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[Majestic7]

D'you guys remember which mod changed the planet (market) sizes, so that they can grow past 6? I think there were two. One that straight-up added like four extra levels across the board, an another that made it so that a system with a colony ship could get to 7, matching the core planets.
I've read the description of all mods in the mod list, like, twice already. Can't seem to find either.

If that is all you need, you can easily change it yourself. Go to /starsector-core/data/confic and open settings.json. You can search for max colony size and change it to your liking. I always increase maximum fleet size and battle size too from the same file, since I enjoy larger fleets, both for the enemy and myself. Other common changes are max level of officers and max level for myself and AI alike.

[Loud Whispers]

It did always puzzle me that the default planet size got nerfed. When starsector starts seeing its final release version I think they will need to rework the economy completely. There are too many contradictions and odd things that work well enough as abstractions for making the early-game difficult and fun, but fall apart completely once the player has their first colony. If planets paid for their imports & sold their exports it'd already be leagues better than the current abstraction

[Great Order]

The idea is twofold:

1) The player can't fix the sector, it's fucked beyond one person being able to fix it. Making it so that you can get planets of billions is contradictory to that goal.

2) The sector has a few hundred million living in it *at most*, you don't get up to billions of people in the span of a normal game. Most of your growth is based on immigration, after all.

Although I would like to be able to get up to tens of millions with a cryorevival facility or a friendly planet in the same system with 10^8 population.

The import/export thing is especially weird though, but obviously for balance. Every increase in exports is exponential, a planet producing 6x food is producing far, far more than one producing 5x, hence why a planet producing 6x can feed as many planets that have 6x or less demand as it wants. So why don't the export values increase non-linearly too?

It also means that under optimised conditions, a planet of 1 million, assuming it's a logarithmic scale, could feed over 1 quadrillion people. 6 base, +2 from bountiful farmland, +2 from mirrors, +1 from an AI core, +1 from industrial planning, +1 from improvements, +2 from soil nanites. Total of 1,000,000,000,000,000

Really puts in to context the sheer power of the Domain, and explains why the Luddics are who they are. That's a rate where you're going to be straight up hollowing out small planets within a few decades of mining it, that's enough to make anyone think "Maybe we should slow down"

[Majestic7]

Honestly, I think the cryorevival building should increase the maximum population cap, as should the decivilized status. Population cap makes sense when the only source of population is immigration and natural growth. But thawing loads of ancient colonists should be an exception, as well as integrating existing population.

[Il Palazzo]

Honestly, I think the cryorevival building should increase the maximum population cap, as should the decivilized status. Population cap makes sense when the only source of population is immigration and natural growth. But thawing loads of ancient colonists should be an exception, as well as integrating existing population.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to find the mod that made cryorevival raise the market size cap to 7. It's just about right for the lore and doesn't break the economy too much.
I'm pretty sure there was such a mod (more likely a part of a larger mod) and it's not just my imagination. Right?
Or could it be how it was in vanilla a couple versions back?

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, it sounds familiar but I'm not sure what mod that was. Might be a good question for the Starsector discord?

[Salmeuk]

It also means that under optimised conditions, a planet of 1 million, assuming it's a logarithmic scale, could feed over 1 trillion people. 6 base, +2 from bountiful farmland, +2 from mirrors, +1 from an AI core, +1 from industrial planning, +1 from improvements, +2 from soil nanites. Total of 1,000,000,000,000

Really puts in to context the sheer power of the Domain, and explains why the Luddics are who they are. That's a rate where you're going to be straight up hollowing out small planets within a few decades of mining it, that's enough to make anyone think "Maybe we should slow down"

this is a fun concept..

There are too many contradictions and odd things that work well enough as abstractions for making the early-game difficult and fun, but fall apart completely once the player has their first colony.

