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Tanith posted:I'm imagining Pilum LRMs actually being scary now, this will be ridiculous. Maybe now I'll actually mount a missile on the Tempest? If you have a fast firing missile active ability the Pilums are the scariest missiles in vanilla, mainly because they have a lot of ammo. The reaper changes from the patch notes are nice, but I think they could take some inspiration from classic WW2 torpedo usage - long reloads, lots of ammo, basically infinite range, unguided and fired in spreads. Something to keep the PD busy and force the other side to dodge (so the opposite of how you use torpedoes right now - point blank and after you've disabled the PD).
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Sep 30, 2014 13:58
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OwlFancier posted:I've had some joy putting Pilums (pilae?) on support ships. Anything I wouldn't generally want to field in combat but which I will have in the fleet such as a light carrier or heavy supply ship, I can put Pilums on and it will sit at the back just throwing missiles downrage, I've had a number of really good wins because a volley ended up hitting a ship just as I took its shields down, they hurt like hell if you get hit with them and as you say, they have a lot of ammo so you can keep slinging them all round. The Venture is pretty much the perfect storm of "this is how a carrier/support ships should work with missiles" with some ludicrous long ranged direct fire punch on top. It's the perfect Pilum user (Fast Missile Racks) but it's also a carrier (so you can keep it out of a fight easily) and it can also mount Heavy Maulers (so frigates generally can't survive a brawl if they get to it through the inevitable fighter swarm). Really almost all of the vanilla missile weapons are fundamentally broken on a design level - they're all massively ammo limited and reload more or less instantly. The Pilum is how missile design should be done - your limit isn't ammo (it's simply impossible to balance missile ships if they get to fire 3 extremely AI/RNG dependent salvoes in the whole fight and then are a waste of fleet points and hull) it's reload time. The fact that the missile specific active System cuts reload time means they knew at one point that it should be reload time that's the limiting factor, but somehow along the way they forgot. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 15:56
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:Missiles simply add up too well in numbers. Cause they've got no reload times they get to reach those numbers (with very few exceptions). But hey if you like how the no-reload missiles work I don't think we could ever agree on missile design.
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Oct 1, 2014 13:35
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I really disagree with the "in vanilla pilum spam is also too good" thing. Vanilla has lots of missile counters - and they're light enough on outfitting points to make a fleet with adequate point defense more than possible. They did screw themselves by including mods in the tourney though. If there's anything mods do is make unbalanced weapons and ships especially compared to vanilla and if you add cross-mod upgrades in - it was silly from the start.
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Oct 14, 2014 19:21
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I'm not saying Pilums are bad. Pilums on something with Fast Racks are probably the best missiles in vanilla - but that setup is fairly rare in vanilla. But there's a ton of counters for swarms of LRMs in vanilla too - although it's fairly counter-intuitive because it's not the Point-Defense lasers (it's the Flaks, swarmer missiles and hordes of cheap fighters who really love going after missiles).
DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 20:08
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I'm pretty sure those missiles in that screenshot aren't vanilla. The fact that ships without fast missile racks broke the tournament with missiles just confirms that mod missiles also have the same no-reload-time problem (and that modders aren't good at balance, but that's a known thing).
DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 21:21
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MShadowy posted:Yeah, and... ? That's hardly a proper comparison. You're putting a spam fleet against another spam fleet. Just because Enforcers did good in the tourney doesn't mean they're the ultimate ship. An alpha striking fleet of cheap stuff with a couple of shots of big damage is pretty much the perfect counter to an all-capital ship fleet (especially Enforcers which excel at taking down stuff bigger than them, not smaller). Also there's no one-weapon-solution so just slapping as much Flak on there as possible isn't really going to work especially on single-ship spam. I'll also note that the Mercuries are equipped with exactly the kind of missile that breaks the good missile design pattern - a strike missile (let's assume that such a thing is needed) that for some dumb reason gets to have it's medium version with a bigger ammo pool (and still no loving reload time) for no increase in mount size. There is a small mount version of these already - there shouldn't be a better one also in a small mount. Of course it's exactly those missiles that mods usually copy - and then crank the ammo up by a factor of 10. Edit: Going through the Codex I did come across the Bomb Bays again. I wish the AI could handle those. Or there were situations where they were really great (like attacking a static target like a Station). The concept is pretty neat. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 22:40
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I just wish there was a way to get the improved skill trees from Starsector+ without all the extra ships, weapons and shaders.
