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Just had my first experience with an "aggressive" captain. I gave my starting Wolf to the dude - it was the basic starter wolf with a heavy blaster, so designed to dance in and out and try for killing blows when the enemy's shields were down. First battle we went into, the guy careened through the crossfire between my fleet and the enemy, and barreled clear into the enemy formation firing on all sides and exposing his rear to basically everybody in sight. Blew up like ten seconds later. Lesson learned, do not give finesse frigates to aggressive captains. Dude ought to do well with Enforcers, though.
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Nov 20, 2015 17:13
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I put an aggressive captain in a phase frigate (Afflictor, I'm still in my starting Wolf) and he's amazing at it. Leveled him from 1->4 in like 3 battles, he gained two levels in the first battle. So far I really like this patch. It took me a little while to really get going but now that I understand the sensor stuff I'm having a lot more luck hunting pirates and Luddites for Tri-Tachyon. Now I just wish I didn't have to be at work today! Kenshin fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Nov 20, 2015 |
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Nov 20, 2015 17:34
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Playing a smuggler is sooooo much fun now. Drug/Weapon/Organ runs can be incredibly profitable. The trade is the higher risk of a scan or getting caught running around without a transponder on. I swear the AI is better than ever in this update. Just lost a Condor to a Lasher(d)/Torp Bomber tagteam. Lasher is just pouring constant harrassing fire long enough for the bombers to loop around for a clean shot at it'a flank. 3 Reapers to the hull, no survivors. I was off microing a Frigate elsewhere and only saw the last exchange from a distance.
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Nov 20, 2015 18:37
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The buff to the accelerated ammofeeder has made the lasher pretty nasty. You have to be really careful if you go near one with autocannons if you have shields up because they'll overload you almost instantly.
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Nov 20, 2015 19:08
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Retro42 posted:Playing a smuggler is sooooo much fun now. Drug/Weapon/Organ runs can be incredibly profitable. The trade is the higher risk of a scan or getting caught running around without a transponder on. Dagger torpedo bombers have suddenly become intelligent in this update and it is goddamn terrifying. Nine at once backed up by two Condors with a bunch of annoying frigates blocking turned what used to be a laughable battle into one that cost me three frigates. Then again, I have my own override Sunder now with three heavy blasters so I can murder everything. The market (even the black market  ) needs to catch up because no one is selling Tempests and phase lances yet.
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Nov 20, 2015 22:12
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Tanith posted:Dagger torpedo bombers have suddenly become intelligent in this update and it is goddamn terrifying. Nine at once backed up by two Condors with a bunch of annoying frigates blocking turned what used to be a laughable battle into one that cost me three frigates.
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Nov 20, 2015 22:33
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It would be nice if there was actually a way to outrun pursuing fleets that are way stronger than yours since burn levels are pretty leveled out and the AI uses emergency burn constantly. Getting run down by Tri-Tachyon patrols with shittons of Medusas, Tempests, Hyperions, phase frigates, and other stuff while I've got a destroyer and some light frigates is pretty rough. Edit: Oh an apparently these patrols have a whole lot of max-level officers too. Gobblecoque fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Nov 20, 2015 |
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Nov 20, 2015 22:36
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I feel like fleet burn levels are way too uniform after this update, honestly.
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Nov 20, 2015 22:41
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Just posted a bit of a rant about the conviction mechanics over at the Starsector forums. I don't actually mind the mechanic so much as an idea, but current implementation is a bit rage-inducing when you go from +77 relations and almost ready to buy an Eagle to -55 because you hunted pirates a few times for the Tri-Tachs.Gobblecoque posted:It would be nice if there was actually a way to outrun pursuing fleets that are way stronger than yours since burn levels are pretty leveled out and the AI uses emergency burn constantly. Getting run down by Tri-Tachyon patrols with shittons of Medusas, Tempests, Hyperions, phase frigates, and other stuff while I've got a destroyer and some light frigates is pretty rough. I think in theory the idea is that evading enemies should be more about sensors than speed - if you can find the right kind of terrain and start hiding out in it, using a combination of emergency burn to get there and then going dark once you're where you need to be (while the enemy is still burning and thus relatively blind), you can manage to slip away while they're trying to reacquire you. That doesn't help much if you're caught in open space without any kind of terrain nearby, though, so...
