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[Anotikonti]

Just got back into the game. How do you guys play the game in 0.6.5.1 or 0.6.2?

So I played Starsector way back before combat readiness was a thing (I would say 0.5 ish). And I pretty much became addicted to downloading all the mods I could, and I collected capital ships and would try weapon setups and other such stuff. I just loved the feeling of decimating an entire fleet with my one ship. Unsung or Banshee in Neutrino mod. Blackrock Shipyards mod with its incredibly fast frigates (with the system cannon) and the like... This game filled a hole in my soul that was left over when I had to leave WoW for university.

This game used be a spaceship/ space fleet simulator. But now, and it's awesome that is has, the game is expanding its exploration and trading and star systems to become a fully-fledged space sim. I honestly felt like game had perfected the space combat, and every mod was made to add more content to this perfect combat system. It made the combat flashier, more entertaining, and I felt Starsector could do no wrong. A combat system that was deep enough and complex enough for a good challenge no matter what. The best feeling would be having the one capital ship, and playing it so well that you could wipe out the enemy against incredible odds because you played it well. The enemy AI is by no means a push over, you really have to be good to win.
Starsector in 0.5 was like Fractal Softworks was giving out free crack cocaine. It was plain awesome. And now we get to explore, and there are reasons to explore? Awesome. Things can only go uphill from here right?

I stop playing SS for about 2 years, and I come back... And I'm some sort of space farmer/accountant. This game has become a farming simulator for me, and I'm really heartbroken. My entire experience of this game in 6.5.1 has been calculating enough fuel til I arrive and drop off food. If the pricing and event system wasn't so random, I'd be making spreadsheets for all tradable items by now. Do people even use capital ships in their fleets? How do you even maintain your fleet? How much money should I have on hand if I want to maintain just one capital ship?

I want to be a ship captain (not an admiral or space general or commander), and explore and fight and just wipe out the enemies that stand up to me. And I want to do that with one ship, make a profit off of it. I don't want to manage a fleet and I don't want to worry about pre-battle deployment and all that 'noise'. It's fun don't get me wrong, but I wanna feel like a BADASS (and I don't trust the teammate commander AI with my life let alone a bunch of virtual spaceships). But with CR, I don't know what to do... I don't even look to refitting my ships. I just look at the cargo to see if I have enough space to buy more things to trade.

My recent 50 hours with this game, has been running between two systems and dropping trading when I need to. Its become the most efficient way for me to make money in the game. I only buy enough fuel to get me close to the other half of the trade run while in hyperspace, and then drift the rest of the way to other system. That's how bad it has become. The reputation thing has stopped me from getting any awesome ships. I'm still in favourable with a majority of factions, I've got a lot more flying too and fro until I get access to a capital. But when I do get the capital and throw my freighters and cargo away, and all the frigates and fighters... I can only fight like 2 battles before I'm starved of supplies and money. And then I lose everything... No money means no supplies, and supplies have exorbitant prices. No supplies means dead crew. No crew means a ship that won't ever be combat ready, and so my existence in the game is an extremely beautiful, heavily armed, drifting ghost ship that died off from two to four battles. My journey hasn't even begun, and I've lost the game. And it feels really wrong to me. I love the reputation system, and I love the market system, but for me, that is all a means to a peak, but whenever I get there, it's all over. Am I going to fly back and forth for the rest of my space farmer life? Remember how I talked about the game was like crack cocaine for free? Well the CR system is so punishing, that I feel like I'm working for my crack now, and it's just not fun. I don't have to massively profit for each battle, in fact, I expect it to be a loss. But I'm losing EVERYTHING, just to wait 5 minutes til my ship is comabt ready, when I had played it so well that my hull isn't even scratched. I don't mind that I have to pay supplies to keep my crew members eat, sleep, and poop and all that jazz. But I didn't lose the battle, I didn't even suffer for it at times, I don't know why my ship, after flying around for a space month that after 2 battles it decides to implode on the third scuffle.

How do you guys play the game? I'm sure you have different tastes to myself, and I'm sure some of you all get bored with having an unstoppable, undefeatable ship. But it's something I dream of, and Starsector 0.5 gave that to me in all its glory. I just don't enjoy this game after jumping back into it, but I feel like I'm playing it wrong.

