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1

Mods / Re: [0.97a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 12, 2024, 08:37:57 AM »

Say, isn't there some mechanism implemented in vanilla to keep ships bunched up when facing phase fleets? I wonder if that could be leveraged somehow, even if it's a bit more primitive. But anyways, fair cop; thank you for the great work

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Mods / Re: [0.97a] AI Tweaks

« on: April 06, 2024, 02:49:53 AM »

Why does the fleet cohesion feature apply only to player ships?

3

General Discussion / Re: Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 04, 2024, 04:33:14 PM »

I can think of a few ways to go about a different system, though nothing too concrete just yet.

One way is to approach extra OP from the other wise of the spectrum — instead of using s-mods to gain effects without using OP, allow the player to generate additional OP by building in powerful d-mods. This additionally serves to eliminate the immutability issue not only in that said d-mods can be restored off the hull, but additionally in that a lot of flexibility is given in what the freed OP benefits.

Thematically this entails messy and destructive rearrangement of internals to free up capacity for a feature, so it makes a lot of sense for a refurbishment to blueprint factory settings to clear the mod out with the rest. This also obliquely disadvantages s-modded vessels since the mod, in addition to its customary debuffs, is eligible for removal alongside other d-mods and increases the cost of refurbishment; it checks out that additional damage to an already unsafely-modified hull would be more of an issue than were the hull firmly within tolerances and the benefactor of well-established maintenance tradition.

This is a decent array of disadvantages, but the end result should still be fairly advantageous: the process fundamentally allows the player to sacrifice qualities of a given hull that they find unnecessary for a certain role, to make the hull more performative in said role. This could certainly reenforce the primacy of a hull's already optimal roles, but in best cases it would also open up radical modification into roles a given hull would not typically fulfill, at a capacity at least viable for play (and possibly even competitive in certain circumstances); that is not particularly divergent from what s-mods should already accomplish in their current incarnation.

The balancing doesn't necessarily need to flatline said advantages, but careful treatment of the debuffs should ideally keep away truly ridiculous exploitation. Arguably more importantly, the debuffs need to be substantial enough to be genuinely felt in play; this significantly determines how different the experience of piloting a given s-modded hull would be from its modified baseline, and that difference is what we're really after.

I would also favor locking the feature behind a skill (tech or ind obviously; ord. ex., makeshift eq., and derelict ops are obvious candidates for a smooth integration at 2nd, 3rd, or 4rth tier without much skill-rejiggering). While this doesn't necessarily contribute to the balancing of the feature in the longue durée, it makes performance advantages a bit more earned; more importantly, it reenforces the exceptional and unique quality of s-mods by increasing their averaged rarity and demonstrating that their use requires particular proficiencies in in-depth ship-design, rather than being an unexplained default advantage over NPCs.

Finally, the system provides fantastic opportunities for enhancing AI-used ship variants. Some factions might enjoy the occasional use of one or two relatively standardized modifications on domain spec in accordance with their doctrines; others, particularly the pirates and pathers, could add a menagerie of quirks and informal retrofits to their arsenal, reenforcing their DIY design thematics and providing more interesting opponents to some of the most commonly-fought fleets in the game.

4

General Discussion / Re: Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 03, 2024, 01:39:59 PM »

For my part I always end up with at least one fantastic bar deal or lucky salvage of something far too big to be practical for my fleet in the moment, and into storage they go; If I’m feeling unscrupulous and not obsessively and pointlessly hyperfixating on the acquisition of pristine hulls, this applies doubly; anything larger than a destroyer that pops up in the salvage either gets refurbished as an anchor or, more commonly, gets tossed in the locker so as not to be a logistical drain.

By the time I’ve got a colony up I generally have a decent stash; by the time it starts to produce noticeable profits it’s jammed full of legions of hulks from exploration, market acquisitions, and unfortunate invasion fleets, most of them already armed and configured.

5

General Discussion / Re: Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 03, 2024, 08:46:22 AM »

It’s interesting that people mention run-ending consequences, because Starsector doesn’t have them; it’s not permadeath and indeed the only things you lose in the absolute worst-case scenario of total fleet destruction are the ships you had with you at the time. By early midgame it’s trivially easy to have a few spare ships sitting around in docks, and in my experience that happens even without any intention on the player’s part as a result of normal fleet configuration optimisations in play. Before that, losing a few frigates and a destroyer or two is an almost immaterial setback.

Unless you are a speedrunner, there are no substantial negative gameplay consequences to defeat; only narrative complications and some fleet reshuffling which if anything keeps things fresh.

