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Author Topic: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 596028 times)

FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2115 on: August 28, 2021, 02:08:25 PM »

If it's any consolation, I really like starting over. I'm rarely married to any particular run-through. :D
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TLW

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2116 on: August 28, 2021, 03:40:03 PM »

[...]
I mostly fought battles by flipping between the tactical map and queuing orders like in StarCraft... Capturing the points to get more deployment points for more ships hehe.

Great game considering I played and explored/finished everything the wrong way and had a blast!
[...]
Sounds like you ended up playing in much the same manner as I did.

Hi - just wanted to say, I appreciate your feedback. Much of this does seem to be just a "you're looking for something that's not the game's focus", as you say - which, I mean, it's absolutely fair, but, right. So much of the game's focus is on controlling a ship in combat - I can respect that it's not your thing, but the fact that you can actually play the game without it (and, as far as I'm aware, that's still quite doable, if harder) is more of a happy accident than a specific goal. Still, feedback duly noted!
My frustration is mostly... well, intentional or not, it was a manner you could play in a fairly decent manner.

And even now the game is largely presented as though that remained the case... when it was, and now isn't.

(For instance, the blurb on the main page: "...open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game. You take the role of a space captain seeking fortune and glory however you choose." ... which I took a look at and went "meh, the single-ship realtime combat portion isn't my cup of tea, but yay economics and exploration, and it explicitly mentions that you can take different paths so I can largely avoid the small-scale mercenary portions I don't like". Which was true of 0.9.1. Not so much 0.95.)

0.9.1 felt like you were able to bootstrap up to better and greater things; 0.95 feels like you're being railroaded into being a dumb mercenary. (Perhaps hyperbole, but the trend is there. Much of the flexibility of choice in 0.9.1 has been nerfed in 0.9.5, and, perhaps more importantly, has been decreed to be unintentional or unsupported. The writing is on the wall.)



Is it intentional that you can make ~250k (or likely more) in Galatia before the tutorial finishes by just repeatedly shuttling recreational drugs from Ancyra to Derinkuyu? At this point ships don't care about you having your transponder off, so the only issue is the pirate patrol around Derinkuyu, which is very simple to avoid. (It also pushed my level high enough that I actually had improved salvaging before I grabbed the ships at... Tetra I think?)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2117 on: August 28, 2021, 04:30:08 PM »

"Dumb merc" sounds like a low-level job.  This is why I wish for things greater than what a dumb merc can do, and I do not mean stuff like sending more unfair cheese fleets that make triple Radiant Ordos fleet with twenty alpha AI officers look easy.  I mean stuff that a head of state or guildmaster could do, like sending fleets to raze core worlds to the ground while player is busy razing AI Nexus to the ground, or setting up a "pilgrimage" to the nearest hyperstunt to haul all of that metal needed to bring it online, or maybe have player build an artificial planet to populate like a colony (or use it as a death star superweapon), or (like last release) colonize the entire sector.  Basically do high-level things you expect a high-level D&D spellcaster can do to shape the world.

People complained about income too high for colonies.  It would have been a great opportunity to introduce actions that require millions of credits to execute and make the player feel like a ruler or pirate king.  Instead, income was slashed and we still feel more or less like low-level thugs at a dead-end path.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2118 on: August 28, 2021, 04:32:35 PM »

0.9.1 felt like you were able to bootstrap up to better and greater things; 0.95 feels like you're being railroaded into being a dumb mercenary. (Perhaps hyperbole, but the trend is there. Much of the flexibility of choice in 0.9.1 has been nerfed in 0.9.5, and, perhaps more importantly, has been decreed to be unintentional or unsupported. The writing is on the wall.)

I'm not really sure I see how that comes out of "if you pilot your flagship, you'll do better". Which was always the case, it's always been the objectively superior choice power-wise; by a bit more now. But I don't see how one makes the jump from "piloting the flagship personally is now slightly more powerful, but not doing it is still quite possible" to what you're saying. Am I missing something, or interpreting what you're saying incorrectly?

Is it intentional that you can make ~250k (or likely more) in Galatia before the tutorial finishes by just repeatedly shuttling recreational drugs from Ancyra to Derinkuyu? At this point ships don't care about you having your transponder off, so the only issue is the pirate patrol around Derinkuyu, which is very simple to avoid. (It also pushed my level high enough that I actually had improved salvaging before I grabbed the ships at... Tetra I think?)

Hmm - maybe not intentional, but hey. Sets the tone and all that. Though, yeah, I should probably make a note to have a look at that at some point.

... so I can largely avoid the small-scale mercenary portions I don't like".

