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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing  (Read 1343 times)

sketchesofpayne

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Heard about Starsector through Splattercat's YouTube channel.  I've been playing for a couple weeks now.  Started by playing the tutorial and then going around hunting pirates and bounties with eight wolf frigates and two Condor light carriers.

After a while I started a new game as a trader with an Apogee cruiser.  I soon learned that I needed to be quick to capitalize on surpluses and shortages.  I went buzzing around the core systems building a merchant fleet.  I was putting Efficiency Overhaul hull mods on all my ships hoping it would reduce my overall daily supply consumption.  (I was also putting Unstable Injector mods on all of them too.  I thought it would help me evade pirates, and I originally thought it also made my fleet move faster, but now I guess it would actually be the max burn rate that determines that?)

One thing that messed me up several times was accidentally departing overloaded with fuel, crew, or cargo and not noticing until I had already burned half way to the jump point.  It's easy to lose a ton of resources if you're slow to react!

A huge part of my income was, and still is, buying loads of organics from Qaras and Jangala and blasting off toward wherever will give me the best price on them.  My black market trading eventually got the Hegemony angry at me, so I did a bunch of bounties for them to get my reputation back to normal.  At some point the Persean League got miffed with me, but I was so busy dashing from system to system chasing the markets that I'm not really sure when or why that happened.

For a while I was running with a fleet of ten Tarsus freighters, five Buffalo freighters, five Venture cruisers, five Wolf frigates, and a Dram tanker.  I went on like that until I had $5,000,000 in the bank.

In this playthrough Durzahk had an inhabitable desert world with poor farmland and a mineral rich world both orbiting the same gas giant.  So I built a farming and commerce colony on the first one; a mining, refining, and heavy industry colony on the second; and a fuel production and volitiles mining colony on the third.  All right next to each other.  I've shelled out the cash for hazard pay until each of them got to size 6.

I also have two colonies further out that I'm building up.  I'm scraping together the cash to invest more into them.  For the past while I've been alternating between zooming around the core worlds to raise funds and then mounting up expeditions to go out and destroy pirate and Pather bases that are disrupting my colonies.

Right now I have five Atlas freighters and seven Venture cruisers that I do trading with.  I put the Atlas freighters and a couple Ventures in storage and swap in two Eagle cruisers, two Mora carriers, three Drover carriers, and some Wolf Frigates to head out and cause some damage.  I've got a few Hammerheads, a Dominator, Eradicator, and some other miscellaneous ships that I use as well.

In my travels I found a Paragon battleship.  I keep it stashed at my colony further out.  I only bring it along when I really need the extra firepower, because I can't afford the maintenance costs to drag it around everywhere I go.  Having it really helped when pirates launched a dedicated assault on my outer colony.  I baited away individual pirate fleets as they came in to whittle down their numbers.  Then had a final showdown defending my orbital station against the large fleet containing the pirate's three Atlas combat freighters.



Thoughts so far:

Things went smoother when I understood that supplies are like a second fuel meter that constantly ticks down and also doubles as your "health potions" so to speak.

I've made contacts, but I'm always so busy that I don't always get back to where they reside.  And when I do they never have anything for me.  I really wish I could set up a bunch of trade contacts and then bounce between them for missions and contracts to do.
"Hey, should we stop by Nortia and see if what's-his-face has something for us?"
"There's no time!  We gotta move this cargo before supply and demand shifts again!  Besides, with the fleet we're dragging along behind us we'd burn through a dozen crates of supplies just flying over there and back."


Do ships only count as destroyers or cruisers if they are explicitly called such in their description?  In other words, do carriers and combat freighters get bonuses from things like the "Coordinated Maneuvers" skill?

I was surprised there are no mechanics for surrender and ransom.

Wish there was a way to make salvaging and refurbishing ships a viable business.  They just don't sell for enough to make up for the supply cost of recovering them and flying them back somewhere to sell them.

