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1

General Discussion / Re: Is nanoforge reqiured on planet for contancts to offcer access to it?

« on: May 01, 2025, 06:16:46 AM »

I believe nanoforge slot offers have more to do with the presence or absence of heavy industry on the planet - which admittedly is a requirement to have a nanoforge installed.  You can occasionally get nanoforge slot offers at Culann, if you're looking for the Tri-tachyon version.

2

General Discussion / Re: Forgiving ships for player piloting? (new to this)

« on: April 19, 2025, 07:44:50 AM »

What stage of the game are you in?  And what do you want to focus on player skill wise?

I find fast ships to allow you to exercise your human judgement much easier, and means you have a more leeway in knowing when you need to back off.  With something like an Enforcer or Dominator for example, you typically need to stay on your gun line, since if you overextend, you have no options left other than stay and hope your allies catch up to you before your armor is gone. 

If you want to focus on only a few things, I'd focus on your position and hard flux management.  For a new player pilot, I'd probably ensure my ship is close to flux neutral (i.e. shield + typical weapons flux is at flux dissipation - maybe a bit higher if you've got rear mounted weapons and or shorter range PD).  Put all your weapons on auto-fire, and hit 7 or the like (a number after your last weapons group).  This means you don't have to worry about aiming as much, or turning weapon groups on or off, or when to fire weapons.  You just need to watch your position, and know when to go in for a kill, and when to go out to vent (or just lower shields if it is a Safety Override build).

If it is the beginning of the game, and not too much invested, an old fashioned Wolf is a fine player ship when up against other frigates.  Just circle to keep the enemy frigates tripping over each other, and save your charges to escape.  Keep in mind your current movement is the skim direction, so leave enough time to adjust that if you're pushing your flux.

If it is a bit more into the game, you can make a pretty flux light Medusa these days with Light Needlers, Phase Lances, and a burst PD in the back (for inevitable Salamanders).  If you don't want to practice Omni-shield technique, put on the front shield hull mod (and s-mod extended shield if you want 360 protection).  I also like Afflictor at this stage as well, if you don't mind phase mechanics.

Cruiser tier with Systems Expertise and Elite Field Modulation, a Doom with its point and click mine system is a very different play experience than many other ships.  Still need to know when to go in and out, but a Doom can just as easily sit on a ship line and reach out with mines.  Just drop them to the sides or behind and watch either the fireworks, or your gunline gets free hits in.  Alternatively, Aurora has the plasma jets, which makes for a pretty fast cruiser.  Save it for your escape and you should do well.

At capital tier, for a new player pilot, assuming like level 13 or higher, I'd probably pick neural linked Radiant to be honest.  It has got the same phase skimmer system as Wolf and Medusa which you can practice for much cheaper on those ships, and then just has so much firepower, flux, and armor, that as long as you stay near your normal ship line, it just won't die.  s-modded Expanded magazines, 4x Autopulse, 1x High Intensity Laser, 4x IR Autolance, and some PD in the rear is a terrying alpha strike.  It also teaches you to go in, burst, go out, vent.  And is possible in a 5/5/5 build these days.  Otherwise, at the capital tier, if you don't want the positional game, and are willing to handle more complicated flux considerations, Onslaught or Paragon I think can both work - just make sure you have some allied AI frigates, missiles, or fighters to handle faster ships that slip away from you.

In summary, Systems Expertise phase skimmer ships will get you out of a lot of situations that other ships simply can't, once you're familiar with the ship system.

3

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 13, 2025, 12:34:41 PM »

To elaborate further, the people I see having the easiest time are people are using the Mk1 and/or multiple Onslaughts specifically.  Lots of low tech, big range, overwhelming firepower. Lots of overlapping PD.  I personally have not been able to make a high tech fleet work yet even against a single fabricator.

For what its worth, one my first playthrough with the new content, I went in blind, and had some success with a high tech adjacent fleet.  My campaign fleet when I fought Shrouded and Threat the first time (I picked option 1 in the shroud because I had an endgame fleet, and went up against a 2 fabricator fleet after the inital MK I intro fleet) was NL Radiant, NL Afflictor, Paragon, 2 Anubis, XIV Eagle, 3 Medusa, with a Combat 5,  leadership 2, Tech 8 build.  I lost something like a Medusa and Eagle, in both those first fights, partly because I didn't know what I was doing.  I should expect a supported player piloted Zig could do sometbing similar witht the combination of speed and DPS, if Automated ships isn't attratictive.

I don't think capital spam is necessary, but captial grade firepower under player control is extremely valuable in both those fights.  Either to eliminate Eyes by staring back or push into the Fabricators.

4

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 11, 2025, 08:56:41 AM »

So collected a few more runs of MKI vs XIV against a single Radiant+Nova Ordo, under AI control (no flagship).

MKI with straight forward fights: 198 seconds, 180 seconds, 178 seconds
Also a 230 second time when the fleet went for the right most objective instead of approaching head on
So for the straight forward fights, 185 mean and 9 standard deviation


XIV-185 seconds, 194 seconds (lost 1 ship), 192 seconds
190 mean and 4 standard deviation
Also when the enemy fleet broke right, one run was 282 seconds and lost a ship, and then a second run was a total loss

This using shield shunted XIVs similar weapons layout to what Vanshilar was using.  MKIs were using similar to what I was using in campaign (Storm Needler,2x Devastator, Disintegrator, 4x Heavy Needler,4x Flak Cannons, 2x Arbalest).