TL;DR: The game was crack cocaine for free. Now I feel like I'm working for my cocaine AND, I'm feeling the awful side effects.

[Cosmitz]

I actually think it's easy, even without broken trading. Bounties, frigate bounties give a decent bit of XP for a frig fleet, and named bounties can be done with some destroyers or a good cruiser or two or just a single cap.

You may get overwhelmed by all the changes, but they don't get in the way of fighting, just provide more layers for when to take battles and under what circumstances. Get a good enemy aside from pirates and you'll actually have guys to fight with your huge fleet, but if not, pirates and bounties rarely pose enough threat to toss a huge fleet at them.

[Anotikonti]

But I don't want a fleet, I just want ONE ship.

[ValkyriaL]

Id say large fleets are perfectly viable, if you have the cash for fuel.

Spoiler

[close]

[Anotikonti]

How much money are you making compared to the fuel you spend? Can you keep fighting constantly, or do you have to stop every now and then?

[Tomn]

If you want to never have more than one ship, ever, at any point in time, it might be hypothetically possible, but it isn't going to be anywhere close to easy.

If you're willing to compromise a bit, though, a fleet of two or three Wolfs with a Gemini and two fighter squadrons is way more than enough to kill you enough in bounty money to outfit the ULTIMATE CAPITAL SHIP, after which you can sell off all your escorts if you want.  Plus side is that you'll earn enough in goodwill to actually be allowed to buy the big ships, too - by the time I started thinking about upscaling to cruisers, I had 600k+ in credits.

The key thing is to always go after bounties.  Generic "1500 per ship" bounties may not sound like a lot, but given that pirates tend to have a minimum of six ships per sizable fleet, if not more, it adds up.  The named bounties also offer a decent payout, and if they're in a system that's also offering generic bounties, that's just gravy.  It's not at all difficult to end up with almost literally more money than you know what to do with just by chasing bounties.  It's also worth noting that the size, deadliness, and profit of the bounty fleets scale up as you level up, too, so you're provided with more more excitement and more money to keep your increasingly dangerous fleet afloat.

Now if you really insist on flying nothing more than a single Conquest (or an Onslaught or a Paragon, I suppose, if you're uncivilized), I do strongly recommend that you bring a couple of non-combat support ships as well - a tanker, a freighter, and a tug to help manage your loot and keep spare supplies and fuel on hand.  You don't need to fight with them, just have them around to ensure that your big ship gets the cargo bays it needs.

I've yet to actually find a capital ship worth using yet, so I can't speak to its cost-effectiveness and whether it's possible to fly using only the capital ship, but I can say that it's entirely possible to have way more money than you could conceivably use, which would be pretty much perfect for allowing you to play forever with a giant supership.  If it ISN'T cost-effective and you start running out of supplies and money, you could always mothball it, drop it off on an abandoned station, and use a smaller fleet to build up the cash needed for your indescribable rampage of terror later.

If you intend to fight literally everyone with that supership, though, then yes eventually you're going to run out of money.  But that's true even if you ran a fleet of frigates - combat fleets NEED bounty payouts to survive.

[WKOB]

I think it might go without saying but 1-3 Tempests is godly. It's pretty much how I played my whole Vanilla game and I had few issues.

[Linnis]

lvl 30 char with one onslaught and a few freighters for supply and fuel (you never deploy) can destory any AI fleet in the game.

So yes, you can still do that

[Megas]

I store bigger ships at planets near stargates or gas giants (where bounty fleets spawn).  I roam the stars with frigates, and pick up bigger counter ships from storage when necessary.

My fleet has been two Hyperion, three Tempests, plus whatever ships I need from storage.  Ships from storage vary from three dozen more frigates (among Cerberus, Lashers, Vigilance, and Wolves), a few cruisers, or one to three battleships.

Due to bounty fleets featuring flagships with max Combat skills, plus improved missiles, Missile Specialization 10 is a MUST to solo fleets, at least for those who want to solo fleets with a frigate.

[Gothars]

I'm some sort of space farmer/accountant.

I want to be a ship captain

You can just do that. It's pretty straightforward, really. Just go to where the bounties are. They are easily high enough to pay for supplies, fuel and new ships. And it's not even difficult to stick with one ship at a time if you are decent pilot. My last playthrough was just that, with Wolf->Sunder->Onslaught.

