1) A capital without range advantage can't do anything against a much faster DE. As a DE I'd just attack from exactly max range retreating just a bit when I need to vent. 2 DEs could easily tag-team any capital that doesn't one-shot them with TLs.
1) A capital without range advantage can't do anything against a much faster DE. As a DE I'd just attack from exactly max range retreating just a bit when I need to vent. 2 DEs could easily tag-team any capital that doesn't one-shot them with TLs.
A capital would still have more long-range firepower, since he has more big guns.
ON a another note, do you think the ship COUNT limit should be replaced by a total FP limit (for player). right now, because max fleet size is determined by a number of ships, everyone endgame fleet is all capitals to make max use of it. But if you run that into a FP limit, then you could have a larger flee of smaller ships.
Alex already said he'll be removing the 30 ship hard cap in the next update.The penalties for excess will probably be severe like it is for exceeding cargo. The soft cap will probably be most useful for fleet shuffling immediately after player recovers a bunch of ships or swaps ships at his base. It stinks not being able to recover ships (dead enemies or that derelict Legion XIV) because you were at the fleet cap.
Alex already said he'll be removing the 30 ship hard cap in the next update.The penalties for excess will probably be severe like it is for exceeding cargo. The soft cap will probably be most useful for fleet shuffling immediately after player recovers a bunch of ships or swaps ships at his base. It stinks not being able to recover ships (dead enemies or that derelict Legion XIV) because you were at the fleet cap.
It is probably less work for Alex for a soft cap than it is to check for everything that plays nice with hard caps and other features hurt by hard caps (like no ship recovery).
The penalties for excess will probably be severe like it is for exceeding cargo. The soft cap will probably be most useful for fleet shuffling immediately after player recovers a bunch of ships or swaps ships at his base. It stinks not being able to recover ships (dead enemies or that derelict Legion XIV) because you were at the fleet cap.
It is probably less work for Alex for a soft cap than it is to check for everything that plays nice with hard caps and other features hurt by hard caps (like no ship recovery).
Wait is that right? I just remember him saying that he'll get rid of it to see how it plays out, since supplies/fuel/crew are already kind of a soft cap. Don't recall seeing anything about penalties.True, but whenever I exceeded something for cargo due to looting too much, supplies just bleed like crazy (and burn might be slowed), and it is a very good idea to jettison excess as soon as possible to stop the bleeding. If exceeding cargo is punishing enough that you usually want it to avoid at all costs, I think ships following similar rules would make sense.
Wait is that right? I just remember him saying that he'll get rid of it to see how it plays out, since supplies/fuel/crew are already kind of a soft cap. Don't recall seeing anything about penalties.True, but whenever I exceeded something for cargo due to looting too much, supplies just bleed like crazy (and burn might be slowed), and it is a very good idea to jettison excess as soon as possible to stop the bleeding. If exceeding cargo is punishing enough that you usually want it to avoid at all costs, I think ships following similar rules would make sense.
Excess cargo is not always punishing. If I don't have enough cargo space but there is excess supplies I take them on even with the supply cost debuff because they provide a nice bufferIf I loot excess supplies, then fine, they get brought alone for the reason you posted. Usually, it is something like more metal, more fuel, or other junk from salvage or raiding. I do not want to trade supplies for such trivial junk. If I bring too many supplies from base and did not check, I redock and put the excess in storage.
1) A capital without range advantage can't do anything against a much faster DE. As a DE I'd just attack from exactly max range retreating just a bit when I need to vent. 2 DEs could easily tag-team any capital that doesn't one-shot them with TLs.
A capital would still have more long-range firepower, since he has more big guns.
ON a another note, do you think the ship COUNT limit should be replaced by a total FP limit (for player). right now, because max fleet size is determined by a number of ships, everyone endgame fleet is all capitals to make max use of it. But if you run that into a FP limit, then you could have a larger flee of smaller ships.
