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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 595797 times)

Morrokain

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #180 on: October 18, 2020, 06:03:21 PM »

Imagine if the endgame enemy was the Hegemony, and you were facing a couple of Lashers. Maybe with a pre-buff Enforcer thrown in there, to make it a challenge.

Wow that's even better than I hoped. That is... extremely exciting!

Quote
:-X

 ;D

Quote
IIRC not generally, and unless the ship is panic-firing. But e.g. it might fire them at a high-flux enemy to force them into a tough choice, etc, so it's not a cut-and-dry binary thing.

Ah thanks for the info!
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #181 on: October 18, 2020, 06:12:27 PM »

Babysitting a colony is probably at its worst when it is at size 5, when it is not quite big enough to defend against endgame threats (star fortress has too high demand), yet too big to abandon.  The few times I could not defend my size 4 or less colony, I cut my losses and abandon it, then rebuild it later when I am better prepared.  I cannot do that with a size 5 or bigger colony.

So far, weaker pirates can be held at bay with orbital station and modest ground defenses.  It is when major factions' expeditions get involved (or the -3/-50% pirates) that I want stronger defenses to repel endgame strong invaders.

If size 2 colonies become a thing, I hope there is a way to bypass the proposed introductory quest phase once player can plop them down left-and-right.

Just occurred to me that Pather cells spawn only on worlds that are size 4 or bigger.  If I want to spam alpha-run worlds throughout the whole sector, in a mad full sector colonization game, I need to make sure planets do not grow to size 4.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #182 on: October 18, 2020, 06:43:28 PM »

Any plans for kinetic torpedoes?
Cruisers and capitals with salvage gantry? Does the phase troop transport come with Ground Support Package?

What if Size-7/5 industry colonies are made a part of endgame colony management instead of something available from the get go?
« Last Edit: October 18, 2020, 08:06:06 PM by SonnaBanana »
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IronBorn

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #183 on: October 18, 2020, 08:10:10 PM »

Colony nerfs and fighter rebalances! Nice!

Dover nerf should probably be changed to 14 DP, otherwise it is a light cruiser cost to deploy. And since cryosleepers usually spawn in less than optimal systems, would it be possible to allow the colony with the cryo facility to potentially reach a size of 7?

Look forward to the implementation of story points. Can they be used to stop pirate/ludic path activity in your colonies? And for a higher cost, would you be able to persuade them to target other factions? A little privateering to help you with the competition!

The fleets of 30 capitals sounds kind of bad, especially from a lore perspective. Will such fleets be rare? Would be cool if they are named, persistent fleets that pop up on the intelligence screen when created. Hunting down and destroying such a fleet would weaken a faction and it would take them some time to build such a fleet again. Major hostile actions, like losing a colony, would drastically accelerate the creation of the next fleet. Named fleets officers would also level, to be a consistent threat to the player.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #184 on: October 18, 2020, 08:45:31 PM »

Any plans for kinetic torpedoes?
Cruisers and capitals with salvage gantry? Does the phase troop transport come with Ground Support Package?

The phase troop transport does, yeah, "no" on the other stuff.

What if Size-7/5 industry colonies are made a part of endgame colony management instead of something available from the get go?

I feel like there are only so many ways I can say I don't think it's a good fit in-fiction-wise.



And since cryosleepers usually spawn in less than optimal systems

See this part of the patch notes:
Quote
Cryosleeper: now has (gradually reduced) effect at up to 10 light-years; spawns in better star systems

Look forward to the implementation of story points. Can they be used to stop pirate/ludic path activity in your colonies? And for a higher cost, would you be able to persuade them to target other factions? A little privateering to help you with the competition!

They can't, no. I could see potentially doing something like that, though. The thing with story points is there's infinity possible cool uses for them - which is good! but also means that (infinity minus some finite number) of those cool uses won't see the light of day.

The fleets of 30 capitals sounds kind of bad, especially from a lore perspective. Will such fleets be rare? Would be cool if they are named, persistent fleets that pop up on the intelligence screen when created. Hunting down and destroying such a fleet would weaken a faction and it would take them some time to build such a fleet again. Major hostile actions, like losing a colony, would drastically accelerate the creation of the next fleet. Named fleets officers would also level, to be a consistent threat to the player.

Hmm - I'm not sure where you're getting the "fleet of 30 capitals" from; there's nothing that's like that! If you can clarify, I can respond better.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #185 on: October 18, 2020, 09:01:09 PM »

The phase troop transport does, yeah, "no" on the other stuff.
Oh nice!


