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46

Suggestions / Re: Torus Battle Map

« on: May 24, 2022, 11:09:29 AM »

Isn't it like 100 times simpler to just make it a circle if you want corners removed? That's the obvious solution to me instead of being impossible to track ships since they now teleport from side to side.

I'm not a programmer, but I what heard over the years of various gamedev trivia is that it is hard to both work with anything that is not a straight line and to use said straight lines to imitate not-straight lines.

47

Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2

« on: May 09, 2022, 10:15:13 AM »

A stupid (and work-intensive) idea came to me regarding the Diktat:

Instead of having worse re-colors of other factions' ships, the Lion Guard roster should be 100% comprised of distinct, unique ship designs exclusive to them.

The kicker is that all of these unique designs are statistically worse/worse in other ways compared to the ship designs they were meant to compete against or counter.

The point of this? It is not as obviously bad, and if Alex allows the LG ships to be traded outside the Diktat (how they got outside the Diktat? Corruption is one of possible answers) they could be a potential "Not what you want, but is the best you can currently get" type buy.

This idea is inspired by various presentation tricks gamedevs employ, for example the bonus exp mechanic in World of Warcraft: Players hated that you get Negative XP gain modifiers when you go too long without resting at Inns, so Blizzard "replaced" it with the functionally identical system where you get Bonus XP modifiers upon resting, and the players ate it up.

48

General Discussion / Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes

« on: May 02, 2022, 09:51:35 PM »

How could the Diktat even survive as a faction if everyone sucks up to a deluded egotist who makes everything worse through excessive micro-management? If Supreme Executor Andrada is as bumbling and overconfident as he sounds in the latest blog post then what is the glue holding the Diktat together?

Institutional inertia backed by the biggest fuel reserves with unity enforced by scaremongering over the external enemy along with said external enemy's unwillingness to actually invade because of high potential cost of life and resources.

EDIT: I just skimmed through the section for the Sindrian Diktat in the latest blog post and remembered a very particular point I considered a discrepancy at first: Philip Andrada is a former Hegemony Admiral. That is how he came to power in the Askonia system in the first place. The Hegemony sent him there to conquer it, and he did, but then he defected and founded the Diktat. The Hegemony's psych profile on Andrada describes him as intelligent and charismatic, but also an egotist.

And yet it goes on to say that he doesn't know how to fit his own ships! He fits short range weapons on big fat battleships with low speed and maneuverability, which makes them unlikely to bring those weapons to bear in a fight. An experienced admiral ought to know better. How did this guy make it so far up the ranks if he doesn't know the basics of how to fit his own ships!? I get that he's an egotist and injects himself into fields of expertise that he's unfamiliar with, but as a successful fleet officer shouldn't he at least know the basics of ship classes and weaponry?

My occasional dabbling with the shipgirl fandoms (Kantai Collection and Azur Lane) led me in contact with various people all too willing to explain the meanings and background reasons for shipgirl designs and general naval history, and the main takeaways I got that are relevant to the current topic:

1) The higher the rank, the more political it gets, with the side-effect of the political skills almost overshadowing the actual military side and requirements.

2) Admiral =/= Expert on the technical specs and/or how to use stuff effectively.

And in the places like Diktat of course it gets worse.

49

Modding / Re: [0.95.1a] Of Ludd and Lions

« on: April 30, 2022, 02:44:16 PM »

So, a question in light of the recent blog post.

Will this mod ignore how the vanilla game portrays the Lion Guard, or will the Diktat part of the mod be rebranded as some kind of subfaction where all the actual competent Sindrians are at?

50

Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2

« on: April 30, 2022, 02:30:44 PM »

About DEM missiles, I can't help but be reminded about the comments in the Carrier/Fighter balance threads stating that missiles are better fighters than actual fighters.

51

Suggestions / Re: Colony Economy Changes

« on: March 21, 2022, 10:58:51 PM »

As nice as those suggested changes sound, I'm under the impression that Alex is pretty sick of trying to make the economy system work (while trying to make it computationally cheap (relatively) for old PCs) for the nth time and would rather focus their attention elsewhere.

52

General Discussion / Re: Is there a lore reason for no XIV Mora?

