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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: Sindrian Diktat Changes  (Read 8235 times)

Null Ganymede

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #45 on: May 08, 2022, 11:48:41 PM »

Askonia is the heart of the sector. It's well placed for a Duzahk colony, especially a refining + orbital works one on Drujh. Knock out Nachiketa and fuel gets lucrative. The military markets have solid ships. There's a chance of even higher upsides if interesting planets spawn in Askonia or Duzahk, or you're playing with Nexerelin and can invade and hold Umbra with a barebones force.

10/10 commission.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #46 on: May 08, 2022, 11:49:02 PM »

Truly remarkable how some are so adamant at defending their points and trying to explain mumbo jumbo for Alex yet lack the ability to read. Imagine discussing a blog post with people who barely read it, but no let's just keep mentioning real life example, that'll teach them.
/reading, my bad.
The aggression really wasn't warranted, though.

There's everything wrong with it, they're literally worse than any other skin in the game. Pirate hulls are either different due to mounts, ship system, cost, etc. LP skins get built-in SO. These are the *** terrorists and the outperform a faction military by a wide margin. Again, I don't have issues with ships not made to be something extra, for all I care make them worse. But make them actually unique and interesting, not "basically x without any other differences but less yz stats and less OP". How can people still argue that this isn't bad for gameplay is beyond me. Do you really wish ill on the game just so you can say you were defending Alex's points back in the day?
Pirates hulls are, on the whole, worse off in combat than their regular variants (barring a few unique ones like the pirate Falcon, while others may have minor campaign layer effects at no cost). Some also have fewer ordnance points. Case in point, the Wolf (P) - has a straight-up worse version of the Phase Skimmer, loses 2 weapon mounts, and has fewer ordnance points. No redeeming qualities whatsoever over the regular Wolf.

You bring up Pather ships. Those also come with Ill-Advised Modifications, and LG ships get Special Modifications (both can be restored out as well). However, Safety Overrides locks the ship into a very specific role, and allows no deviation at all what with the severe range restriction and -66% PPT debuff - you can massively outrange SO ships and beat them off before they even come into range. Compared to the LG ships, this is a massive railroading of the ship's combat role rather than an (honestly minor) reduction in the flexibility of the ship with at-cost Solar Shielding, which has precisely no downsides as a hullmod.

In any case, I still see no real problems with it. Like I said before, not every ship needs to be used by the player. Some ships' purpose in life is to be killed by the player - these belong to that category.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2022, 11:53:35 PM by The Soldier »
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Null Ganymede

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #47 on: May 09, 2022, 12:00:10 AM »

The blog post also makes it sound like the elite weapons are for LG patrols only - but more likely it's using the existing game system of commissioned reputation gating access to elite equipment on the Military market.

Sign commission, run a few missions, get a few contacts and bam - you're the Lion's Guard now! Time to load up on cheap fuel and go hunt Remnant fleets with your flashy purple assault ships that do heavy kinetic damage from energy mounts.
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #48 on: May 09, 2022, 12:30:25 AM »

The blog post also makes it sound like the elite weapons are for LG patrols only - but more likely it's using the existing game system of commissioned reputation gating access to elite equipment on the Military market.
Just a quibble, but I've used the same method (spawning unique fleets via a structure at the market) twice now, and unless the method for spawning in Lion's Guard fleets has changed, it explicitly doesn't place those weapons in any of the local submarkets. The faction file containing them is used only to inflate the fleets, and then the fleet is transferred over to the base faction via script. So the script would have to change for those weapons to become available to the player just because of the fleets spawning from the Lion's Guard HQ structure.

The submarkets populate with weapons and ships using the base faction's file only. The relevant code is in the submarket implementations in com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.submarkets, you can take a look for yourself.

(personally, I like forcing the player to acquire certain gear only through combat and other non-market interactions, but everybody has their own preference for this stuff.)
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Grievous69

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #49 on: May 09, 2022, 12:52:50 AM »

My man explained himself why are the other skins interesting but somehow got to the wrong conclusion. Also the pirate Wolf costs 4 DP instead of 5 DP... If you don't like snarky posts then please look up the information you're arguing on a forum.

