There's also some weirdness inherent in either the sim or the AI to take account of.
If you put an Onslaught in a 1v1 against an identical Onslaught (both controlled by the AI), the player's one will win every time with no more than 30% hull damage.
There's also some weirdness inherent in either the sim or the AI to take account of.
If you put an Onslaught in a 1v1 against an identical Onslaught (both controlled by the AI), the player's one will win every time with no more than 30% hull damage.
Hmm - are you by chance not accounting for player/officer skills/fleetwide skills? Because this seems... unlikely. The player-side Onslaught does get a kind of random edge because it ends up activating burn drive a second or so later due to autopilot kicking in, which means it ends up armor-tanking a bit more, forces the other Onslaught to vent first, etc etc.
But that doesn't translate into that drastic of an advantage... though I suppose if there was a very specific loadout that was able to take extreme advantage of the early vent, maybe it'd play out like that; not 100% sure. Regardless, though, any difference you see is either due to the starting conditions, or to other factors (i.e. officers/fleetwide skills/etc). I wouldn't expect to see a difference if the ships start a bit farther apart.
Just spit-balling here, but doesn't the enemy AI sometimes give specific orders such as Eliminate/Escort, etc - while player autopilot does not? Could that be coming into play here somehow??
No officers, or skills to my knowledge, am retesting and collecting screenshots.
EDIT: Tada!
I ran the Onslaught test myself a dozen times because I'm certain the AI is symmetrical. From what I saw, the battles usually follow one of four scenarios:
Both Onslaughts use their system immediately and the battle is even.
Both Onslaughts use their system late, bump into each other, often flameout, then the battle is more or less even depending on the flameouts.
Either Onslaught uses their system after a few seconds, wins the flux war because the other Onslaught has its shield up, and ends up winning with a huge margin. For some reason, the "player side" Onslaught did that a lot more often than the other, but both versions of this scenario did occur.
Therefore I'm confident to say that the mission does NOT affect the AI in any way and it is working as intended.
I ran the Onslaught test myself a dozen times because I'm certain the AI is symmetrical. From what I saw, the battles usually follow one of four scenarios:My thanks, and also my damnation, for now I must find a more consistent metric to re-re-price my ships XD
Both Onslaughts use their system immediately and the battle is even.
Both Onslaughts use their system late, bump into each other, often flameout, then the battle is more or less even depending on the flameouts.
Either Onslaught uses their system after a few seconds, wins the flux war because the other Onslaught has its shield up, and ends up winning with a huge margin. For some reason, the "player side" Onslaught did that a lot more often than the other, but both versions of this scenario did occur.
Therefore I'm confident to say that the mission does NOT affect the AI in any way and it is working as intended.
First group with early game fighters (Talons) and no carrier options:
- with Condor + Harpoon Pod + 2 Talon wings: around 2min40 and 100% win, unstable results
- with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 2 Talon wings: around 2min40 and 100% win, stable results
- with Hammerhead: around 3min20 and 100% win, unstable results
- no additional ship: around 4min00 and 100% win, stable results
And second group with more advanced fighters - Kopeshs and Daggers - mixed with Broadsword:
- with Condor + Pilum + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Kopesh wing : around 4min10 and casualties, unstable results
- with Condor + single Reaper + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Dagger wing : around 3min10 with 100% win, unstable results
- with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Kopesh wing : around 3min00 and 100% win, stable results
- with Drover + 4 Harpoons + 1 Broadsword wing + 1 Dagger wing : around 3min20 and 100% win, stable results
It might be due to my poor formating and so you may have missed it, but I'll note the Drover + 4 Harpoons + Broadsword + Dagger had a Wolf casualty on its first run, same as the Condor + Pilum + Broadsword + Khopesh did on its 2nd, so to be fair it should probably be listed there.
Having watch some of the fights (and left it to run in the background on others), (...)
I also would be extremely hesitant that 3 runs imply a particular stability in terms of speed of completion. The sample size is too small, and depends on how the AI ended up dividing into smaller skirmishes.
To throw one more data point on, I did a 120 DP gunship + 120 DP carrier fleet (so 240 DP total for each side), broadsword + dagger drovers vs condors just for kicks. Long fight, but condor still pulled it out. Lost an Eagle, hammerhead, Condor, 3x Wolf in process, but those 2 extra carriers definitely help as things scale up.
Personally, I think in terms of comparisons, the larger 60 DP gunship + 60 DP carrier tests are more telling than the time to kill, as they're much more sensitive to a slight imbalance because they snowball. That yes/no helps provide a definite signal - but unfortunately doesn't tell us how much, just that it is due to the snowball nature. I'm pretty sure a human just giving orders, not even piloting, could shift victory either way very easily.
So what I've learned from all of this is that fighter superiority is even more important that I thought originally. I knew that it's good to have a carrier or two in your fleet just to help with those pesky frigates or just pure distraction, but this, this is just wrong. I wonder how a fleet full of Converted Hangars would perform vs just the ''usual builds'' (I know it's not the thread for this, I'm just thinking out loud). So yeah long story short, fighters are too strong and AI is too dumb vs fighters.
I tested using of Fleet Tester that included player-side admiral AI, so test results might be different than yours. However, the upside is that the testing is completely divorced from any skill in playing Starsector I have (except for making loadouts). It also meant that some ships were retreated off the battlefield, at discretion of admiral AI.
Comparing this to a real campaign situation: you would realistically have a lower number of Condor (those left from early game), and more non-carrier ships, and probably dedicated escorts. This what I have in my current campaign: 2 Condors, 3 Herons, 8 frigates, 2 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 1 Legion recently added. Condors are not being targeted that much, and have a permanent 1 Shepherd escort. I have left them unmanaged since early game with 100% survival rate.There's a 1:2 ratio of carriers to warships, which I don't consider outlandish. I'd say that with fewer carriers, though, Condors are even worse off, since fighters are more likely to be lost and drain their replacement rate, whereas Drovers can leverage their ship system to prevent and mitigate losses.
Thanks very much for the information. I don't suppose you know if the Admiral AI you are using the same one used in the AI battles mods? I used it assuming it'd been setup with at least some form of fleet AI for both sides. Alternatively, I'd be interesting to know which mod to grab that has said Admiral AI.I remember downloading it from Tartiflette on Discord, since Fleet Tester doesn't have any admiral AI. If it has one now, it has been added in the meantime. Whenever I paid attention to the battle going on, it didn't seem to do much; assign escorts to cruisers at the very start of the game, then discard escort orders and order assault at the objective in the centre of the battlefield, then discard that order and focus only on retreating individual ships until the end.
Were all individual ships set to steady AI?Yes.
Although I'm wondering how much its affected by fighter selection versus base ship. I'd like to try this fleet setup, but with all 4 carrier types using the same ratios and types of fighters, to help eliminate other variations beyond the base ship.But why? Why wouldn't better carriers leverage the capability to use better fighters than others? We might have different priorities and I can change variants to what you consider better, but I won't run suboptimal variants just to make all carriers use the same fighters. Though Condors with reapers are probably a better choice against the fleet that I tested against (which I'll fix later).
