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General Discussion / Some thoughts on phase ships
« on: June 11, 2021, 04:21:32 PM »
So I was going through the main storyline, and encountered a certain rather infamous fight that has a lot of people wondering if phase ships are balanced, or if they even can be balanced:
The triple doom fleet. I was curious to see how bad it actually was since I actually had never encountered it before.
Aaaannndd... I got creamed. Absolutely creamed.
Typically I play Iron mode, and when I lose that hard I usually just start over, but given this fights infamy I decided to cut myself some slack and reload
2nd time around I won, it won't say it was easy, but it wasn't too terrible either. I think one of the things that made the fight hard was I was so restricted by deployment points that I couldn't field my full fleet.
Some notes about my second attempt:
* I turtled HARD and was careful to make sure the AI didn't get caught out of position
* I didn't plan on this, but I had a lot of weapons that happened to be good against phase ships: beam weapons, locust srms, and fighters.
* the fight ended when they ran out of CR, which I think reveals that turtling is perfectly valid tactic to use against phase ships. You don't have to kill them, just outlast them and they'll just fall over dead at some point
My fleet comp: 1 Paragon, 1 aurora, 1 astral, 2 apogees, and I think some tempests or shrikes, maybe an omen? (I wasn't able to deploy most of my smaller stuff so I don't remember how many of them I had exactly, they didn't contribute much anyway) oh and the brilliant vow class from arsenal expansion, which was the only modded thing I used.
All weapons were vanilla weapons.
Anyway, the fight got me thinking: I think I only lost the fight the first time because it was the first time I had ever fought any significant number of phase ships. I don't think phase ships in general are overpowered (not touching the issue with dooms, I know the arguments, but I frankly don't have enough experience with or against them to weigh in on that).
I really just wasn't prepared, and didn't know what tactics to use. I quickly learned, but it was a nasty surprise regardless.
Thinking about it more, beyond the occasional gremlin, phase ships are rare to face off against.
I think in all my playthroughs I faced off against... maybe 1 pirate shade, and I don't think I've even seen a pirate afflictor except in shops.
Point is, the player doesn't really get a chance to face off against phase ships and learn what tactics to use: you can't just try to outshoot them, you lose if you do and that's fine. Having to turtle it out was an interesting change of pace.
So, what I'm suggesting is that there should be more phase ships. Maybe some small pirate fleets composed mainly of phase ships, and more bounties that make use of them.
The first time that the player encounters phase ships in any meaningful quantity should not be the triple doom fight. Some smaller scale, less dire fights that the player can afford to make a few mistakes in would allow the player to learn and experiment.
The triple doom fleet. I was curious to see how bad it actually was since I actually had never encountered it before.
Aaaannndd... I got creamed. Absolutely creamed.
Typically I play Iron mode, and when I lose that hard I usually just start over, but given this fights infamy I decided to cut myself some slack and reload
2nd time around I won, it won't say it was easy, but it wasn't too terrible either. I think one of the things that made the fight hard was I was so restricted by deployment points that I couldn't field my full fleet.
Some notes about my second attempt:
* I turtled HARD and was careful to make sure the AI didn't get caught out of position
* I didn't plan on this, but I had a lot of weapons that happened to be good against phase ships: beam weapons, locust srms, and fighters.
* the fight ended when they ran out of CR, which I think reveals that turtling is perfectly valid tactic to use against phase ships. You don't have to kill them, just outlast them and they'll just fall over dead at some point
My fleet comp: 1 Paragon, 1 aurora, 1 astral, 2 apogees, and I think some tempests or shrikes, maybe an omen? (I wasn't able to deploy most of my smaller stuff so I don't remember how many of them I had exactly, they didn't contribute much anyway) oh and the brilliant vow class from arsenal expansion, which was the only modded thing I used.
All weapons were vanilla weapons.
Anyway, the fight got me thinking: I think I only lost the fight the first time because it was the first time I had ever fought any significant number of phase ships. I don't think phase ships in general are overpowered (not touching the issue with dooms, I know the arguments, but I frankly don't have enough experience with or against them to weigh in on that).
I really just wasn't prepared, and didn't know what tactics to use. I quickly learned, but it was a nasty surprise regardless.
Thinking about it more, beyond the occasional gremlin, phase ships are rare to face off against.
I think in all my playthroughs I faced off against... maybe 1 pirate shade, and I don't think I've even seen a pirate afflictor except in shops.
Point is, the player doesn't really get a chance to face off against phase ships and learn what tactics to use: you can't just try to outshoot them, you lose if you do and that's fine. Having to turtle it out was an interesting change of pace.
So, what I'm suggesting is that there should be more phase ships. Maybe some small pirate fleets composed mainly of phase ships, and more bounties that make use of them.
The first time that the player encounters phase ships in any meaningful quantity should not be the triple doom fight. Some smaller scale, less dire fights that the player can afford to make a few mistakes in would allow the player to learn and experiment.