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[Voyager I]

"Harpoons might be a bit too good and high missile skills turn them into the fingers of God" is well-established, as it happens, and they've already got a rightfully-earned ticket for the chopping block.

[Megas]

CR is not an inherent issue with capital ship speed&range glasscannon builds.

It is for a solo capital against a sufficiently large fleet.  Time is not on a sniping Conquest's side if it attempts to solo the simulator or equivalent.  It takes about fifteen minutes, maybe more or less, for a capital to solo a simulator.  Perhaps even more so in 0.72 since enemy ships can kite your ship if they cannot surround or overwhelm your ship.

[Sy]

Time is not on a sniping Conquest's side if it attempts to solo the simulator or equivalent.

yeah, because you only have one battle to do it. but there are no standalone missions with that many enemies, and in the campaign you can easily just retreat and immediately re-engage (several times, if you want to) to reset the timer, assuming you didn't take a lot of hull damage.

[Voyager I]

Time is not on a sniping Conquest's side if it attempts to solo the simulator or equivalent.

yeah, because you only have one battle to do it. but there are no standalone missions with that many enemies, and in the campaign you can easily just retreat and immediately re-engage (several times, if you want to) to reset the timer, assuming you didn't take a lot of hull damage.

I think I just heard the latch flip open on the case for the Nerf Bat.

[Sordid]

I think there actually is a direct relationship between the total number of enemy ships that you're taking on and how much fun you're having. Blowing up enemy ships myself is huge fun, watching my AI sidekicks blow up enemy ships less so. If I'm alone, I fight all the enemies and therefore have all the fun. If I run a large fleet, my AI sidekicks get to have most of the fun...

I can see that - it's subjective, for sure, but I can definitely see that. But! Is it really about the number of ships you blow up? E.G. if you spend 15 minutes taking down, I don't know, 20 enemy ships, vs spending the same 15 minutes taking down 10 ships, that's not necessarily less fun. Either one of those could be a boring slog or a tense, tactical fight - it just entirely depends on how that plays.

I could easily see the smaller fight being more fun if, for example, the ships in the larger fight blow up too quickly for it to be satisfying. This is of course heavily subjective. For me, personally, maxed-out combat feels a bit too fast, and I'd like to pull it back to where it's more tactical, especially in larger ships. I definitely don't want a slog, but, again, what that means is subjective.

You're absolutely right, how fun a fight is depends on what specific ships are involved and how those engagements play out. The actual number doesn't really matter as such, the point is it's huge fun to fight outnumbered. Being the underdog and coming out on top? Boy does that feel good! But, like I said earlier, you can't really do that with a small fleet, you have to go solo. It's more tactical and difficult than you might think. Positioning and situational awareness are key, you have to carefully manage your flux, you have to choose which enemies to blow up quickly as they arrive and which to 'juggle' by making them back off to vent and repair. Now this playstyle wouldn't be possible if the AI was smart enough to just mob the solo ship instead of going in one by one, but it isn't (thankfully!). The problem is that the very same AI that can be exploited to destroy enemy fleets piecemeal also means that your own fleets get picked apart by the enemy, because they're not smart enough to not go in one by one either. Since AI can't keep itself from getting overwhelmed when outnumbered like the player can, killing a large enemy fleet without suffering significant losses yourself requires either using a solo ship and relying on your piloting skill or using a similarly sized fleet and relying on your numbers. And when it comes to those two options, killing a large enemy fleet all by myself is immensely satisfying (even though in reality they didn't stand a chance). Killing it with a similarly sized and similarly powerful fleet of my own is more of a "meh" moment, because the odds seemed more even.

[Techhead]

I don't think 10% OP vs 30% OP is going to ruin gameplay.

Not just 10% vs 30%, but 10% and no Optimized Assembly vs. 30% plus Optimized Assembly.  (Optimized Assembly freed a significant chunk of OP.)  Unless ships have a higher baseline OP than now, it is a severe OP cut to almost no-skill level (where you cannot afford enough unless you are Onslaught or Paragon).

