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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: this is the greatest game ever made  (Read 7913 times)

blazeroth

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2021, 01:33:52 PM »

Starsector is one of the games by which I measure others against. Whenever I look at or play a new game, I find myself wondering if I'm having more fun than if I was just starting a new playthrough of my favorite in the same genre. For roguelikes that's Cataclysm. For colony sims that's Rimworld. For tactical combat, that's Battle Brothers. And for space sims that's Starsector.
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Steven Shi

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #16 on: February 10, 2021, 09:45:35 PM »

Yeah...I think all of you have something on your nose.

SS has a great combat system but everything else is pretty patch work atm. The exploration, fight, loot, fleet upgrade loop is pretty shallow. The galaxy economy is more or less a placeholder with easy exploitation by the player and isn't a living simulation as much as a place for player to dump loot. Colony management, skill tree, NPC mission etc are also fairly basic and haven't been expanded on in many years.

The game has great POTENTIAL but as it stands now, its only notable strength is still the combat that was pretty fleshed out when Totalbiscuit was still alive whereas everything else is pretty bog standard for a sandbox beta. Personally speaking, the game's core mechanics have been treading water since we went from a single system map to a open world 2-3 iterations ago.

Outside of fleet combat, it feels Alex is having a hard time pinning down what he wants his game to be - a mount and blade in space low-sim sandbox, a 2D X-series economic builder or Everspace with a story/quest/RPG open world. Right now SS has elements of all three genres of space sim but kind of just there on their own and not as part of a coherent game. 
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #17 on: February 10, 2021, 10:14:54 PM »

Yeah...I think all of you have something on your nose.

SS has a great combat system but everything else is pretty patch work atm. The exploration, fight, loot, fleet upgrade loop is pretty shallow. The galaxy economy is more or less a placeholder with easy exploitation by the player and isn't a living simulation as much as a place for player to dump loot. Colony management, skill tree, NPC mission etc are also fairly basic and haven't been expanded on in many years.

The game has great POTENTIAL but as it stands now, its only notable strength is still the combat that was pretty fleshed out when Totalbiscuit was still alive whereas everything else is pretty bog standard for a sandbox beta. Personally speaking, the game's core mechanics have been treading water since we went from a single system map to a open world 2-3 iterations ago.

Outside of fleet combat, it feels Alex is having a hard time pinning down what he wants his game to be - a mount and blade in space low-sim sandbox, a 2D X-series economic builder or Everspace with a story/quest/RPG open world. Right now SS has elements of all three genres of space sim but kind of just there on their own and not as part of a coherent game.
Many of your issues should be getting fixed soon. Basically Alex has been building a framework for everything before fleshing it out. Meanwhile modders can use said framework to both add their own content and also stress test it, finding bugs or uses that Alex might not never have found
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Steven Shi

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #18 on: February 11, 2021, 01:59:27 AM »

Many of your issues should be getting fixed soon. Basically Alex has been building a framework for everything before fleshing it out. Meanwhile modders can use said framework to both add their own content and also stress test it, finding bugs or uses that Alex might not never have found

Okay, putting aside what modders will or will not add to the base game, SS should stand on its own and not just as a framework. As much as I want to laud Alex and SS as an example of indie game done right, it's been at least two years since something substantial had been added to the game's mechanics. I will continue to be cautiously optimistic that the final game will be done well but I think it's a bit too early to sing the game praise.
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Grievous69

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #19 on: February 11, 2021, 02:18:41 AM »

I feel you. Many times I've seen people make great suggestions or just ask a simple request when the answer often times is just "there's a mod for that". Well what If I don't want to grab dozens of QoL mods just so I can enjoy the game. This goes for every game, if a mod is required to make the game more enjoyable and less tedious, then there's a problem in the base game that should be fixed. Not saying it's that bad here but I still see some issues that are (at least currently) not fixed / improved.

Btw what do you mean there's hasn't been a change in game mechanics in almost two years? Last patch was in May 2019, so there hasn't been any change. If you think the mechanics won't change much you should check out some of the dev's blogposts, there has been a lot of reworked mechanics.
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Steven Shi

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #20 on: February 11, 2021, 04:05:57 PM »

Btw what do you mean there's hasn't been a change in game mechanics in almost two years? Last patch was in May 2019, so there hasn't been any change. If you think the mechanics won't change much you should check out some of the dev's blogposts, there has been a lot of reworked mechanics.

Personally, I see the SS's transition from a combat sim to a single-system map then to a multi-system map to be the three iterations worth mentioning. Every other patch are either QoL tweaks or minor additions like silent running and star base etc. So no, in the past two years, nothing really changed how the base game played. The contracts are still the same, the exploration loop is the same, economy is still the same mess and colonization is just a money sink at the moment. Don't get me started on the whack-a-mole pirate, ludite bases that spring up without any economic restrictions.

