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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 355254 times)

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #315 on: February 27, 2016, 03:45:04 PM »

(I think you guys might be selling an all-beam Aurora a bit short. It's not going to kill a Paragon, probably, but anything short of that?)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #316 on: February 27, 2016, 04:04:38 PM »

(I think you guys might be selling an all-beam Aurora a bit short. It's not going to kill a Paragon, probably, but anything short of that?)
Compared to Eagle, Aurora has three small beams instead of three (superior) medium ballistics.  Eagle with beams + HVDs + Mauler is long-ranged and effective, but slow at killing things, certainly no simulator smasher like Dominator (though with more ships in 0.7.2 simulator, I doubt Dominator can solo the simulator now).  I think all beam Aurora would be even worse at killing things than beam-and-ballistics Eagle.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #317 on: February 27, 2016, 04:08:09 PM »

What if the Aurora's Synergy slots are all changed to Universal?
I would mount railguns or needlers in the small mounts, and heavy blasters or phase lances in the medium mounts.  Aurora with universals would work like Medusa, Falcon, or Eagle.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #318 on: February 27, 2016, 04:25:23 PM »

P.S. Still no intel map panning, boo hiss etc :P

It can be modded in.


Compared to Eagle, Aurora has three small beams instead of three (superior) medium ballistics.  Eagle with beams + HVDs + Mauler is long-ranged and effective, but slow at killing things, certainly no simulator smasher like Dominator (though with more ships in 0.7.2 simulator, I doubt Dominator can solo the simulator now).  I think all beam Aurora would be even worse at killing things than beam-and-ballistics Eagle.

I suspect the superior flux stats, combined with beam flux efficiency, combined with beams needing critical mass to be effective as the main armament, and further combined with High Energy Focus (which is extremely useful now) may make up for that. It's very different than what the Eagle brings to the table, and quite effective.
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Dri

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #319 on: February 27, 2016, 06:12:08 PM »

I'm waiting for the hotfix to start a full new game. The bug reports and other issues seem to have slowed down; patch tomorrow or Mon? :)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #320 on: February 27, 2016, 06:52:54 PM »

I tried all graviton beam and tactical laser Aurora, with +20% damage from max Ordnance Expert.  It mostly works, but slowly.  It can kill standard destroyers and some other bigger ships.  Enemy Aurora is impossible to kill without High Energy Focus; it dissipates about as fast as beams raise flux.  I did not bother with Paragon, since its defenses are better than the Aurora that could not be killed (quickly enough).  As simulator opponents, none of them have boosted defenses.

I compared beam Aurora with beam-and-ballistics Eagle.  Eagle is the superior ship for long-range support; its ballistics hit for hard flux and has just as much range as beams.  Beam Eagle with ballistics kill faster.  For beam support, I would take beam Eagle over beam Aurora every time, if given a choice.  With more demanding upkeep and deployment costs, not to mention slower kill times, Aurora simply underperforms.

Heavy blaster or pulse laser spam, on the other hand, Aurora does that better than Eagle.


Other comments:
* Noticed Burn Drive disables venting.  That will knock the somewhat overpowered low-tech bruisers down a little.

* The Dampen Field effect looks like it can be modified and applied to some mod ship as form-fitting shields.  Seems like quite a bit of stuff could be done with it.


I will wait until the hotfix comes out before installing stuff and starting a new game.
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #321 on: February 27, 2016, 09:09:25 PM »

Noticed MIRV behavior gets pretty weird against small targets. The Hurricane will sometimes slam into shields before it can split, but usually it splits extremely close. So SplitRange doesn't mean much against small targets, but it seems to scale up a lot vs bigger targets as well. It's very noticeable with mod MIRVs, the Achilles from BRDY is supposed to split at a range where the 3 heatseekers can curve around and hit engines, and it usually splits way too close against frigates. Increasing SplitRange too much makes it buggy against large targets in exchange.

E: also, the random factor MIRVs have can compound this issue, I belive it's what causing the stage 1s to occasionally fail to split

E2: Mirvs go after your current target rather than the target you had when you fired the stage 1, not sure if bug or intended, but it can lead to strange situations : 0

E3: A Hurricane firing on cooldown can kill a full health Balanced Hammerhead on its own in about 20-30 seconds, to go back to the missile criticism. The only real defense against the weapon is to play ultra defensively until all the ammo has been wasted, due to the massive DPS while firing as fast as it allows. Then again it IS ammo limited, can only be mounted by a few ships, and costs 25 OP, but idk, I don't like how low the firing cooldown is, plus the ease of countering it (avoid and bait ammo) contrasted with how *** you are if you don't cheese it out. I actually think it was better as a long-range pressure weapon, because then you were basically forced to kill the mounting ship OR you could generally deal with the missiles in some way due to how they were less dangerous and numerous.

