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Author Topic: Raids make little sense  (Read 14918 times)

Agile

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Raids make little sense
« on: August 12, 2019, 04:52:22 PM »

Heya!

So, after trying my hand at colony making, ive started to know how and when to build colonies, how to build them to avoid dying early, etc.

Something that doesn't make sense to me, however, is the consequences and rewards, and the lore behind raids.

I might be rambling but why do PIRATES, of all things, create mega deathballs to attack colonies? Pirates, in my view, are mostly desperate people with no where to turn; much like in the tutorial, they are miners down on their luck, mercs with outstanding debts that turn to banditry to resolve it, or done by opportunistic criminals who think they can get away with it. These type of people do not tend to field large fleets or have the resources for such fleets, nor do they have the industry to sustain it.

Yet the pirates that attack me after a few months are just as bad if not WORSE than expeditions (which ill get back to soon). Not only does this not make sense lore wise (why are pirates even better military than age old factions?), how are they SUPPORTING these fleets? None of these pirate bases have an inkling of good industry, and most of them would take heavy losses attacking core worlds as core worlds are CORE for a reason; they are controlled by large factions with heavy pockets and massive fleets.

I understand pirates attacking me when im a puny 3 colony, maybe up to 4, but why are they attacking me when I have HEAVY BATTERIES, HIGH COMMAND, level 6 colony, and a massive fleet? They should be looking for other tactics. I know the excuse for this is "colonies are there for combat" but I have a solution that both makes sense AND is more fun to fight, but ill get to this soon.

Now to continue my rant, why do expeditions travel HUNDREDS of light years in MASSIVE fleets just to attack me, a guy minding his own business? Id understand if the expeditions were a) small, or b) because I have hostilities with them, but I am neutral if not IN GOOD STANDING with the HEGEMONY and they keep sending fleets against me. And there is no way to stop them unless I download mods like Nexer that lets me do a cease fire / alliance.

Not only should core factions not be sending expeditions (especially when they are at war against someone else) against the player unless they are hostile to said faction, the expeditions need to be drastically cut down to be more reasonable and realistic, with actual supply routes / ships factored in.

Now, my solution to the "colonies are there for you to be forced to fight" problem while fixing the "pirates are unrealistically powerful and sometimes even better than core factions if left alone" problem.

Once you get level 6 colony, you will be warned by a "cryptic warning beacon" or by a "shady man at the bar" of a "possible alien incursion" in 120 days. After 120 days, you will be invaded... by the Remnants!

You will get raided by them more, and faster, the farther you are away from the core worlds (which gives a in-universe reason as to why most of the major factions are in fighting instead of colonizing like you; because they know this hidden but open secret about the Remnants. This also explains all the ruins out in space and why you constantly get survey missions; you are fodder to detect if Remnant fleets are getting closer or farther from the Core Worlds and how powerful they are, and also explains how Warning Beacons became a thing.)

This gives a decent window (4-6 level) in your colony size for you to make cash, get a pristine nanoforge on a orbital works so you can build decent ships and weapons, and be prepared for the "threat".

This also gives a plausible and actual consequence to using AI cores; the more AI cores you use, the faster the Remnants locate and attack you. I don't consider Pathers or Hegemony inspections an actual threat to AI use, since one of them can be waited out, the other can be bribed.

Remnant expeditions will not appear from a pre-made base; they will only happen from medium beacon systems (colony 6-8 level) and red beacon systems (colony 9-10 level). This also lets you end the threat of the Remnants by wiping out their bases; but be careful, this might trigger "unexpected consequences".

Spoiler
If you have an AI core as an admin in any of your colonies, they will "rebel" out of fear that you will destroy them next out of your hatred of the Remnants, which will automatically convert your colony into a red level remnant fortress. Another possible consequence of using an Alpha AI core.
[close]

While we are on this topic, maybe one of the consequences of trying to remove your Alpha AI core as a admin is they'll send a special distress signal out into space, much like a Distress Signal, except it can only be heard by Remnant forces. This only happens if you continue to remove the core even after its attempts at black mailing you.

Anyway, im done rambling, I kinda just had random ideas pop up as I was ranting about inconsistent raids and lore. Thanks if you read this far.
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Kalarak1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2019, 12:46:37 AM »

I agree with most of this. The entire colony system is completely ridiculous the way it currently is IMO. The only thing I'm a bit iffy on, is the rebellion, seems a little over the top, but something similar would be a good idea none the less.
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TaLaR

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2019, 01:01:17 AM »

Yeah, pirates feel a lot more like space zombie horde.
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #3 on: August 13, 2019, 06:28:29 AM »

Pirates also feel like the evil empire Hegemony should have been.  Pirates also act like the boss faction Remnants should be.  They may have inferior tech, but that does not matter if 1) they have infinite resources and 2) other NPCs are incapable of defending their worlds from the horde.

