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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 - SapphireSage

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1
General Discussion / Re: I wish you could fly the Radiant
« on: May 16, 2023, 08:45:38 AM »
You should at least be able to change the OP value of those hullmods yourself. Just head to starsector-core/data/hullmods/hull_mods.csv and modify the "cost_frigate", "cost_dest", "cost_cruiser", and "cost_capital" for the "Neural Interface" and Neural Integrator.

2
General Discussion / Re: Ship top speed
« on: April 02, 2023, 08:14:30 AM »
Edit: Nvm, guess there isn't a separate entry for XIV versions of low-tech ships. But you can check if you made the change for the Legion itself instead of its XIV version?

3
Suggestions / Re: Toning down the Monitor Menace >:)
« on: March 12, 2023, 07:28:21 PM »
I'd agree that the monitor should probably deserve a nerf. Most players eventually learn that one of the best things a frigate can do is distract 3 destroyers and a cruiser off to the far end corner of the map to be mostly useless for the whole fight, or kill the frigate at best. Monitors however, are able to distract such a large group consistently, and more importantly can make said group useless in the battle line itself by just having it ram itself and its nigh impenetrable fortress shield into the middle of them with an eliminate order and a couple Dual MGs. Whenever I run Wolfpack Tactics I usually bring 3/4 officerless monitors along and will thoughtlessly and immediately give them the eliminate command on any capitals that show up and they'll basically make the caps + escorts a non-factor for the whole rest of the fight because they waste all their time firing at a tiny invincible ball till the wolfpack's ready to gang up on them. The only time I lost a monitor with that was against a Radiant packing a bunch of tachyons because the EMP arcs destroyed it past its fortress shield.

I also tend to see its use recommended *very* frequently on the StarSector reddit, for what that's worth.

4
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 03, 2023, 06:40:35 PM »
What would your current thoughts be on reducing the OP on the Legion XIV back to what it currently is? I ask because currently, though this is subject to change depending on the new caps, the Legion XIV is considered one of the stronger capitals largely because, unlike its base counterpart, its a capable long range support with its two large missiles and 4 fighter bays while also capable of being a strong front-liner with its tougher armor and 5 medium ballistics for only 40 DP and my main concern is that between the increased number and types of missiles and the +40 OP the XIV Legion has the potential to become even more oppressive compared to its peers. I'd understand if you'd not want to due to Legion XIV's rarity, because its only available to the player, and because it would be weird to not have XIV be a straight upgrade to its non-XIV version, but to that third I'd argue that its weird that the weapon mounts are different compared to its base version in the first place and the lower OP could just be the tradeoff of the conversion to Large missiles over ballistics from base.

5
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (In Development) Patch Notes
« on: February 01, 2023, 02:02:25 PM »
Squall really did not need a boost to anti-shield performance, it was already generally considered a very strong weapon.

A large part of why Squalls were so strong was because of their long reach, reliable penetrating of PD, and constant stream of high DPH rockets that could whittle down and overpower all but low-tech armor making so unless you were a Mora or tougher you'd be taking heavy armor/hull damage for the otherwise correct move of putting your shield down for it, same as old Sabot. Its stronger against AI's tendency to prefer shields, but now it will hopefully not be as oppressive to deal with if targeted by one.

6
What does the HRS smod upgrade do exactly? I don't quite get it.

Unless it's been changed, it would increase the combat vision radius (how far the ship can see in combat) for the ship its attached to. For a fleet, its typically a non-thing unless you wanna see when and what enemy reinforcements arrived but haven't pushed the enemy to their reinforcement zone yet and don't have any fast flankers but otherwise its best use might be built-in on Solo ships for in-combat information if it weren't for the fact that solo ships tend to want to squeeze out as much combat performance as they can.

7
I'm actually gonna say that as a concept, I've actually liked the mechanic of S-mods as a way to get OP via free hulmods. Hullmods range in effects on how they affect a ship and how you play it. You only really need to go so far as Megas's thread on experimenting with High-tech using Shield Shunt to modify their AI behavior to see that. Being able to add at least a couple of hullmods makes a big difference to ships that struggle with their OP count to even slot in one or two, tbh some of my Moras struggle with OP so much that the S-mods are their *only* hullmods and if I had just gotten an OP increase instead I would just be spending them on more vents or premium fighters and/or weapons instead still leaving them with little to no hullmods.