I think I saw Alex mention a higher baseline, but I couldn't find it when I went back for it.

[Questionable]

i'm just another random player, same as you.

I know.
 

right. i still disagree with the "more powerful" part. they kill quicker, yes. but they have to put themselves in a bit of danger as a return. if you go against a large fleet with a single slow Onslaught (and don't exploit the edge of the map, which is an issue) you're gonna get surrounded and killed. a Conquest that can kite at 90-190 speed with ~2k range can just stay out of danger, even against a large number of enemies.

As I said, with enough fire power and sane positioning you just chew through a lot of the things trying to surround you, the AI isn't that good.

yeah, because that Conquest of yours only has 300 seconds of peak performance, for some reason. i assume you put the Maximized Ordnance hullmod on? that hullmod is part of the Ship & Weapon Pack mod, it doesn't exist in vanilla. vanilla PPT of Conquest is 600 seconds, or 900 with Hardened Subsystems. the fight in your video lasted 266 seconds. you can also retreat at any point and re-engage, losing only 15% CR each time, if you didn't take any hull damage. so at 100% CR, you can do that 5 times before you start getting into malfunction range. 5 * 900 = 4500 seconds, or 75 minutes of non-stop fighting. and it's not like that Maximized Ordnance is required for a build similar to (even if not the exact same as) the one in your video. so no, CR is not an inherent issue with capital ship speed&range glasscannon builds.

I play without retreating to magically refill your peak operating time, what you just mentioned is nearing exploit levels of cheating the system. You have one fight and you fight to the death(unless you never initiated the fight and were trying to run away to begin with).
Besides if we start account for such tactics then might as well account for things like having 20 onslaughts in your arsenal and you can just cycle them around, hardly fun, hardly skillful, pretty much unbeatable.

 

with 90-190 (140 for most of the fight) speed, you're gonna outmaneuver anything larger than a frigate, not just "the slowest ships in the game". the fastest vanilla ship that isn't a frigate is Medusa, with a base max speed of 100 + Phase Skimmer ship system. the Burn Drive system provides a lot of speed to some otherwise slow ships, but not in a way that is well suited to geting close to a fast-kiting enemy, and it disables shields while active, making the ship very vulnerable for the duration.

if they happen to have officers with maxed out Helmsmanship, some destroyers might be able to keep up, but that's it. and keep in mind, with the upcoming nerfs to your hullmods and skills, the enemy's hullmods and officer skills will be nerfed in the same way. so i don't see how the fact that you have the speed skill and hullmods in that video while the enemy doesn't is an argument that said speed skill and hullmods do not need a nerf? if anything, i'd actually say it demonstrates quite well why they do need a nerf, because the difference between having and not having them has too much of an impact.

Oh yeah, okay, so if I run my conquest point blank into the other capital ships and my shields or armor can't withstand their damage output(other ships strengths), does that mean that armor and OP of other ships needs to be nerfed? I mean even without mods, those other ships have better shields or armor.

this is kinda besides the point, but: yes, actually. i do think that these webms point to there being a balance issue with those missiles. not because these exact scenarios happen in a campaign game, i'm well aware that they don't. but because what is shown is so over-the-top powerful, that it shows there's a potential problem with how these missiles combine with the missile skill. which, as it happens, is getting nerfed as well in 0.8. that Reaper spam won't be doable anymore, that Harpoon spam will also be less crazy, and i know that many mod authors (who've spent hundreds and even thousands of hours on playing, modding and balancing this game) are of the opinion that Harpoons really are in a problematic spot balance-wise, especially when combined with the current missile skill.

