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Author Topic: [0.97a] Starship Legends 2.5.2 - Extra flavor for ships, crew, and NPCs  (Read 768893 times)

Degernase

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #255 on: August 25, 2019, 03:11:39 AM »

So, with default settings, traits will adjust themselves to match the rating of a ship. For example, a ship with a rating of 70% will gradually adjust it's traits so that 70% of them are good and 30% are bad. So if your paragon already had one good trait, the next one is pretty much guaranteed to be negative because 50% is closer to it's rating of 59% than 100%. Don't worry though, that bad trait will eventually go away if your paragon maintains a high enough rating. There is a way to configure starship legends to award traits based only on performance from the previous battle, as you seem to expect. Take a look at the "options presets" in the original post. You might be interested in the "better immersion" one at the bottom.
Thanks for the quick reply. I thought you might be able to replace bad traits by gaining enough reputation but then I probably got confused by the 8% reputation gain but still getting a negative trait. But I understand how it works now.

First of all, why do reserved ships gain traits? Not only that, it seems to always be negative because they of course didn't contribute.
Civilian ships gain traits even when they're not deployed because there generally isn't any reason to deploy them. Eventually I want to make civilian ships earn traits for experience gained outside of combat instead. There's supposed to be a flat 50% chance for them to gain a good or bad trait, so this looks like a bug to me. The chance for eight ships to get a negative trait at the same time should be less than 0.04%. In fact, given that you're using ruthless sector settings, I think I may know what's wrong and I should be able to fix it in the next day or two. Until then, you might want to use Console Commands to clear the reputations from your civilian ships.
Quote
clearRep Atlas
clearRep Colosus
clearRep Buffalo
Sorry about the trouble!
Even if it's a 50/50 system and this was caused by a bug in the Ruthless Sector settings I don't think that's an entirely fair system. Would it not be possible to take the average reputation gain (or loss) of all deployed ships and apply it (or half of it) to those in reserve? The way I understand it you can't ever get them above 50/50 good/bad if you're unable to change their reputation. I hate the idea of a system giving out negative traits that I'm completely unable to affect in any way. Also it was 14 ships (every last one of my civilian ships).



I think a lot of the complains comes from a lack of understanding of the inner working of the mod. Which is a problem given how difficult it is to explain it quickly.

Maybe if the reputation traits where given after a delay instead of after the battle it would disociate them from the direct battle performance. The intel text could also be written with a bit more flavor to point out that the reputation traits aren't necessarily grounded in cold hard facts, especially negative ones.

Another way to deal with it would be to garantee a positive or negative trait if if there is a large swing in combat rating, say more than 5%. That way a really good ship that is cruising to a high combat rating wouln't get stacked with mixed traits that would get replaced over time until it reaches it's nominal rating.
I really like the idea of guaranteeing positive or negative traits if the swing is high enough. Though disassociating reputation traits from combat doesn't make any practical sense since that's the only way to earn or lose reputation.
From a game design point of view you also want to reward or punish players when doing something good or bad and in a way where they can associate the outcome directly with the action they performed (such as doing very well or very poorly in a fight). But maybe this is exactly how the 'immersive' setting works?

I understand how the reputation and traits interplay now but it's not very intuitive with a system that will seemingly punish the player with bad traits after pulling off an amazing win against all odds simply for the purpose of balancing a % table. I'd rather it be based on flat numbers, say 50 is neutral and at 55 you get a positive trait, reaching 60 another positive. If you go back down to 55 you lose a positive one and you'll only start amassing negative ones when below 50.


Or maybe a new ship added to the fleet could get a starting rating dependent on its D mods: a pristine one could start at 100% rating since it's brand new and would only get negative traits after loosing that rating, but any dmod present would reduce the starting rating by 15% and early negative traits could be explained by the defective nature of the ship.

Crew loyalty could also be used to completely nullify the effect of negative traits making them more palatable (but wouldn't remove them) instead of improving good traits, while keeping the ppt boost.
Could be an idea but I prefer the other solution. D modded ships are meant to be somewhat of a mixed bag that are good for early game or smart usage to save supplies (like compromised storage on a salvage hull). But often the D mods are so terrible its hard to justify their use. If you make this change it would make the difference even bigger and further reduce the incentive to use ships with D mods which is the opposite of what the game needs.