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Nov 20, 2015 22:42
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Where in the config files is the market seeding time located? EDIT: I think it's "economy.json" in the starsector-core/data/campaign/econ/ folder. Looks like they simulate around 1000 days. Beer4TheBeerGod fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Nov 20, 2015 |
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Nov 20, 2015 23:26
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Tomn posted:I think in theory the idea is that evading enemies should be more about sensors than speed - if you can find the right kind of terrain and start hiding out in it, using a combination of emergency burn to get there and then going dark once you're where you need to be (while the enemy is still burning and thus relatively blind), you can manage to slip away while they're trying to reacquire you. This is because space is mostly empty, and even when it's condensed in a game like this, many of the objects that are useful for subterfuge are background objects: planets, moons, etc. Also passive sensors have a terribly short range, and as far as I can tell sensor strength is based on ship size. On top of that, activating active sensors makes you a sitting duck with no way to pre-emptively turn them off. And it gets better, the player is punished heavily for turning off their transponder while in system. This is really annoying, especially at the start of the game, where you can get easily ambushed by a larger pirate fleet which can detect you from several screens away. This all effectively means that if you can see them, they can see you; so it's usually too late to run. Finally, navigation got a big nerf, since it only helps reduce modifiers in terrain, and as mentioned there isn't really enough terrain around. Having said that, the system is great but the numbers need a little work I think, perhaps add some mods related to sensors and more information about sensor ranges on the overmap would be great. Although sometimes I get the feeling that once an enemy fleet has located you, it's very difficult to lose them (even by hiding in a nebula).
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Nov 20, 2015 23:36
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Jinx posted:This is because space is mostly empty, and even when it's condensed in a game like this, many of the objects that are useful for subterfuge are background objects: planets, moons, etc. Also passive sensors have a terribly short range, and as far as I can tell sensor strength is based on ship size. On top of that, activating active sensors makes you a sitting duck with no way to pre-emptively turn them off. And it gets better, the player is punished heavily for turning off their transponder while in system. This is really annoying, especially at the start of the game, where you can get easily ambushed by a larger pirate fleet which can detect you from several screens away. This all effectively means that if you can see them, they can see you; so it's usually too late to run. Honestly, I think a lot of the complaints about sensor range could be alleviated with a larger "there's something there" range, even if you don't know if it's hostile, neutral, or friendly. Too often, pirates comes streaking at emergency burn speeds and you have about 1 second to react. While I agree that pirates hiding in planetary rings, asteroid belts, etc. should be hard to spot (because I would want to be too!) they're currently all but invisible currently when it matters most: when you're just starting out with a tiny frigate. I also think a sensor hullmod should be available early under Navigation. It would cost OP but if you really are afraid of getting ganked by pirates, the mod would increase passive sensor range by 50% or something. Also, there should be utility/non-combat ships that boost sensor range and/or allow you to ping without slowdown. There's a lot of features that are begging to be teased out of this system, which is one of way of saying that the system is robust and pretty drat cool.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:03
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I wish there were more map screen abilities, as well as more sensor mods.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:07
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FooF posted:Honestly, I think a lot of the complaints about sensor range could be alleviated with a larger "there's something there" range, even if you don't know if it's hostile, neutral, or friendly. For what it's worth, this would make sneaking past patrols even more of a giant pain in the rear end than it already is. That being said, the danger of getting ganked by pirates is more important than the danger of having patrols scold you, but still.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:14
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OwlFancier posted:I wish there were more map screen abilities, as well as more sensor mods. Good thing we're only at v0.7a 
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Nov 21, 2015 00:14
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There's a massive MMO style multipage skill bar so I assume there's going to be a considerable amount of map skills in the future.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:28
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So the patch seems to have reset the vmparams file back to stock, but when i tried to edit it to increase the RAM allocation, SS silently fails to launch. Is this likely because of A - a new version of jre bundled with SS, B - i doubled my amount of RAM since the last time i did this, or C - i am being a moron and forgot how to do it properly?
