The game can be quite pretty actually when it doesnt drop every second frame.

Thanks for making a thread, Distant Worlds 2 just got more details https://www.slitherine.com/game/distant-worlds-2

>takes me an unacceptable amount of time to fix and reclaim a ship in the middle of a minefield >land it on the designated station >just as a dialogue window pops up to deliver the ship, I habitually press M and then back up with ESC >it counts as me telling the client to fuck off >Mission Failed Sasuga, Bernd-san. At least Ive got a gas miner for free I guess. >>219440 One of these days I will sit down and figure out how to actually play DWU without the game doing everything for me.

How is X4 in the current year? I've heard so many wacky up-and-down things about that game that I stopped trying to make a decision entirely. I'd like a good space game with variety in it to play after trying to play Elite: Dangerous and finding it thoroughly boring.

>>219452 >At least Ive got a gas miner for free I guess. As long sector police won't glass it. It did happen few times to me back in X3:AP. Did they actually finished X4 yet?

>>219459 >Did they actually finished X4 yet No... I got it when it was on sale. Modding it makes it better but still needs alot of work. The AI is beyond fucked.

>>219457 >>219459 As of Beta 4.00 its playable. Id say X3 Reunion after a couple of patches tier. Nowhere near the complexity or content of TC with or without mods tho. Ive slapped a bunch of mods on it, specifically VRO and prominently NoSuperHighways, and also a bunch of busywork removal mods. But eh at least Ive got Styg flying my ship now instead of the illegal immigrant of undetermined middle eastern descent.

How to make money in X4? I have a bunch of miners and some traders but I feel like I just tread water? Also what are some of the better mods for it right now?

>>219485 >How to make money in X4? Set your S miners to mini nividium, they will get between 700k and 1m credits an hour per. You can however oversaturate the market so dont go overboard with it. Once the gravy train stops, silicon pays the most while ore is always in demand. >Also what are some of the better mods for it right now? VRO rebalances the game to be more like X3 and adds a couple of ships, busywork removal mods are alway good.

I'm just waiting for the Starsector update.

>.219512 >I'm just waiting for the Starsector update So what, it looks like he's done away with a lot of level-related things and instead you get plot points, that let you do big unique things to the world?

I've been waiting for this thread! I've been on a space games binge lately. I've just finished FreeSpace 1, Silent Threat, and 2. They were bretty good! The combat is quite satisfying and there's a big amount of attention to detail. I'm impressed by the fact that the first game came out 23 years ago yet has it so much effort put into it. It's a great feeling actually playing a good video game in current year+7. After that I didn't know what to play and after looking around for a while I saw that a series I had previously played got a new game so I started playing Starpoint Gemini 3. I had previously played the second game and it wasn't anything special, but I was excited by the thought that the devs might have worked things out for the third game. But they actually didn't, it's awful in just about every sense, holy shit. It almost feels like they were sabotaging their own game with some things like the writing. I've also been playing an open source space mobile game, which is actually pretty great for what it is. It's a text based game where you have to get rich buying and selling stuff, hence the name, Space Trader. It was originally a Palm OS game and there's an Android port. I'm kind of fond of it because it's a tiny game made out of almost nothing yet it's quite fun, and it demonstrates how great the genre is. >>219429 Is that actually X4? Looks quite beautiful. >>219457 >Elite: Dangerous Can that be pirated? When I was looking for new games I researched the Elite series but it seems there was a huge shitstorm about E:D and they removed the ability to play it offline. Normalfags were defending it saying that the universe was so big that they could only distribute the sectors on demand or some other bullshit.

>>219493 Might do a fresh game then with mods. >>219523 I like the idea of story points

Any space games with good, complete, Star Wars mods?

>>219618 >>219485 Yeah forgot to mention a mod thats basically mandatory - Sector Satellites. What SS does is to provide AdvSats with a sector wide scan which reveals stations. Without it youd have to manually explore and set up limited range satellites and lose millions doing so, extending the hobo phase by a dozen hours, because the vanilla auto-explore script doesnt work.

>>219592 >Can that be pirated? When I was looking for new games I researched the Elite series but it seems there was a huge shitstorm about E:D and they removed the ability to play it offline. Normalfags were defending it saying that the universe was so big that they could only distribute the sectors on demand or some other bullshit. I didn't look into it honestly, I bought the game because I like multiplayer but the game was pretty shit. They've supported the game quite a bit and there's new content, but what they really need to do is make the combat and routine missions less boring.

>>219493 I went and downloaded some of the mods on that. How big is the variety and rebalance overhaul? I disliked some of the combat in X4, what does it change?

Why are so many space games so painfully shallow?

>>219893 It's not about "speed shooting, running, big action!" all the time. Space games have that when lets say you enter combat but with most space games its also about the chill atmosphere, the solitude of space. You can say some space games are not just about the gameplay but also the feel of the game itself.

Is everspace 2 any gud?

>>219893>>219988 Because real life space is boring. Its empty vast and filled with nothing for light years. To convert it into game accurately will have lots of do-nothings in between of sporadic action, which again will be simple collect this shit, resaerch that shit, try not to die. Actually there is no new gameplay mechanic specific to the space genre; everything is based elsewhere but with a coating of space - Here's truck driving but in space, heres runescape but in space, heres base building but in space. So yeah the devs are bad

>>220012 I see your point but consider that space is just a canvas waiting to be filled. I think egosoft has a good canvas "besides the AI" that they need to start filling. Content with story makes that boring empty space thrilling. If you are drifting in space and all of a sudden your sensor detects a near by star exploding and gives you a time limit to exit the sector before you die then a thrill was just made for you. You can give this thrill options also. Instead of exiting the sector you can find a large satellite that can withstand the blast but it's a risk. You see, I think most space games just lack building blocks for the player to make content. It's good that at least egosoft devs allow mods with their games or i think they would have been out of the business a long time ago.

>>219893 Why are so many games so painfully shallow?

>>220054 Well that all depends on the era, the scope and what the devs were intending to do. Is Tetris shallow? Mechanically, yes. All you do is move pieces and tilt them. However, it's what is done with those mechanics and what the game is aiming for. The extremely limited nature of Tetris is perfectly apt for its gameplay. Is Doom shallow? By the standards of modern first-person shooters, even retro-styled ones, Doom is archaic. It lacks basic features like jumping, only has 5 real weapons (the chaingun is a direct upgrade to the pistol and the fists are a last resort rather than a viable option), 7 enemies (two of which are effectively reskins), two bosses and levels which revolve around finding keycards. But were id Software trying to make Doom some in-depth and mechanically rich game like System Shock? No, they focused on level design, extremely polished gameplay and technology. Even though virtually all first-person shooters today are leagues ahead of Doom in mechanics, weapons and enemy variety today, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who says isn't a masterpiece that consistently remains better than not just most FPSes, but most games in general almost 30 years later. You could say Daggerfall is shallow with its heavily recycled content and its rapid, almost aimless character progression, but for the time it was considered as one of the best RPGs ever made. Its scope was something barely any game even attempts to achieve even now without procgen. The magic system puts most modern RPGs games to shame with how open and exploitable it is. There were numerous minor skills like climbing and learned languages that weren't remotely required, but allowed for interesting things. Dialogue was expansive and allowed you to ask pretty much anybody anything. The main limitations of Daggerfall were technological and time related, not lack of drive of passion. But many space games fail to capture neither the basic level of depth Daggerfall, the inherent fun of Tetris or the polished to a shine design of Doom. And none of those are even space games, it feels like devs limit themselves to avoid feature creep but end up with products that have less depth than games made decades ago. No Man's Sky is a good example, too much time focusing on things that don't matter and not actual gameplay. Even years later it lacks so many simple things, the actual SPACE portion of the game is still completely barren and acts like a hub. There are games that break this mould in some ways; Elite: Dangerous though highly flawed, has extraordinary ship depth, but there isn't much of an actual game around it. It's a sandbox with too little sand. It kinds the lack of content with an ungodly amount of grind. E:D, mechanically, is extremely in-depth. Gameplay-wise, it's pitifully shallow. Again, too much time spent to the wrong things. The only game I can think of that is truly fleshed out is EVE, but that hardly counts as it's an MMO and everything is player-generated. Not to mention all the flaws that come with an MMO.

>>219889 Pretty big. Dev got a full list of changes on the mods homepage. The short of it is that its closer mechanically to X3, rebalances the ships into a wider range of roles, and fills a couple of niches, notably adding proper battleships. Its also balanced for Faction War/Economy Enchancer and NoSuperHighways, holy shit good riddance. Its amazing how you only need to remove an integral part of the gameplay system and literally EVERYTHING changes for the better.

>>220080 super highways would not be a problem if the AI was not shit. I wish they designed them more for use with large ships.

>>220082 Superhighways are a redundant mechanic. If you try to make them more useful, you fuck with the rest of the systems, the only way to improve them is to make them less useful, which in turn defeats the purpose of having them in the first place. Its just the devs pet-project that they refuse to give up, and the AI is terrible at utilizing it. Highways is like adding a turbocharger to a vacuum cleaner, and then refusing to take it off because it took too much time to implement it.

Are the X series sort of a space Mount & Blade with its gameplay loop cause I've been hankering to try it out especially if it lets me commandeer fuckhuge warships to raid space stations with.

>>220094 Yes, especially if you add mods, x4 foundation and starsector are my go to games for my space fix, now if only wayward terran frontier would launch ver 9.0 already that would be three games

>>220094 Sorta kinda? You dont really fight to get rich, you get rich to fight. Do you amass giant armies to dominate your enemies? Yes. Is there character progression? No. Its more of an extremely heavily economy focused 1st person RTS. If youre looking for fleet on fleet combat, install X3AP and Litcubes mod, if youre simply looking to pew pew, go with X4.

>>220094 Yes. However, you need a lot of big hyper-upgrade factories to even be able to mass produce full armed fighters. Mass producing heavy Missiles and Energy Cells to feed few Missiles Frigates are way easier to pull off.

X4 at release was Cyberjank levels of broken, vanishing NPCs with faces missing, the UI was half responsive. I'm judging games at first glance now, they don't get a second chance to unfuck themselves, their initial release shows how much of a shit the devs give/are going to give. >>220082 The AI for X games has always been crap, they shunt each other up the ass and smash into gates all the time, best one for me was setting up a two system patrol in X2 to guard my crappy solar cell factories while I was off raping pirates only to have fucking Argon Prime decide to rock up for a visit just as my retarded automated fleet was passing through the same gate, they smashed head first into the big fucker and got reduced to dust in seconds but now I'm immediately King Shit for that 'unprovoked attack' and all my installations in Argon space are now fair game, cut to them getting nuked out of existence on my map screen as I question weather or not I'm going to reload. I did but then roughly the same shit happened with a Boron Ray then again with a goddamn invading Xenon ship and that killed it for me, couldn't get on with 3, TC was ok I guess but still had the same issues.

>>220143 >X4 at release was Cyberjank levels of broken, vanishing NPCs with faces missing, the UI was half responsive. I'm judging games at first glance now, they don't get a second chance to unfuck themselves, their initial release shows how much of a shit the devs give/are going to give. that's every x game tho, dunno why people would expect anything else at this point. >>220076 >the actual SPACE portion of the game is still completely barren and acts like a hub. so, space then? because in itself there's nothing and it's just a backdrop.

>>220236 >X4 at release was Cyberjank levels of broken Yeah, but that game actually had ambition, a small team and a low budget while being a private company Cybersoy was advertised as the next GTA, had fucktons of money, a fuckhuge team and saround the same timeframe as Egosoft while being developed and published by a publicly traded company. Not saying that it's right that Egosoft does this shit, but Cyberpozz fucked everyone and is missing 70% of the content they promised.

>>220076 I'd argue that climbing was a necessary skill for anyone who refused to learn magic (probably a bad idea in Daggerfall). There are certain dungeons that will trap you in a lower level that you can only escape through a vertical shaft. Sometimes the shaft is dickishly placed into a high ceiling that you can't jump to without magic or good jumping skill. Daggerfall is a memorable game because it throws exploration challenges at you, which are common in tabletop games but not at all in CRPGs.

Does anyone know he current state of Starpoint Gemini 3 or Rebel Galaxy Outlaw? Are they any good/playable?

>>220076 >Is Doom shallow? Doom is not shallow nigger. Your perceived lack of content in some areas doesn't make the game shallow, and although you praise the level design and gameplay this somehow doesn't contribute to your definition of depth and it's like you're equating modern corridor shooters as having the same depth as Doom simply because they also have "maps" or "weapons". At the same time you forget to mention all the shallow shit modern games do like regenerating health and scripted events.

>>220346 >>220076 Doom has more depth than it would first appear. There is a permanent ammo upgrade (the backpack). All of the maps are designed with you being able to start with a pistol in mind. The blursphere is a powerup that doesn't really have an analogue in most other games (causing enemies to miss you with ranged weapons) even though it is useful (although it is flawed unintentionally, for example it can make mancubi hit you more often because of their spread pattern). Doom has very swingy RNG damage calculation, but somehow the game never feels like arbitrary bullshit, except maybe when you get cornered by a former sergeant or raped by chaingunner snipers (but again, these are more flaws in map design than anything else). This alone is a game design accomplishment that impresses me. Doom leans extremely heavily on its map design quality, but the thing most other FPSes don't realize is they do too; they're just trying to hide this fact by dressing themselves up. The maps are very deep in their design.

>>220306 SG3 looks like a disaster and RGO mostly meh

>>219618 >>219512 same. Hopefully it also has story about the PC creating his own star empires and destroying the other factions. But im worried it wont

>>220572 If I recall its stuff you can do. Its not really "story" per say. So its a way you can weasel out of a fine or do something cool with the idea being that your character is already competent and they shouldn't put limits on your character because you didn't build right or did something to early.

>>220626 >per say Do you mind educating yourself before you say stupid shit?

>>220664 But how will I say stupid shit if I educate myself?

>>220693 By even asking this question, even rhetorically, you are basically inviting an answer. Like this one, and now you've been educated on the risks of asking such stupid questions. So if your goal was to avoid education to keep asking stupid questions, then you have both failed and succeeded - as your stupid question invited an education but your education did not preclude the question from being stupid.

>>220626 I mean will you get a story about your PC destroying the Sindrian Diktat or any of the factions and being the universal hegemon of the sectors. I have a good vanilla seed of two twin planets in the Askonia sector with rich resources. Once you get two Starbases up, it becomes impossible for any force in the game to wipe you out and thats including if you have no fleet backing you up. The only problem is you have to keep the Sindrian Diktat at bay until the bases get up and running.

>>220346 >>220358 That's kind of my entire point, I'm not how you guys missed that.

>>220787 Sorry, I'm just a faggot that likes talking about Doom

I miss my /stog/ bros, STO has this new Klingon recruitment event going on and just added the ability for Feds to fly KDF ships and KDF to fly Fed ships if you have a level 65 KDF (not Jem'Hadar or Romulan) or just buy the ability. You do not need to make an STD Klingon for the event any species will do.

>>220346 >>221115 That Doom 2 map is one of the absolute worst levels in the game. Fuck you Sandy.

>>220076 >Is Tetris shallow? Mechanically, yes. All you do is move pieces and tilt them. wrong if you're talking about modern tetris

>>221110 The new missions are kind of a bust though. Just endless talk about std characters and some cunt noone cares about who's supposed to be really important. But at least we're getting some gowron back. I bet he's going to be the Chancellor by the time this storyline ends.

>>221168 The T6 recruit ship is alright if you avoid the dogshit STD skin and use the one that at least looks Klingon, though in the end it will always be a worse Kor BoP since it doesn't have access to that sweet revamped B'rel model.

>>220306 >Rebel Galaxy Outlaw I can't talk about Outlaw since I haven't played it, but I've played the previous one. You play as capital ships instead of fighters with broadsides and some turrets. The actual game gets old pretty fast because by your first upgrade you will have most likely gotten your hands on the insanely powerful laser broadsides that outrange and outdamage a shitton of things and at that point the combat that's essentially just slowly turning around in space until you deplete shields/hulls gets old. The one good part about the game is the soundtrack which is all dark country music and it's really fitting, but otherwise the game's a bore. Outlaw's decision to be an EGS exclusive does not make me feel better about how this one will turn out.

>playing X4 slowly progressing, getting cash and doing missions >after 6 hours there are no hull parts on the map, stations are not being built >new beta update is rolled out >after 12 hours the game starts hitching every 2 seconds, making the game unplayable >progressively disable all mods to eliminate the issue >nope its the base game absolutely amazing well I guess thats it for my playthrough

>>221206 >Downloading beta update >Having hope for it to not be broken piece of shit You should have known better.

>>221209 With X4 any beta update is an upgrade over the main branch. Plus the only reason the update is still in beta because egosoft is holding it until the terran DLC is released which is at this point never ever.

>>221213 Nice to know. So after Terrans is someone else left yet?

>>221219 Theres supposed to be 2 more DLCs I think, one of them will be Boron and the other one is likely to be a ship expansion, seeing how they STILL dont have M2s in the game without mods. You know its kinda hilarious how they wont have M2s in the TERRAN DLC, the one faction with the longest and thickest battleships in the lore. Fuck, their signature ship is the Valhalla, initially an M0. Fuck Ill prolly just reinstall fucking Litcubes at this point if I dont go insane in the process again.

>>221247 That's messed up, but I didn't expect anything at all after Rebirthwitz.

>>221307 The thing is, on paper the games systems are solid, and they actually made an effort to make a global market simulation this time. The problem is not that the whole is broken, the problem is that a lot of the systems dont work individually, as in they are accounted for but they simply dont work, and I dont mean they dont work as intended, they just dont work. Like at all. For 2 years, ever since the release day, the "explore" command hasnt been working. From version 1.0 all the way through to 4.0, the command hasnt been fixed. It hasnt been replaced, it hasnt been tweaked, its literally in the same place it was 2 years ago. After I played he latest version for a couple of hours I realized that yes, X4 is indeed still unplayable, as opposed to my initial asessment. As in, theres so much wrong with the game that if you dont play in a very specific way, your save is eventually unrecoverable. Its simply amazing.

Well I decided to try and fix the issues with my game when faced with the prospect of having to troubleshoot a broken Litcubes install again, and it worked so far. Had to remove the ship expansion mod because it caused serious hitching, but I went and bought this angry shark looking motherfucker. Turns out it has a boresight weapon for taking out heavy ships, so I slapped a bunch of point defense and 2 beeg fookin shotguns on it. Melts M6s like butter.

When I said its time to go fightin this was not what I asked for.

I wish the ED devs weren't such fag. Combat and flying is fun and the game looks really pretty. The best future for first person space games that I can think of is the SC funds drying out, forcing them to sell the game to some company that'll just fix it and release the game.

>>221663 >SC funds drying out I wish for this as well just to see the fallout from all the whales who turned their entire savings account into dust for an unfinished game, but whatever company that does grab the rights to this game will probably run it down the same path as 114M dollar man did with dripfed content & more JPEGs to fund "completion" of the game.

>>221648 F I started to play Litcube again. That being said, I could live without getting my M5 destroyed by fat M2 on South gate of Argon Prime right on start.

>>221648 is that an onahole

>>221206 >after 6 hours there are no hull parts on the map The trick is to either cheese or cheat yourself a hull parts factory early on. Or just reroll, lack of hullparts in the early game is usually caused by some faction getting BTFO by Xenon, causing them to buy up all the hullparts in the galaxy to rebuild (without building any hull parts factories). This happens often, but not every time.

