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Messages - Serenitis

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721
General Discussion / Re: Ship classes balance
« on: September 02, 2019, 09:46:10 AM »
I'd highly recommend giving a short range onslaught a go however, tons of fun!
For those using Ship & Weapon Pack, there's an IBB ship called Flamebreaker which I politely suggest you consider recovering and flying into battle at least once just for the novelty.

722
General Discussion / Re: Venture, why?
« on: September 02, 2019, 08:51:34 AM »
Venture in early releases was a super hybrid.  It functioned more like a bigger Gemini (back when fighters were ships and not fancy missiles), and it was a good ship.  Still annoyingly slow, but useful.

Now, it is just a meat shield that can pump out few missiles.
Yes! Super Gemini is the perfect description for what the Venture used to be.

You said "This looks like fun", did you put me in my place yet? I'm not feeling it.
Nice projection.
Have you considered that having different expectations and goals makes some mechanics less relevant regardless of thier existence, and vice-versa?

[e]
Finally got some time to do this adVenture. Took longer than I thought it would to put together.
Spoiler
This is the fleet I built:
Spoiler


Five Line Cruisers fitted for punching holes in things.
Spoiler
[close]
Ten Fire Support Cruisers for bombardment.
Spoiler
[close]
And one Flag Cruiser because GREEN.
Spoiler

I spent a while looking for an LP version (from Luddic Enhancement) but wasn't lucky.
[close]
Fleet also contains two Morae fitted for bombardment and kinetic support, six Pirate Falcons fitted as hybrid missile/carrier ships, one converted Colossus for bomb duty, a single Colossus with maximum cargo, a pair of salvage rigs for flavour, and two Blackrock Hawkmoths because cruiser tanker.
No officers were used.
None of this is 'optimal', but who cares? It's fun, effort is hard, and I spent way too much time doing this nonsense.
[close]
And without even trying I ran into these guys, who seemed to be quite well off but also very interested in recieving donations.
Spoiler
[close]
I only deployed the Ventures here and let them do whatever while I pondered how green my ship was.
Spoiler

Ventures are good boys. They know to eat the rich without being told.
You can just see I lost two ships at the top of that image. Not a bad result for bricks.
[close]
What's next? We need something big, something to prove how 'good' our good boys are....
Spoiler

That'll do.
[close]
I ended up deploying eveything here eventually, and got burnt spectacularly. I lost my flagship about 2/3 of the way through the battle due to a stunning display of mediocrity on my part, and everything fell to pieces shortly after, resulting in....
Spoiler

All the good boys went to a better place.
[close]
But how much damage did they do to a battleship Ordo?
Spoiler

They got six frigates, two destroyers, two cruisers, and the battleship.
I'm not hugely disappointed by that result.
[close]
Verdict:

Ventures are good. Not great, but good.

[close]

723
General Discussion / Re: Venture, why?
« on: September 01, 2019, 01:21:23 PM »
So, instead of killing them all you decended into paranoia?
I bet if you killed them all you'd feel lots better. And the best bit is, they always come back so you can kill them all again.
It's like therapy. Only with more blood and debris. That you also save the sector is just a convenient happenstance.

I wonder how well a fleet of Ventures could smack the Pirate PiƱata....
Might have to look at that tomorrow.

724
General Discussion / Re: Venture, why?
« on: September 01, 2019, 12:58:40 PM »
This looks like fun.

Spoiler
Their are several major logistical issues with low burn speeds that shouldn't be glossed over as "obsessed with speed".

- Your escape window if a fleet got close via asteroids/debris field/nebula/magnetic field/ect is tiny and nearly every pirate fleet has an equal or higher base burn. This forces more use of emergency burns to escape, wasting more fuel and supplies from CR loss.
Never seen this myself. I've always been able to scoot away with sustained burn @14 whenever I want. Sure there's times when you didn't see something and end up running into a huge wall of red.
But you did make sure you have a decent combat fleet to go with all those lovely burn 7 Colossi and Ventures. Didn't you?

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- Low burn speed also wastes tons of supplies by costing you days of travel time.
When you're flying through the edges of the sector stripping everything that isn't nailed down and ripping up whatever is, supplies are functionally limitless. And time doesn't really matter.
The only real concerns you have are cargo space, and crew.

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- You can't catch pirates or bounties easily or at all, costing you more supplies, forcing more emergency burns, costing more supplies from CR loss, costing more fuel.
Stop chasing small bounties and pick on someone your own size (or bigger) then.
I've never had a problem catching bounties because they all head right for me.

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- Missions have timers and you might not be able to get that extra mission done if given the chance, costing you cash.
I honestly don't bother with missions past the early game. I've got more interesting things to do.

