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31

General Discussion / Re: The 'I suck at combat' thread.

« on: March 19, 2019, 03:32:21 PM »

Yeah, OP, I feel your pain. I'm only 28 years young and basically have my left pinkie contorted over to shift the entirety of any Starsector playthrough (I do about one a year and/or every time Alex adds a radical amount of stuff) between campaign speed up and point to cursor. By the end of the week or two and I kind of feel satisfied and/or get bored, my pinkie is killing me.

One of the things you might consider is rebinding the key to something you can more easily reach, though I see even here on page 4 people have already suggested that.

32

General Discussion / Re: Identifying new mods from the mod index

« on: March 19, 2019, 12:07:46 PM »

Alex, is there any chance that mod updates in the future would stop breaking saves? Some change you can do on your end? I believe that is the main barrier to any sort of mod manager that a lot of other games have.

The problem is that mod updates may just be balance passes, tweaking damage or ship values here and there, and those can be eaten rather easily by the engine because it doesn't change anything outside the battle screen, really.

The problem usually hits when mod authors add new ships and/or change fleet lists, or more often when something is deleted, or faction/colony behaviors. If there's a fleet generated in the universe (in your save file) with ship X, and ship X is removed... The game doesn't know what to do, because it's looking for assets that don't exist.

As well, the economy and marketplace is paying attention to factional information, like what fleet behaviors are expected. Let's say you have some, like, mod that adds a "religious" faction that has "crusade" fleets that do x, y, and z behaviors. If the mod author releases an update removing the "crusade" as a fleet, or redefining properties of it, the engine doesn't know how to use that fleet anymore, and if its actions are based on "crusade_fleet" behaviors, and it's referring to that file, except "crusade_fleet" doesn't exist... Exception.

There's really no non-breaking way I can think of to deal with this fault because, well, they're specific to mods. As Alex only changes fleet compositions and behaviors, and adds or subtracts stuff, during updates, and (especially since, as we all know, this is still a game in development and player progress loss is to be expected) he tells us "start a new game" (or recommends it at least), I don't fault him for not trying to add some sort of placeholder effect or replacement for such cases.

Edit: don't take this the wrong way, but i feel like you're putting undue trust in the game's developer for support of modding idiosyncrasies, when virtually every game ever with a modding scene (note, I am not talking about "editors" like say, Halo Forge, as they are built into the engine as a feature the everyday user can access) has the implicit lack of support for user generated content.

You could argue Bethesda, with its Creation Club, shows that it is possible for devs to directly offer support for mods, but they offer only limited support even in these cases, and only specifically for the bare handful of mods they've curated (and basically turned into bite-sized DLC), AND all of which don't do anything fancy requiring third party code (Skyrim Script Extender in this case). Anything you get "in the wild" is as-is and the devs have precisely zero responsibility to account for all UGC.

Now with most mods here requiring at least one of the "utility" libraries (Magic, Shader, or Lazy), it's even more silly to expect Alex to not break mods using these things that, in doing so, are already outside the scope of what the engine is written to do.

33

Modding / Re: Identifying which mods i have downloaded at a glance

« on: March 18, 2019, 07:38:44 PM »

I'm, uh, not sure if you noticed, but this forum is built on a rather outdated HTML markup codebase.

The feature you're asking for would require these text posts to be more than just editable HTML fields.

34

Suggestions / Re: Bouys should have automated defenses

« on: March 17, 2019, 05:43:16 PM »

It would only make sense if vital infrastructure like these would be defended right? So that a single frigate raider won't just be able to take them over or take them apart.
Hack should still be possible with defenses still up, since presumably it is done from a distance.

I don't know about automated defenses (so if you play 'tag' with an enemy fleet, trading the buoy back and forth, where are the drones coming from?)

But I definitely think that some sort of time-spent thing would be just right.

35

Modding / [[[Request Thread Deletion]]]

« on: March 16, 2019, 10:53:26 PM »

This thread is deprecated, please purge.

36

Suggestions / Re: Getting New Blueprints - Maybe a way to 'reverse-engineer' stuff? [Math Inside!]

