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Author Topic: Blueprint acquisition and raiding  (Read 20751 times)

The2nd

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Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« on: November 21, 2018, 03:16:12 AM »

I have done a lot of exploration in the early and mid game. By now my colonies are making me more money then I could ever spend. They are also annihilating all fleets that are sent against them by themselves.
But I'm still missing blueprints, especially high tech ones. So I decided trying to raid Tri-Tachyon.

I hit both military markets and the only not common thing I got was a light needler blueprint.
That's really underwhelming considering I blew up a star fortress, bombed their ground defenses, raided with a 90% effectiveness and went hostile with a major faction for this result. I mean Culann is now sitting at 0 stability.

So I am wondering if exploration is currently the only decent way to find blueprints? I might try [REDACTED] next but I have read in another thread that the loot there is rather bad as well.


Somewhat unrelated I want to say that I really like the raid/bomb mechanic itself. Slipping past the station for a quick raid but having to deal with the added defense the station itself gives and the ground defenses. Or just blasting through and straight up bombing the defenses.
Or possibly targeting trade convoys to the target carrying marines and supplies so that the defenses are only working sup-optimally.  ;D Something that might be even possible early to midgame.
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Reinhark

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2018, 06:37:51 AM »

So far? Absolutely.

My best sources of blueprints are rare domain space structures(research stations and mining stations) and ruin explorations on the ruin planets.

[REDACTED] are only for cores.

I have bombed and exterminated about Church, League, Hegemony and 90% of independent(this is extremely bad idea by the way. Your market will look worse than ruins I explore regularly).
Not a large blueprint yield I'm afraid.
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dandylions

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2018, 08:40:07 AM »

Since blueprints are rare, it's also luck-dependent. Raiding a faction base seems to be the equivalent of salvaging a rare Domain structure, but the former is a more limited resource (there's only one Culann Starforge, but dozens of Domain stations out there).

I also think that the underlying balancing for blueprint acquisition will get revisited at some point. This is the first release, after all!
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oorek

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2018, 09:43:41 AM »

If you raid stations that have the "heavy industry" module, you can get good blueprints. You can get capital blueprints from raiding Sindria, albeit at a low chance.

I wish blueprints were not so stupidly rare though. The only endgame fun in this game is building unique fleets, and you need blueprints to do that.
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Megas

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2018, 10:12:42 AM »

I agree.  If player cannot raid factions for all of the blueprints they can use (after salvaging and all else fail), then that hurts.

I am already annoyed that much of the rare stuff I salvage are com-mon booster packs (i.e., Pirate and Pather blueprint packs) or yet another synchrotron.
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Sutopia

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2018, 10:23:13 AM »

Jesus crist, just that noone KNOW how to raid in the right way that they complaining how hard the blueprints to be acquired.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” —Benjamin Franklin.

First, know WHERE you should raid. Simply by looking at ship market you can know which colonies have heavy industries and that's where you raid for blueprint.

Second, know WHAT you want from raiding. You don't find Astrals in Hega's colony naturally.

Third, know WHO you should mess with. Lower sized markets tend to be easier to raid (for low def status) and they reduce less rep per raid. Starting from Hega or Tritech's size 5 is a VERY good idea (I think Alex designed this intentionally) since you can get just about everything you'll need with very little cost. You'll have pain with Sindra's size 7 for conquest but that's about it. You'll be sitting on tons of Astrals, Onslaught(XIV) and Paragon when you actually consider raiding them, given you're unlucky enough not finding Conquest blueprint elsewhere.

Last but not least, know WHEN you should strike. Normally the patrol can be a pain and cause huge rep drop simply because you'll need to fight them. Try raid them when pirates decided to send a raid on them, let pirates deal with patrols and we can safely steal the blueprints without feeding all the heavy battle ships.

I carried out all the blueprint raids in stealth by exploiting pirate raid (sometimes even lucky enough to raid when pirates managed to kill their star fortress!) with only one Harbinger and one Enforcer(XIV), rest are either Valkyrie or civ ships for logistics and marines.
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Megas

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2018, 10:36:21 AM »

I have not progressed enough to attempt raids on major factions yet.

