Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More (04/10/24)
A SSD rarely influences loading times significantly.
SSDs generally have excellent read/write speeds but most consumer SSDs are not much faster than a good hard drive. Where a SSD's performance comes in is with responsiveness; lacking a seek time or physical platters, they have random access performance that a hard drive can never hope to match.
In conclusion there is rarely any benefit whatsoever to gaming on a SSD, but you would benefit greatly by running your operating system on a SSD.
It's a start, yeah, but I don't think the pieces are quite there to make the endgame more challenging. That's almost certainly going to take giving AI fleets skilled combat officers. I'm more looking at balancing out trade income vs combat income, which isn't quite the same as changing the curve, though that can't help but change somewhat anyway. Hopefully in a good direction, but this isn't a pass where I'm terribly worried about the curve, beyond it being playable.
As far as tech levels: think of it in terms of technology having mostly plateaued a long time ago. The "tech levels" more represent different schools of design thought. Sure, some slight improvements to engine technology may have been required to create the "high tech" ship designs, but they were far from being a qualitative change, and likely came with their own set of trade-offs.high tech ships are more expensive to build and maintain, for one. Which means you can have more low tech ships than you can high tech, even if the high tech are individually more powerful it means little if they're overwhelmed. Something like that, right? :p
^^^
Thank you for the great advice! I will try to impliment it all the next time I play. Which do you think are better though, the default ships, or the DLC ones?
I think that ability to scrounge if you need to is neccasarry because currently, especially for new players, doing anything at all can be difficult without a straight winning streak vs very small hostile fleets. This streak is even harder to accomplish considering that they are actually new players who are still learning combat. Anyone who gets wiped out gets shot back down to one frigate, and if they didnt save, no money. there has to be something for people to do in these situations other than just gamble on finding enough lone enemy frigates to kill before their supply cost outweighs the gain.Im a little worried about the... validity of the trade system. if it is *only* random events creating trade opportunities, there is a large problem. Additionally, some profit should be possible even without these events, so you have something to scrounge if you really need to.
What i mean is, all these fleets of traders roaming around, if a certain station has a pirate infestation at a certain point in its orbit maybe, that prevents any traders from getting to that station, during that period prices should rise due to lack of traders visiting and prices could go up.
I agree with the assessment that from your blog post, it sounds like trading will be nothing more than a thing you get a popup quest for every now and then and do, rather than a real profession that makes buying an atlas fleet worth it. It could just be from the blog's presentation rather than your actual intentions though.
Edit: additionally, if im not a trader getting trader event popups could get very annoying. it did in evochron mercenary and that was only for distress calls.
Was just looking through the comments and realized I totally missed this one; sorry about that!
I'm not sure why trade being event based would be a problem; you're saying it's because you need to be able to scrounge something up if you need to but... why is *that* necessary? In a nutshell, I see making money from standard trade as a bad thing because it encourages safe, boring trade runs. You might say that responding to an event isn't any better, but the difference (hopefully) is that you can do more interesting things to set yourself up to respond to an event effectively (such as, say, cultivating connections to get the information early, or even acting to create the necessary conditions for an event to occur), and then the actual "trade run" is the culmination of that work and planning, rather than being the actual work.
An Atlas fleet might be just the sort of thing you can use to really cash in on an event you took pains to predict/cause, while a faster fleet might be able to be more reactive, but wouldn't have the cargo space to really capitalize.
As far as the UI, popups would indeed be annoying. The idea is that you get messages (in the lower left corner, that widget is being reworked), and you can click on them to get additional information if you're interested. Otherwise, they can just be ignored.
I should say that there's one case where I'd like something like regular trade to be profitable - shipping exotic, luxury goods. The idea there is that they bring in more profit further away from their world of origin, so design-wise, you're guaranteed that it's going to be a very long trip. Then, if the trip itself is difficult enough (having to refuel/resupply on the way, maybe pirates specifically hunting you since they know you carry high-value stuff, etc), it could work without becoming repetitive. Really need to see it in action, though, and it might need even more star systems than the next release will have to work properly.I agree. I think it would be cool if there were 4 luxury goods (maybe faction specific?) each made in one of the 4 corners of the sector (not literally but close) that would require a fairly long trek.
Also form a pure traders perspective its infinitely better than having to prey on RNG events since those while fun are definitely not a reliable form of income.