D modded ships should if anything be randomized between maybe 20 and 80%. Who's to say that a ship didn't have a nearly shining reputation before getting destroyed?
« Last Edit: August 25, 2019, 03:56:10 AM by Degernase »
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Botaragno

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #256 on: August 25, 2019, 05:17:32 AM »

It's hard to determine how much "experience" a ship needs to get a new rank, Combat Analysis can help but it does feel a lil hidden
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Some day the Conquest will be a viable capital..... some day....

Alphascrub

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #257 on: August 25, 2019, 06:07:28 AM »

@the discussion over dmods and traits. I would honestly say Dmoded ships should have the strongest traits. Take a car in real life you have fixed up but not completely replaced with factory new parts. Cars like that have a true personality to them. Certain things would still be broken others might be over engineered to fix problem. You learn these things as you operate the car, what gears it might stick in while shifting, how the blinkers might only work if you flick them in just the right way, how your heater might not work but your air conditioning is worse than a freezer. Ect. Sometimes you end up replacing a fuze or light bulb with something vastly better than the original because its all you had at the time. Basically I think of dmods are going to effect trait percentages they should increase them across the board, both positive and negative.

I don't know. Sounds like a lot of work to me,  a pain to balance to, but just my two cents.
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Degernase

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #258 on: August 25, 2019, 06:39:03 AM »

@the discussion over dmods and traits. I would honestly say Dmoded ships should have the strongest traits. Take a car in real life you have fixed up but not completely replaced with factory new parts. Cars like that have a true personality to them. Certain things would still be broken others might be over engineered to fix problem. You learn these things as you operate the car, what gears it might stick in while shifting, how the blinkers might only work if you flick them in just the right way, how your heater might not work but your air conditioning is worse than a freezer. Ect. Sometimes you end up replacing a fuze or light bulb with something vastly better than the original because its all you had at the time. Basically I think of dmods are going to effect trait percentages they should increase them across the board, both positive and negative.

I don't know. Sounds like a lot of work to me,  a pain to balance to, but just my two cents.

I like this suggestion, could maybe boost (both negative and positives as suggested) traits by 5-10% per D-mod. Would make D-mod ships a trade-off to consider even in the lategame where reduced supply cost is mostly negligible compared to stronger combat potential.
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Orcling

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #259 on: August 25, 2019, 06:37:23 PM »

I love the leveling system but it isn't entirely fair to support ships- and I don't mean civilian ships that arent even deployed, someone else mentioned those.
I mean dedicated escort ships for example, that ONLY shoot down missiles or bombers/fighters. Point Defenders, so to say. Or distraction Kites. They don't take any damage but they never do any hull damage either, so their Combat Reputation will always go down no matter how "well" they do. My Heron Carrier who is covered in Large PD Lasers and only has Interceptors has a Reputation of 30%(And it's still going down), even though he never took a single Hull damage in any of the battles he's in. All he does is sit in the backline and shoot down  :(

No idea how to fix this.
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Killgarth

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #260 on: August 25, 2019, 07:15:35 PM »

>ship lore customization mods
THATS THE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL *** BABY GIVE IT TO ME
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Tackywheat1

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #261 on: August 25, 2019, 11:07:01 PM »

If only I had this mod when I started.... My Apogee and shrike (I have soloed pirate stations with the shrike) would probably be legendary with virtually no negative traits
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Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #262 on: August 26, 2019, 02:50:17 AM »

Starship Legends 1.2.1

FIXED:
Default RUTHLESS_STARSHIP_LEGENDS_OPTIONS.ini settings will no longer cause civilian ships to receive nothing but bad traits
Battle reports will no longer display loyalty changes for ships that do not yet have a reputation

ADDED:
New setting "bonusChanceForCivilianShips" to easily change the likelihood for civilian ships to get good traits

CHANGES:
The default rating formula has been adjusted, reducing the effects of both taking and dealing hull damage by half
The rating of Noir ships (from the Artifact mod) is now less affected by hull damage due to their reliance on hull regeneration
Settings are now loaded using getMergedJSONForMod, making it possible to override them with other mods (including personal tweaks mods)

Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.0 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #263 on: August 27, 2019, 01:37:09 AM »

Probable incoming change:
Another way to deal with it would be to garantee a positive or negative trait if if there is a large swing in combat rating, say more than 5%. That way a really good ship that is cruising to a high combat rating wouln't get stacked with mixed traits that would get replaced over time until it reaches it's nominal rating.
I really like this idea. It solves two problems at once, and while it complicates things a bit, it's intuitive. I think I'll end up doing this, or something similar. In fact, I think I might just make it so that ships that improve their rating at all can't get new negative traits from that battle, and vice versa.