So from a slightly larger data set, using very specific loadouts, it looks to me both ships have similar damage outputs (with overlapping 1 sigma errors bars if we ignore worst case scenarios), despite fewer guns and less flux available to the MKIs.  The MKIs are also much, much more resilient with the Vambraces and full 8 elite skills, despite having only ~1800 armor versus the XIV's ~2800 armor.  Ship losses on the XIVs were typically due to Reapers eliminating their armor (the Radiant happens to be 2 Autopulse, 2 Cyclone Reaper, 1 Tachyon lance).  During all my testing, I had not lost a MKI to any of these small Ordo fleets, while I've lost numerous XIV (both shield shunt and without).

Probably could have made the XIVs more resiliant with more PD and more defensive skills, but that would have reduced damage output.

This testing was all done in RC7, so it looks to me, offensively, 4 MKIs are worth 5 XIVs in terms of overall kill time against a single Ordo, while still having an edge in survivability, despite only having base 1200 armor and the reduced DPS Heavy Adjudicators.  I don't think it is a hero ship or player phase ship, but I think most fleets should find it worth 50 deployment points, assuming it is properly supported.

Although I'd love to see other players numbers on its effectiveness.

5

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 08, 2025, 07:23:33 PM »

Yeah back in 0.96a I tested shielded vs unshielded Onslaughts and unshielded Onslaughts were clearly better. Basically, the shields drive up the flux from taking enemy fire, and then the AI gets skittish about moving forward and stays back to vent and stuff, reducing their offensive power. I didn't have any issues with keeping them alive even without fancy defensive skills, at least through double Ordos, so they were generally still purely offensive (forgot if I bothered with something like Impact Mitigation, they probably did have Resistant Flux Conduits and/or Automated Repair though).

For my flagship Onslaught, I still keep shields, just so I have the option of using them against Tachyon Lances or Reapers or whatnot, but I generally keep them off most of the time.

So 5 AI controlled, with level 6 officers with Elite Combat Endurance, Elite Impact Mitigation, Elite Missile Specialization, Target Analysis, Ballistic Mastery, Ordnance Expertise, and s-modded expanded magazines, heavy armor, and shield shunt, using 3x Heph, 3x Heavy Needler, 2xlight needler, 2x Hac, 4x Flak cannons, 4x Harpoon pods, ITU, Expanded Missile Racks, Auxilliary Thrusters, Automated Repair, Armored weapon mounts took about 185 seconds to do that Nova + Radiant small ordo (compared to 260 seconds with the shield version, again 1 sample each, so probably not the best to draw alot of significance from).  No chasing frigates or Radiant in this case, and was a much smoother fight - no retakes necessary.

So I agree that against Ordos, the shield shunted Onslaught looks to be much stronger.

So for me in RC7 (so post-nerf):
1 trial - 185 seconds with 5 shield shunt Onslaught XIV
1 trial - 198 seconds with 4 Onslaught MK I
4 trials, 3 lost a ship and aborted, 1 worked - 260 seconds with 5 omni-shield Onslaught XIV

I do really need larger sample sizes though, as I have no insight into the variations between runs.

This does make me wonder, should we be taking advantage of the shiny and fancy new simulator more?  We can simulate full up 240 DP s-mod and alpha core Remnant fleets if we want (just summon - or farm - a pile Alpha cores in your cargo hold).  While that doesn't include fleet skills, the s-mods probably make it a wee bit harder than normal remnant fleets.  We can put singular ships up against a couple cruisers or straight up fight an Alpha Radiant with 3 s-mods.  We can also let people run the exact same opposing fleet from different save files, and change the ratio of Paladins versus Tachyon lances on various Remnant ships.

Although I will admit I'm used to assuming, everything else being roughly equal, a higher hull to shield damage ratio is better.  Certainly for something like an Afflictor or Doom, that holds.  Here, where the MK I is doing 40% more hull damage, if that was the only stat I had available to look at, I'd assume it was killing about 40% more ships.

Well, sort of. It's more complicated than that. Yes in some sense all that "matters" is hull damage, since killing a ship just depends on its hull and not its shields or armor, but you need to get through the shields and armor first. The Mk 1 definitely has a lot of anti-hull damage, so once enemy shields go down, its DPS is going to go way up, so it will be finishing off enemy ships more quickly than other player ships. It's basically a kill-stealer. (So is any flagship I pilot, since I the player am much better at gauging if it's okay to finish off a target than the AI so I tend to be much more aggressive at finishing off targets.)

However, shields can recover, and armor can be broken in only one place, or the ship can take awhile to die, and turn to present fresh armor.  So generally, if I hand you a ship's damage breakdown, and don't indicate how many ships it faced, or how long it took to deal that overall damage, it's really hard to interprete.

