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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 0.8.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 276631 times)

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #225 on: May 31, 2017, 09:29:36 AM »

For whatever the reason, if you click on "inhabited" filter with "not fully surveyed" on, it'll disable the latter. It wouldn't be very jarring, except you can turn the latter on again. "Stars" and survey filters are incompatible and disable each other when the other is selected, but it doesn't work with "inhabited" filter.

Ahh, thank you - fixed that up.
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #226 on: May 31, 2017, 09:30:07 AM »

...Sustained Burn, on the other hand, is mandatory, at least if you want to get anywhere in any kind of reasonable time...

strongly disagree here. I have never used sustained burn in any of my playthroughs after the first. And even that I only used it for the tutorial. It all depends on what you consider reasonable, which I suspect is very different between us.
Without sustained burn you're spending anywhere from 2 to 3 times as many supplies when traveling, not taking into account any hyperspace storms or fights you get into with pirates that can catch you because you're not at burn 20. I'd say it's pretty mandatory for increasing your profit margins.
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PCCL

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #227 on: May 31, 2017, 09:44:33 AM »

it's mandatory for *increasing your profit margins*. Meaning, it's only mandatory assuming increasing your profit margins is mandatory. Again strongly disagree here.

I did a playthrough under 3x supply and fuel consumption and 2x ship cost once just so I could find out how hard the game can be before I stopped turning a profit. Vanilla gets me far more money than I know what to do with by comparison
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #228 on: May 31, 2017, 10:03:25 AM »

Fair enough, but still feels the simulator Onslaught should do better against it. In any case, it's still remarkably good. It didn't get any extra OP, btw.
Ouch!  There goes the missiles.  Oh, wait!  I got rid of them already to make everything else fit!  Okay, let's see how well new Talons work...
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Paul_Kauphart

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #229 on: May 31, 2017, 10:11:54 AM »

Hi,

I want to add to the discution on Transverse Jump.

I agree the 0.8 version is way too powerfull, and I agree it should be nerfed, however, I think just adding a strong timer is not the way to go, because it just makes it into a replacement jump point with no decision making behind it (close to a jump point, use it, otherwise use TJ). Furthermore, lorewise it basically makes jump points irrelevant and there's no way to explain why no one else is using it while everybody should be using it.

Instead I'd like it to be a choice between ressources and time, meaning if I have time, going to a jump point should always be cheaper.
For me something that make sense should be that jumping outside of a jump point (or strong enough gravity well when jumping in) costs a lot more energy, so instead of spending 1 ly worth of fuel to jump in and free jump out, it could be something like 10 to 15 ly worth to jump in hyperspace and maybe 5 ly worth to jump out.

Then I have to think about the money cost of using it, and if I TJ away from that REDACTED fleet, will I still have the fuel to carry on my exploration, or make even make it back to an inhabited system.

Finaly, I think having an activation time is fine, if it stays short (probably no more than a second).

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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #230 on: May 31, 2017, 10:18:11 AM »

Meaning, it's only mandatory assuming increasing your profit margins is mandatory.
You need enough profit to upgrade and at least keep up with enemies as they upgrade.  It hurts having to put a fleet in storage when they upgrade faster than you can.
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Paul_Kauphart

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #231 on: May 31, 2017, 10:23:27 AM »

PS : I forgot the TJ CR cost, I think its fine as it is, but it wouldn't hurt if it got increased a little, it shouldn't be the main cost though, we already have a lot of stuff that costs CR.
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FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #232 on: May 31, 2017, 10:47:53 AM »

See, you're right that in general reaching god-like levels of power makes games boring. That's when you retire that character and start over with a different build. And to me it seems that that's the intention behind SS's system given its restrictive level cap and lack of a respec option. You seem to want the game to be playable and challenging indefinitely, and I can see why, it takes a long time to level up your character and assemble a top-tier fleet. I see a contradiction in the design here.