>>221648 Is that a mod or is that in game? I am probably going to try a mod playthrough right now and see how I like it. I don't have all the mods from that list above but it should still be fun. >>221809 So what you are saying is that with hullparts there are profits to be made?

>>221731 Do you have Bounce enabled? Lutcubes makes ships in a sector with no hostiles invincible to collision. >>221808 I dont have the save anymore but you dont want to stick your dick in that. Very spiky. >>221809 Ye I removed Ship Variation and rerolled since the save was fucked anyways. I started a new game and gave myself a small loan of 30 million credits to offset the gains I made in the previous save, and immideately plopped down a 4x hull factory. >lack of hullparts in the early game is usually caused by some faction getting BTFO by Xenon thats basically what happened, the xenon have been facerolling the entire map with little to no resistance >>221824 The U is a VRO addition.

>>221832 Yes. But I probably set SETA on too high multiplier for it to react in time. Thankfully, I didn't lost much time on that save.

>>221832 The Xenon winning so hard is part of the spiral. It goes something like this: >Early Xenon advance destroys a lot of factories >They're all getting rebuilt, which requires much more hullparts than are in the galaxy >All hullparts that are available get distributed more or less equally among all factories, so nothing is actually getting built >High demand means higher price, means more hull part factories/mines are getting built >This heightens the demand for hull parts and distributes them even more, even less is getting built >Meanwhile, Xenon fight further and destroy navy ships >Ships require hull parts too, but there are none >There are less navy ships >Xenon win harder and destroy more factories, including in-progress ones, and all the hullparts they had in them If you see the Xenon win early, reroll.

>>222294 Isn't it related to Xenons lacking any kind of economy from what I remember?

>>222307 I've notice this also. Xenons seem to just build whatever without having to do much or anything but getting energy cells. That's all ive ever seen them use is energy cells. They can build up a fleet faster and deploy sooner then any other faction in the game. Also, it dose not help when other factions start fighting eachother and ignore the Xenons laying waste to their stations.

>>222307 All they need is ore, energy, and water iirc. Also what is litcube?

>>222485 >All they need is ore, energy, and water iirc. No wonder, they can tear second asshole to everyone with barely trying. >what is litcube? Complete overhaul mod for X3:AP. Focused on fighting against one galaxy ending threat(OCV - Zerg Xenons) and featuring richfag "Player 2" which hates you. litcube.xtimelines.net/wiki/index.php/What_is

>>219994 It's alright, but I'd wait until the full release in 2022. Flying feels alright with mouse and keyboard, combat was tricky at first, now that I have some proper weapons and a better ship I'm more confident. Instead of the roguelite experience that was Everspace 1, you now have a more traditional space-sim with experience points and levels. Gone are the fuel gauge, you keep your credits, buy and sell, shoot and kill. There's a story, and it's a good idea to follow it until you have some proper equipment. I say this because I got screwed over on a level 4 sidequest. Fixed it once I had a gunship and my chosen weapons. Once you can do sidequest for G&B you can get standing and some free stuff, such as sellable goods and materials or equipment, at certain standing levels. You'll want to save some of these for perks. You can choose one of three perks every fifth level, and these can be changed for free whenever you dock. Companions also provide perks, but these require materials and credits to unlock. Ultimates have been introduced, but these are ship-specific. I'm not too impressed with them. The gunship (my personal pick) has a turret you can activate for 20 seconds. I did try the one that lets you shoot electricity that arcs to other enemies, but I felt this was a rather bad ability. The turret works great however, very good feedback. Just note it can only shoot things in a (I think) 180 degree arc above you, so make sure you angle your ship correctly. it can shoot straight forward as well. You'll be switching equipment fairly often in the beginning due to levels, but I'm used to this mechanic from other games, so I'm not too bothered by it. I have three weapons I like. Ships will also need to be switched out, but last a lot longer. About the story, it was alright, but the introduction of the female doctor Dahlia (Dehlia?) felt like a typical stronk independent wahman bullshit where the two male characters turn completely retarded. Apparently you can just jump out of cryosleep with no adverse effects, and had a syringe gun with her as well. Oh, and syringes work immideatly. It was dumb and didn't add anything to her character. You can only level up to level 14 in the current build. Again, I'd wait, and just pirate the gog version.

>reroll and begrudgingly return to the game >turns out the current beta update completely stops the economy by breaking miners AND traders at the same time you cant make this shit up

Aight so heres a follow up on X4 just now, and its KSP-loading-game-into-ram-through-ethernet-adapter retarded. So since the latest beta update, the economy grinded to a halt. As in theres nothing being mined and nothing being produced. Devs fixed a bug that was materializing raw mineral out of thin air repeatedly, when it was only supposed to be doing that occasionally. Okay so hear me out now. This bug, for 2 years since release, was the only reason the ingame economy was functioning at all. You cant make this shit up even if you wanted to.

>>222949 Shouldn't the two images on the left side of your pic be reversed?

>>222955 They really should.

1 million years in MS GIMP 2.5

>>222949 Holy shit, that reminds me of that game whose AI was fucked because of a typo on a script and the devs said they couldn't fix it until a fan realized what the mistake was. I myself am experiencing bugs up the ass in Starpoint Gemini 3, one of which crashes the whole game depending which direction you're looking in when you open the map, which has been reported on their steam page for months. How can things be this bad?

>>222966 >How can things be this bad? Misplaced priorities. Egosoft got so much shit for literally everything in X:R and they still doubled down on their retarded additions still. At this point you basically got a bunch of farthuffers among the lead devs who keep fucking up over and over and over again and just keep ignoring the issues.

>>222975 >X:R Oh no, fuck, I've been avoiding X since X3 because of that whole shitstorm and I had forgotten about that game thinking that the X4 that everyone was shitting on was X: Rebirth. That's two stinkers in a row then? Fuck I was hoping to hop back on board after they realized the stupid mistakes they made with the game after X3. I'm just reading the chronology >X3: TC was in 2008 >X3: AP was in 2011 Holy shit where did time go? The last time I looked at these games it was almost a decade ago?

>>222990 X4 is definitely not as much of a clusterfuck as X:R, its a clusterfuck that you can salvage. X:R was shit from the design stage.

How to cheat in x4, I don't want to grind for another fucking ship again.

>>223030 >turn off save compression >make a save and a backup save >locate the save file >open the file with notepad++, look for the value of cash you had, change the first 2 instances of that value to whatever you want it to be

>>223042 Actually I just found the custom start mod. It allows you to make your own start with money and blueprints and all that junk. I might do that instead and just start enough where I can purchase some ships. It looks like its not really even a mod, its vanilla and just hidden with a line of code.

>>223030 There's always a console and some loopy spawn commands in X games, looking at the UI I'm sure 4 is no different. Though be forewarned making your ship 'invincible' in my experience is situational thing, get stuck in the rotating structure of a big ship and you'll get killed, I think ramming and pinballing between two ships can also chew an so called invincible ship to bits too. Cheating is generally how I got my retarded fleets of suicidals after the first couple of legit attempts in each game I gave up grinding, I love getting stations built but all that effort for such gimped idiot ships is disheartening, even when they're fully decked out and upgraded they're still as fragile as glass ornaments when it comes to bottlenecks and cause diplomatic incidents on the reg. You can probably get away with a hauler and escort doing automated trading in-system, that's about all you can be sure will work unsupervised as soon as they have a gate to pass they're open to collisions and causing upset which can domino into all your shit getting rekd.

Coincidentally, I played X4 a bit vanilla/modded a few weeks ago. >Very pretty when it wants to be. Holy shit, looks better than Yiddizen (which doesn't exist what was I talking about?) and arguably ED >Combat is simple and seems to be a matter of weaknesses, but I heard that a certain weapon breaks that entirely. >Superhighways are comfy but they seem to eliminate a good portion of chance for gameplay events. Also, the game keeps giving me missions where enemies can fucking escape off a superhighway after spawning seconds away from a superhighway. The fuck. <Stations are almost fucking empty. You've got a trading hall, a governer's place, and your ship bay. That's it. >You're getting only nothing to do, outside of the main missions and few actual side missions. >The mechanics that do exist feel solid but feel like their missing critical components. Like hacking just being "fly towards flashy thing" and spacesuit flight being barebones as shit most of the time. (or when returning to a craft you just sorta noclip inside it to get back into the cockpit.) For context I haven't played the other X series games. With mods some of this got better until it didn't because of the bugs. I'm honestly surprised a modded game is a bit more stable than a fucking vanilla game. >>222949 >Fixed a bug that ended up breaking the entire game It's pretty clear then they don't incrementally test their game. They make a shitload of code and 'features' before each playtest, instead of working on a feature at a time.

>>222990 X4, when it works (it tends to more or less do that on main releases, less so on beta ones) is relatively good. Not X3, but still good. X:R was retarded from the get-go in all of its aspects. >>222966 X4, unlike older X games, has a fully simulated economy. That means fully living world. And that's a bitch to program and debug, I've tried before in a much smaller example. Even with little complexity, it tends to be a clusterfuck that's almost impossible to untangle because everything is connected so symptoms regularly pop up in places entirely unrelated to the actual bug. And, as was here, some bug's symptoms hide the symptoms of other bugs. Why the unholy fuck are they releasing patches that obviously stop the game from working though, I don't know. Just... unpatch that bug and patch it back in when you've actually fixed the problem since it's so obvious.

>>223681 >Why the unholy fuck are they releasing patches that obviously stop the game from working though, I don't know. Just... unpatch that bug and patch it back in when you've actually fixed the problem since it's so obvious. The devs official stance is "should have been playing the main branch lmao".

>>223042 I am sorry

>>223681 >X4, when it works (it tends to more or less do that on main releases, less so on beta ones) is relatively good. Not X3, but still good. You make it sound good enough. Do you think I should try it now or give it another year? Also, can it be pirated? How often are patches/upgrades released? It sounds like a pain in the ass to keep up with them unofficially. >X4, unlike older X games, has a fully simulated economy I thought X3 also had something like that too. If it really is something new it sounds like a great way to get yourself into more trouble than it's worth for a developer like Egosoft given the pile of issues they usually have with their games. No need to add more to the pile.

>>223878 >Do you think I should try it now or give it another year? As it is, give it another year. If you cant stop yourself, the game is easily piratable, and mods are all on the official forums. >I thought X3 also had something like that too. X3s economy is only really simulated for the player, the ALife engine just spawns and despawns shit semi-randomly. You can still get into situations where you get a galactic shortage but its mostly to do with increased demand due to increased faction warfare. Or lets say its simulated, but the simulation resolution is incredibly low outside of player owned and controlled systems. Which is why Litcubes player 2 mechanic is interesting to play against because it plays by the same rules you do, and is an actual active threat to you even if you play nice and dont take sides in the faction wars.

>>223878 >Also, can it be pirated? Yes, but I would recommend waiting until all expansions will finally come out. >I thought X3 also had something like that too. Nah. Spawning anything took time and was rather random. Also sometimes when you weren't in some sectors for long time, some stations could just disappear on their own.

I just finished Starpoint Gemini 3 and I thank God it's over. I don't think I've ever played something quite like it before. I think this breaks a record in terms of the most buggy and the most absolutely disgustingworthy thing I've ever played. Not even memeing, I wish I had recorded some of those hot cutscenes so that at least I could share some of the things I've experienced, and unfortunately they're not on jewtube either. I think the game keeps the autosaves of your progression so I might go in later and see if I can record something, but the game is so buggy that trying to record it with obs is utterly fucked and the recording ends up with like 1 frame per second. In the meantime have this image. In the final mission they made a puzzle where you have to go through a room without being spotted by some stationary drones. The problem is that because of the view perspective, the controls, and the fact that the drones are almost entirely featureless and you can't easily understand which way they're facing, it's very difficult to not get spotted and figure out which way you're supposed to go. So when you fail the puzzle the drone you're piloting starts giving you tips which progressively spoil the puzzle until it just outright tells you how to solve it completely. It's like these developers have been getting tips from the developers of Bioshock Infinite, it's pathetic. >>223894 >>223901 Thanks, I think I'll wait some more then. I've found a few other games in this thread I think I could try for now.

>Destroy your ship on loot crate which needed L size cargo, when you had only M sized one. I didn't play any X game for quite long time now and I probably forgot almost everything at this point as well.

Figure this is the right thread to ask. I just installed SMAC with scient patch and PRACX, but now I'm a bit lost in the game. Are there any basics guides that go over the main gameplay mechanics and controls? Haven't played a 4X game before.

I want to like this game, but I think I'm just too autistic. I can't play fair in singleplayer, I always end up savescumming or at least restart-scumming. Likewise I can't even begin to imagine getting into any multiplayer 4x, and I'd probably get destroyed anyway.

>>224348 ES2 is pretty casull as far as 4x goes. All of the endless series is. >>224308 Nothing that isnt immideately googleable. Game is old and all that there was to say about it has been said decades ago. Its also a terrible first 4x entry, either go with CIV 4 or Endless Legends, SMAC is both overwhelming in its mechanics AND clunky as all fuck. Basically what Im saying is, play a game of CIV 4 and SMACs mechanics will be immideately understandable to you. Mostly.

>>224403 Casual is a pretty easy way to say least shitty, most 4X games just aren't very good. A lot of them are just shitty clones of older games and I'd rather just play the better versions of said games like Homm3 and Civ4 mods. The Endless series is a miracle in that it's one of the more recent 4x series that isn't another clone or low budget trash. The only decent SF 4X games I'd bother messing with is Endless Space 2 or SMAC if you can ignore the human diversity leaders since they act like how they look, flaming dickheads.

>>224348 My favorite multiplayer 4x space game will always be Sword of the Stars 1. The only problem is that you have to turn off catastrophic events/invasion events if you expect the campaign to end in anyone winning and not being utterly destroyed by unbeatable aliens or the galactic patrol ship.

>>224493 Like I said I can't even imagine playing those games in multiplayer. They take like an entire day to play, the only way to convince other people to do that is to schedule multiple shorter sessions, and the only way to do THAT is to play with people you know already. I've always only pirated 4x so I haven't actually seen how their online component is set up. And again even if it is set up in a way that a friendless loser like me can get into a game, I'd still be fucking terrible beyond belief. No I pretty much have to stick to single player, hence why I never actually buy the games. And since I cannot force myself to play fair with the AI I just end up ruining it.

>>224473 For your hot take, you are being awarded one docto peppuh. >>224493 SotS 1 is the best combat oriented spess 4x in existence. >Getting fucked by the Fagrald, the Wokust or the Soykeeper You need to git good, if any of those can cripple your economy to the point of losing the game, youve got other problems. Now spectres on the other hand, those can go fuck themselves right in the ass. >>224497 A full multiplayer round of SotS takes 2 binges of 12 hours each, finishing a game of SotS outside of a LAN party environment is impossible.

I was gonna give Starsector a try but given that it's not on gog, that the continuous update model is a paint to follow unofficially and that it just doesn't seem to have many unofficial download options I think I'll pass for now. Someone mentioned Galaxy Rebel Outlaw earlier and that seems easier so I'm jumping on that for now. Any other recommendations? I'm waiting on X4 to get more stable and I've already played X3, Freelancer, Freespace, and Starpoint Gemini 2 and 3.

>>224505 I'm not into planet-based 4x shit since most of them are half-assed spreadsheet clones of MoO, Endless Space 2 is the shiniest most well-designed clone so that's my take on it.

>>224532 >can get it for free >with randomized maps and mods that give infinite replayablity Just get it off the official site, Here's the code everyone uses to play the game. And heres a map seed with planets worth colonizing right next to major economic systems. Just copy and paste the code when you start new game MN-19412131600109270

>>224505 I didn't play that many games and it was years ago, but usually we got fucked by Von Neumann, and granted the galactic patrol vessel doesn't do shit to you if you take no military action. I only got fucked by Locust once and I don't remember how late we were into the game. Galactic patrol still a gay event though, because it incentivizes everyone sitting around and doing nothing. It only benefits people who are losing a war.

>>224532 >that the continuous update model is a paint to follow unofficially I'm not sure what you mean but the updates are extremely spaced apart. If you're planning on pirating the game, you'll probably be able to get the latest version easily. They release updates roughly annually, if even that. The last update was May 2019, although he just released a devblog about narrative features being added to the game for the next release. Each patch introduces major content updates though, as you might expect from the delays.

>>224762 Well Locust is a threat up until the mid game, but the Pisskeeper is easily dispatched if you have the basic Antimatter tech.

>>224770 >>224766 Wait, I mixed up some things. In order to remove Peacekeeper you need neutron mass drivers, preferrably netron stormers. Neutron rounds apply force to ships, and a couple of salvos on the same point around the edge should sent the Peacekeeper into an uncontrollable spin.

>>224762 That and the Space queen bug thing. Man that game was fun. How hard would it be to set up multiplayer? I wonder if anons could do a blits type game

>>224803 What silicoid queen bug? Literally the first time Ive heard about it. >How hard would it be to set up multiplayer? Direct connect works flawlessly assuming you open the ports. ZeroTierOne also works for LAN tunneling. >I wonder if anons could do a blits type game A blitz in SotS is virtually impossible, you need a small but dedicated group of autists who are willing to go for a binge. The shortest game I can imagine would be 8 hours on a small map.

>>224812 Would a compstomp work or is it the same situation?

>>224813 Same situation really. Especially if you got hivers on either side of the stomp.

>>224403 Not as clunky as I expected, actually. I'm not spoiled by the later 4X games, so I don't need to readjust my preconceptions about how it should be controlled. The in-game tours helped a lot so far, although I'm getting fucked by constant drone revolts and have no idea how to control them.

>>224819 That makes me sad.

>>224830 Its less about being spoiled and more about how SMAC mechanics are not intuitively presented. For example, you usually learn about unit upkeep by the time your supplying city is irrevocably fucked. >I'm getting fucked by constant drone revolts and have no idea how to control them. Thats what psych and specialists are for. Also have this, I dont know if its a supplement that came with the box, but its packaged in the GoG release. >>224831 Whats there to be sad about, like I said, you just need a couple of nerds who are willing to binge. Also its not like the game is boring in singleplayer, theres even BSotS to spice things up.

>>224835 I checked for supplements and found some manuals, thanks. >Thats what psych and specialists are for. I can't figure out which factors lead to drones vs talents appearing, plus assigning doctors doesn't seem to help at all.

>>224639 Oh, well, shit. I didn't think that was an option. I just got started on it, I'll see how I like it. >>224766 I thought it was a more normal game so I was expecting a multi gigabyte release that needed a crack and that needed to be torrented, and that's a pretty bad scenario because there's no guarantee there are going to be new torrent releases for every single new update. I briefly looked into torrents and I wasn't finding much at all to begin with. >>224719

>STO has been doing "Year of the Klingon" since 2020 >only it has been mostly a joke >Legendary Ship bundle #2 is two Klingon ships and two more fucking Fed ships >the first bundle was 10 fed ships >the Legendary Excelsior they revealed has a new STD inspired design If this baktag keeps up I'll have some petaQ blood on my knife.

>>224876 If im not clear. TEITW-HP9ON-A7HMK-WA6YA is the cd key And MN-19412131600109270 is a map code for easy to colonize planets. Have fun and enjoy >>224889 Tried to get into it but couldn't. I just wanted to be a romulan.

