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1381

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: March 10, 2015, 11:33:59 PM »

Imposing artificial limits is not the way to go. If you want to nerf trading, make the interplanetary market less prone to these extreme and easily exploited shortages. Think: What would the inhabitants of the sector do to fix it? After years of living there, why can a certain planet still fall into starvation within days? Why do planets even offer their hard-earned reserves of food to you, if it means they'll have a famine soon afterwards?

All planets should implement a 'reserve', and smaller traders should be way more responsive to fixing food shortages (and making a profit) than these big relief fleets. Traders want money - this is how you make money. Taking this one step further, traders should by now be in-tune with which planets regularly need a product and make regular runs to supply it.

Event-based trading is nice and all, but at some point we should consider that margin-based trading is not evil and it isn't boring either. It's just another way to make a buck.

1382

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: March 06, 2015, 12:41:27 PM »

Correct me if I'm wrong, the stats might be off in my head.

Phase Lance is more flux-efficient and more forgiving as an all-round weapon, but it requires a balanced loadout with at least some kinetic guns to take weight off it for shield-cracking purposes. It has the potential to deliver more damage-per-flux and it does EMP, which makes it powerful vs anything that's not shields.

Heavy Blaster is the brute force method. It takes more skill to snipe fighters and missiles with it, and the burst damage nature of it means that it won't both overload shields and destroy the fighter, it'll do either one or the other. Phase Lance does both thanks to DoT. But you can use HB against shields more effectively.

For frigate use, I'm quite happy with putting a HB on my Wolves and two Pulse Lasers on a Tempest. ABs on Phase Frigates and Phase Lances on my Medusa. You have to consider that in a fleet, varied loadouts will work better because they cover more ground. One-on-oneability becomes less important than utility. Except for the ship you solo with, of course.

1383

Suggestions / Re: Give fighters CR timers

« on: March 03, 2015, 10:13:55 PM »

I could see a 'Refuel Timer' to be a thing, but I find the whole combat to be already so harshly penalized through combat effectiveness and CR that I'd say the less of that, the better.

1384

Mods / Re: [0.6.2a] Uomoz's Sector: Journey 1.3 [upd.17\05] *New video in the OP!*

« on: March 03, 2015, 04:43:22 PM »

I'm really missing the Voidwalker's Theta Fortress.. is this only a part of this compilation or can it be found elsewhere?

1385

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: February 28, 2015, 03:45:02 PM »

Phase Lances are also bru-tal as a PD weapon against incoming fighters when you have them on auto.

1386

Suggestions / Re: Allow some way to cancel engaging maneuvers

« on: February 27, 2015, 02:24:58 PM »

Simple solution: You refuse to pay, the other commander reads you your space-rights and gives you the option to smarten up before he blasts you to bits.

1387

General Discussion / Re: What are the things that annoy/frustrate you about Starsector?

« on: February 27, 2015, 03:16:06 AM »

I don't hate the crew system at all, but I do find the 'halved crew' skill a bit silly as far as fighters are concerned. Jeb, Bob and Joe, you'll be piloting these 6 fighters over here.

1388

General Discussion / Re: What are the things that annoy/frustrate you about Starsector?

« on: February 25, 2015, 03:30:11 PM »

- Getting my ass kicked. Bounties with Onslaughts frustrate me on principle.

- When the AI decides it's time to charge into the middle of a pack of enemies and then gets taken out in seconds.

- When the AI forgets about putting up its shields / turning on phase in anticipation of an explosion. Especially dumb if it's a phased ship taking out an enemy and then it just 'takes the hit'.

- When I chase down fleeing ships and I expressly give orders for my fast frigates and fighters to take out two enemy fast frigates, only to find them all circling around the big, fat boat that I'd brought my destroyer for.

- How shy an AI phase frigate suddenly gets when chasing down a fleeing enemy. Nope, I'm not gonna fire just yet. It doesn't feel right. I'm a libra, you know?

- Certain ships are still too rare, even on military markets. Tempest, Omen, Hyperion.

..that general behaviour setting is a great idea. It'd take some weight off what a capable AI needs to do.

1389

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.65.2a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: February 25, 2015, 11:37:35 AM »

Hoping there'll be another hotfix before the next big cycle, mostly for the odd crash and the fighter restock AI fix.

1390

General Discussion / Re: Dissapointed from the last Patch.

