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the crossed arcs of one's own gun turrets are the best comfort to be found in the cold reaches of space Old thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3465556  The Now is what the ancients would call “year 3126.” We do not call it that anymore. It is pointless to cite large numbers that remind us how far we had come, and how far we have fallen. Since we do not even know where Old Earth is anymore, and cannot reach it – we use a new way of telling time, the sector cycle. In our sector of space, it is cycle 206.   STARSECTOR 0.96 (the 2023 update) is OUT!!! What's Starsector? Starsector (formerly, Starfarer) is a single-player game where you roam a rapidly destabilizing Sector of the galaxy as an independent captain, trying to survive in a dystopic future. The game has action, strategy, tactical and RPG elements, and features procgen, modelled economy, planetary colonization and blah blah. It blends features of Star Control II, Mechwarrior, Escape Velocity, Mount & Blade and others to create (in my opinion) the ultimate 2D space game experience, with the combat being the main draw for most players thus far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAvo3S0MD-o It's accessible, yet deep - and not at all like brain-melting space sims like X3 or the Evochron series. Flying your chosen flagship is a simple matter of WASD and mouse, and you give your fleet members general orders that they carry out themselves, as opposed to RTS-style micromanagement.  What's the gameplay like? You shoot the other spaceships, sort through the scraps, and then chase the stragglers around the system until they're so starved for supplies, they've started eating each other. At which point you graciously take what's left of their fleet. The combat has an amazing feeling, and is instantly familiar if you've ever played SPAZ, Escape Velocity, etc: you have a top-down view of a spaceship, and you click the mouse to shoot, press the W button to go forward, shift+A/D to strafe and turn to mouse, and so on. There are lots of weapon types, lots of ships, and lots of different but equally valid ways to get stuff done in the game.  Sounds familiar! Starsector has a lot of cool mechanics that set it apart from similar games. Most ships have access to an energy shield: raise it and it'll face in the direction of your mouse if it's an omnishield, or cover a fixed arc of your ship if it's a frontal shield. When your shield absorbs damage, your ship will build Flux, a negative resource akin to Mechwarrior's Heat. Flux also builds up if you fire weapons or use certain ship systems (per-ship "abilities"). Too much Flux, and your shield generator overloads. It dissipates on its own, but you can also choose to vent it all out as superheated plasma, a process that leaves your ship temporarily exposed to enemy fire. Basically, Flux makes all the standard space combat poo poo emergent, and ties offense and defense together to force you to make tons of small, meaningful decisions. 'Diverting power to shields' is accomplished by holding fire. Want to focus 100% on flanking your enemy? Hold fire and lower shields, at 0 Flux your engines are way stronger. All-out firepower? Lower shields so you can't get overloaded, and redline your reactors. Combat in the game is highly positional: you need to keep your shields in the right direction. You also need to take incoming fire into consideration. Kinetic weapons do more damage to shields but are deflected by armor, while High Explosive weapons are harmlessly absorbed by your shield, but will blow a hole in your ship. Energy weapons are all-rounders, but usually cause a higher flux buildup to the firing ship. It's all a matter of split-second decisions and feels really rewarding when you get it right.  There's a ton of ships, and they range from lumbering slabs of metal armed with mass drivers, missiles and cannons, to high-tech, sleek ships with antimatter guns, beam weapons and teleporters. Each ship is equally viable: some of the older warship classes are from the era before energy shields were developed, so their armor is extremely thick, and replacement parts are widely available. Inversely, deploying a high-tech vessel can be a logistical nightmare, fixing them if they break is expensive, and they are usually more specialized. Best of all, you can outfit them all in a million different ways and tweak according to your playstyle. Optimized munchkin bullshit, concepts taken to the logical extreme, and stupid gimmicks.  Smart AI? Surely you jest! In the words of former thread poster Dominic White: quote:I'm serious when I say this game already has some of the best AI I've seen in any game, RTS, action or otherwise. Both friendly and enemy ships are quite intelligent, and aware of the attack arcs of both friendly and enemy weapons. They'll back off when damaged, dodge or try to intercept missiles, hang back if they've been given an obvious 'missile boat' loadout and generally behave like clever little things. The AI makes the gameplay fluid. The enemies rarely give you a break - show weakness and they respond with aggression, if they're outgunned, they'll try to escape, chip away at you or flank you. The same goes for the ships in your fleet - you can give them orders, and then trust them to carry them out, like "protect this spot", or "go harass that cruiser", or "bomb this battleship". You have a limited number of orders you can give at any time, so it's often best to just give a general game-plan to your fleet and go along with how they work it out. Sidenote: the community has organized a number of AI vs AI tourneys (given the game has no MP) wherein you outfit a fleet according to a ruleset and pit it against other similar fleets. Interestingly, the AI vs AI fights reveal how much the player is required as a sort of "chaos maker" to break status quos, but even so, the overall complexity of the AI lends itself to a lot of different strategies and kinda weird and unexpected events. What was that about RPG elements? The game has a rapidly growing campaign mode on a huge map which is partially procedurally generated. It features systems connected by Star Control-style Hyperspace travel for the player to explore and conquer. As you win battles, you gain experience and unlock skills in chosen fields: Combat, Leadership, Technology or Industry.      