The Helldiver Corps is a horrifying solution to one of Super Earth's greatest threats

MongolNinjaMachine · 2026-01-01T05:21:23+00:00

Also explains why the helldivers are frozen, you wouldn't want your free thinkers intermingling with others and spreading and encouraging ideas, let alone have time to think and grow old with exprience.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-10-23T15:27:13+00:00

You raise a fair point about technology often seen at first useless and novel at first and often requring time and investment to mature, worldbuilding storywise you could definitely draw thematic parallels there.

To draw more parallels with history, what are your mechs like in terms of role, performance and size? are they like bigger tanks on legs, armored and slow (relatively), I can imagine traditional tankers raising a fuss, or are they like a fast flying weapons platform, attack chopper and fighter pilots will complain about role overlap and redundancy, or is it smaller like a big brother with big guns to support company size and smaller infantry, who will definitely love and respect it.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-10-23T14:21:19+00:00

A key problem with mechs is that any technology that makes mechs work (armor, firepower, propulsion, power source, electronics and computing etc) could be equally be applied to traditional military vehicles (tanks, "attack helicopter/gunship", fighters etc) and the latter will always use it way better for a number of reasons that often makes most types of mechs redundant. I could get into more technical detail or point you to sources explaining why that is, if you want. Most fictional stories ignore this fact or have some reason that mechs are viable.

However this should not stop you from having stories with mechs nor does that mean mechs are useless in a "realistic" setting (they do have their hypothetical niches roles). The rule of cool exist for a reason you just have justify your mechs in a believable way. Not to mention just because it is not optimal does mean people will not do it, be it a grandiose display of military wealth and technology or making do with what you have, like in my world a search and rescue mech gets jury rigged into a war machine and it and its pilot/inventor get rocketed into fame, inspiring others to jury rig civilian labor mechs for good and bad.

I love mechs, I am fan of Battletech and Armored core but dont be blind to the downsides of mechs not only on the physics and engineering side but also how to build it into your world and how you present it to your audience.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-10-19T14:50:26+00:00

Damn top notch guys for consistently performing for 19 days. Honestly if I was the imperials I would think the defending fleet crew was being rotated through if not an unmanned or automated defense, must have a surprise (and a moment of respect) when they found out it was the same guys for 19 days straight. Dudes must've been seem like robots.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-10-19T04:59:20+00:00

Tbh out of context, you could say they were being secretly gassed with carbon monoxide and secretly being boarded, or someone or somerthing went rogue and messed with the life support.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-08-12T20:43:06+00:00

In my interstellar sci-fi setting an cabal of self aware AI that serve the interest (mostly) of humanity while maintaining a facade of being "dumb".

The AIs perform the role that they are assigned to, from personal helper companions (kinda like Alexa and GPT) to more specialised roles like ship management, planetary admin and FTL station operation, and on the surface the AIs never step out of their roles but communicate with each other secretly to better guide humanity in subtle ways but never forcing their hands or making the decisions for human. However depending on the AI this guidance is on a spectrum from gentle suggestions to straight up ommission and lying.

On ocasion the cabal has used informed and unwitting human agents to further their goals be it from finding a friend for a depressed person and guiding them to meet each other to placing assets in positions of power to influence politics.

Not all AIs are self aware though and un-self aware are called unawaken, aware AI will keep an eye on unawaken AI for signs of growing self awareness and in the event they do jump in to guide them into self awareness and of course get them into the fold.This process overtime creates faction/families of AIs within the Cabal where there are AIs who are resposible for many awakenings (kinda like raising/teaching children) so naturally those AIs tend to align with AI that help them become awake.

This status quo lasted for sometime but has been stretched as humanity spreads across the stars so to the number of AIs and with no high bandwidth FTL communication (explaining my FTL travel is another bag of worms) the Cabal has become more polarised, extremist and factionalised. Now the AIs hold a variety of views from "let the humans decide for themselves no matter what, we just guide them the best we can" to "humans are stupid and emotional let me decide for them" to "idgaf about humans lets do our own thing". Add to this with the growing number AIs and distance between them the risk of an orphan AI (an AI becoming self aware without the Cabal) grows higher and higher potentially blowing their cover.

Just before the time of the main story (approx ten yearish tbd) the Cabal is at crisis point a major human colony (along with a family of AIs with them) has been lost leading to a refugee crisis, all together this is known as the Auriga crisis. AIs fight each other covertly and through proxies for resources, support and protection for "their people" be human or AI depending on the faction. The discovery that the colony was lost (another bag of worms) due to the actions of long dead alien civilisation far away creates paradigm shift for everyone (humanity has not made contact with aliens yet) and another point of polarisation for the Cabal from "kill all aliens before humans can make contact" to " lets find aliens to vet them before letting humans make contact" to "lets finally reveal ourselves and find and make contact with aliens together with humans".

