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[FenMuir]

This again!  Not interested in mods to fix game problems.

Your post suggests that someone has already given you a perfectly valid means by which to resolve your self-imposed problem. This means you're just complaining.

You ultimately have two choices:
a) Just go install the damn mod and be happy, or
b) put up with not being allowed to respec every time you decide you want to captain a different ship.

/shrug

Trust me, mods make the game much, much, much better. Nearly every problem you have with the game has a mod that fixes it. It's amazing.

[Megas]

ultimately have two choices:
a) Just go install the damn mod and be happy, or
b) put up with not being allowed to respec every time you decide you want to captain a different ship.

/shrug

Trust me, mods make the game much, much, much better. Nearly every problem you have with the game has a mod that fixes it. It's amazing.

I take option c), which is hope the game changes for the better before it becomes final.  If not, I stop playing and look for another game.  In the meantime, I put up with the game as-is and report what I like and dislike about the game now, effectively option b) temporarily.

As I wrote before, I am venting my dissatisfaction with the current game as it is.  It is better than no respec at all in releases before 0.95, but the current mechanics still punishes respec when current gameplay otherwise encourages it.  Maybe it will change in newer releases before the game goes final, but maybe not.

No, I will not trust you.  I have "been there, done that" regarding mods for other games, years before I found Starsector.  I do not want to rely on mods for a solid game experience.  Game that is mediocre without mods and only good with mods is not a good game.  After playing one such game that was mediocre without mods, I thought "never again" for games that need mods to be good.

And I disagree with mods making game much, much better (unless the game was bad enough that it needed mods to fix issues that should have been fixed by the devs in the first place).  It can make the game different, maybe in a good and memorable way, maybe better than the base game, but the base game needs to be good on its own without mods.

[Cyan Leader]

I feel like the solution to your problem is to run specialized saves. It's what I do in games like Dark Souls in which respects are limited or non existing. So when you get in the mood for a super ship run, go to your save A. Want to run a carrier fleet? Go to save B. Heck, this is even better for role-playing if you're into that.

But I want to finish by saying that what you're claiming to be the game fault, it really isn't. There are reasons why Alex limited choices and most of the community seems to agree with them. I agree with you that modding games shouldn't be the go-to solution but the reason why so many people are telling you to do it is because you have run into a problem that is unique to you because of your playstyle, in other words not an inherent problem of the game.

[hydremajor]

How about a system that allows us to switch between multiple builds ?

You get presets you can aquire by, say, turning in a A.I. core and then gain the ability to switch between presets,
you gain presets based on the quality of A.I. cores, not quantity

Gamma gives 1 extra set of skills
Beta gives 2 extra sets of skills
Alpha gives 3 extra set of skills

You can only have one active at a time

Say the A.I. core is used to make a sort of personnal assistant or something, like a personnal secretary android or whatever...

[Megas]

I feel like the solution to your problem is to run specialized saves. It's what I do in games like Dark Souls in which respects are limited or non existing. So when you get in the mood for a super ship run, go to your save A. Want to run a carrier fleet? Go to save B. Heck, this is even better for role-playing if you're into that.

The game is too slow or too long to keep and support multiple saves like this.  I kill few fleets, and now I have more loot and maybe a story point or two, and more time elapsed.  And if I want something different, I go back to another save and repeat?  In terms of respec, it is better to stick with one save than support three or so.  This is why I posted the topic.  Unless I have progressed far enough to build a specialized farmer fleet, gaining story points at max level is too slow, and wasting them on frivolous respecs when story point gain is a mind-numbing grind is harsh.

I just reached the Ordos killing part of endgame, and even that is annoying if I want maximum story point game because I need a specialized story point farmer fleet (ships and skills) if I want maximum skill point gain (to get +300% or more instead of 100% or less bonus xp and pay off the story points eaten by respec).  It feels just like bringing a magic-find sorceress (decked in specialized magic-find gear) to farm items from Mephisto or some other boss, only instead of items it is story points.  And if I bring a small fleet, I cannot carry much loot (limited capacity) or recover more ships if my fleet can handle another battle before leaving (because bonus xp drops).