The blog posts actually have me more worried than anything else. Alex has been polishing and re-designing certain features many times over the years and while I appreciate a better mechanic, there are far bigger issues. If SS is just a combat sim, then what it has is fine but it's claim to be a sandbox sim like Elite game with a living economy and that's what I've been waiting for all these years. Considering the amount of years Alex has been refining the combat portion, the equally important (to me) economy/trade/faction interaction/colonization have barely changed since inception. We are going on the third iteration of skill tree now according to the blog, is it really the time to refine that right now I wonder? Will Alex spend another 2 years polishing the non-combat portion too?

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sector_terror

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2021, 04:21:18 AM »

Curse you for igniting my brain into one of these essay posts. Oh well. I have to fair....I was also thinking "lets not give too much hype here, I just wasn't going to be the one to pull the trigger. So I give Steven credit for having the courage to make the accusation everyone is sucking off a bit here. It's conversation that kind of short comment is normal, but it's still a saturation point of complimenting without much more to say. I was going to just leave it at that and let someone have their feelings shown and not rain on it. But the conversation has been detailed since so, *** it. Life story over, onto the post.

The exploration is quite solid. Planning the resources you need, reacting to what's in the sector and managing salvage and information, using it to plan your own colonization, seems all fine to me. It's a fairly small title and this isnt the kind of thing that's easy to write, especially with the current system. Hell the new personal contacts blog discussed in some detail the new functions and the like that would make modding a lot easier. I'm only an amateur at programming code, but the example he gave was far from minor if he's doing this for multiple kinds of missions. In fact with the new system it be easier than ever to make missions in such detail that even -I- could do it. The economic system is excellent with a lot of factors in place and the entire colonization system is quite strong.

What Starsector lacks is an outside context variable to make the sector change in form over time. Nothing is taking planets or moving fleets around en mass. To make the market adaptable to the player several planets make several things, or the economy would be so heavily exploitable and fragile that, say, killing Sindra would destroy the fuel economy and leave it open for the player to use or ruin things forever. There's a lot going on under the hood and addressing the verb choice of his paragraphs is far from a small change, it just isn't highlighting the hard strengths that Starsector could have, it's only setting them up for use later. Right now it be too hard to find jobs and missions to make significant profit if an outside context threat was able to toy with the economy, or war was significant enough to alter the station of each faction so that anything not their home-world could switch around and leave planets in a state they suddenly lack certain products. Once the new system addresses that, war or an outside context threat changing economics sufficiently would highlight whats already there.

And what I just wrote is just the economy. The skill system isn't lacking, it's just not balanced enough. Without re-spec options it cant be too specialized and anything too strong is jus an easy pick that makes the whole choice useless, not eve including the issue of some trees being bigger than others not helping. The new system would encourage specialization and even alteration as your fleet evolves and grows to new flagships and systems. It's going to be much better assuming it's balanced. If it's not even I could mod it personally without needing a direct mod. The contacts system will make jobs a lot easier and more diverse, as well as hiding greater challenge behind walls that keep you from being ambushed by them or leaving you unable to scale down from them(a current problem with the bounty system as it stands). Kitsune is right: Right now it's framework and we're playing a beta.

But before I defend Kitsune too much, Steven is right and a point needs to be addressed. Staying in Beta with only minor updates again and again isn't a good thing. going back and forth isn't helpful at all. But....I don't think what's been added is small. Most them are fairly significant, especially in the modding section. Think of how much needs to be added and tested in the one example about missing editing Alex put in the personal contacts blog post? It's entire function libraries being added, with staggering numbers being added in the notes with quite a few content additions and bug fixes. and none of it is working against itself or being scrapped besides fleet composition rules for spawning AI fleets.

As a final, I'm reminded a lot of Stellaris in the question steven posted: Is it time to refine "that" right now? Yes, yes it is. Steven said it himself: It's not flushed out enough. And every problem in it, and some I didn't even think of, are being handled by the new upset. Re-specing allows for more specialized builds to be possible as mistakes can be adjusted. New players are more able to go insane specializing for craft since they can now change over and will feel worth not putting points into things they may not use. The inability to make skills truely powerful and one-sided is not handled by the limits it places. If I'm reading screenshots right then the skill for the number of colonies and the skill improving colony production, will now compete with one-another(damn you Alex! I hate that and approve it at the same time!) meaning they can be made several times more powerful since there is a price to compete with. Imagine what huge damage bonus at sub 1k range(capping at 600) could do to a proper Aurora build like what I did for my last campaign. But if you could put that alongside say, a general buff to damage, it have issues.

Stellaris had similar complaints with colony development. The new job system did amazing work in fixing the issue and more, while only really causing lag issues as a result because the engine wasn't made for that much data on each planet. An issue they're talking about fixing right now. By re-designing they made a framework that is much easier to work with, like what the skill system is going to be in the next issue. People may complain, but re-writing it offers more options then "tweeking" it forever. As long as it doesn't start going back on itself, why not. The skill system is old enough that altering it this way without throwing out the entire menu is a good move.

