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Topics - Kaucukovnik

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Modding / Superfreighters
« on: November 29, 2016, 03:38:27 AM »
With multiple mods installed, capital-sized freighters feel rather underwhelming. The only reason to use them appears to be the arbitrary 25 ship limit. Their maint&fuel/capacity ratio is inferior to smaller freighter ships, capacity hullmods give pitiful bonus considering their base capacity and OP costs and your entire fleet's speed goes down. If you want to keep your speed up, you can get some tugs, which renders the "fewer ships" point moot.

Furthermore, many big cargo ships also want to be somewhat combat-capable, which is then being offset by turning their maintenance cost and/or fuel consumption up to eleven. This would work a lot better if you couldn't just exclude parts of your fleet from battle most of the time and always had to think about their defenses.

I have noticed this tendency in several mods. Blackrock's Eschaton  carries much less than Atlas, has more than twice the maint cost and consumes just as much fuel. Same for the Imperial Barrus class, at least that one is a bit faster.
On the other hand ASP's Gigantophis is a beast, 750 cargo + flight decks and enough OP for okay weapons, you can have over 2000 cargo plus 6 flight decks for less than Atlas' fuel consumption. Dassault-Mikoyan cargo ships  are very efficient, especially as dedicated haulers with capacity hullmods.

If large freighters are less efficient, why would anyone even construct them? Is the fleet size limit an in-universe phenomena that affects space logistics?

2
Modding / Biomechanoids (WIP)
« on: November 24, 2016, 01:52:39 AM »
Decided to stop spamming the spriting thread and make my own, since this seems to be actually going somewhere.

Biomechanoids so far:

Despair destroyer, Lilith phase cruiser, Baphomet command cruiser, Cocytus battle carrier
No edge cleanup yet for the latest ones, so black background is better for now.

I'm not sure about the edited tachyon lance on Lilith and I will eventually make custom weapon mounts for these ships, as was suggested.
For now I'm putting those aside to continue making more and will come back with a bit more fresh eyes and hopefully also comments from you guys.

3
That's my only nitpick when it comes to user interface.

And maybe a little wider scrolbar?

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General Discussion / Shields - how to overwhelm them?
« on: November 20, 2016, 01:55:25 AM »
In a pinch the AI is very good at soaking every kind of damage the most efficient way, and it always seems to have that bit of flux breathing space left to flicker its shield on for every single hit of my intended armor and hull killers.
Then I back off to the edge of my weapon range, and the AI suddenly turns its shield off, taking several massive hits before turning it on again. This especially happens in 1v1 simulations, which tends to make them kinda useless.
I particularly like reactions to asteroids. "CRASH - Oh an asteroid, shields on! Path clear, shields off....CRACK - Goddammit, another asteroid, shields on..."
On the other hand, I love how AI ships protect each other by throwing their shielded selves in the line of fire for a moment. Sometimes a tiny frigate sacrifices itself in vain, but most of the time it works and it gives the fleet operations so much more life.

To the point: dedicated anti-armor and especially anti-hull weapons pale next to shield killers. If a ship is already taking hull damage, it is doomed most of the time anyway. Armor and hull are finite resources, if you are consistently able to nibble at enemy armor and they aren't capable of that, you are winning. Dedicated armor-destructors may make this faster, but also less reliable. And if you are just scratching their armor, chances are that weaker anti-shield weaponry will make those scratches even less likely. And if you are already destroying them, do you really need that happening faster?
Missiles are completely hopeless, as they face PDs in addition to shields, and surrounding hostile ships can help your target with that as well. Bombers can deal some serious damage if they happen to hit an unshielded side, and that is entirely up to them right now.

The best way seem to be sustained fire to spread damage evenly over time, so that the target simply has to take your payload exactly as you composed it without picking what to block with shields and what is better soaked by armor. Burst fire ballistic weapons are okay too, as they are able to clear the last bits of shielding for themselves.

I do like the fact that the AI can use the mechanics well, but it renders a minority of weapons superior and far easier to use regardless of circumstances. "I'll just point my tachyon lance(s) at it until it explodes."

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