Starsector Modded 2 - Phros's Big Score

[@tymvas]

The issue with Starship Legends is by default your ships will get negative quirks if they eat up hull damage, which given, your playstyle, will end up with you having you ships laden with negative quirks. You can change the weighting by editing the mod config file.

[@netherane]

This is why I hate the mod. It de-incentivises taking tough fights, and using armor and hull to tank. My ship should become MORE legendary for surviving in 10% hull but killing the entire enemy fleet, but instead your going to give me like -13% speed?! Gtfo, such an incredibly mechanic.

[@Phrosphor]

I guess the question now is can I remove legends without breaking the save?

[@mckitten9643]

@@Phrosphor You can't remove it, but the mod has an option that disables all features in-game that you can use instead. But i recommend keeping it, it gives ships a lot more character. While it can be a bit disappointing to get a negative mod that hits hard, it's equally nice to hit a great positive mod (like +flux on a Wolf or shield durability on an Omen). It also gives you a reason to shop around for ships later on, replacing ones that got particularly bad mods. Otherwise, you usually hit your optimal fleet quite quickly and don't change much after that. The mod is also supposed to be more balance neutral than just ships gaining power with XP (look at progressive S-Mods or Ship Mastery System if you're looking for that), which is why the negative mods are important to offset the positive ones. There will also be opportunities to change or even remove negative mods, if the ships survive for some time and the crews gain loyalty. And finally, you can always adjust the settings to reduce the number of negative mods if you want. A final note: since you have LunaLib in your modlist, you'll need to change the mod settings for Starship Legends in the main menu of the game with the LunaLib mod editor. The config file in the mod folder is only used if you don't have LunaLib, so changes there won't work for you.

[@Nortonius_]

Phros going for those AI cores like Tony B for the bag of drugs in season 5 of the Sopranos 🔥

[@roryr8]

Talking through your decisions really makes the video for me!

[@ahmadhaziqizzuddinishak3751]

Nice seeing someone give Starsector the coverage it deserves. Keep up the good work, Phrosphor; also, I know it might be a bit late, but maybe you can look into the mod me and some of my friends worked on, the Epta Consortium mod. It's basically Tri-Tachyon giving rights to some AI cores, and the cores decide to become traveling salespeople. yes really. massive teleporting Robo-salesmen spacestations in deep space you can stumble into while adventuring.

[@imperialus1]

Couple suggestions based on your ship outfitting. 1) Grok has a flux distributor. You don't want to include that on a ship until you have already maxed out your vents. It is less efficient. For a cost of 4 OP you get 30 flux dissipation with the flux distributor. Each vent you add gets you 10 flux dissipation so the same 4 OP will get you 40. 2) Grok's heavy blaster is very inefficient from a flux/damage end of things. Between that and the IR Pulse laser you are going to have a really difficult time managing flux when pressured. A good rule of thumb (though it is tough to manage with a wolf) is to try and make sure your weapon flux/second is as close as possible to your flux dissipation/second. Right now, with all the guns firing you are generating over 900 flux/second and passive venting less than 300. This is sorta expected with the heavy blaster, and totally workable as a player piloted ship if you are careful with timing your shots, but the AI is going to really struggle, especially given how short ranged the blaster is. 3) Burst PD is good, but overkill on a frigate. Don't forget the OP cost. You really just need to worry about something to cover your rear from missiles if you end up out of position, regular old PD lasers only cost 4 OP vs 6 for the burst. 4) If I were to rijigger your weapon loadout... Given what you have available I would suggest putting the heavy blaster combined with the ion blaster on Grok since the Cabal upgrades hurt your flux, and buy those sabot missiles for kinetic damage against shields. Once the enemy drops their shields, either because the sabots overloaded him or to avoid tanking them on the shields then shoot with the heavy blaster. The ion blaster is very low flux and can disable enemy systems. Put the graviton beam and the IR pulse laser on the other ship along with the harpoons. Let him hang back and work with the other wolf since the graviton beam will penalize shield efficiency when targeting enemy shields. Put those anti matter blasters on your Lunaris. Phase ships work best when you can hit someone with a very powerful alpha strike and then go back into phase, and there are very few weapons short of torpedoes that can put out alpha damage like a couple of anti matter blasters. As a note, this is probably where you want to put those Reaper torpedoes you found.

