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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 722468 times)

basileus

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It's not just the shuttle.  I can't use militarized subsystems anymore.  Maybe it's looking for the vanilla civilian grade hull rather than the AO version.

I like the changes overall, but I am moving and haven't had a chance to play much.

In my opinion, virtually all PD and Fire Support weapons should be soft flux and virtually all assault and strike weapons should be hard flux.

I also think that PD is too effective.  I'd recommend either shortening ranges or, better yet, making most PD weapons magazine-based, so that they continue at their current effectiveness for a time but can be overwhelmed.  (It might also make expanded magazines useful.)  If things become too lethal, then improve the effectiveness of interceptors.  It's the same as making PD weapons magazine based--PD capabilities can be degraded with enough sustained fire.  This will increase the lethality of fights, but I think that's a good thing.  They take too long, imo.  It's too easy for a player to keep all their ships alive once they have all the blueprints.

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Doom with a proper loadout and captain can solo Paragon no problem in open space. Its speed might be too fast.
Is this a problem?  I think it's a good thing if it's viable to use smaller ships with level 20 pilots, as opposed to forcing us to run all capital fleets in the late game.  Also, balancing around a fully optimized loadout and level 20 pilot might have undesirable consequences for general gameplay.  Does it seem too powerful without the pilot?

SciCorps fleet doctrine needs to be adjusted to field more carriers now that the Odysseus is a carrier--or they need another capital.  All they field is Apogees and small ships.

There are two versions of the Dagger bomber currently enabled in the mod.  Actually, there appear to be multiple versions of a number of strikecraft.

Ogleth is still missing the Habitable modifier.

I'll also second Albreo that the Squall probably needs an extended range.  Since it's a capital class engine interdiction system, it would make sense that it has a medium range (1800-2500).
« Last Edit: December 16, 2020, 09:13:21 AM by basileus »
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Albreo

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Is this a problem?  I think it's a good thing if it's viable to use smaller ships with level 20 pilots, as opposed to forcing us to run all capital fleets in the late game.  Also, balancing around a fully optimized loadout and level 20 pilot might have undesirable consequences for general gameplay.  Does it seem too powerful without the pilot?

You should test it out. I myself only skim through it and won't be able to deliver a concrete verdict. From the brief test out with no pilot, usually phase ship AI is crappy with no pilot but it can still manage to solo at least 30 OP Onslaught while running away from fighter which should be a phase ship nemesis. I also used this missile build to kill the new Guardian ship with another capital. It looks like it's too slippery to me but well gotta sleep.
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basileus

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Is this a problem?  I think it's a good thing if it's viable to use smaller ships with level 20 pilots, as opposed to forcing us to run all capital fleets in the late game.  Also, balancing around a fully optimized loadout and level 20 pilot might have undesirable consequences for general gameplay.  Does it seem too powerful without the pilot?

You should test it out. I myself only skim through it and won't be able to deliver a concrete verdict. From the brief test out with no pilot, usually phase ship AI is crappy with no pilot but it can still manage to solo at least 30 OP Onslaught while running away from fighter which should be a phase ship nemesis. I also used this missile build to kill the new Guardian ship with another capital. It looks like it's too slippery to me but well gotta sleep.

I won't have time to do too much testing until next year, but I'll try to get some level 6 and level 12 pilots and not promote them past that.  That seems to be what the AI typically uses.
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Morrokain

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It's not just the shuttle.  I can't use militarized subsystems anymore.  Maybe it's looking for the vanilla civilian grade hull rather than the AO version.
Ah yeah probably I'll add my own version to fix it. Likely tomorrow if I get a chance. I also still need to look at midline bombers.

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I like the changes overall, but I am moving and haven't had a chance to play much.
Good to hear the changes seem good so far! Hope the move goes smoothly!

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In my opinion, virtually all PD and Fire Support weapons should be soft flux and virtually all assault and strike weapons should be hard flux.

