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Author Topic: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants  (Read 2653 times)

DeMatt

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Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« on: December 30, 2015, 02:20:33 PM »

Just putting these out there, so as to not let them simply fester in the dank recesses of my mind.

-General Luddic Path hullmod:  increased armor and hull integrity; reduced crew capacity, flux capacity, and flux dispersion.  Need to debate whether LP ships should be variants of D-variants, or variants of the originals.

-Lasher-L Strike:  2x Hammers, 2x Standard Bomb Bays (fixed mounts), 1x Dual Autocannon (fore turret), 2x Vulcans (flank turrets);  SO, Expanded Magazines, Expanded Missile Racks, 2x vents.  It should come as no surprise that the stock AI is hilariously incompetent with this design, thanks to the Bomb Bays, but a player in the simulator can take down an Atlas in under ten seconds just by flying straight at it and unloading on the way.

-Lasher-L Assault:  2x Hammers, 2x Mortars (fixed mounts), 1x Single Autocannon (fore turret), 2x Single Machine Guns (flank turrets);  SO, Expanded Missile Racks, Unstable Injector, 2x vents, 2x capacitors.  This design is intended to use all the most primitive weaponry available, thus no dual-mounts and Mortars instead of LAGs.  It makes up for the crappy weapons by having a top speed of 260 before officer skills - something which the AI can quite happily use.

-Brawler-L Assault:  2x Thumpers, 2x Hammers;  SO, Unstable Injector.  I think the Brawler design is well-suited to the Luddic Path idea;  this design is just meant to be primitive as opposed to the stock ACG design (or an ACG/HMG mix, which I think would be best).

-Buffalo-II-L Strike:  3x Hammers, 1x Typhoon, 2x Vulcans (side turrets), 1x Dual Machine Gun (bow turret), 1x Dual Autocannon (fixed mount);  Expanded Missile Racks, Unstable Injector, 9x vents.  This one was hardest for me to test because of the change to the mount types, which meant I needed to create a new .skin, a new .variant, and then add that variant to the Random Battle mission.  The AI's no good with it, thanks to the broadside mounts, but it makes for a very amusing poor-man's Gryphon in player hands.  I'd have preferred to use the Proximity Charge Launcher instead, but it's too futuristic-looking for something lobbing big bombs around.  I couldn't justify SO here - it doesn't need the flux, it does poorly with the extra engines, and reducing its deployment time to all of 40 seconds just hurts it too much.

Thoughts, additional ideas?
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Linnis

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Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2015, 01:13:10 AM »

My thought is that is not enough vents and capacitors for AIs. They are not players and plan their vents and capacitor usage, they are reactive users.

Having low venting meaning they often will end up not shooting and sitting there with shields up.
Having low capacitors means they will get easily overloaded by deciding to shield tank stuff like LMG and autocannon shots.


Atlest 7-8 capacitors are needed to prevent lashers from instea gibbed from getting hit by a kenitic volly from destoryers and above.
Atlest 5 vents are needed so they can shoot without baisically getting themself overloaded within a second and various disaters happening.

To acoomadate for this I can say you can drop the missles and magazine mods. They are made for long engagements that 1. low tech ships are not made for, and 2. goes aginst the doctrine of ludd and hegenomy.


Your Bralwer-L assualt is a underuse of the Brawler class frigates. Brawlers are designed as fire support as they carry alot of weapon mounts with acclerated ammo, as the flaw is the terrible shield coverage. With an unstable injector its going to act as a comical relief ship as it will gurantee to be a spinning wreck flying off into space right at the start of the battle.

Also Brawlers themselves are expensive and rare enough that they should have better weaponry.

If you want a light assult Brawler capable in AI hands I suggest:

1x Heavy machine gun, 1x Chain assault gun. SO, Automated repair, and durable engine assembly.

If you want a more "primitive design"

How about a Cerberus with a chain assult gun and a dual light autocannon in the front.


Baisically, I want to warn you putting Unstable injector on AI ships, as they are nutoriously bad at keeping their engines out of harms way that once they burn out, they are dead, espechially friagates. (as they cannot keep formation and distance, allowing maximise shield arc protection and limiting firing options on them)


Also on your Luddic Path hullmods. The Ludds are well known to be food producers and supporting large populations, so people might be a cheaper resource then ships.

So how about we reverse that Reduce crew to something similar to :

Increase minimum crew required, increase hull and armor values (better maintain work cuz more people), also no flux increase as that is TECH STUFF, AND TECH STUFF IS BLASHPEMY. Also crew accomidation on ships are increased as you know, they might get along better with one and other and you can fit more people without problems arising. Also faster weapon and engine repairs, cuz also, more people.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2015, 01:15:26 AM by Linnis »
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DeMatt

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Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2015, 04:52:38 AM »

My thought is that is not enough vents and capacitors for AIs. They are not players and plan their vents and capacitor usage, they are reactive users.

Having low venting meaning they often will end up not shooting and sitting there with shields up.
Having low capacitors means they will get easily overloaded by deciding to shield tank stuff like LMG and autocannon shots.


Atlest 7-8 capacitors are needed to prevent lashers from instea gibbed from getting hit by a kenitic volly from destoryers and above.
Atlest 5 vents are needed so they can shoot without baisically getting themself overloaded within a second and various disaters happening.
True enough, but the only design here that doesn't have passive dissipation exceed shield maintenance plus all weapons is the Buffalo-2.  And that one doesn't have a shield to worry about.

