While I totally agree that Harbinger was OP and needed a nerf, doesn't this leave it a bit too useless?
... possibly? The system *is* different, so that could leave some room. It's also got 2 minutes more base peak time, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Mostly, though, I think all these points are an argument in favor of reining in the Afflictor a bit as well, if that makes sense.
Oh you know... I was holding out hope it would end up more than 1%. I mean I am glad the bug is fixed, but I am not glad it's fixed into a value I personally don't agree with, since that was originally the reason I even reported it
Yeah, I know
Making balance changes is just a different mindset for me, if I'm fixing bugs, I can just do that quickly. Balance changes require more thought and testing and so on, so I'm generally pretty resistant to making them at the drop of a hat.
My reward is the great game you are making and polishing up the small things pointed out.
It feels great to have a dev that listens, over the years I have gone over many developers from different games of different sizes. It's really refreshing when things mentioned get considered/fixed/balanced/touched-up. I can't tell you how many times I have brought up well documented issues and suggestions on how it may be addressed, only to have forum mods go "that's nice" and never seeing any of the issues touched on in months/years/ever. So again, a single dev managing to do this is hope inspiring to say the least.
Looking forward to testing out the new AI
<3
Oh and lastly, is there some kind of ETA on the patch?
"When it's done", which should be soon(tm).
What about AI cores drop after destroying REDACTED battlestations? In current moment no any sense to kill this. Better leave this for future endgame grind.
It's still on my list, yeah - there's a bunch of stuff that's been reported and noted but not yet fixed up.
This would make the the Harb the only phase ship incapable of using missiles at all.
Would it be possible to have the forward centre mount reverted to synergy or changed to universal, just to keep all the phase ships consistent with each other?
Well, it's got the 2 universals in the back, so that's not strictly true. I'm also not sure this is a point of consistency that makes sense to focus on - it's just a thing that they happened to have in common, right, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a shared pillar of their design.
Out of curiosity, would this also be adjustable via the settings.json "MaxShipsInFleet" or the "DoNotPrune" or is this non-adjustable for those that enjoy larger fleet sizes/battles in order to be able to salvage things in endgame?
If someone wanted to raise their max fleet size to be able to have room for salvage, it would be unfair if the player would outnumber the AI consistently.
There's a "maxShipsInAIFleet" setting, so you can tweak the AI and player maximums separately as you see fit.
Also, are colonies with Commerce able to put their own nanoforges in Heavy Industry after a time when sold to them? I can see that a 2nd Heavy Industry with Commerce could be used as an extra money farm by returning every so often to remove the nanoforge and resell it to them since the highest level nanoforge in all your colonies is used for ship quality in all fleet and ship productions.
Thanks for all the excellent content and enabling of other awesome content!
Not sure if this made it into the patch notes, but I've fixed up that exploit.
Fleet spawning:
Will not produce fleets with more than 30 ships
Stronger fleets will have many more large ships
This one I am a bit worried about. Top heavy fleets are be good for "elite" strike fleets, but a general the cap does not sound like a good idea. It will only worsen the already existing ship size inflation. Low-tier frigates and light destroyers (like wayfarer/enforcer) should not become obsolete by mid-game.
Also from a purely immersion veiwpoint the only top-heavy fleets are less fun. The whole point about a large battle is how it stats small with frigates/destroyers, harrassing/flanking and occasional cruiser, and builds up to eventually reach the peak with facing enemy capitals. It builds up. Facing a heavy-only fleet does not sound as fun.
It's not "only" capitals, there's still some smaller ships. Obviously it's a change, but I think it'll be good overall - instead of fighting 300+ ships, most of which are frigates and don't really pose a challenge beyond eventual CR drain - you'd fight some frigates/destroyers/etc, supporting a larger number of capital ships that do pose a threat, including to stations. And there's plenty of fleets that don't end up top-heavy as well; this really comes into play when the alternative is an absurd number of ships.
Can now abandon colonies up to size 4
Can we get the Nex option of granting independence to colonies (just because I found a better habitable world doesn't mean the other habitable is useless)
Maybe at some point; holding off on doing that until a few more things fall into place and it's more clear what exactly I want from this in vanilla.
Abandoning a colony no longer removes the "Decivilized" condition
Is there now a proper way of removing this modifier?
No; I don't think it's a modifier that should be able to be removed.
- Ships with "Militarized Subsystems" no longer get increased maintenance from capacity-increasing logistics hullmods
- And can have Safety Overrides
RIDE THE LIGHTNING I am actually against this change. As much as i want to field a stampede of SO Buffalo MK.II, allowing SO with Militarized Subsystems make it a no-brainer for freighters/tankers. The massive speed boost make it invaluable in retreat scenarios. A Tarsus can fit both MS and SO, allowing it to fly at a blazing 125 su, faster than a Lasher! And that's without counting the burn drive. Not all civilian ships have the OPs available for those two hullmods though, only the tankers , the Tarsus, the Valkyrie... Haven't checked them all.
But yeah, i think it's too good, civilians ships's survivability would be vastly increased with this combo.
There are a couple of other changes that factor in:
1) You can ensure a clean disengage through a rearguard action - fighting a battle and destroying some enemy ships - which would let your civilian ships get away regardless of their speed.
2) Flanking deployment during pursuit starts 4000 units further up, so it could get dodgy regardless. Though the Tarsus in particular has just always been great at retreating.