Hire charming officers to captain your fleet's ships! At all times in the campaign, you manage the duties of a captain in keeping his fleet intact and healthy. You need to figure out a fleet composition that suits your needs: ships need supplies for repairs and day to day functioning. Fighting takes its toll on your ships: big battleships take forever to get primed for combat, and will consume a ton of supplies to get back up to speed after a big fleet battle, while frigates and destroyers have more undemanding logistics. This means you'll want to deploy the right ships to deal with the right foe, and if you have a fleet with powerful vessels in it, they'll require vulnerable support ships to keep everything running. The campaign can be unforgiving, but rewards players who can work the game mechanics to their advantage. It also features a modelled economy, with a trading system that allows the player to choose between open market or black market trading. By using ingame intel, a clever player can find events like uprisings and food shortages, and either help the ailing people of the Sector out... or exploit them for even more profit. For instance, smuggling drugs or hand weapons into a 2-stability world with population unrest is a sure-fire way to generate a 0-stability hellhole with massive emigration. Several factions in the Sector will reward the player for helping them out - things are rather feudal in the Sector and you will often get bullied by armed patrols for tolls and "protection" money on your way to a port. Befriend a faction, and patrols will turn a blind eye to you, and you will gain access to military surplus wares, or even powerful warships. Smuggling and trading with other factions can be done, but you have to be clever about it. Faction relations work a little like reputation in the old WoW, with tiers based on how high your reputation value is. Since 0.8, a big part of the game is exploring the big, totally destabilized outskirts of the Sector for adventure and loot. There's... a lot of.. interesting stuff out there. Surely nothing could go wrong. Since 0.9, you can colonize planets you've surveyed, and use this to start your own faction! Try to find a really cozy world and turn it into a breadbasket if you wanna see what space-feudal plausible deniability warfare is like! You can also use industry to set up a fleet doctrine for your faction and produce any ship, weapon or fighter you have the blueprints for. This game isn't finished yet? Yeah, it's unfinished right now, and rough around the edges in some aspects, mainly in terms of overarching goals in the campaign (it's basically a sandbox, without win conditions or story arcs) Officially it's in Alpha, but what sets this apart is that it's a really polished, stable and playable Alpha. Rather than try to do a million things at once, the developer seems to be focusing on one element at a time. Up until recently, he has focused entirely on the combat engine, and that plus the missions + mods available is probably worth  alone if you're a 2d space game buff. You can get it at the official site.Check out the dev blog on the official site for updates on stuff, it's generally an interesting read just from a game dev standpoint as the guy tends to be very transparent about what he's doing and how he ended up doing it/how he failed at doing it earlier. Gameplay tips/Misc stuff: quote:Remove flashbang effect when ships explode: Starsector\starsector-core\data\config\settings.json > "enableShipExplosionWhiteout":false, quote:Dev mode gives you several extra features. It removes the limit on zooming out, so you can get a view of the entire battlefield/solar system if like. It also allows you to CTRL+click and take direct control of any ship in the game, including enemies. 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quote:You can't overload unless your shields are up. About to overload? Vent flux instead. You'll still take damage, but at least you'll be pretty dangerous when you finish venting (unless you were about to be hit by 3 torpedoes or some poo poo, then take the overload instead - shields can take a hit of arbitrary strength before overloading) quote:Armor damage is not automatically bad. What would you rather have, 2000 hard flux from blocking a couple Sabot SRMs, or a hole in your side armor? That's usually a choice you can make in the heat of combat. Low-tech ships can get away with this more than high-tech ships. Primer on the vanilla ship tech and their gameplay differences: quote:MASTERY EPOCH, or Low-Tech (red ships w red shields): High armor, ability to keep shields off and stay at high flux to bully enemy ships with kinetic and HE damage, lots of missiles, low logistical load, positioning-dependant. The choice if you like to man up and facetank, if you wanna ram things and slug it out. What's that about mods? The game has an absolutely crazy big modding community. You can find them on the official forum's mod section. Currently, most modders are updating their stuff after the recent patch and things might be a little shaky. It's usually a good idea to up the game's java memory allocation if you intend to use many mods at the same time. "Must have" mods: DynaSector - procedurally generated fleets and ship variants, adds unpredictability, immersion and variance to your game Ship/Weapon Pack - set of additional vanilla-style ships and weapons that are integrated into the base game Underworld - Pirates get more tools to play with, and adds a high-tech "highwayman" faction, the Starlight Cabal, which are horrid technocrat scientologists that fart around in purple high-tech ships and extort you Nexerelin - Turns the game into a deeper