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Oct 18, 2014 16:12
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Well all I can say so far is - gently caress the Hegemony. 30% tariffs on every transaction? That's hyperlane robbery! Edit: No I take it back - actually stopping people at jump points and demanding a toll. That's hyperlane robbery. Which they also do. gently caress the Hegemony. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 20, 2014 |
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Oct 20, 2014 22:26
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loving with economies seems to work - you can intercept messages on when relief fleets for shortages leave their home system. If you intercept them the shortage gets worse - or better if you deliver the goods they were going to deliver yourself. Since shortages and abundances change so quickly I'm stockpiling goods I get from fighting at the abandoned stations - that way when a shortage for something hits I can immediately cash in my stockpile at great prices. Reputations change really fast though if you fight - especially pirates can quickly hate you if you shoot up 1 or 2 fleets. And if you're hated that means you don't have access to those markets anymore.
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Oct 20, 2014 22:50
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I just lost my awesome starting Wolf Frigate to my own Harpoon missing the enemy, circling around twice and then running out of fuel and nailing me in the rear end right where the shields don't cover. The new missile code might have some issues when it comes to shooting at smaller targets. So beware when using Harpoons against frigates I guess.
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Oct 20, 2014 23:59
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occipitallobe posted:Ok so in the new patch I run around trying to chase pirates who I can't catch and then proceed to get murdered by anyone I can fight. What am I doing wrong? Unfortunately the skill trees are still bad, so pretty much your only choice when you want to do combat is to spend your first points on the burn speed skill. While that's not so bad because the Blue Skills are all great, it's also terrible because the Blue Skills are all great. There's very little choice for skills unless you're playing some weird gimmick that'll just end up being Hard Mode. So get Burn Speed - then you can catch pirates you want to kill and run away from the ones you can't. Also the .5 Logistic 50 Cargo Shuttle is a great investment if you want some extra cargo space.
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Oct 21, 2014 13:53
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Also if you ever have a surplus of cash it pays to buy goods cheap and store them. Especially food. I managed to grab 100k+ on some food runs within the Corvus system when a shortage broke out because I had the food in storage just waiting for a shortage.
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Oct 21, 2014 13:58
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Why would you say trade balance isn't working? A good trade seems to about equivalent to a good run of bounties in money output. The one general gameplay issue I can see is that there's not enough factions. Especially the independents being all lumped together is really hurting the viable playstyles. Can't intercept a Smuggler without making every mercenary band and every Indie Station in the entire sector angry at your for example. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 16:16
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Cathair posted:I meant the balance between smuggling and open-market trade. Especially when you're first starting out, tariffs are so high that legitimate trade isn't profitable at all. You can still make some pretty good money when responding to severe shortages, but it kinda hurts ~*my immersion*~ that a milk run is not really a thing that exists in Starsector right now. Due to tariffs, trading between the highest and lowest of non-shortage prices will break even at best. That's intended. All the blogs have talked about it. There's not supposed to be a milk run, because the player is a tiny fly in a giant pond - the big freight lines have far more influence and capacity than you do. In effect they don't pay taxes because they're the default person the governments go to when they need something. The only way to make a profit is to exploit short term shortages (by being fast or preparing and then creating the shortage yourself) - that's working as intended.
