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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 722405 times)

Morrokain

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Morrokain do you have a discord?

Yes though I haven't been on discord in a while. The discord name is Morrokain there just like the forum name here.

also why is it that tri tachyon is ok with transponders being off in some sectors and not in other sectors ? is that your mod or base game?

Base game afaik. If its not, its probably a bug. It could be that patrols from a free port don't care about the transponder? I have a vague memory of something like that when I made one of the mod factions have a free port but I could definitely be wrong. I don't think I added any free ports to Tri Tachyon colonies though, just mod faction colonies.

Anyway, I can investigate it if you'd like. A screenshot or more information on where this is happening/not happening would help narrow it down.
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Flying Dice

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Mm, the main issue with midline/low-tech ships in AO is the same as in vanilla: the AI is dumb enough to keep using inefficient partial shields instead of dedicating their whole flux budget to offense and relying on damage spreading across their thick armor. The inevitable result there is that any savvy player can spike their flux by deliberately shooting shields, leaving them in a situation where they either get a long overload, a long vent, or can't use most of their really dangerous weapons (which is especially bad against high tech because a lot of the best kinetic weapons cost flux to fire).

That's not to say high tech is better for AI since it has a similar problem there exacerbated by the fact that high tech ships don't have high armor and hull to fall back on. I usually build my combat fleets around a doctrine of keeping ships alive; I use predominantly midline/XIV Battlegroup cruisers and caps, stack them with Heavy Armor + Reinforced Bulkheads + Hardened Shields where possible, load them mostly with 0-flux weapons, and rely on my own flagship to deal killing blows.

The bottom line is that most ship power in any variant of Starsector stems from two things: player intelligence in ship design and flux management. If you're decent at both you can win any DP-equivalent fight handily and kill fleets of almost any size with any capital so long as you have a beefy escort.
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Morrokain

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Mm, the main issue with midline/low-tech ships in AO is the same as in vanilla: the AI is dumb enough to keep using inefficient partial shields instead of dedicating their whole flux budget to offense and relying on damage spreading across their thick armor. The inevitable result there is that any savvy player can spike their flux by deliberately shooting shields, leaving them in a situation where they either get a long overload, a long vent, or can't use most of their really dangerous weapons (which is especially bad against high tech because a lot of the best kinetic weapons cost flux to fire).

That's not to say high tech is better for AI since it has a similar problem there exacerbated by the fact that high tech ships don't have high armor and hull to fall back on. I usually build my combat fleets around a doctrine of keeping ships alive; I use predominantly midline/XIV Battlegroup cruisers and caps, stack them with Heavy Armor + Reinforced Bulkheads + Hardened Shields where possible, load them mostly with 0-flux weapons, and rely on my own flagship to deal killing blows.

The bottom line is that most ship power in any variant of Starsector stems from two things: player intelligence in ship design and flux management. If you're decent at both you can win any DP-equivalent fight handily and kill fleets of almost any size with any capital so long as you have a beefy escort.

Thanks for the details and in general I agree about the AI limitations. The biggest flaw in high tech AI is that it will drop shields to avoid building hard flux and armor tank shots it really shouldn't. Or it will vent when surrounded and at half hard flux. A low tech ship can usually survive that while a high tech ship gets shredded. That's why I built in a nearby threat assessment check in the Flux Converter AI to prevent the ship from venting when nearby enemies can swoop in and finish the ship off when it could have used a charge of the system and survived.

For low tech, one of the big issues I see is that ships with Combat Capacitors use charges of the system to flee and vent rather than to armor tank with added dps. The speed boost component is only supposed to be used to close the distance or chase down the enemy ship if its faster. I may take the time to set the AI to aggressive while the system is active - unless the hull is fairly low and therefore it is likely that the armor is stripped. I'm still thinking about what would be optimal behavior for the general use case of the system. I may also buff the system's effects by lowering the cost to fire flux generating weapons and possibly increasing weapon mount repair times. That should reduce situations where a charge of the system is wasted at least.