(And, hey - other ways of making credits are a way to do that. Smuggling is just the easiest alternative one, and of course not limited to just this specific situation...)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2119 on: August 28, 2021, 04:36:23 PM »

People complained about income too high for colonies.  It would have been a great opportunity to introduce actions that require millions of credits to execute and make the player feel like a ruler or pirate king.  Instead, income was slashed and we still feel more or less like low-level thugs at a dead-end path.

Some of those kinds of things could be fun, but colony income being reduced has nothing at all to do with them being or not being in the game, so I don't think that framing makes much sense. It was simply too high; even assuming endgame-level uses for large amounts of credits, you don't want colony income to so completely dwarf typical fleet-related expenditures. It's not like the game would become a 4x at that point; it's still fleet-focused.
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FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2120 on: August 28, 2021, 05:06:16 PM »

As it is, Star Fortresses cost literally a million credits. I don't know how much higher you'd want to go. Relative to fleet expenditures, this is insane (in a good way). Colonies themselves are massive money sinks: it's just that once you have a decent income, that kind of expenditure doesn't seem that ludicrous. I've got a single colony making 650k/mo right now and at that point, I've "beat" the economy portion of the game. Even if there was some end-game expenditures that cost 5 million, all it's done is delayed the inevitable. That's why I like the Coronal Hypershunt "mega project:" its cost isn't credit-based. That would be too easy. You have to plan the logistics of transporting that kind of giant payload.

Again, we're still lacking an end game to use all the credits on so I think it can be forgiven that we're drowning in them right now. If [Super Redacted] suddenly started popping up out of Gates and routinely wrecking our fleets, all that cash would go into repairing/rebuilding. Or raising our own Secondary/Auxiliary fleet to run errands, hunt bounties or tag along with us for really difficult targets. We just don't have those kind of options right now.

Also, I've never felt like a "low-level thug." Thugs don't have 5-6 planets underneath them and own entire systems. I suppose that is all in the eye of the beholder but once I (or my fleet) start piloting Cruisers, I think the moniker of "thug" just doesn't carry weight anymore. I never feel like a proper faction but I'm ok with that: a rose by any other name. I mean, when you own something like 35-40% of every commodity market, you might not get treated like your own faction but you're actually more profitable than any of them. Maybe take a page from Crusader King and start giving us titles... :D
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Histidine

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2121 on: August 28, 2021, 06:05:37 PM »

Maybe take a page from Crusader King and start giving us titles... :D
Speaking of this, one idea that's come up on the Discord server a couple of times is letting the player specify a rank/title (maybe in the faction name/flag setup screen?), which gets used in dialogs. Instead of always "captain", which starts looking weird when the player has a large fleet and even more so when they have a multi-system faction.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2122 on: August 28, 2021, 06:26:05 PM »

As it is, Star Fortresses cost literally a million credits. I don't know how much higher you'd want to go. Relative to fleet expenditures, this is insane (in a good way). Colonies themselves are massive money sinks: it's just that once you have a decent income, that kind of expenditure doesn't seem that ludicrous. I've got a single colony making 650k/mo right now and at that point, I've "beat" the economy portion of the game. Even if there was some end-game expenditures that cost 5 million, all it's done is delayed the inevitable. That's why I like the Coronal Hypershunt "mega project:" its cost isn't credit-based. That would be too easy. You have to plan the logistics of transporting that kind of giant payload.

Again, we're still lacking an end game to use all the credits on so I think it can be forgiven that we're drowning in them right now. If [Super Redacted] suddenly started popping up out of Gates and routinely wrecking our fleets, all that cash would go into repairing/rebuilding. Or raising our own Secondary/Auxiliary fleet to run errands, hunt bounties or tag along with us for really difficult targets. We just don't have those kind of options right now.
Income from colonies is like a curve.  Big sink early, but once it is size 6, player can remove hazard pay, and the colony is likely big enough to take care of itself, which means Free Port!  It is like after reaching a point of singularity, the colony goes from barely making ends meet to a massive cash cow in an instant.  But by then, the game is practically over unless my goal was to colonize the whole sector with cores.

Hypershunt revival was a disappointment.  It is a matter of stacking a bunch of Atlas and stockpiling metal to enable the action, then do it once (or twice).  Then I can scuttle most of the Atlases I stockpiled for that purpose.  And the reward for bringing the shunt online... enables the use of a tap (if it drops) that implants a Pather cell (thanks +8 Pather interest) and raises demand for transplutonics.  Better use of the tap is to sell it to someone to sabotage their markets (by forcing transplutonics shortage and possible Pather attacks).

