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1

General Discussion / Re: Autosolve Battle?

« on: April 13, 2019, 06:31:53 AM »

Before 0.6, it was possible to auto-resolve any fight.  With the proper fleet, it was possible to auto-resolve and win every fight.  During 0.5.4, with character skills, auto-resolving everything was the only way to reach 10-10-10 in three trees quickly enough.

Auto-resolving fights is tricky since player can use junky ships that have no business fighting in a real battle, and win.  With currently pursuit auto-resolve, I deploy armed civilians and badly armed recovered clunkers and wipe out most of what is left of the enemy.

Don't forget you could deploy ships that literally couldn't catch the fleeing ships in battle if they TRIED, and autoresolve lets them have kills.

Alex mentioned fixing that in the patch notes though iirc

2

Modding / Re: No fighters that grant 'ground support'?

« on: April 08, 2019, 07:09:26 AM »

1.) Hullmod. Take away the carrier's bays for X bonus in attack strength per bay removed (call it "ground attack craft manufactory; unfortunately, this makes it very handwavy and you don't see it)

My "Repurposed Fighter Bays" hullmod from Disassemble Reassemble could be a good basis for something like this. I've already made one random standalone variant that gives bonuses to flux handling. Another that buffs ground operations should be trivial - assuming it's a stat you can change on a modular hullmod of course.

Not gonna lie, was thinking about DaRa as I said that lol.

But yeah, I imagine it'd probably be even easier than the RFB's effect, which requires a call for what value the modded ship has, then applying X% bonus to it. The ground-attack thing would probably, like Ground Support Package, just need to add Y value to the fleet's combine assault strength.

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: April 04, 2019, 03:43:24 PM »

So I think I'm something like 10 for 10 "steady" pod officers. Are they supposed to always be steady?

No, though [personal opinion] Steady really is probably the best roll, but Aggressive and even Reckless can have their usages in rushers and/or phase ships, and Cautious can be useful for missile or "artillery" ships [/personal opinion]

But no, they are not, and I have seen many officers of all personalities. You might wanna buy a lottery ticket with your luck.

Would be nice if Loadout 3 OP rounded up/nearest/even so tugs could get a 6th OP for a second hull mod.

Not to just poo-poo your idea, but this seems like a very specific application/reasoning. That you can fit any hullmods on an Ox in the first place seems like a bit of a stretch, especially given they can readily fit IEA, which then lowers their sensor profile to match that of the capitals you probably already have in your fleet that justifies having tugs in the first place.

Is there a minimum time before missions are withdrawn? There have been a few times now I've gone to look at a new mission notification and it's already withdrawn.

Now, that's an Alex question.

4

Suggestions / Re: Range, or lack of it

« on: April 04, 2019, 01:09:11 PM »

+1 to the 3d battlescape conceptualization.

It also helps explain if you think of the ships on slightly different elevations. So, that projectile isn't traveling in only an X/Y dimension, it's also traveling up or down (z).

This is why projectiles can do a bit of damage beyond effective range, albeit at a rapidly-diminishing value... Think of it as the projectile going high or low, and only glancing off the armor/shield or hitting empty hullspace whose value doesn't really matter in the long run

5

Modding / Re: No fighters that grant 'ground support'?

« on: April 04, 2019, 10:05:08 AM »

Proposals x2:

1.) Hullmod. Take away the carrier's bays for X bonus in attack strength per bay removed (call it "ground attack craft manufactory; unfortunately, this makes it very handwavy and you don't see it)

2.) Have LPCs with very poor in-combat performance (but they can still be used in space), with the flip side of offering similar attack strength bonus(es).

6

General Discussion / Re: Can someone explain the (invisible-ish) "autoaim effectiveness" stat?

« on: March 25, 2019, 09:49:43 PM »

I'm not sure what you mean by "a firing solution is acquired".

Let me put it another way: it's going to aim so that its shots hit (or, rather, miss) behind the target. Whether that necessitates firing before or after it would fire if it was aiming to hit the target depends on their relative velocities, the facing of the gun, etc. All I'm trying to say is that "firing behind the target" does *not* always equate to "firing earlier". Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't.

Sorry, too much military (Navy, space and wet) fiction. Firing solution is roughly equivalent to "weapons lock" for non-guided weapons.

Okay, gonna see if I'm picking it up one more time, and if not... Well, I'll just trust it's a good thing:

So a weapon is always trying to aim at "center mass" (or rough equivalent) of a target, and TLA dictates how quickly the weapon is brought to bear on that aimpoint?

7

General Discussion / Re: Can someone explain the (invisible-ish) "autoaim effectiveness" stat?

