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Author Topic: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]  (Read 424170 times)

Loud Whispers

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2325 on: January 12, 2025, 07:30:05 pm »

Strongly concur with Meph. Enjoy mucking about in vanilla before you do modded stuff, just so you've got a good frame of reference (some of the mods can go crazy). Also give the missions in the loading screen a try! They're a great way to practice piloting ships around. I know I sucked until I did the loading screen missions a few time, each of them focuses on a particular skill which is great for teaching the ropes :]

Great Order

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2326 on: January 13, 2025, 02:28:37 am »

Also this is one of the games, at least for me, where once you mod you can't go back.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2327 on: January 13, 2025, 10:45:06 pm »

Also this is one of the games, at least for me, where once you mod you can't go back.
Nexerellin makes me lost to vanilla. Flying around in my dinky mining rig with a fleet full of drone tenders trying to keep up profit margins and workplace accidents down is a mood. Feels great running away from pirates into the safety of hegemony patrols, the sorts you normally hate with a passion. But I am a tax paying space trucker

Mephansteras

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2328 on: January 14, 2025, 01:55:44 am »

Yeah, mods really open up the possibilities in the game.
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Great Order

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2329 on: January 14, 2025, 06:07:56 am »

Yeah, Nex is the big one. The sector feels so... dead? Still? Without it now.

I actually avoid mods that add ships and factions. I like a consistent art style and have an irrational hatred of anime-style - especially the "big tiddy waifu" style - art, which a lot of the mods love to use. Also so many of the ships are hilariously unbalanced, which is fine if the faction's, say, hivers since they're *meant* to be unbalanced and more like a threat, but when it's "I'll add a few ships and weapons. They have heavy armour, good shields, good flux stats, a buffed temporal shell, can outrange a gauss cannon and do insane damage" it's just... eh.

I mean I don't mind the Doritos or the Ziggy because, again, they're supposed to be busted, end-game stuff.

Anyway, my current game: Using my favourite theme, low-tech fleet. This time I'm leaning heavily into the overwhelming firepower doctrine. No frigates, no destroyers, just cruisers and capital ships. Got an automated XIV Onslaught and Legion, both with integrated alpha cores (Never knew you could pick their skills at will), a manned XIV Legion and a manned Onslaught, four or five Dominators, two Eradicators (Normal variant for the sweet, sweet AAF) and three Ventures. And a few logistics ships.

It's been fun. I've been at war with the Hegemony most of the game, and with Starpocalypse it's difficult to get a hold of good ships so they've been my main source. Just yoinking ships from patrols and revenge fleets. Also going around bombing their planets, nicking worlds from them to give back to other factions and generally being a pain in their arse. Especially since they tend to dominate and I'm putting a crimp in their plans.

EDIT: My fleet's actually pretty damn good it seems. Every battle I'm deploying two Onslaughts, two Legions and four Dominators. Historically I've been... alright at combat. Not great, but not bad either. Between my AI ships being absolutely brutal thanks to having nine elite skills and creating builds that actually work well, I've been able to take on Hegemony invasion fleets three-to-one without much issue, even when the opposing ships are S-modded and have good officers.

The Legions have been built to act in strike roles - Lux bombers on the automated ship, Xyphos on the regular, double hammer barrages (Prefer reapers but hammers are cheaper), three thumpers on the front (I've been sleeping on thumpers because of their fragmentation damage. They're actually incredible) and a heavy autocannon either side.

Onslaughts are mid-range, able to perform admirably at long-medium range thanks to their TPCs but excelling in a mid-short range with every gun being able to reach and having four reaper pods.

Finally, the Dominators are set up with Mk. IXs, harpoon pods and maulers. Not so good at close range, but they often do a harpoon dump into anything on approach which usually causes them to overload or be forced to back off to vent. Make good close-support and finishers, every time a ship comes in with a shield shunt or overloads an enormous swarm of harpoons suddenly appears to destroy them.
I need to do some proper stress testing though. I've yet to find a high danger system where I can start prodding the Ordos to see if I can take them down too. Certainly the dominators were able to take down the fleet guarding the Red Planet without any capital ships helping them, but that's not a proper test.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2025, 11:19:32 am by Great Order »
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The_Explorer

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2330 on: January 15, 2025, 04:33:23 pm »

I already added mods :P Base game is good, but I wanted even more colony stuff...and added Nex+unknown skies. Nex sounded like it should almost be in the base game lol. I know a lot of it is diplomacy stuff, though tbh haven't delved too much into it personally, but from reading it adds a ton to starsector. Also added one that adds a ton of trade goods called space trucker I think it is. Plus some misc mods, more (fitting) portraits. More industry stuff etc. I dunno about the faction mods, some seem kinda weak or OP...so I avoided those.

Most of the mods I got are for the non-combat parts of the game.
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Mephansteras

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2331 on: January 15, 2025, 04:55:16 pm »

Factions liven up the sector a bit, especially with Nex. But you do need to take care in which ones you add, since they can drastically change the balance of the game. I tend to rotate in and out various factions between runs to change things up.