experience and adds optional procedural sector generation. Enables you to play "as" or join a faction and conquer markets for them, enables alliances and various other features. Adds win conditions. GraphicsLib - Adds dynamic lighting, better-looking ship explosions, distortions and other visual spice. Required for some mods but can also be disabled completely in the .ini and just ran for compatibility. LazyLib/MagicLib - Other mods depend on these being installed and enabled for functionality Mod factions: The "faction mods" tend to add a new faction to the game + a set of hardware and sometimes quests or campaign mechanics related to this faction. This is the most common type of content-injecting mod. Most of them play nice with all other faction mods and any combination of such, while other ones have special integration with mods that add overarching campaign mechanics. Best bet is to skim the mod threads OP and download if it looks interesting, then check it out. Note that, in order for systems and planets to be added to the game by mods, you have to start a fresh game with them enabled. So it is a bit of a committal thing to try out a bunch of new faction mods as you can't slap them into an ongoing campaign and have everything work properly. But which faction mods should I play? There are so many... It comes down to preference! Generally, content mods hold up to a similar standard of quality and fit in with vanilla content in terms of gameplay balancing and utility. Ask the thread if you want recommendations. Note: To use many of the big mods at the same time, you need to do some preparations - you may have to edit the vmparams file in starsector's install folder to allocate more than 2 gigs of ram. See this post for detailed instructions about mod compatibility and allocating extra memory if you need it for running fuckloads of mods. Some random mod related crap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNcyzVTVMT4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf3TkVBI6Xg   
SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND fucked around with this message at 12:00 on May 7, 2023 |
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Sep 16, 2013 00:05
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This is a Cool Game (tm) and cool people should play it.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:25
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Please remove that obnoxious line of underscores. It makes everything scroll horizontally.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:25
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New name's terrible.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:29
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dis astranagant posted:Please remove that obnoxious line of underscores. It makes everything scroll horizontally. My Pre-Collapse datapad displayed it perfectly 
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Sep 16, 2013 00:30
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Everyone should play this game and, more importantly, play Fuckfiend's mod because it is awesome. (Though he needs to hurry up with the Karkinos, because the Kumaraja lacks proper amounts of dakka nudge nudge wink wink)
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Sep 16, 2013 00:38
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SynthOrange posted:New name's terrible. What was wrong with Starfarer? Copyright thing?
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Sep 16, 2013 00:44
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Important information I can think of for newcomers and people who haven't played .6 yet First, this post from the old thread: Voyager I posted:You will be drowning in rivers of money if you play the new supplies system right. As soon as the game starts, sell some of your early supplies. Coupled with the 6000 credits you start with, the hilarious value of supplies means you can easily afford to buy and fully equip a Lasher right from the get-go and will be much better equipped to deal with early game threats (you can skip the entire '10 minute 1v1 strafe wars with a Hound' phase of the game). Also, Unstable Injectors make killing Hounds infinitely easier and speed is an amazing stat in general so put them on your frigates if at all possible. If you really want money you can also consider selling your starting Marines since you have like 1500 credits worth of them. When you buy new ships, they aren't outfitted with anything. If you can just barely afford a ship, you can't afford that ship, the weapons to get it working, and the supplies to get it into shape. Marines cost .1 supply per marine per day, so keeping even a small contingent can double your upkeep. Sell them. Boarding actions are rarely successful, and even if they are, the inflation caused by expensive supplies has made ships and weapons not terribly valuable. High tech, energy weapon laden ships now require a lot of supplies to deploy, so they may not be the best to use every fight, as opposed to the wolf pack swarm tactics of previous patches. A good alternative freighter to the Mule is the Gemini, though it's a fair bit more fragile. It works more as a backup carrier than a brawler, if you have a fighter contingent. Speaking of fighters, another Voyager I quote: Voyager I posted:Fighter logistics values are a bit messed up. They're 1/day per ship across the board regardless of actual individual ship strength, so a flight of Talons or mining Pods costs twice as much as a Xyphos Wing. The only exceptions are Trident bombers at 2/day and Wasps at 1.5/day. The Tridents are overpriced, but the Wasps are just straight
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Sep 16, 2013 00:53
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because it means one wing of them has the logistics cost of a cruiser and each one of them has the logistics cost of a Lasher. They're reenacting the bad old days when you were picking between a flight of Warthogs and a Medusa.
