Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: intrinsic_parity on June 14, 2019, 01:04:43 PM

Title: assessing fighters
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 14, 2019, 01:04:43 PM

I've realized it's actually really hard to tell which fighters are good if you don't know what the weapons do. There are no weapon statistics and some of the fighter weapons are different than the base weapons so even if you know generally what the weapon does (which isn't a given for new players) you still don't know what the actual fighter is capable of. This is waaaay worse with mods since all the weapons may be unknown to the player. There should be some way for the player to know what the fighter weapons do.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: SCC on June 14, 2019, 01:09:53 PM

In vanilla, all the weapons that fighters use are the same weapons that your ships use, save for high delay IR pulse and ion cannon. It's much worse with mods indeed, seeing how there are many fighters with fighters-exclusive weaponry where you really have no way of telling what do these weapons do.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: Megas on June 14, 2019, 01:15:12 PM

Also, fighters' unlimited Swarmers (which I want for real ships).

Actually, the high-delay weapons would make nice 2 or 3 OP weapons that are more useful than Mining Laser.  Mining Lasers need a plethora of additional hullmod and/or skill support to be useful, a much higher cost than 2 OP.  Light Mortar and some of the one-shot missiles are good out-of-the-box, Mining Laser is not.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 14, 2019, 02:21:33 PM

I agree that it's less of a problem in vanilla, but even if you know what the weapons do generally, if you want to compare fighter stats, you have to have a copy of the weapon to see the stats which is really annoying.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: AxleMC131 on June 14, 2019, 02:31:47 PM

I would argue this is a general mod problem rather than a vanilla problem.

THAT SAID: I've got nothing against the ability to mouse-over a weapon name in the fighter stats popup (or codex page) and have it popup a stat card for the weapon over the top (whether the weapon has a codex description or not). If you need to lock the fighter stats popup, you could just have the player hold Shift or F1 or something.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: Serenitis on June 15, 2019, 06:17:39 AM

I wonder if it might be worth including the damage type icons on the infocard for each fighter?

Spoiler

The top-right corner seems to be fairly consistantly empty
(https://i.imgur.com/LPDzzch.png)

[close]

It wouldn't help with what each weapon does exactly, but it would be an easy way to give a general impression of what the fighter is supposed to be used for. Maybe.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: Gwyvern on June 15, 2019, 05:31:59 PM

Quote from: Serenitis on June 15, 2019, 06:17:39 AM

I wonder if it might be worth including the damage type icons on the infocard for each fighter?

Spoiler

The top-right corner seems to be fairly consistantly empty
(https://i.imgur.com/LPDzzch.png)

[close]

It wouldn't help with what each weapon does exactly, but it would be an easy way to give a general impression of what the fighter is supposed to be used for. Maybe.

not a bad idea, actually.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: Inventor Raccoon on June 15, 2019, 05:37:42 PM

Could also color-code the fighter's weapons' names, so kinetic weapon names are beige, HE red, energy blue and frag yellow.

Title: Re: assessing fighters
Post by: MesoTroniK on June 15, 2019, 10:45:23 PM

I like your suggestion as well Serenitis.