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1

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: Gargoyle's gender?

« on: November 28, 2024, 09:20:21 PM »

I just want to say, I feel like this is tackling contemporary social issues "just right": not in-your-face, but it's just treated as, in the future no one bats an eye about these types of things, they just *are*.

2

Suggestions / Re: Make Eliminate Actually Eliminate

« on: November 28, 2024, 05:26:10 PM »

As far as the backing off - if you have a reproducible scenario, most ideally a 1vs1 in the simulator - I'd love to take a look! The AI generally tries not to back off more than it needs to to vent, so if it's backing off more than what "looks" safe then one of the possibilities is an enemy ship in range having missiles that it considers threatening during a vent. The AI is capable of staying close to enemy weapon range while venting, without backing off further (at least, I tested that a while back) so if it's backing off more than that, it's seeing some reason for it. Or there's a bug; that's always an option too.

Sorry for the necro, it took a while for me to look at what's happening (multiple times!) to get a sense of under what conditions will this happen.

It happens even when the ship is at zero flux. I don't know how the AI works that well, but it seems like it switches from "move toward target" when it's really far away to "maneuver around target" at around 2000-2500 su away from the target. At this time, sometimes it'll decide to flank the target instead of heading straight in, and sometimes it'll decide to back off. The problem is that the AI will do this even if it's supposed to "Eliminate" the target, even if it's at zero flux, even if the target only has short-ranged weapons, even if there are no other enemy ships/missiles/fighters nearby, even if there's already a friendly ship in front engaging the target, and even if the target is moving away. So the effect is that the ship is advancing toward the target, then suddenly back off at around 2000 su away, then head back toward the target once it's around 3000 su or so away. If the target was moving away, then this means that it'll take a *really* long time for the ship to eventually catch up to the target, especially if the target was a frigate.

It's not all the time so it's hard to set up a reproducible scenario, but it happens fairly frequently when I set a frigate to chase another frigate, such as when trying to capture objectives, or when an enemy ship is heading toward an objective and I then send a frigate after it.

This also happens with the "Capture" command, where if you send your ship to capture an objective, but an enemy ship is also heading there, sometimes your ship might back off even if it's able to overpower the enemy ship, letting the enemy ship capture it. That sort of defeats the purpose of the "Capture" command if the AI is going to yield to an enemy ship that it can easily defeat.

Here is an example where both ships are ordered to "Eliminate" an enemy frigate but decide to back off at first instead before engaging. The Scarab has an Aggressive officer and the LP Brawler doesn't have an officer but the fleet doctrine is set to Aggressive (level 3 out of 5 on the Aggression setting). At the end of the video, just before the Scarab kills the enemy Glimmer, you can see the LP Brawler backing off a second time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1gK5z_6gI

In the sim, I can get this to happen in several ways. For example, take a bunch (say, 5-10) LP Brawlers and spread them out in a line. Have them start moving, say to the left (so that they're at different distances; this seems to happen at that particular distance). Then spawn in an enemy frigate, and order them to "Eliminate" the frigate. Quite often, at least one of them will decide to flank (move perpendicular to) or back away from the enemy frigate, despite being at zero flux and being far away.

That would do it, yeah. It might also have some other consequences - which might be desirable given an Eliminate order - but I'd have to dig into it some. For example, a case like "you issue an eliminate from far away, the ship targets the Eliminate target, and now can't effectively use missiles against something that's actively engaging it and needs to be fought" - you'd have to handle this with some amount of care. Made a note to have a closer look at all this.

Making the ship select the target (i.e. "R") seems like it should work out, at least at first glance. If the target is out of range, autofire will automatically fire at any other ships in range. If the target is in range, then the player is wanting the ship to fire at the target ship regardless of if other enemy ships are in range; it's up to the player to use the "Eliminate" command correctly, otherwise there's still the "Engage" command if the player just wants the ship to "sort of" go after the target.

