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31

Suggestions / List built it armaments on ship info cards

« on: August 12, 2022, 10:16:32 AM »

Doesn't matter if it's a weapon, a fighter wing, I now see that it can look very misleading when a ship has "1x fighter bay" but you can't actually change what's in it, probably shouldn't be listed under mounts. Same as built in weapons, should probably be a bit more obvious "hey! this comes with the ship".

Think built in hullmods could also stand to be more obvious, this part is not hugely important but it's also nice to know for new folks.

Elegant way to do this is maybe change the colour of it so it's more clear, and list it in the beginning like with hullmods. Good example are s-mods on ships you want to recover, you can immediately tell what's on there permanently.

32

Suggestions / Let us be able to see enemy ships and officers while deploying our own

« on: August 12, 2022, 01:42:30 AM »

That's it. I'm sure it happened to everyone, you clicked too fast and didn't have a chance to take a good look, or maybe just saw the ships but forgot to check the officers. Also it's easier and more comfortable seeing everything the enemy has while you're thinking about what to deploy and when.

33

General Discussion / What is in your opinion the best mount type?

« on: August 08, 2022, 12:08:07 AM »

For me it's medium ballistics no doubt. There are so many varied options suitable for all kinds of different builds. Sniper, brawler, SO, anti-fighter and hull, PD, budget options, I just never leave a single medium slot open because there's always something useful to put on. I honestly think medium ballistics outshine large ballistics when comparing them relatively.

Second best would probably be large energy mounts. Fewer options there, but each one is unique and useful that it really feels like an upgrade from previous sizes.

34

General Discussion / 3 years since the Sseth video

« on: August 01, 2022, 11:05:05 PM »

Hey hey people

God it's already been 3 years... Anyways just wanted to remember the day when the game blew up, site overloaded and people couldn't buy the game, glorious ***. I always wondered how would everything look like today if it weren't for Sseth. He basically made a trailer for the game, without being sponsored lol. It also meant a lot to me because my favourite indie game was extremely unknown back then, couldn't talk to anyone about it pretty much. Bless our warlord and his merchant guild.

35

General Discussion / Converted capitals are actually nice to use now

« on: July 25, 2022, 12:23:32 AM »

Been so busy complaining and suggesting here that I forgot to talk about something that made me really happy. And that's both Prometheus and Atlas converted versions, that before made me stay far away due to the 6 burn speed. These are now actually decent early game capitals, if you really want to try something bigger, but you're not yet ready for true battleships. I know Atlas MkII. didn't change but I'm super glad Prometheus MKII. got buffed, as imo it has one of the most varied possible builds in the game, such a unique ship. That was my flagship for a long while, while Atlas had the role of a support artillery. Prometheus now feels like a proper poor man's battleship, you obviously feel the limitations of both the hull and OP budget but it's just right in that 30 DP zone (making Aurora obsolete once again hahahahaha). And usually I'll have max 2 capitals in my fleet, anything more than that feels too tight for 240 DP budget, but with these two I could comfortably run 3 capitals. They may be used only by the fodder factions, but I suggest that everyone should try them out at least once, they make for fun playstyles.

But I must say, one of the hardest fight in my last campaign was against a Path Holy Armada that I wasn't yet ready for. And they had maybe 3-4 Prometheuses all with lvl 6 officers. That really was a fight I didn't expect to push me to the outer limits.

36

Suggestions / Various small UI suggestions

« on: July 24, 2022, 11:52:22 AM »

These are the things I randomly remembered now and some that were suggested a while ago but I don't think they were planned to implement.

- The hard flux notch can be hard to see when you're in a hectic situation. I'm so used to the game and I still sometimes miss it in a pinch.
- Easier to tell status of ships in tactical view. Can be a bit annoying trying to click each ship to see if it needs help, and even then everything is the same colour that you mostly look at the position and not text.

I know there was something else but I forgot. Please suggest similar things if you think they can be improved, us veterans are so used to the game's systems that we forget how clunky the UI is for someone newer.

EDIT: Not what I forgot but some sound of effect when you deploy shields. I can't tell you how many times I tried to spam shields, or just clicked once, and sat there like a fool eating a torpedo. Some shields deploy super slow and it's very hard to tell in time.

37

Suggestions / Fleet aggressiveness option should be much more obvious

« on: July 18, 2022, 06:11:51 AM »

There's no way in hell anyone will find out about this hidden setting unless they're told about it, or they read it somewhere. I've seen so so many people surprised you can even affect your ships without officers, and rightfully so. The option is hidden under doctrine settings which affect your colony and its fleets, which is something not important, only visual. FP calculation for autoresolve is all that matters, you're barely going to be fighting alongside your colony fleets because of the nature of gameplay. And then there's a setting so bloody important literally in the last place on the page. If it were up to me I'd put that setting at the start of creating a new game, but for new players the officer personalities don't mean much, so that's a no go.
(It annoys me that it resets with every new game as a bonus)

Before the "new players should try playing with steady ships for a while", I say that the steady ships seem to die more often than aggressive ones. Ever since this setting is a thing, I always turn it up to aggressive and have way less issues with AI. Anyone who's getting frustrated in fleet combat should try it out, trust me. I honestly feel like that's the better "default" behaviour. Steady ships stall too much and expect player to finish every single kill.

