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

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Author Topic: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 639144 times)

Serenitis

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1290 on: April 28, 2017, 03:18:42 AM »

Idle query:
Has anyone managed to get any utility out of the Remote Survey skill?

I've used it a couple of times and then left it alone, as 9 times out of 10 I'll be going there anyway to either hunt for derelicts or survey it fully.
Knowing what it costs in advance has not been something I've cared about all that much.

Having to cart around volatiles for the neutrino scanner is vaguely irritating.
I'd argue that it was plenty balanced enough without any kind of consumption given it's accuracy (or lack thereof), that you can't use sustained burn at the same time, and it being a big "someone's here and doing stuff" flag to anything else in the system.

Are you playing with the junk-fleet related industry skills? With them, I find every d-ship workable. And even if they get more often damaged and destroyed than normal ships, it doesn't matter too much.
Without the skills, I only use d-auxiliaries, the occasional early cruiser find (temporarily) and rare ships for restoration. If I'd try to use Ds for normal combat without the related skills, I'd not be happy either. Maybe that's the reason for our different experiences?
Yes. I currently have that industry skill. And I agree that it does lessen the problem, although it is still a problem.
Reduced turn rate is such a huge handicap it essentially renders any combat ship so affected worthless. Especially if that ship has fixed weapons and/or shields.
My current fleet is almost entirely (D)s because there has been nothing else available, so getting that skill was a priority. But it still means theres a lot of unusable ships due to thier being poorly flown by the AI, or being too frustrating to fly myself.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1291 on: April 28, 2017, 04:12:29 AM »

Has anyone managed to get any utility out of the Remote Survey skill?
yes, for two reasons:

1) while i also usually fly to every point-of-interest in a system while exploring, i don't necessarily fly all the way to each planetary body, especially if there are several of them somewhat close to each other. i just use Active Sensor Burst when i'm nearby, that's almost always enough to see if there's anything worth taking a closer look at. Remote Survey combines well with that.

2) you can survey all the uninhabited planets in the core systems as well, where there usually isn't anything else to explore. doing one or two Remote Surveys while traveling between markets and jumppoints is often enough to get preliminary data on all planets, without having to fly to each of them in turn.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1292 on: April 28, 2017, 05:51:41 AM »

@Alex, is it intentional that autofit doesn't save weapon-group configurations? my Enforcer keeps putting Sabots and Reapers into the same group (which is just a terrible idea in general), same with HE and KI weapons (which probably doesn't matter for the AI, but it does in case i ever wanna pilot it myself).
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CedricO

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1293 on: April 28, 2017, 06:14:33 AM »

When can we expect Starsector to pop on steam (early access?).
steam, yes. most likely. once it's done.
steam early access, definitely not.

Why not exactly? Early access works well for games where the dev actually updates the game (like in the case of this one) It would also help attact more players.
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orost

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1294 on: April 28, 2017, 06:34:56 AM »

The Steam community has the patience and sense of a hungry three-year-old. In the time it takes to develop one major Starsector update the game's reviews and forums would go through four cycles of ecstatic praise to hysterical meltdown to angry accusations of ripping off and back to ecstatic praise. Nobody wants to deal with that unless they have to, and Starsector doesn't have the kind of budget requirements to need early access funding.
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Cosmitz

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1295 on: April 28, 2017, 06:35:45 AM »

Since this is a game that pretty much gets 'rereleased' each new version every 6-12ish months. Each version is aimed to be a playable experience, and updates are rare after the .1 version of each major release. It doesn't have a constant back and forth each week/month of development, filled with half-done features and playable-but-not-really gameplay.

Plus, it's overhead the dev team will need to have. given ratings, reviews, keeping people happy during the dev period.. instead of a casual forum which they can check, or not, of their own volition.

Read more about why and how SS is developed the way it is in my old-but-still-current interview i had with Alex a while back.
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BillyRueben

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1296 on: April 28, 2017, 07:43:27 AM »

Started to read that interview and lol'd that I only paid $10 for this game.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1297 on: April 28, 2017, 08:20:12 AM »

Reporting potential bug.
Taking contract for metal delivery.
Having three cargo freighters and some other ships.
Loaded to the max with metal(about 1000) and supplies, heavy machinery and some weapons(~650 cargo space). Max capacity.
After doing jump to hyperspace on my way to jengala i get approached by pirates who demand to hand them stuff.
Refused and try to run but failed.
3 cargo haulers get destroyed(mule, Gemini and colossus).
I run with two shepards, tanker and wolf.
Thing is I have only crew and fuel left.
Nothing completely nothing in cargo. I should at last have some supplies or metal I transported or spare weapons. But there is nothing.I still have ~+250 cargo capacity and was full(minus few supplies that was eaten).
I do not think that something like that should happen.
I will try to recreate it . Back log if anyone interested can send.