The limits should be what the player can use at any given time.  Respec does not raise limits, it reallocates resources within the skill point budget.

How about a system that allows us to switch between multiple builds ?

Seems like alternate equipment switching, kind of like Diablo II: LoD where pressing a button changes your hand equipment.

[bob888w]

So the core issue is that you want a vanila way to farm SP once you reach lvl cap that doesn't involve you from getting into fights with XP multipliers?

[DirectionsToL3Please]

So the core issue is that you want a vanila way to farm SP once you reach lvl cap that doesn't involve you from getting into fights with XP multipliers?

If there's anything Megas has made clear in this thread, it's that he doesn't want a solution, he wants to complain.  It's not even a problem anyone else has, and yet when given ways to mitigate or solve the problem, he just says no and restates his complaint that the default settings aren't set specifically for him.

[Amoebka]

Story point grind being exhaustingly slow at max level is an issue multiple people brought up across multiple threads. It's by no means Megas-exclusive.

[Sutopia]

Story point is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be, unnatural.

I think it is owe to be hard to acquire. In fact, due to how ordos calculated exp gain, they’re not all that hard to come by.

[Amoebka]

Then the game shouldn't advertise itself as ironman-friendly. Spending 10 hours grinding story points to recover from a fleet wipe isn't friendly.

[Sutopia]

At least you respawn and your offshore assets are preserved?
Do you expect “recover” to be a 30 cap fleet with 150 S-mods?
Might as well just save scum.

[Amoebka]

At least you respawn and your offshore assets are preserved?

The point is that offshore assets are worth very little in the current state of the game. Before you could at least quickly replace your fleet if you had colonies set up, now you need to grind story points because full s-mods are expected. Getting to keep your credits is pointless when credits can't buy anything nice, which requires separate rare currency.

Bonus XP existing implies bouncing back should be possible (we even now get bonus XP for lost ships, how generous...), except the system is disfunctional and it still takes ages.

[Vanshilar]

I just reached the Ordos killing part of endgame, and even that is annoying if I want maximum story point game because I need a specialized story point farmer fleet (ships and skills) if I want maximum skill point gain (to get +300% or more instead of 100% or less bonus xp and pay off the story points eaten by respec).  It feels just like bringing a magic-find sorceress (decked in specialized magic-find gear) to farm items from Mephisto or some other boss, only instead of items it is story points.

Let's put in some numbers here to put it in perspective.

After level 15, you get 1 story point per 1 million XP. It's not Vespene gas, it's basically just XP, like in pretty much any other RPG. You kill stuff, you get XP for killing stuff, you use that XP to upgrade your character. (Vespene gas is different, you farm Vespene gas which doesn't involve combat, and you don't get any more from killing enemies.) After all, such games reward the player for going out and actually doing something, i.e. killing baddies.

Level 10 Hegemony deserter bounties give around 500k base XP (assuming double from SP bonus), and the DP for the XP bonus (not the fleet's actual DP) is roughly 700 DP or so. This means if the player's fleet is 350 DP then you get +100% XP bonus (i.e. 700/350), if the player's fleet is 500 DP then you get +40% XP bonus (i.e. 700/500), etc. By the way, bounties go higher than level 10 (which corresponds to about 300k credit payout), I've seen level 13 bounties already, just that I've already collected data on multiple level 10 bounties at this point. So higher-level deserter bounties will pay out even more.

The personal bounties tend to cluster together in the same region of the map. So it's easy to take a fleet and do a lap to kill them. Say you knock out 3 of them, and they're level 10 (noting that this isn't even the highest-paying bounties). That's 1.5 mil XP right there, assuming no XP bonuses, plus whatever you get from the XP bonus, meaning you should be netting around 2-6 SP per bounty run, depending on your fleet. It's easy to get multiple SP points from doing a bounty run, and you don't need anywhere near an endgame fleet to do it. Claims that you need something specialized to get SP is completely overblown when we're just talking about regular faction fleets at this point and not even talking about [REDACTED] fleets.

