Let’s talk about the options the player has for moving around the Sector! For a long time, the set of movement mechanics has been incomplete, with additions made here and there (slipstreams, unlocking the use of the Gates), but still lacking some of the options that in my mind would make up the final picture. Perhaps “final” isn’t the right word – things will certainly be tweaked as necessary – but it’s about having a more complete set to tweak, rather than what has been, until now, a partial implementation.
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One of the design goals for the campaign layer of the game is that it should present the player with opportunities for combat. This doesn’t mean that everything you do in the campaign has to lead to it, but it’s a good thing to always keep in mind, regardless – how does a feature of a mechanic give context (and meaning) to combat, or lead into it directly?
If you’ve been following the game, this is something you’ve probably read before. So, in brief: this post is going to talk about some aspects of how establishing colonies leads the player towards combat. This already happens in the currently-released version of the game, and the changes I’ll talk about here are about three things: cleaning up some of the rough edges of the current approach, creating a system that makes it easy to add a variety of encounters, and building some infrastructure that can be used for other purposes, in particular implementing the endgame.
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A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I was happy to answer random questions about my game dev practice (offer still stands!), and in the following discussion I said something about having cut a bunch of text from “the anarchist art collective” portion of the Starsector missions. There was at least one person interested in hearing more, so who am I to deny this request?
It turns out that getting to that anarchist art collective involves – for the purposes of context, of course – a meandering path through the entire process of writing narrative for Starsector. Therefore, my friends, that’s what we’re going to do today.
There will be spoilers in this post for content that was released in Starsector 0.95, the March of 2021 vintage. I won’t talk about any upcoming content ( … unless?). So if you haven’t done the so-called “main quest” of the game starting at the Galatia Academy, both myself and Hegemony COMSEC recommend you hold off on reading further.
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Technically, the next release was meant to be a “bugfixing and polish” release. It’s true that the skill system update already pushes the boundaries of that, but still, we’ve somehow ended up with some major new features, too, which will be discussed in this post. The short answer to “how did we get here” is “weeeeell, one thing led to another, and before you know it…”
I’d actually like to give a longer answer, too. The first thing I want to say, though, is that this is ok! Ultimately, it’s all stuff that was going to be in the game one way or another (though the specific form would depend on exactly how it happened), so as long as it’s added in a way that lets it fit into the existing mechanics nicely, it’s all good.
I could have held off on adding these until a later release – there’s something to be said for sticking with a plan. But also, I think it’s important to take advantage of inspiration when it strikes – and to occasionally, have some fun!
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Part one of this two-part blog post is here.
In this part, let’s dive into a few details about specific skills, and some other points note. I don’t want to go through every single change – just highlight some interesting tidbits, and a couple of the bigger changes.
Elite skills
One of the goals was to do a pass over the “elite” effects of the combat skills and make them more interesting/powerful/appealing. For example, Helmsmanship’s elite effect now – in addition to its original “0-flux boost at any level” effect – grants a flat +5 to top speed, making it a consideration for slower ships. Combat Endurance and Damage Control got some brand-new, fun elite effects.
Combat Endurance brings back the “repair ship hull during combat” effect from several versions ago – repairs up to 25% of the hull level, with total repairs not exceeding the higher of 50% of the hull, or, as of right now, 2000 points. With Combat Endurance being a skill that’s great for small ships, the elite effect is, too, because of the potential to repair far more than 50% of the hull over the course of a battle.
Damage Control’s elite effect grants a reduction to large hull hits – any hull hit above a certain threshold of damage has the portion above the threshold reduced by (again, as of right now) 60%. No-one plans on being hit by a Reaper torpedo, but still, neutralizing that much damage when things go wrong is going to have a lot of appeal. To make the skill not completely neutralize the strike potential of certain weapons, this effect only triggers at most once every two seconds.
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