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Author Topic: [0.8.1a] The Knights Templar 0.9.8f  (Read 626926 times)

Cycerin

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #165 on: November 25, 2014, 12:58:30 PM »

The first one you made is pretty damn cool. Good use of the angular plates on the Paladin sprite.

Me and DR have discussed some upcoming ship designs, but given the massive effort needed to create Templar content, it's not happening just yet.
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Asauski

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #166 on: November 25, 2014, 01:10:18 PM »

I understand. I looked at the codes and scripts of the Templar Knights and really are huge, by the way, I have a doubt out, what are those class files with a "$" at the end, ex.: excaliburcoreexplosion$1?
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Spenz

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #167 on: November 25, 2014, 08:56:39 PM »

If people are adverse to adding new ships for the Templar, what about introducing those from where, and whom, the Templar got their advanced tech from?  Could there be room for another OP race, one that is more powerful than the Templar and who are just as angry?  I mean the templar are fricken tough, but once you get a hold of their ships and tech, the playing field starts to even out quite a bit.  Granted, many Bothan's died to bring me my kitted Paladin, but I have left a trail of holy death in its wake, and the Templar are no longer much of a threat.

Of course, if this becomes a reality, it is waaaaaay off in the distance.  I just love the concept of endgame content period.  Starsector, even with all the mods, desperately lacks endgame stuff, and the Templar scratch all the right itches.  
« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 08:59:14 PM by Spenz »
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MesoTroniK

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #168 on: November 25, 2014, 09:03:30 PM »

If you want something that rivals the Templars, but with tricky finite supply campaign mechanics and is not player usable at all... I will have that taken care of sometime next year :)

Spenz

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #169 on: November 26, 2014, 01:40:44 AM »

I eagerly await this pain train.  I need a grand final battle to shatter my fleet.
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j01

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #170 on: November 27, 2014, 12:02:21 AM »

I've noticed a few problems and troublesome quirks with this mod since I've been using it.

In one of my playthroughs with this mod active, I decided to check out how it works when you side with the templars, which as I understand it (and only know about because of a comment in this thread), is only possible by just mass killing non-pirate, non-templar fleets in a system during an active crusade. I had 100% cooperative standing with every faction except pirates before starting to contribute to the crusades, at which point I started killing only independent fleets within crusaded systems. Doing this enough seems to raise the Templar's opinion of you after the crusade ends, and lowers your faction standing with every faction present in that sector, even if you've only been fighting one of them.

Now, this could be a problem if for some unrelated reason you are just already fighting one of the non-pirate factions, and happen to fight them a bit during a crusade, especially one where few or no templars actually show up during the entire event, so you might not even notice, or forget between play sessions, though it's not at all impossible to recover your faction standing from contributing to a crusade just once. In this way, it is at least possible to only be permanently hostile to one non-pirate faction, and just fix your losses with with everyone else, and make it to cooperative level with the templars. It takes an extra long time and a lot of concentrated effort, though.

Another thing I noticed is that once you do gain access to the templar's home base, way off in the middle of nowhere, far removed from the other systems, you don't even get the option to purchase a place to store ships and weapons, even after reaching max faction standing with the templars.

This is problematic not just due to the distance from everywhere else (especially combined with the fuel and extra high supply costs of the templar ships), but also for the fact that under normal circumstances, a player allied with the templars will have made permanent enemies with most or all of the other factions by doing so, and thus be unable to dock and store things anywhere else except the abandoned platform in Corvus, and completely unable to resupply and refuel other than by fighting huge enemy fleets, which is not enough to support the extra high maintenance supply costs of templar ships, much less the fuel costs of getting from system to system without having to slog all the way back to the templar home base, where you can't even store anything extra.

It also seems like the templar home base should have at least one of every one of their ships and weapons available for purchase in the market at every new market update cycle, since you can't very well just store all your ships and crew right there at the home base and just wait around for months and months and months at a time with 0.0 supply cost, hoping for the RNG to produce the number and kind of ships you require, and traveling the enormous distance from a populated system all the way back to the templar system and base is both boring and time/resource consuming to an extreme if you have more than a frigate in your fleet (which is impractical when all other factions are hostile to you), and yields desired results even less often than just waiting around the templar base in fast forward mode for hours and hours. Hours and hours of real time, that is, after which I still never saw a templar carrier or a joyeuse cannon, after speeding through ingame time on a scale of years.

The amount of effort and the sacrifices that have to be made to fully ally with the templars seems right, but basically, if you've worked your way to cooperative with the templars, they should at least be more minimally accomodating to a player that they consider their invaluable comrade, I'd think.

On a side note, it'd also be nice if the templars had a few or a lot of patrols all around the universe that were quite a bit smaller, like just one or two destroyers/frigates, and saved the really huge fleets mostly for crusades. At the moment it mostly seems like an all-or-nothing affair to fight them that first time, where if you turn them hostile before you have 40+ levels worth of perks and a fully decked out paragon or two, a massive fleet is going to easily run you down, or catch you by surprise and easily destroy you with vastly superior power AND numbers. Even if your fleet is a few big and powerful ships, you're not ever going to win against half a dozen templar frigates/destroyers, which can also always catch up to you.

Great mod though, still enjoying the shiny effects and overwhelming opposition immensely.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #171 on: November 27, 2014, 01:00:31 AM »

I've noticed a few problems and troublesome quirks with this mod since I've been using it.

In one of my playthroughs with this mod active, I decided to check out how it works when you side with the templars, which as I understand it (and only know about because of a comment in this thread), is only possible by just mass killing non-pirate, non-templar fleets in a system during an active crusade. I had 100% cooperative standing with every faction except pirates before starting to contribute to the crusades, at which point I started killing only independent fleets within crusaded systems. Doing this enough seems to raise the Templar's opinion of you after the crusade ends, and lowers your faction standing with every faction present in that sector, even if you've only been fighting one of them.

Now, this could be a problem if for some unrelated reason you are just already fighting one of the non-pirate factions, and happen to fight them a bit during a crusade, especially one where few or no templars actually show up during the entire event, so you might not even notice, or forget between play sessions, though it's not at all impossible to recover your faction standing from contributing to a crusade just once. In this way, it is at least possible to only be permanently hostile to one non-pirate faction, and just fix your losses with with everyone else, and make it to cooperative level with the templars. It takes an extra long time and a lot of concentrated effort, though.

Another thing I noticed is that once you do gain access to the templar's home base, way off in the middle of nowhere, far removed from the other systems, you don't even get the option to purchase a place to store ships and weapons, even after reaching max faction standing with the templars.

This is problematic not just due to the distance from everywhere else (especially combined with the fuel and extra high supply costs of the templar ships), but also for the fact that under normal circumstances, a player allied with the templars will have made permanent enemies with most or all of the other factions by doing so, and thus be unable to dock and store things anywhere else except the abandoned platform in Corvus, and completely unable to resupply and refuel other than by fighting huge enemy fleets, which is not enough to support the extra high maintenance supply costs of templar ships, much less the fuel costs of getting from system to system without having to slog all the way back to the templar home base, where you can't even store anything extra.

It also seems like the templar home base should have at least one of every one of their ships and weapons available for purchase in the market at every new market update cycle, since you can't very well just store all your ships and crew right there at the home base and just wait around for months and months and months at a time with 0.0 supply cost, hoping for the RNG to produce the number and kind of ships you require, and traveling the enormous distance from a populated system all the way back to the templar system and base is both boring and time/resource consuming to an extreme if you have more than a frigate in your fleet (which is impractical when all other factions are hostile to you), and yields desired results even less often than just waiting around the templar base in fast forward mode for hours and hours. Hours and hours of real time, that is, after which I still never saw a templar carrier or a joyeuse cannon, after speeding through ingame time on a scale of years.

The amount of effort and the sacrifices that have to be made to fully ally with the templars seems right, but basically, if you've worked your way to cooperative with the templars, they should at least be more minimally accomodating to a player that they consider their invaluable comrade, I'd think.

On a side note, it'd also be nice if the templars had a few or a lot of patrols all around the universe that were quite a bit smaller, like just one or two destroyers/frigates, and saved the really huge fleets mostly for crusades. At the moment it mostly seems like an all-or-nothing affair to fight them that first time, where if you turn them hostile before you have 40+ levels worth of perks and a fully decked out paragon or two, a massive fleet is going to easily run you down, or catch you by surprise and easily destroy you with vastly superior power AND numbers. Even if your fleet is a few big and powerful ships, you're not ever going to win against half a dozen templar frigates/destroyers, which can also always catch up to you.

Great mod though, still enjoying the shiny effects and overwhelming opposition immensely.

I had limited time to develop and test the long-term campaign progression for the Templars, so you're essentially the first one to actually test it out; I am grateful you made such a detailed report, since otherwise I could only guess how the experience is.

I have worked to minimize the chance of reputation loss for "contributing" to crusades, but ultimately there will be some false positives.  The news report does warn people to stay out, after all.

No storage in Ascalon is an oversight.  I'll fix that.  I'll also have them stock more supplies and fuel, and have no tariff.

The Templars should stock Joyeuse, but the carriers were an oversight.  I'll force at least one of each ship class, but weapons are another story.  I'll have more in the shop, though.

When there is no crusade, fleet spawns are actually often quite a bit smaller.  I'll make them even smaller in the future, however, so you can get those low-end fleets.
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j01

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #172 on: November 27, 2014, 06:21:12 AM »

I had limited time to develop and test the long-term campaign progression for the Templars, so you're essentially the first one to actually test it out; I am grateful you made such a detailed report, since otherwise I could only guess how the experience is.

That's surprising, since pretty much everything else other than the stuff I mentioned seems to work and meld so well with the campaign, and even the issues I mentioned are mostly quality-of-life stuff. Definitely nothing game breaking.

The only thing I'd really call gamebreaking about the templar integration into campaign would be the fact that the player's accumulated perks from character levels will eventually make them capable of taking any templar threat on with minimal risk, even with vanilla ships, though I suspect that it's more of an issue with the synergy some character skills have with certain vanilla ships in particular.

For example, the metric I usually use for weighing the challenge of campaign content at a late-game level is reaching a high enough character level to get level 10 ranks in all of the stuff that directly improves ordnance points and combat capability, and kitting out a single paragon with a few choice loadouts of vanilla weaponry (all beam weapons or all pulse laser weapons), and seeing how autopilot fares against the biggest and baddest threats.

A fully leveled beam paragon with all the best hull mods and combat perks like this is able to take on a templar fleet of pretty much any size, even multiple paladins simultaneously which are supported by jesuits and bulwarks, without sustaining any hull damage at all unless the autopilot AI pulls a significantly stupid move. When player controlled, it's not only possible, but actually quite easy to win against the best the templars have to offer without even taking armor damage. The carrier and fighters are especially susceptible to the amount of extended range beam weapons a paragon can carry. This is with SS+ mod as well, though, for what that's worth, and I'm talking about character level 30-40ish worth of upgrades, and specifically the paragon, which has somewhat unique advantages that work well with the 30% hard flux dissipation with shield active perk and general flux capacity/dissipation bonuses.

Amusingly, the vanilla beam weapons are actually more effective when stacked onto a paragon than trying to add in the stronger templar beam weapons, since the lower constant flux costs of vanilla beams allow for constant suppressing fire even while tanking hits on the shield.

Relatedly, and of possible interest, is that the arondight accelerator's flux damage when hitting a shield seems to ignore the fortress shield shipsystem's damage reduction. This might also be the case with the secace autocannon and Galatine Heavy Disruptor, I suspect, though I've only confirmed it with the accelerator. I figured it might not be intentional, but if it is, it's pretty much the only thing to give the abovementioned high level paragon setup any real trouble.

Sorry for the long winded, rambling walls of text, and thanks for your quick response and excellent mod work!
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Sabaton

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #173 on: November 27, 2014, 01:04:14 PM »


Me and DR have discussed some upcoming ship designs, but given the massive effort needed to create Templar content, it's not happening just yet.

Didn't helmut made a kitbashed/upgraded paladin a while ago?  How would introducing that as a stronger alternative fare?

But perhaps having two paladins  would be redundant...
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #174 on: November 27, 2014, 01:10:14 PM »

I had limited time to develop and test the long-term campaign progression for the Templars, so you're essentially the first one to actually test it out; I am grateful you made such a detailed report, since otherwise I could only guess how the experience is.

That's surprising, since pretty much everything else other than the stuff I mentioned seems to work and meld so well with the campaign, and even the issues I mentioned are mostly quality-of-life stuff. Definitely nothing game breaking.

