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[Grievous69]

Yeah as Histidine mentioned, the graph comparing the LN and Railgun came to mind. Just loading up the simulator with a ship with 2 LNs and then 2 Railguns will show you a drastic difference. Sure the Railgun is more versatile but who cares about that when you have a Sabot in gun form almost. Also every other Needler weapon is the most expensive on OP in their respective tier, so this would just look wrong. I agree with Foof, 8 OP for both would be perfect, 7 is too low for such elite weapons.

Also I kinda forgot about Mk IX, surprised there weren't any changes to it when most of the people agree it's very underwhelming. It really doesn't justify having 1.15 efficiency, sure the dmg/shot is respectable for a kinetic weapon but it's also wildly inaccurate. I'm glad Devastator got some love tho, one meh large ballistic less

EDIT: Maybe I missed it, but you forgot to add that the High tech blueprint package now has Fury instead of Apogee.

[SCC]

>Added a number of story-related missions and a hint of an endgame threat
I have a feeling that there's way more effort put into this, than this simple entry implies.
>Added 10 heavy machinery on game start so some scavenging can be performed right away
>Salvage effectiveness with no heavy machinery is now 25% (was: 0%)
Nice things. It was hard to salvage anything from 0, since getting heavy machinery was possible, but relied on luck much.
>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...
>Heavy Armor: reduced maneuver penalty to 10%, moderately increased armor bonus
Just get rid of manoeuvrability penalty! It has no point, it just makes it hard to use on ships that benefit from it the most.
>Fury, Champion, Phantom, Revenant
Alex, you sly mod-name-taking devil!
>Brawler changes
I will miss my ballsy little frigate.
>Xyphos has no range now
Any particular reason for that change?
>Pollution doesn't require habitable - consider corrosives, radiation, etc. Good point re: bombardments, though; let me remove the "habitable" requirement there. Hmm. On the other hand, what this does is instead of disincentivizing industry on habitable worlds, it more incentivizes (somewhat) industry on a world by itself. So, actually, let me make a note to check tomorrow; it seems offhand that requiring habitable for pollution is probably the right way to go.
Very much makes sense. Pollution is only a concern, if the environment was habitable. Polluting a toxic or volcanic world would be like *** in a sewer.

That's all I can address quickly, I'm somewhat busy now.

[Grievous69]

>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...

It really does seem weird players prefer to use medium weapons when large slots are available. When on the other hand, you'd do anything to have a large energy mount instead of the medium one. I think the biggest problem are flux costs, where the majority of ships that can mount these weapons, really cannot use them decently. I'm not saying all of the large ballistics are bad, but half of them are either unusable or extremely niche where you could only fit them on one ship, and it's not even low tech.

[Golde]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NOT THE SMALL RAILGUNS

NO NO N N NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Serenitis]

Well, a few mods are getting eaten in this release.

Spoiler

Alex pictured yesterday:

[close]

Ruins in core systems now start out as explored

Will Tia, Duzahk, and Penelope's still have searchable ruins (should they generate any)?

Nanoforges: add Pollution when installed; becomes permanent after three months

Is this going to be permanent as in absolutely final, or will you be able to 'upgrade' to a better version of the same thing later?

Added 10 new items conditionally boosting various industries
    Found where currently you would find a synchrotron or a nanoforge - so, larger pool of items

Yes! Hopefully this will be the end of having multiple items stacked in a corner removing any difficult choices.

Debris fields: can only be scavenged through once; explored fields marked on map

Entities / mission targets / etc spawning in the "outer system" will now generally spawn orbiting a far-out jump-point or planet at a medium range (3000-5000 units)

Very welcome changes.

Hammerhead:
    Fixed slight alignment issue for left medium hardpoint, this is Very Important

Highest priority change. Consider highlighting in notes to reflect importance.

[AcaMetis]

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

It's not that I need to see colonies 100+ times more populous than Chico everywhere, I just don't want colonies to hit a complete brick wall when it comes to growth when there's not really any reason why it shouldn't be able to keep growing. Growing very slowly because of the 10^x curve, sure, but growing surely all the same.

A bigger concern with this change is that it'll have some kind of unexpected result that leads to me having to babysit my colonies even more than they currently need it. To name one thing, fleet size and ground defence strength are both tied to colony size, and I have no idea if a size six colony can defend itself against a -3/-50% pirate raid without me needing to drop everything and rush to it's aid every single time. Sure, Alpha Cores to boost stuff, but than I'd have the Hegemony and their extra buff ships knocking down my doors instead. And Alpha Cores aren't exactly burning holes in my stockpile anyway. Alternatively, Red Planet, but I'd like that to not be a requirement before I start putting down colonies that can defend themselves. And especially with all these profitability nerfs I probably won't have millions of credits burning holes in my pockets for a very long time either anyway...

