I'm taking over a section of the galaxy in Starsector, join me. (no spoilers)

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by Vulkanis, Jul 25, 2016.

  1. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    So, what is this thread?
    I'm going to post updates on my progress in conquering a piece of the galaxy in Starsector in screenshot updates. I'll probably record some short videos too or I would if recording a Java game wasn't impossible without enormous amounts of RAM. You can come along for the ride just to watch and vote on a few things, or you can participate more directly as an officer.


    What is Starsector?
    A science fiction game taking place in the secluded colonies of a fallen empire a couple of centuries after the empire's apparent destruction. New groups trying to rise to power among the colonies fight over what they can reach. Humanity's understanding of science also fell with the empire. Many ships operate on principles their crews, captains, and technicians cannot understand. Although they often understand how to make their equipment work, they don't understand why it works. They basically have an early 21st century understanding of most of the equipment, that's how you should think about it. I'll cover these groups in more detail soon. In short: Space Mount and Blade.


    Even shorter explanation:
    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]


    How will we participate?(this will get a little complicated)
    Much like Mount and Blade, the player can hire named NPC's that use their character skills to improve the player's forces. I'll assign anyone that asks for an officer one (whenever we have an unoccupied officer), and I'll PM a character biography with a list of special things they can do with the character to affect the outcome of the campaign for conquest (like an infiltrator game). You also get three votes instead of one when there are votes compared to people without officers. (When voting please post your vote in the thread in character with some character fluff, and please act in accordance with your character's motivations and knowledge. Do not metagame.)


    How does Starsector combat and ship equipment work? (there is no TL;DRing this)
    Starsector combat takes place in real time tactically. The combat area's features change depending on your surroundings, e.g., initiating combat while very close to a star will generally have a large impact on how the battle plays out.

    The combat uses a shield and damage type system that I will explain in some rudimentary detail. There are three types of shields ships generally use, and four types of damage weapons can do. Weapon sizes on ships come in four flavors, small, medium, large, and built-in (usually the last defies any categorization). Weapons are also considered either ballistic, energy, or missile weapons, and they cannot be mounted on mounts that do no accept their weapon type.

    Shields absorb damage until a ship's flux bar (the ship's stamina bar, basically) is full, and at that point the ship is stunned until it vents half of that flux away. The ship moves at half its top speed when stunned, and cannot shoot or raise the shield again until half the flux is vented. Flux comes in two varieties, hard and soft. Hard flux cannot dissipate while the shield is up, soft flux can, but generally builds up faster. You can forcefully vent your flux at a faster rate than normal, but your ship is basically stunned while this happens, but it's faster (and safer) than overloading your flux bar.



    Damage Types:

    Kinetic Damage
    Deals 150% of listed weapon damage to shields, and only 50% of listed damage attribute to armor. Deals normal (100%) damage to hull.

    High-Explosive Damage
    Deals 50% of its damage attribute to shields, and 150% to armor. Also deals a buttload of damage to hull.

    Energy Damage
    Does normal damage to shields, armor, and hull. Most high-tech weapons do this type of damage.

    EMP Damage
    Generally, most weapons don't do EMP damage alone. EMP doesn't technically do damage, it instead disables components of ships as if it had done enough of any other damage type to accomplish that.



    Shield Types : (There will be many exceptions to the list here)

    Regular Shield
    Absorbs damage like you'd expect it to and does not modify the damage in any way. Something to note is that not all shields fill the same area, or even move over the same points on all ships. Some ships only have a frontal shield with a small arc and no movement ability, others will have a shield that covers the entire ship and can be shifted across the ship as it generates to cover areas as needed.

    Phase
    When activated, a ship with a phase system will phase through all objects (even other phased ships). The ship also moves at something like four times normal speed in phase space (represented as time slowdown if you pilot one). Phase ships often fly through a target and start shooting it in the ass when they leave phase space because the target ships simply cannot react to the phaser fast enough.

