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1

Mods / Re: [0.95a] DIY Planets - Terraforming and more!

« on: July 12, 2022, 02:46:15 PM »

Just wanted to give a warning to people about this -- I'm not sure whether it's just an issue inherent to the mod itself or it conflicting with another mod, but DIY Planets broke AI core drops from remnant fleets and stations for me, such that they never dropped under any circumstances, even the guaranteed drop from killing a station.

So I think after doing some of my own testing with the mod I found out that it doesn't remove drops or influence them, even without the mod the guaranteed drop didn't occur mind you I play with a very large mod list and I imagine you did the same, good news you can still play with DIY planets and other mods you have and get drops from fleets, altho im not sure if the percentage rates were normal  or I just have imhumane I only got an Alpha after killing maybe 40 fleets over 3 hours (I put on god mode to test)which resulted in 26/21/1 of G/B/A.

It's likely some very specific combination of mods, because I cross-checked every combination and the only one which consistently caused it was DIY Planets. Which makes sense, because the issue only started when I began a new campaign with DIY instead of TASC and every test campaign I started with the exact same modset sans DIY didn't have it.

2

Mods / Re: [0.95a] DIY Planets - Terraforming and more!

« on: July 11, 2022, 03:44:23 PM »

Just wanted to give a warning to people about this -- I'm not sure whether it's just an issue inherent to the mod itself or it conflicting with another mod, but DIY Planets broke AI core drops from remnant fleets and stations for me, such that they never dropped under any circumstances, even the guaranteed drop from killing a station.

3

General Discussion / Re: Do we really need Fragmentation damage ?

« on: September 14, 2021, 06:00:06 PM »

Frag damage is the "economy" damage.  Frag weapons tend to be cheaper, both in cost and ordnance points, because they're not specialized at and are generally bad for cracking any kind of defenses.  That being said, I really want to know what flak weapons people have been using because every time I employ flak of any variety, it goes everywhere BUT the target.  I must be cursed or something, I dunno.  I keep seeing people say 'reliable, efficient and accurate" and I'm like..."are we talking about the same weapon?"  I'm scratching my head on that one.

Flak's not really for "I have one missile curving towards my drive and desperately need it to be shot down", it's for "there is a small tidal wave of rockets and bombers headed for me".

Efficient it most definitely is, insofar as that it does a decent job for dirt cheap.

4

Mods / Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21

« on: September 14, 2021, 05:53:12 PM »

It would also be nice to have a third wing setting to force them to dock. A lot of times I'd like to be able to set my fighters to stand off like you're talking about so they don't all melt in the initial exchange of fire, but the only way to do that right now is to order them to... fly right into it with Engage. No idea if it would be possible to have a way to order them to land until you order them to launch into one of the other stances, but it would be lovely if so. Half the reason I use remnant fighters is to avoid crew attrition.

5

Mods / Re: [0.95a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - New REDACTED 8/13/21

« on: September 12, 2021, 02:50:08 PM »

Morrokain, after I was stuck playing non-AO waiting for the update, I just wanted to poke my head in to thank you for all the common-sense balance changes you make in AO. It was physically painful being reminded of how bad vanilla beams are. :x

6

General Discussion / Re: 0-flux speed boost question about realism

« on: September 12, 2021, 11:23:42 AM »

That's wrong. The actual reason for 0 flux bonus is to speed up travel from places where combat has ended to places where combat is ongoing.

Which falls under "preventing kiting". Otherwise you could use frigates to draw enemy capitals off into a corner away from the main battle line. The fact that an anti-cheese system also benefits QoL by hastening post-battle cleanup doesn't mean it's not an anti-cheese system. It certainly isn't necessary in the latter role with the modern retreat system.

Why do you think it reactivates so quickly? If it's just a way to get ships around the tactical map faster, it wouldn't pop back on so quickly. It does so because the intent is that a fast skirmisher shouldn't be able to apply a prolonged speed debuff just by grazing a battleship with a single long-range shot -- instead, the boost kicks back on almost as soon as the flux from the hit dissipates.

On the whole it's a more complete answer to acknowledge that the movement mechanics, flux mechanics, AI behavior, and retreat/surrender mechanics are a big furball of interconnected systems and balance decisions strung out over the better part of a decade, but the root cause behind why a lot of their elements are as they are is to curtail cheesy tactical behavior.

7

General Discussion / Re: Are Remnant fleets broken or how do I win this battle?

« on: September 12, 2021, 07:27:37 AM »

Looks like you need to turn your battle size up and use more kinetic weapons.

8

General Discussion / Re: 0-flux speed boost question about realism

« on: September 12, 2021, 07:24:15 AM »

What it does for the game, though, is a bit odd.  It's not an escape mechanic, since every ship has it.  It tends to prevent escape as defenders need to defend themselves and attackers are where they want to be when they need to spend flux.

The main role it has these days is to prevent prolonged kiting, same as deployment time limits. This is for both the player and AI, and is bound up with the history of issues like retreat cheese. "Either you have enough materiel to win a fight or you don't," basically.

9

General Discussion / Re: For those who don't pilot their own ships

« on: September 12, 2021, 07:20:14 AM »

I can see why you didn't place them in the "dangerous" category. I've seen them as more of a tough decoy than an enemy AI killer.

A lot of that comes down to the build. A standard Brawler running the Safety Overrides + HMG + Assault Chaingun build is pretty nasty, or Safety Overrides + 2x Heavy Blaster on the TT variant. The main problem with it is the low speed, so SO is pretty much essential.

10

General Discussion / Re: 0-flux speed boost question about realism

« on: September 11, 2021, 06:15:04 PM »

something that was CLEARLY NOT thought of when the game was being made

What are you even talking about? Flux was a core mechanic even in the first public release, and the 0-flux boost was part of that system from the beginning. One of the early balance patches that got a fair amount of talk was when Alex removed coasting (which was a submechanic where, if you got up to speed with the 0-flux boost, you could start firing weapons and build flux without losing the boost as long as you didn't change your vector -- it was removed because the AI couldn't do it effectively).

On a related note, I vaguely recall some early lore (like, 2013-2014 era) about the "drive anchor" as a core element of the physics/propulsion of the setting which loosely explained why ships handle the way they do (in particular, why drives that visually resemble big fusion torches behave more like reactionless drives).


In terms of mechanical heritage, flux has more to do with the energy mechanics in a lot of traditional space shooter sim/RPGs (think the power triangle in Elite: Dangerous for a modern example) than with BTech's heat meter. Heat existed exclusively as a balancing mechanic to stop wargamers from being wargamers and just running massive alpha strike builds. It had very little nuance or skill involvement beyond developing an understanding of how close to the line you could reliably ride. (Wargamers being wargamers, cheese found a way regardless with things like the MGboat Hunchback.)

11

General Discussion / Re: For those who don't pilot their own ships

« on: September 11, 2021, 02:42:52 PM »

The bottom line is that with AI-commanded ships up to ~light cruisers (think Falcon/Fury/&c.) you're not going to avoid losses. Starsector AI is flat-out not good enough to keep flimsier ships alive. It only starts to be reliable with well-armored midline cruisers like the Eagle; even high-tech capitals will occasionally get popped when the AI misjudges the flux war.

Your best bet for minimizing losses while you're faffing about with wolfpacks of frigates, since you're not going to take the most effective route of commanding and killing things yourself, is to reduce risks. Don't go after anything with ships larger than low-tech destroyers, and focus your own fleet around things which are durable (Monitor/Brawler/Centurion) or dangerous (Hyperion/Wolf/Tempest/Lasher). Get through the frigate phase as fast as possible -- normally I'd suggest a cruiser purchase ASAP to give you a flagship that'd allow you to punch way outside your weight, but a single AI-directed cruiser is going to die fast. Instead, repeat the process with durable/hard-hitting destroyers until you have 3-4 of those, then start acquiring cruisers.

The skill combo of Officer Management + Field Repairs for you and Damage Control/Reliability Engineering + Impact Mitigation on your officers is going to help a lot in the long run, but you're still going to take losses frequently even with the best possible AI personalities and doctrines that others have already outlined coupled with durability cap fleets.

12

General Discussion / Re: If you had to nerf DOOM PHASE Cruiser, how would you do it?

« on: September 08, 2021, 05:43:41 AM »

I'd take the indirect approach. Don't nerf phase ships directly. Instead make the phase lance do (some) damage to ships in phase. Or just have it increase the target flux if it hits a ship in phase.

It even fits into the flavortext of the phase lance.

(One downside of this is that there's no equivalent ballistic-based weapon to do this with.)

No real issue there, vanilla beams are so gimped by the lack of hard flux damage that they need little things like this to be even marginally viable.

13

General Discussion / Re: I don't pilot my own ship in combat

« on: September 07, 2021, 06:10:43 PM »

If my personal skill allows me to solo half the enemy fleet, without a doom, then did the game just get easier? Hence me saying it feels like cheating, because it's impact is way too high if you get good and I'm not talking about just the Doom here. But do carry on attacking my posts with others ignoring my intent.

Where did I say player piloting outcomes should be worse then AI? More strawman.

Just going to point out that there are really only two ways to follow on from a complaint about good players being able to steamroll just about anything in combat:

1. "...therefore, players shouldn't be able to meaningfully affect combat outcomes for the sake of balance"
2. "...therefore, the difficulty of combat should be sharply increased"

Leaving aside that the second option has a lot of problems ranging from easy to overcome (i.e. just add a new "Hard" difficulty to avoid frustrating less skilled players) to virtually impossible (i.e. you can't just flip a switch to make AI markedly better and trying to "solve" the issue by giving them cheats is not a solution), you haven't exactly been acting as if that was your perspective to begin with.

Starsector was all about testing player skill in combat before even the single-system campaign existed, when the game was still called Starfarer, and that has never changed. The current situation isn't ideal, but I'd rather play an enjoyable game with Alex trying to iterate better AI and trim back excessively strong builds than one where the AI constantly cheats or where combat is me sitting and watching AI headbutt each other.

14

General Discussion / Re: burst PD keep shootting ships<<<

« on: September 07, 2021, 06:01:16 PM »

Yeah, just sticking PD in rear mounts is the only real way in vanilla.

This is one of many reasons why I play basically nothing but AO any more, since it adds a cheap hullmod that makes burst PD only shoot at missiles. :|

15

General Discussion / Re: If you had to nerf DOOM PHASE Cruiser, how would you do it?

« on: September 07, 2021, 05:58:06 PM »

Hard cap how many mines it can drop in a single engagement. Allow the cap to be increased by Systems Expertise and maybe Expanded Missile Racks. So, in this scenario, you could use at the very most 12 mines, or 5 with no enhancements. This compartmentalizes mine balance as a discrete issue that can be tackled semi-separately from Doom balance as a whole.