So what I've learned from all of this is that fighter superiority is even more important that I thought originally. I knew that it's good to have a carrier or two in your fleet just to help with those pesky frigates or just pure distraction, but this, this is just wrong. I wonder how a fleet full of Converted Hangars would perform vs just the ''usual builds'' (I know it's not the thread for this, I'm just thinking out loud). So yeah long story short, fighters are too strong and AI is too dumb vs fighters.
But why? Why wouldn't better carriers leverage the capability to use better fighters than others? We might have different priorities and I can change variants to what you consider better, but I won't run suboptimal variants just to make all carriers use the same fighters. Though Condors with reapers are probably a better choice against the fleet that I tested against (which I'll fix later).
: Takes copious notes :
I suspect that exact loadouts are going to make a big difference - in particular, with so many frigates any bomber other than a Dagger is dead weight.
In other news: in campaign last night the only medium missile I had around for the Condor was the medium Reaper. The AI will, on occasion, use its system to double tap enemy ships with 2 consecutive reapers. In this case 2x Thunder Condor, so the enemy was flamed out. I don't think this is an optimal build or anything, as the Reaper is almost always wasted, but its very gratifying when its not.
So what I've learned from all of this is that fighter superiority is even more important that I thought originally. I knew that it's good to have a carrier or two in your fleet just to help with those pesky frigates or just pure distraction, but this, this is just wrong. I wonder how a fleet full of Converted Hangars would perform vs just the ''usual builds'' (I know it's not the thread for this, I'm just thinking out loud). So yeah long story short, fighters are too strong and AI is too dumb vs fighters.
Anecdotal evidence: I am currently running a fleet of an Odyssey, Eagle (XIV), Heron, 2 Drovers and 12 Hammerheads with CH with Sparks, Broadswords, and Thunders. I am demolishing endgame bounties. The only ship without fighters is the Eagle. The AI is really skiddish around swarms of fighters so most ships start backing off even when the enemy fleet ought to control the battlespace. I notice fights really get spread out and that's where the range of all the fighters become a force multiplier where traditional ships wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
As for the rest of the thread, I don't have much to offer but I am surprised the Condors are doing so well vs. the Drovers.
I'm not surprised to learn that CR/passive play is a big problem. Between fighters flying around and no admiral to give eliminate/fighter strike/engage commands, and no player to push things, its a perfect storm to make for slow play!
I'm not sure how to tell what the admiral AI is doing. At the beginning of the AI Battles mod or Fleet tester with the updated jar, there are some initial orders to claim nav/sensor bouys. That shows up on the map layer. Then the only other orders I see on the map layer are retreat orders. The local ship AI is clearly assigning itself to escort though (I've seen drovers follow other ships that are retreating to the edge of the map, then once they retreat, head back to the fight). And generally in the initial clash, most of the bombers go after the same ship, but then again, that might just have been the first ship seen, or they all had the same selection criteria at the beginning of the fight, so it tends to make them select a single target.If you keep the map open and the game unpaused, you can see what admiral AI is doing. As I mentioned earlier, first it gives escort orders on cruisers, then dismisses those orders and orders assault on the objective, then dismisses that and only retreats individual ships. I don't think it's possible to give invisible orders, but I'm not so sure of it now.
If you keep the map open and the game unpaused, you can see what admiral AI is doing. As I mentioned earlier, first it gives escort orders on cruisers, then dismisses those orders and orders assault on the objective, then dismisses that and only retreats individual ships. I don't think it's possible to give invisible orders, but I'm not so sure of it now.
The biggest benefit for me was that it acted sort of like the player, so I did not have to make any input myself.
If you keep the map open and the game unpaused, you can see what admiral AI is doing. As I mentioned earlier, first it gives escort orders on cruisers, then dismisses those orders and orders assault on the objective, then dismisses that and only retreats individual ships. I don't think it's possible to give invisible orders, but I'm not so sure of it now.
The biggest benefit for me was that it acted sort of like the player, so I did not have to make any input myself.
However, AI behavior when dealing with fighters, specifically, drives me absolutely crazy. It works in standard vanilla campaign balance but only there and it is the most inflexible part of the AI right now. It is balanced for a very, very specific use case: A small number of fighters mixed in with lots and lots of combat ships such that the combat ships can huddle together and reduce the fighter replacement rate or kite away and do the same. Large numbers of fighters break this concept, and they break it very hard. Also, it is difficult to conceptually create a faster reinforcing fighter without running into this issue. Even if the fighter is very fragile, as long as the carrier can send a couple or have one on the field at all times the AI will continue to backpeddle and never really make any ground against the carrier. It either leads to the warship dying or a stalemate situation that drastically slows the battle down until CR runs out. It quite literally takes active player intervention to speed the battle up and eliminate carriers.
Speaking of eliminate, this default behavior would actually be just fine if it weren't for the fact that an "Eliminate" command doesn't really do that much to help this. Standard AI should be conservative and focused on staying alive, but though the warship will be more aggressive while under an eliminate command, certainly, large numbers of fighters still lock it into a backpeddling position because the key assumption that the AI makes is that the carrier will eventually "run out of fighters to send" for some kind of window. When that assumption proves false the AI can't make the decision to just go for the kill and hope it makes it - which is what I think eliminate should be about. It needs to be a binary "this ship must die" order that assumes the player is ok with the ship in question from dying. When I give that order I am making a gamble to sacrifice ships to eliminate a high-threat target that I find to be more important to take out vs keeping those ships alive in the tactical sense of the battle. I don't really want them to be smart I want them to do their job and carry out my order because it's priority one in this circumstance.
Just, generally in agreement with your analysis here as far as fighters - and it kind of has to be like that, because the decision to ignore fighters and go after the carrier is an extreme one - it's win or die, basically. The AI just can't make those sorts of decisions with a good-enough success rate. So fighters that can't be depleted by a similar-strength warship force are... more or less necessarily broken.
And, yeah, Elimintate is supposed to be how you fill in this gap as the player. Hmm. So when I take the "Custom" Medusa - the one with 2 AM Blasters - and run a simulation against the Condor with Talons and a Salamander Pod:
- No eliminate: it stalls until it clears the Talons, then moves in fo the kill
- With eliminate: it cruises right up to the Condor and wrecks it right away
To be fair, the actual difference in time-to-kill is something like 10-15 seconds, but the observable difference in behavior is very clear. My question is, is this due to some changes in the dev build, or is this not a representative scenario... I seem to remember teaking something related fairly recently-ish, but not seeing anything my my notes.
It would be nowhere near the issue it is right now if weapons could have target priority tags.
IGNORE_FIGHTERS is an obvious candidate for a new weapon tag, but by itself it would be a blunt solution. Combined with PRIORITIZE_LARGER and PRIORITIZE_SMALLER however, we would have a vastly superior set of options to fine tune the weapon behavior.
It would be nowhere near the issue it is right now if weapons could have target priority tags.
IGNORE_FIGHTERS is an obvious candidate for a new weapon tag, but by itself it would be a blunt solution. Combined with PRIORITIZE_LARGER and PRIORITIZE_SMALLER however, we would have a vastly superior set of options to fine tune the weapon behavior.
