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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - dead_hand

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1
Suggestions / Re: Fix AI suicide by Fortress Shield
« on: May 25, 2020, 01:02:44 AM »
Do you have a recording of the battle? Quite curious as to why the Auroras would stick around a Paragon for long enough to cause troubles with Flux, especially if they are equipped with beam weapons which do meager damage. Taking 4 plasma cannons to the face is not exactly what the Aurora was designed for :S

2
Suggestions / Re: Niggles/Annoyances from a playthrough
« on: May 25, 2020, 12:56:37 AM »
No mods, 0.91a-RC8

...

* I'm playing on "easy" and I've been playing spacey games for decades (and am not too shabby at them as a general rule), but I still keep losing whatever ship I'm piloting with great ease, even if it's a cruiser and the rest of my ships are destroyers (against destroyers/frigates). I transfer into another ship in the fleet and shortly thereafter I'm dead again while the rest of my fleet goes on with no loses. I'm not that aggressive either. Now, for one thing this is a testament to the great AI, and obviously I'm doing lots of things wrong, but apart from this balance issue, I *have* to participate in the battles otherwise I'm just spending 10 minutes watching a (admittedly pretty) space combat happen. I can't micro my fleet (which I'd be more than happy to do) because I have a piddly amount of command points. So what am I /meant/ to do during the combat? I can't micro my shields/weapons like the AI does, I'm more of a strategist than a tactician but the game design decisions means that the space combat portion can be quite not-fun against anything except an inferior force.


Not all cruisers are great at combat. Some of them have more of an exploration focus (e.g. good cargo space, exploration related hullmods), e.g. Venture Class, Apogee Class cruisers. While they can generally beat a destroyer 1v1, they will not survive if they take on too many of them. If you are done with exploration, and want a more battle-focused play, then your aim should be (besides making money) to buy a strong cruiser like the Eagle or Aurora. You are much less likely to lose either of those ships, and pretty much impossible to lose them if the enemy has no Capital ships.

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* Further to this, in big fleet battles there simply aren't enough command points in the first place, even without microing. Reinforcements eat them all up alone, if I were to bother retreating that'd eat a bunch more. Didn't get the command-point upgrades because spent my levels on non-combat stuff (not that +3 points would have done much).


Completely agree here. Although there is a skill you can learn for more Command Points, it's not enough for the largest battles, unless you go for the pure Paragon spam.

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* I "resisted" an AI inspection and took a -50 hit to rep! Ok, I get that they *really* don't like that, but it should have told me that the consequences would be so bad then I would have simply bribed instead. That's a *huge* rep hit with no warning; no way I'm going to bother grinding that back. If I click on the event after the fact it actually says "relationship reduced by 59". :-/


Ah. If you decide to use any AI Cores (Gamma, Beta, Alpha) in your colonies, it will trigger AI inspections from the hegemony. If the Hegemony AI Inspection fleet gets defeated by either Your personal fleet, or any fleet belonging to your faction, then the Hegemony will declare war on you and your faction, and relations will go to -50 instantly (if not lower already). Essentially, the Hegemony will become your enemy in each and every game-play, unless you decide NOT to make any colonies yourself. Having low relations with Hegemony is completely normal, I end up with -100 on every play-through, unmodded and modded  ;)

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* Forced manual combat against tiny fleets when I'm orders of magnitude more powerful.


Use fighters. Fighters can shred frigates and destroyers insanely quick.

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* Chasing the last frigate or two down (and it's not decided I've "won" yet). Gah! Especially when they have that jumping ability.


If you think the ships with the phase skim ('jump') ability is bad, wait until you have to fight ships with the phase cloak ability :D there is nothing you can do to catch then, other than waiting, or installing console commands and typing 'Nuke' (recommended solution).

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* Given that (again) I can't micro my fleet, it would be nice if there was a "keep away from all other ships" option for my carriers. I've tried various things (assigning escorts, placing them "behind" where I think the combat will be, assigning them as escorts, etc) but they're glass cannons. I don't have enough command points to keep repositioning them away from the combat (which is always moving fluidly).


