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76

Mods / Re: Vanilla addon - variants mod V1.1 (0.54a - total vanilla/campaign integrated)

« on: November 27, 2012, 03:11:09 PM »

I think that's a neat idea, but at the same time one thing I really liked about this mod was the curveballs you'd get. Pirates with light/heavy needlers and hypervelocity guns I thought were great, for example. Especially for a faction like Pirates, you'd expect to see a good variety of loadouts. Hegemony, probably not as much, but it's still interesting to see the variety and get some nice surprises.

77

Suggestions / Re: Additional method to obtain hullmods?

« on: November 26, 2012, 02:54:22 PM »

Thanks for pointing that out, Talkie Toaster. To be honest I suspected that this idea would not be wholly new to Alex, so it's good to see evidence of it out there.

78

Suggestions / Additional method to obtain hullmods?

« on: November 25, 2012, 07:33:38 AM »

I noticed a complaint about the new skill-requiring hullmods on the Bay12 forums along the lines of "Picard didn't have to master warp core engineering!"

Setting aside the fact that this setting is rather quite different than star trek, it did get me thinking-- as it stand right now, aside from your starter ship there does indeed seem to be no way to get a hullmod beyond DIY. Surely there are others out there in the sector who could provide access to hullmods?

The (in my opinion) problem of hullmods stripped on capture is one thing, but what about a method linked with faction relations? For example, as long as you're in good standing with the Hegemony their stations could install heavy armor on your vessel. Perhaps it could even be tied to individual stations instead of broad factions-- the techies over on Xingbat III really know how to get the most out of targeting systems, say. These could be free as long as you have sufficient friendship, or they could be for a price. A freeport (pirates), say, would always have some engineers willing to do some quick and dirty mods for the right price.

Does this sound palatable at all? The ability to be able to do-it-yerself anywhere, anytime hullmods seems like it would still be quite useful, while at the same time large numbers of hullmods are not forever locked away to a character.

79

General Discussion / Re: The Difference

« on: October 12, 2012, 03:36:10 PM »

I don't know about the map part, but to elaborate a little on the other two Catra mentioned:

You'll need to attack if you think the enemy's going to flee. Fairly logical. This works both ways, of course-- if the AI's not confident it can beat you, it will take a defensive stance. This allows you to flee (if you want).

If one person is attacking and the other defending, the defender will have more deployment FP to work with. Also fairly logical. I don't know exact numbers, though.

Of course, if I'm wrong about any of this I apologize and I'm sure I'll get corrected soon enough.

80

Mods / Re: [0.53.1a] Interstellar Federation v1.233

« on: August 23, 2012, 03:05:45 PM »

Anybody have any tips on using the Shogun? I get that IFed ships are generally pretty specialized and 'harder', so to speak, than other factions, but I can't see any reason to take a Shogun. While it may have two medium turrets and sensor drones, the low speed, passable shields, mediocre flux and, most of all, terrible amount of ordnance points render it a questionable destroyer. As best I can tell, it's only good for putting a pair of long range kinetics on and hoping nothing gets close to it-- something that, in my opinion, a Brawler can do in a smaller and cheaper package (if slightly reduced range).

I noticed it has a fairly large crew surplus-- is it meant as a troop carrier? Is the 'command ship' designation referring to capabilities it will have in a more campaign-rich future? Am I missing something? I like the look, hardpoints and layout... it just seems lacking in the core stats, particularly in terms of OP.

Criticism of the Shogun aside, thanks for all your work on the mod. Definitely one of the best factions around right now, in my opinion.

81

General Discussion / Re: Smashing the Vase: If our saves don't matter any more, give us a better start!

« on: May 02, 2012, 05:27:19 PM »

I was aware of the # thing, guess I wasn't being clear in my language. I meant that one should feel free to uncomment the starter ships to try 'em out-- their setups tend to be pretty good for dealing with early threats, in my opinion.

It's been a few patches since I've tampered with modded player faction files, so good to hear that's been worked out.

