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Starsector => General Discussion => Blog Posts => Topic started by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 11:59:27 AM

Title: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 11:59:27 AM
Blog post here (https://fractalsoftworks.com/2021/05/28/a-tale-of-two-tech-levels/).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: robepriority on May 28, 2021, 12:15:15 PM
What would be the difference between an interruptible burn drive and plasma burn?
Would a discharged terminator be effected by strike commander or missile specialization?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Bub on May 28, 2021, 12:19:25 PM
Well there goes my idea for a ship pack lol, I had the same idea of swapping out shields on a low tech ship for dampening field and maybe having it regen a little bit of armor so you could be more aggressive on low tech

Really excited about the changes, the new tempest nuke system seems really fun, mixing it with an atlas mkII could make for some crazy firepower
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: tseikk1 on May 28, 2021, 12:25:13 PM
The new low-tech ships look great, and the change to burn drive is, in my opinion, the best of all the suggestions it has gotten.

But did the tempest really need a nerf? I don't think it was overperforming that hard. Thanks to its small shield it was really hard to use in mid-late fights. Sure, it smashes early pirates and pathers, but what doesn't? Most people were already choosing to use the scarab over the tempest, since it has a proper shield, and because small energy slots in general are better than in earlier versions. edit: and why is the Omen left untouched?

On another note, are there any plans to change or rebalance the skill system any further, or is it in a finished state now?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Eji1700 on May 28, 2021, 12:27:26 PM
As always i really like the approach that's being taken to solve these issues. 

The new frigate looks fun and opens some really interesting design space, and of course i'm really excited to see how the burn drive changes work out (Especially in AI hands).

In general though i'm just excited for "moar ships" in vanilla.  God knows we've got a ton of great mods to expand the roster, but i'm happy to see some of the niche's being filled in more and more without it.  Really helps keep the flavor right in the base game, and hopefully moves away from "high tech best tech" mentality that it can leave you with.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 28, 2021, 12:32:09 PM
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Vanguard
What happens if I try to put Makeshift Shield Generator on the Vanguard? Does it just not allow the hullmod to be added?

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Though, to be fair, “this isn’t as powerful as the baseline version of the ship” is unlikely to be much consolation when it’s coming at you full-burn.
"Ship coming in with Full Burn" means "big, predictable target wide open to Reapers/Doom Mines". So yes, that is, in fact, a consolation ;D.

Actually wait, that's cancellable now. Might have to be more worried in the future ;).

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Bonus: Termination Sequence
Does the AI know how to use this new system? I can already see my officers spamming missile drones against a SO Hound that they're never going to hit and never needed to hit with that kind of ordinance, or spamming the 1K flux option in front of multiple Sabots or something. Beyond that I'm curious to see how the modified Tempest handles, and whether it'll still manage to justify it's 8DP cost. People said it "overperformed" a fair bit, but I don't recall as many people saying it "overperformed for an 8DP frigate"...

Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: intrinsic_parity on May 28, 2021, 12:34:09 PM
I'm not even sure if the tempest is all that nerfed. If the drone missiles deal good damage, it basically gets unlimited missiles which is pretty solid on a frigate. It might even be worth treating it like a battle carrier with bombers and investing in replenishment rate.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Dark.Revenant on May 28, 2021, 12:34:28 PM
Will the existing non-toggle Burn Drive AI be available?

I'm not even sure if the tempest is all that nerfed. If the drone missiles deal good damage, it basically gets unlimited missiles which is pretty solid on a frigate. It might even be worth treating it like a battle carrier with bombers and investing in replenishment rate.
The flux cost (and loss of PD) makes it an overall nerf compared to HEF.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on May 28, 2021, 12:34:53 PM
Finally, burn drive can be interrupted again. You don't have to choose between not using it or using it and overcommitting anymore.
I was hoping for pirate Fury, but alas.
Stealing another name from DR (first Revenant, then Vanguard) is just rude. However, it's cool to see second ship system UI implemented, it would help some mod ships that already had ship systems instead of shields.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on May 28, 2021, 12:35:22 PM
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The problem, however, is that this system very difficult for the AI to use safely. There are just too many factors to consider, but the main problem is that *if it gets it wrong* then this leaves the ship terribly exposed and likely to be destroyed. So, even an AI that got it mostly right – it just takes one mistake, and those are the things that stick in the player’s mind when they see it. The AI, therefore, is very conservative with its use – but this means that Burn Drive is largely not doing the job it was intended for, giving low tech the ability to keep the pressure on when facing technically-faster ships.

So, one key change that supports much of what’s in the rest of this post is making Burn Drive able to be toggled off at any point in the burn. (This can be done either by pressing the system-activation key again, or by venting.)

I am so Ludd right now.

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With this final piece of the puzzle, the new ship – named the “Vanguard” – works! It’s tough and persistent, and if it does fall in a larger battle, then it’s just not a very big deal. And another nice thing here is that this combination of two systems is special, so low tech gets something with a bit of a shine to it that way. Here’s its in-game description:

An ancient and tough heavy frigate featuring robust construction, a combat burn drive, and no modern shields. Instead, the Vanguard is equipped with an integrated Damper Field of archaic design but tuned to modern standards. This allows the Vanguard to allocate 100% of flux buildup to weapon systems, leaving defense to its heavy armor enhanced by the obscure physics of resonant field-dampening.

And here’s a shot of it in action, featuring burn drive and damper field active at the same time:
Spoiler
(https://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/vanguard_burn.jpg)
[close]

I can't wait to try this bad boy now. It's legit making me doubt my next campaign focus :P

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Eradicator, which has Accellerated Ammo Feeder
I can taste the Safety Overrides, Heavy Machinegun and Harpoon/Reaper/Annihalator spam already. It's going to be glorious.

Do you have Luddic Path versions of either of these ships planned by the way? The faction could really benefit from some more good ships  :-[

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About the Tempest
It's very pleasing to see the amount of effort being devoted to reining high tech back a tad. Looking forward to the tempest and the other High tech frigate changes!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Luuiscool4567 on May 28, 2021, 12:36:54 PM
Mmm. Just saying that the Eradicator could make a good choice to add a 14th Battlegroup variation. It's pretty close to being in line with the Kantai Kessen decisive battle doctrine that the 14th practiced. Eagle and Falcon XIV variants don't really feel like they fit in the 14th Battlegroup's overall. 
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on May 28, 2021, 12:39:42 PM
Mmm. Just saying that the Eradicator could make a good choice to add a 14th Battlegroup variation. It's pretty close to being in line with the Kantai Kessen decisive battle doctrine that the 14th practiced. Eagle and Falcon XIV variants don't really feel like they fit in the 14th Battlegroup's overall.

Indeed, a 14th battlegroup variant of both these new upcoming low tech additions would be very welcome!

Welcome to the forum by the way Luuiscool4567! Stick around  ;)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: RustyCabbage on May 28, 2021, 12:43:03 PM
All these changes/additions are really exciting! The Eradicator especially looks lovely. Guessing the dissipation will be around 300-350? That'll be a lot of fun with 3 AAF-boosted medium ballistics.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Luuiscool4567 on May 28, 2021, 12:44:24 PM
Mmm. Just saying that the Eradicator could make a good choice to add a 14th Battlegroup variation. It's pretty close to being in line with the Kantai Kessen decisive battle doctrine that the 14th practiced. Eagle and Falcon XIV variants don't really feel like they fit in the 14th Battlegroup's overall.

Indeed, a 14th battlegroup variant of both these new upcoming low tech additions would be very welcome!

Welcome to the forum by the way Luuiscool4567! Stick around  ;)

Always been lurking around on the forum posts. Just decided to make an account just to throw around ideas now for fun as this is the opportune time to strike for moar XIV variants.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 28, 2021, 12:54:10 PM
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It's very pleasing to see the amount of effort being devoted to reining high tech back a tad. Looking forward to the tempest and the other High tech frigate changes!
I would like to not see High Tech dragged down because the whole "Low Tech" philosophy is just faulty by design and therefore unable to compete, though. That said I'm not sure what to make of the Tempest change. It definitely feels like a nerf, since I can't imagine these pseudo-missiles are at all sustainable in an extended fight (if only compared to infinitely renewable HEF Pulsar shots, which would be a very difficult bar to cross). But 2 combined HB shots and 1.25 Ion Cannon worth of EMP at 1K flux is nothing to sneeze at either.

(The loss of PD I personally don't care about, I always pair Tempests with Omens anyway since I find anything short of top tier PD to be suicide in this patch for some inexplicable reason)

Alex, what are these Terminator missile things classified as, in terms of skills and hullmods? "Fighters turning into missiles that deal energy damage" is...not clearly accounted for in the skill tree ::). Does Strike Commander's +20% damage to Destroyer+ targets apply to them? That would be lovely, especially as I wouldn't have any reason to pick that skill otherwise...
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Maethendias on May 28, 2021, 12:57:50 PM
"PhD in starsectorlogy" LUL
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on May 28, 2021, 01:01:30 PM
"PhD in starsectorlogy" LUL

We've got to ask the real questions here:
Does being a devoted Luddite, follower of the Holy Path count as a Master?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on May 28, 2021, 01:02:14 PM
but if it had a shield – even a pretty decent one, though not high tech grade – then it would fall short of being useful. It’d start to get close to an enemy, take a bunch of shield damage, back off, and this would repeat itself with no real progress being made.

This AI issue affects most low-tech ships and is one of the factors weakening them severely right now outside of player hands. Low-tech ships overusing their shields like high-tech ships (while ignoring that they have good armour) until they overload or can't use weapons.
The Vanguard looks interesting as a "big fleet" low-tech frigate but hopefully other low-techs ships won't be ignored regarding the above-mentioned problem.

Eradicator looks nice too, like a low-tech Fury. I like that they both have turrets. It always felt like hardpoint guns would be a midline thing (efficient, focused firepower, with the agility needed to make use of it) while low-tech would have turrets to compensate for low agility and to engage multiple opponents. With that in mind, the main low-tech frigate and cruiser (Lasher, Dominator) both being hardpoint gun ships felt strange.

PS: The blog post mentions big engines on the Eradicator but the engines on the sprite and the engine glow FX look kinda small.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on May 28, 2021, 01:04:46 PM
Looks pretty nice.
Eradicator look great and Vanguard is interesting even if plain looking. Idea of having Damper field instead of shields is pretty neat.
Mixed on tempest changes but they were really strong before so hope its for the better.
Anything about skill changes?
Hope for some buffs here and there and for some nerfs(especially to Derelict Contingent - hope it go away completely and phase ships).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: StrikeEcho on May 28, 2021, 01:04:54 PM
"PhD in starsectorlogy" LUL

We've got to ask the real questions here:
Does being a devoted Luddite, follower of the Holy Path count as a Master?
Well, there are degrees in theology, so I don't see why not.
Although, I think that Galatia Academy no longer has a course in that particular field of study.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: HELMUT on May 28, 2021, 01:27:17 PM
Hey, new blogpost! A little bit of premature theorycrafting wouldn't hurt to accompany this. The burn drive cancel was removed years ago but is now back, and without the need to vent now! That's a pretty huge buff to all burn drive ships. Moving that Onslaught precisely where it needs to be without accidentally ramming its target is a huge deal. Will it be enough to revive the Onslaught vs Paragon threads of old?

As for the ships, first the Vanguard :

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It’s worth noting that the Vanguard isn’t especially great against other frigates. (https://i.imgur.com/uNSK9oN.png)

Vanguard seems like a top low-tech pick for frigates, for early and possibly mid game. Late game however? Eh... Maybe as combat objective capping cannon fodder. It seems to be similarly armed to the Lasher, although with AAF, so not as bursty. Unlike the Lasher however, stopping a charging Vanguard is going to be hard as hell. No shield to overload, and very resilient to EMP thanks to damper field. I just hope the pirates or pathers won't field many of those loaded with harpoons/sabots combos.


The Eradicator seems like a cruiser sized Lasher. And like the Lasher, a Safety Override bait. Or for the more subtle, a nasty HVD/Mauler platform for suppression, with 5 small harpoons for taking down vulnerable targets. It seems like a very basic, but efficient vessel. I expect it to be a top tier ship both for player use as for the AI throughout the campaign.


And the Tempest... Well. I'm not sure about that one. On one hand it did lost HEF. On the other hand, it gained a tachyon lance torpedo. Alright, not quite tachyon lance, but still beefy as hell. I feel this won't change much for most early/mid game combat scenarios. But can you imagine a pack of those for a late game fleet? Handling one or two kamikaze drones is manageable, but dealing with a ceaseless swarm from an entire Tempest fleet seems... Impossible. I guess it'll all depends on the system's cooldown, the drone's range, or its maneuverability if it's affected. But from what i'm seeing, it seems like a moderate early game nerf/side grade and a terrifying late game buff for the Tempest, or at least, for a pack of Tempests.

Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Zuthal on May 28, 2021, 01:28:11 PM
What is the range of the Tempest's drone-missiles? You didn't say in the blogpost, and it should probably say so in the system description.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Grievous69 on May 28, 2021, 01:29:19 PM
So I was basically almost spot on with my guesses, an elite low tech frigate plus a smaller than heavy cruiser with AAF system, I was just wrong on the cruiser mounts. Really looks like a low tech Fury and I like it. But come on where are the most important details, what are the DPs chief? I assume it's 7-8 DP for the baby bowling ball and 20 for the Eradicator.

EDIT: Thank god I'm going to fight something other than Ventures in pirate fleets, this might actually be the biggest thing for me in the whole blog post.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: pairedeciseaux on May 28, 2021, 01:45:04 PM
New ships! With many missiles! Looks like great additions to the roster.

The cruiser looks a bit like a cross-over from an Enforcer and an Aurora (when using missiles on front hardpoints). The frigate will probably be a nasty little pest. Though you have to wonder what kind of herbs people at FractalSoftworks were smoking when they managed to get the strange but interesting right-click-damper-field idea. :P

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While we’re looking at low tech frigate performance, it also makes sense to look at some high tech ships that are over-performing. The Tempest isn’t the only one (nor the only one I’ve looked at and made some adjustments to), but for this post, I’d like to talk about it since the changes turned out more interesting than your run-of-the-mill buff or nerf.

If you are still looking at those, I’d like to point a minor underperforming issue with Hyperion. A skill-less non-SO AI Hyperion will hardly ever use its ship system for reasons I don’t fully understand. It seems to be a mix of: 0-flux bonus condition, shield staying raised in threatening situations, AI flux management behaviours (re-engage enemy before passive venting gets flux to 0, does not use active venting). Having omni shield conversion seems to improve things a bit because AI is a bit more confident and then lowers its shield more often, and, uhhh, shield shunt is even “better” (no I’m not suggesting to remove shield from Hyperion!).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on May 28, 2021, 01:59:43 PM
If you are still looking at those, I’d like to point a minor underperforming issue with Hyperion. A skill-less non-SO AI Hyperion will hardly ever use its ship system for reasons I don’t fully understand. It seems to be a mix of: 0-flux bonus condition, shield staying raised in threatening situations, AI flux management behaviours (re-engage enemy before passive venting gets flux to 0, does not use active venting). Having omni shield conversion seems to improve things a bit because AI is a bit more confident and then lowers its shield more often, and, uhhh, shield shunt is even “better” (no I’m not suggesting to remove shield from Hyperion!).

Hyperion needs to have the Zero-Flux speed boost active in order to use the Phase Teleport. The easiest way to do this is to install Safety Overrides, but there's also another way to make it use more often which is giving it an Officer with Elite Helsmanship. The elite effect of the skill applies the zero flux speed boost when the ship is not generating any flux, making the frigate use the system more often.

Do you have a non-overridden Hyperion setup to share by the way? We might be able to help you that way!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Megas on May 28, 2021, 02:00:53 PM
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Another point worth noting: I’ve increased the range of the Light Autocannons and the Light Assault Gun – small ballistic weapons that the Vanguard can mount.
How much extra range?  The main point of Railgun and Light Needler is more range, and if the 4 to 5 DP weapons will have (nearly) as much range as the elite weapons, then Railgun and Needler may cost too much for what they do.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on May 28, 2021, 02:11:19 PM
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Another point worth noting: I’ve increased the range of the Light Autocannons and the Light Assault Gun – small ballistic weapons that the Vanguard can mount.
How much extra range?  The main point of Railgun and Light Needler is more range, and if the 4 to 5 DP weapons will have (nearly) as much range as the elite weapons, then Railgun and Needler may cost too much for what they do.

Could always buff Railgun range more to be the true light "sniper gun" and make the Light Needler more bursty to be the best at overloading enemies among light guns.

I'm eager to try the range-buffed ACs and LAG. The current low base range makes them difficult to use for AI frigates and destroyers, and on larger ships they don't benefit enough from % increases from DTC/ITU to justify mounting alongside other weapons.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: writeru on May 28, 2021, 02:16:54 PM
Never before I thought I would be EXCITED to see something I love being nerfed. The tempest solution is promising! I don't know if it will make the ship less powerful or not, but it does FEEL good to use this system. This change literally made the game more interesting to me, and I think changes like this are rarely made in videogames, they rather "fine tune" a boring statistic than making a interesting change.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 28, 2021, 02:45:26 PM
That the Eradicator (P) is getting a DP discount compared to the base model is quite interesting and also somewhat unusual, given that the other pirate direct downgrades (Wolf (P)'s loss of OP & side turrets & degraded skimmer, Afflictor (P)'s loss of OP and side hardpoints, etc) do not benefit from that.  Presumably this isn't implemented via .skin as those lack the ability to change DP costs.  Is the Eradicator (P) kind of an outlier in that regard or is this part of a new, upcoming trend for Pirate downgrade variants?

The LAC & LAG range buffs are curious.  IMO they risk crowding out the premium small ballistics in terms of role, as well as potential balancing connotations associated with having inexpensive, small, and relatively long-range guns.  If they're considered underperforming it may be best to approach other avenues of enhancements, such as flux efficiency or damage.

A shieldless superfrigate is conceptually interesting, to say the least.  I've never had real issues dispatching shieldless ships thanks to various available EMP and anti-armor options available, bug I guess I'll have to see how it works out ingame.

I don't agree that current Tempest overperforms for its light cruiser grade Deployment Cost, but I'll just leave it as that for now.

Overall, most excited for the introduction of the Eradicator and Eradicator (P)!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 03:21:23 PM
What would be the difference between an interruptible burn drive and plasma burn?

Not to be facetious, but interruptible burn drive is interruptible, where plasma burn isn't :)

I think what you're saying, maybe, is that plasma burn is short enough duration that it allows for a safer advance? But the extra ... 300 or so? however many units it commits you to going matter quite a bit here. And you can keep shields on. And it's faster. And it has charges. Etc. They're just... quite different.

Would a discharged terminator be effected by strike commander or missile specialization?

It'd pick up target leading - for shooting its weapons - from Strike Commander. But the missile HP bonuses wouldn't apply in either case since it's just using the drone.


Well there goes my idea for a ship pack lol, I had the same idea of swapping out shields on a low tech ship for dampening field and maybe having it regen a little bit of armor so you could be more aggressive on low tech

Really excited about the changes, the new tempest nuke system seems really fun, mixing it with an atlas mkII could make for some crazy firepower

:D


The new low-tech ships look great, and the change to burn drive is, in my opinion, the best of all the suggestions it has gotten.

Thank you!

But did the tempest really need a nerf? I don't think it was overperforming that hard. Thanks to its small shield it was really hard to use in mid-late fights. Sure, it smashes early pirates and pathers, but what doesn't? Most people were already choosing to use the scarab over the tempest, since it has a proper shield, and because small energy slots in general are better than in earlier versions. edit: and why is the Omen left untouched?

I think so. Honestly, I don't think it's even particularly close, as far as being stronger than it really ought to be. The Scarab is a separate point - it could well be too strong, as well. I *think*, if I remember right, that when it lost two weapon slots (the useless ones) it did not get a corresponding ordnance point reduction by 10. That may well be a significant part of it being over-tuned now.

The Omen seems mostly fine, though it could maybe use a slight DP increase. It's a good (great, really) frigate, but with its lacking main armaments, it's still mostly a support one.


On another note, are there any plans to change or rebalance the skill system any further, or is it in a finished state now?

Yeah, very much so; there are some significant changes coming.


As always i really like the approach that's being taken to solve these issues. 

The new frigate looks fun and opens some really interesting design space, and of course i'm really excited to see how the burn drive changes work out (Especially in AI hands).

In general though i'm just excited for "moar ships" in vanilla.  God knows we've got a ton of great mods to expand the roster, but i'm happy to see some of the niche's being filled in more and more without it.  Really helps keep the flavor right in the base game, and hopefully moves away from "high tech best tech" mentality that it can leave you with.

Thank you, glad you're into the new stuff! And, yeah, I really hope so too, as far as low tech seeing a bit more use.


What happens if I try to put Makeshift Shield Generator on the Vanguard? Does it just not allow the hullmod to be added?

You can't put it on, same as with phase ships. (Which, now that I check, actually says that the ship already has shields, let me fix that up...)


"Ship coming in with Full Burn" means "big, predictable target wide open to Reapers/Doom Mines". So yes, that is, in fact, a consolation ;D.

Actually wait, that's cancellable now. Might have to be more worried in the future ;).

Yeah, I was going to say, it can be cancelled! And the AI will do it in a case like this.

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Bonus: Termination Sequence
Does the AI know how to use this new system? I can already see my officers spamming missile drones against a SO Hound that they're never going to hit and never needed to hit with that kind of ordinance, or spamming the 1K flux option in front of multiple Sabots or something.

The AI is aware of many factors - the fighter replacement rate, how vulnerable the target is, whether there's a current missile threat, etc. Still testing it out a bit, but so far it seems fine.


Beyond that I'm curious to see how the modified Tempest handles, and whether it'll still manage to justify it's 8DP cost. People said it "overperformed" a fair bit, but I don't recall as many people saying it "overperformed for an 8DP frigate"...

I don't think it's even all that close as far as whether it's over-performing or not! The damage it can deal with HEF is, to be frank, kind of bonkers.


Will the existing non-toggle Burn Drive AI be available?

Yeah! In fact to use the new AI you'd have to specify BURN_DRIVE_TOGGLE in the .system file. The original BURN_DRIVE AI is still used by Plasma Burn and remains intact.

Stealing another name from DR (first Revenant, then Vanguard) is just rude.

Apologies :( The "cool ship name" space is, sadly, somewhat crowded. Best I can do is not *intentionally* grab a mod ship's name. (Which isn't the same as not doing it *knowingly*, though in this case I didn't actually know. If I ever add, like, a Karkinos, though, there'd be some cause for consternation. Even if it's just Greek for "crab".)


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Eradicator, which has Accellerated Ammo Feeder
I can taste the Safety Overrides, Heavy Machinegun and Harpoon/Reaper/Annihalator spam already. It's going to be glorious.

... there may be an Overdriven pirate version that does something very very similar.

Do you have Luddic Path versions of either of these ships planned by the way? The faction could really benefit from some more good ships  :-[

Hmm, not specifically. Though it might be a good fit indeed, especially for the Eradicator.

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About the Tempest
It's very pleasing to see the amount of effort being devoted to reining high tech back a tad. Looking forward to the tempest and the other High tech frigate changes!

(Just to try to rein in the expectations a bit, this isn't how I'd *usually* go about nerfing something! The scythe of balance is indeed mercurial, but usually much more straightforward.)

Mmm. Just saying that the Eradicator could make a good choice to add a 14th Battlegroup variation. It's pretty close to being in line with the Kantai Kessen decisive battle doctrine that the 14th practiced. Eagle and Falcon XIV variants don't really feel like they fit in the 14th Battlegroup's overall.

Hmm - it's actually not even a Hegemony ship at this point. We'll see, though, we'll see. For some reason the Eradicator just doesn't feel quite right for the Hegemony, for me. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point :)


All these changes/additions are really exciting! The Eradicator especially looks lovely. Guessing the dissipation will be around 300-350? That'll be a lot of fun with 3 AAF-boosted medium ballistics.

It's at 400! I think I tend to overtune new things a bit sometimes (which, I mean, can be good to help them see more use); we'll see if it needs some reining in.


High Tech dragged down because the whole "Low Tech" philosophy is just faulty by design and therefore unable to compete, though.

Hmm, hard disagree on this. There are *so many* balance knobs to turn that I don't think "unable to compete" holds up to scrutiny.

That said I'm not sure what to make of the Tempest change. It definitely feels like a nerf


It's definitely a nerf, yes. But it's situationally useful, and in ways that the HEF couldn't do, so it's more of a... sideways nerf.
 
Alex, what are these Terminator missile things classified as, in terms of skills and hullmods? "Fighters turning into missiles that deal energy damage" is...not clearly accounted for in the skill tree ::). Does Strike Commander's +20% damage to Destroyer+ targets apply to them? That would be lovely, especially as I wouldn't have any reason to pick that skill otherwise...

They're affected by missile damage and speed/range/guidance modifiers. And also by ship system range modifiers. They're *not* affected by missile hitpoints modifiers.


This AI issue affects most low-tech ships and is one of the factors weakening them severely right now outside of player hands. Low-tech ships overusing their shields like high-tech ships (while ignoring that they have good armour) until they overload or can't use weapons.
The Vanguard looks interesting as a "big fleet" low-tech frigate but hopefully other low-techs ships won't be ignored regarding the above-mentioned problem.

I understand what you're saying, but it's kind of two separate things. In the case of the shield-Vanguard, taking damage from larger ships on shields and backing off is generally the right choice; otherwise it would just get destroyed quickly!

There's *also* the fact that it's impossible for the AI to armor-tank as effectively as the player can. I mean, it does it to some extent, and because of this there's occasional feedback to the effect of it taking unnecessary damage. It's just a tough problem to solve. Doesn't mean there won't be some incremental improvements about it here and there, but it's in a fairly workable place already.


Eradicator looks nice too, like a low-tech Fury. I like that they both have turrets. It always felt like hardpoint guns would be a midline thing (efficient, focused firepower, with the agility needed to make use of it) while low-tech would have turrets to compensate for low agility and to engage multiple opponents. With that in mind, the main low-tech frigate and cruiser (Lasher, Dominator) both being hardpoint gun ships felt strange.

Ah - I think you're picking up on something that isn't there, design-intent wise. So, I mean - I understand why it might feel strange given the "midline = hardpoints" assumption, but that's not at all a pillar of their design.

PS: The blog post mentions big engines on the Eradicator but the engines on the sprite and the engine glow FX look kinda small.

The Eradicator's engine flames look about the same as those of a Dominator *at full burn*, so I'm not sure I see that.


Looks pretty nice.
Eradicator look great and Vanguard is interesting even if plain looking. Idea of having Damper field instead of shields is pretty neat.
Mixed on tempest changes but they were really strong before so hope its for the better.

Thank you! And, I hope so too.

Anything about skill changes?
Hope for some buffs here and there and for some nerfs(especially to Derelict Contingent - hope it go away completely and phase ships).

Nothing I'm ready to talk about quite yet :-X

(Well, aside from Derelict Contingent, that's going away in its current form.)



Hey, new blogpost! A little bit of premature theorycrafting wouldn't hurt to accompany this. The burn drive cancel was removed years ago but is now back, and without the need to vent now! That's a pretty huge buff to all burn drive ships. Moving that Onslaught precisely where it needs to be without accidentally ramming its target is a huge deal. Will it be enough to revive the Onslaught vs Paragon threads of old?

Oh yes, the Paragon. *pats nerf bat* I think replacing its ship system with a flare launcher - not active, mind, just the regular kind - would be an interesting sidegrade as well.


Vanguard seems like a top low-tech pick for frigates, for early and possibly mid game. Late game however? Eh... Maybe as combat objective capping cannon fodder. It seems to be similarly armed to the Lasher, although with AAF, so not as bursty. Unlike the Lasher however, stopping a charging Vanguard is going to be hard as hell. No shield to overload, and very resilient to EMP thanks to damper field. I just hope the pirates or pathers won't field many of those loaded with harpoons/sabots combos.

For late-game, my hope is that it can occupy a similar niche to the Centurion/Monitor. More aggressive and more likely to be lost, but also easily recoverable. And, at the same time, also better at capping points. I'm not sure how many would be worth putting officers into, but with Damper Field, I suspect a bunch of these - with d-mods, whatever - could make a very effective first wave and stick around to absorb a lot of fire. But yeah, that's just theorycrafting, we'll have to see! And I'm excited to.


And the Tempest... Well. I'm not sure about that one. On one hand it did lost HEF. On the other hand, it gained a tachyon lance torpedo. Alright, not quite tachyon lance, but still beefy as hell. I feel this won't change much for most early/mid game combat scenarios. But can you imagine a pack of those for a late game fleet? Handling one or two kamikaze drones is manageable, but dealing with a ceaseless swarm from an entire Tempest fleet seems... Impossible. I guess it'll all depends on the system's cooldown, the drone's range, or its maneuverability if it's affected. But from what i'm seeing, it seems like a moderate early game nerf/side grade and a terrifying late game buff for the Tempest, or at least, for a pack of Tempests.
What is the range of the Tempest's drone-missiles? You didn't say in the blogpost, and it should probably say so in the system description.

The missile range is currently 1500, so, less than a Harpoon. The system indicator tells you when it's out of range so you can easily see the range on it in combat. The system doesn't have a meaningful cooldown - rather, it's limited by the availability of drones! Which, at a baseline, 20 seconds to replace one, and considerably more once the replacement rate starts ticking down - which it will as soon as even one is fired. A pack of Tempests might be able to overwhelm a couple of ships with drones, but in an endurance fight, their effectiveness should drop off real quick.



So I was basically almost spot on with my guesses, an elite low tech frigate plus a smaller than heavy cruiser with AAF system, I was just wrong on the cruiser mounts. Really looks like a low tech Fury and I like it. But come on where are the most important details, what are the DPs chief? I assume it's 7-8 DP for the baby bowling ball and 20 for the Eradicator.

Spot on for the Eradicator! The (P) version is 15; possibly under-costed there.

The Vanguard, I really wanted to make it 8, but I'm not sure it holds up as good value at that point. So right now it's 6, but I'm not 100% set on whether it'll stay there.


EDIT: Thank god I'm going to fight something other than Ventures in pirate fleets, this might actually be the biggest thing for me in the whole blog post.

That's ... actually fair :)


If you are still looking at those, I’d like to point a minor underperforming issue with Hyperion. A skill-less non-SO AI Hyperion will hardly ever use its ship system for reasons I don’t fully understand. It seems to be a mix of: 0-flux bonus condition, shield staying raised in threatening situations, AI flux management behaviours (re-engage enemy before passive venting gets flux to 0, does not use active venting). Having omni shield conversion seems to improve things a bit because AI is a bit more confident and then lowers its shield more often, and, uhhh, shield shunt is even “better” (no I’m not suggesting to remove shield from Hyperion!).