Watching high power weapons waste their shots times and against gainst fighters is infuriating when it leads to the ship's death because it ran its flux too high. Not even mentioning that if makes large weapons with chargeup or burst size useless without the STRIKE tag because of the turret rotation dampening preventing them from hitting those fighters. But then the AI becomes incredibly afraid to use those weapons at all, especially if they have a clip.
During the tournament we saw several cases of ships refusing to deal the killing blow to cruisers and capital ships because they suddenly got distracted by a wing of wasps that they tried to shoot down with weapons not dissimilar to a hellbore.
I believe priority tags would solve most of those issues, and would further open the design space of AI-friendly weapons.
It would be nowhere near the issue it is right now if weapons could have target priority tags.An IGNORE_FIGHTERS weapon AI hint would be a godsend and low hanging fruit. While there may be no such weapons in vanilla? There are in mods, weapon that are a Bad Idea to fire at fighters 100% of the time regardless of context, Hell even under player control.
IGNORE_FIGHTERS is an obvious candidate for a new weapon tag, but by itself it would be a blunt solution. Combined with PRIORITIZE_LARGER and PRIORITIZE_SMALLER however, we would have a vastly superior set of options to fine tune the weapon behavior.
Watching high power weapons waste their shots times and again against fighters is infuriating when it leads to the ship's death because it ran its flux too high. Not even mentioning that if makes large weapons with chargeup or burst size useless without the STRIKE tag because of the turret rotation dampening preventing them from hitting those fighters. But then the AI becomes incredibly afraid to use those weapons at all, especially if they have a clip.
During the tournament we saw several cases of ships refusing to deal the killing blow to cruisers and capital ships because they suddenly got distracted by a wing of wasps that they tried to shoot down with weapons not dissimilar to a hellbore.
I believe priority tags would solve most of those issues, and would further open the design space of AI-friendly weapons.
It would be nowhere near the issue it is right now if weapons could have target priority tags.
IGNORE_FIGHTERS is an obvious candidate for a new weapon tag, but by itself it would be a blunt solution. Combined with PRIORITIZE_LARGER and PRIORITIZE_SMALLER however, we would have a vastly superior set of options to fine tune the weapon behavior.
Watching high power weapons waste their shots times and again against fighters is infuriating when it leads to the ship's death because it ran its flux too high. Not even mentioning that if makes large weapons with chargeup or burst size useless without the STRIKE tag because of the turret rotation dampening preventing them from hitting those fighters. But then the AI becomes incredibly afraid to use those weapons at all, especially if they have a clip.
The other two would also be wonderful, but are more complex. Like how would the prioritizing work? I could think of many ways to tackle that, and ideally would involve range bands that are also specified not just one off tags. Firing a Hellbore at a frigate at 500 range isn't such a bad idea, but it is at 1200 (thinking of mixed target scenarios)!
I could see a use case for something not firing at fighters *at all* though. I just don't think it would make sense for this to apply to the vast majority of weapons, e.g. nothing in vanilla.
For example, you might want to fire a Plasma Cannon -or even a Gauss Cannon - at fighters if the flux situation is good or if the carrier is very far away and you don't have any other targets in range. But if you do have other targets in range, then you might want to prioritize those instead.
Imho, I think that the vast majority of players are going to go "why the heck is that thing shooting at fighters?! Argh!" rather than "Why the heck is that thing *not* firing at fighters?! Argh!" If that makes sense.
I mean I get you Alex. But I also got missile AIs with hyper intelligent targeting picking algorithms that make vanilla missile AIs look... Bad, and I do think there is potential here for *guns* to get at least a small fraction of that sort of intelligence. I see way too many bad fights where fighters just *** on everything because AI makes incredibly foolish decisions regarding them. Is one (of quite a few) reasons fighter swarms are so incredibly game breaking right now.
Don't know if doing this specifically is the best plan, but: If the hypothetical weapons that didn't autofire at fighters clearly said so on their stats card, that would make the behavior clearly-not-a-bug.
Don't know if doing this specifically is the best plan, but: If the hypothetical weapons that didn't autofire at fighters clearly said so on their stats card, that would make the behavior clearly-not-a-bug.
That's... a very good point. Yeah! I like this a lot, coming from sort of an in-fiction reason why it doesn't/can't do that, rather than being a purely an attempt to adjust the AI. So it stops being an AI thing and becomes an explicitly billed feature of the weapon.
^ In regards to player piloting balance vs player admiral balance: (Bit of a tiny derail but I think it's relevant to the balance discussion)
If you were using half bomber, half thunder Condors and had way more wins than I did, then I either unknowingly had other changes in my files I don't remember, or my Condors had one hell of a bad luck. I'll run some battles tomorrow and if they stay abysmal like that, then I'll have to reinstall my Starsector and check if that changes anything.
Eh, missile AI is part of a missile's balance and intended feel; it doesn't necessarily need to be "good" or "bad". And I'll note that vanilla missile AI is mainly intentionally the way it is, e.g. target tracking could obviously be more effective but then missiles would be too hard to dodge. I don't particularly think target picking is something most vanilla missiles need to worry about. Locusts do, but then they do target-picking decently. But primarily I think target-picking is the player's job (or the ship AI's). Otherwise you get a game that plays itself, or at least a move in that direction...The sorts of things I was talking about doesn't override player (or AI) targeting decisions most of the time except when it is the only move that truly makes sense. Like let me give some examples:
As far as ships vs fighters, I think it's mostly - like I said earlier, and like Morrokain said - an issue with not deciding to commit. Which is more or less unavoidable. If you've got a good example of poor vs-fighter targeting making a big impact, though, I'd love to see it! (Preferably simulator with vanilla loadouts etc...)
SpoilerI also wonder, is there design space for anti-massed fighter/missile spam weapons? I mean, I only recently discovered the proximity charge launcher as being effective, and there's also flak, but it just doesn't stack the same way as fighters do. You can't currently combine all the PD of the fleet in one place to handle a spike in fighters, but fighters can stack to focus all their fire power on one ship. And due to flux mechanics, spike damage is much more powerful than sustained damage.
Remember, the player controlled spam fighter fleet is far more dangerous than the AI spam fighter fleet, since a player can call coordinated bombing runs which any individual ship can't survive. They can pull back to a way point, gather strength, and then go again and take out another ship.
But what if the defending fleet could gather effectively an entire fleet's worth of PD in one spot? I do know you've modified the Paladin to have an AoE component, which will be interesting to see, given it can shoot over allied ships to hit fighters on the other side.
If you do get enough AoE damage in one place that can last long enough, it is possible to bring down a swarm of sparks. I remember doing something like that against a 12 Drover spark swarm in the simulator using an Onslaught XIV with hand picked Officer (Advanced Countermeasures, Armor Skills, Damage skills, Flux skill) + armor/flak focus on the ship itself. With the magnified armor, it survived the first pass swarm and took out enough fighters along the way with its purely flak loadout, it eventually became immune to the uncoordinated return flights, and just slowly burn drived down each Drover.
So is there a place for a missile or maybe high tech energy weapon that chains between enemy fighters/missiles within a certain distance from each other like lightning, hitting each target only once, but then jumping to all targets within range of that target, and so on until all possible targets are exhausted? A couple of these and sufficient density of fighters suddenly makes the damage spread to the entire swarm. Below a certain density, it only hits a few and then runs out of range. And against single wings, well, it only hits a single wing. And against a ship, assuming its not bumping another ship, you get a single hit. So now, you've got an anti-fighter weapon which fired from different directions on the swarm, hits all of them. Potentially concentrating fire from multiple ships.
