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[GrayingGamer]

I guess the bigger question is 'what kind of game is Starsector?'


Is it an adventure game (with sandbox elements) with a beginning, a middle, and an end? Something like the Starcom games on steam, where you play through the game, you explore the world and experience the story, and then that's it?

'Getting rich' is obviously not the end goal of a game like that, and if Starsector is that kind of game, then I can understand if some of my criticisms don't really matter. Getting money is a hurdle you deal with, in one or more of several different ways, and then you move on to more important things.


Or is it a more of a sandbox world that you play around in, but there's no obvious main end goal. There's 'late game,' but this could be a variety of different activities that are largely optional and also largely mutually exclusive from each (encouraging multiple play-throughs). There may be story elements, but these are not the main drive of the game... they just serve to give context and flavor to the sandbox world. In this kind of world, getting fabulously rich (and having things to spend that money on) could very well be one of the main late game activities.

On a recent playthrough I finally found the gate storyline and got the

Spoiler

Ziggurat... and the ship definitely feels like something from an adventure game (the kind of thing that's given to the player in the last 5% of the game), as opposed to something from a sandbox game. It's so incredibly powerful, it trivializes all other ships.

[close]

So anyway, that got me thinking that maybe I had pegged Starsector wrong, and it's more of an adventure game than a sandbox game. Or maybe it has a bit of an identity problem.

I hope it's a sandbox, with lots of different possible goals. The game is amazing, and I want more excuses to spend more time in it.

[Nettle]

When I first saw it, I also assumed Starsector was more of a sandbox akin to Mount and Blade or Cosmoteer. However, after playing for a while and engaging with the story, I've got the impression that it's more of an adventure game with sandbox elements. A lot of design decisions make more sense when you experience the game with this mindset.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

Even when the game's storyline is finished, I doubt it will result in "you win, game over" screen. I expect it to be more of "Congrats, you finished the storyline, you got all your toys(i.e. gate travel), now you can still do what you want just better"

[happycrow]

I'm still (mostly) figuring out "how can I not go bankrupt if I

• don't piratic/drug-dealing scum
• don't sign on to be a faction's freelance mercenary

The answer is about one game in four I succeed really nicely exploring and performing Galatia missions, so I have lots of money to ruin trying to learn to manage colonies. And three out of four I bite the bullet and take a commission because otherwise even a mild increase to my fleet winds up running me into the ground on expenses.

tl;dr -- this game clearly plays out very differently as a noob than a veteran.

[ayckoster]

tl;dr -- this game clearly plays out very differently as a noob than a veteran.

That sums the situation quite well. It is very difficult to balance for both extremes and maybe the way forward are multiple modes like the existing iron mode.

An iron mode without Hull Restoration could be a solution to the money overflow. After every fight you need to buy new ships or repair your D-modded ones. Ship repairs would be a constant money sink, even in the late game.

[Selfcontrol]

As happycrow said, the game is different depending on your knowledge. Starsector is quite an overwhelming game when you first launch it and going bankrupt is very real threat for many hours when you first learn it. I remember very well my first few hours (it's an euphemism, it took me a lot more) ... I think I ragequitted at least 4 playthroughs because of bankruptcy

Imo, credits are too easy to make when you are a veteran. I agree. But the beginner or even casual experience shouldn't be negatively affected. Hard mode or Ironman mode sounds like the perfect place to change a few things. For example, reducing the number of "random" contracts available in space and reducing their payout and instead giving "normal" contracts to Contacts is an idea I just had and I like it.

[Thaago]

tl;dr -- this game clearly plays out very differently as a noob than a veteran.

That sums the situation quite well. It is very difficult to balance for both extremes and maybe the way forward are multiple modes like the existing iron mode.

An iron mode without Hull Restoration could be a solution to the money overflow. After every fight you need to buy new ships or repair your D-modded ones. Ship repairs would be a constant money sink, even in the late game.

As others have said, it all comes down to experience. I play iron mode, never do dedicated smuggling runs, and never take hull restoration, and I'm still swimming in credits. I don't even particularly try to make money, but just take the good opportunities that are around me and do missions clustered in the general direction I want to explore. I consider hull restoration to be, for a veteran, the weakest capstone skill (and industry the weakest branch, again for veterans for whom managing logistics and money is easy). For someone who's not a veteran, the constant upkeep/fuel/officer costs, costs of repairing ships, etc, can be a serious burden that threatens to death spiral the game, so industry is a great skill branch for them.

As an example of an opportunity that might not be obvious: piracy of any convoy that has heavy armaments (and to a lesser extent supplies). If you see one flying, or see one pop up on the intel feed, taking a modest rep hit or a detour, then selling to either a perpetual shortage or possibly the one that was just made, will net between 250k and 750k (and sometimes more) for often a quite easy fight right in the core systems.

