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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 722252 times)

Morrokain

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A question, where do I find those simulation’s capital ships to test against?

Have to put the game in dev mode. Go to the core starsector settings and set dev mode to true. It should be near the top. To make it easier I'll see about making a non dev mode version later. I think it should be fairly easy to do.

*EDIT* It shouldn't require dev mode now. I added a copy of the sim opponent list to show up under the non-dev setting. I may just keep it this way so people who just want to test the mod out have easier access to stuff.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2021, 04:06:46 PM by Morrokain »
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Velerian Mengsk

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Nice mod. Too bad that can't support other mods that i use. And Fighter wings too op. Slow moving capital ships can't get close before losing it's half HP. Uses much more ram(but can be dealt with no cost it's too great)
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Morrokain

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Nice mod. Too bad that can't support other mods that i use. And Fighter wings too op. Slow moving capital ships can't get close before losing it's half HP. Uses much more ram(but can be dealt with no cost it's too great)

Hi thanks! What mods are you referring to and how does this mod not support them? - just so I have that info.

Also are you playing the OP link version or the beta version? Fighters are different in strength between the two versions so that will better help me understand the feedback.
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Morrokain

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Someone reported via PM that a CTD can occur deep into a game caused by a flaw in the hullmod removal logic that occurs when a save is loaded. I've corrected that in the beta DL for anyone who has run into it. The fix shouldn't break existing saves.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6cxbrz5xcftwn8m/AAAaOPS8xMh6uIN5Pd1mwrbta?dl=0
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Albreo

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I like this new Sabot. It hits more, often 60% of the time, and it's useless against armor due to more projectile and low damage per bullet which suits its role pretty well. Often fast frigate and destroyer that strafe can evade it pretty easily. Might consider low second stage projectile speed a bit more if you think fast frigate should be immune to it.

I haven't had time to test anything substantial but I noticed that Spectre receives a massive damage buff and it becomes OP at the moment. A full stack of 10 can one shot almost any capital which is a bit crazy. And what more, I can usually buy Spectre directly from the black market associated with AO. You should limit the buying option to military commission only.

I think Flash bomber is a little too fragile and might need some buff. On another hand, I think some armor oriented craft is too tough to shoot down with normal PD. Might need some explosive anti-craft missile to counter it. I believe Vespid can be changed to this role as at the moment smokescreen is superior to it in every way.
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Morrokain

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Ah I'm glad the Sabot finally feels good!  :)

That one was very tricky to balance.

I don't remember buffing the Spectre but I may have. I'll have to take a look. I honestly thought maybe I made the Wasp too strong with its prox mine in comparison since they have similar OP costs. I believe I did recently buff the Banshee too because Shattercell Cannons aren't great against armor.

I plan to do something about ship availability. It might have to wait until the next Starsector update so I can see how the contacts system is going to work, etc.

I like the Vespid idea. In general, I don't want PD/ship based weapons to be too effective against strike craft so that dedicated carriers will have a role.
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Albreo

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Oh no, not Spectre, the Phantom bomber. The name is too similar lol.
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Morrokain

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Oh no, not Spectre, the Phantom bomber. The name is too similar lol.

Ah ok, yes I did buff that. I'll have to test it some more. I didn't really test it much after the redesign.

I wonder if less projectile hp on each individual phase orbs would be the way to go or if that would just make it too easy to abuse overloads? I want to distinguish it from the piranha in some way (obviously the phase helps) and have it be worth the OP cost to install. The earlier version's damage seemed weaker compared to torpedo bombers so I probably just tuned it too high.
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Albreo

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I wonder if less projectile hp on each individual phase orbs would be the way to go or if that would just make it too easy to abuse overloads? I want to distinguish it from the piranha in some way (obviously the phase helps) and have it be worth the OP cost to install. The earlier version's damage seemed weaker compared to torpedo bombers so I probably just tuned it too high.

The earlier version could only scratch the enemy lol.

The bomb HP is not that critical, to begin with. I would say, the amount of bombs is too overwhelming for PD to intercept when deploying en masse. One craft can shoot out 5 orbs. If I fully loaded 10 slots Astral with it that would be 100 orbs which are just downright horrible for the enemy. This dense bomb screen can help protect the crafts from damage as well which makes it harder for interceptors to kill them. I would suggest either reduce the damage or cut down on the amount of bomb per craft to 3 or 4 and adjust its damage accordingly might help. The craft survivability is pretty OK, not too strong.

