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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Topics - AxleMC131

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46
(Not sure if this has been mentioned before - I know a bunch of Autofit/Restore related stuff has - but just in case, here it is.)

Accidentally discovered this shortly after recovering a Luddic Path Brawler outside Jangala. Popped back to Asharu's Abandoned Terraforming Platform (where I've been storing weapons), wondered how much it costs to restore a 3-D-mod Brawler (LP).

I'm guessing this is because the ATP isn't technically a "market" and therefore you aren't actually paying anyone.

Spoiler

[close]

47
Mods / [0.8a] Better Beginning v0.3 - Create the Story!
« on: May 03, 2017, 08:22:04 PM »
Better Beginning
         Version 0.3 - For Starsector 0.8a          





Download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1dgro0d7ut36nn/BetterBeginning_v0.3.zip



Please Note
Due to the recent release of 0.8.1 and the following updates to Nexerelin and Dynasector, it should be noted that Better Beginning is redundant if you are also running either of those major mods, as their character creation/generation processes override that of Better Beginning.

If you're running Nexerelin and/or Dynasector, it is recommended you uninstall (or at least disable) Better Beginning as it will otherwise be completely useless.




Features
"Better Beginning" is an extremely simple utility mod that gives you a wider ship selection when starting a new campaign game. Currently it replaces the vanilla options with three trees of three ships each (flagship, support and logistics), presented in the form of an interactive narrative.

The mod seeks to return slightly to previous options for starting ships, and also to experiment with more complex rule features to give the player more varied starting scenarios - not just ships in their fleet, but things like financial situation, resource/equipment wealth, and faction relations.

All options aim to be balanced to the point that there are no options that the player always wants to pick, but likewise no options the player would never pick. The difference comes purely from player choice and the influence of a little role-play.



Changelog

Version 0.3 (Overhaul #1 - Experimental)

- Reconfigured ship selection with an interactive narrative
- Added a third tree of ship options
- No longer includes stock ship choices (though some are still options in different places)

- Revised first tree:
   - Removed all previous options
   - Added three destroyer options for player flagship
- Revised second tree:
   - Removed all previous options
   - Added three frigate options for second ship
- Added third tree:
   - Added three logistics options for third ship

- Removed additional benefits (temporary)


Version 0.2 (Quickfix #1)

- Cerberus primary choice now gains the player 10,000 credits
- Vigilance secondary choice now gains the player Gladius and Dagger fighter LPCs

- Updated some dialogue and tooltip texts
- Reordered secondary options to subtly suggest appropriate ship matches


Version 0.1 (Testing release)

- Added new options for the player's starting ship:
   - Tempest
   - Lasher
   - Cerberus
- Added new options for the player's secondary ship:
   - Dram with additional fuel
   - Hound with high-tech weaponry
   - Vigilance


48
Since procedural generation was added to the game, the sector has become oh so much more beautiful, exciting and mesmerizing to explore, visually as much as gameplay-wise. I probably haven't played nearly as much of the version as other people out there, but even what little I've seen has been awe-inspiring and serene and dangerous and vibrant, and everything else in between.

Therefore, I wanted to create a thread where players can share screenshots of their adventures in 0.8 - specifically starscapes and system generation - for others to gawk at, and maybe be a source of desktop background material... You never know!

Have some jaw-dropping 'scapes you'd like to share? Post them in the comments below, paying attention to the following guidelines:
- Try to take screenshots without the HUD. You can check your game settings to see what the shortcut key to hide the HUD is.
- If you post full-size or HD screenshots or multiple screenshots in one comment, please put them inside a spoiler tab to avoid cluttering up the thread.
- Please only post screenshots you have taken yourself.
- Usual [REDACTED] rules apply. If you're revealing spoilers, stick them in a spoiler tab.
- Assume that by posting screenshots here you are giving permission for other players to save said images for their own personal use (desktop backgrounds, posters, etc). (I'm allowed to assert that rule, right @Devs?)

Also, if things still aren't pretty enough for you, check out Tartiflette's gorgeous new mod Unknown Skies!

Happy Exploring!

49
Suggestions / QoL: System markers for interesting locations
« on: April 25, 2017, 04:19:58 AM »
Since we now have procedurally generated sectors, it can get a little confusing remembering where you've been and which system it was that had that cool thing you wanted to finish exploring, but didn't have the cargo capacity or time to do it earlier.

It would be nice, therefore, to be able to manually mark systems with a "Point Of Interest" icon. This could be implemented as an additional option in the drop-down list when you click on a system from the sector map, and could show up with an icon similar to those systems with a warning beacon attached.

That way the player can easily mark a particular system amid a cluster of confusingly similar stars, and be able to return to it at a later date with less hassle.

Thoughts?

50
Suggestions / QoL: Salvage risk assessment rating
« on: April 22, 2017, 06:27:09 PM »
At present, when you attempt to salvage a debris field or ship, you first get a subtle suggestion of how likely it is to find something, ie. "Long-range scans indicate it's [likely/possible/unlikely] something of value could be found inside."

