Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - dgs6686

Pages: [1] 2
1
General Discussion / Remnant fights?
« on: April 09, 2021, 04:07:03 PM »
Curious what people think about remnant fights right now. I've noticed some strange inconsistency with how battle size is allocated. In some cases, I will clearly have a larger fleet - ex. 4 battleships, 4 cruisers 4 destroyers 8 frigates VS their 1 battleship, 4 cruisers, 4 destroyers, 6 frigates but playing on 400 battlesize I will only be allowed to bring in 160 while the AI gets 240. This only seems to happen vs remnants and makes fights which should be pretty fair seem extremely unfair.

My other gripe is, why do they get to have 20+ officers in a stack when we are limited to 10? I attached a screenshot of a fleet that I can't fathom ever being able to beat with how the game currently plays. I know these are supposed to be end-end game encounters so I understand they should be difficult but honestly this seems like a few too many odds stacked in their favor.

Anyways, I was wondering how others are dealing with fleets like the one in my screenshot or if ya'll just avoid them as well lol.

[attachment deleted by admin]

2
Modding / Re: Would there be interest in mid-game mod?
« on: August 28, 2019, 10:44:06 PM »
To that point with commissions... why do we get paid just to say 'sure i'll take your faction hits!'. You never really have to help them, they don't care they just give you money while you are doing your own thing. I the monthly stipend should be removed all together in favor of bounties for destroying enemies. Also 'Enemies' should be limited to the main factions, not pirates / luddic path.

3
Modding / Re: Would there be interest in mid-game mod?
« on: August 28, 2019, 05:36:47 PM »
I would like something like this. I think a big part of the problem though is not only the ships and money available but the huge power creep that comes with levels and skills. I'm trying to work on a mod now that tones down the skills a great deal and removes some of the obviously overpowered stuff such as Electronic Warfare.

4
The Skills are in starfarer.api\com\fs\starfarer\api\impl\campaign\skills.  To implement new ones, you'll need to create a directory (preferably in /scripts) and move one of the Skill java files there, change the reference in the .skill file, etc.

Thanks for the help! With a little digging and playing around I was able to get started on my some of my ideas. My first test was to try and combine 'Strike Commander' in to 'Missile Specialization', and then remove the 'Strike Commander' skill from the game. I am running in to 2 complications I was wondering if you or someone else might know how this is supposed to be done.

Firstly, It appears that the game is still reading the base-game skill info for 'Missile Specialization' and inputting the stats with my modified version (as seen in the attachment). As you can see for my test the only value I changed was 'Level 3: Missile damage' from 25% to 10%. However it is still reading the 25% from the base-game value and dumping it in extra with my modified stats.

Secondly, I can tell if I remove the 'Strike Commander' skill entry from skill_data.csv in the default sub-directory (starsector-core/data/character/skills) that it will no longer appear on the character screen as a learn-able skill. However I'm not sure how to remove this from showing from a mod standpoint. If I copy the skill_data.csv to my mod folder/data/character/skills and remove the 'Strike Commander' entry it appears to have no effect. I'm also not sure if this will prevent the AI / Officers from being able to learn this ability.

Edit: Also wanted to throw in that I tested this with harpoon MRM pod - 4x 750 damage harpoons hit a hammerhead shield for 1620 damage, which is equivalent to 2025 damage after dividing by .8 for the shield mitigation. Since harpoons deal 1/2 damage to shields, 4x 375 = 1500 * 1.35 (25 % + 10%) = 2025 so I confirmed that both the mod values and the standard values are being added.

[attachment deleted by admin]

5
Hi all, fairly new to the game and forums but I was considering making a mod to adjust / remove some of the skills available in the game... (particularly Electronic Warfare). I know there is a skills overhaul coming soon anyways but I just wanted to try my hand at this and see how modifying some of these affects combat.

I am fairly new to modding overall and only moderately fluent in Java but I figured this shouldn't be TOO difficult. I was wondering if anyone knew where I would start for something like this? I see the skills files under character/skills and I see the api calls that it appears to make but I'm not quite sure where to look after that.

