Best Of
Suggesting a change to gas scooping
Visually impaired (VI) players really can't scoop gas, and some players don't enjoy scooping gas. Other simply won't bother in its current state because it's perceived as tedious. Although I've learned to do it well, I wouldn't miss gas scooping in its current form if it were changed to accommodate VI players and to make it less tedious.
My suggestion: change the fly-around scooping method to function like a vacuum. Here's how it works. Park your ship in the cloud; no movement required. Activate your scoops. The scoops automatically vacuum up the cloud around the ship. The cloud visibly shrinks as units of gas are gathered (this would be ideal). When done, a message informs the player how many units have been gathered, and whether the scoop ended because the scoops are full or because the cloud was depleted. This is in addition to the per-unit-collected messages we receive now.
In case it isn't clear why this would help VI players,
this change would permit a player to SHIP BEACON to discover a cloud at
X, Y, then to autopilot to X, Y. No fancy autopilot functions required to fly around to scoop the gas. However, the behavior of despawning the cloud could be a tricky to implement because, if a cloud dissipates right next to the ship, then that might cause the scoop to end, if implemented in such a fashion. Then, what would happen would be that the VI player would not be able to see where to get the rest of the cloud; perhaps SHIP BEACON could still help. I don't have a great suggestion for remedying this.
Corollary changes:
Widescoops (the improved scoop we gain from captaincy) can be changed to accelerate the process.
Mining spec can also accelerate the process. I suggest this because one of the mining spec perks is that the deployed scoops do not impede maneuverability, which, in practice, speeds up scooping right now.
Thoughts? This was brought up on the unofficial Discord earlier today.
Steve
8
Re: Announcements post #79: Rogue refineries and autofactories.
Having gotten another direct comparison finally, I think it's time to scrutinize the values for resources gained from blowing up refineries vs. hacking them.
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, hacked - 78 vandium
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, blown - 63 vandium
This difference is okay, since it's certainly less, although I feel it's still a lot considering the substantially lower risk involved.
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, hacked - 19 arrays
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, blown - 19 arrays
There is no difference here. I realize there's some rng involved here and I probably just got lucky/unlucky on one, but the range must be awfully close, and I definitely think there should be more disparity. I honestly expected there to be a flat-out 50% reduction in yield, and I don't think that should be out of the question here.
The entire point of making activate pirate zones Open PK is to encourage ship combat, but right now it's so easy to just snipe a facility and move on. This is exacerbated by a few things:
The tl;dr here is that there is inherently a lot of risk in hacking and very little in blowing up refineries, but the rewards appear to be very similar. Widening the disparity between the two would, at the very least, make people think a little more carefully about how they'll approach a situation, and may even lead to more ship combat (which we need more of to highlight what's fun and what isn't).
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, hacked - 78 vandium
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, blown - 63 vandium
This difference is okay, since it's certainly less, although I feel it's still a lot considering the substantially lower risk involved.
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, hacked - 19 arrays
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, blown - 19 arrays
There is no difference here. I realize there's some rng involved here and I probably just got lucky/unlucky on one, but the range must be awfully close, and I definitely think there should be more disparity. I honestly expected there to be a flat-out 50% reduction in yield, and I don't think that should be out of the question here.
The entire point of making activate pirate zones Open PK is to encourage ship combat, but right now it's so easy to just snipe a facility and move on. This is exacerbated by a few things:
- You don't currently have to destroy all platforms before you destroy the refinery. Solution: Give the refinery some sort of barrier that comes up after the initial attack that doesn't go down until all platforms are destroyed.
- There's a weird bug where the platforms won't change their aggro right away (or at all?) unless fired upon, which means it's even easier to swoop in and kill the refinery while other people are tanking, scoop up the cargo, and make off without a fight. Solution: I don't know mechanically what the fix is, but ideally they'd behave the same as regular generators in terms of changing their aggro.
- You're able to destroy refineries while people are on board hacking, instantly killing the person and gaining access to the cargo. This is fine in theory, except that a) the person hacking gets 0 notification that their facility is under attack, b) even if they were given some notice, the refineries go down in just a few rounds, in as little as 5 seconds, and c) since there is very little to no disparity, you're absolutely going to want to blow up the thing because you're not missing out on much and you're eliminating whatever competition you might have had. Solution: Instead of instantly destroying a refinery once it's been 'defeated', maybe trigger a countdown to detonation, similar to the one made by hacking (probably shorter). Alternatively, just alter the rewards as mentioned and make sure hackers have some kind of notice that they're under attack, though it's obviously always going to be safer to hack if you just bring a friend or know no one will oppose you.
The tl;dr here is that there is inherently a lot of risk in hacking and very little in blowing up refineries, but the rewards appear to be very similar. Widening the disparity between the two would, at the very least, make people think a little more carefully about how they'll approach a situation, and may even lead to more ship combat (which we need more of to highlight what's fun and what isn't).
Rhindara
4
Re: Command List
You're not expected to read it all word for word. Takes a bit of time to get used to it, but you will start to not really skim or speed-read so much as just recognize blocks of text as "shapes"? It's hard to explain but i still remember my first foray into text games. Just walk into this with a Dark Souls mentality (this isn't a Dark Souls difficulty kind of game but the "learn by dying" mechanic fits) for a while, you're going to die a bit. Face some setbacks. But you can always scroll back up and go wtf was that?
