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1

General Discussion / Re: Phase + Fortress shields vs 3 Ordos

« on: March 14, 2024, 09:33:11 AM »

AI harbinger is very effective if you micromanage it to avoid larger ships and chase down destroyers and frigates, but relying on the player to micromanage orders is really not ideal. A lot of this could be solved by giving players finer control over how their ship AI behaves. For example: imagine if you could program the harbinger AI to act as if there is an avoid order on capitals and cruisers whenever it has no orders, but to ignore this programming whenever it does have an order.

Considering the purpose of command points is to discourage rts style play, it's clear that Alex imagines the commands are meant to be guidelines for your fleet to follow rather than something you need to micromanage. If that is the case, then allowing us to pre-program some behaviors that don't rely on giving explicit commands would fit right into this design goal. I understand this would be overwhelming to new players if available right off the bat, so instead the player should unlock it once they get their first colony. Some kind of "doctrine" system that lets you plug pre-designed behaviors into your ships (almost like adding hullmods to them, but with a different interface).

Heck, you could even start with only basic behaviors when you get your colony and unlock new behaviors when you get a military base and high command. Simple things could be like "be less conservative with missiles" or "be MORE conservative with missiles." More advanced ones would be like the harbinger behavior I described earlier.

That's a great idea. I've been thinking for many years that the game really lacks this system. The current approach, divided into 5 behavioral models (two of which are completely useless), is outdated and requires revision.
Try creating a topic in "suggestions", maybe Alex will pay attention to this, since he has started revising simulations.

2

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 05, 2024, 06:09:11 PM »

honestly I would imagine lore-wise the Hegemony using phase ships of normal kind, rather than Gremlin and Grendel. Considering they don't necessarily shy away from high tech, seeing they use high tech fighters and weapons that are generally considered high tech like velociraptors, heavy needlers, phase lances, etc. But then phase ships should be made more universal, in that they aren't necessarily tied to the Tri-Tachyon, but were just a general tech from the Domain era where things worked significantly better than they do now. And people just had those.

And then the only faction using the Gremlin and Grendel would be the Church and Pathers, who enjoy low tech piece of crap, with pirates using hacked versions of Tri-Tachyon phase ships.

They could just use the Afflictor and Shade... Or just Shade and Harbinger... With phase ships performing support roles, holding heavy armour and hardened subsystems, if they can afford it. And these phase ships just appearing as a minor part of the fleet with doctrine set 1. They should also have Mora removed, as Mora or Condor tbh don't fit their lore of being a modern Domain army with a bad deck. Instead having to rely solely on the Legion as their carrying carrier. And then just using their point defence mastery to clear up whatever garbage you can throw at them.

Hegemony isn't high-tech enough to use proper phase ships, and what's more, we will be entering tri-tach territory, which isn't particularly healthy. I strongly advise you to not break their high-tech identity, starsector already have well established situation in that case, i assure you that we don't need full vinaigrette of ships in hegemony fleets. We already got low-tech phase for them, so it will be much better to simply make them good instead of dumping them into luddie fleets, replacing by tri-tach ones and calling it a day. Church isn't some kind of low-tech junkyard in which you can pour every piece of crap, they have a strong low-low-tech identity in them. Grendel and gremlin isn't low-tech enough for them simply speaking.

>As Mora or Condor tbh don't fit their lore of being a modern Domain army
Hagemony is a Domain wannabe, chinese copy, not a real Domain, so mora works perfectly fine with their lore. As for condors, well... tarsus conversions were performed long before the Collapse, they served in trade fleets along with original tarsus, and local security pickets. So there is virtually no reason for them not to serve in hegemony and any other fleets throughout the Sector.

3

General Discussion / Re: new phase is absolutely horrible

« on: March 04, 2024, 10:11:47 PM »

Gremlin is just a piece of crap, it should be upgunned and get more armor and hull (with a new system, current one is even worse than previous) to serve as a lesser grendel, or vanguard phase analogue. It's just ridiculous that it cost the same as pirate phase versions, even lore wise i don't get why hegies would like to use gremlin instead of any other frigates.
As for shades tho, they work perfectly with 2 needlers, 2 ambs and agressive officer. 2 to 3 of them work great as a quick force projection on the battlefield, and they are the only frigate in the game which can execute "harass" order reliably against extremely dangerous enemies. You can try to use them as a hyper-offensive omens in escort role (afaik Alex mentioned that he fixed AI in that regard). They tend to explode once in a while because of AI miscalculations of battleship explosion radius, and time in which said ship will explode, just move them before you destroy it.
And for breaches, i don't really like how AI use it, they just miss every oportunity to fire them, and dump all at once in the enemy shields which is strongly frustrating. I wonder if Alex can make them fire them at highfluxed enemy in succession, one after another so enemy cannot shieldflick them. It is a waste of time to mess with them on a phase ship, just stick to ambs.

