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

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Messages - Hiruma Kai

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1
Allows you to disengage most fights, and those you can't just run foe the top of the map at full speed.
That doesn't sound any different to my Dram experience.

It mostly only matters against Pather fleets with fast SO frigates or if you play with mods, some mod factions.  Or if you are not using a Safety Override Dram since a basic Dram can be caught by most d-mod pirates fleets with some frigates.

From my experience, the ability to disengage without if fight is a comparison of your slowest speed, or your slowest burn speed ship to the enemy's fast speed or fastest burn speed.  Oddly enough, a Bulk Transport skill + civilian Dram (so no SO fallback) at burn speed 11 can disengage from most frigate fleets, while a Militarized Dram with Navigation skill at burn speed 11 can't.  Not sure what the interaction there is.  In any case, for a speed run of the campaign, I'd almost always pick Navigation first for transverse jump ability from the very start, which has me leaning towards the Hound, personally.

I attach two pictures of trying to disengage from the exact same opposing fleet to explain why.  An SO + UI Hound can do disengage and then leave without a fight, while the SO + UI Dram cannot and is forced into a retreat combat.  Essentially, if a Pirate fleet includes an Overdriven Hound (one of the target variants) or it is a Pather fleet with sufficiently fast frigates generally, means the SO + UI Dram can be caught, or at least forced to the battle map.  And an Overdriven Hound is speed 280 vs the Dram's 245.  It is admittedly a small sub-set of the game space, and Pather usually let you pay credits to be on your way, but as someone who has played a lot of early game on Iron man, I've at least regretted the Dram choice once.  And again, can matter more if mods are present.

I also happen to like the interaction of Rugged Construction, disengaging only costing 10% CR and 1.5 supplies (instead of 20% CR and 2 supplies) so I can chain escape, larger cargo bay and more crew which means I can take advantage of serendipitous salvage opportunities a bit better.

You don't really have to get away from things, as long as you've completed the objective. In fact, if your mission takes you to outer worlds, it might be quicker to intentionally sink your ships and emerge back in core worlds.

For me, it is more likely a hostile small frigate fleet patrolling the core I accidently land on while transverse jumping that gets me.  Or speeding through a slipstream into an ambush I can't react fast enough at 2x speed.

As for taking the fast way back from the black, getting destroyed also hits your accumulated credits somewhat, and is also precluded if you hit up some salvage opportunities while out in the black, which may or may not matter depending on why you are speed running the gate storyline in the first place.

2
I personally like a solo Safety Override and Unstable Injector Hound with s-mod auxiliary fuel tanks instead of a Dram, at least when playing with the Ironman option.  Allows you to disengage most fights, and those you can't just run foe the top of the map at full speed.

3
General Discussion / Re: do you unironically use DEM missiles?
« on: March 17, 2024, 11:13:26 AM »
In terms of dragonfire: I don't find that they do soft flux to matter much. If the enemy decides to hold fire to bleed off 4k soft flux then they aren't firing 4k flux at me.
you pay 6 op to make your opponent pretend they missed 5.5 blaster shots? Best case scenario. Cause most often shields are like 0.5 for Remnants. Or 0.8 on average I would guess...
I mean, fair.

If you're including bonuses from skills and CR to get to 0.5 efficiency, you really should apply it to both offense and defense.  Baseline Remnant shield efficiency is 0.6.  Alpha cores get Field Modulation and 100% CR for 0.6*0.85*0.9=0.459 efficiency.  Beta and Gamma only get Combat Endurance (i.e. 100% CR) for 0.6*0.9=0.54 efficiency.

Missiles in a player fleet will often benefit from 100% CR, Elite Missile Specialization, Target Analysis, and Tactical drills or Cybernetic Augmentation (assume +5% either way).  Against a cruiser, this would be  (1+0.1+0.1+0.05)*1.15 = 1.43.

For a Dragonfire, this means 4000*1.43*0.459=2625 net soft flux vs a Brilliant or Apex.  Or an effective overall shield efficiency of 0.65 when both sets of skills are taken into account.  And DEMs clearly were balanced with Missile Specialization in mind given every single Persean League officer has the skill.

So, 5.5 Heavy Blaster shots (no shield efficiency or skills), or in the case of a typical player vs Remnant fight, 3.6 Heavy Blaster shots or 4.8 Plasma cannon projectiles can be the difference between you overloading, or them overloading.  Especially when it is done in 1 seconds instead of 3-4 seconds.  It is a flux race, and being able to keep the enemy frozen in place for 3-4 seconds can be enough to win that race.  Although, to be honest, best case scenario is you prevent a flux dump of an Auto-pulse Laser on a Brilliant with its 0.83 flux efficiency rather than a Heavy Blaster's 1.44 efficiency on an Apex.  2625 flux is 3162 hard flux shield damage from an Auto-Pulse Laser in a little over 2.1 seconds, while it is 1822 hard flux in 3.6 seconds from a Heavy Blaster.

