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31

Mods / Re: [0.9.0a] Diable Avionics 2.00 (2018/11/25)

« on: November 26, 2018, 02:28:34 PM »

i agree to some degree, yeah. but ultimately, their weapons still need to be balanced as modular weapons. not just because Diable can use other factions' weapons, but also because other factions (and the player) can use Diable weapons. if their PD weapons are overpowered or underpowered, that's an issue for more than just Diable AI fleets.

plus, even if they prioritize using their own, all factions use other weapons as well. that's not something only the player would do. so even if the Diable PD choices would have bad flux efficiency, you'll still find a lot of PD weapons with good flux efficiency on Diable AI ships.


so: Diable PD weapons having poor flux efficiency as a weakness, balanced out by being strong in other areas, works quite well. each PD weapon can be balanced in itself to be overall worth using on many different ships, without being something you'd wanna use all the time.
but that doesn't really translate well into flux inefficient PD being a weakness inherent to the Diable faction. such a weakness would imply that they make up for that weakness by having stronger weapon or ship stats in another area (rather than those PD weapons themselves making up for their inherent weakness in their own stats), which would cause balance issues whenever you use Diable ships with other weapons, and whenever you use Diable weapons on other ships.

smoothing over the "problems" of a faction as a player should be about mixing for more varied combination and filling niches that a faction-exclusive loadout wouldn't. not about leaving out the weapons that were designed to be bad, and replacing them with weapons from another source that are just better as a result.

32

Mods / Re: [0.9.0a] Diable Avionics 2.00 (2018/11/25)

« on: November 26, 2018, 06:19:59 AM »

I could see it as an intentional weakness of the faction. Flux inefficient PD.

that only works to a small degree, when almost all weapons in this game are modular. they can focus on PD weapons that prioritize power over efficiency in their average loadouts, but it can't really be made an inherent weakness of the faction -- because if it was a real weakness, rather than simply a different focus, they should just be using other weapons.

33

Mods / Re: [0.9.0a] Outer Rim Alliance v0.81rc2 (2018/11/26)

« on: November 26, 2018, 06:15:42 AM »

ORA likely has too many markets at game start....11 is... even hegemony doesnt have that many markets, and some of the Heg's are in shared systems. Doesnt seem like to many to you?

are you maybe confusing Persean League markets with ORA's? because they have a rather similar text color, and are both mainly situated in the same core world quadrant, so it would be an easy mistake to make.

34

Mods / Re: [0.9a] Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority 0.7.0.1rc4(11/24/18)

« on: November 25, 2018, 02:37:40 PM »

looks really good! i like the mostly symmetric tier 1 with asymmetric tier 2 upgrade.

for Star Fortress.. i think most should have some kind of minefield, as that is the main thing of all the vanilla ones. could create slightly different mines though. for example, smaller and less damaging, but a more dense field (aka higher spawnrate). or EMP mines, that explode into oversized versions of the Heavy Polarizer projectiles -- so not really dangerous on their own, but good at screwing with the enemy while they're hit by fighter swarms or long range station guns.

35

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 25, 2018, 08:31:27 AM »

What item of expenditure? Maybe it special from "hard" spacer start? This grows from the level of the player and it is strange.

yes, this is from the spacer start: "a life-long debt"

36

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 25, 2018, 06:37:33 AM »

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but has anyone else encountered a bug where you cannot join your colony's forces in a fight?

A Sindrian diktat expedition is floating around my colony and engaging patrols/star station but I get the "neither side trusts you enough" message.

Enable the transponder. You can't join fights with transponder off.

Now whether this should be a requirement is another question. Pirates are clearly aware of each-other despite running without transponder, so it would make sense for player faction to have some private communications channels as well.

it can still happen with transponder enabled, when you have good reputation with the attacking faction. fleets only let you join if are either hostile to one side but not the other, or allied to one side but not the other. that worked fine before, but now it will have to be tweaked to allow joining against these hostile fleets even if they belong to an allied faction.

37

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 25, 2018, 04:21:48 AM »

This particular station has a weakness on the first stage, when a ship can pound it from the side and it can't retaliate. If you make a ship to exploit that, it's still just one ship. Normal orbital stations have a fighter module too and midline battlestation and star fortress also have additional turrets on the side, that prevent you from cheesing it like that.

i think all of the station gun modules should still have *some* of their turrets able to fire at anything that is able to fire at them. in the midline 'broadside' module example, it would be a bit crazy (and look rather silly) if all 9 large turrets could fire at that Cerberus. but i'd say at least 2 or 3 of them should be able to, as well as a couple of the small ones for PD coverage from that direction.

the stations have these spurs that cover the sides and have to be destroyed before the gun module can be engaged at that angle, but i still think doing so should work along the lines of "destroy this cover module so you can damage the main module while only a third of its guns can hit you", rather than "destroy this cover module so you can cheese the main module without fear of retaliation".

for larger, fully equipped stations, you first need to destroy the other big modules to be able to cheese it like that. but that doesn't prevent the largest, most dangerous modules to eventually be cheesed like that regardless, after all the less dangerous ones have been taken care of.

