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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Anubis-class Cruiser (12/20/24)

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Author Topic: Colony Crises  (Read 25766 times)

Twilight Sentinel

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #75 on: November 26, 2023, 02:30:40 PM »

If nothing else, having the hostilities be on a randomized schedule would take save scumming them out of the equation.
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Doctorhealsgood

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #76 on: November 26, 2023, 02:30:51 PM »

If the luddic church were to succeed in taking your planet could you be able to take it back without suffering the perpetual decivilized debuff or something? Because currently the only way to take owned planets is to nuke them into a wasteland or complete societal collapse far as i know.
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Megas

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #77 on: November 26, 2023, 02:39:01 PM »

If the luddic church were to succeed in taking your planet could you be able to take it back without suffering the perpetual decivilized debuff or something? Because currently the only way to take owned planets is to nuke them into a wasteland or complete societal collapse far as i know.
And since the Church wants your habitable worlds, nuking your former home would add the Pollution debuff (which is not as bad as Decivilized) and get the PL/Indie/H factions angry at you.
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RaiDz77

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #78 on: November 26, 2023, 02:39:52 PM »

Question: How do your relations with the crises factions effect the event progress and resolution options?

Also, thanks for always walking us through most of the thought process in your blog posts! As someone whose dream hobby is making their own game, I love reading informative bits from people who clearly know what they're doing.
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Helldiver

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #79 on: November 26, 2023, 02:41:06 PM »

Yep, same as it currently works! It tries to be not-too-obvious about it, but if you're doing something meant to expose this behavior, then you'd probably succeed. It's technically *possible* to make these travel etc but that has a performance cost (save file size, memory use, etc), which gets much worse if the player colonizes a bunch of systems, and I'd rather not close out that possibility, if only for the sake of mods. It's also more complicated, meaning it's more difficult for it to reliably achieve the desired outcome of "having fleets in the system that the player can fight".

If travelling from far/a specific location is an issue complexity-wise then they should absolutely at least spawn near the system then jump into it. I am writing the following from a vanilla perspective:

I think that invading fleets spawning directly in system is a big problem that breaks elements of gameplay and feels extremely bad. Defending a system by either protecting its jump points in hyperspace or intercepting the enemy at the jump exits in system is both a logical step for a player and in universe and the game itself demonstrates this by having NPC patrols defend jump points. If fleets break this by ignoring basic game rules it not only negates an interesting gameplay aspect of the campaign layer (the importance of jump points) but it also goes against logic the player learns from playing. If it's some special fleet whose leader is wise to transverse jumping and uses it to dodge defenses and surprise the player, it's one thing, but if it's an automatic thing from any fleet generated like this, it's another in a bad way.

To illustrate the problem: imagine playing a medieval game. And you see towns defending themselves from their enemies. You get notified that an army is coming to your city and the live battle starts. You rush to the walls expecting to defend against the invaders. And then you get a notification that your city is being sacked. What? You go back in confused and you find out the enemy army spawned inside your city. You think that the game is bugged, and you feel robbed from a natural and expected piece of gameplay. You even feel like an idiot for thinking that you were doing the right thing trying to stop the enemies from coming in - they did anyways because "they just spawned inside" and ignored what you saw elsewhere.

I hope that this speaks to you in some way...
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Wyvern

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #80 on: November 26, 2023, 02:51:34 PM »

I hope that this speaks to you in some way...
There are situations where it makes sense to just spawn the fleets in-system. Those situations are when the player is just approaching or has arrived - if I fly back to my system after being away for a while, or just gated in, it's no surprise that those sneaky pirates already have a few raiding fleets tooling around.

However, having fleets just magically appear the instant I drop a colony down, or while I'm sitting around in-or-near my star system? That is where immersion breaks for me; those fleets should jump in or spawn from an existing in-system colony.
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Alex

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #81 on: November 26, 2023, 02:55:41 PM »

If the luddic church were to succeed in taking your planet could you be able to take it back without suffering the perpetual decivilized debuff or something? Because currently the only way to take owned planets is to nuke them into a wasteland or complete societal collapse far as i know.

You couldn't - it's not an invasion proper; the in-world justification for this is different, more of a "taking over the planet by demonstrating that you're helpless in defending it and can't be relied on". So, invasions are still not a thing.


Question: How do your relations with the crises factions effect the event progress and resolution options?

Some, depending on the specific situation. Sorry for the sort of non-answer :)

Also, thanks for always walking us through most of the thought process in your blog posts! As someone whose dream hobby is making their own game, I love reading informative bits from people who clearly know what they're doing.

*thumbs up*

If travelling from far/a specific location is an issue complexity-wise then they should absolutely at least spawn near the system then jump into it. I am writing the following from a vanilla perspective:

I think that invading fleets spawning directly in system is a big problem that breaks elements of gameplay

...