[GrayingGamer]

At this point I'm hoping that the game eventually has multiple modes:

1. The base game, which is a story driven experience with a clear ending/"I beat the game", and has at least the two current difficulty levels, probably another one or two.

2. A sandbox-survival mode that is tuned to be more difficult (possibly more than one difficulty level, too), with most story elements removed, and is instead injected with various pathways to 'late-game success'/long-term goals (whether that be helping the Hegemony establish dominance in the sector, or becoming a pirate even richer and more feared than Kanta, or establishing a thriving and dominant independent faction, or bringing about the next AI utopia (or apocalypse!), etc.).

3. A simulator arena that just focuses on combat - a fleshed out experience that improves on the simulator and the missions (the starting screen ones) that are currently available, with its own progression system and lots of challenges. If I've learned anything from these forums and the Starsector community, it's that lots of players really just like fiddling with fleet battles, which is no surprise, given how good they are.


The game is simply too rich to have it just be a story-driven adventure. There's a lot more meat on these bones - hopefully we get to sink our teeth into it. I realize it's a tall order, a ton of work... but the potential is absolutely there.

[landryraccoon]

My two cents:

It's fine for money to be really easy to get, because money should only matter in the beginning and mid game. At the start of the game it feels like the only thing that matters is how much money you have, but in the endgame, the only things that matter should be things that money cannot buy, because money gets replaced by some new type of endgame progression.  If you're a beginner at the game, even managing the basic logistics of the game is difficult, so having some "easy" ways to get money is both fun and makes you feel like you're getting a lot better at the game when you master them. I don't really have an issue with certain types of trading or raiding breaking the (early) game, because that's fun. When you start a new playthrough you feel like you're a hero because you can skip past the early part knowing a bunch of tricks, and why not? The problem is if there's no endgame content beyond that.

In the end game, things that matter should be things that are earned through overcoming significant challenges in the game. Omega weapons, for example, seem to fit this perfectly. I hope that whatever end game ends up being, that there's a lot more stuff like Omega weapons - stuff that simply can't be bought for money, but must be earned by beating gameplay challenges.

IMHO, endgame starts at the point where money significantly drops in importance. Typically in my games this is when I get a profitable colony up to size 6. At that point money does not and more importantly should not matter, and that seems fine to me.

[Kirschbra]

I agree a lot with what OP is saying here. 

literally whole portions of the game become ignored... which is a huge shame.

Agree

1. Hulls/ships - yes, it's true that buying a brand new Paragon from some arms dealer guy is pretty expensive, but this is the exception. Hulls, in general, feel cheap at best, or trash at worst. I feel this aspect of the game needs some serious work, but that's a separate topic.

This can be fixed simply by increasing the proportions in cost from each ship class, make destroyers substantially more than frigates, and crusiers substantially more than destroyers ect.  Make a cruiser be a million, Make capitols even more, 10 mill, balance the numbers, but make that progression up ship classes more expensive.

3. Cool mods for ships - currently this whole system is strangely free, once you've found the hullmod (which is neither difficult nor expensive). This part of the game could also be made more complex and 'gamey' - certain hullmods would be very cheap, and able to be installed just about anywhere, while others would be expensive, require special parts, and/or require special facilities.

Totally agree, adding mods effects ship value I notice, but do they even cost anything to add?  if they do it's so trivial that yea they're free.  This could be another place to sink credits.

Making money is pretty easy once you know what your doing.

People mentioned the new player vs veterans thing, and yea, I forget how hard it is for new players to learn everything.  A lot of us learned how to fly ships before there was ever an economy to worry about.  We got to learn every concept of the current game, one patch at a time over many years.  I try to show this game to people, and I just don't get how they don't know how to fly a ship right lol.  I think maybe the tutorial should include making them use the shift aim - strafe mechanic if it doesn't already.

On the subject of money, there just needs to be more money sinks.  The colony system has been a good fun money sink, it makes players feel established and permanent, like they really matter in the sector.  I'm hoping later in development, Alex implements some of the mechanics nexelerin sort of implements.  With a vanilla capture colonies system, but story line unlocked at some point in the main story line, so that you can have a static sector until a certain point when the player can interact with it.  This also solves the problem of locations being captured and making the story line wonky.  Just have the big war be end game where you can finally bring stability to the sector in how you see fit, or fail in doing so.  Then there could be a big ultra end game threat, sort of like how stellaris does the big end game event crisis.  So just when your like, ok I'm conquering the whole sector, player has achieved ownership of 50% of colonies, BAM Dominion shows up.

To touch on the thread about Story points and S-Mods,  S-mods could be something thats added with high amounts of money and time.  You have to leave your ship at your colony for months for an S mod refit, and make them more expensive than removing D mods.  This is another, what to do with money.  S-mods are crazy powerful, they should be reserved for end game fleets.

