Aurora is a cursed ship that will never be allowed to be good again. Comparing things to it isn't meaningful.30 DP is too much. At least as an AI ship, it is worse than Dominator or Champion, or more precisely, I do not get my DP's worth like I do with those two 25 DP cruisers. Aurora feels more like a 25 DP ship.
I wouldn't mind Aurora buff, but at the same time - bad on AI, good in players hands is a fine niche as well. Wouldn't Ziggurat need buffing if we tried balancing it around AI usage?There is only one Ziggurat in the game, and the player cannot build or find another. It is Starsector's hero ship Vindicator. Also, Ziggurat is the biggest, baddest ship the player can use in the game - it is a monster. Player can build as many Auroras as he wants, and Aurora is not the biggest ship.
I don't disagree, thematically it is "biggest baddest" and at AI hands it's not worth the DP points. Not an issue. Same thing with Aurora or Hyperion or Doom. It's fine that some ships are only good in players hands, it's an ok niche.Hyperion is actually very strong, possibly overpowered, even in AI hands... but only with Safety Override to enable teleportation while shields are up and get the flux stats it needs to sustain three medium weapons.
Wouldn't really call 1 medium + 1 potential medium slot a "bunch of missiles" for 20 DP. Manticore has that much missile firepower and it's not even built around it. Anyways I can't believe my eyes someone would say Fury is a safe ship, or more recent, that a pack of Furies mean business. No, both are factually wrong because my very first playthrough this patch, I had 3 Furies in my fleet probably 80% of the game. ...
The thing about SO Furies is they have frigate tier speed (ignoring their plasma burn) with a pair of 1000 energy DPS heavy blasters. I vaguely view them as an easier to find Hyperion replacement, that has a bit more PPT.Fury with SO is pretty silly (SO in general is overpowered IMO), but is also fast/durable enough to be used with used unstable injector+elite helmsmanship officer and double heavy blaster+ion cannon (no other weapons). Can almost max caps/vents, it smashes smaller things and can gang up on big ones. It does have the pretty common problem of low range ships, AI sometimes just doesn't want to close in so might need some extra babysitting when used as a line ship.
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Since playstyle and fitting are a huge component to effectiveness of ships, I'd be interested in hearing how people are configuring them for use by the AI, both for those that think they're underperforming and those that feel they're fine. It may be trying to shoehorn them into a job which they are ill-suited for.
Don't like SO so didn't bother with such builds.
I'm sure if you min max enough for a certain fight you can beat it with a lot of mono fleets, but I'm not sure if that's a valid argument for game balance.
The issue I have with the Fury is that it has so few mounts for its flux that you're heavily pushed into using a Heavy Blaster. Putting something else in the nose turret is just making things complicated for little gain, and often means skipping half your missiles.Yeah, for some reason whenever I try to mix it up with other weapons and reapers AI doesn't use the reapers nearly as well as it would on an Onslaught/Odyssey.
Also, unless I'm missing something the variant fits seem pretty bad, so in faction fleets it's rarely carrying its weight.
That brings up the age old question, what is a valid argument for game balance? As you noted, the DP cost is meaningless for early campaign, it's just a few supplies here and there. It only matter at the 240 DP fleet limit. So what am I usually fighting when I've amassed a full 240 DP fleet? Ordos, Doritos, and end game bounties. How do I test just the Fury effectiveness with as few other confounding factors? Just use Furies, aka a mono-fleet.Team players like Vigilance and Onslaught are going to have an infinitely worse time mono-fleeting than say Hyperion or Odyssey. A better test would be to assess which roles you want the hull to be competitive at, make up a couple different fleets to fit them in, then make up a couple more where you fit the tested hull's spot with its competitor (and with randos), and finally let your testers try all these against fleets you expect the player will be facing when using this hull and compare the results. The point would be to see whether the tested hull feels weaker than its competitors to the point where the players would prefer not using it so they don't shoot themselves in the foot.
