Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 ... 109 110 [111] 112 113 ... 146

Author Topic: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 596131 times)

WeiTuLo

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 312
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1650 on: April 14, 2021, 10:22:15 AM »

What do access codes do? Increase raid strength/decrease raid defenses?
Logged

AcaMetis

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 483
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1651 on: April 14, 2021, 10:28:32 AM »

What do access codes do? Increase raid strength/decrease raid defenses?
×0.05 modifier to the amount of marines lost in one raid, IIRC. Access codes require a bar mission to buy, are only good for a month/one use, and are faction-specific. And summon a vengeance fleet some time afterwards.

Totally worth it if you can get it to work out, though.
Logged

WeiTuLo

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 312
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1652 on: April 14, 2021, 11:12:33 AM »

Ahh, so it doesn't raid success chance? The codes tend to cost about 30k, and 30k is worth 150-200 marines, so the break even point would be around 150-200 marine casualties prevented, not counting the time take to find a set of codes and the chance of not getting to use it in time due to patrols and other unknowns.
Logged

Gosts

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 9
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1653 on: April 14, 2021, 12:28:33 PM »


That said, I'm not opposed to changing some specific encounters to give a smaller rep change instead of insta-hostile. Which ones specifically bothered you? I can note them down to have a look.


The weirdest one to me was "Tri-Tachyon Bounty Hunters"; they had a stack of four dooms and they appeared as I was searching the edge of the galaxy for a story-related probe.

Some of the other ones were not totally bizarre, but for this one, the name "Bounty Hunters" implies (in my mind) that they aren't even directly working for Tri-Tachyon, so I was really caught off-guard that I had to go from +80 relation with them straight to war.

Personally, for these story-revenge-fleet kinda things? I would make it so fighting them gives you like... a negative 50 malus to that faction. Or even negative 80, or more. That way it has the same effect of basically going to war with them... But if you're REALLY good friends, you only have to do down to neutral instead.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2021, 12:30:19 PM by Gosts »
Logged

ANGRYABOUTELVES

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 592
  • AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1654 on: April 14, 2021, 01:17:13 PM »

Ahh, so it doesn't raid success chance? The codes tend to cost about 30k, and 30k is worth 150-200 marines, so the break even point would be around 150-200 marine casualties prevented, not counting the time take to find a set of codes and the chance of not getting to use it in time due to patrols and other unknowns.
It's not worth it if you're raiding some backwater for supplies or drugs, but if you're raiding a heavily defended system for a nanoforge or blueprints it's well worth the price.
Logged

TuxedoCatfish

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 56
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1655 on: April 14, 2021, 02:01:10 PM »

Also marines have experience now, being able to level them up a ton without losing so many that it wipes out your XP gain is a big help.
Logged

RedHellion

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1656 on: April 15, 2021, 01:04:05 AM »

I feel like the automated ships skill is extremely cool in practice, but has way too little of an impact compared to the alternative. Just 30 points means that with just 3 [REDACTED] version of the kite with 3 gamma cores, i'm already at full capacity... sure i could take a bigger ship with reduced CR, but as much strong a single redacted ship can be, other than the novelty, giving 10 to flux capacitors and vents, and an extra hullmod to every single ship is just too good to pass out.  My suggestion would be to raise the maximum points, even doubling it,  reducing the points cost of the gamma core while increasing beta and alpha cores cost. 
I think it would be balanced if you could have a single good ship with a good commander and enough leftover points for a couple of smaller ships with trash commanders, or a lot of smaller ships with trash commanders , or some medium sized ship with good commanders etc, opening up to various combinations that are impossible right now

Just wanted to chime in on the Automated Ships skill with my 2 cents as well:

Not sure if this is a bug (posting this in the Bug forum as well):
With 2 [REDACTED] cruisers I'm at 50/30 for the skill already, meaning they have 60% of the normal max CR. Normally I would think that means they have 47% CR ((70 base + 8 from my current Crew Training) * 0.6 from Automated Ships), but their CR is only 38%.
If I give them both Gamma Cores, my Automated Ships skill goes to 60/30 meaning they have 50% of their normal max CR, so I would expect them to have 46% CR ((70 base + 8 from my current Crew Training + 15 from the core's Elite Reliability Engineering) * 0.5 from Automated Ships) but their CR is only 43%.
Not sure if there may be some weird interaction with the base -100% CR penalty for the Automated Ship hullmod (since that's the only other contributing factor listed for that calculation when hitting F1), or there's some other hidden math going on.