I'm sure Alex will flesh out the economy more, the new changes have been great.  This has been my favorite game for over a decade.

[Hiruma Kai]

The game is enough of a sandbox that I expect portions of the game to be ignored by different subsets of players.  If don't want to trade, then I'm ignoring the majority of the trade system.  If I don't want to pirate, then a lot of disruption manipulation is off the table.

Personally, I play the game to see pretty exploding opposing spaceships with the least amount of stuff on my side I can get away with.  Doing stuff which does not involve exploding opposing spaceships gets filed under boring grind that I don't want to do a lot of. 

1. Hulls/ships - yes, it's true that buying a brand new Paragon from some arms dealer guy is pretty expensive, but this is the exception. Hulls, in general, feel cheap at best, or trash at worst. I feel this aspect of the game needs some serious work, but that's a separate topic.

This can be fixed simply by increasing the proportions in cost from each ship class, make destroyers substantially more than frigates, and crusiers substantially more than destroyers ect.  Make a cruiser be a million, Make capitols even more, 10 mill, balance the numbers, but make that progression up ship classes more expensive.

That will require more extensive changes to the game to make work than I think you're proposing here.  Keep in mind, veteran players can kill capitals with certain frigates (i.e. Afflictor, Shade, Hyperion), in the middle of the enemy fleet no less.  For a combat oriented player, it is currently quite easy to salvage a capital early on, which would suddenly mean I could sell a salvaged capital for a full fleet of destroyers (since its value is 100 times that of the destroyer tier, and assuming even a 10% sale price, that is 10 destroyers) earned from a single fight.  Or simply salvage a cruiser from the salvage field left by a Tri-tachyon fleet fighting a Hegemony fleet near Skathi without needing combat.  Or maybe an invasion fleet fighting defending fleets in a Nex game.  Or simply find a Legion XIV drifting around a lonely planet, of which I believe there are 4 guaranteed each game in Vanilla.

You'd have to completely change the salvaging system to make that kind of distinction work, or else the path of least resistance becomes salvaging everything.  Especially if ship value is large compared to running costs.  As it is, there already is a huge mark down for selling ships.  One option I guess would be to force the sale value down to 1% of its purchase price in such a scaling scheme, although I think that would get even more complaints than the current system.

As a combat focused veteran player, changing the credits gain for various campaign layer actions such as trade, colonization, commissions, exploration missions, isn't going to affect me much.  Now if you start making it so bounty profits and AI core sales aren't sufficient to maintain that bounty hunting, then we're going to have a problem.  As now you're saying I need to other credit making options in order to get to the good part of the game.

The fundamental question I feel a lot of these types of discussions should answer is, what do you want the player to spend most of their time doing?  Or perhaps do a finer break down of time spent percentage wise, along with considering if that time usage breakdown should change as the game progresses?  My suggestion is the majority of time a player spends should be on game loops they consider fun.  The equivalent of fetch quests is not a particularly exciting game loop, and forcing new players to do even more of that in order to simply get to the good part of the game either because of running costs or acquiring ship costs isn't a direction I'd take the game.

[SCC]

I should make a chart that details resource flows in Starsector. Currently, it's mostly about obtaining assets to get credits to get more assets, with minor story point and AI core economies on the side, and which feed only one-way into the credit economy anyway.

I mean, imagine if you had a combat skill that increased your hull by 50% and also gave you a 10u/s speed bonus on top of that.

Don't you mean elite Combat Endurance?

[landryraccoon]

This can be fixed simply by increasing the proportions in cost from each ship class, make destroyers substantially more than frigates, and crusiers substantially more than destroyers ect.  Make a cruiser be a million, Make capitols even more, 10 mill, balance the numbers, but make that progression up ship classes more expensive.

The game should be balanced around vanilla, not mods. If you're telling me that in vanilla Starsector without mods you can earn $10M without a huge amount of grinding I don't believe you. Even a pretty profitable vanilla size 6 colony only earns about $360K a month, it would take you 3 cycles to earn $10M, and that would be for a single Paragon in your example.

That change would make it so that practically speaking the only way you would get a capital is by salvaging it.

[prav]

That change would make it so that practically speaking the only way you would get a capital is by salvaging it.

I don't really have a problem with that.

[landryraccoon]

That change would make it so that practically speaking the only way you would get a capital is by salvaging it.

I don't really have a problem with that.

Agree to disagree. There's room in the game to support multiple play styles.

As it stands, you can choose to trade and build / buy or salvage or both, and I think that's a good thing. I think that the cost to buy/build ships in the game is pretty well balanced right now and I don't think it needs drastic changes.