    No Shield
    Some special ships don't use a shield or phase system at all, but most ships without a shield or phase system aren't very good in my opinion.

    Ship Types: (and what they mean)

    There are five types of ships in the game, fighter (cannot be manually controlled or modified), frigate, destroyer, cruiser, and capital ship.

    Basically, ship types determine how different modifications to a ship scale their stats. Otherwise the classification doesn't do much else, e.g., Lightweight plating on a Stheno-class Cruiser only gives a speed boost of 15 su/s (space units a second) and an acceleration bonus of 25%, but on a Lasher-class Frigate it gives a speed boost of 25 su/s with an acceleration bonus of 17%.



    End of Combat Mechanics Explanations

    Will the number of mods combined with the constant updates to the game disrupt the playthrough?
    Unfortunately yes, I'll do my best to reboot the series whenever that happens. A very helpful mod can solve problems like that semi-easily by letting me hack in resources and markets back to states they were at when we got update fucked. I'll probably wipe the legacy updates list if I do a complete reboot to keep things simple.

    Update List (use this because I spend time making it for your convenience):
    Faction Rundown 1
    Faction Rundown 2
    Faction Rundown Final

    Update 0, Donny Stone is a Lucky Guy.
    Update 1, Red Blips on the Radar.
    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part one.

    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part two.
    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part three.
    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, final.
    Update 2, Dueling in Nebula.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2016
  2. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Faction Rundown 1:

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    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
  3. McGyver

    McGyver Experimental Pedagogue

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  4. Varbles

    Varbles Simply Maptastic. Staff Member

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    Your 'cubeupload' embedded images don't work, and opening the address just leads to imgur, which you should have used in the first place.
     
  5. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    I actually tried to preview them, and I just assumed it had something to do with the new layout of the forum. I'm not sure what I should do since even embedding those .gif's from Imgur appears to cause the same problem in the preview.
     
  6. Varbles

    Varbles Simply Maptastic. Staff Member

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    Aside from that I don't grasp what's going on yet. Is this a let's play, an infiltration game, or similar to the old dwarf fortress community games we used to have? Either way I'll follow along out of curiosity. The game sounds like a combo of Star Ruler 2 and Space Rangers 2 (both awesome games).
     
  7. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    It's going to be a mix of something like the infiltration games and the old DF community games. Basically, if someone does something according to his character profile or character powers, then I'll update stuff in game to reflect that. It's not a built in feature of the game, but it's for the reader's entertainment.
     
  8. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Update 0, Donny Stone is a Lucky Guy.

    [​IMG]
    At the start of our journey we find the leader of our group, Donny Stone, orbiting around the desert world of Palaeven in an ancient gem of a ship. It just barely managed to putter out of dry dock. The man that offered Donny the ship at 10% of the normal price looked at the ship drifting away from station with his jaw dropped, not only was he down around 12,000 Domain Credits, but his pride tarnished by at least that many credits too. Administrator Qor's life revolved around his work, which is the biggest reason why the P9 Colony Group officials selected Qor as the head administrator of the local government's space station.

    Donny met Qor after both of them were in the same bus that broke down on a trip to the space elevator. Usually, men like Qor were hard to reach given the busy and dangerous nature of their jobs, but Donny had an unprecedented stroke of luck that day in meeting him. Donny spoke with the administrator, and after some cajolement from Donny, Qor agreed to let Donny take a look through the ships condemned to be scrapped. Donny ended up taking a look at what Qor thought was certainly one of the worst off ships. Before Donny even turned to Qor to ask how much he'd have to pay to take it, Qor said "I'll let you take that piece of junk for a thousand." Qor thought why not let the rookie captain learn a lesson by buying into some garbage heap. This way he would make more than three times the junker's worth in raw materials if he had simply scrapped it.

