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76

Suggestions / Odd Ship Behavior

« on: June 04, 2012, 04:09:07 PM »

I've been playing starfarer some more and I've noticed a few odd things.  (This is all done with VETERAN crew)

First thing is that the AI gets really confused by Philums and ends up spinning around wildly, they also never seem to think about absorbing the explosive damage on their shields and instead wait until there's about a dozen on screen at once before actually getting hit instead of removing them quickly.


Second thing is that when two ships are dueling it out, they will both retreat from each other at the same time.  Even if one is on low flux and the other is near-overload or has overloaded they still back away from each other.  I don't know if this 'Space Chivalry' is intended or not but it seems to drag out rounds much longer than they should be.  Ships also don't take the vulnerability of a frigate/destroyer having a burnout to their advantage.  It's understandable for cruisers and capitals since they don't spin like a top, but for frigates and the really quickly turning destroyers they should exploit the vulnerability.


Third, the AI also has a terrible habit of nor firing their missiles while the enemy is overloaded, I usually have to manually tell a ship to use a harpoon or use a strike command just to get them to actually use it.


Fourth, when two ships are dueling they tend to turn their frontal weapons away a lot of the time for no good reason.  This leads to my ships getting destroyed (or enemy ships) because they keep attempting to broadside with most weaponry in the front.


Fifth, ships when dueling each other sometimes drop shields while being attacked even if flux is very low, leading to unnecessary damage.


Sixth, on the campaign when an enemy retreats they sometimes will only do for a second before attacking again if they're still larger than the opposing fleet.


Seventh, fleets in the campaign get accidents at an incredibly frequent rate, usually from too much fuel.  They should remove excess fuel so accidents don't turn into a large spam.


Eighth, some ships have this tendency to consider dropping shields versus kinetic rounds supersedes the explosive rounds that are fired along side it.  And something they just plain drop their shields before all the explosive pellets have hit or missed.


Ninth, sometimes fightercraft that has only a single survivor in the squad when retreating will respawn with their entire wing at low HP.


Tenth, ships have a tendency to raise shields while pursuing retreating enemies instead of laying on the hurt until they turn around.  This makes retreating very easy to do as the AI doesn't know how to handle it.


Eleventh, ships consider weak swarmer missiles a greater threat than large explosive rounds.


EDIT:  Twelfth, bombers sometimes drop their payload within the shields of a ship. 

77

Suggestions / Improved Devopment Mode

« on: June 04, 2012, 02:31:15 PM »

Ship Builder and sub-editors:

Spoiler

dotShip Builder/Editor:

Generate Name:  The user inputs the name that the ship that is being built will go by.

Generate Ship ID:  The user inputs the ID for the ship being built.

Ship Type:  The user chooses from a dropdown whether a ship is a Fighter, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, or Capital Ship.

Choose Style:  Drops down a list of either High-Tech, Midline, or Low-Tech that the player can choose from.

Sprite Loader:  Loads up a prompt asking for a sprite within certain dimensions.  Loads up the sprite in-game.

Designate Center:  Places a dot on where the user thinks the ship's 'Center' should be and generates the Height and Width accordingly.

Auto-Draw Boundaries:  Runs a script that will ignore transparent pixels and design a basic boundary line around the ship.

Edit Boundaries:  Allows you to drag and add new boundaries for the ship is the automatic process wasn't precise enough.

Set Collision Radius:  Generates a circular boundary which can be dragged to be larger or smaller when the tool is selected.  Useful for round ships.

Set Shield Radius:  Generates a circular boundary which can be dragged to be larger or smaller when the tool is selected.  Required for all ships, even those without shielding.

View Shield:  Causes the shield to become animated to show what it will look like in game.

Add/Edit Hardpoints:  Brings up a tool that places a hardpoint where designated, right clicking that hardpoint will bring up that hardpoint's specific statistics.  It will display it's name (Automatically named as WS 001), Angle, Arc, whether it's a turret, hardpoint, or hidden, what type of weapon can be mounted or if it's a hanger, and what size.  You can drag the hardpoints around by left clicking them while the tool is selected.

Add Hardpoint Graphic:  Brings up a small selection of the different hardpoints used on existing ships that can be used to modify the sprite to help make it look like a proper Starfarer ship.

Add/Edit Engines:  Brings up a tool that places an engine contrail where designated in a drag and drop format.  Right clicking will bring up it's properties between it's angle (Default is 180), it's length, it's width, and it's tech level.

View Engines:  Causes the designated engines to become animated to show what it will look like in game.

Tool Tip:  When hovering over a tool it will tell you it's specific purpose.



