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Stellar TacticsPatch incoming - Part 2 - The first chapter, psionics and more.(12 posts)(12 posts)
(12 posts)
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Posted July 22, 2022
Part 2:

QOL CHANGES

SALVAGE UI QoL Schematics that are being learned through salvaging are now displayed on the salvaging UI with percent complete in the Schematics view on the right of the screen. Completed schematics show no % complete. Selecting an item to salvage now displays items that can be salvaged in the disassembly pane of the salvage UI. When selecting an item to salvage, pressing ESC will cancel that item rather than exiting the salvage UI allowing you to select another item to disassemble.

Right clicking an equip-able item other than mods in your inventory will equip it. Double click still works to equip items.

The stat allocation widget now allocates stats quickly when you click and hold the mouse over the allocation arrows.

Your ships now accelerate immediately when micro-warping.

When looting, if you do not have the room in inventory for all ammo, the loot container will close and a message will be sent to display that you do not have enough room in inventory for the ammo. Just a note that there is a ammo converter in the game that you can purchase from one of the faction vendors. I leave ammo in the containers in case you have an ammo converter and want to convert ammo in inventory to another ammo type to make room.

Sorting:

Added sorting for the stash. You can now sort by quality, name, value, type and quantity.
Added sorting to vendors. You can sort by quality, type, value and quantity.
Added a compact inventory icon to the upper right of the shared inventory area. This organizes in the following order - med kits, grenades, devices, armor, melee weapons, ranged weapons and finally - vendor trash.
I will be adding improved sorting to the cargo, cargo storage and other areas in the next update.
Removed the annoying vendor dialog. When you click a vendor, the vendor UI is displayed immediately.

When out of combat, pressing the reload hotkey "R" will reload all weapons for all crew members. Right click to reload all still works.

GENERAL NOTES

Translations for the new content will be rough for a while. I'll post updates over the next month as translations to German, Spanish, Russian and French languages progress.

Updated - When boarding a ship, space combat experience is rewarded when selling the ship to Arkus. You can still get experience by exiting the ship and not selling to Arkus, then blowing up the ship. Or, as usual, by destroying ships in space combat without boarding.

Updated - Difficulty setting modifications to NPC's now kick in at level 1. Previously, difficulty settings for hard and extreme had no effect on NPC's until your crews average level was level 5 or greater.

Updated - Ramped up Extreme difficulty mode.

Updated - Various enemy types have Psionic skills - especially Coven and Phage.

Updated - Dauntless - Removed grenades from "Captain".

Updated - Added cave areas to random missions at the Facility in Achmedius.

Updated - Devices can not be destroyed or sold. They are considered key items.

Updated - Replaced some of the Arach sound effects.

Updated - Grenade damage adjusted down.

Updated - Increased 2 hand melee CTH and damage.

Updated - You can now rollover status effects for descriptions (bleeding, defend, poisoned etc.) in the extended targeting UI.

Updated - Increased LOS visual angle for NPC's and PC's so they do not have tunnel vision.

Updated - Performance improvements in space. - LOD, distance clipping, UI performance related to NPC ship labels etc.

Updated - In space, when a target is selected and obstructed by a planet, the target reticle is faded to let you know the target is on the other side of the planet. Updated - In space, if a ship is obstructed by a planetary object, the label is faded.

Updated - When rolling over repair material icons in the equipment repair UI, the name of the repair material is displayed.

Updated - Reduced chance of a random attack taking place when entering a star system from a station, ground location and FTL space.

Fixed - When a grenade is active, occasionally you would move instead of throw the grenade when you clicked.

Fixed - When gaining piloting skill in space combat, the log was displaying the incorrect string - WEAPONRY. Piloting skill gains were not affected - just the display string in the log.

Fixed - If armor was unequipped in combat, the player was invulnerable to damage. This was related to an error in the equipment wear system.

Fixed - Universe search now responds correctly to enter key - searching the existing list of systems with beacons first and if no result, entire universe database.

Fixed - Arach parts are now considered vendor trash and are sold when selling all junk.

Fixed - After clearing the slice mines for Scarby, the return location is selected when choosing the mission in the objectives tracker in space.

Fixed - The approach button is now displayed after scanning a planet. Previously a scan would hide the approach button until you selected the planet again.

Fixed - Cleaned up various sub faction agents that should not be giving missions at this time. They will return eventually and provide alternate mission types (The Syndicate, The Church etc...).

