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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 595941 times)

Soban

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1545 on: April 07, 2021, 07:14:55 AM »

+1 Base value
+2 Plentiful volatiles
+3 Plasma dynamo
+1 Administrator

That is a total of 7. If I didn't have Plasma Dynamo I would not get up to even 5, which I thought would be a more reasonable number but, looking at this now, ouch yeah Fusion Lamp feels extremely pricy for what it does. Might actually be more beneficial to switch to a +1 Volatiles planet instead that does not have Extreme Cold and Darkness debuffs so I would not have to use the lamp.
Did you improve Mining for another +1?  Also, Alpha core adds another +1 (and stacks with the colony skills it has too).

+2 Volatiles is the highest a planet can have.  (Same for Farmland, for that matter.)

I did not improve mining with a +1 from story points. I see the storypoint upgrades as an extra, so don't look at them as a "vanilla" part of the colony experience. That and they are horrendiously expensive! Avoiding AI core use so luddics won't come bothering me.

Would be nice if High Command could have an effect that counters pirate activity -1 stab and -10% accessability. It seems like a pointless module in your planet currently due to requiring its own industry slot and Patrol HQ is enough to take back relays.
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BGrey

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1546 on: April 07, 2021, 07:42:15 AM »

You don't have to meet the full demand for the lamp to work, you just have less of a hazard performance. So does it really cost anything at all?
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1547 on: April 07, 2021, 07:43:24 AM »

I plan to improve colonies because of all of the item restrictions, plus some items aggravate Pathers.  I want to have self-sufficient colonies, and without items, I need colony improvements and Industrial Planning.  Last release, it was flat out impossible without items.

Also, one of my colonies has Decivilized Subpopulation, and I really want to improve Pop&Inf for +1 stability to mitigate the stability malus.

Quote
I did not improve mining with a +1 from story points. I see the storypoint upgrades as an extra, so don't look at them as a "vanilla" part of the colony experience. That and they are horrendiously expensive! Avoiding AI core use so luddics won't come bothering me.
What I dislike about them is it encourages the grind for story points to feed the ever-growing black hole, much like soft-capped level limits of earlier releases.

I plan to heavily exploit colony improvements because I do not want to rely on items, unless I need to for those special 10 resource requirements, which are bugged.  I do not want to deal with Pather cells or Hegemony inspections, and sat bombing does not wipe them off the map because quests give them immunity to nukes.
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Shoat

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1548 on: April 07, 2021, 07:54:39 AM »

I also just want to say: I would really appreciate a hard mode for the game. The normal difficulty is fine starting out, but it's just not very challenging economically.

While searching, I found this good post on the subject from someone in 2019:

Quote
As much as I'd love to sink another 100 hours into the game, the meta is just too easy. 2h in everything seems to lose purpose as your power level just explodes.
Hyperspace travel is essentially hassle-free. The factions are either not aggressive enough or they don't have enough fleets overall ( and I'm on negative with all but Hegemony ). The only hassle is the annoyance of navigating the "storms" and occasionally avoiding the very few stronger faction fleets. Avoiding the fleets is fairly easy as the strong ones are generally much slower.

The skill-driven power explosion was unsatisfactory as well. Overall skills feel meaningless when you get so many so quickly.

The stipend + commission down-right break the already fragile economy.
By fragile I mean:
 The over-supply of ships ( they are more common than ore or basic supplies .... )
 The ship prices are ludicrously low. Even at 2x their current cost they would still be ridiculously low. ( I had an Onslaught with 1D 4h in, did not break the bank either )
 Trade routes are way too easy to abuse ( it's worse than in the usual grind-trading systems since your viable options are actually lower but the payouts much higher )
 Rewards are way too big for non-combat "quests". ( to be read as those without a cost sink )
 Basic supplies are way too cheap and abundant.
 I have more weapons than storage slots to put them in ( from salvage ). Granted, they are not rare but nor did I ever feel the need for rare weapons or stronger ships ( 7h in this run ).
 
To make things worse, the faction standings are too easy to recover from and overall feel very artificial. They switch and change too often and easily, making them lose substance.
IMHO accepting a comission should be a big, game-changing thing, not just an easy way into cash.

