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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 595849 times)

Deshara

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #330 on: October 21, 2020, 09:23:43 PM »

But I think the old concepts about alpha, beta, release are long since meaningless.

I'm sure you're right, but I'm sticking to them :)

(Re: "release", I remember reading sometime back that the initial EA release on Steam is basically "the release", as far as any potential interest from press etc goes, and the actual 1.0 release doesn't really register... so, yeah, I'm sure you're right.)

its funny bc 2.0 releases for games that get re-made into a different game after release seem to make more of a difference than the 1.0 release.

A question nobody has asked from what I read: can you give details about the Escort Package and Assault Package?

From one of your previous blog, I guess it is not related to ECM or navigation/speed boost which are now specific to frigates. So maybe they provide other fleet bonus  (sight range? Manoeuvring boost?), or boost some of the ship capacities (flux for assault package, missile bonus for support package?)?

It's a boost to the individual ships, actually! Escort Package gives a lot of hefty PD bonuses, while Assault Package makes the ship into a brick. The effect of these hullmods is *greatly* increased by a relevant skill.

The combination of more pixels (due to widescreen) but needing to use anti-aliasing (due to not-quite-200% scaling) is probably the most performance-intensive situation there is here.

What do you mean by the 200% thing? Whats the relation between 200% scaling & anti-aliasing?
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #331 on: October 21, 2020, 09:29:27 PM »

About that. An idea would be (1) the ability to host a faction without owning a world and (2) the ability to hire captains to (say) trade between various worlds, with the player receiving a cut or something of that sort. Essentially, we can imitate the Hegemony, but we can't imitate the Tri-Tachyon. This would tie into the game's dynamic economy very well too, and provide a very different experience. You could tie this in with colonies, and have the player negotiate trade deals with contacts and in some situations even receive military contracts, and this could further tie into the proposed starting phases of a colony as a mission or two.

The question is, how is this interesting mechanically, aside from being a nice roleplaying thing? Colonies have the potential to make some trouble for you (i.e. lead into combat); the specifics of this can certainly be refined, but at least the path is there. If you just hire a fleet to trade for you, is it just a "get more money over time" mechanic? The design work here would be trying to make this interesting.

Also, diplomacy (ie vassalage and allowing players the ability to found colonies in a faction's name) is a must at some point or another, whether in vanilla or in nex.

(Just speaking as far as vanilla, I wouldn't say diplomacy etc is a "goal" - I can see adding something along these lines, but it's more likely if it was needed for something else to work, not for its own sake.)


Alex, what post-colony credit sinks will there be? Fleets? Research? Megaprojects?

:-X


What do you mean by the 200% thing? Whats the relation between 200% scaling & anti-aliasing?

If you scale to 200% (or 300%), there's no need for anti-aliasing - it already looks good, because it's double the amount of pixels, so the scaling algorithm has an easier time. For example, a line that's 1 pixel wide becomes 2 pixels wide, etc. If you scale to, say, 180%, a line 1 pixel wide becomes 1.8 pixels wide - which, of course, isn't a thing - and antialiasing is required to make that look reasonably good.
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Melanoc3tus II

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #332 on: October 21, 2020, 11:48:32 PM »

About that. An idea would be (1) the ability to host a faction without owning a world and (2) the ability to hire captains to (say) trade between various worlds, with the player receiving a cut or something of that sort. Essentially, we can imitate the Hegemony, but we can't imitate the Tri-Tachyon. This would tie into the game's dynamic economy very well too, and provide a very different experience. You could tie this in with colonies, and have the player negotiate trade deals with contacts and in some situations even receive military contracts, and this could further tie into the proposed starting phases of a colony as a mission or two.

The question is, how is this interesting mechanically, aside from being a nice roleplaying thing? Colonies have the potential to make some trouble for you (i.e. lead into combat); the specifics of this can certainly be refined, but at least the path is there. If you just hire a fleet to trade for you, is it just a "get more money over time" mechanic? The design work here would be trying to make this interesting.