Serenitis

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1298 on: April 28, 2017, 08:56:51 AM »


David. I love you.

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Histidine

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1299 on: April 28, 2017, 09:12:38 AM »


Huh. Damn, nice catch; I only recognized not-Yang and not-Morgan (and I wouldn't have managed even that if I hadn't seen David's tweet way back when).
(Even now, not-Zakharov looks more like Michio Kaku than anyone else)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1300 on: April 28, 2017, 09:30:49 AM »

Within the solar system view; the animated star itself; The core seems to be larger than that of a white dwarf.  I posted a comparison here:
http://imgur.com/a/cL3qT

I know my last post was a little long; but don't forget to rename F-class stars so they are named differently from White Dwarfs:
http://imgur.com/a/LPDO5

Hmmm, I just noticed that the White dwarf in Arcadia is a lot bigger than the one on Magec...so I guess the size of Neutron stars/White Dwarfs might vary anyway.

Ah - Achaman it just abnormally small, being in a hand-made system. Have to say, though, I'm not very keen on renaming white dwarfs to anything else - feels a bit pedantic to me; so much stuff isn't scientifically accurate anyway, so it's a distinction that's not likely to add any clarity.

@Alex, is it intentional that autofit doesn't save weapon-group configurations? my Enforcer keeps putting Sabots and Reapers into the same group (which is just a terrible idea in general), same with HE and KI weapons (which probably doesn't matter for the AI, but it does in case i ever wanna pilot it myself).

Made a note - right now it just auto-assigns.

Reporting potential bug.
Taking contract for metal delivery.
Having three cargo freighters and some other ships.
Loaded to the max with metal(about 1000) and supplies, heavy machinery and some weapons(~650 cargo space). Max capacity.
After doing jump to hyperspace on my way to jengala i get approached by pirates who demand to hand them stuff.
Refused and try to run but failed.
3 cargo haulers get destroyed(mule, Gemini and colossus).
I run with two shepards, tanker and wolf.
Thing is I have only crew and fuel left.
Nothing completely nothing in cargo. I should at last have some supplies or metal I transported or spare weapons. But there is nothing.I still have ~+250 cargo capacity and was full(minus few supplies that was eaten).
I do not think that something like that should happen.
I will try to recreate it . Back log if anyone interested can send.

Thank you, made a note - yeah, that sounds like a bug. There's a similar one for fuel, too.



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Hazard

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1301 on: April 28, 2017, 09:39:12 AM »

Hehe, I did immediately think of Corazon Santiago when I saw the lower left female portrait for the first time, but only now I get the others as well.

Also, not-Miriam's look matches her personality much better than the original portrait ever did. :D
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David

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1302 on: April 28, 2017, 09:56:34 AM »

David. I love you.
<3

(Even now, not-Zakharov looks more like Michio Kaku than anyone else)
You got me; totally used Michio Kaku as the reference because I think he looks more like Zakharov than Zakharov does.

Also, not-Miriam's look matches her personality much better than the original portrait ever did. :D
That one is based on Louise Fletcher (who played Kai Winn on Deep Space 9 and Nurse Rached in One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). She'd be the perfect Miriam in SMAC: The Movie.
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Hussar

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1303 on: April 28, 2017, 10:48:34 AM »

This gonna be my first post on this forum so I guess I’ll quickly say “hi!” to everybody :)
I might be new but I’ve remember buying SS back in 0.6.2a-RC3 version, and I’ve since then loved it and played both vanilla and with mods regularly. I regard this purchase as probably my best spent money on games as your work Alex have gave me countless hours of pure fun. For that reason I’ve also been lurking on the forum for all this time (:

But since you’ve dropped the 0.8 update I just had a feel for a past week urging me to come out and write what everyone will read below.