AI midline ships are probably the hardest for the player to abuse since either of the above scenarios are less punishing to them, but that's not to say that they aren't able to be abused at all.

Kinetic weapons: The Velocity Cannon is a pretty decent 0-flux kinetic ballistic, imo. It has less range than the Tri-Railgun but it deals decent damage considering it has no cost to fire. Railguns were once flux-free and they were too powerful because of their range. It was too easy for low tech ships to kite. I'm not as sure about the Mass Driver and Heavy Mass Driver. I don't think they are bad all around, but I'm not sure if it would ever be desirable to equip them over railguns, long range drivers or iridium weapons. For low tech ships, missiles have some decent low/0-flux kinetic options as well. The Heavy Rapier launcher received a fairly decent buff in the beta iirc.
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shpooky

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so with tri-tachyon they dont care when you have transponder off in valhalla, mayasura, and magec they only care about transponders in Hybrasil
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Morrokain

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so with tri-tachyon they dont care when you have transponder off in valhalla, mayasura, and magec they only care about transponders in Hybrasil

Looking at the vanilla code, yeah the Tri Tachyon colonies in all of those places are free ports. Culann in Hybrasil is not a free port, so patrols from this colony will care about the transponder. Eochu Bres is a free port so patrols from there won't care but I don't think there is an easy way to tell which colony a patrol in that system is from.

If you'd like to change this in the beta, I can probably set up logic to add or remove the free port setting in the economy config.
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Inflow

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1. Fighters
1.1. Flash Bomber is overpowered by a lot, for example similar by mechanics Trident Heavy Gunship can't be even compared with Flash Bomber, Flash Bomber have many times more dmg and other stats are about the same, Flash Bombers spam can kill almost anything in this game even in "Full Assault!" mode. My main damage is coming from my Astral carriers equiped with Flash Bombers, only Remnants can pose a danger to me and only becouse of teleport abbility and poor fleet AI (my ships can't just keep shield active all of the time even when they are not in need of regenating flux for weapons, if I had like "force shields always active" command even remnants will pose no thread at all), normal factions are just a joke, for the most part I dont even need any ships to protect my Astrals, sometimes I need like 1-2 paragons against verry large fleet or some air support ships equiped with Spark Heavy Interceptor, only enemy Fighters can pose any danger.
With Flash Bombers there is a thing, the more you have of them the more tanky they will be, so when you have 3-5 Astrals fully uquiped only with Flash Bombers any Point Defence+enemy Interceptors can't deal with them anymore, in rare cases when it does I can just chose all of my Astrals and order them to take capital ships 1 by 1 or order them to attack carryers and leave enemy withoult Interceptors.
1.2. Spark Heavy Interceptor is OP, it cost only 8 Ordance and its the best Inteceptor in the game.
1.3. All Fighters are verry poor balanced, I can't even highlight anything, they all placed in random order in regards to Ordance Points. But mb its a thing, donno
here is the sceenshot of Astral, I have 6 them, all completelly the same (donno why that much, I don't really need 6 but wutever): https://imgur.com/sApXZFs

2. Razor Tri-Beam is OP. Here is screenshot of my Paragon, its verry tanky and still have decent dmg. Here is screenshot: https://imgur.com/5cOzXtz

P.S. Don't ask me why I have Efficiency Overhaul in endgame, prob becouse I feel no thread from AI and they don't deserve builds withoult Efficiency Overhaul.

You can copy this Astral and Paragon design + use good lvl 20 officers and you will get fleet that kills anything except Remnants (becouse of poor AI) in "Full Assault!" mode. For anything except Remnants you will just press "Full Assault!", press Caps Lock and go watch Youtube. Im not really an expert but Im assuming it's OP

sry for poor English, did my best to get my point and make a lot of mistakes in process, hopefully I succeeded in 1st part.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2021, 11:44:57 PM by Inflow »
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Morrokain

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@Inflow

Thanks for the feedback: (Your links host illicit content in their ads and redirects (which is a virus risk) and so probably shouldn't be used on the forum.)

