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General Discussion / Re: Will alpha core give station extra fire power ?
« on: Today at 02:39:33 PM »
It always gets gunnery implants iirc; I think the others are random?
Fractal Softworks Forum
- August 07, 2022, 06:07:36 PM
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News:
Starsector 0.95.1a is out! (12/10/21); Blog post: The Pilgrim's Path (07/19/22)
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General Discussion / Re: Do any damage bonuses affect EMP damage?
« on: Today at 09:53:23 AM »
It was annoying to test so its possible I misremembered. The damage bonus from point defense does apply I'm sure though.
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General Discussion / Re: Do any damage bonuses affect EMP damage?
« on: Today at 09:00:39 AM »Here's a slightly more iffy question: Do damage bonuses affect EMP arcs from ship systems? I'm guessing for weapon range, it's going to be a no.
When it comes to the range and damage of the Omen's system, I'm 90% sure that yes it is boosted in both range and damage by skills/hullmods! I'm certain its boosted in range by system expertise, and I believe I tested the elite Point Defense skill as well.
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General Discussion / Re: Should there be more Large missiles that don't shoot Large missiles?
« on: August 06, 2022, 03:37:11 PM »
The Hurricane is still an excellent weapon, yes, its just a different one from the Harpoon.
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Blog Posts / Re: Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2
« on: August 06, 2022, 11:06:41 AM »
I think the idea is exactly what you are saying: it lets ships armor tank squalls much more effectively, but keep it good at its job of anti-shield. Having HE missile spam to back up kinetic is just good fleet design on your part, but looking at your numbers the Squalls are putting in a lot of armor and hull damage on top of being the very dominant anti shield weapon.
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General Discussion / Re: Should there be more Large missiles that don't shoot Large missiles?
« on: August 06, 2022, 10:57:02 AM »
Re: Harpoon vs Hurricane:
Harpoon is a higher burst for its cost; 4x750=3000 for 10 OP, medium mount vs 9*500=4500 for 25 OP, large mount, and has a refire time of 8.25 vs 15. It has moderately better tracking than Hurricanes, but requires ECCM to reliably hit frigates and even some destroyers. It is great for rapidly overwhelming ships and I use tons of them! It pays for that by being much easier to shoot down (to the point where entire salvos of harpoons can't get through good PD, while hurricane submunitions often can), being much shorter ranged, and most crucially having much less ammo/total damage (9k vs 45k).
Hurricane has a somewhat low floor with the recent nerfs (going from 11 to 9 submunitions) and low accuracy without ECCM (with ECCM it is extremely accurate), but it has a high ceiling because it benefits more from ECCM, Racks, and the missile skill/its elite perk The Harpoon's low ammo is its weakness: with racks and the skill it has enough ammo to make a big difference in battles, but will still run out, and while the +50% firing rate is occasionally handy for rapid fire destruction, most of the time the missile is not firing because it lacks opportunity/would just waste itself, so that part of the skill is semi-wasted. The Hurricane has the ammo where the +50% fire rate is extremely valuable, almost like having an extra half weapon.
The Squall vs sabot is in a bit of a similar position: sabots are incredible burst and effective out of the box, but have short range and low ammo, while Squalls need ECCM but have the ammo where with +50% fire rate skill they are just an oppressive level of missiles.
Harpoon is a higher burst for its cost; 4x750=3000 for 10 OP, medium mount vs 9*500=4500 for 25 OP, large mount, and has a refire time of 8.25 vs 15. It has moderately better tracking than Hurricanes, but requires ECCM to reliably hit frigates and even some destroyers. It is great for rapidly overwhelming ships and I use tons of them! It pays for that by being much easier to shoot down (to the point where entire salvos of harpoons can't get through good PD, while hurricane submunitions often can), being much shorter ranged, and most crucially having much less ammo/total damage (9k vs 45k).
Hurricane has a somewhat low floor with the recent nerfs (going from 11 to 9 submunitions) and low accuracy without ECCM (with ECCM it is extremely accurate), but it has a high ceiling because it benefits more from ECCM, Racks, and the missile skill/its elite perk The Harpoon's low ammo is its weakness: with racks and the skill it has enough ammo to make a big difference in battles, but will still run out, and while the +50% firing rate is occasionally handy for rapid fire destruction, most of the time the missile is not firing because it lacks opportunity/would just waste itself, so that part of the skill is semi-wasted. The Hurricane has the ammo where the +50% fire rate is extremely valuable, almost like having an extra half weapon.
The Squall vs sabot is in a bit of a similar position: sabots are incredible burst and effective out of the box, but have short range and low ammo, while Squalls need ECCM but have the ammo where with +50% fire rate skill they are just an oppressive level of missiles.
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General Discussion / Re: Should there be more Large missiles that don't shoot Large missiles?
« on: August 05, 2022, 04:55:20 PM »
I'll also note that most of the large missiles play well with missile spec and its elite skill. The mediums tend to have low ammo even after doubling (though annihilators are pretty good here!), but the larges have more base and tend to be limited by firing rate. +50% firing rate on the larges is _quite_ good!
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General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« on: August 04, 2022, 09:01:34 AM »
The one thing HBL excels at is shooting down sabots before they pop - but it can only do that in a "clean" battlespace where other missiles aren't closer/saturating.
