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[Demetrious]

*The increase did not include bounties, which are on a different scale than the other bar/contact missions.

I can see why. Last night I went chasing some normal bounties and was pretty happy with the effort-to-payout ratio; it felt rewarding without being too easy. The problem I had before was that you have to wait for a suitable one to pop up (an enemy you can reasonably take, at a reasonable travel distance.) With the other low-end mission payouts substantially increased you have something to do while waiting.

(Speaking of, while chasing down easy pickings in Askonia for system bounties I ran across a bar contract selling a one D-mod Enforcer for only 14k credits. A steal and a significant jump in firepower for me. It feels like randomly wandering around now has a lot more potential payouts. Just bouncing from colony to colony checking shops is annoying. Bar contracts - and the potential to add contacts - is a big increase in reward and incentive to go a-wandering.)

The fact that Alex didn't touch the bar bounties makes it pretty clear that they're supposed to be bad; hence them reliably spawning at roughly twice the distance of a normal bounty. The idea is pretty clear - you do some dirty work for the agent effectively at-cost, and you build up your reputation till he gives you the real good stuff. This might throw new players off a bit if other bar contracts are more or less profitable but I think they'll figure it out. Normal bounties feel worth chasing now even though the payouts weren't touched from the last version that I can recall. It took me a while to realize why; travel is moderately less annoying now with the slow-movement-doesn't-incur-storm-strikes change. Since its glacially slow, if you run into a huge screen-filling mass of deep hyperspace that's nothing but storms you're still best served just surfing over it to clear it fast and get hit less, but if you're weaving through storms and find one you just can't skip, you at least have the option of going slow to pass it. Same for those frequent strands of deep hyperspace that are thin, but develop a storm at just the wrong time. Supply consumption from storm strikes is a significant additional cost and this change makes exploration and going into deep space for exploration contracts a bit more manageable. It also gives you a solid trade-off between saving supplies or saving time, and makes you calculate supply consumption from taking longer to get places versus just taking a hit and skating along.

Giving extraordinarily skilled players the ability to do extraordinary things seems like a pretty good reason to me. What Alex has done over the last half a decade of fiddling with skills and hull mods is raise the skill floor and lower the skill ceiling, neither of which is a good thing.

Good and bad balance are a matter of opinion, it just depends on what you want from the game. If you want a game where the player has agency and their actions matter, then making them very powerful is good balance. It's only bad balance if you want a game where the player matters very little and most of the work is done by allied AI. That's been the case for some years now; the more you progress in the game and the more ships you amass in your fleet, the less you matter and the more the game plays itself. If that's what you want from the game, good for you, but that's not the kind of game I backed in early access nine years ago.

This is correct.

The guy who introduced me to Starsector - dragged me to the Sseth video and hyped it - blows my mind because he lets his AI fly his flagship. He prefers to manage the big-picture battle and just watch. (He IS an avid Eve nullsec player so maybe that's got something to do with it.) Me, I cannot imagine playing that way because I fell in love with this game for the top-down pew pew pew. That the other layer of the tactical game, running around in space, chasing sensor contacts, sneaking through asteroids - has so much to do is vital; it reminds me of original X-Com in which the Geoscape was a game of its own - but that alone wouldn't hold me. I actually slowed combat to half speed with settings.json because I just couldn't match AI shield micro at full speed. (It also gives me more time to enjoy explosions.) With that said, one ship will always be one ship and having escorts just to body block and soak fire is vital - ask anyone who likes flying Onslaughts. At the same time, the flagship will typically punch harder simply because a player is in it; and humans are always going to be significantly better than the AI you find outside of a CalTech machine learning laboratory. So I've always appreciated that the game offers options for both kinds of player; the "fleet admiral" type and the "D*** THE REAPERS, FULL SPEED AHEAD" type. Because of this, it's not really bad if a skilled player can solo entire fleets with a special build, even if the "fleet admiral" player can't match that kind of performance efficiency even with his most optimized builds because they're fundamentally different play experiences. As long as the fleet admiral player can be an effective fleet admiral - if he's having fun and is equipped to handle challenges - everything is fine.

