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

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Author Topic: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2  (Read 37909 times)

MacguffinLove

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #375 on: July 12, 2022, 10:53:37 PM »

SD stuff feels like flanderisation, I don't like it, I think it really lacks nuance and subtly. every sentence I was reading about the SD just gave me a sinking feeling of "oh no, this isn't what they wanted all along was it?" It makes me fear for what's going to happen to the other factions when/if they get fleshed out in the lore reflected in-game, it makes me worry that the Hegemony is going to become the imperials and the Persian league are going to be the rebels. Another poster really early in this thread said something about how a great trait of Starsector and its factions is the grayscale that exists, I totally agree and I think it's an excellent aspect of the game that stems from lack of specifics especially in relation to the higher-up prime movers of the major powers which create enigmatic factions that allow the player to fill in the gaps to whatever they want their RP to be. When a faction is characterised in the way the SD has been with this blog post and given in-game elements that reflect it; I believe it removes the lack of information that allows people to build their own story: I do not want every LC ship to come with a LC specific D-mod which basically says "Aren't they stupid and backwards lol, -%10 for everything." The LC already have that reflected in the fact their ships have lots of other D-mods that aren't specific to them, it gets the point across without GETTING THE POINT ACROSS

When I capture one of those new SD ships I will not be rewarded with a cool new ship to try out and experiment with as a player, I will have a ham-fisted history analogy shoved in my face as lore at the expense of what could have been a cool new ship. the LC are already the "Wow I can't believe people actually act(ed) like this IRL, isn't that so funny and weird and aren't you glad you're not like them?" faction, two is too much. At the moment I can believe many things about tri-tach, maybe they're a scientific oligarchy manipulating corporate interests to fund their science projects, maybe it's a corporate board manipulating scientists to stay ahead of the game, maybe it's neither and they're being controlled by AI. At the moment I can believe any and that's wonderful. I do not want that choice taken away from me, I do not want the enigmatic world that has been created here to be made into something I've seen and played before, just a bit different. I believe the best RPGs create stories, not tell them.

I'm sorry for how negative this comes off especially considering my low post count but this really set up a red flag for me, enough for me to change my password, log in and make a post about it in the hopes that what I'm trying to articulate here gets across because I think it's an absolutely vital and elemental part of Starsector that would be awful to lose. I saw someone earlier say that the people complaining are just experiencing whiplash from having their perspectives on SD changed by this and yeah that's the case; but I'm taking this metaphor further by saying it's hardly self inflicted whiplash if we've been on a steady ride for half a decade and then the driver decides to just slam the breaks, it's actually kind of rude. Yeah it's his car but we're all sat in the passenger seats.

I like the other stuff though don't get me wrong, and I absolutely love the idea of being able to tell who you're actually fighting against during a battle besides just "Do they have high-tech, Y/N" and even being able to make tactics and strategies to combat a specific faction even if it does run the risk of being a bit repeatable. A couple suicide Drams for large LP fleets wouldn't be out of place. I think it plays well into the "We do not play fair and we do not care" chic that an astro-theo-primitivism terrorist cell should give off when coming for you. I think giving them the extra punch to be at least capable of accidentally knocking out something valuable in your fleet reinforces their character and makes fighting them more interesting.
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smithney

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #376 on: July 12, 2022, 11:49:45 PM »

Alex, can you pin this comment of yours?

Probably worth noting that I ended making a few changes to [LG ships], basically because the skins do look so cool :D

The LG ships (minus the Executor, which is a separate case and not limited to the LG) are still ever so slightly worse than baseline on average (so the power level isn't really changed), but there's some niche potential. Also a few changes to the Executor, too; those are more along the lines of slight buffs with some, ah, thematic downsides, but net-positive overall. Definitely not getting into the details now though, sorry!
« Last Edit: July 12, 2022, 11:57:11 PM by smithney »
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Grievous69

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #377 on: July 13, 2022, 03:29:08 AM »

Yeah that reminded me, I really want to know what were those changes. It's been a month, hopefully they feel good right now. Imagine we get a full blown blog post "Uniquifying the Sindrian Diktat - take two".
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Doctorhealsgood