Spoiler
So, in general I wanna say that I simply love it. The update is so massive and changes so much that I actually have a great time playing just “vanilla” (I mean, I’ve installed the Venture (A) mod and I think you could expand on the hegemony auxilliaries and other - but I’ll touch on that later) which honestly I never did since 0.65 like. I was pretty much always playing with mods, most often with/as SCY.

Currently I’m having a blast flying for hegemony with my XIV themed fleet since the new hegemony skin for the wolf is absolutely gorgeous (and I would wish to see more skins for other ships as well, it would be nice to see for example hegemony aurora [as codex says few were seen in Hegemony DF). As everyone knows the XIV battlegroup ships are generally slower but that’s where skills come into play. So I guess I’ll start with those!

1. Skills
So, my first reaction wasn’t too fond of the new overhauled skill system honestly. But it was all because of the new levelcap and the fact we’ll have to make substantial skill choices in the game so my initial reaction was more of a spoiled kid that had his sweets taken away - I’ll admit.

But oh golly how wrong was I. Since in general I do absolutely love it in fact. Before it was just a matter of time till we got “everything” we might have needed, plus the skills itself were only meaningful at 5 or 10th level mostly. The fact that right now every skill level gives a meaningful bonuses is something I do very much like. The only thing I’d would argue with is the levelcap, as I have found that it’s really hard to assemble a really good set of skills and the way I came to my current one was pretty much by means of consoling my way to the 40th level to have the full pool of skillpoint to play with and assess it’s impact. Yet even now when I’m on level 40 via normal means, as you can see HERE. I have not yet found a place for last 2 points to spent in as there’s simply too many good skills yet left to pick.

I would really much like to see level cap increased in the future by like maybe 5 levels, since my current set of skills is pretty much effect of things I’ll talk in detail below. But shortly it’s an effect of introducing the remnants, slower paced & harder battles and carrier overhaul. All of these are very much positive things but in my first playthrough I have found that going full/half industry path cripples my fleet more in the later game than benefits, as the battles were simply too tough to handle..

For sure it will have to be raised if you’re planning on adding any more skills related to the outpost and hopefully colonies (:

As for my choice of skills, everyone can deduct from the screenshot that I have wanted to be able to survey planets and salvage derelicts while being still able to fight effectively. My commander is not a best fighter but I’ve chose a fleet-wide skills allowing me to field 10 officers (which are really valuable and meaningful now), as well as to boost my fleet’s handling (vel ECM warfare and coordinated maneuvers - which counters the downgrades of XIV hulls) in battle. At this point I’ve chose a style to command from a cruiser or other similar class of ship, and leave carrier handling to my officers in the fleet. At this point I’m not salvaging ships at all unless it would happen to be hegemony auxilliary (as I said, playing hegemony themed playthrough this time, something I never did before really) or or better, an actual ship of the XIV battlegroup. But other than that I don’t, mainly because of the flaws in the d-mod system which I’ll describe.

2. D-mod ship system overhaul
In general? It’s great, totally new concept and I do very much like it. Sadly it feels a bit handicapped that unless someone specs for full industry, they’ll still suffer from the simple fact we cannot restore single d-mods of our choosing. It’s either none or all, and this in my opinion cripples the usefulness of it in the long run. Yes, with full industry we can salvage more and more often with less d-mods but it still costs absurd amounts of money to fix them - especially if we happen to grab a hull with a really undesired d-mod. Like for example degraded engines. I personally wouldn’t mind a battleship to have glitched sensors and weakened structure as long as it’s engines, armor and weapon mounts were fine. This gives a nice spin on the thing, that we got for example an onslaught but one that’s weaker structurally so it would demand better care. But if it happen to have one of the undesired mods - good luck fixing it? Well, in my current playthrough I could go this and I’ll go this route with any XIV battlegroup ship for RP purposes and simply because I’ve scored an absurd haul netting me 2 million credits in survey data, AI cores and transplutonic metals and fuel. But at this point having so much cash you won’t care for derelict ships anymore much because you can buy brand new ships instead.

