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[Chiefbigfeather]

Dear Devs,

this is my feedback after sinking a decent amount of hours into the game. I'm not the hardcore player, but not belonging to that audience may provide helpful perspectives.
Starsector is a brilliant game. It is definitely one of the best space games I tried in a long while. The combat is engaging, the ship balance is very well tuned. There are areas of the game that could be improved though.
By far the best part of the game is the early to midgame. Finding better ships, thinking about what fleets to take on with what you got. This is where the game shines and is at it's best.
This kind of comes to an abrupt end when you complete your 240 deployment point fleet though. In my first playthrough, I got 3 buffaloes, commissioned with Try-Tachion and bought 2 paragons and started tinkering. It was a relatively short process to complete my fleet (add 2 long range sunders with escort package for each Paragon, find a fun flagship). Once that fleet was completed, the game felt 'won'. The fleet is so completely overpowered, combats just became meaningless clicking to grind for the progress/reward. It felt like the pacing of the game broke down. Money stopped mattering, there was nothing more to do in the game.

My suggestions:
Player fleets should be weaker then the biggest bounty fleets, faction fleets etc. Maybe reduce the player deployment points to preserve the feeling of fighting overwhelming odds. If you allow player fleets on equal footing to AI fleets, the game doesn't seem to work very well. S-Mods feel very strong too and may need a nerf to achieve this.

It would be great if there was a stronger sense of rock/paper/scissors. It would be very interesting if you needed to tinker with your fleet to be a able to beat certain challenges. The way some skills work encourage you to max out 240 and always field the same ships. There is no mechanic for swapping officers etc. I don't think the game profits from those mechanics. It would be much more interesting if there where more specialized weapon and ship roles to beat opposing fleets. This ties into the first suggestion: Mechanics like this would only be interesting if the player fleet has to fight an uphill battle in the first place.

Acquiring the fleet/weapons you want is far too easy. Having to make the best with what you got is most of the fun. The battletech mod BTA3062 handles this much better for example. The military markets under commission grant way, way too easy access to the best ships and weapons in the game. Some larger, more powerful weapons should be uncomon or rare, trading even one of them on the black marked should be an event (and have much more serious ramifications if caught). Factions should jealously guard their better/larger weapon and ship techs.

Addendum:
Some small notes on balance:
The medusa seems to have too good shied and flux stats for it's DP.
Escort package could use a nerf: Give the s-mod bonus to cruisers, reduce the capital bonus to x1.5.
The Paragon could do with a reduction in armor.

[Grievous69]

Might be a dumb question but have you fought anything else apart from bounty fleets? The game currently has no real endgame (so it's kinda to be expected that it suddenly just stops), but there are harder enemies to fight than regular human fleets.

And you have found a fleet combo that works for you, the things you commented on balance imo don't deserve nerfs. As you'll find out there are equally if not more "broken" strats you can pull off to make the game seem easy.

[Killer of Fate]

i feel like the issue of the game feeling won could be solved by just fixing the economy giving the player the ability to print money.

[Chiefbigfeather]

Might be a dumb question but have you fought anything else apart from bounty fleets? The game currently has no real endgame (so it's kinda to be expected that it suddenly just stops), but there are harder enemies to fight than regular human fleets.

And you have found a fleet combo that works for you, the things you commented on balance imo don't deserve nerfs. As you'll find out there are equally if not more "broken" strats you can pull off to make the game seem easy.

Yes, I have. But the game doesn‘t suddenly stop, it suddenly becomes too easy. There is plenty of content already, it‘s just that the pacing is off and the top player power is too high/easy to reach.

[Megas]

With how stingy the rewards are, combat has to be easy or else the player loses money (replacing lost ships).  That 250k+ bounty (which has several enemy capitals) does not even cover the cost of a new capital.  Smaller bounties too for smaller ships.  I consider loot they drop roughly covering the cost of travel and repairs.  I would prefer the game to be balanced around player losing ships, but rewards need to be much higher to cover the cost of replacements.  Thus, combat with the current rewards needs to be balanced around flawless victories or close to it.  However, when the game is balanced around flawless victories, the game looks too easy.  The challenge then is not whether your fleet survives a total wipeout, but not to lose any ships so that you have a decisive victory and make profit and progress, not a pyrrhic victory where you are effectively defeated and are set back enough that it is faster to reload the game and replay than to continue and recover from your losses.