It would be cool to have a cruiser-sized salvage rig that had a chance to remove d-mods when salavaging ships.  Or it could be interesting to be able to cannibalize ships of the same hull type to assemble "rebuilt" versions that got rid of the other d-mods and replaced them with a dedicated "rebuilt" d-mod of some type.

It would be nice to have pre-made systems thrown into the mix of randomized systems that contained a mini story quest within them.  Maybe some pre-scripted standalone encounters.  Or just some interesting hand-crafted setpieces to find.

Rather than relying on the black market and avoiding tariffs to make money as a trader/merchant I would rather have more opportunities to take legitimate delivery contracts.  I run into potential smuggling jobs all the time, but I'd like more of the normal trade contracts too.  I did eventually learn to look for invasions and other trade disruptions that create opportunities where demand was high enough in enough different goods at one location to make tariffed trading really profitable.

I had been wanting to play a mostly legit trader/merchant, but the only way to make money in a reasonable time-frame is by trading with pirates and on the black market.  That's fine when I want to play a smuggler or mercenary type career, but I'd like to have the option to be a more upstanding business magnate.  As it stands, I spend a lot of time smashing up pirate bases in the fringes, yet in the core sector they're my biggest customer!  Oh, what a double life I lead!

I think tariffs ought to be affected by your faction relationships.  If you have a maxed out positive relationship with a faction the tariffs should drop down to 15%.  Or maybe you should be able to buy "preferred trading partner" certifications for different planets.  Where a one-time fee drops your tariffs at that particular location by 5-10% permanently.

Asteroid belts and navigation hazards should be harsh in places you've rarely been.  But if you've navigated through a system a hundred times you should eventually be able to cruise through its asteroid belts at full burn with no problem.  You've been through there so many times you know what to watch out for and where the main hazards are.  Maybe you've flown through a particular electromagnetic or radiation hazard enough times that you've come up with tweaks to your shields and engine coils that mitigate the worst of it.

It would be fun to be able to "re-fit" the color scheme or paint job of your ships.  Or at least have a hue/color slider for the details and pin-striping.




Anyway, if there's stuff I've overlooked or you have some tips or insights I'd love to hear it.
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SCC

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2022, 02:12:22 PM »

(I was also putting Unstable Injector mods on all of them too.  I thought it would help me evade pirates, and I originally thought it also made my fleet move faster, but now I guess it would actually be the max burn rate that determines that?)
Correct. Speed in the campaign is determined by the burn level.

One thing that messed me up several times was accidentally departing overloaded with fuel, crew, or cargo and not noticing until I had already burned half way to the jump point.  It's easy to lose a ton of resources if you're slow to react!
It really could use a bigger warning.

Do ships only count as destroyers or cruisers if they are explicitly called such in their description?  In other words, do carriers and combat freighters get bonuses from things like the "Coordinated Maneuvers" skill?
Actually all ships are one of four sizes, even if the game doesn't explicitly spell it out. You can most easily discern what size a given ship is by looking at its base (unmodified) sensor strength is: 30 for frigates, 60 for destroyers, 90 for cruisers, 150 for capital ships.

Wish there was a way to make salvaging and refurbishing ships a viable business.  They just don't sell for enough to make up for the supply cost of recovering them and flying them back somewhere to sell them.
It makes it easier for more combat oriented gameplay. Take a ship if it's useful, scrap it without worrying about lost potential money if not.

Rather than relying on the black market and avoiding tariffs to make money as a trader/merchant I would rather have more opportunities to take legitimate delivery contracts.  I run into potential smuggling jobs all the time, but I'd like more of the normal trade contracts too.  I did eventually learn to look for invasions and other trade disruptions that create opportunities where demand was high enough in enough different goods at one location to make tariffed trading really profitable.
You can get delivery contracts in bars and from contacts. "Legit" trading being less viable than grey area is intended, since it's more dangerous (less boring) - or, at least, it's supposed to be. Alex should work on that.

