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Author Topic: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2  (Read 37937 times)

Megas

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #345 on: June 14, 2022, 05:25:54 AM »

It is really unfortunate just how much of the discussion was people blowing up over the LG ships being ever so slightly weaker than stock.  How this apparently ruined the entire Dictate's military, even though the LG is a minor part of their military which is added on top of the normal military, I have no idea.  Even if everything had been kept as originally proposed, Sindria would have still been the toughest system to crack in the game, with the largest and most numerous military patrols.
I think people want something aside from pure downgrade from standard.  I have no problem with Executor because it has different mounts than Pegasus.  The other LG ships get a d-mod and nothing else.

It is not about Diktat's military.  It is about the tech or hardware the player can buy or steal from the other factions.

P.S.  I am not fond of reskins that are otherwise identical to the standard hull, either.  Stuff like Hegemony Wolf, Church Lasher, or Pirate Vanguard, Enforcer, Manticore, and maybe others.  At the very least, it bloats codex and production lists.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2022, 05:58:18 AM by Megas »
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braciszek

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #346 on: June 15, 2022, 02:26:58 AM »

It is really unfortunate just how much of the discussion was people blowing up over the LG ships being ever so slightly weaker than stock.  How this apparently ruined the entire Dictate's military, even though the LG is a minor part of their military which is added on top of the normal military, I have no idea.  Even if everything had been kept as originally proposed, Sindria would have still been the toughest system to crack in the game, with the largest and most numerous military patrols.

The only downside for the player was that some pretty ship skins you could only get from battlefield salvage would have been worth a tiny bit less.

It came off as a disappointment as it seemed like wasted effort in development to turn LG into a superweapon loot piƱata for the player (that is, adding content to the game that doesn't add much to the player's experience). The player's main interaction with everyone in the game is through combat, and it just comes off as weird that the player's experience with LG will be against a fleet of weaker ships. The intention is fine, but the execution seemed quite off. That is, the only purpose for the existence of LG is to mock the Diktat at large at the expense of a more thoughtful experience for the player. There's a difference between being just worse vs. being worse and having noticable differences that aren't strictly downsides, and that's all anyone really wants is something else other than strict downsides. If you take something away from the experience, you still need to add some value back in some way to keep it from being perceived as just worse.

But I am speaking in the past tense as I am looking forward to the additional changes Alex had mentioned to hopefully add some differentation.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2022, 03:30:03 AM by braciszek »
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SafariJohn

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #347 on: June 15, 2022, 04:05:44 AM »

If Alex really wanted players to hate the Diktat all he'd have to do is make the LG ships better than baseline, never sell them, and have the Diktat get pissy when they see them in your fleet.
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Igncom1

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #348 on: June 15, 2022, 04:41:22 AM »

Give regular SD fleets no penalty, as they don't closely follow the words of the GREAT LEADER and so are not favoured by his INGENIOUS weapons.

The Lions Guard do and so suffer accordingly, but also have the ridiculous wonder weapons but also the best supplies, fuel, crews and officers if a bunch of sycophants.

The LG aren't better in that instance, just differently able to the regular fleet.
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smithney

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #349 on: June 15, 2022, 11:00:43 AM »

Since this is my first post, let me introduce it with huge props to Alex & the team at Fractal for their amazing work! I have played through two and a half versions of vanilla so far and had more fun than I was due for the money ;D

With that out of the way, let's cut to the chase: From what I understand the Tri-Tachyon will become the sole faction to field high-tech ships. Considering that the Tri-Tach are a medium sized faction and hi-tech has hull versatility on par with the other two tech schools, isn't there a thematic space for another faction? One that would spin its fleets differently compared to the phase-supported battleship flavor of the upcoming Tri-Tach?

