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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 - Eji1700

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31
General Discussion / Re: Most underdeveloped aspect of game?
« on: August 20, 2020, 07:51:00 PM »
I'd say ship to ship communication.

I know that on some level this is because it's part of the story stuff, but seems a waste that I can communicate with all these other ships, and the options are just a shell of a system that will (hopefully) eventually be fleshed out.

At the very least in the EV games you could occasionally get simple missions from it, temporary escorts, and a few other things (fuel mainly, but there's a system for that.).

I'd love to see some level of depth, especially since it seems a decent amount of effort went into making pilots uniuqe and giving EACH ONE OF THEM a rep system.

I'd love the idea where you smuggle to a planet in the hegemony, which hates you, by bribing all the local pilots enough that they don't inspect you fleet, and similar stuff like that.

32
Blog Posts / Re: Re.: Personal Contacts
« on: August 13, 2020, 10:08:06 PM »
stuff about objectives letting you deploy more
Dunno if it was intentional but I really like how elegant that solution is at also getting the player to think about deployment.  It's a neat system that feels completely overlooked as 90% of the playerbase likely just shows up in their initial fleet and begins chucking hulls at the enemy until there's nothing left.

Pausing to asses who's out of ammo and should retreat vs who can come in to replace them and similar things was a really cool way to find use out of some ships that I didn't really discover for awhile because deployment wasn't actively encouraged.

33
Blog Posts / Re: Personal Contacts
« on: August 13, 2020, 06:45:41 PM »
I haven't slept most of this week so this all just kinda popped into my head while i was giggling reading the update.  Feel free to just take it for the lunacy that it is and skip it.
Spoiler
With the closing of the comlink the contract is signed.  The order for fuel needs to go through.  A brief stop at an abandoned terraforming platform and a month later the pilot arrives at a tiny colony at the edge of the cluster.  A backwater to backwaters this worthless speck of dust, rock, and cold has barely even been able to provide fuel for itself let alone the order requested, but that cannot do.

Mass industry begins to mobilize as credits pour in to attract enough bodies to handle the demand.  No longer a hidden wasteland to fade from the eye of civilization, every suitable inch is to be converted into anti matter producing factories.  The logistic railways of the future are laid across the stars and access to the barely born colony begins to flow while the factories begin to grow.  What once could have easily passed for yet another uninhabited hellscape has become a industrial mecca at the end of a credit fueled pilgrimage.  The order might be filled.  Profit begins to flow as for the first time since life graced the surface, the colony has an export and for the first time the market is aware.

The industry is humming and the fuel is pumping when pilot pulls from their cargo holds a metal seed that will grow into plenty.  A pulsating metallic heart of an empire long past, the Synchrotron liberated from the decay-less death of space is plugged in, hums to life, and beats as though it had never stopped.  The order will be filled.  The market is concerned.

What was once a view of the galaxy unhindered is now blocked by the bulk of the shipping freighters arriving around the clock, bringing precious materials before filling up with as much fuel as they can carry and burning out again.  An infinite stream of life stretches across the horizon and the past and present can be seen in real time.  Next Tuesday arrives as the most recent birthed star of engine light at the edge of the gate while last Wednesday continues to burn its way through the gridlocked sky. The market is now in panic. The order must be filled.

Grudges forgotten and status quo's threatened a crusade of violent metal is assembled as livelyhoods collapse.  What was once a vibrant economy has been submerged under the constant infinite flow of the fuel from the edge.  It began as concerns about warehousing and illicit surplus, but has devolved into quaking panic as entire moons are overflown with the annihilator mana. A commodity who's scarcity balanced the relative tranquility of drowsy toddler empires is now so abundant as to be as worthless as the lives of those conscripted in the eyes of their terrified lords.  Sent off to build a dam of corpses and stem the flow.

The rate is incalculable. Impossible. Inhuman.  The worst is assumed and the final fleet is dispatched. The taboo is broken clear as the order in the chaos and it must be cleansed.  For the many lives that are about to be lost it will be because they have nothing left in the crush of an economy they could not understand, but for these souls it will be because of a threat they wish they could only be ignorant of.  Whatever the normal citizen fears from the false gods of trade they do not know the eldritch terror of the unhindered AI.