This would mostly just provide more intricacy to colony building, but I could see a company of some sort be interesting. Maybe a combination of warding off pirates (perhaps through mercenaries), having to build trust with contacts, that sort of thing. It wouldn't supplant normal gameplay, just be an option with various difficulties (non-randomised, as discussed before) inherent. Then one can add the black market into the mix too. Now it is rather passive, but a large amount of good could come from a specialised intel tab, allowing the player to view their trade routes, and perhaps even the trade routes of other factions. That brings us to another application for contacts. Spies. I need to go now. Bye!
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #333 on: October 22, 2020, 12:34:01 AM »

Usually I don't have an issue with the current five weapon groups... but there are some ships where it's a serious limitation, especially with respect to ships that are being set up for AI control.

Similar thought here. 5 weapon groups is enough in most situations. But I find it kind of frustrating in a few player-controlled-ship situations. Thinking about Onslaught, Conquest, Legion, Aurora and Gryphon here (maybe others).

The thing is, the 5 groups limit means I'm not as creative as I could when designing a load-out. On Conquest I always leave medium missile mounts empty because I can't find a satisfying way to control them without crippling the whole ship. So I would say the 5 group limit is gameplay-limiting in such cases. I have stopped piloting Onslaught 2 years ago because of this (and because AI is pretty good at it with appropriate load-outs).

On the other hand, finding load-out design solutions within the 5 group constrain means I have to be creative in other ways, so I would say its fair (kind of frustrating) game.  ;D
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #334 on: October 22, 2020, 12:36:25 AM »

About that. An idea would be (1) the ability to host a faction without owning a world and (2) the ability to hire captains to (say) trade between various worlds, with the player receiving a cut or something of that sort. Essentially, we can imitate the Hegemony, but we can't imitate the Tri-Tachyon. This would tie into the game's dynamic economy very well too, and provide a very different experience. You could tie this in with colonies, and have the player negotiate trade deals with contacts and in some situations even receive military contracts, and this could further tie into the proposed starting phases of a colony as a mission or two.

The question is, how is this interesting mechanically, aside from being a nice roleplaying thing? Colonies have the potential to make some trouble for you (i.e. lead into combat); the specifics of this can certainly be refined, but at least the path is there. If you just hire a fleet to trade for you, is it just a "get more money over time" mechanic? The design work here would be trying to make this interesting.

This would mostly just provide more intricacy to colony building, but I could see a company of some sort be interesting. Maybe a combination of warding off pirates (perhaps through mercenaries), having to build trust with contacts, that sort of thing. It wouldn't supplant normal gameplay, just be an option with various difficulties (non-randomised, as discussed before) inherent. Then one can add the black market into the mix too. Now it is rather passive, but a large amount of good could come from a specialised intel tab, allowing the player to view their trade routes, and perhaps even the trade routes of other factions. That brings us to another application for contacts. Spies. I need to go now. Bye!
Don't forget, there's always room for other factions attacking your companies if they get desperate.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #335 on: October 22, 2020, 12:37:54 AM »

@Alex
Any words about that terrible tariffs?
Maybe make them scale down based on reputation and commission?

Well, the word is that they're about as punishing as I'd like them to be :) If they're more than you want to pay, sell that Paragon blueprint on the black market!


That is the problem.
Black market is all profit and almost zero risks.
I do not understand your opposition to allowing players making money from legal trade.

SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #336 on: October 22, 2020, 01:04:45 AM »

That is the problem.
Black market is all profit and almost zero risks.
I do not understand your opposition to allowing players making money from legal trade.
Riskier should be more rewarding, no?

The problems are that the black market isn't risky enough and players aren't rewarded enough for being really friendly with a faction.
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Gothars

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #337 on: October 22, 2020, 02:00:31 AM »

I do not understand your opposition to allowing players making money from legal trade.

Tariffs are meant to discourage players from giving themselves an endless chain of boring fetch quest to make money in a safe way. Btw, you can do legal trade via bar missions.

The problems are that the black market isn't risky enough and players aren't rewarded enough for being really friendly with a faction.

