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16

General Discussion / Re: Power limit to ships.

« on: January 06, 2023, 07:49:48 AM »

Also, don't forget that there are consequences: Your flux bar is now full. There's no free lunch. In a 1v1 these 5 AM blasters could probably snipe your opponent dead no problem, but in larger engagements the glass cannon playstyle is risky. If you're a hightech ship, your shields are now useless and if you're a phase ship, you can't phase. These are the ships that conceivably get 5 AM blasters.

Edit: Actually, if you have good Flux stats you can phase and bleed off the soft flux from the weapons. My bad.

There's a reason why in a vanilla game 2 dual AC & 2 LAG is a much more solid layout for Afflictors than trying to fit energy.

17

General Discussion / Re: I don't like the idea of build-in hull mods debuffs

« on: January 06, 2023, 07:44:19 AM »

EDIT: It's paradoxical when developers try to fight min maxing by adding another mechanic which will get, wait for it, min maxed as well.

I think fringe min-maxing should simply not be nerfed out of the game at all, as it hurts people who play normally as well. It's a singleplayer game and there is no pressure to keep everything perfectly even keel.

When officers were new, they were way OP and produced crazy maneuverability and other buffs on their ships. We also had plenty of OP and other stat bonuses in the skill tree. This was overpowered but fun. Arguably it became frustrating when trying to take out certain ship/officer enemy combos.

Now the power ceiling is way, way lower and still we're getting nerfs to the S-Mod system, even though it is itself a lower-power replacement of the previous bonus system. I don't see why it needs this nerf and I'll probably try to mod it out of my game if it happens. I don't need my Annihilator racks to fire at half RoF and make it impossible to actually empty themselves over the course of an engagement.

18

General Discussion / Re: Power limit to ships.

« on: January 05, 2023, 09:41:16 AM »

Ordnance touches on it, moreso the two Flux stats. The only thing that we don't have is a "Maximum Flux/s Gain" which would limit stacking power hungry weapons. It would remove massive burst by Phase Lance, but there's still massive burst by Torpedo for example. So it's a selective nerf to energy weapons which IMO don't need a nerf. The whole point of Energy weapons is that they use Flux much moreso than Ballistics - which is a downside as it shares a Flux bar with shields. Doubling down on the downside by imposing a limit is silly.

I'd rather see AI recognize burst potential and switching to a more cautious ranged stance when facing it, or try to keep its flux lower.

19

Discussions / Re: Games for bookworms?

« on: January 04, 2023, 08:32:39 AM »

If you're into roleplaying, Planescape: Torment has great writing. Baldur's Gate series also, to a lesser degree. Oh, duh!

King of Dragon Pass.

20

General Discussion / Re: Favorites

« on: January 03, 2023, 08:02:53 AM »

Altogether including style and guns and so on... probably Blackrock, or Dassault-Mikoyan. Depends on whether I'm feeling happy or sad that day (color scheme ). They both have a thing going where their weapons are slightly above baseline but specialized. Plus very polished designs.

Just base game, probably Tri-Tachyon. Not because I empathize with corporate fascism but all their goodies are gooder than the other faction's. The "Hope they make it" vote goes to Hegemony though.

21

Discussions / Re: Dwarf Fortress sold 300k units in 6 days on steam

« on: January 03, 2023, 07:59:12 AM »

Starsector, Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Rise to Ruins, Slay the Spire, Space Haven... and that's just what I have installed. 

22

Discussions / Re: Dwarf Fortress sold 300k units in 6 days on steam

« on: January 02, 2023, 04:44:22 AM »

That guy can't have been very much into the indie gaming scene. There's lots.

23

Discussions / Re: Dwarf Fortress sold 300k units in 6 days on steam

« on: December 23, 2022, 12:52:58 PM »

Now that we're relatively close to release, it would be silly IMO to release Starsector on Steam prematurely. You're (still) looking at lengthy wait times between major versions, which is bound to *** people off. Yes, it's very polished but is an early release worth the downvotes of all the people who don't know this game's developmental mindset?

Yes, it should absolutely be on Steam, but doing it prematurely is likely a move that burns some potential unnecessarily.

Virtually everybody knows what Dwarf Fortress is about. Its prohibitive UI and general depth are legendary stuff of memes and there are no misunderstandings what you're getting into. Starsector is an underdog. It has not made it into the collective gamer mind in the same way. Although people who are seriously into PC gaming, such as a lot of streamers, know about it.

It's one of those "quick cash now" vs "more cash later" situations. Where it's not just cash but about customer feedback & satisfaction also.

