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[Ranakastrasz]

That is a far more in-depth explaination than mine.

As a side note, do you know how continuous beam weapons are effected by armor? What is their impulse damage for armor penetration? This is a vanilla game question, but still.

~
Sometimes, enemy fleets will claim to flee when they are chasing me, and vise versa.

[xenoargh]

do you know how continuous beam weapons are effected by armor?

I think they do damage like everything else does, but it's divided by the amount of time that's elapsed.  So they're just as effective against regular armor as anything else is, but they're very bad vs. Armor Regeneration until we're talking MegaBeam / HIL / Melter levels of DPS. 

Then they start being very effective again, because they can break down armor blocks faster than Regeneration can fix them, and once blocks go down, Regeneration works less and less well.

Sometimes, enemy fleets will claim to flee when they are chasing me, and vise versa.

Yeah, that's because I'm overriding the Vanilla Fleet AI, which wants to run away.  I can't actually make it change what it says there; all I can do is override the behavior (and only kind of, at that), unfortunately.

[Dranume]

I like the idea of the mod and I have played the whole mining and planet blue print thing, but I have sort of lost interest when its takes way to long for ships to kill each other.. Im not talking about capitals.. I am talking about destroyers.. I had 3 destroyers vs. 1 pirate destroyer and I went through an entire TV. episode and they were still fighting and there was next to zero dmg on the enemy ship.  I just don't think that when its a 3 on 1, it should take up to 20 mins to kill one ship. 

still, there are parts of the mod that I find fun and interesting!

[TimeDiver]

Believe me, the sheer length of some battles used to be far worse in the pre-build #16 days.

There were a couple of ship variants here and there not only had Neutronium Plating (90% universal DR, egads!) but also Heavy Armor (50% additional DR, presumably multiplicative), and in some rare cases Armor Regeneration (the regen factor + 65% DR / 75% DR for the Glaug) on top of either of those two.

It got to the point where I had to nerf the sheer DR for any of those three hullmods, or just plain edit the .variants, to have some semblance of sanity remaining before turning in for the night.

[xenoargh]

Hrmm.

I never have battles last that long.  If that's happening, then you're probably using the wrong guns / strats.

Do I need to make a LP?  I feel like figuring it out is part of the fun, but I already know what's good for what and all that, since I made it.

[Ranakastrasz]

I Still think armor/health regeneration should run out, after, at absolute maxiumum, 10 times as much damage as health or armor is healed. It would not come up in most cases, unless you end up in a 20 minute long battle. But it will ensure that if surrounded and being wailed upon for a half hour, your armor repair potential will eventually give up and stop, followed by slow but eventual death.

10 fold increase is enough that it won't show up in most situations. You can heal yourself from stripped armor around 10 times before actually taking permanent damage.

As for beam damage. I mean, If I have a beam weapon with a thousand DPS, then how much damage would a projectile weapon have to do to get the same split between hull and armor on impact. my guess is that it's impulse is per second, although considering it to be a continuous weapon, I personally would not be surprised if it was based on damage per gametick.

[TimeDiver]

Hullmod bug report for Build 33:

Hardened Circuitry's tooltip describes EMP damage being reduced to 10% of normal, but the .java file has EMP damage increased by 0.1%.

Kinda hilarious, really. I'm guessing that line should've been 'modifyMult()' rather than 'modifyPercent()'.

[xenoargh]

LOL.  That's gotta be a really old bug, too; I don't even remember when that was changed.  Probably one of the earliest things I ever did with SS modding, tbh, when Vacuum was new.

Will fix asap, but it makes me wonder what's going to happen with the balance there with the Flux Hull Mod that also buffs that stat (which I checked, and it actually works right, lol).

[xenoargh]

I Still think armor/health regeneration should run out, after, at absolute maxiumum, 10 times as much damage as health or armor is healed. It would not come up in most cases, unless you end up in a 20 minute long battle. But it will ensure that if surrounded and being wailed upon for a half hour, your armor repair potential will eventually give up and stop, followed by slow but eventual death.

10 fold increase is enough that it won't show up in most situations. You can heal yourself from stripped armor around 10 times before actually taking permanent damage.

One idea for a way to make the mechanic a bit more forgiving was to make the healing cost a little bit of Hard Flux, and not allow it to operate while Venting, like shields.  I'll test that and see if it works.  

The issues people have with this are mainly about using the wrong tools for the job, though; you don't use MegaBeams against the Glaug, for example, because it's very inefficient vs. using HPCs or Dual Slammers or Neutron Blasters.  Each faction requires a bit of a change in terms of approach; if you fight Tri-Tach like you fight the Glaug, you're going to lose, generally; each faction has some whacky hard-counter stuff that players need to adjust for.  

I can see how this is a problem for newbies; they're not used to the idea of frantically searching the Stations to find the gear they need and all that, based on which Factions they're initially enemies with.  Building up endgame fleets is a challenge, even before you're actually fighting the battles, because you may have to adjust strats to take on different foes and all that implies.  But it's kind of part of the charm of the mod; it's gotten so intricate that way that it's a really fun challenge trying to shoehorn in more concepts

As for beam damage. I mean, If I have a beam weapon with a thousand DPS, then how much damage would a projectile weapon have to do to get the same split between hull and armor on impact.

A beam that's rated for 1000 DPS vs. a shot that does 1000 damage will only do as much damage as that shot after one whole second.  Beams are doing damage every frame, so damage is the raw damage * time between updates; i.e., each update, the beam's doing pretty low damage.  Against Armor Regeneration, it works very heavily against the beam, power-wise, because while the beam's doing damage, the armor's regenerating, and is thus keeping its resistance high, which means the armor's taking less damage than it regenerates.  

The big factor here is whether a ship has Energy Pump installed; if you're going to mount any beam weapons at all, beyond PD, then it's practically mandatory.

This isn't to say that beam weapons are worthless vs. Armor Regeneration targets; if you have even a couple of Medium Lasers with Energy Pump, you're going to get through the armor even on the Glaug... eventually.  But is it going to tear the big, gaping holes in armor that a couple of HPC shots will, allowing lighter weapons to do enough damage to keep the hole open and do damage to the ship's hitpoints?  No, it won't- one of these things is alpha-strike and the other's a pressure weapon, it's just how it is.  

This is the efficiency tradeoff with beams- they don't miss and they're pretty decent DPS trading tools to push shielded opponents into Overload if you're in range, they kill fighters and other small stuff well... but they're not all that hot vs. Armor Regeneration or the biggest ships.

I think part of the issue is that newbies don't always get that there are a lot of hard counter mechanics here.  For example, lighter beam weapons like Tac Lasers are just plain worthless against even Glaug frigates.  

It's just how the mechanic works atm.  Frankly, after the last big nerf, I thought it was balanced just fine... if players were doing their homework.  Give me a single Destroyer with a Neutron Cannon and Glaug are just plain dead, up until midgame, and in lategame, Neutron Blasters rip them up, because they don't have shields.

That said... I'll try the Flux mechanic and see if I like it.  It'd give players an "eventually" method, if nothing else, which might help a bit with frustration.  But it's going to be tricky to balance it well; tbh, I think if I nerf it too much more, then it's just not worth taking.

