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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 593886 times)

Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #405 on: October 25, 2020, 08:35:40 AM »

I've noticed that enemy fighter LPCs on carriers with the Reserve Deployment ability do not self-destruct as the mothership retreats from the battlefield, leading to some rather annoying time after all enemy ships retreated, like in this case:
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You guys might want to look into that as you nerf Reserve Deplyment (unless you've already fixed it and I did not spot it in the patch notes). I've also had it happen with a Drover using Broadswords and a modder (SafariJohn) confirmed it seems to be originating from Vanilla. It should be fairly easy to reproduce in a real battle scenario.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2020, 08:50:56 AM by Arcagnello »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #406 on: October 25, 2020, 08:43:45 AM »

Alex, how many colonies do you think a no admin skills player should have (as of 0.9.5a)?

Please clarify for Megas, is Converted Fighter Bays only for ships with built-in wings like Sunder or does it work for every carrier?

It would be nice if Admin skills can be made elite just like combat skills. In addition, players can spend story points on an Admin to make one of their skills elite, cryopod admins might start with one skill already elite, Alpha cores have three elite admin skills.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2020, 09:13:53 AM by SonnaBanana »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #407 on: October 25, 2020, 09:22:10 AM »

Oh yes finally I am more excited for this than for christmass  :D

:D

Can you drop a hint if there's any substantial changes for colony management in the works? It's probably my fav part of the game

Hmm - you mean beyond what's already in the patch notes (a bunch of new items, "make improvements", size changes, cryosleeper having a range, etc)? I think that about sums it up colony-wise for this release.
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CoverdInBees

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #408 on: October 25, 2020, 09:27:24 AM »

Ah, I see what you meant not, sorry I misunderstood! Yeah, they're more or less as-is; the stuff found on the core colonies is for 1) making the Sector economy work out and 2) flavor. It doesn't really need to be "optimized according to the rules" because it's not a symmetric 4x type of situation, you know?

Yeah makes perfect sense. The only thing that really changed is that you have the *opportunity* to make changes without them breaking the rules that apply to player colonies if you desire. Nothing saying you have to use that opportunity if you feel they're already in a good spot.
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Zaizai

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #409 on: October 25, 2020, 10:13:12 AM »

First of all, thanks for all your hard work, I can't wait to try the game out!
I know the patch is gonna drop when it's ready and I'm not gonna ask that...however if you could respond to these simple questions i bet it would make lots of people happy :p   
-Ignoring that things can be added or changed or take more time than expected, what do you feel right now is your current progress on the patch? (50%, 90% etc)     
-Compared to previous patches, do you feel you released these patch notes as early in development as those? or did you wait until you were closer to release? 
 
One thing about the game, i would LOVE to have a way to disable CR degradation for the flagship, sometimes i enjoy taking my time and fighting unwinnable battles by slowly taking the edge, however CR heavily hinders this kind of gameplay and instead i feel forced to play in a way i don't really like. I'm fine with the fleet having it for balance purposes, but it really bums me out when i'm almost about to win an extremely difficult and long fight, just for my CR to run out :( (yes, even with the cr upgrade). What about an upgrade that progressively decrease CR usage for the flagship? so if you choose to go that route, you'd have to actually waste points on it, making your flagship immune to cr degradation at max level, but overall weaker/with a weaker fleet. Or maybe even adding some flux penalty to that upgrade/making it impossible to reach CR degradation immunity on phase ships.
Thanks again for your amazing work

 

« Last Edit: October 25, 2020, 10:17:14 AM by Zaizai »
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AsterPiano

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #410 on: October 25, 2020, 10:29:01 AM »

I've thought about the gameplay implications of these notes a bit more, focused around this change
Quote
Increased XP gain from fighting more challenging battles; up to 500% more XP gained

Fleet Combat 'Efficiency' will now be significantly more important. Combat XP is now not only based around the strength of the fleets you destroy, but also around how efficiently you have designed your fleet.
XP now also has the added importance of gaining you Story Points, in addition to the already important Skill Points.