If there were some dedicated PD variant files that used such a weapon, and they showed up enough, they would give over concentrations of fighters some pause, at least in some engagements.
Not sure how easy or hard to script such a weapon, although it'd be a bit like ion damage jumping, but between fighters/ships instead of just on the ship.[close]
The sorts of things I was talking about doesn't override player (or AI) targeting decisions most of the time except when it is the only move that truly makes sense. Like let me give some examples:
- A PD missile won't target ships *at all* unless there are no missiles or fighters within range.
- A big slow derp missile, will never target fighters unless there are no ships within range.
- A big slow derp missile if the original target is destroyed or retreats or whatever, will retarget the nearest non fighter ship within range basically as per the above. This is a big one and one of the big issues with vanilla missile AI. Oh I fired this Harpoon volley at an overloaded ship, but something else killed it as they were enroute. Well, they retarget... Fighters nearby, rather than a destroyer just a bit farther away. This is terrible! And conceptually generally the same issue as big huge alpha slow cannons being generally wasted on fighters in most situations and all of them in the case of some really enormous mod ones.
As far as examples to show regarding guns, will see what can be done. I have seen it hundreds and perhaps thousands of times but will take a little bit of digging to list a reproducible scenario.
Re: Weapons being billed as "will not shoot at fighters:
I'm sure you'll come up with more nuanced version but for me, if one rule was followed, I'd be very happy with such a tag.
*Any weapon that costs >300 flux/shot won't shoot at fighters.*
To be explicit: Mjolnir, Guass Cannon, Heavy Blaster, Plasma Cannon, Hypervelocity Driver, Hellbore, AM Blaster, Mining Blaster. (Heavy Mauler is about there, too, along with the Mk. IX. I'm not sure how you would look at high-flux beams like Ion Beam, HI Laser or, Tachyon Lance, but the Phase Lance is fine.) Outside of the Mjolnir, every other weapon is a high-damage, relatively slow-firing projectile that has little probability of hitting a particular fighter and would almost always be a Pyhrric victory even if it did.
My only concern is the number of weapons I listed: 1 Small, 2-4 Medium, 4-7 Large. Large Weapons have the easiest excuse not to target small/fast-moving targets but that does leave a lot of Large Weapons not firing at fighters, even if it does make gameplay sense.
*Any weapon that costs >300 flux/shot won't shoot at fighters.*
A decision like "don't fire at the fighter because a better target is not in range, but will be in range soon" is too difficult to make well. And it's more decision-making that I think autofire should do - it should be predictable rather than "smart" since it's more of a control for the ship's main AI than a separate brain.
I could see a use case for something not firing at fighters *at all* though. I just don't think it would make sense for this to apply to the vast majority of weapons, e.g. nothing in vanilla.
I mean, I think I understand where you're coming from! Just, to me it seems like "having a set of tags that make target selection better" sounds a lot better than it would actually be, for practical reasons.
I could see a use case for something not firing at fighters *at all* though. I just don't think it would make sense for this to apply to the vast majority of weapons, e.g. nothing in vanilla.
I'm actually genuinely surprised the current weapons do get used on fighters.Don't know if doing this specifically is the best plan, but: If the hypothetical weapons that didn't autofire at fighters clearly said so on their stats card, that would make the behavior clearly-not-a-bug.
That's... a very good point. Yeah! I like this a lot, coming from sort of an in-fiction reason why it doesn't/can't do that, rather than being a purely an attempt to adjust the AI. So it stops being an AI thing and becomes an explicitly billed feature of the weapon.
I really don't think firing at fighters with high flux weapons that are unlikely to hit is more understandable than not firing. Firing a weapon and missing is actively worse than not firing so weapons with slow projectile speed/ low rate of fire/wind ups /slow turn rate are really not suited too shooting fighters down the majority of the time. If they're likely to miss, then you're just wasting flux. I think turn rate and projective speed are a bigger factor. Maybe there could be some logic to not shoot at things moving too fast to hit/track?
I think most weapons are fine to shoot at bombers because they move slow and are easy to hit (and its very valuable to shoot them down before they fire), but shooting at fighters/interceptors with big guns can be really detrimental.
I'm also of the opinion that spending lots of flux capacity to clear fighters with inefficient weapons is bad as well. You're basically doing the fighters job for them by running up your own flux. It depends on your loadout and the situation of course, but it's definitely bad to fire some weapons at fighters, even if they hit.
Also, backpedaling to deal with fighters is very frequently the right choice, even for the player. You usually can't just push through fighter swarms to go for the carriers. Fighters are really strong, I don't think the AI is necessarily to blame for having a tough time dealing with them. I don't mind that the AI is not prone to making desperado charges at carriers through fighters, and the player is left to make decisions about aggression. I do wish the player had a bit more control since it is their responsibility to make those decisions though. The AI ignoring my orders is pretty annoying and the control point system can hurt too. I wish there was something in between eliminate and engage. Eliminate is borderline suicidal and engage is more of a suggestion.
Another thought: what if the player could set weapon groups to have behaviors like 'strike', 'PD', 'anti fighters' etc.? That might let people have the control they want, and as long as there was a 'general purpose' setting that was default, I don't think it would be too much of a complication for beginners.
Having big guns shooting fighters would be more understandable if depleting a carriers fighters supply was more of an option. But as it stands, replacements are so frequent it's a losing maneuver. And many fighters don't even get destroyed by big gun hits, just disabled and they limp back to the carrier or take a second shot to kill. And if a fighter causes a big gun to shoot twice, the fighter has already done massive damage.
Well it would appear I'm disagreeing with the majority here since I'd rather have ships fire all of their guns in the general direction of fighters rather than wait for them to come into almost melee range. Yes, you're running up your own flux, but that's soft flux, if fighters come too close, then you're stuck with hard flux and they're even harder to get since they start circling around ships instead of coming in a straight line. A weapon not being accurate matters only if you're targeting a single wing. When there's a huge swarm coming, and your ships start firing everything, most of the shots actually connect. And that then makes the whole fight easier since I won't probably see a ship of mine get instantly nuked by fighters.
The only weapon in vanilla I'd say is a horrible choice to fire at fighters in every scenario is the Antimatter Blaster. Everything else depends on the situation. I get that it would be super useful for mods tho, I'm just talking about vanilla weapons here.
Re: Weapons being billed as "will not shoot at fighters:
I'm sure you'll come up with more nuanced version but for me, if one rule was followed, I'd be very happy with such a tag.
*Any weapon that costs >300 flux/shot won't shoot at fighters.*
To be explicit: Mjolnir, Guass Cannon, Heavy Blaster, Plasma Cannon, Hypervelocity Driver, Hellbore, AM Blaster, Mining Blaster. (Heavy Mauler is about there, too, along with the Mk. IX. I'm not sure how you would look at high-flux beams like Ion Beam, HI Laser or, Tachyon Lance, but the Phase Lance is fine.) Outside of the Mjolnir, every other weapon is a high-damage, relatively slow-firing projectile that has little probability of hitting a particular fighter and would almost always be a Pyhrric victory even if it did.