If I remember correctly, as you repeatedly salvage the same area the reward goes down as the accident chance goes up. Would it be possible to also have a "Risk Assessment Rating" for the operation? It isn't strictly necessary, but it feels extremely sensible. Maybe after you click "Assess" and it gives you the stats on the salvage operation crew/machinery bonus and salvage rating, you could also have something like...

"Your Chief of Recovery Operations examines the situation and warns of a [low/moderate/high] level of danger to the crew and equipment which will perform the salvage operation."

Thoughts?

51
This happened in the second part of the campaign tutorial that is received through the "Important" intel tab.

"... Contact $dataContactName at Derinkuyu Mining Station...."

Spoiler



[close]

The agent still has a properly generated name however:

Spoiler



[close]

52
(Found this while looking at new ship variants in the single missions.)

The Monitor-class Frigate still only has the one variant, which shows it with flak cannons attached (as expected), but clicking on this and confirming the loadout somehow removes the flak cannons entirely. The only way to bring them back is to reset the mission.

On a whim, I also tried this on an Onslaught in a random mission, and the same thing occurs for the Thermal Pulse Cannons. Somehow Autofit completely removes built-in weapons from hulls.

Screenshots included for both cases:

Spoiler

Monitor after selecting "Escort" as the target variant:



[close]

Spoiler

Onslaught after selecting "Standard" as the target variant:



[close]

EDIT: You know, I never thought I'd ever see a normal Onslaught without its TPCs.  ??? Now I've seen everything...

53
I've asked this question previously when I was designing the shipsystems for The Silent Armada, where ballistic rate of fire, flux venting, etc. are buffed to a point that scales with the ships current flux level.

Through a number of concepts to redo the combat system for the mod, I've decided that what I need is to instead have a similar mechanic but as a hullmod instead of system. Problem is, the BaseShipSystem and BaseHullMod (blah blah) classes have different factors, and I'm not sure if I can make a hullmod that allows dynamic changes to buffs...!

Any advice?

Specifically, the plan is a hullmod that constantly changes how much flux ballistic weapons generate, dropping the rate as the ship's flux level goes up. I can handle the FluxTrackerAPI somewhat - the difficulty is converting a shipsystem into a hullmod.

54
Sorry to bother the Devs once again, I'm sure they're getting frustrated at incessant posts demanding info on the 0.8 update, and need to get back to work on the 0.8 update ( ;D ) but I noticed this out of the corner of my eye while reading through HELMUT's old post from 2016 effectively reviewing ships and sticking Safety Overrides on whatever was around at the time... *inhales* AND I had a question. As in the title:

Why is the Conquest the only ship in the game with a 1.4 efficiency shield?

I can't believe I'd never noticed it before, but the stock "ship_data.csv" confirms it! Every other ship in the game [with a shield] has a shield efficiency (amount of flux generated per damage point taken) between 0.6 (efficient) and 1.2 (inefficient) in steps of 0.2, and each division has a fair number of ships with that level.

It goes without saying that the Conquest's horribly inefficient 1.4 flux-per-damage explains a lot of people's problems with it - as well as why I was convinced for a long time that its problem was a lack of venting capability (it decidedly isn't...) - but rather than complain, I'm super-curious to understand why that might be?

And just so no-one takes this the wrong way, I'm aware a lot of things are changing in 0.8. This isn't a call for yet another change, this a simple, honest query of "Why? Why was this decision made at the time it was made?"

55
This is another one of those miscellaneous questions I'm sure many players have considered while playing Starsector, and I thought I might go ahead and ask this of the developers, purely out of curiosity:

When you create a new weapon, how do you decide how many Ordnance Points it costs to fit on a ship?

Is it a simple balancing act between the big stats like DPS, flux efficiency, range, ammo, etc... Or are there less fundamental reasons to make a weapon cost X amount of OP? Does the weapon's accessibility/rarity within the campaign come into play? How about lore-related factors, such as ease of fitting, tech level? Do you have a set-in-stone procedure that decides all this when you create something new, or does it differ?

How about hullmods? Do similar rules apply?

And - screw it! - while we're on the topic, is there any advice you'd like to give to modders about balancing the ordnance point cost of their content?

56
As in the title, I had this thought just now while playing a campaign game, and it occurred to me that along with various uses for commodities being added in 0.8 (heavy machinery for salvage and surveying, volatiles for this neutrino detector thingy) that it isn't too far-fetched that hand weapons may also have an impact on gameplay.

The immediate connection was "Hand Weapons" + "Marines" = "Better chance of successful boarding". Basically, you can improve the effectiveness of your marines by providing additional weapons for them to use while boarding an enemy ship.

(Further nerdy examples and ideas in the spoiler, none of which you have to pay attention to.  ;D )

Spoiler

This could be balanced with a limitation that states a marine cannot hold more than one weapon at a time, ie. You are only increasing the effectiveness of your marines by carrying more and more hand weapons up to the point where you have as many hand weapons as marines, at which point the benefit caps.

The math could also work by a percentage or ratio of "Armed Marines" to "Unarmed Marines", so the actual numbers aren't important, only the number of hand weapons compared to marines. Perhaps when you have no hand weapons, your marines have a slightly degraded effectiveness (not much though). As you have more hand weapons that effectiveness goes up, so if half of your marines are "armed" they get a universal 10% effectiveness buff. Maybe when all your marines are armed the benefit caps at 25%. Not much, but enough perhaps to warrant carrying hand weapons alongside other commodities for your own purposes.