These changes add a new meaning to picking player Combat Skills, in the current 0.9.1a patch they can massively increase your fleet's combat efficiency - especially in the early game/for small fleets where you have very few combat ships - but with 0.95a's changes they further give a boost to XP gain and now by extension, Story Point gain.
(assuming Combat Skills are equally as good as they were previously, a well piloted player ship with full combat skills can increase the ship's effectiveness tenfold)
These changes definitely encourage players to try maximising the efficiency of a smaller fleet through carefully designed fleet strategy and loadouts in order to fight bigger fleets (going 'taller' kinda), as opposed to getting more/bigger combat ships and focusing more on numbers (going 'wider'), which I think is especially good since big fleets for new players can be frustrating to manage the logistics of; they often end up being slow and expensive.
Also more than before you're discouraged from going after easy targets, and encouraged to go after larger targets where you can make full use of all of your combat ships.

Quote
Story point uses include (but are not limited to):
  • "Piloted ship" skills can be raised to "elite" level, unlocking an additional effect
  • Building a limited number of permanent hullmods into ships, making the cost 0 ordnance points
  • Officers: Can raise one skill to "elite" level (story point)
Speaking of Story points, these additions give the player more ways to spend resources on their fleet to further tune its effectiveness in combat and affect combat XP. However, depending on how the equation works, using these features could increase the "fleet strength" value of your fleet, which could make them less worthwhile. (Although using story points does grant bonus XP anyway, so it might cancel itself out)

Another implication that I find interesting is, the player already has a choice to forgo logistics in order to increase the fleet's overall combat efficiency, and the change of "more XP from challenging battles" adds to the already existing dynamic of Combat vs Logistics by asking Combat-focused fleets the question "Do you want to focus on Combat XP, or do you want more space for Salvage?", which adds extra playstyle options even among Combat focused fleets.

Quote
Cargo Pods: cheaper to stabilize, stabilization adds 400 days (was: 150)
This also supports the idea of removing cargo ships to increase combat efficiency to some extent, as it makes it easier for the player to pick up all of the cargo they couldn't at a later time. (Also generally.. I'm quite happy about the prospect of stabilising cargo pods being less costly and more effective, big fan of this change!)

However, I have a few worries about this change to combat XP, depending on how the equation works for deciding on the strength of a fleet. For example if the number of officers in your fleet strongly affects the "strength" of your fleet for the purposes of combat XP calculation, then it could discourage hiring low level officers. If it scales with the level of the officer, it could discourage the use of officers overall (however, even if the scaling was punishing it would at least give you a choice of more Combat XP vs more pure fleet strength).
However, if the "fleet strength" value does scale with your fleet officers' levels, that also raises the worrying question of "Does your Player Combat Skills Level affect "fleet strength" ? I personally think this would be a mistake as it further discourages players from trying Combat Skills if they think they're bad at piloting ships.
Some more questions, does having more/more expensive weapons equipped on ships increase the player's "fleet strength" value? Does having less dmods increase the value?

Of course, all of this depends on how exactly the equation will work, and what the purpose of the change is. Since I don't know I'm just making assumptions about what it could be. It could scale with your officer levels but only a little bit, so that it's still better to have officers than not (as long as you use them). I guess there's a lot of unknowns here so I began thinking about the (in my opinion) worst case scenarios.
As far as I can tell, the main purpose of the change is either to reward the player for their skill (in piloting/ordering and planning/loading out their fleet),
or to reward the player for their skill and all the resources they put into making their fleet more combat effective.
I guess my question comes down to: Is that the case? And if so, which is it? (Although I can understand if you don't want to share exactly how it'll work; people are bound to take the equation and minmax their gameplay choices around its quirks)
« Last Edit: October 25, 2020, 10:34:15 AM by TheLochNessCheeseBurger »
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Mordodrukow

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #411 on: October 25, 2020, 10:53:58 AM »

Sorry, did not read all 28 pages of discussion.