With the investment colonies need, they only start printing significant money after they reach size 6 when they no longer need hazard pay.  Before then, they are a money pit (for all of the buildings paid for).  Whatever meager profit they generate is gobbled up by fleet expenses and/or further colony buildings (or a new capital for the fleet).  Once player has five size 6 colonies, he can make close to a half a million per month, with only minimal items and without any AI cores or colony improvements.  Once extra items and improvements come in, income from those five worlds can be pushed closer to a million per month.  By then the player starts getting a return on the multi-year investment (i.e., printing money), and the game is effectively over.  I usually get my endgame fleet before I get my five size 6 worlds.  I am not printing money when I have the ships to fight Ordos because the colonies are still growing.

P.S.  As for pacing, the enemy scales up faster than the player.  If the player gains power too quickly, the enemy gains power even faster.  Player needs to play catchup with the enemy.  Bounties scale way too fast.  Old releases years ago had better pacing for the enemy.

I do not think the player gains power too quickly.  I do not have time to play Starsector hours on end anymore, and I like to reach late game as quickly as possible.  Early game, or pre-colony part of the game, is the part I like least, and I like to get it over with as quickly as possible.  In newer releases (probably since v0.9a), I play only one or two games per release (depending on how many hotfixes Alex puts out after release) because of time.  I have no interest slogging through early game by restarting the game.  I want my ships and weapons, and I rather keep one good game (save) handy at all times and stick with it.  I do not want to replay a new game because it takes too long.

P.P.S.  Thanks to crises, I need close to an endgame fleet to fight the major factions if I want their rewards.  Some peaceful options deny you rewards or steal/drain colony income, so of course combat is the only option, except for pirates (and maybe Church with their sabotaged world takeover exploit).  That means I need my endgame fleet when my colonies are still at size 4 or 5, long before they are printing enough money to make up for the costs sunk into colonies.

[Alex]

Hi - I appreciate your feedback! It's kind of a given at this point that it peters out since there's no real endgame; I can understand wanting to stretch out the early/midgame and have some thoughts about that, but also don't want to make it too difficult to acquire ships and weapons, since that can just feel like a grind, too, especially if it were too RNG-based.

In my first playthrough, I got 3 buffaloes, commissioned with Try-Tachion and bought 2 paragons and started tinkering. It was a relatively short process to complete my fleet (add 2 long range sunders with escort package for each Paragon, find a fun flagship).

I'm not super clear on this - do you mean that you used the Buffalos to smuggle and make credits or some such, and then just bought your way into a large fleet? I feel like there are some steps missing here since you'd need to at least do enough to raise your reputation with TriTach to be able to buy the Paragons in the first place.

Might be a dumb question but have you fought anything else apart from bounty fleets? The game currently has no real endgame (so it's kinda to be expected that it suddenly just stops), but there are harder enemies to fight than regular human fleets.

Yes, I have. But the game doesn‘t suddenly stop, it suddenly becomes too easy. There is plenty of content already, it‘s just that the pacing is off and the top player power is too high/easy to reach.

Hmm - hopefully this isn't too patronizing, but: are you sure? It's *possible* but it seems fairly unlikely that someone on their first playthrough just got 2 Paragons quickly and made good enough builds etc that they could steamroll the entire higher end of the game's challenge.

Spoiler

Heck, just the hypershunt defenders would be very likely to give an unprepared 240 point fleet a run for the money. Never mind the high-end all-alpha-core (plus) bounty, or multiple Ordos, or even a fully-operational Remnant station with some defenders.

[close]

Maybe it was a long playthrough? The rest of what you wrote kind of makes it sound like it wasn't, though, so I'm not sure. Just trying to get a better understanding of your experience so I can have a proper frame of reference for your feedback, which I again appreciate!

[Grievous69]

Yeah they've definitelly missed the hardest fights judging by the both posts. I just didn't want to spell them out in case of spoiling it. There's no way someone would call the game too easy after seeing what Ordos can do to your 2 Paragon with Sunders fleet. I also doubt they did contact bounties, as those ramp up to crazy levels once you raise the relations. Compared to triple s-modded enemy fleet, regular intel bounties are a tutorial basically.

[Alex]

I just didn't want to spell them out in case of spoiling it.