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Nov 21, 2015 00:37
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Ceebees posted:So the patch seems to have reset the vmparams file back to stock, but when i tried to edit it to increase the RAM allocation, SS silently fails to launch. Is this likely because of A - a new version of jre bundled with SS, B - i doubled my amount of RAM since the last time i did this, or C - i am being a moron and forgot how to do it properly? Probably A. I re-copied my Java 8 JRE and edited vmparams and it worked fine. I also recently doubled my RAM.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:39
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Stuff I've learned smuggling in this new patch. I haven't done much, just runs in the starting system in the starting hound. Buying or selling prices / unit aren't constant when selling a lot of units in one transaction, so make sure you aren't doing something stupid like selling the first item in a stack of 100 for 100 cr, and the last for 1 cr. I forget if that's new in this patch, but I was trading at a loss and couldn't figure out why, so it probably bears pointing out. To turn off the transponder, you actually have to use the ability, and then use the ability again. The message it gives you the first time you use the ability is ambiguous, and I was parsing it as "if you want to turn the transponder off, don't use this ability again". It's actually the opposite. Keep your transponder off in pirate territory and steer clear of any unknown or neutral contacts. Don't stop to trade if there's anything near you, you won't be able to speed up quickly enough. Some planets, like pirate planets, will let you use the open market and will default to this even with your transponder off and bad rep. You probably want to switch over to the black market so that you don't pay tax. Of course, there isn't as much stuff on the black market, so it might not be an option. The burn ability lasts kind of a long time but has a slow acceleration, so if someone is overtaking you with it and you can't hide, activate yours sooner rather than later if you want to avoid being caught.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:51
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Lowen posted:Buying or selling prices / unit aren't constant when selling a lot of units in one transaction, so make sure you aren't doing something stupid like selling the first item in a stack of 100 for 100 cr, and the last for 1 cr. Once the amount you sell equals the demand, any prices after that will go sharply downward because you're filling non-existent demand.
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Nov 21, 2015 00:56
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Tomn posted:Just posted a bit of a rant about the conviction mechanics over at the Starsector forums. I don't actually mind the mechanic so much as an idea, but current implementation is a bit rage-inducing when you go from +77 relations and almost ready to buy an Eagle to -55 because you hunted pirates a few times for the Tri-Tachs. Oh boy, huge rep swings are still in? I was hopeful for something to be done about that. This game really needs to take a page from Rebel Galaxy's lenient rep shifts, where it's very difficult to remain friendly with all non-allied factions but not too hard to stay close to neutral, and occasional crime only gives you a minor hit as it should.
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Nov 21, 2015 01:36
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My take is slightly different on the whole sensors vs. speed debate. I've found two very effective strategies so far. 1. Play the straight and narrow and stick to shipping lanes. Use the patrols and bounty hunters to keep the pirates off your back. Drawback is you HAVE to keep your transponder on and avoid contraband. Works in hyperspace as well, there are somewhat defined routes if you avoid deep hyperspace. Pirates will just avoid you outright if you are surrounded by system patrols. 2. Pure smuggler. Abuse asteroid belts/nebulas/etc and go dark. May take you a bit longer to get some places but VERY lucrative when you can safely haul guns/drugs/organs. Key here is a small fleet with a small sensor profile. Hound/Cerberus actually pull their weight here quite well. Cutting thru deep hyperspace works better when you don't have a transponder on. Thing is not every fleet can pull this off. Too big of a fleet and going dark just doesn't work.
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Nov 21, 2015 01:40
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Cathair posted:Oh boy, huge rep swings are still in? I was hopeful for something to be done about that. This game really needs to take a page from Rebel Galaxy's lenient rep shifts, where it's very difficult to remain friendly with all non-allied factions but not too hard to stay close to neutral, and occasional crime only gives you a minor hit as it should. Alex responded - apparently the system is that the game deliberately tries to force you into only being friendly with one faction, and if you're friendly with multiple factions they'll start running "investigations" into whether or not you've been providing aid and comfort to the enemy. If you're convicted, you take small rep losses and if you're not, you get away scot-free (and you can bribe the investigator into giving you a clean bill of health), but the trick to it (and the bit I didn't know before) is that the convictions work on a three-strikes deal - if you're investigated three times, the third investigation will always find you guilty and you'll always get hammered straight into hostile levels of rep no matter where you were before. So yeah, if you find yourself getting friendly with a faction and you want to stay friendly with that faction, take some time out of your busy schedule to shoot up everyone else you're friendly with so that your favorite faction doesn't get all jealous and insecure about you seeing other people.
