one or two colonies in year one.  More come later when I find a good second place and can afford (and defend) them.

<snip>

By the time colonies make a lot of money, I could have been farming for alpha cores for years and colonizing more and more worlds, long after the game is effectively over unless I wanted to colonize the whole sector and/or waited until all the crises have come and gone.  In my last game, I was done before my last crisis with the Hegemony began.

Hear, hear. I agree.

Endgame colonies mean the player has infinite money. I am totally fine with this, in fact I think it's a good thing.

Conceptually I think we should think of Starsector's endgame as only starting when money no longer matters to the player. The player can now build the fleet they want with the weapons they want, and running out of supplies/fuel should be a minor concern, something that's dealt with by a minimum of planning and not a continuous emergency. At that point, John Starsector's reason to keep going should be something other than economic - defeating some ultra hard group of enemies, finding rare loot / equipment that money can't buy anywhere, etc..

By that definition, Starsector doesn't really have an endgame yet. Hunting and killing [REDACTED] and [SUPER-REDACTED] are a cool endgame challenge, but there isn't anything beyond that. Prolonging the period before the player has infinite money is just trying to drag out the middle game. I don't see the point.

What would make Starsector eternal, imho, is a real endgame for the player, where they're chasing extremely difficult goals and the early/middle game needs of basic survival and putting together a basic fleet don't matter anymore.

3
General Discussion / Re: Colony Crises Ruin the Game
« on: October 18, 2024, 04:42:32 PM »
This is like the millionth thread about colony crises.

To be blunt this is a skill issue. Maybe the game could be more obvious about telling you how to resolve each crisis, like it is for Tri Tach.

My point is the same as it was in the other threads: none of the colony crises are that big of a deal. You can either solve diplomatically or just kill them.

4
So just my two cents - I’ve actually never found any of the colony crises to be a big threat. When I started a new game after the crisis system was announced, I really prepped for it. I had several capitals in my fleet and enough money to go straight to star fortress on defenses.

Maybe I’m playing too conservatively? It took me about 2 in game years before I founded my first colony. None of the crises felt like a big threat. Just, like, kill them all, man - or go for a diplomatic solution, they all are avoidable.

5
Suggestions / Re: Hypershunt tap problem
« on: May 24, 2024, 04:40:11 PM »
I'm coming late to the thread, but here's my suggestion.

Remove the upkeep from the hypershunt tap. Yes, you heard me. It should just be good.

When you find a pristine nanoforge, you're just happy. It's just a good item, you found one, so you're glad. Why can't the hypershunt tap feel like that?

You have to have a colony within 10 light years of a hypershunt and beat the entire game to make use of it. Why can't it just be a reward?

Like, just let the player be happy. They won the game. They get an extra industry. No drawback, no gotcha, it's not a bunch of grinding. It's a good job, you get a prize.

Edit: Maybe after you install it, the Pathers send the Grandmother of All Armadas to take you out. That would be an even bigger prize! You get to have an awesome fight, in addition to having an awesome colony, instead of a bunch of grinding with a mediocre payout. After beating Tesseracts, the Pather fight would probably feel cathartic, an appropriate denouement like Merry and Pipin coming back from defeating Sauron to clean up the scourging of the Shire.

6
Reading this thread makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Am I completely misunderstanding how story points work, or is everyone else?

- Worries about S-modding early game/bad ships: Do you realize you get the XP back if the ships are lost or if you scrap them? There's no drawback, go ahead and S-Mod your early game D-modded frigate all you want, scrap it later and get the XP back.

- Green options that give 100% XP - I literally ALWAYS take these. You get 100% of the XP back on the story point, how is this a waste? These are the most efficient possible uses of story points, there is literally no drawback unless you are saving the SP for something else and you can't spare them.

Seriously, people who are saying don't S-Mod ships that might get blown up or spending story points on green options, do you know how this works?

7
FWIW, I like Story Points a lot.

The main use of story points for me is to avoid save scumming. If I run into some random fight (maybe even one that I could easily win) but I'm just not in the mood I have no hesitation to press the green option to skip it. Or if I'm doing quests and I want a bigger reward, I press the green button.  They make the game feel less grindy to me.

It fits really thematically. I see them kind of like "Karma points" in some RPGs. Ordinarily if I don't like the outcome I might just load an earlier save, but now I don't have to.