Speaking of, I haven't even tried to use the new story point hullmod thing, in part because I am awed and terrified by its power. Elsewhere on the forums someone mentioned "story-point built in SO hullmod," and I just trembled. That is going to go a long way towards making player flagships more potent on the battlefield. It also introduces an interesting early game mechanic where you get a pile of story points up-front from rapid early leveling and you can spend them early to accelerate early/midgame or save them for more endgame shenanigans. The balance implications of Story Point hullmods are insane and incalculable and... maybe that's okay. Outside of the fact that balancing such things is best done by releasing it into the wild and seeing what insane crimes players come up with, it's also a factor that doesn't enter into it unless the player wants and chooses it, which is the whole point of story points. There's other places to spend them, after all.

One thing I've noticed with the new raiding changes are that core pirate bases are now supply pinatas. One mudskipper full of marines pays itself off after one raid, there rarely guarded by fleets due to the random activity of the other factions patrols, and because there's no reason to use transponders at pirate bases anyway the relation penalty means nothing.

Are you sure? A lot of core pirate bases have ground batteries at a minimum. Unsurprising, considering that they'd have to be well defended to exist in core faction territory at all. Having some easy pickings here and there isn't bad; it's only an issue if there's too many of them (repeat visits are already limited by intrinsic raiding mechanics.)

[Hatter]

Liking the building-in-hullmods. Picked up a Sunder near the beginning and have been running it with built in SO + Hardened Shields + Heavy Armor (Could swap this for something else if I was more confident in my piloting). Outfitted it with a Plasma Cannon + 2x Ion pulsers and misc. PD and it can really hit hard against anything that gets into range with it. Taking the Plasma over an autopulse for performance vs armor and sustained DPS.

Really feeling the skill and story point lock-down in the endgame. I went down technology and leadership and got both 'permanent' skills at the end, which locks down ~2/3 of all my skill points. Then I went down the combat tree and upgraded the skill to elite, so I'm scared of re-speccing them and losing that elite-ness. Now I'm trying to colony without any colony skills, being limited to 2 admin and 2 colonies is a smidge painful.

What's also painful is a trace volatiles deposit preventing me from putting the Super-Grow-Item onto farming and making more corn then the sector has ever seen. I wonder if a future use of storypoints would be allowing items to be used in conditions contrary or less then optimal, I.E. I can use a storypoint to put the Nutrilizer 9000 in even in the presence of volatiles, but only trace volatiles. Or making the heat lamps operate at less volatile import. Or get the 100% fleet bonus at hot instead of extreme heat or +25% at habitable. It would cut down some of the room for colony optimization that's RNG dependent.

Skills that have bonuses scaling with DP of military ships really hurts using Militarized sub-systems on logistical vessels. MS is a great logistical hullmod, providing some of the effects of Augmented Drive Field, High-Resolution Sensors, and Insulated Engines. Trying to replicate it's effects is OP prohibitive even before running into logistics hullmods limits and MS is pretty much mandatory for using Expanded Cargoholds without eating the +50% maint. penalty. Took industry skill 1 that gives an additional burn level to civ hulls to mitigate this, but can't fit expanded cargo holds on anymore.

I think it would be cool if purely logistical hullmods (I.E. Expanded cargoholds but not Solar Shielding) could be built in at greater EXP bonus and without using up a precious hullmod slot so I could waste story points allowing my combat ships to double as logistical ships. Either that or have Expanded Cargoholds and co not have a maintenance penalty when built in or with the hauling skill.

Got to ~2 capitals and supporting fleet. Haven't tried the AI-ship skill and it seems much weaker then the sheer variety offered by another built-in hullmod. Got a Derelict bounty through a contact and fought a guardian and accompanying fleet, which was really cool. Its neat to see them as a fleet instead of static defenses. Then I got a 400k+ Remnant bounty for a Radiant and four cruisers + escorts. I thought 'Gee, I've got all officer-ed custom ships and have been kicking butt across the sector. I took out Pather, Pirate and Deserter multi-Capital bounties. I should be able to take this.'

