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181

Bug Reports & Support / I may have discovered why the Oddesy is so rare

« on: December 22, 2020, 07:48:34 PM »

so I got tired of having to hunt for the Aurora and the Oddesey being so stupid rare, and I decided that I would try to alter the files for each faction to try and make some ships more common by having them actual spawn. Not only did I not notice i could edit faction files, I found this line of code.
========================

# listing ships here will make the faction mostly use them even if other hulls become available
   "priorityShips":{
      "tags":[],
      "hulls":[
         "doom",
         "afflictor",
         "shade",
         "harbinger",
         "drover",
         "heron",
         "astral",
         #"odyssey",
         "paragon",
      ],
   },
====================

You may notice the Odyssey is marked with what I believe is a comment mark. This file can be opened up in simple wordpad and is found in core/data/world/factions, with tritachyon as the specific faction. I hope this makes Oddeseys much faster to spawn.

182

General Discussion / Re: When is the AI going to get a FIX.

« on: December 21, 2020, 07:35:50 PM »

I am in no way a developer but it does seem that some builds causes the AI to be more aggressive than other builds. No matter what you do there is always 1 ship that always goes suicide.  It almost seems like some weapons on ships make them go in close. Like if you have a tac lazer the AI will stay at a distance but if you mix them they will not go in close even if you have weapons that are all close except 1 tac lazer.

I can confirm this in my own experience as well. The AI handles carriers differently than an enforcer which plays differently than a wolf. This does mean figuring out what the game really plays off of is pretty critical. If you really want to cap the AIs operation, youd have to really dig into how it measures its design, assuming I'm correct(and I think I am.) Ex: The AI will stay fairly passive on an eagle equipped with 2 assault chainguns and a hypervelocity driver, if you put 3 graviton beams on it. But swap the beams for pulse lasers or especially ion pulsars and it changes the combat range to be much closer. Again, just my experience so I might be imagining it, but my point remains.

Honestly, this is making me appreciate the AI. It's acting "intellgently" enough that I can't figure out what it's doing, but never feel it's making a truly stupid move. I'm getting mental uncanny valley vibes and thats truely an impressive feat to have created.

183

General Discussion / Re: Lasher is disgusting

« on: December 21, 2020, 07:30:34 PM »

My only issue with the Lasher is that its really SO or bust: its not fast enough without SO to keep ahead of pirate swarms in an early game fight where the player is badly outnumbered. In that regard the wolf is better because it can keep ahead with just Unstable Injector and keep itself alive for a long time. Its damage is very low, but a turret mounted ion cannon and either a pulse laser or a mining blaster main (I know it has terrible efficiency, but it cracks armor well for early fights) goes a long way in terms of distracting and opportunistically disabling/flank hitting enemies as my destroyers do most of the work.

I agree with this experience. Without some help the lasher only keeps the offensive side of the low tech spectrum and ends up with a lack of defensive options for the AI to make use of. While it's true a player can mroe than overcome that for the higher raw DPS of any frigate sans the tempest(and even that has issues), the ai doesn't really make use of it's strengths properly. It's kind of too bad. The ship isn't unbalanced it's just only a frigate. Without high mobility or a strong tanking ability, they cannot handle themselves for long

184

General Discussion / Re: System degradation and depopulation

« on: December 20, 2020, 09:12:23 PM »

I'll be honest, I have gotten to deep colonization(size 7 colornies) twice now and continue to be confused how people get to these issues with pirates. Sure if you never show your face in core then they cause issues but I routinely tear them apart, and that was before I turned minimum pirate bases to zero(max 3 still) in settings.json. Now that I have I dont have to even show my face in core much but to take down a pirate armada once maybe every 10 years. Maybe I'm insane here but I on my thrid late colony run have yet to see this supposed depopulation.

185

General Discussion / Re: When is the AI going to get a FIX.