The colony becomes the star of malevolence when the fleets meet in the soundless trenches of space.  The profit has been spent and the system fortified. A hardened shell of weaponry and income, the battle rages from hyperspace to surface in an endless pile of rearranged carbon and light. Though the fuel is beyond measure the defenses are not, and through the splintered hulls and bone the invaders continue to press.  Glory to those who will fill the order.

And with the stars themselves alight with chaos, and the blink of an eye production wonder reduced back to ash like some cosmic mayfly that has pulled the souls of its species with it, the pilot races through hyper space in their escape pod. The dark and crammed quarters finally illuminate.  Finally in range of a beacon, the message comes through. 

Contract complete. 150,000c transferred

"neat" says the pilot.
[close]

tl;dr;omg;wtf-
1. Log scaling is fun and I neeeeeed sleep.
2. Hope if we're going to give incentives to player colonies to fill orders that we've had some tweaks to the late game economy so that isn't an automatic declaration of galactic war like it is now.
3. I love the changes.  As always i enjoy seeing more player decision and depth added.  I'm sure it's going to come with some tweaking but the concept is great, and I'm hoping plays into other systems as well (black market cough cough).

34
I don't get how would you make this a challenge when it's just pure luck
That's the point.  I don't agree with everything in the OP (especially that fast start is bad), but the issue is that it probably shouldn't be just pure luck.  There really should be some other gate depending on your playstyle.  Maybe combat heavy fleets can raid a heavily defended world or salvage heavy fleets can get a high enough salvage skill with support ships to find one and get it online, but the "roll dice with a modifier" kinda lends itself to just blowing out the game.

It's ok as is, and i'm not sure it's bad enough to be a dev concern now (or maybe ever), but it's absolutely something that could be more interesting.   In general it'd be a lot more fun if finding a legion/core/forge/whatever in the early game marked it on the map, but required some sort of skill/ship/hull/combat/whatever investment, so you're likely going to have to remember that spot (which the game already does for you) and come back later better equipped.

At the very least you're now turning a "oops got lucky, guess it's over" scenario into "oops got lucky, i've now got a short term goal"...which may still functionally end the game depending on other factors (as always econ could use a lot of smoothing out imo), but at least there's more gameplay to it other than die roll.

35
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: August 10, 2020, 09:59:55 AM »
No update still? To get people through another wave of lock down + summer holidays?
Poor show...
Really dude? What dev's live in a magic bubble so world events don't effect them?

36
General Discussion / Re: Anyone else check the website everyday??
« on: July 08, 2020, 11:44:21 AM »
I've got the discord muted except for the announcements channel so if I see a new message I know there's likely something i'll want to check out.

37
I would personally really like a hull mod/story point thing/flipping something that lets us weaken minimum armor.

The idea of using a well placed thumper/devastator to rip through something or just "moar dakka' chewing apart a ship with enough vulcans should be doable/fun.  Probably shouldn't be the go to strategy, but it really feels like it's a lot of effort to setup the sorts of scenarios where this stuff would even matter, and the payoff is pretty poor.

Edit-

In relation to thumper slipping shots between shields-

And?  Like if it's too good sure tone it down, but yeah i'd really like more weapons that reward precision stuff like that.  Nothing feels better than a long range reaper, so i'm not really worried about the idea that with the right build a thumper might actually stick around in a late game fleet.

38
Having bad ships is absolutely critical. Pirates need to fly clunkers for the early game progression to make sense.

I disagree, sort of.

Yes having early game pirates in super ships is bad, but I think the "draw" of games like escape velocity was the idea that in player hands, I could take ANYTHING, and turn it into my ship(and you very much could).

To me it's a huge waste of effort to spend all this time creating assets and code for all these things, and then to just cut off entire avenues of gameplay because "well obviously they suck". Especially when you've already got a system in the game to help with this (d mods).  This was arguably a big complaint among the EV:Nova community (vellos were super restricted and Polaris were just better by design)

One of my favorite mods for the old EV's to help with replay value was themed starts (ditto for any RPG like Skyrim/Fallout).  For starsector the idea that you could start as a rim explorer, faction officer, bounty hunter, or pirate clan leader all make a ton of sense, and punishing the player for enjoying that playstyle doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

I'm hoping story points fix this to some extent, and if i actually put up and shut up it's one of the first things i'd try to mod, but this "it must be this way" mindset in general is usually wrong.  There's so many games out there that there's almost always a counter example.

