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16

Suggestions / Re: Minimum sale value of ships should never be less than the scuttle value

« on: March 15, 2021, 10:37:29 AM »

This, I'm not so sure is a problem.  The post-battle salvage screen literally lists your current supplies, supplies to be used for repairs, and how many extra supplies would be needed to repair each and every salvaged ship, along with crew availability and needs, and even has graphical bars and go red if you start taking stuff beyond your means.  It is explicitly answering the question interactively as you click different ship combinations.

As for future upkeep, in terms of monthly supplies, that is something you need to be aware of anyways.   You'd have the exact same issue sitting at a station contemplating frigate purchases or planning a trip into deep space.  It is fundamental part of the game, and you're better off learning that sooner rather than later.  Once you've internalized it, it tends to be a minimal hassle to keep sufficient supplies on hand.

Everyone i've introduced this game to has messed it up repeatedly.  Knowing "oh it's going to take X more per day" is totally useless when you don't have a good feel for how long your average trip is.  One of the hardest things for me starting out was trying to figure out what was a reasonable amount of supplies to bring for a bounty trip, and salvaging makes that math harder.  I have watched multiple people screw it up for a ship that wasn't worth it.

It only gets harder when they learn that "oh yeah 9/10 times for anything good you can ALWAYS get it, just need to insta mothball it".  I know the tutorial shows you some of this in theory, but again, it's a totally absurd process to be dumping on players every single combat.

It is telling to me that we've got so many "well i play this way" posts going here. Of course we all do.  It's not people sitting on a forum with 100's of posts who are bouncing off the games weird mechanics. 

17

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: March 14, 2021, 10:50:40 PM »

There area  few - Buffalo Mk II with converted hangar costs more crew than its capacity. Presumably they are in spacesuits on the outside of the hull pushing Talons off by hand.

At that point i just mentally assume the whole ship has 0 life support.  Just some O2 tanks and tubes you hook up to so you don't run out.

18

Suggestions / Re: Minimum sale value of ships should never be less than the scuttle value

« on: March 12, 2021, 01:46:10 PM »

To allow the player to obtain a particular ship that they want, without having to pray to RNGesus (anymore than you have to currently, at least)...

There are a ton of ways to do this without wasting everyone's time and making beginners die because they recovered something they didn't have the supplies to repair and didn't know to mothball.

Again, if players want that method of ship acquisition, let them opt in.  Do not make it default.  Ship chaff everywhere is pointless and confusing.

Just look at how many knowledge tests this puts on beginners-

1. Do you know that recovering ships isn't worth money if you sell them?
2. Do you know that you can scuttle them for more resources than the sell value, and without a dock?
3. Do you know if you have the resources to take that ship into your fleet right now? (this has a whole BUNCH of sub questions related to repairing it while flying, moth balling it, accounting for additional future upkeep until you get back to port, etc).

Having these questions be asked of a player every battle is absurd.  For beginners it's a variety of unfun traps, and for experienced players its rote.  There's some middle ground of, yes post faction combat, where you might actually think 'ok is this thing worth it', but that's near middle/end of the game and can easily be kept without having this pop up every single combat, and then having to warp the ship resale economy around it.

19

Suggestions / Re: Minimum sale value of ships should never be less than the scuttle value

« on: March 12, 2021, 12:27:04 PM »

Non-pristine ships being worth less than their scuttle value is a way to allow for very high recovery rates...

But...why?

This is what this all boils down to.  Why, after every battle, do i have a screen of trash to click through?

I get it if you spec into that (have salvage ships and salvage skills) so you're opting in, but having that as the default is just....weird.  It makes a lot more natural sense to me that by default ships should rarely be recoverable (you are blasting the hell out of them), and when they are they're probably worth taking, even if its only so you can sell them when you get back to port.

The entire ship economy kinda bends around the idea that you're going to see 20+ ships for recovery every trip, and it really doesn't make a lot of sense, or lead to any interesting gameplay.  Having to click through the "nope don't want any of the pirate trash" after every battle, JUST IN CASE something worth salvaging stuck around, is a hassle as well.

