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Messages - Draba

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1
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 26, 2024, 11:43:19 AM »
...To be fair, i wouldn't call Executor's shields good. It's, at its core, a missile boat someone mad put energy hardpoints on. It has base flux stats of a Legion, which would just get it chewed up and spit out if it didn't have a 0.6 shield to compensate. It's basically the reverse of Sunder and Conquest having "worse" shields.
It does beat every other capital except the paragon in shield health at 23k. The next best three in order are the astral at 20k, the pegasus at 17500, and the onslaught at 17000. The paragon sits at 41k. And an extremely efficient shield means pumping caps helps shield health a lot more  for it than other ships. It's as close as it gets for being a high tech shield without actually being high tech.
That, and it has builtin solar shielding, and it has high speed for a capital so can make better use of those shields, and it has high OP, and it benefits a lot from elite sysexp.
All things considered Executor shields are very far above good.

2
However, from what I see on the forums, Storm Needler seems to be dominating the role of an anti-shield weapon against Remnants. And for a good reason. Its burst, DPS and synergy with Expanded Magazines is insane.
I didn't notice that.
Keep in mind storm needler was considered bad in older versions. I liked it in Onslaught mid but was in the minority, and it was a tossup between needler and heph.
With Heph getting accuracy and minor efficiency buffs I wouldn't use storm needler without smags over it.

Builtin mag effect is certainly on the stronger side, but it has to be since the base is pretty bad.
Armored mounts is a decent comparison: gives durability and recoil reduction +unconditional peak and sustained DPS.
Mags do not increase peak DPS, and the sustained increase can be below what it says on the tin (if the weapon didn't fire long enough to empty the mags and could regen it does nothing).
Most mag weapons do get good mileage out of it ofc.

LAC, HAC have high recoil, and need some slots to pay off. Their DPS isn't high enough to compete against ultra shields of something like a Radiant. Though yeah, they are effective in that LAC has high efficiency and HAC has high value per OP, or something... And is good on hardpoint slots.

Mark IX and Arbalest are more anti-hull oriented, tbh... Okay, they are not anti-hull. But their shield DPS isn't that high, the potency of their design comes from adaptability and efficiency. Thus making them not ideal anti-shield weapons. But still pretty good weapons in the general game.
Don't think S/M kinetics being anything but great is a hill you want to die on :)
Storm needler was considered bad partially because literally any ballistic mount size has good alternatives to smack shields.
IMO play around a bit more with the various weapons and ships before calling for changes.

3
General Discussion / Re: Legion/Sunder/Medusa vs 6 Ordos, 2380 DP
« on: March 23, 2024, 01:14:48 PM »
It's nice to see large kinetics get their chance in the sun, first with the storm needler and now the mark ix. It's interersting that you're getting so much usage out of heavy maulers, but I guess the low dps doesn't matter so much with those sunders on the field.
Yeah, Onslaught and Legions give plenty of options and feel like getting kinetics in the L is very good.
With that many mounts and OP maulers are great, builtin AWM helps with the DPS and dissipation is still maxed at ~1700/1500 with all important hullmods so it's mostly about using flux well.
Range is better compared to Arbalest/HAC+Heph, and the hit strength+projectile speed on maulers also comes handy.
(hard to quantify, but the 5x3x200 HE burst feels like it's really strong vs the AI too)

These endurance battles are always so funny to me in terms of builds in the way they don't use missiles. For smaller battles, those Legions might have to make do with Mk IX + Mjolnir (or Heph) as the guns... but would be rocking 5x rockets/reapers etc. Also just hardened subsystems on caps!
I think skipping missiles (or getting various pilums/salamanders) is pretty competitive on lots of ships now, not just for the longer battles.
Missiles and the hullmods/skill some of them want cost a lot of OP, and might not hit enough against some enemies.
Dumping a bunch of ballistics faster and venting once the threat is gone can often be better.
Ofc hardened subsystems on capitals is less generally useful :)

Neat. I always suspected that HIL+Autolance Sunder is a good support, I just struggled to make it not get blocked by allies and not shoot stray frigates. Rally command is amazing.
Yep, Sunders would've been good even without escort package just didn't know rally civ can keep them from suiciding :)
Certainly very strong with both of those.