« on: December 20, 2020, 08:59:38 PM »

It's funny, I get the opposite issue. The AI is almost suicidal in how much it wants to attack. In fairness I also tend to border into suicidal overconfidence when I get in an aggressive mindset, so it evens out. Honestly I think people are also missing a serious issue here, in that AI not only has to adapt to all possible enemies without being too aggressive or to passive, respond to modified or outright new ships, and do so in an optimized manner that doesnt tear your CPU apart. On top of that, as is in the .9.5 patch notes, some of this is to keep the AI from stalling you too badly. No one enjoys hunting down that last phase frigate that will not or can not retreat because it wants to stay alive. It makes the whole question of the enemy and ally AI alike being too aggressive/not aggressive enough a question so challenging I don't think I'd ever be happy. As an aspiring artist(writer) I can understand that feeling of it never being perfect really hitting this exact topic.

But hey, AI managment isnt my strong suit so maybe I'm an idiot, or maybe im suffering imposter syndrome. Exostential dread and self-doubt are fun.

186

General Discussion / Re: Questions about retreating, possible unfair trap

« on: December 20, 2020, 08:54:02 PM »

This sounds like something a story point could fix next release.

Excellent point, though it still should be labeled before your accidentally end up in a terrible scenario based on a missed button pushed or a menu variant kaizo trap. But yeah its more of what I'm looking forward to. But good sir, are you a sadist? Reminding me what is coming out knowing I know not when? do you enjoy the pain you have sent on this forum?

So my question: Is there some mechanic I could have used to escape that encounter that wasn't "turn in your goods."

Jettison all your legal cargo temporarily = illegal goods are guaranteed to be in the shielded holds.

Fair....though I suspect that might be an unintented sort of cheat. Plus, as has been pointed out, I wasn't even full on shielded cargo it just doesn't register 100%. This could explain why even after turning them in the first time my remaining 500 still got caught directly after, but only on the second inspection.

187

General Discussion / Re: Lasher is disgusting

« on: December 20, 2020, 08:50:10 PM »

Nobody tell him about SO assault chaingun hammerheads.

Nerf to assault chainguns is coming in 0.95. Damage 90 -> 75 (-16.7%)

The Hammerhead is getting nerfed too, 2 small hardpoint will not face forward if I remember correctly

Is that really needed? I find the extra railguns(or dual machine guns if your going that direction) dont offer that much, especially compared to the forward firepower of other destroyer class ships, and you lose forward point defenses. Honestly seems find to me, though maybe I'm not using it right. The chaingun I can entirely see.

188

General Discussion / Re: Smuggling exploit: dump all *legal* goods before search

« on: December 19, 2020, 10:04:50 AM »

Iirc the cargo in shielded holds has priority given to it for illegal goods. As in if you're carrying 3k worth of goods with 300 shielded cargo capacity with 200 illegal goods, they will all be in the shielded cargo holds.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. So with those 3k legal goods and 200 illegal goods, they won't find the illegal goods -- but they might find the quantity of cargo suspicious, especially if your max cargo capacity is only around 4k. Then you get docked 5 reputation points, although they can't confiscate anything.

My main concern is that the legal goods-dumping trick circumvents that suspicious cargo balancing, and I don't think it should.

I'm playing with Nex btw, but as far as I know, Nex doesn't change the contraband search & "suspicious cargo" mechanics.

I can confirm it's not 100%. I had 2/3rds of my shielded filled(800 illegal goods out of 1500) and got 300 or so of them caught just now, got caught again later. At high levels of cargo it seems to get harder to hide. I had no issues iding when I capped at 1500 cargo, now that I have 5400, it isn't that reliable.

189

General Discussion / Re: Lasher is disgusting

« on: December 19, 2020, 09:55:47 AM »

I prefer the SO tempest. High energy focus has a similar effect to accelerated ammo feeder, but tempest is even faster and can mount some crazy high dps weapons like heavy blaster. SO lasher is no slouch though. Ultimately all SO frigates get screwed by PPT. I use one SO frigate in late game to clear the derelict fleets while exploring, but after cruisers come into play, frigates don't do enough in even fight before they run out of PPT and have to retreat.

Same here, the 60 difference is speed is worth much much more than the 100 armor and small hull increase.I generally keep 5 of them for chasing after runaway cargo ships when I'm doing comission work.

