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46

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Better Deserved S-Mods 1.64

« on: February 19, 2024, 01:22:51 AM »

Neat, this still works in the new version.
Just some cosmetic UI issues where the word "null" appears a lot in some duplicated tooltip areas, but everything still does what it should.
(Except for converted hangar, which has different OP costs and ignores the vast hangar mod so it doesn't apply the extra bay.)

And honestly, I think I prefer some of these bonuses to the vanilla ones.

47

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: The player morality test

« on: February 18, 2024, 02:11:29 PM »

I found some lost "honest" pirates on some lonely rock, who seemed like a fun bunch who'd just been done dirty.
Took them on an action tour through a red system so they'd have some cool stories to share when I dropped them off at Qaras (because that seems like not a complete dump).

48

General Discussion / Re: My thoughts and opinions on the new colony system, with some suggestions

« on: February 18, 2024, 09:05:13 AM »

Finally got round to playing through some stuff, and have done 2 crises so far.

The first was the pirate mini-crisis, which I resolved "accidentally" as I was lurking around the system they started in as it had a system bounty.
And the fleet got bopped without me even realising it until the battle was over and I got the "crisis resolved" message.

The second was the League mafia protection racket.
16 fleets looks like a scary wall of doom that you can't really win against in a straight fight.
So I chose to follow them from the outskirts of the core on the way to my colony at the edge of the sector, and give them a Vietcong style jungle hyperspace adventure.
Whenever a fleet got separated from the pack it "mysteriously vanished", and by the time the blockade reached its target it was just over 50% strength.
I entered the system behind them and dropped right on top of the remaining supply fleet, and the blockade was "solved" after achieving almost nothing.

The rewards were however literally useless - extra rep with factions I already had maxed out rep with isn't exactly great.
I did enjoy the fights, even though there are plenty of hints to try other less direct things. The League don't deserve them though...
Maybe the boot is it's own reward when applied to the correct rear?

49

Bug Reports & Support / Re: 0.97a-RC7: Music ignores "volume" field in sounds.json

« on: February 16, 2024, 07:36:24 AM »

There is a noticable difference in volume between the music which plays on the map/campaign, and that which plays in a market/encounter/interaction.
The campaign music seems noticeably louder, to the point that setting it at a comfortable level makes everything else very faint.

The in-game volume controls do work as intended, but due to the above it's difficult to find a good place to set them.

Changing the values in sounds.json both does and does not work.
It does work as you can set the value to 0 and that music will no longer be audible.
It doesn't work as the music returns to its 'full' volume level when you:

• Dock and start the market music, then leave. (only seems to trigger on the following markets)
• Hegemony
• League
• Path
• Church
• Unclaimed/Abandoned (although not all entities seem to produce this trigger)
• Transition to and then from hyperspace (again, not every instance will trigger)

Saving, exiting the game back to the menu and then re-loading resets the volume levels back to whatever is in the json.

No mods.
Although mods do seem to make the issue stand out much more.

What's really confusing is that everything seems to be the same as older versions which had no such issues, barring additional entries for new content.

50

Bug Reports & Support / Re: 0.97a-RC7: Music ignores "volume" field in sounds.json

« on: February 16, 2024, 02:55:17 AM »

Is anyone else still seeing this in RC10?

I think I am.

51

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Progressive S-Mods (0.10.2) — gain XP for ships, spend it on S-mods

« on: February 09, 2024, 12:26:30 PM »

Show All > Show Recent

52

Suggestions / Re: Internal fleet promotion buff

« on: February 08, 2024, 04:48:45 AM »

I use internal promotion quite a bit, since all the characters it generates explictly pull thier portraits from player.faction, so if you have any non-standard stuff loaded it will show up here.
And that fits nicely when doing RP stuff with a modified faction.

For triggering bonus xp mostly I start off with promotions.
If I am given the chance to restore CR before a battle I will almost always take that as well.
Running away from stuff makes up a significant amount of my bonus xp in the early game, but later on I will deliberately bounce off a hostile fleet then carry on to wherever I was going if I feel the need to see green numbers.

53

Suggestions / Re: Allow players to directly control colony size increases

« on: February 07, 2024, 04:52:38 AM »

Could be just as simple as an additional toggle right next to free port / hazard pay for "Automatic Growth".
When set to on the colony behaves as it currently does.
When set to off it behaves like an NPC colony - the growth meter fills up, but the colony never changes in size.

54

General Discussion / Re: Some bloat content

« on: February 06, 2024, 12:21:19 PM »

The Col3 is certainly an oversized garbagecan for its number of decks, but it's also only 4 DP per flight deck.

I love the C3 - it's usually one of my early game goals to get a couple of these and armour them up so they can soak damage and distract stuff for me.
They're also not bad logistics ships, and being civgrade get buffed by Bulk Transport as well.

55

General Discussion / Re: Neutrino detector needs a rework or outright removal

« on: January 26, 2024, 03:44:00 PM »

Imo, the biggest problem with the Neutrino Detector is just how variable it can be.
Sometimes you can turn it on and within a few seconds see exactly where you need to go to find something.
Other times you can burn through an entire stack of volatiles (and time) and it's utterly inscrutable because the signals are either buried in an ocean of noise, and/or just so small that they are indistinct from the ring.