I'd also settle for the GO HERE order actually GOING. Failure to actually obey GO HERE NOW orders (even the suggested "Rally Civilian" order doesn't actually work). If I order GO HERE NOW, I expect to see either that the thrust and velocity vectors immediately begin aligning with the direction I just ordered, or that somebody gets shot for not following orders.

Yeah I would offhandedly say around 2/3 of the AI issues revolve around moving to the right place. It's something that humans are good at intuiting, but machines are bad at. I remember reading somewhere along the line that around 1/3 of the development issues with Starcraft had to do with the pathing algorithm. So I know it's a hard problem. Even so, it would be nice if there were a command that's simply "go here and I mean it". "Rally Civilian" sort of works, but I've sees plenty of examples where (like above) the ship will sometimes back away even at low flux instead of advancing toward the point.

3

General Discussion / Re: Question about target analysis and wolfpack tactic

« on: November 25, 2024, 10:22:15 PM »

Amoebka did a great compilation of how damage bonuses interact with each other here:

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=29471.msg433545#msg433545

In this case, yes Target Analysis and Wolfpack Tactics will add together, but they may be multiplicative with other types of bonuses.

4

Mods / Re: [0.97a] Detailed Combat Results v5.4.1 (2024-07-15)

« on: November 11, 2024, 10:37:07 AM »

Hmm just had a thought. Would it be possible for the mod to export the combat results mid-battle? I'm thinking say a console command that will have it make an entry for the combat results up to that point in the battle. Probably needs a flag to denote that it was "in progress" and not the final results so that it's not mistakenly aggregated.

I think it'd be interesting to see how the damage dealt changes over the course of a battle, to compare limited-ammo weapons like Harpoons with other weapons.

(Also, the thing about the current version mis-counting the number of hits above.)

5

General Discussion / Re: The current state of fighters and carriers

« on: November 11, 2024, 09:56:36 AM »

I can see their ranges cut down from 2500 to 2000 or even 1500 to try to end Squall-and-Harpoon combo dominance.  After all, Cyclone Reaper's fire rate and ammo capacity from Starfarer lasted until this release.  It will not be the first time a sacred cow from Starfarer would get slaughtered.  On the other hand, Remnant Nexus relies on Squalls (plus Gauss and HIL).  Nexus would need a replacement or a special station hullmod to boost missile range (or amend an existing one like Targeting Supercomputer) to fix their Squalls if Squalls lost range.

That's an interesting idea. Testing my flagship Doom + 2 Conquests + Gryphons + LP Brawlers fleet against double Ordos, but with Squalls and Harpoons set to 2000 range, and their flight time also decreased by 20%, the time to kill the double Ordos test fleet went from <180 seconds to ~195 seconds according to Detailed Combat Results. So yes it does have some impact on their effectiveness.

The issue with long-range missile spam (plus long-range ballistics) is that it removes most of the risk of the fight, even against endgame enemies. It's able to kill enemies at a range where they're not really able to fight back. In these fights usually my fleet ends up doing something like over 10x the damage of the enemy fleet. It's simply too effective right now. So yeah cutting them down to 2000 range (and decreasing their flight time by 20%) would make their effectiveness more on par with other fleet doctrines.

If it does make stations too easy to kill, then yes something like having Targeting Supercomputer also affect missiles (though probably not the full 250% heh) may mitigate that.

6

General Discussion / Re: Support Doctrine doesn't work

« on: November 08, 2024, 10:58:13 AM »

As Phenir said, did you check your fleet doctrine? It can be found under the "Command" tab (press "D"), then the "Doctrine & blueprints" tab (press "4"), then near the bottom where you can set your fleet's "Aggression" level. That's where you select how aggressive you want your fleet to be by default. Ships without officers will use that setting, while ships with officers will use the aggression level of the officer itself. It sounds like you have aggressive/reckless officers but a low fleet aggression setting.

As far as I know, Support Doctrine doesn't affect how aggressive the ships are. It *might* end up affecting ship aggression in the sense that a stronger ship is naturally going to be more aggressive, but I doubt that's the case here.