So let's ignore the fact that the officer was picked for their missile skills, or the fact that the enforcer was geared for this one shot attack on the capital ship and that if it miss-times or aims the burndrive wrong it can't out maneuver it with such ease, or the fact that it was on easy difficulty. Or with the hammerhead, the fact that the missiles were hitting the ship right as it was in burn drive and thus no shields, or the fact again, it was on easy difficulty and this situation would very very rarely play out in a real battle. But no, the potential for awesome moments or "all or nothing" ships is just Too over powered in your mind such things should not only be extremely rare, but actually impossible and until we nerf it to that point it's just too unbalanced in a single player game to have fun.

kinda repeating myself here, but i just disagree. if the combination of high speed and high range is the problem, changing everything except the speed and range will not fix said problem. reducing the damage you deal would only make this playstyle more boring, not more challenging. shorter PPT would have to be a massive change (something like reducing it by 90% or more!) to have any meaningful impact. being far more vulnerable to damage, again, is pointless when the main issue is that you can avoid almost all damage in the first place.

Again disagree 90% reduction is overkill unless you plan to retreat all the time to replenish it, as I said earlier on, that should be removed and having your PPT restore fully only if you have fully recovered CP.

i feel we're going in circles a bit here, so i'd rather not continue this argument much further.

But why, we are having such a lovely time arguing.

and, look.. i get that you're frustrated. i get that having your favorite playstyle nerfed isn't fun. honestly, that is 100% understandable. but, personally, i genuinely believe that these changes will be positive for the game as a whole.

Maybe, maybe not, I trust Alex has some kind of idea going and hopefully everything falls into place, I am just listing my main concerns sooner, rather than later.
And besides....All of these changes practically don't effect my early, mid, mid-late flagship which is Afflictor or Shade. Essentially all this will mean is that I wont have a late game flagship and will just get more destroyers and some fighters for cannon folder while I flank all other ships.
On my first playthrough I had 1 Afflictor, 2 destroyers and 5 wolfs vs Onslaught and 5 enforcers + some other frigates. Because the AI was to dumb to provide fire support without over extending and dying. I essentially had to take down all the frigates and 4 destroyers by myself and only then let the AI come support me to finish off the Onslaught because my combat readiness was degrading fast.

[Voyager I]

I don't think 10% OP vs 30% OP is going to ruin gameplay.

Not just 10% vs 30%, but 10% and no Optimized Assembly vs. 30% plus Optimized Assembly.  (Optimized Assembly freed a significant chunk of OP.)  Unless ships have a higher baseline OP than now, it is a severe OP cut to almost no-skill level (where you cannot afford enough unless you are Onslaught or Paragon).

I think I saw Alex mention a higher baseline, but I couldn't find it when I went back for it.

It's from the blog post.

A side note here – previously, Technology granted a 30% bonus to ordnance points available on each ship to equip weapons, hullmods, etc. This was rather extreme and very “must-get”, more so because enemy ships didn’t have access to this bonus. Now, the maximum bonus is down to 10%, but the base ordnance points of ships will go up some as well – keeping the total maximum points reduced slightly, but more importantly reducing the point difference between your and enemy ships.

The total OP for a fully-skilled character will be less than it is currently, but base OP is being increased somewhat to compensate, as the stated goal is to narrow the difference between ships with and without the skill as it is to reduce the raw power of ships.

[ChaseBears]

Oh yeah, okay, so if I run my conquest point blank into the other capital ships and my shields or armor can't withstand their damage output(other ships strengths), does that mean that armor and OP of other ships needs to be nerfed? I mean even without mods, those other ships have better shields or armor.

What's that got to do with anything? No, seriously.  Conquests don't need to be faster than Medusas to outmaneuver other BBs, and if anything their relative advantage will be more pronounced when you can't amp up ship's speed as far.

[Thaago]

...
The total OP for a fully-skilled character will be less than it is currently, but base OP is being increased somewhat to compensate, as the stated goal is to narrow the difference between ships with and without the skill as it is to reduce the raw power of ships.

Leaving aside the discussion on what level of OP's are the most fun, I think this is the most important part. With a narrower difference and no 'must have' level 10 combat skill, we are much more free to customize.

