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16

General Discussion / Re: Best way to boost relations with a faction?

« on: April 18, 2023, 06:30:58 PM »

The quickest fun way to do it is to find system bounties and cash in on those. Grab every offending fleet and every assist and gank kills with fast ships to get that high damage percentage. That's usually pirates but it may sometimes mean hostile factions. Most "fly-to-a-thing" single objectives won't yield nearly as much.

Welp.. didn't see the date.

17

General Discussion / Re: Game engine optimization

« on: April 14, 2023, 12:57:37 PM »

Readable save is very useful for cutting out unwanted mods that can't otherwise be removed, if you're willing to invest the time. Also, SS doesn't use *that* much memory. It's usually happy with 4GB heap even with a ton of content mods.

18

General Discussion / Re: Is there a patreon or another way to donate directly to the games development?

« on: April 14, 2023, 08:32:55 AM »

Buy more keys! There's not really any difference in doing this vs. Patreon, except that Patreon takes a percentage.

19

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: April 14, 2023, 07:04:35 AM »

Frontal shields are not always better. The AI is notoriously careless about flicking shields on and off; taking hits on armor when it doesn't have to and not accounting for the time it takes for a frontal shield to fully envelop the ship. Assume it's got bombers incoming on the side and it takes 3 seconds for the shield to cover the side. It's not calculating that or see it as a risk, at least not as far as I can see. Omni shields don't have that issue. Unless the conversion results in 360° coverage I'll usually not bother.

Accelerated shields help, and previously with upkeep cost reduction for free you'd consider slapping Accelerated on, too. Now it may be more of a Tough Decision.

20

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: April 13, 2023, 03:57:12 AM »

The only loadout that works perfectly with 3 sizes of energy hardpoints is Beams, and on the Apogee that was bad before and now it's passable. Plasma Cannon build doesn't profit because that works better leaving the other two empty. It's not that big a buff.

21

General Discussion / Re: Game engine optimization

« on: April 12, 2023, 11:19:29 AM »

SS shovels a lot of data to and from the system Temp folder if I remember right, which accounts for some of the time. And this is proportional to the size and number of mods you have also. I noticed this when symlinking the Temp folder to a regular HDD one time to try and reduce SSD writes, and Starsector took suddenly a good deal longer to start up.

Generally the game is decently optimized, but you're stressing a system with dozens of mods (some of which can be performance nightmares in their own right) and it's not fair to judge the game on those grounds. By the way, I played heavily modded games and they were "fine", talking 8 faction mods, GraphicsLib, a dozen utility mods and so on. There was an issue with lingering debris fields & lag that was fixed, and there may be possible performance holes in a particular mod you're using as well.

22

Discussions / Re: Now That's Entertainment!

« on: April 11, 2023, 05:02:57 PM »

The fanedit of Lynch's Dune has a lot of deleted scenes which add cool stuff from the book back into the movie. They are kinda grainy and as it's a fanedit, the guy overused the same pieces from the soundtrack to fill most of these with music - silence would have been better. But as far as extra scenes go, I'm surprised they did not make it into the movie. This really could have been "the one" if not for the cursed production difficulties and need to cut away so much. That, and Toto.

I agree that Villeneuve's is very watchable and slick. If he could just have eased off his style-over-substance approach a little bit and made the movie less detached. The book is a little bit like this, too, but I'm missing the character.

23

Suggestions / Re: Phase Lance

« on: April 11, 2023, 02:12:12 PM »

Agree that there should be a small margin of error. There may already be one, but it may be too small. 5-10% of max range should be fine, as long as the AI also accounts for relative inertia. Such as "If we're drifting apart, only fire if the beam connects for at least 1/2 of the time."

24

Discussions / Re: Now That's Entertainment!

« on: April 11, 2023, 12:45:43 PM »

I'm not surprised all attempts at Dune have failed. The novels are kinda schizophrenic. The first one lulls you into a sense that it's a grand coming-of-age hero adventure, and people love those. The books that follow just subvert that and would leave many readers disappointed.

The miniseries wasn't bad, but it was as painfully '90s as the old movie was painfully '80s (gorgeous art neau-noir set pieces aside) and the new movie is painfully Villeneuve-y. I'd say read the first book and leave it at that.

25

General Discussion / Re: I'm already 54, will I see the game released before I die?

« on: April 08, 2023, 08:44:22 AM »

Certainly. 1.0 is not that far off. If I had to make a bet, I would say 2 years-ish.

26

General Discussion / Re: New to game need combat help

« on: April 07, 2023, 02:19:00 PM »

"Fog of war" and searching and chasing ships is part of combat, so you won't always know where the enemy is. You get notified of captured points and can guess where they're going towards - sometimes that's just a single frigate capturing, sometimes it's the majority of their forces. It helps to have fast frigates to pick off their fast ships and to more easily beeline for points on the map. This also applies to search & destroy once you have won engagements and the enemy has turned to flee.

Combat in this game is awesome. Enjoy the early game struggle (best part of the game for me) and learning things and pushing the envelope with skill and timing.

27

General Discussion / Re: Utterly broken fleet AI

« on: April 06, 2023, 06:02:16 PM »

On the other hand - a lone Shrike against these odds will get surrounded and melted in no time. That's why I suggested an Escort just to keep the small guys alive in the shadow of a tanky Apogee. Generally I don't use Escort either. A Defend command for the AI fleet would do the same thing and may allow for some more individual maneuverability.

28

Discussions / Re: Now That's Entertainment!

« on: April 06, 2023, 07:30:07 AM »

Stanislav Lem is a trip. My first and favorite of his are the Star Diaries. They're good fun if you like nuts-and-bolts Sci-Fi.

These days I'm watching the Zatoichi series again, which is 26 (!) movies about a blind swordsman and gambler in feudal era Japan. They're amazing in that they are all similar, yet they're all quite good as well.

29

General Discussion / Re: Utterly broken fleet AI

« on: April 05, 2023, 10:15:17 AM »

Broadly speaking, when you have fewer ships and get ganged up on, putting a single Defend command on a good point like a Sensor point and sticking together there until the scales have evened out can be a way to win. If you feel confident in your piloting, you can also have the fleet Defend there while you go and distract, harass and pick off ships to a large enough degree that pressure is taken off the rest of the fleet.

Apogee is a good tank, Hammerhead can be a good damage dealer, Fury and Shrike are both kinda weak for their size class. I would consider giving the Apogee to the AI to play hold-out while you use the Fury to turn the tide. If not Defend, then have the Apogee escorted by the destroyers.

30

General Discussion / Re: Utterly broken fleet AI

« on: April 05, 2023, 08:08:33 AM »

You mentioned the enemy AI considers flux and has decent placement - but there is no functional difference between player fleet AI and enemy fleet AI. The only difference would be the player giving a command that overrides what a ship would otherwise do, such as eliminate or avoid.

Yes, there are plenty of awkward situations when the fleets are not well-matched, such as the player having no fast harassers and taking on a handful of frigates with just 2 Enforcers. Or conversely being understatted for an encounter where they have to face off against bigger opponents. Or range mismatches that one party can exploit. Are you sure your ships are just not struggling to keep up with events due to being too weak, too slow or not kitted to work effectively?

I've found the AI is usually fine, but it has no concept of looking out for dangerous burst damage.