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[Liral]

Will the weapon spec modification code of Realistic Combat need to call this method to get all weapon specs? 

Code

List<WeaponSpecAPI> getActuallyAllWeaponSpecs();

Thrilled for this update!

[Antelope Syrup]

I wonder if those system defense fleets will have handpicked loadouts and officers, or S mods for that matter. It would be cool to fight against an opponent with a coherently designed fleet, but thats probably more developer effort than it's worth. +1 to them periodically reinforcing, too.

[Foxy]

I think the transponder is way too overpowered. If I turn it off, I can go around literally everywhere even if everyone hates me. If they stop me and ask me to enable, all I do is refuse and leave and I get negative rep, which is already at -100, but it makes no difference. I can plunder and loot to my heart's content, the only penalty is that I have to wait 3 months if I raid things nearby a base/planet, but other than that no one identifies me as the enemy, no one chases me, and most of all there are no serious reinforcements coming after me.

During the colony missions, I liked the idea of having a bounty on my head from tritachion, but unfortunately they are scripted, so if you avoid/break their triggers they get canceled and you never see them again. Maybe having bounties from the factions you mess with (-50 reputation) they send all they can after you, making movement tricky (unless you have stealth ships, and even then if someone spots you in their radius, all hell should break loose).
I'm still waiting for exploration to be more engaging, and less of a click fest to scan planets. That part is really not fun and there is really little incentive to do it.
The Ludic Path needs a bit more love, so far their missions are quite sparse, and for some reason they are allied with the pirates but they give you bounties to hunt them. I think they should give you bounties for the other factions in the core sectors, just like the pirates do. They also need more Contacts, especially for commerce.

Pathers aren't allied with pirates. They're neutral to them.
Pirates will for example target Pather worlds like Epiphany and Chalcedeon in Kumari Kundam (might have spelled that name wrong)

I agree with the rest of the statement though. But I'm sure that is something that will be worked on in the next patch and future patches. Considering the patch notes themselves I think mention some new dialogue and missions...

Sorry, yeah I wanted to say neutral. It's awesome if they are going to work on that.

[Alex]

Thank you for your comments and feedback, everyone! Wow, wow. Been keeping up it and and will respond where I can, but won't be able to respond directly to evertything - my apologies

Sindrian Diktat colony crisis now uses Lion's Guard ships instead of regular Diktat military

It was already one of the easier ones to fight directly, I don't know that it needed a nerf.

Hmm, I don't think that the relative balance of the various crises is a particular concern - at least, it isn't to me. It's hard to predict what the strength of the player is going to be when a particular crisis comes - more like impossible. That's why there are various options for dealing with them, and as a consequence the actual combat strength a crisis can be has a LOT of leeway, because a the same exact crisis can already be "too weak" or "too strong" depending on when it gets rolled. So to me it's more about feel.

• Added a new Tri-Tachyon character who will pay for certain [EXTREMELY REDACTED] items

Will they be buying items that will be introduced in this patch or certain [SUPER ALABASTER] items? If you're willing to divulge.

New stuff! As was mentioned in later posts here, selling limited-quantity Omega weapons for credits/reputation wouldn't make much sense.

Oh, this is an interesting addition as it makes sense as these are the major faction's capital systems, and can make "obtaining" Pristine Nanoforges more difficult, though I feel lore-wise, the Samarra system can also get a "system defense fleet" to protect Eventide.

Fleets like this are actually somewhat performance-intensive to have a bunch of, so I'm being intentionally very conservative here.

This is gonna completely break some intel based utility mods like Captain's Log and Stellar Networks to the point that simply changing a version number won't cut it anymore, isn't it?

Hmm, is it? Offhand I'm not sure why it would.

Also, could we reasonably expect some teasers about possible post-Galatia Academy story content? Is something like that even in plans/works? 

Alright: some of the stuff in this upcoming release is going to feel unrelated to it

(But, yeah, it's absolutely something we're thinking about and doing some preliminary work on.)

Do the "powerful system defense fleets" respawn?

Yes! And if they've taken substantial losses, they'll return to their source colony and re-launch at some point, too.

