Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Lopunny Zen on June 17, 2017, 04:01:39 PM
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I think they deal too much damage to armor and hulls
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They used to deal even more damage to armor before 0.8, when each missile had a single, harder hitting warhead. I think they're fine now.
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well they still hit hard for no reason. They should be kind of weaker honestly against armor
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Agree, still die to sabots more than harpoons
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Honestly they're pretty bad against armour due to low pellet damage (not to mention it's kinetic) and against hull (it's still at best 1000 damage, but pellets are prone to missing - typically 1 or 2 miss).
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I really like Sabots as they are now. Before 0.81 they were anaemic wastes of OP, now they're something to be feared, if you find yourself in a position to be hit by them. They are much more versatile than the Harpoon ever was, but you have to be up close to your target to ensure a solid hit. They're great for giving your ship some breathing room, or getting in that one big punch you needed to overload a target, and if not cause it a lot of disruption.
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I don't think it's the sheer kinetic damage that makes them so dangerous - it's the fact that they also deal EMP damage. Harpoons can be soaked by shields relatively harmlessly, but when you use Sabots, it's mostly a win/win situation: target takes the blow into the shields - they get tons of hard flux. They take it into armor - they get half their gear disabled. And heaven forbid you try to tank a sabot salvo with a bare hull. It's gonna hurt a lot.
Longbows from my Astral can actually one-shoot some frigates when all of those sabots hit a single target.
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My biggest problem is that the second stage fires outside of average PD range, so they are much more guaranteed damage than other missiles. Its also pretty difficult to dodge them. Also they stack disgustingly, especially medium pods. Legion with 5x medium sabot pods can have 20 sabots in the air pretty much simultaneously. Even 2 medium sabot pods can put out 8 at once which is enough to screw over most ships in the game.
A couple ideas I had for changing them:
1) add a small delay before the 2nd stage fires to create a chance for ships to dodge
2) make the 2nd stage fire closer the the target so PD has a better chance of shooting them down (you would probably have to make first stage faster to compensate)
3) add a more substantial delay between firing the missiles so it's harder to stack a lot of them
I would maybe also add making the medium sabot pod fire 1 at a time.
I wouldn't implement all of these, that would be too much of a nerf, I'm just throwing out ideas that might improve them.
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Also a single volley on frigates basically strips armor AND disables everything.
Then they are better than harpoons at fighting frigates in all situations.
Baisically they are the frigate killers, hard to doge, can't block without overload, guaranteed some kind of damage.
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In my experience frigates can dodge all but a few of the pellets. Of course if for some reason they don't then they are totally screwed. Longer range PD works nicely on the first stage - lrpd on any ship or burst pd on a cruiser with a targetting core. Its one of the few situations where high tech PD wins over low tech, at least that I know of.
I'd be careful of nerfing them too much... their armor/hull damage is frankly bad against anything with high (>500) armor, both EMP and shield damage are temporary, and their ammo is limited.
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Man, seems Sabots just can't catch a break. They used to be worthless, then OP as all hell, but now I think they are in a much better spot.
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I think I remember a mod from quite a few versions back, where they had regenerative ammo, and a two-stage attack, missile followed by a high-speed kinetic impact projectile.
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I feel like the extent of the EMP damage dealt by tanking sabots on your hull is a bit much. Just a couple of them, or even just one can disable basically all your weapons, forcing you out of the fight and leaving you nearly as vulnerable as being overloaded by them would, even on cruisers.
It just a matter of it being an effective weapon regardless of whether it succeeds in its intended purpose or not. Most weapons can be directly countered by something, but with sabots you're left vulnerable no matter what you do assuming you can't dodge it outright. Low OP cost makes them extremely spammable as well, the small mount version is better than basically every other 4 OP missile available.
That said the EMP is much better than them being able to obliterate ships entirely on their own.
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I'm not sure the Sabot needs to be tweaked any further. I haven't seen their frigate-killing ability all that often - IME destroyers and cruisers are the most vulnerable to them, since their flux capacity usually isn't strong enough to let their shields stand up to a sabot if their flux has been driven up by any other factor (e.g. firing weapons or taking shield hits).
I would say that they're a better choice than Harpoons most of the time. Harpoons are easier to shoot down with PD and do very little if they hit a shield compared to a Sabot, while a Sabot that hits the target is always useful.
I'm not sure what I would suggest. Anti-EMP measures are currently actually quite easy to get, but few (including me) actually use them because it's preferable to spend the skill and ordnance points used for the +% weapon/engine HP/repair speed skills and mods on something that's more generally useful. Perhaps one could add some more directly applicable tech/industry skills?