38

General Discussion / How would you go about nerfing Eradicator (if needed)

« on: July 17, 2022, 11:59:50 PM »

I'll start off by saying I really don't think it needs a nerf, even though there seems to be a lot of people thinking it's a problem. The thing is, it's just a simple ballistic ship with AAF, there's not much AI can screw up with, and building a decent loadout for it is very straight forward. Easiest comparison is Hammerhead, very reliable ship that's always going to be doing something useful. It might seem overtuned at first if you look at closest competitors, such as Fury or Eagle, but those are a different topic. There's Apogee, Champion, 20 DP carriers, hell even Atlas MkII. And all of those are competitive with Eradicator when you adjust DPs. So you could argue that the ship is too easy (as in you can't really go wrong with it), but that doesn't mean we should gut it and make it undertuned. There's been way too much examples of ships being potent > community keeps repeating it's too strong > gets nerfed > no one touches it for 2-3 patches when it gets buffed again to pretty much the same level it was originally.

So if Alex caves in to such demands, the only thing I could see is dropping the top speed by 5 su, and maybe touching the flux capacity a bit. I really don't know what would you do with it to not make it trash tier very quickly. The stats of the ship aren't even anything to write home about, it's literally only the AAF justifying the 20 DP cost.

39

General Discussion / So what's the plan with the Fury?

« on: July 17, 2022, 12:20:47 PM »

Once again, I came across Furies in my playthrough and I think my relationship with them is even worse than with Auroras (hell even Medusa). But the thing is, I can at least justify Aurora as an expensive flagship. Fury is just not at the 20 DP tier it currently stands. Now if Alex decides to nerf every other cruiser in the game, then ok this post is pointless. Otherwise it either needs to be a bit cheaper or get a slight buff. Now the situation isn't as serious as I'm making it out to be, the ship isn't straight up unviable or bad, it's just that the balance currently is in a such good place, the Fury is a thorn in my eye and my over analytical playstyle. I'm not even sure how would you go about buffing it, except boring stat changes. If it stays the same then it absolutely can't be more expensive than Apogee (18 DP).

Obligatory "I called it": https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22611.0

40

Suggestions / Shrike as bounty hunter starter ship instead of Wolf

« on: July 14, 2022, 10:30:31 AM »

I'm sure there's plenty of players perfectly fine starting out with a Wolf, but I think it makes more sense for it to be Shrike and here's why: It's sooo much easier to pilot, and you have a bit more punch so you could take normal fights instead of looking for those 2 Hound + Cerberus fleet. It has frigate burn speed so the player won't be punished except with a tiny bit more maintenance, and let's face it, Wolf is already very expensive for what it does.

But really the biggest thing here is that the Wolf is ridiculously hard to pilot for a new player, barely any margin for error with the need of precise movement and aim. It just doesn't feel right to me in a combat focused campaign start.

41

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Had a dream about Starsector (again)

« on: July 10, 2022, 03:57:19 AM »

Guess this would be the right place to post this, otherwise I apologize for clutter.

Anyways I dreamt of a new blog post where the game took on a completely new art style, it was still 2d but everything was just so ugly. And I distinctly remember the part where Alex was "reintroducing the Onslaught" since for some reason it received a visual overhaul. I kid you not it was basically phallic shaped, big long tube with something resembling of wings on the side in the back. At this point my dream became a nightmare and I don't remember much from that point. Except that I immediately went here to comment on it after reading the blog post, and to my surprise everyone was very welcoming of this change. Never knew I could have such an emotional dream over a game...

42

General Discussion / What is the point of Defend order?

« on: May 13, 2022, 01:47:08 AM »

Playing another campaign, I'm using strats I haven't explored much earlier. Such as using an Atlas Mk.II as a centre of my mid-game fleet where it does most of the damage, naturally I don't want it taking heavy damage. So I'm up against a really tough LP fleet and I give a defend order on my Atlas, ok pretty cool, most ships surround it and stay in a close formation. The fight somewhat starts and I notice the Atlas is much more in front than I'd like, ships that are supposed to defend it just kind of float behind it. I thought once the damage starts coming that the supporting ships would come out and help (you know actually defend), but nope. Atlas *** dies immediately after some random frigate, while the rest merely watch and fire a shot here and there. The ship that's supposed to be heavily defended almost dies before anything else. And it's not like I'm ordering a defend order on a fast frigate while other ships are slow as hell. We all know Atlases move like snails, and every other ship in my fleet can easily catch up and dance around it, so what gives?

This didn't happen only once btw, this is just a funny example because I have no clue when are you supposed to use the defend order. Seems to me like an inferior escort command.

43

General Discussion / New vanilla DREADNOUGHT

« on: March 11, 2022, 01:42:47 PM »

https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1502374949251698688

Can't believe no one is talking about this here. A bloody huge capital ship with sooo many large mounts and no shields, that's going to be fun to fight against hah. I love how we're getting new powerful normal (non secret or requiring skills) ships that can rival Paragons and Onslaughts. Also of course, factions being more unique with their fleets was always one of my biggest wishes for future updates.

