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Author Topic: Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.  (Read 1931 times)

Giblodyte

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Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.
« on: May 11, 2017, 08:50:55 PM »

So, it sucks losing ships obviously, that's to be expected but I've noticed that after a certain point not very far into the game frigates simply do not survive even when you babysit them unless you are personally piloting them. That in and of itself is fine and to be expected, cruisers and captial ships should be expected to make short work of frigates.

But then, if you get a good build going and you outfit it with needlers, antimatter blasters and/or railguns and it blows up in battle, provided you can even recover it you'll lose most of those weapons and it'll cost twice as much to restore. With the really good frigates like afflictors and tempests that's over 100,000 and enough to buy 2 new cruisers.

Point being frigates within fleets only realistically have 3 possible outcomes:

1. You use Junk fleets of frigates in your fleet
2. You pay extraordinary amounts of money and scour the sector for decent weapons to maintain a good frigate fleet
3. You don't use frigates

I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that most people like good ships with good weapons but currently it just doesn't feel like there's any viable way to have good frigates with good weapons incorporated into a fleet with cruisers and destroyers without it being an expensive pain in the neck which is a shame to me.
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Morbo513

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Re: Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2017, 10:05:43 PM »

So, it sucks losing ships obviously, that's to be expected but I've noticed that after a certain point not very far into the game frigates simply do not survive even when you babysit them unless you are personally piloting them. That in and of itself is fine and to be expected, cruisers and captial ships should be expected to make short work of frigates.

But then, if you get a good build going and you outfit it with needlers, antimatter blasters and/or railguns and it blows up in battle, provided you can even recover it you'll lose most of those weapons and it'll cost twice as much to restore. With the really good frigates like afflictors and tempests that's over 100,000 and enough to buy 2 new cruisers.

Point being frigates within fleets only realistically have 3 possible outcomes:

1. You use Junk fleets of frigates in your fleet
2. You pay extraordinary amounts of money and scour the sector for decent weapons to maintain a good frigate fleet
3. You don't use frigates

I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that most people like good ships with good weapons but currently it just doesn't feel like there's any viable way to have good frigates with good weapons incorporated into a fleet with cruisers and destroyers without it being an expensive pain in the neck which is a shame to me.

I agree, though personally I have little issue keeping my fleet of 18 wolves and a few cruisers and capitals alive. A lot of it boils down to proactively retreating ships off the field, or giving all the deployed ones escort orders to the larger ships, and ordering a full assault once the entire fleet closes with the enemy, rather than the frigates screening out front and getting picked off one by one. Still, all it takes is for the AI to overextend and drop the ball and that ship gets melted instantly. It'd be nice if Frigates had a higher chance of recovery, but a higher chance of D-mods being applied to balance it out
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Megas

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Re: Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2017, 09:59:07 AM »

The only time I may deploy frigates late in the game is Remnant attacks that are too small to warrant a capital to deploy.  Unlike other factions, Remnants are fearless and never run away.  Frigates are also good for auto-resolving pursuit, but you can equip your frigates with junk weapons and they will do just as well.

Recovering your ships is easy.  Put Reinforced Bulkheads if you really care about the hull.  However, recovering good weapons is hard.  The only way to get around that somewhat is to rely on ships that can use common weapons (open market and black market staples) effectively.  (For example, Lasher with machine guns, mortars, and annihilators or single shot harpoons).

It makes using high-tech ships a bit of a pain.  Weapons useful for them are in the black market, and the really common ones are limited to pulse lasers and low-grade (LR) PD lasers.  Other energy weapons (like phase lance, AM blasters, and maybe ion cannons) are rarer.

If you really want to use the good stuff that is hard to find, be prepared to reload the game as soon as you lose it.

I do wish that better weapons are more common.  I get a bit tired of using open market stuff all of the time.
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Deshara

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Re: Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2017, 10:15:22 AM »

Hmm, maybe a skill that increases the chance of recovering frigates without any additional d-mod
Or a hullmod (automated subsystems) that makes a ship unpilotable, but gives 50/35/20/10 chance of 0d recovery if lost
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Thaago

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Re: Adjust ship recovery to make using good frigates viable.
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2017, 10:56:27 AM »

I find that frigates can survive if I change how I load them out. My wolves for examples I usually change from pulse laser/ion/swarmers to a beam and harpoon build, so that they can standoff and support.
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