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

Suggestions / Re: Why is "Ground Support Package" a unremovable modifcation

« on: November 04, 2023, 02:09:58 PM »

If Ground Support Package were a regular hullmod, what would be the point of the Valkyrie? The Phantom's stealthier and has a better version of GSP, Nebula and especially Starliner have more room for troops, Colossus Mk.III more nearly approximates a useful space combatant, there's a number of logistical ships that could probably take GSP without giving up anything that really matters, and if you restricted GSP to ships with military/militarized hulls it'd have to be pretty cheap or it'd be almost worthless.

Also, as far as the in-universe logic for GSP only appearing on the Valkyrie and the Colossus Mk.III goes, I would say it's not terribly unlikely that GSP goes beyond just what's mentioned in the description - the Valkyrie is one of two dedicated assault dropships in the game (the other being the Phantom) and the Colossus Mk.III is a heavily-modified freighter adapted for raiding. Ships such as these being better suited to rapidly disembarking battle-ready infantry (and potentially also vehicles) in a combat environment and having a greater degree of rough-field landing capability than your typical space combatant or freighter while also being designed not just for aerial/orbital fire support but also to provide suppressing/covering fire while grounded and disgorging troops would not strike me as unreasonable.

Big dishes for High-Resolution sensor, Or cranes survey equipment would have the same effect on armor integrity.

Debatable; a lot of that can just be superstructure, and while power/data/control signals probably would need to be routed through the armor somehow those don't necessarily need significantly larger or more numerous holes than already exist in the ship's standard configuration.

Of course, depending on how things were handled the close-support weapons and sensor/countermeasures packages of GSP might also be something that can be treated as superstructure. It might not be terribly popular with the crew, but as long as we're not talking about anything too heavy an unpowered external gun position with "some" local ammunition storage is plausibly adequate for providing fire support to infantry during landing operations, and if it can be manned by people in space suits or is only used in-atmosphere you may not even need to provide life support.

32

General Discussion / Re: Colonizing questions

« on: October 28, 2023, 12:23:56 PM »

Yes, you can create stable points at black holes. If you weren't already aware, be warned that black holes cause significant CR damage to unprotected ships.

33

General Discussion / Re: Need help planning empire

« on: October 03, 2023, 03:16:55 PM »

I see, so this system is missing Volitiles right? I'll keep an eye out for another system, if I can't find one though how would I make this one work?

If you want to colonize everything:
- Arid: Farming, Mining, Light Industry, Commerce
- Barren: Mining, Refining, Fuel Production, Commerce
- Deserts: Light Industry, Heavy Industry, Commerce, Military Base (probably upgrade one to High Command)
Set everything as Free Ports, install a useful industry item on each world, build orbital stations / battle stations / star fortresses and ground defenses as funds become available, maybe put Patrol HQs on the Arid and Barren worlds.

Honestly, though, I probably wouldn't bother colonizing the desert worlds unless perhaps I had a couple spare Biofactory Embryos and didn't mind becoming a drug lord; they don't have any particularly interesting resource deposits (the Barren world has mostly-better mineral resources and neither has Organics/Volatiles or better farmland than the Arid world), they can't make use of Fullerene Spools due to Extreme Weather, and as habitable worlds they're not the most valuable potential colonies to begin with since habitables are incompatible with most industry items, Farming is a low-grossing industry even when boosted with Soil Nanites or alpha cores, and Light Industry is only really good with Free Port. If you don't colonize the deserts, you ought to have at least a Patrol HQ on either the Barren or the Arid world and a Military Base somewhere once you have your first size-5 or larger colony.

Also, I agree with Nettle that getting all resources in a single system (or, for that matter, even within your empire) is overrated. The only thing that supplying most resources from within your empire gets you is upkeep reduction, but upkeep reduction is of very marginal value for worlds below about 200-250% hazard (maybe even more than that for low-upkeep industries like Mining) unless you're building more or less exclusively low-margin industries (Heavy Industry, non-Free Port Light Industry, maybe Fuel Production or Refining if it's unboosted and you have a few other producers in your empire competing for market share) or a lot of expensive military infrastructure (Star Fortresses, Military Bases, High Commands).

