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Author Topic: Add a phase hauler  (Read 4181 times)

Alex

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #15 on: June 10, 2019, 12:09:51 PM »

If I may raise my hand here, phase freighters are one of those concepts that's fairly volatile in the modiverse. I've tried to make one, and I had a bunch of people tell me it wasn't a good idea, and as it turned out they were right. A phase freighter, in the simplest sense it can be, is a tad broken because it's nigh impossible to catch, so suddenly all your fleet's cargo is 100% safe no matter what.

Not saying the idea is inherently bad! But it's a risky one, as other folks who've tried it will no doubt tell you. Definitely needs to be treated with caution.

Generally, if you're going to go with a phase freighter, you want its capacity to be very limited - good for a phase ship, perhaps even good for a warship, but rubbish compared to a good old civilian hauler. It has to be very specialized, in order to not be "the best" at its job.

(If you want a sneaky "spec ops" freighter or personnel carrier though, I'd just go with the Phase Field hullmod. It doesn't need a full-blown phase cloak to get the point across.)

This makes sense, yeah. I was thinking that as long as its efficiency is quite bad, it'll be alright.
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Goumindong

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #16 on: June 10, 2019, 12:52:25 PM »

Another thing that could do it would be to lower burn speed.  A phase freighter, for the purposes of non-combat, is almost just a frieghter that already has insulated Engine Assembly and militarized subsystems. So long as its radius is lower than your top 5 it doesnt matter much if its radius goes to zero. Which means that as long as your entire fleet isnt phase ships youre not going to gain all that much value out of it. And even then you can get Buffalo and Phaeton and Valkyrie down to 30 radius which means that your sensor margin for moving from non-phase to phase transports is at most 15 per ship... so long as the rest of your non-phase fleet is frigates with insulated engine assembly.

So in terms of sensor radius i am not too worried about huge adverse impacts on gameplay or in terms of significant efficiency reductions being all that necessary. After all if sensor radius is an issue the margins are pretty thin. Once you have a few cruisers in your fleet destroyer level transports need neither militarized sub or IEA in order to have minimal profile impact.
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Drone_Fragger

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #17 on: June 10, 2019, 02:00:09 PM »

Maybe a good compromise would be to make it so it's a phased freighter but due to some pseudoscience technobabble it's basically impossible to make a cargo hold big on a phase ship due to interference caused by the un-integrated cargo space in the middle of it, so the best you can do  is strap a bunch of phase coils on it to reduce it's signature down to 0, but you can't actually "phase" the ship.

tl;dr: "phase" freighter has no shield, and can't phase, but does get the "low level phase field" hull mod that reduces it's sensor rating to 0. still expensive as heck to run because it's a phase ship though.
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Vayra

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #18 on: June 10, 2019, 05:05:24 PM »

My notes for a phase freighter I was planning on making just have it with a really low base speed and possibly custom phase field that either doesn't dilate time, doesn't dilate it as much, and/or reduces top speed while phased.  8)
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R.U.A

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #19 on: June 10, 2019, 06:27:25 PM »

If I may raise my hand here, phase freighters are one of those concepts that's fairly volatile in the modiverse. I've tried to make one, and I had a bunch of people tell me it wasn't a good idea, and as it turned out they were right. A phase freighter, in the simplest sense it can be, is a tad broken because it's nigh impossible to catch, so suddenly all your fleet's cargo is 100% safe no matter what.

Not saying the idea is inherently bad! But it's a risky one, as other folks who've tried it will no doubt tell you. Definitely needs to be treated with caution.

Generally, if you're going to go with a phase freighter, you want its capacity to be very limited - good for a phase ship, perhaps even good for a warship, but rubbish compared to a good old civilian hauler. It has to be very specialized, in order to not be "the best" at its job.

(If you want a sneaky "spec ops" freighter or personnel carrier though, I'd just go with the Phase Field hullmod. It doesn't need a full-blown phase cloak to get the point across.)
I think a good idea is to change the phase field hullmod-the 0 sensor profifile ability only takes effect when go dark, which means you should be careful to seize the opportunity to use this ability.
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goduranus

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #20 on: June 10, 2019, 07:44:05 PM »

In a situation where some one needs a phase cargo ship, why not just retrofit commonly found pirate Gremlins with expanded cargo hold? That's what people would probably do if they are confronted with this situation irl, attaching stealthy payload pods for the F-35, rather than building a stealth cargo plane.

Imagine some one owning a very specialized vehicle like that, it would be so rarely needed that the economics for owning it would be terrible, so the company making it wouldn't be able to get any customers, and so they wouldn't be able to justify the cost of designing it.
« Last Edit: June 10, 2019, 07:49:58 PM by goduranus »
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Megas

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #21 on: June 11, 2019, 05:34:40 AM »

When I decided to bring a pure phase fleet for raiding, I thought about the choice between more cargo or more personnel (in addition to Efficiency Overhaul).  Since the priority of the time was blueprints and not cargo (because I already had millions to buy whatever I need), I put the crew hullmod on all of my ships that did not need the campaign mod for Augmented Engines, for more marine capacity.

But if I wanted to design a new phase ship with expanded capacity, I would pick cargo because it can be used either to smuggle or take everything (not just the blueprint or special items) from a raid.  Personnel would be only good for raiding.  Phase ships have significantly less capacity than conventional warships or carriers, let alone haulers.  A phase hauler with less capacity than others (but more than other phase ships) in exchange for no profile and better evasion seems like a good idea from a worldbuilding view.  As for killing it, if it is not an effective combat ship that always runs away (like civilians do), it can meet Mr. Autoresolve, which I almost always use in a pursuit.

Quote
Imagine some one owning a very specialized vehicle like that, it would be so rarely needed that the economics for owning it would be terrible, so the company making it wouldn't be able to get any customers, and so they wouldn't be able to justify the cost of designing it.
I think phase field alone would be military only, but the military needs to haul stuff too.  Not to mention outlaws who care less about legality and more about what they want.  Yes, the phase hauler is very specialized.  In this case, hauling without adding profile to a pure phase fleet, which is very specialized indeed.
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Wyvern

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Re: Add a phase hauler
« Reply #22 on: June 16, 2019, 08:21:31 PM »

Alex: I'd like to strongly suggest that any phase hauler be made to also be a combat freighter - that should make pursuit scenarios where the player has to try to hunt one down be a little bit less obnoxious.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.
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