[close]

"Increased effectiveness", by the way, could refer both to increasing the chance of successfully boarding a ship, as well as decreasing the chance of losing marines in the action.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Yeah, I know, boarding is being removed in 0.8. But still, could be food for thought for future versions with certain adaptions?

57
I've been doing a little more work on my mod The Silent Armada, specifically regarding implementing an additional hard flux dissipation to the fancy built-in hullmod all the ships have, and I wanted to point out some of the math I did to reach an interesting conclusion.

This also applies in the stock game to the Monitor and its "Flux Shunt" hullmod (which allows it to dissipate hard flux at 50% of the normal flux dissipation rate while shields are active). Turns out, 50% is NOT the rate at which the ship appears to dissipate flux in that situation. The same is true of the modifications I've made to the hullmod from my mod. So, I thought I'd do a little maths.

Here are my notes from the WIP version changelog to explain why this is the case:



- Built-in hullmod "Rewired Flux Dispersal" now also allows TSA ships to dissipate hard flux at 75% normal rate while shields are active

NOTE: This makes it harder for the player to hold a high flux level outside of combat, and therefore means that to get the most effect out of the Flux Sink ship systems, they have to stay in combat to keep their flux high. Previously the player was able to maintain a high flux level outside of combat by keeping their shields up.

The hard flux dissipation also scales with the Flux Sink buffs to passive venting, allowing ships with those systems to stay in combat for longer while still keeping their shields up.

It is worth remembering that flux dissipation rate while shields are active is still lowered by the shield upkeep, so the actual hard flux dissipation rate is quite a lot lower than 75% (0.75) of normal passive venting. Most TSA ships have a shield upkeep that uses 40% (0.40) of their base venting rate ('V'), so without any further modifiers, hard flux dissipates ('H') at:

      H = ( V - (0.40V) ) * 0.75
          = 0.60V * 0.75
          = 0.45V
          = 45% of normal passive venting rate




Not sure if anyone else out there was initially confused by "Hard flux dissipation rate", but hopefully that clears up some of the finer points - at least, the ones I've figured out here. Have a nice day!  ;D

58
My first time playing Starsector for YouTube - the first in a bunch of things I have planned with the game! Just thought I'd share this first video as a little shameless self-promotion, see what people think, and to hopefully nab a few new followers direct from the game's community.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIpuE6_wfjY

(Channel is my "variety gaming" channel, mostly Minecraft-related, but with other games thrown in regularly. Starsector is the most recent of these.)

59
To cut a long story short, I first heard about the Composite mount type in one of the blog posts for 0.8 (specifically the development of the Mora-class Carrier), and saw it mentioned as "the cool new thing". Having never encountered or even heard of this type of mount - which fits ballistic or missile weapons to complete the three-way every-option-fulfilled triangle - I assumed, probably not without reason, that it was a new thing coming in 0.8.

(As they say, when you assume you make an ASS out of U and ME.  :-[ )

Just earlier this evening I was reading an older blog post in my spare time, and saw them mentioned then... And got confused. Immediately I think, "There's no way these have been in-game since 0.7, because they aren't used on any stock vessels! Why would Alex and Co. have this mechanic and not use it?" (I won't bother mentioning the fact that Trylobot's wonderful ship editor, while having SYNERGY and HYBRID as mount types, does not have COMPOSITE as well... Oh wait, I just did mention that. Oh well.)

So, the ultimate test! Follow me if you will, on a journey through the folders and files of my WIP mod "The Silent Armada" as I select a ship to muck around with. The Explorer-class Transport Scow, that'll do. I open the .ship file, find the forward turret mount, and swiftly replace "BALLISTIC" with "COMPOSITE".

"There's no way this will work," I'm thinking to myself. "It's too good to be true." But nevertheless, I save the file, start up Starsector, take a flying leap at the TSA test mission, and ---!

Spoiler

"Well sh*t."




[close]

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, AxleMC131 with not a single shred of dignity left. *Takes a bow*

And on that note, and the hopefully encouraging statement that there are far stupider people than you out there, I bid you goodnight. ;)

60
Modding / How how HOW do modders make custom sounds???
« on: March 20, 2017, 08:21:57 PM »
It's been bugging me more and more in recent times that the one thing I never seem to be able to find documentation on anywhere is the creation of custom sounds for mods. Basic mod setup? Yes. Spriting? Definitely yes. Tips and tricks? Everywhere I look. But custom sound effects...? I've never seen anything on it. :-[ Yet it's one of the greatest methods for creating an atmosphere about a mod.

Ultimately, this is all a long-winded way of asking of the modders out there with some of the coolest sounds I've ever heard in their mods (Tartiflette, Dark.Revenant, I'm looking at you): How do you create custom sound files?


EDIT: By the way, if it turns out there actually is a thread or something about this on the forums and I'm actually just being dimmer than a blown lightbulb here, let me know quickly before I lose any more self respect. XD

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