Drones are the iconic thing that makes the ship unique, they have to stay.I mean, for reference here, I remember playing with the Tempest back in a time where ship systems didn't exist - the Tempest back than didn't have its drones or HEF, so to me, they're not really iconic.
I mean, how many steps away is a Tempest from just BEING a destroyer anyway?You guys don't already consider it to be a destroyer?
I mean, how many steps away is a Tempest from just BEING a destroyer anyway?You guys don't already consider it to be a destroyer?
Tempest is good, but so are Scarab and Hyperion. If nerfed, Tempest will just be replaced by these in my fleet.
I guess maybe replace high energy focus with something like plasma jets like the aurora has but then reduce it's base mobility to compensate? so it's still fast a ***, but it has a cooldown to play around for it.
I like the idea of giving it reserve deployment and leaning into the drones. That would be a kind of down and sidegrade rather than pure down like flares would be.
Stop. Nerfing. Stuff.
Like really.
Just stop.
If everything is equivalent, then why bother using anything different?of course, the opposite is true as well. if one is just plain better then everything else, why bother using anything else?
If everything is equivalent, then why bother using anything different?of course, the opposite is true as well. if one is just plain better then everything else, why bother using anything else?
If everything is equivalent, then why bother using anything different?of course, the opposite is true as well. if one is just plain better then everything else, why bother using anything else?
Not sure that applies as much to a SP game, but I do get what you mean.
Of course how often is it that people use fleets of nothing but Dooms despite them being the best ship in the game?
Not sure that applies as much to a SP game, but I do get what you mean.Fleets of nothing but Dooms don't seem common, but a lot of people seem to be using Doom(s) in the endgame, (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=20699.0) some are saying they (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21354.0) are the answer to everything (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=20476.0) and there are people (like me) who refuse to use Doom on the principle. It certainly is an outlier, hardly any other ship seems to find its way into so many fleets.
Of course how often is it that people use fleets of nothing but Dooms despite them being the best ship in the game?
When contrasted to this, we don't see the same with frigates because aside from high tech, other frigates are very often useless to deploy, after there is certain amount of firepower in the field, a low or mid tech frigate will disappear the moment it gets into firing range. Armor tanking and low mobility are good for differentiating bigger ships, frigates can't afford either of those, so trying to make it happen is what gets us into this mess.Centurion is doing okay later in the game, though it indeed is no Omen. Highlighted bit in particular is interesting, because high-tech capitals are doing fine, despite being at odds with their design philosophy. Paragon gets by with cheating high-tech (low range? ATC lol) and Odyssey gets by with its incredible mobility (caps are supposed to be slow? maybe yours). Small low-tech ships could likewise cheat/"cheat", similarly to the Centurion with its damper field.
By the way, is it just me, or are Tempest's drones more fragile in this version?
Fleets of nothing but Dooms don't seem common, but a lot of people seem to be using Doom(s) in the endgame, some are saying they are the answer to everything and there are people (like me) who refuse to use Doom on the principle. It certainly is an outlier, hardly any other ship seems to find its way into so many fleets.I like Doom, and I would like one or two in my fleets, just like last release.
There's also the loss of the fleet wide -15% damage to fighters skill and 15% replacement rate that most player likely took. Those would seem to be the major contributors (unless you had officers in tempests with carrier skills).Also, Expanded Deck Crew got hit hard even though it is still must-have for carriers.
how do we make skills which are intended to help a category of ships (i.e. frigates) help them roughly equally?
Imagine if Wolfpack tactics did not require an officer but instead was a 60 DP limit skill not unlike Phase Corps, but applying to frigates. Suddenly 2 LP Lashers without officers against a Tempest without officer doesn't look quite so bad in that comparison. At which point, the higher DP cost would be a downside.
As far as I can tell, Wolf pack tactics has no need to be a flat PPT bonus. It only applies to a single class of ship already, frigates with officers in them, and could just as easily been % based. Making it flat simply biases it towards low PPT frigates, which are the high tech ones.
240 vs 180 seconds is a noticeable difference (Lasher vs Tempest, 33% more time). Wolfpack + Reliability means 420 vs 360, which is less noticable (16.7% more time, and more importantly, both are starting to get close to cruiser PPT). But you could replace the +120 seconds of Wolfpack with +67%. 180 still gets +120 seconds, but 240 gets +160. 400 vs 300 base, then the flat bonuses come in for 460 vs 360. Now 27% more time.