6
Suggestions / Re: My 0.9(.1) suggestions
« on: August 25, 2019, 02:29:59 PM »
I would love to see D-Mod ships be more of a staple than they currently are. We are led to believe that no one has the capabilities to reliably manufacture defect free ships yet everyone and their neighbors are flying around in pristine ships or maybe at worst 1 D-Mod. Getting a pristine ship should be more special than it currently is. Heavy industry / nanoforges should be greatly reduced in power. Speaking of nanoforges why do these massive ship 3D printers only take up 1 unit of cargospace? These should take a whole atlas to transport and everyone should know you are doing it. Also, you should need more than 1 for the effects to be usable on larger ships. We should not be able to plop down on any random planet, build a heavy industry, install a random miniature 3d printer and start printing pristine 500k battleships. Having a pristine nanoforge in itself should be enough to cause other factions to view you as a threat.

7
Suggestions / Re: Skills Rework - Remove/Rework OP & Necessary Skills
« on: August 25, 2019, 11:01:58 AM »
Quote
Electronic Warfare 1 is mandatory just for ECM defense.  If they have it and you do not, the range penalty your fleet takes really hurts!  Grabbing ECM Package for all of your ships as an alternative is impractical.

Exactly, that is the problem. The range penalty is far too powerful to overlook and forces you to pick up the skill just to negate when the enemies have it. As a result this completely destroys the combat dynamics because having even just 10% more range than your enemies is such a large advantage. In my ideal scenario you would not be putting ECM package on all of your ships and neither should the enemy... and the bonus should be no more than probably around 5%. You would maybe have a couple of frigates or destroyers with ECM installed to either counter the enemy ECM or get a small advantage yourself.

8
Suggestions / Re: Skills Rework - Remove/Rework OP & Necessary Skills
« on: August 25, 2019, 09:27:18 AM »
Officer Management - I think I worded that wrong - I didn't mean 10 is too high for the number of ships we have, but it is too high for the officers to feel special... at least to me. I often just level them to 20 pick whatever the best skill for them is, and then stick them in whatever the most powerful ship I have for them to fly is. Right now it's either 'you are a carrier officer' or 'you are a battleship officer'. I would love for them to have specializations to fly ships such as energy weapon specialization / frigate specialization wanting you to put them in a frigate that sports energy weapons. If this was the case then more would feel great.

Personal carrier skills - Oh yeah, I didn't really mention that - I totally don't think these are worth taking as the player unless you really enjoy flying carriers as other ships are far better in the player's hands... but they are fine for the officers.

Helmsmanship - I think the problem here is that the AI does not get access to Coordinated Maneuvers meaning you already have a 20% bonus when the enemy likely has none or possibly 10% from Helmsmanship. Then when combined with other skills (particularly Electronic Warfare and / or Gunnery Implants) you now out-range and out-move all of the enemy ships crippling or destroying them before they are even allowed to fight back.

9
Suggestions / Skills Rework - Remove/Rework OP & Necessary Skills
« on: August 25, 2019, 12:46:58 AM »
I will preface this by saying that I know a skill rework is coming, but I wanted to give some personal feedback for the current skills system as well as some suggestions for the upcoming changes. There are a number of skills that I think should be removed, reworked, or relocated to different areas - either for balance reasons or, quite frankly, because they just aren't fun.

I think we would all much rather be putting our limited points in to combat skills rather than necessary quality of life or fleet-wide improvements, even more so once we are limited to 15 points.

Combat

Spoiler

In general I don't think any of these are strictly overpowered on their own but the quantity of them makes the difference. Fortunately(unfortunately?) there are so many other necessary skills that the player must pick up that we can not really get all of these. I think this area of the skill system has the most fat that needs to be trimmed as there are many bonuses that are a bit redundant

Combat Endurance - Not really sure what to say about this one, the tier 3 15% combat readiness is OK but there are better things to spend your points on. After the first few battles I never have issues with fights taking so long that peak performance becomes an issue. Personally I feel like the combat readiness bonus could be rolled in to either character level, an added bonus for spending points in the combat tree, or another combat skill... Helmsmanship maybe?