I do max out S-mods on my flagship and ships that I fly, but I generally don't feel the need to max out S-mods on the rest of my fleet. In fact, the very first S-mods I put on most ships is S-modding good logistics mods on my support fleet. That lets me max out on range / minimize supply cost so I can load up on missions without having to return to the core worlds.

8
Suggestions / Re: Quest Planets being immune to satbombing
« on: April 08, 2024, 12:32:10 PM »
Hot take, vanilla shouldn't even have satbombing as an option. What purpose does it serve?

Make it a mod only option. It makes perfect sense in Nexerelin. Vanilla Starsector isn't a 4x game. You're like, some trader / pirate / bounty hunter dude with a small fleet, why are you nuking the sector like Genghis Khan?

9
Suggestions / Re: Making (some) money should be easy...
« on: April 07, 2024, 04:19:34 PM »
That change would make it so that practically speaking the only way you would get a capital is by salvaging it.

I don't really have a problem with that.

Agree to disagree. There's room in the game to support multiple play styles.

As it stands, you can choose to trade and build / buy or salvage or both, and I think that's a good thing. I think that the cost to buy/build ships in the game is pretty well balanced right now and I don't think it needs drastic changes.

10
Suggestions / Re: Making (some) money should be easy...
« on: April 07, 2024, 02:13:05 PM »

This can be fixed simply by increasing the proportions in cost from each ship class, make destroyers substantially more than frigates, and crusiers substantially more than destroyers ect.  Make a cruiser be a million, Make capitols even more, 10 mill, balance the numbers, but make that progression up ship classes more expensive.


The game should be balanced around vanilla, not mods. If you're telling me that in vanilla Starsector without mods you can earn $10M without a huge amount of grinding I don't believe you. Even a pretty profitable vanilla size 6 colony only earns about $360K a month, it would take you 3 cycles to earn $10M, and that would be for a single Paragon in your example.

That change would make it so that practically speaking the only way you would get a capital is by salvaging it.

11
Suggestions / Re: Clear indication of fleets operating independently
« on: April 03, 2024, 06:10:49 PM »
It's quite hard to tell which fleets in your colony system are just regular independent mercs and prospectors and which are commerce raiders. The same goes for a bunch of other specialist fleets, in quests etc.
It'd be helpful if there was a clearer way to identify which fleets are 'non-faction-faction' ones. Some kind of modification to the border, a floating icon beneath or over the centre of the fleet, or something like that would be helpful.
Commerce raiders are literally named such. There's no ambiguity there. All non independent fleets in your system are either trader convoys or crisis fleets. And for independents they are either mercs, traders, or the aforementioned commerce raiders. You just need to read the name of the fleet.

No. This is a good idea. When I'm looking for the satbomb fleet in the system it departs from, I don't want to have to assume and accidentally engage it when it's supported by patrols (the fighting of whom will cause a declaration of war). There should be a clearer indicator than the fleet names.

I think if you attack a satbomb fleet in a system owned by the same faction, it should be a risk that you aggro the entire faction. That just makes sense to me. It doesn't need to be easier to stop the fleet.

If you want to be sneaky, wait for the satbomb fleet to head to hyperspace and ambush it there. If you attack a Hegemony satbomb fleet near Jangala, yeah, you should risk aggroing the entire Hegemony.

12
Suggestions / Re: Making (some) money should be easy...
« on: March 28, 2024, 04:06:26 PM »
My two cents:

It's fine for money to be really easy to get, because money should only matter in the beginning and mid game. At the start of the game it feels like the only thing that matters is how much money you have, but in the endgame, the only things that matter should be things that money cannot buy, because money gets replaced by some new type of endgame progression.  If you're a beginner at the game, even managing the basic logistics of the game is difficult, so having some "easy" ways to get money is both fun and makes you feel like you're getting a lot better at the game when you master them. I don't really have an issue with certain types of trading or raiding breaking the (early) game, because that's fun. When you start a new playthrough you feel like you're a hero because you can skip past the early part knowing a bunch of tricks, and why not? The problem is if there's no endgame content beyond that.

In the end game, things that matter should be things that are earned through overcoming significant challenges in the game. Omega weapons, for example, seem to fit this perfectly. I hope that whatever end game ends up being, that there's a lot more stuff like Omega weapons - stuff that simply can't be bought for money, but must be earned by beating gameplay challenges.