All that said, and to be fair to the devs, dev time is a finite thing.  I get a "it's good enough for me" approach when you've got a million other features to work on that we don't even know about, but speaking from a pure theory standpoint I absolutely believe that "Every ship is viable in a players fleet" is an achievable, if very difficult, goal.  Especially given we've already got so many easy ways to asymmetrically tweak things (hull mods, player skills, and upcoming story points)

39
aaaaaahhh now I get it
I was using them in a Gryphon, so there were very little missile "maneuvers" from launch to full activation. Their tracking description should be changed, honestly... semi-tracking or smth

Yeah you don't need to look at the target at all to have squalls hit them.  You can fire completely perpendicular and they'll reorient and smash into them.   Assuming they can't actually maneuver anyways.  The pressure they put out, especially in mass, can be brutal though.  They aren't killing anything without some sort of support though.

40
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: June 24, 2020, 01:14:27 PM »
I think it would be exceptionally cruel to have a progress bar that on any given day is just an RNG number but any time Alex wanted to, he could input his best guess as to where he really thinks he is. On the one hand, you absolutely can't trust it. On the other,  it might be absolutely true. "Schrödinger's Progress Bar."

It would also make a great social experiment since whether or not we trust the progress bar is more indicative of our perception of how far along the game is, independent of reality. For example, most people would dismiss a bar rating of "12%" as too low, and ignore it. A greater number might feel "62%" is about right and tacitly agree, whereas something like "96%" would cause some to believe in immanent release while others adamantly argue against anything so soon. The carnage would be exquisite! (Some people just want to watch the world burn!) :D
See what you do is randomly tie it to his source control and have it display based on number of commits.

41
...
Non-Paragon chat:

What ship do you think has the most longevity in your fleet? As in, if you picked it up early game, you might still reasonably use it late game?

...

This is completely by accident, and not what I wanted to happen, it just happened: The Centurion.

Yes, the little dinky frigate thats not anywhere near anyone's top of the tier list has stayed with me from the very start of a campaign all the way through multi ordo fights. I bought it for being cheap tough gun frigates to help me in early game and then it just refused. To. Die. I've used Omens and Tempests in the same fleet, and while they have that sweet system/offense they both have a tendency to... pop. Meanwhile I watched my Centurion about to get hit by a reaper with shields down and high flux, began to say F in my head, and then was shocked when it slapped on its system and tanked the hit. (Granted it was damaged enough that I retreated it, but still!)

I don't feel any need to really bump against the 30 ship limit in order to kill everything, so this little frigate just hangs out in my fleet. I deploy it whenever there is room (its only 4 DP) and it putters around as an escort/killing fighters/distracting the enemy. I've got a kinetic, an HE, an ion cannon on it, and a reaper, so it is a pretty reasonable little combatant that can help against larger enemies by disabling, shoots down fighters and missiles pretty well when they come nearby, and I cheer every time it sinks its reaper into a cruiser or battlecruiser. It basically became the fleet mascot.

So... while I still wouldn't put the Centurion at the top of the tier list, I have a great fondness for them and consider them useful at every stage.

Any ship with a damper filed is amazing in AI hands, and almost always worth having in your fleet.  The AI gets crazy level usage out of the damper field and is one of the few shining points of sticking to low tech.

42
Everyone has different definitions of broken which often muddles things.

For all intents and purposes a paragon basically ends the game currently.  If you get one it's trivial to load it up with an even half decent loadout and steamroll almost all the remaining content.  Is that "broken?"...i dunno...probably not.  There's obviously supposed to be an average player path through the game, and it ends with something like a paragon taking down stations and fleets.  Does it have flaws?  Sure...but the amount they actually matter in vanilla is pretty minor given that nothing in the base game actually exploits them.

