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« on: January 01, 2022, 04:15:28 PM »
I'm not super impressed by it to be honest.
It kinda gutted phase ships but in a subtle way.
Since phase ships are both: High Tech, and, Lacking Shields, they rely on their Phase to avoid damage, but with the newest update, it's fair for maybe the afflictor, but the harbinger and doom have both been cut in half. They are inheritly slow ships, being Destroyer and Cruiser, who relied on phase for more than damage mitigation, but for mobility as-well.
I'll get to my point now: Without speed (And no, adaptive phase coils does not give you your speed back as of now), Phase ships can't get to an enemies weak spot, which is where they belong, given they have no shields. Without the ability to avoid damage, they are pigeon-holed into the worst kind of playstyle for phase ships: Long range harrassment.
You sit in the back with long-range beams, and if you start getting pestered by frigates or the odd destroyer, you just phase and leave, rinse, repeat.
There's little else to do unfortunately. My previously favorite strategy, hyper-hit-and-run (Phase, fly behind the enemy, unphase, blast with Lances, re-phase) doesn't work because you can't to the run part of hit and run, so unless you kill your target, you're just stuck with too much hard-flux to escape before you cap out.
Here's how I would do it differently: Change nothing about Phase as a concept (For now), and completely overhaul Afllictors. The harbinger hasn't been, and won't be a balance problem, and the Doom fails to function in the hands of the AI, which means there can only be 1 good doom in the sector at any time, gremlins are annoying, but not unbalanced. All the support phase ships don't need to be combat-balanced anyway, but the afflictor was to fast and too deadly. So why, oh why, did we fix the afflictor by nerfing ALL phase ships?