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1

Suggestions / Re: The once per file super rare bounty punishes players for leveling contacts early

« on: February 07, 2023, 03:55:20 PM »

I don't think there are any prerequisite bounties at all, it's just random and based on contact importance and reputation with you.

Correct, but to increase the reputation you'd have to do a fair share of the bounties.

Contracts offer other things besides bounties. It’s quite possible to level up a military contract to max without ever shooting someone for them

2

Suggestions / Re: What could be done with Safety Overrides

« on: January 18, 2023, 09:19:10 AM »

Another option might be:

Double dissipation, no venting, zero flux always (but otherwise no speed boost)

Shields now generate hard flux.

In game reasoning: SO is like always venting and your shields are off during venting normally because venting utilizes the shields normal venting procedure. This has to be locked off, preventing the shields from venting flux under normal conditions. Shields must be off in order to vent their flux so that this connection can be re-affixed. And so venting hard flux can happen normally.

Another thing you could do would be to decrease acceleration by a size class* and increase impact damage. But I am not sure how well this would work. The idea here is that the overrides allow you to use your main engines better, but you can’t turn your main engines for a strafe and so this acceleration suffers relatively.

*that is frigates would get destroyer acceleration characteristics. Destroyers would get cruiser, cruiser would get capital, and capital would be unable to strafe or backup (provided you got one on it).

3

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: January 02, 2023, 10:27:11 PM »

I'm unconvinced that the heavy blaster's dps actually mitigates its poor efficiency when it comes to anti-shield. The factors that make that true are niche: when I'm actually fielding the weapon I find it to be a poor shield breaker because the ships mounting it flux themselves out before breaking the shield unless they have very high flux stats (SO ships use it well for example).

Its a great weapon, but not very good vs shields.

Run that same situation with pulses and you will find the same thing. You will tend to flux out before breaking shields unless you have very high relative flux stats. 

Its true that the HB is good when you're "already winning". But by that estimation the pulse laser is then bad when you're "already winning" and bad when you're "trying to trade reasonably" because its neither efficient nor damaging enough. Like. Would you put pulse lasers on an aurora and go chasing destroyers with it? Why not use HB, kill them faster, and then vent and then go kill another destroyer/frigate? Would you use pulse lasers on an Aurora to shoot cruisers? You would lose to a badly fit sim eagle. At least with HB aurora you can dump sabots then vent while they're overloaded then kill them. The pulse Aurora can't even do that.

This may not be an issue if the pulse laser is meant to be a "downgrade" weapon. But it is an issue if the pulse laser is not meant to be a "downgrade" weapon.

4

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: January 01, 2023, 12:39:52 PM »

So the thing is the pulse laser probably should be better than the mixed ballistics case. At least in a vacuum. This is because there are fewer medium energy slots and fewer ships that can utilize them and because energy weapons rely much more on raw efficiency because they do not have multiplicative scaling on their armor cracking. So like. If you have a single weapon in that case it needs to be better than the mixed case or the mixed case is just plain superior since you can mix or specialize.

The “problem” as it were is that the weapon that actually does do that thing currently is the HB. Its extra DPS negates the efficiency disadvantage for the ships that tend to want to shoot it. And its extra armor cracking power makes it more efficient Vs armor and often hull in addition to being faster to kill a target. This relegates the pulse laser to a secondary role or a “weapon downgrade”. I suppose part of the issue is that it’s a pretty heavy downgrade given what these ships are designed to do (punch down) where other downgrades are not usually so pronounced.

I am not sure this is “actually” a problem. There need to be weapons for the AI to use inefficiently after all. But what is a problem is that the weapon as sold as a quality generalist weapon and it’s very different in character from the heavy blaster that it often feels like it should have a different role.

A text upgrade on the pulse laser, saying it’s a less used and older weapon might help some of the thoughts regarding its lack of use. Simply by clarifying that players should probably be upgrading out of it.

5

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 27, 2022, 08:35:38 PM »

I am starting to come around on the idea that it’s DPS/OP isn’t actually that good.

The arbalest has 334 DPS/8 OP at 700 range Vs shields. A heavy mortar has [email protected] Vs armor for 7 OP

The combination has 444 vs shields for 15 OP. 29.6 DPS/OP.

Now granted accuracy is a reasonable look but the pulse laser isn’t actually more efficient than the two weakest ballistic weapons in combination. And because armor is very fixed you can set efficiently by having generally more kinetic than HE rather than what was examined above. And those weapons are more efficient.


Light needlers are 37.5. Light autocannons are 50 and LDAC are 57.2. The HB is 41.66

So the pulse laser just isn’t providing quality DPS/OP. Certainly not quality punch down DPS OP especially because as a punch down ship you tend to have only a few medium energy slots. A single pulse laser on a shrike would be OK if enemy frigates tended to only have one single small ballistic. Two pulse lasers on a fury simply cannot cut it unless the capacitor advantage is absurdly huge.

Which is why the superior HB tends to be used. Much better DPS/OP. Functionally better or equivalent flux efficiency due to its much higher DPS/slot. 

6

General Discussion / Re: Colonies

« on: December 27, 2022, 08:17:09 PM »

Anything that has farmland is pretty easy to maintain and is likely to produce reasonable profits. And no one sends expeditions to stop farmers. So a farm world is relatively easy to build up in population because, so long as you only have farming. You only need to worry about pirates and not much else.