Answered by Alex in the Bug forum, I was just assuming the wrong CR calculation for Automated Ships.

And on the Automated Ships skill itself:
I feel like 30 deployment points is too low a limit, with the speed of diminishing returns so that you get half the bonus if you double the limit. We already can't fly any of them ourselves, which is understandable both meta- and lore-wise. [REDACTED] ships are cool and specifically require this skill to even field in combat, and the skill is at the end of the tree: I want to field them as a not-just-token part of my fleet for that skill investment at a CR level where they're not instantly within malfunction territory as soon as I deploy them for the first time. Currently you can run maybe 3-4 frigates, 2-3 destroyers, or a single cruiser at full max CR.
Maybe the DP cap should be raised slightly to 40, or enough to field a single [REDACTED] battleship plus an Alpha Core while still getting the full bonus? Or if that feels too powerful for no extra cost compared to the story point cost for the additional built-in hullmods granted by Special Modifications, allow us to spend an extra story point to make the skill Elite to raise the DP cap or have the skill unlock a special "[REDACTED] Overrides" hullmod that has to be built into [REDACTED] ships that gives them an extra +50% CR or something to counteract the low-CR issue on a per-ship basis.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 02:40:08 PM by RedHellion »
Logged

HiddenPorpoise

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 20
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1657 on: April 15, 2021, 02:42:28 AM »

A REDACTED battleship with an alpha core integrated is the second most powerful ship in the game (below singing friend encounter 1 and above REDACTED 2: Electric Boogaloo). Operating at 45% combat readiness doesn't even figure into that. The larger issue with the automated ship skill is that that is the best use of it and it makes every other recoverable automated ship redundant once you can get your hands on one.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1658 on: April 15, 2021, 04:20:06 AM »

Because I give up Special Modifications that enables +1 s-mod to the whole fleet (including flagship that I sooo want the +1 s-mod on) for killer Radiant (unless I double-dip Tech and waste more points), Radiant needs to stay overpowered.  (I do not mind a small DP increase for Radiant, but then Automated Ships DP pool needs to go way up, or cores not counted toward the pool.  Use the cores in ships is a cost after all.)

Radiant should get full CR.  The other Remnants should be overpowered like Radiant.  Not sure what to do about the other AI ships.  Maybe make Guardian recoverable?  The other Domain explorers are obvious trash ships and are a lost cause.
Logged

Rain

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 43
  • Burn bright!
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1659 on: April 15, 2021, 06:06:19 AM »

Another round of mostly-this-patch-specific feedback after reaching mostly-satiation point with my 3rd character (story done, colonies securely established and maxed out, fully explored sector with minor-spoiler exceptions:)
Spoiler
Tesseracts can keep their coronal taps though, especially when I didn't settle any of the affected systems, I'm not messing with those again 'kaythanks!
[close]

- Colony stuff: It feels like it's a bit harder and demands more investment to make profitable colonies now. Maybe Hazard Pay just makes it more obvious month by month how much money is sunk in as opposed to how growth incentives used to work, especially for high-hazard planets? Maybe high hazard planets just cost way more now and that's intended? If that is intended, okay, I -think- I like it. I have now certainly have felt the temptation to do stuff like colonize cryovolcanic worlds just for mining, or not necessarily pushing all planets to max possible size ASAP; I certainly haven't done any real math though, so that may be wrong. I also don't use AI core admins since I read that post about spamming them being kind of a temporary thing while colonies don't yet have their full gameplay purpose established. Getting fewer but more substantial attacks by the factions is welcome, too, and does feel better than a constant stream of pirate nuisances; my latest character just had a giant space battle fending off 3 fleets of Persean League goons over my 'capital' world and I found it a very satisfying battle and victory. The way officers (even when I reduced the AI merc officer multiplier from 2 to 0.4) nudge DP limits in station battles might need tweaking though. When the station eats ~50 DP and you have multiple fleets attacking you it's a real strange-feeling underdog 160-240 situation when I'd expect a big star fortress to provide a substantial defender's advantage. I guess the bigger ones do point quite a lot of guns at the enemy for the amount of DP they take up though, so maybe that's actually enough... Maybe it needs to be this way for attackers to actually have a chance to win.