Ah, I'm sorry, I thought you'd meant the non-crisis fleets that are mostly just a hassle.

Actual crisis fleets - e.g. a pirate raid, a Luddic Path attack force, a Hegemony AI inspection, etc - all *do* travel, including starting at a specific enemy-held location, and can be intercepted at any point along the way. Here this definitely matters and it would, as you say, be a huge problem if you were defending a system from a Path attack in hyperspace and then suddenly your world got sat-bombed.

But the miscellaneous fleets where this isn't simulated to that degree don't really matter very much, right. It's not going to be the sort of thing you'd need to intercept.

However, having fleets just magically appear the instant I drop a colony down

(I've seen this mentioned a few times and this absolutely *does not* happen in vanilla. It'll take at least 30 days of the colony being in existence before any "hostile activity fleets can spawn. It's possible that there's some kind of bug here, but I've not seen it, and I've recently spent quite a bit of time watching hostile fleets spawn in-system.)

... those fleets should jump in or spawn from an existing in-system colony.

They generally do, or at least spawn both 1) outside the player's sensor range and 2) towards a jump-point, making this plausible.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2023, 02:57:33 PM by Alex »
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Nettle

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #82 on: November 26, 2023, 02:56:55 PM »

Another approach is to make it a bar event where you pay an informant to give you insights on politics & conflicts. Maybe even provide the option to prevent or postpone the incident for money and reputation loss.

That sounds like a major political intervention, not something you would casually influence through a bar visit.
Couldn't you just get a notification via existing channels, minus the intervention options? Just how you get notices on every other intel right now. It could have a distinct sound cue like colony management notifications do, to make it more distinct, and a note in comission tab which seems to be underutilized right now anyway.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2023, 02:58:47 PM by Nettle »
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Psylo

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #83 on: November 26, 2023, 03:31:52 PM »

Really enjoying all the new lore additons this will add, seems like it will make building a large colony feel like an impact on the sector at large as it reasonably should, having an independent colony with 100,000s of people pop up in half a decade is definitely a important change in the sectors dynamics.
Especially if you've got a *** ton of domain era arifacts causing your colony to be super industrious.

Would also be really interesting to role play as a Persean League member state.
Seems like alot of people are complaining about things that can probably be quite easily modded, such as repeatable crisis,
plus ive always disliked the ideas of invasions in the game, breaks the lore of the sector being in locked in a stalement where no power is willing to fight another conflict so soon after the last.
I agree things like sat bombardment should be made way more expensive and much harder, shouldn't be that easy to basically destroy an entire planet.

Overall, im really looking forward to this, having them being more one time and dynamic really adds to the whole feel of colony building.
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Helldiver

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #84 on: November 26, 2023, 03:36:52 PM »

Ah, I'm sorry, I thought you'd meant the non-crisis fleets that are mostly just a hassle.

But the miscellaneous fleets where this isn't simulated to that degree don't really matter very much, right. It's not going to be the sort of thing you'd need to intercept.

I also meant these lesser "before the big crisis" fleets. Even if they are small and do small damage they still matter in the same way and how the same gameplay elements are treated. To better illustrate how scale doesn't affect gameplay breaking:

You're a big bulky space soldier aiming at a doorway in a first-person-shooter, knowing an enemy is coming. And then you get punched in the back for 1% damage by a cheater who just teleported behind you with a hack to troll you. It "doesn't really matter very much" - it's just 1% HP and you turned around and killed the guy - it still feels bad because it breaks gameplay, expectations, in-game logic. In the case here for Starsector, I think that it feels even worse because you can't blame an unintended cause like a cheater - it's the game suddenly ignoring something important and that touches multiple aspects of gameplay.

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Dri

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #85 on: November 26, 2023, 04:05:16 PM »

Since this is a much juicer patch will it include some new ships/weapons/hullmods or things of that nature? Or is it purely going to be travel/colony/exploration content?
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Alex

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #86 on: November 26, 2023, 04:07:22 PM »

I also meant these lesser "before the big crisis" fleets. Even if they are small and do small damage they still matter in the same way and how the same gameplay elements are treated. To better illustrate how scale doesn't affect gameplay breaking:

You're a big bulky space soldier aiming at a doorway in a first-person-shooter, knowing an enemy is coming. And then you get punched in the back for 1% damage by a cheater who just teleported behind you with a hack to troll you. It "doesn't really matter very much" - it's just 1% HP and you turned around and killed the guy - it still feels bad because it breaks gameplay, expectations, in-game logic. In the case here for Starsector, I think that it feels even worse because you can't blame an unintended cause like a cheater - it's the game suddenly ignoring something important and that touches multiple aspects of gameplay.

