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[Voyager I]

Quick feedback on hullmods:

*I really like the balance work overall, particularly with Unstable Injectors having a meaningful downside.  Having it no longer be a mandatory upgrade tones down the pace of combat a bit, and it's much less stressful fitting frigates without what was essentially an OP tax.

*Recovery shuttles is a nice idea, but at the end of the day it's a tradeoff between crew and ordinance points, and I can buy one of those things with credits.  I could have seen doing it back when crew had experience levels to stop fighters from burning through veterans, but right now crew losses just aren't that big a deal.

*If there was a cheap hullmod that gave a ship ~90% protection from death explosions I would probably put it on all my phase frigates.


A final note - the Brawler TT is basically a joke ship.  It doesn't have enough hardpoints to beam spam effectively and it's too slow to use the shorter-ranged weapon options.  It needs some kind of Paragon-style innate range bonus to have any hope of finding a useful configuration.  You've said yourself many times recently that energy weapons are balanced around the expectation that they will be mounted on mobile platforms, and hoooo boy do we get an ugly result when that is not the case.

[Deshara]

but losing a full-health wolf in the opening of the game to an enemy's death explosion is the best part of the game ):

[AxleMC131]

*If there was a cheap hullmod that gave a ship ~90% protection from death explosions I would probably put it on all my phase frigates.

Actually, I'd be down for something like this being implemented with the "Impact Mitigation" skill. Perhaps reducing damage from indirect explosions (so, ships exploding nearby and AOE damage like the Devastator and Flak cannons).

Nevertheless, I'd be putting it on Hounds when I have them. XD They do like to get in people's faces just as they're about to blow up...

[Megas]

A final note - the Brawler TT is basically a joke ship.  It doesn't have enough hardpoints to beam spam effectively and it's too slow to use the shorter-ranged weapon options.  It needs some kind of Paragon-style innate range bonus to have any hope of finding a useful configuration.  You've said yourself many times recently that energy weapons are balanced around the expectation that they will be mounted on mobile platforms, and hoooo boy do we get an ugly result when that is not the case.

Without Unstable Injector and only toned down speed bonuses from skills, many high-tech ships that used to be fast and agile are sluggish and mildly slow now.  High-tech ships are not much faster than other ships, not enough to matter.  Trying to kill many ships with Wolf or Medusa was a pain because their weapons are short-ranged and inefficient.  Enemy high-tech ships (like Remnants or even pirate Wolves) just kite and kite more, and it is hard to flux lock them when my weapons are flux inefficient.  Others just spam kinetics, sometimes with better range, and win the flux war outright.

Another problem with energy weapons is availability.  You can find plenty of low-grade but effective ballistics everywhere.  For energy, the most accessible energy weapons are pulse lasers, pd laser, and lr pd laser, and that is because they are fairly common in Black Markets and the few indie military markets.  It makes outfitting clunkers that use energy mounts a bit of a pain until late in the game.

Brawler TT is awful.

[Serenitis]

Did Aux. Thrusters always depend on flux level to determine rotation speed?
Ships with them fitted seem to turn faster when at zero flux and turn at normal rates with any flux buildup, and I don't remember this being a thing previously.
Is this just a faulty memory or some wierd fever dream?

[AxleMC131]

Did Aux. Thrusters always depend on flux level to determine rotation speed?
Ships with them fitted seem to turn faster when at zero flux and turn at normal rates with any flux buildup, and I don't remember this being a thing previously.
Is this just a faulty memory or some wierd fever dream?

Pretty sure that's because the zero-flux engine boost ships get also affects turn rate - it doesn't say that anywhere, but I believe that's the case. It's nothing to do with Auxiliary Thrusters.

[Embolism]

A few extra thoughts.

The Paragon's Advanced Targeting Core is actually slightly worse than ITU when it comes to boosting weapons labelled as PD (50% vs 60%). Shouldn't it be at least equivalent? Same goes for the Targeting Supercomputer for stations.

The damage type descriptions are inconsistent: Ballistics and High Explosives both ignore hull damage but Energy and Fragmentation both include "100% vs Hull". IMO they should all mention Hull damage or none of them should mention it, otherwise it can be confusing for new players that don't know everything does 100% damage to Hull and wonder why Ballistics and HE omit it.

[AxleMC131]

The Paragon's Advanced Targeting Core is actually slightly worse than ITU when it comes to boosting weapons labelled as PD (50% vs 60%). Shouldn't it be at least equivalent? Same goes for the Targeting Supercomputer for stations.

I believe the Devs discussed this briefly in one of the blogs - at least, the Targeting Supercomputer on stations they did. Hang on, here's the relevant bit:

"Gameplay-wise, this presents a clear pitfall – if anything outranges the station, it’ll be able to damage it with impunity, because the station can’t move. This isn’t very different from what large and slow ships face already, though, so the solution is a more extreme version of the “dedicated targeting core” hullmod that most large ships install to increase their weapon range and ensure they outrange smaller opponents.

