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[Amoebka]

It feels everyone suggesting commissions gating ship access is forgeting just how disfunctional faction balance is? From a powerplayer's perspective, only 2 factions exist - TT if you like winning and Hegemony if you like orange paint. Other factions offer nothing you can't trivially get without a commission from indies. Looking at the military market on Kazeron is straight up depressing (my last time was 4 conquests, 6 herons and 8 drovers, wish I made a screenshot).

Another reason I don't want commission gates is because they limit the already weak variety of ships to use. There are clearly "good" and "rubbish" ships in starsector, so the number of actually usable ones is very small (remember, you are forced to fight 120 vs 180 every single time). If I have to pick a faction, I'm pretty much limited to ONE ship type - the good one they sell - and that's assuming their faction even knows any good ones. If I side with the church, do I use mules or enforcers for my destroyer fleet? The answer is I will never side with the church because both suck. Illusion of choice instead of actual choice.

As for grinding and getting to the desired game state... My desired game state is the one where I can spend money to buy ships after a wipe (I play ironman). Currently not the case at any stage before colony production. I want LESS obstacles to buying ships, flying around the core in circles checking markets to see if there are any hammerheads for sale is what I consider grind in starsector.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I don't understand the fixation on capital ships in this thread. I don't consider them a lategame ticket, in fact, I don't even use them lategame. They feel borderline worthless on 300 deployment size. I really can't afford 40 out of 120 dp to field a slow ship that will get swarmed and killed. The only way to win against numerical advantage is to be faster.

[Grievous69]

@Morrokain
Yea I'd say when a cruiser joins the fight then it gets interesting to me. Without cruisers you don't really have such high priority targets, you just form a deathball with your frigates and destroyers and advance. Also cruisers come is such wildly different sizes and roles they really spice things up in battles. Honestly I don't know how the answer the last question. I enjoy blowing things up and trying to do cool plays with my flagship I guess? Also I don't like piloting frigates so that's another thing why I get a destroyer as fast as possible.

And finally Amoebka repeated my concern which everyone ignored, the pool of options is already not that great (maybe everyone here is just super used to playing with mods). Again, some ships are already ultra rare, Aurora, Medusa, Scarab and Odyssey are all ships that I've maybe seen once in my 4 vanilla 0.91 runs. Come on they're rarer than Dooms, and now you want them to be even harder to get.

It's hilarious to me everyone is going "wee woo early game has actual options, you have to make meaningful decisions", where in reality, every combat encounter plays out the same because you just deploy all ships. There's zero choice, there's no "oh is it smart to deploy this thing right now or save it for reinforcements?".

[Megas]

In all but one of my games, I had no commission, and my only (reliable) variety was whatever I loot from pirates, and maybe one or two ships purchased from Black Market.  (Remember that shops often sell clunkers too, so finding a good pristine ship may not be easy.)  Early game is the same, kill pirates until I recover a wall of Enforcers, Mules, and Shrike (P)s until I can start smashing 150k+ bounties and/or early expeditions and loot better ships.  Also, most ships are clunkers until the end because that is what I loot, and I am not paying an arm-and-a-leg restoring disposable ships.  I do not build Heavy Industry and ships until my colony can repel expeditions because HI is an expedition magnet, which means no ship building until the cusp of endgame.

Many non-phase high-tech is TT exclusive but their warships is set to one, making them very rare.  The easiest way to get rare high-tech warships is to steal the blueprints from Culann and build the ships yourself.  Since Culann is one of the more heavily defended worlds, it is hard to sneak in without a pure phase fleet built for raiding.  (They have atrocious capacity, so piling on Additional Berthing to carry more marines is necessary.)

And speaking of phase ships, most factions, including the Independents, have them all, making the likes of Afflictor and Doom common.  In my last game, much of my early and midgame was spent raiding New Maxios for all of the phase ships and midline ship blueprints.  Independents have a nice selection of things to steal from their undefended world.  Luddic Church has Legion, and the Church is also easy to steal from them because most of their patrols hang around Gilead and leave Asher (their industry world) undefended much of the time.  Warp in through gas giant next to Asher, smash-and-grab, T-Jump out.  Also, the Hegemony industry world in Valhalla is sometimes left undefended and player can get XIV ships and railgun blueprints from them.

