Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

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

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - bobucles

Pages: 1 ... 23 24 [25] 26 27 ... 36
361
General Discussion / Re: How to hunt remnants?
« on: November 07, 2019, 03:57:31 AM »
Good ol Drover spam takes on 3 ordo in less time with no retreats and only 200 DP used.


I could possibly take on 5 or 6 ordo fleets with this setup if I retreat to reset the peak performance timer. That is a little cheaty in my opinion though.
It was at the point where you overloaded directly in front of a Radiant with no consequence that I realized you might be on to something.

362
Suggestions / Re: More Realistic
« on: November 05, 2019, 02:44:09 PM »
Quote
Similarly, "Nearly any enemy ship type that appears on the captain's scopes can quickly be dispatched" is vague enough that it could imply campaign sensors rather than in combat sensors, but either way it means any ship type can be destroyed without a refit, so again it kind of implies all types of fighters are present and ready to launch.
I think you'll have a harder time finding ships that can't be killed with 6 strike wings, regardless of how either side is set up. The phrasing could certainly be tuned a bit, but there is no exaggeration in stating that the Astral's strike craft capabilities are terrifyingly deadly.

363
General Discussion / Re: Make the Core Worlds Larger
« on: November 05, 2019, 10:07:23 AM »
The core world area does seem to be pretty small. How did precious ruins get spread across the sector, when the humans haven't colonized anything more than a week long trip away from their central worlds? How did this tiny dot manage to survive while everything around them is practically obliterated? It is unusual that many bounties and base destruction missions can be found in deep space, yet there's not a single planetary human habitat to be found. These confusing questions could use some lore explanation, or perhaps some tweaks to sector generation. The map doesn't necessarily have to be smothered in special locations like some kind of Elder Scroll's world map, but some more curiosities to find here and there would be neat.

364
Suggestions / Re: More Realistic
« on: November 05, 2019, 09:44:39 AM »
Quote
"a launch order of a wing of nimble interceptors, strike bombers or fighters", so it would have an equal amount of all three types and sends out only one type,
I don't understand how this is simple statement has ended up being difficult to read. Here, let's try parsing this statement again.
Quote
Nearly any enemy ship type that appears on the captain's scopes can quickly be dispatched, given just a launch order of a wing of nimble interceptors, strike bombers or fighters.
Now to apply my patented digital 5th grade filter...
Quote
"The Astral finds baddies, then hurts them with lots of tiny ships"
Is that easier to understand now?

365
Suggestions / Re: More Realistic
« on: November 04, 2019, 05:22:37 PM »
There's no need to lie and pretend the description writes something it does not. There is not mention of combination. This is what is written:
Quote
The true power of an Astral lies in its fighter craft, which give the carrier unprecedented flexibility in the battle space. Nearly any enemy ship type that appears on the captain's scopes can quickly be dispatched, given just a launch order of a wing of nimble interceptors, strike bombers or fighters.
Gameplay wise, the Astral's wing is entrely fixed and can only be set to engage or regroup. It cannot change or launch separate wings of anything, though it may have been intended that LPCs on carriers could do that.
Yes and? The only one inventing new features in the description is you. The Astral does kill ships with strike craft. That's true. Those strike craft come in 3 potential flavors. That is also true. Mixing flavors, just like with neapolitan ice cream, creates combinations. That's math 101.

 Why are you saying the Astral is supposed to hot swap fighters in battle or have squadron command powers? It doesn't say that anywhere. No ship has that ability, and none of them claim to have that ability. Stop giving them abilities they don't claim to have, and then crying foul that they don't have them.

It's probably some confusion over "dispatch" as it both means "to deploy" and "to destroy".