Thus: station modules are fitted with a “targeting supercomputer” that triples weapon range, with the exception of non-beam point defense weapons – a Flak Cannon with that sort of range turned out to be a bit ridiculous. The supercomputer also improves weapon accuracy, to help with scoring hits at extreme ranges."

That answer your question?

[Embolism]

The Paragon's Advanced Targeting Core is actually slightly worse than ITU when it comes to boosting weapons labelled as PD (50% vs 60%). Shouldn't it be at least equivalent? Same goes for the Targeting Supercomputer for stations.

I believe the Devs discussed this briefly in one of the blogs - at least, the Targeting Supercomputer on stations they did. Hang on, here's the relevant bit:

"Gameplay-wise, this presents a clear pitfall – if anything outranges the station, it’ll be able to damage it with impunity, because the station can’t move. This isn’t very different from what large and slow ships face already, though, so the solution is a more extreme version of the “dedicated targeting core” hullmod that most large ships install to increase their weapon range and ensure they outrange smaller opponents.

Thus: station modules are fitted with a “targeting supercomputer” that triples weapon range, with the exception of non-beam point defense weapons – a Flak Cannon with that sort of range turned out to be a bit ridiculous. The supercomputer also improves weapon accuracy, to help with scoring hits at extreme ranges."

That answer your question?

If my question was "why does Targeting Supercomputer has less of a range boost for PD weapons?", then sure.

My point however was "Targeting Supercomputer and Advanced Targeting Core should not boost PD weapon range (50%) by less than Integrated Targeting Unit (60%)". The Paragon effectively has less PD range than all other Capitals because of this. Same goes for stations.

[TaLaR]

Thus: station modules are fitted with a “targeting supercomputer” that triples weapon range, with the exception of non-beam point defense weapons – a Flak Cannon with that sort of range turned out to be a bit ridiculous. The supercomputer also improves weapon accuracy, to help with scoring hits at extreme ranges."[/i]

That answer your question?

This explains only why bonus is not 100%. Still doesn't take existence of ITU (that gives 60%) into account.

Also question to Alex: why do all PD weapons suffer from this penalty equally? Beam PD are weak enough already, and as was stated above, only Flaks were real problem.

[Embolism]

It really all comes down to Flak. It's the only PD that is in any way, shape or form overpowered.

Another thought: Unstable Injectors in its current form is too punishing, especially for larger vessels. I think its range penalty should scale: say, 20/15/10/5 for frigates to capital ships. Given it costs OP and larger ships get less benefit out of it, the penalty should be proportionally reduced as well, otherwise it's as good as unmountable for larger ship sizes.

Having it not affect weapons below a certain range would be nice too (so it doesn't neuter PDs), but then it becomes increasingly similar to Safety Override.

I also feel Augmented Drive Field needs a buff, but only because of Sustained Burn; and I'd sooner see Sustained Burn nerfed.

[Megas]

Single flak is not overpowered because it fires too slowly to stop everything.  On a Legion, I need to use Devastator to supplement flak to stop much of missile streams from Onslaught or Squalls or MIRVs from other capitals.  (I do not always use this because Devastator is rare enough that it turns ships into non-disposables.)  Dual flak is a bit overpowered, but it is relatively rare, and it costs quite a bit of OP.  Flak may be a bit strong, but some low-tech need it now to stay useful.  Without flak, Enforcer is trash (slow and bad shields make it easy to flux lock).  Hammerhead used to be trash, but now it is almost the other way around.  (Not unlike Mjolnir and Storm Needler in previous versions.)  Hammerhead is good while Enforcer struggles to keep up.  With Flak, at least Enforcer has something useful it can do much better than Hammerhead.

Unstable Injector is too punishing for all.  If anything, it is even more punishing for small ships.  The shot range penalty should be a flat -15% to offset Gunnery Implants 3.

If anything has to change about burn, I would like to see Augmented Drive Field disappear and Sustained Burn stay as is.  It is liberating to not care about burn speed, and it opens more ship choice in fleet.  It makes tugs obsolete, but I rather have more warships and capital-sized civilians in the fleet than a few tugs.  By endgame, I almost need Prometheus to explore the map, and that is slow.

[Schwartz]

Haven't had a phase ship die to a death explosion in this version yet, but if it still happens that needs to be fixed in the AI, not by hullmods.

[Alex]

Also question to Alex: why do all PD weapons suffer from this penalty equally? Beam PD are weak enough already, and as was stated above, only Flaks were real problem.

Tried not applying the penalty to beams etc a while back and it felt weird. As did small ballistic PD, like Vulcans and LMGs.

The Paragon's Advanced Targeting Core is actually slightly worse than ITU when it comes to boosting weapons labelled as PD (50% vs 60%). Shouldn't it be at least equivalent? Same goes for the Targeting Supercomputer for stations.

I get where you're coming from, but since there's no player choice here between the two, this doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Yep, it's slightly worse than the ITU for PD weapons.

[Trylobot]

Loving the latest build. Thanks for this Alex!~