Oh you're not? <disappointedly moves hand from delete key>

I'll keep this in mind, but, right, it does require the zero-flux-boost to use, so that all sounds about right. I'm not sure I can see making shield-lowering more aggressive just for this case. The re-engage before flux is low enough thing, though... maybe I'll be able to have a look at that at some point. I've noticed it myself (for all ships, more or less); I think it's that they're seeing the flux become favorable to them and want to move in before that changes, so - again, tricky situation. It's often the visibly wrong move to not let it get to zero, though.


Quote
Another point worth noting: I’ve increased the range of the Light Autocannons and the Light Assault Gun – small ballistic weapons that the Vanguard can mount.
How much extra range?  The main point of Railgun and Light Needler is more range, and if the 4 to 5 DP weapons will have (nearly) as much range as the elite weapons, then Railgun and Needler may cost too much for what they do.
The LAC & LAG range buffs are curious.  IMO they risk crowding out the premium small ballistics in terms of role, as well as potential balancing connotations associated with having inexpensive, small, and relatively long-range guns.  If they're considered underperforming it may be best to approach other avenues of enhancements, such as flux efficiency or damage.

They have 700 range, same as the Railgun and the Light Needler. I don't think these are in too much danger of being too expensive; they have other features that make them great. And, more importantly, the Light Dual AC has abysmal accuracy, so whatever its paper stats are, they have to be taken with a grain of salt. Not to say they'd never compete with them, just, hopefully, there'd be cases where the extra cost is and isn't worth it. (The LAG, being HE, doesn't directly compete with either premium option...)


I'm eager to try the range-buffed ACs and LAG. The current low base range makes them difficult to use for AI frigates and destroyers, and on larger ships they don't benefit enough from % increases from DTC/ITU to justify mounting alongside other weapons.

*thumbs up* I've been playing around with them a bit - on the Eradicator in particular - and it's just really fun to have lots of dakka from smaller guns. I hope this holds up balance-wise in terms of being a reasonable loadout choice more often.


Never before I thought I would be EXCITED to see something I love being nerfed. The tempest solution is promising! I don't know if it will make the ship less powerful or not, but it does FEEL good to use this system. This change literally made the game more interesting to me, and I think changes like this are rarely made in videogames, they rather "fine tune" a boring statistic than making a interesting change.

:D :D :D

(I mean, if we're being honest, I'd rather fine-tune a more boring statistic, too! Just, in this case, nothing seemed particularly promising, and then the idea kind of took on a life of its own.)


That the Eradicator (P) is getting a DP discount compared to the base model is quite interesting and also somewhat unusual, given that the other pirate direct downgrades (Wolf (P)'s loss of OP & side turrets & degraded skimmer, Afflictor (P)'s loss of OP and side hardpoints, etc) do not benefit from that.  Presumably this isn't implemented via .skin as those lack the ability to change DP costs.  Is the Eradicator (P) kind of an outlier in that regard or is this part of a new, upcoming trend for Pirate downgrade variants?

It's now possible to do via skins, actually! And, great point re: the Wolf (P) and Afflictor (P); made a note. Thank you for mentioning it!


A shieldless superfrigate is conceptually interesting, to say the least.  I've never had real issues dispatching shieldless ships thanks to various available EMP and anti-armor options available, bug I guess I'll have to see how it works out ingame.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see; definitely not claiming to have this all on lockdown. I will say that the Vanguard also has a pretty decent OP budget, and the base loadouts are geared towards countering EMP damage. Notably, the Damper Field effect also affects EMP damage. So when, say, facing an Omen in a 1-1 - I mean, it'll lose eventually, it's dealing with something that's almost a hard counter on paper! And weapons do go offline some. But it's able to put fire on it, and the engines generally speaking stay up for the vast majority of the fight, if not the whole thing.

I don't agree that current Tempest overperforms for its light cruiser grade Deployment Cost, but I'll just leave it as that for now.

(You mean light destroyer, yes?)

Overall, most excited for the introduction of the Eradicator and Eradicator (P)!

*thumbs up*
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: FooF on May 28, 2021, 03:24:46 PM
Quite elegant solutions to the "Low Tech Problem" but I'm afraid you've set a precedent that makes thematic sense across all Low-Tech: Rugged Construction and Damper Field instead of shields. I know that probably goes too far (and you'd have to give the Mora Burn Drive!) but what a different style of play Low Tech would be given those base parameters. That's all I'll say about that but my mind is going in a lot of directions about how that could work.

Anyway, I love the Vanguard already not only because it's novel but because it looks like it already has a solid role in my fleet. How would you compare it to the similar Centurion? That, too, is an underrated ship that tends to stay in my fleet even mid-to-late game.

The Eradicator is a strange-looking ship. At first I though it was a kitbashed Fury but seeing them next to one another, maybe not so much. AAF is nice and I look forward to seeing this in action, especially with all the pew-pew it's going to do. I do agree that we need a Large Ballistic cruiser somewhere but this wasn't it.

The Tempest change is very outside-the-box and I like it. I don't think the drones regenerate all that fast so they're not going to be a reliable source of extra damage. It also makes one consider boosting the Replacement Rate, which was never an issue on the Tempest before. I'm just very glad the drones didn't go away. They're a unique addition to the line-up and gives the ship some character.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: IonDragonX on May 28, 2021, 03:29:00 PM
Buff to the Hound?! Praise Ludd!!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 03:42:23 PM
Quite elegant solutions to the "Low Tech Problem" but I'm afraid you've set a precedent that makes thematic sense across all Low-Tech: Rugged Construction and Damper Field instead of shields. I know that probably goes too far (and you'd have to give the Mora Burn Drive!) but what a different style of play Low Tech would be given those base parameters. That's all I'll say about that but my mind is going in a lot of directions about how that could work.

You know, I was thinking about Rugged Construction on the burn drive ships at one point. The thought being, "burn drive gets ships destroyed, so make that hurt less". But with the changes to burn drive, that didn't make sense the same way - but it *did* for shieldless ships. Also, it would've pigeon-holed them into whatever skill ends up boositing junkfleets. If you have a whole lineup of ships like that, then a junkfleet skill kind of has to be based around them.

Damper Field on an Onslaught... I don't even want to imagine how long that would take to destroy! It'd be a real beast, though. And yeah, that's a fun combination of things to imagine. Still... "flux doesn't matter for defense" is, I think, a bit much to do to a broad swath of ships.

Anyway, I love the Vanguard already not only because it's novel but because it looks like it already has a solid role in my fleet. How would you compare it to the similar Centurion? That, too, is an underrated ship that tends to stay in my fleet even mid-to-late game.

I think it's a more offensively-capable version of the Centurion that will get disabled more. For reference, with no officers, Vanguards can take, say, an Aurora + a Fury + a Medusa when at even DP, while sustaining some losses. I haven't tried it, but I suspect Centurions couldn't do that.

The Eradicator is a strange-looking ship. At first I though it was a kitbashed Fury but seeing them next to one another, maybe not so much. AAF is nice and I look forward to seeing this in action, especially with all the pew-pew it's going to do. I do agree that we need a Large Ballistic cruiser somewhere but this wasn't it.

(Half-thinking of a low-tech destroyer build around a large slot - sort of a Sunder in that sense, but with some things that make it a different concept...)

The Tempest change is very outside-the-box and I like it. I don't think the drones regenerate all that fast so they're not going to be a reliable source of extra damage. It also makes one consider boosting the Replacement Rate, which was never an issue on the Tempest before. I'm just very glad the drones didn't go away. They're a unique addition to the line-up and gives the ship some character.

*thumbs up* I wasn't thinking about that aspect of it, but yeah, using it, I'm just naturally watching the replacement rate like a hawk. Which, maybe not great if it was across the board, but it seems like a nice bit of variety for one ship to bring.


Buff to the Hound?! Praise Ludd!!

Indeed! I'd love to see it and the Cerberus see more combat use. And, heck, I suspect it might see more early game use in general, since the easy-to-acquire recoveries from pirate fleets will now be worth something.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on May 28, 2021, 03:59:01 PM
Oh yes, the Paragon. *pats nerf bat* I think replacing its ship system with a flare launcher - not active, mind, just the regular kind - would be an interesting sidegrade as well.
I'm sorry but WHAT? Please PLEASE tell me that is a joke! Fortress shield is a MAJOR part of the Paragon's identity. And replacing it with flares seems like a double barrel "F*** YOU!!" to it and those that like it. The ships would have to be COMPLETELY changed in order for the system change to be even remotely worth it
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 28, 2021, 04:02:24 PM
Unless someone can seriously call going from Fortress Shield to basic Flares a "sidegrade" with a straight face...
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: IonDragonX on May 28, 2021, 04:02:45 PM
Indeed! I'd love to see it and the Cerberus see more combat use. And, heck, I suspect it might see more early game use in general, since the easy-to-acquire recoveries from pirate fleets will now be worth something.
Thank you for answering my next question! I like to watch 'Necromunda' runs where you only keep what you kill. The Cerberus, Hound and Vanguard are going to do more for that playstyle. The old Recovery Operations used to have +25% chance to recover disabled ships after battle. Nothing really filled that space except the SP.

BTW, I'm still hoping that you pulled out L5 and I5 tier, to make a different thing with them.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on May 28, 2021, 04:05:46 PM
(Half-thinking of a low-tech destroyer build around a large slot - sort of a Sunder in that sense, but with some things that make it a different concept...)
Just do it!

A ballistic+missile ship above Hammer that doesn't handle like a brick was a great addition.
It'd be nice to have more options for playing around with the L ballistic slot, too.

Really like the AAF/burn drive split too, very different playstyles when controlled by the player.

Oh yes, the Paragon. *pats nerf bat* I think replacing its ship system with a flare launcher - not active, mind, just the regular kind - would be an interesting sidegrade as well.
I'm sorry but WHAT? Please PLEASE tell me that is a joke! Fortress shield is a MAJOR part of the Paragon's identity. And replacing it with flares seems like a double barrel "F*** YOU!!" to it and those that like it. The ships would have to be COMPLETELY changed in order for the system change to be even remotely worth it
Put the pitchfork down, that was a joke :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on May 28, 2021, 04:07:29 PM
Removing Fortress shield from the Paragon and giving it flares instead would equal to Removing the Thermal Pulse Cannons from the Onslaught and swapping them out for Mining Blasters.

I..don't think it's a good "sidegrade". The Fortress Shield is what makes the Paragon worth 60 Deployment Points in the first place. What would removing it even achieve? The Paragon itself is already heavily struggling to stay useful after the dawn of the Overridden, Officered Monitors with Wolfpack tactics and integrated hullmods as main tanks of a fleet.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 04:16:28 PM
I'm sorry but WHAT? Please PLEASE tell me that is a joke! Fortress shield is a MAJOR part of the Paragon's identity. And replacing it with flares seems like a double barrel "F*** YOU!!" to it and those that like it. The ships would have to be COMPLETELY changed in order for the system change to be even remotely worth it

Is joke

(Sorry ;D)

Removing Fortress shield from the Paragon and giving it flares instead would equal to Removing the Thermal Pulse Cannons from the Onslaught and swapping them out for Mining Blasters.

Mining Lasers, maybe.

BTW, I'm still hoping that you pulled out L5 and I5 tier, to make a different thing with them.

:-X

A ballistic+missile ship above Hammer that doesn't handle like a brick was a great addition.

To be fair, if we're talking about the Eradicator, it handles more like a half-brick. One thrown at a pretty good velocity, but still.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 28, 2021, 04:17:45 PM
Damper Field on an Onslaught... I don't even want to imagine how long that would take to destroy! It'd be a real beast, though. And yeah, that's a fun combination of things to imagine. Still... "flux doesn't matter for defense" is, I think, a bit much to do to a broad swath of ships.
Hm, could we make Shield Shunt replace the shield with Damper Field?* (It'd probably need Shield Shunt to be a more expensive hull mod, and it'd probably need to be a nerfed version of the Damper Field, but I think that'd make that hull mod a lot more viable without needing to rely on the current implementation of Derelict Contingent.)

* Edit: or install a damper field right-click on ships like the Hound that don't have a right-click system already.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on May 28, 2021, 04:21:48 PM
To be fair, if we're talking about the Eradicator, it handles more like a half-brick. One thrown at a pretty good velocity, but still.
The step up from Hammerhead was a Dominator, so will take the ~70(-ish, maybe) speed half-brick any day of the week :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Dark.Revenant on May 28, 2021, 04:22:18 PM
Flares are far too powerful for a D-tier ship like the Paragon.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Dread Pirate Robots on May 28, 2021, 04:30:23 PM
(Half-thinking of a low-tech destroyer build around a large slot - sort of a Sunder in that sense, but with some things that make it a different concept...)

Full-think it! Vanilla needs a couple more large ballistics imo and upgunned destroyer is a lot of fun for the player.

I'd love to try the damper-shields on a couple of low tech ships. It might be a bit much on an Onslaught like you said, but on a Dominator? That definitely might make the 25 DP seem more worth it! Very excited about the changes.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Warnoise on May 28, 2021, 04:30:54 PM
I wish the new damper shield stuff would also be equipped to the onslaught and the domknator. Or perhaps could be added as a hullmod
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on May 28, 2021, 04:32:35 PM
I'm sorry but WHAT? Please PLEASE tell me that is a joke! Fortress shield is a MAJOR part of the Paragon's identity. And replacing it with flares seems like a double barrel "F*** YOU!!" to it and those that like it. The ships would have to be COMPLETELY changed in order for the system change to be even remotely worth it
Is joke
(Sorry ;D)
Oh thank Ludd! Don't scare me like that!

Edit: IS it even possible to add a ship system as a Right Click System via a normal hullmod?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on May 28, 2021, 04:39:28 PM
Apologies :( The "cool ship name" space is, sadly, somewhat crowded.

Why not name ship classes after elements in the game's lore? While a lot of video games fall into the trap of only giving generic "cool-sounding" English words as names for spaceships, real ship classes are usually named after iconic things - places, events, people of renown and so on.
Let's make use of Starsector's lore! For example, whatever "Hegemony"-style ship classes are added in the future could be named after things in the Domain's history, with a small explaination about the origin of the name in the ship class description.

Fixes the issue of limited name space and can be an organic way of adding/detailing lore in the game.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: writeru on May 28, 2021, 04:49:46 PM
I wish the new damper shield stuff would also be equipped to the onslaught and the domknator. Or perhaps could be added as a hullmod

Maybe if the 14th battlegroup variant was the damper field one... this would be a more balanced approach.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Warnoise on May 28, 2021, 04:53:45 PM
(Half-thinking of a low-tech destroyer build around a large slot - sort of a Sunder in that sense, but with some things that make it a different concept...)

Full-think it! Vanilla needs a couple more large ballistics imo and upgunned destroyer is a lot of fun for the player.

I'd love to try the damper-shields on a couple of low tech ships. It might be a bit much on an Onslaught like you said, but on a Dominator? That definitely might make the 25 DP seem more worth it! Very excited about the changes.

Enforcer XIV should have 1 Large 2 Medium and 2 small ballistic mounts imo
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Beinsezii on May 28, 2021, 05:02:58 PM
Really liking the low tech changes. Every time I try a low-tech playthrough I end up adding some mid or high in there to balance it out.

If I might add some 2¢, given the low-tech's "decisive confrontation" idea, perhaps some sort of ballistics weapons that utilizes actual charges like the Autopulse. Currently the only time I've ever used Expanded Magazines is for my Autopulse Paragon and my antimatter harbinger.
It could even eject a little magazine on empty for extra visual flair.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 05:11:27 PM
Hm, could we make Shield Shunt replace the shield with Damper Field?* (It'd probably need Shield Shunt to be a more expensive hull mod, and it'd probably need to be a nerfed version of the Damper Field, but I think that'd make that hull mod a lot more viable without needing to rely on the current implementation of Derelict Contingent.)

* Edit: or install a damper field right-click on ships like the Hound that don't have a right-click system already.

I feel like this sort of thing is really, really difficult (or, rather, actually impossible) to balance. What system a ship has is such a big balance/gameplay factor for it, and being able to just swap it out for something else could range from "useless" to "incredibly overpowered" with no balance levers to turn to fine-tune it.

I mean, I love the idea of just being able to slap burn drive on something, or some such. But I can't really see it as anything other than a story based one-off or something along those lines.

And, well, you're not talking about swapping it out, but replacing shields with it, but I think the same general points apply.

I don't hate the concept of the Hound/Cerberus having it be a "primitive shield", though. But I think it'd also rule them out as useful, easy early game enemies for the player to face. Though if that were done with a hullmod, as you're suggesting... hmm. See, for the Hound and the Cerberus, that has potential. But what about for a ship that's designed to be a full-on combat ship without relying on a Damper Field special? I think this just enables really wild swings in power.


Flares are far too powerful for a D-tier ship like the Paragon.

Perhaps we can settle on the Gladius's single Decoy Flare, then :)


Full-think it! Vanilla needs a couple more large ballistics imo and upgunned destroyer is a lot of fun for the player.

Yeah... I mean, I already have a ship system in mind for it! So "half" is probably underselling it.


Oh thank Ludd! Don't scare me like that!

My actual apologies :) I really shouldn't joke like that, I mean, someone's bound to take it seriously.

Edit: IS it even possible to add a ship system as a Right Click System via a normal hullmod?

(I don't think it is right now, but, I mean, it *could* probably be done with some back-end work.)



Why not name ship classes after elements in the game's lore? While a lot of video games fall into the trap of only giving generic "cool-sounding" English words as names for spaceships, real ship classes are usually named after iconic things - places, events, people of renown and so on.
Let's make use of Starsector's lore! For example, whatever "Hegemony"-style ship classes are added in the future could be named after things in the Domain's history, with a small explaination about the origin of the name in the ship class description.

Fixes the issue of limited name space and can be an organic way of adding/detailing lore in the game.

Not necessarily a bad idea! But 1) it's nice when ship names sound cool in a vaccum, and 2) it's a bit late to start now and just pepper that sort of thign in.

Really liking the low tech changes. Every time I try a low-tech playthrough I end up adding some mid or high in there to balance it out.

If I might add some 2¢, given the low-tech's "decisive confrontation" idea, perhaps some sort of ballistics weapons that utilizes actual charges like the Autopulse. Currently the only time I've ever used Expanded Magazines is for my Autopulse Paragon and my antimatter harbinger.
It could even eject a little magazine on empty for extra visual flair.

Hmm, that could be interesting, yeah. The light and heavy needler already kind of do that, minus charges, though. I guess... by itself, this isn't enough to base a weapon on. I could see perhaps something like the Storm Needler using that approach, but it finally seems like it's in a pretty good place now, and I don't want to mess with it. Still, I get what you're saying, and will keep this in mind! (Equally, though, one might argue that charges/burst damage is good for the high tech "dart in and do damage, then back off" approach.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Burvjradzite on May 28, 2021, 05:47:12 PM
Low tech heavy frigate, finally, a blessing from our lord. Everything suggests it just must be used while heavy d-modded to get bonuses from I4R. I hope it will have enough OP to make various builds even in the cost of increased DP. Tempest change looks interesting, i even fear it can be more powerful in some situations than it already is. And oh that grandfather of an aurora looks very promising for the low tech fleets, never before i was so scared of hegemony inspection as now.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: CrashToDesktop on May 28, 2021, 05:52:10 PM
I'm not sure how the tracking on the Tempest's suicide drones is, but it sounds like to me the Tempest just got an Antimatter SRM launcher strapped to it for free, since both deal the same damage for the same flux cost, and both have a 20-second reload. Compared to the AM SRM, Termination Sequence has 1 less ammo, gains 500 EMP damage, and your ammo fights back while it's not being used! Granted, it consumes a drone, but that can be well worth it as a strike weapon to crack armor and then chew up the squishy insides with regular weapons.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 28, 2021, 05:57:28 PM
I'm sorry but WHAT? Please PLEASE tell me that is a joke! Fortress shield is a MAJOR part of the Paragon's identity. And replacing it with flares seems like a double barrel "F*** YOU!!" to it and those that like it. The ships would have to be COMPLETELY changed in order for the system change to be even remotely worth it
Is joke
(Sorry ;D)
Oh thank Ludd! Don't scare me like that!

Edit: IS it even possible to add a ship system as a Right Click System via a normal hullmod?
It isn't afaik.  Tried to go from phase to shields for a week before figuring out (well, being told) that wasn't actually possible.  Unfortunate, 'cause I thought I found a way to get it to work in a way that was fun while not breaking the balance (well, more so than any given phase ship might already do)
Quote
Low tech heavy frigate, finally, a blessing from our lord. Everything suggests it just must be used while heavy d-modded to get bonuses from I4R.
I4R is being taken through the shredder, haven't you heard?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Beinsezii on May 28, 2021, 05:57:43 PM
Really liking the low tech changes. Every time I try a low-tech playthrough I end up adding some mid or high in there to balance it out.

If I might add some 2¢, given the low-tech's "decisive confrontation" idea, perhaps some sort of ballistics weapons that utilizes actual charges like the Autopulse. Currently the only time I've ever used Expanded Magazines is for my Autopulse Paragon and my antimatter harbinger.
It could even eject a little magazine on empty for extra visual flair.

Hmm, that could be interesting, yeah. The light and heavy needler already kind of do that, minus charges, though. I guess... by itself, this isn't enough to base a weapon on. I could see perhaps something like the Storm Needler using that approach, but it finally seems like it's in a pretty good place now, and I don't want to mess with it. Still, I get what you're saying, and will keep this in mind! (Equally, though, one might argue that charges/burst damage is good for the high tech "dart in and do damage, then back off" approach.)
I was thinking some kind of heavy-duty scattergun (scattercannon?) that fires lots of rounds somewhat inaccurately for high damage and moderate flux. Think mortar to scatter-thing like autocannon to needler. Problem is it'd make sense for it to be a magazine in the true sense, where instead of adding 'charges' gradually, it has to reload the whole magazine at once. I don't think it'd be worthwhile to have a dedicated reload key for one weapon (or a very small handful in the future), so perhaps it could 'reload' after not firing for an amount of time. Thus Expanded Magazines would extend the amount before having to cease fire, but wouldn't affect the delay between bursts, and if you and re-engage after retreating/murdering you'll still start with a full magazine.

Could be fun adding a small element of thinking when to use what weapons other than just not overloading, like do you stop your HE scatter-nameinprogress early to reload sooner, allowing you to strike the *moment* they take their shields down, or use your remaining charges/bullets to attempt an overload?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SteelSoldier on May 28, 2021, 06:02:24 PM
 Burn Drive and Damper field are good solutions for certain low tech ships, I would like to see more abilities explored as well.
 
 I was thinking something in the lines of Armour Shrapnel the ship has additional plating in the front and the sides and it ejects them at very high speeds, could be a last resort to do additional damage against an enemy that is up close or destroy some pesky reapers/bombers before it is too late.

 

Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on May 28, 2021, 06:03:10 PM
I have to agree with others: the tempest change is a nerf I'm actually excited to play with, it sounds awesome.

Cancellable burn drive sounds great! I just know I'll burn drive forward and not cancel it quite in time and eat a reaper anyways. ;)

For the low tech frigate the right click damper field is interesting to say the least... I wonder if it could do effective ramming moves with burn drive + damper? Its a bit small, but I just know its something a lot of people are going to try.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: FooF on May 28, 2021, 06:07:30 PM
If I may, because I sorta brought it up, I wasn't intending we just go swapping ship systems willy-nilly. I was specifically talking about Damper Field replacing shields on Low-Tech (and only Low-Tech) ships. Damper Field reminds me of some kind of precursor to proper shields: some mitigating force field that reduces shot velocity before it hits armor. When true shields were introduced, it kinda made the damper field obsolete (after all, you can fire through shields but damper fields shuts your offense down) but certain "traditionalists" (read: the "Low Tech School") balked at the possibility of overload and leaving your ship completely vulnerable and stuck with the old-school Dampers. Why put flux toward shields when they could all go to guns (I think this could explain Low Tech's generally poorer flux stats: it's all going to guns so you have balance off of that).

Where the tuning levers come in is defining the Damper Field strength of the individual ships, kind of like shield efficiency. If an Onslaught was too tough at 50% mitigation, you lower it somewhat to find the right balance. It gets "boring" to take down such ships, true, but there isn't a ship in the game that only has Damper Field and no shields. If you can't mitigate damage via shields, Damper Field ships might not be that hard to take down. But I digress.

Re: Expanded Magazines

I've always chuckled that the hull mod that was originally intended to boost Ballistics way back in the day now only boosts Energy weapons. Should be called "Expanded Charges!" I mean, not to bring it up for the 10th time but a Medium Assault Gun would be a great candidate for this. Since we can't balance such a weapon around traditional ranges and damage (because it'd make everything else obsolete), make it burst-y with ammo considerations and sustained fire that is inferior to the Heavy Mortar. Sure, it's strong, long-range, and accurate but it can't do so indefinitely. I think having a specialized gun that uses ammo like an even larger Hellbore or a pure EMP weapon could also work.

As far as the Paragon: you know what you must do... Missile Autoforge.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SafariJohn on May 28, 2021, 06:12:38 PM
Burn drive cancellation! Yes! Cue the M.Bison meme! Yes!


The Vanguard, I really wanted to make it 8, but I'm not sure it holds up as good value at that point. So right now it's 6, but I'm not 100% set on whether it'll stay there.

The Roider Union's shieldless super frigate compromises on this by being 6 DP and having High Maintenance. 12 su/mo is expensive early game while 6 DP makes it easier to deploy later on.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Histidine on May 28, 2021, 06:18:45 PM
It occurred to me that Tempest will be benefiting a fair bit more from fighter buffs now.

Eradicator is an uglified Fury, change my mind

Related to comparisons of Low Tech and High Tech: Alex, do you remember this thread (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16560)?
I liked this proposal the most:
If a false sense of tiering is the main problem, the main offender is probably Low Tech. It draws the direct comparison with High Tech and looks like the inferior option. If it was called something else, High Tech would have nothing to be superior too, and appear more as a sidegrade, while still conveying its relative recency. Also, if modern day Earth is any comparison, people would be euphamizing the category as "classic" or "vintage" to sell more ships.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: nathanebht on May 28, 2021, 06:21:31 PM
"The key thing is that high tech is not intended to be better than low tech, just a different way of doing things. High tech has speed, good shields, and fairly inefficient (but varied!) lower-ranged weapons. Low tech is slower and more ponderous, has high armor and hull integrity, with efficient longer-ranged weapons."

High tech has some of the best long range weapons. 1 small, 1 medium, 2 large energy weapons with 1000 range. So high tech gets to control the range against low tech ships and does not need to close to do damage. It just takes some time to burn through the armor.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Farlarzia on May 28, 2021, 06:51:08 PM
High tech has some of the best long range weapons. 1 small, 1 medium, 2 large energy weapons with 1000 range. So high tech gets to control the range against low tech ships and does not need to close to do damage. It just takes some time to burn through the armor.

Beams definitely aren't the best long range weapons.

They're really quite awful unless you mass an extreme amount of them, their only redeeming quality *is* their range.

While ballistic weapons are very good at what they do, and happen to have range on top of that.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Legendsmith on May 28, 2021, 07:09:02 PM
I like the changes to burn drive; it'll be great to see the AI actually using those because as it is they basically never do.
But the Vanguard? This has missed the mark absolutely.
Well, the idea that low-tech ships are more focused on armor and weapons than speed and shields "Doesn't work for frigates" and like... Yes, correct.
This "solution" of "How do we make a frigate fast and tough without making it fast and tough?"
"Well we make it fast and tough, of course."

You can change the name of shields and engines but their effects are the same. Giving the high-tech model a low tech coat of paint is wrong. I seriously have to contest this decision.
For example; The idea of the torpedo boat did not work in history until the advent of powerful enough engines and weapons that could be installed on a small vessel that enabled it to be a threat to a larger one. It is a similar situation here, and thus the Vanguard is an anachronism within Starsector itself.

Furthermore, the sniper frigate idea was clearly not given adequate consideration. What other frigates fill this role? Missile frigates do not count here; missiles are not sniper, they are missiles. The Brawler? Well it can mount the Heavy Mauler and Hypervelocity drivers. I suppose that is what you were getting at. But that's somewhat incidental.
This was a huge missed opportunity. There was so much more in the design space other than "A tempest, but brown."
An actual 'torpedo' boat could even have been a possibility. Or a low tech ship with a kind of "Small ballistic intergration" that gives a large range boost to small ballistic weapons, or maybe medium ones. Or even making something that's like the Mudskupper Mk II except not terrible; perhaps with a built in hullmod that changes the behavior of the large ballistic weapons mounted to it.

Finally, the Eradicator seems alright, but does the pirate variant of nearly everything HAVE to be bad? Pirates should be pirates, not barbarians who just want to kill you, in space. The Falcon (P) is a great example of pirate design.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on May 28, 2021, 07:21:44 PM
I don't think something with burn drive for speed and damper field is going to play like high tech. High tech is all about getting back out to vent to replenish their infinite hitpoints after delivering their strike (or just wolfpacking something down with numbers, but thats not unique to tech levels its just something small ships do). If they can just dart in and do a little damage, but the enemy is denied venting due to other enemies etc, then dart out with speed, then high tech is winning even against superior enemies. Even though wolves are pretty lackluster, 2 of them will comfily take down any isolated destroyer because of that strategy for example.

This thing doesn't have infinite hitpoints - it has more hitpoints than would be expected because it can turn on and off the damper field, but every hit it takes is a permanent step towards exploding: playing it like a high tech ship isn't going to be good I don't think (haven't playtested, but thats what theorycraft says to me at least). It also is going to be difficult to run away after a strike because burn drive is forwards only and has a cooldown.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Legendsmith on May 28, 2021, 07:49:49 PM
It's still a kind of high tech philosophy, which is my point.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 07:53:35 PM
Low tech heavy frigate, finally, a blessing from our lord. Everything suggests it just must be used while heavy d-modded to get bonuses from I4R. I hope it will have enough OP to make various builds even in the cost of increased DP. Tempest change looks interesting, i even fear it can be more powerful in some situations than it already is. And oh that grandfather of an aurora looks very promising for the low tech fleets, never before i was so scared of hegemony inspection as now.

It has a good amount of OP, yeah. And the Tempest - well, ideally, in *some* situations it would be more powerful. Just not universally!

I'm not sure how the tracking on the Tempest's suicide drones is, but it sounds like to me the Tempest just got an Antimatter SRM launcher strapped to it for free, since both deal the same damage for the same flux cost, and both have a 20-second reload. Compared to the AM SRM, Termination Sequence has 1 less ammo, gains 500 EMP damage, and your ammo fights back while it's not being used! Granted, it consumes a drone, but that can be well worth it as a strike weapon to crack armor and then chew up the squishy insides with regular weapons.