7

General Discussion / Re: Armored weapon mounts s-mod

« on: October 30, 2024, 07:50:12 PM »

Not sure if you mean energy weapons as opposed to low-tech i.e. ballistic weapons, but yes, it affects both energy and ballistic weapons, but not missiles. So the AM Blaster will fire 10% more quickly. It doesn't regenerate ammo though, but even if it did, AWM wouldn't affect that. (It's s-modded Expanded Magazines which would affect ammo regeneration rate for energy and ballistic weapons which regenerate ammo.)

A caveat is that for burst beams, AWM only affects the cooldown part of each burst. For example the Phase Lance fires (chargeup, full power, chargedown) for 1.75 seconds, then is off for 4 seconds, so it fires for 1.75 seconds every 5.75 seconds. AWM decreases the cooldown in between bursts by 10%, so in this case the cooldown decreases from 4 to 3.6 seconds. So Phase Lance will end up firing for 1.75 seconds every 5.35 seconds, increasing its damage output (and flux use) by 7.5%. Similarly Tachyon Lance goes from firing for 2.5 seconds every 6.5 seconds to firing for 2.5 seconds every 6.1 seconds for the same reason, increasing its damage output by 6.6%. So it gives a "partial benefit" but not the full 10% to burst beams.

AWM does not affect continuous beams like the Tactical Laser or HIL.

8

General Discussion / Re: Is Starsector ready for default Iron Mode?

« on: October 30, 2024, 07:32:20 PM »

I've always interpreted that as meaning that the game is balanced around iron mode, as in "this game should be playable on iron mode" as opposed to "I intend for people to play this game in iron mode". And thus the various "outs" like using SP to get away from battle, etc., so that the player doesn't have to reload saves, so that iron mode is more doable.

9

Suggestions / Re: Expanded Magazine: a S-mod Magazine Nerf Suggestion

« on: October 30, 2024, 01:31:52 AM »

You’re being pretty unfair here, it’s extremely close and on top of that there’s (as far as I can see) one more Radiant and more Apexes, which would slow down either of our fleets which makes them more equal despite the missing DP.

No, it means my fleet had to churn through an extra 90 DP or 13% more DP than yours did, in pretty much the same amount of time, which is not "extremely close" at all. Your enemy fleet had 1 more Radiant (which my Doom would've easily dispatched, in fact I would rather take a Radiant over a Nova) and 2 more Apexes, but my enemy fleet had 1 more Nova, 5 more Brilliants, 3 more Scintillas, 1 more Glimmer, and 1 more Lumen. It's not close. Put another way, it means that I could've taken away one of the Gryphons from my fleet -- gone in with 220 DP instead of 240 DP -- and still have ended up faster at churning through the same enemy Ordos fleet.

A single Ordos from a full (undamaged) Nexus, after the initial spawns, can be as low as 232 DP (or lower) to as high as 505 DP (or higher). So a "double Ordos" can range anywhere from around 464 DP to around 1010 DP; a large single Ordos can actually be bigger than two small double Ordos. Hence to properly compare different player fleets, when everyone's fighting different "double Ordos" fleets, you need to account for the size of the enemy fleet. Otherwise I could take my player fleet against two small (but still full) Ordos and probably beat it in less than 2 minutes and still call it "double Ordos".

That's why I talked about looking at player fleets in terms of enemy DP killed per minute, and the total amount needed to be sizable (close to the average size of a double Ordos which is somewhere a bit less than 800 DP) to account for limited-ammo weapons (such as Harpoons). Any DP amount higher/lower would need to have the results adjusted to account for the size difference. Note that since my

(When I choose my double Ordos test fleet in each game version, I also try to make my test fleet fairly close to the average proportion of enemy ships in Ordos fleets. That's why it'll always be 2 Radiants and 2 Novae, since that most closely matches how often they show up.)

Anyway this more properly belongs in your thread about it, I just haven't gotten a chance to go through it in detail so I haven't responded to it yet.