24

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 23, 2022, 12:23:38 PM »

Sorry FooF, I was being lazy and didn't read every single post. We just had the same great idea.

Yes, Pulse Laser doesn't have to be great at armor-cracking. Giving it stronger damage with lower RoF still would not make it amazing vs. armor. The difference between 100 and 150 is pretty much piddly. It would make it a good deal better vs. frigates and light destroyers though - which the Phase Lance also obliterates thanks to its extreme burst that the AI cannot deal with nor properly anticipate. I never felt Pulse Laser was weak. In fact, for the longest time I thought Phase Lance needed the buff more because it lacks the flux efficiency. But thanks to how AI does (not) handle it, Phase Lance actually excels whereas PL is just the definition of average. It's still one of the best energy weapons up to that size for winning flux battles vs. shields. If it loses that crown in the next version, it would deserve something extra, yes.

25

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 22, 2022, 11:30:06 PM »

Simple way to buff the pulse laser without actually changing any of the values (because it doesn't need changing, it's flux-efficient and an energy projectile weapon.. it has enough perks): Halve the fire rate, double the damage/flux cost per shot. Or reduce fire rate by x0,66, up damage/flux by x1,33. Something like that.

26

General Discussion / Re: The problem with the Radiant

« on: December 05, 2022, 12:03:41 PM »

The Radiant is great. It's a good challenge but can be dealt with in various ways still. Phase ships, even phase frigates, piloted by a capable player will deal with them. Conquest can deal with it okay, but it's a glass cannon and Radiants have loadouts that could challenge the Conquest at range or pressure it into close combat and then it's easy to lose your ship. Paragon is a safer bet, though so slow that it's better to only deploy Paragons for challenging Radiant fleets and leave the smaller stuff out of it.

I would say the only thing broken about the Radiant is that the player can put one in his fleet.

27

General Discussion / Re: Question about adminstration.

« on: November 28, 2022, 05:18:17 AM »

I think it was a natural progress there. It started as just a neat combat simulator - I always offer the comparison to Mount & Blade, which started the same way and then the devs slapped a strategy/RPG system on top of it.

As far as additions go, Starsector is by far the more polished of the two. Everything fits together well, just that there's a couple of design choices that we can critique.

I think the 3 admin limit is just something that has not been 'updated' yet. Almost everyone is using AI Cores and they're clearly the superior choice, but 1) we may see more downsides to using them in future releases and 2) I do expect the human limit to be raised too. 3 colonies is the sweet spot to more-or-less become self-sufficient. One metal planet, one organics planet, one volatile planet. So 3 admins doesn't strike me as an arbitrary number. But the player gets visits from just using AI Cores in industries, so there's no downside to using them everywhere.

Indeed, it could be a fun idea to also introduce a new kind of officer that does the same as AI Cores in Industry slots do, just weaker or juggling some up- and downsides. It's not really any more micromanagement than switching out AI Cores in these slots, but could add some variety.

28

General Discussion / Re: Attacking a heavily defended base (looking for the best approach)

« on: November 27, 2022, 04:46:35 PM »

You can take over a comms/nav point which usually prompts several fleets to burn towards the point and patrol there for a little while. In that time, double back and attack. Just leave the transponder off. Don't 'go dark' unless you need to, or you'll be too slow to get anything done.

You must be using Nexerelin or something. Can't comment on those other options.

29

Suggestions / Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic

« on: November 25, 2022, 05:26:34 AM »

I think this is mostly going to be good for hybrid ships like Odyssee or Venture, where you can outsource PD to a few wings of cheap fighters. Spending for Converted Hangar AND DTT AND fighters just so they can do PD duty - is PD really an issue for the line cruisers?

30

Suggestions / Re: Militarized sub system needs a rework.

« on: November 24, 2022, 07:22:50 AM »

You can get around this by using Aug Drive Field and Insulated Engine instead. There's also the Survey hullmod and Efficiency Overhaul. More Logistics hullmods than you can fit, so Militarized Subsystems are a choice, not a requirement. The only thing you can't fix 100% is the sensor stats, Insulated Engine only accounts for half of it. I can see why it's a bother to have these cut into DP, but it makes sense why it's like this.

On the flipside, does Venture without Militarized hullmod count toward skill DP limits? Because that's actually a competent combat ship. By current logic, it should not.

I agree that this should be more concise, but a solution is not immediately obvious. Making a crowbar separation between combat-capable and fully logistics ships is not so easy (Tarsus? Prometheus?). Maybe skills working with DP should just account for the whole fleet and then be scaled up a bit. Since there's seldom fleets without any logistics ships.