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- Everything takes longer to do, so in addition to not being able to do extra mission in an area because of time restraints you are also spending more time getting every mission done. Costing you cash/supplies.
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- Crew costs cash every month, you get less done in the same time frame inflating your costs. 14 burn vs 20 burn is 30% more crew costs to get the same thing done, works the same for supplies.
I generally don't care about missions, that's not what I'm going out to the fringe to do so it's not something I consider all that relevant. And neither cash nor supplies are limited resources.
So long as you enjoy what you do, it's never a waste. So time spent doing it is not a concern.
[close]
We could save some effort next time and just say we play in very different ways.

Spoiler
Most importantly, less than 20 burn means more time spent babysitting worlds (mine or core), or traveling to babysit, than doing fun stuff.  Even with burn 20, I still spend an unacceptably high amount of time babysitting or traveling to babysit.
One of the benefits of trawling the sector is that you sweep up all the pirate and pather bases. And when they resapwn they make convenient jumping off points once you turn them in to debris. They also frequently have large bounties on them.
I've played several runs though 0.9 now and have not once seen a core world decivilise.

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Also, if player wants to sneak in a system, he really needs burn 20 to evade patrols.  Patrols seem to have at least burn 18 when they charge at your fleet.
Yeah. Never really cared about doing this. Just about the only sneaking I do is in red beacon systems, and that kind of requires cargo space to take advantage of all the 'free' supplies and fuel floating about in those charming pale blue containers.
[close]

Venture is fine as is. It could do with it's proper fighter bay back, but it's not an 'essential' change.
Don't agree that it needs all the speed frippery, but then again I'm obviously not a majority here.

725
General Discussion / Re: Noob Questions
« on: September 01, 2019, 11:57:27 AM »
Do civilian ships surve any purpose? Why should I bother with them.?
Civilian ships are largely 1 of 2 things:
  • Dedicated transport ships of some description
  • A conversion of the above into something that can kind of fight
There are a few exceptions, but generally thay fall into one of those two categories.

Transport ships are useful for carrying supplies and loot, fuel, and crew. You probably won't need one for every occaision, but it's usually a good idea to have some in your fleet. And once you pass a certain 'mass' of ships, it becomes really hard to do anything without them.
They all can also have mods installed on them which help you in some way.
You can also use transports to accept a large cargo mission, or found a colony and then once it's complete store them until needed again.

One thing to consider is having a few Shepherds in your fleet. They may not look all that impressive, but they can really help in the early game.

The converted ships are not supposed to be good. They're little more than a transport with a gun stuck on the front and some armour plate bolted onto the sides. They're the sort of thing you use when you have nothing else, and mostly exist for the pirates to use so the player can have some weak enemies to start off with.
However some conversions are really good at one thing, usually at the expense of everything else (including survival).

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Are mining ships or slavaging ships usefull? What mor do I get from them?
Depends how you play.
If you spend a lot of time combing through debris fields and salvaging derelict ships and stations, then dedicated salvage ships can help noticeably by increasing the quantities of resources recovered. These tend to be specialised ships which cannot be modified out of thier role. Nor can you add this ability to a ship, so you have to use what's available with that ability.

If you like to scan planets then survey ships can reduce the costs to do so. Survey ships are sometimes specialised, but any ship can be modified with this ability (which fits really well with transports as you don't have to give up any combat ability, because they don't have any).

Both benefit from stacking multiples of each for a greater effect.

As far as I know, there are no mining ships. (This may be from a mod.)

726
General Discussion / Re: Venture, why?
« on: September 01, 2019, 01:59:52 AM »
Why the Venture exists is a very good question at this point. It should be justified in Lore or mechanics in some way.
It is. It exists as a fallback option for any faction without access to heavy industry, so they have at least one ship capable of being an anchor in thier fleets.
Venture is supposed to be the poverty option for cruisers, in the same way Buffalo II is for destroyers, and Condor is for carriers. And the same way that all of them are fodder for the player to beat on in the early game.

As to why you'd want to build it over other ships, you probably wouldn't unless it was the only thing of it's size you had access to. Eg; running a heavy industry without any extra blueprints, something that happens only if you build a colony right at the start of the game, and do zero exploring.

The Venture is actually a civillian ship. You need to waste DP on Militarized Subsystems or else you get ganked by pirate patrols due to 7 burn (without Military systems) and high sensor profile.

Plus without it you get huge costs due to it being a civillian hull.
You can run from almost anything with burn 7 ships. I regularly build fleets around Colossi because they're the biggest thing capable of burn 7 without having to spend dock slots (which I want for other things), and have had no issues running when needed.
Burn 7 is not an issue for the Venture, unless you're obsessing about the highest possible speeds. In which case most cruisers will not be suitable for you either. This is quite an unfair standard to hold against one ship.