« on: March 16, 2019, 07:29:35 PM »

If I might make a recommendation for the ships, rather than using their OP to use their Deployment Costs instead. Many ships' powers and capabilities are often in correlation with how many Deployment Costs are needed.
For example, the Hyperion, Harbinger, and many mod "High-end frigates/destroyers" are worth a similar amount of DP as cruisers for the amount of power and combat ability they bring and are also balanced out with their rarity.

Having it based on OP would mean even the normally rare Hyperion would be a very likely guarantee despite its combat capabilities because it has frigate level OP.

Lastly, DP is more like the OP of the combat layer, since OP limits what you can place onto a ship and DP is meant to limit what ships you can bring out onto the field simultaneously.

Otherwise, I agree with the thoughts behind the rest of the idea, as currently the only way to get blueprints you desire without mods are to regularly farm raids on a specific faction. I understand that the chances are going to go up in version .1, but its still a waiting game for something that's eventually going to happen late game when there's not much capable of stopping the player and I would not mind the costs that devoting ones economy would bring to increase the chances of making blueprints for a vessel via the industry recovery skill.

Good point, got much the same from live Discord feedback. I also had a rather interesting insight from them: What if this replicator were a specific, very rare flag on planets that allowed you to build the replicator structure?

That way, it's not like "okay, founded my first colony, time to start churning out whatever I want", you have to literally build up the replication AROUND that particular planet.

37

Suggestions / Getting New Blueprints - Maybe a way to 'reverse-engineer' stuff? [Math Inside!]

« on: March 16, 2019, 05:12:34 PM »

WARNING: There's a bunch of me attempting to think of fancy computer math and probability-finding the further you read!

The TL;DR -- Add new colony structure for reverse-engineering, sacrifice a weapon or hull to the structure, do some math based on weapon size and OP cost or ship hull OP value, bingo-bango-bongo you may or may not have the blueprint for that item, or have a higher chance of succeeding the next time you try.

So, after like a year off, doing my annual "let's reload SS with every mod we can find" playthrough (it's a tradition, kind of like Skyrim runs). I'm really digging the colony thing (to date myself), custom industry, blueprints, expeditions, all that. Out of curiosity, has it been proposed or discussed at all whether or not we could have some means of acquiring blueprints outside of finding them in random caches on the outskirts of the sector, or from raiding markets?

I'm not sure this is really a vanilla-affecting issue, if it's only mods my issue is less significant (but still present!) but... I noticed some factions will sell me some blueprint sets in their marketplaces; whereas others (like the ones I'm maining right now, Dassault-Mikoyan specifically) seem to never sell their schematics, and since I haven't raided them, all I have to show for it are (what I'm guessing are) random BP spawns from random research stations out in the galactic boonies.

So what I was thinking was, what if there was a way to reverse-engineer stuff? When I say this, I don't mean old Omnifactory-style "give them the stuff, they immediately figure it out", but rather have it tied to skills or something. The process, in my mind, goes something like this:

1.) You have a weapon or hull that you want to reverse-engineer. For the sake of balance and fairness, let's say rare stuff like redacted ships and weapons can NOT be reverse-engineered, and there's a flag in the ship info that bars you from even trying. Of course, this frees modders to then decide what 'experimental' or 'exclusive' high-end equipment their faction has and pick and choose the things they want excluded from the process.

2.) You take it to a player-owned colony with some particular structure. I'm thinking, for the sake of making it more of an investment (so if you want to go the route of reverse-engineering, you REALLY need to commit to it), there's a specific new "Research Facility" or "Stellar Engineering Bureau" or whatever that serves the exclusive and precise purpose of allowing you to attempt to reverse-engineer stuff. It has a high upkeep and a decent set of demands -- basically, make it so that if you want to reverse-engineer, you need to be in end-game anyways, where if you weren't doing R-E, you'd be stampeding across the galaxy anyways stealing blueprints from factions through violence.

