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

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Messages - Dark.Revenant

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2731
General Discussion / Re: Astral.... want to love it.... but it sux.
« on: December 31, 2012, 06:16:11 PM »
Perhaps a -1 fleet point cost to any fighters housed within the Astral's hangar?  E.G. if you have 5 Broadswords and 5 Wasps they'd count as 5 and 3 FP each for a total of 40 FP towards your overall limit and your combat deployment.  Maybe some other carriers can have similar cost reductions (like the Odyssey being a -1/4 and a Condor being a -1/3 or something).

2732
Suggestions / Re: Solution for Save Scumming
« on: August 16, 2012, 04:16:23 AM »
Yeah, like a hardcore mode.

It's kind of like how Hardcore became so popular in Diablo II; a lot of players don't care for that kind of risk, but many actually enjoy the thrill and accomplishment.  It's a preference that players can make for themselves, and having a method for the game to enforce it makes the feeling sweeter.

2733
Suggestions / Re: Solution for Save Scumming
« on: August 16, 2012, 02:33:16 AM »
Anyway, I personally do not have any interest in this suggestion. Let's be honest, it is just labeling for how much someone challenges themselves, it doesn't actually do anything since we can already do everything in this suggestion, and thus it's not worth spending time working on.

A large part of good game design is an understanding of player psychology.  The label does matter.  A lot.  You'd be surprised how many people pride themselves on personal feats and achievements like that.

2734
Suggestions / Re: Solution for Save Scumming
« on: August 16, 2012, 01:43:03 AM »
That thread is more-or-less what I suggested: a separate mode with no save scumming.

Thus, we have come to an agreement.

2735
Suggestions / Re: Solution for Save Scumming
« on: August 16, 2012, 01:31:52 AM »
That in no way pertains to my suggestion.  A player can use self-control on his difficulty setting, surely.

The main point I made is the "Hard" "Normal" "Easy" labeling on your char file.  It's a badge of valor for sticking to a particular path.

2736
Suggestions / Solution for Save Scumming
« on: August 16, 2012, 01:21:42 AM »
Easy Difficulty: No saving restrictions
Normal Difficulty: Save on planets/stations only (Escape Velocity style)
Hard Difficulty: No saves at all; game keeps exactly one autosave, which updates after every battle, accident, refit, and landing

Difficulty can be changed but then it labels your character using the lowest difficulty setting used.  If you want to keep "Hard" on your character, you have to load back up the hard mode autosave and continue from there.  This way, you can screw around on easy mode to have some fun but go back to the "true" path when you load back up.

Any questions?

2737
Honestly I think the progression will be slowed by a number of the factors you guys posted in this thread.  I'll list some of the likely ones:

1. A few (probably not that many -- if any, I'd say the Phase Ships) ship designs are just undiscovered as of the beginning of the campaign
2. Few places will offer ships for sale, and those that do will only offer weaker/cheaper ships
3. Larger ships and more powerful guns will end up being more expensive, especially in upkeep
4. Capture chance of large ships will be lower, crew will be more effective at fighting off marines
5. Large, advanced ships will be hard to find (and will be too dangerous to take on if you do find them, b/c of large support fleets)
6. Player must level up in order to support fleets that have huge capships
7. Skilled officers needed to pilot each capital ship
8. Factions will grant access to capships after long quest lines
9. Quicksaving will be gone, can only save on a station or planet, or when you jump to a new system

I imagine the progression being sort of like Escape Velocity or Mount & Blade...

2738
General Discussion / Re: Credit Value?
« on: July 14, 2012, 05:30:56 PM »
The SF Credit can't be directly compared to USD because the difference in economies of our country versus a downward-spiraling domain and post-apocalyptic society is enormous.  Food is probably very expensive in the Starfarer world compared to ours, at least in relation to military costs.  There is NO way a warship can be purchased for the same amount of money as a year's living costs of ~250 men, unless living costs are just that expensive in space.  It would be like buying a military destroyer for around 50 million dollars.  For comparison, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer costs 1.8 BILLION US dollars.

So by equating Starfarer costs to US naval costs, a Gerald R. Ford supercarrier (currently in construction) costs around 9 billion USD and the Starfarer equivalent is the Astral, which is something like 225,000? credits when fully outfitted.  This makes 1 Credit == 40,000 USD in military value.  Consider that 1 Credit == 500 USD in civilian value, the world of Starfarer is quite a frakked-up place.

The average civilian in Starfarer probably earns 75 Credits per year in wages.  Certainly not enough to buy military craft, but that means even small settlements of 100 people can pool up to buy a freighter.

Of course this is all just universe fluff-bending to fit the gameplay balance Alex came up with.  A mere mental exercise rather than anything grounded in fact.

2739
Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: July 02, 2012, 03:24:27 PM »
I don't think more coders would be able to help Alex unless they work physically side-by-side and are top-tier programmers.

However, skilled modders would be very useful for content design and balance.  Rather than spending time testing your stuff for balance extensively, you can hand it to a team of dedicated testers with access to the data values so they can iterate on the actual numbers for you.  I've found in my own experience that this is a highly efficient method of refining the game once it gets large enough and saves the developer a lot of time.

This is assuming you don't already have something like this set up, by the way.

2740
General Discussion / Re: More expencive late game items?
« on: March 17, 2012, 04:24:57 PM »
The reason you make so much money is that this system is very large and extremely highly-trafficked.  It's a gold mine.  If the player can get so much money from such a system, there should be independent admirals who are going around with death fleets.  I'd personally love to see independent hunter-killer fleets that are fairly fast and utterly unstoppable, pillaging stuff before you can get to it in systems like these so it makes it harder to become stupidly rich and overpowered.