Incidentally, with Pather cells now fixed is there any way to stop their constant attempts at sabotage beyond riding out to destroy their bases every...what was it, 230-365 days I think? Because that's another thing that might end up getting me caught in a cycle of babysitting, if Pathers keep blowing up my Orbital Works and whoops, -3/-50% pirate raid pops up before however long it takes to get fixed.

Also also:

• When recovering ships after combat:
  • In an officer was in command, they will be reassigned back to that ship

Typo .

[arwan]

not going to lie, i see that post and feel even more now that "SOON ^TM" cant come soon enough, I had just started a new game a few days ago after putting it down for a while, you know to not burn out. and now this tease drops. and i just want to get my hands on it just that much more now. I mean if you need us to beg I'm sure many of us will get on our knees and shamelessly cry and beg lol.

I am very curious to see all the changes realized, especially the character level progression and all the things that go with that.

[Cycerin]

Added Revenant-class phase hybrid freighter/tanker

Alex I'm having such a hard time imagining this thing and I love it.

I could go through the entire list and nitpick but overall I think all the changes and additions are great. Its gonna be fun to go in blind to good ol' vanilla and experience new stuff once again.

[Lith]

Overall looks really damn good.
However there were a few things i was hoping for that do not seem to be present.
I remmeber reading somewhere that you said you would look into pirate fleets their composition and behavior in general as in at the moment they do not "feel" like pirates but more like a zombie faction - they have alot of ships, theyre bad and theyre suicidical to kill you, rather than being raiders trying to profit.
Also someway to permanently deal with pather cells (such as destroying the faction as a whole or maybe a dedicated industry required either per planet or system) rather than the periodically having to destroy their bases.

most importantly however... RELEASE WHEN?

[Gothars]

Cool, cool, cool Thanks for keeping spoilers to a minimum!

I like that there are now more unique industry items to find while exploring. The "unique stuff to find" was really not enough for all the "places to find stuff in". (I also wouldn't mind if there were some really unique stuff to find for the explorer who's currently not that interested in founding a colony, like hulls and weapons.)

Added Phantom-class phase troop transport
Added Revenant-class phase hybrid freighter/tanker

Raiding grants significant XP

Added story option (50% bonus XP) that removes reputation penalty from raiding

Arrrph, I am a Pillaging Phase Pirate now! 


 

Moving slowly":
Now at half the burn level of the slowest ship rather than being fixed at burn level 2
"Sensors" skill gives bonus to this burn level
Go Dark: forces "moving slowly" instead of having a separate movement penalty
Active Sensor Burst: can move slowly while charging it up
Still reduces sensor profile while in applicable terrain (rings, asteroid fields, debris fields)
Asteroid fields: chance for moderately damaging asteroid impacts on ships when not moving slowly
AI will move slowly through asteroid fields
Hyperspace storms: slow-moving fleets do not attract storm strikes
AI will move slowly through storms instead of trying to avoid them

Mhh, is there even enough difference left between "moving slowly" and "going dark" to warrant them being separate options? Seems like turning off your transponder and moving slowly archives almost the same thing as going dark. Minus the 50% detection range reduction, which could just be added to moving slowly.

I just had the though that it might be cool if only "go dark" would extend the phase field of phase ships around the entire fleet (and more effectively), but it would cost them CR at a slow rate. So without phase ships in your fleet there would be no "go dark" option and "move slowly" would take over that function.

[ArkAngel]

Oh god, a phase transport? Time to be the best smuggler ever. No one will be able to catch my sales of illicit wares!

This update looks awesome though.

[TaLaR]

>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...

It really does seem weird players prefer to use medium weapons when large slots are available. When on the other hand, you'd do anything to have a large energy mount instead of the medium one. I think the biggest problem are flux costs, where the majority of ships that can mount these weapons, really cannot use them decently. I'm not saying all of the large ballistics are bad, but half of them are either unusable or extremely niche where you could only fit them on one ship, and it's not even low tech.

It's only rational. Onslaught's side slots have very limited coverage, so I see no point in investing much OP there. No flux to use that many large guns either, as you also noted.