If we could instead fix d-mods one at the time at the shipyard this would add more depth and attachment for those ships to the player. At least that’s how I think. Reasoning is that finding them, even crippled with 4 d-mods or more wouldn’t be gamebreaking for the player. Yes, as said, with full industry we should cut in half the number of d-mods in general, but the early game finds would be simply more meaningful to the player if he knew that he can patch the ship up one d-mod at the time - in turn growing attachment to this particular ship they have found in a far flung corner of space. For example I have found Odyssey in a far flung remnant infested system. I ditched it in corvus at the abandoned station and totally forgot about it because it happened early in game and the ship had every d-mod possible. The fix bill was simply horrendous. If I could fix it one d-mod at the time, I would most likely end up restoring it to it’s full (or almost full) glory and include it in the fleet (I can even think of the name like Invincible or something along those lines to mark the fact that remnants didn’t pulverized it and here it comes striking them back and continuing the fight).

So yeah. That’s pretty much all issues I have with d-mod overhaul.

There’s also a fact of that some ships like pirate afflictor that doesn’t loose (d) upon fixing. But you’re aware of this, and at the same time I believe the matter of making other skins (example hegemony aurora) and perhaps even allowing the player to choose other paintjobs on their ships to either get them all “hightech’y”, “rusty ol’ buckets” or to simply mark their in game alliance - is totally separate thing and I understand not the most important right now from the point of game development. So I’ll leave it be and on a note that I really like hegemony colors on the Wolf frigate :D

3. Carrier overhaul
This one was a surprise and a really nice one I gonna say. Confusing at first but making so much more sense now. In previous playthroughs with for example Scy or DME I was trying out carrier doctrines and every time it was ending up in high maintenance cost becuase skills weren’t cutting supplies on fighter and bomber wings. This problem is right now gone, even if for a price that we can field less of “planes” now, but this isn’t a bad thing in my oppinion. It’s more logical right now that wings are tied to the hangar space of the ships we field, so this makes ships like Astral a true powerhouse and gives an actual benefits and reasons for fielding bigger carriers. So I really do like that.

What I don’t like is the problems they brought in with new CV skills. By which I mean it’s random but I’d wish we could get a option on the “advance menu” to turn them on or off for a desired officer. Because there’s nothing more frustrating than training a perfect assault ship captain that will eventually end up with a battleship/cruiser/destroyer command, and having him reach level 17 with all skills full and then got a choice between 2 cv related skills. Which popup really too often honestly - especially if we don’t want them on this officer. It’s kind of important since with for example my current skill build, which is clearly a “fleet command” oriented, it’s really important to have officers with few crucial skills on my frontline ships. So if we could get an option for “profiling” upon officer advancment it would be nice.

Further, what I think is missing is some sort of carrier command options for those who field those under AI command. I have many times situations where AI was in range of enemy ships but wasn’t supporting the allies or attacking the target even upon manual assignment of said cv to attack that ship specifically. The AI to my taste is really wonky here a little, as said I can either have a carrier that sits back and does little - or one that ends up charging into the line. Which can be troublesome if that’s a light carrier for example. I know this is new and completely new AI mechanics, but if it was possible to give players a bit more control in CV behaviour it would be nice. For example things I’m thinking off would be orders that would affect CV and their carrier-borne craft. Orders like attack marker for all carrier-borne craft in range, while the cv itself would keep itself behind the screen of cruisers and destroyers instead of pushing itself to the front to rub it’s omni-shields with the enemy ship… Or special tab for carrier focus with options telling cv’s to cover their allies or R&R all craft and sending them all together instead of pouring the wings one by one into enemy PD’s. Things like that, though I guess others with more carrier experience could give more specific and more elaborate ideas on what exactly could be added here in the future.

But that said, in general I do still very like the changes. They’re good base, and carriers make for more interesting assets to play with right now.

4. Combat
There has been a lot of changes here. The skill overhaul, changes to the combat itself making armor more meaningful (I never had so much fun with Enforcers before!), cv overhaul & more. Everything resulted in that combat is slower, more tactical and in depth than before and I do very much like it. As many, I have found myself more and more staying on the tactical screen issuing commands and leaving AI to it. The AI got more competent as well I have noted, as I would never before dare to use Kite’s (A) in a fleet combat… While I do now, I got 4 of them to screen 4 wolfs or run solo as harassers. And I’m really happy with them, I have lost one of them maybe once or twice on my road towards 40th level. And there has been many battles and usually they were coming out unscatched or maybe with minor damage to armor. Rarely they got themselves dunked hard, but then I was still able to issue retreat commands to them and they did exactly what has been expected from them. I even had a reckless captain on one of them for a time being… Yeah he was the one I was calling off all the time but she did not die! AI is surprisingly competent this patch, I have to say. I even had battles forced upon me which I’ve been starting on retreat. Told my auxilliaries to bunch up with carrier, all destroyers and cruisers were to cover them while frigates were running around this blob covering everybody from the pesky harrassers. I was managing to break off without losses (sometimes the only loss would be my ship via issuing retreat commands to other ships too early and getting dunked but still - a huge progress I reckon).