And to pre-empt some of the response:

The why i've heard before is "so you can get more ships" but is is SUPER weird to me that the most common way's to acquire ships in this game, for me are 1. Black market 2. Salvage 3. Military market 4. Normal market.

That is completely counter intuitive to what a normal person would expect (and how it's worked it basically every other game of this genre) and leads to a lot of odd gameplay.  Maybe there's some other reason i'm missing but I really think it'd be a serious QOL improvement if it just wasn't this way normally.  Again, if someone wants this playstyle, it fits perfectly with the idea of using salvage skills, hull mods, ships to make it happen, but I just don't think it should be normal.

20

Suggestions / Re: Minimum sale value of ships should never be less than the scuttle value

« on: March 11, 2021, 10:39:15 AM »

I feel the sell button is mostly there as a last resort option...

This is still SUPER unintiutive.  It took me forever to realize that scuttling actually gained me resources and was worth more than selling on a majority of scenarios (and less hassle).

I really think ship sales just need to be reworked to make more sense(salvage mcuh less frequent without skills, sale prices much higher), but i've preached about it enough.   

21

Suggestions / Sort/filter equipment by faction/Tech

« on: March 02, 2021, 02:18:19 PM »

I finally upgraded my computer and as is tradition went through and redid my mods.  Screwing around with new things has reminded me how comically huge the equipment list can get.  I think there's plenty of QOL changes that are due for both the inventory and refit screen, but in the short term being able to sort/filter by Faction/Tech would be nice just for those of us trying out new things.

Further i'm hoping we eventually get some more reason to care about tech/faction in vanilla, but that's a whole other topic.

22

General Discussion / Re: What do you think of the black market?

« on: February 25, 2021, 12:36:06 PM »

It could use a lot of depth, but some of that comes with tweaking the economy lottery in general.

Personal thoughts-

1. Not every pilot should have the same access to the black market.  Just got his first ship squeaky shoes mc nice guy really shouldn't have tremendous black market contacts.  I feel like rep/skills/conditions should all play a part in whats available in a black market.

2. Coming screaming on with full burn + transponder on reallllly shouldn't transition straight to me loading up guns, organs, drugs, and ships and streaking out again....maaaaaybe with a nasty letter(to say nothing of the planetary scans, resources, weapons, and ships i probably just dumped on the black market dock).  Stealth already exists in the game as shown by the tutorial, and having the black market have more/better stuff because you went dark and slunk into a colony would really help give a payoff to fleets that care about sensor profile and the sneaky mobility skills/mods.

3. With those in mind, ideally, by default black market should probably always have the basics (supplies, crew, some trash weaponry).  Skills and rep mostly determine what you can FIND in the black market.  How you got into the port + ship mods like shielded hull should determine how risky it is to buy/sell some of those items.  Landing on some random port as johnny mc nobody and waltzing over to the capital ship section of black market should maybe still be possible, but only on the understanding that you're going to be E burning your fleet out of the system with some VERY *** off locals (that said having them seize the stolen goods or force a fine should also be possible outcomes rather than just instant battle).

That may not be the perfect setup, but I think that this gives waay more interaction to the black market, and could make "smuggling" builds more interesting. As both selling and buying on the market now takes more skill, you can also increase the rewards.  It gives a reason for you to up your rep with pirates as well, and should potentially lead to very powerful weaponry/ships, as another way to get them (main one being getting rep with a faction and joining, with the more common way currently being salvage).

Granted some of this is pretty intensive, so as a start, I think just tweaking what the market shows based on how you got into the system would help a lot.  It may already do that, but i honestly can't remember since it's already "good enough" as is because a huge portion of what the market is used for is tariff free selling of goods.  If you limit that (can only sell 5k worth or something if you come in blazing) I think you'll see a lot more players looking for less well defended worlds they can sneak into in order to offload their goods and maybe get better goodies.


Oh side thing-

TRANSPONDERS!  It's a good idea, but there needs to be more to it. On and off is fine, but spoofing/veiling/something to temporarily allow you to approach a heavily guarded world in a "transponder off" state would be cool.  Maybe have it be very short, require hacking a local node, and possibly a skill/hull mod (or any combination of these)

23

General Discussion / Re: Is this game dead?