Fixed - When boarding the Frontier CG-1 several doors on this ship could not be hacked/opened.

Fixed - In some cases, when looting a ship equipment crate on boarded ships - not all equipment was being moved to the cargo hold.

Fixed - You can now craft "Rare" weapons with up to 3 mod slots.
Post edited July 24, 2022 by StellarTactics
Posted July 23, 2022
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StellarTactics: Updated - You will no longer be able to swap weapons from inventory during combat. Weapons, armor and shields cannot be unequipped during combat. You can swap mods and devices while in combat. For example, swapping a damage type mod to adjust melee weapon damage types based on enemy weaknesses. Swapping heavy weapons to avoid reload penalties was OP. Also, with special attacks added, this could in some cases lead to triggering multiple special attacks in a single combat scenario making content trivial.
Sad to hear this, as it's a game-killer for me. I can understand not wanting to allow a player to avoid reload penalties, but there are far better ways of accomplishing this than locking a player into a heavy weapon throughout the entire combat. Some weapons are clearly designed for extreme range, and if the player isn't allowed to switch to a closer range weapon for the entire duration of combat... well, the enemy shouldn't be allowed to close the distance either.

Now, I'm obviously not suggesting THAT, as locking the enemy positions when combat starts would be ludicrous. But I don't think that preventing the player from switching weapons as enemy disposition changes during the course of combat is any less ludicrous.

A better solution would be to prevent the player from avoiding reload penalties via weapon switching by imposing a significant penalty for doing so - like switching weapons cost all remaining action points for that round, or maybe even losing all remaining action points and having a penalty for initiative on the following combat round... Or allow switching weapons, but have it cost the same amount of actions points as reloading the previous weapon would have cost. It would allow the player to adapt their combat strategy to a changing field of play as enemies advance or even appear out of nowhere from previously hidden locations without allowing the possibility of triggering multiple special attacks or unfairly avoiding reload penalties by having several loaded one-shot weapons and freely switching between them.

Your concern appears to be that you don't want players to be able to change weapons from inventory during the course of a combat round (for reasons that are both understandable and reasonable) but your solution appears to be to prevent them from changing weapons at any point during the combat imposing a negative effect far exceeding that needed to correct the issue.
Post edited July 23, 2022 by Toccatta
Posted July 24, 2022
I'll be looking into a better solution. Players were stocking up on 20 heavy weapons (usually missile launchers) and just plowing through content. This was a quick solution until I have more time to address the issue. The same goes for armor which just fell into the same category for the quick fix.

Oh, and I'll be working on a fix soon - so you won't need to wait until the next major content patch.
Post edited July 24, 2022 by StellarTactics
Posted July 24, 2022
Posted a patch that rolls back the weapon swapping changes.

Removed the changes from the patch notes.
Posted July 31, 2022
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StellarTactics: Sorting:

Added sorting for the stash. You can now sort by quality, name, value, type and quantity.
Added sorting to vendors. You can sort by quality, type, value and quantity.
Added a compact inventory icon to the upper right of the shared inventory area. This organizes in the following order - med kits, grenades, devices, armor, melee weapons, ranged weapons and finally - vendor trash.
I will be adding improved sorting to the cargo, cargo storage and other areas in the next update.
Removed the annoying vendor dialog. When you click a vendor, the vendor UI is displayed immediately.
The new sorting is very handy when looking for specific things to equip or store for later... The one thing it appears to be missing is the "All" filter (Three stacked bars in the trade interface, but missing in the inventory/stash interface). Would you consider adding this option to the filters? I find it easier to mark items for sale from the entire list rather than having to go through each individual category - it also helps me get a feel for "the big picture" when I can see how much stuff I'm holding onto semi-permanently compared to the entire capacity of the stash

When you can see your "hoard" is taking up a significant portion of the stash, you know it's time to clean house... or at least find suitable alternative storage ideas.
Post edited July 31, 2022 by Toccatta
Posted August 11, 2022
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StellarTactics: I'll be looking into a better solution. Players were stocking up on 20 heavy weapons (usually missile launchers) and just plowing through content...
Wouldn't a simple fix for this be to lock the primary and secondary weapons slots during combat? Or impose a really heavy AP cost to change them?

