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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - mvp7

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1
General Discussion / Re: What's AI good and bad at?
« on: October 02, 2019, 01:35:25 PM »
The AI is insanely good at micromanaging shields. When receiving fire from a single enemy ship it will sometimes cherry pick HE projectiles in middle of the salvo while letting kinetic projectiles hit the armour. A ship with omni-shield can POP several missiles in a fraction of second by turning the shield on just for an instant to receive the impact.

Of course there are also moment where the AI will systematically fail to use its shields effectively and when facing fire from multiple opponents its much more likely to make mistakes (although missiles still rarely get through shields if the AI has flux left). I think it would be nice if the AI was a bit more unpredictable and prone to "human error" when it comes to stuff like this.

The biggest weakness of the AI in my opinion is the inability to recognize good opportunities for damaging and finishing opponents. The AI will often reverse away from an enemy that is venting flux or near flux cap even when they have good flux situation or missiles and finishing the opponent would have been a trivial matter.

Overall I think the AI is very good and fairly natural as it is. Predictability aka lack of random errors and some systematic errors are its biggest weakness.

2
Suggestions / Re: Going dark should require a double press if your IFF is on
« on: September 26, 2019, 11:47:28 AM »
There's no gameplay reason to use transponder in hyperspace but turning it off isn't really a standard procedure lore-wise. By default transponder is supposed to be on at all times. At very least an option to automatically turn it off should be optional.

3
Suggestions / Re: Targeting Behavior Mod
« on: September 26, 2019, 11:30:42 AM »
Yeah, it would be really nice if there was some basic options for prioritizing and ignoring target types for autofiring weapon groups.

In the refit screen every weapon group could have 3 target types under it: Ships (meaning everything from frigate to capital, maybe even one for each size), Fighters (fighters and bombers) and Missiles.

For each target type one of four options could be selected: Normal priority (default), High priority, Low priority and Ignore.

The ship would choose the highest priority target in range and completely ignore types that it has been set to ignore. This way you could make point defense weapon group target missiles first, fighters second and not shoot at large ships (to avoid wasting 0-flux boost pointlessly), or make a Phase Lance weapon group ignore fighters (and missiles if point defense AI is installed) to not waste flux on the small fry.

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4
Suggestions / Re: Going dark should require a double press if your IFF is on
« on: September 26, 2019, 10:56:25 AM »
It would be nice if going dark required double press. It makes the transponder double check kinda pointless when you can make the exact same mistake with single press of going dark.

@Agile, Why should the transponder turn off automatically when jumping out of system?

5
Suggestions / Re: We need some repairing modules for armor and hull.
« on: September 26, 2019, 10:51:59 AM »
That build is very shields focused. What kind of Onslaught builds are you comparing it to?

6
Suggestions / Re: Was reading the old State of Affairs post...
« on: September 26, 2019, 07:06:08 AM »
Maybe they were scrapped and replaced by the Sindrian Diktat in the lore.

7
Suggestions / Re: We need some repairing modules for armor and hull.
« on: September 26, 2019, 06:59:22 AM »
Regarding the main topic of mid-battle repairs: I don't think having such a mechanic would necessarily be a problem but I also don't think it's necessary.

Both Paragon and Onslaught can use shields to defend themselves, the Paragon is just much better at this. Paragon's offense is very much limited by its defense while Onslaught can better trade defense for offence without being obliterated in seconds. Paragon can restore and maintain more of it's defense than Onslaught but Onslaught can survive relatively larger amount of damage while still committing all of its flux to offence. Shields use flux that can be regenerated indefinitely but armor still reduces damage of all weapons types even after it has been stripped away.

If armor could be repaired then the question is how would it work? If it was really slow and passive it would have little effect on the battle. If it was relatively fast and passive it would work outside the flux mechanics. If it was fast and used flux then how would it really differ from shields? Would the mid-battle repairs have no supply-cost? If so, this would encourage unnecessarily prolonging battles just to repair as much of the armor for free as possible.

One interesting option could be a specialized ship like the Celestra from Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. It can add applique plating on top of other ships' normal armour whether that armor is damaged or not. The applique armor only lasts during the battle and has no effect on the post battle repair cost of the normal ship armor. The maximum amount of applique armor is limited and fixed so it can be used to further beef up an important area or to add some small level of protection to exposed hull.

8
Suggestions / Re: We need some repairing modules for armor and hull.
« on: September 26, 2019, 06:22:07 AM »
Paragon is more expensive to purchase, maintain and deploy so one would expect it to perform better than Onslaught. Personally I'd still take 3 Onslaughts over 2 Paragons any time.