For instance, can you tell me how many ships were engaged by the XIV and how many were engaged by the MKI?  If I gave you those MKI and XIV damage numbers and told you the MKI engaged 6 Brilliants and the XIV engaged 5, the numbers mean on thing, and if the MKI engaged 5 Brilliants and the XIV engaged 6, they mean another.  The damage stat line could conceivably happen in both.

Now, you're the one running the tests, and looked at the full numbers, so you're probably right in that the effective kill time for individual ships they were facing were similar and the MKI wasn't actually involved in killing 40% more ship on it's side of the battlefield, but you do have some information I don't have access to.  This is why I was trying to tease out the amount of time spent shooting at shields versus armor versus hull.  If the MKI happened to spend 10% more time shooting at hull, that might imply shields were only up for 90% of the time they were up for the XIV side, which might imply that side of the battlefield had to deal with 10% total less shields.  For whatever reason (fewer ships?  ships with different shield to hull ratios?  ships cycling in and out so they can recharge more flux?).

Interestingly, in a flux limited situation (just testing in the sim with autofire all in one group), TPCs or Heavy Adjudicators will have priority, followed by the Hephestus, then the kinetics.  Given the TPCs and Heavy Adjudicators are charge based, the Hephestus Assault Guns are probably the best proxy for seconds spent shooting shield/armor/hull, if the ships are flux limited at least.

But looking just at hull means ignoring the contributions of whichever ship was doing the shield damage in the first place, which is generally going to be greater. From 0.95.1a data, shield damage was always significantly greater than hull damage, and a player fleet would have to have a battle completion time of 66 seconds against double Ordos for the shield damage to go low enough to match the hull damage, extrapolating from the linear trend. Obviously that's not going to happen. So I look at all 3 damage types when looking at overall fleet effectiveness.

Depends on the testing setup.  If it is a single ship being deployed, then I stand by the statement - a higher hull to shield ratio is better (even if the ratios we are comparing are less than 1, specifically 0.3 is better than 0.2, and I recognize against Ordos shield damage is going to be higher than hull unless you're soloing with a Doom or the like).  If it is a fleet in aggregate (i.e. the overall fleet did less shield damage), then I think the statement also generally stands as that typically implies a shorter completion time.  The issue is that any given combat is a bunch of smaller engagements, potentially with dead time in between, and different ships presenting themselves to be shot at, where comparisons become much, much harder.  Especially if you're trying to tease out a +/- 10% relative strength difference (as opposed to say, +/-100%).

Although, having run the fights, do you get a feel for how much dead time is spent between waves, and is it equal between sides?  I mean, given the variation in damage you mentioned, there's got to be wide variation in what engages the XIV and MKI ships, and presumably it varies a lot within and between fights.  Is a DPS comparison valid for individual ships if one ship is engaged by capitals while the other is engaged by destroyers?  Although, given your Doom statistics, perhaps they are just engaging destroyers and a few cruisers each? 

But picking out individual ships in a fleet, it becomes much more confusing without additional information, because it is unclear if the DPS is being set by the ship, or simply limited by the number of ships it engaged in a timely matter, or other ships are just taking that much more of the load.

It is also interesting the Heavy Adjucator shield damage is down relative to the TPCs roughly in proportion to the overall shield damage between the MK Is and XIVs.  12074/13641 = 0.885.  51711/57268 = 0.902.  It is like the MKI simply saw 10% less shield averaged over all its guns, not just the Heavy Adjudicators. 

Well I'd be wary of reading too much into relatively small differences, because each run varied by quite a bit. It was just one ship each in each battle so there was quite a bit of variation; the XIV varied from 42061 to 70161 total shield damage while the Mk 1 varied from 36586 to 75104 total shield damage, depending on run. The TPC varied from 687 (!) to 8356 hull damage while the Heavy Adjudicator varied from 8217 to 30094 hull damage, depending on run. So I'm pretty comfortable saying that the Heavy Adjudicator does more hull damage than the TPC, but the shield and armor were relatively close considering the amount of variation.

Interesting. I think you are saying the 1 sigma standard deviation of shield damage dealt by the Onslaught XIV is something like 20,000 10,000 or larger?  With similar values for the MK I?  Yeah, in that case I don't think we can say anything at the 25% level, let alone the 10% level.

Edit: I fail at mental math apparently - assuming 3 trials, with 1 more around the mean value, std would be 11,400 or so.  Assuming 6 trials, with 5 around the mean, then it could be as low as 8100 for example (each factor of 2 trials improves by square root of 2 assuming drawn from the same sample set).

Although, on the MKIs the Hephestus Assault Guns saw 14% more shield time, 4% more armor time, and 19% less hull time, relative to the XIV's Hephestus Assault Guns.

That's actually fairly straightforward -- on the Mk 1, there are fewer other anti-shield weapons, and so the Heph will spend corresponding more time on shields, while the Heavy Adjudicator grabs a lot of the hull damage so the Heph spends relatively less time on that. For the Needlers, I wonder if that's just variation since their armor damage is usually pretty small.