34

General Discussion / Re: Hypershunt Taps

« on: September 10, 2023, 01:15:44 PM »

Player takes penalties when he goes over the limit.

Seeing as you go from +2 stability at one colony to +0 at two, you take a penalty whenever you're at more than one PC-managed colony. If you don't want to take a penalty, you're limited to four colonies.

35

General Discussion / Re: Hypershunt Taps

« on: September 10, 2023, 11:57:58 AM »

It comes too late, even if colonies themselves take too long to take off.

Agreed, and as long as you more or less have to have a size-6 colony before you can actually use it I don't know that there's really any way that that'll change  even though you could theroetically rush finding and restoring a Hypershunt.

I already use two forges and a synchrotron on three of my five worlds (which I need to feed Military Base or High Command, the big resource hogs), so that leaves two worlds left for other items.

Six or seven colonies is well within reach using only the player character and hired administrators, and up to eleven without income penalties except during shortages is workable with enough care - colonies administered by hirelings are neither affected by nor count towards the mismanagement penalty, a fully-developed world can have up to +17 stability (+6 base, +2 Domain-era Comm Relay, +1 domestic goods, +1 luxury goods, +1 Ground Defenses, +2 Military Base or High Command, +3 Star Fortress, +1 Population & Infrastructure "improvements"), and pirate hostile activity only cares about the largest most stable colony while other stability-related penalties only come into play at less than 5 stability, so one hireling governing a size-6 planet neuters passive pirate hostile activity while the player character administers all other size-6 worlds and the other two hirelings manage developing worlds until the player character's mismanagement penalty becomes too high to add another size-6 world without reducing stability below 5, giving up to five colonies administered by the player character even with Commerce and Free Port or up to eight with neither Commerce nor Free Port. Dropping the Population & Infrastructure "improvements" and swapping the Domain-era Comm Relay for a Makeshift Comm Relay costs you a planet, but that still leaves you with four to seven colonies managed by the player character plus the three administered by hirelings before PC-governed colony stability drops unacceptably low.

Tap should give +4 interest like everything else.

Honestly, considering how thin the margins are on most industries when they're not being boosted by something, I'm not sure that it'd really be worth using even at +4 interest if you're trying to avoid generating Path cells; roughly doubling the gross income of an existing industry or increasing the colony income multiplier by 50 points looks far more appealing to me than adding another barely-profitable industry to the planet.

36

Suggestions / Re: Shield orientation in fleet refit

« on: September 09, 2023, 07:37:57 AM »

Honestly, while I don't have any particular objections to this, I also don't really see that it has all that much of a point in unmodded Starsector; there aren't any modular hulls, at least not that are available to the player, and about the only ships I can think of off the top of my head that might actually want to use something like this are Conquest and Odyssey, possibly Fury and Eradicator, and maybe Heron - but all of those already have Omni shields, all but Conquest have big enough shield arcs that Front Shield Conversion will cover pretty much anything you want to cover and isn't going to be much if any worse in general than a variant of it which can be configured to move the center of the shield away from the bow of the ship, and of these only Eradicator is all that likely to actually want to engage anything like a peer opponent without its shields up while boom-and-zoom is unnecessary when punching down.

What's wrong with Omni-shield conversion

Reduced shield arc, reduced shield deployment speed, and control limitations - omni shield orientation, active-group weapon aiming point, and camera are all controlled by cursor position.

37

General Discussion / Re: Finding the Apogee and Black Market Question

« on: August 28, 2023, 10:16:36 AM »

My experience largely matches Lawrence's - Apogees are usually quite difficult to find on the market or as derelicts. I'd say that if you don't have the ability to produce them yourself then bar encounters are probably the most reliable way to get them, either through custom production orders - though I think only high-value illegal arms dealers and independents can offer them - or occasionally through the 'steal military ship' event at an independent colony.