190

General Discussion / Re: Deployed #

« on: December 19, 2020, 09:52:04 AM »

I can't seem to refind exactly where right the exact number si right now, but I remember reading in the json files that your deployment number gets smaller or bigger the mroe outnumbered you are to your opponent and vis-versa. It's there to make sure even if your ships quality is so high you can beat 4 of their dudes for every 1 ship, you still feel the effects of being outnumbered.

191

General Discussion / Re: Questions about retreating, possible unfair trap

« on: December 19, 2020, 09:45:48 AM »

If you can't retreat, this means the sum total of your ships' DP is over 150 or over 40% of your battlesize. Since the game can't force you deploy your whole fleet in this situation, it forces you to fight. Hm, Alex probably should get rid of 150 DP hard limit and instead use just 40% of battlesize (or 50% to be a little bit more lenient). It would have the drawback of somewhat favouring bigger battlesizes, but I think it would be worth it for convenience.

Hell even if we take "realism" into play, real police arrest you for being a smuggler or trading heavy criminal goods like truckloads of harvested organs. They dont like you go with a minor fine, so the rules of reality can't be assumed anyway.

To be fair, patrols in Starsector are less like first world police and more like second world military, and you typically don't travel unarmed yourself. Nevertheless, perhaps the option to fight the patrol should be made more obvious that it will make you fight, and maybe also the player should get the ability to bribe the patrol.

agreed. It's more the noob trap where you can end up, by either forgetting or just not knowing, that you cant say no and escape from a patrol, just cut yourself from a 1/3rd of the galaxy. Losing the Dictat or the Luddics isnt a huge deal, and thus not quite as aggresious, but for the league or hedge boys, it's nasty. But yeah, if I'd had that message of "you may not be able to escape the patrol, which may lead to becoming hostile with faction," on the first option would have made a world of difference. I basically got forced into reloading outright and losing 2 hours because of something I accidentally into. The first time it happened it was an accident, I hit a wrong key and lost all the progress I'd made all night.

Oh and, as for the size thing. That is adjustable without mods in settings.json. Mine is set to 15k supply cost for deployment before the run option gets turned off explicitly to stop this very problem from ocuring because I hit "2" instead of "1" on my keypad. I might raise the .4(40%) to .8 or .99

192

General Discussion / Re: Questions about retreating, possible unfair trap

« on: December 19, 2020, 09:09:22 AM »

Shielded Cargo Holds only decrease the chance that illegal goods will be found, though I don't know how exactly does it work.
In addition to that, if you are forced into a pursuit battle and get away while doing no hull damage (or minimal, not sure) to the enemy, you will only get a -5 or so rep hit, instead of instant hostilities.

I thought it was 100%, thank you for that info I'll dump my illegal good ASAP from here on. and yeah, trying to control the amount of damage midway through an active fight is difficult, and a full pursuit wasn't an option. The game -made- me fully engage so I couldn't have had a choice since those battles don't end until the enemy retreat fully.

193

General Discussion / Re: Questions about retraining, possible unfair trap

« on: December 19, 2020, 09:07:48 AM »

What happens if you refuse to comply with police orders IRL? What happens if you refuse to comply while brandishing weapons? Exactly this. For all intents and purposes, colonized systems are inside a faction's borders. Worse than IRL, there is no international law protecting you, only whatever the local government (worse, actually a military junta, corporation, etc.) says goes. So while it is not pleasant, you are the little guy, and s*** out of luck, unless/until you bring the bigger fleet.

And I'm not here to play real life the game literately. I'm here to play starSector. Telling someone "the consequences for this are a negative reputation loss" and blindsiding them into realizing the real consequences is "being marked kill on site and lose all ability to trade with an entire faction right on the spot," is not particularly fair. To top if off, it's base game design you should always give the players an out if possible. A player should have to go to fairly distant lengths to end up a situation where they lose safe access to an entire section of map and/or get attacked on the spot. Hell even if we take "realism" into play, real police arrest you for being a smuggler or trading heavy criminal goods like truckloads of harvested organs. They dont like you go with a minor fine, so the rules of reality can't be assumed anyway.

