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Repurpose CAC tasks to become location-specific activities

Steve — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:11:30 +0000

So you know those CAC tasks that people do occasionally for little benefit? Those same tasks that are probably on the rework-or-cut list for the upcoming conflict rework? I propose repurposing the CAC task system to make additional PVE and other kinds of activities for each zone, particularly for zones suited to leveling up, for the following reasons:

Alleviate developer resource scarcity by putting more activities/objectives into each zone without having to dedicate developer resources to writing and implementing quests (the tasks system would do a lot of work here with semi-randomized activities);
increase player engagement while exploring and leveling by adding more reasons for players to perform certain tasks, go to certain locations, and so forth; and
enhance player game experience by rewarding activities that players want to do, such as leveling or exploring.

Before going on to the tasks themselves or rewards, let me take a moment to say I suggest a location in each zone be dedicated to the Task Board. And, to reiterate, there's one of these Task Boards in every one of the Areas (found on the AREAS LIST). The Tasks available at each Task Board would be tailored to each zone, such that if you go to a Task Board, you can expect to receive Tasks for you to interact with in that region. Task Boards would be the place to go to undertake tasks, similar to how we can undertake CAC tasks at will.

Tasks would be modeled closely after CAC tasks under the hood, I think. The simplest one to implement, in my estimation, is the bashing task: kill X mobs in that zone, selected from a list of mobs available for bashing in that zone. I think of this Task as one that's based on common quests, and there is room for developing new Tasks that track with common quest objectives, such as collect some items from zone-specific props or turn in drops from mobs in that zone.

Going further afield for Task development, we could add tasks like the following, which are based on existing systems or rather underutilized exploration skill abilities:

triangulate in the region (like WILDERNESS TRIANGULATE, ideally with randomly selected triangulation rooms and a mechanism to find out whether you're getting closer to or farther from the triangulation room),

use a scanner to scan certain mobs (sort of like a repeatable xenozoo scan),

gather reports on local activities from NPCs by talking to them (add a command to streetwise the heck out of individual NPCs),

find the thing and dig it up (HEY SHOVEL HOW'RE YOU DOING LANGUISHING OVER THERE?),

put out literal fires (speaking of exploration abilities that don't have any good uses),

find the game-generated bug and sweep the heck out of it (yeah another exploration ability),

locate the hidden mob (yep another exploration ability),

ascertain the location of the MacGuffin that has been carried off by an individual (peruse ability)...

You get the idea.

Rewards could be experience, marks, reputation or some kind of location progress-tracking (could lead to honors or lumps of experience and marks as their own quests), gear or mods, some combination of those, something else, whatever.

My suggestions are suited to bashing/leveling and exploration. Others can be added easily to develop other systems such as crafting, performance, whatever.

To summarize: more stuff to do, less admin work longterm by making a single system to flesh out activities in each zone instead of having to create custom quests.

Scoundrel weapon theme improvements

Steve — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 23:06:44 +0000

Greetings! Here's my suggestion to clarify Scoundrel's theme and expand the ways people approach the class, based on what weapons the Scoundrel equips. If you're curious, read on!

The problem. Scoundrel's theme is messy and lacks focus. Many Scoundrel players envision something different in substantial ways from the abilities and weapons we have now. The PIECE, in particular, is a thematic hodgepodge that contradicts itself and muddies the thematic waters. Some people are uncomfortable with Scoundrel's IED themes because it reminds them of terrorist acts and things that are a little too real.

The proposed solution. Scoundrel becomes thematically flexible by having multiple versions of its weapons, each with a set of description elements and ability lines to go with each weapon version but which are identical mechanically. The theme for each weapon version would be different to help Scoundrels pick their flavor a la carte from themes that allow for a variety of players to pick Scoundrel as the class for them (with the common element being the Scoundrel's just a person making the most of what's available in a world of space sorcerers, giant robots, and so on).

A community-driven effort. If you've been around the Starmourn Discord's Scoundrel channel for any amount of time, I'm sure you've read something about trying to figure out how the PIECE works or asking why we have to have certain, contentious elements of the class. I am 100% sure player volunteers would leap at the opportunity to develop the many ability lines that would be needed to pull this off.

To elaborate, here are my suggestions for weapon versions and the ability themes that can go with them.

PIECEs

Revolvers. This is the gunslinger we have now, but with a lot more clarity on how the gun works.

Semi-auto pistol. This is a fairly middle-of-the-road shooter, somewhat vanilla in terms of standout features.

Full-auto pistol or small submachine gun. This Scoundrel fires a bunch of very low caliber rounds, matching the effect of other PIECE platforms by virtue not of excellent aim, but rather by virtue of spray and pray (rapidfire becomes firing even more bullets).

Pistol-caliber rifle. This is the would-be sharpshooter Scoundrel, choosing shots carefully and preferring to be a little more serious about the whole business of putting bullets downrange.

Light, short barrel shotgun. Scoundrels that want to use scatterguns are very intense and direct (I can't help but think of some action movies -- Bruce Willis seems like the guy who'd use a shotgun in this case).

Knuckledusters

Knuckles (what we have now). This is the unrestrained, violent scoundrel we know and love (mostly).

Knife (Vibroknife, baby lightsaber, a little bitty blowtorch). This is a more methodical, more professional, but still brutal scoundrel (pummel becomes stab stab stab, for instance).

Beating sticks of various sorts (wrench, crowbar, cudgel, blackjack). This is a scoundrel that understands improvisation and prefers a direct approach to solving problems (find a stick and smack the problem with it), but without the high degree of unrestraint found in the knuckles scoundrel.

Toolkits

Preliminary note. The thematic question of how Scoundrel makes bombs should be clarified. Reworking the IEDs is a ton of work behind the scenes because of how IEDs are items, though that would be ideal. Instead, I suggest changing the bandolier to be some kind of high-tech bomb generating device. What would change below, then, would be how the scoundrel delivers bombs.

Bomb-bag/box (like the toolkit we have now, but without the confusion of being an engineer's weapon). This is the terrorist scoundrel we currently have, with a bit of change to its theme to be more unrestrained and a little crazier (forcefeed's current ability line being especially instructive) (also, I'm imagining a big of classic Green Goblin, here).

Wrist-mounted grenade launcher. This is a higher tech scoundrel that may be a soldier, an inventor, or a spy, where the scoundrel does not handle the grenades at all but uses specialized delivery mechanisms (e.g., tripwire becomes a Bouncing Betty kind of mine that the Scoundrel launches).

Portable, single shot grenade launcher (single shot breach action or whatnot, like a flaregun). This is another example of a simple approach to solving the problem, but the user may handle the explosives by hand in some cases.

Mobility items.

Jetpack. Yep.
Jet boots. Self-explanatory, too.

As for outlier abilities, those, too would be themed according to certain weapons. Guile, in particular, has a lot of those outlier abilities. The most contentious ability in this category is none other thaaaaaaaaaaan....

POCKETSAND! Some suggestions I have are strobe flasher, repurposed medical neuralizer, and pocketsand for knife, stick, and knuckles, respectively.

In conclusion, let's fix scoundrel together~~~~~~

Ahem.

You can now make amazing illustrations for IRE muds!

mindw0rk — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 19:36:30 +0000

Google Midjourney AI. It allows to create amazing illustrations in seconds and almost free.
You could create hundreds of images for Starmourn and other IRE muds that could breath new life to them.

