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[Allectus]

Hey Histidine, did a brief update on my guide on how mining works as is. And, I'm not entirely sure how it's supposed to function.

It used to be a way for low-level players to grind to higher ship classes and avoid the frigate game, but right now it's not really functioning like that. The heavy machinery requirement is a bit restrictive for early play; machinery is either expensive, or really risky to scavange for a miner. I'd prefer if the required heavy machinery amount were smaller, and the heavy machinery loss accident chance were also smaller. Maybe if the crew accident chance were higher as well to compensate? Right now, it works like a method to turn supplies into rather small amounts of money and a lot of experience, and exists as a weird side-quest for scavangers instead of a way to avoid the frigate game or reap mad dosh for dedicated mining fleets.

Hmm, I didn't think the machinery requirement would be that significant; it only needs miningStrength/2 machinery and trade fleets start with a lot of it (starting machinery is 1/8th of total cargo space). But reducing the weighting of machinery loss accidents (from 2.5 to something like 1.5) and their severity (right now it's (1,4) + (1,4) units lost per incident, I can cut it to (1,3) + (1,3) or less) is fine.

Do you think accident rates are also too high in general?

So I took a quick look at the code you linked (thanks for linking directly to the file, by the way!) and see now what you're doing.  It strikes me that you should leave the machinery accident probability unchanged--just like other tasks machinery should act as a cover for your crew and giving it a higher weighted probability of occurring accomplishes that reasonably well.  

If I'm reading it right it looks like, instead, the problem may be in the amount of machinery you lose given an accident. It is exceedingly punishing with small mining fleets (combat freighter + ~2 mining ships) because you will often lose more in machinery in expectation than you'll make in ore/gas/volatiles in expectation because each machinery accident roll you're losing a 2-8 machinery (probably ~1 in expectation, though I didn't check the full probability chain), and you need to make a lot more rolls against the accident table given that your overall production is much lower.  End result is that small mining fleets are now uneconomical while large fleets are basically unaffected because they make way more per roll against the accident table.  This pretty significantly changes the role of mining fleets in Nexerelin--they're no longer a bootstrap option but rather a late game money factory.  It's basically a level/regressive tax.

Scaling the machinery loss to the fleet size (and critically making it less impactful to smaller fleets) would help substantially (again, presuming I'm reading the code properly).

[King Alfonzo]

Hmm, I didn't think the machinery requirement would be that significant; it only needs miningStrength/2 machinery and trade fleets start with a lot of it (starting machinery is 1/8th of total cargo space). But reducing the weighting of machinery loss accidents (from 2.5 to something like 1.5) and their severity (right now it's (1,4) + (1,4) units lost per incident, I can cut it to (1,3) + (1,3) or less) is fine.

Do you think accident rates are also too high in general?

So I took a quick look at the code you linked (thanks for linking directly to the file, by the way!) and see now what you're doing.  It strikes me that you should leave the machinery accident probability unchanged--just like other tasks machinery should act as a cover for your crew and giving it a higher weighted probability of occurring accomplishes that reasonably well.  

If I'm reading it right it looks like, instead, the problem may be in the amount of machinery you lose given an accident. It is exceedingly punishing with small mining fleets (combat freighter + ~2 mining ships) because you will often lose more in machinery in expectation than you'll make in ore/gas/volatiles in expectation because each machinery accident roll you're losing a 2-8 machinery (probably ~1 in expectation, though I didn't check the full probability chain), and you need to make a lot more rolls against the accident table given that your overall production is much lower.  End result is that small mining fleets are now uneconomical while large fleets are basically unaffected because they make way more per roll against the accident table.  This pretty significantly changes the role of mining fleets in Nexerelin--they're no longer a bootstrap option but rather a late game money factory.  It's basically a level/regressive tax.

Scaling the machinery loss to the fleet size (and critically making it less impactful to smaller fleets) would help substantially (again, presuming I'm reading the code properly).

What Allectus said. The availability of machinery may be better for a trade fleet start, but outside of this specific instance it's incredibly difficult. I wouldn't mind seeing the machinery requirement be somewhat exponential; If your small you only need a really small amount of machinery, but when you're large you need a lot more of it to keep running. Maybe something like:

[Heavy Machinery Requirement] =[e^(Mining Power/360)] x (Mining Power/2.35) - (Mining Power/4.1)

That way, when you're very small (10 MP) you'll only need very small amounts of equipment (2ish heavy machinery). When you're bigger (100 MP) you'll need 30ish Heavy Machinery. When you're much bigger (200 MP), you'll need 100ish Heavy Machinery. Or something. I whipped this up in 10 minutes in Excel to get something that 'felt' right, and it still doesn't 'feel' quite right. I also lack the expertise to do complex mathematics, or the knowledge of whether it's possible to put something so god-damned overly complex in.

