float theRangeMult = Math.min(Math.max((maxRangeSquared / MathUtils.getDistanceSquared(beam.getTo(), beam.getFrom()))-1f,0f),3f);
Beams are in a decent place right now. I would rather see HIL turned to Energy type instead of even more beam weapons being made non-Energy. It should be the exception rather than the rule (explosive beams are just a silly concept).Explosive beams actually make sense to me. It's not that the beam is somehow full of explosions; it's that the beam makes its -target- explode. This is actually what happens with a sufficiently powerful laser - see, for example, all the laser-pumped fusion experiments.
Explosive damage beams are also counter intuitive given how weak they are irl at penetrating things. To quote Children of a Dead Earth's dev:
"In terms of actually destroying enemy capital ships, however, lasers can cut into the enemy bulkhead all day with basically zero effect (I measured the ablation of a monolithic armor plate at one point, and found that the ablation was happening at micrometers per second)."
(Also cold? An actual spaceship? Have you heard how difficult it is to cool these things off?)Given that I wrote a giant post here once (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=6450.msg105135#msg105135) talking about how Flux was basically heat-by-another-name... yes?
The next piece where it mentions lasers and slanted armor is pure *** - as if you can get total internal reflection on a piece of aluminum *eyeroll*Yeah, indeed, lol.
Explosive damage beams are also counter intuitive given how weak they are irl at penetrating things.
I kinda wish there was a slow charging beam with a lot of firepower in the game.
That feature was - imho, unwisely - removed from the game.Disagree. Most non-beam weapons received more base damage to compensate, and beams generally received more range and cheaper OP costs. The only two weapons that got shafted by the change were AM blaster and mining blaster for getting less damage than most other weapons. Maybe burst PD too for requiring two charges to blast some missiles instead of one. Pulse lasers were atrocious before the change, then they get a huge damage boost and became somewhat useful.
Disagree with your disagree - yes, many weapons got partial compensation, but it's not even close to the same; before, high-tech ships had bonus firepower when they really needed it (i.e. were at high flux), which was both useful (particularly for point defense) and just neat - and added an extra dimension when fighting them, too, as high flux on an enemy meant a high risk high reward target.That feature was - imho, unwisely - removed from the game.Disagree.
Disagree with your disagree - yes, many weapons got partial compensation, but it's not even close to the same; before, high-tech ships had bonus firepower when they really needed it (i.e. were at high flux), which was both useful (particularly for point defense) and just neat - and added an extra dimension when fighting them, too, as high flux on an enemy meant a high risk high reward target.I would say that they really needed it all the time and when flux is kept low, the extra damage is useful, especially for pulse lasers which were very weak before the flux supercharge removal. The only thing I miss somewhat from flux supercharge removal is watching the weapons glow as flux built up. However, I think the benefits of flux supercharge removal outweigh the drawbacks. Most of all, one less thing cluttering the UI on the left.
However, the only ships I would consider plasma cannon and vent spam on, Apogee and Odyssey, are bad enough that they might as well not be there. (Apogee being unable to force fights, and Odyssey having too low OP and becoming extremely fragile after shield nerf).
You just zoom around at 143 speed volleying frigates and destroyers until only large ships are left.If I wanted to hunt down frigates and destroyers, I can do that just fine with, oh, a Sunder or a Hammerhead or a Drover. If I'm spending the resources to deploy a capital ship, it'd better be able to take on other capital ships - and the Odyssey can't.
Like... there always must be a ship that loses a slugging match with other ships of the same size. The fact that it’s the Oddssy doesn’t make it a bad ship. Mainly because with its speed you shouldn’t be getting into slugging matches with larger ships.It does not need to be that way. And that Odyssey cannot fight its own peers does while doing nothing that its peers cannot also do does indeed make Odyssey a bad ship. It is awful like pre-0.8 Hammerhead and 0.7.2-era Aurora. Like Wyvern said, if I spend resources to use a capital, "it'd better be able to take on other capital ships - and the Odyssey can't."
