Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

151

Suggestions / Re: About That Whole Salvaged-Hull Thing...

« on: May 02, 2017, 04:36:16 PM »

Another thing I found with a garbage-ball fleet is how the fleet engages with the AI piloting garbge ships. There are very real stacking efficiency penalties that play out in an actual battle, where the AI's engagement width is a lot lower than it should be. More often than not, the AI will engage 1 v 1, even though the enemy fleet is outnumbered maybe 3:1 or 4:1. I've observed my lasher ball to frequently engage in a triangle, where one ship goes first, and two ships remain behind it. This is especially true when my AI is piloting ships against enemy ships that outclass it. A lot of this leads to the garbage fleet becoming less and less effective as its size increases.

One other way I've thought about to make garbage hulls more effective is to buff ships that are more designed to be garbage hulls (maneuverable and houses nothing but missles). The kite is not meant for garbge balls; needs a buff changing its maneuver jets with flairs, no civiling hull, and burn 10. Same thing with the buffalo 2, but only remove its civvy hull. This way, I can just throw a much of these garbage missles balls at my enemy, and watch the magic happen.

152

General Discussion / Re: Odyssey looks quite unique

« on: May 02, 2017, 04:16:58 PM »

Symmetry is also redundant as a craft requirement in space. Symmetry is important for flight craft due to the aerodynamic requirements. In space, those requirements do not exist. The important factors are more so targetting profile and weapon coverage.

If you look at the Odyssey, its weapon mounts are portruding from its long frame, and thus in a 3D plane would have excellent coverage as the ships body would not interfere with the firing arcs. Additionally, a long slender ship would need less rotational force to "rotate" the ship along its main axis in a 3D plane, thus allowing it to rotate and position its weaponry much more easily. This is as opposed something like the dominator or onslaught, where frontal heavy weaponry have very limited firing arcs and its wide diameter greatly increases in the force require to "rotate" the ship in a dogfight.

This above sort of design philosphy is one argued strongly for in "the expanse" sci-fi series. The author actually went into great detail with fans explaining why ships would look "more like office buildings".

From my perspective, ship design that "don't make sense" are ships that fire broadsides. In naval warfire it makes sense because the firing "arcs" and positioning is more or less on a 2D plane. In space, the ability for a ship to have portuding weapon mounts and that can fire in a 180 degree arc (the only areas where there is no coverage is the area "below" the weapon mount), makes fire concentration most significant towards the front as well as the rear, as opposed to the sides (since weapons on all "sides" of the ship can concentrate fire towards the front". Additionally, the ability for "spin" and "rotation" makes broadside fire much less important. What becomes more important is the targetting profile of a ship. A ship that fires broadsides have a wide profile relative to its target. A ship with a slender body allows it to have a small profile, while maintaining the same strong fire concentration. Thus the wide body of the dominator, makes a lot less sense compared to the long body of the oddysey.

That said, the oddysey does have one small thing that doesn't make sense. concentrated fire from all of the oddyseys main guns will create a larger profile than what is actually required of the ship.  But other than that, its actually a really scientific lay out of a battle cruiser.

153

Suggestions / Re: About That Whole Salvaged-Hull Thing...

« on: April 27, 2017, 09:04:49 AM »

I've been playing on a pure salvage pirate game with no missions and no bounties (old school style), and honestly the salvage tree is very much usable. Commerce raiding with a fleet of 10 lashers that only cost 0.5 supplies a day is more profitable compared to the 0.72 pirating options. Granted, hyperspace raiding is not profitable in the least, but hyperspace raiding wasn't profitable in 0.72 either.

I don't think the viability issue lies with the d-mod effects, but rather the other gameplay elements that you are forced to forgo with the salvage junk fleet. Survey and exploration just gives so much more, with fewer risks. You can also pretty much gather the full compliment of hull-mods with exploration; you can't with ship-salvage skills. Something like augmented drives is unaccessible for the salvage fleet, which cripples your in system normal burn to 9 most of the time (granted the free e-burn skill and s-burn does help alleviate this, but having 10 burn is still really important).

D-mod fleets are also much less powerful during the late game, where as the normal exploration tech fleet is much more powerful during the late game. D-Mods are tolerable on frigate hulls because they are meant for close quarters roles, and thus can compensate by relying on flux efficient weapons like MGs/missles instead of autcannons. This is not the case with destroyers, as they rely a lot more on having good flux capacity and can't switch into an efficient close quarters role. The hammerhead for example, requires mortars/maulers + railguns/light needlers for a long range fight or chainguns + railguns for close quarters. Neither of these options are in anyway low flux cost and there are no low-flux replacement for these setups.

