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Author Topic: Starfarer 0.53a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 368153 times)

Thaago

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #585 on: July 24, 2012, 04:40:14 PM »

This version is not out yet - this is just a list of changes made/new features implemented so far in the development build.

Changes as of July 24, 2012

...

Ship Systems:
  • Fortress Shield: generates hard flux but allows soft flux dissipation while it's on, allowing ship to take a "breather" in combat when its flux is high from weapons fire
  • Maneuvering Jets: removed cooldown, added flux cost

...

Hmm, that changes my thoughts on the fortress shield quite a bit! How much hard flux is generated, or is that just the flux from incoming fire?
Also that sounds like a really good call on the maneuvering jets - I was happy when you made the same call with the missile launchers.

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Psiyon

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #586 on: July 24, 2012, 04:43:29 PM »

Any requests?
Actually, yes, I do have one: would it be possible to make the value for the player's credits accessible? I'd love to be able to add or subtract from them, and create events based on a player's monetary worth.

I'd also love to be able to create simple text-only pop-up boxes that could be used for notifications (something similar to accident report pop-ups), as the current notification system in the campaign screen is a bit too subtle, and makes it easy for players to miss important notifications. Though, I understand that's a fairly large addition--perhaps for the next version of the game?

Finally, the Mule looks pretty nice--it scared me for a second though, when I saw the scaled-down image, it appeared as some sort of Venture kitbash. :P
So, will this ship be replacing a lot of the Buffalos in the pirate fleets? They could use the extra firepower.
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ClosetGoth

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #587 on: July 24, 2012, 04:46:40 PM »

Okay, I am going to draw attention to what K-64 said. I also really want to see directional thrusters. I don't think it would be that hard to visually have the thrusters activate when logically needed, but I do recognize that it might be a pain to deal with flameouts of odd-angle thrusters and how it affects the steering. :P

Also, I have a more tricky request. I would love it if we could set an "engine mount" sprite, and have gimbaling on engines. Kerbal Space Program has made me realize that having engines that vector thrust is an actual thing, a viable thing, and something that shouldn't be ignored. It would look awesome to have our ships swish their engines around as we mash the keys, and it wouldn't add any extra visual clutter to the battles.

EDIT: P.S. I agree with Psiyon on both the player credit point and the "perceived kitbash" point.
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Kregoth

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #588 on: July 24, 2012, 04:49:06 PM »

Quote
Admiral AI:
Knows to engage enemy fire support ships when they become a significant danger

I was actually just about to suggest this very addition myself, Thanks for this! I honestly thought that it made fire support ships to powerful as they where largely ignored by the AI. This should prove to increase player tactics in outfitting long range weapons as now they actually need to consider point defense, this could mean dedicated point defense ships used as an escort to be far more valuable in fleet operations for fire support ships:)
« Last Edit: July 24, 2012, 05:18:32 PM by Kregoth »
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #589 on: July 24, 2012, 05:00:36 PM »

Requests on coding or general gameplay? :)
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Kregoth

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #590 on: July 24, 2012, 05:32:38 PM »

Requests on coding or general gameplay? :)

EDIT: Ooops I miss read that I though you said "Requests on coding of general game play?"
« Last Edit: July 24, 2012, 05:40:20 PM by Kregoth »
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #591 on: July 24, 2012, 05:43:10 PM »

Another!...combat freighter?  Sounds like more pirates. ;D
But then again, it has that midline feel and look to it.  Can't want to test it out. :)

EDIT:
That rear light MG sticks out A LOT in the exhaust light.  Can something be done about that?
And a "few" things to sort out?  I say it's released withing a week from now. ;D

Another? It's pretty much alone in its role!

The rear MG... I don't know, I think it kind of works - also, this is with the maneuvering jets on, so there's a lot more glow than usual. The ideal solution would be to add some glow bleed here ("bloom" effect) but that's not in the cards.


I'm quite liking the look of the Mule there. From what I can see there, it appears to be able to take a fair beating, especially for a freighter, be it combat or no.

Yep - it's intended to be similar to the Venture in design. Quite likely designed by the same corporation in the early days of the Domain.