As an aside, current military weapons have the option to use multiple types of ammunition (e.g. a rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher) so perhaps weapons addons allowing use of another type of ammunition (with very limited capacity, selectable via firing mode) might be worth including at some point?
Posted August 12, 2022
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StellarTactics: I'll be looking into a better solution. Players were stocking up on 20 heavy weapons (usually missile launchers) and just plowing through content...
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AstralWanderer: Wouldn't a simple fix for this be to lock the primary and secondary weapons slots during combat? Or impose a really heavy AP cost to change them?
A better fix would be to not fix it. If I toss a grenade, and it kills every enemy NPC in the zone, that's overpowered and will ruin the game for pretty much everyone - it's something that needs to be fixed because it will destroy the value of the game for the people that want challenging combat, and because it affects anyone that uses grenades whether they want it or not.

However, if the problem is that it is an exploit that people CAN use, but takes effort and planning to accomplish, then NOBODY will accidentally be affected by it. Only the people that actually WANT it to happen will be affected by it, so it isn't something that will ruin anything for anyone, because the people that don't want it to happen just won't do that.

And no, locking the primary and secondary weapons slots wouldn't be a simple fix to the problem. Some heavy weapons are almost exclusively designed for extreme range (like missile launchers). If you prevent a person from changing weapons during combat, you leave them with two equally unacceptable choices: 1) Use your rocket launcher at the beginning of combat before the enemy closes the distance and then be limited to your secondary weapon for the entire remainder of combat... or 2) just never equip a rocket launcher, making it as effective a game object as a slice shaker or an arachnid stinger.

The bottom line is that what was being described by the developer doesn't affect anyone except the people that want to be affected. "Fixing" the problem is nothing more than telling them that only one way of playing the game is the right way, and if they're not playing the game that way, then they're having fun *wrong*. This isn't a multi-player game where using this trick gives one customer an unfair advantage over another, nor is there some huge contest where the first person to complete the game wins a big prize. If anyone's fun is spoiled by this OP trick, they have only themselves to blame for using it. It quite frankly doesn't need to be fixed.
Post edited August 12, 2022 by Toccatta
Posted August 13, 2022
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Toccatta: A better fix would be to not fix it...However, if the problem is that it is an exploit that people CAN use, but takes effort and planning to accomplish, then NOBODY will accidentally be affected by it. Only the people that actually WANT it to happen will be affected by it, so it isn't something that will ruin anything for anyone, because the people that don't want it to happen just won't do that.
That sort of argument could be used to justify removing any and every restriction. Why bother with AP limits rather than letting players decide when the enemy can have a turn? Why bother with a skill system rather than allowing players to succeed at everything?

Unfixed exploits can weaken the verisimilitude of a game if they allow players to achieve something that is implausible or unbalances a system, and this one clearly does both (allowing a character to effectively carry/use several dozen heavy weapons at once and effectively bypass the reload and damage immunity systems by having every type of heavy weapon on hand). The fix should be simple to implement and I see little merit in your counterargument - heavy weapon plus pistol has been a working tactic for one of my characters (two others use rifles and the third a shotgun) - I avoid rockets since their "friendly fire" potential is too great but there are at least 3 other types of heavy weapon available.

The game already offers multiple difficulty settings plus a "friendly fire" setting so there is plenty of choice for players to do things "their way" without rules compromises.
Posted August 13, 2022
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Toccatta: A better fix would be to not fix it...However, if the problem is that it is an exploit that people CAN use, but takes effort and planning to accomplish, then NOBODY will accidentally be affected by it. Only the people that actually WANT it to happen will be affected by it, so it isn't something that will ruin anything for anyone, because the people that don't want it to happen just won't do that.
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AstralWanderer: That sort of argument could be used to justify removing any and every restriction. Why bother with AP limits rather than letting players decide when the enemy can have a turn? Why bother with a skill system rather than allowing players to succeed at everything?
I can't find anything wrong with that argument (freedom of play style) and it's also not an exploit to switch weapons.

You are all ignoring the already high MANAGEMENT COST for such an aproach of having like 20 launchers
1. You need to remember to reload them all by hand and switching weapons after combat each and every time
2. Killing lots of opponents also means picking up lots of loot. That becomes a nightmare, except you put the launchers in the stash, get the loot and take them out again
That's a lot of clicking. Don't you think the already present restrictions are enough?
If not here are some more ideas: Maybe just make the inventory smaller or tie it's size to the combined strength of the teammembers (would give another reason to character development).