4

General Discussion / Re: Grendel - poor bastard

« on: February 25, 2024, 12:29:26 PM »

I haven't put the Grendel under AI control but I found it fun as a close-ranged SO build. You need all the speed you can get so helmsmanship is a must and building in aux thrusters increases the 0-flux speed boost that's always on with SO.

Spoiler

[close]

I didn't mentioned SO, because it is a legal cheat in our game. You can slap it on a bad ship, and it suddenly will become at the very least OK.

It needed a reason to have Distributed Fire Control, but this is a chicken or the egg situation. Because it's a cruiser it can have Heavy Armour of cruiser kind, which is a very large amount. But at the same time it would have cruiser's ITU, which would be a huge range increase. Which would make it kinda straightforward in design. So, Distributed Fire Control... But then maybe it was made a cruiser to have Distributed Fire Control, not the other way around. Cause you don't put ITU on destroyers that often anyway??? So, it would act as just a straight up buff.

Maybe just make it a destroyer and remove the DFC... But, eh... Who cares...

I see this like it has ITU before the release, but then for some reason (being overly powerful, or simply due to inconsistency with the original vision) got DFC, lower DP cost, and Rugged Construction as a consolation prize due it's inability to stay alive in AI's hands.
It doesn't need to be a destroyer to simply get it's ITU back, it will be an another nail in Harbinger's coffin, but what it truly needs to be it is a cheaper gun-oriented Doom analogue. To make Grendel a solid beefed-up cruiser and not just small cruiser wannabe with identity crisis.

Poor bastard? Grendel is an AAF cruiser with five medium ballistics, that converge, with stats of a shield shunted low tech cruiser meant for actual warfare, and phase on top of them. For 18 DP.

Delicious Fire Control at that point is less of a debuff and more of a sign waving a finger, going "tsk-tsk-tsk" and pointing to Safety Overrides.

Why don't we replace his system with a burn drive then? Most of the shieldshunted types we can see in the open nature has it!
On paper 5 medium slots and AAF looks rad, on practice tho it just doesn't work due to it's poor phase stat profile. And as i mentioned above, if SO is mandatory, then the ship has real problems.

What I do not like about Grendel is how AI can act so dumb with it in duels.  Makes AI Fury look like like a genius, and AI Fury is awful without the Safety Override band-aid.  I do not mind Grendel dying because it has Rugged Construction to mitigate death, but dying because the AI is so incompetent with the ship is frustrating no matter what.

Rugged Construction does not prevent D-mods on 100%, and it is a cruiser, so his recovery will cost player a real coin in comparison to Vanguard, or Cerberus. Without mentioning that Vanguard is simply more potent as a frigate, than Wendigo as a cruiser. And broken AI on top of that.

5

General Discussion / Re: Grendel - poor bastard

« on: February 23, 2024, 12:07:54 PM »

My fleet with 2 Grendels is doing quite well, there hasn't been a fight yet that I couldn't win. One is a Eradicator-lite for less DP and more distraction potential, the other is an armour tank which shreds anything smaller than itself. Although both have elite Helmsmanship, so that helps with speed.

Would you mind sharing your builds?

I tried:
3 - Light Needlers
2 - Maulers
2 - HVD
1 - DualFlak
HeavyArmor, Injector, AdaptiveCoils for hullmods. All caps, remaining OP on vents.

Agressive AI seems too afraid to go on the frontline, and is constantly overfluxed.

6

General Discussion / Grendel - poor bastard

« on: February 23, 2024, 11:37:50 AM »

Recently i've been messing with Wendigo, and i just don't get the purpose of this ship.
I thought it's gonna be a solid gunship, but it got Distributed Fire Control for whatever reason, and turtle speed on top of that. Retribution has an impressive firepower and "boom-boom-boom" so it can happily live with it, but Grendel? It slow as brick, it can't engage targets without being constantly kited, nor retreat.
This hullmod should not be on this ship, this a mistake. Let it go up in DP, by five, by ten, but let it have ITU. It just struggle to breath without it, and it's painful to watch.
There is just no point to have this instead of Eradicator at this point.

7

Mods / Re: [0.97a] Random Assortment of Things

« on: February 03, 2024, 05:24:19 PM »

Something scary is going on, crashes on every interactions with Exo-Tech ships.

