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Messages - bobucles

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376
Are you by chance using mods? I've noticed that certain mods push bounties farther away from the core, though for what reason I'm not sure.
I read something somewhere that missions spawn at a minimum distance from core worlds. If a mod adds in more core worlds, the viable spawn location for missions will get pushed even further out.

Larger maps also increase the area that missions can spawn. If a map has twice the length on its borders, the simple square-cube law means that 75% of randomly placed missions will fall into that new, larger area.

377
The very first missions are very far away for the naked starter fleet. You can explore worlds without needing to do the missions. There's typically a few stars mixed in the core worlds, with some loot to check out. The main bounty missions in the core worlds are the "kill x ships". The rewards for them are pretty low when compared to target bounties. The main advantage is you can usually find friendly fleets to help in the battles, or just loiter around and pick up loot from their battles. Neither method really is a match for the $50k+ bounties from doing real missions, however.

The smallest starter missions are $15k trade deals where you pick up <100 things. There's no real equivalent for exploration and combat, so trade missions are really the easiest thing to do at level 1.

378
Suggestions / Re: Gunnery Implant - gives additional weapons groups
« on: November 02, 2019, 08:01:11 AM »
Check it out, I can fix the weapon grouping AI but with only FOUR weapon groups. They aren't real weapon groups but are rather AI directives to utilize the weapons in the way you expect them to be used.

Quote
Primary weapons
are the guns that the ship is expected to use in most engagements. They define the ideal "combat range" of the craft and the AI will attempt to utilize all its primary weapons, against a main target, as part of its main attack. Short range primary weapons will force the ship into melee. This is kind of like the "weapon group" system that you have now, with all the primary guns slaved to a single goal.
Quote
Secondary weapons
are situational weapons that excel in some situations but suffer in others. The default weapon AI is to hold fire until it "seems good" to use them. The conditions are fairly broad and generous, for example kinetic weapons fire "against shields" and anti armor weapons fire "when it's cheap or when enemy shields are stressed". Secondary weapons include things like limited missile racks, inefficient guns, aggressive PD, or extreme range artillery that might fare poorly up close. For a ship with limited frontal focus, secondary weapons would attempt to hit the "best targets" around them. For something like a Conquest using a kinetic broadside/anti armor broadside, both sides might be considered secondary and it'll attempt to attack with the best side. The downside of using too many secondary weapons is the ship won't focus fire and "alpha strike" all its weapons, when primary weapons would.
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Tertiary weapons
are guns that get used in extremely rare conditions. It is fitting for 1-shots like reapers or antimatter blasters. They only shoot at a main target when a full aggression routine asks for it, such as against an overloaded ship, or for a jousting Phase ship. Generally the purpose of a tertiary weapon is to score a killing blow and is otherwise not useful in a direct slugging match. A ship with only tertiary weapons will not force itself to stay in combat range and only looks for lopsided opportunities to attack.
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Defense weapons
are almost exhaustively not used to engage larger ships. This grouping is basically for PD and they only like to target missiles/fighters. Against larger targets they will only be used opportunistically. They will not attempt to stress their own ship's flux to deal damage, except on the most aggressive settings.

379
General Discussion / Re: Mods for Nomad play style.
« on: November 02, 2019, 04:44:08 AM »
1 ship play? I think he means a mono fleet, where you only use one ship type for battle. You can go soft monofleet by allowing logistic ships on the side for extra fuel/cargo. That opens up some options to monofleet any ship with bad cargo/fuel stats. Or you can go hard monofleet and demand only one ship type ever. In that case you'd need a versatile jack of all trades like the Apogee.

Some players have done well with pure Tempest spam. It's a potent ship with good attack and PD from its drones.

380
General Discussion / Re: pilum + razorback = cheese
« on: November 01, 2019, 12:03:17 PM »
I love that this game lets players try out absurd meme strategies, and they even sometimes work.

381
Suggestions / Re: Please add high-tech freighters and tankers
« on: November 01, 2019, 08:44:15 AM »
High tech phase freighters would be more fitting of military secret operations. For example Tritachyon sends expeditions into deep space. They generally don't want to be found with a pile of precious tech, so a fleet with insulated engines and phase freighters would make sense. Any faction attempting large scale secret missions would also want some kind of stealthy marine ship, phase transports are an excellent possibility.

It's pretty much impossible to catch a phase ship in pursuit, except by chasing it until it breaks down. The closest in game option is to harry an enemy fleet, until they can't summon the CR to race away anymore. That kind of drama could be very annoying if phase freighters were abundant.

It'd make sense that phase freighters are too rare to be found as ordinary smugglers. Such a ship would only be deployed when the loot is precious and is better off hidden than announcing it with a huge fleet. This does two good things: 1) it reduces the drama associated with annoying, difficult to catch ships and 2) It means that when you do find them, they're guaranteed to have something good. Like a loot goblin or special treasure chest or something.

