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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: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 596191 times)

Hiruma Kai

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #45 on: October 16, 2020, 05:23:04 PM »

First, thanks very much for the patch notes. They look exciting.

Can you talk a bit more about the reasoning behind increasing the growth penalties for hazard rating? It already felt to me like it could be hard to justify trying to make a colony on high hazard worlds. I noticed that the synchrotron requires no atmosphere, are there other new industry boosters with similar requirements that incentivize high hazard colonies, or are they just becoming even less desirable in the next release?

Sounds like the old pay to increase growth which is now hazard pay lets you close the gap?  Since its whatever the hazard penalty is + a few?  So really high hazard worlds are no worse than zero hazard worlds.  Habitable and Mild change that on top of that, but really high hazard growth isn't that bad off?  Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something from the notes.

I feel like higher hazard worlds tended to have more mineral/fuel resources.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #46 on: October 16, 2020, 05:38:04 PM »

Population growth stuck at 0% forever no matter how many decades pass or what happens in those decades. It'd just look off.

(Pretty sure it'll stop showing the progress bar at max size; if not, it should.)

Actually, as far as ideas to make very large colonies possible to get but limited/hard/expensive/etc., what about Cryosleepers? New colonies without a Cryosleeper can only get so much growth from natural population growth and immigration before even Chico on it's worst day is able to make much of a dent, but Cryosleepers (optional: and an AI Core/Story Point to speed up the process) can push a colony to size 7/8/9/10/whatever makes the most sense?

It just comes down to me thinking that size 6 is about what's appropriate on the high end, feel-wise. You can have as many industries in a size 6 as you can now on a bigger colony, and items gives you industrial bonuses you wouldn't have had access to before. I'm not really sure why you'd want bigger colonies, beyond just "it's a bigger number". I mean, if you just want to have the largest colony in the Sector, that's already achievable with a size 6 colony :)


As to how it works right now (bugged or not), and how that relates to "go dark", i wouldn't be able to tell, considering how limited my use of it is.

Makes sense, it's got very limited usefulness right now.


Thanks for the patch notes Alex, and g'luck on assembling everything together for this release!

Thank you!

Also I just wanted to say I'm excited you've thrown me a bone with the megastructure stuff in this release, and I can't wait to engage with what's there in the release, and to see more in future versions. Also, I don't know if David or you are doing the story elements/descriptions for them, but don't forget to check out Charles Sheffield's work - his novels (Summertide) partly inspired my lifelong fascination with them (and the ideas in Jack McDevitt's stuff, even if I found all his novels dry as a desert).

Oh, funny - I'd recently read a bunch of McDevitt (the entire Hutchins series, and then the... other one about the antiques guy? Benedict, that was it) and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Lots of cool ideas! Will check out Sheffield, thanks for the rec!

The first thing I'm doing is still changing the Apogee's shield efficiency back to .6 though, the suspiciously combat effective long-range exploration vessel checks every one of my favorite science fiction tropes, and I love her so much.

*thumbs up* Honestly, I'm happy that you can easily tweak it to your liking.

still no way to restrict maximum AI fleet power?
sad
fighting a fleet with 10+carriers is not fun, it just turns game into a turn based strategy

Hmm? The patch notes talk about AI fleet composition changes.


I never thought about it, but it definitely makes more sense this way, since it's weird that an enemy fleet could detect something like a derelict ship, but not think something's off when that derelict ship suddenly turns into a debris field.

Yeah, the idea is that it should create for some suddenly-exciting situations :)

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Scarab:
Increased flux dissipation to 250 (was: 150)
Increased flux capacity to 2500 (was: 2000)
Removed the two less than optimally placed weapon slots
It makes me happy to see the most (?) underwhelming ship in the game to get a nice buff. Also another feasible ship for slamming beams onto..

(I had one in a recent test run - funnily enough, found a blueprint and then had a contact make one - and it's such a beast of a ship. Total glass cannon, but in one fight it literally blew up 4 ships in under 10 seconds, and two of them were destroyers. I need to make a gif of it at some point if I can recreate even a similar situation, it was just so ruthlessly efficient.)


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Ion Pulser:
Increased range to 500 (was: 450)
Increased damage to 100 (was: 75)
Increased emp damage to 600 (was: 400)
I'm surprised about these changes, I've always thought the Ion Pulser was one of the most effective energy weapons (and also a lot of fun to use).
This change along with the decrease in OP for the Light Needler makes me wonder if you want to promote the use of more burst weapons, or if the reasons for the changes are completely something else.