Once all of those have been filled in your ship will be made into a .ship file and placed in a special file for modified ships that are not yet complete.






Ship_Data Modifier:

Add-to Ship_Data:  Selecting a .ship file from the incomplete .ship folder will add it to the list and bring up a large prompt asking for it's statistics.  Name, ID, Designation will already be filled in, however the Fleet Points, Hull, Armor, Maximum Flux, 8/6/5/4%, Flux Dissipation, Ordnance Points, Maximum Speed, Acceleration, Deceleration, Maximum turn rate, Turn rate acceleration, Mass, Shield-Type, Shield Arc, Shield Upkeep, Shield damage efficiency, Skeleton crew size, Maximum crew size, Cargo capacity, Fuel capacity, Fuel use per lightyear, Range, Hanger Size, Ship Value, ID number (Automatically assigned if left alone, notifies of conflicts).

Edit Existing Ships:  Brings down a prompt of the ship names to select, and then will load the statistics of the selected ship to be edited.

Tool Tip:  When hovering over the name of an element it will tell you it's specific purpose.





dotVariant Editor:

Effectively exactly the same as the current modification tool, any ship without a .variant will instead load as a 'Hull'.

[close]

Weapon Builder:

Spoiler

dotWPN Builder/Editor:

Generate ID:  The user inputs the ID that the weapon will be recognized by.

Weapon Class:  Whether a weapon is a Projectile or a Beam.

Weapon Type:  The type of slot this weapon may fit into.

Weapon Size:  The size of slot this weapon may fit into.

Load Sprite:  Loads the sprite that the weapon will use for the Turret and the Hardpoint.  If only one is designated then both will use the same sprite.

Load Turret Muzzle Sprite:  Loads and places the sprite that will be placed on the end of the muzzle when it is fired.  One is needed for both the Hard-point and Turret versions, if only one is selected it will be used for both.

Load Glow Sprite:  Loads and places the sprite that will be placed over the turret when the weapon fires.  One is needed for both the Hard-point and Turret versions, if only one is selected it will be used for both.

Glow Color:  Brings up a RBG pamphlet that will tell what color the glow should be.  The glow will be shown once all the variables have been filled in on a size box over the selected weapon sprites.

Visual Recoil:  Only used if the weapon has a muzzle sprite.  Allows the user to drag backwards the muzzle to show how it should recoil into the gun, you can also use numbers if you so desire.  In the side window it will show the gun's firing animation in action.

Render Hints:  Tells the recoil or missile launcher how to render.  Shows in the side bar.  By default they're set to "RENDER_BARREL_BELOW" if it has a muzzle.

Barrel Mode:  Either ALTERNATING or LINKED depending on when the barrels should fire.

Animation Type:  Choose between NONE, GLOW, MUZZLE FLASH, or SMOKE

Interruptable Burst:  True or False, whether or not the gun can stop firing in between set bursts.

Auto Charge:  True or False, whether or not the weapon will continue charging and fire if the LMB is tapped instead of held

Requires Full Charge (Pulse only):  True or False, whether or not the weapon will fire at a lower strength partial charge

Muzzle Flash Specification (MUZZLE FLASH only):  Statistics for how the muzzle flash should look.  Length, Spread, Particle Min Range, Particle Max Range, Particle Duration (In seconds), Particle Count, Particle Color.  When filled in it will show what it looks like on the gun in a side window.

Smoke Specification:  Same as muzzle flash, but using smoke variables and only for smoke based weapons.

Projectile Sprite/Texture Type:  What projectile or graphic will be used for the weapon.  Different for BEAM weapons.

Fire Sound:  The sound that the weapon makes when fired.

(I may have missed some things, if I did of course they should be added)




Weapon_Data Modifier:

Add to Weapon_Data:  Selecting an incomplete .wpn file will bring up a prompt with the statistics for it to be filled in.  ID is already filled in, the rest must be filled in manually.  Name, Tier, Base Value, Range, DPS, Damage per shot, EMP damage, Impact (Unused except on Graviton causes ships to spazout when hit), Turn Rate, Ordinance Cost, Ammo, Ammo per second, Weapon Type, Flux generated per shot, Flux generated per second, Chargeup time, Chargedown Time, Burst Size, Delay between Bursts, Minimum projectile spread, Maximum Projectile spread, Spread per shot, Spread Decay per second, Beam Speed (Only on BEAM weapons). Projectile Speed, Launch Speed, Flight Time of projectile, Projectile HP, Hints (PD/Assault/etc.), Number.

Demonstrate Weapon:  When a weapon is complete it can be demonstrated, this will generate a small test-room with a shield, armor, and hull plate along with the weapon in question to show how it works.  The shield and armor may be ticked off, but they otherwise have infinite HP.  The weapon fires automatically at it's fastest rate without taking ammo or flux into consideration unless it's enabled.

