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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 - NikolaiLev

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31
There isn't a "weaponSizes", no.

The best way to see what all the possible values are would be to collate the data from vanilla systems. I think that'd about cover it, except for a couple of mod-requested enhancements.

Yeah, I did that already.

I'm assuming it's possible to limit what the system applies to through the Stats script?  Or am I unable to make a system that affects only a specific size of weapons?

32
Man, I miss this mod.  Hope it comes back someday!

33
Is there anywhere I can figure out all the possible options for a .system file?  I don't think it's in the API since it's not java.

There's a "weaponTypes": with possible options like BALLISTIC, but there doesn't seem to be a "weaponSizes": value.

34
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: December 05, 2014, 07:31:21 PM »
If it's about ammo: like I said, in my view, it was not a meaningful balance tool or differentiator, except for extra-long battles, where it basically just means low-tech ships can't do those.

Arguably, CR loss was the balancer for high-tech ships.  Now that ammo is out of the question, the balance might swing the other way.

Maybe make it so that if a ship runs out of ammo, it reloads its magazine at the cost of CR.  Maybe 5% or something.

35
Suggestions / Re: Make AI better at reactive shield dropping
« on: December 05, 2014, 07:25:09 PM »
Heavy Mauler is OP.

It might be.  But I don't think it has to be.  If the AI was better at dealing with it the assault chaingun might actually be useful.

36
The problem comes from scale: calculating flight patch with the real bounds for each ship is somewhat costly but doable since we rarely have more than 20 ships around (fighters, drones and missiles don't need that). But unlike RTS games, in SS each weapon has it's own Auto-fire AI running each frame. Suddenly you are talking about 200+ weapons in large battles that would have to calculate bound collisions each frame, in addition to the ships.

Maybe it could be possible to simply add more that one collision radius on ships, imperfect but still better, for a small CPU cost. Or target a random bound point in range instead of calculating line intersections when targeting the center of the ship?

But this topic has been brought up with each update, and since it is mostly relevant with mods I doubt we will see a solution come in vanilla, or at least not before the final polish phase. Especially now that we have TwigLib that is meant to deal with this issue in mods.

May be possible to make the collision radius an ovaloid instead of a circle where appropriate.  This could be done automatically or determined by the modder.

37
Suggestions / Re: Make AI better at reactive shield dropping
« on: December 04, 2014, 10:04:23 PM »
The AI can already do this - it's especially noticeable with certain modded weapons (such as the Templar Joyeuse Laser which is rendered all but useless by this behavior).

What it won't do is drop shields and vent when there's a good chance you can get some other weapon in range.

You'd think.  But from what I've seen it doesn't do it well.  Especially when it's under pressure from long range, yet slow firing HE weapons that can still do significant flux damage to shields.

38
Suggestions / Re: AI won't suitably charge extreme-range opponents
« on: December 04, 2014, 10:02:49 PM »
I know what you mean. Moving from bugs to suggestions because, well. Like you said, not much of an issue in the base game, and isn't a "bug" to boot.

It's the sort of thing that's very difficult for the AI to judge well, since it has to make a decision to rush and accept that it'll take some damage in the process. If it gets that decision wrong, and it's on the player's side, that's a big issue. I think it's better resolved by not putting the AI in that situation to begin with, though we'll have to see if the new beam stats make this more of an issue in vanilla.

Unfortunately this puts a damper on creativity with modding.

39
Suggestions / AI won't suitably charge extreme-range opponents
« on: December 04, 2014, 09:32:47 PM »
While this is arguably only an issue with mods, the AI refuses to advance on ships that have very long range weapons.  Naturally, any sensible designer will make long range weapons have poor DPS, so shorter range combatants would obviously want to charge an enemy ship at any cost to get within their own weapons range.

This is most evident with mod ships with a lot of extreme (2000+) range weapons, that would be balanced, if it weren't for the AI's tendency to just... sit there and get shot.  AI will repeatedly go between "approach" and "move away", and this is a death sentence with slow capital ships.

40
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: December 04, 2014, 04:44:15 PM »
Not sure I approve of the removed flux bonus.  It added an interesting layer of brinksmanship to energy weapons.  Perhaps this should change to being a per-weapon setting.

And I definitely don't approve of removing ballistic weapon ammo.  Besides the flux bonus, ammo management is what separates ballistic weapons from energy ones.

Now, there's not much of a difference.  It's a step towards homogenization and I'm almost always against that.