    Donny agreed in an instant. After making his way into the ship from the maintenance port he then walked through the mess hall, past the brig, and into the bridge. There he found and sat down in the captain's chair of the aging Alastor-Class Frigate. Donny trained with a variety of different ships, but with the collapse of the Domain almost all innovation in ship design stopped. The Domain's impact, after their many, many, wars on ship design was extreme. If you knew how to operate one Domain military vessel, you could crew them all with little issue. Using and mastering are two different things, though.

    Donny fiddled with the control panel on the seat and tried to jump start the engines of the ship. *click* Nothing, Donny got no response from the tired old ship's engine. It was much louder than that for Qor on the outside of the ship. Qor, with his ears still ringing, and as quickly as his space suit would allow him, moved to the fore of the ship. Qor was disturbed by the sudden explosive sound, but he was even more bothered by the suit he was wearing. His aides insisted he wear it whenever in an area that may be exposed to the vacuum with little warning. The last administrator met a grisly end when a ship left through an automated airlock without warning. When Qor finally made it to the fore of the ship he tried to signal to Donny to stop trying to jump start the engine when suddenly BOOM, the engines exploded back into life as if they were brand new. Donny disengaged the ship's mooring to the woefully inadequate junkyard section of the station, and the automated airlock quickly opened to allow the now extremely dense smoke in the dock to vent out into space.

    Qor, now a mix of confused and angry, stood on a catwalk in the dock only holding on to it with the suit's magnetic attaching system. He activated the EVA gear on his suit to ask Donny something. "Are you going to pay for that?" Donny responded to Qor. "Look down at your suit." Qor looked as best as he could between the aides rushing to pull him out of the dock and the venting thruster exhaust, and he found one credit chit hanging from the suit's utility chain. Now completely bewildered, Qor noticed the chit held exactly 1,000 credits. Qor's face grew red. "Donny, don't speak to me for a little while."

    Donny looked to his friends on the bridge asking them what they thought was their next best move.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2016
  9. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Faction Rundown 2:
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  10. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Faction Rundown Final:
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  11. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Update 1, Red Blips on the Radar.

    This is our first dose of this game, and it's a pretty rude one. Nobody has taken the two open officers yet, Baraz and Nixon, so go ahead and volunteer if you're interested. I'm going to be writing out of character to establish a few more things here so you guys can make decisions when the votes start coming.

    [​IMG]
    This is the sensor view of the strategic map. The strategic map is exactly what it sounds like. When you're not in combat, you're on the strategic map moving around. Everything you see is either a market, a warp point, or something that can modify the tactical combat area. The most important thing will be the big triangles you see near the box indicating where we are on the map. Right now, we're downright tiny, those two big purple triangles above us are P9 combat patrols of only a few ships. We're that minuscule triangle just below them.

    Our sensors are also very weak, so there are many things moving around here that we haven't detected. One thing I should drive home is that the entire game is a living system. If we raid a commerce fleet headed to a planet, that planet could have a food shortage and drive the price of food up there enormously. The clouds on the map of any star system are nebula that will slow us down if we try to pass through them. For now, we're headed into hyperspace to pick a place to start grinding. We want more ships, officers, and levels.

    [​IMG]
    This is a strategic view of hyperspace and all of the star systems that will be present in the game. The port you see in the center is Prism Freeport, a unique indepedent port in hyperspace that sells ships you can usually only get by joining the faction they're from (at a wallet destroying price). The clouds are horrible hyperspace storms that also eat supplies like there's no tomorrow if you fly into them.

    Now for the red blips: We bumped into a Starlight Cabal (Tri-Tachyon pirates) fleet, maneuvered out of its way, and then ran into the independent pirates instead. Below is what those red triangles look like outside of the sensor view. If I were to zoom in you could see the sprites of the ships in their fleets flying around in the red bubbles, a neat touch.

    [​IMG]


    So, they caught us, and that fleet would totally slaughter us in just this ship even at max level. There's no hope of winning, but we can retreat. In the future I will not record these sorts of exchanges unless it's unusual. Just assume we're running from big fish constantly.
    [​IMG]
    The start of any retreat encounter, when we're retreating, spawns us on one end of the area. They can spawn behind us, to the left of us, and to the right of us.