4
General Discussion / Legion/Sunder/Medusa vs 6 Ordos, 2380 DP
« on: March 22, 2024, 07:40:45 PM »
Seeing how some people think Onslaught is too strong for the cost I was curious how current Legions perform compared to it.
Gave base version a spin, with the usual Sunder support. Non-XIV because Sunders/maulers got hull damage covered, mark XIV battering down shields looks more helpful.
Ships are under AI control, player character is used in an op center kite, needed 1 merc to have enough officers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh4y0ZxoGWU

Combat results, skills
Spoiler


[close]
Legion
Tanks and takes shields down, fighters confuse omni shielded enemies and add some damage+PD capability. The usual Maulers do armor and hull damage.
Xyphos was probably a mistake, Claw for some extra tanking and good EMP output would've been better.
Part of the 10 OP saved on the Claw could've gone toward expanded deck crews, solar shielding or just more caps.
Still worked with Xyphos despite me fumbling around a lot, good enough :)
Spoiler
[close]
Sunder, Medusa
Same as in the Osnlaught/Doom mix vs 2350 DP battle:
Spoiler


[close]

Overall Legions are more fragile, but can deal with smaller targets much better than Onslaughts.
Lots of wide arc turrets+fighters help dealing with any target in a big area, but have less standalone finishing power and are less generous with OP.
IMO in relative strength adjusted for DP Legions, Onslaughts and Executors are on the same level (do different things well ofc).

5
The majority of the hull and armor killing is being done by the HIL-Autopulse sunders and the S-Mod Thermal Pulse Cannons*
Poor maulers not getting the credit they deserve :)
On the Onslaughts they do the most armor+hull damage, generally 2x as much as TPCs (and TPCs usually do more than needlers).
In these big fights Sunders have to be benched so side turret storm needlers catch up a bit with tons of extra hits.

the issue comes from the fact that shields existed in a universe where there aren't that many good anti-shield weapons. If you introduce such a direct DPS tool against Remnants, they have no ability to respond to it. And just die.
LAC, railgun, mark IX, HAC were always good and arbalest also got a big buff pretty long ago.
Anti-shield ballistics being very strong isn't new, though smalls/mediums did get some pretty nice buffs recently.

You mention low hit-strength. Remnants armour tends to be kinda bad. With the exception of Radiant, which forms a minority of Remnant fleets DP strength
Overall remnant armor+hull with all their elites is on the stronger side, especially since its effectiveness is boosted by strong shields.

6
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 22, 2024, 02:25:30 PM »
I can't remember if I've posted this already or not, but I enjoy S mod auxilliary thrusters on pretty much every capital and moderately slow ship these days. Maneuverability is great and the +10 speed with 0 flux is even better for getting them into combat faster.
Maneouverability AND doubled 0 flux turn bonus are just great, can send Onslaught to eliminate something >90° off from the front and it'll still be back to help others in time.
Generally overkill but can be really helpful with some setups and OP is pretty generous.

7
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 18, 2024, 07:07:37 AM »
There are minor inaccuracies, but never noticed continuous beams being overreported.
Well the bug is not necessarily that frequent, so it may not necessarily show up in a couple of tests in the sim. But it shows up pretty often in full battles. For example, attached is a screenshot of DCR reporting an Eagle with a single Phase Lance doing over 124k hull damage and two IR Autolances doing nearly 53k hull damage in a double Ordos fight. This is a fight where, if there are no player ships using any beams, the total hull damage for the entire double Ordos fleet is usually around 320k or so, but this fight registered 588k of hull damage.
Combat results got cleaned out (maybe on rc11 update or save copy?) so only have stats for ~20 >1K DP battles with lots of HILs/autolances, went over them to check.
Highest hull damage ratio one was 573K hull damage against 1243 DP, so 460 hull health for each DP. Lots of regenerating <capitals including Fulgents and Apexes.
Lowest one was 424K against 1118, 379 against lots of Radiants/Novas. Average seems to be 420-430-ish.