Perhaps there's a better metric, and I'd love to hear other testing methodologies. General experience feedback is obviously valuable, but it's hard to place in context given it is presumably with a specific loadout (or set of loadouts) in a specific fleet composition played in a certain way.
Team players like Vigilance and Onslaught are going to have an infinitely worse time mono-fleeting than say Hyperion or Odyssey. A better test would be to assess which roles you want the hull to be competitive at, make up a couple different fleets to fit them in, then make up a couple more where you fit the tested hull's spot with its competitor (and with randos), and finally let your testers try all these against fleets you expect the player will be facing when using this hull and compare the results. The point would be to see whether the tested hull feels weaker than its competitors to the point where the players would prefer not using it so they don't shoot themselves in the foot.
It was simply too boring to have every Fury build be Heavy Blaster + Sabot Pod, since I already did that combo a million times on high tech ships. That's why I tried some experimenting with the AMB in a small turret but the ship either hangs back or goes in too deep. Now that it's brought up, yeah I'm also not a huge fan of the mount setup. It present itself like you can do a lot there, but is in fact very limited if you want an effective build. It all goes back to my age old complaint of high tech cruisers with only medium mounts, they'll either be frigate/destroyer hunters or rock Heavy Blasters with Sabots. We'll see how much of a difference with the Kinetic Blaster make, but I'm not getting my hopes high up.
I haven't tried Fury in the last patch, but my guess is that it feels weak without SO or cookie-cutter builds. Mono-fleeting is just an extreme case of wolfpacking, which was Fury's forte back when it was released and I wouldn't be surprised if it's still good at it now. Is it possible that Fury's current problem is that it lacks alternative builds that would feel viable?
It's the exact same build options the Aurora has.And that was a concern of mine when it was first teased. There's already a number of ships that pretty much have exact same build and design philosophies. I don't mind the Shrike because it's cheap. So either Fury or Aurora needs to change a little bit since imo they're too similar too each other. Bunch of medium energy and medium mounts, 180 omni shield, mobility system. Aurora has the advantage of having a better mobility system that can go backwards, that's it. If the fast high tech ships had more options for builds I wouldn't complain I think, right now it seems weird to have many same options which are basically "punch down" ships.
There's already a number of ships that pretty much have exact same build and design philosophies. I don't mind the Shrike because it's cheap.The fury really does feel less like it's own thing and more like the middle child between shrike and aurora, but those two ships are far apart enough they don't step on each other's toes even if they use the same weapons. It doesn't help that from an aesthetic standpoint the fury is the ugly duckling of the bunch.
The fury really does feel less like it's own thing and more like the middle child between shrike and aurora, but those two ships are far apart enough they don't step on each other's toes even if they use the same weapons. It doesn't help that from an aesthetic standpoint the fury is the ugly duckling of the bunch.It is the Falcon of high-tech, and one of the few ships in the high-tech blueprint pack (instead of locked up in rare singleton blueprints).
It's the exact same build options the Aurora has.And that was a concern of mine when it was first teased. There's already a number of ships that pretty much have exact same build and design philosophies. I don't mind the Shrike because it's cheap. So either Fury or Aurora needs to change a little bit since imo they're too similar too each other. Bunch of medium energy and medium mounts, 180 omni shield, mobility system. Aurora has the advantage of having a better mobility system that can go backwards, that's it. If the fast high tech ships had more options for builds I wouldn't complain I think, right now it seems weird to have many same options which are basically "punch down" ships.
What I’m hearing is that the Fury doesn’t have a place because the Aurora exists.
Actually, that makes me wonder, instead of High Scatter Amplifier halving range and giving beams hard flux as a hullmod, what if Alex doubled down on the long range beam spam and made a hullmod such that all beams gained allied ship passthrough (like what the Paladin has).I thought viable sustained long-range beams are a no-no because there is no counterplay to them. Wouldn't it end up in a situation like the Pilum spam?
What I’m hearing is that the Fury doesn’t have a place because the Aurora exists.Aurora costs too much DP. Fury is nice because its DP cost is more reasonable, even if slightly overpriced at 20, and it is more widespread (for now). Wonder if Independents will have it after the factions get "uniquified" next release.
Actually, that makes me wonder, instead of High Scatter Amplifier halving range and giving beams hard flux as a hullmod, what if Alex doubled down on the long range beam spam and made a hullmod such that all beams gained allied ship passthrough (like what the Paladin has).I thought viable sustained long-range beams are a no-no because there is no counterplay to them. Wouldn't it end up in a situation like the Pilum spam?
I mean, I can't think of a time when I've put a Graviton beam as a primary weapon on a ship, as opposed to an after thought on an Eagle or Falcon.Wolf because it does not have the flux stats to comfortably support pulse laser or any other medium-sized energy bolt weapon.
What I'm suggesting isn't actually increasing their peak power, simply making them more AI friendly and opening up a new usage possibility. The DPS is exactly the same. Since they're long range, normally you can surround or line up such that the beams can concentrate anyways. However, it does open up the possibility of more efficient escort ships, since those tend to hang behind the escorted ship. It helps the case where you've only put in 1 or 2 beam ships, or only partially use beams, like on an Eagle. Certainly would help solidify Eagles as anti-fighters (and maybe even anti-missile with Heavy Burst Lasers (1190 range with Gunnery Implants, Advanced optics, ITU) .Since the main limit on long range is usually ships getting in each other's way a big ball of tac lasers with advanced optics+IPDAI/PD would roll over anything IMO.
Since the main limit on long range is usually ships getting in each other's way a big ball of tac lasers with advanced optics+IPDAI/PD would roll over anything IMO.
Tac laser is already kinda-sorta OK, if you have some other weapons on the target it steadily plinks away and usually does surprising amounts of hull damage for the cost.
Agreed that tacticals and especially gravitons aren't the stronger weapons in the game ofc, and need to be spammed or be used along squalls/ballistics to really work.
The beam build didn't have enough pressure to be able to keep the Furies together - they kept drifting apart as the remnants pushed in, at which point they had trouble killing even remnant destroyers, plus needed to constantly issue eliminate orders to get them to focus fire - they typically shoot at the closest. Other ships might do better with it, but at first look it doesn't seem crazy. Now tachyon lances might be too strong with it - AI typically tries to trip up opponents by getting foes in a line, and so it wouldn't be as valuable in this case against a certain subset of weapons - but that's already true of guided missiles and fighters.
Wait why doesn't energy AAF equivalent exist? It's perfect for ships with crap mounts and already good speed. Not sure how that would work with beams but you wouldn't mount beams on such ships anyway.Isn't that HEF? It's just not as flashy as AAF because the amount of lead going down range remains the same. Actually, it'd be kinda cool if HEF caused the projectiles to change colour so it's more obvious when someone's using it.
At 8 DP, I just run scarabs. Officered wolfpack scarabs are amazing.
Also, I think Fury should be 19.99 DP.Ah, the negotiator.
The base stats of the eagle are nearly the same as the base stats of the aurora. Basically the only advantages in raw stats the aurora has is 10 more speed, 10 more ordinance points, and 200 more dissipation, which is not much for a ship that costs 8 dp more than the eagle. Also, the eagle can mount flux efficient ballistic weapons and make better use of it's flux than the aurora, so that kind of diminishes the flux dissipation advantage of the aurora.Aurora also gets 125 speed from jets, instead of 50 for Eagle, and has 6 times more missiles. The ships aren't directly comparable like that, because the speed difference is much, much more extreme than what you imply.
The base stats of the eagle are nearly the same as the base stats of the aurora. Basically the only advantages in raw stats the aurora has is 10 more speed, 10 more ordinance points, and 200 more dissipation, which is not much for a ship that costs 8 dp more than the eagle. Also, the eagle can mount flux efficient ballistic weapons and make better use of it's flux than the aurora, so that kind of diminishes the flux dissipation advantage of the aurora.