I really don't think firing at fighters with high flux weapons that are unlikely to hit is more understandable than not firing. Firing a weapon and missing is actively worse than not firing so weapons with slow projectile speed/ low rate of fire/wind ups /slow turn rate are really not suited too shooting fighters down the majority of the time. If they're likely to miss, then you're just wasting flux.
Another thought: what if the player could set weapon groups to have behaviors like 'strike', 'PD', 'anti fighters' etc.? That might let people have the control they want, and as long as there was a 'general purpose' setting that was default, I don't think it would be too much of a complication for beginners.
Right, a IGNORE_FIGHTER is limited, but it will already help immensely with cruiser/cap-mounted spinal weapons, weapons with long chargeup, strike weapons with clips etc.
Now another thing that makes a lot of weapons vastly underperform against fighters is the turret rotation dampening while firing and cooling down. It was designed when the game was much slower overall: There were a lot less mobility systems, ships were slightly slower and fighters were a LOT slower. Maybe it should be toned down or removed entirely given the current balance of the game? Or at least there could be another weapon hint like NO_ROTATION_DAMPENING?
Antimatter Blasters
The AB's delay makes it really hard to hit fighters.
Perhaps weapons that aren't point defence or specified as anti-fighter should fire only if there are no ships in range and if ship isn't gaining flux otherwise. This would result in periodic bursts of fire from all weapons or a constant fire from point defence and anti-fighter weapons.
An interesting idea would be to tie fighters range to fighter replacement rate, though perhaps not linearly. If fighters lost 25% range whenever fighter replacement rate isn't maxed out, it would make even relatively small losses have an impact, by either slowing fighter waves or forcing carriers to drive closerand hit you with their swords.
Interesting mechanically, yeah. I think it'd be a pain to convey the range to the player, for both their and enemy ships. When it's fixed, at least you can get a feel for it...If we had a visual cue showing us the range of fighters from the flagship, we could use this indicator to see if the range changes. Actually, it would be a neat thing to get regardless of if my idea goes anywhere.
That's what I meant by Pyhrric Victory: by firing these flux-intensive weapons at fighters, you lose even if you hit. If there is nothing else to fire at and you're at 0-flux, I get it, but the fighters are absolutely winning if the ship in question generates more flux trying to kill them than the fighters' weapons themselves. At best, firing these big guns are grossly inefficient when they hit. At worst, you're dumping huge flux/shot and hitting nothing
Strike tag only applies to the AI. If you have an AMB on auto it fires immediately against whatever it can hit.
Either way the point was more that there definitely are weapons that you don’t want to fire vs fighters much at all not that they all necessarily did so. Autopulse without an accuracy clutch is probably the most pertinent. Its likely to be turreted and so when it sees a fighter it just dumps its charges into the ether.
I vaguely remember fighter machine guns firing half as often than ship ones or the like.This isn't actually true, it's just that Broadsword doesn't have enough flux to fire even just two light machine guns.
This isn't actually true, it's just that Broadsword doesn't have enough flux to fire even just two light machine guns.
For a quick example: using a Medusa with 2x Heavy Blasters, 2x Railguns, 2x IR Pulse, and 2x PD Laser (some changes in-dev, such as IR Pulse being better) vs a Condor with 2x Talon. And then the same test, just removing the Heavy Blasters, to simulate them not firing at fighters (it never gets to fire at the Condor, in any case, without an Eliminate being ordered). It's actually quite a drastic difference - the loadout with Heavy Blasters survives over an extra minute compared to the one without.Not sure if your dev build, or the mission I'm using to test, or some mod I have enabled is messing things up, but I can't reproduce this at all. Removing the Heavy Blasters (leaving the excess OP unused) from the Attack variant Medusa (the one you're using as an example) made the Medusa significantly more aggressive, to the point where it actually would reliably attack the Condor.
And this is a loadout that's *extremely* overfluxed - 2k+ flux buildup vs 600 dissipation. And, it's facing a constant stream of fast fighters - just about the worst-case scenario in terms of driving up flux use, not getting much of a break to vent/dissipate, and having a higher chance to miss. And yet, the AI manages to keep its flux below half for almost the entire fight.
Basically, using high-flux weapons on autofire vs fighters is a benefit, since the AI will use it when there's flux, and it'll stop when there are problems. I'm not sure how much of this is due to in-dev improvements to autofire management...
If you *don't* fire high-flux weapons vs fighters at all, you're wasting your flux dissipation, unless the lower-flux weapons build enough flux to fully consume the dissipation rate. And if that's the case, then the high-flux stuff will get turned off.
Isn't this decision currently being made at the weapon design stage when weapons are given AI tags? I don't see how that decision is being made tactically in combat, but maybe I don't understand something about the AI, or we are not talking about the same thing.Another thought: what if the player could set weapon groups to have behaviors like 'strike', 'PD', 'anti fighters' etc.? That might let people have the control they want, and as long as there was a 'general purpose' setting that was default, I don't think it would be too much of a complication for beginners.
I think this is a dynamic, tactical decision, and not one that can really be made at ship loadout creation time. Managing autofire status based on flux levels and weapon flux use seems better.
It's actually a turret rotation *bonus* when the weapon is not firing, btw. The value in the CSV is the rotatio rate, in degrees/second, for when the weapon is firing. IIRC the point of this bonus was to keep the while-firing turn rate relevant as a balancing factor for a weapon's effectiveness vs fighters and missiles, while not having the weapons be slow as molasses and take upwards of 10 seconds to just switch targets. If something turns slowly and underperforms vs fighters as a result, that's literally the goal, so if that's not desired, the solution is to up the turn rate.
I just don't think that's right - building up soft flux from firing weapons and building up hard flux from getting hit on shields are qualitatively different. (As Grievous was saying earlier.)Counterpoint: riding the flux high means that even a single wing fighter can force a capital ship shield down, at least in the currently released version of the game.
I maintain my stance that the Helbore could stand to have the "DO_NOT_FIRE_AT_FIGHTERS" tag. It hurts more than it helps. That being said, I was surprised at the difference Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers, and even the flux hungry Gauss Cannon can make due to their faster projectiles and the sluggishness of bombers.
I maintain my stance that the Helbore could stand to have the "DO_NOT_FIRE_AT_FIGHTERS" tag. It hurts more than it helps. That being said, I was surprised at the difference Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers, and even the flux hungry Gauss Cannon can make due to their faster projectiles and the sluggishness of bombers.
Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.
HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).
Edit: Alex beat me to this point I think.SpoilerThat's what I meant by Pyhrric Victory: by firing these flux-intensive weapons at fighters, you lose even if you hit. If there is nothing else to fire at and you're at 0-flux, I get it, but the fighters are absolutely winning if the ship in question generates more flux trying to kill them than the fighters' weapons themselves. At best, firing these big guns are grossly inefficient when they hit. At worst, you're dumping huge flux/shot and hitting nothing
It's a very complicated question actually. It doesn't need to be a 0-flux game to be worth it. It depends on the fighter, the weapon in question, and how much flux you're generating right now versus flux dissipation. If the fighters are all on one side of your ship, then only half your guns are firing. A broadside ships exploit this fact. Also, if only PD weapons are firing, generally you are nowhere near hitting your dissipation rate.
