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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 - TaLaR

Pages: 1 ... 134 135 [136] 137 138 ... 187
2026
Blog Posts / Re: Minefields
« on: March 25, 2018, 09:46:03 PM »
@Alex, thanks for detailed analysis of why that won't work.

Do mines have friendly fire? If yes, is it easy/possible to make Doom kill itself/allies with mines? By spamming Talons on top of it/it's allies, for example. Then again, Talon Astral is a gimmick build at best.

2027
Blog Posts / Re: Minefields
« on: March 25, 2018, 08:29:07 PM »
@Alex
"The system AI uses a fairly versatile scoring system to prioritize mine-targeting. For a proficiency test, it had to solo an Astral carrier – which it did, laying mines ahead of incoming fighter flight paths, then crippling the fighter wings trying to regroup behind the carrier, and eventually pressuring and destroying the carrier itself."

That's very nice, but how about going deeper?
Sounds like Astral could easily counter that by using recall whenever significant amount of fighters is threatened. Or even just setting them to regroup for a short while, if they can turn around in time.

2028
Suggestions / Re: Beam Stuff
« on: March 21, 2018, 10:22:24 PM »
What I liked about high flux damage bonus is that there were 2 approaches to fighting:
- vent as soon and often as possible.
- keep close to max flux and use the bonus.

Now only the first tactic is valid.

2029
Suggestions / Re: Junk Stuff
« on: March 21, 2018, 11:24:57 AM »
Anything is too good for zero-OP, zero-Flux. Many currently decent ships build leave empty slots - would be a no-brainer to put a totally free weapon there.

Trash guns (if they were to exist) should be exact opposite of that: either cost too much OP for what they do, or have abysmal flux efficiency.

2030
... unless they have skill that allows to keep 0-flux speed bonus at low flux levels, which is a mandatory pick for any dedicated carrier officer.

2031
Suggestions / Re: Beam Stuff
« on: March 15, 2018, 12:37:32 PM »
Soft flux is only a serious problem when you do not produce overwhelming amount of it (though most ships don't). How op do these changes make all beams (well, with 2 universal slots possibly used for ballistics) Paragon? Considering that it's quite viable with beams as is.


2032
Suggestions / Re: After battle salvaging time
« on: March 14, 2018, 04:04:11 AM »
Unsalvaged post battle loot already spawn on the campaign map as a bunch of floating crates and can be picked up later.

Aren't salvageable ships offered only once? With a possible, but not guaranteed second chance when using salvage?

Anyway key difference between this proposition and present state is that currently most of the loot is dropped right after combat, with lesser amount available as salvage. Salvaging is also instant with short delay between attempts (but without related industry skills, I'm usually happy salvaging only once, so it does not matter).

2033
Suggestions / Re: After battle salvaging time
« on: March 14, 2018, 03:41:26 AM »
This all could be done in the aftermath of the battle where the player chooses what they want to loot.

First, if any similar system implemented it should not force me to start scavenging immediately on end of combat.
That would put player in a no-win situation - become vulnerable to enemies that otherwise would have been not a real threat in fair fight or abandon loot. Or do some nonsense like trying to bunch up enemy fleets before combat so that they all die in a single fight...
I'd rather cleanup the area first and then do my looting comfortably.

It would also make sense to mark some specific ships as sentries - so they do contribute less/not at all to looting speed/quality, but do not suffer penalties either. If being attacked is going to become part of game flow, player needs to be given viable defensive options.

2034
Suggestions / Re: Large ships in small fleets.
« on: March 13, 2018, 01:39:01 AM »
Then big slow ships can hit high speeds, but it's a cost-over-time issue; this allows smaller fleets to win the acceleration race, if using Emergency Burn, but only if Fuel supplies permit.  This would present the player with interesting challenges; they can out-run the local system police, for example, but only if they're willing to give up Fuel, and only if the locals don't have enough Fuel to catch up.

Currently,resources are just not a consideration for AI fleets or factions as whole. I'm not saying this should remain as is, but making AI handle limited resources in intelligent manner is not a small task either.

And if the player is the only side to be limited by resources, it's not fun.

2035
Suggestions / Re: Large ships in small fleets.
« on: March 12, 2018, 09:57:59 PM »
Such fleets make no sense (=are extremely vulnerable) due to having their speed determined by largest (and slowest) ship, but being unable to properly fight against average fleet of same speed.
Which is why I never do such a thing as player, and would see AI fleets like that (if they were to commonly exist) as nothing more than a freebie.