Agreed. Transponder-off smuggling is more exciting, but there's too little reason to do so, because transponder-on black market trade is so safe. Sometimes I wish it wasn't accessible at all with your transponders on.
But there are softer options. If, in case of high suspicion, your ships would get physically searched (causing disruption and lowering CR) instead of just scanned, that would up the stakes. Or if suspicious factions would continuously shadow you with some picket ships while you're in system, that could hinder your operations quite a bit. (Until you lure those watchdogs into a passing pirate fleet, of course.)


If you scale to 200% (or 300%), there's no need for anti-aliasing - it already looks good, because it's double the amount of pixels, so the scaling algorithm has an easier time. For example, a line that's 1 pixel wide becomes 2 pixels wide, etc. If you scale to, say, 180%, a line 1 pixel wide becomes 1.8 pixels wide - which, of course, isn't a thing - and antialiasing is required to make that look reasonably good.

Just to make sure: What keeps me from scaling to 200% (if my screen resolution is smaller than that) is that it would cut off the UI at the top and bottom, because it doesn't move, right?
« Last Edit: October 22, 2020, 04:27:17 AM by Gothars »
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #338 on: October 22, 2020, 05:37:21 AM »

For all of the talk about making Black Markets more risky does nothing to those whose Black Market visits are mostly at the bases of their enemies before destroying them.

Most of my black market visits are at the pop-up zombie pirate bases to sell vendor trash and buy crew and marines before I raid them to steal back some of the items I just sold, then destroy them.  (Omit raid and destroy if friendly with pirates.)

Quote
Transponder-off smuggling is more exciting
While transponder-on trade may be safe, I never use that option because I do not want to deal with patrol scans.  Plus there are enough places where I can safely turn off transponder next to the market before docking.
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TerranEmpire

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #339 on: October 22, 2020, 06:15:01 AM »

@Alex

I would like to weigh in on the colony size discussion.

First of all, I completely understand, that the changes won't really affect the mechanics and the balance of power. So I'm not very interested in changing your mind at all.

However, I think many commentators simply don't understand why some players complain about this change, including maybe you. They don't necessarily complain about the change in the balance of power. Many of them see this limit (^6) doesn't make sense in-fiction-wise. Although for you, it makes the world more believable, for them it makes it less believable.

I think I can see the reason. Because it's on the edge of being possible/impossible.

Let's analyze the situation a bit.

The Sector has a population on the order of 10^8s, because of the Hegemony.

(Totally unrelated, but it's interesting to think about it for a moment. Depending on the exact population of Chicomoztoc and the size 7 planets the Hegemony owns between 30% and 90% of the Sectors population. If we think the size 7 and 8 planets are just barely size 7 or 8, we get that the Hegemony has around 2/3s of the total population.)

So theoretically, not counting external interference, the maximum size of our faction's planets should be 8.
Could it happen?
First let's investigate the possibility of a size 7, in let's say ~25 cycles. Let's assume that it reaches size 6 in 10 cycles. This assumption is based on the fact that you allow size 6 and a playthrough lasts for 10-15 cycles, so at least for me, it indicates, that you think this could happen.

Is size 6 to 7 change is possible in 15 cycles? The supply (Sector population) is there. The demand (our planet) is there, too.

Let's look at some historical examples.

The US had an immigration rate of 10%/decade for two decades. That means +5 and +8 million in the 1860s or 1900s respectively.
So theoretically, IF immigration is independent of the starting population this COULD happen, at least it did happen.
We have to consider many factors here. Is the desperation of the Core big enough? Enough ships to relocate the population? Is it widely accessible? Enough money spent on attracting immigrants?

Is immigration independent of the starting population? Depends. Based on technological sophistication and the initial conditions of the planet it could be, more or less.