I'd quite like to hear Alex' take on what the intention here is. Is the game supposed to be played repeatedly with different skills, factions, and fleet compositions? In that case giving the players the ability to become god-like with certain broken builds might not be such a bad idea. It's immensely satisfying to reach that point, and once the boredom sets in the player can simply start over with a different build. Finding ever more powerful builds becomes a motivation for replaying the game over and over. If, on the other hand, the idea is to make one character and keep playing them indefinitely, then IMO a respec option would not go amiss. Part of the reason why I stopped playing .8 is that I built my character wrong, and with no respec option correcting those errors would require throwing away all the time, effort, and progress I've invested.

IIRC, Alex has been a proponent of starting over. This is the reason there is no respec and I think I even remember him saying that after killing the Redacted Redacted, the game is "over" and it's time to start a new character. For me, it's a lot like Diablo II in that you can play the same class of character with totally different skills and totally different drops and have a totally different experience. So far, I've done probably 5-6 playthroughs to Level 40 and have tried various extremes of playing: fleet-based, solo-based, Industry-based, Explorer-based, Low-Tech, High-tech, etc. I set out from the beginning to stay true to that kind of experience but the randomness of the campaign forces a bit of fluidity.

The thing is, I don't think I have more than 10 hours invested in any one character. Compared to that same Diablo II (or III for that matter) where you can easily have a hundred hours in one character due to grinding. Re-rolling isn't that big of a deal in SS, to me anyway, most of the fun comes from the variety of RNG elements and experiences along the way (also true of Diablo!) The other side of it is that each playstyle has its own strengths and challenges. I've had fun with each style, though I'm naturally inclined to go one way or another. I just hit Level 40 in a "max the Combat Tree" playthrough and despite everything I've said here and elsewhere, I do feel it's lacking somewhat compared to the other playstyles. My flagship is strong but not proportional to the investment.

But my Level 40 character with a top-tier ship might have a chance going around single-handedly wiping out Red Warning REDACTED systems if we had the 0.7 skill system. Perhaps it would be fun the first time around due to novelty but there would be that point of no return where you know, as a player, that no challenge is left. As it stands for 0.8, I've only had one playthrough where I felt that nothing could challenge me and that was a with a high-tech fleet with 10 Level 20 Officers and 15 million credits banked. I had just wiped two Battlestations back-to-back (in adjacent systems no less) and so I retired that character. Everything else? There's still challenges out there and to me, that's good design. Eventually every game runs out of things to do but the longer that takes, the better.
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Ali

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #233 on: May 31, 2017, 11:02:36 AM »

Sigh - i wanna like the odyssey but just find it too ordpoint / flux starved...

i think in a recent build i tried with it, there was no spare op for 1 fighter bay yet alone 2  :(

Also bit frustrating the medium missile mounts aren't synergy... that woulda made a more appropriate change and small mounts left as energy imo?

Every battle i tried with odyssey as my flag just resulted in getting overloaded :( also shudn't the odyssey have suimilar or more op than a conquest?  Conquest seems to be much easier to use as a flag vessel than odyssey  :-\

Just noticed shield mod speed nerf now too.. sigh, "balance ruining fun at every turn"  :(

Still Starsector remains my top game!  ;D  Hope to see more ships & modspec items & the skill tree gaps filled in, in the future!!

Am glad starsector remains mod friendly so even clueless types like myself can mod ship stats to suit self like swapping systems and built in modspec around etc...

Hope to see 8.1 asap so the other top mods can be released soon after!  ;D

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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #234 on: May 31, 2017, 01:28:49 PM »

@ FooF:  That is why my first (and only) character is unskilled, so I do not need to re-roll characters.  I have a master character to branch from and experiment with skills and various other resources without the need to restart.

* * *

I just tried a carrier fleet with carrier and mobility skills, and except for killing the battlestation, it is much more powerful than a conventional fleet.  By that, I can bring a smaller fleet of carriers than a bigger fleet of mixed ships and kill as fast or faster than my generalist fleet for less supplies and fuel consumed.  The only thing that limits the fleet is the fighters of other carriers escort other ships instead of attacking other ships.  Unless I bump my carrier into an enemy or the enemy drives too close to my deathball fleet, the fleet is not as destructive as it could be.  (This really hurts for battlestation fights where carriers will not send fighters along with yours to murder sections from a safe distance.)

Most of the fighters of my carrier fleet were Warthogs.  Flagship used Sparks (I did not have enough Warthogs for all of my ships).  A few ships used Thunders and Claws.

