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Author Topic: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 291705 times)

Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #525 on: January 09, 2016, 03:59:43 PM »

Just because beams are weak does not always mean they are useless, especially if there are no viable alternatives.  For example, if I mount HVDs and Mauler on an Eagle, what else can I use in its energy mounts?  Pulse lasers and blasters do not have enough range (plus Eagle cannot use blasters effectively unless built for it).  Tactical and graviton beams have matching range.  Yes, they are weak, but some damage is better than none if I kite-and-snipe at maximum range.

Continuous beams that hit for hard flux is overpowered because the AI has no idea how to counter it.  AI will keep shields up until it overloads, every time.  Burst beams that can hit for hard flux should be okay because AI has a chance to recover between bursts.
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #526 on: January 10, 2016, 12:40:00 PM »

Just because beams are weak does not always mean they are useless, especially if there are no viable alternatives.  For example, if I mount HVDs and Mauler on an Eagle, what else can I use in its energy mounts?  Pulse lasers and blasters do not have enough range (plus Eagle cannot use blasters effectively unless built for it).  Tactical and graviton beams have matching range.  Yes, they are weak, but some damage is better than none if I kite-and-snipe at maximum range.

Continuous beams that hit for hard flux is overpowered because the AI has no idea how to counter it.  AI will keep shields up until it overloads, every time.  Burst beams that can hit for hard flux should be okay because AI has a chance to recover between bursts.

If they are mostly only good if you don't have alternatives, then that might be a problem. Yes, those two weapons are at least OK due to range and accuracy, which generally isn't possible for most balistics.

Oh god, You are really using AI as an argument for why hard flux beams are a bad idea? Does the AI do the same thing with, say, Autopulse laser, or... Something else which does a lot of damage really fast? I mean, if the AI having trouble is the problem, improve the AI.
Its not like projectile weapons can't keep firing until the target overloads, or they drop their shield, the only difference is that slower projectile weapons are possible to dodge at max range and the damage is like a rapid-fire pulse beam instead of continuous.

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Wyvern

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #527 on: January 10, 2016, 01:03:06 PM »

Oh god, You are really using AI as an argument for why hard flux beams are a bad idea?
Unless you want to write your own AI, it's a pretty good reason.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #528 on: January 10, 2016, 01:20:16 PM »

If you have continuous beams do hard flux damage while keeping their range, they become hard counters to a lot of things. The issue is mainly qualitative, so tuning things like DPS or flux costs wouldn't be very effective. I.E. you'd have to tune their stats to be bad enough that a ship using them would run into peak performance problems; otherwise all it's doing is just making the kills slower but no less inevitable. To keep some kind of balance, you'd have to reduce beam range, which in turn would make them very similar to other energy weapons.

As it is, their intended niche is as a support weapon, whether as extras on a single ship, or on a dedicated support ship. They're not intended to function as primary weapons for combat between evenly-matched ships. That they don't largely work in this role is a sign they're working as intended. On the other hand, they *do* work well in conjunction with other weapons.


(It's not so much an AI issue, I think - not that the AI couldn't respond to this sort of pressure marginally more effectively, but a lot of situations come up where there aren't *any* good options to counter hard-flux beams. Unless their range was lowered, but then, it's back to them being basically more of the same.)
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #529 on: January 10, 2016, 02:30:53 PM »

Main issue with beams is that they are massively effective vs unshielded ships. This is, as you said, mainly because of the range bonus, but it makes playing anything without shields a horrid idea. Even a graviton beam can... Wear down armor unless you hit the Combat readiness threshhold.

I suppose its more that they... Are extremely polarized. In the old mod Vacuum, due to the way the hull mod system was setup, it was really common to have weapons destroy an enemy ship in a single shot unless that ship had massive durability stuff (and destroy the hull with a second shot) or else be entirely invulnerable unless you used excessively heavy weapons.

Here, beam weapons are not quite that bad, but they are exactly as bad as you claim hard flux beams would be vs shields already, Vs Armor. Armor doesn't regenerate, and hence unless you backup armor with shields, or else the armor is very high quality (meaning cruiser or heavier) then even light beams are a massive threat.

Vs shields, the polerization is when you deal more soft flux than dissipation,which causes you to suddenly go from zero damage to massive damage. That kind of thing is not really seen in other weapons. Other weapons, hard flux builds up, eventually breaking the shield. Beams, its no apperent damage until its massive damage, which I think is a problem.

Not really sure how to explain my thoughts on the situation. Still wish I could get the beam hard flux script to work...
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #530 on: January 10, 2016, 02:35:16 PM »

Quote
Oh god, You are really using AI as an argument for why hard flux beams are a bad idea? Does the AI do the same thing with, say, Autopulse laser, or... Something else which does a lot of damage really fast? I mean, if the AI having trouble is the problem, improve the AI.
Unless Alex spends time to improve AI, the AI we have is what we are stuck with.