Isn't the flux/second 500 currently, not 750?

Proooobably, but iirc here I'm talking about the behind-the-scenes "flux while actually firing" cost, which doesn't account for the delay between shots. Either way, it's a third of what it was

One of the particularly notable things about Starsector is the writing. Would it be possible to have
some one-off dialog for each of the level 7 officers we rescue? It would make them stand out a bit
more rather than just "Yoink! Gotcha" when they join our fleet. Maybe even a dialog choice or two
that would let us select a skill for them? I don't know if that's asking too much but it would really
give them some personality and make their rescue an event, rather than just a pause in the player
steamroller of the sector.

Hmm, maybe? I'm not particularly against that and I think it'd be a good thing, but also David is pretty much constantly adding new stuff along these lines - more conversations, interactions, etc - so it's more a question of why this specific one would get priority over the other things, if that makes sense. There are a *ton* of opportunities for this sort of thing!

Also, has a general buff to EBC been considered? Right now, the Remnant ship that relies on it feels rather underwhelming - it doesn't really have the flux to use an EW-heavy loadout to great effectiveness, and more-or-less feels like a worse Aurora, diverging from the general theme of Remnant ships being truly exceptional in some way, and breaking one or more gameplay 'rules' in a way that makes them frightening to fight and appealing enough to spend a capstone skill to field them.

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment of the Apex - to me it feels like one of the more threatening/dangerous ships in the Remnant lineup simply because it's much harder to delete than anything else, and it lets the other ships around it function more effectively. That said, if I wanted to buff the Apex, I'd probably not touch the EBC but just improve its stats. Range boosts are very powerful, base range boosts even more so.

The Gryphon’s nerf. I feel like EMR is a no-brainer on the Gryphon given how much of the ship relies on its missiles, even if you removed its system entirely. Removing EMR because of the system no longer synergizing directly with EMR feels like a reason that doesn’t consider the Gryphon’s mount selection as a whole.

I’m not for or against Gryphon nerfs or buffs, the reason given just seems a bit weird.

It's definitely *less* of a no-brainer; not installing EMR is it's giving up, what, a fifth of its maximum missile capacity? Base + MS + 2x base from system + EMR. I can definitely see making a choice to do that.

So for the most part it's a UI update so far

It's *definitely* not!

• Added a powerful "system defense fleet" to Aztlan, Thule, Hybrasil, and Eos Exodus star systems

Ooh, this is going to be nice! I wonder if there will be any story elements involving those fleets, just like Caden and Hyder in the Askonia system?

Not at the moment, but it opens some doors there.

> I wonder who Threat is

(Very difficult to resist making some sort of "John Threat" joke.)

The patch notes look amazing! Really looking forward to playing it! However while there is still time for suggestions, can we get a buff to the smuggling bar/contact mission type? Although the mission can be done with some luck by any fleet the rewards tend to be so small as to make it pointless. The only times I have found reason to do it was for rep farming or when starting with super small fleets.

I'll keep it in mind! Chance of anything happening there for this release are just about zero, but I've been thinking about about bar missions in general, though no promises

I noticed that the Anubis is the only ship included in the patch notes, but the Anubis blogpost mentioned that the Anubis would be "one of a few ships that will be possible to have in the player's fleet". I have to assume that the other ships that we could get are too entangled with spoilers to include in the patch notes?

That's certainly a reasonable reading of the available facts!

I feel this does not unclude the hyperspace derelicts, and one can go past you whilst you lose your lvl7 officer?

Right now I think you're right, but in the next release - per the patch notes - they'll only "count" if you actually find them and they join your fleet.

(Possibly) fixed issue with "search & destroy" order sometimes being impossible to give for a few seconds

Yessss! Nice, thank you! I was "whining" in the 0.97 thread about it. Must have been a pita to fix.

Yeah it was! Not 100% sure if it's settled or not, either.

• Wasp: reduced replacement time to 3 seconds (was: 5)

I feel this one is a much bigger deal than it looks at first glance, Wasps were already very good IMO.
Now carriers can have much more reliable PD covering the fleet, I like having a cheap lowish impact baseline so fighter bays are always useful.
Curious to see how it affects missiles and fleet compositions in general (paired with the nice HBL/PD laser/paladin changes).

