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1

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 14, 2024, 08:03:17 AM »

Which comes back to my original question to the posters in the thread: Is the game too hard, too easy, or about right in difficulty?

Too easy for no flagship playstyles.

Thank you for answering the question.  Which is a good data point, especially coming from you, since I've got ample evidence you can play the flagship style fine.

You could for example instead of reducing officer and core levels, simply multiply the effects of skills on the flagship (and only the flagship) by a factor of 1.25, or 1.5 or even 2, in concept similar to how carrier skills get a 1.5 multiplier on officered ships.

One thing I'd been thinking about for a *while* is finding items that, when right-clicked, grant the player a unique combat or two. Something very limited - you wouldn't get amazing at combat off those alone - but it could be a fun way to approach this sort of thing.

Gameplay and design wise, this isn't that different from the pre-chosen character builds but limited to one path.   It just makes doing certain actions or quests feel mandatory on repeat playthroughs, which is not a bad thing as long as its entertaining to do.  On the plus side, unique skills to the player are really handy balancing levers, since they don't impact anything else.

And, yeah, it's a fair point about officers having too many elite skills; that definitely got a little out of hand. I've pulled it back a bit with CyberAug going from +2 elites to +1, but 3/6 elites is still a lot.

I feel like you've chosen a harder balancing path by coupling the player to NPCs and end game challenges so tightly in terms of skills.  Your balance levers are elite skills number and maximum level for the officers.  Whereas in a more decoupled system, where perhaps officers and AI cores alike only ever get 1 elite skills, period, you also get the lever of changing elite power itself like you did in the recent release.  In such a system, AI cores could remove all the elite skills (not even 1 - they are alien in a sense) and just get a bonus Hypercognition skill, like they do with Administration where you actually did break the player/officer/core symmetry.  Or maybe instead of selecting elites, you pick an AI Hypercognition specialization.  Defense, Offense, Support.  Something like that.  Make them orthogonal to people, they're non-human, let the "skills" reflect that.  It also gives you something you can use tune end game difficulty very easily without changing anything else, and potentially adds variety to encounters.  Instead of just having all the skills, now an Offensive Radiant with very different and large bonuses will feel very different to a Support Radiant and a bit of variety at the end.  Right now an Alpha Core Radiant is an Alpha Core Radiant, because you haven't left yourself the option of customizing, simply applying the same 90% of all elite skills - which mirrors player flagship power.

Personally, since I almost never pick the +2 officer skill, you could probably drop the elite skill from Officer Training and people would still take it. +1 base skill on 8 officers isn't bad, especially compared to most fleet wides.  As for Cybernetic Augmentation, you could double the damage reduction for the flagship as well and remove the +1 elite skill and call it a day.  Again, this isn't that different from simply giving the player's flagship larger bonuses - here it is just more and different bonuses.  So easier to balance.

And if no flagship playstyles are truly true strong, this is a sensible way to go - weaken a few fleetwides.  Even if they are not truly strong, well, then you've got levers to adjust that are orthogonal - you can weaken or strengthen end game threats (hypercognition), weaken or strengthen flagship (elite skills), and weaken or strengthen no flaship style (fleet wides) relatively independently.

2

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 13, 2024, 05:15:16 PM »

If there's an elegant solution to keeping current flexibility versus guiding new players down a particular way to play the game, I'd love to see it.

Nerfing baseline officer level to 3. AI cores to 1, 3 and 5.
Why: currently officers are very strong and there's no need whatsoever to pilot your ship, and if you do so, most players are likely to reduce their performance in combat. And people complained that reducing baseline officer count to 4 would just lead to cap spam.
Upsides:
- Officers, by default, don't get capstones, so the player is harder to replace.
- It's cheaper for the player to reach parity with officers in skills.
- Indirectly nerfs capital ships.
- Easy to implement.
- Doesn't impact balance against most factions
Downsides:
- Melodrama about officers levels being taken away (from everyone, yes).
- Officer Management becomes worse, because individual officer quality degraded.
- AI core levels are smushed in a weird way.

This is a reasonably self-consistent approach.  Similar alternatives I've seen is just disconnect officer combat skills from player combat skills, which allows you to scale the player skills harder to make the fleet vs pilot balance better, if that is something that is perceived to be off.  If combat skills are in fact not attractive enough, then make them individually more attractive for the player character only (and not officers and AIs as well) makes sense to me.

This is kind of what the elite system tries to do, but then allows for 50% elite skills on officers anyways for skill picks, or in the case of cores, 100% of the skills are elite, so it never feels like the game fully commits to the idea.  Is a 6 combat skill with 6 elites really that much better than 6 combat skills and 3 elites (the 3 most synergistic).  Plus the existence of 7/4 officers as well.