[Alex]

It's definitely not a perfect solution, but as far as simplest-possible-first-implementations go it provides a substantial improvement for every ship without burn drive while at least leaving those that have it no worse off.

Hmm. I'll probably just add a "fighting retreat" order alongside the normal retreat.

AI wise, I guess retreat behavior could be part of the code for the ship system?  Presumably they all come with instructions to begin with, so it wouldn't be fundamentally adding a new AI behavior or something.

I don't think trying to do something smart here is a good idea. Probably better to leave this decision in the hands of the player, since it's situational.

I believe you when you say teaching the AI how to use it intelligently is a significant challenge, though is it really that much more difficult than teaching it how to Vent?

Honestly, it seems a more difficult. Venting, you can assume that the ship is turning to maximize damage taken on armor, you can assume that its PD and shields aren't working, and you have a clear timeframe for when it stops being vulnerable. It's basically a calculation of "how much damage am I likely to absorb in this time window?" combined with "how much do I actually want to vent"? Not simple, but at least it's fairly easy to define what you're trying to figure out.

Turning to activate burn drive, man, that's rough. The ship is turning its vulnerable arc towards the enemy, there's engine damage and risk of flameout to consider, it's not utilizing armor as best it can, it may or may not be able to use its PD, the timeframe is more open-ended (not safe the second burn commences, but some time after - or maybe not at all), etc.

It's complicated to the point where I don't want to attempt it - it's guaranteed to mess up fairly frequently, and the price of a mistake is very likely to be the loss of the ship. Which is why in this case, I think predictable player-ordered behavior is the only workable answer.

You're absolutely right, how fun a fight is depends on what specific ships are involved and how those engagements play out. The actual number doesn't really matter as such, the point is it's huge fun to fight outnumbered. Being the underdog and coming out on top? Boy does that feel good!

Yeah, I hear that!

But, like I said earlier, you can't really do that with a small fleet, you have to go solo. It's more tactical and difficult than you might think. Positioning and situational awareness are key, you have to carefully manage your flux, you have to choose which enemies to blow up quickly as they arrive and which to 'juggle' by making them back off to vent and repair. Now this playstyle wouldn't be possible if the AI was smart enough to just mob the solo ship instead of going in one by one, but it isn't (thankfully!). The problem is that the very same AI that can be exploited to destroy enemy fleets piecemeal also means that your own fleets get picked apart by the enemy, because they're not smart enough to not go in one by one either. Since AI can't keep itself from getting overwhelmed when outnumbered like the player can, killing a large enemy fleet without suffering significant losses yourself requires either using a solo ship and relying on your piloting skill or using a similarly sized fleet and relying on your numbers.

You know, a lot of these changes are aimed at making the middle ground possible, as well - that is, making "outnumbered-but-not-solo" something that works better than it does now. Incidentally, I tend to go for that a fair bit already in my playthroughs, and it works well to a point - faster ships, equipped with long range or support weapons, it can be *really* fun stuff. I remember kitting out a Vigilance with an Ion Beam and a Salamander Pod, and it was great fighting alongside it. Never died (even when it was the only ally deployed vs a larger force) and caused an amazing amount of chaos. But that falls apart a little bit when high-level enemy officers come into play in numbers, or just when there's more and better enemy ships.

There's also ongoing AI work to enable it to survive when facing larger number of enemies. It's quite capable of it, at least when it's using a faster ship - and more defensive officer skills will be another part of that puzzle. As will some currently REDACTED stuff. What I'd love is if you could bring an ally into a tough fight - say, a friendly Enforcer - and then play around them, and have them survive provided you play it well. Which doesn't mean you couldn't solo the fight instead; I'd just imagine it would take a different set of skills and perhaps a different loadout.

[Questionable]

What's that got to do with anything? No, seriously.  Conquests don't need to be faster than Medusas to outmaneuver other BBs, and if anything their relative advantage will be more pronounced when you can't amp up ship's speed as far.