Anyways, after reloading that save and eating rep penalty for mission termination, I put my capitals + a dominator into storage and took a small fleet out to try to find the 'very rare enemy' mentioned in patch notes. Half the galaxy in and I have had an intense fight with a Domain-Mothership and drone ships vs a cruiser, five destroyers, and a handful of frigates. Wolves are really useful for mingling on their own and splitting up the enemy force. I accumulated 50+ gamma cores from Derelicts/probes and gave them all to Tri-Tach for a cool 1.5+ mil and ~30 rep. Still no sign of anything abnormal, is there a bar event that points towards the new-ness or should I just keep looking and hope its obvious enough that I haven't missed it in an already visited system?

The new missions are a hoot. Nice to have something other then "Kill X ship." I got one mission from a shady guy where I dead-dropped a paper crane. The guy was so shady I expected a fleet to try to jump me when I got there, but nope. Took an Onslaught, Conquest, and escorts to drop off a paper crane and I was tense the whole while.

I'm finding a reference to a "Coronal Tap" in a colony item description, 'must be within ten light years of a coronal tap' but haven't found any odd structures floating around a star. I guess they're really rare. I'd assume it's leftover Domain-Engineering like the cryosleepers. But without the bread-crumbs trail, unfortunately.

I cultivated a 'important' contact on Janghal, and the importance-bar-graphic makes me think there's a way to get Very Important level contacts. The High-Hegemon and Tri-Tach CEO sent me to voicemail and a cadet when I tried calling them, respectively. The Lion Of Sindria gets my respect for actually picking up the phone, even if I can't say anything back. Tried frequenting Sindria's bar in hopes of picking him up as a contact, but no such luck. Commissioned to Hegemony so the Perseans keep being hostile to me, haven't hit up Kazeron(?) to find the Persean leader. Just ignoring the Luddite Church.

The intel screen has a 'Important Events' tab that is very, very ominously empty and has been my entire 10 cycle run. This, combined with the game noting every gate I run into as 'Inactive' makes me think some real stuff is going to happen, once I actually find anything.

[xenoargh]

I really enjoyed the Galatian Academy quests.

[Drazhya]

I feel like I forgot how to play.
Been savescumming a lot of fights to avoid losing big ships and, more important, to figure out how to beat them. Steadily built up a fleet of mostly cruisers, personally commanding a Fury (neat ship, really fast). Everything seems to die really slowly. Part of that is that good weapons have been few and far between, but even considering that, it's been difficult.
At one point I took on a ~120k bounty from a contact. Seemed simple enough, I'd done similar bounties before. Enemy fleet was something like an Atlas II, four cruisers, and a bunch of chaff. Got spanked the first time. How did that happen? Try again, lose.
I think I lost 3 times before I started catching on. They had so many officers that one of them was on a Buffalo II - which died surprisingly slowly when I focused it with my Fury. They're supposed to just pop! And every single officer was level 6. 20+ of them. The other problem was that they had hounds to reliably take 3 points before I could get there, which meant I was out-DP'd immediately, and I could kill every hound and I'd still be just as outnumbered unless I took the points, because they had enough other ships in reserve.
Ultimately I just retried until the points spawned close enough that I could get 3 of them, and then I just won, because the deployment points made that much of a difference.
I don't like it.

Level cap of 15 seems a bit low. And part of that is that I play with the removed level cap mod, sure, but it still seems like 18 would be a more comfortable spot for vanilla. Hit the end of three trees and double-track one to tier 3, or some other configuration.

I've been making 100-200k going after big, dangerous fleet bounties ~15ly away, then wander into a bar and pick up a mission to deliver 1200? heavy armaments for 330k, easy 6ly trip.

The skill system seems neat, I want to like it more than the old system which was meh, and I think it could get there, but it isn't right now. Particularly: compact it down to 3-4 levels with three options on each level, and/or allow taking the second talent on later levels without taking a second talent on earlier levels. If the final level will have massively good skills like the +mod/vents/capacitors one, then have only that level require extra investment in previous skills to grab the second option.
The current track progression for skills of similar value, some of which you don't want but have to go through for ones you do, isn't cool. Track progressions are supposed to build up / culminate. Want to be the best colony governer? Spend your maximum possible points getting 3 of the 4 capstones in leadership and industry and then stare at the last one sadly, while your other 12 points, that were required to get those 3, do not help with this. That's some progression right there.