Damage value might be small for the kinetics, but the number of shots isn't.  Keep in mind, assuming Impact mitigation (and possibly Polarized Armor on capitals) cancels out various damage bonuses roughly, it only takes 141 units or higher of remaining armor to drop a needler's damage per hit to 3.75 (50*0.5*0.15 = 3.75), the normal minimum.  And against cruisers (like Brilliants) it likely only hits about 9 damage per hit at best.  To reach 359+492=851 damage could take up to 227 hits worst case (out of 625 total shots that hit), down to perhaps 95 on the very low end where its eating away at the last 50 armor or so each time.  The true answer is probably somewhere around 150 or so, which is roughly 25% of the total shots that landed, so I wouldn't consider it that small compared to the rest of the numbers.  The damage per hit hon hull is probably somewhere between 18 and 26, for somewhere between 78 and 113 shots as well, meaning roughly 15% hit hull, and the last 60% or so hit shield.  So I'd submit you've really only got a little more than twice as many shots on shield than you have on armor, so about square root of two more uncertainty.

6

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 07, 2025, 10:55:05 AM »

I use a modified version of Detailed Combat Results v5.4.0

Ah, that explains it.  Thank you for that information.

Yes it does seem like the TPC does more shield damage, but the Heavy Adjudicator ends up with more armor damage (and of course much more hull damage). Not sure if that's just from the TPC's having greater range and thus more likely to hit shields, and then running out when the Onslaught XIV gets closer and starts doing more armor/hull damage. That's just a guess. Both averaged pretty close to the same number of hits per battle. (I can't count how many shots they fired because they already have ammo to begin with and recharge it throughout the fight.)

Yeah, that's one of two ways to interpret it, and it is too bad about the lack of total shots fired numbers.  Still you have the number of actual hits, which are quite similar between the TPCs and Heavy Adjudicators.  So of the ~150 hits landed for each, 12% more of the TPCs looks like they hit shields, 22% fewer TPCs hit armor, and about 9% fewer hit hull.

Making some really broad assumptions/guesses about average defenses, and damage buffs, then the number of shield hits for the TPCs is probably something like 90-100, hull is likely 15-20 or so, and probably 30-45 or so on armor.  For the Heavy Adjudicators, it is more like 80-90 shield, about 18-22 on hull, and probably 38-50 or so on armor.  So the majority of shots are still impacting shields for both, but just a few less for the MKIs.

Although I will admit I'm used to assuming, everything else being roughly equal, a higher hull to shield damage ratio is better.  Certainly for something like an Afflictor or Doom, that holds.  Here, where the MK I is doing 40% more hull damage, if that was the only stat I had available to look at, I'd assume it was killing about 40% more ships.

It is also interesting the Heavy Adjucator shield damage is down relative to the TPCs roughly in proportion to the overall shield damage between the MK Is and XIVs.  12074/13641 = 0.885.  51711/57268 = 0.902.  It is like the MKI simply saw 10% less shield averaged over all its guns, not just the Heavy Adjudicators. 

Although, on the MKIs the Hephestus Assault Guns saw 14% more shield time, 4% more armor time, and 19% less hull time, relative to the XIV's Hephestus Assault Guns.
While the Needler and HACs averaged together on the MKIs saw 7% less shield time, 20% more armor time, and about the same hull time.

This suggests to me the HE and kinetics in both cases get turned off as flux gets high and sub-optimal defensive profiles are exposed to them. Which is another argument that the extra guns on the Onslaught XIV (as opposed to its missiles) are not providing as much benefit as one might expect.

I find the fact that the MKI's fewer guns spent even more flux than the XIVs larger number of guns to quite telling.  It suggests to me that the XIV wasn't using its entire flux budget to full advantage.  Assuming I did my math right, it looks like the XIVs spent 117,480 flux with 11 guns, while the MKIs spent 135,210 with 7 guns.  So more guns are probably better in a burst situation, in a grind situation you are still limited by flux dissipation and capacity.  Although the Harpoons aren't limited by this.

So Onslaught XIV's were 26% and 31% slower in these two setups than the MKIs.  Its not a lot of data points, but it seems to suggest, that at least under some circumstances, 4 Onslaught MKIs do better than 5 Onslaught XIVs.  Possibly to the tune of 25-30% more effective DPS.

Hmm how much of that might be from the Onslaught Mk1 being better able to chase down ships to prevent the odd frigate or something from getting away? The Onslaught Mk1 does seem to be more maneuverable (i.e. get to where it should be) due to its drive, compared with the Onslaught XIV. Also, were you using shield shunted Onslaught XIV's? (I was.) The XIV fleet took a lot more damage from the enemy fleet than the Mk1 fleet from your screenshots, so don't know if shields made the difference.

In my case, the Onslaught MK I's lacked missiles, and the XIVs Harpoons actually did a good job of securing frigate kills.  One of the Onslaughts did end up a fair bit away due to a frigate however.  These are Remnant frigates to be fair though, so they do eventually re-engage.  On the other hand, because of how the ships engaged, the Radiant was killed early on in the XIV fight (and was critical I think, in preventing actual losses - I had to repeat it like 4 times until I got one without any XIV losses), while 2 of the MK Is had to chase the Radiant down as it kept skimming away, and then re-engaging.  The 2 MK Is that went after the Radiant only had pro-rata of 50 and 95 DP, while the other two fighting the bulk of the cruisers and smaller had 123 and 119.  So there was a bit of chasing in both cases.

