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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

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Messages - happycrow

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 12
1
Suggestions / Re: Support ships
« on: February 13, 2025, 04:26:39 PM »
I think a lot of players wouldn't find it meaningful, but expanded logistics/combat-freighter options would be a really nifty mod that some folks would super enjoy.

As a side note, @Alex -- at the risk of becoming a giant heat shield I think this board could profitably be renamed "suggestions and mod ideas." That way whether something's a great idea but fairly niche won't conflict with something that's a great idea with a good fit for vanilla. It seems like this is one of the unspoken points of contention in a lot of discussions.

2
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 13, 2025, 04:20:55 PM »
(To add my bit, though Alex ahem usurped the point quite entirely and fairly, I think a study of history bears out that authoritarian regimes are often incredibly strange, far more than is politely believable, especially when in crisis. I won't mention current events, either.)

Certain Family Members(tm) have a hard time not visibly screaming when confronted with Diktat-like behavior after having also lived through it.

But I think you hit it pretty well given how readily the Diktat translates over to any of the totalitarian states (my favorite parallel still being Albania under Enver Hoxha, but man, there are so many very good choices!).

//obligatory "more writing please faster faster what do you mean you need to sleep?"

3
Suggestions / Re: Extended Colonies info screen
« on: February 12, 2025, 06:49:49 PM »
well, i don't wanna be a mini-admin.

[old man mode: enabled]
You're trying to catch a falling knife, KoF. Never try to catch a falling knife.
[OMM: disabled]

4
General Discussion / Re: anyone feels bad about killing remnants?
« on: February 11, 2025, 10:46:53 AM »
A) are they trying to murder me? That basically determines my POV on it.

5
Suggestions / Re: Market Influence with Special Items
« on: February 11, 2025, 10:42:38 AM »
Huh. So you'd have to sell it to the specific market then, that's what I missed.  Thanks!

6
Suggestions / Market Influence with Special Items
« on: February 10, 2025, 08:08:43 PM »
I'm sitting here on three corrupted nanoforges and a pristine. I'll never use that many.

Pirates have a neat mechanic where blue prints sold in black markets eventually come into production.
It'd be neat way to get some of the experience of 4x play (exerting a real influence on the setting) w/o all of the baggage, if a mechanic like that allowed factions to make use of similar items, strengthening their positions vis-a-vis the competition. All your exploration might result in some subtle shifts in power between the factions.

7
General Discussion / Re: Which ship has the most "swag"?
« on: February 09, 2025, 07:15:37 PM »
You guys sure spell "Hound" weirdly.

8
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 09, 2025, 10:11:00 AM »
And something for the Lore Bores (that I probably should have put in the changelog and forgot): the Codex displays all kinds of content, including illustrations. Quite a few of the illustrations are hidden until you see them for the first them, then they're unlocked. And all of the illustrations have been given a unique description. Some of these are recycled from existing text, slightly rewritten, and a bunch of them are new. Just some fun treats for those who are into that sort of thing.

Yay lore bores!
I was a monster (in my peer group) at Spacewar! (fav thing: bouncing people into bad orbits until they asplode) but still have real trouble with the slidey-around screen thing. Have to learn it though bc in AI hands the Ziggy isn't the murder weapon all these players are enjoying....

9
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 04:34:29 PM »
the difference between me and the rest of the balancing outlook is that I review the balancing from the perspective of NPC enemies.  I intended to make them intimidating in design and competent when fighting the player
Meanwhile the general intent of balancing consensus is to nerf ships and weapons around the player. And then leave NPCs to fend for themselves. Which in the end doesn't produce a satisfactory balancing experience in my opinion

I agree with this approach to balancing in general, except insofar as balancing down is almost always better than balancing up (bc then you get what I refer to as the "perpetual spiral of awesome" as everything else breaks). I will eventually get the free time this summer/fall to figure out how to write a bar mission (or find somebody interested in partnering very patiently while helping me up the learning curve). I won't ever get the time/depth required to play a min-maxed style. Like you, I'm niche (tho possibly in/from an alternate direction).

But with respect, I frequently find the way you describe things balance-wise to be just as opaque as the more-usual perspective. I'm like "wait what, I get GOBS of mileage out of Scarabs as escorts, their EMP is fab for wrecking NPC fighter sorties," for example.