Further, as Allectus said, accident rate is also too high and too punishing for smaller fleets; maybe if the loss itself were a function of mining power instead of fleet size (Like a 10th of mining power per accident), and was reduced a bit (1.5 seems fine) then it'd be more viable for smaller mining fleets, while still being a bit punishing for larger fleets.

Linking the loss of machinery to fleet size would be...an interesting gameplay mechanic. Like, having a smaller, more concentrated mining fleet would be more favourable, but then adding cargo ships, drams and protection ships to support the mining fleet becomes increasingly risky; the more of these less dedicated vessels you have, the higher the damage you're going to take for machinery. This would make it feel like mining is an all or nothing affair without mods at least.

[Histidine]

Current changes

Further, as Allectus said, accident rate is also too high and too punishing for smaller fleets; maybe if the loss itself were a function of mining power instead of fleet size (Like a 10th of mining power per accident) [...]

Mining accident count per run is already based on mining power. Accident count and per-event effect magnitude are otherwise completely insensitive to the fleet's size, other than the indirect effect via the pool of ships allowed to have damage/CR accidents.
But there's an obvious source of the issue: accident count uses sqrt(strength), so high mining strength gives a better output : accident ratio.
I've just made it strength/10.

[Heavy Machinery Requirement] =[e^(Mining Power/360)] x (Mining Power/2.35) - (Mining Power/4.1)

Yeah... an equation that uses e and two non-integer divisors is probably overengineering it just a little!

[Titann]

I got this error after playing like 1-2 hour (i had this same error with 0.7.6c)

Spoiler

172712 [Thread-4] INFO  exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager  - Getting name prefixes of alliance type MILITARIST
172712 [Thread-4] INFO  exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager  - Missing name prefixes for alliance type MILITARIST
172721 [Thread-8] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Cleaning up music with id [Blackrock.ogg]
172881 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at java.util.ArrayList.addAll(Unknown Source)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.createAlliance(AllianceManager.java:210)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.createAlliance(AllianceManager.java:169)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.tryMakeAlliance(AllianceManager.java:417)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.advance(AllianceManager.java:491)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
173145 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Creating streaming player for music with id [expanse.ogg]
173178 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.OooO  - Playing music with id [expanse.ogg]

[close]

here is my alliancenames.json

Spoiler

{
   # please don't break this file if you don't want your game crashing at unexpected moments
   "namesByAlignment":{
      "corporate": ["Consortium", "Conglomerate", "Industries", "Guild", "Trade Union"],
      "technocratic": ["Research", "Academy", "Institute", "Engineering", "Laboratories", "Technologies", "Dynamics"],
      "militarist": ["Pact", "Alliance", "Empire", "Axis", "Dominion"],
      "diplomatic": ["League", "Federation", "Confederacy", "Coalition", "Cooperative", "Union"],
      "ideological": ["Brotherhood", "Clan", "Fellowship", "Sodality", "Order"],
   },
   "prefixes":{
      "common": ["Northern", "Southern", "Eastern", "Western", "Central", "Stellar", "Interstellar", "Darkstar", "Solar", "Nebula", "Outland", "Far Reach", "Unified", "United", "Superior", "Integrated"],
      "corporate": ["Advanced", "Consolidated", "Future", "Femtotech", "General"],
      "technocratic": ["Advanced", "Consolidated", "Future", "Femtotech", "General"],
      "militarist": ["Dragon", "Fury", "Guardian", "Thunder", "Titan"],
      "diplomatic": ["Freedom", "Phoenix"],
      "ideological": ["Dragon", "Phoenix", "Eternal", "Free", "Renaissance"]
   }
}

[close]

modlist;

Audio Plus 1.1.0
Dynasector 1.3.1b
Blackrock Drive Yards 0.9.0
Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering 0.9.5c
Interstellar imperium 1.17.1
lazylib 2.2
Nexerelin 0.8.1
Scy Nation
Ship/Weapon Pack
Underworld
GraphicsLib

[Thaago]

Started to play with mods this version, having a blast with Nexelerin as always.

One comment: my current randomly generated sector has no AM fuel production facilities (at least listed on the planets screen), so while prices are low fuel simply isn't for sale at the majority of places. I've found one place with fuel and tracked its source via the market screen to a planet that appears to be producing, so I will persevere. Perhaps make sure in the sector generation routine that there is a few worlds with AM production?

[peperoni_playboy]

I'm encountering a few bugs in randomly generated nexerelin clusters, namely: Prism Freeport spawns, but does not show up on the sector map (unlike previous Nex versions) and REDACTED warning beacons spawn next to inhabited systems (which have no REDACTED in them, naturally).

