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16

General Discussion / Re: mod/s for quest tracking?

« on: August 04, 2019, 12:01:20 PM »

Not sure i've seen of something like that, but to be fair, given how quickly some expire, once i accept a mission (since story quests are really few anyway) it's the thing i'm doing right now. At most i juggle two-three of them to try to set up a trade chain or a bounty grouping, but that's probably not a problem for you right now.

17

General Discussion / Re: In game notifications and dead ships.

« on: August 04, 2019, 11:59:48 AM »

Hum? It shows up in the post-battle screen, little red 'explodey' UI elements over your ships.

18

General Discussion / Re: Starsector not being on major distribution platforms is legit hurting its growth

« on: August 04, 2019, 11:33:33 AM »

As someone that has touched on the gaming industry a bit, being on any platform requires a lot more upkeep than just running it through the site alone, and that may be more upkeep that Alex would want to do on his own. Sure, he can expand with a dedicated PR/marketing person, but that is a new person to manage and integrate.

However, i will say that it's 2019 and there have to be better, more integrated, and more easily accessible and usable solutions than BMT Micro. I've seen a lot of people not managing to finish orders or buy the game. That's a straight big 'no-no' when it comes to seeing the game as an actual 'successful' product now. The demands upon it become bigger than just the game being fun and not buggy, but the whole experience being as transparent and flawless as possible.

As for 'the game isn't finished'... i've said it before and i'll say it again, each fully hotfixed version of Starsector/farer from .51 onwards can stand on its own as a playable game and experience. I'm amazed at how well it has always been handled and how each game is 'enough' on its own. By this point, if the game launched and it said each new patch is a 'content patch' i don't think anyone would think any different.

19

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 14, 2019, 02:37:50 PM »

The more ideas you have on those points, the more I want for the game to cheat against me if I use them.

One of the best 'empowering' feeling in games comes when you as the player get powers that seem like they utterly BREAK the game... aaaand then the game ends up handling it just fine, but the feeling remains. else Heart.Break() is a great example of that.

20

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 10, 2019, 12:13:24 PM »

I'm not sure about Remnants in player fleets. The idea that the player simply domesticated an Alpha core to play nice with his fleet takes away from the awesome power and alien nature of AI in the game as it is now.

I'd kind of like to see AI ships break free of the shackles with a random chance at low hitpoints, say 30% or so and turn on all ships, friend and foe alike.

21

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 08, 2019, 05:39:34 PM »

Right, yeah, this is part of me wanting to tone down the current endgame fleets to something that feels more reasonable but still presents a challenge.

I get that, there are a lot of moving parts there, but they will need to be tackled at one point since there's 'bones' like that sticking out through the experience. (i mean i see we still have the softcoded 'minimum fleet size to disengage' in one of the screenshots which i think is really an archaic thing by this point given how polished and in-depth the game is and how intricate its other systems are)

Not sure what you mean. Like, the Conquest has Heavy Ballistics Integration, and that does *not* count for the 2 built in mods limit, if that's what you're asking.

Yep, that was what i was asking. I mean, ITU and Hardened Shields/Heavy Armor built-in on a CQ aside from its own HBI seems.. slightly excessive, but i guess HBI is as much as part of the gamedesign of the ship itself, and anything player-"extra" would indeed go on top. Thanks, talked myself through it, sounds reasonable.

Otherwise... it's possible that people might still be doing Combat fleets; it's not that Combat's been nerfed to death (although there are a few things that aren't quite as useful as others) it's that there's no global power-boost.

I think this ties in more to what the endgame has creeped and bloated itself to. Throw the current skill tree back to when all we had was Corvus and the single Defence Fleet was the biggest thing around, and buffing a single ship to godlike abilities would have a much bigger impact than facing four consecutive waves of top-tier remnant battleships does now.

The player's "OP" ship could have a more measureable and direct impact on the general campaign map than it can today, and that's where the feeling of 'combat is underpowered' comes from i'd say, since you want powerful /fleets/ now, getting 5% out of every 20-30 ships in your fleet, instead of 50% out of your single ship.

