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16

Discussions / Re: 7 Exoplanets, 3 in hab zone, 1 star!!!

« on: February 23, 2017, 01:35:30 PM »

Lots of planets in the habitable zone is nice and all, but if they're irradiated to high hell, it might not be of much use.

Not to us, but we're not going to be there anytime soon.

There are however quite many organisms that have a lot more radiations tolerance than we do. The most likely forms of alien life we'll see,
microbes and bacteria, can in some cases withstand tremendous amounts of radiation, up to 3000 times what would definitely kill even the
most resilient human.

Even more complex lifeforms such as members of the wasp family show very high resistances.

17

General Discussion / Re: Thinking about making a public mod - Theft from myself!? - Opinions wanted!!!

« on: February 21, 2017, 01:12:44 PM »

I've been working on and off on a still unreleased mod for maybe 2 years now, and while most of the ship concepts
I've thrown out for a completely different twist with every iteration, there is one concept I keep coming back to.

Sure that specific concept did undergo quite radical changes over time, but still I think it isn't that you are out of ideas
when you keep coming back to something, it just means the concept is good and is asking for more of your time to
mature and evolve.

Just my 0.02$

18

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 20, 2017, 04:52:05 PM »

Besides, the USS Ronald Reagan acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with thousands of DJI Phantoms would look really cool and be fun to play with, and isn't that what matters?

Heh, I'll have to agree there. If you tape a Galaxy Note 7 to each of the DJIs, it might even increase the ships combat value...

Still not convinced about placing the blame on "overpowered" mods alone, if you apply the very same logic here then
it is only legitimate to have fighters (or a weapon) with 3-4 times the combat value, at the appropriate OP cost. There is nothing
overpowered about that by itself, it is just flavor.

The problem comes when OP alone are not fine grained enough to balance out, and with weapons we have two factors, OP and slot
size. In my opinion, that would make sense for fighters as well. We don't have to agree though

19

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Running Starsector on Chromebook with Ubuntu

« on: February 20, 2017, 04:29:22 PM »

The graphics don't suffer, but low FPS will make it unplayable, trust me.

Pretty much. Thing is Starsector being rather heavy on CPU, your GPU don't matter much.

With larger engagements, you can have your CPU fans screaming bloody murder while GPU
fans being completely silent even on a high-end gaming rig.

20

Discussions / Re: EVERSPACE

« on: February 20, 2017, 04:25:48 PM »

Look at the math and everything is geared towards kiting and flying backwards, every single fight.

Well, it's hard to have kiting as a viable tactic at all and not have it the most viable tactic at the same time.

Forcing your own terms on the enemy has always been the 1st rule of warfare.

21

General Discussion / Re: Rare Ships

« on: February 20, 2017, 04:20:56 PM »

>hyperion is impossible to get without either
1. save scumming, which takes 6 hours and is """"cheating"""""

Why should that be anymore cheating than replaying combat over and over until you are
satisfied with the result?

The game allows you to save prior to combat, which is essentially allowing you to access
a different timeline if you will.

When does cheating start?

When you reload because you lost 5 crew?

When you reload because you lost a battleship?

What about when you reload after losing a frigate, play the same combat again and not
reload after losing a cruiser the 2nd time? Is that reverse-cheating?

22

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 20, 2017, 04:11:19 PM »

So no, that's not going to happen. Carriers aren't going to get 25 OP per flight deck, they're going to get much less.

That's not going to happen for *vanilla* carriers. But you can't exactly balance strong modded fighters against
vanilla fighter simply by means of OP without running into one of two issues:

1) player uses vanilla carrier with (OP-cheap, strong) mod fighters
2) player uses vanilla fighters with (OP-heavy) mod carriers

Both of the situations you consider problems (cheap escort carrier with endgame fighters and a powerful endgame carrier with crap fighters and more hullmods) aren't actually problems, they're legitimate strategies that force the player to make trade-offs between them.

Even for vanilla, and I already said I think it'll probably be less of a problem there, the first thing that came to mind was the possibility
to beef up carriers as combat vessels with a bunch of zero-OP AI-distracting decoys. Some might see that as legitimate strategy, some
as unintended metagaming.

Sure the player should have fitting choice in carriers, but imho this shouldn't go as far as (bad real-life analogy incoming) the HMS Ocean
launching F/A-18s because they removed the Phalanxes, or the USS Ronald Reagon acting as a gunboat while swarming the enemy with
thousands of DJI Phantoms.

23

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 20, 2017, 02:41:19 PM »

My point is ITU isn't built-in, so it isn't free, it is a choice where you have to make concessions.

Now if you're tight on OP with your weapons package already, coming up with extra OP means you'll
have to cut down somewhere.

