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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: [0.97a] Starship Legends 2.5.2 - Extra flavor for ships, crew, and NPCs  (Read 768595 times)

MesoTroniK

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.9 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #165 on: May 28, 2019, 08:26:55 PM »

I was'nt even aware there as a hotfix.....

Version Checker is your friend.

Sundog

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Starship Legends 1.1.10 (BETA)

Fixed a problem with battle difficulty calculation
Fixed battle report showing a rating of 0% for combat ships that weren't deployed
« Last Edit: August 06, 2019, 12:55:20 PM by Sundog »
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eidolad

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Much as I hesitate, I will say this:

TLDR:  has the combat readiness buff that legendary Captains/crews get, been balanced?

What makes this mod essential for me, in addition to the "emergent lore" goodness is:  I think that this mod is giving my legendary officers and their ships (that they've Captained long enough to gain fanatic loyalty) great combat endurance during the long battles.  I may be wrong that this mod is the source of this extended endurance.  I may be wrong even about the extended endurance.  Assuming I'm right:

I wonder out loud if my legendary officers and their ships are staying quite fresh during these long battles in the late game, while the enemy ships are degrading in combat ability.  I don't know how to examine enemy ship readiness (perhaps it is right in front of me).

- like when I'm up against a 380K bounty and there are six Conquests, two Astrals, and a horde of worthy cruiser-class carriers, combat cruisers, etc. to back them up.

- and my Deployment Points restrict me to six total ships:   Victory battleship, two battlecruisers, three cruiser carriers.

And in that long struggle (great battle...much love to StarSector) where I "earn" the right to deploy the rest of my legendary officers and their ships, I get only one degradation of combat readiness fleet-wide (and it didn't affect every ship it appears).  I had set a "defend" point in the middle of the map and just planted my flag there until the capitals were nearly gone...this was like a 17 minute battle in real time.
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Sundog

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17 minutes does seem like an awfully long time for ships to remain deployed without breaking down. I did some tests to make sure the buff was being applied correctly and I couldn't find any problems. Stacking a fiercely loyal captain with hardened subsystems reduces CR degradation rate from 100% to 37.5%, which would increase the time a ship can remain deployed after peak performance runs out by 266%. That might account for the extreme boost in endurance. Anyway, I think I'll reduce the bonus to 30% at max loyalty.

I get only one degradation of combat readiness fleet-wide
Does this mean that only one of your ships ran out of peak performance time? That would be crazy, and something officer loyalty shouldn't affect.

Schwartz

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Since the bonus got nerfed twice, it may be fair to make the malus a little less harsh as well.
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Sundog

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Yeah, I'm thinking it'll just be a simple -30 through 30. I think that should be enough to be meaningful without upsetting difficulty too much.

eidolad

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Does this mean that only one of your ships ran out of peak performance time? That would be crazy, and something officer loyalty shouldn't affect.

Sorry for the inaccuracy of that, I'm not well versed in the degradation phases since most battles end for me, one way or another beforehand, I'll try to collect more info.  But basically:

a) Without this mod:  if I'm in a battle of long duration I would get a big stream of readiness warnings that seem to account for all ships having hit the first degradation level. 

b) With Starship Legends, the few times that I recall getting readiness warnings since my officers fully leveled, the reporting pattern was more sporadic...and I have never once had to withdraw a ship due to CR depletion.  This is a massively good thing.

Details:  With Starship Legends, I've played a single Nex game (11 mods total) with the same 10 officers flying mostly the same ships since mid-game.  All are legendary lvl 20s.  Absolute pros and my battle reports rarely show any attribute changes for most.  The only changes are for the few officers I've moved to bigger ships.

I haven't found enough justification to retire ships that have mostly negative traits either...they seem to purr along just fine.

The nature of the big battles and how I've been fighting them recently:  we're talking enough time for a big bounty fleet to cycle in all 7 of their capitals on default battle size, with the player defending a point in the middle of the map - and thus those ships have to fly down to the player even to begin fighting.  I'm not bothering to remove the defend point until I've destroyed most of those capitals.
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Schwartz

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Having played with the new system for a while, I have some observations and some questions.

A perfect 8/8 fleet imported over from the old system will see a slow trend downwards at the beginning. This makes sense. However, I have not once seen a (+) as a result of outstanding performance since the update (talking 400% damage inflicted and at 100% score). Once a ship peaks, there are no trait changes. It has become impossible to 'buff out' bad traits once you have them, whereas with the old system it was difficult and up to RNG to promote the right trait for the negative trait to be demoted. Something I have never seen happen either, but it was possible. Everything I have gotten so far has been maluses. I have even seen crew loyalty promotions and bad traits being awarded simultaneously.

The config says that RNG is heavily reduced now, but either I'm seeing a pattern of bad luck, or something in the calculations is off. Note that most of these ships are legendary with 6-8 positives, but once they lose some or gain a bad trait, I am not seeing any improvement either. Doesn't a 100% score correspond to 8 positive traits?

