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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 - Gothars

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31
The dynamic is a bit weird: the moment you take these skills and focus on a carrier heavy fleet, you have to cull every flight deck from your fleet that doesn't directly boost your combat power. Every flight deck after the eight will drag down your fighter performance, even it if has no bearing on the battle.
That means no more Shepherds, no more Ventures, no more [insert civilian mod ship with flight deck], no more Converted Hangar for your logistics ships (which is probably the best survival option for them). These ships just don't contribute enough to your fleet to make reducing your fighter's stats worth it. Converted hangar on any ship is a more difficult proposal, since they perform worse than normal flight decks but count the same, but OK.

I'd say that the skills should just count military and civilian flight decks separately.
So you can have 8 decks in each ship category before the bonus gets slashed, for a total of 16. And then only the higher number of the two is used to calculate the absolute malus. If that is too much of a buff for the skill, the drop off point could maybe be reduced to 7 flight decks (for a max total of 14).


Alternatively, counting civilian flight decks only half could also help... but in practice it would probably only delay the moment I kick all civilian "carriers" out of my fleet.

Only counting deployed flight decks would work well mechanically, but would be hard to make clear in the UI.



 




32
Interesting! I would not miss the flat statistical penalties. But yeah, I also think that opens up a way to split the hostile activity into multiple event bars.


And in general I'd like to have dynamics where getting in the good with one faction pushes you in the other direction with others. However, that many progress bars is *a lot*, before you even consider adding mods into the mix - I have to wonder if there aren't simpler ways to handle this sort of thing - achieve the similar results with less. And, having both a relationship bar and some other kind of bar for a faction feels a bit redundant. ... hmm, having a bar for *just* pirates might even be interesting...

Could there maybe be some more general "issue alignment bars" that factions reference when dealing with you/spawning events for you?

For example, a "criminal reputation" bar, a "Believer in technology" bar, a "Domain resurrectionist" bar, a "respect for life" bar. Basically, list the main issues that divide the Sector, and allow the player to take a stance on them with their actions.
 
Then the factions (and mod factions) will react to you accordingly, e.g. Hegs will send inspections flotillas (later fleets) if you are high on the  "Believer in technology"" bar - defying those might increase event progress of that bar and open some doors with the TTs. 

Other example: If you are a somewhat known Domain resurrectionist (but not, like, fanatical about it) the Perseans might try to get you to spy on the Hegs for them. If you do what they say, your event progress decreases, if you double cross them it increases and the hegs might send you to recover a fleet of historic XIV derelicts.


The nice thing is that the alignments could interact. A high "criminal reputation" and "Believer in technology" will generate other events than having just one of them high, like stealth jobs for TT.

The alignments should probably not be dependent on you having a colony, but colonies might influence each of them separately and continuously. Settling a terran world helps your "respect for life" reputations, polluting it reverses that effect. Using colony items makes you a "Believer in technology", running a free port increases criminal reputation.

Faction commissions (or at least cooperative standing with them) could be locked behind the right set of alignments/blocked by a wrong one.



An Event/Opportunity example might be: Tri-Tachyon doing commerce raiding and then sending punitive expeditions, due to your having a high market share in drugs or volatiles or some such. If they're defeated, in whatever way: this approach has proven unprofitable, and they're willing to cut lucrative deals with you!

A alignment bar would allow to have event/opportunity separated between factions, like in the example above.

33
Suggestions / Re: Throwing s-points at d-mods
« on: June 09, 2023, 04:34:28 PM »
Hm... I think I like better the notion of being able to 'integrate' specific d-mods, if you get one(s) you want to keep. This could use the same interface as s-mods, and integrating a d-mod would then presumably cost a story point (but give back 100% bonus XP).

Oh, that would be rather nice addition to a junker playstile - own your faults! I think they should get better when integrated, though. Either by increasing their logistic bonus further, or, better, by getting unique integration bonuses like s-mods. Like, degraded life support could decrease crew causalities because everybody runs around with a personal breather anyway. Erratic fuel injector leads to the ship storing more fuel, degraded shields can be raised faster, degraded sensors can be plastered over with more armor, that sort of thing.

