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Author Topic: [0.97a] Nexerelin v0.11.1b "Clausewitz Protocol" (update 2024-02-11)  (Read 3014786 times)

bob888w

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Vengence Fleets are basically just regular expedition fleets but they want your head, trouble is they run at low burn speeds and I don't think I've ever seen the AI use tugs. So they will never catch up aside from hyperspace bouncing or jumpoints
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Justinkid

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Vengence Fleets are basically just regular expedition fleets but they want your head, trouble is they run at low burn speeds and I don't think I've ever seen the AI use tugs. So they will never catch up aside from hyperspace bouncing or jumpoints

You're undoubtedly correct, but I don't know how much, if any, control histidine has over the burn speed of vengeance fleets (I'm not a modder so I have no idea). That's why I figure increasing the timer, while not exactly an ideal solution, would still  increase the likelihood of you crossing paths them eventually.
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Histidine

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[0.95a] Nexerelin v0.10.1b "Buttons, Buttons, Buttons" (fixes 2021-05-14)
« Reply #3842 on: May 13, 2021, 08:51:02 PM »

Release for some fixes of confirmed bugs.

I'll see if the pirate raid issue crops up in my coming playthrough. Will also see about changing how vengeance fleet lifespan works.

Nexerelin v0.10.1b
Download

Changelog
Spoiler
## v0.10.1b ##
* New invasion, rebellion intel icons by ThePinkPanzer
* When giving marines to fight a rebellion, concentrate XP in remaining marines
* Conquest missions last twice as long
* Deciv colony barter event: Do a better job of picking commodities the player actually has
* Fix double bombardment bug
* Fix rebellions not applying the market condition
* Fix some fleet size multipliers using old values for doctrine effect on fleet size
* Fix being able to repeat operative action while not having enough credits
* Fix free operative actions being disallowed if player has negative credits
* Fix random relations and faction respawn setting not displaying proper values on returning to screen
* Add story disable warning to random sector toggle
* Update some instances of operatives still being called agents
[close]

if one disables some factions at the start of the game and goes through a playthrough will the factions I disabled appear later if I turned on enable spawning of factions not present at the start?
Quote
Try to guess from the name.

One can assume it's an option used for adding new factions that weren't previously installed only. I didn't feel stupid asking this question to reconfirm.
Unfortunately, I do not know the ins and outs of the workings of the mod that is why I come asking this question. I felt the way you responded was unnecessary. Perhaps it was for comedic effect?

When I give my clients a nutrition plan what may be obvious to me (the creator) might not be obvious to the client/user, same for workout plans. It might be annoying to repeat or state the obvious but it has enabled me to put as much information as possible in the index when they are not sure. Perhaps it's time Nexrelin started a community wiki?
Guess I'm just mildly annoyed seeing someone on multiple occasions to repeat questions, in cases where getting them answered wouldn't have (from my PoV) any notable impact on the game.
That said, I can see how the option's wording is ambiguous.

Anyway: The answer is yes, factions that were disabled at start can respawn with that setting, same as factions whose mods weren't loaded.

A wiki might be a good idea. Though I don't have time to set one up or do significant work on it, unless it used an existing wiki host (either the Starsector fandom wiki or the GitHub repo wiki, neither of which is quite suitable for a couple of reasons).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the timer starts at 1 month? Maybe try increase it to 6 months, with 12 being the max?

edit: Wait I actually don't know, is it possible to have, for example, two or more pirate fleets after you at the same time or is each faction limited to only one vengeance fleet at a time? I had presumed it was the former, but if its the latter I see no issue with removing the timer altogether.
The base timer is currently 2 months at level 1 with one extra month per level. Up to two months can be added depending on how far away the player is, but it doesn't look like this applies in anything resembling a normal-sized sector. Also if you get found but then shake them, the timer counts down faster.

There can be multiple vengeance fleets from the same faction at once (easy to see if you sat bomb a heavily populated colony).


EDIT: Found that something's screwing with the vengeance fleet AI; they may not even actually leave their system. I'll investigate further.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2021, 09:30:09 PM by Histidine »
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TerranEmpire

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Hi Histidine!

You mentioned that you intend to make conquering planets harder. Do you have any idea how harder should it be?
Also, do you have anything concrete ideas on how do you want to achieve this?
Because I think I have a few ideas, some of them might be interesting for you, but it really depends on how hard do you want to make it...
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Wyvern

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So, I'm still on Nex 0.10.1 and this might have been fixed (though I don't see it in the patch notes for 0.10.1b.)

