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1

General Discussion / Re: AI ships getting to close to enemy ships and blocking line of fire for allies

« on: April 27, 2021, 09:51:03 PM »

Dual Flaks have 400 range. Arbalests 700. There is no way for Hounds to not get between destroyers and their target. They are doing their best to not get stuck. Do not assign ships with so much difference in range to the same target. Including Escort order if weapon range of the larger ship doesn't prevent possibility for the smaller ships to engage directly.

Granted I hadn't played SS in over six months until the current release, but I don't remember it being this bad in the previous version. My playstyle keeps me from investing too many points into pure combat skills, so the past few versions I've mostly been autopiloting carriers while giving orders, I've spent alot of time watching how the AI behaves.

Larger ships were much better at spacing out when focusing fire on a single target in the previous versions. I've seen really stupid collisions between two ships when there was nothing else in the vicinity. It's almost as if both ships are simultaneously not aware that the other exists and are trying to fit into the same space, probably trying to reach the optimal follow vector.

Smaller ships would previously stay out of the other ship's firing lines because they seemed to be better at maneuvering behind larger ships to hit the engines or sneak behind shields, which doesn't seem to be happening much. It's mostly just hover at safe point and make the occasional probing attack until somebody's flux starts going up.

New updates always break the AI in some way, but it's particularly regressive with this update.

2

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 22, 2021, 11:48:19 PM »

One more thing, in the last update I ran across a hot, barren world with a decivilized population modifier. Found a smilar world to what I remembered in the current release. Named Tyronoe in the Morganna system in the new save, the only other modifiers are scattered ruins, abundant ore deposits, no atmosphere, and hot.

I don't know if this is a pre-made planet or a random generation bug, but it bugs the hell out of me every time I see it.

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 21, 2021, 10:09:39 PM »

The AI updates made ships a bit less passive and overall combat is going at a generally faster pace, however, there is still a complete lack of situational awareness as far as ships go.

I really wish I thought to take a screenshot, but my tutorial pirate fight had my hammerhead and my condor constantly bumping into each other while my Wolf was floating between the target (pirate venture) and the two ships playing bumper cars, blocking the hammerhead from firing.

Granted I haven't played the game for a while between releases, but I don't remember it being this bad.

4

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 07, 2021, 03:55:05 PM »

After having put a couple of afternoons into the new version:

I'm really liking the new economy and the industry items, overall I'm really enjoying the whole of the exploration and colonization aspect.

I'm really not a fan of the new combat though.

First, the AI is back to feeling way too timid like they were a few updates ago, it feels like they all just cluster up at the edge of enemy ship's firing range. They also have an infuriating tendency to block each other's firing line. Most noticeable with slower Hagemony fleets.

Second, officers were fun in the beginning, but it's time to reign them in. They're making the early game where the player doesn't have officers extra frustrating, and then end up making the late game too easy when the player gets a full roster of their own officers. My last system defense, I tied up two wolves and a Shepherd on a single Wolf with an officer, which leads to number three...

Third, why the hell does the AI still have such a massive deployment advantage over the player? Especially when we have a meta where the player may need to tie up 3 of their ships to match one of the enemies? I'm getting increasingly fatigued of getting overrun at the beginning of the battle and not being able to control enough of the battlefield to even come close to matching the number of hulls the enemy is throwing at me.

5

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: May 23, 2019, 01:16:20 PM »

It looks to me like the problem is that the constructor for SynchrotronInstallableItemPlugin is expecting an instance of com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.econ.impl.FuelProduction, but what you're giving it is your new fuel production class. The best way to resolve the issue would probably be to make your class extend the vanilla one, thereby making it into a class that the SynchrotronInstallableItemPlugin will accept as an argument. This would also give you the advantage of only replacing the code you need to change instead of copying the whole class.

Yeah, that was it. Alot of sloppy work on my part - I hadn't touched a programming language in years

6

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: May 23, 2019, 02:06:24 AM »

I'm trying to double the raw material demand of fuel production and heavy industry.

I found the two relevant .java files in starfarer\api\impl\campaign\econ\impl (FuelProduction.java and HeavyIndustry.java)

I have the barebones mod_info.json file and tried putting the edited source files into \Data\campaign\econ\impl of the mod folder but resource demand isn't budging from the base game.

Sorry for the uber noob question but what am I missing here?

