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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Topics - Vanshilar

Pages: [1] 2
1
General Discussion / Damage Bonuses
« on: March 11, 2024, 12:38:52 AM »
Just wanted to make a note of this since I did some testing.

Damage bonuses generally modify the base damage. So if the weapon does 100 base damage, Tactical Drills gives 5% bonus damage, and 100% CR gives 10% bonus damage, then the damage will become 100 * (1 + 0.05 + 0.10) = 100 * 1.15 = 115 damage.

However, certain bonuses modify the whole thing instead of the base damage. For example, if you have the above, and then add Tactical Analysis, say against a capital ship (20% bonus damage), you might think it'd be 100 * (1 + 0.05 + 0.10 + 0.20) = 100 * 1.35 = 135 damage. But instead, it'll actually be 100 * (1 + 0.05 + 0.10) * (1 + 0.20) = 138 damage. It basically added +23% of the base damage since it's also multiplying with the other bonuses.

There are a couple of those types of modifiers, but thus far, they all multiply with each other. In other words, as far as I can tell, the damage boils down to (base damage) * (1 + X) * (1 + Y), where X are some modifiers like the CR damage bonus, and Y are some other modifiers like the Target Analysis bonus. Since X is easier to get, I'm going to call them the "regular" bonuses, while Y is more rare, so I'll call them the "special" bonuses. I could probably call them something more descriptive but this is just to organize it. The mathematically astute reader would notice that I could've defined it the other way too, but there are more in X than Y so I think it'll be easier to think of it this way.

Testing is done via the simulator in version 0.97a-RC10, by looking at the damage numbers of weapons against a target from the Practice Targets mod and against a sim Hyperion, and then calculating out what it needs to be for the given bonuses to match the observed damage numbers.

There's probably a way to just look in the code to see the list of all possible bonuses or something, but this is relying on empirical testing instead.

The "regular" bonuses:
CR (assuming CR > 70%)
Ballistic Mastery (regular and elite)
Tactical Drills
Energy Weapon Mastery
Cybernetic Augmentation
High Energy Focus
High Scatter Amplifier (regular and elite)

The "special" bonuses:
Target Analysis (regular and elite)
Wolfpack Tactics
Advanced Turret Gyros s-mod -- note that this also benefits missiles, not just ballistic and energy

Of particular note is that fighters are not affected by any of the "regular" or "special" bonuses above *except* for CR.

Targeting Feed (shipsystem on Heron) seems to be its own modifier, and thus multiplicatively stacks with everything else. Most damage modifiers don't apply to fighters, though.

Graviton Beam's effect is a damage taken modifier by the target ship, as opposed to the above which are damage dealt modifiers by the firing ship, and thus will multiplicatively stack with all of the above.

Since the "special" bonuses multiply all the other bonuses (except each other), and they're more rare, they are in some sense better than the "regular" bonuses. Note also that if the ship is a capital, then with elite Target Analysis and s-modded Advanced Turret Gyros, the ship is basically doing +20% against all targets, multiplying with the "regular" bonuses. On the other hand, frigates with elite Target Analysis and Wolfpack Tactics get +5%/+30%/+35%/+40%, multiplying with the "regular" bonuses.

2
Suggestions / Make Defend orders persist even if no ships assigned
« on: February 09, 2024, 08:23:56 PM »
Starsector 0.97a now automatically removes waypoints that have no ships assigned to it, which is a welcome change to clean up clutter. However, Defend is a useful command to corral ships, even if no ship are directly assigned to it. For example, it's useful to have a ship do something (capture an objective, kill an enemy ship), and then have it automatically leash back to a Defend point once it completes its task, without having to spend another command point to do so.

So it'd be nice if "Rally" waypoints were automatically removed, but "Defend" waypoints persist even if no ships are currently assigned to them.

3
If the capital ship your destroyer is relying on for Escort Package dies, you still keep your weapon range and speed (and probably maneuverability) bonus. It'll say "no connection" but the bonus is still present.

Once another ship that can give you the bonus moves into range, it'll update again, but until then, you get to keep the last bonus you had prior to the larger ship's destruction.