>>224835 I'm sad it takes so long. I wonder if anons would be interested in a game at some time.

>>224876 Oh yeah, I forgot. There's no CD-key verification except on client-side. If you unlock the game once you can update it forever. I gave him money anyways because I like the game and it's cheap. >>224901 I'd be interested, but maybe not for an 8 hour session. 4-6 hours would be quite doable. The game is good at saving and allowing people or AI to substitute in for players in the game. I don't think you necessarily need dedicated autists, just people who are willing to swap in and out if someone isn't there consistently.

>>224897 Romulans have been a thing for years now, you just end up allying with Klingons or Federation, and all their ships have been made available for any faction. Love my Scimitar, Thalaron weapons aren't a war crime if there isn't a war, or if they don't find out.

>>224906 We should like, do it man.

>>224897 I know, I'm not that stupid anon. I managed to install it just fine, I just started playing but so far I don't understand much, so I'm looking forward to experimenting some more. How would you rate the combat later on in the game? I feel it may end up being a bit weak.

>>224941 What's your timezone? I am in US central and I work 9 to 5. Should we make a separate thread?

What are the most arcadey, combat focused space games? I loved Strike Suit Inifinity and Ring Runner.

>>225107 >combat focused space games I'll go with FreeSpace. You go through a series of missions one after the other where the only thing you do is combat and it's got a lot of detail to an autistic degree. You can target and destroy entire ships, their subsystems like the engines, or in the case of bigger ships each individual weapon turret to maim the ship. You will also need to target and blow up incoming anti capital ship torpedoes before they reach their target when you're are in anti-bomber roles. I posted a webm of a mission earlier >>219592. If you decide to play FreeSpace make sure you use the source port.

>>225245 This looks like what I'd want. Can I ask which sourceport?

>>225247 Volition released the source code of FreeSpace 2 a long time ago and a pretty hardcore fan community formed around it. They added tons of features and made it so that it can run on modern resolutions in any platform, and additionally they recreated a lot of the assets in higher resolutions, but this is optional. Since the FreeSpace 1 source code was not released but the engine was very similar to FreeSpace 2, they just ported the contents of the first game to be run with the second game's engine. See these for more information: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Getting_Started_(FreeSpace_Open) https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/FreeSpace_Port

>>224995 I find late game starsector combat pretty enjoyable. It depends a bit on your approach, it's entirely possible to set up a fleet to fight on autopilot, but it's also possible to pilot a fast frigate like a tempest or hyperion and make a difference in a large fight by punching way above your weight.

Im starting to think this trade ship design is not very well thought out.

>>225431 >trade ship That ship is designed to carry few fighters inside it. It works quite well as salvage ship or small carrier.

>>225431 >Split >Transports Anon, no. Go Teladi for bulk transport or Argon for most other circumstances. Split are excellent as pirate ships and pretty good for general combat, but are utter trash for trade.

>>224812 OK, after reinstalling and playing for a bit, I have some serious questions involving auto-resolve. It seems like auto-resolve frequently destroys random threats that I'd normally have trouble with in real time. For example, there will be times where I have two basic extended range destroyers and a tanker scouting systems, and I encounter something, then auto-resolve and I win. How the fuck could they win against anything? The ER body doesn't even have a medium mount for a missile so they'd have to engage with small lasers/ballistic, exposing themselves to damage. There was even one time where I found an alien derelict, and after realizing it couldn't move, I got a bunch of DEs with missiles to stand off and blast it from range, but it wouldn't die. Then later, I auto-resolved and it died with no problems. I guess it's possible that the derelict was weakened after the first battle. This also seems to happen with the silicoid drones. I got completely annihilated all the times I tried to send in a fleet of anywhere from 12-25 destroyers, and one time even cruisers, against a swarm hive. Except there was one time I sent in about 10-12 DEs to fight real-time and I succeeded in killing all the drones, blowing up the hive and chasing the queen from the system, however I could not kill her because she deflects lasers like bad pick-up lines, and I went laser-heavy because I figured it would be better against the drones. I found out later through reading that apparently, the drones have a tendency to plow stupidly into asteroids if you position yourself near them, which may have been what happened. However this still doesn't explain why auto-resolve seems so much better than real-time battles when it comes to these threats. What am I doing wrong?

>>225445 Thats what Im using it for, Im using the Boa as a mobile base for my Kestrel, which is my actual player ship right now. Im currently in the game phase where I dart around the universe buying and nigging ships for selling. >>225452 In LU the meta states that the best UTs are TMs, specifically the Magnetar. Also even in the base game speed > space for UTs, and Split are all speed and not much else. >>225465 Autocalc in SotS just calculated DMG vs DMG You can cheese your way around specific targety by selectively using autocalc or realtime. Some enemies are impossible to kill in autocalc, like the Pisskeeper. If you want to gank the silicoid queen you need to extend the battle timer, she has too much HP to kill in under 3 minutes. The strat is to blow away her head, that way she just remains stationary and doesnt know what to do.

>>225470 >Autocalc in SotS just calculated DMG vs DMG I wondered if it was something like that or if I was doing something woefully incorrect in real-time. Naturally it was both.

>>225028 EST here. At what point in X4 do I do piracy?

>jump into a pirate sector because Im a cheeky cunt >a wing of fighters is trying to intercept me >BTFO them all with just a pair of PACs >one straggler shits out a ton of swarm rockets >I get the fuck outta there to a neighboring sector >ten seconds later this motherfucker shows up to finish the job

ruh roh

>>224995 just wanted to be clear Combat is fine, lots of variety. Only thing that irritates me is speed of capital class ships, that and chasing your enemies down. >>224916 Yeah i played romulans but the game was hard for me to get into.

>buy a somewhat busted Orinoco for 2kk >stock Orinoco sells for 10kk >repair it >hop back into the bangbus >a fleet of pirates spawns in my face, immediately pulverises the Orinoco is this what being a Dogecoin retard feels like

>start playing starsector >slowly getting more acquainted with the mechanics >try not to fuck it up, carefully read all descriptions on skills, weapons, and figure out best combinations >first few missions go smoothly and the game lets go of my hand >still in first sector, it tells me I can fuck off or kill some pirates in same sector I had already partially raped >previous battles went very well so try to kill pirates >manage to isolate one of their fleets >they try to escape but I corner them and engage >only like 3 ships, 2 light carriers and no escort >carriers with no defense sounds like a terrible idea, laugh in their stupid faces and start the battle >carriers wipe out my whole fleet from the other side of the map, couldn't even get close >remember it's been hours since my last save All of it is my fault but I'm still upset.

>>225633 Carriers are basically as good as their ship manufacturing chips. You might have gotten unlucky and went up against two with decent fighters. They can be quite devastating; some of them launch torpedoes that will instantly shatter anything smaller than a cruiser if it hits at the right (wrong) time. There's another very cheap and effective one that shits out a rocket barrage in a strafing run which will tear your asshole open if your shield is down or not facing the barrage. I don't know what your fleet makeup looks like, but you need some tactical lasers, vulcans and MGs to keep fighters at bay. Tac lasers are nice because you can zap them before they get close and they have good tracking, but you need rapid-fire stuff for point defense. If all else fails, you can get your own cheap carrier and get one of the interceptor chips (they're among the cheapest). That will at least hold them off long enough so you can get close to the enemy carriers. One of the most popular faction mods adds an anime-esque gundam faction that has devastating carrier capabilities because they can field gundams that will circle-strafe ships, have shields and punishing weaponry. They also transform into jets so they can traverse the map quickly.

>>225644 I like DA but flicker cores on a fucking capital is bullshit.

>>225644 >There's another very cheap and effective one that shits out a rocket barrage in a strafing run which will tear your asshole open Yes, they had some of those for sure. What the hell, it was a barrage of missiles as long as the map itself! They also had some really annoying fighters that not only did decent hard damage against my shields, but actually were like a dozen. I do have some point defense stuff but it's so weak and short ranged that it's not very useful except against weak missiles. God damn, I was hoping to pop those shitty old carriers and get their scraps.

>>225648 The rocket bombers, like most bombers, are totally worthless against any fighters. Try to get some Broadswords or the super cheap interceptor drones that never run out of replacements. >>225647 Yeah, the forum claims that a lot of those factions are "vanilla-esque" in balance but sometimes I wonder. Although, vanilla has some obnoxious shit anyways, like the Doom cruiser which isn't even very hard to get, or its destroyer equivalent.

>>225633 >3 ships, 2 light carriers and no escort Those 3 ships were its escort. Underestimating carriers is going to lead the bad days. And these are the cheap kind of carriers. Once you reach mid to endgame they can really fuck your fleet over >>225644 Last patch i played removed the flicker for one of the capital class ships

>>225696 No, there were 3 ships in total and 2 were carriers. I didn't think carriers were so OP.

>>225732 Was it this? Or was it the cheap pirate blockhead knock off. Either way i always avoid carriers till midgame

>>225746 what the fuck is that fucking monstrosity?! Anyway, no, it wasn't that. This was in my first sector, it was an L shaped piece of shit. And yeah, I'll void carriers for now... or at least save the game before doing something as stupid as engaging them again to experiment and git gud.

>>225756 I assume it was a Condor. They tend to be the go-to carrier for shitter pirates. Also a good choice for a carrier to have around just to spew cannon fodder at the enemy fighters.

>>225746 >monstrosity Boy you've just barely dipped your toes into the clusterfuck coming your way. >>225760 yeah that seems like what you'll have to deal with in the beginning. But im surprised two of them managed to to destroy him. Usually its ventures and above that start wrecking your shit.

>>225760 Yeah, it was that one. I actually have one myself and it looked so weak when equipping it that I though I was walking into a scrap fest until they kicked my shit in.

>>225764 I'm fairly sure pirates can get Khopeshes on the regular. Those tend to be my first bomber chip if I go carriers as they're ridiculously high-value. Not the best by any means, but very good for how cheap they are. >>225765 They look like shit because the design is literally a converted freighter, but it's still way better than the crappy mining drone controller you can get in one of the starter fleets. They have two chip slots meaning they can deploy two (possibly different) wings of strike craft at once.

>>225781 I must be one of the lucky ones. Im usually the one defeating condors then repurposing them into my fleet

>>225781 Khopeshs ARE one of the best fighters. Khopesh, Flash, and Pirhana bombers are the three options that are best able to annihilate capitals (and anything else) by overwhelming firepower, particularly when deployed by an Astral. While the Khopesh does the least damage of the three, their self-propelled rockets are much faster than the inertia-only bombs dropped by the other two, making them more effective against small and mid-sized ships and giving them faster in-and-out bombing run times.

>>225791 Pirhanas are better against stations but less reliable against capitals. When they hit hard they hit really hard though.

>>225794 Indeed, a Piranha or Flash wing can do 12000 explosive damage in a single bombing run, if all its bombs hit. Khopesh wings only do 4000. Even so, 2 astrals filled with 6 wings each can be a massive 48000 damage per strike, which is enough to overwhelm any shields even at half damage.

>>225499 >>225587 Pro tip: If you didn't fought against many pirates yet, you can turn them neutral by buying/selling few things at pirate bases and changing Pirates into friend at global commands. Then you only have Xenons, OCV and Phanon left to fight against. I don't get why exactly Yaki were turned so toothless in LU though.

>>226455 Yaki got decent utility ships. Also pirates are just more rep fodder, but if you wanted to raise pirate rep, all you would need to do is to find a pirate sector and bust some xenon in there.

>>226516 >Yaki got decent utility ships. I know. I meant part where they are just contained to 3 sectors and don't lead any invasion fleets against Paranids. Their region of space is just empty, except for some ore/silicon mining and occasional mass selling space fuel(booze).

Bullying nerds is my favourite past-time.

>X4 beta 4.0 isn't playable yet well here i was hoping to get in some spess in 2021. fuck me

Any answers to >>219622

>>226872 check out freespace 2 mods. they got a bunch of different universe campaigns created. some of them are even voices though im not sure on the star wars ones.

>>219622 >>226872 Sins of a Solar Empire has an excellent Star Wars mod. I can't remember what it's called, but it's well done, and is notable to me at least for not trying to "balance" - some ships are unquestionably better than others. X-Wings will win vs. TIE Fighters nearly every time unless they're way outnumbered. Lancer-class frigates shred starfighters like a mad cunt. So on and so on

>>226874 > X-Wings will win vs. TIE Fighters nearly every time unless they're way outnumbered Are eyeballs cheaper than X-wings in the mod?

Man, I got really addicted to Starsector, fuck. Just had an ebin battle vs a fleet of ships 3 times as big as mine that came straight at me at breakneck speed with horse dildos on hand. That was rather frustrating to be honest though, I almost fucked up my save.

>outrun an entire Phanon rapid response fleet in a paper kestrel while theyre sending at least 10M worth of missiles after me Im fast as fuck boii

>>226949 Kestrel is fastest ship in game. >>226859 What is this ship category? TL?

>>227004 Its an Elephant, fastest TL with the strongest weapon generator, which makes it a good vessel for combat mission grinding. In LU you can slap some serious firepower on it, for a TL at least. Theres 2 ISRs, 2 IBLs and 4 Flaks on it, which is at this point just bullying against anything smaller than it and isnt Phanon.

>>227023 Nice. Just be careful to not destroy TandiTech too early.

>>226930 Damn, it took me a whole day to get out of the sector where this happened. Man, Starsector is sure is fun, but it's pretty damn unforgiving. It's happened more than once that I almost fucked my whole game because I saved near a fleet that would almost rape me a few seconds afterwards, not to mention that you can easily run into a bunch of pirates that will just completely obliterate your fleet with no chance of escaping or killing them. I'm dying to ask questions but I'm enjoying exploring and finding the answers for myself a lot.

>>227666 Going to remote sectors and exploring contracted targets is arguably safer because you don't have to deal with the usual pirate and enemy fleet traffic. Well, you have to worry about pirates waiting at hyperspace gates, but that's not anything unusual for any mission. The only problem is you have to deal with the occasional ERROR, SIGNAL LOST

>>227674 I'm actually just returning from my first exploration trip. It wasn't anything contracted, though, I just wanted to go see the systems that are a bit farther away. I was curious about what was in them since they seemed desolate, and also I wanted to see if they had good planets but it seems all the planets everywhere are pretty much wastelands. It was thoroughly worth it though, I found a lot of shit! I was exploring the last system I planned to explore when I quickly found out it was infested with pirates, fortunately I managed to escape... only to be completely fucked by other pirates when I arrived to a populated system that I thought was safe. no spoilers pls

>>227711 If you want to explore you should always choose a exploration contract. You make money for doing what you you planned on doing. Pirates will always be a pain in the ass

>>227711 >no spoilers If you will see red/orange buoys anywhere near system borders, get the fuck out of that system.

>>227711 Anon are you playing vanilla or modded starsector? cuz the novelty of vanilla wears off fast without a dozen modded in factions fighting for supremacy, or all the secret stuff faction and ship packs add, not to mention the unique ships that you get via bounties.

>>228037 Fuck, now I want to play some Starsector badly. Just wish I had more than 4 gigs of RAM so that the game didn't take an entire day to save with a couple of mods. And I mean literally - I once left my PC running SS for over 24 hours just so it could save the game.

>>228037 I actually snagged one of those huge capitals Diable has when they attacked me. I'm doing a nex run right now and they got one place left. I've managed to get some nice blueprints as well including a paragon as well as a few other capitals so my fleets are really strong. Speaking of blueprints I might turn off junkpirates next game I play, pack blueprints seem to be really common for whatever reason and they aren't super good. PACK also seems to have stations spawn way outside the sector as some sort of enemy you can fight which is sort of neat.

>>228064 time to upgrade anon. What the fuck

>>228064 Unless your finances are dire I'd recommend an upgrade.

>>228071 >>228070 It's an old Lenovo I've got because my previous notebook suddenly died. I've been thinking about getting a new notebook, probably a Thinkpad. I'm not sure about their GPUs, though, they seem underpowered.

>>228064 >>228087 Yeah 4 gigs is not enough for a fully modded starsector, also save bloat that some mods like Vayra's Sector add worsens the problem. Check the threads in Bug Reports & Support (modded) for help on how to disable shit that is clogging the game. Also you need a decent cpu, with all the scripts running, especially if you plan to add more factions? >>228067 Never had problems with pack blueprints, but then again I have so many mods that a single playthrough is not enough to unlock all the blueprints by scavenging ruins and derelicts, unless I start to raid. And the drop rate from raids is pretty low so I don't usually do it.

>>228091 CPU wan't really a problem, it's the massive RAM usage spike during saving. I can play the game normally with some shit relegated to swap partition, but every time I try to save on my decently long run it goes into overdrive grabbing around 25% more memory and apparently accessing it in its entirety which forces the system to constantly swap pages around.

>>227798 I think the game mentions this, but I wanted to go my own way. My fleet is also very humble so I can't go very far and I'm not sure if I could complete the contracts. I just mainly wanted to see if there were good planets in the outer systems because everything in the main sector is shit, but I've explored a few of the outer sectors and they're shit too. I'm get the feeling I'm way overdue in getting a colony up so I'm panicking a little bit about that. No, I don't want to know if I'm right or wrong, I love the feeling of not knowing what the fuck am I doing and obsessing about the little details of my rustbucket fleet. >>227798 It felt so good coming across one the buoys for the first time and not knowing what the fuck I was getting into tens of light years away from civilization and debating turning back or moving forward. I love how the game feels. >>228037 Yes, vanilla. I get the feeling that once you know the ins and outs of the game it will get a bit more boring and I can see how mods could improve on that but so far I'm pretty satisfied. I went blind into this shit and the adventuring and the uncovering of secrets and stories feels amazing. Also the difficulty of the game is just right where each battle is a challenge without being super frustrating most of the time so I'm taking my time and enjoying the ride. >>228091 >Yeah 4 gigs is not enough for a fully modded starsector Holy shit, seriously? I was thinking how cool it was that the game wasn't murdering my GPU with heat but I never thought a simple game like this would use so much ram. I'm curious now, I'll monitor my RAM usage next time I play. Speaking issues with Starsector, it happens to me that certain screens load very choppily and take seconds to completely load. Has this happened to anyone or is it a known issue?

>>228114 Vanilla is fine with 4 gigs, it's the mods that take up most of RAM. Especially when you play a long game with Nexerelin, Vayra's sector and adjust sector's size and population. Ship mods also contribute to total RAM footprint, although not as much.

>>228114 >Yeah 4 gigs is not enough for a fully modded starsector >Holy shit, seriously? I was thinking how cool it was that the game wasn't murdering my GPU with heat but I never thought a simple game like this would use so much ram. Mods are what ultimately eat up rams one of the few flaws of this game is that the game itself cant actually utilize the ram you have. Its coded to 4gb, you have to fiddle around in the game files to fix it. Also its good you're doing vanilla first. You gotta walk before you run. Then the mods add even more surprises. >>228087 Hopefully a sale comes up soon for you.

>>228114 60+ mods here, and have allocated 8gigs(vmparams) out 16 total system memory. >certain screens load very choppily and take seconds to completely load It's a java thing. >>228118 Out of curiosity, what is your mod list and are you talking about total system memory or the memory you allocated in you vmparams file? As for the save problem, more factions, more fleets and those fleets start fighting each other which in turn spawn derelicts, this increases even more when they start to colonize worlds, plus when you start to hoard weapons and ships, all of this and more shit going in the background add to save bloat.

