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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 595912 times)

FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2145 on: September 13, 2021, 07:33:13 PM »

Re: Officer chat

As vital as they are, and as much as veteran players know how valuable they are, I don't think the game really tells you this. If you don't pick bounty hunter with a starting officer, I don't even know that a new player would be aware of their existence until they start surveying skills. Granted, it has been awhile since I've done the tutorial but granting an officer as a reward during the tutorial (and explaining what they do and how to acquire them) would go a long way in telling new players "hey, these guys are super important in combat." Or heck, make the reward officer a "free" Mercenary and kill two birds with one stone. It would be a temporary power-up for a new player and it would explain how both officers and Mercs work.

Also, if I didn't know from patch notes that officers and/or their level increase your deployment size against larger fleets, I would not guess that at all. I can't seem to find any tooltip in-game that suggests this. Now that I think about it, outside of the brief patch notes that tell me this is the case, I don't know how the mechanic functions at all. I always run with maximum officers about as soon as possible so I guess I don't run into any issues but if a new player that doesn't know much about officers and doesn't routinely hire them, what kind of disadvantage are they (unknowingly) getting into? What's the worse-case scenario?

Re: Weapons

Yes, I hoard my favorites but collect just about everything early. Weapons as a commodity seems to be intentionally neutered (kind of like ship hulls) so hoarding them at the Abandoned Station in Corvus and then later at your first colony is par for the course. It snowballs really fast, though, especially if I have my eye out on black markets early game. I'll buy a Heavy Blaster, Needler, or the odd Large Energy when I see them available because that will pay dividends down the line. The weapons stash becomes a bit absurd by late game, especially now that recovered ships don't lose weapons.

I don't see this as a problem, per se, but it does make returning to your "stash" pretty mandatory every time you want to change the loadout of a ship. I know we have the odd production slot guy at worlds who will custom order ships/hulls/fighters but wandering merchants/arms dealers would kind of be welcome, especially if their wares are top-shelf (albeit at a premium price). The closest we get are the tough guys that needs a few marines to steal a ship or contacts that give you a good deal on a pristine faction ship. But just more Joe Business fleets that roam around the Core Worlds and can be interacted with (and targeted by pirates!) would be cool and serve a useful function.

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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2146 on: September 13, 2021, 08:12:33 PM »

Spoiler
oh my god i do that too!! lol thats why i only play recon at this point. idk what it is about the way the game is presented to the player but i never think to use adrenaline but i will remember to use stealth -- and the funny thing is, I only use stealth in the exact way that adrenaline is supposed to be used; to get myself out of a bind on the turn before im probably gonna die by getting off a safe heal. it's just, for some reason using energy to pop stealth so i can use medkits without being attacked hits my brain different than using fury to pop adrenaline so i can ???? heal in some way ????. my brain never quite glued on to how its healing works or how much its supposed to be. probably why i dont play that class. its a solid abject lesson in the importance of informational clarity
[close]

(Ahh, same! I think the issue is Adrenaline requires Pain to use and it just never lines up to where 1) I remember to use it and 2) the Pain level is high enough that it's good...)


As vital as they are, and as much as veteran players know how valuable they are, I don't think the game really tells you this. If you don't pick bounty hunter with a starting officer, I don't even know that a new player would be aware of their existence until they start surveying skills. Granted, it has been awhile since I've done the tutorial but granting an officer as a reward during the tutorial (and explaining what they do and how to acquire them) would go a long way in telling new players "hey, these guys are super important in combat." Or heck, make the reward officer a "free" Mercenary and kill two birds with one
stone. It would be a temporary power-up for a new player and it would explain how both officers and Mercs work.

Hmm, that's a good idea - at least specifically about introducing officers in the tutorial (maybe the agent you contact at Derinkuyu needs a lift off the station and joins you?). Not 100% on it being a merc, worth thinking about though.

Also, if I didn't know from patch notes that officers and/or their level increase your deployment size against larger fleets, I would not guess that at all. I can't seem to find any tooltip in-game that suggests this.

