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2401

General Discussion / Re: Tips for outfitting Onslaught (and hullmods in general)?

« on: December 04, 2015, 09:59:02 AM »

Okay, now I have one HVD at the nose, and two dual flaks on the arms, which leaves a total of four dual flaks.

If you do this, I recommend putting vulcans in the front two small slots - there's a bit of a gap where the side flaks will occasionally let things through.  The vulcans won't stop torpedos, but they can shoot down most other stuff.

Flux managing needlers is a bit too painful. Also, I have zero Flux Dynamics   

Huh?  Needlers have a lower flux cost than railguns (and heavy needlers are far more flux efficient than HVDs, too)!  Unless I'm really missing something, they ought to be easier to flux manage, not harder.

2402

General Discussion / Re: Tips for outfitting Onslaught (and hullmods in general)?

« on: December 04, 2015, 09:06:34 AM »

I'm currently running with an XIV Onslaught.  Fairly similar to your original fitting, except that I use 3x dual flak up front (that's enough to eat incoming torpedos about 98% of the time!), use needlers instead of railguns (better flux efficiency, higher range, and I don't need 'em for armor stripping), and run with a pair of heavy needlers in the back - the purpose of those guns isn't killing things, it's forcing annoying frigates to take large amounts of hard flux and back off, and the needlers' high burst damage is better at that.

The rest of the configuration is 80 vents, ITU, Augmented Engines, Armored Weapon Mounts, Advanced Turret Gyros, Resistant Flux Conduits (faster venting, and the EMP protection is nice too!), Automated Repair Unit.  (For bounty hunting, I typically drop the repair unit in favor of more vents - but it's a life-saver when I go trawling through hostile territory.  The Sindrian Diktat in particular loves to throw fleets at me non-stop whenever I enter their system.)

I don't use Aux Thrusters - I've got both maneuverability perks, and it doesn't seem to make much difference.  I also don't use Heavy Armor, because it does make a noticeable difference in maneuverability for me.

I did, originally, use maulers in those two medium slots just forward of the torpedo launchers... found the HVDs work better for me.  But then again, I leave the Mjolnirs on autofire (occasionally turning that group off if I can't vent but need to conserve flux), and they're great at popping frigates.  Destroyers and up get a torpedo or two.

When possible, vent spam to keep flux low.  When not possible (i.e. too many incoming missiles and you need to keep the flak running), it's often worth turning off autofire on a group of weapons to conserve flux - and then turn them back on when you decide it's time to unleash your full firepower (such as, say, a torpedo-carrying Vigilance has just come into range and needs to die right now.)

2403

Modding / Re: Armor Repair persistant

« on: December 03, 2015, 04:06:07 PM »

Because Janino (the just-in-time compiler used when you hand Starsector a code file) uses a very old version of Java that doesn't support generics.

So if the original pre-compiled its code, it could happily use a HashMap<ShipArmorData> object that returns ShipArmorData objects, but a copy that's not precompiled would have to use just HashMap, which returns Object objects (which then need to be cast appropriately).

2404

Suggestions / Re: Make Transponder change require single-click instead of double-click.

« on: December 03, 2015, 02:43:09 PM »

Hm.  So the real reason this one has the double-click effect is because it's sharing a key binding with interaction dialogs.  Perhaps the proper solution is to change the default keybindings?  (And perhaps allow the player to set 'double-click required' for any or all of their individual abilities?)

2405

General Discussion / Re: 0.7 feedback

« on: December 03, 2015, 11:35:08 AM »

If people want to abuse the bad AI and play one battle kitting them for 40 min, let them do it, this is not a mmo, but a single player game.

Strongly disagree on this point.  Basically, the game shouldn't encourage that sort of thing - and with supply costs for deploying ships, there's a strong incentive to deploy only what you actually need, and before CR timers, "what you actually need" was always "One Hyperion."

2406

Suggestions / Re: Make Transponder change require single-click instead of double-click.

« on: December 03, 2015, 11:22:07 AM »

Agree.  Even with the "accidentally hitting it is bad" logic, well, accidentally hitting sensor burst is usually worse (especially if you were aiming for burn drive and missed...)

2407

General Discussion / Re: .7 just isn't fun ...

« on: December 01, 2015, 06:59:06 PM »

RFC? Which is that?

Resistant Flux Conduits.  Provides slightly faster venting.

2408

General Discussion / Re: .7 just isn't fun ...

« on: December 01, 2015, 08:46:22 AM »

Huh.  I didn't have too much trouble getting myself started in .7... but then again, I'm quite happy with a heavy blaster wolf.  Slap SO on there, max out vents, strip the missiles because why bother when you have a heavy blaster, swap to 2x burst PD instead of 3x PDL if you get lucky enough to find some...