The tracking is quite good! But, I think this analysis is a bit backwards - it's not ammo that can shoot, but, since the Tempest already had the drone, it's *using something that could shoot for ammo instead*. How much damage could the drone do in 20 seconds? (In theory, well over 1000. In practice, with armor and positioning, it really depends.) How much value would it have as point-defense? Also, 20 seconds is optimistic - it'd literally never be that short, since if you're down a drone, the replacement rate is ticking down.

I think the way to think about this is it's letting you take an existing capability and use it in another way. Whether it's worth it at any given point is situational.


 
I was thinking some kind of heavy-duty scattergun (scattercannon?) that fires lots of rounds somewhat inaccurately for high damage and moderate flux. Think mortar to scatter-thing like autocannon to needler. Problem is it'd make sense for it to be a magazine in the true sense, where instead of adding 'charges' gradually, it has to reload the whole magazine at once. I don't think it'd be worthwhile to have a dedicated reload key for one weapon (or a very small handful in the future), so perhaps it could 'reload' after not firing for an amount of time. Thus Expanded Magazines would extend the amount before having to cease fire, but wouldn't affect the delay between bursts, and if you and re-engage after retreating/murdering you'll still start with a full magazine.

Could be fun adding a small element of thinking when to use what weapons other than just not overloading, like do you stop your HE scatter-nameinprogress early to reload sooner, allowing you to strike the *moment* they take their shields down, or use your remaining charges/bullets to attempt an overload?

Gotcha! As you say, though, adding a reload button is a bit of a no-go, and a reload after not firing... it'd need an indicator, AI awareness of this, etc. It gets pretty messy rather quickly. Still, just a basic with-regenerating-ammo ballistic could be interesting, no argument there.


I was thinking something in the lines of Armour Shrapnel the ship has additional plating in the front and the sides and it ejects them at very high speeds, could be a last resort to do additional damage against an enemy that is up close or destroy some pesky reapers/bombers before it is too late.

(You know what's funny, me and David were talking about something very similar, though in a different context, just the other day...)



For the low tech frigate the right click damper field is interesting to say the least... I wonder if it could do effective ramming moves with burn drive + damper? Its a bit small, but I just know its something a lot of people are going to try.

Ooooh! Say hello to flameout, though. Not sure how practical it'd be but it could be rather spectacular.


If I may, because I sorta brought it up, I wasn't intending we just go swapping ship systems willy-nilly. I was specifically talking about Damper Field replacing shields on Low-Tech (and only Low-Tech) ships. Damper Field reminds me of some kind of precursor to proper shields: some mitigating force field that reduces shot velocity before it hits armor. When true shields were introduced, it kinda made the damper field obsolete (after all, you can fire through shields but damper fields shuts your offense down) but certain "traditionalists" (read: the "Low Tech School") balked at the possibility of overload and leaving your ship completely vulnerable and stuck with the old-school Dampers. Why put flux toward shields when they could all go to guns (I think this could explain Low Tech's generally poorer flux stats: it's all going to guns so you have balance off of that).

Where the tuning levers come in is defining the Damper Field strength of the individual ships, kind of like shield efficiency. If an Onslaught was too tough at 50% mitigation, you lower it somewhat to find the right balance. It gets "boring" to take down such ships, true, but there isn't a ship in the game that only has Damper Field and no shields. If you can't mitigate damage via shields, Damper Field ships might not be that hard to take down. But I digress.

I get the conceptual appeal of this, I really do! The main sticking point is that I don't think having an entire range of ships not engage with core mechanics like "using flux for both defense and offense" and "being able to be overloaded" is a good idea.

A smaller but still non-starter issue would be stuff like beams, which all of a sudden become capable of chewing these ships up with impunity, albeit slowly. The game is really built around normal ships having shields. An exception here and there is good, but I think it's important to avoid getting carried away!


Re: Expanded Magazines

I've always chuckled that the hull mod that was originally intended to boost Ballistics way back in the day now only boosts Energy weapons. Should be called "Expanded Charges!" I mean, not to bring it up for the 10th time but a Medium Assault Gun would be a great candidate for this. Since we can't balance such a weapon around traditional ranges and damage (because it'd make everything else obsolete), make it burst-y with ammo considerations and sustained fire that is inferior to the Heavy Mortar. Sure, it's strong, long-range, and accurate but it can't do so indefinitely. I think having a specialized gun that uses ammo like an even larger Hellbore or a pure EMP weapon could also work.

(Have you noticed how its icon is now blue?)


The Roider Union's shieldless super frigate compromises on this by being 6 DP and having High Maintenance. 12 su/mo is expensive early game while 6 DP makes it easier to deploy later on.

Interesting! You know, having to occasionally recover the ship and repair it up might end up having just about the same effect overall.


It occurred to me that Tempest will be benefiting a fair bit more from fighter buffs now.

Hmm, maybe? The missile stage wouldn't actually benefit from fighter speed buffs. I'm not sure how it'd benefit more than now. Perhaps less, since when it does its missile thing, it doesn't benefit any more than it already had, but now it'll just have less uptime overall.


Related to comparisons of Low Tech and High Tech: Alex, do you remember this thread (https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16560)?
I liked this proposal the most:
If a false sense of tiering is the main problem, the main offender is probably Low Tech. It draws the direct comparison with High Tech and looks like the inferior option. If it was called something else, High Tech would have nothing to be superior too, and appear more as a sidegrade, while still conveying its relative recency. Also, if modern day Earth is any comparison, people would be euphamizing the category as "classic" or "vintage" to sell more ships.

I did see it, yeah! It's not necessarily a bad idea, bu the long and short of it is I like the name and don't want to change it.


High tech has some of the best long range weapons. 1 small, 1 medium, 2 large energy weapons with 1000 range. So high tech gets to control the range against low tech ships and does not need to close to do damage. It just takes some time to burn through the armor.

Beams definitely aren't the best long range weapons.

They're really quite awful unless you mass an extreme amount of them, their only redeeming quality *is* their range.

While ballistic weapons are very good at what they do, and happen to have range on top of that.

Right! A key point being that they deal soft flux, and oftentimes can't get through shields, even low-tech ones, at all. They're a way to give high-tech long ranged support weapons while still more or less requiring some of them to close in to deal actual damage.


I don't think something with burn drive for speed and damper field is going to play like high tech. High tech is all about getting back out to vent to replenish their infinite hitpoints after delivering their strike (or just wolfpacking something down with numbers, but thats not unique to tech levels its just something small ships do). If they can just dart in and do a little damage, but the enemy is denied venting due to other enemies etc, then dart out with speed, then high tech is winning even against superior enemies. Even though wolves are pretty lackluster, 2 of them will comfily take down any isolated destroyer because of that strategy for example.

This thing doesn't have infinite hitpoints - it has more hitpoints than would be expected because it can turn on and off the damper field, but every hit it takes is a permanent step towards exploding: playing it like a high tech ship isn't going to be good I don't think (haven't playtested, but thats what theorycraft says to me at least). It also is going to be difficult to run away after a strike because burn drive is forwards only and has a cooldown.

This all seems broadly correct based on my experience with it, yeah. In feeling around for "how to make this work" I did indeed at one point have stats that made it "a Tempest, but brown". And it felt pretty bad. What it is now is not even close to that.

It's still a kind of high tech philosophy, which is my point.

Ah, ... no? A bunch of low tech ships have burn drive; per the blog post, it's literally meant to be a crucial piece of what makes them work. And "having better than usual non-replenishable toughness" is also a core low-tech hull property.

(Edit: I apologize for the borderline snark, there, btw. I'm just genuinely confused.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SonnaBanana on May 28, 2021, 08:00:19 PM
Both of the new ships look like they came out of a mod pack, not that it's a bad thing.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Burvjradzite on May 28, 2021, 08:05:56 PM
Quote
Low tech heavy frigate, finally, a blessing from our lord. Everything suggests it just must be used while heavy d-modded to get bonuses from I4R.
I4R is being taken through the shredder, haven't you heard?
What happened? I'm in a middle of a run using d-modded ships with this
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Cyan Leader on May 28, 2021, 08:09:05 PM
While I rarely pilot low tech ships I appreciate the increased variety of ships I'll be fighting when facing pirates.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: WeiTuLo on May 28, 2021, 08:42:30 PM
Will Eradicator be the new SO cruiser? :D
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Legendsmith on May 28, 2021, 09:10:55 PM

I get the conceptual appeal of this, I really do! The main sticking point is that I don't think having an entire range of ships not engage with core mechanics like "using flux for both defense and offense" and "being able to be overloaded" is a good idea.

A smaller but still non-starter issue would be stuff like beams, which all of a sudden become capable of chewing these ships up with impunity, albeit slowly. The game is really built around normal ships having shields. An exception here and there is good, but I think it's important to avoid getting carried away!
I agree strongly with this.

Ah, ... no? A bunch of low tech ships have burn drive; per the blog post, it's literally meant to be a crucial piece of what makes them work. And "having better than usual non-replenishable toughness" is also a core low-tech hull property.

(Edit: I apologize for the borderline snark, there, btw. I'm just genuinely confused.)
No worries. Now, the thing is that you've basically defined a frigate's role as practically synonymous with the high tech doctrine. Just because you've given it a burn drive, a signature subsystem of low tech, doesn't change this. By your own admission low tech frigates are bad (at least in fleet combat) because they don't play to low-tech strengths. It feels like instead of designing a heavy or elite tier frigate that actually does play to low tech strength you've tried to assemble the frigate style. Giving them ways to sidestep those weaknesses is just denying they fit the doctrine, and that's fine. Outliers don't have to fit the doctrine but that needs to be admitted.
The fact is as far as I can see this might not play precisely like Tempest but it's still trying to fill the role of one in the same way of being a "premium frigate" by the given definition (which is basically HT doctrine), rather than being something that actually fits with low tech doctrine. Hopefully this makes it more clear.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Beinsezii on May 28, 2021, 09:12:16 PM
Gotcha! As you say, though, adding a reload button is a bit of a no-go, and a reload after not firing... it'd need an indicator, AI awareness of this, etc. It gets pretty messy rather quickly. Still, just a basic with-regenerating-ammo ballistic could be interesting, no argument there.
Hmm. Maybe it could regenerate in 'chunks'? So say it has ~100 rounds at the start, but instead of regenerating 1 at a time every 1/4 second like pulser weapons, it generates 25 at a time every ~5 ish seconds.

Alternate idea, you could have 'charge burst' weapons that have a multi-shot burst but stores in charges over time. So it could have 5 charges/magazines of however-many round bursts. You could instead use total bullet count, but then if it has, say 20 round bursts and 100 max, adding expanded magazines would give you an odd count at 150 max so your last burst would only be half.

I personally think either (or both) could make interesting charge/magazine based ballistics weapons, especially on faster ships like the Falcon or new Eradicator. Could finally be the gateway to a new medium ballistic weapon that isn't either a blitzkrieg chaingun or a long-range siege mortar
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 28, 2021, 09:44:58 PM
Will Eradicator be the new SO cruiser? :D

Maybe :) It's certainly got the firepower...


No worries. Now, the thing is that you've basically defined a frigate's role as practically synonymous with the high tech doctrine. Just because you've given it a burn drive, a signature subsystem of low tech, doesn't change this. By your own admission low tech frigates are bad (at least in fleet combat) because they don't play to low-tech strengths. It feels like instead of designing a heavy or elite tier frigate that actually does play to low tech strength you've tried to assemble the frigate style. Giving them ways to sidestep those weaknesses is just denying they fit the doctrine, and that's fine. Outliers don't have to fit the doctrine but that needs to be admitted.
The fact is as far as I can see this might not play precisely like Tempest but it's still trying to fill the role of one in the same way of being a "premium frigate" by the given definition (which is basically HT doctrine), rather than being something that actually fits with low tech doctrine. Hopefully this makes it more clear.

Ahh, thank you for clarifying! I think I understand where you're coming from. I don't think this is right, though!

One of the points was that frigates usually rely on speed for survival, and high tech does this better because their ships are baseline faster. Burn drive isn't contributing to this at all - it's a way for the ship to get stuck in/chase something down, but not to get away (which is very much in line with the low tech way of doing things) so I think we can more or less discount this aspect of it. In fact, "I want this frigate to have burn drive" was the starting point, not, like, a way to paper over some aspect that wasn't working.

(I do agree that if the Vanguard relied on speed for staying alive, it most likely wouldn't feel quite right. Though for example the Hound *does* do this, so there are ways to "sell" this.)

The other part is that having good shields, for a frigate, is more beneficial than having heavy (for a frigate) armor. Low tech shields are generally worse than high tech ones, both due to the shield absorption multiplier, and to having poorer baseline flux stats. But "comparatively high armor values in a reasonable range for frigates are still pretty poor in practice" isn't an intrinstic low tech way of doing things, you know? It's just how some numbers work out due to armor mechanics. The important conceptual part there - the doctrine, if you want to think of it this way - is that low tech ships can take a lot more damage on hull and armor.

Bigger ships can do this with reasonable-looking armor values. Damper Field on right click is just a way of achieving this for a smaller ship! And so the Vanguard takes this aspect of low tech and cranks it up to 11 - instead of having poor shields and good hull/armor damage tanking, it has no shield and really amazing hull/armor tanking. You could also achieve this by just turning the armor values up to something unreasonable, but 1) they'd look silly and 2) the Damper Field on right-click is more fun.

I actually *have* been thinking about a built-in hullmod to give small ballistics a bit more range - not for the Vanguard, but for the Lasher. One could advance the same argument against it, though, I think - that it's sidestepping the "inherent weakness" of small ballistics, and so on. But ultimately it's the substance of how ships work that matters, not how they play with the numbers to make them come out right. And for the Vanguard, it's tough in the low-tech way, and it's situationally fast in the low-tech way, and that's what counts!


Edit:
Now, the thing is that you've basically defined a frigate's role as practically synonymous with the high tech doctrine.

(Just for clarity, I don't think I did that. Rather, just pointing out why, given how the stats work out, high tech frigates tend to be stronger. So it's more setting up the problem to solve - "how do we work around this to have a frigate that's good in the low-tech way" than saying "any good frigate must do this". And, in fact, the end result is absolutely doing things in a way that's different from high-tech frigates. Heck, it generally doesn't even beat them, because of those differences!)


Hmm. Maybe it could regenerate in 'chunks'? So say it has ~100 rounds at the start, but instead of regenerating 1 at a time every 1/4 second like pulser weapons, it generates 25 at a time every ~5 ish seconds.

Alternate idea, you could have 'charge burst' weapons that have a multi-shot burst but stores in charges over time. So it could have 5 charges/magazines of however-many round bursts. You could instead use total bullet count, but then if it has, say 20 round bursts and 100 max, adding expanded magazines would give you an odd count at 150 max so your last burst would only be half.

I personally think either (or both) could make interesting charge/magazine based ballistics weapons, especially on faster ships like the Falcon or new Eradicator. Could finally be the gateway to a new medium ballistic weapon that isn't either a blitzkrieg chaingun or a long-range siege mortar

(There's actually existing mechanics for this sort of thing! For example, the Ion Pulser regenerates charges 3 at a time. And, yeah, this could be interesting.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: CrashToDesktop on May 28, 2021, 10:21:46 PM
The tracking is quite good! But, I think this analysis is a bit backwards - it's not ammo that can shoot, but, since the Tempest already had the drone, it's *using something that could shoot for ammo instead*. How much damage could the drone do in 20 seconds? (In theory, well over 1000. In practice, with armor and positioning, it really depends.) How much value would it have as point-defense? Also, 20 seconds is optimistic - it'd literally never be that short, since if you're down a drone, the replacement rate is ticking down.

I think the way to think about this is it's letting you take an existing capability and use it in another way. Whether it's worth it at any given point is situational.
Well, once you start cutting down fighter replacement time through high CR and character skills, it'll be consistently lower than 20 seconds. Anyhow, I'm not saying that you should be firing these things off as soon as they leave the hangar - they are, of course, very good at shooting things - but their functionality (and, to a certain extent, their purpose) is very similar to that of the AM SRM - send one or both off to their doom at the right moment, which is obviously the intent, as you said, to use it in another way.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Legendsmith on May 28, 2021, 10:44:16 PM
I actually *have* been thinking about a built-in hullmod to give small ballistics a bit more range - not for the Vanguard, but for the Lasher. One could advance the same argument against it, though, I think - that it's sidestepping the "inherent weakness" of small ballistics, and so on.
Short range isn't an inherent part of small ballistic weapon design; the Railgun has quite a respectable range. Weapons have different ranges, it's not an inherent weakness. It's a weakness but it's not inherent. The railgun doesn't feel like "not a small ballistic weapon" because it's got superior range.
I don't think we're going to get anywhere with this though.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Dudok22 on May 29, 2021, 12:43:54 AM
Wow! I love these changes! The terminator drone missile looks fun!

One thing I noticed about some of the movement enhancing ship systems like plasma burn is that they usually disable the 0 flux boost by generating miniscule levels of flux. This makes the movement "choppy" and unnatural because after you use plasma burn the ship slows down to the base speed and then immediately speeds up as the 0 flux boost activates. It's nothing serious but it would make it visually more pleasing (at least to me) if the 0 flux boost stayed on during the burn.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 29, 2021, 01:39:56 AM
Quote
Ooooh! Say hello to flameout, though. Not sure how practical it'd be but it could be rather spectacular.
I recall one instance where I was testing a Fury in simulation, and after causing my Hammerhead opponent to flame out I rammed it with whatever micro burn system the Fury has. End result? The hammerhead was send flying off in the opposite direction at over 400 speed, up until it's engines finally turned back on. Nice opportunity for me to vent, all things told.

Don't think the Vanguard could accomplish the same thing, exactly, but there might be an interesting strategy or two behind ramming ships.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Strict on May 29, 2021, 01:43:46 AM
Good changes, but I think you should go even further. Shields will ALWAYS be superiror to armor, so problem with LT vs HT is still there, esp in lategame. IMO there is not enough difference between HT and LT where it is considered a decision, you always go for HT ships for lategame.
Suggestions:
1) Remove shields from LT ships, raplce with DF, balace around charges/duration/cooldown/damage reduction/flux generation for every ship separately. When DF is active you cant use weapons/DF generates alot of flux, but its not affected by amount of damage taken.
2) Nerf shields of HT ships to the point when 1 SF/D is considered good shield. Values like 0.6 SF/D is not achievable without combination of dedicated ships (shield tanks)+hullmods+officers and you cant go past 0.6 (unless you have fortress shield) coz its just silly at this point with 0.4 SF/D. Now HT will need to make a choice between vents for damage or caps for HP.

After that you will have a choice between "decisive battle" of LT or hit-and-run duels of HT.

You have a unique opportunity to implement extreme changes without alienating fanbase, coz everyone can just mod the game to their hearts content, game is still in development, so more bold changes are welcome. Changes in this blogpost are good, but not enough to really affect lategme of HT vs LT balance. As of now LT ships are for early game and target practice, every lategame encounter is HT ships vs HT ships if you ok with that then sure, good patch inc, if you tried to make LT viable and force players to chooes between equal (in terms of viability and efficiency) playstyles, then it will change nothing.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on May 29, 2021, 01:45:39 AM
Faster ships generally have worse armour, but shields can stay the same.
I wonder how the game would play, if moving or just accelerating increased the damage you take to shields. You could tank damage only if you stood still.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Megas on May 29, 2021, 05:01:12 AM
If AI Tempest chucks the drones freely like MIRVs or Locusts (or even Harpoons on high-flux target), then the new system probably is a nerf and drones cannot be relied on for PD.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 29, 2021, 06:08:31 AM
Quote
Low tech heavy frigate, finally, a blessing from our lord. Everything suggests it just must be used while heavy d-modded to get bonuses from I4R.
I4R is being taken through the shredder, haven't you heard?
What happened? I'm in a middle of a run using d-modded ships with this
We don't know precisely what, but I4R will not be existing as it is in the next update.  Turns out Enforcers casually eating a dozen or two Reapers is a bit excessive.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on May 29, 2021, 06:20:01 AM
Having more upgunned ships with Large Ballistic mounts would be nice. So yeah Low Tech destroyer with Big Guns would be really nice.
Also some thoughts on Vanguard.
>sure it looks though
>thing is its armament is similar to Lasher and no medium ballistic mount and Damper field don't allow shooting and it lack AAF like Lasher had
>also it really looks like little Enforcer

What if Damper field actually allow shooting weapons?
So you essentially you trade flux from using it for reduced damage but still can blow your guns? Yes it would be strong but whole idea of it to make Low Tech ships to shoot a lot of dakka.

I think small weapons should really get some range increase. Heck maybe even all weapons especially this on lower range end. But it would really help smaller ships especially with their Aim at the centre of the target issue.

Some thoughts about skills
>what if combat/personal skills have no Tiers(pick and choose) but you still follow tier progression for Industry/Leadership and Tech?
I feel that this way combat picks would be actually somewhat attractive to pick at any moment instead of going either full spec or ignoring them.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on May 29, 2021, 06:44:28 AM
If you are going to make a low-tech destroyer with a large ballistic, take the whole Vanguard from DR and not just the name!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: basildazz on May 29, 2021, 08:06:39 AM
The terminated terminator drone, will bring a tear to little John Connors eyes after dispatching numerous buffalo for it's carrier commander I am sure.

However, in an attempt to repel the pressure you exert on the 'burn-drive' being a tactical success, I suggest a 'tractor beam' would perform the same function inversely applied as the burn drive, but I would presume to consider it a high tech weapon more likely applied in an energy weapon mount. However, a low-tech ship system that could be deployed in a 'tractor-like' manner in the combat simulations may possibly be a magnetised hull?

 
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SonnaBanana on May 29, 2021, 08:09:24 AM
The terminated terminator drone, will bring a tear to little John Connors eyes after dispatching numerous buffalo for it's carrier commander I am sure.

However, in an attempt to repel the pressure you exert on the 'burn-drive' being a tactical success, I suggest a 'tractor beam' would perform the same function inversely applied as the burn drive, but I would presume to consider it a high tech weapon more likely applied in an energy weapon mount. However, a low-tech ship system that could be deployed in a 'tractor-like' manner in the combat simulations may possibly be a magnetised hull?

 
No, just an electrified grappler cable. Great for stopping those pesky little frigates.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: basildazz on May 29, 2021, 08:12:17 AM
'No, just an electrified grappler cable. Great for stopping those pesky little frigates.' - SonnaBanana

Sorry, phased out on that one!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: FooF on May 29, 2021, 08:17:59 AM
A Large Ballistic on a destroyer is going to make the ship specialized because under most circumstances (barring the Mjolnir), you'll only have access to a Kinetic or HE weapon. I'd imagine the secondary armaments will all be Small Ballistics (or 1-2 Small Missiles thrown in) and mostly PD coverage at that, so what you choose for the Large Mount will essentially determine its role. The ship system for such a thing is what I'm most intrigued about.

Point taken on Damper Field vs. Shields. I hadn't thought about Beams basically being a hard-counter, and they would be, especially something like the HIL or Tachyon Lance. If there was an opportunity to try something like this on a larger ship, an XIV Onslaught or Dominator might be the place. You already know you're getting a variant and kind of like the Legion XIV, it operates a little different than standard. Sort of a "relic of a bygone era" -feel. But I'm done promoting the idea at this point. :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 29, 2021, 09:45:37 AM
Well, once you start cutting down fighter replacement time through high CR and character skills, it'll be consistently lower than 20 seconds. Anyhow, I'm not saying that you should be firing these things off as soon as they leave the hangar - they are, of course, very good at shooting things - but their functionality (and, to a certain extent, their purpose) is very similar to that of the AM SRM - send one or both off to their doom at the right moment, which is obviously the intent, as you said, to use it in another way.

Ah, it's a really good point about skills, in particular Carrier Group, factoring in here! I wasn't thinking about that. And, yeah, you're right on about them being similar to the AM SRM in function, though, right, the cost-benefit analysis is considerably more involved.

One thing I noticed about some of the movement enhancing ship systems like plasma burn is that they usually disable the 0 flux boost by generating miniscule levels of flux. This makes the movement "choppy" and unnatural because after you use plasma burn the ship slows down to the base speed and then immediately speeds up as the 0 flux boost activates. It's nothing serious but it would make it visually more pleasing (at least to me) if the 0 flux boost stayed on during the burn.

I see what you're saying, but I don't see it the same way, I guess? To me it looks natural - one mode of engine use cools down, there's a switch-over, and it picks back up. Makes it feel like a real thing working behind the scenes. It's also a bit easier to balance if there's something modifying the zero-flux bonus; I think in particular for these systems being able to predict how far it'll go is important. Well, for Plasma Burn it still is, for Burn Drive it's less so, now that it can be cancelled.

Good changes, but I think you should go even further. Shields will ALWAYS be superiror to armor, so problem with LT vs HT is still there, esp in lategame. IMO there is not enough difference between HT and LT where it is considered a decision, you always go for HT ships for lategame.
Suggestions:
1) Remove shields from LT ships, raplce with DF, balace around charges/duration/cooldown/damage reduction/flux generation for every ship separately. When DF is active you cant use weapons/DF generates alot of flux, but its not affected by amount of damage taken.
2) Nerf shields of HT ships to the point when 1 SF/D is considered good shield. Values like 0.6 SF/D is not achievable without combination of dedicated ships (shield tanks)+hullmods+officers and you cant go past 0.6 (unless you have fortress shield) coz its just silly at this point with 0.4 SF/D. Now HT will need to make a choice between vents for damage or caps for HP.

After that you will have a choice between "decisive battle" of LT or hit-and-run duels of HT.

You have a unique opportunity to implement extreme changes without alienating fanbase, coz everyone can just mod the game to their hearts content, game is still in development, so more bold changes are welcome. Changes in this blogpost are good, but not enough to really affect lategme of HT vs LT balance. As of now LT ships are for early game and target practice, every lategame encounter is HT ships vs HT ships if you ok with that then sure, good patch inc, if you tried to make LT viable and force players to chooes between equal (in terms of viability and efficiency) playstyles, then it will change nothing.

Hmm - if you look back over my previous replies, you can see why I think replacing shields with Damper Field on a large number of ships is not a good idea.

I also think that how much better high tech is quite exaggerated. It's definitely better right now, but I think it would be easy to overbalance and have low-tech be better - and, due to how it works, possibly even more dominating. For example, by turning up ballistic weapon range, adjusting the ballistic weapon flux stats, or, as you say, adjusting high tech shields. There are ample balance levers here (that could already be turned to flip the comparative strength of LT and HT around) and I think that doing something drastic - that makes a whole ship lineup not interact with key game mechanics - would be a big mistake.


Faster ships generally have worse armour, but shields can stay the same.
I wonder how the game would play, if moving or just accelerating increased the damage you take to shields. You could tank damage only if you stood still.

I think it'd get super fiddly, honestly. And it'd really mess up the high tech idea of hit and run. That's... kind of how high tech ships work, generally, right? Fundamentally messing that up seems like not a good idea. We're not *just* trying to balance high tech vs low tech here. We're trying to make both of their unique approaches works. High-tech's approach already works, since it's the simpler one to make work with just baseline ship stats. Low-tech's approach is more complicated to get to come out right, both stats and game-design wise.


What if Damper field actually allow shooting weapons?
So you essentially you trade flux from using it for reduced damage but still can blow your guns? Yes it would be strong but whole idea of it to make Low Tech ships to shoot a lot of dakka.

I'm not sure it's actually necessary, at least not in the case of the Vanguard! The uptime for Damper Field isn't particularly high, and the Vanguard's flux stats are pretty poor. So generally what happens - well, at least in my testing - is that good loadouts are over-fluxed, but since there are no shields and little breaks from Damper Field, it works out ok. What I'm getting at is I don't think DF ends up reducing the ship's effective firepower, there's just more of an ebb and flow to it, which is nice.

I think small weapons should really get some range increase. Heck maybe even all weapons especially this on lower range end. But it would really help smaller ships especially with their Aim at the centre of the target issue.

(Not sure if you saw, but both Light ACs and the Light AG are going up to 700 range.)

Some thoughts about skills
>what if combat/personal skills have no Tiers(pick and choose) but you still follow tier progression for Industry/Leadership and Tech?
I feel that this way combat picks would be actually somewhat attractive to pick at any moment instead of going either full spec or ignoring them.

:-X

(I'd love to talk more about skill changes! Just, need to get further along with it; been working on it quite a bit, actually.)

However, in an attempt to repel the pressure you exert on the 'burn-drive' being a tactical success, I suggest a 'tractor beam' would perform the same function inversely applied as the burn drive, but I would presume to consider it a high tech weapon more likely applied in an energy weapon mount. However, a low-tech ship system that could be deployed in a 'tractor-like' manner in the combat simulations may possibly be a magnetised hull?

Yeah, a tractor beam would probably feel kind of high-tech, though I suppose the visual and sound FX could sell it either way. But in general mobility-interfering systems would be really frustrating to play *against*. This is largely why there aren't any! I did mess around with the idea of an "Interdictor Array" on a phase ship (since they're allowed to be unfair, basically) but that didn't go anywhere too useful. It'd also require an unreasonable amount of cooperation from the AI, more than likely.


A Large Ballistic on a destroyer is going to make the ship specialized because under most circumstances (barring the Mjolnir), you'll only have access to a Kinetic or HE weapon. I'd imagine the secondary armaments will all be Small Ballistics (or 1-2 Small Missiles thrown in) and mostly PD coverage at that, so what you choose for the Large Mount will essentially determine its role. The ship system for such a thing is what I'm most intrigued about.

Yeah, very much agreed on that. Heck, this is why the Eradicator didn't get a large slot - I think it'd determine far too much even for a bigger ship like it! I have some ideas for this... kind of excited about it, actually, the more I talk about it - I think it could end up being a great support ship, but, importantly, one that's fun for the player to pilot, because you'd get some high-impact toys to play with.

Point taken on Damper Field vs. Shields. I hadn't thought about Beams basically being a hard-counter, and they would be, especially something like the HIL or Tachyon Lance. If there was an opportunity to try something like this on a larger ship, an XIV Onslaught or Dominator might be the place. You already know you're getting a variant and kind of like the Legion XIV, it operates a little different than standard. Sort of a "relic of a bygone era" -feel. But I'm done promoting the idea at this point. :)

Yep, similar thoughts.

(And, interestingly: Damper Field on the Vanguard is good enough that it doesn't quite melt to the HIL the way it does without it. It's still highly effective but they don't just get deleted and have a reasonable chance to survive an engagement unless they're the sole focus. I'd imagine quad Tachyon Lances or some such are much less forgiving, though.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: dostillevi on May 29, 2021, 09:54:27 AM
I get the conceptual appeal of this, I really do! The main sticking point is that I don't think having an entire range of ships not engage with core mechanics like "using flux for both defense and offense" and "being able to be overloaded" is a good idea.

