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1

Suggestions / Allow players to spend SP to recover ships during a "clean disengage"

« on: May 21, 2025, 12:00:42 PM »

Right now ironmode is unappealing to most players because losing a single battle is insanely punishing, mostly because you can only recover ships if you win a battle.

The big problem here is it makes you feel like a complete idiot moron if you decide to retreat halfway into a battle after you realize it's tougher than you expected. Now any ships you lost are gone permanently. Might as well try to fight to the bitter end for the chance at a Pyrrhic victory. Except it's not so bad actually, because you can recover your lost ships. Compare that to retreating after you lose a couple frigates and a destroyer... even if your remaining ships all manage to escape, you are still worse off than the "Pyrrhic victory" scenario.

My suggestion is simple: once you do enough damage to the enemy to qualify for a "clean disengage" you should be able to spend a story point to unlock the option to recover your lost ships. If that feels too easy, maybe they come with 1 extra d-mod when recovered this way because your recovery teams are in a rush.

Narratively, I'd say it makes about as much sense as the "emergency repair" SP option you get before combat when your ships are damaged. Mechanically, this smooths out the overall experience; it gives you a reason to perform a "fighting retreat."

Also, it would be nice if there was a more obvious visual indicator of your progress towards a clean disengage. Something like a big progress bar at the top of the screen whenever you open the tactical map. This would help retreating from battle feel like an actual part of the game, rather than an afterthought.

2

Bug Reports & Support / Phase lances not firing

« on: May 19, 2025, 02:39:03 PM »

Screenshot

[close]

This *might* be a suggestion, but the AI acts like margin for "friendly fire" is so ridiculously large for phase lances that I'm inclined to think it's a bug. The AI will happily fire other weapons in this situation, but the harbinger refuses to use its phase lances if an ally is even remotely close to the target.

3

Suggestions / Re: Make Hyperion incompatible with SO

« on: April 07, 2025, 12:31:50 PM »

I don't see how it's specifically SO that's boring.

I could see an SO fleet being boring because combat is always about rushing in with everything set to full assault, but the hyperion is functionally the same with or without it. High speed, short range. It just so happens that it has such high base stats for a frigate that SO is insanely cost effective, the downside being you get 60 seconds of ppt with delicate machinery.

4

General Discussion / New Weapons Discussion [spoilers]

« on: April 01, 2025, 06:08:00 AM »

What are your thoughts on the new weapons so far? I'll list out some of the ones I've played around with.

Hungering rift:
Combined with the s-mod bonus from shrouded mantle, your ships gains lifesteal. Or hullsteal? Either way, it eats enemy ships to recover itself. Not by a lot, but combined with the mantle's jump it could make for an immortal ship that always slips away and then recovers its hull. Just one ship though, because of the weapon only allowing 10 rifts to be spawned across the entire battlefield which puts a soft cap on the number you can effectively run in your fleet.

Mass drivers (light and heavy):
Fantastic flux efficiency, perfect accuracy. Yes they are expensive, but lowtech ships with ordnance expertise are going love these things.

Swarm launcher:
Tried it with the legion. Three of these can command up to 12 swarms, and combined with 4 fighter bays it... feels underwhelming. Seems pretty gimmicky. Maybe if you commit your fleet to spamming them it might become good, but the heavy OP cost you pay for the hullmod and the launcher makes it a questionable investment.

Voltaic Cannon:
Being a small energy with 800 range sounds promising, but it comes with a sustained DPS of 5! A full minute to regain one charge makes it more like a missile that happens to go in the small energy slot. Problem is, it seems the AI will happily waste that ammo on targets it will never EVER hit like fighters and phase ships. If this gets fixed I could see some uses for it.

5

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: March 30, 2025, 06:17:16 AM »

Mercantile convoy messages (in the bottom left) are spam, there should be an option to choose what is shown and what isn't, having to click "show more" to see important missions is a PITA. And not clicking it can result in missing critical missions. I had assumed the spam was caused by mods until now but I played without any and... the messages are still spammy.

It definitely gets worse with mods, but even in vanilla it is pretty noisy. I really need the option to "mute" certain categories. You can tag messages as important, so it would be nice to get another button next to it that "mutes" that type of message. Let's say I'm doing a pacifist run; it would be nice to mute bounties entirely so they don't pop up at the bottom left and drown out more relevant information.

6

General Discussion / Ship AI changes

« on: March 30, 2025, 03:23:01 AM »

I've read some people saying the AI is worse at flux management as a deliberate design choice, to make player piloting more important.

