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Author Topic: Starsector 0.95.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 248950 times)

Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #225 on: November 10, 2021, 06:52:18 PM »

How much were the substantial HP and armor buffs for Legion and Dominator?
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TheLaughingDead

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #226 on: November 10, 2021, 07:30:44 PM »

Oh, how's this for a thought: damage to armor reduced based on current ship speed. The faster you're going, the more shots 'glance off'!

Balancing could be tricky, and might require scaling differently for different ship classes... but at least the notion of it seems good: a small benefit for slow, high-armor ships, a larger benefit for faster, less-armored ships, and a hopefully-noticeable boost to durability while Burn Drive is active.

Dunno, depending as much on how as where you get hit, more shots would be 'absorbed,' not necessarily 'glance off.'  If you punch me in the chin, the difference between a KO, a broken jaw and sore jaw are like a few cm, but also generally dependent on how you punched me; an uppercut might KO, but a jab likely would end skidding off to the side as landing squarely.  And that's not even accounting for strong vs weak chins!  Maybe not the best example, but you get the idea.

Put another way, flying straight into a projectile (ie, exactly opposite vector), stuff isn't likely to glance off unless the surface it hits is angled as opposed to perpendicular (straight hit) or parallel (straight miss).  But game already uses polar geometry for tracking threat vectors/evasion of a ship in battle, so math/code already exists in game for basically doing this.  But definitely would require some sort of scaling for different ship classes, and prolly a second scaling parameter regarding any arbitrary ship's level of armor (since theoretically stuff more likely to ricochet off of armor, I guess).

But this is the kinda change that would require A LOT of simulation to verify balance, so maybe in the next update...

I believe what Wyvern is referring to is a simple armour damage reduction percentage related to speed. The 'glancing off' bit was put in quotation marks as an in-game lore explanation for this effect, and would not actually require anything so extensive or excessive.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #227 on: November 10, 2021, 08:58:15 PM »


I am a bit curious where your ideas for the elite Impact Mitigation effect are going, given the 90% max mitigation being duplicated in Polarized armor.  Where you looking for something that helps at high armor levels and or small weapon hits (which is what the 85%-90% does), but doesn't quite stack so much (1/3 less damage during the maximum mitigation period extends it by a factor of 1.5,.e. 50% more, while 2/3 extends it by by a factor of 3).

...

Would something like a simple 10% more real armor, or +75/150/200/250 (tweak numbers as needed) real extra armor based on size, repaired instantly at the end of every engagement work?  Where "repaired" is just the has an elite Impact Mitigation officer piloting it at deployment time, so it adds say +250 to whatever the armor was there as the ship is deployed into the fight.  At the end, if it's over normal maximum in any cell, just remove excess.

I'm actually pretty open to what the effect might be - ideally it'd be something that's at least semi-interesting gameplay-wise, and also doesn't come with the problem of, for example, making most kinetics near-useless vs hull, like +150 effective armor did.

The issue with +X armor (not effective, just at the start) is that it wouldn't apply once command is transferred. Generally, the goal of the design is to have skill effects transfer over - although a couple do break that rule; most notably Missile Specialization. I kind of wonder - is "giving your intended flagship to an officer with Missile Spec, and probably Reliability Engineering, and then transferring command to it after deployment to benefit from about an extra skill's worth of stuff" at all a thing? I'd guess it's probably not quite worth it, but if we pile on more bonuses that work like this...

That is a fair point.  Stack enough bonuses and some min-maxer some where will take advantage of it.  I will admit if I'm pulling solo Odyssey shenanigans, I'll load it up with a missile expertise officer and switch into it, since my officers have nothing better to do in that scenario.

Interesting gameplay-wise is perhaps a bit tough given it has traditionally I simply take more shots to die kind of skill, which definitely makes the character or officer stronger, but doesn't feel like it changes the ship fundamentally.



Oh, how's this for a thought: damage to armor reduced based on current ship speed. The faster you're going, the more shots 'glance off'!

Balancing could be tricky, and might require scaling differently for different ship classes... but at least the notion of it seems good: a small benefit for slow, high-armor ships, a larger benefit for faster, less-armored ships, and a hopefully-noticeable boost to durability while Burn Drive is active.

Extra armor durability during Burn drive would be amusing, I admit, and potentially really useful.  It does make it fairly niche though.  There is quite a large range in speeds in each ship class, say from 25 of the Onslaught to the 70 of the Odyssey.  Not to mention plasma burn drive.  It also ties into gameplay.