A smaller but still non-starter issue would be stuff like beams, which all of a sudden become capable of chewing these ships up with impunity, albeit slowly. The game is really built around normal ships having shields. An exception here and there is good, but I think it's important to avoid getting carried away!

So a thought in this, because I like the concept being presented. Could those game mechanic goals be addressed but in different ways for low tech ships? The first thing that comes to mind is that ships can only be overloaded via damage to shields. There’s room for other means of causing overload. In the case of damper fields, maybe there’s a chance of overload that increases with damage absorbed?

To the point of flux being both defensive and offensive, I think perhaps this mechanic doesn’t hold up to scrutiny when one entire line of ships is based around poor flux management and high armor. Why would anyone design a low tech ship with shields, knowing that having shields puts the ship at great risk of being overloaded? I feel like a competent low tech designer would focus on armor and systems that improve armor without trying to jerry rig on a system that works poorly for the ship, introduces the risk of being overloaded, and only has a marginal benefit of absorbing light fire, while simultaneously limiting damage output?

Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 29, 2021, 10:20:42 AM
So a thought in this, because I like the concept being presented. Could those game mechanic goals be addressed but in different ways for low tech ships? The first thing that comes to mind is that ships can only be overloaded via damage to shields. There’s room for other means of causing overload. In the case of damper fields, maybe there’s a chance of overload that increases with damage absorbed?

Hmm, overloads that involve RNG seem like... not the best idea. I mean, imagine if shields did that! Overload really needs to be predictable.

To the point of flux being both defensive and offensive, I think perhaps this mechanic doesn’t hold up to scrutiny when one entire line of ships is based around poor flux management and high armor. Why would anyone design a low tech ship with shields, knowing that having shields puts the ship at great risk of being overloaded? I feel like a competent low tech designer would focus on armor and systems that improve armor without trying to jerry rig on a system that works poorly for the ship, introduces the risk of being overloaded, and only has a marginal benefit of absorbing light fire, while simultaneously limiting damage output?

Well - beam weapons and HE missiles/torpedoes exist, and are extremely well countered by even weak shields, while also countering armor. If we're talking vs high-tech, energy weapons are also countered by weak shields reasonably well, which is particularly important vs large hits. So, I really can't agree here. Shields on low-tech are obviously less universally useful, but they're also *critical* when they are, since they extend the life of armor by absorbing high-damage hits. The decision for when to use them is more complicated than it is for high tech, so if anything, the mechanic produces more interesting decisions for low tech.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 29, 2021, 10:33:55 AM
Quote
I see what you're saying, but I don't see it the same way, I guess? To me it looks natural - one mode of engine use cools down, there's a switch-over, and it picks back up. Makes it feel like a real thing working behind the scenes. It's also a bit easier to balance if there's something modifying the zero-flux bonus; I think in particular for these systems being able to predict how far it'll go is important. Well, for Plasma Burn it still is, for Burn Drive it's less so, now that it can be cancelled.
I think he's referring to the sort of pattern on Burn Drive ships:
-Ship begins at 0-flux cruise speed, heading towards ex: an Objective
-Ship activates Burn Drive, receiving a big temporary speed boost
-Burn drive period ends, ship slows down to normal max speed.  If not in a combat situation, ship will also have the 0-flux booost activate immediately afterwards, which means the ship must accelerate back up to the speed it was initially at before it started the cycle.
It does feel somewhat awkward outside of combat, though there's not any real connotations associated within combat outside of large and low-acceleration warships like Onslaughts would be able to reach the frame somewhat quicker if they didn't "lose" speed after using Burn Drive.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: WeiTuLo on May 29, 2021, 10:34:07 AM
Wasn't there an interdiction field ship system at some point? It supposedly killed half the engines through shields or something.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 29, 2021, 10:36:24 AM
Doom.  It was bad, which is why its system was swapped to Mines.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 29, 2021, 10:39:25 AM
I think he's referring to the sort of pattern on Burn Drive ships:
-Ship begins at 0-flux cruise speed, heading towards ex: an Objective
-Ship activates Burn Drive, receiving a big temporary speed boost
-Burn drive period ends, ship slows down to normal max speed.  If not in a combat situation, ship will also have the 0-flux booost activate immediately afterwards, which means the ship must accelerate back up to the speed it was initially at

(Yep, that's exactly how I understood it.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: DatonKallandor on May 29, 2021, 10:57:03 AM
Regenerating ammo ballistics were very good, and I think they got given up on *way* too quickly. It provides so many interesting levers for balance and ways to differentiate ballistics more than the current stats. You run into a lot of "what is even the difference between these small kinetics" without it.

And they happen to also combo very nicely with damper fields and provide a good outlet to stop the traditional low-tech face-hugging technique from being unstoppable.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on May 29, 2021, 11:33:39 AM
On destroyers with a large ballistic, there are interesting lessons that can be learned from mods that have had such ships in them for some time.

If the destroyer only has small mounts alongside the large mount, and people only have access to vanilla guns, players invariably use large kinetics there (Mjolnir usually excluded due to OP/flux) as kinetics are always useful, while HE is only useful when enemy shields are down which won't be achieved reliably (small guns won't have the range, sabots will only be available in small amounts, friendly ships can't be counted on due to haphazard AI).

If the destroyer has at least one medium mount that changes everything - as the ship gains reliable ability to create its own opportunities for a large HE gun (even if limited to vanilla weapons).

Using destroyers with a large ballistic mount as fire support ships usually doesn't work out well as they don't have access to cruiser/capital-grade range increases (ITU bonus much lower on DDs) - when trying to support a large ship they don't have the range to shoot the same targets reliably. If supporting smaller ships their aim gets blocked by allies frequently (causing AI to rarely fire). In player hands they can work well however, but normally don't make full use of Ranged Specialization (difficult to achieve max bonus threshold).


I'm excited to see the Starsector team tackling this ship concept and see how different it may end up from how it's been done so far.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on May 29, 2021, 12:02:59 PM
Regenerating ammo ballistics were very good, and I think they got given up on *way* too quickly. It provides so many interesting levers for balance and ways to differentiate ballistics more than the current stats. You run into a lot of "what is even the difference between these small kinetics" without it.

And they happen to also combo very nicely with damper fields and provide a good outlet to stop the traditional low-tech face-hugging technique from being unstoppable.
Yeah. I support idea. I must admit that I just love dakka weapons.
Wish that Thumper was actually usable and something like this.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 29, 2021, 12:08:56 PM
If the destroyer only has small mounts alongside the large mount, and people only have access to vanilla guns, players invariably use large kinetics there (Mjolnir usually excluded due to OP/flux) as kinetics are always useful, while HE is only useful when enemy shields are down which won't be achieved reliably (small guns won't have the range, sabots will only be available in small amounts, friendly ships can't be counted on due to haphazard AI).
...What?  Medium kinetics are, uh, really not all that.  And the hellbore is cheap, both in terms of OP and in terms of flux load. I'd expect to see exactly the opposite of what you describe: a hull with a large and some smalls would tend towards hellbore + railguns or light needlers (or, flux permitting, Mjolnir), while ones with medium slots or good numbers of missiles would be able to consider kinetic large options.

Regenerating ammo ballistics were very good, and I think they got given up on *way* too quickly. It provides so many interesting levers for balance and ways to differentiate ballistics more than the current stats. You run into a lot of "what is even the difference between these small kinetics" without it.

And they happen to also combo very nicely with damper fields and provide a good outlet to stop the traditional low-tech face-hugging technique from being unstoppable.
Yeah. I support idea. I must admit that I just love dakka weapons.
Wish that Thumper was actually usable and something like this.
Thirded. The original implementation of regenerating ammo on ballistics was bad, yes, but that's because it was (with very few exceptions) applied in a broad fashion that mostly boiled down to 'ballistic weapons deal half dps after a short time'.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on May 29, 2021, 12:12:26 PM
I will also drop some general thoughts.

The Rugged Construction inbuilt hullmod could be added to some other low tech ships.
It could also offer some benefits in combat like faster repair for weapons or taking less damage from EMP weapons.
The problem with armor tanking is not only that its finite resource but its also make all weapons mounts open to suppression.
Having some Low Tech ships something like 'Resilient Subsystems' that reduce time offline or maybe straight reduce damage taken from EMP would be great(especially on non shield ships).
Shield Shunt also could use a buff.
also it would be great to get back some old Impact Mitigation bonuses(the one for both max and min damage reductions) maybe in a form of some hullmod?
Another thing for Low tech is that their flux capacity capacity alongside with bad shields make that they can't really shoot a lot - especially true for AI. AAF  help a lot but only few ships have it. Maybe some Ballistic Mod that helps with flux cost of weapon shooting would help?(in build on some LT ships).

Also(almost forgotten).
Recovery Shuttles.
Currently there are little to nor reason to even use this mod. I read some ideas about converting this mod into fleet buff instead that help recover not only lost pilots but also lost crew from disabled ships. It would greatly help LT/junk fleets. working kind of like some logistical mods.
I think its idea worth considering.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on May 29, 2021, 12:13:06 PM
Ballistics with ammo makes low-tech kinda funny. High PPT, but low sustained performance because of ammo, but it wants quick fights because of relying on a limited resource for defence, but it's slow.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: FooF on May 29, 2021, 12:17:21 PM
On destroyers with a large ballistic, there are interesting lessons that can be learned from mods that have had such ships in them for some time.

If the destroyer only has small mounts alongside the large mount, and people only have access to vanilla guns, players invariably use large kinetics there (Mjolnir usually excluded due to OP/flux) as kinetics are always useful, while HE is only useful when enemy shields are down which won't be achieved reliably (small guns won't have the range, sabots will only be available in small amounts, friendly ships can't be counted on due to haphazard AI).

If the destroyer has at least one medium mount that changes everything - as the ship gains reliable ability to create its own opportunities for a large HE gun (even if limited to vanilla weapons).

Using destroyers with a large ballistic mount as fire support ships usually doesn't work out well as they don't have access to cruiser/capital-grade range increases (ITU bonus much lower on DDs) - when trying to support a large ship they don't have the range to shoot the same targets reliably. If supporting smaller ships their aim gets blocked by allies frequently (causing AI to rarely fire). In player hands they can work well however, but normally don't make full use of Ranged Specialization (difficult to achieve max bonus threshold).


I'm excited to see the Starsector team tackling this ship concept and see how different it may end up from how it's been done so far.

I think what you're describing is generally true but that's where the ship system comes in. If it's not a mobility system (and I kind of doubt it would be), you can get very creative in tackling the problem of hyper-specialization vs. generalist. Imagine, if you will, a ship system that modifies the damage of the Large Mount to Energy. If you have a HE weapon, you use it against Shields, if you have a Kinetic weapon, you use it against Armor so that the ship isn't completely toothless against whatever it isn't specialized in (Mjolnir might just get 2x EMP damage or something). Or, if there was a specialized AAF variant that only boosted the Large Mount but did so at +75% ROF/75% flux redux. Suddenly a Hephaestus is putting good pressure on shields or that Mk. IX is lobbing tons of "decent" projectiles against armor. Storm Needler makes Remnants weep and so on. Point being, you can become pretty exotic with a ship like this because you're starting with a clear "specialist" role in mind and there's not many other directions you can go in.

But, as I said, I think what you've said is generally true. Kinetics will be preferred for the most part if the secondary battery is just a bunch of Small Mounts but I could still see the value of putting HE on a ship like this in a fleet setting. DP cost will also be a factor because if I can get a few of these, I can really tailor them to a fleet role and deploy them judiciously. If the Sunder is any indicator, longer-range Destroyers are still quite welcome in late-game fleets as fire support.


Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Inhilicon on May 29, 2021, 12:47:00 PM
These are really cool, I'm looking forward to using and fighting them! Starsector is the best, no contest, I do attest.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Dri on May 29, 2021, 01:13:11 PM
Oh nice, Burn Drive going back to how it was when it first released. Was sad when you could no longer cancel it early...

Hopefully those side turrets on the new frigate can aim behind it, else Salamanders gonna have a fun time with it.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 29, 2021, 01:26:20 PM
I appreciate the feedback re: the large ballistic destroyer; some stuff to consider for sure.

Regenerating ammo ballistics were very good, and I think they got given up on *way* too quickly. It provides so many interesting levers for balance and ways to differentiate ballistics more than the current stats. You run into a lot of "what is even the difference between these small kinetics" without it.

It's just a fairly massive balance undertaking, since adding this to ballistics is a baseline nerf, so would need to come with some corresponding buffs, and changing an entire lineup like that... balance things get extremely complicated if trying to do a broad swath of things at once. I think if - if I was going to do this - I'd look at a few weapons where it makes good sense and could be handy. For example, I could see doing this with the Thumper, which could use a bit more help anyway (which adjustments offer a good opportunity to provide), and the clips mechanic fits with its general theme of being bursty.

Not actually sure about the small kinetics - to me they're all very distinct. There's the pretty bad one, the one that'd be ok if its accuracy wasn't terrible, the solid reliable one, and the burst one. (And, hopefully, the first two will be more usable now. I forget if I mentioned it, but the Light ACs got a flux efficiency boost, too.)

And they happen to also combo very nicely with damper fields and provide a good outlet to stop the traditional low-tech face-hugging technique from being unstoppable.

(That last part is more an SO thing, right?)


These are really cool, I'm looking forward to using and fighting them! Starsector is the best, no contest, I do attest.

:D

Hopefully those side turrets on the new frigate can aim behind it, else Salamanders gonna have a fun time with it.

Indeed they can. But with DF and Insulated Engines - not to mention RFC - it can actually also just tank them.

Another thing I didn't mention about the Vanguard is that the missile-holding slots are currently composite. I'm not 100% sure on sticking with that, but it might be interesting for a few builds (probably mainly SO), but still.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on May 29, 2021, 01:48:43 PM
And the hellbore is cheap, both in terms of OP and in terms of flux load. I'd expect to see exactly the opposite of what you describe: a hull with a large and some smalls would tend towards hellbore + railguns or light needlers (or, flux permitting, Mjolnir), while ones with medium slots or good numbers of missiles would be able to consider kinetic large options.

Railguns and Light Needlers have noticeably shorter range than the Hellbore and Hephaestus they'd go along with, which is the worst case for a kinetic+HE combo. Medium ballistics have HVDs (superior range and hits first, ideal for kinetic damage) and HACs (at least closer in range to heavies than what lights get).

I think what you're describing is generally true but that's where the ship system comes in.

Fosho, that's also where I think a solution could come (or a hullmod).

If the Sunder is any indicator, longer-range Destroyers are still quite welcome in late-game fleets as fire support.

I only mentionned the issues of ballistic support destroyers.
The Sunder definitely works as a support ship but it's a very different discussion IMO since it is one of energy weapons, with different weapons and ship synergies. Energy has "no travel time 1000 range support beam" options for all mount sizes, while larger energy gun ships fighting alongside a support Sunder may often mount high-DPS lower-range energy guns - such that a Sunder with a Tach Lance and Grav/Ion beams can instantly and easily apply all its support beams simultaneously to a target that an Aurora or Fury is engaging because it actually range -matches or outranges these bigger allies even with hullmods.
Beam guns' nature also means it can apply these support weapons to enemies reliably even when supporting smaller allies that will buzz about near the targets (where AI hesitates to fire ballistics due to friendly-fire risk).

Ballistics don't have such ideal support scenarios, which is why I'm curious to see what kind of new things (weapons, hullmods, ship systems etc) could be used to make a hypothetical heavy mount ballistic support destroyer work really well - although there's no obligation for such a ship to exist
Spoiler
also pls make frigate/destroyer fire pass above/under friendly cruisers/capitals and vice versa pls pls pls
[close]
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on May 29, 2021, 01:58:44 PM
To the point of flux being both defensive and offensive, I think perhaps this mechanic doesn’t hold up to scrutiny when one entire line of ships is based around poor flux management and high armor. Why would anyone design a low tech ship with shields, knowing that having shields puts the ship at great risk of being overloaded? I feel like a competent low tech designer would focus on armor and systems that improve armor without trying to jerry rig on a system that works poorly for the ship, introduces the risk of being overloaded, and only has a marginal benefit of absorbing light fire, while simultaneously limiting damage output?

Well - beam weapons and HE missiles/torpedoes exist, and are extremely well countered by even weak shields, while also countering armor. If we're talking vs high-tech, energy weapons are also countered by weak shields reasonably well, which is particularly important vs large hits. So, I really can't agree here. Shields on low-tech are obviously less universally useful, but they're also *critical* when they are, since they extend the life of armor by absorbing high-damage hits. The decision for when to use them is more complicated than it is for high tech, so if anything, the mechanic produces more interesting decisions for low tech.

Related to HE, wanted to mention shield modulation's special effect in case it's not on your radar.
The AI is prone to firing HE missiles into shields and it feels real bad when they do practically nothing.
Extra penalty does reward skill both in handling shields and explosive weapons but IMO HE hitting shields is punishment enough.
Could be better to give the AI a hand by changing it.


Also shield-related, if you are considering a minor nerf to high tech hardened shields hullmod might be part of that.
Something like 15-20% would probably still make it an automatic builtin choice for most ships, but makes armor bricks comparatively stronger.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Megas on May 29, 2021, 03:34:03 PM
Not actually sure about the small kinetics - to me they're all very distinct. There's the pretty bad one, the one that'd be ok if its accuracy wasn't terrible, the solid reliable one, and the burst one. (And, hopefully, the first two will be more usable now. I forget if I mentioned it, but the Light ACs got a flux efficiency boost, too.)
With 700 range, sounds like two light ACs may be better than railgun or needler on ships with more mounts than flux can support.  (Sort of like two light mortars are better than one LAG, when both had 600 range.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Warnoise on May 29, 2021, 05:50:31 PM
If there was a specialized low tech destroyer with a large weapon slot I would give it a ship system that adds ion damage to its shots. Something like Ionized ordnance which adds X% of weapon damage per shot as ion damage that spreads through target's engines and weapons if high on flux
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Inhilicon on May 29, 2021, 06:34:17 PM
Quote from: Draba
Also shield-related, if you are considering a minor nerf to high tech hardened shields hullmod might be part of that.
Something like 15-20% would probably still make it an automatic builtin choice for most ships, but makes armor bricks comparatively stronger.

I have to agree with this. I feel like Hardened Shields is in its own hullmod tier of "amazing", while the rest are either good, average or unimpressive. It lets a high-tech ship's shields turn HIGHER tech or it pushes a low-tech ship's shields into midline levels.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sundog on May 30, 2021, 12:39:31 AM
This all looks great!  :D
The burn drive change should be a huge improvement for the AI. Gotta admit, I've considered burn drive more of a liability than a boon for quite a while.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: basildazz on May 30, 2021, 01:54:26 AM

    However, in an attempt to repel the pressure you exert on the 'burn-drive' being a tactical success, I suggest a 'tractor beam' would perform the same function inversely applied as the burn  drive, but I would presume to consider it a high tech weapon more likely applied in an energy weapon mount. However, a low-tech ship system that could be deployed in a 'tractor-like' manner in the combat simulations may possibly be a magnetised hull? - basildazz



Yeah, a tractor beam would probably feel kind of high-tech, though I suppose the visual and sound FX could sell it either way. But in general mobility-interfering systems would be really frustrating to play *against*. This is largely why there aren't any! I did mess around with the idea of an "Interdictor Array" on a phase ship (since they're allowed to be unfair, basically) but that didn't go anywhere too useful. It'd also require an unreasonable amount of cooperation from the AI, more than likely. - Alex


Ok, with nebula, magnets and ion cannons and being over fluxed, a player may never get a turn, so to speak. But to consider the AI deploying some varied tactics, maybe a little 'aggravation' induced by the computer controlled ships is the diversion required to fall prey to a tactic. Altering my suggestion and considering your reasoning on the amendment to the 'burn-drive'. If a low tech ship, has the ability at shorter ranges to deviate the opposition ships in direction, velocity or rotation, then it may (estimating the programming complexity to it's full extent) have a tactic to aim 'safely' away from the main body of the enemy force and disorient them briefly, that other ships may be opportunist.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: pairedeciseaux on May 30, 2021, 01:56:17 AM
Some theorycrafting about weapon range and ship speed,

Increasing range of LAC, LDAC and LAG to 700 means +16.7% range increase. Compared to 0.95, assuming non-ITU frigate builds, low tech and midline ships will have:

So overall in 0.95.1 (or whatever next version will be) you get either longer range (baseline) or higher max speed (if spending OP on UI hullmod). In both cases it shall help compete with the highly mobile high tech frigates using 600-range medium guns.

Lasher with 1 LDAC + 2 LAG or Centurion with 2 LAC + 2 LAG:

Kite with 1 LAC:

So I could see Unstable Injector becoming a high priority hullmod for some low tech and midline ships/builds in next version, especially for people looking for fast non-SO frigates alternatives.

For reference: having UI in 0.95 lowers 600-range guns to 510.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Rojnaz on May 30, 2021, 09:49:22 AM
I don't know if this is the right place to put it but.
Buffalo Mk2 could be a somewhat decent user of damper field as right now it has no shield.
I also think Colossus Mk2 & 3 should have their OP buffed a bit, they are especially difficult to use in combat right now, even using the full buff of auxiliary support.
I mean, Buffalo has 22 OP and Buffalo Mk2 has 70 OP.
Colossus has 55 and both Colossus Mk2 and 3 have 55 OP.

Buffalo Mk2 and Atlas Mk2 are decent in combat for what they are but the Colossus and Prometheus Mk2 are too underperforming even for a converted hull.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: halloween20 on May 30, 2021, 01:03:13 PM
after two days of searching in the forum for infos on this and that, i finally found the new blog ... lol  :o ::)

the change to the vanguard sounds nice.
but as someone already pointed out the possible problem in using "a lot" of Vanguard to alpha away a lot of ships i thought about a "little" Countermeasure  to this...
why not give a replacement penalty by using that ability. not the normal penalty for loosing the drone and replacing it what gradualy reduces the replacement rate, but a straight -x% the moment the drone explods, or the skill is used to "arm" the bomb...
this will allow for an alpha strike right at the first encounter with enemies, but the repeatable usage of it will dwindle in the heat of the fight where the drones get shot down more frequently.

next to the change of the BD System.
first of all i like the idea to cancel it somewhere allong its duration. as a new player i am still hiting F instead of V sometimes ...  :-X :o
i think the moment the duration is canceled, the CD will start befor i could reuse it?!
what i would like is a "steady refill" approach. that would enable the skill to be "switched on and off" every time. but from zero to full it would still take as long as it takes now. it still prevends ship to permanently use it as the ship has to gain speed to make use of it, fast on/off shouldn't be a problem.
the overall activation time should be the same.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: shoi on May 30, 2021, 02:56:27 PM
will there any extra considerations needed for letting the AI understand how to use 2 ship systems from a modding perspective?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 30, 2021, 04:56:00 PM
Related to HE, wanted to mention shield modulation's special effect in case it's not on your radar.
The AI is prone to firing HE missiles into shields and it feels real bad when they do practically nothing.
Extra penalty does reward skill both in handling shields and explosive weapons but IMO HE hitting shields is punishment enough.
Could be better to give the AI a hand by changing it.


Also shield-related, if you are considering a minor nerf to high tech hardened shields hullmod might be part of that.
Something like 15-20% would probably still make it an automatic builtin choice for most ships, but makes armor bricks comparatively stronger.

Thank you! Both of these are already on my radar, one's actually done and the other one is on the TODO list :)

With 700 range, sounds like two light ACs may be better than railgun or needler on ships with more mounts than flux can support.  (Sort of like two light mortars are better than one LAG, when both had 600 range.)

That sounds pretty good, I think - situation trade-offs etc etc.


If there was a specialized low tech destroyer with a large weapon slot I would give it a ship system that adds ion damage to its shots. Something like Ionized ordnance which adds X% of weapon damage per shot as ion damage that spreads through target's engines and weapons if high on flux

Hmm, why? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, btw, just in general, the "why" of an idea is... basically more important than the idea, really! A random idea is just a random idea, you know? But if there's a line of thought behind it, then that can help clarify whether it's a good or a bad idea, or perhaps lead to a discussion and something even better coming out of it.


Some theorycrafting about weapon range and ship speed,
Spoiler
Increasing range of LAC, LDAC and LAG to 700 means +16.7% range increase. Compared to 0.95, assuming non-ITU frigate builds, low tech and midline ships will have:
  • without Unstable Injector : that +16.7% range boost for those guns (700), unchanged max speed
  • with Unstable Injector: almost the same range as non-UI in 0.95 (595), together with +25% max speed boost

So overall in 0.95.1 (or whatever next version will be) you get either longer range (baseline) or higher max speed (if spending OP on UI hullmod). In both cases it shall help compete with the highly mobile high tech frigates using 600-range medium guns.

Lasher with 1 LDAC + 2 LAG or Centurion with 2 LAC + 2 LAG:
  • without Unstable Injector : 700 range and 120 max speed
  • with Unstable Injector: 595 range and 150 max speed (similar to Wolf)

Kite with 1 LAC:
  • without Unstable Injector : 700 range and 140 max speed
  • with Unstable Injector: 595 range and 175 max speed (similar to Tempest)

So I could see Unstable Injector becoming a high priority hullmod for some low tech and midline ships/builds in next version, especially for people looking for fast non-SO frigates alternatives.

For reference: having UI in 0.95 lowers 600-range guns to 510.
[close]

*thumbs up* on the analysis, thank you! Whether more speed or more range will end up being better for surivability remains to be seen, I suppose - but then again that's why it's the tradeoff for UI...

the change to the vanguard sounds nice.
but as someone already pointed out the possible problem in using "a lot" of Vanguard to alpha away a lot of ships i thought about a "little" Countermeasure  to this...
why not give a replacement penalty by using that ability. not the normal penalty for loosing the drone and replacing it what gradualy reduces the replacement rate, but a straight -x% the moment the drone explods, or the skill is used to "arm" the bomb...
this will allow for an alpha strike right at the first encounter with enemies, but the repeatable usage of it will dwindle in the heat of the fight where the drones get shot down more frequently.

(Assuming you mean the Terminator drone, not the Vanguard - the Vanguard is the low-tech frigate.)

I mean, that's an option! Right now it doesn't feel too powerful, though; the natural downside of the replacement rate ticking down from losing the drone feels like enough.

next to the change of the BD System.
first of all i like the idea to cancel it somewhere allong its duration. as a new player i am still hiting F instead of V sometimes ...  :-X :o
i think the moment the duration is canceled, the CD will start befor i could reuse it?!
what i would like is a "steady refill" approach. that would enable the skill to be "switched on and off" every time. but from zero to full it would still take as long as it takes now. it still prevends ship to permanently use it as the ship has to gain speed to make use of it, fast on/off shouldn't be a problem.
the overall activation time should be the same.

Ah - I did think about this! Just, ship systems are not at all set of to handle a "steady refill" type of approach. And I do like that aborting a burn early still has a cost - it's not quite as much of a commitment as it used to be, with having to go the full distance, but you a least still are commiting to using the ability and having to wait before using it again.


will there any extra considerations needed for letting the AI understand how to use 2 ship systems from a modding perspective?

Yes - the specific system AI needs to be able to handle it. Most vanilla system AI can't because it assumes that it's using the system returned by ship.getSystem(), not the right-click system (which is returned by ... ship.getPhaseCloak()). So it'd just crash if the system was slotted in as "right-click" - or try to use the normal system. The Damper Field AI had to be adjusted to handle either scenario. Other vanilla AI has not.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on May 30, 2021, 05:16:20 PM
Hmm, so could a ship be set up from a mod to return a new custom ship.getPhaseCloak()? Assuming the system passed back was written for the purpose. Having custom ship systems on right click instead of shields would be wonderful from a modding perspective.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Warnoise on May 30, 2021, 05:44:58 PM
Hmm, why? I'm not saying it's a bad idea, btw, just in general, the "why" of an idea is... basically more important than the idea, really! A random idea is just a random idea, you know? But if there's a line of thought behind it, then that can help clarify whether it's a good or a bad idea, or perhaps lead to a discussion and something even better coming out of it.

Since the main problem of a destroyer with large mount is the extreme specialization, giving it extra emp damage as ship system would make it useful regardless of what large weapon it is equipped with.

So it becomes a destroyer that provides a two layered support: Large mount (i.e range) + EMP damage to harrass/disable stronger ships.

That makes it useful even in late game against redacted and other strong fleets.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 30, 2021, 05:59:02 PM
Related to HE, wanted to mention shield modulation's special effect in case it's not on your radar.
The AI is prone to firing HE missiles into shields and it feels real bad when they do practically nothing.
Extra penalty does reward skill both in handling shields and explosive weapons but IMO HE hitting shields is punishment enough.
Could be better to give the AI a hand by changing it.


Also shield-related, if you are considering a minor nerf to high tech hardened shields hullmod might be part of that.
Something like 15-20% would probably still make it an automatic builtin choice for most ships, but makes armor bricks comparatively stronger.

Thank you! Both of these are already on my radar, one's actually done and the other one is on the TODO list :)
If you're going to nerf hardened shields, would you consider reducing its OP cost as well? Right now it's a near-automatic choice for installation as an s-mod simply because it's one of the most expensive hullmods that's generally-useful. For a cruiser or capital, it's hard to go wrong with integrating hardened shields and ITU, where in 0.9.1-and-earlier the high OP cost of hardened shields made it more of a decision.

A small nerf to hardened shields will just push it further into the corner of 's-mod this or don't use it', while a small nerf combined with a reduced OP cost should, hopefully, open up the field to it being reasonable to consider other choices for s-mods.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SafariJohn on May 30, 2021, 07:07:01 PM
For some existing takes on destroyers with large ballistics, you can check out Legacy of Arkgneisis's Burke and Burke (P) and the Roider Union's Bombard.

The Bombard backs its large hardpoint with a medium missile mount and a medium ballistic turret. Its raw stats are underwhelming except for its cruiser-grade weapon range, but its weapon mounts allow it to effectively use a variety of weapon combinations.

The Burke also has cruiser-grade weapon range, but has its large in a turret. Even with reduced weapon rotation speed, it's still substantially better than a hardpoint at focusing its fire on vulnerable enemies. Its reasonable stats, turret coverage, and PD ship system give it decent survivability even when attacked directly.

The Burke (P) is some crazy thing with TWO large ballistic hardpoints and not much else. I've never used one, but my understanding is it tends to flux-lock itself.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Kahnmir on May 30, 2021, 08:41:59 PM
I am a little concerned about this "balancing the tech levels" thing, I've seen many games get stuck in this never ending loop of nerfs that never seem to go anywhere.

Really, "balance" seems to be a lost cause because the only way you'll ever achieve true "balance" is to make everything exactly the same. Which is not fun.
I do think a form of balance that is fun can be achieved by leaning into the differences of various elements rather than making them more similar, but this is a tact rarely taken by game devs.