So my personal conclusion is that with enough money and a desperate enough pool of immigrants, this is borderline impossible or possible depending on technology. Maybe habitable worlds with farmlands could support this kind of growth. So I can totally understand why many people say it's possible, but I can also understand why don't you like it.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #340 on: October 22, 2020, 07:00:29 AM »

@ TerranEmpire: I agree with your point.  10^7 looks like something that can be achieved in a game that lasts decades.  (I did have games that lasted a little more than 15 years, and could go on if I wanted, because endgame is my favorite part of the game.)  If a game lasts long enough, it is plausible that the player's faction has been around long enough to grow into major faction status.  Especially, if my faction can defend against zombie pirates and major factions cannot.

10^8 on a player colony, I can see not happening unless Chicomoztoc or other core planet grows into 10^9 during the game.

It would be mildly disappointing if the only way I can match major factions is to permanently knock them down to Indie equivalents through saturation bombings.

However, that all assumes the player has unlimited time, and there is no threat that will kill the sector (like Kohr-Ah in Star Control 2) if more than a few years pass.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2020, 07:19:54 AM by Megas »
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Melanoc3tus II

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #341 on: October 22, 2020, 07:57:27 AM »

Another thing.

I see you responded to a comment about zombie pirates by saying that the player needs something to fight. This, to be honest, is B.S. of the highest order. Smart pirates would allow for much more interesting possibilities when trading, which would allow for legal trade as a viable activity, not a severely punished series of fetch quests. After all, when you could get accosted by a superior force of pirates at any time, it would be rather thrilling. Just make black market trade much harder to compensate. Exploring the possibilities further, pirates could be more finely grouped by star system, with individual gangs and their leaders,

(who would integrate rather seamlessly into the contact system, perhaps by having each leader hosted in pirate bases. They would be less difficult to reach, too, as the pirates would only attack good targets. That is, trade convoys, weak entrepreneurs, and anyone that wouldn't destroy a large number of their ships. Additionally, the leaders could have flag ships, mimicking the bounties, and you could even allow for hostile takeover of a group via destruction of their vessel. This would not be a easy way of making cash, not only because returns from such a business would be sporadic and entirely dependent on auto resolve encounters in the system, but also because pirate fleets could be severely increased in power level)

even if the overarching faction wasn't modified. As for combat opportunities, there are plenty, from hunting the Luddic path to fighting derelicts to attacking trade convoys yourself. Not to mention that you could just seek out the pirates if you did want to fight them. And they would still come after you if you were obviously transporting something valuable. The Luddic path has an excuse for being suicidal, but the pirates do not.

You might respond that this would inconvenience the player, but I simply see it as more opportunities for unique gameplay events, thus increasing the number of active elements involved in rather passive activities such as trading.

In the words of DF, !!Fun!!
« Last Edit: October 22, 2020, 08:09:35 AM by Melanoc3tus II »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #342 on: October 22, 2020, 08:21:31 AM »

Domain Derelicts would be much better early game zombie-like enemies than pirates, IMO. Track them back to their spawners (probes), nests (survey ships), and finally to the origins (motherships), eliminating the threat.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #343 on: October 22, 2020, 08:30:59 AM »

In terms of population, the US in the 1800-1900s was receiving immigration from the rest of the world which had a population of a few billion (10^9), so immigration population was three orders of magnitude lower than the total population (~10^6 per year). In our sector, that would mean we would expect early immigration on the order of 10^5, and it would take 100 year to hit 10^7 from immigration at that rate.

It is strange that the population of the entire sector is less than earth in the 1800s. I've always felt like all of the scripted worlds should have population increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude. In that case, the player could have 10^7 colonies while still being firmly behind the scripted worlds.
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TerranEmpire

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #344 on: October 22, 2020, 08:50:12 AM »

I don't think that the magnitude of the world population is a good indicator here.
Most of that population was not even close to technology levels capable of intercontinental travel or had no hope at all to make the journey (from China or British India for eg).
AFAIK that's not the case in SS.

Even if that is the case, the desperation level is more relevant. And IMO the desperation level in the Sector is very-very high, like Irish immigration levels high.

I don't want to say, it's plausible, but I think it's wrong to say, that it's implausible.
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