Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

General Discussion / Sector Settings

« on: August 06, 2019, 12:23:02 PM »

So I know many of us here have been playing the game for quite a while, and have developed our own preferences on how starsector should be configured. I personally have made a handful of changes to my settings.json and wanted to see if anyone else had changes of their own that they have enjoyed playing with.

Notable changes in my settings file:
CAMPAIGN
"sectorWidth":810000,
"sectorHeight":500000,  // These required me to resize the hyperstorm map as well to fit properly

"speedPerBurnLevel":40,    //doubled from vanilla to facilitate larger sector size


BOUNTY
"minSystemBounties":5,
"maxSystemBounties":7,
   
"minPersonBounties":5,
"maxPersonBounties":7,

"minPirateBases":5,
"maxPirateBases":7,

//target rich environment

ARMOR
"maxArmorDamageReduction":0.99,
"minArmorFraction":0.01,

//Up from 85% max and down from 15% minimum. Makes armor and the lack of it feel much more significant. Fragmentation is especially useless at high armor totals and especially deadly without any. Makes holes in armor feel even more meaningful to defend.

SPEED
"zeroFluxEngineBoost":200,

//Up from 50, not nearly as crazy as it looks. Ships don't gain additional accel/decel or maneuver so this boost is only really good for pre-battle and between engagements. Pursuits are faster, but not safer by any real margin.



Has anyone else made changes to these or any other areas of their settings to customize Starsector to their liking?

2

Discussions / Void Destroyer 2

« on: June 26, 2019, 06:33:34 AM »

I've had this game in my library for about a year but only a few days ago committed some brainpower to learning how it works and I'm really happy I did.

Features as I've experienced them:

-It's a space pilot sim, with a fairly large number of ships.
-Ships range from fighters to frigates (as far as I've seen) and each ship is fairly unique to pilot
-Variety of missions and activities (trading, escort, patrol, mining, racing are what I've seen)
-Overworld/strategic movement layer for moving between stations / intercepting fleets, etc
-Fleet building and customization
-Hot swap between fleet ships at any time to pilot them
-Swap to turret seats and let your crew pilot the ship
-Set turrets to auto or manual (really satisfying watching railguns blast someone automatically)
-On demand slow motion / tactical pause accessible from anywhere
-Tactical view for fleet command in battle
-Sandbox as well as story starts to the game. (I haven't touched the story at all, just been enjoying playing sandbox missions)
-Faction system I haven't figured out yet
-Steady progression and flexible difficulty, really gives you options for how you want to build your fleet immediately.
-Mod support and modding community (seems like there are multiple mods already available on the steam forums but I haven't played around with them yet)
-Active development (but already well fleshed out), developer seems really engaged and thoughtful.

Has anyone else played this, or have any thoughts on it?

3

General Discussion / High Zero-Flux Speed Boost

« on: April 29, 2019, 07:47:26 AM »

Has anyone else tried playing with a drastically heightened zero-flux speed boost, say 500 instead of 50?

I started a campaign last night using it and it's been a very different feeling, battles start more quickly, cover much more space, break into groups more often, and overall feel fast and dynamic.

I chose 500 because it seems about the speed ships burn in at and I wanted to mimic the feeling of a ship putting power to engines and engaging a travel burn drive. I love the feeling and functionality it provides across all ship classes as well.

Since ships in starsector have defined accel/decel and maneuverability stats, the additional top speed isn't as broken as it sounds, as functionally, ships aren't built to handle at these boosted speeds. The game also beautifully handles automatically braking you down to combat speeds once you start burning flux, so ships aren't zipping around uncontrollably all the time.

Things i've noticed:

-Every ship can charge screaming into engagements and it feels *** cool. Some ships take a long time to get up to speed.
-Playing low top speed ships no longer feels like trudging through sludge, as you can get around to different engagements easily before digging in for a fight.
-Playing faster ships now emphasizes your ability to control engagements even further, but slow ships are not helpless as you dance around them.
-Frigates feel genuinely useful at any battle size, now able to advance quickly and skillfully under long range enemy fire.
-Pursuits are fast moving and require decisiveness, the new top speed means ships get away FAST when you aren't paying attention.
-Calling in reinforcements feels *** cool when they all punch into the engagement you're struggling with.
-Flux capacity/dissipation is now very very important for determining your movement options in a given engagement. Using your armor to soak damage while you vent and angle for escape feels natural.
-I didn't think about safety overrides before making the change. It really feels like safety overrides now. Pathers appropriately feel like cultists and not weirdly competent close combat specialists as they wildly zip around before burning out.
-Accidental ramming happens but hasn't been as impactful as I expected.


Overall i'm enjoying it a lot! I might post updates / other things i notice. Has anyone else experimented with this?