Apogees do sometimes show up in bounty-target fleets so you might also be able to obtain them that way, but that's obviously not reliable and by the time you can really do it it might be kind of too late for the Apogee to really be a valuable addition to the fleet.

I really wish there was a set of purpose built explorer ships, the omen kinda fits the bill for frigates but i'd love a carrier and capital class support ship.

Shepherd, Venture, Apogee, Odyssey. All have above-average logistical statistics and at least one built-in hullmod useful in an exploratory fleet and three of them are at least carrier-adjacent.

The Omen may have High Resolution Sensors, but given its unremarkable logistical statistics as well as built-in ECM and ECCM packages I'd view that more as an AWACS or a radar picket than an exploration vessel.

38

General Discussion / Re: Can I stop the Hegemony from stealing my cores?

« on: August 27, 2023, 07:45:55 PM »

If you can get to your world before the inspection arrives, a fourth option is to substitute lower-value cores for higher-value cores and a fifth option is to hide the cores until the inspector leaves - though be aware that the inspector can take cores from the targeted planet's storage, so if you want to hide the cores you should keep them with your fleet or put them on another planet, and be warned that the inspectors can be a bit... petulant... if they don't find any cores when they were expecting to find something.

39

General Discussion / Re: How do i disable the new event system ?

« on: August 20, 2023, 04:23:00 PM »

If you haven't built military infrastructure, do so - a Patrol HQ will passively counteract 5 points of hostile activity, upgrading to a Military Base will passively counteract 2*[size] points of hostile activity, and upgrading to a High Command will passively counteract 3*[size] points of hostile activity, where [size] is the size of the largest colony with such an installation. Only the 'best' one counts for the hostile activity reduction, but additional Patrol HQs, Military Bases, and High Commands aren't necessarily a waste since they can help deal with expeditions. Additionally, Path interest is per-colony and only counts towards hostile activity once it gets higher than 6, so if you keep every colony at or below that level it's not going to create any issues for you, and the Path also doesn't pay attention to size-3 colonies.

For in-game methods to more or less entirely shut off hostile activity:

Spoiler

Pirate hostile activity can be significantly reduced by bribing Kanta - there's a couple bribes that will be accepted, but 1,000 units of Volturnian lobster or a million credits are probably the easiest to acquire. Doing this will entirely negate the passive pirate hostile activity generation and significantly reduce the activity generated by nearby pirate bases.

Luddic Path hostile activity can be turned off for two years at a time by intercepting a Pather fleet, hailing them, and offering them a bribe to stop harassing your colonies. You can also give them the bomb from the hidden cache near Sentinel to permanently disable Pather activity, and at present there are no drawbacks to doing so.

[close]

40

General Discussion / Re: N00b questions

« on: August 19, 2023, 02:41:37 PM »

ALSO note that, (unless I'm sorely mistaken) when a mission for some kind of derelict ship or station appears, even if the mission times out, the object in question remains; therefore if you make a note of where a target is located, you can still go salvage it if you fail the mission.

Missions to interact with an object (station, derelict ship, supply cache, et cetera) don't spawn a new object, they target something that already exists. If you don't explore and recover or salvage the stations, derelicts, and caches you find, you can be offered missions targeted at something you already discovered.

Research stations mean blueprints and mods.

While I agree that research stations are interesting mission targets, it's not for that reason - hullmods are easily collected while trading on the open and black markets or by raiding places for ship parts, and blueprints are of marginal value since most of them are things you're probably never going to order, either because you don't actually want it or because you can quickly and easily obtain it some other way, and as for the rest, well, by the time you've found blueprints you actually want and have the production capacity to build whatever it is in a reasonable amount of time you're probably not suffering permanent losses often enough for a reliable source of replacement ships to be of any particularly great value.

The real value of a research station, at least to me, is the chance of finding a useful colony item.

