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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Starsector Ship Tiers  (Read 151954 times)

HELMUT

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #180 on: November 10, 2015, 02:14:10 PM »

Agree with Megas. A 10/10/10 Onslaught (or anything else) may be tough and hurt like a truck, you can still "flux-lock" it by pounding its shield, indirectly reducing its firepower. Its frontal shield also leaves its rear vulnerable, a massive weakness when there are other ships involved.

A max skilled Paragon however have no soft-spot. You can't flux lock it because of the fortress shield (at least for a while) and the 360° arc cover every angles. At max level, it's the second toughest ship in the game behind the Archbishop, but unlike the Templar carrier, it still have enough firepower to rip apart another capital ship in mere seconds.

Among all the SS+ 10/10/10 capital ships, none make me second guess engaging a fleet like an enemy flagship Paragon.

This tier list is general, TJJ. If it was AI only, the Hyperion would never be tier 1. This also explain why the Paragon is at the top of the food chain, whether it's piloted by the AI or the player, it still outperform the rest.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 02:16:08 PM by HELMUT »
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TJJ

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #181 on: November 10, 2015, 02:28:56 PM »

Perhaps someone should draw up a PvP(1v1) tier list.
How do you imagine the meta would evolve?

Would kiting & manoeuvrability dominate?
Would fleet sizes effect composition?
What size ship is the human fleet commander most efficiently utilised in?

Lots to think about!
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #182 on: November 10, 2015, 03:31:54 PM »

Frigate swarms with as many missiles as you can throw in there, beats all.
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TJJ

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #183 on: November 10, 2015, 03:50:32 PM »

Frigate swarms with as many missiles as you can throw in there, beats all.

Ah yes, the AI wars challenge.
Mercury spam will definitely need addressing.
I never really understood why the Mercury had universals in the 1st place.

Perhaps 0.7's hybrid mounts will do something about it.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #184 on: November 10, 2015, 03:57:09 PM »

Frigate swarms with as many missiles as you can throw in there, beats all.

PD Onslaught can hold off the missiles of the missile Onslaught. It'll crush a bunch of one-shot frigates.
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TJJ

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #185 on: November 10, 2015, 04:12:03 PM »

Frigate swarms with as many missiles as you can throw in there, beats all.

PD Onslaught can hold off the missiles of the missile Onslaught. It'll crush a bunch of one-shot frigates.

135 Harpoons? or 81 Atropos? or 27 Reapers?
You'd need a *heavily* specialized Onslaught to survive that.

I think the point is that such strategies being available, even if hard counter-able, would give *too much* tactical flexibility.
It'd result in a degenerate meta that wouldn't be fun to play against, and would require 'house rules' to enforce 'realistic' fleet compositions.

It'd be much better to put in place a balancing system that made overly specialized fleets cost prohibitive in some way.
Something along the lines of:
- Each duplicate hull/weapon after the Xth, costs Y% more than the last.

Also, should monetary cost be a balancing factor?
I'd like to see all weapons (and hulls!) fulfill some kind of niche, not just the most efficient ones. (Even Arbalest Autocannons & the D-rated Hound hulls!).

Though balancing both OP cost & monetary cost together isn't something that vanilla SS does, so that'll require a whole heap of trial & error.
tldr; theory crafting this stuff ahead-of-time isn't wasted effort!
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 04:36:31 PM by TJJ »
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D00D

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #186 on: November 10, 2015, 04:42:38 PM »

I'm not sure why would you want to balance gimmicky strategies in  a Single player game. I've had a lot of fun with using disposable missile ships from mods where I flank the enemy fleet while they break themselves on my defensive fleet and then flanking them by unloading all my missiles then retreating and coming back with a fresh ship
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TJJ

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #187 on: November 10, 2015, 04:48:18 PM »

I'm not sure why would you want to balance gimmicky strategies in  a Single player game.

We weren't talking about Single player.

Perhaps someone should draw up a PvP(1v1) tier list.
How do you imagine the meta would evolve?

Would kiting & manoeuvrability dominate?
Would fleet sizes effect composition?
What size ship is the human fleet commander most efficiently utilised in?

Lots to think about!
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #188 on: November 10, 2015, 05:06:20 PM »

It's really hard to say because everything is so hypothetical. If it's literally just starsector with human players and perfect netcode, then the tier list should remain quite faithful, except a lot of the notoriously monstrous-when-player-piloted ships would go even higher.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #189 on: November 10, 2015, 06:44:48 PM »

Throwing Starsector into a PvP free-for-all online server is just asking for the all of the powergamers to break this game to win at any cost.  Also expect lots of trash talk and howls to "balance" the game.

Any and every degenerate tactic will be ruthlessly abused.  Hyperion will turn into tele-spam duels (see sorceress or Enigma users in Diablo II).  Ships with high peak performance and superb defenses may try to run down the clock.  Missile spam may be a possibility.  Expect many cookie-cutter character builds.
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #190 on: November 10, 2015, 07:49:55 PM »

It would be A Bad Game for the most part. Only fun when playing against people that are generally fun to be around. Minmaxing is the bane of MP games. That's why most of them are very tightly designed.
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heskey30

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #191 on: November 13, 2015, 01:59:57 PM »

I don't think it would be as bad as you all are saying. Hyperion would be troublesome, as it should be, but it wouldn't be game breaking. It costs as much to deploy as a cruiser, and generally a player controlled cruiser would be able to at the very least outlast it - don't expect to kill my aurora 6 heavy blaster shots at a time!  As for outlasting... well, thats when you deploy a couple of cheap hounds to harass the thing for a few minutes. Or some vigilances with missiles. Or just wreck it - you might be able to avoid the AI, but you'll probably have a hard time evading me. Missile spam? Well anything fast with a skillful pilot can deal with that alright. Fighter spam? Get me some fast frigates with graviton beams or a paragon with some flak.

Also let me point out that PvP battles would be very dangerous, so collecting enough of any one type of thing for a gimmicky strategy would be very hard, and keeping it would be harder.

I'd expect each side of a lategame pvp battle to have a big, diverse fleet that they can play from to counter each others different strategies. I'd also expect fragile, faster ships to be much stronger/more necessary than they are right now.
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SpacePoliticianAndaZealot

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #192 on: November 14, 2015, 03:07:34 PM »

What Cycerin said. What about co-op, though? Competitive coop MAY be a potential source of minmaxing ruckus, but I find it highly unlikely. Take for example Payday 2 before it went to ***: Weapon customization allowed for a variety of very interesting playstyles, especially the awkward loadouts (especially) for weapons in the "trap option" tier. Sure, there were whackers obsessed w/ minmaxing and hellbent on introducing a "tight design"(the unfunny brigade!), but the majority of the community didn't give a damn. Which was great.
Spoiler
As of now, thanks to the effort of the said *******, da gaem is kill.
[close]
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gruberscomplete

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #193 on: November 15, 2015, 07:23:52 AM »

Well, if MP did ever happen, it would probably be very hard to get any profits at all, as usually when you get out of a "safe-zone" (tutorial) you will be eliminated by OP enemy players with 25 ships in their fleet. You will not be able to level up, so anyone will be able to catch up to you will defeat you.

So really it wouldn't be fun. Its like Minecraft with diamond vs wooden sword.

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TJJ

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Re: Starsector Ship Tiers
« Reply #194 on: November 15, 2015, 10:14:53 AM »

Well, if MP did ever happen, it would probably be very hard to get any profits at all, as usually when you get out of a "safe-zone" (tutorial) you will be eliminated by OP enemy players with 25 ships in their fleet. You will not be able to level up, so anyone will be able to catch up to you will defeat you.

So really it wouldn't be fun. Its like Minecraft with diamond vs wooden sword.



Oh god no, a multiplayer MP campaign isn't even under consideration; it'd require total overhauls of too many core systems, not to mention a persistent universe.

What I'm talking about is standalone multiplayer battles; 1 fleet vs 1 fleet.
Initially 1 Player v 1 Player, but Many vs Many might be viable in the more distant future.

It'd go something like this:

  • Main menu -> multiplayer
  • Connect to master server to retrieve live players list. Interface for chatting(via master server), and selecting an opponent.
  • Once opponent (peer) is chosen, and successfully connected to -> game configuration screen. (various game options & fleet building screen)
  • peers share game/fleet configurations, and sync input states.
  • begin synced* game simulation (*deterministic lockstep; buffer inputs & transmit, UDP -> concatenate un-acked packets for minimum latency)
  • (for the future)transmit user inputs to the master server too (TCP), allowing for archival of games, and even near-realtime spectating of games in-progress.
  • (for the future)back-end database (hosted on the master server) for recording games, player stats, managing leagues etc

SSME provides the means of hooking into SS classes for enforcing determinism, input capture/replacement, injecting the new front-end menus, and mangling the various parts of the game logic that will need it.
Though this is highly coupled to internal SS code, so to avoid wasted effort I shan't progress any further with it until 0.7 is released.

The master server stuff is work-in-progress.
The deterministic lockstep simulation engine is planned out in my head, and can be implemented stand-alone as it's not fundamentally tied to SS.
The other back-end spectating/persistence stuff are just ideas for 'added value' features that would be possible to pull off with such a multiplayer model.

Kind of derailed this thread; sorry.
Back on topic!

Enforcer for life!
Honestly, its hardpoint selection + armour + speed make it totally awesome! A very powerful & flexible yet forgiving ship.
Better than a Lasher at.... Lashing.
Better than a Dominator at.... Dominating.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2015, 10:26:05 AM by TJJ »
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