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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: .8 feedback thread  (Read 103707 times)

ChaseBears

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #180 on: April 27, 2017, 11:34:14 AM »

I've only tried the menu mission conquest; i kept getting dunked by fighters.   The default loadout doesnt have the specialized broadsides anymore, which is sad... xD
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Awe

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #181 on: April 27, 2017, 01:14:31 PM »

Is being a bounty hunter/merc viable? Yes, if supplemented with some trading. Does it have financial parity with any of the other money-making methods in the game? Absolutely not - it doesn't even come close - and that's what I take issue with. I am encouraged, financially, to survey in a way that I am not encouraged as a combat pilot.

Im playing second playthrough without industry skills - bounty hunting still very profitable. 2-3 rewards for 200k-350k each for the price of 500-1k supplies and 3-4k of fuel - easy lategame moneys.

Just a proper use of carriers as distraction/support and flagship as main damage dealer.  ::)


So... about topic subject. ^.^

Patch is nice.

Map. I wish a merge of intel map with usual - want a some intel info like bounty locations at standart map(tab). Intel map(e) is too small, but still more frequently usable. And please, Alex, change default option at map lmb from "info" to "lay on course".

New skills. Disappointing. Most of the skills nearly useless so u can play without skills at all and didnt notice a big difference. Also almost full restriction of surveys to skills is wrong - you can easily fight with 0 in combat tree but cant survey 99% of planets without at least 2 skills at industry.

Carriers. Wohoo! I like new carrier mechanics. But Mora is really too OP - exceptional survivability with good damage capability for the only 19.99 supplies cost - best admiral choice.  :D

Restoration mechanic. Is very good. Thanks for the good way to obtain rare ships.

Hull mods. Is it possible too just remove already known mods from market instead of graying them?
Built-in mods is good too. Nice way to add some exotic to ships.
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Axisoflint

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #182 on: April 27, 2017, 04:59:31 PM »

I think one thing I'd love to see is the seperation of survey (and derelict salvage, although ships are all 0% difficulty? only affects stations etc?) from the skills and instead give modifiers to the salvage you get, or the supplies/crew required for the salvaging.

I.e, if you have 1000 men and 5000 supplies, you should be able to salvage and/or survey anything, since you can just keep throwing things at it it until you get a result - but if it's a ship, your crappy salvage people might give you an extra d-mod when they start up the engines and blow them out or something. If it's a planet, maybe your men accidentally detonate a volatiles mine(? dump? pit? whatever..) so it gets reduced in quality.

Ymmv.
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Techhead

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #183 on: April 27, 2017, 06:42:15 PM »

I think one thing I'd love to see is the seperation of survey (and derelict salvage, although ships are all 0% difficulty? only affects stations etc?) from the skills and instead give modifiers to the salvage you get, or the supplies/crew required for the salvaging.

I.e, if you have 1000 men and 5000 supplies, you should be able to salvage and/or survey anything, since you can just keep throwing things at it it until you get a result - but if it's a ship, your crappy salvage people might give you an extra d-mod when they start up the engines and blow them out or something. If it's a planet, maybe your men accidentally detonate a volatiles mine(? dump? pit? whatever..) so it gets reduced in quality.

Ymmv.
Alex talks a bunch about the design decisions about this in this blog post. And more discussion in the corresponding blog-post-thread.

TLDR: If you would get less-than-ideal results from doing a survey with low skill, no one would do low-skill surveys and they'll just wait until they max the skill out before starting.
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Axisoflint

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #184 on: April 27, 2017, 07:06:11 PM »

I think one thing I'd love to see is the seperation of survey (and derelict salvage, although ships are all 0% difficulty? only affects stations etc?) from the skills and instead give modifiers to the salvage you get, or the supplies/crew required for the salvaging.

I.e, if you have 1000 men and 5000 supplies, you should be able to salvage and/or survey anything, since you can just keep throwing things at it it until you get a result - but if it's a ship, your crappy salvage people might give you an extra d-mod when they start up the engines and blow them out or something. If it's a planet, maybe your men accidentally detonate a volatiles mine(? dump? pit? whatever..) so it gets reduced in quality.

Ymmv.
Alex talks a bunch about the design decisions about this in this blog post. And more discussion in the corresponding blog-post-thread.

TLDR: If you would get less-than-ideal results from doing a survey with low skill, no one would do low-skill surveys and they'll just wait until they max the skill out before starting.

To clarify two points:

1) I'm not suggesting subpar results per se, I'm saying that if you want to survey a tough planet with no skills invested, it's going to cost you a lot more men + machinery to get a good result, with a higher chance of getting a poor result. This would give people who invest heavily in combat a reason to explore a little more and would mean the people who invest in the skills would still get a better chance at higher returns and be more efficient.