Keep in mind that carriers, under the current system, have OP to fit a full weapons package,
and some to spare for vents/caps and maybe a hullmod or two. All other ships (typically) do as well.

Under the new system, given the (endgame) carrier will need the same as above, plus say
25 OP per bay for (endgame) fighters, putting cheap fighters (say 5 OP per, on 6 bays) there means
you've freed up 125 OP.

That makes the new carrier quite a bit more flexible than needed imho, and it complicates balance
considerations, when suddenly the problem is "there isn't a 5th useful subsystem I could get for my
leftover 30 OP" after you've maxed on vents, caps and weapons, instead of "do I take ITU or HS".

Same goes the other way round, if to a lesser extend. Say a cheap escort carrier that only sports
a couple of light turrets that don't do much in the grand scheme of things anyway. Do a full fit,
or run with only the smallest PD you can find and cram endgame fighters in there.

Hence imho it would be better to have a more fine-grained control over fighter size restriction, e.g. endgame
fighters require "large/hightech/whatever" bays plus a *moderate* amount of extra OP (e.g. 4 vs 7), especially
once mods come into play where modders deliberately stray from vanilla conventions.

(Disclaimer: I've actually read the blog, and for the record I don't see that much of an issue with the numbers
presented in there. However, I don't think that'll necessarily hold up for a heavily modded game, especially with
factions that revolve around "strong fighters", as they'd need to beef up more under the new system to stay true
to the theme, with OP costs on their fighters going along with it.)

24

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 19, 2017, 03:19:53 PM »

The thing is, 4-5 extra hullmods are a tremendous amplifier, translating into better range on weapons,
stronger shields and more resilient hull.

25

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 19, 2017, 01:08:51 PM »

could be handy to have some additional options for modding though, especially for factions like Diable or Templars, with their rather unique fighter design/balance.

Yea, I was thinking about the Storm from DA, given that one would probably need somewhere in the ballpark of +150 OP for fighters, and with the already
plenty of firepower it has now, things might end up with carriers becoming just better battlecruisers and players ignoring fighters.

I mean, that ship pretty much is a combination of battlecruiser and carrier, so from a min-maxer perspective, it would be logical to crank up one of those to the max.

26

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Redesign

« on: February 19, 2017, 01:38:58 AM »

Idea for fighters, limiting what ships can mount what fighters, and making significant differences between dedicated and combat carriers.

This could be done by making launch bays sized similar to current weapons, e.g. "small/medium/large" bays.

I've some carriers in early-concept stage, most of them actually carrier escort type ships, and I'd really like
to restrict what they actually can do, as the description sometimes goes along the lines of

"transport converted into a makeship carrier escort, can support a small interceptor wing for system patrol duty"

27

Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]

« on: February 17, 2017, 03:00:58 PM »

Concept for a small combat freighter, plan is to make 3 convert versions from this base model,
a standard combat freighter, a troop transport and a carrier escort.

[attachment deleted by admin]

28

Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]

« on: February 16, 2017, 01:49:11 PM »

@Thaago

Alternatively (as in, instead of moving that turret forwards), try recessing the large mounts back into the hull some, with a bit of the flat armor peeled away to make room for machinery and cooling ports (like the machinery above the engines).

I'd probably go down that route, maybe even remove the two small mounts and completely integrating the large hardpoints into the hull, e.g. have them not protrude from the front. Would probably make the shape more aggressive while filling some space, and then remove some more "empty" armor plating and add exposed machinery like Wyvern suggests.

Then maybe break up the form a bit more, say some kinda stubby winglets to the sides at the middle, or even small maneuvering engines.

29

Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]

« on: February 16, 2017, 01:36:13 PM »

Personally, I'd put the new mount forwards, between the missile mounts. Having such a large turret near the back end feels weird. Looks pretty good, though.

Yea, that actually was the original plan, but it turned out a bit awkward in-game when there are weapons mounted as it looks really cramped in the middle,
especially with Harpoons racks.

So I came up with the idea of removing some height (that hole with exposed machinery where the middle turret was), and allow a rear mounted turret to
shoot over the front (the back of the Wolf apparently is kinda elevated, looking at the original weapon arcs).

Anyway, some new stuff, two kitbashed destroyer designs using parts of the Paragon, kind of high-tech brothers to the Enforcer.


[attachment deleted by admin]

30

Modding / Re: Spriters judgement thread [non-sprite art allowed]

« on: February 14, 2017, 01:47:13 PM »

Had this idea for a while, a refit variant of the Wolf. One of my favorite ships in the game,
love the overall design but always wanted a somewhat different configuration.

Trading the three small turrets for a single medium, with overall less coverage.

[attachment deleted by admin]