Mining and refining - suggestions

Picram — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 19:32:55 +0000

Now that modding has received a rather massive update and everything is all over it, I would like to point out another system that is currently un-fun and may see some resurgence sooner or later: mining (and, by extension, refining). I bring this up because mod shipments do still cost resources that can only be gained by mining (or pirate refineries, but I will disregard those here as not everyone can get all the resources they need by raiding pirate installations, and some might just not want to risk open PVP), so chances are more people are going to be looking into mining either for their own resource demands, or mining in order to sell to modders looking to get shipments. Also please, before you start stating "mining does not make money": we are not even at that point yet. I am talking about the very act of getting from a rock unproductively floating in space to refined resources sitting around in a cargo bay somewhere waiting to become part of a death machine.

Let's start with rock mining. Many people do that in their interceptors/corvettes/destroyers, as those are nimble, and have an easy time with it. That is fine, but I dare say that a single asteroid per trip does not quite make you the most efficient miner out there, and still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of output. The "professional" miner goes for a freighter or superhauler, with the ablity to carry four or seven asteroids respectively (HELP file says eight, but the eigth one seems to get lost more or less all the time, so I always use a scoop instead, works fine). The latter are not entirely fun to fly, but bringing in seven asteroids and full scoops or even double scoops makes you FEEL productive as hell. However, this is where the first issue comes in - each resource must be turned in at a corresponding refinery, and if you have several different asteroids tethered up, you are subject to Lady Luck's cruel judgement as to which asteroid is first to be queued up. This gets particularly annoying if you want to make use of the bonuses for the more demanded resources, like titanium, which only gets a bonus in some backwater stations that usually only hold refineries for one or two types of material. If you show up at the titanium refinery with several different asteroids in tow, and the one the game wants to queue up does not happen to be the titanium asteroid you found, but, say, vandium, you're out of luck and get to travel all the way to a place that -has- a vandium refinery, turn that in, then go back to the titanium refinery and try your luck again, forcing you to do two rather pointless and boring trips for up to 20% extra yield. Alternatively, you could release the asteroid, and retether it, but that means you're losing a lot of time and essentially wasting another tether, so that's definitely not a desirable solution either. Only picking up titanium asteroids is also hardly viable if you just want to get some resources, especially since hyperscan is still useless once you have tethered one asteroid with your desired resource, as Sherlock Hyperscan will diligently and somewhat correctly point out that the closest source of your desired resource is still right behind you.

Gas mining has a similar problem once you have gained secondary scoops - let's say you want to mine iriil, and find a nice cloud of tritium on the way as well, which you scoop (or just accidentally fly through, as a hauler maneuvers like a wall). You could now head to the iriil refinery, queue up the iriil and dump the tritium, which would be a waste, or not use the secondary scoops at all, which is not quite the point, or turn in the iriil, then fly your tritium to a different refinery, and then return to iriil mining.

So... how to solve this? One option would be to let the hard cap of three refineries per player die, and allow people to earn more refinery slots by refining raw materials. This would (very) slowly give people more opportunities for refinery building, however this may take a very long time to be viable, and refineries are still far from profitable, so opening a refinery at a backwater station just to make life easier for miners would still not make too much sense in terms of return on investment.

Another, more immediate way to sort this would be to open up an NPC refinery in certain stations, which would "buy" the asteroids (and scoops) you don't want for a somewhat decent price, but would keep the resources, so you could basically "dump" your stesium asteroid for money there immediately. This would still leave you out of luck if you actually -wanted- that stesium (or whatever). The third, and often suggested option here would be to introduce ship board refineries, which would only fit on the big, "economy" ships such as the freighter and the superhauler, giving you the choice to either process the asteroid right on board or have it done somewher else, potentially giving you the bonus. My suggestion here would be to give this a separate order, for example SHIP REFINE ASTEROID (allow to specify the ID here!), which would reel in a tethered asteroid (potentially making the tether reusable...) and move it to your cargo hold as "raw (material)", which would then gradually be turned into the refined stuff. This may warrant having a close look at the refining times again, as otherwise a good mining trip would clog up your shipboard refinery for up to a week, or just act as a "quick" way to dispose of an asteroid you're not too interested in, but may want to take in for daily credits. The refining cost should be the base line cost for that material, maybe a little higher as you're doing it literally on the fly. Since you would be pretty much the only person having access to your ship refineries, those should not count towards your refinery limit. Your specialisations would affect those as they would refining on a station in terms of cost and time, meaning no changes to the specialisation mechanics would be required in my opinion.

(edit: could even make them faction owned refineries, paying a set amount per raw material, and refining straight into the faction stores).

You could also only go half way - make tethers/scoops not attach the material to the ship, but take the raw stuff right into the cargo (so an asteroid containing 19 units of raw astrium would become 19 cargo units of "raw astrium"), and change the refinery syntax to "refinery (id) queue 10 (material)", which should also just take the payment as a lump sum and tell you when it is done (reducing the marks spam in the process), taking any potential jobs queued up before yours into account. This would still leave smaller ships with a rather slim capacity for mining, as they don't tend to have much cargo capacity to go around even without the supplies you'd need for an incursion, however, battleships would still be mining beasts as well. The suggestion would be to either add a "raw material storage" cargo that is entirely dependent on the ship class (say interceptor gets 30 units of raw material cargo, corvette 60, destroyer 100 and so on, or just leave the cargo as is, considering even freighters seem to have a rather substantial capacity as well for minimal cost. In light of that, I would suggest making scooped gas "compressed gas" in the cargo hold, so 4 units of scooped gas would become 1 unit of compressed gas in your cargo, each could then be turned into 1 unit of refined gas in the refinery. Alternatively, make the asteroid crusher and gas compressor medium modules (either one or two) with a very small energy consumption, or make the power output of the economy ships big enough to maintain all ship components, tractor beam and those potential new ship modules (tractor beams are necessary to make mining not entirely awful in those ships), giving players the full amount of choice whether they want to haul asteroids the old fashioned way, or grind them up into nice chunks in their cargo hold, then turn them in at the refinery. As an added bonus, speaking of RL experience, the pre-ground resources may even be processed a little faster at the refinery. (edit: the mining specialisation giving you 10% extra would come in when you grind up/compress the resource, giving you 10% more of the raw stuff in your cargo hold)

In all honesty though, I'd be fine with the old tethering/scooping as is going the way of the dinosaurs, and making mining a little less of a chore. It is already 90% flying around alone in space, there's no reason to make it worse than it needs to be.

And, as usual, my apologies for the massive wall of text.

Suggestion to tweak consequences of death

Steve — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 19:31:50 +0000

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.

I like the idea, and I think you should, too. Vote for Steve, Corpse Guy. (That's an old, inside joke.)

Weaponmodding and Armormodding

Pink_Candyfloss — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 12:25:37 +0000

Hey all,

Neritus has requested that I start a forum post to gather some feedback on the weaponmodding and armormodding, so here it is. If you have any particular issues with it in its present form or want to see some tweaks and improvements, perhaps quality of life adjustments, post them here.

I want to start by saying that I love the changes to these two tradeskills, feels like the first bit of actual longterm content that the game has received in a while. Followed sharply on the heels with our asteroid mining content, I am overjoyed to have things to do again. Thank you, Starmourn team.

Now, moving on to my feedback:

Mod Scaling
While I do not have exact numbers at hand, it does feel like getting a mod from level 1 to level 14 in research takes roughly the same amount of research credit as getting it from 14 to 15. This in itself isn't a bad thing, perfecting and finishing a mod off should be a gargantuan amount of effort, to excel at your chosen field. What gets me is that this amount of effort is not reflected in the results.

Crit_Chance:
Lvl 14 = 24.75%
Lvl 15 = 25%

There is a measly 0.25% increase for what is likely months of effort in increasing a mod from level 14 to level 15. I suspect that other mods have the same sort of scaling, where the later stages of development grant minimal improvements.

