Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: xenoargh on March 15, 2018, 12:05:33 PM

Title: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 15, 2018, 12:05:33 PM
Hey, just wanted to report that I've been testing out some ideas which appear to be working thematically.

Basically, Beams lack two major things, if they're going to work without Hard Flux.

1.  They need a mechanic where they're at least OK for assault roles. 

Making them ultra-efficient makes them pretty ubiquitous weapons (although I think everybody would be shocked how far you have to go, with Vanilla's current mechanics; essentially, a Tac Laser is nearly-free at that point). 

Giving them Hard Flux makes them too attractive for kiting (at 1000+ range).  It'd work if Beams were largely within the 600-800 range, but 1000 plus bonuses is not all right.

So, what I've done is given them scalar damage, based on range vs. max range.  The formula I'm using is:

Code
float theRangeMult = Math.min(Math.max((maxRangeSquared / MathUtils.getDistanceSquared(beam.getTo(), beam.getFrom()))-1f,0f),3f);

This gives a range scalar on damage that can range from 0 to 3 (at < 25% of maxRangeSquared) and this is added to the conventional damage number. 

This, along with some efficiency changes in general and removal of the Beam vs. Armor nerf, got to a pretty happy place, even at relatively-low damage numbers.  The effect is that Beams start to become reasonably-effective at belly-button ranges, but are otherwise essentially unchanged in their mechanics.

2.  They feel less-differentiated than they should; this is a problem with the High Tech weapons in general, now that a lot more ships may be considering them as part of their portfolio.

So, what I've tried out recently is pretty straightforward:

PD, LRPD and Mining Laser have been switched to HIGH_EXPLOSIVE; this gives them a secondary role as armor-killers (and, in particular, makes them more relevant vs. fighters while losing nothing against missiles).

Tachyon Lance and Phase Beam are HIGH_EXPLOSIVE with EMP damage additional.  This makes them devastating vs. unshielded targets, and the change in mechanics outlined above makes the Tachyon Lance fierce up close (but does little for the Phase Beam, which I have at 450 range, in exchange for better burst DPS in general).

Tac Laser, Graviton and HIL are now KINETIC; at each tier, there's an option to efficiently trade Soft Flux with opponents, which feels like Support, but without much Armor-killing power.  This is much more noticeable in big scrums and late-game fights where Beams' range advantages are quite a bit less important (which is usually where, in Vanilla, I drop most Beams entirely).

The Burst weapons (BPD, HBPD, Guardian) are all ENERGY.  This makes them inferior on Soft Flux but they can remain somewhat ubiquitous.

The Ion Beam remains ENERGY, but it's an inferior Flux-trader.

Mining Laser is a long-duration (0.3s) burst-beam with a 1-second cooldown; it does great damage per-pulse but cannot engage swarms.  It does about 100 damage per pulse, which will not allow it to stop Harpoons by itself, which seems about right.  I keep mentioning this weapon largely because the Vanilla version is just totally not worth mounting at all; it's simply too weak to stop anything and is thematically too much like the PDL; this gives it a different job, but doesn't obsolete the PDL (especially if range scalar is considered).

After trying this out in testing, I feel like this all works, thematically.  The PD lasers suddenly have a job that is sensible; they can engage missiles at full efficiency and aren't trash vs. fighters, and while they're certainly not great assault weapons, they have a niche role to play where they're reasonably useful.  The Tac Laser benefits from the change and the Pulse Beams stay neutral, which is probably where they should stay; they can do a little bit of everything and kill missiles pretty well, but aren't great for anything other than that job and occasionally being useful against fighter swarms.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 15, 2018, 12:37:32 PM
Soft flux is only a serious problem when you do not produce overwhelming amount of it (though most ships don't). How op do these changes make all beams (well, with 2 universal slots possibly used for ballistics) Paragon? Considering that it's quite viable with beams as is.

Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 15, 2018, 01:41:23 PM
It doesn't really do a lot for the Paragon, ironically.  It's not zero, but it's not as deadly to go all-Beam (at least, imo) as an alpha-strike Paragon built around Plasma Cannons / Light Needlers is, in Vanilla.  Kind of depends on what you want the Paragon to do, ofc; for AI-controlled "don't die" Paragon builds, this helps them out.

Mainly, these changes buff Beams against fighters and other close-range threats and provides an assault option for a few ships (Beam Aurora makes more sense, Beam Odyssey kind of makes sense, if its turrets weren't silly). 

The one really arguable point I've kind of gone back and forth on is whether it weakens the Tac Laser too much as an anti-fighter weapon; this really kind of pigeonholes it into a Support role.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 15, 2018, 03:39:21 PM
I don't see the need for beams to fill an assault role and i don't see the need for the secondary changes that "make things feel more unique". Antimatter Blasters, Heavy Blasters, Plasma Cannon, Pulse laser, and AutoPulse Laser all fill assault roles. Yes, they're not beams but they don't need to be be beams in order to energy weapon slots to have sufficient assault capability






As it stands beams feel pretty unique to me, the phase beam and tachyon lance are the only two weapons that are similar to each other and you're not solving that. Just looking at the beams currently we have

Tachyon Lance: Anti-Frigate/Destroyer plus anti-armor fleet support
Phase Lance: Anti-Frigate/Destroyer plus anti-armor fleet support

Graviton Beam: Fleet Support Anti-Shield

Ion Beam: Fleet Support Specialty (keeps shields up mainly preventing hard flux dissipation without eating EMP)

Point Defense: Its point defense. Maybe there are too many types of PD... but ballistic gets a load of PD too. Either way we have consistency/support/raw defense

Tactical Laser: Fleet Support untyped

HIL: Anti-Armor (finishes off enemy ships)


Your changes make things even more samey. Tactical/Graviton/HIL all doing kinetic make them the same weapon at different tiers rather than being different. It also, depending on the the scaling, makes these weapons hilariously OP or hilariously worthless. The thing, at the moment, really keeping Graviton Beams in check is the difficulty of attaining medium energy slots. Otherwise you stack them* and you produce overwhelming soft flux on any target you focus. Two Eagles with Graviton's produce 1200 Shield Damage/Second or more depending on skills. If they've got maulers in the front slots have fun keeping your shields up.

Doing that for HIL would be... insane. I love me an HIL Sunder but with HIL doing kinetic this would produce 1400 kinetic damage/second. You barely care about the armor punching power on smaller ships (125 pen at 250 dps is still plenty for frigates and destroyers). But this is enough to flux lock many capital class ships. And then its going to get a damage boost if you're closer?

If they're not going to do *** damage at max range then hooo boy every ship with small energy is loading up on tactical lasers and HILs, don't even bother bringing anything else you can kill them flux locked ships with missiles. If they're doing *** damage at max range then you just stop taking beams because nothing with a beam would ever really have the chance to penetrate the hail of HVD fire that you would load up all the medium ballistic slots with. You would entirely cede the long range game to ballistic weapons.

*You still stack them if you can


Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Schwartz on March 15, 2018, 03:42:14 PM
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), and that exception is Graviton beam.

Large beams do not need the anti-armour buff; they murder armour quickly enough as it is. Both HIL and Tachyon are devastating if they manage to connect. However giving HIL Energy damage might round it out a bit vs. shielded ships and not make it such an insta-kill vs. everything else.

If it was all up to me, I would:

Make HIL an Energy damage weapon
Up PD and LR PD damage output slightly
Give Phase Lance its EMP back or up its range

The other stuff, while interesting, is fixing a non-issue IMO. Beams have range; they don't need extra damage.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Blothorn on March 15, 2018, 03:44:32 PM
Not all weapons need to be useful in all situations. Moreover, in Vanilla, the fact that you trade damage/effiicency and range is important to loadout balance--overfocus on long range and you can be overwhelmed at point-blank. Range-scaled damage is therefore a substantial advantage, and I worry about applying it to an entire class of weapon.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: intrinsic_parity on March 15, 2018, 04:11:18 PM
I like the damage scaling idea (in fact I've suggested it before), but I think that existing beams fill roles well already. Maybe adding a few new beams with these new mechanics would be more interesting than replacing all beams.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 15, 2018, 04:22:39 PM
HIL as energy would probably even be too much. The inability of ships with large energy slots to penetrate shields with 1000 range weapons alone is pretty central to the design identity.

Think about the sunder again but this time we look at what it does shooting at another destroyer. Say a Medusa.

A Medusa has 400 to 600 flux dissipation and 6000 ish flux. A sunder with ex HIL does 625 shield damage/second. En HIL does 900. Kin HIL does 1400. The EX HIL cracks shields in 240 seconds. It effectively doesn’t. The En HIL cracks it in 20. The Medusa barely has a flux capacity at that point. The Kin HIL is right out. It kills the shields in 7.5 seconds.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 15, 2018, 05:39:46 PM
HIL used to be energy... and half the DPS.  It was awful, like old Thumper awful.

Even current HIL is a bit on the weak side, rather weak enough that I would never use if I had a steady supply of Tachyon Lances.  Although... HIL could be handy if it was a common Open Market weapon.  HIL is useful enough like Heavy Mortar or various other Open Market ballistics are, something to use until you find enough rare weapons to replace them.

Phase Lance is usually rubbish.  Pulse laser is generally more useful.  Phase Lance either needs more range (it used to have 700 range as Phase Beam) or hit for hard flux.  Getting its EMP back would not hurt.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 16, 2018, 10:06:55 AM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Linnis on March 16, 2018, 12:12:16 PM
I am not sure how you been playing but beam weapons are great atm, especially the large variant HIL an TL. (Though the HIL really shines in mods where cruisers can have them as paragon really needs the burst of the TL)

The only two problems beams have imo is the graviton beam has too low power output maybe 150 for 150?. As for the small PD beams, they suck at tracking but anything that's not flack or vulcan has problem shooting at missiles anyways.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Blothorn on March 16, 2018, 01:24:08 PM
Kinetic beams are dangerous because they provide long-range flux that cannot be dodged (save by high angular velocities usually only achievable by fighters). Making them stronger, even with slightly worse efficiency, would make it very easy for anything with medium energies to run area denial against frigates and anything with multiple medium energies to run area denial on most destroyers.

