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Section Z posted:That could very well be the mindset. No matter how long you can keep up the surveying, because you could technically run out it gets judged less harshly than being able to go back to the space coffee factory and sell it to someone who wants space coffee. Even if you'd end up with much less money, over a much longer time investment, the fact trade commodities existing is reliable compared to "Boy I hope I find some cool space anomalies" is what is probably the mental sticking point. I think its mostly about what flavor he wants the game to have, not some weird idea of "fairness", eg. the core worlds are already exploited and all the major players are in place, you go outside the core worlds and make your own fortune. Hence the "Outposts" tab that has been in the game for like 4 years now and whatever SS' economy simulation makes it impossible to do an exponentially more lucrative trade run like in EV, that poo poo wont be redesigned to allow it any time soon. Its likely however that the more dynamic things become in future versions the more interesting it will be to trade and speculate in various goods
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Apr 22, 2017 03:50
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Retro42 posted:Pretty standard fare for the dev cycle actually. Think he errs on the side of excess intentionally to highlight issues with new mechanics rather than have them fade into the background. Yeah, I think last time it was faction penalties or something like that.
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Apr 22, 2017 03:52
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Retro42 posted:On the same note I'm hopeing the new mechanics let me build a stealthy privateer fleet. ECM/etc to reduce sensor profile and just pillage the gently caress out of a system with my transponder off. Maybe hide in a belt or nebula to get the drop on merchants. going dark with the relevant skill at rank 3 will make your signature absolutely tiny. i was under 200 without even trying.
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Apr 22, 2017 03:52
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:I think its mostly about what flavor he wants the game to have, not some weird idea of "fairness", eg. the core worlds are already exploited and all the major players are in place, you go outside the core worlds and make your own fortune. Hence the "Outposts" tab that has been in the game for like 4 years now and whatever Yeah. There is a big helping of damned if you do, damned if you don't for the Dev in the whole situation when it comes to how he deals with "Space Trucking", if he wants to keep it to the sidelines but still have it in game in the first place. It would be super hard trying to make the boring vanilla trade hit some magical sweet spot of "It's enough to pay the bills without much hassle" as a safety net to restock, while still preventing the ability to essentially running laps for as good/better payouts compared to more proactive gameplay. Even if I wish otherwise, I can see why the design would skew towards making plain old legal vanilla trade border on outright detrimental. Because to make it worthwhile in a reasonable sense, means people would use it more often than all the cool stuff the Dev worked much harder on. But that doesn't make the subject itself some kind of waste of time casual wishlisting, either  The fact talking about the subject basically requires highlighting that you are talking about standard trade and not "Just sell to pirates/etc" doesn't help matters. Because then you just get bogged down by people chiming in to just talk up how their preferred methods are still making them money, and the whole conversation degenerating into different flavors of people telling eachother to go gently caress themselves  Plus the big irony about people saying "Spreadsheet trading is terrible", is how you need an even bigger spreadsheet than usual. That intent is great and one I could get behind, but the message and results feel much more mixed. Section Z fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 04:21
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Internet Explorer posted:Seriously, please just give up and go play a different game. No one here cares if you don't like it and we're tired of reading your dumb rear end posts. Hi I'm sorry words are so unsettling for you and making you angry, I hope you are well and happy in the future  haha just kidding eat poo poo nerd Section Z posted:Making 400k credits EZ in your starting ships is all well and good, just as long as you can't go back and do it again in the same spot. But making 5,000 credits reliably in the same general area? oh wow you want the game handed to you on a silver platter I guess. The missions are procedurally generated and they generate the loot, so it's not exactly you go back to the same spot, but they're all exactly as risky (i.e. not) so it's not really relevant. Flesh Forge fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 04:29
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How do I take on missions? A lot of my time is mindlessly spent hunting down pirate fleets, as I don't know what else to do. I can't survey as most planets are too hazardous for me to attempt surveying. I open comms with Station HQ but people just say "Eh, what do you want? gently caress off" instead of offering their humble servant a tasty morsel of a quest.
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Apr 22, 2017 05:16
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Look above the comms contacts, that's where missions are listed. All the missions within a system+faction are the same (i.e. if you're in a system with two Hegemony bases, you don't need to bother to check both) but different systems will have different missions, and I'm pretty sure different factions within the same system will also have different missions (e.g Corvus with Hegemony and Independent).
