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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 - SpaceDrake

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16
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: September 01, 2023, 01:13:08 PM »
Also, I guess I'll raise The Specter at this point, and ask.

Do you have any idea when you'd like to get this out, Alex? This looks like it's already fairly well-developed. Are we angling for this year? Or is all the quest writing for this going to take a while longer?

17
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: September 01, 2023, 11:51:07 AM »
This topic reminds me of a question: why do fleets travel with their transponders on in hyperspace?  They should rather turn them off to hide their identities and avoid detection by pirates.

So, a lot of this is easy enough to explain: remember that many of the fleets we encounter in our travels are flagged fleets belonging to a specific government and/or polity. Any fleet dispatched from a military base to patrol, for example, is explicitly part of a military formation, and the Hegemony and League in particular would be very interested in having their larger fleet detachments "show the flag" and make their presence known. They would want to be seen, to give more casual pirates and the like pause, and let merchants and the like know they're there.

Similarly, while being flagged might make merchants a lot more visible, it also allows patrols and such to see they're potentially in distress and come to their aid.

In fact, the only fleets we encounter that are really of a similar status to the player are Mercenary and Scavenger fleets (and, to a lesser(?) extent, pirates and Pathers) and it turns out that you will, in fact, often encounter them with their transponders off, especially outside of the Core Worlds!

It's actually quite internally consistent once you think about it a bit. Even in hyperspace, government-backed fleets would have reasons to remain flagged and visible.

18
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: September 01, 2023, 12:36:30 AM »
From the way it's phrased, the wormhole anchors and the scanner will be part of The Stuff we get when we get back in touch with folks from the Previous Branch™ of the main story.

Man, I really did not expect this to get picked up again in a .x.1 release.

19
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: August 31, 2023, 12:37:48 PM »
Btw I have a suggestion for the Abyss Alex, make the music fade out as you enter into it and replace with silence, maybe with an occasional distant ambient sound, it's the perfect ground for some creepy environment ambience stuff.

I'll point out that the game already has a perfect track for going deep into abyssal hyperspace. (I wouldn't be surprised if another track in that vein is made just for AHyper.)

Hah - oh, wow, I had no idea that Eve of all games went there! Not super familiar with it (only played it a little, a while back) but wouldn't have imagined it to have that sort of stuff in it.

Being extant for twenty years will do that to a game. There's all kinds of nonsense in EVE that doesn't make "the papers" - it's a game with a lot of work done on it over the years! And yeah, they've had "exploration" content of various sorts for a long while now.

Nooo, Alex ignored my own comments and questions ;.;

20
Blog Posts / Re: Wormholes and Sundry - Getting Around the Sector
« on: August 31, 2023, 11:48:19 AM »
Oh look. A star. Alone. In the pitch black abyss.

...

I'm sure it's fine.

A single beacon in space - all alone in the night.

Anyway, this is all super neat, and although it does give the player more "superpowers", from feedback it's been obvious for a long time that there needs to be more to Do™ in hyperspace to make it interesting past your very first playthrough. While it would be neat to see the occasional Pather fleet yeeting itself across the Sector, I can imagine the work trying to get the AI to cooperate with these abilities in a non-obnoxious way (and determining which NPC factions would get wormholes - though it might be fun to see that open up as the game/main storyline progresses) to not really be worth the potential payoff, compared to just making thing interesting for the player.

And it's worth pointing out that the Slipsurges, from the sound of it, aren't without risk. Use a really big one, and you could end up yeeting yourself clean out of the main bounds of the Sector, which is where Things™ are!

Though, that's probably not too big a deal. It's just dark out there, after all. And they're waiting to say hello.

I am wondering if Alfonso might have to revise the "edge of sector" static constellation in HMI a bit, though...

Wormholes/WH-Anchor sounds interesting, but considering how strapped for real estate 90% of systems are in regard to stable locations, I can't see it become of much use.

This is a point of consideration, though. It's already nearly mandatory to have a comm array in a system you want to control, and depending on build, nav buoys can feel needful too. So with this, we're already hitting all three possible stable points, and if a Gate takes up another, welp. And of course, a lot of systems don't even have all three points, and you can only generate two via grav manipulation (with stable point #2 costing an arm and leg in story points).

This might be intentional in design, but I do wonder about feel in practice. Certainly on paper Hostile Activity looked neat and made sense, but going by feedback, hasn't translated to good game feel.

---

Anyhow, I also have a World Building Question in all this: it's generally been assumed, ever since the Orion-Perseus Abyss label was added all those years ago, that it represents the Persean-side edge of the large, star-thin area between the Orion and Perseus Arms of the galaxy. Is that still accurate? Is it known in-universe if this is something Else? Can you reveal how many Spacer Rumors there are in-universe about this area of space, since we're presumably not the first to try and go in there?

also:

It's estabilished from the begining since you can spend 15 skillpoints on combat skills when other human officers max out at 7, Alpha cores max out at 8 and Omega maxes out at 10. You're the dog, man.

And more to the point, anything in the skills can be done by other captains. You explicitly get both of the first-tier science active abilities outside of their skills as part of the storyline (and can even surprise people by being stupidbrave enough to try Transversing on your own without software assistance) and you see others using those actives. Enemy fleet commanders can even have capstone fleet-altering skills (and in fact can go beyond their actual stated level in skills). We're not comparatively that "super-human". We just get a few extra skills from high-end levels, and at least one of those skills involves us just deciding to Break Da Law™ and figuring out how to do that (which, as a side note, I wish got more acknowledgment from patrol NPCs in various polities). This is actually the first instance of us getting to do things the non-player can't, and at least one of these will be tied deeply to the progression of the main story. It would, again, be neat to see the occasional yeeting NPC, but clearly being able to do that involves a lot of research and mapping on your part, and anyone else who's done it is likely keeping their cards close to their chest.