The point was that conquest main thing over other ships is it's speed and maneuverability, just like some have much better armor or better shields.
Saying "well my slow ship that has better frontal firepower and better shields can't catch up to that heavily modded Conquest is silly, because you are expecting to get have both the strengths of slow captial ships while at the same time matching the biggest perk of the conquest. In the same manner its silly of me to want the conquest to have good shields, or strong armor which would help it in close range.

Conquests don't need to be faster than Medusas

It doesn't, but it feels nice. As I explained, I choose speed because it feels fun, not because I am desperate to win battles. I believe players having the freedom to sacrifice points into what ever playstyle they wish, is valid.

[Voyager I]

Hmm. I'll probably just add a "fighting retreat" order alongside the normal retreat.

I feel a sympathetic twinge pain every time you have to solve a problem with a new button on the UI, but this definitely does the job with the least hassle for the player.  I'll take a few too many buttons over way too many clicks.

I should add though, that even using the GTFO command to make ships evacuate at best speed, for ships without directional mobility systems there's still no reason for them not to present their most durable facing to the enemy while retreating.  Is that kind of binary distinction feasible?  Sorry if I'm being stubborn about this, but I think I might be on a bit of a different page in terms of perspective.  In my mind, the new idea you're discussing is the ordinary, default definition of retreat.  In a world where ships have omnidirectional movement, there's just no reason for them to at least not present their shields while making for the exist.  It's the current behavior that is the aberration, starting as a contrivance to convey information to the player and living on as an exception for the handful of ships that do have a reason to face their direction of travel.  Essentially, you're not adding a new button to make ships retreat carefully; you're fixing the ordinary retreat behavior and then adding a new button so the players can tell the guy in the Tarsus to forget all that jazz and just floor it.

Forgive me for arguing with the guy who makes the game about how to think about his game.

Honestly, it seems a more difficult. Venting, you can assume that the ship is turning to maximize damage taken on armor, you can assume that its PD and shields aren't working, and you have a clear timeframe for when it stops being vulnerable. It's basically a calculation of "how much damage am I likely to absorb in this time window?" combined with "how much do I actually want to vent"? Not simple, but at least it's fairly easy to define what you're trying to figure out.

Turning to activate burn drive, man, that's rough. The ship is turning its vulnerable arc towards the enemy, there's engine damage and risk of flameout to consider, it's not utilizing armor as best it can, it may or may not be able to use its PD, the timeframe is more open-ended (not safe the second burn commences, but some time after - or maybe not at all), etc.

It's complicated to the point where I don't want to attempt it - it's guaranteed to mess up fairly frequently, and the price of a mistake is very likely to be the loss of the ship. Which is why in this case, I think predictable player-ordered behavior is the only workable answer.

That's a compelling analysis of the problem.  Guess we'll have to see what computers are capable of when Starsector II's in Alpha.

[TaLaR]

Saying "well my slow ship that has better frontal firepower and better shields can't catch up to that heavily modded Conquest is silly, because you are expecting to get have both the strengths of slow captial ships while at the same time matching the biggest perk of the conquest.

But Onslaught already catches a Conquest without any problems, that's exactly what Burn Drive does. Just not simulator Onslaught vs maxed out player Conquest.
Onslaught can't kite (well, except against Paragon), but it can't be kited either (on even ground OP/skill-wise).

It's kind of funny to see current state of Conquest presented as overpowered. Conquest with over-top-speed was definitely that, but current one is meh. It doesn't even approach sheer effectiveness of Onslaught/Paragon.

There's also ongoing AI work to enable it to survive when facing larger number of enemies. It's quite capable of it, at least when it's using a faster ship - and more defensive officer skills will be another part of that puzzle. As will some currently REDACTED stuff.

