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16

General Discussion / Re: I think I just hit the motherload

« on: December 10, 2023, 04:14:31 PM »

To be fair, when I'm in the late endgame turning out new battleships at need and getting hundreds of thousands per month from colony income, a fight with the orange boys really is just a change of pace in my "fun".  SOMEBODY has got a Flawless Nanoforge on Chicomoztoc that I probably haven't looted yet but by all means give me an excuse Mister Orange.

17

General Discussion / Re: I think you just hit the motherlode

« on: December 09, 2023, 01:40:09 PM »

Somebody's smiled on you, all right.  That's a top-tier system, the kind of thing I wish I'd find in every playthrough but it ends up being more like one in ten.  I got a 125% Hazard Terran world in a system with a cryosleeper in my current run and I've built up three of the planets in that system to maximum population, but none of them are quite as good as those.

18

Mods / Re: [0.96a] The Xhan Empire, version 2.51 Gramada

« on: November 30, 2023, 07:57:47 AM »

Starting with general considerations for the whole faction, their lack of hostilities towards pirates is really weird, especially since they're a rich & opulent micro nation on the edge of the core systems.

Yes, this is actually the one and only major problem I have with this mod.  Pamed is too friendly, since they're NOT hostile to pirates, they post bounties for pirates but then when you fight pirates in the Pamed system you don't actually get paid for your fighting.

19

Discussions / Don't quit yer day job there Arthur!

« on: November 17, 2023, 10:30:54 PM »

All right I got a joke.  I just now made this up, I guess a few hours ago so technically it was yesterday.  This is my joke copyright 2023 STEI Conceptual Productions Division.

WHAT IF...  Harry Harrison wrote Gangs Of New York?

Spoiler

You see this knife?  I'm gonna teach you to speak Esperanto with this [REDACTED] knife!

[close]

20

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: A few short Starsector stories.

« on: November 08, 2023, 09:34:23 AM »

Good stuff!  (And I'm not talking about the feyleaf, I'm talking about your writing!)  Like I said, you don't really need my proofreading help.  However, I think I have found one single typo in the latest story.  Now maybe "Presbysteres" is an in-universe religious rank, knowing you're coming from 40K one expects a certain amount of faux-Latin.  But it just looks like a typo for the actual word "Presbyteres", apologies for wasting your attention if that's intentional.

Now I have a couple of requests, and once again, knowing you're coming from 40K this will be easy for you.  Feel free to ignore this if it doesn't intrigue you.

One:  "A conversation between a human and a nonhuman intelligence."  Could be an Alpha, could be something... else.

Two:  "A conversation between a space janitor and one of your characters where he asks them on behalf of his boss (my StarSector character), what is the worst place in the universe, and why?"  If you asked Hugo Kaboom or Merton Elwood what is the worst place in the universe, they would say Seele or Uvas.  I'm keen to say what Muir or Nahua would say about that.

21

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: A few short Starsector stories.

« on: November 03, 2023, 11:07:45 AM »

Well I will certainly be hoping for a Part Two.  Interesting to see somebody else's "in-character campaign diary."  Also, I think if you rank them ruthlessly, Nahua is my fifth favorite follower of the teachings of Ludd in StarSector fluff. 

What's your blog or your fanfiction.net account or whatever?  There's no way this is your only writing, I'm keen to read the rest of it, and you're not spamming or advertising if I am literally asking for it.

22

Announcements / Literary Merit

« on: November 02, 2023, 08:51:54 AM »

All that said, the gaming audience traditionally comes from a certain viewpoint about religion that tends toward the negative and portrayals of religious factions in games tend toward the negative as well. The challenge I set out for myself several years ago was to offer a way for some (not all, obviously) people from that general audience to think about religion with a little more nuance. Is Starsector successful in this? I like to think it is, sometimes. I hope.

Yeah, you succeeded.  When I plug StarSector to my online friends, I tell the more literary-minded ones that "The writing stands proudly in the same tier as Banks and Reynolds."  And I tell you, David, the fictional religion of the Luddic Church is the only video game religion that has ever altered my personal moral and philosophical structure in real life.  Like Fury Road or The Man Of Steel is to movies, StarSector is to video games.  I'm not joking when I say that if and when it is possible to read Brother Cotton's book in full like it was Morrowind, I'm gonna read that book cover to cover twice.

