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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: Various QoL ideas  (Read 2534 times)

Gothars

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Various QoL ideas
« on: September 10, 2020, 11:42:17 AM »

I recently started playing again for a bit, and made some notes:

- Fighters should not make the overload sound when their shields brake. The purpose of the sound is do indicate a chance (or danger) of critically damaging a ship, that it plays when fighters are affected dilutes the sound's informational value.

 - It happened to often to me that I made I quick weapon switch while underway only to go into a fight with a low CR ship. It would be helpful if there could be a pop up when a change leads to my ship not being combat ready.

 - The "low on supplies" tooltip should probably mention the option to suspend repairs, because that is often your best option in a low supply situation. Maybe also mothballing. The "scuttle ship" option id does mention is far less useful.

 - It would be nice to have a text float (like the damage floats in combat) on the campaign map, next to your fleet, that indicates how much fleet-wide CR damage you're taking. That would be especially useful when travelling through hyperspace storms, and also help to immediately estimate the danger different environments pose. At the moment I have to carefully read the tooltip to compare a corona vs a flare vs an event horizon.

- It was probably suggested before, but it would be really nice to have all storage locations connected into one. Like a magic chest, you know. Call it the sector courier network or something, maybe give it a waiting time or extra costs.


- More of a random thought: Harvested organs could reduce crew casualities.
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rokenx2

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2020, 11:49:43 PM »

i like some of these my addition would be..... make a way i could "always set aside bribe money automatically" for annoying AI inspections ill often miss it as i play when watching tv a lot  then lose all my ai cores and be like weeell derp.... how far back do i gotta go....

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Alex

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2020, 12:27:45 PM »

Thanks for the suggestions!

- Fighters should not make the overload sound when their shields brake. The purpose of the sound is do indicate a chance (or danger) of critically damaging a ship, that it plays when fighters are affected dilutes the sound's informational value.

Did that - good call, I think.

- It happened to often to me that I made I quick weapon switch while underway only to go into a fight with a low CR ship. It would be helpful if there could be a pop up when a change leads to my ship not being combat ready.

Hmm - will keep that in mind.

- The "low on supplies" tooltip should probably mention the option to suspend repairs, because that is often your best option in a low supply situation. Maybe also mothballing. The "scuttle ship" option id does mention is far less useful.

Did that - well, aside from mentioning mothballing, since that can get a new player in trouble, too, due to suddenly reduced capacity.


- It would be nice to have a text float (like the damage floats in combat) on the campaign map, next to your fleet, that indicates how much fleet-wide CR damage you're taking. That would be especially useful when travelling through hyperspace storms, and also help to immediately estimate the danger different environments pose. At the moment I have to carefully read the tooltip to compare a corona vs a flare vs an event horizon.

This could be good, yeah - also a non-trivial amount of work to get sorted, but will keep it in mind for when/if I'm doing something related.

- It was probably suggested before, but it would be really nice to have all storage locations connected into one. Like a magic chest, you know. Call it the sector courier network or something, maybe give it a waiting time or extra costs.

... yeah, probably a little too "magic" for my liking. That said, could maybe have a related story point use - you know, sell it as "advance planning" or something.


- More of a random thought: Harvested organs could reduce crew casualities.

But then casualties produce organs, so it all ... cancels out? Ahem, getting a bit too dark for me.
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SaberCherry

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2020, 01:23:33 PM »

- It was probably suggested before, but it would be really nice to have all storage locations connected into one. Like a magic chest, you know. Call it the sector courier network or something, maybe give it a waiting time or extra costs.

I don't mind the current storage system, but it would be nice if ships could be sent to a central location without the player ferrying them (which is how building currently works).  Additionally, it's great that you can check your inventory at planets with storage, but that's not possible for abandoned starbases where I actually store stuff, so I have to write it down on paper...
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2020, 10:15:28 AM »

- It would be nice to have a text float (like the damage floats in combat) on the campaign map, next to your fleet, that indicates how much fleet-wide CR damage you're taking. That would be especially useful when travelling through hyperspace storms, and also help to immediately estimate the danger different environments pose. At the moment I have to carefully read the tooltip to compare a corona vs a flare vs an event horizon.

This could be good, yeah - also a non-trivial amount of work to get sorted, but will keep it in mind for when/if I'm doing something related.


Maybe also have the sensor/detection range indicators have change color when they are modified. For example, it would be helpful if the detection range would flash green when inside a asteroid field.