Have you made changes to the Cobra yet? Because it's pretty crappy right now lol. Its torp HP is severely low.
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Morrokain

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I've been working a Expanded Fleet Dialogue for a couple of days for a change of pace - mainly to help avoid burn out.

I will address both the Phantom and the Cobra either later tonight or at some point tomorrow. I'll probably reduce the orb count to 3 and possibly buff damage a bit - or reduce it to 4 and keep the damage the same.

Just for my reference, does the Cobra die much? I know I increased the range at which it fires the torp. Increasing its hp is probably ok, but I don't necessarily want to make it always hit because reapers are very, very strong when they connect with armor instead of shields - even for high armor low tech ships that don't have 360 shields. So PD needs to be somewhat effective at least.
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Albreo

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It did die a lot due to slow speed. The turn radius is also quite wide for a ship this slow. Unless I supplement with some decoy fighter/interceptor, more than half will be gone against a capital ship. I don’t mind the loss that much (kamikaze bomber lol) but I do mind its inability to even hit something. Even with fighters combine, in my case I used 4 Nightmares + 8 Cobras, the hit rate of torps is as low as 10%. I was like T^T when it pops from a few Electron gun’s bullets.
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Morrokain

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Ah ok noted!

Should have some changes ready later today.
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Radicaljack

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Is it usual for the Archean Order to get crushed so often by the Trade Guilds? Their tech is excellent but I frequently see them getting ground up by Midline fleets. Excited to see what changes are around, enjoying the rebalancing so far.
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Darrow

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I just wanted to say that this is probably the best mod currently available for Starsector.
I've been around since the early versions of this game and I've always found that most Mods fail to address a lot of the core issues with the game.

Focusing heavily on fighters/bombers/gunships is something that was really needed. I've always disliked how these crafts functioned in the base game and this mod addresses exactly that.
In fact, 10 years ago I wrote a thread complaining about Fighters/Bombers and their base function in Starsector: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=418.msg3518#msg3518

My only gripe is that this mod fails to address the complete technological domination of some ships and strike crafts. While it's fine for the early game, later game essentially results in the same meta-builds and the same use of fighters/gunships/bombers over and over again. This essentially makes 90% of the crafts that this mod makes effort to improve essentially.... useless and just junk waiting for the player to obliterate.

This is something that vanilla Starsector suffers from where-as meta-builds become so prominent (very quickly) that a lot of other features, weapons, ships and crafts become useless almost an hour into gameplay. Likewise this mod suffers the same issue of vanilla where large ships can be insta-destroyed quite quickly in mid-late game by single barrages from various ships or strike crafts.

Further-more, in my opinion.... this mod could distinguish itself further by expanding on it's improvements to strike-craft by applying this gameplay directly to larger ships.
Battleships & Carriers should be a main component of EVERY fleet and the main "Command Ship". These ships should all have significant boost in health/hull to withstand barrages and be able to deploy and maintain large  (even larger) craft wings. These ships would essentially functions are mobile "bases" on the battlefield and almost function as semi-quasi battle-stations.


I do want to reiterate that this is my -favorite- mod and the only one I really use that adds ships and changes content. I genuinely don't believe I'd play Starsector without this mod as the changes to strike craft are so good and so signifanct to the over-all gameplay. However as I stated before, I believe this formula should be taken further to greatly expand this Mod into a more distinctive area of more HARDY big ships and stronger emphasize of carrier/mobile battleships.

Thanks for your work.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2021, 11:17:48 AM by Darrow »
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Morrokain

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Sorry for the delay in changes, I had a tricky thing I wanted to solve first that ended up taking more time than I expected. I have it working (mostly) now though. I might take a break tonight but I might not too. I'm still undecided. I have the changes I want to do in mind and they would be fast but I want to test a bit first so that the testing burden is a little less on the users and a little more on me. ;)

Is it usual for the Archean Order to get crushed so often by the Trade Guilds? Their tech is excellent but I frequently see them getting ground up by Midline fleets. Excited to see what changes are around, enjoying the rebalancing so far.

Welcome to the forums!

Is this during autoresolve battles between npc fleets or in a live combat battle of which you are taking part? Tech doesn't help as much in autoresolve since FP values are closer. The size of the fleet matters more there - as does the number of capitals, generally.

(Also glad you are enjoying the beta!)

I just wanted to say that this is probably the best mod currently available for Starsector.
I've been around since the early versions of this game and I've always found that most Mods fail to address a lot of the core issues with the game.

