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1

Suggestions / Re: gunship mode ''toggle''

« on: March 08, 2013, 04:38:00 PM »

...but its also annoying that you cant switch weapons becouse it then only toggles autofire ...

I get around that by rebinding my 'toggle autofire' keys from Shift# to Ctrl#. I think they should be Ctrl# by default since control isn't used for anything and having them be Shift# runs into the aforementioned problem.

I personally don't find continuously holding shift down to be annoying but I guess I'm just used to it now and I can definitely see how some people would want it as a toggle.

2

Suggestions / Re: Nuclear class weapons

« on: February 27, 2013, 09:23:55 AM »

Though you are right about how big a nuke would be the largest ship the paragon is 360 pixels long and 320 pixels wide, convert that into metres (an area of 115,200 square (an actual square)) and as the scale is 1 pixel = 1m the ship is somewhere around 115,200 metres square, the biggest nuke to date the Tsar Bomb, detonated with an area of 35 km of destruction but only 3.5 km centre (the part that is most likely to damage/destroy a Starsector ship so the overall blast of 35000 would cover about a third of the ship, but only 3500 metres would be properly damaged by the blast (57 megatons) so most likely the ship could survive this.

You do realize you are comparing the area of a ship to the radius of an explosion? If you convert the radius of the Tsar Bomba explosion into area (area=2?r²)you would find it covered an area of ~7,696,895,500m² with the fireball specifically having a radius of ~76,968,955m²; definitely big enough to completely engulf a Paragon.

Of course, it has been stated that things in Starsector are not to scale, with distances being too close and larger ships not being relatively large enough. That, and the fact that nukes are being compared to relativistic Gauss weapons and Antimatter Blasters means that using actual nukes probably won't do superweapon amounts of damage, even if it covers a very large area. Given that explosive weapons are stated to work sort of like HEAT weapons, which work by focusing as much of the power of the explosion onto a specific point as possible, it is entirely likely that even the lowest damage explosive weapons are throwing around projectiles as powerful as nukes and the reason they only damage the specific part of the armor they hit is that any part of the blast not focused into that one point is not strong enough to damage even the lightest of ships.

3

General Discussion / Re: Do not understand combat speeds

« on: February 23, 2013, 11:08:09 AM »

If a ship has zero flux and their shields off they get a +50 speed boost (+75 with a skill-perk, but the AI doesn't have that), this is probably how it caught up to you.

It should be noted that if you use a speed boost (zero flux or maneuvering jets) to go over your normal max speed but then lose the bonus you will not slow down unless you try to use your engines, in that sense the 'combat speed' of a vessel is not how fast it can go but the maximum speed it can accelerate to. Therefore, you can use the zero flux boost and then 'coast' towards your destination with your shields up and weapons firing, as long as you don't bump into something or have to change directions you will be going as fast as you would be if you were using the zero flux boost even though you aren't at zero flux.

4

General Discussion / Re: Do not understand combat speeds

« on: February 23, 2013, 09:11:45 AM »

Your combat speed is 120 and his is 117, making him only slightly slower. The (+30) and (+3) are the bonuses, but they are already factored into your speed, meaning that before the bonuses your combat speed was 90 and his was 114.

Basically the stats are:

Combat Speed:  Your actual speed (the amount of bonus speed it took to achieve that).

5

Blog Posts / Re: Combat Readiness

« on: February 19, 2013, 05:52:21 PM »

Right, I got that from what you said. What I mean is you can avoid almost all shield damage in a frigate, so long you're exclusively concerned with baiting out and dodging shots, rather moving in to get damage done. I think it's just going about the issue in a way that can inherently be circumvented, and if you're going to add brand new mechanics to fix it, they should probably do a more reliable job of it.

Ah, that makes sense. Still, losing CR just by waiting doesn't sit well with me, I feel like it should be tied to actual combat somehow, though the only foolproof way I can think of is by flux usage and that just disincentives flux heavy weaponry. Given that deployed frigates are going to spend most of their time fighting anyways I guess this will not be as big an issue as I thought it was going to be at first.