@Tartiflette:
Spoiler
I think a lot of the complains comes from a lack of understanding of the inner working of the mod. Which is a problem given how difficult it is to explain it quickly.
Oh, for sure. I updated the original post a few days ago, so hopefully that will help.

Maybe if the reputation traits where given after a delay instead of after the battle it would disociate them from the direct battle performance.
True. It's ironic that this mod started out using delayed notifications and traits based only on the most recent battle, and now does the opposite. The biggest problem with the notifications was that it could end up creating some pretty serious spam. Battle reports were the solution to that. I'm having a hard time thinking of any sort of hybrid that would work well.

The intel text could also be written with a bit more flavor to point out that the reputation traits aren't necessarily grounded in cold hard facts, especially negative ones.
I've tried to do just that, but I'll try to figure out a way to do it better.

Or maybe a new ship added to the fleet could get a starting rating dependent on its D mods: a pristine one could start at 100% rating since it's brand new and would only get negative traits after loosing that rating, but any dmod present would reduce the starting rating by 15% and early negative traits could be explained by the defective nature of the ship.
I would personally prefer that all ships start on a level playing field, but perhaps I'm not seeing some benefit to gameplay that you are.

Crew loyalty could also be used to completely nullify the effect of negative traits making them more palatable (but wouldn't remove them) instead of improving good traits, while keeping the ppt boost.
I feel like high loyalty is already too powerful due to it's effect on traits, and I'm not too concerned about negative traits bothering some people, because they have the option to turn them off. A little power creep is a bit of an inevitability with a mod like this, but I want to keep it under control as much as possible, at least with default settings.
[close]

@Degernase:
Spoiler
Even if it's a 50/50 system and this was caused by a bug in the Ruthless Sector settings I don't think that's an entirely fair system. Would it not be possible to take the average reputation gain (or loss) of all deployed ships and apply it (or half of it) to those in reserve? The way I understand it you can't ever get them above 50/50 good/bad if you're unable to change their reputation. I hate the idea of a system giving out negative traits that I'm completely unable to affect in any way.
Yeah, that's understandable. Hopefully the new bonusChanceForCivilianShips setting will be able to alleviate some of your frustration. Personally, I like the RNG in this instance. Even at 50/50, starship legends is unlikely to make the civilian ships in your fleet weaker than they would be without it, because you can choose which ones you keep. It would certainly be possible to base civilian ship trait gain on average rating changes, but it would cause a lot of minor complications and confusion while inflating power creep. If I could snap my fingers and make it an optional setting I would, but I'm not convinced it's worth the work it would take.

From a game design point of view you also want to reward or punish players when doing something good or bad and in a way where they can associate the outcome directly with the action they performed (such as doing very well or very poorly in a fight).
Good point. That's what I should've told him!
[close]

It's hard to determine how much "experience" a ship needs to get a new rank, Combat Analysis can help but it does feel a lil hidden
True. In fact, earning new traits is based on RNG. Earning more XP in a battle makes it more likely to get a new trait, but XP does not accumulate for the purpose of earning new traits.

@the discussion over dmods and traits. I would honestly say Dmoded ships should have the strongest traits. Take a car in real life you have fixed up but not completely replaced with factory new parts. Cars like that have a true personality to them. Certain things would still be broken others might be over engineered to fix problem. You learn these things as you operate the car, what gears it might stick in while shifting, how the blinkers might only work if you flick them in just the right way, how your heater might not work but your air conditioning is worse than a freezer. Ect. Sometimes you end up replacing a fuze or light bulb with something vastly better than the original because its all you had at the time. Basically I think of dmods are going to effect trait percentages they should increase them across the board, both positive and negative.