I also think that PD is too effective.  I'd recommend either shortening ranges or, better yet, making most PD weapons magazine-based, so that they continue at their current effectiveness for a time but can be overwhelmed.  (It might also make expanded magazines useful.)  If things become too lethal, then improve the effectiveness of interceptors.  It's the same as making PD weapons magazine based--PD capabilities can be degraded with enough sustained fire.  This will increase the lethality of fights, but I think that's a good thing.  They take too long, imo.  It's too easy for a player to keep all their ships alive once they have all the blueprints.
The magazine idea is neat. Artificially creating a window for missiles would probably be a good thing and I could have much larger magazines on things like the Machine Gun to allow for another balancing mechanism. I already tried to do this to a small degree by increasing higher tier PD's time between firing and therefore allowing lower tier to better counter consistent missile spam over something like the PD Cannon. Soft flux might be too difficult considering shielded strike craft not to mention there isn't a vanilla mechanic that does that and so it would be difficult to implement.

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SciCorps fleet doctrine needs to be adjusted to field more carriers now that the Odysseus is a carrier--or they need another capital.  All they field is Apogees and small ships.
Making a note - though just to make sure are you talking about their military bases or smaller colonies? They have a lot of Patrol HQs which don't field capitals. There should definitely be capitals at places like the Directorship Headquarters. The Odyssey is technically considered a capital warship on the code side of things so it shouldn't be treated as a carrier in fleet generation even though it has the dedicated carrier bays hullmod.

They need another capital just in general though, I agree. The Astral is actually somewhat of a placeholder though I will use it as their rare capital carrier. I plan on making another kind of capital ship on top of that.
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There are two versions of the Dagger bomber currently enabled in the mod.  Actually, there appear to be multiple versions of a number of strikecraft.
Have you hotfixed the issue Albreo mentioned earlier with vanilla weapons showing up in markets? (Requires a new game.) If not, that should *probably* fix it unless I'm missing something else. There was an issue with the Persean League's override because there was a spreadsheet typo in the faction id and it was being skipped.

If that doesn't fix it, a linked save + AO mod settings file would be most helpful in order to troubleshoot.

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Ogleth is still missing the Habitable modifier.
Fixed along with adding that to Xolydunne as well. Added those changes to the download though hotfixing isn't worth it since it requires a new game anyway.

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I'll also second Albreo that the Squall probably needs an extended range.  Since it's a capital class engine interdiction system, it would make sense that it has a medium range (1800-2500).
I'm ok with that, but wouldn't it then need a damage reduction? It is a very effective large missile right now. Imo it beats Heavy Thunderbolt and the large Atropos in effectiveness. The only two things that probably outshine it are the Hivemind and the Heavy Widow Launcher.

In a 1v1 the ship equipped with Squalls often wins even if the rest of the build is poor. I get that it is mitigated more in a fleet scenario, but in something like a close quarters 5 v 5 cruiser/capital battle it still hits fairly often from what I've seen.

That being said, if you guys think it needs medium range without a damage nerf then *shrug* fine by me.

(*EDIT* Not being sarcastic here just in case that was the impression at all. I really do think I could be overestimating the missile's survivability but recent tests have made it seem good in a medium-DP/capital scenario for sure. I will also add the caveat that the primary power of the weapon is engine interdiction and a tiny pinch of AI abuse since it's a kinetic missile so damage could actually be mostly irrelevant. Engine knockout is a serious liability during an even battle.)
« Last Edit: December 16, 2020, 11:26:37 PM by Morrokain »
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Albreo

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Have you hotfixed the issue Albreo mentioned earlier with vanilla weapons showing up in markets? (Requires a new game.) If not, that should *probably* fix it unless I'm missing something else. There was an issue with the Persean League's override because there was a spreadsheet typo in the faction id and it was being skipped.

If that doesn't fix it, a linked save + AO mod settings file would be most helpful in order to troubleshoot.
Yep, it doesn't show up in markets. Should be fixed this time.

Eh! I never know Odyssey has a salvage gantry. What a must have ship. But I don't understand why Odyssey AI wants to kiss enemy ships. It just floats right in front of tach lance smash shield to shield but it doesn't have weapons that require that close of a distance.