You could for example instead of reducing officer and core levels, simply multiply the effects of skills on the flagship (and only the flagship) by a factor of 1.25, or 1.5 or even 2, in concept similar to how carrier skills get a 1.5 multiplier on officered ships.  So 3 skills act more like 4.5 or even 6 skills.  Same 3 skill investment in this proposal gets you the same relative performance as a level 5 or level 6 officer, plus the elite effects.  Which would be like a level 3 combat skill player character versus a level 3 officer.  Has the advantage of not changing any of the current "your fleet vs NPC fleet" dynamics at all, and just purely affects the flagship.  Or just as you say, limit everyone else's maximum officer level does something similar in the other direction.  Fleet vs fleet stays the same, while flagship vs fleet is stronger.

Of course, all of this only makes sense if the game is too hard when using those combat skill picks instead of fleet wide skill picks, or alternatively, the game is too easy when you go fleet wide focused.

Which comes back to my original question to the posters in the thread: Is the game too hard, too easy, or about right in difficulty?  How much does it depend on skills picks and personal player skill?  I think we'll continue to get these types of discussions so long as we've only got 2 difficulty levels, simply because it is really hard to balance for multiple player skill levels simultaneously.  A "heroic" difficulty, where you are playing a "hero" after all, that had all flagship skills effects doubled would be one way to approach it and likely easy to code up.

3

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 12, 2024, 06:24:47 PM »

And the same people come by and try to shoot this down with the same flawed arguments every time, as if rebalancing skill values and potential character power levels is somehow magically completely impossible and unacceptable.

Well, that is why I phrased my response in the form of questions.  If there's an elegant solution to keeping current flexibility versus guiding new players down a particular way to play the game, I'd love to see it.  If its magically impossible, then present the counter example.  And also present the negatives that come along with it, not just the positives.  Explore what the suggestion fully requires for implementation.

A suggestion I've sometimes thought of is just requiring players to have successfully finished all the vanilla missions as a pre-requisite to playing the campaign, as that would force players to learn a number of key concepts which will make them better at combat, and also pilot a ship to progress.  No officers or extra skill bonuses are going to save you there.  The campaign skill system maintains its flexibility, while new players are taught the joys of piloting (whether they want to or not), and a given a reason to take personal combat skills given they see what a lone Paragon can do against entire fleet in player hands, let alone some of the wolf pack scenarios.

Although, if I don't care about flexibility, and only want the best play experience for new players, another option I haven't seen thrown around is eliminating the free skill picking and just let you pick a pre-picked path at the start of the game.  You could have 4 pre-designed characters, getting a specific skill at each level that synergizes on a particular theme.  Ensure players get capstones early for example rather than do something like 3 picks in each tree by level 12.  Make sure they take Target Analysis before Damage Control (if they ever take Damage Control).  Navigation can be the 1st pick for two characters, and Bulk Transport for the other two.  Ensures they get an even mixture of personal and fleet skills as they level up in an "optimal" way. 

Finally to make this all good for veterans, you make free skill picks an advanced option that you unlock at some point for new game (or new game+ if you prefer that parlance), perhaps after finishing the main quest line or reaching max level.  And just to let players try different things, make it a single story point to swap between the 4 pre-made characters once started (with all elite skills pre-paid).

Both these suggestions maintain flexibility for veterans, while introducing new players to the concept of personal piloting as well as good skill builds.  It also prevents a randomly leveled up officer being the flagship officer.

The downsides to both of these suggestions of course, is railroading players into doing something they may not want to do first.  Or at all.  I doubt either suggestion would get much traction.

Yes, something like this is absolutely a good idea.

For some playstyles and some players.  It is not a universally good idea for all players and all playstyles.  The entire skills system and overall difficulty of the game is by definition a compromise.  It can't be all things to all players.  So if you tell me that the way I've played some campaigns and had fun is absolutely the wrong way to play or the wrong difficulty, I'm going to have to disagree.  Admittedly, my having fun likely has different requirements than a brand new player playing the game.  By the same token, the requirements for having fun for that same player after a month of play time might also be different. 

I am more than capable of doing self-imposed challenges to increase my difficulty.  If the assumption is many players are unwilling to explore the parameter space of skills, are the majority going to do self-imposed challenges, or simply consider the game too easy at the end?  What level of difficulty is the right one to pick for the default version of the game?  It is really hard to say as single veteran player.  Which is why I'm interested in players opinions on the difficulty of the game, especially new players.

My personal favorite version of this is the 'flag captain' notion, where your combat skills are just whatever officer is assigned to your flagship. Interestingly, there is a mod that actually implements something like this; there's a pair of special ships you can acquire in the Secrets of the Frontier mod that have an integrated AI core, but don't count as automated ships; you can set one of them as your flagship, and in battle it uses the AI core's skills rather than yours.