Missile Specialization - Overall this seems good. I think it would feel better if the tier 3 increased the # of missiles instead of giving a damage bonus.

Ordinance Expertise - The bread and butter of the tree. faster projectiles to make it much easier to land shots and increased damage... something we all want.

Target Analysis - Adds extra damage against specific things. seems fine I guess - I mostly pick it up for the 15% increased damage to shields since this makes winning trades that much easier. Not really a fun skill, but it's something

Damage Control - The bonuses this skill provides seem pretty weak overall. Having your ship be recoverable is a great thing but fleet logistics does the same thing and more. 25% Hull and armor damage taken repaired after combat, well Field Repairs does 50% for all of your ships, and lastly 25% less hull damage taken and overload time - well if you got to the point that this has any significance in combat then it's probably not going to help you.

Impact Mitigation - More damage reduction. It's hard to tell how much any of this matters but as I said in the beginning I am sure all of these %s add up to mean way more than they sound like. I don't usually pick this up since points are so limited but I'm sure it's good on an officer in an onslaught.

Defensive Systems - All of these bonuses are great. Probably a little too good overall. You can definitely tell when a remnant AI ship has hardened shields as 20% less damage taken is big.

Advanced Countermeasures - I have never really bothered with this skill as it makes your defenses better against the things they are already good against. The last bonus of 50% damage to fighters and missiles seems like a good bonus but really fighters and missiles die so fast already that it seems unnecessary.

Evasive Action - 50% maneuverability bonus feels so necessary, but also a little out of place here with the other 2 bonuses. 50% reduced weapon and engine damage as well as 50% armor for damage reduction calculation. These both sound more like they belong in Damage Control and 50% maneuverability in Helmsmanship.

Helmsmanship - Very small bonuses overall, but it feels nice to have the acceleration at least. 10% top speed is vastly overshadowed by Coordinated Maneuvers and the 0 flux speed boost working at up to 1% is a novelty at best in almost all cases.
[close]

Leadership

Spoiler
Command & Control - Command points are almost never an issue once you realize that it only takes 1 point no matter how many orders you issue at a time, as long as you don't leave the tactical screen. 5% more Electronic Warfare and Coordinated Maneuvers bonuses are just overkill and not at all necessary to spend 3 points on to get. Maybe you could simply get more command points by leveling up, investing in the Leadership tree in general, or through story points.

Officer Management - With how powerful officers are, and since you are already devoting 3 points in to rank 3 Leadership, this seems like a no-brainer. Is it fun? Not inherently something I enjoy spending points on but definitely powerful. I think this would be a great candidate to transition to a story point sink. One additional officers per story point spent, up to a maximum of X. I personally think 10 is too high of a maximum.

Fleet Logistics - Fairly powerful, but not fun in any meaningful way. Having ships not be lost with an officer in command is fine, but there is a combat skill that does this also that they can get and makes much more sense as such. 25% reduced supply just makes life easier but very irrelevant late game. Lastly, 15% increased combat readiness for all ships. This is equal to the tier 3 Combat Endurance but for ALL ships, making it very over-tuned. If this remains it seems like the bonus should be lowered to maybe 5% and Combat Endurance tier 3 buffed to 25%.

Coordinated Maneuvers - This skill is drastically overpowered but in some ways feels necessary to help with cleaning up stragglers that draw out battles. 10% movement speed to all of you ships for 1 point. at 3 points it is 20%. To compare it to Helmsmanship tier 2 just highlights how ridiculous this skill is. I think a good place for this ability to come from the "Operations Center" hull-mod and it should be limited to 5-10%.

Fighter Doctrine - Another powerful fleet-wide buff that seems too good for 3 points when compared to Carrier Command. gives basically 75% of what
Carrier Command gives

Carrier Command - An overall buff to fighters. seems alright as long as you don't compare it to Fighter Doctrine.

Wing Commander - Seems reasonable and strong as is. I think I would like to see a specialization for fighters/interceptors (Wing Commander) vs bombers (Strike Commander)

Strike Commander - Basically missile specialization but for fighters/bombers. Seems fine.

