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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 722342 times)

Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #255 on: February 05, 2019, 08:42:23 AM »

I'd define early-game as the period before the player's able to sustain at least one cruiser and a handful of destroyers - which usually necessitates either a colony or a commission.
As for faction starts, I've not tried any. I've only done the basic start that begins with you orbiting Jangala.



But the biggest issue I have overall, is it seems to make battles much more about the comparative size of your and your opponent's fleets and how many ships are able to field fighters; they severely limit how much the player's decision-making within a battle can influence its outcome. In other words, the threat of ships being mobbed by fighters is much greater than the firepower of any one ship alone. So it becomes more about countering that threat with PD or matching/exceeding it with your own fighters, than out-maneuvering or isolating parts of the enemy fleet.

Typically the player finds themself fighting fleets larger than their own, so more often than not you'll be fighting battles where the enemy has more fighter wings than you have ships and fighter wings, more or less incapacitating your fleet; they're either equipped well enough to counter the swarms in which case they won't stand up well to the enemy's non-carrier ships, or vice-versa. So the only optimal solution there is to ensure you have many more fighters than your enemy can deal with.

To sum it up even further, compared to vanilla it's much less likely you can win (without cheesing) against a numerically superior enemy, or lose against a numerically inferior enemy, simply because of the effectiveness of fighters per-OP compared to any other weapon, and how prevalent they are in this mod.

The idea behind built-in PD was a bad one really, like you say it'd probably end up railroading those ships into anti-fighter roles. So instead; A point-defence hullmod. For ~8OP (Frigate), the ship's hull is fitted with several small-calibre PD weapons (less effective than any given weapon-mount PD turret) at the expense of increased crew requirements. There could be several different variants of this - Beam (Energy) weapons with high accuracy and good damage, but weak ROF and flux generation; Ballistic weapons with area-of-effect, but a long reload time between magazines (Flak); Smaller ballistic weapons with weak damage and middling accuracy, but high sustained ROF (CIWS); EMP weapons with high flux generaion and weak damage, but a decent ROF and accuracy.
Another idea is a weapon-mount PD that's an "active" countermeasure; It spits out explosives (or an EMP variant) in a 360deg arc and detonates them after they reach some distance from the ship.
Something else is the fact that fighters are able to shoot down most missiles. Again not sure as to the feasibility of this, but rendering them only able to destroy (Not just target, but actually hit) torpedos would help balance them out.

Ah ok I see, thank you for taking the time to reply in detail.  :)  Response below.

i can agree with this i just played this mod its hard to get income as well during the start. the pirate bounties are really tough with all those fighters. I was hoping a bit like the starfarer days where ships gain exp.

I miss that too! I'm not sure if I can re-implement it though. It was unsupported quite a long time ago and I'm not sure the plugs into the campaign would be sufficient anymore.

For income, did you happen to try derelicts? They should be easier and more profitable in the beginning than bounties. Bounties would be considered tier 2 early game. If that is not your playstyle, though, no worries. I have a few things I may try listed below to make pirates a little easier.

---------

So the issue is two-fold. The first part is the lack of counters to fighters early on, because there just isn't enough available pd to the player.  The second, and more interesting problem to solve, is the ability for fighters to mass attack targets more effectively than ships with weapons ever could, so you are saying fighter strength is the number one factor in any given battle and you feel that ship load-outs almost exclusively revolve around that layer of combat. Does that about sum it up, or am I off somewhere?


I can certainly agree with your analysis on numerical superiority, and actually that is by design. Personally, I feel that vanilla Starsector is too easy, and the only challenging part is, in fact, the beginning where you are mostly outnumbered and outgunned by everyone. I'm not sure I completely agree on the player's inability to influence the battle, though. I think a player controlled ship is still a far more serious threat than an AI controlled one, at least in my experience, but you are right that it will only be noticeable when fighter strength between the two fleets is at least close enough that one fleet won't have complete free reign of the battlespace over the other.

There are numerous posts about the reverse difficulty curve and how it is a problem, and each update Alex adds more to address it, but I can empathize with how difficult it is to get that to feel just right. This is only compounded on by differing view points on what is difficult and what is not- based on player skill and experience with the game as a whole.

So when I intended to solve the endgame difficulty issues through all these balance changes, the trade off is that the early game is of course also more difficult because you still have very little tools and your enemies are tougher.

