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1

General Discussion / Re: Overrated (overpriced) ships

« on: August 26, 2019, 09:27:02 AM »

I was talking about ship roles specifically. Destroyers don't destroy torpedo boats, cruisers don't cruise and capital ships don't adhere to the limits of the 1922 Washington naval treaty.

But since I wasn't clear, you are correct. Add to that, the number of capacitors and vents are strictly delineated by hull type, as are hullmod costs and any hullmods that change according to hull type.

Oh. Well to be fair, real world destroyers have stopped carring about destroying torpedo boats a while ago. They pretty much made the first few ones as torpedo boat destroyers and the admiralty was like "Oh... You know what we could use that thing for ? An high sea torpedo boat !" *yoink*.

2

General Discussion / Re: Overrated (overpriced) ships

« on: August 25, 2019, 10:14:46 AM »

In terms of percent speed bonus, UI gets more efficient with size.  A Tempest with 180 base speed gets +25, which amounts to a 13.8% gain at the cost of 10% of its OP.  A Paragon with 30 base speed gets +15, which is a 50% boost at the cost of 6.8% of its OP.  So in percentage terms, UI is over 5 times as efficient on a Paragon as on a Tempest.

I pretty much always run UI on my Paragon.  Coupled with aggressive use of zero flux boosts, I can chase down most cruisers and destroyers (the enemy will never have 0 flux boost unless they are in full retreat).  When I'm fighting Remnants in particular I like to hold fire until I can touch shields with the Radiant, then let loose.  Even after it teleports away, I have enough speed and range (range does matter, it's a question of how much) to keep up and kill it.

I would argue that you can do the same with an ITU Paragon since its beams will force the enemy to shield up while you close in on 0 flux. Though thanks to your calculations I realised that I'm better off using Nav relays rather than UI on my frigates and destroyers. So that's the last use I had for UI removed, ironicaly. Sorry. 

3

General Discussion / Re: Overrated (overpriced) ships

« on: August 25, 2019, 09:48:44 AM »

Outside of Odyssey, and maybe Conquest as cruiser and DD killers I would not consider UI over ITU for any capitals. Well, Prometheus, in case you're having a bad day.

Even with UI Paragon/Legion/Onslaught arn't rushing anything with a +15 top speed. It still leave them much slower than most cruisers and open them up to being kitted to death due to their reduced range, but then I guess you would not include any of them in a rushing fleet in the first place.

4

General Discussion / Re: Overrated (overpriced) ships

« on: August 25, 2019, 06:22:06 AM »

The game doesn't work that way. The ship classes don't have anything specific delineating them, but that they tend to be bigger. Some have burn speed higher than the rest. Some have different fuel costs. Some have weaker hulls than the class below.

I agree with that but on one specific point : Range. Because of the way ITU works, the ship class dictate its max engagement range which I find to be a very important factor in deciding who will win an engagement, both in simulation and actual fleet battles.

As an aside, I kind of don't like the way ITU works because it's pretty much mandatory on capital ships. My current fleet it built on long range engagement, with most ships using beam and missile weapons to soften the enemy from afar, a strong ECM game (most battles the enemy's range is cut by 25%) and carriers to deliver the killing blow. It's not unusual with that configuration that my beam Tempests will outrange cruisers and capitals that don't use ITU+Advanced Optics and, being Tempests, they don't care about missiles the enemy might throw at them. They don't do a lot damage-wise except for heating up the enemy's shield a bit but quite often they manage to get the attention of a few of the bigger enemy ships and lead them in a wild chase accross the map where they're being utterly useless and not helping the rest of their fleet.

5

General Discussion / Re: Ship costs and availability

« on: August 23, 2019, 03:18:05 PM »

Uh if by "the military" you're thinking of the Hegemony... XIV Battlegroup - the guys who became the Hegemony - arrived in the sector only 50 years or so after the Collapse. They were set to replace another battlegroup that had already left the Persean Sector and the gates collapsed on them mid-travel and they ended up a few lightyears away from their destination.

Add to that that they lost or had to scrap most of their fleet during the travel before they were able to make it there, that the people of the Persean sector had started to organize, recover and even start waging war on each other and that Tri-Tachion was surprisingly ready when the Collapse happened and you don't really get the "US military in a third world backwater" situation you're imagining.

