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[Zenos Ebeth]

So, I've been playing Starsector for quite a long time, don't honestly remember how long but it was around the time TotalBiscuit made a video about it so.. 9 years ago ?

Well one thing I've never done in all that time is an iron mode run, which I decided to try since I thought It'd spice things up, and it's supposed to be the "intended" way to play after all. I must admit that usually I am a scum of the saving variety, like I imagine most people who play this game are.

Well, it wasn't that bad, but I'm quite experienced with the game. Still, I got caught a few times and escaping battles has by far been my greatest drain of story points. Recently I got caught by a superior fleet and had no story points to spare, I tried to run away but my entire fleet got wiped out quite easily, it doesn't really matter as I've reached the "infinite money" stage of the game through colonization.

But this got me thinking about how often this scenario could happen to a new player going in blind in an iron mode run, and how frustrating it might be. Which is why I'd like to discuss if and how things should change before iron mode becomes the default mode of the game.

For me, the crux of the problem is how binary the outcomes of fight tend to be: in the vast majority of cases you either crush the opposing fleet, or you can't take them and they crush you. Of course there is a middle-ground where the fight is even and usually results in you taking heavy losses but still winning the fight, but I found that this happens very rarely in practice.



So, what is it that causes losses to be so total in Starsector ?

- AI fleets are usually a balanced mix of larger ships and frigates, which means that in pursuit scenarios you will have big ships chasing you from behind while a screen of frigates intercepts you from the front.

- Civilian ships are hilariously incapable of defending themselves, surviving for any duration of time or running away. The new player's first instinct is to try to defend them but this usually result in both them and the combat ships dying, their best use is as (short-lived) distraction.

- The distance you need to travel to escape is very large, it's extremely hard to fight off a superior force for long enough to reach the other end of the map.

Well, perhaps it's fair that being on the losing side of a fight means you lose everything, after all it's your fault for letting yourself get caught. But is this really the right approach ? In these cases I always think of the game Kenshi, due to its clever system of making loss punishing but at the same time rewarding in a way that genuinely makes you not want to savescum. Without going too into detail about the game's mechanics, when you lose a fight you are rarely killed outright; instead you are usually robbed, imprisoned or simply left for dead. These outcomes allow you to recover from a loss and rewards you at the same time because losing fights is the best way to progress your character's abilities since it grants you more experience than winning would.

Now this experience rewards work in Kenshi because the game is very much stats-based, in starsector you also get experience from losing fights but since the game is skill and capability-based it doesn't procure anywhere near the same level of incentive. It seems to me that the devs are taking the route of giving options to the player to avoid being engaged in losing fights, but it is my humble opinion that it would be better to make losing a fight not so catastrophic in the first place.

 

In this vein of though, here are some suggestions and thoughts in no particular order:

- Why should every fight be to the death ? Wouldn't it be interesting if pirates gave you the option of paying ransom or giving up your cargo in exchange for your life ? Perhaps [redacted] could be appeased by giving them AI cores, etc... In my opinion such trade-offs are more interesting from a world-building perspective. Right now the only option to avoid a fight is to spend a story point to completely escape, which is very binary and frustrating since story points are in very high demand and using them like this feels like a waste.

- Civilian ships need to be less vulnerable. It's natural that they can't stand up to combat ships, but right now they might as well be auto-killed as soon as the pursuit begins. I think giving more civilian ships systems based around mobility or defense would be a good way to make them a little bit more survivable: maybe burn drive or damper fields ? Flares are basically useless in any case, to the point that even in-lore it seems puzzling that they would continue using it.

- Side-deployments in pursuits are very oppressive, and it doesn't really make sense that the enemy fleet can outflank you while you are running away from them, if that was the case why not simply surround you and prevent the retreat ? 

- How about introducing an insurance system ? Pay monthly fees on your ships but receive a payout in case of loss, so that you can have something to build upon if you lose your entire fleet.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. But what do you all think ?

[JAL28]

Insurance system already exists in Nexerelin though, so I am not sure if it could be coming to the vanilla game

[Thaago]

I like a bunch of the ideas you've presented, but I'll offer a few tips as someone who initially hated iron mode, but now enjoy it a lot more than regular.