So a lot of analysis here is going to be heavily context dependent.  Although in general against Remnants, spending 6 OP to make the enemy "miss" 3.64 shots every 10 seconds is still a better deal than paying 1.6 OP to make them fire 5 burst PD charges in the case of a Missile Specialization Typhoon launcher and Remnant shields, and "miss" the equivalent of 0.55 shots (400 soft flux for the burst) every 15 seconds.  2625 is still 26% of the base flux capacity of a Brilliant, or 21% of an Apex.  16% or 14.5% in the case of maxed vents.  Those 5 burst PD shots against Reapers are 4% and 3.3% of the base capacity, or 2.5% and 2.2% of maxed vents.

Against a fully functional combat line, a single Reaper, 4 Harpoons, or 3 Hammers are not making it across that no-man's land.  Even a Dragonfire might not make it depending on its target's relative location to the line.  Now, point blank range in a human player's hand on a highly mobile ship is a different situation, but I'd argue that is not the use case being considered here, given it sounds like an AI firing into shields. I'd be interested what the best missile investment would in fact be for a single salvo from a medium or large missile launcher is into shields?  Even a single Squall launcher won't drive the hard flux up on an Alpha Core Radiant if there's nothing else hitting it.

And it is true, DEMs are much more effective in a missile saturated fleet than not.  But this is true basically for all missiles, since you need to overwhelm the opposing line's point defense to land non-DEM missiles.  A single Harpoon pod or Typhoon Launcher is not likely to overwhelm a typical Remnant cruiser's PD, while a set of 4 or 8 is going to land some hits.  A full fleet of Gryphons and Conquests spamming Squalls and Harpoons will overwhelm and destroy an Ordo in short order, as their PD simply can't keep up.  Every missile past saturation is a free hit and a fully missile loaded fleet can easily mix missiles to cover each other's weakness.  Squalls and Harpoons or Squalls and Hurricanes can be an effective mixed damage type long range volley of missiles from a missile specialized fleet.

Also, in regards to the extra shots of the Reaper launcher compared to the Dragonfire, how often do you actually run out in actual play?  If you're not running out of Reapers, what are the extra shots actually doing for you?  Is a Typhoon launcher 6 shots for 10 OP, or is it more like 2 or 3 for 10 OP in AI hands?  Especially once Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization come into play.

4
General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible
« on: March 09, 2024, 11:54:34 AM »
Second test same loadout, set full assault from the start. I only watched this passively on the tactical map. This was a massacre. The falcons basically pushed the afflictors up the map all the way and obliterated them. I'm curious if .91 afflictors would make the leap to run all the way below the falcons, but boy howdy did they not do that in this test.

Its a good question, and since I've got a 0.91 install, I tested it.  So I tried to copy the build as best as possible, but a few changes in weapon costs meant only 28 flux distributors, 0 caps.  Still, 2x Heavy Mauler, 4x PD Laser, 2x Salamander, 2 Pulse Laser, Extended Shields and Integrated Targeting unit.

Set the 10 Falcons to Full Assault and let it go.  Result was 5 dead Eagles, and 4 more that wouldn't survive another anti-matter blast, but the Afflictors running out of CR and retreating or getting destroyed because they were out of CR.  7 made it off safely though.  Overall, looks like a better showing than in 0.97a to be honest.  More killed and less caught.  And they didn't get caught at the top, but edged around the sides, and eventually turned into a heavily mixed furball, with them leaking through cracks in the Falcon line.

I'm curious what your take on the more retreats, and more Falcon losses in 0.91a versus 0.97 given as close a setup as I could manage.  You can see the numbers in the first attachment.

I noticed the Extended shields were the real MVP for this fight, restricting the Afflictors down to a hard to make shot.  Out of curiosity, given I don't usually put Extended Shields on a Falcon for general purpose work (they need caps more for dealing with more traditional opponents), I dropped Extended shields, and increase vents to 30 (from 28) and capacitors to 10 (from 0).  The results are the second attachment.

That was basically a total loss for the Falcons again.  So, as far as I can tell, it wasn't the guns so much as the shield defenses being much stronger.  As noted, most of those Afflictor deaths in 0.91a in the first test (mirroring doll's 2nd test) were from being low on CR at the end of the match.   There were a few (out of 14) that did apparently get caught out though in the middle of the match.