10

Suggestions / Re: Expanded Magazine: a S-mod Magazine Nerf Suggestion

« on: October 29, 2024, 01:31:43 AM »

I put my money where my mouth is and made a thread showing SO is capable of the same speed as missiles spam focus is. I will post the video that the forum thread showed. I wasn’t one of the people who ever said it was most efficient, either. I suggested it might be faster, and there’s a teeny tiny chance if I optimized the build I showed it might be a teeny bit faster for far less efficiency, but I was ultimately wrong.

Sorry I haven't had a chance to post in that thread yet, but it didn't really show that an SO fleet can kill as fast as a missile spam fleet. That video was against a 674-DP double Ordos whereas I used a 764-DP double Ordos, so it was more like fighting a 1.75 Ordos fleet (an average Ordos fleet has a bit less than 400 DP). So it was killing around 320 DP per minute whereas my fleet killed around 360 DP per minute. So it's pretty good, but if my fleet were fighting against the same fleet, it would've finished in around 150-155 seconds depending on how much the initial burst damage takes out relative to the overall damage. And if I used a bunch of mercenaries to get level 6 officers with 3 elite skills for free, I might try using something like Buffalo2 spam for the "junk ships" instead for even more missile spam; I used LP Brawlers including unofficered ones in the run. It's a pretty good run though, the best I've seen for a fleet relying on SO.

For Expanded Magazines, I'm not sure what is the use case where it's too strong in player hands. It seems like Storm Needler Onslaught is mentioned a lot, so I took my flagship Onslaught and tried it with Storm Needler, Thumper, and Mining Blaster with s-modded Expanded Magazines, in my Conquest/Gryphon fleet against double Ordos. The Storm Needler did less damage than the 2 Light Needlers in the nose, since its range was a lot shorter (even though I was trying to burn drive in to the Storm Needler's range most of the time). The Thumper did less than Heavy Mortar. The Mining Blaster was decent though, but once I put in the usual Mjolnir in the nose large ballistic, the Mining Blaster faded a bit. So I don't think the Storm Needler nor the Thumper is worth it in this case, especially when it's usually better to put Mjolnir or Hephaestus in a large ballistic for the anti-armor/hull, so that the small/medium ballistics can be anti-shield.

Having said that, I usually do use s-mod Expanded Magazines if I'm using weapons with recharging ammo. I don't think it's overpowered though since its base OP cost is low so the s-mod effect should be pretty good.

11

Suggestions / Re: Large missiles feels lacking in options

« on: October 19, 2024, 01:35:51 AM »

this conversation is now super complicated I assume,

It's pretty simple, actually:

1. The claim is made that large missiles aren't that good, and that the unique ones are underwhelming, while the medium missiles are good.
2. I showed that the large missile Squall does equivalent DPS to a medium missile Sabot Pod that is buffed many times over -- with its damage output more than doubled (increased number of missiles per burst from 2 to 5), its weapon range more than doubled (increased weapon range from 1200 to 2500), and its ammo increased many times to match the Squall's endurance (increased ammo from 12 to 80), with no increase in OP (i.e. as if the Sabot Pod still costed 10 OP).
3. In other words, the large missile Squall is many, many times better than the medium missile Sabot Pod. Imagine how strong a medium weapon like the Assault Chaingun or the Heavy Machine Gun or the HVD would be if you gave it the same stat increase (more than double its range, more than double its stat card DPS). That's how much stronger the Squall is compared to the Sabot Pod; the damage output of the Squall is equivalent to a Sabot Pod whose stat card would say 512 DPS at 2500 range.
4. This is based directly on analysis of combat results from actual double Ordos fights, not the sim nor theorycrafting nor Internet unsupported made-up claims.
5. Additionally, the Squall has the relatively uncommon (though technically not unique) ability to suppress enemy flux from a very long range. This means that the enemy fleet has less flux to use against the player fleet, so the player fleet in turn spends more of its flux on destroying the enemy fleet rather than absorbing enemy attacks.
6. Again, this is supported directly by analysis of combat results of double Ordos fights: if the player fleet used Squalls instead of buffed Sabot Pods, the enemy fleet lost over a quarter of its DPS, with the player fleet in turn doing around 14% more DPS and hence also a faster completion time.
7. Thus, the Squall's property of long-range suppression means that it actually performs better than what its on-paper stats or its DPS results would suggest. This is a relatively unique ability which significantly improves the player fleet with few other substitutes.
8. Any claim made thus far which contradicts any of the above have been shown to be either wrong, or simply made up, or both.

