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[Alex]

Will there be some optimization done for this new release? The game's been quite laggy when travelling (not in combat or in stations) for me. I don't have a gaming rig but I would think a 2D game should run smoothly on a Macbook air? I do understand the current focus is on new content, just hoping there will be a optimisation pass sometime in the near future?

Yes, there's been quite a lot of that, both for combat and for the campaign; hopefully it will help in your case! Hyperspace can still sometimes get a bit intensive, though, depending on the number of fleets nearby and how far you zoom out. But it's definitely a lot better than it used to be, I'd say something like 30% or so faster overall.

(As a point of possible interest: just because a game is 2D that does not mean it's not resource-intensive. That's a common misconception, but it is indeed just that. Much of the performance required by Starsector is not graphics-related, anyway, but even the graphics part won't necessarily be faster or slower, it just depends on what the game actually does.)

[Sarissofoi]

Are there plans to add more core worlds to this update? I could stand to have a few more, lore and gameplay-wise. There's some interesting combinations we haven't seen yet (iirc) like a system inhabited by both the Church and Tri-tachyon or the Persean League and the Hegemony. I feel like more warzones like Valhalla (?) would be an interesting place to hang out in.

Ah - there might be a few less, actually; there's been a bit of rearranging on that front. It's something like 50-ish colonies total, and I feel that's approaching being too much; beyond a certain point, things can start to blur, and these do still have a cost in terms of performance. I do hear you re: warzones etc, though, but ideally that would happen more dynamically.

there might be a few less, actually

Nooooooo!

[SCC]

Well, you can't tell me all those worlds are actually memorable. You know what's in Corvus, Askonia, Magec, Aztlan, Valhalla-Ragnar, Eos Exodus, uhhh... Westernesse, Thule, Hybrasil... But the fact is that the more planets in the core there are, the more distinct they have to be or they risk being places that exist and maybe you even know it, but aren't ever relevant to you. At some point it's not more features, but more bloat. If Alex makes the core more interesting by having less boring stuff in it, good. I personally would ask only for uninhabited systems in the core have loot, danger or be possibly colonisable, even if that'd mean *** off other factions (perhaps that's why they're empty in the first space, because neither side wants to spark a total war).
By the way, Alex, have you thought about arms dealer mechanic to allow a player with some real estate to access military markets of other factions (those that agree to trade ships and weapons for something)?

[Sarissofoi]

To be honest I would love to see some semi military ships avialable on civilian market.
Sector is dangerous and merchanters need some escorts, explorers need some long range artmed ships etc.

[Maxzhao]

Yes, there's been quite a lot of that, both for combat and for the campaign; hopefully it will help in your case! Hyperspace can still sometimes get a bit intensive, though, depending on the number of fleets nearby and how far you zoom out. But it's definitely a lot better than it used to be, I'd say something like 30% or so faster overall.

That's awesome! And yeah your explanation makes sense, I guess there is a lot happening in the game than just the graphics!

[Ishman]

-snip-

Yes, there's been quite a lot of that, both for combat and for the campaign; hopefully it will help in your case! Hyperspace can still sometimes get a bit intensive, though, depending on the number of fleets nearby and how far you zoom out. But it's definitely a lot better than it used to be, I'd say something like 30% or so faster overall.

(As a point of possible interest: just because a game is 2D that does not mean it's not resource-intensive. That's a common misconception, but it is indeed just that. Much of the performance required by Starsector is not graphics-related, anyway, but even the graphics part won't necessarily be faster or slower, it just depends on what the game actually does.)

As an easy example of what Alex is talking about - dwarf fortress is incredibly well optimized (for a single threaded application) but it will crush absolutely every single cpu in existence very quickly due to the sheer number of things it must keep track of and calculate. Physics calculations and the cost of large numbers of AI entities can balloon out of control very rapidly, and while there are lots of tricks one can do to improve performance in situations like those, most/all come at the cost of simulation fidelity.

It's also frequently a problem that parallelization is difficult or near impossible for some of these tasks as they must be done in order, so they can't be offloaded to other threads or even GPUcompute - and the game can't proceed to the next tick where it starts all over again until it gets those necessary updates, even if it could wait for some unimportant ones to be calculated. That results in the stuttering you get as the game has to continually wait for these big chunks of data to (whether large numbers of AI entities doing pathfinding or keeping track of enormous numbers of items that are being traded depending on the game) be processed, even if it finished all the graphics calls ages ago in computational time.