With the numbers as they are presently, there's just too many downsides to slotting in a level 15 mod, there's really zero reason to push research up to the maximum level. You will get more out of using that 1 level out of your 30 total on a different mod. You may as well just use 3 mod effects at level 10, or split it to 2 at level 8 and 2 at level 7 if you can find four effects that benefit you for your one piece of armour or weapon.

If this final tier of research is going to be such a huge commitment in time and effort, then I do want to see a payoff for it. I have a few ideas, not necessarily picking all of them at once, but balance is ever an issue when I dream up stuff.

1. You can only slot 1 mod of level 15 in on any piece of gear. All mods at level 15 gain additional unique bonuses. An example I gave Neritus was Crit_Chance at level 15 grants 25% crit chance and 10% more damage on a crit. Criticals are PvE only and this won't effect PvP balance, but thinking up useful, relevant boosts for other mod types at 15 may impact PvP and that is obviously a delicate situation. A few ideas for other mods could be that the afflictions under their banner (muscular, sensory etc) proc more often, tick faster. Perhaps small passive wetwiring regens every 15 secs on the armours, The resistance mods increasing the lowest resistance on a piece of gear to the same as the modded resistance. I'm sure you can think up better things that won't be massive balance swings.

2. Fully researched mods provide a research boost towards other mods. You have mastered X, you know the ins and outs of it, and this has provided insight into how other mods are slotted together. As such, each mod you fully research provides a stacking 10% increase to research credits earned.

3. Rebalance the amounts you get at each level of a mod so the scaling is better. If you're committing a large amount of your mod level allocation to one effect, it better be worth it in boosted stats. Make it scale more linearly so the mods don't just taper off with virtually no improvement over previous levels, or make the final amounts so much better. If you can only have 2 level 15 mods in your equipment, you've still got a tradeoff because you're not including other beneficial effects.

This is all I have as feedback on the system. Everything else seems pretty fair and balanced to me. The artifacts that effect this system the most are freely available to everyone through credit purchases (parts gen and research).

One last thing I have noted, however, is that if you have weaponmodding and armormodding, you are diluting your capabilities of researching these and can't focus on one specific branch to increase your gains. I would love an option to tell your manage to concentrate efforts on weapons or armour, so that any you find while triangulating are limited to this.

Love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this, your own opinions or just tearing mine apart, all are welcome.

Refining/Autofactory suggestion

Picram — Sat, 18 Sep 2021 21:00:37 +0000

Now that mining is actually rewarding, I would like to suggest things for the other two steps of turning rocks into things - refineries and (auto)factories. I think we all agree that the current system is pretty much "set it and forget it", and thus offers very little meaningful interaction with our facilities. There is also a mastery system, which I don't see being used all that much as I guess many people have used their refinery/factory slots to either provide production facilities to their factional stations or to secure a production boost of their choosing in one of the bonus sectors, and with the resource demand being as it is, I don't think they're overly likely to constantly change around to master another resource, making this another barely used system we might fold into another, hopefully more engaging way to deal with refineries.

So what do I suggest? Production xp, which you could split up into refining/autofactorying if you feel like it, or may just leave as one system, both would work in the sense I envision. As the name suggests, you would gain this for producing things, and once you hit a certain amount of xp, your... license or so would level up, and you would gain a point you could then spend on improving your production in a variety of ways. There's really a lot of possibilities here, so I'll list a few:

use it to gain a new facility slot, allowing you to build another factory/refinery
add a new production line to an existing refinery/factory, allowing you to refine/produce additional things (so you could say add a vandium line to your iriil refinery, enabling the same place to handle both resources, or your autofactory could make explosives and processor arrays - what could possibly go wrong?)
improve an existing production line (make it faster, cheaper, give it a small chance to produce bonus resources (i.e. 5% chance to produce 2 units instead of 1 in non-bonus sectors, or 3 instead of 2 in bonus sectors, make it possible to give you one unit of product for every 10/20/whatever batches processed)
provide capacity to the NPC economy, basically using your upgrade for a passive income (the frequency of payments would need to be debated, maybe at the end of every IG month?, sum could depend on both levels and a somewhat hidden "economy score" for the place, which could be based on the sum of "economy upgrade levels" in a particular sector).

This would allow players to customise their facilities to a degree, either going a generalist route for the faraway places, or a more focused approach for things they really wish to master, while also making it possible to finally actually make money with them, and finally set refinery A apart from refinery B. Specialisations would tie in here by either starting with an additional upgrade or two/giving 10% more xp/something else. In the wake of this, refineries and autofactories should be made a little more similar, as in just set the rate you're charging (i.e. 105% of base price) instead of having to set it for every product. Also please make it possible to pay the lump sum for the refining batch ahead of time while, as many players (myself included) have asked for. The reason I have included a passive income option here is because I don't really see any way to make refineries/factories earn decent money without drastically inflating the prices for everything all across the board.

I don't think there should be a hard cap on production levels, as the nature of levels usually means that the next one requires more and more xp, meaning it would still be functionally impossible to stick a fully decked out refinery on every station in the sector, unless someone was to invest substantial amounts of time. Larger factories could also spawn "cargo" type station missions, which would require a large amount of cargo units to be moved/processed at the place in exchange for money/captaincy or production xp. May include pirates similar to assassins in passenger missions, and may add a rather large job to the facility of choice, rendering it unable to process other things for a while. It may also require limiting every player to one refinery and one autofactory per location, so two existing refineries of one person on a station would be merged into one with a secondary production line. Production licenses may be reset with a consumable artefact, too.

This is by no means a complete list of options and possibilities, so feedback is welcome. Also sorry to those expecting another wall of text from me, I tried to keep it shorter this time.

Presenting: The Y'saari Games

Lilias — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 19:55:48 +0000

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!

Space, take two

Rylek — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:16:54 +0000

Okay, hopefully, the forums don't eat this one as well.

Starmourn is the space IRE. The space MUD if we're lucky. We should absolutely lean into that hardcore, have fun with it, and make it a wild, exciting ride. Currently, it's a little anti-social and we should aim to fix that.

What would I like to see?
-A complete re-imagining of the goals of space combat. Let's move away from ships being blown up in 5-20 seconds, and instead move into ships being disabled. Cruisers and Battleships especially, it should be more about disabling them. Actual destruction should take a silly amount of concentrated fire from multiple ships. OR, a boarding action. More on that later.
-Adding in multi-crew options! I think this is really important, the amount of boredom groups have in space is kinda not really a good thing. At all.
---New weapon option, manned turret! Same damage as a massive III, gains 360-degree range. Requires a turret room in the ship (multiple seats can exist in one room). Requires a player gunner!
---Cruisers and Battleships gain engineering nodes in a required engineering bay. Here, players can improve the speed at which subsystems are repaired or brought back online.
---An airlock is placed adjacent to the engineering bay, where the ship can be boarded by aggressive parties (NPCs or players), and if the engineering bay is breached, they can set the core to overload. There should be then a window of time the crew can attempt to reclaim the core before it's gone too far and will explode.
---Battleships can be upgraded with cloning stations! This will allow anyone CREWED with the pilot to reclone at this station if they die within the same sector of space. Can be disabled by boarders, until fixed by the crew.
---Battleships and Cruisers gain the ability to "tank" NPC ships in some way.
---New ship class, Tugboat! Used for towing broken ships from the battlefield, or providing battlefield repairs at a much-advanced rate!

This would open up the sky to epic, fun battles. Battles that can be all space, but also can include things to do for ground combatants! Which of course, need boarding ships!
-The delightfully under-used interceptor can now be used as a boarding craft! Once a large ship is disabled, it can pull up alongside and use some new action/equipment to force its way into the airlock.
-New large mod, ship bay! Cruisers can carry one interceptor. Battleships can carry two, or one corvette.
-New mod, Asteroid Buster, is only usable by mining class ships.

