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Author Topic: Combat beginner guide  (Read 32088 times)

Megas

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2018, 06:32:39 AM »

Aggressive officers and range advantage via electronic warfare help the AI get stuck in. You definitely don't want to over-commit to the combat tree at the cost of key green/blue skills.

The player's one advantage over officers is (hopefully) situational awareness and (sometimes) good decision making. You can make decisions on which flank to reinforce or which targets to prioritize, then execute them far better than officers will via orders.

Gunnery Implants 2 gives a significant accuracy bonus to projectiles, which is effectively a damage bonus. It fits the theme of damage over utility, although 3 is usually worth it.
AI is aware of range.  If they do not want to engage, and your ship is not fast enough and does not have fighters to chase them down, then there will not be a fight until one side loses CR and gets engine failure.  Paragon has the best range, but frigates know better than to engage until it can swarm the Paragon by the dozens and kill it fast.  Range is important though, enough so that the enemy does not outrange and can kite-and-snipe at you.  More annoyingly and more common is when your smaller ship is barely faster than the enemy, but the enemy keeps kiting until it can be backed up by an ally and you cannot fight them both... or if you miscalculate your flux usage and then it charges in to overload you, and you have trouble getting out.

Combat aptitude does nothing for range, only Technology (and Leadership via Officer Management) does.

Player does not need skills for "(hopefully) situational awareness and (sometimes) good decision making".  If player needs a fleet to fight effectively, better to have a whole fleet (sans you) that punch above their weight instead of only you.  Officers can take all of the combat skills you can, but they cannot take the fleetwide or QoL skills you can.  Combined with mostly weak Combat skills, player is most effective as a (passive) buffer or force multiplier, like a bard or cleric class, by taking the fleetwide skills.

Gunnery Implants 3 is gold, unless you are married to a carrier.  +15% to shot range is extremely powerful.  If player wants to use Unstable Injector on a non-carrier, Gunnery Implants 3 is really needed.

Combat skills seem to be designed for officers.  Most of the Combat skills provide insignificant bonuses to your ship.  To make things worse, some of the really good perks are gated behind junk perks, and others are duplicated by Leadership except they affect the whole fleet instead of only one ship (or in case of Officer Management, you get two more officers for one point).  Those little bonuses can add up into something nice, but only if the player puts everything into Combat and gives up everything else.

The Combat skills I tend to get are Combat Endurance 1, because AI are cowards that LOVE to turtle and run down the clock.  Combat Endurance 1 is great for extending the clock, especially on frigates.  And Helmsmanship 3, because that is a game-changer on any flagship with fighters, either a dedicated carrier relying on fighters to kill everyone or a gunship that uses Converted Hangar for interceptors because the fighters are effectively better regenerating missiles than Salamanders or Pilums.

P.S.  Electronic Warfare is important, but mostly to offset the enemy's Electronic Warfare if they have it too, which happens more late in the game when player fights things bigger than pirates.  For that purpose, one point is enough.  The reason is the enemy fleet will probably be as big as yours and the net ECM rating will be near zero, and that changes when one side starts losing (ships).  By the time the bonus gets big enough to warrant more than the one point in Electronic Warfare, the battle is basically decided.  On the other hand, if player does not have EW 1, but the enemy has EW, -10% or especially -20% shot range for your whole fleet really hurts.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2018, 06:46:32 AM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #16 on: February 01, 2018, 05:25:36 PM »

...
A few skills aren’t going to make the starting wolf kill destroyers easily.

Spoiler as off topic:
Spoiler
Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).

This is not counting missiles, because a nice simple sabot + reaper + expanded racks autodeletes two destroyers or one cruiser (choosing burst damage over sustainability of course, which might be a good decision or a bad one depending on enemy fleet comp.). Not that you really need skills for that either, but it does make it easier.

I feel like people are so hung up about what combat skills could do in past versions that they are undervaluing how powerful having your flagship be 2-3 times more powerful is. Megas complains about the AI being cowards, but if you use combat + a faster flagship (Aurora, Eagle, Harbinger, Conquest, etc), you can run down and kill anything other than lone skirmisher frigates like hounds or a Paragon, which you might need some support for.
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I'm not claiming that 'endgame max power' is a combat build, because its not, but its definitely not a trap. And for a new player, which this guide is for, the powerful defensive bonuses will keep their ship alive as they figure out how to fly, manage flux, etc.
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Null Ganymede

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2018, 10:37:42 PM »

Exactly. Getting through the first part of the learning curve is hard, combat skills help a ton.

Megas, frigates maintaining contact with a Paragon aren't cowardly. Waiting until they have numbers and positioning to kill it via swarming is smart. Why the hell are you using a Paragon to engage frigates?