I've seen the suggestion, but you I disagree that such a change is absolutely better, and doesn't have downsides.  There are compromises that need to be made to make it work given the current game balance.  So what are the compromises and changes you'd make along with this?  Or as I asked, do consider the game too hard right now and need the increase in power that just a straight addition of this would add?  There are completely self-consistent and valid arguments to be made for this change.  However, self-consistent and valid arguments can be made against it just as well, simply because different people value different things.

I assume your suggestion would not simply slap this ability on top of the current skill system and call it a day, given that leads to things like nine level 6 officers with 3 elite skills with a player piloted triple s-mod Radiant (with elite Missile Specialization and Elite Systems Expertise?) backed up by Combat Drills, Coordinated Maneuvers, Crew Training, Electronic Warfare, Flux Regulation, Phase Coil Tuning.  Essentially a 6 combat, 7 Leadership, 8 Technology build.  That strikes me as significantly more powerful than what I can do right now, with an entire 2 extra capstone talents.  I could also replace the Radiant with the Ziggurat if I preferred to skip Automated ships and grab Industry 5 instead of Tech 8.  Or maybe an Onslaught if I'm being old school.

Or perhaps you would, and simply increase the difficulty of the base game to account for the effective level 21 possible?  Or do you allow only 2 non-combat capstones to reign in the possible synergies?  Reduce the power of skills overall?  Or something I haven't thought of that elegantly reigns in power?

Don't just consider the impacts on the new player learning to play, but how does it impact the new player who can't (perhaps due to physical limitations) or doesn't want to pilot.  How does it impact the grizzled veteran interested in exploring a different way to play?  Perhaps those should take a back seat to the typical new player experience, but I'd suggest they should at least be acknowledged, even if in the end you argue they are lesser impacts worth accepting.

4

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 12, 2024, 07:04:10 AM »

When this proposal comes up, I do like asking a few questions of the proposer.

1) Do consider the current game balance too hard, too easy, or about right?
2) With an eye to question 1, are you proposing that level cap, where you get 1 combat skill and 1 non-combat skill and max out at level 7 or 8? So we have total roughly the same number of skill points as now of like 14 - 16?
3) The industry tree contains 2 Combat skills, so it is pretty easy to do picks at level up of non-combat, personal combat, non-combat, personal combat, capstone already.  How does this proposal change your own skill picks in the Industry tree?

4) If I say I feel like the game is about right, and we don't want to raise the overall power level, given I often play very personal combat focused (10+ skills in combat skills), and other often play fleet focused only and never pilot (so 15 non-combat skills), does this proposal eliminate those builds and playstyles?  Or phrased another way, is there some new combination of skill enabled by this proposal, or is it only reducing what other players could pick, and your ideal skill picks end up the same as a currently possible combination?

5

Suggestions / Re: Hull Restoration is way too overpowered

« on: April 12, 2024, 06:55:47 AM »

Personally, I don't mind skills which have different values to players with different skill levels.

I will point out d-mod ships are perfectly usable, and if you're struggling with supply/fuel costs as a new player, cheaper to run combats with.  Until you hit 240 DP, d-mod ships are in a sense, not a disadvantage.  You just need to remember to bring more fuel tankers than supplies since the fuel/supplies ratio usage changes.

The only thing I've seen close to that is when they are selling off a specific ship, but the vast majority of the time its only going to be a destroyer or a cruiser and you don't get a choice of ships. When it comes to Nano forge production you normally only get a 200k-300k at 80% cost or so which is never enough for he more expensive capitals.

It's the specific ship sold by a high ranking military officer contact.  I've gotten Onslaught XIVs offers (multiple, one after another) from the one very high contact I once lucked out on Jangala and I made priority.  Admittedly, very high  contacts are pretty rare.  A high ranking priority contact should do something similar I think (not sure if its Jangala's size 6 or military base that made it seem like he was offering a lot of ships, or just human perception).

Of course, if you're acquired a multi d-mod capital at point in the game where bounties won't pay for the capital's restoration in 2 or 3 fights, you probably don't need a pristine capital.  And saving ~2000 credits per deployment on a 3 d-mod capital isn't a bad thing.  Another d-modded synergy is with safety overrides, since running down the CR is much cheaper to pay off.

And occassionally, I lose a ship, it gets a single d-mod and I realize, its an improvement as the supply savings is greater than the impact to the combat capability of the ship (typically high tech frigates losing armor).

6

General Discussion / Re: tell me few things about this game

« on: April 06, 2024, 10:12:27 AM »

Welcome to the forums.

I've never played Star Valor, and only a very little bit of Endless Sky at one point.  I did play a lot of Escape Velocity Nova back in the day, which I believe Endless Sky is a spiritual successor to.

The game is a bit like Endless Sky.  However, it is like Mount in Blade in that there are two layers to the main camaign game (as opposed to the stand alone missions). 