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Apr 22, 2017 05:27
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Flesh Forge posted:http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8693.msg147286#msg147286 Don't do this.  quote:e: also you might edit vmparams in the Starfarer directory and enlarge the amount of memory allocated in -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m to -Xms2048m -Xmx2048m (I think this was the trick in earlier versions) this didn't help either, oh well  
Flesh Forge fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 05:35
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Reading the forums, it seems that the complete non-viability of legitimate trade outside of procurement missions is supposed to be temporary. Apparently, in 0.8a the disrupted trade condition (which created some opportunities) was turned off, in part because it was causing hard-to-track-down bugs and revamping trade was a low priority for this release.
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Apr 22, 2017 05:49
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FreeKillB posted:Reading the forums, it seems that the complete non-viability of legitimate trade outside of procurement missions is supposed to be temporary. Apparently, in 0.8a the disrupted trade condition (which created some opportunities) was turned off, in part because it was causing hard-to-track-down bugs and revamping trade was a low priority for this release. Now that's some beta testing logic I can really get behind. Though admittedly, it doesn't hurt that "It's not so hot because we can test stuff better that way right now." is also a much less abrasive stance.
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Apr 22, 2017 06:03
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  ...and right next to it I salvaged an Astral Elite (D)
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Apr 22, 2017 07:30
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Is it worth going to any old uninhabited system and doing surveys as long as it isn't too far out of my way, or should I only do it when I can get paid to go look at the planet?
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Apr 22, 2017 07:37
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There's a lot of gushing I could be doing about the new version, but these trading arguments are really bothering me and I want to add some thoughts to what Section Z said. In my experience, the problem with trading isn't that it prohibits easy, repetitive farming by moving from point A to point B and back again, that's a good idea. The problem is that what you need to play trading "as intended", the data needed to take advantage of the time-sensitive opportunities where trading can be profitable, is obfuscated behind about a million layers of bullshit. Sure, you can place comm sniffers and stockpile goods, but where it's worthwhile to do this is a complete mystery to new players. If you want to know what planets are likely to have shortages, and of what goods, you need to have done extracurricular reading on how the guts of the economy and conflict systems work, and then a lot of time spent personally flying to different planets to find out where to get things. Even in the excellent new Intel/Map setup we just got, we still don't have a basic remote reference for goods sold and ballpark prices even at visited planets. If you're trying to source something on short notice, then I hope you wrote it down beforehand, like going through an old-school dungeon-crawler with loving graph paper and a notebook. But hey, have a page-long list of prices on commodity tooltips that ceased to be relevant three in-game months ago! It's an incomplete framework of a system that presents the player with a bewildering amount of mostly extraneous information, while not mentioning the key pieces they need to act on. This is obtuse even by the standards of games in general, and it looks even worse compared to the relative accessibility of the other money-making paths in Starsector. The new salvaging stuff needs some skill point investment and enough familiarity to handle combat with a slightly less than optimal fighting force, but beyond that, just get your rear end out there and you'll find profit anywhere you poke your nose. Pure bounty hunting is even simpler- you need a handle on the sensor cat-and-mouse games that are universal to every form of play, but once you've got that, the most complicated thing you'll have to figure out is, say, when projected profits are worth an emergency burn to catch something. Just go kill poo poo- it's practically the "milk run" that Alex is trying to avoid in trading, though broken up by having to move occasionally with the bounties. Compared to that, how can you look at the byzantine process required to turn trading from a death-spiral moneysink into an exploit-tier profit and say, "yes, this is fine"? I really don't like the rampant fanboy-ism that has taken hold in this thread. It's like the Starbound thread in reverse: recursively self-amplifying hyperbole, but worshiping something instead of ragging on it. Look, Alex is a standout game dev with a lot of interesting ideas that others could stand to learn from, but he is far from perfect, and his implementation of a fair number of his ideas doesn't exactly do them justice. A lot of that is just because the game is still in alpha; it's having extensive, game-changing systems added on every update and it's not going to be completely coherent yet; them's just the breaks. Some of you are foaming at the mouth because you seem to think people are trying to tear down your shining platonic ideal of a perfect game, but you're not going to improve anything by just refusing to talk about what parts don't work. When someone comes in and finds certain elements completely alien to the uninitiated, that's a legitimate accessibility problem at the very least, and you'll have to do better than "B-b-but the lore" or "it's all great in theory, honest!".