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Oct 21, 2014 17:18
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Bremen posted:I've been having a lot of luck using a Wolf as my flagship and one or more destroyers as support. Even against more powerful foes, I charge ahead and circle around to distract the enemies, splitting them up and forcing them to face me. Then my destroyers come up from behind them, the anvil to my hammer. It works shockingly well if they don't have fighters; I worry less about the AI losing destroyers than I would frigates, and the wolf can easily avoid anything it can't outfight. Those big fighter fleets tend to tear me apart, though. I've got a Medusa and 4 Wolves (although they're all (D) Wolves salvaged from Pirates) with a bunch of the new Shepherd(?) class Drone Frigate/Freighters as my core combat group on my straight and narrow Bounty Hunter save. I saw a ton of Tri-Tach ships for sale at their military market in the system north of Corvus. Also got a Pirate save but I expect I'll run into trouble on that one soon, since every sale of illegal goods slowly tanks my Hegemony reputation to the point where eventually I won't be able to sell my looted Organs and Drugs anymore. It doesn't help that just dealing with Pirates at all, even on the open market, is damaging to your Hegemony Rep. It certainly seems like you'll want to make all the deals on the open market as a smuggler, except for the ones that you can't (the illegal goods). DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 20:47
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All the (D) Wolves I've seen so far were only missing their 2 small energy mounts. They are still great missile boats with a medium energy mount and phase skimmers. The new missile AI is really good too, so they know just when to use them. Edit: Yeah there's other kinds of Damage too, but the weapon mount loss seems to be hardcoded per ship type. I've never seen a Wolf with a different missing-weapons-damage. For the Medusa I just have some Pulse Lasers and tons of PD lasers - more support for the AI controlled Frigate fleet by bringing down shields and swatting fighters than solo killing. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 22:08
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I gotta say I like the fact that crew still needs supplies less and less. The whole "constant upkeep" idea is already mostly gone, might as well kill it entirely. Then it's a nice and easy to play with "are you fighting and/or getting damaged? Then you use supplies till you're back to top shape".
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Oct 22, 2014 16:43
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Retro42 posted:As much as I'd like to agree with you the game would really stagnate if there was no sense of urgency to hunt/pirate/trade. There's something to be said for having to weigh the upkeep costs of fielding a big rear end cruiser pack also. Well there'd still be an incentive to do well and win with the minimum amount of ships fielded - damage and deploying would still cost supplies.
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Oct 22, 2014 19:55
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It would be nice if the "chance to replace ships" skill wasn't a one-shot at 5 points but a scaling 10% per point. Since replaced ships come in with barely any equipment intact and heavily damaged there's already a huge cost associated with getting ships destroyed and recovered. It already is blatantly the Mount and Blade surgery skill, might as well go full hog and make it work like that completely. Then again, there needs to be a complete skill tree overhaul in general. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 24, 2014 19:17
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McGiggins posted:Holy poo poo carriers are overpowered. Fighters are really good against unshielded targets, especially since swarmers are HE damage now. Many pirate ships don't have shields.
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Oct 25, 2014 11:07
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For easy mode, choose bounty hunter at the start - that'll get you the best starting frigate (Wolf). Then just hunt pirates in whatever location has a bounty on them at the moment. You start in a system with a really high one (3000 for a frigate) that'll last 2 months, so you should get at least 3-4 fights into that time span (and with a Wolf you can easily take on 2 combat frigates without risk at the same time). Make sure you've got enough supplies to last you through your repairs to stay out hunting longer and off you go. For even easier mode put your points into burn speed.
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Oct 25, 2014 12:31
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Do not kill Independents if you want to make money hunting pirates. Half the bounties put on pirates are set by the Independent faction and they don't pay you if they hate you.
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Oct 25, 2014 13:17
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It is so ridiculously hard to get a large energy mount compared to how easy it is to get large ballistic slots. I want to try the newly non-Onslaught specific Thermal Pulse Cannons! But there's nothing with large energy to put them on.
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Oct 25, 2014 19:02
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OwlFancier posted:Uhh, really? Guess what kind of Sunder doesn't have a large Energy mount. It's the (D) one. Edit: drat there are a lot of Hounds with different paint schemes. Lots of non-D ones too. And the Pirate version Buffalo is really awesome. 300 Shielded Cargo units, no defects and a great paint job. They'll probably have to find a way to make paintjobs not take separate ship slots, because that is going to be hell on the Codex (and probably the RAM usage too?). DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 20:17
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OwlFancier posted:If they do improve the ship variant system, it'd be nice if we could get some changes to the weapon hardpoints too. Some with more or fewer, some with bigger or smaller, or different types. They're sort of doing that now - the Gemini variants have different mounts (the pirate one is ballistic) and I think the Mules are different too.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:43
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Demiurge4 posted:Been looking at the Templar faction mod and it's just really, really dumb. They have everything, passive shields, huge mobility from their actives, massive aoe's that poo poo on fighters and huge flux capacities that let them spam all their weapons and never worry. I mean how is that faction even remotely balanced for fun? What are their weaknesses? All the non-total conversion mods are ludicrously unbalanced. Usually the mod missiles are especially bad, generally being as good or better than vanilla missiles but with 5-10 times the ammo.