« on: March 25, 2019, 02:39:47 PM »

Case 1:

<-----------T

       I
       X

Case 2:

<-T----------

       I
       X

X is the gun, I is its barrel, so in both cases it's pointing up. T is the target, moving from right to left. Assuming imperfect "aim quality" on the gun.

In case 1, it'll turn to the right, and fire after it needed to to score hits, since it's aiming at an older position of the target than it needs to, essentially.

In case 2, it'll turn to the left, and fire before it needed to to score hits, since it's aiming at an older position of the target than it needs to.

In both cases, it's going to be hitting somewhere behind the target's vector, it's just that firing either "earlier" or "later" than optimal may be needed to do that.

It's clear to me though that you guys (indie devs the world over) making your own engine and everything are frickin' smart, though, and for what it's worth I really am grateful you're clever enough to make this stuff work!

I'm probably just making this sound too complicated All it's doing, really, is "leading the target, just not by quite enough". And then gradually adjusting.

Ooooohhhhh

So it can be before OR after firing solution is acquired?

8

General Discussion / Re: Can someone explain the (invisible-ish) "autoaim effectiveness" stat?

« on: March 25, 2019, 01:31:28 PM »

Hmm... So, the turret may over OR undercompensate, either way, as a result of lower TLA? And I'm curious then, does that mean that the weapon won't fire until/unless it has that "ideal firing solution"? Because you seem to nip my "prefiring" thing in the bud, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the hell out of this.

It's clear to me though that you guys (indie devs the world over) making your own engine and everything are frickin' smart, though, and for what it's worth I really am grateful you're clever enough to make this stuff work!

9

General Discussion / Re: Can someone explain the (invisible-ish) "autoaim effectiveness" stat?

« on: March 25, 2019, 01:06:20 PM »

Thanks for the replies, I think I get it. Also, sorry I used like all the wrong terms and values

So, to read it back in my own words to make sure I'm understanding correctly:

If a ship has perfect "target leading accuracy" (between CR, skills, and hullmods, etc.), then it will fire when and only when the weapon is aligned in such a way that a hit would be guaranteed, assuming the target maintains course and speed and the weapon travels straight down the centerline (usually not because recoil, but that's an aside).

When the value is less than 100% or 1.00 or whatever, the ship will start firing while the turret or weapon is still traversing to the aim point, with the lower the value leading to an earlier start time for shooting. This can waste flux at best (high RoF weapons) or ruin a salvo at worst (low RoF weapons).

When a target changes velocity, the weapon(s) must redo the same math they did when first acquiring the target, with the lower value leading to the same premature-to-aimed firing. However, if a target maintained identical course and speed (or even very similar, with ship size/hitboxes allowing for some differentiation), the weapon(s) will after a time determined by gunnery skill eventually settle into a perfect firing arc as described above, and assuming a situation where the target and shooter stay at the same relative velocities to one another, will have "perfect" aim.

Sorry for the wall of text, but am I understanding this right?

10

General Discussion / Can someone explain the (invisible-ish) "autoaim effectiveness" stat?

« on: March 25, 2019, 12:11:39 PM »

I'm really, really unclear on how the Gunnery Control Implants skill with "+% to autoaim effectiveness" (or, if you want, the mod-added Gunnery Control AI hullmod that basically gives you a minor boost in every category GCI covers, including the nominal autoaim effectiveness stat) affects gameplay.

Whenever I use the weapon arcs mod to draw autoaimed groups (or use the vanilla method of selecting a group, then selecting an empty group, still drawing the last group's arcs), the aim line appears to track with the same mechanical computer-controlled precision as it ever does.

Perhaps I'm not paying close enough attention, but does the aim point "lag behind" and take longer to reacquire/retrack a target's changes in velocity or something more with a lower autoaim stat? That's was I'm guessing it means but... Right now, the perk just sort of exists as an awkward in-the-way part of the GCI skill, which I otherwise want for projectile speed and weapon range.

11

General Discussion / Re: Autosolve Battle?

« on: March 23, 2019, 07:34:42 PM »

You can autoresolve battles by selecting "let your second-in-command take care of it", but only in pursuits as the aggressor (which isn't really what you're looking for, as that's one specific form of combat that, especially if you're not able to compete in the combat arena and thus build up your wealth and threat level very well in the first place, you won't be initiating very much).

Unfortunately... I mean, right now the game is kind of feature-complete on the combat side, and you just joined (presuming you're new-ish) when the campaign/strategic level started to get fleshed out. For the most part, it's not really wrong to say the campaign acts as a setpiece to get you from battle to battle, at least as of the current build.