I was using shielded (Omni + Hardened) Onslaught XIVs, so yeah, I perhaps should consider redoing this with s-mod shield shunt variations, although that also means changing up the officers a bit, as Elite Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Elite Damage Control and Polarized armor is almost required in that case.

By the way, as an aside, as I do more of these runs I'm appreciating how valuable the LP Brawlers can be.

I totally believe it.  I find one of the most valuable functions in a fleet is a cheap or fast frigate sweeper to keep the larger ships focused on their targets and/or allow your own distraction frigates to work.

7

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 06, 2025, 11:22:38 PM »

Cool but you're only allowed to have one Mk1 in the game. If the 4 capitals all with integrated Alpha cores didn't have faster clear times, that would be very very wrong.

200 DP is 200 DP, no?  Shouldn't the fact that you're allowed to put an integrated Alpha core into an Onslaught MKI count towards its overall strength when debating whether its better to use officered Onslaught XIVs instead?  I mean, I used an integrated Alpha core in my campaign with it.  It is part of the reason Automated Ships is worth taking - access to Alpha core ships.

As for limiting it to one, I know its unique, but I was trying to get a clear signal in the quickest way possible under something resembling fleet conditions.  If 4 MKIs are in fact 25% faster than 5 Onslaught XIVs, if I only have 1 in otherwise identical fleets, the difference would only be about 6% in completion time (or more like 4-5% in a full 240 DP deployment fleet), which requires even more tests to have any confidence in.  Also its hard to swap only a 40 DP Onslaught XIV for a 50 DP Onslaught MK I, where as 5 vs 4 fits nicely (and is conveniently the max deployment with Best of the Best).  I don't really have time to run 20 tests at the moment to tease out a 5% signal, but I'd love to see the data on that kind of mass testing as well if you're offering to do the single ship swap version.

8

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 06, 2025, 10:55:22 PM »

So I just ran a pair of really quick tests using 5 Onslaught XIV (no flagship, just AI control and orders from the map level) against two different small Ordos, and then the same with 4 Onslaught MK I by reloading.  I used level 6 officers with 3 elite skills for the XIVs and integrated Alpha cores for the MKIs.

In both cases, I used a MK I setup similar to, but not exactly like, what was using in my playthrough which included a single Disintegrator in the nose medium mount - which I think is fair given the MK I is normally a singular ship.  But thinking maybe a fairer comparison would be more similar setups, so I did the second fight (with the Radiant and Nova), and made the Onslaught XIV builds a bit closer to the MKIs (Storm Needler in the front instead of Hephestus, Disintegrator in the nose medium).

I attach detailed combat reports, mostly for the time to kill.  So using a setup closer to Vanshilar's (I.e. Heph x3, 2 Heavy Needler, 2 light needler, 2 HAC, 4 Flak cannon, 4 Harpoon pods), it took the Onslaught XIVs 247 seconds to kill. 

Using my Storm Needler, Disintegrator, Devastator x2, Heavy Needler x4, Arbalest x2, Flak x4 and no missiles took 196 seconds.

Second battle that included a Radiant and Nova, and took the Disintegrator + Storm Needler Onslaught XIVs 260 seconds. It took the Onslaught MK Is 198 seconds.

So Onslaught XIV's were 26% and 31% slower in these two setups than the MKIs.  Its not a lot of data points, but it seems to suggest, that at least under some circumstances, 4 Onslaught MKIs do better than 5 Onslaught XIVs.  Possibly to the tune of 25-30% more effective DPS.

This is in RC7, not RC5, so post-nerf.

9

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 06, 2025, 11:34:19 AM »

According to Vanshilar here, Detailed Combat Reports hasn't reported projectile hits accurately since its v5.4.1 update (so during Starsector 0.97a). It had worked in previous versions, but I assume that the bug fixes in v5.4.1 somehow also broke normal hit counting. That being said, the actual damage numbers still seem fairly reliable, though I can't really confirm this yet myself as I haven't even started playing with mods yet for 0.98a.

(Edit: Oh, I may have misread this post to be about all weapons in general and not the Heavy Adjudicators specifically, but what I said still stands. The latest DCR version is also just a compatibility update for 0.98a, with 0 new bug fixes or anything, so I don't expect this version to work perfectly either, unless the v5.4.0 version was edited via mod_info.json to work with Starsector 0.98a, maybe?).

Ah fair.  Yeah, I'm mostly concerned about the new weapons and their new damage scripts not being handled properly.  Right now, I do not trust numbers for the Heavy Adjudicator specifically, as it is clearly under counting them, given that screen shot shows 2 dead ships with minimum 2500 hull combined, but 0 damage done.  There were no other weapons in that fight on my side, so something about the AoE explosions is not being calculated right.  Hence, I'm interested in how Vanshilar got his numbers, as maybe he modified the current maintenance update to handle it properly.