Honestly, I might end up pulling some of this back - it seemed underpowered, but using it with the changes, it's *very* good, to the point of possibly being too good.


I'm curious, is this also going to mean that we don't need to be commissioned + high relations with a faction if we want to buy their good weapons or even ships?

Right - though it'll be less reliable access, as this custom production through contacts won't always be available.

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Increased XP gain from fighting more challenging battles

Does this mean challenging in the sense of really high end late game battles, or challenging in the sense of battles against fleets much bigger/higher tier relative to your fleet? If it's the latter then that sounds really exciting and a lot of fun :D, a really nice boost for the early game and a satisfying reward for spending the time to load out a fleet efficiently, and not as many downsides to keeping a small fleet.
Also if it's the latter, does it take into account both fleets' officer levels? I wonder, would it also take into account the player's combat skills level?

It's based on relative fleet size and officers etc. So you could absolutely take advantage of it in the early game. Notably, it's not based on what you deploy, but on your actual fleet, so it's more encouraging a leaner fleet composition than it is smaller deployments.


Can you talk a bit more about the reasoning behind increasing the growth penalties for hazard rating? It already felt to me like it could be hard to justify trying to make a colony on high hazard worlds. I noticed that the synchrotron requires no atmosphere, are there other new industry boosters with similar requirements that incentivize high hazard colonies, or are they just becoming even less desirable in the next release?

IIRC it's so that higher-hazard colonies have a lower natural size that they get to without additional incentives. It also gives you more control over growth so you e.g. don't attract attention too early or don't have a colony grow and then start paying more upkeep than you wanted to (which is more of a concern on high-hazard worlds).

Most items have some kind of requirement that's often less-than-ideal. High-hazard worlds are obviously less desirable due to the hazrd rating, but they're also more desirable due to often having better quality resource deposits etc.

Mainly, though, it's because I think "small mining colony" should be a thing.

Sounds like the old pay to increase growth which is now hazard pay lets you close the gap?  Since its whatever the hazard penalty is + a few?  So really high hazard worlds are no worse than zero hazard worlds.  Habitable and Mild change that on top of that, but really high hazard growth isn't that bad off?  Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something from the notes.

Right, but closing the gap is also more expensive on high-hazard worlds.

I feel like higher hazard worlds tended to have more mineral/fuel resources.

They absolutely do, yeah.
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Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #47 on: October 16, 2020, 05:43:46 PM »

Wooo patch notes! Tons of great stuff in here, and lots of teasers for mission content I see. I am super pumped for the Xyphos having a range of 0! (Yes this is a tiny change, but I don't care, its wonderful.)

Unless I've missed something, higher hazard worlds will still make for higher maintenance costs, which is then reduced by having goods supplied in faction. It will depend heavily on the exact values everything ends up at, but there is the potential for "early" colonies wanting to be habitable in order to avoid maintenance and high hazard colonies being profitable "late", once demanded goods are supplied. Just a bit of theorycraft.
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Piemanlives

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #48 on: October 16, 2020, 05:44:45 PM »

Alex I love you.
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This is called me throwing my missile swarm at you, and by swarm I mean massacre, and by missiles... I actually just mean missiles, there's actually not much to it really.

Drazhya

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #49 on: October 16, 2020, 05:46:51 PM »

"Number of recoverable ships shown not limited by maximum number of ships in player fleet"
As a long-time user of mods that add special ship bounties, this'll save a ton of trouble.

"Can use a story point to recover an otherwise unrecoverable derelict ship (only applies to derelict ships found in the campaign, not during a combat encounter)"
And having encountered a few modded ships that I would have loved to recover, that will also have a big impact.

"Emergency Burn no longer makes the fleet ignore terrain penalties"
Are we going to get a hyperstorm map layer on the sector map? I don't remember how it was without Adjusted Sector, but at least with it, there doesn't seem to be any way to figure out where the hyperstorms are without almost flying into them. If I could, I'd try looking at a map and navigating around, but as it is, it's too much bother and I'd rather burn through.

"Moderately reduced sell price of ship blueprints and special items such as Nanoforges"
Blueprints, I can understand. Corrupted nanoforges, I can understand. Pristine Nanoforges though... I'm pretty sure most factions in the sector would gladly trade 5 or more capital ships for one pristine nanoforge. On the same note, it's kind of odd that you can only trade them to factions through the open market for static profit and no rep gain, while the relatively unremarkable AI cores can be traded to contacts for variable profit and some rep.