It'll be interesting to see, yeah. Wasp feels like a fairly safe fighter to do that with because it's made out of paper and spamming it offensively feels unlikely to work. I'm sure someone will prove me wrong, though!

Any chance Gladius could have its IR pulse laser fixed to 40 flux as normal ones? My OCD hurts while looking at it. Pleasssssse.

Sorry, no! Its flux cost is part of the balance of the Gladius; I'd have to adjust its flux stats and test it etc and it wouldn't end up in the same spot it is now since it has multiple weapons generating flux.

getActuallyAllWeaponSpecs was awkward-funny to read, but getDisplayNameWithArticleWithoutArticle probably still has it beat

(I like to have a little fun sometimes.)

To Eos? But not to Canaan? That's interesting. Curious about the justification for that.

Eos is the miltiary/industrical "capital" system of the LC.

Is this OP reduction added to the existing OP reduction due to the built-in Solar shielding? or replaces that?

In addition to.

Added Anubis-class Experimental Cruiser (found in Tri-Tachyon fleets)

So, the only way to get those new ship is to mug a TT fleet?

You should be able to pick it up on the black market, too, if more rarely than other TT ships.

Hmm...does this check for that the missile ammo does not regen? A missile that regenerates ammo means it could still fire at any time and is still a threat, even if the slot currently has 0 ammo.

The code considers that, yeah.

With the codex updates, I would really like to see a search function for ship names (and variants), type but particularly stats. For instance, quickly fine the info of a derelict ship or blueprint, filter any ships labeled as a "freighter", filter out ships with greater or less than stats, additionally the search may even include the ship system. This would make the codex extremely useful especially when playing with many mods.

There's a search function for ship names, and tags for types etc. And it's easy to see all the ships that have a specific system (because they'll all be linked from the page for that system). No search function for stats, though.

If I may, I have a request for a mod-support feature that I was hoping to see here, and didn't.
I have been told in the past by mod developers in the community that the effect of AI cores on planetary industries was not easily moddable, to the poiint that it isn't being done. This was an exchange with the creator of Legio Inferno, which introduces two new AI cores.
If this is still the case, I would like to request that this be made more accessable in future.

Thank you for the amazing game, and continuing updates!

I'll keep it in mind! It's doable but it makes the mod conflict with other mods that try to change the same industry. Not the easiest thing to extract and text on my end, though, so it's not suuuuper likely that I'll actually do it without a vanilla reason for it.

I can't wait to get curb-stomped.

(Honestly, I'm really looking forward to this.)

Regarding the Tempest, I'll take the replacement rate buff but I'd still prefer a charge-based system that replaces the Drone when used. That way the Tempest doesn't gimp its own PD by using its system. Maybe if the AI isn't so trigger happy with it now, it won't be so bad.

I've thought about that, but ultimately I like the system to have a bit of a trade-off with its drone availability. If it just replaces the drone immediately then it's just a "fire free missile" system which is just less interesting.

Looks like Omega weapons got a once over. Might I suggest the Rift Lance be brought to 0.8 efficiency? Prior to 0.97 it had identical stats to the Phase Lance but since the PL was buffed in efficiency, the RL looks worse by comparison.

Hmm, to me the Rift Lance seems quite strong already, given that it's in a small slot.

LG Sunder getting Coherer does raise the question of why LG Hammerhead exists. It has the same system, worse flux stats, worse OP and the Sunder has all the same relevant mounts plus a Large mount which is a Pretty Big Deal.

Hmm, I'll mull that over. It does have substantially better survivability, though it's still destroyer-grade.

Thank you for the patch notes, Alex!
If I may give my feedback, I don't think the Gryphon needs another nerf right now. In the current patch the ship seemed fine to me, it has already been nerfed several times in the last few patches (both directly and indirectly) and taking out expanded missile racks as a built in hullmod, it basically means giving the ship a 20 OP penalty. If you still want to remove it as a built in hullmod, why not then give the cruiser 20 more ordnance points so one has the choice to get it back for free or actually taking something else? Just my humble opinion on this matter.