41

Suggestions / Re: Improve Explorarium Mothership Loot!

« on: August 18, 2023, 06:08:42 AM »

Core worlds are guaranteed to generate exactly ONE habitable planet, and it's not guaranteed to be compatible with nanites, or even allow farming at all.

1. The Core Worlds are guaranteed to contain something like twenty habitable worlds, and several of them are always compatible with Soil Nanites; most of them are simply already inhabited.

2. Soil Nanites is the least useful industry item in the game, because even when boosted Farming doesn't generate a whole lot of revenue - it's a decent starter industry because it's cheap to set up and operate, not because it brings in a lot of income - and unless you're trying to use a small colony to feed a large one there's nothing in the game that actually requires more than +0 to food production. If you don't have a good place for it, so what?

3. At least in my experience, Soil Nanites is incompatible with a significant majority of the habitable worlds you can find anyways, because you need arable land without any Rare Ores or Volatiles deposits and that's actually a pretty unusual combination.

Finding a 150% rock to make space gasoline is straightforward enough, that's true.

What items other than Soil Nanites, Biofactory Embryos, and Hypershunt Taps are actually hard to find a good location for in the Core, or for that matter pretty much anywhere else?
- Synchotron and Catalytic Cores require an airless rock, so a 150%-hazard airless rock or 175%-hazard low-gravity airless rock with high accessibility is a pretty ideal location for Refining and Fuel Production.
- Nanoforges add Pollution (+25 points to hazard rating) to Habitable worlds that don't already have it, and at least in my experience most of the worlds with hazard ratings less than 150% are Habitable worlds that aren't already Polluted, so a 150%-hazard airless rock or a 175%-hazard low-gravity airless rock with good accessibility isn't that far off being the ideal location for Heavy Industry (for that matter, accessibility is an income multiplier and, even with as poor a return on investment as Heavy Industry offers, base income is likely still higher than base upkeep, so a 150%- or 175%-hazard world in the Core may actually be a better site for Heavy Industry than an already-polluted 75%-hazard habitable somewhere in the fringe).
- Dealmaker Holosuites have no specific requirements for their placement, but ideally go on worlds with high export value, and high export value correlates strongly with high accessibility.
- Autonomous Mantle Bores can't go on habitable worlds, gas giants, or ice giants and ideally want to be somewhere with Ore, Rare Ore, and Organics. That's a pretty rare combination, but one such world is guaranteed to exist in the Core, and if you're unwilling to dispossess the rightful owners the next-best site is usually an inhospitable rock with both types of ore deposit. That's not a rare world, and several of the uninhabited examples of such worlds in the Core are either guaranteed or pretty likely to have fairly high quality ore deposits.
- Plasma Dynamos want to go on ice or gas giants with volatiles deposits, i.e. just about any ice or gas giant anywhere in the Sector, and if I'm not mistaken there's always at least one uninhabited gas giant with Plentiful Volatiles in the Core.
- Orbital Fusion Lamps can be usefully deployed anywhere that doesn't already have Extreme Heat, whether to improve the hazard rating or to improve the world's compatibility with a Cryoarithmetic Engine.
- Fullerene Spools are compatible with most worlds that aren't ice or gas giants, especially if they lack atmospheres since that rules out Extreme Weather. Finding a place to use them isn't a problem.
- Cryoarithmetic Engines require Hot or Extreme Heat worlds, and there's plenty of those in the Core. Low hazard would be ideal, but Extreme Heat messes with that even on habitables, and military infrastructure isn't prohibitively expensive on 200%- or 225%-hazard worlds.
- Combat Drone Replicators can literally be used anywhere.

42

Suggestions / Re: Improve Explorarium Mothership Loot!

« on: August 17, 2023, 09:37:45 PM »

how are you going to find good planets for items without exploring.

Pretty easily, because the problem with setting up in the Core isn't the natural resources, hazard ratings, or accessibility ratings of the uninhabited worlds that you already have full survey data for at the start of the game.