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I'm ok with that, but wouldn't it then need a damage reduction? It is a very effective large missile right now. Imo it beats Heavy Thunderbolt and the large Atropos in effectiveness. The only two things that probably outshine it are the Hivemind and the Heavy Widow Launcher.

In a 1v1 the ship equipped with Squalls often wins even if the rest of the build is poor. I get that it is mitigated more in a fleet scenario, but in something like a close quarters 5 v 5 cruiser/capital battle it still hits fairly often from what I've seen.

That being said, if you guys think it needs medium range without a damage nerf then *shrug* fine by me.
Damage reduction? I mean it's pretty weak right now with an 862 burst and 100 sustain. It's only useful as fire support to mess with the enemy engines. Its chance to arc might be too high consider the amount it spews out each time which can knock an entire ship out even though it shouldn't. And from the look of it, missile speed might also be too fast as it hits 90-100% of a time due to PD can't keep track of it.

For sabot, I can't think of any better way to buff it. Its stat is impressive if it hit but it usually doesn't. lol

Found the Mother ship. It spawned small drones? The drones didn't do much but fun to shoot at. There should be some... suicide drone in the mix. Like blow up real big when using the ability, do a little blink, sound effect, and boom.

I would like more ships for the simulation test though. It would benefit balancing in the long term. At least all of the capital.

https://youtu.be/7fNi34lhFWw
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basileus

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Artificially creating a window for missiles would probably be a good thing and I could have much larger magazines on things like the Machine Gun to allow for another balancing mechanism.

Yeah, that way certain ships cannot have endless area point defense spam, in particular.  Maybe the Shattercell is an exception.

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Making a note - though just to make sure are you talking about their military bases or smaller colonies? They have a lot of Patrol HQs which don't field capitals. There should definitely be capitals at places like the Directorship Headquarters.

I did start to see a few, but even at the HQ some detachments had no capitals.  That said, the Apogee is actually a competent cruiser now, which I'm happy about because I like exploration, and your Squall/3xAtropos build is quite good.

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(Requires a new game.)

Oops!  OK. :)

--

WRT Missile ranges:

I noticed there is a Large Salamander now (or has it always been there?) @2,400, so I suppose that I'd only advocate for bumping Squall up to 1,800.  I've never thought of it as a DPS weapon.  I'd agree with Albreo that either the EMP damage or speed might need a slight reduction.  I probably wouldn't do both, at least to start.  The only ships that it really does a lot of damage to would be frigates, and the missile don't turn tight enough to connect with them.

I'd agree with the analysis of the Sabot, but it does give me an idea: Are there any fighters left with active flares?  Maybe if there were fast heavy fighters and/or maybe a light gunship that specialized in flare spam.  They wouldn't do a lot of damage on their own, but would open the door for other strike craft / missiles.  Sort of a Wild Weasel role.

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Eh! I never know Odyssey has a salvage gantry. What a must have ship.

It's one of the new changes.  It's definitely something that you'll want 1 of in your fleets now.  Although, I'm skeptical you'll find it worth fielding at 28 DP.  Its DPS profile is modestly worse than the 22 DP Revenant (fewer hardpoints/worse fields of fire/worse net dissipation/worse shield efficiency), and much worse than the Legion or Onslaught.  Its cost probably needs to fall or it needs a full conversion to Battlecarrier.

Also, should the Renegade fighter-bomber count as a fighter for the purposes of the new hull mods?  Currently, I don't find them to be worthwhile, but if I could field them cheaply on the Ody or Revenant, I might.
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basileus

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When your building these variants, do you test them with the pilot personalities that the faction favors?

For instance, SciCorps favors cautious pilots and that becomes a problem with some of their builds.

The Squall/Atropos variant for the Apogee works very well because the ranges are nearly identical.  Some of the other variants are a little more problematic.

The Exploration variant is fine without a pilot; however, with a cautious pilot it struggles because the pilot will try to keep at 3,500 and do nothing but fire harpoons.  That variant would benefit from something like a Heavy Shockstorm/Rapier replacing the Atropos up front and Typhoon Atropos in the Large.  Ditching the Liberators for Retributions. 

