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[Locklave]

So Nanoforges will be basically restricted from being on a habitable world realistically since the penalty only exists on them.

Okay.

I mean... That does make sense. You wouldn't want your main refinery, factory and assembly line to be on a world that has more value for population habitation. No one complains about smog if the normal atmosphere is sulfur dioxide with regular sulfuric acid rain storms.

I guess it just makes the change seem pointless. It's an arbitrary restriction presented as a choice when the only choice it clear.

a) Shoot self in foot, put it on a habitable planet and ruin it for giggles
b) Don't be dumb

A non option option.

I honestly feel like it's a tangent at this point. I'll just go with option b) like everyone else will. There is no advantage to option a) and only downside.

Take from this what you will.

[Alex]

I'm not sure that looking at this specific thing as a "choice", in isolation, makes sense. Rather, it's one of *many* similar pieces that when combined will hopefully produce more interesting colonization decisions.

(Also: not that you're doing this, but just a thing that I think is worth mentioning - it makes sense to look at this assuming the player is not using alpha cores for admins; right now that's of course possible/good/etc but it's not a fleshed out mechanic and I'd expect it to get some real major downsides/limitations before all is said and done. So design-wise, the assumption is a player colony count of something like 3-4 tops. I mean, if you can colonize 20+ worlds, then none of the decisions around colonization matter very much in the end, so it's not a useful assumption for looking at balance/choices etc. But if one assumes a lower limit, than some otherwise sub-optimal choices may need to be made since they'll still sometimes be better than "not having X at all".)

[intrinsic_parity]

Isn't pollution just 25% hazard? It seems plausible that could be a better option than making an entire new colony on a bad world, especially if that bad world is preventing you from making another good colony.

[Alex]

Indeed!

[SonnaBanana]

What levels do player's ship assigned Gamma, Beta and Alpha core have, for calculating DP advantage from Officer contribution?
How many skills do Gamma and Beta cores have as officers? Do player's AI cores and [REDACTED] "officers" have the same amount of skills?
Also for calculating DP, is a level 15 player only considered a level 5 officer for Officer contribution)? Or do admirals, whether player fleet or AI fleet, do not matter for calculating Officer contribution?

[SonnaBanana]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENAH4W8WkAE46yz?format=png&name=small
This is your colony on cryoarithmetics

[Retry]

While we're looking at upcoming energy buffs next patch, would it be possible to test a few more slight tweaks to burst lasers before the patch is released?

1.Adjusting damage of the Heavy Burst Laser to be just slightly above 150
Reasoning: It's currently at 147 burst damage right now, while the small-size Burst Laser is at 128.  Quite a few missiles have ~150 or ~300 health, so in practice, even though the Heavy Burst deals more damage, it still takes the same amount of shots to kill most missiles.  A tiny bit "beefier" burst could help it kill some more-common missiles in less shots.

2.Adjusting ammo for both the Burst Laser and Heavy Burst Laser to even numbers
Reasoning: Expanded Magazines rounds decimal values down, so the small Burst laser goes from 3->4, and Heavy Burst goes from 5->7.  As a result it doesn't "feel" like such a good upgrade as it could for the OP investment for those specific weapons, if that makes sense?

[Megas]

If cores are not an option, then I put priority on self-sufficiency and Pather cell avoidance.  On my four worlds in my last game, I had...
* Gas Giant with Mining (for volatiles), Light Industry, and Heavy Industry (no forge due to pather cells)
* Tundra world with Farming, Fuel Production, and Mining.
* Random habitable with Farming, Heavy Industry (with forge), and some other no interest industry.
* High-gravity habitable with Farming, Mining, and Refinery.

All four had the obligatory High Command for colony defense.

When avoiding Pather cells, items in various industries put interest at the safe max, which really limits industries that can be placed without attracting the zombie Pathers.

I had extra colony slots for pop-up colonies here and there for temporary base of operations, then eventually built a fifth colony near a red system for Ordos farming.

I got max colony skills in that game because wanted an empire, and I did not know about the Pather bug until much later, and by then, I did not feel like restarting.  I missed combat skills due to sunk points in colonies, but I wanted my empire!  With alpha cores as they are, I would totally dump Industry for more combat skills.  (I gave up officer management and armor skills for colony skills.)

As for pollution, a low hazard world with pollution probably has less hazard than a non-habitable world (which probably has 125% or 150% hazard minimum).  Pollution is less severe than Decivilized, which puts a big stability penalty on top of +25% hazard both give.

[Schwartz]

You don't usually take Extended Magazines because of a couple of energy PD you use but because you synergize it with Autopulses or ABs.

But I agree that having 4 or 6 charges would feel better. Does Burst PD need it in conjunction with the flux buffs it already got and the damage buff you're proposing? I dunno.

[Locklave]

Speaking of Pathers what kind of actual threat will they pose in .95a? Will we see their big ships attacking colonies like pirates do in current? Will bombings actually happen?

This may have been covered already in the 45 earlier pages lol.

[Megas]

Speaking of Pathers what kind of actual threat will they pose in .95a? Will we see their big ships attacking colonies like pirates do in current? Will bombings actually happen?

Bombings may happen.  Cells ignore all planetary defenses.  If you cannot dissolve cells, you play whack-a-mole zombie Pathers (to disrupt cells for a year) or your colonies suffer disruptions and stability drops.  They do not need to invade your colonies when their cells break things automatically.