Based upon the details, it seems that you might be playing the last released version? If so, then hopefully some of your concerns have been addressed in the beta. For instance, the beta Spark is 24 OP to install. Flash bombers have also had changes.

Beta download.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2021, 11:20:39 PM by Morrokain »
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Inflow

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Yes, Im playing latest released version

Also I changed the pics hosting, ty for tip
« Last Edit: February 28, 2021, 11:50:03 PM by Inflow »
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DatonKallandor

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I think if you have 6 Astrals, you've won the game anyway, no matter what you put on them.
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Inflow

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for me its sounds more like "don't play the game, you won anyway". Buying 6 Astrals is easy, about 5-10 hours and you have 6 of them + a lot of spare credits. Its super easy to get tons of credits wia bountyes.
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Morrokain

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for me its sounds more like "don't play the game, you won anyway". Buying 6 Astrals is easy, about 5-10 hours and you have 6 of them + a lot of spare credits. Its super easy to get tons of credits wia bountyes.

There should be some changes to late game fleets in the next Starsector update as well as the addition of a bit of endgame content. That should help a bit just by itself.

I do increase the bounty payouts. If you go to mod's data\config\settings.JSON you will see this settings block:

   "baseSystemBounty":3500,
   "basePersonBounty":75000,
   "personBountyPerLevel":50000,
   "minPersonBounties":4,
   "maxPersonBounties":7,
   
   "pirateBaseBounty1":200000,
   "pirateBaseBounty2":300000,
   "pirateBaseBounty3":450000,
   "pirateBaseBounty4":600000,
   "pirateBaseBounty5":1000000,
   "pirateBaseMinMonthsForNextTier":9,
   
   "minPirateBases":1,
   "maxPirateBases":2,
   
   "minLPBases":1,
   "maxLPBases":2,

 - so you can change those values to give you a larger challenge - at least when completing bounties. Also feel free to suggest changes to the default values that you think would feel better. They are tuned for a new player so they are set to be fairly easy.

As far as fighter balance/Astral, the beta already has a lot of changes. One of the things that makes the Astral very powerful in the last released version is its bomber teleport ship system - which was changed to fortress shields. So its system is defensive rather than offensive in the beta. While any high OP bomber is still going to be dangerous - especially when massed - the beta includes buffs to interceptors and pd as well.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2021, 11:55:13 AM by Morrokain »
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Inflow

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Fighters as Trident Heavy Gunship are almost useless when bots have about 20-30% Fighters of those type (Im not talking about Remnants), the thing about Fighters as Trident Heavy Gunship are that you must have A LOT of them, like 70-90% of your Fighters fleet, when you do, they will overrun any defences like Point Defence and Interceptors combined. So for that matter it would be nice to make different fleets, for example bombers fleet wich will only include bombers+interceptors (with no fighters) and another fleet with only Fighters+interceptors fleet (with no bombers, so they will try to overrun PD and interceptors). This can force player to search different fleet combinations against each enemy.

I don't know if its possible but it would be nice to force AI to use better equip in lategame, some fighters bots using in lategame are just trash and they only wasting slots, its not even fun, bots using some interceptors that weak, that they can't even take 1 Spark Heavy Interceptor with 5-10 of them. Many ships are not even a meat that can be thrown into the enemy and win you some time, many ships are just wasting fleet capacity and preventing good ships to form a line or even came close. It would be nice to remove complitely useless ships from pool in a lategame and make some ships that usefull meat/victim, ships that will be verry aggresive and will not fall back no matter what and drag as much fire on them as they can, this will make game more fun and versatile. Mb making some faction like that would be nice, Hegemony for example with their armor.