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The new burn level is a much simpler way of seeing travel speed and if you can chase down a fleet or not. Much like in Mount and Blade you can make bank by being fast enough to catch weaker enemies on the campaign map. High tech frigate wolfpacks still wreck all pirate fleets. The Tempest pulls ahead of the Hyperion with the CR per deployment reduction but nothing can outrun the Hyperion in pursuit. I thought they were a toss up before but now they have more clearly defined roles. All in all CR works better than I expected. I like the new logistics mechanics now that I've got a hang of them but the game needs a way to ease you into them so that you don't gently caress yourself. The current info is serviceable but could be a lot better. After battle I'd like to know what my nominal supply consumption is when the fleet is at full repairs/CR and how long it'll take to get down to that level so that I can make a decision about jettisoning cargo, returning to a station, or pushing ahead. Being stranded without supplies sucks and quickly gets you into a position where your ships just fall apart. At the moment the easiest way to avoid that feels like hugging a station and taking the battles that cross your path. This is all stuff to tweak and experiment with though, the game's really coming together. It's also something that might sort itself out once we're able to hire NPC captains for other ships, depending on what their modifiers end up being. The new fleet window is rear end though and I agree with everything Bhodi said about it in the last thread. Bhodi posted:The purchasing ship window, for example, continues to get worse; On the buy tab, you get a big picture of the ship and the bottom 1/4th of the window is taken up by 2 completely irrelevant items - Combat readiness repairs. You can't even see the price without mousing over! Then, you hit the ?, and are given THIRTY performance statistics. Seriously? Does anyone else think it's gotten completely unweidly? There are really only a few things you care about :
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Sep 16, 2013 01:03
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Holy poo poo, EV: Nova was my favorite game forever growing up, I can't loving wait to start playing this. By the way, what's with the name change?
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Sep 16, 2013 01:11
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Copyright issue - there's some boardgame somewhere that already went by Starfarer, and instead of dealing with all that poo poo the developer just changed the name.
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Sep 16, 2013 01:13
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What I really like about this update is that it makes it easier to see how the entire game will eventually pan out. I like the idea that you can make a fleet perfectly suited to one thing and one thing only. But right now, we got more excuses to fly low-tech ships, and that is great, because low tech is best tech. Protagorean posted:Holy poo poo, EV: Nova was my favorite game forever growing up, I can't loving wait to start playing this. All the EV games were so great back in the 90s. Man, I like that this patch brought back a tiny bit of that "ohgodwhatifirunoutoffuel" suspense from EV when exploring... although there isn't much to explore yet. SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 01:14
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Thanks Voyager for your tip about what was going on with fighter upkeep costs at the end of the previous thread, that would explain why my logistics exploded when I tried to swap out a squad of Talons for Wasps... Now I'm considering switching out my 2x Broadswords for 3x Thunder squadrons if they'll give about the same value.
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Sep 16, 2013 01:29
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Well I most definitely got my ten bux out of the previous release, and I only started tooling around with Uozmoz's awesome mod collection before this update came out. How is the new faction? When I was playing vanilla a lot Tri Tach was basically the bees knees and I didn't bother with anything else.
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Sep 16, 2013 01:33
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This game is bloody great, the last update is bloody great. Play this game right now.
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Sep 16, 2013 01:49
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Some more  on playing 0.6:Boarding is Dead You can do it, but it's not even remotely worth it. Marines are bullshit expensive and suck up a shitload of supplies to keep around. Actually getting a chance to board a ship you want instead of a loving Buffalo is highly unlikely in the first place, and even if you get lucky there it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you'll even get it or it will just self-destruct with a bunch of your expensive Marines inside it and maybe blow up whatever ship you were boarding it with too. This massive unreliability means boarding is altogether terrible as a means of getting a ship you want, but wait, it gets worse! Not only do you have to buy a bunch of expensive Marines and let them eat into your logistics capacity (0.1 supplies/day each!), any ships you actually do manage to capture will be cripplingly damaged with no CR, so the cost of the supplies it will take just to get them back into fighting shape ends up being comparable to what you would have spent just going to a station and buying a new one (and also means the old fix-and-sell is no longer profitable). Combine that with updated markets that actually stock everything and there's no reason to even bother. As soon as the game starts, sell all your Marines and put the money towards your Lasher buddy. Don't buy Marines again and whenever the game gives you the boarding option just torpedo the fuckers. Alex, being a pretty sensible dude all around, has looked at this a bit and is going to make Boarding less terrible in 0.6.1. For now, don't bother. More Supplies Chat Bigger ships are punishingly expensive to deploy in combat, so don't drop the big toys unless you really need them to win a tough fight. Consider Frigates, Destroyers, and cheap Fighters with the occasional