2) I realise it might appear overly defensive, but I want to say that I'm not arguing with his design decisions, just presenting my opinion. I love the game regardless and I'll end up playing whether or not he makes any changes to the skills :)
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FooF

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #185 on: April 28, 2017, 06:47:30 AM »

1) I'm not suggesting subpar results per se, I'm saying that if you want to survey a tough planet with no skills invested, it's going to cost you a lot more men + machinery to get a good result, with a higher chance of getting a poor result. This would give people who invest heavily in combat a reason to explore a little more and would mean the people who invest in the skills would still get a better chance at higher returns and be more efficient.

The problem with this suggestion is that it effectively is no better than locking it behind a skill. Only in the end-game are you going have the ability to carry and/or risk high amounts of crew/machinery for even a moderate-risk proposition. It would be what you do when you have nothing better to do. Alternatively, you save-scum to get the result you want which is grind-y in a different sense. Though there is a distinction between impossible and "a small chance," realistically, no one is going to pull the trigger on low-chance-of-success missions except for those capable of absorbing the loss (and probably don't need the survey money anyway) or new players who don't know better.

I find it more appealing to still have all-or-none conditions rather than RNG. I don't mind having survey ratings on planets that limit a player from doing them but I would prefer being able to increase my rating level by other means than just skills. Lost in all this is that Alex has said that this is all placeholder anyway, I'm not terribly surprised that it's not quite robust as it could be nor am I holding my breath for sweeping improvements. It's a money-making/fun side-quest at this point and will probably need to wait on outposts before receiving the full treatment.

I'd love to see players start at 0% survey rating and get survey XP for each planet. The "levels" would be the various rating thresholds we have now (25%, 50%, etc.), so it would still have that all-or-none component but one addition I'd like to see is missions giving temporary +survey rating so that players on the low-end of the scale can still net some higher-rated planets. Higher-rated planets also give more survey XP so a few good missions can set you up well pretty quickly. On the other hand, the XP necessary to get into the 100-200% gets increasingly scales up so an unskilled player would ultimately reach a soft cap. With skills, you get a multiplier on survey XP so those higher rating values take much less grinding to do and you're less dependent on missions. In addition, skills net you hullmods and perks.
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #186 on: April 29, 2017, 10:09:39 AM »

Finally got another town leave, so here is some quick feedback:
  • Restoring ships is confusingly expensive, accounting into it the cost of initial repairs it can cost 4 times as much as just buying the ship from the market, why you would ever do that remains unclear
  • I really don't like the texture that is applied to [D] modded ships so I try to not have any in my fleet, I know it's stupid and I am throwing away perfectly good cruisers, but eww dirt
  • It's bloody expensive to get into carrier warfare, both in term of skill points and cost of fighters/carriers/extra crew
  • The sell prices of ships are ridiculously low now, what's up with that? Am I an idiot for buying ships for nearly 10-20X the price they are selling for
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PCCL

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #187 on: April 29, 2017, 10:21:47 AM »

restoring ships are for those rare scarabs/hyperions/odysseys or whatnots that you can't find in markets. Generally you're not expected to restore a generic hull

sell prices of ships are trash for d-modded ships to prevent players from making easy money from them
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Bastion.Systems

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #188 on: April 29, 2017, 11:57:09 AM »

Is it just  me or do every single faction end up at war with every single other faction eventually in 0.8?
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Gothars

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #189 on: April 29, 2017, 12:01:11 PM »

Yeah, that is a reported bug.


sell prices of ships are trash for d-modded ships to prevent players from making easy money from them

It's more about not feeling obligated to tow every last one to a market.
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Serenitis

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #190 on: April 29, 2017, 12:38:28 PM »

I really wish officers would roll skills that were relevant to the ship they are flying more often.
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Shendao

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #191 on: April 30, 2017, 01:05:13 PM »

Have been playing .8 to max level (40). I did scanning missions and added planet surveying of these systems to the mix. No commission, maxed faction rating with independent.

Tutorial:
Was very confusing and I restarted the game without it. Tutorial messages and objectives need their own window.

Early game:
I lost my fleet 2-3 times due to not having enough fuel while scanning. It took me a bit to notice the fuel range (and what it means) in the map overview.
Money was surprisingly easy to acquire, I guess you wanted people to do this sort of quest instead of the bounty hunting way.
* Getting money this way is definitionem too easy, risk vs reward mismatch.

Salvaging:
(I maxed out the salvaging tree).
It annoys me that you need certain skills to salvage certain things. This should be a fleet setup thing where skills only help, but not enable.
I maxed out every skill in the salvaging tree. It allows for a new playstyle, but it costs you more interesting combat. (More interesting in terms of you missing skills that enable different combat experiences).

Fighters:
(I tested different setups and my fleet is almost exclusively carrier based).
Talons don't seem too strong in general, but they are for 0 OP. I never used them outside the simulator. They are crazy against frigates and other minor targets, but what do I care? Real threats are destroyers and every size above. That's where all the other fighters shine. Still, massing them on all carriers might cause ridiculous results because of their missiles.
Dagger bomber are not worth their cost. Never used them.
Longbow, Kopesh and Piranha are all excellent. Longbow might do too much armor / hull damage, but I'm not certain. It's just that you need to pull your shield down against them.
I love Warthog, but I'm not sure if they're the best fighters for bomber support.