Edit: I just realized that there's another part to why the game feels harder than it used to. The AI's masses of frigate officers gives them nav that I no longer have and more ECM than I'm used to. Full nav and ECM (and other speed/range bonuses) is how I chumped the Blade Breakers. It's a big deal.

[Jonlissla]

Love most things with this update, especially story points. Amazing tool for the player and would like to see more game incorporate it. At early levels you get a good amount of them, enough to put on your ships and give them a bunch of permamods. Lategame they sort of stop trickling in though. I'm around lvl 13~ish and they are getting few and far between which annoys me since it feels like I wasted them earlier.

I like the new skill tree. It's refreshing and brings a bit of variety to standard designs you see in games. Not happy at all however in how certain skills compete with eachother. Oh gee, do I want more flux stuff and a +1 permamod, or should I get this gimmick skill which will give me a REDACTED ship that won't even be at max CR? In the Industry line there are even two entirely competing skills; one that removes D-mods every second month (incredibly good btw), or a skill that gives damage reduction based on the amount of D-mods a ship has. They contradict eachother entirely. I'm fine with limited choices to make each playthrough unique and you can always respec if you like, but I feel some of the skills should be given another look and replaced in the tree.

Overall I'm really happy with the new stuff. Still as addicting as it was earlier.

Still no sign of anything abnormal, is there a bar event that points towards the new-ness or should I just keep looking and hope its obvious enough that I haven't missed it in an already visited system?

Keep exploring, it's a certain object orbiting a star, you'll know it when you see it.

Been savescumming a lot of fights to avoid losing big ships and, more important, to figure out how to beat them. Steadily built up a fleet of mostly cruisers, personally commanding a Fury (neat ship, really fast). Everything seems to die really slowly. Part of that is that good weapons have been few and far between, but even considering that, it's been difficult.
At one point I took on a ~120k bounty from a contact. Seemed simple enough, I'd done similar bounties before. Enemy fleet was something like an Atlas II, four cruisers, and a bunch of chaff. Got spanked the first time. How did that happen? Try again, lose.

Yeah I know the feeling. I stopped savescumming as of lately and taking the losses because it spices up the game, but I do reload every now and then if I get ambushed by a gigantic pirate fleet. And oh boy do the new pirate fleets hit hard. I don't know what Alex changed with the AI but I feel like they're much more dangerous now than before, and it seems your teamates aren't as triggerhappy as they were in the previous version. Even with Aggressive officers they don't seem very... well, aggressive. Pirates and bounties now have tons of high-level officers, and even with a pretty decent fleet I can't handle many of the bounties that are being posted and the payout is still pretty poop considering the fleet I will be fighting. Like, 210k for a bounty filled with cruisers, nice, I can deal with that. And over there is another bounty that pays 240k, but it's filled with literally 5 Conquests. Sounds legit.

[Sordid]

The other problem was that they had hounds to reliably take 3 points before I could get there, which meant I was out-DP'd immediately, and I could kill every hound and I'd still be just as outnumbered unless I took the points, because they had enough other ships in reserve.
Ultimately I just retried until the points spawned close enough that I could get 3 of them, and then I just won, because the deployment points made that much of a difference.
I don't like it.

I've hated the point capture thing ever since it was introduced, but much like combat readiness it seems to be here to stay.

[Sayak]

I might be odd duck there but red tree seems to be worthless to me. No point taking it over fleet wide bonuses. AI ships cap is way too low it should alow us to have one proper battleship with alpha core or two cruisers.
Wolf pack recoverable buff should work for all frigates in fleet.

[Bummelei]

Hmm where do i start... I have been waiting for this update for a very long time, and i had high expectations about it. Well from my point the gameplay went downhill, everything became too lazy and unfriendly.

