Skins:These are just a shorthand for defining new hulls. The game takes the .skin file and creates a new hull based on that; for almost every purpose within the game, it's treated as an entirely separate hull. You can't change skins for a ship once you have it, for example. "Skin" might be slightly misleading as it encompasses more than just appearance. Skins can, for example change/remove weapon and engine slots, change the OP/deployment points/price, add/remove built in hull mods and weapons. Skins can not change the bounds or weapon slot locations, and also can't change the ship's system (the latter, at least for the moment).
The one exception to skin hulls being treated the same as other hulls is they can share variants via the "Manage Variants" dialog, provided the skins are inter-compatible - i.e. they didn't change ordnance points or weapon slots.
Here's an example skin for the pirate version of the Buffalo:
Spoiler
{
"baseHullId":"buffalo",
"skinHullId":"buffalo_pirates",
"hullName":"Buffalo",
"descriptionId":"buffalo", # optional
"fleetPoints":5,
"spriteName":"graphics/ships/buffalo/buffalo_pirates.png",
"removeWeaponSlots":[], # ids
"removeEngineSlots":[], # indices, as engine slots have no id in the .ship file
"removeBuiltInMods":[], # hullmod ids
"removeBuiltInWeapons":[], # weapon slot ids
"weaponSlotChanges":{
"WS 001":{
#"angle": 0,
#"arc": 210,
#"mount": "TURRET",
#"size": "SMALL",
"type": "BALLISTIC"
}
},
#"builtInMods":["comp_armor","comp_hull","degraded_engines","faulty_grid","destroyed_mounts"],
"builtInMods":["shielded_holds"],
"builtInWeapons":{
},
}
Changes as of September 24, 2014
- Wolf, Lasher frigates: now have frontal shields, to better work with their front-facing firepower
- Pilum: improved top speed and acceleration. Can still be dodged effectively, just harder. Deadly vs non-omni-shield frigates w/o PD
You are a terrible person.
Thank you! (In my defense, I've also improved the AI for dealing with missiles using front shields a *lot*.)
Only thing I might suggest taking a look at before the update is the "Stabilized Shields" hullmod. The way it currently works, it sees automatic use on any ship where Stabilized Shields is cheaper than an equivalent amount of vents (like the Apogee or Sunder, for instance). Although it's not OP or anything, it seems a little too easy to get access to, requiring only a 1 point investment into Applied Physics. Maybe move it up a little bit in the skill tree to make it require a bit more dedication to get (like rank 3-5 or something)?
Fair point, but in all honesty, I don't think this is high priority enough to where I'd want to look at it now.
I read the patch notes but I didn't see anything about this, but will it be possible to specialize factions towards certain commodities (for example via average abundance or price)?
The supply/demand is based on the market conditions your markets have, so yes.
And will there be a way for haulers to be nerfed in terms of smuggling capacity in a similar way to how the new hullmod works, ie extra thin cargohold?
And could you make cargoholds discriminate specific items, such that for example my faction's hauler could only carry supplies and fuel but no commodities? Or maybe only supplies, fuel, an "energy cells" commodity and guns?
No to all, though you could probably code around that if you really wanted to. As far as the player, though, cargo capacity is cargo capacity. I can't really imagine doing something like "X of your capacity can only be used on Ore", etc.
This could tie into a sort of mechanic for stations and planets you own that are under attack. An enemy fleet hovers/orbits around a station or planet with the status of 'attacking' or 'suppressing', and you get a notification of the event in progress, and your control over it measurably goes down over time until you fend off the attacker.
Yeah, without committing to any specifics, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Back when .6a was in development you released the WIP starfarer api a bit early so modders could get a head start on supporting the massive changes in that patch. Would you consider doing so again since it's looking like .65a will be an even bigger compatibility breaker than .6a?
Definitely. Sort of want to hold off on it until I've had a chance to plow through some stuff in the API requests thread, though.
Really glad to see that you're still polishing combat, the AI and missile changes should mix things up again. (I'm just afraid that the Cerberus is completely at the mercy of missiles now.)
It was really driven by campaign playtesting, but yeah, it feels good to go back to that an polish thing up a bit. I have high hopes for the ship AI improvements; fixed some really nasty bugs that were responsible for a lot of the needless losses.
As far as the Cerberus, the Vulcans are surprisingly good PD. With a good loadout, it can solo a harpoon-armed Lasher or a Pilum-armed Condor under AI control, though it might take a hit or two in the process. But yeah, a missile-rich environment is generally unhealthy for it, though this is also the case for other ships.
Oh, and... did you really double weapon end engine health again, so it's now quadrupled? Or did you just forget that you already listed that change in the June update?
