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Topics - BCS

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1
Suggestions / Combat Readiness cap increase to 115%
« on: February 16, 2023, 01:51:04 AM »
The base is 70% but it can actually be increased by 45%: +15% from Crew Training, +15% from three S-mods(Best of the Best and Hull Restoration combo) and +15% from officer/player with Combat Endurance.

Currently if you get all three then the extra 15% is completely wasted - the cap ramains 100% and you don't even get extra Peak Performance Time out of it.

I don't think increasing the cap would be OP given the investment required - capstones in both Industry and Leadership and then you still need to use up an Officer skill. Even in a no-flagship builds it would still be a rather niche thing to do. I guess it would make Support Doctrine a bit stronger.

2
Suggestions / Hullmod bonuses from skills
« on: January 15, 2023, 07:20:40 AM »
Here's a random one kinda stolen from Reddit.

Picking certain skills unlocks hullmods more or less associated with the skill. For example picking the Flux Regulation skill automatically unlocks the Resistant Flux Conduits hullmod. This is generally speaking of absolutely minimal use since most hullmods are available on the open/black market for pennies and the really rare/good ones like ITU cannot be unlocked by skills in the first place.

But now that hullmods are going to have bonuses(or penalties) when S-modded, why not combine the two systems? For example picking Flux Regulation unlocks RFC, but also means that RFC will provide the S-mod bonus even when not built in. In case of hullmods with penalties, the penalty can be made smaller.

There are some balance concerns with this idea though, for example if the hullmod bonus applied to every ship it would make combat builds even stronger(i.e. you get Field Modulation for your flagship -> all ships in your fleet with Hardened Shields get a bonus) so it probably would have to be limited to hullmods on the flagship only.

3
Suggestions / Afflictor AI
« on: January 13, 2023, 07:04:49 AM »
I've been playing with Afflictors for a while now and I observed several... peculiarities when it comes to their behaviour. I don't know if this is something specific to Afflictors or all phase ships.

When two Afflictors are ordered to take a point, they use phase space to get there, but they both go to the middle of the point, so they cannot exit phase space(because they overlap one another) When this happens AI tries to move a bit in not-so-random direction to get out of collision range, but because both ships do it simultaneously it often doesn't work too well and it can take several seconds or so for them to actually "untangle" which just looks bad and wastes CR.

Sometimes Afflictors exit phase space too close to large friendly ships(in my case, Conquests - maybe it's a Conquest thing) even though they still have plenty of flux to spare - this usually means within operational shield range, but in some extreme cases within the actual bounds of the ship. In both cases they needlessly take damage.

Sometimes they hang out too close to enemy ships when they blow up. This is especially bad in case of enemy capital ships which can instapop them(and that's with Reinforced Bulkheads and Elite Damage Control but I'm not sure if the latter affects ship explosions) I noticed that the AI will try to keep the distance from an enemy ship that is low on hull, it's just sometimes not good enough at doing it especially if both ships are moving.

The Afflictor AI has no respect for Light Assault Guns - it will not treat the base 40 explosive damage as worth entering phase space for(it will avoid Light Mortar shots, so I assume it's calulated based on per-shot damage, not damage per second) This causes the phase ship to needlessly tank 160 explosive DPS.

Shade's EMP Emitter functions the same - Afflictor will just hang around in real space in range getting constantly zapped. (On a side note the EMP Emitter seems to be quite... strong? - it's basically a Pulse Laser with a massive EMP effect)

Oh, and Afflictors sometimes just die to Doom mines because they don't avoid the mine blast radius, only the trigger radius, so if something else triggers the mine the Afflictor takes the hit too. Dunno how intended this is.