The only thing I'd really call gamebreaking about the templar integration into campaign would be the fact that the player's accumulated perks from character levels will eventually make them capable of taking any templar threat on with minimal risk, even with vanilla ships, though I suspect that it's more of an issue with the synergy some character skills have with certain vanilla ships in particular.

For example, the metric I usually use for weighing the challenge of campaign content at a late-game level is reaching a high enough character level to get level 10 ranks in all of the stuff that directly improves ordnance points and combat capability, and kitting out a single paragon with a few choice loadouts of vanilla weaponry (all beam weapons or all pulse laser weapons), and seeing how autopilot fares against the biggest and baddest threats.

A fully leveled beam paragon with all the best hull mods and combat perks like this is able to take on a templar fleet of pretty much any size, even multiple paladins simultaneously which are supported by jesuits and bulwarks, without sustaining any hull damage at all unless the autopilot AI pulls a significantly stupid move. When player controlled, it's not only possible, but actually quite easy to win against the best the templars have to offer without even taking armor damage. The carrier and fighters are especially susceptible to the amount of extended range beam weapons a paragon can carry. This is with SS+ mod as well, though, for what that's worth, and I'm talking about character level 30-40ish worth of upgrades, and specifically the paragon, which has somewhat unique advantages that work well with the 30% hard flux dissipation with shield active perk and general flux capacity/dissipation bonuses.

Amusingly, the vanilla beam weapons are actually more effective when stacked onto a paragon than trying to add in the stronger templar beam weapons, since the lower constant flux costs of vanilla beams allow for constant suppressing fire even while tanking hits on the shield.

Relatedly, and of possible interest, is that the arondight accelerator's flux damage when hitting a shield seems to ignore the fortress shield shipsystem's damage reduction. This might also be the case with the secace autocannon and Galatine Heavy Disruptor, I suspect, though I've only confirmed it with the accelerator. I figured it might not be intentional, but if it is, it's pretty much the only thing to give the abovementioned high level paragon setup any real trouble.

Sorry for the long winded, rambling walls of text, and thanks for your quick response and excellent mod work!

The ship you describe is specifically designed to kill Templars and only Templars.  Nobody else has shields that take hard flux from beams.  This does seem to be a particular weakness that is too easy to exploit, though, so I'll be looking into giving Templars 50% beam resistance while the shields are on.  The other issue, of course, is kiting.  The Archbishop is intended to be super slow and kiteable; once you've isolated it, you've had to destroy the rest of the fleet in the first place, so I think it's fair.  When it's not alone, it's a deathtrap because of those interdiction beams (I'll probably raise the HP of those things).

In SS+, the Templars do indeed have their own skills; the flagship will often be a Combat 10 monster.


Me and DR have discussed some upcoming ship designs, but given the massive effort needed to create Templar content, it's not happening just yet.

Didn't helmut made a kitbashed/upgraded paladin a while ago?  How would introducing that as a stronger alternative fare?

But perhaps having two paladins  would be redundant...

Might show up as an Arcade boss at some point.
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j01

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #175 on: November 27, 2014, 11:57:57 PM »

The ship you describe is specifically designed to kill Templars and only Templars.  Nobody else has shields that take hard flux from beams.

That couldn't be less true, actually. The fully leveled beam paragon steamrolls everything, including multiple capital ships at a time, and even other standard paragons, despite only dealing soft flux to their shields with beams.

There's just that many beams, even without SS+ improving the damage of vanilla beam weapons, and hull mods combined with character level abilities can extend them to very long ranges.

It's equally as powerful, though less flux efficient, to just stack pulse laser type weapons in every slot. The paragon just synergizes in all the right ways with a lot of character skills, and has amazing base flux/dissipation, and a hell of a lot of weapon slots.

50% beam weapon resistance on shielded templar ships won't stop a fully leveled paragon from dominating them. It already takes longer to kill templar ships with the beam paragon loadout I mentioned compared to how long it takes that same paragon to destroy any vanilla or SS+ ships despite the soft and hard flux difference, it's just that the fully leveled paragon has enough defense to simply keep the pressure going forever, comfortably.

Their current level of defense vs beams actually seems fine, it seems more to me like they just have no decent way of dealing with high tech ships with super deep flux pools and 0.5 damage/flux shields or better, when combined with high character level perks.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #176 on: November 28, 2014, 12:57:10 AM »

The ship you describe is specifically designed to kill Templars and only Templars.  Nobody else has shields that take hard flux from beams.