A wolf costs 5 points to deploy. It has 150(250) dissipation, 2250 capacity, and a medium energy slot. A conquest costs 40 points to deploy. So you get 8 wolf for every one conquest*.The part you forget in dps race terms is that one side dies. If 8 Wolfs fought a Conquest in exactly even terms, the Wolfs would lose every single time, because once the Conquest has destroyed 1 wolf they lose 1/8th of their DPS, meanwhile the Wolfs can't reduce the Conquest's DPS until they completely destroy all 8/8ths of it. In practice what tends to happen is that frigates die before they even get close to the Capital.
The conquest has 1200(1700) dissipation and 20,000 cap. So 8 wolf beat its dissipation by 300, which means they have a higher maximum dps. They have slightly less capacity but are also a lot harder to hit
Is 8 wolf worth a conquest? Maybe, maybe not.
What if we start looking at better frigates? 5 tempest? 10 LP Brawlers? Different capitals? Well the conquest has the highest dissipation and lowest deployment point cost of any capital. So everything else is specific to fleet composition. But if frigates has the same range as capitals you would never use capitals.
*strangely this is also perfect alignment with fuel use!
*has fleet of mudskipper mk IIs armed with gauss cannons*Fighters. Not even mass fighters, like 2 wings of fighters will kill that entire fleet.
As someone who prefers to spam cruisers over capitals, I feel like this discussion is focusing way too hard on weapon ranges. The main reason I feel forced to not field smaller ships isn't the range disadvantage, it's the ridiculous carrier spam.There was a post about fighters, missiles and PD,but in short:PD right now - useless garbage. Only decent one is flak cannon and thats a medium ballistic slot and again its only decent. Fighters need to be put in pseudo 3D,like give them huge evasive chance against primary weapons,but also make them a lot more fragile. And yeah,give PD a buff so they can effectively fight off fighters.
Carriers are just blatantly better than anything else right now. Even in AI fleets, that can't spam the optimal drover/spark/lux combo. AI doesn't understand how to deal with fighter clouds, at all. It will fire its main weapons and torpedos at them, mising every single shot, it will turn to face a wing of fighters, exposing their unshielded behinds to 3 dagger wings, etc. Even something as trivial as mining drones greatly increases fleet power, simply because they will mess up with decision making of enemy ships so much, and later game opponents field much scarier things.
Destroyers and frigates simply stand no chance whatsoever in carrier-heavy lategame fights (which is all of them) - they get oneshot by a single bomber fly-by or harassed out of this world by fighters.
Carriers are just blatantly better than anything else right now. Even in AI fleets, that can't spam the optimal drover/spark/lux combo. AI doesn't understand how to deal with fighter clouds, at all. It will fire its main weapons and torpedos at them, mising every single shot, it will turn to face a wing of fighters, exposing their unshielded behinds to 3 dagger wings, etc. Even something as trivial as mining drones greatly increases fleet power, simply because they will mess up with decision making of enemy ships so much, and later game opponents field much scarier things.
Destroyers and frigates simply stand no chance whatsoever in carrier-heavy lategame fights (which is all of them) - they get oneshot by a single bomber fly-by or harassed out of this world by fighters.
As someone who prefers to spam cruisers over capitals, I feel like this discussion is focusing way too hard on weapon ranges. The main reason I feel forced to not field smaller ships isn't the range disadvantage, it's the ridiculous carrier spam.There was a post about fighters, missiles and PD,but in short:PD right now - useless garbage. Only decent one is flak cannon and thats a medium ballistic slot and again its only decent. Fighters need to be put in pseudo 3D,like give them huge evasive chance against primary weapons,but also make them a lot more fragile. And yeah,give PD a buff so they can effectively fight off fighters.