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Nov 21, 2015 01:42
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I've found that carrying contraband is a non-issue as long as you keep your transponder on. Turning it off gives any faction reason to search you so as long as they don't have that reason, they don't. Now, it is harder to deliver contraband with your transponder on and that's why you have to kill it just before arriving at your destination. As long as you unload it and do some open market dealings, I've found no one gets too suspicious. Also, my favorite trick now is to get barely out of range of patrols, kill my transponder, let them chase me and bring them to Barad A and B. I then turn on my transponder, let the pirates come to me and the patrols always chase pirates over me and/or join any battles the pirates start on my side. I've been able to clean up nicely to start and get a few levels under my belt. @ Tomn Yeah, I saw your post about going all psycho on your former allies in order to preserve rep on the official forums. I agree with you: it seems a little too game-y for my tastes. I can understand other factions not wanting you to get too close to their enemies but "friendly" is too low of a threshold. I can get behind only being "cooperative" with one faction and having a very hard time maintaining "welcoming" with more than one faction but it should still be doable. Also, the investigation mechanic is pretty arbitrary and should only come when you're already entrenched in one faction and they begin to doubt your loyalty. Perhaps the factions are that petty and jealous but it's not terribly fun to play. FooF fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 01:44
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Tomn posted:Alex responded - apparently the system is that the game deliberately tries to force you into only being friendly with one faction, and if you're friendly with multiple factions they'll start running "investigations" into whether or not you've been providing aid and comfort to the enemy. If you're convicted, you take small rep losses and if you're not, you get away scot-free (and you can bribe the investigator into giving you a clean bill of health), but the trick to it (and the bit I didn't know before) is that the convictions work on a three-strikes deal - if you're investigated three times, the third investigation will always find you guilty and you'll always get hammered straight into hostile levels of rep no matter where you were before. Good to know. Actually an even worse system than I thought. From what you said, I'm inferring that these investigations are based not on current actions that increase rep with enemy factions, but just on your existing reputation? FooF posted:@ Tomn I agree. I'm perfectly fine with not being able to be everybody's buddy, but the current system seems to push you towards being outright hostile to most parties that aren't your chosen faction. This doesn't seem to fit the game at all. Also, 'too game-y' is exactly the phrase I'd use to describe this.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:00
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While we're on the subject of nonsensical and punishing mechanics, how about the new refit CR loss? It's cool and good that just renaming a ship doesn't cost you CR anymore, but there's now a huge penalty on swapping hullmods in particular. You can very easily reduce a ship to 0 CR, potentially costing you a huge amount of supplies for minor tweaks. I don't really understand the gameplay rationale behind this. Is there something massively exploitable about being able to swap hullmods between battles? Pretty much the only times I change them are when I get access to new mods through character leveling or when I've done a full refit of weapons as well, since mods depend heavily on your overall build. Luckily, you can fix this easily by adjusting "crLossMultForRefitHullmods" in starsector-core\data\config\settings.json. By default it's set to a ludicrous 4x multiplier, to me it feels about right at 0.5 or so.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:15
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Cathair posted:While we're on the subject of nonsensical and punishing mechanics, how about the new refit CR loss? It's cool and good that just renaming a ship doesn't cost you CR anymore, but there's now a huge penalty on swapping hullmods in particular. You can very easily reduce a ship to 0 CR, potentially costing you a huge amount of supplies for minor tweaks.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:22
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I've got BRDY running again. Now to actually see how things work out in practice. Need to add a lot of terrain too.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:33
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I look forward to it.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:39
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Kenshin posted:It doesn't cost you any CR if you're docked in a station. There's even in-game text that tells you that swapping weapons (and especially hullmods) will reduce CR if you do so outside of a station. I have no problem with this mechanic. Yay for BRDY! Funnily enough, Gneiss already had that solar mirror in it, so you were ahead of the curve on that one. tangential but I still want to see a shattered planet somewhere. We've seen glassed ones and a one possibly exploded into space dust (and is now a ring...?) but not one where a horrible science experiment blew a chunk out of planet and nearly cracked it in half. 
