Bay 12 Games Forum

blech

message on checking email it's phasing out the basic html version at some point in the next few months

Sucks, because the non-html version is just... worse. On every level, from layout to especially performance.

Having a similar issue at work with fedex, them gearing up to leave a perfectly serviceable, relatively quick, mostly functional website for a less serviceable, slower, actually non-functioning on multiple levels, steaming pile of shite.

It's, just. I know corpo brainrot means it'll never happen. But good goddamn, when you have something that just works, let the damn thing just work. You don't need to make it (arguably, usually not really) prettier at the cost of core aspects of functionality -- and that is basically always the tradeoff that happens. You never see websites turn back to something slimmer and simpler when this mess happens. It's never to add substantive functionality that people that actually use the website would benefit. It's always some idiot CEO's idea of fancy, to everyone else's detriment. Sucks.

Are... are you serious? Gaza is smaller than barbados. You're asking why they didn't want to try to fit several million people into an area smaller than barbados. It's also like a fifteenth the size of the west bank, depending on how you measure the parts of it being actively occupied by illegal settlers. The palestinian arguments against that should be obvious, because the idea is remarkably poor on a pile of different levels.

So I definitely think I've found my favorite thing to do in starsector. Technically only takes one (content) mod, and I'm not sure how viable it is outside easy mode, but.

Prv starworks has a weapon and a hullmod. The hullmod is neat but niche, gravitic anchor -- it doubles the effective mass of the (cruiser or smaller, capitals sadly need not apply) ship, makes it harder for things to run away when they get close to you, and lets you basically roadkill fighters. All nice stuff, but not, like, super amazing or anything. Pretty good for chasers and brawlers that want to slow something down.

... the weapon is an agni drop, a large ballistic weapon, the Spinneret. What it does, is, well. Web whatever it hits. And violently drags them towards you if it doesn't hit shield (it drags shield hits a little, sometimes, but not a lot). No flux cost to it, but limited regenerating ammo and fairly low damage... most of the time it's not very good, and the AI in particular is remarkable poor at using it.

When you combine the two, though? It's amazing. Just about every shot you land will kill a frigate, because it snatches the poor blighter into your doubled mass at high speeds and roadkills it across your face. This sometimes disintegrates the frigate entirely, not even leaving wreckage, just a wreath of fire around your ship as you orient towards the next target.

Larger things, you drag it around, haul into allies firing lines, do all sorts of very, very rude things to it -- my favorite is to basically turn your ship into a paddleball of doom, bungeeing your victim into you, then shoving them forward, webbing them again, and smashing them back into your shield over and over until they explode. It is intensely satisfying.

I've been combining it with a random things Aboleth (the starting abyss walker ship, basically, remarkably nasty cruiser), with has a temporal grid system, so on top of everything else like half the time I'm doing it in slow-mo, ha. It's a thing of beauty.

I'm... fairly sure at some point in the 90s or 00s I tried that... once. Bounced off the UI and went and did other things, heh.

Thread title really could use a change of some sort, though, 'cause I was pretty confused looking at it the first time and it took a second to figure out why (it was because some part of me remembered the game is old enough to legally drink and there's no "just" to its release date, heh). "2023 update for 80s game <Game Title> released!" Something like that?

Worst I had on that front was... earth science, I think it was? Some general ed req like that, first semester or two after high school. The room was consistently nice and cool, the teacher wasn't super engaging (though they were okay in a more general sense, really) on top of going into the class basically already knowing the material (it was barely above high school science), and there was something going on with the lights that made a sort of hypnotic buzzing noise. Made me drowsy as all hell. Don't think I ever actually fell asleep, but it came close.

My heart desires a massive wave of gryphons saturating the map with a billion pilums, salamanders and squalls. But their deployment cost is really too high to do this :[

Some mod or another (I think, anyway... I don't actually know what's vanilla or not at this point) I'm using has these lovely silo drones: 2 large, 3 medium missile slots, with autoforge, for 16 -- compared to the gryphon they're -3 small missile but +1 large and medium, for 4 less. Good stuff. They're automated, don't have shields, fairly slow and not very sturdy, but they're basically my favorite missile platform so far.

Only problem I have with them is that, well, you need cores in them to have missile specialization for the really good spam, and cores are remarkably stupid. Like, just in general they're suicidally dumb, but they're especially poor at understanding the concept of stand back and fire. Sometime earlier today I had a silo full of 1k+ range missiles rubbing its face up against a drone capital's ass when someone blew the capital up. Silo went with it in the explosion, because of course it did.

... there's a forbidden AI love fanfic in that, but good gods from the perspective of missile spam is it so, so very dumb.

If you don't have cores in them you can use auto commands to assign cautious or timid to them and they live a lot, lot longer, ha.

Honorable mention goes to MVS's stilettos, though. They're little missile frigates that are kinda' awesome -- four sets of infinite ammo small missiles built in, plus a small slot to do whatever with (I like crickets, so far) and a few other bits and bobs... and they have a hullmod that drops missile damage by 10%, but increases reload by 25%. Fairly speedy, not entirely flimsy, small enough to dodge well... their built in stuff isn't amazing and they don't really have the space or flux to do anything wild, but especially with a missile specialist driving it around they just spew out an unending stream of boom and it's wonderful. They're probably my second favorite missile ship, so far, heh.

Why. Just... why. Is the windshield wiper controls not also light controls. There's, like. No. Situation where your wipers should be turned on and your lights off.

So, just. Take that out of drivers' hands, it's clearly too many steps for like half the people on the road. Turning on wipers should also turn on lights.

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*

For what it's worth, the FAQ has instructions on how to change basically all of that if that's how you want to play them. There's actually files included with the mod that stops dropping and/or cuts credit value of the junk, mostly just have to switch some file names around, maybe do some light editing. I've been doing a lot of easy mode runs lately (which I don't think effects the campaign level any?) with hiver active and unchained, and it's remarkable how long it takes for them to actually, like. Kill anyone. Except the freitag corporation, who I keep including 'cause they have supply/fuel generating ships -- those guys fold like flimsy origami paper. Like, hiver's hyperagressive but they rest of the factions hold up pretty well... though it's possible that's a consequence of all the other mods I'm running, heh.

I've been fiddling around with fairly significant mod mashes myself lately... can't go as wild as I'd like, because I just don't have the RAM for it, but it's usually a fair bit. Inevitably ends up with me having a fleet full of remnant ships, though, heh. Assuming I'm not doing abyss runs, anyway, then I end up with a fleet full of the fish ships instead :V

Hiver's definitely the less ridiculous biological faction I've been playing with lately, though. The prv starworks mod has these remnant equivalents called Agni that are just farcical. Pretty mean weapons, stupidly had to kill, nearabout hard-counters carrier spam (my second favorite spam in starsector, after missile), they're just a frikkin' menace. Not sure if I can get them as a ship, but they do drop their silly weapons (like a 7 OP small-something weapon that gives a stacking 5% boost to ballistic and energy range) occasionally. Their frigate size critters are adorably doofy looking, though. Like fish with googly eyes.

For fun, latest batch: Few other things I want to get around to adding that I haven't, though. There's apparently something that makes salvaging debris fields automatic, which'd be real nice. Hopefully there's something that makes it so sustained burn doesn't cut off when you do an active radar ping. Slow down's fine and dandy, just... stop making me turn the damn burn back on, come onnnnn.

Though if any of y'all are aware of something else that adds hullmods or ships that help with logistics that'd be grand to know about. Managing fuel and supplies is probably my least favorite part of playing the game at the moment, heh.