But thank you for answering the base question, I had no decision in the matter, I was caught in a dialogue trap I'd forgotten about given how rarely it matters after finding what shielded cargo holds exist. I got blindsighted

194

Suggestions / Re: {0.9.1a-RC8} AI irrationally afraid of superior numbers of far inferior quality

« on: December 19, 2020, 08:39:18 AM »

I think it's more to keep the AI from getting overwhelmed and surrounded in -your- fleet. I would be furious if the AI threw itself 4 to 1 against a fully loaded enemy no matter how weak that enemy was, it just put my ship(money) at severe risk for nothing. this would be especially bad with ships like the sunderer who lack the defenses to get out of a bad scenario quickly, so getting too aggressive would make those ships trash for the AI. The AI is basically afraid of being clanked or caught without the necessary flux to fight back. Fair enough honestly.

195

Suggestions / Re: Reputation hit after colony defense fixes

« on: December 19, 2020, 08:35:25 AM »

I feel like it would be much more interesting if instead of having endless periodic expeditions for certain things, you had one big discrete event when you passed certain thresholds. Something like a series of increasingly large expeditions followed by declaring war but at the end of it all, you should be able to make peace (or win) and not have endless expeditions sent after you. Factions should give up at some point and not mindlessly throw endless armies at you. I much prefer a big short term challenge that I can plan for to grinding endless waves of relatively easy fights.

In my mind, the player would be allowed to initially avoid fighting/war by either keeping their production under a threshold (or keeping freeport off or whatever) or by paying or doing missions or whatever obligations you want to impose on the player (could be faction specific i.e. tt wants a bunch of AI cores while heg wants you to kill some dissident... I mean pirates). These payments could be made endlessly, but the faction would send no expeditions as long as the conditions are met. If the player chooses not to submit, the factions could maybe send a few underhanded expeditions or do some of the subtle/escalatory things mentioned by the OP, but after some short time, they should openly declare war. Then the player can make peace (by winning some number of battles or through diplomatic means (story points ) or huge bribes like giving away colonies), and after that the player is left alone.

Also to the OP: the current message you get when defeating an expeditionary fleet is weird because in previous versions of the game, you would have an additional rep penalty if you a fought a fleet yourself (as opposed to letting you defenses handle it), and the message is there to inform the player that they can fight without additional penalty. It's not really necessary anymore since people aren't expecting it to be the way it was anymore. This has come up in threads before and I believe it will be changed in the next release.

Also to the OP: Alex (the dev) has said he doesn't want the game to become a 4x, and he wants the factions to stay somewhat fixed. Presumably this leaves some room for big scripted events, but I don't think he wants to have the factions behaving like players (i.e. diplomacy, cycles of war and peace, expanding/conquering new colonies and stuff). Hopefully he will chime in if I am misrepresenting his position.

I'd prefer a system like this to the current version. BUT...as far as I'm concerned, this kind of "problem" is only due to not having an endgame at the moment. While endless expeditions begins to break my suspension of disbelief, I also know that without them, the game would completely stall out after the last "major incursions/war" scenario.

I think the factions formally declaring war on you would still be better than what we have. At least in such a scenario you wouldn't be penalized for taking the fight to them. If the Hegemony declares war, than all bets are off when it comes to me firebombing their colonies and it won't make every other faction hate me. It's a window of opportunity where you can take your high-end fleets and smash them against their defense fleets and battlestations with no "outside" repercussions.  If you do vie for peace, then yes, I think there would be an understanding that you're not worth dealing with anymore and that would be the end of their incursions on your systems.

I'll join in to give my support on this. Having hostilities that break out from time to time in the same way the faction do is an excellent idea. you could still have penalties for raiding a colony enough to damage it permanently(keeping out the 'kill the hedge and let AI cores rule crap) but still let you actually fight with the factions freely and profit from it. Plus it give you sometimes to do late game that doesn't end up fighting your reputation gain.