That said, is it too good?  I think so, but i'm also highly in favor of stretching out the early and middle game as they have some really interesting choices that don't get emphasized because of how easy it is to skip them, especially once you know what you're doing.  I also have to fight the urge to just mass produce them the moment I get a colony that can because...well why not?  Same issue with other ships that appear to be above curve (drover being an obvious outlier because it's clearly not supposed to be that game warping).
So wait you're telling me the most expensive ship in the game is better than everything else the player can get? Why that's preposterous!! It's 60 goddamn DP, basically a battleship and a half if you look at other examples. If hypothetically speaking, we had a capital that's maybe 70 DP or even more, would you call that thing broken because it's stronger than other ships? Hopefully this Paragon circlejerk will stop once we'll be able to get Radiants in our fleets.

@Daynen
It was hard putting both Mk II capitals on my list because they're both good for their DP but the campaign stats absolutely kill them and make them unwanted. Atlas Mk II just dies to a sneeze while being awfully slow so that's another reason why some people put it so low. It's like a glass cannon but one that has been tied to a tree like a pinata.
If money were actually a real limitation the fact that it's the most expensive ship might matter, but I can't even remember the last time I bought a paragon from a shipyard, and if you're capable of building one at a colony you're capable of affording it. 

If you want to i'd guess that you can have a kitted out paragon in a couple of hours of gameplay max, with a lot of that just being travel time.

DP is a much more significant limitation and part of why i don't think it's broken, and had you bothered actually reading what I wrote it's why I think it would be better to find ways to stretch out the early and mid game, so other ships get a chance to shine, rather than nerf the paragon in any way shape or form.

43
People tend to often forget downsides when something seems very strong to them. Like people see a 4 Tach lance Paragon (which isn't even that great always) and immediately call it broken despite its flaws. There are very few truly broken ships in the game. This is why I have lots of ships in A tier. With the right build, most of the ships can be really really useful in battles, but that doesn't mean they're perfect.
Everyone has different definitions of broken which often muddles things.

For all intents and purposes a paragon basically ends the game currently.  If you get one it's trivial to load it up with an even half decent loadout and steamroll almost all the remaining content.  Is that "broken?"...i dunno...probably not.  There's obviously supposed to be an average player path through the game, and it ends with something like a paragon taking down stations and fleets.  Does it have flaws?  Sure...but the amount they actually matter in vanilla is pretty minor given that nothing in the base game actually exploits them.

That said, is it too good?  I think so, but i'm also highly in favor of stretching out the early and middle game as they have some really interesting choices that don't get emphasized because of how easy it is to skip them, especially once you know what you're doing.  I also have to fight the urge to just mass produce them the moment I get a colony that can because...well why not?  Same issue with other ships that appear to be above curve (drover being an obvious outlier because it's clearly not supposed to be that game warping).

 

44
https://imgur.com/a/3FfvWzG

To me-

S tier- basically game breaking.  Clearly too good/designed to end the game.
A tier- never ever sad to have in my fleet
B tier- more than happy to have at any point, but might drop for an A tier if i feel like trying harder.
C tier- serviceable but probably not in a late game fleet.
D tier- the only ship i have in here is an afflictor that I don't recognize...so if i did have one i'd say "ship that could use some work"
E tier- Stuff that seems meant to be in a player fleet that probably should never be in the player fleet.
F tier- Arguably a waste of asset work/target practice only.

I should add than anything down to C tier i'll usually play with in a themed run where i try to impose rules on myself to make things more interesting.

In general i think people sleep on a lot of the hulls because there really isn't any in game reason to experiment with them, but things like the venture/condor pull a lot more weight than given credit.
I've seen some changes I can understand, some up or down for one tier or two, but. What about Mora? It's tanky, but it's not that carrier should have. Atlas mk.2 with a burn 6? It is good for a DP cost, but campaign-wise absolutely not.
I see people likes Lashers, but anyway, it's only for early game.
Legion S tier, Onslaught A tier — burn 7, both slow AF, has many weaknesses. I do must say, my Onslaught well helped me destroy couple T3 stations, but I would not take it to ordinary battle.
Mule, Venture, Gemini — at some point they are necessary or given at start, but honestly, I try to get rid of them asap. From my pov they can win in a battle only if they outtime their opponents since that types of ships has great peak operating time.

Also I put monitor in S tier because with some perks it can indefinitely tank stations most heavy fire which helped me a lot. It is really game-breaking.