« on: February 23, 2021, 11:38:10 AM »

I think Steam and GoG also offer refunds that exceed those limits, it just doesn't happen automatically.
I also want to point out that SS development is taking a long time for a limited scope game. Since frequency of updates dropped as time went on, I wonder if it's just that updates got bigger, Alex got somewhat tired of developing the game, or it's the maintenance piling up.

Some portion of this is that updates aren't just "new ships/weapons" content packs.  They're entire systems....or another economy rework.  It's important these things are thought through and tested properly, especially because the game doesn't often just lift from what's popular.  The skill system is on its 2nd major overhaul since i started playing and I'm pretty sure there were a few more before that.  They could get away with a MMO style tree and be done with it but a lot of what makes this game great is real time put into figuring out what systems are fun and what aren't rather than just dropping in what's easy.

Ultimately though these conversations always boil down to the same arguments.  Someone thinks updates should be faster/better/stronger, someone else thinks that in their dev environment/personal setting/workplace it would be faster, and maybe that's true, but at the end of the day small projects like this have things like this happen.

Star sector sure as *** isn't churning out junk updates, which I am happy for, and whatever the reasons for the frequency of the updates (code debt, burnout, personal life) I frankly don't care.  I do wish we could get more info/content on upcoming updates but I understand the hell that is unfulfilled promises in code dev because something you thought might be cool got everyone excited and turned out to be an unreasonable hell to implement and now that's all you hear about.

Its been stated a few times that part of the silence on this new patch relates to it having a lot of content that's in flux(my take on that being some because they're unsure it will make it and some just because they're unsure it'll make it this patch) mixed with "spoilers/surprises".  Based on just what we know (story points/skill rework, new weapons/ships, some stuff related to planetary systems/missions/story) it makes sense that this isn't just some numbers tweaks, and god knows what we don't know, because at the end of the day it's a very small team doing quite a lot of work with god knows what going on outside of it.

I don't think the development has ever been cagey/dismissive about any of this, so while i can understand the frustration for people who might want it to be faster, i think it's pretty lame to compare this to some of the other clusterfucks that have come out of the gaming industry.  If the game never updated again i'd be sad but I still wouldn't regret buying it in the slightest, especially with how much has already been able to be done through mods.

24

Discussions / Re: Why is it important to have forum etiquette/forum moderation?

« on: January 29, 2021, 11:03:40 AM »

All i'm going to say is i have been on many forums over the years with more than successful moderation.  The ones with weak moderation generally imploded eventually and the ones with good moderation only "died" as people moved on to discuss something else. 

The implosion almost always being because first more rational members leave as the loud and obnoxious ones harass them out, often with stuff that doesn't even further discussion, and then finally the loud and obnoxious ones turn on each other and it all blows up.

25

General Discussion / Re: Does anyone else prefer using mainly frigates?

« on: January 19, 2021, 12:03:11 PM »

Yeah i almost always have one or two frigate packs with my fleet (4-8 ships).

As mentioned  Omens/Tempests are godly, but I'll usually use wolfs/lashers which can put out a surprising amount of punishment when designed with squad tactics in mind.  Have one or two loaded up with harpoons, and another set on more disabling tactics like salamanders and ions, and they can put in work.   I usually just put 3 protecting one and then let them figure it out.

26

General Discussion / Re: Any Chance of a Surprise Christmas update Alex?

« on: December 24, 2020, 11:11:32 AM »

No chance, I think. The trick to seeing the update immediately is to check the forum multiple times a day! And Alex's twitter account!

Alternatively i have the discord channel mostly muted except for announcements so i know when something big drops.

But yeah devs are humans too. I very much doubt we'll be seeing the patch before the new year. It could happen, but this time of year everything takes more time because people often have real life commitments.

27

Blog Posts / Re: Writing Starsector

« on: December 17, 2020, 02:24:40 PM »

"Conclusion: we don’t as a rule do skill checks in dialog – there’s an exception, but it’s largely for flavor – instead we use story points to let players choose when and how to be a totally awesome hero of their own story."