366
Suggestions / Re: Autofit Warnings
« on: November 04, 2019, 11:32:31 AM »
Quote
It's fine that auto-fit does basic loadouts with minimal hull mods and average weapons, but that will also result in players who depend on auto fit never learning what stronger load outs look like.
Does this ever actually happen? Is it representative of reality at all? The very first thing a player sees in the refit screen is a giant picture of their ship with tons of hard points and options to play with. Every docking port is filled with an assortment of guns and hull mods, and everywhere the player goes they find new equipment to try out. The shinies are directly in front of the player's face, they're advertised everywhere in what world is a user not going to play with them? Hard mode: Assume the player also enjoys games with customizable units.

It's only when players get confused or exhausted that they look around for the autofit button. This can naturally happen early on, when players are learning an entirely new game archetype and are flooded with a ton of information and no context to understand it. That's the part where autofit shines. Once players start learning the ropes, autofit won't help much any more. It kind of can't help the player, there's too many things to consider in ship design to boil it all down into 4 packages.

367
Suggestions / Re: More Realistic
« on: November 04, 2019, 11:23:50 AM »
Quote
Astral claims to be able to dispatch any ship with an wing, though their LPC are fixed in battle
What are you talking about?
Quote
Nearly any enemy ship type that appears on the captain's scopes can quickly be dispatched, given just a launch order of a wing of nimble interceptors, strike bombers or fighters.
Doesn't imply anything about hot swapping its LPCs in the middle of battle. It merely states the Astral can kill ships, using some combination of intys/bombers/fighters. There's nothing wrong with that statement. The Astral can definitely blow ships up using strike craft, and it can definitely be outfitted with a favorite selection of strike craft. It can even use a combination of all 3, since it has 6 flight decks to play with.

Capital ships are huge, lethal, and a force to be reckoned with. They don't just rank among the strongest ships in the entire game but they ARE the strongest ships in the game (mods notwithstanding). There's nothing wrong with describing the best ships with terms befitting the best ships.

368
Suggestions / Re: Please add high-tech freighters and tankers
« on: November 04, 2019, 10:26:14 AM »
Quote
I don't really like the idea of phase freighters. They would have to be rare,
Rarity is more a case of understanding that phase ships are very difficult and annoying class of ships to chase down. Annoying ships should at least be rewarding ships, or they'd drag down the gameplay. There's also the very contradictory nature of them high tech and purpose built for illegal operations, yet beyond the budget and tech expertise of ordinary pirates. That kind of contradiction means they wouldn't be found on public markets (why would someone advertise an illegal smuggling ship?), rare on pirate markets(probably heavily d-modded) and almost exclusively locked behind some kind of military market. The main customer for a phase freighter has a high bankroll and a need for secrecy, that's textbook military(and discerning CEO) niche.

There are any number of factors to prevent phase freighters from being a pure upgrade over ordinary freighters. The most obvious solution is cost. Up front costs aren't free, and monthly upkeep and fuel aren't free either. A trader hoping to maximize profit would not be too happy about paying more money per cargo. The player smuggler would definitely appreciate extra smuggling potential though, and they'd certainly enjoy having more shielded cargo hold options for their contraband.

369
General Discussion / Re: Mods for Nomad play style.
« on: November 04, 2019, 09:30:09 AM »
A solo ship run doesn't make sense in the context of this game. Starsector is primarily scaled around fleet battles. Even if you grab a hero ship, max out on pilot talents and dive in, you still need a supporting fleet to cover your weak points and help you win. A solo ship can only take on the smallest battles, and even with perfect invincible piloting skills you'll eventually run out of PPT and be overrun. On the campaign map you need cargo ships for supplies and fuel ships to probe deep space.

That being said, the Apogee tries to do it all. It has decent combat power, decent cargo space and good fuel range. Not a bad all in one ship, but it won't be a galaxy conquering powerhouse.

A MONO fleet makes more sense. Plenty of ships are good as a jack of all trades and can swarm to make functional, if not necessarily optimal spam fleets.

370
Suggestions / Re: Future Brawler's changes.
« on: November 03, 2019, 01:18:50 PM »
Wow, I didn't realize that salamanders were effective against some ships. I was about to throw them away entirely.