As for expeditions, I am growing increasingly convinced the best way to stop expeditions is to destroy all of the core worlds, well... all of the military worlds (while pirates decivilize the rest because I get tired of constantly defending treacherous and ungrateful core worlds who rather attack my colonies than defend themselves, while I have very little time to do other fun stuff like exploring the red planet).

Something is wrong when the best way to reduce excessive babysitting combat is to kill all of core.  It is like all major factions treat you as a greater existential threat than their enemies just for being a capitalist.
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Igncom1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #4 on: August 13, 2019, 06:37:52 AM »

Are the hegemony supposed to be evil?

Aren't they space Romans of some kind? Stuck at the point between republic and empire, with potential for both depending on how things turn out and slowly being influenced by the luddic faith?
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #5 on: August 13, 2019, 06:49:16 AM »

Hegemony feels the most heroic (or least evil) out of all of the factions.  If anything, they feel like the stuck-up Lawful Stupid paladin stereotype.  More control freak than anything.

Once player opens Free Port just to get decent population growth, Hegemony acts like all of the other bullies that need to be wiped out just to stop the babysitting madness.
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Merkurial

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #6 on: August 13, 2019, 06:50:28 AM »

I haven't been playing long and I've only made one pitiful colony on vanilla and 1 half decent with mods and I must say a lot of OPs points resonate with my experience so far.

Another point about expeditions, I thought the whole spiel of the lore is that humanity is on the knife-edge with resources etc, so it wouldn't make sense for anyone to come hundreds of lighyears to raid a little colony, right?

Pirates are great and all but they shouldn't be able to field large fleets unless we start seeing pirate systems or significantly sized "safe harbours" where they can retrofit and maintain said ships.
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Igncom1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2019, 06:58:33 AM »

To be fair you don't need either AI cores or an open free port, what with both having in world examples as to why they are very bad things to exist. (Breeding grounds for extremists and terrorists, and being literal examples of the violent and anti-human death machines from the first AI war.)

They just both so happen to be very profitable for the 'open minded player who doesn't really care so long as the money flows in. Other then that the hegemony are more then happy to have another law abiding colony or independent faction to trade with.

Almost makes me wish I could ask for them to establish a garrison or two for defence so I don't need to bother.

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As for the pirates, they are essentially fed by every part of the economy and their ties to the general independent civilian population are effectively indistinguishable. With pirates swelling and dissipating based on the sectors overall economy. Low stability but high income economies breed pirates, which is basically most of the sector. So I suppose if the pirates were proportional to the general economy in game, they could make more sense. As could or do panther cells to the presence of heavy industry and e-demons.
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Agile

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #8 on: August 13, 2019, 07:03:52 AM »

To be fair you don't need either AI cores or an open free port, what with both having in world examples as to why they are very bad things to exist. (Breeding grounds for extremists and terrorists, and being literal examples of the violent and anti-human death machines from the first AI war.)

They just both so happen to be very profitable for the 'open minded player who doesn't really care so long as the money flows in. Other then that the hegemony are more then happy to have another law abiding colony or independent faction to trade with.

Almost makes me wish I could ask for them to establish a garrison or two for defence so I don't need to bother.

---

As for the pirates, they are essentially fed by every part of the economy and their ties to the general independent civilian population are effectively indistinguishable. With pirates swelling and dissipating based on the sectors overall economy. Low stability but high income economies breed pirates, which is basically most of the sector. So I suppose if the pirates were proportional to the general economy in game, they could make more sense. As could or do panther cells to the presence of heavy industry and e-demons.

Thing is, even WITHOUT either of these (if I don't open port and I get colony skills) I get attacked ANYWAY.

No matter what you do, everyone wants to get you, hence why I say AI cores aren't really a problem; you are going to be attacked by massive *** off deathfleets anyway, might as well get an AI core and make massive bank while not wasting skill points.

Heck ive tried a farming world (hazard 100 with +1 to farming) with 0 cores and only me as administrator. This was a) not very profitable (because of expenses it took for me to go to and from pirate bases so they didn't get big enough to deathball me) and b) I still got expeditions after a while because my colony naturally became big enough to "threaten the rest of the galaxy" despite the fact that im just a puny colony with a battle station, military base, and farming + tech mining (the shittiest industries).
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Igncom1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #9 on: August 13, 2019, 07:08:51 AM »

Yeah you got attacked, but not the the hegemony!  ;D

The rest are a spiteful bunch in this version, yeah I agree with you there.