2741
General Discussion / Re: Original game art
« on: March 15, 2012, 05:19:03 PM »
Most likely with a digital pad, he creates an outline sketch with some rough fill coloring, then does the usual digital painting method to get the shape, highlights, shadows, and other large features done.  After that, he does pixel art on the whole ship.

Basically, he first paints the ships and then pens in the small details.  It's easy to tell by the art style and from a few of the work-in-progress pics I've seen.  Exactly replicating it would be exceptionally difficult.  The best you can do is copy the process, but even then the ships will look significantly different because of an irreconcilable difference in drawing styles.

2742
Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.51a (Released) - Live Patch Notes
« on: March 15, 2012, 11:48:37 AM »
Personally, a good counter to fighters would be different ways for missile/energy slots to handle them.  An area-of-effect fragmentation missile or area-EMP missile would be great against fighters.  Similarly, some kind of super-short-range arcing chain-lightning cannon for small energy slots would be a nice counter to groups of fighters close in to or even inside your hull.

2743
Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.51a (Released) - Live Patch Notes
« on: March 13, 2012, 11:07:11 PM »
I'd propose nerfing certain fighters and making mid-mission fighter repair take much longer, like 2-3x longer.  That ought to fix most of the issues.

2744
General Discussion / Re: Aurora class is awesome sauce!
« on: March 07, 2012, 02:44:40 AM »
Delicious copypasta!

Hull Mods
Stabilized Shields (This cuts down the flux usage by an incredible amount.  Since you'll have shields up for the vast majority of the time in an Aurora, this is equivalent to about 20 flux vents and only costs 8 OP.  There's a reason that this is on the Aurora by default.)
Extended Missile Racks (Holy ***, this is worth the money.  Instead of being able to fire three salvos of the Harpoons and five Reaper torpedoes, I can fire five salvos of Harpoons and eight Reaper torpedoes.  Nearly doubling the effective killing capabilities of this variant means that the extended racks are mandatory.)
Augmented Engines (This is well worth the exorbitant cost.  Being able to keep up with and sometimes outrun a Medusa is amazingly useful.  Few ships can get away from me using this mod, plus it allows circle strafing at a high enough speed to avoid many projectile weapons.)
Additional Thrusters (Or whatever it's called, this adds maneuverability to the ship so that it can turn very quickly.  This is very useful for just about everything that this ship does, as it can keep the Pulse Lasers pointed on the enemy, it can swing the ship around to dodge missiles, it helps the ship strafe the enemy to avoid some projectile weapons, and it allows the torpedo tube to be used effectively.)

Weapons Group 1 (Linked)
2x Pulse Laser [Two front medium turrets] (This weapon is able to put the pressure on the enemy destroyer/cruiser/capship shields until they eventually drop, and has a good enough range to stay out of the way of most other weapons, and they are rapid-fire and turn fast enough to drop any and all fighter/bomber wings and frigates that come near.  Seriously, I can just hold the trigger down and watch the destruction.  The pulse laser is by far the best weapon in the game for its OP cost.)

Weapons Group 2 (Linked, Automatic)
3x IR Pulse Laser [Three front small turrets] (These help the full Pulse Lasers deal damage.  The constant non-beam pressure brings down shields very effectively and is virtually impossible to dodge.  Because of the volume of fire, missiles and fighters also fall prey to the dakkadakkadakkadakka.)
3x LR PD Laser [Two rear small turrets and one rear medium turret] (These offer extra missile protection from behind.  Since the shields take a while to extend to the back, this is fairly important.  Plus, you can swing the ship around with the increased turn speed to take out some missiles and fighters using these, if you really want to.)

Weapons Group 3
1x Cyclone Reaper Tube [Front heavy hardpoint] (We don't have enough OP for a Hurricane MIRV, so we use Reapers instead.  This is very good for putting ships into overload since the damage is so high.  And if the enemy ship drops their shields instead of going into overload...)

Weapons Group 4 (Linked)
4x Harpoon Rack [Four front small hardpoints] (Oh my God these things are godlike.  These are linked because you will only need to fire these off all at once.  With the extended racks, you get 5 salvos of 4 missiles, which is enough to drop a Paragon.  Each salvo does 3,000 explosive damage, meaning that if you get the other ship to drop shields and you use your supercharged engines to swing around to the rear or an area of exposed hull, you can let loose with your IR Pulse Lasers, Pulse Lasers, the Reaper Tube, and -- most importantly -- the frontal Harpoons.  Nothing survives.)

The rest of the OPs are used for Flux Vents.  Being able to tank lots of hits while constantly pounding on the enemy with Pulse Lasers is very valuable.

The important part is the frontal array of Harpoons which give meaning to my flagship's name: ISS Ezio, Aurora-Class Assassin Cruiser.  Being able to deal 15,000 explosive damage in five seconds is enormously powerful.  As soon as you get behind an unshielded ship, that ship is ***.

I prefer 4 harpoons over 4 reapers because the harpoons are guaranteed to hit and are (iirc) better on the OP cost.  Plus they don't have a chance of damaging yourself.  With extended racks, however, a frontal assault of 5 reaper torpedoes is no less than 20,000 damage at once, versus the 1 reaper and 20 harpoons which deal 19,000 damage over 5 seconds, and in the former you have room for one more salvo (1 + 50% rounds up to 2 shots in that single-shot tube, amusingly).  Whatever floats your boat, really.  The pulse lasers and engine boosts are essential, however.

2745
General Discussion / Re: Best kind of PD and why.
« on: March 06, 2012, 07:00:47 PM »
The best kind of PD is a Wasp wing on escort duty and some decent engines.

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