Also, as an aside to the thread in general, I suggest we keep our discussion to talking about the ships and their performances and not each other.  People have different interpretations, take aways, and experiences playing the game.  I consider it as an opportunity to test some new ideas or theories out.

Edit: And now that I think about it, basically fighting until CR runs out and having half of them still escape was the problem with the old system.  You couldn't kill them reliably unless you had a very specific anti-phase hunting loadout with high mobility, or you waited them out with solid shield defenses, which wasn't very interactive.

5
General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible
« on: March 09, 2024, 08:34:55 AM »
So out of curiosity, and to clear up my memory, I downloaded 0.9.1a-RC8 again, altered the first mission to be a falcon_Attack on my side, and an afflictor_Strike on the other side.  I modified the Falcon attack variant by removing heavy armor and automated repair and instead putting on Dedicated Targeting Core, put in IR pulse lasers in the smalls, Pulse Laser in the mediums, and left the fronts as Heavy Machine guns.  Left the Salamanders.

Started the mission, put the Falcon under autopilot.  You can see the first two attached images, but the Afflictor eventually won, pretty decisively.

So, first I'll point out this was a 1 out of 1 test, so extremely small sample.  Secondly, I noticed it spends a lot of time dancing around.  A human piloted Afflictor would likely have won the fight in like 1/5th the time, but the Afflictor is at least willing to decloak under IR pulse fire sometimes.  Its 350 armor is good enough to tank that, and still had a good portion of its front armor left I think (hard to tell with the graphic as opposed to a hard number).

Biggest problem for the Afflictor is I think it is afraid of the death explosion, which it should be with an anti-matter blaster loadout.  400 range Anti-matter blasters will typically put you in explosion range of a cruiser unless you're moving away from the target at the moment of fire, and basically on the edge of range.  Alternatively, decloak, wait for phase delay, and then fire and cloak.  However, even with that extra long dance towards the end of the fight, the unofficered Afflictor took out the unofficered Falcon with no hull damage, despite the IR pulse lasers in the rear of the Falcon.

So, what I saw was the Afflictor get to the rear 45 degree arc, move to the other side of the 45 degree arc, back off, try again, eventually decloak in that rear arc, trade shots, and eventually kill the Falcon as opposed to simply having the Afflictor explode.

Keep in mind, a 500 hull and 50 armor buff only increases the time for an IR Pulse laser to get through the armor by about 2.5 seconds (from about 10 seconds to 12.5 seconds), and then only about 5 seconds for hull (from ~9 to ~14 seconds).  Used a quick python script to calculate that, but the hull can be seen from 17.5 residual armor vs 20 residual armor and 500 extra hull.  1000/((50/67.5)*152) = 8.8.  1500/((50/70)*152) = 13.8

Overall relative time difference to kill with an IR pulse laser is 38% longer.  So if you can kill multiple ships now with current Afflictor toughness, you can kill multiple ships with the old Afflictor armor/hull stats, just about a quarter fewer (against that tier of weaponry).  Given  I'm typically pulling 150-200 pro rata DP against remnants with a current Afflictor in a fleet situation, old Afflictor (assuming I played the same) would be pulling at least ~100-150, more in the fights I didn't use phase anchor's escape clause.

At this point, wondering if the high speed of the Afflictor and ability to avoid a lot of IR pulse shots was the issue, I tried replacing the IR pulse lasers with Burst PD.  I changed the Heavy Machine Guns to Arbalest to account for the 7 OP vs 5 OP cost difference of the Burst PD vs IR pulse laser.

Essentially same result, and is the last attached image.  Although higher armor damage in this particular fight though.  Again, tiny sample size of 1.

6
General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible
« on: March 03, 2024, 09:55:09 PM »
An afflictor or shade has a decent amount. 350
No, the old afflictor had 350 (1000/350). Afflictor has 450 (and 2500 hull, to wit). Similar stats to a centurion, with a much better defensive system.
The page you're so confidently quoting hasn't had it's hull/armor values changed this decade.

I'm curious where you are finding these current numbers?  If I open the game (0.97a), go to codex, and look at the Afflictor, I see 400 armor, 1500 structure listed.
Compare to a Centurion, which has 500 armor, 2250 structure.  These match what is written in ship_data.csv as far as I can tell.  See attached images.

Afflictor is not nearly as tanky as a Centurion if its just sitting there unphased, given 2/3 the hull and 100 less armor.

In addition to having ghost fortress and massive armor, the new phase ships are also hull monsters.