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Nov 21, 2015 02:43
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Kenshin posted:It doesn't cost you any CR if you're docked in a station.  Alright, cool. Still kind of pointless, but manageable. On a more positive note, I like the fact that you can adjust your maximum combat zoom in settings.json now. Now you don't have to run in devmode to get a decent field of view when flying large ships! I'm also really liking the new sensor mechanics. I'm not pretending to speak with full authority here because I haven't gotten up to large-fleet level yet, but I seem to be finding almost as many fights as I always did, you just have to look in places where enemies are likely to be. And if you're just pinging willy-nilly, you're doing it wrong; in my experience the ping is most useful when you've got reason to believe there's something there in the first place. All in all it seems to have much more emphasis on anticipating likely movements using your own judgement and collated information. In that vein, I haven't had any trouble being punished for having my transponder off, either- most patrols make a lot of noise, so as long as you pay attention and turn your transponder on again before they get close and catch an interest, you're fine. I enjoy the sense of scale that the new sensor mechanic adds. It produces the illusion of fleets in a vast space, rather than just a bunch of arcade-y blobs in a little box.
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Nov 21, 2015 02:51
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FooF posted:
My highest faction rep after one afternoon of play is Hegemony at 38, and i started getting investigations from Tri-tach and Luddites. They're both at the low end of 'welcoming', so maybe they also fire if you have two or more tied for the highest rank?
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Nov 21, 2015 02:52
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FooF posted:Yay for BRDY! Funnily enough, Gneiss already had that solar mirror in it, so you were ahead of the curve on that one. Haha, it was fun to see they had a similar idea. The one in Gneiss tries to stop sunlight from hitting Blackrock though, I believe the ones in Hybrasil are for concentrating it.
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Nov 21, 2015 03:03
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Cathair posted:Good to know. Actually an even worse system than I thought. Yeah, rep of any kind will do the trick, no matter the source. Pirate hunting is a perfectly valid way to get enough rep to be considered a dirty traitor. For what it's worth, Alex DID acknowledge that the current system wasn't perfect and was something of a placeholder until a more elegant solution can be developed down the line, but he also seems to think the current set-up does the job well enough as is.
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Nov 21, 2015 03:13
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Officers are great for their skill bonuses, but I'm underwhelmed by the AI preferences. 'Cautious' and 'aggressive' officers are so extreme that they end up being quite niche- they need a very specific kind of ship and loadout, and are pretty good when they've got it, but are often much worse than the default AI when they don't. This game desperately needs more configurable AI if it's ever going to do anything about how the tactics aspect falls apart in larger fleet engagements. We need multiple AI behavior options for every ship, regardless of officer assignment, at the bare minimum- like what Uomoz was working on in his old compilation mod. Would also help with the AI's ineptitude with certain weapons, too. Orders do seem to be more responsive now, which is a relief. Using escort orders as a means of getting groups to actually act as a group seems more viable now- escorts can still be a little suicidal, but I'm seeing fewer instances of frigates trying to outright tank for destroyers, for example.
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Nov 21, 2015 04:05
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Just found and purchased a Gryphon, the new missile cruiser, and I've already got a cautious officer with max missile specialization  edit: Seems to be pretty devastating with the new Squall MLRS and a shitton of harpoons, just hope the AI doesn't get to trigger-happy with the autoforge ability as it eats up 15% CR with each use and there's no cooldown. edit 2: aaand the ai gets it blown up in the first actual fight i put it in. It sucks because this thing can easily kill cruisers in a few seconds but ai doesn't have a clue how to use it Gobblecoque fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 04:37
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Oh my god the Squall MLRS was made for the Aurora. 
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Nov 21, 2015 09:57
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Marcus Garvey posted:I feel like fleet burn levels are way too uniform after this update, honestly. It's more that the AI doesn't really seem to have to care about resource use at all, so they can just emergency burn and go dark all day every day. They don't give a poo poo that it costs them fuel and supplies - so they'll pretty much always have an advantage over the player unless the player spends lots of money on every encounter.
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Nov 21, 2015 13:53
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It leaves them with less combat readiness, at least.
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Nov 21, 2015 14:01
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I wish the radio wave thing you get when theres something beyond your sensor range was clearer in which direction it was comming from. Is it the direction the waves are curving? Is it the the opposite? Why does the signal sometime "land" on the other side of my ship from the direction it came from? The system is so opaque I get frustrated becasue I keep wasting my time and supplies chasing signals and I'm never sure If I went the wrong way or just missed the fleet that was giving the signal.
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Nov 21, 2015 14:47
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