Where before even a low-ish difficulty rating would allow a ship to excel, i.e. a single player-piloted Afflictor helping an ally vs. pirates and doing upwards of 150% damage, now that is not enough to even push beyond 80% score. This seems a bit harsh and results in me not wanting to engage *anything* that's not a difficult battle against overwhelming odds. It also makes me deploy way less than I usually do. Usually resulting in very difficult fights that still end up with a less than great difficulty score.

Also noticed a bug. Sometimes a score change is shown on the post-combat screen but it doesn't stick.. That last screenshot shows the Afflictor getting to 94%, but now that I look at it it's back to 88%. After a second test: After-battle report. And then checking the ship stats. I have fought half a dozen battles with these two Afflictors to try and get their score up, yet it seems they are stuck on 88% and 81% respectively.

A Heron also went from Legendary down to Well-known without ever dropping below 80% score.

Spoiler


Crew bonus, trait malus.



Chance for a flawed Afflictor to lose a bad trait. Destroyed ship gets no bad trait.




Heron with a +-0 score change gets bad trait. Outstanding Sunder previously demoted to 'Famous' and 6/6 traits gets nothing. Outstanding Afflictor with bad traits gets nothing.



Outstanding Sunder gets shafted. Outstanding Afflictor with a bit of hull damage gets a bad score.



Another chance for the Afflictor to lose a bad trait.
[close]
« Last Edit: June 01, 2019, 01:22:52 AM by Schwartz »
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Schwartz

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #173 on: June 01, 2019, 01:23:42 AM »

When I set "useRatingFromLastBattleAsBasisForBonusChance":true, I get very different results. Even with low battle difficulty.
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BringerofBabies

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #174 on: June 01, 2019, 03:29:10 PM »

I don't know if this problem would fall upon other mod makers, but I think that the battle difficulty calculation could use some work for boss factions like the Blade Breakers from DME. I feel that ~23% significantly underrates the BB dreadnought capabilities when I am going up against it with a fleet with a few not great capitals (DME Zelenograd, 3 HMI Junk for cargo capacity), a couple carrier cruisers and one combat cruiser, and a number of destroyers. I don't know if you could take into account the supply usage increase by the built in hull mod on the BB ships.
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SCC

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #175 on: June 02, 2019, 03:36:40 PM »

I think I broke this mod in the least interesting way possible.
Spoiler




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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #176 on: June 02, 2019, 07:05:39 PM »

I think I broke this mod in the least interesting way possible.
Spoiler




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HOW?
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Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #177 on: June 03, 2019, 04:42:18 PM »

a) Without this mod:  if I'm in a battle of long duration I would get a big stream of readiness warnings that seem to account for all ships having hit the first degradation level. 

b) With Starship Legends, the few times that I recall getting readiness warnings since my officers fully leveled, the reporting pattern was more sporadic...and I have never once had to withdraw a ship due to CR depletion.  This is a massively good thing.
Hmm... this isn't consistent with my experience (or my intention) at all. Starship legends should only be increasing the peak performance time of ships with the "determined crew" trait (by between 3 and 24 percent). Does the peak performance time display as higher than it should? Does it properly deplete at a rate of 1 second per second?

@Schwartz:
Spoiler
A perfect 8/8 fleet imported over from the old system will see a slow trend downwards at the beginning. This makes sense. However, I have not once seen a (+) as a result of outstanding performance since the update (talking 400% damage inflicted and at 100% score). Once a ship peaks, there are no trait changes. It has become impossible to 'buff out' bad traits once you have them, whereas with the old system it was difficult and up to RNG to promote the right trait for the negative trait to be demoted.
The config says that RNG is heavily reduced now, but either I'm seeing a pattern of bad luck, or something in the calculations is off. Note that most of these ships are legendary with 6-8 positives, but once they lose some or gain a bad trait, I am not seeing any improvement either. Doesn't a 100% score correspond to 8 positive traits?
If everything is working properly, there should be a minimum of an 8% chance for a bad trait to be removed or demoted on a ship with 7 good traits and 1 bad trait for each battle in which it maintains a score of 100%. I've made some adjustments to increase that likelihood (and generally improve how the rating system works for ships at 100%), but I haven't found any bugs that would prevent it from working as intended.

I have even seen crew loyalty promotions and bad traits being awarded simultaneously.
Loyalty is still based on the old system, so this would be working as intended if the battle rating was above 50% but below the ship's percentage of good traits.

Where before even a low-ish difficulty rating would allow a ship to excel, i.e. a single player-piloted Afflictor helping an ally vs. pirates and doing upwards of 150% damage, now that is not enough to even push beyond 80% score. This seems a bit harsh and results in me not wanting to engage *anything* that's not a difficult battle against overwhelming odds. It also makes me deploy way less than I usually do. Usually resulting in very difficult fights that still end up with a less than great difficulty score.
Yeah, the rating mechanic encourages difficult fights, which isn't a goal of this mod and I'm sure it isn't the preference of all players, but I don't think it's particularly harsh. Fighting easy battles alone can never reduce a ship's score below 50%, which is the (rough) baseline for being the same power as the ship would be without the mod.