Is the loss in CR a constant effect or does it only apply after a certain amount of time has past?

6

Blog Posts / Re: Combat Readiness

« on: February 19, 2013, 04:34:46 PM »

Wouldn't really work across the board. The "effective but boring" strategy would then involve waiting out not only enemy LRMs, but also their ammo. So, ok, that wouldn't work vs high-tech ships, but low-tech ships would still be susceptible.

Perhaps I phrased by my post poorly, the loss of CR is caused by taking too much shield damage, not dealing it. If anything, this would make ammo less of a problem since enough damage would eventually make keeping the shields up too prohibitive for the target. Having a limited amount of practical shield use doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem either, since armor and hull are already limited and not useless. If it poses a problem for a certain ship you can just set the threshold for it really high, though I expect thresholds for most ships to already be quite high to begin with, only really being a concern for fast attack ships.

Since we are talking about ammo, how about being able to reload ballistic weapons at the cost of CR, to represent the crew scrambling to grab and load ammo crates out of the cargo hold?

7

Blog Posts / Re: Combat Readiness

« on: February 19, 2013, 01:17:18 PM »

I'm not sure I like how it effects frigates, either. It seems a bit arbitrary that frigates, and only frigates, just lose CR over time in combat, and also severely inhibits their ability to function as escorts, sure you could switch them out mid-combat but if you do that you might as well just use a destroyer.

Fast attack craft like the Hyperion and Tempest are overpowered not because they never get hit (which would necessitate a time limit of some sort) but because what damage they take is done to the shields and can just be vented off later, giving them effectively unlimited endurance in battle. Meanwhile fast but unshielded ships like the Hound will have to eventually retreat because they take damage to non-regenerating hull and armor, and relatively slower ships like the Brawler can be forced into a situation where they have to drop shields while under fire; so giving either of them a time based limit is unnecessary.

With that in mind, why not make it so that CR instead starts to drop after a certain amount of damage is done to the shields? Ships that are too effective at retreating can simply be given a low threshold before CR starts to drop, limiting the amount of attack runs they can do at peak efficiency without preventing them from being kept back to be used when needed. Ships made for the line-of-battle on the other hand can be given a very high threshold allowing them to brawl with the enemy without having to worry much about CR. By adding hullmods that affect the threshold then you can make so that variants can be designed that have a higher threshold for escorts or have increased speed at the cost of a lower threshold for fast attack ships.

8

General Discussion / Re: shield flux/second stat

« on: February 09, 2013, 09:42:54 PM »

Actually, yes they do; it is just not very noticeable since having shields up on their own isn't enough to cause an increase in flux since you always have more flux venting than shield flux cost. You can most easily see the effect of the shield flux cost if you design a ship that has just enough vents to outpace flux cost of its weapons; fire the weapons with the shields off and the flux stays near zero, fire the weapons with the shields on and your flux will slowly start to build up.

EDIT: As an example of such a ship, equip a Wolf-class frigate with a phase beam and 1 vent. The Wolf will have just enough venting to keep the flux from raising as long as the shields are off.

9

General Discussion / Re: Mysterious joint on command points

« on: January 29, 2013, 06:47:09 AM »

I think that is where the "Standing Orders" button used to go before it was removed; the UI just hasn't been changed to reflect that.

10

General Discussion / Re: Need More Fleet Points

« on: January 24, 2013, 02:26:03 PM »

All stations save the abandoned station have ships you can purchase. The Apogee and Medusa are in the Tri-Tachyon station (the blue one).

Images, stats, and descriptions for all ships and weapons can be found in the codex.

11

Suggestions / Re: Remove the 'wiggle room' with hardpoints - make it easier to use

« on: January 09, 2013, 06:45:10 AM »

Welcome to the forums!