Starsector is amongst many modern indie concretions that will always bear the scars of early access and extended development. In what sense? This game grew to popularity when it was nothing more than a very beautifully done space battle simulator. Over time and as player support grew, the devs took the concept further into 4x territory. the earliest mention of campaign layer plans can be found on this post, copied here:

Campaign Layer
The next step is to get a basic campaign layer up and running. It won’t be quite like the final game – the idea is to create something that works well with what’s already done, and then be able to mold it into final shape.
A rough outline of the features for the initial implementation of the campaign layer, tentatively slated for 0.36a:

    Select a character (perhaps just one choice to begin with) which determines your starting fleet points and later possibly skills
    Use the starting fleet points to create your fleet. Pool of available ships possibly influenced by character.
    Travel around a single star system, engage hostile fleets
    Capture enemy ships and salvage weapons to upgrade your fleet

Subsequent versions will augment it with features like:

    A full character creation system and skills
    Officers & crew
    Establishing outposts on planets
    Blueprints and ship/weapon manufacture
    Trade & exploration
    Faction relations
    Raiding core worlds and outposts

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm not sold that many people can properly design a game with two heads, so to speak. or, at least, a "balanced in every respect" game. in fact, there is a weird and almost anxious desire amongst many indie devs to constantly explode their game worlds into larger, strategic layers, as if the only meaningful gameplay is that which is built up from the many smaller tactical situations, a sort of droning call to turn everything into 4x micromanagement hell.

and so, how many games end up being nothing more than disasters of beautiful complexity, where the player can enjoy the spectacle of many small things happening all over the place, but never really gets to interact with the system of actors in a meaningful way? or is forced into a tedious nightmare of "pick the most efficient logical solution" x100, turning the game into questionably rewarding labor?

 Starsector is IMO a great success overall but there is certainly something off about the balance of the game, and probably always will be.

if you're curious, here is the oldest blog entry... from 2010. honestly feels like yesterday when I started reading about this game. at that time it stood out from other indie projects because of these aforementioned prospects of a 4x campaign. ambitious back then I think.

Over time this style of design (core battle mechanics wrapped with a strategic layer) has become very fashionable and now Starsector kind of blends in with the rest, i guess with the unique exception of being very very well constructed.

also, for the shiny pixels - Starsector has very very shiny pixels.

[Loud Whispers]

Even if the 4x elements remain peripheral unto the final release, I think at the very least the goods available to a planet should scale exponentially with the size to reflect what greatorder said. This would be a fun addition to the game that wouldn't require any economic rework at all, and would allow you to scale from doing small-time trade deals with size 1-4 planets all the way to the huge ones like Gilead or Eventide

[Mephansteras]

Finally updated Stardust Ventures. After, like, months and months of chipping away at it every once in a while.

Feels good to at least get some stuff out there, even if my list of stuff to do for the mod didn't really decrease all that much.

[Mephansteras]

Well, if you ever wanted to fly a knock-off Normandy in Starsector I've got you covered:



Just added it into my mod and got it released last night. It's a missile cruiser, roughly equivalent to a Gryphon in stats.

I wouldn't say it's my favorite ship that I've done, but I do think it showcases how my spriting skills have improved.

[AlStar]

My only criticism would be that I don't care for the four lines that divide up the top/front portion of the ship. They're a bit too harsh,  IMO - maybe if they were closer in color to the rest of the hull, or maybe if they looked curved at the edges, to give the front of the ship a rounded look?

Otherwise, it looks great.

[Loud Whispers]

Started a new heavily modded run. Start with the cathedral ship start "Notre Dame." I expected to have a typical Notre Dame campaign, in which you fly around with your giant fat nuclear-missile armed megastation slowly repairing it up until you're ready for deep space exploration and colonisation. In reality, the Hivers proved way more aggressive and powerful than when I last used them. It was non-stop invasions and saturation bombardment missions being sent by the Hivers to all the core worlds, and my Cathedral ship was flying from system to system intercepting the Hivers. The standard Cathedral meta of just spamming a million missiles did absolutely nothing to Hiver fleets, as they field a billion point defence craft and weapon systems + their ships regenerate hull damage. So I outfitted a MAX-DAKKA loadout. Shields on the front module, shields on the side, high-accuracy long range weapon systems everywhere. Four highly skilled, ambitious talon fighters. Standard engagement protocol:

1. Set cruising speed towards main enemy capital cluster or siegeworks objective (added the sick mod which adds "defensive bastion" objectives. Capture them and you get a respawning defensive bastion).
2. FIRE ALL DAKKA. Overload enemy flux. Pierce their armour, unleash the talons and every missile. Use phase mines to snipe all of the enemy's fighter cover.
3. Vent under cover of the three frontal shields, repeat.

