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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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181
Suggestions / Re: General Feedback / Thoughts
« on: May 08, 2019, 04:55:01 AM »
- I'd love a small quality of life thing for bordering-OCD people like me who constantly want to have their inventory sorted:
Supplies and fuel could be stack-able past 1000, so my inventory isn't a constant mess as supplies/fuel are in a continuous cycle of being used up and being looted. (Perhaps have two inventory slots that are fixed to only hold supplies and fuel?)
Or have some sort of auto-sort active, so that everything gets sorted automatically when you open your inventory.

I believe the 1000 item limit is removed in 0.9.1 so everything will be stacked in the same square. In the meantime, a workaround I've been using for awhile is:
1. go to a store, or storage that will take you over 1000 of an item
2. put all of the item in question into the store/storage then click (not ctrl or shift + click) and bring back the item while it has more than 1000.

This will allow that square of commodities to carry more than 1000 and avoid supplies/fuel, for example, to take up more then one square. That item will keep that property even through save/loads and going under/over the 1000 limit as long as you do not lose the commodity(By running out or accidentally clicking it to sell/eject). It'll also work for crew and marines too.

182
Mods / Re: Starship Legends - Personality for Your Ships and Crew
« on: May 07, 2019, 09:17:59 PM »
Must everything be stat-based?
Can some titles be simply for fluff/atmosphere?

Although like SCC stated earlier that it would require a mod that's able to keep better track of a ships actions in combat/campaign I certainly would enjoy a mod that gave titles based on actions without buffs/nerfs as it would prevent power creep and even a negative title for my 5 D-mod cannon fodders could be interesting to have in its history if I restored it and give it greater purpose as a reminder of its unfortunate history.

As cool and interesting as this mod is to create more unique story-based ships I do fear about the resulting power creep from giving straight buffs to the player with no compensation to AI.

183
Mods / Re: [0.9.0a] Diable Avionics 2.03 (2019/02/19)
« on: May 05, 2019, 10:48:01 PM »
I'm not involved with mod creation, but let me try to answer some of these as best I can:

1. Yes, I know for sure DA has the Pandemonium class dreadnought which has 4 Large Hybrid mounts with the flux to fire off a full salvo. Its basically meant to be a high alpha capital. Uhlan siege lasers have a tag to ignore shooting at frigates and fighters, usually because their shot speed is so low without skills that they'll likely just be evaded and waste flux.

2. Its mostly luck of the draw, I've had a few DA campaigns where I could go for several cycles without DA losing a market and I've had DA campaigns where they lost stations within the first 6 months.

3. Assume Wing Control exists purely for the cool factor of controlling mech fighters, let's be honest. It's actually pretty abusable too compared to other systems since you can control a zephyr and park on top of a ship while unleashing your super beam.

4. Tartiflette has expressed multiple times previously that transforming ships likely won't exist any larger then the valiant class frigate due to the "hacky" way that it had to be done in order to work with the base game. (I believe the in-depth answer had to do with turret slots or something related to that? I'm not a modder and don't have experience with that sort of thing though).

184
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« on: April 29, 2019, 06:45:18 AM »
If you deploy as usual, order a mass retreat and then deploy again, do you lose any loot? If during the retreat the last ship on the battlefield dies, does it count the whole battle as lost, somehow? I use redeployment pretty liberally and have no issues with it, but other people don't share my experiences and now I'm not sure anymore if it's as good of a strategy as I thought.

If I recall correctly, Alex did fix the lost loot from retreat to reengage bug in 0.9 so long as you win, but there's still an issue with losing the experience gain you would've gotten.

185
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« on: April 26, 2019, 07:55:23 AM »
Luddic Path Cells: incidents have a chance to fail depending on the stability of the colony targeted

So what would the chances of that panning out be? Would a stability 10 colony be mostly safe from Pather attempts at sabotage?


186
While the Deployment point penalty mechanic might be a snowball mechanic that usually only helps the AI, I would argue that the AI could really use it.

Firstly though, the bigger fleet getting more ships in combat makes having a bigger fleet more of a boon by allowing said fleet to leverage its larger numbers tactically which is very important. Otherwise in the tactical sense the bigger fleet would not be able to outnumber the enemy fleet which is a huge behavioral limiter to the AI. If the AI couldn't outnumber my fleet then my ships would have much higher aggression due to local equivalence and could kill faster and safer.