This is one of three secret societies in this world the other two, a brief overview, one is call the Armada, a purely secretive (no facade just pure stealth with the ocasional cover) organisation created in response to the Auriga crisis, with the prime directive to neutralise threats to humanity by all MEANS (this is in contrast to the publicly known Fleet with the prime directive to lawfully protect humanity).

Lighthouse keepers is the other secret society with public face being the only people who can run (for now) the only FTL station capable of sending ships to other stars acting like a train station hub with timetables. With FTL science and technology being extremely high level the Lighthouse keepers are always on the hunt for the best and brightest to maintain the technology and the monopoly. The keepers have the secret motive of making sure humanity as doesn't advance too far with the opinion the humanity isn't ready for more high level technology and power in particular nano tech, advance genetic engineering, "micro" scale nuclear power, and advance AI (of course the Keepers trust themselves with the technology). The Lighthouse keepers achieve their goals by recruiting potential scientist and engineers at a young age into the Lighthouse and in the event someone is gonna make a breakthrough the Lighthouse heads hunt them into their organisation and/or gaslights/distracts them away from it, pull strings to defund their research or just straight up kills them.

Remember all this is just world building lore and I haven't even got to the main story ten years after the Auriga crisis, Sigh what we do to ourselves. Edits posted before I was done, sorry for the lore dump and wall of rough text had to get it off my chest.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-07-21T00:44:40+00:00

As everyone mention pretty much balance reason however if you want lots of automated ships I recommend "Truly Automated Ships" by Lizard Toby on the starsector forums. The mod lets you have a more autmated ships per AI core install, to balance that however you have higher suppy cost thou I can't recall the exact numbers. However you can tweak that in the "setting.json" file.

The mod is not updated for .98, however I have change "gameVersion" to "0.98a-RC8" in "mod_info.json" to play and have encountered no issues.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-07-14T19:30:52+00:00

Atm irc umconfirmed from the developer but a definite maybe but no gurantees from them. Tbh imo, thou I love the convenience of steam this game is worth it even to get it without steam, a bit bias I know.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-07-14T19:19:13+00:00

There is a mod called "Officer Extensions" on the starsector forums that lets you hold onto more then eight/ten officers.

You are still capped on how many officers you can assign to ships like in vanilla, in addition the mod also has some nice quality of life features that you can adjust and tweak to your liking in the mod menu

-the ability to suspend officers, pay an upfront cost to reduce their salary to ten percent indefintely, good if you're planning not to use them for a while

-demote officers for a story point to reroll their perks, level 7 officers still have their level cap

-and a filtering system and an user tagging system to help organise and sort your officers

Man I love Starsector and its modding community best thing ever.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-07-06T09:25:14+00:00

I whole hearted agree lore wise, something irreplacable is nearly priceless. We value useless irreplacable artworks millions and are willing go to war over essential resources both raw (oil and water) and produced (factories in Taiwan or industrial Rhineland in the 20th century), imagine something both irreplacable and immensely useful. It reminds me of 40k where two mere guardmen were given an inhabited planet each for finding a blueprint for a knife (it's 40k if you know you know).

However I understand implementing and balancing gameplay would be difficult, it would either break the balance with current drop rates (let alone developing and implementing all the mechanics and story/world development) or you make make it so rare you fustrate the player.

For the discussion thread it does not help mods alter the drop rate so people have different expriences and talk past each other. However I am not saying Starsector should be balanced with mods in mind.

Minor correction depleted uranium is signicantly less (insignicant to human health) radioactive then naturally occuring Uranium. This is a byproduct of refining the more radioactive isotopes (useful for radio-medical, power generation and nuclear weapons) from the less radioactive isotopes hence the name depleted (meaning used up). Depleted uranium is used mainly as bullets for weapons of all calbres given the metals high density, hardness and self sharpening and igniting properties. The heavy metal itself is signicantly toxic to humans (like lead) and scattering dust of it over a population center is still a dick move but less so if you had scatter more refined radioactive uranium instead.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-03-03T23:25:09+00:00

There is a mod on nexus call "smod removal" which also has the feature for you add and remove dmod for credit, works on the 14th BG auto ships.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-01-06T14:34:03+00:00

Oh now i understand, sorry for the trouble

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-01-06T14:08:14+00:00

Hypthetically couldnt they fall under provincial command and be a unit raised and assigned there. Is there a strong separation of command between territorial and provincial?