3.) You give the weapon or hull to the Facility. It uses the same month-based ticker that I'm gathering every other industry uses, so at the end of the month it is decided whether you reverse-engineered the thing successfully.

• 3a.) If possible (although it would require yet another backend layer), EDIT: Fixed this already by the time I finished writing the post; add a 10% chance per failed attempt to reverse-engineer. Donezo.

4.) Success of the process is NOT guaranteed. This is how I envision it differing from old Omnifac-style set-and-forget. Every successive weapon size or hull size, and maybe OP cost for further randomization, requires a better roll.


So let's say the behind-the-scenes math looks something like

Chance of Successful Reverse-Engineering Weapon (Expressed as probability where 1.00 meaning guaranteed success) = (Base Chance of Reverse-Engineering) / (OP Cost) + Weapon Size multiplier [0.5 for Small, 0.3 for Medium, 0.1 for Large, something like that]

So a 10 OP Medium weapon would have, assuming a base chance of 1.00:

Code

1.00 / 10 + 0.3 = 0.4,

or a 40% chance of reverse engineering the weapon successfully.


Now, in spending about 5 minutes trying to come up with the above equation, I admit I'm not the best at this whole coding thing, but that appears to be serviceable enough. The only 'guaranteed roll' here are Small weapons of 2 or 1 OP (and if you're reverse-engineering those, you probably deserve to have them). Then, obviously, add in an Industry Skill that increases base chance (to 2, 3, and 4 with each successive level, which brings our above example to 50, 60, and 70% respectively), although I'm loathe to think how you express that in the skilltip to the average player; and then ditto add-in parts for the Facility (another +1 to chance), maybe even upgrades (MORE +1s!) to the building for higher tiers.

EDIT: I actually think the weapon size might be an unnecessary value. It's far too easy to (doing up an example spreadsheet) easily pass 100% chance, and given as I wrote this that there's a "rollover" bonus for failed attempts... yeah, you know what, scratch the weapon size mult.

I think it would be better off in this sense, where it's hard to ever get 100% certainty for the highest-OP, largest weapons, because the entire point is that the player should have to risk that rare one-off weapon that they have sitting in their storeroom that they really like, for a 30, 40% chance of getting production rights to it.

Now, ships.... those are a bit trickier. OP cost is a lot easier to factor than OP possession. Hmm. I think this one won't be tied to size in any way, but rather OP specifically, because I can't think of a graceful way to account for high-OP frigates vs low-OP destroyers:

Success Rate = Base Chance of 1.00 / Ship OP Value * 20

This one's rougher, and I based the final multiplier on the Hermes (20 OP). So given that the Onslaught is 360 OP (most in vanilla, right?), this leaves you with a painful

Code

1.00 / 360 * 20 = 0.0555555

5.5% chance of R-E success at base values (!!!). Even assuming, let's see here... 3 skill tiers, a plugin module, and even 2 Facility upgrades, that increases base chance to 7.00, which leaves you with a more palatable (but still bad)

Code

7.00 / 360 * 20 = 0.3888888

38.8% chance.

But I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing? Again, this is supposed to not be a guaranteed ace-in-the-hole for the player. You have to invest a lot of money into the facility and 'project' weapons/hulls, XP into the skills, and time into finding that (those? Multiple tiers maybe?) plugin. Oh, and of course, luck and/or RNGesus blessings. If you really want Onslaught rights, make sure you bring several to the Facility and cross your fingers.

And while even the main meat of the idea itself is barely fleshed-out, maybe... Hmm, going back to 3a.) above, maaaaybe add an extra value to the equation for every failed attempt on that particular part? So the Onslaught, and anything else you attempt to reverse-engineer, after every failed attempt, gets a hard 10% multiplier, so that you are GUARANTEED to succeed no later than (assuming maxed-out Facility and skills) 6 or 7 tries. So the equation looks like:

Success Rate = Base Chance of 1.00 / Ship OP Value * 20 + (0.1 * number of attempts so far)

Yeeeeah, there we go. That fixes it. Ditto for the weapons, I suppose.