Not to mention that combat wise, the player has a lot of advantages to the AI. Even leaving alone the idea of player piloting/commanding which is better able to take advantage of positioning, tactics, and loadouts the AI couldn't dream of using. The player will likely have much more optimized skills themselves and in their officers, unlike the AI having random skills. The player will likely have a much better setup for their ships as well as their fleet to have stronger advantages in what the player focuses on while covering up any weaknesses while AI fleets will have a minor focus based on doctrine their ship loadouts can sometimes leave something to be desired.

Sure, its annoying when the AI has things like the lack of fleet ship limit, or when they used to E-Burn all the time because they don't have to care about supplies but the deployment limit is one of few things that the AI gets when it comes to the combat where the player has so many more advantages.

187
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« on: April 21, 2019, 12:46:05 PM »
Huh, that would make a lot more sense then. Looks like I can still get trophy Legions after all.

188
As someone that's played a lot of DA previously, I can confirm that its something related only to flying DA ships. At the start of fights, you have an accuracy and recoil penalty but as the fight carries on your accuracy/recoil improves and becomes a decent sized buff along with vastly improved acceleration for ships which is really good for hit and run attacks.

189
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« on: April 21, 2019, 08:50:29 AM »
Any ETA on when the .1 release will roll around? Picked up the game again recently and stuff like this (spoilers) keeps ruining my fun.

As was pointed out in goduranus's large thread, you can remove all weapons from your carriers to force them to be more timid. Although this means that enemies will underestimate your forces.

Has anyone else noticed that if you investigate any of the Legion XIVs but don't choose to recover it immediately and leave it in place for later, when you come back to pick it up the option to recover it is no longer available and you have no choice but to break it for parts.

I'm not sure if this is just general wreck recovery logic, or something specific to the Legions as I've never noticed this behaviour previously.
Granted, I've never been in a position to want to 'leave a wreck for later' before as they are usually all drifting and need a snap decision before they vanish anyway.

Just a few days ago when I started a new game, I went bounty hunting as a solo frigate and bumped into a couple of Legion XIV's so knowing that my interactions with them will prevent me from salvaging them is a bit depressing, even if I wasn't planning on using them.

190
Modding / Re: Domain Drones?
« on: April 16, 2019, 08:07:36 AM »
When I played vanilla, I would see domain probes very commonly, especially if I took exploration missions as the majority of them wanted you to go to some.

However, in my current game after installing multiple mods, including Tyrador, DME, Unknown Skies, and Nexerelin which might affect the fringe the most, I have yet to see a single domain probe/ship/mothership even after exploring half the sector. Of course it might also just be bad luck, but I think one of these mods, or any others that affect fringe generation, might have something to do with it.

191
Yeah, that's almost certainly the case - should be fixed for .1 (thanks to goduranus' earlier report), but I'll take another look.

Assuming that the enemy actually was sending in its forces piecemeal to be picked apart, does this also solve the issue of a player-less spark drover fleet being so powerful for its ease of use or are the drovers still able to overpower so many enemy ships without needing escorts?

192
Although I will be adding my own thoughts here, please bear in mind that this is someone that prefers to pilot carriers/supercarriers as the flagship in a carrier centric fleet. Honestly, I was pretty excited when 0.8 rolled around and Alex announced the new mechanics for fighter control that wasn't "Mass tons of fighters with a few hangers and watch them wolfpack them down."

Generally, fighters do better against frigates and destroyers while bombers are better against cruisers, capitals, and starbases. Another unmentioned reason that fighters are strong are because of the AIs tendency to deploy all small ships first before the larger ones. This leaves nothing but separate frigate and destroyer fodder to be quickly run through before the less DP efficient enemy caps and cruisers show up lacking any support and getting worn down.

The video also shows the main advantage of fighters, the concentration of force with little risk. Early on you took down the level 2 station by concentrating the fighters immediately on it prior to the enemy frigates showing up, and as stated before frigates are fodder to fighters and quickly disposed of by the high-end performing sparks. This meant that for the first few minutes you were able to safely concentrate 160 DP worth of firepower on the station. Some fighters would be destroyed of course, but it means little to losing frigates or destroyers.

In this case too, as noted earlier, pirates tend to be very poor in dealing with fighters, let alone the extremely high end and dangerous shielded 5x Burst Laser sparks. Pirates lack good anti-fighter weaponry, either have no or poor shields with little coverage, lack good options for bigger ships aside from Falcon(P), and their officers tend to be few and low in number, meaning less chance for 'Advanced Countermeasures 3'.