Total losses are absolutely brutal, but the game gives a lot of tools to avoid them. In regular play where we can reload a save there's little incentive to use them as ambushes/too hard fights are somewhat rare they take away from something else (either a skill point, or ship OP, or supplies/money/efficiency), but in iron mode they are worthwhile. Some of these tools are:

Avoiding Fights:

• Sensor mechanics, in particular the sensors skill. With it and hullmods the player can see farther then they are seen (even with the 1000 penalty from full burn sometimes). For bounties this lets you scout the target before they see you and lets you complete many missions without ever fighting at all (surveillance, dead drop, smuggling come to mind).
• Alternatively, transverse jumps. Most enemy ambushes are at jump points, so if taking navigation instead of sensors never use a jump point. This doesn't help with bounty hunting or missions though and is usually a worse choice.
• Terrain: Either through hiding or 'dragging' the enemy through it, the player can either hide from or avoid larger enemy fleets.
• Burn level: be very wary of decreasing burn level through larger ships: a lone cruiser with little else is not enough to justify getting caught. This is one of the reasons the starter Apogee is a bad idea.
• In combat speed for retreats: Usually a concern for civilian ships (and the Apogee. Starter Apogee is a bad idea). Unstable injector helps some, and militarized subsystems into safety overides helps even more if the ship has the OP. Drams are notable for being able to mount both and are essentially uncatchable in a retreat if built that way. This costs credits by lowering the efficiency of logistics ships.

Risk mitigation in fights:

• Have goals for what you want to achieve in combat and retreat early if things aren't working out before a collapse happens. Eg: if playing a fleet of hunter frigates and after a few minutes your ships have only managed to kill a few outlying frigates, but can't get through to the enemy's main ships, retreat before taking losses. This costs credits, either because of needing to start the fight again in a new round or by simply running away and not getting the bounty money. (And also needing the logistics capacity to get back to friendly space after running.)
• Even in situations where you want to retreat on the main map without any fight, consider fighting a limited battle beforehand. Even enemies that can't be beat can often be damaged enough that they don't want to chase (there's an indicator in the upper right on the tactical screen I think that tells exactly how much needs to be destroyed). If you can take out their high burn ships they might not be able to do anything more than harass you even if you don't meet the retreat threshold.
• Consider if reinforced bulkheads is worth it. On the one hand, it lowers combat ship performance by costing offense. On the other hand, it mitigates risk of losing ships by letting them be recoverable (D mods are part of amortized cost). Ships with officers usually have another ability making them recoverable anyways, but fragile ships without officers can benefit from them.

Weathering losses:
This all comes down to money, and the money situation has a clear solution: use the industry tree. Even in its currently not so great state, the industry tree gives the player a huge amount of money between more cargo, less supplies/fuel spent on maintenance, cheaper repairs, and less D mods/repairs granting a free ship every other month. It doesn't hurt that the second industry skill has one of the better combat skills too! There's a legit complaint that the industry takes away combat power efficiency, and it does, but in the early to mid game the player is still expanding their fleet and hasn't hit the fleet deployment limit: having more ships because of more money is better than having more efficiency in combat. That ends once the player reaches the deployment limit, but thats usually getting to endgame anyways where money isn't a concern, so a single skill point can swap the skills towards pure combat.

[Megas]

For me, the crux of the problem is how binary the outcomes of fight tend to be: in the vast majority of cases you either crush the opposing fleet, or you can't take them and they crush you. Of course there is a middle-ground where the fight is even and usually results in you taking heavy losses but still winning the fight, but I found that this happens very rarely in practice.

Heavy losses of any sort might as well be a defeat, given the expense of replacing ships.

Bounty rewards seem to assume flawless victory to be profitable.  That is, player side should be overpowered and can totally crush the enemy.  If player cannot manage that, he should not try to fight them.

[Alliostra]

I'd really like to see the changes you mentioned, this feels like a much better way of making being caught less punishing instead of removing consequences for being caught (almost) altogether through story points.

Another way to make escaping more viable would be by making progress in the clean disengage meter spawn your non-deployed ships closer to the escape zone in a pursuit scenario the closer you are to a clean disengage rating, so attacking with frigates and fast destroyers could buy your dominators and enforcers some time to make their way to the exit. This would also be a great encouragement to always have a few frigates in your fleet, too.

[Amoebka]

I'll offer a few tips as someone who initially hated iron mode, but now enjoy it a lot more than regular

While everything said is true, it still illustrates the fundamental problem with ironman in starsector - losses are easy to avoid completely, but devastating if not avoided. This is the opposite of how good ironman games are designed. Those tend to throw unavoidable bad situations your way, but allow you to mitigate most of the losses with skillful play. Starsector, in contrast, is extremely swingy. One bad combat can set you 4 hours of progress back.