But naturally people are usually going to gravitate towards hullmods that play to a ship's best strengths. Some ships will have no issues with using a variety or being flexible enough that their viable choices can range between a few of them. Its just that for some other ship cases with clear roles, like Dominator for instance, its a no brainer to just slap Heavy Armor to get the most OP for your frontline buck. Here's the thing with that though, and its that less maneuverability as a penalty is both a limiter on Heavy Armor as a hullmod, due to limiting a ship's ability to rotate armor, and also not that big of a deal for the typical Low-tech ship who's already incredibly vulnerable if you manage to get around and behind their line as it only really accentuates what is already a big weakness for them.

Earlier, someone mentioned that they would be tempted to either build-in EMR to make it last even longer or leave it not-built-in for extended burst at the overall cost of lesser OP by building in something else (with its potential bonuses). It honestly seems like this might be an overall buff or non-effect for more variable ships with their more currently viable options, but will help somewhat expand the decision space for ships that have clear, singular roles like the aforementioned Dominator.

With regards to officers, I will say that typically I do build officers to match their ships and so am reticent to modify what ships I'm using in my fleet due to the higher cost of investment into a fleet. Between S-mods and Officers, if a planned fleet design doesn't work out as effectively as hoped, its very painful to start trying to swap out as I could be spending anywhere between 32 to 50/60 Story Points to completely design a new fleet from scratch. This feels like it goes at odds with the ability to quickly swap between skills and personal builds with a single SP and being able to retrain all officers instead of just found ones would help go a long way toward not requiring tons of time to retrain new officers for new ships again.

(As a suggestion, what if all ships had a permanent slot to begin with that could be used without any SPs. Some of the stronger factions would be able to use that slot as well to make them stronger, like the Hegemony and Tri-tach for instance. This could help players start with experimenting with permanent built-ins while not requiring investment beyond the ship itself and then we can get rid of the hidden mechanic that grants the leftover bonus XP for built-ins on scuttle as the freebie means spending an SP means they're invested in the ship anyway.)

8
Its not just Hullmod but worse though, they're OP free for the cost of an S-mod slot. In fact, the amount of OP they would normally cost to not build them in, alongside with just how strong they are thanks to the power of missiles and the exponential scaling of armor, is exactly why those two in particular are almost always built-in where applicable. You otherwise save massive amounts of OP for the same slot cost as it would cost for you to slot in Advanced Turret Gyros.

9
Reading through it at the moment and wanted to make a correction. You mention that Heavy Autocannon would be outranged by railgun on ships with Large Ballistics and Ballistic Rangefinder but that's not true. Instead they would match at 900 range as a Large ballistic means that the max range of Rangefinder's bonus is raised to 900. Large Ballistic also adds 200 range for small ballistic (700 + 200 = 900) but also adds 100 range for medium ballistic (800 + 100 = 900!). Unfortunately, this is only true with Ballistic slots, which is why Rangefinder is rarely worth the OP for the Legion.

10
General Discussion / Re: High Scatter Amp Builds
« on: January 24, 2023, 11:50:57 AM »
One HSA build I used last version when I did a Wolfpack run were Tempests Equipped with Graviton beams, Heavy blasters, and Hammer torps. Graviton beams were a flux-cheap and fairly safe way to harry and raise opponent's flux and allowed the Tempests to run the HB with much more impunity to either assist in building up hard flux or cracking armor and hull with Hammers around for the bigger stuff.

11
The twitter teaser picture shows that the hullmod tooltip description includes the s-mod changes, and I'm quite certain that you don't need to go into s-mod menu or s-mod the hullmod beforehand for that to show up, just like in the gamemod that inspired this mechanic.

Ah okay good. Thanks for letting me know, I remembered the stuff in the lower right, but didn't remember the tooltip display.

12
Actually, as a quick thought. Would we be able to see the S-mod bonuses/penalties when hovering over the hullmods in the add/remove hullmods screen as part of their tooltip? Its typically where I'm thinking about hullmods in a S-modding sense and being able to see that info in the same screen as where I'm able to see their benefits and OP in the first place would be really helpful in decision making over whether or not I would want to S-mod it in for hullmods I don't have in my current build. Especially as we're getting into the territory of more complex hullmods, such that it took me a few rereads of Ballistic Rangefinder to discover that it was actually completely useless with my Legion build (mediums are composites and all my smalls were vulcans) and now with the new Missile Autoloader adding to that complexity as well.

