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1

Blog Posts / Re: Codex Overhaul

« on: May 12, 2024, 05:19:20 PM »

After 3 and a half years since I last asked, I got my improved codex! Navigation will be much more useful compared to what it is right now. On top of the sim improvements, I'll likely be spending more time in sim than in the game proper once the next update comes 
(Frankly, I already spent a lot of my game time in sim)

2

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: February 06, 2024, 11:44:48 PM »

Great update! As I mentioned in a previous blogpost thread, the colony crises do well to explain the difficulties anyone's fresh colonization attempts will have when encountered with the scrutiny of the factions of the sector. The outcomes, through diplomacy or force, play well into what each faction would do to consider the legitimacy of a weaker polity. And it's quite funny to shatter the average Diktat officer's worldview that some upstart would dare defy the Sindrian Diktat and its hold on the fuel market - and succeed. "The fuel, you fool!"

Would you entertain a question for us lore enthusiasts? You gave us a lot of food for thought with the grendel lore, which we greatly appreciate and discuss to death on the unofficial discord. I forgot to suggest this in David's historian lore suggestion thread, but will we ever hear more about the previous occupying Battlegroup, the VI? From the True and Accurate History of the Persean Sector, they are mentioned to have left before the XIV arrived (has the Domain ever heard of rotating in shifts?). But perhaps it would be cool if they actually did leave something behind that they may have forgotten to take with them... or get something more compelling about their existence than a conspiracy theorist's ramblings.

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: January 01, 2024, 06:13:02 PM »

Escort Package: it's back, in a very different incarnation

    Can be installed on any destroyer or cruiser
    Provides 25% maneuverability, 10% top speed, 20% weapon range while within 1000 su of larger ship
    For destroyers, when the larger ship is a capital, these bonuses are doubled
    For destroyers, when s-modded, also grants 20% reduced shield damage when in proximity

I will certainly try my best to make use of the return of the escort package, since it'll be seemingly useful for what I already try to do with ships in my fleet: Have smaller support-built ships escort larger ships. My most favorite type being laser pointer sunders, which will certainly be more intimidating with the escort package buffs.

4

Blog Posts / Re: Colony Crises

« on: November 24, 2023, 03:56:50 PM »

Hegemony
The AI inspections are now a series of escalating crises, instead of being separate from this system.
Defeating the inspections is narratively framed as defeating the Hegemony, and there’s a new way to avoid the inspections.

Nice, making it a bigger deal to beat or avoid inspections is nice, because, as I recall, the last time someone resisted the Hegemony's AI inspections, there was a massive war that resulted in massive casualties for everyone involved. It should mean something when the Hegemony is failing to enforce one of their most important restrictions in the sector.

I am very excited to see the outcomes of each crisis; the narrative of influencing the balance of power in the sector through these crises is very interesting to me, since it practically proves to the major factions that your faction will not go down easily and it is here to stay.

5

Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector

« on: August 31, 2023, 12:55:17 PM »

Oh look. A star. Alone. In the pitch black abyss.

...

I'm sure it's fine.

Totally! (Good eye )

I hope it's just the first breadcrumb of a series of breadcrumbs of systems and stuff that exist in the Abyss that we can't see in the map view. A first dot to draw the player over there, but there's more hiding outside of view.

6

Suggestions / Re: What should the Historian ramble about?

« on: August 03, 2023, 06:48:14 PM »

There are a couple holes in sector history that I would love to hear at least in-game theories on to ground some circumstances that are vague to the player.

These include:
The time between the Collapse and the arrival of the XIV to the Persean Sector. At this point, it's only the Luddic Church, Tri-Tachyon, indies, and pirates. Later, the Hegemony justifies its war over enforcing Domain-era restrictions on AI development by the threat of TT making a move fielding armadas of autonomous ships. But if TT wanted to conquer the sector, they had 48 years to do that before the XIV arrived where there was no opposition (outside of pirate warlords like Warlord Leonis, but I can't imagine them being a problem for TT if they wanted to clean them out themselves) and they themselves only started deploying AI warfleets in c84. What was the sector dynamic before the arrival of the XIV?

The lack of AI ships in the second AI war despite the existence of the remnants, which the public do not know about - but any spacer who has left the core and every major faction does. We have our own theories as to why TT couldn't levy these fleets after they lost the first AI war, but this isn't acknowledged by anyone as being convenient for the sector or inconvenient for TT. Though, the lack of them in the second AI war allows the official proclamation that they have all been destroyed to not fall apart. Very convenient, but again, why couldn't (or didn't) TT levy them? Isn't anybody (in-universe) bothered about this?

