@SQW: Being a .2 release, it's a good time to try some things and clean some things up. A lot of this flowed out of the missile changes (which I think turned out very well), and a lot out of player feedback.
I'm sad beams won't pass through (over/under) friendly ships but I'll get over it.
Tried that; really wasn't good for ship feel. Stuff starts feeling really not solid.
If tac laser is used with PDAI, will it engage missiles or hold fire if a friendly ship is further downrange?
It's aware of whether a beam can pierce the target or not.
Still not sure why other missiles/rockets wouldn't regenerate even with ridiculously long timers if this is the way you're going. (1 min, 4 min, etc).
As I mentioned earlier in the thread (a couple of times, I think
, it was very bad for missile feel. Besides, missiles in other roles don't *need* this to be effective. Long timers like that aren't a good idea besides, as it's either 1) too long to be practical due to peak effectiveness running out or 2) is encouraging the player to not engage and wait for a ridiculously long time, otherwise.
With salamander, why can't the AI just treat it as a short range weapon such as Sabots even if range is medium (special rule)? Tried it and it still doesn't work?
It's just not how the missile works. It's not something you fire as part of a larger salvo or as a reaction to an enemy being high on flux/venting/overloaded/etc. You want to fire it at a medium range, and it takes a while to get around the enemy ship anyway. It's really a medium range support weapon, and making the AI use it as such wouldn't make the AI *good* with it. Besides, with this change, it's also a more appealing choice for the player.
Peak effectiveness for destroyers/cruisers—like others have said, I don’t expect this will actually have much impact. I do wonder if it isn't sort of missing the mark—the problem with combat right now (as I see it) isn’t that destroyers and cruisers can kite too long, it’s that the optimal approach to combat is always to take a single ship at a time. After the patch, you'll still be able to have three Falcons in your fleet and just switch from one to the next as CR drops. I like xenoargh’s solution to this—take reinforcements out of the equation (unless, perhaps, total fleet size is really, really big). You pick the ships with which you think you can win, and you’re stuck with them.
Well... there's another change I'm mulling over that'll take care of that, but
for now.
Which leaves ballistic weapons. I actually agree that this change will barely be noticeable—I ran out of HVD ammo every once in a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever run out of ammo for the heavy mauler, my favorite early-/mid-game iron. However, though I think the change is okay, I do wonder if it’s not a missed opportunity. Ammo for ballistics didn’t just differentiate them from energy weapons, it was also (as I think somebody mentioned) a potential lever for balance. You can have two weapons with similar OP costs—gun A has enough ammo to deal twice as much damage, over the course of a long fight, as gun B, but gun B has three times the single-shot damage as gun A. Adds some interesting nuance to weapon design—I guess modders will still have access to that, of course.
However! As a twist on what Cosmitz suggested early in the thread, what about using freighters(and/or tankers and/or those supply ships we saw art for that got cut in an earlier build) to actually resupply ships in combat? A freighter comes in from the bottom of the map, flies straight to the ship that called for resupply, and both ships have to sit still (maybe with shields down?) for 5/10/20/40 seconds (depending on hull size) as ballistic (and maybe missile) weapons are refilled. AI ships will make a beeline for your resupply operations, so you need to send some escorts to run interference, etc. etc. It’s a dramatic change, maybe beyond the scope of this thread (in which case I’d be happy to drag it over to Suggestions), but it could kill a few birds with one stone—keep ammo in the game, get civilian ships into harm’s way, and encourage players to use more one warship at a time.
Yeah, probably best in another thread. My main objection to this is same as before - just not seeing how it might be smooth gameplay-wise. It's either overwrought for something that doesn't matter much, or ammo is such an issue that the game is all about those resupply ships. Which might be ok if it didn't seem like it would be so very, very clunky. I mean, I could be totally wrong, but that's how I'm seeing it.
Also—Alex, you have the patience of a saint when it comes to all our griping. But hey, even if some reactions have been a little over the top, it’s great to see so many people so obsessed with Starsector that a dozen lines of patch notes can generate a dozen pages of heated debate. And probably a dozen more to come!
Hah, thank you
That's a really good way to look at it, and I really do appreciate people chiming in with their thoughts.
I just remembered something: Weren't frigates' top speed and recovery boosted from 0.54 to 0.6 because they were the only ships with CR decay at the time (when 0.6 came out)? One reason I use frigates, aside from high burn speed, is they recover quickly. Big ships (and fighters) take forever to recover CR.
Hey Alex, I don't think you ever addressed this and I too would like to know if recovery speed is gonna be boosted
Ah, I don't think I did.
It's not that firgates got higher speed to compensate for having a peak effectiveness timer. Rather, it was finally possible for them to be as fast as I'd wanted them to be, *due* to the peak effectiveness timer. It's one of several ways this mechanic opens up other design possibilities.
I don't recall that frigate CR recovery was adjusted to be faster specifically due to peak effectiveness, and in any case, the larger ships have a longer effectiveness period, so I don't think there's much that requires tweaking here. It might, given more playtesting, though.