New events! Asteroids absolutely stock full of resources can come barreling across the void. You need to put a fleet together to get out there and take those resources! The Iron Corsairs(and similar parties), of course, would also be doing the same. You get out there, set your mining ship up to drill. This causes resources to break off periodically and need pickup. Can be interrupted by X factor (damage? special attack?). The mining ship would need protection from the fleet! From other eager harvesters. Perhaps the asteroid has its own wildlife that is unhappy at the attack!

Could even have giant space boss battles, huge hulking space squids float in and try to devour a planet, and a massive coalition fleet is needed to get in there and take care of it! Battleships try and entice it to attack them, crews keep things running and guns firing. Smaller ships provide support and repair. Towing broken ships out of range of being destroyed, providing more firepower, etc. Maybe the giant space bosses also have their own smaller support fleet that needs to be whittled down.

I have a very hard time getting people to enjoy the space aspect of this game because it's very isolating. Friends I've played with for years, who love space stuff, get into it and then quickly get bored and stop. Or they sit and watch as the ship they're in takes part in an actual battle, and then declare it's not worth the grind because the combat is super fast, and not very interesting. I would love to fix all of that. I know the above would require a pretty intense over-haul. Most hulls would end up with much, much more health. or like, take 90% less damage from weapons or something. The damage would instead go towards subsystems. It would be a big change. I do think, it would be an extremely fun change that would move people out to do things in space.

Especially when the planet eaters need to be removed

Cerebral augment chamber market analysis task

bugbo — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 01:00:19 +0000

For the cerebral augment chamber market analysis task you may want to make it so that delivering 25 units of goods would be sufficient, Most market orders are for 500 to 1000 units of goods, and the smallest NPC one I could find was for 50 units with the next smallest being several others at 250 units.

Economy thoughts

Poet — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 03:53:01 +0000

--Yes, I recognize this post is all over the place. And I don't have hard numbers, cause I really don't like math. I quit Eve when it became a resource management simulator, and Starmourn is headed the same way.--

Without further ado, some thought on the economy in Starmourn. See also, my thread on the mining specialization-
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/1029/mining-spec/p1

Separate systems:

Physical shops. (more please) most owned by NPCs Accessible in specific locations
Trade terminals x4 systems. Accessible only in specific places, except via artifact
Ship brokerage. Accessible anywhere
Starforge. Accessible in dock area or from ship in dock (and it's confusing as to where you need to be)(Also, new artifact lets you get supplies anywhere)
Market (space) accessible from stations, can be modified remotely with artifact
Refinery/Autofactory. Accessible in specific locations, some things can be modified remotely with artifact (not sure what the utility of this is in practice)
Junk shops. Accessible in specific locations, or remotely with artifact
Repair shops. Accessible in specific locations, or remotely with artifact
Collectibles market. Accessible anywhere
Promo market. Accessible anywhere
Rejuvenation (is this part of the economy? It's certainly a mark sink)
Cosmpiercer. Powers purchasable in faction territory, generally from a station
Token Equipment. (are the tokens listable anywhere?) Redeemable in specific locations.
Love shop. One location, with its own currency.

Currencies:

Marks
Credits
Love tokens
Gear tokens
Cosmpiercer vouchers
Ta-deth crystals

I can buy a starship from anywhere, but if I want a t-shirt, I have to be in a specific place.

Some of these are split up- can take market orders from station, but have to complete on ship with goods in ship cargo

Autofactory can be started from ship, but goods have to be in station/planet cargo

Trade skills- high entry cost, low/no ongoing cost. Goods appear magically and have no material requirements.

Unlike some people, I find plenty of mark sinks. Between promo items, ships, rejuv and etc, Poet is almost always broke.

There is a huge disparity in marks generation. Incursions are number one, once you can do the hard ones. There is, at least, a marks cost involved in purchasing ammo and repair kits. As compared with the second best method, ground bashing. Essentially costs you nothing, and nets you 10's of thousands of marks/hour.

Both these activities are reasonably fun (for me). I know some people hate bashing, but I don't mind. Incursions are better, in that there is more effort involved in getting to range and lining up the targets.

Hacking I don't care for, and know little about. Seems mark generation is fairly low, considering the consequences (bounties).

The 'actual' economic activities are all a loss. Having done them all, none of them make money. There is a ton of effort involved, and the upfront costs in getting set up are high. I have another thread on this, and my thoughts haven't changed.

-I will also note that there are Honors available for those who own 10 factories/refineries and that no one can do that anymore, as the cap is 9.

Materials need to be required for everything. I hate saying that, cause I like being able to make clothes out of thin air, but seriously. There should be crates of fabric that need to be bought and shipped about. Gems and metal for jewelry, etc. Right now, ship supplies exist in their own little world, and given the existence of the ship forge, there can never be a shortage of anything. You might pay more, but things are available if people put in the work, or not. The only reason to engage with the economy is to be nice to the new players, or to use the comms for guards and station stuff, that most people probably don't know exists. I would not recommend using comms for more of this kind of thing as a stop-gap, and in fact having to track it to keep the guards paid is really quite annoying. I can see using them to buy station upgrades, but just dumping them into ongoing maintenance is also annoying.

The other problem with this economy set up, is that only the fighting tasks generate any reasonable pay, and XP gains. The thought being, apparently, that things that involve 'risk' are the only valid ways to make money. The economy cannot work this way. There has to be a way to make money doing 'economy' things. Like hauling in rocks and gas. And it needs to earn reasonable XP. Maybe not quite as much of each as incursions, but enough that people are willing to invest time and effort into it.

Materials also need rarity adjustments. There need to be cheap, commonly used materials that are super easy to find in large quantity. Rare stuff that's expensive, and hard to find- but which you don't need much of in the recipes. Right now, as Holgorath pointed out, this is backwards. Iriil, which is supposedly rare, is required in huge quantities, and it appears to spawn at exactly the same rate as every other material. Everyone wants it, and everyone needs it, and no one can find enough. Everyone is paying 100 marks/unit or more trying to get some, without any luck cause even at that rate, people aren't interested in mining it. Also, at that rate, all the batteries on the market are sold at a loss, cause that price was set based on Iriil being worth about 40/unit.

Yields are also far too small. As it stands you cannot refine enough material to be able to sell large quantities of things cheaply and make it worth your time and effort. Holgorath indicated mining for 8-12 hours and making 80k marks, and I think that number is wildly optimistic. Even if correct, you can do the same thing in an hour in an incursion. Also, the quantity limits mean you can't refine enough stuff to be able to sell at a price that makes the finished goods affordable. If we paid what materials were reasonably worth given time and effort invested, batteries would go for 2500 marks apiece, and incursions would stop being profitable (and Ship Forge exists, so you can't ever charge more than 450/per)

People need to be able to move cargo from place to place for others. Give the freighters and haulers reason to exist. (And shrink the cargo bay on the Battleship, cause it's bigger than a freighter).

The cargo boost modules are much, much too small.

Drone bay module is good, but dedicated mining ships would be better.

Specializations probably also need to go. I know why the limits on ownership were put in, but we can't keep a full complement of refineries and factories, cause not enough people are interested, and then they freeze and we are short facilities again.

Refining straight up needs to go. Charging miners for bringing in materials is a slap in the face. Scoop the gas into the hold, and then just sell it. Yet another reason to upgrade to a bigger ship with a bigger hold.

It would also be nice if there were a way to easily see how much space in the hold a material was going to take.

Tl;dr Too many economic systems that are not connected to each other in any fashion. If I can walk in a circle and spam freeze and make 10k an hour, I should be able to make at least half that amount scooping gas.