38

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 24, 2018, 05:44:43 PM »

light industry isn't meant to turn a profit, it's to support your faction's population needs internally.

if that were how it actually works, sure. but it isn't. as long as you have decent accessibility, afaik it makes no difference whether you produce goods locally/in-faction, or import them from out-of-faction. out-of-faction imports don't cost anything.

but regardless, even if it it would work that way, this logic could be applied to pretty much any industry. food for your own population, ore for your own refineries, metals for your own heavy industries, armaments for your own ground defenses, fuel for your own spaceports, supplies for many of your different industries, etc. unless you own Volturn, literally every good that an industry on one of your colonies can produce will be in demand by another industry you can build on the same colony, or on other colonies of your faction.

but that doesn't change the fact that LI does export its produced goods just like any other industry. i don't mind if not all industries are meant to be profitable (and i actually think HI shouldn't be, as mentioned). but saying that if LI isn't profitable, it is clearly because it isn't meant to be, seems a bit silly -- especially considering the use you describe doesn't actually exist in terms of gameplay (unless you have really bad accessibility for some reason, so that you run into shortages when importing from out-of-faction).

39

Mods / Re: [0.8.1a] Nexerelin v0.8.4b "War and Peace" (update 2018-09-30)

« on: November 24, 2018, 10:49:58 AM »

my thoughts on how capturing enemy markets could work with the new colony gameplay:


i'd say captured markets should simply be different from your own colonies, by default. they'd be part of your faction, but not under your direct leadership or control. sort of like a vassal that provides you with a share of its income, and will follow your lead in important military matters, but is otherwise allowed and expected to govern itself. so in gameplay terms, they could stay very close to what they were in 0.8.1.

many players will still want to be able to take over big markets, like Sindria, and make them theirs properly. so that should be possible, but for a significant cost. probably just credits, but could also include additional resources. the more valuable the market (size, built industries, planet conditions, accessibility rating, etc), the higher the cost to take full control of it.

if the total number of colonies under direct player control stays the same as in vanilla (meaning penalties for going over the max), and taking over other factions' markets entirely is costly, i think it should work out alright for balance, and allow Nex functionality without completely devaluing the process of building up your own colonies from scratch.


the cost for integrating a captured market fully into your own faction could be explained conceptually as being required for a smooth transfer in leadership, with many branches of local government requiring significant bureaucratic effort to ensure everything will still work without major issues under the new authority. local military and/or commercial structures might also need to be restructured. and last but not least, the population at large would generally probably not be too happy about the massive changes that end, in effect, end with being ruled by a new dictatorship (even if many of the current governments aren't exactly nice, at least they are a familiar kind of bad ^^)... which might be solved either with bribes for influential persons of interest (law enforcement officials, Luddite clerics, TT share holders, Hegemony war heroes, etc), or with investment into various infrastructure projects that could raise the quality of life of the general population.

40

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 24, 2018, 09:58:14 AM »

Yep, Light industry without free port = doing it wrong.

considering LI is the one that supposedly produces most of the basic necessities for the entire population of the sector, besides food and supplies, i'd say there's a problem with it being only worthwhile for drugs, at the very least on a conceptual level.

even with drugs though, it still has lower profit than HI, despite HI playing a uniquely necessary role in colony building that has nothing to do (in gameplay terms) with its monetary profits. i'm not saying HI should be the benchmark for all industry profits, quite the contrary, but even with assuming that LI is only ever supposed to be built to export drugs, the numbers are still off. not to mention that LI being decent in normal ports and really profitable in freeports would be preferable to it being decent in freeports and completely useless in normal ones, imo.

drugs could also just be moved to something else as well, if LI producing supplies would make it too profitable compared to everything else. Farming would make sense, i think, depending on what exactly these drugs are made from.

41

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 24, 2018, 08:37:50 AM »

from a discussion in the discord: we looked at profits from Light Industry and Heavy Industry, and the numbers on these two seem really off.

Light Industry makes way too little. on my 100% Hazard, 146% Accessibility, and 10 Stability world, my LI exports goods for about 18k credits. it's upkeep is 12k, and that's with a 50% reduction from a Beta Core! it's *slightly* profitable with all those 4 positive modifiers, but only just. on most worlds, or even on that world but without AI Core, it's not even close to being worth building.

meanwhile, Heavy Industry seems overpowered. with all the same modifiers as above, as well as a Corrupted Nanoforge, mine makes 65k from exports, and costs 18k upkeep. if it was just a for-profit industry, i'd say these numbers would be fine. a bit too high maybe, especially considering how common Corrupted Nanoforges are, and that it would be even more profitable with a Pristine Nanoforge. but not by much.
but it's not just another for-profit industry, it has the absolutely crucial function of allowing ship production for both my faction's fleets, and custom orders. even if it would make zero income of any kind, every player should still build at least one HI at some point, that's how important it is. combined with big export profits, it's a bit crazy how valuable this industry is.