You do travel between star systems, as well as inside the star systems between planets, but it is done on a campaign layer, where you see your ship and the rest of the fleet ships traveling in a little bubble together.  If that bubble intersects an opposing fleet's bubble, then you drop into the combat layer, which will feel similar to the combat in Endless Sky (I.e. top down, flying your own ship, with your other owned ships around you as allies).  In combat you also have some ability to influence your allied ships via orders although the AI controlled allied ships may or may not follow those orders depending on their current situation for that particular ship.   The AI has been tuned to err on the side of survival, although that can be tweaked via officers and other settings.

I'll also note you have to pick which ship you are piloting at the start of combat, along with which ships of your fleet will join you on the battle field.  While Escape Velocity Nova had fuel, it didn't have supplies.  Simply having your ships flying with you consumes supplies over time, so you can't just stay out flying around forever without heading back to a settled world where you can buy more supplies and fuel. Unless you're finding enough supplies in the remains of your enemies or in random derelicts scattered about.  Also sending your ships into combat eats a lot of supplies, so there is incentive to use the bare minimum of forces needed for complete victory to conserve supplies and thus credits.

In the campaign layer, you do have to travel between systems, although by memory its not that bad compared to Endless Sky transit times.  As the game progresses, different types of short cuts become possible.  The latest release added a bunch of new campaign layer travel options that unlock with exploration type activities.  Buildings sensor arrays and powering them volatiles, sensor pinging interesting types of planets and phenomena, etc.  Late game I find I can get around the entire sector quickly enough, although not instantly from any given point to any other given point. 

There's also the transverse jump ability, which allows you to transit between a star system and hyperspace instead of using a fixed location jump point, and from hyperspace back to a planet within the system, which can be a short cut (that costs a bit of fuel and supplies to do), to cross star systems with very distant planets.  It is an ability you can either get from the skill system (available at level 1) or from the main questline.

I'd suggest taking a few minutes to look at a video or two of the game, with an eye to looking at the campaign layer travel and then the combat layer (which I consider the heart of the game).  Given the wide range of ships from frigates to capitals, the needed level of reflexes by the player can vary.  I would say it is more akin to a Mechwarrior game in terms of reflex and thought for combat than say a classic shoot 'em up game.

7

Suggestions / Re: Making (some) money should be easy...

« on: April 06, 2024, 09:27:32 AM »

The game is enough of a sandbox that I expect portions of the game to be ignored by different subsets of players.  If don't want to trade, then I'm ignoring the majority of the trade system.  If I don't want to pirate, then a lot of disruption manipulation is off the table.

Personally, I play the game to see pretty exploding opposing spaceships with the least amount of stuff on my side I can get away with.  Doing stuff which does not involve exploding opposing spaceships gets filed under boring grind that I don't want to do a lot of. 

1. Hulls/ships - yes, it's true that buying a brand new Paragon from some arms dealer guy is pretty expensive, but this is the exception. Hulls, in general, feel cheap at best, or trash at worst. I feel this aspect of the game needs some serious work, but that's a separate topic.

This can be fixed simply by increasing the proportions in cost from each ship class, make destroyers substantially more than frigates, and crusiers substantially more than destroyers ect.  Make a cruiser be a million, Make capitols even more, 10 mill, balance the numbers, but make that progression up ship classes more expensive.

That will require more extensive changes to the game to make work than I think you're proposing here.  Keep in mind, veteran players can kill capitals with certain frigates (i.e. Afflictor, Shade, Hyperion), in the middle of the enemy fleet no less.  For a combat oriented player, it is currently quite easy to salvage a capital early on, which would suddenly mean I could sell a salvaged capital for a full fleet of destroyers (since its value is 100 times that of the destroyer tier, and assuming even a 10% sale price, that is 10 destroyers) earned from a single fight.  Or simply salvage a cruiser from the salvage field left by a Tri-tachyon fleet fighting a Hegemony fleet near Skathi without needing combat.  Or maybe an invasion fleet fighting defending fleets in a Nex game.  Or simply find a Legion XIV drifting around a lonely planet, of which I believe there are 4 guaranteed each game in Vanilla.

You'd have to completely change the salvaging system to make that kind of distinction work, or else the path of least resistance becomes salvaging everything.  Especially if ship value is large compared to running costs.  As it is, there already is a huge mark down for selling ships.  One option I guess would be to force the sale value down to 1% of its purchase price in such a scaling scheme, although I think that would get even more complaints than the current system.

As a combat focused veteran player, changing the credits gain for various campaign layer actions such as trade, colonization, commissions, exploration missions, isn't going to affect me much.  Now if you start making it so bounty profits and AI core sales aren't sufficient to maintain that bounty hunting, then we're going to have a problem.  As now you're saying I need to other credit making options in order to get to the good part of the game.