Take a 4400 flux Hammerhead, turn off all weapons fire, raise shields and sit there. Send 2 wings of broadswords at it from a Condor. It'll overload in about 3 seconds from when the Broadswords start firing. Just tested in sim. On paper a single broadsword deals 156 kinetic damage per second, or 312 shield damage per second. I vaguely remember fighter machine guns firing half as often than ship ones or the like. Anyways, 4400 flux/0.8 efficiency/6 fighters/3 seconds = 305 shield damage per second per fighter. Seems to check out roughly. So we have a rough estimate of the DPS of a single Broadsword (which I suppose means dual Broadsword Condors with Harpoons should be kinda scary - 936 kinetic damage per second at long range, flux free followed up by HE missiles).
Unskilled heavy blasters require 2 projectiles to connect to completely kill a broadsword. It is worth it to kill a broadsword if they hit both hit, and it would have lived for 4.6 seconds longer otherwise (1440/312) assuming your shield is 1.0 efficient and you're already using up all your flux dissipation. On the other hand, most ships do not reach their flux dissipation only firing their PD weapons, so 1440/312 isn't the right thing to compare. Its flux above dissipation. If your spare dissipation is, hypothetically, 800 (after shields and all other weapons), then the comparison is 640/312 = 2.05 seconds.
Take a shrike. Lets say it has a Heavy Blaster, 4 PD Lasers, Sabot Pod, and 610 flux dissipation (a player design), weapons adds up to 880, and shield is another 105, so 985 max builldup versus 610 dissipation.
A wing of broadswords come in. 4 PD lasers deal 300 energy damage per second, at a cost of 160 flux per second. Shield costs 105 flux per second. So without firing the Heavy Blaster, you're sitting at -345 flux per second. The broadswords are dealing 936 klinetic damage, or 1310 shield damage (including the 0.7 modifier) per second. With 8200 flux capacity, it'll last 6.2 seconds or so with shields up.
Now, the Broadsword flares basically mean the PD lasers are useless for about 6 seconds. The heavy blaster on the other hand, isn't distracted and will shoot at fighters. Lets say half the heavy blaster shots hit. So you're spending 1,500 extra flux (720*4-345*4) to kill a broadsword in 4 seconds. If that broadsword would have lived for another 6.9 seconds, it was worth it. Or the other way to put it, if it buys you a 6.9 second reprieve from a fighter (i.e. rebuild time and fly back out to you is 6.9 seconds or longer), and you've got 50% accuracy, you should be firing that Heavy blaster. Given Broadswords take 10 seconds to replace, the answer is always yes (assuming that 50% hit rate). For this particular ship against Broadswords. Which is not a 0-flux balanced ship.[close]
Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.
HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).
Not sure if your dev build, or the mission I'm using to test, or some mod I have enabled is messing things up, but I can't reproduce this at all. Removing the Heavy Blasters (leaving the excess OP empty) from the Attack variant Medusa (the one you're using as an example) made the Medusa significantly more aggressive, to the point where it actually would reliably attack the Condor.
The effect is even more drastic if you compare the results against the 2x Broadsword Condor, where removing the HBs allows the Medusa to win almost unscathed versus losing over half its hull with them still equipped (or in unlucky cases, even dying).
edit: I have the same result with Broadsword Condor on vanilla using the Coral Nebula mission. Heavy blasters shooting at fighters is a major minus, at least in this example.
Isn't this decision currently being made at the weapon design stage when weapons are given AI tags? I don't see how that decision is being made tactically in combat, but maybe I don't understand something about the AI, or we are not talking about the same thing.
Then the issue is that it isn't possible to make a large weapon able to track fighters that won't turn cartoonishly fast when not firing, and we could still use a NO_ROTATION_BOOST tag.
Counterpoint: riding the flux high means that even a single wing fighter can force a capital ship shield down, at least in the currently released version of the game.
In theory (and in the dev build :D), the AI shouldn't be autofiring high-flux weapons to that degree. If it is, it's a problem, but solving it by making drastic changes to how the AI uses a large fraction of weapons ... doesn't seem like the right move.
From what I've seen the heavy kinetic damage + high impulse of multiple Atropos torpedoes is more what causes overloads than the AI overrunning it's flux - though an argument could certainly be made that it could be the combination of those two things (inefficient flux use being the second) that gets the AI in trouble in the first place - so there is definitely a gray area to consider.
Not trying to be pushy here, btw, in case it seems that way because text != tone. I'm just getting my overall thoughts out on the subject. :)
Thanks for double checking; I left the 24 OP unused, yes. I think your point about how the pulse laser performs significantly better indicates the importance of a rule for specific weapons - it's not so much an issue of how over-fluxed the ship variant is as it is specific weapons having detrimental effects when targetting fighters.Not sure if your dev build, or the mission I'm using to test, or some mod I have enabled is messing things up, but I can't reproduce this at all. Removing the Heavy Blasters (leaving the excess OP empty) from the Attack variant Medusa (the one you're using as an example) made the Medusa significantly more aggressive, to the point where it actually would reliably attack the Condor.
The effect is even more drastic if you compare the results against the 2x Broadsword Condor, where removing the HBs allows the Medusa to win almost unscathed versus losing over half its hull with them still equipped (or in unlucky cases, even dying).
edit: I have the same result with Broadsword Condor on vanilla using the Coral Nebula mission. Heavy blasters shooting at fighters is a major minus, at least in this example.
Hmm - you didn't spend the OP freed up by removing the blasters, did you? I suspect in-dev changes to flux management and autofire factor in here, too.
It does do better without blasters vs the 2xBroadsword Condor, though - for me, it takes damage in both cases, and the fight seems like it could go either way (in my quick test, it barely beat the Condor with the HBs, and had about half hull left without HBs). A variant with Pulse Lasers instead of Heavy Blasters does better than either of these, winning consistently and easily while only taking a sliver of hull damage. And it's still a very over-fluxed variant, 2x flux generation vs dissipation - around 1200 vs 600.
Yeah, that makes sense. It seems easy to underestimate just how quickly a bunch of kinetic damage can drive up flux, and in the case of Broadswords, it seems like firing off an HB shot or two and not makes a difference of a few seconds, which isn't too much.
Still, the HB is definitely a tricky weapon for the AI to use! It's just... how it is, I suppose, with it being a bit of an outlier in terms of flux use and damage and so on. It really benefits from more situational awareness and forward planning. So it'll naturally be less good in AI hands in some situations, of which "vs *some* (but not all) fighters" is one, but not the sum total. So it probably doesn't make too much sense to over-focus on fixing that specific one.
(Actually, talking about this now, I'm remembering spending a bunch of time tuning the "whether to put a group on autofire" logic specifically for these kinds of situations! That the HB is better even in some situations, on a heavily over-fluxed loadout, seems like a win.)