Putting the Lasher-L-Assault into the simulator, it won 2 out of 3 matches one-on-one against both the Lasher-CS and the Lasher-Standard.  A fourth match against the Lasher-Standard got aborted after the Lasher-L-Assault decided to reverse into a map corner... not because the enemy was pressing it, but just because.

To acoomadate for this I can say you can drop the missles and magazine mods.
If, as with the existing Luddic Path variants, SO gets moved to a permanent hullmod (and I thus didn't have to spend OP on it), then those 15 OP I assigned to SO can easily be reallocated to capacitors and vents.  But I think being able to easily overload a shielded Luddic Path ship is a good thing.

They are made for long engagements that 1. low tech ships are not made for, and 2. goes aginst the doctrine of ludd and hegenomy.
Given the low ammo counts and high refire rates on most small missiles, I disagree.  In these cases, it's less "long engagement" and more "bigger punch".

Your Bralwer-L assualt is a underuse of the Brawler class frigates. Brawlers are designed as fire support as they carry alot of weapon mounts with acclerated ammo, as the flaw is the terrible shield coverage. With an unstable injector its going to act as a comical relief ship as it will gurantee to be a spinning wreck flying off into space right at the start of the battle.

Also Brawlers themselves are expensive and rare enough that they should have better weaponry.
It's supposed to be "thematic", not necessarily "powerful".  I did start running it through simulations, and it seems that the Thumper underperforms even more than I thought it did, so I swapped out the Hammers for LMGs and lost the Unstable Injector to pay for it.  That got it winning, hopefully not by too much.

If you want a light assult Brawler capable in AI hands I suggest:

1x Heavy machine gun, 1x Chain assault gun. SO, Automated repair, and durable engine assembly.
That's too powerful, it'll eat players all day every day.

If you want a more "primitive design"

How about a Cerberus with a chain assult gun and a dual light autocannon in the front.
Feel free to spec it out.

Baisically, I want to warn you putting Unstable injector on AI ships, as they are nutoriously bad at keeping their engines out of harms way that once they burn out, they are dead, espechially friagates. (as they cannot keep formation and distance, allowing maximise shield arc protection and limiting firing options on them)
I wanted speed and more speed on them, so it's either Unstable Injector or Augmented Engines - and Augmented Engines would increase the burn speed and make the fleet harder to avoid.  If that makes their engines a weak spot, so much the better.

Also on your Luddic Path hullmods. The Ludds are well known to be food producers and supporting large populations, so people might be a cheaper resource then ships.

So how about we reverse that Reduce crew to something similar to :

Increase minimum crew required, increase hull and armor values (better maintain work cuz more people), also no flux increase as that is TECH STUFF, AND TECH STUFF IS BLASHPEMY. Also crew accomidation on ships are increased as you know, they might get along better with one and other and you can fit more people without problems arising. Also faster weapon and engine repairs, cuz also, more people.
Luddic CHURCH is about the rural, ascetic lifestyle.  Luddic PATH is the destroy-all-technology type.  I don't see Luddic Path fanatics as being interested in such fripperies as "showers", "medical stations", or "additional bunks", not when they can fill the space with more HOLY EXPLOSIVES.
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Techhead

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Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2015, 08:56:26 AM »

Also on your Luddic Path hullmods. The Ludds are well known to be food producers and supporting large populations, so people might be a cheaper resource then ships.

So how about we reverse that Reduce crew to something similar to :

Increase minimum crew required, increase hull and armor values (better maintain work cuz more people), also no flux increase as that is TECH STUFF, AND TECH STUFF IS BLASHPEMY. Also crew accomidation on ships are increased as you know, they might get along better with one and other and you can fit more people without problems arising. Also faster weapon and engine repairs, cuz also, more people.
Luddic CHURCH is about the rural, ascetic lifestyle.  Luddic PATH is the destroy-all-technology type.  I don't see Luddic Path fanatics as being interested in such fripperies as "showers", "medical stations", or "additional bunks", not when they can fill the space with more HOLY EXPLOSIVES.
I more imagine the Luddic Path reducing automation and doing things by hand. Fly-by-wire systems replaced with manual controls. Point defense guns controlled by human gunners instead of computers. Manually loading missles instead of using autoloaders. All of which of course would require additional crew.
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2015, 06:39:03 PM »

Also on your Luddic Path hullmods. The Ludds are well known to be food producers and supporting large populations, so people might be a cheaper resource then ships.

So how about we reverse that Reduce crew to something similar to :

Increase minimum crew required, increase hull and armor values (better maintain work cuz more people), also no flux increase as that is TECH STUFF, AND TECH STUFF IS BLASHPEMY. Also crew accomidation on ships are increased as you know, they might get along better with one and other and you can fit more people without problems arising. Also faster weapon and engine repairs, cuz also, more people.
Luddic CHURCH is about the rural, ascetic lifestyle.  Luddic PATH is the destroy-all-technology type.  I don't see Luddic Path fanatics as being interested in such fripperies as "showers", "medical stations", or "additional bunks", not when they can fill the space with more HOLY EXPLOSIVES.
I more imagine the Luddic Path reducing automation and doing things by hand. Fly-by-wire systems replaced with manual controls. Point defense guns controlled by human gunners instead of computers. Manually loading missles instead of using autoloaders. All of which of course would require additional crew.
Heh. You could also go the Warhammer 40k route, where they also have to go and bless everything, resulting in stronger ammunition/armor/whatever.
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Clockwork Owl

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Re: Some suggestions for Luddic Path variants
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2015, 10:23:04 PM »

The question is will they bless their 'necessary evil' sort of tools... I mean the spaceships.
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