[close]

I think that if something like this was done it would make modding considerably easier, and therefore help the modding community expand rapidly due to the ease of making weapons and ships.  It would take a lot of work but I think it would be worth it.

78

Suggestions / Biting the Bullet, Ammo Depletion & Random Thoughts.

« on: June 02, 2012, 05:43:54 PM »

Two things that I've seen some problems with on the AI.  First and probably easiest to fix is that when a ship's weapon is out of ammo the AI still considers it an active weapon and therefore avoids it even if that weapon can no longer cause harm.  Any weapon that's out of ammo should be treated if it simply wasn't there as I've made some ships that are specifically designed to be a bullet sponge, but will never go in for the kill even against a ship with no ammo left or one or two small lasers that couldn't overpower the shields.


Second thing is that ships with larger armor or shielding will not ever make a death lunge against another ship if it has any long ranged weapons, instead preferring to attack at the longest possible range.  Ships also don't treat PD weapons as an actual weapon to use when there's no fighters or missile weapons, which when there are none that are visible they should basically treat them as if they're tactical lasers.  Ships with a massive amount of burst damage also don't swoop in for the kill if there's the possibility that their shields might overload, disregarding their armor total.  Ships also don't seem to try and out maneuver opposing ships, if you have two ships of the same type they'll usually follow in a line and not really attempt to get around to the other side.  They look like they'll try to do that, but they seem to stop doing that the second they could possibly fire.



Also in terms of shields, ships don't protect themselves from asteroids if there's no enemies around or within sight, leading them to take damage that they really shouldn't need to take.  They also don't maneuver shields around to block multiple targets correctly and will also disregard asteroids even if they've taken massive damage if there's any enemies within sight, even if they're out of weapon range.  At the same time ships don't seem to vent flux if they're faster and outside the range of the enemy whereas I as a player can easily vent or just drop shields long enough to reduce the hard flux.


Another abnormality is that when switching from manual to auto-pilot the AI will always disable shields and then re-enable them.  Which can occur at terrible times.  I also wish to know why the autopilot disables when the user gives any input what so ever except when boosting flux.  I think it might be better to let the AI when it's engaged use whatever your not doing.  Want to operate the shields while it maneuvers or fires the weapons?  Fine.  Want to manage the flux venting without disabling the ship?  Fine.  I don't see why any control what so ever seems to disable the AI despite it's seeming ability to operate even with player inputs.  


It also appears appears the the Tachyon Lance/High Intensity Laser/Graviton Beam/Phase Beam/Tactical Laser/LRPD Laser/PD Laser/Mining Laser builds up soft flux when it hits shields instead of hard flux.  This has the inadvertent effect of making the higher-end weapons horribly ineffective.  The HIL, Phase Beam, Mining Laser, and Graviton laser are almost useless due to this mechanic.  Tachyon Lance is hindered by it, but I don't know how I should feel about that.  I'm OK with it being on the lower-end lasers like PD, but it really shouldn't be on the higher-end beam weapons, especially the graviton laser as it's BUILT for anti-shield and this mechanic makes it totally inept at it.  
EDIT: This also has the weird effect of making enemy ships raise and drop their shields rapidly when near high flux but never properly vent.
EDIT2:  This also applies to Burst PD, Heavy Burst Lasers, and Guardian PD.


Last but not least a couple weapons I feel don't work too well.  
First off I feel that the Ion Cannon is either a little too expensive for it's effect, or that it lacks the shield penetration to make it useful.  It also costs a lot of energy despite it being rather weak weapon overall.  I've not really found a use for it due to it feeling like a less efficient pulse laser despite it consuming almost the same amount of energy.  There also should be a medium or large version of the ion weapon I feel, without those it feels like the odd one out.  It also is HEAVILY resisted by a commonly used modification which doesn't help it's situation.  
EDIT:  It also pretends to be a point defense.

Second, I feel that the Guardian PD is too expensive or inefficient for what it does.  It feels like a more cumbersome burst PD.  It doesn't really feel to me like it fills it's role as PD too well.

Third, I believe that there needs to be a higher-tier anti-fighter Missile launcher.  Currently Swarmers are about all we got currently, and they're small sized.

Fourth, to me it seems like Torpedos are rather gimpy, they're too slow and easily shot down by most point defenses.  The only ones that are really useful are the ones that come in giant containers, but even then they seem limited.

Fifth, Phase-Charges are rather pathetic.  The AI doesn't know how to use them, and the damage, speed, and ease of destruction and ability to hit the user makes them an utterly useless weapon.