I think I've rambled enough: That's my take on it. Hope it isn't too much of a spaghetti post.
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scrye

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2021, 12:56:41 AM »

Just gonna hop on the good feels train and say I'm really looking forward to the next 0.95 update!  I enjoy Starsector a lot, and really appreciate the thought that went into the scifi setting and the different factions; I also think that Starsector really emphasizes economic pressures on the player to a degree I haven't experienced elsewhere (trying to pay back Tri-Tachyon loans on a timer can be surprisingly tense!  I would actually like to see more of these higher risk-reward loan style missions added to the game).  A big +1 for the combat too.  The layered tactical mechanics and intricate ship loadouts work well, and keep the game from feeling like just another generic 2D space combat game.

I am anticipating the story content fill-in and also the revamps to the character and fleet management mechanics.  I'd love to have more to do with AI cores as part of ship customization also.

I get that it's done when it's done, but I hope I don't have too much longer to wait!  I'm trying not to read too many spoilers in the recent story focused blog posts. :P


P.S. Thanks also to all the mod developers out there, the vanilla game is great but I have had a lot of fun with your work as well!
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HannibalMannibal

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2021, 07:28:34 AM »

yeah i mean of course you're going to have some real smug dudes come in and start *** on everyones fun

ya all need to understand one thing: Context

Every single other space  game sucks ass and puts you to sleep with its insanely, pointlessly slow pacing or is so incredibly obtuse in its controls (X series, I'm looking at you) that it is absolutely pointless to even attempt to dive into it because its not fun

Games are meant to be fun

Starsector may not be as complex as some other 4xs with huge studios behind them since the game devs only charge you $15 for free updates forever, whereas Paradox Games holds you up at gunpoint in a seedy alleyway and demands over $100 if you want to play the actual game and then they keep adding more and more *** so eventually this damn game will cost $300 for a game you dont actually play. you just hit buttons and sit back and watch the game unfold

Starsector you actually control the ships, you actually control your fleet, you actually have a character. you go around a broken galaxy uncovering lost technology until you have accrued so much forgotten overpowered technology that everyone has to kiss your feet. you actually PLAY the game. plus, you dont need HOURS of tutorials to figure it out. i tried Elite: dangerous the other day and refunded it because the tutorial is over HALF AN HOUR LONG. who cares??? i want to play the game. i dont want it to treat me like i'm unable to just hit escape and read the key bindings to learn how to play the game. Starsector dumps you in and says "figure this *** out" and its not very hard, you might have the IQ of a lima bean if you cant figure out how to play starsector in five minutes. the deeper mechanics and really getting into the combat takes time, but idk so does Dark Souls.

why does it need such a focus and such a story? do you really need every little bit of plot and detail spelled out to you in a 40 page handbook? cause that is the antithesis of good writing. as it is, you create your own characters. you don't necessarily need mods to create your own elaborate stories. mods like Nex certainly flesh out the 4x aspect and colony management, but as it is, the main factions and the mechanics available are far more of a complete and interesting game than Freelancer or GalCiv 3 or even Stellaris in the beginning. Stellaris in the beginning was frigging terrible. there's just a higher level of quality control with the devs for this game so they still consider this phase to not be a full release. most AAA games are not even this well developed in their betas.

except, its actually fun. most sandboxes are just a bunch of game elements that game developers cut and paste.

you know what other game wasnt that complex but had a great combat system and just enough 4x elements to give the game way more depth than just shooting ships? and also pirates? and a bounty system? also a handful of guys made it and it blew away every single space game ever made up until that point and everyone wanted to replicate the ideas it started?

Sins of a Solar Empire
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HannibalMannibal

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #24 on: February 15, 2021, 07:30:45 AM »

that being said, if this is what the devs consider a beta/alpha version, i am really interested to see what the finished product will have.
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Kakroom

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #25 on: February 15, 2021, 08:03:56 AM »


why does it need such a focus and such a story? do you really need every little bit of plot and detail spelled out to you in a 40 page handbook? cause that is the antithesis of good writing. as it is, you create your own characters. you don't necessarily need mods to create your own elaborate stories. mods like Nex certainly flesh out the 4x aspect and colony management, but as it is, the main factions and the mechanics available are far more of a complete and interesting game than Freelancer or GalCiv 3 or even Stellaris in the beginning.

Yeah this is why I get really antsy whenever people start talking about "story content."