I like all changes except for inability to bribe Hegemony's inspectors without spending story points. Its just pointless. Story points will be limited resource (if i get it correctly), so, it will be way easier to eliminate entire Hegemony than going home every time to retrieve cores till inspection is done.

Also, an idea: Hegemony tells you that they will come with inspection... but dont tell which colony they want to check. For example, inspector secretly picks one planet and has a chance to pick second one if player has big number of worlds (more than 4, i guess...).
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Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #412 on: October 25, 2020, 10:56:36 AM »

Ah yes this reminded me, can we have inspections remember the last choice we picked? For example If I say my colony to retaliate, can it do that next time too, instead of just allowing them to take all cores? Obviously we'd still get the message, I'm just talking about scenarios where you forget about the notification.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #413 on: October 25, 2020, 12:16:53 PM »

Sorry, did not read all 28 pages of discussion.

I like all changes except for inability to bribe Hegemony's inspectors without spending story points. Its just pointless. Story points will be limited resource (if i get it correctly), so, it will be way easier to eliminate entire Hegemony than going home every time to retrieve cores till inspection is done.

Also, an idea: Hegemony tells you that they will come with inspection... but dont tell which colony they want to check. For example, inspector secretly picks one planet and has a chance to pick second one if player has big number of worlds (more than 4, i guess...).
Story points are renewable.  Do not know how quickly player can earn enough XP to level up beyond max for more story points.

If I plan to use cores (to build an empire), purging the Hegemony may become a very attractive option.

However, if I am willing to stop what I do and rush home to grab cores, it is better to intercept the inspection fleet and kill it.

Inspection that does not tell which colony Hegemony checks would be evil.  I would sat bomb Hegemony off the map to eliminate that headache.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #414 on: October 25, 2020, 12:50:29 PM »

First of all, thanks for all your hard work, I can't wait to try the game out!
I know the patch is gonna drop when it's ready and I'm not gonna ask that...however if you could respond to these simple questions i bet it would make lots of people happy :p   
-Ignoring that things can be added or changed or take more time than expected, what do you feel right now is your current progress on the patch? (50%, 90% etc)     
-Compared to previous patches, do you feel you released these patch notes as early in development as those? or did you wait until you were closer to release? 

Ahh, I'm afraid that would be more or less answering the same question as the one you're not asking :) I'll just say, most of what remains is some reasonable amount of story content, a bunch of random QoL/modding items, a few assorted odds and ends, and a bunch of playtesting.
 
 
One thing about the game, i would LOVE to have a way to disable CR degradation for the flagship, sometimes i enjoy taking my time and fighting unwinnable battles by slowly taking the edge, however CR heavily hinders this kind of gameplay and instead i feel forced to play in a way i don't really like. I'm fine with the fleet having it for balance purposes, but it really bums me out when i'm almost about to win an extremely difficult and long fight, just for my CR to run out :( (yes, even with the cr upgrade). What about an upgrade that progressively decrease CR usage for the flagship? so if you choose to go that route, you'd have to actually waste points on it, making your flagship immune to cr degradation at max level, but overall weaker/with a weaker fleet. Or maybe even adding some flux penalty to that upgrade/making it impossible to reach CR degradation immunity on phase ships.
Thanks again for your amazing work

Hmm - much like you're saying you feel "forced" into not playing this way, the flip side is if what you're asking for *was* an option, other players would feel forced to use it, since "use a single ship to take a long time to win a fight" is more efficient. And having to do this on the regular would not, I think, be good for the game. I'd suggest, personally, just editing the Hardened Subsystems hullmod in your game to adjust it to your preference. That one's actually easy - doesn't require compiling anything etc; you can just edit data/hullmods/HardenedSubsystems and change the peak time modifier to what you want. That's affect AI ships too, but in your particular case that doesn't seem like it'd be a problem.


I've thought about the gameplay implications of these notes a bit more, focused around this change

I think this is a really good, deep analysis; thank you for sharing it!