Hypothetically, if I make an OP weapon that launch 1000 reaper at once that kill any enemy, it will have high miss rate, because enemy would be super dead after like 10 reapers, all 990 will miss. That dont make it a poor weapon. You want the enemy to die.

Sabot is a burst weapon lile that. Its very nature means enemy might die before all submunition connects.

Better to have 'overkill' miss in sabot case than actual missing tickle damage like Squall.

But sabots pop shields not hulls

They actually do a ton of hull once armor depletes, or so says detailed combat report.

Both of these posts are false. Detailed Combat Reports shows that the buffed Sabot Pods (not regular Sabot Pods) only contribute around 10% of the hull DPS, even in its buffed state (more than double the rate of missiles, more than double the range). The hull DPS of actual Sabot Pods is going to be pretty negligible, especially in an environment with multiple Mjolnirs, Harpoons, and Locusts, all of which have much farther range and have much higher hull DPS. When the hull DPS is so small compared with other weapons, the chance that a target dies mid-burst is also pretty small, so claiming that low effectiveness is due to overkill from bursts is pretty silly.

As I already mentioned, the large missile slot is one of the strongest weapon slots in the current version of Starsector. Most of the strongest player fleets rely heavily on large missile slots, in particular the Squall, and to a lesser extent, the Locust. So yes, large missiles right now feel lacking in options, but only because it's so dominant over everything else that it becomes a no-brainer if the player is interested in having a good fleet.

What the hp nerf did was stop a solo ship from bombarding an enemy that had more than minor PD with effectively a homing super HVD (Squall).  Before, I could rely on Squall to power through any PD the enemy had, and I needed lots of PD (dual flak or guardians) to stop some of theirs (like from SIM Astral).  Now, some enemies I used to solo with a Squall cannot anymore because too many Squalls are shot down, and I do not need as much PD to shoot down those from an enemy Astral (or other capital armed with a Squall).

Pretty much this. The Squall nerfs stopped it from being a "one-stop shop" in terms of being able to flux out enemy ships and kill them and disable their weapons/engines via EMP and absorb their PD (through its hit points), etc. However, it's still very strong in the current version when complemented correctly with other weapons.

The strength of the Squall also lies in having them come in from multiple directions, so in some ways it's like fighters (i.e. a few don't matter much, but a swarm can overwhelm enemies) in that you need a mass of them for them to really work. Thus, its strength is best observed in full fleet-on-fleet fights, rather than in the sim or in theorycrafting. Hence why it's important to test out weapons and ships in full battles rather than just in the sim.

As for whether or not it's too strong, well, missiles overall are very strong right now, and large slots should be strong. So it really depends on what adjustments are made to the overall balance between the different types of weapons. I think overall missiles should be toned down a bit, and seeing as how Squalls and Harpoons are pretty dominant, they could probably be toned down somewhat.

12

General Discussion / Re: Where to find special colony items (and very good vanilla seed for .97a-RC10)

« on: October 17, 2024, 01:14:38 AM »

I'll note that this still works in the latest version (0.97a-RC11), so it's still relevant (not a necro ). The system is named Alpha Bentzon Disk. The Tundra also has an Orbital Solar Array for +2 Food.

It doesn't have any gates nearby though (think the closest one is Thule). Also, the seed's [REDACTED] weapons are somewhat below average, with only 3 guaranteed larges, listed below.