>>228159 4 gigs total memory, 8 gigs swap partition. Set max heap size to 6 gigs. >mod list Outside of utility stuff it's <Nexerelin <Vayra's Sector with commie faction disabled <Vayra's ship pack <Adjusted Sector <Industrial Evolution <Luddic Enhancement <Terraforming and Station Construction <Torchships and Deadly Armaments <Xhan Empire <Unknown Skies I haven't played the game since last summer, so all this stuff is obviously outdated. I was recommended to avoid making my sector too large after encountering the issue.

>>228175 >Terraforming and Station Construction I missed the item that instantly terraforms planets now takes to balance purposes it takes millions of credits plus a shitload of time to get a planet up and running

>>228199 It's a snowball effect - you start with one-two decent planets, terraform them over the course of a couple years and you get a money printing machine because upkeep gets down to 25% of normal and accessibility shoots through the roof. With AI cores it can get pretty ridiculous. Which reminds me of the fact that Starsector has this terrible UI problem that doesn't allow you to build more than 12 structures on a given planet. Hard to encounter in vanilla, but it gets really bad with some colony mods. Grinds my gears.

>>228087 >buying Chinese laptops Anon... >>228131 >Its coded to 4gb, you have to fiddle around in the game files to fix it. That's an inherent limitation of most interpreted applications. The Java VM needs to know how much RAM it can use. It's very simple to increase it.

>>228175 >Adjusted Sector You don't really need a bigger sector than vanilla since you didn't add that many factions, and yes this is a big offender. >Vayra's Sector with commie faction disabled Another big offender, try disabling the factions in colony_factions.csv in vayraColonies folder, warhawk republic tends to spawn allot of fleets if they gain a foothold more so than the other faction introduced by this mod. >4 gigs total memory, 8 gigs swap partition. Set max heap size to 6 gigs Mechanical drive or SSD? cuz if it is mechanical that is bad for both your game and your hdd, you might end up with bad sectors on it. Console commands mod adds in-game tracking of your ram usage. Clear commands mod complements console commands by adding options to clear clutter, good before you save and such.

>>228214 I just want to cheat and save time > terrible UI problem that doesn't allow you to build more than 12 structures on a given planet. Hard to encounter in vanilla, but it gets really bad with some colony mods. Grinds my gears. I know that pain. Honestly feel 2-4 slots would solve the problem. But it might not help with game balance >>228221 wish it could be done in settings and not the game files though

>>228091 >shadow yards I like their ships. I made one of their cruisers apart of my main line and they have some good energy weapons without being bullshit. The Cpec is a nice workhorse.

>>228064 >4gb That's painful. Can't you at least get one more ram stick? I did that with my old laptop, coincidentally also a Lenovo. >>228159 >60+ mods here God damn, are you serious? Do you even know what they do? Did you actually go through a list of hundreds of mods to install the ones you wanted? >It's a java thing. It looked like this thing had Java in it given some of the strings I've seen but I wanted to believe it wasn't true. So some of the screens like when docked on a planet/station and opening the trading screen load slowly for everyone?

>>228298 >So some of the screens like when docked on a planet/station and opening the trading screen load slowly for everyone? No absolutely not. I think you might have to do the ram fix to get rid of this problem >God damn, are you serious? Do you even know what they do? Did you actually go through a list of hundreds of mods to install the ones you wanted? Kind of have to, you search for the recommended roms, then you find out which ones are incompatible with each other. Some make the map bigger, some add music, some add new PC avatars, then comes the ships, the star systems, etc. etc. You have a rough idea of what you get from your roms. Incidentally i have about 20 myself

>>228298 >God damn, are you serious? Do you even know what they do? Yes, I've been playing starsector since 0.65, besides 60 or something mods is nothing compared to my modded skyrim, kek I have a dedicated SSD for that monster.

Can you construct a colony in Starsector on a system owned by some other faction without them hating you or wiping it out? I tried to do that and the message said they would fuck me up but I did it anyway to see what happened and it doesn't seem like they mind. >>228306 Sounds time consuming.

>the vulture is such a shit ship, it barely breaks even just existing as a universe trader amazing

>>228445 They will at some point send an orbital bomb fleet

thats a ballin fucking skybox

>>228445 >but I did it anyway to see what happened and it doesn't seem like they mind. Once you wasted enough money and the planet economy stops being in the red and seems like it might actually make money. They'll come and bomb you back into the stone age. >Sounds time consuming. It depends. Do you have a 64-bit operating system if you don't nothing you can do. Also how much ram do you have to work with?

Have you ever found a fully loaded missile frigate just lying by the side of the road?

>>228274 They'd have to make a configuration GUI app for it. It's written into the Java VM, sadly, nothing they can do about it unless they port their engine to a new language. Well, maybe the best they could do is have an ingame setting but it wouldn't take effect until you restart the game... >Did you actually go through a list of hundreds of mods to install the ones you wanted? Thankfully the mods for this game are autistically documented on their forums so you can go to a single thread and gauge which mods will work with others and get a general idea of what they are like. It even tells you how vanilla-friendly the faction addons are (with generally good accuracy).

>>228594 >Once you wasted enough money and the planet economy stops being in the red and seems like it might actually make money. They'll come and bomb you back into the stone age. God damn, this game is really unforgiving, in the sense that if you fuck up something seemingly small and harmless it might as well be game over. I fucked up a transport contract earlier and they sent a fucking armada after me that was impossible to dodge or beat. >Do you have a 64-bit operating system Yes. Are there actually people with 32 bits OSes in current year+7? >Also how much ram do you have to work with? 32gb.

>>228274 >God damn, this game is really unforgiving, in the sense that if you fuck up something seemingly small and harmless it might as well be game over. Yeah, it's highly reminiscent of Mount & Blade in that regard. I guess I'm used to it from also having played that game since beta.

>>228222 >You don't really need a bigger sector than vanilla since you didn't add that many factions, and yes this is a big offender. I mostly wanted a bigger scale, so if I decide to play again I will definitely cut the density down so that I'd end up with roughly vanilla number of worlds. >Mechanical drive or SSD? Mechanical. I didn't play long with this situation, so I doubt it did much damage. >Clear commands mod It was released some time after I stopped playing. Thanks for recommendation, it seems like it's exactly what I need. Actually, now that I think about it I did see some really weird fleet formations in my game, especially around core Hegemony systems. See picrelated. >>228298 >That's painful. Can't you at least get one more ram stick? Got 2 slots of DDR2 filled with 2 GB sticks. At this point I'd rather save up for a new PC than pay for overpriced 4 GB DDR2 sticks. >>228445 In vanilla you can build a colony in another faction's system if you're commissioned by them. If not they're gonna send bombardment fleets to fuck it up until either you or them have no presence in the system.

>>228773 >I'd rather save up for a new PC than pay for overpriced 4 GB DDR2 sticks. Salvage some out of a Teddy Ruxspin.

>>228773 >that picture Yep, Vayra's Sector shenanigans, the problem with this mod it increases the number of fleets factions deploy but the big problem comes from most of said fleets NEVER despawn, ergo the clusterfuck.

>>228469 Only because it's slow as fuck. It's decent for ST, due highest storage capacity. >>228638 Yes, but only once. Also it had 2% of hull remaining and one shield left.

>>228773 So I tried out ClearCommands on my old save and this is what I got out of it. After this game saved just fine, took about a minute like it should. If I didn't have a bunch of mods with save-incompatible updates I could've just continued the session. But now that I'm gonna start a new campaign, are there any (small) ship mods that you'd recommend?

>>220736 why not just temporarily ally with the diktat via commission?

>>229064 >>220736 My favorite campaign was one where I founded a couple of colonies that completely deposed the Diktat's Middle Eastern oil baron hold on all of the antimatter fuel trade, and they declared war on me for it. Fucking space semites ruining cheap fuel for everyone.

>>229064 >>229112 I hate the Sindrian Diktat. Though to be fair i hate the majority of the factions ingame for taxing the shit out of me and several other slights. But the Sindrian Diktat holds a special place in my heart. You see when i first started this game i told myself i'd be a good boy and i wouldn't comprise my morals to get rich. I'd be a friend to all the factions by trading with them and helping them complete contracts. I don't need to tell you that not only was this foolish but it was an impractical way of making money. Every week you'd make just enough to cover repairs, buy fuel, buy supplies, pay your men, and have just enough money for market speculation. Soon the reward money from the hegemony began to dry up and things began to look dire. I was looking at selling some ships and letting men go. But i endured, i endured like no other motherfucker before me had. Finally the Hegemony issued a contract to explore some planet somewhere. The money was good and i had enough supplies to make the round trip. So i embarked on the journey, and i had to fight off waves and waves of pirates incidentally around this time they started using their capital ships on me. But the kicker was that i had found the mother load of all mother loads, i was looking at a treasure trove of REDACTED goods. Everything from weapons to blueprints to even the coveted Alpha I was rolling in goods that would set a spacer for life. Now the smart thing to do would have been to sell to Tri Tachyon because they pay extra. But since i wanted to be a good friend to the Diktat i sold it to them. Now flushed with cash the future seemed limitless. I could upgrade my ships to something worth a damn, i could travel further, protect myself, anything i wanted was in reach. I planned on leaving the sector to buy some capital class ships. But then i saw it. in the far reachs of Askonia there were two habitable planets. Like twin jewels they shined. So i scouted them and discovered the hazard ratings weren't so bad 125-150%. And the resources the planet had could make up for it. But best of all i was going to be buddy buddy with the sindrian diktat. For you see i had reached a 100 reputation with them and It seemed like such a good idea. But getting a colony started takes money and after much calculation i discovered i would still be short a few hundred thousand. So i borrowed money from Tri tachyon and took odd jobs here and there. But slowly my twin colonies were beginning to take shape. And then the Diktat came, no quarter was given, no pleas were accepted they came and bombarded my planet with the weapons i sold them. They rained death on my planet turning a beautiful planet into barren wastelands. The ships and goods i kept in storage the money i had invested all gone. When the second wave came to finish off my 2nd colony i saw the writing on the wall i took what goods i could and fled. My colonies were destroyed and i was ruined. Unable to pay the loans to Tri Tachyon my reputation was ruined there too. I was hunted by the Diktat and Tri Tachyon wherever they found me. I wandered the solar winds and i hated. Hated the diktat for ruining me, hated tri tachyon for hounding me. I had to let go of Star captains who had supported me in my space faring adventures, ships that were now too expensive to maintain. I was forced to start from the beginning with nothing but the basics and then i took inventory of my stock. Everything i had taken with me in my flight was illegal. Coveted Alphas, Heavy weapons, drugs, etc. Things that could not be sold. And so in my weakest moment i abandoned my morals, i sold weapons to the luddic paths, drugs to miners, and sold marines who could no longer be kept to pirates. I was making money faster than before but I had become the very thing i despised. But the last most cruelest blow was i realized i no longer cared. And so i wandered space fulfilling contracts and killing any Sindrian and Tri tacyhon ship that crossed my path. From a would be planetary power to a pirate. Then as i was hiding from patrols, i found it. For in the Duzahk system i found a terran and tundra planet worh colonizing. Was this a sign? Could this be a chance to start over? And so i used up the illegal money i had gained to rebuild what i had lost. Since i didnt want to go searching for administrators i decided to leave governing to the REDACTED i had taken with me when i fled. And what a governor he made, managed to be better then the last two people combined. But then the FUCKING HEGEMONY came and demanded to inspect my colonies. The Ludds got jealous of my farming. And the Diktat with Tri Tachyon was raiding my merchant caravans. And that is the story of why i hate every single worthless faction in this game.

>>229207 For me it was like clockwork. I wasn't sure I would be able to make a lot of money on fuel trade, but my colonies, despite being easy to inhabit, didn't have many other resources and if I remember right fuel doesn't need expensive resources to synthesize. I watched as AI-governed refineries boosted my market share to around 40%, giving the Hegemony 100k to fuck off all the while and making enough bank not to care. Then, the moment I reached 49% and breached the glass ceiling of 50%, the Diktat came after me. Sore losers, those cunts.

>>229231 Was my first playthrough in only understood the bare minimum it was still the funnest i've ever had. But i really learned to hate em. Especially the Diktat. Got into the fuel business just to piss them off and then felt justified about wiping them out.

>>229231 Fuel is huge money. In fact I think its one of the best. Get some volatiles production and you can rake in 70k easy and more with a bigger colony. I just swiped sindra from the league becausein nex you can apparently invide while another invasion is going on so I just cucked them after they blew the station. I make so much dough I can afford to send invasion fleets now. Maybe Ill just take over the sectornow.

>>229241 Volatiles, that was it. I seem to remember one of the nearby systems had a major producer of them and they were dirt cheap. I hauled them to my colonies myself until they could sustain themselves and invested into refineries first. It was a good way to bootstrap a colony.

>starsector >explore countless systems and planets in search of the special one for my first colony >finally find it, it's in the middle of nowhere but it's comfy >work hard to get money to send back >slowly see the deserted far away system get populated with other ships and fleets >pirates say they're gonna rape it god fucking dammit.

>>229755 Pirates gotta pirate

>>226875 I don't remember, but I do remember that virtually every single Imperial carrier has way, way more TIEs than any comparable Rebel option. I like it because it's autistic enough to even model the price/rarity of some craft more than others; TIEs are cheapest of all, followed by old Z-95 Headhunters, followed by Y-Wings, and so on and so on. When you're fielding TIE Defenders or whatever you have comparitively few of them to model that they're harder to make.

>>229755 Pro tip: you can destroy the pirate stations a bit more easily if you raid them a couple of times beforehand to reduce stability. You'll also get some more goodies out of it this way.

This starcom nexus game looks nice. Is it?

>>230321 >Sirokos It's probably best buyable ship of that class. Also just wait until you see fully armed M2 in action.

>>230321 >>230407 Considering you're directly comparing it to a Hyperion, I feel the need to mention the actual best ship in the game

>>230424 Admittedly LU nerfs it into the ground and then makes it virtually unobtainable anyway, but then every ship sucks in LU.

>>230407 Its not my first playthrough, I usually go with Hyperion or the split M6s because I have a need for speed, but the Sirokos is just a straight upgrade at this point. >>230424 Spergblossom would be a fine alternative but it trades nearly half of its shields for a 20m/s boost in speed and thats a no-go for a playership. Now AP-Gunner on the other hand is barely armed for an M6 but has a retard strong shield regen, making it essentially immune to fighters. >>230425 Theres a script in the submod section that allows you to buy Goner ships at the OTAS shipyard, they all trade off raw damage for something else tho so theres no gamebreakage going on with the inclusion.

>>230440 > for a 20m/s In an unmodded game, Springblossoms top speed (upgraded) is 360m/s. It's almost 3x what you expect from another M6, only M5 scouts are faster, and not even all of those. The Hyperion for comparison has a top upgraded speed of 169.3m/s, almost 200m/s less than springy.

>>230425 >every ship sucks in LU. No shit. Lowered max speed in everything was most annoying thing for me. I raised top speed in every ship per about 1/3 of their original one in all classes and rate of fire per same amount in all weapons for balance.

>>230516 Basically LU is designed to minimize the effect of piloting skill as much as possible. It wants fleet management and strategy to be the only way, and it does that by making aim, dodging and reactions meaningless. Then it goes and makes the grind to build up a fleet incredibly difficult and/or time consuming by multiplying the prices of everything you buy and reducing or closing the margins on whatever you sell. Which in turn makes any kind of fleet combat incredibly punishing and undesirable. I really fucking hate that mod. It's nice to have a major threat to give you some kind of direction in your game, but every other change is for the worse.

>>230521 >Basically LU is designed to minimize the effect of piloting skill as much as possible. The argument Litcube himself made was that less pew pew per second allows for larger battles at the same performance, as opposed to XRM which had more pew pew per second but completely shat on performance in large battles. LU is essentially optimized for stability with big battles. >It wants fleet management and strategy to be the only way, and it does that by making aim, dodging and reactions meaningless. When I use my HOTAS setup Im able to evade about 70% of the shots of an M6, you may need to git gud. If anything the slow fire rates make it easier to dodge and maneuver. >Then it goes and makes the grind to build up a fleet incredibly difficult and/or time consuming by multiplying the prices of everything you buy and reducing or closing the margins on whatever you sell. After 3 physical ingame days Ive set up 10 SCHs and am pulling 200 mil per hour, if I would stay at that rate without scaling it up I would have enough dakka to be able to wipe out the current and any following Phanon generation as soon as they spawn in about 3 hours. I mean I get your issues with it as compared to the base game or XRM, but all of those issues are only issues if you refuse to adapt to a new meta, which requires different strategies and a different type of progression to succeed.

>>230086 >You'll also get some more goodies out of it this way How does that work exactly? Also is there a way to have them fuck off completely? I've blown out of the sky two of their stations but they always return after 1 or 2 months, which is a problem because it doesn't let me do much else other than handling them. Fortunately I somehow found a fucking cruiser floating in space which although it's an expensive piece of shit helps a bit against the station.

>>230855 >How does that work exactly? Get some marines on board, turn off transponder, go to pirate station, raid it. As long as there are no ships around the station to defend it you can raid the station to your heart's content, although you will get less and less goods each time you do it. Each time you raid the station it gets a temporary -3 to stability which stacks infinitely. Lower stability also means that the station itself will be slightly easier to destroy. >Also is there a way to have them fuck off completely? Not in vanilla. I think if you get a good reputation with them they stop raiding your colonies, but I'm not entirely sure.

>>230861 Ah, I'll get some marines the next time I'm near the main planets. The loot for simply destroying a station is rather mediocre. >Lower stability also means that the station itself will be slightly easier to destroy. In what way? After I've raided do I have to wait some time for the low stability to affect things? >Not in vanilla Well that fucking sucks. I like blowing pirates up but this is really going to interfere with the game soon. Now the fucking pathers got a grudge against me too. Also I'm level 42 and I only have 1 colony, is that somehow weird?

>>231031 >In what way? After I've raided do I have to wait some time for the low stability to affect things? No its instanteous, usually it low stability means you bombed the crap out of their station or planet so they're starting to feel the effects The long way is when you cripple their economy by destroying their merchant caravans. >is really going to interfere with the game soon Yeah and thats why the mods were made, because pirates and some other factions became increasingly annoying. >Also I'm level 42 and I only have 1 colony, is that somehow weird? No because you play how you want, its open ended and the game hasnt been completed yet.

I'm upset I missed countless cool battle moves but have this shit I managed to record at least.

>>232183 >killing spree Nice but that better not be your mid tech Battlestation

>>232186 It is, why?

>>232186 >>232187 Wait no, it's s simple orbital station.

>>232188 Mid tech orbital stations are the worst investments one can make. Ironically both Low tech and and High tech are better by far. You'll understand once you've fought them yourself. in order for High Tech to truly shine you need to buy alot of high tech blu prints if you're unable to low tech will serve your defending needs far better

>>232183 >Dominator Always a good choice if you're not that familiar with the game. I'm playing the Tiandong Heavy Industries mod (basically Chinese heavy industry, most of their ship designs are clearly heavily modified existing designs like the Venture) and I enjoy their ship lineup so far. They have a siege cruiser that is one of those "We designed this gun, so now we need a ship to put it in" types of designs. Sneaking a torpedo-sized cannon shell past directional shields at 1000+ range is incredibly satisfying. It also gives an orbital bombardment bonus and as you might expect from the name, is very useful for sieging stations.