And of course,  d-mods are awful for cruisers. Flux and armor d-mods are ok for frigates, but make cruisers into glass cannons that can't maneuver. Frigates don't suffer as much from lower survivability because they rely more so on being small and maneuverable. Cruisers are more about firepower and shield strength, both of which are heavily impacted by d-mods. The AI is already not very good at flux management, with normal cruisers; D-mod cruisers are just asking for trouble in the hands of the AI. I've scuttled all my d-modded cruisers because of I can't afford to have the AI fly a d-mod cruiser and get destroyed due to poor flux management. A single cruiser loss is crippling in crew costs, and cargo losses.

SO my suggestions for buffing d-mod skills are:
Nerf exploration

Make important hull-mods like drive field and ITU avaiable in markets, or droppable from fleet kills (currently super rare because no AI ships are equipped with ITU nor drive field)

Make low-cost, low damage alternatives to midrange/long range HE/kinetic ballistic weaponry, like those available in the imperium mod (sludge guns). That or create some hull mod that lowers all weapon damage in exchange for a flux discount on all weapons. This way the alternate loadouts for a d-mod dominator is not just a whole bunch of underutilized mounts with all the saved OP thrown into capacitors and vents.

Make a hull-mod that saves crew when a ship is destroyed, with percentage saved scaling for ship size. This way d-mod cruiser losses are not as severe and d-mod cruisers become actually useful and viable.

154

General Discussion / Re: i think SO need a nerf

« on: April 27, 2017, 08:16:16 AM »

SO is probably not as overpowered as you think. It is only powerful in some ships due to the lack of other strong loadouts. A lot of ships with access to only 700 range weapons or without the flux or speed to support a long/med range arsenal benefit a lot from SO because they cannot perform any roles other than a front-hitting ship. Lasher, for example, can really only use assault guns with dual auto cannons and have a limited flux pool/dissipation, thus SO is important to allow it to come out far ahead when trading flux with an enemy.

for other ships, those with alternative potential roles, SO isnt nearly as powerful. Hammerheads could use SO, but often do not need to have it because of its potential as a mid-range (700-800) ship (winning a head to head fight is easy when you can hit your opponent's frigates when you can't be hit back). Tempests do not need SO because they already have the terminator drone to out-flux or out-maneuver their opponent without SO. Ships that can attach ion weapons do not need SO, since good flux/management will allow you to trade flux at least evenly, and when both shields come down, your ion weapons will allow you to come ahead. Eagle do not need SO, since you can just outrange your opponent with hypervelocity drivers and heavy maulers.

155

Modding / Re: Misc modding questions that are too minor to warrant their own thread

« on: April 26, 2017, 09:49:31 PM »

Does anyone know what values to change to allow certain hull-mods to spawn in markets? I played around with hull_mods.csv and "tier" did not have any effect on what hull mods can spawn in markets. Is this something that's specified in the economics files?

156

General Discussion / Sector Age/Size and Income from Surveying and Salvaging

« on: April 24, 2017, 11:34:07 AM »

Has anyone experimented with the different eras in ProcGen yet? Does a younger sector make the surveying game more difficult as there are less habitable planets? What about sector size? Does that decrease the distance for surveying missions?

157

General Discussion / Re: Need suggestions for interesting alternate playstyles in 8.0?

« on: April 23, 2017, 07:25:54 AM »

I was thinking of maybe doing a pure exploration, scavenger, pirate play through for 8.0, with no access to any trade (the resource manage will be really fun). I don't know how I would set up something like this though. Anyone have any suggestions?

You can trade survey data to pirates, but you won't get much from it due to low stability, and none of their stations accept AI cores, atleast to my knowledge. I imagine that starting with the Wayfarer and Shepard would be a good start to allow for early exploration, and some of the unsurveyed planets in core worlds have given me class IV data so that could be a early boost in your economy.

Also, when you wrote that you won't have access to any trade, do you mean completely neglecting trade? As in, you will never buy or sell goods? If that's the case I guess you will have to get all your supplies and fuel via battles and salvage from debris field.

I think there's enough resources that a low maintainance, salvage fleet could potentially work in the outer systems. The only issue is that there is no abandoned stations in the outer systems to store extra goods. I could try it in the internal systems, but a lot of potential supply gain comes from derelicts debris not available in the main systems. I wish someone could make a mod where there are stations in the outer systems too, so I can play an outersystem pirate.

158

General Discussion / Need suggestions for interesting alternate playstyles in 8.0?

« on: April 22, 2017, 09:57:00 PM »

So I've played through most of the available content for 8.0 and its been fun. However, the game has gotten a lot easier and I've really quickly reached end game through exploration. The challenge and difficulties of the previous game are no longer there.

