Best Of
Re: Mining and refining - suggestions
Enter: Gas Compressors and Ore Crushers! Thanks for the inspirational post! We're continuing to look at the ships, mining, and manufacturing as we work on bringing ship modding to life.
Neritus
3
Announcements post #290: Hard-Rock Industries.
From: Neritus
Subject: Hard-Rock Industries.
Hello, Sector!
Today we have some exciting new content for you. Introducing: Material-Rich Asteroids! Asteroid Exploration? Whatever you want to call it, it's time to blow up some big rocks.
These asteroids work a bit like wildernesses, but they're in space. Instead of triangulating, you'll be placing charges at weak points in the asteroid surface. At the moment, we have no physical item requirement like the triangulation device, but might add one. The bigger the rock, the larger the area and the more weak points it has.
Consult STATION ASTEROID LIST when at a station, or remotely in your ship with the Station Link artifact, just like STATION PIRATE REFINERIES. Newly-discovered asteroids are surveyed and placed on this publically-available database periodically.
To make it as immersive as possible, we've integrated spacewalking with the ground exploration experience. When exploring, you're still using your same reserves of spacewalk power. In light of this, we've introduced the @spacewalk prompt token, the "spacewalk_pow" GMCP Vitals field, and the CONFIG SPACEWALKALERT config, so you can better keep tabs on your remaining power.
To leave an asteroid area, simply FLY to high elevation, and then FLY again. There is no particular exit room. You might want to get good at this before placing the last charge... you only have 30 seconds to get back to space before things end terribly for you.
When the asteroid explodes, it'll leave behind tetherable asteroids or scoopable gas. The bigger the rock, the better the reward.
Watch out for the locals! Or perhaps the miningdrones that have showed up. Either way, you'll have some space mobs and ground mobs to deal with. Special hats off to one of our new Storytellers, Domin, for creating some terrifying enemies!
What's fresh content without fresh honors? HONORS STATS tracks the number of asteroids you've destroyed, and there are honors at 10, 100, and 1000 thanks to Damiel!
That's all for now! Remember: New Exciting Content = New Exciting Bugs. So please do get those BUG reports in and we'll get any hiccups ironed out!
Happy spacerocking,
Neritus
Subject: Hard-Rock Industries.
Hello, Sector!
Today we have some exciting new content for you. Introducing: Material-Rich Asteroids! Asteroid Exploration? Whatever you want to call it, it's time to blow up some big rocks.
These asteroids work a bit like wildernesses, but they're in space. Instead of triangulating, you'll be placing charges at weak points in the asteroid surface. At the moment, we have no physical item requirement like the triangulation device, but might add one. The bigger the rock, the larger the area and the more weak points it has.
Consult STATION ASTEROID LIST when at a station, or remotely in your ship with the Station Link artifact, just like STATION PIRATE REFINERIES. Newly-discovered asteroids are surveyed and placed on this publically-available database periodically.
To make it as immersive as possible, we've integrated spacewalking with the ground exploration experience. When exploring, you're still using your same reserves of spacewalk power. In light of this, we've introduced the @spacewalk prompt token, the "spacewalk_pow" GMCP Vitals field, and the CONFIG SPACEWALKALERT config, so you can better keep tabs on your remaining power.
To leave an asteroid area, simply FLY to high elevation, and then FLY again. There is no particular exit room. You might want to get good at this before placing the last charge... you only have 30 seconds to get back to space before things end terribly for you.
When the asteroid explodes, it'll leave behind tetherable asteroids or scoopable gas. The bigger the rock, the better the reward.
Watch out for the locals! Or perhaps the miningdrones that have showed up. Either way, you'll have some space mobs and ground mobs to deal with. Special hats off to one of our new Storytellers, Domin, for creating some terrifying enemies!
What's fresh content without fresh honors? HONORS STATS tracks the number of asteroids you've destroyed, and there are honors at 10, 100, and 1000 thanks to Damiel!
That's all for now! Remember: New Exciting Content = New Exciting Bugs. So please do get those BUG reports in and we'll get any hiccups ironed out!
Happy spacerocking,
Neritus
Announcements post #287: So long and thanks for all the skips.
From: Neritus
Subject: So long and thanks for all the skips.
Hi!
Captaincy tricks no longer require an active skipdrive. We are removing the skipdrive module, but have not yet got around to the finicky task of deleting all existing skipdrive modules, pulling it from the game entirely. But you can swap them out for something else and remove them from your designs entirely.
The justification is two-fold: 1) Skipdrives are so essential that they provide no meaningful choice in ship designing. You just always need one, and are constrained to it. 2) "Skip Drive" is just a generic lore terminology for the technology behind how all ships move. We're not entirely sure how or why the skip drive was introduced as a module, as all ships inherently have skip drives, or else they would not move.
Regards,
Neritus
Subject: So long and thanks for all the skips.
Hi!
Captaincy tricks no longer require an active skipdrive. We are removing the skipdrive module, but have not yet got around to the finicky task of deleting all existing skipdrive modules, pulling it from the game entirely. But you can swap them out for something else and remove them from your designs entirely.
The justification is two-fold: 1) Skipdrives are so essential that they provide no meaningful choice in ship designing. You just always need one, and are constrained to it. 2) "Skip Drive" is just a generic lore terminology for the technology behind how all ships move. We're not entirely sure how or why the skip drive was introduced as a module, as all ships inherently have skip drives, or else they would not move.
Regards,
Neritus
Presenting: The Y'saari Games
So, some context before getting into the concept... In the Starmourn Official Discord, a discussion began in #starmournpk about the state of conflict in Starmourn, started by @Solus. One of the things discussed was a lack of resources that needed to be fought over, and I mentioned the Orrery from Aetolia(for those who haven't played IRE's Midnight MUD, you can read about the orrery in more detail here). @Steve mentioned that such a thing would be neat for giving access to the Y'saari's subsector, and it gave me this idea. Thus...