Player losing his fleet probably means s-mods down the drain and loss of story points.  If I think fights will be so hard that all victories are pyrrhic, then that might push more people toward the new Hull Restoration skill to repair their ships as good as new without spending money at shops or restore.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2021, 06:27:59 PM by Megas »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2123 on: August 28, 2021, 07:01:25 PM »

We do need better ways with of dealing with Pathers that doesn't involve babysitting.
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2124 on: August 28, 2021, 09:12:05 PM »

We do need better ways with of dealing with Pathers that doesn't involve babysitting.
I'm pretty sure that's planned. The unused and non-functional "Orders" tab in the colony management screen and the vestigial High Command upgrade for the Military Base implies quite a bit. I wouldn't hold your breath about it though, it's at least one or two major updates out.
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JAL28

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2125 on: August 28, 2021, 10:44:10 PM »

I don’t think the High Command is vestigial, I do believe it does add more fleets than Military Base(at least according to the wikia)
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hydremajor

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2126 on: August 29, 2021, 12:42:07 AM »

On the topic of AI controlled fleets, is there a feature to make ship designs for the A.I. to use ?
or is that planned to happen further down the line ?
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2127 on: August 29, 2021, 06:45:06 AM »

Also, I've never felt like a "low-level thug." Thugs don't have 5-6 planets underneath them and own entire systems. I suppose that is all in the eye of the beholder but once I (or my fleet) start piloting Cruisers, I think the moniker of "thug" just doesn't carry weight anymore. I never feel like a proper faction but I'm ok with that: a rose by any other name. I mean, when you own something like 35-40% of every commodity market, you might not get treated like your own faction but you're actually more profitable than any of them. Maybe take a page from Crusader King and start giving us titles... :D
Five to six worlds would be nice, except player needs either Colony Management or cores.  Out-of-the-box, he can have up to four worlds.  Without favorable planet generation, that is the minimum he needs.  That said, four is on par with a minor major faction.  Okay, sure, not everyone can be a land baron, but currently, player can do little with it.  It is mostly a vault and/or factory that has some guards.  It does not feel like the player commands more than just his personal fleet.  He has mostly those mascots or cheerleaders that are semi-common to anime protagonists.

As for fleets, in this game, nearly every chump thrown at the player late in the game has the infamous capital spam fleet.  Even early in the game, defense fleet equivalents are thrown at a starter player who dares to attempt stealth or raid missions, or progress with the main quest.  Player is not exceptional with his fleet at any point, he is yet another brick in the wall at best or a tiny bug to be squashed at worst.  At least factions can throw more than one such fleet at a problem (i.e., expeditions).  Player, being a major faction in his own right by the end, cannot do the things other factions can do.
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Serenitis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2128 on: August 29, 2021, 07:03:53 AM »

If it's any consolation, I really like starting over. I'm rarely married to any particular run-through. :D
Same.

Although I've not touched the game since April, so this is perhaps not really that much of an endorsement.
It has, I think given me enough separation to analyse things without the filter of annoyance though.
There's a bit to unpack here, and it's all tangled up together like a decades old ball of string that's all manky and you can't find the end of...

Why I 'fell out' with Starsector
One of the things I thought was really neat about Starsector was the setting - everyone is just about making do, new stuff is locked behind ridiculous DRM nonsense that people guard bigly. And anyone without access to this has to use handed down stuff, or dig it out of a junk pile.

This is p. great as far as settings go, and imo it felt p. great to jive with this by leaning into it super hard and using whatever stuff could be found or recovered.
There were even skills available that allowed you to do that more effectively, and that was really apropos for the setting.
And so I spent a ton of time just repeatedly doing this as my core gameplay, and building around it as various things happened or were found.
Really leaning into the mechanic that these ships might be trash, but I can support and deploy more of them explictly because of that.
It felt right.

So having those particular skills straight up removed from the game in 095 was... Not really the best feeling I've ever had tbh.
Even more galling was the (excuse my language) absolute dogs dinner that was the new Derelict Contingent skill, which would have been the perfect place to put those particular abilities but instead had some really odd/unbalanced effect that runs into another issue I have.
It requires an officer to work.

This is something I can't get my head around. At all.
There are skills that do literally nothing unless you have an officer in a ship.
But there are no guaranteed ways of getting an officer (except for picking Kite as your starting companion), so these skills are dead weight or path blockers unless you've been lucky enough to find an officer, and lucky enough that the officer you find is actually useful to you in the first place.

And as if that wasn't quite odd enough, the entire deployment mechanics for your whole fleet now depend on how many officers you have compared to your opponent.
Your opponent will always have officers. Lots of them.
While you the player will only have the number of officers you have managed to find. It is not uncommon in my case for this number to be zero for a significant amount of time since I don't obsessively check comm directories on the few occaisions I visit the core, mostly because I'll forget about it.