23

Suggestions / Re: Map Notes / Player Annotation

« on: November 01, 2023, 06:16:47 PM »

Yeah I literally have a small paper notebook and every new StarSector campaign I turn it to a new page to take notes with.  This was in System Shock One when games came on 3.5" floppy disks, it has been in Dwarf Fortress for fifteen years (since your humble narrator asked Toady for it), there's no reason it shouldn't be in StarSector.  My StarSector character is halfway between Captain Picard and The Emperor from Star Wars, I kinda feel like it's beneath his dignity to take notes on paper like some ground-pounding dirtworm from the early 21st century.

24

General Discussion / Re: HALO mod

« on: October 21, 2023, 07:09:35 AM »

.

25

Suggestions / Re: Bomb ships and hulls mods

« on: October 12, 2023, 04:06:15 PM »

.

26

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: A few short Starsector stories.

« on: October 10, 2023, 02:02:16 PM »

Very nice.  I like your style of writing action, imagining I hadn't played StarSector and didn't know each of the ships intimately, I would still have been able to follow the space combat in the latest story.

27

General Discussion / Re: Silly question

« on: October 09, 2023, 01:19:57 PM »

As I understand it, it's technically a glitch but the dev team left it in because it's freakin' hilarious.

28

General Discussion / Re: List of mechanics questions from a new player

« on: September 25, 2023, 01:19:13 PM »

I think I'll start a new playthrough and start posting about ships as I find them. Is it OK to discuss modded ships on the main forum?

It's not strictly forbidden, I don't think.  If it's a crime I'm guilty of it myself dozens of times over.  I'm a major league Safety Overrides Enjoyer, especially on the Aurora.  Right now I'm playing with the Alfonzo Mod suite and a few others, but I'm going to boot up StarSector and modify my current "Smash Twenty Times Its Mass In Pirates And Solo 200000 Cred Bounties" SO Aurora build into something vanilla-friendly and post it here in a little bit.

I also have a Eagle build that is the backbone of my fleets.

Spoiler

[close]

You can build the regular Eagle this way and just leave off the missiles if you don't have the XIV version.  Either way, this is my ideal fleet filler for midgame before I have my own faction and expenses are a concern.  I deploy my flagship first, then a line of these, then a second line of whichever carriers are necessary for the fight I'm facing.  They don't do tremendous damage to anything on their own (that's what my flagship is for) but they consistently stay alive and drive up the enemies' shields and can easily swat flanking frigates.

(edit)  Okay, here's a picture of my current SO Aurora and the character build to make it work.  The Chimobuko Mining Lasers aren't relevant to the build, you can replace them with regular lasers or ignore PD entirely, this build is about smashing into things at close range and firing at them until they're vapor while grinding your shields into their face like a grappling character in a fighting game.  Call this Perfect King or Demon Form Zangief, same general idea.  The Cryoblaster is a lucky find from the Highly Shielded Cache after I complete the tutorial, if I got a Disintegrator instead I would have used that.  Likewise with the rear Shock Repeater.  My point is you don't NEED Remnant tech, the truly important bits of this are the Safety Overrides, Hardened 360-Degree Shields (with an amazing flux to damage ratio), and the triple Blasters.

Spoiler

[close]

29

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: A few short Starsector stories.

« on: September 25, 2023, 09:53:11 AM »

I appreciate it more than you know, are you writing these as you post them or do you have an archive somewhere?  If you just tossed that off overnight, that's some amazing first draft work!  Generally I offer proofreading services on here but you don't seem to need my help knowing that they're on their way there or what have you.

30

General Discussion / Re: Tutorial TIL - Variable Reward for Tetra Mission

« on: September 24, 2023, 05:16:56 PM »

Despite repeated rebellions and cycles of 0-1 stability, neither Ancrya nor Derinkuyu decivilized.  This is likely a unique mechanic Alex put in explicitly to prevent the tutorial from breaking.

I want to point out that this is not completely unique, several populated locations critical to the vanilla storyline have a hardcoded protection against being decivilized until they don't matter any more for the campaign storyline.  Kanta's Den, for example, will not decivilize no matter how often you raid it, until you have completed certain events in the Galatia Academy storyline.

Thats very thorough, I imagine very few people play through the tutorial more than once though, there is little reason to do so.

I might be unusual in the StarSector playerbase, but I nearly always play the tutorial when starting a new campaign.  For one thing, it's traditional.  For another thing, it helps me recalibrate my skills if I'm starting over from a lategame save where I have a max level character and piles of endgame loot, I can retrain myself to battling without character skills before it actually matters to my campaign.