4
I didn't know whether or not to qualify this as a bug so here it goes.

Basically I've been watching a lot of AI Afflictors in action recently. I had them in two versions - one with Annihilators and one with Swarmers. In both cases they would absolutely refuse to fire the missiles against enemy Cerberi/Hounds when contesting objectives. Sometimes if the enemy ship was disabled(they had Ion Cannons) or overloaded they would fire off one volley but that's about it. This is especially weird since against ships with shields(i.e. Kites, Shrikes) they would fire missiles whenever they were on cooldown(as they should, that's not a complaint)

Same thing happens against Derelicts although it's less noticeable because they're so slow they rarely get to contest anything.

5
General Discussion / The problem with the Radiant
« on: December 05, 2022, 02:29:13 AM »
I'll get straight to the point: the Radiant is broken. Not only is it the fastest battleship by a quite large margin, it also has the Phase Skimmer which makes it go even faster, and has no downside to compensate for either of those. Other Remnant ships can be annoyingly slippery or tough, but that only drags out the fight - any decent fleet should be able to handle just about any sized Ordo... as long as it has no Radiant in it. Once even one Radiant is in the enemy fleet, that roughly doubles the difficulty.

But that is not even the main problem. So-called common sense says that you should be able to simply concentrate your firepower on the Radiant as it closes in and if not kill it then at least push it back. Disregarding the micromanagement and command points needed to do this(since it requires you to adjust ship positions one by one even before the Radiant actually arrives) there is one tiny, teeny problem with the idea: it is actually impossible to order one of your ships to attack another.

"Engage" simply means "Grab some(~= target DP) ships that are currently not terribly occupied then issue a MOVE command towards the target"

"Eliminate" simply means "Grab some(~= target DP) ships that are currently not terribly occupied then issue a MOVE command towards the target with threat calculations turned off"

Putting aside the problems with grabbing "not terribly occupied" ships(which tend to be scattered all over the place and therefore will not arrive simultaneously - if they manage to arrive at all) just because you MOVE a ship towards an enemy ship does not mean it will start FIRING at it. Every ship is doing its own target prioritization based on things like hull damage and flux level. Even in the best case scenario, when you have, say, four Eradicators sitting in a neat line with a Radiant right in front of them, they will still keep shooting at the Brilliant NEXT to the Radiant because the Brilliant is at 90% flux level and 80% hull - AI prioritizes finishing off ships, so it considers overfluxed cruiser a more valid target than a "fresh" battleship.

Combined with the fact that Radiant will enter the battle later than other Remnant ships(since it's slower) and therefore the "90% flux, 80% hull Brilliant distraction" is a rule and not an exception, the Radiant basically has free reign and by the time AI reacts to it, it likely already killed a cruiser. Words can't describe how frustrating it is to order your ships to attack the huge-ass battleship that is about to murder them, and then have said ships completely ignore your order shooting at something completely irrelevant instead which ends up in a disaster. Is this how raising children is like?

Because of this, there are basically only two methods that I know of dealing with the Radiant:

 - Fly a flagship yourself and directly intervene, either killing the Radiant or at least distracting it, or even just fluxing it up enough so that friendly AI starts considering it a "valid target", or distracting rest of fleet so that the Radiant is isolated, the ability for the player to mess with AI is almost limitless;
 - Bring such overwhelming firepower that you beat the enemy ships so hard that by the time Radiant arrives it sticks out like a sore thumb and AI starts shooting at it based on proximity alone. Doing this basically requires Squalls, Safety Overrides or just spam(Support Doctrine and/or Derelict Operations) and in general drastically reduces the number of valid fleet compositions you can use against the Ordo(And I could also add that you don't need such overwhelming firepower against ANYTHING else in the game; even the Omega, which are supposed to be endgame boss fights, are a lot easier than Ordo with a Radiant in it)

Now I would love to see Radiant's speed nerfed to that of Paragon or even Onslaught(nerfing the phase skimmer is also a possibility but it's so iconic that I don't think it would be a good idea) but what I would love even more is this: If a player is NOT piloting a flagship, give them an extra set of DIRECT orders, letting them control ships like it's an RTS(i.e. if I tell a ship to go somewhere, it goes exactly there, immediately, at full speed, without any further AI considerations, even if it has to bump friendly/enemy ships out of the way) and maybe also a command points generation bonus. So that the player can directly intervene in a fight at crucial moment(s) even without a flagship.