- Maybe give AI cores to pirates for reputation? The pirates are the only faction that don't take AI cores. At the same time, they are the hardest faction to gain positive reputation with. If you could gift cores to an pirate boss as a token of respect, that would fit pretty nicely, don't you think? (yes, I'm doing a pirate playthrough atm. It's fun!)
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Megas

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2020, 11:05:14 AM »

- Maybe give AI cores to pirates for reputation? The pirates are the only faction that don't take AI cores. At the same time, they are the hardest faction to gain positive reputation with. If you could gift cores to an pirate boss as a token of respect, that would fit pretty nicely, don't you think? (yes, I'm doing a pirate playthrough atm. It's fun!)
That would be great for total kill core games where the only significant faction left are the zombie pirates.  Make friends with them, get them off my back, and I can explore or kill Ordos in peace without constant babysitting interruptions.
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2020, 09:14:06 AM »

- This one is really minor: Maybe instead of saying "ship x reports lowered combat readiness", the message could read "ship x reports falling combat readiness". "Lowered combat readiness" implies that it has already fallen by some significant amount, while what the message means to say is that the process of decay has now started. Might be confusing for newbies.
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Alex

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2020, 09:47:25 AM »

Good call, changed it to "decreasing" to be consistent with the message for the flagship.
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ubuntufreakdragon

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2020, 04:26:45 PM »

A third option besides no an full repairs: emergency repairs only: CR is repaired up to 20.
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2020, 08:05:49 AM »

Some kind of inventory mass transfer function would be wonderful. Especially selling salvaged weapons becomes quite the chore after a while. Ctrl+click moves an entire stack, maybe holding the keys and hovering the cursor over other stacks could also move those?


Quote from: ubuntufr
eakdragon link=topic=19096.msg298606#msg298606 date=1600903605
A third option besides no an full repairs: emergency repairs only: CR is repaired up to 20.

I like it.
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The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

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SafariJohn

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2020, 08:49:14 AM »

Some kind of inventory mass transfer function would be wonderful. Especially selling salvaged weapons becomes quite the chore after a while. Ctrl+click moves an entire stack, maybe holding the keys and hovering the cursor over other stacks could also move those?

Ctrl-click and hold, maybe? Would be more logical than the settings-enabled alt-transfer.
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2020, 08:43:50 PM »

A build-in hullmod idea (fitting the Gemini):

Highly modular

This ship contains dedicated internal volume for exchangeable modules and the autofac plans and production capacity to construct such modules on the fly.
The effects of extended cargo holds/berthing/fuel storage are doubled. These three hullmods can be (de-)installed  even when away from a dockyard.
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Alex

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #12 on: September 24, 2020, 08:57:25 PM »

Some kind of inventory mass transfer function would be wonderful. Especially selling salvaged weapons becomes quite the chore after a while. Ctrl+click moves an entire stack, maybe holding the keys and hovering the cursor over other stacks could also move those?

Ctrl-click and hold, maybe? Would be more logical than the settings-enabled alt-transfer.

(Just to elaborate super quick, if you set "altMouseMoveToMassTransfer" to true in settings, you can hold own Alt to mass transfer things as you mouse over them.)
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #13 on: October 28, 2020, 07:01:34 AM »

If you suspend repairs on your fleet, go into battle, lose and then recover a ship, it will be still set to suspend repairs. Since it will be at 0% CR (without salvaging skills) it will then shortly have an accident and be completely lost, without any prior warning to the player.

--> Recovered ships should never start with repairs suspended, or there should be a higher baseline CR (like 5%) after recovery.


I also noticed that the tutorial pop-ups about low CR come in the wrong order if you have recovered a ship. While it steadily increases CR, you get progressively less pressing messages about it having low CR and what you should do about it. Maybe the logic about when to show these messages should consider if CR is dropping, not just the current CR level.



(Just to elaborate super quick, if you set "altMouseMoveToMassTransfer" to true in settings, you can hold own Alt to mass transfer things as you mouse over them.)

Thanks, I totally forgot about that! :)
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Gothars

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Re: Various QoL ideas
« Reply #14 on: October 28, 2020, 10:48:50 AM »

Another thought:

Maybe ships with officers should not suffer as quickly from the "crew understrenght" condition. After salvaging a hull, it's a bit unbelievable (and costly) that your main combat ships have to give up just as much crew and CR as your freighters and tankers. It's also not pretty to look at to have that warning smeared across every one of your ships. I'd say only touch the crew of ships with officers after all other ships have a max CR of 40%.
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The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

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