6

General Discussion / Re: Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 03, 2024, 06:52:59 AM »

To address points regarding immersion: I fail to see any appreciable way in which an abstracted meta-currency that is spent to act in complete contravention to the rules of the game’s setting could possibly be construed as immersive. The ability to customise your ships is already central to the game and included in a far more rewarding and engaging fashion, but as I have indeed suggested in my original post, there are certainly interesting ways in which to expand on that. Ones that don’t involve BS meta-points.

As for the advertised feature of story points allowing you to “make your own story”, I feel that is a largely empty rhetoric. Emergent narrative is not achieved by allowing players to break the game’s rules at their discretion. All that achieves is the funnelling of players into paths of minimal resistance. Paths of minimal resistance do not make for thrilling narratives. The best stories emerge as a result of a game’s dynamics and limitations, rather than in contravention of them.


I can see the appeal of s-mods in making interesting ship designs; however, I hold that a significant part of that appeal is replicable without the introduction of SP use and immersion-breaking direct upgrades. The remainder may be non-zero, but is in my perspective distinctly not worth the downsides inherent. One of the worst qualities to my eyes is the fact that s-mods provide direct stat advantages over AI fleets; to me the predominant attraction of the game is building capable fleets, and this is trivialised by mechanics built to render AI adversaries directly inferior. The satisfaction of creating a competitive fighting force is only significant if the playing field is level, and I can be sure that actual skill, knowledge, testing, and planning are the factors predominantly responsible for my success.

7

General Discussion / Re: Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 03, 2024, 03:32:04 AM »

You can't just buff some ships like the Nova. If it's given 150 or 210 arc omni shields on top of having a free Alpha core, it will be busted in Remnant fleets possibly even outperforming Radiants.
What keeps them balanced in player fleets is either you only get one with a Beta or Alpha core, or you can get 4 with no cores. In either case they are not supported by reckless ship spam to fight alongside them.

Should that be the case, well, fantastic — most late-game enemies in Starsector are incredibly underpowered and could really use substantial facelifts. As it is, a good fleet can play easy wave defence against many times its DP in the game’s second most powerful ships.

Though one of the big culprits there is certainly the fantastically jankfull DP system imposed by SS’s computational limitations; I’m cautiously optimistic that at least some of that could be ironed out by the impending Java upgrade.

8

General Discussion / Does anything genuinely benefit from the existence of story points and s-mods?

« on: April 02, 2024, 03:31:48 PM »

Try as I might, I cannot think of any way in which the story point system has lead to better gameplay; it is extremely easy, however, to recall multiple ways in which they have made the Starsector experience objectively worse.

The ability to dodge fleets using SP trivialises movement on the campaign layer and effectively annihilates the retreat battle and all dynamics and considerations associated with it.

Easy bargains such as SP usage to render skills elite, increase the value of trade contracts, or mentor officers do not contribute any fun or dynamism to the game, serving only to needlessly obfuscate player choices and punish players for failing to adhere to a shallow meta-game of SP resource management entirely divorced from the setting and substance of the game itself.

S-modding adheres to the above fault but expands heavily upon it from multiple angles. Its permanence directly harms a player’s ability to experiment with different ship builds and fleet compositions, which is the core mechanic and attraction that the entire game is built around. The massive power creep it introduces is not only pointless but also an added lever to the already significant complexity of balancing the aforementioned core mechanic of the game, making Alex’s already endless work in adjusting for interest and variety harder. Last, but most certainly not least, s-mods are a colossal middle finger to the game’s setting and lore; the ability to take a tried and tested military vessel developed by a galactic power and operated continuously for hundreds of years, which is moreover produced from rigid and largely immutable schematics, and effortlessly make it simply and objectively better, is an absurdity. The fact that, to compensate for the power creep, major factions now possess large fleets of s-modded vessels is likewise laughable, and particularly so in that since story points are an entirely meta resource, there is an utter void of explanations as to how AI fleets find themselves to be s-modded in the first place.

A system for producing legitimate built-ins in the style of pirate and pather artifice, sacrificing OP and/or gaining assorted defects in the process, would have been a fantastic addition to the game. What we have at present took that idea and fused it irreparably with a pointless, limited meta-resource, the result of which is a travesty which fails in all aspects where an uncorrupted modification system would have succeeded.


In conclusion, my perspective on the mechanic is steeply negative. When time affords I’ll likely try to mod SP back out of game entirely. But there are always opinions on at least three sides of any given argument, so I’d like to inquire what other people make of the matter, and how your takes differ.

9

Mods / Re: [0.97a] Nexerelin v0.11.1b "Clausewitz Protocol" (update 2024-02-11)

« on: March 12, 2024, 12:39:59 PM »

Is there any way to adjust colony sizes in nex's random sector mode? It keeps generating oodles of giant size 7 colonies everywhere which is at cross-purposes with my current intentions.