« on: February 22, 2022, 11:04:19 AM »

My impression is that the XIV folks primarily preferred Big Guns over carriers, and ideally would've wanted another Onslaught-like ship over the Legion, but circumstances forced them to adopt the battlecarrier.

53

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: November 06, 2021, 11:26:13 AM »

Alex, how do you feel about me bringing up officer skills for carriers again? (I drafted a post some time back, but didn't submit it because meh)

Well, you're always welcome to bring stuff up! But as far as likelihood-of-me-doing-something, it's fairly low, though it depends on the specifics. I'm not a fan of bringing back carrier-only skills; the new skill system (for 0.95.1a) is a deliberate step away from skills locking the player into a too-small set of ships. Yeah, ballistic and energy masteries do that to some extent, but the range of interesting ships that these benefit is broad.

Carrier skills, there aren't that many interesting ships to pilot - Astral, Legion, Heron. Maybe the Odyssey. But combining carrier skill effects with non-carrier effects seems like it would still incentivize you to pilot a subset of these ships due to them benefitting from both the carrier and combat aspects of the hypothetical skill. So it seems like a tricky design problem. That would be less of an issue for officer skill picks - if you have a dedicated carrier officer, that's fine - but since those come from the same skill pool...

Overall, I'm happier with the skill system now that it doesn't have these (well, almost - Point Defense, still) and the carrier effects are fleetwides-only.

I think you're really overestimating things here.

Only the small minority of min-maxers would agonize over wasted bonuses. The non-carrier players (or at least those who don't personally pilot them) would simply ignore them either because it is irrelevant to their play-style or found that trying to squeeze fighters into non-carrier ships for the sake of utilizing those bonuses more trouble than it was worth.

Meanwhile, giving carrier/fighter exclusive bonuses to existing skills would help the Carriers get out of their current bad standing.

Besides, what options do you have? You have said that Carrier exclusive skills are not an option, and yet at the same time you consider adding carrier/fighter bonuses to existing skills as some kind of design sin that will ruin everything.

So besides leaving them in the rut, that leaves either designing a whole separate (sub)-system for the Carriers/Fighters (And if the debacle behind the Colony system is any indication, this is not your preference)... or removing them all together to prevent obviously inferior newbie trap options.

54

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: November 06, 2021, 12:04:26 AM »

So What happens to the packages then? Are they removed or untouched then? If the latter, that would make them only slightly more useful than something like recovery shuttles.

They're technically still in the game (for save compatibility) but there's no way to actually get them in a new game.

I had runs where I purchased Assault/Escort Packages from the markets and used them with no problems even before I could invest into/when I ignored the Auxiliary Support skill (Could have been a mod, though?), so why not let them to be purchased and usable, even if they would not be as effective?

55

Blog Posts / Re: Skill Changes, Part 2

« on: July 18, 2021, 10:35:03 PM »

So there's only three fighters-affecting skills (Point Defense, Carrier Group, Fighter Uplink) in total now?

Right.

Does that mean that since of out those the officers have access only to Point Defense AFAIK, assigning officers to carriers is basically an inferior choice at best, newbie trap at worst?

56

Suggestions / Modifying/mitigating the Skill DP Limits via hullmods

« on: July 17, 2021, 01:28:16 AM »

I'm not a fan of skill bonuses being reduced by going over an arbitrary amount of combined DP of certain ships you have in the fleet when your only options are "don't" and "grit your teeth", and roleplay-wise it doesn't matter if you're a pauper barely scraping by or a richest admiral in the sector, the limit is the same.

So how about new two hullmods for phasers and redacted each?

One that reduces DP for skill bonus calculations but doesn't actually reduces the actual DP cost for fielding the ships into the battle, with OP costed just enough to have a meaningful choice between more, but undergunned ships and less but more fitted out ships.

And another, Cruiser/Capital exclusive that increases DP limit before bonus reductions start for a large OP un-S-moddable cost.

The versions for REDACTED can be either cost more for less benefit or not exist at all for balancing reasons (Thought I fail to see why would one prefer to have a malfunctioning Alpha Radiant when a Player piloted one is simply better even with the Neural tax).

I was also thinking something similar with Carriers and LPCs, but they need a lot more than that to get out of the gutter they are currently in (not helped by removal of Strikecraft skills).