I personally really enjoyed doing high difficulty playthroughs in 7.2, one of my favorite was playing as a pure pirate with hostile faction relations with everyone. I was thinking of maybe doing a pure exploration, scavenger, pirate play through for 8.0, with no access to any trade (the resource manage will be really fun). I don't know how I would set up something like this though. Anyone have any suggestions?

159

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Save File Corruption

« on: April 21, 2017, 07:15:12 PM »

I do not! Will download and let you know! Thanks for the quick reply!!!

160

Bug Reports & Support / Save File Corruption

« on: April 21, 2017, 07:08:28 PM »

Well looks like I got a corrupted save

Not sure how to make sense of this.

Caused by: com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.reflection.ObjectAccessException: Could not call com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.CampaignShipEngineGlow.readResolve() : null
   at com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.SerializationMembers.callReadResolve(SerializationMembers.java:84)
   at com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.reflection.AbstractReflectionConverter.unma rshal(AbstractReflectionConverter.java:264)
   at com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convert(TreeUnmarshaller.java:72)
   ... 797 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.getHullSpec(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.CampaignShipEngineGlow.readResolve(Unknown Source)
   at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
   at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.util.SerializationMembers.callReadResolve(SerializationMembers.java:76)
   ... 799 more

161

General Discussion / Re: I'm bored.

« on: April 14, 2017, 10:37:31 AM »

I started my undergrad with starsector

I'm about to graduate. Still years from 1.0.

Guess I should apply to law school so I can still be in school when the game gets released.

162

General Discussion / Re: Sensors: Useful?

« on: April 01, 2017, 10:27:38 PM »

Go Dark is useful in asteroid belts too, you pretty much go invisible.

You can use the pings in hyperspace and it'll tell you pretty much everything in the non-storm area around a jumppoint. I usually just wait at jumppoints to conserve fuel and spam pings until I find a nice target.

163

General Discussion / Re: Missile-centric ship longevity

« on: April 01, 2017, 06:59:15 PM »

There are quite a few missles that can fire through the course of an entire battle without running out, so the limited ammo aspect is not as restricting to me as it is to the OP. I mean sure, if you autofire some missles, most will empty their ammo within a minute. However, accounting for the prevalance of PD, I only fire when I have a high degree of confidence of the ordinance hitting its target.

To be honest, the ammo restriction does not even limit me alot of the time  (unless on a small ship with just reapers), since most of the time I only use my missles against targets that outclass me, and only when the target is fluxed out or their PD is emp-ed. Quite often I finish with ammo remaining, but that could just be because I'm bad with missles.

Now, if I'm on a cruiser or capital that has to kill destroyers and frigates repeatedly, I will select missles with 10+ volleys and have ammo for an entire fight. That usually is enough of an adjustment to prevent 0 ammo.

I do, however, agree with the OP in the sense that the missle arsenal do not have enough long engagement specialization at the moment. There's a lot more of "burst" missle than missles that provide sustained fire (albeit still with a ammo restriction). Lower dmg/high ammo missles intending to overwhelm PD or to supplement existing fire would be really helpful.

164

General Discussion / Re: Living the life on the dark side of the Law

« on: November 27, 2015, 09:39:23 AM »

What you should do is butter up the independents. Notion in Askonia has a great military market.

Anyone knows whats in the independents military market? Is there capital ships?

What the point at which pirates stop attacking you on sight? I'm at -19 and they still attack me, even though they have a "neutral" stance

I don't think they ever do stop. They're pirates after all.

165

General Discussion / Re: Living the life on the dark side of the Law

« on: November 26, 2015, 05:46:48 PM »

You can put together a fighter - carrier fleet fairly easily as a pirate. Granted its not as strong as the conventional set-ups, but its still powerful enough to take care of most convoys. The thunder fighter carries harpoon missles which melts straight through frigates.

There's some rare ships that will show up in the black market and open market. The key is to look for non-defective variants of destroyers as you're trading. Defectives are, in my opinion, worthless. It takes a lot of luck to put together a decent fleet of destroyers. My personal favorite has been the sunderer, though the non-defective variants are incredibly hard to find (buy it immediately if you find it). The Sunderer, equipped by a tachyon lance, can basically take down cruisers with ease. A clean hit from a tachyon lance will kill 3/4 of a frigate.

There are no real late-game options if you restrict yourself to purely the black markets. But, if you're only really going after convoys like me, then you really don't need capital ships. Just make sure you remain as at most suspicious/inhospitable to factions. This way, the relations will automatically improve back up by 15 every once in a while.