Presenting: The Y'saari Games
The Context
Extremely wealthy, ancient, and wise, the Y'saari Covenant have been one of the most powerful forces in the Sector for thousands of years. Now, as their ancient enemy, the Ishvana, continues its machinations in the background, the Covenant decides to bequeath a small fraction of their wealth and technology to one of the factions of the Starmourn Sector... But who is worthy of such a gift? Should they be allowed access to such secrets forever?
The Y'saari have come to a conclusion to answer both of these questions. Each year, they host their competition, allowing each faction to send forth their most powerful soldiers, their most fearsome protectors, and their most bloodthirsty mercenaries to compete in the Y'saari Games.
The Mechanics: The Basics
The Y'saari Games, of course, are not simply competitions of reflex or strength, but of tactics, strategic resources, to determine which of the Sector's superpowers could truly become a military force to fight back the Ishvana. Thus, the Games themselves focus on total planetary warfare.
The Y'saari have prepared one of the myriad worlds to be the perfect battleground, with three stations, one for each faction, and one additional station, in orbit about it.
The Mechanics: For the Ground Combatants
Upon the surface, there are seven primary structures; three are the landing zones, one for each faction, three are orbital defence cannons, and one is a Y'saari supercomputer. Shuttles taken from each faction's station bring people down to their landing zones, with shuttles behaving similarly to the one to Ajax Garrison, wherein there's a time within which players may load aboard, before being taken down to the surface.
Orbital defence cannons can be captured at the surface to fire upon the other faction's shuttles, delaying their travel time to the planet, as well as attempting to defend against incoming orbital bombardment(see the Space Combatant section below for more info). To capture and hold an orbital defence cannon, at least one player must be at the location of the cannon, there must be no other players of another faction in their room, and both of the previous two requirements must have been true for the past thirty seconds.
The final structure, the Y'saari supercomputer, is the primary objective of the ground force. Capture of the supercomputer goes the same way as the capture of the orbital defence cannons, with a few differences. Firstly, fully capturing the supercomputer takes far more than thirty seconds, as fully capturing the supercomputer signifies the end of this session of the Games, and a point gained for the capturing faction, along with a number of marks from the Covenant's accounts. The speed at which the supercomputer is captured will directly correlate to the number of players not engaged in combat standing with the supercomputer, though hackers may slice into the system to give their faction a small boost in capturing. After the supercomputer is fully captured, the battlefield will then become a no conflict zone for the next IG day, until the next session. The faction that gains the most points over the course of five sessions will be the victor of that year's Games, and receive a bonus(listed at the bottom) depending on how high their score was compared to other factions that year.
However, the Games focus not only on ground combat ability, but on a faction's ability to engage in total warfare. Thus...
The Mechanics: For the Space Combatants
If you're here, you probably noticed the comment about orbital bombardment? Well, no worries, this is exactly where you can learn more about it. The fourth structure in orbit around the planet is a Y'saari orbital bombardment satellite. By taking control of it, a process that takes a full minute announced over either the conflict, or the Game's channel, pilots may remotely connect to the satellite, and order an orbital bombardment one of the seven aforementioned structures, doing massive damage to all people in that location, only reduced by the number of active orbital defence stations on the planetary surface. After that, the satellite will take five arms to automatically cool down and rearm.
Capturing the satellite is pretty simple, you must have at least one ship from your faction that is in one of the tiles immediately next to the satellite, and no ships from any other factions next to it.
Though, you may be wondering what exactly you're firing down upon the planet below. The answer? Meteors of useless materials. You might also be wondering what all of that random detritus is that's everywhere in the zone. The answer? Meteors of useless materials. You might be seeing where this is going. Meteors from inside the zone can be tethered and brought to the bombardment satellite to rearm it faster. Be warned though, once it's rearmed, its control computers will have been reset, and it must be captured all over again.
Of course, no war machine is simply consistent of its troops and vehicles. There's logistics to account for, and those to are present in the Games.
The Mechanics: For the Non-Combatants
Your faction needs you! During each session of the Games, the Y'saari will open a number of cargo requests. If you bring the proper cargo to the Y'saari's stations, they'll award you a single logistics point. You can then spend this logistics point, similarly to the CAC, to improve something that'll affect your faction for the entirety of that session.
Logistics Bonuses:
-Faster cloning time
-Faster shuttle time
-More bombardment damage
-More defence cannon defence against bombardment
-More enemy faction slowdown of shuttles by defence cannons
The Mechanics: The Rewards
Finally, the rewards for winning the games, ranked by how many points you have more than whichever faction came in second.
1. Faction-wide access to a Y'saari voidgate that connects to your faction voidgate. From here, you can access a special section of Y'saari space, including better mining, a Y'saari station that sells special goods, and perhaps more(I started running out of ideas for base rewards, but that's what the forums are for)
2. The Y'saari provide your faction with special shuttle fuel, increasing the speed of shuttle transportation(stacks with luxury shuttles)
3. The Y'saari reduce the prices of voidgate travel for all members of your faction
4. The station in Y'saari space provides special ship parts that you can't get anywhere else
5. The Y'saari improve your faction's cac with quantum subroutines, allowing twice the capacity they normally have
Conclusion
So, that was an extremely long post born from an idea from a random discussion on more PvP incentives, and inspired by the orrery from Aetolia, but given more mechanical depth because I got caught on the idea of total planetary warfare. Though, this only an idea for right now, so please do leave your comments, thoughts, and critiques below!
Big things I'd very much like to hear about(though if you have something else to comment, please do); overall attitude about the concept, whether or not orbital defence cannons should be a thing at all, more/less/different logistics bonuses, and more/less/different rewards for winning the Y'saari Games.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you all enjoy!
