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[Hiruma Kai]

So what if there was like a phase in big battles where it was only frigates and maybe a few destroyers. After it was done the real battle would start. Then if someone didnt have any small ships they get like an encircled lack of screening penalty of some kind. Even make it small space and timed so its not a battle to the death just a skirmish before the battle for posturing.

This is in some sense the direction Alex is going, but integrated into the main battle.  He has added additional deployment point capacity to the capture objectives, meaning a few fast frigates at the beginning can grab those, allowing you to deploy more forces relative to the enemy.

On a slightly related note, I believe Alex is moving towards skills having a much larger effect on smaller ships (and smaller fleets).  So if a skill provides a 20% boost to a capital, it might provide a 100% or 200% boost to a frigate (or something proportional to DP or fighter bays).  I don't know if all those bonuses will add up to be enough to make it an interesting choice between a frigate and a capital, it'll certainly at least move them closer - but only for a very limited number of ships.

I do too.  And destroyers.  But what if you get in a serious battle?  And what if you want to salvage some enemy ships after the battle?  Everything other than capitals in your fleet is a handicap.  If a serious AI mission comes to crush you with 4 fleets of 50% capitals each, you will regret filling your limited fleet slots with anything other than capitals (and if you win, you will regret filling your fleet to 30 so you can't recover any enemy capitals).

I disagree.  There's a point where additional capitals in your fleet do not help (at least in vanilla, and for many mods I've tried).  I suppose where that line depends on playstyle though.

To be honest, between officers and character skills, plus human judgement, I find a core of 11 capital ships is more than I ever use in the current game (assuming I actually grabbed 10 officers - often I'll just settle for 8 ).  At that point I find myself already throwing away credits for no good reason since a few of those capitals I never end up needing to use.  Do people really go through ~20 combat capitals in a fight or even series of fights?  Typically I'm fighting outnumbered late game and even with a 500 deployment configuration setting, means I generally can only deploy 200 DP worth of ships versus the enemy's 300 DP.  Which tends to be 4 capitals at most plus a few other ships things thrown in that fit under the cap.  Or more likely 3 Capitals and a couple carrier cruisers.  Of course, I tend to use pristine ships with officers, so I guess a junker fleet (i.e. capitals with multiple D-mods) might have issues with that ratio.

  Not only will you run out of PPT early and lose without even being able to fight, their fleets will be able to field 180 DP to your 120 DP so you will face defeat in detail every single time, even if you don't face all 4 at once.

While if you're running a frigate only fleet, PPT is definitely an issue in a large capital spam (excluding Afflictor player piloted tricks), a mixture of a core set of capitals plus 2 or 3 waves of frigates that are ordered to retreat once the start bleeding CR isn't an impossible fleet to use.  The biggest issue is you will see some frigate losses over time, which means needing to replace them at some point.  However, the fleet is more than capable of winning those types of fights.

At least for me, 180 DP versus 120 DP is a winnable fight in the campaign.  Especially if you start piling on character and officer skills.  Do I have a skewed view for typical campaign engagements?  I mean, the mission Forlorn Hope is doable and that is 60 DP versus not quite 200 DP (and 122 DP in just Capitals and Cruisers) and that is done without character skills like Gunnery Implants and Defensive Systems, or even Loadout Design.

Not often, but in some close fights, I've used fast AI controlled frigates to distract a capital, splitting enemy forces, so its more like 40 DP (Onslaught) vs 8 DP (Ion Tempest) and 140 DP vs 112 DP.  Only a 125% DP advantage instead of 150% for the main fight.

I'm not saying focusing on frigates or destroyers is necessarily good (except maybe carrier destroyers), but rather, a few fast ships set to harasses can occasionally have an out sized effect on a fight compared to their DP.  This is one of the reasons why I like the Odyssey as a player flown ship as opposed to a Paragon.  The ability to shift focus on the battlefield or draw several capitals away to give some breathing room to AI controlled allies.

As it stands, even in 1v1 fleet battles, fielding frigates is a terrible idea because each fleet is limited to 30 slots.  So if, say, a fleet with 15 capitals and 15 frigates faces an enemy with 30 capitals, guess who will win?    Or a fleet of 30 capitals versus 10 capitals, 10 cruisers, 5 destroyers, and 5 frigates.

Which ever one is the player optimized and flown fleet?  Personally, I keep a pair of fast frigates (Wolf or Tempest usually) and a destroyer or two around for when a situation calls for it.

It's obvious in every case, the fleet size cap simply wrecks the utility of small ships.  The only reason to keep small ships around is to take advantage of unrealistic game rules, like it somehow costs less to shoot with your small ships and let them take some damage while keeping your bigger ships silent, compared to just crushing an enemy fleet as fast as possible.

Why do you feel its unrealistic?  In the real world, an aircraft carrier is expensive to run. It becomes even more expensive when you launch the jets (fuel costs), and launch missiles (ammunition cost).  A missile launched from a jet might cost 300,000 dollars or more, while a local police boat plus some rifles might cost 100,000.  That is kinda the difference between an Astral and a Wolf, no?  Replacing the boat is still cheaper than replacing a missile.

[craftomega]

This is something I have been mulling over for years. My conclusion is two-fold. First, create packs of ships with certain limitations, second include escort slots on most cruisers and larger ships.

Packs of ships should be flexible; the primary goals are to provide an officer bonus to multiple ships and have multiple small ships worth together to complete an objective. Together this would make them more relevant in the late game. A pack could be any combination of destroyers and frigates with some limitations. Some possible examples could be 2 destroyers, 3-4 frigates, or 1 destroyer and 2 frigates. Certain combinations of frigates or destroyers can take on larger ships, especially if the AI was programmed for them to work together.

Escort slots for cruisers and above would also allow you to bring frigates to support larger ships. Ideally, this would be reserved for support ships to act as mobile PD or guard the flanks and rear from other frigates. A way to restrict abuse this would be to "tether" the frigates to the ship so they would be stuck on follow/defend/etc...

Both of these would allow the holy CR to remain and maybe bring some late-game relevance to smaller ships.

[Apfelkuchenbemme]

My Jimmies are already rustled from the fact I can’t reduce cargo space / fuel capacity or crew space on my Paragon flagship to raise its Ordnance Points, so I have two empty large energy mounts because I like the hullmods I have installed. It’s a single player game and I’ve reached the end of the campaign, let me screw around a bit … the last thing I need is some “Mothership Command Center” mod so I can deploy 5 Cruisers in a fight but have to stay in the flagship for the bonus to apply or something like that.

What I could get behind is making Capitals waayy bigger and making them feel more like a mobile station. Like, ever played Freespace 2, ventured too close to a Cruiser with your Medium Fighter and got picked off by those blue anti-fighter lasers from like a mile away? Remember that one mission where you had to wear down the Sathanas before it could jump to the Colossus and the only way you could do some damage to those four main lasers was with the heaviest, slowest bombers in the game that launched the biggest torpedos?

Some ideas that would give smaller ships more viability would be:

• Make bigger ships more costly to run and make them rarer in general. I'm pretty sure I've seen more Atlas Mk. II in the last Pirate Armada than in random merchant fleets I ran into.
• Give smaller ships a higher burn level so you’re no longer able to catch a fleet that has a Dram in it (max burn 9) with your 4 Paragon + 3 Astral fleet just because you have two Ox and the Navigations perk (max burn 10).
• Give Frigates and maaybe Destroyers the ability to drop in from the side of the battle field if you’ve captured a point there, like when you pursue a fleet. (maybe even Cruisers and Capitals, but drop them in with a delay and announce their arrival to the enemy)
• When deploying, give smaller ships the ability to drop further into the battle field; the bigger the ship, the lower the distance you can drop in.
• Give Frigates the ability to either replenish Operational Time at a deployed Capital ship (would consume supplies you have to bring into the battle) or give them the ability to retreat, replenish 75% of their PPT and redeploy them again (would lower CR twice, just as if you had deployed the ship in the follow-up engagement).
• Give ships the ability to retreat from an engagement without getting harased / lesser effect from getting hrrassed if the attacking fleet doesn’t have ships with a similar speed. So like, if you win the engagement, ships with 3 higher max burn could escape instantly, ships with 2 higher max speed would suffer less from getting harassed and you could only directly pursue the remaining ships who only have a max burn that’s 1 higher than your fleet. (As a flip side, the more ships you have with a similar max burn, the more damage you do when harassing the enemy)

A possible problem I see with the last point would be some “forever retreating wannabe pirates”. As in small parts of pirate raiders you didn’t manage to destroy, which would then still try to hunt merchants while completely evading your fleet or forcing you to also take some faster Destroyers or Frigates along.

And that "forcing you" is something that just doesn't sit right with me. I mean yeah, no **** the two Hounds that ran in front of my 2 HIL got grilled instantly ... but that isn't a problem of Frigates being too weak, it's a question of "What in the world did the AI expect to happen when it comes within 2000 Su of my Paragon's front?". Same thing goes for the Enforcer that almost got overloaded by 2 Heavy Needlers, don't face the Paragon's front while it doesn't even have its shields up from low enemy density and you'll be golden.

In terms of "which ships can be part of the fleet", think about things like expedition fleets or AI inspections: "Oh well whoops, we seem to have chosen 7 Conquests, but Jerry ... you know we can only send 5!" doesn't really make sense in a moment the Syndrian Dictate wants to disrupt your fuel production. If the player wants to send in 10 Capitals and 12 Cruisers, let them use those ships. Yes ok, make it more expensive or alter the sensor mechanics so all Capitals and Cruisers count for Sensor Profile and -Strength, but don't wigglewaggle your finger and say "Ah-ah-ahhaa, only 2 Capitals until you have perk xyz!". Unless of course those "Capital" ships are something entirely different and more destructive and impressive than the current "Capital" ships.

[SCC]

I wonder how much the next update's changed fleet generation (way fewer capital ships and cruisers) will affect how players build fleets.

My Jimmies are already rustled from the fact I can’t reduce cargo space / fuel capacity or crew space on my Paragon flagship to raise its Ordnance Points, so I have two empty large energy mounts because I like the hullmods I have installed.

Because those stats are wholly negligible for dedicated combat ships already.

I'm pretty sure I've seen more Atlas Mk. II in the last Pirate Armada than in random merchant fleets I ran into.

If you really mean Mk II, then it's a pirate conversion. It wouldn't fit for others to use it. If you mean normal Atlases... Yeah, it's weird.

[Flet]

This is something I have been mulling over for years. My conclusion is two-fold. First, create packs of ships with certain limitations, second include escort slots on most cruisers and larger ships.

Packs of ships should be flexible; the primary goals are to provide an officer bonus to multiple ships and have multiple small ships worth together to complete an objective. Together this would make them more relevant in the late game. A pack could be any combination of destroyers and frigates with some limitations. Some possible examples could be 2 destroyers, 3-4 frigates, or 1 destroyer and 2 frigates. Certain combinations of frigates or destroyers can take on larger ships, especially if the AI was programmed for them to work together.

Escort slots for cruisers and above would also allow you to bring frigates to support larger ships. Ideally, this would be reserved for support ships to act as mobile PD or guard the flanks and rear from other frigates. A way to restrict abuse this would be to "tether" the frigates to the ship so they would be stuck on follow/defend/etc...

Both of these would allow the holy CR to remain and maybe bring some late-game relevance to smaller ships.

I was going to post something very similar to this. It could be accomplished in various ways.

One way would be to simply give frigates the inherent attribute that any time they are assigned to escort a ship they gain any officer skills of that ship. This would probably be the easiest way. They could then become effectively extra hardpoints that follow the main ship around.

A more complicated way would be to make a formal grouping system where you can construct custom units of ships under a specific officer. It could be a command tree, with multiple branches and the way it works is a hierarchy of officer skills so all officerless ships under an officer inherit their skills. Different specific ship classes could have different configurations of their branching structure. One ship might have two destroyers under it, with one of those destroyers having room for 3 frigates under it, whereas another might just have a bunch of frigate slots. If in the first example you had two officers, one in the lead ship, and one in the destroyer with frigates under it, the lead ship and the other destroyer would have the lead officers skill, and the destroyer with frigates under it and those frigates would all have that destroyer officers skills. You could also issue commands simply by ordering the lead ship and all the rest would follow, or issuing an order to the lead ship and a different order to one of the destroyers, in which case if its the destroyer with frigates under it that destroyer and those frigates would do one thing, and the lead ship and the other destroyer would do the initial orders. Issuing an order to the lead ship would again issue orders to all ships in the grouping.

In this way for simple fights it accomplishes two things. Smaller ships obtain officer bonuses and escort groupings are hard wired into the start so you dont have to set it up. In more complex fights the ships tethered nature to lead ship orders means they tend to work as a unit, but you can give temporary adjustment orders to chains of ships under the lead ship if you for example want to spread them out for a pincer attack then tell the lead ship to engage a target all ships will converge automatically.

[dotdotdot]

Perhaps one possibility is to have destroyers and frigates operate on their own "layer" like fighters do, including having their ordinance pass through allies or the ability to park on top of a larger ship and fire within the shield (though they'd still be vulnerable to getting blown up when the enemy ship explodes). This can allow them to more easily run behind the "tanks" of your fleet for cover or rush behind enemy capital ships and cruisers.

[robepriority]

I was going to post something very similar to this. It could be accomplished in various ways.

One way would be to simply give frigates the inherent attribute that any time they are assigned to escort a ship they gain any officer skills of that ship. This would probably be the easiest way. They could then become effectively extra hardpoints that follow the main ship around.

Would also make the escort command useful.

[wei270]

i was actually thinking of giving frigates a more effective specialization options.

the 3 example coming to my mind is that 1 monitors are still an effective shield tanker late game.
                                                          2 scrabs with ion weapons is a every good disabler late game.
                                                          3 LP lasher with 6 bomb launch turns out to be a super effective dive bomber even at late game.
in one of my games i manages to tech mine 6 bomb launcher, and i stick it on my LP lasher oh boy i have to said i was IMPRESSED by the result

so perhap even in late game there are place for highly specialized frigates

[Arcagnello]

I'll second this statement by saying that I'm currently using a good number of frigades/small destroyers in my current late game fleet, wich is on starfarer mode plus a few more that also make it harder.

I have fleet size increased to 50 for both me and the AI and battle size increased to 400.

The smallest ship I am using is the Pinnacle. It can field 3 tac lasers, 2 graviton beams protected by a 180 omni shield (that I turn into a 360 front one) plus the High Energy Focus ability at a measly 6 Fleet Point and it comes with improved optics already installed too! The end result is a kiting frigade with amazing range (Advanced optics + ITU), really great pressure with it's beams that it can fire nonstop for a long time (with 11 vents a flux distributor AND hardened subsystems) and a great 360 shield at 37 flux/second with a great damage ratio of 0.57 to boot (stabilized shields, shield conversion - Front and hardened shields)!

It's so great I actually have 8 of them and deploy at least 4 in most battles as they're hard to kill, distract the enemy at worst and actually give a hand or even deal with certain, small and incredibly annoying targets like phase ships at best!

I believe that the biggest problem of frigades and even some destroyers is their lackluster Peak Performance. I am unsure what methods could be used to at least alleviate it, but if we combine those with better in-battle uses frigades are going to make a wider comeback into late game Starsector.

Edit: This is 36 FP worth of Pinnacle absolutely humiliating an Onslaught. Schway!

Spoiler

[close]

[Arcagnello]

I am sorry for what could be a slight image spam (how do I make the image size a bit smaller by the way?) but this one screenshot is glorious.

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[Grievous69]

Instead of trying to make the image smaller, just put them inside spoilers.

Spoiler

Like this

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[Arcagnello]

Didn't actually think about that. Let me edit the previous comments!

Thank you

Edit: Done!

[Apfelkuchenbemme]

The Pinnacle with your setup sure sounds and looks like a good flanking ship, but a 6 on 1 fight with 85% CR high-tech ships, that are very purpose-built to be long range flankers from the players side vs one of the slowest low-tech ships of the game without (i assume) an officer isn't really that much of a comparion now is it? Give the Onslought one or two of those Pinnacles as escort of its own and you'd probably see more moments like that one Pinnacle with ~85% hard flux in the left of your second screenshot. Imo, raising the fleet size for both sides and just spamming Frigates until the Frigates are fielding 3x as many guns as the big boys also doesn't really solve any "problems", but can lead to shenanigans like:

If you can still see the background, you're not using enough Tempests

[close]

Plus honestly, compared to things like the Tempest, 2 medium and 3 small energy mounts that can all engage the target at once, High Energy Focus as ability, a 180° Omni Shield, Advanced Optics preinstalled and like what, 60 OP? sounds like a deployment cost of 6 is pretty damn low.

