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Author Topic: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets  (Read 3104 times)

Kazimierz3000

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Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« on: March 03, 2019, 02:46:50 AM »

Long time player, first time poster.  I’m really enjoying coming back to the game and the new colony system, well done Alex!  As I’ve been playing I’ve thought of a few things that could improve the experience further.

1) Some players have mentioned feeling they don’t have enough time to prepare for incoming fleets headed to their colonies.  I’ve thought of a possible solution as a simple pop-up that could occur sometime prior to raids/inspections headed for your colonies, such as...
“Word of your colony’s heavy industry has spread to Hegemony.”
“Your fuel production has begun to affect the trade in X system.” etc

2) I was pleasantly surprised to see that booting up the game on my ultrawide monitor scaled perfectly and looked as beautiful as ever. With resolutions getting higher I’d enjoy more scaling options to aid with reading text and modifying ships.

3) A final wish list feature would be the ability to use one or more of your officers to create an AI controlled sister fleet. This fleet could be given orders such as patrol system(s)/complete local bounties/salvage system  Perhaps this could be a solution to recurring pirate bases and Luddic Path cells while your personal fleet is deployed elsewhere.

Thanks for keeping up the hard work, I’m really excited for what’s next!
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Alex

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2019, 05:04:22 PM »

Hi, and welcome to the forum :)

1) Some players have mentioned feeling they don’t have enough time to prepare for incoming fleets headed to their colonies.  I’ve thought of a possible solution as a simple pop-up that could occur sometime prior to raids/inspections headed for your colonies, such as...
“Word of your colony’s heavy industry has spread to Hegemony.”
“Your fuel production has begun to affect the trade in X system.” etc

I had something like this on my list, but I don't think I can swing it for the .1 release. On the bright side, expeditions should take longer to start up and be less unremitting once they do start, so hopefully it'll just be more manageable in general. Keeping it in mind for later, though.

2) I was pleasantly surprised to see that booting up the game on my ultrawide monitor scaled perfectly and looked as beautiful as ever. With resolutions getting higher I’d enjoy more scaling options to aid with reading text and modifying ships.

Scaling's tricky for various reasons; in many cases it could amount to - in addition to doing the scaling, which is non-trivial - also doing multiple UI layouts. I'd be curious to see a screenshot of what your setup looks like, though!

3) A final wish list feature would be the ability to use one or more of your officers to create an AI controlled sister fleet. This fleet could be given orders such as patrol system(s)/complete local bounties/salvage system  Perhaps this could be a solution to recurring pirate bases and Luddic Path cells while your personal fleet is deployed elsewhere.

Hmm - I think patrols and such mostly cover this. Beyond that, having this sort of thing do automated bounties or whatnot seems a bit dodgy - at best it's basically just a over-complex feeling source of credits, isn't it.
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Kazimierz3000

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2019, 07:51:30 PM »

Hi Alex, thanks for getting back so fast, I know I'm in the minority playing at 3440x1440, but here are the pics, the game looks amazing!  Perhaps instead of AI fleets the High Command could be ordered to hunt for Pirate/Luddic bases while you'e elsewhere colonizing or running your own bounties to save time running back and forth protecting the same colony.







« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 08:02:53 PM by Kazimierz3000 »
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Alex

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2019, 08:31:19 PM »

Nice, that's so cool! Thank you for posting the screenshots.

Perhaps instead of AI fleets the High Command could be ordered to hunt for Pirate/Luddic bases while you'e elsewhere colonizing or running your own bounties to save time running back and forth protecting the same colony.

... mmmmaybe, I want to see how some other things play out first. There's the currently-empty "command" tab; I've got some specific ideas to try for it which may or may not end up lending themselves to this sort of thing!
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Kazimierz3000

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2019, 08:56:30 PM »

Thanks Alex!
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FreedomFighter

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2019, 04:53:15 AM »

Perhaps instead of AI fleets the High Command could be ordered to hunt for Pirate/Luddic bases while you'e elsewhere colonizing or running your own bounties to save time running back and forth protecting the same colony.

Nex Mod let you do that and it should be implemented into vanilla too. Playing hidden base whack-a-mole isn't fun and it becomes chore busywork that distracts the player from what they're supposed to be doing.
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Megas

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2019, 05:29:04 AM »

Playing hidden base whack-a-mole isn't fun and it becomes chore busywork that distracts the player from what they're supposed to be doing.
I feel this.  With Pathers, I know I have a ticking time bomb where I can spend a few months either exploring the other side of the sector or raiding core worlds for missing blueprints (or hunting deserters) before I need to stop what I want to do, use Intel exploit to find base, and kill it before I can play in peace for another year.  I try to get all active pather cells in all colonies synched to one single pather base so that I do not need to kill more than one base per year.  In the meantime, I get invasion alerts from major factions, which I completely ignore (if my colonies are strong enough), and sudden pirate activity, which I cannot ignore and must drop what I am doing and deal with the problem (which may mean burning across the sector back home).

Having a colony threat alert every few months that only my fleet (of space cops) can fix means no time to do fun stuff unless I can completely ignore most or all of the threats.  Like in Nexerelin, I almost feel like the janitor or hired hand that can be fired at any moment instead of the leader of my faction.

I would like it if I can round up Pather cells and exterminate them permanently.  Without old Industry Planning 1 and nanoforges adding to pather activity, there will be no way to avoid pather cells if the goal is meeting demand and obtain self-sufficiency.  Of course, killing pather cells with brute force probably will not happen, so the next best thing is to order fleets to kill bases for you.

And because other factions do not attack bases threatening them, player needs to kill some of the pirates to prevent them from decivilizing some core worlds and permanently reduce your income.  (Decivilization is fine once the goal becomes kill all factions and conquer the sector, but not before then.)  They have no problem sending multiple huge fleets to attack my colonies.  Why don't they send those fleets at pirates and pathers that are actually harming their colonies, or at other major factions' whose colonies are smaller than mine?
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Kazimierz3000

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Re: Colony Warnings/UI Scaling/AI Sister Fleets
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2019, 02:14:32 PM »

Perhaps instead of AI fleets the High Command could be ordered to hunt for Pirate/Luddic bases while you'e elsewhere colonizing or running your own bounties to save time running back and forth protecting the same colony.

Nex Mod let you do that and it should be implemented into vanilla too. Playing hidden base whack-a-mole isn't fun and it becomes chore busywork that distracts the player from what they're supposed to be doing.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure to check it out!  In the interim I've been using the Console Commands mod to jump between systems to save time hunting down the Pirate/Pather bases.
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