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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - Darloth

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 40
1
General Discussion / Re: Why the sliding-scale mechanic on prices?
« on: February 28, 2023, 04:55:54 PM »
If you've ever sold anything in Eve Online, or tried to buy something with demand and NOT at a market hub, then the "series of increasing/decreasing prices" is exactly what happens.

Admittedly, the analogy falls through at large market hubs (like Sindria really SHOULD be for fuel!) because there's often massive stockpiles and the price margins between different traders are razor thin and usually only a few credits.

That might, in fact, be a way to rebalance this to make more sense.  Look at how many units the colony is demanding or short or producing or whatever, and divide the amount the scale slides by the amount of exponential units in question, and then if you buy fuel at Sindria yes the price will go up but from 93cr to, say, only 98cr, instead of more - wheras at a small independent place, buying the same amount of fuel might push the price from 93cr to 125cr.

Maybe it -already- works this way, I've never paid too much attention, honestly.  It usually doesn't bother me too much as I'm well aware the economy is all a little abstracted for the purposes of gameplay, and it's more fun if you just don't think about it too hard.  Like most game economies it doesn't really make sense even after various justifications, but it does the job well enough to be fun.

2
General Discussion / Re: What happened to Odyssey's?
« on: October 01, 2022, 07:13:25 AM »
In counterpoint...

You see a new capital ship you've never seen before.  It's not even in the simulator lists.  You've NO IDEA what it's like.

Do you want it?  I do.  Whatever it is, even if it's crap, by virtue of its scarcity and unknownness, I want to at least try it.  I'll save before buying it, for sure, but I -will- buy it.

3
General Discussion / Re: Asteroid Collision
« on: August 18, 2022, 05:43:22 AM »
I'm interested in what the factor for collision regularity -ought- to be.  As mentioned right now it's just a flat 0.5 all of the time.  Maybe we're not meant to be hitting asteroids nearly this much until our fleets are huge?

4
General Discussion / Re: Asteroid Collision
« on: August 17, 2022, 08:54:32 AM »
reality?  When the ships are using a hyperspace drive bubble to move at nigh-FTL speeds even before hyperspace itself?

In addition, while not being a star trek fan enough to instantly know the reference, there are several episodes with asteroid belts in, and the ships do slow down whenever they're doing something inside said asteroid belts.  There's at least one episode I can find with a 15 second bit of searching where an asteroid hits and causes significant damage to a federation starship, although it is significantly smaller than the enterprise, which is huge.

The next obvious arguement is "well space is 3d, why don't they go around?"  Ok, but wouldn't that be slower than going straight through?  Pretty much the same game effect as just slowing down a bit.

Either way, it's an abstraction that allows for functional, plausible space terrain.  Without asteroid belts the number of large system-encircling things you can successfully hide in, or use your enhanced terrain navigation skills to pass through quicker than an opponent, or generally -interact- with is one lower, and given how many systems have asteroid belts it's a -big- one.

Sadly I can't answer your actual question solidly in either direction, making me somewhat unsure I should post this reply in the first place, because clearly your opinion about asteroid collisions and my opinion is very different to start with and given it's a fictional situation in a game with many layers of abstraction there's not really much productive debate that can be had, it's all so subjective...  But still, these are the reasons I think it's fine.

It doesn't sound like asteroid collision can currently be turned off, though investigating the AsteroidBeltTerrainPlugin.java does sound like the obvious starting point.  So to try and add a bit of value to my post, I investigated it myself.  It's been ages since I did any solid starsector modding, but if one can override AsteroidBeltTerrainPlugin.java then there's a line on line 179
Code
					hitProb = 0.5f;
suggesting that even though it calculates the changes of collision from the size of the fleet, it then ignores that and sets the collision chance to 50%.  If that were set to, say, 0%, I think that would do what you want.  Again, can't confirm as it's been a while and I can't remember how difficult overriding such a plugin is, but I'm reasonably sure it's possible... so it now sounds like it -is- possible to reduce the chance.  If you wanted to learn modding, this would be a very simple starting point, and it certainly sounds like you have the motivation needed!

5
General Discussion / Re: Solar shielding Hull mode vs regular Shield
« on: August 17, 2022, 08:33:55 AM »
> *is taken seriously*
God take me, I have suffered enough

Your best Wordery is simply TOO STRONG for this forum.

Plasma makes sense, except for the things which aren't at all plasma adjacent, including what is clearly a laser.  Unfortunately Energy is probably the best description that covers lasers, plasma, electricity and some other stuff, but we could also go with Energized, or Energetic, maybe?  Would match Kinetic/High-Explosive's tense better too, even though it's not as typical a word.

6
Suggestions / Re: uniquifying fleets within factions
« on: August 17, 2022, 08:25:10 AM »
Muddling faction identities would also make them stand out less.

Yes, but it doesn't have to happen that way.

The way I'm hoping it could be done is more

"Oh, it's the guy with the triple S-modded Onslaught and the two Legions full of Khopesh, don't want to fight HIM again" or perhaps more likely "Fighting him was fun last time, let's see what new things he has now!"

7
Could have it as a fleet menu toggle, a bit like you can suspend repairs for some ships but not others, have an option that's
"Suspend bonuses from DP Limited skills"

When that's toggled on, that ship never gets skill bonuses from skills, even in combat.  On the other hand, that means it can sit in the backline and not be sucking up the DP from other more useful ships... but since it's a fleet menu thing, if it does get forced into combat you can't decide to suddenly have the bonuses turned on, either.

