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Messages - bowman

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Suggestions / Alpha Core Admins

« on: February 26, 2024, 07:10:38 PM »

Alpha core administrators should slowly (over 5-10 Cycles) siphon more and more funds/production from the colony output towards funding the AI war machine against humanity. It'd be perfect if it was slow enough that the player would genuinely not even notice until Things happened- befitting of the Alpha-core's lore for plainly being more intelligent than any human.

I'm reminded of a clip I saw for one of Endless Space 2's DLC factions who exist in cyberspace and siphon funds from other factions- the tooltip of which is randomly pulled from a list. One of the most amusing of these is the "Craver Pension Fund" where Cravers in that universe are effectively the zerg (in that they consume everything and there's not really any diplomacy to be had). Doing something similar in the detailed tooltip for the planetary costs would be ideal, though as for what it would actually say I imagine David would have some good ideas.

This could likely be tied into the Hostile Activity system already: Alpha-cored planets would have an increasing risk of a remnant saturation bombardment fleet attacking them in the same way they do so for settlements in beacon systems. The hyperspace journey and production of such fleets would be funded by the goods siphoned from your own colony, with the chance of the event proportional to the amount of goods siphoned in some way. In order to prevent this from becoming a chore with many planets using AI admins, I'd just sum it all just as HA does for other effects and have an attack on any one of the planets being successfully defended solve the fund siphoning on all planets (until a few years have passed again).

Bug Reports & Support / [0.97a-RC11] Unfilled "$market" line & Shrine tag resetting

« on: February 22, 2024, 09:18:23 PM »

Hovering over the local Storage tab in the fleet menu for my owned planet, the description states "Storage space for ships and cargo. $market is under your control, and there are no storage fees or expenses."

Obviously, $market should be filling with the name of the planet.

While I'm here I'll also mention that the Luddic Shrine visitation for Volturn seems to reset the tag for visiting it every time you leave. If you visit the shrine, close the planet window, and then re-interact with the planet you'll be able to visit the shrine again- though only in so far as you can go light the candle again. You'll still keep the quest progression and won't repeat the dialog with the shrine keeper. This seems like it could easily be intentional but just as easily be unintentional (although I vaguely recall this happening when it was first added so maybe it's intentional and I've simply forgotten).

I am playing modded, but I don't believe anything should be affecting either of these. (Console commands, a custom mod which adds ship names, another custom mod that edits some vanilla ship values, detailed battle stats, the various library mods, SpeedUp, Automated Commands, and Ship Direction Marker). It is perhaps notable that the last two are fairly outdated but they Just Work(tm) and haven't caused any visible issues so far.

Suggestions / Re: More new phase ships please

« on: February 14, 2024, 12:00:31 AM »

I've thought for a bit now that Remnants should have a (or even multiple) phase-capable vessels for their fleets. I agree with the desire for more brawling-capable phase ships.

Suggestions / Option to Toggle Follow Mouse

« on: February 10, 2024, 05:22:08 PM »

It'd be nice to be able to toggle following mouse instead of having to hold down M1 while in campaign view, in fact I'd argue it'd probably make more sense to be the default and have M1 make it stop following since you spend much more time moving around than you do aiming at things. I can probably use mousekeys to do this (as I do in minecraft nowadays), but it's a bit more convenient if it's just built-in and bindable.

Nice for anyone who is feeling years of gaming catch up to them in their joints.

General Discussion / Re: When is Shield Shunt worth it?

« on: August 04, 2023, 02:30:08 AM »

onslaught, dominator, mora

Can't think of any others I specifically shield shunt off the top of my head but it's been a few months since my last campaign again. It's definitely a good hullmod tho, even after it was nerfed (and before it got the s-mod bonus).

As others have pointed out, part of its strength lies in not having shield flux be a concern. In particular, it makes the ship literally incapable of overloading (with the specific exception I guess of the Harbinger's special). As such, you just design the ship around dissipating exactly as much as the guns produce and arm it to the teeth. You can even undergun the dissipation and just treat it as burst windows since you don't have to worry about it overloading itself on accident.

Polarized armor is a massive skill for its use in a fleet setting, though. If you're going to run it it is a night and day difference in my experience. (Along with all the other armor skills, for that matter). I've ran fleets that are more unshielded than shielded against ordos, you've just got to be careful of HILs.

Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Adjustable Skill Thresholds 1.2.0

« on: May 13, 2023, 09:48:01 AM »

Quote from: Djin on May 12, 2023, 08:05:16 PM

When I try to run this I get error: this mod requires a different version of the game.

It does not let me toggle it on. the client is 0.96a-RC8.

That's a safety feature of the game. Just edit the modinfo file's required game version, it just takes notepad.

General Discussion / Re: Perdition lpc is never relevant

« on: May 12, 2023, 10:20:04 PM »

The raw hit strength of the missiles combined with their speed makes them very good imo. Khopesh have been relatively worthless for a while now because there's no way to increase hit strength vs high-ranking AI captains (which have significant reductions from skills).

You can easily acquire perditions from CGR planets (and prob LP) at any stage of the game. Benefit of daggers is obviously the tracking, but benefit of perditions is higher total dmg + hit strength. I'm not sure on the exact missile stats but I'd also bet hammers have higher missile HP than atropos do, making them both faster (for passing through PD coverage) and more resistant to the PD itself.

tl;dr I've found perditions quite useful

General Discussion / Re: Built Heavy Industry, my fleets still have garbage ships.

« on: May 12, 2023, 10:12:23 PM »

Prioritizing doesn't change quality (in terms of dmods) it just makes the fleets that are generated favor certain blueprints. This matters because there's some level of simulation for patrol fleets fighting hostiles (and also if you're ever defending in-system, you'll have them as allies if they're near enough to the battle). Notably as well, if I'm not losing it and remembering wrongly, they will also use the variants you save (though mixed with the existing variants for the hull).

Anyway, back to the main point, the average dmods for a produced ship is show on the top-middle ish of the colony display, next to the stability (the white/red vertical bars). Hover over that at the tooltip will explain some as well.

Suggestions / Alter Derelict CR Stats

« on: May 10, 2023, 01:34:16 AM »

In recognition of the glory that is Rugged Construction now (? I think this is from this patch but really it all blends together now) halving repair + deploy supply costs, it would be nice if derelict drones also played into how the CR mechanic exactly works in regards to supplies.

If we look at the Defender-class derelict frigate, it costs 3 DP and nominally 3 supplies to deploy. With Rugged Construction, this becomes 1.5* supplies and the same 3 DP to deploy. However, it has 5% CR per deployment and 5% CR recovery per day. This translates to a full (though of course we're generally not at 100%, but I digress) CR bar consuming 60 supplies. Now, this is also halved, as mentioned, by Rugged Construction: so it only really consumes 30. This would be fine but 30 supplies to fill the CR of a ship that won't survive to use that CR is a significant waste. (It really dies every battle in my experience)
I suggest changing its CR per deploy and CR recovery rates to something crazy like 35/35 or 50/50. That's because the math would work out for repair to cost only 3 (for 35/35) supplies in that case, which would make the full deploy cost 5 supplies compared to Vanguard's 3. What this would do is keep it at the same combat power but make it cost nearly nothing to repair. Now, of course, this would mean you can't chain deploy them but that's totally reasonable given what they are and gives them a particularly interesting niche in the form of a sort of zombie ship, which is what derelicts feel like to me in general (in that they're this decrepit old von-neumann system that's out there building scrap ships from the broken down remains of the previous ad infinitum)

Ships this applies to:
Warden
Defender
Picket
Sentry

and to a lesser degree
Bastillon
Berserker
Rampart

While we're on the subject of derelicts, I think the Picket deserves an OP buff to 75-80, in order to broaden its builds a little. Maybe the berserker, too, but I haven't used it much. The Rampart is pretty good as-is but I wouldn't be averse to giving it 15% CR/deploy just as a little buff similar to the frigate problem, though it's pretty ok given it eats enough damage in a fight that repairing it makes it worth it, and it's a cruiser with actual firepower whereas the picket is, simply, not.

*Rounded to 2 in the display, I think, but it is actually accounted for in the total recovery cost since it goes from 60 to 30 instead of 60 to 40.

**After applying its own Rugged Construction (66 supplies nominally; 16 DP w/ rugged and 12% CR/dep -> 8 supplies/dep and 8.33 deploys per 100% CR

Edited to update the affected vessels list (I missed a couple frigates; spotted them when I was making a custom mod to play around with these changes myself). Really appreciate Rugged Construction, especially for the Vanguard. I think these CR stats are holdovers from when the Explorarium drones were first implemented which was many years ago now.