On another note, I'd like to see, like several other users suggested before me, a system defense fleet also in the Samarra system, not only in Aztlan.

Thank you (and David) for all your work these years on this gem of a game! I'm very excited to try all the new stuff you, guys, teased on bluesky in the last few months!

Thank you for the kind words! <3

About the Gryphon - in all honesty, it's an outlier in terms of balance, it's *extremely powerful if used in certain ways.

I’m guessing it’s just getting the PD_ALSO flag? I just had a funny thought. What if the IPDAI s-mod effect did that (give it PD_ALSO as well as pd) for all converted small point defense weapons? Rift Lance, ir pulse lasers, light assault gun, railgun…

Hmm. Maybe? I could see a case for either.

Also, I noticed that Paladin’s changes are less than the blog on Anubis showed. Does that mean the Anubis’ flux is different than it was listed in the blog, too? Just curious.

Not sure what you mean, could you be more specific?

I'm still waiting for exploration to be more engaging, and less of a click fest to scan planets. That part is really not fun and there is really little incentive to do it.

Hmm, to me that's not really "exploration"; exploration is the more engaging and rewarding stuff like finding abandonded stations and the like, fighting remnants/derelicts, etc. Totally seriously, and with no sarcasm: if it's not fun and there's little incentive to do it, then why do it? A certain amount of planet surveying alongside other exploration - especially if you find ruins - can be fun and rewarding. And with the changes to planet survey data and the Remote Survey ability, you will get more opportunities to find the better planets without scanning everything. But if someone wants to scan everyting out of, say, completionism - if they find it fun, more power to 'em! And if they don't, they don't have to do it - as you say, there's not actually a ton of incentive for it!

Will the weapon spec modification code of Realistic Combat need to call this method to get all weapon specs? 

Code

List<WeaponSpecAPI> getActuallyAllWeaponSpecs();

Probably not? This one returns SYSTEM weapons etc.

I wonder if those system defense fleets will have handpicked loadouts and officers, or S mods for that matter. It would be cool to fight against an opponent with a coherently designed fleet, but thats probably more developer effort than it's worth. +1 to them periodically reinforcing, too.

Something in-between; not hand-picked (though that'd be fun) but stronger than standard for the faction in ways that make sense for the faction.

[Bungee_man]

Fleets like this are actually somewhat performance-intensive to have a bunch of, so I'm being intentionally very conservative here.

Wait, does that mean that these fleets have some sort of special behavior at the campaign layer, rather than just despawning when he's not around? Something (abstractly) like those faction task forces in Nexerelin, that go around and do things while the player is away?

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment of the Apex - to me it feels like one of the more threatening/dangerous ships in the Remnant lineup simply because it's much harder to delete than anything else, and it lets the other ships around it function more effectively. That said, if I wanted to buff the Apex, I'd probably not touch the EBC but just improve its stats. Range boosts are very powerful, base range boosts even more so.

Interesting - do other players find the Apex suitably useful/dangerous? It could be that I just have different build preferences that make it less outstanding on both counts. Would be cool to see Automated Ships builds that make proper use of them.

[Liral]

Code

List<WeaponSpecAPI> getActuallyAllWeaponSpecs();

Probably not? This one returns SYSTEM weapons etc.
[/quote]

I think some modders use SYSTEM weapons, so I will need to call this function to get those too.  Any weapon not modified by Realistic Combat ends up much weaker.  Thanks for telling me!  I really appreciate your prompt and helpful responses.

[ilikegoodfood]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

If I may, I have a request for a mod-support feature that I was hoping to see here, and didn't.
I have been told in the past by mod developers in the community that the effect of AI cores on planetary industries was not easily moddable, to the poiint that it isn't being done. This was an exchange with the creator of Legio Inferno, which introduces two new AI cores.
If this is still the case, I would like to request that this be made more accessable in future.

Thank you for the amazing game, and continuing updates!

I'll keep it in mind! It's doable but it makes the mod conflict with other mods that try to change the same industry. Not the easiest thing to extract and text on my end, though, so it's not suuuuper likely that I'll actually do it without a vanilla reason for it.