34
Modding / Re: [0.96a] ThirstSector - A Complete Portrait Replacer
« on: June 09, 2023, 11:59:20 AM »
why you'd want to replace the top notch vanilla portraits with this soulless AI puke is beyond me.
It's so bad, it even whitewashes people's ethnicity by making them look more white. It also turns every woman's portrait that had so much personality into nothing more than an odd doll that you see in those weird internet ads.
Honestly, the success of this mod is kinda beyond me. Why not just commission artists to draw or paint new portraits???

Please stay respectful. That goes especially in a mod topic. Your comments are far beyond what could be called constructive criticism. Consider this a warning.

@ therealzOh
If you'd like me to clear the thread up, just say so.




@ the volkflower, GreyMechanic, Hotpics

Personal insults are not the appropriate response here. Please use the report function next time.

35
Suggestions / Re: Exploration needs to be a challenge again
« on: June 09, 2023, 09:50:42 AM »
If anyone is interested, I just found Sundog's Mod Nomadic Survival which addresses the shortcomings I pointed out in the OP :)



If a single living being here enjoys getting hit by asteroids I have some fun activies to suggest in free time.

It adds nothing meaningful to gameplay of such game.

Well, I enjoy asteroids the same way I enjoy holes in a jump and run: by successfully avoiding them. Or, occasionally, shaking off enemies by making them avoid the hits.

I think it's really good that your fleet interacts with the terrain, it makes both feel more substantial.

36
I just discovered this mod, and it elegantly addresses the issues I had with the triviality of exploration in the base game. At least so far, did not spend very much time with it yet. I especially like how it makes dedicated exploration ships so useful, as they have properly shielded fuel storage. Thank you very much, Sundog!

Do you want it to be added to the mod index and/or moved to the mods subforum?


37
General Discussion / Re: Expectations for 1.0
« on: June 08, 2023, 05:18:27 AM »
I expect nothing. I already got more out of this game than I could have hoped for. I hope for the dev team that they can bring Starsector to a point where they are satisfied with it, and then be massively successful in sales.


38
Suggestions / Re: Spoiler Task Force REDACTED
« on: June 07, 2023, 12:11:54 AM »
The reward is really the ships, though, not so much the PK!

As someone who got those ships to stand down with a Heg comission, I feel cheated! ;P

39
Suggestions / Re: Suggestion: time
« on: June 06, 2023, 12:58:29 PM »
I can't remember the exact technical reason why not, I think the menus are not set up to update while you are browsing them. Safe to say, it was suggested many times. I wonder if at least one aspect, for example just reading the codex, would be possible, since I find myself tabbing out when traveling long distanced through known&safe space.

40
Suggestions / Re: Show real weapon ranges in weapon list
« on: June 06, 2023, 12:38:50 PM »
doing it for the whole weapon tooltip is a major undertaking, and there are some issues where it's unclear how this might be accomplished at all
Well then, at least I guessed the general problem correctly ;D

Another potential place to show this might be the weapon group dialog...

That would certainly be an improvement over now, and would actually be an advantage over the list idea when looking if the ranges in the overall load out match well. But when fitting new weapons, which is arguably the main purpose of the refit menu, it would be pretty cumbersome - you'd have to equip a new weapon and then open the groups window each time. The info would be kinda hidden from new players there, as well. Showing it in both places would combine the advantages, of course. There's enough room in the refit dialog when you shrink the weapon group number a bit, so that's not a problem at least:





But showing the modified range in this place in the UI, and not in the tooltip, hmm. It wouldn't create that expectation, necessarily - which, good! - but at a guess, it'd result in about 100 (reasonable) suggestions to also show it in the tooltip.

I'm not so sure about that, the weapon list and weapon tooltip are right next to each other so players would just have access to more information: the modified range on one side and the weapon's base range on the other.

