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General Discussion / Re: Current notes on 0.96a
« on: May 06, 2023, 06:58:27 PM »
The Retribution definitely feels fine in my hands, but I'm worried about the AI controlling it, with it being so fragile and all. I'll try some testing.
Starsector 0.96a is out! (05/05/23)
And there's also the fact that, looking at some of the technologies available to the player now that colony items are a thing, what we know of Ludd's teachings about "devouring God's creation" have a bit more bite to them. The Mantle Bore, for example, given that it raises planetary ore and organics productions by three units, or three powers, would in fact be capable of hollowing out a planet completely and collapsing it, albeit on a timescale longer than the game is (generally)assumed to run. So you benefit, but it is in fact destroying a whole planet. You are devouring God's creation.
But then, of course, you get around to the fact that abandoning much of this sort of thing would lend a lot more proportional power to terraformed or naturally-terran-climate worlds like Gilead, and how that'd just so happen to give the ruling bodies of world like that more influence and power...
The binary nature of pilums kind of ruins them as a weapon. It's not effective to only use some pilums; they pay off when everything has a pilum and you reach critical mass. And even then they primarily work because mass pilums screws up the enemy AI. So you don't use them at all or you use them everywhere. Since the latter option is only nice for one whole playthrough, no one really touches pilums ever again.I agree, against larger fleets pilums are not very helpful, unless you have a massive amount. Though in smaller fleets, I think pilums are pretty good. The lack of PD makes pilums much more scary.
I completely agree with inrinsic here, firing almost any HE missile (besides reapers) into shields has barely any effect unless you shoot a lot of missiles, or you're shooting a frigate. On the other hand, sabots either raise flux by a large margin, or emp all the weapons, because they are impossible to shoot down! The main annoying part of sabots is that they hit the ship they are fired at 90% of the time! Lowering the range where they split and increasing the spread of the pellets would be a step in the right direction I think.Beyond that, Sabots still only do mostly temporary damage, and e.g. removing the EMP component would make it possible to make firing them mostly a waste by just turning shields off.HE missiles can just as easily be wasted into PD or shields. I think that sabots are the outlier in that they are very difficult to waste.