41
Suggestions / Make AI better at reactive shield dropping
« on: December 03, 2014, 11:44:12 PM »
Yes, I know, "Make AI better" is kind of a given and it's something that never stops being worked on.  But I feel a simple yet effective way to improve the AI, especially in terms of how weapons work (think what would make an assault chaingun appealing over a heavy mauler) is giving the AI the ability to drop shields to vent flux when not being fired at, based on the refire rate of the enemy's weapons.

The effectiveness of this behavior would of course depend on the ship's crew skill.  An Elite crew will have an excellent time dropping shields after receving an antimatter blast or a heavy mauler shot, but green crews might get spooked and keep shields up, or have delayed response times.

If this was done, you'd actually have a reason to use assault chainguns over heavy maulers (and other similar instances) as you could keep constant HE pressure.  Right now, the heavy mauler is a better choice every time.  Even that 17 dps can't make up for that range, efficiency and damage (higher flat damage is superior than DPS when it comes to destroying armor due to how armor works, even with HE damage).

And, of course, it would help AI with those pesky high alpha damage kinetic weapons mods love to add.

42
I'm sure everyone knows by now that if you're in range of a ship, your beam weapons may autofire yet still miss the target.  This is because they target not bounds, but the collision and/or shield radius.  This is especially obvious if you have a long but thin ship like the Conquest.

I'm aware this is undoubtedly done for performance reasons.  But I honestly think it'd worth it to either allow the player an option, or accept the performance hit so weapons could be more accurate.  At least projectile weapons have fadeout time so they actually hit ships to a degree.

43
Suggestions / Re: Starsector could use better gun sounds
« on: November 25, 2014, 03:41:10 PM »
They are distinct and different from each other without being distracting or grating ...

It's very much this, yeah.

It's tempting to go in wanting to make weapons sound extra cool and prominent, but in the grand scheme of things, many weapon firing sounds *aren't that important* gameplay-wise. Hit sounds matter more, it's important to differentiate between the type of hits, and a potentially huge number of sounds have to be able to coexist without it becoming an unreadable mess. Stian could speak more intelligently about this, I'm sure, but that's the gist of it.

It's sort of like if you have a band practicing, and then one person turns up just a little, and then another person does, and before you know it everything is up to 11 and you can't even make out the vocals.

FWIW, I'm happy with where the sounds are at. I mean, everything could always be improved (even if it's only marginal), but the sounds being the way they are is a design feature.

I'm fairly aware of the risk of making every sound a glorious bang of gloriousness.  However, I still think ballistic weapons could use some love.

I mean, have you even heard the Light Mortar lately?  I could make more impressive sounds with my mouth.  Probably.  Pity there aren't any ships that really make use of it, it's an underrated weapon.  So flux efficient.

Though that may change when I finish my mod...  ;D

44
Suggestions / Starsector could use better gun sounds
« on: November 24, 2014, 09:05:42 AM »
After working on my mod and trying to implement sounds, it's become even more obvious than ever that Starsector's gun sounds are rather wimpy.  I carry the philosophy that mods ought to work to be as cohesive with the base game as possible; visually, balance-wise, and aurally.

This means I've had to essentially neuter the sounds I want to use.  Lasers aren't pewpewy, guns aren't boomy.  The sounds need more oomph.  I know sounds can't travel through space, but if SS is going to have sounds, why not go all the way and make them as cool sounding as possible?

I think the biggest offenders are the ballistic weapons.  Light autocannons may be small in the context of the game, but they're probably 70mm or so naval cannons.  Even they ought to make an impressive bang.  The Heavy Autocannon sound is just... so dull.  Pretty much every other weapon suffers from this.  The Mjolnir and Hellbore sound okay, I guess.

I hate to rag on you, Stian, but I think Starsector could use an audio overhaul.  Though it's worth saying that even after hundreds of hours of playing (which, granted, might make me a little sick of the sounds), the explosion sounds are all pretty satisfying.

And yes, I'm aware one could simply make a mod that replaces the sounds, and one might already exist.  But from the moment I started playing I always found the weapon sounds wimpy.

I think another problem is the gun sounds are simply too quiet compared to the rest of the game... that could just be me though.  One must be careful given that sounds need to sound great whether it's one Lasher shooting or an entire fleet in battle.

45
Putting this here since search has failed me but I'm sure it's been asked before; is Starsector's AI code somewhere?  I'd like to make my own AI but without the base AI to work off of I have no idea where to start.

So, I know what vanilla AI is obfuscated.  Is there any chance of either 1) Unobfuscating it or 2) Allowing custom AI to callback to default AI behaviors?  That would allow modders to implement custom AI without building it from scratch.

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