I get the most choice by endgame, when I have all the blueprints and can build what I want except Remnant tech (i.e., Sparks).

As for acceptable timeframe for grinding?  That varies by person.  For me, I cannot binge on games like I used to.  Some days, I have no time for games.  Even when I do have time, it is often spent on something aside from Starsector.

P.S.  What do I enjoy about combat?  Being an overpowered avatar of death and quickly and utterly crushing the enemy into fine scrap.  (Of course, if my fleet is too strong, they usually run and I auto-resolve for free loot.)  I can play fair or even gimp fights, but that is least interesting part of the game.  Character has no business fighting hard battles when he can make it easy instead.

Starsector happened to be the first game I played where ships can wield multiple weapons at the same time instead of a forward-facing pea-shooter every other space game I played before.  I get to play a big ship with lots of big guns instead of a fighter craft, in theory.  It is a reason why I get dismayed over naked hull loadouts where the best loadout is a single gun or two and every other mount empty, like on no-missile Aurora and two plasma Odyssey.  Even a unbalanced Conquest with one side with maximum firepower (like two Mjolnir and two needlers) and the other side totally empty is probably more effective than any Conquest with both sides filled or partially filled.

[pairedeciseaux]

This discussion is about managing player progression. A question to ask oneself is: what drives/limits player progression in Starsector? Currently, it's mainly money.

So, how does player earn money? Through exploration, trading, combat and various missions.

There is a loophole where a player can abuse exploration+trading, because of the high value items that can easily be found while exploring and then sold. Unless I am mistaken, we are looking at a very specific usage scenario: the minimalist player fleet exploring fringe systems and looting Research Stations and Mining Stations. I feel like the first post from sqrt(-1) is about that, first and foremost.

If this is considered a problem, then:

• access to items: make the high value items rarer and/or harder to find and/or harder to obtain by requiring combat with adequate difficulty and/or harder to obtain by requiring specific player character skills (see below)
• value of items: maybe lower the value of such items or even forbid selling some of them, though honestly previous point is much more important
• and… that’s it, you don’t need more to close the loophole, IMO

By the way, what items are we talking about? AI Cores, Synchrotrons, Nanoforges. Maybe blueprints?

Access to precious artefacts controlled by player character skills:

Spoiler

Well, an additional possibility would be to control access to such items through the higher tiers of some skills, that are obtainable if player levels-up said skills. Think specific "Industry" or "Technology" skills required to extract such items from a derelict/station. Extracting AI Cores would only be possible with the relevant higher tier Technology skill, extracting Nanoforges would only be possible with the relevant higher tier Industry skill, and a similar skill check would be used to allow/deny extracting Synchrotrons and blueprints. Those skills could be the relevant colony production buff skills so that players benefits from natural synergies when investing in said skills: ability to extract important colony-related artefacts + colony production improvements.

Flowing from this skill check idea, there could be a sensor/surveying skill related check in order to, well, be able to detect Research Stations in the first place (when not directly pinpointed in a mission briefing). This would help render high value items harder to find, especially since Research Stations have a lot of precious loot - in 0.9.1, don't know if still true in 0.95. Mining Stations loot is changing in 0.95, so this may not apply to them.

[close]

The main purpose of such high value / rare items is to be used as part of player colonies. A secondary purpose is to provide a money boost or reputation boost. Basically make sure “money boost” stays secondary and that it is earned rather than just easily found without some effort.

In other words, rather than punishing players with additional rules about how they can/cannot spend hard earned money and choose preferred fleet composition, let’s focus on controlling access to money and precious artefacts in order to manage player progression.

If an additional player fleet progression control mechanism is desired, then I would reuse the license idea and reformulate it as an ability to grow fleet:

Spoiler

• in Starsector 0.95 player character max level is 15
• player has an implicit ability to grow its fleet tied to its current player character level, irrespective of faction reputation
• up to level 5 is frigate + destroyer allowed
• level 6 to 10 is frigate + destroyer + cruiser allowed
• above level 10 is frigate + destroyer + cruiser + capital allowed

Notes: the level thresholds above are just examples since we don't know yet what it takes to - say - reach level 6, the ability to grow fleet could also control max number of ships in player fleet and overall player fleet strength rather than or in addition to max ship size.