Consider a theoretical lasher with 2500 capacity/200 dissapation (~140 after shield upkeep). At present, a single graviton beam (say on a Wolf) would take it down in 42 seconds; two (e.g. on a Sunder) in just 10 seconds. Up that to 150/150 and the Wolf takes the shield down in 16 seconds and the Sunder in just five. (And remember that these numbers go down dramatically if the Lasher attempts to use any flux-generating weapons.)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 16, 2018, 01:32:56 PM
I have never been really afraid of graviton beams.  They are either ineffective or too slow at their job.  The only ship I can justify graviton beams on is Eagle, which can mount enough to hurt frigates, but even then, I have Arbalests/Heavy AC/HVDs backing those beams up.  (Paragon can use Gravitons well, but I much rather have Ion Beams or Heavy Blasters instead, since it has the flux stats to use those hogs.)  For nearly everything else, Tactical Laser does Graviton Beam's job nearly as well for a fraction of the OP cost.  However, if I have leftover OP to burn, I might upgrade Tactical Lasers to Graviton Beams with a "Why Not?" attitude.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 16, 2018, 03:05:11 PM
Graviton beams stack in all your med slots to be very efficient. If you attain higher tech frigates and destroyers they are all able to efficiently contribute to fights at high range
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 17, 2018, 01:53:55 PM
Most of the changes I was experimenting with didn't effect the bigger Beams this round; I was really looking at the smaller ones.  The issues there are subtle.

You know, though?  The more I think about the subtle problems with these things, the more I think that the biggest problem in the weapon balance was the choice to have just four fundamental damage types.  Giving them names like "energy" makes everybody have opinions based on fluffy stuff, rather than what's happening in the numbers.  

As for Gravitons... they're not great, but they're not the worst of the bunch.  Eagles are, as Megas points out, about the only viable platform, and even there, they're a questionable choice.  Graviton-Wolf is a thing, but not a good thing; usually, it's better to keep Wolf packs more within their Dissipation bands, and that's too hard to manage when you spend OPs and Flux on Gravitons.  Can't think of any other ships where I'm really excited about them; they don't work on Mules, they don't work on Auroras, they don't work on Paragons or Odysseys or Medusas; there are better choices and unlike the Tachyon Lance, they're not absurdly rare.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 17, 2018, 05:05:07 PM
For Eagle, the only other viable choice in the medium mounts are Tactical Lasers, Ion Beams, or some form of PD laser.  One Ion Beam is enough.  Two would be better except flux costs are too high.  With three Gravitons, Eagle can overload frigates and Enforcers.  If not for that, I probably would put one Ion Beam and the rest Tactical Lasers or some form of PD laser.  Using Pulse Lasers is too short ranged and too flux intensive (let alone blasters), not to mention Aurora does that job of close-ranged energy brawling better.

I would like if there was an assault medium beam as a midway between Tactical Laser and HIL.  So far, the only options are either Graviton Beam or Ion Beam.  Graviton Beam is weak enough that if you cannot get enough to overcome dissipation, then use Tactical Laser instead to save some OP that can be spent elsewhere.

Graviton would be okay on Paragon except it can mount blasters instead and kill everything much faster.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Linnis on March 17, 2018, 06:02:19 PM
Overall beams feel forgotten, the damage and drawbacks match projectiles, except not putting on had flux is such a drawback, that I would not mind if all beams did 125-150% more damage on shields.

Graviton beams work on Eagle because it can put on 3 of them, the power output is too low for a mid slot.

Also all the steady beam PD are all horrible.

Tac laser on paper does good DPS for a small slot. But the bad tracking, and slow beam travel time means that it won't be firing as much as ballistics. So in practice the Tac laser's dps is much worse.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Tartiflette on March 18, 2018, 12:47:55 AM
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)."

If they were to change mechanically, I'd say that they should keep their half damage against armor and double their damage against weapons and engines, maybe through armor (kind of like localized EMP), and make them target those instead of the center of the ship. Then you get a weapon that has a different role as long range EMP+damage.

(But I also like the idea of extra damage at low range, since laser diffraction is also a very real thing) 
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: MesoTroniK on March 18, 2018, 12:56:54 AM
Beams having extra damage at close range I am fine with but it would need to be balanced *very* carefully and also visualized somehow. Via fading the transparency the farther the beam travels, or a subtly triangular beam where the core (but not the fringe) is pinched a bit. If not visualized, I am very much against the idea entirely.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: intrinsic_parity on March 18, 2018, 11:51:16 AM
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)."

Lasers are definitely not bad at 'cutting' things, they are commonly used in industrial cutting processes. Sure the mechanism of ablation might happen slowly, but a high enough powered laser focused properly can easily melt metal very quickly. For a brittle i.e. stress hardened metal, thermal stress could also cause cracking. For something like a bulkhead, the internal pressure from the air inside the ship would likely be enough to push any melted or weakened material outwards. The laser itself won't blast a hole in the metal, it will melt and weaken it until the structure fails under other loading. The dev you referred to may have been looking at certain laser cutting techniques that focus on ablation as the mechanism of removing material to create a cut, however these techniques are usually designed to not heat the material too much to avoid damaging it which would not be a concern in combat.

In terms of actual gameplay, they should be balanced to be interesting and not to try and match reality. It could be really interesting to have beams act as a sort of damage buff/multiplier rather than directly doing damage. On the other hand, that might be way too complicated to bother implementing.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 18, 2018, 02:41:14 PM
In a much earlier period of my life, I operated and programmed an industrial laser that was the size of a giant dump truck.  That was my first "real job".  So I know a few things about cutting metals with beams. 

"Micrometers a second" is just pure pseudo-scientific garbage by somebody who knows nothing at all about lasers.  Put enough power behind a laser and it's able to cut just about anything up close.

In the real world, there are complications to making them effective weapons, especially when using them in atmospheres over relatively long distances.  Scattering, thermal bloom and ionization along the beam path, etc., along with putting a long-duration beam on a target for any length of time present a lot of problems.  This is why, despite lasers being a thing for almost 70 years now, we're just now figuring out how to use them to intercept anti-ship missiles and other targets, and the current weapons still aren't as effective as their old-fashioned alternatives.  It turned out to be pretty tricky to get energy from A to B any more efficiently than a bullet does; but bullets have been through centuries of design and lasers are still pretty new; it'll happen eventually.

In space, when we're talking about short-duration, high-energy beams, they're actually better weapons than you'd think, because most of these problems no longer pertain and the weird conditions of space warfare come into play. 

What happens is that the surface gets converted into a plasma, which expands rapidly, causing shockwaves. 

Here on Earth, when using industrial lasers to cut metals, we avoided this effect (which we called a "blowout", because it was like a miniature volcano of molten steel flying everywhere, heh) by blowing compressed, near-liquid oxygen or nitrogen onto the area being cut- partially to blow out the melted bits, partially to cool the edges of the cut to prevent it being overly ragged, and, in the case of oxygen-cutting, we were deliberately assisting the laser's combustion of the iron.

Also, bear in mind that in space, a lot of severe temperature differentials will be present; a beam weapon hitting a part of a ship that's super-cold will cause quite a lot of damage from bits splitting off due to thermal shearing forces. 

If that seems odd... try this experiment at home.  Take a hot lightbulb out of a socket and throw it into a cold bucket of water; it'll crack and probably implode quite energetically (er, maybe don't try this at home, unless you like cleaning up glass).  Now imagine it's some hard armor plate that's currently -300 Celcius and the surface just got heated to 10K C.  The result will be more like "bang" than "micrometers per second", lol.

So the idea that Beams "ablate" armor is largely incorrect; at the energy levels we'd expect in futuristic combat, it'd be more like little explosions happening everywhere the beam touches, with some areas taking more damage than others. 

The mechanic of making beams more powerful up close is firmly based on science (well, provided that we presume scales in SS are purely nominal); even in a vacuum, lasers spread out- a beam that's a pin-point at point blank will be quite a lot larger at one light-second, and the energy-per-square-inch goes down even faster than that, because even "empty space" has some dust and things floating in it, although far less than an atmosphere.  So that's a very real thing; a beam that would be devastating at one light-second will probably just be good for toasting bread at one light-minute, and will make a nice safe spot-light at one light-hour.

Anyhow, that's the layman's version of the science, so far as I know anything. 

This game isn't a truly scientific simulation of anything, though, so I really care a lot less about realism than I care about whether beams have good roles to play and are worth installing.   These suggestions were part of some explorations I'm still doing over here, but they looked promising.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Linnis on March 18, 2018, 03:47:37 PM
Well atleast there is a "volcano" like continuous "explosion" of stuff coming out of impact point of lasers.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Tartiflette on March 18, 2018, 06:09:36 PM
 You can read a lot about lasers in the context of space warfare on Atomic Rockets:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php
The part about their energy efficiency is particularly telling, compared to pretty much any other type of weapon.
(Also cold? An actual spaceship? Have you heard how difficult it is to cool these things off?)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 18, 2018, 07:53:35 PM
Quote
(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?

As for practical effects... in the real world, it depends on what part of the ship and a bunch of other factors.  Spacecraft are not exactly radiating evenly; some parts will be quite cold and some are quite hot.  Depends on a bunch of things.  It's more accurate to say that "space is really cold, but parts inside a spacecraft may have major problems with heat distribution and buildup because of the problems with heat transfer in zero G".

The Atomic Spaceship guys are down on lasers, and that's a consistent theme.  

But... their assumptions are weird.  

They throw out the word "diffraction" and don't really explore what's possible in regards to collimated beams.  Essentially, a laser weapon could, in theory, adjust the point of least diffraction dynamically, based on the target's current distance from the target; this is much of the theory behind current laser weapons research using LED arrays- not just pushing out sheer power, but making the power arrive really efficiently at the target point, so that you aren't wasting energy defeating thermal bloom, etc., quite as much.