Besides, Onslaught really needs flak in side large slots. The only 2 other options to cover these angles are front medium slots (but these reach forward enemies, if onyl barely so, thus can be used for offensive weapons) and central medium side slots (which easily reach front, so offensive weapons are also high priority).
Heavy Ballistics Integration would incentivize using large guns there, but... There is no good alternative to flaks in large slot (outside mods anyway). Devastator is horrible PD.

[Megas]

So much stuff.  Few things that catch my attention.

So the reborn not-Aurora is named Champion.

Onslaught getting Heavy Ballistics built-in looks nice.  Currently, I have incentives to fill them up with medium weapons.  With Conquest, Heavy Ballistics is the only reason I use Mark IX instead of more Heavy Needlers.

Light Needler being at 7 and Railgun at 8 seems fine.  With that, I probably would use Light Needler much more.  If they were both at 8, I probably would still favor Railgun over Light Needler.  Railgun has more going for it (accuracy, better DPS and shot power, steady stream of shots for suppression AI cannot weasel its way out with shield flickering).

Questions, since the notes had no info:
* What are the maximum colonies player can own, and maximum admins he can hire?
* With max player colony size at 6, do we get the cute size 7 images at size 6, or are they reserved for NPC colonies?

Incidentally, with Pather cells now fixed is there any way to stop their constant attempts at sabotage beyond riding out to destroy their bases every...what was it, 230-365 days I think? Because that's another thing that might end up getting me caught in a cycle of babysitting, if Pathers keep blowing up my Orbital Works and whoops, -3/-50% pirate raid pops up before however long it takes to get fixed.

That would make total sector colonization annoying.  The only reason I bother with alpha cores and stuff is because the Pathers are broken.

A bigger concern with this change is that it'll have some kind of unexpected result that leads to me having to babysit my colonies even more than they currently need it. To name one thing, fleet size and ground defence strength are both tied to colony size, and I have no idea if a size six colony can defend itself against a -3/-50% pirate raid without me needing to drop everything and rush to it's aid every single time. Sure, Alpha Cores to boost stuff, but than I'd have the Hegemony and their extra buff ships knocking down my doors instead. And Alpha Cores aren't exactly burning holes in my stockpile anyway. Alternatively, Red Planet, but I'd like that to not be a requirement before I start putting down colonies that can defend themselves. And especially with all these profitability nerfs I probably won't have millions of credits burning holes in my pockets for a very long time either anyway...

If this becomes a problem, I probably will aim for total core kill to eliminate the babysitting.  Babysitting is lame.  With that said, size 6 is the smallest size I would consider able to defend against expedition spam, since (without cores), star fortress has high demands that I can only comfortably meet with a size 6+ colony.

[Kentington]

You've outdone yourself again, Alex! It's difficult to pick my favorite aspect of these patch notes, but the story points system in particular seems like something the genre as a whole has been missing: a way for the player to directly say "this, here, is what's most meaningful to my playstyle."

Not such a fan of the changes to colonies, though. Putting a hard cap on colony size basically forces the player to play "wide" rather than "tall" (in the parlance of 4X games). Given that the current version of Starsector already requires quite a bit of babysitting your colonies, bouncing back and forth across the Sector as threats pop up, I'm concerned that this will end up being an additional tax on the player's time. Especially since planets that are appropriate for particular industries just got rarer, thanks to the restrictions on industry-boosting items. And this change doesn't play well with an existing cap on colonies: the number of administrators/alpha cores the player has access to.

If I may offer a couple of suggestions:

• Some method of breaking the cap on colony size. As others have mentioned, the perfect in-universe explanation already exists: the cryosleepers. Perhaps the player could use one or more story points to tow one into orbit around a colony, permanently restricting its use to that colony only, but allowing it to reach size 7+. Alternatively, perhaps if certain core worlds become destabilized enough (cough Can't imagine how that might happen), it triggers a refugee crisis event which allows a colony to reach size 7 at some massive resource cost.
• Workarounds for the restrictions on industry boosters. Perhaps some kind of "Environmental Precautions" toggle which allows heavy industry to avoid polluting the planet, at a punishing cost in credits - or, alternatively, this could be one of the industry improvements which costs story points. A choice to make if you're more interested in ship production than credit income, or just for roleplaying purposes.

One last question: with the introduction of megaprojects, is there a chance we'll eventually see some kind of terraforming option introduced into the base game?

[Cyan Leader]

Not much to comment this time around, looking solid. Thank you for your hard work.

Good luck with the playtests Alex, I know they can be quite time consuming.