It's actually much more comfortable than before, thanks to bounties you don't have to worry about bringing loot home anymore.

[Megas]

How much money are you making compared to the fuel you spend? Can you keep fighting constantly, or do you have to stop every now and then?

Before v0.60, player can munch fleets like popcorn, and that was fun.  Since v0.60, you cannot chain-battle fleet after fleet anymore thanks to CR, among other obstacles.

In v0.60.  CR was awful.  (My opinion, which is likely in the minority.)

In v0.62,  CR was tweaked, better for combat ships with elite crew (but worse for those with green crew).  Loot was increased enough that one battle can yield more than most fleets can take.  Overflowing with loot was a bigger problem than CR.

In v0.65,  Loot was cut.  CR is worse for ships that take hull damage, but there are rarely many enemy fleets to fight in quick succession if you hunt only pirates.  Eventually, you go from one named bounty to the next, and you will have opportunities to fix your ships along the way.  Also, pursuit is obsolete - Vengeful relations hurts too much.  Barad (pirate base) is useful for cheap ore and storage base.  No pursuit means no more double CR costs for each enemy fleet.


At endgame, I go on the sector tour, clockwise from Jangala(->Arcadia)->Magec/Achaman->Eos->Askonia(->Valhalla).

Food and supply runs are much more profitable than bounties.  I hunt down bounty fleets and take advantage of food shortages and trade disruptions along the way.  While I like combat most, I gladly take advantage of huge rewards from trade opportunities.  Thanks to trade, I can push my leveling cap up to twenty levels more.  Even at level 70, I still do not have all of the skill points I want, and the skills available are incomplete!

You can just do that. It's pretty straightforward, really. Just go to where the bounties are. They are easily high enough to pay for supplies, fuel and new ships. And it's not even difficult to stick with one ship at a time if you are decent pilot. My last playthrough was just that, with Wolf->Sunder->Onslaught.

In my case, it went from Wolf -> 3 Wolves -> Medusa -> Hyperion -> 2 Hyperion.  If I take a huge reputation loss due to smuggling conviction, I may go back to a lone Wolf and beat up stray pirates (who may run away from a lone Hyperion).

[Dri]

You can have one big ships like an Onslaught or a Paragon but you ARE going to need some frigate/destroyer size freighters/tankers - you don't ever have to deploy those into combat though. Oh and a tug for your big, slow capital ship would be a good idea too.

[MidnightSun]

My fleets usually revolve around one big ship (I generally hate piloting frigates), so this is entirely possible. I usually dump the starting frigate/destroyer as quickly as possible and pick up an Enforcer, then move to a Dominator, and then an Onslaught. I have a few support ships, usually one or two Gemini with 2 fighter wings to capture points, and a medium tanker (eventually looking for an Atlas, but they're remaining elusive in my play-through).

With the Tech speed boost perks, I find tugs to be unnecessary as well, since there's no point chasing small fleets that don't have good payoffs anyway. I'm always raking in more money than I can realistically spend through bounties and the occasional highly-profitable trade run.

[Cosmitz]

The issue, but not exactly an issue-issue, with Starsector is that you need to match numbers, even if on a one-to-three ratio. The enemy fleet needs something else to shoot at aside from you. Even a Paragon with hardened shields and that L10 perk that allows you to drop hard flux WILL be overwhelmed if enough firepower gets on it, and to be fair, it's mostly always been this way.

Nowadays, even its combat rating factors into shield flux/damage efficiency, so that Paragon if it's on its third battle in a short timespan, it will be weaker than if not. Again, even tossing in a Medusa or two or an Enforce will mitigate a lot of damage off you and that will make mostly-solo playing viable.

On the other hand, as you said.. mods do end up with some ridiculous things, and some of them aren't vanilla-balanced. So there's that if you want to be a godking of the universe.

[Punchclock]

Hammerheads are very easy to use for me.  Load them with needlers and explosive missiles and you're set, surprisingly flux efficient too thanks to the time between bursts.

You won't be able to take on absolutely everything with it but it works pretty well for smaller scale bounty hunts/escorting.