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Author Topic: "Balanced" expeditions  (Read 2023 times)

Kalarak1

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"Balanced" expeditions
« on: August 19, 2019, 12:59:47 AM »

In my second in game year, just after making my colony I get an expedition from the Luddic Church. Putting aside the point that getting attacked by a faction that I've never interacted with makes literally no sense, the expedition size is absolutely ridiculous, bordering on the line of being a bug. Even if you were to do the absolute most efficient tactic for building a fleet, I'm not convinced that you'd ever be able to handle an expedition of this size even with the help of a station and patrols.

In total there are
10 Legions
17 Dominators
4 Moras
~30 Less significant ships
~50 Groups of fighters

https://imgur.com/HgsLpYz
https://imgur.com/AjXkhQi
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TaLaR

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2019, 01:10:38 AM »

Legions have front shield without rear PD, it's as if they exist to eat Reapers up their tailpipe. You could clean up all Legions with chain deployed Afflictors (3 to 5 of them, depending on variants and character skills), then proceed to disassemble Dominators (they can't corner you without enough fighters, so a fleet of mobile ships like Eagles/Falcon + Carriers could safely kite them to death as much as CR allows, for multiple rounds).

I do agree that capital spam for high end bounties and invasions is quite ridiculous in 0.9.1. You have to get somewhat cheesy with Afflictors or Spark Drovers to defeat that in cost efficient manner.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 05:46:49 AM by TaLaR »
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Plantissue

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2019, 05:34:11 AM »

Yeah unfortunately right now faction relationship with you and your colony seems to a bit of a weak point right now. It doesn't really make sense that they can send these massive fleets at will, yet some worlds are consistently raided by pirates and even different faction co-exist in the same system. You are basically treated akin to an extermination target, even though there are plenty of other independent worlds around and Sindrian Diktat exists.

Hey could be worse, at least the fleet is sticking to the 30 ship limit. Honestly I think some of the ridiculousness is due the player fleets were limited to a ship limit instead of a deployment point limit, because after the ship limit was introduced, we started seeing these escalatingly huge fleets.
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Kalarak1

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2019, 06:46:19 AM »

Well the ship cap doesn't really matter when they're sending two fleets that are at the cap while the player can only have one.

Aside from that, even if they didn't follow the ship cap that would be fine if they weren't hitting new colonies with these massive deathballs that they have no way of realistically producing, and that the player at that point has no way of combating.

Overall it's very disheartening and it makes me want to either wait for an update or a mod that fixes this and balances the challenge based on what the player can realistically beat without cheese, or to learn how to make said mod myself.
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BTracer

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2019, 08:37:46 AM »

Or, you know, don't build a colony your first year and pack it with AI cores. Probably don't have an orbital or military base and went straight to heavy industries.

Yes, it is Alex's fault for assuming people would figure out that starting a colony has consequences, starting one early even more so. There should probably be a level 50 requirement to found a colony, heavy industries should require a tier 3 orbital, and using AI cores should require a Patrol HQ or Ground Defenses.
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lethargie

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2019, 08:40:11 AM »

that's weird, I never got expedition of this size while I was just getting started on colony. In fact, I tend to not get any expedition if I don't make it my mission to outproduce every core world.

The first expedition sometimes doesn't even have a capital, and never multiple fleet. Did you use ai core? What was your production level compared to other faction? Did you have bad relationship with the luddic church?
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Kalarak1

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2019, 09:07:27 AM »

My industries are farming and mining, no heavy industries and I have a patrol station and an orbital station, I am using one gamma core and it's on my patrol station iirc. I feel like none of that is too crazy to warrant such a massive fleet.
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BTracer

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2019, 09:30:35 AM »

My industries are farming and mining, no heavy industries and I have a patrol station and an orbital station, I am using one gamma core and it's on my patrol station iirc. I feel like none of that is too crazy to warrant such a massive fleet.

You're right, that doesn't sound like to much, and sorry for making assumptions. With that said, let's look at some possible issues.

Mining attracts expeditions.
AI Cores attract expeditions.
You don't have/don't know money can bribe them.
You don't have/don't know reputation can bribe them.
Your orbital probably isn't strong enough. (Tier < 3)
Your patrols probably aren't strong enough. (Tier 1)
Your fleet is to small / ill-equipped.
Your fleet doesn't have enough officers / has poor officers / has aggressive officers.
Your colony has poor stability (Stability affects patrol ship strength)

All or part of this can make starting a colony early a real pain. Keep in mind, you don't have to start any industries, and given a decent world, just the basic structures can produce a profit.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #8 on: August 19, 2019, 12:58:30 PM »

You don't necessarily need cheese to beat that fleet. A properly equipped late game fleet can handle that. I never use afflicter/phase cheese and I am able to defeat the most powerful bounties without losses. You have to remember that they can only deploy a fraction of those ships at once, so the battle isn't as hopeless as it seems, but you definitely need multiple capital ships of your own and concentration of firepower (using officers and the best ships) also helps a lot. Optimally a paragon and an astral. I find that once you win the initial battle, you can set up and kill ships as they burn in to clean up the rest of the fleet.

With a strong station, you probably can get away with a fleet of mostly cruisers, and maybe one capital. Just order them to defend points behind/near the station and let the station do its work. You definitely need at least a tier 2 station though. If you don't have that, you've started your colony too early or grown it too fast.

Particularly if your planet a\has a +3 resource modifier, you can start outproducing factions with a relatively small colony, and that will definitely attract expeditions. If by petrol station, you mean fuel production (particularly with a synchrotron), that will also attract attention.

Also, I though Invasion fleets were a nexerelin thing but I could be wrong. Are you playing with mods? If it's with nexerelin, then that's a totally different case.
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SCC

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #9 on: August 19, 2019, 01:34:32 PM »

Part of the issue is that you never know how much strength do you need, only that it's weaker or stronger, or just about the same, but the other thing is that you don't really have any control over how much money does your colony make. Right now there's only a binary choice, build an industry to export stuff or not, with the only exceptions being fuel production and heavy industry, since they have items that can be used to control the output of the industry.
The thing about "established factions try to squash an upstart" being obvious depends on people's worldviews. Perhaps it really is a good idea to make sure they know that major factions have no intention of playing fair.

Plantissue

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #10 on: August 19, 2019, 02:35:20 PM »

The "squash the upstart business" destroys the suspension of disbelief when there are plenty of independents that never enter hostilities with any faction. Heck, even opposing factions aren't permanently at war with each other. Essentially you are treated as if you at war permanently, as if you are pirates. Except at least pirates get some respite from Pathers.

You don't see Hegemony invades Sindrian Diktat -5 reputation several times and then theya re in a permanant state of hostilities. Why should the player be any different.

Not to mention the sending a war fleet big enough to crush any other faction -5 rep is a bit strange anyways. It's war and should be treated as such.

It also doesn't help that the game doesn't tell you, or warn you beforehand about AI "inspections" or expeditions or free port attacks.
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Megas

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Re: "Balanced" expeditions
« Reply #11 on: August 19, 2019, 04:10:45 PM »

Expeditions as posted in the OP, and 350k+ bounties that are equivalent in power, are routine and common in endgame, and easily beatable with no or minimal casualties by a good endgame fleet.  If anything, such fights are tedious to slog through, and having enough peak performance to last long enough can be annoying.

Most common fleets are those with ten Atlas 2 (pirates) or ten Conquests (Diktat and League, worst two expedition senders).  Tri-Tachyon may use Astral and Doom spam, which is annoying because I need to edge-camp to prevent my AI ships from dying to mines by foolishly chasing Dooms.

However, the game can easily send such fleets at you long before you obtain your dream endgame fleet that kills all.  That is why avoiding expeditions for earlier colonies is important, because it takes less time for them to escalate than it does for you to progress.

Last release, NPCs did not honor the fleet cap, and sent a hundred or so smaller ships instead.  Now, in an attempt to honor fleet cap, they spam capital fleets at least three times as big as the classic Hegemony System Defense Fleet (which had three Onslaughts and a variety of other ships).
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 04:16:36 PM by Megas »
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