It also should be worth noting that the Elite Onslaught is over it's allotted OP.  It uses 358/335 slots.




The last thing on my mind for right now is that there needs to be a proper drag-able scroll bar.  Currently the scroll bar REQUIRES the mouse wheel, which is kind of tedious in some places but it's possible to be in a situation without a proper mouse wheel.




EDIT:  Fragmentation damage really needs a buff, it should do much more damage to shields.  Currently the Salamander is pathetic, as are pretty much any fragmentation weapon.  They should at the very least be moderately effective against shields, but heavily weakened by armor.  This makes armor more valuable and shields have another weakness.

EDIT2:  Ships need to be more aware of what part of them has the guns on them and make sure to keep that side to the most dangerous enemy.


EDIT3:  Bomb-bays need to be more resistant to flak guns, currently they can take out the entire clip with a single round.  Maybe give them armor since they're bombs rather than missiles?

Also is it just me or are standard FRONT shields just really useless, they are less efficient then the obviously better omni shields and take longer to raise?  Why is this?  Omni is pretty much better in every way.

79

Suggestions / Ship Systems Ideas.

« on: May 31, 2012, 03:39:29 AM »

Some Ideas for Ship Systems I have thought up.

Spoiler

Tactical Up-link:  Increases the effective veterency level of a friendly ship to Elite.  Capital ships are only raised one veterency point instead of to elite.


Emergency Shielding:  Provides a power emergency shield that lasts for 5 seconds before shorting out for the match.  The shield will absorb all damage, but disables regular shields, weapons, and engines.  Still allows flux dissipation and doesn't slow down the ship but prevents them from maneuvering.


Mine Layer:  Launches a mine behind the ship, it travels for a small bit in the opposite direction before coming to a halt.  The mines slowly track onto nearby enemy ships and do massive damage.  They do not harm friendly ships and can absorb a lot of damage from defensive guns.  When destroyed by defensive guns the mine explodes as if it collided with a ship.


Blaze of Glory:  When the ship explodes the radius is doubled, damages enemy fighters and doesn't harm friendlies.


Boarding Party:  Launches a small transport of marines at target ship, if the ship is destroyed during it's effect it is instead brought under your control at 33% HP, 0% flux with all it's weapons offline.  Over time however the boarding party deals a small amount of damage to the hull of the ship, about 25 per second for 30 seconds.


Remote Control:  Targets a disabled ship and brings it under your control, the ship will be regenerated at 20% HP with it's engine's offline but weapons and maneuvering online.


Reactive Super-Structure:  When the ship takes damage to armor or hull FLUX is dropped by double that amount.


Cybernetic Warfare System:  Targets an enemy ship with a computer virus, target ship immediately disables 5 weapons systems.


Flux Transfer:  Drains the flux of a friendly ship over time and adds 66% of it to the user.


Emergency Evasive System:  Doubles the top speed, acceleration, deceleration, and turn rate of the user for 15 seconds.  Disables weapons and shields for the duration.  The ship will automatically recover from burnout once activated and will be immune to burnout for it's duration.


Overcharge:  Doubles the damage of laser weapons, doubles the rate of fire and projectile speed of bullets, and doubles the fire rate of missiles in addition to increasing missile movement and turn rate by 50% for it's duration.  Lasts 5 seconds and disables the ships's engines and shields.


Scramble Interceptors:  Generates a squadron of fighters that will fight for the user for a set duration before returning.  If the fighters are destroyed then this ability cannot be used again.


Repair Nanites:  Target friendly ship is hit with a beam that repairs health and armor for a short duration.


Magnetize:  Causes target ship to become magnetized, drawing disabled ships and asteroids to hurtle towards it at high speeds.


Scramble Sensors:  Causes target ship to become unable to see, effectively disabling it without support ships.  Lasts 10 seconds.


Repulsion Field:  Causes all nearby enemy ships and fighters to be repelled from the user for a few seconds.


No Quarter:  Causes nearby ships to take a small amount of hull damage every second.


Electromagnetic Cannon:  Fires a powerful EM weapon that will deal 1000 EM damage and if it hits causes a brief overload.


Gravity Field:  Causes nearby enemy ships and fighters to be attracted to the user for a few seconds.


Emergency Repair:  Causes the ship to become completely disabled for a few seconds and repairs a portion of the hull over time.


Reclaim:  Launches a tractor beam onto a disabled ship and brings it in close.  The attracted ship does not collide with the user and once inside the ship will be deconstructed and have a portion of that ship's armor and health added to the user.