Cruiser mixed in to be your workhorses. The days of getting into an Onslaught and facerolling everything smaller than a Hegemony SDF are over. The price of supplies means the game is pretty boom-or-bust. If you're doing well, you're harvesting hilarious piles of them and converting them into rivers of money that you legitimately can't spend as fast as you make unless you want to start a capital ship museum in the abandoned station (or routinely use ships larger than destroyers in combat  , or use Wasps). On the other hand, if you have a bad streak then you can death spiral into a place where you only have one ship and it's broken and you have no money to fix it and you can't get more money to fix it with because the only ship you have to make money with is broken and  Vanilla Talons are also basically hosed right now. The fact that fighters actually need carriers means they've lost their place as your first-fight wingmen, and by the time you can afford to keep a carrier around their broken logistics cost means they're just not worth having in your fleet compared to something like Thunders (and once you get the supply train moving, premium fighters will not be prohibitively expensive). Voyager I fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 02:03
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Drakenel last thread posted:What sounds like is happening is your CR is tanking too quickly. Wolf frigates are a bit of a liability in that regard. Also graviton beam seriously sucks. If you can find a better energy weapon or manage to grab a brawler frigate you'll have an easier time. Scroll wheel down to zoom out to see more and hold shift to speed up time. Tab to look for one triangle ships that look like they're heading towards you. Hounds are cunts, don't bother with them unless you can catch them. Buffalos (the freighter that has three sets of missiles sticking out of it's rectangular shape) are also easy prey, since their only defense is missiles which can be blocked by a quick shield. Graviton beam seemed interesting at least. "Oh cool, a giant laser that hurts hull AND shields." But I can see what you mean. My other attempt at the game gave me a Vigilance and while I was an okay shot with the pulse laser, fighters still kicked my rear end because I didn't have braindead auto aim lasers covering all angles like that Wolf. As for prey, I've not seen many enemy ship packs that were just a single freighter, or just a single freighter and s single pack of fighters. Usually it's stuff that's outumbered me three to one or more, or just had flat out more huge ships. I somehow suspect the AI does not have to deal with combat readiness or supplies. I'm probably wrong but that's the impression given when I start malfunctioning just for a 1 vs 1 dragging on starting me malfunctioning every 15 seconds, while the enemy ship seems just fine. Is there a point to the Assault Shuttle everyone seems to have as a choice? Do you start with extra money or something? Voyager I posted:For more supplies chat: anything bigger than a Destroyer is punishingly expensive to deploy in combat, so don't drop the big toys unless you really need them to win a tough fight. The days of getting into an Onslaught and facerolling everything smaller than a Hegemony SDF are over. This is why as a completely new player, the whole combat readiness and supplies system has given me the impression I'm supposed to start off slogging it with just my starter ship, because if I can barely afford supplies and repairs for my starter, then obviously more ships when you first start is a bad idea right 
Section Z fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 02:10
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The Wolf is still the best starting ship in the game. Throw an Unstable Injector on it with the Tactical Lasers and it automatically wins against Hounds and fighters in the small groups you'll be fighting in the early game. If they try to pincer you, keep your shields on the Hound (though an Unstable Injector should make you fast enough to outmaneuver them); it doesn't do much damage to your shields but will tear you apart if you let it hit your hull. Conversely, Talons, Piranhas, and Broadswords can't really hurt you until something else opens up your armor (at which point they can gently caress your poo poo up, so be careful). Also remember your Phase Skimmer; if you get in a bad spot or want to be in someone's face real quick, just mash F a few times and presto! Remember to turn your shields back on though. The only issue you'll have with a pure Tactical Lasers Wolf is that you might not be able to overcome the flux dissipation on Lashers; that's where the Graviton beam is actually really useful because it's Kinetic damage, though if you stick Autocannons on your Lasher Buddy you'll probably be okay either way so don't feel bad if you just rip it off for an Unstable Injector and some more vents.
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Sep 16, 2013 02:19
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Section Z posted:Graviton beam seemed interesting at least. "Oh cool, a giant laser that hurts hull AND shields." But I can see what you mean. My other attempt at the game gave me a Vigilance and while I was an okay shot with the pulse laser, fighters still kicked my rear end because I didn't have braindead auto aim lasers covering all angles like that Wolf. As for prey, I've not seen many enemy ship packs that were just a single freighter, or just a single freighter and s single pack of fighters. Usually it's stuff that's outumbered me three to one or more, or just had flat out more huge ships. I guess the problem is you aren't paying attention to your CR before you pick battles and deploy? It's decreased every time you deploy a ship and takes time on the strategic map to recover (it's also set to max when you repair at the station). If you attack pirates when you're still at low CR then you run the risk of being forced to retreat with no control over your ship, or fighting but getting malfunctions right away. If combat drags on and frigates start losing CR, then you'll get malfunctions first because you started at a lower CR. You also know that systems fail also as a result of battle damage, right? Like if you get hit in the engines you get flameouts, weapons go offline, etc. That definitely also applies to the AI players.