[Takion Kasukedo]

Hey, something strange I have noticed.

So (pictures coming soon) I noticed that the Remnants/Domain AI (very strangely enough) are Neutral towards the player, even though they're usually hostile/vengeful

Is this supposed to happen?

[Histidine]

I got this error after playing like 1-2 hour (i had this same error with 0.7.6c)

Spoiler

172712 [Thread-4] INFO  exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager  - Getting name prefixes of alliance type MILITARIST
172712 [Thread-4] INFO  exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager  - Missing name prefixes for alliance type MILITARIST
172721 [Thread-8] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Cleaning up music with id [Blackrock.ogg]
172881 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at java.util.ArrayList.addAll(Unknown Source)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.createAlliance(AllianceManager.java:210)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.createAlliance(AllianceManager.java:169)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.tryMakeAlliance(AllianceManager.java:417)
   at exerelin.campaign.AllianceManager.advance(AllianceManager.java:491)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
173145 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.oo0O  - Creating streaming player for music with id [expanse.ogg]
173178 [Thread-10] INFO  sound.OooO  - Playing music with id [expanse.ogg]

[close]

Ugh, seems to be a lingering issue with locales and uppercasing. Sorry; it'll be pretty much guaranteed not to fail in next version.

I'm encountering a few bugs in randomly generated nexerelin clusters, namely: Prism Freeport spawns, but does not show up on the sector map (unlike previous Nex versions) and REDACTED warning beacons spawn next to inhabited systems (which have no REDACTED in them, naturally).

Prism: Hmm, is this specific to random mode? Prism generation is identical in both random and Corvus modes.
(It does appear after turning off starscape display btw)

Beacons: It'll clean them up in next release. (Not accidentally cleaning up neighboring systems' beacons not guaranteed, unfortunately).

Hey, something strange I have noticed.

So (pictures coming soon) I noticed that the Remnants/Domain AI (very strangely enough) are Neutral towards the player, even though they're usually hostile/vengeful

Is this supposed to happen?

Domain Exploration Derelict is neutral to player in vanilla.
For the Remnants, are you playing as Tri-Tachyon? Remnants are hostile to everyone except them.

Started to play with mods this version, having a blast with Nexelerin as always.

One comment: my current randomly generated sector has no AM fuel production facilities (at least listed on the planets screen), so while prices are low fuel simply isn't for sale at the majority of places. I've found one place with fuel and tracked its source via the market screen to a planet that appears to be producing, so I will persevere. Perhaps make sure in the sector generation routine that there is a few worlds with AM production?

Glad you're enjoying it

It should already make sure there's enough fuel production somewhere in the sector to meet demand. (You can search for exerelin.world.ExerelinMarketBuilder and exerelin.world.MarketBalancer in starsector.log to see where they got located)

[peperoni_playboy]

It is specific to random mode, in corvus mode it'll just have the Prism freeport show up just fine in SCY's system. I didn't know turning off starscape would reveal the station though, thanks for the info.

[Ranakastrasz]

The tooltips in game setup suggest that you should be getting a small income/salary periodically. I seem to remember this from older versions as well, and it was great to avoid painful death spirals.

Is this a setting that has to be enabled or was it entirely removed?

[Phearlock]

It's still in by default, but just like in .72 you won't get it unless you're part of a faction. So you'll have to start as part of a faction. Or if you picked free start: join a faction once your rep is high enough, or conquer some world to found your own faction. Then you'll get your monthly income as well as partial ship insurance.

[Ranakastrasz]

It's still in by default, but just like in .72 you won't get it unless you're part of a faction. So you'll have to start as part of a faction. Or if you picked free start: join a faction once your rep is high enough, or conquer some world to found your own faction. Then you'll get your monthly income as well as partial ship insurance.

I started with a faction, and had a commision by default. I thought that meant I joined the faction by default.

How do I join a faction?

[Takion Kasukedo]

Hey, something strange I have noticed.

So (pictures coming soon) I noticed that the Remnants/Domain AI (very strangely enough) are Neutral towards the player, even though they're usually hostile/vengeful

Is this supposed to happen?

Domain Exploration Derelict is neutral to player in vanilla.
For the Remnants, are you playing as Tri-Tachyon? Remnants are hostile to everyone except them.

No, I am playing as the player faction (only flag and name were customised as per usual for me)

[Hussar]

How do I join a faction?

Raise your relation with them to cooperative and then you'll be able via dialog with the base/station commander.

[dk1332]

Sorry for not uploading the screenshot that has the bug I mentioned. Had to send my PC to the shop for maintenance and upgrades.

Anyway here it is:

Spoiler

[close]

This only happened after capturing the Dekyuu Mining station (which created my own faction) and also has the same bug. Not present in other systems except Galatia.