Spoiler

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.getStats()Lcom/fs/starfarer/combat/entities/ship/E;
   at assortment_of_things.exotech.shipsystems.ArkasShipsystem.spawnPhantom(ArkasShipsystem.kt:191)
   at assortment_of_things.exotech.shipsystems.ArkasShipsystem.apply(ArkasShipsystem.kt:67)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.systems.F.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[close]

Spoiler

java.lang.NullPointerException
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMember.<init>(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.createFleetMember(Unknown Source)
   at assortment_of_things.exotech.shipsystems.TylosShipsystem.spawnShipOrWingDirectl y(TylosShipsystem.kt:413)
   at assortment_of_things.exotech.shipsystems.TylosShipsystem.createInitialCopy(TylosShipsystem.kt:267)
   at assortment_of_things.exotech.shipsystems.TylosShipsystem.apply(TylosShipsystem.kt:218)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.systems.F.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.entities.Ship.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advanceInner(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[close]

Dang, I was so excited to play with the new update, wonder if the older versions still work...

p.s. Love your mods, thank you for your great work <3

8

General Discussion / Re: What da Harbinger doin'?

« on: January 23, 2024, 06:31:21 AM »

On the other hand, it would make AO Phase Lances easier to use.  Extending shot range gets discouraged if I cannot use the system to compliment the weapons, and using the system is what separates Harbinger from Vanguard.  I do not want to use Harbinger as overpriced Vanguard that is only good at armor tank brawling before it inevitability dies, and Harbinger does not get Rugged Construction to play crash test dummy.  All it gets is Phase Anchor which only protects it if it is the first phase ship to die, and I do not want to waste that first death protection on it if I have more important phase ships in the fleet, like Doom or Ziggurat, not to mention Phase Anchor is not built-in free, unlike Rugged Construction.

And if nothing else changes, extending range should not be a problem because the long recharge delay and minimal overload duration hopelessly cripple the system otherwise.

And I do not have a problem with it performing well in AI hands.  It is about time Harbinger gets as overpowered as Afflictor and Doom.  Well, Doom is not so overpowered without Systems Expertise.  Even Shade is not half bad, just not as overpowered as Afflictor.

You know the thing is that without the sane QD recharge time it doesn't matter if you will have range on it or not, you either have your Lances recharged 3 times faster than system so instead firing it you are bound to wait for QD cooldown, or keep slaming the shields ignoring QD completely like it doesn't even exist. If we have old recharge rate, and will consider Harb as player only ship then yeah, proper range would be nice to have. I played a lot of time with lances, and was a bit sad that i cannot stack range, being limited by the QD restrictions.

9

General Discussion / Re: What da Harbinger doin'?

« on: January 23, 2024, 05:14:35 AM »

* More than one charge
* Longer overload duration (less than a second of vulnerability is not long enough for one charge and insanely long recharge delay)
* Longer activation range.  I would like to stack range and beams on Harbinger, but then I cannot use QD when sniping at max range because the beams outrange it.  It should have as much range as Afflictor's Entropy Amplifier. 

I like the idea of cutting curent cooldown by half and give it at least one more charge, buuuuuuut make second charge have longer CD from 2 to 3 times from normal.

Longer overload is cool, it lets player to use whatever option it wants, but it kinda turns ship into a monstrosity without breaks with cryoblasters. So in one case the ship is still suffer from 20 sec CD, and in other it makes it too overpowered. It maybe not that bad in reality, but needs testing to be certain.

Range is a big nono if Harbinger is ever gonna perform somewhat well in AI hands. I remember how scary they were, if it's not about low range of QD, then they would be an absolute unkillable menace for small ships.

(Now watch Alex nerf Entropy Amplifier and chop its range to match QD.)

(Yeah, right, thank you a looooot for the kind reminder)

If you have *maxed* skills, there's a really strange and powerful variant with Neural Link. Subsystem resetting too slow? Get double the subsystems to control! And reset their cooldowns every time you swap ships. Needs some hotkey swaps to be comfortable and is quite a lot to manage, but the DPS output and enemy ship lockdown is extreme.

Wow, that's some serious pro strats is going on here, i definetely should try this.

10

General Discussion / Re: Phase Ship AI vs "Low Damage" Weapons

« on: January 22, 2024, 01:55:56 AM »

From my experience AI does the same against HAGs and Chainguns, and starts to phase only after it's HP bar got divided by 2. Also there is another "trick" that AI loves to perform is runing away from missiles along their flying trajectory. It becomes especially tremor-inducing when Afflictors and Harbingers with damaged armor trying to outrun Pilums. It was always been the case as far as i remember, but somehow it feels even worse now.

11

General Discussion / Re: What da Harbinger doin'?