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #378 on: July 17, 2022, 01:27:57 AM »

well there's no telling what the devs would do if they changed the gryphons ability. My idea would be giving the persean league a unique variant of the drover which has a built-in hullmod known as a "ammunition manufactoring forge" and would have a unique lpc called the "pack rat" the goal would be that this drover can resupply ships with missile or magazine based weapons but the downside would be this variant drover will not have any means to defend itself and would cost roughly less to deploy than an average drover. It's special ability would be the same as a regular drover but the pack rats would be slow as a cobra.
I think it's cool that missiles are limited; big immediate power wasted if you miss the opportunity. In fact I feel like they are too safe to use this patch, if optimizing Gryphon to the maximum isn't even worth it. That's one of the reason I called out for a new system for Gryphon. The current one doesn't feel as impactful if you start to see it as an EMR button. It used to feel unique when rockets were held back by their relative scarcity, but at the time they were overshadowed by bomber spam, unfortunately.

Which, btw, makes me wish bombers were impractical besides cracking capitals and sieging stations :P
Carriers/fighters got nerfed quite a bit already please don't. It already upsets me that carrier centric fleets are impossible as the carrier skill diminishing returns start appearing so fast that you might trigger them even when you are not focusing on them. I had the idea that considering that OP used on fighters might as well be their deployment points i would suggest that instead of tracking the number of fighter bays that your fleet has you should instead track the amount of OP that you are using for fighters. It would at the very least give more flexibility to the limit and that is always nice. Sadly i think that fighters themselves aren't that flexible considering that most are concerned either by ai or by design to attack enemies and there is almost no fighters that offer support to the fleet. This makes them all just glorified weapons at the moment sadly. What fighters do you use if you want some PD for example? Xiphos and that's it. Sure you could say interceptors are supposed to fulfill that sort of niche but more often than not they will run up to enemy ships when ordered to engage and probably kill themselves instead of trying to protect the carrier from missile barrages.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2022, 02:30:03 AM by Doctorhealsgood »
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ForestFighters

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #379 on: July 17, 2022, 06:09:01 PM »

With how they are weaker than normal forces, it's just: "oh sweet, it's the lions guard, these guys are chumps. This will be easier than their normal fleets." And yes, they won't actually be significantly weaker, but they will be perceived to be weaker.

And at that point, all they are is a somewhat rare fleet with more D-Mods and a paintjob. That is not a great way to see what is supposed to be an elite force. This would be like if Tri-Tachyon had a new fleet type added, say the "X Operations" fleets, but all they were was a paintjob and -5% to flux stats due to "experimental prototypes". It would be dumb, and just a worse fleet for what is supposed to be special. And if you want to add a downgraded fleet, just make them reserves or something.

Only their fleets with capitals won't have this problem quite as bad, both because of the Executor, which is a semi-unique ship, and their unique weapons. But instead, you will have the problem of the only interaction with the LG capital fleets compared to the normal ones being that you will be hunting them down as loot piñatas for their stuff. Honestly, making the LG into straight downgrade ships is annoying, but making them also the only source of some fancy weapons makes it worse. They are irrelevant at best or a frustrating grind at worst.

Also, the Diktat is in one of the most valuable systems in the galaxy. Everybody wants it, and all the political maneuvering in the world is useless if their military gets flattened before any third-party support can arrive. This would not be a First Gulf War-esqe situation, as the Hegemony is an actual great power, not some regional power like Iraq was. Having bad fleets just makes them not being invaded seem weird.
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Doctorhealsgood

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #380 on: July 18, 2022, 11:34:39 AM »

With how they are weaker than normal forces, it's just: "oh sweet, it's the lions guard, these guys are chumps. This will be easier than their normal fleets." And yes, they won't actually be significantly weaker, but they will be perceived to be weaker.

And at that point, all they are is a somewhat rare fleet with more D-Mods and a paintjob. That is not a great way to see what is supposed to be an elite force. This would be like if Tri-Tachyon had a new fleet type added, say the "X Operations" fleets, but all they were was a paintjob and -5% to flux stats due to "experimental prototypes". It would be dumb, and just a worse fleet for what is supposed to be special. And if you want to add a downgraded fleet, just make them reserves or something.

Only their fleets with capitals won't have this problem quite as bad, both because of the Executor, which is a semi-unique ship, and their unique weapons. But instead, you will have the problem of the only interaction with the LG capital fleets compared to the normal ones being that you will be hunting them down as loot piñatas for their stuff. Honestly, making the LG into straight downgrade ships is annoying, but making them also the only source of some fancy weapons makes it worse. They are irrelevant at best or a frustrating grind at worst.