The tooltip on the deployment points bar in the deployment dialog explains this.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2147 on: September 13, 2021, 08:20:01 PM »

Looking forward to the new Technology Story Point option(s) since +1 s-mod is now a Leadership thing!
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Vanshilar

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2148 on: September 13, 2021, 09:09:23 PM »

Hmm, that's a good idea - at least specifically about introducing officers in the tutorial (maybe the agent you contact at Derinkuyu needs a lift off the station and joins you?). Not 100% on it being a merc, worth thinking about though.

Actually a good time might be when the player goes to retrieve the ships, since that's near the end of the tutorial (since officers have upkeep), and it's when the player will feel more like they have a "fleet" of ships now.

The officer should probably have a fixed personality of steady, not sure if the skill should also be fixed, to prevent the player from getting something wonky. A timid or reckless officer might turn a new player away from getting more officers.
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Serenitis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2149 on: September 22, 2021, 04:33:30 AM »

Here's another way to think about the officer stuff:

Officers have been changed from 'nice' to 'required'.
Okay. Not nescessarily an issue in and of itself.
But how do you get officers?
The only ways available are essentially roulette wheels, of which the most 'effective' one is to trawl around as many colonies as you can in order to find them.

This is the problem.
What has been introduced here is a mandatory 'shopping' requirement to play the game at all.
And that is neither fun nor interesting.
I don't want to go shopping. Not interested. Which is why it gets 'forgotten'.

Previously this was not an issue, as officers while certainly very good things to have were not a hard requirement for anything other than min-maxing.
You could quite easily do your own thing and not worry about them at all because it simply was not an issue.

Trying to do this in the current version gets you stonewalled fairly early on because the core gameplay has been altered to require officers, but the means of getting them has not been altered to take this into account.
Which is an inconsistency - If a thing is required, it should be readily available without the player having to go out of thier way to get that thing.

Officers being required is not the problem. Forcing players to grind through a 'shopping minigame' or 'roulette wheels' in order to get them is.
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Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2150 on: September 22, 2021, 04:46:11 AM »

What you said would be true if we didn't have the option of mentoring them to change behaviours. If these changes were made before we had story points, I'd probably agree with you, but it honestly isn't such a hassle to find a few officers as you picture it out to be. How's that any different from trying to find a decent warship for your fleet? It's RNG again baby, even trying to recover one in combat is pure luck.

I'm not saying I don't understand you, I'm just telling you that it's likely an exaggeration, no offense.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2151 on: September 22, 2021, 10:55:00 AM »

It is easier to get officers.  A significant number came from after-battle promotions.  Mentoring is a no-brainer, no need to shop for behaviors or save-scumming to level up the desired skills.  And a endgame fight is enough to level up one from 1 to 5, which is good (for disposable officers).

However, I am not happy that officers alone determine fleet size on deployment, especially now that mercs are in play.  Mercs were the worst addition to 0.95, because now that gave the enemy justification to break the officer cap, like that Remnant fleet with alpha cores in all 20+ ships in that one pic.  Plus, mercs are income hogs until colonies start making lots of money, which happens at the end of a playthrough (unless player wants to colonize the whole sector with cores).

I did like that officers were optional in previous releases.  Not so much today since they are practically required (barring unconventional fleet configuration).

Just raise in-game setting's maximum back up to 500, or better yet, up to about 1000 as long as capital spam (by the enemy) is here to stay.

500 was great back when the hardest fight was Hegemony Systems Defense Fleet, or a 200k bounty, but now it is barely big enough for modern capital spam.
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2152 on: September 22, 2021, 02:25:31 PM »

My understanding is: all of this is by design.

Player fleet size limit, late game fleet being stronger than player fleet, officers, ...

The point is precisely to provide a greater challenge compared to previous version of the game, largely preventing player brute force, having player use legitimate tools to succeed (including officers!).

Regarding officer availability, I have not seen any issues: every time I visit a core market in the early to mid game, I look at potential contacts and recruitable officers, easy-peasy. My main complain regarding this process would be the UI, that I don't love. Also, I think I have only used mentoring once, and never used mercenaries.

That said, maybe officer promotion should happen more often, especially very early game? Could happen right at the end of the campaign tutorial - when completing the last mission before leaving starting system, getting some money ensuring player can afford the new officer's pay for long enough. Tutorial would then explain the different method to recruit officers. If there's a guaranteed recruitable officer waiting in Jangala and player is told about it, then player learns by example the other way to obtain an officer while starting his campaign journey.