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auto pursuit
I'm not really a fan of the auto pursuit system ignoring key escape factors such as speed. Phase freighters would get hurt even more because they depend entirely on speed to escape.

382
Modding / Re: Module won't turn off shields and FLux Shunt is buggy
« on: October 30, 2019, 06:20:05 PM »
Ah, I think I can field this one.

Your "shield upkeep" attribute is a fraction of the ship's (in this case an attached module?) total flux venting potential. You set it to 1.0, therefore the ordinary shield will always use 100% of the module's base flux venting. There's nothing left over so the flux shunt will never have anything to do. I assume you can't normally add extra flux vents or take advantage of flux reducing talents on the module? I dunno how those things work.

Hardened shield is a unique shield. I played with the monitor a bit, and the ability (at least for the monitor) 1) consumes 0 soft flux, completely over riding the normal shield rate and 2) produces a fixed 100 hard flux when active. The fortress module has 600 venting power? With 50% flux shunt, it should be venting 600*.5 - 100 => 200 hard flux when fortress shield is active.

Play around a bit. In theory, you should have absolutely unchanging fortress shield flux at 200vent*50% shunting (unless it changes somehow), and you should be able to cool hard flux from the normal shield by setting the "shield upkeep" less than 1.0.

383
General Discussion / Weapon primary roles?
« on: October 30, 2019, 03:50:38 PM »
I see that weapons have "primary role" listed as their stat. These roles range from Anti Armor, General, Suppression, Anti shield, and so forth. Does it do anything in the game? Does it affect AI behavior, and if so is there a way to set guidelines for it?

384
There's another option for getting outgunned, except on the other side of the track. Check out the monitor, which you can find as an uncommon
Spoiler
Hegemony (orange faction)
[close]
ship.

Load them up for maximum defense. Expanded shields, hardened shields, maxed flux vents and extra hull vents. Defense systems 3 is an absolute MUST, Loadout design 3 and power grid modulation 1 also help a ton. I do not know if helmsmanship 3 speed boost works but it could be very useful.

Flying the Monitor is an absolute meme. Press F at the start of battle. Done. You are now a bowling ball. Ram into enemy ships, soak up missiles and make yourself a complete menace. If at any point you drop shields, vent or overload, you die. Everything else is up to your fleet.

385
Sure its a substitute. But OP clearly have feelings for the Wolf so I tried to explore it further.
It looked more like he enjoyed going fast. The eagle is pretty agile for a cruiser, but phase ships have the need for speed thanks to their time acceleration.

Afflictors can dramatically alter a battle thanks to their special ability (+50% incoming damage) and they can get into enemy backsides to crit them hard with antimatter blasters and torpedoes. The PPT is absolutely awful though, so you have to force a few kills and retreat or switch to another one. It's fragile, quick, and deadly.

386
Quote
Wolf w. AM Blasters and Reapers is pretty impactfull in my eyes.
An AM blaster wolf is a poor substitute for an afflictor. The afflictor has more speed, burst damage and pretty good escape potential. But that price tag, oof. That's a hammerhead on the front.

The +150 permanent armor talent is practically a requirement for getting in melee range with any ship. The extra rating does wonders against point defense weapons (usually low damage kinetics/energy) so you can survive far more hits.

387
General Discussion / Re: Battle Tactics
« on: October 29, 2019, 06:00:08 PM »
It would be nice to teach phase ship AI a bit more in the way of backstabbing. Phase cloak is simply a completely unique play style- going through enemy ships, being able to dodge gunfire as long as they have spare hard flux (soft flux does not reduce "spare phase cloak" time), and multiplying their speed inside phase space to be far faster than normal ships. These traits allow them to easily sneak behind enemy lines, charge directly up to ship flanks, or completely break away from combat to vent. Instead they try to dance around and fight like a normal frigate, which makes them look dumb. But I know AI is a super hard job that rarely plays out as intended.

388
Suggestions / Re: Please add high-tech freighters and tankers
« on: October 29, 2019, 05:06:26 PM »
I spent forever puzzling what exactly a high tech freighter might be, then I remembered we have phase ships. Shielded cargo holds, zero sensor profile, extremely fast getaways? Sounds like high tech smuggling to me!

389
Suggestions / Re: More Realistic
« on: October 29, 2019, 07:59:21 AM »
Those questions come down to matters of pacing and gating. One concerns how quickly the player progresses in strength, while the other is about what obstacles restrict a player from growing.

The early game is very fast paced. The hegemony stipend covers a huge chunk of early expenses and early missions practically double your starting bank. A bigger fleet allows the player to tackle bigger missions, which increase income rates even more. There's not much in the way of hard obstacles to growth, other than unlocking blueprints and entering the colony game. You need a good bank to set up a comfortable colony, and a good fleet to defend it.

390
General Discussion / Re: How does armor mechanics warks?
« on: October 28, 2019, 06:23:06 PM »
All the more reason to invest in excellent officers for those huge defense bonuses. An extra ounce of flux is nice, but stacking up that double endurance is amazing.

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