I'm a bit confused if 1500 hull on a frigate makes it hull monster, given that is the same amount of hull on a Wolf.  The residual 20 armor is admittedly going to reduce some low hit strength kinetic shots a bit compared to 7.5, but any energy or HE damage isn't going to care much.

Personally, I'm one shotting enemy phase ships with my own triple anti-matter blaster Afflictor, up to and including Harbingers  which only has 4000 Hull, compared to say a glass cannon Sunder's 4000 hull or a Hammerhead's 5000 hull.  Dooms take 2 passes given it only has 8000 hull (compared to say, the 8000 hull on an Aurora, or the 9000 hull on an Apogee, both high tech cruisers). Only light cruisers and pirate/pather civilian converted cruisers have less hull than a Doom.

Now, I'm not saying their armor and hull wasn't buffed during the release where their long term speed was toned down, but I don't feel it rises to the description of "hull monster".  My Afflictor gets taken out very easily still if I'm not careful with phase and where I drop out.

I mean, that second claim is just flagrantly untrue. They've been buffed. You could easily manage them when their relative DPS was subpar because, if your formation and loadout wasn't literally the worst thing ever, they'd always lose the race versus shields while they were surfaced. They were never scary. They were just cool. I didn't use them much because they weren't strong, but it was always fun to see them.

Are you suggesting phase ships are scary now and that you can't manage them?  Or merely talking about previous incarnations not being scary?  Its a bit unclear. I mean, I have an easier time with them now I think than before, since I can actually chase them down and kill them instead of chasing the rocket across the map.  I didn't lose ships to them (I've always tended to hull mod omni-shield conversion in), but actually putting the final hull damage into them tended to be a pain, at least for me.  Is there an opposing fleet thats giving you more problems than previous releases, as I haven't had particular difficulty with even the all phase fleets lately.

It's insane to think people had DIFFICULTY with phase ships. Ludicrous. It isn't even vaguely possible. Get better material. Literally only the doom presented any meaningful threat and it's a defacto capital.

And yet there are posts on this very forum to that effect.  Overall, I'm a bit confused.  Can you clarify if you asking for easier phase ships to deal with on the enemy side, stronger phase ships on the enemy side, weaker in player hands, stronger in the player hands?  If it is the former and you want easier time with the current enemy AI phase ships, why not simply get some better material and tactics?

7
General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible
« on: March 03, 2024, 07:44:33 PM »
Phase ships being durable means that there's no reason to ever worry about blindsiding your enemy (more than once), and you aren't even able to do it anymore either.

Is there a particular phase ship you are referring to here?  I feel that it is quite possible to blind side (i.e. attack from rear or gap in omni-shield) with an Afflictor or Shade, assuming you have Phase Coil Tuning.  Combat skills are a plus, but not necessary.  Although new elite Helmsmanship, 100% CR, plus Coordinated Manuevers results in an Afflictor or Shade pushing 331 at 0% flux, and 109 at around at 50% flux, keeping in mind relative speed to other ships gets multiplied by 3 due to time dilation.  Adaptive Phase Coils would obviously improve the slowdown rate.

Also, I wouldn't recommend dropping phase and venting as an Afflictor or Shade in the front of a cruiser or capital, but both are capable of soloing said ships with proper positioning.  They are certainly less armored than a Vanguard.  So positioning for at least the phase frigates is still quite important.  Even a Harbinger doesn't have that much armor at only 600, which is significantly less than an Enforcer's 900.

The ships which need to do what you're describing are the Doom and Ziggurat, although the latter is really a unique campaign ship which didn't actually change the other phase ships, so their capabilities are still more or less the same.  I could be wrong, but the Doom never felt like a get behind the target and assassinate type of phase ship to me.  It never was as fast as the frigates.

8
General Discussion / Re: An analysis of SP sinks and some thoughts
« on: February 27, 2024, 01:11:26 PM »
There's a lot of things the game offers a player, but you're not expected to take them to the extreme.
Taking BotB and Cyber Aug is some extreme skill combination now? Perhaps Alex should put a warning on it, to dissuade new players from accidentally making the game harder for themselves for no good reason.

No I don't think Cybernetic Augmentation and Best of the Best are an extreme combination.  I certainly can get a very strong benefit out of them both with an expenditure of only 56 story points, completely ignoring any bonus XP.  9 Ships x 3 = 27 story point.  8 Officers x 2 elite skills and 1 mentoring = 24.  5 Combat skills.  27+24+5=56.  That is a complete and full build using those two skills, and be done just as you turn level 15.