The fleets of 30 capitals sounds kind of bad, especially from a lore perspective. Will such fleets be rare? Would be cool if they are named, persistent fleets that pop up on the intelligence screen when created. Hunting down and destroying such a fleet would weaken a faction and it would take them some time to build such a fleet again. Major hostile actions, like losing a colony, would drastically accelerate the creation of the next fleet. Named fleets officers would also level, to be a consistent threat to the player.

Hmm - I'm not sure where you're getting the "fleet of 30 capitals" from; there's nothing that's like that! If you can clarify, I can respond better.
[/quote]
I think they're talking about Atlas MKII zombie death balls, late-game bounty fleets with 7 Conquests and alike. And expedition fleets in general.
Which did get fixed.
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Cosmitz

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #186 on: October 19, 2020, 12:30:52 AM »

Well, this is a whollop of changes, and i'd rather not pick on individuals as these seem very much interlinked and should be taken as a whole experience. Howeves:

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.

Honestly, by this point, shouldn't the 'real' map be the default? The 'pretty' map, as pretty as it is, is sorely not useful in the least as an actual map for navigation, and without a doubt a lot of players miss that little hotkey, and generally the hotkeys on the map screen, so even the fuel limits would be helpful to come pre-loaded.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2020, 12:41:59 AM by Cosmitz »
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mendonca

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #187 on: October 19, 2020, 01:01:10 AM »

Heh, yeah, so much stuff going on I can hardly make sense of it all together.

I'm strangely impressed by the 'Move Slowly' change, which seems like a really elegant way to neaten up the small gameplay things around that.

Thanks for the patchnotes, Alex.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #188 on: October 19, 2020, 02:33:47 AM »

I feel that plenty of people complaining about need for colony babysitting and invasions etc didn't play vanilla recently and have their experience coming from Nexerlin overdose.

Kazimierz3000

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #189 on: October 19, 2020, 02:57:09 AM »

Hey Alex, keep up the incredible work.  I'm really excited to see 4k and UI updates are coming, being one of the people that loves playing this game in ultrawide in all its glory.  Thanks for what you do!
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Ishman

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #190 on: October 19, 2020, 03:20:47 AM »

I'd like to further endorse the idea of being able to just plop down a beacon that says "here be colony" and then your organic mission is to actually transition from that into an actual faction - with a variety of options picked from a list to get to that point (mechanics wise, you could have a table of stuff that mods can add to that it draws from where it provides options for population (do you just give incentives for homesteaders, rescue cryosleepers,), administration, industry/resources, etc - seems like it could be a way to add another questline dynamic (that's still just a variation on go here do thing/pick thing up, return, but for engaging story reasons).

Besides that, I'd also like to not have too create a fully functioning colony to provide resources to the faction. I'd like the whole vast resources available in space aspect to be leaned further into - drop one lonely guy in an inflated balloon in charge of corralling a bevy of automated mining drones and their tenders in a ring system, mined out nickel-iron asteroids spun up for super cheap habitat space (no antimatter powered grav generators for the poor), lean into the whole 'these planets are *** and we have to make do' aspect of the Persean Sector. It's not as though there isn't the technology to do great things, but there's so much squabbling between the factions that no one's using the resources to do anything - until you the PC explodes upon the scene.

Basically Alex, I just want to put a particle collider around a gas giant and start mass-manufacturing supermaterials - these stars won't harvest themselves!

(Also John C. Wright has some fascinating stuff in his two space opera series)
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #191 on: October 19, 2020, 04:32:35 AM »

I'd like to further endorse the idea of being able to just plop down a beacon that says "here be colony" and then your organic mission is to actually transition from that into an actual faction - with a variety of options picked from a list to get to that point (mechanics wise, you could have a table of stuff that mods can add to that it draws from where it provides options for population (do you just give incentives for homesteaders, rescue cryosleepers,), administration, industry/resources, etc - seems like it could be a way to add another questline dynamic (that's still just a variation on go here do thing/pick thing up, return, but for engaging story reasons).

Besides that, I'd also like to not have too create a fully functioning colony to provide resources to the faction. I'd like the whole vast resources available in space aspect to be leaned further into - drop one lonely guy in an inflated balloon in charge of corralling a bevy of automated mining drones and their tenders in a ring system, mined out nickel-iron asteroids spun up for super cheap habitat space (no antimatter powered grav generators for the poor), lean into the whole 'these planets are *** and we have to make do' aspect of the Persean Sector. It's not as though there isn't the technology to do great things, but there's so much squabbling between the factions that no one's using the resources to do anything - until you the PC explodes upon the scene.