BEAST/Heavy armor and balancing it before the upcoming Mod overhaul

Rylek — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 02:41:15 +0000

Hallo,

Images for reference(Light is not 105% quality, medium and heavy are):

Light ARmor (No Pref):

Medium Armor (No Pref):

Heavy Armor (Impact preference):

Fun fact, our medium armor contestant got confused when I posted my armor values (last of the above) and thought it was another medium armor person posting theirs. They wanted to know what set they used to get it. That's how stupid close the different armor weights are in value.

Some math, please note that most hunting attacks during the end game seem to be around 800, not 1000.

If you take 1000 damage and apply it to the average value of 17L, 20M, and 25H you'll get the following damage received:
Light: 830
Medium: 800
Heavy: 750

That is less than a hundred difference, and it gets closer the smaller the number.

However! There is variance in attacks, so it can be hard to properly "math" it to exactness. Example pvp hit:

Light armor, not pure 105% quality, no mods:

Heavy armor, pure 105% quality, modded for impact damage(30.3%):

That's a difference of 155 damage. And again, there is variance in attack damage so it can be smaller or wider, but not by a ton.

At this point, armor perfectly weighted against an impact attack would save you from completely trash armor by about the amount of...one bleed tick. Not even a high one. The problem further exacerbates if you consider the healing malus that is applied the heavier your armor. Medium heals for more than Heavy, and Light heals for a lot more.

On top of THAT, is the fact that several of the lighter armored classes have flat DR skills. Nano has a 20% DR (could be 15%, but math leans towards 20%). Fury has 10%, and I'm told it can scale much higher during combat. Fury also heals WILDLY better, and faster, than any other class.
EDIT: Nano Protect is only 10%, but Fury Resistant is 25%. Fury also have Harden, which is 10%. Not sure how those two skills work with each other.

This leads to the strange result of BEAST, the Heavy Armor unit, effectively being the least durable class in the game. Scoundrel technically takes more damage but heals for much more. Engineer takes basically the same damage, but again heals better.

Solutions?
-Bring all class heals to the same value. This makes armor actually matter. If you want to have one class be the "healer" (engineer?) then by all means make theirs better and balance accordingly.
-Bring Heavy armor up to about 60% base. Maybe even higher. Bring Medium up to about 35%.
-Nano might need to have their DR reduced to 10% or even removed. Depends on if you want to design it to be tied for the most durable, a completely viable choice.
-Did you know the BEAST shield gives no actual protection to the pilot? No DR, nor armor value, nothing. Change this, give the class a passive DR boost.

I fully suggest applying all of the above, seeing how it feels, and balancing around that setting instead of the current setting. Right now, people change class, forget to re-attach armor, bash for days before realizing they're naked, and laugh that it didn't matter. Armor technically does things to numbers. Just not enough to matter in pvp or pve in any realistic way. Please change that before balancing armor mods.

I bet if you polled the player base asking it which class it thinks thematically represents the "tank" of the game, almost everyone would say BEAST. I bet if you asked them which they assume is the least durable, I bet nobody would guess the heavy armor user is that, or at least tied for it. Let's bring the mechanics in line with the thematics.

Thank you for listening to my latest rant on armor being useless
-Me

INFO HERE - please format like other tables, for QOL

Indi — Wed, 19 May 2021 01:17:23 +0000

Can 'info here' please take the format of other, similar information requests (such as 'props')?
As far as I can tell, that is a standard table format for most stuff in the game, so it'd be nice if legacy things take the same format.

Currently it has no starting line, so capturing data from it is not easy - yet we have to use it to handle aggressive mobs.

Yet another MODS thread

Kirin — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 12:21:51 +0000

The entire mods tradeskill is a huge sink for credits and marks the way it is structured currently.

In the past one month since the game has released, my character has managed to collect ~30 weapon mods. In this time, the progress towards any one mod is 5% meaning I need at least 20 more months to even come close to manufacturing a mod. This seems like a huge drain of money with a very long gestation period and a hurdle rate that most of the game won't have access to.

While I understand the need to long-term goals in developing goals, there has to be some interim progression otherwise it seems quite pointless.

Some recommendations

Player Mod Usage: Restrict players to use only player-made mods. At this time, it almost seems a year of RL time before players can actually make mods making it better to use them than to sell them (unless it is for very high prices)
Interim progression 1: Let modders make simple, complex, obfuscated and advanced mods if they have researched sufficient mods of a particular quality [not specific mod] you can make mods, provided you have the parts
Interim progression 2: Let modders research a specific family of mod and let each count towards progression towards that family. As an example all Surger Mods would give you progression towards the family of Surger branded mods
Touchstone skill: Perhaps, mastery in a particular mod could allow you to rename and brand mods and add stats rather. So you could have Locke n Loaded Surger SMA (mental) if you master the particular mod completely
Drops: The variability in mod drops amongst players seems significant. There are players with no mod drops while there are others with many multiple drops for approximately the same number of kills. This represents a material difference in earnings due to mods. A potential solution could be a 'pity timer' used in some games where you get a mod for every 5k kills since your last drop irrespective with an increasing chance of a mod dropping as you approach the mark.

More Ideas Welcome

ID       Item                           Progress     Parts       
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
25       Surger SMA (Mental)            5%           1
26       Warzax 1 Impact                5%           0
27       Driver Three (Impact)          4%           1
30       Surger SMB (Kith)              5%           1
40       Melee Booster JB-2             5%           0
42       Driver Four (Mental)           4%           1
78       EM Booster JB-1                5%           10
84       Nascent PTX-WM-3 (Melee)       5%           10
103      Augmenter 2 (Melee)            4%           13
104      Augmenter 3 (Cellular)         4%           13
125      Tazi Electric II               5%           10
147      Surger SMC (Impact)            5%           10
163      Electric Booster JB-3          5%           10
167      Driver Three (Kith)            4%           13
178      Warzax 1 Ranged                5%           10
179      Surger SMA (Tech)              5%           10
184      Nascent PTX-WM-2 (Mental)      5%           10
185      Draining Booster JB-2          5%           10
191      Tazi EM III                    5%           10
192      Driver One (Tech)              4%           13
193      Driver Three (Mental)          4%           13
194      Kith Booster JB-3              5%           10
207      Warzax 2 Electric              5%           10
211      Xyca Cellular-1                5%           10
212      Tech Booster JB-3              5%           10
213      Surger SMC (Kith)              5%           10
214      Warzax 3 EM                    5%           10
216      Warzax 2 Kith                  5%           10
220      Tazi Tech II                   5%           10
221      Thermal Booster JB-2           5%           10
231      Nascent PTX-WM-1 (Impact)      5%           10

Why do mods have a MAX level?

bugbo — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 05:00:30 +0000

Is there some technical reason? It would be nice if they only had a minimum as giving them a level range seems to make it so the trade terminal can't find find mods at a desired level.

Tradeskill Ideas

Nathaniel — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 21:09:21 +0000

So, i'd love to broach an idea that I've had come up in conversations more than a few times, and would personally love to see come into Starmourn, and hopefully get some feedback from you guys on.

Weapon Crafting:

The -very- rough idea i have thus far, is that much like other trade skills that have you submit an item design, this could be done as well for class weaponry. For example, a Scoundrel might get into weapon crafting, with PIECEs in mind, and submit a design for a new PIECE, either specific to the character, or for general use for game injection. This would also allow for some additional options as far as non-combat skills, and could perhaps be a general tradeskill, or more particular and being based on one type of weapon. I.E., PIECEs, Kithblades, etc.

Anyway, like I said, -very- rough idea, and i'd love to get some outside opinions.

Would it be possible to make it so assassin ships would go away after the passenger mission is over?

bugbo — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 17:21:46 +0000

If either the person who took the mission succeeded or the assassin's target is killed or destroyed? It's kind of annoying to get your ship heavily damaged or possibly destroyed by them.