I still do Combat but i do force myself to not really do 'endgame' content since that's just where i don't have fun anymore, if we're just crashing ships into eachother fighting off 5% boosts with other 5% boosts, it feels la lot more like Gratuitous Space Battles than it does Starsector.

22

Blog Posts / Re: Skills and Story Points

« on: July 08, 2019, 05:05:02 PM »

I'm excited about story points, it definitely brings that 'smoothness' to the few rough spots here and there and it's an investment in a persistent experience that's unique to each playthrough. There's a lot to be said here, but all of it is good. As a fan of the FATE game systems, where players get to craft their stories by using 'perks' which are freeform attributes people attach to their character, and then use FATE points to make that perk have outstanding effects which are entirely contextual, i appreciate this weird mesh of 'hard' gameplay and 'soft' storytelling. However, i will say that maybe changing the name somewhat to reflect more their actual in-game-mechanics altering effects might help. "Starfarer Points"?

About the skills system... eh. The point of choice paralysis was a real issue, and that got entirely solved. A secondary problem was that of how it felt you always could get just 90% of the skills you wanted, three-four points just out of reach that made the 'build' feel flawed. It isn't about getting a 'perfect' build per se, it's about either allowing the 100% or make it so there can be no sense in chasing that 'perfect' build since there never are enough skill points to get what you want, just 50-60%ish. I'm not sure how this fares now, since i need to see the actual layout before making a comment, but i can see a flaw in 'getting to the last tier, just so i can pick the other 2nd tier skill' which may lead to a feeling of needing to 'waste' skill points to unlock the other thing you want. There's also something to be said about how the game may feel slightly less in-depth, but in full retrospect, very few skills you only took 'a level or two of', so i guess clumping all the effects together may make some sense (and i assume some were shuffled around too or new ones instated). I'm also glad about reassigning skillpoints, however the 'only some can be reassigned' kind of feels a bit like cheaping out. I understand why, but it feels more like under-the-hood issues than actual user experience issues. (also, if those are say tier 2-3 skills, would that prevent you from rolling back the entire tree? or will you just have a random skill in an empty tree)

It's also interesting how effect scaling and forcing downscaling in ship numbers which may offer a better choice than slapping extra ships to the tailend of the roster may loosen up the tension felt on the hard 30 ship cap, which so far is only really kept in check by supply/fuel usage and nothing else. However, this comes with the caveat that the gameplay experience itself has been balanced around these smaller numbers that you are tempted to deploy, and that we're not fighting enormous ship blobs in quick succession.

Moving on to 'building-in hullmods'. Well, uh. I need to see a guy about a Conquest. But i assume the 2 limit is WITH whatever it comes on included by default right?

Bonus experience sounds really great as a mechanic but it'll take a lot of interface and general gameplay communication to say that 'hey, this isn't just a hullmod upgrade, it's also a 75% bonus xp booster'. And i guess the 'quantity of experience for which it's boosted' stacks? Or else we'd end up in the 'i get the 100% xp boost going right now, so i'm going to wait out until i get another experience boost off of something'. I'm not super sure calling it percentages helps explain the 'quantity' it's valid for either. Heh, maybe just because i didn't quite get it in one sitting /is/ the problem.

Anywho.. remnant and derelict ships? Guess it was somewhat expected, also especially since they wouldn't really be fully player flyable (or configurable if i got that right?)

23

General Discussion / Re: Starpoint Gemini Warlords vs StarSector

« on: June 01, 2019, 02:28:37 PM »

An alternative to Starpoint Gemini of a kind is Rebel Galaxy (first one, not Outlaw).

24

General Discussion / Re: War on Vanilla

« on: May 28, 2019, 08:23:02 AM »

Random didn't-consider-in-detail idea I had for Mine Strike was to have the mines spawn on the Doom (or station module) and travel to the target point through phase space at high speed, rather than teleporting there instantly. The intent is to require more skill (since you have to lead the target) and give the enemy time to react.

This combined with a bit of 'scatter' to where it ends up after you click will be enough in my book to remove the 'f to remove ships'.