Also, the Diktat is in one of the most valuable systems in the galaxy. Everybody wants it, and all the political maneuvering in the world is useless if their military gets flattened before any third-party support can arrive. This would not be a First Gulf War-esqe situation, as the Hegemony is an actual great power, not some regional power like Iraq was. Having bad fleets just makes them not being invaded seem weird.
Alex has said the LG ships are going to get something so don't worry about that.
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speeder

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #381 on: July 18, 2022, 11:46:09 AM »

I just read old lore posts, and in them Andrada is portrait as a genius of politics and space warfare, having victory after victory and gaining an ever growing popularity inside hegemony before he founded the Diktat.

I just can't see how Alex post and the lore posts fit, it is incompatible.
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smithney

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #382 on: July 18, 2022, 12:03:54 PM »

I just read old lore posts, and in them Andrada is portrait as a genius of politics and space warfare, having victory after victory and gaining an ever growing popularity inside hegemony before he founded the Diktat.
Wasn't that a propaganda PoV? If you're talking about what I'm thinking you are, I don't see how is the developer's 'word of god' incompatible with an in-universe image of a dictator. Would you mind sharing us a link?
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Twilight Sentinel

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #383 on: July 19, 2022, 01:59:15 PM »

I don't really want to jump in on the arguing, but like the D-mod for special modifications isn't -5% to combat power.  It's not even 1%, the player isn't going to notice these ships are any weaker than normal ships when actually fighting them.  However it seems like the mere fact that it's a d-mod that makes ships weaker is making so many of these responders go berserk over that one detail?

The LG fleets are not weak, they're not going to be beaten down by any random passers by.  They're still going to be extra fleets in what is already the best defended system in the core worlds who were taking an almost imperceptible nerf to their effectiveness for flavor reasons.  A nerf to ships that players would have no reason to actually have except as battle trophies and bragging rights.  It's was so bizarre to see this much hate being directed to something that was basically a nothing issue.
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Amoebka

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #384 on: July 21, 2022, 03:51:04 AM »

It doesn't matter if it's 1% worse or 10% worse. What matters is that these are faction-unique ships with special graphics, that aren't actually any more interesting or useful than baseline. Fighting LG is the same as fighting any other midline fleet. They just get 1 extra d-mod of which half the effects don't even apply to NPC fleets. It looks like it should be special, but it's exactly the same thing you've already seen elsewhere. And that's not a smart gotcha moment, it's a disappointment. People only like surprises when they are good.

Being even 1% worse than baseline (and having no other benefit) also means players never have any reason to use the ships in their fleet. Why add ships that players have no reason to use when you can add ships that player can use? It's the same amount of work either way, but the latter is infinitely more fun for the players.
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Serenitis

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #385 on: July 21, 2022, 06:37:57 AM »

Ship is ship. And 99% of a ship is still good enough to use and do cool/fun things with.

Actual d-mods have far worse effects than this Sindrian flavour-mod, and ships are still perfectly usable with as many of those as you can stack.
And on top of that, you can just straight-up remove the thing and render this whole "issue" completely irrelevant.
So all this "its 1% worse than baseline so its useless forever" stuff is... Not making a whole lot of sense tbh.

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Grievous69

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #386 on: July 21, 2022, 07:08:05 AM »

Ship is ship. And 99% of a ship is still good enough to use and do cool/fun things with.
With such arguments, why even bother balancing the rest of the game. I get what you're saying but in this context it doesn't make sense. You also completely forgot to mention the very situational built in hullmod that steals OP. So if there was an attempt to create something unique and "cool", it was a failure since no one with a sane mind would choose to recover such ships, except in some weird challenge runs.

But why is this discussion still going? Alex said he changed some things, both for LG and Executor. That information has to be visible somewhere or this topic should just get locked.
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smithney

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #387 on: July 21, 2022, 10:42:58 AM »

Ship is ship. And 99% of a ship is still good enough to use and do cool/fun things with.
With such arguments, why even bother balancing the rest of the game. I get what you're saying but in this context it doesn't make sense. You also completely forgot to mention the very situational built in hullmod that steals OP. So if there was an attempt to create something unique and "cool", it was a failure since no one with a sane mind would choose to recover such ships, except in some weird challenge runs.
I gotta agree with both of you. On one hand, the only thing preventing you from trying cool things with "underpowered" elements is your own mind. If you like the cool paintjob, you can at least challenge yourself, even modify the game to your liking if that's not enough, Starsector's open like that. On the other hand, it would be a developer's blunder to miss completely on players' expectations. Alex thankfully confirmed that's not the case.