"Maximum post-Collapse colony growth limited to a maximum of colony size 6"
Kind of sad about this, but mostly because I like making things bigger and better. Find a big, dark planet orbiting a black hole, build a blazing sun-moon, terraform in some green, add a couple astropoli...

"Colossus (all versions): increased fuel/ly to 4 (was: 3)
Atlas: reduced fuel use to 6/ly (was: 10)"
It amuses me that so very many mod logistics ships were so carefully, precisely tuned so as to be not overpowered, so closely matched to their vanilla equivalents, and often so hard to find to boot that I usually just went with stacks of the old, vanilla Colossus... and then you went and nerfed the Colossus and made the Atlas king of fuel economy. Welp. Glad it happened.

"Phase Field: now also reduces the fleet's sensor profile, in addition to its current effect
Diminishing returns from multiple ships, based on value from largest phase ship
High Resolution Sensors:
No longer affect individual ship's sensor strength
Now increase fleet's sensor range, with diminishing returns based on value from largest ships"
On the one hand, you no longer need to specialize all your ships to get good value out of these mods. On the other hand, it means less to have a specialized fleet. Dunno how to feel about this. Probably good?

"Added: Converted Fighter Bays
Removes built-in fighter bays, adds cargo capacity and reduces required crew per bay removed
Ship must only have built-in fighter bays for hullmod to be installed"
Great to see this one going vanilla. Though I say 'this one', it's clearly not quite the same. No reduction in maintenance. Curious what the final numbers will be.

"Added: Shield Shunt; removes shields and increases EMP resistance by 50%
EMP resistance is multiplicative with other sources"
This one, on the other hand... just EMP resistance is pretty light. I can see the use, I guess, but I'd like to see a little bit more. Eh well, see how it shakes out I guess.

(AI tweaks)
Hopefully this will mean less herp-a-derp in my future.
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #50 on: October 16, 2020, 05:55:17 PM »

Very, very, very promising. Surely a great release coming our way!

As always the attention to details is awesome.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #51 on: October 16, 2020, 05:57:44 PM »

I am super pumped for the Xyphos having a range of 0! (Yes this is a tiny change, but I don't care, its wonderful.)

Ha! Fair enough :)

Unless I've missed something, higher hazard worlds will still make for higher maintenance costs, which is then reduced by having goods supplied in faction. It will depend heavily on the exact values everything ends up at, but there is the potential for "early" colonies wanting to be habitable in order to avoid maintenance and high hazard colonies being profitable "late", once demanded goods are supplied. Just a bit of theorycraft.

It will *heavily* depend on which items you find. The idea here, really, is that you find some items, and your colony strategy for that playthrough is based off that - so that there's less of an optimal plan going in, and more variety/adapting to what becomes available.


Are we going to get a hyperstorm map layer on the sector map? I don't remember how it was without Adjusted Sector, but at least with it, there doesn't seem to be any way to figure out where the hyperstorms are without almost flying into them. If I could, I'd try looking at a map and navigating around, but as it is, it's too much bother and I'd rather burn through.

If you press "1" on the map, it turns off the Starscape view and you can roughly see where the deep hyper areas are.


Kind of sad about this, but mostly because I like making things bigger and better. Find a big, dark planet orbiting a black hole, build a blazing sun-moon, terraform in some green, add a couple astropoli...

I mean, if you're playing with a terraforming mod, it's not too much of a stretch to assume it might up those numbers, too.


On the one hand, you no longer need to specialize all your ships to get good value out of these mods. On the other hand, it means less to have a specialized fleet. Dunno how to feel about this. Probably good?

It's more about making sure that, say, having an Omen in your fleet matters even if you have a bunch of large ships (which with the old mechanics would overshadow it entirely).


Alex I love you.

(Should I go with the Han Solo reply here? Sorely tempted.)

As always the attention to details is awesome.

Thank you!
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huhn

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #52 on: October 16, 2020, 06:04:09 PM »

Quote
Recall Device: now has a 30 second cooldown

NO. i guess i have to play doom again.
i was using this every 5-30 sec. i was using it sometime just to make sure they are in formations.
and yeah it was a bit strong just flying through an armada and pressing the DELETE key from time to time.