So, I would probably be asking different questions than this thread.
One, are Tempests balanced well enough around their DP in the absence of skills and officers (keeping in mind a 1 DP shift is a 12.5% effectiveness swing - which is a lot in AI vs AI match ups). Two, how do we make skills which are intended to help a category of ships (i.e. frigates) help them roughly equally?
I think maybe specifically in the case of frigates, it might be better to buff the mid/low tech frigates a little rather than nerf all the high tech frigates. It might actually be a similar amount of work considering that hyperion, scarab, tempest and omen are all on a similar power level/DP now IMO. The alternative to nerfing those is to buff lasher/centurion/wolf/brawler primarily? It doesn't seem that unreasonable and several of those frigates probably want a buff anyway. I also don't think the disparity is that bad.
I definitely agree that a big part of why tempest/scarab/hyperion are good is that they get the most value out of limited officers. I have some crazy ideas floating around about having an officer on every ship, but having a finite number of skills to distribute between them, but I'm not sure if it would work.I think maybe specifically in the case of frigates, it might be better to buff the mid/low tech frigates a little rather than nerf all the high tech frigates. It might actually be a similar amount of work considering that hyperion, scarab, tempest and omen are all on a similar power level/DP now IMO. The alternative to nerfing those is to buff lasher/centurion/wolf/brawler primarily? It doesn't seem that unreasonable and several of those frigates probably want a buff anyway. I also don't think the disparity is that bad.
Sure, thats a case where the disparity is pretty small and the number of ships on each side is pretty equal, so it could go either way. If the goal is for frigates as a class to get stronger relative to destroyers/cruisers/caps, then buffing up the underperformers is a good way to go. I disagree only with Centurions - those things are really good already for 4 DP. Though that brings up the question: with the existence of Wolfpack Tactics and limited officer count, are low DP frigates viable? I do think 2 4 DP Centurions are slightly better than 1 8DP Tempest in the absence of officers... but costing 2 officers instead of 1 is not worth it at all.
It might actually be a similar amount of work considering that hyperion, scarab, tempest and omen are all on a similar power level/DP now IMO.Omen's overall package (tank, EMP, PD, distraction, ECM, campaign utility) is undercosted at the moment.
The alternative to nerfing those is to buff lasher/centurion/wolf/brawler primarily?Wolf, Hound (?), Lasher, Brawler, Vigilance, Cerberus, Kite, Shepherd (?), Centurion, Wayfarer (?), Lumen and Glimmer.
Drovers a little help (might be a bug with the ship system and bombers instead of balance)There's something specific to Reserve Deployment and bombers? I thought Drover's replacement keeled over and died no matter what fighters it used.
I wouldn't mind Wolfpack Tactics' bonus scaling depending on DP, with 4 DP frigs getting current bonus and 8 DP ones getting only a half of it.Sure, thats a case where the disparity is pretty small and the number of ships on each side is pretty equal, so it could go either way. If the goal is for frigates as a class to get stronger relative to destroyers/cruisers/caps, then buffing up the underperformers is a good way to go. I disagree only with Centurions - those things are really good already for 4 DP. Though that brings up the question: with the existence of Wolfpack Tactics and limited officer count, are low DP frigates viable? I do think 2 4 DP Centurions are slightly better than 1 8DP Tempest in the absence of officers... but costing 2 officers instead of 1 is not worth it at all.I definitely agree that a big part of why tempest/scarab/hyperion are good is that they get the most value out of limited officers. I have some crazy ideas floating around about having an officer on every ship, but having a finite number of skills to distribute between them, but I'm not sure if it would work.
...Drovers a little help (might be a bug with the ship system and bombers instead of balance)There's something specific to Reserve Deployment and bombers? I thought Drover's replacement keeled over and died no matter what fighters it used.
...
...Drovers a little help (might be a bug with the ship system and bombers instead of balance)There's something specific to Reserve Deployment and bombers? I thought Drover's replacement keeled over and died no matter what fighters it used.
...