Spoiler

Alpha site: Disintegrator, 2 Minipulsers, Shock Repeater
Alpha Garbhodaka: Volatile Particle Driver, 3 Cryoblasters, 2 Disintegrators, 2 Resonators, Rift Beam, 4 Shock repeaters, 2 Rift Lances, AMSRM
Jahannam: Rift Cascade Emitter, Rift Torpedo Launcher, 2 Resonators, Cryoblaster, Cryoflamer, Disintegrator, Rift Beam, 4 Minipulsers, 4 Shock Repeaters, 2 Rift Lances, AMSRM

[close]

However yeah I've never seen any seed that's anywhere close to that good. There's obviously a workaround for the lack of a gate, and the player fleet may not really depend on [REDACTED] weapons anyway.

13

General Discussion / Re: Showerthought Safety Overrides rework

« on: October 17, 2024, 12:35:39 AM »

Replaces current ship system with "Override Safeties", a toggleable ship system.

It seems like the idea is to give the ship a general stat boost (similar to say, extra CR%) in return for shorter PPT. While that's an idea worth considering on its own, it does away with what's more fundamentally interesting about Safety Overrides, namely trading weapon range + endurance for more speed + flux. Ships tend to be on a spectrum between "fast + short weapon range" (i.e. high tech, frigates) or "slow + long weapon range" (i.e. low tech, capitals), and SO basically moves the ship along that spectrum toward the "fast + short weapon range" end.

The problem is that right now, in practice, SO ends up giving up too much in terms of weapon range (and/or OP) for the benefits that it provides in terms of ship speed and increased flux. So in most cases it's better to go non-SO than SO. It's extremely overhyped, i.e. its on-paper stats are very good and people claim it works well, but when comparing it against other possible ship and fleet strategies in combat, it generally fares poorly. (Note that the people who claim SO is overpowered say so as a general statement but don't provide concrete examples nor compare it against other builds in combat, i.e. provide evidence to support the claim.) But that's more an issue with adjusting the stats to make it work better, as opposed to any fundamental issues with the concept. (I don't really have any good ideas for how to buff SO to make it more competitive, but maybe something like 1/3 instead of 1/4 of the range beyond 450 su or something, so that it's a bit more feasible to get a bit of range with it or something, dunno.)

That's not necessarily something specific to SO; high-tech ships also fare relatively poorly for the most part, and for the same reasons. It's simply that right now the meta is that it's better to go long range than to duke it out in close quarters, since the player fleet ends up taking too much damage (decreasing its offensive potential) if it goes for shorter-range higher-damage weapons over longer-range lower-damage weapons.

Also, since this is replacing the ship's original system, this idea would naturally be better on some ships with weaker systems and not as good on ships that already have a good system. In other words the ships that this idea would be good on are not necessarily the ships that SO would be good on.

So it'd probably be better to rework SO's numbers, give it a small boost to be more competitive with non-SO, and make this something in its own right. This is an interesting idea, I just think it'd be better as a hullmod in its own right rather than replacing SO.

Notice how the Fury was left out of the list 

Well it wouldn't have been practical for PixiCode to list nearly every ship. For the Fury, at least against early-game pirates, non-SO Fury was something like 44% better than SO Furies (tested using Support Doctrine, no officers, against pirate fleet), so basically 7 non-SO Furies could kill about as quickly as 10 SO Furies. I haven't tested Furies, non-SO or SO, against endgame (i.e. double Ordos) for a long time now because the AI keeps suiciding with Plasma Burn (bump into object, flameout, careen into enemy fleet and die) so it was too annoying to try to keep them alive for the duration of a double Ordos fight to get accurate statistics. But I haven't really seen anything that would make me think they'd do better with SO.

Wolf and Hyperion too.

For the Wolf, at least in terms of the player-controlled flagship using dual AMSRMs, non-SO does around 15% more damage than SO. This is because I can put the OP that would've gone into SO into vents instead, and then get active vent for double flux regen on top of that, so I end up with more flux to use if I don't use SO. So if I'm running something flux-intensive like dual AMSRMs, it's actually better to go non-SO. The Wolf can also phase skim away from the front lines so SO's speed advantage isn't as relevant.