I also want to point out here that a small nerf to high-tech and a small buff to low tech can cumulatively be the same as a big nerf to high tech or a big buff to low tech. Which I think is pretty unwarranted.

Finally, there is an element that is completely absent from this discussion: Mid-line. If midline vs high-tech is "balanced" and midline vs low-tech is "balanced, but low-tech vs high-tech is "unbalanced" then what is actually going on here? Not claiming to know exactly how "balanced" midline is versus anything here, just pointing out that leaving it out of the discussion seems an oversight. I mean, if you nerf high-tech to the point where mid-line just does what high-tech used to do, and everyone stars complaining about how "op" midline is then you end up stuck in the "nerf-loop" I mentioned.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 30, 2021, 09:15:24 PM
Hmm, so could a ship be set up from a mod to return a new custom ship.getPhaseCloak()? Assuming the system passed back was written for the purpose. Having custom ship systems on right click instead of shields would be wonderful from a modding perspective.

Yeah - a bunch of ships already do this, as far as I know. You specify the defense type as PHASE and then the system id as the defense id.


Since the main problem of a destroyer with large mount is the extreme specialization, giving it extra emp damage as ship system would make it useful regardless of what large weapon it is equipped with.

So it becomes a destroyer that provides a two layered support: Large mount (i.e range) + EMP damage to harrass/disable stronger ships.

That makes it useful even in late game against redacted and other strong fleets.

Hmm, interesting! Thank you for explaining your thinking. I will say that I like the general idea of a system that adds EMP damage. I do have something particular in mind for this one already, though.


If you're going to nerf hardened shields, would you consider reducing its OP cost as well? Right now it's a near-automatic choice for installation as an s-mod simply because it's one of the most expensive hullmods that's generally-useful. For a cruiser or capital, it's hard to go wrong with integrating hardened shields and ITU, where in 0.9.1-and-earlier the high OP cost of hardened shields made it more of a decision.

A small nerf to hardened shields will just push it further into the corner of 's-mod this or don't use it', while a small nerf combined with a reduced OP cost should, hopefully, open up the field to it being reasonable to consider other choices for s-mods.

I'm not sure that "s-mod it or don't use it" is any worse then "always pick this but don't s-mod it", which a nerfed + cheaper hardened shields would be. In fact, the former seems like it's probably better, since there's more of a choice there - if it's worse than now, then another hullmod might compete with it for being s-modded in, no? Where if it's cheaper, it's just going on there no matter what.


For some existing takes on destroyers with large ballistics, you can check out Legacy of Arkgneisis's Burke and Burke (P) and the Roider Union's Bombard.

The Bombard backs its large hardpoint with a medium missile mount and a medium ballistic turret. Its raw stats are underwhelming except for its cruiser-grade weapon range, but its weapon mounts allow it to effectively use a variety of weapon combinations.

The Burke also has cruiser-grade weapon range, but has its large in a turret. Even with reduced weapon rotation speed, it's still substantially better than a hardpoint at focusing its fire on vulnerable enemies. Its reasonable stats, turret coverage, and PD ship system give it decent survivability even when attacked directly.

The Burke (P) is some crazy thing with TWO large ballistic hardpoints and not much else. I've never used one, but my understanding is it tends to flux-lock itself.

Thank you for the rundown! (The Burke actually sounds fairly similar to what I've got in mind here.)


Really, "balance" seems to be a lost cause because the only way you'll ever achieve true "balance" is to make everything exactly the same. Which is not fun.
I do think a form of balance that is fun can be achieved by leaning into the differences of various elements rather than making them more similar, but this is a tact rarely taken by game devs.

I feel like that's very much what we're doing here - helping low-tech's different approach to things actually work out. Balance is important, though - obviously not like it is in a multiplayer PvP game, but in a single-player game, good balance helps with variety. The bar for what's "ok" is lower, though, for sure.

I also want to point out here that a small nerf to high-tech and a small buff to low tech can cumulatively be the same as a big nerf to high tech or a big buff to low tech. Which I think is pretty unwarranted.

I'm ... not sure that sort of math checks out, generally speaking :) It all depends on the details! But that aside, I think I understand what you're saying. Balancing is an iterative process, though, and things will over and undershoot and so on, particularly in the face of significant changes like new skills or the burn drive change etc. I think it's worthwhile, though, since ultimately the goal here is to make more playstyles work. We're not aiming to have, like, perfect balance for the sake of numbers lining up, but for larger, more gameplay-focused goals.

Finally, there is an element that is completely absent from this discussion: Mid-line. If midline vs high-tech is "balanced" and midline vs low-tech is "balanced, but low-tech vs high-tech is "unbalanced" then what is actually going on here? Not claiming to know exactly how "balanced" midline is versus anything here, just pointing out that leaving it out of the discussion seems an oversight. I mean, if you nerf high-tech to the point where mid-line just does what high-tech used to do, and everyone stars complaining about how "op" midline is then you end up stuck in the "nerf-loop" I mentioned.

Midline isn't as specialized, or, rather, doesn't have as distinct an approach to things. It kind of splits the difference between low and high tech and just ends up with a bunch of solid ships. I'm obviously keeping an eye on them, but since there aren't a lot of *systemic* changes - rather, they're more targeted at specific issues - midline ships should not be affected in a way that drastically changes their power. For example, a nerf to hardened shields isn't going to suddenly make midline great - this one actually affects all tech levels. And the changes to the Tempest are targeting one specific ship, not high-tech as a whole. And so on.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 30, 2021, 10:15:17 PM
If you're going to nerf hardened shields, would you consider reducing its OP cost as well? Right now it's a near-automatic choice for installation as an s-mod simply because it's one of the most expensive hullmods that's generally-useful. For a cruiser or capital, it's hard to go wrong with integrating hardened shields and ITU, where in 0.9.1-and-earlier the high OP cost of hardened shields made it more of a decision.

A small nerf to hardened shields will just push it further into the corner of 's-mod this or don't use it', while a small nerf combined with a reduced OP cost should, hopefully, open up the field to it being reasonable to consider other choices for s-mods.

I'm not sure that "s-mod it or don't use it" is any worse then "always pick this but don't s-mod it", which a nerfed + cheaper hardened shields would be. In fact, the former seems like it's probably better, since there's more of a choice there - if it's worse than now, then another hullmod might compete with it for being s-modded in, no? Where if it's cheaper, it's just going on there no matter what.
...No? I mean, I guess that does depend on how much cheaper and how much you nerf it, but my aim with this suggestion was to bring it back to where it was in 0.9.1-and-earlier where it was basically just the Paragon that literally always got hardened shields installed, and everywhere else it was at least somewhat situational and something that you might just not use because you needed the ordnance points for other things.

For which, with s-mods existing, it needs two things: It needs to not be one of the most expensive hull mods (so you can reasonably pick other things to s-mod), and it needs to be balanced at the OP cost it has.

I'm not actually personally convinced it needs a nerf in the first place, but if I were going to nerf it, I'd start with changing its OP cost to 4/8/12/20 and then reduce the damage reduction to 10% (but keep the boost to defense against shield-piercing effects the same.)

Edit: If you wanted to get fancy you could even do something like "reduces damage taken by shields by 10%; reduces HE damage taken by shields by an additional 5%."
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on May 30, 2021, 10:48:04 PM
I don't think it's a good idea to nerf HE damage to shields, with skills or hullmods.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 31, 2021, 02:17:17 AM
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For example, a nerf to hardened shields isn't going to suddenly make midline great - this one actually affects all tech levels.
In theory, but in practice I'm expecting a different outcome. Compare a a Tempest to a Vanguard - which of these two is going to care more about a Hardened Shields nerf? Or a Paragon compared to an Onslaught, even if the latter isn't a Shield Shunt variant, or a Conquest. High Tech lives and dies on it's shields, they don't have the armor to do anything but take the occasional stray hit without exploding (hopefully), and with energy weapons they need every flux war advantage they can get. Midline can afford to lose their shields briefly, they're not designed to armor tank but they stand a chance of survival if they have to and have access to ballistic weapons. And Low Tech is Low Tech, we know their armor tanking strategy by now.

Nerfs like that is going to prevent High Tech from leveraging their speciality until it pushes the meta towards Midline to the point where the new mantra becomes "Midline Best Line", and then we're right back at square one.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: EclipseRanger on May 31, 2021, 05:19:30 AM
I absolutely love these additions/changes.Thanks Alex :D.
IMO,Low Tech benefits from having a more distanced relationship with shields(or sometimes even forgoing them fully) while getting other toys to emphasize its own niche.And Terminator Sequence seems very fun to play around with.I love the general idea of moving into more complex ship systems(and not just stat bonuses).Admittedly,the new system seems more fun to use with more tactical tradeoffs than "press button to do more DPS".

On that subject,is it correct to assume more similar mechanics/tools are coming in following patches?Obviously,the next patch is far off,but from things like the Breach missile,and the Vanguard uniquely possesing 2 systems,and the new Tempest system,I am getting the feeling that the gameplay is shifting towards more tactical tools and fewer stat boosts.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on May 31, 2021, 06:12:41 AM
Can we get a few numbers on current changes to weapons/hullmods?  Quite a few of us would be interested in testing a few of these changes.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 31, 2021, 12:58:18 PM
I'm not actually personally convinced it needs a nerf in the first place, but if I were going to nerf it, I'd start with changing its OP cost to 4/8/12/20 and then reduce the damage reduction to 10% (but keep the boost to defense against shield-piercing effects the same.)

Ah! I think that's where the difference comes in; to me it seems too strong, so generally "weaker and less OP" leaves it still too strong - or, well, with a rather tiny bonus. So I guess your general point is to make it cost less OP (and balanced for that - which, I mean, in retrospect - of course! A bit silly of me to assume "lower OP cost but still overpowered"). But that's a broader topic re: s-mods. You'll usually s-mod the most expensive mods, regardless, and some of the mods will be the most expensive ones, so reducing the impact and cost of the hullmods *currently* in that category just re-arranges what's in it but doesn't actually *change* things more broadly. I suppose if the most expensive hullmods were all highly specialized? That might be worth thinking about, but, again, it's a broader topic than just one hullmod.


In theory, but in practice I'm expecting a different outcome. Compare a a Tempest to a Vanguard - which of these two is going to care more about a Hardened Shields nerf?

I didn't say they had the *same* impact on all tech levels! Just that it affects most ships and so its relative impact on high-tech is somewhat mitigated.

Stepping back to address the broader point: I don't think the argument that one shouldn't try to balance things because they *might* become imbalanced in some other way makes much sense. Balancing is an iterative, incremental process. When there are changes - especially with a bigger release - the balance will be disturbed, and needs more adjusting. But, yeah, like... might as well not add new ships because they might be overpowered, not add new mechanics because they might be exploitable, and so on. Balancing things is just an ongoing part of dev work.


I absolutely love these additions/changes.Thanks Alex :D.

:D

On that subject,is it correct to assume more similar mechanics/tools are coming in following patches?Obviously,the next patch is far off,but from things like the Breach missile,and the Vanguard uniquely possesing 2 systems,and the new Tempest system,I am getting the feeling that the gameplay is shifting towards more tactical tools and fewer stat boosts.

Hmm - I wouldn't *necessarily* assume that. The things you've named all got specific, custom mechanics in order to be able to fit into design niches that just tweaking raw numbers would not let them do. And stat boosts could be interesting, too. I mean, in some sense Burn Drive is a stat boost, to speed, but it's still interesting! So I don't think it's a general trend, it's just... you're noticing me use the same kind of tool to try and solve some particularly tricky design challenges. Which, fair enough, and *thumbs up* on connecting all of these as sharing similar traits! But it doesn't represent a change in design philosophy, if that makes sense. Just... right tool for the job, right? And part of this, I suppose, is the engine just having developed easier access to be able to do these kinds of things. For example, the Breach piggybacks on the work done for the Omega weapons, and the Vanguard makes use of some not-really-originally-intentional features that got added in and refined because modders wanted them.

Can we get a few numbers on current changes to weapons/hullmods?  Quite a few of us would be interested in testing a few of these changes.

Not quite yet. I'm also not sure if it'd paint the full picture without corresponding changes in skills (a lot of which are still pending). Hmm... I'll keep this in mind! Right now it's definitely too partial to share in detail, though.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 31, 2021, 01:19:51 PM
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I suppose if the most expensive hullmods were all highly specialized? That might be worth thinking about, but, again, it's a broader topic than just one hullmod.
Broader topic, yes, but I would just like to mention that S-modding Operations Centre, one of the most expensive hullmods in the game (most expensive in some cases - for Frigates it costs twice as much as SO!), is not something that practically anyone does...

Quote
didn't say they had the *same* impact on all tech levels! Just that it affects most ships and so its relative impact on high-tech is somewhat mitigated.

Stepping back to address the broader point: I don't think the argument that one shouldn't try to balance things because they *might* become imbalanced in some other way makes much sense. Balancing is an iterative, incremental process. When there are changes - especially with a bigger release - the balance will be disturbed, and needs more adjusting. But, yeah, like... might as well not add new ships because they might be overpowered, not add new mechanics because they might be exploitable, and so on. Balancing things is just an ongoing part of dev work.
Fair point, and something like the Termination Sequence change is definitely more than just "ship's too good, maybe reduce it's flux stats". That said I am concerned about things getting nerfed that don't need to be, or things getting nerfed beyond what's needed. Tempests are good, sure, but they're good for premium frigates in a patch that heavily pushes a frigate meta. If those skills change, suddenly Tempests are less good, and if they get nerfed on top of that suddenly they might be plain awful (for their cost). Basically what happened to Drovers in 0.95 - once there was Drover Spam, now there is Herons trying to justify hauling carriers around.

Of course we'll have to see how all the skill changes, ship additions/adjustments, etc., ultimately add up. I'd just hate to see Tempests (or High Tech in general) become the next Drover and me moving on to the next "overtuned" fleet composition because the overnerfed ones just can't justify their costs.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Demetrious on May 31, 2021, 03:38:46 PM
I really like everything I read in that blogpost but what I really, really adore is how the new hulls neatly fit into the low-tech Domain design doctrine.

Fluff for various hulls mentions the "battle-line doctrine" of the old Domain and many low-tech ships reflect that in their design and positioning of mounts; the Dominator being a classic example (and the Champion being a classic example of a mid-tech take on Domain doctrine.) The biggest hurdle to making low-tech ships work in this game has been, to me, the disconnect between the "battle line doctrine" and the AI's ability to actually realize that doctrine. Burn Drive being interruptable should be a huge effective improvement in the AI's ability to actually move around and make good on their various escort orders, or the checkerboard "defend here" patterns some players use to keep their low-tech fleets in a rough battle line. It certainly increases the value for the player as well, and as someone who tends to fly Onslaughts as much as possible, I can attest that it really needed that. Even after the significant buffs in the last version, the Onslaught is still a tricky ship to fly sometimes, even with the experience I've had with it, because getting that burn drive timing right and eyeballing the distance is important. And sometimes you have to bite your lip and accept the Bonk - despite the damage it does to your precious forward armor - because it's either that or let an enemy capital back off and vent. (And god forbid if you lay on the trigger a little too hard and it blows up in your face before you can raise shields. Oi.) Burn drive is going to be a lot more useful now, but honestly, that still just feels like bringing it up to parity. I think I speak for many of us when I say that on low-tech ships we often find Harpoons to be important bordering on mandatory so we can confirm kills on runners; because the burn drive isn't really an option half the time it should be.

Most importantly, burn drive is still... well, burn drive. It's not the equivalent of high tech mobility systems, as those are actually optimized for hit-and-run tactics. Burn drive won't get you out of the fight, but it can get you into the fight - which is why it was so frequently either a suicide button or just not worth the risk. Now it gets you into the right place in the fight which is essential for low-tech doctrine.

... which brings me to the other two new hulls and why I like them - low-tech is a doctrine that more or less embraces specialization. (This is accurate to real life; if you compare US WWII "fleet boats" to their inter-war brethren, you can see how the idealized all-round fleet submarine only came about due to technological advances, and how earlier submarine concepts had to make essential trade-offs to be effective at a smaller number of roles; further requiring a diversified fleet working in concert to cover every role sufficiently.) As Alex said, the Lasher - despite being an excellent little gunboat for frigate/destroyer fights - just doesn't have the speed or short-term tank required to do frigate things in large battles; and even in the Old Domain Era a frigate's role in a large battle would be essentially the same. Thus one would expect the Domain to have fielded a frigate variant meant specifically to operate with large battlewagon fleets.

The Eradicator also fits into "battle-line doctrine" as a great ship for protecting flanks. Accelerated Ammo Feeder is by far my favorite ship system; pushing that button and watching a ship buzz-saw through hostiles is amazing. As a flank protector, it makes sense that it'd trade burst speed (burn drive) for sustained higher speed and horrific burst firepower; if you think of it as a ship meant to protect the ends of a battle-line formed by Onslaughts and Dominators, that's exactly the kind of ship you'd want.

Adding this to pirate fleets is also VERY nice. I second whoever said that they're sick and tired of fighting Ventures. The best part is that a burn-drive ship with the standard generous low-tech missile slot allotment makes for a perfect pirate-doctrine ship, much like the Falcon(P); focused on overwhelming burst firepower to end fights quickly and the speed to take advantage of opportunities to deliver it.

Lastly, I really like the Tempest change. The Tempest is fun to fly, and the DP cost of a destroyer means we've always had to pay more or less what its worth, too. I can see the problem you had with High Energy Focus. It's a flat boost to the ship's burst damage output - which is always good and is necessary for frigates in big fights if they want to make a difference without torpedoes loaded - but it also regenerates and works great against other frigates too, which, combined with all its other strong points, makes it just a little too much. But making the damage more compartmentalized in its utility would require reworking weapon slots and such and those work pretty well as-is. Plus, it'd diminish what makes the Tempest so fun (and what makes it worth the staggering DP cost) - the versatility.

The drone missile system is a regenerating missile weapon on a frigate which is hands-down great - especially because it's somewhat unique in the HP of the drone (which I'm going to wager is better than a great many missiles) and that it can also shoot while inbound, so maybe it can plow through rocket spam whereas no other missile weapon really can. And yet, it imposes a direct cost on the ship, by denying it a drone for a while, and costing it fighter replacement rate (which also gives it a semi-limited pool that needs to regenerate, a bit like charges.) It keeps the hallmark flexibility of the hull while adding a resource cost (and associated opportunity cost) for using it, which keeps it from being hands-down insane.

Also, it's pretty cool. 

Overall these sound like great changes; I can't wait to play with them.  :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 31, 2021, 03:51:57 PM
Fair point, and something like the Termination Sequence change is definitely more than just "ship's too good, maybe reduce it's flux stats". That said I am concerned about things getting nerfed that don't need to be, or things getting nerfed beyond what's needed. Tempests are good, sure, but they're good for premium frigates in a patch that heavily pushes a frigate meta. If those skills change, suddenly Tempests are less good, and if they get nerfed on top of that suddenly they might be plain awful (for their cost). Basically what happened to Drovers in 0.95 - once there was Drover Spam, now there is Herons trying to justify hauling carriers around.

Of course we'll have to see how all the skill changes, ship additions/adjustments, etc., ultimately add up. I'd just hate to see Tempests (or High Tech in general) become the next Drover and me moving on to the next "overtuned" fleet composition because the overnerfed ones just can't justify their costs.

Fair enough! (The Drover, there may be some sort of bug that's currently tanking its performance - I forget the details, but I seem to recall seeing some report. It's written down in a TODO sheet so I'll have a look eventually.)


I really like everything I read in that blogpost but what I really, really adore is how the new hulls neatly fit into the low-tech Domain design doctrine.
...
Overall these sound like great changes; I can't wait to play with them.  :)

:D Thank you, glad you're into the changes/additions! <3
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Demetrious on May 31, 2021, 04:02:34 PM
:D Thank you, glad you're into the changes/additions! <3

Low-tech forever 8)


And the Tempest... Well. I'm not sure about that one. On one hand it did lost HEF. On the other hand, it gained a tachyon lance torpedo. Alright, not quite tachyon lance, but still beefy as hell. I feel this won't change much for most early/mid game combat scenarios. But can you imagine a pack of those for a late game fleet? Handling one or two kamikaze drones is manageable, but dealing with a ceaseless swarm from an entire Tempest fleet seems... Impossible. I guess it'll all depends on the system's cooldown, the drone's range, or its maneuverability if it's affected. But from what i'm seeing, it seems like a moderate early game nerf/side grade and a terrifying late game buff for the Tempest, or at least, for a pack of Tempests.

Yeah, but if they do that, they'll be shorn of their innate point defense for a while and thus be easy prey for Talons, Thunders or even a few Locust launchers. Which really strikes at the heart of the change - the Tempest is not overpowered in any one scenario you could put it in. In fact, it's not even overpowered as a player flagship. What pushes it slightly over the upper edge of "fair for the DP cost" is that it's good at everything, all the time, which makes rolling around with a big death blob of them attractive. Taking it out behind the woodshed with a nerfbat would beat everything fun about the ship out of it. It needed, like, a nerf toothpick. And I think that's more or less what it's got. I'm going to guess that the damage output of the Drone Missile is more or less on-par with the kind of burst output that HEF on it used to deliver; you just have to make a temporary trade-off for it now. Which accomplishes the very difficult goal of keeping the innate versatility of the hull (it can do everything and do it with the same fit,) without making it an auto-win button. And leaning more into the drones, which is the unique and fun thing about the Tempest to begin with, is a really nice way to do it; it makes you weigh your very good integral point defense versus that tempting wide Onslaught stern in front of you. In either case, the Tempest will do really well; it'll just do even better and do it faster with some other variety in the fleet rather than "another Tempest" always being the hands-down best choice for the DP.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 31, 2021, 04:06:09 PM
But that's a broader topic re: s-mods. You'll usually s-mod the most expensive mods, regardless, and some of the mods will be the most expensive ones, so reducing the impact and cost of the hullmods *currently* in that category just re-arranges what's in it but doesn't actually *change* things more broadly. I suppose if the most expensive hullmods were all highly specialized?
"Most expensive" isn't actually the only priority there, though. At least for me, I want 'most expensive hull mods that are always going to be useful' - I'm not going to s-mod, say, expanded missile racks into something unless I'm absolutely certain that I'll always want EMR on that ship.

And that is, for me, the main reason I always end up with ITU and Hardened Shields s-modded on cruisers and capitals - they're the most expensive hull mods that are just generally always good*.  With Hardened Shields reduced to the same price as Flux Distributor, there's some actual choice in what you s-mod, and at that point, you might actually end up not installing hardened shields at all, if there were more valuable things to spend ordnance points on. Whereas if you just nerf Hardened Shields down to 15-20% damage reduction with no change in OP cost... well, nothing changes except that my ships are slightly less durable.

* Excluding only some builds for dedicated carriers, the Gryphon, or ships you know you'll be installing SO on.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 31, 2021, 04:15:18 PM
... hmm. Right, yes, that's (not always wanting racks) kind of what I meant by having the most expensive mods be specialized. Still, this is a good point. On the other hand, it seems like a 10% Hardened Shields would be way too good if it was the same cost-tier as Flux Distributor... and going below 10% would just feel bad.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on May 31, 2021, 04:18:57 PM
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Fair enough! (The Drover, there may be some sort of bug that's currently tanking its performance - I forget the details, but I seem to recall seeing some report. It's written down in a TODO sheet so I'll have a look eventually.)
Replacement rates were tanking because Reserve Deployment losses counted as actual losses, or some such, IIRC? Of course that combined with the Remnant LPC nefs, carrier nerfs and the (since fixed, I believe?) bug where shielded fighters would stay permanently overloaded make Drovers a thoroughly underwhelming package.

That said I'm still not sure whether Herons or Astrals are worth using either. Carriers just ate so many nerfs and want player skills that conflict with other important stuff (Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?) that it seems better to just cut them out entirely and focus on finding a replacement. Maybe focussing on a carrier fleet would be more effective, but mixing fleets seems very much against the meta this patch.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Demetrious on May 31, 2021, 04:24:30 PM
Quote
Fair enough! (The Drover, there may be some sort of bug that's currently tanking its performance - I forget the details, but I seem to recall seeing some report. It's written down in a TODO sheet so I'll have a look eventually.)
Replacement rates were tanking because Reserve Deployment losses counted as actual losses, or some such, IIRC? Of course that combined with the Remnant LPC nefs, carrier nerfs and the (since fixed, I believe?) bug where shielded fighters would stay permanently overloaded make Drovers a thoroughly underwhelming package.

That said I'm still not sure whether Herons or Astrals are worth using either. Carriers just ate so many nerfs and want player skills that conflict with other important stuff (Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?) that it seems better to just cut them out entirely and focus on finding a replacement. Maybe focussing on a carrier fleet would be more effective, but mixing fleets seems very much against the meta this patch.

When I first played the latest version I thought carriers were dead as well, though I've moderated my opinion since then. The biggest impact to me is the dearth of carrier-relevant skills; to really build a fleet around them you'll need some battle-carrier fits mixed with pure carrier fits. Haven't tried that yet so I can't speak to it, though.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Megas on May 31, 2021, 04:27:01 PM
If Hardened Shields were weakened, I would hope it would be cheaper, maybe on par with the 5/10/15/25 DP cost.

Anything worth more than 5/10/15/25 are prime candidates for s-mods.  Augmented Engines, Expanded Missile Racks, Heavy Armor, current Hardened Shields, maybe Reinforced Bulkheads (on capitals).

Kind of wish Expanded Deck Crew was cheaper.  Currently, it is still a hefty ITU-like tax on carriers, despite being weakened to 40% of its power.  Without skills, Expanded Deck Crew is all the carrier has, and that alone is not enough.

Quote
That said I'm still not sure whether Herons or Astrals are worth using either. Carriers just ate so many nerfs and want player skills that conflict with other important stuff (Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?) that it seems better to just cut them out entirely and focus on finding a replacement. Maybe focussing on a carrier fleet would be more effective, but mixing fleets seems very much against the meta this patch.
Maybe make carriers warship-lite like they were before 0.8a.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on May 31, 2021, 04:30:17 PM
(Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?)

(That should become easier to manage in the future. But, right, I'll hold off on talking about skills changes until I'm actually ready to go more in-depth. I'll just say that the *goal* is to have carriers be very useful, but in small numbers, and to have that usefulness drop off (not off a cliff, just so they're considerably less efficient than in small numbers) if you go for a full carrier fleet.)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on May 31, 2021, 06:33:50 PM
... hmm. Right, yes, that's (not always wanting racks) kind of what I meant by having the most expensive mods be specialized. Still, this is a good point. On the other hand, it seems like a 10% Hardened Shields would be way too good if it was the same cost-tier as Flux Distributor... and going below 10% would just feel bad.
Huh. I (obviously) don't agree there - the cost tier of the flux distributor is only slightly cheaper than the current hardened shields - and the current hardened shields is 25% reduced damage, not 10%. I picked the values I did specifically to be something that I'd use sometimes-but-not-all-the-time.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Harmful Mechanic on May 31, 2021, 06:52:03 PM
I think one of the biggest issues with Hardened Shields is actually just that it can stack with Heavy Armor, and I think it should be more of an either-or for tanky ship builds.

What I'd like to see is Hardened Shields and Heavy Armor be mutually exclusive, and each have an additional hullmod (existing or new) that can only be installed along with the parent hullmod.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: EclipseRanger on May 31, 2021, 11:40:05 PM
Quote
Fair enough! (The Drover, there may be some sort of bug that's currently tanking its performance - I forget the details, but I seem to recall seeing some report. It's written down in a TODO sheet so I'll have a look eventually.)
Replacement rates were tanking because Reserve Deployment losses counted as actual losses, or some such, IIRC? Of course that combined with the Remnant LPC nefs, carrier nerfs and the (since fixed, I believe?) bug where shielded fighters would stay permanently overloaded make Drovers a thoroughly underwhelming package.

That said I'm still not sure whether Herons or Astrals are worth using either. Carriers just ate so many nerfs and want player skills that conflict with other important stuff (Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?) that it seems better to just cut them out entirely and focus on finding a replacement. Maybe focussing on a carrier fleet would be more effective, but mixing fleets seems very much against the meta this patch.

When I first played the latest version I thought carriers were dead as well, though I've moderated my opinion since then. The biggest impact to me is the dearth of carrier-relevant skills; to really build a fleet around them you'll need some battle-carrier fits mixed with pure carrier fits. Haven't tried that yet so I can't speak to it, though.

After extensive experimentation and practice with carriers of all kinds,loadouts and formations,I 'd say carriers are in a relatively good spot right now,if a bit underwhelming.I can definitely rely on my carriers to vaporise up to heavy cruisers with no chance of escape and they can do it multiple times in a fight.

The biggest issue with carriers,IMO,is the lack of finer control,especially on the AI's side.AI Drovers IMMEDIATELY use their system when they start a bombing run even against targets they can't alpha strike where they would be better off using it right after the first bomber wave.Likewise,the player can't easily coordinate his carrier group to focus fire on a specific location of say,a battlestation.I think the addition of something as simple as control over the formation of bombers would make carrier a much more appealing choice for many players,though perhaps the newer Skill touchup will solve that problem in other ways.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: AcaMetis on June 01, 2021, 02:07:05 AM
(Carrier Group over Crew Training? In what universe?)

(That should become easier to manage in the future. But, right, I'll hold off on talking about skills changes until I'm actually ready to go more in-depth. I'll just say that the *goal* is to have carriers be very useful, but in small numbers, and to have that usefulness drop off (not off a cliff, just so they're considerably less efficient than in small numbers) if you go for a full carrier fleet.)
So a captain that mixes in carriers with a balanced fleet will have great carriers, but a captain that specializes in carriers will have (relatively) inefficient ones? I can see the logic RE: gameplay balance, but beyond that I'm not sure how that's supposed to make sense.

As for carriers being useful, one thing I would like looked at is the whole "being a fighter pilot is basically a fancier death sentence" aspect. I get that lives are cheap in the Persean Sector, just ask practically any pirate/pather controlled colony, but non-drone carriers effectively taxing me in money and extra OP (Recovery Shuttles, because OP is cheaper than money) to run them, in addition to usual the supply and fuel costs, is...well, as someone who's a greedy penny-pincher when it comes to fleet logistics that means non-drones are off the table. And drones means either Wasps (garbage, but they're bodies that can be put on the field) or Remnants (have to fight to get them first, and after the nerfs they're not really impressive beyond their lack of upkeep).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Burvjradzite on June 01, 2021, 03:57:00 AM
All that hardened shields talks reminded me of shield mechanics presented in other games. Like Freelancer or Star Conflict, there type of shields determine that sort of damage it can absorb. Graviton, positron, molecular shield are a bit outdated terminology of shield type and do not suitable for starsector, but the mechanic itself (-% damage from HE type and from recent update solar shielding too -% energy) are already present. So if the main problem of hardened shield being auto s-modded because it's too much value for the cost, why not to divide hardened shields into multiple shield-mods: 25 vs HE, 25 vs Energy, 25 vs kinetic. For a frigate hardened shield is 8 OP and this shield mods should cost around 3 OP. Obviously high-tech and some mid/low tech frigates will try to take them all, but other low-tech ships will take only HE variation of such mod because they rely on shields mostly for evading this type of damage, while high tech ships tries to evade any damage. That way you can not only adjust frigates/larger ships balance, but high tech/low tech as well.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 01, 2021, 05:29:06 AM
Small question.
How far away is the ship patch release?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 01, 2021, 05:32:21 AM
Small question.
How far away is the ship patch release?