Carriers are just blatantly better than anything else right now. Even in AI fleets, that can't spam the optimal drover/spark/lux combo. AI doesn't understand how to deal with fighter clouds, at all. It will fire its main weapons and torpedos at them, mising every single shot, it will turn to face a wing of fighters, exposing their unshielded behinds to 3 dagger wings, etc. Even something as trivial as mining drones greatly increases fleet power, simply because they will mess up with decision making of enemy ships so much, and later game opponents field much scarier things.
Destroyers and frigates simply stand no chance whatsoever in carrier-heavy lategame fights (which is all of them) - they get oneshot by a single bomber fly-by or harassed out of this world by fighters.
under player control
And yet some people still don't understand clearly. PD is NOT meant to destroy fighters quickly. Sure Burst PD can kill them without much trouble but it would be stupid just to equip a couple of PD Lasers and then be immune to fighters. I don't get why people have these crazy suggestions in which the whole mechanics of the game have to be changed, introduce RNG in combat to make it frustrating and more needlessly complex, for basically no gain. Put actual weapons that are good vs fighters then see how quickly they die.Okay,Ill admite I was not very clear with my suggestions,but you are really exaggerate. I never suggested buffing PD to that extend. And can you please tell me about this secret weapons that good vs fighters? I find a really hard time find such weapons aside from Locusts and my own fighters. Usually its more effective to just use your primary weapons to deal with incoming fighters or
Okay,Ill admite I was not very clear with my suggestions,but you are really exaggerate. I never suggested buffing PD to that extend. And can you please tell me about this secret weapons that good vs fighters? I find a really hard time find such weapons aside from Locusts and my own fighters.
Okay,Ill admite I was not very clear with my suggestions,but you are really exaggerate. I never suggested buffing PD to that extend. And can you please tell me about this secret weapons that good vs fighters? I find a really hard time find such weapons aside from Locusts and my own fighters.
Literally every beam weapon in the game (Graviton might be a bit slow for that but when massed works), Railguns, Pulse lasers (small ones are also good), Autopulses, HAG, Devastator, Heavy Mauler, Mjolnir especially melts them. Basically everything that has good accuracy and decent projectile speed. There are of course more weapons suited for that but these first came to mind.
Alex already said he'll be removing the 30 ship hard cap in the next update.
THAT's exactly my point! All this weapons (aside from Devastator) designed to deal with SHIPS,not small aircraft. Why even bother to use specific PD/Anti-air weapons when you can use your regular weapons with the same result or even better and also dont lower your combat effectivness against other ships? Why even bother with kinetic/HE damage types,lets just make all weapons deal energy hard flux damage,all this damage and defence types just meaningless overcomplication *sarcasm*
And about Devastator. Its feels awkward. I think better make flak cannon with highther rate of fire then this
Okay,Ill admite I was not very clear with my suggestions,but you are really exaggerate. I never suggested buffing PD to that extend. And can you please tell me about this secret weapons that good vs fighters? I find a really hard time find such weapons aside from Locusts and my own fighters.
Literally every beam weapon in the game (Graviton might be a bit slow for that but when massed works), Railguns, Pulse lasers (small ones are also good), Autopulses, HAG, Devastator, Heavy Mauler, Mjolnir especially melts them. Basically everything that has good accuracy and decent projectile speed. There are of course more weapons suited for that but these first came to mind.
THAT's exactly my point! All this weapons (aside from Devastator) designed to deal with SHIPS,not small aircraft. Why even bother to use specific PD/Anti-air weapons when you can use your regular weapons with the same result or even better and also dont lower your combat effectivness against other ships? Why even bother with kinetic/HE damage types,lets just make all weapons deal energy hard flux damage,all this damage and defence types just meaningless overcomplication *sarcasm*
And about Devastator. Its feels awkward. I think better make flak cannon with highther rate of fire then this
I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail. Destroyers haveYour preconceptions on the names of ship roles has no relevance to a discussion on game balance. In any case, the Afflictor, a frigate is used to face all other warships and quite successfully at that in the player's hands. Someone a while ago tried to mass Tempests successfully and claimed to be able to beat everything. The Omen has a place in a fleet always.