Also there could be some bar events/missions where player end-up encountering a character that wants to join his fleet as officer (uhhh, this one doesn't already exist, right?).

I remember reading on the forum that some improvements are coming for mercenaries.

By the way, you guys are monsters! Every time this thread gets updated I'm like: this is it, new release available! - Hmmm, wait, what did I just do.  ;D
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FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2153 on: September 22, 2021, 05:08:17 PM »

My understanding is: all of this is by design.

Player fleet size limit, late game fleet being stronger than player fleet, officers, ...

The point is precisely to provide a greater challenge compared to previous version of the game, largely preventing player brute force, having player use legitimate tools to succeed (including officers!).

Regarding officer availability, I have not seen any issues: every time I visit a core market in the early to mid game, I look at potential contacts and recruitable officers, easy-peasy. My main complain regarding this process would be the UI, that I don't love. Also, I think I have only used mentoring once, and never used mercenaries.

That said, maybe officer promotion should happen more often, especially very early game? Could happen right at the end of the campaign tutorial - when completing the last mission before leaving starting system, getting some money ensuring player can afford the new officer's pay for long enough. Tutorial would then explain the different method to recruit officers. If there's a guaranteed recruitable officer waiting in Jangala and player is told about it, then player learns by example the other way to obtain an officer while starting his campaign journey.

Also there could be some bar events/missions where player end-up encountering a character that wants to join his fleet as officer (uhhh, this one doesn't already exist, right?).

I remember reading on the forum that some improvements are coming for mercenaries.

By the way, you guys are monsters! Every time this thread gets updated I'm like: this is it, new release available! - Hmmm, wait, what did I just do.  ;D

Pretty much agreed. I generally don't use Mercs due to limited availability and them being non-aggressive but if I could have 2-3 of them on payroll at any given time, I probably would use them. I tend to mentor most of my officers early because SPs are plentiful and it means I can take a Steady officer and move them to Aggressive. The extra skill choices help, too.

As for the end game, I'm routinely smashing Ordos with far less than a maxed out Fleet Size (usually only 1-2 capitals) but I'm always maxing officers. I can't imagine not trying to cap out your officer limit as early as possible because an officered ship is just so much more powerful, whether it's a frigate or an Onslaught. It also makes going the Leadership tree sort of mandatory because either way you go with the Officer skill, you dramatically increase your fleet's effectiveness. I can't think of a run where I didn't pick it.

I also wouldn't mind earning officers through bar missions. I'd be all for some captain to join your fleet in his/her ship (Allied NPC) and the two of you go hunting a particular bounty. If you succeed, you don't get credits but they join your fleet as an officer and you keep the ship.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2154 on: September 22, 2021, 05:27:42 PM »

Also there could be some bar events/missions where player end-up encountering a character that wants to join his fleet as officer (uhhh, this one doesn't already exist, right?).

The reveal the location of a Pather base bar event has the option of spending a story point to turn the "contact" into an officer instead of paying them off with credits.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2155 on: September 22, 2021, 05:40:45 PM »

Does mentoring re-roll available skills for an officer if they have unselected skills? I usually mentor officers to get more choices and adjust aggressiveness, but I just realized it would be really advantageous to save mentoring for the last skill or two if it let you re-roll to try and get a skill you missed.
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Thaago

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2156 on: September 22, 2021, 05:52:24 PM »

Does mentoring re-roll available skills for an officer if they have unselected skills? I usually mentor officers to get more choices and adjust aggressiveness, but I just realized it would be really advantageous to save mentoring for the last skill or two if it let you re-roll to try and get a skill you missed.

I'm not sure, but I'll note that I've never had a mentored officer that didn't have pop up one of the skills I wanted. Mentoring is one of the +100% XP uses of story points, so in my mind every officer should be mentored.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2157 on: September 22, 2021, 10:04:34 PM »

Does mentoring re-roll available skills for an officer if they have unselected skills? I usually mentor officers to get more choices and adjust aggressiveness, but I just realized it would be really advantageous to save mentoring for the last skill or two if it let you re-roll to try and get a skill you missed.