What are mechanics and behavior we can tie into?  Maneuverability, speed.  Either modifying those numbers, or basing it off what you're doing (i.e. the proportional bonus to speed suggestion).  There's weapons fire state, although that doesn't make much sense.  There's shield state and flux levels.  Polarized armor already has stuff proportional to flux level though.  There's shield state though.  Your armor could become better if you have no shields up (which would indirectly make damping field better).  Reinforcing internal structures in a powered way somehow.

You could make the armor trade for winning the flux war explicit.  You reduce your current flux levels by real armor lost.  I.e. take a hit that make you lose X armor, reduce your built up hard flux by Y.  If no armor was lost (i.e. it was all already destroyed in that cell) then no benefit.  It does mean if an Onslaught eats a Reaper, it suddenly perhaps drops it's flux level by a few thousand.  You're essentially storing waste flux in the armor sections, and if it get's blown off, it takes the flux with it.

Alternatively, increase flux dissipation while shields are down is perhaps simpler to communicate, and incentives actually armor tanking more.

Some crazier ideas:  Ramming bonus when impacting on the ship sprite instead of shields, and reduced or completely negated damage from ship explosions.

Actually, for unshielded ships like Ramparts, or phase ships like the afflictor, being immune to ship/station explosions would be a fairly big quality of life improvement.  You could alternatively simply limit how much damage AoE effects do to armor cells in total, so that things like Reapers still make holes, but they are smaller holes.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2021, 08:59:49 PM by Hiruma Kai »
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SonnaBanana

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #228 on: November 10, 2021, 09:25:16 PM »

With support doctrine, I believe it would be safer to give more Elite skills benefits to carriers/fighters.
This way players would be forced to choose between a hefty DP reduction and an assortment of other bonuses.
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DaShiv

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #229 on: November 11, 2021, 01:22:29 AM »

  • "Defend" assignment can now be placed on friendly ships
    • Right-clicking a powerful group of ships onto a friendly will also create this assignment

I assume this only refers to the default behavior - will the player be able to manually toggle between Escort or Defend regardless of group size of assigned ships?
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Gothars

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #230 on: November 11, 2021, 01:50:36 AM »

Oh, how's this for a thought: damage to armor reduced based on current ship speed. The faster you're going, the more shots 'glance off'!

Balancing could be tricky, and might require scaling differently for different ship classes... but at least the notion of it seems good: a small benefit for slow, high-armor ships, a larger benefit for faster, less-armored ships, and a hopefully-noticeable boost to durability while Burn Drive is active.

Cool idea! Mh, a simpler to balance (and play with) version would be if ships just get a flat (scaling inversely with ships size) armor boost with their zero flux speed boost. Would be great for escaping or tactical repositioning. Or, if mobility systems should be buffed, get that flat armor boost whenever the ship is moving faster than its nominal top speed.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #231 on: November 11, 2021, 05:27:32 AM »

Another thing:  If fights against human fleets become even larger because they get more ships to close the gap with Ordos with Radiants, then map size needs to be bigger too.  Having and fighting a fleet with ten capitals and twenty cruisers is lame when both sides can deploy only a quarter or third of their fleet at time due to DP limits even at max size.  (I still miss 500 map size.)

What is the point of big fleets when we cannot use them (because over half of our fleet is stuck on the sidelines like lazy bums)?  And backup ships to replace those lost in battle is not a good idea for the player's fleet when rewards are calibrated toward flawless victory.  Meanwhile, the enemy is expected to run through all of their ships in waves and do not care if they lose because they have unlimited fleets and resources.  If I lose one of my capitals, I pay more than my bounty reward to replace it.  Meanwhile, I am expected to chew through about ten capitals and twenty cruisers of a human enemy endgame fleet without losing a ship.  If I can do this, my fleet is highly overpowered, but I need to be overpowered if I want to make money instead of losing it.  Otherwise, I am better off avoiding combat altogether and abuse trade or raid exploits to make money.

Hopefully, 60 DP Radiant will shrink Ordos fleets, and the gap between humans and Ordos, enough.
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #232 on: November 11, 2021, 08:06:11 AM »

Patch notes included some notes on reducing the size of bounty fleets. I assume (and hope) that if Alex increases their challenge, it will be by giving NPC fleets more fleetwide skills.

Caymon Joestar

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #233 on: November 11, 2021, 08:20:20 AM »

Another thing:  If fights against human fleets become even larger because they get more ships to close the gap with Ordos with Radiants, then map size needs to be bigger too.  Having and fighting a fleet with ten capitals and twenty cruisers is lame when both sides can deploy only a quarter or third of their fleet at time due to DP limits even at max size.  (I still miss 500 map size.)

