The custom start for the upgradable battlewagon is my constant go-to for every single campaign ever since I discovered it, would absolutely love to see more custom starts with upgradeable ships if you ever get the chance!
I was just going to come in here and say this. Oh my god after getting my feet wet in Starsector , and looking to get into Nex Starsector, I had been thinking "god but I'd love to start with a Cool Ship but it needs hella upgrades to go from being a junker to being The Hero Ship" and was beginning to idly wonder if I had to mod that in myself, somehow. Imagine my delight at seeing the Infernal Machine option after installing Underworld! The balancing of it is especially delightful - not only is an attempt made to make the ship reasonably balanced on the progression curve in and of itself (at the start, aside from all the d-mods bringing the stats down, the un-upgraded hardpoints means it effectively has a single-side broadside, which is a neat dynamic) but the price you pay for getting a big tough cap to start off with? Everyone is sus as hell of you and worried you're going to be like granddad. It's a nice way to make the start a challenge and find a way to open up markets and trading!
It's absolutely been my most compelling play of Starsector yet (and I'm still pretty new and haven't even "finished" a seed yet) and I can't wait to get into the late game with it. Thank you so much for putting this much effort into it!
Speaking of which, I've been eyeing that specific start for my next pirate playthrough, where I can apply the lessons I learned from my current, little-fish pirate foray into 0.95, but I have some questions before committing. Having only seen the first upgrade choices so far, I assume that it will not be possible to eventually get every upgrade from every path? Is there a chart somewhere where I can see what's waiting in store for me, so that I don't miss out on a ship feature that I might wanted to have for my playstyle? It looks really interesting as a flagship concept, but going in completely blind for what is going to be a fairly long-term time investment is obviously not ideal.
Also, considering the main character's backstory in that start, is there any modified story content concerning your interactions with Jorien Kanta? I imagine that she would recognize your bespoke ship, even after such a long time.
Absolutely great work on the entire mod, by the way. I love both the rickety pirate variants and the Cabal as a late-game pirate threat, and I can't imagine playing without my purple Tempest anymore! Thank you!
No choice is permanent. You can (relatively cheaply) swap out the mutually exclusive upgrades to try out different builds.
TIM's start is meant for Nex, where it's kind of a freeform sandbox where the story content takes second stage to the 4X stuff going on. I suppose for that reason, modifying the ATG mission for adjusted Kanta interactions could be done in the future, but generally speaking I don't like modifying vanilla stuff in a mod that's supposed to be an add-on.
Besides, what's she gonna do? Kill you? The player character is immortal.
I did want to touch on this, though, since I've been thinking a bit about it myself.
I've actually avoided most [REDACTED] content outside of experiencing it myself firsthand, but I do know Kanta comes up in the main story and I had been wondering if the TIM start gave that any extra content. Not surprised to hear "no, it doesn't", and Kanta's ways of interacting with the player are (currently) rather limited, but it still feels like the TIM start "ought" to do something with that, because of one thing: you touch upon something Baumgart spoke of in his blog:
Some games define a character for the player that’s a particular person who has their own opinions and outlook. Most games define at least a character who’s a bit of a cipher, allowing them to center their game mechanics. Master Chief or Gordon Freeman are pretty straightforward; they raise few questions about player agency outside of the limited mechanical range that the game can excel at. These are useful constraints.
We’re in a similar place with Starsector. This game has a nature to it, and it suggest a certain type of character: you’re some kind of cool space captain. Imagine a more successful Han Solo (which I guess makes you Lando, haha). I can safely assume that this character won’t have strong opinions or interest in something like farming except insofar as they’re buying, selling, or stealing cargo related to it. Good.
Still, we’ve got to keep dialog a bit vague. We have to leave an openness in interpretation of actual tone and wording so that the player can project enough of their own interpretation to those words that it feels correct. If we provide a dialog option that feels out of place or that pans out vastly contrary to the player’s expectation, then we lose narrative verisimilitude. The illusion wavers!
What's interesting here is that, due to the framing of this start, we aren't just a cipher-style character like other Starsector or general RPG/roguelike PCs are. We are, specifically, Harcourt's Grandchild™; it informs the ship we start with, it informs the attitudes others have to us in game mechanics, it's an impact that ripples out from the start of the game. This makes the character a bit more "Shepard-like", if you will; while we're still totally free to express the PC's character after the start in game mechanics, TIM gives the player a bit more grounding by default and thus makes more interaction from anything related to that backstory more "natural-feeling".
This isn't claiming that you're "obligated" to do it or whatever, of course; it's just something that kind of grows organically out of the conceit of the scenario. Even "without" it, I'm still having the time of my life, and I hope you decide to do similar styles of start for other mods!