You can't overwrite vanilla classes directly.
In this case you have to make your own classes (which you've already done) and then include an industries.csv (in [mod name]/data/campaign) with the fuel production and heavy industry rows. Modify the plugin column to point to your modded classes.
(Note: Industries in existing saves will still use the old classes)

Thanks for the help, the refinery changes are working without a hitch. However, I've been having trouble getting FuelProduction implemented. It's a way more complex class and the Synchrotron core function has been causing all sorts of errors. I got around most of them except one fatal error;

Fetal Error:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: File 'data/campaign/econ/impl/FuelProduction.java', Line 161, Column 15: No applicable constructor/method found for actual parameters "data.campaign.econ.impl.FuelProduction"; candidates are: "com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.econ.impl.SynchrotronInstallableItemPlugin(com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.econ.impl.FuelProduction)"

Code

	@Override
	public List<InstallableIndustryItemPlugin> getInstallableItems() {
		ArrayList<InstallableIndustryItemPlugin> list = new ArrayList<InstallableIndustryItemPlugin>();
		list.add(new SynchrotronInstallableItemPlugin(this)); //<- Exception line 161
		return list;
	}

7

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: May 20, 2019, 02:05:45 PM »

I'm trying to double the raw material demand of fuel production and heavy industry.

I found the two relevant .java files in starfarer\api\impl\campaign\econ\impl (FuelProduction.java and HeavyIndustry.java)

I have the barebones mod_info.json file and tried putting the edited source files into \Data\campaign\econ\impl of the mod folder but resource demand isn't budging from the base game.

Sorry for the uber noob question but what am I missing here?

8

General Discussion / Re: Colony sizes ad industry limits make no sense

« on: May 18, 2019, 11:23:22 PM »

I haven't had a chance to try the new patch, but my only concern is that in some cases it wouldn't make sense to have colony size 1 start at millions of population.

Example is a Barren colony with only tech mining and a spaceport. I wouldn't expect a colony like that to be up to a million pop. Hundreds of thousands max.

9

General Discussion / Re: It's time to do away with the smaller fleet deployment penalty

« on: April 24, 2019, 01:45:01 PM »

The main issue in defending a new colony is having absolutely no help, dealing with one or two deathstacks at once AND having to swallow a 40 DP strength deficit. I don't understand the balancing rationale behind the mechanic, the campaign already has CR and the smaller fleet will already decay in effectiveness and peter out in a battle of attrition. What this mechanic does is make fleet actions take hours and makes the battles supremely boring defensive actions where you camp a corner with your hardened subsystems carriers waiting for the enemy to decay in CR.

It's already in the favor of a weaker fleet, if deployment restrictions were removed the enemy would usually swarm you like mad. The fact that you only give up a small deployment disadvantage and get to fight only a portion of the enemy fleet at a time gives you as the player much better fighting chance.

It's time to rebalance combat deployment. I even came up with an in-game lore reason *handwave*a smaller fleet should be easier to organize and make battle ready than a larger one *handwave*

Yeah, which is why you are facing only a portion of the enemy fleet and not the entire enemy fleet at once.

I mentioned the defending from raiding fleet context already, but I'll keep hammering at it.

The enemy does *not* have a bigger fleet. A planetary assault fleet does *not* have more combat ships, it has tons and tons of tankers troop transports. the two raiding fleets I had trouble with actually had about the same size number of combat ships that I did, they got a deployment bonus due to the large number of civilian hulls and actually got to field more ships in the battle despite the fact that militarily, two of their fleets were about the same in firepower as the one of mine.

Second, this is *not* realistic. What are the ships that I can't field during the battle doing? What they would logically be doing is attacking the unguarded civilian ships. How would the enemy fleet counter? By keeping some of their warships out of the main battle to defend the civvies. What the enemy fleets should be doing is sending in a main combat force to match my own, and then keeping the rest of their ships in the backline to defend their civilian grade hulls from the player's backline.

10

General Discussion / Re: It's time to do away with the smaller fleet deployment penalty

« on: April 22, 2019, 12:28:33 AM »

I have to agree with this: the deployment penalty is not a good game mechanic. It's a snowball mechanic - whichever party is in the better position to win, gets an extra bonus to make extra sure they do win.

The difference is that the enemy side doesn't have a player piloting one of their ships. Not to mention that the size of fleets is hardly the only factor that wins or loses the battle.

Having only combat skills to put points in hasn't been a thing since, what? 0.6?

The closest to a combat skill my first and only 0.9 character has is Fighter Doctrine and am usually more than happy setting my Operations Center legion on autopilot and just giving out orders for particularly tricky battles.

 The only time I feel the need to manually control my ship nowadays is the aforementioned defensive fights where my Legion and 2 Moras have to hold off 3 deathstacks solo, and I only do it to make sure the legion stays in it's designated defence corner.

It is technically correct that the player piloting a ship offers a distinct advantage here, but it's still a situation where both the gameplay and the player loses.

11

General Discussion / Re: It's time to do away with the smaller fleet deployment penalty

« on: April 17, 2019, 05:41:56 PM »

This proposed change seems counter-intuitive to me. The way it is right now, it's designed to reflect strategic superiority (more and/or bigger ships in one fleet than the other, outnumbering/outgunning the enemy) on the tactical level (being able to have more/bigger ships on the battlefield at once, outnumbering/outgunning the enemy). Having a big fleet to crush your enemies but always being tactically outnumbered/outgunned by a strategically outnumbered enemy seems frustrating for unrealistic reasons.