I don't feel the suggested change is strictly necessary, or will even accomplish what you want. Surely removing a little leeway from how precise you have to turn your ship would make it harder to aim and not easier? I never really noticed them being "floppy" either; in fact, one mod I played gave a ship two hardpoints with a fairly large arc which ran into problems because it turned out hardpoints turn extremely slowly. That said, if you pilot a ship and don't use mouse-strafing (where your ship faces the cursor and 'A' and 'D' are used for strafing instead of turning) for some reason I could see it causing slight problems if you are trying to shoot an enemy with your hardpoints while your mouse is somewhere else; but then the question becomes 'if you are using a ship with forward fixed hardpoints why exactly aren't you mouse-strafing?'

...The Hammerhead recently had its hardpoint angles doubled...

The change happened as of 0.52a, which was released in April of last year. I don't think "recently" is the right word.

12

Mods / Re: Blackrock Drive Yards - !!v0.20 RELEASED!!

« on: January 07, 2013, 08:55:24 PM »

I disagree with the statement that they are more useful for coasting than than they are for quick maneuvering. The Nevermore would be completely useless if it couldn't reposition or turn with the Burst Jets.

Ah, of course. Most of my experience with the Burst Jets come from using the Scarab, which is maneuverable enough to not need Burst Jets to turn quickly; I didn't use Nevermore quite as much since I preferred to fly the Desdinova. Still feels that it encroaches on the Arc Jet's ground a bit too much, but that is not a big deal.

the other change I have been considering is to make it fire a fan-shaped blast of flechettes, so it becomes like a "shotgun needler" that doubles as a great manual screen against incoming missiles. Any thoughts you have about this are quite welcome!

Sounds good. I think the 'shotgun effect' should be ridiculously exaggerated, it should have at the very least a 45 degree arc of fire but be capable of very high firepower if all projectiles hit at once, which would only ever happen at point blank range. The idea of an ultra close combat weapon is something I find highly appealing, and probably unique enough to not even need the EMP effect.

The Solenoid Quench Gun is already quite useful, it's terrifying for shielded frigates due to the enormous projectile speed and single shot damage - but I've considered upping the damage a bit.

While it certainly is effective against frigates that is not really much of an accomplishment, and they still aren't as effective against them as any of the other medium kinetics with perhaps the exception of the Heavy and Arbalest Autocannons. As a comparison, the Hypervelocity Driver has slightly worse damage per shot, DPS, and flux efficiency but nonetheless remains useful because it has a very long range (twice that of the Solenoid) and also carries a hefty EMP payload, making it reasonably effective whether or not the enemy has their shields up. Perhaps you could turn it into a kinetic shotgun like above, though the graphics don't quite fit that. Alternatively, you could emphasize the burst aspect by making it a weapon that fires an interruptable about four second long burst with an about six second long cooldown (I believe this is possible; if I'm not mistaken the Thumper and Storm Needler work by firing a "burst" that lasts longer than you can fire and can be stopped by releasing the fire button); that way you get to have a weapon with a long enough cooldown such that a quick ship is realistically capable of using to dart in, fire a burst, and dart out without making it capable of instantly overloading every ships' shields or requiring too much flux to actually use.

How do you feel about the Mantis, Gonodactylus, Serket, Krait and whatnot?

Given how light the Locust is it could probably stand to cost an FP or two less, but more importantly it (and as I'm sure you are aware) it needs a unique ship system to stand out. Perhaps a set of weak, regenerating drones; or maybe a really short but intense version of the burn drive.

The Gonodactylus is quite effective and has a very fun and unique weapons arrangement, though I find I don't use its Hammerclaw Impact Bolter very much since it is only a single light missile and it feels odd to group with other light missiles. I'd probably the Hammerclaw more if was a medium equivalent weapon (say by firing a burst of three 500 damage versions of the missile) and the current light missile slot replaced with an energy weapon, for either PD use or an Antimatter Blaster. Its ship system doesn't make it feel quite as special as the other BRDY ships but it serves its purpose just fine.

I haven't got the chance to play with the rest of the ships very much, will get back to you on that when I do.

Incidentally I just realized that the shortened form of BlackRock Driveyards (BRDY) is read as "birdy".

Spoiler

[close]

13

Mods / Re: Blackrock Drive Yards - !!v0.20 RELEASED!!