Kriby

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2022, 02:23:38 PM »

Actually all ships are one of four sizes, even if the game doesn't explicitly spell it out. You can most easily discern what size a given ship is by looking at its base (unmodified) sensor strength is: 30 for frigates, 60 for destroyers, 90 for cruisers, 150 for capital ships.

WHELP. That's a good tip! I've just been installing/uninstalling unstable engines and looking at the speed increase. I sort of think there could be a little icon for this? A simple square with a letter (F/D/C/CC)?
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Thaago

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2022, 02:25:09 PM »

Welcome to the forum!

It is surprisingly hard to know what size class a ship is and its a lot more important than it used to be, so some sort of indicator would be nice.
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Grievous69

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2022, 02:34:12 PM »

It is surprisingly hard to know what size class a ship is and its a lot more important than it used to be, so some sort of indicator would be nice.
Yup, it's something veeery easy for veterans, as there are lots of tells of ship size (sensor profile as mentioned, number of max caps and vents, cost of hullmods). But those are all things which don't mean a thing to a brand new player. Sure for lots of ships there's a category at the end of the variant name, and then you come across a "combat carrier" and wonder what the hell is that.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2022, 02:35:09 PM »

I've made contacts, but I'm always so busy that I don't always get back to where they reside.  And when I do they never have anything for me.  I really wish I could set up a bunch of trade contacts and then bounce between them for missions and contracts to do.
That's actually a legitimate issue currently, super odd that there aren't interstellar phones in a future with interstellar communications for market data... but there's a mod for that!
I was surprised there are no mechanics for surrender and ransom.
So is basically everyone else, but general consensus is that game doesn't really want to give a player an excuse to skip battles, since steep learning curve and a big part of game.  Seriously, not hating on newbs or anything, but curve is waaay steeper than most realize; however, also much more fulfilling once you stop being Sisyphus and finally get that boulder up the hill!  I mean, mastering the curve requires both figuring out piloting, weapon layout, CR mastery and skill interaction just for player's ship, PLUS also learning how the orders system works for rest of your fleet (here's a hint:  CP will regenerate slowly, but player actually gets a window to issue orders per CP use.  So pause game and issue a bunch of orders at once).
Wish there was a way to make salvaging and refurbishing ships a viable business.  They just don't sell for enough to make up for the supply cost of recovering them and flying them back somewhere to sell them.
Can't, too easily exploited for $$ by average player.  What is interesting is that cost of D-mod ships also had weird cost issues when buying (I guess a ship with a single D-mod is same cost as 4 D-mods).
It would be cool to have a cruiser-sized salvage rig that had a chance to remove d-mods when salavaging ships.  Or it could be interesting to be able to cannibalize ships of the same hull type to assemble "rebuilt" versions that got rid of the other d-mods and replaced them with a dedicated "rebuilt" d-mod of some type.
Agreed, kinda weird that biggest salvage ship is only a destroyer class.  Balance mostly likely achieved by having terrible speed, so would require some Ox tugs in fleet (since S-modding in augmented burn drive prolly not worth it for big salvage rig).  Alternatively, game could split hull mod so there is a better version that affects ship speed, and less efficient version that doesn't affect ship speed.
It would be nice to have pre-made systems thrown into the mix of randomized systems that contained a mini story quest within them.  Maybe some pre-scripted standalone encounters.  Or just some interesting hand-crafted setpieces to find.
Prolly something added with final polish update, along with all that missing fun lore from just so so many planet ruins
Rather than relying on the black market and avoiding tariffs to make money as a trader/merchant I would rather have more opportunities to take legitimate delivery contracts.  I run into potential smuggling jobs all the time, but I'd like more of the normal trade contracts too.  I did eventually learn to look for invasions and other trade disruptions that create opportunities where demand was high enough in enough different goods at one location to make tariffed trading really profitable.
This used to be much more viable, but 0.95 update shifted basically all the trade contracts into the contact system.  Player used to just be able to fly around and get trade contracts, now they have to land and ask; very tedious...
I had been wanting to play a mostly legit trader/merchant, but the only way to make money in a reasonable time-frame is by trading with pirates and on the black market.  That's fine when I want to play a smuggler or mercenary type career, but I'd like to have the option to be a more upstanding business magnate.  As it stands, I spend a lot of time smashing up pirate bases in the fringes, yet in the core sector they're my biggest customer!  Oh, what a double life I lead!
Game specifically forces player to use black market by setting arbitrarily high trade tariffs.  C'est la vie.
I think tariffs ought to be affected by your faction relationships.  If you have a maxed out positive relationship with a faction the tariffs should drop down to 15%.  Or maybe you should be able to buy "preferred trading partner" certifications for different planets.  Where a one-time fee drops your tariffs at that particular location by 5-10% permanently.
There's a mod for that.  Actually a few mods that do something like it, but only one specifically specializes in doing it.
Asteroid belts and navigation hazards should be harsh in places you've rarely been.  But if you've navigated through a system a hundred times you should eventually be able to cruise through its asteroid belts at full burn with no problem.  You've been through there so many times you know what to watch out for and where the main hazards are.  Maybe you've flown through a particular electromagnetic or radiation hazard enough times that you've come up with tweaks to your shields and engine coils that mitigate the worst of it.
Space hazards are dynamic.  Asteroids aren't locked in place.  But hitting six asteroids in a row late game is super annoying and can really kill CR at inopportune points in game.  Multiple solutions have been suggested, I still stand by mine that extra Ox tugs should reduce asteroid strike chance.  I'm sure someone will mod a fix eventually anyways...
It would be fun to be able to "re-fit" the color scheme or paint job of your ships.  Or at least have a hue/color slider for the details and pin-striping.
More 0.99 polish stuff, lotta sprite recoloring for little payoff.  But someday!
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Megas