Also doesn't help that thinbooks like the Macbook Air have quite weak CPUs in order to limit the thermal load on their passive cooling.

[Sooner535]

^ could not be happier with people who have understanding of gaming like you mate lol, I have a bud that when he sees games like project zomboid, starsector, and dwarf fortress (all for example) he sees them as crap because of graphics, if a game isn’t AAA quality he will not play them, which too many people think that way.
Funny thing is I specifically built my pc for games like that, high cpu load and low-medium gpu load. Sad that so many people will only look at graphics and will never play some of the greatest games available (for the record I think starsector and pz have great graphics, and I love the lack of them in DF, more imagination). Anyways to get off that tangent, thank you Alex for this load of work! Can’t wait to get my hands on this update

[Jonlissla]

I think what's in covers the bases pretty nicely. There are certainly some more niches that could be filled, but that would always be the case, for increasingly narrow niches. If 1.0 shipped with the current set of ships and weapons, I would be 100% ok with it. Of course, there's still the possibility for adding more, but it's on the "whether me or David feel like adding something in particular" basis, rather any kind of specific plan to do so.

Then I would kindly suggest another midtech capital ship.

[Morbo513]

I've heard SS described as "Mount & Blade in space". I'd never played it til earlier this year, there's quite a few features that would be great in SS. In particular I'd like to see named NPC captains who you have individual relationships with, and the ability to conquer markets as in Nexerelin (or better). Judging by some of the changes here, and what I've read in the past, it sounds like that may be the intent.

[c0nr4d1c4l]

I think what's in covers the bases pretty nicely. There are certainly some more niches that could be filled, but that would always be the case, for increasingly narrow niches. If 1.0 shipped with the current set of ships and weapons, I would be 100% ok with it. Of course, there's still the possibility for adding more, but it's on the "whether me or David feel like adding something in particular" basis, rather any kind of specific plan to do so.

Then I would kindly suggest another midtech capital ship.

+1

[steelwing]

My reaction may most closely be represented by the following helpful graphic:

Loving the news about colonies especially.  With a dynamic economy and more fluid faction relationships, this game will approach the same scale as, say, the X-Universe.

[PCCL]

Frequently, I see my fleet of something like 2 destroyers and 2 frigates being attacked by 3 (D) frigates.

Huh, really? That shouldn't happen; could be a bug that I've since fixed. Just gave it a quick test and a pair of (D) frigates runs away from my fleet of 1 frigate and 1 destroyer. Possibly mod-related?

In any case, totally agree that that's not a good thing and forcing the player to have trivial fights like that is not a good idea.

I'll admit my memory might exaggerate and I haven't played in a while, but I just picked up my old save and had this happen:



This is for a delivery quest, so it's entirely possible the problem is exclusive to that, but cmon, that's not a remotely fair fight, is it?

[Alex]

Yeah, it's definitely related to it being a delivery mission. The pirate fleet that spawns there will always want to fight (and there's also a non-combat resolution available).

I've heard SS described as "Mount & Blade in space". I'd never played it til earlier this year, there's quite a few features that would be great in SS. In particular I'd like to see named NPC captains who you have individual relationships with, and the ability to conquer markets as in Nexerelin (or better). Judging by some of the changes here, and what I've read in the past, it sounds like that may be the intent.

I'm not sure about relationships w/ specific NPCs in particular; will have to see how things go. Can definitely see the argument for it and it's a very good thing in M&B, though.

[Megas]

Pirates may do dumb things during freight missions, at least the one designated hunter fleet that sometimes spawn after accepting such a mission.

In a pre-0.8 game, I had a couple pirate fighter wings (whose fleet got mauled by other fleets) tried to stick up my warfleet with at least two capitals, demanding I hand over the cargo.  The dumb crooks (on camera) were blown away.

[Shoat]

I'm not sure about relationships w/ specific NPCs in particular; will have to see how things go. Can definitely see the argument for it and it's a very good thing in M&B, though.

It was always nice in M&B how, even if you were a neutral non-associated guy, some people from a faction might ignore you while others would chase you to the ends of the earth to murder you and yet others might save you from certain doom even though it is not part of their duty, simply because of some earlier interactions you had with them that might have left an impression.

I think it could be possible to get close-ish to that point here, though the larger scale makes it difficult to achieve the same feel. It would have probably worked out well back in the day when we were all crammed together into the cozy corvus system - come to think of it it might be cool to have an extra setting at campaign generation for an even smaller sector size with even fewer systems (and I can imagine some players' computers might be grateful for that, too).