10

Mods / Re: [0.97a] Nexerelin v0.11.1b "Clausewitz Protocol" (update 2024-02-11)

« on: March 11, 2024, 04:05:01 PM »

> "Every part of that post is correct" when the post says Onslaught has "4 medium mounts and no shield"

It's pretty clear that that's talking about the back of the onslaught i.e. the part of it that's in combat. You spend 40DP on a ship and only 4 medium mounts can fire (and they receive fire without a shield). That's the onslaught. Literally, "40 DP for 4 medium weapon mounts and no shield." You're going to insult me because you misread that as claiming that the ship literally only has 4 guns and literally doesn't have a shield?

Do you carefully tailor your battle size so that you never fight in anything but a 1v1 duel? In a group combat engagement there is next to no opportunity for anything but a suicidal Afflictor to get behind an Onslaught — to so do you’d have to go through the entire fleet around it.

11

General Discussion / Re: Persean League Crisis, and Crises in general, killed my desire to play more

« on: March 11, 2024, 12:22:08 PM »

For my part, I took the Dolos Executor, grabbed some champions, and did bounties and bulk freighting up to a few mil before starting a colony. Didn’t wait around for an optimal system, but it was nevertheless rapidly profitable.

When the League came I had already acquired a commission from them, so it was just a matter of beating up their fleets and accepting the minuscule 5% fee in return for essentially a greenlight on AI core usage.

Until I read this thread I didn’t even know there were nuances to the occupation fleets, because it turns out that 1 free capital, 3 cruisers, and some escort destroyers go through their entire armada like it’s made of wet toilet paper. The effect was less an unsurpassable obstacle or big challenge, and more a PL hull piñata, but it was very fun in any case.

Just goes to show how different experiences can end up I guess.

12

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a][v1.0.4] Realistic Combat

« on: July 27, 2022, 05:10:20 AM »

I also noticed the issue where fighters are now slower than the carrier in some cases - this is an issue with realism in space combat because there isn't any realistic reason to use fighters in zero-g. There is no upper limit on speed for space vessels, so size isn't a factor in speed. The only reason to use fighters would be that a smaller mass is easier to accelerate and a smaller profile is harder to target, but with laser point defence and infinite sub-light fuel these benefits are made moot. Bigger is always better in space, using realistic flight models. Only maneuverability could be claimed as a benefit of a fighter, but given their fragility and the range of all weapon systems maneuverability doesn't really matter.

Actually, fighters are very viable in truly realistic space combat, though people with their foot halfway in the door love to bring this up alongside gushing about railguns or whatnot. Granted, Starsector does not model the all-important dV (though that would be a really fun addition for this mod to make, actually) but the assumptions present (eg, missiles are faster than ships) validate parasite craft regardless.

13

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a][v1.0.2] Realistic Combat

« on: July 09, 2022, 06:43:17 AM »

So far, the mod renders PD solutions utterly useless, at least in their intended role: the extended range causes all PD to engage anything within range, causing their magazines to deplete, and seems to have trouble tracking the drastically accelerated missiles. The targeting AI also seems to not account for the increased projectile velocity, causing turrets to fire their munitions into the ether. Also, the speed of the missiles seem to break hit registration: Hammer torpedoes fly so fast that they go right through their targets, and have the somewhat hilarious side-effect of spinning ships like a Shepherd when they go past ships at a certain angle.

In the meanwhile, is there a way to disable all the features other than the damage calculations? It would probably be best to test that aspect of the mod alone.

Yeah, this.

14

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Disassemble Reassemble v1.6.9 - Another lovingly kitbashed ship pack!

« on: June 13, 2022, 12:52:14 PM »

I just loaded up on mods and was going to start playing again for the first time in over a year, after making peace with not having Tiandong or Blackrock in the current version, and then realized just how many DaRa ships I used to use without even realizing they weren't vanilla. My main goal in my original playthrough (other than just exploring) was to find a Sturmovik S.
I hope the mod's updated soon.

Very important to remember that there's an unofficial update for BRDY on the mod page with Cycerin's permission

15

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Vayra's Sector 3.2.1 - D&DSECTOR 2021-03-25

« on: June 12, 2022, 02:02:53 AM »

   "spawnColonialCompetitors":true,   # Boolean options: true, false
       # set to 'true' to spawn other upstart factions looking for their slice of the sector
      # this framework is usable by other mods to add more colony factions
      # check /data/config/vayraColonies/ for examples

Well bother, that was the feature that sounded most interesting, I just thought they'd be more of a randomly generated sort of thing.