The fundamental question I feel a lot of these types of discussions should answer is, what do you want the player to spend most of their time doing?  Or perhaps do a finer break down of time spent percentage wise, along with considering if that time usage breakdown should change as the game progresses?  My suggestion is the majority of time a player spends should be on game loops they consider fun.  The equivalent of fetch quests is not a particularly exciting game loop, and forcing new players to do even more of that in order to simply get to the good part of the game either because of running costs or acquiring ship costs isn't a direction I'd take the game.

8

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] What is the fastest way to finish the story line?

« on: March 29, 2024, 06:59:00 AM »

You could also use a solo revenant, if you get lucky on a derelict spawn. With phase anchor, even if you get caught during a pursuit the auto-disengage effect of the anchor will let you escape from any enemy.

I'll note neither Augmented Drive Field (to bump up to burn 10) or Phase Anchor is available from day 1, I'd probably reserve this for an already established character playing for a while deciding it is time to get the main quest out of the way, as opposed to trying to use it to get it out of the way from the very start.  Spending time looking the right hullmods is time not spent doing the questline and is heavily RNG dependent.  Even then, it is still much faster to be able to just hit the leave button as opposed to select the ship, deploy, and either try to escape or let the ship be "destroyed".

Given you have to hit the core worlds anyways to turn missions in at Galatia, there's no significant benefit to being able to circle the sector 3 times without stopping when speed running, especially since the early missions from Galatia that you have to go through are all clustered in roughly one quadrant of the sector.

9

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] What is the fastest way to finish the story line?

« on: March 27, 2024, 12:58:31 PM »

Allows you to disengage most fights, and those you can't just run foe the top of the map at full speed.

That doesn't sound any different to my Dram experience.

It mostly only matters against Pather fleets with fast SO frigates or if you play with mods, some mod factions.  Or if you are not using a Safety Override Dram since a basic Dram can be caught by most d-mod pirates fleets with some frigates.

From my experience, the ability to disengage without if fight is a comparison of your slowest speed, or your slowest burn speed ship to the enemy's fast speed or fastest burn speed.  Oddly enough, a Bulk Transport skill + civilian Dram (so no SO fallback) at burn speed 11 can disengage from most frigate fleets, while a Militarized Dram with Navigation skill at burn speed 11 can't.  Not sure what the interaction there is.  In any case, for a speed run of the campaign, I'd almost always pick Navigation first for transverse jump ability from the very start, which has me leaning towards the Hound, personally.

I attach two pictures of trying to disengage from the exact same opposing fleet to explain why.  An SO + UI Hound can do disengage and then leave without a fight, while the SO + UI Dram cannot and is forced into a retreat combat.  Essentially, if a Pirate fleet includes an Overdriven Hound (one of the target variants) or it is a Pather fleet with sufficiently fast frigates generally, means the SO + UI Dram can be caught, or at least forced to the battle map.  And an Overdriven Hound is speed 280 vs the Dram's 245.  It is admittedly a small sub-set of the game space, and Pather usually let you pay credits to be on your way, but as someone who has played a lot of early game on Iron man, I've at least regretted the Dram choice once.  And again, can matter more if mods are present.

I also happen to like the interaction of Rugged Construction, disengaging only costing 10% CR and 1.5 supplies (instead of 20% CR and 2 supplies) so I can chain escape, larger cargo bay and more crew which means I can take advantage of serendipitous salvage opportunities a bit better.

You don't really have to get away from things, as long as you've completed the objective. In fact, if your mission takes you to outer worlds, it might be quicker to intentionally sink your ships and emerge back in core worlds.

For me, it is more likely a hostile small frigate fleet patrolling the core I accidently land on while transverse jumping that gets me.  Or speeding through a slipstream into an ambush I can't react fast enough at 2x speed.

As for taking the fast way back from the black, getting destroyed also hits your accumulated credits somewhat, and is also precluded if you hit up some salvage opportunities while out in the black, which may or may not matter depending on why you are speed running the gate storyline in the first place.

10

General Discussion / Re: [SPOILERS] What is the fastest way to finish the story line?

« on: March 27, 2024, 08:43:02 AM »

I personally like a solo Safety Override and Unstable Injector Hound with s-mod auxiliary fuel tanks instead of a Dram, at least when playing with the Ironman option.  Allows you to disengage most fights, and those you can't just run foe the top of the map at full speed.

11

General Discussion / Re: do you unironically use DEM missiles?

« on: March 17, 2024, 11:13:26 AM »

In terms of dragonfire: I don't find that they do soft flux to matter much. If the enemy decides to hold fire to bleed off 4k soft flux then they aren't firing 4k flux at me.

you pay 6 op to make your opponent pretend they missed 5.5 blaster shots? Best case scenario. Cause most often shields are like 0.5 for Remnants. Or 0.8 on average I would guess...
I mean, fair.

