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

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 31 
 on: March 28, 2024, 05:18:48 PM 
Started by Bungee_man - Last post by Siffrin
I will just chalk it up to the pathers exaggerating as usual, there's a few factors that makes an Opis with billions of people quite unbelievable. First off there is no mention about it apart from a conversation with a pather, Opis wouldn't just be described as the population center of Askonia it would dwarf the entirety of the Sector with its population in the billions. It's also a moon so I don't even think there is enough room for that many people, unless if David wants to clarify this then I'm subscribed to the pathers are just lying theory.

 32 
 on: March 28, 2024, 05:02:24 PM 
Started by Kaysaar - Last post by Pizzarugi
A fun concept, though seeing how everything has those “exotica” upgrades makes the whole thing not very exotic in the first place. I initially thought that the way this worked was to have these very rare upgrades so that occasionally you fight a ship distinguished with those and sometimes you upgrade one of the ships you care about with them. I think an implementation focused more on those exotic upgrades and less on a generic upgrade system would overall be more satisfying to play with.

My only criticism of it being balanced this way is that eventually your fleet will be decked out with these upgrades and exotics so the game becomes far less challenging unless your opponents are also generously equipped with them.  If there were a way to scale the frequency of encountering fleets that are very enhanced with your power that would be fine.

I think your fleet being completely decked out with upgrades and exotics being overpowered really only applies if you prefer to run meta fleet compositions. I'm talking things like 3 Onslaughts, 2 Afflictors, whatever else to fill the remaining combat ship DP limit. Something like that with upgrades installed? Sure that would be pretty OP. As someone who runs unusual ships in a fleet, I feel like this balances out and lets you perform with meta fleets.

I edited the configs of this mod to disable all factions from spawning with upgrades (with the exception of faction-exclusive ones) then edited them to be 2-3x stronger than before in an effort to bring them in line with Extra Systems Reloaded (I can't edit exotics currently since the actual stats are in a .class file). That's allowed me to fight 5+ ordo with a fleet consisting of a Medusa flagship, 1 Radiant, 1 Lich (Exalted mod), 1 Fantasma (Exalted), 1 Vampire (Exalted), 1 Valafar (VIC mod), 1 Moloch (VIC), 1 Aurora, 1 Scarab, and 1 Monitor, but only survive with just the flagship and capitol. Without Exotica, it wouldn't be possible to face that many ships with a loadout this whacky and survive, at least not without the way I edited the mod anyway.

 33 
 on: March 28, 2024, 04:21:20 PM 
Started by n3xuiz - Last post by 8bitascii
There wasn't a lot about this on the interwebs, lots of discussions saying you could colonize in red systems without repercussions, but I just learned it the hard way.

Tried upgrading my Orbital Station to defend myself against their occasional fleets, but then the crisis hit  :o

Got satbombed out of their system, now I'm back to being a poor vagabond  8)

 34 
 on: March 28, 2024, 04:08:01 PM 
Started by Dazs - Last post by Aaroooon
Hey there, I've been looking into the fighters a bit more, and the Barkentine post nerf.

My findings so far are this, MOST of the fighters from CFT are fine in terms of balancing. Skiffs, Dinghys, also the more powerful ones.
The two biggest problems I have found so far are the Skjold and the Cutter. The Skjold is slightly weaker than the cutter just because it is missing a fighter per wing, it does incredible kinetic pressure, 195 per dart gun so roughly 800 damage against shields, and still 200 against armour, plus an additional 300 to both shields and armour from it's wavemotion pulse lasers, so each fighter puts out around 500 against armour plus some EMP, and 1100 against shields.
For reference, Broadswords as the best kinetic fighters in the base game do around 600 damage against shields and 150 against armour.
The Skjold has one less fighter per wing and it does cost 50% more OP, it is definitely a lot better than the Broadswords, especially since it has 400 armour compared to the Broadswords' 100.
I think a pretty good nerf would be something like taking it's Flare launcher away, since even without that it has such a ridiculous amount of armour, it doesn't even need it to be a top tier fighter.