Definitely not necessary, though.
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Great Order

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2332 on: March 29, 2025, 03:04:19 am »

0.98 has released. Wait a bit for the big bug fixes and mod updates if you're not desperate, if you are... well, enjoy the added "Threat". Looking forwards to finding out what that is when I get it.

EDIT: Decided to spoil myself.

And uh,
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Jesus Christ.

EDIT2: Be aware there's a bug that makes [REDACTED] ships of all stripes and colours show on the escape menu. You might get spoiled by accident.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2025, 01:27:22 am by Great Order »
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I may have wasted all those years
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2333 on: April 01, 2025, 05:08:18 pm »

Big paladin buffs. Also where can one find the spoiler stuff

Great Order

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2334 on: April 01, 2025, 07:29:18 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's a Bladerunner reference. In one of the new missions a guy asks you to recount your travels, and you can reply "I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Orion-Perseus abyss..."
EDIT:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also slightly adjusted my usual Sunder design. I've added an escort package. So that's an HIL and two gravitons, both 1000 range base. Advanced optics brings that to 1200, ITU brings it to 1440 since AO increases base range, then being near a capital brings the range up to 1920 in total. Absolute, complete and utter filth.

EDIT2:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: April 08, 2025, 08:27:09 pm by Great Order »
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Mephansteras

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2335 on: April 19, 2025, 10:25:57 pm »

After I think more than a year of work I've finally gotten a release out for Stardust Ventures as a faction. It's also for .98a of Starsector, since Alex beat me to the update.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22966.0
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slowpersun

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2336 on: May 05, 2025, 04:51:53 pm »

Regardless of your opinion about playing Starsector with or without mods or which mods, can we all agree that the implementation of that abstract resource "story points" was a terrible idea and should never have been contemplated, let alone implemented!

Why, you ask?  Well, I understand the reasoning behind it (Alex added a bunch of cool but super unbalanced stuff while redoing skill system, how to balance?), I just vehemently disagree with the need.  Game already has resources: money, supplies (which is really money in inventory form), hyperfuel (more inventory money), and experience; all of which are really just time anyways.  So just make redoing skills or adding permanent hull mods really REALLY expensive (and/or grow over time), or make respeccing reliant on finding someone in a bar (although I'll admit the bars in general could use some pep, maybe a mini-game).  Plus, from what I understand, story points are really kind of an artificial cap, since the apparent solution is just to farm them in the end-game, so it's arguably just adding unnecessary playtime... while also punishing experienced players trying to rush through.  Although I will agree that mitigating storm surfing was probably necessary, even if having space currents but not in the core doesn't make any sense.

Also, it's true that once you start modding, hard to go back.  But once you start making your own mods for Starsector, it gets weird.  Kitbashing new ships is one thing, but the fact that the entire game's dialogue is stored in spreadsheets is HILARIOUS.  I get why (it's cheap), but trying to edit fit paragraphs of text into a spreadsheet box is getting very close to summiting Mt. Absurd.
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Djohaal

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2337 on: May 10, 2025, 08:35:39 pm »

People play starsector without mods? That's just... gross. Obscene. Indecent. I'd say even immoral. :P
And I don't get why people get so angry about the story points, I find them fun to collect and invest.
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Also, tadpoles.

Paul

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2338 on: May 16, 2025, 05:40:39 pm »

I like the story point system. It lets you do cool stuff that wouldn't be balanced to do all the time, like raid without being caught or escape a certain death fleet engagement. It's a more precious resource that you can't farm quite as easy as money, so it makes you think twice about dumping them into things. But it also gives bonus XP, which encourages you to use them instead of hoard them.
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slowpersun

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Re: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space]
« Reply #2339 on: May 20, 2025, 02:53:57 am »

I like the story point system. It lets you do cool stuff that wouldn't be balanced to do all the time, like raid without being caught or escape a certain death fleet engagement. It's a more precious resource that you can't farm quite as easy as money, so it makes you think twice about dumping them into things.
I mean, you do you, but for all I know you've only ever played the game with it.  But I'll admit my griping about it primarily relates to the fact that the dev implemented it not to "balance" the game, but to cover up that he redid the skills system and made such a hash of it that this was the only way to not waste more time trying to simplify skills.  If money is so easy to farm, just make the parts of the game that now use Story Points start expensive and have the expense grow over time; probably with a compounding growth formula.  BUT NOOOO, HERE'S SOME BS EXTRA RESOURCE INSTEAD!  GO FETCH!
But it also gives bonus XP, which encourages you to use them instead of hoard them.
It didn't originally, which arguably illustrates how poorly designed the system was (and still is, in my opinion).  Alex had to literally add a bonus to force people to stop hoarding story points so they would spend the story points to more quickly advance in the game in order to earn more story points... and people wonder why I think it was a bad design choice!
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