Just got a mission from Midnight Dissonant, offering 560,000 credits to go hunt an "elite mercenary" fleet.
Said fleet has an Aurora, a Fury, two Barbarians, five destroyers, five frigates, all with level six officers (except the Aurora that has a level seven officer) and no s-mods.

It was not a particularly challenging fight; certainly not one that justified a half-million credit bounty.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2021, 04:21:12 PM by Wyvern »
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Histidine

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New version preview download, should fix the vengeance fleet breakage and also adds a spiffy new GUI feature in certain places.
Official release soonish, if nobody reports it exploding.

Hi Histidine!

You mentioned that you intend to make conquering planets harder. Do you have any idea how harder should it be?
Also, do you have anything concrete ideas on how do you want to achieve this?
Because I think I have a few ideas, some of them might be interesting for you, but it really depends on how hard do you want to make it...
I've done most of a turn-based minigame for ground battles. These are meant to have a high cost to carry out and take days or weeks of ingame time depending on colony size, the idea being that the enemy can summon reinforcement fleets from space to drive off your fleet during this period.

A sneak preview
Welcome to Sindria


Note: this is a debug view, normally you wouldn't see enemy units like this.
[close]
It hasn't been seriously playtested yet, so there's currently no guarantee that I won't throw out the entire feature (with its 5.8k lines of code and counting) as being unfun to play, and think of something else. Such is life.

So, I'm still on Nex 0.10.1 and this might have been fixed (though I don't see it in the patch notes for 0.10.1b.)

Just got a mission from Midnight Dissonant, offering 560,000 credits to go hunt an "elite mercenary" fleet.
Said fleet has an Aurora, a Fury, two Barbarians, five destroyers, five frigates, all with level six officers (except the Aurora that has a level seven officer) and no s-mods.

It was not a particularly challenging fight; certainly not one that justified a half-million credit bounty.
The bounties Dissonant offers are all vanilla ones currently, so that's a vanilla issue.

Looking at the code, the "small fleet" form of the merc bounty always has 3 S-mods per ship, but the large one only gets one S-mod at difficulty 9, and two at difficulty 10. Since the S-mods are the main cause of the difficulty and therefore the high payout mult of the merc bounty type (mult of 2, while pirates/Pathers are 0.8 and deserters 1), the reward/risk ratio is probably skewed for the large merc fleets. Might be worth bringing up with Alex.
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Warnoise

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Hi I am playing a luddic path campaign. I have a question, is it possible to make luddic path at least launch raids (like pirates)?

Because currently, even when I invade colonies for them, they don't even attempt to protect them when they get targeted in invasions
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TerranEmpire

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I'm not sure it's a good idea to present my humble and primitive solution when you have already done 5000+ lines of coding...

But just maybe...

(Also I'm aware that my English is far from perfect...)

What if, instead of trying to make invasions harder, make holding conquered planets a LOT harder, AND creating a mechanism where pacifying and occupying a planet costs you a lot, and failing to meet the occupation upkeep risks uprising, but this time with a serious chance of succes.

Currently, we only have to bring a coupe thousands of marines and heavy equipment and we can overrun even the Hegemony.
And this is a viable strategy ( I think since 0.95 it's even better, because of the size limit of 6 ) because you don't really have to pay for the occupation.
Just stabilize the planet, and they are instantaneously profitable...
Next planet.

My reasoning is that in the age of space warfare and orbital bombardment, the current model of bringing a couple of thousand troops is not that unrealistic. Achieving victory defined as eliminating centralized, organized resistance is much more a function of firepower, than the number of boots on the ground. Here, having space supremacy is THE ULTIMATE force multiplier. (For instance, you can eliminate ANY troop concentration anywhere)
(That does not mean, that invading a bigger planet should not take long, or take more troops, or take more fuel spent on "fire support" or all of them..)

Having the high ground is important, and space is the ultimate high ground :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6uckPRKvSg&ab_channel=AshPlatt

However after a fleet departs, a new collab or occupation administration has to deal with the unruly population...
(So in effect, you have this brief period, where you can occupy the planet without additional funds, while the original task force is over the planet, ready to bombard...)
This suppression value should scale with the size of the planet, so occupying and pacifying size 7 or 8 would be a nightmare, requiring years of investments on the scale of the revenue of a dozen average-sized planets (4-5-6).
(Also making planets with active rebellion unprofitable, even without any additional money spent could be a good idea representing a population, that actively breaks the law, evades taxes, etc..)
(In addition, any occupied planet might have reduced patrol fleets and ground defense strength...)