Or mb making some elite squads with only best weapon and unique gameplay. for example: only Fighters+some interceptors and some tanky ships / only bombers+some interceptors and some tanky ships / some crazy junkyes with only fast ships, high dmg close range weapon, super agressive and only interceptors (low number, just to defend themself) / only big ships with high range weapon and carryers at their back / fleet with big ships which will try to rum your ships super agressively (no retreat) and a lot of high range missile carriers at back (pirate), since pirats aren't really having the best of best weapons and ships that fleet won't destroy player fleet but chances of losing 1-2 big ships will be decent. The reasoning of those "super aggresive" is that AI mostly aren't capable of using hit and run tactic, for the most part they are just stoping their allyes and saving player fleet from taking damage.

About PD. Laser PD are many times better then projectyles, so its must be nerfed. You can compare cheapest PD Laser (1 Ordnance point) against for example 3-5 Ordnance points projectile PD, projectile PD don't stand a chance.

About Astral and bomber. I never really needed teleport, for me it was like a bug when Astral using teleport for no reason, when Astral have only Fighters and none Bombers. Flash Bomber (the name is false, its a Fighter type) spam is much more dangerous then bombers spam, have more damage, dmg is more reliable and they increase survive ability of your fleet, enemy ships will waste time to fight them, enemy interceptors will fight them and never will get close to your fleet and also they deal some dmg to enemy fighters and bombers, its just all around better then bombers, more dmg+increase tankyness of fleet+keep enemyes a far.

Donno wich of those accorded to default values though
« Last Edit: March 02, 2021, 09:05:43 PM by Inflow »
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Albreo

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Sadly, no one has control over fleet wide loadout so the best Morrokain could do is to balance the craft on one ship as a mix of multiple types. Also, Astral's Teleport ability has already been removed in the BETA.

What you experienced right now is the release version which is from last year and very outdated. Half of your concern has probably been fixed already in the BETA version. Major overhaul in regard to the entire craft roster has been implemented and I would implore you to try out the BETA version.

@Inflow
Beta download.
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Inflow

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Sadly, no one has control over fleet wide loadout so the best Morrokain could do is to balance the craft on one ship as a mix of multiple types. Also, Astral's Teleport ability has already been removed in the BETA.

What you experienced right now is the release version which is from last year and very outdated. Half of your concern has probably been fixed already in the BETA version. Major overhaul in regard to the entire craft roster has been implemented and I would implore you to try out the BETA version.

[/quote]

Mb I will, donno. The thing is Im already kinda completed my current playthrough and donno if I would want to start new playthough, mb in 1-2 weeks I will want to, atm not rly.
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Inflow

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Installed BETA 1.4.0

Same poor balance in PD, Beam vs Projectiles. Pulse Beam (1 Ordance Point Beam) are much better PD then for example both Pulse Laser (5 Ordance Points Projectile) and Void Driver (6 Ordance Points Projectile). As I understand Beam PD must be better vs fast moving ships, when Projectile PD must be better vs slow tanky ships and slow big missiles but it's not the case. Even when I tested it against slow and tanky Fighters, Projectiles performs much worst, effectivness against Missiles I won't even try to compare. Beam weapon is just overkill when Projectiles PD its just a waste of space (ordance points).
What I mean by overkill is that my Paragon (all Paragon fighters slots are EMPTY for this test) equiped with 9 Pusle Beams (1 Ordance Point "trash") at his back (not even at front, only at the back) can for the most part beat my 2 Astrals. The same Paragon against same 2 Astrals dies pretty fast even when equiped even with 14 Pusle Lasers (5 Ordance) and Void Drivers (6 Ordance).
Small Burst PD Laser (7 Ordance Points Beam) can't be even be compared to any small projectiles PD, 2 Burst PD Laser performs the same as about 7-10 small Projectile PD againts fighters. If we will talk about rockets vs 2 Burst PD Laser, they can't be compared at all, Projectile PD is just a joke. Later I will compare Missiles attack vs 2 Heavy Burst PD Laser at Paragon vs fully equiped front of the ship with only Projectile PD, 4 medium and the rest is small, I think 2 Heavy Burst PD Lasers have some chances of wining or performing at about the same level.
So its again not about you need to increase PD damage, its more about verry poor balance, Beam PD must be nerfed, Projectile PD dps must be increased.
Somehow you need to work around Projectile PD miss a lot, mb there is a way to increase their accuracy (something like Leading Pip). If there isn't, then mb you need to just increase their dps by a factor of 2-4 (testing is needed, also there can be a new problem after this, that projectile PD is dealing to much damage to normal ships, atm I can't give proper advise becouse don't know what you can do and what can't, like for example is it possible to add -ship damage modifier to PD?) and reducing beam PD damage to about 0.7-0.8 of current.