the main issue here, i think, is that LI produces only 2 goods that both have rather low total sector profits, whereas HI produces 4 goods that have pretty good sector profits.

so one easy way to at least make the numbers a bit more reasonable would be to simply remove the Supplies production capabilities from HI, and add them to LI instead. for Heavy Machinery and Armaments, and obviously Ship Hulls, it wouldn't make much sense for them to not be produced by HI, conceptually. but for Supplies, which are also needed by many civilian industries, and even basic infrastructure, i think LI would actually fit pretty well.

with my numbers from above, moving Supplies from HI to LI, LI would have an export of 36k (assuming it would produce the same amount as a HI with CN), and HI 47k. HI would still be significantly better, but not quite as good anymore, and LI would make a decent profit.

i know the colony numbers in general will still probably get a lot of adjustments in future patches, and my suggested change might not be enough to balance out these two industries, but it would be a very simple change that reduces the main issue of why their export numbers are so skewed.

42

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 24, 2018, 05:07:19 AM »

re tutorial difficulty:

i also think the last battle of the tutorial kinda needs to be about as difficult as what the player will encounter afterwards, outside the tutorial. but maybe the game could do a better job of setting the right expectations. i haven't played through it since 0.8, so i don't remember how it's currently worded, but some notification that informs the player of a few things prior to the battle could help:

1) this battle ahead is gonna be tough, despite still being part of the tutorial. a new player will need to use everything they've learned so far, and even then victory won't at all be guaranteed.
2) it's okay to reload, and more than once. while many players may prefer to play on ironman eventually, reloading and retrying frequently is expected for new players, and something even many veterans have to do.
3) for anyone who prefers to not have to reload too much, or who has already reloaded several times and just can't get through this battle, easy difficulty option is strongly recommended.

additionally, i think the difficulty option shouldn't be set only at campaign start, but somewhere else. probably just a toggle in the settings. that way, someone who started on normal but runs into problems in that battle can just switch it to easy then, rather than having to restart and do the entire tutorial again. similarly, if it can be changed mid-campaign, switching to easy for a time might feel less boring than setting the entire run to always be on easy.
then the tutorial can tell players to just switch difficulty in the settings menu based on how their fights go. if things get to tough, switch to easy. if later things feel a bit too easy again, can just switch back to normal.

the campaign start panel can still also have an option to select difficulty as well, so that it's easily visible for anyone new to the game, with a short note next to it or in a tooltip that mentions it can also be toggled at any point through the settings menu.

43

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 23, 2018, 03:52:36 PM »

I'm loving the revamped Doom Cruiser.

+1 to that!

also, i feel it needs to be said, the sound effects of the mines are amazing. many great new sounds in 0.9 in general, and i especially love the varied and tiered skill-up ones, but those teleporting mines are still my favorites. sooo satisfying, and scary if i'm on the receiving end. ^^

44

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 22, 2018, 05:28:43 PM »

But as far as gameplay goes, it's not exactly encouraging or fun.

i think that really depends entirely on whether you have means to fend it off. if you had a million credits, your fleet seems quite small for that. also, now that you know enemy fleets striking at your colonies is a thing, you can prepare for next time by starting to build an orbital defense station, which can make a huge difference in battle.

also keep in mind, you don't *have* to win that battle. if it is hopeless, just avoid it. let their fleet do its thing. they'll disrupt your industry, but they're probably not gonna destroy the entire colony, so it's not exactly a "game over" state if you're unable fend them off.

my personal experience has been kinda the other opposite: the enemy fleets that tried to attack me so far were all absolutely crushed, primarily because even a tier 1 orbital station really can completely swing the battle in your favor. and even if i had let them defeat the station and land their troops, their chances at getting past my ground defenses were low. so i'm actually hoping future fleet will be larger and/or higher quality, as so far the fights against them have been a bit diappointing.

45

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 22, 2018, 04:06:39 PM »

Well... I mean thats just kind of Piranhas. They are true 0 OP bombers

they are not 0 OP, if that's what you're saying. they are 10 OP, 2 less than Perditions.

as for balance, i actually think they are fine as they are. i used to think they're trash, as most people seem to do, but they do have a niche; they have *by far* the highest damage potential. if even half their bombs hit, they'll do more damage than any other bomber wing would do with all their missiles hitting.
most of the time, that damage potential isn't worth much, because they are so unreliable. but when they work, they *really* work, vastly outgunning any other bomber (except maybe Flashes?). so while i don't use them very often, i still do use them sometimes, and find them to be quite effective when used in the right combination and situation.

maybe they could stand do be slightly cheaper, like 7 OP or so, but i think they are fine as they are for the most part.