Emergency Crew Transfer:  When the ship is destroyed it spawns a shuttle that will fly to the nearest (and largest) ship and boost it's veterency by one.  


Desperate Move:  The crew launches everything that's not nailed down into a giant shotgun like blast that deals 1250 fragmentation damage if all the parts hit, 25 pellets in total (Take the appearance of metal supply crates).  Only works once.


Re-Arm:  Causes target ship to receive full ammo and missiles.


Project Field:  Launches a flux-shield wall into the enemy that damages and knocks them away as if colliding with an object.


Anti-Fighter Pods:  Launches several small flak shells in a circle around the ship.


Desperation:  As the ship takes hull damage the rate of fire of weapons increases without increasing the flux cost.


Override Code:  Causes target strategic point to instantly become under your control.  Only works once.


Finest Hour:  Causes all ship systems to be boosted by 33% for 15 seconds.  Fire Rate, Flux Dissipation, Shield Mitigation, Acceleration, Top Speed, Turn Rate, and Instantly Repairs all weapon platforms and reduces flux to zero.  However, once the effect ends the crew will be exhausted causing a 33% drop for 15 seconds afterward.


Shield Disruptor:  Adds .4 to the shield's mitigation total (1.0 becomes 1.4, 0.3 becomes 0.7, etc.) to an enemy ship for 10 seconds.


Adaptive Shields:  Causes the ship's shield to take 33% less damage from the most common source of damage to hit the shields within 5 seconds.  All other damage is increased slightly.


Deploy Mining Platform:  Launches a mining platform that acts as an immobile turret equipped with 2 mining lasers and a single mining blaster.  It has no shields, but high flux dissipation/capacity and high armor and hull.  If the host ship is destroyed the platform is disabled.


Deploy Repair Platform:  Launches a small repair satellite that sends small repair drones to nearby ships to repair their armor and hull.  The satellite has a powerful omni shield, but very weak hull and no defenses.


Deploy Shield Array:  Launches a small satellite that generates a large sized shield that allows friendly ships to pass within it.  It's shields are very powerful, but it lacks armor and is vulnerable to fighter craft due to it's large shield radius.

[close]

 


Thoughts?

80

General Discussion / Problems with the Campaign.

« on: May 31, 2012, 01:40:11 AM »

First off I seem to have a lot of problems, especially with that whole slowing down when you win mechanic.  It's possible to be stuck in back to back fights because by the time your 'invulnerability' from a fight wears off you can't escape them due to the slow down effect in the game.  It's not helped by the fact that ships that are retreating only do so for a few seconds before looping back around.  So I end up losing my entire fleet not due to lack of ability on my part but that they slowly kill of my crew with burst weapons than retreating and repeating over and over.  This isn't fun at all and only has served to turn me off of playing the campaign further.


Sorry Alex, but I must say that the game has progressively seemed more like a MMO in the sense that I stop being engaged in the game's world and more focused on mini-maxing or scumming to the best of my ability due to your difficulty curve of the game.  It needs to be nailed down quite a bit in order to be a reasonable task for me to do.




This feels to be increasingly my experience with starfarer, if I am not totally working to the best of my ability then I can't get anywhere.  While I have no problem of a challenge, it's persistence without any lulls between them makes me feel more like a powergamer than one that's actually trying to enjoy the game for it's own sake.  I just can't sit down and enjoy it, it's always frustrating or rage producing.  While that's fine on occasion it's every few minutes in starfarer's current state and it only serves to make me regret my purchase.  I will say this now, realism should not superseded the fun, and currently I believe that the attempts at realism only seem to take away from the experience instead of add to it.


Ok so say you really want it to be as realistic as possible even if it sacrifices the fun, ok then.  Let me ask you, why is it that a ship who's lost too much crew to remain active somehow is still active in the middle of battle and suddenly stops functioning the second it ends?  If your goal is realism then obviously that needs to be added in too.  But I digress I doubt that's your intended goal so I'm assuming this was done more or less to try to make it realistic without being frustrating.  That's fine, just that the current implementation is simply too much for the kind of game you have going here.  Crew shouldn't just die en mass as a percentage of damage to the ship as a form of attrition damage.  Attrition in games just isn't fun and I've yet to see a game that has made something like that fun.  I will also mention the fact that many of these mechanics that cripple the player are either ignored by the AI or not a problem as they just simply are dumped with enough supplies that it's never a problem except for the rare occasion.



