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.

Topics - TaLaR

Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6]
76
While for other systems such interruption feels normal, here it seems out of place. I mean giving up maneuvering control is supposed to be key point with this system. Or is this actually intended behavior?...

77
Bug Reports & Support / High Energy Focus damage bonus is 125% ???
« on: August 09, 2012, 01:41:03 AM »
1st screenshot - 1 shot from Mining Blaster at zero flux without HEF - 648 damage on Onslaught shield.
2nd - same, but with HEF = 1460 !?

[attachment deleted by admin]

78
Suggestions / AI venting behavior
« on: August 08, 2012, 10:44:57 PM »
Currently AI will pretty much always vent whenever it gets high flux.

This might be a good decision for armored low-techs that don't have vent rate for sustained fire, have lots of armor and don't get benefits from flux.

But for high techs it's quite often completely wrong.  In many situations high tech designs capable of (near)sustained fire could get much better results by simply armor tanking (or even allowing serious hull damage, if you can trade it at good rate) but continuing to fire anyway.

For example, for Aurora quite good way to defeat Standard Onslaught seems to go HEF-berserk after shield tanking initial burst to about 80% of own flux capacity. You will get somewhat damaged, but at least you win. Obviously AI doesn't do anything like that.

Actually more on HEF - AI seems to use it only if it badly outranges the enemy. This is of course safe strategy, but leaves HEF seriously underused. Should at least activate it against venting enemies too.

79
Suggestions / AI handling of phase cloak.
« on: August 06, 2012, 11:12:11 AM »
Right now there seems to be huge gap between actually (close to)optimal use of phase cloak with currently defined phase mechanics and the way AI tries to use it.

First a simple question - how much does 1 second in phase cost? Obvious answer is - whatever is stated in ship stats as cloak upkeep. However, complete answer is - cloak upkeep + ship's flux vent rate.
Other important points:
-phase is entered instantly
-when you break phase, there is a short period while you are still immune & don't pay upkeep, but also do not vent flux. You also can fire. For further calculations i'll consider it to be 0.5 sec, though i don't know precise duration.

Consider following variant of shade: 125 phase in, 125 upkeep, 250 flux vent, 2500 flux capacity.

First second of long phase = 125(in) + 125(upkeep) + 250(regen loss) = 500
Not first = 125(upkeep) + 250(regen loss) = 375
Instant phase/unphase = 125(in) + 125*0(no upkeep) + 250*0.5(no regen while unphasing) = 250 for 0.5 sec immunity

This means that if ship is shot at less than once per 1.5 second it can dodge by instant phase/unphasing indefinitely (with perfect control though), more realistic estimate would be once per 2 seconds. Even human player can have good enough reaction to engage cloak right after he sees that enemy fired projectile weapon, so it's not impossible (beams are kind of special case, agreed).

Furthermore, while once per 1.5 seconds seems unrealistically rare for ship being attacked by multiple weapons, how the opponent uses these weapons is also important. AI will start firing right after unphase period. So time you get before you need to re-engage cloak = weapon fire up time (weapons like gauss cannon, but for most it's zero) + shot travel time (not quite zero even for beam weapons as it seems). With average speed projectiles at medium range this approach to phasing already starts to make sense, at long range it simply rules.

Conclusion: right now instant phase/unphase usually beats long usage of cloak both because it allows you to continue firing while phasing and stay immune longer (in terms of total *useful* immunity time). What is also important is the fact that it makes enemy waste flux, while simply staying phased lets them recharge it. Anyway - either precise mechanics behind phase needs an overhaul to make this sort of behavior inefficient or AI needs to build it's tactics around it.

PS1: tested it once more and found that unphase time can't be longer than time you spend phased. So if you have perfect reaction and can afford to phase for 0.1-0.2 sec, you can actually get even better efficiency.

PS2: Of course AI has even more obvious problems with phasing too, like staying phased under missile threat, which could easily be handled by available PD, or Doom inevitably killing itself through overload.