There is much more things wrong with Fighters overall but Im not ready atm to talk about them. What I can say right now is that Pirates have verry weak fighters, I understand that they aren't having best of the best equipment but 250-350 HP interceptors and fighters? Are they really that bad? With that stats, their fighter/gunship type fighters are useless for pirats, they instadie vs some Pulse Beams (1 Ordance Point Beam) or 1-2 Burst PD Laser (7 Ordance Points Beam) and are just a waste of space, would be nice increase HP for Interceptors to 450-550, keep shields at same 0. Also there is same problem with Beam vs Projectiles, Pirate Inteceptors have Projectile weapon, so they just can't do anything against decent Interceptor with beam weapon. If I been a pirate and had bad technologies, projectile weapon that can't hit small targets, probably I'd try to make some weird Interceptor with mines on board and some Kamikaze drones, they will act almost like a missiles, you can get rid of useless fighters and make gameplay even more versatile and interesting by adding mines Interceptors and Kamikaze.

Graviton Lance OP
1. Damage is insane, especially with +200% shield damage
2. Its beam weapon (much better PD then projectile) and attacks both ships and Fighters, so when ship is attacked by a enemy Fighters it can defend it verry well, when you to attack enemy ships it's one of the best Large Energy Weapon in the game
3. 0-Flux cost to fire weapon, why?) Even with 200-400 Flux cost it would be a decent choise.
Some 300 dps 0-Flux 900 range Beam weapon would be pretty balanced Large Energy Weapon and 400 dps 0-Flux 900 range projectile (you already added) would become nice, player will have to chose projectile weapon with more damage vs big ships or more accurate beam wapon, wich is better vs small ships and fighters. Atm player have totally broken OP 0-Flux choise (Graviton Lance) and wrong useless 0-Flux choise (Capital Pusle Canon). 0-Flux gives A LOT of surviveabillity + beam weapon itself also does (kill fighters MUCH better then Projectile), its OP when you can use Graviton Lance and have both survivability and insane damage capable of shreading enemy capital ships.

Conclusion: balance got worst in some parts, you increased overall PD damage when it wasn't the problem, the problem was:
1. Insane damage of Fighters (seems like its fixed, but I need more time to say this with confidence)
2. Projectile PD performance, not overall PD, you increased Pulse Beam damage and made it even worst. And it wasn't a slight difference, as I already stated, beam PD performs about 2-10 times better (1 Ordance Points beam PD is 2-3 times better then 5-6 Ordance projectile, when 7 Ordance beam PD 5-10 times better then 5-6 Ordance Projectile)
3. Overall to much damage on Beam weapon. Beam weapon must have worst damage/flux ratio then projectile since Beam have high accuracy, accuracy its already VERRY good adventage by itself

Its not all but probably it's enough for now. Tell me if you need my observations and advices and most important, would you use any of those?)
Also if you want, I can try to change some values on weapon/fighters, then you and couple testers can try it out and tell if like new balance or not. But to do that I would need some help, I newer worked with any mods for Starsector, I think it won't be hard since all I want to do its just to change values > test > change > test > and so on xD
« Last Edit: March 05, 2021, 04:46:29 AM by Inflow »
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