It's also hard-countered by flak and ignores every other form of PD save mass vulcans.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 09:31:51 PM by Cycerin »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #322 on: February 27, 2016, 10:36:20 PM »

There's a bug which I can't reproduce reliably, but I've seen a few times.  When I join a battle in progress, say between the Hegemony and the Pirates, then we win the battle and pursue fleeing ships, it seems that dead Hegemony ships will occasionally deploy from the sides to try to catch fleeing pirates.  I've mostly been using my starter Centurion so I've never been fast enough to actually see a dead ship enter the battle, and I could imagine an ally ship with a tiny sliver of hull left might fatally collide with an asteroid or friendly.  However, if this happened, I assume I'd see a "Whatever Ship has been destroyed" message and I didn't in the cases I'm talking about.  Now if ships that were destroyed in a previous battle will still be in the battlefield during pursuit, maybe that's what I'm seeing?  I've definitely seen a couple of dead allied frigates coming in from the sides when I'm pursuing from below.

Hmm. I'll keep an eye out, but I *strongly* suspect something else is going on here. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a ship could deploy dead. Even if it deployed at 0 hp, it'd still be alive until it got hit once, at which point you'd see a message.


@Megas: interesting, thank you for the feedback!


Noticed MIRV behavior gets pretty weird against small targets. The Hurricane will sometimes slam into shields before it can split, but usually it splits extremely close. So SplitRange doesn't mean much against small targets, but it seems to scale up a lot vs bigger targets as well. It's very noticeable with mod MIRVs, the Achilles from BRDY is supposed to split at a range where the 3 heatseekers can curve around and hit engines, and it usually splits way too close against frigates. Increasing SplitRange too much makes it buggy against large targets in exchange.

That's odd. The range doesn't scale, although it does need to face the target to split, so maybe that's why it seems to be having a harder time vs smaller targets? The range check takes the target radius into account, but as a flat modifier.

E: also, the random factor MIRVs have can compound this issue, I belive it's what causing the stage 1s to occasionally fail to split

Right - but you can set the splitRangeRange to 0 to avoid that, right?

E2: Mirvs go after your current target rather than the target you had when you fired the stage 1, not sure if bug or intended, but it can lead to strange situations : 0

They definitely do not do that. They used to a few versions back, but I remember fixing this. Just tested and it works the way it's intended, as far as I can tell. I.E. target one ship, fire MIRV, switch targets, observe MIRV split and fire submunitions at original target.

Are you sure your MIRV and submunitions are actually using the vanilla missile AI? :) Could be I'm missing something here, though, but can't think what at the moment.

E3: A Hurricane firing on cooldown can kill a full health Balanced Hammerhead on its own in about 20-30 seconds, to go back to the missile criticism. The only real defense against the weapon is to play ultra defensively until all the ammo has been wasted, due to the massive DPS while firing as fast as it allows. Then again it IS ammo limited, can only be mounted by a few ships, and costs 25 OP, but idk, I don't like how low the firing cooldown is, plus the ease of countering it (avoid and bait ammo) contrasted with how *** you are if you don't cheese it out. I actually think it was better as a long-range pressure weapon, because then you were basically forced to kill the mounting ship OR you could generally deal with the missiles in some way due to how they were less dangerous and numerous.

It's also hard-countered by flak and ignores every other form of PD save mass vulcans.

Yeah, like I said, nerfing it is on my TODO list :)
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #323 on: February 27, 2016, 10:36:52 PM »

I'm waiting for the hotfix to start a full new game. The bug reports and other issues seem to have slowed down; patch tomorrow or Mon? :)

Something like that, most likely. We'll see what tomorrow brings!
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Achataeon

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #324 on: February 28, 2016, 01:44:27 AM »

Something like that, most likely. We'll see what tomorrow brings!

A new patch maybe?