I don't know. Sounds like a lot of work to me,  a pain to balance to, but just my two cents.
All true, and I think this could be a pretty neat mechanic if done correctly, but yeah, the work involved to get it working well would be pretty daunting. Maybe there could be a few traits similar to battle scarred and scrap heap that would be affected by d-mods instead of affecting them. Not sure what stat it would modify though. Hmm...

>ship lore customization mods
THATS THE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL *** BABY GIVE IT TO ME
;D

@Orcling:
Spoiler
I love the leveling system but it isn't entirely fair to support ships
Yeah, this is a longstanding issue that I haven't found a good solution to yet. I might be able to boost dedicated PD ships, but how could I possibly quantify the value of something like distraction kites? The only real solutions I've come up with involve removing damage dealt from the equation and making all ships that participate in a battle have the same battle score.

My Heron Carrier who is covered in Large PD Lasers and only has Interceptors has a Reputation of 30%(And it's still going down), even though he never took a single Hull damage in any of the battles he's in.
With default settings it shouldn't be possible for a ship that has never taken hull damage to have a rating lower than 50%. Did you edit the options? If not, this could be a new bug.
[close]

boogiebob

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #264 on: August 27, 2019, 08:01:47 AM »

My two cent after trying this for a few days- noticeably every ship is worse-off than better, this is with all-too frequent repairs on my parts via the console to try and get a single worthy trait.
Worse yet, overdriven phase ships just get railed- 3 famous or whatever level harbingers had 5 negative a 1 positive. The idea that the rating be based on CR over time in battle is ridiculous, because you have no direct control over it other than the loadout you choose.

The mod concept is nice, but needs way more fleshing out to be useful rather than deleterious.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2019, 12:10:27 PM by boogiebob »
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Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #265 on: August 27, 2019, 10:02:58 AM »

My two cent after trying this for a few days- noticeably every ship is worse-off than better, this is all-too frequent repairs on my parts via the console to try and get a single worthy trait.
Unfortunately, the rating system will be too hard for some people and too easy for others no matter how it works. To change it, you might want to edit STARSHIP_LEGENDS_OPTIONS.ini found in the mod's folder. If you like, you can disable negative traits entirely.

The idea that the rating be based on CR over time in battle is ridiculous, because you have no direct control over it other than the loadout you choose.
I agree. That's why rating is not (and has never been) based on CR loss.

CitizenJoe

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #266 on: August 27, 2019, 07:26:46 PM »

Hey, just wanted to add that the mod's default ruthless sector config isnt really working great. Its pretty much guaranteed that any ship participating in a low-difficulty battle will lose combat rating if it takes even a single glancing hit to armor and will seemingly never gain any rating for winning even on a flawless victory. Captain confidence also seems to steadily decrease if you regularly engage fleets significantly weaker than yours. Dis-incentivizing engaging in combat seems a little odd.
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Sundog

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #267 on: August 27, 2019, 07:49:55 PM »

Yeah, I think I might've made the default settings with ruthless sector a little too ruthless. Generally, I think I'll start making the rating system more forgiving than I personally want it to be. People don't seem to mind when it's too easy, but I get all kinds of complaints about it being too hard.

CitizenJoe

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #268 on: August 27, 2019, 09:05:38 PM »

Actually, now that I'm testing it, something is up since the latest update. I replaced the ruthless settings with vanilla settings and combat ratings are still tanking in general even with flawless battles against similarly sized fleets. Even after changing to vanilla settings, One of my fast carriers, over the course of 5 fairly large battles, has killed roughly 6 frigates, tanked zero damage, but has gone from 51% and confident to 40% and insubordinate
« Last Edit: August 27, 2019, 09:11:02 PM by CitizenJoe »
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crowman

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Re: [0.9.1a] Starship Legends 1.2.1 - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« Reply #269 on: August 28, 2019, 06:47:47 AM »

While the progression is nice, it would be even nicer if you could lock-in traits permanently. I'd gladly pay the entire cost of a pristine ship per locked trait and I think that would open up avenues for mothballing and rerolling ships from scratch, locking desirable traits, rinse and repeat until once achieves heaven perfection.
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