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1

Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2

« on: May 03, 2022, 04:45:46 AM »

I'd be much more in favor of the Diktat working the other way around, where the Lion Guard is elite.

But the Lion's Guard is the elite force, using the newest and "best" equipment.

Both the normal military and the Lion’s Guard get access to the Executor; the Lion’s Guard however are the only ones lucky enough to also have full access to the fruits of the weapons program.

Also, I got no idea why anyone would bother getting the Executor compared to the Pegasus

There is no reason. That's the point. It's to add flavor to the faction. It's stuff that seems good on paper, but doesn't work well in practice. The ships and weapons are essentially Wunderwaffe which underline the fact that the Diktat is a cult of personality, with Andrada potentially getting disconnected from reality.

But I question if the Diktat is going to "feel" intimidating after this update.

I'd say the only mistake Alex made in this whole thing was to lay his intentions so bare in the blog post. I think finding out while playing that the ship with the GIGACANNON is not as intimidating as it sounds would have been a cool experience, and would have been fun for a player to realize on their own that the SuPrEme EXeCuToR fell into the trap of believing in Wunderwaffe.

And as an aside, I really don't care if a cool looking ship isn't that good. While the combat is really good, world building and atmosphere is a very big part of Starsector, so making a new ship to purely serve that purpose seems ok to me (even if it is useless to the player).

2

General Discussion / Re: TFW you turn off all sounds...

« on: August 23, 2021, 10:56:47 AM »

It seems you guys are not using this beautiful, beautiful mod called Combat Alarm Sounds, made by yours truly.

3

General Discussion / Re: I pledge my soul to Starsector by making this dense montage

« on: May 19, 2021, 01:17:36 AM »

As a capital ship enthusiast, I truly hate this game.

But yeah, it's my favorite game of all time as well.

4

Mods / Re: [0.95a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.4

« on: April 10, 2021, 10:10:52 AM »

Hello!

I've updated the mod so you can now swap in your own sounds, and there's also a Settings.ini where you can change sound volume and triggers and such. Let me know if anything's ambiguous or unclear about how you change those.

Really looking forward to do a playthrough; this new update seems to bring us an especially spooky sector.

5

Blog Posts / Re: Writing Starsector

« on: December 20, 2020, 03:08:13 AM »

Please don't ever lock any kind of outcome behind a grindable resource (like a skill check). It would just make me go "well why don't I just reload a save and grind some more XP to level up?", and making me grind for XP in a singleplayer game is a big no-no, because nobody's got time for that and then I'll start cheating.

If you are gonna do it though, I think a cool way to have a skill check is something like this:

Quest-giver asks you to take over an un-take-overable station, wat do?

A) (Combat skills > 5) Some advanced space tactic makes half the enemy fleet surrender! Then we plough our ships through the front door! (cripples enemy defenses)
B) (Tech skills > 5) Hack their defenses and move in undisturbed! (cripples enemy defenses)
C) (Industry skills > 5) Convince other factions to block trade with this station! (cripples enemy defenses)
D) (Spend 100000 credits) Bribe an insider to lower defenses! (cripples enemy defenses)
E) (Story-point) Send an elite squad to lower defenses before moving in with the fleet! (cripples enemy defenses)
F) **** it! (assault the fully functioning station)

Takes all of 5 minutes to make, doesn't lock a desirable outcome behind a skill check, gives the player the feeling they made a choice, allows you to role-play thus adding a bit of flavour to your character, and can also warn newbie players about biting off more than they can chew while also not blocking out veteran players. Obviously, all these apply to this particular, handpicked example, but I'm sure there are other situations where a similar approach could work.

Another solution is to light a fire under the player's ass, a la FTL: Faster Than Light. Sure, it would be nice to have all the money/XP in the world, but you can't, because the Domain Liberation Fleet/AI Extermination Fleet/Alien Invasion fleet is coming in 1 cycle and 6 months. This way, a player has a harder time justifying save-scumming out of a situation where their skills/credits/whatever are insufficient (though one might still do it), because you don't really have time to grind when there are still a bunch of other important missions to do. Obviously, this depends on where you want to take the end-game.