- Skill system: After messing around a lot more with it now, I can appreciate the idea of the layout as it is, though the main pain points to me come from how skills that either 1) encourage you to make most of your main fleet a particular way or 2) "you really can't use both (at once)" don't necessarily seem like they fit neatly into pairings for a wrap-around kind of system. As before, I'm much more of a roleplayer than a min-max-player (though I do certainly do a bunch of that too), and as such this is more about what feels good/bad and what I feel incentivized to do/not do than exact numbers and fine tuned balance. Anything I don't mention is a pairing and choice I'm -mostly- fine with, beyond things that have already been mentioned earlier such as the ECM problems, and the one notable exception of the Automated Ships skill which I haven't yet actually played at all with. As much as I liked the fantasy of a suggestion (sorry I forgot who made it!) I saw about a skill tree going from skills concerning a single ship, to fleet-wide to grand management style skills to mirror the sort of progression you make in game, I also make the assumption we won't see a revamp on the same scale as this one was any time soon (if ever). Spoilered to keep post size down somewhat...
Spoiler
   a) Derelict Contingent: This skill suggests more or less something you are meant to tailor your whole (main combat) fleet around, and it's a very particular tailoring at that, demanding and encouraging substantial alteration and adaptation to make proper use of it. To me that might indicate that it's a skill that doesn't fit neatly into a "choose 1" system, and that it might be better suited to being learned elsewhere than in the skills, perhaps in a special quest-like a la the red planet? I also finally ran into an enemy fleet that clearly had it (derelict exploration drones) from a bounty and that was kind of frustrating when I was flying a missile ship at the time. When the enemy has it you can't really play around it much either, but if it only happens in special contact bounties I guess it's not entirely out-of-the-void; it could be really annoying to new players who don't think about a somewhat niche skill in Industry being an enemy fleet thing?
   b) Wolfpack Tactics shares the Derelict Contingent thing in that without a DP limit it also kind of suggests a "build-your-fleet-around-it" approach, however in practice I have a much easier time actually making some use out of it even without going for a full frigate focus, and it feels much more like something you can actually adapt around; especially if you take Phase Corps too/anyway and have a couple of phase frigates around for their handy utility effects. I have no clear rational reason for why Wolfpack feels better than Derelict Contingent in this sense, however; perhaps it's just much easier to figure out a couple of useful frigates than a couple of still-useful, heavily D-modded and shieldless ships? Having a big Darth Nihilus style flying wreck as a flagship does have a certain thematic appeal, however...
   c) From the C1 tier, you can't really make use of both from unless you're in a carrier or battlecarrier, so if, say, you're all in on a missile flagship, or want to gun for a master-of-combat character and need/want both the skills in higher tiers this one grates a bit.
   d) C2 at first looks a bit rough to have to take both to progress, but I've come to appreciate the value of Point Defense; getting fighter-swarmed still starts stinging when flying smaller ships, especially when I'm so in love with the Fury and want to use it to go in hard to take out enemy carriers.
   e) C4 as has been mentioned is probably the most grating tier to me; you really can't use both at once and while you -can- adapt around it having 2 different ships for yourself doesn't feel natural, especially when you consider a lot of the DP-scaled skills we now have.
   f) Overall I've ended up finding that Wolfpack, Phase Corps, Carrier Group and Fighter Uplink at least are very possible to reasonably adapt your fleet around so they're only as 'dead' as you let them be. I understand that monofleets end up pretty degenerate so I'm seeing the point of the scaled bonuses here. I'll just drop that 6 hangars feels a bit tight for the carrier skills, but I think that's been mentioned before, too.
   g) I think L1 is the tier that leaves me the most lukewarm. While Auxiliary Support like the previously mentioned skills is technically also only as dead as you let it be, and the idea is kind of neat, I'm struggling to figure out what to do with it since so many civ-ships have really awkward weapon mounts (outside of mod-added ships but I'm leaving those out for this); I guess that suggests Escort Package for PD escort ships is the easiest adaptation to make? The result of them eating into the militarized DP skills feels a bit rough though since that makes for a few, fairly niche ships in order to keep the bonus at a level that still feels impactful, and simultaneously not take away too much power from more consistently deployed main warships. Its competitor, Weapon Drills, is rather unexciting; and has the same thing going where its tighter DP limit makes the bonus shrink and become practically unnoticeable; and even at its full 10% it's kind of on the brink of what's even noticeable moment to moment. I'd not miss Weapon Drills if it was removed and replaced with something else entirely.
   h) The skills containing the crew loss reductions have some other effects that are still nice and useful, so this is pretty minor, though these components feel kind of meaningless; life is too cheap to really care much about them. Ship crews probably need to be half the size, but ask twice the pay each for these to start being noticeable, but maybe that just asking for other troubles somewhere?

