Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

31

General Discussion / Re: How to increase battle size? [More ships on the battlefield at once]

« on: June 17, 2018, 03:12:37 PM »

   "maxShipsInFleet":30, in the same file

32

General Discussion / Re: How to increase battle size? [More ships on the battlefield at once]

« on: June 17, 2018, 01:21:55 PM »

Can confirm you're on the right track, increase those by a factor of 10 and enjoy

33

Suggestions / Re: Reasons to (temporally) use a small fleet

« on: June 10, 2018, 09:19:04 PM »

I bring back this as another idea that can incentivize a smaller fleet.

It's the main reason I conceived of the system, really. Growth is a fundamental part of the progression of this game, but growth does not necessarily mean more/bigger ships. What if instead we can focus on building a small but elite taskforce?

Probably too intensive to implement at this stage of development, but I do hope some form of this makes it into the game.

34

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 09, 2018, 10:38:55 PM »

I doubt it'll be out until November at the earliest

35

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 09, 2018, 11:42:00 AM »

Frequently, I see my fleet of something like 2 destroyers and 2 frigates being attacked by 3 (D) frigates.

Huh, really? That shouldn't happen; could be a bug that I've since fixed. Just gave it a quick test and a pair of (D) frigates runs away from my fleet of 1 frigate and 1 destroyer. Possibly mod-related?

In any case, totally agree that that's not a good thing and forcing the player to have trivial fights like that is not a good idea.

I'll admit my memory might exaggerate and I haven't played in a while, but I just picked up my old save and had this happen:



This is for a delivery quest, so it's entirely possible the problem is exclusive to that, but cmon, that's not a remotely fair fight, is it?

36

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 05, 2018, 11:57:56 PM »

Note that player-pirates would still need to fight for their reputation. Nobody is going to drop cargo or transfer credits to some random guy they've never heard of. Build a reputation as a fearsome pirate who kills those to refuse to give in to their demands should be just as important as not killing the ones that do.

I don't know that "nobody" is going to drop cargo to some random guy if said random guy is pointing an onslaught at them...

37

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 05, 2018, 03:00:59 PM »

I hear what you're saying, for sure. The counter-point is that the game's focus is combat, and campaign-level activities should (generally! not always) funnel the player towards that. A high degree of unprofitable and bad-for-self-preservation behavior is essentially a design requirement.

Don't mean to tell you how to design your game, but thought I'd voice my opinion on this.

I respectfully disagree that combat should be the focus (or, at least, the overwhelming focus the way that quote presents it as) of the game. To me, the game is at its best when it immerses you in the world as a small business owner with a home port, small fleet, jobs to take and mouths to feed. The "fun" of the game, in my opinion, comes more from "how can I stay afloat with what I got" than "woohoo let's blow up another pirate fleet". The front page of fractal softworks seems to reflect that at least to some extent:

Starsector is an in-development open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game. You take the role of a space captain seeking fortune and glory however your choose.

I would also argue that, even if the game is meant to funnel the player into combat, it does not follow that "a high degree of unprofitable and bad-for-self-preservation behavior is essentially a design requirement".

Combat, in my opinion, is at its most exciting when the outcome is in doubt. Frequently, I see my fleet of something like 2 destroyers and 2 frigates being attacked by 3 (D) frigates. Without the ability to auto-resolve, this does begin to grate. Even if the game is meant to funnel players into combat, I argue there should be a distinction between "fun, exciting combat" and mop-up chore. There are two arguments against this that I can think of, I will try to represent them the best I can and address them below:

The first argument is that the CR consumption more or less deals with that. I argue it does not. I regularly play on 2x - 3x supply cost and, in mid/late game (3-4 cruisers and assorted support vessels) supplies cease to become an issue.


The second argument is that it's difficult to distinguish between fun, exciting battles and chore ones. This is a little more nuanced and I'll wall-of-text my response below:

I understand this point, I am a fairly adept player at this game (it's been what, 6 years since I bought it now?) and a painfully easy fight to me may not be so for other players. This, I suppose, stems from the fact that the game doesn't really have a difficulty setting (other than the easy mode, which I don't think is discussed very much and I can't comment on because I don't use).