Domain leadership and discussion over the source of special Domain technology.
WHO is the source of Domain Restricted items? Who commands the battlegroups? The true-and-accurate-history mentions a Domain Sector-leader that prosecuted Ludd, but I doubt the leader of a frontier sector has power over the massive armada that occupied them to maintain control and stability (also, who in the Domain thought it was a good idea to time battlegroup rotations such that the first battlegroup leaves before anyone from the second battlegroup comes to replace them?). Who was above the Sector-leader, and likely the entity that had power over the gates? The Domain outsourced a lot of its technological development necessary for expansion to corporations, which includes terraforming technology, ships, communications equipment, as well as advanced AI. But we have Domain restricted items such as hypershunt taps and nanoforges which seem like their development, manufacturing, and distribution was entirely controlled by higher Domain authority and not a responsibility of a corporation (but the Domain didn't have such totalitarian control over AI, for whatever reason, especially given TT's multiple violations of alpha+ AI development in the past; I wonder how many people take notice to this part of their faction description). There are also the larger Domain megastructures - the gates and hypershunts themselves, which one wonders how they were made such that no one in the Persean Sector - or even the Domain military itself given how helpless the XIV were when they were cut off from using the gates - has any idea on how they work. Gates are massive and would require massive supply chains and logistics to supply resources and manufactured parts to build them, and we know there are a lot of them! How do you hide this process from human eyes unless you've automated the entire process without the need for human supervision...
(also, if gate haulers existed to haul gates, were there hypershunt haulers for the hypershunts?) 

7

Suggestions / Re: Capital Neural Integrator Dynamic Cost per DP

« on: June 23, 2023, 06:46:31 PM »

What about making NL hullmods cost no to minimal OP and making them increase DP like with CH instead?

I feel like that is counterintuitive as the purpose of the player piloting ships with their own skill is to provide greater DP value for their flagship than under AI control.
Increasing ship DP to accommodate player piloting basically nullifies that. It feels... wrong.

8

Suggestions / Capital Neural Integrator Dynamic Cost per DP

« on: June 23, 2023, 03:32:44 AM »

Hello all,

Regarding Neural Integrator, the OP cost of the capital version of this hullmod is a steep 50 OP. This was a fair concession for the Radiant, at the time the only capital droneship that could be equipped with the hullmod (by the player through legitimate means).

However, we now have a new capital droneship, the Nova, which is priced at 40 DP and nowhere near as dangerous as the infamous Radiant. Whether it's a friendly ship or an enemy ship, it has a habit of getting in situations where it is easily killed. Its effectiveness is greatly improved with player piloting, but it has less OP than a radiant and is nowhere near as invincible or overpowering as it. Also ignoring how much of a skill point sink double dipping in tech is just to pilot one...

That leads into the title of this suggestion. Have a cost for the capital version of this hullmod be based on DP to allow for its expense to remain the same for the Radiant and be less punishing for the Nova.

A simple formula that is a base 30 OP cost + the ship DP cost over 40. Such that the Nova's cost would be 30 OP, not cheap by any means, but the radiant's cost would remain 30 + 20 = 50 OP. Admittedly, this is not my own suggestion, but it's an annoyance many players share.

Conceptually, I think it's solid, assuming it does not open a can of worms. This is merely to remove the punishing costs of the hullmod for capital hulls as a result of its balancing around the Radiant - hullmods are usually not balanced around a particular ship in mind. There would just need to be a UI explanation as to why the cost is different to explain the formula. Then we would be free of the "Radiant tax" associated with the capital version of the hullmod.

I have no clue how difficult it would be to make this in the game, but it is a change out of reach for modders, and it would benefit the several other mod capital droneships that exist. Most of them are balanced under the Radiant, and the hullmod's OP cost becomes noticeably prohibitive...

9

Suggestions / Re: [BUG][SPOILERS] Humans can be recovered from [REDACTED] in a certain system

« on: June 18, 2023, 04:49:32 PM »

Thank you for the report, not a bug though

Important lore probing:
What are you suggesting then, that first AI war remnants were collecting prisoners? It's interesting that it's only these wrecks, neither from normal remnants that are quite old, nor hyperspace remnants that are also ancient.

... will we find out later? 

10

General Discussion / Re: Problem with the Brilliant!!!