I used it with interceptors and it worked fine - replacement kept up ok through a bunch of battles. Bombers with RD have this weird thing where they take forever to rearm and during that time the rate is ticking down. I had thought that was the main problem, though I could be wrong.
Its a lot more work to buff everything below an outlier than to nerf the outlier, or vice versa.
About mod balance overall, I think vanilla game must not rely on their balance at all, except cases where modded content get integrated in the game.
4 (non SO) Enforcers would just smash all the heavy ships on contact but then take a while to clean up all the frigates.
Its a lot more work to buff everything below an outlier than to nerf the outlier, or vice versa.
0.95 changes made frigates viable, but not all of them - only officer-ed ones. Which implies that frigate in question must be worth an officer. And weaker DP-cheap frigates just aren't.
0.95 changes made frigates viable, but not all of them - only officer-ed ones. Which implies that frigate in question must be worth an officer. And weaker DP-cheap frigates just aren't.
I agree with you that the weaker DP frigates aren't worth officers.
But I have an unpopular opinion that frigates were viable lategame without officers last version as distractions, escorts, and torpedo boats. The change to target analysis makes them take a bit less damage this version, and coordinated maneuvers + flux regulation + crew training apply even without officers, so I think they have come out a bit ahead and are still viable. Once properly built and buffed, I've found that my un-officered frigates can usually win or tie vs an officered enemy frigate of equal DP unless I get unlucky and it has an unusually good build/set of skills (bit of RNG there). And as a player I have the power to tip the duel in their favor, either by swapping command or by sending an interceptor strike.
But officered high performance frigates are way above viable, they are excellent, and the contrast is pretty stark. Something like an unofficered Brawler plinking away with HVDs: helping, but unlikely to do any heroics. An officered Tempest, Scarab, or Hyperion? I expect it to kill 4 times its weight or more (if there are enough targets).
Yeah, frigates aren't bad at distracting, I'd guess the lack of interest came from loss aversion from players and the way that combat is often balanced economically around flawless victories (or at least seems like it). If facing a multiple capital fleet cost you a couple of your own capitals you'd be operating at net loss all day every day, expecting such efficient handling is a little strange but it could be considered a harder difficulty encounter not meant to a beginner.Those bounties eventually become all the player gets to fight eventually aside from the once-in-a-blue-moon 50k bounty nobody cares about. Sometimes, before the player is ready to fight them.
Those bounties eventually become all the player gets to fight eventually aside from the once-in-a-blue-moon 50k bounty nobody cares about. Sometimes, before the player is ready to fight them.
After player becomes powerful enough to flawlessly win nearly every time, he can rack up money and story points (or move on to Radiant grinding). Until then, he is miserable because he cannot fight them without taking devastating losses, and needs to rely on other easy money tricks like raiding or drug running to earn money.
Personally, I think a good start would be making it rarer than it currently seems to be. It feels like I see one in almost every developed shipyard, which feels weird for such a powerful high-tech ship.I don't think making them rarer would really accomplish anything. It'd just force people to do several more loops around the core worlds trying to get ships that are as (supposedly) "overpowerded" as before, and afterwards encourages reloading a save if one is lost in battle because it'd be a painful bit of RNG to replace it otherwise.
Personally, I think a good start would be making it rarer than it currently seems to be. It feels like I see one in almost every developed shipyard, which feels weird for such a powerful high-tech ship.It was too rare before. I think it is fine if player can buy the ship. If Tempest is common in NPC fleets, it should not be so hard for the player to buy one.
There are other ships like that, though, like the paragon. Most high-tech ships in general are pretty rare, but I got a squadron of tempests almost right away, since they seem to be very common and cheap. I think removing high-energy focus would be a very real nerf, and probably still keep the ship pretty good, if it was actually meant to not be as powerful as it is. My two cents are that at the end of the day, it's a frigate and can easily get nuked by a bigger ship even at it's power level.Personally, I think a good start would be making it rarer than it currently seems to be. It feels like I see one in almost every developed shipyard, which feels weird for such a powerful high-tech ship.I don't think making them rarer would really accomplish anything. It'd just force people to do several more loops around the core worlds trying to get ships that are as (supposedly) "overpowerded" as before, and afterwards encourages reloading a save if one is lost in battle because it'd be a painful bit of RNG to replace it otherwise.