If you're including bonuses from skills and CR to get to 0.5 efficiency, you really should apply it to both offense and defense.  Baseline Remnant shield efficiency is 0.6.  Alpha cores get Field Modulation and 100% CR for 0.6*0.85*0.9=0.459 efficiency.  Beta and Gamma only get Combat Endurance (i.e. 100% CR) for 0.6*0.9=0.54 efficiency.

Missiles in a player fleet will often benefit from 100% CR, Elite Missile Specialization, Target Analysis, and Tactical drills or Cybernetic Augmentation (assume +5% either way).  Against a cruiser, this would be  (1+0.1+0.1+0.05)*1.15 = 1.43.

For a Dragonfire, this means 4000*1.43*0.459=2625 net soft flux vs a Brilliant or Apex.  Or an effective overall shield efficiency of 0.65 when both sets of skills are taken into account.  And DEMs clearly were balanced with Missile Specialization in mind given every single Persean League officer has the skill.

So, 5.5 Heavy Blaster shots (no shield efficiency or skills), or in the case of a typical player vs Remnant fight, 3.6 Heavy Blaster shots or 4.8 Plasma cannon projectiles can be the difference between you overloading, or them overloading.  Especially when it is done in 1 seconds instead of 3-4 seconds.  It is a flux race, and being able to keep the enemy frozen in place for 3-4 seconds can be enough to win that race.  Although, to be honest, best case scenario is you prevent a flux dump of an Auto-pulse Laser on a Brilliant with its 0.83 flux efficiency rather than a Heavy Blaster's 1.44 efficiency on an Apex.  2625 flux is 3162 hard flux shield damage from an Auto-Pulse Laser in a little over 2.1 seconds, while it is 1822 hard flux in 3.6 seconds from a Heavy Blaster.

So a lot of analysis here is going to be heavily context dependent.  Although in general against Remnants, spending 6 OP to make the enemy "miss" 3.64 shots every 10 seconds is still a better deal than paying 1.6 OP to make them fire 5 burst PD charges in the case of a Missile Specialization Typhoon launcher and Remnant shields, and "miss" the equivalent of 0.55 shots (400 soft flux for the burst) every 15 seconds.  2625 is still 26% of the base flux capacity of a Brilliant, or 21% of an Apex.  16% or 14.5% in the case of maxed vents.  Those 5 burst PD shots against Reapers are 4% and 3.3% of the base capacity, or 2.5% and 2.2% of maxed vents.

Against a fully functional combat line, a single Reaper, 4 Harpoons, or 3 Hammers are not making it across that no-man's land.  Even a Dragonfire might not make it depending on its target's relative location to the line.  Now, point blank range in a human player's hand on a highly mobile ship is a different situation, but I'd argue that is not the use case being considered here, given it sounds like an AI firing into shields. I'd be interested what the best missile investment would in fact be for a single salvo from a medium or large missile launcher is into shields?  Even a single Squall launcher won't drive the hard flux up on an Alpha Core Radiant if there's nothing else hitting it.

And it is true, DEMs are much more effective in a missile saturated fleet than not.  But this is true basically for all missiles, since you need to overwhelm the opposing line's point defense to land non-DEM missiles.  A single Harpoon pod or Typhoon Launcher is not likely to overwhelm a typical Remnant cruiser's PD, while a set of 4 or 8 is going to land some hits.  A full fleet of Gryphons and Conquests spamming Squalls and Harpoons will overwhelm and destroy an Ordo in short order, as their PD simply can't keep up.  Every missile past saturation is a free hit and a fully missile loaded fleet can easily mix missiles to cover each other's weakness.  Squalls and Harpoons or Squalls and Hurricanes can be an effective mixed damage type long range volley of missiles from a missile specialized fleet.

Also, in regards to the extra shots of the Reaper launcher compared to the Dragonfire, how often do you actually run out in actual play?  If you're not running out of Reapers, what are the extra shots actually doing for you?  Is a Typhoon launcher 6 shots for 10 OP, or is it more like 2 or 3 for 10 OP in AI hands?  Especially once Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization come into play.

12

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 09, 2024, 11:54:34 AM »

Second test same loadout, set full assault from the start. I only watched this passively on the tactical map. This was a massacre. The falcons basically pushed the afflictors up the map all the way and obliterated them. I'm curious if .91 afflictors would make the leap to run all the way below the falcons, but boy howdy did they not do that in this test.

Its a good question, and since I've got a 0.91 install, I tested it.  So I tried to copy the build as best as possible, but a few changes in weapon costs meant only 28 flux distributors, 0 caps.  Still, 2x Heavy Mauler, 4x PD Laser, 2x Salamander, 2 Pulse Laser, Extended Shields and Integrated Targeting unit.

Set the 10 Falcons to Full Assault and let it go.  Result was 5 dead Eagles, and 4 more that wouldn't survive another anti-matter blast, but the Afflictors running out of CR and retreating or getting destroyed because they were out of CR.  7 made it off safely though.  Overall, looks like a better showing than in 0.97a to be honest.  More killed and less caught.  And they didn't get caught at the top, but edged around the sides, and eventually turned into a heavily mixed furball, with them leaking through cracks in the Falcon line.

I'm curious what your take on the more retreats, and more Falcon losses in 0.91a versus 0.97 given as close a setup as I could manage.  You can see the numbers in the first attachment.

I noticed the Extended shields were the real MVP for this fight, restricting the Afflictors down to a hard to make shot.  Out of curiosity, given I don't usually put Extended Shields on a Falcon for general purpose work (they need caps more for dealing with more traditional opponents), I dropped Extended shields, and increase vents to 30 (from 28) and capacitors to 10 (from 0).  The results are the second attachment.

That was basically a total loss for the Falcons again.  So, as far as I can tell, it wasn't the guns so much as the shield defenses being much stronger.  As noted, most of those Afflictor deaths in 0.91a in the first test (mirroring doll's 2nd test) were from being low on CR at the end of the match.   There were a few (out of 14) that did apparently get caught out though in the middle of the match.

Also, as an aside to the thread in general, I suggest we keep our discussion to talking about the ships and their performances and not each other.  People have different interpretations, take aways, and experiences playing the game.  I consider it as an opportunity to test some new ideas or theories out.

Edit: And now that I think about it, basically fighting until CR runs out and having half of them still escape was the problem with the old system.  You couldn't kill them reliably unless you had a very specific anti-phase hunting loadout with high mobility, or you waited them out with solid shield defenses, which wasn't very interactive.

13

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 09, 2024, 08:34:55 AM »

So out of curiosity, and to clear up my memory, I downloaded 0.9.1a-RC8 again, altered the first mission to be a falcon_Attack on my side, and an afflictor_Strike on the other side.  I modified the Falcon attack variant by removing heavy armor and automated repair and instead putting on Dedicated Targeting Core, put in IR pulse lasers in the smalls, Pulse Laser in the mediums, and left the fronts as Heavy Machine guns.  Left the Salamanders.

Started the mission, put the Falcon under autopilot.  You can see the first two attached images, but the Afflictor eventually won, pretty decisively.

So, first I'll point out this was a 1 out of 1 test, so extremely small sample.  Secondly, I noticed it spends a lot of time dancing around.  A human piloted Afflictor would likely have won the fight in like 1/5th the time, but the Afflictor is at least willing to decloak under IR pulse fire sometimes.  Its 350 armor is good enough to tank that, and still had a good portion of its front armor left I think (hard to tell with the graphic as opposed to a hard number).

Biggest problem for the Afflictor is I think it is afraid of the death explosion, which it should be with an anti-matter blaster loadout.  400 range Anti-matter blasters will typically put you in explosion range of a cruiser unless you're moving away from the target at the moment of fire, and basically on the edge of range.  Alternatively, decloak, wait for phase delay, and then fire and cloak.  However, even with that extra long dance towards the end of the fight, the unofficered Afflictor took out the unofficered Falcon with no hull damage, despite the IR pulse lasers in the rear of the Falcon.

So, what I saw was the Afflictor get to the rear 45 degree arc, move to the other side of the 45 degree arc, back off, try again, eventually decloak in that rear arc, trade shots, and eventually kill the Falcon as opposed to simply having the Afflictor explode.

Keep in mind, a 500 hull and 50 armor buff only increases the time for an IR Pulse laser to get through the armor by about 2.5 seconds (from about 10 seconds to 12.5 seconds), and then only about 5 seconds for hull (from ~9 to ~14 seconds).  Used a quick python script to calculate that, but the hull can be seen from 17.5 residual armor vs 20 residual armor and 500 extra hull.  1000/((50/67.5)*152) = 8.8.  1500/((50/70)*152) = 13.8

Overall relative time difference to kill with an IR pulse laser is 38% longer.  So if you can kill multiple ships now with current Afflictor toughness, you can kill multiple ships with the old Afflictor armor/hull stats, just about a quarter fewer (against that tier of weaponry).  Given  I'm typically pulling 150-200 pro rata DP against remnants with a current Afflictor in a fleet situation, old Afflictor (assuming I played the same) would be pulling at least ~100-150, more in the fights I didn't use phase anchor's escape clause.

At this point, wondering if the high speed of the Afflictor and ability to avoid a lot of IR pulse shots was the issue, I tried replacing the IR pulse lasers with Burst PD.  I changed the Heavy Machine Guns to Arbalest to account for the 7 OP vs 5 OP cost difference of the Burst PD vs IR pulse laser.