« on: March 14, 2023, 08:38:58 AM »

Scintilla being the only source of remnant fighters isn't so bad since there are only 3 remnant fighters, and one is not worth anyone's time. I don't think anyone ever felt threatened by or compelled to use the lux. I wish that it was a reward worthy of receiving by killing remnants.
I kind of wish there was a drone bomber besides the flash because the scintilla is a pretty pathetic candidate for AS since its recall device doesn't really benefit anything other than flashes. That or recall device is changed so that it isn't practically useless for non-bombers.

Remnant ships have good stats and weapon loadouts to brawl with, and the brilliant being able to chase down ships to finish them off will be good.

11

General Discussion / Re: What would a midline capital carrier be like?

« on: March 09, 2023, 12:53:00 PM »

Midline is not exclusively limited to the cruiser school philosophy, they are getting a battleship in the next patch.

Especially in early releases when there were not so many ships.  If midline was heavily bound to cruiser school, I doubt there would be anything other than cruisers.  Midline is one of the big three tech styles, and it has a battlestation like the other two styles.  I see no reason why midline needs to be restricted to cruisers.  That said, midline and low-tech packs have lots of goodies, while the high-tech pack is sparse.

The biggest obstacle to a midline carrier capital (if the devs were so inclined) is who among the NPC factions will use it?  League? Hegemony? Independents? Pirates?  Who uses it ought to affect its stats.  If the League or Hegemony get it, then it can be a high-cost unit.  If it is the Indies or similar minor power, it should be no better than an elite cruiser or low-end capital (about 35 or 40 DP), yet still be something more than a stock Heron.

Alex is making it so that the indies will no longer be able to field capital ships, and it is against Diktat doctrine to use carriers and fighters, and their access to ships will be adjusted accordingly. TT will no longer use midline carriers either, iirc (their only carrier will be the astral). That really does leave only the Heg and PL. With the upcoming update, each faction will have two unique capital ships (well, the diktat will have only the executor which is a pegasus skin), and the odyssey is a bit of an oddball with regards to this. I think it'll be a bit weird for the Heg to have another capital carrier besides their legion, so I personally could only see the PL getting such a thing.
But with regards to capital ship access equality, it'll be more likely we'll see a ship of a smaller class, like a hightech cruiser carrier, than another new capital ship.

But that's technically a separate issue to the question of what the ship would actually look like. Though it wouldn't matter if it is hard to justify needing one in the first place, I suppose...

Stolen pirate pegasus with large missiles replaced with hangar bays and some medium mounts replaced with missiles

12

Suggestions / Re: Builtin hullmod for reduced OP cost for bombers on Astral

« on: March 09, 2023, 12:35:46 PM »

I'm not sure what incentivizing a behavior that is already optimal is supposed to achieve.

Yeah, if anything, Astral needs incentive to not just use all bombers.

Here’s an idea, what if Recall Device had a passive ability that would make new fighters (not bombers) teleport to the active engagement? Basically, as fighters get killed, as soon as a new one is launched, it’s blinked to an “engaged” target. If you have 2 Broadswords and 4 Daggers, for example, and set them to Engage, upon Recall, only the Bombers go back. The Broadswords continue to fight and as they get destroyed, new fighters launch and are teleported directly to the target. Meanwhile, the next wave of Daggers launch their payloads. If you switch to Rearm, all fighters are recalled when the system is used.

So for protracted fights, interceptors and fighters don’t have to fly back to the target and the Astral can reinforce them without delay. I think that would keep interceptors in the mix for Astrals.

Heck, just making it so interceptors don’t get recalled during Engage orders would be kind of nice.

This would certainly be more interesting than just making bomber usage more convenient, which everyone uses, anyways. I feel discouraged to mix fighters as a result of recall device, and this would help alleviate that.

13

General Discussion / Re: What would a midline capital carrier be like?

« on: March 08, 2023, 09:51:41 PM »

Fortunately, Tart gave us the herald PANTS

14

Suggestions / Re: Give the new s-mod bonuses/penalties to ships that come with built-in hullmods

« on: February 16, 2023, 03:49:56 PM »

Builtin hullmods with penalties make no sense and are just musings to find a way to nerf them.

Builtin hullmods infer purpose designed and built functions. There is no penalty because the ship was designed around accommodating said hullmods.

Smods are trying to cram functionality into a modular system beyond its intended capacity. We can rationalize a penalty here.

15

Suggestions / Re: Unknown yet reproducible ships

« on: February 03, 2023, 12:47:56 AM »

No faction knows the revenant or phantom. Mercs may use them and black market production opportunity may have them, and otherwise their bps may be found.