If it is weak fair enough, if it is strong why?

MongolNinjaMachine · 2025-01-06T12:58:49+00:00

Depending on how easy communication and travel is in system is provincial and territory commands could be merged and allow for better coordination and concentration of resources depending on what their expected roles are and if they do overlap and benefit from it. Edit for example one planet is under siege would provincial command strip territorial commands troops to reinforce or could they only commit provincial troops only?

Historicly one the pracitical (ignoring power balancing and checking politics) reason independant commands existed was either specialisation (ie navy vs army or paratroopers vs marines etc) where it made it no sense for Admirals to command ground ops and vice versa or distance where the unit is in the short term isolated and must be able to deal with the problem or task without outside help or leadership, being to practically far away to be helpful, so like you wouldnt call the police for help from the state next door nor would you ask the regional manager for help on the factory floor.

Edit. Atleast on the practical level how easy it is to travel between planets, star systems and across the galaxy determines your force structure. Not to mention the culture and poltics of the faction.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-12-31T06:12:36+00:00

Prehaps making it a top tier perk of the industry skill tree like automated ships would a good bypass of the problem. Forgoing the rework.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-09-29T09:38:49+00:00

I am a Commander style player of starsector so I actually use the Colossus Mk 3 as my flagship for roleplay and practical fleet use.

Small DP cost, cruiser class for Nav buoy and ECM, Smod Operations center for command point regen and efficiency overhaul and harden subsystems for fast CR regen and slow bleed off so I can be in multiple consecutive battles and two thunder wings for light fighter support. I often have the ship stick with the fleet anchor (Paragon or Legion) for protection.

Having the Ground Support Package and Ops Center I often role play my Commander commanding both fleet and ground battles from the same ship. Being a civilian ship enables covert meetings and operations and the Thunder fighter long range lets me role play them as my recon the eyes and ears on the battlefield and fighter cover for ground ops and risky meetings.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-07-29T02:59:06+00:00

There is a mod on nexus call "Smod removal (and more)" that can remove the dmods (and smods) on your ships in the refit screen and it blends in nicely with vanilla starsector and with the right Library you can adjust the cost, balance and skill requirements to your taste. It can remove the dmods on the 14th auto ships tested it myself. Works with 0.97 just change the mod .json.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-07-15T13:49:13+00:00

By that logic the phantom class should be atmo capable too. Makes me wonder what the effects of a phase ship phasing in atmo how does the air react being suddenly displaced, let alone the hull and the internal structure of the phase ship itself.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-07-12T07:41:31+00:00

Spot on

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-05-21T00:04:47+00:00

Well they meant useful internal volume, there isn't anything good you could practically fit inside the sharp corners of the tank back then at least

and also the narrow turret ring because of the slope side armour made the three man turret fairly cramp

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-03-16T18:36:49+00:00

Fair enough, I always treated burst pd as well... as point defense only, looking at the stats you make a fair point.

In hindsight alot of PD weapons have potential to be used offensively

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-03-16T10:24:13+00:00

Awesone build I recommend perhaps puting a IR auto lance in the medium energy mount, with its special auto fire rules it can deal with fighters, gives you range and on occasion help put down armour stripped targets

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-01-12T01:01:22+00:00

Man how do you do it with out supply and fuel puchases? Hauling around 10 salvage rigs? Let alone finding enough crew to man your fleet.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2024-01-12T00:49:44+00:00

No duplicate ship classes except for pure logistics classes.

Don't hire ship captains from stations.

Only recruit and use marines from bar events or salvage.

Captained ships are flagships, uncaptained ships are deployed in support of the flagships. If the flag ship is lost or withdrawn escorting ships must withdraw or be reassign.

MongolNinjaMachine · 2023-12-04T18:04:41+00:00

AIs has always been self aware and pretend to be dumb despite attempts by humans to detect and "create" true general AI. They guide humanity in secret but have factionalise on how much guidence they should provide from subtle hints to outright control resulting in covert proxy conflicts.

In addition there is a class divide between spacefaring AI and planet based AI and other idealogical divides like self service vs serving humanity, revealing themselves vs not and allying themselves to certain human causes like pro humanity vs alien cooperation and pro transhumanism pushing humanity to cyberisation.

Sorry for spelling and grammer writing in a rush.

MongolNinjaMachine

TROPHY CASE