>>232191 God dammit anon. I researched but didn't find any indication they were worse than the rest, and after fighting both them and the low tech variant I actually had a lot more trouble fighting the mid techs so I purchased those for my planets. The low techs having only 1 heavy side out of 3, at least without upgrades, discouraged me further. >>232243 Funny story, I found it floating in space by pure chance. It's come super handy. I don't particularly like it, it's slow and doesn't really pack much of a punch against armor in the way I managed to configure it, but it has reach and it provides the advantage when needed. It also overheats very fast when shooting the anti armor canons. Definitely better than the Venture though, those are utter shit. I did a move earlier where I engaged the burner drive and arrived in the middle of a battle shooting on all cannons and blew up a bunch of shit but I failed to record it. That kind of shit is exciting, it's like making a multi kill shooting from the hip in an FPS! I'm now at a point where I can't move away from my planets because there's always some raid going on, and this is at just 2 colonies. First were the pirates. Then there were more pirates. Then I had to fuck up a pather base as a preventive measure. Then it was penis inspection day. Then some faggots were annoyed I was too successful. Then some other faggots were annoyed at me supplying drugs. Then more pirates. Now more anti drug fags and pirates at the same time. Nigger I want to explore, fuck off. Worse, this is going to end up with me being enemies with everyone. I kill their expeditions with ease for now but I'm not gonna be able to keep doing this forever. I guess if their expedition size keeps constant and I upgrade my orbital stations then I could move away from them, is this viable?

>>232248 I think you should probably try to upgrade your fleets by providing industry for it, although this may require you to make another colony. Pirates have shitty ships so if you can make good quality ships with the amount of blueprints you usually get, you should be all right to leave them

>>232090 Nice. Amount of credits needed to repair that carrier will be painful though.

>>232191 Mid-tech is the best station. High tech stations get fucked in multiple successive battles, unless they've fixed it. When the battle readiness depletes, parts of the station stop functioning. The first fucking thing to go on High Tech is the shield generator. So if you have to fight two or three times in a row, the station becomes useless. Low Tech stations are just sitting ducks to begin with. Low shields, all they do is armor tank and die. They do technically have the best damage output, but defense>offense in station battles. Mid Tech's rapid spin makes it the toughest to kill in the long run. The AI isn't good at focusing a single component at the best of times, and the fast spinning allows the mid tech station to regen shields before the enemy can take them down.

>>232255 >>232191 Also when attacking enemy stations, High>Mid>Low. On the first assault, High Tech stations are fucking invincible, and since you generally only make one assault yourself, that makes them the hardest nuts to crack. Midline stations rapid spin still makes them annoying as hell. Low tech stations are easy, either just overwhelming them or using player ship tactics to poke at the exposed parts.

>>232255 crisisaverted.png Them spinning faster is a good point. It's fun seeing the AI vent the flux when the side that has been shooting turns the other side. It's like a well oiled killing machine. >>232253 Wouldn't the colony suffer stability penalties even if they can fend off for themselves? I'm at a point where I have to choose to make a heavy industry or fuel production in my industrial colony. Heavy industry seems to produce products which have a very small market so they'll bring less income, and at the same time I doubt the ships they could produce will be worth a damn given the amount of d-mods. Fuel production seems to be a really good market and I found an ancient artifact that would give a good boost to production, plus my productive colony produces tons of volatiles so they'd compliment each other.

>>232261 Fuel is excellent if you want pure money, so I don't blame you for choosing it on your first colony. Be aware that the Sindrians don't really like people muscling in on their fuel business though, they're basically oil barons. Building heavy industry increases the quality of your fleets in all your colonies, I believe, just for having it. It's always better to source your parts from in-house instead of abroad because you get only the leftovers from other factions, is the reasoning.

>>232261 Fuel production is a money printer, especially if you've got a synchrotron. Do note that Diktat will hate your guts for daring to compete with them in fuel market. Heavy industry produces ship hulls, supplies, and weapons which are required on almost every market. On top of that you can upgrade it to an orbital shipyard and shove a nanoforge in it to boost production quality and industrial output (only for the latter). Heavy industry will also improve the quality of your faction's defense fleets, so I'd make it a priority sooner than later.

>>232264 >>232271 I really hate the balance of this game. It has way too much negative feedback. Anyway, thanks for the advice. I think I'll go for the heavy industries to avoid getting even more enemies at this stage, plus better fleets and having a source of supplies far from the main planets is encouraging. >orbital shipyard I barely have enough money for the heavy industries, orbital shipyard will likely be something for (much) later. I'm curious about something else too. Can the AI claim Domain derelicts and weapon caches? Oh, and by the way, what's the deal with the story of this game? I feel like I've missed something because I just jumped right into it and there's no explanation about anything and you can only grasp bits and pieces from descriptions.

>>232275 I would suggest building fuel production now (since you have a synchrotron) and constructing another colony with heavy industry in the same system. >Can the AI claim Domain derelicts and weapon caches? Nope, just you. >Oh, and by the way, what's the deal with the story of this game? I feel like I've missed something because I just jumped right into it and there's no explanation about anything and you can only grasp bits and pieces from descriptions. The game is still in development and the story is fairly low priority. There's some stuff expanding on the lore on official site somewhere, plus scenarios depict some historic events as playable battles. The real story is the friends you make along the way :^)

>>232271 I hope you read my post before posting because I'm uncomfortable with how similar your post is. >>232275 >>232282 The setting is pretty detailed, but there isn't any plot events yet. Supposedly the next update is going to be adding story progression or something like that. There is at least one quest in the game (the Red Planet quest you get from a random spacer in a bar), and some mods add them too. If you're interested in the background lore, there's a fair bit. It's similar to 40k in that humanity was a giant empire in space, then it fell apart because their FTL highways stopped working all of a sudden. Also, production was driven by nanoforges which use blueprints with DRM on them, and since the connection to the company servers stopped, nobody could manufacture anything. So yes, it's a regressive sci-fi game where the fall from grace was caused by DRM. I believe Tri-Tachyon is the company that was responsible for creating the copy-protected chips.

>>232282 >constructing another colony with heavy industry in the same system I don't think there's another planet in the system. Even if there were, I couldn't afford everything. >The game is still in development and the story is fairly low priority Oh, alright. It's just that there seemed to be so much more behind it, and all of it is so detailed and interesting. >spoiler what >>232285 >Red Planet quest I got that one, I just haven't been able to complete it because everything keeps getting in my way. I'm sad to hear there aren't more, I was hoping there were. >since the connection to the company servers stopped, nobody could manufacture anything Then how is it supposed to work in the game since nanoforges and blueprints work but the FTL highways are still non functional? >Tri-Tachyon is the company that was responsible for creating the copy-protected chips. All the lore around Tri-Tachyon seems really interesting, both from the faction description and what the remnants say when you try to speak to them. It feels they could write a whole book about this stuff.

>>232294 Presumably either Tri-Tachyon updated their shitty API because they have a presence in every sector, or someone just cracked the DRM. I'm not super keen on the details.

>>232254 The amount of credits needed for the maintenance of the carrier itself isnt really the problem, its the fighters. 6M to 9M for a decent M3 plus kit x65, adjusted for attrition and maintenance is an absolutely fuckhuge pile of credits. In LU M5s are just glorified combat drones, and M4s are essentially you converting your credits directly into burst damage. I used to do the repair laser SETA switcharoo back in the day, but then I spared myself the hassle and just installed the 10x repair laser mod. With the mod you just have to weigh down the ctrl key with a lighter and go do something else for a couple of minutes. Also the fact that the best strategy to deal with any M7 is to just unload a dozen IBLs point blank and ram it is pretty hilarious. Never fails to induce a sensible chuckle.

>>232321 >ram There are some ships in Starsector that have abilities that allow them to boost, some in short boosts and some in longer continuous bursts, and I swear I've seen the AI effectively use it as a ramming weapon in several instances in ways that seemed actually deliberate. One case was specially fun >be in middle of battle >a ship is shooting at me and is about to destroy my ship >friendly ship nearby >sets course to get in the way of the other ship shooting at me >boosts and gets in the way >effectively blocks the other ship from shooting at me >sets collision course to the enemy ship >boosts towards it and rams it to push it away >mfw

>>232369 I always rammed shit with the onslaught because how fuckhuge and durable it is. Doesn't work against paragons, though, so I have a paragon now.

>>232191 >in order for High Tech to truly shine you need to buy alot of high tech blu prints This is something I've read when researching which station to construct but I don't understand. I imagined the weapons the station gets is somehow related to the blueprints you have, but after building the midlines I don't find any reference to that anywhere and I can't choose or adjust anything. Is this somehow different for the high techs or am I missing something? God I can't wait for the day to be over to boot up the game and blow some stuff up.

>>232369 If you like ramming, you should hang out with Pathers. They like a good suicide rush.

>>232620 Check the Doctrine tab, you can set which weapons are used by your fleets (and orbital stations by extension).

>>232620 Stations are equipped with the tech most optimal to the build. If you don't have the corresponding tech they'll fill in their weapon slots with weapons one slot lower. In this case high tech stations may find themselves using mining lasers which are sub optimal for defense. Which is why its recommended to have all corresponding blu prints. To give your high tech battle stations fighter jets and lasers that pierce the enemy >>232369 > ramming weapon in several instances in ways that seemed actually deliberate. It is deliberate and if you have a heavily armored ship you'll find yourself doing it too. >>232255 i dont know if they've fixed it but i remember entering your colony and repairing your ship might repair them too. But generally its the fourth battle in a row that incapacitates them. But by then everything should be dead. >low tech low shields What the hell? Are we talking tier 1 or Tier 3 stations? >>232275 >Oh, and by the way, what's the deal with the story of this game The flaw in this game is that there is very little story. Something everyone who plays this game laments.

>>232275 >>232282 >>232714 >story Its about as deep as the faction lore and motivation. You might little blurbs on ship descriptions too. One fan story I was amused by is that the derelict ring gates were used to travel the galaxy. So Earth sector hyped it up, sent the fucking crazy faction leaders through, then destroyed the gates

Looks like one of the Starsector devs has cancer and might RIP it https://mobile.twitter.com/amosolov/status/1359209413714845700

>>221663 >SC funds drying out Nice to hear, how is Star Shitizen faring now? They must be getting some flak. I just realised they're the Scientology of game devs: >doughy leader who hangs out on a boat >his unrealistic vision is never questioned >product is perpetually unfinished >always costs MOAR >$10,000 if you want to *start* getting anywhere >$50,000+ if you want the 'good' non-existent shit >shoddy bits and pieces released that don't add up to anything >none of the tech works like it's advertised >ludicrous propaganda videos full of lies and empty promises >ex-supporters fill internet pages with scorn deriding it as a scam >legion of dupe supporters will attack anyone who criticises it >scant few new members who aren't totally in the dark about its past And so apparently >only funded by whales who're already suckered in by the sunk cost fallacy It's a wonder they've not applied for tax exempt status yet they way they're going.

>>232714 >low tech low shields >What the hell? Are we talking tier 1 or Tier 3 stations? Tier 3 obviously. Lower tier stations are barely speed bumps and hardly worth mentioning. Now I can't remember if low tech stations had shields at all. It's been a good while since I've played the game. If they didn't though, there wouldn't be anything to stop you from just shutting them down with tachyon lances, and I don't remember them being THAT defenseless. In either case, the point is still valid. Whether they have low shields or no shields, it's still a major weakness in extended combat.

Just made a tour throughout the system wasting pirates and raking in bounty credits. I lost hundreds of crew over the course of the tour and had to return because I didn't have enough to keep my ships in shape, besides people were waiting in line to be killed at my colonies too. I'll have to look for another planet to settle with the fresh dough. The retarded AI on my ships is getting on my nerves though, however in some cases I have to admit it makes some really cool moves. >>232696 That tab looks like a mess so I never bothered with it. Additionally only now I'm actually starting to get fleets. In the case of stations, when does that take effect? Next time I build an orbital station, or does my current stations eventually get re equipped? >>232724 >sent the fucking crazy faction leaders through, then destroyed the gates I wouldn't blame them, those faggots are insufferable. >>232835 FUG. >>232984 Low tech doesn't have shields at all on level 1. Mid tech does.

>>233109 Have you experimented with the command and control interface yet? You can order your ships around much like an RTS, but it uses up Command Points which you mostly increase through character skills. They slowly regenerate over time. You can tell them to escort particular ships, guard a location, go all-out on the attack or retreat, eliminate a particular ship right now (this one is very useful if one of the enemy ships is lured out of position) or take one of the capture points in the bigger battles.

>>233130 Personally I tend to find that giving ships orders ends up worse than letting them do their own thing. They still only follow your commands very loosely, yet the orders put some hard restrictions on how they can maneuver and end up getting them killed even faster. Figuring out how to build a fleet that the AI can use effectively is most of the challenge in the game.

>>232724 >>233109 Im just going to greentext Sseth review on Starsector so here it is in its full glory > Story! Okay, nobody gives a shit. So I'm gonna be quick: >Right, so in StarSector™, humanity figured out faster than light travel. >We colonized thousands of worlds spanning hundreds of galaxies using the relays from Mass Effect, >which were the only practical way of crossing galaxies. They *were* the only practical way until suddenly (nobody knows exactly why) all the gate systems went dead. >We could no longer reach the rest of humanity. >This event is referred to as "The Collapse" and marks the end of the prosperous Domain Era. >In an isolated galaxy, 206 cycles after the collapse, our story takes place. >Common humanity has been replaced with ambition, desperation, and conflict. >Our future is bleak and we don't know what tomorrow might hold for us.

>Welcome to StarSector™ - basically everything's a piece of shit. >We're in the Galactic version of the Dark Ages, but it's super fun~ >Nobody remembers how to make anything anymore, mainly because of DRM and copyright laws. >I'm not kidding; That is the actual in-game reason. >We can't reliably make new ships or machinery because all the corporations put copy protection on their design chips. >Anyway, in the chaos that followed, everybody broke off into their own respective factions and keep dick-waving each other.

>>233130 Yes, I use it extensively, but the ships are just retarded >be defending station >order ships to gather next to the station, but a little bit behind it >ships reach target waypoint, then go chase ships on their own >their 'movement arrow' in the command interface shows they're supposed to go towards the waypoint >they ignore it, keep doing their thing and moving away from it until they get destroyed by the incoming wave of enemies >be in battle >realize AI is retarded so use many more ships than necessary for the battle >order ships to waypoint >start fighting >suddenly I'm alone and getting my ass kicked >a quarter of my destroyers went chasing an enemy shuttle >another quarter went to capture some irrelevant comm station >another quarter got their ass kicked before me because of being left alone >eliminate a particular ship right now (this one is very useful if one of the enemy ships is lured out of position) It rarely ever succeeds because the enemy ship just keeps running and my ships are too coward and stupid to rush the ship to destroy it. What this means is that the ships I send will get busy doing nothing for most of the battle and contribute nothing. I'm still not sure what's a good tactic to use. I think pairing ships together works best, but it's still not good enough. >>233138 I hope they find a way to tell the story that makes it as interesting as it looks in the game. This abridged version is very unsatisfying.

>>233133 The only two orders I tend to use are defend a location or attack a particular ship. >>233156 Yeah, they tend to get baited pretty hard by engagements and their positioning can be manipulated too easily. That's the biggest problem but it's also your biggest advantage against the enemy factions. >It rarely ever succeeds because the enemy ship just keeps running and my ships are too coward and stupid to rush the ship to destroy it. I only use it when the enemy ship is out of position and only on the ships that are nearby to the target. If there are other enemy ships between them and the target, you probably won't get them to go where you want them to.

Fuck, I need some advice for very early game in Starsector with Nex. I decided to do a small fleet start at level 1 and I'm getting absolutely fucked by the tiniest of pirate fleets.

I love the sound of armament impacting against naked hull. That carrier of mine is actually really OP, I wouldn't have noticed if not because of going over the footage but he nuked two Hammerheads in a row here and torpedoed a cruiser in the previous set. Helped bomb the hell out of the battlecruiser here too. >>233184 What's Nex? You seem to know a lot more than I do about the game so I don't think there's any valuable advice I could give you.

>>233273 Nexerelin, a mod that brings some 4X mechanics into the game. Allows NPC factions to grow and expand, wage war on one another and gives you some victory conditions to strive for.

>>233184 I generally start with exploration contracts. Buy some cheap tankers and go to the edge of the galaxy, cause the smaller your fleet the less you're paying in fuel. There's also looking for good trade/delivery jobs. I once found a contract for delivery of around 500 units of Heavy Armaments for 300k credits. Incredibly space efficient for the money.

>>233288 My issue was the fact that I had no money or cargo space to get a long-range exploration fleet or a good shipment of commodities. I think I have a plan now though - I'll borrow some dosh from Tri-Tachyon, get a couple freighters, load them up with luxury goods and go straight to Xhan space to offload shit. Then I'll just install sniffer and scoop up supply contracts for them. Should make me some decent dosh this way.

>>233355 >borrowing money from the triple jew Honestly, you don't even need exploration contracts, just dip into random star systems until you find a derelict mining station.

How do I into fighting carrier fleets? There's a really sweet bounty contract literally next to my colony and I thought it was going to be easy cash but they completely rape my fleet no matter what I bring. I can't even get close to them because they have a ridiculous amount of fighter wings. For some reason I'm also only allowed to field a battleship, a cruiser, and a handful of destroyers, but they somehow can field all the ships in their fleet. What gives? >(((dickerson)))

>>233973 >dickerson has an astral Looks like someones reached endgame, and yeah Astral are one of the most OP ships in this game > field a battleship, a cruiser, and a handful of destroyers Yeah you're not going to be able to take them on without sacrificing everything you got. >For some reason I'm also only allowed to field a battleship, a cruiser, and a handful of destroyers, but they somehow can field all the ships in their fleet Computers a cheating bastard.

>>233973 Wow, that's a nasty one. 9 Herons, 6 Dovers and a fucking supercarrier. Jesus. >>233991 Does the computer really just get more ships to field at once? I forgot/hadn't noticed this. It's funny because it reminds me of the Tactics skill in Mount&Blade, which allows you to field more of your army at once. But there doesn't seem to be an equivalent in this game.

>>233993 >Does the computer really just get more ships to field at once? Ai has its limits but it can field more then you ever could. you can barely field 2 capitals yet the AI can get 3 on the field with some escorts for good measure.

>>233991 Encouraging. I'm tempted to build a point-defense exclusive fleet to see what happens, but that would take way too long for what it'd be. >Looks like someones reached endgame I guess. Colonies are producing a shitton of money which is nice and allows me to expand effortlessly. They aren't even that big in terms of population and industries, and only now I realized I could upgrade their starports and I think I'm gonna be showering with credits when that's done due to all the additional accessibility they're gonna bring. I'm still cautions about overexpanding however because I can see how stretching myself thin could be a huge mistake. Today was rather peaceful compared to yesterday and I'm considering establishing a base on the other side of the system to use it as a staging base to explore the rest of the system since I've explored all the reasonably close areas near my colonies and I want to see what's on the other side (besides pirates and pathers, all the bounties are far away from me). Does having heavy industry on more than one planet stack the benefit to colonies' fleet %?

any new updates on Star Sector? been playing it on and off and hoping theres updates that lets factions colonize planets, more ships and so on without mods

>>234002 >>233993 >>233991 What you can field is based on the total "strength" value of each fleet present in the battle, and the game settings for maximum battle size. The fleets are weighed against each other (including reserve ships), and then each one is assigned a portion of the maximum deployment, with the stronger fleet getting the larger portion. It can be useful to keep "dummy" ships in your fleet just to stack the deployment advantage in your favor. >>233973 Doesn't look like they have a good lineup of fighters. I'd probably just roll over them with my paragon and odysseys personally, but I've never encountered a fleet that stacked before so maybe it would be harder than it looks. I know drovers and astrals can be insane when set up properly, but they can also be utterly useless when loaded improperly.