12

Suggestions / Re: "Built-in" planetery industries

« on: March 23, 2019, 04:05:35 PM »

But does that make sense though? If you find a nice factory, why wouldn't you be able to salvage it and sell it for scraps? and why wouldn't you be able to disassemble it and move it around? Flavor is good but it should be explainable and consistent within the game's lore.

Gameplay-wise: The idea of being able to just salvage it is... I mean, that's basically what Ruins are ¯\_(?)_/¯

As for lore: For example, what if it's a factory built out of a natural cavern, or otherwise integrated into the local geological structures (it's in a mountainside or something)? You can't just pack up and move Cheyenne Mountain, for example.

13

Modding / Re: [In-Dev, not live yet] Domain Blueprint Encoder (DBE) - Blueprint Replication

« on: March 22, 2019, 12:00:19 PM »

I'd incline to push all configuration to a whitelist file in the other mods; don't underestimate how much of a headache potentially needing to re-release with every big change for every supported mod is going to be, both for you and players.

Also, is there a reason to give a physical BP rather than directly adding it to the player's known ships/weapons? The only option I see it closing off is the ability to reverse-engineer something to give to the pirates, and it avoids issues such as manufacturing BPs to sell to the Prism trader. That said, if you know how to get the BP item for something it is trivial to add it to the player's cargo.

I was curious about this, yeah. If there's a way to trigger the same function as is, essentially, accomplished by the right-click-on-BP-in-inventory function, I would like to do it that way; I'm just worried about it getting glitchy if you already know the BP and it tries to execute the action - in your inventory it does the squelch sound, no harm no foul, but when it's an invisible asset that's being manipulated...?

14

Modding / Re: [In-Dev, not live yet] Domain Blueprint Encoder (DBE) - Blueprint Replication

« on: March 22, 2019, 11:13:13 AM »

The smart way to do this would be to set it up like Vesperon where whitelisting something means It Just Works without you having to update the mod for it -- hopefully without the crash bugs that plagued early versions of Vesperon, though.

Also, the OP still says blacklist, not whitelist, and I know we've talked about the differences between them.

Yeah, we did... I know

Okay, since I clearly don't have any idea what hell the difference is between a whitelist or a blacklist or whatever, let me just say my intended path:

Every individual item that can be replicated will be added to a manually set array dictating input to output (Give item "Lasher", output item is successful is "Lasher BP". Since I will be manually making all these inputs, rather than doing a call for a defined value (have the system look for the DP value for the ship, use that for probability roll, then yield the BP for the item*), it will require active participation on my part to keep things updated with every vanilla update and, more dangerously, every mod update, I realize this.

However, this does still have a Just Works effect, as I'll just have an available list for every mod faction (that participates) in the package, and so long as the faction mod author doesn't change hull or weapon IDs, it should still yield the same results; I just will be missing whatever new main line ships they add until I update my lists.

I don't want a default-on effect, because with that theoretically you could just stick whatever mod in and get what you want no matter what. It's more work that way, but more controlled to add to a list rather than subtract from one.

*On that note, is it even possible to tell the system "receive X from player, get X's BP" with X being a freely defined value based on the player input? Because while I know the game generates BP items for everything, I'm not sure how to set it up to do that outside the initial loading process.

15

Suggestions / Ship class "specialization" for officers

« on: March 22, 2019, 08:47:55 AM »

Yes, to some extent this exists by having skills geared towards certain playstyles... But really, the only "niche" skill sets are the missile skill and the carrier skills. Everything else is just sort of... A general perk that will help any officer for any ship type.

I wonder if we could have another trait added (like personality), but that dictates ship class proficiency? To sync with the Production Screen paradigms, it could be warships, carriers, and phase ships. A warship officer will have automatic bonuses to... I don't know, shields, armor, and weapon range when in a ship tagged with the "warship" classification, a phase officer could get a maneuverability and weapon damage boost, and a carrier officer could get... Some carrier perk.

These would stack on top of the normal skills, which will still have full availability (so if you're in a pinch and can't find a carrier officer, you can still spec a warship officer with all the carrier skills to pilot that carrier you looted, he or she just won't be quite as good as a dedicated carrier officer).

The bonuses wouldn't be too significant, I think, nothing that makes the game too unbalanced (for the phase ship officer, maybe just like a 20% manueverability buff and 5% damage buff), but it would encourage that much more meta gameplay for the campaign element, and also allow for more specific building since you can, for example, opt NOT to use this or that hullmod or maybe skip a certain skill in favor of something else (or double down and pick the skill anyway for even more effect).