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.

1381

General Discussion / Re: [Poll] December 4th Dev Patch Thoughts

« on: December 07, 2014, 10:11:54 AM »

Even though I find a poll before any of us have play-tested the new build to be unfair to the dev, I had to tick 'mostly disagree'. Alex has already said that vocal opposition won't sway him (and it shouldn't), so what are we accomplishing here? The patch comment thread already serves as a reference for who's on board and who isn't, and everybody's a visionary, anyway.

Maybe a 'hardcore rebalanced' Mod will pop up sooner or later, with harsh ammo limits, even more diverse playstyles for the different weapon categories and Daggers that actually fling themselves at the enemy kamikaze-style because they're pretty much a torpedo strapped to a separate engine, anyway. Cowboy hats included.

1382

General Discussion / Re: 0.65 Playthrough

« on: December 06, 2014, 02:32:35 PM »

If we're talking about elaborate tactics and pin-point accuracy flux management then yes, you can expect the player to be the only one able to do that. But when it's something simple like putting up a shield in the right direction so you don't get obliterated immediately, that is survival 101.

1383

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 05, 2014, 08:34:15 PM »

Short rant incoming.

You know that's not a bad idea at all. It'd simplify the whole deal without taking away any of its depth. Right now the CR-Logistics-Supply trifecta is pretty convoluted to understand and to tie in with various ship stats.

1384

General Discussion / Re: 0.65 Playthrough

« on: December 05, 2014, 03:16:58 PM »

I've had several occasions where a fleeting Lasher will show us its unshielded ass while it tries to make an escape. But we're clearly faster and take it out in seconds. The AI could make more trouble for us here, if it decided to be competitive even on retreat. Might even buy enough time to save some other ship's life.

1385

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 05, 2014, 01:25:49 PM »

Timers for destroyers and cruisers per se aren't a bad thing, but the overall supply cost for battles needs to remain reasonable. Fights are already very expensive, damaged ships prohibitively so, and I'd rather keep playing fleet battles instead of being forced into a cheap & lowball kind of scenario just to make a buck. I have a hunch this'll make Hardened Subsystems mandatory because it translates into money saved.

1386

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 04, 2014, 06:40:14 PM »

The Ammo mechanic is responsible for more than just an "Oh ***!" moment when it runs out. It shapes the entire playstyle. High-damage, low-ammo weapons have to be used with caution and aimed carefully. High RoF also means that you can decide to burst-damage your way to a blaze of glory early in a match to tip the scales, but it'll come at a tradeoff. A prolonged fight might've seen most of your Vulcans run out of ammo and you frantically twisting and turning shields to try and keep your head above water.

While the Flux damage bonus was rather arbitrary and we can all live without it, the other changes effectively turn all weapons into the same thing running on different numbers. We can all agree that ballistics are simply better than the alternatives. They can wreck you and do it not expending much flux. What comes next, upping their flux to not make them too OP in comparison to Energy? You see where I'm going with this. I love the variety and I'm forced to see this as a narrowing down of variety and playstyle, or conversely bringing all weapons up to a certain plateau of similarity and power. One less thing to worry about translates into more single-minded battles, which is in my opinion a bad thing. Arcade is fun and all, but simulation feels more satisfying.

Though, just to make it clear, this doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it. A game isn't static and nothing says we can't play it differently once in a while, see how it feels. I kinda hope it'll be a temporary change all the same. 

1387

General Discussion / Re: Shields, flux em.

« on: December 03, 2014, 11:50:51 AM »

No matter which epoch, I find neither shield-only nor armour-only playstyles as fulfilling as a combination of the two. Even a low-tech Dominator will want to occasionally raise shields to withstand a torpedo hit, and likewise a high-tech Medusa will often have to decide whether to take everything on shields or to allow the less damaging (kinetic, fragmentation) shots to hit armour, particularly if they're outnumbered.

Granted, a properly set-up high-tech ship has other tricks up its sleeve - not to mention that it's kitted and skilled to deal with flux - and will seldom have to resort to armour tanking.

In my current run, my flagship is a Medusa. And she can take out 6-8 times her own weight in enemies easily. Could not do that with an Enforcer, not even a Combat skilled one. They'll just never be as mobile, which is another thing that gets low-tech ships killed. Granted, you could put 5 damaging long-range mediums on it, use burn drive and whatever else bonuses you got to be very competitive, but armour doesn't re-grow, it's always a race against the clock.

1388

Suggestions / Re: UI and Interactions streamlining (lots of big images...)

« on: December 02, 2014, 06:02:36 PM »

Funny thing - I already instinctively try to navigate the options menus with 1,2,3,4... it's an old leftover from playing lots of FTL that never quite went away.

Also love the mock-ups and everything to do with fitting info into a more concise package.

1389

Suggestions / Re: Ability to wait at a space station

« on: December 02, 2014, 05:58:27 PM »

Seconded. Good idea. The game is very Mount & Blade-ish and this always struck me as a missing piece to deal with fleets.

1390

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Bad performance with AMD

« on: December 02, 2014, 12:28:49 PM »

I made a log with HWiNFO and it looks like this: CPU and GPU. During most of that it would report a 0-5% Idle and throttle FPS down from 60 to about 30 minimum. Also note that the GPU is still in a mid-power state, it goes up to 1070 MHz on high.

Whether I have VSync on or off in settings.json, the performance is now roughly identical and better than it used to be, which is good. The strategic view for example doesn't tank below 60 FPS anymore. I'm not expecting the mystery to resolve itself; I still think it may be an inefficient piece of code in the graphics driver. But anyway, thanks for the input.

1391

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Bad performance with AMD

« on: December 02, 2014, 09:04:45 AM »

Okay, this is still weird. It runs a lot better now. The only things I changed were to link Starsector to my Java install on C:\ and to install an Intel SATA driver where previously I ran Microsoft's.. but disk access during battles is virtually zero!

Also, I'm seeing a lot of 'proper' FPS regulation and 0% Idle during battles while both CPU and GPU still have plenty of headroom left. This is different from before where it also showed a high Idle %. So at least it's using some measure of power now to give me better FPS, but how come it's 0% Idle when there is so much more headroom on all hardware fronts?

Same thing, different day?

1392

General Discussion / Re: There's a me!

« on: December 02, 2014, 12:04:15 AM »

Yeah I did. The guilt was unbearable for the 2 seconds until the bounty rolled in.

1393

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Bad performance with AMD

« on: December 01, 2014, 11:14:03 PM »

This seems to be fixed for the latest version of the game. Or at least performance is way up. Anyone else?

1394

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers

« on: December 01, 2014, 07:48:21 PM »

Yes, the latter. I'll try it again some more, but I'm pretty sure it has happened before.

Anyway, about the cooldown thing - fair enough.

1395

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers

« on: December 01, 2014, 06:49:57 PM »

Sure, the explanation makes sense. But it's not really a fun mechanic, it just effectively gimps you for clicking at the wrong time. If it's just a measure to make sure you don't exploit phase too much, then by all means extend the no-fire period a bit more before and after phasing. But giving us a cooldown for not really doing anything, that's just weird. Antimatter Blaster is the worst offender here because it takes so damn long to reload.

Also: If you have two Antimatter Blasters and they're set to alternating, it can happen that you click very fast, switch back and forth between them but never actually fire, even though one of the two is readied up. It might have something to do with this weapon 'warmup' as well.