The explosion of skills has been addressed, but that's pretty much it.

I suppose I can look into making a "hard mode" mod myself. I've never done any modding before, but I really like this game in every other respect.

One of the biggest issues to me is that it feels like the actual fun parts are quite separated from how to make money. If I want to make money, I do a bunch of trading. Then, with that nest egg, I can go around having fights. But fighting because you're some leisure-class dilettante who wants to hunt the "most dangerous game" is very different from the idea in the lore of struggling to survive. Fighting, exploring... these are money losers (certainly when you look at the opportunity cost).


That's a matter of customization.
The game's plenty hard for a new player until they figure it all out out, and then it's on them to not play in a manner that trivializes the game. If you find that trading a lot early to get rich quick makes the game easy, then... don't do that?

Also:
Stipend can be turned off in the config file.
You can choose not to take a commission, or adjust how much it is worth.
You can enable spacer start (which IIRC starts you with literally nothing) in the config.
You can adjust the prices of ships and basic supplies yourself... hell, pretty much any "number isn't right for my tastes" problem you have can be solved by editing a simple text file in the game folder.

Eventually Alex will probably make a big boi difficulty himself, but until then we can help ourselves while he does more important things that we can't just adjust ourselves in text files.
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Flet

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1549 on: April 07, 2021, 08:22:20 AM »

officers
Yeah, it bothers me that officers you level up are inferior.
On one hand, the speed at which you can level them makes me feel like they are intended to be the placeholders while you go look for really good officers, but the problem with this approach is:
1. If you spend SP on them thats entirely wasted
2. It skews things towards officer management. I already feel like officer management is the better skill just because the strength of officer frigates in this version, the fact that you can get higher level officers anyway makes it even more biased in that direction because the few builds that would really improve by a 6th skill i can just hope gets covered.
3. It ignores any emotional attachment people might develop. You go through fights seeing that officer going around in the periphery of the screen doing stuff and after so many of these it feels wrong to throw them out just to replace them with some random person you found in a cryopod.
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GenericGoose

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1550 on: April 07, 2021, 08:56:23 AM »

While we are talking about officers, Im not a big fan of how they work. I wish they had tactics setting you can change as needed, instead of personalities you can only change once. Random officers don't feel rewarding, because a lot of them can have skills that are as good or worse than regular officers, because it's random. How is a lvl6 officer with the same skills as a lvl5+carrier skill useful or rewarding to me if I'm not using carriers? It could've been a skill I'd find useful, but it isn't, because rng decided so, etc. it's also a headache to look through all of the officers to pick the one that's the least useful to toss out the airlock once I'm at the limit. Or if I want to change my fleet and now need different skills, I have to purge my officer team and hire and train a new one... 15 years serving under me only to be deleted forever... If the player can respec, why can't the officers? Please consider changing this, it would take out a lot of pointless rng and tedium out of officer management and make the game more fun.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 08:58:55 AM by GenericGoose »
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1551 on: April 07, 2021, 09:03:32 AM »

There are no carrier skills for officers, just warship or general-purpose skills.

However, Leadership 4L is devalued by all of the random level 7s the player can eventually loot (if he bothers to check out all random derelicts and distress calls).
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1552 on: April 07, 2021, 09:35:55 AM »

(Just, again - thank you for all the feedback; read through everything!)

Thank you for the added info! Could you clarify on the exact order setup you have to make them "blob"?
Well, I can't quite remember, as I've done multiple fights. Usually, I assign auroras to escort an onslaught, each, then I send the capitals to a control point or a rally point, closer to my side of the map. Depending on how the points generate, sometimes our fleets meet on one, me getting there first. Pretty much all enemy ships go to the point, except for a few frigates/destroyers and pile on from one direction, slowly trickling around.

Ok, thank you for the added detail!

However, Leadership 4L is devalued by all of the random level 7s the player can eventually loot (if he bothers to check out all random derelicts and distress calls).

(It's a bug that those can be found on these kinds of wrecks. They're supposed to be hard-limited in number at game start.)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1553 on: April 07, 2021, 09:40:10 AM »

Some modding questions, but I think they are serious issues...
Are "getDamageToFighters" and "getDamageToMissiles"(MutableStat) should use "modifyFlat" to increase the percentage damage bonus?
All new vanilla codes which are created after 0.95a from "starfarer.api" use "modifyFlat" to increase percentage damage bonus, but codes created before 0.95a use "modifyPercent", which is confusing...