PS3: actually, i kind of remember where i've seen AI doing something close to described here - Paragon's Fortress shield handling. Hmm... I wonder if phase ships could be improved by letting them use variant of this logic instead (of course it needs to modified still, since *anything* is threat to them, while for Paragon it's only situations where incoming fire is too much for shield to handle normally).

Any comments on topic and the above wall of text?:)

80
Suggestions / AI needs to counter Hyperions better.
« on: August 05, 2012, 11:00:37 AM »
Phase teleport is huge game changer, and currently AI fails to adequately counter it.
1) AI raises omni shields a bit too late to block first shot after teleportation , which allows player-piloted Hyperion to pretty much ignore shields. Since freshly teleported Hyperion can raise shields quickly enough to block fire from target ships, reverse should also be possible.
2) It expects being able to raise 360 degree shields before Hyperion gets into firing range, which is usually false. Could be countered keeping shields up constantly if an enemy Hyperion is seen somewhere on the battlefield, though that's going to be big handicap against other enemy ships...
3) Ships which have neither 360 shields or omni need to cover each other and avoid staying alone.

Not sure about 2 and 3, but 1 seems feasible.

81
Bug Reports & Support / Fortress shield and soft flux damage
« on: August 05, 2012, 10:16:59 AM »
Either i got my math wrong at some point or Paragon activates fortress shield against non threatening( less than it's regeneration) amount of soft flux damage.

I used custom Paragon with 4 HILs and 4 Gravbeams (actually it has more, but using only these at zero flux is enough ) against Elite standard layout.
That's 250x4 + 100x2x4 = 1800 raw dps on shield.
Target has 0.5 flux/damage adsorbed and 1380 regen, so theoretically it could ignore up to 2760 dps, yet it activates fortress shield and loses because of it.

82
Suggestions / Per ship level auto-retreat
« on: August 04, 2012, 09:56:51 PM »
Right now managing big frigate fleet in close to even fight is quite problematic since you need to constantly manage health of them all and issue retreat orders as soon as they get damaged. Having them automatically retreat as soon as they take substantial damage would help a lot.

83
Suggestions / Flux limit for weapons autofire
« on: August 04, 2012, 09:51:30 PM »
Right now weapons will autofire up to max flux, putting you very dangerously close to overload sometimes. Having controllable limit would greatly reduce need for switching autofire on/off as often as you have to do now in some situations.

Limit should check not amount of flux you have before shot, but what you would end up with after it - so it could reliably work for flux expensive weapons.

Being per group would also be quite nice - it's ok to fire point defence to about 95%, since it uses small amounts of flux, and probably spares you more (compared to shield hit), but for heavy/am blaster reasonable threshold would somewhere between 60-80% depending on shield efficiency.

Having these limits active only while shields are up would be even better:)

84
Suggestions / Flameout during Burn Drive activation
« on: August 04, 2012, 09:59:36 AM »
Normally burn drive slows down at the end, leaving ship with it's normal speed, BUT if engine is disabled in process - ship continues inertial flight at max speed.
While not technically a bug, this creates really weird situation - getting *benefit* from letting enemy disable engine/having to avoid firing on enemy while it retreats with burn drive(if you are capable of catching it during cooldown).

85
Bug Reports & Support / Phase cloak burst fire abuse
« on: August 03, 2012, 11:36:35 PM »
Activating phase cloak while firing burst weapon (needler, annihilator, etc) won't start weapon cooldown,  allowing to fire partial bursts at phase/unphase rate instead of intended one.

86
Suggestions / Overload and phase ships
« on: August 03, 2012, 06:22:09 AM »
Maybe they should just unphase after reaching max flux without further penalties ? Reasoning:
Getting overloaded with phase cloak is possible ONLY by ai/player mistake since there is nothing to gain in this outcome, while for shields it could be tactical choice. For example, getting overloaded by am blaster shot is often better then letting it hit...

...While we are at it, AI also seems to be prone to getting overloaded by annihilators/swarms of missiles in general for no good reason - absorbing 1 more than your flux capacity allows  just doesn't balance getting overloaded....

Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6]