This might be a missed opportunity.  It doesn't take a lot to have skill checks feel like a nice way to really personalize a run.  They don't need to be huge, but "sneak in instead of shoot everyone" is a pretty classic one.  Going back to your archetypes, if we're han solo "bribe the man and be on our way" is probably just as valid as "*** you come get some", but it feels a little better when the first one is "locked" behind having the right skills, or even equipment (shielded hulls in this case).

Obviously you have to be careful because for many people this doesn't become player expression so much as one more thing to route and min max (always make sure you have a plot ship with solar shields/shielded hull/etc so you can trigger the better plot choices), but so long as the skill versions aren't 100% superior, and just feel more "in character" they can be a really good way to get value out of multiple runs.

Overall i get it (one less thing to develop/balance/test for questionable returns) but i'm hoping that at the very least we can mod some stuff in?

28

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 16, 2020, 04:21:27 PM »

Thank you all!

"Pirate bases should no longer spawn in systems with neutron stars/pulsars"

Have to say i'm kinda sad to see this.  I was hoping for a more creative solution, such as making it kinda rare/special and with some wonky effects.  Something like having a few results where either they're totally unprepared so their fleets are just a mess, or they have some special feature/items that you normally wouldn't find at a pirate base so it's worth visiting, or even them being some sort of super high tech pirates so the base is actually a high tech with high tech ships sort of thing.

This mostly has to do with fleet AI just not being able to handle pulsars. If I ever have the time (ha) to dedicated to making it handle them, that might be reconsidered, but the likelihood of this seems low. It's just a complicated problem to solve. (And now that I'm talking about it, I kind of want to try. Must. Resist.)

Well to be fair that's why i was shooting for the age old developer solution of "Feature! Not a bug".

In lore reason either being they're just falling apart because they don't know how to handle living next to a pulsar, or they're all equipped with solar shielding in and the like and thus immune/special.

Either way doesn't require an AI rework, just a gameplay tweak (super weak, or high tech and unusually strong.  Both ways you could tell from the fleet that you should be dealing with pulsar systems).  Then make it rare because it's odd enough you don't want it happening all the time.

Anyways just spit balling here. Ripping it out/waiting until you feel like tackling the AI side are both legit too.

29

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: October 16, 2020, 02:30:27 PM »

"Moving Slowly"

Love all of it.  More depth to movement is something i've rambled about a ton, and this is exactly the kind of stuff that I was hoping for.  Intuitive changes that can make looking at the map more interactive as you figure out how to approach something, and what skills you might use to do so.

"Skill system revamp:"

Obviously hype to see how this goes.  I'm sure there will be some initial rough spots but in general i think skills systems are something that should be fun, and often aren't, so any game experimenting there is heading in the right direction in my book.

"Officers:"

Great.  Love that they're capped at 5 now, felt kinda tedious before.

"Added "personal contacts" mechanics:"

Very hype for this.  I'm hoping it gives some depth to the fleet communication/relations that exist. 

"Adjusted AI fleet compositions:"

Glad to hear this.  "ALL THE CAPITALS" felt odd in a lot of ways, but especially for pirate armadas.  Power should scale without having to just send X of the biggest thing.

"Can use a story point to recover an otherwise unrecoverable derelict ship (only applies to derelict ships found in the campaign, not during a combat encounter)

    Some ships (such as REDACTED ships when the player doesn't have the proper skill) are not recoverable this way"

Maybe i'm reading this wrong, but won't this lead to "always have 1 story point" situations because you don't know when it'll come up and matter?

"Requires fuel and heavy machinery (consumed) and an Alpha Core (not consumed)"

In general i love the idea of expanding the uses of items like this.  Having X item in inventory lets you do Y is often decently interesting progression, especially when its something like a core that can get you in trouble.

"Pirate bases should no longer spawn in systems with neutron stars/pulsars"

Have to say i'm kinda sad to see this.  I was hoping for a more creative solution, such as making it kinda rare/special and with some wonky effects.  Something like having a few results where either they're totally unprepared so their fleets are just a mess, or they have some special feature/items that you normally wouldn't find at a pirate base so it's worth visiting, or even them being some sort of super high tech pirates so the base is actually a high tech with high tech ships sort of thing. 