Pirate base bounties now is just a joke, there is no real point of doing them, only supplies and fuel cost more than bounty itself. Not to mention fun mechanics of deterioration and decivilization (if player will not gonna clear pirate bases, soon they just gonna flood the entire core worlds) so now player will not gonna be compensated for wasted time, which is amazing. Bar missions, same as aforementioned, offers pitiful and laughable amount of money.
Trading as a method of earning credits also was nerfed. Black market stocks were cut in 3 times, and with 30% taxes on legal market, profit is almost nonexistent.
Thanks god regular fleet bounties still there, and they can provide you with credits, but doing only them can become boring real fast.

As for skills, the new rework seems not as bad as i expected, but... That loop system is just a complete bs. Let's say i want to cut my supplies and fuel costs, both of skills is equally important and not interchangeable, ideally i want to get both of them, but to do that i shall spend 4 points more, gaining skills i do not need. Awesome. Wolf pack, Auxiliary fleet, Energy weapons these new skills is pretty amazing, i really enjoyed them.
Soft cap skills on the other hand is another example of bs this patch bring us. CV skill is interesting, if i wanna use cariers en masse i won't gonna pick it, bc 6 hangars buff brings no visible impact on the field. Phase ships roughly at the same category, if you want that buff you should pick: 3 frigates, frigate + destroyer, or part of a cruiser (not encluding new auxiliary phase ships). So you are not gonna be able to build invisible stealth fleet and have that buff at the same time. Droneships which doesn't even give us opportunity to bring even one cruiser without suffering penalty on CR, competes with most useful skill from all skilltrees? Yeaaah...

New enemy officers is another topic, looks like the ammount of them just got doubled and every single one of them using elite Shield skill. And because of that regular frigates start to resemble Remnant ones from the last patch, but back then you was able to bring CVs to counter them, but since cariers is dead...

New map points are useful now, that's great because before that they had no value at all.

Story points and opportunities they give is simply amazing, really like em.

And in the end i really hope that developer understands current flaws and will get rid of them soon. (but soon i mean not year or years later, guess i will not gonna wait that long)
I would really like Alex to stop chasing a mythical balance, and leave alone fun things as it its. After all it's a singleplayer not a competitive multiplayer game like League Of Legends or Dota for the god sake.
 

[Demetrious]

The fact that Alex didn't touch the bar bounties makes it pretty clear that they're supposed to be bad; hence them reliably spawning at roughly twice the distance of a normal bounty. The idea is pretty clear - you do some dirty work for the agent effectively at-cost, and you build up your reputation till he gives you the real good stuff.

Having done some Science, I am back to report on this. It would seem the "good stuff" is not bounty contacts that actually pay out, but the other benefits the contact offers; such as steep discounts on combat ships every now and then.

The contact: "Important" rank military contact affiliated with the Hegemony.
The Target: Two cruisers, two destroyers, two frigates. Well, more than two frigates. The text in the chat with the contact calling the ship icons "complete" information was a lie. The intel screen properly describes it as "partial info."
The trip: From Naraka, 17 lightyears, 564 fuel and 22 days one way trip (map screen auto-estimate.)
The fleet: Dominator, Heron, XIV Falcon, two Enforcers, Hammerhead, Drover, two Lashers, two Centurions, three Wolves and a Phateon for tanking. Four officers, only one of which is lvl. 5.

I originally tried with a smaller, more compact fleet, but found that the enemy had officers in almost EVERY ship, some of which were level 7; higher than my own officers can achieve (unless you can do that with story points?) I took a "harder" target from the contact because the ships looked manageable; I was expecting officers in every significant ship, but not level 7 officers even in frigates. And given the DP limitations, this even made my frigates undeployable, and thus useless.

But for the sake of Science, lets pretend this fleet would actually work. The fleet consumes 5.2 supply per day and costs 155 to deploy (minus the tanker and ignoring the few D-mod discounts for simplicity.) 44 day round trip equals 229 supply (rounded up) plus deployment cost for the battle: 384 supplies and 1,128 fuel total. At average price of 100c for supplies and 25c for fuel, that's 66,600 credits upfront costs for 43.4k profit off the 110k bounty. One-way cost should be 115 supplies and 564 fuel to reach the target system. I have the Navigation skill, giving +1 burn and reducing terrain penalties by 30%. This fleet is slowed by about 23% in deep hyperspace (without the frigates and the Drover, it was slowed about 15%.)