7

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 25, 2022, 11:39:09 AM »

It’s still a “punch down” destroyer or “swarmer” though at its heart. It can utilize a PL because it’s got only one medium slot and can use smalls for AMB. But I wouldn’t want to utilize that as a “hold the line ship”. It’s got 350-550 / 245-445  flux dissipation(pre/post shield). Which can feel a tad low for a HB plus others. So you can still punch down/swarm with the PL. But even then you’re not firing your entire flux when you’re shooting just the PL unless you skimp on dissipation (which you maybe should do, I do not know)

It just does not have the range or the efficiency to stand up to a destroyer fit with kinetics. So it cannot “hold the line” at any point in the game.  Like. As much as people dislike the Eagle the Eagle does a really god job of both not dying and also putting out shield pressure on other ships. It’s kind of, but not quite an ideal “hold the line” ship. The purpose of which isn’t to kill anything but simply to tie up more than it’s DP with of enemies for long enough for the rest of your fleet to do things.

The shirke cannot do that. If you put it near the center of your formation unless you’re a lot stronger than the enemy fleet it’s going to be flattened

8

General Discussion / Re: Optimizing the Conquest: a Mathematical Model of Space Combat

« on: December 24, 2022, 10:18:47 PM »

Ahh that makes sense. I was reading the normal distribution as the spread when catching up when it was error.

9

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 24, 2022, 07:17:38 PM »

I think I could maybe make it work on an Eagle. I like phase lances there usually because the burst flattens fighters. But 3x PL with 3 kinetic in front would probably be fine at winning flux wars.

10

General Discussion / Re: Optimizing the Conquest: a Mathematical Model of Space Combat

« on: December 24, 2022, 06:49:17 PM »

Is spread actually normal? Just looking at how weapons shoot in game seems like it’s a uniform distribution rather than a normal one. (Granted this isn’t a scientific examination but the tails seem awful heavy for a normal distribution)

Now this will eventually approximate a normal distribution but since we’re looking for TTK and doing a sequence by individual shots starting with a normal distribution will be inaccurate if the actual distribution is uniform

11

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 24, 2022, 06:25:21 PM »

It is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of ships that would use PL are “punch down” ships rather than “hold the line” ships (which tend to have kinetics for obvious reasons) and as a result are always on a “enemy ships will show up to aid the isolated one” timer. So if you have HB you’re going to be in fewer multi-ship engagements. You will have time to reset your max cap.

Edit: like. Name one ship that is going to sit on the line and trade/push away with medium energy weapons. The eagle can do it but probably not with pulse lasers

12

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 24, 2022, 06:05:23 PM »

Think about how efficient a pulse laser is Vs a HB Vs Shields

In 1 second the pulse laser does 300 dmg and the HB 500. The pulse laser eats 300 and the HB 720.

So it looks like the HB is way behind. It is 320 net flux behind. The HB ship has taken 1020 flux and the PL ship has taken 800. The PL is way ahead.

But assume Youre shooting something that has lots of kinetics. (Which is common because kinetics are good) and is firing at exactly 1 to 1 before the kinetic bonus. Well then it gets another 200 flux each second to shoot kinetics at you, which is worth 400 damage. Now youre now only 20 flux ahead using the “shield killing” PL. this gets better the better your Shields are and the better the enemies Shields are (and gets worse the better the enemies weapon efficiency is). But it’s still not a terribly huge difference. And if you have your own kinetic weapons why would you trade a net 20 flux trade advantage for the raw power of HB?

(Though they may be a lot better Vs high tech ships which only have energy, it may be worth testing Vs redacted, but I suspect you will do better with IR pulse in that instance)

13

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 24, 2022, 05:45:11 PM »

But I don’t want it better at breaking armor. It’s fine at breaking armor as it is. And the Heavy Blaster is the dedicated armor breaker that is good at breaking armor. No need to make the PL good enough at breaking armor and better at breaking shield than the HB. I would prefer increasing its RoF and giving it more DPS and flux usage than increasing its damage per shot.

The “problem” with the pulse laser, if there is one, is that it’s bad at breaking Shields. You have a hard time effectively flux dumping into enemy shields because your efficiency is 1 to 1 and your raw output is lower than HBs. You then do not win the flux war against any ship that has even a modicum of kinetic.

14

Suggestions / Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields

« on: December 24, 2022, 11:59:30 AM »

If the pulse laser is to get a buff damage shouldn’t really be it.

It does 300 dps and has 100 armor pen. That is objectively good for a medium weapon. The only problem it has is that it also costs 300 flux per second and because it’s neither HE nor Kinetic you get neither the “it’s very valuable to flux dump this into armor” nor the “it’s very valuable to flux dump this into shields” advantage that HE and Kin have.

Two IR pulse do 304 dmg for 242 flux. This is worse Vs armor (50 Vs 100 pen) and has lower range but given that the range difference isn’t that much and running multiple pulse lasers is difficult for most ships anyway… the two IR pulse might be better than the single pulse laser because your anti-armor value doesn’t much matter if you lose the flux War and your weapons shut off.

Now, if you only have one medium slot this isn’t an issue. But very few ships have slot and flux stats that make it make sense. *

So if pulse lasers are to be buffed (and I am not sure they should be, after all, weak weapons are fine, they give AI loadouts things to use and players upgrade space) it should be in flux efficiency or in OP cost. RoF I don’t think is great because most ships already have difficulty firing a pulse laser.

*the shirke being I think the only one, and it still has small slots to utilize IR pulse. (This because a single pulse laser can start winning the flux war on a small ship from further away and an antimatter blaster rather than IR pulse can finish the job). But the Shrike still has the flux to maybe like a HB instead.

15

Suggestions / Re: Less Ill-Advised Mods for Vanilla Path

« on: October 16, 2022, 09:37:48 AM »

Pathers are much stronger than Pirates due to everything being SO and reckless. They may still lose but they’re almost certainly going to blow something up

Wothout IAM they would be absurd.