Right! When you click the weapon it looks like this, with all information being visible at once:




Also, I just realized that I forgot the whole ship class weapon range boost in my calculations...which just demonstrates my point further.

41
Suggestions / Show real weapon ranges in weapon list
« on: June 06, 2023, 06:28:45 AM »
Pretty please. Normally I would suggest to show it on the refit screen like 1200(+500), but then, of course, one might ask: why not do this for all the modified weapon stats? Since this would be (imho) an obvious improvement but has not been implemented, I'm guessing it's quite a task and/or there are technical hurdles.

Why just focus on range then, specifically? Well, it is the most important stat of a weapon, especially for comparison/matching with other weapons - the game acknowledges that, it is the only stat visible in the weapon list view. Where, instead of the base range, the modified range could be shown.



Another reason is that, at least for me, weapon range specifically it's getting too confusing to calculate with all the modifiers that now potentially apply.
To know the real range of a weapon I have to do so many calculations that I'm sure to forget one factor or another. So in praxis, to see if the ranges of different weapons match, I have to fire up the simulator for every weapon change. Aside from being bothersome, this approach is also limited by different weapon positions on the sprite.

Let's take a cruiser, for example.

It runs a railgun with base range 700.

Ballistic Rangefinder expands that base range to 800...but also caps it there? I hope that cap only applies to base range.

It has ITU, meaning +40%, or +320.

Unstable injector -15%, or -120

Ballistic Mastery +10%, or +80

Gunnery Implants +15%, or +120

So that's 1200(+500) range, hopefully.
For the Ion cannon (825(+325))  , Mining Laser (1400(+800))  or Vulcan (725(+475)) weapon next to it those calculations would look completely different, though. I tested those weapon by the way, some of my results are off, for example Mining Laser and Railgun seem to have the same range. So, yeah, no chance to do this in my head correctly each time.




42
Suggestions / Re: Phase Lance range buff?
« on: June 05, 2023, 08:02:47 AM »
AI might need to understand how to use them better rather than just cycling them while the phase ship remains in phase, though.

Not if it had an effect while they are phased, it needn't  ;)

43
Suggestions / Re: Automated Ships Rework
« on: June 05, 2023, 05:34:15 AM »
The weirdest thing about [Redacted] ships is that nobody in the core worlds minds them in your fleet, despite fighting two wars about them. If they became illegal, they could generally be a bit stronger imho, to compensate for that weakness.


The way I use Exploratorium drones is as cheap, temporary combat strength boosts during exploration, that you discard before going home. I wouldn't mind if they became even cheaper to restore, maintain and repair them, to strengthen that ad-hock role.


44
Blog Posts / Re: Narrative in 0.96 aka Movie Night With David
« on: June 05, 2023, 02:56:19 AM »
I also really like the writing. I wish I could forget all of it and experience it for the first time, once the game is finished.

Quote
Will it tie into anything else? Maybe a little, I dunno. It’s important to leave yourself narrative opportunities that can be picked up later, or not.

I'd love way more of this kind of stuff. Not easter eggs or homages, mind you, but just little slice of life episodes that don't necessarily lead anywhere. 

At the moment, whenever I read any non-standard text I go "Aha! Story time! Let's follow that quest line!"
I think introducing some more narrative noise would do two things:

- Make actual long narratives more surprising and more believable. That's how stories in life work after all, you never now how long a path will be when you step on it for the first time.

- Make the sector feel (even) more alive, by implying that many more stories are going on without the player involved. You are just crossing them like a slipstream in your path, instead of being swept along with it. This helps to show that the player is not the center of everything (a core issue with video game world-building) and make the Sector itself into the main character, of sorts.





I also want to mention, once the codex is reworked, it would be fantastic to include short character profiles - it's getting to the point where I start to confuse names.

45
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: June 05, 2023, 02:27:34 AM »
As someone who has never left his home planet and would be very excited by a three day trip to another star, I find that VIP very relatable.

Seriously though, I think this mission helps to illustrate that most people in the sector never actually left their home planet. Being a starfarer is something special post-collapse, not the norm.

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