Just for engines this time around. Might play with it some more, though.
Sounds so great.
I am also salivating at the Lasher / Wolf frontal shield change and the impact pilums (pila?) are going to have on their rear ends.
Don't know why that stands out amongst all the other things, but it does
Adds interest to the choice of frigate, I guess. At the minute Lashers and Wolves are a safe option in so many ways.
You know, even if this is technically a nerf, it makes the Wolf so much more fun to play. The reasoning behind the change was to remove the control conflict that having omni shields on a ship with a significant portion of its firepower on front-facing hardpoints, which is especially an issue for frigates (and other ships that turn quickly).
Removed speed penalty after winning battle
But... why?
That way you can just keep on farming smaller fleets, without fear of a bigger fleet catching you after battle. The way I see it, the hit to burnspeed after winning a battle means you have to carefully pick your targets. Which to me adds to the fun of the game. And from a roleplaying stand point, I think even a victorious fleet first has to get back into formation again, and prepare to fly off at full burn speed. It only stands to reason that such preparations take some time.
Yeah, that's still a concern, but as I mentioned earlier, I don't think the tradeoff is worth it right now. In the future, I think some other mechanics (that I'm not prepared to discuss!) might take care of this neatly, so this isn't something I'm punting on long-term.
The shielded cargo hullmod makes me think: if the customs patrol doesn't trust you (maybe you've been caught smuggling before, or they've been swamped with illegal goods lately), they should insist on a boarding inspection. Obviously much harder to hide contraband from, and if you decide to fight after letting them on, you've got armed marines on your ship that could mess your crew/CR levels up or even take it over entirely.
Or is that too unfun a mechanic?
Actually thought about it; decided it was too complex in many ways. The chance for contraband to be found is higher if they're suspicious btw.
Oh, the Shielded Cargo Holds hullmod - how does it work? Does it reduce detection chance per hullmod present in the fleet? Or is it dependent on the cargo space of the ship that has it equipped? Depending on the answer, there could be ways to exploit it, E.G. equipping a bunch of shuttles with it.
It's based on the cargo capacity of the ship that has it. Also, you can't equip anything with it, it's only available as a built-in on certain hulls and skins.
- Added chance for an investigation event to be triggered by player use of comm sniffers
Is this a completely random dice roll at each clock tick as soon as the sniffer is online? The problems with such mechanics are 1. Opaque to the player and 2. Utterly beyond their control. This combination may result in frustration. Randomness that you can either affect or predict is good, randomness you can neither affect nor predict is bad.
I suggest the sniffer have a period of time during which it cannot be caught, adjusted by some skill from the character screen. A progress bar somewhere on the intel screen could show how much time you have left on your sniffer(s). After that, if you don't uninstall it (remotely or in person as balance demands) THEN the dice rolls for investigations start.
This is my first forum post. I've got a few other suggestions about current gameplay as well, which I will post in the appropriate subforum.
I get what you're saying, but I think the magnitude of the event is a large component here. The consequences of a "guilty" result are minor - a slight reputation hit. On a more general note, even if something is purely random, if you have the choice of which gambles to engage in, and can make enough of them, then the outcome is essentially not random. What I mean is, if you have one 75% chance to win and 25% chance to lose, that could be bad (it could also be ok, if this was the culmination of a set of bad choices/lost gambles). But if you make 100 smaller bets with similar odds, then the outcome is fairly predictable despite being technically random.
Also: hi, and welcome to the forum!
- High Intensity Laser now fires on achieving full charge (instead of starting to fire at partial effectiveness immediately)
Any chance of pairing this with a damage increase? Or maybe a slight increase in the armor penetration power of beams in general? The change a version or two ago where armor could get a higher overall damage reduction was mostly good, but really hit beam usefulness pretty hard, especially the HIL (and phase beams).
Hesitant to mess with this, to be honest. So far in playtesting beams seem to be doing quite well, though I haven't done too much with larger ships yet.
- Fixed bug in StatBonus that was applying the flat bonus after the mult bonus (the correct order is: percent, flat, mult)
Huh. Can you give us an example of where this makes a difference?
Not anywhere in the current version. Came up when I was adding something, don't exactly remember what.
Why have them at all now if they lost most of their main purpose? How USEFUL is ONE more burn speed? Have you ever tried to catch up to a ship when you are one point faster? How long did that take in?
Many times in the last few days; somewhere around 10 seconds or so. As a side note, it kind of feels like you're taking one change, looking at it, and then assuming everything else will be done in the worst possible way so that this change is horrible. I assure you, that's not the dev process
Not to say that occasional mistakes won't be made, but still. I'd also invite you to read
what I wrote in response to your similar question in another thread.