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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: A very good space themed zombie shooter game  (Read 2417 times)

Undead

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A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« on: November 13, 2019, 05:38:45 AM »

I would like to express my gratitue towards this great game about space zombies. What makes this game different from other zombie themed games is that not only you have to defeat endless zombies, but also do that with uncontrollable zombies of your own!

Developers have made an excellent job of making a "living, breathing galaxy" (Sseth, 2019) only to completely negate any perception of the starsector galaxy by completely realistic unending hordes of pirates that seem to sneakily arrive into your galaxy from all of the multiverse via "inactive" domain gates. Picrelated is the result of living the game iddle for about half an hour, in hopes to make a few thousand credits of newly established colony while I enjoyed my dinner (yes, all those fleets are pirates). Clearly, somebody have to make a mod that turns pirate ship skins into tyranids/zergs, that at least would make the game more believeable.




And not only you have to defend agains an endless onslaught of space zombies, you have to do it with your own zombie - ships that never follow your orders, with only 5 command orders that regenerate with the speed of a zombie - well that fits the theme at least (I know, there is a skill for command points, but what fun is the whole skill system if some skills are pretty much mandatory? Isnt the game should be flexible in playstyle?). Your ships constantly ignore your orders (especially eliminate), there is barely difference between engage and eliminate, defent/waypoint orders are also out of whack, and your ships cant capture a nav/comm/jammer point as they just fall back just enough for the opponent to capture instead. Also you cant set up the formation of your fleet ath the start of the battle, which can be a huge problem in case the battlefield has no capturables, as then your fleet is one third ahead in the middle of the battlefield and you are confronted immediately and you have no real option to make some preparations/formations before engaging the enemy. The only way to deal with it is to deploy one ship, and then deploy the rest of the fleet as reinforcements, as then they will come from the edge of the battlefield. Also ships are really bat at pursuing ships that retreat and they cannot cut their retreat off, you have to manually do it youself, because your zombies will always make a nice hallway for enemy to retreat even if originally the zombie stands right between the enemy and his retreat point. Also the following:

- "Lieutenant, the enemy ship has overloaded! Should we finish him off?"
- "Holly Mother of God, fall back! FALL BACK IMMEDIATELY AND GIVE THEM ENOUGH TIME TO COMPLETELY VENT! Burn drive engineer, Ill have your head severed for insubordination if you dont full reverse our engines right now!"

And another tiny thing - interdiction pulse doesnt work on enemies, they still can emergency burn aftr being affected by it.

Developers please fix the game instead of focusing on less relevant things such as the skill system and story points, skills are pretty much fine, just a little unintuitive at first.

Peace
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DatonKallandor

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2019, 05:49:08 AM »

If you think controlling units directly like in an RTS is more realistic than units that think for themselves and try to follow a battleplan while having self-preservation I don't know what to tell you. Units in Starsector don't behave like zombies - units in other RTS games do.

As for fleet spawning - yes it's out of control and doesn't fit the fluff. All of the bigger ship and fleet counts introduced in the colony update don't. But since colonizations and empire building wouldn't really fit the old fluff at all, it's probably the fluff that'll have to change, not the mechanics. I personally also would have liked less fleets that matter more.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2019, 05:50:41 AM by DatonKallandor »
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Innominandum

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2019, 06:18:16 AM »

Quote
- "Lieutenant, the enemy ship has overloaded! Should we finish him off?"
- "Holly Mother of God, fall back! FALL BACK IMMEDIATELY AND GIVE THEM ENOUGH TIME TO COMPLETELY VENT! Burn drive engineer, Ill have your head severed for insubordination if you dont full reverse our engines right now!"
Must be a very cautious officer piloting that ship, do yourself a favor and only enlist aggressive and reckless ones, its do and/or die with them.
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"The early worm catcheth the bird."