Essentially, if the Hephestus is getting 2.5 times armor damage over multiple runs for the Onslaught MK I, that implies the Onslaught MK I is seeing unshielded targets for 2.5 times as long as the Onslaught XIV - which would tend to make me think the Adjudicators should have even more armor damage than reported, and possibly a lot more hull than reported, especially in RC5.  The numbers just don't look like they are consistent to me.  That or maybe the unshielded vs shielded nature means the Hephestus are turned off more?  Something in the story just doesn't hang together for me.

Given I don't have a Detailed Combat Results that works for the MK I, probably the best I can do is some console command testing with 4 Onslaught MK I and a Onslaught XIV time trials against 6 Onslaught XIV versus the same Ordo or two.

10

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 06, 2025, 10:30:36 AM »

So I just did a quick test, with command console and dev mode.  Started a new game, summoned an Onslaught MK I, and didn't equip any weapons, fought a two frigate pirate fleet in Corvas, killed them both with just Heavy Adjudicators, and it only reported 10 missile hits, and 0 actual hits and 0 damage done.  So I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the mod that is calculating damage properly for them, as it is right now, it seems to be massively under counting the damage.  Like sometimes it reports at least a few hits like in my previous screen shot, but most of them go uncounted.  Again this is RC7, not RC5 though.

Alternatively, I guess I need to look into how Detailed combat reports hooks into AoE type scripted damage.

11

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 05, 2025, 11:35:57 PM »

Basically, the Heavy Adjudicators did more hull damage while the TPC's did more shield damage, which is expected. However, the Onslaught Mk 1 only has 2 instead of 4 medium missile slots for Harpoons (so the Onslaught XIV made up some of the armor/hull damage with the extra Harpoons), plus it lacked the additional small ballistics for more shield damage. So overall, the Onslaught XIV is more anti-shield focused, due to TPC's energy instead of Heavy Adjudicator's frag damage, and due to the extra small ballistics. But the Onslaught Mk 1 seems to be better at finishing, with more armor and hull damage. Again, this was under 0.98a-RC5. With the various nerfs for 0.98a-RC7, the Onslaught XIV will likely be better against Ordos

Very interesting, thanks for the data points.  A quick question, is there a version of detailed combat reports that works with Heavy Adjudicators?  My detailed combat reports (that I downloaded a few days ago) doesn't seem to be reporting the correct numbers for the Heavy Adjudicator and was wondering how you were getting shield, armor, hull breakdowns.  Modify it yourself?

As for the shield versus hull numbers, I guess it is expected when most engagements in a fight don't run the TPCs out of stored charges.  TPCs have 66% higher fire rate in burst, but same long term sustained rate in RC5 (with s-mod expanded magazines 1.5 charges per second per gun).  The Heavy Adjucator does get the +15% damage from Elite Ballistic Mastery, although that's more like a net +10% when other damage bonuses are considered as well.  What I'm slightly confused by is why the armor damage numbers are extremely close between TPC and Heavy Adjucator (within 1%), while the shield numbers are 20% different, as that would imply the fire rate didn't matter for the armor, but did for the shields.  Is this because of Squall pressure from the Gryphons?  At which point the 200 less base range is probably making a larger difference than fire rate - although my Alpha Core Onslaught MK I does tend to get much closer than my officered Onslaughts.

Also, any thoughts on why the Hephestus Assault Guns did 2.5 times the armor damage on the Onslaught MK I than on the Onslaught XIV?  That seems like a massive difference (+150% !), which isn't made up for by the Harpoons, and I'm just trying to think of why?  Onslaught MK I must have had 2.5 times the the number of Hephestus shots land on targets with their shields down or out of the way.  Is this something to do with how close the Onslaught MK I tends to get to enemy ships compared to an officered ship?  If the Onslaught MK I is behaving significantly different from the Onslaught XIV, it might mean optimal loadouts differ between the two. 

For example, while I would typically put a Missile Specialization officer and Expanded Missile Racks on an Onslaught XIV, I'd probably skip them and just slap some Reapers on the MK I, since 2 medium missile slots aren't worth the same investment as 4, and the Onslaught MK I tends to be closer so the Reapers would tend to land more, though I suppose I should end my iron man campaign and switch to an actual testing mode to confirm that.  My campaign build also isn't ideal for testing optimal AI ships (Cybernetic Augmentation/Automated Ships/Sytems Expertise).

Edit: Attached an image showing number of hits seems to be wrong as well as hard to believe a Storm Needler did the most hull damage, and the total hull damage doesn't even add up to one 18% of one Brilliant's hull, so I don't know how it is assuming the Onslaught MK I "soloed" it if that is the amount of damage Detailed Combat Results thinks it did.  I feel like something doesn't seem right here.  I do wonder at the AoE nature of the Adjucator and if that is causing some issue.  Although this is admittedly RC7 and not RC5.

12

General Discussion / Re: [!!SPOILERS!!] New academy quest line ship [!!SPOILERS!!]

« on: April 03, 2025, 07:27:48 PM »

No, I just got it and it's objectively worse than an XIV Onslaught, and slightly worse (debatably) than a normal Onslaught in terms of its DP.

