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Messages - Null Ganymede

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1
General Discussion / Re: Nexerelin's Star Wars
« on: September 21, 2022, 10:12:10 PM »
Being a fly on the wall of awesome invasion fleets fighting back and forth is great. That's without even touching the invasion ground game!

2
Heron is one that needs a buff, namely getting the same +10 OP buff Mora got.
Heron's not forced into a high risk brawl by its ship system. It's fine.

Heron can be a dedicated high-cost wing platform. Or it can cheap out on wings but become a PD/zone control beam disco ball, especially since carrier officers really want that elite PD skill anyway. It doesn't have the mounts or ship system for brawling unless it's some temporary meme SO flagship setup.

Mora's a decent 3-wing missile boat, or a close-in brawling wrecking ball. The latter needs all the OP it can get.

3
General Discussion / Re: first colony (optimal)
« on: August 07, 2022, 01:09:29 AM »
Free port is amazing. Don't use "use stockpiles during shortages" though.

4
General Discussion / Does anyone miss gas cloud combat terrain?
« on: August 06, 2022, 08:21:04 AM »
Used to be if you fought inside blue clouds you'd get scattered clouds to fight in. They would slow ships a bit and let you wrangle Pathers while outnumbered or push frigates into them while chasing with a destroyer.

It was definitely something players could exploit but AI couldn't, but was also relatively minor and easy to ignore. Objectives (except modded ones) and asteroid fields don't quite bring the same Total War feel.

5
General Discussion / Re: first colony (optimal)
« on: August 06, 2022, 04:04:44 AM »
Unless your rush to colonize is gated by crew capacity and available credits, in which case you're "paying" a 300 credit opportunity cost but don't actually care. (Especially since early game wolfpacks are supply-positive so supplies/machinery likely came from combat...)

6
General Discussion / Re: first colony (optimal)
« on: August 06, 2022, 02:03:20 AM »
Early Waystation next to starving Pather world is clever!

It sounds like "optimal" means "early" without being a credit sink. You want to start growth ASAP, but also want to keep industry options open pending blueprint and item finds.

Options for this range from 100% reliable to somewhat random:
  • faction commission + colonize nicest things in their space: worth sorting planets by class early and seeing who's got spare Class Vs
  • Freeport + story point spend on accessibility improvements can dodge Hazard Pay while maintaining good growth
  • Waystation moneymaker near a starving pather/pirate base (needs anti-bombardment defense fleet)
  • academy mission chain consistently takes you to high-value worlds
  • scan missions for Research Stations and Domain-Era Survey Ships can seed item drops that determine what you want to colonize, same for habitable planet survey missions
Cheap industries like mining or farming pay for their construction in a cycle (?) or so. Moneymaker like refining, fuel, and drugs kind of need high accessibility/stability and a powerful fleet first. Plus their cost is high enough to want a full chain for that 50% price drop reduction...

Is it possible to simplify colony choices to the payback period relative to their cost? e.g. "don't Megaport your size 3 colony for growth, wait until it's a size 4 with Refining+Fuelprod".

Base price in credits is ~50k crew ~20k supplies ~15k machinery plus a Nebula or something to bump your fleet up to 1k crew. Saving on base price here and there and using supplies from combat drops you can get it below 50k a planet.

Viewed that way optimal strategy is to go wide (many small bets) on colonization the moment you can spare 50k, then go tall (one or two massive investments) much later and let things de-colonize.

edit: does anyone actually drop colonies + tech mines on every good ruin they find, as the game kind of suggests you do?

7
Ridiculously stylish mod.

Garegga has a fun interaction with elite PD skill since the arms are PD weapons. You can soften stuff up from 700 range, "bounce" it off of SILVERSWORD once it gets close, then finish it safely as it retreats. Officer-intensive and not super AI friendly but extremely satisfying. The gun sounds and firing animations are amazing too.

8
General Discussion / Re: Any good guide videos?
« on: August 05, 2022, 10:27:28 AM »
Limit testing "abuse" stuff helps build a baseline.
- Gimmick fleet videos like "High Tech Best Tech" or "Saturated Ordnance" show fleet compositions that are better than the sum of their parts. Same for anything involving Monitors, though, meh, Monitors.
- Gimmick flagship videos like "VERY fast Conquest travelling at incredibly hihg speed" or any of the Shade/Harbinger/Doom/Gryphon/Excelsior videos soloing the sector show ships that scale extremely well with player skills.

You probably won't run into the same exact conditions in your games, but spotting flagship-bait ship designs and thinking how to abuse what you've got to not go broke will be useful.

9
General Discussion / Re: Any good guide videos?
« on: August 05, 2022, 06:49:31 AM »
There's so many viable options it's kind of overwhelming, especially taking (even well-balanced!) mods into account.

The various Tournaments (PvP and AI) are worth looking through if you're playing a faction. See what people abused, see what doctrines they adopted, see how different ships played off each other.

10
General Discussion / Re: Coronal Hypershunt guardians early
« on: August 03, 2022, 02:35:07 AM »
Stuff like this should really go into a "stupid dwarf trick" wiki page or megathread. It and min-maxing fleet outmatch via unassigned officers + degunned civilian ships are too niche to really be broken but amazingly nifty.

11
General Discussion / Re: Coronal Hypershunt guardians early
« on: August 02, 2022, 07:18:22 PM »
Wait, could you mothball or scuttle your salvage ships to change the loot RNG?
n e a t

12
General Discussion / Re: Coronal Hypershunt guardians early
« on: August 02, 2022, 02:03:30 AM »
Dude in Discord soloed them with a hulltanked amb Doom. Think it was a max level character though.

13
General Discussion / Re: 3 years since the Sseth video
« on: August 02, 2022, 01:55:12 AM »
Normally niche e-celebs are pretty cringe outside their niche.

But uh. Sseth's shtick suits the Collapse.

14
General Discussion / Re: Vigilance is bad
« on: July 28, 2022, 08:44:58 PM »
Okay but if you use 2x neural linked ones as flagships you can hop between them to constantly reset the ship system. That lets you magdump 2x slow-reload medium launchers (Pilums/Hurricane MIRVs in vanilla, lot of MRM/LRM options in mods) almost as fast as they can fire!

... but you're right

15
General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« on: July 28, 2022, 08:34:06 PM »
"video"
here
[close]
In a thread heavy on vibes and opinions, here's a post with (1) a concrete fit (2) definition of combined-arms fleet role (3) video evidence of AI-friendliness.

In a fleet with bombers and MRMs that fit's a killer front line hammer. Add officer and kinetic+EMP will go brrrrrr.

Gold standard for ship balance discussion imo.

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