I play Starsector for a freeform world simulator where I can run around and be my own guy in a world of other guys running around and being their own selves. Static, dev-constructed storylines that decide characters and things exist at a certain place and time that are dependent on player interaction for their operation are the antithesis of that experience. They create this dichotomy between the "real world" where things are happening and people are going places because they have goals and interests independent of you, and the "story world" where things are happening and people are going places because now that's what's happening in The Storyâ„¢. It doesn't really matter how good the writing is if it's making the world less dynamic and vital. If I wanted such I'd play Shadowrun or Lisa. Or Homeworld.

Of course it's Alex's game to do with as he pleases, it's just, you know, I like the game and naturally I want it to be more like the parts I like about it.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2021, 08:19:55 AM by Kakroom »
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HannibalMannibal

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #26 on: February 15, 2021, 09:19:21 AM »

Ya im not really opposed to the game changing that aspect of it and i wouldnt ditch it if the game did. i do like it quite a lot though. i also do appreciate that a good chunk of the modding community is really... really... really dedicated to expanding lore and trying to match the writing and aesthetic
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Kpop

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #27 on: February 16, 2021, 05:55:18 PM »

why does it need such a focus and such a story? do you really need every little bit of plot and detail spelled out to you in a 40 page handbook? cause that is the antithesis of good writing. as it is, you create your own characters. you don't necessarily need mods to create your own elaborate stories.

Disagree with this immensely. It's less about outright plot development(in this sort of game) and more about world building, a vehicle to cram in little nuances and quirks of the universe. Getting to know the opinions and personalities of characters that you come to learn why they are like this.
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Sabaton

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #28 on: February 18, 2021, 04:25:31 AM »

Btw what do you mean there's hasn't been a change in game mechanics in almost two years? Last patch was in May 2019, so there hasn't been any change. If you think the mechanics won't change much you should check out some of the dev's blogposts, there has been a lot of reworked mechanics.

Personally, I see the SS's transition from a combat sim to a single-system map then to a multi-system map to be the three iterations worth mentioning. Every other patch are either QoL tweaks or minor additions like silent running and star base etc. So no, in the past two years, nothing really changed how the base game played. The contracts are still the same, the exploration loop is the same, economy is still the same mess and colonization is just a money sink at the moment. Don't get me started on the whack-a-mole pirate, ludite bases that spring up without any economic restrictions.

The blog posts actually have me more worried than anything else. Alex has been polishing and re-designing certain features many times over the years and while I appreciate a better mechanic, there are far bigger issues. If SS is just a combat sim, then what it has is fine but it's claim to be a sandbox sim like Elite game with a living economy and that's what I've been waiting for all these years. Considering the amount of years Alex has been refining the combat portion, the equally important (to me) economy/trade/faction interaction/colonization have barely changed since inception. We are going on the third iteration of skill tree now according to the blog, is it really the time to refine that right now I wonder? Will Alex spend another 2 years polishing the non-combat portion too?

Combat was always intended to be the core of SS as specified by the devs and because of that every activity can/will easily push you into combat. But you're right in stating that there is no final vision of how the game will come out 1.0.
 
There has never been one, given how much the game has changed :phase-redone, ship boarding-redone, skills-redone, smuggling-redone, hell Combat Readiness exists just to nerf frigates due to maniacs like Hellmut killing fleets/stations with a single frigate.

So anyone who buys into the game needs to realize that SS is an unstable but persistent project without a predictable development.
 
Personally I find this state of affairs interesting because you can't tell how 1.0 will even look like and the sheer persistence over the years has shown that the devs are committed. And as far as I'm concerned that's all that matters.
 
« Last Edit: February 18, 2021, 04:27:30 AM by Sabaton »
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Flying Dice

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Re: this is the greatest game ever made
« Reply #29 on: February 21, 2021, 05:48:07 AM »

Agreed. Pretty much all of my favorite games (Aurora, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi, STALKER, &c.) are games which provide a worldbuilding framework for you to shape your own stories rather than a plot that's dictated to you. I want a Starsector that feels more like that, like a modern Freelancer without a central story, than a story-based RPG that you play through once.

And yeah, it's fundamentally a combat game. The core gameplay all orients around fighting, supporting your ability to fight, and choosing when and where you fight. That's the core gameplay loop; if you don't enjoy the combat, you're probably going to have a rough time having fun with the game in the long term, since most of the economic/political/exploration systems are approximations that exist to provide reasons to fight and differentiation between fights.

Amazing what a game can do when it doesn't focus on pushing everyone's PC to the breaking point and draining everyone's wallets with cheats, ain't it?  Starsector is a breath of fresh air in a swamp of corporate muckery and I'm all for it.  It's a GAME in a sea of "LiVe SeRvIcEs" and Alex does more actual thinking than Bethesda's entire dev team. (SHOTSFIRED)

Really helps me double down on the "stop worrying about graphics" thing ive been telling people for ages.

It helps that good spritework always have and always will look better than 3D. It was true back when 3D was impressive if models had three-digit polygon counts and it's still true now.
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