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2022, 07:50:59 PM »

Surrendering was in releases before 0.6a.  But that was chance whether a ship escaped, captured without a fight, or sabotaged and lost if a side auto-retreated.  There was no ransom in any case.  Acquiring ships had at least three different systems over the releases, changed once in 0.6a, and then again to what we have today in 0.8a.
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sketchesofpayne

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2022, 10:06:06 AM »

Thanks for the replies!  I've played more and have a few more questions and observations:

The markets seem fairly reasonable in their behavior.  At the beginning the surpluses and shortages were predictable.  But as conflicts happened, Pirates and Pathers caused upset, and colonies grew over time, things became much more dynamic.

I went into one system where the Hegemony and Luddic Church were fighting amidst ongoing pirate activity.  It had caused big shortages in the independent colony there.  My little merchant armada flew in and dropped off the goods.  Then we set about collecting system bounties hunting down stray pirate fleets.  A couple of times I was able to join a Pirate/Church battle in progress and up my reputation with the Luddic Church as a result.

I'm still in a bit of a loop of doing some trading in the core for a while then arming up and setting off to take out Pirate and Luddic Path bases in the periphery.  Each time I do, I swing by my two outer colony systems to check up on them.  If I'm lucky there will be some bounties to hunt down somewhere along my route.  If the offending base is quite far out I'll be able to hit some exploration objectives in the area or survey nearby systems.

A couple times convenient slipstreams gave me an excuse to survey systems farther out, letting me make the trip without burning so many resources.

My six colonies together have just begun to turn an overall net profit each month of around $100k.  They're on worlds that are generally resource-rich but hazardous.  I care more about their astrographic location than their earning potential.  I've been sinking all my money into building them up.  I usually see people talking about colonies as a revenue source, but for me they've sorta been my end goal.  Building my own worlds and faction with blackjack, and hookers!.


Hauling around my main combat fleet with three Dominator, five Eagle, three Heron, three Drover, two Apogee, two Paragons, plus a tanker and a few freighters and frigates, I'm burning through about 14 supplies a day.  So when I set off to go kick over someone's sand castle and start a fight I don't leave without 3-4k supplies and 2-3k fuel.