2036
Suggestions / Re: I wish there are “Fleet Points“
« on: March 09, 2018, 03:17:41 AM »
There is already a limit to how much you/enemy can deploy simultaneously. You can deploy 40-60% of total battlesize worth of deployment costs. 40-60% part is governed by your fleet vs enemy fleet size ratio (probably just your total deploy cost vs theirs).
Battlesize can be decreased in settings, if you find default too high.

2037
(Moved to suggestions.)

I could definitely see this being nice, but I'm also hesitant to add more controls. Every button around WASD is already taken up by something, and I'm not a fan of either cycling through 3 states or different behavior on holding a button vs tapping it, at least for these sort of "action" controls. For example, if you're holding X, it's going to be tough to maneuver at the same time, and chances are you really want to be maneuvering if your flux situation is such that you shut down everything but PD.

Almost wondering if a per-group setting to ignore "hold fire" status might be an alternative approach... hm.

Optimal control setup is half of victory, but it's individual. Standard setup will never be optimal for everybody. So having more options to fine-tune would be welcome (even if not all of them end up used by most people). Some keys being configurable as hold vs switch would be nice too (but not a high priority since Autohotkey can do that easily). I strongly agree on not using 3 state switches.

As for keys around WASD specifically - there are several keys that I would easily reassign to less accessible locations in favor of non-PD hold fire (C to decelerate I pretty much never use, Q/E rotation I only use on Conquest, default scheme does not use Alt (actually why? It's way more convenient to press than Ctrl) or MouseWheel press).
Plus there are hardware solutions too - like gaming mouses with extra buttons.

Then again, now that I brought up Autohotkey, I think whole thing is already scriptable as switching autofire for groups except PD one.

2038
Yeah, would be nice.

2039
Suggestions / Re: An idea for armor
« on: February 21, 2018, 01:49:15 AM »
Why would it? HE doesn’t get bonus damage to hull with minimum armor values

As extreme case stuff like small damage per shot frag or needlers start doing real hull damage only after armor is fully (well, to 5%) stripped.
With 50% minimum armor value, that never happens. So pretty much everything that is not high damage per shot HE will get reduced to minimum 15% or close.
And HE still counts, since as I understand armor calculations use effective damage after type multiplier.

2040
Blog Posts / Re: Blueprints, Doctrine, and Production
« on: February 20, 2018, 04:52:41 PM »
My biggest reason for not playing D-mod heavy is that Degraded Engines seems very common (almost every black-market D ship I have seen, and the majority of recovered ships), and it is a killer--the burn level reduction means that it is very awkward on ships not already above your target fleet burn level (requiring Augmented Drive Field), and the combat speed reduction is a big issue on many ships.

Is it actually that big a deal? I keep feeling like an extra level of burn here and there doesn't matter quite as much as I see players expressing they feel it does.

I mean, Sustained Burn and E-Burn almost qualitatively override it, and especially if AI fleets are also dealing with degraded engines in many of their fleets...

Granted, I have not been playing very long, but in my limited experience: emergency burn frequently cancels out--it can help catch or avoid a faster fleet if you catch them with it on cooldown, but in general I cannot reliably catch a fleet without a speed advantage or escape at a speed disadvantage. If you are hunting Luddic mining fleets, dropping a burn level is not a big deal; with a newish career trying to avoid fast destroyer fleets, dropping to 8 from picking up a destroyer with degraded engines definitely makes a difference.

Sustained burn (especially with the skill boost) does negate the travel-speed disadvantage, so if you never want to initiate combat and are strong enough to fight whomever catches you (plausible for mid/late game exploring) I agree it is not much of an issue.

E-Burn cancelling out each other is important point, yes.

It's not too important to have the strongest fleet overall - but being strongest at certain Burn level is quite nice. Having just 1 higher than enemy means that as long as you don't run into disruption they can almost never catch you. Though AI can use a smaller tackler fleet, so going below 10 (full frigate fleet without degraded engines) is an especially important breakpoint.

I very much do not like compositions like 1 cruiser and few frigates for example - that's not good enough to fight a fleet of cruisers, yet makes me exposed to such risk. Same for having a Capital - if I have one, it's gotta be capable of beating multiple enemy ones - so Onslaught/Paragon or similar from mods.
I do grudgingly make exception for a single DE + frigates composition though. Medusa is just good enough to be worth it, in vanilla. Plus there are no really efficient cargo frigates.

Though I guess a lot of that is more relevant for Nexelerin. In vanilla you start hostile only to Luddites (very small fleets) and Pirates (weakest faction and any large fleet will be slow due to d-mods). Bounties are not going to run anywhere either.

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