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General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« on: August 03, 2022, 04:39:35 PM »
I believe that, but the sim Eagle is... not so good lets say.
Errrr, no? Burn Drive is only forward. Maneuvering Jets is forwards, backwards, sideways, etc - a 50 speed bonus that can be active half the time for roughly 25 extra speed total. If the Eradicator is chasing the Eagle, then we should count the speed. If the Eradicator is backing off, then burn drive gives nothing.
...So its entirely incorrect to say that the pirate eradicator has a speed of 135. Its not equivalent to the Eagles speed of ~75 in this manner.
Its entirely correct. Manoeuvring jets are less about speed than manoeuvre, and burn drive is about speed, at the cost of manouvre . If you accept MJ as a speed increase then you may not dismiss BD, because it's doubly as valid.
Errrr, no? Burn Drive is only forward. Maneuvering Jets is forwards, backwards, sideways, etc - a 50 speed bonus that can be active half the time for roughly 25 extra speed total. If the Eradicator is chasing the Eagle, then we should count the speed. If the Eradicator is backing off, then burn drive gives nothing.
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General Discussion / Re: Coronal Hypershunt guardians early
« on: August 01, 2022, 04:58:11 PM »
And we all know to blame Grievous.
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General Discussion / Re: Coronal Hypershunt guardians early
« on: August 01, 2022, 04:46:47 PM »I may be joking here but at the same time, why does it cost the same? Other variants that have superior firepower cost more than the others (Eradicator for example). And it's not like it loses anything by not having a mobility system like its brethren since it has built-in SO. Sorry to everyone who enjoyed these little guys if my joke becomes true.
- Brawler(LP): Increased deployment cost to 6 (was: 5)
Honestly, yeah, this would be a good balance change. 7 (a 40% increase) is too much imo, but 20% would bring them more in line. AAF is a major upgrade and as you pointed out other ships have more DP from it, free SO is arguably an even bigger upgrade, and for players the ill advised modifications is a fairly cheap restore away.
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General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« on: August 01, 2022, 04:27:35 PM »
An Ion Beam is useful on long range pressure Eagles because otherwise the AI can tank the hits on the armor. Going 2x HVD + 1x Mauler also does the same, but that is cutting into the kinetic budget a lot. The Ion Beam doesn't help the Eagle all that much because this configuration of Eagles lacks the ability to capitalize, but in terms of helping other ships and being a pain for the enemy, the Ion Beam lets them shut down enemy offense, flame out enemies through their shields from the front, etc. (It certainly helps the Eagle to catch smaller ships when they have no engines.) For pure kiting (IE HVD) Eagles, the EMP from the HVD's stacks with the Ion Beam to be more reliable in terms of shutting things down. The flux cost is only 200/second, so they aren't expensive - for the pure kiting build the ship doesn't need any skills/flux distributor/stabilized shields to be neutral so I'd even argue that 1 ion beam means the ship is undergunned for any crowded fight in terms of flux expenditure.
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General Discussion / Re: About the new "Lion's Guard" ships teased in "Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2"
« on: July 31, 2022, 01:51:03 PM »Have to drive home the point about dictatorships being bad and inefficient. How else would you know that if an indie space sim didn't teach you?
Given the reactions from people in pages and pages of comments... I think that most people don't know or willfully disbelieve the mountains of evidence.
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Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf
« on: July 31, 2022, 10:41:25 AM »
The carrier skills are exactly the same as the phase skills - they encourage mixed fleets by. For very very large carrier fleets, the replacement rate skill is still worth it because in that limit every bit of replacement rate helps and the base bonus is so large. The +top speed skill and target leading is not worth it for 50+ bay fleets.
For mixed but fighter heavy compositions, say if the player has 16 bays in the fleet, the fighter skills are worthwhile. +25% replacement rate (37.5% on an officered ship) and +10% max speed (15% on officered) are good. For fleets that want some fighters to supplement other ships (say 3 herons/moras for 9 bays, 2 legions, Astral + Heron etc, something like that) the impact of the skills are transformational, especially with officers: +75% replacement (on top of 10% lower time from CR) means that even the heaviest bombers getting destroyed doesn't neuter the replacement rate, and you can have a neverending stream of interceptors with +40% speed - extreme example is Thunders going around at 630 speed which honestly might be too fast even with the autoaim at max...
For mixed but fighter heavy compositions, say if the player has 16 bays in the fleet, the fighter skills are worthwhile. +25% replacement rate (37.5% on an officered ship) and +10% max speed (15% on officered) are good. For fleets that want some fighters to supplement other ships (say 3 herons/moras for 9 bays, 2 legions, Astral + Heron etc, something like that) the impact of the skills are transformational, especially with officers: +75% replacement (on top of 10% lower time from CR) means that even the heaviest bombers getting destroyed doesn't neuter the replacement rate, and you can have a neverending stream of interceptors with +40% speed - extreme example is Thunders going around at 630 speed which honestly might be too fast even with the autoaim at max...
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Suggestions / Re: Fleet size limit, talents, and state of end game
« on: July 31, 2022, 10:29:15 AM »
Why are players forced to spam capitals?