25

General Discussion / Re: Newbie Guide Thread/ FAQ

« on: May 28, 2019, 08:16:17 AM »

It costs a lot (more than base hull cost from shop) to offset the 'search' for a specific ship in shop in pristine condition, or the hassle of making it youself.

26

General Discussion / Re: Expedition Fleet Sizes: Capital Skew

« on: May 28, 2019, 08:13:06 AM »

Given that frigates were now brought into discussion regarding roles, would it be wise for the fleet size to be OP-based, given how a fair bit of the other mechanics are OP based as well? If you want seventy frigates, you can, same if you want eight capitals, but that won't penalise you for having 30 frigates or allow you to be 'overpowered' by stacking 30 capitals (not that that would be entirely feasible but colony defence sometimes calls for that sort of shenanigans).

I mean, that would lead way to a having a single 'slider' in the options that's more holistic in its approach, that controls everything from map size/fleet size/battle size and guarantees a good experience if you want a smaller more tactical game or more swarmy.

27

General Discussion / Re: Expedition Fleet Sizes: Capital Skew

« on: May 26, 2019, 11:01:21 PM »

The balance between CR, fleet size, map size and the 30 ship cap was always more haphazard and emerged as players played the game. If there's a question of the 30 ship cap, it calls into question any of the others. The only real answer to that comes from the trickle-down of the campaign layer, fuel, supplies, costs etc, since for the sake of combat, without the cap and considering CR, you'd just plop down the most cost/OP efficient ships, set them to permaproduce on your colonies and that'd be that, just match your numbers to the enemy's numbers.

Given where we are now, if you are to ask me, while CR 'works' now, it seems very overengineered for just keeping Hyperions from soloing fleets, while causing issues with the current campaign game that throws you into multiple successive battles where indeed, the cap limit of 30 ships comes into play since you /need/ to have extras to swap in as a sort of 'stamina bar'.

28

Suggestions / Re: officers academy

« on: May 26, 2019, 10:52:06 PM »

I'd rather have some sort of respeccing option both player and officers. Insert some currency need for it, maybe credits per level, 2500 credits or so, to reset an officer, and then play the RNG game to level him up. For the player, it can cap out to 50k and then ask in plus for a different AI core quality at each 10 level past the 20 limit.

If we reach 'handpicking skills' then where's the game there, it just becomes a grocery list. There should be some element of 'play' there, even if it's just a skill slot machine.

29

General Discussion / Re: How Do You Fight Station Battles?

« on: May 26, 2019, 10:47:44 PM »

Past all that was said, something that may help is 'layering' your fleet.

When you go into the initial deployment menu, select your harder tanked ships, also your slowest. You can immediately after 'reinforce' with other forces which spawn a bit behind them as they don't do the 'burn in' animation starting at 10-15% of the map. Then if you wait a bit, when the station starts firing at the first line, you can deploy your frigates/fast cruisers/whathaveyou. With this, you'll make sure your frigates/fastthings don't take all the initial flak, your midline of firepower/fragile status won't go ahead of your heavy/tanked/capital ships and will arrive at the battle after the station already acquired the frontline targets which it'll focus on for the first third of the battle, and your main line tank will do just that.

Even if there are other supporting ships on the station's side, it's still the same tactic. Tier 1 and 3 stations as well as remnant stations play mostly the same, but the tier2/midline station that has two 'sides' needs to be mananged a bit.

30

General Discussion / Re: Best Colonies

« on: May 26, 2019, 10:41:54 PM »

Low accessibility primarily reduces your ability to export which can mean that you might be able to supply your own systems(thus reducing upkeep) while staying under the percentage of exports that trigger a retaliation.

It's funny because i stayed just in the realm of 'trying things out' with colonies in the current 0.9 and one of those experiments was 'how useless can i make a colony and will it stay off the radar if it is'. Short answer, given colonies by default 'produce' people and you 'export' crew, is no. You have huge pirate fleets attacking your peaceful, hippie commune colony just because they're having too much sex and some of those dudes want to go out and work on starships.