For non-SO I use Heavy needler + 2 heavy mortars + 2 vulcans for guns for pressure, but its the missiles that kill things like stations quickly. I've settled on half sabots half reapers in linked groups, for most fights, so for the officered ships 18 sabots and 6 reapers. They aren't the best at hunting but they are very tough and have decent overall DPS (250 kinetic at .8 efficiency, 440 he at .82 efficiency) to support the missile bursts.
The problem with compositions is during the earlier stages player may struggle at, he may not have unlimited access to weapons or hullmods. He may not have Expanded Missile Racks or Hardened Shields. He may lack the energy weapons or other big or elite guns he needs to bring the best out of his ships.Those bounties eventually become all the player gets to fight eventually aside from the once-in-a-blue-moon 50k bounty nobody cares about. Sometimes, before the player is ready to fight them.
After player becomes powerful enough to flawlessly win nearly every time, he can rack up money and story points (or move on to Radiant grinding). Until then, he is miserable because he cannot fight them without taking devastating losses, and needs to rely on other easy money tricks like raiding or drug running to earn money.
Yeah, that is true, the bounty system sticks you up there often far before you are ready to take them on, 100k bounties seem to appear very rarely or in short windows of time after beating a few 50k but they go up to 200k really soon.
Contacts somewhat help you alleviate that now at least.
The fact that this game is essentially a strategy game, and fleet composition and loadouts are the most important of all factors seems to be forgotten by most, it's only natural that once you have a perfected fleet and build you are nigh unstoppable, but to get there you have a lot of learning to do. The line between phyrric victories and "too easy" no losses is very thin in this game, people who have a perfected fleet comp and find it too easy should just try other ones and see how they fare, otherwise we risk ending up with both combat and campaign earnings balanced around the best possible compositions, that's not exactly reasonable for the vast majority of players.
I just want the low or midline variants to amount to anything useable.Hyperion is definitely very, VERY powerful, but requires you or an officer with 0-flux speed boost when not making flux talent, if you want to get the most of it. It's still extremely durable and high-flux for a frigate, being able to fight most destroyers. Catch is, it's as expensive as a cruiser to maintain, so I don't think it really counts. From what I remember scarab has a very good system but struggles with dealing with shields and in general can't punch above it's weight at all. Good for harassment and flanking.
It isn't exactly the tempests fault, that the other small ones are just so garbage. Scarab and Hyperion might be good, but they are high tech aswell and not exactly normal ships in any way.
New IR pulse lasers are pretty good anti shield, so scarab is just all around good now IMO.Isn’t scarab just worse lasher?
I think its mainly speed holding Lashers back at this point... for their price they have good firepower, though far from the firepower that the true high performance frigates bring. Scarabs have speed from their system like intrisic_parity said.
I'm now on the "give lashers 180 speed!" ultrabuff train. Why not eh?
For the love of God don't give the Tempest active flare launcher!It used to have that. It more recent versions, Active Flare Launcher is... not that bad. It is reliable anti-missile. Good for a ship without PD, if a Tempest nerf means no more drones with PD.
Could you share your Scarab build + officer? I haven't played around with them much but that sounds very strong.You've already watched the video it seems, but here you have it.
After two campaigns of testing frigates with wolfpack I've came into a conclusion that officered scarab>officered tempest, but regular scarab<regular tempest. 3x speed on scarab is just bonkers, it received a huge buff, i must say i was a fan of scarab even before then it has only 150 flux dissipation and considered by many a very meh pick. Most other unofficered frigates do not even worth a try. Tempest do not really have two free ir blasters, target analysis, wolfpack tactics, energy focus them all do not affect drones, so it felt like wasted potential putting officer on tempest imo. in the previous version I've even tried putting green skill on a tempest officer, worked well tbh.
I think the reason scarab is so strong is that it's system increases dissipation and fire rate by 3x. While the system is active, 2 IR pulse lasers become 900 DPS at .8 efficiency, and then you add wolfpack + target anaysis + energy weapon mastery and you some really high damage numbers. I prefer to lean into the system by increasing uptime with system mastery and spending OP on other hullmods instead of missiles and expanded missiles racks. I don't think it really needs to rely on sabots, although I'm sure it's very effective that way too.