Hacking should be more integrated into other systems. Here are some ideas regarding that.

Grek — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 15:58:28 +0000

Currently with hacking, the big ultimate goal is to get through a door and the big proximate goal is to get to the processor. That's fine for a mini-game, but it seems like hacking is supposed to be at least as much of a 'thing' as Captaincy in Starmourn. So why not have more tie-ins to the rest of the game?

1. Junk Data. Just like bashing drops junk and incursions drop space junk, why not have hacking give you junk data? This would give FRAY information brokers an extra use, since you could JUNK SELL DATA at one in order to cash in your mailing lists, security logs, sex holo tapes and grandma's secret waffle recipes for money. It would give another variation for quest design - think a version of the creeper shells quest from Ixsei, but with Windishu ICE dropping quest items instead.

2. Hacking CAC Quest. Same idea as the current 5/5 Incursion Enemies or Obtain Samples quest, but with ICE instead. It could either be hack a certain number of terminals or (more interestingly) to delete a certain number of a specific kind of ICE 20 antivirus, 10 firewalls, 10 scanners, etc. (Antivirus ask for should be more because of how SRA work.) Alternatively, a contract reward which gives you a sliver for 50 FRAY Credits.

3. Crafting/PVP integration! Add special terminal in Tranquility Deepness where people can do HACK TERMINAL PIRATE [] in order to get five random designs for a particular skill (and optionally from a particular org) added to a temporary shop in the same room at the cost of earning a bounty from that org. Want bootleg Song jumpsuits for some sort of plot? Data piracy is your answer!

Quality of Life Wishlist

Rhindara — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 14:36:22 +0000

This thread is for all of the little quality of life updates you'd like to see that would make the game just a little more polished, accessible, or fun to play. Major sweeping changes like 'make my class not suck' are beyond the scope of this thread.

My first requests are:

Some way to transfer clans instead of being forced to challenge for leadership of them
Clan history [IMPLEMENTED]

Enhanced asteroid probes?

bugbo — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 14:55:58 +0000

Would it be possible to make it so that when players probe an asteroid it keeps track of what the asteroid contains and how much? This way players can focus on gathering resources they are low on and if they come back to that asteroid at a later time they will not have to probe it again if they did not write down what it contained the first time.

All I Want For Winterflame Is...............

Senzei — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:11:45 +0000

So, I want to focus on trying to rolling out some new requests, fixes, and ideas as a sort of present to the player base (and our storytellers, who also get to give requests).

You can request any existing bug as a priority (which you can also do in game with BUG PRIORITY.

You can request any idea that you already submitted, which can also be marked (currently) with BUG PRIORITY.

You can also propose something entirely new. That needs be written out here.

Bear in mind that, purely because I am just a lone me, I cannot get to every bug. So the easier things are more likely to be tackled than big projects, but that does not mean I will shy away from something I really like.

So here are the rules:
* You can only ask for one thing. Do not use alts to make additional requests.
* You acknowledge not every change will be done, you do not need say this or post this, just keep it in mind!
* Combat changes have a longer process, so may not be gotten to right away.
* Anything requiring approval should be considered a priority, so any sign offs are done before people leave for the holidays.

Also know that I will still work on these after December, but I want to try to give people a little love for the season.

Toodles!

Bashing After Crits

Zoe — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 17:14:02 +0000

This has been discussed before on Discord and in passing on the forums, but I think it's an involved enough issue to warrant its own thread. The introduction of talents - critical hits in particular - has had a negative effect on endgame bashing because the legacy endgame areas were designed without the sort of DPS players now achieve. With max crits each area can support one basher, leading to a total of seven concurrent players bashing if I'm being generous. In practice, though, only Ixsei, Usum Usutti and New Dikamazi are regularly cleared by anyone, as the others are widely considered not worth the effort due to increased risk and/or low mob counts.

One solution I've seen suggested is to have new areas be high risk because of wandering aggro mobs. We already have these (Jelle, Gnomon) and it's easy to see that this isn't a solution at all because, as I said, they aren't regularly cleared. Adding new areas that present the same challenge people are already avoiding would be a waste of time. Changes can't be made to existing 'worthwhile' areas without negatively impacting pre-75 players, though, because Ixsei and ND are where most people go for their last 10 levels.

In my opinion, I think the best way to move forward with new areas taking into account the higher DPS we achieve would be to lower the TTK. If mob HP and XP gain were scaled up to match the TTK and XP/M of pre-criticals bashing, the area would both be a viable alternative to the overhunted areas we currently have and probably be able to support more than one person at a time.

Also, none of this is intended to be me saying 'this is what you should work on' so much as 'these are things that should be taken into consideration if/when any work is done on new areas.'

Holiday Wish-list

Rylek — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 03:11:50 +0000

Happy Holidays everyone!
I wanted to spend a small pocket of free time discussing the one thing I really super duper wish Starmourn had. That of course being:
Minipet League

I think it'd be EXTREMELY COOL if we had some form of minipet combat. They could level up, have skill choices, have weaknesses and strengths. Have their own arena event. As the system expands, you could have other game loops have small chances to drop super cool, rare minipets. You could install NPC pet trainers. Have WILD minipets to combat and/or capture. You could make a way for someone to level entirely without having to go bash! Grab your trusty companions, and take on the next miniboss! Each area could have a trainer (more down the road hopefully!) and fighting them could give you, and your pets!, experience.

Could make a few pet 'families' which are strong/weak against the other ones. Voidkith, Starkith, Mechanical, Wild....imagine the fun!

This is my dream endgame. I don't go save the universe because it needs saving. I go save it, because that super boss monster might drop a starkith rockhopper. And by golly, that little guy needs a new home. With me. I don't get on every day to mindlessly grind out another perk point. I get on every day to mindlessly grind out a perk point that makes my minipets more awesome in some way. And I grind that point, by taking on the Minipet League, the true masters of the art, who wait for me to come to challenge them.

/nerd dreams

Classlead AFfliction Reports

Senzei — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 23:44:04 +0000

Hello Everyone!

I have come to you with a trove of information to go over and give your thoughts and feedback. But I have rules!

Rule 1: All posts are directed at me. If you have back and forth to do, do it in game or discord, then come back with your summaries. Ideally we will avoid 100 posts of 2-4 people arguing back and forth. If you want to address someone's point in your reply, you can speak to the point. "Regarding the destruction of Alderaan, I think blah".

Rule 1 was lifted, we will see if we can keep it civil without it!

Rule 2: Your goal is to convince me of your stance. If you believe the change is bad, you should try to establish why and provide some evidence. If it is good, explain!

I will number them to make it easier to respond by number if desired. Note that some of these are already done. Humor and wit was left for all to enjoy.

==2==
Sensory afflictions don't have a whole lot of power, and what power is there is diffused over too many afflictions. Blind, deaf, comm blackouts -- consolidating their effects and improving them overall should help bring sensory to a usable place in the game. This classlead submission should be considered alongside another bug report, which I will specify in comments.

SOLUTION 1: deaf is entirely irrelevant. Comms blackout is weak. Rolling comms blackout into deaf so that deaf blocks every instance (not a chance, but every single instance) of every type of verbal communication, meaning says, tells, crew tells, clan tells, faction tells, deathsights, commerce, etc., would provide a meaningful effect. Even with this change, it still does nothing in a pure 1v1 fight -- it only disrupts group coordination.

SOLUTION 2: blind becomes relevant if it stops people from blocking movement in addition to interfering with look and information regarding player movement. The exception to this effect would be provided by abilities like scoundrel's GUILE BAR defense. It would gain more power if it also hid information regarding what other characters are doing in the room.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==3==

Sensory doesn't have enough afflictions to work with, and it has only one affliction that directly affects combat (blurry vision). More direct impact is needed to bring it to a usable place.