A drover or heron or 4 is simply not effective against large numbers of enemy ships.If the enemy has large number of fighters to saturate your ship you might be right (but then we are not dealing with a modest fleet of frigates and destroyers anymore, in which case, deploy your battleship of choice and wipe out the heavy enemy ships, then deploy whatever to finish off the cowards that will not fight your battleship). If not, characters built for fighter spam and speed can constantly outrun just about everything with Drover and Heron and kill everything small, or at least much more than other ships of their weight, with fighters. If the enemy fleet is big enough to require capitals because they have a capital. I would deploy Paragon and have it kill everything except the frigates (because AI frigates are cowardly enough to avoid Paragon unless they can swarm Paragon by the dozens).
Tachyon lances have as good or better range than any other weapon in the game. You do not need hard flux when you one volley small ships and flank everything else..You need hard flux for Tachyon Lance to kill the big targets (at least if AI cannot be cheesed for some reason). Two Tachyon Lances alone against bigger targets does not work. Smaller targets will avoid Odyssey until they can swarm as they are faster, and they do not need to avoid as far (despite Odyssey being a bit faster). Odyssey has fighters, but if it needs to rely on fighters to kill things its guns cannot reach, then there are better capitals (or Heron) for fighter power.
You also don’t need 15 skill points to do it (carriers generally need the fighter line and the helmsmanship line), you need 6 (Helmsmanship only)In that case, get Paragon and kill everyone except maybe the frigates. Paragon is a monster. As for frigates, solo anything that is not a carrier struggles against frigates. Oh, the bigger ship would eventually win if the frigates do not have the numbers to swarm effectively, but it might win just by waiting until the frigate's CR decays too much and runs out of gas. Also, without fighter boosts, they are more unreliable for Odyssey. The main point of using Odyssey is to mix up brawling and fighters. Legion does it well. Odyssey is horrible at it.
The HIL is still pretty bad; it barely outperforms a Heavy Mauler for OP costs, yet takes a Large Energy slot... and that's just the surface numbers.There is no "hidden beam nerf" - the number there doesn't do what you think it does (and is in fact a significant -buff- over what you'd get from naive calculations).
If you look at the details, it doesn't at out-perform it, when we consider that it doesn't inflict Hard Flux and that, unlike the Heavy Mauler, it's artificially gimped vs. Armor (it does a mere 16.7 damage per tick against Armor, before the Armor reduction, after the hidden Beam nerf in Settings).
A question for you, Goumindong: What sorts of fleets are you facing with this build, and what sorts of support ships do you have to deploy to make it work? You keep saying that enemy capital ships are not an issue because they'll be "overwhelmed" - what ships are you using to do that overwhelming? This seems to be a vital part of your tactics, without which the Odyssey wouldn't be usable.i tend to use a core of eagles with supporting Dover/Heron. Eagles are primarily fit for kinetic (gravitons and HVD) while the Herons/Dover have split duty (one on PD, one on Strike). The Oddesy cleans chaff and pushes enemy ships against the HVD/Graviton Fire as it circles around to the rear. If I can find monitors I add as many as I can. I prefer Herons to Dover because my AI Dover always seem to suicide no matter what orders or pilots are assigned.
I thought Beams were damaging stuff 30 ticks / second, not 10. Wherever that number is set, that's very important.Actually, it's not; since the armor reduction is based on DPS, not per-tick damage, we get -roughly- similar end results no matter what the actual tick rate is.
This needs a clear answer from Alex. I don't think you're right, based on how things feel in testing; going from 0.5 to 1.0 didn't result in HE Beams doing huge DPS to Armor; they were better but didn't melt Armor like the numbers you're waving around would imply.Going from 0.5 to 1.0 would make the HIL's calculation for a 1/10th of a second interval of fire against an undamaged Eagle into 100 * 1000 / (1000 + 1000) = 50 damage. Compared to the 33 you actually get, that's about a 50% improvement, which should be noticeable, but also well short of the doubling effect you seem to be expecting.
dpsToHitStrengthMult: used to compute vs-armor "hit strength" for beam weaponsThat "hit strength" is specifically the number used for armor penetration calculations. (Edit: In the post of mine you linked, I label this value as "armor penetration".) For a heavy mauler, it's 400, because that's how hard a 200-damage HE projectile hits armor. For beams, it's based on their DPS; for the HIL, that number is 500. (500 base DPS, *2 from being typed as HE, *.5 from the dpsToHitStrengthMult value.)
dpsToHitStrengthMult: used to compute vs-armor "hit strength" for beam weaponsIsn't actually clear; it's totally unclear when the tickrate is applied- before or after baseline DPS.