371
Suggestions / Re: Gunnery Implant - gives additional weapons groups
« on: November 03, 2019, 04:55:34 AM »
Not to mention his theory only makes categories for weapons, it doesn't change the problem of only 5 weapon groups. Sure it sounds nice on paper but you missed a ton of scenarios which would be a royal pain to implement with the primary, secondary and so on rules.
It changes the problem from tweaking the AI with weapon groups, to using weapon groups as the player convenience they should be. The player doesn't need more than 5 weapon groups to perform player actions, so there is no weapon group problem that needs solving.

Weapon groups can't even solve the problem to begin with. The weapon issue is an AI issue. You solve AI issues with AI solutions.  The AI doesn't understand player intent with weapons, and there's no clear way to define that intent. This weapon system defines broad brush attitudes towards its weapons. I stuck to AI features that are not very difficult to define, and which the game already attempts to discover on its own (sometimes failing in the process).

- Primary weapons define a very clear representation of the ship's combat range. The current AI system essentially tries to guess the combat range where a ship wants fight, and a ship with multiple weapon ranges typically causes a lot of problems for the AI. Let the player set the range. For carriers, their primary weapons tend to be strike craft. Primary weapons also help to define focus fire, all the main weapons should attempt to engage the primary target. Since primary weapons concern themselves with a ship's range and weapon arcs, they would dramatically affect how a ship chooses to move.
- Secondary weapons copy many aspects of the current AI system, I.E. what if every weapon behaved like its own weapon group and tried to be a smart weapon. There's nothing groundbreaking here, there's already a ton of rules for weapons trying to be the best they can be. The target behavior is more opportunistic, rather than actively pushing the ship into range like with primary weapons.
- The PD group basically flags a weapon as yes/no being PD, which is a behavior that already exists for PD weapons. However, sometimes you want a small weapon to be used very aggressively as well, such as PDs on a wolf or maybe you want a Dominator to get all in there. You can do that by upgrading PD to primary or secondary weapon behaviors, transforming a PD weapon into the main method of attack.
- The only feature that is really difficult to grasp is the tertiary group. It exists to classify rare, strategic power weapons that are very difficult to build an AI for. Generally it stops trying to fire the weapon as an immediate first action, trying to reserve it for a key turning point later in battle.  Torpedoes already attempt to perform this behavior, by of holding themselves until a "killing blow" opportunity shows up. The "lunging phase ship" behavior doesn't even exist, that is legitimately breaking new ground on ideas for AI behavior. That might be more of a generic phase ship issue where they don't really understand how to fight, rather than a weapon grouping issue. But if you want a ship to dunk all its reaper torpedoes in the first 10 seconds, set it as a primary weapon. Maybe that's a thing you want, just a nightmare barrage of torpedoes sounds like fun.

372
Suggestions / Re: Please add high-tech freighters and tankers
« on: November 03, 2019, 04:31:50 AM »
Even if a refueling ship is possible, the idea of grabbing a coffee while you wait for fuel to recharge sounds pretty boring. The current distress system is much nicer, since you can either recover quickly or at least get a quick painless death at the hands of pirates.

373
Suggestions / Re: Autofit Warnings
« on: November 03, 2019, 04:21:07 AM »
Giving the player the best designs wouldn't make much sense anyway, since the best things are typically hard to find. If autofit is for novice players, it makes sense for the autofit to use common, easy to find items and hull mods. Even the ITU is pushing things a bit on the high end.

374
General Discussion / Re: Where's Prometheus Mk II's bridge?
« on: November 02, 2019, 08:54:25 PM »
imagine the rumbling every time a Hellbore fires above your head.
It must be like riding a motorcycle, except in space.

375
Suggestions / Re: Please add high-tech freighters and tankers
« on: November 02, 2019, 05:13:39 PM »
Quote
A ship that slowly generates fuel on the fly.
Ships use antimatter fuel. How are they supposed to find any decent source of antimatter, other than by flying directly into a star/black hole?

Pages: 1 ... 23 24 [25] 26 27 ... 36