I don't fully understand electronic warfare's effect, but range advantage seems to make a huge difference in AI confidence. The same battle re-played with and without ECM mods changes drastically.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2018, 11:13:17 PM by Null Ganymede »
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Megas

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #18 on: February 02, 2018, 05:27:43 AM »

Megas, frigates maintaining contact with a Paragon aren't cowardly. Waiting until they have numbers and positioning to kill it via swarming is smart. Why the hell are you using a Paragon to engage frigates?
Because when smart tactics become annoying, like waiting as long as it takes to win becoming the most optimal strategy, the game becomes either not fun or a drag.  For example, in one of the 0.7.x versions, enemies could have Timid officers.  They refused to engage your flagship, but they wanted your objective so badly that they hovered back-and-forth daring you to lose patience and leave your objective (or you deploy more of your ships so you waste more of your CR/supplies and the enemy deploys more to maintain their numbers advantage and your AI allies were not as smart as you).  Since player flagships were so powerful back then, the optimal strategy was to wait until the enemy ran out of CR then got engine failure and could not move anymore.  Such battles take about an hour to finish.  Enemies no longer have Timid AI, but the new 0.8.x AI has partially brought that annoyance back for everyone.  Similarly, people disliked fighting phase ships, so now their cloak shifts time so that even if phase ships are untouchable, they run out of CR soon enough, in theory.

If the AI does not want to fight, it should retreat off the map, not play keep away coward and stay in battle.

As for Paragon, if I send it against a fleet, it would destroy destroyers and up without much problem, but then the frigates will play keep away until they can swarm.

Paragon is not the only ship frigates can play keep away.  They can play keep away against everything, except other frigates (which risk getting killed themselves) or carriers (since most fighters are faster than everything else).

The easiest way to counter that nonsense is to saturate the map with fighters.  Unfortunately, your AI carriers tell their fighters to escort your flagship instead of at enemies to kill, so I cannot pilot a backline unit (like Astral with five Warthogs and a Claw) or have the entire fleet full of carriers.  I either need to have tanks in the fleet or solo the enemy fleet with Drover/Heron/Astral.

If I add mods, stuff the Templars' Paladin or Archbishop utterly destroys frigate swarms, courtesy of Priwen Burst.

P.S.  The point of bringing up Paragon is it can have more shot range than everything else that is playable, and all the range in the world is useless if the enemy simply refuses to engage.  When the enemy engages, then range is great - hit them before they can hit you.  But if they do not, then range is not so great.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2018, 05:41:32 AM by Megas »
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Goumindong

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #19 on: February 02, 2018, 09:30:19 AM »

...
A few skills aren’t going to make the starting wolf kill destroyers easily.


Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).

Not that you really need skills for that either


The starting wolf does not do well against even pirate destroyers (except Buffalo's) unless you have allies and so can get behind them. Plus, you know.. the bolded
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Grimm

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #20 on: February 06, 2018, 08:55:08 PM »

Great Guide, its helped me easily advance in the combat aspects.
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Thaago

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #21 on: February 07, 2018, 11:20:51 AM »

Off topic so spoiler:
Spoiler
...
A few skills aren’t going to make the starting wolf kill destroyers easily.


Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).

Not that you really need skills for that either


The starting wolf does not do well against even pirate destroyers (except Buffalo's) unless you have allies and so can get behind them. Plus, you know.. the bolded

I do not appreciate how you've twisted my words by not giving a full quotation. This is what I actually said:

Quote
Erm, yes, they do. The starting wolf without skills should take down any pirate destroyer just fine. With skills it can take down a well equipped destroyer with a bit of time (though for something with heavy shields like a Medusa you do need to use those 'risky' jumps and take advantage of weaknesses).

This is not counting missiles, because a nice simple sabot + reaper + expanded racks autodeletes two destroyers or one cruiser (choosing burst damage over sustainability of course, which might be a good decision or a bad one depending on enemy fleet comp.). Not that you really need skills for that either, but it does make it easier.
...

Saying you don't need skills for it was specifically about the sabot + reaper + expanded racks combo, and I even pointed out that having skills makes it easier. It actually makes it a lot easier.

To your point: you are wrong. A default loadout Wolf with no skills can take down pirate destroyers, and one with skills can take down fully equipped destroyers. (This is even leaving blast doors on and basically wasting 5 OP.)

I just did tests in the simulator against the pirate Hammerhead, and while I needed to use about 3 harpoons, it didn't need any fancy maneuvers. Considering that real combat is always easier than 1v1 for a maneuverable ship like the Wolf, I think its just fine.

I used the same loadout and put my skilled character in (still a 55OP loadout + blast doors, so basically 50). With those skills I killed the Non-pirate Hammerhead using 2 Harpoons, taking only light armor damage. Thats one of the toughest destroyers, having railguns, ITU, Expanded missile racks, and a really powerful offensive ship system. If I was more patient I wouldn't have needed the missiles. The star of the show was the Impact Mitigation (didn't even have 3, so just 1 and 2) Evasive Action, Advanced Countermeasures combo that let me tank the railguns on the armor when I couldn't dodge them (which skills also help) and only take tiny amounts of damage (2 points per shot to start). An unskilled Wolf cannot tank railguns for more than a few shots without losing its armor and dying.