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Apr 22, 2017 07:49
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Bold Robot posted:Is it worth going to any old uninhabited system and doing surveys as long as it isn't too far out of my way, or should I only do it when I can get paid to go look at the planet? Depending on how good the planet is you get a physical survey report you can then sell to anyone. Right off the bat got one worth about 500k in some random system and a bunch of 100k surveys as well. I just take probe hunting missions which pay about 100k and then survey as I go. Come back with a few million, or get got and ragequit.
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Apr 22, 2017 07:55
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Bold Robot posted:Is it worth going to any old uninhabited system and doing surveys as long as it isn't too far out of my way, or should I only do it when I can get paid to go look at the planet? If you're passing it anyway, you might as well go in and see if there's planets inside because a lot of systems don't have any. If you have a bunch of excess supplies then while you're there you should probably go ahead and do the surveys, on average they're a lot of easy money. Often you'll find some extra Domain poo poo to salvage too while doing that. Cathair posted:In my experience, the problem with trading isn't that it prohibits easy, repetitive farming by moving from point A to point B and back again, that's a good idea. The problem is that what you need to play trading "as intended", the data needed to take advantage of the time-sensitive opportunities where trading can be profitable, is obfuscated behind about a million layers of bullshit. Yes this is what I was getting at with "inscrutable gibberish". I really love the game in general and I wouldn't be here providing free loving technical support for it if I thought the game sucked, but it's OK (or it should be) to acknowledge a thing you don't like in a game.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:04
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Plenty of games have every vendor in the game buying widgets at $n and selling them at $2n. No one complains that you can’t buy low and sell high in Final Fantasy. I thought it was pretty obvious that it was not easy to make money via trading in Starsector, after visiting a few planets and seeing massive tariffs and similar prices. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 08:04
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Flesh Forge posted:free loving technical support for it What the gently caress are you even talking about lmao
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Apr 22, 2017 08:05
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Platystemon posted:Plenty of games have every vendor in the game buying widgets at $n and selling them at $2n. No one complains that you can’t buy low and sell high in Final Fantasy. I... What? Is this really a stance being taken? That wanting to at least be able to reliably fall back on vanilla trade to pay your fuel and maintenance fees in a space fleet game without needing three times the spreadsheets of the average space trading mechanic... is the same as expecting a JRPG to have literally ANY business mechanics? Am I missing out on being offended that I can't play the stock market in Mario 64, if that's the mindset you are projecting on people here? For serious. The base concept of "Vanilla trade is low profits" I can get behind. Flying trade buzzard circles until you go from newbie ships to mega fleet before tacking on combat is lame and ignoring all the cool space gameplay. But having a relatively reliable fallback to repair and rearm if you gently caress up but survive combat keeps it relevant and just fill in a basic QoL niche. The hard part there, would be the fact enough money to maintain a fleet would escalate into good money numbers just by virtue of how involved upkeep can get. But that's still much different than saying you want to take generic trade out back, shoot it in the head execution style, then scream at the corpse it also had a tiny penis. Section Z fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 08:10
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reading is SO HARD guys OMGF
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Apr 22, 2017 08:09
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Gobblecoque posted:What the gently caress are you even talking about lmao Seriously dipshit it's on the SAME PAGE.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:11
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Gobblecoque posted:What the gently caress are you even talking about lmao he helped me out with my CTD issue. why are people such insatiable cunts, we're all meant to be happy and poo poo cause the patch finally came out, but instead you'd all rather tear each other a new rear end in a top hat and fight over inane crap. trading is garbage. If I wanna sit and spam trade routes to make money, that's my prerogative. I actually just wanted to start off as a happy little trader, and then outfit a small, quick bounty hunting fleet, and in my head my silly little backstory would be that I tried living the peaceful life of a trader, but pirates wrecked my poo poo, stole my family, killed my dogs and sold my space gaming console, so I resorted to bounty hunting instead. I also wanted to get into trading cause making money through other means is ridiculously easy and I at least wanted to feel like I worked for it instead of having wads of cash thrown at me. Qubee fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 08:11
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Usually Star Sector threads are extreme chill zones where we all sit back and bask in Alex's perfect design getting more perfect or differently perfect with every patch. Have faith, if trading is more perfect another way, he will make it so... eventually.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:12
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Baronjutter posted:Usually Star Sector threads are extreme chill zones where we all sit back and bask in Alex's perfect design getting more perfect or differently perfect with every patch. Maybe the Dev will decide to implement a new "Sell" button that asks if you'd like to apply your profits to discounted upkeeps instead. "Hmm, you COULD make 5,000 space bucks... OR, Arbitrary multiplied value in repairs and refueling!" Hell, it would certainly cut out a lot of middle man of offloading loot if you prefer combat and are happy with your ships. While also avoiding the logical paradox that "I only want to reliable pay my maintenance bills with vanilla trading, is that so much?" escalates into the fact that yes, it IS asking for a lot of money. Because this game has a much more robust logistics setup compared to the average everything. But maintenance coupons or whatever would sidestep that. Section Z fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 08:26