Yunru

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2019, 06:24:58 AM »

I have the opposite problem: ships deciding the battle they're engaged in is more important than their own escort orders, assault orders treated as "fight every ship you pass" and whatnot.

SCC

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2019, 11:50:17 AM »

Pirate hordes are an issue, yes. I doubt anyone has missed how ridiculous they are. Pirates in general are out of whack at the moment, partially because they have to fill in for endgame content that's not in yet.
When it comes to your ships, though, you must remember that with default settings, a ship's survival is more important than defeating the enemy. That one is at hands of the player; either through personal piloting skills, or through giving out orders. Ships will try to follow orders, unless they are faster than the enemy (and can disengage) or they have allies nearby (can hide behind them). If they are left alone or constantly harassed, they are going to try not to die to the ship that's harassing them, while engaging another one.
About defend, waypoint and assault orders: again, ships won't actually fight an uphill battle they can't win. They will try to stay where you order them to, but a Condor won't just let a Dominator come and effortlessly munch it.
The most I can suggest to you, if you feel your ships are too cowardly, are issuing "Search & Destroy" orders, which will make them more aggressive, getting aggressive or reckless officers, and issuing the "Full Assault" global command in the upper right corner.
There's also the possibility that you gave your ships loadouts just that bad, but I think even when relying on autofit you should be fine.
- "Lieutenant, the enemy ship has overloaded! Should we finish him off?"
- "Holly Mother of God, fall back! FALL BACK IMMEDIATELY AND GIVE THEM ENOUGH TIME TO COMPLETELY VENT! Burn drive engineer, Ill have your head severed for insubordination if you dont full reverse our engines right now!"
To my knowledge, AI is made for fleet battles and for survival, which means it anticipates that enemy could come over there at any moment and won't risk it. AI genuinely doesn't know what's a good trade. It's still dumb on AI part, but I suspect it would make AI behaviour in other situations worse. Just invest in harpoons.
And, finally, are you sure interdiction doesn't work, instead of you just not noticing they were just outside the range? It seems strange, since it never not worked for me. Don't forget that Active Sensor Burst defends you (and other fleets) from effects of interdiction.

Undead

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2019, 02:40:09 PM »

About defend, waypoint and assault orders: again, ships won't actually fight an uphill battle they can't win. They will try to stay where you order them to, but a Condor won't just let a Dominator come and effortlessly munch it.

I was referring to the situation when your wolf backs off when facing, say, a kite - both of those are usually on capturing duty from both player and computer

I hope that devs will improve the orders system. I might suggest adding orders "neglect" and "ignore", the first one makes the targeted ship ignored, but still fired on while in weapon range, and the other one will make the target completely "invisible", as if it was not there. And a "cut off" order, under which your ship will try its best to prevent the target from retreating to its retreat zone.

This game has a lot of potential and has a unique foundation framework, and I, after playing for a while, had the following feelings towards the game:

https://youtu.be/kjS6bQ5OQ-o?t=49

Its just AI issue like Ive mentioned and a bit of lack of content, substituted by pirate hordes, that adds a spoon of dirt in a barrel of honey, so to speak.
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Alex

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2019, 03:03:51 PM »

I'll just say, super quick (before diving back into the code-mines) that I totally agree as far as endgame content and pirates; they're doing way too much "work" there simply due to the lack of other endgame stuff. Even in the dev build, they've already been adjusted in some ways and will be adjusted some more. In particular, one of the things I'm aiming for is fewer ships, smaller ships overall (i.e. less capitals etc), and having the difficulty be adjusted through other means.

As far as ship AI, there *may* be a bug where it occasionally backs off a venting ship? I'm not 100% sure; haven't been able to reproduce this myself but saw it reported maybe two or three times. But since there are also legitimate reasons to back off, it's basically impossible to say w/o seeing the exact situation, and ideally being able to reproduce it and step through with a debugger. I did spend some time looking for that issue a few versions back and there was one case where it did do this, but that's definitely fixed in the latest release, and I didn't see any other places where that would've been an issue...