Also, agree on the Kite being a great choice for a backup ship; I lucked into an A class Kite, and - while I don't use it anymore - it survived through everything I put it through and is now sitting in storage.  I fitted mine with 2x salamander and a vulcan, and it happily kept its opponents busy until I could get around to killing them with my wolf.

2409

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: December 01, 2015, 08:33:25 AM »

@Megas: That change was, I'm guessing, meant as a bug fix for a case where someone randomly encountered a group of pirates who'd rolled all timid commanders and essentially got trolled by pirates who wouldn't fight.

2410

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: November 30, 2015, 08:33:39 PM »

Hm.  So in .1 we won't have access to independent military + one faction military markets?  That's a significant nerf to ability to find ships.

2411

Suggestions / Re: Hull mod suggestion for Hardened Shields and Blast Doors

« on: November 27, 2015, 10:35:21 PM »

Kinda disagree on Hardened Shields - it's at its best on ships that had good shields to start with.  That .6 to .45 may seem like "oh, it's only giving me .15 better shields" - but it's actually doing exactly what it says: reducing incoming damage by a full 25%.  Sure, you might be able to tank more total damage if you go with capacitors on some ships - but Hardened Shields makes it 25% easier / faster to vent off the damage you've taken; a ship with strong shields and this hull mod and the 20% hard flux dissipation perk can often go an entire battle without needing to lower its shields.

Augmented Engines: The current sensor penalties aren't as bad as they seem on paper - as long as you're only using it on a few ships.  It is, however, as you say, no longer a no-brainer upgrade for every hull in your fleet, which is probably a good thing.

IPDAI: This only really works with tactical lasers and advanced turret gyros (and not advanced optics - you can't take the turning penalty with this setup!)  Works reasonably well as PD for the ship it's on; works great as fleet support for ships nearby.

Heavy Armor: The actual damage equations for armor mean that the more armor you have, the more each point of armor does for you.  The fixed value works fine, and I try to make room for it on my most heavily armored ships.  (Try being the operative term; my XIV Onslaught just doesn't have the spare ordnance points to let me install this.  But it does see use on my Dominator.)

Front Shield: The shield this provides just isn't good enough, imo.  Could use some improvement.

Solar Shielding: Haven't actually tried this in game, but it does seem a bit underwhelming.  I don't really like the notion of situational swapping of hull mods, so I think this one could probably use a slightly stronger constant effect - maybe if it also added a reduction in sensor profile?


Now the hull mods that I find most useless are the Flux Coil Adjunct and Flux Distributor.  These saw some usage back when you could get to 150% normal ordnance points, but right now they're just relics of a bygone age, too expensive to be worth using.  Oh, and the fact that they've got relatively high skill unlocks doesn't help either; by the time you can even consider installing a Flux Distributor, you're almost to the point of being able to just install that many extra vents anyway.

2412

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.7a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: November 27, 2015, 09:12:35 AM »

Just putting a decent reload time on the "one-shot" missiles would help with that.  It's a simple fix that I've advocated doing for quite a while.

2413

Suggestions / Re: Thoughts Thus Far

« on: November 26, 2015, 09:55:27 PM »

Okay, okay.  Addendum to mining blaster: if you simply don't have a heavy blaster available, it can be of some nonzero value.  I tend to take the bounty hunter start with the advanced weaponry, though, which renders that a moot point.

2414

Suggestions / Re: Thoughts Thus Far

« on: November 26, 2015, 09:21:02 PM »

On Mining Blaster / Pulse Laser / Heavy Blaster: I find the distinction is pretty simple...
Mining Blaster: Don't use.
Pulse Laser: Use if you're tight on flux or just don't need the heavy blaster's punch.  (For example: Two of these on a Sunder with a captain that has Target Analysis will just rip things apart, thanks to the increased damage from ship special and increased armor penetration from the skill.)
Heavy Blaster: Use for premium damage output or as specialized anti-armor guns.  Generally works best on the player ship or if using Safety Overrides; the AI still doesn't handle high flux weapons like these very well.

2415

Suggestions / Re: Slow infinite magazine reloads. Or an arsenal ship mod.

« on: November 25, 2015, 07:48:39 PM »

The problem with clip ballistics is either the clip is big enough that it did not matter or it was small enough that your DPS was roughly half max DPS in any prolonged battle.

The problem with clip ballistics is that they were all set to reload at half the firing rate, and there was no hull mod to increase that reload rate.  In other words, it wasn't given a sufficient try.  It'd be as if Alex had implemented CR, and then backed it out in the next bug fix patch.