I also want to know why your assigned a random ship instead of allowed to pick your starting ship out of a small list when you start.  I don't like having to make several files until I get a ship that isn't horrible.  But also if the ship costs less than the most expensive one you get bonus credits equal to the amount less of your ship versus the most expensive.  But still, I am of the opinion that your starting ship should be larger or should at least have a small fleet so the game doesn't feel like your dragging your feet.  Speaking of dragging your feet, the MMO mindset I complained about comes in a lot more noticeably when I'm trying to get ships because I know that it's only ever a random chance to get a ship, nothing but pure luck influences it so it just feels like a GRIND FEEEEEST.  It's like each ship is a rare item with only a 1% drop rate from a strong miniboss monster.  You just kill them over and over again and get no progress until they give you the lucky drop you need to go and repeat the same thing on the slightly stronger miniboss.  It just feels plain grindy, as if it's afraid that the game won't last long enough if it doesn't rely on making progress as slow as possible.  I know this is a beta but COME ON, I shouldn't need to spend hours to experience the end game content, if anything that's rather counterproductive since that means most people won't actually get to the places in the game that actually requires testing.  Losing progress also sucks a lot, that's why I stopped playing MMOs because if by some quirk you actually die you lose hours of progress, I have no idea why this is thought to be a good point in Starfarer.  You say you want progression to be slow, fine.  But at least make it so that even having a single bad battle doesn't put you hours behind.  All that does is frustrate me and make me reload which I assume that quick save and quick load aren't expected to be part of the general gaming experience.  What was the phrase that was used... "It's one of those games where you might as well have quick save and quick load bound to the left and right mouse key".  I wholly believe that the game is far far to reliant on random chance mechanics rather than actual player input.



The music and changes to the sound were nice though.

81

Bug Reports & Support / Brawler Combat Avoidance.

« on: March 17, 2012, 10:59:40 PM »

The brawler ship under AI control seems unable to fight lashers properly.  It is always in 'Keep your distance' mode, but I noticed that this happens not only when the lasher is out of ammo but even if it's disabled.  I'm pretty convinced that with the latter part that it's a bug with the AI for the brawler.

82

Suggestions / More shields

« on: March 09, 2012, 10:34:01 PM »

Well currently Starfarer only has two variants of shields.  OMNI and FRONT.  I thought that seemed a little boring so I thought I'd put together some new ones that might be interesting.



New shield systems:

Rapid Oscillation Shield Emitter:
An uncontrollable shield variant that projects several small rotating shields around at a rapid rate.  Good at blocking slow moving projectiles, but bad against lasers and fast moving projectiles.


Micro-Pulse Shield Emitter: A special omni-directional shield with instant turning and low operating cost, doesn't disable the speed boost and generates nearly no flux on hit.  However the emitter only generates a very small shield that’s only a few degrees in size.


Flux Armor Generator: A shield variant that covers the hull itself with a layer of shielding rather than emitting a field and raises instantly.  However it has a penalty to the flux generated when hit.  It’s more effective versus fighters as it prevents them from flying through shields.


Flank Shield Emitter: A special fixed shield emitter that protects the flanks of the ship but not the front.  However it generates less flux and raises faster.


Frontal Shield Emitter: A standard fixed shield emitter that protects only the front of the ship.  IT leaves the flanks exposed but generates less flux.


Full Body Shield Emitter: A standard shield that projects a shield around the vessel entirely.  However it requires time to raise.


Omni-Directional Shield Emitter: <Same as the current>


Maneuvering Shield: A highly specialized emitter that works like a full body emitter, but much stronger and more efficient and doesn't prevent a ship's engines from losing their bonus.  However it comes with the drawback of preventing the ship from firing when enabled.


No Shield:  This remove the ship's shield, but distributes bonuses to OP and other stats due to power being able to be diverted to other subsystems.

83

General Discussion / The feel of Cruisers and Capital ships

« on: March 04, 2012, 11:06:39 PM »

Anyone else feel like trying to pilot a cruiser or capital ship is boring or ineffectual next to piloting a destroyer or frigate?  They move so slow and feel in effective next to faster more efficient destroyers and frigates.  In the campaign I pretty much never use them due to how pathetic they are.  I mean they're cool when in battle, but they're terribly inefficient when I can just put a bunch of frigates/fighters and capture all the control points before the ships could even reach the center.  It just seems like they're built to intimidate rather than be effective.  Anyone else feel like this when using them, or have you guys had better results?

84

General Discussion / AI and Missiles

« on: March 04, 2012, 03:09:19 PM »

I don't know if anyone else has had this issue, but it doesn't seem like the AI properly uses missiles.  More often than not I kill the enemy ships before they fire off a single missile off their rack,  this happens with friendly ships also and the auto-pilot.  I don't know if this is accurate, but it seems the AI is saving them for a destroyer/cruiser/capital ship even if none are on the field or in reserve nor if they're being mobbed by frigates and nearly dead.  This kind of makes torpedo fighters a non-threat because if you attack them with frigate they will never ever use their reaper torpedos and instead shoot at you with their wimpy PD laser.  Same goes for many ships that are mostly missile based.