Mora's stats/slots make it flexible as hell, and it's a ship I don't mind piloting and throwing in AI hands.  You can load it up as a backline, shoving all the OP into high cost fighters/bombers, or you can give it some basic fighters (vulture/khopesh sort of thing), a few half decent guns, and let it brawl like a god on the front lines.  The AI is stupid good with damper fields, so you can also make them walking PD platforms that will just not die.  They're obviously slow so they're not great at escorting faster ships, but I will ALWAYS take more mora's.  Easily one of my favorite ships in the game in that it feels very powerful but not absurdly so.

Atlas- I modify my fleet depending on my mission.People worry about burn rate too much.  If you're going pirate base/bounty hunting and need some damage the Atlas is more than fine.  It's not something I want to be lugging around all the time (and sometimes i'll spend OP to get the burn rate up or get a tug) but it has uses.  Once i start getting better capitals it rotates out of use usually, but even then as an artillery platform there's very few options that compare.

Lasher- Totally disagree they're early game only.  Having a small squad of 4ish lashers/wolfs is crazy useful for the mobility alone.  Group them up and send them to harass on the flanks and keep the AI worried about letting them behind. You lose them, oh well, they aren't tempests, and as the enemy fleet stretches you can send them in and snipe off carriers.  People vastly underrate mobility becuase it's not as useful in AI hands as it could be, but with just a little effort you can get pretty big rewards out of them.  Granted you don't NEED to because you can also faceroll everything flying only destroyers and up, but I always like having frigates in my end game fleet, especially disposable ones (i don't like risking tempests given they're so insanely good).

Legion- again people overhype burn speed.  It's not that hard to get around, and for a legion it's 100% worth it.  It's like a bigger mora.  Throw whatever the hell you want on it and watch it wreck shop.

Onslaught- more burnspeed being whatever.  Onslaught is hindered by its flux/op issues, but I'd still rather have it than a lot of the ships mentioned.  Burn drive in player hands can get you quick kills on critical targets, and while arming one is not easy, it can still fit a multitude of roles and be a constant threat. I usually throw missile racks on it and just load it to the brim with missiles and then whatever supporting weaponry fits.

Venture- Super slept on.  It's a missile platform, plain and simple.  Treat it as if it was a destroyer sized gryphon with cruiser armor.  I generally have one or two in the early/mid game as support missile platforms to help lob sabot's/harpoons wherever is needed, and the salvage bonus doesn't hurt at all.  I think ships like this should matter more, and for longer (cargo and money should really be more limiting than they are imo), because as is everyone overlooks how powerful something like this can be when kitted out properly.

Gemini- Yeah you'll rotate this out eventually, but like the condor I think this doesn't get a fair shake.  It's insanely outclassed because your other mobile carrier option is one of the best ships in the game, but I'll cart 2-5 gemini's around well into mid game, usually kitted out with PD + salamander + whatever wing I want to support with.  Mule actually winds up fitting a similar role because I almost always put converted hanger on it(making it much better imo).

Buffalo MK2- someone else mentioned it, but i'd probably but this in C-.  They're a bit hard to use right at first, but the amount of burst these can bring to a fight for their Deploy/Cost is nuts.  You do need to retreat them when they run dry (wish there was an auto order for that on missile ships) but having a few of these with different loadouts escort a venture is a common thing for me in the early game.

45
https://imgur.com/a/3FfvWzG

To me-

S tier- basically game breaking.  Clearly too good/designed to end the game.
A tier- never ever sad to have in my fleet
B tier- more than happy to have at any point, but might drop for an A tier if i feel like trying harder.
C tier- serviceable but probably not in a late game fleet.
D tier- the only ship i have in here is an afflictor that I don't recognize...so if i did have one i'd say "ship that could use some work"
E tier- Stuff that seems meant to be in a player fleet that probably should never be in the player fleet.
F tier- Arguably a waste of asset work/target practice only.

I should add than anything down to C tier i'll usually play with in a themed run where i try to impose rules on myself to make things more interesting.

In general i think people sleep on a lot of the hulls because there really isn't any in game reason to experiment with them, but things like the venture/condor pull a lot more weight than given credit.


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