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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

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31
General Discussion / Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« on: January 26, 2025, 01:50:41 PM »
Last night I fought an Apogee pirate fleet with a commanding Mule, some generic low-tech starter destroyer whose designation I can't recall, and a bunch of Shepherds, and to my surprise, the Shepherds on escort would often drift in to face-tank the Apogee's main beam (successfully, to my serious surprise), before slewing out to the side and letting their borers pop its missiles. I don't know how the heck these orders work, but they're super inconsistent and that may be a strength rather than a weakness!

32
General Discussion / Re: Help wrapping my head around this
« on: January 26, 2025, 01:47:07 PM »
Killed an Apogee last night with a couple beginner destroyers and a half-dozen or so Shepherds (took a while! wasn't easy!) doing exactly that, and a huge chunk of it was just trying to isolate the cruiser from its escort. I can't pilot for squat, but even playing on the fleet level, the more you can concentrate your force while dispersing theirs... all the old military adages still hold true.  Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle is one of the worst things you can do as a beginner unless you know the game so well that can set your mods and officers and stuff to "stack the math" overwhelmingly in your favor.

33
Suggestions / Re: The Ox tug gets no love and no one uses it
« on: January 25, 2025, 02:21:06 PM »
...On the other hand, I still think the game would be better off going back to a fleet point cost limit rather than a fixed number of ships, and if it did that, the Ox would still need high logistics costs relative to its size.

I'd love that. It would be a true boon for those trying to get frigate-destroyer wolfpacking fleets to remain viable longer in the game, rather than a "throw away your fleet and invest in massive ships or get rekt" sort of deal. Now, I'm still a relative newbies, so maybe there's something in custom-officering-per-ship that really makes that up....

When I first started playing I used Ox a lot. Now I want to, but the more I understand the maintenance costs, the less and less I've used it. If I were trying to help that Atlas (etc) keep up with a wolfpack fleet, otoh, it'd definitely be worthwhile.

34
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Restoration
« on: January 24, 2025, 06:01:11 PM »
Temurqaddangan Doji did not like what he was seeing.

"Ko Combine R450. You want me to finance the production of a series of cheap HK units to erstwhile explorers who can get their hulls melted by pirates and their cargos confiscated by Pathers, far from the core."

Genej laughed, knocking back a hideously-colored orange drink.  "No sir, I wouldn't do that to you. I want you to finance something that will serve as the backbone for the first true fleet design for the Independents for system patrols local-hyper salvage."

"It's... a Shepherd, Genej. What am I missing here?"

"What you're missing, Ser Doji, is that the Independents need vehicles they can truly call their own, and which serve their own purposes, as well as being able to provide rudimentary defenses."

Temurqaddangan frowned. "I don't see how adding yet another HK mod into the list of crowded HK mods is going to help you here."

"Look, Ser Doji," Genej implored. "You trawl bars looking for hopefuls you can dole out venture capital to, because if you land the right person, you're in the money. I wouldn't waste your time with a dust venture. This has backing."

"Sure," Temurqaddangan mused. "But it has no market. HK's are everywhere. Even the Pathers can make these."

She shook her head. "Not these, Ser. Check the spec sheet."

He took a quick glance.  "The weapons are gone. The maneuvering jets are gone. This is to be part of systems-defense patrols and sold to independent contractors...with no weapons? A brace of borer pods isn't going to cut it, Genej."

Genej's started to smile, and for the first time, Temurqaddangan noticed that the smile was predatory, almost feral. I need to watch this one more carefully, he thought.

"I've missed something." He frowned. "Okay, tell me what I've missed."

"The Shepherd," Genej said, falling easily into Lecture Mode, "is one of Ko Combine's most successful designs. Agreus does big business with the Hegemony performing various salvage and breaker functions with it. It's the absolute complete package for the explorer clan which wants to mine, salvage, and survey. But in a pirate scrap, three Shepherds really isn't all that much better than one Shepherd. This design solves that, while adding significantly to operator profitability."

"Okay," Temurqaddangan allowed, sipping his own drink... water, as musual. "How does it do that?"

"Losing the useless turrets and the maneuvering jets allows for a doubled combat persistence time. If projections hold, it'll have persistence that will rival or possibly even outclass a Venture, at two hull sizes lower. This means less down time, less dwell time, less refurbishment time, lower maintenance across the board.  On the other hand, losing the maneuvering jets means fewer fuel lines as well. Look here and here," Genej said, pointing to an R450 image. "See all of this infrastructure to support the maneuvering jets? That's a fundamental part of the HK variant that's so popular. We pull all that out, especially the portions along the main fueling column here on the right, and substitute this."

He frowned. "You added an extra shuttle deck?" No, it wasn't a shuttle deck. Something was off here.

Genej grinned again, and this time it almost looked scary.  "That's the main flight deck, Ser Doji. Compare it to the HK."

"I see," he mused. "Ko's ability to squeeze a flight deck onto a frigate-sized hull is more impressive than I thought. But then, this and this...?"