Is this typical?  I feel like replenishing my Combat Readiness post-battle eats up supplies like your mom in a donut shop crazy.  And is my fleet setup reasonable?  It has been working pretty well, even without the Paragons.  I used to leave the Paragons at home because of their maintenance costs, but it seemed a shame not to use them!


In battles I keep my ships together and wait for enemy ships to get themselves out of position and then pounce on them as they do.  If I can't focus them down and kill them and they pull back into their lines, I call off the kill order and close up my ranks again.  Once I can take out a few of their bruisers I slowly work toward taking down their flagship.  Once that's done I push aggressively and the enemy fleet usually ends up scattering. 

When I'm outmatched I send in all my carriers with some cruisers and frigates to screen for them.  I keep my fleet in a really tight formation and just gradually wear down the enemy's CR against my fighters and bombers.  About the time I'm running out of fighters the enemy's big ships should be exhausted.  I retreat the carriers and frigates and bring in a fresh wing of cruisers who are then able to push in and clean house.

Are there other tactics I could be trying?

I largely use the autofit configurations for ships.  One custom setup I use on the two Apogee cruisers is getting rid of their small point defence weapons and investing those Ordinance Points into an ECCM to go with their Locust SRM Launcher.  It makes the Locust way more effective.  Losing their small point defence weapons isn't a problem.  I have enough point defence among my fleet for missiles and the Locust SRM takes out fighters.

Are there particular autofit loadouts to avoid?  They've all seemed pretty serviceable so far.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2022, 10:21:43 AM »

Hauling around my main combat fleet with three Dominator, five Eagle, three Heron, three Drover, two Apogee, two Paragons, plus a tanker and a few freighters and frigates, I'm burning through about 14 supplies a day.  So when I set off to go kick over someone's sand castle and start a fight I don't leave without 3-4k supplies and 2-3k fuel.

Is this typical?  I feel like replenishing my Combat Readiness post-battle eats up supplies like your mom in a donut shop crazy.  And is my fleet setup reasonable?  It has been working pretty well, even without the Paragons.  I used to leave the Paragons at home because of their maintenance costs, but it seemed a shame not to use them!
That's very likely way too many ships. You can only deploy 240 DP at a time and some skill benefits start decreasing if you have more than 240 DP worth of ships (unless you have edited config files). Most of those ships are probably just sitting in your fleet never getting deployed and sucking up resources/cutting into skill bonuses. My fleets are typically about 10-15 combat ships tops. I only really want enough to use all officers and DP. 1-2 capitals at most and mix of smaller ships to use up officers and fit under 300 total DP. Usually I have like 1-2 capitals, 3-5 cruisers and 4-6 frigates.

You can definitely do other things involving more smaller ships if you take skills that buff unofficered ships, but I don't think it's every correct to have more than like 300-350 DP in your fleet, and getting it down to 240 is usually my goal (you have 400+).

Are there particular autofit loadouts to avoid?  They've all seemed pretty serviceable so far.
I think the eagle auto fit with 3 mortars is really bad, but none of them are going to be so bad that the ship is completely useless. I think it's 100% learning how to outfit ships though, you can get a lot more out of them than auto fit.
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DirectionsToL3Please

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Re: Experience, Thoughts, and Questions After First Couple Weeks Playing
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2022, 01:49:26 PM »

It would be cool to have a cruiser-sized salvage rig that had a chance to remove d-mods when salavaging ships.
In my first playthrough I saw - and, not realizing it was a unicorn, didn't bother salvaging - a Colossus with the Salvage Gantry mod in a bounty fleet. No game mods, so that was a vanilla occurrence. Wouldn't have stripped D-mods, but then again with 15 skill points at level cap I can't imagine running a build that isn't 5 deep in Industry for the Hull Restoration skill; it's just too useful a skill not to have, with almost guaranteed recovery in case of good ship loss, plus D-mod removal and +Combat Readiness on your best ships that you've invested story points into further improving.
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