Carriers naturally keep away from combat, except for the Legion class, because it is not a pure Carrier (it's a kind of a hybrid combat and carrier ship). However, if the enemy can keep your fighters busy with their own, and has a bunch of fast destroyers, it's a bit of a coin toss as to who will win :P

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...

* One of my colonies in particular keeps getting raided (by various factions). Eventually they took down the starbase, and now all the raids succeed because there is no starbase and they raid while it's still "disrupted". This has happened at least 5 times in a row now! Starfortress, heavy batteries, patrol, size 7, 270% fleet, me administrating with all 3 colony perks.

* The pirates keep setting up next to one of my colonies in particular. Then I go there and destroy them, then a few months later they're at it again... :-/ Happened at least 4 times. Colony has patrol, surely they should, you know, patrol known pirate places. (Another colony has High Command).

One colony with one High Command and Star Fortress will repel many of the common attacks, but a fully fledged pirate raid can overwhelm that. If you want a base that is impenetrable for unmodded vanilla, get a system with 5 planets, colonize them all, build High Command and Star Fortress on all of them, put Alpha Core as Administrator for all, and put Alpha Core into all High Commands and Star Fortresses. It is usually best to keep all your colonies in one system if possible, there's not really a lot of advantage in colonizing between distant locations, because of the aforementioned pirate threats.

3
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 20, 2020, 02:38:24 PM »
That's all fair, yeah. I do think the Paragon would see some solid use at 90 supplies/month, though - it just might be more in line with how good it is. 120 would be... a lot.

I also happen to like the extra fuel use from low-tech ships with burn drive - thematically - so I don't want to touch that.

Another related point, as far as the next release - the higher DP cost of the Paragon will matter more when it affects the magnitude of some fleetwide bonuses. I.E. (numbers made up on the spot) if you get +15% max CR from Crew Training, but having the Paragon pushes you over the limit and you only get +12% or some such - fleetwide! - then, while not a major concern, that's certainly a way a higher-powered ship pays for it. Especially when this is added up over several skills.

Afflictors and Phase ships need balancing. Not (just) in terms of power, as a player you can cheese through the whole game with afflictors, but also the annoyance factor, that you need to wait for their CR to expire to be able to kill them. It's annoying enough that it got me to disable phase ships from the game altogether.

Please consider a hullmod that disables phase cloak ability in a circular range. All stations, and radiant class should get this ability innately, and should be available as a hullmod on capitals at least.

4
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 19, 2020, 12:31:42 PM »
(Edit: the Condor's not too bad, really, btw. The Drover is just an enormous outlier, so, I don't think it's a great point of reference. It badly needs the nerf bat, and has had an appointment with it.)

Is there any chance/hope for a Drover nerf?

See bolded part :)

Jeez, I am evidently completely blind, my apologies. Thank you for the good news ofc! :)

5
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 19, 2020, 09:27:39 AM »

Paragon > Onslaught. Always and in every type of engagement. This frankly feels like the most egregious example given the difference in power. But the Onslaught costs more to upkeep.

60 DP vs 40 DP, it would be quite sad if +20 DP did NOT amount to a clear advantage.

6
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 19, 2020, 04:36:47 AM »
Well, a lot of the low-tech stuff tends to be "meant to be pretty bad", but that's not the design philosophy of low-tech, that's just many of the "intentionally bad" ships happening to be low-tech. E.G. the Hound, Cerberus, Buffalo Mk.II, and the Condor, are all low-grade ships, so if they generally don't work out - especially past the early game! - that's to be expected. They're supposed to underperform, for various reasons.

Really, in those size classes, the only "proper" combat ships that are supposed to be up to par are the Lasher and the Enforcer, so I wouldn't lean too heavily on the other ships when trying to analyze things.

(That said, I know what you mean in general; it's largely I think a question of progression. I'd generally agree that the early game flies by too fast right now. The skill revamp should help here, too - not specifically by extending the early game, but by encouraging smaller ships/fleets in several ways...)