[Thaago]

I'd argue that the game does allow the player to mitigate losses through skillful play, its just that as players we usually have no need to do so because of reloading. So people either don't know the ways to do so or are unpracticed/rusty at it. That was my experience with transitioning to iron mode at least, I had absolutely no idea how to use the retreat mechanics to my benefit until I needed to instead of playing fights multiple times.

[Megas]

One bad combat can set you 4 hours of progress back.

This is why I do not play Iron.  For me, reloading is faster than recovering from a loss, which is why I abuse reloads.

In some other games, it was faster to start over with a new character than it was to recover a character crippled by permanent stat drain or swap, and people suicided crippled characters to get on with it.

I'd argue that the game does allow the player to mitigate losses through skillful play, its just that as players we usually have no need to do so because of reloading. So people either don't know the ways to do so or are unpracticed/rusty at it.

Or do not want to waste time recovering from an effective level drain and grinding back to square one.

[Pratapon51]

More than monetary losses involved, I find I sometimes reload nonetheless because irreplaceable ships are lost in a fight prior/during a battle where I could have or was attempting to retreat. It's one thing to lose a few generic cruisers, it's another to lose the Zig or a HVB supercruiser.

[Phenir]

Instead of immediately retreating from a large enemy fleet, you should fight them anyway. If you destroy enough ships (there's an indicator in the top right during the battle), you can retreat from the battle and then escape the enemy fleet without the chase battle. There's also the option of keeping your fleet small and fast so they can't force a battle and you only lose some CR from harassment. I'm not sure on the exacts of that option though.

[JAL28]

I don’t believe the AI ever skips out on pursuing your fleet unless forced by a Story Point to harass, or by sufficient losses to let you run. There is literally no other way AI fleets will not pursue, whether it is allied or enemy. At least, in my experience.

[Phenir]

I went and tested it a bit, it seems to actually be related to burn speed. If your slowest ship has higher burn speed than their fastest ship, you can just leave and they will only harass you. I spawned a large pirate fleet whose fastest ship was 10 burn. With an eagle with augmented engines (10 burn) I couldn't escape but with a falcon with augmented (11 burn) I could. Navigation skill doesn't help with this since it's not a boost to individual ship burn speed. I imagine tugs also wouldn't help but the skill that increases the burn speed of civ ships should. This also means a fleet with a falcon P is difficult to escape since all your ships would need to be a base burn of 10 + augmented engines.

[TLW]

I went and tested it a bit, it seems to actually be related to burn speed. If your slowest ship has higher burn speed than their fastest ship, you can just leave and they will only harass you. I spawned a large pirate fleet whose fastest ship was 10 burn. With an eagle with augmented engines (10 burn) I couldn't escape but with a falcon with augmented (11 burn) I could. Navigation skill doesn't help with this since it's not a boost to individual ship burn speed. I imagine tugs also wouldn't help but the skill that increases the burn speed of civ ships should. This also means a fleet with a falcon P is difficult to escape since all your ships would need to be a base burn of 10 + augmented engines.

Does that include the +1 burn to non-military ships skill? 

[Brainwright]

I'd argue that the game does allow the player to mitigate losses through skillful play, its just that as players we usually have no need to do so because of reloading. So people either don't know the ways to do so or are unpracticed/rusty at it. That was my experience with transitioning to iron mode at least, I had absolutely no idea how to use the retreat mechanics to my benefit until I needed to instead of playing fights multiple times.

I'll start sending those 10 Atlas Mk II and 20 Colosssus MK II fleets into your game from the dead drop quests, and we'll see how much you like iron mode.

There are way too many fleets that find you in hyperspace, flying full speed on an intercept, and from well outside sensor range for iron mode to be worth it.

[Brainwright]

Heavy losses of any sort might as well be a defeat, given the expense of replacing ships.

Bounty rewards seem to assume flawless victory to be profitable.  That is, player side should be overpowered and can totally crush the enemy.  If player cannot manage that, he should not try to fight them.

Let's be clear : the primary problem with iron mode is not expense.  It is the fact many ships cannot be replaced due to random market selections and random blueprint finds.

I would much rather mothball a cratered wreck than try to go find another Valkyrie after one gets zapped.