The Odyssey is kind of a poster-child for the way that all-Energy can only work if given a huge advantage via stats or System or other things, given the balance issues.I remember times when I tried Medusa, I practically need to max vents AND nearly max capacitors just so a basic pulse laser and light AC combo can barely win the flux war over the likes of anything that is not high tech. (Pulse lasers and Light AC because they are readily available and not obnoxiously rare.)
Medusa used to be fine, but only with high-level Captain bonuses to allow it to flee and kite. It's kind of meh right now.High level combat bonuses do not help my flagship when I need my skills to buff my fleet. Fighting Lumen and Glimmer duos are a royal pain with Wolf or Medusa flagship. (One mistake on my end, and they charge and cause serious damage with their near perfect-play AI.) Now I deploy something with fighters and do not deal with that headache anymore. I may use my starter Wolf for a while, but I do not always upgrade to Medusa, and if I do, not for long.
(Wyvern is 100% correct about the math. I'm not fully sure if it's 10 times per second or not - though I think it is - but, as already mentioned, that doesn't matter much due to how the calculation works. And, specifically, it's set up that way to be largely framerate-independent.)Thank you! The verification is nice to have. So is the new signature.
@ xenoargh: I am disappointed with most energy weapons, though phase lance really annoys me, with range no better than pulse laser (without hard-to-find Advanced Optics) yet still cannot hit for hard flux. Even with Advanced Optics, if my ship cannot use kinetics to back Phase Lance up, why bother?
Well, that sounds great, but there's the order-of-operations issues here, Alex. Where does the tick get applied?
Let's do that math.
If a Beam with HE damage hits a target, the results vary quite a lot, depending on what's going on. Let's say it's 1/10th of a second and hits a target with 1000 Armor, for the sake of argument.
If the tick's applied before the damage, then: (100)^2 / (1000 + 100) = 9 damage, per tick, at dpsToHitStrengthMult of 1.0.
If the tick's applied after the damage, then ((1000)^2 / (2000)) * 0.1 = 50 damage per tick. But if dpsToHitStrengthMult is applied afterwards at 0.5, it's half that; it's the nerf I was implying.
If dpsToHitStrengthMult is applied before the other factors, then:
((500)^2 / (1500)) * 0.1 = 16.7
So, uh, what's the order of operations here? Beams aren't straight-line like an ordinary hit, both because of the tick and dpsToHitStrengthMult (which, to keep things simpler, I didn't move into the equation here- that would also change the order of operations). Where they get applied matters.
they use 50% of their DPS (and that'd be that .5 value you found in settings and made assumptions about). 50% of 1000 DPS is 500. So the actual calculation for a single tick of the HIL is 100 * 500 / ( 500 + 1000 ) = 33 damage.
Well, that sounds great, but there's the order-of-operations issues here, Alex. Where does the tick get applied?
Let's do that math.
If a Beam with HE damage hits a target, the results vary quite a lot, depending on what's going on. Let's say it's 1/10th of a second and hits a target with 1000 Armor, for the sake of argument.
If the tick's applied before the damage, then: (100)^2 / (1000 + 100) = 9 damage, per tick, at dpsToHitStrengthMult of 1.0.
If the tick's applied after the damage, then ((1000)^2 / (2000)) * 0.1 = 50 damage per tick. But if dpsToHitStrengthMult is applied afterwards at 0.5, it's half that; it's the nerf I was implying.