That couldn't be less true, actually. The fully leveled beam paragon steamrolls everything, including multiple capital ships at a time, and even other standard paragons, despite only dealing soft flux to their shields with beams.

There's just that many beams, even without SS+ improving the damage of vanilla beam weapons, and hull mods combined with character level abilities can extend them to very long ranges.

It's equally as powerful, though less flux efficient, to just stack pulse laser type weapons in every slot. The paragon just synergizes in all the right ways with a lot of character skills, and has amazing base flux/dissipation, and a hell of a lot of weapon slots.

50% beam weapon resistance on shielded templar ships won't stop a fully leveled paragon from dominating them. It already takes longer to kill templar ships with the beam paragon loadout I mentioned compared to how long it takes that same paragon to destroy any vanilla or SS+ ships despite the soft and hard flux difference, it's just that the fully leveled paragon has enough defense to simply keep the pressure going forever, comfortably.

Their current level of defense vs beams actually seems fine, it seems more to me like they just have no decent way of dealing with high tech ships with super deep flux pools and 0.5 damage/flux shields or better, when combined with high character level perks.

Paragons are straight-up overpowered, and with player skills are just stupid.  With the right setup, an enemy needs to deal over 750 DPS to you just to make your flux go up.  I realized templar shields aren't affected by skills and such, so I'm fixing that for the next version, but that won't help against something like the Paragon.  If I buffed the Templars enough to take out your ship, they'd be impossible to kill unless you abused the game mechanics and made ridiculous deathships.  You'd see Jesuits wrecking stock Conquests.

Perhaps in the future, the Templars will get a shieldbreaker weapon (built-in maybe), but that doesn't really change the fact that Paragons still dominate everything else.
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j01

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #177 on: November 28, 2014, 01:53:36 AM »

Paragons are straight-up overpowered, and with player skills are just stupid.  With the right setup, an enemy needs to deal over 750 DPS to you just to make your flux go up.  I realized templar shields aren't affected by skills and such, so I'm fixing that for the next version, but that won't help against something like the Paragon.  If I buffed the Templars enough to take out your ship, they'd be impossible to kill unless you abused the game mechanics and made ridiculous deathships.  You'd see Jesuits wrecking stock Conquests.

Perhaps in the future, the Templars will get a shieldbreaker weapon (built-in maybe), but that doesn't really change the fact that Paragons still dominate everything else.

Pretty spot on, I'd say. A workable compromise however might be something along the lines of, say, the priwen burst dealing hard flux damage to fully shielded enemies within its blast radius of a percentage of the enemy ship's max flux.

This would make it very powerful against paragons with their deep flux reserves, giving templars a much needed edge against them and other ships with huge flux maxes and super efficient shields specifically, without making it overkill against other ships.

Whatcha think?
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KvaNTy

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #178 on: November 28, 2014, 02:21:34 AM »

By the way, speaking about standing towards Templars. I've noticed the way to rise it surprisingly easily and without harming relations with other factions.
I'm using Debido's "RandomSector" mod which randomizes star's locations and adds them ability to move over time. This means that Templars homeworld is no longer on the edge of map and can be close to other stars. So the number of faction and pirate fleets sneaking back and forth in hyperspace near this system will be much bigger and you can get standing rewards for killing those pirates. And the thing is that such actions improve relations with Templars by the same amount as with any other faction. Even if there are no active crusades atm.
Something tells me it's not supposed to be this way.
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Sabaton

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Re: [0.65.1a] The Knights Templar v0.9.3e
« Reply #179 on: November 28, 2014, 02:33:09 AM »

 Is this really that much of an issue? Paragons are supposed to be the epitome of domain design. They are supposed to be super powerfull against other ships.
 Besides, finding/buying/equipping/maintaining a paragon is no easy task at first, but endgame you pretty much don't care.
 Most games have this issue, where they cease to be a challenge once you cruise through them and become god.
 
 And of course smaller ships are more vulnerable to brutes like the Paragon, size can matter. There's no shame if a paladin outright loses to one, its just a cruiser.
 As for the disco paragon build, thats an issue of vanilla, not your mod.
 But if you do want to fix it, might i suggest giving a ship the same system the Exi capital ships carrier has, the one that can teleport a ship close to it? Might seem cheesy, but it could do the trick.
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