As an aside point, are thrusters ever going to be truly directional? I was testing earlier on with having a rear pointing thruster to see if it would only activate if I put the ship in reverse, unfortunately it didn't work. Such a feature would be one of the small details that'd make the combat that bit more flavoursome than it already is

Okay, I am going to draw attention to what K-64 said. I also really want to see directional thrusters. I don't think it would be that hard to visually have the thrusters activate when logically needed, but I do recognize that it might be a pain to deal with flameouts of odd-angle thrusters and how it affects the steering. :P

Also, I have a more tricky request. I would love it if we could set an "engine mount" sprite, and have gimbaling on engines. Kerbal Space Program has made me realize that having engines that vector thrust is an actual thing, a viable thing, and something that shouldn't be ignored. It would look awesome to have our ships swish their engines around as we mash the keys, and it wouldn't add any extra visual clutter to the battles.

I just don't see that happening. It's the kind of thing that has a lot of impact on the visual ship designs, and introduces a lot of constraints there. I can see it fitting into a game that was all about modeling thrust accurately, and while Starfarer has a few nods to that (spinning out of control when some engines are disabled, etc), it's certainly not a focal point of the game design. So, I don't see making it a key component of the ship designs, either.

What I can see doing at some point is being able to flag thrusters to go on/off depending on the keys being pressed, but in all honesty, that's not very likely either, as it'll involve some significant ship retro-fitting. Still, never say never and all.

Hmm, that changes my thoughts on the fortress shield quite a bit! How much hard flux is generated, or is that just the flux from incoming fire?
Also that sounds like a really good call on the maneuvering jets - I was happy when you made the same call with the missile launchers.

2.5% of the base flux capacity per second, plus whatever comes in from damage (at a 10x improved efficiency).

Yeah - cooldowns seem to get in the way a lot of the time. Sometimes they're necessary, and sometimes they work... but I'd say they're better for controlling the rate at which the player can do something, not for controlling when they can do it, if that distinction makes any sense. I'm not sure that's good as a hard and fast rule, though.

Requests on coding or general gameplay? :)

Was just asking as far as the modding API.

Actually, yes, I do have one: would it be possible to make the value for the player's credits accessible? I'd love to be able to add or subtract from them, and create events based on a player's monetary worth.

I'd also love to be able to create simple text-only pop-up boxes that could be used for notifications (something similar to accident report pop-ups), as the current notification system in the campaign screen is a bit too subtle, and makes it easy for players to miss important notifications. Though, I understand that's a fairly large addition--perhaps for the next version of the game?

Added SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() and CampaignFleetAPI.getCargo() methods - that should let you get a hold of the player fleet and then work with the credits using its CargoAPI.getCredits() method (which returns a MutableValue). Haven't tested it, though - advance apologies if something there doesn't work.

About messages - I think it's a good idea, but you're right, it's not exactly something I could just hack in. Have to make sure it plays nice with other UI code, which could be particularly tricky since a mod could call that at an awkward time.


Finally, the Mule looks pretty nice--it scared me for a second though, when I saw the scaled-down image, it appeared as some sort of Venture kitbash. :P

Thanks! Hmm, yeah - not sure there's any way around that, though. It's definitely in the same style, and is meant to be - and if you've seen a lot of kitbashing, then anything similar-looking is bound to make your mind go there for a second :)


So, will this ship be replacing a lot of the Buffalos in the pirate fleets? They could use the extra firepower.

More of a Tarsus replacement, but yeah, you'll see a decent number of those in the pirate fleets.
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Psiyon

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #592 on: July 24, 2012, 06:14:16 PM »

Added SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() and CampaignFleetAPI.getCargo() methods - that should let you get a hold of the player fleet and then work with the credits using its CargoAPI.getCredits() method (which returns a MutableValue). Haven't tested it, though - advance apologies if something there doesn't work.
Awesome, thank you! Now I'll be able to code all sorts of lovely things, like station defense contracts, preferred customer contracts, buying out small mercenary groups to work for you, creating a virtual stock market to invest in... this will be fun.