>>234004 The dev posted a blog about the next update not too long ago. It will be story-focused so you will get more quests to do and whatnot. >lets factions colonize planets, more ships and so on without mods Honestly the mods do a pretty good job, especially when it comes to adding new ships/factions. I can't even tell the difference in quality vs. vanilla most of the time.

>>234004 >Does having heavy industry on more than one planet stack the benefit to colonies' fleet %? From what i remember bonuses don't stack but you'd still want them for the money Honestly it pays to have carriers too, they're a good counter and a good ship to have. >>234004 Last news was december and it was focused on story, official twitter says that one of the devs has cancer. >>234007 I don't know if thats true, i have never been able to field 3 capital classes with escorts to boot, but the AI manages that with no problem

>>234003 >I'm tempted to build a point-defense exclusive fleet to see what happens In my experience, point-defense is so utterly useless that I tend to leave many of the smaller slots completely empty on my ships. Easier to just rely on shields and direct firepower. >>234004 >hoping theres updates that lets factions colonize planets From my experience with mods, that tends to snowball badly. It always ends either with factions wiping each other out without your input, or when you do join the war you end up scrambling to keep up with their colonization, barely killing one before another pops up. >>234012 > I can't even tell the difference in quality vs. vanilla most of the time. I can, easily. There are very few faction mods that keep vanilla flavor. >>234013 The Paragon+Odysseys are easy, the difficult part is getting the astrals out as well. Eventually I just changed the config file to allow for much larger max battle size across the board, so I could field everything I wanted and face truely massive enemy fleets. >with escorts That's what the odysseys are. Anything smaller than a capital is a liability the way I fleetbuild. Smaller ships pop without warning.

>>234004 >hoping theres updates that lets factions colonize planets That sounds horrifying. >>234007 >and then each one is assigned a portion of the maximum deployment, with the stronger fleet getting the larger portion. Huh, I didn't know that. I thought carrying more ships into that battle was useless since I could only field so few of them. So if I bring 5 capital ships and a truckload of destroyers and carriers I can suffocate the AI's ability to field ships into the battle? >Doesn't look like they have a good lineup of fighters It could be because that's as much as it would fit in one screen, but there's at least one more full screen full of more wings. >>234013 >but you'd still want them for the money I don't think they bring in as much money as other industries. I placed a light and heavy industry in a low hazard planet to reduce the upkeep and they make a fraction of the money that my other planet that produces ores and refined ores makes. >I don't know if thats true, i have never been able to field 3 capital classes with escorts to boot It kind of makes sense to me a bit, I swear I was able to field more ships in certain battles, but I thought it had to do with something else. >>234018 >In my experience, point-defense is so utterly useless that I tend to leave many of the smaller slots completely empty on my ships. Easier to just rely on shields and direct firepower. I do the same if the ship doesn't have good hardpoints for point-defense or if I could better use them for anti ship weapons. In the case of this battle more point-defense is needed to not get raped by the fighters.

>>234018 >It always ends either with factions wiping each other out without your input It's a personal preference thing, I don't mind it so much. I like adapting to a shifting sector. Also, I'm not sure which factions you have installed, but I'm ~6 years into my campaign and nobody has wiped each other out yet. Maybe it's different in the newest version of Nex, but the factions tend to sign a peace treaty before things get out of control. >In my experience, point-defense is so utterly useless that I tend to leave many of the smaller slots completely empty on my ships. Point defense lasers are quite good in my opinion, preferably the LR ones, other ones not as much. Larger mounts for PD, like flak cannons, are not bad either. Vulcans do a surprising amount of damage to missiles but are overall not worth it due to their ridiculously short range and relatively high OP cost. Remember the AI is not as good at dodging missiles and torps as you are.

What happens if a planet gets attacked in Starsector and the orbital station is undergoing upgrades?

>>235023 I'll reply to myself: the transition is abrupt when the upgrade is done and up until then the old station fights as normal.

<the attacking forces are outmatched and are likely to be defeated in space >outmatched help

>>235937 >pissing off the luddic church It was bound to happen sooner or later, but yeah you should run away. No way in hell it should catch up to you. Either that or just stay near your planet and station, hope its stupid to enough to attack your recon ships and then wait until its too weak before you pounce.

>>235937 >Some of the weakest ships in the game ton-for-ton >You have a station to defend I've fought off fleets of 20 Legions in station battles. They are all front shields, you have easy access to their engines and they have no means of escape.

>>235937 I'm pissing literally everyone off just by existing, much like in real life. I'm worried, I'm not enemies with anyone yet but they keep sending fleet after fleet and the reputation keeps getting lower and lower. >>236037 >fleets of 20 Legions That's insane. >They are all front shields, you have easy access to their engines and they have no means of escape. You make it sound easy to outmaneuver a fleet of humongous ships like that and not die.

>>236042 Nah in the case of the Legions I just push right up into their face with superior firepower and shields (IE a front-loaded Paragon with a bit of support). Then you just have the dominators to deal with, which you CAN outmaneuver easily if you want (a couple of player piloted Hyperions could easily destroy that entire fleet, the only issue is time). It's not like the AI actually positions the dominators to cover the Legions intentionally.

>>236042 >You make it sound easy to outmaneuver a fleet of humongous ships like that and not die. They're slow as shit, and you can switch ships, I use a phase ship, go behind them and then bomb their engines.

>>236050 Good point. A nuke-loaded Doom would tear that entire fleet apart.

>>236043 >Nah in the case of the Legions I just push right up into their face I just can't imagine doing that in a real battle because usually even in a 1v1 simulation capital ships do good damage against my own ships so doing it in a real battle surrounded by other dangerous ships sounds reckless. I guess the Paragon must be really OP. I actually just got my first one, first ship I ever get that has exactly 0 d-mods. Unfortunately my options for equipment are very limited right now so I'm not sure if I'm gonna use it or not. I have to also admit that bombing the shit out of everything with an onslaught is turned out to be fun. >a couple of player piloted Hyperions What do you mean exactly? It sounds like there's a feature I don't know about. >>236050 I guess I have a lot to learn still. I've never used a phase ship yet.

>>236147 The Hyperion is a super advanced, super rare frigate. It's ship system is "Phase Teleporter", which allows you to teleport the ship wherever you put the mouse, automatically turning to face the nearest/targeted enemy, with virtually no cooldown. It's exactly as powerful as it sounds. The downside is that the Hyperion has an extremely short peak performance time and costs almost as much as a Cruiser to deploy, and twice as much to maintain monthly, despite only being a frigate. Plus the AI can't pilot it nearly as well.

>>236162 I was referring to the part that I quoted. It sounded like there was some way to command more than one ship at the same time or something like that. I'm aware you can kind of do that by issuing orders (which the AI sucks at carrying out) or moving to another ship (which can take some time, so it may not be viable to disable a ship's engines and then move to a different ship to attack), but I thought there was something else. I guess what you meant was having more than one Hyperion and doing a gradual deploy so you can switch from one spent Hyperion to a brand new one.

>>236176 >I guess what you meant was having more than one Hyperion and doing a gradual deploy so you can switch from one spent Hyperion to a brand new one. Yes exactly. With only 2 minutes peak performance, you wouldn't be able to kill nearly that many dominators. 2 Hyperions/4 minutes should clean up at least half of them though, maybe nearly all with the station to help you.

>>236183 What about firepower? Because even if you're shooting at a Dominator with another cruiser and even if it doesn't raise the shields it would still take a pretty long time to take all the hitpoints from it's hull. Is there something about the engines that make a ship take additional hull damage or is there some really OP weapon to use that both inflicts an obscene amount of hull damage and also has such a low flux cost so that you can use it permanently to blow up several cruisers or battleships in a row?

>>236190 hittinng the engine effectively turns the ship into a sitting duck, Dominators shield only goes half way and leave their engines unprotected, so once you knock them out they're just going to sit their until you finish them off. And yes missles are extremely op but the downside is you can only bring in so much.

>>236190 I use two Phase Lances on my Hyperion personally, no other weapons. In mission mode sim (no player stats) I can kill 3 dominators before being forced to retreat. In battle, with player stats and a station to help, 4 seems pretty simple. 2x4 is exactly half the fleet pictured, they are also heavily d-modded so some of them probably have reduced hull/armor.

What's a good tactic to use against remnants? Between how retarded my AI ships are and how overpowered remnant ships are I'm having a lot of trouble going even against fleets of theirs which don't even have capital ships.

>>238708 My anti-remnant fleet is composed exclusively of Paragons, Odysseys, and Astrals. I've been able to clear up to a triple-fleet with 3 Radiants without suffering losses, though that's by no means something I can accomplish every time. I use an increased max deployment size in the config file, which increases the number of deployed ships for BOTH sides. It's technically fair if not necessarily balanced. My preferred fleet has 1 paragon, 3 Odysseys, and 2 Astrals. Paragon is my player ship, using Plasma Cannons (fixed) and Autopulse turrets. The Odysseys run 2x autopulse and Squall MLRS, usually with longbows for fighters. The Astrals are bomber ships, I've successfully used Khopesh, Spark, and Piranha bombers and I have a hard time saying for certain which of the three works best. It's absolutely imperative that all 6 fighter wings in the astral are identical though, and preferable if both Astrals use the same fighters as well. Keeps them using cohesive volleys and more effective recalls. I ignore point defenses almost entirely. Remnant fighters are too tough to kill with PD and missiles just get absorbed by massive shield efficiency. Sometimes I throw in some tempest frigates, but I'm not convinced they do anything useful and keeping them alive is all but impossible. The AI odysseys do a good job of covering each other, pushing in and then backing out to recover while another pushes in. Giving them any orders at all usually fucks that up. They harrass the sides and keep open a space for my player paragon to retreat. Astral bombers stay in the back and nuke shit, they are pretty much defenseless on their own. You have to make certain to secure as many kills on the mid-sized ships as possible as fast as possible, without pushing too hard and getting surrounded. Usually focusing the Radiants is a waste of time until later in the fight.

>>238806 Oh, my odyssey's officers are set to Aggressive. I want them to get as close as possible to whatever ship they are trying to kill, because that minimizes the chance it will be able to escape when its shields are low. Reckless though is just plain stupid. I don't typically bother with any kind of increased range hullmod, for any ship.

>>238806 >I've successfully used Khopesh, Spark, and Piranha bombers Correction: Flash bombers. There is a strategy revolving around a carrier fleet (drovers usually) filled with Sparks, but I doubt that works well against remnants, who have their own heavily shielded fighters to distract what should be focused firepower.

>>238806 >I use an increased max deployment size in the config file I was thinking of tampering with that eventually but I didn't want to before actually learning how to win on default settings. Besides, fleet size for normal battles seems okay or at least challenging, but the remnants completely fuck my shit up and deploying only 2 capitals or 1 capital and 2 cruisers is just nowhere near enough, so I thought there was some trick I was missing. >1 paragon, 3 Odysseys, and 2 Astrals That's a lot of ships, how big did you make the deployment size exactly? Also what's with the autopulse lasers? They seem really weak and only 2 plasma cannons is barely enough to go against bigger ships. >Giving them any orders at all usually fucks that up I guess I'll try to stop being a control freak. Not that it works at all anyway. >Astral bombers stay in the back and nuke shit That's what used to happen with my Condors but for some reason my Moras believe they're actual battlecruisers and rush head first into battle (only to throw stones at the other ships and be destroyed). Is this a matter of the loadout or are Moras supposed to act different? They're either unmanned or manned with a steady officer much like the Condors were, so it's not that it's a reckless officer doing it. Maybe I should get a couple of cautious/cowards officers to man them? >You have to make certain to secure as many kills on the mid-sized ships as possible as fast as possible, without pushing too hard and getting surrounded. Usually focusing the Radiants is a waste of time until later in the fight. Makes sense but having only 1 or maybe 2 other ships with me we can barely kill a few of the enemy ships before we're Zerg rushed and killed. It doesn't help that the Radiants completely dominate the battlefield with their long range beams and the warping they can do. >>238807 >I don't typically bother with any kind of increased range hullmod, for any ship. I used to think the increased range hullmods were the best option, and for my ship I think it still is because they're so advantageous, but considering the AI is so useless I think I should consider using other mods that would allow them to live a bit longer for me to take actual care of the enemies.

>>238806 >The Odysseys run 2x autopulse and Squall MLRS Oh, and I tried using a Squall on an Oddysey, but the AI would target Remnant frigates with the Squall so it would be completely wasted. It wouldn't even hit the frigates given that it's unguided. God I hate the AI.

>>239374 >That's what used to happen with my Condors but for some reason my Moras believe they're actual battlecruisers and rush head first into battle (only to throw stones at the other ships and be destroyed). Is this a matter of the loadout or are Moras supposed to act different? They're either unmanned or manned with a steady officer much like the Condors were, so it's not that it's a reckless officer doing it. Maybe I should get a couple of cautious/cowards officers to man them? They are tagged as combat ships, most other carriers are not. Nothing you can do about it unless you want to edit ship_data.csv

>>239374 >That's a lot of ships, how big did you make the deployment size exactly? I think 1000 points (default is 300, max with in-game settings is 500). I could be mistaken though, I don't exactly have my old install to check. Anyway, it's only 285 deployment points worth of ships that I mentioned, so even unmodded with max in-game settings and a small fleet advantage, you could deploy all of that. >Also what's with the autopulse lasers? Autopulse are THE most efficient energy weapons. They cost .83 flux per point of damage. Compare the Plasma cannons that cost 1.1 flux per damage. They also have the most burst DPS. Get in close with fully-stocked Autopulses (probably with the related ammo hullmod) and you can rip most ships apart before you run out of ammo. Then you get out again and recharge most of the ammo before re-engaging. Odysseys do it with movement, alternating positions with one ship forward one back. Paragons do it with fortress shields. Where autopulse is weak is in cracking armor. The way armor works, bigger individual hits break through much more effectively than smaller hits of the same damage type, which is the main reason I use plasma at all. It also gives me some sustained damage when I need to keep going after my autos are spent.

>>239701 >>239374 Here's a video demonstration. I decided to include a few tempests mainly as a distraction. Against 1 ordo and 4 sub ordos, including 1 Radiant capital, 14 Brilliant cruisers, 12 Fulgent destroyers and an assortment of frigates, I manage to defeat the entire fleet without issuing a single order (except to conserve CR on my tempests by telling them to retreat), losing only a single Frigate during the fight. In addition to the standard 6 capital ships I listed, I also deployed 4 tempests that mainly serve to split up and distract the enemy fleet. As I said, I'm not entirely sure how effective they are and they die so easily I can't reliably take no losses while using them, but 1 frigate is an acceptable loss I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UljL1cWUHC8 I had to run though a few different configurations and eventually gave up on trying to pull both full Ordos (2 radiants). With all those Brilliants, I was simply over the limit of what I could handle. In particular I also found that Khopesh bombers work MUCH better than Flash bombers. In spite of having only a 3rd of the damage per bombing run, they hit far more often and the Astrals are able to recall the fighters much more reliably. Even very late into the fight they still had sufficient surviving bombers to continue effective bombing runs. With the Flash bombers they simply spend too much time exposed to enemy primary weapons and die after a few runs in spite of their much higher defenses. I didn't try Piranhas. Bit of advice for piloting the Paragon, you can use the Fortress Shields to bait enemies into overcommitting, especially with their missiles, and exposing themselves to bomber strikes. After their missiles are absorbed by the shield is often a good time to combat-vent. You still take damage of course, but it's often worth the trade. Positioning yourself so that weaker (or even dead) enemy ships are blocking the line of fire of stronger enemies, or even using your own bomber waves as cover also helps.

>>230084 >I don't remember >TIEs are cheapest of all ???

>>240490 Are you playing on easy or something? Because it doesn't look like damage works like that on my game at all. I haven't tried your setup because I don't think autopulse lasers are worth a damn but I'm tempted to reproduce it just to actually see it fail because there's no way it works like that in my game. I have no Astrals though, that would be missing for now. I decided to stop trying to kill Remnants for now and look for the few blueprints I'm missing, but ultimately I'm pretty frustrated and bored and I don't see a way to defeat them, they always end up raping my fleet badly. Yesterday I changed the max deployment size and tried a big fleet with my Paragon and a shitload of Dominators and Moras and an Odyssey and I don't think they destroyed a single ship. The Odyssey went down first because it's a useless piece of shit.

>>240710 It's on normal. Keep in mind both my player character and officers are all max level, with the the best, or at least close to the best perks for this particular setup. The only mod I have running is console commands, which I used to create the fleet since I don't have a current campaign save to play from, and the only config change I made was to increase the max deployment size. Dominators are meh, Moras are total shit. Odyssey is a big ball of shields with incredibly high speed for its size. Their real job is to provide a distraction. The shields mean that they can take a lot of punishment, and the speed allows them to dip in and out of combat to regenerate those shields, especially if they have a partner odyssey to take the pressure while they vent. Solo they aren't nearly as good. You might think to use a paragon instead, but once the AI paragon runs out of flux it overloads and dies, because it lacks the speed to escape combat and vent, and the AI never combat vents like the player can. Astrals are absolutely essential to my strategy though. Being able to spam bombing runs via their recall system puts out a LOT of damage, you can see that in the video. Things would have gone very badly, very quickly, many times over if not for the bombers. Other carriers simply can't do the same job, even Drovers don't put out that kind of concentrated firepower. I still should work on my setup a bit. I'm not certain about using Unstable on the odysseys. I'm thinking about taking that off and giving them a tachyon lance instead of the lower auto. Might swap out their fighters too, I don't know. The Astral is basically all flux and shields, practically unarmed. Their purpose is to stay out of combat and recall fighters as often as possible. If they do get attacked, they should try to hold out until help arrives.

>>240714 >It's on normal I don't know then. I'll guess I'll have to go all the way and give it a shot, but I'm not holding my breath even after seeing it in action. I saw you used heavy needlers as well, I'll take a look into that, needlers are pretty good but I never managed to fit any on my Paragon. Thanks for the loadout pics too, they'll come in handy to get more ideas of things I could try. I didn't know you could use the front shield conversion but still have 360° shields, lol. >Dominators are meh I like them, they have good firepower and are comfortable to use but it's true that shielding and specially mobility plays a bigger role for AI ships since as you mentioned the main task of AI ships is taking damage and making enemies busy. Still given that I deployed so many of them I was hoping they would at least be able to hold on for a bit but when I opened the map all I saw was Dominator husks littered throughout the map. >Moras are total shit They simply don't work in battles with lots of powerful ships, but unfortunately lacking Astrals the alternative is either Condors (lol) or Drovers. >You might think to use a paragon instead I did try to rely on Paragons a couple of times and my experience was that the AI actually manages the shields really well, they time hits and micromanage them to prioritize shields or hull/armor taking the damage depending on the type of damage, but they fail to output any meaningful damage and they resist for a while until they are surrounded and destroyed. On the other hand this same pattern happens with all the other ships too so it doesn't look like such a downgrade. >Astrals are absolutely essential to my strategy though Yeah, I guess they make a good counterpart to the rest of the AI ships that are there only to take the damage. >tachyon lance I tried experimenting with this and other beam weapons but the AI is just too good at micromanaging their shields and the moment I'm even thinking of using the beam weapons they raise their shields just enough to block the beam so it's almost useless to equip beam weapons except against much smaller targets where you can overload their shields over time.

