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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: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - *hotfix* 4/14/22  (Read 722360 times)

Morrokain

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Hey just wanted to quickly say sorry the update is going to be later than planned. Might be a few more days  ::) but a lot more weapons, a couple ships, some balance changes and weapon design improvements and new illustrations and faction colonies are on the horizon!

Going to update the notes under patch info.
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Morrokain

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Update is out!  ;D

Some considerable balance changes and a ton of new content. See the below list for details and some screens and gifs. Updated the main webpage with new content screens and gifs and improved the installation picture under Download Instructions to more accurately reflect that the player no longer needs utility mods.

Also a really super big thank you to Andreas Rocha for allowing me to use some of his artwork for illustrations! Seriously check out some of his stuff on the linked website under Credits and Thanks. I find his work to be really inspiring and the ones I've included really set the mood for the factions well, imo.  :)

http://www.andreasrocha.com/info.htm

So, here are the notes:

Spoiler

Content Additions
  • Archean Order and Adamantine Consortium have new systems near the Core Worlds containing their respective capitals and main strongholds.
  • Many new faction colonies now have custom illustrations and all new colonies have custom descriptions.
  • New Independent and Sci-Corps colonies - Penelopes Star is now a part of the Core Worlds (this should make a couple early game bounties slightly less risky and weapons/ships from those factions more accessible).
  • Made the "Random Battle" Mission have a much wider selection of variants to randomly pull from. -a great way to test out max battles and get a feel of the new combat without investing too heavily into the campaign.
  • 5 New low tier energy strike/fire support weapons.
  • 3 New low tier ballistic strike/fire support weapons.
  • 1 New high tier missile strike weapon.
  • 2 New low tech frigates with medium energy mounts found easily early on.
  • 1 New mid tech destroyer with medium hybrid mounts in Lions Guard and Trader Guilds patrols/markets.
Balance Changes
  • Harpoon MRM and its large variant has more missiles per salvo, and higher regen. To balance this change they deal less damage per shot and have less armor penetration. This small rebalance makes them a lot more reliable to use, and the AI will use them more liberally as well. Two direct hits will still destroy most frigates- if caught unshielded.
  • The Graviton Beam and Graviton Lance are now proper assault weapons, as classified. They will also now autofire and target fighters if no other combat ships are in range. Reduced turn rate, beam speed, and burst mechanics for the weapon and buffed its damage. Persean League was suffering in most fights due to its lackluster performance. It penetrates armor slightly better, but is still poor at it overall.
  • Hegemony XIVth vessels now have an increased deployment cost in association with their armor and ordinance point buffs. This better balances these powerful vessels and slightly nerfs the overwhelming campaign power of the Hegemony (They could beat any faction (except maybe the highest tier ones) too easily in pitched battles before).
  • Adjusted most starting variants to support new weapons and spread them out over multiple factions. They should now be found in most early markets.
  • Added new variants and edited existing ones - the aim of this was to both reduce weapon redundancy and give a platform to acquire the new strike/fire support weapons more easily.
  • The Hound's composite hardpoint is now universal - allows the use of small, low tier energy strike weapons in pirate and independent fleet compositions.
  • The Eagle now has a few small hybrid turrets to better support its intended Jack-Of-All-Trades combat role. Variants adjusted accordingly.
[close]

Showcase screens/gifs of the new features:

**Warning**
These may contain light lore spoilers:

Gifs
Spoiler







[close]

Screenshots
Spoiler









[close]
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Igncom1

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Seems pretty cool. Interesting to get my head around a new style of combat.

I've got a few low tech frigates and a mule freighter but I'm not too sure what to do against enemy fighter swarms. Any suggestions?

I've been finding it difficult to keep some of my frigates alive in the face of enemy cruisers/destroyers al though the same can be said of the vanilla game.

I find that my ships flux out in seconds which does make it challenging when facing enemies with medium sized weapons.

The lasher frigates seem kinda bad in my opinion, they get overloaded and caught almost instantly in battle but this might be due to them not being hegemonic auxiliary or 14th fleet ships. When compared to the wolf frigates/kites/rhinos that I have picked up they seem really lacking.

Looking forward to getting into the bigger battles with proper destroyers!
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

Ranakastrasz

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Bring more pd and intercepters. Fighters are nasty. Ships that are mostly PD are actually useful.