I propose maybe a more involved difficulty setting can help with this whereby in higher difficulties, enemy fleets take you more seriously and won't engage unless they have at least even strength (or in really high settings, when they outnumber you significantly).

In the alternative, I propose an internal "player threat" tracker - a variable that more or less represents how skilled of a commander the player is reputed to be. AI fleets would (subject to some variability) only engage when their fleet strength is roughly equal or greater than the variable times the player's fleet strength, where fleet strength is estimated from ship size, quality, weapon quality, damage, and officers. So for example, the variable may start out at 0.8 (player has a reputation as a noob) and pirates may try to take on a player fleet of 2DD 2FF with 2DD 1FF with 1 d-mod. When the player beats that, the game will calculate the damage he took and readjust based on it. If the player lost 1FF, for example, the variable will remain the same; if he lost 1FF and had heavy damage to 1DD, the variable may decrease to 0.75; if he wiped the floor with the fleet and barely took damage, the variable may increase to say 1 and the next time enemies may be more cautious in engaging them.

Bigger fights would be weighed more than smaller fights, to prevent players from losing threat by feeding small fleets and then go marauding with a large one.

Hopefully that wouldn't be too difficult to implement. I feel it would add a good deal of dynamic difficulty to the game and keep funneling the player to battle without making enemies too easy and suicidal.

38

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (In-Dev) Patch Notes

« on: June 01, 2018, 06:23:39 PM »

Lava planets will no longer show up as part of the combat background (too bright)

By this do you mean volcanic planets?

Is this really necessary? They're not brighter than stars, are they? Stars do show up in combat backgrounds, don't they?

39

Suggestions / Re: The Tyranny of Fuel: Exploration Vessels, Solo Fleets, and Vanity Projects

« on: April 02, 2018, 10:57:37 AM »

Unfortunately none of these matter because fuel and supply are not simulated.

And if they were, that wouldn't matter anyway since we can magically hide all our logistic ships away for the main fight

40

Blog Posts / Re: Orbital Fleet Behavior

« on: March 20, 2018, 03:45:38 PM »

does the player fleet factor into this? I imagine the AI wouldn't make us move our fleet, but would other fleets move out of our way?

41

General Discussion / Re: 10 hours in, lots of questions

« on: February 19, 2018, 11:39:55 PM »

1. Flux vents increase how quickly a ship vents flux passively, which is the case with 'soft' flux produced by weapons. Hard flux produced by shields being hit can only be vented via actively venting. Personally I go for half and half, putting the points into flux vents first.

not quite true, you can also vent it passively with your shield down.

42

Blog Posts / Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production

« on: February 14, 2018, 07:48:32 PM »

Should XIV ships even be buildable? The description specifically says it is one of the original survivors of the battlegroup....

Gameplay-wise, I like the idea of the Hegemony, being the ancient "empire" figure that they are, have some long lost technology that no one else can ever get. Lore-wise, I think at least there should be a rewriting of the XIV description

43

Blog Posts / Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production

« on: February 14, 2018, 03:17:08 PM »

How do blueprints work with Condors and buffalo/mudskipper/colossus mkII's? I don't imagine it'd quite make sense for them to be built from scratch like the rest of 'em?

44

Blog Posts / Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production

« on: February 13, 2018, 12:10:44 PM »

Hmm. Will have to see how it plays, but could see making mini-orders near instant, for example, if "ugh, waiting a month for a few extra weapons to slot in" became an issue.

Maybe a "rush-order" option that completes the construction at the minimum time but costs extra?

45

Discussions / Re: Wayward Terran Frontier

« on: January 19, 2018, 10:22:44 PM »

I have a few questions about the game that I really should be asking on their forum, but hey, I'm more familiar with this one and there's already a discussion thread here, so hope someone would take the time:

Is there a crew on your ship? Or are you alone piloting everything? If there is, how is crew management done?

You guys are mentioning ship customization, how does that work? Ship exterior shapes are pretty fixed I'm guessing (with premade sprites), can you change the interior? How much freedom do you have in doing so?