[close]

[Grievous69]

@pairedeciseaux
I like everything you wrote expect skill requirements for items, that seems like a bad idea imo, while forcing a player into a reasonably hard fight to acquire said items seems the most elegant (and makes sense). Also yeah reducing the price of rare items is such an easy way to prevent the sudden fleet expansion from RNG I don't know why are people against it. Like you said, those items are primarily for colony use, the money part is extra you get from getting rid of them.

I wouldn't mind level requirements for ship classes but the problem with that is that not all ships in each class are equal. At first it makes sense to slow down the huge fleets early, but then you could see it gimping some playstyle. For example all "light" ships would see play much later than they were intended at. Falcon, the new Fury, Venture, Conquest, pirate and Ludd capitals are all ships you probably won't use when you have access to other ships of equal size, but they can be useful to give you an edge early when most of the fights have smaller ships still.

[Amoebka]

Reducing the price of rare items is something that's already happening in 0.95. That's not what OP is suggesting and not what people disagree about.

I'd also argue that exploration is dominating player's income because combat is simply too unprofitable. Bounties pay far too little outside of the first few tiers, system bounties pay too little, commission bouties are a complete joke (300 per ship?!), weapons sell for nothing (allegedly adressed in 0.95, but unless it's 5 times the current price, not much will change).

The game feels like you have to ""grind"" exploration (be it missions or item hunting) so you can spend money on the fun combat part. Making the combat even less accessible by locking it behind reputation grind in addition to money grind is making the situation worse.

[Grievous69]

And the only bounties that were profitable, station bounties, were nerfed and now they will give less money. With an added bonus of no more tier 1 stations, now the weakest ones will have at least 2 modules. So yeah exploration all the way.

[Amoebka]

Well, combat now also awards story points, so it's more of a choice between "explore and get money" and "fight and get story points". Still not ideal because you do need some money to fund your combat playstyle.

[Megas]

And the only bounties that were profitable, station bounties, were nerfed and now they will give less money. With an added bonus of no more tier 1 stations, now the weakest ones will have at least 2 modules. So yeah exploration all the way.

It looks like combat bounties assume flawless victories.  I look at endgame bounty (which has up to ten enemy capitals), then the cost to replace a capital if I lose one, and I say "Nope!" unless my fleet is so overpowered that I do not need money anymore.

Well, combat now also awards story points, so it's more of a choice between "explore and get money" and "fight and get story points". Still not ideal because you do need some money to fund your combat playstyle.

Even that is a losing battle for those with permamod ships (which will probably a given by endgame).  Lose a permamod ship, and two or three story points per ship lost goes down the drain, unless player pays arms and legs for each ship restored (or save-scums after each casualty until victory is flawless).  I doubt combat will award so much XP that player can level up enough to replace story points spent for each ship lost and replaced.

[intrinsic_parity]

I tend to make a significant fraction of my money from bounties. They do assume no losses, but that's also very achievable IMO. I've spent a significant amount of time trying to find the ships and loadouts that are least likely to die in AI hands, and that makes a big difference. I also spend a lot of time trying to work out strategies to prevent the common mistakes the AI makes.

And finally Amoebka repeated my concern which everyone ignored, the pool of options is already not that great (maybe everyone here is just super used to playing with mods). Again, some ships are already ultra rare, Aurora, Medusa, Scarab and Odyssey are all ships that I've maybe seen once in my 4 vanilla 0.91 runs. Come on they're rarer than Dooms, and now you want them to be even harder to get.

Ship rarity can be tuned independently. It's not a downside to the suggestion, it's a separate issue. No one wants ships to be impossible to find, and this suggestion should almost certainly be paired with some changes to ship rarity that significantly increase the odds of finding good stuff on the military market if you make the decision to take a commission. I'm pretty sure that's trivial to change compared to the main suggestion.

It's hilarious to me everyone is going "wee woo early game has actual options, you have to make meaningful decisions", where in reality, every combat encounter plays out the same because you just deploy all ships. There's zero choice, there's no "oh is it smart to deploy this thing right now or save it for reinforcements?".

How is there no choice? You can always choose to not deploy all, and that will almost always save you money, I never deploy all at any stage of the game. I always try to deploy the absolute minimum number of ships to win without loses, which is almost never my whole fleet. That is most important in early game when the resource management aspect of the game is most significant. I enjoy that resource management aspect of the game, and it has the added benefit of keep battles vaguely interesting, even if my fleet is far too strong for them to be interesting in a 'deploy all' scenario (which is almost every battle in late game).