Or just don't do this kind of thing at all. My main point was please don't ever lock any kind of outcome behind a skill check or, in general, any easily findable resource which requires grinding to obtain; of course, this begs the question "well what even is the difference between grinding and just normal character progression, jamplier, if you're so alpha core smart and full of yourself?". An interesting question:
1) a player's progression should probably only be decided in combat, not a quest dialogue
2) alas, I'd barely register as a gamma core, so this is all you're gonna get out of me for now.

6

Blog Posts / Re: Painting The Stars

« on: February 07, 2020, 12:52:55 PM »

Man, this next update is gonna be wild.

7

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.32

« on: December 03, 2018, 02:01:13 AM »

Here's a link to the previous version, which was compatible with 0.8a.

if its good for 0.9a now need to get it updated in the mod index to show :p .

Thanks for pointing that out, I see the mods updated it in the meantime!

8

Mods / Re: [0.8a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.32

« on: November 21, 2018, 11:10:49 AM »

I added those lines to the script. I can't play the game at the moment, so I won't be able to test the mod for a while. Download link updated.

9

Mods / Re: [0.8a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.3

« on: July 09, 2017, 03:24:14 AM »

Ok, I think I fixed for real this time. Updated the download link.

10

Mods / Re: [0.8a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.3

« on: April 21, 2017, 06:53:33 AM »

Haven't run into any issues so far after some light testing with 0.8a. If you run into any problems with it, please do post here. This mod should generally work with any future version of the game.

11

Suggestions / Re: Blog post ideas

« on: April 19, 2017, 02:26:59 PM »

I'd love to see more technical blog posts about the game's development, and more posts expanding the game's lore. It kinda sucks that you guys (understandably) don't like to talk about new features, because I'm sure they'd make great blog posts. Perhaps post some of your conversations about things which ultimately won't make it into the game? (similar to the Ion Pulser blog post)

12

Blog Posts / Re: Ship Recovery

« on: January 24, 2017, 05:04:43 AM »

I'm not sure I've read about it anywhere, so how does this "industry" playstyle compare to the "tech-combat" playstyle from a financial standpoint? From what I understand, industry basically means you'll be burning through ships and replacing them with whatever you can salvage after successful battles, having a "safety-in-numbers" approach to combat, as opposed to the "few-but-strong-ships" playstyle we are all used to right now.

Is the cost of repairing burner ships/replacing crew losses offset by the industry skill set/other changes? The idea of having a fleet of disposable ships which you can "burn through" sounds really appealing to me, but I must confess, I really can't see myself choosing this style of play if it means less $$$ thanks to really expensive fleet maintenance.

Also, choosing industry from the really early game (1 to 3 ships) sounds like it might make an already difficult start even worse. I'm not sure if it actually does, but I think this is worth keeping in mind going forward through development.

<3 u Alex  

13

Suggestions / Re: Give Weapons / Hull Mods Mass Effects

« on: December 19, 2016, 04:33:21 AM »

Might as well just have a third "engine" in addition to vent and capacitor.

That actually sounds kinda spicy.

14

Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.3

« on: September 08, 2016, 08:46:47 AM »

Thanks again for helping me Paul!

I've updated the mod and everything should be working fine now, though if anyone finds any problems or has a suggestion then please do let me know.

15

Mods / Re: [0.7.2a] Combat Alarm Sounds mod v1.2

« on: September 05, 2016, 05:34:31 AM »

Hah, I'd use a config file if I knew how to do it. It will happen eventually, but a relatively difficult year of school is starting in the mean time.

And yes, the stopHull problem was definitely an oversight on my part. Though I'll resort to updating stopHull if the ship's hull increases, as hull1-hull3 would only trigger it if you get bursted with 200 damage.
Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention!