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Author Topic: Allow refit of orbital stations  (Read 5582 times)

Megas

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Allow refit of orbital stations
« on: November 21, 2018, 05:19:31 AM »

In my first colony defense battle with my battlestation, it had Tachyon Lances, which were great.  Sometime later I got the autopulse laser blueprint.  From then on, my battlestation has used autopulse lasers.  I want my station's lances back!  I even have Tachyon Lance checked for priority and autopulse laser unchecked, but my station wants to use autopulse when I want it to use tachyon lances!

While refitting the station like ships would be ideal, a priority screen similar to your colony's fleet doctrine to check which weapons the station should use would be nice.
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SCC

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2018, 05:24:44 AM »

I guess going to dev mode and checking out variants of stations in there wasn't that useful. I wonder why the station decided autopulse laser is the best thing ever.

Megas

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2018, 05:46:52 AM »

Don't get me wrong, autopulse is good, but when I have plenty of ships dealing hard flux on enemy ships, what I really need is Tachyon Lance for long range, shield pierce, and EMP.  Tachyon Lance is probably the best heavy energy weapon in the game if supported by ballistics from elsewhere.  There is a reason why quad lance and dual HVD Paragon is the most powerful and destructive playership in the game.
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Sutopia

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2018, 11:22:23 AM »

Prioritize production of the weapons you want and that's about it.
The station weapon I believe is generated when engaged in battle, not actually pre-armed.
I tried changing doctrine between battles and the station instantly changed it's armament accordingly.   
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Darloth

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2018, 03:11:42 PM »

There's an argument to be made that orbital stations ought to value range rather highly compared to other stats.

Even with their buffed range... having MORE of it to buff lets them support other ships so much better.

I'm uncertain I support the argument, but it -would- incentivise tach lances.
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Megas

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2018, 03:18:40 PM »

Long range tachyon lance is overpowered if the attacker has a way (or has support) to put hard flux on shields.  In this case, I have a bunch of my ships putting hard flux on enemies left-and-right, and I want to see lots of long-range purple beams fly all over place zapping things dead fast.

In my first fight with my shiny new high-tech station, even though the station had no way to put hard flux on enemy ships, it did not need to.  My fleet did all of the shield pounding and enemies just dropped like flies once the station fired tac lance beams everywhere.  With autopulse, station could kill things by itself, but it could not fry things from long range very well, and it was not as satisfying.
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Sutopia

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2018, 03:28:31 PM »

Instead of total manual refit, I'd suggest making some kind of preview just like how it worked on patrol fleet.
Like, cmon, I don't even know what's the impact of my doctrine twitch until I actually go in there and fight.
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Thaago

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2019, 10:55:53 AM »

I also second this (bit late to the party), with a further suggestion: let us take the station into the simulator! Finding effective variants is quite fun and its pretty rare we get to actually watch our nice stations engage in combat.

Proposed mechanisms: station can be refit through the colony management screen and only with equipment that has been learned in blueprints.
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XazoTak

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2019, 05:17:18 PM »

There's an argument to be made that orbital stations ought to value range rather highly compared to other stats.

Even with their buffed range... having MORE of it to buff lets them support other ships so much better.

I'm uncertain I support the argument, but it -would- incentivise tach lances.
Orbital Stations shouldn't be support though. They have few ships to support because of how much DP they take up, and in an invasion the defenders are typically vastly outnumbered meaning there's no way the station will have enough protection to not be fighting mostly in close quarters.
Autopulse Lasers are really underrated, although their sustained DPS is poor being able to get lots of damage in while you can is very important. Stations must be opportunistic with their weapon usage, since once a weapons bank passes over a ship it won't be a threat to that ship for a while, and what better way to be opportunistic than to do 1500 DPS per large energy mount for several seconds?
Autopulse Lasers on a station are pretty scary to fight against since it's so much damage all at once and it's all hard flux too making followup damage much more dangerous.
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Megas

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #9 on: January 10, 2019, 07:37:26 AM »

Autopulse is decent, but it cannot blast things from across the map.  Tachyon Lance can.  Station has lots of lances, and if my fleet is a bunch of ballistic bruisers, then those lances will pierce shields after my ships shoot up the enemy fleet.  Lances were tearing the enemy fleet during the brief time I had lances and not the high-tech pack.  Once I got high-tech pack, station refused to use anything aside from autopulse, even though lance was prioritized and none of the other weapons were.

If I want lances on my station, then I want lances on the station, not autopulse.  Currently, the only way to do this is not learn the high-tech pack, which hurts too much.
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TaLaR

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2019, 12:04:53 AM »

Paragon with 4xTL already can overpower most cruisers and below with pure soft flux, station can pack even more.
Soft flux is not a problem when you produce enough of it. So I'd totally cram my stations full with TLs.

On the other hand station has range, but not even Ordnance Expertise (without alpha core) to accelerate projectiles. When projectiles need several seconds to reach targets, they become much easier to manage.
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RawCode

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Re: Allow refit of orbital stations
« Reply #11 on: January 12, 2019, 02:33:36 AM »

stations just should respect already existing "priority" tag on weapons.
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