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Starsector - RT 2D indie space goodness

Sarathiour

Cipher
Joined
Jun 7, 2020
Messages
3,264
Haven't played recently, but phase ship are probably still a thing in any decent player hand.
Dabbing on missile and volley of projectile for minimale flux cost + easy repositioning is hard to beat.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,357
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How come the Doom is C?
He said it's because phase ships got nerfed hard.
It is true, but its mines are still awesome, if you don't let the AI use it (because otherwise, they'll lead to plenty of embarassing friendly fire accidents).
The reason Doom mines are good is because the AI will panic over these, and happily redirect its shield away from your fleet to limit the mine detonation, but it is true that it makes the Doom pretty situatinal.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
28,080
I heard they messed with the skill system and fucked it but the latest version seems fine to me. I assume they fixed it after negative feedback?

Also:
upload_2022-5-5_17-2-0.png


Im using the latest version from their site, is there an experimental branch Im missing?
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,357
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I heard they messed with the skill system and fucked it but the latest version seems fine to me. I assume they fixed it after negative feedback?

Also:
View attachment 24231

Im using the latest version from their site, is there an experimental branch Im missing?
I think it is the other way around: the mod was probably not updated for the latest version (or it just works, and the modder didn't bother changing the version required ).
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
28,080
The skill that lets you repair D mods is amazing.
Found a 14th Group Legion wreck early on and now it's already in pristine condition again.
If I find something rare I just take it, no worries. Feels good.
 

Sarathiour

Cipher
Joined
Jun 7, 2020
Messages
3,264
Idk about the current version, but the alternative to D mod repair was previously derelict contingent, which was busted (check 2 pages ago). I think it got nerfed, and repairing D mod is certainly nice for prolonged campaign early on.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,357
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Idk about the current version, but the alternative to D mod repair was previously derelict contingent, which was busted (check 2 pages ago). I think it got nerfed, and repairing D mod is certainly nice for prolonged campaign early on.
It is still busted, but I prefer to work with "cool functionning ships" over an armada of derelicts, and D mod repair allows you to disregard damage done to your ships when it comes to the economy of combat, and even sell salvaged ships for a reasonable amount.
 

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,531
Location
Türkiye
Hey what are some good strats and loadouts on current patch if you just want to play Fleet Manager 2022 and AI combat all fights?
Atlas Mk2, with 2 Mark IX Autocannon, 2 Hurricane missile, 2 vulcan on front to kill missiles rest of the slots are empty. Get ECCM package and max out vents. Cheap, efficient and AI friendly.
 

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,531
Location
Türkiye
- Onslaughts with shield shunt, Hellbore cannon and Storm Needlers
If you are using shield shunt go with hephesus assault gun, it uses more flux but you don't need to worry about that with the hullmod. Hellbore is really good against armor due to high damage per shot but it's projectile is slow the flux use it's saving grace.
 

Sarathiour

Cipher
Joined
Jun 7, 2020
Messages
3,264
Altas mk2 is a very cost-effective glass canon, people underestimate it because it's not that big of a threat when the AI got one, as it's not very hard to flank it. Just make sure it's protected, I liked to used a mora for escorting purpose, but I don't doubt there is better option.
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,654
I've seen Atlas II used to great effect as a backline missileboat.
 

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,531
Location
Türkiye
Altas mk2 is a very cost-effective glass canon, people underestimate it because it's not that big of a threat when the AI got one, as it's not very hard to flank it. Just make sure it's protected, I liked to used a mora for escorting purpose, but I don't doubt there is better option.
I've seen Atlas II used to great effect as a backline missileboat.

I play with the d-mod skill, I farmed pirates to get d-modded Atlas Mk2, some d-mods are super annoying aimed to get 5 "good" d-mods. Wıth the skill I deploy Atlas Mk2 only for 17 deployment points which is insane, it's cost like a cheap cruiser. It's a very cost effective missile boat, if you can't manage it just give them Monitor escort or something. But even without escorts it's not really hard to manage it.
 