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Nov 14, 2014 13:46
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Boarding is pretty much always a net-negative in terms of money and resources spent, so always keep that in mind when a Boarding Chance pops up. It's entirely intended to give you an opportunity to grab ship you couldn't get another way at a higher cost. Generally 5-10 marines is all you'll need in your fleet and you'll be set. Send 3 times as many marines as they're displaying life signals and you'll only lose on self-destructs (you can go up to 4x the life sign in marines for a guaranteed victory but you lose more if it blows itself up). Most pirate ships you don't even wanna bother with though because they'll be a (D) type and with some exceptions they have irreparable engine damage (so they are giant anchors that drag your entire fleet down). If you see a pristine ship you think you can use? That's when you send in the marines, but only if you have a surplus of supplies and can survive a self destruction doing horrendous damage or killing the ship you send in to dock. Always Hard Dock or the cost of boarding goes up tremendously because you'll need to use a fuckton of marines in an non-dock boarding attempt. This is where the tiny .5 or 1 supply a day shuttles really shine - the 20 crew version can deliver more than enough marines in a hard dock attempt to capture everything smaller than a cruiser and it's dirt cheap to replace if something goes wrong (plus it's fast so it doesn't slow your fleet). You're fairly high level, I'm hope you put your points into the Burn Speed skill? Also you've attacked Indie fleets? That'll tank your income because half of the bounties are handed out by the Indie stations, not the empires. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 14:27
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Hopefully all the other missiles follow before the patch drops and they all get regen ammo with differing regen times. That'll put them on par with all the other types and they can finally start being balanced in proper fashion. Beams needed a buff - the fact they don't generate hard flux (no matter which damage type they use) is a huge downside and the range was far too short for something that leaves no lasting impact in enemy shields.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:16
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Gobblecoque posted:I'll have to reserve my judgement until I play that patch because the developer almost always makes good game decision, but man that's a pretty big set of changes. Really can't see why destroyers and cruisers now have time limits. For really high-tech stuff like the Medusa and Doom sure, but for the rest? ehhh It's basically a soft time limit for fights in general. That's a good thing, especially if weapons get infinite ammo - it stops those eternal runaway fights, which are absolutely a thing that happens with high tech ships (even big ones). Low Tech becomes more viable because eventually the High Tech enemy is going to be forced to fight or flee because they'll run out of performance first.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:58
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Also let's not pretend the shield-less ships were ever really viable. They were a bad gimmick at the best of times.
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Dec 5, 2014 19:32
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Brainbread posted:Buffalos, yes. But Hounds are really, really useful. I keep 3-4 of them for chasing down defeated fleets. The range on a Mauler is enough that they can harass most retreating ships safely, and they're so cheap to deploy and maintain that you don't even notice having them in the fleet. As well, they can chase down defeated fighters. So unshielded ships excel in situations where the enemy can't shoot at them. Yes but any ship would do well in those situations. Also Heavy Maulers are broken as gently caress and I don't know why they haven't been nerfed yet (they make every ship that has a medium ballistic mount great). DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 20:18
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oohhboy posted:I don't see the problem with having long protracted battles between two large fleets. Its is fun as hell being in a target rich environment. You are no longer dance fighting on a one on one basis, you're now acting as part of a larger team that can cooperate as a force multiplier. Choices open up in the tactical gameplay. Do you call for a bomber strike on your target or change target or disengage and then re-engage on a different target already under fire or just keep engaging on a 1 on 1 like in the early game. Maybe you need to run interference or bait a ship into a trap. Currently for most part you get to choose when to fall back, I don't want that to be done for me by an arbitrary timer. The problem is that CR-less ships aren't used for long protracted intense battles. They're used for cheesing fights against the AI. It is simply much better for the game as a whole to put a timer on that option. And it is just a soft timer - ships don't become anywhere close to instantly useless when the timer hits 0, and they generally don't do it all at the same time. What it means is less cheesing of the AI and more fights in which the side with the upper hand in terms of speed (high tech, low timer) is forced to apply that speed for offense.