6
Every mechanic exists for a reason but I'm not sure about this one. In practice all it seems to do is make hard fights(Remnant) even harder. I also don't find it particularly thrilling to have massive swings in DP(up to 1/3 of your entire fleet may become impossible to deploy depending on the fight) since, well, how do you even design a fleet at that point?

My best guess would be that it's something to incentivize using officers? But against full size Remnant fleets it doesn't matter how many and what levels officers you have, you're always pushed down to 160 base deployment anyway.

7
Suggestions / Some balance things that stand out to me
« on: November 19, 2022, 05:20:05 AM »
Tarsus is supposed to be a more durable alternative to the Buffalo but the fact it uses 3 fuel rather than regular destroyer-hull 2 kills it as a logistics ship and means most players won't ever consider it as an option(to be fair even if it used 2 fuel most players would still only ever use Buffalos because you don't plan for getting caught, but that's another topic)

Falcon uses 3 fuel, same as the Eagle. Considering Falcon is closer to a destroyer than a cruiser and that it's essentially two thirds of an Eagle, I think it would be fair if it only used 2 fuel.

Valkyrie's two forward facing small energy mounts have no cone of fire at all(more of a bug than balance issue?)

Colossus again uses up one unit of fuel more than normal for its class, and again it's especially bad given the fact it's a logistics ship. Even if it had fuel use of 3 it would still make two of them slightly worse than one Atlas so there's really no reason for that. Also the Colossus' defenses are nonsensical: it has a fixed front shield(I think it's the only freighter that does) but none of its PD mounts cover the engines making it extremely vulnerable to Salamanders. Dunno how intended that is though.

Swarmer SRM Launcher is supposed to be an anti-fighter missile but it generally fails in the role because of extremely low rate of fire. The weird "evasive maneouvers" it performs in flight also tend to cut on its effective range.

8
Like all other kinetic ballistics.

9
Suggestions / The weird way Best of the Best works
« on: October 09, 2022, 12:52:57 AM »
Best of the Best gives you 10% of total battle size as objective DP. So for example with maximum battle size of 400 you get extra 40 DP at the start of the battle.

Hovewer if this still isn't enough to max out your deployment(which mostly happens against Ordo but also in the case of some high level bounties) then this also means the first 40 DP you get from objectives simply doesn't count.

For example: the battle size is 400 but enemy has superior officers so your deployment pool is only 200(160 base + 40 from BotB) You deploy 200 worth of ships, take a Nav Relay and... you get no DP from it because you technically already have 40 DP from objectives and a single Nav Relay only gets you 20. Then you take a Comm Relay(worth 40 DP) and get only 20 DP - again, because you technically already have 40 DP from objectives and Nav Relay + Comm Relay total is 60 - so the 40 objective DP from BotB is "substracted" and 60 - 40 = 20.

Since BotB is supposed to help "small, elite fleets" then I assume this is not working as intended?

10
Suggestions / Removing D-mods only possible with Hull Restoration skill
« on: September 24, 2022, 11:11:13 PM »
This is something that came up in the "Uniquifying the Factions, Part 2" thread: if D-mods can be instantly removed at any station, why is the player seemingly the only one who can do it?

For Pirates and Pathers you could make the money argument but then you get to large factions like the Luddic Church who surely could scrape few hundred thousand to fix their ships. It gets even more bizarre when you get to player colonies - why are a bunch of MY patrols flying around with 3-4 D-mods each when I could remove them at the press of a button and I'm sitting at 20+ million credits? And in the general game world sense, what even is the "point" of nanoforges affecting ship quality if you can just throw money at the problem instead?