Even something like Hellbores - they'll miss fighters a lot, but they're pretty effective vs, say, incoming Piranhas or Flash bombers, no? Due to the shots passing through missiles. And that's a cool moment, to see a hellbore shell carve a path through a cloud of bombs. Plus it's flux-cheap! I understand what you mean about it costing zero-flux bonus, though; I'm sure you're right in it being detrimental for that reason in that situation. But that seems like a rather minor issue overall; I don't know that it's worth the cost of "adding a new rule the player has to remember about the Hellbore so they're not confused" and "the Hellbore is also *less* useful in some (possibly/maybe smaller) number of situations".
(I'm more leaning towards including the "don't fire at fighters" hint, btw. The idea of calling it out explicitly is really selling me on it; could see maybe using it for a few vanilla weapons, even.)
Thanks for double checking; I left the 24 OP unused, yes. I think your point about how the pulse laser performs significantly better indicates the importance of a rule for specific weapons - it's not so much an issue of how over-fluxed the ship variant is as it is specific weapons having detrimental effects when targetting fighters.
I don't think it's very many weapons either, imo it's only really problematic with the Heavy Blaster, the Gauss and the Tachyon Lance - generally inefficient but high burst and in the latter cases high refire delay.
You know, speaking of this, can you remember why the AI needs to put a STRIKE hinted weapon off autofire and fire it manually? - When the player putting such a weapon on autofire doesn't actually make it used on fighters? I'm curious about it.
(I'm more leaning towards including the "don't fire at fighters" hint, btw. The idea of calling it out explicitly is really selling me on it; could see maybe using it for a few vanilla weapons, even.)
Missed this! Yay! ;D
I hope it happens. My mod really needs this for several weapons. Basically using any weapon that generates flux that isn't specifically designed to be used for fighters should not be used on fighters. (it's a DnD based mod so weapon types are more synergistic and role based and less multipurpose like how vanilla's are)
STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES certainly helps, but it's not always fullproof in the case of missiles - especially when combined with DO_NOT_CONSERVE which is necessary to ensure the AI uses the full clip. I remember seeing non-missile weapons sometimes fire at fighters too with that hint... but tbh that could have been an earlier version or back when my station modules still had the periodic missile reload mod - which iirc changes autofire AI. It doesn't happen often.
Putting STRIKE weapons on autofire seems like a bad idea, so the AI... doesn't. It's not specifically about fighters; STRIKE makes the AI take more care with aiming the weapon at other targets (which is why adding it can make it hesitant to fire, since it's looking for a higher-percentage shot).
To be honest, I kind of forgot about Gauss/Hellbore piercing missiles; I probably wouldn't want to use this tag on them in vanilla. But for mods, yeah, it could be handy. My concern is it'd be overused by mods - i.e. put on weapons where equivalent-ish vanilla weapons don't do this...
STRIKE,USE_VS_FRIGATES certainly helps, but it's not always fullproof in the case of missiles - especially when combined with DO_NOT_CONSERVE which is necessary to ensure the AI uses the full clip. I remember seeing non-missile weapons sometimes fire at fighters too with that hint... but tbh that could have been an earlier version or back when my station modules still had the periodic missile reload mod - which iirc changes autofire AI. It doesn't happen often.
Hmm? Yeah, probably to do with the missile reload. As a rule, AI won't fire non-ANTI_FTR missiles at fighters unless it's in panic mode.
Ehhh, that doesn't seem to be the reason. The weapons I'm talking about are small, fast projectile weapons or even instant strike beams against capitals. They do fire, but not efficiently in regards to their clip/regen.
(Working on reproducing this. I have one case - but the weapon not being used is HE and the shields are up on the enemy vessel. So I'm not sure if that is a good example. That being said, other HE strike weapons are used on shields at times.)
Why is that a concern? It would/certainly should be reported to the mod author- not against vanilla. If the modder chooses to do this then they would take on the burden of any subsequent bug reports (and again stat card/description explanations make a huge difference there.) If they get annoyed by it then they can just not use the hint.
https://youtu.be/24fIDJOh3ro (https://youtu.be/24fIDJOh3ro)
I was under the assumption that the AI was more loose with flux (and firing high-flux weapons) than it actually is so I am more than happy to concede the point, though I appreciate the testing with the Medusa as the HB is kind of the poster-child for what I was getting at.
(Says video is private.)
Unless it also has USE_VS_FRIGATES? But anyway, that's getting pretty off-topic for the thread. My apologies for contributing to that, myself.
Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.
HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).
I haven't tested Plasma yet but that is what I've heard. I already said Gauss was pretty good... though I didn't see any passthrough there against Daggers. Helbore?? That is not my experience at all after several hours of testing.
Yes, it is without character skills but that is the point! Not all of your AI ships can have officers so they should be left out of the equation completely. I don't want behavior that is only good for 1/3 of my allied ships! ;)
*EDIT* Another counterpoint to that - it would make those skills more mandatory than they really need to be.
Building fleet around 10 officers is already staple of current meta. Anything else is wildly sub-optimal, with sole exception of Spark Drover spam.I disagree on it being a wasted advantage if the ships are saving flux and using their other weapons effectively. You shouldn't need an anti-ship weapon (what non anti-fighter/PD large weapons ideally should be) to deal with fighters in the first place imo. Hellbore definitely qualifies as anti-ship in the era where shields weren't a thing. Gauss is the reaction to said shielded ships. To me, if that were the case and these larger weapons are needed to fend off fighters, there is a problem there in terms of overall fighter balance. That means, inherently, that things that don't have these weapons (so anything less than a capital in 95% of cases) are at a strict disadvantage against them.
(to edit) It would no less stupid for max skilled ships to refuse to use their advantage (by simply not firing).
Fair enough, yeah.That plus a ignore fighters tag? Whooooo this is great, thanks a lot. Combined with a smarter autofire decision AI, it should help a LOT when dealing with ships supported by fighters.
Edit: added "NO_TURN_RATE_BOOST_WHEN_IDLE" weapon hint.
Relevant to the talk about weapons focussing too much on fighters:
https://twitter.com/NiaTahl/status/1283538572021301253
Turns out there was an oversight that in some (frequent) circumstances a ship would focus on the closest target regardless of its size, causing over-aggressive target switching to fighters.
For example, you can get... I think +50% fighter replacement rate, fleetwide - but only at 6 fighter bays in the fleet - not deployed, but fleetwide total. (Numbers could be tweaked, of course; 6 feels like it might be a bit high.)Wait, wait. Too high? Six feels, to me, like the minimum acceptable value here - that's the point where I can apply full benefit to a single Astral if and only if I have no other fighters in my fleet at all.
Ah, and that reminds me - I think I fixed (or at least mitigated a lot) the "turrets turn towards target, fire too early, first volley misses" issue, since that came up with HBs and the Medusa. To be perfectly honest, not 100% if this is already in the currently-out release, but I think it's only in the dev version. Forgot to add this to the patch notes I've been keeping, though.)That's got to be an in-dev change, because this issue is endemic to the current live version - including both the 'turret fires too early' issue, and the even-more-annoying 'Onslaught fires its side large turrets when they actually can't quite hit what it's aiming at' issue.
Wait, wait. Too high? Six feels, to me, like the minimum acceptable value here - that's the point where I can apply full benefit to a single Astral if and only if I have no other fighters in my fleet at all.