Now, I'm not exactly great at combat in the first place. I have less than great physical dexterity because I used to be a riveter and whitefinger is a ***t of a thing.
But I've found the combat in 095 to be significantly harder than it was in 09.1 to the point that I just don't want to deal with it.
I can't quite identify what it is that's making things feel this different, but I suspect it's because I don't have nearly as many officers as the opponent and that's making them really aggressive, while my guys are really passive.
(This is all guesswork on my part - so ??)

I could restart on easy, that might be something to look at.
But this has a downside: It messes with the drop tables and makes things more common, which is the opposite of what I want.
So no matter what I do here I'm going to get unrewarding gameplay.

Honestly, I think this is one of the worst design descisions. Basing fundamental game mechanics off luck based events.
If this is staying in, there really does need to be some way for the player to create officers. Raise crew from the ranks etc.

The skills themselves are not bad in a vacuum.
But the fact they are chained together in such a way that things you want are trapped behind things you either don't care about, or actively do not want is... Less than great.
Having to choose between two things you want equally because you need both to do the thing you want to do is particularly irritating, and just introduces a huge time-gate onto progression because now I'm literally grindng xp to get more skills so I can wrap around to get the other half of the skill I missed before I can even start doing the main thing in the game I want to do - explore.
Ugh. The whole thing just makes me feel viscerally ungood just thinking about it...

Another thing that was something of an irritant was the rather restrictive limit for the number of colonies the player can control.
In 09.1 the player could ultimately control 4 planets directly, plus another 3 via governers for a total of 7. This was fine.
In 095 the player can control 2 planets directly, plus another 2 via governers for a total of 4. This, less so.

One of my obsessions is having colonies with access to all resources.
If you're super lucky you can do this with 2 planets. If you're unlucky you'll need 4.
The problem being that being unlucky is vastly more likley than being lucky, and by using your colonies in such a fashion you have just locked yourself out of ever doing any tech mining.
Which is somewhat annoying.
And also introduces/encourages metagame behaviour like doing all the tech mining first then doing colonies, which is p. silly.

Imo, 5 is the absolute smallest number of colonies that the player can have and still have access to everything.
4 to cover resources plus 1 for tech mining.
If you can get all your resouces in fewer planets, then lucky you. More tech mining or less overheads.

Removing direct player control and doing it all via governers could be a way to look at.
It's not that big of a deal for this to be gated behind rng as it's not required.
And porting it all over to governers potentially unlocks the possibility of it being uncapped entirely, and letting expenses/overheads be the soft-cap.


All of this is a shame, because the story (what I've seen of it at any rate) is really nice.
Even if it does have some really dumb missions that are a bit tedious.

I super-miss being able to find a beat up junk ship and actually be able to use it almost as well as a shiny new ship because I've invested time and skills into being able to do that.
Feels like theres no point at all in doing this now. (D)amaged ships are always pure negative. Where previously they were negative, unless you deliberately built yourself around using them and then they became partially positive.
Which was fun and thematically appropriate for the setting.


I made this as a joke, but it came true and I hurt my own feelings because I am literally a pratfall given form:
Spoiler
[close]

[close]
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2129 on: August 29, 2021, 07:49:14 AM »

One thing I dislike about the old Starfarer lore was the post-apocalyptic setting that wanted to enforce Thunderdome and clunkers for everything and I am so glad that it is downplayed to near-irrelevance.  I am a big fan of pristine and top-of-the-line shinies (in part because the game is balanced with pristine as the baseline).  If Hull Restoration is required to keep those multi-s-modded ships clean at all times (because expecting AI to play perfectly and not die at any time is a bit too hopeful), I might grumble a bit, but I probably will bite the bullet like I did with Field Repairs this release.  (That might get in the way if Neural Linked Radiant becomes addictive, and I want Combat skills and Hull Restoration.)

The things I dislike about officers most are the following:
* AI can have more than ten officers and break caps if they want, which they did not do before.  I blame mercs for this, and I wished they were never implemented.  At least AI would have no excuse for breaking caps if mercs were never implemented (and if it did anyway, it would be a blatant violation of rules like fleet caps were in previous releases.)

* They (and not your big endgame fleet) dictate how much you deploy.  Combined with above, player can be assured of permanent disadvantage in the fights that matter (those hard enough that flawless victory is not a given), with DP limits and -10% shot range.

About planets.  Yes, with only four, I felt like I had no room for Tech Mining or even a convenient pop-up colony as a temporary base.  (I had a crappy planet spawn in my 0.95 game.)  I suppose I could get Colony Management (I had Field Repairs, so sparing one point for Industry 5 was not onerous), but that meant I needed alpha cores that I did not have if I respec'ed out of Colony Management.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2021, 07:51:26 AM by Megas »
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