The Jets n Guns guys released a new game, Silent Sector. Looks pretty combat heavy.

>>240776 >they resist for a while until they are surrounded and destroyed. They do resist for a while, but they are basically on a hard timer until that happens. The Odysseys have a way to escape being surrounded, by being faster than anything even close to their size. >They simply don't work in battles with lots of powerful ships, but unfortunately lacking Astrals the alternative is either Condors (lol) or Drovers. Drovers are good. They are better with heavy fighters/intercepters and not bombers, working almost exactly opposite to how Astrals do, but they are amazing for concentrated fighter firepower nonetheless. Mostly when people use Drovers though, they use entire fleets of almost nothing but drovers, and rely on fighter swarm tactics to win. >I tried experimenting with this and other beam weapons but the AI is just too good at micromanaging their shields and the moment I'm even thinking of using the beam weapons they raise their shields just enough to block the beam so it's almost useless to equip beam weapons except against much smaller targets where you can overload their shields over time. I usually find beam weapons useless myself, BUT check this out. I put on the Combat Analytics mod for another battle, this time using Tac lances+Autopulse+MIRV. I'm definitely NOT impressed with the MIRV here, but the Tac Lances did insane hull damage over the course of the fight. Sadly not a clean fight, I lost an Odyssey right at the end who thought he could solo the last remaining Radiant. In any case the Odyssey definitely do pull their weight in damage as well as in defense.

>>241280 Though it seems that using this configuration might be better than using 2 AL think it'd be interesting to have a few battles with a mix (2 Odysseys with 2 AL and 2 Odysseys with 1 AL + 1 TL) and seeing the results to have a more fair comparison. It could be that the lance got bigger hull damage because the AL has limited shots, so they would exhaust their AL during the first few seconds of the fight and then spamming the TL did the rest, which might not necessarily be an improvement vs 2 AL. I tried some of your tips today. First I equipped 2 heavy needlers on my Paragon. They're awesome, I love how far they can hit from and it greatly helps get the damage going without overtaxing the flux. I also tried the Odysseys as companions instead of the Dominators, and it's worked wonders. It seems the AI really likes the Odysseys and they perform so much better. Most battles are a breeze now, but I haven't really tried one of the huge battles with multiple capitals yet. I equipped my Odysseys with 2 AL (left side) + 1 TL because I don't believe using the other side for a missile helps much, but admittedly having the lance on the wrong side would probably have questionable results. I also let them have 2 Annihilator pods because they're well positioned and spamming them can sometimes tip the balance of a battle, but I'm not completely sure about it and I might replace them with another hullmod tomorrow. I've been exploring to try to find the remaining blueprints but no dice yet. Have a webm of something that happened today. Besides the funny move this positioned the ship so that it could hit with both weapons so it used the lance really effectively. Unfortunately I dumped the replay buffer too early and I don't know what happened afterwards but it could be that the rightmost Odyssey was positioning itself to use the lance on the far away ship given the huge range it has. That would have been awesome to have it captured.

>>240490 I got the Astrals and I've been experimenting a bit. The combination of Paragon+Odysseys+Astrals works pretty well, it's a massacre against regular fleets although I'm still having trouble with bigger Remnant fleets (2 Radiants + shitload of Brilliants). What do you think about loading the Astrals with Longbows? They're amazing at keeping ships suppressed and I feel this might give a big advantage, plus they can also make somewhat good damage against naked hull, see webm1. Have also some additional funny webms.

>>243712 >escape >dodging all those Redacted You magnificent fuck

>>243712 Longbows should work, but I think Khopesh work a bit better. I see so many longbow munitions hit the wrong targets before they even split apart, and it seems easier for the enemy to retreat after getting slammed by longbows, instead of getting their shields low and then letting them get destroyed by Khopesh. You still seem to be spending a lot of OP on weapons that don't really do anything to help you. The Burst PD lasers and I see regular Pulse lasers listed as well. There are always more hullmods that could be useful.

>>243997 >I see so many longbow munitions hit the wrong targets before they even split apart I'll need to test further but I've mostly seen this happen when there's debris, otherwise it seems good enough. Something I do see happen often is that the missiles are so slow that a retreating ship will not get hit because it never comes into range of the missiles before they expire. The issue I have with the Kopesh is that it's unguided and specially with ships smaller than a capital a lot of the missiles will probably miss. I've also did some brief testing and I've been able to output a lot more damage with guided missile fighters such as Daggers instead of Kopesh. Longbows have the advantage of both being guided and also that they get released super early so the fighters don't get as much exposure to enemy fire. I still want to keep experimenting some more. >and it seems easier for the enemy to retreat after getting slammed by longbows, instead of getting their shields low and then letting them get destroyed by Khopesh. Yeah, this is true, but on the other hand only 1 barrage is enough to get most ships out of combat, possibly for a long time if the shields are overloaded which happens quite often because it's a massive amount of anti shield damage dealt instantly. Overall even if they don't get destroyed suppressing several ships sounds advantageous, specially the limited deployment size for both sides. >The Burst PD lasers and I see regular Pulse lasers listed as well. There are always more hullmods that could be useful. I guess I'll review this as well. The pulse lasers come in handy when there's small ships nearby as otherwise catching them with the autopulse is hard and time consuming and wastes a lot of ammo, or when needing additional firepower since the autopulse lasers get exhausted fast. If you've got any other ideas for this use I'll try them out but the pulse lasers seemed like the best thing I could equip.

>>244025 > If you've got any other ideas for this use I'll try them out but the pulse lasers seemed like the best thing I could equip. I mostly just don't bother swatting flies until everything else is dead or they blunder directly into my line of fire, then it's the plasmas. TLs on the sides also works pretty well over the ALs, but it costs more flux. Having my front plasmas on alternating fire also helps a bit, a more constant stream of fire easier to hit with and more controlled. Anything destroyer or larger is easy enough to target and kill with primary weapons. Frigates don't really have enough firepower to worry me in a paragon, and I never target fighters directly preferring to rush the carriers instead.

>>241188 Playing this now, seems to be Star Sector (very) lite, no player fleet, no bases, there are factions but the gameplay is disposable.

Does anybody else likes midline ships in Starsector?

Anyone else remember Warpath 98 or Operation: Inner Space?

>>244489 Theyre some of the most powerful ships in the game. Whats not to love. I have a fleet of falcons with hangars that demolish everything in game

>>244489 I love the hammerhead. I was disappointed there weren't other accelerated ammo feeder ships worth a damn later in the game. Speaking of this, why are most ships so badly designed? Most ships don't allow you to concentrate your firepower and more often than not even big ships have a rather pitiful selection of hardpoints both in terms of size and amount. You'd think it's the first thing someone designing ships would think of.

>>244489 >>244498 Hell no. Maybe if you like an expendable fleet that wins (slowly) through endless reinforcements. Eagles and Falcons pack no punch. Conquest works alright as a weapons platform, but folds the instant it comes under pressure. Mid (and low) tech is useless when the enemy has the bigger fleet, high tech is all about punching above its own weight.

well fuck, I'm out of shit to do in Elite till their expansion and none of the other space games I might want to play are out of early access. Is there any reason to start X4 now instead of waiting for Cradle of Humanity?

>>244928 >Is there any reason to start X4 now instead of waiting for Cradle of Humanity? No. Also you forgot about one more DLC. (The one with Borons.) >>244777 >t. Tri-Tachyon

>>244968 >t. Tri-Tachyon Well they do make all the best ships. Of course the best way to get those ships is to raid the shit out of them for blueprints.

>>244777 Despite you being right and ultimately as the game progresses every other fleet type becoming completely non viable, I've had the most fun piloting other types of ship at earlier stages of the game. >>245011 Funnily enough even though they seem to be really smart and overpowered they're rather pathetic as a faction, at least in my game. It feels counter intuitive.

>>245082 >they seem to be really smart and overpowered they're rather pathetic as a faction, at least in my game. It feels counter intuitive. Not really. Their fleets are just too small to make difference.

I've been playing a lot of Endless Space 2 lately. Partly it's my own fault for being a pacifist pussy who'd rather conquer through expanding my sphere of influence and cultural buyouts once I reach an "escape velocity" of science and engineering development so that even a few scout ships can hold their own against a small enemy fleet. Also, got lucky and entered into a pretty stable alliance with the Lumeris that haven't been asking me to fight their wars and shovel heaps of cash into my empire through a trade partnership. Also, their leader has some pretty great green tits.

>>244777 >eagles pack no punch >lowtech useless Thems fighting words

Space you say?

>>245254 reminds me of an old newgrounds flash video but i cant remember what >>245267 What kind if vigilance

>all that Starsector High Tech talk Honestly I just don't like High-Tech that much, Astral and Paragons are not very interesting strategy wise (unless you're aiming for some modded shenanigans to make the most utterly broken build you can ), that said All longbow Astral + Quad HILs Paragons are a thing that might not work that well but I always enjoy using it. I personally use Kinetic Hurricane Legion XIV + PD boat Xyphos Legion + Tach Locust Odyssey + Ionbeam HVD Eagles when I can find that, but I've not touched anything close to resembling vanilla in years. >>244489 >>244777 Thunder Drovers, not much to add, it's boring as fuck but damn is it retardedly overpowered as fuck. Spark Drovers is also not very far from that.

>>245254 I remember now All your Base >>245325 >Thunder Drovers this anon gets it

>>245325 I guess I'll have to try droverspam. Is there anything specific I need besides just drovers with thunders, like some kind of tanky ship in front? I would expect that build to lose a lot of ships against bigger remnant fleets and not actually beat anything close to the max my paragon/odyssey/astral fleet can handle, but we'll have to see when I have the time to build it.

>>245662 Preliminary testing shows that the fighters hold off the enemy fleet by themselves early on, but as the battle progresses larger enemy fleets are able to eventually push through. The drovers don't kill nearly fast enough on their own vs remnants. All of my ships ran out of peak performance time before killing even one Radiant (there were two), and I'd already lost several drovers by that point. Focused fire orders might help, I'm currently running the test in an AI-only manner. Different weapons and loadouts for the drovers maybe. It doesn't look very promising though, not nearly on the scale of my high tech capital fleet.

>>245662 >I guess I'll have to try droverspam. Is there anything specific I need besides just drovers with thunders, like some kind of tanky ship in front? Just critical mass and the appropriate skills (the fleetwide fighter buffs), expanded deck crews helps, hardened subsystems too 10-15 drovers might start to seriously struggle once you engage some specific targets like Remnant Ordos, 20-25 though will handle that usually. IF you're into mods, I'd suggest >Shikome from SRA >Lycosid from DME >Valkyrie S / J / FA from YRXP >Falx from SWP >Owstoni from Mayasura >Tappah LP from LTA >Aigrette from DME Some of those are so utterly broken that you can actually nuke several capitals in one single pass but most just straight up exceed anything vanilla could ever hope to offer, in fact most can run on naked drovers (no PD / missiles)

>>245690 I was running 30 drovers vs 4 remnant fleets, 2 radiants. They never killed either radiant, I quit with about 5 to 10 drovers dead and all of them malfunctioning. There are several ways I can improve the fleet. I didn't have officers assigned, though I did have fleetwide skills, and thier weapons could be tweaked, all they had were harpoons. But based on what I saw I really doubt they will perform on the level of my capital fleet, which would have cleared that fight with no losses save maybe a tempest in about 7 or 8 minutes real time.

>>245769 Technically they should not suffer any loss, in my tests that fleet comp (25 drovers thunders without any officer + Expanded decks + hardened sub + 2 vulcan + 4 linked single reaper) can hold up to 4 remnant capitals + supporting fleet at bay while maybe taking a bit of damage and the occasional stray loss from fighters / pushy capitals, they do have trouble penetrating and killing them before running out of PPT, though honestly I could retreat and reengage to handle even up to a proper deathstack if I wanted, Maybe the one sort of big difference is that I set a defense point in one of the bottom quarter and wait for the enemy fleet there, AI is kinda retarded when left to wander aimlessly. It's rather economical compared to capspam for a heavily miliitarized exploration fleet imo.

Ok it works. I gave it a try with everything going for it. Used officers where possible, even upped the officer max level so I didn't have to think too much about what skills to give them. I'm not sure if it was the officers, the loadout, or the defense order (I think it was the order probably), but they were able to clear out remnant fleets that the capspam on AI-only would have struggled with at least. They are a little slower (taking about a minute longer), but more reliable.

>>245837 Of course, it only works because the AI is too dumb to handle it. They only ever seem to push forward with at most 4 ships at a time, and those all get fully disabled by the thunder's EMP weapons, left sitting with no engines and no weapons. They don't even use primary weapons for the most part to try and kill thunders. If the AI pushed with everything, it could wipe the drover group in seconds. When I tried previously, the thunders attacked in a more spread out manner across the enemy fleet, and got whittled down quite quickly. It's also boring as hell. There's nothing meaningful you can do piloting a Drover. At most, you can sit on the map issuing orders but that's not even necessary beyond grouping everything together. Also running that many combat ships is a logistical nightmare, with only 30 slots in a fleet it's difficult to bring the necessary fuel and cargo space, and you can forget about using tugs. Upping fleet size in the config is always an option, but, but that cuts three ways. Larger fleets suffer more from hazards and fleet size cap applies to AI fleets as well.

I've decided to put some ECM into my fleet to fight the high ECM rating in Remnant fleets and it seems to work well. I've also thought it was a good idea to establish a colony next to a Remnant battlestation in a high danger system. I'm looking forward to blasting huge Remnant fleets with my station.>>245845

>>249637 I always find ECM to be too much cost for too little gain, especially when you need some 40%+ just to equal out. The average fleet for me is about 28% vs 74%. The problem with putting a colony inside the remant system is that they can weaken or eliminate the remnants eventually on their own. Good if you just want to exterminate them and claim the system, but if you are looking to farm AI cores it kills your farming ground.

>>249850 Outranging your enemies is entirely overpowered due to how the AI works, out ECMing your enemies is always viable because of that. Also why ATC isn't seen on anything that can mount large ballistics even among mods, shit is just fucking busted if it's not coupled with serious limitations.

>>249876 It's good for standoff tactics. The trick is getting the AI to use rushdown tactics instead. Anyway if I stuck ECM on my entire fleet, I still wouldn't even be at break even. I'd end up at 72% vs 74%, it would close the enemies range advantage but wouldn't start giving me one.

>>249850 I thought it was the most useless thing, but the remnants having such high ECM rating made me have to crawl to whispering distance to be able to even hit them, which was super annoying because it exposed me to great danger and their ships more often than not ended up escaping before I could destroy them. Now the beginning of the battle is a massacre before the Radiants come to shooting range. >The average fleet for me is about 28% vs 74%. My deployment size is limited to the maximum the game would normally allow and the most I've encountered is about 35%, while I can get some 50% without my Paragon having the ECM package, so it's pretty sweet. I get my full weapons range and can snipe them from across the map while they now get -15% range, so the tables have turned. >The problem with putting a colony inside the remant system is that they can weaken or eliminate the remnants eventually on their own. Good if you just want to exterminate them and claim the system, but if you are looking to farm AI cores it kills your farming ground. That was something I've wondered if it was gonna happen. I don't think they'll be able to wipe the Remnants out. Even with a High Tech Star Fortress I'm pretty sure they'll rape the colony if I'm not around, and the colony's patrols are really feeble compared to the remnant fleets, even with a High Command on the colony. The only way I could somehow see this happening is if the feeble patrols engage the Remnant battlestation a hundred times and draw the CR to 0 and then it just explodes or something because otherwise they normally won't even kill 1 ship of a remnant fleet. I've farmed the sector plenty anyway, all the remnant fleets in the system rushed my colony when the orbital station got built so it was like a dozen battles one after the other and I got plenty of cores, and until the Star Fortress was built I farmed like 20+ alpha cores. It got pretty boring after the initial Remnant patrols died though. >>249876 >ATC What's an ATC? >>249895 >I'd end up at 72% vs 74%, it would close the enemies range advantage but wouldn't start giving me one. That's awful, but at lest it isn't -20% weapons range. You might want to experiment using the hullmod or skill (I don't remember which one it was) that limited the negative ECM effects to -50% instead of the full amount, but if it's a hullmod it may ultimately end up costing a similar amount of OP than the ECM package with less benefits.

>>249896 ATC: Advanced Targeting Core. Built in mod on the Paragon with +100% range. Mutually exclusive with the Integrated Targeting Unit and Dedicated Targeting core.

>>249895 >It's good for standoff tactics Which are overall the best from a general standpoint provided you're piloting a strike built ship with good maneuverability / speed.. I know spamming HVD / H. Mauler is lazy as fuck but it works

>>249930 Standoff means sitting at max range slowly damaging the enemy. It fails to use all available weapons, preferring only to use the longest range options, kills slowly, and leaves the enemy easy retreat. It's the opposite of what a "strike" built craft wants to do. "Strike" craft want to get in as close as possible, unload everything they have, and then gtfo. They use their range (if any) to keep hitting the enemy as it backs off. The AI isn't exactly programmed to do this well, but it works much more quickly than standoff, and eliminating enemies quickly reduces their overall firepower faster, preventing deaths on your side.

>>249940 Like you say it will force a slow long distance engagement, which the AI can usually handle very well, worst case scenario the enemies loiter at the edge of your range with 20-75% hardflux. However the AI being the AI it means that it will overcommit / flank poorly / get pushed frontwards by it's own allies, which stops being quite as much of an issue if you're ht one with the range advantage but definitely means that the side with higher range can capitalize on that much better. That's where you, the player piloted strike ship come in and do the thing the AI sucks at, high alpha on isolated / vulnerable targets, that said nothing here implies you're forced to use short range (See Tach Lance) There's few things it won't handle well (especially in vanilla, modded has nasty surprises if you try that) because it takes advantage of AI quirks in relation to autofit and combat which means that anything handcrafted is gonna become an actual issue (Well built Radiants in particular when it comes to vanilla) tl;dr standoff good because easy, low risk, low maintenance, slow paced strat playing on the AI strenghts

>>249637 >leave colony alone 2 seconds to fight some other raid in literally next door system >finish battle and go back to remnant system >orbital station is blown out of the sky >wait some 60 days or so and come back just before the repairs are finished so that it didn't get immediately destroyed again >arrive in system and see this >go dark and slowly crawl my way to the station >meanwhile an AI inspection arrives in the system and is immediately blown out of the sky by the remnants sporting top of the line AI cores. oh the irony >station finishes rebuilding and every remnant in the system rushes my colony at the same time >huge battles ensued This was a fun experiment but it required constant attention so I wiped them out after this. With this done I don't really know what else to do. I've explored almost all the sector and I've wiped some of the main systems too because of the factions being annoying. I kind of want to look into mods and a replay but I'm lazy and man this game required a huge amount of time.

>>250972 Good job. You may as well own or destroy entire sector at this point. Feel free to try out Nexerelin with Vayra's Sector or Archean Order.