Anyways, congratulations on reading through all this, if you did. Alex, if you got further than the first paragraph (because you already have the answer, "no and we aren't doing it period"), then thanks for your time. And if not... hey, your vision, your game, we're all just playin' it.

38

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.3 [03/15/19]

« on: March 15, 2019, 07:21:36 PM »

Will 1.3 break saves? Just had to reload my game (damn memory leaks) and got the notification that LoA was updated.

Yes, this update will do disgusting things to your saves. Things that make death look merciful.

How lewd.

39

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.3 [03/15/19]

« on: March 15, 2019, 06:50:20 PM »

Will 1.3 break saves? Just had to reload my game (damn memory leaks) and got the notification that LoA was updated.

40

Suggestions / Re: Add Damage Type "Tag" to Fitting Screen Weapon Sorting. Heck, Size too.

« on: June 02, 2018, 10:07:20 PM »

Hmm, this sounds like a good point/idea; will definitely keep it in mind for when I'm in the neighborhood. Not sure whether adding a bunch more filter items is justified due to the clutter it adds, so that's a bit tricky, but I very much see what you're saying.

I can understand that my request is super-niche, at least with regards to the size. You know what, scratch that part of it.

With that said, with the meta of "shred shields, blow up armor", being able to rapidly find the applicable damage type would be neat, especially since it would make it more viable to have, say, a BUNCH of HE ballistic weapons, but use Kinetic-damage missiles to take out shields. I know this sort of combined-engagement profile is part of the idea behind damage types, so...

Yeah, gonna go ahead and let you do you, Alex, I'm just glad I even managed to plant the possibility of the idea in your head. As I've said for the past 6 years, glad you keep pushing on this game.

41

Suggestions / Add Damage Type "Tag" to Fitting Screen Weapon Sorting. Heck, Size too.

« on: June 02, 2018, 09:49:54 PM »

Simple request, couldn't really see it mentioned when I searched (tried "sort", "fitting", "damage"), but... Yeah, haven't played the game in months (a year+, really, if I'm thinking about it right), and the new (to me) sorting of weapon types by Ballistic/Energy/Missile is a big timesaver with all the universal/composite/hybrid/synergy mounts available, and especially once you start adding any significant number of mods.

That said, would be super cool if I could ONLY look at, say, Kinetic weapons (because I just fitted some huge HE battery, for example, but need something to whittle down shields). As a bonus, for slots that are fixed-type, as you know you can do "step down" mounting, so if I say want to exclusively mount Pilums, I can sort by "medium-size weapons" and thus fit them onto the Large Missile slots.

This would be really nice, especially for mods that add weapons, because I find myself tending to pick whatever the first/most familiar weapon is that has the damage type I need, which in my current playthrough for example means all of my Large Ballistic HE weapons are Hephaestuses and Mostros (from Diable) just because they show up near the top of the list since it's sorted by OP cost. Seeing the full spread of weapons with the damage type I want/need would really help me maybe discover some of the weapons I tend to skip over because I haven't really had visibility on them before.

42

Blog Posts / Re: Ship Recovery

« on: December 28, 2017, 02:45:44 AM »

Well, just caught up to all the SS blogposts I've not kept track of over the month.

It's certainly invigorating to know that I called this 2 years ago :I

Good stuff.

43

General Discussion / Totally delayed 0.7.1 reaction

« on: February 16, 2016, 07:20:13 AM »

Took a few months to get around to playing it, but in a word: wow.

Positives:
- Joining battles is awesome, and its implementation is fantastic as well. I like how when you join a battle, it's not just a regular deployment -- you could end up on a battlefield with a huge battle already happening, making it feel that much more fulfilling
- The new over world mechanics are intriguing. It certainly feels a lot more like traveling through deep space, and the various abilities (I'm guessing more are in the offing) grant a meta gameplay aspect that improves it.
- NPC captains are natively supported, instead of just being SS+! And it's clear at a glance what they bring to the table, as their skills aren't abstractions but hard numbers like the players.