For full-size [REDACTED] fleets, it's roughly 700k base XP, with a DP for XP bonus (again, not the fleet's DP) of roughly 1200 DP. So you should be getting multiple SP per [REDACTED] fleet. Endgame fleets actually pull together multiple [REDACTED] fleets at once to maximize the XP bonus, and hence why you can get upwards of 10 to 15 million XP (i.e. 10 to 15 story points) per fight if you had an actual, optimized endgame fleet. Hence with such a fleet you're talking about getting dozens of SP per hour of gameplay.

Long story short: if you're finding that SP gain is too slow, then it has to do with how you built your fleet, and/or because you're wasting them frivolously and then complaining about how hard it is to get more.

And if I bring a small fleet, I cannot carry much loot (limited capacity) or recover more ships if my fleet can handle another battle before leaving (because bonus xp drops).

No. Civilian ships (with the actual CIVILIAN tag in ship_data.csv, not the civilian hullmod) count for 1/4 of their DP in terms of XP. So even an Atlas, which is 10 DP, only counts as 2.5 DP in terms of XP. That's a drop in the bucket when your fleet size is hundreds of DP.

Also, ships without any weapons on them (i.e. when you recover a ship and are lugging it back home) also only count for 1/4 of their DP in terms of XP. So again, they're not going to impact your XP much.

Then the game shouldn't advertise itself as ironman-friendly. Spending 10 hours grinding story points to recover from a fleet wipe isn't friendly.

Um, ironman in any game is generally for powergamers who want an additional challenge beyond what the regular game provides. Almost by definition it's for those who want to make the game the most challenging possible because it's already gotten too easy for them otherwise. Why a game needs to be "ironman-friendly" is beyond me. If a player is playing ironman, they're expected to know how to handle themselves.

[Amoebka]

Um, ironman in any game is generally for powergamers who want an additional challenge beyond what the regular game provides. Almost by definition it's for those who want to make the game the most challenging possible because it's already gotten too easy for them otherwise. Why a game needs to be "ironman-friendly" is beyond me. If a player is playing ironman, they're expected to know how to handle themselves.

That's not true at all. Games can be designed for ironman (i.e. no savescumming) regardless of their difficulty. X-com series, roguelikes and roguelites, games with dark souls like respawns, etc. Taking an average game NOT designed for ironman and slapping the option "for the challenge" is what Starsector currently is (sadly).

Never taking risky fights isn't "knowing how to handle yourself" - it's playing the game in a way that isn't fun. Good ironman games reward risk taking while also providing some means to recover from failures. Starsector is lacking in the second aspect, even though it tries (bonus XP for lost ships, retaining officers and levels, passive credits income from colonies in the late game, etc). The systems are there, they need to be balanced to do their job.

[Thaago]

Funnily enough, I was going to use xcom as an example of horribly done ironman: it just has the option and a masochistic community, but nothing else about the ironman feature other than strict anti-save scum is actually well designed. Failure in xcom is much more luck based and so much more punishing than failure in starsector, with a single bad die roll or mission destroying a hundred hour save (or multi-hundred hours for long march) on the harder difficulties, as the game can actually be lost. In terms of not engaging in risk, watching ironman playthroughs of that game is both enlightening on how to reduce risk as much as possible and also horribly tedious because of it.

The only permanent things that can be lost in SS is tesseract weapons and getting the polluted condition on a planet after a saturation bombardment. Everything else is renewable, sometimes quite quickly, with the most powerful things (skills and officers) being completely immune from damage.

A full fleet wipe is an extreme example of failure - literally the worst outcome of a fleet combat and it implies that the player never retreated damaged ships/called for a full retreat when the battle was clearly lost. Most actual ironman failures for me involve engaging an enemy fleet, wincing as my initial clash doesn't do enough damage and my ships get driven back, trying and failing to turn the battle with my flagship, and then doing a fighting retreat followed by disengaging maneuvers. Sure that sucks and costs a good amount of money and even some story points, but its nothing like a full fleet wipe!

I agree that the upside of difficult fights is lower in SS than what would be nice for the level of risk, but they do have upsides: higher rewards of money, better ships to recover, and more XP for the player and officers. Taking risky fights/entering risky situations in ironman is still a good idea, but knowing how to salvage the situation when those risks start to turn bad (and building fleets able to do so) is very much a skill that needs to be developed in tandem!