4
Okay, I know it says values higher than 1 make it impossible to control the player ship correctly, although I don't know if there's a technical reason why it can't be done (since the SpeedUp mod also allows people to play at higher speeds). But one thing I noticed, if combatStepsPerFrame is set to 2, then when you right click to turn on shields, they turn on then turn off right away; you lose your zero flux speed bonus and then get it back again a few seconds later, but the shields never actually go up. Similarly if you had forced shields to turn on (such as Paragon's fortress shield), when you right-click, the shields go down then go right back up again.

If combatStepsPerFrame is set to 3, then shields go up normally. So I'm guessing it's something like, at combatStepsPerFrame = 2 it's sending 2 right clicks per right click or something, causing this behavior.

Playing at combatStepsPerFrame = 3 seems okay if a bit fast, but I'm not noticing any particular problems with the player-controlled ship -- so I don't know if the warning is for technical issues or if there may be some loss of fidelity at receiving player input. (I assume the rest of the ships are fine since it just calculates extra world frame states between each graphical render frame is my understanding.)

5
I've been having fun with ~200-DP fleets of some form of flagship Onslaught + "other" + 1-3 Gryphons as flankers, where "other" is whatever other ship makes up the bulk of the fleet. The Gryphons are there to grab the objectives and take care of trash on the sides, while I'm in the center, as a wrecking ball to the heart of the enemy fleet, with the "other" ships in between.

The absolute fastest fleet I'm aware of is simply flagship Onslaught + 8 Gryphons, but Onslaught + 3 Conquest + 2 Gryphon is a very effective fleet too, only slightly slower, but gives roughly 20% more bonus XP since it's smaller XP-wise. So here's a video showing this fleet in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhyXg1VG8cE

The flagship Onslaught uses Heavy Autocannons, Light Needlers, Light Autocannons on the sides, and Hypervelocity Drivers as its main anti-shield weapons. I have Ballistic Rangefinder so they all match range at 900 range (the HVD's are further back so they also roughly match the range of the others). Then the anti-armor/hull weapons are 3 Hephaestus Assault Guns. Basically, a single HAG isn't enough DPS, so when I'm hitting armor/hull, I point the nose to the side of the target so that it gets hit with two HAG's at once. For burst DPS or against large ships, I use Proximity Charge Launchers. They also double as PD since I armor tank most of the shots so that my flux goes toward damaging enemy ships most of the time.

I don't bother with Heavy Armor nor Polarized Armor, they're simply not needed. I do use Impact Mitigation though since it also improves my maneuverability, and it's the best armor skill; the -25% armor damage taken actually amounts to something like -40% armor damage taken because of how hit strength works, so the armor lasts a lot longer than you might think.

This flagship is heavily overfluxed, so it relies on frequent venting to make the most use of its weapons. I usually throw some PCL's in the path of the enemy ships before I vent, to give me some cover, which you see multiple times in the video.

The Conquests have Squall/Locust/Harpoon Pods as one group (linked), and dual Mjolnirs/HVD with IR Autolance and 2 LR PD Lasers, also linked. For the missile group, I won't run out of Squalls nor Locusts anyway (need more Ordos for that), so I want the Locusts firing as much as possible, so it's linked with the Squalls. For the Harpoon Pods, I want them used as much as possible in the initial fight, since the initial fight is actually the hardest part of the battle. During the initial clash, the enemy fleet has its entire 240 DP fleet against the player (and I only use 200 DP), while once their ships start dying, a lot of their DP is tied up in the steady stream of reinforcements heading to the front lines, so my ships are actually only facing around 1/3 to 1/2 of their fleet for much of the fight. So I want to kill that initial fleet as quickly as possible, hence the linked Harpoon Pods. The EMR hullmod is really just there for the Harpoon Pods to give more Harpoon spam.

The Mjolnir/HVD is pretty self-explanatory, Mjolnir does the bulk of the damage, the HVD helps out with anti-shield and anti-hull. I'm not sure if IR Autolance or Graviton Beam is better; Graviton Beam gives a bonus vs shields against all targets, while IR Autolance is pretty effective at finishing off targets (especially small ones). So I used IR Autolance here but it's possible that Graviton Beam may be better, I'm not sure. The LR PD Lasers are to give the ship some PD, but also to ensure that this weapon group always stays on. The AI is generally overly conservative about flux and tends to turn off weapon groups for flux too early, i.e. at around 30-40% flux or so. Then it continues to get hit (usually hard flux) which makes it turn off weapon groups even more, until it gets fluxed out and can't fight. So having PD in the same weapon group, linked, ensures that the weapon group stays on even at high flux. It's risky to do though and causes overloads, so it needs to be used with care. However, in this case, the Conquests are long-range ships and shouldn't come under attack too often, so it's used here.