In the planetary raid context, the enemy's bulked up numbers are a direct result of the numbers of tankers and troop transports they towing. There's no outgunning or any real outnumbering because I don't see the enemy fleets throwing their tankers in in the early waves, it's basically the player fleet versus the enemy fleets combat ships + 60% of any nearby fleets combat ships thanks to the passenger liners and phaetons.

On that topic, planetary defence combats, for me at least, usually lead to one or two combats with the war ships, and then an additional 3-5 combats with tankers and transports that for some reason refuse to withdraw once the war ships are destroyed, which usually translates into 3 all tanker strikeforces retreating as soon as combat starts followed by 2 more combats of them exploding on the field due to low CR while whatever combat worthy ships on my side get sent in to mop up.

I stand by my original assertion that two huge ass fleets with that kind of logistical profile can not be well enough organized to deserve that kind of deployment point boost.

I am willing to compromise and swallow the deployment tax if the pre-combat system gets organized to not count civilian grade hulls in whatever calculation it does.

12

General Discussion / It's time to do away with the smaller fleet deployment penalty

« on: April 17, 2019, 01:07:40 PM »

I've been playing the latest update for about a week now, and overall it's been really fun.

What *hasn't* been really fun is beating back bombardment fleets, and there's a Luddic Path starbase that I haven't been able to crack since I started the game.

The main issue in defending a new colony is having absolutely no help, dealing with one or two deathstacks at once AND having to swallow a 40 DP strength deficit. I don't understand the balancing rationale behind the mechanic, the campaign already has CR and the smaller fleet will already decay in effectiveness and peter out in a battle of attrition. What this mechanic does is make fleet actions take hours and makes the battles supremely boring defensive actions where you camp a corner with your hardened subsystems carriers waiting for the enemy to decay in CR.

Not to mention I see red every time I have to go through 5 fleet battles on the way to the Luddic Path starbase that always has it's own deathstack in orbit, and then having the pleasure of trying to fight a starbase and reinforcements with one Capital and two cruisers.

It's time to rebalance combat deployment. I even came up with an in-game lore reason *handwave*a smaller fleet should be easier to organize and make battle ready than a larger one *handwave*

13

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Dagger Bombers always out of attack range on the Astral

« on: January 17, 2018, 09:54:48 PM »

Is it possible the Astral is just letting bomber numbers replenish? I'm not seeing this behavior on my end, and if it was a commonplace occurrence I'd expect it to have come up by now, hmm. A screenshot of your Astral's loadout might help.

Also, are you playing vanilla or with mods?

Vanilla, I shelved the astral and had to rebuild it, but getting the same behavior in the simulations.

The loadout is all Graviton beams. I suspect that with the 1200 range with the help of Advanced Optics this thing keeps too high a range to engage the bombers.

Once in a while I see them engaging their shields (I assume they when they float into attack range) and then promptly float behind and turn them off again. Ran a few simulations with this loadout and the Dagger triangles are still just clustering behind the ship on the tactical map.

[attachment deleted by admin]

14

Bug Reports & Support / Dagger Bombers always out of attack range on the Astral

« on: January 16, 2018, 03:57:33 PM »

I don't know if this is specific to the Dagger bombers, but watching my Officer controlled Astral, I noticed that the Daggers almost never attacked. I tried switching to a more aggressive Officer with the same results.

They do attack on the Odyssey, it seems as if it's because the Odyssey tends to move in closer to the action, and on both ships the Daggers loiter near the Aft, never having a chance to do anything at the extreme ranges the Astral engages in.

15

General Discussion / Re: .8 feedback thread

« on: April 22, 2017, 09:17:35 PM »

After bypassing the tutorial and putting about 8 hours into the update... I realised just how little fun I'm having.

I'm level 5 and only put points into the surveying and salvaging skills so far. My thoughts:

The new skills like go dark and burn are clearly meant to babysit the fleet and sneak around the sectors, but when traveling huge distances or through the ample amount of nebulae with no real autopilot for automatic evasion, trying to avoid the massive fleets of pirates in uncharted space is a chore.

Speaking of pirates, who'se supplying these a**holes? I need to bulk my fleet freighters and tankers just to make expeditions viable. Who handle's the pirates' logistics that lets them field fleets twice my size in deep space?

It seems like the only viable way to play right now is to go oldschool, ignore all the new content, and dump all my points into combat 0.7 style. I'm a bit disappoint.

EDIT:
Also, I noticed that following bigger fleets and joining in on their battles for brownie points isn't an option either. Large AI fleets tend to clump into firing lines, and when I do engage a lone ship surrounded by multiple smaller friendlies, they seem to stay way out of firing range, and don't press the advantage when I engage.