82

General Discussion / Re: Smashing the Vase: If our saves don't matter any more, give us a better start!

« on: May 02, 2012, 03:26:07 PM »

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it yet, but there's a fairly easy way to edit the initial ship(s) you start with.

Go into starfarer-core/data/world/factions/player, open it with your standard text editor.

You'll see a 'fleet compositions' section, with 'start1', 'start2', and 'start3'. I'm not sure what start1 is, to be honest. Start2 is what you start with, and start3 is what you'll end up in if you bet the house and lose.

maxFleetPoints does what it says on the tin. If you set it to 0 (which is the default), you'll get one ship at random.

The crew, supplies, marines and fuel seem to be based on whatever capacity you start with. So 30-40 days worth for a single ship will be numerically much less than a full fleet.

The ships portion has variant names followed by two numbers in brackets. Take the variant names from starfarer-core/data/variants; if you know what you want pick it, otherwise feel free to experiment. First number in brackets is the minimum number you can start with, second is the max-- but you won't go over the fleet point limit. If it crashes on startup then you probably typed something in wrong, but if I recall previous versions had one or two variants in the variant file that don't work.

One thing you'll notice is that there are a bunch of 'starting' variants commented out (the #). I don't think there's any other way to get those, so feel free to experiment. They tend to not be great, but starting with a fleet of starter frigates is interesting.

Finally, not sure how to add fighters. Maybe follow the 'wing' format in start1?

Note that a mod might have its own 'player' faction file that will override this.

83

Mods / Re: [Alpha-Rel] Green Sun & Other custom factions [Campaign and Missions]

« on: March 27, 2012, 03:49:39 PM »

Played it some more, this time without any other mods. This time the Ceredians got pounded and the Isorans ended up owning most of the galaxy, primarily because they had several massive fleets that annihilated anything they touched with seemingly no losses. So... maybe it's just luck of the draw in both cases. Either way, it's a fun mod with great (and great-looking) ships. Thank you for your work on it!

84

Mods / Re: [Alpha-Rel] Green Sun & Other custom factions [Campaign and Missions]

« on: March 26, 2012, 03:51:10 PM »

I concur somewhat with one of the earlier assessments-- the Ceredians (orange fellows with no shields) seem to dominate the system, though the Isorans and Green Sun do alright. Pirates seem to be like the tide (come and go), TT is a tad weaker, and the hegemony has no fleets at all about 70% of the time. I'm running this with the Lotus Conglomerate mod, however, which probably makes a difference (I believe they're hostile to the hegemony).

Liking the ships. The pocket carrier might be a tad too useful as it can outrun many of its predators. The hyena seems a little too awesome. Captured one somewhat early (worth the hostility). Speed of a fast destroyer, flux of a cruiser, firepower in between. Mounted pulse lasers and kinetic ballistics and could destroy a lot and easily run from what I couldn't. I feel like the speed might be a tad too high, but I'm not sure.

85

Bug Reports & Support / [0.51a] Point Defense Hull Mod and anti-ship Missiles.

« on: March 09, 2012, 11:27:09 AM »

A somewhat amusing bug.

Put the integrated point defense mod (or whatever it's called) onto a ship. My tac lasers started doing PD duty, but so did my harpoons! That is, when I launch my harpoon MRMs instead of flying at my targeted ship they fly at the nearest missile. Needless to say, harpoons aren't exactly great at that.

I imagine this is a small wrinkle in the hullmod making everything PD and the new addition in 0.51a of making PD missiles possible.

86

Mods / Re: Starfarer Extended for 0.5a

« on: February 22, 2012, 09:35:58 PM »

Fun mod, thanks for your work making it!

One small bug I've encountered with the latest version: I captured a dragoon cruiser of the strike variant. By default it uses 172 ordnance points out of 150, so it starts with more than the maximum number of ordnance points. Considering that is has 22 points worth of cap/vents, perhaps you left those out of the calculation? I'm not sure how ordnance points for a ship is determined, to be honest. I tried to fix it myself, but could not find an easy way to do so.