[@hev360]

Didn't expect the second part to come out so soon, great to see! And of course commodities in this game is so core to the gameplay, you did choose a rather tough start with only a single phase ship., but still excited to see how you deal with it. Selling those ai cores were huge

[@mckitten9643]

Always great to see more StarSector! Just started a new playthrough myself, first time on .97, took time until all my must-have mods were up to date. Also great to see you have SRA in the game, it's a great mod faction and the Mimir is my absolute favourite player ship out of hundreds i've tried. (Because of the look, the fantastic mobility & ship system, not the lolcannon) Let me suggest a few QoL mods you might consider adding to this game: Advanced Gunnery Control, Leading Pip and Weapon Arcs all improve weapon handling. AGC lets you set behaviours for the AI controlled guns of your ship, Weapon Arcs lets you display range and arc of your weapon groups and leading pip adds just that to your current target. Fleet Size By DP is something that imo should be in the vanilla game, it changes the game so that various limits on your fleet are determined by total DP, not number of ships. This makes fleets of many small ships a possible playstyle much further into the game. Stellar Networks is a great UI improvement for the intel menu QoLpack has many QoL changes that can be individually configured

[@starshine_project]

stumbled upon this channel and seems like a gem! seeing a lot of games i really quite like

[@Zephyrite]

I love your playstyle so far! It's scrappy, desperate and fun to watch. Here's something I recommend: Just get a freighter and refit it to grant it the Additional Fuel Tanks mod, that's an easy way to get early range without spending money on a tanker. Make sure that both your shuttle and any other auxiliary ships have two hullmods that increase crew/cargo/fuel to make what you have as efficient as possible. It might also be worth looking at replacing that Harpoon with a Reaper/Atropos launcher since the Harpoon is more for disabling engines than doing direct damage, and it really sounds like you're mostly using that missile slot for a finisher. Lastly, I highly recommend just skipping the scrap metal entirely when you're salvaging since it's basically worthless, unless you're able to turn it right in. And on that note, always make sure to look to see if the salvage button (6) is lit up after battle. That domain probe had salvage remaining and you might have been able to score even more cores (tho likely just ship parts and relics, but those are better than the sheet metal in your holds)! Also, the Galatia Academy story missions aren't timed, apart from the scientist delivery missions, so you can always just accept them and once you have the range you can do them.

[@netherane]

0:31 fizzy juice and happy meals?! 😂😂😂 just about spit out my food I’ve actually never done smuggling for money off the start. It’s always been exploration and combat missions. I take down bounties over my fleet size by repeated engagements. Fight right up until I have enough Peak Performance to retreat (or I’ve killed enough to safely flee), retreat, and then force a re-engagement. This way I am losing minimal CR, but can wear down the enemy over multiple fights. I cant remember exactly how peak performance DOESNT reset, but I think it resets after each engagement. IE if you fight, and they run, and you force another fight, both of your Peak Performance resets, but your CR stays the same.

[@netherane]

11:50 missiles dont load between engagements in a battle. It has to all get wrapped up before your missiles are resupplied.

[@netherane]

22:05 considering you just threw four beam weapons, and one of them is anti-shield (quite rare for beams), high scatter amp would have been an excellent addition the to starlight. Yes itd have shorter range, but the wolf-class can phase jump to get into and out of range easily. In conjunction with the alpha of the heavy blster from your wolf-H, or another alpha weapon you equipped, could be a great 1-2 punch

[@netherane]

26:16 if you change velocity or direction during burn-in it cancels it. I generally try to “hands off” my keyboard before the burn-in finishes.

[@netherane]

25:57 because at the station you repaired before un-mothballing. Station repairing restores CR as well, so you ended up leaving the starlight wolf to slowly build-up instead of instantly via station repair.

[@Wedcakskacdew]

hold alt to move all on hover, edit settings.json to "altMouseMoveToMassTransfer":true, filepath: Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\config Look couple of paragraphs down under, Can be changed by mods

[@EvelynNdenial]

gotta get some torpedoes for that phase frigate. nothing more satisfying than hitting a cruiser in the ass with reapers and one-shoting it.