"Colonies/exploration/related:"

All sounds interesting.

"Revamped ground raid mechanics"

As always love all of this for adding more depth and not just being a dialogue option you mash through.

"Combat:"

In general lots of qol and i've already talked before about how I like that buoy's are now going to introduce beginners to the idea of post combat start deployments/retreats.

"Ships/systems:"

Brawler- losing damper field feels sad.  Maybe it's more fun to pilot but it made it a great AI ship.
Onslaught- awesome.
Gemini- Interesting.  It's a favorite of my early game so i'm curious to see how it plays out.
Drover- I like this, especially more cargo nerfs in general.  The "support" section of your fleet feels incidental right now, and it really should be more of a cost.

"Weapons/fighters:"

I like basically all of this.  Feels like trying to bring things in line rather than just playing wack a mole with what's currently good. Always more interesting because it keeps fun things fun.

"Hullmods:"

As always i love anything that makes civilian ship sprites more likely to wind up on screen.  If time is going to be spent making it then it should have a reason to show up in battle even if it's niche.  Very curious how the "remove fighter bays" thing will play out.  Shield shunt also seems like it should be fun to play with.

"Ship AI:"

Quality of life heaven.

"the rest"

All good.

Can't wait until we can mess with it.

30

Suggestions / Re: Possible "Empty mounts spam" solution?

« on: August 25, 2020, 12:45:07 AM »

Hmm. I feel like this is assuming that "having weapons in all slots" is a good thing regardless of *why* there are weapons in all slots. I don't think that holds up - having weapons in all slots is good if you, well, want the weapons that are there and mean to use them.

Just having some random stuff there - or the cheapest possible, to be able to max out vents - or some other idea (say, not having weapons in a slot reduces armor, or w/e)... I think that'd just make a loadout feel messy, because you're putting weapons in for some reason other than actually wanting the weapons. "Put the weapons in a separate group and never fire them" could become a thing, etc.

I'm not entirely sold on the premise that "always have weapons in all slots" is good. If that were a goal, though, then I think the solution would probably involve increasing ship flux budgets (which could be troublesome to iron out balance-wise) and/or adding some very low-end, low-flux options for ... probably small and medium ballistic/energy slots. Though even if these cost 1-2 OP and generated no flux, it might be a hard sell in a lot of cases.

It seems like there is also some potential in somehow making burst damage potential "better" (which would make an over-fluxed loadout more desirable), but I haven't really thought that through, so that's mostly theoretical...

I 100% think it should be a viable option to "under mount" a ship, but I also feel like it shouldn't be the go to?

From a casual perspective "moar dakka" is intuitive and fun (just seeing your capital armed to the teeth is a nice feeling), but there's a heavy learning curve on kitting out some of the larger ships, making it very easy to accidentally over spec them.

I think the first thing to help with this would be clearer feedback on flux stats.  It's SO important but it's just "more numbers" on a screen that's already overwhelming with them. 

Having flux dissipation right next to(not on a line below) weapon flux (both on the main screen and the weapon group screen) would help really draw eyes on the idea that comparing these two numbers is super super vital.  Bonus points if you can color code the dissipation number on some % scheme (super green when it's 2 to 1 and super red when it's 1 to 2 or something).   Or maybe just put the % efficiency right next to it instead (numbers easier than colors?  I dunno UI is the devil and its half my job).

This, again will help beginners really keep an eye on both the actual ships overall flux, and what it looks like for each weapon group, hopefully also teaching the idea of strategic weapon group usage/show off why missiles can be so good.

Somewhat related to this is the fact that ships don't come stock with weapons, unless recovered (and post salvage with a few).  There are premade loadouts, but as a beginner i'd click on those, get annoyed that I didn't have all the weapons an it just "winged it", now had no idea if that was any good, and basically  gave up with it (since hunting down a bunch of weapons just to test a maybe ok loadout isn't exactly fun with rng shops and no idea how to tell what planets might have what you're looking for).

I feel it might help if they did, and even if not, if maybe more premade loadouts were under gunned.  Really drive home there's some great builds that center around putting on some killer weaponry but not bothering to fill out the rest.