« on: January 07, 2013, 05:34:25 PM »

One of the frigates (the Scarab I believe) has two light ballistic hardpoints with a fairly wide arc of fire. The problem is any weapon put on them turns very slowly, presumably because its a hardpoint. It appears that if you want a weapon with an arc above fifteen or so degrees you have to make it a turret.

The Burst Maneuvering Jets (which could probably be just shortened to Burst Jets) seem to be more useful for accelerating yourself to a high speed then coasting to where you need to be than quickly maneuvering. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, just seems unintentional and probably better suited as solely the domain of the Desdinova's Arc Jets. Perhaps you could forcibly limit the ships speed after the burst jets finish firing.

On the subject, I kind of liked the Nevermore's old ship system better. I feel as though the concept of the ship built around an extremely heavy energy weapons fits better as an artillery support ship rather than a close up brawler, especially since the addition of the Antiplasma Blaster makes the newer-version of the Nevermore's weapon less unique, though I suppose its change to being something the AI can actually use is a fair trade.

The short range kinetic weapons, the Solenoid Quench Gun and the Shard Autocannon, are not very useful. Sure their bursts are fairly strong, but not nearly strong enough to justify the greatly lowered DPS or range. For instance, the Solenoid Quench Gun fires a shot once every three seconds, has a range of 500, and only does a pitiful 143 DPS; in order to be more useful than a Heavy Autocannon the ship wielding it would have to be able to get into range, fire a shot, and retreat out of Heavy Autocannon range in the span of only three seconds; and if a ship is fast enough to do that it could easily just equip a Heavy Machinegun, which does a whopping 320 DPS. The high explosive counterparts to these weapons, the Ichneumon Assault Gun and the Squall Cannon, are useful however; the Ichneumon because it's flux efficient, the Squall because of its low OP cost and the way armor damage is calculated, and both because a strong burst is actually meaningful for high explosive weapons since it allows them to better take advantage of situations where shields are only momentarily dropped or facing the wrong way. The Shard could probably be repurposed as the that 'long range mortar' you were thinking about making (the selection of light kinetics fill most niches I feel).

The Ironweave Chaingun is also not terribly useful, it does not have a high DPS and ironically its higher accuracy than the Vulcan actually makes it even less likely to hit missiles since it require more precision to strike its target, as well it is not functionally very different from the other light ballistic PD available. Perhaps it could be a sort of miniature flak cannon, with a higher rate of fire but much less damage per shot and a much smaller explosive radius than the medium version.



In general, however, the mod is extremely well done and very fun to play. I particularly like the new Desdinova, nothing quite like darting around at 400 speed with a pair of Squall Cannons.

14

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.54.1a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: January 06, 2013, 01:38:33 PM »

The in-combat sounds... well, I suppose it depends on how high tech the equipment being used is supposed to be. Because the new waypoint sounds have a noticeable crackle and a slightly over-serious 'appearance' noise. Same goes with the cancel-waypoint noise.

But that's just me. There's a decent chance that there's some bias towards the old sounds. The old sounds, admittedly, were a little soft, but the new sounds to me seem a little too rough/serious. Then again, I have no idea of the level of equipment the player is supposed to be using.

Given the dystopic nature of the setting I would say the more recent, "rougher" combat sounds are fine. A smooth, clear tone carries the implication that the equipment is new and shiny, while a rougher tone implies the equipment is either old or in somewhat poor condition.

15

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.54.1a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: January 06, 2013, 01:20:10 PM »

Regarding the menu sounds, the 'clicky' sounds are fine in and of themselves. The problem with them is that they are at odds with the 'beep boop' sound all other UI elements make. Additionally, the 'clicky' noises gives me the impression that the UI is a more civilian piece designed with comfort in mind, since if the designers of the UI didn't care about how pretty it sounds they would have just put in a plain 'beep' instead. Given that most ships in Starsector are either warships or freighters, and that 'beep boop' sounds more 'science fictiony', I would say that the 'clicky' noises should be replaced with something else.