[@jonber9411]

Get yourself the dram and the tramp. Compensate the drams smaller cargospace by giving it expanded cargo holds modspec. If you want to earn bigger cash, make a blackmarket run with "fizzyjuice" or heavy weapons. The modspec insulated engines is great when smuggling, makes you ships sensors profile smaller. Otherwise save the cash for a more potent frigate or destroyer upgrade 🍌

[@ShinMail6164]

Great Idea

[@imperialus1]

I think he is trying to avoid smuggling, but otherwise good advice. Adding expanded cargo holds kinda across the board is a good idea at this point. It is also possible to turn a profit trading on the open market. I believe it is F1 on the map screen will show you commodity prices and if you can find a place with a shortage of something near an inexpensive source for said something you can pull it off, even with the 30% on both ends. Bit of a slog though.

[@phillipstevenson4883]

Enjoying the videos keep up the great work Phrosphor!! Name suggestion - Nostromo the tug from Alien movie. may want to save this one for a bigger vessel 😁.

[@CounterfeitDuck]

24:43 Did they make plot armor into a resource?

[@tymvas]

Exactly. Though story points can be used for a lot of *different* things, that's just one of them. Yourself and your crew are supposed to be kind of a big deal skill-wise in universe so the story points help convey that part.

[@CounterfeitDuck]

@@tymvas This game gave me some Space rangers vibe, but this aspect of it is exactly opposite. World of Space rangers doesn't revolve around the player but player is the same part of world as everyone else. Game doesn't even need player to complete the main quest. The only thing stoping NPCs from doing it is difficulty. But I heard that in the latest revision of the game that aspect is lost to the new quest line while other versions of the game are not officially available due sone license violation in development. 😢

[@Phrosphor]

My thoughts on the Story Point system. I think it is less of 'You are the protaganist' and more - here is an opportunity to influence the narrative by doing something exciting. Yes I dodged the fleet using a story point, but I only have 4 and there are a lot things I can use them for so it's a very precious resource. You can use them to 'bake in' hull mods to make them extra powerful for example - or recover a ship that normally wouldn't be salvageable. Arguably dodging a fleet is a terrible use of a point.

[@darloth]

@@Phrosphor It's not that terrible - it does at least give +100% of a level worth of xp bonus (making you level twice as fast for a while), which in turn means it pays for itself (since the bonus xp also generates a story point, or at least it does at 100% bonus). You don't really lose anything long term by spending them on something with a +100% bonus like this, but you certainly lack that point in the short to medium term! Things that benefit you long term like S-mods usually won't grant much or any bonus XP.

[@tymvas]

@@Phrosphor but if it's that or a game over.. It's nice to have the option.

[@ShinMail6164]

Man, these episodes are coming out fast and furious

[@felix34ever1]

Calling harvested organs as happy meals really gives them a dark twist

[@spiritofconfusion4460]

Try the afflictor phase ship with anti-matter blasters, it is incredible.

[@Sloppyllama]

One Happy Meal please, with the Fizzy Juice. Super Size Me.

[@stetytielemans]

The playlist is out of order, this is the second video in the series, but is the first in the playlist.

[@warwolf3005]

I think it would be intresting to get the tanker to be able to reach those far away missions

[@overboss9599]

should be a free dram in that scrapyard, along with some more combat ships. they all have Dmods of course, but given your current situation, the bright and shiny hulls are really beyond your reach. as for what you should do next, given that mod you downloaded that makes exploring basically impossible, I suggest you pick up combat trading, which is to say selling goods in systems that are experiencing turmoil. also, always check the bar for the "concerned trader" as they offer shipping contracts that can pay well. one other suggestion, i always slap either expanded cargo holds and efficiency overhaul onto my freighters, or a converted hangar. the first one makes them pretty good at hauling, the second gives them a snowballs chance at actually making it out of a retreat situation.