I've stalked followed Alex's comments on the forum and, judging by ones like this one
Thank you! And, yeah, for the next update - 0.95.1a, which is basically a huge tweaks, polish, fixes, etc pass over the current version.
Suggests there's a pretty solid patch-note written already. It should not be long. Then again we might want to not ask him too much or the legends may very well be true and he purposefully delays Patch Day for another 24 hours every time he's asked when the new update releases  :P
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 01, 2021, 05:55:41 AM
he purposefully delays Patch Day

Can a man who likes cats can be THAT EVIL?
I don't think so.
Spoiler
Don't prove me wrong.
[close]
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: halloween20 on June 01, 2021, 06:04:54 AM
Small question.
How far away is the ship patch release?

I've stalked followed Alex's comments on the forum and, judging by ones like this one
Thank you! And, yeah, for the next update - 0.95.1a, which is basically a huge tweaks, polish, fixes, etc pass over the current version.
Suggests there's a pretty solid patch-note written already. It should not be long. Then again we might want to not ask him too much or the legends may very well be true and he purposefully delays Patch Day for another 24 hours every time he's asked when the new update releases  :P

he might have a bot runing searching new posts for specific used words/word combination to automaticaly add 24h
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 01, 2021, 06:14:19 AM
he purposefully delays Patch Day

Can a man who likes cats can be THAT EVIL?
I don't think so.
Spoiler
Don't prove me wrong.
[close]

I'm unsure on the validity of this concept, fellow human.
How does showing affection to a subspecies of animals which seems to particularly enjoy the act of toying with helpless prey before killing it and/or leaving it half eaten over your door mat describe an individual as "not evil"?
I would certainly find this statement more agreeable in the case of another Homo Sapiens Sapiens being in the possession of a pet Gaboon Viper instead;  another inferior biological organism thats as much if not more beautiful than the aforementioned feline and only decides to end another being's life if it feels threatened or hungry.
There's also the important added bonus of this particular human showing so much love towards its subservient animal at home that its willing to accept the fact said Gaboon Viper has one of the most sudden and fastest strikes in the animal kingdom and possesses 3 to 5 inch fangs filled to the brim with venom strong enough to warrant immediate amputation of the struck limb even in the possession of an antidote.

Alright. I've done enough AI-Posting today  ::)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: th3boodlebot on June 01, 2021, 08:28:05 AM
very cool!  i love the changes to burn drive (it always annoyed me i couldnt stop) and the addition of the tempest system is GOLD.  i love the idea of putting unique systems wherever applicable
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 01, 2021, 05:59:12 PM
Could some armor friendly hull mods get added that are geared to low tech? I mean we have a rather powerful mods to enhance shields on ships that already have the best shields. Give armor resistance traits or something. Some hull mods specifically designed to most benefit Low tech. Every hull mod seems to be Generalized or clearly just better for High tech and a lesser extent Midline.

I find the hull mod options for low tech rather crummy. Instead of buffing a strength it seems like it's always trying to compensate for a glaring shortcoming.

Please specifically consider removing the Auxiliary Thrusters hull mod and/or folding it into the ships that are being forced to pay for it as OP tax. Onslaught, Dominator and Enforcer specifically spring to mind. It's not helping matters for Low tech that it feels mandatory on these ships.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 01, 2021, 06:18:24 PM
Hmm, why does Enforcer need Auxiliary Thrusters? It has a decent turn rate and all its guns are turrets. Similarly I've never installed it on the Dominator or Onslaught so I don't think its an OP tax.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Realm on June 01, 2021, 06:27:58 PM
Could some armor friendly hull mods get added that are geared to low tech? I mean we have a rather powerful mods to enhance shields on ships that already have the best shields. Give armor resistance traits or something. Some hull mods specifically designed to most benefit Low tech. Every hull mod seems to be Generalized or clearly just better for High tech and a lesser extent Midline.
I do like the idea of having hullmods to better specialize what your armour protects against. Impact Mitigation before the last couple of hotfixes was very strong, but that was because it was extremely common on Officers and never had a cost for the ship. Hullmods that offer similar armour specialization would be pretty nice, doubly because using them would take away OP the ship might use elsewhere (and so likely wouldn't be ubiquitous picks).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Wyvern on June 01, 2021, 06:28:34 PM
Aux Thrusters on the Dominator used to be a very viable choice... but that was back before player skills existed, where aux thrusters was the only option for boosting the ship's turn rate.

I do still use it sometimes, but, well, that also requires using a Dominator in the first place and they aren't my favorite cruisers.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Retry on June 01, 2021, 06:43:29 PM
I never use Aux Thrusters on purpose.  OP cost is in ITU territory; a bit too pricey for just a soft stat boost (even a big +50-100%)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 02, 2021, 02:57:11 PM
Hmm, why does Enforcer need Auxiliary Thrusters? It has a decent turn rate and all its guns are turrets. Similarly I've never installed it on the Dominator or Onslaught so I don't think its an OP tax.

Specifically why it's OP tax? Try it out and tell me how it flies with it as compared how it flies without it or the skill, without makes it feel like you are piloting a garbage truck. I have no way to quantify it. It's like the rare find chance skill that got nerfed, it felt like an exploration tax. You didn't need it, it's viable without it, it just feels that way. These ships including the enforcer feel like they are operating in slow motion while everything else is normal time without it.

Generally speaking it's one thing to say, it's viable, it's another thing to ask is it desirable. Enforcer and the other 2 fall into the viable and not desirable I feel mainly because of their handling, which is worse in non player control. Maybe these burn changes will fix this, but I think all they will do is highlight how badly these ships handling is hurting their performance. Don't get me wrong, the burn changes are gonna be a buff they need and will certainly be a vast improvement.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 02, 2021, 04:48:50 PM
What Enforcer need is AAF and inbuilt Safety Overdrive.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 02, 2021, 09:47:55 PM
What Enforcer need is AAF and inbuilt Safety Overdrive.

The Enforcer with the recent buffs this version is a good frontline combat destroyer (and I really thought it was bad last version, so I'm happy to be able to say that). Its currently competitive with the Hammerhead, Sunder, and Medusa - a little bit less powerful on balance, a lot tougher, a bit DP cheaper, good missiles. Its a staple lineship I use against everything from early game pirates all the way through Radiants and Omegas.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 03, 2021, 02:12:51 AM
The Hammerhead is still a better ship by a clear and noteworthy margin. The power systems relative to weapons is a glaring issue alone assuming the control of when engagements happen is resolved, which still wouldn't put them at par. It's only actual advantage is the number of missiles slots. Because those extra medium Ballistic slots will run out of flux fast in a head to head.

The missile advantage fades in longer fights which should be when Low tech ship shine in theory by doctrine at which you are left with a Low tech ship without power systems to support it's guns or inefficient shields.

It's competitive because of missiles, not because of the rest of the ships design or performance. The missile slots are a crutch for the enforcer, the hammerhead continues to remain a real fighting force the entire fight because of it's performance, system and flux generation.

If High tech/Midline get more power capacity/higher flux dissipation and more efficient shields why does that also reward them with the ability to fire more? Low tech should have an across the charts discount on Ballistic weapons power costs. Give them efficient weapons at least. 

Low tech themes.

terrible
- power systems
- shield efficiency
- top speed
- acceleration
- turning speed

good
- armor
- PPT

High tech themes

great
- power systems
- shield efficiency
- top speed
- acceleration
- turning speed

terrible
- armor
- PPT

Then add via skills ways to increase PPT dramatically. Armor doesn't do much unless you are getting beat down and is useless when you have the advantage.

Hammerhead is built to do a job in fleets, enforcer is a theme ship. I find the downplaying of the problems specifically engineered for low tech extremely frustrating in this thread in general, we even have some people arguing that the Tempest was fine. I can only assume they feel the Hyperion frigate cruiser is also fine. Low techs theme in reality is Inferior tech. Dampener field, while a welcome addition is as others have clearly stated an effort to bypass the corner Low tech has been painted into.

Burns more fuel, but is still slower. Inferior tech theme at it's finest. Insert sarcastic statement about having to do that to balance out how powerful armor is here.

This thread makes me hopeful and extremely frustrated at the same time.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Grievous69 on June 03, 2021, 02:18:21 AM
But they have efficient weapons already... I mean most of them at least are. If you were to buff them overall then that would just make midline stronger. The problem is low tech ships having atrocious flux stats, it's not rocket science. Actually Enforcer got all sorts of buffs to survivability but its flux remained exactly the same. Which I guess is fine balance wise but I personally don't care much for a slow ships that fires 3 shoots and then is a sitting duck. I wonder how Vanguard will affect Enforcer's viability, because it just seems like a smaller and faster version.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: tomatopaste on June 03, 2021, 03:14:40 AM
Are there going to be API hooks to detect if a second ship system modifies the default combat HUD? If a plugin is rendering a custom measurement above then the current alternative seems to be checking every secondary ship system id to see if it needs to render higher on the HUD, if that is even possible.
(https://i.imgur.com/B9pNCCo.png)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on June 03, 2021, 09:17:32 AM
Are there going to be API hooks to detect if a second ship system modifies the default combat HUD?

No, since the answer is "always" :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Bob69Joe on June 03, 2021, 12:37:42 PM
Tempests commanded by reckless officers, having two phase lance mounts, and a high scatter amplifier hull mod cause a ton of paralyzing tactical damage to capitals, cruisers, and destroyers. Those larger ships have to balance shield flux with firing larger weapon mounts. Tempests are awesome.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 03, 2021, 02:44:55 PM
The Hammerhead is still a better ship by a clear and noteworthy margin. The power systems relative to weapons is a glaring issue alone assuming the control of when engagements happen is resolved, which still wouldn't put them at par. It's only actual advantage is the number of missiles slots. Because those extra medium Ballistic slots will run out of flux fast in a head to head.


An enforcer's advantages are having 110 OP instead of 95OP, 900 instead of 500 armor, 6000 instead of 5000 hull, double the missiles (4 instead of 2), better PD coverage (360 flaks or vulcans depending on investment), and better gun mounts (5 turreted medium ballistics which can be downgraded if needed, vs 2 fixed medium ballistics and 4 small which can't install larger guns). And being 9 DP instead of 10.

Its disadvantages are less flux to use (200 vs 250 = 50 less, or with T4L 240 vs 300 = 60 less), lower flux capacity (4000 vs 4200, IE 1 OP worth), a worse shield (1.0 vs .8 ), lower speed (we'll see how cancellable burn drive changes this, but it will certainly be interesting), and not having an offensive ship system (this is the real big one: AAF is powerful). The shield difference is real: Hammerheads have 25% more shield HP for a given capacitance, a significant advantage.

Examining the flux in more detail (with T4L effect in parenthesis), a Hammerhead with 20 vents (standard build) is going to have 450 (500) flux or 45 (50) per DP. An Enforcer is going to have 400 (440) flux, or 44.4 (48.9) per DP. Capacity depends on build because caps are usually not maxed, but Enforcers have 15 more base OP and are only 200 (1 OP) behind in capacity: it all depends on build, but the Hammerhead barely has any advantage here. So, Enforcers have less flux, but really not that much less flux. And if thinking of the amount of flux the fleet has to use (a DP based analysis) they are even closer.

A brawling fit for an Enforcer might have a Heavy Needler and 2 Heavy Mortars, for a total of 560 fps. A brawling fit for a Hammerhead of 2 Heavy Mortars and 2 Railguns has a fps of 660. But the Hammerhead has only 50 (60) more dissipation. At the same time, its shield is 100 vs an Enforcer's 80. Both of these fits are running above the flux limits by a reasonable amount, but this common Hamemrhead fit is actually more 'overgunned' than the enforcer fit. The Hammerhead has a significant DPS advantage: 2 railguns is 334 dps vs a heavy needlers 250, and the Hammerhead has a ship system to give it a big firepower boost!

For a 'sniper' fit, a common Hammerhead has either 2 HVDs or HVD + Mauler. The other 2 small guns might be LAGs or Railguns, but they won't be range matched unless its tac lasers. Either way, the point of this build is to be at range, so its going to be running either 325 or 350 flux in that band, then another ~300-320 at the 700 range band: about the same flux as the other build, with split engagement ranges.

A 'sniper fit' Enforcer with 2 HVDs and a Mauler uses 500 fps. With 400 (440) dissipation, thats a completely reasonable flux budget. This is an interesting case because the Enforcer with 3 guns has about the same firepower at max range as a Hammerhead with 2 and its system: the Hammerhead needs to close in to the 700 range band to get a firepower advantage (or use tac lasers). But at those closer range bands, the extra 2 small ballistics + AAF are a significant boost to offense.

T5L is interesting, because an additional 100 flux benefits the Enforcer more than the Hammerhead. Hammerheads are already at their max gun load - they just don't have more slots. Theoretically I could see an Enforcer with T5L and 30 Vents using 4 medium weapons, but I wasn't using this skill in my low tech game so I don't know for sure if the fit would work. With T4L: 200*1.2 + 30*10 = 540 dissipation. 3 HVDs and a Mauler would be 675 flux... thats actually the same 1.25 ratio as before, quite reasonable. I should try this build with T5L, I think Enforcers in a skilled fleet might actually have a firepower advantage over Hammerheads in sniping which would be wild (I did not expect a 4 gun flux budget to work, but with skills it does!). The HH can use their extra OP for other good things like boosting their defense, so they do get benefit from T5L, just not really an offensive benefit.

This kind of rambled on a bit, but one point other than examining the stats is that the "Enforcers can't fire their guns!" theme is actually a myth: they aren't more overfluxed than Hammerheads. They do have less firepower when using 'brawling' weapons thanks to not having an offensive ship system, worse shields, and are slower. But at the same time they have double the missiles, more OP to afford missile boosting hullmods, and a very significant toughness advantage.

Quote
The missile advantage fades in longer fights which should be when Low tech ship shine in theory by doctrine at which you are left with a Low tech ship without power systems to support it's guns or inefficient shields.

It's competitive because of missiles, not because of the rest of the ships design or performance. The missile slots are a crutch for the enforcer, the hammerhead continues to remain a real fighting force the entire fight because of it's performance, system and flux generation.

...

I think this is a misunderstanding of low tech ships. The things they have more of are limited resources: armor, hull, and missiles. They are not endurance ships: they are ships that use limited resources to get kills (which unfortunately the AI is not great at, though aggressive/reckless officers and full assault helps). The long PPT is "nice" (and it lets them win in some edge cases) but not nearly as defining as armor and missiles.

Its bizarre to call the weapon slots available to a ship a "crutch" though. Like if I call a Hammerhead competitive only because of its 'crutch' of a ship system, not because of the rest of its design or performance... ok, yeah, the ship would underperform without the system but that doesn't matter because it has the system. If the ship is competitive, its competitive, we can't just ignore parts of it.

Missiles are the most powerful weapon type, so just dismissing them because they are limited isn't really realistic. There are situations where missiles run out, but by the time they do they've done lots of damage to the enemy. When I did a low tech themed playthrough, they lasted long enough for my ships to still have missiles at the point where multi-Radiant/multi-capital enemy fleets were broken and reduced to an incoming stream thats easily mopped up.

Quote
... I find the downplaying of the problems specifically engineered for low tech extremely frustrating in this thread in general...

I empathize with this: There are real ways in which low tech is less competitive than high tech, and burn drive is one of them: its not right to downplay problems and all it does is hurt attempts to make low tech ships fun to play. But its also not right to ignore their strengths and not accept that others make the tech level work. I'm not going to claim low tech is overpowered or more powerful: its not, its a bit weaker! But really only a bit. It can still be used from early game to endgame and win all fights.

In that other thread where there were people who didn't use high tech frigates in a good way and claimed that they weren't extremely powerful: you use them in a much better way and know that they really are. The same kind of thing applies here: you aren't getting success with low tech, but that doesn't necessarily mean that low tech is awful and completely broken, just that you haven't gotten success with them yet.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 03, 2021, 03:02:29 PM
Impressive Enforcer Essay @Thaago, if I do say so myself. Accurate to the smallest details too!
That not-so-small bowling ball of a Destroyer truly has become one of Low tech's strongest assets, whether you think that's amazing or an excuse to showcase just how much Low tech has fallen down the "balance stairs" as of late.

Oh, one more thing:
I quickly looked up Affectionado on the intrawebs and it came up as "Common misspelling of aficionado". That's what happens when you listen to religious fanatics, really; unless you actually knew this beforehand and you're simply holding onto the monicker bestowed upon you by some unknown crazy luddite, in which case you can totally have tea with him at a local bar whenever you feel like it  ;)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 03, 2021, 03:37:00 PM
About the enforcer and related back into my main point. They are overfluxed because of their shields taking damage and being inefficient in all flux regards. Which is the same problem the Dampening Field is working around, the problem was acknowledged in this thread without acknowledging the problem is effecting all low tech.

So it's not a myth unless they are in a position to fire without taking fire. Which is not a reasonable expectation.

If dampening fields were older reliable tech they used before shields, common on newer Low tech designs because they are easier to maintain/cheaper then shields. Then there is a design element to pull Low tech together in a functionally unique way. But that's not were this is going, it's gonna be on a couple of ships. The rest will remain "viable", but not desirable in a fleet unless they were free.

Does 1 point of armor on a Low tech block more then 1 point on a High tech/Midline? No. But we get that for shields. Because the Flux Capacity/Flux Dissipation disparities weren't big enough I guess.

I'm at a completely loss as to what Low tech is even intended to be anymore. I associate negative ship traits to it. Based on their descriptions you'd think they were heavily armored ships that excel in slugging matches rather then finesse and are extremely dependable and reliable. PPT suggest longer fights should be their strength vs High tech, but that means less then nothing.

In reality they have heavy armor and a list of bad traits.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 03, 2021, 09:16:09 PM
With respect to shields: yes they take 25% more damage than a .8 midline ship - its significantly worse, but in my experience it does not cause the ships with the loadouts I posted above to stop firing completely. It matters and is going to lower the fire rate, but the full weapon load is still only 1.25 times dissipation, so its not that bad. The ships do lower their shields at high flux and start taking hits on armor while firing: they don't do it nearly as well as a player does, but they'll do it.

Quote
... Does 1 point of armor on a Low tech block more then 1 point on a High tech/Midline? No. ...

They do because the higher the armor, the more damage is mitigated, and low tech has more armor. At 900 armor instead of 500 for example for example anything thats large enough to not be at minimum vs both does more damage to the Hammerhead (anything over 88 penetration to start, and then less as armor gets worn away). And then they have more residual armor, so each point of hull blocks more.

Its still a finite resource unlike shields, but more damage is blocked per number.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: TaLaR on June 04, 2021, 12:42:11 AM
... hmm. Right, yes, that's (not always wanting racks) kind of what I meant by having the most expensive mods be specialized. Still, this is a good point. On the other hand, it seems like a 10% Hardened Shields would be way too good if it was the same cost-tier as Flux Distributor... and going below 10% would just feel bad.

Even hullmod buffing most important stats can become irrelevant, if it is nerfed to be too inefficient at that.
Take frigate ITU for example - I use it exactly never after the nerf. A frigate can't outrange large ships anyway, so reducing approach/retreat time by fraction of a second is not worth 4 OP.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 04, 2021, 02:36:29 AM
They do because the higher the armor, the more damage is mitigated, and low tech has more armor. At 900 armor instead of 500 for example for example anything thats large enough to not be at minimum vs both does more damage to the Hammerhead (anything over 88 penetration to start, and then less as armor gets worn away). And then they have more residual armor, so each point of hull blocks more.

I believe I explained/worded that poorly, I'll retry it.
1. A low tech ship and a high tech ship with the same armor are equally good.
2. A low tech ship and a high tech ship with the same shields (flux capacity) are not equally good. Because shield of efficiency and flux dissipation.

Low tech has more armor default. So sort of it getting more from armor but no secondary factors are involved. But High tech is getting more shields, but those shields are worth even more just because it's on a high tech ship via secondary factors.

One specific tier is getting strengths on strengths. The other is not.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 05:33:44 AM
Good idea.
Low tech ships should get bonus to maximum armor damage reduction and bonus to min value when armor go to zero.
Having separate value for armor efficiency would be great but maybe too much.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 04, 2021, 05:37:50 AM
I'm not going to claim low tech is overpowered or more powerful: its not, its a bit weaker! But really only a bit. It can still be used from early game to endgame and win all fights.
Yep, "low tech isn't THAT bad" is often read as "low tech is just as strong as high". Late game high is a bit better, didn't see much argument there.
Low does have some extra tax, missiles usually want ECCM and practically always officer skill+racks. Heavy armor, resistant conduits, armored mounts, reinforced hull all strong candidates.
On the other hand OP allowance is relatively generous for those ships.
Didn't feel they need aux thrusters or helmsmanship on officers, work fine without it.

Armor doesn't do much unless you are getting beat down and is useless when you have the advantage.
...
Dampener field, while a welcome addition is as others have clearly stated an effort to bypass the corner Low tech has been painted into.
With high armor shields can be dropped in the middle of a fight and weapons still work at full output.
Paired with how it can ignore a good chunk of kinetics it's a big advantage, right now just not as good as speed+better shields.

Damper field isn't there to get around a universal low tech problem.
If I understand correctly it's there to fit a theme, giving the Vanguard very high armor for frigate level would mean it can tank smaller weapons but still dies to crackers really fast.
With damper field it can rush in guns blazing and tank everything, but will fall apart/get worn down after the initial rush. Fingers crossed the job is done before that :)

In that other thread where there were people who didn't use high tech frigates in a good way and claimed that they weren't extremely powerful: you use them in a much better way and know that they really are. The same kind of thing applies here: you aren't getting success with low tech, but that doesn't necessarily mean that low tech is awful and completely broken, just that you haven't gotten success with them yet.
To be fair there was still no example for some of the stronger claims.
Would still like to see an example how a full SO hyperion/scarab fleet rolls over some of the strong ordos in time, without losses.
If he says everybody sucks for not being able to do it a video is welcome.

How to smash the same remnants Ziggurat uses as SP dispensers without omega weapons:
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/a0TOsWJh.jpg)
[close]
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/jde9qv1h.jpg)
[close]
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/MTOub09h.jpg)
[close]
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 06:28:32 AM
IMAGINE
Imagine the glory of the Hound and Cerberos wolfpack with the DAMPER FIELD.
Spoiler
Maybe finally they will survive explosive death of their enemies.
[close]
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 04, 2021, 06:40:58 AM
Do hounds really need the buff?
A fleet comprised entirely of speed-spec'd LP Hounds literally can't be caught :P
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Sarissofoi on June 04, 2021, 07:10:44 AM
And they blow easily and run out of timer fast.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 04, 2021, 07:12:30 AM
And they blow easily and run out of timer fast.
Both of which don't matter if you're only bum-rushing the escape zone.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 04, 2021, 01:26:53 PM
With high armor shields can be dropped in the middle of a fight and weapons still work at full output.
Paired with how it can ignore a good chunk of kinetics it's a big advantage, right now just not as good as speed+better shields.

Right now the problem is the AI can't do that. Making the AI smart enough to do that would likely take the next 5 years focused entirely on that one thing and it would likely still do dumb stuff. Since I know the degree of impossibility of an AI solution I'm here asking for something the current AI can work with. Dampener fields. Maybe Alex is way ahead of everyone on the problem, the guy comes up with crazy creative solution I'd never have thought could be done. But I don't feel like that's being presented in this thread.

The AI can use speed and better shields with great success.

Dampener Fields on Hounds and Cerberus would be cool as hell, they'd be useful up till midgame. Make them pay for it with OP for sure, I'm not saying built in, why not breath life into ships that are instant replaced by nearly everything. Would a Cerberus with a Dampener field really ruin game balance, like the meta would instantly shift to 100% Cerberus fleets lol. With SO combined, restored,  it would be a good ship. The HORROR!

People talk like we are on a razors edge with balance and High tech would because D list if Low Tech stopped being w/e it is currently.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: 6chad.noirlee9 on June 04, 2021, 02:58:02 PM
Hmm, why does Enforcer need Auxiliary Thrusters? It has a decent turn rate and all its guns are turrets. Similarly I've never installed it on the Dominator or Onslaught so I don't think its an OP tax.

I could see there being a variant with thrusters (maybe pirate or something) and then perhaps a midline or maybe the 14th bg one having damper field.  I REALLY like the idea of the damper field on one.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 05, 2021, 04:25:44 AM
With high armor shields can be dropped in the middle of a fight and weapons still work at full output.
Paired with how it can ignore a good chunk of kinetics it's a big advantage, right now just not as good as speed+better shields.

Right now the problem is the AI can't do that.
AI isn't very keen on tanking without shields, but it definitely drops them to avoid hits that won't damage armor too much.
For the sake of the example, imagine all lowtech ships got 500000 armor. Suddenly they smash everything so it's not a concept that fundamentally can't work.

People talk like we are on a razors edge with balance and High tech would because D list if Low Tech stopped being w/e it is currently.
There is a lot of hyperbole about low tech/destroyers/whatever being useless, a good portion from you. Compared to that any position will look conservative :)
High tech wouldn't become bad with a nerf or if low got a buff, nobody said that.

Point was that low is much better than people give it credit for.
A XIV Onslaught isn't even too out of place in a minmaxed fleet. Dominator and to a smaller extent Enforcer do let it down, but with durable support it's a decent artillery piece for 40 DP.
Low tech can use some help (mostly with durability IMO), but nothing as drastic as some people believe.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Soda Savvy on June 05, 2021, 01:57:38 PM
How does the new shieldless ship deal with Omega weaponry with all their armor eating and whatnot?

Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Megas on June 05, 2021, 07:14:50 PM
How does the new shieldless ship deal with Omega weaponry with all their armor eating and whatnot?
And Breach missiles for that matter?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on June 05, 2021, 07:24:48 PM
How does the new shieldless ship deal with Omega weaponry with all their armor eating and whatnot?

Probably not well at all!

And Breach missiles for that matter?

Though, yes, both that and the Disintegrator are affected by Damper Field.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 01:31:04 AM
For anybody in the "it is fine" gang.

Would you be so kind as to provide the Enforcer variant capable of completely dominating this thing here:

(https://i.imgur.com/wje0cSo.png)

"Completely dominating" will be "winning three fights on autopilot in a row without taking hull damage".

No mods. No officers. No built-ins. No Weapon Drills. 70 % CR. Flux regulation and +10 caps/vents is OK.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: TaLaR on June 06, 2021, 01:39:11 AM
@Lucky33
Why would expect such Enforcer variant to exist? Enforcer is one of weaker 9DP ships, I would be very surprised if it could do that much on auto-pilot.

Plus, "not taking hull damage" pretty much disqualifies Enforcer against all but weakest DE builds. Taking armor/hull damage in controlled manner is exactly how even a player piloted Enforcer would need to fight to defeat a decent opponent.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 02:40:46 AM
@Lucky33
Why would expect such Enforcer variant to exist? Enforcer is one of weaker 9DP ships, I would be very surprised if it could do that much on auto-pilot.

Plus, "not taking hull damage" pretty much disqualifies Enforcer against all but weakest DE builds. Taking armor/hull damage in controlled manner is exactly how even a player piloted Enforcer would need to fight to defeat a decent opponent.

It is not about DP. Try it yourself. The main reason for failure is the burn drive. And not because AI misjudges the distance, it is the opposite, distance and timings are perfect. For the Enforcer to take the whole burst on its shields. After that it is the whole downward spiral of doom. Overloads, disables and AI's inability to use Sabots while rotating. I somehow managed to make it win a fight but it all comes down to random.

On the other hand, Hammerhead with the HVDs is not even breaking the sweet. Disproporsion in capabilities is very dramatic,  have absolutely nothing to do with DPs but only with the design principles.

And the whole thing is completely rethoric.

Why do the low-tech users have to suffer in this manner?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 06, 2021, 03:22:17 AM
For anybody in the "it is fine" gang.

Would you be so kind as to provide the Enforcer variant capable of completely dominating this thing here:

Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/wje0cSo.png)
[close]

"Completely dominating" will be "winning three fights on autopilot in a row without taking hull damage".

No mods. No officers. No built-ins. No Weapon Drills. 70 % CR. Flux regulation and +10 caps/vents is OK.

Ok. First things first, unless every planet in the sector aligned properly and Ludd himself came down from the heavens to bestow Autofit with infinite wisdom, that Fulgent Variant is most likely from a mod editing the Vanilla "Assault" Variant of the Fulgent and making it significantly more decent. The Vanilla Assault Variant from the Fulgent Droneship Destroyer is the following:
Fulgent-class Droneship Destroyer
(https://i.imgur.com/v0xmVMW.png)
Codex Entry
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/nYd1DJV.png)
[close]
Fulgent's Stats (above) compared to a Sunder's (below)
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/14wvB8n.png)(https://i.imgur.com/tLnagcw.png)
[close]
[...]
Assault     Personal Rating: Why Does This Exist
Armament: 1x Heavy Blaster, 2x Ion Pulser (Linked), 2x Sabot SRM (Alternating), 4x PD Laser (linked), 2x Tactical Laser (linked)
Hullmods: Auxiliary Thrusters, Integrated Targeting Unit
Capacitors: 12  Vents:4
I just can't with this variant. I don't know who I need to have their location forwarded to the nearest Pather Cell for this unholy heresy. Does Vanilla Starsector unironically field a ship with 300 base flux dissipation armed with the most flux intensive continuous fire medium energy in the game plus two Ion Pulsers, no vents to speak of and without even overriding it?
This is litterally like mashing a Space Coconut into a glass without adding water, giving an Asthmatic Luddite a straw and then telling him "Go ahead, it's for you, drink!". Don't even get me started on why it even has Aux Thrusters or I might space myself out the airlock and into the nearest Blue Giant.

This particular variant you show has full vents and hardened shields as opposed to the vanilla variant having 4 vents and no such hullmod, evvectively making it a somewhat minmaxed Remnant ship of sorts, which is something that does not exist in Vanilla. I can also assume this is a modded variant of the Fulgent because I can glimpse you're also looking at its stats from the Simulation Screen.