And the final thing that keeps getting brought up is an amusing argument that "not ever ship needs to be used by the player". I simply ask why, what do you get from having obviously bad/trap choices in a game? Let's say you have a whole class of weapons in an RPG that suck and you're only challenging yourself by using them. Why spent development time and effort, making something that will only get used once until the player realizes that "well this is trash" and then never look at it again. If the answer is "worldbuilding" or "for the lulz" I give up on this discussion.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #50 on: May 09, 2022, 01:41:07 AM »

If you don't like snarky posts then please look up the information you're arguing on a forum.
Yes, a completely gimped frigate costing 4 DP instead of 5 DP totally makes it interesting and worthwhile. Semantics won't save your side of the argument. Not an excuse for aggression either.

Also, in case you aren't really able to judge balance, the Lion's Guard ships, once restored, is no longer worse off than other ships of the same type. Yes, Solar Shielding is built-in at cost, but it has no downsides. It is merely less flexible. If you had a restored Lion's Guard Falcon and a regular Falcon, both with the same loadout, both would perform identically.

If the answer is "worldbuilding" or "for the lulz" I give up on this discussion.
What I find funny is that this is exactly what Alex wanted. And I think it's fine too. It builds up the story of the game, though you've already made it clear you don't value that very much. With that mindset, you should be absolutely shocked and appalled to know what the Princess of Persia quest contains.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2022, 01:51:31 AM by The Soldier »
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Igncom1

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #51 on: May 09, 2022, 01:56:44 AM »

There are so many games with basic and common gear that simply never get used that I could mention.

Ultimately the normal Sindrian Fleet I feel should be a focus for either having little to no penalty as they aren't a parade force and actually have to routinely fight the local pirates and other invaders. If anyone is going to revert those special modifications it's them "whoops sorry, pirates hit us hard, blew those flux safety panels right off! we will fixed it as soon as we return to port..... and 2 cycles time...."

Otherwise you end up with parade ships like the guard have with 'dictator approved' upgrades and the necessary solar shielding, which should probably come for free. The guard do get their fancy new doomsday weapons, but on ships that can;t effectively use them, with officers who have seen as much battle as I have, with stats that aren't exactly great outside of being on some super specific min-maxed build anyway.

Ultimately I think one of the main things that has caused people to spit their dummy out is that 99% of the rest of the coming changes are too good. Two new capitals for the luddites, a new one for the league, and now the Sindrians are getting a copy of that one with a fluffy penalty slapped on top.
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Grievous69

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #52 on: May 09, 2022, 02:06:09 AM »

@The Soldier
Look man I love Alex as much as the next guy, you can find me orgasming with excitement on literally any other blog post, but let's not put him on a pedestal as an ascended being who's perfect. He can make bad calls, wrong decisions, not everything he decides to develop for the game is good. If the vast majority of the community doesn't like something, why should we be okay with it, purely because it keeps being explained like it's some sort of hypnotic act?

The other examples you've given are completely different from this discussion. You can't compare a sub faction in Starsector (when there's <10 factions total) to a single item in Skyrim that has thousands of items. If every LG ship was somehow unique (not just a bit worse), and then that uniqueness made 1 or 2 of their ships obviously inferior to the base variants, I'd be 100% fine with that. If you want to draw a parallel to Skyrim, imagine one weapon class, say two-handed swords. Now imagine there comes a new set of weapons, looking different and being called differently, only to find they're the exact same two-handed swords that just deal less damage compared to the originals, without any other benefit or perk of any kind. Tell me that's good game design.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2022, 02:14:22 AM by Grievous69 »
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Grievous69

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #53 on: May 09, 2022, 02:09:23 AM »

There are so many games with basic and common gear that simply never get used that I could mention.
Yes, and that gear has a role of being progression gear. Meaning you use in when you start out, eventually finding better things and ditching the now obsolete gear.