A high tech space fortress might be the better contender against the spark drover due to having better, dedicated shield modules and heavy mine spam. It won't kill the drovers not being mobile, but if it isn't slowly getting worn down it should force a stalemate and retreat. High tech would also be more likely to make use of dooms and omens which are much more effective at anti-fighter.

Although mods were involved, in 0.8 I used an II Matriarch loaded with Wanzers and was able to blow through most opponent fleets with the exception of the Templars, who were strong due to their priwen bursts and the high frequency of 'Advanced Countermeasures' from all level 20 officers and DME who have a lot of EMP, which is better against low numbers of strong fighters admittedly.

Generally, PD weapons are not so good against fighters though you'd think so by designation. Since all weapons can target fighters it works a bit differently, HIL for instance can be manually swept over an initial fighter wave with its strong HE. Swarmers can be massed rather than harpoons for good anti-fighter coverage for a time and the first wave at least. And don't dismiss Advanced Countermeasures 3. AC 3 with good autofire accuracy can single-handedly wipe fighter squads with token defenses or weapons, 50% damage is no joke. Usually when piloting a carrier, I can immediately tell when an enemy ship has AC 3 regardless of class by the amount of casualties they inflict. It won't save a frigate, but for a cruiser and capital it makes a huge difference in whether I'll be able to beat them down or if they completely no-sell my carrier and its a very good skill to give to officers if one is inclined to go warship heavy as it counters fighters surprisingly well. Using the templar example above, AC 3 bulwarks were almost entirely untouchable with priwen bursts, and the paladin and archbishop would kill them before they even got close.

193
General Discussion / Re: How not to suck?
« on: April 07, 2019, 11:13:09 PM »
Keep in mind that these are mostly based on my experiences, so feel free to experiment and tweak it as it works for you.

I set each ship to escort each other, and form on me. No one goes off on their own. What usually plays out, we face off with enemy and they eventually overwhelm us. They also have mostly cruisers, destroyers and frigates. My heavy firepower onslaught and his supporting cruisers and destroyers make no difference.

In the beginning, I used to do that but you have to realize what the escort order does. Currently the escort order does not mean 'follow this ship and provide backup' it means 'Put yourself between the enemies bullets and this ship regardless of size differences' with the exception of carriers who prefer to hide behind escort targets.

Instead, don't be afraid to let ships be free roaming. Though this does mean checking up every so often to ensure no one gets into an overextended position with no chance of rescue (though orders as suggestions can prevent you saving them anyway) the ships on your team tend to be very cautious and conservative in what they do and will more often than not be perfectly fine on their own. This is more true the bigger ships you have in your fleet as larger ships are not able to travel quickly and so will be more likely to fight around allies in a line whereas frigates will usually zip around and wind up behind enemy lines either skirmishing or kiting.

Also, escort does not work well between ships that have wildly different speeds as a slower vessel can't keep up with a really quick one so they won't support each other and a quick one won't use its superior speed to stay safe because of the leash the escort order gives it.


I try to fit with variation of anti shields and anti armor weapons on my battleship which I fly. I never had any trouble getting this far, I mean I'd say im in mid-end game area now, I've won lots of battles during that time. Should I be trying to out maneuver people instead of getting in a shooting war? Are my weapons terrible?


Depends on what kind of ship you're piloting and what you like to do. Are you flying a Hyperion, tempest, or Aurora? Go around the flank and hammer anything that overextends itself or backs off while weakened from your main line.

Playing as a Paragon, onslaught, hammerhead, or SO lasher in the earlier game? Fly in there and cause some trouble with your superior firepower. Don't be afraid to do a head on approach when flying an onslaught as excluding mods, stations, and remnants it has the highest offensive power of all sector ships.

If you desire to be a Heron or Astral then make sure to take things in a more tactical manner and more actively directing your fighters and fleet to achieve your goals.

I will say though that how you build your ships will have the largest impact on their performance, which is why Loadout Design 3 is considered on of the top tier skills in the game. What you want to do is try to think of a role for the ship to do and build for it, and very importantly make sure that what you hand off to the AI is something that they'll be able to make good use of. The AI are very good at being a line, but don't expect it to smartly use a quick, high alpha damage, assassin style ship as that's more the player's territory. Don't feel as though you have to fulfill that role though, there are many ways to skin a cat in this game.