If you're amenable to feedback, a more-patient method of discussion would really bear fruit bc like me you're coming in a bit out of left field and it's often unclear why you mean what you mean. As I learn more about the game, the differences in how people think about balancing the game is really valuable to me and I'd truly like to understand all sides of the discussions better.

10
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 04:22:00 PM »
I noticed that the Anubis is the only ship included in the patch notes, but the Anubis blogpost mentioned that the Anubis would be "one of a few ships that will be possible to have in the player's fleet". I have to assume that the other ships that we could get are too entangled with spoilers to include in the patch notes? Or were these additional acquirable ships scrapped?

It means he hasn't quite figured out The Scythian yet.  ;)

11
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 04:21:02 PM »
Neat stuff. If not in the labs, where did you find opponents?

x86 boxes emulated the software to allow two players on the same keyboard. But this was only bc I was babysitting for folks who were like a solid decade ahead of everybody else around them, and as for the rest of it, I've no idea man, I was a preteen who was just thrilled not to have to wait five minutes to load a game off a tape deck.  :)

12
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 01:10:02 PM »
Bit of a tangent, but I'm a fan of SPACEWAR! history. Did you play in those tourneys back at CalTech, or was there another 'scene' I'm not aware of?

Not quite that old. :)  I babysat for guys in that crowd, and played on an emulator that let the 8080 stuff get played on the early x86 machines. Nobody knew how to do clock magic, though, so until it got forked for mainstream IBMs in the 90s, once everybody upgraded to 286 it became basically unplayable bc the boxes were too fast... :D

13
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Restoration
« on: February 08, 2025, 12:57:26 PM »
"Admiral, I need your sign-off on something."

The admiral turned to her aide. "Yes, Commander?"

"You successfully sold Starsector that XIVth carrier, right?"

The admiral nodded. It had been an easy sale, and a predictable one. Starsector's movements were trending more and more into Fringe territories where his predilection for lightweight combat freighters was no longer going to cut it.  "He took the bait."

"I have a proposal, but we'll need a third party to sell it." The Commander seemed diffident.

New appointee, desperate not to screw up while also making a name for himself. Packet says ambitious and smart. "Hit me, Commander," the admiral replied. "We're not Sindies here."

"I want to put a new civilian-auxiliary package in play, complete with Blueprint, and feed it to the Pathers."

The Admiral nodded, listening. "Which you know I'll have to sell to Daud at the next Joint Chiefs meeting. Okay, why the Pathers?"

"The Pathers because they have nothing comparable in their fleet arsenals per Intel, and everybody else has something with enough redundancy that it won't be plausible. Here, Admiral. I'm calling it Atlas mk III."

The Admiral took the encrypted comms pad and looked it over.
Her jaw dropped.

"You want to give the Pathers a Capital-class Troop Transport with built in heavy weapons array?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Justify it."

"I just spent my last deployment analyzing Pather incidents. They tend to involve themselves in extortion, etcetera, but one of their major problems is that all they really have is their "hammer." It does straight to their operational and tactical doctrine, insofar as they have one. They're unable, for instance, to simply raid for technology and blow it sky-high, and aside from certain famous terrorists, they're about as subtle as a Diktat fashion show."

The Admiral snorted. "You want to give them that capacity."

"No ma'am," the Commander countered, "I want to let the Pathers build it so they can sell a few to Starsector."  The commander pointed to a display array. "On its own, my projections are that this would actually reduce Hegemony casualties, military and civilian, by forcing them into fights where doctrinal and tactical efficiency actually matter. But that I really want it for is to get it into the hands of auxiliaries who are likely to take on Alabaster-level concerns."

"How does this do that," The Admiral countered, "given that it's a troop transport?"

"If you'll refer to display four," the Commander replied, falling into Staff College Mode, "we render it plausible via the crudeness of the design.  Atlas are in many ways fundamentally awful transports. It's literally nothing other than a drive and crew-habitation spindle with shipping containers magsealed to the outside. So this design simply magseals containers designed to minimally-contain, with no concern for comfort or safety whatsoever, armored fighting platforms and powered-armor suits for explosive drop-deployment."

The admiral frowned.  "With four times the capacity of a Valkyrie, that's doable. You've effectively swapped cargo for deployable personnel, so long as we define "deployable" very loosely."

"Correct, ma'am," the Commander replied. "This is standard for Pather refits. Suicidally-poor refit qualities which would get our engineers hired are considered high brilliance for a faction that still thinks Orion Drives are clever. So it sells. But more importantly, this gives the Pathers the ability to act more like ARC raiders. So they'll take it."