The Gryphons are pretty standard Squall/Harpoon spam, linked so that the Harpoons are launched as often as possible. I stuck Railguns on them with Ballistic Rangefinder for a bit more DPS (like, 3% more), but I generally recommend against that, it's usually better to make them more survivable by putting the OP toward Hardened Shields, etc. But this fleet is very offensively-oriented so I can get away with that. Notice I took Missile Autoloader on them too for a few more Harpoons.

In battle, I send the Gryphons to the sides; their job is just to grab objectives and take care of trash. I may be able to find something else for it but haven't really tried to look for others, because they usually do a good enough job. I lead the charge in the middle, with Conquests on either side. The Conquests have such a long range that they can take out ships from far away, so ships don't get away between my ships that much. (If they do, my Gryphons are what I send after them.) I run in and tank and spam PCL's as needed.

This fight took 222 seconds to kill the double Ordos fleet. This fleet usually does it in around 220-230 seconds or so. The only fleet composition I'm aware of that's faster is the aforementioned flagship Onslaught + 8 Gryphons (which basically uses the same strategy as here), which is around 10 seconds faster. However, I've found a number of other fleets that can roughly match the speed of this fleet. For example, flagship Onslaught + 3 Onslaught + 2 Gryphon can also achieve similar times, but the challenge in controlling it is a bit different. For the Conquests, as broadside ships, you can't really direct them to where you want them to go, since they tend to go to the side of the target. So you have to account for that in their positioning. You also have to rearrange the fleet at the beginning quite often (if the ship's weapons are facing the wrong side). For the Onslaught, it's instead a challenge to constantly give them Eliminate commands so that they'll be willing to advance more. They tend to hang back too much.

Doing a bit more analysis of the damage results (thanks to the Detailed Combat Results mod): From some previous testing, it takes around 45 seconds for my fleet to start clashing with the initial enemy fleet. So basically all the damage was done in around 222-45 = 177 seconds. Thus, since my flagship did 296,043 total damage, that works out to 1673 DPS. The Conquests work out to 807 non-beam DPS on average (DCR does not record beam damage accurately, so I'm ignoring the contribution of IRAL and LRPD here) and cost 40 DP each, so each DP contributed around 20.2 DPS, which is a pretty good ratio. Most ships seem to provide around 10-15 DPS per DP by comparison. The Gryphon gets up to around 430 DPS or higher, or 21.5 DPS per DP; it's the most overpowered ship (highest DPS/DP ratio) I'm aware of under AI control. Player ships can obviously do much better; in this case my flagship did 1673 DPS for 40 DP or 41.8 DPS per DP. This DPS/DP ratio is important for knowing just how much each ship is contributing toward killing the enemy fleet, relative to how expensive they are to deploy. Some other ships which do well for their DP include the Legion XIV, Pegasus, and, funny enough, the Atlas2.

This fleet also works well against stations (realistically, me charging in and spamming PCL's do about half of the fleet's damage in that case) and many other challenges in the game, so it's a good general-purpose fleet. It's great for farming Ordos fleets for cores and XP but it can do a lot of other stuff as well.

6
General Discussion / Does the Fearless AI intentionally suicide?
« on: July 07, 2023, 10:19:37 AM »
Just kind of curious. I like the way the Novae and Brilliants burst in, it makes Ordos fights a lot more dynamic. However, I'm noticing that they seem to run in even at high flux / low hull, whether via their ship system, or just by regular maneuvering, when they're close to dying. Obviously then their explosion does a large amount of damage to my fleet. This even involves bursting in right when they're at the end and dying, so that their hulk flies through my fleet at high speed. I don't know if that's actively part of the AI or if it just happens because they don't care about dying in general.

Of course, I'm pointing it out because I see it happening annoying often when I'm high on flux myself and not able to use shields to defend against it lest I overload :)

7
Let me start by saying testing a fleet against 5 Ordos doesn't have much particular practical purpose, since realistically the most you'll ever need to do is against double Ordos or possibly triple Ordos, at which point you've maxed out your fleet DP (maximizing your kill rate) and your XP bonus, unless you have a bunch of AI core officers. But it's fun to try to see how long you can go with your fleet.