All of that being said, I would love to get a discussion going because I do feel like there are a few lighter touch solutions that would really help in this area. Feel free to disagree or add. :)

On the hullmod idea: That may work, and I certainly don't dislike it as a solution, conceptually, but there is a considerable problem there. Something like that would require me to add built in weapon mounts to every ship, and then the hullmods that add weapons to those mounts, which would mean that the weapon mount ids would have to be universal. I am not even sure it is possible to equip built-in weapons with hullmods, but even if it was it would be a huge amount of work to get it implemented, and even more to balance it properly. Then I have to somehow communicate to the player that those hullmods are almost required until you get your own pd. Wouldn't ensuring the player simply has access to a proper amount of standard pd weapons be more appealing?

Speaking of hulldmods, though, what about balancing pirates, and by association, independents, through changes to D-Mods? So, there is already a D-Mod that reduces fighter replacement rate, and I'm not sure if that is on every pirate carrier. That could be a start, though.

Then, I could add an additional D-Mod that reduces fighter stats by some amount, and also make sure that is included on pirate carriers ( really anything pirates have that use fighters). So a double whammy to pirate fighter strength that does nothing to modify the endgame difficulty of fighting high tier military factions, and doesn't require me to re-invent the wheel on fighter/PD balance.

Combine both of those with higher pd and fighter accessibility for the player, and that may be enough to at least reduce the difficulty of the early pirate bounties. All of this will require some ample playtesting, of course.

Thoughts?

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Morbo513

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #256 on: February 05, 2019, 01:28:16 PM »

Quote
you are saying fighter strength is the number one factor in any given battle and you feel that ship load-outs almost exclusively revolve around that layer of combat
Yep, that's the long-and-short of it. Re: PD, in many cases I don't feel as though they're effectie/efficient enough either.


To me the fundemental issue with fighters/carriers, vanilla or otherwise and at any stage of the game, is that their combat effectiveness will in practice pretty much always out-last the battle (Provided the carrier isn't destroyed). You lose or retreat eg a destroyer, it's gone for the entirety of the battle. It could've destroyed 100 fighters, but the impact that has only goes so far as the immediate damage prevented - the fighters still exist as a threat. In other words, it doesn't feel like you achieve anything in eliminating swathes of fighters.

I don't know how this could be changed mechanically while still sitting right with the AI (especially since I don't fully understand the current fighter mechanics), or otherwise not being a huge amount of work. But to brainstorm it:


General reduction of replacement rate

CR for fighters (ie "Fuel") - Regardless of damage/casualties/ammo expenditure, they only have X seconds' combat time before pulling back to their carrier

Limited ammo for all fighter weapons

Destruction of all fighters in a wing either eliminates that wing from the battle, or incurs a very long delay before they start to be replaced


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Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #257 on: February 05, 2019, 02:08:07 PM »

^

I have messed with replacement rate before, and the current system sort of has an invisible pendulum at play there. It doesn't mean that isn't an option, but I have to be careful.

Too fast of reinforcements and the replacement rate never decreases, but too slow of reinforcements and carriers tend to quickly drain and permanently stay at 30% replacement rate for the entirety of the battle after the first minute. This is because the thing that determines replacement rate either increasing or decreasing is the wing percentage of active fighters. So, naturally ones that replace faster are less effected by replacement rate as a whole because they tend to get past that threshold a lot easier than a bomber wing with 2 fighters and 30 second replacement rate each.


I thought I had found a good balance here where I see a gradual decline in reinforcement fighters as a battle wears on, but I can see if I can get some improvements out of it among the interceptor and fighter lines. Those are likely the ones that are the issue in the first place.

-----
I really, really like the limited ammo suggestion. That would be fairly simple to implement too, because most fighters at this point have built-in lower quality versions of the weapons they use anyway.

It would also make carriers like the Astral that use the fighter warp ship system less railroaded into bomber builds... hmm.

-----
The other two would probably be difficult to implement because I don't think that code is exposed to modders. I could be wrong, but likely that is the case. I could maybe write a script to override the replacement rate or something, but that would be a bit hit to performance.
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atgc

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #258 on: February 05, 2019, 05:36:39 PM »

I played the mod for a few hours, got my first colony up and running recently. Here are my 2 cents :