« on: February 25, 2015, 11:36:09 AM »

Taking SS as an example of an indie-funded game done right, I think Alex deserves a community that gives him the benefit of the doubt (and most of the time, we do) and lets him work at a pace that lets him enjoy the process. I'm pretty happy with it. Yea it could go faster, but consider the size of the 'team'. As long as development will continue, that's just peachy. Mods can fill in the blanks with sheer quantity of content until the point that SS will be properly done.

1391

Mods / Re: [0.6.2a] Tore Up Plenty V7c - Campaign + Exerelin Integration! 55+ new ships!

« on: February 25, 2015, 11:28:27 AM »

This is my favourite mod, and one of the few kitbash-mods I can stand to look at, it's that well put together. I also hope there'll be a new version eventually.

1392

General Discussion / Re: My biggest issue with campaign mode - No point

« on: February 23, 2015, 12:57:36 AM »

When you have a total sandbox, what makes it come alive is emergent gameplay. Cues can be taken from Crusader Kings 2 for example, one of the best cases of emergent gameplay I've yet seen. CK2 does it by having a strong social aspect, almost Sims-like, with developing characters, raising children, making friends and carrying grudges that may even lead into war.

What Starsector hasn't got yet - but I imagine it will at some point - is personalities. Ideally, at the start of a SS game, these would be shuffled to a certain degree. Maybe in one playthrough, you ally with the Hegemony and they're led by a small group of paranoid control freaks that jack up patrols everywhere and extend the territory of their police state. Their personality makes them give you predominantly missions for espionage, border security, smuggler catching, stuff like that. And because they're jackasses, they end up dragging their faction into a bloody border war. Another playthrough could be entirely different. But the main thing is that SS shouldn't have a set number of scripted things, but bank fully on its sandbox, extending into every area of the game. When done right, that's how you make it interesting and massively replayable. With checks and balances that make a game play out and evolve along a path that is partially random and partially driven by AI decisions and AI personalities. End-game goals are more difficult.

1393

Suggestions / Re: Simple Skill Change to Remove Level Bonus Gates

« on: February 21, 2015, 04:15:15 AM »

Those level bonuses are fun. They're something you can look forward to. Everybody loves levelling up, and this is a big part of it. Right now they're just too powerful and there's not enough of them.

I took the first 2 Combat skills as a hypothetical example for an optimized skill tree, granting less strong and more diverse bonuses. Items marked green are additions, items marked orange have been nerfed. The red item has been cut. You'll notice the pattern of fleet bonuses at level 10, with the piloted ship bonuses more easily attainable.

Missile Specialization: Missile speed and maneuverability (+3% piloted ship, +1% fleet)

Autoloader Reprogramming (3)
+25% missile rate of fire (piloted ship)
+0 missile weapon ammo (piloted ship)
Increased Yield (6)
+25% missile damage (piloted ship)
Improved Blueprints (10)
+10% missile rate of fire (fleet)
+10% missile damage (fleet)

Ordnance Expertise: Weapon damage (+2% piloted ship, +1% fleet)

Increased Stress Tolerances (3)
+25% ballistic and energy projectile speed (piloted ship)
High-Speed Belts (6)
+10% ballistic and energy rate of fire (piloted ship)
Optimized Assembly (10)
1/2/4 OP cost reduction for small/medium/large weapons (fleet)

1394

Discussions / Re: RPG Theme Of Choice

« on: February 20, 2015, 05:51:13 AM »

Silly!

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Realms of Arkania Trilogy. From the second game, Star Trail. This one can be heard when you're at the blacksmith's. The game itself is pretty unforgiving. It's got various diseases, weapons break, you can drown and die in many colourful ways, but there's also herb-collecting, hunting, great spells and other fun stuff. I can't recommend it enough.

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Diablo 1 & 2 need no introduction. Fantastic music.

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Age of Pirates! I have a love-hate relationship with this game because it does some things so well and then ruins it by being a total bug-fest. What will always stand out though is the (very Russian) score.

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Y'all probably know about FTL. A fun little game that has been frustrating me a lot lately.

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1395

Discussions / Re: IF there was boarding / ground combat in this game.

« on: February 20, 2015, 05:04:27 AM »

Hey, SubSpace Continuum represent! I used to play competitively on Extreme Games. High five!