That sounds really interesting, currently even speed-maxed Tempests tend to eventually (or even quite early) die against much slower opponents. There is no mechanical reason for that - without obvious mistakes they could kite at least till CR malfunction levels.
Though I'm not sure why are officers strictly necessary. As long as you have >+50 speed over every enemy ship, you can only be caught in corner (unless enemy has ship system that effectively make them faster and you don't). At something like +100 speed you are simply impossible to catch or corner (except by Hyperion).
... Phase ships are so rare in campaign that I tend to forget they exist. So I guess they go in same category as Hyperion in terms of catching-ability.

[Alex]

I feel a sympathetic twinge pain every time you have to solve a problem with a new button on the UI

Hah, appreciated.

I should add though, that even using the GTFO command to make ships evacuate at best speed, for ships without directional mobility systems there's still no reason for them not to present their most durable facing to the enemy while retreating.  Is that kind of binary distinction feasible?  Sorry if I'm being stubborn about this, but I think I might be on a bit of a different page in terms of perspective.  In my mind, the new idea you're discussing is the ordinary, default definition of retreat.  In a world where ships have omnidirectional movement, there's just no reason for them to at least not present their shields while making for the exist.  It's the current behavior that is the aberration, starting as a contrivance to convey information to the player and living on as an exception for the handful of ships that do have a reason to face their direction of travel.  Essentially, you're not adding a new button to make ships retreat carefully; you're fixing the ordinary retreat behavior and then adding a new button so the players can tell the guy in the Tarsus to forget all that jazz and just to floor it.

I get what you're saying, yeah. Perhaps naming-wise, it might make sense to also rename regular retreat as "Committed Retreat" or something like that.

What you're suggesting is, for a "committed retreat" in a ship without burn drive to still face towards the enemy as it pulls back. This seems binary at first glance, but, let's just think this through.

What about shields? Using front shields naturally would require facing backward, but a ship with omni shields doesn't have to. This could be an advantge when it comes to either changing course (since forward acceleration is better than backwards or sideways, sometimes considerably so) and when it comes to actually punching the button to get out of there. It could be a disadvantage in terms of taking engine damage when shields have to be lowered due to flux getting high.

It could also get iffy just figuring out when to turn around to engage travel drive. Could just say "as soon as in range" but there will definitely be cases where that's suicidal and waiting a few seconds would be fine, and vice versa. Or something as basic as, say, not using a front shield to keep the zero-flux boost going despite taking some damage.

Some of this probably sounds minor, but consider that for a lot of civilian ships - let's say, something like the Buffalo - the difference in how long it takes to take down based on where it's facing is probably even more trivial.

A ship told to do a "fighting retreat" also faces these questions, but there it feels like that's what the player signed up for. You're telling it to be safe while retreating (which, fair enough, makes sense to look at as the default mode of retreating, if both exist), but if it's a rough situation, it's fair to expect it might fail.

"Evacuate at best speed" is the player making the call that yes, in this situation, you just need to go for it 100%. Overriding that decision is asking for trouble - after all, if the ship does not have a forward-mobility system, why did the player not just tell it to make a fighting retreat? The AI deciding to ignore that is making the decision that the player didn't mean something that they explicitly said they meant.

Where it gets interesting is the default order for civilian ships in an escape scenario. I think those need to do a non-fighting retreat by default, because that's where I think the benefits of it generally outweigh the downsides.

Forgive me for arguing with the guy who makes the game about how he should think about his game.

No worries, plus you do have a point

That sounds really interesting,

I don't want to oversell it - just making incremental improvements to AI's decision-making, when to back off, which way to go vs many opponents, etc.

... currently even speed-maxed Tempests tend to eventually (or even quite early) die against much slower opponents. There is no mechanical reason for that - without obvious mistakes they could kite at least till CR malfunction levels.

It's hard to say without seeing what you're talking about. It could just be that they're trying to engage and it's a fight they can't win - but that they could if they had more support nearby. Sometimes, even flying in enough to take a few shots - or even to start taking shield damage - is enough to take hull damage too, if the damage is bursty enough.

If you want a Tempest to avoid fighting more, there are a few tools: a timid officer, the "avoid" command, or, if it's a lone enemy ship, "harass".