Maybe if there were some underlying "mechanism" to refine the output over time it would be less frustrating?
Perhaps it starts off as it is now, and after a set (cumulative) time of operation it can start to filter out the false positives, and then eventually highlight actual returns.
Kind of like a sonar/radar operator analysing and refining the input data to get a better "picture".

56

Suggestions / Re: Map should center itself on player fleet

« on: January 25, 2024, 02:58:31 PM »

I would very much like the map to centre on the current location of the player fleet.
This has been a minor but ignorable issue forever, but the introduction of gates has made it much more noticeable (and disorienting).

If this does become a reality, it should not be huge task to have a toggle somewhere to set the map behaviour.

57

General Discussion / Re: What ship hull would amount to (loosely) a East Indies Merchantman? (incl. mods)

« on: January 09, 2024, 02:41:16 AM »

For mods 3 ships stand out to me for this role.

The Junk from HMI.
It's an Atlas covered in guns. It technically can't really support those guns all that well, but it has them.
Has poor armour and is slow as anything, but uniquely the ship gets better as it gets more trashed. (D-mods give you OP.)

The Eschaton from Blackrock.
Imagine a Venture the size of an Atlas with a sporty bodykit. Fairly quick for such a big ship with it's mobility system.

The Galleon from Vayra's Sector.
Sort of a crossover between a Prometheus and Atlas, but not quite as good as either. It's covered in heavy armour, and has a decent array of broadside guns it can actually use fairly well.
This is more-or-less the perfect "Merchantman" ship, but I'm not sure if this mod still works or not tho...

58

General Discussion / Re: Heavy mortar: slow projectile+high inaccuracy a bit too much?

« on: January 09, 2024, 02:08:42 AM »

It's very good for builds that can get close...

This is also how I treat the Heavy Mortar - when you are so close to your target that the shot speed and spread don't really have a chance to matter, it's not a bad weapon at all.
I consider it to be a "budget Chaingun" in this case. Because while I don't think it's as good as a Chaingun, it has a lot less overhead both for moutning and supporting vents, meaning it's a lot less restrictive.

From what I have experienced with medium HE ballistic is there is a gap to be filled between heavy mortar and heavy mauler.

This has been a recurring debate / wish for years.
I made something to try it for my own amusement, just to see if it was a good idea or not.

Spoiler

[close]

It's okay. The numbers are probably not perfect, but it fills the HE800 gap and doesn't feel like a "must have" or "must avoid".
Whether something like this actually needs to be in vanilla or not is another question.

59

General Discussion / Re: Personal Colony Management

« on: January 06, 2024, 12:59:27 PM »

\starsector-core\data\config\settings.json

Open with any notepad-like thing.
Search for "colonyOverMaxPenalty" and change the number at the end of the line to however many colonies you want to be able to control.

60

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Ship/Weapon Pack 1.14.0

« on: October 09, 2023, 03:05:22 PM »

anyone have any advice on how to build the cathedral?

The Cathedral is a very silly ship, and I love it dearly.
It is so very slow though, and to make use of it in anything approaching a not-tedious/frustrating manner where everything just runs away and avoids you forever you need to maximise it's speed by following 4 rules:

Spoiler

Rule #1: Do not put guns (or anything else that generates flux) on the main module. Missiles only or leave the mounts empty.
Rule #2: Put makeshift shields on all the secondary modules.
Rule #3: Put Unstable Injectors on the main module.
Rule #4: Never set your fighters to 'engage' (so the UI doesn't really have a negative).

You fly the ship by using the zero-flux speed boost of the main module to cruise around at ~80/90-ish speed until you get close enough for your secondary modules to attack things while you take potshots at targets of opportunity with your giant cluster missile while the rest of fleet just does what it does.
When you get into range you can start using your main shield to take some heat off your modules, and throw some mines around.
The main module will eventually get filled up with flux, at which point you can turn the ship to face fresh modules at an enemy as you vent, or let it dissipate on its own as you fling missiles around.
Officers can't really take advantage of this little quirk/gimmick, so you really need to fly it yourself to do this.

The actual loadout of the secondary modules almost doesn't matter, apart from the shields.
Heavy Armour might be a good call, especially for the front module.
2x Squall + 2x Hellbore on the front module is a decent starting point.

Hornet missiles work really well due to the weight of numbers all the modules can generate.
Blackrock Gridfires are absolutey nuts if you can get hold of enough of them to fill all the suitable mounts.
Pilums and Salamanders are fine, if somewhat lacking in the extravagant displays of destruction. They're more opening creators than ship removers.
Generally I prefer to use missiles that always fire, rather than conditional ones (like Harpoons) - but that's down to my taste rather than any concrete 'science'.
They should probably be guided missiles though, so they're not arc-limited and any of them can fire at anything (and over friendlies).

Having PD is good because it eats missiles that can chip away at your modules, but it's not 100% mandatory as you have multiple layers defence already (main shields, module shields, fighters).
Elite Helmsman is very useful for flux management in order to increase your mobility.
Putting Efficiency Overhaul on the main module is good for the upkeep savings (especially fuel), but moreso for the increased recovery rate.
This also pairs well with the Field Repairs skill - any amount of free restoration after a battle is huge for a ship as hungry and slow to recover as Cathy.

[close]

All of this is however merely my opinion, and not any kind of indisputable fact.
Please use/iterate/ignore as you wish.