Now that does presuppose you know what you want, which is Mishrak's point.  On the other hand, such a fleet is complete overkill for the basic campaign as it currently stands.  You can be less efficient than that, and still beat the expected challenges as presented by the game, specifically end game bounties, single Ordos, the Hypershunts, and the million credit Tesseract bounty.  It may or may not be able to handle a 6x Ordo and 2500 DP worth of ships, but that's not an expectation of the game, nor can every fleet can do that kind of stuff.  Nor should the expected to be, as it would make the rest of the game trivial.

Even with just five ships with triple S mods (out of 9 or 11 or whatever) and four officers with double elite skills (out of 8 or 10 total officers), I feel like I'm gaining a significant improvement in my fleet compared to alternative skill picks.  I feel like maximization of the skill, which is what I'm comparing to a potentially extreme choice, is a separate consideration from are they good enough with a reasonable time investment.  In the same way that you can use a few Alpha Cores to improve your colonizes as opposed to maximizing their use and colonizing the entire sector, are two separate considerations.

Alex doesn't put a warning on colony story point investments, nor on salvaging with story points, nor on adding extra contacts, all of which can be infinite sinks, so I don't see a need to put a warning on the skills.

We'll see about that, if I manage to crack ~2500 DP of Remnants with my double Radiant fleet.
Very cool.  That's extremely close in terms of character skills for what I used for my first playthrough in 0.97, back when NL Radiants cost 72.  Although I was using Coordinated Maneuvers and a much wider fleet for support instead of Helmsmanship.  I like the Pulse/Beam build.  They come in close, pulse rises shields and beams finish them off as they move away.  I'm so used to putting missiles in the Medium Synergies, but this makes an excellent case for the cheap IR Autolances there.  I'll have to try that.

I feel like I've seen the Radiant and support Afflictor somewhere before as well... :)

 
One might argue that having more difficulty in maxing out its benefits is a good thing, to make other skills more attractive in comparison and result in players trying different builds in different runs.
It's doing a terrific job at it currently, now is it?

Indeed it is, as evidenced by this discussion.  On the other hand, as evidenced by this discussion, if there's a default assumption that story point costing picks like Officer Training and Cybernetic Augmentations are so necessary that everyone has at least one of them in their build, that would tend to lend evidence to the theory they need to be reduced in power, or other skills brought up to their level, so they are not an assumed picked.  If something is picked every time, its not really a choice, from a gameplay design point of view.

9
General Discussion / Re: An analysis of SP sinks and some thoughts
« on: February 26, 2024, 08:37:22 PM »
I'll note there is a minor mistake about changing the Elite skills for an officer in the opening. The retrain button (change elite skills and change personality 1 step) returns 100% bonus XP.

I could have sworn if you elite'd a skill, you got the elite for free if you respecced into the skill later, as in even if you didn't take it in that respec and later respecced back into it or picked it up again after leveling.

You are correct. Mishrak is looking at it from the point of view of never going back to that skill.

Officers
Every SP spent on Elite skills is sunken cost.  Each officer wants 3 SP minimum, only one of which is returned at 100%.  The others are sunken cost.

I'm curious, what is the 3rd minimum story point expenditure?  Mentoring is the 100% returned one, and I can kinda of see the baseline 1 elite skill for a typical level 5.  Although there are some playthroughs I don't even do the baseline 1 elite skill for all officers.

Restarting the game seemed unfathomable to me due to the time I spent on colonies/exploration/etc.

This is the problem with the fact the game is not finished, and there is no end game.  After you've extensively explored, after you've got fully running colonies, and after beating the three one time fights - two Coronal Hypershunts and the million credit Tesseract bounty, what is there actually to do in game?  Fighting the same remnant and bounty fleets over and over again, getting more credits and more story points so you can get more credits and story points. 

For me, I tend to restart often. Once I've taken a type of fleet from nothing to taking out the Tesseract bounty, there's really nothing much else to do.  And I find it far more interesting going from nothing to full end game capabilities than going from full end game to full end game capabilities.

As for new players, I don't know.  I feel like there has to be some incentive to get better at the game.  If story point choices are completely fungible, then the choices don't really matter.  You can just convert one sort of thing into another, and the player never learns to make a plan, be frugal in spending them.  Because they don't need to learn to do that.

Now, that's not what you're asking for, you want it to be easier, but not trivial is the impression I get.  More bonus XP means you still have to do about 1/4 the work (post level 15).  I guess my question is, what level of effort would be ideal for you?

How much effort do you want it to be to completely swap out your fleet, change your officers completely, and respec your skills?  As I think that is what you're kind of talking about.  You were learning, you found some things didn't work for you, so you wanted to change them to things that did.