...Of course, that is an Astral, so if you want it to not be higher than six, I can live with that, even if I'd prefer seven or eight just to allow for an Astral and some spare change. But being able to go over the limit with a single carrier would just feel wrong.
Currently, 6 bays is nothing, but perhaps Alex has decreased the scale of battles that even a single capital ship is a centerpiece of the fleet. We will see.
The bigger issue I'm going to have with this skill is that Shepherds are going to needlessly dilute this bonus.
I'd presume that it doesn't count bays with built-in fighters? I don't, personally, in the end-game, use Shepherds or Ventures, but having fighter bonuses get eaten up by Tempests would be kindof annoying. (I think there was some comment from Alex that ships with only built-in fighters would neither count towards the limit nor benefit from the skill? But I don't remember where it was.)
That is very interesting. I wonder how much that fix will change the AI behavior in heavy fighter spam situations. Certainly, it should make improve the odds for the gunship in 1 on 1 gunship versus carrier situations. It does make me wish we could test some of the AI modifications and fixes Alex has waiting for the next release, just to see the effects. AI is such a huge factor in this kind of testing.
I think what really matters is how the skill scales, IE how fast the bonus drops off. +25% over 10 wings for example is going to be a much stronger force than +50% over 5 wings (with a hypothetical 5 wings max and -5% per extra wing). Sure the bonus is lower, but more fighters = less losses, especially if the scale of combat is smaller than present. Otoh, if its -10% per extra wing, then are 10 unboosted wings better than 5 boosted ones, given the opportunity cost those wings represent in terms of carriers/warships?I mean for most of the ships and situations we are talking about (tempest, venture, shepherd etc.) the wings are not actually contributing much, or at all. If you have 4 shepherds in your fleet for the salvage bonus and don't deploy them, they still count against you and your combat performance is worse (If I am understanding correctly). Tempest drones don't really benefit much from the bonus, and don't really contribute to the overall fighter density (at least nowhere near the extent a proper wing on a carrier would). Also, having 'backup' ships in your fleet for a potential second fight counts against you as well. In all those cases, you are straight up losing combat power, there's no trade off. In general I think the mechanic is interesting/good for dedicated carriers, but I think it really hurts ships that have fighter bays which don't contribute as much as a normal fighter wing, or ships that are more useful for non-combat reasons that just coincidentally have fighter bays.
50% is already a huge, game changing number. Even if expanded deck crew is gone (I hope so), that means that a modest number of carriers for that captain will never run out of fighters. Just think about a pair of strike Herons in the midgame that rebuild their bombers in half the time (actually 40% of the time because of CR bonus...).
Also, having 'backup' ships in your fleet for a potential second fight counts against you as well.
Hm. Still doesn't feel right to me. Then again, a properly-piloted Astral doesn't actually benefit much from replacement rate anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter that much. Unless you're nerfing the recall device?Wait, wait. Too high? Six feels, to me, like the minimum acceptable value here - that's the point where I can apply full benefit to a single Astral if and only if I have no other fighters in my fleet at all.
...Of course, that is an Astral, so if you want it to not be higher than six, I can live with that, even if I'd prefer seven or eight just to allow for an Astral and some spare change. But being able to go over the limit with a single carrier would just feel wrong.
+50% fighter replacement rate is a lot. Having a single ship exceed the limit actually feels fine to me, even good - I think it would really help sell the scale of that ship. (I.E. "wow, the Astral is such a big ship, it can't even get the full bonus", etc.) Anyway, if it ended up with, say, +30% or whatever, that's... still huge.
Unless you're nerfing the recall device?
Even if expanded deck crew is gone (I hope so)
I'd be okay with it being somewhat flavor based and just say any drones don't count. That happens to fix all of the vanilla issues (Venture, Shepherd, Tempest) and also is a nice kick in the teeth for the overperforming Sparks.This easily translate into an elite fighter/bomber squadron supported by a swarm of sparks and/or various drones, it wouldn't discourage carrier only fleets.
This easily translate into an elite fighter/bomber squadron supported by a swarm of sparks and/or various drones, it wouldn't discourage carrier only fleets.
I'd be okay with it being somewhat flavor based and just say any drones don't count. That happens to fix all of the vanilla issues (Venture, Shepherd, Tempest) and also is a nice kick in the teeth for the overperforming Sparks.This easily translate into an elite fighter/bomber squadron supported by a swarm of sparks and/or various drones, it wouldn't discourage carrier only fleets.
+50% fighter replacement rate is a lot. Having a single ship exceed the limit actually feels fine to me, even good - I think it would really help sell the scale of that ship. (I.E. "wow, the Astral is such a big ship, it can't even get the full bonus", etc.) Anyway, if it ended up with, say, +30% or whatever, that's... still huge.
Also, having 'backup' ships in your fleet for a potential second fight counts against you as well.(That's super intentional, btw.)
cr recover cost( which is the bulk of the bills)Due to Condor using 10% CR per deployment and 10 supplies to recover and Drover using 15% CR per deployment and 12 supplies per deployment, it takes 70 supplies to recover from 0% to 70% for Condor, but only 56 supplies for Drover. If you run out of PPT, Condor becomes more expensive per deployment after it loses 10% of CR. It's possible to get more PPT out of Condors than out of Drovers, though, by retreating and redeploying to renew PPT.
Drover has to be just 10% better for it to be more cost-efficient than Condor, when looking at maintenance and salaries.cr recover cost( which is the bulk of the bills)Due to Condor using 10% CR per deployment and 10 supplies to recover and Drover using 15% CR per deployment and 12 supplies per deployment, it takes 70 supplies to recover from 0% to 70% for Condor, but only 56 supplies for Drover. If you run out of PPT, Condor becomes more expensive per deployment after it loses 10% of CR. It's possible to get more PPT out of Condors than out of Drovers, though, by retreating and redeploying to renew PPT.
The way CR drain works is a bit counter intuitive and obscure, I hope Alex will do something with it.
One thing I'm curious about is thus:
Condor vs Gemini.
Well, to be fair, we don't know how the other skills scale as well. Or at least, I don't if there's been further details put somewhere. If the skill opposite the Carrier group provides a similar CR bonus that gets split across ships (i.e. +15% CR up to 10 ships, then scaling down to +5% Cr at 30), then there is also a penalty to having reserve direct combat ships (or really, any reserve ships). I'd need to see the all the skills before being able to make a statement about where this skill fits in.
Actually, here's a semi-related question. When hyperspace storms deal damage and reduce CR, is it proportional to the CR per deployment (i.e. a 10% CR per deployment ship takes half the CR hit from a storm that a 20% CR per deployment ship) or is it some kind of flat supply value or what?
Deliberate exclusions from counting towards and bonuses through a zero OP hullmod.
I agree it probably does lead to some unintended decision making, dumping non-combat ships with drones that never get deployed. On the other hand, early game when you fail to escape a pirate fleet with your small exploration fleet, you'll want that bonus applying to any ships you have, to get as much of as an edge as you can get. It'd be weird early game taking that skill, and then not having it help your shepherds which happen to be your only fighter ships at the time. Having to stick hull mods which modify skill behavior strikes me as inelegant and non-intuitive.
Its not clear to me what is the right way to go in this situation without testing and without knowledge of all the other skill effects.