(Edit: the Condor's not too bad, really, btw. The Drover is just an enormous outlier, so, I don't think it's a great point of reference. It badly needs the nerf bat, and has had an appointment with it.)

Is there any chance/hope for a Drover nerf?

7
Bug Reports & Support / Re: station destroyed by pirates
« on: May 18, 2020, 04:04:14 PM »
Just remembered another very likely cause.

Star fortresses class stations have small vessels that circle around the station. These do not avoid any obstacles, so if you have a larger ship e.g. capital ship crossing path with one of those, they will keep bumping into the ship's shield until it is destroyed. This is also classed as friendly fire.

8
Bug Reports & Support / Re: station destroyed by pirates
« on: May 18, 2020, 11:30:00 AM »
hi, just had a strange bug
I have to reload

I was fighting againtst pirates in Hybrasil
planet1,helped TT killed all pirates
planet2,helped TT killed all pirates, station was destroyed by pirates->relations to TT went down to -45 :o after I won

my relations to pirates are on that run: -100

Was there any friendly fire? E.g. did any stray missiles from your ships or anything of the sorts hit the station? Or did any TT ships bump with their hull into the shield of your ships and get destroyed? It's possible to lose rep in unexpected ways like that.

9
General Discussion / Re: Worldgen
« on: May 17, 2020, 06:47:40 PM »
White dwarfs are usually terrible for me, they often have one barren world and nothing else. I'm pretty sure I've seen red stars have decent worlds before though. I'm almost positive blue giants can have habitable tundra worlds, and they can also have really good cry-volcanic worlds. Of course yellow and orange are the best chance though, but I think there's lots of variance.

Yes, they can. Blue giants are my favourite to look for. They often end up having several planets, so you can create a tough system with many patrol fleets, so you never need to go and defend your colonies with your personal fleet.

10
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 17, 2020, 07:16:54 AM »
Yeah the burn drive is really nice for the cruisers and capitals as it helps them hound down and peruse a fleeing enemy. Two onslaughts set to eliminate a radiant battleship can hound it to the end of the maps as it never gets a chance to properly vent under the unending attack. And even they are ripped open by a reaper torpedo or two.


I fail to believe that you can use onslaughts to effectively kill Radiants. Radiants seem pretty much designed to counter Low-Tech ships. I used to test Radiants out for fun and on Autopilot, it can wipe out entire hedge detachments (although that was with a custom weapons layout, but still...)

Admittedly it's not like I was using stock loadouts, and I never tried to fight an even battle, and I supported them with legions, but I have a video of me hunting down Ordo fleets.

Audio balancing is "Luddite" but it's good fun to just rampage through Remnant fleets.

Thanks for sharing the video! Was interesting to see everything I've ever learned about the game flipped upside down! Would've expected a hands down Remnant victory there tbh. Congrats on the epic win!!

Don't think there's much I can add other than that though, it seems that we are playing with different settings for max DP, so that can have sweeping changes on the game-play. (At least I don't remember being able to add 300 DP against a Remnant Ordo) I think the highest DP I've ever seen was 240 or so, but then that did involve a star fortress, but recently I've been playing modded, so Remnants end up being 100/100 relation


Well, I do. And it is wide.

Surprisingly, well-equipped medusa is effective against a larger targets, especially if you give order to attack single target to more than one medusa. They are just bigger wolfs and will flank slower targets, dealing all the damage they can, and it's quite big for a destroyer. Using the phase lances in combination with needlers can be devastating against most capitals. That is a slow process, tho'.

But when it comes to a smaller enemies, AI medusas sometimes dive into the enemy line, loosing all the system charges and get surrounded by a smaller enemies. And the shield is not wide, and an armor is sub-par. Usually death.

Seems like we think alike:

Spoiler
[close]

11
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 17, 2020, 05:27:37 AM »
Yeah the burn drive is really nice for the cruisers and capitals as it helps them hound down and peruse a fleeing enemy. Two onslaughts set to eliminate a radiant battleship can hound it to the end of the maps as it never gets a chance to properly vent under the unending attack. And even they are ripped open by a reaper torpedo or two.