CivGrade doesn't increase costs in any way. Unless you're counting the increase from the military conversion, which again is unfair as it's not a requirement.

728
General Discussion / Re: Venture, why?
« on: August 30, 2019, 05:20:09 PM »
Venture is okay. Not great, but okay.
Decent cargo space. Free survey gear. Can carry a pile of missiles. Can defend itself. Can tank quite well. Won't slow down trash fleets.
Something that you don't mind finding and tidying up in the right circumstances, but not usually something you'd go out of your way to buy.

I used them a lot more when you could put any fighter in thier bay, but since they got locked to mining drones I'd rather use Mules.
That loss of flexibilty is the only reason I tend to avoid them.

729
General Discussion / Re: Ship Loadouts
« on: August 20, 2019, 10:18:06 AM »
@Megas
Spoiler
I always fit Tempest with Bulkheads because I don't want to "waste" an officer on a ship that doesn't constantly see action, when I'd much rather have them in destroyers or cruisers which do.
My Temps don't usually get deployed except as an escort or in pursuit.
Same ship, different role.

I suppose I can see the logic of putting autocannons on a Sunder, but I've never seen the situation you described as I never have a Sunder fighting off on it's own. And wherever possible it will have a cautious officer and be escorted by one of the above Tempests.
And in any case:
If they rush just drop shields and melt with Sunders active. Guarenteed shield overload in a few seconds.
This is also why you want to put Sabot on the wings. An instant "I win" safety net.

I don't generally use capital transports either, as I don't want to deal with the speed/utility restrictions.
A small herd of Colossi will easily take care of your surveying needs and give a decent amount carrying capacity.
Fuel is trickier, and usually the only time I make an exception to the above generalisation. But then it doesn't come up all that often as I tend not to use capitals much at all, apart from my Odyssey.

I try to use burst lasers as energy PD wherever possible, so never need to make use of the AI mod. In fact, I can't recall the last time I did use it....
Pilum however, I love. They're like the tac laser of missiles. The more you have, the better each of them becomes.

Speaking of which....
[close]

@pedro1_1
Spoiler
Have you ever used an Odyssey fitted as a pure beam platform?
I mean actually properly used it in campaign, rather than do a few minutes in a sim and decided it was bad.

It is probably the best fleet lead I have used to date. Better even than my Dominator steamroller.
Sure it struggles to really break big stuff on it's own due to no hard flux. And it can't really solo things all that well. But so what? That's what your fleet is for. Why would you ever be deploying this on it's own in a campaign anyway?
And set up like this, it's a captial ship which can touch north of 160 without using it's mobility system.
Aggro a nice target. Kite it to where it needs to be. And then set your fleet on it. Bonus points for sealioning it off the map as it gets destroyed.
Or, deploy just the flagship and bait as many enemies toward the bottom of the screen as possible sniping as many as you can on the way, and when they're all in position drop your fleet on top of them.

And with a beam loadout, you don't usually need to vent much at all. Just let the flux dissipate on its own between targets, or occaisionally drop the shield and let it go that way.
The only times I really need to vent are when I need to chase something and want the no-flux boost right now.
Beams are p. chill with regard to flux generation. And Ody has decent dissipation abilities.

Locust > MIRV simply because it's more reliable against targets that can move. Even with ECCM MIRV is underwhelming for the cost. And that Locust is also cheaper helps.
(And yes, I did forget Ody has ECCM built in. Never really noticed it because I'm not using anything that would benefit from it and so have never looked for it. The more you know. Thank you for enlightening me.)

Xyphos > Spark because Spark does not have 4x flux-free Ion Beams for suppression.
Ion Beams are good. Ion Beams that you never have to flux manage are amazing.
You could claim that Sparks have an advantage due to not using crew, but this is largely moot due to Xyphos never actually getting destroyed anyway as they are always either inside your shield bubble, or directly over the ship.
The only real advantage Sparks have is that they're cheaper.
I've never had any issue with PD coverage from Xyphos though.

I suppose we just have very different uses and expectations for the same ship.
Nothing wrong with that.
[close]

730
General Discussion / Re: Ship Loadouts
« on: August 19, 2019, 11:44:23 AM »
Here's the perennial Magpie's perspective on some of these:

Tempest
Capacitors: 9
Vents: 10
Weapons: 1x Heavy Blaster, 1x Tactical Laser, 1x Salamander MRM
Hullmods: Efficiency Overhaul, Hardened Subsystems, Integrated Targeting Unit, Resistant Flux Conduits
Needs Reinforced Bulkheads as Tempest is not disposable, and I want to keep it because even as a junker Temps own hard.
Not too concerned about ITU as it has the native speed to close distance. And don't care about H.Subsys as Tempest is the clearup and pursuit crew, it just doesn't need it. Would swap this for Unstable Injector for yet more speed.
I'd be tempted to swap the Salamander for Sabots on half of my Tempests instead for extra shield breaking.