Focusing heavily on fighters/bombers/gunships is something that was really needed. I've always disliked how these crafts functioned in the base game and this mod addresses exactly that.
In fact, 10 years ago I wrote a thread complaining about Fighters/Bombers and their base function in Starsector: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=418.msg3518#msg3518

My only gripe is that this mod fails to address the complete technological domination of some ships and strike crafts. While it's fine for the early game, later game essentially results in the same meta-builds and the same use of fighters/gunships/bombers over and over again. This essentially makes 90% of the crafts that this mod makes effort to improve essentially.... useless and just junk waiting for the player to obliterate.

This is something that vanilla Starsector suffers from where-as meta-builds become so prominent (very quickly) that a lot of other features, weapons, ships and crafts become useless almost an hour into gameplay. Likewise this mod suffers the same issue of vanilla where large ships can be insta-destroyed quite quickly in mid-late game by single barrages from various ships or strike crafts.

Further-more, in my opinion.... this mod could distinguish itself further by expanding on it's improvements to strike-craft by applying this gameplay directly to larger ships.
Battleships & Carriers should be a main component of EVERY fleet and the main "Command Ship". These ships should all have significant boost in health/hull to withstand barrages and be able to deploy and maintain large  (even larger) craft wings. These ships would essentially functions are mobile "bases" on the battlefield and almost function as semi-quasi battle-stations.


I do want to reiterate that this is my -favorite- mod and the only one I really use that adds ships and changes content. I genuinely don't believe I'd play Starsector without this mod as the changes to strike craft are so good and so signifanct to the over-all gameplay. However as I stated before, I believe this formula should be taken further to greatly expand this Mod into a more distinctive area of more HARDY big ships and stronger emphasize of carrier/mobile battleships.

Thanks for your work.

I appreciate the very generous compliment and the time you have taken to provide feedback! I'm not sure that this is the best mod out there (in my mind), but it definitely provides something different and, hopefully, interesting as well. Anyway, I really appreciate it. :)

To quickly address the main points:

strike craft/roles: Yes this is a core tenant of the mod's overall design goals. I'm glad it seems to work well. Final balance between craft as far as roles go isn't there yet, but I think it's better than it was before. As I design other things I will continue to try and get closer to where it feels "just right" though that will of course be subjective.

Tech meta: I am aware of this (at least to a certain degree) and I agree that more work could be done here. Finding legendary craft/ships/weapons is very fun imo, but the stronger such things are the more likely it will be that a player is going to focus on them to the exclusion of all the other toys in the toolbox. The same goes for the OP - to - effectiveness ratio of higher tech stuff. I want spending more OP on something to have a noticeable impact, but that also runs the risk of obsoleting low OP stuff pretty quickly.

Any detailed thoughts analysis on that topic are welcome - I am certainly open to specific feedback and, perhaps more importantly, why it feels one way or the other and any potential solutions to the perceived problem on an item-to-item basis. In the beta, for instance, I've hopefully already addressed the bombers vs everything else conundrum that carrier building can potentially suffer from. Another goal was to address smaller hullsize carriers and make them feel more worthwhile without making them too strong against warships. On that note, carrier spam effectiveness should have been reduced a bit due to larger AOE radius PD and higher PD hit strength. On the large scale end of the battle size, however, having a lot of interceptors is still going to be necessary.

I also think that when I address item rarity/accessibility in the future this will help a lot too. Though, ideally, I'd like most things to at least have a niche use in certain builds or something along those lines.

Capitals as bases/command ships: This is something that is also a design goal of the mod, but there are two things stopping it from being easy to do right now. The first is that capitals are relatively easy to acquire and fairly prevalent in most fleets in large numbers. So they therefore become the only desirable hullsize to use under those conditions considering the player's ship cap. I want to have destroyers and frigates still provide utility and have a place in the player's fleet rather than simply being an early game throw-away ship if that makes sense. The next Starsector update is looking to tone down npc fleets a bit, and then changes along those lines will be easier to do.

The second and harder to solve issue is battle slowdown and CR. Having capitals as bullet sponges can significantly slow down battles if over-tuned. And, smaller ships can run out of CR before being able to soften them up enough - which goes back to the player ship cap issue. Once again, though, the next update might make these issues easier to work around.

To summarize, I want to do this but I have to be careful about how I go about balancing it from the large-scale design perspective. (I hope that makes sense - it does in my mind anyway :P )
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