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Section Z posted:For serious. The base concept of "Vanilla trade is low profits" I can get behind. Flying trade buzzard circles until you go from newbie ships to mega fleet before tacking on combat is lame and ignoring all the cool space gameplay. But having a relatively reliable fallback to repair and rearm if you gently caress up but survive combat keeps it relevant and just fill in a basic QoL niche. The hard part there, would be the fact enough money to maintain a fleet would escalate into good money numbers just by virtue of how involved upkeep can get. Okay, I agree with the idea of a fallback, but disagree that it can or should be trade. Even if trade were profitable, you still have to put the money down for the goods, supplies, and fuel you need, and you risk further encounters with hostile fleets. Section Z posted:Maybe the Dev will decide to implement a new "Sell" button that asks if you'd like to apply your profits to discounted upkeeps instead. Or perhaps friendly fractions could give you aid. They won’t pay for you to run a battlecruiser, but they’ll keep your pack of frigates in the black. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 08:32
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Perhaps I haven't played vanilla in too long but right now timid and steady captains are utterly worthless, and any fights where you don't have a significant speed or numbers advantage over the enemy turn into these long and boring protracted attrition plinkfests to see whether someone accidently kills someone else or I simply quit and load an earlier save. I feel the combat skills have been, maybe not specifically nerfed, but still diluted to the point where having a decent combat character (where the skills only apply to your piloted ship) takes a lot more levels and makes it a choice between swimming in money or not hating combat. Fighting those Remnant AI ships makes me want to uninstall the game. Which brings me to the fact that surveying, and to a lesser extent, salvaging is disgustingly lucrative. After one or two false starts, I made over 500k without much difficulty. I accidently found surveying data worth >200k just from visiting a random system not too far from the core. Domain probes are also huge cash as the automated defences are trivial to destroy and the AI cores are worth a lot of money. The other changes are all really nice - the new travel mechanics really grow on you, even if having a tanker is pretty much a must have now. And did everyone notice that games have a seed that can be re-used to generate the same sector map? Not sure yet what it affects apart from the names and layouts of systems.
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Apr 22, 2017 08:47
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Internet Explorer posted:Seriously, please just give up and go play a different game. No one here cares if you don't like it and we're tired of reading your dumb rear end posts. Yeah, here people just want to be blind fanboys instead of admitting maybe the game still have some unbalanced stuff and how the trade economy isn't very clear. /s
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Apr 22, 2017 09:35
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Alex already stated that portions of the current trade mechanics were intentionally disabled for bugfixing reasons, resulting in trading not being as lucrative is could potentially be, and these mechanics would likely be redesigned in the near future. This juvenile snipey bullshit you nerds are engaged in is pointless.
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Apr 22, 2017 10:05
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Flesh Forge posted:Seriously dipshit it's on the SAME PAGE. Dude you are getting all worked up over I don't even know what.
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Apr 22, 2017 10:50
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Can you blame him? He complained about the trade mechanics and a bunch of people came by to personally poo poo in his mouth.
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Apr 22, 2017 11:00
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The problem that trade has in this game is the same on Sunless Sea had. The player identifies a route and runs it continously forever for a 500 credit profit until he reaches an arbitrary point (like a bigger ship) and that's basically his new game point. That's why Star Sector makes trade lucrative only on specific circumstances like shortages and blockades. The game wants trade to be an opportunity that sticks it's had out every now and then while you fight battles. Now is that a good or a bad thing? I have no opinion on that since I've never used that part of the game apart from the odd organ run.
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Apr 22, 2017 11:18
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Soup du Journey posted:Can you blame him? He complained about the trade mechanics and a bunch of people came by to personally poo poo in his mouth. Because his issue has an obvious fix that he refuses to acknowledge. Don't like tariffs, don't bother and smuggle instead.
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Apr 22, 2017 11:35
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 thx 4 the battle fleet~
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Apr 22, 2017 11:45
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Because his issue has an obvious fix that he refuses to acknowledge. Don't like tariffs, don't bother and smuggle instead. I mean, yeah sure Illegal trading does give better profits than legal trade. But it's also entirely avoiding the actual stated issue in favor of just admitting it's so poo poo that you don't bother, but wanting to phrase it in a positive light. I wish I could properly get across why telling somebody asking about legal trade "But ILLEGAL trade works just fine! Therefore you can't complain about legal trade  " only makes it look like you are giving people the brush off.