[@darloth]

It doesn’t make exploring impossible at all - it actually adds loads of ways to get fuel out on the frontier, but you can no longer guarantee long runs with only a single tanker. I think it comes with fuel scooping built in, so you can stop off at a nebula for pretty good efficiency supplies to fuel conversion, or any star for bad efficiency conversion but enough to get you home maybe. There’s caches to find on planets and trades to make and all sorts of things too.

[@overboss9599]

​@@darloth hrmm. I'll take your word on that as I've never used that mod. don't think it's something i would add to my playthrough, but it might be interesting. still think he might want to build up a nest egg before wandering out into the void though.

[@darloth]

@@overboss9599 I wasn’t sure I’d like it either until I tried a play through with it, and it really added a lot of feeling of distance to the overworld. Because it makes fuel so much cheaper in the core systems you can do short hops without worrying about frittering away fuel in hyperspace so much, but because fuel costs ramp up with distance it makes the sector effectively a lot larger without actually being any larger, but you can set up (or find!) waystations along the way, which makes exploration and expansion feel more meaningful. It absolutely makes exploration harder and require a little more planning (or at least bringing extra supplies), but since before you could stay out with a dram or two and a small frigate fleet for months and months, I was fine with that.

[@overboss9599]

the barren planet just outside the asteroid belt would've been a veritible treasure trove, unfortunate you didn't check it before you left. there's also a domain era probe to scavenge in galatia, pretty sure it's 'north" on the system map, you would use sensor burst to find it. oh, hey you found the probe.

[@darloth]

I would love to watch more of this from you if that is plausible

[@Kapitaen_Flauschbart]

Regarding your dog, we just pretend its your pet tark, residing besides your chair in the middle of the bridge 😀

[@ahmadhaziqizzuddinishak3751]

or a pet snark.

[@lordmummie]

Been waiting for this!

[@CoolSs]

34:02 we can call them the "rimworld special"

[@ToastedWaffles_]

I said it too late on the last video but a wolf-class would make a good ship under the name ISS (or whatever ship naming convention you wanna use.) Phage.

[@ToastedWaffles_]

As to advice on what to do ship wise is shop around more; getting yourself into a real destroyer is a huge boon early game I love the Shrike light destroyer if you can find one. Load it with a torpedo launcher in the medium slot and you have something that can be used to crack open larger vessels. But if you must pick now my money is on a dram, and the wolf. With the dram and other non -combat ships you can get the hull mod extra cargo bays and basically make up the diff with the ultra light freighter; I would save for a destroyer class freighter. You should find a "home" station buy some storage and offload all the spare weapons you have. This station that you chose to stop the episode is a great choice for this with the repair dock so you can leave scavenged ships here and equipment. Also you really should always, always drop the metal plates for any other item as they take up huge amounts of space and are low yield in credits per sale.

[@Melganor]

Not dumping the metal and take more supplies is just a noob mistake ^^

[@ahmadhaziqizzuddinishak3751]

Yea, Phrosphor should atleast keep a note on the base price of all cargo items as a helpful reminder when scavenging.

[@lateralus6512]

I like the idea of this game, so eventally bought it, but I just can't get into it. I'm not sure why. I read lots of guides and watched plenty of helpful youtube videos. I guess it's just not for me.

[@Showdowguy]

The Shuttle has to be the fleet Skyranger

[@kvera]

Salvage exploration fleet

[@tylerphuoc2653]

Oh yeah, I see that you are reading the UI and mistakedly thinking "I have enough" when the text is orange; if it's yellow, the statistic is highlighted but not made worse or insufficient. Usually, orange means d-modded or noticeably inefficient, as a rule of thumb, while green means the opposite. For ship statistics, it will usually show you the final total after modifiers, _not_ the base value. A (+/- x) next to a ship modifier shows how the base has been changed, but it does not affect what the final total looks like. To sell AI cores, you land at stations or settled planets and open the comms menu, where you find the station/planet head administrator and tell them you have AI cores to return. Certain factions will give more of a reputation bonus or more of a monetary bonus in return for the AI core(s). Also, usually you have two opportunities to salvage after large enough ship battles. First, from the wrecks directly after the battle, and then from the resultant debris cloud created by the fighting. All this starter info can understandably look daunting at first, but you can quickly get accustomed to it after applying them for a long enough playthrough.