This fleet is a modification of my flagship Onslaught / 3 Conquest / 2 Gryphon fleet that I found to be reliable for farming double Ordos with a high XP gain (~+450% XP bonus, usually takes around 4 minutes or 240 seconds or less per battle according to Detailed Combat Results). I basically used the same strategy and tactics, just with a loadout that's geared toward endurance rather than max DPS.

The star of the show is the Conquest. After 0.96a, I've found that a Squall/Locust pair does better than double Squalls, since the Locust will help finish off trash now that the Squall doesn't do as much to hull and armor, and since part of the reason for the Squall is to break up the enemy fleet and put them on the defensive, so the second Squall is a bit redundant anyway. Then it's the usual dual Mjolnir, dual HVD, and dual Harpoons. In this case, I set the missiles in their own groups for endurance; for max DPS (i.e. vs double Ordos) they would all be in the same group and linked, to make sure they're fired as quickly as possible.

I also stuck on some Tactical Lasers and a Graviton Beam. The Graviton Beam gives a bonus to anti-shield damage, of course. The Tactical Lasers are pretty inefficient at damage/flux, so they should be the first to go if you need some more OP (starting with the tail one), but I had some extra OP and flux so I figured I might as well. I don't know if Graviton Beam (for more anti-shield damage from all sources) or IR Autolance (to finish off ships faster) would be better, but I just stuck with Graviton Beam.

For the flagship Onslaught XIV, since it's for endurance, I put HVD's in the medium ballistic slots for max range, since staying farther away means I take less damage means I can last longer. Sadly, I lost most of my armor in the first few minutes due to the Novae anyway. Oh well. Note that I also chose to take more damage with my shield and rely on frequent venting, to make my armor/hull last longer as well. Usually, for double Ordos, it would be all 5 Heavy Needlers, or 3 Heavy Autocannon in the front and 2 HVD in the back, or all 5 HVD, which all seem to work well depending on what I'm focusing on -- the former is better for charging into big ships while the latter is better for picking off a bunch of weaker ships at long range, reducing the time it takes for me to switch from target to target.

The Hephaestus in the center large ballistic is for general-purpose killing, while the Proximity Charge Launchers are for big ships, or when I get in a jam and need some extra DPS, or for some anti-missile duty if I'm full on flux. Side Devastators are to take care of incoming from the sides, since I should be able to take care of incoming from the front via either shields or PCL.

The Gryphons are just the usual Squall/Harpoon/Breach/HVD Gryphon, they're basically there to grab objectives and chase down any ships that got away. I could probably use a different, better ship for it, I just haven't bothered to try other ships. That's where this fleet could probably improve.

The video can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1tLbLe8iUY

The 5 Ordos total 2130 DP. It pretty much follows with my Ordos fleet statistics thus far (on average, an Ordos fleet will have 1 Radiant and 1 Nova) so it should be pretty representative.

It wasn't the best run, I took a lot of damage early on which I usually don't, so I had to stay farther away than I usually do, decreasing my DPS. Also, an Apex got away near the end because the Conquest was trying to flank (since it's broadside AI) and wound up behind the Apex, which is sort of dumb since I want the Conquest to block it, not go around it. But no way to tell broadside AI to do that, oh well. So that lengthened the run and exposed my left flank, which made the run take longer. But this overall shows how it can be done. Having a max DPS loadout against double Ordos is pretty much the same, except I don't bother to deploy the 4th Conquest (I only use 3 Conquests for more XP bonus), and it goes much faster.

8
This may already be fixed in 0.96a-RC9. But at least as of RC8, the Squall description says that it increases the base damage by 200 when hitting shields. It actually increases the base (kinetic) damage by 150.

9
General Discussion / Starsector 0.96a-RC6 XP Bonus
« on: May 05, 2023, 08:35:24 PM »
So this one's a bit interesting. I did some testing as to how the XP bonus works under the new update.

So, it's still based on the original XP bonus system. To recap, the original system looks at the ratio of your fleet's DP and the enemy fleet's DP, i.e. your XP bonus is based on (enemy fleet DP) / (your fleet DP). But this has some caveats:

* For the enemy fleet, officers count as 15 DP base + 7.5 DP per skill.
* For your fleet, officers count as 7.5 DP base + 3.75 DP per skill. This includes your character, so once your character is level 15, it costs 63.75 DP in terms of the XP bonus.
* Ships with the CIVILIAN hint count for 1/4 of their DP, regardless of if they have weapons. Note that this is the actual CIVILIAN hint in ship_data.csv, like the Atlas. Ships like the Atlas2 which have the "Civilian-grade hull" hullmod but not the CIVILIAN do not count for this, they count for full DP if they have any weapons,
* Other ships that have no weapons equipped also count as 1/4 of their DP. Fighters count as weapons here.
* Mothballed ships do not count their DP toward the total.
* Each d-mod reduces the ship's DP by 0.9 (multiplicative).
* The enemy fleet's DP is multiplied by 0.67, after accounting for all the above.

There are probably a couple more caveats that I'm missing here, but this is the overall gist, at least as of 0.95.1a-RC6 (I haven't fully tested all this for 0.96a yet). The maximum XP bonus you can get is +500% XP.

Anyway, version 0.96a has added an additional check on this, basically to limit the XP bonus when soloing battles. The main check is that your fleet's DP is now:

your fleet DP = max (your fleet's DP, min (enemy fleet DP * 0.5, your max ship DP * 6) )

Your max ship DP is the ship that has the highest base DP (mothballed ships don't count and ships with no weapons count for 1/4 of their DP); this does not include the effects of Support Doctrine for example (and probably doesn't account for Derelict Operations nor Converted Hangar either, though I haven't tested them yet).

For smaller enemy fleets, enemy fleet DP * 0.5 is going to be smaller than this, so it will be the dominant factor. So in this case, if your fleet's total DP is smaller than half of the enemy fleet's DP, then you'll be limited to a maximum of +100% XP. An example would be if you're soloing [REDACTED BROCCOLI] with a Falcon (P). (By the way, the [REDACTED BROCCOLI] fight counts as 110.55 DP for XP bonus purposes.) Generally though this won't affect things once you move past smaller fleets.

I haven't gathered statistics on 0.96a enemy fleets yet, but based on 0.95.1a, faction fleets (fleets from max level deserter bounties from the various factions) were roughly 666 DP for XP bonus purposes. So the middle term is 333 DP, so your max ship DP needs to be less than 55.5 DP if you want to get more than +100% XP bonus. If you want the max +500% XP bonus, then your max ship DP would be 18.5. So you are limited to a fleet made up of ships that are 18 DP or lower to get +500% XP bonus. If you have a Champion (25 DP) for example, then the maximum XP bonus would be 666/(25*6) = 666/150 = +344% XP bonus, even if your fleet is made up of just a Champion, or a Champion plus a couple of other ships.

A [REDACTED] fleet is roughly 1105 DP as of 0.95.1a. Assuming it'll be similar for 0.96a, this works out to the largest ship being 30.7 DP if you want +500% XP bonus. If you use any larger ship than this, then the max XP bonus you can get will be reduced. (You'd also need your fleet to total less than 184.2 DP, noting that your level 15 character counts for 63.75.)

For double [REDACTED], this implies a maximum ship DP of 61.4. So you can use any ship under this and still get +500% XP bonus.

So this mechanism encourages fleets that are more "short and wide", i.e. many ships of less DP, rather than having a big ship surrounded by many small ships, if you're looking to maximize your XP bonus. You basically want to look at not just your fleet's total DP, but also, that of the largest ship's DP * 6.

Some of these numbers are based on statistics gathered in 0.95.1a, so they may need to change somewhat for 0.96a, but they should be in the right ballpark.

10
The Expanded Magazines s-mod bonus of restoring ammo/charges 50% faster doesn't work with IR Autolance. This may be intended (since IR Autolance is a beam), but if so, maybe the description should clarify that it's for non-beam ballistic/energy weapons. (Some mods have ballistics that are beams, so this may also apply to ballistic beams.)

11
General Discussion / Starsector 0.96a-RC6 S-mod Bonuses/Penalties
« on: May 05, 2023, 11:43:02 AM »
This is largely a listing for personal use but I thought it'd be useful to put all the s-mod bonuses/penalties together in one thread:

Accelerated Shields: Increases the shield's turn rate and raise rate by an additional 100%.
Adaptive Phase Coils: none.
Additional Berthing: Doubles the crew capacity increase and, for, civilian hulls, negates the maintenance cost increase.
Advanced Optics: none.
Advanced Turret Gyros: Increases damage to missiles and fighters by 25%. Increases damage to smaller ships by 5% per size class of difference.
Armored Weapon Mounts: Increases the rate of fire of all non-missile weapons by 10%.
Assault Package: none.
Augmented Drive Field: Increases maximum burn level by a further +1.
Automated Repair Unit: Reduces the time required to repair disabled weapons and engines (in combat) by 50%.
Auxiliary Fuel Tanks: Doubles the fuel capacity increase and, for, civilian hulls, negates the maintenance cost increase.
Auxiliary Thrusters: none.
Ballistic Rangefinder: none.
Blast Doors: Increases the crew casualty reduction to 85%.
Converted Fighter Bay: Monthly maintenance cost reduced by 15% per fighter bay.
Converted Hangar: Increases the rate at which the fighter replacement rate recovers by 10% for cruisers, and by 25% for capital ships. No added effect for destroyers.
Dedicated Targeting Core: Increases the range bonus to 40% for cruisers and 60% for capital ships.
Defensive Targeting Array: Extends range of ballistic and energy weapons of the ship's fighters by 100 units.
ECCM Package: Fully negates the effect of ECM and flares on missiles fired by this ship.
ECM Package: none.
Efficiency Overhaul: Reduces maintenance cost, fuel use, and minimum crew requirement by a further 10%.
Escort Package: none.
Expanded Cargo Holds: Doubles the cargo capacity increase and, for, civilian hulls, negates the maintenance cost increase.
Expanded Deck Crew: none.
Expanded Magazines: Increases the ammo/charge regeneration rate for ballistic and energy weapons by 50%.
Expanded Missile Racks: Reduces the rate of fire of missile weapons by 10%.
Extended Shields: Increases the shield's coverage by an additional 60 degrees.
Flux Coil Adjunct: Increases flux capacity by a further 200/400/600/1000, making the coil as efficient as adding capacitors.
Flux Distributor: Increases flux dissipation by a further 10/20/30/50, making the distributor as efficient as adding vents.
Hardened Shields: none.
Hardened Subsystems: none.
Heavy Armor: Reduces the ship's maneuverability by 25%.
High Resolution Sensors: Increases the ship's in-combat vision range by 1000/1500/2000/2500, based on hull size.
High Scatter Amplifier: Increases beam weapon damage by an additional 5%.
Insulated Engine Assembly: Increases engine durability by a further 100%, and increases the sensor profile reduction to 90%.
Integrated Point Defense AI: All small non-missile weapons are classified as "point-defense", automatically target missiles, and are affected by point-defense stat modifiers.
Integrated Targeting Unit: none.
Makeshift Shield Generator: none.
Militarized Subsystems: Negates the increased crew requirements.
Missile Autoloader: Increases the post-reload cooldown to 10 seconds.
Nav Relay: none.
Neural Integrator: none.
Neural Interface: none.
Operations Center: none.
Phase Anchor: none.
Recovery Shuttles: Increases the fighter pilot casualty reduction to 95%.
Reinforced Bulkheads: none.
Resistant Flux Conduits: Increases the flux dissipation rate while venting by a further 10%.
Safety Overrides: none.
Shield Conversion - Front: Reduces the amount of damage taken by shields by 5%.
Shield Conversion - Omni: Negates the shield arc penalty.
Shield Shunt: Increases the ship's armor by an additional 15%.
Solar Shielding: Increases the protection from solar coronae and similar hazards to 100%.
Stabilized Shields: Converts 10% of the hard flux damage taken by shields to soft flux.
Surveying Equipment: Increases the survey cost reduction by 100%.
Unstable Injector: none.

-----

Some of them are *very* interesting. Extended Shields may close the engine gap for a number of ships, such as the Eagle and the Medusa. Armored Weapon Mounts increases the ballistic/energy damage output by 10% (and the flux cost as well). Advanced Turret Gyros will help big ships kill off smaller ships. Expanded Magazines means that ballistic/energy weapons with ammo (such as Ion Pulser), increasing their sustained DPS by 50%. This could be very helpful for certain (especially [REDACTED]) weapons that are ammo-limited. However, it doesn't seem to work for IR Autolance; not sure if that's a bug or not (since it's a beam weapon), will post in the bug forum about it.