They're certainly powerful and I agree it is a bit weird they would let warships and weaponry be sold on the open market in their territory when it is supposedly illegal to do so but they're not "the military" that everybody else recognise as the rightfull autority in the sector. They can't fully enforce their diktat of Hegemony in the systems they nominaly control, can't deal with a splinter group that pretend to be the real, legitimate Hegemony and can't crush Tri-Tachion after having waged two wars against them.
I don't think they're at the point where they regulate ship IDs and specifications sector-wide just yet. If you read the description of the Valkyrie troop-transport you learn that they tried to restrict that hull and miserably failed at it. (Yeah, somehow the first thing they tried to ban was a ground landing crafts, not the battlecruisers or carriers. Though it makes sense considering how important it is to keep your blueprints and infrastructure safe.)

6

General Discussion / Re: how trading actually works

« on: August 23, 2019, 11:42:17 AM »

No one at any point said or suggested that legal trade should equal smuggling.

Legal trade without missions nets you nearly nothing or negative after factoring in fuel/supplies/crew pay. That is not a reasonable state. Smuggling can double costs, Legal gets you nearly nothing. A 10-20% return on legal trade costs would make it viable.

It's not selfishness, it's you objecting to something no one said.

My point is that peacetime legal trade between core worlds lending you a 2-3% profit margin at best is a perfectly reasonable state of affair. Again, there is zero risk involved in it. You can know in advance where the pirates are by reading your intels, pathers can be bribed and even without that it's not hard to make a trade fleet either impossible to catch up to or strong enough that the odd pirates or pathers wont want to go anywhere near it. If you are engaged in battle while trading in the core worlds in peacetime you're doing something wrong.

You already get the 10-20% profit margin on legal trade by trading on shortages, but that often involve risking your fleet in systems that are raided by pirates so at that point it become reasonable.

Profitable open market trade makes no sense, both gameplay wise and in setting. Not a 20% profit margin anyway. A 30% blanket tariff on everything isn't there by accident. It means the factions don't want you being involved in trading their stuff. Each probably already has their own chartered trade companies/merchant guilds/subsidiaries handling the trade for them and they don't want the competition from you and your rag-tag fleet of Hounds. Now, maybe there could be a more involved way to do legal trade than just pressing F1 on your cargo and checking your intels from time to time, maybe you could become one of those company that trade on behalf of a faction and maybe having a comission could grant you a lower tariff or a tariff-free quota in the ports where you're comissioned.

Making legal trade more interesting with new features would be welcome, sure. Just making it more profitable by fiddling with the numbers until you get a profit margin that seems reasonable to you is the lazy way out and would potentialy ruin the smuggler gameplay by making it irrelevant.

7

General Discussion / Re: how trading actually works

« on: August 22, 2019, 09:14:07 PM »

Market values can suddenly change destroying any profit. I've had this happen smuggling.
Pirates and LP can attack players trying to trade. This is a bigger threat to someone that's running cargo ships.

Just pressing F1 is not all there is to it. That's like saying Bounty hunting is "just go there and kill them, zero challenge and zero risk." as if it was just that simple.

What other people find fun should not be invalid because you don't want to do it. Go bounty hunt/scav or w/e it is you do at the start, no one is suggesting your ways to make money should be removed to make trading better. Your post comes across as rather selfish.

I was talking about "legal trade". Smuggling is, by definition, not-legal trade. Smuggling is fun.

One of the reason it is fun is that it is profitable. If hauling legal goods between core worlds on the open market without ever having to turn your transponder off was making as much credits as smuggling on the black market that would defeat the entire point of smuggling and, thus, ruin everybody's fun. See ? It's not selfishness, it's game design.

8

General Discussion / Re: how trading actually works

« on: August 22, 2019, 06:26:13 PM »

I don't think legal trade should ever be a valid source of income. There is no fun in just pressing F1 to see where you should buy a given ressource and where you should sell it then. There would be zero challenge and zero risk for the player so if legal trading became the optimal way to make money early game I'd rather just skip the chore and have the cash given to me from the start.