Negatives:
- The new over world mechanics... Are a wee bit frustrating. The whole transponder/unidentified fleet thing is a neat idea, but in my experience only really affects Pirates on the NPC side. It's also more than a little frustrating when I go to hyperspace, then get ambushed by massive hostile fleets that are camping near the gate and that I'm unable to see until it's too late because my game always seems to fill hyperspace with nebulae/storms.
- Was hoping to see some new skills, maybe in particular those on the industry side, but seems we'll be waiting a little longer for that. I suppose the plethora of other features added are more than enough.

44

Discussions / Re: Battletech Kickstarter

« on: September 30, 2015, 06:30:50 PM »

Weird that the promo video skipped mention (Crescent hawk -> MW2 -> Mech Commander -> Mech Warrior Online) of what I consider to be the pinnacle of the franchise; MW3.

They were pointing out significant points in the series.

>Crescent Hawk: The first game in the series
>MW2: The starting point of the familiar MW game formula, of designing 'mechs and then piloting them in a fully-3D battlefield
>MC: The first non-sim MW game
>MWO: The most current entry in the franchise

Notice how they didn't mention MW4, either... or MW2: Mercs... Or the (admittedly terrible) MechAssaults.

It was more just a small blurb to point out where the franchise has been in the past to hype up this newest rebirth.

For myself, I would be thrilled to see a tabletop-faithful game. Not having the time, money, or IRL friends to play TTGs, the more virtual representations of them that come out, the better.

Now, if only GW would just release a 40k TT simulator...

45

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Always Eat Your Vextables [Intro 11SEP15]

« on: September 11, 2015, 10:14:19 PM »

The first part of a man's story from privateer to a lesser Pirate Lord. This is not even one full chapter, just a dump for interest.

Spoiler

When Niklaus Vexirson had envisioned his end, this was not the way he pictured it.

The shields covering the front of the Indomitable, his Eagle-class cruiser, rippled and distorted with the occasional blast from the hostile Onslaught's Thermal Pulse Cannons. He knew that if the opposing commander had wanted, they could have blasted right through his shielding – his reactor was screaming at max capacity, the hard flux built up to somewhere around 80%, and as long as the shield stayed up the strain would remain. He also knew, though, that the enemy was as well aware of this as he.

“Pirate, we will say this once more: shut down your primary reactor and stand by to be boarded. You have precisely 30 seconds – make that 28, now – to comply.”

And what a compelling idea that was. Vexirson looked at his tactical map one more time, willing it to show something other than what it did. Nope, still the same thing – Onslaught at his twelve o'clock, two Dominators at roughly 10 and 2, and a smattering of smaller ships floating about, just daring him to try to make a run for it. And as for his own fleet – a fair dozen or so blue outlines of the ships he had so proudly commanded only an hour or so ago, their husks bleeding debris and their crews either dead or the next closest thing. There was the Innocence Lost, once piloted by his trusted second Jack Connolly, the Falcon-class light cruiser looking forlorn and lost amongst the wreckage of its enemies – but then, Jack had made his funeral pyre. His skill was phenomenal, and somehow he had managed to take down an enemy Eagle – its corpse dead in space at an oblique from his ship – before succumbing to the sheer, overwhelming might of the Hegemony fleet.

But neither Jack, nor any of his other subordinates, could have prevented this outcome. It was a futile battle from the get-go, but Vexirson had wanted to believe in his Vextables pulling off just one last miracle. Ah, Vextables. What a silly name. He could still recall his road to this moment – his first ship purchase, the time when the stupid name had been coined, all sorts of little events in his life. Memory lane... funny, how quickly that road can be traveled in the space of seconds.

_______________________________________________________________________________ ____________

Vexirson had waited nearly a decade for this moment. Long hours working at the shipbuilders' yard on Jangala had paid off, and he finally had the money he needed to buy a ship – a Lasher, that most ubiquitous of privateer ships, no less. He was determined that it would be 10000 credits – between the hull itself, weaponry, and supplies – well spent. Vexirson was far from the first person to drop a few thou' on becoming a starfarer, and would certainly not be the last, and like the rest of those dreamers he imagined himself becoming one of the most well-known names in the Sector, not to mention one of the richest. The real trick, though, was going to be actually managing to make the purchase.