The admiral nodded. "All right. Call Phase One, Minimal Justification passed. Now, why do we engineer that getting passed over to Starsector?"

"He'll buy it," the Commander replied smugly.  "Heavy weapons raiders have a use that I believe Starsector will find absolutely irresistable."

"What's that?"

"Check Display Seven," the Commander continued, "Phase tank deployment system. It's Hegemony work, but it looks VERY much like a bit of leftover unadopted Tri-Tac software left hanging around that the Pathers will have stolen. The Pathers won't activate it, but Starsector will. And that will let him drop heavy weapons directly onto Alabaster targets, Nexus especially, for the purpose of engaging in combat-archaeology during fleet deployments."

"You've developed a sophisticated breach-pod device masquerading as a Pather-trash capital-class raiding ship design," the Admiral marvelled, whistling.  "I was told you were ambitious. I wasn't told you were devious."

"Thank you, Admiral," the Commander smirked.  "This isn't quite the same as the old Doom-style mines. In terms of operational tempo, this is destruction over time. And there's not really a "breach" per se, since the Alabaster threats don't have to bother with corridors or crew quarters. Call it "highly-kinetic salvage operations," with software pre-loaded for nice clean cuts, insofar as anything short of a Combat Drone Replicator can produce said effects."

"Nice clean cuts," the Admiral mused. "designed by Tri-Tac....Ludd's balls, Commander. That's how you're selling the story. It's an abandoned Tri-Tac attempt to harvest AI cores!"  She laughed. "Plausible deniability all the way down."

The commander nodded. "It's not a secret that we have labs trying to figure out how to put the proverbial... what is that thing... ancient mythical wish-giving monster?"

"Jeen," the admiral replied.

"Jeen," the Commander nodded. "Thank you. If we want more actionable intel from Starsector's assaults on the Remnants, we need salvage that is more, rather than less, intact. In the meantime, staff projects an 8-14% overall drop in casualties from Pather events and a significantly likelihood that Pathers, mainstream Luddics, and ARCs use it to prioritize Diktat targets which are currently impossible for them to impact significantly."

"And if deployed against us, Commander?"

"We designed the ship and therefore have the drive profile, Admiral. The design has minimal ballistic PD, and a skin as thin as the wrappings on your lunch. Once it's out and in play, we can simply have our listening stations monitor for the specific frequencies in hyperspace, and we know who's getting hit, when. Easy enough job for COMSEC."

The Admiral shook her head. "I see a dozen proposals like this a year, Commander, and they all fail for the same reason."

"What's that, Admiral?" the commander asked, looking a bit crestfallen.

"It's too neat and practical," the admiral countered, adjusting her own comm pad on the staff table. "Put an Orion on the back of it, and put a really moronically large torpedo on the very front of the ship for no apparent reason. Because the Pathers will want to heroically charge the foe through a wall of flak and drone-fire, shooting on the way in even if it reduces deployment efficiency."

He snorted halfway through a sip of coffee.  "Yes ma'am."

"Have Lieutenant Galawei's staff assist you on this. As it happens, I'm called in earlier than expected. I want to put this in front of Daud and Comsec asap."

A rating would have come to attention and saluted smartly. The commander's reply was just as formal but notably more relaxed.  "For the Domain."

"For the Domain," the admiral replied.
That's the problem with the opposition, she mused into the rest of her ***. They could easily swamp the us given the right diplomatic approach, but for all their energy, they have no sense of strategic vision. And they forget that we can play just as dirty as they do...

14
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 11:47:47 AM »
One of the particularly notable things about Starsector is the writing. Would it be possible to have
some one-off dialog for each of the level 7 officers we rescue? It would make them stand out a bit
more rather than just "Yoink! Gotcha" when they join our fleet. Maybe even a dialog choice or two
that would let us select a skill for them? I don't know if that's asking too much but it would really
give them some personality and make their rescue an event, rather than just a pause in the player
steamroller of the sector.

Perhaps showing my age (old enough to have played Spacewar! without irony, more interest in the campaigns than the ins and outs of the fights), I have to wholeheartedly agree -- anything and everything we can beg for writing-wise, because it's a massive and somewhat undersold strength of the game. 

15
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 08, 2025, 11:14:38 AM »
(quick, everybody, run in circles screaming and losing your minds with joy!)

runs, screams, loses

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