These changes add a new meaning to picking player Combat Skills, in the current 0.9.1a patch they can massively increase your fleet's combat efficiency - especially in the early game/for small fleets where you have very few combat ships - but with 0.95a's changes they further give a boost to XP gain and now by extension, Story Point gain.

Hadn't considered that! But, this seems good overall.


Quote
Cargo Pods: cheaper to stabilize, stabilization adds 400 days (was: 150)
This also supports the idea of removing cargo ships to increase combat efficiency to some extent, as it makes it easier for the player to pick up all of the cargo they couldn't at a later time. (Also generally.. I'm quite happy about the prospect of stabilising cargo pods being less costly and more effective, big fan of this change!)

*thumbs up*


However, I have a few worries about this change to combat XP, depending on how the equation works for deciding on the strength of a fleet. For example if the number of officers in your fleet strongly affects the "strength" of your fleet for the purposes of combat XP calculation, then it could discourage hiring low level officers. If it scales with the level of the officer, it could discourage the use of officers overall (however, even if the scaling was punishing it would at least give you a choice of more Combat XP vs more pure fleet strength).
However, if the "fleet strength" value does scale with your fleet officers' levels, that also raises the worrying question of "Does your Player Combat Skills Level affect "fleet strength" ? I personally think this would be a mistake as it further discourages players from trying Combat Skills if they think they're bad at piloting ships.
Some more questions, does having more/more expensive weapons equipped on ships increase the player's "fleet strength" value? Does having less dmods increase the value?

Of course, all of this depends on how exactly the equation will work, and what the purpose of the change is. Since I don't know I'm just making assumptions about what it could be. It could scale with your officer levels but only a little bit, so that it's still better to have officers than not (as long as you use them). I guess there's a lot of unknowns here so I began thinking about the (in my opinion) worst case scenarios.
As far as I can tell, the main purpose of the change is either to reward the player for their skill (in piloting/ordering and planning/loading out their fleet),
or to reward the player for their skill and all the resources they put into making their fleet more combat effective.
I guess my question comes down to: Is that the case? And if so, which is it? (Although I can understand if you don't want to share exactly how it'll work; people are bound to take the equation and minmax their gameplay choices around its quirks)

Right, yeah; this is a good thing to think about, vis a vis "does this change encourage weird gameplay patterns". I'd be lying if I said I'd considered every detail (this was, to be honest, kind of an impulsive addition based on a suggestion from, iirc, Gothars), but!

I think overall having more/better officers will always be good - they do reduce the difficulty of the fight, but I think not to the point where it's better not to have them. It'd be pretty much impossible to do anything real meaningful without them. And, while officer level/presence matters here, it matters less than e.g. for deployment points distribution, so it shouldn't discourage putting officers in small ships. Player level - rather than specifically combat skills - factors in here, but, again, it's not an overwhelming factor. Weapons/dmods etc don't factor in; it's based off the base deployment points of a hull and officer levels. Again, though, I don't think it's something where trying to optimize out a dmod or two would make much difference.

(Officers that aren't assigned to a ship still count, since otherwise you'd be encouraged to unassign officers you're not planning to use in the fight... made that change just now, actually, since wasn't thinking about that aspect of it before.)

Overall, the hope is this is something that's worth playing around on the macro level - in terms overall fleet size/composition/engagement choices - but not on a micro level, trying to wring an extra couple of percent out of it.


I like all changes except for inability to bribe Hegemony's inspectors without spending story points. Its just pointless. Story points will be limited resource (if i get it correctly), so, it will be way easier to eliminate entire Hegemony than going home every time to retrieve cores till inspection is done.

Also, an idea: Hegemony tells you that they will come with inspection... but dont tell which colony they want to check. For example, inspector secretly picks one planet and has a chance to pick second one if player has big number of worlds (more than 4, i guess...).

That'd just make it impossible to prep for, no?

What I want to look at is making inspections etc more rare, though...