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Mule
Capacitors: 12
Vents: 20
Weapons: 1x Arbalest Cannon, 2x Salamander MRM, 2x Light Mortar, 1x Vulcan Cannon
Hullmods: Efficiency Overhaul, Integrated Targeting Unit, Reinforced Bulkheads, Resistant Flux Conduits
Mules are better as fleet support than they are at being on the front line.
Get rid of ITU and fit Converted Hangar with a wing of interceptors (Wasps preferred for crew saving, but Talons work fine).
Flux Conduits aren't needed so this can be swapped for a campaign mod like Surveying Equipment if needed.
Put Pilum in the medium mount, keep the Salamanders, and swap the mortars for 2 more vulcans.

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Sunder (beam)
Capacitors: 1
Vents: 24
Weapons: 1x High Intensity Laser, 2x Graviton Beam, 2x Light Autocannon, 1x Vulcan Cannon
Hullmods: Advanced Optics, Efficiency Overhaul, Integrated Targeting Unit, Reinforced Bulkheads, Stabilized Shields
Autocannons are a waste here. If they're in range to fire at something, the ship isn't doing it's job right.
Either swap for LMG/Vulcan or leave empty.
Also really benefits from having Sabots on the wings.

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Heron (late)
Capacitors: 5
Vents: 17
Fighters:  3x Sparks
Weapons: 1x Heavy Blaster, 4x Burst PD Laser
Hullmods: Efficiency Overhaul, Reinforced Bulkheads
Interceptors on Heron is a waste of its targetting ability. And it doesn't have the flux to support a gun in it's medium slot and keep it's shields up. Especially that gun.
Downgrade the Burst lasers to standard PD. Fit a missile in the medium, Pilum and Salamander are good but anything will work.
Put bombers in the bays. All of them work well (yes, even Pirahna), but Heron doesn't have the OP to use Trident.

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Mora
Capacitors: 8
Vents: 27
Fighters:  1x Khopesh, 1x Broadsword, 1x Talon
Weapons: 2x Hammer Torpedo, 3x Vulcan Cannon, 3x Light Mortar, 2x Light Autocannon
Hullmods: Efficiency Overhaul, Reinforced Bulkheads, Surveying Equipment
I'd use the Mora as an Interceptor/Suppression platform as it's always going to end up in the thick of things, and saturating space with fighters helps the entire fleet.
Doesn't need Surveying stuff as transports do that without having to sacrifice combat ability. I would instead use Recovery Shuttles to protect my precious crew.
Medium missles are a good fit for Pilum here as the Mora can still contribute as it's slowly shuffling into range.

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Odyssey
Capacitors: 0
Vents: 40
Fighters:  1x Xyphos, 1x Mining Pod
Weapons: 2x Plasma Cannon, 1x Hurricane MIRV Launcher, 3x Salamander SRM, 11x PD Laser
Hullmods: Efficiency Overhaul, Hardened Shields, Integrated Point Defense AI, Integrated Targeting Unit, Resistant Flux Conduits
Does IPDAI do something other than turn small mounts into makeshift PD? Seems like not a great use of OP for a ship already using dedicated PD.
Personally, I really dislike plasma on Odyssey as the projectiles end up missing half the time. Beams are much better imo, either Tachyon or HIL work fine. (Tachyon if you want to control guns, HIL if you want to control missiles.)
Doesn't really need Resistant Flux or Hardened Shields, but really wants a pair of Xyphos for PD, suppression and more beams.

Unstable Injector and Adv. Optics are also something to consider if you're going the maximum beam HIL route, so you turn it into an obnoxios kiting machine.
Medium missiles work as either Sabot for shield breaking or Salmander for shield diverting.
Locust generally works better than MIRV as Ody can't afford ECCM without giving up something else it needs more.
Another thing to consider is that shields are also a weapon (of a sort), and the Odyssey is uniquely blessed amongst ships to take advantage of this in an easy, repeatable, and amusing manner.

731
Modding / Re: Please be mindful of the tone of your mod
« on: August 18, 2019, 01:36:24 AM »
I don't really mind stuff like this, so long as the author isn't being outright abusive to others. Or fasc.



