Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 ... 19 20 [21] 22 23 ... 75

Author Topic: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.62a ALPHA build 34) (TC Mod)  (Read 418451 times)

MesoTroniK

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1731
  • I am going to destroy your ships
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #300 on: December 28, 2013, 10:28:01 AM »

Disclaimer*

I just wanted to pop in here and mention that while my faction Exigency Incorporated is implemented in Vacuum, it is also available in a vanilla balanced standalone format and Uomoz's compilation. I enjoy Vacuum quite a bit myself but the mechanics are vastly different, and my faction is much more finely tuned in the other available formats. My hope is you can enjoy all the versions :)

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #301 on: December 28, 2013, 11:35:45 AM »

@Annex:

They're thoroughly incompatible  :D

And Build 8, which I think I might get done today, will probably break 'em again.  

Alpha and all that :)
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Annex

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #302 on: December 28, 2013, 12:22:08 PM »

@Annex:

They're thoroughly incompatible  :D

And Build 8, which I think I might get done today, will probably break 'em again.  

Alpha and all that :)

Roger that, its all good, just making sure I understand what to expect and all that.
Logged

Debido

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1183
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #303 on: December 28, 2013, 01:13:28 PM »

I haven't played build 7, but I'm really looking forward to the release of build 8, which I'll definitely download and play.

We'll done on implementing the AI fleet abstraction you'll no doubt have other modders clambering for the code to put into their own. This is LazyWizard level Lazylib stuff, although I assume one day something similar will eventually become part of the main code tree.
Logged

Garmine

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 97
  • We're The Borg. Every resistance is futile.
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #304 on: December 28, 2013, 01:37:11 PM »

Could you please fix the sounds/fx/guns/exigency_RR.ogg capitalization problem?

The file is exigency_RR.ogg while the code looks for exigency_rr.ogg. Aaaand Linux likes it a lot!

Thanks in advance :D

Edit: fixed lots of typos. Damn I can't type!
« Last Edit: December 29, 2013, 06:42:49 AM by Garmine »
Logged
I went outside one day, the graphics were amazing, but the gameplay sucked...
Prepare yourselves for miscapitalization errors! *evil laugh*

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #305 on: December 28, 2013, 02:21:07 PM »

Fixed for Build 8.

Finished the Newbie Tutorial; still working on the Win Condition code.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Annex

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #306 on: December 28, 2013, 06:38:48 PM »

The planetary exploration random encounters range from too easy to beyond impossible. Having 6 battleships and a dozen cruisers come at ya at the same time is just undoable when all I have is 1 battlecruiser and 2 battleships. Now I dont mind the challenge if its a rare event, but it happens 50% of the time (you can tell as the map will have the 4 capture points), with the other half being in the "too easy" category. Are you able to add more in-between events that pose a more reasonable challenge?
« Last Edit: December 28, 2013, 06:42:57 PM by Annex »
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #307 on: December 28, 2013, 06:49:00 PM »

I'll take a look at that.  Almost done with the (rudimentary-but-functional) "victory" mechanic.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

LiquidStang

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 47
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #308 on: December 28, 2013, 07:05:07 PM »

As a moddist you're certainly quite the artist.
Logged
David

Starsector is challenging, but what's more challenging is dealing with people who encourage you to try real hard.

Debido

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1183
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #309 on: December 28, 2013, 07:14:00 PM »

Xenoargh, how are the random fleet strength encounters calculated? Or are they pre-sets?
Logged

Annex

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #310 on: December 28, 2013, 07:58:08 PM »

Xenoargh, how are the random fleet strength encounters calculated? Or are they pre-sets?

Theres always 5 battleships and 7 cruisers in the enemy attack fleet, always. Never one more, never one less. So either its maxing out to a pre-set amount of each or thats how its hardcoded. Either way build 7 is 10x harder than build 6 because of this.