SOLUTION 1: New subsystem affliction to replace comms blackout, which I will call "Super Duper Itchy" (that's, erm, my officially recommended name): Channeled abilities take longer to complete, including crash, OR interrupting a channeled ability, including crash, imposes a significant balance loss (I'll put 2.5 seconds on it, though I'm not sure). The way crash works now, you can crash, get interrupted, and crash again immediately, getting away for sure because the crash channel is short. It functions similarly to muscular's crippled movement in some respects.

SOLUTION 2: make dizzy something useful, such as a chance to be afflicted with prone when hit. Note that furies have a defense called balancing that allows them to stay standing instead of getting knocked over all the time. A change to dizzy may require tweaking class abilities, but losing dizzy as it is now is no loss at all.

SOLUTION 3: Nearsighted retains its can't-attack-outside-current-room but also gains a 10% damage reduction to ranged-type attack damage within the room, and blurry vision becomes a stacking affliction that ramps up in how much damage it reduces (I'm thinking 5, 10, 20) instead of just 10%. The rationale here is that sensory offers disruption that only has soft effects that cannot be bypassed, and so it needs some kind of punch, somewhere, in the affliction list so that it directly affects combat. I am not certain I like the numbers for this solution, but I do think nearsighted is too weak and blurry vision could be buffed.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==4== (This was left because of discussion about the solution used)
Muscular afflictions do too much hinder, making it the most directly useful in combat. It can substantially reduce damage dealt by an opponent and substantially increase balance costs for that opponent, and, currently, doing both simultaneously is the norm. Toning down either the damage reductions or the balance reductions should be sufficient to help the other affliction categories compete. Damaged limbs do not have a timer to cure, and so it's quite normal to end up with multiple damaged limbs that never get cured or that eat up wetwiring cure ticks for more individually impactful afflictions. Crippled movement (subsystem affliction, not curable except by mending subsystem) is dangerous and much, much stronger than alternatives that impede the ability to move around (read: escape). Myopathy (also subsys aff), on top of it all, is quite good, too. Altogether, it's oppressive hinder, and toning it down a little should help other affliction types compete.

SOLUTION 1: add a timer to the damaged limbs afflictions. They functionally never get cured because of no timer, or, they end up diluting the affliction cure pool. Why timers this isn't already in place is a really, really good question.

SOLUTION 2: reduce crippled movement duration from 2 seconds to 1 second. The trick with crippled movement is that other balance penalty effects functionally stack with this.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==5==
For your information, there's a significant number of afflictions that have similar effects and are all similarly useless. I don't think anyone would miss them. Let's get started! The first group, one for each subsystem: Tender, trauma, dazed, stupefied, and vulnerable. For an example of what they do, here's what tender does: "Each stack increases muscular damage by 10%. Can only be given to targets with at least 25% muscular damage." Like the other four afflictions of this design, tender deals no subsystem damage when afflicted and stacks up to five times. That means it takes, on average, about 15 seconds to stack it up (and they get 3 ticks of wetwiring curing in that time) and, in that time, you could do a whole lot better than that. The second group: Spasms, choking, painspike, seizures, and shortcircuit. Here's what spasms does: "Causes periodic muscular subsystem damage. Can only be given to targets with at least 50% muscular damage." I hear that these are less useless because they don't require stacking, but they're still pretty bad because they apply no subsystem damage immediately. Personally, I don't bother with any of these 10 afflictions because they're almost entirely a waste of time, with the possible exception of choking for a scoundrel pushing internals for a forcefeed kill (I haven't bothered adding this in, but it could be done).

"SOLUTION 1," in air quotes -- get rid of group 1. Erase it. Ta-da! No more problem! Free up those affliction names for something more interesting.

"SOLUTION 2": I'm resorting to spitballing ideas, here. Rework group 1 to have direct subsystem damage (say, 100) and possibly have fewer stacks. Say, 3. Or, no stacks at all, and just make it a 25% damage increase to that subsystem. Or a lower percentage, or a greater one. I don't know.

"SOLUTION 3": add direct subsystem damage to group 2 afflictions so that they have an impact right away, and aren't a complete waste of time in case they're cured right away.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==6==
Proposal: I'd like to propose a change to BLIND and DEAF, I'd like to have them combined into a skill called SENSORY_DEPRIVATION the conditions would be can't LOOK, see people enter or leave, or hear says. If movement happens cannot see the room entered. This will leave an affliction over for a new skill I'd like to suggest for sensory. Sensory deprivation would do 200 subsys damage to sensory. Thanks!

==7==
Proposal: I'd like to propose a new skill for Sensory tree called SENSORY_FEEDBACK. Sensory lacks hinder or damage pressure. As a way to help with that I'd like to see if this affliction can cause 5% damage back on the target when they attack. The idea being that the nervous system is in overload and sensitive to the point of hurting yourself with the exertion of attacking. I'd like to see this give 200 subsys damage to sensory.

==8==
Internal subsystem afflictions need to be more impactful. Internal's rejection subsystem affliction hardly every works, making it a very weak subsystem affliction. Coughing blood is pretty low impact, too. Internal bleeding's damage is low, but it does add up over the course of a fight. The overall impression I get from the internal subsystem is that it is slow but steady pressure on vitals that crescendos suddenly, and these suggestions are aimed at shifting power around while staying close to the feel of what we have now.

SOLUTION 1: tweak 1st internal subsystem affliction. increase the power of internal bleeding by having hypertension increase internal bleeding's damage by 50%, or by having coughing blood increase the damage from internal bleeding.

SOLUTION 2: rework 2nd internal subsystem affliction. Make coughing blood the replacement to old rejection, meaning coughing blood is now second in the progression of internal subsystem afflictions. When internal bleeding (the first in the progression) processes, the target loses 0.5 seconds of balance, and displays a visual cue for this to show that the target is sputtering blood (it may do this now, I don't know).

SOLUTION 3: rework 3rd internal subsystem affliction. Tweak rejection and make it the 3rd internal subsystem affliction instead of coughing blood. Increase the chance for rejection to process to 50%.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==9==
Mind subsystem afflictions don't keep up. Also, brain swelling doesn't work -- it's definitely not keeping up. My approach is to consolidate stupidity and forgetfulness, which then ramp up, and are followed by a new brain swelling which works to complete the mental breakdown.

SOLUTION 1: tweaked 1st mind subsystem affliction. Stupidity is annoying, but it's not that hard to write a script that handles it no problem. Add current Forgetfulness' effect to Stupidity to make Stupidity meaningful. I suggest renaming it Carelessness, reflecting occasional inefficiencies that may add up to a significant failure in combat.

SOLUTION 2: reworked 2nd mind subsystem affliction. Forgetfulness brings stupidity to where it should be. Rework Forgetfulness to make the target temporarily forget how to perform an action or to suffer a penalty for performing an action repeatedly. Option 1: every time someone uses an ability, that ability has a 3-5 second cooldown added to it after balance is regained (or an 6-8 or so second cooldown added on ability use). Option 2: the affliction tracks the last 3 abilities used. If the ability you use matches 1 of the 3 previous abilities used, you suffer a 1.5 second balance loss. Option 3: like option 2, but a 9 second timer instead. (Note that all classheals have a 10 second normally.)

SOLUTION 3: reworked 3rd mind subsystem affliction. Brainswelling doesn't work. At this point in the fight, things should be going downhill towards a fast conclusion. Brainswelling now applies, at random, one of the following afflictions that the target doesn't have every 5 seconds: acrophobia, disorientation, distraction, encroachment, hallucinations, sluggish, stupefied, vertigo (just throwing some out there). This might not be powerful enough, but it sure is better than literally nothing, which is what we have.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==10==
Mind has a few abilities that don't quite do their jobs, for various reasons.