Anti-fighter missiles are surprisingly effective. I try to get a medium missile slot asap purelyto fit a locust(I Think) because of how quickly it breaks fighters. Last game i has a ship with 3 of them and missile rack to deal with heavy gunships. Highly effective. And that work on normal ships too, if not as well.

Cant be sure exactly what you need witgout more data.


Flux is easier to deal with if you have enough vents. Or better yet stabalized shields. If you use non-assault weapons it spends your shields way more than vanilla.
Flux capaciters ARE worthwhile here far more than vanilla.

Flux works differently than vanilla. Shields prevent all dissipation not from vents.so add vents and stabelized shield to get combat dissipation. Capaciters help if you want to use flux hungry strike or support weapons.

Stabalized shields are almost manditory if you use shields and strike weapons at the same time.

Read the manual/guide on the op as well.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2018, 01:25:12 PM by Ranakastrasz »
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Ranakastrasz

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Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.

After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......

Fun times.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Igncom1

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I have a reaper on my mule. Easily the most powerful ship in my fleet so far.
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Sunders are the best ship in the game.

Ranakastrasz

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I have a reaper on my mule. Easily the most powerful ship in my fleet so far.
Indeed. Reapers always hurt. A lot. I just didn't expect 5 of them at once. I expected 2 of them.
Ouch.

I knew I could eat two reapers safely, even though I would overload. It was a mudskipper, and hence only a threat via it's missiles.
-----

Whats with the "Stabilized Drive Conduit" mod? What specifically makes a ship have that mod?
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

A Random Jolteon

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Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.

After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......

Fun times.
Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.

Mudskipper is now a ship to fear.
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Hi. I exist. Bye.

Ranakastrasz

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Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.

After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......

Fun times.
Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.

Mudskipper is now a ship to fear.
Indeed. Their ability to wield heavy-duty missiles, which now regenerate make them actually a sort-of sane ship design. Still fragile as h**l, but they now actually have enough firepower to make up for it.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

A Random Jolteon

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Gah. Just ran into a mudskipper 2. Had reaper torpedos, which is normal. Dodged the first one. Second one took half my shield down (using a rhino class)
Next two managed to hit, tore my shield down, and took 90% of my hull.

After the shield went down, I was like, Oh crap. Then the next one came out, and I was like, OH S**T. Then, a fifth one came out, and killed me..... I did not see that coming. I thought it would be only 4 at best. Ouch.......

Fun times.
Mudskipper is no longer a meh ship.

Mudskipper is now a ship to fear.
Indeed. Their ability to wield heavy-duty missiles, which now regenerate make them actually a sort-of sane ship design. Still fragile as h**l, but they now actually have enough firepower to make up for it.
You make me want to spawn 20 and fit them all with Reaper launchers just to kill an Onslaught. :)
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Ranakastrasz

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You make me want to spawn 20 and fit them all with Reaper launchers just to kill an Onslaught. :)
That sounds fun. Just hope the Onslaught doesn't have Heavy PD and a decent escort.
In this mod, It kinda hurts.

Still probably quite fun.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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Seems pretty cool. Interesting to get my head around a new style of combat.

I've got a few low tech frigates and a mule freighter but I'm not too sure what to do against enemy fighter swarms. Any suggestions?

I've been finding it difficult to keep some of my frigates alive in the face of enemy cruisers/destroyers al though the same can be said of the vanilla game.

I find that my ships flux out in seconds which does make it challenging when facing enemies with medium sized weapons.

The lasher frigates seem kinda bad in my opinion, they get overloaded and caught almost instantly in battle but this might be due to them not being hegemonic auxiliary or 14th fleet ships. When compared to the wolf frigates/kites/rhinos that I have picked up they seem really lacking.

Looking forward to getting into the bigger battles with proper destroyers!

Keeping your feedback in mind, thank you! I am definitely thinking along the same lines as you on the lasher. I think it needs slightly more flux and dissipation, but slightly less shield efficiency. It's not so much that I want it's shields to perform better under fire compared to, say, the wolf, but the difference between it and the wolf's ability to use strike weapons is a little too drastic right now. It doesn't help that the stock variant comes with several flux-hungry strike weapons to start, either. The Iridium Cannon in particular is tricky to use. If it's hitting anything other than shields with its burst, it's actually hurting your own defenses in flux build up more than the enemy's. That's why it has such high damage for only 4 OP.