"Are," Genej beamed, "also borer-only flight decks. This variant will be an absolute workhorse for mining and salvage work, and of course, the same hazardous-environment work borer drones already do. The reliability that boosts performance time is actually for economic purposes. It should be as effective with the additional drones as a destroyer-sized salvage rig. No better at surveying than the original R450, sadly. BUT," she continued, realizing that all the economic talk was starting to bore her prospect, "what it REALLY turns this into is a small scale economic powerhouse which can double as a defense carrier. A half-dozen borers is enough to keep some rockets off your tail. But a dozen and a half borers...."

He nodded. "That many drones outnumbers a typical fighter wing dramatically and probably allows the Shepherd to go toe-to-toe with most of the low-end trash that a raider fleet cobbles together."

Genej nodded with him. "Exactly. While also being of extremely limited interest to them. Who in their right mind would run a fleet of ships which literally has no guns?  Offensively, this machine is pointless. But for defensive purposes, we're confident that this vehicle can punch far above its weight class and become the gold standard for independent operators. At," she smiled, "a significant upcharge compared to what a typical HK variant sells for."

Temurqaddangan thought quietly. "How much upcharge are we talking about here?"

"Enough to cover the dock chop-work and the additional parts." Genej opened up a knock-off Tri-pad that looked like she'd done half the wiring herself," showing him a spreadsheet with some numbers. "Not enough to put it in Tarsus territory, though the first design, stealing a B-deck mod from a damaged Gemini got that high. We're looking at equivalent cost somewhere between a Dram and a Vigilance, with significantly greater economic value. For the cost and crew compliment of a single near-indefensible Tarsus, you should be able to operate two of these."

He finished his water.  "The credits are yours. I'll need to make a quick call and then I'll run you up a terms sheet," he said, shaking her hand.

Temurqaddangan paused. "This is impressive work. If you can continue to produce work at this level, the Corporation is likely to make more financing available your way."

Genej gave him that feral grin again.  "I have a running plan for Mules you might enjoy. But honestly, if you really want to see something creative, once this is done, I'll show you what my team and I have done for HGA-220m2 raider."

"The mudskipper? Really?" he said, letting down his performative game-face. He could relax here, this woman was worth cultivating a business relationship with.

"Same hull, but very different design," she replied. "We call it The Scythian."

35
Suggestions / Re: Fighter Capstone
« on: January 24, 2025, 02:07:12 PM »
Thanks, y'all.
(must shoot more pilum pretty pretty light show)

36
Suggestions / Re: Fighter Capstone
« on: January 24, 2025, 01:11:16 PM »
Newbie question here, how does expanded racks help? The carriers with pylums since the pylums don't run out of ammunition? I am a little bit confused there.

37
Suggestions / Re: Deep Strike Carrier
« on: January 23, 2025, 04:42:06 PM »
I thought mad meatwave tactics are a luddic path thing

I was thinking of several real-world parallels under dictatorial societies. A heavily-protected back-rank carrier flinging out overpopulated torpedo-bomber wings (hard-build it in like Venture does so players can't abuse out of context) could be pretty daunting.

38
General Discussion / Re: [CRISIS SPOILER] wow...
« on: January 23, 2025, 04:23:14 PM »
It'd give the factions some more personality, make exploration more varied and dangerous, and make the sector seem lived in.

Yes please.  <3

39
Suggestions / Re: Deep Strike Carrier
« on: January 22, 2025, 06:57:07 PM »
Honestly, I see the Sindrians engaging in bomber meat-wave tactics if they used a carrier. Absolutely overwhelmingly spammy numbers of torpedo bombers with nothing even remotely resembling hull durability or crew-survival hardware, the routes pre-programmed in advance from the local command ship.

And the hell of it is, an assault carrier group engaging you directly out of corona or some other close terrain like that could be scarily effective without needing to be phased at all. If they were phased, it'd likely be a one-way trip designed to get them moving at very high speeds towards their target without needing to worry about bumping into each other etc.

40
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: plant lore
« on: January 20, 2025, 12:38:33 PM »
Jangalan spores as bioweapons which can be released on raids. Xenobiota as black market medical research item. Live organics as a necessary low end crop for stations as air purifier and living space greenery...

41
Suggestions / Re: missiles arent op, eccm is
« on: January 17, 2025, 07:56:30 PM »
One possible test for the hypothesis. I have noticed that this discussion seems to revolve around specific missile types.

Does eccm notably improve the performance of pilum?

42
General Discussion / Re: Let's talk about Escort orders
« on: January 16, 2025, 03:43:10 PM »
Quote from: F4RST4R
It's tedious, but what makes it worse is my starting 'formation' is often a mess.  S

Preach it brother. I would love to know how to get that initial formation to be orderly so my ships didn't have a traffic jam trying to figure out how to get to their escort positions. I have good success with string of pearls and p************* type escort orders, but the traffic jam is ridiculous and sometimes can be a problem early on when I need my missile boats to cut flank hard so that they don't get overwhelmed by an initial foray down the middle.

43
Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Restoration
« on: January 15, 2025, 06:18:02 PM »
"See, yer gonna buy this Kite."

"Hatch" Beru looked dubiously at the specs. "So you've been good to me, but you know I asked you to find me a good reliable Hound. You know, with shielded cargo?"