Also the enemy fleet seems to be perfectly content flying in a horizontal formation allowing all of their ships to focus fire each of mine one at a time, while my ships charge in one at a time, blocking shots for all the others, and then decide to dump their flux while being focused fired by 5 battleships. All my ships have weapons with ranges 1200 to 1800 and yet they decide that point blank is the best way to go. Ive never seen battleships (mine) die so stupidly fast...
Logged

Annex

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #311 on: December 28, 2013, 08:10:12 PM »

Right now im convinced that something terribly broke with the AI. I just watched a battleship (one of mine obviously) that wasnt disabled or broken in any way sit at around 95% full flux. He stopped moving, he stopped shooting, wasnt overloaded, wasnt dumping flux. His shields were still up and that was it. This lasted about 6-7 seconds at which point two enemy battleships came up on him, pushed his flux to 100%, overloaded him, and killed him. Never witnessed this once in build 6 (got to level 46 there). At this point every defense fleet has 4 battleships and every attack fleet has 5. They all come out at once and all focus fire my apparently crippled ships.

Also ran into a crippling bug: I started off as Hegemony and I noticed from the start that Independent fleets were defending their stations. However once I declared war on the IDF, they still remained friendly to the Hegemony, and keep patroling their stations. As a result I cannot enter my own nations stations without having a wall of battleships thrown at me.

I also declared war on the IDF as they were the only ones sending out large amounts of civilian fleets. Unlike the previous map which was filled with nice mix of everything until late game where one race begun to dominate, on this map (8 systems) its got IDF presence in each and every system while most of the other races are either extinct from the get go or heavily suppressed. I think some code needs to be thrown in to give each race a balanced and well established foothold so that 1 race cant immediately conquer the place if they somehow got the better starting positions.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2013, 08:17:30 PM by Annex »
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 7) (TC Mod)
« Reply #312 on: December 28, 2013, 09:21:29 PM »

@Annex:  I keep putting making the Faction distribution a bit more "fair" on my list, but I haven't got it done yet.  I'll look at that for the next build, shouldn't be too hard.

Other than System AI (which, with the exception of Fortress Shield, doesn't effect shield use)... IDK about all that, sounds like you've exposed a bug in Vanilla's AI. 

I've actually seen that behavior several times, but I can't quite pin down why the AI does that, when it's perfectly obvious that they should be dropping their shields or Vent or both.  It's probably about time to write new AIs for things, but that's a very complicated chore.

@Debido:  Fleet vs. Fleet is using a very simple weighted dice-throw system.  I set it up this way because I don't like how Vanilla's system works; it hugely over-complicated and yet it produces really boring results, because it doesn't have any real chance for "magic bullet" victories of small fleets over larger ones.  The system's heavily-weighted in favor of larger fleets; victor wins and totally defeats the smaller fleet, for now.  In the future, I want to add a feature where defeated fleets get a chance to have a few members left, so that players can "vulture" them, but that's been left out for now and it's really not that hard for players to find fleets they can defeat atm, once they're past the "grinding asteroid encounters" stage.

Anyhow, the end-game "You Win" thing works now.  I just need to write up the text for it, so I'll do that and push out Build 8.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 8) (TC Mod)
« Reply #313 on: December 28, 2013, 10:50:04 PM »

Build 8 is now available.

Changelog:

  • Adds Newbie Guide- a really basic explanation of "how 2 play".
  • Adds You R Winnar- a win-condition that informs the player when they've won.
  • Fixes a smallish bug in the missile guidance code.

Stuff on plate for Build 9:

1.  Distribution of Factions to make for less-random playthroughs / difficulty.
2.  An actual difficulty setting that influences the entire game, beyond the current settings for number of planets.
3.  Diplomatic relationships between the Factions, including with the player, that can change who's a friend and who's an enemy over time.
4.  Maybe a look at virtual systems to replace Fleet mechanics.  Could mean simpler player control over their Empire, too, when that part is finally considered.
5.  Doing the big bad rewrite of the FleetInteractionDialog, to bring the Capture mechanics in line with the random encounters and simplify the system a bit.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Annex

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Vacuum - Build a Stellar Empire. (0.61a ALPHA build 8) (TC Mod)
« Reply #314 on: December 29, 2013, 08:06:08 AM »

The other thing thats happening with build 7 is that when I had a small fleet, when I docked at hostile factions stations, I could buy/sell/repair there still. However once my fleet got big enough (think at the 2 battleship mark) I could no longer do that, and the only option when going to a hostile station was to try to capture it. While im fine with that in itself, that leaves very few friendly stations at that point to dock at. If that is left as is then what would help would be to have 1 neutral uncapturable unaligned station in each system that the player can use as a fallback point for buying/selling.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 19 20 [21] 22 23 ... 75