Looking back on this, to think, some of my feels-bad-man moments with skills may suggest my brain is a bit mis-tuned with regards to the way the DP/hangar limits work, though; I do very much feel the compulsion to not eat so deep into the limits that the bonuses shrink so small that I can't notice them anymore (even if they may remain substantial if we had detailed breakdowns of post-combat stats), which may really not be 'correct' and more of a thing I just have to get used to.
[close]

- Spelling error: "Ancyra Station is AN bastion..."; in the mouse-over tooltip about... Well, yes, Ancyra Station.

- Not-really-this-patch-but-still: Pathers feel a bit passive; I end up fighting a lot of pirates in my games (to the point where I usually end up selling some blueprints on the black market just to vary up their ships a bit more), so maybe the occasional Pather raid from their out-among-the-stars bases to disrupt industries they hate could be a fun way to vary up the pirate raids? Like, pirates still raid to steal stuff, but now sometimes Pathers raid to disrupt offensive industry (like the major factions do you when you start eating into their market shares)? I don't think the game needs a larger quantity of raids, so just replacing ~10-15% of them with Pathers could maybe be fun. Since I rarely have to fight them, they still tend to catch me off guard with just how much more aggressive they are, which is a fun "oh right" moment when combat starts. Plus, you could keep the option to bribe them with 'tithes' if they catch you in the midst of their raids to keep them differentiated from the more 'shut up and die'-style pirates.
Logged

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1660 on: April 15, 2021, 10:18:09 AM »

Pather plant cells on your colonies if interest is too high.  It is possible that items no longer add interest or they should but a bug blocks that.

In 0.9.1a, there were cells at all of the core worlds with heavy industries (except Asher) because of nanoforge plus another interest generating industry.  Now in 0.95, there are only cells at Culann and Aregus.

Heavy Industry with forge or Fuel Production with synchrotron add +6 interest.  Any other interest generating industry (mining, refinery, tech mining, anything with AI cores) would add more interest and cause cells to appear.

Cells sabotage and disrupt industries periodically, and there is no guaranteed defense against them, and they cannot be bribed.  They can be temporarily disrupted for a year if you kill their base.  The only way to get rid of them is to remove industries and/or items.
Logged

Rain

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 43
  • Burn bright!
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1661 on: April 15, 2021, 10:37:41 AM »

I'm aware, I played 091a too. :)

I guess that's how it could be angled into a this-patch thing now; I'm getting the impression that their attention system changed because they've not bothered me at all since and maybe that got me thinking about it? I could see why, the old one didn't exactly have any substantial interactivity to it other than "don't do this stuff or prepare for whack-a-mole Pather bases". Anyway, my thought was mostly to just replace a (small-ish) % of pirate raids with Pather ones (on both core systems and on you, I guess?) as more zealously direct attempts at carrying out Ludd's will (or whatever they think they do) than the Pather cell thing, giving some more variety in enemies to fight, since (as far a I can tell, anyway) they fight a lot more aggressively than pirates which makes for a different thing to fight if I'm out harvesting system bounties for money and/or reputation.