The Ko Combine springs to mind, especially with how well it was implemented in Great Wound's mod. I could easily imagine a small-ish hi-tech faction with a taste for fighters mixing things up in the Core with their task force. Especially if sympathetic to the Hegemony, but not necessarily powerful enough to tip the balance in its favor. Is the development too far to introduce a faction like this? If so, is there any other way we can experience a hi-tech enemy with a phase-free flavor?

btw Thanks SapphireSage for setting me on this train of thought ^^

EDIT: Just found out there are stray flags for currently lore-only factions in the game files while I was browsing them for a pic to appropriate for my profile ;D Talking about duck bearing a leek...
« Last Edit: June 15, 2022, 11:26:03 AM by smithney »
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speeder

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #350 on: June 17, 2022, 08:50:01 AM »

Great post, but I am a bit disappointed with the Diktat being treated as if the leader was a moron.

I don't play as Diktat and don't care for them but please remember, the guy actually pulled of a genius coup and built something awesome, his country is quite powerful and his people respect him, no moron would pull that off.

His ships instead shouldn't be "dumb" or worse than normal, instead they should be impractical.

Taking examples of Germany in WW1 and WW2:

1. The Paris gun worked, for real, made people  believe Germany had invented stealth bombers (lol), but it was too vulnerable and once spotted by accident it attracted a ton of bombers.

2. The "landship style" tanks weren't bad idea per se, although one of the designers was kinda insane and wanted to make a 1500 tank with 1400 ton gun... something that obviously wouldn't work properly. Still, the problem with such vehicles was the logistics issues they caused.

3. One of the super heavy tanks was atually completed, and it worked, but took so long to build it that there was no chance to mass produce it.

4. The Gustav rail-mounted guns actually saw combat and did tremendous damage to their targets (one shot could pierce 35 meters of "ground" and penetrate a fortified bunker! when shooting fortresses it could penetrate 5 meters of concrete!), biggest problem was it was too easy to capture, since it moved slowly and had no defenses against that, so when enemy infantary threatened to overtake one, the germans were forced to destroy it to prevent it from being stolen.

------

The "d-mod" for Diktat ships is an example of something that I found to be badly designed, I get the idea, and I get the idea of why a naval officer would decide on that, remember, he was a naval officer, not some rando, he knows how important it is for ships to have least weight as possible, if he decided to make the ship safer for his crew with other disvantages as tradeoff, it was a concious decision even if a wrong one.

That d-mod shouldn't kill more crew, it should actually work correctly, syndrian diktat ships sporting it should have the crew to be very hard to kill, something that makes sense for a Diktator, he wants his most loyal and elite subjects alive and he clearly is believing their lives are worth more than the "material" side of things.

So the d-mod should do this:

1. make the ship inefficient in many ways (as it already does).
2. protect the crew.
3. keep protecting the crew even if ship blows up... ships captured or salvaged with that d-mod right after battle should spawn a bunch of prisoners ;) maybe you can add less valuable prisoners to represent more "common" crewmembers and spawn them by the boatloads in those ships, have the player to consider the morals of trying to fit 5000 prisoners on his ship eating his food or ditch them ;)
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Megas

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #351 on: June 17, 2022, 10:16:58 AM »

3. keep protecting the crew even if ship blows up... ships captured or salvaged with that d-mod right after battle should spawn a bunch of prisoners ;) maybe you can add less valuable prisoners to represent more "common" crewmembers and spawn them by the boatloads in those ships, have the player to consider the morals of trying to fit 5000 prisoners on his ship eating his food or ditch them ;)
Give LG ships Rugged Construction for free.  Now that would be an incentive to Shield Shunt and armor up ships.
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PizzaInSpace

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #352 on: June 18, 2022, 02:39:16 AM »

I wonder when it will be released? really itching to try the new ships that will be added in the next update. also would be nice if the next next update would add more story into the game. i liked the idea of project ziggurat and would be even more awesome if it got expanded to the point that tri-tach would be at risk of other high end megacorporations like itself from eventually leading towards a battle of independant organizations as well as an excuse for the hegemony to finally send an AI inspection fleet on culann for further story development.
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Amoebka

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #353 on: June 18, 2022, 07:19:12 AM »

