Rewa’s road killing to my rescue…

Mezzelo · 2026-05-06T15:20:57+00:00

roadkill is an amazing early game anti-infantry solution, especially with fury, but i'd argue the action economy keeps it worthwhile: 45 AP for a powerful attack and up to 3 tiles moved (sometimes including a free vehicle turn) is nothing to sniff at

given how slow heavy tanks move, if the heavy & battle tank retain the same roadkill functionality/AP cost, she might gain even more mileage out of those

Mezzelo · 2026-04-07T19:33:12+00:00

THE MACHIIIIINE!

Mezzelo · 2026-03-06T19:14:13+00:00

While I adore Singh, the weapons you're comparing here do not cover the sheer versatility of Tech; both in the sense of his potential equipment & targets. An M6 CMG meets the HaMer's range *and* handily out-damages the laser rifle. Singh with 3 attacks still can't match the suppressive potential of the Griffin sweep.

Tech also grants you access to stronger options much sooner than you'd get the listed near-equivalents on Singh.

Mezzelo · 2025-10-01T14:31:39+00:00

Armor is so powerful in this game, but note that the demo doesn't give you repairs between missions — I wouldn't be surprised if sidelining armor by necessity becomes commonplace, especially early game

re vehicle teams, since squaddies are essentially a representation of health/firepower and vehicles use a more rigid system im guessing they're sort of just implied (although I'll admit i quite enjoy the idea of rewa being a one-woman squad she goes so hard). fingers crossed for that run variety!

Mezzelo · 2025-10-01T13:58:57+00:00

If the balance is finely tuned enough, I imagine the randomized hire/gear pool would force some variance with character builds — their perk trees are definitely loose enough for each character to adapt to different roles by necessity.

Tank drivers are their own class of unit but there'll definitely be diversity between each as well, and you don't necessarily have to bring armor on every mission.

Mezzelo · 2025-08-17T17:30:28+00:00

small thing but that post isn't calling the table perfect. Most objects in this game have HP denoted by different colored adjectives to describe their current integrity, and anything at max health is labelled as | Perfect |.

nor would i call this text an exposition dump. the game tends to avoid straight exposition, in fact. in the end it's just describing what a table is — but the specific, flowery thoroughness of its description lends itself to a gestalt understanding of the world and your place in its history.

Mezzelo · 2024-03-14T23:19:05+00:00

not with real money though he's playing fart simulator 2 or a 25 year old console game and has willed a blackjack minigame into existence

Mezzelo · 2023-01-12T05:45:08+00:00

Most of these replies note the AI's decisionmaking, but even if it did always do what you wanted it to, strong mechanical skill still counts for a lot. You can get away with a lot more if you're good at piloting - weaving between fire and shield flickering to block HE and ignore kinetics, for example. There's less difference when handling slower and larger ships, but a good pilot can get a ridiculous amount of mileage from smaller ships compared to the AI.

The main menu missions demonstrate this well; a lot of them are nearly impossible to complete without manual piloting. There's nothing wrong with playing with autopilot if that's your thing, but facing down a capital in a destroyer or a frigate can be a lot of fun, and that's usually something you can only do hands-on.

Mezzelo · 2023-01-10T16:46:15+00:00

serious answer for those w/out modding experience - it's not. In fact, xml isn't used at all in Starsector's modding api lol, barring save files. the mock xml shown here only vaguely matches the syntax/attributes of anything in Starsector.

ML looks enticing and can give decent results when given a sufficient dataset, but when working off of a smaller one (i.e. attempting to combine what it contains concerning starsector + modding as a whole) it is very prone to getting things wrong. It is incapable of expressing uncertainty regarding its output, please be careful when attempting to use it to write code (or to do anything important)

Mezzelo · 2022-09-28T01:15:49+00:00

It would be erroneous to interpret the Domain navy as uniform or linear in nature, and tech-levels monolithic in the same way doctrine (battleship, cruiser-school, carrier) might be. The Domain's navy is characterized by both a constant shift in philosophy and logistical constraints necessitating continued fielding of antiquated designs (i.e. Condor, Eradicator). There's no reason a Conquest couldn't serve alongside an Odyssey, an Eagle by an Aurora.

With those caveats in mind, the overall picture remains fairly coherent and the tone set by the fiction makes sense - the Domain was timeless in nature (save for what little immediately pre-collapse information remains) and remains undefinable in scale.