Just to clarify, while I entirely understand the desire to make a system capable of handling multiple mods modifying the same AI core industry effects, I was asking only for mods that add new types of AI cores to be able to define industry bonuses for those new types of AI cores. Handling modification of existing bonuses, and mod conflicts thereabout, does indeed sound troublesome.
It wouldn't be as feature complete, but, hopefully, it would be more manageable.

[quirkz]

Hmm, to me that's not really "exploration"; exploration is the more engaging and rewarding stuff like finding abandonded stations and the like, fighting remnants/derelicts, etc. Totally seriously, and with no sarcasm: if it's not fun and there's little incentive to do it, then why do it? A certain amount of planet surveying alongside other exploration - especially if you find ruins - can be fun and rewarding. And with the changes to planet survey data and the Remote Survey ability, you will get more opportunities to find the better planets without scanning everything. But if someone wants to scan everyting out of, say, completionism - if they find it fun, more power to 'em! And if they don't, they don't have to do it - as you say, there's not actually a ton of incentive for it!

As another data point - I agree with you here for the most part. I enjoy salvage/exploration gameplay. Setting out for a cluster of stars where I have one or more missions, scanning all the planets (yeap, all of them. I'm a completionist), getting excited when I find a high class planet, or ruins, or some delicious derelict ships to expand my fleets, or a station filled with rare, valuable resources or plans. And fun encounters with pirates or [REDACTED] for the thrill of testing out my newly found ships and upgrades.

Exploration is all of these - scanning is just a tool that's part of it.

[Selfcontrol]

Interesting - do other players find the Apex suitably useful/dangerous? It could be that I just have different build preferences that make it less outstanding on both counts. Would be cool to see Automated Ships builds that make proper use of them.

I kinda agree with Alex.

During 0.96, I had a very poor opinion of the Apex. But Remnants were buggued in 0.96 and were deploying their ships in a certain order depending on their sizes : frigates spam => destroyer spams => cruisers spam => capitals.

Since 0.97, this bug has been fixed and now Remnants deploy a mix of all of their ships at the same time (just like any other fleet) and I found Apexes to be REALLY annoying. They rarely kill my ships, but they are so much tougher than Fulgents or Brilliants that they allow other Remnants to surround my ships. In a way, I find them to act like tanks (in the RPG sense of the word) : they don't do lots of damages (although the SO Apex is dangerous), but they improve a lot the efficiency of their fleet by being capable of absorbing lots of damages and by supporting their allies efficiently with their Terminator Drones and missiles.

[Dadada]

> I wonder who Threat is

(Very difficult to resist making some sort of "John Threat" joke.)

Sounds even more dangerous. "happy noises" "sweats"


The Apex, it's kinda durable but I don't see it as threat, must be the speed and/or turn rate holding it back. The armaments are 6 Mediums, 4 of them are Synergies and Terminator drones? Plus some small energies, yeah. https://starsector.wiki.gg/wiki/Apex

Mmm, it's either the low speed or the armaments which are below my "Remnant threat treshold", or the combination. Well, it's not anemic, missiles and pulse lasers are fine and EBC increases the range, but I only register it as a brick and rarely as a danger unless ships are in front of it and in weapons range, my preference for more mobile fleets must be "to blame" for such an experience.

Yep, it does indeed work as a (cruiser sized) anchor, at least that is how I perceive it, takes much longer to kill than other Remnants of similar or smaller size. Would be interesting to see if my feelings about the Apex would change with a slower fleet, so with Enforcers and Domis slugging it out with Apexes.

I don't think it needs any changes, but I would not complain if it got 2k Flux or 100 dissipation or 150 more armour. "shrug"

tl;dr: In Remnant fleets it feels like a brick but not dangerous, more like a DPS check to put it out of the fight.

getting excited when I find a high class planet

Excellent planets not far away from the core are my love. laughing.jpg

[Doctorhealsgood]

I've thought about that, but ultimately I like the system to have a bit of a trade-off with its drone availability. If it just replaces the drone immediately then it's just a "fire free missile" system which is just less interesting.