IMHO, endgame starts at the point where money significantly drops in importance. Typically in my games this is when I get a profitable colony up to size 6. At that point money does not and more importantly should not matter, and that seems fine to me.

13
Suggestions / Re: Colony building that gives SP
« on: March 04, 2024, 11:46:35 AM »
This is probably a minority viewpoint but I would go in the opposite direction. Story points shouldn't become just another depreciating currency.

After a certain number of total S-mods in your fleet, additional s-mods should cost 2 SP and then 4 SP, with no limit. Like colony improvements have scaling SP cost.Let the player have soft cap of S-mods for the entire fleet, but no single-ship limit.

If you could spend all of your story points to mod one super ship that your player pilots, that sounds like a "Story". It would be super cool to trick out one single combat freighter so it can fight off cruisers Han Solo style, or an Eagle until it can bully a Paragon. They aren't "Galactic Khan Empire Logistics Points". How does the "Story" even matter if you're churning out stories at one of the metropolises of your burgeoning interstellar polity?

SP stands for "Story Points". I don't like the idea of them becoming another min-max currency for your absurdly-large-armada. I like the fact that they can be used to get slightly better rewards for missions, and quality of life improvements like ignoring patrols, and generally pulling off legendary hero ***. IMHO that is where their usage should be centered.

14
General Discussion / Re: Lion's Guard Sunder Availability
« on: February 28, 2024, 01:38:18 PM »
yeah, but you don't know that. That's just your interpretation of their actions, and a very surface one at that. The player could find out who they are, what they do, and not deal with them in a violent way. Maybe the reason they attack scavengers is cause, cause they know that scavengers will report their location... I mean, if you walked into a bandit camp and these bandits were like hiding out there. They would stop you from leaving, because they would know that you were going to snitch on them, probably. I mean, sure. They could be diplomatic about it. Like Red Dead Redemption 2 style, where you have the mission where you chase a guy and in the end he falls down a cliff, but he's still hanging down. And you can save him. And he goes like "okay, sir, I will not snitch on you". And then you trust him, even though you have no idea if it was the right thing to do.

The game throws us onto the path of least resistance every single time, a path of least resistance that ends up with us gunning someone down. This is most likely just a gameplay loop thing, but it does end up portraying the main character as a soulless psychopathic murderer. Especially considering we never bother to recover survivors of shot down ships.

Like, think about it. Plenty of ships, for example Conquests of Persean League have blast doors. Which means that if we destroy them, most of the crew is probably still alive, at least half of them. And yet, the player is always like "screw you!" and just leaves them to die. I mean, it is a behaviour other factions practice. And it is probably just a mechanic thing with the developer of the game still thinking about maybe making some kind of a system later on. But you see what I mean? Like those little things look really awkward in the long run.

I don't think it's intentional to make the main character look like a warlord who just murders everyone in their path. But it's just that the game's most important aspect is combat. And without a story, you need some sort of a gameplay mechanic that causes combat. And when you fight without a reason, you fight for fun. Then... Like... You murder for fun. And if you think about it. The fact that Starsector is about murder being fun, than the story makes the main character feel like a... Freaking... You know... Freaking evil... Like... Evil murder dude from space.

This is all your choice in how you play and your personal head canon isn't it?

I don't chase down the support fleet after I've won a battle. I assume those ships picked up survivors from the defeated fleet and ran off with them, besides for which, generally they're the ones attacking so I'm acting in self defense.

By far the most rewarding thing in terms of loot is exploration missions and finding research labs and mining stations. I don't see how that's evil.

Bounties I pretty much stumble upon by accident, and bounty targets always aggressively attack anyway, so I had no choice but to defend myself.

There's no reason in the game whatsoever to ever bombard a planet except to be intentionally evil, so maybe just don't do that.

Also - you haven't played the Galatia quest line? That's the main story quest for the entire game in vanilla. How can you say that the player is always evil when you literally admit you haven't even played the main story? It sounds like playing an evil character is something you clearly chose to do for yourself.

15
Suggestions / Re: Cargo and fuel capacity should be a hard cap
« on: February 27, 2024, 12:02:03 AM »
Going over cap when you're docked at a market is the only scenario that makes sense to me. After a fight you can simply jettison cargo and come back for it later if you really think it's that valuable.

At the market, you could either 1) not let you undock while you are over cap or 2) automatically place excess into storage.

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