Level cap:
Hate it. I stopped playing once I reached level 40. I stop playing every game once there is no longer any progression. Allow me to reset my skillset, something like NG+, but keep everything else. Increase the level cap on the next run. Something you can buy ingame, a brain update or whatever. But don't force this level cap on me. I'm not going to start another game just to re-progress or try another playstyle. I just leave.

Officers:
I love them. Have maxed the skill for 10 Officers.
They're really strong and the their personality makes quit some difference. Just why do balanced Officers in carriers try to kiss the enemy fleet? I'll only use cautious Officers next time (or use Mora's).
Also, I have not managed to get one Officer with all free carrier/fighter related skills. Very annoying.
Would like to see even more different personalities in Officers in the future. Maybe add some traits?
I also don't like the Officer cap. How about Officer cost you some money for every transaction? Or a monthly salary? The cap feels artificial and out of place.

Fuel:
Non issue once you have some tankers in your fleet. NPC fleets obviously don't have the same requirements, I dislike that. But well, fighting enemy fleets consisting of 50% supply ships would get real boring real fast, so understandable design choice.

Exploration/drones:
Fighting drones get's really boring very fast. There needs a way to bypass this.
The [redacted] faction lacks variety. I like that you get swarmed by their fleets, but it's just the same thing over and over again.
Maybe add "possessed" ships? Normal ships that have been taken and modified.

Marines:
Do I need them? Haven't seen one instance where I could use them.

Surveying:
Dislike the skill requirement. Again, like for salvaging, make skills help but not a requirement.

Skillsystem.
Never should the player spend a skill point without having a direct benefit. Whatever you add, there needs to be a reward.

Combat skill tree:
Haven't spend one point there because I wanted skills from the other trees. That let me to never really participate in combat, just in support roles. In consequence, I enjoyed combat less. Why fly one of the bigger ships myself if my officers have way better skills for that? I don't see a solution for this other then having more points in the long run.

Bounties:
They don't scale if you don't go after them, right? Once 40, I wanted to do something else. Quickly abandoned that idea because fighting these tiny fleets for low profit was neither profitable nor interesting.

Command points:
Excellent idea with recharging points.
Is there a way to group carriers so that they do attack runs together? I've seen my carriers attacking solo over and over again, while one concentrated attack would have been sufficient.

Distress calls:
I almost never went after them. Reward seems minimal. Increase reward, decrease distress call frequency?
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #192 on: April 30, 2017, 01:31:00 PM »

Just thought I'd answer these two bits:
Salvaging:
(I maxed out the salvaging tree).
It annoys me that you need certain skills to salvage certain things. This should be a fleet setup thing where skills only help, but not enable.
I maxed out every skill in the salvaging tree. It allows for a new playstyle, but it costs you more interesting combat. (More interesting in terms of you missing skills that enable different combat experiences).
and
Surveying:
Dislike the skill requirement. Again, like for salvaging, make skills help but not a requirement.

First off, you can always salvage anything you find by just blowing it up and then using the Salvage fleet ability on the ensuing Debris Field.  The loot might not be quite as good, but you still can get it.

Secondly, if you were able to survey stuff, but not as good as if you had a higher level, you just flat out wouldn't survey anything until you could survey it, because why would you bother with a worse result than when you could just wait until you leveled up your Survey skill enough to get a much better one?  Unlike Debris Fields and Derelict Ships, planets aren't going anywhere anytime soon - and Class V data is worth a whole lot.  If you get anything less, you've just lost out on a quarter million credits.

However, also do note that Alex has said Surveying in it's current state is pretty much just a placeholder.  So take that for what you will.
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Shendao

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #193 on: April 30, 2017, 02:58:55 PM »

Didn't know the first one. Starsector isn't really clear in these things.

> Secondly, if you were able to survey stuff, but not as good as if you had a higher level, you just flat out wouldn't survey anything until you could survey it, because why would you bother with a worse result than when you could just wait until you leveled up your Survey skill enough to get a much better one?

Disagree. Why not make surveying a percentage thing? You don't have enough equipment / skills? Well, you can't survey everything on the planet. Without skills, you'll need quit some surveying oriented ships, capping your potential elsewhere.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: .8 feedback thread
« Reply #194 on: April 30, 2017, 03:02:58 PM »

Didn't know the first one. Starsector isn't really clear in these things.
The tutorial tells you that.

Disagree. Why not make surveying a percentage thing? You don't have enough equipment / skills? Well, you can't survey everything on the planet. Without skills, you'll need quit some surveying oriented ships, capping your potential elsewhere.
With the current system, partially surveying something won't work.  Besides, why partially survey a planet and have to waste the fuel to go back there to fully survey it?  Just wait for more Survey skills.  That planet isn't going anywhere quickly.
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