Just before that, I tried various conventional warships with combat skills, but despite surviving a bit longer and killing a few more ships, they all succumb to the AI's kite-and-swarm tactics.  Carriers counter the AI's favorite (and irritating) playstyle effectively because carriers can keep running away and fighters are faster than most if not all ships and kill them.

Once 0.8.1 comes, I will be tempted to play a carrier-focused fleet.
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MCWarhammer

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #235 on: May 31, 2017, 02:21:12 PM »

I did a playthrough under 3x supply and fuel consumption and 2x ship cost once just so I could find out how hard the game can be before I stopped turning a profit. Vanilla gets me far more money than I know what to do with by comparison

How did you do this, by the way? I'd like to try it.
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PCCL

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #236 on: May 31, 2017, 02:48:55 PM »

It's a little involved. I first doubled f/s consumption (ship_data.csv) and 1.5x'ed the price (commodities.csv). I doubled fuel capacity while I was at it because the idea was to increase upkeep cost, not range. The issue with that was it made salvage more profitable than I'd have liked (if loot table worked the way I thought it did). So I then went off and changed the loot tables to weigh scrap metal more heavily and fuel/supplies less (somewhere in Campaign/procgen, off the top of my head) and lowered min salvage value to like 1/10 of the original value (config/settings). Needless to say, there was a lot of playtesting involved.

Just the first 2 changes would give you a general idea as to what it's like though. If you want you can also just increase consumption (supplies/mo, supplies/de, fuel/ly, and fuel capacity) in ship_data.csv and be done with it. That's the far simpler method with some small issues I'm not gonna outline here. If I have to remake my personal mod come 8.1 that's probably the way I'd do it.
 
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isaacssv552

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #237 on: May 31, 2017, 04:35:53 PM »

I leave supply/fuel costs constant and just dramatically increased ship prices. When stacked with the omnifactory tariff they can get very expensive.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #238 on: May 31, 2017, 07:56:54 PM »


Why the odyssey nerfs? 90 speed odyssey was able to kill almost every cruiser sure, but it still lost to other capitals. At best it could beat a conquest or flee from a Paragon.

The extra 10 speed doesn't really make a difference when the player is piloting it, so it's probably better for it to be on the low end of the effective spectrum. For shields, let's put it this way - it was beating an Onslaught in an AI vs AI fight prior to that adjustment.

Out of curiosity, given the Odyssey has a higher combat deployment cost than a Onslaught, would you not want the Odyssey to beat the Onslaught, or at least have 50/50 odds?  It feels like if you consider the campaign stats, they are perhaps worth 5 supplies/month (Buffalo + Dram), with the downside you have an extra 5 supply cost per combat since you don't deploy Buffalos or Drams normally. 

So I tried modifying the some of the ship definition files in 0.8, and in the sim matched an Odyssey with the originally proposed buffs (90 speed, increased maneuverability some - matched the Aurora in this case, added a 2nd fighter bay), then outfit it similar to the default simulator loadout (2 Autopulse lasers, 1 Guardian PD, 3 Pilum, 7 Burst PD Lasers, 5 IR Lasers), but dropped capacitors/vents to put in a 2nd Longbow.

While the autopilot with a 100% CR Odyssey (realized the CR was 100% on the Odyssey after I ran the tests) defeated an Onslaught_Standard 3 out of 3, it fell to the Onslaught_Elite 2 out of 3.  Given the Onslaught_standard is sub-optimal against a high tech opponent (no frontal kinetic), this doesn't seem that far off, assuming one was aiming for 50/50 victory rate.  I admit it is a small sample size though.  Dropping the shield to 1.0 seems like it causes a large shift in those odds.  Not saying the 80 speed, 1.0 shielded Odyssey is wrong, but just curious about where you want the Odyssey to slot in given its costs.
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Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.8.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #239 on: May 31, 2017, 09:34:25 PM »

An 80 speed capital is pretty insane/awesome—not getting any more OP on account of the 2 fighter bays kinda blows, though! It's ship system pairs really well with them Autopulse Lasers, gotta say!

The Odyssey really needs David to give it a loving makeover, btw.
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