Also noticed a bug. Sometimes a score change is shown on the post-combat screen but it doesn't stick.. That last screenshot shows the Afflictor getting to 94%, but now that I look at it it's back to 88%. After a second test: After-battle report. And then checking the ship stats. I have fought half a dozen battles with these two Afflictors to try and get their score up, yet it seems they are stuck on 88% and 81% respectively.
Just found and fixed an issue that could frequently cause this problem. I should've looked into it sooner. There are a few other things I want to add to the next patch, but I should be able to get it out today.

A Heron also went from Legendary down to Well-known without ever dropping below 80% score.
This sounds like an unfortunate and unintended consequence of transitioning to the new system. Did your Heron start with nothing but good traits? If so, the mod is probably trying to balance it's traits toward it's rating by removing good traits, but that never does any good since it hasn't gotten any new bad traits to lower it's percentage of good traits below 100%.

When I set "useRatingFromLastBattleAsBasisForBonusChance":true, I get very different results. Even with low battle difficulty.
Yep. That setting should revert back to the old system. Your screenshots reminded me that I need to make it so the rating column shows the ship's rating for the battle instead of it's persistent rating when that setting is true.
btw, thanks once again for your in-depth feedback!
[close]

I don't know if this problem would fall upon other mod makers, but I think that the battle difficulty calculation could use some work for boss factions like the Blade Breakers from DME. I feel that ~23% significantly underrates the BB dreadnought capabilities when I am going up against it with a fleet with a few not great capitals (DME Zelenograd, 3 HMI Junk for cargo capacity), a couple carrier cruisers and one combat cruiser, and a number of destroyers.
Starship legends estimates the strength of a ship based on the supplies required to deploy it. Deploy costs are an important balance consideration, but less so for non-player factions like BB or [REDACTED], so it might not always be accurate. There's not much I can do about this situation other than creating a list of power estimates for every ship, both modded and vanilla, but that has several massive downsides.

I don't know if you could take into account the supply usage increase by the built in hull mod on the BB ships.
This might already be the case. I'll have to check.

I think I broke this mod in the least interesting way possible.
Spoiler




[close]
I'm assuming those numbers are accurate? If so, then I'd say either you earned those combat rating increases by fighting very well, or there's something about your game configuration or mod list that makes combat too easy. A liberal application of cheese, perhaps? If you want to avoid the problem of inverted difficulty created by getting good traits from doing well in battle, you might want to try the "perfect balance" or "completely random" settings.

SCC

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #178 on: June 03, 2019, 10:55:44 PM »

It's fine, I'm just boasting. It's a shame that I can get +10 ship rating every fight and still get negative traits, but I've heard that it's not working properly (still) and you're working on it.
Starship legends estimates the strength of a ship based on the supplies required to deploy it. Deploy costs are an important balance consideration, but less so for non-player factions like BB or [REDACTED], so it might not always be accurate. There's not much I can do about this situation other than creating a list of power estimates for every ship, both modded and vanilla, but that has several massive downsides.
Fleet points are exactly that, power estimates for every ship. I swear, I've mentioned this one before...

Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.1.10 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #179 on: June 04, 2019, 01:26:09 AM »

It's fine, I'm just boasting. It's a shame that I can get +10 ship rating every fight and still get negative traits, but I've heard that it's not working properly (still) and you're working on it.
Ok, gotcha. There are several fixes and improvements on the way, but the only problems related to trait gain that I'm aware of are fairly minor (there should be no chance of negative trait changes at 100% rating, for example). The new system tries to make ships have the same percentage of good traits as it's combat rating, so it's entirely possible for a ship to get a negative trait in spite of gaining 10%. A ship with only one good trait is almost guaranteed to get a bad one next time, for example. The only way to prevent that would be for the ship to get a rating of 100% before gaining a new trait.

Starship legends estimates the strength of a ship based on the supplies required to deploy it. Deploy costs are an important balance consideration, but less so for non-player factions like BB or [REDACTED], so it might not always be accurate. There's not much I can do about this situation other than creating a list of power estimates for every ship, both modded and vanilla, but that has several massive downsides.
Fleet points are exactly that, power estimates for every ship. I swear, I've mentioned this one before...
You have. I remember. FP was one of several stats I considered while deciding how best to estimate ship strength while I was initially working on ruthless sector. While FP may not underestimate remnant strength as much as deploy cost, it has several disadvantages that I consider to be much more important considerations:
  • The game uses deployment cost, not FP, to limit the number of ships that can be deployed. This, to me, makes it an official indication of a ship's power.
  • FP is not a player-facing stat. You and I have been around long enough to remember versions in which FP was visible in-game and supplies didn't even exist, but most new players will never know about FP at all.
  • D-mods reduce deployment costs, but not FP. I could manually adjust FP based on d-mods, but there's no precedent for that in vanilla.
  • I think deploy cost is simply a more accurate indication of how powerful a ship is. FP tends to overestimate smaller ships. For example, according to FP, a Hound is 10% as powerful as a Paragon, while it's only 5% as powerful according to deploy cost.
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