Higher than the theoretical average hull on remnants, but pretty close.
More important is that have 5 battles with Onslaught+Manticore and full plasma Paragon+Manticore/Hammerhead, their average is similar.
Even slightly higher, but they kill much slower so regen from combat endurance probably adds more hull to kill.
Having a definite value would be pretty nice ofc.

Obviously a Phase Lance and two IR Autolances did not do 177k of hull damage during the fight. This is in version 0.97a-RC10. So yeah you can't count on the beam damage as reported by DCR.
Yeah, that's very far off but: 1 phase lance 124K hull vs 2 autolances 53K hull, even inverted that'd be fishy.
Phase lance is 100% wrong while 53K for autolances is a lot, but not unfeasible depending on your fleet.
I did notice burst beams being off, but continuous seems to be pretty close. 8K on mining lasers is also out there though, I'm spamming them but literally never seen them do so much in >100 huge battles.


Stats are a tangent though, autolances do pass the eye test. Definitely kill hull faster than other non-torpedo weapons, but then again that's the ~only thing they can be used for.
Executor/Sunder/Eagle turns them on, things die very fast.

8
General Discussion / Re: do you unironically use DEM missiles?
« on: March 17, 2024, 02:09:57 PM »
...
I disagree with basically everything beyond the Odyssey being able to back away and this is a DEM topic anyway, dropping this beyond 1 note.

1250 post shield net.
...
But post shield dissipation this is 680 dissipation…so the Odyssey is dissipating double the real effective dissipation.
Even if you ignore that on Astral stabilised is even good enough for an smod, and Odyssey needs a minimum of 1650 flux/s to do damage:
680/0.6 = ~1133 effective dissipation compared to Odyssey.

9
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 17, 2024, 01:51:24 PM »
I think people are making more general statements that you can't always trust the raw damage numbers, which is especially true when it comes to shield damage.
I understand they are making more general statements, I just don't think those are useful in any way here.
It's also a little insulting to assume that people bothering to post stats only use stats to evaluate performance.

10
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 17, 2024, 01:23:59 PM »
I think the effect is on shield damage. High range beams will often fire before the enemies they are hitting are able to fire themselves. As a result this will tick up shield damage but that shield damage will be swiftly dissipated away. So there are going to be a lot of instances where a Sunder will be ticking up 450+ shield dmg/second but like… actually doing nothing*.
Yeah, but for Sunder with HIL/autolance you literally don't even look at shield damage.
It doesn't matter, the job is to kill hull fast with whatever armor is protecting it.

After all, weapons that deal less damage could be doing less damage, cause they actually kill their target.
So any time someone posts Detailed Combat Results, I take it with a grain of salt.
Ok, what's the best way to actually kill a target quickly? :)
The underlying assumption here is people understanding that for a high burst, hull-only weapon the hull damage done stats are a pretty good indicator of usefulness.
"stats aren't the full story" is pointless navel-gazing in this context. Stats are just reinforcing what anybody with eyes should see in battles anyway.

11
General Discussion / Re: do you unironically use DEM missiles?
« on: March 17, 2024, 12:52:37 PM »
And it is true, DEMs are much more effective in a missile saturated fleet than not.  But this is true basically for all missiles, since you need to overwhelm the opposing line's point defense to land non-DEM missiles.  A single Harpoon pod or Typhoon Launcher is not likely to overwhelm a typical Remnant cruiser's PD, while a set of 4 or 8 is going to land some hits.  A full fleet of Gryphons and Conquests spamming Squalls and Harpoons will overwhelm and destroy an Ordo in short order, as their PD simply can't keep up.  Every missile past saturation is a free hit and a fully missile loaded fleet can easily mix missiles to cover each other's weakness.  Squalls and Harpoons or Squalls and Hurricanes can be an effective mixed damage type long range volley of missiles from a missile specialized fleet.