AI does better against rapid-fire shots; it will lower shields instead of allowing itself to get overloaded.  As someone who has not read Starsector's code aside from snippets posted here and there, the AI... just... knows.

Another attack form that can be overpowered against AI despite appearing balanced on paper is shots that hit for unusually high damage to shields.  When AI gets high on flux, it dissipates a little flux, but otherwise tends to maintain flux at an acceptably high level if forced to keep shields up.  Shots that hit for big damage will exploit this and overload the AI.  This is why Antimatter Blaster costs more to mount than IR Pulse Laser despite the former having inferior DPS and range to the latter on paper - and limited ammo.  This is a hidden benefit of the Target Analysis 10 perk (that does +25% damage to shields); you can overload ships more easily with that perk.
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #531 on: January 10, 2016, 02:38:11 PM »

Quote
Oh god, You are really using AI as an argument for why hard flux beams are a bad idea? Does the AI do the same thing with, say, Autopulse laser, or... Something else which does a lot of damage really fast? I mean, if the AI having trouble is the problem, improve the AI.
Unless Alex spends time to improve AI, the AI we have is what we are stuck with.

AI does better against rapid-fire shots; it will lower shields instead of allowing itself to get overloaded.  As someone who has not read Starsector's code aside from snippets posted here and there, the AI... just... knows.

Another attack form that can be overpowered against AI despite appearing balanced on paper is shots that hit for unusually high damage to shields.  When AI gets high on flux, it dissipates a little flux, but otherwise tends to maintain flux at an acceptably high level if forced to keep shields up.  Shots that hit for big damage will exploit this and overload the AI.  This is why Antimatter Blaster costs more to mount than IR Pulse Laser despite the former having inferior DPS and range to the latter on paper - and limited ammo.  This is a hidden benefit of the Target Analysis 10 perk (that does +25% damage to shields); you can overload ships more easily with that perk.
The AI doesn't seem to treat high alpha weapons as a threat requiring them to maintain lower flux, true. I would say that in part, absorbing attacks like that even if it causes an overload might be a good idea, since that level of damage is easily able to tear through armor and deal critical damage.  It is still situational, but A frigate should always try to take a reaper on it's shield if it can't dodge, rather than drop the shield and explode.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #532 on: January 10, 2016, 02:46:39 PM »

Another thing that was overpowered for a while was shield ramming by the Monitor.  AI had no idea how to counter it, and it kept shields up to the point of overload (just like continuous beams that hit for hard flux).  Before, ramming did enough damage that cruisers and capitals died quickly.  The only ship class that could counter the Monitor was a destroyer because it was light enough that shield ramming was not damaging enough, and it had enough toughness that it took over a minute to kill with IR pulse lasers.

The last time I tried shield ramming, capitals did not take as much damage as they used to.  You can still shield ram big ships to death, but it is not as damaging, takes longer, and you may not win the flux war before Monitor needs to back off and vent.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #533 on: January 10, 2016, 09:39:08 PM »

Main issue with beams is that they are massively effective vs unshielded ships. This is, as you said, mainly because of the range bonus, but it makes playing anything without shields a horrid idea. Even a graviton beam can... Wear down armor unless you hit the Combat readiness threshhold.

...

Here, beam weapons are not quite that bad, but they are exactly as bad as you claim hard flux beams would be vs shields already, Vs Armor. Armor doesn't regenerate, and hence unless you backup armor with shields, or else the armor is very high quality (meaning cruiser or heavier) then even light beams are a massive threat.

Well, yeah - lots of things make flying an unshielded ship a dangerous proposition; beams are hardly unique in that. EMP damage is essentially a hard counter, for example. There's a reason they're the exception and not the rule! If someone is making a shieldless combat ship without accounting for beams (and without intending for beams to counter that ship), that's an issue with the ship design. What you're talking about re: regenerating armor sounds like a possible way to address that, though I'd imagine that'd be tough to balance so that it's effective vs beams but not over-effective vs everything else.

And, right, that's very much what things would be like across the board if beams did hard flux damage. Which makes it a bad thing, no? I'm not saying it couldn't work somehow, but it'd require a pretty major redesign.
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superhotdogzz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #534 on: January 11, 2016, 01:48:49 AM »

Main issue with beams is that they are massively effective vs unshielded ships. This is, as you said, mainly because of the range bonus, but it makes playing anything without shields a horrid idea. Even a graviton beam can... Wear down armor unless you hit the Combat readiness threshhold.
.
.
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Vs shields, the polerization is when you deal more soft flux than dissipation,which causes you to suddenly go from zero damage to massive damage. That kind of thing is not really seen in other weapons. Other weapons, hard flux builds up, eventually breaking the shield. Beams, its no apperent damage until its massive damage, which I think is a problem.