  • The emphasis on fighters is an interesting theme, and I'm starting to appreciate it, but the lack of PD weapons can be a bit frustrating, especially at the start - it's starting to get better now
  • Full shields also are much more important, since a lot of damage can come from behind (especially with the extremely effective bola missiles and much deadlier Salamanders
  • Early game is quite different, instead of fighting pirates getting missions done is the most lucrative activity. Like in the base game, getting into 100k+ credits is very easy if you know what to do.
  • The lack of flux ony many weapons means a ship's firepower is directly linked to the number of weapon hardpoints it has, messing with the balance quite a bit
  • I like a burst-fire weapon once in a while, but man that's just too much lol, burst fire weapons outnumber normal ones hahah
  • Missiles feel actually worth having since you can reload them, which is pretty cool.
  • The fact that you can't cheese battles anymore is good. Vanilla game was getting too "easy" once you had a good ship, now you really need allied ships (for better or worse) to counter all those fighters, at least in early and mid game
  • I find some weapons/ships/fighters quite unbalanced - just a general feeling I have, some weapons seem pretty bad choices all around compared to others
  • A few bugs around missions and NPCs of the mod factions - now having a pirate fleet with 4 caps, 10 cruiser and 20 destroyers on my arse for that missed fuel delivery
  • Pretty good job otherwise. Keep on!
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #259 on: February 05, 2019, 08:43:53 PM »

^

Thanks for the impressions. :)

I won't be able to respond to everything in detail just yet, but in general I took a look and yes there is indeed a large difference between .8 and .9's markets as far as, oddly enough, pd weapons in particular.

For some reason, the new markets tend to mostly spawn strike weapons and missiles, assault weapons rarely, and almost never pd weapons. That is probably why you feel like all weapons are burst fire, because most strike weapons are, and have limited ammo in their magazines.

It is a little bizarre to me as to what would cause that. Well, there is a greater variety of fighter LPCs for some reason, so that's something.

In .8, there was almost always 6-10 Light Machine Guns in any given market, but now I can't really find any pd other than proximity mines and, decent enough if you have a medium missile slot: Locust SRM Launchers.

----
For next update, I plan on implementation of:

-- larger starting fleets in all starting options to make early pirates less of a pain.
-- storage nearby with a stockpile of weapons OR a tanker and an assortment of weapons right in your starting fleet.

I'm intrigued by the limited ammo idea, but I don't think that will make next update because that is a huge change and I want a lot of time to test that out to make sure it doesn't break the feel of combat. Definitely going to experiment with the idea, though.

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verlonxx

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #260 on: February 08, 2019, 03:18:47 AM »

when recruiting new officers it get error message null with three lines. i don't have any other mods on.
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #261 on: February 08, 2019, 10:25:01 AM »

when recruiting new officers it get error message null with three lines. i don't have any other mods on.

Known issue I'm working on and don't quite have a fix for yet. I originally thought Rules had changed, but that upon looking at it that isn't the reason. Still working on figuring out what changed to cause that issue from .8 to .9

It should only affect faction officers at faction markets however, I'm pretty sure the "normal" officers at places like Jangala should be fine. Let me know if not, because that points to deeper issues than I thought, which is quickly looking to be the case anyway.. :(
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verlonxx

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #262 on: February 08, 2019, 12:22:11 PM »

i see there was a defector girl she seemed to have a nice backstory sadly i crashed without saving lol.... a bit annoyed haha
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #263 on: February 08, 2019, 06:09:14 PM »

i see there was a defector girl she seemed to have a nice backstory sadly i crashed without saving lol.... a bit annoyed haha

Doh! Sorry :(
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #264 on: February 15, 2019, 02:53:48 PM »

Been trying the Missions. They differ from vanilla quite a bit, so it is interesting.
The "Forlorn hope" mission is currently not something I can handle with the base ship. If I refit it as I want the mission is pretty much trivial.
Essentially you have an assault/pd/Missile strike Paragon vs "Everything".
Thus far, I haven't managed to kill any of the three Cruiser/Capital ships that are involved.

You have a ton of assault blaster type weapons, some minor PD, and two Guardians. Also 3 ion blasters. This deals with most missiles and fighters, and tends to discourage any frigates getting close.

Missile wise, you have 4x12 Hunters, 2x10 Squalls and 2x2 Thunderbolts. This is where most of the firepower comes from.
I can flush all the squalls and thunderbolts for ~2/3rds of my flux, and the hunters for ~90% of flux.
Squalls don't seem to do anything. They either have the worst targeting ever, or are trying for engine hits. Either way, they almost never connect.
Thunderbolts are pretty effective since they fission into 10 missiles each.
And the Hunters use all of your flux, and easily eat all your flux regeneration, but are fully capable of obliterating frigates and destroyers with a full volly, should a large fraction connect.