Planetary Operations - Not really sure why anyone would ever pick this up in the current version of the game. Ground operations are already very easy and you can just use alpha cores for your planets.
[close]

Technology

Spoiler
Gunnery Implants - I really don't like having increased weapon range as a skill. Accuracy and recoil are one thing, but increased range leads to some problems where enemies are just not allowed to fight back. Combine this with Electronic Warfare and you have scenarios where if both player/officer and enemy are equipped with 700 range weapons the player has 805 range and the enemy has 560. This is before factoring in Integrated Targeting Unit which you likely will have while enemies do not. Maybe the tier 3 could be increased fire rate and / or decreased flux from firing?

Power Grid Modulation - Overall seems fine the way it is. 10% is tame enough but definitely gives you an edge.

Electronic Warfare - This is the skill that caused me to decide to write this whole post. 20% reduced enemy weapon range. This is a completely unfair and not at all fun skill that makes the combat way too easy. If it weren't for the remnant ships having ECM and some random enemies I would never pick this skill up because it completely destroys the combat balance. Combine this with Gunnery Implants and enemies can not even fight back as you savagely murder them. I think this effect should be limited to the 'ECM' hull-mod and be limited to -10% weapon range.

Load-out Design - Not a "fun" skill to pick up but very powerful - a must have. With story points being able to permanently add hull-mods on to ships I wonder if this is needed anymore?

Sensors - Picked this up one time because I thought the neutrino sensor sounded cool and I was trying to find a pirate space station... only to try and activate it to be told I need volatiles. I don't really use the go dark ability after the first 45ish minutes of the game probably but 25% increased sensor range is a nice quality of life thing. Maybe sensor range could be increased via story points?

Navigation - Seems like another one you really just pick up out of necessity. 25% less fuel used and +1 maximum burn are both very nice and traverse jump is great. Probably fine the way it is?
[close]

Industry

Spoiler

I am a little torn with how I feel about these skills overall. When it comes to the colony management stuff it really isn't worth spending limited points on those when you can just use an AI core. Perhaps story points could be used her to make this a little less cluttered? Such as spend a story point to be able to personally govern another colony.

As for the resource and salvaging stuff, I really just pick these up because well, getting loot is fun, so who doesn't like more loot. However these points do not feel very tangible at all and more-so feel like something the loot-*** side of me tells me to get.

Safety Procedures - This skill just doesn't really seem to do enough to justify taking it. 50% less effect of D-mods is nice but not really enough to warrant using the bad D-mod ships. I was thinking maybe it could allow you negate 1 D-mod from each ship, but not remove it so the ships will still sell for less.

Recovery Operations - I usually pick this skill up but after reading it I'm really not sure why. 25% higher chance to recover weapons is alright early on but totally pointless overall. 25% higher chance to recover disabled ships that are loaded with D-mods seems rather pointless, and lastly, recovered ships have less D-mods overall... well I guess they all would have had 4-5 instead of 2-3 but unfortunately 2-3 is still rather unusable.

Field Repairs - Nice quality of life skill. Not sure what more to say about this one.

Salvaging - First skill I pick up as the loot from derelict ships and research stations are one time and limited. Not really sure what to say about the skill, I like stuff... it gives me more stuff.

Colony Management - Again, alpha cores do this job at the expense of no skill points. Seems like colonies would be better off having administrators vs player characters governing them.

Industrial Planning - One more, Alpha cores do this just fine... though it seems extremely unnecessary with the amount of money colonies already produce.
[close]

Hopefully, if nothing else, this can start some discussion for the upcoming skill change! I apologize if it got less coherent as it went. I wrote this over the course of several hours and was distracted throughout some of them  :)

10
PD weaponry at the very least seems to need a buff to range in general to be viable. The energy variants seem to be reasonable in the 400-600 range, but 250 for vulcan cannons, 300 for machine guns and 400 for flak cannons is totally unreasonable. Even if their tracking was better they still would often not be able to even shoot down a missile before it impacted on the shields since this range only gives them about half a second to turn to and shoot it down. Flak cannons seem to be the only ones able to reliably shoot down some missiles but taking up a medium weapon slot just to shoot down missiles to save some shield flux (costs you flux to shoot the cannons anyways...) never seems worth it.