I fail to believe that you can use onslaughts to effectively kill Radiants. Radiants seem pretty much designed to counter Low-Tech ships. I used to test Radiants out for fun and on Autopilot, it can wipe out entire hedge detachments (although that was with a custom weapons layout, but still...)

The only destroyer* worth carrying to late(r)-game is the Medusa. It has the necessary ship system to survive against Cruisers, and with the right backup, it can even harass some capitals.

Medusa's ship system gives it the potential to survive and be useful in cruiser/capital dominated battlefield (under player control), but AI is fairly incompetent at using the skimmer.

Hammerhead is a simple brick of stats with a straightforward system - point to the enemy and activate system, done. Which makes it the most AI-compatible direct combat DE by far. Any other DE can defeat it under player control, but that involves more advanced tactics than what AI uses.

Odd. I have not had major negative experiences with the AI piloting Medusa ships. What loadout did you use for your medusas? I like using them to harrass/disable carriers of enemy fleets, I've never been let down by them. They're usually not (very) good at attacking capital ships, but I think its quite rare for destroyers to be able to take on capitals anyway.

The reason why I don't think the hammerhead is so great, is because the weapon arcs aren't wide, and mostly the weapons are all on its front, so the whole ship needs to turn in order for its weapons to be able to target its enemy, which is a big inherent weakness.

12
General Discussion / Re: Low Tech ship non viablility
« on: May 17, 2020, 03:47:27 AM »
The problem with the Enforcer is not the Enforcer, it is the Hammerhead. Nerf outliers, don't power creep things that are fine.
Is it, though? The Hammerhead is just about the only vanilla combat destroyer that I will snap up once I have started transitioning to a cruiser/capital fleet. And unlike the Drover, the Hammerhead doesn't obsolete anything of a larger ship class - it is good, but not a substitute for a real cruiser.

Either the other destroyers that aren't named "Drover" should be brought up to the level of the Hammerhead or there needs to be a change in the combat mechanics to make destroyers generally better before the nerf hammer is brought down on the Hammerhead. Otherwise, all that would be accomplished is making a marginalized ship class even more marginalized.

Why do you like the hammerhead so much? It doesn't have anything special about it. The only destroyer* worth carrying to late(r)-game is the Medusa. It has the necessary ship system to survive against Cruisers, and with the right backup, it can even harrass some capitals. But a hammerhead? It'll get rekt as soon as it approaches any half-decent ship.

*The Drover is only so good because of fighter spam. :-( I think it should be nerfed by changing its fighter slots (or at least one of them) to a fixed unchangable fighter type. If you can fill up a whole fleet of Drovers with Sparks, then it's disturbingly OP.

13
Modding / Re: [0.9.1a] Advanced Hullmods
« on: May 16, 2020, 07:16:08 PM »
Several new mods, most of which I made because I absolutely loathe paying twice for something. I'll pay in Ordnance Points or I'll pay in drawbacks, but not both!

That's something I can agree with. I feel too many Hullmods, both from vanilla and mods, tackle a downside just because the mod itself is an upgrade, but sometimes it feels unnecessary. For example, there is no downside to spending 20 OP in Flux Capacitors/Vents, why should there always be one for other things?

You are penalized already in that case by a less than optimal OP to Flux conversion rate. So you are paying a hefty OP price for giving the ship a bit of edge.

14
General Discussion / Re: Worldgen
« on: May 16, 2020, 11:23:36 AM »
Try using Old instead of Mixed.

15
General Discussion / Re: Worldgen
« on: May 16, 2020, 10:49:58 AM »
again, you can inhabit any planet you want. so the word "habitable" has a thin red line. Can I colonize a volcanic? yes. can I colonize a barren? yes. You can colonize anything u want. The problem is, all barren, toxic, bombarded, gas. If this is as intended, to have only those types of planets, and have basically everything else null and void. then fine.

What sector age setting do you choose at the beginning? For some reason, 'Mixed' tends to be quite a crapshoot for habitable worlds.

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