SOLUTION 1: reworked mind affliction. Disorientation now has a high chance (say, 50%) to make movement fail instead of having a high chance (unknown) to send into a random direction. This is the lowest priority of all changes I have suggested for afflictions.

SOLUTION 2: reworked mind affliction. Confusion now has a ~35% chance to proc every time the afflicted character uses an ability. When confusion procs, it knocks the character's balance by 1.5 seconds and inflicts health damage, while still allowing the ability to go through. The damage scales according to weapon + mods + artifacts, as mental damage.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==11==
More sensory afflictions or changes.

SOLUTION 1: new affliction. borrow the recklessness affliction's mechanics from Achaea, but rename it something related to feeling euphorically healthy or to wetwiring-to-mindsim communication failure. Option 1: Health shown to be max. Damage taken appears to be set to zero. Despite knowing better, your body's telling your mind and your mindsim that you feel great! Option 2: go with something that is more akin to a complete cutoff of your information between wetwiring and the sim, meaning your health stops updating, and you can't see damage taken and healing done from class heals or from wetwiring health healing.

SOLUTION 2: rework affliction. echoing becomes an affliction that, when the target cures an affliction, echoing causes the reappliction of the cured affliction 5 seconds after it is cured. Echoing expires once it has "echoed" an affliction in this way.

SOLUTION 3: new affliction. add "sensitivity," straight from Achaea. Damage to health received is increased by 10%.

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

==12==
The sensory subsystem needs better subsystem afflictions. See "Super Duper Itchy" the new 1st sensory subsystem affliciton.

SOLUTION 1: new 2nd sensory subsystem affliction. "vitals error". This mindsim affliction causes your current afflictions to be unknown, hides reporting of new afflictions, and hides curing. Your subsystem health is still visible. Wetwiring still cures as normal.

SOLUTION 2: new 3rd sensory subsystem affliction. I'm still looking for an idea, though I'm considering something like the recklessness suggestion in BUG 3844. I'm also considering demented vision, but I'm not convinced it's good enough.

If a change was already implemented, feel free to comment it was done. I will remove the entry to streamline.

Once again, direct all thoughts and feedback at me. Let it begin!

EXTRA SOLUTION X: All of the above

HELP us HELP you!

Ilyos — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 09:02:25 +0000

Our HELP system is under constant development. We've been going through and updating / creating new help files, but this is an on-going process and we can really use your input here. What HELP files do you still feel are missing and which of the ones we currently have do you think need updating? (We do have the HELPMOD command in game, but I feel drawing a bit of attention to the system anyway can't hurt)

A few notes: if you run across a HELP file that exists but is empty or has TBD as its content, it means we're working on it and writing it. Also, we are looking into adding a HELPMOD NEW where you can write/suggest your own helpfile.

Would it be possible to auto-generate sector maps?

bugbo — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 19:47:48 +0000

Something similar to https://www.starmourn.com/game-maps but for sectors like CA-3938 or RS-4244. Or would the ASCII nature of them make that overly difficult?

How about an option to use numpad to steer your ship?

bugbo — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 15:29:07 +0000

If not something official then has anybody put together a reflex package that will let you do this?

Web client and hacking mini game.

bugbo — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 12:00:32 +0000

Would it be possible to adapt the web client so that when the player is in the hacking mini game the choices when clicking on a mob are changed from 'attack' to 'infect'? This would make using the mouse much easier as it takes some time to type out the words while being attacked.

Personal Opinion on using public hunting grounds to get a ticket to bounty anyone, forever.

Rylek — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 04:02:24 +0000

I know this is going to be addressing one person in particular, but my issue is more that it's being allowed than who's doing it. Although I firmly believe the person doing it knows the situation is bullshit and does it anyway.

A player/organization should never, EVER be given free rein to claim a public area forever. During sanctioned events, sure. Otherwise, no. New Dika is one of the best leveling bashing areas in the game, and one person is able to hold it hostage for "roleplay" they're so lazy they don't even take part in it? Placing holomedia and graffiti is NOT partaking in roleplay. People should not be expected to SEE the holoprojector, and then walk back and forth until it shines. And then to read all the damn graffiti they ever see, just to understand if a place is being camped by a griefer. That shit isn't okay. I went hunting during a xenohunt, and got a huge bounty thrown upon me. Which is less the point, than the person who did it wasn't online during my hunting OR during the bounty placement to my knowledge. Even if they were, I should be WELL aware they're online and forcing conflict on me because they're actually interacting with me.

Imagine if I decided the Ironbound liked snake people. So we set up a holoprojector, some bugs, and some graffiti saying don't come here or we'll have you killed. Not even, we'll kill you, but that we'll sit on ships or in safe rooms and have other people kill you. Now imagine the other end game areas had the same from other groups. It's a bloody bad president to allow to take place.

Areas inside faction territory being patroled by factions? Good. That's game supported, hardcoded conflict openings.
Are public resources becoming points of conflict? Fantastic, they're short term and most importantly you AGREE to take part. Great.
Public areas being "claimed" by someone who's only RP is to splash some notes and then place bounties? That's straight-up griefing.

Imagine if someone who ruled the pvp scene got bored, and decided they'd claim that creepers and rock giants are their long lost cousins and anyone who touched them was going to die. That is finding a paper-thin bullshit excuse to kill someone for no reason. And you can say that 'death costs next to nothing' all you want, but it has very real effects on people who want NOTHING to do with that shit. People who work hard not to die as a part of their character. People who do any other roleplay reasons to avoid player combat. Why is arbitrarily claiming a very public and very good hunting ground allowed? Why are you allowed to place bounties for a manufactured crap reason, and do it to the ENTIRE player base now and forever?

And the system supporting this bullshit, the Bounty System, needs to be fixed. This system is broken in the way it inflicts death upon someone without giving away for the target to A) Check why or Win. Seriously, you can't kill the person who placed it and have it cancel. I don't think killing the BH who attacks you ends it, but it might. A target has basically zero way to interact with the situation, other than to die. This means people can abuse it by placing a bounty while you're not around, then sit in a ship or a safe room and laugh as there is nothing that can be done. The person has one option, die.

"Dying once means nothing, just take it and move on." Has legitimately driven players from our game. I personally know people who would rather quit the game, than deal with the fact that anyone can bounty them for the flimsiest of reasons, and they have basically no recourse to deal with it in a way that is positive to them. I know people who have quit because of the damn Dika situation. Because it shows clearly that people are both willing to grief from safety without even nothing to TALK to the person they're ordering killed, and that they're -allowed- to do so by the administration.

Forcing death on people because they're in a public area doing the thing they play the game to do, an area you have no actual claim over, is not an acceptable thing to do. Ever.

New time

Cubey — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 23:56:17 +0000

I don't really play Starmourn at the moment but I still keep up with the news (and make sure my factories don't disappear) and I just noticed the game was changed so instead of 1 RL day = 1 ingame month, it's 1 RL day = 4 ingame days.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. You have no idea how long did I hope for a change like that to happen in, well, any IRE game at all, and once again Starmourn's devs prove they're not afraid to do things different just because that's how every other IRE mud did it in the past.

The usual timescale of 1 day = 1 ingame month is ridiculous, it means if you leave the game for a few days then literal ingame months pass and your character ages for decades during only a year of gameplay. This is not conductive to roleplay and turns every character who has been around for a while into an apathetic immortal who lived for hundreds of years but does on average one thing per week and spends the rest of that time asleep or something.

There are games where this works but Starmourn, being a sci-fi one, is not one of them. I'm glad this was recognized and changed to something more reasonable.

Well done.