Then there is the cutter, cutters are really really really really strong.
800 frag damage from the culverin, so 200 against shields and armour, plus another 300 from the wavemotion pulses. So it does 500 damage per fighter against shields, falling behind the Skjold a bit since 2 skjolds would do 2200 shield damage per second, while 3 Cutters only do 1500, but it has much better armour damage, also 1500, while Skjolds only do 1000.
They do have only half the armour of the skjolds, but one more fighter per wing means an extra fighter thats launching flares, and an extra fighter shooting down other figher wings for PD purposes.

I'd suggest just taking away one of the pulses, same for the skjolds honestly, the damage they do even without is still really really good. Or, let them have their really high damage but make some of it beam based, so they can't flux shields to the extend they can now, forcing you to somehow pressure the shields more to get the value from the fighters.

And this brings me to the synergistic effect of Cutters plus Barkentine, larger wings do better on the Barkentine because it's ability means more new wings get spawned.
So with a single Barkentine you can normally have 9 Cutters, during the ability 18. This means you're putting out 9000 damage per second against shields and armour.
I've found that 2 Barkentines usually murder a Paragon relatively quickly without issue if they have nothing but Cutters.
I also attempted an Onslaught against 2 Barkentines and the result was pretty laughable, it kinda just gets murdered between them.

I've done my testing with Officers but no skills on them enhancing the fighters or speed of the Barkentine, or it's ability, and no fleet wide abilities to make fighters better either.

Right now I will admit, using Barkentines is a looooot of fun and so are the two fighters I mentioned, but I think they are a bit too strong at this moment, especially once you buffs from skills and other ships into the mix.

I think to make it a bit more reasonable you need to tweak a few things, first, make the extra wings spawned from the ability use fighter capacity if they are destroyed as well, as far as I can tell right now they do not.
Then, the cooldown for the ability needs to be longer, it is incredibly strong right now, with it the Barkentine can actually nuke weaker capitals on it's own by using Cutters.
Maybe make it so that you get a Cooldown reduction for each wing that returns without dying, with the shortest if all wings return being something slightler longer than right now or around the same, because right now you simply spam the ability whenever, since there is no cost to the fighters dying, you simply get to spam free wings to do an incredible amount of damage over and over.
Honestly, even with 2 fighter wings rather than 3 the ship would probably be one of the best carriers in the game, but right now it is honestly broken for it's cost, especially in conjunction with one of the two fighter types I talked about.
Maybe another way to deal with the ability would be to only spawn an extra wing for each of the wings currently active, because right now even if the ship is caught without any fighters, it can fully deploy its entire set of fighters.
Now that I am thinking about it, I might like that better, make the extra fighters use fighter capacity, dont reduce the cooldown tooooo much, but only spawn an extra fighter for each fighter not currently being replaced. That way it cant spam wave after wave over and over even when its main fighters are regenerating or dying to just suicide in, instead you have to slow down, get your fighters and then send them together, or just spawn fewer. That might be a good trade off.

I've also taken out any consideration from other mods I use, like Exo-Tech stuff allowing to add an extra fighter wing on ships, which obviously breaks the Barkentine beyond belief, since I understand you can't balance for what other mods may or may not add.

 35 
 on: March 28, 2024, 04:06:26 PM 
Started by GrayingGamer - Last post by landryraccoon
My two cents:

It's fine for money to be really easy to get, because money should only matter in the beginning and mid game. At the start of the game it feels like the only thing that matters is how much money you have, but in the endgame, the only things that matter should be things that money cannot buy, because money gets replaced by some new type of endgame progression.  If you're a beginner at the game, even managing the basic logistics of the game is difficult, so having some "easy" ways to get money is both fun and makes you feel like you're getting a lot better at the game when you master them. I don't really have an issue with certain types of trading or raiding breaking the (early) game, because that's fun. When you start a new playthrough you feel like you're a hero because you can skip past the early part knowing a bunch of tricks, and why not? The problem is if there's no endgame content beyond that.