There was a bit of discussion on tempest drones on this semi-recent thread https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=31487.0 i assume you already saw it but just in case you didn't saw it yet (and to perhaps toot my own horn a bit) mentioned a DEM termination sequence idea for the drones with some changes on how the trade-off would be altered by it (and because overcharging drones to shoot big lasers is cool). I am probably being a bit annoying with the idea at this point so sorry about that.

Hmm, I'll mull that over. It does have substantially better survivability, though it's still destroyer-grade.

Personally i disagree with their assessment as i previously mentioned they are way more squishy than a hammerhead so i argue their purposes are different.

[PixiCode]

Also, I noticed that Paladin’s changes are less than the blog on Anubis showed. Does that mean the Anubis’ flux is different than it was listed in the blog, too? Just curious.

Not sure what you mean, could you be more specific?

I went and educated myself, it's just a misunderstanding on my part.

The Weapon_Data energy/second lists 750, but due to how paladin fires, the in-game display of Flux / second (sustained) shows 500 (150). I didn't know that the weapon_data energy/second would be different.

[mr. domain]

I noticed that the Anubis is the only ship included in the patch notes, but the Anubis blogpost mentioned that the Anubis would be "one of a few ships that will be possible to have in the player's fleet". I have to assume that the other ships that we could get are too entangled with spoilers to include in the patch notes?

That's certainly a reasonable reading of the available facts!

HYPE!!! NEW SHIPS!!! NEW SHIPS!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!

[TK3600]

Lots of great stuff this patch. But The buff to the lion guard ships seem more like nerfs except for the Falcon. It actually works well with the Falcon and for less op.

The Fulgent needs a rework. Not because it's bad. It rocks in its role as an escort ship. It just does not seem to fit in with the remnant fleet doctrine. So buffing it when it's already really good at what it does seems crazy to me. The buff seems to be for the players as I don't think that would make it better in the remnants hands cuz the rest of the remnant fleet is doing other things than what it is trying to do. The Fulgent change makes me happy but at the same time confuses me.

So much this. Fulgent is too slow for Remenent doctrine. They are not escorting crap because they are too slow. The capitals phase/boost straight into player fleet and slam head on. Fulgent lag behind. Capital dies. Fulgent gets picked off with ease.

[PixiCode]

I think the Fulgent fits the remnant doctrine well enough. It's basically a larger Glimmer, which itself is average for speed in its size, just like the Fulgent. It's weird that the Fulgent isn't 90 speed but 85 isn't much of a downgrade.

I do think having the Fulgent be buffed with a DP reduction is a little weird, but automated ships get to be a bit special since they require a whole capstone just to use, so I'm not against the idea. At worst, Remnant autofits could give Fulgent the Unstable Injectors hullmod - it's not like the Fulgent is hurting for range given its +200 base range to energy weapons. This OP buff would help it equip UI more, too.

Overall Remnant seem to be about a mixture of ships - both fast and slow. The fast ships can flank or otherwise hunt down and kill fast ships like Medusas (Remnant when a Lumen + brilliant kill team forms is the bane of any of my small fast ships u.u) while the slower ships (Glimmer, Fulgent, Apex) provide a bit of backbone to prevent the faster ships from being cornered and surrounded. In theory.

In practice the AI doesn't always manage to play like that, especially if you play in certain ways that just completely counter their strategy, like camping a corner of the map. Is that bad? I don't know. Fighting Remnant is pretty fun, but they feel like a stopgap between fighting earlier game threats and later game threats which don't exactly exist yet, is how I feel.

I can see why you think Fulgent doesn't fit for the above reasons, Nova in particular is a gigantic meme with how they rush in, but I do not see Radiant 'rush in and die' very often. At worst, I see it over-commit trying to kill the player flagship because of anti-player bias while it is being hammered by other allied player ships. So long as that isn't happening, Radiant has always been really happy to move in and move out.

Even the Nova will backpedal if given the chance and with its very high top speed for a capital. I think the problem is that it decides when to backpedal based on flux and not much else due to Fearless, but with such a tiny shield... well. Hehe.