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Dec 6, 2014 12:53
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Weaker fleets can still beat stronger fleets with a CR timer. The fact that frigates aren't obsolete right now, and in fact extremely good is proof of that. But you need to put a cap on just how much you can gently caress with things in a kiting high-tech ship. CR timers also don't mean your only option is "charge madly into enemy". It simply means endless kiting is not an option.
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Dec 6, 2014 13:32
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OwlFancier posted:Endless kiting isn't really an option anyway, you need to engage enemy ships in bursts because they have shields, if you don't buckle down and get into a fight you won't get anywhere. Sorry that's just plain not true. It is absolutely possible to kite endlessly with certain high-tech ships and skills while constantly getting kills. It was especially bad with the Hyperion before Frigates had CR timers, but there's still ships that can do it in bigger size classes.
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Dec 6, 2014 14:09
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Network Pesci posted:Sweet, I can hardly believe we've been talking over these changes for THREE MONTHS. Time to see what unlimited ammo for practically all weapons feels like. Time to mod all missiles to behave like Salamanders (the new version of which is loving great and should be the blueprint most missiles are built on), Pilums and MIRVs - because having 3 missiles regen but not any others is weird as gently caress, especially when they have so wildly different uses and power. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 00:19
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:The combat changes set off some kind of frenzy of reactions on the official boards, people are saying ballistics are bad now because Alex removed their biggest weakness and added a soft cap in place of the old hard cap. I don't really get it. Yeah you'll run out of ammo faster, but ballistics by design allow you to end the fight before that happens if you play your cards right, and bigger ships can go for expanded mags like they used to. The best part about the ballistics rebalance is that Heavy Maulers aren't the ultimate ballistic anymore. Heavy Maulers were so broken, but a very small ammo pool fixes them without having to change too much about their other stats.
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Feb 14, 2015 14:52
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Absolutely the same experience with Tac Lasers - they are incredibly good against anything small enough to not vent enough to deal with the soft flux and they absolutely eat anything without shields for lunch. Generally Unshielded stuff seems even worse than it was, but Unshielded stuff has always been a hugely problematic thing. In terms of ballistics, I've found the ammo system has brought a lot more interesting weapons to the fore. Stuff like Gauss is a lot better because it has a decent-enough pool, while Maulers have been (finally) hit very hard by the ammo changes. But unlike just making the pools smaller, they're not completely unusable - good weapons with small pools still perform extremely well in the opening of the fights. I've built a small missile mod to give them all regen and standardized firing rates and the game's working out really well - I've yet to find a missile that's too good or too weak when they all regen ammo at different rates. It also reels back the power of the Wolf quite a bit - although not quite enough to make up for them having 3 tac-lasers. Interestingly, with a vast variety of usable missile types, the Buffalo MK2 is almost worth using as a steady fire-support platform, it's just the lack of a shield is still slightly too crippling.
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Feb 15, 2015 00:13
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OwlFancier posted:I was actually thinking of getting a buffalo 2 and packing it with regen missiles, just not sure if I'd have enough OP to give it extended deployment time and maybe jam a crappy shield onto it. It does matter a lot for some weapons - and what really forces you to think about it is the Ammo Feeder System. You go through most ballistic weapons really quick when that's turned on. I agree that there' still some fairly useless or overlapping types though. Especially on the low end in the PD niche. Vulcan/Machinegun/2xMachinegun/Autocannon/Mortar/blegh - they're all very similar in that sub 500 range is incredibly bad and the AI can't deal with it. A ton of it in the medium kinetic area too, with all the machine guns, autocannons, needlers, etc. Enforcer is a beast, and it's stats are oddly great compared to other destroyers at it's price point and tech level. The 5 Medium Ballistics and 4 Small Missiles (and hot drat a lot of OP) are really, really good compared to the 2xSmall Missiles, 2x Medium Ballistics and 4x Small Energy of a Hammerhead (and a lot less OP). Although I suppose the buff to Tac Lasers has done a lot to make small energy a lot more desirable. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Feb 15, 2015 |
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Feb 15, 2015 00:48
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It's also done a bunch of other stuff, like nerfing Salamander HE damage (very good) and nerfing pilums into the ground (not so good - they have half the range and are slower than many ships, including some destroyers with skills). And just to make it clear - it's not the clip system that's gone. It's the entire ammo system for ballistics. They all have infinite ammo, so good-bye ballistics trade-offs, it's back to Needlers and Maulers. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 13:34
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