Sarathiour

Cipher
Joined
Jun 7, 2020
Messages
3,264
I was talking about AI use, thing might go sour if you let it to his own device without escort, though I think it will still make it most of the time if you don't put a reckless officer on it.
 

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,531
Location
Türkiye
I was talking about AI use, thing might go sour if you let it to his own device without escort, though I think it will still make it most of the time if you don't put a reckless officer on it.
As long as you don't let an aggressive officer on it as you said it's safe as it gets. It's very prone to be flanked and overwhelmed, but AI successfully use it as long range support ship.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,869
Well decided to give it a spin after a long while.

Yeah same issues. Skill system is way to overpowered that completely changes gave and some of the skills are difference between pew pew laser and nuke. And the biggest issue about it are story points. You get plenty of them so that with stealth trading fleet you can make milions upon milions of cr, steal everything not bolted to the space with 0 repercussions and if you run into trouble you just use story point and voila you move away from danger.

couple that with salvaging and game is straight up broken. Just 2-3 points into salvaging and you can run 20-30 ships including capital ones just by flying around scourging conflicts. What is even more retarded is that there issalvaging skill that gives you lowered deployement cost per d-mod. D-mods themselves don't mean shit in huge group so you have stack of doom.

then you finish it with colonies that grow over few months like mushrooms after rain.

All ironman mode.

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Decided then to look for mods to make game harder. There isn't much but nerexin gives you something, lowers down colony growth rate by half, removes cheat money from academy and instead gives you debt to pay which grows over time + some scenario in which redacted start to activete and attack core.

A little better but still i rolled with huge fleet of capital ships just after 2-3 hours. Moreover with other salvaging perk i had all ships more or less in prstine condition for which i payed grand total of 0 as i repaired them out of supplies i found in battleones.

I could start colony but at this point i had both mirror artifact and that thing that improves fleet by 100% on ultra hot worlds and i knew about 2-3 habitable planets which were hot and loaded with stuff. Making easy 400% to fleet size by the time colony would reach 4.

so decided to drop it.
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Like previously stated game needs some major rebalance to make it really good. IMHO:

- colonies should grow very slowly and for most of the time they should be money sink instead. only rich colonies in resources should make decent money but on other hand they should be the most targeted by other powers. Main boon from colonies should be safe space for your fleet, place for your loot and restock and ability to get few smaller fleet to follow it on conquest. Making colonies all about money printing and in vast quantities quickly is mistake. Reaching 6-7 size should be almost impossible, considering it took eons for core words to do that.
- skills need major rework if not complete removal. Same with story points. That stuff should be something you install on your ships to specialize fleet rather than fleet wide skill. Skills could still be there on officers but in much weakened state. You shouldn't get double the amount of missiles just because of stupid skill. Instead of officier with missiles specialization should get boost toward accuracy, tracking, less missfires etc.
- d-mods should get complete overhaul. Each d-mod should be straight up -20% to hull + their own major maluses. So "structural damage" d-mod would be 20% base D-mod + extra 20% for whoping 40% hull damage. Moreover those d-mods should not be used as food for combat. Neither they should be fixable easily nor used as way to lower deployement costs or supplies recovery improvement. Fleet of junk should be just that. Fleet of junk that barely holds on. Moreover D-mods should be earned in combat just by receiving critical damage. If your engines receive critical damage that should give you d-mod "broken engines" with which aside from 20% hull malus gives you 50% to total speed both combat and out of combat. Receiving such damage and then getting pursued means you would have to pick between keeping ship and risk even more damage or just scuttling it to increase fleet speed. That being said it is not fun to get D-mod on one off ship you found so imho d-mod should be fixable but the cost of it should be extraordinary. Way more than buying brand new ship. So ship with one d-mod could be relatively easily fixed just by paying about half of ship cost but 2 d-mods fix would run to nearly twice the price of ship. 3-4 and 5 would rise exponentially because we are not talking here about fixing but more like some chirurgy to revive dead people. If you will find some rare unique ship there is still a way to fix it but at the same time player should be prepared to spend their arm and leg for it.
- complete rebalance of ships. Starsector is the best when you fight small battles so overall battles need huge reductions in amount of ships and size of them. Capital ships should be incredibly rare. Owning one and being able to maintain it should be late game achievement not something you get in first hour. Major factions should have few at the same time at best not whole fleets of them. They should be what constitute power of faction, capable to turn the tide of battles alone if needed. AI shouldn't use it willy nilly too. They would be more like defenders of absolute core worlds of factions than conquest machines. With one in place system should be absolutely protected from major attacks from AI or player. Taking them down would be final nail in faction coffin. They should still be replaceable though so if faction manages to defend itself for a looong while then they would build new one to replace it. The other significant part is cost of maintance. They shouldn't be manned by 2-3k people but more like 30-40k people and at increased cost per crew member (instead of 10 something like 20 or 30) so each one would be negative 100k to your budget if not more. Cruisers should be leading large attack forces and be core of large fleets. The biggest fleets should have more than 2-3 of them (aside from mega fleets with extra battleship or something like that). Destroyers should be core of medium sized fleet again 2-3 max. Frigates would be core of small fleets.
- CR overahul. Game simply pays too much for very easy things. Put up satelite in some empty sector ? 70k. Almost as much as whole cruser. Do it 5 times and you can have enough money for huge battleship. Prices should exponentially rise with difficulty of stuff. So getting shuttle should be cheap getting frigate should be expensive, getting detroyer should be very hard choice, getting cruser would mean you are rich and have stream of money flowing toward you and getting battleship would mean you run empire. Early game should be about small ship fights. Shuttles etc. with occasional frigate. Missions should pay less, margins on trade should be much tighter so occasionally you would lose money on trade, bestbuy-bestsale should be removed from game as player should learn how economy works, what are profiteable runs, waste money exploring different routes etc. missions that lead to buying cheaper ships, missions that give you ability to buy cheaper goods. etc.
- Hyperspace overhaul. If you play nerexin mod with adjusted sectors for huge map you know how much fun there is to navigate stuff. So map should be massive and getting from one core world to another should be decent fly. There absolutely should be a reason why core worlds are core. So if you would want to fly and explore galaxy you would need first big money to prepare expedition for supplies enough ships with fuel and so on. The more you fly outside of core world the weirder space should be. More hyperstreams, "winds", new phonemonons like whirpools. You should also watch out what you fly over. Supermassive black hole should straight up take you out of hyperspace.

Just those alone would make game a lot better.
 

FriendlyMerchant

Guest
Big question. How is there a Terran world exist when it's regularly cooked by stars on multiple sides?

dZc4BG7.png


RGICcdz.png
 

wololo88

Novice
Joined
Jun 4, 2022
Messages
5
Big question. How is there a Terran world exist when it's regularly cooked by stars on multiple sides?
The rays of the stars cancel each other out and result in a happy medium, basic physics.

The canuckle science says that those rays do not in fact cancel each other out but instead go into the same dimension the phase ships are able to traverse through.
 

Fenix

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 18, 2015
Messages
6,458
Location
Russia atchoum!
Actually, did you know that our Sun is defending solar system from galactic radiation, by creating almost empry space near the Sun?
It's like bubble, huge one, and beyond it space is largely different.
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
8,876
Location
Italy
it's not really "almost empty space": the heliosphere, the sun's magnetic field, has its own flux of charged particles which being closer to the point of origin bear more energy than some rando asshat particle coming from a third world solar system, deflecting it away. tl;dr: orange star built a wall, and it worked.
(why can't i keep a straight face even while talking about my favourite topics?)
 

Fenix

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 18, 2015
Messages
6,458
Location
Russia atchoum!
Yes, but in comparison to what is beyond the bubble, it's almost empty.
 

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