The open market had no new Lasher hulls for sale, to his consternation. Instead, there were a few (D) models left in the catalog, but what would he do with a ship that was known to be defective, damaged, or some other d-word? Of course, he wasn't looking to go toe-to-toe with anything more dangerous than a Pirate-piloted Hound or two, which would be just as likely to flee him as fight, but at the very least he wanted a ship with enough reactor overhead to fit more than a couple light machine guns or something.

He pondered the display, unconsciously rubbing his chin with his hand. Even for his relatively modest price range, a [D]-Variant Lasher cost more than he could afford, and that was before he actually kitted it out... and paid the insane amount of overhead that dictated Hegemony tariffs. There had to be an easier-

“Hey, buddy!”

Jumping slightly, Vexirson turned to see an almost archetypically shady figure eying him. The guy fit every bad vid's image of backroom dealership – seedy expression, a frayed ensemble of clothing, and a too-obvious struggle not to look in every direction at once for the authorities. As he caught Vexirson's eye, he nodded.

“Yeah, you. Mr. Big Dreamer.”

“Do I know you?” Vexirson asked cautiously, already beginning to scan around for Hegemony officials himself. He had a feeling what this was leading to, but he still found himself unconsciously longing for the reassurance of the symbols of the powers that had controlled his life for several long decades.

“Not yet,” The man grinned, showing a surprisingly clean and well-managed set of teeth, “but I think you want to. C'mon, step into my office.” The character beckoned Vexirson towards an empty lounge along one side of the station's concourse.

The alarm bells began ringing immediately in Niklaus's mind. Smiling despite himself at the feeble attempt to roll him, he shook his head. “No thanks, partner,” he said as he turned back to the terminal, “but I don't-”

The man frowned at the dismissal, and then spoke. “Lasher-D with typical close-combat loadout. One LAG, two LACs, two LMGs, and a pair of Harpoon batteries.” He shrugged his shoulders almost apologetically. “I know the book says that this configuration does best with heavy armor bolted down, but my guys aren't exactly technical experts. I'm sure you could slap on a few more caps or vents, though.”

Vexirson slowly turned towards the man, intrigued despite himself. He took a shuddering breath, and asked the question he knew might change his life. “How much?”

“10 flat.”

He couldn't help himself – Vexirson's mouth drew into a grimacing smirk, and he chuckled to himself. The guy frowned at his response. “Yeah, okay, and I'm sure next you're gonna offer me a Mule for 30, right?”

“Is that an offer?”

It was Vexirson's turn to frown. Was this guy serious? “Look, buddy,” he said, but his curiosity in whether this weren't too good to be true made him keep his voice to a mutter so that the whole concourse didn't hear them. “I know you're trying to take me for a ride, but the hull ITSELF costs more than 10, let alone without a full loadout. So you'll forgive me if I doubt you.”

The man grinned. “That it does, you're right... unless you take the tariff out of the question.”

Vexirson's face locked into a neutral mien as what the man said rolled over him. “You know that's il-”

“Sure is.”

He paused, considering. An offer like this wouldn't come along every day, true... but if the Hegemony got word of this, he would definitely be in a world of hurt, even if only financially when they asked him to recoup their losses for the under-the-table sale. “How much damage are we talking?”

The seller screwed up his eyes, staring at the overhead for a moment. He held up his hand, and ticked the issues off on his finger. “I think with this one... both the main and burn drives are shot, so you're looking at something like three-quarters combat speed and somewhere around 1 'year a day. Power grid's also burned out, so it's got a flux limit of 14 – hundred, of course, not thousand – and reaches maybe 80 ticks of flux dissipated a second. Like I said, though, figure you tuck a few more vents and caps in there and you can rectify those issues quick enough, no sweat.”

Vexirson looked at the man for a moment longer with a flat stare, then found himself slowly reaching out his hand.

“You've got a deal.”

[close]