If dpsToHitStrengthMult is applied before the other factors, then:
((500)^2 / (1500)) * 0.1 = 16.7
So, uh, what's the order of operations here? Beams aren't straight-line like an ordinary hit, both because of the tick and dpsToHitStrengthMult (which, to keep things simpler, I didn't move into the equation here- that would also change the order of operations). Where they get applied matters.
You still have the equation wrong--a beam uses nominalDps*dpsToHitStrengthMult strength for calculating the armor reduction, and its damage for the tick is multiplied by that. The tick length has no role in the armor reduction calculation.
Did someone say the Fortress Shield is a bad system on the Paragon? Its immunity to strike weapons for the slowest, longest ranged capital, and lets you vent soft flux while tanking fire. Charge based weapons like burst pd lasers and autopulse are recharging during it, so you don't lose overall DPS with them either. Of course the ship would still be a monster with a different system, but it certainly doesn't hurt.I like to use Fortress Shield to trade Paragon's full bar of soft flux into about a third bar of hard flux before venting, if under fire from the enemy. Less time armor or hull getting shot at.
...
Oh and Thaago, yes, I think it's a bad system. When you need it to work (surrounded by DPS you can't tank normally) you just lose the Flux war faster than you would by dropping shields and firing, generally; there are edge cases where you take less damage, because you're just facing down one thing that can't dump enough Hard Flux, but it's not great and there's a threshold where it's counterproductive, because it costs Hard Flux while it runs. You don't get immunity to strike weapons, either; they just do less Hard Flux; the immunity isn't total.
Did someone say the Fortress Shield is a bad system on the Paragon? Its immunity to strike weapons for the slowest, longest ranged capital, and lets you vent soft flux while tanking fire. Charge based weapons like burst pd lasers and autopulse are recharging during it, so you don't lose overall DPS with them either. Of course the ship would still be a monster with a different system, but it certainly doesn't hurt.I like to use Fortress Shield to trade Paragon's full bar of soft flux into about a third bar of hard flux before venting, if under fire from the enemy. Less time armor or hull getting shot at.
When AI uses such ships, Fortress Shield is annoying to fight against since the AI can flicker it well.
Beat me to it! In addition, the faster vent means that missiles/torpedoes have less time to get to the ship, so you can usually avoid a reaper barrage that would hit during a full vent.I forgot about this too. AI will unleash Harpoon storm at Paragon with high flux, then Paragon turns on Fortress Shield and shrugs and laughs off all of the harpoons the enemy wasted on Paragon.
@Alex: Right, that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of; where that number's coming from.Still not getting the math quite right.
So, 33 damage a tick for the initial hit, and second hits onward go up. Roughly 390-ish / a second and rapidly rising after that; roughly 2 seconds to pierce an Eagle. OK, that's maybe a little more like the reality here.
The Mauler does 200 HE. So it's (400 * 200) / (1000 + 200) = 66.7 and the second hit's around 71.
So, 138 for two hits vs. 390-ish for the HIL?
To the OP: I feel like beams are supposed to be support weapons in a way that they complement your build.True... for midline ships (Sunder, Falcon, and Eagle) and Paragon, because those ships can use long-range kinetics to back up their beams with hard flux. For typical high-tech ships like Wolf and Aurora, not so much; for them, beams are mostly good for PD and little else, and only because they cannot use superior Vulcan and Flak. Long-range assault beams and short-ranged flux hogs usually do not mix very well. (EDIT: Almost, I find heavy blaster and tactical laser combo superior to two pulse lasers for near equal performance for 4 less OP, but not many ships can take advantage of that; mainly good for Tempest.) Ion beam is a special case in that you use it to pierce shields and knock out weapons or engines.
About the Odyssey, why the hell does it even have missiles? Seriously, if one person puts anything in missiles slots, please let me now. You already have barely enough OP to put decent-ish weapons and hullmods, and if you need zero-flux weapons you have 2 fighter bays. Honestly the whole ship is a mess, I really loved it before because of the cool design but in reality it has a weird loadout of weapon types and sizes and not to forget the frustration of trying to allign all 3 turrets on the same target. Sure it's fast for a big boy but with weaker shields and an absurd cost to deploy in combat, I could use any other ship(s) in the game and still do the job for the lower price and less deployment points.I used to put small Salamanders or Pilums, but now, I only use 1 OP missiles, if any. Odyssey in 0.8 was short on OP before it gained its second bay. Now, it is extremely OP starved. It is the joke ship of 0.8, like pre-0.8 Hammerhead and 0.7.2 Aurora. If I put heavies, all (LR) PD lasers, two fighters, and the hullmods it needs, I have about 30 OP left for vents. Not enough for max vents, let alone extra for capacitors or Hardened Shields... or missiles.
I would like to see the Odyssey's mediums changed from missile to synergy. Then at least Odyssey can attempt the HIL and Ion Beam combo if fighters put hard flux on shield. Or it can do heavy blaster spam and do a ton of damage in a moment.
Edit: While making it basically a mega Aurora with fighters sound good to me, I still think that won't make a huge difference. Idk actually, it's hard to say like this without testing.Without an OP raise, I agree. Odyssey is seriously OP starved. I leave missiles empty and still do not have OP to get everything I need like Legion can, although Legion has advantage of cheap and effective heavy guns like Hellbore or Mark IX and super effective dual flak. Nothing energy has comes close. Without more OP, changing missiles to synergy only means that player can leave the rear and/or small mounts empty and focus everything up front.
Edit: While making it basically a mega Aurora with fighters sound good to me, I still think that won't make a huge difference. Idk actually, it's hard to say like this without testing.Without an OP raise, I agree. Odyssey is seriously OP starved. I leave missiles empty and still do not have OP to get everything I need like Legion can, although Legion has advantage of cheap and effective heavy guns like Hellbore or Mark IX and super effective dual flak. Nothing energy has comes close. Without more OP, changing missiles to synergy only means that player can leave the rear and/or small mounts empty and focus everything up front.
@ Goumindong: I see what you did. You outsource PD on fighters and use them as escorts, which may let you skimp on light weapons and squeeze more OP on the side that matters most. I tried it your way and while effective enough to be viable, is not significantly better than the other loadouts I tried against capitals (and others). Unskilled, Onslaught will maul Odyssey just as easily and very hard to solo. Conquest is a difficult fight, and Paragon is virtually impossible. With Helmsmanship 3 and the other must-haves (like Loadout Design 3), winning against SIM Onslaught is about 50/50, Conquest is at least 50/50 or better. Astral is still difficult, and Paragon is still nearly impossible. Helmsmanship 3 on Odyssey is not always enough to flank Onslaught. (Meanwhile, if I use a similarly skilled battleship against a lone SIM capital, it utterly crushes it without much of a fight.)
Sim Paragon is only kill-able by cheesing shield drop behavior and firing off-center. Process that takes a lot of time and leaves almost no margin for errors.I noticed that once hull gets extremely low, AI never drop shields and shield drop cheese no longer works. For attacking ships unlucky enough to not quite finish off a ship and hull gets to that point, defender never drops shields and beams alone do not work. This is what makes four Lance and two HVD Paragon effective. HVDs puts hard flux on shield, and the lances pierce and remove the last remaining hull. Odyssey needs its fighters (or other ships) to put the hard flux on the shield.
Like, I understand that you all want to use the Oddesy to kill capital ships. But it’s not that ship and not every ship can be that ship.In that case, Odyssey truly is useless. It is overpriced and underpowered. It must stand up to capitals or else there is no point to use it instead of a capital that can do its job and more, or two or more smaller ships for less cost. Destroyers warships are fairly balanced. Cruiser warships are mostly balanced. Capitals... Odyssey is the odd ship out.
The Oddssy is the worst. And that is fine.No, it is not as long as it is more expensive than most capitals. Odyssey is an order of magnitude worse than every other capital, just like Hammerhead was for destroyers before 0.8. Conquest was relatively weak before 0.8, too (though probably comparable to Odyssey at the time), but it got some nice buffs, more armor and hull, and that OP discount with heavy weapons. Now the gap between Conquest and proper battleships is narrow.
I don’t understand how you think the Odyssey is so bad when you yourself claim that the primarily limiter is Tachyon Lances. Yet you want 4 rare tachyon lances for your Paragon as opposed to only two for your Odyssey. You get to bring two Odyssesy for every Paragon you can field. You can fit a single Odyssey twice as easily as you can fit a Paragon!Because if I try to use anything else, Odyssey cannot kite-and-snipe effectively, which leaves brawling as the only option, and it loses in a slugging match against any other capital (even against weaker ones like Conquest), and I can thank the shield nerf (plus energy weapons' overall inferiority) for that. Odyssey was not that great at slugging matches in previous version, but it lasted a bit longer with better shields, and Conquest (and Astral) was not as powerful back then. (Astral was laughably weak until 0.8.) What is more, the one weapon which gives Odyssey a chance, Tachyon Lance, is extremely rare, and there is no substitute for Odyssey. Even if Odyssey can use Tachyon Lance, it cannot brawl with other weapons like it used to (unless it guts its entire loadout) thanks to the shield nerf and low OP. All it can do is kite-and-snipe.
I am not fielding an Odyssey or a Paragon or an Astral or an Onslaught or a Conquest* until I have enough firepower to take down a single capital with the fleet (minus its support of course). I don’t need to be able to punch through the thing later.
If you’re shooting at capitals sure.... but you can build up hard flux with the third turret when necessary... which means you’re not all in with soft flux as you have hard flux options.
Edit: The third turret, regardless of what is in it, should be shooting maybe 5% of the time.
If you’re shooting at capitals sure.... but you can build up hard flux with the third turret when necessary... which means you’re not all in with soft flux as you have hard flux options.
Closing into hard flux range against a Capital is suicidal enough even with proper full hard flux build (no-skills vs sim). With just one large slot on enemy you are at best a sidekick to your allies, with no 1vs1 viability.Edit: The third turret, regardless of what is in it, should be shooting maybe 5% of the time.
That means you basically use only 2/3 of the ship. Criminally inefficient piloting, as I see it :)
You also only use 2/4 turrets on the conquest at once... you’re deciding to use 1/3 of the ships speed and and all of its shield rather than simply not taking damage.
And you don’t charge into a 1v1 with an enemy capital. Like... I just described how it works. Defeat in detail.. you destroy the larger force piece by piece
if the general sentiment is that the odyssey is poor for its supply cost, then what would be the correct supply cost if we are to reduce it without changing any in-combat stats of odyssey? 35? or something around 38?The problem with that is that it would make it cheaper than the Onslaught, which is a low tech ship AND the Conquest, both of which are 40 DP.
if the general sentiment is that the odyssey is poor for its supply cost, then what would be the correct supply cost if we are to reduce it without changing any in-combat stats of odyssey? 35? or something around 38?The problem with that is that it would make it cheaper than the Onslaught, which is a low tech ship AND the Conquest, both of which are 40 DP.
if the general sentiment is that the odyssey is poor for its supply cost, then what would be the correct supply cost if we are to reduce it without changing any in-combat stats of odyssey? 35? or something around 38?The problem with that is that it would make it cheaper than the Onslaught, which is a low tech ship AND the Conquest, both of which are 40 DP.
I think we need to look at combined supply and fuel costs (I think I spend comparable amount if not more on fuel in my playthroughs...). Onslaught is 40/15, Paragon 50/10, Odyssey 45/10, Conquest 40/10.
Is Odyssey superior to Conquest in it's combat performance? Maybe for some specific situations under player control, but generally not.
Also Conquest kind of has to go for asymmetric build to be competitive - 2 Gauss on 1 side to safely(but slowly) kill Paragon/Onslaught, whatever else (probably Mjolnir) on other side to quickly kill smaller or distracted targets.Actually, stock Onslaughts are unoptimized enough that, assuming no skills, AI Onslaught vs. AI Conquest (with Hardened Shields and/or high capacitors) is roughly even. Gauss is only required for Paragon, or perhaps an Onslaught with skills and/or better optimized loadout (not present in vanilla).