Lilias
2
Suggestion to tweak consequences of death
Death's weird in SM, and people've had strong feelings about it over the years. Here's a suggestion for tweaking death and why I think it's a good idea.
Suggestion:
- Remove marks penalty on death.
- Remove experience loss on death.
- Add a temporary experience gained penalty on death.
- Scanning own INR removes the experience gain penalty.
- Scanning other player's INR grants experience receives no change.
- Remove the bandaids for death, such as no marks penalty and no experience penalty for death in certain areas like faction stations.
Benefits:
- People who are bashing can return, pick up and scan INR, and continue bashing as normal. No change to what basher is doing.
- People who are not doing activities that gain experience are not affected negatively by their deaths in a way that doesn't pertain to the activities they're currently doing. This removes a significant barrier to activities like PVP -- people who want to PVP aren't necessarily going to want to go and recover lost experience afterwards. A death in PVP becomes a setback for that activity, not a setback plus an obligation to go gain experience to continue PVPing.
- Marks loss removal also addresses a barrier to PVP and risky activities, though I consider this a lesser factor than number 2.
- No longer have to wonder why it costs a couple thousand marks to clone a person.
- The theme for mindsim integration can come through more strongly with this change if the theme for the penalty is that the new mind, body, and mindsim take time to operate at full efficiency, and finding the old INR remedies this.
- Normalizing the consequences of death across all activities is a plus.
Steve
4
Re: Space, take two
Here's some other suggestions.
Accelerate the speed at which SHIP SHIELD (section) transfers the shields.
-This will enable pilots with active shielding to actually get them in the right location while taking the dps or be in the right place when they are reactivate.
Interdictor beam: halves the distance you can Skip, Flyby or Overload. (or make it a % and give it to sm med and lrg)
-Now hear me out on this one... 5, 7.5, and 60 respectively. This is only in effect while the target ship is in the cone and flyby and overload have decent cooldowns. A 5 space skip will be used the most to try and get out of the cone. This is manageable since the aggressive ship will -likely- not be being affected by a beam themselves (although maybe) and can match the maneuver should they wish to chase.
Damage: Increase the damage taken to subsystems (engine, shield, capacitor, shipsim, sensor) while decreasing the damage taken to hull and shields. Make a damage split for if it hits systems and give it a curve similar to wetwiring and when these subsystems fail all damage goes to hull and shields.
-This would buff missiles a bit since they can do extra damage to subsystems based on type. Also helps with ship survival rate. Also gives choices to where to heal instead of (ship repair auto off and just ship repair hull). <- that's currently the best option in most cases. (exception being if your aft is facing their cannons your engines WILL tank quickly)
-I would also posit that missiles could be loaded into small and medium weapon slots with appropriate damage reductions to benefit from their ancillary effects.
Ship mod ideas: shorter cooldown on skip based abilities, temp capacitor overcharge, shield buffs (resistances, lower recharge timer on shields, hp, etc) hull buffs, turn speed buffs (locked to cruiser and above), acceleration buffs, quicker targetlocks (could be an artie too), missile pods to increase the amount of missiles per pack to 2-4-6 (missiles be expensive - also have missiles effective range removed and do a flat damage at any distance), make mines more like drones that will seek a target with x range of them not including allied faction ships (similar to current faction armada ships).
Just to expand on this idea. I'd like to see this Dreadnaught class of ship be faction/dynasty based. Possible to be
Could also add into GMCP a tricks similar to the ww prio one ship_trick = "sfotr" ship flyby overload reversethrust reflexes
Perform Reflexes needs a re-work for sure. the capacitor draw borders on the insane to make you pass through debris? Could phase your ship to take reduced damage from any particulate like cannons/missiles/mines etc. Especially at that insane cost.
Cannons: Massive Cannons remain the same but Cannon 1 & 2 could benefit from a reduced reload time, capacitor draw for the reduced DPS. Making them a better speed shot vs heavy shot from the massive cannons. You would use more ammo but have a better chance of damaging subsystems which could lead to a win!
Weapons: Similar to SHIP SHIELD allow the ability for medium and small cannons to be mounted port starboard or aft of your vessel. Naturally this would help battleships the most but also small ships too gaining a wider firing arc at the cost of accuracy. Target locking would help with the accuracy malus but still, shouldn't be optimal to do this.
BBS class (Dreadnaught): A dreadnought class ship available for factions and large dynasty's that requires more than one person to operate. 1-3 (total) pilot, engineer, gunner. Actions performed in the appropriate room would be necessary and could have hacking levels 1-10 done for repairing some systems on the ship for the engineer to hack to fix backfiring or to repair a system.
If there are more aboard it would speed up the ability to fire or repair major systems. The implementation would be for cosmpiercers or to help those young in captaincy gain experience with a team. Since incursions are best done alone and have no bonus to working with your faction or a friend.
Cannons: Massive Cannons remain the same but Cannon 1 & 2 could benefit from a reduced reload time, capacitor draw for the reduced DPS. Making them a better speed shot vs heavy shot from the massive cannons. You would use more ammo but have a better chance of damaging subsystems which could lead to a win!
Weapons: Similar to SHIP SHIELD allow the ability for medium and small cannons to be mounted port starboard or aft of your vessel. Naturally this would help battleships the most but also small ships too gaining a wider firing arc at the cost of accuracy. Target locking would help with the accuracy malus but still, shouldn't be optimal to do this.
Weapons are already separated into Small, Medium, and Large modules. Let's say we threw in an option to Sync Small Cannons. Then the game automatically aliased the each "bank" of weapons and combined their damage and reload together it would cut down on how much is thrown as an output (spam). In order to maintain balance it would have to be slightly slower than a normal fire each weapon as it becomes available, especially in incursions where you may only fire 1 cannon instead of the whole bank. But it wouldn't be terrible and might be a nice QoL improvement for screen readers.