I'm not sure, but I'll note that I've never had a mentored officer that didn't have pop up one of the skills I wanted. Mentoring is one of the +100% XP uses of story points, so in my mind every officer should be mentored.
When I'm doing frigate or phase officers, I usually have some specific set of 5 skills I want and so I frequently miss on the last skill and have so settle for something suboptimal.

I agree that every officer should be mentored, I was just thinking it might be useful to delay mentoring to get a re-roll when you need one if that was how it works.
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Serenitis

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2158 on: September 23, 2021, 12:25:02 AM »

Why it is so frustrating is because this is a problem that has already been removed from the game - in the design stage.

Gating an element of gameplay (combat) behind trading items back and forth between colonies is something that Starsector was specifically designed to avoid, because it's not "fun" gameplay unless that's explicitly what your game is about.

With this update combat is now hard-gated behind travelling back and forth between colonies to find officers, which may or may not be present.
How is re-adding something that was removed at the design stage just with slightly different variables, good?

It's the same thing. A non-trivial investment of effort which is required before you're "allowed" to have fun.
Why?

There's ways around this.
As mentioned above, making the promotion event more common, or even guaranteed if there's an open officer slot.
Allowing the player to spend a story point to force the promotion event.
Rescuing officers from defeated fleets with a "defection" event.

You know, get officers by doing officer-ish things that the player will be doing no matter how they play.
And respect the player's time by not gating "fun" elements behind "not fun" elements.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2159 on: September 23, 2021, 04:30:42 AM »

As for the end game, I'm routinely smashing Ordos with far less than a maxed out Fleet Size (usually only 1-2 capitals) but I'm always maxing officers. I can't imagine not trying to cap out your officer limit as early as possible because an officered ship is just so much more powerful, whether it's a frigate or an Onslaught. It also makes going the Leadership tree sort of mandatory because either way you go with the Officer skill, you dramatically increase your fleet's effectiveness. I can't think of a run where I didn't pick it.
The near mandatory of Leadership is what I do not like.  I like Combat, Technology, and/or Industry more, and since we have limited skill points, I leave Leadership out, but it hurts.  First with Wolfpack Tactics for frigates (I do not think frigates are worth using without Wolfpack - too low PPT without it), and then officer skills to keep up with the DP balance when everyone else has greater officer power.

AI can gave themselves as many mercs as they want.  Player has to play whack-a-mole markets to maintain his merc force and pay them highly inflated salaries (which require high colony income to absorb).

Quote
The point is precisely to provide a greater challenge compared to previous version of the game, largely preventing player brute force, having player use legitimate tools to succeed (including officers!).
Brute force is fun.  Especially before 0.8a when AI was less cowardly and more macho.

I do not mind fleets getting harder if they play by the rules.  I do not like it when they get harder by cheating, like breaking meta caps (like having many more ships than you can have by breaking fleet cap.)  That said, boss factions that are stronger because they have superior tech (cores for officers with AI factions, Remnants having the overpowered 40 DP Radiant, Omegas having weird alien stuff player cannot easily acquire) are fine.  What I do not like is stuff like seeing AI having a hundred ships in their fleet but I can only have 25 or 30.  That is NPCs getting harder by cheating, and I avoid playing such games because they are not fun (even if I can win by cheesing the game).

I am not fond of mercs, because officers are practically mandatory and because of mercs, AI has plausible deniability of filling every ship with an officer, but all AI needs to do is spawn them out of nothing and put it on everything without any effort (like that Remnant fleet with Alpha cores on all 20+ ships), while player has to constantly play whack-a-mole market to maintain his merc force and pay them (I think) 25k?/month plus story point for each merc.  Don't get me started with the story point costs for mercs.  If I want to bleed lots of story points, I rather spend them on colonies which have escalating 2^n costs (which is also stupid).

And if Alex really wants small fleets, he should go back to Logistics instead of having ship limits but low DP limits from skills because the enemy loves to spam capitals all over the place (while PPT and battlemap size have not kept up).  Bring the upper cap back down to Hegemony System Defense Fleet levels or low 200k bounty equivalents, not this capital and cruiser spam that is a slog to grind through.

I would not mind capital spam if the fleet cap, PPT, and maximum battlemap size were raised.
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