I ran three trials for both transit options. The first is to engage autopilot and just hold down Shift, tanking storm hits on the way. This has the benefit of being less tedious.

Trial 1: Arrived/w 187 supply consumed initially, 277 after full repairs. Fuel consumed: 700.
Trial 2: Arrived/w 173 supply consumed initially, 300 after full repairs. Fuel consumed: 695.
Trial 3: Arrived/w 160 supply consumed initially, 235 after full repairs. Fuel consumed: 695.
28200
Average supply: 248.3. Average fuel: 690

The second option is to actually bob and weave through the storms As Intended. This is easier than it was since pressing S not only allows you to slowly fly through a storm, but it also slows you and lets you pivot your trajectory quicker, as opposed to tapping"5" all the time in 0.91 to engage/disengage sustained burn. It's not perfect though, as unless you are completely slowed to the "moving slowly" speed the storms can still clip you, so if you misjudge once you can get accelerated by a storm into another storm and since you're still moving fast... if this happens on the edge of a big patch of deep hyperspace that's nothing but a full computer screen worth of storms (which isn't uncommon at all,) you're going for a ride.

Trial 1: Arrived/w 187 supply consumed initially, 277 after full repairs. Fuel consumed: 700
Trial 2: Arrived/w 112 supply consumed initially, and no repairs needed. Hooray! Fuel consumed: 723.
Trial 3: Arrived/w 160 supply consumed initially, and no repairs needed. Fuel consumed: 774.

Average supply: 186, Average fuel: 732

Doubling these values for a round-trip and adding the 155 supply combat deployment cost (assuming I somehow managed to deploy everyone):

Grugbrain flying: 651 supplies and 1380 fuel. 65,100c supply, 35,500c fuel. Total: 100,600c costs. Profit: 9,400c.
300 IQ flying: 527 supplies and 1464 fuel. 52,700c supply, 36,600 fuel. Total: 89,300c costs. Profit: 20,700c.

Since this takes over a month to complete, and it's clear I can't hope to clear this contract without four or five lvl. 5 officers myself, add in the monthly salary for those officers and you basically break even. These values are too close for coincidence; I suspect that Alex tuned these for this result. The last "hard" bounty contract from this contact I took was 50k reward, and I had to try three or four times before I was able to defeat it; mainly due to friendly AI still being literally too stupid to live. And I still lost a frigate.

The steep discounts on warships sometimes offered are excellent - 1/3rd the cost and "special" ships like XIV variants are included (I snagged my XIV Falcon from that contact) but given that I'd have to do quite a bit of fighting to level up my officers before taking this contract from the guy, I could probably make enough money to buy what I want outright - and it'd be what I want, not whatever ship the RNG proffers up from the contact. And the spysat deployment contracts don't pay much better than the ones I see in bars. None of these can compete with the "dead drop" missions you get from bars/underworld contacts, as those are 70k for essentially flying out to the nearest stars by the core worlds and back again in a single Dram with augmented drive fields installed.

Maybe I could take this fight if I try something Very Clever; deploying my frigates first and grabbing the map objectives to raise my DP allowance so I can bring in my whole fleet. Except it'd be a stiff fight with every ship deployed outright; given how much an advantage level 5-7 officers give the enemy, and if I run around grabbing objectives first, then I have to somehow concentrate force on the enemy with my frigates scattered all over the map. And that is already hard to do given the generally braindead friendly AI; the only method I've ever found to work is to order them to guard a waypoint near the deployment zone, and then, maybe I can prod them into making properly co-ordinated attacks. And that depends on my "reckless" officer not proving to be a burden, but I can't not have him because there's only so many officers available to hire that I've found.

I can't say for sure how this is or isn't balanced as there might be aspects I've still yet to encounter, but so far I can't say I'm going to take another mission from a contact. Close fights in Starsector are great fun in theory, but watching half your combat ships chase lone frigates into the corner of the map while you're being prison-shower shanked by a cruiser, destroyer and two frigates, all with high level officers in them, isn't fun in practice.