But for me, the most surprising thing in those screenshots is you've actually managed to get all six Pinnacle to flank the Onslought. From the POV of an almost purely Capital Ship captain, I'd say the biggest problem the Frigates of the enemy have is that they're just thrown away. Having Frigates say "Haha, nnoope!" and running away to their Cruisers when they find your Capital Ship would be a good boost to their survivability already. What happens instead is you arrive at an Objective in an Odyssey with two Auroras trailing behind and the Hound and the Lasher of the enemy just keep going although you're already aiming your Tachyon Lances into their direction and your Tacs are lighthing them up.

[Arcagnello]

The one thing that absolutely shafts the Pinnacle is it's relatively low speed, that and the fact it's 2 energy and 1 composite mounts at the front are fixed, and the craft itself is not as manouvrable as you would expect from a frigades.

Also, yeah the onslaught mostly sucks against everything unless It's literally built to counter what it's fighting. I mean seriously the damn thing dies to a single AI controlled, no commander afflictor.

As for real combat scenarios, the most my Pinnacle fleet does in either chase small phase ships or act as distraction as you said. They're mostly there to keep the enemy occupied while my bigger ships do the damage, some other fights also prevent me for using them like the ones against either fast enemies or ones with a lot of carriers, they get absolutely wrecked by them.

[Arcagnello]

I actually did not have time to fully respond to your post Apfelkuchenbemme (I actually chew a bit of german since I'm from northern italy, nice nickname ) so here it is.

I do believe it's alright for smaller ships in general to have more flux capacity and weapon mounts overall when compared to bigger ones, as that makes them viable for a certain "fleet stereotype" and (for example) nerfing the Pinnacle would render it useless in the one and only good thing it's efficient at: medium to long range beam kiting against frigades/destroyers or otherwise anything that does not have particularly good range able to match it.

I personally believe there are three main fleet types in Starsector.

The first one, or the "Kite Stereotype" consists of mainly fast, agile ships designed around the general concept of enveloping the enemy force and apply steady pressure, progressively working their kill count from the smallest enemy first to the capitals left for last. The more lacking in mobility and/or general aggressiveness the enemy fleet is, the more this composition works as it generally has more sustained DPS than all other fleet stereotypes.

The second one, or the "Strike Stereotype" on the other hand is all about fewer, stronger ships capable of easily focusing the enemy down to achieve a tactical advantage as fast as possible before being overwhelmed. This usually plays into the "capital meta" and the more reckless the enemy force is the better.


The third one wich I like to call "Hammer and Anvil" could be mistaken for a combination of the first two stereotypes but actually is not. I personally believe it to be the most powerful fleet design of all three due to how adaptable it is to basically all combat scenarios. The concept is very simple and revolves around one part of the fleet with the sole purpose of taking aggro, absorbing damage and disabling the enemy while the other focuses on exploiting these openings and punch their face in. The combinations are endless really. Hardened shield Apogees spamming sabots combined with Astrals, Heavy Armor XIV Dominators/Onslaughts combined with Conquests armed with disgustingly high DPS mounts or even in-your-face luddic path capitals rushing headlong into the enemy while Safety Overridden squirrels on cocaine armed with assault chainguns tear everything in their wake.

The problem of the current capital spam meta is many-fold.

The AI is still way, way too simplistic and can't be instructed on even the most basic of tactical logics, like for example only going after frigades and destroyers if it's a small vessel while avoiding cruisers and capitals or the opposite if it's a capital, a cruiser or an assault vessel. This also negatively impacts the supposed difficulty of some encounters.

Then there's the issue of many capitals doing a better job than destroyers/cruisers at their niche roles while at the same time not being tanky enough for their specifications, I honestly think the Onslaught could be less of a meme if it had more armor, more back weapons better flux management but less heavy mounts just to name one.

The peak performance issue is in my opinion not really affecting frigades the most since they're very easy to retreat and replace with another one, what the PPT really hurts is both cruisers and destroyers that already struggle to be worth it compared to capitals.

.