Also, in regards to the extra shots of the Reaper launcher compared to the Dragonfire, how often do you actually run out in actual play?  If you're not running out of Reapers, what are the extra shots actually doing for you?  Is a Typhoon launcher 6 shots for 10 OP, or is it more like 2 or 3 for 10 OP in AI hands?  Especially once Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization come into play.
Been using Dragonfires quite a lot this version, they are just too slow to be practical in any fleet I've used.
Too much time passes between missile launch and payload triggering, so even if it's not shot down it often wastes the charge on something that's already dead (sometimes literally).
Paired with the low base ammo it doesn't feel good compared to the alternatives (Mirv, or Cyclone in direct fire mounts).

Typhoon often doesn't use up all ammo (0.97 seems to be much more conservative with it), but 2 shots on M Dragonfire for 12 is really low.
Typhoon can easily skip racks and/or skill while still getting work done, that's a big advantage.

Ammo could be fine IMO, taking so damn long to do damage after launch is the main thing holding dragonfire back.

1) The Odysseys shield is very good. It’s only worse than the Astral if the Astral is fit exceptionally weirdly.
Why?
Astral shields has 33% better effective health and same regen out of the box.
Every point in caps/vents helps it much more, OE helps it much more, doesn't need lots of venting to do damage.
Astral should ~always have better shields, being weaker than Odyssey is the exceptionally weird case.

12
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 17, 2024, 09:18:00 AM »
Since this has turned kind of into a weapon balance thread, I'm going to throw out a hot take: I think the IR autolance is actually slightly overtuned right now! Gravitons are in a good place for what they are, but that hull melting, intelligent AI, instant hit blamo is just really good.
They do feel to be on the very strong side, but I think this is the good kind of weapon to give slightly more power to.
Does nothing by itself, needs other weapons to do lots of the heavy lifting but it's also strong enough to be worth trading generalists for.
Low OP/very low flux use means it can fit into many different loadouts.
It's also unique in that it acts as a decent missile substitute (low flux, high burst damage), really shakes up what you can do with M energies.

It is noticeably stronger when the ammo/beam hullmod cost can be spread over multiple mounts, specialist beam artillery feels very strong.
As before though: specialist beam artillery by itself isn't very good, needing to combine ships with different roles is an interesting part of the game IMO.
(and I just enjoy that the AI can finally use something exactly as it should be used)

Even hotter take: The IR Autolance + smodded Expanded Magazines is in a pretty decent spot, but Detailed Combat Results' buggy reporting of beam damage (usually inflating beam damage) makes people think it's better than it actually is.
There are minor inaccuracies, but never noticed continuous beams being overreported.
(Tach and Dragonfire do have noticeable swings)

3 alpha Radiant kills with HIL/autolance, 19947, 20364 and 18868 hull damage reported:
Spoiler


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Gigacannon/pulse, 21861, 20031 and 20327:
Spoiler


[close]
That's 20K hull at 100%, if anything beams seem to be underreported after a few very limited tests.

13
Suggestions / Re: An "always autofire" toggle for weapon groups
« on: March 14, 2024, 07:04:50 PM »
The downside is - it's across the board, so there isn't much of a functional change here, except that ships get "better" at fighting, closer to optimal behavior (though of course still fairly far from it in most cases). Which - assuming the implementation was at least halfway successful at making ship AI stronger - narrows the margin by which the player can outplay the AI. Not saying that's a reason not to do it, but it's something to keep an eye on; if the game had perfect AI, flying a ship would be miserable.
IMO  there is plenty of room for propping the AI up with some guidance here and there (both enemies and friendlies).
The player can have a significant hardware advantage, piloting agile high impact ships with burst weapons is very strong.
Just flying around in something with a strong defense+mobility combination can already give your ships easy pickoffs.

If nothing else, AI variants could use this hint sparingly or as a double-edged sword.
Setting a few too many weapons on full auto could make them more immediately dangerous, but also easier to get into a bad position.

Overall I feel there are many ways a player pilot can "break" the game even without the big guns(Zigg, Doom, Radiant, Afflictor, ...), making AI slightly more intelligent wouldn't be too much.