Meanwhile, the Long range variant probably needs to have all of its M/L as some combination of Thunderbolts / Hurricanes.

And if you wanted to do a MRM variant, then all the ranges should cluster between 2.5-3k. etc.

Anyway for any faction that defaults to cautious pilots, it's probably worth looking at the variants carefully to make sure that there are enough M/L weapons near the max engagement range of the variant.  Otherwise, the addition of a pilot risks making the ship perform worse instead of better.
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Morrokain

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Thanks for the continued feedback! Keep it coming when anything comes up I am following it and will report changes as I make them. I spent time posting on the new blog post thread so I don't have time to respond in detail yet, but I will soon.
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basileus

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Is it possible for you to change the 1st rank of Fighter Doctrine so that it reduces the crew requirement of all strike craft by 1?  There are all those LPs, and I'm unwilling to use 80% of them as things stand.
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DatonKallandor

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I don't think I've ever seen crew requirement being a limiting factor for any strikecraft.
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basileus

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I don't think I've ever seen crew requirement being a limiting factor for any strikecraft.

Try playing the Perseans using only their stuff.

High tech and low tech are easy to play.  High tech you can play carriers, you can brawl with elite shields, go phase ships, or you can play long range hit-and-run.  Low tech you double down on armor and dakka dakka.  (Low tech has more L slots and hull mods to reduce heavy ballistic costs.)  Midline sucks.  There's no reason to choose it to go defensive, so it has to play offense as the best defense.  The most obvious option is to play a carrier fleet, and try strikecraft and missile spam.

The trouble is that its strikecraft and missiles are pound-for-pound worse than high tech, and the strikecraft typically have +1 crew to their high tech equivalents.

So not only are you at a strategic disadvantage to begin with, you also pay two additional taxes:  You have to buy lots of replacement crew, and you have to pay the upkeep to haul a lot of extra crew around with you or it can become a legitimate operational limitation.  To play midline, you pay more to use worse stuff.  With the Excalibur cannon nerf, I don't see that they have anything going for them.

Can anyone name any role that the midline excels at?  The Executor is an OK ship, but unless you use a mod that raises the officer level cap, you kind of have to choose between making it a ship of the line or a carrier.  As far as I'm concerned, you'd be infinitely better off with either a Paragon, an Astral, or two Pillagers for roughly the same DP.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2020, 12:34:40 PM by basileus »
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DatonKallandor

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Even if all of that were true, changing the skills would be a terrible solution, because it would affect all ships, not just the ones supposedly underpowered.
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Morrokain

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Albreo:
Spoiler
Eh! I never know Odyssey has a salvage gantry. What a must have ship. But I don't understand why Odyssey AI wants to kiss enemy ships. It just floats right in front of tach lance smash shield to shield but it doesn't have weapons that require that close of a distance.

Yeah I wanted it to be unique and exploration themed. I *think* having capital level maintenance and crew requirements still gives the Salvage Rig a place in fleets, but to be honest I didn't look that closely.

As for the AI was it a reckless officer? I've seen them do that sort of thing. If you have a lot of PD Burst beams on it that can also tempt the AI to get within those ranges since that weapon's dps is pretty high.

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Damage reduction? I mean it's pretty weak right now with an 862 burst and 100 sustain. It's only useful as fire support to mess with the enemy engines. Its chance to arc might be too high consider the amount it spews out each time which can knock an entire ship out even though it shouldn't. And from the look of it, missile speed might also be too fast as it hits 90-100% of a time due to PD can't keep track of it.

For sabot, I can't think of any better way to buff it. Its stat is impressive if it hit but it usually doesn't. lol

The Squall has 1800 range in the DL now. Disabling most of the ship is intended as an additional perk. I'll possibly reduce its speed a bit later on after I test it a bit more.

I adjusted the Sabot to fire the second stage missiles at a farther out distance and narrowed the spread a bit. From there I'll look at second stage hitpoints to see if an increase is needed. Aoe pd hitting all or most of the second stage missiles at one time is a big part of the reason it doesn't get through as easily I think. It will probably get to the point where high tech PD can't mitigate it much, but their shields are stronger so it might work out.