"Yer gonna buy this Kite," Eight Gun said.  Hatch didn't want to argue with the portboss. He didn't like coming to a pirate station in the first place, but what were your options in this day and sector?

"You said I was going to buy the phase ship."  Hatch shook his head.

"This is better than the phase ship," Eight Gun said.

"Yeah? Why's that?" Hatch retorted.

"Because sure, you can knock a phase transport down all the way to where it gives off no more signature than a random rock," Eight Gun said. "But the minute somebody tracks your shuttle to and from your parked ship at the dock and sees you're running a phase stealth rig with an insulated core, all it takes is some basic bribery and sleuth work to see what your run is and where you're going.  Phase doesn't stop somebody from shock-rodding you on the gantry, after all."

"So why," Hatch sighed, "is a Kite any better?"

"Because it's a shuttle. It's expected to run people."

Hatch frowned. "And that makes it better why?"

"Because," Eight Gun insisted, the cyber augmentation at his temple whirring with some kind of high-speed data feed Hatch couldn't even guess at, "in spite of my every offer, you've refused to carry recreational drugs for me. You've even put yourself deep in the hole to avoid doing. Far enough I thought you were hard-vac'd for sure, but you came back. You've got... ethics and stuff."

"I do," Hatch nodded.  "organ transplants can be abused but they're also medically necessary, particularly for research."

"And," Eight Gun leaned in, "you've got two daughters on Eochu Bres with Mairaath Syndrome."

Hatch grimaced. Hadn't realized that'd gotten around. Rads. Of course it had. "There may be a cure."

Eight Guns nodded. "For your sake, I hope there is. Even I won't do business with Joze Mingalar's lab. Those people are sick." He shook his head, repulsed. "Point is, I know you're desperate, and this ship is going to be yours."

Hatch shrugged. "I don't want it." He looked over the technical readout. "Augmented drive...specialty augmented drive, specialty solar shielding, additional fuel supply, insulated engine assembly, downgraded missile mounts, automated light machine gun mount...." He didn't care about the armaments. His relationship with this station was good enough that nobody tried to harass him. His problem was Heggie patrols, and a Kite's armament wasn't going to make a difference there.

"You don't care about the weapons," Eight Gun murmured. "You never have. You're the guy who told a Heggie patrol you were parked in an asteroid field so you could read a book."

"It was a good... Deprecated storage? Sleeper cabin? Shielded flight deck?"

Hatch pointed at the sheet and looked up at Eight Guns quizzically.

"Yeah. So you can move people around in sleeper pods rather than having them be bored all flight."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because," Eight Gun said, looking pleased with himself. "Nobody scans a sleeper pod, and nobody IN a sleeper knows or cares if you take a little detour on your trip, long as you arrive on time, which you can with this configuration. And with that deck, nobody can scan your pods. They have no way to tell whether you're running a skeleton crew or a full manifest unless they do a full inspection.... which you're too smart and careful for them to ever bother with.

And because the hatches are sealed, nobody coming on board knows whether thirteen out of your thirty berths are actually carrying organs for Joze's sickos to play with. It's the literally perfect ship for the ethical smuggler who specializes in laundering legally sourced organ cargoes at a specific port where such cargoes are very strictly forbidden. Any other cargo wouldn't work, but with this ship, you can smuggle organs all cycle long and so long as you're the quiet, polite, extremely careful little neb you already are, your cargo is literally undetectable by mechano-tech means."

Eight Guns smirked at him.

"And," he smiled, "you can put the ladies to sleep and bring them with, without having to worry about them getting snagged on somebody else's raid-and-grab."

Rads, Hatch swore under his breath, the possibilities opening to him.

"You're gonna to buy this ship," Eight Gun said. "I'm making it available to you at a price you can't refuse."

Hatch instinctively looked at Eight Gun's bodyguards. "What price is that?"

"Free!" Eight Gun grinned.  "Except, I'm going to need a little favor. You see, I need somebody picked up on Umbra and taken on a discrete little one-way trip to Sindria...."

44
General Discussion / Re: Would you live here?
« on: January 13, 2025, 08:42:12 PM »
I assume that's what the game implies. There's a separate icon for xenomorphs in the game's files that is unused

There's a VERY old game (I played it as a teenager in the mid-late 80s) called Starflight that had critters as valuable economic commodities. Would be really neat to see that IG (and to see in which markets such things would be illegal), because of all the various resources xenobiology could provide. Redundant to harvested organs perhaps, but in a way like Volturnian Lobster - it's only coming out of specialized markets, but a lot of folks might want it -- Tri-tac would probably have negative interest in it, but I bet a bunch of Independents and Pirates might, and LCers would either ban the trade outright as an immoral harvest for Mammon's gain, or else be all-in on it because "fight the machine, spread life everywhere."

45
Suggestions / Re: About population 8
« on: January 13, 2025, 05:43:03 PM »
Depends on which historical parallels we're using -- the Pilgrim colonists, who are in many ways a reasonable parallel to the Luddic Church, had an average of eight surviving children per family, which is the reason an otherwise small region of the U.S. has such a huge influence on its history and economy.

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