I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail.Your preconceptions on the names of ship roles has no relevance to a discussion on game balance. In any case, the Afflictor, a frigate is used to face all other warships and quite successfully at that in the player's hands. Someone a while ago tried to mass Tempests successfully and claimed to be able to beat everything. The Omen has a place in a fleet always.
If 8 Wolfs fought a Conquest in exactly even terms, the Wolfs would lose every single time,
"Even terms" in this case meant they were simply exchanging blows as a pure DPS race rather than using mobility to avoid taking damage and micro target availability, I don't think I conveyed that properly. Wolfs absolutely can take advantage of their mobility, especially the ship system, to win against a Conquest. The conquest having paper-thin shields and weak armor for a capital doesn't help matters either.If 8 Wolfs fought a Conquest in exactly even terms, the Wolfs would lose every single time,
If the conquest was set to kill frigates then maybe. But otherwise i put my money on the wolfs.
A capital without range advantage can't do anything against a much faster DE. As a DE I'd just attack from exactly max range retreating just a bit when I need to vent. 2 DEs could easily tag-team any capital that doesn't one-shot them with TLs.
Why is that an issue? This a FLEET game. The capital will rarely be alone. And even more reason to have your own smaller, faster ships in a fleet.
And 2 DE's might not have enough DPS to tag-team. Remember, IF range depended on mount size (a large autocannon will have a bigger range than a small one), the capital will STILL have a range advantage on the account of more bigger mounts. It only won't be as overwhelming as it is now.
"Even terms" in this case meant they were simply exchanging blows as a pure DPS race rather than using mobility to avoid taking damage and micro target availability, I don't think I conveyed that properly. Wolfs absolutely can take advantage of their mobility, especially the ship system, to win against a Conquest. The conquest having paper-thin shields and weak armor for a capital doesn't help matters either.If 8 Wolfs fought a Conquest in exactly even terms, the Wolfs would lose every single time,
If the conquest was set to kill frigates then maybe. But otherwise i put my money on the wolfs.
Why is that an issue? This a FLEET game. The capital will rarely be alone. And even more reason to have your own smaller, faster ships in a fleet.a capital without a range advantage has no place in a fleet. It would always be better to take smaller, more maneuverable ships. Possibly even once you hit the fleet cap.
To be fair you do get a range advantage baked into the larger weapons by default.
I'd highly recommend giving a short range onslaught a go however, tons of fun!It hurts. Enough that I probably prefer three heavy needlers over one storm needler at the front, just for 800 range instead of 700. (However, Storm Needler is brutal if enemy is in range.) I bet 450 or so range from medium heavyweights is even worse. (I think I tried that once and it was frustrating.) Does not help that AI seems to love TPCs over all else and behaves accordingly.
I'd highly recommend giving a short range onslaught a go however, tons of fun!For those using Ship & Weapon Pack, there's an IBB ship called Flamebreaker which I politely suggest you consider recovering and flying into battle at least once just for the novelty.
Just a thought, but if larger ships weren't built around range advantage, they could probably have their speed buffed. Not necessarily to the point where they are equal to frigates at 150+, but the capitals could probably average in the 70-90 range, closing the gap considerably.
And what does your your preconceptions on the names of ship roles has on the relevance to a discussion on game balance? None at all, which is why you wrote something that i and others have written and where you pretend it was the point you was making.I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail.Your preconceptions on the names of ship roles has no relevance to a discussion on game balance. In any case, the Afflictor, a frigate is used to face all other warships and quite successfully at that in the player's hands. Someone a while ago tried to mass Tempests successfully and claimed to be able to beat everything. The Omen has a place in a fleet always.
Balance-wise, faster ships SHOULD lose a shootout to bigger, slower ships; otherwise, there's no reason to ever take those bigger, slower ships. So one 30-FP capital ship should be able, all things being equal, to take on 6 5-FP frigates and come out on top.
Now, obviously a sufficiently skilled player can beat pretty much anything in the game with pretty much anything in the game, and very fast ships are ideally suited to maximize the skill differential between a player and an AI. But capital ships should absolutely be *** of the walk in combat terms, as superior combat performance is the only justification, either balance-wise or in Watsonian terms, to build a giant, slow, heavily crewed, resource-hogging capital ship instead of a group of small, fast, cheap frigates.
And what does your your preconceptions on the names of ship roles has on the relevance to a discussion on game balance? None at all, which is why you wrote something that i and others have written and where you pretend it was the point you was making.I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail.Your preconceptions on the names of ship roles has no relevance to a discussion on game balance. In any case, the Afflictor, a frigate is used to face all other warships and quite successfully at that in the player's hands. Someone a while ago tried to mass Tempests successfully and claimed to be able to beat everything. The Omen has a place in a fleet always.
Balance-wise, faster ships SHOULD lose a shootout to bigger, slower ships; otherwise, there's no reason to ever take those bigger, slower ships. So one 30-FP capital ship should be able, all things being equal, to take on 6 5-FP frigates and come out on top.
Now, obviously a sufficiently skilled player can beat pretty much anything in the game with pretty much anything in the game, and very fast ships are ideally suited to maximize the skill differential between a player and an AI. But capital ships should absolutely be *** of the walk in combat terms, as superior combat performance is the only justification, either balance-wise or in Watsonian terms, to build a giant, slow, heavily crewed, resource-hogging capital ship instead of a group of small, fast, cheap frigates.
A long time ago I had written that ship ranges and ship speeds should be more normalised closer towards each other, so the kiting and outranging effect would be harder to create and gameplay would flower more nicely. Something like tempest should only be a little faster than wolfs, and slower frigates should be a bit little faster, and so forth with all the ship clases, so in the end Paragon and Onslaughts would be closer to speed 50 and small energy should be range 500 and medium ballistics 650 and so on till the "normal" weapon ranges for large ballistics would be 800.
I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail. Destroyers have>He tried to apply antiquated naval terminology to Starsector
I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail.
You do realize that real world naval classification has always tried to keep up with ship development and figuring out what to do with them later? They are completely arbitrary and serve no purpose in this game, and, apart from the broadest possible definitions, in real navies, either, if we're being honest.
If I got your other points right, you would much rather prefer a literally tiered approach to ships? Where capitals would be untouchable by cruisers and down, and cruisers would be immune to destroyers and frigates and so on? Where's the fun in that? Gameplay as it is today is already pushing the player to field bigger ships the more the game progresses, and it kind of makes sense. But that doesn't mean one is limited to Paragon-only in late game.
I fail to see the point in your argument, and it might just be that there isn't really one.
Why is that an issue? This a FLEET game. The capital will rarely be alone. And even more reason to have your own smaller, faster ships in a fleet.
And 2 DE's might not have enough DPS to tag-team. Remember, IF range depended on mount size (a large autocannon will have a bigger range than a small one), the capital will STILL have a range advantage on the account of more bigger mounts. It only won't be as overwhelming as it is now.
This has so many flaws it isn't even funny. Yea let's completely *** up the balance by making the Tempest the most broken thing since nothing could touch it unless it had large mounts, Sunder would also be OP due to oversized mounts for its class, Aurora would be even more crap then and so on. And the worst thing, all PD would be utter garbage on capitals. Since most PD is put in smalls and capitals have mounts that are not always in the far front, it wouldn't even be able to shoot before getting hit by a missile or something. Just give this idea a rest, it wouldn't work.
Why is that an issue? This a FLEET game. The capital will rarely be alone. And even more reason to have your own smaller, faster ships in a fleet.a capital without a range advantage has no place in a fleet. It would always be better to take smaller, more maneuverable ships. Possibly even once you hit the fleet cap.
Let's take Onslught vs 2 Sunderers. For the sake of arggument let's say they have the same long-range weapon as the Onslaught. So you have a total of TWO weapons from which they can attack the onslaught - to use others they have to get closer. Meanwhile the Onslaught can use all of it's large weapons. Do you think those two weapons will be enough to flux out and destroy the onslaught?Loooooooool Onslaught can use all of its large weapons, kid stop smoking crack please. It has only 3 larges which can't even fire at the same spot so it's 2 vs 2 in your example. And even without your silly changes the Sunders easily win since Onslaught's turn rate is crap. One HIL is enough.
. . . Is a stupid idea, which would in fact damage gameplay. Strong distinctions between ship classes, including in speed and range, are valuable and interesting. 'Normalizing' distinguishing characteristics is something to be avoided as much as is practical, not sought after; reducing variety should be an absolute last resort. I'm frankly puzzled that I even have to mention this in a strategy game forum, but here we are.
Hey mods, can we have a sticky somewhere saying ''Don't use real life logic on a video game''? Gotta love people normally discussing balance of a game when someone comes in and goes ''well achcktually, the US navy...''
Hey mods, can we have a sticky somewhere saying ''Don't use real life logic on a video game''? Gotta love people normally discussing balance of a game when someone comes in and goes ''well achcktually, the US navy...''This.
[...]No, actually. I went and re-read your posts, and if your only gripe is that capitals should be able to stand up to their own DP in firepower, in a simulator, I get it. But that point is so hypothetical, it hardly matters. I mean, sure, 8 Wolves can kill an Onslaught in the sim, but are you going to field nothing but Wolves because of that? And if you do, there are many other drawbacks to that specific strat. Not least of all the fact that your staying power will drastically limited because of the frigates' Peak Operating time. Once the ship cap gets removed, I am sure frigates will become a lot more interesting, but that is a discussion for the future.
Does that clarify things for you?
Lolno. What is the modern day definition of a frigate, when compared to 70 years ago? What's a destroyer nowadays? Where have all the cruisers gone? Definitions change over time because they are arbitrary.I rather think that frigates being nonviable as a line-of-battle combatant in the face of capital ship firepower and range is a feature, not a bug. Frigates have been incapable of facing proper warships as far back as the Age of Sail.
You do realize that real world naval classification has always tried to keep up with ship development and figuring out what to do with them later? They are completely arbitrary and serve no purpose in this game, and, apart from the broadest possible definitions, in real navies, either, if we're being honest.
No, not at all. The terminology used for things indicates how the designer is thinking of them, and the role they're supposed to analogize to - obviously not a perfect one-to-one match, but think about it. You could easily refer to spaceships by completely different terminology; they're called frigates, destroyers and cruisers in Starsector for a reason. That's a deliberate analogy.
Frigates becoming obsolete at endgame is good game design. If frigates weren't obsolete, people would use the same ships for the entire game (see: wolfpack/tempestpack). There is a lot of nuance and gameplay to figuring out how to outfit and use different ship classes that would not be incentivized.Ikr, what would the point of all various ships be if frigates were equally good in all stages of the game. It's like playing an RTS and then complaining how the expensive units are too good. If a Zerg rush was effective in late game, there would be almost no strategy left.
You obviously don't play Starcraft, Grievous69, otherwise you would know that zerglings are used effectively as main units the entire game, all the way to the late game. That's good game design, where televised tournaments in stadiums are still held for this 20 year old game.Starcraft was just an example because I played a bit of Zerg, and I didn't use Zerglings in late game as much as in early game (still used them tho). See it's like in Starsector, you could use frigates late game but there are better options. I don't get the need to use non-specialised frigates in late game. Why would you want let's say a Wolf then? I mean you can still use it for smaller battles and pursuits, but why the hell would you deploy a small squishy ship that can't do much damage in a huge fight? It had its uses during a large part of the game, and now it's not the best, where's the problem mate? It just doesn't make sense to weaken everything else just because a handful of people want to see Lashers and god knows what in their fleet fighting Remnants or expeditions.
Anyhow, there is a whole possible range of usefulness to discuss for non-specialised frigates between as useful as they are vs other frigates in early game and being totally obsolete by the late game. Why does a whole class of ships (if such a thing can be applied to Wolf and Lasher-like frigates) need to be a total waste of DP and ship slot? How can that be regarded as good game design?
What wrong with changing a few figures so the "hard" counter is changed to be a "softer" counter?
What wrong with changing a few figures so the "hard" counter is changed to be a "softer" counter?
In Broodwar, there is no better option than to use zerglings in late game for many matchups. Your example was a really terrible analogy as it doesn't even work in the very game you derived it from. But another game strategical usage doesn't matter anyhow. We should talk about starsector, unless you really want to talk about starcraft, in which case I'll be happy to indulge you, but probably bore everyone else.You obviously don't play Starcraft, Grievous69, otherwise you would know that zerglings are used effectively as main units the entire game, all the way to the late game. That's good game design, where televised tournaments in stadiums are still held for this 20 year old game.Starcraft was just an example because I played a bit of Zerg, and I didn't use Zerglings in late game as much as in early game (still used them tho). See it's like in Starsector, you could use frigates late game but there are better options. I don't get the need to use non-specialised frigates in late game. Why would you want let's say a Wolf then? I mean you can still use it for smaller battles and pursuits, but why the hell would you deploy a small squishy ship that can't do much damage in a huge fight? It had its uses during a large part of the game, and now it's not the best, where's the problem mate? It just doesn't make sense to weaken everything else just because a handful of people want to see Lashers and god knows what in their fleet fighting Remnants or expeditions.
Anyhow, there is a whole possible range of usefulness to discuss for non-specialised frigates between as useful as they are vs other frigates in early game and being totally obsolete by the late game. Why does a whole class of ships (if such a thing can be applied to Wolf and Lasher-like frigates) need to be a total waste of DP and ship slot? How can that be regarded as good game design?
What wrong with changing a few figures so the "hard" counter is changed to be a "softer" counter?
The Phase ships are specialized ships as is the Monitor and Omen due to their excellent ship systems in the player's hands. Tempest is also excluded because it is unusually fast and manoeuvrable as is the rare Scarab, and so is able to get out of danger easily. These ships coincidently will always be prefered for the role of pursuit instead of non-specialised frigates.New escort behaviour is already in 0.9.1, make of that what you will.
Caveat: For all we know, once the new escort order is implemented, frigates might regain a role in the end game again. Creating the "ideal" (whose?) of mixed fleets. Brawler and Centurion in particular might become more useful when the escort order become more useful.
Hey mods, can we have a sticky somewhere saying ''Don't use real life logic on a video game''? Gotta love people normally discussing balance of a game when someone comes in and goes ''well achcktually, the US navy...''
New escort behaviour is already in 0.9.1, make of that what you will.Huh ok, I'm a bit disappointed then. This should be a big thing. Doesn't seem to work out as well as the gifs show. Perhaps there are rules of escort that need to be taken advantage of. Other than Megas getting his entire fleet to camp next to an edge, what are people's experience with it?
Many people have misconceptions about how they think reality works. For instance one guy in this thread thinks that frigates cannot fight as warships in the Age of Sail, which must come as a bit of a suprise to the Dutch and English whose only warships were frigates in both of their Golden Ages. Even if it was true to reality, it needs to be meaningfully applied to Starsector and it has no place in a discussion about game balance, except perhaps to second guess the developer's intentions.SpoilerHey mods, can we have a sticky somewhere saying ''Don't use real life logic on a video game''? Gotta love people normally discussing balance of a game when someone comes in and goes ''well achcktually, the US navy...''
That isn't an argument either. Just because you don't like how things work in reality isn't reason enough to demand no one mentions reality. Reality is the bases for everything - and it's also good to keep in mind because reality always makes sense.