@Lucky33
Why would expect such Enforcer variant to exist? Enforcer is one of weaker 9DP ships, I would be very surprised if it could do that much on auto-pilot.

Plus, "not taking hull damage" pretty much disqualifies Enforcer against all but weakest DE builds. Taking armor/hull damage in controlled manner is exactly how even a player piloted Enforcer would need to fight to defeat a decent opponent.

As for the requirements you impose on the poor Enforcer assuming it's going to fight the Vanilla Assault Variant of the Fulgent, asking for it to not lose a single point of hull does it dirty, as TaLaR says. It's a Low Tech Destroyer whose entire purpose in combat is to eventually lower shields and start trading its own armor and hullpoints to deal damage to the enemy.

WIth that out of the way, I could perfectly see an Overridden Variant with Solar Shielding, Resistant Flux Conduits, Automated Repair Unit and 1x Assault Chaingun 4x Heavy Machineguns beating it, provided it has a Reckless personality. It may even win without taking much in the way of damage itself if you minmax the capacitors in a way that does not get the ship overloaded by the Fulgents's sabots. A build that's full of sabots SRMs also works just as well if not better, considering you can probably cut the four heavy machineguns for 4 Sabot SRMs anyway and get two Assault Chainguns going in their stead.

It is not about DP. Try it yourself. The main reason for failure is the burn drive. And not because AI misjudges the distance, it is the opposite, distance and timings are perfect. For the Enforcer to take the whole burst on its shields. After that it is the whole downward spiral of doom. Overloads, disables and AI's inability to use Sabots while rotating. I somehow managed to make it win a fight but it all comes down to random.

On the other hand, Hammerhead with the HVDs is not even breaking the sweet. Disproporsion in capabilities is very dramatic,  have absolutely nothing to do with DPs but only with the design principles.

And the whole thing is completely rethoric.

Why do the low-tech users have to suffer in this manner?

It is also about DP. The Fulgent may be one of the weakest Remnant ships (with one of the worst Vanilla Variants to boot) but it's still a Remnant ship nonetheless, and the Enforcer is even 2 Deployment Points cheaper than a ship that's also underpriced by design.

As I said before, this Fulgent variant is not good at all. I can more or less guarantee you no "normal" destroyer anywhere near the Fulgent's DP range would come even close to beating it if it was an overridden variant with 2 Sabot Pods, 2 Sabot Srms, 1 Heavy Blaster and 2 Ion Cannons (and cheap PD eerywhere else, maybe with enough ordinance points left to also install Expanded Missile racks which would be useless in this heavily situational 1v1 scenario you are proposing.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 03:57:33 AM
That Fulgent is just one of the things I shoot at in the Sim. And it is not the point. It being the whole mess you need to do with the Enforcer to make it win in the same clean manner as the very basic Hammerhead. Like really boringly basic. As I said it was rhetorical stuff.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 06, 2021, 06:28:16 AM
That Fulgent is just one of the things I shoot at in the Sim. And it is not the point. It being the whole mess you need to do with the Enforcer to make it win in the same clean manner as the very basic Hammerhead. Like really boringly basic. As I said it was rhetorical stuff.
That Fulgent is 56 OP over the limit, and the player side is kneecapped by losing 27-39 OP (heavy armor-extended missile racks-hardened shields builtins).
Builtins are part of the game and a very important buff to player side.
Your example just says that against a massively inflated ball of stats having the speed+range advantage(+more DP) is more important.

Fleet doctrine to aggressive or reckless, toggle search&destroy on spawn, Enforcer still more often than not wins by just burning in and dumping 6+6 linked sabots+harpoons.
Little damage taken, ~10 sec total. It's not what happens in a real battle, but the setup isn't exactly realistic either :)
(IIRC S&D doesn't need doctrine, dunno I always use aggressive)

Again, low can use a buff but you did nothing to demonstrate why, or what.
2 sore spots for me are durability being a bit lower than what feels right, and missiles of all kinds being wasted too often.
For missiles I love the omega style, IMO a higher cooldown and a little extra ammo would make them much more AI-friendly.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 06, 2021, 06:45:04 AM
That Fulgent is just one of the things I shoot at in the Sim. And it is not the point. It being the whole mess you need to do with the Enforcer to make it win in the same clean manner as the very basic Hammerhead. Like really boringly basic. As I said it was rhetorical stuff.
That Fulgent is 56 OP over the limit, and the player side is kneecapped by losing 27-39 OP (heavy armor-extended missile racks-hardened shields builtins).
Builtins are part of the game and a very important buff to player side.
Your example just says that against a massively inflated ball of stats having the speed+range advantage(+more DP) is more important.

Fleet doctrine to aggressive or reckless, toggle search&destroy on spawn, Enforcer still more often than not wins by just burning in and dumping 6+6 linked sabots+harpoons.
Little damage taken, ~10 sec total. It's not what happens in a real battle, but the setup isn't exactly realistic either :)
(IIRC S&D doesn't need doctrine, dunno I always use aggressive)

Again, low can use a buff but you did nothing to demonstrate why, or what.
2 sore spots for me are durability being a bit lower than what feels right, and missiles of all kinds being wasted too often.
For missiles I love the omega style, IMO a higher cooldown and a little extra ammo would make them much more AI-friendly.

I did not notice that Fulgent was 56OP over the standard amount until I did the OP math. You're correct.

Extra sins and no hot tea with us on local bars for you Lucky33 >:(

Just kidding.To everyone its own!
What mod is actually adding Remnant Variants like that into the sim by the way? Did you add them yourself? I might want to get that too considering my future plans regarding writing up remnant content and possibly working on Remnant-focused mods in the future...
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 06, 2021, 07:15:15 AM
What mod is actually adding Remnant Variants like that into the sim by the way? Did you add them yourself? I might want to get that too considering my future plans regarding writing up remnant content and possibly working on Remnant-focused mods in the future...
Dunno if it's a mod, but you can just add a variant yourself:

Very nice for testing, just don't read too much into it.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 06, 2021, 07:17:10 AM
What mod is actually adding Remnant Variants like that into the sim by the way? Did you add them yourself? I might want to get that too considering my future plans regarding writing up remnant content and possibly working on Remnant-focused mods in the future...
Dunno if it's a mod, but you can just add a variant yourself:
  • \starsector-core\data\variants has the stock ones, take a look and create one yourself
  • \starsector-core\data\campaign\sim_opponents.csv add your variant's ID to this file

Very nice for testing, just don't read too much into it.

Thank you for the incredibly useful information kind Luddite/Luddette ;D
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 07:38:21 AM
That Fulgent is just one of the things I shoot at in the Sim. And it is not the point. It being the whole mess you need to do with the Enforcer to make it win in the same clean manner as the very basic Hammerhead. Like really boringly basic. As I said it was rhetorical stuff.
That Fulgent is 56 OP over the limit, and the player side is kneecapped by losing 27-39 OP (heavy armor-extended missile racks-hardened shields builtins).
Builtins are part of the game and a very important buff to player side.
Your example just says that against a massively inflated ball of stats having the speed+range advantage(+more DP) is more important.

Fleet doctrine to aggressive or reckless, toggle search&destroy on spawn, Enforcer still more often than not wins by just burning in and dumping 6+6 linked sabots+harpoons.
Little damage taken, ~10 sec total. It's not what happens in a real battle, but the setup isn't exactly realistic either :)
(IIRC S&D doesn't need doctrine, dunno I always use aggressive)

Again, low can use a buff but you did nothing to demonstrate why, or what.
2 sore spots for me are durability being a bit lower than what feels right, and missiles of all kinds being wasted too often.
For missiles I love the omega style, IMO a higher cooldown and a little extra ammo would make them much more AI-friendly.

Yes. It is exactly my point. Speed+range is not some mere advantage. It is a definitive one. And the Enforcer plus the whole Low-Tech with it are all nerfed by design. Armor is irrelevant because you can't compensate the said handicap with it. If you want to win you have to revert to the lottery style all-or-nothing bursts (you don't really need any hullmods apart from the racks). Not the extensively mentioned "armor tanking" or the actual topic with the "fix" to the burn drive. It is all about strike capabilities. But while Hammerhead is enjoying its complete domination over that "massively inflated ball of stats" making even this level of buff useless, Enforcer doesn't have the same level of the dominance in the close range fight. Why is that? What is the actual amount of defense needed to really compensate the speed lost?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 07:43:52 AM
That Fulgent is just one of the things I shoot at in the Sim. And it is not the point. It being the whole mess you need to do with the Enforcer to make it win in the same clean manner as the very basic Hammerhead. Like really boringly basic. As I said it was rhetorical stuff.
That Fulgent is 56 OP over the limit, and the player side is kneecapped by losing 27-39 OP (heavy armor-extended missile racks-hardened shields builtins).
Builtins are part of the game and a very important buff to player side.
Your example just says that against a massively inflated ball of stats having the speed+range advantage(+more DP) is more important.

Fleet doctrine to aggressive or reckless, toggle search&destroy on spawn, Enforcer still more often than not wins by just burning in and dumping 6+6 linked sabots+harpoons.
Little damage taken, ~10 sec total. It's not what happens in a real battle, but the setup isn't exactly realistic either :)
(IIRC S&D doesn't need doctrine, dunno I always use aggressive)

Again, low can use a buff but you did nothing to demonstrate why, or what.
2 sore spots for me are durability being a bit lower than what feels right, and missiles of all kinds being wasted too often.
For missiles I love the omega style, IMO a higher cooldown and a little extra ammo would make them much more AI-friendly.

I did not notice that Fulgent was 56OP over the standard amount until I did the OP math. You're correct.

Extra sins and no hot tea with us on local bars for you Lucky33 >:(

Just kidding.To everyone its own!
What mod is actually adding Remnant Variants like that into the sim by the way? Did you add them yourself? I might want to get that too considering my future plans regarding writing up remnant content and possibly working on Remnant-focused mods in the future...

Talar made it into actual mod so what you will not accidently damage your core files.

But I don't see it in the mod section.

Strange.

I'm using it mostly for the skills effect imitation. Hence inflated stats.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 06, 2021, 09:04:16 AM
Yes. It is exactly my point. Speed+range is not some mere advantage. It is a definitive one.
An example to illustrate the point: if you spawn a special enemy with 300 range infinite damage weapons then everything slower than it loses.
If you set its speed to ~80 you can say that Brawler is stronger than Paragon in an absolute sense, because it can chip it down while Paragon loses.
Not a problem with being slow, the test is just really bad for what you want to demonstrate.
AI can't realistically win a shootout against a higher DP, faster ship if it also has both hands tied behind its back and knees smashed with a hammer.

I'm using it mostly for the skills effect imitation. Hence inflated stats.
Don't need to imitate skills if player doesn't get them and the builtin mods every keeper ship will have.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 09:47:58 AM
Enforcer can win. It is inconsistent. And the question is, why it is Low Tech what has to suffer this fate. I mean it is common knowledge what kiting mechanics is and its power. Making a whole ship line-up noticeably slow without any compensation is a very bold decision. Like painting a target marker on your forehead. It worked to some extent in 0.91 because enemy was weak. Now it is not and we have the whole array of target practice equipment called "military ships".
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 06, 2021, 11:39:00 AM
The sim Hammerhead with HVD/Mauler is defeated by the sim condor with broadswords. It does not have enough DPS on turrets to kill the broadswords and gets destroyed. A sim escort Enforcer wins this fight. Why does midline have to suffer this fate? All of midline is obviously terrible!

No, no midline is not terrible. A single cherry picked example does not give any real information on balance.

And on a side note, thats not a correct fulgent variant. It has 56 more OP than it should out of a budget of 100! Even if all 3 hullmods were built in it couldn't be correct. It has 30 vents and 30 caps, despite the limit on destroyers normally being 20 too. So yes, I can believe that an 11 DP ship with a cheat build of +50% OP can defeat a ship that can't kite it that costs 9 DP and isn't allowed any buffs. How about we give the Enforcer a free 60 OP and the ability to go to 30 vents/caps? That would be a bit more fair.

On kiting: A build that has range + speed advantage at the same time will always win. Usually slowly, as mostly long ranged weapons have lower DPS than their medium/close range counterparts. But that same build can be hard countered by things it doesn't outrange + outspeed, while a shorter ranged build isn't. I'm doing a midline run right now and have some 'support' Hammerheads with the 1000 range guns. They do very nicely, but their DPS is only like 275 + system for ~412 (and slightly closer in it has 1-200 laser dps from lrpds) , while a "brawler" Hammherhead is 774 + system for ~1161, nearly 2.5 times more DPS. Those support Hammerheads are a lot safer and they can win some fights the brawlers can't, because there are some enemies too dangerous for the brawlers to get in with that the supports can kite. Does that make the brawlers useless? No, they kill things 3 times faster and kill speed matters. They are also much more capable against things that can catch them, such as frigates and fighters.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 01:53:21 PM
It is not about specific builds. It is about the fact that kiting is implemented fully, without limits and a ship with range and speed advantage is guaranteed to win even against way more powerful enemy. But brawling is limited. There is no specific "brawling build" responsible for the same level of absolute advantage as the kiting one. It is all about stats. Even the Safety Overrides. No specific weapon, hull mod or system what guarantees victory if the ship with it managed to close the range.

Kiters gonna kite. But brawlers don't really exist apart from the Harbinger. They were balanced out of the game.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on June 06, 2021, 01:59:07 PM
Kiters gonna kite. But brawlers don't really exist apart from the Harbinger. They were balanced out of the game.
Could you elaborate on this point? I don't consider Harbinger to have its playstyle be any different to phase frigates, which is just unphasing, using the ship system, unloading guns, then phasing again, like a really big bomber.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 02:27:06 PM
Kiters gonna kite. But brawlers don't really exist apart from the Harbinger. They were balanced out of the game.
Could you elaborate on this point? I don't consider Harbinger to have its playstyle be any different to phase frigates, which is just unphasing, using the ship system, unloading guns, then phasing again, like a really big bomber.

Its system removes the target's shield and prevents usage of weapons. It becomes the same thing as the kiting. Steady but surely you can kill anything even if it has much better stats.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 06, 2021, 02:40:56 PM
It is not about specific builds. It is about the fact that kiting is implemented fully, without limits and a ship with range and speed advantage is guaranteed to win even against way more powerful enemy. But brawling is limited. There is no specific "brawling build" responsible for the same level of absolute advantage as the kiting one. It is all about stats. Even the Safety Overrides. No specific weapon, hull mod or system what guarantees victory if the ship with it managed to close the range.

Kiters gonna kite. But brawlers don't really exist apart from the Harbinger. They were balanced out of the game.

So are you then claiming that the Conquest is the only viable capital ship because it has the longest range + speed combo with Gauss cannons? Or that Falcons are best in class because of their speed + range? Sunders must be better than Hammerheads, because they can have ranged up to 1550 while Hammerheads are limited to 1350, while having the same speed. All those poor high tech frigates like the Scarab and Tempest must only be viable with beams because brawling is dead, and Odysseys can't compete at all what with their poor range...

I'm sorry, but thats just not true and everyone knows it. Kiting Conquests, Falcons, and Sunders can be pretty strong in the right circumstance, but they aren't be all end all ships, and close range high tech frigates are very strong right now.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 02:54:55 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 06, 2021, 03:05:41 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 03:17:39 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

For that you need numerical superiority.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 06, 2021, 03:19:41 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

For that you need numerical superiority.
No, just enough to surround your foe. Doesn't matter how many you trap in your net as long as they're all actually in it.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 06, 2021, 03:22:41 PM
AI isn't very keen on tanking without shields, ...
For the sake of the example, imagine all lowtech ships got 500000 armor. Suddenly they smash everything so it's not a concept that fundamentally can't work.

For the sake of example you go to an insane extreme no one in this thread has suggested is required. More crazy armor also has nothing to do with what I said and is an attempt to change the subject to something absurd you can easily counter.

The AI can't do armor tanking. Your argument about armor tanking only applies to player control, which isn't the point at all.

...but it definitely drops them to avoid hits that won't damage armor too much...

This is a mechanic used for retreating by the AI and it's trading armor to avoid overloads. It isn't used aggressively so bringing it up has nothing to do with my counter to your original incorrect statement.

There is a lot of hyperbole about low tech/destroyers/whatever being useless, a good portion from you. Compared to that any position will look conservative :)
High tech wouldn't become bad with a nerf or if low got a buff, nobody said that.

Please refer me to my post that said they were "useless" because I've been clear that they are inferior to high tech during this entire thread, which is accurate. I even stated they are viable. I have not been hyperbolic, perhaps I used overgeneralizations but that isn't being hyperbolic. If you can't defend your statements please don't just make things up to portray me as unreasonable. This is a well veiled ad hominin attack. Paint me as unreasonable and not my points.

There are posts in here expressing concerns that Low tech will get overbuffed. There are posts suggesting ships like specifically the Tempest are not overpowered currently. Actual posts in this thread. That is the reality.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 06, 2021, 03:33:46 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

But there already are many accessible mechanics to stop kiting: fighters or fast frigates to bog a kiter down (or just blow it up) and the 0 flux boost on the brawler, or EMP weapons like salamanders or ion beams to knock out engines, or ship acceleration on a closing course, or systems like plasma burn, burn drive, phase teleporter, maneuvering jets... There are probably others that let a close range brawler get in close that I'm not thinking of. In this very blog post it talks about why burn drive is supposed to be a tool to do exactly this, why it currently fails, and the proposed solution to make it better at the job. "Hit the enemy when they can't hit back" is a core strategy sure, but there are other strategies that work just fine. There's been a lot of attention on ships that I'd label as "brawlers" being dominant this patch: high tech frigates that just take all fire on the shield and don't even need to maneuver away to vent most of the time; SO ships with the new PPT increasing skills to make them last longer; Omegas and Radiants don't kite either, they close in and overwhelm!

When I did my low tech playthrough the fleet was absolutely vulnerable to ships that were fast and/or longer ranged because of the lack of elite frigates, so I used interceptors for the same role and missiles for quick kills. The tools were there, I used them, and the fleet kept winning.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 06, 2021, 03:50:11 PM
I think we have to see how the new burn drives play out against kiting.

Lumen is the king of annoying kiting ships that make your fleet have to chase it around the map btw.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 06, 2021, 04:02:44 PM
I think we have to see how the new burn drives play out against kiting.

Lumen is the king of annoying kiting ships that make your fleet have to chase it around the map btw.

Agreed, especially because of its long PPT, that thing is a right pain. When doing high tech frigates I send some tempests after them with glee but for other tech levels I used Thunders.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 04:09:52 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

But there already are many accessible mechanics to stop kiting: fighters or fast frigates to bog a kiter down (or just blow it up) and the 0 flux boost on the brawler, or EMP weapons like salamanders or ion beams to knock out engines, or ship acceleration on a closing course, or systems like plasma burn, burn drive, phase teleporter, maneuvering jets... There are probably others that let a close range brawler get in close that I'm not thinking of. In this very blog post it talks about why burn drive is supposed to be a tool to do exactly this, why it currently fails, and the proposed solution to make it better at the job. "Hit the enemy when they can't hit back" is a core strategy sure, but there are other strategies that work just fine. There's been a lot of attention on ships that I'd label as "brawlers" being dominant this patch: high tech frigates that just take all fire on the shield and don't even need to maneuver away to vent most of the time; SO ships with the new PPT increasing skills to make them last longer; Omegas and Radiants don't kite either, they close in and overwhelm!

When I did my low tech playthrough the fleet was absolutely vulnerable to ships that were fast and/or longer ranged because of the lack of elite frigates, so I used interceptors for the same role and missiles for quick kills. The tools were there, I used them, and the fleet kept winning.

Fighters, missiles and long weapons are forms of kiting. Frigates are dependent on the stat check just as Enforcer and whatever else is trying to close the range.

You are missing the point.

When kiter got its speed and range advantage it got itself the guaranteed victory. When so called "brawler" closed the range it got some short window of opportunity for the attempt at bursting down the target. And the target can have simply better stats and can burst down our poor "brawler" instead. Because it got pack of papier-mâché at discount and not something useful.

Whole "they close in and overwhelm" thing have a very predictable result of forming a clear tier ladder of ships. With anything but the top ones being a junk serving the sole purpose of being overwhelmed.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 04:11:36 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

For that you need numerical superiority.
No, just enough to surround your foe. Doesn't matter how many you trap in your net as long as they're all actually in it.

You can't "surround your foe" when you have only single entity. And if you have more it becomes numerical superiority.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 06, 2021, 04:42:48 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

For that you need numerical superiority.
No, just enough to surround your foe. Doesn't matter how many you trap in your net as long as they're all actually in it.

You can't "surround your foe" when you have only single entity. And if you have more it becomes numerical superiority.
Uh... No?
I have, say, 5 ships. I face a Fleet of 15. I clearly don't have numerical superiority, being outnumber 3:1, and yet I can surround them to negate kiting attempts.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 06, 2021, 05:29:30 PM
For anybody in the "it is fine" gang.

Would you be so kind as to provide the Enforcer variant capable of completely dominating this thing here:

"Completely dominating" will be "winning three fights on autopilot in a row without taking hull damage".

No mods. No officers. No built-ins. No Weapon Drills. 70 % CR. Flux regulation and +10 caps/vents is OK.

Hmm... 24,444 effective shield strength.  So, 12 sabots?  Maybe 8 Harpoons for the hull?  I would expect an Expanded Missile Racks + ECCM + 2x Sabot (12 total) +2x Harpoon (12 total) + long range weapon of your choice (Heavy Autocannon maybe) all linked together in one fire group would have a solid chance of alpha striking the thing down. Certainly such an Enforcer build would likely one shot the HVD kiting build that can handle that Fulgent.

I may have to try that out.  Also, Enforcer could possibly include some cheap fighters to draw fire in the initial exchange as well.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 06, 2021, 05:52:03 PM
AI isn't very keen on tanking without shields, ...
For the sake of the example, imagine all lowtech ships got 500000 armor. Suddenly they smash everything so it's not a concept that fundamentally can't work.
For the sake of example you go to an insane extreme no one in this thread has suggested is required. More crazy armor also has nothing to do with what I said and is an attempt to change the subject to something absurd you can easily counter.

The AI can't do armor tanking. Your argument about armor tanking only applies to player control, which isn't the point at all.

Spawn a sim onslaught and shoot it, it will often drop shields when it's not escaping.
AI is not very good at tanking with armor, but it does try to do it.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/87jMa2n.jpg)
[close]

The 500000 armor example is there to demonstrate that there is a point where armor+hardflux range advantage on ballistics (lowtech) is definitely better than high (shields+speed), even with current mechanics.
I think that's relevant, don't see the need to go off the handle about it.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 06, 2021, 06:04:25 PM
For anybody in the "it is fine" gang.

Would you be so kind as to provide the Enforcer variant capable of completely dominating this thing here:

"Completely dominating" will be "winning three fights on autopilot in a row without taking hull damage".

No mods. No officers. No built-ins. No Weapon Drills. 70 % CR. Flux regulation and +10 caps/vents is OK.

Yup, missile spam works really well.  Heavy Autocannon + 2x Sabot + 2x Harpoon linked plus Xyphos (why not?) and a pile of hull mods.  Expanded Missiles + ECCM is key, but I tried an armor tank with Shield Shunt, Resistant flux conduit, Converted Hangar, Armored Weapon Mounts and Automated Repair unit.  Not sure any of that is really necessary given how quickly the Fulgent just overloads.  Probably would be better to throw on more actual guns and leave the shield, but shrug, this works.  And was literally the very first thing I threw together.  Worked 3 times in a row as well.

This was via mission so no skills for either side, just hand edit 30 vents/caps for the Fulgent.

Edit: Ran it 7 more times.  Not all engagements are 100% clean hull apparently, so I got lucky with the first 3.  But enough of them are that I certainly can get a streak of clean wins 3 in a row.  Poorly placed asteroids can impact it's performance as well.  Replacing automated repair unit with solar shielding will likely up the percentage of perfect no hull damage runs (for obvious reasons), since a number of them were very low amounts of hull damage (like 5856 hull left out of 6000).

Edit2: Better setup is probably Heavy Needler + light mortar for weapons, and swap Automated Repair unit for Solar shielding.  In a test run of 10, 50% of fights were no hull damage.
5525, 6000,6000,6000,5984,5326,6000,6000,5980,5290 hull remaining.  Seems more reliable than I expected to be honest.  Note, I was using the eliminate command as soon as the enemy ship was on tactical map.

[attachment deleted by admin]
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 09:06:21 PM
For anybody in the "it is fine" gang.

Would you be so kind as to provide the Enforcer variant capable of completely dominating this thing here:

"Completely dominating" will be "winning three fights on autopilot in a row without taking hull damage".

No mods. No officers. No built-ins. No Weapon Drills. 70 % CR. Flux regulation and +10 caps/vents is OK.

Hmm... 24,444 effective shield strength.  So, 12 sabots?  Maybe 8 Harpoons for the hull?  I would expect an Expanded Missile Racks + ECCM + 2x Sabot (12 total) +2x Harpoon (12 total) + long range weapon of your choice (Heavy Autocannon maybe) all linked together in one fire group would have a solid chance of alpha striking the thing down. Certainly such an Enforcer build would likely one shot the HVD kiting build that can handle that Fulgent.

I may have to try that out.  Also, Enforcer could possibly include some cheap fighters to draw fire in the initial exchange as well.

2xSabots, 2xHarpoons, 2xHeavy Needlers, 1xHVD (as a trigger for the Sabots). EMR. It creates overload at the end of the run. Or not. Even if I stopped the run any time Enforcer hit an asteroid it is still inconsistent. To feel the difference you can try Hammerhead with two HVDs and two Sabots. It works like a clock.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 09:17:25 PM
I'm claiming that game lacks the universally accessible brawling mechanic as opposed to kiting.
I believe that's called "the opponent running out of space."

For that you need numerical superiority.
No, just enough to surround your foe. Doesn't matter how many you trap in your net as long as they're all actually in it.

You can't "surround your foe" when you have only single entity. And if you have more it becomes numerical superiority.
Uh... No?
I have, say, 5 ships. I face a Fleet of 15. I clearly don't have numerical superiority, being outnumber 3:1, and yet I can surround them to negate kiting attempts.

You will block only part of them. While others will proceed to surround your forces. If the enemy will attempt to move all its ships in one direction than you will block only single ship who will act as a frontal bait while other envelops. But more realistically speaking they will simply crush that ship head on and will be on their merry way.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Hiruma Kai on June 06, 2021, 09:52:26 PM
2xSabots, 2xHarpoons, 2xHeavy Needlers, 1xHVD (as a trigger for the Sabots). EMR. It creates overload at the end of the run. Or not. Even if I stopped the run any time Enforcer hit an asteroid it is still inconsistent. To feel the difference you can try Hammerhead with two HVDs and two Sabots. It works like a clock.

I agree, EMR by itself isn't quite enough to get reliability.

Further testing, as I indicated in my last post, suggests 1xHeavy Needler,1x Light Mortar, 1x Xyphos, Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM, Converted Hangar, Shield Shunt, Resistant Flux Conduits, Armored Weapon Mounts, Solar Shielding, 1 vent works fairly robustly.  Sabots, Harpoons, Heavy Needler linked.  Light mortar in it's own group.  As noted, I did 10 runs, it won all of them, five at 100% hull, 2 more with trivial hull damage.  And 3 more with less than 20% damage.

Edit3: Forgot to list the 2x Sabot, 2x Harpoon, sigh.

The Xyphos are actually quite important it seems in the cases where the initial burst isn't enough, as the constant EMP damage pressure forces the Fulgent to keep its shields up. Even with them up, because there's hard flux build up, it eventually shuts the engines down, allowing the 60+50 speed Enforcer to catch up (since it's running 0 flux and the Xyphos are never sent to attack).

However, such an Enforcer build also seems more flexible, given it also beats a 2x HVD, 2x Sabot Hammerhead build 5/5 times with no hull damage.  Even with Sabot linked to the HVDs.  If I swap to linked Harpoons with EMR on the Hammerhead, the Enforcer still seems to come out on top in the 5 runs I just did, although it is close in some cases.

Edit:  Looks like it wins about 9 out 10 times vs a long range /w HE missile Hammerhead.

Edit2: Although perhaps if we want to continue this discussion, we should make a new thread.  I feel like's we've wandered a fair bit from Alex's blog post. :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 06, 2021, 10:33:04 PM
You will block only part of them. While others will proceed to surround your forces. If the enemy will attempt to move all its ships in one direction than you will block only single ship who will act as a frontal bait while other envelops. But more realistically speaking they will simply crush that ship head on and will be on their merry way.
I can see there's no reasoning with you, what with the arbitrary declarations that support your side with, well, no evidence. You can't envelope a force that is already enveloping you!

And don't get me started on "you will block only part of them"! According to what? You spread out, they retreat backwards as they kite, grouping up in doing so, you move forward tightening the net. Boom, all blocked.

It's a simple result of the fact that a kiting ship will try and maintain maximum distance from the ship it's kiting, and try and avoid other ships. Kiters between two opponents will move towards the middle of those two, as it's furthest away from both. The flanks then move up, channelling said kiters further into the middle. Once in the middle, they move up in uniform, trapping the kiters against the back of the map.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 06, 2021, 11:06:45 PM
2xSabots, 2xHarpoons, 2xHeavy Needlers, 1xHVD (as a trigger for the Sabots). EMR. It creates overload at the end of the run. Or not. Even if I stopped the run any time Enforcer hit an asteroid it is still inconsistent. To feel the difference you can try Hammerhead with two HVDs and two Sabots. It works like a clock.

I agree, EMR by itself isn't quite enough to get reliability.

Further testing, as I indicated in my last post, suggests 1xHeavy Needler,1x Light Mortar, 1x Xyphos, Expanded Missile Racks, ECCM, Converted Hangar, Shield Shunt, Resistant Flux Conduits, Armored Weapon Mounts, Solar Shielding, 1 vent works fairly robustly.  Sabots, Harpoons, Heavy Needler linked.  Light mortar in it's own group.  As noted, I did 10 runs, it won all of them, five at 100% hull, 2 more with trivial hull damage.  And 3 more with less than 20% damage.

Edit3: Forgot to list the 2x Sabot, 2x Harpoon, sigh.

The Xyphos are actually quite important it seems in the cases where the initial burst isn't enough, as the constant EMP damage pressure forces the Fulgent to keep its shields up. Even with them up, because there's hard flux build up, it eventually shuts the engines down, allowing the 60+50 speed Enforcer to catch up (since it's running 0 flux and the Xyphos are never sent to attack).

However, such an Enforcer build also seems more flexible, given it also beats a 2x HVD, 2x Sabot Hammerhead build 5/5 times with no hull damage.  Even with Sabot linked to the HVDs.  If I swap to linked Harpoons with EMR on the Hammerhead, the Enforcer still seems to come out on top in the 5 runs I just did, although it is close in some cases.