    [​IMG]
    We managed to nail this Modified Silverfish with our Phase lance as he tried to intercept us. We'll try to get the kill with our harpoon missiles since his flux is high. If all three fly true, then at least one should get through.

    [​IMG]

    Or it could just shoot two of them down. Do you see those red turrets on it? Those are Diable Avionic's point defense turrets. I have no clue how a pirate got his hands on those, but it was a surprise.

    [​IMG]
    He pulled back to vent, and we thrust away from those "Thunder" fighters. They have Ion Cannons that do a ton of energy and EMP damage. We'd be pretty well fucked if they got our engines with those.

    [​IMG]
    Here they come out of the woodwork. Some Junk Pirate and a Tiandong mercenary gone pirate introduce themselves with some missiles towards our face.

    [​IMG]
    There's so many, but we've practically escaped now. Nothing but a "Reaper" or "Atropos" torpedo could really stop us at this point. That and some BRDY teleporting battleship. Even if our engines are flamed out at the edge of the escape scenario, if we select our ship in sensor view and order retreat, they will reactivate and let us escape.

    That's this update, I'm going to post a vote to decide which faction we should work for first. I excluded factions from the rundown if they can't own land (and thusly have no place for us to get a commission from them), are very minor factions, or aren't worth joining (the indie pirates are a challenge run not suitable for an infiltrator game).
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2016
  12. McGyver

    McGyver Experimental Pedagogue

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    I don't think anyone understands how to participate in this game...
     
  13. Paradox

    Paradox I am a gigantic asshole who loses people's hard wo

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    What the fuck
     
  14. McGyver

    McGyver Experimental Pedagogue

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    Is voting buggy for anyone else?
     
  15. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    It's going to be a mix of an infiltrator game and a let's play. I posted something about this to Varbles earlier. Almost everyone that gets an officer will be working towards helping conquer the galaxy--there will probably be one or two people with their own interests in mind screwing with everyone on our side, though.
     
  16. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Yeah okay, what the fuck is wrong with the poll.
     
  17. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part one

    While I try to figure out why the poll isn't working, or whatever is going on, I'll record some missions, which are separate from our campaign. All of the early missions are mind bogglingly easy, but this one is the first one where the difficulty really picks up.

    Many years ago, the Mayasura System was among the greatest and richest independent polities of the sector. It stood against the spread of The Hegemony's influence militarily and ideologically. The System valued its self-sufficiency, but remained neutral in the many wars between the other factions in the sector.

    The crown of the Mayasura System was the trio of massive acrology stations orbiting the planet of Mariaath. In total they housed tens of millions, and made possible the terraforming of the planet Mariaath into a paradise of a world. The use of the fantastic technologies aboard the arcology stations and the robotic terraforming machinery on the planet's surface drew the attention of the Luddic Church.

    The Luddites organized a decades long infiltration of the Mayasura System, and on one chosen day put their plan into motion. One of the arcology stations was rammed by an enormous capital ship sized Phaeton fuel tanker, which cast the station from orbit in a trail of radioactive dust and fire.

    The second arcology station was sent crashing into the surface of Mariaath by Luddite saboteurs using its own thrusters. The resulting explosion killed everyone aboard the station, and sent the carefully manipulated atmosphere on Mariaath into chaos.

    The third station escaped the fate of the other two, but many of the people on board died during the hijacking attempt. The Mayasurain Admiral Garret personally witnessed hundreds of bodies venting out of the station from his Conquest-Class Battlecruiser.

    Admiral Garret could only watch as the population of Mariaath died right infront of him when his communications officer started shouting.

    [​IMG] "Thirteen ships approaching our sensor net, it's a Hegemony fleet!"

    Garret knew what they were coming for. The Hegemony's majority are Luddites, so they probably worked with the Luddic Church to topple Mariaath.