A minor bug of sorts is that there's an unnecessary comma after "for" for the s-mod bonus descriptions of Additional Berthing, Auxiliary Fuel Tanks, and Expanded Cargo Holds.

12
Suggestions / Allow Restore to Remove Individual D-Mods
« on: September 28, 2022, 10:00:43 PM »
Currently Restoring a ship is all-or-nothing, i.e. either you remove all of the d-mods, or you leave them all in place. But sometimes I don't mind one of the d-mods but only want another one removed. Some of the d-mods aren't necessarily all that bad and there are some side effects that are fine (such as reduced supply use). Not to mention, sometimes, removing all the d-mods is too expensive while I could afford to remove one or two at a time.

In the current system, it basically becomes a game of roulette as to whether or not you hit the jackpot of d-mods that you can work with, versus having one in there that really suck for that particular ship. This encourages save scumming to get the "right" d-mods, or to reload if you had some okay ones but then get a "wrong" one. It would be better if the player could pick and choose which d-mods to remove individually.

As a side note, I feel like 20% less supply per d-mod is a bit too strong, I feel like 10% less supply is more right. When I happen to get a ship with 4 d-mods that all don't really affect the ship's performance, I basically only have to use 41% of its supply to recover after battle, while it didn't affect the ship's performance that much, which feels too powerful.

13
I'll admit this one is pretty obscure, and it took a while to figure out just what was happening (I didn't want to just post a bug saying "XP bonus keeps changing" without looking into possible causes).

When calculating the fleet's DP for the XP bonus, ships that have no weapons nor fighters will count as only 1/4 of their DP. Presumably this is so if you just recovered a warship or are otherwise not using it for combat (i.e. using it for cargo, etc.), it won't hurt you too much in terms of your XP.

Some ships such as the Shepherd have built-in fighters, which would normally make them count for full DP for XP bonus purposes. However, that can be overridden with Converted Fighter Bays, which removes those fighters (and gives more cargo room), so if they don't have weapons, then they'll only count for 1/4 of their DP, for a bit more XP bonus.

However, the bug is that when a saved game is first loaded, it does not take Converted Fighter Bays into account, so a Shepherd (or other similar ship) would count for its full 3 DP toward the fleet's DP for the XP bonus. Once the player goes to the fleet screen and scrolls down to where the Shepherd is shown, it forces an updated calculation of the ship's DP and it will then contribute the correct value of 3/4 DP toward the fleet's total for the XP bonus.

Hopefully the bug fix is straightforward, just run the same fleet DP calculation that's used on the fleet screen when the game is first loaded, though I don't know why they'd be different in the first place.

As a workaround for this bug, the player can just open up the fleet screen and scroll down to where any of those types of ships are displayed to force the updated calculation, and then continue to play normally, to receive the proper XP bonus.

I can provide a video and/or save of this bug in action if needed.

14
Not sure if this has been reported or not. Somehow I'm able to get the Red Planet and Tech Cache missions twice.

For the Red Planet, which I started but never completed (already talked to pilot, but haven't actually gone to the planet), I can talk to the veteran spacer (a different one) who will point me to a pilot (a different one) that can reveal the location of the Red Planet (same planet).

For Tech Cache, I can talk to a (different) academic which will generate a new Tech Cache in a different location than the original one. I had started it but never completed it. So, I get to loot the Tech Cache twice.

This is vanilla + utility mods. I have the save from right before docking at the planet if it will help figure out the issue.

15
Here's a weird one. When looking at the damage of the motes from the (NPC version of the) Ziggurat, it turns out that if you the target has Target Analysis, you'll take more damage. I'm guessing the damage formula is supposed to be looking for the shooter's damage bonuses, but ended up looking for the victim's damage bonuses instead.

To reproduce: take any ship, easier if you save right before the fight. I just took the starting Apogee. Put your character as pilot. Don't have Target Analysis. Assuming 100% CR and Field Modulation (but not Hardened Shields), if you go and fight the Ziggurat, the first mote will do 184 shield damage and 71 armor damage.

If you reload and respec your character to have Target Analysis, and then fight again, the first mote will do 184 shield damage and 90 armor damage. You're in an Apogee which as a cruiser means Target Analysis does +15% damage, but in this case, it applies to the motes even though they're the ones doing damage to you.

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