Section Z fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 11:51
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Loopoo posted:On a different topic, how can I compete with megafleets if I don't want a large, slow, logistical nightmare fleet myself? When I stop to think about what I want from this game, I wanna be quick and agile, able to flit between systems in no time, chase down smaller enemies, and generally operate in a small area. But when I see these big pirate fleets, it makes me wonder how I can compete against them if I limit myself to 10 burn ships. Can a bunch of Wolf class ships overwhelm something much tougher without taking on too many losses? Smaller fleets have the advantage of choosing fights. If you spot a bigger fleet that you want to attack then consider shadowing them, or baiting them into a friendly gank fleet. Either way be opportunistic with your advantages. Broadly speaking small fleets aren't going to be able to take on large fleets by themselves. Niche cases do exist such as heavily specialised strike fleets, which can be super fun and I highly recommend trying it at least once. I usually prefer to build up a favourite operational area with a lot of ships in storage, slimming down or bulking up to meet whatever goals I'm chasing at the time. OwlFancier posted:Pick leadership and take the 50% maintenence cost reduction, it's like, the best skill in the game and I don't really understand why it's there. It is extremely good. I'd say this is almost mandatory for rolling around in a large, shiny fleet. Usually there are meaningful alternative choices but the only ones I can see right now for a large fleet are to run a relatively quite slim maintenance profile fleet or a literal flying junkyard fleet with D mods everywhere & the tier 3 Industry -> Field Repairs skill; (D) hull deployment cost reduction also applies to maintenance cost (all ships in fleet)
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Apr 22, 2017 12:06
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I keep thinking of questions I'd like answered but this game is so good that I'd rather discover the answers through gameplay. All the new exploration stuff is amazing, except for running out of supplies in the furthest reaches of deep space and having to go in and edit my save file to keep from having to restart. But we came across a Domain mothership and scraped several hundred thousand credits out of its hull, so it was worth all the hassle. Edit: I'll ask one question: can you sell cores to a hostile faction? I'd sure like to dump some on Tri-Tach but I'm commissioned by the Hegemony. I'm gonna build the biggest, baddest expeditionary force the sector's ever seen. The Muffinlord fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Apr 22, 2017 |
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Apr 22, 2017 13:56
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my Sector is locked in all out war (all factions are fighting all factions, with the exception of independent) and has been since pretty much the beginning. Has anyone else seen this?
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Apr 22, 2017 14:00
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Not gonna lie, Fart Cannon, that sounds awesome. Invest in the salvage skill and sell their ship meats back to them!
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Apr 22, 2017 14:07
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TheWetFish posted:Smaller fleets have the advantage of choosing fights. If you spot a bigger fleet that you want to attack then consider shadowing them, or baiting them into a friendly gank fleet. Either way be opportunistic with your advantages. I've found that using disposable freighters/transports/tankers really helps. Pack extra gear to start and scuttle them as you go to save on maintenance costs. I usually plan on bringing home a few prize ships anyways so those usually replace them. Larger fleets can pick fights as well if you bring tugs and gear out for a super slim sensor profile. Easy to win an ambush out of a belt or nebula when you bring a few cruisers to the party. Mod talk: Can't wait to see what some of our resident modders can do with all the new mechanics here. Although it looks like waaaaaaay more than a simple fix to bring any mod into this build now.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:09
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The Muffinlord posted:I keep thinking of questions I'd like answered but this game is so good that I'd rather discover the answers through gameplay. All the new exploration stuff is amazing, except for running out of supplies in the furthest reaches of deep space and having to go in and edit my save file to keep from having to restart. But we came across a Domain mothership and scraped several hundred thousand credits out of its hull, so it was worth all the hassle. Bring a phaeton and a buffalo or 2. remember that you can stick surveying equipment on your logistics ships so try to pick ones that have at least 20 ordnance points so you can take advantage of this. Or load up on shepards.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:31
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Jesus Christ you loving babies, if you want to do spreadsheet enabled trade milk runs go and play EVE Online, the trade missions that every single market offers (bring 500 metals to volus within 30 days to get paid 50 grand, for example) are perfectly fine as a replacement for the market conditions that are currently disabled.
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Apr 22, 2017 14:36
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