I like the idea of the max-missile cathedral ship as it's like roleplaying as a defensive station and is fairly chill. But it just doesn't do anything to remnants or hivers. Max-dakka puts you at way more risk and stress but heavily rewards optimal BATTLESHIP decisive doctrine. You can take full-frontal engagements with XIV battlegroup capital ships because your guns are so potent.

So after spending millions of credits rennovating my flagship, and accruing a small but elite coterie of salvaged capitals & black-market procured missile frigates & phase ships for objective capturing, I began flying around building alliances with the Hegemony & Persean League. And while I wasn't able to get Pirates, Sindria or Tri-Tach in on the alliance, I was at least able to get relative neutrality between them and the grand Luddic-Hegemon coalition so everyone could focus on the fucking space bugs. Ferrying cargo goods, defending space stations, hunting bounty fleets... I almost never left the core worlds whilst building up a fortune of 15,000,000 credits and a true lean mean armada fighting machine. I took a quick stop at every major hegemony and luddic church world, buying up all the heavy armaments and marine/crew contracts I could get.

I had 13,000 crew and over 3,000 marines, with enough heavy weapons to equip 4,000 marines. Every month I lost a net 150,000 credits as my giant warfleet traveled the stars, briefly exploring solar systems for worlds to reclaim for humanity. Found plenty of weird anomalies, including the Hegemony planet Sentinel which had been lost to the history books for ages. Settled a pleasant desert world which I began turning into a terran world. Until at last I reached the Hiver home systems. It was so cathartic managing to sneak into their terran-world centre of heavy industry, purchasing all of their stocks of supplies and fuel, before annihilating their station and dropping thousands upon thousands of marines, mechs and grav-tanks. Every single hiver patrol began racing towards me at speed 20, revenge-fleets and counter-invasions too, and I would alternate between annihilating these fleets and tactical bombarding the ground-resistance so the bugs would finally be eliminated in the name of Ludd. In 8 days the world was claimed, and all of my marines retrieved. I requested an armed fleet of venture cruisers come reinforce my new conquest (the Luddic church were displeased I took it under direct administration), whilst I began systematically degrading the defensive capabilities of their key fortress-worlds in preparation for total system conquest.

Felt like a rogue trader just burning millions of credits to ply the stars, set up new colonies and annihilate xenos. What a fun campaign

[Mephansteras]

Nice!

I don't generally like the quality of the Hiver mod, but I have to admit it does spice up the game in an interesting way.

[Loud Whispers]

Nice!

I don't generally like the quality of the Hiver mod, but I have to admit it does spice up the game in an interesting way.

I can't really say if my experience is indicative because of how many mods I have (including the realistic combat overhaul mod) but imo a lot of Hiver stuff is just too cheap on deployments cost and ordnance points. They're remnant quality hulls with low tech levels of firepower and swarms of heavy drones. A lot of their capital ships have high speed, high armour, high flux shield pools and high firepower, which violates the basic design principles that ships players can get their hands on should be good at 3 of those things at most. Otherwise it's kinda nuts to have something with remnant quality + autohealing at luddic tier deployment costs. I find they're more bearable in random sector starts where they start off as weak and confused as everyone else, but in a core world start they're scripted to begin with a dozen high-productivity worlds which they just use to incessantly plague the core worlds from the start. And I don't think I would enjoy trying to play a small smuggler or salvage fleet run only to come back to the core worlds and find everyone's been saturation bombed to extinction

I think after I'm done wiping out the hivers I might try a run where I play as a hegemony fighter pilot or prometheus/atlas space trucker... But keep the hivers, legio and pirates at full power. I kinda want to see how the game plays out if your campaign just slowly becomes a darker, emptier galaxy, and you're racing against the clock to revive humanity's chances. Reminds me of that one guy who accidentally gave paragon and doom blueprints to the pirates and ended up decivilising the galaxy so there were only luddic and pirate stations left

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the Hivers is that you can just...use their stuff. Like, let it be OP, but don't just hand it to the players. Especially for weird bug stuff, that logically just shouldn't be easily usable by folks. That and the weapons sell for a stupid amount of credits.

But a lot of that is just me having opinions based on what I'd do as a modder with them. *shrug*