This dying by learning is part of why under level 20 you don't have to pay to respawn.
If it's something that happens too fast for you to deal with manually (there's alot of that), there's always triggers. If you don't get how triggers work, someone, somewhere at some time is more than willing to explain/walk you through the basics.
Ikchor
1
Re: Command List
Also, as to your question, you can flip a table (that is flippable) with the syntax... FLIP TABLE. You can then take cover behind it with the syntax TAKE COVER.
Nykara
1
Re: Command List
Combat commands are almost all class-specific and depend on what abilities you have unlocked. You can check AB for your skill list, AB <skill> for a list of abilities, and AB <skill> <ability> for the ability description. If you use Nexus it's faster to just click on underlined skills.
All player factions have guides for what abilities are good to use in combat. For Celestine it's FHELP BASICS and FHELP <your class>. I forgot what it was for others, it's been a while. You can also ask on the newbie channel.
CONFIG COMBATMESSAGES BRIEF will turn messages of player actions into something like: "You: Crackshot -> rockhopper". It won't work on NPC actions but you don't need to read the combat descriptions, they're just for flavor*. All you have to know is "enemy attacks, I lose HP". What you should pay attention to are messages saying you regained balance (which means you can act again) or that you can use your class-specific healing skill again.
* Okay, there are also channeled enemy attacks that need to be interrupted before they deal a lot of damage, but you won't have to deal with those for quite a while yet.
Cubey
1
Re: Quality of Life Wishlist
- List the in-game date in CONCERTS under the 'When' column, with the days until in parentheses.
---------------------------------< Concerts >----------------------------------
ID Band Venue Price When
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Freighting Guppies Lamentations 6 2nd of Mega (7 days)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- This is a little more involved, but it would be great if there were a way to optionally add a blurb to a concert's info (CONCERTS #), like 'This is our debut of our new song' or something.
Rhindara
3
Sorean Mean :(
[Majel]: I just sent this off to Soren for us:
HI PLS I WOULD LIKE RP WHERE FLIP BECOME RICH.
(Cesspool): You say, "If this doesn't happen I will complain on the forums."
@Soren why no rp??? not rich flip? why???
rude
HI PLS I WOULD LIKE RP WHERE FLIP BECOME RICH.
(Cesspool): You say, "If this doesn't happen I will complain on the forums."
@Soren why no rp??? not rich flip? why???
rude
Re: The Ideas Thread
(This thread was so buried i needed two shovels)
These are part QoL and part idea, so take them for whichever works for you.
1) Newbie faction: This thought goes beyond what I've seen in Starmourn and more to do with faction based games as a whole.
These are part QoL and part idea, so take them for whichever works for you.
1) Newbie faction: This thought goes beyond what I've seen in Starmourn and more to do with faction based games as a whole.
Getting dropped right into a faction out of chargen can be hit or miss if the write up for each faction isn't quite what you thought it was.
So give the newbies their own faction to start out in, without having to jump into any at all. This gives the new players the chance to get used to the game's mechanics if they're brand spanking new and also allows for some RP fact checking to see if what you read about Song, Celestine or Scatterhome actually plays out like what you think. This also lets players already in these factions have an opportunity to RP with interested players. Kind of like a hiring interview/first date, I guess.
2) Space is big. There's repeats of complaints about it feeling empty which get met with "Well, yeah it's space. It's supposed to be kinda empty looking." I figure one way to mitigate that is to make the planets appear larger on the space map thus taking up more space real estate and maybe give a secondary function to BEACON that you can also see who else is in your general area (like not specifically your subsector but maybe something larger such as who's with you in the Diamond Belt)? Not specifically names and coordinates or else that'd make bounty hunting stupid easy in space, but something like
"Your systems detect 4 other ships in the Grenshulian Sector with you."
2) Space is big. There's repeats of complaints about it feeling empty which get met with "Well, yeah it's space. It's supposed to be kinda empty looking." I figure one way to mitigate that is to make the planets appear larger on the space map thus taking up more space real estate and maybe give a secondary function to BEACON that you can also see who else is in your general area (like not specifically your subsector but maybe something larger such as who's with you in the Diamond Belt)? Not specifically names and coordinates or else that'd make bounty hunting stupid easy in space, but something like
"Your systems detect 4 other ships in the Grenshulian Sector with you."
Couple that with a kind of subspace communication method similar to shout/yell that only works in your specific area/sector and space might not feel so empty anymore.
Ikchor
2
Mapping the Stations
I'm curious if anyone has a map of the stations. I would love to see a nice, printable (and framable) map of the known galaxy. I've created a simple static map using Twinery.org to help me get around.https://imgur.com/a/EEXVdZP
Daikojun
1
Re: Announcements post #82: New Celestine Storyteller.
Because it is a cold case file by now!Ikchor said:Wait, when did Clover's campaign for the Eckin go from freeing it to freezing it? This just got sorta sinister.
Zhulkarn
3