You also have two wings of Wasps (Pd/intercepter) and two wings of Xyphos (Shield hybrid gunship)

One thing I am trying to figure out is whether or not Energy Weapon Focus effects hunter missiles (They deal energy damage) And whether it is determined when you fire or when they impact. If it works, this is probably key to taking down the cruisers and capitals.

I spend most of the battle kiting, flushing hunters and thunderbolts to deal with the frigates and destroyers as they get too close. This is pretty effective, but I end up spending a ton of flux doing this.

The two cruisers have potent assault weapons that mean I have to keep kiting, (Since I can't kill them) and will break my armor/shield. They also have 3 reapers each, which if I don't PD down or shield from (Forward shield means I can't trivially react to them) I pretty much lose right there (Armor gone, weapons offline in that arc)

I mostly leave fighters on defense, but I send them to attack destroyers when they get out of position. Problem is that if I leave them out too long they all die, and then half my PD is gone.

Tough as my shields are, they can't withstand two dominators and an Onslaught. I just can't find a way to get through.

Any suggestions?

-----

Campaign wise, I haven't seen any PD weapons thus far in any of the 3 shops I've checked. I am pretty sure I should have seen at least 1.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2019, 03:51:26 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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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #265 on: February 15, 2019, 08:29:15 PM »

^ (Edit* Was too much of a wall of text when the quote is right above lol)

Hmm, I wonder when I changed the variant of the Paragon from the Elite to the Raider variant? Yes, it would be immensely difficult to use a Fire Support outfitted vessel to take down Assault outfitted vessels of the same class, let alone when outnumbered. Fire Support shines when surrounded by Assault-oriented allies, similar to the concept of using archers to support cavalry and infantry. In that mission you have no allies, so that doesn't make sense. The Elite variant may be too specialized for fleet combat too, though, so I'll change it to the Escort variant. That would probably be the best suited for the mission. :)

On the pd weapon shortage, that is a known issue of .9 that Alex has told me he is going to look at for the next official release. That being said, his balance is different so that doesn't necessarily mean it will be 100% effective in dealing with the problem. To help a little extra, I've done a couple things that have already been implemented for the next update.

1) All starting fleets under Normal and Advanced Start are, in general, larger. Secondary fleet choices have also been upgraded. This well help with starting bounties and pirates considerably. I think I may buff derelicts to match pirates since this will be the case. I intended derelicts to be easier "first encounter" enemies, but that doesn't make sense from an RP perspective since some players don't want to be an explorer/salvage expert right at the start, or even at all.

2) All starts include a cargo freighter so that I can populate the player's cargo with a stockpile of basic PD weapons to help with losses from destroyed ships and help re-arm recovered or bought ships. Hopefully, this stockpile will be large enough to get you through to a commission to open up a regular supply of weapons or until you can build your own.

3) Advanced Start has been renamed Faction Start to better reflect what it actually is now that Normal Start options have been expanded and fleet size is roughly the same in most cases.

I'm still working on the bugs for officers and the faction procurement missions. There is some definite weirdness there.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2019, 10:29:35 PM by Morrokain »
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #266 on: February 18, 2019, 06:11:31 AM »

Lore wise, Isn't the Paragon cut off from support and has to hold the line, heroically? Despite being set for support fire?

----
I don't know if the Tachyon lance is just OP (May well be) or if missiles are underpowered, but I find the sheer power and range of the Lance compared to the flux compares exceptionally favorably to any missiles with similar range, if purely from the reliability.

One thing I have always found problematic in this mod is the sheer flux cost of missiles. Yea, they are horrifically powerful, about as much as vanilla, and the regeneration is balanced by massive flux costs, but given how counterable they are, I don't think the massive flux costs are quite appropriate. Admittedly, you see this in a lot of other strike weapons, and yes, there is absolutely a line that needs to not be crossed, but...

Ships with epic flux stats, like the paragon can't fire off full volleys of some missiles, certainly can't keep up with regeneration with their flux stats, and I just have to ask if the level of flux cost on those weapons is intended to be so high as to eat a ship's entire flux budget on it's own.

Also they compare unfavorably to fighters, which have similar power, but cost much less flux (OP cost vs vents + upkeep while on hunt mode)

A rough -50% or so flux cost reduction of strike/support weapons on average might be sane enough honestly.
----

If it didn't require probably crippling script support, I would think that having you fire missiles for ~10% flux, and then spend the other 90% over the regeneration cycle would be sensible. It is very much that the sheer impulse cost is crippling.