I don't remember reading anything like this in the notes (maybe I just missed it). If true, it could be a good choice for the game. A lot of players struggle with piloting at first because the AI is so much better than a new player. That being said, this kinda sucks for experienced players. I think the solution is pretty simple: you can have ships use the "nerfed" AI on easy difficulty, and use the better AI on normal difficulty.

7

General Discussion / Re: Late game challenges

« on: March 28, 2025, 08:11:01 AM »

Come back after you've seen the threat and the clouds. Maybe this will challenge you?

Out of context this sounds like some kind of obtuse fortune-telling.

8

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: March 28, 2025, 06:18:24 AM »

If you go to the missions tab and try to run a simulation all the devmode options are available. Probably not an issue for most players, but it could end up spoiling some things for like the 5 people who play the missions.

9

Suggestions / Re: Escort Package

« on: March 23, 2025, 10:25:35 AM »

That is what got me thinking about it. I wondered if there was a way to make escort package work in the tournament by changing the ship tags so they inherit auto-escort behavior.

After thinking about it I figured it would actually make sense for escort package to do that in single-player.

10

Suggestions / Escort Package

« on: March 21, 2025, 11:26:38 PM »

Ships with escort package should get the "auto-escort" behavior that most carriers have. At present they operate independently by default and you have to order them to act as escorts which makes sense for a normal destroyer, but if you give it escort package then it should be the other way around.

11

Suggestions / Re: Best of the Best and Flux Regulation Need to be Removed

« on: March 21, 2025, 01:02:25 AM »

They are easy to take because they are generic. Every ship wants flux, and every ship is improved with more hullmods.

The skills competing with them are narrow; phase coil tuning for phase ships, neural link for double flagship, and support doctrine requires you to run ships without officers on purpose. If you go into green or blue without planning to do any of those things you will automatically grab BotB, Flux regulation and Electronic warfare.

With how strong afflictors are you could easily grab phase coil tuning and neural link so you can pilot two of them at the same time, and you can easily make up for the lack of flux regulation by your sheer impact on the battlefield.

12

Suggestions / Re: New Player Here: Bounties! Just Offer Variety!

« on: March 19, 2025, 02:17:34 PM »

I think part of the problem is the current bounty system. It spawns in the bounty fleets immediately, even if you the player have no interest in them. If you add more variety to the bounties, that means more bounties spawn, that means you are going to run into them a lot more even when you don't care about bounties.

The bounty system could use an overhaul. The way it works with contacts is a lot better, where you have 3 different difficulty options and they only spawn in after you accept the mission.

Imagine the random bounties that spawn in the intel tab didn't just tell you where the bounty target is, and instead told you who posted the bounty. Then if the difficulty/reward of the bounty interests you, you have to go visit the person who posted it to sign the contract and only then does the game tell you where they are. Now the target can spawn in. The poster can have a chance of becoming a contact as well. It adds some extra legwork to the whole process, so the credit reward should be increased by like +50% to +100%.

This way you can increase the number of bounties on offer to easily fit a wider range of difficulties, and the bounty system now feeds into the contact system. The only issue is notifications popping up constantly for every new bounty offer, but I think the solution there is pretty simple. Instead of telling you about every single new bounty, you can get a notification that says "Bounty board: 7 new jobs." If you want to know the details you have to go the bounty tab yourself.

Also, this way of doing it adds a lot of potential for new storylines. Every bounty isn't just about the target, it also involves the person who wants them dead.

13

Suggestions / Re: Missile Spam: Fratricide?

« on: February 12, 2025, 10:56:26 PM »

And honestly? If the Remnants had a consistent number of Paladins present, that seems like it would put a real damper on missile-heavy strategies. This is interesting to think about, though, hmm.

Sounds like the Remnants may be getting their own version of the Anubis...

Or maybe a brilliant loadout with paladin and escort package.

14

General Discussion / Re: .98 wishlist!

« on: February 12, 2025, 06:56:36 AM »

I'm just going to say it: Sunder needs a nerf.

I feel like this is more a result of escort package, rather than the sunder itself.  Not that they were bad before.  I'd rather see more love given to the other destroyers rather than nerf one of the good ones.

Agreed. Medusa, manticore, and sunder are all really good. I don't see any basis for singling out the sunder over the other two. The others are a little underwhelming, but viable.

15

General Discussion / Re: Question about the Gigacannon and why we build ships the way we do?

« on: February 11, 2025, 10:05:16 PM »

That's certainly a better configuration for dueling against single enemy capital ships, but for a general purpose, I find it better to have the plasma cannons in the turrets and the lances in the hardpoints: lances in turrets will miss or partially miss a lot, especially against lighter enemy ships.

I find the opposite. Plasma projectiles are too slow to hit faster ships while tachyon lances don't have much of an issue.