On the gameplay side of things the ability to press "Restore" basically makes D-mods completely meaningless as a mechanic outside of the niche Derelict Operations skill(which runs into the opposite problem - there's no easy/simple way to ADD D-mods to a ship, nor to remove them selectively; it's all or nothing) Removing D-mods costs money but money is not a factor past the first few hours of the game if you know how to make money and are not actively roleplaying.

The easiest and simplest way to fix most of this is to completely remove the "Restore" button from Refit screen. This way the only method to remove D-mods is the Hull Restoration skill. Since Hull Restoration is a finisher for Industry tree it's easy to rationalize why no one else can seemingly do it(hell, Navigation gives you Transverse Jump that no one else in the sector can do and it's an opener skill) and the fact that you have to wait literally months per ship to actually fully restore them is a much better balancing factor than money.

As for players without Hull Restoration, they will actually have to check the D-mods - some of them are more debilitating than others(i.e. less cargo space on a combat ship - who cares) but currently it doesn't even matter as they're all gone at the press of a button. Finally, this would be an indirect nerf to Brawler LP - which definitely needs a nerf - because of the Ill-advised Modifications D-mod.

Another possibility is to allow the player to remove D-mods without Hull Restoration but using SP and not money. This also fits in the game world since the entire point of SP is to do exceptionable things that no one else could do. In addition being able to pick which D-mods to remove would also go a long way for the Derelict Operations skill.

tl;dr: Removing D-mods costs SP instead of credits, you get to pick which to remove, if you don't want to spend SP get Hull Restoration and wait.

11
General Discussion / Modspec availability
« on: August 31, 2022, 04:01:02 AM »
Is there any reason why some of them only appear on open market and other only on black market? I always wondered about that.

12
General Discussion / Does combat XP gain need adjustments?
« on: August 22, 2022, 08:12:11 AM »
Once you reach the endgame the only limited resource is Story Points. The best way to generate SP is with combat XP. The amount of XP you get from combat is based on relative strengths of your and enemy fleets, officers included.

This leads to a situation where the most optimal way to farm XP is by not having any officers at all since they increase relative fleet strength and therefore significantly lower your XP gain, and the more and better officers you have the worse it gets. Instead you should just spam Brawler LPs(and/or carriers, since without officers the Leadership skill line will naturally push you towards them) with Support Doctrine.

Personally I wouldn't mind if the whole "more XP based on relative fleet strength" mechanic was completely removed since IMO it does more harm than good. I'd rather race to the top than to the bottom.

13
Modding / Removing(or fixing) Cryosleeper ships?
« on: August 20, 2022, 03:05:19 AM »
A bug currently exists where blueprint missions will point to Cryosleepers since they're technically derelict ships but there is no way to actually salvage them which leads to this. It's already fixed in the dev but I would rather not have to wait hovewer many months until the dev gets here.

Assuming a mod fix is impossible how would I go around removing Cryosleepers entirely? I never use them anyway.

[Edit] Wait, you just add "not_random_mission_target" tag to "derelict_cryosleeper" in custom_entities.json and that's it?

14
Suggestions / Ability to "bench" officers
« on: August 18, 2022, 11:59:19 PM »
I wrote a big wall of text about how "unfair" Remnant are and how they heavily push the player into making specific fleet comps but then I realized what my real problem with it was: said specific fleet comps require specific officers to work and unlike ships, officers cannot be simply put in and out of storage. If I have a set of officers trained to fly small, short range energy weapon based ships then I am condemned to forever fly fleets of small, short range energy weapon ships. If I suddenly get the urge to field 6 Shield Shunt Onslaughts just for laughs then I either have to accept that my officers are completely unfit for the job or fire all of them, hire new ones and retrain them from scratch. Then if I want to make a fleet of Champions I have to fire and retrain all my officers again, etc.

tl;dr: make officers work like colony Administrators - you can have as many of them as you want and as long as they're not "employed" they're paid 10% of their normal wage(mercenary officers are still limited by their yearly contract even when not commanding a ship)

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