85

Bug Reports & Support / Java Heap Space

« on: March 04, 2012, 01:16:43 AM »

I've been plagued with this error, it happens every few battles I participate in.  Is there any way to prevent this?

86

Suggestions / Additional Gameplay Settings.

« on: March 03, 2012, 07:44:42 PM »

Currently there's only a small selection of settings from which you can adjust, so I thought I'd add some more that might be worth adding.


Damage taken by your fleet
25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%


Weapons add flux
Off, Only on enemies, Only on self, On


Consume Ammo
Off, Only on enemies, Only on self, On


Regenerate Ammo
Off, Only on Self, Only on enemies, On


Consume Fuel  (Campaign only)
No, Yes


Consume Supplies  (Campaign only)
No, Yes


Game Speed
50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250%


Fog of War
On, Off


Friendly Fire
On, Only on Enemy, Only on Self, , Off


Enemy Difficulty:
Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Unreasonable
(On easy settings enemy crews get a penalty to their AI rank, whereas at hard and above they get a bonus to the point where Unreasonable makes all enemies 'elite')


Friendly Difficulty:
Cake, Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard
(On cake your crews are given a bonus to their AI rank, whereas on hard they get a penalty)

87

Bug Reports & Support / |Abnormality| Capture System

« on: March 03, 2012, 03:44:02 PM »

I do not know if this is intended, but if a ship blocks the capture of an enemy ship it will start to 'regain' it's control even if ships are still close enough to capture it instead of pausing or continuing to drain until neutral.

88

Suggestions / Suggestions & Feedback regarding the Campaign

« on: February 29, 2012, 06:46:46 PM »

I Periodically update the posts, so check for additional content from time to time.


Ok First off I will go over the issues that I found when playing the campaign, then suggestions on how to fix them.  After which I will give general suggestions.




This image I feel best represents the difficulty curve of the game.  Early on you're so incredibly weak that you'll barely win most battles, and lose your second due to you having attrition damage.  However, by late game your fleet is simply so powerful that you just stomp flat any opposition without any effort.

Here's my fleet as of time of writing this topic:



At this point in the game I can simply blockade the pirate homeworld and destroy the fleets the second they spawn with no risk to my fleet what so ever.  In fact, I have such an advantage that the 'Auto-Resolve' feature along with saving and reloading is the easiest way for me to get ships.  I can typically just reload any time I don't get a boardable ship until I get it.  Which while not a good thing the unfortunate fact of the matter is that currently there's no real way to make a fleet without save and reloading before each fight because losing 1 ship sends you back easily ten or more fights (Especially early on).  Something really needs to be done about things like recruitment rate and credit generation of ships, currently it's vastly too low.  It doesn't help that ships that are at the space station do not get restocked, so if you bought the capital ship and were unfortunate enough to lose it you cannot get it back.


Now when I say attrition damage I'm talking about Crew, Ship Health, and Replacement Ships.

Currently crews gain experience at a snail's pace and they're so quickly lost that buying anything but greens is pretty much a good way to lose money early on.  Even taking on the Pirate Armada will give me maybe 10 veterans for what was (at the time, before my fleet scared it off) usually a pretty Pyrrhic victory.  Usually just winning a battle will usually cause me to lose twice if not more crew members than were gained in veterancy.  Most battles require you to win by a large margin or you're screwed and you simply have to restart the campaign over because your replacement ship is crap.

When a ship is in bad shape with a small fleet it takes a very long time to recover any health, due to this you're pretty much forced to run from everything until repaired.  

Last but not least, god forbid that you actually LOSE a ship.  You're quire simply not going to get anywhere in this game without exploiting the save system as much as possible due to the insanely low rate of boarding/surrendering.  Now you might say "Why not buy ships", well as I mentioned before you gain credits very slowly, most battles you'll get between 500-1500 credits, and can easily lose a ship which costs 4000+ credits.  Now, can't this simply be fixed by generating more money?  Not exactly, see while supplies and crew are regenerated periodically at the space station, ships are not.  Buying them will permanently remove them from the station.  Therefore, the only other way to get ships is by boarding ships that are either disabled or have surrendered.  The rates of surrendering are pretty much non-existant.  I've had only 6 ships surrender while I've had all the other ships except the capital one boarded, even then I've had to save and reload hundreds if not thousands of times just to get the fleet I have.  It doesn't help that boarding also requires marines which in turn cost money (Which is weird, when the two options are 'Give us your ship' or 'Get turned into scrap metal' I'd probably give them the ship and join the crew instead of getting scrapped or riddled with bullets).  Since money is hard to come by boarding gets slowed down as you'll be spending money to replace crew and supplies considerably more often.  Any ships you do board will also be crippled or heavily damaged and therefore not able to fight for a few days.  Because of this it also will eat through your supplies quickly, while they're not costly there's certainly more of a burden.