87

Suggestions / Fighter threshold retreat?

« on: February 14, 2012, 09:38:12 PM »

A general threshhold retreat order for ships is, I suppose, the commander's role to determine (and it costs a command point!). However, I've found that perhaps the best reason to own a carrier is that it makes your fighters less suicidal. In the event that one doesn't own a carrier, a 'retreat when below x% lost fighters' would be really handy. It can be hard to babysit fighters that have a very short expected lifetime.

It's okay if this would count a command point, I would just like a way to trigger the 'rearm/repair' order for fighters when no carrier is present, causing them to retreat instead.

88

General Discussion / Re: 0.5 feedback

« on: February 14, 2012, 08:04:16 PM »

Hi, picked this up a few days ago and am quite satisfied with my purchase. Was just getting the hang of 0.35 when 0.5 rolls around the corner!

I'm quite enjoying 0.5 and have some feedback. Much of this I've seen already-- more bases (I think a pirate base as well as a tri-tachyon base would be nice, personally), click on map to travel to a location, seeing stats for equipped weapons, etc. In addition to what's been said, I have some more feedback.

First, I think the brawler needs some help. I tried a number of new games, and found that I could get going with every ship but the brawler. It's just too slow for a starter ship-- anything you manage to badly damage without a critical blow will just run away from you. Also, maybe it's just me but it's more of an anti-cruiser frigate that gets destroyed by fighters and frigates. Considering that you start out fighting those, it's a bit of a problem. All that said, I think just a small boost to the top speed (travel and combat) would go a long way to making the ship a more viable starter.

Of the starter ships, I found the brawler was impossible (for me, at least). The support frigate (can't recall the name, it's got a single medium energy and single medium missile) was merely passable. Got lucky in forcing the surrender of a pirate destroyer early on. Lasher and the rest are comparatively easy-- fast and good power. All of them start out rather grindy, though.

On the whole low-tech v. high-tech, the advantage of high tech comes out all the more strong when the campaign map is added. A high tech fleet seems to be faster, more quickly repaired (if only due to less hull), and less supply reliant. This is in addition to them being able to slaughter their low-tech counterparts with their (seemingly, at least) generally longer range weapons, better shields and higher maneuverability.

Second, unless I'm mistaken the ship stock at the station are not currently replenished. It's nice to have the crew/supplies/weapons replenished, but kind of rough having just 1 of each of ships available for sale. Knowing the power of flight decks, my first purchase was a condor. Sadly, that condor got destroyed not too long after (an avoidable death, I admit). Managed to scrounge up the funds for the venture, but now that's it-- apart from a lucky salvage of an enemy carrier, there are no more carriers to buy. Making the resupply convoy replenish ship stocks (or some other convoy) would be quite handy. On the other hand, I suppose having the extremely limited stock reinforces the whole crapsack universe this takes place in. Lose the 1 wasp wing available for sale? Too bad.

Finally, and I suspect this will be handled with by the skill/officer system, but some way to increase our in-system speed would be great. Not only is it annoying to have all the nice prey zip away from you, but also a fleet of any decent size can get pretty darn slow, even if you strap augmented engines to anything and everything. My best fleet has 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 3 frigates and 3 fighter wings and gets a top speed of 144. Of those ships, only the cruiser is slow (a venture). I imagine a low-tech fleet would make system travel require a good book on hand.

Now that all that's out of my system, I can finish up by saying that this is looking superb! I'm happy to have invested my 10 bucks in it and look forward to its future while appreciating its present. Thanks for all your work!

Edit: Adding one more ship to my fleet brought it down to 120 top speed. Added two more destroyers, and it's still 120. Is there a minimum fleet speed? Also, I really wish there was a fast carrier out there. I don't care if it's armored with cardboard and has no weapons, I just really want a carrier that doesn't slow down the rest of my fleet!