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Found the Mother ship. It spawned small drones? The drones didn't do much but fun to shoot at. There should be some... suicide drone in the mix. Like blow up real big when using the ability, do a little blink, sound effect, and boom.

Yeah it's more flavor than challenge and fits the description of the encounter well. Since it is supposed to be a beginner-level fight I think making it even harder might be going too far, but at least its a bit harder from the past version where if CR wasn't a thing you could deploy a single combat frigate on autopilot and go eat dinner and the fight would be won eventually.

Your idea is cool though. It reminds me of a game probably nobody on this forum has played or remembers called Armada for the Sega Dreamcast. There was an enemy that did that sort of thing and man did it often catch me off guard.

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I would like more ships for the simulation test though. It would benefit balancing in the long term. At least all of the capital.

Ok I'll work on that some more. I agree that sometimes I want to test a wider array of variants just in general. I also need to add a Luddic Church fleet and a Adamantine Consortium fleet iirc.
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basileus:
Spoiler
Yeah, that way certain ships cannot have endless area point defense spam, in particular.  Maybe the Shattercell is an exception.

Makes sense. The Shattercell is kind of like the upgraded and more OP expensive version of the Machine Gun. The magazine feature in general is something I'll probably look into tonight.

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I did start to see a few, but even at the HQ some detachments had no capitals.  That said, the Apogee is actually a competent cruiser now, which I'm happy about because I like exploration, and your Squall/3xAtropos build is quite good.

It is possible that the lack of an Orbital Works + nanoforge affects the fleet size/num of capitals despite having High Command. Sci-Corps HQ only has Heavy Industry. You could also be seeing patrols from Lexicus near the station as part of their patrol route. I don't want to just arbitrarily give them an Orbital Works + forge because it effects the sector economy, but you could try and adjust the doctrine settings in the faction file to see if a larger value for shipSize makes a difference.

Also, if you want to test an Orbital Works instead of Heavy Industry you can do so be going to the econ settings under data/config/ArcheanOrderEcon/systems. You will see spreadsheets for most if not all core systems. In the spreadsheet there is a a column to remove and a column to add industries as well as planetary conditions and stations. You can add a row for Sci-Corps HQ and make any changes you want then start a new game.

You'll have to know the ids for these, but for what you would use for this change:
entity id: scicorps_headquarters
removed industries: heavyindustry
added industries: orbitalworks

The code that manages this doesn't currently accept the addition of special items, but I'll probably do that eventually. If you make these changes just remember you made them. ;) They are there for players to customize non-random core games. At some point they may not even require a new game to take effect, but I haven't coded the logic for that yet since it requires building maps for most of the mod ids and that's time consuming.

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WRT Missile ranges:

I noticed there is a Large Salamander now (or has it always been there?) @2,400, so I suppose that I'd only advocate for bumping Squall up to 1,800.  I've never thought of it as a DPS weapon.  I'd agree with Albreo that either the EMP damage or speed might need a slight reduction.  I probably wouldn't do both, at least to start.  The only ships that it really does a lot of damage to would be frigates, and the missile don't turn tight enough to connect with them.

The large Salamander has always been there, but I'm sure it is often overlooked for a large missile slot considering other options that exist. I put the Squall range at 1800 for now. I'm thinking about the speed reduction. It is very reliable but its requirement to swirl around a ship means the tipping point to unreliability is incredibly thin and I'd rather it be too reliable over unreliable considering the tier and rarity of the weapon.

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I'd agree with the analysis of the Sabot, but it does give me an idea: Are there any fighters left with active flares?  Maybe if there were fast heavy fighters and/or maybe a light gunship that specialized in flare spam.  They wouldn't do a lot of damage on their own, but would open the door for other strike craft / missiles.  Sort of a Wild Weasel role.

Currently only the Claw, Hercules and Krakken have flares and that's mostly just to balance those particular designs to be more attractive when comparing them against shielded strike craft. A Wild Weasel sort of role is interesting though. Maybe a midline fighter armed with a single Micro Repeater or something could work. Once upon a time several other wings had flares, but I find that they are too strong to add to wings that also cause a decent amount of damage.