But LG ships aren't given to you when you start out, you have to go out there, fight them, and then recover their ships. How bad would it feel to kill a mini boss in a game, only to see it dropped tutorial gear.

EDIT: Accidentally double posted instead of editing the above post :/
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Igncom1

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #54 on: May 09, 2022, 02:11:50 AM »

It's supposed to be worse, so it's good game design.  ;D

Also way to put words in my mouth as being some deranged fanatic just because I disagree with you, thanks.
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Grievous69

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #55 on: May 09, 2022, 02:13:47 AM »

My bad, the response was directed at another post, I forgot to @
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #56 on: May 09, 2022, 02:23:17 AM »

If you want to draw a parallel to Skyrim, imagine one weapon class, say two-handed swords. Now imagine there comes a new set of weapons, looking different and being called differently, only to find they're the exact same two-handed swords that just deal less damage compared to the originals, without any other benefit or perk of any kind. Tell me that's good game design.
I think there's a chance for a meaningful discussion here and an opportunity for you to understand game design. It's not that the LG ships "deal less damage", they do something else. Take the sword analogy - your regular Eagle-shaped sword might deal 100 physical damage per swing. But, the Lion's Guard version of the sword has a rune which converts 20% of it's damage to fire damage - so, 80 physical and 20 fire. Some enemies might be resistant to fire damage (say, low-tech enemies), others might be more vulnerable to it (say, high tech enemies). The only difference between the regular sword and the Lion's Guard version is you can remove the fire damage conversion rune on the regular one, and it's permanent on the Lion's Guard one, eating up one of your rune slots but otherwise functioning normally. Less flexible, but perfectly usable once you polish off that pesky Special Modifications-shaped rust.

That, is perfectly fine.
« Last Edit: May 09, 2022, 02:25:37 AM by The Soldier »
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Note: please sacrifice your goats responsibly, look up the proper pronunciation of Alex's name. We wouldn't want some other project receiving mystic power.

Grievous69

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #57 on: May 09, 2022, 02:42:55 AM »

Ayyy finally an analogy we both agree on. It's just the matter of me not liking the idea of adding such inflexible samey ships to a faction while you don't mind it.
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Blue_Bear

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #58 on: May 09, 2022, 05:28:55 AM »

At first I was kinda.. meh on the changes, but now that I've had time to stew on them, I think they're not too bad, there's a logic to a dictator of 30 years or so becoming increasingly detached from reality.

With that said, I feel like it creates an interesting opportunity for player agency in terms of more narrative quests. Sindria in general is a narrative goldmine and could be a great setting for a series of side-quests involving the player getting involved with the balance of power in the region.

For example; if the player becomes close enough to the Diktat, and has a commission, perhaps they get the chance to get involved in some special assignments. These assignments will send you into the darker corners of the Diktat, you'll see how far you're willing to go, and if you prove yourself to be hollow enough, gain an honorary admission into the Lion's guard.

Alternatively, you might find that the seedy underbelly of Sindria is too much to bear and throw your lot in with the rebels, pushing the player into direct conflict with the guard and offering an opportunity to share some of the Diktat's special toys with the pirates and anarchists in the system (and watching the resulting chaos of putting these things into the wild where pirates can play their games)

 In general I'd love to see more interactions that have wider gameplay consequences through branching story narratives, especially if they can be properly gelled in with existing mechanics (like feeding blueprints to pirates)
« Last Edit: May 09, 2022, 07:07:21 AM by Blue_Bear »
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Toxcity

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Re: Sindrian Diktat Changes
« Reply #59 on: May 09, 2022, 06:45:35 AM »

I'm gonna err on the side of "Alex knows what he's doing" in regards to the LG skins. Less because "dictators are bad" moralizing, and more since it points toward having to do with additional story content. Like it LG are meant to be mid tier enemies for the story, doesn't that kind of run against making them an elite group (with all the officer skills, elite skins, and s-mods that would entail).
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