« on: January 22, 2024, 01:35:00 AM »

Unfortunately, in 0.95.1a, the QD system got nerfed to its current state as a single-charge system with a 30 second cooldown (System Expertise does decrease the cooldown to 20 seconds, but there's no more gaining extra charges with QD). That doesn't mean the Harbinger is completely useless, though, as it also has Phase Anchor to increase its brawling ability. Along with the buff to the Mining Blaster and the introduction of S-Mods, a player-piloted Harbinger can still put in a lot of work as a dedicated small-ship killer that also provides occassional support against larger ships. This here is a Harbinger loadout that you could try using for yourself (I put it together for this post in like 2 minutes, but I also piloted it in the SIM against a few ships and did well with it, so I'd say works even with no combat skills -- as long as your personal piloting skills are good enough to handle it):

Harbinger Loadout

(The Mining Blaster should be in a weapon group separate from the Ion Pulsers)

The Ion Pulsers are incredibly useful here, as they allow you to also temporarily disable weapons and engines during QD's 1 second overload, providing you more opportunities to wail on your target or even vent in its face. A Mining Blaster ensures you have anti-armor capability, and the Phase Anchor doubles the weapon recharge rate while phase, resulting in more DPS while waiting for the QD to recharge. Capacitors are prioritized over vents for phase ships, as it lets them phase for longer and slows the rate at which phase stress slows down your speed while phased. Resistant Flux Conduits is for faster vent speed and less EMP damage -- both always useful to have for phase ships. The other hullmods/S-Mods are basically survivability or QoL, so feel free to change them up depending on your needs.

[close]

I thought it was 20 sec cooldown? Yeah, it is indeed 20, still kinda a**. Tried your build, it is somewhat slow to my taste, but it works to my surprise, mainly because of it's ability to overwhelm smaller ships, so you don't have to use it's system... In that case CD just doesn't matter.

Now, is the Harbinger good enough to be worth piloting over something like the Afflictor? That depends, but, probably, the Afflictor will be more generally useful with its frigate profile, lower DP, more versatile ship system, and the ability to effectively use torpedo missiles. However, the Afflictor is generally limited to Antimatter Blasters for strike energy weapons, while the Harbinger has access to more strike options through its 3 medium energies (although only a few medium energies can really compete with the Antimatter Blaster, so that advantage gets somewhat mitigated). Ultimately, the Harbinger can work well as a flagship; however, if the goal is to optimize flagship use, using another ship would probably provide superior value for most fleet compositions.

AMBs is not that bad really, if we add 50% damage bonus from it's system, it can become nasty real quick. From that perspective no matter how hard you try, Harb will always look dull in such comparison.

(Harbinger on ship AI, though, is a whole 'nother story; long story short, it struggles to use its QD system and, if it does use it, often fumbles it. Also, it suffers from the sub-optimal phase ship AI making it take on hits it really should've phased against; I've even made a a thread about this quirk of the phase ship AI here. Unless it is supported by other ships, an AI-piloted Harbinger has to try really hard to even justify its 18 DP cost, so it's no surprise that other ships around that DP department tend to be used over it.)

Something wrong is going on around entire phase ships field, from the scary death incarnates they suddenly became a crippled lobotomites. Pristine Afflictors keeps exploding out of nothing every second fight (Pirate one somehow managed to escape this curse), Harbinger feels miserable no matter what loadout it has, Doom is just painful (thanks for the vid in your thread, got severe migraine case for the breakfast), only Shades knows what they are doing.

12

General Discussion / Re: What da Harbinger doin'?

« on: January 22, 2024, 12:13:44 AM »

I'm new in this game: started with .96, so I don't know how it was before the nerf and what the right builds for it was before. Thanks for the idea with Mining Blasters. I will try it with Unstable Injectors or maybe even with SO.

So far, I used Phase Lance with Advanced Optics +  ITU + Phase Ancor. Most of the time, I didn't use the system at all - just shot from a relatively safe distance, phase for 3 seconds to kite missiles and shots, and burn them again. Most of the ships were not able to recharge shields in 3 seconds, so most ships that smaller than cruisers, and all pirate cruisers from pirate armadas died quickly, even face to face, without using the system at all.
The main problem with this build - it's quite slow, especially after afflictor. And Unstable Injector cuts weapon range, so you have to burn from a much closer distance that is not so safe. So I want to try something faster with different weapons.

Go for SO if you got Cryoflamers after Omega ships fights, from that point Disruptor doesn't matter at all, Cryoflamers can overwhelm even a capital ships through their shields. To get all three can be tricky tho, as weapons from Omega fights drops at complete random.