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It's one of the new changes.  It's definitely something that you'll want 1 of in your fleets now.  Although, I'm skeptical you'll find it worth fielding at 28 DP.  Its DPS profile is modestly worse than the 22 DP Revenant (fewer hardpoints/worse fields of fire/worse net dissipation/worse shield efficiency), and much worse than the Legion or Onslaught.  Its cost probably needs to fall or it needs a full conversion to Battlecarrier.

Making the Odyssey more of a speedy light battlecarrier is an option. Maybe add a bay or two and increase max OP? It already has carrier-grade bays. Fields of fire is something I will look at as fixing that is relatively easy to correct. I'd rather balance it up to its cost then reduce the cost just in general. That being said, it will probably continue to be slightly worse than a Legion or an Onslaught since it has utility on top of its combat performance.

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Also, should the Renegade fighter-bomber count as a fighter for the purposes of the new hull mods?  Currently, I don't find them to be worthwhile, but if I could field them cheaply on the Ody or Revenant, I might.

Afaik I think it would change the way the AI uses them if I do that. I'll have to ask to be sure. If so, the biggest downside is they would use their Ion Torpedoes on passing strike craft if I make them a fighter instead of a bomber. I'll see if I can get that to work. Otherwise I'll probably just buff their torpedo a bit or give them more of them, etc.

When your building these variants, do you test them with the pilot personalities that the faction favors?

...

Anyway for any faction that defaults to cautious pilots, it's probably worth looking at the variants carefully to make sure that there are enough M/L weapons near the max engagement range of the variant.  Otherwise, the addition of a pilot risks making the ship perform worse instead of better.

I don't typically no - though I probably should. I did change and update the Apogee variants from your suggestions. I'll try and keep that in mind as I go through variants.
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Re: Crew Requirements and Midline
Spoiler
DatonKallandor is correct that skills don't really solve tech issues because they are universally applied. I also think that - while midline probably needs work in some areas - that tech isn't bad overall. The Excalibur nerf is likely disappointing yet necessary. I think it is still legendary caliber performance-wise. The Executor needed more OP, but the rest of its stats are really good and it has a built in 100 range weapon increase before the percentage increase from the targeting core is applied. It can kite and kill an Onslaught (XIV) using Excalibur Cannons alone if they are put in their own weapon group so it can manage flux levels and maintain the zero boost more easily. The buffs to the Graviton Beam are pretty substantial as well. The Eagle variants beat the other cruisers' stock variants reliably right now. The Heron's Targeting Feed system is really, really good when building bomber/gunship builds, etc. I think the Persean League has plenty for the player to use effectively, but they don't have as many unique things - which is something I will address in the future.

All that being said, I think midline by design is more difficult to specialize using builds and this can cause the illusion of weakness against specialist builds. Adding more armor or better flux stats/shields helps as far as defense is concerned, but you probably can't do both types at once and the midline ship relies on both. So defensive builds won't feel as good as they do at high/low tech equivalents even though they technically are either equally effective or more effective for their OP. (Example: Hardened Shields has a larger benefit since the base shield efficiency value is higher than a high tech ship's base value.)

Offensively, midline has the most diverse weapon loadouts available. They can equip all types of weapons and can even have weapon combinations that other tech levels can't. They also have a lot of combat capable carriers or carrier-like warships. That is really cool imo, but it also is a bit of a trap when making a build and requires balance considerations that aren't necessary on the other tech levels. Energy weapons are typically either less range or more flux heavy in order to gain additional damage. Either downside hurts midline ships more than it does high tech ships. Ballistic weapons deal less damage, but low tech ships are defensive and can leverage their armor to stay in the flux war longer. Since midline ships have the same or less weapon mounts on average, this means they can't stay in the flux war as long as low tech can and also can't kite/vent as easily as high tech can. They can do both enough to be versatile, however. A midline at high flux isn't as vulnerable as a high tech ship in the same situation. An armor stripped midline isn't as limited on its flux war duration like an armor stripped low tech ship would be either. However, a midline ship can get to either of those statuses faster in some circumstances.