Their other big assumption has to do with effects of rapid vaporization on structures due to lasers or other high-energy beams.  

There isn't lots of research available to the general public on this, but, based on my practical experience, I can tell you that a beam that doesn't blow through an armor plate will do pretty unexpected (and violent) things to it, at least in an atmosphere.  

The most dangerous part of cutting thick steels (we cut up to 1 1/2" Hot-Rolled P&O steel, which is a pretty mild steel with relatively low reflectivity) was the initial piercing of the steel, where chunks of steel might shatter out and blow all over the place, leaving a dent in the plate that looked like somebody had shot it with a bullet; heat stress shearing was real problem.  

We had to compensate by programming in a slow pierce cycle, where we basically cycled the laser on and off about every tenth of a second and blew oxygen out, resulting in a pierce time of about 15 seconds, if we wanted to minimize blowouts.  When we were first doing test-cuts on that material, we blew out chunks of red-hot steel with quite-audible "bangs", fountains of sparks, and you could feel the vibrations through the enormous mass of the plate.

And this was a late-1980's tech, giant inefficient laser that was relatively low-wattage and wasn't designed for a military use at all, that was being used on a material that wasn't even officially within spec (official spec, IIRC, was 3/4" HR P&O; we were cutting double that).

So, while I certainly haven't worked for any military designing laser weapons, I feel pretty confident in saying that, while there are problems, they aren't what the Atomic Rocket guys think they are.  But hey, just view this and tell me laser weapons don't work... does that look like gentle, "micrometers/second" or more like what I'm talking about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyUh_xSjvXQ
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 18, 2018, 08:13:03 PM
Only with respect to a game that has since made lasers effective. (At least theirnforums think so)

And well it’s also only relevant to a system where Delta-V is important. As ship velocities get higher (and the idea that these ships have hilarious lasers but low thrust engines is kinda funny) laser range issues dissolve and the advantages skyrocket.

Edit: and of course beams do not need to be lasers. As an example we can look at pulsars.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: intrinsic_parity on March 19, 2018, 12:26:35 AM
The article suggests that diffraction would be a huge issue, but diffraction only occurs when waves interact with physical objects. It's certainly an issue in the atmosphere since the light will diffract around gas particles, but there is virtually no matter in space. It might be an issue over very extreme distances where the number of dust particles might become enough to cause issues. However, they were likely getting confused with divergence, but that is an issue of focusing which can be adjusted. You just need a big mirror to focus at very long distances.

In terms of heat issues with spacecraft, I've done some thermal analysis for a cubesat and it is very dependent on specific circumstances. In the light part of the orbit (when the sun is up) temperatures would get quite hot but in the dark orbit, things get colder. It also depends on what components are running, certain parts of the satellite would generate a lot more heat than others so there would be hot spots on the satellite. I remember the temperature ranges being like 0 to 70 degrees C or something like that. It's actually not very hard to keep a satellite cold or hot, it's hard to design it so that it will be warm enough in dark orbit and cold enough in light orbit. In the starsector universe though, technology exists to let ships fly very close to a star so I think they must have very advanced thermal management technology. Still, the temperature that a laser would heat something to would much higher than any temperature you would design the craft for, so thermal stress would definitely be a factor.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Thaago on March 19, 2018, 09:22:31 AM
Atomic Rockets tends to have very strongly worded opinion pieces - sometimes accurate, sometimes not. The piece on lasers is correct in that divergence angle is limited by aperture size for a Gaussian beam by diffraction - solutions to the wave equation, given the initial conditions of an aperture, just don't support a perfectly straight beam. Thats of course the math for a single emitter - with multiple emitters things get more complicated, but essentially the aperture size becomes the distance between the farthest emitters in terms of the diffraction limit - the idea that you need to have a giant mirror or giant solid optic is wrong. And thats before taking into account the recent advances in meta-material optics that ignore diffraction limited focusing altogether by being weird.

Basically, the Atomic Rockets/Children of a Dead Earth reasoning is sound, but based on the very basics of optics; its current to knowledge from about 40 years ago. Optics have advanced.

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*.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 19, 2018, 10:14:17 PM
Quote
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. 

We had a job once where we bored holes through a giant piece of 1/2" aluminum that had been pressed into a shape of almost precisely the angle described, in fact (it was a giant cone for some industrialized food process at Gerber).  Guess what?  It worked just fine; we weren't having to frantically dodge laser radiation bouncing around the shop, lol.  Our difficulty was getting the work piece below the usual bed our machine used because we couldn't traverse the laser head high enough otherwise, not punching holes in the aluminium... ::)

In fact, beams interacting with slanted armor in general is a bit different than that author described, at least based on what I learned at that job.  Unlike a single projectile, a beam's going rapidly to carve a step into practically anything it comes into contact with, at any angle (helped by thermal shearing) and then, if it's (magically) staying on the same spot, it'll be no different than anything else.  This is not to say that angle and reflectivity "don't matter", but they don't matter as much as one would think, because it only effects the beam very briefly.  Now, in space, at high velocities (and more importantly, high delta-V being used copiously) it would make a real difference, but it certainly wouldn't provide invulnerability.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Cyan Leader on March 21, 2018, 08:38:51 AM
Explosive damage beams are also counter intuitive given how weak they are irl at penetrating things.

I don't know man. I mean, beams are used all around in fiction as very destructive things.
See http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/244160/ss_00c4865153238dfa69fa88e135d23577e152bc79.1920x1080.jpg

I kinda wish there was a slow charging beam with a lot of firepower in the game.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: c plus one on March 21, 2018, 02:38:14 PM
I kinda wish there was a slow charging beam with a lot of firepower in the game.

IIRC, all energy weapons used to do that at player command (beams included), along a curve where extra damage output scaled up according to firing ship's hard-flux level.

That feature was - imho, unwisely - removed from the game.
I would personally enjoy having it return.

Regarding your own wish, I would like to see at least three beams that work as you described. One each in small-, medium- and large-mount sizes. Let's call the large one the "Wave Motion Gun". ;)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 21, 2018, 03:12:07 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 21, 2018, 09:58:06 PM
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.

Also, you missed one of the weapons that really lost out on the change: the plasma cannon is basically unusable in the current game due to absurdly high flux costs; you can get away with two on a Paragon and... that's it.  Nothing else worth fielding can support even one of the things anymore.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 21, 2018, 10:22:24 PM
What I liked about high flux damage bonus is that there were 2 approaches to fighting:
- vent as soon and often as possible.
- keep close to max flux and use the bonus.

Now only the first tactic is valid.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 22, 2018, 07:02:28 AM
Plasma cannon was unchanged at first and was worse than heavy blaster.  Heavy blaster becoming nearly as powerful for 18 less OP and 100 less range.  Also, autopulse did not get enough of a boost (such that heavy blaster overtook DPS after only few seconds of sustained fire).  At that time, heavy blaster was the best weapon for heavy mount due to combination of power and OP cost.  Then plasma got the damage boost plus passthrough (and autopulse too).  However, Alex also raised the flux cost, which no other energy weapon got as part of the rebalance (except possibly autopulse when he raised damage a bit more too).  The flux cost for plasma cannon became atrocious, although at the time, skills were powerful enough that it was usable.  Today, with worse skills and flux stats, the flux cost is so bad that it is only viable as a playership weapon if the player vent spams, which is still a thing.  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).

Come to think of it, the flux cost of blasters are atrociously bad, especially mining blaster.  Also, pulse lasers are also flux hogs for midline ships.  Energy weapons that are not beams or cannot hit for EMP are bad for midline ships due to poor range and flux efficiency.

I would not mind seeing flux costs for energy weapons lowered across the board (or damage raised so high that they are comparable to what they were during the days of clips for ballistics) so that they are a viable option for midline ships.

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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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 22, 2018, 02:29:38 PM
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).

The Odyssey is a great ship* and one of the few battleships that are competent with a low amount of skills. You should barely even have to turn the shields on in order to fight with it. You just zoom around at 143 speed volleying frigates and destroyers until only large ships are left.

*Helsmanship 3/Human Pilot. Ideal load-out is 2 Tachyon Lance Primary + 2 Xyphos/Spark for point defense + Autopulse or Plasma Cannon on the back side. ITU is core. Advanced Turret + Aux Thrusters advisable but not necessary. Salamanders + ECCM + Missile Speed 1 is nice as well but also unnecessary.

Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 22, 2018, 03:01:57 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 22, 2018, 03:28:33 PM
To add to Wyvern's point, if I want to hunt small ships with a capital, Astral and Legion are better at it than Odyssey due to more fighters.  Plus, Astral and Legion can fight other capitals effectively.  Odyssey is really bad when even Conquest can crush it as easily as Onslaught can, and Legion can probably outfight Odyssey with better guns and more fighters.  Odyssey is the only capital that cannot fight any of its peers in a slugging match, and it is not fast enough to overtake most smaller ships (including those with less top speed but superb mobility systems).

Tachyon Lance is one of the few viable weapons for Odyssey, if you want to play sniper.  However, Paragon is far better at sniping with Lances than Odyssey.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 22, 2018, 05:42:56 PM
Oddesy kills smaller ships much faster and more efficiently while still being able to bring effective firepower against capitals. The inability to swiftly swap between targets makes the legion and Astral much less effective at clearing out the blockers. You don’t “hunt small ships with fighters” you volley them with your tachyon lances and then volley another one when they come up again as you circle the main fleet pinning them into poor positions against the rest of your fleet and removing their support structure.

The inability to travel 140 speed means they’re less able to flank and create other tactical openings. The fact that they’re not fast enough to dodge incoming fire means they have much less effective cap for fire.

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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 22, 2018, 06:04:53 PM
The vast majority of ships that Odyssey can fight are fast enough to avoid it entirely.  Most of the ships the Odyssey can outspeed are enemy capitals that can outgun it easily.  As for Odyssey fighting capitals, Odyssey has some firepower, but it loses the flux war before it can get very many shots off due to bad shields (and either terrible shot range or weak beams that cannot get past shields without help).  The reason Astral and Legion are better against small ships is because fighters are fast enough to chase down and destroy small ships by themselves, and Astral and Legion have more fighters than Odyssey.

Conquest that spams its Jets is almost as fast as Odyssey, and if built properly, can go toe-to-toe against any other capital except maybe Paragon (if Conquest does not use Gauss Cannons).

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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."

If I do not feel like deploying Astral or Legion as super-ship that can kill almost everything, then I can deploy Drover or Heron and solo a fleet of small fry for less cost.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 22, 2018, 06:49:47 PM
A drover or heron or 4 is simply not effective against large numbers of enemy ships. When you hit the point where enemy fleets require reinforcements to field the entirety of you will get overwhelmed. Either you’re using strike craft and are subject to return/travel times or you’re at the mercy of enemy interceptors and point defense.

The Oddssy does not suffer those problems. It just slices through the enemy fleet; shaving off portions with every circle.

Like, the fact that you need to comment on the quality of the shields surprises me. You should barely turn your oddesy’s shields on at all. You should use it far less than the much worse shielded conquest.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 22, 2018, 07:11:20 PM
I use shields on Odyssey (when trying to fight capitals) because it has worse shot range than other capitals (or beams that are completely stopped by shields).  If I am outranged by the enemy, I need shields to block damage.  If I do not use shields, then I take hits... and Odyssey has worse armor (and maybe hull too) than other capitals.

In previous versions, Odyssey could shield tank... not very well, but some.  With worse shields and not enough OP to get more capacitors or Hardened Shields, Odyssey's shields evaporate quickly and loses the flux war when it gets close or takes a worse beating than the enemy capital (who has more armor and possibly hull).

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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).
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 22, 2018, 09:47:03 PM
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... and move fast enough that even HVD has a hard time hitting you... but when you do you can turn the third turret to add hard flux.

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)

Yea if you’re using the Odyssey to tank and spank you’re going to lose to the tank and spank battleships. Quelle surprise! But you shouldn’t be doing that. You should be using defeat in detail to remove ships until the enemies capitals are not an issue because they’re overwhelmed.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 07:06:10 AM
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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.

Tachyon Lance is one of the few viable weapons for Odyssey, but they are much better on Paragon.  Also, Tachyon Lance is rare.  I am lucky to find enough by endgame to outfit one ship, and they go on Paragon, who can use them much more effectively (by having about even more range and can put hard flux on shields with ballistics).

If Tachyon Lance cannot be found, Odyssey is out of luck.  While HIL is a somewhat worse but viable substitute for Sunder and Paragon, it is almost useless for Odyssey, who has no way to put hard flux on shields without fighters.  (IR Pulse Lasers on smalls is not viable due to terrible range - enemy will standoff like cowards and kite-snipe-kill - or simply outgun if capital - Odyssey if tried.)

Odyssey used to be able to tank somewhat (not very well, but a little), but now it cannot, and that is a shame.  High-Energy Focus is better suited for brawling.  Brawling loadouts like triple autopulse or triple plasma cannon used to be viable, but the shield nerf killed those.  Well, almost.  It is possible to brawl if Odyssey uses Claw wings, but that is a high-risk tactic.  If I need to deploy a capital, I need it to stand-off against capitals.  Otherwise, I am better off with a cruiser or two or some other combination of smaller ships.  If I want to be extravagant and kill frigates with a capital, capitals with more fighters are better because fighters are fast enough to chase down and kill frigates that attempt to run-and-turtle before they decide to swarm and kill with superior numbers.

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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.

If you plan to use carriers in your fleet (not as flagship only), Fighter Doctrine 3 is close to a universal god skill as Loadout Design 3, Fleet Logistics 3, and Electronic Warfare 1, since it affects all carriers.  Plus, Fighter Doctrine 2 is the easiest way to get Converted Hangar in an unmodded game, which is great for cruisers and capitals.  Now Eagle, Dominator, and Paragon can be mini-carriers too, and fighters are better regenerators than Salamanders or Pilums.  If I get Fleet Logistics 3 as my #3 perk (#2 being Loadout Design 3 and #1 being Electronic Warfare 1), and if I have Leadership 3 solely for Fleet Logistics 3, then Fighter Doctrine 3 is a bargain at three points.  Now I can include carriers in my fleet and be decent with them.  Carrier Command 3 is good, but player cannot really afford that unless he plans to specialize his flagship for fighters.  (His officers can afford it, though.)  Wing Command 1 is good for slow pokes like Warthogs, but messes up Thunders.  The rest of Wing Command is only good to defend against enemy fighter swarmers, mostly useful for ships that rely entirely on fighters (like Astral; once again, delegate this to officers and use your points on things officers cannot get).  Strike Command has junk perks in 1 and 2.  3 is good, but costs too much to get for a minor damage boost.  Not useful enough in the campaign.  Maybe if trying to solo the simulator.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 23, 2018, 12:41:20 PM
You need half the tachyon lances for an oddesy to do about the same damage as a paragon does with 4 and you are 60 units faster base and 110 units faster effectively because the paragon cannot keep cap minimum while the Oddesy can

That isn’t “a tad bit faster” it’s faster by the base speed of a frigate! You don’t go “chasing frigates down. You just circle the fleet and they will be in range because you will push them in.

You fit an auto pulse or plasma cannon in the rear spot and just turn the ship to apply hard flux damage when necessary.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 12:50:21 PM
The Paragon works because of range and sheer Flux Capacity / Shield Efficiency; its System is pretty lousy and unintuitive to use, but it gets away with it, since players will hardly ever use it and find out how (really) bad it is (if it basically conferred immunity, didn't put Hard Flux on the ship and let the Hard Flux drain happen, it'd be all right- as it stands, when the System goes up and it's taking fire, it's losing the Flux war even faster than if it kept firing).  In Vanilla, the Paragon works unless it gets mobbed by Destoyers and Frigates that can use Kinetics- this will beat it every time.  I don't fear Paragons in Vanilla, given that I tend to go for a mixed-arms approach and almost totally eschew High Tech.

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.

This is totally fixable.  I'm playing a pretty viable, roughly balanced version of the Odyssey right now.

The balanced Odyssey has an efficient shield, better overall Flux stats so that it can fire without running out of room if given reasonably-efficient weapons (i.e., Dissipation > Weapon Flux, by more than enough to afford to spend Soft Flux draining Hard Flux with the Skill; if maxed on Dissipation and kitted out well, the ratio's about 1.5:1).  This makes it able to shield-tank long enough to stay in a scrum (it still has relatively-poor Armor values, so it doesn't like dropping shields).  

Its System is High Energy Focus, which has been rebalanced so that it improves damage enough to matter.  It also has turret arcs that are sensible; at an angle, on one side, it can bring all three Large Energy turrets to bear., and can usually bring two to bear, rather than the current situation, where there's barely any functional overlap.

It also is using the rebalanced Energy weapons, which have, at this point, completely different stat-lines, other than OP costs.  In general, I found Energy was the most difficult damage type to get balanced well, but it's generally functional now.  Most Energy weapons had to trade a bit of accuracy or total DPS to get their Flux efficiency into a range where they were solid.

Even in my build, though, and even with my current iteration of weapon rebalance, it can't use an all-Beam build; it's slow enough that it has to alpha small stuff that gets close enough to put Kinetics on it and gradual kills with Beams aren't viable.  But my favorite builds for it often have Beams in supportive roles or as defensive weapons, and a level-29 Captain running an optimized Odyssey can be expected to wreck things very reliably and shield-tanks well enough to avoid being destroyed by anything less than a mob or an Onslaught / Conquest geared for shield-kill.  I think that's how it's supposed to work; the Odyssey should feel like it's the inverse of the Paragon- shorter-ranged, faster, more built for alpha, but more fragile.

So it's the result of a lot of work on different areas.  But in the main, it's largely down to having Energy weapons and Beams be balanced properly, which requires examining the rest of the stuff as well.  This is key; otherwise the only way to make High Tech / Energy builds viable is to give them ridiculously-OP Systems or other crutches.


On specific weapons:

The Tachyon Lance is better than the HIL in Vanilla, but only because of the scripted effect and scary range on the Paragon.  I don't think it's worth mounting on anything but a Paragon right now; the burst damage isn't great and it's only cool against targets with small shields whose Flux levels are already high.

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.  

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).  

So we're talking about a weapon that can fry Fighters and small unshielded Pirate trash, mainly, at a horrific cost for its efficiency, not exactly a world-changer.  I'm sure that looks impressive to people, given that it was useless before, but it's not actually good.

The HIL should be considerably more Flux-efficient than it is, if that's where the damage is set and it's going to keep that damage type.  To put it another way... in Rebal, after getting rid of the hidden Beam nerf, it's at 400 DPS / 235 Flux and is Kinetic, yet it's still not amazingly powerful, it's merely competent as a Flux-trader at that point, when Soft Flux is considered properly.

The Guardian still underperforms against every other PD in the game.   I'd need to double-check, but I'm pretty sure it's even worse per OP spent than the Mining Laser, lol.

In Rebal, it got moved to Medium, range was set to 900, DPS/Flux is 2:1... and it's now effective on ships that actually want high-end PD and are willing to spend 15 OPs on it; it does 150 a strike, so it can efficiently kill Harpoons, but it can't stop swarms of Reapers or even mass Annihilators (due to re-engagement times) and it's not an effective offensive weapon, since it's still Energy and Soft Flux and therefore remains a poor Flux-trader (2:1 Soft Flux Energy damage is worse than 1:1 Hard Flux from anything; this isn't a Light Needler, performance-wise).

So, yeah.  Odyssey's problems are many and none of the Large Energy Slot Beams are tuned well yet, in Vanilla.  But I really didn't start this post to talk much about those weapons, frankly; there are so few ships that can even mount them, they're almost a separate problem (well, other than all the modded stuff out there that probably has suffered, balance-wise, by using Vanilla's numbers as a rough guide).  I'm much more interested in the mid-to-lower end of those things, where I feel like there are some basic fixes available that would help them out.  The big Beams aren't seen all over the game, after all, whereas stuff like the Graviton Beam, Phase Lance, etc. should be seen pretty often, but are largely a waste of OPs.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 23, 2018, 12:51:08 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 01:04:48 PM
More to the point:  what are you fighting?  I can't imagine an Odyssey build, with whatever backup, being super-great against anything but Pirates, at least in Vanilla. 

Now, if we're talking about heavily-modded SS where you're putting efficient modded weapons on it, mod Hull Mods that fix it up, etc., then fine, whatever, but don't tell us that it works in Vanilla against 500K+ Bounty Fleets that aren't Pirates, because I don't buy that.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 23, 2018, 01:15:07 PM
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.  

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).
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).

Here, then, are the -actual- calculations for the HIL.

It does 500 DPS, typed to HE.  So, before armor reduction, it does 1000 DPS against armor.  Since beams tick in 1/10th of a second intervals, that's 100 damage per tick.

Now, for projectile weapons, the armor reduction calculation is: total damage = damage * damage / ( damage + armor ); let's say we're up against an Eagle, a pretty typical mid-tech cruiser with 1000 armor.  So a Heavy Mauler would deal 400 * 400 / ( 400 + 1000 ) = 114 damage.

If we naively assumed that beams worked the same way, that first tick of the HIL would be doing 100 * 100 / ( 100 + 1000 ) = 9 damage.  Fortunately, they don't; instead of using the per-tick damage for armor calculations, 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.

Now, let's get back to that mauler comparison; the mauler fires once every second, so let's see what one second of HIL does... that's 10 ticks, 33 * 10 = 330 damage.  Already much stronger than a mauler, but wait, it gets better - each of those ten ticks is stripping armor, which makes the next tick do a little bit more damage.  Running the numbers out, and making some conservative assumptions along the way (i.e. always rounding damage dealt down to a whole number), it turns out that ten ticks of an HIL does a total of 369 damage against our target Eagle, more than three times the armor stripping power of the heavy mauler.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 23, 2018, 01:19:03 PM
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 fight anything with this build. Though it falters against tier 3 redacted unless my fleet size is large enough to field an extra capital on strike duty. (Whether or not I do). Certain high tech frigates can be annoying but are never a real threat.  Astral fleets that outnumber me 2:1 can sometimes be a problem if the astral is full strike and my AI core decides to split its PD.

This is vanilla.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 01:27:46 PM
Hmm.  I was under the impression that that nerf served as a damage multiplier for that tick vs. Armor, not the total DPS.

It's HE, so 2:1; then it gets multiplied by 0.5.  So it's 1:1 at that point, 500 DPS, divided by how many ticks / second Beams actually do their thing.

I thought Beams were damaging stuff 30 ticks / second, not 10.  Wherever that number is set, that's very important.

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.

Also, that's not what it said when that factor was added; read here:

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5813.msg91539#msg91539

And that's not what you said here, either:

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.msg208394#msg208394

So... where are you getting this "total DPS" argument from?  Everything that's documented here points to it being a per-tick multiplier that effectively nerfs Beams against Armor for some reasons lost in the mists of 0.6, when it was added.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 23, 2018, 01:40:27 PM
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.
(It's also possible that the tenth of a second intervals I was using are obsolete; I calculated that many versions of starsector ago when I was testing burst beams, and found that a burst beam with a .25s duration did not, in practice, do any more damage than a burst beam with a .2s duration.)

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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 23, 2018, 01:50:54 PM
That's exactly what I've said before, and also exactly what the patch notes say.
Quote from: Alex
dpsToHitStrengthMult: used to compute vs-armor "hit strength" for beam weapons
That "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.)

Where it gets complicated is with burst beams (as discussed in the post you linked - note that the numbers listed in that specific post are all either effective "hit strength", or pre-armor damage numbers), who penetrate armor based on what I called 'raw' DPS; that's the number you'd see if you opened up weapons.csv, and the DPS you'd get if the beam was firing continuously rather than in bursts.  The codex, by contrast, shows a lower DPS value that represents damage done over time, counting the times where the gun is firing as well as the times where it's not.

Edit2: It's also worth noting that the post you linked to isn't actually one of my posts - it's a post containing a quote from me, and an incorrect application of some of the numbers I provided; you may want to also look at my response to it, here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.msg208415#msg208415
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 01:55:35 PM
Well, how we arrive at the number is important, actually.  Order-of-Operations pertains and in this case, it matters a bit.

Quote
dpsToHitStrengthMult: used to compute vs-armor "hit strength" for beam weapons
Isn't actually clear; it's totally unclear when the tickrate is applied- before or after baseline DPS.

I'll write some code to find out exactly how this works, I guess, if Alex isn't willing to post that code.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 01:56:35 PM
My grievance with Odyssey is primarily one-on-one duels against enemy capital, or one-against-many.  Every ship benefits help from a fleet, but if Odyssey needs help to fight capitals while other capitals do not (or need less of it), then why use Odyssey when I can use a better (and possibly more common) capital when I need a capital?

@ 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?

Quote
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.)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 01:59:54 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 02:07:45 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Alex on March 23, 2018, 02:29:47 PM
(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.)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 23, 2018, 02:47:35 PM
(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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Alex on March 23, 2018, 02:49:15 PM
Hah, nice :)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Blothorn on March 23, 2018, 03:22:28 PM
@ 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?

For one thing, the pulse laser is garbage against armor--100 nominal damage per shot translates to a mere 20 against 400 armor. By contrast, the phase lance loses less than half its power against that armor. Its burstiness also allows you to make the most of HEF, exploit brief windows where the enemy turns a shield to catch a missile, etc.

Now I do tend to agree with "if my ship cannot use kinetics to back Phase Lance up, why bother"--but that highlights one situation in which the pulse laser is superior while ignoring the situations in which the phase lance is superior. Really, they fill entirely different roles--the phase lance (along with most slow-firing burst lasers) is a finisher, the pulse laser a setup/attrition weapon.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Thaago on March 23, 2018, 04:01:34 PM
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.

On topic: for anything below destroyers I find pulse lasers underwhelming without something else to help crack the armor. I'm quite in love with having 1 heavy blaster in the center medium slot of an Eagle though. The short range works well with its role as an armor/hull high dps cracker - by the time its in range, tactical conditions are correct for it to fire. And against smaller threats that might try to skirmish, its a 'go away now or be wrecked' gun.

My go-to AI Eagle at the moment for end game work: 2xHeavy Needler, 1x Heavy Mauler, 1xHeavy Blaster, 5x burst pd laser (really pretty to have all 5 in a ring...), 2x sabots, 2x pd lasers in rear.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 04:31:37 PM
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.


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.

Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 04:34:32 PM
@ Blothorn: Phase Lance is better than pulse laser as a burst weapon, it has that advantage.  But if I want a burst weapon, blaster is usually superior.  Better damage, hits for hard flux, and best of all - no need to maintain fire for about a second.  Just pop of a shot in an instant, and it is done.  Now if phase lance hit for hard flux or had some meaningful advantage (like more range), okay.  But, it really does not.  Well, I guess it does if you have Advanced Optics (meaning either Tri-Tachyon commission or lucky endgame drop) or Safety Override (if ship cannot support pulse laser).

Pulse laser is not that great at armor, but with an all-energy ship, shields are a greater problem than armor.  Armor will wear down eventually.  Shields regenerate.  If my ship can use mixed arms, sure, I will think more about armor.  But if all I can use is a one-size-fits-all hammer.  Well, regenerating defense is higher priority to neutralize.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 04:39:46 PM
As for Phase Lance... yeah.  It needs to have pretty absurd efficiency to be all that great, at its short range.  IIRC, I currently have it doing some pretty ridiculous burst damage with a long timer, so that it has a role as "evaporator of Frigates" and can kill Destroyers in two bursts over 10 seconds or so.  That gave it a point as a close-in assault gun that did something nothing else does- it won't put Hard Flux on like AM Blasters, and you don't want to hit shields with it, but it's nasty vs. unprotected armor.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Blothorn on March 23, 2018, 05:09:06 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 23, 2018, 05:14:38 PM
OK, then it's:

(500)^2 / (1500) = 166.7 per tick, or 1667 Armor per second.  

That's unbelievably high.  I'm pretty sure HIL's don't pierce Eagles in less than a second.  Remember, on the next tick that would be the same equation, but against lower Armor; this way simply can't be correct.

The tick-length has to be factored in here.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Alex on March 23, 2018, 05:19:27 PM
@xenoargh:

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.

It's like everything else, except the "hit strength" is half the vs-armor dps of the beam. So, use the hit strength to figure out the vs-armor multiplier, then apply that to the actual damage, which in this case is 1000 * 0.1 (for the 1/10th of a second tick).

(I think what's tripping you up comes from factoring the damage into the equation and thinking of it as the armor damage reduction formula, so you've got "damage^2/(damage + armor)" in your mind, but the armor reduction is just "hit strength / (hit strength + armor)", and beams are a case where hit strength != damage.)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 23, 2018, 05:32:37 PM
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.

He doesn’t have armor damage reduction as a function of tick rate.  He has total dps as a function of tick rate. It’s all multiplicative so it’s cummative.

As an aside while tick rate doesn’t have an effect on immediate armor pen it does have an effect on armor pen/second.

The higher the tick rate the faster you penetrate armor because you’re stripping armor. For the next tick armor has been reduced and so you do more damage.  



Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 06:03:01 PM
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.

P.S.
Re: Pulse Laser vs. Heavy Blaster
If the ship has two medium energy mounts, what I like to use instead of two pulse lasers is one heavy blaster and one tactical laser.  The latter combo is nearly as damaging and efficient as two pulse lasers, except it costs much less OP to use.  The only weakness of the combo is the obnoxious rarity of heavy blasters (unless I fight a bunch of enemies with blasters and loot them).
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Thaago on March 23, 2018, 06:04:06 PM
...

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.



I think I see the problem - is your Paragon flux neutral? The cycle for a Paragon that is surrounded should be:

1) Maul the crap out of any ship in the game by dumping the flux pool. Seriously, everything but another Paragon should be hurting.
2) Activate Fortress Shield to bleed off soft flux/recharge weapons. The hard flux gain is significantly less than the soft flux lost.
3) Either repeat step 1-2 or do a tactical quick vent, taking some rounds to the armor but not a strike barrage. In practice, you can do several cycles of 1-2 if your enemy is light, or you can do a 1/3 flux vent and start fresh.

This is why a Paragon should always be "overgunned", even with its high dissipation. Very, very overgunned.

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.

Flickering well as a player requires so much situational awareness, but is very rewarding. Nothing like switching on for a half second to catch a sabot salvo. But yeah, annoying to fight against.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 23, 2018, 06:10:40 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: xenoargh on March 24, 2018, 05:48:13 PM
@Thaago:  hmm.  Most of the time, I'm equipping a Paragon to be the "anvil".  It's too slow to be fun to play that style, and the AI can't really do what you're describing all that well.   I can see the point, if you're taking practically no Hard Flux during the fight, though. 

Most of the time, though, a Paragon doesn't get the luxury of putting everything around it into Flux trouble; against high-level Bounties, it has to survive being surrounded and under pretty constant fire.  That doesn't allow for a maxed-out, wasteful alpha build.  In general, under the current conditions of fighting high-end Bounties, I don't find alpha designs at all attractive for the AI and generally speaking, they're usually not as good for human players as having something maneuverable that can be the critical mass.


@Alex:  Right, that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of; where that number's coming from.

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?

That seems a bit strange, given how the real-world results tend to go.  I don't think of the Mauler as something that gently chips armor off, or takes roughly 10 hits on the same spot to penetrate an Eagle.  The nearby-armor-cells rules tend to make big hits go exponential past the early tipping-points when the reduction's high enough.

I'm simply going to have to write some code and test this stuff out, I guess.  Meanwhile...

The problem with the HIL is that, for a weapon that takes a Large Slot, uses 20 OPs, does no Hard Flux and is, in general, not scary vs. anything with a shield up, it's simply not competitive.  The Tachyon Lance is better, simply because it avoids Shields if Flux is high enough; the Plasma Cannon's better, because it puts Hard Flux on shields.   That's kind of the end of the story; for it to perform well-enough in HE, it either needs to be efficient-enough that it's not a pathetically-bad Flux trader, or it needs a mechanic that gives it a good advantage.  Perhaps it should trade continuous fire for a pulse; then it can trade very effective performance and Flux efficiency for lower DPS overall.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Thaago on March 24, 2018, 07:48:53 PM
On a Paragon being surrounded and under constant fire is exactly where you want to be for an alpha build. Its a target rich environment for dumping flux into straight murderatory fun time! (Murderlicious? Murderatrocity? Shialebuffamurderationtime?)

I get where you're coming from - with any other ship/system having a high alpha build and being surrounded is bad news, and a less aggressive flux ratio is totally the way to go. I recommend giving it a second chance on the Paragon though.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 24, 2018, 08:27:43 PM
Being surrounded is definitely the point where the flux dump strategy works. So long as you kill what you hit you can chip the enemy force down to size fairly easily.

Key is to have semi-efficient weapons in the non-large slots. Heavy blasters in the medium slots go a long way to murdering things.

Re: HIL

The HIL is not “strictly inferior to the tachyon beam”. Ok it is on the Paragon and Oddesy but on other ships the HIL has twice the damage/flux against armor. It also has nearly three times the total DPS against armor.

This is tempered by the high burst values of the tachyon lance but the HIL will generally be more efficient.

I prefer the HIL on the Apogee for instance. And sometimes on the sunder too
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 24, 2018, 10:06:59 PM
@Alex:  Right, that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of; where that number's coming from.

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?
Still not getting the math quite right.

Here, let's try this again.

Damage dealt to armor = damage of attack * reduction from armor
reduction from armor = hit strength / (hit strength + armor)

For any projectile weapon, damage of attack = hit strength.  So a heavy mauler's 200 damage gets multiplied by two, to 400, because it's typed as HE.  Then we plug that into the above formulas.

reduction from armor = 400 / (400+1000) = 2/7 ~= .286
damage dealt to armor = 400 * 2/7 ~= 114

The mauler's fire rate is one shot per second; if we pretend that there's no bleed-through to hull and that we're dealing all of our damage to a single armor cell (both bad assumptions, but they make the math -much- simpler), then it ends up taking seven hits to reduce that 1000 armor to zero, so, seven seconds to completely strip an Eagle's armor with one heavy mauler.
1000 - 114 = 886
    400 * 400 / (400+886) = 124
886 - 124 = 762
    400 * 400 / (400+762) = 137
762 - 137 = 625
    400 * 400 / (400+625) = 156
625 - 156 = 469
    400 * 400 / (400+469) = 184
469 - 184 = 285
    400 * 400 / (400+285) = 233
285 - 233 = 52
    400 * 400 / (400+52) = 353
And we've hit zero armor after seven seconds.

* * *

For beam weapons, hit strength = 1/2 DPS.  The HIL is 500 DPS; x2 because it's HE; plug that in and we get a hit strength of 500.  So for 1000 armor:

reduction from armor = 500 / (500+1000) = 1/3 ~= .333

Now, how much does one tick of the HIL do?  Let's consider three different tick rates, just for fun.

Ticks once per second (it definitely doesn't do this, but if it did, here's how the math would work):
damage per tick = 1000 * .333 = 333, for 333 DPS.

Ticks ten times per second:
damage per tick = 100 * .333 = 33, for 330 DPS (actually slightly higher due to intermediate armor reductions, but if we were shooting at something where 1000 armor was its 5% minimum value, this is what we'd get.)

Ticks thirty times per second:
damage per tick = 33 * .333 = 11, for 330 DPS (with the same caveats as the 10 ticks per second case).

If I run the numbers out for the ten ticks per second case (and no, I'm not going to write down all the equations along the way like I did for the mauler), it ends up taking twenty ticks to burn through 1000 armor... which is all of two seconds.

* * *

Now, all of the above is just theorycrafting - as noted, I ignored the fact that armor is split into multiple cells, and the fact that some damage can bleed through to hull even before the armor's gone.

So, let's run a test in-game; fire up a mission with an Eagle (The Last Hurrah works fine), give it 2x heavy needler under player control, and 1x heavy mauler on autofire; put yourself in the simulator against another eagle and see how it goes.  Stop firing the needlers when the enemy eagle drops shields, and, depending on how accurate you are with the mauler, it does indeed take around seven shots to break through its armor.  (It took me nine shots, personally, but that's because I wasn't able to land all my shots on the same spot every time; two of them went wide.)

Now let's try again with an HIL; the Sunder is probably the best platform for this...  There's also a Sunder in the Last Hurrah; I went with 1x HIL, 2x railgun, ITU, hardened shields, flux distributor, stabilized shields, 17 capacitors and 20 flux vents.  It's a bit harder to convince an Eagle to drop shields like this - I had to use the HIL to shoot down its sabot missiles, and vent while in beam range a few times - but it's doable.  One mississippi, two mississippi, yup that's hull damage I see going past.

Conclusion: the theorycrafting I did under a single-armor-cell assumption is at least close enough to how the actual game works that I'm happy to continue using it.
Edit: Just for funsies I ran one more test, using an Eagle again, and this time -not- halting fire of other weapons when the enemy Eagle's shields went down.  With the extra chip damage from other weaponry mixed in, its armor broke after only around five mauler hits on the same spot; this is probably what you'd be more likely to see in actual play.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 25, 2018, 06:30:37 AM
Re: HIL
Every time I tried HIL vs. Tachyon Lance against enemies, time-to-kill with Tachyon Lance is always faster than with HIL, or even HIL and Ion Beam combo.  The conclusion I reached is HIL would be okay as a common Open Market weapon much like Heavy Mortar is to Heavy Mauler.  But unlike Heavy Mortar, HIL is semi-rare.  I do not find very many HIL either, but more than Tachyon Lances.

How is HIL useful on Odyssey without support from other ships?  Even if player wants to rely on AI faults with shield for free hits, the beam does not reach the enemy instantly, and if it manages to score a hit before enemy shields fully raise, it is not long enough before shields are fully up and the HIL blocked before it can do significant damage.

With Tachyon Lance, at least Odyssey can sometimes cheese the AI and get free hits, and maybe overload a few weak ships.  That makes it viable for Odyssey.  HIL can do neither and (assuming solo) Odyssey must rely totally on its fighters for hard-flux.  But two wings of fighters is not much against bigger ships that will eat them up.  If I use any other weapon for hard flux (e.g., autopulse, plasma cannon, or tons of IR pulse lasers), I run into the problem of getting badly outranged by capitals and losing the flux war before Odyssey can get close enough to attack because fragile shield with no capacitors (and not enough OP to fix that) means near full bar of hard flux before Odyssey is in range to fire its weapons (or at least enough that Odyssey cannot afford to fire its heavy weapon flux hogs), and it cannot rely on armor and hull to take hits because enemy capital has more of it than Odyssey.  (Claw wings can sometimes disable the enemy, so that Odyssey can approach safely, but that is not reliable.)

As for Sunder and Paragon, HIL is useful enough to use if player does not have any Tachyon Lances to use, thanks to backup from needlers or HVDs, but if I have Lances, the HILs will be left to rust.  Tachyon Lance alone is cheaper (OP cost) and more effective than HIL and Ion Beam combo (as Tachyon Lance substitute).  In case of Paragon, with Lances, I can fill my medium slots with Heavy Blasters instead of Ion Beams so it can dump flux pool and kill enemies that get too close fast.

I do not bother with Apogee - too slow and too short ranged to force fights, but if I must use it, I use plasma cannon (and almost nothing else; thanks to flares, I do not need beam pd badly) because it desperately needs the shot range that can hit for hard flux.  Apogee is bad enough that there are better and more common options, like Eagle.  Plasma cannon is rare until player can farm them from Brilliants at endgame.  One more thing about Apogee, change the heavy energy into a hybrid, so it can have more shot range and be a bit like the Brilliant.  Brilliant is similar to Apogee, weird and stuff, except it trades capacity for flight deck, and it can use ballistics.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Grievous69 on March 25, 2018, 11:34:11 AM
To the OP: I feel like beams are supposed to be support weapons in a way that they complement your build, not like assault weapons as you said since then you could just put all beams on a ship and go ham. Tachyon Lance is a different story of course. Imo the main problem is a lack of energy weapons which put hard flux on shields and have similar range as beams. As it is now, you either have to build a speedy ship with pulse weapons and blasters, or rely on your allied ships and fighters to deal hard flux.

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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 25, 2018, 12:26:15 PM
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.

For Legion, I might need to leave a few smalls empty, but Vulcans are not too critical when Legion has three or four dual flak defending it.  Legion barely has enough OP to get everything it needs, although it might need to skimp on a few small weapons.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Grievous69 on March 25, 2018, 01:00:48 PM
And that's what I'm trying to say, high-tech ships are in a weird spot because you can't really do much with them. For example an Eagle, midline ship that you see everywhere has so much different builds which all work in their own way. Then you have ships such as Apogee, Aurora, Odyssey... with mostly energy weapon mounts and they have one build that you can actually use decently(maybe 2 depending on the ship). Kinda sad that most high-tech ships need special treatment (Paragon with crazy range, Aurora with jets and so on) to make them worthwile. Hmmm what could that mean?

You and me both man, when Pilums were much faster than now, I pretty much had it on every ship that could support it since they regenerate. Even Salamanders I have a hard time justifying it on something since fighters are now in every fight.

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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 25, 2018, 03:15:35 PM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Schwartz on March 25, 2018, 06:21:46 PM
I like the Odyssey with dedicated missile slots, but would like to see OP increased.

HIL is a fine large mount weapon. Use it all the time on Sunder in conjunction with 2x Gravitons. For steady pressure it works better, and pairing Tachyon with two medium beams is more awkward because there aren't any that do burst at that range. I don't see it as a junk option but a viable large mount for Sunder and Odyssey.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 25, 2018, 07:14:52 PM
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.

You really shouldn’t have much in the small mounts anyway in an Oddesy. The ones you want to fill first will all be on the soft side as well.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 25, 2018, 07:58:12 PM
What soft side?  I guess that is the nose of the ship because that is what get pointed at enemies to get all three heavies aimed at a target at the same time, not to mention that is where shield first appears when Front Shield Emitter is installed (which I do not think I use now).  (I am fairly good at aiming all three heavy turrets on target thanks to lots of practice in earlier versions when Odyssey was decent.)

Having lots of cheaper PD lasers make up for their weakness somewhat.  Most energy PD is not like Vulcan or Flak where one might be enough.  Ship needs at least two or three to stop missiles before they hit.

With old skills and when LR PD was terrible, I often used Tac Laser + IPDAI + Gyros for PD.  Now, I use LR PD Lasers (which are good now) as an alternate.  (Burst PD is too rare and costs too much OP even if some mounts are left empty.)

IR Pulse Lasers used to be fun when shields were not terrible and enemies charged in.  Now, IR Pulse Laser spam gets Odyssey killed.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 25, 2018, 10:25:53 PM
You fly the Oddesy like you fly the conquest. Circling around the enemy. The rear large turret is your soft side, there primarily to fend off enemies that get behind you. You still want a hard flux gun back there so you can turn it to the enemy when you need it, and range isn’t that important because if you ever get a capital behind you you’re running from them anyway.

PD is pointless except maybe one or two burst at the engines.. You have two fighters so sparks will give you 5 burst PDs per wing or Xyphos will give you 2 plus 2 ion beams for low shield punishment.  You don’t engage with your fighters, they’re free slots for you effectively.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 26, 2018, 09:57:22 AM
@ 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.)

If I am forced to stay close to the enemy because of fighter escorts and making it harder for an enemy ship to pillbox Odyssey, then I noticed that a pair of blasters and several IR pulse lasers is more efficient than two plasma cannons (and more sustainable than two autopulse), and costs less OP, meaning more OP for capacitors and better flux stats for shield tanking.  Plasma cannon is a real hog.  Autopulse is kind of piggy on OP too if the ship needs Expanded Magazines for more shots.

Loadout Design 3 is a big help for Odyssey (and for everything else, especially carriers).  If it leaves most weapons empty, it might have enough OP to afford Hardened Shields and high capacitors, which lets it shield tank somewhat like it used to, but that is a huge sacrifice that other capitals do not need to make.  If I skimp that much, then smaller enemy ships have an easier time flanking Odyssey, because everything significant is on one side.

The main reason to use fighters is mostly to sic them against cowardly small ships that most ships cannot catch, although keeping bombers as escorts for unlimited missiles can be useful too.  If I need to keep non-bombers as personal escorts, that defeats the point of using fighters.  Might as well use a dedicated warship better at defending itself.

I still have no practical reason to use Odyssey instead of any other capital or a pair of cruisers.  Odyssey needs its 0.8 shield back and some OP relief (either more OP or free builtin ITU).
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 26, 2018, 11:21:31 AM
@ 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.)

Skill-less 3xTL, rest Tac Lasers beats sim Onslaught fairly reliably and almost without taking damage. Not even that long fight, assuming Longbows perform well enough. No need to flank it either.
Funnily enough, sim Conquest might be a more difficult target (or at least time-consuming), because you need to drain it's Squalls before being able to attack properly. Plus there is minor, but real threat of being cornered before this happens (since Conquest pushes quite aggressively in this scenario).
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.

With that said, I just don't enjoy piloting it. Keeping enemy within 3xTL sweetspot is quite tiring.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 26, 2018, 11:40:05 AM
@ TaLaR:  I was trying it with Goumindong's way, with Sparks and Xyphos as support fighters and hard flux weapons (two plasma cannons at first, then two heavy blasters and four IR pulse lasers).  As for Tachyon Lances, it is doable as you wrote, but it is a pain to do.

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 26, 2018, 02:39:40 PM
Tachyon lances on the hard side, hard flux on the soft side. The tachyon lances are necessary and valuable in real fights because you almost never ever solo an enemy BS in normal play. You need to be able to hit and kill small targets before closing on the caps because.

1) the enemy almost never fields BS without an apropriate support fleet

2) I almost never field capitals before I am at least capable of fielding multiple cruisers.

3) you will have to kill the small ships before the large as they run interference and also provide significant supporting fire.

—?—

The entire point of an asymmetric design is using it asymmetrically. The Oddssy is maneuverable enough that you can swing the soft side around to provide hard flux when necessary. Otherwise the HEF and tachyons provide the perfect frequency of fire to ruin smaller ships as you make your maneuvers against the enemy fleet.

The best rear slot weapon is probably the auto-pulse laser. A heavy blaster will overcome the initial Autopulse burst in about 15 seconds of pure fire but I tend to swap to the front two before that and the Auto lets me store up that DPS. Thermal Pulse will start ahead and never falter from the Autopulse but you’re paying a lot of cap for that and you don’t want to lose your flux speed boost when you’re swapping sides.

Anti-Matter/IR work OK in small slots for this same purpose. IR is generally best against the threats you have behind as well as you don’t have to worry about AI fire flux dump as you do with AM.

Additionally it’s worth it to moderate your flux dissapators to be able to fire your front weapons only. You don’t need cap to fire everything at once and you’re less concerned about capping out when you turn. This frees up a lot of OP on the ship because the base dissapation is nearly high enough to fire your TLs indefinitely. You can save 30-50 OP here iirc.

—?

The paragon is great and especially great the bigger the target. But against larger fleets the inability to keep the two front guns on target (compared to two 180 deg HEF capable turrets on the same arc), the inability to keep two guns on the same target unless they’re in front, and the much lower speed make it considerably less effective. I almost prefer it with full Autopulse or TPC or Heavy Blaster in order to be better at its primary use case of wrecking stations and then it would sit unused consuming fuel and supplies until needed.

The Astral is better at killing ships than the paragon simply because it has a much higher range but still suffers when trying to strike multiple small ships. Simply because it has to fly those strike craft all the way out there. Once it and it’s fighters are there though nothing survives (I prefer 4/2 or 3/3 longbow/trident, daggers are right out because they will fire their payloads before the longbows in 90% of cases, impacting uselessly off shields)

With huge fleet sizes fielding both an Oddesy and Paragon tends to yield the Oddesy destroying the majority of the enemy fleet before the Paragon gets in range. With an astral the clean up arrives much faster and more powerfully. But it’s still generally clean up. Hilarious overkill cleanup. But cleanup none the less.


—?-

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. There are four distinct Capital size gunships and two distinct capital size carriers. One of them has to be best at killing enemy capitals one on one. One of them has to be the worst. So long as the worst does something else valuable it’s fine.

The Oddssy is the worst. And that is fine. Don’t put longbows on it and try to kill capitals. You cannot afford the crew losses this creates. Do not put TPCs on it and run it nose first into the enemy. You will cap out long before you kill anything.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 26, 2018, 03:06:32 PM
Quote
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.

I will not give extremely rare lances to Odyssey when Paragon can use them better than everyone else (due to range bonus and backup from HVDs).  Paragon can destroy everything except frigates that run away.  But frigates are able to run away from almost everything, including stuff like Medusa.  For anti-frigate, nothing beats fighters.  Even if I do not want to use Paragon, the other capitals can pull their weight... except Odyssey.

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 26, 2018, 04:05:51 PM
An order of magnitude is 10 Times. Other capitals are not 10 times better at killing capitals than the Odyssey. Plus the 8 burn speed is nice.

No two cruisers can do the job the odyssey does. The odyssey is faster than any cruiser save the Aurora and maybe the Falcon* but these two ships have significant fitting and cap and range downsides that prevent them from being as effective. Additionally the fact that the Odyssey will be traveling on the same line as it’s main engines when engaging the main fleet gives it significant effective maneuverability and speed advantage.

Plus the Aurora costs 30, so you’re at 60 with two. The Aurora is probably slightly better at swatting frigates and destroyers by just flux dumping them with AM blasters but it will not provide a hammer or anvil to pressure an enemy fleet without tachyon lances and capital sized range boosts. The Odyssey provides as much cap as three Falcons plus better slots for putting that cap down effectively.

Either way, you cannot have two of these effectively working the way the Odyssey does because you can only pilot one ship at a time.

The speed of smaller ships when facing an Odyssey doesn’t much matter because the optimal method of play negates those issues. You push enemy ships into a smaller region where they don’t have room to maneuver. Things you cannot do with comparatively under gunned Auroras and Falcons or Eagles. A few frigates behind you is NBD for an Oddyssey because they cannot hurt you with your 700x1.6 and 500x1.6 wrecking crew back there.  Nor can they push you out of optimal pathing because your pathing is tangential rather than parallel with the enemy fleet. Following you will drag them into the arc of your tachyon lances with a slight course correction.

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!

*the Falcon cannot easily keeep cap minimum and if it loses out on Helmsmanship it’s done.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 26, 2018, 07:02:52 PM
Okay, I (mis)used order of magnitude.  Fine, Odyssey is on a different tier or level, and not in a good way.  While Paragon may be on top tier, and the other four are roughly mid-tier, Odyssey is low-tier.

Odyssey cannot solo capitals except maybe with Tachyon Lances (or Plasma Cannon and Claws).  If reliably killing capitals with Odyssey is not an option, then that means attacking fleets with smaller ships, which cruisers can do too.  One cruiser may be enough, but if it is not, I can chain-flagship both (i.e., deploy one ship, leave, deploy another flagship), or I can deploy both and have the AI-controlled second cruiser double team enemy ships with me.

Aurora is expensive, hard to outfit, and has terrible shot range.  I rarely use Aurora.  I use Falcons, Eagles, Dominators, and especially Herons (occasionally Mora too).  Heron is probably the most powerful cruiser in the game to solo things with.

Quote
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.

If I want Tachyon Lances for Odyssey, I want three for all three heavy mounts, so I can use all three at roughly the same time when I need them.  (I would use Advanced Optics, 3 Tachyon Lance, 10 or so LR PD Laser, and at least one (probably two) Longbows so Odyssey can safely kite-and-snipe while Longbows bombard enemies)  Also, while I want four for Paragon, it can use HILs (and Ion Beams) as a (sniping) substitute (or other weapons for more brawling power) until more lances are found.  If I only have two lances, I put those two in the turrets while Paragon uses HILs (or whatever) in the hardpoints.  Eventually, I want four because Tachyon Lance is better than HIL.

Paragon can use inferior weapons and still have a chance.  Paragon can use almost anything, maul whatever it is fighting.  I can use all-beam Paragon, all pulse laser Paragon, all blaster Paragon, combo Paragon, or whatever, and it kills things and wins battles.  But with Tachyon Lances and HVDs, Paragon can do the one thing no other ship aside from a carrier with fighters can do, snipe and kill things across a screen or two.  Until battlestations got automatic Gunnery Implants 3, it was possible for Paragon with the right skills to (mostly) outrange a full-powered battlestation, and pick off modules one-by-one without getting shot back by its HILs and Squalls.

Thanks to the buffs Conquest received (and the weaker skills that knocked Onslaught off its throne), as long as it has one or two Gauss Cannons (common thanks to pirate Mudskippers dropping them) somewhere to counter Paragon, it can be somewhat flexible on loadout and have a decent chance of killing any capital and other ships.  Not auto-win, but a reasonable chance of victory.

P.S.  As for burn speed, thanks to Sustained Burn, burn speeds of ships are mostly irrelevant.  Also, by the time I am ready to use capitals in my fleet, it includes an Atlas and/or Prometheus, which are slower than every other ship.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 26, 2018, 07:39:08 PM
Yes if you refuse to do the things that make the Odyssey good it indeed will not be good. The point about the Aurora was not that the Aurora was good, rather that while it is faster than the Odyssey it’s not nearly able to do the “same thing”.

You absolutely can “kite and snipe” with an Odyssey. You’ve got 143 speed or more! Two eagles cannot do what it does. Two eagles can’t even get close. Except that since it does 3 tachyon Lance worth of spike damage (2.5 average if full cycling) before turning the third turret to bear it’s not really “sniping”

You do not even want a third tachyon in the rear large let alone need it to fit the ship out! If you’re fitting out an Odyssey and have three tachyon lances and a heavy Blaster fit two TLs and the Blaster! If you ever want to bring three TL on target at the same time you’re better off having hard flux in the rear slot.

Maybe you’re just a better pilot than me but when the enemy has 400 deployment in ships two cruisers doesn’t cut it. An Astral is OK but it’s sooo slow at killing everything. A Paragon is even worse and sometimes actively dangerous (it’s sooo slow the other ships will have significant engagement time before you make it even if you tell them to back off, the Odyssey being on the other side of the map having killed 50+ deployment points by then, does not have this issue.)

I agree that the cruisers are generally superior... (The Eagle specifically due to its decent shield/speed profile and ability to HVD and Graviton making an excellent line ship, and the Heron for non-strike carrier roles) ... but this refers to all capitals and not just the Odyssey.  I wouldn’t field a Paragon before I would field two eagles and I wouldn’t field an Eagle until I could field a few destroyers.

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.

*which I also really like now that I discovered the hilarity of ECCM and expanded missiles on it.

Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 26, 2018, 08:39:59 PM
@Goumindong
There is significant difference between using 2 or 3 TLs on Odyssey. Soft flux is all or nothing approach, so either you overwhelm their flux vent rate, or you can't even scratch them. Any additional damage output past tipping point radically decreases time-to-kill.
3xTL (+HEF) + extra Tac Lasers is the best that Odyssey is capable of, so that's what soft flux Odyssey should do.

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.

- Onslaught is fairly suitable for solo deployment (since you can catch pesky frigates with Burn Drive)
- Paragon not so much (prone to stalemates due to enemies avoiding it)-
- Astral is probably fine too, but I never have carrier-skills to properly use it.
- Conquest can do it too, though against smaller fleets than Onslaught.

Plus "enough firepower to take down a single capital with the fleet" boils down to one Afflictor (or at most two chain-deployed)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 26, 2018, 09:12:37 PM
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.

For smaller ships you absolutely have enough firepower to go in on the soft flux and you should not sacrifice survivability by pointing the third turret at the enemy fleet unless you have to.

All of those a suitable for solo deployment against non-capital fleets... but so is the Odyssey against non capital fleets. (Hell its speed makes it generally better than others)

Edit: The third turret, regardless of what is in it, should be shooting maybe 5% of the time.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 26, 2018, 09:59:21 PM
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 :)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 26, 2018, 11:35:38 PM
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
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 27, 2018, 12:28:59 AM
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

On Conquest it's not a matter of choice - aligning all it's turrets on single target is impossible, and it doesn't have flux to fire all 4 at different targets for significant duration.
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.

Odyssey can align all 3 turrets on same target (even if doing so is awkward), and does have enough flux for that. HEF gives additional stimulus to do so (to fire all 3 during short HEF window). TL reload time also aligns quite closely with HEF cooldown.

Any other Capital can kill a an enemy that is distracted by your allies, in most cases even faster than Odyssey. If your fleet as whole already has that much advantage, performance of Odyssey doesn't matter much.

It's mobility is also overstated.
Conquest is close in terms of general speed due to system. Onslaught can be even faster, as long as we speak strictly about pushing. Astral and Legion have fighters to get over speed advantage and do not need to drop zero flux boost most of the time (with helmsmanship 3). Only Paragon is truly limited in terms of mobility.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Goumindong on March 27, 2018, 01:12:57 AM
The Conquest goes about as fast when it uses its active. It’s otherwise significantly slower.

The Odyssey is faster than the bombers on the Astral. (143 vs 130)

It really matters
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Rigel on March 27, 2018, 02:58:03 AM
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?
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on March 27, 2018, 04:10:06 AM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: TaLaR on March 27, 2018, 04:40:48 AM
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.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Rigel on March 27, 2018, 08:59:12 AM
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.

yeah my original question was pretty much "what is odyssey's "net worth" in its current state?" and so if odyssey is weaker than onslaught and conquest then it should cost less. (ofc im not saying to just nerf it in that case and leave it as is)
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Wyvern on March 27, 2018, 09:34:44 AM
Goumindong: The problem with the Odyssey isn't that you're making it work - the problem is that, against a similar opposing fleet, I could deploy a Legion - possibly backed by a couple of fast destroyers or a cruiser, possibly just on its own - and then roll over the opposition, killing everything in my path.  Lower total deployment cost, greater effect.  Or, if I wanted to mimic your playstyle of circling around the edges and picking off anything destroyer or smaller, I could deploy an Aurora.  (Actually, a good Aurora build can pick off most cruisers that get themselves separated from support, too.)

If the Odyssey cost 30 supplies to field, I'd have no problem with its current power level.
Title: Re: Beam Stuff
Post by: Megas on March 27, 2018, 12:10:09 PM
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).

Also, AI Conquest seems to have more trouble piloting with Gauss cannons than it does with something more ordinary like Mark IX.

If I do not think I will encounter Paragon, I ignore Gauss Cannons because they are OP (ordnance point) and flux hogs.  Only if I think I will fight Paragon do I mount the Gauss Cannons because Conquest will die against Paragon like non-beam Odyssey does against every other capital.  With Gauss, Conquest only needs to get into beam range.  If it gets into range with the rest of Paragon's weapons, Conquest is dead.

* * *

I think Odyssey is worth no more than 35 DP at its current power.  At 45 DP, I prefer to use Conquest or Legion instead, if I do not go all the way for Paragon.