After a while, and large sums of money, the rebellion would slowly fade away, but in the case of a size 6 it would take years, and size 7 or 8 would take 10-15 years or so...

This mechanism would basically be an updated version of the current rebellion mechanism, but would completely alter the balance of power with respect to government vs rebels. I think currently the problem is not so much the easy conquest of the planets, but how easy is to hold them and how profitable they become almost instantaneously (after pressing the stabilize button a few times...)

It makes snowballing very easy, which is the real immersion-breaking thing in many (most) strategy games.

I have a couple of ideas regarding how to implement this feature.
Instead of the unrest modifier, we should add the "rebellion" modifier which would effectively be a "derivative of stability", so every month the stability would go down, making an open rebellion more likely. Countering this should be some kind of monthly fee, similar to the current growth modifier button, where pressing the button would allocate money to fund the occupation and pacification. So if you spend the money the "rebellion" effect is frozen for the time being (derivative is zero for the moment..).

Eliminating this rebellion (pacification) could be implemented as having to fund the occupation for a set period of time, this time being the function of the planet size and other possible factors...
Or there could be some kind of toggle to increase or decrease the funds, so massively increasing the occupation funds (like exponentially) would shorten the occupation time.

(Also to make things believable, a rebellion would first target the patrol HQ, so during an open rebellion the planet would not have a home-grown space superiority force)

One last thing. The AI should have a different mechanism, where similarly to their current invasion capacity, they would have an occupation capacity, based on their faction size for eg. I think this is necessary because AI empires could not go bankrupt, so having to allocate funds is not a problem for them.

So to sum up:
*I think the main problem is not how to conquer planets, but how to hold them
*In any case most of the planets in SS have populations comparable to my home country (Hungary) or yours. It's perfectly believable that a small, but very well-armed mechanized force, with continuous overwhelming air support, could eliminate our national defense forces fairly quickly.
*Preventing snowballing makes the whole world more believable
*In real life after conquering new land the occupation could cost as much or in many cases (like Afghanistan, South Vietnam, commie Afghanistan, etc) a lot more.
*After conquering a planet you have to occupy it, which costs a lot of money so, in the end, your economy determines how many planets you can simultaneously occupy.
*Fine-tuning the exact values would require play-testing and feedback, but the mechanism could make pacifying smaller (size 3,4) planets relatively quick and cheap, and larger planets progressively costlier and longer.
*This would also prevent the source of the current complaints, that factions are eliminated too quickly (like Tri-Tachion), especially if we introduce other modifiers in case of the occupation cost other than size (for eg, technology, or faction modifiers, etc).

I know, that if you have already invested that much time into implementing your ideas, you probably don't want to start from scratch...
I wanted to create this post months ago but kept postponing it because it's very tiresome to write such long essays in English for me, while I had to work on university projects...

So thank you in advance, and if you read my post, I hope maybe you find some of my ideas interesting.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2021, 08:33:24 AM by TerranEmpire »
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Histidine

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Since nobody reported explosions, here's the vengeance fleet fix:

Nexerelin v0.10.1c
Download

Changelog
Spoiler
## v0.10.1c ##
* Agent orders dialog and fleet requests use a GUI map to pick destination
* Fix vengeance fleets not following player or even leaving their origin system (bug introduced with Starsector 0.95)
[close]

@TerranEmpire: Interesting and helpful thoughts, thanks!

I don't think it's one or the other; not yet planning to really transform the rebellion mechanic, but I'll make it stronger and longer-lasting in general, reduce the pacification effect of supplying the local government, and increase post-invasion stability loss (making the planet less profitable and also raising rebel strength). Another easy thing I might do is increase the cost of (or prevent outright) the stabilize-for-credits mechanic on freshly conquered worlds.