EDIT: Damn I was so captivated by the ship that I didn't even notice that a low tech ship has beams O.o

44

General Discussion / Over-reliance on story points

« on: February 21, 2022, 01:06:47 PM »

I know this is an old thing by now but it just came to me in my second 0.95.1 playthrough that I dislike some aspects of story points. First of all, I understand most people play differently and my use of story points will differ than rest, so just keep in mind I'm mostly doing bounty hunting with some exploration, I spend a lot of time in combat.

1) Naturally the first and biggest gripe are s-mods. Even when the idea of story points and their uses were shown to us, I immediately wasn't a fan of a system where you make your ships stronger with semi limited currency. We lost the skill that gave us extra OP, and got built in hullmods instead, which in the end can give you more OP than before story points, but without them your ships are weaker. Sure, some ships got slight OP boosts, but those were critical even with the bonus OP skill. Now building in hullmods is a cool concept and makes for interesting decisions, yet it kills one of the most important part of this game personally, and that's fleet customization. Before if you had a ship you noticed didn't do much long term, you got rid of it and got something else. There's something not functioning well with the rest of the fleet? Farewell trusty hunk of metal. Not now tho!

Now getting rid of ships or switching them out feels horrible because you invested 2 story points into it to even see how it operates in "optimum state". Ok, we can scuttle them and get bonus xp instead, that seems like a cruel joke because my XP bar is almost always totally green. Just give me those 2 points back if I decide to throw the ship away. I know that defeats the "use story points on ships you're surely going to keep using" aspect but that sucks for new players and for those that get bored of same ships for a huge part of your run. I'm not sure if I'll ever take the skill that gives you 3 s-mods, imagine having to spend 3 points every time you get something new...

2) Maybe the novelty of the patch kept me occupied and I just didn't notice but recovering ships seems also like a story point suction machine. Literally ever trash frigate destroyed in battle is present in standard recovery, and then you have to use precious story point to get anything of decent value. Again, maybe this isn't always the case, but it feels like 95% of the time. I barely recover ships after combat now, finding them randomly in space or getting lucky with bar missions or contacts is so much easier and efficient.

3) Why are officers such a story point hog? Get rid of mentoring for bonus xp, just make them level up naturally, don't make us feel bad for not having a spare point for my not maxed officer. Elite skills are also a nightmare. At max level (or set permanently at 5 to not worsen some skills), you can pick one skill to make elite. AI core integration - it already comes with a downside. Retraining officers is fine and is actually an example of what a normal story point use should look like.

Also a skill I'm never going to get is +2 elite skills for my officers, that one pretty much demand at least another officer skill to make most out of it, and that' even mooooore story point to spend. I know that's a skill issue but it reflects on the topic.

4) Colony improvements are hilarious to me, like who's going to spend 16 or 32 points for such a tiny upgrade?? Either have a cap of 3 upgrades per colony, or make it less extreme. 2/4/6/8 etc. certainly won't break the game.

Sorry if this seems rant-y, I just think there's waaay too many places where you're forced to use story points, otherwise your fleet power will suffer. We brainstormed so much on ways to use them and then ultimately ended up in a position where any small thing requires story points. If everything is going to stay exactly the same at least have more places to earn story points. Story missions give a few but those are very limited.

EDIT: Just to paint a picture, 99% of my story points go into s-mods and officer mentoring + elite skills. In my 2 playthroughs I've spent them maybe on 2 colony improvements, emergency escape from ambush fight (also pretty rare) and once on a historian just to see how it works (another thing I forgot to complain about, but historian is end game luxury so eh). I almost forgot elite player skills for the tree, and once again everyone sane enough will use them on that, it's a mandatory point sink.

45

Suggestions / Revert Aurora nerfs from 0.9a

« on: February 15, 2022, 09:06:55 AM »

Naturally, since my last playthrough was full on low tech with Industry and Combat skills, this one is mostly high tech ships and a heavy investment in Tech skills (with again some in Combat). My flagship currently is an Aurora and I also got one that I gave to AI. Needless to say the reason I'm making this post is because it feels underwhelming for that high cost of 30 DP. AI Aurora dies every second battle even though it has a comfortable build along with a level 5 officer (in short: HB, Phase lance, AM blaster, 2 Sabot pods and 4 Burst PDs). You could even argue that's weak for a 30 DP ship but let's ignore that for now. So even with its superior speed and fast ship system, it somehow gets into trouble and suicides. Sure it can easily chase frigates and destroyers but I have other ships for that (also fighters exist). When it finally meets a similar opponent it just derps out and barely does anything except dance around in its final moments.

Yeah you could make it a missile ship and it would do better until it runs out, but then that's a bloody expensive missile cruiser lol, we have Gryphon for that. I saw Nia's suggestion on Twitter to reduce its DP, but imo we have enough cruisers in that range. I'd rather see it buffed in some way (except speed) so that it can compare to real options. As it stands right now it's a no brainer to just get an Odyssey instead of this for flagship, same burn speed.