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Sep 16, 2013 03:01
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I'm just going to chime in with more praise for Starsector (this is literally the game I've been wanting to play for years) and to shamelessly plug the clumsy mod that I made for it. It adds a new faction with a bunch of ships that are mostly in line with the vanilla ones in terms of power (and will only get more balanced as I update it) and a new star system. And most importantly, it works with the new 0.6a patch.
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Sep 16, 2013 03:11
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Lowen posted:I guess the problem is you aren't paying attention to your CR before you pick battles and deploy? True, I guess I should have double checked the CR rating I had when I started the game fresh for the first time, and then went after the first enemy I saw who I thought I could take on. I'm still picking this up as I go so I didn't realize you start with a gimped combat rating or something then, if I have to double check my CR before my first fight. Thanks for the heads up. As for damage caused failures, I had taken no damage except for a few glancing bullets in my first Wolf Vs Sphinx fight until the malfunctions spam, then the Sphinx just jumped on me while I couldn't turn or get out of their Vulcan and missile range. Even then, that fight ended with me "winning" because they ran out of ammo and ran off, but my engines just kept cutting out too often to pursue them. How do I make my CR high enough to last through a single drawn out fight without tanking? I'm not sure how to get the ships beyond the 60%-66% Max Readiness they start with, and that slider bar in the station refit lab seems just for simulation use. What am I doing wrong there. Not to mention how to catch up with ships I can likely take on who decide to just flee the battle in two seconds, looks like the AI is smart enough to only want to fight unless I'm trying to tackle something well above my weight (Two frigates? oh they are running from my Starter ship, 4 fighters, and undeployed for cargo use Hound). Maybe they are scared of the unarmed, unshielded frigate? Tl;DR: My very first fight was a pathetic stalemate with out much damage taken from either side, until I started getting Combat Readiness warnings and malfunctioning every 15 seconds and the enemy ran completely out of ammo and left. Section Z fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 03:20
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As much as i like the game, I keep getting my rear end kicked so hard. I need to learn how to play this game. I made it to level 2 on the last version of this game, but now I'm losing to anything. Trying to figure out the best starting ship, because the Wolf is not doing it for me.
Fargin Icehole fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 03:23
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Section Z posted:True, I guess I should have double checked the CR rating I had when I started the game fresh for the first time, and then went after the first enemy I saw who I thought I could take on. I'm still picking this up as I go so I didn't realize you start with a gimped combat rating or something then, if I have to double check my CR before my first fight. Thanks for the heads up. They are definitely afraid of the unarmed frigate; they don't notice armaments on ships except for avoiding them in combat. Also, early game fighters are no longer as useful as they used to be. Wait, Sphinx? Like, a war cruiser, two classes larger than you? That's not what you should be fighting in a solo frigate. Look for Buffaloes. Sounds like you are playing like earlier versions. Frigates in this are supposed to get in and deal with it; they are explicitly not supposed to kite larger ships indefinitely any more. Unreal_One fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 03:31
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Uh yeah don't take on cruisers early on. Look for lashers, hounds, talons, piranhas, and buffalos to fight first. Use your starting cash and sell off some of your marines and fuel to get a lasher frigate, and ensure he's armed. It'll help.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:26
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I got to the point where I'm now rolling with a self-piloted Medusa set up with heavy blasters and ion cannons shooting forward and 3 burst PD lasers on the rear, a cloaking sidekick buddy that shoots lightning (A shade class, I think), and a Buffalo transport that I never deploy into battle. You can basically do whatever you want with this setup as long as you avoid capship fleets, and have plenty of room for loot and supplies with the buffalo. This owns.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:31
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Did the Vigilance get nerfed? Its starting pulse laser seems a lot less powerful than before. Also it's yellow instead of blue.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:48