14
General Discussion / Re: Prometheus mights need a nerf.
« on: March 13, 2024, 04:44:45 AM »
I don't see how this is significantly better than just bringing a proper capital ship or two with a destroyer escort; they tend to have credible long range firepower as well. what makes 200 DP of escort package destroyers better than 240 DP of e.g. conquests and escort package destroyers? i have no doubt it can work just fine, but where's the problem?
Same here, it's cheap but it also doesn't do much so don't think it's very strong.
Massive, clumsy target with bad shields and medium hull (cruiser level but a big chunk of hull durability comes from officers and Prometheus definitely isn't worth one).

on paper... A 10 DP Hammerhead dies after 0.00001 seconds of trying to hold a line against a Radiant. A Prometheus??? I dunno... 20 seconds? A high estimate. Unless Cyclones land... Maybe it's not that bad. I mean, Reapers exist solely to blow up this kind of garbage out of orbit. The thing is costs... Paying 10 DP for 1700 armour, 10k hull durability and on top of that it doesn't count towards the leadership skills cuz of civ-grade hull.
Hammerhead is a smaller, agile target that also has better shields with a few caps and escort package.
Prometheus hull can take quite a few hits ofc, but in plenty of situations Hammerhead will draw more fire before dying.
If it wasn't moving forward when Radiant jumps it can easily survive by moving behind allies, Prometheus generally won't. (autopulse variant with reapers instantly kills both ofc, harder to hit Hammerhead with reapers though)

Update:
I am not saying that it's an optimal build, just pointing a fact, that this supposedly pure civilian tanker that i managed to unironicaly use in Remnant fights and win.
That's a good thing IMO, being able to do something new just adds more ways to play.
Doesn't seem overpowered to me, and having the option for your logistics ships to help out in combat in lean fleets could be interesting.

15
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 12, 2024, 12:31:37 PM »
Actually missing the Plasma cannon.
Did mention it, graph was just meant to demonstrate the difference for ~comparable weapons.
Plasma is significantly more expensive(OP and flux) and shorter ranged, Devastator does maybe 1/4 its nominal DPS at long range and it's all spread out, Hellbore has very noticeable hitrate and spread problems.
All can be good candidates, but IMO HIL and Heph are generally the best weapons at their ranges. Exact position doesn't even matter, Heph is certainly top 3 so not "tickling".

You're missing the actual number one non-missile anti-armor weapon: the Tachyon Lance. Now, the TL does come with some caveats: the AI has trouble aiming it when it's in a turret, and if you're fighting an Invictus or similar super-armored mod ships, then the HIL will (eventually) pull ahead. But the Tachyon Lance otherwise outperforms all the competition.
I can see how it can be close to Heph, but HIL is in a league of its own. I already liked it more than tach at 500 flux/s, for 20 OP and 400 flux vs 25 and 462 it's a steal.
Executor, Sunder and Odyssey all do significantly higher damage with HIL. For Paragon Tachyon usually does better, can focus lots of them at very long range for sniping or just have something bursty to help plasmas.
That's under AI control, player can utilize Tach better but player can also use the much higher DPS of the HIL (and the extra flux/OP in other weapons) better.
(And even in those cases, I personally would rather use a TL for my anti-armor; the mass EMP is very helpful for actual-in-practice kill times by shutting down enemy weapons and letting you actually just sit there and fire without having to back off.)
Having a cooldown on your main weapon is also a downside (IMO a pretty big one, beyond downtime AI also seems to have a hardon for turning while firing Tach).
Always being ready to do a bunch of HE damage is very helpful, especially when packing lots of kinetic.

Remember that the tachlance has a bunch of scripted damage, iirc it works out to around 1/3rd extra. (Aside: maybe this should be specified in customPrimary)
Huh, thought the arcing damage only applies when hitting shields.
Neat.

Tested the HAG against the same 1k armor block since that's the thread topic: 6 seconds of fire was ~1426 armor damage and ~400 hull (significantly worse than HIL as expected!). Shot spread wasn't too bad (as evidenced by the low overkill), tested at near max range with ITU and Armored Weapon Mounts (but no gunnery implants).
One thing I always like to emphasize is that ballistics get elite ballistic mastery for higher range, damage, hit strength AND hitrate.
It's a massive upgrade.

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