Unlike pirates who give base location for free in the bar, you need to pay credits to Pather defectors in the bar to reveal Pather bases on the map.

[Alex]

What levels do player's ship assigned Gamma, Beta and Alpha core have, for calculating DP advantage from Officer contribution?
How many skills do Gamma and Beta cores have as officers? Do player's AI cores and [REDACTED] "officers" have the same amount of skills?

3/5/7 or thereabouts. It's the same for player/AI.

Also for calculating DP, is a level 15 player only considered a level 5 officer for Officer contribution)? Or do admirals, whether player fleet or AI fleet, do not matter for calculating Officer contribution?

I don't remember offhand - I think the player counts for their full level, but not 100% sure.

While we're looking at upcoming energy buffs next patch, would it be possible to test a few more slight tweaks to burst lasers before the patch is released?

1.Adjusting damage of the Heavy Burst Laser to be just slightly above 150
Reasoning: It's currently at 147 burst damage right now, while the small-size Burst Laser is at 128.  Quite a few missiles have ~150 or ~300 health, so in practice, even though the Heavy Burst deals more damage, it still takes the same amount of shots to kill most missiles.  A tiny bit "beefier" burst could help it kill some more-common missiles in less shots.

2.Adjusting ammo for both the Burst Laser and Heavy Burst Laser to even numbers
Reasoning: Expanded Magazines rounds decimal values down, so the small Burst laser goes from 3->4, and Heavy Burst goes from 5->7.  As a result it doesn't "feel" like such a good upgrade as it could for the OP investment for those specific weapons, if that makes sense?

Hmm. I'll keep this in mind and mull it over a bit, but, a couple of things:

Burst beam damage is not exact; beams deal damage approximately 10 times per second, while the burst damage value reflects what the result would be if it was just equal to the integral of a continuous function. Also, some damage may be lost due to beam travel time (which, admittedly is very short for burst PD), but, still, point being it's inexact.  There's also a solid chance the beam won't stay on target for the entire duration; this is especially common/easy to see vs Salamanders. So I don't think a slight increase would make it quite as reliable as it seems it should, it'd probably need to be a bit more hefty.

There are also several ways to bump up damage that can take it over the threshold. And, finally, there are often multiple PD weapons firing, so e.g. a Heavy Burst laser would in theory synergize nicely with a PD or LR PD laser covering the same arc - or any other PD, really. Point being that just looking at it in isolation isn't the whole picture - and it's a premium enough OP cost that I'm not sure a ship would often use *just* burst lasers for PD. (And, again, if that's desired, there are ways to boost the damage...)

You don't usually take Extended Magazines because of a couple of energy PD you use but because you synergize it with Autopulses or ABs.

But I agree that having 4 or 6 charges would feel better. Does Burst PD need it in conjunction with the flux buffs it already got and the damage buff you're proposing? I dunno.

Right, yeah. So then the bonus to the PD weapons would be, well, an added bonus, not the prime factor. I could see increasing the HBL damage and reducing its charges by 1, maybe, though, hmm.

[XCTrailBlazer]

I have read all the changes, and with the exception of the change to the colonies, I like them.

PS: Glad you can adjust the size to the growth of the colonies manually if you want the current system.

Okay, now my question for you, Alex.

Since each time version 1.0 is approaching in time and with it the official launch.

Can we expect content patches after the 1.0 release or will only bugs be fixed?

It's a question you probably can't answer for me in a concrete way, but I'm a little nervous that it's the end of these patches / blog content that keep me excited about Starsector.

I'm sure the 1.0 release will be a success.

Thanks for doing such a great job and such a fun game for so many people.

[Alex]

Okay, now my question for you, Alex.

Since each time version 1.0 is approaching in time and with it the official launch.

Can we expect content patches after the 1.0 release or will only bugs be fixed?

It's a question you probably can't answer for me in a concrete way, but I'm a little nervous that it's the end of these patches / blog content that keep me excited about Starsector.

I'm sure the 1.0 release will be a success.

Yeah, I can't say with 100% certainty, so please understand if this changes to, I don't know, the exact opposite of what I'm about to say here.

Currently, the way I'm thinking about it, I'd want to put together an expansion or two after the 1.0 release, and see how that does, and just in general see how 1.0 does. Basically, the way I feel right now, I'd love to keep working on the game past 1.0; whether that'll be viable or whether how I'm seeing it might change, I can't say. Whether some amount of content/mechanics/etc would make its way over into the bugfixing patches for the base game, that's also hard to say - it really depends on the specifics of the situation, and also I just haven't thought it through to that degree yet. There'd have to be some kind of balance there. So, again, this answer is very much a "here's my very rough, not-given-it-too-much-thought current idea of what things might go like", and not anything more definitive than that.

Thanks for doing such a great job and such a fun game for so many people.

Thank you! Happy you're enjoying it

[Goumindong]

While we're looking at upcoming energy buffs next patch, would it be possible to test a few more slight tweaks to burst lasers before the patch is released?

1.Adjusting damage of the Heavy Burst Laser to be just slightly above 150
Reasoning: It's currently at 147 burst damage right now, while the small-size Burst Laser is at 128.  Quite a few missiles have ~150 or ~300 health, so in practice, even though the Heavy Burst deals more damage, it still takes the same amount of shots to kill most missiles.  A tiny bit "beefier" burst could help it kill some more-common missiles in less shots.

This may be intentional so that skilled burst lasers cut through missiles much faster