For the Hyperion, it's a bit structural, i.e. the Hyperion actually has the stats of a light cruiser but it's masquerading as a frigate, so SO only costs 15 OP but gives 500 flux dissipation. Thus SO gives it a big flux boost compared with how much SO benefits other ships. The AI doesn't use it that well though, whether SO or non-SO, because the AI jumps away too soon, so the Hyperion ends up spending very little time attacking a target compared with other ships (and that's specifically because other ships aren't able to jump out right away so they end up sticking around and fighting longer). Then again, if the AI for the Hyperion were improved to stay on its target until like 80-90% flux before jumping away, that'd be a fairly difficult and annoying enemy to fight against.

14

General Discussion / Re: Not getting any younger

« on: October 14, 2024, 10:16:24 AM »

Starsector has already been in 1.0 for years, we just get a new DLC for free every year or so. Not actually calling it 1.x is just so Alex has an incentive to keep working on the game. Otherwise once it's marketed as 1.x, he might take the profits from the game, buy his own private island somewhere with it, and retire to a life of beaches and mojitos.

15

General Discussion / Re: The Fearsome Buffalo Mk.II -- The King of the Early Game

« on: October 06, 2024, 07:47:19 AM »

Watching a few of the rounds, I definitely see room for improvements on the non-Buffalo side.  While the Onslaught fleet was losing large fractions of its value, if I switched it up to 6 Omens and 2 Onslaughts (and only bringing 116 DP), repeating one fight each resulted in 1-2 omens going down rather than 1-2 Onslaughts, which in a tournament setting is going to be a much stronger record.

Yeah by the same token for tournament play it'd probably be better to have something out in front to complement Buffalo2 Harpoon spam, maybe Monitors or anti-shield or something (no idea what's popular in tournaments), since Harpoon spam is overly anti-armor/hull and not enough anti-shield. Buffalo2 are the best per DP of putting Harpoons out in the field (though I think Venture is the quickest at putting them out due to Fast Missile Racks) but it needs to be complemented by something anti-shield and something that can tank damage, in order for the Buffalo2 to stay alive long enough to put all those Harpoons out.

Then there would be some counter to that, followed by the counter of that counter, and so forth. I never got into tournaments because it's really just trying to hit an always-moving target (or more accurately, finding a fleet that maximizes the chances across multiple different targets) so it's difficult to tell if you actually found something "good" or if it just happens to be something that worked well against whoever else just happened to show up, or that particular tournament's fight order or rules, etc. In other words it's harder to make a more general assessment of things.

While I got 2 BMII's from an early pirate fleet in good condition, and found a bunch more for sale, I cannot find any harpoons! Either small or medium. I checked 17 (yes, really, 17) markets, found a few 2-shot small harpoons and tried to use them, but then just sold the BMII's as not worth it. I found missile autoloader in those 17 markets, but no expanded missile racks, ECCM, converted hangars, or any Gladii (bought a few talons, but could never use them).

Huh which markets did you tend to look at? I generally stayed on the east part of the map and had no trouble finding Buffalo2's nor Harpoons in both my playthroughs. Looking through the saves for the second playthrough, for example by May 31 (when I went for the Alpha cache) I had 6 Buffalo2, each with a Harpoon Pod and 3 Harpoon MRM's, my flagship Wolf and a Hammerhead each with 2 Harpoon MRMs, a Falcon (P) with 4 Harpoon Pods and 2 Harpoon MRMs, as well as an additional 16 Harpoon MRM's in inventory. I actually found the biggest bottleneck was having enough credits, since I was going with a "no getting money from trading nor missions" run; I had to skip out on getting Buffalo2's or Harpoons several times due to lack of credits. I basically traveled from Galatia then northwest toward Askonia then northeast toward Alpha site then stopped at Yma before going to the SD bounty fleet, stopping at the markets along the way. I didn't count up how many markets I went by though.

I haven't looked at what determines what ships/weapons/hullmods get sold at each market, i.e. where you should go to maximize the probability of finding whatever you're looking for. That'd probably be useful information for playthroughs like this where you're looking for certain things. Askonia seemed to have good stuff generally. I did find that Harpoons, like probably most weapons, were kind of "bursty": they get sold in bunches, so you'd only have a few, then you'd have a bunch, etc. Also, the Buffalo2 spam does work with other missiles, just that Harpoons are the most effective and so my analysis was based around that. But when getting started I used whatever I could find, keeping in mind that my fleet is fronted by me in a Wolf as well as a Hammerhead, so it wasn't purely Buffalo2 spam.