732
General Discussion / Re: How does shield damage work?
« on: August 18, 2019, 12:44:10 AM »
Do shields have hit points?
How many?
Directly themselves as in some other games, no.
The flux itself does roughly the same job though. The more flux a ship can 'hold', the longer it can keep its shields up.
Effectively, a shields hit points is the ships flux pool.
Adding capacitors, a hullmod or taking one particular skill can increase this.

Shields also have an efficiency rating which will be a decimal value somewhere near 1.
Where 1 means every 1 point of damage gets turned into 1 point of flux.
Lower numbers mean more efficiency and higher means less.
0.7 means every 1 point of damage gets turned into 0.7 points of flux.
Adding a hullmod or taking a specific skill can increase the efficiency.

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Is there a way to check?
For your own fleet you can access the refit screen,  or use the information infocard on the fleet buy/sell to pull data for each ship individually.
Improvements over the baseline for that hull type will be appended with a green number telling you how much better it is.
Conversely, areas below baseline will be appended with red numbers.

For both your own fleet and enemies in battle, if you hold your cursor over a ship a mini-display will pop up just above them and show you two bars.
The bottom bar is hull integrity. Basically the health bar, when it hits zero the ship is disabled.
The top bar is the current flux level. Watching this will allow you to press an attack while an enemy can't fight back effectively.
When this bar is full a ship will try to pull away from battle to vent the flux, and will be forced to fire weapons sparingly and lower shields.

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What happens after they get depleted?
This:
Quote
What I'm noticing is enemy ships dropping their shields after a while and raising them up right after, giving a small window to shoot something else at them.
Or they don't drop the shields fast enough and overload.

733
Suggestions / Player Faction Colour
« on: August 17, 2019, 03:55:16 AM »
This is an issue that goes back some way, and could still use some attention.
Previous thread

The player faction and Tri-Tachyon colourings are really not immediately distinct, and where they appear together it can take some non-zero amount of effort to mentally separate them.
This is an example cropped from the best buy/sell infocard:


Could we look at doing one of two things please?

Change either the Tri-Tachyon or player faction colour in order to make them more noticeably different.
or
Add either a colour picker or a set of preset colour schemes to the player faction.

Making TT a darker blue would be the easiest route.
Eg: Changing TT to 50,159,236 gives the following result. (This is what I have done as a temp fix.)




734
General Discussion / Re: Harbinger Synergy mount?
« on: August 12, 2019, 11:36:54 AM »
Honestly, giving the Harbinger it's centre synergy mount back wouldn't be terrible.
It's not really any different from allowing the Afflictor to mount Reapers. It gets 1 more missile, but with more waiting between explosions.

735
General Discussion / Re: The Conquest and the Gryphon
« on: August 12, 2019, 11:18:39 AM »
Gryphon is ship that fails to live up to expectation of a dedicated missile boat.
It's gimmick is that it has a large missile mount, which in theory is great.
In practice however, large missiles are either underwhelming or situational. And have some rather large gaps in thier capabilities (there are zero large standoff missiles for example).

The only large missiles worth equipping are designed for close support or strike roles, and require the firing ship to be on or near the front line in order to be effective.
Somewhere the Gryphon is extremely unsuited for, with it's low speed, cumbersome maneuvering, low flux pool and mediocre armour.
It cannot just "dive in to snipe a ship and then retreat to safety". It is too slow, and frequently does not survive the attempt. Because it is not a front line ship. It does not belong there.

I suppose you could put SO on it as that doesn't affect missiles. But then you're playing against the Gryphon's one strength, and undermining the effectiveness (and often use) of it's autoforge system.
You could also downsize the front mount and fit medium missiles, but again doesn't make a huge amount of difference as it just doesn't have the ability use them all that well, due to still being in the 'wrong' environment.

If you relegate the Gryphon to the back lines of your fleet as missile artillery it's still not great as it only has 3 available mounts for Pilum, which for the cost of the ship is terrible.
3x medium missiles is fairly poor armament if that's all a cruiser is contributing.
And even then, you're completely sidelining the autoforge as that's irrelevant for Pilum.

The only time I ever consider using a Gryphon is if I'm at exactly the right stage of the game to support cruisers, and have not yet found anything better for missile throwing.
I have used one as a flagship exactly once. It was not a great experience. Slow. Fragile. Can't defend itself. Depends totally on fleet support for continued existence, which makes it even more expensive to deploy than stats alone suggest. It can't even carry its own fighters without completely gimping some other aspect of its mediocrity.
Mostly they're a huge NOPE and get mulched for supplies.

I might be tempted to use a Gryphon if it had a mobility system.
Or a large mount version of the Pilum launcher existed.

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