In the end game, things that matter should be things that are earned through overcoming significant challenges in the game. Omega weapons, for example, seem to fit this perfectly. I hope that whatever end game ends up being, that there's a lot more stuff like Omega weapons - stuff that simply can't be bought for money, but must be earned by beating gameplay challenges.

IMHO, endgame starts at the point where money significantly drops in importance. Typically in my games this is when I get a profitable colony up to size 6. At that point money does not and more importantly should not matter, and that seems fine to me.

 36 
 on: March 28, 2024, 04:03:18 PM 
Started by Der_Doggg - Last post by Der_Doggg
i feel like it's a bad idea adding it during a playthrought
Oh *** I think you might be right, I just tested it again and there is indeed an error naming the savefile or something. Don't know where that comes from since the mod only adds a bunch of .wpn files, but then again I havent got half an Idea about modding this game. The save still seemed to load fine after that, but I'll edit the post just to be safe. Thanks for letting me know

 37 
 on: March 28, 2024, 03:53:43 PM 
Started by Bungee_man - Last post by Gabloc
Such event was also mentioned in the official blog:
Quote
The moon Opis, capital and population center of the Askonia polity, is destroyed by a Planet Killer. Andrada blames rebels, rebels blame Andrada, other rebels blame each other, others blame outside agents.

The Hegemony executive council considers Andrada’s actions erratic and ill-judged, issuing a recall order which he ignores, declaring it “weak-willed treason”.

Phillip Andrada starts purges throughout Askonia system, declares himself executor-for-life aka Diktat Executor over new polity formed from the Hegemony intervention fleet.

Most of the Hegemony task force declares for Andrada – Hero of the Battle of Maxios – while a minority remains loyal to Hegemony and a smaller minority joins the Askonian rebels. A chaotic battle breaks out in the Hegemony armada in orbit around Sindria with fighting both in ship corridors and between ships of the Hegemony fleet.

In my opinion, Opis definitely has more population than Sindria. However, to claim that it has "Billions of people" is a bit exaggeration.

 38 
 on: March 28, 2024, 03:35:28 PM 
Started by Jasamus - Last post by Jasamus
Combat Background Enhanced

Download



Code repo

Combat Background Enhanced focuses on adding visual flare by procedurally generating asteroid fields and hulk fleets in the background of fleet combat.
Can be added/removed from existing saves.

Features
  • Layered background rendering system that simulates depth in the visuals and fades out from the main combat action
  • Hulk fleets based on nearby factions in the region.
  • Automatically supports modded factions and custom ships they use.
  • Asteroid fields.
  • Procedural generation so each background is unique.

Screenshots:


Gifs







[close]

Currently doesn't support modular/multi-part ships. This will be in a future release.

I've got a good sized list of more features to add so stay tuned for updates.

Thanks to the Starsector Discord for giving great feedback

 39 
 on: March 28, 2024, 03:31:32 PM 
Started by shoi - Last post by jawich
Hey man, Just wanted to say that your mod has been my favorite here for a long while(especially the addition of the armored core boost system), and wanted to throw out a suggestion. I saw that the Halo mod over on the discord incorporated the star wars shielding for their ships. idk if something like that would be possible for the mechs but that would probably look really cool and would lower their profile even more for avoiding enemy projectiles.

 40 
 on: March 28, 2024, 03:16:30 PM 
Started by Kaysaar - Last post by Shogouki
A fun concept, though seeing how everything has those “exotica” upgrades makes the whole thing not very exotic in the first place. I initially thought that the way this worked was to have these very rare upgrades so that occasionally you fight a ship distinguished with those and sometimes you upgrade one of the ships you care about with them. I think an implementation focused more on those exotic upgrades and less on a generic upgrade system would overall be more satisfying to play with.

My only criticism of it being balanced this way is that eventually your fleet will be decked out with these upgrades and exotics so the game becomes far less challenging unless your opponents are also generously equipped with them.  If there were a way to scale the frequency of encountering fleets that are very enhanced with your power that would be fine.

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