Not really sure how to explain my thoughts on the situation. Still wish I could get the beam hard flux script to work...

I think this is exactly how beam weapon is being used.
When their shield is up;
Your beam either is thick enough to overcome their soft flux dissipation or don't bother to kill them with it at all(unless you are using it to build up their flux or harassing them).

Other time, it is geared up to murder those who do not have a shield(Hound). It is just non-sense throwing a Hound at Wolf's tactical laser  embrace.

It is an excellent choice to deal with rag tag pirate ship whose flux dissipation capability is universally bad or has no shield at all.  
« Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 01:52:40 AM by superhotdogzz »
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Mudanzas Valencia

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #535 on: January 11, 2016, 11:08:36 AM »

Any chance of bringing back multi ship boarding, if only for mods?
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #536 on: January 11, 2016, 01:28:42 PM »


Well, yeah - lots of things make flying an unshielded ship a dangerous proposition; beams are hardly unique in that. EMP damage is essentially a hard counter, for example. There's a reason they're the exception and not the rule! If someone is making a shieldless combat ship without accounting for beams (and without intending for beams to counter that ship), that's an issue with the ship design. What you're talking about re: regenerating armor sounds like a possible way to address that, though I'd imagine that'd be tough to balance so that it's effective vs beams but not over-effective vs everything else.

And, right, that's very much what things would be like across the board if beams did hard flux damage. Which makes it a bad thing, no? I'm not saying it couldn't work somehow, but it'd require a pretty major redesign.
Hmm. So none of the vanilla game ships without shields/phaseshifting are intended for combat? There are quite a few of them at low level, although admittely at high level not so much. EMP is more of a hard counter, but unless its, heh, a beam, you can still outrange and/or dodge it.
As for regeneration, I found that out when trying to make my mod for regen. I pretty much made it really small and not scale up with size or armor level at all, which actually seemed to work.

I suppose what I really want is to be able to turn beam hard flux on as an option, global or script, so that I and others can actually know that it would really be a problem. The partial mod showed that 20% hard flux had interesting effects on most combat, but hull mods, skill levels, abilities, and multibeams all failed to work as intended.



I think this is exactly how beam weapon is being used.
When their shield is up;
Your beam either is thick enough to overcome their soft flux dissipation or don't bother to kill them with it at all(unless you are using it to build up their flux or harassing them).

Other time, it is geared up to murder those who do not have a shield(Hound). It is just non-sense throwing a Hound at Wolf's tactical laser  embrace.

It is an excellent choice to deal with rag tag pirate ship whose flux dissipation capability is universally bad or has no shield at all. 
Yes, it is. That is how it is currently. It used to be that good flying could allow you to use unshielded ships vs beam ships since you could outrange them (albiet it being hard to get enough hits in) I understand why that was changed.
The point I was trying to make, aside from beam damage not scaling with firepower, either being all or nothing, was that you can get the same exact effect with rapid-fire ballistic weapons, and they DO deal hard flux.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #537 on: January 11, 2016, 02:15:44 PM »

Hmm. So none of the vanilla game ships without shields/phaseshifting are intended for combat? There are quite a few of them at low level, although admittely at high level not so much.

We've got what, Hound, Cerberus, and Buffalo Mk.II - all pretty clearly not intended to be great for a primary-combat role. Doesn't mean they have no uses, but the beam/EMP vulnerabilities are major weaknesses that need to be accounted for.


The point I was trying to make, aside from beam damage not scaling with firepower, either being all or nothing, was that you can get the same exact effect with rapid-fire ballistic weapons, and they DO deal hard flux.

The thing to consider here is what kinds of ships generally carry which kinds of weapons. Beam weapons are mostly mounted on high-tech ships, which are more mobile. E.G. an Enforcer with HVDs has the ability to deal hard flux at range, sure, but it's not going to be the same kind of uncounterable it would be if the Medusa could do it.
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Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #538 on: January 11, 2016, 02:24:57 PM »

New patch notes... please. *gasp*
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.7.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #539 on: January 11, 2016, 03:08:39 PM »

The point I was trying to make, aside from beam damage not scaling with firepower, either being all or nothing, was that you can get the same exact effect with rapid-fire ballistic weapons, and they DO deal hard flux.

The thing to consider here is what kinds of ships generally carry which kinds of weapons. Beam weapons are mostly mounted on high-tech ships, which are more mobile. E.G. an Enforcer with HVDs has the ability to deal hard flux at range, sure, but it's not going to be the same kind of uncounterable it would be if the Medusa could do it.
The Medusa can mount Light Needlers, which have only 200 less range than most beams and are only slightly worse than Heavy Needlers. Integrated Targeting Unit and Gunnery Implants 5 pushes that well over 1000 range. The Medusa totally can do it.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2016, 03:17:16 PM by ANGRYABOUTELVES »
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