What is the point of big fleets when we cannot use them (because over half of our fleet is stuck on the sidelines like lazy bums)?  And backup ships to replace those lost in battle is not a good idea for the player's fleet when rewards are calibrated toward flawless victory.  Meanwhile, the enemy is expected to run through all of their ships in waves and do not care if they lose because they have unlimited fleets and resources.  If I lose one of my capitals, I pay more than my bounty reward to replace it.  Meanwhile, I am expected to chew through about ten capitals and twenty cruisers of a human enemy endgame fleet without losing a ship.  If I can do this, my fleet is highly overpowered, but I need to be overpowered if I want to make money instead of losing it.  Otherwise, I am better off avoiding combat altogether and abuse trade or raid exploits to make money.

Hopefully, 60 DP Radiant will shrink Ordos fleets, and the gap between humans and Ordos, enough.

What do you mean calibrated toward flawless wins? No one goes for flawless wins, it's not super realistic and recovering your ships is super easy, we have like 10 different ways of making sure the ships are always recoverable. The reward difference between flawless and non-flawless is super negligible.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #234 on: November 11, 2021, 08:26:57 AM »

Unless you have Field Repairs, ships lost will have d-mods if recovered, and unless you build for Derelict Contingent where you want d-mods, replacing or restoring ships will cost a lot of money and some money plus story points.  Take a stock capital, about 500k-700k to repair.  Endgame bounty reward is about 300k-350k.  As for loot, consider that an even trade for all of the supplies and fuel consumed to get to the warzone and back.

When both sides want to throw several capital ships at each other, yet the payout is not enough to replace one capital ship, fighting is stupid unless one side can completely erase the other without significant casualties.  That is not a challenge, and when rewards are that stingy, I do not want a challenge, because seeking a challenge and losing (which can be as small as a single capital lost) is either a reload or time wasted flawlessly winning back losses.
« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 08:29:49 AM by Megas »
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Demetrious

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #235 on: November 11, 2021, 10:26:45 AM »

I'm late to post this reply, but I just wanted to say:

Alex, the sheer number of AI improvements on this changelog are absolutely beautiful.

AI is the one aspect of the game that you can't trumpet as "NEW SHINY CONTENT!!1!ONE" but it is absolutely one of the most important parts of the core gameplay and I am really, really happy to see how much work you've put into it. Not just bugfixing, but flat-out improvements. Bravo sir.
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FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #236 on: November 11, 2021, 10:27:00 AM »

It’s true that losing a capital does cost half a million+ but I can’t think of the last time where I lost a capital in a fight I had any business getting into. The more common cost is more like sub-100k if I’m a little unlucky and lose a destroyer or couple frigates.

Thing is, I’m drowning in credits by the time I’m thinking about removing D-mods. I either have a few ships that have d-mods I can stomach or I find/purchase them pristine. I do lose ships but I can live with the consequences until I can afford to start doing wholesale removal.

One thought I had is reducing the cost of D-mod removal by 25% for every S-mod on a ship. Typically, I’m only going to S-mod ships that I care about and restoring favorites could be a little cheaper than restoring rank-and-file vessels.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #237 on: November 11, 2021, 10:36:43 AM »

If a pristine 70% CR Onslaught goes down, you are out 233 supplies for CR recovery. That is 7.8% of a 300k bounty payout instead of 1.3%.

(I am not sure how much supply cost the hull/armor repairs add.)

If you are willing to suck the d-mods, which are usually not crippling, I think the cost is acceptable. Bad, but acceptable.
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Sarissofoi

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #238 on: November 11, 2021, 12:04:53 PM »

Release the update right now.
So we can test it and put real feedback, no some speculations.
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bobucles

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #239 on: November 11, 2021, 12:26:04 PM »

A pristine sparkling fleet is meant to depreciate quickly. That's not a case of expecting flawless victories, that's a case of being overly picky with the fleet. An ordinary fleet has scratches and scars. Garbage ships get cycled out when a new hot ship shows up on the battlefield, so the cost of replacing ships is nearly free. The updated S-mod removal mechanics will make ship cycling a lot friendlier, since you get the bonus XP back. Losing out on S-mods(I.E. story points) was the biggest issue with standard fleet attrition.

It might be nice for bounty fleets to have fewer d-mods than average, especially for the flagship and select officers. A bounty captain with field repairs will definitely have higher quality ships than the faction standard. Better quality ships are more dangerous, and are also more juicy picks for the loot screen.
« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 12:28:09 PM by bobucles »
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