I don't recommend locking this thread unless Alex pins that he's decided to change LG ships up. No need to alienate the... less understanding members of the fandom.
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Vanshilar

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #388 on: August 06, 2022, 01:32:34 AM »

Playing around a bit with Squall, I wonder just how much the change to do less armor/hull will really weaken it? Around 80% of its overall damage in combat is to shields anyway, and the ship will presumably have other means to do anti-armor/hull damage. So the in-development change (keep same anti-shield damage, but reduce armor/hull damage -- essentially the same as reducing its hit strength) doesn't really seem to affect things much in the end. Unless it encourages the target to armor tank more or something. It'll still be very effective to spam Squalls into the bulk of the enemy fleet since it basically acts as the long-range artillery softening up the enemy fleet before ballistic/energy range combat begins. Seems like it'll still be the go-to for a large missile slot.

Tested using 10 Gryphons with Squall, 2 Harpoon Pods, 3 Breach SRM, a HVD, and Xyphos, with officers having Systems Expertise and Missile Specialization among other skills, as well as Legion XIV with 2 Squalls, 4 HVD, 4 Cobras, 1 Heavy Mauler, and 4 Railguns as flagship, having Missile Specialization among other skills (and Expanded Missile Racks), against triple Ordos with 6 Radiants totaling 1253 DP. Flagship was on autopilot and this was played largely using command map (switching to the battle mode just to watch the fireworks mostly). For the Legion XIV, the results from the Detailed Combat Results mod ended up being:

Code
Weapon		Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	%Total	%Shi	%Arm	%Hull
Squall 114608 92688 6601 15319 31.43% 40.86% 24.21% 13.85%
HVD 109833 78141 5562 26130 30.12% 34.45% 20.40% 23.63%
Cobra 98290 37999 5145 55146 26.95% 16.75% 18.87% 49.87%
Heavy Mauler 24302 4767 9278 10258 6.66% 2.10% 34.03% 9.28%
Railgun 17644 13233 680 3730 4.84% 5.83% 2.49% 3.37%

(Each of the % values refer to how much of that type of damage did the weapon contribute. I have no idea why some of the numbers are red.)

Basically, even though the 2 Squalls ran out toward the end (about when the final Radiants showed up I think, though not sure), they still outdid the 4 HVD due to their shield damage (although this was in a battle with swarms of other missiles from the Gryphons, so the HVD's only got to work when enemy ships got close enough; but the Legion XIV had ITU, Gunnery Implants, and Ballistic Mastery so that range was really far). But their contribution was mostly anti-shield anyway and they didn't contribute that much to armor or hull. So I don't think the change would really affect things that much. This is against triple Ordos so against anything less, there shouldn't be any concerns about the Squalls running out all battle, so their share of the damage would be higher.

Similarly, the average for the 10 Gryphons was:

Code
Weapon	Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	%Total	%Shi	%Arm	%Hull
Squall 64905 51741.6 2494.7 10668.7 49.23% 65.83% 17.47% 27.38%
Harpoon 48583.1 17177.2 8572.8 22833.2 36.85% 21.85% 60.03% 58.60%
Breach 11099 4115.5 2900.8 4082.7 8.42% 5.24% 20.31% 10.48%
HVD 5832.2 4569.5 200.5 1062.3 4.42% 5.81% 1.40% 2.73%
Xyphos 1426 999.6 111.6 314.8 1.08% 1.27% 0.78% 0.81%

(Note that Detailed Combat Results does *not* include the scripted 250 armor damage per hit for Breach, so its armor damage was actually higher than recorded.)

The Squalls only did around a quarter of the hull damage, and much less than that of the armor damage. But it contributed the far majority of the shield damage, which would be unchanged. In fact it contributed about half of the total damage by itself.

Basically it seems like the Squall coupled with some other weapons for anti-armor/hull would still be a really potent combo, without the change really affecting the combo's effectiveness very much. I don't know how much people rely on the Squall's anti-armor/hull damage for the change to do much.

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Grievous69

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Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« Reply #389 on: August 06, 2022, 01:36:26 AM »

I don't think the goal was to seriously nerf it, just make it even less good in situations where it could do some hull damage. Of course it's still going to be strong, it's a kinetic missile.
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