Beacon: For Visually Impaired players can we give others the access to run SHIP BEACON on an allies ship? This
would be huge for VI players to be able to know what's going on in space while a passenger on someone else's ship since they wont have access to the visual map. Have ship beacon items added to CONFIG COLOR objects, minables (asteroids/gas), targets(pve/pvp), voidgates, stations, etc.
BBS class (Dreadnaught): A dreadnought class ship available for factions and large dynasty's that requires more than one person to operate. 1-3 (total) pilot, engineer, gunner. Actions performed in the appropriate room would be necessary and could have hacking levels 1-10 done for repairing some systems on the ship for the engineer to hack to fix backfiring or to repair a system.
If there are more aboard it would speed up the ability to fire or repair major systems. The implementation would be for cosmpiercers or to help those young in captaincy gain experience with a team. Since incursions are best done alone and have no bonus to working with your faction or a friend.
Just to expand on this idea. I'd like to see this Dreadnaught class of ship be faction/dynasty based. Possible to be
taken out rarely for either cosmpiercer runs or boss fights in space. After sustaining enough damage it would be forced to 'Flee' the battle and then your faction/dynasty would have to pay comms to have it fixed. This would boost the comm market and be a marks sync. ALSO since the initial cost would be rather large this would keep the faction from having to re-buy it etc. Since many don't do the comm missions for station because of the high cost low reward this might fill that niche.
EVA: Allow someone who is EVA and not close enough to get to a station to spacewalk over to an enemy ship and hack their systems to reduce shipsim/engines/etc without directly damaging the ship before they run out of air. (not really accomplishing much but hey it's better than NOTHING.)
Many more ideas but already a wall of text sigh. Thoughts?
EVA: Allow someone who is EVA and not close enough to get to a station to spacewalk over to an enemy ship and hack their systems to reduce shipsim/engines/etc without directly damaging the ship before they run out of air. (not really accomplishing much but hey it's better than NOTHING.)
Many more ideas but already a wall of text sigh. Thoughts?
Jaidyn
1
Announcements post #284: Modder than ever.
From: Neritus
Subject: Modder than ever.
Hello, Sector!
Out with the old, in with the new. The mod rework has arrived. This is a juicy update, so hang on tight.
We wanted the new mods to be fun to research and craft and rewarding to own and use. On the user side, the new mods provide deep specialization options, beyond simply damage and resistance. On the crafting side, we've aimed to provide a robust and immersive experience with plenty of options for progressing your craft that you can do multiple times a day, once a day, and once a week. We also wanted to put you in charge of a team in your very own, physical WORKSHOP (check the syntax, and HELP WORKSHOP).
Modding is now done in workshops. Stations throughout the Sector now contain locations where you can establish your modding workshop. You'll need to have learned a crafting tradeskill to do it, and just a reminder: the modding tradeskills do not cost credits to learn. Unless, of course, you want to submit designs for your mods... Mods can now be designed if you've paid the design license fee for the relevant modding skill via the WORKSHOP LICENSE command.
Once you have done WORKSHOP ESTABLISH in a valid room, you can WORKSHOP ENTER/LEAVE to enter/leave your workshop. You'll be greeted by a workshop manager, who has modding quests available and will also help you do mod shipments. The manager also has an introductory quest to teach you the basics, which we recommend doing.
In addition to your Manager, you can also hire up to 3 Workshop Assistants. Assistants do tasks for you passively on a 16 hour cooldown like fetch crafting parts, research specific effects, or represent you in meetings with manufacturers to improve your relationship with them (the higher your relationship with a manufacturer, the more mods you get in a shipment). The success of these tasks are modified by corresponding stats, which all assistants have: Logistics, Intelligence, and Charisma. When they finish the task, they'll gain some progress towards leveling up the corresponding stat. If you truly care for your meeples, you'll consider sending them for professional development instead, giving them a much bigger boost in a specific stat. The more stats they gain in your employ, the more loyal the assistant becomes to you. The more loyal they are, the better they are at every task you send them on.
That's the gist of the crafting side, but there's lots more to cover... Let's talk about the mods themselves.
Finished Mods are now composed of various Mod Effects. To see the effects, use MOD EFFECT LIST. In fact, just check out MOD by itself for all the syntax. These go much further than just damage. We now have weapon and armor mods for subsystem damage, affliction duration, armor piercing, forced move resist, cover effectiveness, and even passive life regeneration independent of wetwiring and... Crits. Talents now grant 3.5% per level, meaning the max you'll get from talents is 35%. With maximum effect mods, you can get your crits up by another 25%, meaning the new max crit chance has gone up from 35% to 60%. Also, crit chance from mods applies even before you get to MIL 75...
Moving on, weapons and armor can only slot one mod now, but a single finished mod can have up to 5 different effects, or a maximum of 30 levels worth of mod effects in total. The maximum level of an effect is 15 and maxing research in an effect is designed to take a long time. That said, mod effects have reduced returns on how effective they are as the levels get higher and higher, such that a level 3 mod effect is definitely worse than a level 4 mod effect, but there's almost no difference between a level 14 and level 15 effect. Meanwhile, the parts and research required to go from level 3 to level 4 is *significantly* less than to go from 14 to 15. In fact, it takes less research to go from Level 1 to Level 13 in an effect as it does to go from Level 13 to Level 15. So before you go spending all your credits maxing out a single effect, please do understand the highest level effects are *very* costly and have significantly reduced returns.
If you feel you'll never quite get all the effects you might want researched all by yourself, don't worry. You can mod TOGETHER! Multiple modders can MOD INSTALL on the same mod chassis. Read more in HELP WORKSHOP.
Have I lost you yet? Stay with me.