Essentially same result, and is the last attached image.  Although higher armor damage in this particular fight though.  Again, tiny sample size of 1.

14

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 03, 2024, 09:55:09 PM »

An afflictor or shade has a decent amount. 350

No, the old afflictor had 350 (1000/350). Afflictor has 450 (and 2500 hull, to wit). Similar stats to a centurion, with a much better defensive system.
The page you're so confidently quoting hasn't had it's hull/armor values changed this decade.

I'm curious where you are finding these current numbers?  If I open the game (0.97a), go to codex, and look at the Afflictor, I see 400 armor, 1500 structure listed.
Compare to a Centurion, which has 500 armor, 2250 structure.  These match what is written in ship_data.csv as far as I can tell.  See attached images.

Afflictor is not nearly as tanky as a Centurion if its just sitting there unphased, given 2/3 the hull and 100 less armor.

In addition to having ghost fortress and massive armor, the new phase ships are also hull monsters.

I'm a bit confused if 1500 hull on a frigate makes it hull monster, given that is the same amount of hull on a Wolf.  The residual 20 armor is admittedly going to reduce some low hit strength kinetic shots a bit compared to 7.5, but any energy or HE damage isn't going to care much.

Personally, I'm one shotting enemy phase ships with my own triple anti-matter blaster Afflictor, up to and including Harbingers  which only has 4000 Hull, compared to say a glass cannon Sunder's 4000 hull or a Hammerhead's 5000 hull.  Dooms take 2 passes given it only has 8000 hull (compared to say, the 8000 hull on an Aurora, or the 9000 hull on an Apogee, both high tech cruisers). Only light cruisers and pirate/pather civilian converted cruisers have less hull than a Doom.

Now, I'm not saying their armor and hull wasn't buffed during the release where their long term speed was toned down, but I don't feel it rises to the description of "hull monster".  My Afflictor gets taken out very easily still if I'm not careful with phase and where I drop out.

I mean, that second claim is just flagrantly untrue. They've been buffed. You could easily manage them when their relative DPS was subpar because, if your formation and loadout wasn't literally the worst thing ever, they'd always lose the race versus shields while they were surfaced. They were never scary. They were just cool. I didn't use them much because they weren't strong, but it was always fun to see them.

Are you suggesting phase ships are scary now and that you can't manage them?  Or merely talking about previous incarnations not being scary?  Its a bit unclear. I mean, I have an easier time with them now I think than before, since I can actually chase them down and kill them instead of chasing the rocket across the map.  I didn't lose ships to them (I've always tended to hull mod omni-shield conversion in), but actually putting the final hull damage into them tended to be a pain, at least for me.  Is there an opposing fleet thats giving you more problems than previous releases, as I haven't had particular difficulty with even the all phase fleets lately.

It's insane to think people had DIFFICULTY with phase ships. Ludicrous. It isn't even vaguely possible. Get better material. Literally only the doom presented any meaningful threat and it's a defacto capital.

And yet there are posts on this very forum to that effect.  Overall, I'm a bit confused.  Can you clarify if you asking for easier phase ships to deal with on the enemy side, stronger phase ships on the enemy side, weaker in player hands, stronger in the player hands?  If it is the former and you want easier time with the current enemy AI phase ships, why not simply get some better material and tactics?

15

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 03, 2024, 07:44:33 PM »

Phase ships being durable means that there's no reason to ever worry about blindsiding your enemy (more than once), and you aren't even able to do it anymore either.

Is there a particular phase ship you are referring to here?  I feel that it is quite possible to blind side (i.e. attack from rear or gap in omni-shield) with an Afflictor or Shade, assuming you have Phase Coil Tuning.  Combat skills are a plus, but not necessary.  Although new elite Helmsmanship, 100% CR, plus Coordinated Manuevers results in an Afflictor or Shade pushing 331 at 0% flux, and 109 at around at 50% flux, keeping in mind relative speed to other ships gets multiplied by 3 due to time dilation.  Adaptive Phase Coils would obviously improve the slowdown rate.

Also, I wouldn't recommend dropping phase and venting as an Afflictor or Shade in the front of a cruiser or capital, but both are capable of soloing said ships with proper positioning.  They are certainly less armored than a Vanguard.  So positioning for at least the phase frigates is still quite important.  Even a Harbinger doesn't have that much armor at only 600, which is significantly less than an Enforcer's 900.

The ships which need to do what you're describing are the Doom and Ziggurat, although the latter is really a unique campaign ship which didn't actually change the other phase ships, so their capabilities are still more or less the same.  I could be wrong, but the Doom never felt like a get behind the target and assassinate type of phase ship to me.  It never was as fast as the frigates.