I do somewhat understand where Helldiver's coming from (the game up till now has been pretty good about the player not having any truly outlandish abilities that the wider Sector couldn't do, at least not without a well-rationalized explanation for why that is), but I think it's a bit of an over-reaction.

---

Edit:

Why do that if the game ends already, when we have enough resources to do all this stuff? So, my question is: do you plan to introduce some end-game activity (hopefully: something bigger than randomly generated REDACTED raids)?

Spoiler
Given what is 99% likely to be required to unlock Gate-building, I would, by 1.0 and possibly even in this coming update, absolutely expect there to be Things to fight beyond standard [REDACTED] raids, and probably even beyond [SUPER ALABASTER] combat.

Which is also to say... huh, are we getting the rest of the main story in several more updates? I always figured it'd be done in one go. But given the scope of what's in this update...
[close]

21
General Discussion / Re: Question about StarSector
« on: August 27, 2023, 08:18:33 PM »
Plans for content beyond 1.0 have not been discussed. We know that 1.0 will happen when the entire checklist on the frontpage is complete (so: once the full storyline and related systems are implemented, and we can "determine the fate of the Sector by our actions", that will be 1.0). Alex and David are not talking, and probably not even seriously thinking, about any plans beyond that.

Starsector has been in development for more than a decade, so we'll have to see what the future holds beyond 1.0. Alex may want to move on to other things, but this is also becoming basically his life's work. We'll see!

22
General Discussion / Re: what type of file do portraits use
« on: August 27, 2023, 08:15:26 PM »
Nettle beat me to it. Though as one note: Starsector does also support the .jpg format, as well as .png.

That said, you'll usually want .png for better color fidelity.

23
I've never seen any destroyer mech beside the Watchdog. Where should I start looking?

Keep looking at Arma HQ, or occasionally take a look at the Persean League or mercenary fleets.

24
Mods / Re: [0.96a] Console Commands v2023.05.05
« on: August 19, 2023, 09:42:14 PM »
Here's a bit of an odd one: is there a known console command or runcode for assigning a Vayra's Sector bounty-on-player to the player on demand? It's something I'd like to do as part of a challenge run I have in mind.

25
can i add wingcom to a carrier?

Yes, that is one of its primary functions. Do note that, to balance out every fighter having skills applied to it, there is a bit of a fighter deployment range penalty (though for cruiser and capital carriers, it isn't too severe).

26
This is a neat mod that I've been meaning to get around to playing for awhile now.

Just started a game with TT commission and they gave me the high tech blueprint package right off the bat. A surprise to be sure.  Visited a couple Heg planets and each had faction bar contacts wanting to offload warships on to me. Plus the usual drunks blubbering about their D-moded freighters.
I kinda thought I'd have a harder time finding ships tbh.

Anyways, it looks like warships that you get from factions in the bars do not start with any d-mods. Is this a matter of luck or is this intentional?

I'm pretty sure that's always been intentional; you're getting a ship that would actually go to a faction navy, which in Starpoc is generally inferred to reserve the best materiel for themselves.

27
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Unknown Skies v1.00rc2 (2023/03/19)
« on: August 15, 2023, 12:08:27 PM »
There is one thing that I've been curious about for a while now:

So in prior versions, Lifeless planets were still a subtype of habitable, and the description still says these are habitable worlds that simply didn't evolve an ecosystem. Arid Lifeless and Arid Windy worlds remain habitable in 1.00, but Lifeless worlds are now a subtype of "barren"-style worlds. That feels like a slightly odd change, and if Tartiflette still checks this thread at all, I'm curious about the rationale behind that change.

28
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Unknown Skies v1.00rc2 (2023/03/19)
« on: August 10, 2023, 11:28:20 AM »
So I noticed that people are saying to just change the game version for the mod and it would work fine.
I'm a bit skeptical, so has there been any crashes linked to an edited Unknown Skies?

Nope, no crashes and I've used it for months. Wouldn't be recommending it if there were known issues and I hadn't tested it myself.

On the technical end, the mod is fairly "simple" in that planetary types and conditions are fully exposed to modding and the various APIs surrounding planets have remained basically untouched for half a decade; Starsector .96a didn't change anything in the game's central guts that would conflict with Unknown Skies. It doesn't even use fancy tooltips, so the old tooltip code it uses won't cause a crash with the game updated TooltipAPI. So it isn't that complex on that front; it's just that Tartiflette did the legwork of actually creating assets for all these new planet types and conditions.

So it's still perfectly compatible! No need to worry about funky interactions.

29
Mods / Re: [0.96a-RC8] Machina Void Shipyards v. 0.61.1
« on: August 10, 2023, 11:10:10 AM »
Just to double check, the ArmaA extension's most recent version remains 0.56, correct?

30
Mods / Re: [0.96a] Tahlan Shipworks
« on: August 09, 2023, 12:14:56 PM »
Does the original creator of this mod comes often here ? I would like to discuss some things. (Yep, i'm not joking when i say that i'm willing to pay money to get that ship back).

Please go away. This is not in any way conducive to a healthy mod scene.

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