I also dislike this mind set of "put an AP cost on everything" without having a better "planning mode". There is no undo and if I misclick (happens quite often on a slow machine that the cursor "jumps") I loose AP and need another plan.
That's not about having a bad plan, it's only about accidentally bad execution on player side sometimes.

EDIT: Discussing further restrictions it should also be thought about a retreat option to reorganize things. In the end it's all about the intended flexibility of the combat system. If done wrong we might end up "gambling and reloading".
Post edited August 13, 2022 by m85go
Posted August 13, 2022
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Toccatta: A better fix would be to not fix it...However, if the problem is that it is an exploit that people CAN use, but takes effort and planning to accomplish, then NOBODY will accidentally be affected by it. Only the people that actually WANT it to happen will be affected by it, so it isn't something that will ruin anything for anyone, because the people that don't want it to happen just won't do that.
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AstralWanderer: That sort of argument could be used to justify removing any and every restriction. Why bother with AP limits rather than letting players decide when the enemy can have a turn? Why bother with a skill system rather than allowing players to succeed at everything?
And your argument is entirely disingenuous B.S. We're not talking about the normal course of events in the game. We're talking about an option that a player must actively and intentionally take advantage of, not something that just automatically happens and the player must actively avoid. The situation being discussed isn't one in which the player must arbitrarily decide what the game mechanics will be, but rather an issue which CAN be used if one wishes, but has ZERO effect on the people who do not. In your analogy, eliminating action points and skill systems would affect everyone whether they want it to or not. Each person would be required to create their own imaginary game mechanics to allow themselves to have fun, requiring more mental effort from everyone than the average player is willing to invest when playing a game.

You would prefer the game have very strict limits that make everyone play according to the play style that you personally prefer (or which the developer prefers). And that if anyone finds a clever way to gain an advantage within those rules, then the rules must be savagely curtailed to enforce that preferred play style. i.e. I'll MAKE you play it my way!

My suggestion allows other players more latitude in devising their play style in a manner which does fall within the game rules. It does NOT suggest completely eliminating the concept of rules, and your implication that it does shows the obvious error in your argument.
Posted August 25, 2022
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m85go: You are all ignoring the already high MANAGEMENT COST for such an aproach of having like 20 launchers
1. You need to remember to reload them all by hand and switching weapons after combat each and every time
2. Killing lots of opponents also means picking up lots of loot. That becomes a nightmare, except you put the launchers in the stash, get the loot and take them out again
That's a lot of clicking. Don't you think the already present restrictions are enough?...
For any game, there needs to be restrictions on what the player can do. That's game balance. Those restrictions/rules/limitations should as much as feasible, parallel "real life" to make the game plausible (at least to avoid regularly "breaking the fourth wall").

Now you're arguing in favour of an exploit that allows characters to effectively have an entire armoury on their holster/belt/webbing. Unless this game is supposed to be a recreation of The Matrix, I'd argue that to be implausible. It is also unnecessary since ground combat is hardly difficult at the moment - toss a stun grenade or two and finish off stunned opponents with the weapons of your choice (if they are too far away for a stun grenade, drop a smoke grenade instead and wait for them to come within range).

Now it's perfectly OK to find and make use of exploits in a developing game - that's what beta testing is for. But to insist that a particular exploit should remain, is the hallmark of a mediocre gamer who lacks the creativity and persistence to find alternate approaches for the problems a challenging game should provide.
Posted August 25, 2022
My problem with the primary/secondary weapon system is that some weapon types are inherently less useful than others, resulting in characters using them lagging behind others in level growth.

The problem is that long range weapons allow engagement at long range, and thus the ability to engage enemies as soon as they become visible, and long range weapons are available only as primary weapons. This means that two handed melee weapons results in a stunted level growth, as does shotguns and flame throwers (I presume: I've never used them because of this). The secondary weapon slot can take a melee weapon or a short range missile weapon, which is fine: both are useful at close range.

As a result of the above, I've given up on my shotgun character (who never used the SMG side weapon, as that's another short range weapon) and switched to rifle + SMG (which now sees a fair bit of use). A fair bit of "coaching" is (and has been) required to get that character to catch up with the other characters level wise.

It would be possible to introduce a two weapon system where you can use any two weapons you want, although I'd probably want three, to allow for the usage of situational weapons such as missile launchers and flame throwers, which I'd otherwise never use.
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Stellar TacticsPatch incoming - Part 2 - The first chapter, psionics and more.(12 posts)(12 posts)
(12 posts)