[Ranakastrasz]

Hard counters are a bit of an issue here. Personally I would prefer tiny ships to die if you have many larger ships firing at it with their tier of weapon. Or if not die, at least pretend to be taking damage. Its not fun early on to find out that some enemy ships are literally invulnerable, insofar as you cannot kill them at this time. this is not made clear until you waste 10 or so minutes firing all your dakka at them and run out of ammo. It tends to scare people away, learning that you can't kill some enemy ships. In Vanilla, you will always do some damage slowly to enemies, and eventually wear them down. Capital ships will soak up damage to armor for a while in most cases, but that will still deplete at a noticable rate, they start to lose health, then they die, Or, alternatively, they kill you in seconds. In vanilla, power is focuses to offense, and size is a good indication of durability.
Here, Size has little to do with durability. Massive ships die to single shots from some heavy weapons, or take dozens of shots, depending on type and build. Tiny ships eat up thousands of rounds without a dent to show for it, while sometimes themselves taking out far larger ships. Its confusing and scares newbies away.

Its not a bad thing, precisely, but it is going to reduce popularity.

The way I've seen it, Soft counters are usually always preferable. Hard counters are only really something I can stand if the cause is blatently obvious. Like in Starcraft, where a melee unit can't hit a flying unit, but the inverse is not true. That is clear, and the melee unit can't even attack the flying unit. Here, your ships, and you, won't know the enemy is literally a juggernaut despite being out-massed by your fleet 10-fold. Even if you disable all their weapons and engines constantly, and it spins merrily.

I understand what you are doing here, but still think an alternative needs to be found.

Idea, if probably poor.
~Hull Regen only works if you haven't taken hull damage within the last 3 seconds.
~Armor squares only regenerate if they havent taken damage within the last 3 seconds.

Allows a constant stream of fire to wear them down. You must disengage, or at least turn out of the way to regenerate your armor. Similar to flux venting, in fact, for shields. Keep taking damage you lose your defences. Gotta stop fighting to recover.

Beam damage buildup doesn't seem to show up in a lot of cases when it comes to shields, which gives the illusion of no damage.


~According to Alex himself
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=3076.15
For beams, the "hit strength" used in that calculation is half the beam's dps - that way, it's independent of the frame rate, how often beam damage ticks, etc.

This means that in the case of the megabeam, without energy pump it's impulse damage is 5k, with pump is 15k.


~
I have no idea how shield AI works.
However, I think the logic I would follow would be
If next incoming projectile would overload shield, drop shield, UNLESS.
It would deal, on impact, more than 50% local armor damage, or 5% hull damage.
If it would deal that kind of damage, taking the hit and overloading would be preferable.

[KitsuneNoMeiji]

I seem to be having an issue with the Annihilator-Class Battleship from the Glaug. After purchasing, I obviously needed to get more crew. According to this picture,

Spoiler

[close]

I have over the needed Skeleton Crew for supporting my entire fleet. The needed is supposedly 470, 400 even for the Annihilator. As you can see, I have 610. i have NO other mods installed, which is to be expected, especially for a TC mod. Anyone know what is going on?

[FlashFrozen]

Could be similar to a problem I had, but I have no idea the cause. http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=7891.0

[xenoargh]

Well, I tested the Flux idea, and it's going to be pretty hard to make that work, balance-wise.  Perhaps a final limit might work- maybe 10 - 15 X max armor points, or after recovering 5X points, the rate halves, or something.  I'll try that and see

I seem to be having an issue with the Annihilator-Class Battleship from the Glaug. After purchasing, I obviously needed to get more crew.

That's a weird issue with the Fleet screen; it happens in Vanilla as well.  I think Alex fixed it for the next build of Star Sector.  In Vacuum, simply exit that screen (go to Refit or whatever) and it'll fix itself.

[KitsuneNoMeiji]

That's a weird issue with the Fleet screen; it happens in Vanilla as well.  I think Alex fixed it for the next build of Star Sector.  In Vacuum, simply exit that screen (go to Refit or whatever) and it'll fix itself.

Didn't work. Also, I went into combat and it registers as insufficient crew even in battle. I couldn't deploy it due to 0% CR. Whatever this is, it didn't fix when leaving the screen...

[xenoargh]

You didn't repair the CR at the Station before leaving?

And I presume we're talking build 33 here?

If so, can you package up the save-game and post it here?