Hmm, I don't see it that way. You're generally not in position to be 100% sure that the fleet wasn't just there for a while in the first place, etc. If it literally spawned on top of you, sure! But if it ultimately flew in from somewhere off-screen, it's imo extremely whatever as to how it got there in the first place. You can pretend it flew all the way from Kazeron if you like :)

Stuff that happens off-screen in games is fairly academic and there is a TON of this sort of thing happening already, all over, because it kind of needs to work that way. Like... I get where you're coming from, I really do. But things just don't work that way; it's all smoke and mirrors.


Since this is a much juicer patch will it include some new ships/weapons/hullmods or things of that nature? Or is it purely going to be travel/colony/exploration content?

There's a new ship :-X
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eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #87 on: November 26, 2023, 04:10:50 PM »

If the luddic church were to succeed in taking your planet could you be able to take it back without suffering the perpetual decivilized debuff or something? Because currently the only way to take owned planets is to nuke them into a wasteland or complete societal collapse far as i know.

You couldn't - it's not an invasion proper; the in-world justification for this is different, more of a "taking over the planet by demonstrating that you're helpless in defending it and can't be relied on". So, invasions are still not a thing.
The reason for the "totally not an invasion" is that the player couldn't stop the invasion, therefore it's justified and not an invasion. Also, the player can't reinvade even with the forces to do so, because invasion isn't a thing, and instead has to waste hours killing their own people, rebuilding their now damaged world, and fixing all of the factions' relationships.

The absolute chutzpah.

Well then, I'm not going to commit genocide via sat-bombing. I'm going to do a fuel purge and watch the Luddic Church colonies commit suicide, because if the really wanted to live they should have forced me to drop my fuel elsewhere.
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Wyvern

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #88 on: November 26, 2023, 04:33:07 PM »

However, having fleets just magically appear the instant I drop a colony down

(I've seen this mentioned a few times and this absolutely *does not* happen in vanilla. It'll take at least 30 days of the colony being in existence before any "hostile activity fleets can spawn. It's possible that there's some kind of bug here, but I've not seen it, and I've recently spent quite a bit of time watching hostile fleets spawn in-system.)
They absolutely do exactly this in vanilla - I think what we're seeing here is a disagreement on what counts as 'instant', because of the way a new colony needs to spend time building its space port, combined with the fact that you can't install or uninstall AI cores and colony items unless you're physically there, which results in the player having to just loiter around a new colony until that initial construction is online.

(And then you have to loiter some more because you've got no defenses yet, so some enterprising pirate base is almost guaranteed to launch a raid within the first month or two, so there's really no point in going anywhere because you'll have to turn right around and come back, and hey look pirate fleets are appearing out of the ether now and giving you trade disruptions because hey, it's a new colony, it can't launch trader fleets that have any sort of ability to defend themselves. 'Instant' is relative, and may not be literally accurate, but it's certainly how it feels right now.)

... those fleets should jump in or spawn from an existing in-system colony.

They generally do, or at least spawn both 1) outside the player's sensor range and 2) towards a jump-point, making this plausible.
This is going to depend a lot on the star system, IMO. Sometimes, yeah, there are a bunch of access points and it's plausible. Sometimes there are just two jump points, right near each other at their current orbital cycle, and the player's been right there and there's just no way a pirate fleet could have gotten all the way over there. And it only takes one of those to make it obvious that the AI is cheating, and an obviously-cheating AI is annoying even if most of the time it's not that unreasonable.
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Alex

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Re: Colony Crises
« Reply #89 on: November 26, 2023, 04:44:56 PM »

I think what we're seeing here is a disagreement on what counts as 'instant'

Ah, apologies, I assumed that "instant" meant "instant" :P

The good news here is that there are no more player-targeted-pirate-raids outside of the crisis system, so that part of it will be more manageable.

This is going to depend a lot on the star system, IMO. Sometimes, yeah, there are a bunch of access points and it's plausible. Sometimes there are just two jump points, right near each other at their current orbital cycle, and the player's been right there and there's just no way a pirate fleet could have gotten all the way over there. And it only takes one of those to make it obvious that the AI is cheating, and an obviously-cheating AI is annoying even if most of the time it's not that unreasonable.

Not even with transverse jump? Or maybe they were laying in wait in the outer system.

I understand what you mean, though, really. Just - sometimes the rough edges will show. My general expectation is that the player will want to cooperate in making the fantasy/story "work out" in their mind. If they don't, it's a lost cause regardless, since there are so many places where one could make things not make sense if they wanted to. Of course you don't want to jerk people out of it unnecessarily, but with this type of thing, the alternative - making every single fleet that you find anywhere get there in a "real" way - is considerably more problematic in various ways.
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