43

General Discussion / Re: N00b questions

« on: August 10, 2023, 12:55:01 PM »

Skills question: The carrier skills only operate on 8 fighter squadrons. Does that mean the first 8 squadrons in my fleet get the benefit (so I have to be thoughtful about how I arrange/deploy my fleet) or if I have more than 8 squadrons (I like to run with 3 Herons currently) they no longer get the benefit?

All of the fighters in the fleet benefit, but the overall effect is reduced; if I recall correctly, the actual bonus you get is [maximum bonus] * min( 1, [limit] / [how much you actually have]).

So, on the topic of creating stable points: How does one 'interact' with the sun/system? I've tried right and left clicking in every screen I can think of and it doesn't seem to do anything? Fly my fleet towards it like it's a planet? That's the one thing I haven't tried because I hate seeing my supplies go up in smoke like that.

Solar Shielding can help with that, especially if you use some story points to build it into your most expensive ships. Granted, you might have other things you want to use the OP, the story points, or the built-in hullmod slots for.

Also, my mining colony is just sucking up my income. I can't get the 500k to install refinery but there's tons of ore there that it seems should be making some good money from trading.

If you can't afford to fill the industry slots that the colony already has, you're not going to benefit enough from having a bigger colony to justify the cost of Hazard Pay, so turn that off for a while if you're using it.

Accessibility factors into market share, which determines how much income your industry gets from exports, and can also limit export volume if it's very low (if I recall correctly, you can export 1 unit of each resource the colony produces per 10 points of accessibility, rounding down, plus four or five if exporting within faction). Consider trying to improve relations with other factions if you have an accessibility penalty due to "hostilities with other factions" of more than a few percent (which is about where it 'should' be if you're only hostile to the pirates and Luddic Path), or perhaps consider building a Waystation, upgrading your Spaceport into a Megaport, spending story points on your Spaceport / Megaport or Waystation, or installing a Fullerene Spool in the Spaceport / Megaport to improve accessibility (be aware, however, that it's possible that building a Waystation or Megaport will cost more than you'll gain from the increased accessibility, and that the cost of 'improving' an industry or structure with story points climbs rapidly each time you do so on the same colony).

Another possible issue is if your colony's stability is below 5, as such colonies have income penalties. Ensure that there's a comm relay in-system if you haven't already, take it back from the pirates if they've seized control of it, and maybe consider building Ground Defenses (or perhaps a Patrol HQ or Orbital Station, though those are more expensive) for the stability bonus. If you've set the colony as a Free Port, consider turning that off as the -3 stability penalty can be difficult to overcome, and possibly assign an administrator to one or more of your colonies since there's a scaling 'mismanagement' penalty to colonies administered by the player character (technically, it's a bonus at 1 colony, no effect at 2 colonies, and a penalty at 3 or more colonies).

Also, with regards to administrators: Fire any that have the Industrial Planning skill (be aware that rescued administrators always, or at the very least very often, have the Industrial Planning skill), and only hire the unskilled ones, because +1 production is not worth the extra 17,500 credits/month until the colony is very well developed, and even then it's pretty marginal unless you have a specific need for the additional output or have something like a Commerce industry upgraded with story points and a Dealmaker Holosuite.

44

General Discussion / Re: Officers are a pain!

« on: August 10, 2023, 07:30:32 AM »

A 50 DP pure carrier doesn't benefit from an officer that gives a huge boost to both carrier group and fighter uplink, a huge boost to the 0.6 shields so it can park in the front, missile spec for the 2 Ls, extra CR, +whatever else?
Yeah, a bit hard to tell if you are trolling or not

You are taking two skills(carrier group/fighter uplink) that will benefit only one ship in your fleet?

It might be just one ship, but it's still a bit over 20% of your maximum DP allotment, and anyways I don't see any particular reason why it has to be the only ship in your fleet that'd benefit; it's not like there's a rule against combining an Astral with an Odyssey or a Legion or whatever.