When you get your hands on a mod, you can MOD SLOT and MOD UNSLOT it at the cost of 3s of balance. At the moment, you can slot and unslot mid-combat, but this may be changed along with mid-combat ARMORSET swapping. We don't want PvP to be all about slotting and unslotting mods, after all.
Mods have been plugged in so many places it's hard to describe them all in one post. A BEAST Tethering you for instance could potentially trigger move_resist, move_resist_pierce, cover_penetrate, cover_effectiveness, and then for the weak knees affliction from it, aff_dmg_musc, aff_duration_musc, aff_resist_musc, and aff_reducer_musc.
What if a BEAST uses Armvice? There are no weapons to mod for Suittech and Plasmacasting, Neritus! Fear not BEASTs. You actually can MOD SLOT directly into SERVOS and PLASMA. These are "weapons" that "don't really exist" as such, and there's now a whole new layer of the underlying weapon system to handle such non-physical weapons.
... But that's not all, BEASTs. As the very special owner of a weird piece of equipment, the Shield, you get an extra treat. Hybrid mods. Hybrid mods can have both weapon and armor effects, can only be slotted to Shields, and have the very special feature that the Shield will contribute certain armor mod effects in certain situations, described in HELP HYBRID MODS.
... Also, take note Scoundrels, cover_effectiveness can only be slotted into Light Armor. Happy table dancing. For now, that's the only armor class restriction among the mod effects, but hey, the functionality is there if we want it more in the future.
If you've gotten this far you're probably wondering what's happened to your old research progress. When you arrive in your workshop, you'll get a bulk sum of global research credits. Please make sure that if you decide to blow all your credits attempting to max one effect that you undertand the diminished returns system mentioned above. We will not be refunding any research credits.
If you want to read more, here are some help files that have had some updates: HELP WORKSHOPS, HELP ARMORMODDING, HELP WEAPONMODDING, HELP ARMOR MODS, HELP WEAPON MODS, HELP HYBRID MODS.
I will be monitoring for bugs and assorted imperfections. Obviously there are huge ramifications for PvE and PvP balance here. Don't be surprised if some mod effects get nerfed, turfed, buffed, or if new ones get added in the short term, or if some abilities get toned up or down in light of the new modding system. In fact, you count on it.
Next up, we have some special plans for the next big project, Ship Modding, but first things first is a pass on ships more generally. We also want to make sure the Workshop system is smooth, engaging, fun, and bug-free before Ship Modding. So keep the feedback coming!
Modest,
Neritus
Subject: Modder than ever.
Hello, Sector!
Out with the old, in with the new. The mod rework has arrived. This is a juicy update, so hang on tight.
We wanted the new mods to be fun to research and craft and rewarding to own and use. On the user side, the new mods provide deep specialization options, beyond simply damage and resistance. On the crafting side, we've aimed to provide a robust and immersive experience with plenty of options for progressing your craft that you can do multiple times a day, once a day, and once a week. We also wanted to put you in charge of a team in your very own, physical WORKSHOP (check the syntax, and HELP WORKSHOP).
Modding is now done in workshops. Stations throughout the Sector now contain locations where you can establish your modding workshop. You'll need to have learned a crafting tradeskill to do it, and just a reminder: the modding tradeskills do not cost credits to learn. Unless, of course, you want to submit designs for your mods... Mods can now be designed if you've paid the design license fee for the relevant modding skill via the WORKSHOP LICENSE command.
Once you have done WORKSHOP ESTABLISH in a valid room, you can WORKSHOP ENTER/LEAVE to enter/leave your workshop. You'll be greeted by a workshop manager, who has modding quests available and will also help you do mod shipments. The manager also has an introductory quest to teach you the basics, which we recommend doing.
In addition to your Manager, you can also hire up to 3 Workshop Assistants. Assistants do tasks for you passively on a 16 hour cooldown like fetch crafting parts, research specific effects, or represent you in meetings with manufacturers to improve your relationship with them (the higher your relationship with a manufacturer, the more mods you get in a shipment). The success of these tasks are modified by corresponding stats, which all assistants have: Logistics, Intelligence, and Charisma. When they finish the task, they'll gain some progress towards leveling up the corresponding stat. If you truly care for your meeples, you'll consider sending them for professional development instead, giving them a much bigger boost in a specific stat. The more stats they gain in your employ, the more loyal the assistant becomes to you. The more loyal they are, the better they are at every task you send them on.
That's the gist of the crafting side, but there's lots more to cover... Let's talk about the mods themselves.
Finished Mods are now composed of various Mod Effects. To see the effects, use MOD EFFECT LIST. In fact, just check out MOD by itself for all the syntax. These go much further than just damage. We now have weapon and armor mods for subsystem damage, affliction duration, armor piercing, forced move resist, cover effectiveness, and even passive life regeneration independent of wetwiring and... Crits. Talents now grant 3.5% per level, meaning the max you'll get from talents is 35%. With maximum effect mods, you can get your crits up by another 25%, meaning the new max crit chance has gone up from 35% to 60%. Also, crit chance from mods applies even before you get to MIL 75...
Moving on, weapons and armor can only slot one mod now, but a single finished mod can have up to 5 different effects, or a maximum of 30 levels worth of mod effects in total. The maximum level of an effect is 15 and maxing research in an effect is designed to take a long time. That said, mod effects have reduced returns on how effective they are as the levels get higher and higher, such that a level 3 mod effect is definitely worse than a level 4 mod effect, but there's almost no difference between a level 14 and level 15 effect. Meanwhile, the parts and research required to go from level 3 to level 4 is *significantly* less than to go from 14 to 15. In fact, it takes less research to go from Level 1 to Level 13 in an effect as it does to go from Level 13 to Level 15. So before you go spending all your credits maxing out a single effect, please do understand the highest level effects are *very* costly and have significantly reduced returns.