Does that make sense?
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 10:42:51 AM by Rain »
Logged

Lucky33

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 894
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1662 on: April 15, 2021, 10:39:14 AM »

Automated ships skill gives you free officered ships. Meaning free ECM and some other stuff. A lot of it actually.
Logged

evzhel

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 15
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1663 on: April 15, 2021, 11:21:37 AM »

List of errors in 0.95:

1. Stable locations in systems with neutron stars. Shouldn't exist, or may exist at dark side of planets.
2. Mission to survey a planet in Alpha Site can't be completed.
3. Some destroyers in tutorial can't be fixed from d-mods with player skill.
4. Some sunders in tutorial have medium energy mount instead of large, changed to large if reassembled at space port for full price.

AI:
5. Cloak ships in full assault don't warp to targets, warping just briefly for no reason.
6. Cloak ships don't fly away from enemies to dump flux, just staying in battle with max flux.
7. Frigates are flying away from targets or stayng in one place far away from all ships for some time.
8. Cruisers and capitals don't fly around space stations to target working sections, just staying in one place without doing anything.
9. When switching full assault on, every friendly ship does a 360 degree rotation in one place for no reason.

10. Some seeds don't contain a single pristine nanoforge in whole sector.
11. If flagship is in combat, R (show ship info) gets stuck on flagship's target, can't turn off of focus any other ship for longer than a second.

tbc
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 03:02:29 PM by evzhel »
Logged

RedHellion

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1664 on: April 15, 2021, 12:14:30 PM »

A REDACTED battleship with an alpha core integrated is the second most powerful ship in the game (below singing friend encounter 1 and above REDACTED 2: Electric Boogaloo). Operating at 45% combat readiness doesn't even figure into that. The larger issue with the automated ship skill is that that is the best use of it and it makes every other recoverable automated ship redundant once you can get your hands on one.

Automated ships skill gives you free officered ships. Meaning free ECM and some other stuff. A lot of it actually.

I agree on the [REDACTED] battleship making all other [REDACTED] ships essentially worthless if you can get your hands on one, I feel like that needs to be tuned now that the player can have them all in their fleet rather than just being NPC-only ships. There should be some amount of decision-making involved in what [REDACTED] ships to keep and field based on your play style to make it interesting (like picking regular Sector ships for your personal fleet and to fly), rather than always being "[REDACTED] battleship + Alpha Core".

I disagree with the implication that Automated Ships is already overpowered or fine where it is. Given that it's at the end of the skill tree requiring 5 points of investment (1/3 of your skill points), it should be powerful; and it should also be a similar power level to the huge increase in combat power of potentially giving every ship in your fleet a free extra built-in hullmod plus more max vents (and capacitors). By contrast, even if [REDACTED] ships individually are more powerful than their Sector counterparts (debatable, at least for anything other than the battleship) they are not "free" and can't be made better by using story points: they still take a slot in your fleet, the still cost maintenance/fuel etc, they still cost DP to deploy in battle, and on top of that unless you have an extremely limited number of them (30 DP or less, which is one cruiser with a Gamma Core) they'll have such low CR that at least their accuracy will be affected or they could have a risk of malfunctions even at their max CR.
If we could spend a story point to add a special hullmod to them individually which has to be built-in and adds another +30% CR for automated ships (which maybe costs more than 1 story point for ships larger than frigates), at the very least, I would consider it on-par with Special Modifications. Right now, power level aside, I don't consider the Automated Ships skill to be rewarding for the investment beyond the (brief) initial novelty.

I feel like Zaizai summed it up really well:
Quote from: Zaizai
One choice is to make my whole fleet stronger, doubling the vents on frigates [or easing flux pressure on flux-hungry capital ships], adding otherwise extremely costly hullmod to capital ships [for just the cost of a story point] etc; the other is to get a single strong ship that i can't even use as flagship [or maybe one or two cruisers] and has lower cr than the rest of the fleet [to the point where it has accuracy and other debuffs or suffers risk of malfunction while at max CR].
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 01:58:13 PM by RedHellion »
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 109 110 [111] 112 113 ... 146