11
Commerce really shouldn't be an industry and should just be something that comes with having a civilization... really don't understand why it's something we have to build in the first place, let alone have it take up a valuable industry slot.

12
Suggestions / Re: More things to do with small ships/fleets
« on: August 23, 2019, 12:56:41 PM »
Obviously it would be fun to have more options of things to do, regardless of fleet size, and these sound like good suggestions. I think a big part of the problem is that there is no limiting factor on how fast you can grow your fleet. The only real limit is money - which once you understand trading and using the black market really isn't a factor since you can easily turn your starting money into 1 million+ in the first hour of game-play. I think this is an inherent part of the problem since you are strongly encouraged to become as strong as you can as fast as you can. I first learned about this game by watching Robbaz's stream and he compared it loosely to Mount & Blade: Warband... which I can get some similarities for sure.

In M&B: Warband, you can not simply pick up an army of 300 mounted knights from right out of the gates and start stomping on everyone, regardless of whether you have the money. There is a leadership skill & a renown system that determines how many troops you can have in your army at any given time. This leads you to be limited to fielding a rather small army early on as you build a name for yourself, but it steadily grows over time as your raise your renown and allows you to feel a very strong sense of progression as your build your army and character. In the next update it sounds like story points are going to be a big part of the player's incremental power growth.

To me, this seems like a great opportunity to use it to implement a sort of fleet size limit vs the current flat 30 ships limit. The fleet size could start fairly low with bigger ships taking more fleet size and steadily grow over time as you level up, earn, and spend story points. This way you can grow your fleet over time and feel a stronger sense of progression as you build up your fleet.

13
General Discussion / Re: The new skill system
« on: August 22, 2019, 11:14:54 AM »
Personally I really hope that the fleetwide bonus skills will either be removed or rolled in to just investing points in the tree. For example, for every point you invest in the 'Industry' tree you would get 5% more salvage, rather than having a skill specifically dedicated to increasing salvage. Some of the fleetwide bonuses such as ECM and coordinated maneuvers are just too powerful imo, but you almost have to take at least ECM because you will be at such a disadvantage if the enemy fleet has it and you don't. When you have ECM and the enemy doesn't they can't even fight back... ECM as a ship mod would make way more sense than as a skill point.

I think this is a good chance to trim some fat, streamline the system, and re-tune / re-think some of the more powerful skills.

14
To me, it's not that a large cannon couldn't shoot down a fighter, the idea is just that large caliber weapons would have no chance of being able to track well enough to actually hit a fighter. That is the idea behind using flak cannons to destroy fighters - you don't have to be so precise. Smaller caliber weapons like light machine guns, vulcan cannons, etc... have the necessary tracking to be able to hit with projectiles. To me it makes sense that weapons would need some sort of specialization. That is why the devastator cannon and flak cannons should exist, but really they serve no purpose because any other cannon can do that same thing but also be strong against bigger ships.

Right now PD weapons just seem to be in a very bad spot. They seem to have difficulty even shooting down missiles due to their range being so low coupled with poor accuracy. A lot of ship's shields project out almost as far as the PD weapons can even attack save for the LR pd lasers meaning they have a typically a fraction of a second to shoot the missile down before it impacts your shields.

15
Suggestions / Re: Make maxShipsInFleet soft cap instead of hard cap
« on: August 21, 2019, 12:43:52 PM »
I definitely get that everyone has different play styles and what they want their fleet composition to look like. It's a single player game after all and one person's idea of fun is not going to ruin someone else's. That was my reasoning for saying that story points could be used to increase fleet size limit so if you wanted to have 20 capital ships you could do it, you would just have to spend more story points getting your fleet size to that point.

I personally like the idea of having a more diverse fleet. I always get burned out around the point that my fleet has 6-7 capital ships and end up restarting. The most fun part of the game for me is when my fleet is just coming up with a single capital ship and a few cruisers and still a mix of destroyers and frigates. The fights are still challenging and require tactics to win.

Pages: [1] 2