Edit:  Looks like it wins about 9 out 10 times vs a long range /w HE missile Hammerhead.

Edit2: Although perhaps if we want to continue this discussion, we should make a new thread.  I feel like's we've wandered a fair bit from Alex's blog post. :)

Why not? The sole reason for making my argument in the form of an experiment is to provide the answer to the question what a brawler really needs to succeed. I mean abstract debate about kiting is good but this here is much more helpful. It clearly shows just how intricate the current "brawling" is. Anti-shield strike, disables, finishers, anti-disable ruggedization. And everything is important. Great stuff really.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: HiddenPorpoise on June 07, 2021, 12:21:35 AM
The enforcer is ill suited for winning duels with fast ships and so it's not surprising it's losing. It's effective in battlelines and squadrons where its extremely good pd options and safety net of armor are most useful.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 07, 2021, 01:48:29 AM
AI isn't very keen on tanking without shields, ...
For the sake of the example, imagine all lowtech ships got 500000 armor. Suddenly they smash everything so it's not a concept that fundamentally can't work.
For the sake of example you go to an insane extreme no one in this thread has suggested is required. More crazy armor also has nothing to do with what I said and is an attempt to change the subject to something absurd you can easily counter.

The AI can't do armor tanking. Your argument about armor tanking only applies to player control, which isn't the point at all.

Spawn a sim onslaught and shoot it, it will often drop shields when it's not escaping.
AI is not very good at tanking with armor, but it does try to do it.
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/87jMa2n.jpg)
[close]

The 500000 armor example is there to demonstrate that there is a point where armor+hardflux range advantage on ballistics (lowtech) is definitely better than high (shields+speed), even with current mechanics.
I think that's relevant, don't see the need to go off the handle about it.

So I clearly didn't say anything hyperbolic, or that low tech is useless. You're just going to walk away from those claims now I guess.

500000 armor is not a razors edge difference I was talking about, that's not a razors edge.

Also if the Onslaught is your only example and it still rarely does it then you are still wrong because the AI doesn't armor tank. One single rare (possibly a case of the AI making bad choices because the Onslaught doesn't seem to understand how long it takes to re raise shields) exception doesn't make your incorrect statement correct.

Are we going to go on for pages now with you trying to prove armor tanking is a AI mechanic that's impacting the battle outcome? Or maybe just prove it exists in some useless and detrimental form so you are technically sort of correct to save face?

1. AI can't armor tank
2. I don't care about your 500000 armor scenario
3. Onslaught is a terrible example for everything
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: TaLaR on June 07, 2021, 02:05:33 AM
AI does drop shield occasionally, but this isn't done in any meaningful way.
- AI doesn't prioritize which shots are ok to land on armor (kinetics except Gauss, low damage per shot energy) and which are not.
- AI doesn't evaluate projectile/beam time to reach it vs shield re-raise time.
- AI doesn't consider exact attack trajectory for anything that isn't a missile (corner hits during shield re-raise or missed opportunities to dodge by strafing a bit).
- AI doesn't evaluate what trying to armor-tank in given scenario actually buys it (whether opportunity to inflict armor/hull damage is present or enemy can disengage unscathed anyway).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 07, 2021, 03:02:37 AM
AI does drop shield occasionally, but this isn't done in any meaningful way.
- AI doesn't prioritize which shots are ok to land on armor (kinetics except Gauss, low damage per shot energy) and which are not.
- AI doesn't evaluate projectile/beam time to reach it vs shield re-raise time.
- AI doesn't consider exact attack trajectory for anything that isn't a missile (corner hits during shield re-raise or missed opportunities to dodge by strafing a bit).
- AI doesn't evaluate what trying to armor-tank in given scenario actually buys it (whether opportunity to inflict armor/hull damage is present or enemy can disengage unscathed anyway).
Had me fooled, it does just drop shields at low flux in the middle of a fight and take full volleys to the center without trying to raise them (seems decent against reapers though).
If it's just random that's my bad, didn't check the code.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SafariJohn on June 07, 2021, 05:13:14 PM
I had a reckless Paragon armor-tank with terrifying efficiency in the 7th tourney.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Delta_of_Isaire on June 08, 2021, 01:23:20 AM
AI does drop shield occasionally, but this isn't done in any meaningful way.
- AI doesn't prioritize which shots are ok to land on armor (kinetics except Gauss, low damage per shot energy) and which are not.
- AI doesn't evaluate projectile/beam time to reach it vs shield re-raise time.
- AI doesn't consider exact attack trajectory for anything that isn't a missile (corner hits during shield re-raise or missed opportunities to dodge by strafing a bit).
- AI doesn't evaluate what trying to armor-tank in given scenario actually buys it (whether opportunity to inflict armor/hull damage is present or enemy can disengage unscathed anyway).

This. The only time the current AI drops shields while in range of enemy weapons is when it is at high hard flux and desperately trying to win the flux war / avoid overload. And often failing at that because this shield-lowering behavior usually kicks in too late to be really helpful.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 08, 2021, 07:17:10 AM
This is a mechanic used for retreating by the AI and it's trading armor to avoid overloads. It isn't used aggressively so bringing it up has nothing to do with my counter to your original incorrect statement.
This. The only time the current AI drops shields while in range of enemy weapons is when it is at high hard flux and desperately trying to win the flux war / avoid overload. And often failing at that because this shield-lowering behavior usually kicks in too late to be really helpful.
Double-checked to make sure I'm not going insane, AI does drop shields in "normal" circumstances. Also does it when it has a flux advantage.
It's not very good at it and might as well be mostly random, didn't dig too much so a modder can tell you more.
To me it always seemed like it also does its best to avoid direct reaper hits and in some way does know the difference between a hellbore and a railgun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ro5v8qmyA
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on June 08, 2021, 07:21:39 AM
AI starts reasonably armour tanking when it gets to high flux, when it should shield flicker right from get go.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 08, 2021, 07:28:31 AM
It's just anecdotal, but I've found ALWAYS_PANICS causes them to armour tank from the getgo too.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on June 08, 2021, 08:58:25 AM
To me it always seemed like it also does its best to avoid direct reaper hits and in some way does know the difference between a hellbore and a railgun.

It does know, yes. And it's reasonable at tanking pure kinetic damage on armor. But when even a bit of HE gets mixed it, the decision gets much harder and it generally won't do it. (It considers the relative damage values too, of course, so incoming Gauss rounds aren't treated the same as a needler burst.)

AI starts reasonably armour tanking when it gets to high flux, when it should shield flicker right from get go.

Should it, though? My guess is that if it did, there'd be complaints about it taking unnecessary damage. And, it's a hard decision to make. Continuing a stalemate - get fluxed, back off, come back in, etc - is a "safe" option that gives the player the most time to make a difference. On the other hand, if it starts the "I'm losing armor and hitpoints, and may or may not be actually getting anything for it" clock right off the bat...

That said, it actually *will* armor-tank (and take some hull damage, as well) in some circumstances when flux is low and - IIRC? it thinks it can press an advantage, I honestly forget all the details here - and when its armor is high. And, indeed, this gets reported as a bug now and again!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: TaLaR on June 08, 2021, 09:01:20 AM
@Draba
That's a build with ONLY kinetic weapon. AI will armor tank that. But no real build should be like this.

@Alex
AI doesn't seem to track actual projectiles though. For example, Hellbore has very few and it is fairly easy for player to block only them while mostly armor tanking HAC/Needler kinetic stream. I've never seen AI do this.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alex on June 08, 2021, 09:07:13 AM
It does actually track high-damage projectiles individually, which includes the Hellbore. That might be a worthwhile case to look at, since that's potentially easier than trying to make the call for a mixed kinetic/HE stream. But it could be something where it's just not sure it could unfold the shields again in time, for example...
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 08, 2021, 09:15:46 AM
@Draba
That's a build with ONLY kinetic weapon. AI will armor tank that. But no real build should be like this.
The claim the 2 people I've quoted made was that AI dropping shields is always escape/overload avoidance (or some shield speed fluke/Onslaught magic).
Example is just there to show that's not true.

It does actually track high-damage projectiles individually, which includes the Hellbore.
Good to know, was starting to think I'm seeing a pattern where there is none.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 08, 2021, 05:54:09 PM
This whole does armor tanking exist in any form even it's not helpful/useful/optimal is a red herring.

With high armor shields can be dropped in the middle of a fight and weapons still work at full output.

The AI can't use it with existing mechanics. It's only helpful for Player piloted ships. That's what this was was about.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on June 09, 2021, 02:29:48 AM
Turns out the solution to low-tech problem was to make new midline ships and pretend they are low-tech.

Fine with me. The less slow dumb bricks the game has, the better.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: ElPresidente on June 09, 2021, 03:25:40 AM
I would like to not see High Tech dragged down because the whole "Low Tech" philosophy is just faulty by design and therefore unable to compete, though.

I propose giving low-tech higher EMP resistance and faster weapon/engine repair time and giving High tech the opposite (with AI/REDACTED ships being even more extreeme).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 09, 2021, 03:56:10 AM
It is clear for a situation of Low Tech being kept "slow" it first needs either even stronger missile burst or strong disables for a target immobilization purposes. Former is self-explanatory, but latter means that Salamanders, HVD's and Sabots are all inadequate for the task as a component of any realistic weapon variant.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: TaLaR on June 09, 2021, 05:43:20 AM
I'd like to see interruptible Burn Drive in action before asking for more low tech buffs.

If anything, issues with low tech at this point could be mostly resolved by AI changes (not saying it would be an easy thing to implement). Aggressive and actively armor-tanking low tech with interruptible Burn Drive could be a menace.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 09, 2021, 06:01:46 AM
AI starts reasonably armour tanking when it gets to high flux, when it should shield flicker right from get go.

Should it, though? My guess is that if it did, there'd be complaints about it taking unnecessary damage. And, it's a hard decision to make. Continuing a stalemate - get fluxed, back off, come back in, etc - is a "safe" option that gives the player the most time to make a difference. On the other hand, if it starts the "I'm losing armor and hitpoints, and may or may not be actually getting anything for it" clock right off the bat...
One way to help with attrition could be to give low tech ships old impact mitigation's 90% max damage reduction in a hullmod ("Time-tested armor design" or the like).
Still gets smashed by big HE hits, but the aggression can be turned up a little.


I'd like to see interruptible Burn Drive in action before asking for more low tech buffs.

If anything, issues with low tech at this point could be mostly resolved by AI changes (not saying it would be an easy thing to implement). Aggressive and actively armor-tanking low tech with interruptible Burn Drive could be a menace.
I think Dominator and Enforcer could definitely use some help.
XIV Onslaught is very nice, my main gripe is that without omega weapons there is no M missile option that feels good.
With the TPCs+ballistics staying at range is strong, but then sabot/harpoon will be wasted and anni is meh. Maybe get reapers, they are flashy at least :)
Deciding factor for me is it'd be the only 7 burn ship in the fleet it goes in, so in the end I just take something else.


This whole does armor tanking exist in any form even it's not helpful/useful/optimal is a red herring.

With high armor shields can be dropped in the middle of a fight and weapons still work at full output.

The AI can't use it with existing mechanics. It's only helpful for Player piloted ships. That's what this was was about.
You wrote that current low tech design fundamentally can't work with the current AI, and that AI literally can't use armor to gain an offensive flux advantage.
AI can use armor, and the numbers can be massaged to make high armor+ballistics/missiles as strong as you want (see the 500000 armor example).
The shield-dropping behavior existing is important for the big picture. Not a red herring, and you brought up "AI literally can't trade armor for flux" to begin with.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SafariJohn on June 09, 2021, 12:39:46 PM
It might be worthwhile to implement a learning algorithm for armor tanking like there is for venting. Maybe compare armor/hull damage dealt vs taken?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 09, 2021, 02:15:00 PM
Not a red herring, and you brought up "AI literally can't trade armor for flux" to begin with.

I think you are conflating my arguments with other peoples. I argued that armor tanking can't be done by the AI because of it's limitations. Clearly I meant in a functional way, even if I didn't state that expressly. Those words "AI literally can't trade armor for flux" never came from me in this thread.

And it is a red herring if it has no meaningful impact on balance when combat with real ships takes place. You abandon your original argument to this armor tanking exists in a useless but it technically exists form because that was an argument you felt could be won. Unless Alex did some wizardry and found a way to make the AI armor tank in a way that doesn't make the forums lose their minds with "the dumb AI suicided my ship" threads then this element of the conversation is pointless.

If it did exist in a meaningful way then the low tech solutions would be easy(ier).

This is a mechanic used for retreating by the AI and it's trading armor to avoid overloads.

Me saying it trades armor for flux to avoid overloads. The complete opposite of what you just said.

Read the post history before posting and stop saying I said things I didn't. I didn't say anything hyperbolic, I didn't say low tech was useless. All things you claim I said. This time at least there is a direct quote of mine proving you wrong.

Generally speaking it's one thing to say, it's viable, it's another thing to ask is it desirable.

Me not saying low tech is useless.

At a certain point these accusations start to come across as lies.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 09, 2021, 04:29:52 PM
You abandon your original argument to this armor tanking exists in a useless but it technically exists form because that was an argument you felt could be won.
My original argument:
- armor can be used to gain a flux advantage(either offensive or defensive), by dropping shields in combat
- the AI can handle this interaction. Said it right there it's not very good at it, but it does have the mechanics down
- armored things can definitely be made strong enough in the existing systems, no need to throw out the concept (that was the 500K example). Just have to find a good spot
That's where I started from, that's where I still am.


The full quotes with context, without the cuts you made.
You wrote that current low tech design fundamentally can't work with the current AI, and that AI literally can't use armor to gain an offensive flux advantage.
AI can use armor, and the numbers can be massaged to make high armor+ballistics/missiles as strong as you want (see the 500000 armor example).
The shield-dropping behavior existing is important for the big picture. Not a red herring, and you brought up "AI literally can't trade armor for flux" to begin with.
...but it definitely drops them to avoid hits that won't damage armor too much...
This is a mechanic used for retreating by the AI and it's trading armor to avoid overloads. It isn't used aggressively so bringing it up has nothing to do with my counter to your original incorrect statement.
Also if the Onslaught is your only example and it still rarely does it then you are still wrong because the AI doesn't armor tank. One single rare (possibly a case of the AI making bad choices because the Onslaught doesn't seem to understand how long it takes to re raise shields) exception doesn't make your incorrect statement correct.

Dunno why this has to be life or death, deny every mistake to the last.
You were wrong, happens to everyone.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Delta_of_Isaire on June 10, 2021, 12:33:05 AM
Observation: Energy weapons are most effective against poorly shielded targets, as very few of them do kinetic damage but plenty of them are effective against armor. Same holds for Ion damage: most effective when enemy shields are hard-fluxed or down completely. Which ships tend to have poor shields? Low-Tech. Which ships use energy/Ion weapons the most? High-Tech. So in a way, High-Tech is set up to counter Low-Tech. Conversely, High-Tech powerful shields combined with relatively poor armor makes them vulnerable to Kinetic damage. Which ships use Kinetic weapons the most? Low-Tech. So in a way, Low-Tech is set up to counter High-Tech.

In this perspective, High-Tech and Low-Tech are each other's counters. Midline comes in as a mix between the two, with diverse weapon mounts to use each damage type, but neither the best shields nor the best armor. That sounds like it might be sort-of-balanced.

One place where this balance might break down, I think, is the following. When a High-Tech ship attacks a Low-Tech ship of similar strength, it often happens that the Low-Tech ship needs to drop its shields and take some armor/hull damage, while the High-Tech ship can usually retreat to safety before its shields need to be dropped, thanks to better mobility. The result is an asymmetric situation where High-Tech can steadily whittle away at Low-Tech's non-renewable hitpoints without receiving non-renewable damage in return.

To stop this being a problem, Low-Tech needs tools that help it mitigate High-Tech's ability to kite with superior mobility. Burn drive could be one such tool. Burst kinetic damage from Needlers/Sabots and the like could be another. As could generally longer range of ballistics compared to energy weapons. But I wonder if in the current state of the game these advantages are sufficient to level the playing field. They might not be.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Locklave on June 10, 2021, 01:39:05 AM
Dunno why this has to be life or death, deny every mistake to the last.
You were wrong, happens to everyone.

I quote myself earlier saying the opposite of your what you claim "I literally said" and you still pretend to be correct. This isn't a misunderstanding anymore, you are a liar and I'm done with you.

The absurd irony in this quote above.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 10, 2021, 05:10:29 AM
One place where this balance might break down, I think, is the following. When a High-Tech ship attacks a Low-Tech ship of similar strength, it often happens that the Low-Tech ship needs to drop its shields and take some armor/hull damage, while the High-Tech ship can usually retreat to safety before its shields need to be dropped, thanks to better mobility. The result is an asymmetric situation where High-Tech can steadily whittle away at Low-Tech's non-renewable hitpoints without receiving non-renewable damage in return.

To stop this being a problem, Low-Tech needs tools that help it mitigate High-Tech's ability to kite with superior mobility. Burn drive could be one such tool. Burst kinetic damage from Needlers/Sabots and the like could be another. As could generally longer range of ballistics compared to energy weapons. But I wonder if in the current state of the game these advantages are sufficient to level the playing field. They might not be.
Longer range means more ships can focus the one trying to jump in, it's just hard to make the ships form a line/not get in each other's way in battle.
Making the ships block each other less would help the side with the range advantage, but probably much easier said than done.

Missiles are also extremely good while they last, ECCM harpoons are great for supporting allies from ships further away (long range+fire over allies).
A common fire support S/M missile with lower damage and more ammo would be a nice addition IMO.
Would even take a harpoon pod with 2 shots/volley. Obviously not as powerful but much more consistent in longer battles.

Same for sabot pods, in some situations you only want them to be fired up close(and sparingly!).
When something gets up close 2x8 sabots to the face is generally overkill :)
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on June 10, 2021, 05:57:21 AM
Observation: Energy weapons are most effective against poorly shielded targets, as very few of them do kinetic damage but plenty of them are effective against armor.

Most energy weapons have very poor per-shot damage, making them horrible against armor. Large ones are fine, but not a lot of high-tech ships can even mount them - just Paragon, Odyssey and Apogee. The vast majority of high-tech battleships rely on medium energy for damage, and among those only the horribly inefficient heavy blasters and mining blasters are good against non-frigate armor. The only small energy that does anything against armor at all is antimatter blaster, which has tons of drawbacks to compensate for it.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on June 10, 2021, 06:02:45 AM
Heavy Blasters are about the half of energy mediums in my fleet - the other half is Ion Pulsers.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on June 10, 2021, 06:06:22 AM
Well, yeah, you pretty much have to use heavy blasters to do any hull damage at all. Doesn't mean the weapon is very good, just means there is no alternative.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 10, 2021, 06:45:27 AM
AMB, Phase Lance, Mining Blaster.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on June 10, 2021, 07:07:21 AM
AMB I mentioned in my post. It has many drawbacks and is extremely AI-unfriendly. Mining blaster is a strictly worse heavy blaster that exists for flavour reasons and shouldn't ever be used by players. Phase lance fails hard against anything that's not a frigate or a Sunder. Go into sim right now and try to kill an Enforcer using a phase lance.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 10, 2021, 07:19:15 AM
Phase lances are a very flux efficient method of punching through armor that either can be installed on frigates, phase ships thats to their great burst damage capabilities and some normal ships too, like the Brilliant for example:
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/KjWomXd.png)
[close]
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/47Iq73r.png)
[close]

The AI is suprisingly decent at handling them too. Their 600 weapon range also makes them perfect for installment on short range focused, non-SO cruisers like the Eagle, which can mount 3 Heavy machineguns at the front (hopefully with an officer having both Gunnery Implants and ELite Point Defence to extend their range) one Ion beam and two Phase lances.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on June 10, 2021, 07:26:00 AM
The paladin Brilliant makes me doubt if you are being sarcasic. I case you aren't, both your examples (Brilliant and Eagle) would be much better if you used other slot types for anti-armor (large energy and medium ballistic, respectively) and medium energies for other roles (pd and long-range supression, in these cases). Even if you insist on wasting good slots on meme weapons, I'm still not convinced phase lances are worth using. Your HMG Eagle would be better off just using one heavy blaster instead of two lances.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Draba on June 10, 2021, 07:31:24 AM
The paladin Brilliant makes me doubt if you are being sarcasic. I case you aren't, both your examples (Brilliant and Eagle) would be much better if you used other slot types for anti-armor (large energy and medium ballistic, respectively) and medium energies for other roles (pd and long-range supression, in these cases). Even if you insist on wasting good slots on meme weapons, I'm still not convinced phase lances are worth using. Your HMG Eagle would be better off just using one heavy blaster instead of two lances.
It wasn't a joke, I also like phase lances a lot.
They are extremely good for phase ships and still nice for everything else IMO.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Arcagnello on June 10, 2021, 08:11:02 AM
The paladin Brilliant makes me doubt if you are being sarcasic. I case you aren't, both your examples (Brilliant and Eagle) would be much better if you used other slot types for anti-armor (large energy and medium ballistic, respectively) and medium energies for other roles (pd and long-range supression, in these cases). Even if you insist on wasting good slots on meme weapons, I'm still not convinced phase lances are worth using. Your HMG Eagle would be better off just using one heavy blaster instead of two lances.
It wasn't a joke, I also like phase lances a lot.
They are extremely good for phase ships and still nice for everything else IMO.

What he says.
The Heavy blaster is a better weapon overall, but it also consumes more flux per second than two Phase Lances combined AFAIK, not to mention Phase Lances work amazingly well when installed on hardpoints, while a  projectile based weapon like the Heavy Blaster might give whatever has it installed an existential crysis.

The Paladin PD system stopped being a joke after it got buffed in 0.95.
It's the best per-OP point defence weapon in the game (not to mention belonging to the Energy category of weapons, which has notoriously bad PD options to boot), does 200 soft flux energy damage per shot at incredible efficiency and even has a weapon AI that saves 10 charges no matter if enemy ships are in range just to shoot at missiles/fighters.

It's a great weapon really, especially on the Brilliant since having no incoming missiles (and detonating Sabots at a longer range than they activate) really helps the Fearless AI when it comes to actually being aggressive. Here's another example of a Brilliant massively benefitting from a Paladin PD:
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/9IjEfK8.png)
[close]
Spoiler
(https://i.imgur.com/PgN6sH6.png)
[close]
I eventually swapped some things out but the Paladin on the Overdriven Brilliant remained, a weapon making sure even the Fearless AI won't back off from enemy fighters or missiles because there will be no such thing near it with a Paladin is quite the boon!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Thaago on June 10, 2021, 09:21:58 AM
Phase lances are great weapons and very efficient anti armor/hull, just soft flux so the usual considerations apply. I'm really fond of them on midline ships myself so that I can support them with kinetics (hmmm maybe I should try a lance medusa with needlers? Haven't played around with Medusa's in a while).
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: SCC on June 10, 2021, 09:23:50 AM
Medusa, I found, handles pretty well with two dual autocannons, two ion pulsers and two anti-matter blasters. You could use phase lances, of course, but that means one or two ion pulsers fewer, which doesn't seem to be a favourable trade.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Yunru on June 10, 2021, 09:51:05 AM
TIL the Paladin got buffed.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: intrinsic_parity on June 10, 2021, 10:38:59 AM
I prefer am blaster over phase lance in most situations. Better hit strength, better efficiency, better burst, hard flux. I'll downsize mounts sometimes. The AI is just stupid with phase lances, it will waste tons of flux firing it into shields and then have it be on cooldown, or not have the capacity to fire it when there is an actual opportunity to deal hull/armor damage. At least it saves am blasters for decent moments.

Phase ships can use phase lance reasonably well, but for a player ship, the DPS is a bit low.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Lucky33 on June 10, 2021, 11:09:45 PM
AMB I mentioned in my post. It has many drawbacks and is extremely AI-unfriendly. Mining blaster is a strictly worse heavy blaster that exists for flavour reasons and shouldn't ever be used by players. Phase lance fails hard against anything that's not a frigate or a Sunder. Go into sim right now and try to kill an Enforcer using a phase lance.

My very first playthrough was phase+frigates. It consisted mainly of AMBs and Phase Lances. Gazillions of Enforcers have felt to them.

MB is a lowest tier energy armor destroyer. It is doing its job.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: CrashToDesktop on June 14, 2021, 01:52:12 PM
I've just noticed that the Eradicator is the return of the ISS Slightly Lopsided Isosceles Triangle!
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Alexis Incarnadine on June 24, 2021, 02:04:57 PM
Would it be a stupid question to ask when these will be implemented in the game, or are they already present?
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: EclipseRanger on June 25, 2021, 05:54:30 AM
Would it be a stupid question to ask when these will be implemented in the game, or are they already present?

They are not implemented as of now.Judging by when update 9.1 got its 9.1a 6 months later,we could also assume that we' ll get 9.5a on September or so.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: xenoargh on June 26, 2021, 02:34:26 PM
My first reaction to the Burn Drive change:  "Hey, that's what I did in Vacuum, like, five years ago, for roughly the same reasons", lol
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Twilight Sentinel on June 26, 2021, 11:22:42 PM
Pirates getting another cruiser will be very good indeed.  The fleets of ventures take forever to go through.  For my own sanity's sake I set a 75% modifier on their appearance rate for pirates.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Brainwright on July 03, 2021, 01:40:00 PM
The best thing for lowtech ships has always been taking advantage of their efficiency.  Ideally, you would form the bulk of your fleet with low tech and deploy a wing of faster strike craft to inflict actual casualties on the opponent and retreat.  Rinse and repeat until their CR is nothing.

As it stands, that methodology is impossible, largely because the limited engagement mechanic favors npc fleets.

A 100% low tech fleet probably shouldn’t be viable, but they also shouldn’t be hobbled.  Drawn out engagements are where that balance lies.

And this will probably be faster for the player, too, as moving in aggressively and trimming down the opposing fleet until it is at clean engagement level before the npc can bring their entire fleet to bear is less of a slog than chewing through the entire fleet.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Bummelei on September 12, 2021, 08:42:49 AM
I personally think that "Termination Sequence" is a bad idea.

For now, we have 2 high end frigates: Scarab which have high amount of firepower, and Tempest which trades some of it for premium tier pd defense and lightning speed.
And you want to cut main strenght of Tempest in favor of very unreliable source of damage, which in reality going to do next to no impact.
From that point Scarab and even cheaper options would look much more apealing than Tempest (without current active system and pd, Tempest is going to be no better than Wolf)

Guess if you want to nerf\fix Tempest, it is better to buff powercrept frigates instead, like Monitor, or Centurion for example. Or maybe add some more premium-tier frigates to the game, like Vanguard (but in that case there gonna be more problems with in game balance so idk)

Interruption of a burn drive is good (long awaited if i can say), but isn't it going even better if burn drive won't disable shields for it's duration?

Concept of Vanguard is interesting, can't wait to see how it performs in reality.

And i have a question at last: will you make something with Venture? In current meta this ship is next to completely useless - complete lack of speed, range, firepower and op makes this ship abysmal in terms of anything, but being useless bullet sponge. Like... it's a cruiser but with firepower of a frigate, which sounds like a joke.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Amoebka on September 21, 2021, 07:48:38 AM
I wouldn't call 2 medium + 2 small missiles with FMR and 3 more medium weapon slots "frigate level firepower". Given how we are getting premium armor/hull tanking skills and the ability to reduce DP by up to 50%, spamming Ventures might become a very oppressive strat.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: intrinsic_parity on September 21, 2021, 09:26:45 AM
The main problem with venture is speed. The burn is so low, and the ship is also slow in combat. The flux stats are also destroyer level which I think is a better representation of firepower. The missiles probably give it overall light cruiser firepower for the beginning of the fight, but with terrible mobility, that doesn't really work if anything in the enemy fleet has significant firepower. No way to run and too weak to win. It's at best an early game bully, but has the campaign stats of a late game ship.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Helldiver on September 21, 2021, 09:47:13 AM
I'm fine with the Venture's combat performance, being an armed freighter and not a warship. It gains a lot of value with mods that make military ships much harder to acquire, being one of the few bigger armed ships sold on the civilian market. That's even supposed to be a trait of the Venture according to its description (usually the flagship in a civilian fleet).
Though that's lost in vanilla where full-on warships are as easy to acquire as buying a bicycle.

For the Tempest, I always expected the Tempest to be weaker than the Scarab, since the Tempest is a regular high tech frigate and the Scarab is supposed to be a super-speshul prototype ship. The Scarab really shouldn't be as common as the Tempest considering that though.
Title: Re: A Tale of Two Tech Levels
Post by: Bummelei on September 25, 2021, 08:40:17 AM
I wouldn't call 2 medium + 2 small missiles with FMR and 3 more medium weapon slots "frigate level firepower". Given how we are getting premium armor/hull tanking skills and the ability to reduce DP by up to 50%, spamming Ventures might become a very oppressive strat.

Ship has abysmal problems with flux, and if you don't max it's vents and flux pool to be around 10k+ you ain't going nowhere, and from that point you already don't have enough OP to pick up "extended missile racks" or even get all medium and small slots. And you still desperately need burn lvl and speed, because you have neither range nor great firepower from the very beginning, and without speed you're unable to catch anyone aside from another lowtech cruisers.

The main problem with venture is speed. The burn is so low, and the ship is also slow in combat. The flux stats are also destroyer level which I think is a better representation of firepower. The missiles probably give it overall light cruiser firepower for the beginning of the fight, but with terrible mobility, that doesn't really work if anything in the enemy fleet has significant firepower. No way to run and too weak to win. It's at best an early game bully, but has the campaign stats of a late game ship.

The problem is that for the early game it is too expensive, slow and too fuel-hungry. Therefore, it is easier to take a couple of destroyers as an anchor for the fleet, than buying Venture.

I'm fine with the Venture's combat performance, being an armed freighter and not a warship. It gains a lot of value with mods that make military ships much harder to acquire, being one of the few bigger armed ships sold on the civilian market. That's even supposed to be a trait of the Venture according to its description (usually the flagship in a civilian fleet).
Though that's lost in vanilla where full-on warships are as easy to acquire as buying a bicycle.

For the Tempest, I always expected the Tempest to be weaker than the Scarab, since the Tempest is a regular high tech frigate and the Scarab is supposed to be a super-speshul prototype ship. The Scarab really shouldn't be as common as the Tempest considering that though.

It was fine in the 0.91, i always started with Venture in early game, but now it's just not worth it. And yes, Venture could be considered an armed freighter, if not for the presence of the Mule in the game, which one by the way is still quite good.

I think amount of Scarabs and Hyperions on markets gameplaywise is completely fine and balanced, in comparison with previous patch.