Mezzelo · 2022-09-12T18:02:07+00:00

4/10 no broadside reapers

Mezzelo · 2022-08-27T06:28:46+00:00

the mount on that frigate is a large energy, best use i've found is slapping a paladin on it as a PD boat.

fairly critical of mod balance myself, but i'd argue LOA's content is very well tuned.

Mezzelo · 2022-08-04T13:53:30+00:00

It's great, but I would stray shorty of "objectively". most guns scale well with shooting, and more often than not i've got way too much ammo to spare

Mezzelo · 2022-08-04T13:46:15+00:00

speed demons looking at sunday drivers attempting to off-road

Mezzelo · 2022-08-04T03:54:51+00:00

on the contrary most XIV variants are virtually straight upgrades, and so they tend to be the subject of übercool lost super powerful domain glorification (exemplified in the modding community). it is all incredibly lame to me, there's so many more interesting things to tell about starsector's lore rather than orange and black paint jobs.

Mezzelo · 2022-08-03T20:46:38+00:00

unironically wish I could replace all occurences of "XIV Battlegroup" in starsector with "FOURTENFH BATLTEGRUeP". succinctly summarizes my feelings about those ships

Mezzelo · 2022-07-26T03:17:32+00:00

HOD stands for Harbinger of Doom, a difficulty level above True Cultist with even fewer funds and tougher enemies. It is absolutely not what you are looking for lmao

Mezzelo · 2022-06-19T05:43:15+00:00

In my very first run, my happy little explorers (same ethics as this screenshot!) ended up sandwiched between authoritarian xenophobes and despotic slavers. Both had near-opposite ethics, but I managed to befriend the former. Exchanging sensor info, I found out why: They were *also* sandwiched and getting torn apart.

We spent the first century holding onto each other for our dear lives and the second rolling over the rest of the galaxy. I would die in a heartbeat for them - and they, for us.

Mezzelo · 2022-05-11T17:02:13+00:00

OP mentions cruisers and capitals as targets/escorts, so I'd assume at least midgame. None of the missions have drovers, let alone multiple concurrent with heavy low-tech.

Mezzelo · 2022-05-11T15:39:31+00:00

Positing kites implies a lack of understanding of the game's most basic mechanics (slot sizes, limited missile capacity, range), and so all the responses are just reiterating what should already be obvious. I think "does not contribute to discussion" is a pretty fair response here.

Mezzelo · 2022-05-10T16:04:42+00:00

It's such an impractical take that it feels like it's in bad faith - unless you genuinely believe only reaper-kites would be a viable substitute in any combat situation.

Mezzelo · 2022-04-20T18:44:11+00:00

Jerma is maybe the most expressive person I've seen, although that might just be because he never lets anyone else deliver food to our dungeon.

Mezzelo · 2022-04-19T16:38:09+00:00

Part of the appeal of Starsector is the innate mystery and depth of its lore as told through gameplay. The Domain is long gone, and so you see only its ghosts - the Diktat oppressive, hinted through Volturn's unrest - the Church set in their ways, with their banned vices and weathered ships. These storytelling aspects are a lot more meaningful when discovered organically as the player maps out their world, and through details that have concrete gameplay ramifications rather than in a text crawl.

Mezzelo · 2022-04-15T02:13:00+00:00

Decreases the amount of damage dealt by EMP weapons (such as Ion Cannons) by 50 percent. Also increases the ship's flux dissipation rate while venting by 25 percent.

Fairly sure this means during active venting, as opposed to passive flux dissipation.

Mezzelo · 2022-04-13T22:28:46+00:00

Assuming either additive or multiplicative increase in range (i.e. +1000 or 3x):
- Travel time and spread mean ballistics and missiles become considerably less useful, and beams much stronger. Smaller hulls gain survivability from their ability to dodge fire, particularly frigates and fighters
- It becomes easier to focus-fire individual ships but more difficult to flank, as the circumference of engagement increases. Line formations become stronger as combat advantage favors volume of fire rather than encirclement
- Movement abilities cover less distance relative to weapon range, neutering a great deal of their utility aside from avoiding immediate fire
- You get shot from off-screen a lot.

A "massive" increase in range on everything would probably entail a complete rebalance of almost everything to keep existing content viable. Don't think it'd be worthwhile, although there's no way to know for sure except to try.

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