On fighters and destroyers/cruisers, what Ranakastrasz says is solid advice, and I would avoid trying to tackle heavier vessels with frigates (try to negotiate a cease-fire with enemy commanders if you see a destroyer and are facing similar numbers), if at all possible, until you either have enough frigates to attack from multiple directions (pick off it's faster escorts first, if you can) or have a solid tactical wolfpack.

What I mean by this: 1-2 Assault oriented vessels to "hold the line", 1-2 full PD-oriented frigates, or your own interceptors to provide point defense against enemy fighters, missiles and bombers AND 1-2 support or strike oriented vessels with heavy strike weapons, long range weapons, assault fighters, gunships or bombers to support your front line assault vessels.

Then
, once it's escorts are removed, coordinate a strike (right click to assign eliminate) with your wolfpack. The heavier weapons should seem less daunting since your frigates will distribute the fire.

In this mod, tactics are slightly more emphasized over ship control. I'm hoping this more like an RTS than vanilla. The combination of multiple ship specializations working together are designed to have exponentially increasing effectiveness. (if you disagree that this is the case, please let me know! I am very interested in this sort of feedback, and why, if possible  :) )


An increase in hull-size generally gives a higher payoff in direct confrontational power than vanilla. This will continue to be the case for destroyers->cruisers and cruisers->capitals. I was playing the other day, and was surprised at how difficult it was to just take down a pirate buffalo mkII with 3 frigates. It has enough hull to take a serious beating by frigate weapons, and it's bola srms can leave you suddenly without any mobility, under heavy fire by its weapons and pd drones.

But, I managed to take it down with one assault heg wolf using forward mounted micro repeaters, a mass driver and two assault autocannons to constantly press the attack. My other heg wolf had trebuchet lrms, a light ion cannon and 5 pd weapons. My kite had two swarmers and a mass driver, its stock loadout from the campaign start. Lost the Kite, but the trebuchets took their toll until a choice ion cannon shot hit its engines. My assault wolf closed, hit it with the micro repeaters while two more trebuchets found their target. Fight over, if by the skin of my teeth.

I had, quite ironically, lost my lasher to a reaper-armed mudskipper mkII in an earlier battle  ::) Those little guys sneak up on me at the worst of times, I swear.
---------------------------------

@ Ranakastrasz: It actually does only have 4, but that variant also has expanded missile racks. So, it means pirate markets have that hullmod, and it will drop off pirate fleets, too. But, the trade-off is that a reaper armed mudskipper, or if I'm honest, even a Pilum-armed one can become a big problem long term. They are usually priority targets for me since they lack shields, but can be so devastating if ignored.

Whats with the "Stabilized Drive Conduit" mod? What specifically makes a ship have that mod?

All ships should, I'm pretty sure. (The Rhino and Bull don't in the current build - working on a hotfix for that, soon!)

It is so that raising shields and sending fighters out to attack or defend targets won't remove the flux speed boost. The A.I is too bad at determining when to do that, otherwise. The relevant skills that used to do that now increase the tolerance for loosing the boost very substantially. I think like 30-35%.
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Morrokain

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So, how would everyone feel about a slight increase in base soft flux dissipation (like 10-15% with shields raised over the current 0%) and a slight reduction in the effectiveness of the Stabilized Shields hullmod? I felt that it was too good before, and as time goes on I am feeling more certain of it.
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Ranakastrasz

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So, how would everyone feel about a slight increase in base soft flux dissipation (like 10-15% with shields raised over the current 0%) and a slight reduction in the effectiveness of the Stabilized Shields hullmod? I felt that it was too good before, and as time goes on I am feeling more certain of it.
Yes. That would be sensible. 10% innate and +20-30% from stabilized. Or make stabilized give hard flux dissipation? Actually no, Given the flux polorization, hard and soft flux aren't as differentiated as they are in vanilla
So yea, 90% shield cost of innate dissipation, with it dropping to 60 or 70% with stabilized shield.
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Doublecheck the frontal shield emitter. Given its supposed to be a crap-tier shield(Or did you change that?), it should, by default, be equal to dissipation, but currently isn't that way for all ships.

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Why not modify the 14th Battlefleet hullmod to add the core-strain effect? It currently says "No downsides", but you can change that to point out the strain on the core.
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I could have sworn there was a way to make all ships innately have that zero-flux bonus without a hull-mod. I might be mistaken however.