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Section Z posted:True, I guess I should have double checked the CR rating I had when I started the game fresh for the first time, and then went after the first enemy I saw who I thought I could take on. I'm still picking this up as I go so I didn't realize you start with a gimped combat rating or something then, if I have to double check my CR before my first fight. Thanks for the heads up. Hah, no. You start the game with the max CR I'm pretty sure. I thought you were having problems in later battles going into malfunctions instantly, or that you got malfunctions before the AI frigates did, which would indicate you started a battle with low CR. I wanted to make sure that wasn't the problem. It costs 35% combat readiness to deploy a wolf frigate into battle, so starting with a max CR of 60ish, if you fight two battles one after the other then the frigate will be completely hosed for some time. I just wanted to make sure you knew that and it wasn't the problem. Section Z posted:As for damage caused failures, I had taken no damage except for a few glancing bullets in my first Wolf Vs Sphinx fight until the malfunctions spam, then the Sphinx just jumped on me while I couldn't turn or get out of their Vulcan and missile range. Even then, that fight ended with me "winning" because they ran out of ammo and ran off, but my engines just kept cutting out too often to pursue them. I just popped into the game to check the codex and I don't see a Sphinx ship hull. I haven't seen one in my time playing 0.6a either. Are you playing with a mod? If so consider playing vanilla until you have the basics down. A large part of being good at this game is knowing what the various hulls and weapons are good at and adding a ton more of them doesn't make that easier. Section Z posted:How do I make my CR high enough to last through a single drawn out fight without tanking? I'm not sure how to get the ships beyond the 60%-66% Max Readiness they start with, and that slider bar in the station refit lab seems just for simulation use. What am I doing wrong there. Well, the only way I know of to increase max CR is to increase the experience level of your crew(s). You can sometimes find more experienced crew at stations. Otherwise, fight battles without taking damage, and they'll slowly level up faster than they die. Getting an elite crewed frigate is relatively easy once you can consistently win battles. But the real answer to your question is don't use frigates in a drawn out fight. Gradually losing CR during combat is very bad. You should be able to win battles quickly using a pack of fast frigates. I used two wolf class frigates and worked my way to a conquest class battlecruiser fairly quickly. Note that it NOT normal for ships to lose CR during combat, that game mechanic was introduced specifically to nerf using frigates to kite larger, slower, more powerful ships. It only applies to frigates (except the brawler), and interestingly enough, the buffalo mk2 "destroyer". I suspect the sphinx class you were fighting wasn't a frigate, and so wasn't subject to this game mechanic. All it needed to do was outlast you, and it wouldn't surprise me if the AI knew this. Section Z posted:Not to mention how to catch up with ships I can likely take on who decide to just flee the battle in two seconds, looks like the AI is smart enough to only want to fight unless I'm trying to tackle something well above my weight (Two frigates? oh they are running from my Starter ship, 4 fighters, and undeployed for cargo use Hound). Maybe they are scared of the unarmed, unshielded frigate? Frigates are hard, fast targets and have terrible loot. If you're just starting the game try to find a pirate fleet with a buffalo mk2 and maybe one escort. Make it a priority to kill the Buffalo. You might have to kill the escort first to avoid dying yourself, but if the escort runs away, let it. If the buffalo runs away, that's fine because it's slow and you can kill it before it gets away. Section Z posted:Tl;DR: My very first fight was a pathetic stalemate with out much damage taken from either side, until I started getting Combat Readiness warnings and malfunctioning every 15 seconds and the enemy ran completely out of ammo and left. I think the main problem there was you attacked something that was too powerful for your frigate. When you're in a frigate, you really do need to be able to kill something within that 3 minute timeframe. That's the price you pay for being in a fast, cheap ship.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:53
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I have to admit that I do like that freighters are useful now. Maybe with some changes to the boarding system and marine upkeep costs a troop transport will be worthwhile, too. Eventually I'm imagining using troop ships to ferry a battalion of marines to assault an enemy space station, which would be just 
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Sep 16, 2013 05:55
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So I had pretty good success with my latest fleet following tips from the previous thread. The biggest two tips: selling the marines and all unnecessary junk at the start, and then buying a mule when you can. Using that I eventually moved up to 2 hyperion with 1 atlas and then saved up till I could get whatever ships I wanted. edit: Also, in case others don't know (it took me a bit to figure out  ), you do not have to send your freighter into battle, you can leave it in reserve.
Burno fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 06:00
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I don't think I've bought a game this fast before.  I have not, however, yet received my key. Is it automated or do they manually email those out?