If you feel you'll never quite get all the effects you might want researched all by yourself, don't worry. You can mod TOGETHER! Multiple modders can MOD INSTALL on the same mod chassis. Read more in HELP WORKSHOP.
Have I lost you yet? Stay with me.
When you get your hands on a mod, you can MOD SLOT and MOD UNSLOT it at the cost of 3s of balance. At the moment, you can slot and unslot mid-combat, but this may be changed along with mid-combat ARMORSET swapping. We don't want PvP to be all about slotting and unslotting mods, after all.
Mods have been plugged in so many places it's hard to describe them all in one post. A BEAST Tethering you for instance could potentially trigger move_resist, move_resist_pierce, cover_penetrate, cover_effectiveness, and then for the weak knees affliction from it, aff_dmg_musc, aff_duration_musc, aff_resist_musc, and aff_reducer_musc.
What if a BEAST uses Armvice? There are no weapons to mod for Suittech and Plasmacasting, Neritus! Fear not BEASTs. You actually can MOD SLOT directly into SERVOS and PLASMA. These are "weapons" that "don't really exist" as such, and there's now a whole new layer of the underlying weapon system to handle such non-physical weapons.
... But that's not all, BEASTs. As the very special owner of a weird piece of equipment, the Shield, you get an extra treat. Hybrid mods. Hybrid mods can have both weapon and armor effects, can only be slotted to Shields, and have the very special feature that the Shield will contribute certain armor mod effects in certain situations, described in HELP HYBRID MODS.
... Also, take note Scoundrels, cover_effectiveness can only be slotted into Light Armor. Happy table dancing. For now, that's the only armor class restriction among the mod effects, but hey, the functionality is there if we want it more in the future.
If you've gotten this far you're probably wondering what's happened to your old research progress. When you arrive in your workshop, you'll get a bulk sum of global research credits. Please make sure that if you decide to blow all your credits attempting to max one effect that you undertand the diminished returns system mentioned above. We will not be refunding any research credits.
If you want to read more, here are some help files that have had some updates: HELP WORKSHOPS, HELP ARMORMODDING, HELP WEAPONMODDING, HELP ARMOR MODS, HELP WEAPON MODS, HELP HYBRID MODS.
I will be monitoring for bugs and assorted imperfections. Obviously there are huge ramifications for PvE and PvP balance here. Don't be surprised if some mod effects get nerfed, turfed, buffed, or if new ones get added in the short term, or if some abilities get toned up or down in light of the new modding system. In fact, you count on it.
Next up, we have some special plans for the next big project, Ship Modding, but first things first is a pass on ships more generally. We also want to make sure the Workshop system is smooth, engaging, fun, and bug-free before Ship Modding. So keep the feedback coming!
Modest,
Neritus
The Current State of Bashing
Late last year I made a thread about the detrimental effect of the introduction of crits on the state of Starmourn's bashing (https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/1274/bashing-after-crits). This post is not intended to revisit that but an attempt to address the multitude of other problems in bashing currently. (Just to get it out of the way, the game wasn't designed with crits in mind but we know they won't be removed, so there's no point going back over that.)
Alright, on to the ethically-sourced noodles meat of the issue. Before level 75 one bashes to gain extra stat points, lessons, and bound credits. Once one reaches level 75, they instead work towards talent points. The problem with talent points as they currently exist is primarily two-fold. The first and more complicated of the two major problems is that talent points only serve to increase the acquisition of further talent points, marks and bound (daily) credits. So effectively we can reduce it to 'talent points only major effect is to effectively increase marks and credit gain. Crits mean faster per mob kill time, DamageResistance, Dodge and SecondWind all mean less downtime lost to death/healing, the rest continue this trend of killing faster and having less downtime. (DR is an outlier in that its effect assists in PvP too, I should note). So the first problem is that endgame bashing is rather narrowly focused on what can be gained.
The second problem is that none of the above actually matters at all, because bashing cannot compare to credit and marks generation from incursions. Just some very basic math to illustrate this point - Victory Rush without the artefact and Speedup give a 2.16s balance time. In unrealistically optimal conditions (no downtime on either effect, always killing a mob with one attack, always having a new mob to kill (that is, queueing attacks so there's literally zero downtime) you could kill 100 mobs in just over 3.5 minutes. So just over 35 minutes to kill 1000 mobs, the same 10 credits gained from doing a a full hard incursion (50 space mobs). Obviously you're not going to kill even close to 1k mobs per 35 minutes and even if you did I doubt you'd reach the 45k marks profit (not gross payout) I average from doing incursions suboptimally.
A separate problem from the above material ones, but one I'm also going to bring up here rather than make a separate topic for, is that endgame bashing is, put bluntly, fucking boring. One of the major features of Starmourn was the ability to use most (though not all) abilities in PvE as well as PvP. Without crits (at the point effectively meaning before reaching level 75 and 20 talent points) the TTK for mobs is long enough that various strategies could be used, diversity of builds is more acceptable/less crippling, etc. Critical hits in their current state obviate any of that, as applying a condition that increases the damage of another attack becomes severely suboptimal compared to potentially killing the mob with one attack. Beyond the effect of critical hits, though, there has been an active move away from build diversity. For example, the presence of the frozen condition previously increased damage from Nanotech abilities, leading to freeze->swarm having once been an acceptable method of killing mobs. The change to Nanotech abilities scaling to mind subsystem, though, makes doing anything other than freeze on repeat pointless, a move away from engaging PvE. (I expect it to be correctly pointed out that many people automate their bashing and don't care about engagement. Those people's feelings on the matter should frankly not be taken into consideration, because by use of automation they have opted out of that side of the game. As someone who opts out of PvP, I don't try to influence PvP decisions and would hope that my thoughts on an aspect of the game I ignore wouldn't be taken into consideration.)