I know a common rebuttal to bringing up issues with the cost of Cyber Augmentation + BotB is "You don't need that to complete the game."  This is not really a good rebuttal.  The reason is: the game offers the player those skills.

There's a lot of things the game offers a player, but you're not expected to take them to the extreme.  Take colonies as an example.  The game lets you go above the nominal administrator limit using Alpha cores.  This is something game offers the player.  Now, you can make a positive income with just an Alpha core administrator combined with population and infrastructure.  Don't even need any industries.    Now consider the fact that given enough Alpha Cores, you can colonize every single planet in the game and still make a profit.  Its something the game lets you do.  And I think there was one player who actually did that - I remember seeing a post somewhere.

Now, I might say you don't need to colonize the entire sector to complete the game.  But the exact same argument you're making, the game offers you those skills, can be applied to the game offering you those colonies and Alpha cores.

For the same reason the colony argument I'm making isn't very compelling, is the same reason I'm not finding the argument the game lets you do something with those skills very compelling.  You can take advantage of those skills with very obvious improvements without taking them to the full extreme, and utilizing every single last possible bonus.

Plus, Best of the Best is among the most commonly taken skills I've seen in other players builds, and likely the strongest one in an absolute fleet strength sense.  One might argue that having more difficulty in maxing out its benefits is a good thing, to make other skills more attractive in comparison and result in players trying different builds in different runs.  Making it easier to max out means other skills look even less attractive in comparison, and probably means needing to buff them, or nerf Best of the Best.

Actually, that is an interesting thought.  What if like DP limits, there were story point limits on the skills.  No more than 120 DP worth of ships with triple s-mods?  No more than 4 officers with +1 elite skills from Cybernetic Augmentation?  Officer training lets you pick 4 officers to get to level 6 and +1 elite skill.  Instead of increasing story points, you reduce the expenditure options.  That would be addressing your concerns from the other side of the equation.  Now a fully fleshed out fleet needs less SP, and less SP are needed to convert from one complete fleet to another complete fleet.

10
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 24, 2024, 01:00:24 PM »
I admit, I typically fall into the camp where most of the time, I prefer the behavior where "take all" leaves excess fuel behind, rather than forcing me to
1) Realize I've got too much because my capacity is 11,170 and 200 over is hard to see, and get the orange notification
2) Go to the cargo screen
3) Control click the fuel
4) Accept the removal

Given the penalty is 0.1 times the over fuel capacity in supplies per day, or 0.01 supplies per second (0.02 supplies per second at double speed), the supply cost adds up quite quickly.  Since fuel is 1/4 the value of supplies, you've spent more on supplies than the fuel is worth after 25 seconds at normal speed, or 12.5 seconds at double speed.

And it has no upper limit if you don't notice for some reason, unlike capacity, which will naturally eat supplies to the point where you're back in capacity limits.  A new player can literally lose their fleet to supply loss if they don't notice they've got like 200 excess fuel (20 supplies per day is the equivalent of a 600 DP - aka 10 Paragons - fleet!).  That, personally, is the best reason to keep the current default behavior.  Settings or other options is a different matter, but I think this will improve the new player experience.

As for me, the amount of time where I'm salvaging and going to be hitting a port within the next ~12.5 seconds (since I typically run at double speed) or about to leave the system, is certainly under 50% of my salvage times, and probably more like 10%.

11
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 20, 2024, 07:50:04 AM »
It's weird to me that the game penalizes you for being too strong.  Oh you filled up your DP and have good officers with a balanced fleet comp?  Get less exp.

Oh you go in with a bunch of teleporting frigates?  Here have a big exp bonus.

Ignoring the fact that some ships are outliers in terms of performance per DP, in an ideal world where everything was properly balanced by DP (which might be impossible given the wide parameter space in ship capabilities) why is it weird the game rewards a player for doing more with less? You view it as being stronger is punished, but I view it as a skilled player being able to defeat the exact same challenge with fewer resources as being rewarded.  To encourage you to push to the edge of defeat, but not past it. 

Makes for more interesting fights to be honest.

Also, doesn't the extra officers needed for a Hyperion spam fleet offset the low DP cost of each ship?  Level 6 officer is worth like 30 DP, time 15, plus the 240 DP of Hyperions is 675 DP equivalent, then the level 15 player character for another 63.75 DP equivalent.  A 9 ship fleet with 8 level 6 officers only adds to 240 plus 240 plus 63.75. Or are we not talking about the "hyberions" general discussion post and video, but some other composition, at which point I would need some clarification.  Is this from a XP per real life minute spent viewpoint instead of +???% XP bonus?