@ Sutopia: If you manage to steal all of their blueprints, then that is good news.  Given what I read previously, it seems like there is a risk to decivilize the place and the golden goose is dead.

Also, if you steal their blueprints, can they still make the ships?  If not, might as well kill the faction with constant raids.

More importantly, if the enemy successfully raids your colony, can they steal your blueprints (and stuff is removed from your production list)?
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Dragon239

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2018, 10:46:07 AM »

I did a quick test the other day with raiding with save -> raid -> reload -> raid -> reload, etc
I was raiding Culann (the Tri-Tach heavy industrial hub) with a Raid Effectiveness of about 80%, IIRC.

I did mmm...10ish tests? and got no blueprints.
I understand them being rare, but this seems a smidge silly. Admittedly, this wasn't the most scientific of tests.
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Sutopia

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2018, 11:04:43 AM »

I have not progressed enough to attempt raids on major factions yet.

@ Sutopia: If you manage to steal all of their blueprints, then that is good news.  Given what I read previously, it seems like there is a risk to decivilize the place and the golden goose is dead.

Also, if you steal their blueprints, can they still make the ships?  If not, might as well kill the faction with constant raids.

More importantly, if the enemy successfully raids your colony, can they steal your blueprints (and stuff is removed from your production list)?

Decivilization bug is due to tactical bombardment (which should only targets ground defense but turned out having similar effect as saturation bombardment), not raids.

Blueprints stolen does not disable faction from producing that ship. I think Alex did mention this in the raid related blog post.
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Sutopia

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2018, 11:07:51 AM »

I did a quick test the other day with raiding with save -> raid -> reload -> raid -> reload, etc
I was raiding Culann (the Tri-Tach heavy industrial hub) with a Raid Effectiveness of about 80%, IIRC.

I did mmm...10ish tests? and got no blueprints.
I understand them being rare, but this seems a smidge silly. Admittedly, this wasn't the most scientific of tests.
That, again, just RNG messing with you. As unlucky as 0 blueprint to lucky as 4 blueprint in one single raid, at least you know there's chance for one and you can(SHOULD) try it once in a while (you should not be doing S/L spam which turns out using similar seed on RNG can be a BAD idea.)
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Linnis

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #10 on: November 21, 2018, 11:31:42 AM »

I just made a exploration fleet and got 80% of all the blueprints off research stations. Still missing astral as the only important one. Prob will try raiding but everyone in the sector loves me and i am trying to become a trillionnare via colonies.
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Sutopia

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #11 on: November 21, 2018, 11:36:29 AM »

I just made a exploration fleet and got 80% of all the blueprints off research stations. Still missing astral as the only important one. Prob will try raiding but everyone in the sector loves me and i am trying to become a trillionaire via colonies.

Aw I know the feeling. I don't want to mess with Tritech either but they hold the blueprint I want and I just can't help.
A solution, do their missions more regularly, invest their industries and... and well, stealth raid their shipyard from time to time.
Keeping a good relation doesn't necessarily mean you have to be extremely lawful. I give you benefits, you "give" me something in return ;)
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Dragon239

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #12 on: November 21, 2018, 11:43:07 AM »

(you should not be doing S/L spam which turns out using similar seed on RNG can be a BAD idea.)
Ah, it doesn't randomize the seed on reload? That would indeed sort of ruin the testing.
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The2nd

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Re: Blueprint acquisition and raiding
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2018, 11:45:52 AM »

Jesus crist, just that noone KNOW how to raid in the right way that they complaining how hard the blueprints to be acquired.

I think nobody in this thread implied that they don't know how to raid. Simply that the drop rates are bad in comparison. As dandylions said blueprint acquisition is likely to be revised at some point.

And the "right way", I mean sure I can just load up 5k marines and raid Culann every month till I get lucky. But this just feels gamey and grindy.
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