(That's a good point, added a spoiler tag to my post.)

[TK3600]

i feel like the issue of the game feeling won could be solved by just fixing the economy giving the player the ability to print money.

This. Colony prints money too easily. This and commission salary makes early game a breeze. Smuggling too could be made harder. For instance, make 'suspicious cargo' alert system wide, so the guy guarding entrance join in stopping my smuggling.

[Killer of Fate]

i feel like the issue of the game feeling won could be solved by just fixing the economy giving the player the ability to print money.

This. Colony prints money too easily. This and commission salary makes early game a breeze. Smuggling too could be made harder. For instance, make 'suspicious cargo' alert system wide, so the guy guarding entrance join in stopping my smuggling.

Commission salary is good... It's just that the crew and officer costs aren't high enough...

[TK3600]

i feel like the issue of the game feeling won could be solved by just fixing the economy giving the player the ability to print money.

This. Colony prints money too easily. This and commission salary makes early game a breeze. Smuggling too could be made harder. For instance, make 'suspicious cargo' alert system wide, so the guy guarding entrance join in stopping my smuggling.

Commission salary is good... It's just that the crew and officer costs aren't high enough...

Officer cost is pretty reasonable if not for colony and commission. Crew cost is pretty cheap, until you start running Invictus.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Running a single invictus and getting slapped by +40k crew costs with it alone sure was an experience when i first tried it out

[Megas]

Even if crew becomes more expensive, that just means exploiting core Pather (or few other) worlds that sell crew far lower than base price when they have excess.  Buy crew for about 10 credits instead of the usual 45.

On the other hand, that same Pather world often pays a lot for marines, and I occasionally trade marines I do not need for money.

Making crew obnoxiously expensive means jumping through hoops to get them cheap unless it is late enough that money is no longer is a concern and you just buy them anyway.

P.S.  Cost of crew is also noticeable early when I buy a lot to colonize worlds, although it is more of a problem of getting enough capacity to haul enough crew (in a ragtag fleet no bigger than a 100k or 150k bounty) while still having leftover to run the ships after a thousand stay behind to run the colony.

[Killer of Fate]

i feel like the issue of the game feeling won could be solved by just fixing the economy giving the player the ability to print money.

This. Colony prints money too easily. This and commission salary makes early game a breeze. Smuggling too could be made harder. For instance, make 'suspicious cargo' alert system wide, so the guy guarding entrance join in stopping my smuggling.

Commission salary is good... It's just that the crew and officer costs aren't high enough...

Officer cost is pretty reasonable if not for colony and commission. Crew cost is pretty cheap, until you start running Invictus.

the costs of officers and crew should be high enough to make you downsize your fleet if you are not doing anything worth the attention of that much personnel... So that elements of early to mid game do not become immediately useless unless you are actively looking to lose your entire fleet and have no bank.

Additionally, I feel like mercenary officers should be far more common, their pay however should be higher than now, to make it so that having many mercenary officers would make you go bankrupt rather rapidly. This would counteract the current exploit in which you can have tons and tons of mercenary officers by just learning and unlearning the Officer Management skill.
It would also make fights with NPCs which have so many officers that they start putting them on civilian ships feel more fair.

[Dadada]

This. Colony prints money too easily. This and commission salary makes early game a breeze. Smuggling too could be made harder.

All true but changing it may make the game more grindy and less forgiving for newer players. "shrug"

We could half colony profits (half market value for goods sold/exported by the colony on the global market, increase access penalties for hostilities, half earnings from pop & infrastructure), I mean we could also reduce commissions to 2-3k per level (and maybe increase commission related bounties and also adjust the Galatia stipend), we could outright decrease player trade profits on the open market and nerf the black market -> reduce profits form smuggling by increasing black market prices for goods bought and reducing the price for goods sold there, so maybe like some kind of lower black market tariff, or rather just adjustments.

I want the game to be harder but none of these changes sound appealing, I'd rather have more strong STRONK enemies and not the game turned into a chore. I'll be fine either way, it will just take a bit longer to print money, noobies on the other hand may be repulsed... Let's keep it as is and hope Alex drops some diverse (LT domain? Missile and wing spam? More [semi] custom bounties?) enemies on our heads.
E: reworded E2: again E3: Shortages already got severe nerfs imo.