What are some good suggestions for fighters/bombers to use on my 4 carriers?

Depends on what your carriers are and what you want to do with them.

For general bombing runs I would suggest a mixture of Broadswords/Longbows(Anti-shield/Torpedo protection) + Daggers/Perditions/Khopesh/Tridents(Anti-armor/hull)

For fighter superiority you can go with a lot of sparks/wasps/xyphos/thunders

For anti-frigate flankers any fighter with excellent speed and a high range of engagement such as thunders(ion suppression, but takes awhile) + gladius(can bring more damage than thunders)

For destroying starbases, Piranhas, which are normally horrible in fights due to always missing or friendly fire threats, can be very dangerous in raw damage output and PD saturation on the stationary target.

Also, coming up against a fleet of equal size and strength one must expect to take losses, but even losing 3-4 ships an engagement is crippling money wise. And then there is no point recovering them even if they are intact because of the permanent damage to them.

Don't be afraid to recover ships just because they have some D-mods. The D-mods even make ships cheaper to deploy in fights making them cost less in supplies to fight, and if you really want to there's a skill that reduces ships' maintenance costs based on its D-mods.

You don't need to restore the ship and in-fact I advise against it as its cheaper to manufacture or buy a new one. Restore is there for extremely rare/unique ships that you cannot easily replace with the earlier two methods.

D-mods mean far less than outnumbering your opponents, so long as they're not something crippling such as degraded engines(Can reduce fleet burn speed which can be dangerous for your fleet.), any D-mod that affects fighters for a carrier(means fighters will die quickly and uselessly), or damaged cargo bays for freighters.

In-addition to that don't be afraid to not only recover your own ships, but feel free to recover enemy ships as well if they're worthy.

Also, should I lean heavy to flux cap or flux vents? I max out both. I see people lean heavy towards vents and less flux cap, and just leave off some weapons to put on more system mods.

Generally vents over caps, with some exceptions where more caps are better and vent speed doesn't matter (ie. Phase ships, frigates, hyperion). I will say though that if you're regularly spending enough OP to max out both weapons and flux stats that you should think about using more Hullmods. Many hullmods can be extremely good, like expanded missile rack can make double the reapers effectively doubling how many cruisers can be immediately put out of commission and Integrated Targeting Unit is a staple of almost every warship build type with Expanded Deck Crew being its Carrier must-have version.

Don't be afraid to leave some weapon slots empty too to help with a ship's flux stats or to get more OP to assist the build plan you're going for on a ship. A scarab is a good example of a ship that benefits heavily from leaving some weapon slots empty.

194
General Discussion / Re: Character Build and doubts.
« on: April 05, 2019, 09:56:27 PM »
I am in a similar boat with Thaago. Often of late, I only really have about an hour or so to play SS and only really if I skimp out on sleep, which is very non-sustainable. Because of this, I generally take a couple skills for doing things quickly like Navigation or the salvaging skill that gives remote survey at level 1, and even Neutrino detector can help by quickly determining if there is any loot worth looking at in the system by doing a quick test of false positives around if I'm able to fit it. This is all because the top priority of my games is simply to lessen time required to do certain tasks, especially ones that can get a bit stale like searching through endless fringe systems with no/minimal planets and loot for the all important blueprints and colony sites.

Navigation also helps more than with speed, between increased burn speeds, maybe sensors, and transverse jump its possible to avoid a lot of unnecessary fights. Fights which, on the larger end, could take anywhere from 30 mins. to said hour to complete.

195
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.9.1a (In-Dev) Patch Notes
« on: March 30, 2019, 09:31:50 PM »

Re: First month's haul.


That's actually a very lucky first month's haul. But yes, Vast ruins typically pay off large dividends on the stuff you typically go out into the fringes for such as blueprints, nano forges, and synchrotrons.


edit:  is it just the first month that's insane? because month #2 was quite disappointing in comparison


All tech mines do have diminishing returns though, with the exception of their production in supplies, fuel, metals, etc. So you'll get less of the good, rare stuff each month until you'll want to abandon them.
Also, although they produce and export metal, fuels, and supplies their export levels are stagnant and do not grow with population so later on in a permanent colony you're better off to replace them as they'll get out numbered in (the logarithmic) exports by the specialized industries which do scale with population.

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