Having just tried the Onslaught Mk I in a couple single Ordo battles in RC7, I think it feels like it is still worth using at 50 DP.  I don't think it has the endurance for a triple Ordo, but might be able to handle a double Ordo on a strong battle line where incoming DPS is reduced.  I've been using it in a Neural Link Radiant + Afflictor, Paragon, Onslaught Mk I, Eagle x2, Medusa fleet, so it doesn't have the endurance for a double Ordo in that fleet composition.  Combat 5, Leadership 2, Tech 8 build.  It needs to pull its weight in such a fleet, being one of 3 capital ships, and only 7 total ships, and it feels like it does.  Build was s-mod Expanded Magazines and ITU, then Heavy Armor, Armored Weapon Mounts, Automated Repair Unit, Auxiliary thrusters.  Storm Needler, 2x Devastator, Disintegrator, 6x Arbalest, 4x Flak cannon, 2x Typhoon. Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation, Damage Control, Target Analysis, Ballistic Mastery, Gunnery Implants, Ordinance Expertise, and Systems Expertise (for -10% damage, although perhaps should be something else).

For example, one fight I split left and right to grab objectives for deployment limit, and guessed wrong on where the enemy fleet was heading. Onslaught Mk I and the Medusa on escort took the brunt of the enemy fleet for a minute or two, engaging a Radiant and Nova plus some escorts, killed the Nova, and was forcing the Radiant and escorts back fluxed.  It was down some hull but regening slowly by the time I got back over there, I think it was back up to full by the time the fight ended.

Part of it probably has to do with the Vambraces being a fully independent set of armor, which the AI seems to prioritize when even slightly to the sides.  I've seen the sim Radiant with 5 Tachyon lances explicitly target the vambrace rather than the front of the ship from a good distance away - probably has something to do with the geometry and distance to center of mass or closest boundry.  30000 + 15000 + 15000 hull is a lot of hull, plus that 1200 armor has to be gotten through twice on the sides as well, and prevents ion arcs to actual weapons/engines.  So while on paper a shield shunted Onslaught XIV should have more survivability with 2800+ worth of armor, even a more modest 1820 on the Onslaught MK I goes a long way, especially when you can guarantee all the armor tanking skills and some offensive skills.

Since Heavy Adjucators have low flux/damage relative to Thermal Pulse Cannons (0.52 vs 0.6 against Armor and Shield, and 0.13 vs 0.6 against hull), the base ship flux dissipation of 500 vs 600 doesn't strike me as that bad.  They also get the DPS buff from elite Ballistic Mastery, which TPCs don't, making them further efficient.  And once those Adjucators start hitting hull, it is all over very quickly.

So, assuming I'm not doing endurance trials for the fun of it, I'll still probably take the Onslaught MK I with an integrated Alpha core and s-modded Expanded magazines over an Onslaught XIV with only a level 5 or 6 officer.

What I do feel is perhaps the biggest issue is that s-mod expanded magazines feels even more mandatory on the ship than before, however.  Dropping recharge time from 20 seconds down to 13.3 seconds is going to feel far more meaningful to a player's perception of time than 10 seconds to 6.7 seconds.

I do wonder if the presence of that particular s-mod is motivating some of Alex's changes to various numbers for both the Paladin and the Onslaught MK I, and perhaps the 50% charge rate bonus is too large if it feels needed on certain ship types.  I'll note other similarly large bonuses, like the old Missile Specialization fire rate bonus, were eventually toned down to 25%.  Missile regen bonus from that skill is also only 25%.

I guess my question is, do people have some experience with an Onslaught XIV and Onslaught MK I, with specific situations where the Onslaught XIV seems to significantly outperform the Onslaught MK I?

13

General Discussion / Re: Does anyone like the Paladin?

« on: April 03, 2025, 10:37:58 AM »

Literally no other PD weapon can do what the Paladin does, especially ballistic. How much ballistic PD is needed on each low-tech/midline capital to keep them “safe” from fighter/missile spam? Has anyone crunched the numbers?

Traditionally, one of the tests I'd run Onslaught builds through in older versions was figure out the maximum number of Gryphons they could take on solo, while still putting out DPS for general fleet work.  It got surprisingly high, given flak is cheap in both OP and flux, just need a couple hullmods and one skill (out of 5 or 6) to really crank it to not quite immunity levels.

Buffalo mk II spam versus some Onslaughts and escorts in 0.97

[close]

I find it is less number crunching and more actual testing in the case of PD.  A lot of it ends up being how focused the PD shots are, how ships are clustered or split, are they 1 shotting missiles or not, and so forth.  There are a number of very hard to "simulate via spreadsheet" effects in game that can make PD more or less effective.

I probably should redo the above tests but replace the Onslaughts with 4 Anubis.  The problem is, those Onslaughts also take out a Conquest + Gryphon composition as well, which I don't think the Anubis will be able to handle.  Those TPCs ensure the Onslaught has something that can handle hard targets in addition to being a missile sponge.

I've always tended towards PD heavy low tech builds given torpedoes tend to be the biggest danger for high armor, and low tech tends to have too many weapon slots and too low flux to go all in on DPS weapon in any case.  Hellbores and Tachyon Lances tend to be much less common than Harpoons and Reapers.

