Hey all, hey Alex!
I want to share a few thougts after playing with 0.97 a bunch. I started with the usual mods, nex, indus, some qol, some factions, but seeing all the talk about the OP colony crisis made me go back to a full vanilla playthrough, to see how the balance was. I'm on rc7, so pre-nerf, if I understand correctly.
To make it worse for myself, I went for colonizing asap. Basically did the tutorial, hunted a few pirates for system bounties, salvaged a few combat freighters from them to allow me to explore the systems surrounding the core and went for that. So, of course, I quickly find a legion, and a decent enough planet to go for, which I do. I almost bankrupt myself doing so, but I'm still on like 3-4 officers, running a destroyer/frigate fleet with the legion in storage, so the stipend keeps me up just enough for the colony income to kick in.
I can just afford the mining industry, waystation and basic orbital station. I don't even open the free port to keep it really simple and low profile. Only pirates get interested in a piece of me.
At this point, because I'm still on a starter ~50DP fleet with low autonomy, I'm splitting my time between exploration/bounties and going back home to store loot. Killing the pirates around my system slows down the crisis progress, giving me more time for more exploration runs. All the while, I'm salvaging the best pirate ships I can get, slowly building a decent-ish starter fleet. Pirates eventually sends their raids, but the station + legion + random craps gets the job done.
Tri tech eventually gets involved, as my colony grows and its production with it. I guess on a better planet it would have started sooner, but mine being average+ at best means I stayed under the treshold for a while. They could have been an issue has that happened, but as is, I'm at a point where I can take a solo merc fleet, or one of their trade fleets. Trade fleets which also happen to be escorted by high tech ships, so, anyway, I end up with a high tech fleet, and the tri tech crisis is resolved. I saw a couple bounty hunters which cost me story points as I couldn't fight them, but never got to see a huge attack like all the others.
Next and last so far were the Persean. I had the "oh ***" moment seeing the 14 fleets, but at that point I could field my own capitals and had a solid line up of cruisers and destroyers with them. I'm one of those players that doesn't read everything, so I didn't know about supply fleets or grand armada. I read about the option to join them, but f that, I was confident I could take them. Head-on didn't work for CR reasons, but by picking a few stragglers where I could and facing the rest behind my orbital station, it was manageable. It was hard a took a few retries, but that's the good stuff
And I'm not a great player by any mean.
Anyway, end of the little story there. Doesn't seem to be another crisis coming unless I start using AI cores, I'm now free to explore more and do quests.
TL;DR: had a very average playthrough focused on getting a colony going asap, the crisis system dictated the pace of the game for most of it, and... I liked it a lot!
I suspect it would feel overtuned if one was to play in a more "optimized" way, like one could read from a guide, or have learned from previous version. I went for what feels like a fair first playthrough, but if you rush trade fleets killing for some early millions and go plop down 3 colonies that you upgrade to the fullest asap with only your SO startership, you might have a bad time.
Still though, it felt like a fair challenge in my playthrough, so I hope you haven't overcorrected with the rc8 nerfs.
So yeah, great job Alex and the team! Very good update, imo, and I haven't seen all of it yet.
Following with more random thoughts:
- new missiles are fun. I don't use them, but they create interesting variety in enemy layouts. There's now a case in fights where I often find myself, where I underestimate a small pack of frigates and end up burning to 20+ lasers.
- has the blue skill tree been revamped? I usually go for the other 3, but this time I refused to go for the easy yellow and faced the full cost of running ships. And uuuuh, SO aurora with an elite skills build (so 5 points in blue, most of the rest in red with story points) feels a bit overpowered.
Especially with the new added effects for s-mods. I'm getting -20% damage taken from elite skills only, not counting the effects of the skills themselves, and I can s-mod 5% less damage taken from front shield conversion and 10% hard flux to soft with stabilized shields, and... Well it's insane. I barely take damage when facing cruisers and less, my flux won't even go up against a destroyer and a few frigates. I can kill capital ships while facing their gun instead of having to rely of maneuverability, but I still have the latter if needed. It's super fun, don't get me wrong, and SO has always been tricky to balance, but yeah, I think survivability is overtuned this patch, with the right build.
Or maybe that's the right reward you have in mind for this commitment to the build. I don't have elite officers or third s-mods, I had to s-mod cheap mods leaving me with less OP for my flagship, so I guess it's a heavy cost, but damn, that reward
You wouldn't think starsector is a shark simulator but here it is.
- those added effects for s-mods are a great addition, by the way, makes it all the more interesting instead of just s-modding the more expensive mods.
- I was worried the game was going to feel dry without all the mods I was using, but it really didn't. All of what's good about Starsector is in the base Starsector, and it's
really good.