Basically Alex, I just want to put a particle collider around a gas giant and start mass-manufacturing supermaterials - these stars won't harvest themselves!

(Also John C. Wright has some fascinating stuff in his two space opera series)
That sound fun but it seems like a lot of work for Alex.
I do want to have player-built orbitals though.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #192 on: October 19, 2020, 05:00:42 AM »

I think "babysitting" only really applies to things that "just happen" at some random time, rather than things you basically explicitly signed up for doing.
Definitely. Colonies requiring extra stuff is fine, just so long as it isn't overly random. Or only able to be supplied once the colony actually demands something. Imagine putting down a colony, getting halfway to further exploration and suddenly the colony goes "actually, we need...eh, let me get out a d4 here...5d100 Food to continue working!", whereas the next colony demands 4d100 Domestic Goods, the next some amount of Luxury Goods and the next Lobster (for some inexplicable reason) or what have you. That'd be...less than ideal.

You could probably integrate this into the colonization screen pretty easily, I'd say, the one that says you need 1000 dudes, 100 Heavy Machinery and 200 Supplies to found a colony. Have another box below that lists what specific things that particular planet will need for a colony to reach the point where it'll be self-sufficient depending on the planet's conditions - say that every colony needs some amount of food/goods to tide them over until they can establish their own food sources, but planets with Destabilized Subpopulation specifically requires some amount of Marines to keep the initial colonists safe, tectonically active planets need additional supplies/heavy machinery to reinforce structures and build warning systems, High Gravity planets can require Heavy Armaments ("Humans require powered exoskeletons for regular movement and find even basic actions exhausting", which could be a part of the Heavy Armaments item, like power armor style?), etc.

The only real detail to remember (that I can come up with off the top of my head) is how to make sure that secondary list of required items is accessible remotely, without being at the specific planet. If the amount of items you need per hazard condition is static you could just look it up on a wiki and calculate it, or run around the core looking for planets with the right conditions and calculate what you need from that, but ideally it'd just be available from the Intel screen. That shouldn't be hard to add, though, I don't think.

Imagine if the endgame enemy was the Hegemony, and you were facing a couple of Lashers. Maybe with a pre-buff Enforcer thrown in there, to make it a challenge.

(It's possible I'm exaggerating a bit for dramatic effect...)
I'd just like to note that Frigates and Destroyers individually have killed me more often than Cruisers and Capitals combined. So in terms of fleets that have an actual record of making Swiss cheese of my hull ::)...
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what am i doing

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #193 on: October 19, 2020, 06:45:09 AM »

I feel like there are only so many ways I can say I don't think it's a good fit in-fiction-wise.

Not only do I agree wholeheartedly that the whole massive colonies thing never really felt like they fit with the game world, I'd add that I think the player should be limited to only one size 6 colony (ie, a designated capital), perhaps two size 5, and any further settlements can only be outposts (ie, for mining). Otherwise, the player will end up with a bunch of size 6 colonies and it would seem odd that the player faction's colonies are all the same size when all the ingame factions have a variety of worlds ranging from densely populated capitals to sparsely populated settlements.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #194 on: October 19, 2020, 07:18:06 AM »

I feel that plenty of people complaining about need for colony babysitting and invasions etc didn't play vanilla recently and have their experience coming from Nexerlin overdose.
In my case, I refer to vanilla, unmodded gameplay when I talk about babysitting.  I have not touched Nexerelin in any of the 0.9a releases.  (Played mostly in pre-0.8a, and only once or twice during 0.8a.)

Not only do I agree wholeheartedly that the whole massive colonies thing never really felt like they fit with the game world, I'd add that I think the player should be limited to only one size 6 colony (ie, a designated capital), perhaps two size 5, and any further settlements can only be outposts (ie, for mining). Otherwise, the player will end up with a bunch of size 6 colonies and it would seem odd that the player faction's colonies are all the same size when all the ingame factions have a variety of worlds ranging from densely populated capitals to sparsely populated settlements.
Size 10^6 is only millions on the whole planet.  If anything, that seems too small on anything bigger than a small moon, especially on a good earthlike world.  That is maybe a big city or three and nothing else.  It is not like post-Collapse is reduced to caveman or medieval tech.  They still have interstellar magitech, just not as much as they had.

Also, it is not hard having 10^4 crew in an endgame fleet if built for it.  If I can plop down multiple 10^3 colonies in quick succession, it would be nice to plop a 10^4 colony instantly if I have the crew on hand.  Also, I tend to have crew and marines in the tens of thousands stockpiled in colony resources or storage.
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