14

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.98a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: April 02, 2025, 03:16:04 PM »

Belated thanks for a very cool release.  My only complaint is it released while I was at a work conference.

Finally got a chance to do a proper play through and appreciate the additional story work and the occasional new descriptions for some locations, like habitats and the like.

15

Suggestions / Re: The Ox tug gets no love and no one uses it

« on: January 26, 2025, 12:09:16 PM »

I think if you are that late in game money doesn't matter. However the 30 ship limit does. Given the choice I would pick almost any ship over the Ox because fleet speed is less of an issue when 2 armadas clash.

The only time I ever run into the 30 ship limit is when I'm explicitly doing balance testing on the Support Doctrine skill with Command Console.  In my playthroughs, I might hit 20 ships in my fleet at tops.  Given the power boost that officers provide, I'm typically running 9-15 combat ships, sometimes with a few unofficered frigates for capping and light escort duty, or maybe a mercenary or two.  At which point, late game logistics is pretty much solved with 2 Atlas and 2 Prometheus.  Alternatively, 4-5 Revenants and not using low tech fuel guzzling ships.

Are a lot of people running Support Doctrine fleets?  Or trying to make pure frigate spam work late game?  By the time you get into destroyers, you can hit the 240 DP cap with 20-25 of them without too much trouble, and that still leaves 5-10 logistic slots.  Sure it'd be nice to have full freedom with designing fleets, but I really don't find the limit all that restricting.

When I think of the spirit of the tug boat it leans more towards heavy trade fleets trying to get an edge over pirates and hustling to the next big trade. Its about lower income fleets trying to pick up the pace. Not end game battle fleets in deep space

When I think tug boat, I think small boat moving a larger ship or barge very, very slowly because they can't or shouldn't under their own power, such as in a crowded dock where the large ship lacks the maneuverability.

Perhaps we should suggest a name change the name from Ox tug to Ox fleet navigation support ship.  That way we don't confuse the name with the gameplay purpose.  I'm willing to bet the gameplay purpose (spend resources to make capital ship fleets fast enough to catch frigate fleets) came before the name.

The idea is to make it a rational option for anyone not just min maxers. When I watch YouTube videos let's plays most dont mess with them. Sure their are a few weirdos

Since I don't typically watch let's play videos, my impressions come from the forums, and it seems to me based on that measure, there are a lot of people using Ox tugs already.  Not early game, but definitely late game.  How do you know if the majority of players, who don't make videos or comment on forums, use Ox tugs or not?  It is quite possible the ones in the minority are the ones who don't use them.  I don't think we have enough evidence to say either way.

I'm just saying it deserves a look at a rework that's all. Also I don't think you should be able to make your fleet faster than the Ox itself

Can you clarify, what do you mean make your fleet faster than the Ox itself?  The fleet already always moves at the slowest burn speed, so given an Ox is base burn 8, the fastest the fleet can be is 8+number of Ox in fleet, in terms of base burn.  Adding a single Ox to a destroyer fleet with base burn 9 doesn't affect the net base burn, but slows it down to sustained burn 17 from 18, and similarly adding an Ox tug to a frigate fleet with base burn 10, slows it down to a base burn 9, and down to sustained burn 17.

Ox tugs look designed to be used when you have slow cruisers and capitals with base burn 8, 7 and 6 in your fleet.  Not early game when you're using frigate logistic ships, as it takes like 4 to have the same sustained burn speed.

So, the Revenant was unique before s-mod bonuses with how it was both a cargo and fuel ship and also had phase field for the sensor radius bonus. However, I feel like the advent of s-mod logistic bonuses have made Revenant a bit redundant. It's a very rare, interesting logistic ship, it should feel cool to get it and make it a mainstay of your fleet for a combat-minded player, but I never care anymore since if I truly want to remain stealthy, I can s-mod Insulated Engines onto my Ox, Atlas and so on. If I want a bit extra fuel, I can s-mod fuel cargo onto my atlas. Stuff like that. I've even started S-modding in Additional Berthing on my Ox ships if I really need that extra crew space.

That made me think it could be nice if Revenant had something extra to make it stick out. What if Revenant was given the Ox's Drive Field Stabilizer hullmod? It could then be used as a special hybrid logistic ship that Atlas, Ox or Prometheus could never do, even with s-mods!

I still think the Revenant's perk is that it is a non-combat cruiser tier phase ship with Phase Field.  Phase Field is not the same as simply putting s-mod Insulated Engine Assembly on your logistics ships, given that Phase Field affects the entire fleet, including the base 300 signature that all fleets have.  Given only the 5 largest signatures matter, your fleet signature is typically going to be determined by your 5 largest combat ships.  Putting s-modded Insulated Engine Assembly on a combat cruiser or capital is typically a loss of potential combat power.  Running something like a Doom with Phase Coil Tuning and 4 Revenants (which don't eat into the Phase Coil Tuning benefits) along with 5 combat capitals is going to have a significantly lower signature than 2 Atlas and 2 Prometheus with Insulated Engine Assembly and 5 combat capitals.

Although the Phase Field benefit stacks up to your 5 highest sensor strength phase ships, so getting 4-5 Revenants is typically necessary to get the full benefit.