About messages - I think it's a good idea, but you're right, it's not exactly something I could just hack in.
Of course; I figured it probably wouldn't be a simple hackjob. Oh well, there's always the future.
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Faiter119

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #593 on: July 24, 2012, 06:22:07 PM »

Quote
Awesome, thank you! Now I'll be able to code all sorts of lovely things, like station defense contracts, preferred customer contracts, buying out small mercenary groups to work for you, creating a virtual stock market to invest in... this will be fun.

Now i expect you to make that.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2012, 06:27:21 PM by Faiter119 »
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #594 on: July 24, 2012, 06:26:04 PM »

Added SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() and CampaignFleetAPI.getCargo() methods - that should let you get a hold of the player fleet and then work with the credits using its CargoAPI.getCredits() method (which returns a MutableValue). Haven't tested it, though - advance apologies if something there doesn't work.
Awesome, thank you! Now I'll be able to code all sorts of lovely things, like station defense contracts, preferred customer contracts, buying out small mercenary groups to work for you, creating a virtual stock market to invest in... this will be fun.

Hmm - you know, I just realized - getCargo() was already there, in SectorEntityToken (which CampaignFleetAPI is derived from). The only tricky part is getting the player fleet object - you can do it using getEntityByName with... I don't remember what, actually - something like "Player Fleet" or just "Fleet". In any case, SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() makes this much nicer.
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Psiyon

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #595 on: July 24, 2012, 06:45:24 PM »

Hmm - you know, I just realized - getCargo() was already there, in SectorEntityToken (which CampaignFleetAPI is derived from). The only tricky part is getting the player fleet object - you can do it using getEntityByName with... I don't remember what, actually - something like "Player Fleet" or just "Fleet". In any case, SectorAPI.getPlayerFleet() makes this much nicer.
Huh, you're right. It's been a little while :P I was always under the impression, though, that getCredits() simply returned the player's credit value, and didn't allow for it to be edited.

So, forgive my lack of experience when it comes to programming, but how exactly would I modify a player's credits with getCredits()? I always guessed that I would have needed a setCredits(float quantity) to do that with.
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #596 on: July 24, 2012, 07:11:51 PM »

So, forgive my lack of experience when it comes to programming, but how exactly would I modify a player's credits with getCredits()? I always guessed that I would have needed a setCredits(float quantity) to do that with.

getCredits() returns a MutableValue (which is a SF-specific class, not a general Java one). MutableValue has a few methods: get(), add(), subtract(), and set().

So you could do:
getCredits().get() to get the actual number
getCredits().set(1000) to set it to 1000
getCredits().add(500) to add 500 credits. That's actually a convenience method, equivalent to getCredits().set(getCredits().get() + 500).

Does that make sense?

It would probably be more intuitive to just have getCredits(), setCredits(), addCredits(), etc in CargoAPI. I ended up doing it this way to avoid having to code up all these extra methods (and instead expose MutableValues) but in retrospect it may have been a mistake. It certainly complicates things a bit.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #597 on: July 24, 2012, 07:16:53 PM »

Combat Freighters:
Condor, Buffalo Mk. II, Hound, and now the Mule

Or is it forever alone?

Anyways, I'll leave the coding talk to the pros, I'm a humble modder, no idea how to do anything deeper than weapons, ships, solar systems, and missions. ;D
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Alex

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #598 on: July 24, 2012, 07:28:15 PM »

Combat Freighters:
Condor, Buffalo Mk. II, Hound, and now the Mule

Condor: not a freighter, a former freighter converted to a carrier - no longer fills freighter role.
Buffalo Mk. II: poor cargo capacity, no longer a freighter
Hound: Fair enough, but it's a frigate :)

The Mule retains significant cargo capacity and combines it with respectable firepower and strong defenses - that's what I mean when I say "Combat Freighter".
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Starfarer 0.53a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #599 on: July 24, 2012, 07:40:59 PM »

Condor still has 120 cargo space, more than enough for me to survive in the early stages of campaign play.  But then again, it has next to no armament. :)
« Last Edit: July 24, 2012, 07:44:26 PM by The Soldier »
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