There's also for some totally unknown reason an arbitary amount of credits deducted from losing, as if losing your fleet isn't bad enough.  I suspect because there's supposed to be a penalty, but losing ships should be penalty enough so... why?


Other problems are that fleets that you can take on run away and are usually faster than you and intercept makes you run straight to them instead of trying to head them off.  Trying to intercept them manually can result in you losing them since you HAVE to be 'intercepting' them in order to actually start combat.  Because of this it makes progression incredibly slow unless you want to play Russian Roulette with the larger fleets.  Aside from combat there is no real way to make money yet.  You get marked down at shops for some odd reason, even if you sell an item that they don't already have making bartering totally useless.  So making money is pretty futile as anything but salvaging computer cores gets an arbitrary mark down at the station and there's not much to spend money on as ships don't replenish so your cash only goes towards crew and marines most of the time.


Problems that aren't just in the campaign are the glitches or issues with the strategic UI and combat on the player's ship.  There needs to be a minimap somewhere so you don't need to toggle into the big menu and pause the game to be properly effective.  Ships also are randomly assigned a task when you set a capture/assist/waypoint/etc. which leads to you wasting command points assigning the correct ship to the position than another to reassign the ship that was randomly assigned to where you wanted it to do.  This shouldn't be happening and is detrimental to the whole "Control as a resource" idea the game has going.  It also would be a good idea to make weapons permentally destroyed or out of ammo turn RED, while temporarily disabled weapons or reloading ones appear yellow/orange.  You also should be able to see how much armor your ship has left.  Also in terms of UI, you should be able to as I feel it more aptly compares than say starcraft.



Some potential solutions to the issues I experienced:

Your starting ship is really weak and easily outmatched by most everything and if you happen to lose it you get an even weaker ship.  So when you're put into your escape shuttle it should have a speed bonus and once you get back to a space station your personal 'Fleet Insurance' gives you another Unique Frigate at the cost of your shuttle.  Your Unique Frigate is upgradable and will always be replaced for free.  The upgrades you can make to your frigate cost 'Skill points' which will do things like add weapon mounts, add OP space, add flight decks (And fighter wings that spawn from them), improve engines/hull, or once you get far enough even upgrading to the next larger chassis.  The better the impact on the ship the larger the cost.  However it should always be the best (or near best) ship in your fleet.  In addition to upgrades to your ship you also convey bonuses and abilities to whatever ship you're currently piloting (if you ever chose to take direct command of another ship).

Example bonuses:

Enhanced Flux Dissipation:  The commander conveys a 20% flux capacity/vent bonus and can stop venting prematurely if necessary.

Manual Aim:  The commander conveys a 20% damage, 33% range, and 25% projectile speed bonus to any weapons fired manually instead of using auto-fire.

Manual Control:  The commander conveys a 25% maneuvering and a 20 maximum speed bonus when taking manual control of a ship.



Example Abilities:

Alpha Strike:  Fires all weapons all at once.  Press/Hold Mouse 3 to activate.

Power to Weapons:  Doubles rate of fire, allows weapons to work even if offline, increases the turn rate of turrets by 50%, and increases the range of weapons by 50% in exchange for disabling shields and halfing top speed and manuverability.  This ability has a twenty second cooldown when turned off.

Power to Shields:  Slows the fire rate of weapons and lowers the max speed (but doesn't affect ships inertia) of the ship by 50%, but reduces damage taken by shields by 20% and decreases flux generation by 25%, if the ship overloads it will vent flux at a faster rate.  This ability has a fifteen second cooldown when turned off.

Power to Engines:  Slows the fire rate of weapons by 66% and increases flux generated by shields by 33%, but increases top speed by 50 and maneuverability by 100% as well as allowing the engines to work while disabled.  This ability has a ten second cooldown when turned off.

Repair Mode:  Shuts down the all systems on the ship save for life support and other minor systems in order to make repairs and refit to the ship.  During which the crew will repair the ship's hull at the rate of 2.5% per second, repairs armor by 5% per second and reloads all weapons at the rate of 10% per second.  This costs supplies however, the more damage repaired the more will be deducted as if repaired in the overworld.  This has no cooldown as you're totallu vulnerable while it occurs, however it requires 2 seconds before repairs actually start.