That aside, though, I think some of what you're seeing is probably a question of getting used to how it works, how to get the most out of the orders, and so on - I'm not saying that's all of it, and improvements are certainly possible, but it's also just overall a system that takes a while to really get a solid handle on. An "ignore" order is an interesting idea, btw.

(Also, hi and welcome to the forum!)
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Terethall

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #7 on: November 13, 2019, 06:35:28 PM »

...there *may* be a bug where it occasionally backs off a venting ship? I'm not 100% sure; haven't been able to reproduce this myself but saw it reported maybe two or three times. But since there are also legitimate reasons to back off, it's basically impossible to say w/o seeing the exact situation...

When I started out the game, I also would get frustrated by small ships backing off too -- until I learned to really analyze their alternatives by pausing and zooming out, and realized usually the backing off ship was some combo of very near flux cap (such that the next shot would put it close to overloading), out of or nearly out of missiles/AM blaster charges, or feeling flanked. The only time it really doesn't make sense is when the flanking ship isn't a serious threat, but I can understand why the AI would struggle to know that being flanked by tac lasers and salamanders isn't really a serious problem without any other threats around, compared to being flanked by a frigate with a reaper.
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Alex

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2019, 09:24:55 AM »

Right, yeah - which is what makes it tough to spot when it's backing off without a good, or at least understandable, reason! I don't think it's a widespread issue that happens all the time, but it's entirely possible that something like this does happen very situationally.
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Dread Lord Murubarda

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2019, 12:34:46 PM »

what I really want to know, is why  is there no transverse jump on you skill bar, my son.

btw I made the same thread when I first started :D, my stupid ship refused to take a tiny bit of armor damage and wreck a weakened enemy. I got used to the AI. it cares a lot about flux level, so try getting high flux/shield resistance on your ships .

thing is, this  game is kinda meant to have fights around the player. I dunno how reckless officers are, too lazy to try, lol!! all of mine are steady, one day I will try the reckless killaz.

on a more serious note, I have an idea. in the fleet window, there'll be a new window which deals with your fleet doctrine in detail.

example:
flux retreat slider: 90%  ;; ships will fight as long as their flux is < 90%. the second it hit 90% they will retreat to safety.

armor retreat slider: this is tricky, do we just have a slider for all armor, or refer to front only? idk

hull retreat slider: cannot be lower than 60% unless it's a reckless officer. I think there needs to be some realism involved, no captain is going to follow a do or die order if they're not crazy( aka reckless ).

lone wolf checkbox : this ship will not retreat towards allies, but towards empty space. this way certain ships will go always go for flanking.

use missiles on shields checkbox : so annoying when enemy is at 90% flux and my ships won't use a reaper to overload that fool into oblivion and then do some damage, but instead dance around for ages waiting for their shield to drop.

fighter reinforcement slider: 65% ;; when it's 65% the ship will regroup to 100%

steady officers follow the sliders to the letter, aggressive ones have a +20% to flux, -20% to armor and hull, reckless engage till target dies.
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Tackywheat1

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2019, 09:44:30 PM »

Don't forget that Active Sensor Burst defends you (and other fleets) from effects of interdiction.

Is this true?

I have never heard of this before..
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bobucles

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Re: A very good space themed zombie shooter game
« Reply #11 on: November 17, 2019, 04:53:07 AM »

Don't forget that Active Sensor Burst defends you (and other fleets) from effects of interdiction.
Is this true?

I have never heard of this before..
Interdiction lasts 6 seconds, +- 1 second for every 200 points of sensor strength between the fleets. Sensor Burst increases your sensor strength by 3000, so if you get whacked during that time then nothing should happen. I mean, you already went to a full stop for the sensor burst, so the interdiction still did its job.

Don't know if your burst can shield other fleets, it wouldn't really make sense. But if they use their own abilities, there's no reason they shouldn't benefit in the same way.