    The Onslaught-Class Battleship signaled to Admiral Garret's fleet for their unconditional surrender.

    Garret ordered the communications officer to send a one word message in response.

    [​IMG] "Nuts?"

    Commodore Jensulte didn't understand what Garret's message meant, but Jensulte was the type to not take any chances.

    Jensulte ordered her fleet to begin a methodical advance towards Mariaath.



    [​IMG] "We're going to use our entire fleet for this fight. I know the Hegemony won't let us simply walk away from our homes after what they've done to us."
    [​IMG]


    [​IMG] "This formation definitely worked well in simulations against Hegemony fleets, but it's time to put it to the real test."
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2016
  18. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part two

    [​IMG] "All ships of the line move forwards alongside the Garuda. We're going to surround the Hegemony, and then send them packing with anti-ship fighters from the flanks."
    [​IMG]


    The first Hegemony destroyer shows up at sensor array epsilon with nothing but a bomber wing as an escort. The Garuda's sensors indicate that the Onslaught-Class is only 1800 SU away from the Garuda.
    [​IMG]


    The Garuda and its escorts (the Garuda will be doing the hard work here) engage the destroyer and now two wings of Hegemony bombers. The Mjolnir cannons on the Garuda will make short work of anything short of the Onslaught here.
    [​IMG]


    We overload the destroyer's shields, and we launch our missiles at it. The decision to hold our fighters back was a good one because those Broadswords would inflict heavy damage on our attack fighters. Instead, they're becoming intimately acquainted with the Garuda's flak cannons like their Piranha bomber friends did before.
    [​IMG]


    We check the sensor map, and notice the entire Hegemony fleet is basically on top of us at this point! Now is a good time to spring our trap. Those green glowing shapes flying in from the back are the artillery frigate squad's missiles.
    [​IMG]
     
  19. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, part three

    The Onslaught and its two heavy cruisers now engage the Garuda and its two light cruiser escorts. We know the Onslaught is less maneuverable than us (pretty much the whole Hegemony fleet is), so we're going to take out the escort to get behind the Onslaught.

    [​IMG]


    The battle is certainly going in our favor now with the Gladius, Thunders, and Warthogs showing up to assist us. The Onslaught's main guns (a primordial energy cannon much like our Mjolnirs) won't be a problem so long as we can keep circling it.
    [​IMG]


    As we circle the Dominator-Class Heavy Cruiser some Lasher-Class Frigates try to intercept our Thunders. The Lasher's efforts are completely in vain as the Dominator's guns were already disabled by the Thunder's ion cannons.
    [​IMG]



    Looking a bit behind the Garuda, we can see the Onslaught isn't having nearly as much success. The Onslaught can only shoot its TPC meaninglessly at our escorts as they constantly rotate in and out of the line of fire. This allows the escorts to vent when needed. Middle-epoch ships like these are notoriously mobile. If we had let this develop into a straight forward fight, we would've definitely lost against the long range firepower of the Dominators and the Onslaught.
    [​IMG]


    The threat posed by the Dominator is gone. The Thunders are cleaning up one Lasher while the other receives a punishing shot from our Falcon's main guns.
    [​IMG]


    We pop another Lasher like bubble-wrap.
    [​IMG]


    Then we move to destroy the Onslaught.
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2016
  20. Vulkanis

    Vulkanis Banned

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    Mission 0, The Last Hurrah, final




    This fight is over.
    [​IMG]


    [​IMG] "Admiral Garret, the Onslaught is broadcasting something on all frequencies."
    [​IMG] "Let's see it."
    [​IMG] "We surrender, please stop shooting!"
    [​IMG] "Hmmmmmmmmm"

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG] "Aren't you going to stop the gunnery officers from shooting, sir?"
    [​IMG] "I'm letting them decide how important their families and friends were to them."










    [​IMG]
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    So, for all of that careful trouble and play, we only get a B minus. I'm not sure how the game determines score, but the game puts it best: Major victory.
    [​IMG]
     

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