Fits with a current style of toggle already in the game, reasonably easy to show which ships are and aren't qualifying for bonuses, and won't usually be a huge amount of micromanagement.  People who enjoy that sort of thing maybe can change which ships they're bonusing between fights but that's up to them, and I don't think it would be optimal enough to do that except when you actually lose a ship anyway.

8
Suggestions / Re: uniquifying fleets within factions
« on: August 14, 2022, 08:06:58 AM »
I'd love it if this were implemented via more memorable fleet officers who actually had a long term influence on the world rather than being forgettable and interchangeable.

Starsector is already tracking your relationship with all manner of individual people, it would be great if we could make more use of that.


9
I've certainly wanted this a few times.

Maybe have it as an Enemy tab, a bit like the simulator, but then with a message that the enemy has X amount of DP and may or may not actually deploy any of the listed ships?

10
Suggestions / Re: Vanilla Balance Tweaks
« on: August 14, 2022, 07:58:22 AM »
May we have the mod to experiment with ourselves please?

11
Suggestions / Re: Pay for your crimes.
« on: August 14, 2022, 07:50:12 AM »
Making it an option might be nice.

Sometimes that 5 rep penalty for running with transponder off is a huge big deal and I really don't want it, would much rather pay a fine or bribe or -something- to make that problem go away... and yet it's not really big enough to want to spend a story point on, at least not when you don't have many.

Other times, the rep is no big deal.

Could even make it tied to reputation with the faction.  People who hate you might insist on the fine, AND you still lose some rep.  People who are at high rep already might be "You know you really shouldn't do that, but yeah if you just pay this (reduced) fine we can forget about it".  In the middle, both options are as usual.

12
General Discussion / Re: Found a derelict Paragon, how lucky am I?
« on: August 12, 2022, 03:19:25 PM »
I saw 3 for sale in TT Station, except I don't have a commission with them. I'm with Hegemony. :/

In my latest campaign I'm finally doing a pirate run, and I learned that you don't have to ask nicely to get what you want, and raiding is surprisingly effective once you get the marine numbers high enough.  You have a capital ship, so I'm assuming a few hundred marines isn't a totally implausible expense? 

Have you considered blowing their station into itty little bitty pieces, and having hundreds of marines go and acquire their lances by force?  Might be the only way to get them, all things considered.

13
Modding / Re: Ship-Gutting Faction Mods
« on: August 09, 2022, 08:51:49 AM »
First - This should probably go in the modding forum.

To actually answer you, there isn't an easy way.  Some faction mods have only a few files, but most of them have lots of bits and pieces all of which assume all their ships will at the very least exist.   It's probably best not to outright -remove- the ship hull files because then the game is likely to just crash with a "can't find vjq_someHull.file" message, or something similar.  Instead you need to remove all the things that would spawn those ships in the game.

Places to start looking:
  • data/world/factions - this directory has the lists of which ships factions prefer to have in their lineup, as well as which blueprints they know.  You'll need to remove all references to non-vanilla ships in these for a start.  Many ship packs touch many different factions, too, and there's a default_ship_roles.json perhaps?
  • data/hulls/ship_data.csv - this file has all the actual stats for ship hulls... but it also specifies which blueprint packages ships appear in, and how rare they are.  You might want to remove them from all blueprint packages and set the rarity either to 0 (does this work?) or something very low, like 0.0000001, to make it so they don't show up in markets for sale.
  • data/campaign/special_items.csv - mostly lootable blueprints ought to be in here? Mostly?
  • data/config/ - so much config in here.  If you're using something like Nexerelin that autogenerates ships and fleets then goodness there's a lot of work to do to ask it not to for, basically, every ship added by a mod.  I couldn't even begin to work out which files do what but at least most of the Nex specific ones are in an exerelin named folder.  Of course, it might not be the only mod config you need to change...
  • data/campaign/sim_opponents.csv - not vital, but here's where things get added to the simulation opponents list.

I've almost certainly missed some places.

14
General Discussion / Re: AI is too good handling shield
« on: August 01, 2022, 07:38:23 AM »
As a vague guide, if it's white or grey it's kinetic damage, if it's orange or yellow or brown it's explosive damage, if it's another fancy colour it's energy damage or maybe a HVD kinetic.

Missiles don't follow this rule at all, but you can just learn to identify most missiles after a while.

Anything else is usually beyond me, but in vanilla I too know what damage is incoming most of the time.  Of course mods totally break this as you get weird green splitting bolts of kinetic to energy mirv shells or missiles that explode into minefields of frag damage that deals extra HE if it hits engines or other weird conditions.

The AI is very good at not missing an incoming shot, but it's terrible about knowing WHEN to drop shields, vent, drop into or especially OUT of phase (the torpedoes have missed! drop out and shoot them!), and other such things.

It also tends to be timid where I'd be bold, and then rush in where I'd go cautiously.  This has resulted in me killing many more ships, and also being overloaded far more than the Steady AI :)

15
Suggestions / Re: Allow to zoom out more depends on sensor range
« on: August 01, 2022, 04:39:45 AM »
Does this mean when you did an active sensor burst the view would smoothly zoom out, and then back in?   That would be pretty cool.

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