Midline wings are in the same spot. Their middle-of-the-road stats make them less attractive compared to high or low end options simply because of the nature of being in the middle when many have a specialist mindset. They have crew requirements but cost more OP. They deal more damage than low tech but not as much as high tech - which also have shields and less crew requirements. So I completely understand why you'd want high tech wings if you have the OP, and otherwise want to be as cheap on the combat build as possible.

If they do end up being less competitive (not seeing that atm as I've said) I think I would approach the problem through higher OP pools over the other techs and possibly more built-in range bonuses to give midline "their own thing" like I did with the Executor. Midline wings are still being tested and I will keep this feedback in mind. I think longer range attack runs like Albreo suggested will make them feel better as you will probably take less losses - which will lighten the crew burden a bit.

Now, all of that being said, I actually did increase the crew loss reduction of Fighter Doctrine to 50% from 15% but not because of midline balance. I did it because:

A) I wanted to refresh myself on skill code and structure since it's all going to change (most likely) in the next update anyway and having a refresher will save time in the long run.
B) I do want to experiment with reducing crew losses from strike craft a bit since so many additional wings are active on the field in this mod. Doing it through a skill is easier to test/reverse than doing it by changing every spreadsheet cell. If this makes carrier officers seem way better than warship officers I will reverse the change.

I haven't added this to the DL yet though. I'm deciding if I'm ok with the override or if I want to set up a settings toggle for skills just like I did with weapons, ships, etc.
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Albreo

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Can anyone name any role that the midline excels at?  The Executor is an OK ship, but unless you use a mod that raises the officer level cap, you kind of have to choose between making it a ship of the line or a carrier.  As far as I'm concerned, you'd be infinitely better off with either a Paragon, an Astral, or two Pillagers for roughly the same DP.

The midline is a pretty jack of all trade for me. Most of the crafts are better than low tech. Most ships have very good speed and more responsive for players that like to micro. It mostly mounts Balistic and Energy weapon which, at the right combination, is superior to pure Energy. Lack of armor and not so good shield probably its only downside. It still lacks more capitals though. I would wish for Sindrian to get one of their own and Trader to get a huge capital trade ship.

As for midline ships, Heron is super dope right now. Eagle is great all around (I should have one less craft slot). Conquest is still not that great but it's cheap to deploy more (It could get up to 4 craft slots from the look of the huge bay hangars it has)

I did request some OP buff. The Executor is a solid ship now thanks to more vents available.
This's my random setup. Can kill a Paragon in seconds. Can 1 v 3 (2 Onslaughts & Conquest) no problem.


@Morrokain
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As for the AI was it a reckless officer? I've seen them do that sort of thing. If you have a lot of PD Burst beams on it that can also tempt the AI to get within those ranges since that weapon's dps is pretty high.
No, no officer. I think the speed boost ability makes it tends to go forward? Not too sure but really needs to micro a lot for this ship. As for the other spec, I think it's a pretty OK ship my setup with no pilot can kill an Onslaught with a bit of a close call due to the crazy behavior of face tanking ballistics.

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I adjusted the Sabot to fire the second stage missiles at a farther out distance and narrowed the spread a bit. From there I'll look at second stage hitpoints to see if an increase is needed. Aoe pd hitting all or most of the second stage missiles at one time is a big part of the reason it doesn't get through as easily I think. It will probably get to the point where high tech PD can't mitigate it much, but their shields are stronger so it might work out.
I was thinking if it doesn't really work out, how about make it a close quarter missile with 800 range, short gun, with very fast missile speed.

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Your idea is cool though. It reminds me of a game probably nobody on this forum has played or remembers called Armada for the Sega Dreamcast. There was an enemy that did that sort of thing and man did it often catch me off guard.
I never had a Dreamcast lol. Only a Famicom.

Other stuff
- AI doesn't do a good job side scraping in Conquest due to some forward facing weapon take priority. I think if the large mounts are on both sides like the original, it would work better.
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basileus

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Thanks, Albreo.  I haven't had any luck with Kraken BPs or finding enough of them in markets to test it out.  Do you use them on the Herons as well?
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