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Most mods which give weapons with no flux cost don't apply that to most ships. I think Vacuum is the only example I can think of that also does this.

It is possible to setup a ship without flux usage. This has the nice effect of giving the zero-flux boost at all times.
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The larger variety of weapon of various types helps a lot. Laser and projectile small energy PD weapons, many, many Strike and support varients. Its far better fleshed out and I have a lot more choices on how to optimize.
I've tried out quite a few other small missiles. The wide range of roles helps design ships to use missiles.

The larger number of hybrid slots helps too.
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Heavy Mortor (I think, its a medium balistic) still says it is strike, but the classification is support (1300 range?)
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Bolo missiles are nasty. Spin out of control. Quite lethal, and almost always worth giving one to any destroyer just to pin down frigates. And yet another way this TC focuses on PD vs Fighter/Missile focus.
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Some of the vanilla fighters still don't have that tooltip giving a quick description.
Some also don't have the Figher Systems hullmod.
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Had some luck with the Rhino frigate. Keep losing it, but it's my new go-to flagship early game, given it's medium energy slot. Phase beam or mining laser work pretty well.
Mining laser lacks Alpha, but works on fighters and just keeps the pressure up.

It's got highly flexable PD turret slots, and a single small missile slot too. Generally I use the forward-left slot for a railgun, use the Main slot for it's strike power, and the missile for a trebuchet to make up for it's somewhat slow speed. The four corner slots get PD or some kind.
Works great, although it's not as mobile as the wolf. I can act as PD support, harrass from a distance, and have a heavy strike weapon. Works for my general role as Assasin without too much worry about DEATH FROM BEES. Vanilla, fighters can be ignored half the time. Here, If I don't use PD I can't dive. The phase beam tears through a single unshielded frigate without too much issue, but can't quite deal with destroyers. The PD lets me cover opponents, and the LR missile lets me slow a fleeing enemy so allies can catch up.

Not the perfect ship I've wanted, and the manuverability leaves a bit to be desired. Burn drive isn't AS reliable as an escape method and all
But, then, the manual did say I had to make tradeoffs if I wanted someone able to do everything. I have a strike, PD, and LR harrass, and traded the +speed and manuverability and +survability, and it doesn't excel at any of those.
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Still trying to find a good interceptor Frigate to interdict those fast frigates. Maybe a Kite?
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The Gemini is a terrifyingly effective PD weapon at the current Frigate-Destroyer phase I am in. Two flak, and 3 Locust anti-figher missiles. Fighters that get close tend to get shredded.
I've also tried giving it LRM instead like vanilla tends to (sabots) but it isn't as impressive that way.
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Since you've shuffled around all those weapon slots, I've been trying out many other ships that I didn't in vanilla, generally searching for medium slots of various types.
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MUDSKIPPERS!!!!!!! ARGH.
Glass cannons of horrid death. Urgh.
Stupid expanded missile racks.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2018, 12:00:14 PM by Ranakastrasz »
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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A nice take on things, thanks.  :)  Got some patch notes incoming taking your feedback into account. It's pretty close to what you and Igncom1 suggested:

 - Buffed Lasher's ability to use strike weapons. Base flux and dissipation increased. Shield efficiency lowered.

 - Buffed Lancer's ability to use it's missiles and ship system. Base flux and dissipation increased. Shield efficiency lowered.

 - All ships now have 10%/15%/20% base soft flux dissipation when shields are raised (up from 0%), depending on if the hull is considered lowtech/midline/hitech.

 - Reduced the benefit of Stabilized Shields hullmod by 15% (Now +35%).

 - Changed Heavy Mortar description to better describe its intended role.

 - Short role description added to the Interdictor Drone.

 - Fighter-Class Systems hullmod is now present on all fighter wings.

This is a pretty significant reduction in the Borer Drones effectiveness, something that was probably necessary considering how many you get and that they are supposed to be worse than anything else, combat-wise. I'll play around and see if anything else was significantly affected.



For an interdictor frigate, trying putting just a couple assault and low OP PD weapons on a wolf, hound or lasher and then also try and get safety overrides and unstable injector on it. That speed can catch just about anything short of the fastest Pathers, and burndriving gets you a lot farther.
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