12
General Discussion / Re: [0.97a] Post Your Endgame Fleets Here!
« on: February 19, 2024, 07:19:22 PM »
1st run: Neural Link Radiant
Neural linked Radiant, neural linked Medusa, Legion XIV, 2 Dominator XIV, Eagle XIV, 3 Medusa, Omen, 2 Alpha core Glimmers.
Combat 5 (Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Field Modulation, Target Analysis, Systems Expertise)
Leadership 2 (Coordinated Maneuvers, Crew Training)
Technology 8 (All but Sensors and Phase Coil Tuning)

Was a bit rough start, trying to make a Nova work, going with too many heavy cruisers, and eventually switching to a wider build.  Also switched from Afflictor to Medusa so I could change Phase Coil Tuning for Electronic Warfare.  I was running into issues with contact bounty enemy fleets with that skill (it was RC8 I think), and just wasn't getting enough of my other ships out.  Radiant eventually made it work, and then some Tesseract weapons upped the Radiant a notch (2x Rift Torpedoes, 2 Plasma Cannons, 1 Paladin PD, 4 Sabot Pods, 2 Ion cannons, 2 Burst PD)


2nd run: Hegemony Officer build.  When the game throws two Legion XIV at you early on, you just go capital heavy early on.
Afflictor, 2 Onslaught XIV, 2 Legion XIV, 2 safety override Eagle XIV, 3 escort package Enforcers
Combat 4 (Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Field Modulation, Target Analysis)
Leadership 6 (Tactical Drill, Crew Training, Carrier Group, Officer Management, Officer Training, Best of the Best)
Technology 5 (Navigation, Energy Weapon Mastery, Flux Regulation, Phase Coil Tuning, Cybernetic Augmentation)

Felt like the strongest run of the 3 I've done in 0.97, although that might be the luck of the two Legion XIVs early on, and deciding to make it a Hegemony theme, so took a commission so a short run.  Onslaughts and Legions hold the line, SO Eagles for hunting down flankers, and Enforcers kind of scattered in between the capitals.  Afflictor for cheap battle influence across the map.  Was planning on respecing and turning one of the level 6, 3 elite officers into a mercenary, but just couldn't be bothered and just kind of ended the run.  Those 4 capitals just chewed through everything in front of them.  55% damage bonus on capital ballistics is quite nice.

3rd run: Support Doctrine test
1 Doom, 1 Onslaught XIV (officered), 12 Medusa (support doctrine), 7 Monitors (officered), 1 Kite (LP).
Combat 5 (Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Field Modulation, Target Analysis, Systems Expertise)
Leadership 5 (Tactical Drills, Coordinated Maneuvers, Crew Training, Officer Training, Support Doctrine)
Technology 5 (Navigation, Energy Weapon Mastery, Flux Regulation, Phase Coil Tuning, Cybernetic Augmentation)

I think I put in too many monitors to be honest.  Also, a lot more work at the combat map level than I prefer.  To leverage the monitors, I needed to be aware and issue eliminate orders with them to make sure they're actually distracting the big bad ships as needed.  As long as you're not up against Harbingers, they're survivable enough.  0.44 base efficiency (0.8*0.90.8*0.95*0.85*0.95=0.442) plus s-mod Stabilized Shields.  Works out to be about 2,200 shield DPS tanking capacity plus a little bit from Stabilized Shields.  (312 flux/second - 30 flux/second shields)*0.7 = 197.4-100 hard flux/second = 97.4 flux/second.  (1/0.1/0.442)*97.4 = 2,203 shield DPS tanked.  Its not SO tier, but two of them will basically tank any capital in the game, and usually only need one.

Collecting the Medusa and Monitors ended up being pretty easy just running through Persean League and Tri-tachyon worlds after each bounty round.  A high level Military contact offered me the Onslaught XIV for only 300,000 so slapped it in for some DPS.  In hindsight, I'd probably go for more like Afflictor, 2 Onslaughts (or maybe 1 Onslaught and 2 Gryphons), 12 support doctrine Medusa and 5 Monitors.  Probably should have done aggressive/reckless SO Medusa instead of steady ITU Medusa.  It was not fast, but if I was paying attention, relatively safe.

13
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 14, 2024, 12:24:37 AM »
Anyways this is a bit random but has anyone seen Luddic Church bounty fleets? From the start of my playthrough I've been doing bounties, both intel and contact ones and I'm yet to see a fleet with Invictuses and Retributions, and I really want to fight them. Everything from other factions normally spawns, Paragons, Onslaughts, Pegasuses, Executors... Have I just been that extremely unlucky?
You've just been unlucky.  I've definitely seen them.  Staring at a 200k Luddic church bounty right now.