In the event that it depends on map seed (although I don't see why it would), my map seed is MN-3938223558644461179. It should be vanilla (no mods that affect world generation) and I did the Wolf start with Shepherd, Normal, skipped tutorial. As a check for whether or not the same world got generated:

Spoiler

The Alpha site is guarded by 2 Alpha Core Fulgents, and the loot should be a Resonator, Rift Beam, 2 AMSRM, and 2 Rift Lance.

[close]

Generating a fresh game using that seed, and just using Console Commands to travel to each market roughly retracing how I did the second playthrough, ignoring the military submarkets, what I got was:

Code

Market	Buf2	HarPod	HarMRM	Har-dou	Hullmod
Jangala				4	
Asharu			4	5	MA
Garnir			1	4	EMR
Derink			1		
Ancyra				12	MA
Cruor		7		3	EMR
Volturn	1			5	
Sindria	1	2			
Nortia		5		8	
Umbra			3		
Skathi			6	22	EMR
Raesv		3	6		
Ragnar				5	
Eochu				4	
Culann	1		1	29	
Cethlen				1	
Donn				11	
Total	3	17	22	113	

So at least that path to the Alpha site seems to have a good number of Harpoons. At the very beginning I would also use several others like Swarmers, Jackhammers, etc. Obviously there would be additional ones from battles, and obviously it would vary from run to run. I also came across EMR and MA several times, though I forgot to check for ECCM so not sure if I came across it when I was looking at the different markets.

(There's probably a better way to figure this out, maybe using finditem and forcemarketupdate or something.)

So I tried looking back to find screenshots from the person who REALLY went crazy limit testing Hyperions in 0.95, but I think I basically just gaslit myself into thinking they cleared more than in the past. Sorry for the inconvenience. I swore it cleared up to 2,000 before, but I never got into personally grinding against Remnant.

Well it was probably possible, since ships can last a long time before CR really takes a toll, even with SO. Even if it were, though, there's also the issue of whether or not it's an effective way to do so -- i.e. whether or not the fleet can kill enemy ships at a reasonably good rate relative to other ships.

Also, just because something isn't the literal fastest doesn't mean it isn't a fast way to get to level 15. I just meant that since it requires no officers, you can get yourself to level 15 pretty fast. Overall less effort/skill required too - and I mean that in a 100% positive light. Piloting phase ships to kill star forts is not easy unless you practice at it, especially if you go for a true ironman sort of playthrough.

Yeah each playthrough is basically looking to optimize different things. Phase frigates against Star Fortresses is to reach level 15 in minimum playing time (and likely game time). Buffalo2 spam is more looking to develop a fairly XP-efficient (no officer) fleet that can easily kill enemy fleets. A lot of the testing is assuming no player-controlled flagship, but the fleet is much improved with a flagship and with a couple of anti-shield ships in front. The playthroughs to test this were sort of a maximin scenario, i.e. what's the best that can be done even with significant restrictions (no income from trading, etc.). In an "actual" playthrough I'd go ahead and do some light trading and stuff to make credits quickly to get a bigger fleet more quickly (and trading is probably the fastest way to make credits). So each have their own strengths and weaknesses, depending on what the goal is and what the conditions/restrictions are.

I think it might be interesting to take the Buffalo2 spam fleet and augment it with the phase frigate flagship thing. I mean against a Star Fortress there's no reason I can't have the Buffalo2's tag along; if you drag enough enemy ships in it'd be +500% XP anyway, and as a bonus, the Buffalo2's can probably kill the enemy ships after I finish off the Star Fortress if I want, even though it's slower than just doing the Star Fortress by itself. Add in some light trading and missions to deal with any credit issues and it should be a pretty quick way to get a strong fleet early on.