Ah - it's a multiplier, so either way is fine. modifyPercent(25f) and modifyFlat(25f / 100f) amount to the same thing.
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Shoat

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1554 on: April 07, 2021, 09:40:42 AM »

There are no carrier skills for officers, just warship or general-purpose skills.

That's just outright not true.
Strike Commander and Point Defense can be on officers, both of them are carrier skills.
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AcaMetis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1555 on: April 07, 2021, 09:41:14 AM »

About those level 7 officers you can find, is it possible to add some way to make them...well, not completely useless in some cases? Being able to fully re-spec them is probably a bit much, but IIRC I once found a level 7 officer specced for close range brawling...who was Timid. I mean he could pilot a really mean Buffalo pretending to be a PD platform, I guess, but...
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1556 on: April 07, 2021, 09:50:54 AM »

About those level 7 officers you can find, is it possible to add some way to make them...well, not completely useless in some cases? Being able to fully re-spec them is probably a bit much, but IIRC I once found a level 7 officer specced for close range brawling...who was Timid. I mean he could pilot a really mean Buffalo pretending to be a PD platform, I guess, but...

Long-term cryosleep does things to people...

... actually, let me make timid officers obey the Eliminate command. That'd at least add some interesting considerations to a case like this, since you could make them useful by liberally using it.
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Chaos Blade

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1557 on: April 07, 2021, 10:10:29 AM »

i just dont understand why contracted officers are even a thing now, they bust the balance out of the door for everyone, but the ai especially, since they can just spam them without regards for, well, the upkeep and upcost

storypoints ARE precious, and having to spend one per officer per yer, while having to deal with the extra micro of managing your officers AND the mercs not only is annoying, but its wasteful...

just remove them, and keep the hard limit for everyone

8 officers is more than enough

(thats not mentioning the problem officers have with skills, and random officers ALWAYS being better than... the ones you train (hardcap on level and elite skills compared to, well, no cap on level AND again elite skills for officers youd find in pods and such)

i just find it wierd that officers you actively teach and guide... can never be as good, hell, nearly as good as officers you just... pick up randomly, especially "promising" officers

just compare them at face value

random officers are almost always level 7 (although i think i have seen a level 9 at some point iirc), meaning... 2 more skills than youd get by growing an officer yourself... and ANY of those skills have the ability to be elite too, and not limited to 1 either (granted... ironically, the "elite" in some elite skills is kind of... weak imo)

there are already alot of good uses for storypoints (especially when you get into colonies my gawd), that we (or the ai in this case)really dont need the ability to spam better officers and ecm the crap out of anything

I get the feeling that the contracted officers need to go, and become contracted mercs force, their own independent command that travels with you (at your supply and fuel expensens) and fight with you, much like a friendly AI force would, but for X ammount of time
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Soban

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1558 on: April 07, 2021, 10:25:13 AM »

Think I found a bug.

https://i.imgur.com/6VHZcB8.png

The path I took to this bug is below.

Ask about brother cotton->Continue->Any of you happen to know brother cotton->Just tell Cotton I'm here. I'll wait.

Reloaded the save and tried out the same path. Happened again.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 10:28:11 AM by Soban »
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Ekibana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1559 on: April 07, 2021, 10:36:59 AM »

Also:
Stipend can be turned off in the config file.
You can choose not to take a commission, or adjust how much it is worth.
You can enable spacer start (which IIRC starts you with literally nothing) in the config.
You can adjust the prices of ships and basic supplies yourself... hell, pretty much any "number isn't right for my tastes" problem you have can be solved by editing a simple text file in the game folder.

Eventually Alex will probably make a big boi difficulty himself, but until then we can help ourselves while he does more important things that we can't just adjust ourselves in text files.

My personal favorites are:
- you can't buy ships, ever; only loot-restore them or build your own, but!
- no exploration until you have at least 1 cruiser(+)-sized exploration ship (like Apogee); with the above rule you have to hunt for it first
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