Beyond that, you need at least three of Leadership's Tier 1 skills if you want any of its Tier 2 or Tier 3 skills, but Crew Training is replaceable, Tactical Drills is nice to have but not incredible when you don't care about raiding, and depending on fleet build Wolfpack Tactics may be completely worthless while Coordinated Maneuvers might not be much better.

45

General Discussion / Re: N00b questions

« on: August 09, 2023, 12:59:01 PM »

Tech mining colonies to get the final blueprints that the player is missing. Once the vast or extensive ruins are mined out, you convert the shut down the tech mining and switch it over to whatever industry is available for the world. An Alpha core on tech mining along with a story point increases yields by 50% if I remember correctly, so vast ruins are always pretty useful to mine.

My gameplay experience is that installing an alpha core in Tech-mining is a complete waste of resources; whether or not you also spend story points to improve the industry and regardless of what level of ruins you're working with, it does not appear to meaningfully improve the chances of getting things that you actually want or noticeably extend the useful life of the industry, and a 50% increase in the amount of garbage produced by Tech-mining is closer to what I'd call a penalty than a benefit.

Also, unless perhaps you're setting up way out in the boonies and refusing to use any items, a few well-developed colonies can easily cover your operating costs and then some - if I recall correctly, Dorus alone can net something like sixty to eighty thousand credits per month, depending on how much of its import demand can be met within faction, from Commerce, Light Industry, Fuel Production, and Refining even without anything boosting production, and Ogygia will do about as much with the same setup. Why bother keeping (former) Tech-mining colonies for income when you already have more money than you're ever really going to need?

Size three AI worlds are a good stopgap money printer

They're an awful stopgap money printer because if you leave them going too long you're not going to be able to recover the alpha core you installed as a governor, which makes abandoning them once you no longer want them problematic, and on top of that a size-3 mining colony with decent resources and accessibility can pull in fifteen or twenty thousand without any items invested or probably more than double that with an Autonomous Mantle Bore. Additionally, while it can vary quite a bit from game to game, alpha cores are quite often not something you have in the early part of the game when you might actually want something that could reasonably be described as a "stopgap" money printer, especially if you're setting up your 'stopgap money printer' before exploring a nontrivial fraction of the sector.

Lastly, pirates no longer raid player colonies unless they reach enough hostile activity,

A Patrol HQ likely isn't going to do anything meaningful to the sorts of fleets that pirates generally send out to raid colonies, especially if the hostile activity meter actually gets high; the point of putting one in the system is to do something about shipping raids, because shipping losses can cripple colonial income and it doesn't actually take that much to kill a lot of the smaller fry that might go after trade fleets. It'll also passively contest pirate control over any satellites in the system, which means less baby-sitting.

Which means the only thing you have to manage is the Hegemonies AI inspections, which can be easily bought off every couple years.

Pathers can be bought off every couple years, too, or shut up permanently if you give them the bomb, and there's a significantly larger benefit to sticking a couple alpha cores on a major colony with a base income of over a hundred thousand than on several minor colonies with a base income of maybe a fifth that much.

Also, a major colonized system can stand a pretty good chance of fighting off an AI inspection fleet (or, really, any other expeditionary force) without player intervention, so if you really want to take a hands-off approach to colony management putting the cores on the big worlds is a much better way to go.

Kanta's wrath is impossible to remove, even by destroying Kanta's den. So, completing the story causes 2 additional HA to be tacked on forever.

Angering Kanta may be the best and fastest way to get through that part of the storyline, but if I recall correctly it's not the only way to complete it.

Also, so what if Kanta's mad? Blowing up an inconvenient pirate base or two every now and then is hardly a problem for the sort of fleet you ought to have by the end of the storyline or with well-developed colonies, and even at 5 stability base pirate interest plus Kanta's wrath is only just over the passive hostile activity reduction of a military base on a size-6 colony.