----
On PD spawning, could you try messing with the rarity/level of weapons to see what shows up in shops maybe? Admittedly I have little idea how it used to work, nor how it works now, but presumably there isn't anything special about PD weapons that makes them not show up.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2019, 04:23:54 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

Death_Silence_66

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #267 on: February 18, 2019, 04:12:06 PM »

I agree with the missile flux cost, particularly with the hunter missile. The incredible cost makes them unfavorable as they lack in both burst and sustained damage.
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Morrokain

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Beams get stuck on fighters constantly.

This should be solved for the next update. :) 

All non-pd beams will pierce fighters. However, some balance changes had to be made in order for that to not cripple fighters after the new replacement rate changes. As an aside, those feel pretty good so far. The AI sends fighter attack waves much more strategically in .9 and tends to be more present of its fighter losses and let its replacement rate recover. That way fighters don't suddenly disappear forever if they are destroyed in large numbers, but they still have a significant enough delay before respawning that taking out a whole wing feels more impactful to the defender. This may have to be looked at again after limited ammo is introduced in order to not render fighters obsolete since they will have to continuously rearm, but for now it should help reduce the feeling that eliminating fighters is pointless.

Fighters will now have 60% beam damage reduction included in their built-in hullmod (The one that adds 50% extra damage from their weapons to weapon and engine hardpoints. Other effects of that hullmod may be removed in the future when limited ammo is introduced to fighters).

Because of the crippling effect that reduced damage will have on pd beams, their damage has been increased considerably. However, because the Advanced Optics hullmod gives too large a range increase to beams for that kind of damage output to be sensible, it has been changed to only increase PD beams by 200su. OP cost remains the same.
--------------------------------------
@Ranakastrasz
@Death_Silence_66
I'll respond to your two posts on missile flux costs a little later on when I have a more thought-out reply. I've been thinking about that a bit and have some opinions/details to share, but I agree that some changes are likely in order. More details to come!
--------------------------------------

For now, I wanted to update the patch notes. Still not downloadable as I want this next release to be bug free if I can help it. :)

Content Additions
-------------
 -- New Ships:
    - Malevolent (Capital-class Dreadcarrier)

 -- New Strike Craft:
    - Mauler (Heavy Interceptor)
    - Mauler (Pirates)
    - Barbarian (Base Gunship)
    - Warrior (Lowtech Gunship)
    - Talon (Hegemony)
    - Talon (Luddic)
    - Talon (Tri-Tachyon)
    - Talon (Pirates)
    - Vanguard (Hegemony)
    - Vanguard (Luddic)
    - Warthog (Hegemony)
    - Warthog (Luddic)
    - Broadsword (Pirates)
    - Broadsword (Adamantine)

 -- New Weapons:
    -

 -- Campaign Changes/Additions:
    - New/replaced stations for many major factions strongholds. Now there should be a lot more tactical diversity even among tech tiers.
    - Adamantine Consortium has a capital-class carrier and a unique heavy fighter(skin) added to their fleets.
    - Nightmare-class heavy fighter is now unique to the Archean Order's fleets.
    - Pirates have unique fighter(skins) added to their fleets.
    - Increased Adamantine Consortium aggression, reduced Archean Order and Trader Guilds aggression.
    - If not already present in the last patch, added Adamantine Consortium strongholds to the list of player colony threats.
    - Derelicts have increased in difficulty to match pirates. Pirates have had their fighter numbers considerably weakened.
    - Increased the starting player fleets for any new game start to roughly match early pirate bounties in size.
    - The two changes listed above should make either salvage or bounty hunting a good starting option for any new game.
    - Added most of the new game starts available to the base game from .9 to the Normal Start option list.
    - All new starts now contain a cargo freighter of some kind and a small supply of pd weapons.
    - Pirates now have unique fighter craft. These are considerably weaker than standard fighter craft, but can be deployed more easily

 -- Station Battles:
    - Balanced most factions' station style to match their respective technological access and doctrine.
    - Upgraded the tier of some stations, and added some where none existed. The purpose was better faction balance.
    - Unique station looks and loadouts for:
       - Hegemony
       - Pirates

 -- Blueprint System:
    - Further separation of tech tiers with more base strike craft available at the start.
    - Higher tier versions of some base strike craft bp available as single drops or in the various tech/faction bp packages.