13
Going into this then, is there going to be a way to lookup effects of hullmods and their S-mod bonuses and maluses? Currently, as it stands I can codex up the effects of Ship systems, which are already available on their ship card, but can't do the same for hullmods and have to rely on knowing the hullmod at all or having a ship with it built-in to figure what's happening with it and if the S-mod effects are going to potentially be significant I'd like to be aware of what they are going into combat.

14
I think, with regards to S-mods, Alex is on the right track to find some way to give choice as to what to S-mod into ships because it does tend to turn into your top 3 OP-cost mods that you'll always keep on because the benefits are so strong you'd be crazy not to. Everyone already know that Heavy Armor is almost a freebie for Low-techs like Dominator, Onslaught, Legion, or Mora, and then you slap on EMR if it has so much as has a couple Medium missiles or greater because you're getting the most OP to firepower bonus in the game with that. If you're high-tech, you'll hardly ever go wrong with stacking Hardened Shields on them and ITU was almost always guaranteed because range is so key despite actually being on the higher end of OP cost. The only thing holding those back *were* those expensive OP costs and the sacrifices you'd need to make for them, but now the sacrifice has just become an SP or two, and the slots you get to put them in so its more of a competition of which of the most-expensives do you want to permanently benefit from.

As an idea, instead of giving the S-mods benefits or debuffs based on what it is (thereby adding more hidden effects on enemy ships even more so as there's already a problem with not knowing *exactly* what hullmods listed on ships in the pre-combat screen *do* which will only be exacerbated with this. It'll be a real fun surprise getting nuked in my wolfpack run by a ship that just so happened to have a built-in that gave it +damage to frigates when *no other bonuses in the game give +damage against frigates* and I didn't know this) what about adding or subtracting OP based on the mods cost? When I was trying to figure out what to put in as my third S-mods on my ships I was trying to balance out something I'd want permanently that was also higher in cost, but what if say building in something Expensive like the incredibly bulky HA permanently "reserved" some of your OP for it, but was still cheaper and something cheap and lightweight could add to your total OP instead and the difference was just based on the average cost of hullmod as, for capitals, a fair number of them hover around the 15, 20, 25 range? This way Heavy armor isn't necessarily a given because it'd still cost OP, just less, and be expensive relatively whereas if you always wanted say Accelerated Shields so that they always raise on time as you need it, then it can add some OP your way such that every S-mod guarantees a strict X amount of additional OP regardless of cost.

Edit: Also, as an aside a large thing I do enjoy about the refit screen is being able to build around a situation to counter an opponent and a lot of examples can be seen here with respect to builds centered around countering the doritos and Zig. Other examples include slapping on Solar Shielding against Tri-tach and the remnants, Piranhas when going to assault a base, Hellbores and HILs when dealing with the Hegemony or Church, or even ECM when dealing with the League. All options you can and might want to think about including for specific situations, but wouldn't want all the time like ECM against pirates/pathers that never use it, or Hellbores against Tri-tach's weak PD and armor. Built-ins run counter to that by making you want to slap in permanent bonuses and so focusing on something almost always generalized for any situation you might want to refit.

15
General Discussion / Re: The problem with the Radiant
« on: December 10, 2022, 10:17:44 AM »
I'm pretty sure I've suggested this before, but I've always felt like there should be a 'be careful' order you can give to ships that are overextending, or that you can see are going to be in danger soon. Like an inverse of search and destroy, making the AI behavior less agressive. Something a bit less extreme than 'avoid', but in the same vein (maybe lowering the flux thresholds for backing off, and changing behavior in terms of what range bands the ship is trying to get into).  I feel like that could help when fighting radiants too. I sometime have to toggle avoid repeatedly to keep ships safe until I can maneuver my fleet for a proper engagement with a radiant.

I wouldn't mind if there an an order that was similar to 'Avoid' but with a much lower range avoidance. Oftentimes, there are decent threats to my fleet in the enemy's that I want my fleet to "avoid" or handle with a specific team but using the avoid order makes it so that ship scatters my fleet to the four corners of the map because the range is so large. A "Caution" order that makes your ships more wary of a picked threat and more likely to back away from them at lower self-flux levels would be handy for those situations.

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