In the other cases SO is probaably an overkill, as you still limited by Disruptor long cooldown and weapons regen rate. Phase Coils, Unstable Injector, Expanded Mags, and Resistant Flux Conduits should do the trick in my opinion, in that case at least you got a ton of PPT so you can stay in fights as long as capitals.
But SO is fast and fun, so go for it! Buy two of them, and change them after first got his PPT drained. Have fun!

13

General Discussion / What da Harbinger doin'?

« on: January 21, 2024, 08:52:48 PM »

I've been thinking about Harb's state in the current meta lately, i haven't touched him since his nerf, and i was curious how bad it could be.
Got him right at the start, and oh boy how painful it was. Without level 8 at the very least it can't function at all, even on a completely basic level.
The variety of it's loadouts is pretty scarce, there is only 3 builds i was managed to come up with:

1 - AMB
Pretty safe one, with system expertise it's skill CD is 1to1 with it's guns. Convinient. With this you stay on the field less time than with other 2 variants. The damage output tho is tremendously low, energy mastery didn't proc on Harb like it do on Afflictor, and the ammo count is very limited. Fighting low-tech with heavy armor and officers feels like throwing peas against the wall, it's just a waste of ammo for nothing.
No risk, and even less reward basically.

2 - Phase Lance
Before nerf it was my personal goto, but currently it's even worse than with AMB. With them you will overstay more frequently, damage per strafe is lower. Enemy frigates and destroyers survive with "1 HP" too often, and you have no instruments to finish them off, so you just watch them helplessly or trying to pin them down without Disruptor (and get your face leveled in the process). Omni-shield jukes with how long it winds up is very unlikely to work.

3 - Mining Blaster
With S-moded Mags it feels much better than the rest. Almost the same damage per system use as AMB, but has no ammo limit, and you won't have seizures after every miss. Burst is tight, so enemies with shields has too little time to react, i even caught myself thinking that I use the system much less often because of this. And unlike AMB you can mow partcularly anoying fighters if needed. So far so good.

Then how does it feel then?
It's no good.
It's not by any means bad tho, it's not at all a terrible and unplayable ship.
It's just not good. That summarize everything.

The only niche use that i can come up with is cheese strats against Ziggy and Doritos. Outside of it Harbinger is just mediocre, if not worse.
He's not particularly fast, nor do impressive ammount of damage, nor super tanky, nor fun to play. Also AI seems broken, it just press F on cooldown without even intending to attack.
90% of the time it is better for the player to use Afflictor instead, and he will not miss anything interesting. Afflictor is fun, fast, does damage, it can do everything that your wife cannot! Still don't have it? Then we have a limited offer just for you! Don't miss out, for only $9.99 you can become a happy owner today!

With CD that high, ship is basically toothless, and it's most clearly seen in late game against Toasters and Hegies. In every battle you will constantly hesitate and cannot decide whether to use it on Kites, Hounds with shields, and similar roaches or hit larger ship instead (if latter, then you can easily got overwhelmed; if former then you will SEETHE that you wasted 10 secs of your life on mf Kite).

Was it that necessary to go that rough on it? In my humble opinion, no. He didn't deserve this.

Maybe there is something that i completely missed. But anyways, i'm curious to see your opinions.

14

Blog Posts / Re: Skill Tweaks

« on: December 13, 2023, 02:23:45 AM »

The only issue with "Neural Link" and "Neural Integrator" was that you locked it behind too many skill points, the main issue is still here. You didn't fix anything, players still need two top skills just to operate Radiance. Is he really THAT gamebreaking so you keep overbalancing stuff? More broken than Ziggurat, or Doom? I don't get it. No one picked this skill before, and no one ever will with current implementation. It's completely unnecessary to go that far, just let people have "Neural Integrator" without taking extra steps.

Decision to buff "Support Doctrine" with "Ordnance Expertise" is warmly welcomed, now it feels more complete.

"Hull Restoration" addition is nice, i really like it. But what about "Derelict Operations"? Skill was already on the weak side, and "HR" buff will hammer the last nail into "DO" coffin. I wonder if it can have some help as well.

15

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: May 13, 2023, 06:20:45 PM »

0.96 update is great.
Especially new lore on Luddites, now they are much more than just space rednecks with hammers. The same goes to Sindriots. Love it.

But, pardon my French, the Pegasus changes are complete ass. It's just another Conquest. And as mentioned above, four large slots were an integral part of his identity. Increase in DP, system nerf (or even a complete replacement), everything is better than what was done. It's just sad. Alex, i hope you will change your mind.

By the way, isn't Dragonfire amount in mediums are just too low for what it does? Or is it just me? Like, 7 Reapers against 2 Dragonfire?