So, now that I've dropped a massive wall of text about what I see as the problems of bashing, I suppose I should at least try to propose solutions to keep this from being a wholly useless, negative post. An expansion of talent points to address things other than marks/credit generation directly and/or indirectly would be massively beneficial to the game. That's something I pushed for when talents were previewed before their release, because I don't consider increased marks generation alone (this was before daily credits) to be a reason to continue the activity. I'm wary of suggesting more things that mechanically benefit PvE or PvP, but I think there's room for a number of other things to be unlocked. Exclusive customizations are one thing - hair/skin colour, etc. Or even beyond character customizations, ship customizations. There are honestly a lot of places we could go with an expanded talent system and I'm hoping this thread will generate ideas. I'm honestly a bit brain dead after typing all of the above.
Alright, on to the ethically-sourced noodles meat of the issue. Before level 75 one bashes to gain extra stat points, lessons, and bound credits. Once one reaches level 75, they instead work towards talent points. The problem with talent points as they currently exist is primarily two-fold. The first and more complicated of the two major problems is that talent points only serve to increase the acquisition of further talent points, marks and bound (daily) credits. So effectively we can reduce it to 'talent points only major effect is to effectively increase marks and credit gain. Crits mean faster per mob kill time, DamageResistance, Dodge and SecondWind all mean less downtime lost to death/healing, the rest continue this trend of killing faster and having less downtime. (DR is an outlier in that its effect assists in PvP too, I should note). So the first problem is that endgame bashing is rather narrowly focused on what can be gained.
The second problem is that none of the above actually matters at all, because bashing cannot compare to credit and marks generation from incursions. Just some very basic math to illustrate this point - Victory Rush without the artefact and Speedup give a 2.16s balance time. In unrealistically optimal conditions (no downtime on either effect, always killing a mob with one attack, always having a new mob to kill (that is, queueing attacks so there's literally zero downtime) you could kill 100 mobs in just over 3.5 minutes. So just over 35 minutes to kill 1000 mobs, the same 10 credits gained from doing a a full hard incursion (50 space mobs). Obviously you're not going to kill even close to 1k mobs per 35 minutes and even if you did I doubt you'd reach the 45k marks profit (not gross payout) I average from doing incursions suboptimally.
A separate problem from the above material ones, but one I'm also going to bring up here rather than make a separate topic for, is that endgame bashing is, put bluntly, fucking boring. One of the major features of Starmourn was the ability to use most (though not all) abilities in PvE as well as PvP. Without crits (at the point effectively meaning before reaching level 75 and 20 talent points) the TTK for mobs is long enough that various strategies could be used, diversity of builds is more acceptable/less crippling, etc. Critical hits in their current state obviate any of that, as applying a condition that increases the damage of another attack becomes severely suboptimal compared to potentially killing the mob with one attack. Beyond the effect of critical hits, though, there has been an active move away from build diversity. For example, the presence of the frozen condition previously increased damage from Nanotech abilities, leading to freeze->swarm having once been an acceptable method of killing mobs. The change to Nanotech abilities scaling to mind subsystem, though, makes doing anything other than freeze on repeat pointless, a move away from engaging PvE. (I expect it to be correctly pointed out that many people automate their bashing and don't care about engagement. Those people's feelings on the matter should frankly not be taken into consideration, because by use of automation they have opted out of that side of the game. As someone who opts out of PvP, I don't try to influence PvP decisions and would hope that my thoughts on an aspect of the game I ignore wouldn't be taken into consideration.)
So, now that I've dropped a massive wall of text about what I see as the problems of bashing, I suppose I should at least try to propose solutions to keep this from being a wholly useless, negative post. An expansion of talent points to address things other than marks/credit generation directly and/or indirectly would be massively beneficial to the game. That's something I pushed for when talents were previewed before their release, because I don't consider increased marks generation alone (this was before daily credits) to be a reason to continue the activity. I'm wary of suggesting more things that mechanically benefit PvE or PvP, but I think there's room for a number of other things to be unlocked. Exclusive customizations are one thing - hair/skin colour, etc. Or even beyond character customizations, ship customizations. There are honestly a lot of places we could go with an expanded talent system and I'm hoping this thread will generate ideas. I'm honestly a bit brain dead after typing all of the above.
Zoe
1
Announcements post #276: ARMORSETS and ARMOR RESISTANCES!
From: Neritus
Subject: ARMORSETS and ARMOR RESISTANCES!
Hello everyone!
We continue down the warpath of equipment-related QoL with two new features:
First off we have ARMOR RESISTANCES [INV] [SLOT] which works like ARMOR LIST, but gives you a condensed view of all the resistances of matching armor pieces. But that's not the cool thing...
Introducing, armor sets! Accessible via ARMORSET, you can use this feature to create sets of armor from your existing gear that you can quickly equip using ARMORSET EQUIP <set name>. ARMORSET EQUIP consumes 4s of balance, but lets you completely swap out your set of armor in a single balance.
You can have a maximum of 3 armor sets, increasing the maximum by 1 with the new extra_armorset artifact.
Gearing up,
Neritus
Subject: ARMORSETS and ARMOR RESISTANCES!
Hello everyone!
We continue down the warpath of equipment-related QoL with two new features:
First off we have ARMOR RESISTANCES [INV] [SLOT] which works like ARMOR LIST, but gives you a condensed view of all the resistances of matching armor pieces. But that's not the cool thing...
Introducing, armor sets! Accessible via ARMORSET, you can use this feature to create sets of armor from your existing gear that you can quickly equip using ARMORSET EQUIP <set name>. ARMORSET EQUIP consumes 4s of balance, but lets you completely swap out your set of armor in a single balance.
You can have a maximum of 3 armor sets, increasing the maximum by 1 with the new extra_armorset artifact.