If anything, late game is the time when supplies are least relevant, so you can just deploy all and stomp everything without making any choices. I don't do usually that because my min-maxer brain will be unreasonably upset, and also because its more fun to toe the line of minimizing deployment and having interesting battles rather than stomping everything with massive over-deployment, even if the resources I'm saving don't matter.


R.E. exploration loot:
I generally don't sell rare loot until I'm sure I wouldn't want more in my colonies (I never sell my first 2-3 forges and syncrotrons unless times are really tough) and I learn every blueprint except a few pirate ones I know I will not use. Usually I don't find more than 5-6 of these rare items, so I really have trouble believing that farming them is a serious issue. I like the feel of the current rarity and value, so if there are really issues with selling them, my suggestion would be to prevent selling them on any market (black/open/militray) and instead only allow sale through the new contact system via special missions. Presumably this would make it much harder to sell them, and there could be strings attached (significant reputation consequences, retaliation by other factions etc.). I much prefer that over making them less valuable or more rare and watering down the exploration portion of the game. 

[Amoebka]

They do assume no losses, but that's also very achievable IMO.

That's also very antifun, though. It forces you to only use cheesy loadouts and effectively removes 60% of the ships from the game because they are not efficient enough. You yourself in another recent thread said that you don't like ironman because it forces you to only pick safe fights. If bounty profit margins were higher and it was still profitable to win while losing a few ships, it would encourage taking more risky fights you aren't sure you'll win, which is where the real fun is.

[Grievous69]

How is there no choice? You can always choose to not deploy all, and that will almost always save you money, I never deploy all at any stage of the game. I always try to deploy the absolute minimum number of ships to win without loses, which is almost never my whole fleet. That is most important in early game when the resource management aspect of the game is most significant. I enjoy that resource management aspect of the game, and it has the added benefit of keep battles vaguely interesting, even if my fleet is far too strong for them to be interesting in a 'deploy all' scenario (which is almost every battle in late game).

If anything, late game is the time when supplies are least relevant, so you can just deploy all and stomp everything without making any choices. I don't do usually that because my min-maxer brain will be unreasonably upset, and also because its more fun to toe the line of minimizing deployment and having interesting battles rather than stomping everything with massive over-deployment, even if the resources I'm saving don't matter.

Bruuh, obviously you don't deploy all if you're fighting a weak fleet, it's just isn't worth talking about those situations since you have a clear edge and can win easily. Now if you're fighting an equal fleet, or even a stronger one, I don't see where the fun is in trying to spend like 10 supplies less. Without the extra ship you may lose some armor and hull so you're back at square one. Anyways I just don't find it fun to reload multiple times just to roll an optimal ending where I spent the least amount of resources. To me that's both boring and needlessly time consuming.

And yeah the "very achievable" part is weird, you realize not only veterans who play the game for multiple years exist? If it's seriously intended to come out unscathed after every bounty then there's a serious issue with the bounty design.

[Megas]

Without the extra ship you may lose some armor and hull so you're back at square one. Anyways I just don't find it fun to reload multiple times just to roll an optimal ending where I spent the least amount of resources. To me that's both boring and needlessly time consuming.

Sometimes, the player saves more by deploying more and killing everything first and fast before the enemy can cause damage (or cower at let PPT and CR decay hurt everyone, except AI has unlimited resources and player does not).  However, with how big fleets get late in the game, it becomes moot because player and enemy AI can deploy only a fourth or third of their fleets before hitting DP limit at max map size.  With default size map size, it is basically double or triple endurance matches from a fighting game, not a fleet battle.

I do not like reloading all of time (but will do it instead of grinding back from a loss to save time), which is why I tolerate clunkers in my fleet early in the game because they are handy and disposable.  Once my fleet is overpowered or my income is very high, I will gladly scrap the clunkers and use pristine ships.

[Thaago]

I don't think bounties require you to come out unscathed - I frequently take losses from bounties, but they are the way I make 85% of my money these days before colony endgame (unless I'm doing an exploration game on purpose where I play totally differently. That can be really relaxing fun too.)