General Discussion / Re: Base busting builds

« on: May 06, 2023, 02:17:04 AM »

Not a build suggestion but a rule of thumb I use is to have a capital ship for every tier of station.

T1 station: 1 capital
T2: 2
T3: 3

Works pretty well, of course I also bring general supporting fleet but you can't really go wrong with it especially if you add on what others have said and get some typhoons to crack the armor. Generally having decent heavy armor break is a good move for stations because they have quite a lot of armor rating, and you can also generally sneak in AoE hits around their shields and potentially kill the sections without even overfluxing them.

Although I suppose it might be worth mentioning I've played with 1000 DP max for ages so how feasible 3 capitals + supporting fleet is in base 400 DP I'm not really sure.

General Discussion / Re: Just a little question about systems expertise.

« on: January 13, 2023, 04:12:44 PM »

It should only affect the burn drive, though I'll admit I haven't looked at the code to check if they're both tagged / tested it myself- but I'd consider it a bug if it affected the rclick damper (maybe I'm alone in that? I doubt it though).

General Discussion / Re: Pick three ship 1excellent/1enjoyable/1disapointing. and tell us why?

« on: January 10, 2023, 04:06:24 PM »

Excellent: Conquest
Conquest threads exist for a reason. Every new one that gets created shows just how many ways people equip this ship but, of course, *my* way is the *best* way

Kidding aside, it's long been my favorite ship and pretty much every playthrough eventually leads to it being my flagship.

Spoiler

The ziggurat is a blast to pilot as well, especially with some omega weapons but its entire point is being a unique insanely-powerful vessel so..

[close]

Enjoyable: Legion (both normal and XIV variant)
There's a couple ways it can be equipped and the XIV variant opens up even more possibilities. A solid fleet anchor that can strike from afar with long-range ballistics and bombers or a frontline brawler with a shunted shield and ablative armor via mining pods.

Disappointing: Harbinger (this may change a bit with next patch teaching AI how to use phase anchor tho)
Its system got nerfed pretty hard- which it decently deserved. However, the phase changes double hit this vessel and it's kind of always been a problem child. Right now it's not even close to 20 DP value.

General Discussion / Re: how to get story points

« on: December 14, 2022, 03:06:12 PM »

You get a story point every 1/4 of a level up (and continue getting them even after you hit level cap).

AKA- do things that give you a lot of XP to get story points quickly (fight hard battles).

General Discussion / Re: Legion is too underwhelming?

« on: July 01, 2022, 04:49:28 PM »

I don't remember if anyone has mentioned it yet or not so: Shield Shunt. Just as it makes the Onslaught into its namesake, it does a similar job with the Legion.

I've had pretty decent success with bombers on the Legion but I normally do 2 wings of Mining Pods and 2 wings of Perditions/Khopesh/Cobra. The mining pods act as ablative armor; replace quickly to keep up refit times on the bombers, and won't be sent out to die (ruining replacement rate). The legion can be a very aggressive missile boat as a result. It burns into an enemy, starts vomiting projectiles meanwhile the bombers start vomiting missiles (as fast as they can be armed and launched). Shield shunt makes this even better because the Legion stops caring about its flux level and just goes ham all the time.

General Discussion / Re: Eagle + HSA decent?

« on: July 01, 2022, 04:21:48 PM »

I'm surprised the Champion is faster than the Eagle at base, though given its loadout I suppose that makes some sense.

I wouldn't add a fighter wing to Eagle because I think it would make the issue even worse: the AI would then send out its fighter wing and lose zero-flux speed meaning it wouldn't even get its ballistics in range before the enemy kited away (I also don't see the removal of them on the Brilliant as a reason to add another one back- imo it's something to be avoided)

Reading through the posts and what makes the most sense to me is either move it to 20 DP or give it Energy Bolt Coherer. A last-choice option would be 5-10u of speed since I worry about broadening the gap between the conventionally "slow" cruisers and the faster ones, especially one with the weapons profile of the Eagle.

The addition of EBC is, however, a little iffy to me because it doesn't quite feel right lore/tech-wise. It's likely that I'm simply used to it not having that effect so it feels wrong.