So in the interest of testing, I modified my Starsector game and changed a few settings.json lines to speed up the crisis meter by a factor of, oh, 10. Its warm and fuzzy feeling when blowback pays out at 1000% instead of 5%, and goes in at a multiple of 10 as well. :)

Anyways, got a 2nd Hegemony check and then finally the Persean League fleet.  First off, I kind of just laughed at the penalty at first, which was simply -60% accessibility, when my accessibility scores were 240%, 165%, and 155%.  I'm not sure I'd actually notice it.  If you're over building your colonies (Alpha cores everywhere, Megaports everywhere, the occasional Fullerene Spool), you can literally just ignore it until you're strong enough to deal with it.  And Alex is right, going forward, if you want to minimize effects, splitting colonies up into different systems will literally reduce the lost income by a huge factor.

As for dealing with it, their supply fleets did not impress me much (Sorry Alex). I deployed 78 DP, a third of my end game fleet, and just wiped it off the map without a sweat.  I definitely think a human piloted Aurora and like 3 Eagles, maybe an omen or two, could take this thing down without losses in the mid-game.

Well since that was so easy, I decided to try something harder, and took on a Supply fleet, a patrol, and 3 detachments simultaneously, with the full 240 DP fleet (425% XP was nice).  Still not a problem. At which point the invasion was over, and didn't even see the big enemy fleet thats supposed to also show up.

Still, one of the biggest Persean League fights I've ever had in vanilla, so that was kinda cool.

So, I'm not seeing an real problems with the event.  It can be chased off with a mid-game fleet via the combat route.  Like, 200k bounty level of difficulty.  Certainly could do it you handed me 2 million credits and told me to go shopping for ships (and maybe did some fighting before hand to get some XP for myself and officers).

14
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 13, 2024, 06:59:31 PM »
I don't suppose the lengths of the bars are exposed for modding? Could make a nice factor in a 'hard mode' mod.

Looks like a bunch of parameters are accessible from the settings.json file.  Just search for  HOSTILE ACTIVITY EVENT CONFIG
Max progress per month, and calculations for individual monthly threat values, are there so you certainly can change how fast it reaches the end of the bar even if you can't change the bar length.

15
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: February 13, 2024, 06:33:30 PM »
For what its worth in regards to crisis pacing, I finished my first 0.97a playthrough without getting the Luddic Path crisis, Persean League crisis, Luddic Church full crisis, and the Hegemony AI crisis only came up once.  So if anything, making the crisis threat bar longer (and with less from the Persean League threat), just means more waiting for me.

Now perhaps I'm colonizing later than most people?  My first colony I put down was in 208.10.2, with a full 240 DP combat fleet (NL Nova, Legion XIV, support ships, and transitioned to a Radiant pretty soon after that) at level 12 with a little less than a million credits in the bank.  It was a habitable world, so I just let it grow naturally, while I went off and did the rest of the story line (having finished the initial exploration academy mission part betwen 206.10 and 207.2), did a Hypershunt and the million credit bounty, did some exploration, etc.  When it was about to tick up to size 4, I colonized 2 more worlds in the same system.

Pirate crisis I just straight up blew up 3 fleets at a time and got +10% accessibility for my trouble, which was nice.  Tri-tach crisis I went to the assembly system, went up to the biggest fleet, and was prepared for a giant hard fight, but open up comms, and all they wanted was 2 million credits, which was what my on hand credits happened to be hovering around (its the dip around c213 on the credit graph).  Proceeded to raid each TT planet in turn and then made peace for a further +24% access (240% access on my size 5 world is kinda silly to be honest).  Blew up the first Hegemony inspection enroute with transponder off.

In between I explored the Abyss, did the 2nd Hypershunt, did a little bit more bounty hunting/exploration/alpha core farming, grabbed the <redacted> Onslaught XIV and Legion XIV and some related ships, and I'm basically running out of new things to do, except just orbit my worlds and wait for something to happen.  I don't need more credits as I'm already passive positive and my largest colony still hasn't grown to size 6 (with a Dealmaker Holosuite just wainting to be put to use at size 6).  I've fully s-modded my fleet, and got my 8 officers with 2 elite skills each.  So time to start a new game.

Overall, I personally think it is a great improvement over the 0.96a version.  I wouldn't complain if they were tuned to be more difficult and happened quicker, but I also think what tuning is asked for is going to depend on which player you ask and what their playstyle tends to be.

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