With right hull-mods and skills an Onslaught can choose to armor tank a lot of damage and use its full flux for firepower. Paragon doesn't really have to durability to rely on armor even for a short period and is more flux sensitive. Venting Paragon is also much easier to take down quickly than a venting Onslaught.

Post battle the free-repair skills will greatly reduce the supply cost of returning an Onslaught to full readiness.

edit. My Onslaughts have never suffered hull damage and rarely even significant armour damage even when fighting against overwhelming capital spam fleet stacks. I don't think the cost of damage they typically take in really bad situation is much worse than a Paragon would suffer in similar situation.

9
I couldn't possibly tell you where those people actually came from.

I think it's implied there is a considerable vagabond or transient population throughout the sector. Also including the unlucky sods who still live on the de-civilised worlds.

That would mean that only  about 2-4% of the total sector population is living in the colonies at the start of the game and that all the rest have moved into the size 10 colony if such exists...

10
General Discussion / Re: Which ships need more OPs?
« on: September 23, 2019, 01:01:37 PM »
Take sim Condor with Talons as example: Hammerhead can win on autopilot with moderate armor damage using standard build. Medusa needs either SO (and takes tons of damage) or specialized anti-fighter build (extended, accelerated, front-conversion) that isn't good against other ships.
Medusa may be better at surviving single overwhelming bomber strike (if it reserved skimmer charges, which AI often doesn't), but that's about it.

I ran the sim and it took my Medusa about 90 seconds to destroy the Condor with Talons and it took less than 5% hull damage in the process. The second run took longer and the Medusa suffered almost 50% hull damage. My Hammerhead build with Heavy Armor did much better which is unsurprising considering fighters are pretty much the only thing that armour is really good against.

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11
General Discussion / Re: Which ships need more OPs?
« on: September 23, 2019, 08:15:06 AM »
Legion, especially the XIV variant can be equipped as battleship first and a carrier second and it will perform great in fleet combat setting. In most other cases it makes more sense to invest highly to fighters/bombers and leave weapon capacity to minimum but I don't think there's any sensible way to avoid that being the best approach.

If the ship could be both a great carrier and battleship at the same time it would be almost unavoidably overpowered. If you consider the history of real world carriers they quickly evolved into dedicated aircraft serving role with only defensive weaponry. Apart from some seaplanes/helicopters on smaller ships that are meant for recon and utility, carrier-battleship hybrids never really became a thing.

12
Suggestions / Re: Resource management sucks
« on: September 22, 2019, 07:26:56 AM »
All anyone needs to haul around in cargo space is Supply and, to lesser extent, Machinery. Everything else is completely optional or uses its own storage space.

From cargo point of view, it doesn't matter at all whether there's 1 or 100 types of commodities. All that matters is value per storage unit. Chances are that if there were less types of commodities, they would have lower value per unit than current top commodities, which practically means less space for loot. Total volume of commodities involved in trading and other activities would also likely be the same as it is now.

I really don't think the current amount of resources in the game is at all confusing or unnecessary. Some are fairly redundant at the moment because refining, light industry and heavy industry produce the same relative amounts of products. However I imagine this is something that will be fleshed out as the lend-game is developed beyond the current placeholder state.

13
Suggestions / Re: What if planet industry is a soft limit?
« on: September 22, 2019, 06:59:52 AM »
Considering how the in-faction demand works, I don't think there would be situations where the additional industry would offer any net benefit. I can't think of any situation where the fifth industry would be vital for anything.

14
General Discussion / Re: Take a rep hit for too much cargo!
« on: September 21, 2019, 12:01:52 PM »
There would be pretty much zero consequences for blatant use of black market if being caught with massive amount of goods purchased illegally did nothing.

15
It is a bit confusing how permanent pirate stations use the same planetary mechanics as settled planets instead of random pirate/luddic stations that don't need saturation bombardment to eradicate.

I imagine the gameplay reason for the relationship hit is to make it a bit harder to destroy the permanent pirate settlements entirely. Technical reason for the confusing bombardment after the station has already been blown up is that every station is technically child of parent planet even though in some cases there is no actual visible parent planet and random pirate/luddic stations skip the bombardment dialog entirely.

Maybe there could be clearly distinguishable orbital habitat models for all permanent stations that are just protected by the battlestation that needs to be destroyed before the habitat is bombarded?

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