I killed a Medusa using 1 Harpoon (I did need that to force its shields to stay up while I vented, it wasn't just impatience) again with only light armor damage, though that one is tricky as it can really jump and kill you fast in the start of the engagement if you screw up because Pulse Lasers are energy rather than kinetic damage and their damage to armor is only cut by 40% by skills instead of more.
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FreedomFighter

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #22 on: February 09, 2018, 09:23:36 AM »

Wolf is versatile with it's weapon slots. It has a bit of everything, it just suffer a bit from low Flux but Flux management shouldn't be problem unless you overextend it's medium slot. Heck, if you're savy enough, Wolf could blink behind most of frontal shield destroyer then Reaper it. If that isn't kill shot, it will leave them seriously wound with flameout.
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Shuka

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #23 on: June 06, 2018, 10:09:58 AM »

Megas you mention cowardly a lot, and with all due respect you're not respecting your opponent.

George Washington ran from fights constantly. Russia spent the first half of WW2 retreating. Viet Cong never engaged in open combat. These forces and many more throughout history were labeled cowards, and not respected by their much stronger contemporaries.

But they won
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Megas

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #24 on: June 06, 2018, 04:23:36 PM »

@ Shuka:  Remember that Starsector is supposed to be a game, not a real-life simulation.  Some things that are acceptable or at least justified in real-life have no business in a game because they are aggravating, not merely unfun.

I do not like excessively cowardly enemies because fights tend to drag on unnecessarily unless I have the ships I need to counter it (which there are not many), which usually involves lots of carriers and fighter spam.  Resources ill-suited to the metagame are effectively dead-weight.

P.S.  The opponent in Starsector is your computer, not a human being.
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Igncom1

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2018, 06:01:18 PM »

Not to mention if your AI ships pin an enemy AI ship against the end of the map and simply won't close to engage, ever, due to being at the edge of the map where they aren't supposed to be.
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Goumindong

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #26 on: June 06, 2018, 06:45:48 PM »

I once had an enemy ship retreat off the side of the map because it kept running away from me and went outside the mission zone too far.
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Shuka

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #27 on: June 11, 2018, 09:50:16 AM »

It's a game about combat, and competitive combat rewards conserving resources and not over extending them in situations that would leave your objectives vulnerable.

The behaviour is intelligent on the part of your opponent. This is frustrating, and instead of using your resources to counter it, you use derogatory words to describe it.

I enjoy finding ways to accomplish my goals, and I do not need the goalposts constantly moved because I haven't found the solution yet.

I've noticed quite frequently high flux ships cycling behind their comrades, covering for each other. If the enemy is getting smashed they will retreat, and try to reset the battle, possibly with nearby reinforcements. This is challenging behaviour, and rewarding when I overcome a difficult opponent.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2018, 09:57:22 AM by Shuka »
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Megas

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Re: Combat beginner guide
« Reply #28 on: June 11, 2018, 01:52:42 PM »

@ Shuka:  (If you were referring to me...) What makes you think I do not use resources to counter obnoxious tactics?

Just because it can countered does not necessarily make obnoxious AI less so, especially if it dominates gameplay to the point that ships with the solution are always optimal, or if the best solution itself is obnoxious, like waiting twenty minutes for a ship to run out of CR (or in early versions, wait until Onslaught or other low-tech ship ran out of ammo).

This is part of the reason why Apogee stinks in 0.8.  It does not have the tools to fight against the 0.8 era AI effectively.  If 0.8 era Apogee was thrust into 0.7 era combat, it probably would do better because the enemy AI is more aggressive (perhaps more so than so-called reckless AI.  If Remnants are reckless, why do they act like Spathi when Wolf and Medusa try to fight them?)

If the solution is not fun, like say... waiting twenty minutes for the enemy to run out of CR first, that is not good.  Phase ships had their cloaks gain time shift mostly because AI dragged out fights with them.  Similarly, AI could have Timid officers in early 0.7, but not anymore because the optimal tactic to beat them was to wait and outlast them with more peak performance.  During the time with Timid officers, I could tab out, continue development with other computer work, go to the bathroom, or eat a meal, come back, and the Timid AI is still doing its dance while the clock ticks down.

If Remnants were playable, they would be overpowered because they have more peak performance than most ships of equal size, and they win if they can turtle up until enemy runs out of CR first.

Think about Mora.  Personally, I did not have a problem with it having 66% damage absorption from Damper Field.  (Heron hiding behind others and kiting with HVD was a more annoying opponent than said Mora to me.)  But enough people complained it tanked too much damage before dying, and it (along with Brawler and Centurion) eventually got 50% absorption.

Is turtling and camping fun?  Not unless the goal is to grief another human opponent.

P.S.  I have no problem expressing displeasure with gameplay that is not fun, especially if it was more fun in a previous version.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2018, 02:16:32 PM by Megas »
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