So what's the actual usage of small ships? Why do navies use them?
- Cost (menaingless, you are not really paying for the ships your planets use, nor do you have upkeep/maintanance for them. Though you do have for your own fleet, hence why they are useful early game)
- scouting
- patrol/force projection (a battleship can only be in one place at one time. A squad of corvettes can do many things)
- picket forces
- wolf pack attacks (would be useful if not for the ship number limit)
Basically a perfect desing would be one where you would WANT a mixed fleet, as each ship has a role[close]
So armor, overall firepower, shielding and flux dissipations are not advantages?
Frigate effective DPS goes WAY down when they can't stay within weapons range long enough to take more than a pot shot or two, if that. The flux overhead of moving in and out of range is too high for them to have any leftover to do actual damage with. Besides, armor is (only) a big deal vs smaller weapons, like those found on frigates. Unless you are using the ludicrously inefficient heavy blaster, or high explosive weapons which are even less capable of breaching shields than said heavy blaster, you can spend literal minutes hammering on cruiser-level armor with frigate weapons.So armor, overall firepower, shielding and flux dissipations are not advantages?
Not if they dont have them. Almost all ships lose dps/DP, hull/DP, dissipation/DP, capacity/DP, as you go up in ship size. Armor is the only thing that actually increases and its not much of an advantage given the target got a lot bigger.
Like.. do you guys not actually field frigates and destroyers et al? I use them all the time at all stages of the game. (Well destroyers less unless i have a specific purpose but everything else totally)
Frigate effective DPS goes WAY down when they can't stay within weapons range long enough to take more than a pot shot or two, if thatyes but the proposal was to remove the range advantage for larger ships...
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Max fleet size and max AI fleet size set to 100 with 900 max battle size is my current preferred way to play.
Per deployment point, late game frigates absolutely justify their cost.Technically, you are correct. But that fleet will be hamstrung by its tiny range and low durability. If you are fighting right next to a planet of yours, that's A-OK, but I dare you to take on a pirate/LP base with that fleet.
Maybe if you run enough mods to eventually face doom stacks that require chain-deploying multiple waves of capital ships... But at that point you're probably better off exploiting the new disengage mechanic since loot drops are no longer your objective. And again, cleanly retreating heavies gets easier if there's lighter ships to disperse the enemy.
Hell, even stamping stacks of disposable Hounds from your first colony immensely increases the combat ability of your fleet. Just from the ECM bonus alone!
You do need to transition into advanced hulls and hullmods as the game progresses, but 200 deploy points is just 5 capitals. That's 100 Kites with 400 Reapers, or a 300% ECM swing in your favor. Even with maxed out battle sizes and running up against the 30 ship limit, the DP efficiency of frigates is insane. You just have to specialize them into specific roles as the game progresses, or build them to win frigate/destroyer fights quickly and take the flanks.
If you can't get value out of them, you're not setting any fleet orders or not experimenting with light ships enough.
The point is hull efficiency. By deploying n-1 capitals you can get a ton more value.I didn't get that. What does n-1 mean, exactly? One less capital?
Are capitals really necessary?You are free to go for any fleet you like, and in the current version, Drover/Spark spam beats anything and everything.
The point is hull efficiency. By deploying n-1 capitals you can get a ton more value.I didn't get that. What does n-1 mean, exactly? One less capital?
Thanks. I was just unclear on the term n-1. I was expecting that term to be part of a function.The point is hull efficiency. By deploying n-1 capitals you can get a ton more value.I didn't get that. What does n-1 mean, exactly? One less capital?
Sure, you want 11 ships on field (player + 10 officers) or at least close to that. At max standard battlesize of 500 you have guaranteed 200 DP, that's 5 Conquests - too few ships. So make it 4 and pad with some frigates. Or swap some capitals for Drovers/Eagles/Heron.
Though some reserve could be useful too, like extra capital that is not deployed initially, but replaces shorter CR ships as they retreat.