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Sep 16, 2013 06:02
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Lowen posted:I think the main problem there was you attacked something that was too powerful for your frigate. When you're in a frigate, you really do need to be able to kill something within that 3 minute timeframe. That's the price you pay for being in a fast, cheap ship. If there was any Kiting, it was incidental I Am So Bad At Driving And Shooting This Thing that it rolled over into sick dodge mode, and it just felt like common sense to back off a bit when staying closer would just get my rear end shield overloaded. I can see why "Don't try to take on a ship much bigger than yours unless it's easily killed, idiot" would be a problem in hindsight, it just didn't occur to me at the time because I would have expected a ship that much better than mine to just plow right through me. Thanks for all the insights to this clueless idiot everyone. Things like recognizing hulls on sight would hopefully come with time, but is there any way to get more info than a couple pictures of the ships when you mouseover enemies flying around? At this point that just gets me "Okay that looks about my size... I have no loving idea what kind of ship that is." Pesky lack of a pre-existing encyclopedic memory of the game. I suppose I could also just pause then flip through the Codex until I find the picture that matches the mouseover ships while learning to recognize them, why the hell didn't I think of this before.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:21
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Section Z posted:Vanilla, just a fresh install for the first time on this computer. Maybe I read the wrong word on the enemy ship while in a hurry. Is there a sphinx gun? Other people have posted saying the Sphinx is a War Cruiser, so I'm more amazed that it just ended in a pathetic stalemate considering I was trying (poorly) to shoot it with my Graviton beam as much as possible.  The size in the picture can be pretty grossly misleading. Luckily, starting out, there is only one ship you need to know on sight: the Buffalo Mk II http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Buffalo_Mk_II This is the easiest pirate ship to deal with, if you can prevent it from slamming salamander missiles (orange tip, fly straight at you then circle around) up your tailpipe. If you can find a single one of these, or one with a light escort, that is the key to getting on your feet. E: Also, the missions from the main menu are pretty useful for learning how to control different ships. Unreal_One fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 06:35
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Lowen posted:I think the main problem there was you attacked something that was too powerful for your frigate. When you're in a frigate, you really do need to be able to kill something within that 3 minute timeframe. That's the price you pay for being in a fast, cheap ship. I haven't gotten around to try the new patch yet, but these kind of timer things are exactly the kind of hideous bullshit mechanics that I hate. I hope there's a mod to increase or completely eliminate the timer. Or get rid of CR entirely, I liked the game just fine before it. I mean really? Three minutes? Get out. Get the gently caress out.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:42
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Fewd posted:I haven't gotten around to try the new patch yet, but these kind of timer things are exactly the kind of hideous bullshit mechanics that I hate. I hope there's a mod to increase or completely eliminate the timer. Or get rid of CR entirely, I liked the game just fine before it. The timer only applies to frigates and mod ships, and is a pretty important part of the balance of this patch. Sure it's not nearly finished yet, but the CR mechanic does lead to much more intense fights than previous kite-a-thons or massively outnumbering the enemy. Also, the time limit is literally just a column in an excel sheet. If you delete the column except for the title, no ships will have any sort of timer.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:52
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Fewd posted:I haven't gotten around to try the new patch yet, but these kind of timer things are exactly the kind of hideous bullshit mechanics that I hate. I hope there's a mod to increase or completely eliminate the timer. Or get rid of CR entirely, I liked the game just fine before it. Don't knock it until you try it. I was a bit wary of some of the changes, but after playing for a few hours, I'm really enjoying them. Like others have stated, the time limit on frigates is just to prevent bullshit kiting. If the fight is lasting long enough that it becomes an issue, then it's either a major, drawn-out battle or there is some kiting going on. Also, the Brawler is now unique in that it is the one frigate that doesn't have a time limit, which finally gives enough of a use that I've been thinking about adding it to my fleet.
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Sep 16, 2013 07:15
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It's also to encourage you when you have larger fleets to stage your releasing of the frigates in groups.
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Sep 16, 2013 07:19
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Fewd posted:I haven't gotten around to try the new patch yet, but these kind of timer things are exactly the kind of hideous bullshit mechanics that I hate. I hope there's a mod to increase or completely eliminate the timer. Or get rid of CR entirely, I liked the game just fine before it. Kenshin, Gobblecoque(heh) and Unreal_One all made good points. I'd just like to add that I like the mechanic and I like how the developer is actually balancing all the ships on the tactical and the campaign level. I feel like it makes in universe sense and increases the lore of the game. Balance wise, three minutes works well. Enough time for the frigates to kill juicy targets, or enough for them to contribute to a larger battle with allied larger ships. I think if you try it you'll find 3 minutes is longer than you think it is. It's also a soft limit, when a frigate goes over it starts losing CR at about 0.25% per second. Which sounds fast, but adds entire extra minutes before you start getting very bad effects. Keep in mind you have complete control over fleet deployment now, there's no more waiting for deployment points to open up, so there isn't a period when you have to fight with nothing but frigates until you have enough points to deploy larger ships.
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Sep 16, 2013 07:41
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The Hyperion is just hideously fun to use. Teleporting out of a barrage of missiles, right up behind another ship, firing lasers into its engines, antimatter blasters on the turrets, and enough flux capacity to let you fire them and then safely teleport away. It's like being a magical space wizard. I have no idea what weapons should go in the medium slots when I can put antimatter blasters in the small ones though. I'm using medium burst lasers just because they look cool.
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Sep 16, 2013 07:48
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This game is great. It's like EV Nova crossed with Battletech.
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Sep 16, 2013 08:08
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Can someone clear up CR and Logistics for me? I have the logistics skill maxed and keep it at or below 100, but no ship will go over 80% CR, is that the max for CR? Is there any other way to increase the logistics cap?
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Sep 16, 2013 08:23
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