But this isn't really an empire building game, the whole colony system is mostly just to help further facilitate the battles you fight. Giving you funding and resources to build whatever fleet you want and letting you just go ballistic in the end of the game.

The constant expeditions are annoying if you don't have the fleet bases enough in one system to ignore them, sure, but it does give you a reason to fight battles at all, which peace wouldn't do.
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #10 on: August 13, 2019, 07:14:33 AM »

You do need Free Port once colony size reaches 6 or 7 unless you do not mind waiting ten or more in-game years to grow.  In my last game, I had Free Port on and every other population growth bonus (except cores and sleeper ship), and it took five in-game years for colonies to grow from 7 to 8.  Unacceptable if I want big colonies before I win the game.

So far, the only meaningful consequences of Free Port are -3 stability and more expeditions.

Quote
Breeding grounds for extremists and terrorists
They appear to be breeding grounds even if Free Port is off.  Why do I get pirate activity even if I have the most closed port in the sector?  If Free Port angers the factions, why don't they attack the Free Ports of Independents or Pirates, who are probably even worse defended than my colonies?

I do not care if the game text says they breeding grounds if the gameplay and rules act otherwise.  As far as I see, your colonies are breeding grounds no matter what you do.  Therefore, the optimal solution is to exterminate all of core, then install more alpha goverened colonies to make up for lost income (population generates income) and no Hegemony to stop you.  Then player can fight pirates or Remnants at a more leisurely pace than the frantic and insane babysitting that goes on with core.

P.S.  As long as alpha cores stay as they are, it is an empire building game, since there is no theoretical limit to alpha cores, just time to grind at unlimited Ordos fleets.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2019, 07:18:01 AM by Megas »
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Igncom1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #11 on: August 13, 2019, 07:25:40 AM »

What you say is fair, and I can't exactly give much of a reasoning towards the difference between the lore and game play other then what I could interpret is happening.

I personally don't have a problem with the colonies taking a while to grow so long as I am making a profit. Having a surplus of 1 million over 10 doesn't really matter when you run out of stuff to spend it on. So as to actually maxing the colonies out I've never been all that concerned.

Pirates themselves appear, I believe, as a product of your own civilian economy as the pirates themselves are all either just civilians, vagrants, or ex-military. You can filter the worst of them out with a non-free port as people have to go through customs most of the time, just like we do at other colonies. But otherwise pirates might as well be nothing more then usual civilian traffic flying the jolly roger whenever they get desperate. But smuggling does happen anyway, so our colonies aren't impenetrable to infiltration and subversion.

And yeah to be fair the rate at which these massive fleets are chucked at you in the current game version is ludicrous when they don't even put 1/10th of the effort into their proper faction wars. I completely agree. If anything any faction that is in a proper war with another faction actively should NOT be sending expeditions at the player, with their non-existent fleets presumably fighting the war somewhere at some place.
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chancoco

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #12 on: August 13, 2019, 07:52:27 AM »

Everything would make a little more sense if you think of the player faction as another rival pirate faction. No wonder everyone's trying to stop you at every turn. We were the bad guys all along!
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #13 on: August 13, 2019, 08:07:45 AM »

Not really.  They do not even send fleets at pop-up pirate bases to destroy them before pirates send raid after raid to lower core worlds' stability.

If player is treated like a pirate, then core worlds should try to attack the player's fleet on sight and deny docking while transponder is on, but leave the player's colonies alone.  Of course, they can post bounties, but who will do them if the only one fighting bounties in the game is the player?
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cerebus23

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #14 on: August 13, 2019, 08:23:46 AM »

maybe the fact we see hegemony as "evil" is a fault of the game, your dropped in the middle of things, they fought two near fatal wars against AI, and you show up and start plugging AIs into everything like every faction but the greedy corporation has AI cores illegal, because $$$$. And your oblivious, for the most part.

All the universe is down on AI. and so is elon musk and stephen hawking and etc :P.

the luddites the ones i think are evil they say all tech is bad while using a crap ton of tech to harass your colonies underhanded annoying like. they do not draw the line at just AI. and they seem to squat some decent worlds while claiming a god given right, i am currently genociding the luddites :P.

and the pirates are just broken. pirates are about plunder and survival. Not suicide on your 1000 def station wave after wave after wave and 1000s of pirates dead. that is just dumb, they should act more like the luddites sitting in deep space shipping lanes harassing convy fleets and only RARELY attacking opportune outposts with low defenses or high instability. So they have a faction that already has the general behavior a few tweaks and the pirates could be decent.

The current game they just come in endless waves and its annoying and very unpiratelike.

 
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