I do think that invasions themselves also need to be harder, aside from any occupation period challenges.
The gameplay reason is that even if the player doesn't want to hold on to the location permanently, they can loot it for a large amount of credits and semi-permanently hammer the losing faction's infrastructure.
Lorewise: Really, a size 5 planet (population 100,000-999,999) should be able to muster more than the equivalent of 200 marines in its own defense (vanilla's base ground defense rating before industry and other multipliers). With that kind of resistance, the player doesn't even really need all the devastating space support capability that's technically available, it just makes things cheaper and faster.
The current level of ease in conquest makes one wonder why the Sector, or at least the small indie worlds, aren't already completely controlled by the Hegemony or various warlords. I can buy 200 marines from any location with a military base!
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bob888w

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I honestly hate running around putting down rebellions, and see it as nothing but a chore. I get why rebellions on invaded planets should be harder to deal with, but I dislike the idea of stability issues as a long term thing.
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TerranEmpire

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Hi!

I completely agree, and I also mentioned that the required troop numbers might have to grow.
I think there are two distinct mechanics in play, though.
First IRL (if we had achieved FTLtravel, etc), smaller size colonies might look more like military outposts, so they might even have a very high percentage of the population as weapon-bearers. Like some kind of frontier. (I mean size 3 or 4)

Second, historically most of the established states with sustainable economies had a troops/population ratio of about 1-2% at most.
Even the Roman Empire had ~500k troops (half of them legionaries) for 50 million pops.

However today the ratio of troops/pops has fallen significantly since equipment and training costs are sky-high. I think it's safe to assume that these trends are going to continue.
So it might be a good guess to say that a size 5 economically profitable planet has a few thousand troops at most.
Simultaneously I have the impression that most of the size 6 or 7 countries today, have size 4 and 5 armies =D (sorry, but using magnitudes is so convenient).
We only have one size 8 planet, so it might be tricky to give troop numbers here. I have a strong impression that Chicomoztoc is closer to size 7 than size 9, maybe with around 200 million pops.
If that's the case I think a size 5 army is good for it, too.

The relevant question is how much survives a tactical bombardment?
I have a strong feeling that a good tactical bombardment reduces the ground troop levels by a magnitude.
In that case, size 5 planets would require size 2 troops to conquer, size 6 would require size 3, and size 7 or 8 should require size 4. Well, the latter would be a real logistical challenge, but I don't think this is a problem, since conquering a size 7 or 8 planets is the only way to have one, so the player should play a proper price.

Disabling the stabilization mechanic is a good idea since if I recall correctly, a low stability planet is not profitable.

The reason why I think some kind of constant deteriorating stability would be nice in addition is that having no revenue from a planet only represents the unwillingness of the local population. Having to pay to upkeep an occupation should financially limit how many planets you should be able to conquer.
But to avoid micromanagement I think this monthly occupation fee should be automatic like the monthly growth incentive button.
The bottom line is if you have no "constant deterioration unless constant payment" mechanism, the player could conquer as many planets as he so chooses, while I think uncontrolled expansion should lead to very serious consequences.
On the other hand, having to pay constant attention via selling marines to stabilize, etc, creates babysitting and kills the fun. So I would recommend against requiring the player to supply the local government.

You are entirely correct about the current defense strength. Also, I wish to point out that if you can disable the stabilize-for-credits mechanic, you can achieve similar effects as I suggested with the rebellion mechanism. The only real difference is by adding a new rebellion modifier as a  function of size, etc, you can fine-tune the occupation fee for each planet size both in magnitude and duration.
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Floorc

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Quick question, sorry if it's been asked before.

How do I make it so when starting a colony on an uninhabited planet it goes to my starting faction instead of starting my own faction?
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Helldiver

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The current level of ease in conquest makes one wonder why the Sector, or at least the small indie worlds, aren't already completely controlled by the Hegemony or various warlords.

Hell even the bigger worlds! Once you've got just 3 Mudskippers' or one Nebula's worth of marines and a tanker you can just click>tac bomb>click>invade most planets in a row. At that point rebellions don't matter because the damage is already done (both damage in gameplay and damage to immersion).

btw excited to see what the GUI map for fleet request/operative mission orders is like.
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Flacman3000

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Quick question, sorry if it's been asked before.

How do I make it so when starting a colony on an uninhabited planet it goes to my starting faction instead of starting my own faction?

Go to comms and speak with any individual and click transfer market to another faction something like that.
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Floorc

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Quick question, sorry if it's been asked before.

How do I make it so when starting a colony on an uninhabited planet it goes to my starting faction instead of starting my own faction?

Go to comms and speak with any individual and click transfer market to another faction something like that.

Found that option, but it seems I can transfer it to any faction except the one I'm trying to give it to.

https://imgur.com/a/HTvR7LV
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