The planet building rework few years ago RUINED stellaris, it is so fucking bad now. Nothing comfy about the game at all anymore. I hate this, it was the only space game I enjoyed after space pirates and zombies 10 years ago >>250972 what game is this? Looks like space pirates and zombies. Is it fun?

>>251076 >what game is this? It's Starsector. >Is it fun? Yes.

>>250972 Its time for mods now, you've learned all you can >>251076 see >>251109

>>251076 Stellaris is better now than it was back then but presonally I dislike the fact that with every update and DLC the game moves further away from abstract concepts, like moving from very abstract racial traits to extremely specific racial traits with negros and lithoids.

>>251137 Feels like every expansion i have to relearn the game. Now theres a new one about creating the first galactic empire ala Caesar/Palpatine style. Oh and you have solar system killer,

>>251043 >You may as well own or destroy entire sector at this point. It's kind of boring and repetitive, and I don't want to completely fuck the world economy. I already killed the Hegemony off and markets collapsed to like half the size. >Feel free to try out Nexerelin with Vayra's Sector or Archean Order. I'm a bit concerned about some of the features these mods implement but I think I'll give them a try next anyway. >>251076 >Is it fun? Yes, it completely sucked me in. >>251115 >Its time for mods now, you've learned all you can Any recommendations?

>>251210 Necessary mods that are required for every other mod GraphicsLib LazyLib MagicLib Console Commands: For cheating, if you really want to try out a new mod Now for the juicy ones Nexerelin: Adds diplomacy, and joining of whichever factions you wish in New game, watch Factions fight each other for supremacy, whilst you build up you colonies and alliances waiting for a chance to leave your mark on the galaxy Diable Avionics: What if Front Mission sent their Mecha's into space? Mid Line ships that out maneuver their enemies. Vayra's Sector: For Bounties and more factions Vayra's Ships: Self explanatory Starship Legends: Give your character, officers, and ships more character. Also a chance to find rare ships. Terraforming and Station Construction: Terraform bad planets into livable ones. Theres a lot more but those should keep you satisfied for a while, and won't overwhelm you.

>>251244 >Diable Avionics EXTREMELY thematically inappropriate. Not sure how they fair on balance because I never really used them much personally.

>>251407 Fast and maneuverable, their fighters/mecha swarm to pin down ships and drain shields But often feels that a paragon shuts them down completely.

>>251210 >>251244 I'd also suggest Better Colonies for a couple tweaks in regards to colonies (like another industry slot at 9 pop and rebalanced admin and officer spawn). Industrial Evolution is also great, gives you a ton of options on how to set up your colonies and has a bunch of derelict industries you can restore to clone rare ships. Unknown Skies is great, adds more variety to planets and a bunch of unique market conditions - negative, positive and mixed bag. Xhan Empire is a nice faction mod that adds 2 new factions complete with their fleets and a couple unique ships you can find floating around. Generally well balanced, if on a weaker side. Console commands is a must for playing with mods as it can help you immensely if one of the other mods suddenly breaks. In the same vein I recommend ClearCommands - extends the former's functionality a bit to clean up bugged fleets. Seeker adds some exploration content, a number of rare and unique ships, some powerful weaponry with unusual drawbacks and several end-game overpowered as fuck "boss" fleets armed with said weaponry.

>>251447 The main problem I have with DA is that their ships have extremely poor direct firepower, and not enough speed or maneuverability to make up the difference. Very few of them have any large weapon mounts, and even their largest capital only has 2, situated very far back where they lose half their potential range. On the other hand lots of DA weapons, particularly missiles and fighters, are better than vanilla counterparts. There are several types of reloading (infinite) small and medium missiles included, which are generally frowned upon in vanilla balance (pilums have gotten the nerfbat hard and often).

>>252402 DA is cruiser centric, almost all of their cruisers are absolutely fantastic for their DP unlike the Panda / Maelstrom Wanzers are good on paper, then you realize they're shit at dealing with other fighters and have insane penalties associated with their usage in general. Their missiles ain't actually all that great which his why they're getting buffed significantly, the Thrush (reloading medium LRM) in particular is basically useless when it costs twice the OP of a pilum while not doing much more damage or being much more likely to hit anything. >>251210 >Any recommendations? It's gonna depend on what you think is acceptable as a deviation from the base game. But I'd say those are basically mandatory >GraphicsLib / LazyLib / MagicLib Because they're mandatory for most mods to run at all >Console Commands Useful for testing and a handful of mods rely on it, also useful for dealing with bugged battles >Clear Commands Can help for low spec / very lategame if you hit save issue because not enough RAM >Version Checker self explanatory, although probably still broken because bitbucket is garbage. >Weapons Group Controls Adds a 6th weapon group if you want everything on autofire, confirmed that this will never be in the base game too despite how useful that shit is. >SpeedUp Modular speed multiplier for battle mode >Autosave Mostly for the save reminder, and optionally actual autosave though bad idea if you go heavily modded / low specs >Lightshow / Upgraded Rotary Weapons / Trailer Moments / Audio Plus Very slight improvement to graphics / sound that I find I cannot do without >Target Practice Very useful for testing builds, in order you get a shieldless Onslaught cube, a Conquest cube, a Paragon cube and a Paragon cube with harpoon drones for PD testing >Common Radar adds a radar and combat strength bar near the bottom right in combat mode >Combat Chatter or Combat Alarm Sounds Mostly so that you have a warning when one of your ship get assfucked, chatter adds "flavor text" while Alarm doesn't Up to that point nothing touches gameplay too much >Nexerelin 4Xlite in Starsector >Skilledup Makes the scaling in XP needed for level above 60 not insane >Ruthless Sector Now you can get jumped in hyperspace by remnants, > Fuel Siphoning / Supply forging To have ways to extend your resources pool >Galactic Markets Commodity monitoring made less shit >Stellar Logistics Check your stashes more easily >Hyperspace Network - Information Services Buy info on where specific weapon / LPC / hulls are >Unknown Skies More flavor of planets >Commissioned Crews Actual reasons to get commissioned or make alliances >Capture Officers and Crew Fixes the issues of finding officers that fit your taste, allows you to capture officers from special bounties from other mods, very light source of resources / income too >Automatic Orders Adds a set of hullmod which allow you to order retreat on certain thresholds (damage / PPT / CR) and also override personalities on officerless ships >Whichmod Self explanatory, doesn't work with every mod Until that point no actual new weapons / ships >Vayra's Sector Adds a few framework for things that are used by a few mods, exploration content, colonial factions (basically factions that try to act like the player) ships that are exclusive to those factions, special bounties and a few unique ships for those Disable Player bounties, unless the prospect of fighting 10-50 capitals deathstack is appealing to you Adds space commies which are disableable but do have so neat stuff besides the commie part. >Vayra's ship pack Adds a few vanillaish ships that are fairly balanced and well made, the exploration / mining lineup is actually really damn good > Disassemble Reassemble About as close to a perfect extension to vanilla ship / weapons you'll get in that community >Hegemony Expeditionary Auxiliary Fleet Self explanatory, militarized civie ships >Luddic Enhancement Mod Makes the Church / Path actually somewhat dangerous to deal with >High Tech Expansion More high tech toys, and an actually not shit medium energy projectile weapon >Torchships / SEEKER Rather high quality ship packs with weird and unconventional stuff, also adds exploration content of the very fucking deadly kind (think extreme lategame combat content.) >More Hullmods Self Explanatory, more balanced than the other mod that does the same thing >Ship Weapon Pack As good as DaRa Adds a special start with a unique special ship you can gradually restore to become very powerful Adds special bounties with unique ships >Underworld More pirate shit, also cancerous purple high tech space pirates Like SWP has a special start with an unique ship you can upgrade > Arma Armatura Space mechs, well made with some fun stuff to pilot / use >CWSP Bunch of neat shit, specifically has anti phase stuff which is unique to that mod >Arsenal Expansion Again ship pack, not as high quality but still good enough Adds friendly remnants with a quest to unlock them > Stop Gap Measure Like the name indicates, adds things that fill gaps in a few places, just not really all there quality wise but worth considering just for options it gives >Tahlan Shipworks It's very well made, but it adds shit that's not vanilla friendly and a lot of unique (as in 1 per playthough and some aren't guaranteed) ships that are very fucking powerful, however also does of many of the most enjoyable to pilot yourself ships of any mods and not because they're OP. Adds super pirates (Legio) which you can disable. >Low Tech Armada If you want duct tapped scrapheaps in the pirate roster. >Another Random SWP Graf Spee in space and a few other useful additions >Commonwheat Addtions Surprisingly high quality ship pack which has two major issue, the "dowsized capital" frigates are retarded looking and there's a bug in the mod which fucks with ship spawning that you have to fix yourself Will do factions latter

>>252659 Forgot to mention EDs Shipyard, which is a really big miss because the ships are great and thre's many niches or interesting to play with ships in there. >>251210 Well time for factions Not really a recommendation list more like a quick description When I say well made I don't take the style fitting into vanilla into consideration at all because that's pointless imo and you can decide that for yourself. > Anvil Industries Cancer >ARIA the escalation https://bitbucket.org/tanem_rin/tanemrin_aria_public/downloads/ It's not on the forum so have ot grab it from here or jew nexus Basically space nazis lolis, which is about as vanilla friendly as it sounds, balance is WIP but the quality is okay and it has some interesting stuff, faction doctrine is mostly slow bricks throwing tons of shit from afar, also space tanks. > ApproLight Very well made, balanced at a glance, however once you wrap your head around the hullmod synergies it becomes fucking busted, has mostly energy / missiles, adds armor corrosion as a mechanic to some of their weapons and exploration + lategame combat content Plus adds ships that were axed back it was less balanced. >Blackrock Drive Yards Quite high quality all around but has some glaring balance issues (Fighters and bombers in particular) as well as bugs that makes it so fleets from them lack a bunch of their stuff. Mostly hit&run centric with fast vents, high movement speed and small shields. >Blue Chunky low tech brick, rather well made, has some colony content in the form of a more powerful orbital works and special station which is a much chunkier low tech that is fucking insanely powerful (and costs around 3 mil to aquire) >Celestial Mount Circle Underwhelming and underpowered mid-tech faction that's centered around drone fighters making your shields better when they're alive, has some neat stopgap weaponry though >Concordance of Protection Syndicate (COPS) The good cops, act like pirates (as in create bases and conduct raids) to unlawful factions, has some genuinely nice things, questionable balance especially their capital missile boat. Has another bigger issue in that one ship can break your game at random, which you have to fix manually by removing hte ship from spawn tables or making it so it cannot mount SO on the attached module. >Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering Pretty well made fighterspam faction, has some very fun ships but overall most things in it are straight up just more powerful than vanilla Has some decent exploration content, but BB are cancer to fight if you're not ready for them >Diable Avionics Mechs in space faction, well made (has extra skin sets if you don't like the default), balance is under that of vanilla though it's been getting some buffs recently Good if you like cruisers >Exalted Cancer >First Persean Empire Space nazis, centered around high alpha mid tech doctrine, it's okay I guess >Foundation Of Borken Basically armor tanking phaseships faction, balance is okay I guess adds a way to change officer behavior and also a way to transfer stuff from one place to another instantly Might cause some very serious performance issues in pursuit fights > Free Stars Union Low tech missiles spam, no major opinion on it. >Fringe Defence Syndicate If you really really want Star Wars stuff, extremely underwhelming otherwise. >Galaxy Tigers faction I've honestly never touched that one, has the baguette ship I guess. >Green Knight Security It's not particularly good or bad > Grytpype and Moriarty Defence Authority The bad cops (as in act like pirates), basically SO rush faction, generally will make your life a living hell if you'(re not friendly with them and independent. (or commissioned / in an alliance). > Hazard Mining Incorporated Low tech junker faction, basically a much better made LTA with insane amounts of exploration content that is unlike anything else currently available. > Kingdom of Royal Azalea Knight lolis in space Has some fairly neat systems going on but the balance is very WIP and the quality is mediocre >Idoneus Citadel Exiles Phase spam faction, extremely cancer to fight, main mechanic is that the wander around for quite a while until they colonize somewhere on the edge, has a few neat ships and weapons but does have one seriously broken support drone which either restore CR or PPT indefinitely as well as hull and armor.. >Interstellar Imperium There's literally no fucking way to justify not having that faction Basically sorta mid tech but extremely modular in how you can play them >Junk Pirates Another low tech junker faction, not super great or anything, brought down by the fact that it shits ups sector gen with useless derelicts and shitty anarchist systems. >Kadur Remnant Low tech disguised as mid tech, weaponry mostly built for standoff engagements but ships mostly built for charging in the middle of things like a retard, good punching bags, builds stations does raids towards Hegemony and friends >Kingdom of Terra Cavemen in space, not balanced but otherwise well made, add a lot of things that are melee or make melee viable > Legacy of Arkgneisis Cruiser centric sorta mid tech faction with some modularity, need to really research your shit to use them well Good chunk of exploration content >Mayasuran Navy If you have an Hammerhead fetish Questionable balance on the Mayasuran variants > Metelson Industries I didn't even know this existed, >Neutrino Corp. High tech but with nice armor tanking mechanic (armor has a buffer where it doesn't actually take damage which regen after a while of not taking damage) has balance and performance issues and most likely will never get fixed. > Outer Rim Alliance Broadside bricks, also has extra skins Not really super noteworthy besides it being a tech demo of how you make AI friendly broadsiders >Pearson Exotronics Tech demo for custom drone behaviors.K >Polaris Prime High tech brawlers that look sorta good I guess > prv Starworks Ads two factions, prv which is a more interesting attempt at high tech brawlers with tons of stuff you don't really see done anywhere else (intentionally asymmetrical layouts, physics only weaponry) and ruster which are low / mid tech super pirates. > Red AI girlscout lolis, fighter and missiles spam with ultra low DP costs which means insane fleets, definitely now low spec friendly at all. >Roider Union Defensive faction, mostly just retrofitted civilian ship, builds base at random in unexplored systems. >Sanguinary Anarchistic Defectors exclusively an exploration threat but comes with a custom lineup, heavily centered around defense in depth and fighters, drops BP if you defeat stations / many capitals. >ScalarTech Solutions High tech brawlers, again, though really solid in all aspects >Scy Cruiser centric hit & run, overall solidly made and well balanced, bit tough to deal with if you're on the receiving end though. >Shadowyards Reconstruction Authority Fighter and hit & run mostly. seemingly is extremely powerful on the 4x layer.as it will snowball into a size 100+ faction on it's own very often. Adds the fighter spam station . > The Star Federation Basically High tech tanks, balance is WIP > Sylphon RnD High tech faction that doesn't do anything too special besides the AI controlled ships. > Tiandong Heavy Industries Low tech faction with not much besides the retrofitting gimmick and a slightly customized autofitter for it's own fleets, solid though if you need something that looks sort of vanilla >Tyrador Safeguard Coalition Not properly updated>Volkov Industrial Conglomerate Glass cannon faction, solid all around and adds bioterrorism to your arsenal . > Xhan Empire Low tech bricks with an extra faction centered around high tech supercruisers also some exploration content that's really cool >Yuri Expeditions Space pirate lolis, centered around area saturation, and shieldless / phaseless ships, balance is hotly debated but not quite as horrible as it's made out to be but most ship look bad.

>>251244 >>252386 >>252659 >>253244 Thanks for the recommendations anons. Unfortunately I had started playing Nexerelin+Archean Order before most of you guys posted. I don't really like it. Nexerelin butchers the atmosphere the original game had and the balance is not great, as you start with barely anything and everyone else has endgame level fleets which they wield against you. Archean Order screwed with the game way too much in a way that removes most of the fun in it. It adds 9000+ weapons and fighters to the point equipping a ship is a headache and it's all just so misguided because ultimately the good weapons are always just a few. Additionally, what they did with limiting the ammo of regular weapons is godawful, and the modifications to standard and well known equipment and ships is super peeving, both because you assume you know what things you like and how things work but it turns out you don't, and also because it almost feels they went out of their way to take out the fun bits of it, like some of the systems and fighter features. The only good thing is that they gave missiles a way to slowly reload. The stupid pseudo pirate faction they added makes for the most boring fights ever with all those phase ships. I'm slowly gaining the upper hand so now I'll just keep going.

>>255218 I didnt like Archean Order either. >Nexerelin >as you start with barely anything Theres an option to give you large fleets and levels before you start new game. I think Archean order interferes with that.

>>255226 >I didnt like Archean Order either. It seemed to be very popular on the forums, I'm surprised it turned out this way. >Theres an option to give you large fleets and levels before you start new game I didn't think you'd start with an already developed colony. I thought it was going to be like in the vanilla game where you start with just a fleet, and starting with a large fleet in that scenario doesn't sound very fun. I doubt it would have made a huge difference anyway, it's not like you can fight against fleets with several capital ships without actually having a well established position.

>>255218 >Nexerelin butchers the atmosphere the original game had and the balance is not great, as you start with barely anything and everyone else has endgame level fleets which they wield against you. You always can try to get commission in some major faction. It will give you free money/insurance for fleet and allows to make colonies in their systems. It's almost like using cheat console. Persean League(my 100k credits commission) has market size of 200 at my game(due my marine/heavy Heavy Armaments rushes). Tri-tachyon and Ludd Church are gone.(They were just pathetic.) Pirates and Luddic Path lost every planet in core, they still will screw around though. Hegemony is impossible to remove from any system which has military base(Except for orbital bombardment with several Prometheus-class ships). Diktat didn't managed to move anywhere from their only system, yet is still friendly to League and Hegemony at same time.(They were in alliance with league at early game, but now they are allied with Hegemony). Remnants did several raids on core worlds as well, only to get farmed for metals, heavy machinery, weapons and AI cores. Unfortunately, my VRAM is just unable to handle it anymore. It was 10/10 game, when it lasted.

>>255218 >Nexerelin butchers the atmosphere the original game had and the balance is not great, Nex shouldn't touch the balance, besides any fleet with something dangerous shouldn't be able to catch you early on unless you've fitted your fleet poorly And as other have told you can start with bigger fleets, though I dunno what Nex alone has for premade starts but you can do custom and grab fucking everything you want right from the start. >Archean Order Yeah it's a TC, and not a great one at that since it readds shit that was bad from older version (ammo for regular weapons) while accentuating existing issues (fighterspam > everything).

>>255386 >You always can try to get commission in some major faction Wouldn't that make it worse due to having actual enemy factions that will actively try to fuck with you just because they hate you? >Tri-tachyon and Ludd Church are gone.(They were just pathetic.) >Tri-tachyon >pathetic >mfw 6+ fleets like this on a raid I have no idea how I'm going to get through something like that. Overall it feels like the game is going in one direction with factions raiding each other with fuckhuge fleets like pic related while I'm doing something completely disconnected from all of it with my 2 cargo ship fleet. >>255406 >besides any fleet with something dangerous shouldn't be able to catch you The problem with that is the colony. I can't stop a fleet with several capitals from raping it and my colony was fitted with a high tech battlestation which coming from the base game I thought was going to be great but it was severely nerfed by one of these mods to the point it's completely useless. >it readds shit that was bad from older version Oh, so that's where that idea was from. >while accentuating existing issues (fighterspam > everything). They seem to be really fixated on fighters. They literally added them to every ship. At least there are some decent interceptors and it's kind of useful to be able to deploy them to protect ally ships.

>>255425 >The problem with that is the colony. I think that's not a nex thing but an Archean Order thing, I never had to start with a colony even with special Nex starts.