Talking further, I have found CR to be crucial right now, to the point almost all of my ships run on hardened subsystems. For some it’s a must even, as harrasing types of ships like phase frigates or my Kite’s are constantly in contact with the enemy so having higher starting CR and hardened subsystems is kind of a must for them to endure the fight. I found it not being as much of a problem for bigger ships or carriers as you have added more complexity to the system aka battleship won’t feel threatened as much by a lurking frigate, while frigate will be under heavy stress for staying in contact with the said battleship. It makes sense and I very much like it.

Further since the overall pace and AI has been pretty much changed (improved for me), having a good skilled officers adds a whole new spin to the combat itself. Same goes for perks like ECM Warfare and Coordinated Maneuvers. The latter for example compensates for deficiences in engine power of some of my ships while giving a boost to all others. ECM is also meaning much, especially that now pretty much all fleets (except for pirates?) contest us on this field. Despite maxed out skill here I had many battles where the crucial combat was going over the sensory buoy to compensate for enemy’s advantage in that regard. The only thing that’s lacking in this regard would be an actual ECM destroyer like the one we can find in the modded factions - since now ECM warfare is pretty much a thing.
But with all that praise there’s one thing I’d would like to see improved upon. The tactical screen is somewhat barebones right now - I haven’t been using it in previous versions of the game much, while today I’m (and others as I have read) making more and more use of it - letting AI to do the actual combat while limiting myself to tasking targets and relocating ships on the map. In short directing the flow of battle. One thing that’s missing from the tactical overview would be the already mentioned lack of CV orders. Second, and perhaps more crucial would be the lack of on-screen information we get while being in combat mode. I have often found myself jumping into my ship (without disengaging the autopilot) just to check on current bonuses (or penalties) to ECM ratings and Coordinated Maneuvers. It would be really nice if we could get those sort of informations also on a tactical screen, since as I have said I have fought uphill battles where my fleet had it’s range decreased so fighting over sensor array was actually meaningful. But we dont’ get those informations at the tactical screen.


Hmm so that would be pretty much it? I won’t comment on the expanded world and alike since those great additions that were awaited for so long really. You’re doing a really good work on the world building Alex. This patch was sort of radical change to the game and I do really like it. There’s some flaws that I hope you can address in the future, but overall? A mighty good job man! If you’re planning to make the outpost/colony patch as big as this one… Damn, I’m already excited! (:

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention the new guys on the block, but that's what I meant by world building. Someone also found the Domain flag in the files so I'm interested how you'll progress with that in the future :D

Edit2: I also like the changes to the modifications. That some will come with skills, some we may buy on the market, others we can find after battle or via means of salvage from a research station. It's a really nice and well thought change that motivates the players to actually think over their skill choices since they can still get a desired hullmod even if they won't spec in missiles for example to get the ECCM or expanded missle racks. I also like that TT holds the best shield related mods while hegemony have the armor etc. It all makes sense giving the profiles of the said factions. I would only say that operations room mod is kind of costly. 30pts is a huge deal on a cruiser size hull, and I was thinking wouldn't it be more in line with the rest if it was 20/30 points (everything<battleships) cost instead? Just a thought, as I still managed to make a decent Admiral class Eagle (XIV) with it installed that can handle itself in battle.
[close]

I'm hiding it in a spoiler since it's kind of long and kind of messy xD
« Last Edit: April 28, 2017, 11:07:19 AM by Hussar »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1304 on: April 28, 2017, 11:18:46 AM »

Hi - welcome to the forum, and thank you for your feedback!

Made a quick note re: carrier AI and orders - I think they may not be obeying "eliminate" properly with regards to fighter targeting, I'll take a look. Will think about the other stuff some more.

(Hey, someone's using Operations Center! That's really cool.)
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