Ah yes this reminded me, can we have inspections remember the last choice we picked? For example If I say my colony to retaliate, can it do that next time too, instead of just allowing them to take all cores? Obviously we'd still get the message, I'm just talking about scenarios where you forget about the notification.

Tn that theoretical example, it'd do that already, right? Since you'd get auto-hostile for resisting. I don't think that defaulting to the option that makes you auto-hostile (when you're not already hostile) is a good idea.
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Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #415 on: October 25, 2020, 01:08:57 PM »

Ah yes this reminded me, can we have inspections remember the last choice we picked? For example If I say my colony to retaliate, can it do that next time too, instead of just allowing them to take all cores? Obviously we'd still get the message, I'm just talking about scenarios where you forget about the notification.

Tn that theoretical example, it'd do that already, right? Since you'd get auto-hostile for resisting. I don't think that defaulting to the option that makes you auto-hostile (when you're not already hostile) is a good idea.
Well yeah being the default option would be kinda silly. Didn't know it automatically made you hostile no matter what your relation is, I always thought it was a big flat penalty like -50 or something. But I'm sure this happened to me. Could it be that the first time I resisted them they became hostile but I somehow raised relations through missions and other stuff so the next option defaulted to the peace one? If such a thing can happen then honestly I don't know what makes more sense, seeing how you already made them angry once, then again, a player might try repairing those relations. Ehh you're probably right in the end (even tho the Hegemony deserves no mercy  :)) )
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #416 on: October 25, 2020, 01:11:08 PM »

But I'm sure this happened to me. Could it be that the first time I resisted them they became hostile but I somehow raised relations through missions and other stuff so the next option defaulted to the peace one?

Yeah, that sounds plausible, since you'd be in "just barely hostile" territory at that point and even a minor rep gain would get you back out of it.
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Mordodrukow

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #417 on: October 25, 2020, 02:05:08 PM »

Quote
Story points are renewable.  Do not know how quickly player can earn enough XP to level up beyond max for more story points.
If progression is the same as it is now (just scaled a bit to fit 15 max level cap) it will be very hard to get a lot of extra points.
Quote
That'd just make it impossible to prep for, no?
Yes. But you can try to guess, or, maybe, just use AIs on some planets (not all of them). Or visit all planets and remove all cores, lol. It gives some options.

Also, many people dont want to babysit anyway. So, there will be no difference for them.

For me the only reason to keep Heg alive is the fact that they have size 8 colony (which will not be achievable on player's worlds anymore (but i hope there will be possibilities like really low threat level, story points, quests, etc.)). In new rule system it will be a miracle which i just dont want to destroy.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #418 on: October 25, 2020, 02:38:05 PM »

Quote
If progression is the same as it is now (just scaled a bit to fit 15 max level cap) it will be very hard to get a lot of extra points.
Maybe, depending how much fighting against endgame fleets player will do.  Leveling a few times past 40 now may not be not too slow, but things slow down quite a bit past 50.

If I want to use cores, it is most likely to expand my empire, that is use them as admins.  I do not want to guess where big H will hit next (at least not without an Intel bug) among dozens of alpha-run worlds.  If I need to guess where big H will hit next (and chances of success are low and result of failure is bad stuff happening), I will stop that nonsense by wiping them off the map.

As for 10^8 miracle, having them as an enemy (because they cannot mind their own business) is more of an incentive to wipe them off the map.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #419 on: October 25, 2020, 03:11:28 PM »

Any chance that there'll be a way to administrate more colonies without having to resort to AI cores at some relatively quick point? I get that colonizing isn't the intended end goal and all, but it never struck me as sensible that some AI colonies can be administrated by a blank portrait saying "no one of particular note" (or some such) whereas your colonies not only must be administrated by someone, but that (given enough skill points invested) four of them can simultaneously be administrated as well as an Alpha Core - and only an Alpha Core -  can administrate one planet, by someone exploring the galaxy on the other end of the sector.

Not that having to, you know, basically retire and sit at your colonies to administrate them would be a very fun mechanic, but it's still bizarre every time I think about it.
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