I am liking the new feel of the launcher, since no one seems to take note of it yet.
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BHunterSEAL

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #325 on: February 28, 2016, 03:33:56 AM »

Definitely been enjoying a nice long stretch of vanilla following the .72 release, the mechanical and balance updates seem to have had a positive impact. A few notes on what I've seen so far:

- Trying a Pirate playthrough, faction relations seem to develop very slowly given the small scale of procurement mission rewards and limited impact of selecting the relation boost. Selecting this new-game option seems to improve starting faction standing from (-65) to (-45), not enough to enable transponder-on docking, so open-market trading doesn't build much goodwill. Since they don't offer bounties, I'm having a hard time increasing relations to the point where I'm able to aid them in battle.
- One possible solution, probably something players can tweak on their own, might be to bump starting Pirate relations even further while making the Independents (or even major factions) inhospitable to start.   
- Really minor nit--this wasn't in the changelog, but was mentioned during discussion of .71--clicking a message popup still takes players to the last-viewed Intel screen rather than details of that item. It feels a bit clunky having to switch to the Log and change filters, then reset them next time you want to check prices or bounties on the map.
- I was going to point out that I haven't run across any of the new ships yet, but it occurred to me that this playthrough has been spent almost wholly in Pirate / Hege space.
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BHunterSEAL

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #326 on: February 28, 2016, 03:48:17 AM »

There's a bug which I can't reproduce reliably, but I've seen a few times.  When I join a battle in progress, say between the Hegemony and the Pirates, then we win the battle and pursue fleeing ships, it seems that dead Hegemony ships will occasionally deploy from the sides to try to catch fleeing pirates.  I've mostly been using my starter Centurion so I've never been fast enough to actually see a dead ship enter the battle, and I could imagine an ally ship with a tiny sliver of hull left might fatally collide with an asteroid or friendly.  However, if this happened, I assume I'd see a "Whatever Ship has been destroyed" message and I didn't in the cases I'm talking about.  Now if ships that were destroyed in a previous battle will still be in the battlefield during pursuit, maybe that's what I'm seeing?  I've definitely seen a couple of dead allied frigates coming in from the sides when I'm pursuing from below.

Hmm. I'll keep an eye out, but I *strongly* suspect something else is going on here. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a ship could deploy dead. Even if it deployed at 0 hp, it'd still be alive until it got hit once, at which point you'd see a message.


Possibly coincidental, but early in my run a Path fleet got clobbered by Hege forces and ran, so I moved to engage the remaining frigate in a separate battle. The Hege fleet joined but just after the mission started I was notified that the Path ship was disabled. No ships or asteroids around it, no shots fired by anyone--my assumption was low CR+hull damage caused a fatal malfunction. The Path frigate wasn't listed as destroyed in the pre-battle screen but there was zero salvage of any kind. Figured I'd throw that out there since that's something I haven't seen in prior releases.
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Schwartz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #327 on: February 28, 2016, 05:23:22 AM »

Found another bug: Picking an officer as the starting option will not actually give you the officer. He'll show up as piloting the ship, but once you put another officer there, he'll be gone. He's not in the list, either.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #328 on: February 28, 2016, 05:27:45 AM »

re: Aurora, i'd also like to see some kind of buff to it. even if it can be on par or slightly better than an Eagle with specific loadouts, i don't think that's even a fair comparison, seeing as how the Aurora has over 50% higher maintenance and, more importantly, deployment cost. the Doom is the only other cruiser that shares the same cost, none of the others even come close. in fact, Aurora and Doom are much closer in deployment cost to Conquest and Onslaught than they are to Dominator, Eagle, Gryphon, etc.

the Aurora's description also seems to imply that it is straight up the most powerful cruiser, with lines such as "one can only wonder what the domain navy could accomplish with a fleet of these sleek, asymmetric and eminently effective vessels" and "few ships can outperform the Aurora ton for ton. its only weakness is its prohibitive cost".

with that in mind, i don't think a large synergy mount would be unreasonable. alternatively, one of the medium turrets could be upgraded to large, or the medium synergy reverted to large missile (although these later changes would of course limit loudout variety more so than potential firepower).

somewhat related, i also just noticed that the description states "the Aurora's large energy turrets annihilate targets at extreme ranges with impunity, while missile launcher hardpoints deal with what is left". that should probably be changed. the "missile launcher hardpoints" are still kind of accurate, but "large energy turrets" is just incorrect. ^^
« Last Edit: February 28, 2016, 05:29:49 AM by Sy »
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Schwartz

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #329 on: February 28, 2016, 05:40:02 AM »

I think it'd be cool to give it more missile power. Several medium forward missile mounts for example. I've always found it a bit weird to use 4x small mounts.

3x medium energy work rather well, and putting Heavy Blasters here gives the Aurora its typical profile of high-damage, high-cost shots appropriate to its flux pool. I'm not sure the frontal loadout is any better now than it had been previously. They are both kind of weird. How about 1x large, 2x medium forward missile mounts? Is that too much?
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