Bounties being profitable hinges on 1) the amount of loot from combat 2) the probability of recovering lost player and enemy ships 3) the supplies the player consumes on deployment and damage  4) the logistics cost of getting there and 5) the payout from the bounty.

The normal advice of 'fight efficiently' helps with 3 and 4: player skill, combat skills, and fleet composition. 1,2,3 are boosted by industry skills, logistics, and navigation. 5 can be helped with a commission, though not too much. I'd call a fleet 'efficient' if it can break even without any bounty payout on fights.

Without the extra ship you may lose some armor and hull so you're back at square one. Anyways I just don't find it fun to reload multiple times just to roll an optimal ending where I spent the least amount of resources. To me that's both boring and needlessly time consuming.

Sometimes, the player saves more by deploying more and killing everything first and fast before the enemy can cause damage (or cower at let PPT and CR decay hurt everyone, except AI has unlimited resources and player does not).  However, with how big fleets get late in the game, it becomes moot because player and enemy AI can deploy only a fourth or third of their fleets before hitting DP limit at max map size.  With default size map size, it is basically double or triple endurance matches from a fighting game, not a fleet battle.

...

Its kind of a minor point in reply to Grievous, but there is a small amount of hull/armor damage you can take 'for free', if its repaired in the same time it takes for the CR of the ship to come back to full (they are done simultaneously without a cost increase, its kind of weird). The amount of damage can be extended with the free instant repair skills, but its really not a huge amount.

I find CR ticking to be the main cost of battle if I'm not careful: it takes a shockingly small amount of time for ships to double or more in supply cost (the fewer % CR it takes to deploy, the more expensive it is to keep them in combat, so low tech ships that can be chain deployed are ruinous to leave going). For that reason I go heavy on aggression in fleet design and composition, and I find it works pretty well. Because the balance of fleetpoints changes over the course of a fight its important it smash the enemy's first wave. After that, the player gets more ships while the enemy gets less, and the enemy is trickling in out of formation, so fights can snowball if the first hit is hard enough.

[intrinsic_parity]

If bounties paid more, that wouldn't change the fact that building fleets to not take losses would make you a lot more money, you would just end up a lot richer lol (and possibly progress significantly faster).

Bruuh, obviously you don't deploy all if you're fighting a weak fleet, it's just isn't worth talking about those situations since you have a clear edge and can win easily. Now if you're fighting an equal fleet, or even a stronger one, I don't see where the fun is in trying to spend like 10 supplies less. Without the extra ship you may lose some armor and hull so you're back at square one. Anyways I just don't find it fun to reload multiple times just to roll an optimal ending where I spent the least amount of resources. To me that's both boring and needlessly time consuming.

Good, so we've established that you're always evaluating the strength of the enemy fleet and deciding how much/what you need to deploy to be successful? The point I was making was that you're always making non-trivial decisions and it's not

every combat encounter plays out the same because you just deploy all ships.

If I need to deploy all to avoid damage/loses, then I will but I'm always thinking about it and making a decision. If the enemy fleet is so strong that deploy all is an obvious decision, then it's a pretty risky fight, and the interesting decision becomes whether to take the fight or not. I really disagree that there's a lack of interesting decisions in the early game, which was the point of the comment.

Also for what it's worth, I don't usually reload loses unless it's my rare flagship that I lost by being an idiot. And when I do occasionally re-load, I'm trying to learn what mistake I made so I can avoid it in the future, rather than just treating it as a way to avoid loses.

And yeah the "very achievable" part is weird, you realize not only veterans who play the game for multiple years exist? If it's seriously intended to come out unscathed after every bounty then there's a serious issue with the bounty design.

So the game should just let you make mistakes and come out way ahead anyway? What's the point of playing a game where you can do whatever you want and comfortably win regardless. You should get punished if you don't play well, and making fleets and ships that don't take tons of loses is part of playing well IMO. (Thaago pointed this out before I finished typing but I'll say it anyway) You can still make money while taking some loses, it's just less money. It also helps a lot to take skills that increase salvage so you can make net positive resources as well as cash. If the bounties paid out so much that you could take significant loses every fight and come out significantly ahead, then you would make an absurd amount of money by winning cleanly. If you don't want to take the time learn how to beat bounties efficiently, or if you want to use ships and loadouts that are prone to dying randomly, then you can make money in one of the other ways the game provides. Nothing wrong with that.