In ~1.5 years, if we extrapolate previous releases.  :)

Although it's a bit weird to get new ships and weapons as the first blog post. As a clueless player I would expect this stuff to be added near the end of the development cycle.
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Grievous69

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #354 on: June 18, 2022, 07:43:56 AM »

In ~1.5 years, if we extrapolate previous releases.  :)
It depends on what the next version number will be. It's impossible to guess with what we've been shown so far. The next update could very well be 1.0 (which I doubt) or a sizeable content update with new ships/weapons, story missions and of course the usual polish and bugfixes. So we can equally expect it to release in 3-4 months, or 1.5 years as you said.
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Ruddygreat

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #355 on: June 24, 2022, 04:34:21 PM »

In ~1.5 years, if we extrapolate previous releases.  :)
It depends on what the next version number will be. It's impossible to guess with what we've been shown so far. The next update could very well be 1.0 (which I doubt) or a sizeable content update with new ships/weapons, story missions and of course the usual polish and bugfixes. So we can equally expect it to release in 3-4 months, or 1.5 years as you said.

I'm assuming that it's a rolling ~5 month window, .95 released 5 months after the preliminary patch notes & we've not had them yet, so....
(as for the version number, I'm assuming it's gonna be .96 because that's the been version in all of the blogpost screenshots)

Grievous69

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #356 on: June 24, 2022, 11:05:45 PM »

Ooooh good eye man, didn't even catch the version number up there. I reckon the patch notes would look something like this:
  • Added a bunch of story missions
And then all the content from the blog posts we had. It seems Alex and David are working hard on the story aspect of the game, almost 2 months since the last blog post and Alex hasn't tweeted anything about the game since that. Usually there's some teases here and there, new features, etc. But it makes sense if they're working on things they don't want to spoil.
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PizzaInSpace

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #357 on: June 25, 2022, 03:19:58 AM »

this most likely means they are in fact adding something else other than just ships. they've been experimenting with new weapon types already and have posted new photos that could be added for certain planets like jangala and volturn. who knows I just hope it won't be a letdown once its released
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Seeing a paragon with gigacannons and kinetic blasters scaring a radiant was very unexpected.

AERO

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #358 on: July 01, 2022, 11:01:35 AM »

I know there are lore reasons for it, but hearing that the Persean League will lose access to the gauss cannon (as part of their focus on autocannons, so no HVD/Guass), which is essential for the Conquest in my opinion because of how fragile it is, feels like a real kick in the gut. What's it supposed to do, wander into range of other ships that are more heavily armored and shielded and just get killed because it has no range to stay at a safe distance? Completely neuters the idea kiting when it can't even stay out of range while being able to engage.

And on the subject of the new [REDACTED] cruiser, why doesn't it follow the naming scheme that the other remnants use? Even the name "Nova" involves light/brightness. It could have been called the Gleam, Incandescent, Blaze, Flare, Sheen, or any number of other things.
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Megas

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #359 on: July 01, 2022, 11:15:33 AM »

I know there are lore reasons for it, but hearing that the Persean League will lose access to the gauss cannon (as part of their focus on autocannons, so no HVD/Guass), which is essential for the Conquest in my opinion because of how fragile it is, feels like a real kick in the gut. What's it supposed to do, wander into range of other ships that are more heavily armored and shielded and just get killed because it has no range to stay at a safe distance? Completely neuters the idea kiting when it can't even stay out of range while being able to engage.
Forget about Gauss, according to this...

Quote from: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
To make sure the distinctive feel of the missiles really comes across, the League will use these to the exclusion of all other missile weapons.
That seems like the League uses only DEMs in their missile mounts, so no Squalls, MIRVs, Harpoons, or any of the classic missiles.  If so, the League cannot use the classic long-range Squall-and-Harpoon or Gauss-and-MIRVs combos.  It hurts more than Conquest; it may hurt Gryphon that is overpowered with the Squall-and-Harpoon pods (and officer with both tier 5 combat skills) combo.
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