RIP Astral for been the strongest ship you will be remembered still good i guess.

edit: iw as thinking that phase transports where missing int he game (expesive upkeep but hard to detect/hard to catch) so i guess that only leaves one ship type missing and that's a mid line capital carrier.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 06:07:22 PM by huhn »
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Arakasi

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #53 on: October 16, 2020, 06:06:14 PM »

Are you considering increasing the sensor range of [REDACTED] fleets to make sneak salvaging in those systems more difficult now that you've introduced the strategic phase ships? (I have been personally modding my game so that their burn level is increased by 2 to make them more punishing, since they don't have a burn drive ability).
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #54 on: October 16, 2020, 06:08:22 PM »

Salvaging/scavenging temporarily boosts you sensor profile by 1000; it's in the patch notes - so, no, but also yes.
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Arakasi

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #55 on: October 16, 2020, 06:13:38 PM »

Salvaging/scavenging temporarily boosts you sensor profile by 1000; it's in the patch notes - so, no, but also yes.

I missed that! Not sure if that will give the phase ships that much of an advantage in that situation but it certainly makes the whole process harder and is appreciated, thank you!
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #56 on: October 16, 2020, 06:20:49 PM »

How many admin skills are there in the next update? Four?
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I'm not going to check but you should feel bad :( - Alex

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #57 on: October 16, 2020, 06:22:28 PM »

Three, same as now.
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Histidine

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #58 on: October 16, 2020, 06:23:04 PM »

*happy dance*

Gonna comment on some specific things, mostly the things I feel have problems.
So first I gotta say: this is almost entirely good news! I had to scroll down three pages to find a thing I specifically objected to.

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Greatly decreased pirate base bounty payouts
eeeee
I mean, not having easy money is good! But taking on any kind of base (especially now that one-module bases are no longer a thing) requires a considerable investment and risk in the early to mid game. It sounds like the problem was more that person bounties and LP base bounties weren't paying enough.

Quote
Maximum post-Collapse colony growth limited to a maximum of colony size 6
Random thought: Cryorevival Facility is an obvious candidate for raising its planet's limit by 1.
(EDIT: Ah, I see this was already mentioned)

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Nanoforges: add Pollution when installed; becomes permanent after three months
Synchrotron: requires "No atmosphere" condition
Ow. Is this a way to incentivize colonies on non-habitable worlds?

Does pollution from nanoforges requite the Habitable condition (like the pollution from bombardment)?

It feels like the heavy industry itself should be the source of pollution, not the nanoforge. Was that deemed too punishing?

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Spaceport: removed "No spaceport" accessibility penalty when under construction or disrupted
*happy dance*
Although I fear that straight-up reducing the penalty to zero swings the pendulum to spaceport disruption being too weak. With the +5 in-faction trade capacity bonus, disrupting a core world spaceport will likely have no effect whatsoever on commodity scarcity on the planet or elsewhere in the faction.

Quote
High Tech orbital station:
    Fixed issue with wrong type of weapon slot
    Added Fighter Chassis Storage to hangar module
Can you also do something about the shield modules dying early on in autoresolve? This has awkward effects when a player joins an ongoing battle with/against the station.

Quote
Tarsus: increased fuel use to 3/ly (was: 2)
Buffalo: increased cargo capacity to 400 (was: 300)
I feel like only one of those changes should have been implemented.

So the idea is that Tarsus is the safe option and Buffalo is the cost-efficient option. But past a certain point, having to fight a disengage scenario at all is a sign you did something wrong (which is why people like me keep suggesting ways to drag civ ships into fights). So the Tarsus's strength will very rarely be relevant.

...unless this is intended to work with the new options to turn civilian ships into combatants?

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Drover:
    Deployment/maintenance cost increased to 15 (was: 12)
Drover was overdue for an adjustment, but with Reserve Deployment already having the run-in with the nerf bat, isn't the DP increase on top of that really punitive?

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Light Needler: reduced OP cost to 7 (was: 9)
Railgun: increased OP cost to 8 (was: 7)
This is probably actually bad!
The attachment is gone now, but bobucles made a graph which shows Light Needler significantly out-DPSes Railgun early in a fight (for like 20 seconds or such) due to having the large damage spike at t=0. Mind, that's a double-edged sword since it also adds flux to the firing ship, and you pay 2 more OP for the privilege, but it persuaded me that LNs are actually worth using over railguns sometimes. And Needler is more efficient and has faster projectiles.

More frivolous stuff
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Added Fury-class light cruiser, high tech
Added Champion-class heavy cruiser, midline
Added Phantom-class phase troop transport
Added Revenant-class phase hybrid freighter/tanker
Ha ha ha this is three mod ships and one mod weapon that will now need renaming

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Afflictor: changed two of the front-facing hardpoints from Universal to Hybrid
Noooooo my Reaper backstab bus
[close]
« Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 06:31:42 PM by Histidine »
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Nighteyes

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #59 on: October 16, 2020, 06:24:20 PM »

Quote
Added UI scaling setting

4k time?!?
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