Gearing up,
Neritus
Announcements post #275: Permadeath.
From: Neritus
Subject: Permadeath.
Hello, Sector!
Ever wonder what life might be like for all those citizens of the Sector without INRs? Are you looking to up the stakes of your Starmourn experience? Do you enjoy roguelikes and wish Starmourn supported that sort of play experience? Would you enjoy roleplaying a character and seeing their arc come to a dramatic, perhaps abrupt conclusion?
Introducing a new, optional game mode: Hardcore. In an IRE first, we are introducing permadeath. This is an OPTIONAL game mode only available to NEW characters and there are a number of new mechanics to support this.
In Hardcore, when your character dies after level 20, they are dead, forever, and cannot be revived by any means. Hardcore characters have no INR, after all. No Hardcore character can ever be made into a Normal character, and vice versa, and you can only have one active hardcore character at a time.
You're probably asking, "If I die, what happens to my credits?" In the spirit of roguelikes, your character's credit value on death is added to your Hardcore Credit Pool, which you can claim on any of your future hardcore characters. Hardcore Credit value works a bit like retirement value, but is much more generous. Namely, you get 100% of the value from purchased credits, artifacts, collectibles, and other places, and 50% of credits obtained for free from a wide variety of sources including dailycredits. This DOES NOT, however, include the No Brainer packages. If you intend on purchasing anything at all on a Hardcore character, please do read HELP HARDCORE thoroughly.
NB: Since this is an entirely unique system in the IRE landscape with its own Credit mechanics, Hardcore characters cannot RETIRE.
And since I know you all love RANKINGS, we have 4 new rankings: HARDCOREXP, HARDCOREPK, HARDCOREHACKING, and HARDCORECAPTAINS. Hardcore rankings work a bit differently, taking combined scores from your current Hardcore character and all your dead Hardcore characters. This cumulative ranking has to be turned on manually, though, so you can still easily conceal who your next character might be after your old one die
There is a lot more to address, but that is the gist of it. Have a look at HELP HARDCORE for detailed information. You also probably have an idea now what those Memorial Deeds are all about. Have a look at HELP MEMORIALS! We've added some new memorial spaces to the faction areas, and are adding more neutral ones over time.
We also have two new artifacts: Reserved Plot (reserved_plot) and Last Will (last_will). Reserved plots are covered in HELP MEMORIALS. Last Will on the other hand is a way to transfer half your marks on death either to a designee or to your next Hardcore character.
And now, the credit reel. Hardcore is Eukelade's swan song for Starmourn. It was the final system she designed, overcoming the major design challenges, and we've been working hard on bringing it to life since. The wider IRE team has been super supportive. Tiur from Aetolia loves us so much, he helped code it too, writing the initial framework which I've gradually filled in over time. Credit to Damiel and the ST team for creating some truly breathtaking memorial spaces and rigorously helping test. Heck, even Euke herself volunteered her time to help test and design some memorials for us!
Rest in peace,
Neritus
Subject: Permadeath.
Hello, Sector!
Ever wonder what life might be like for all those citizens of the Sector without INRs? Are you looking to up the stakes of your Starmourn experience? Do you enjoy roguelikes and wish Starmourn supported that sort of play experience? Would you enjoy roleplaying a character and seeing their arc come to a dramatic, perhaps abrupt conclusion?
Introducing a new, optional game mode: Hardcore. In an IRE first, we are introducing permadeath. This is an OPTIONAL game mode only available to NEW characters and there are a number of new mechanics to support this.
In Hardcore, when your character dies after level 20, they are dead, forever, and cannot be revived by any means. Hardcore characters have no INR, after all. No Hardcore character can ever be made into a Normal character, and vice versa, and you can only have one active hardcore character at a time.
You're probably asking, "If I die, what happens to my credits?" In the spirit of roguelikes, your character's credit value on death is added to your Hardcore Credit Pool, which you can claim on any of your future hardcore characters. Hardcore Credit value works a bit like retirement value, but is much more generous. Namely, you get 100% of the value from purchased credits, artifacts, collectibles, and other places, and 50% of credits obtained for free from a wide variety of sources including dailycredits. This DOES NOT, however, include the No Brainer packages. If you intend on purchasing anything at all on a Hardcore character, please do read HELP HARDCORE thoroughly.
NB: Since this is an entirely unique system in the IRE landscape with its own Credit mechanics, Hardcore characters cannot RETIRE.
And since I know you all love RANKINGS, we have 4 new rankings: HARDCOREXP, HARDCOREPK, HARDCOREHACKING, and HARDCORECAPTAINS. Hardcore rankings work a bit differently, taking combined scores from your current Hardcore character and all your dead Hardcore characters. This cumulative ranking has to be turned on manually, though, so you can still easily conceal who your next character might be after your old one die
There is a lot more to address, but that is the gist of it. Have a look at HELP HARDCORE for detailed information. You also probably have an idea now what those Memorial Deeds are all about. Have a look at HELP MEMORIALS! We've added some new memorial spaces to the faction areas, and are adding more neutral ones over time.
We also have two new artifacts: Reserved Plot (reserved_plot) and Last Will (last_will). Reserved plots are covered in HELP MEMORIALS. Last Will on the other hand is a way to transfer half your marks on death either to a designee or to your next Hardcore character.
And now, the credit reel. Hardcore is Eukelade's swan song for Starmourn. It was the final system she designed, overcoming the major design challenges, and we've been working hard on bringing it to life since. The wider IRE team has been super supportive. Tiur from Aetolia loves us so much, he helped code it too, writing the initial framework which I've gradually filled in over time. Credit to Damiel and the ST team for creating some truly breathtaking memorial spaces and rigorously helping test. Heck, even Euke herself volunteered her time to help test and design some memorials for us!
Rest in peace,
Neritus