Combat Balance/Content Changes
-------------
 - Increased OP cost of Talon to 2 from 0. Its combat effectiveness remains unchanged. Pirate version has 0 OP requirement.
 - Hegemony now has slightly better fighter craft with a tactical focus on anti-ship weaponry. They no longer use bombers very often.
 - Luddic Church and Luddic Path have new fighter craft skins with unique loadouts.
 - Higher tier fighter craft has increased the Luddic factions' military potency by a noticeable degree. Not to the degree of the highest tier military powers, however.
 - Slightly adjusted sprite for Perdition to match its role as a Luddic heavy bomber. Now has two side-turret Machine Guns to support against interceptors.
 - Tri-Tachyon Corporation now has a heavy interceptor to support their advanced interceptor drones.
 - Hercules-class Heavy Gunship has had its primary turreted weapon upgraded to a dual cannon, and has an updated sprite.
 - Hydra-class Gunship has an updated sprite.
 - Added shield modules to the sides of Trader Guilds' battlestations. They were slightly weaker -defensively- than intended.
 - Changed rocket launch behavior. Only a minor adjustment in overall functionality, but a different start-up to full speed. (Reduced launch speed but greatly increased proj acceleration).
 - Marauder, Warthog, and Gauntlet are now base bps.
 - Vanguard is now a low_tech bp (tier 1).
 - Rebalanced Luddic Church Condor variants.
 - Increased Paragon's max flux by 8000, flux dissipation by 300, and armor by 300. It was slightly too weak compared to similar tiered vessels and sometimes couldn't make use of all its weapons when surrounded.
 - Reduced fighter replacement rates across the board. I put an extra special emphasis on drones and interceptors that seemed to spawn continuously, and tended to only slightly increase bomber deployment rates.
 - Increaed PD Beam damage by ~40%-70% accross the board. This won't interfere with missile effectiveness (other than make them better against torps which is their intended purpose).
 - Changed Advanced Optics hullmod to only increase PD beam weapons by 200su (down from 500su) to balance the large damage increase for those weapons.
 - Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Super Computer hullmod by 10%.
 - Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Advanced Targeting Core hullmod by 20%.

Bug Fixes
-------------
 - Hopefully corrected issues with rockets sending flamed-out ships launching away at large speeds.
 - All assault and strike beams now pierce fighters. Fighters now take 60% less damage(40% of total damage) from beams.
 - Fixed Templar Strike variant's weapon groups.
 - Corrected Hegemony ship size in fleet doctrine.
 - Corrected Adamantine ship size in fleet doctrine.
 - Forlorn Hope mission's flagship is now the Escort("Fleet" in-game) variant of the Paragon instead of the Raider variant.
 - Corrected OP of Condor(A) variants.
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Morrokain

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Re: [0.9a] TC: Archean Order: Star-Wars-Inspired Combat/RPG (v1.3.0) Update 1/19
« Reply #269 on: February 20, 2019, 11:21:45 PM »

when recruiting new officers it get error message null with three lines. i don't have any other mods on.

I found the cause for this and it will be fixed in the next update. I didn't catch it at first, but there was a new parameter added to a couple of the Rule scripts that needed to be included.

This will also include custom faction text for admins and likely expanded text on that encounter as a whole. (Thanks SafariJohn's Rule Tool!)

Lore wise, Isn't the Paragon cut off from support and has to hold the line, heroically? Despite being set for support fire?

Hold the line heroically? Yes. But equipped specifically as Fire Support? Less clear to me based on the mission description. It could be possible even now to use that variant with the general Paragon buff though. It's pretty substantial.
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On Missile Flux:

The reason that most missile flux costs are high in the case of long range missiles like the the Hunter was originally because ships can mass equip and focus fire those weapons even over allied ships guarding them. Ballistic or energy strike weapons, by contrast, must have a direct line of sight to the target or they will cause friendly fire, so more allies in front to guard have diminishing returns. Those weapons also still cause a lot of flux build up too, but yes the impulse is generally lower that full missile salvos.

Fighters also accomplish massed strikes, however, and they are more effective in their strikes since they stick around and keep firing. Limited ammo will help a little bit, but missiles do seem a little weak in comparison. Consider though that missile slots are far more common than fighter bays (It may not seem that way but it is true. :P) and so they can be massed more easily and don't have a built-in limiting mechanic like fighters other than flux and regen.

There are some other reasons, too, like ensuring long range missiles generate a lot of flux to avoid too much kiting from full salvo bursting then 0-flux boosting until you can do so again. In large fleet encounters this is less effective because there are so many fighters to screen against missiles, but in small engagements missiles become overwhelming and cheap when used this way.

That being said, the Hunter and a few other missiles could use a re-evaluation after the power creep of fighters when trying to diversify their weapon loadouts. Vessels firing them should still find themselves vulnerable, but maybe not defenseless as is the case sometimes.
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