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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - Hotfix 3/6/22

« on: March 13, 2022, 04:09:30 PM »

  Fury high tech cruiser also have Plasma Burn, though the issue was mostly with the Odysseus. The Shrike are so fragile that they tend to get deleted before they get close to ennemy ships, while Fury appear to be just the right size to get fluxed enough to decide to not kiss ennemy ships, and small enough to rarely hit big wrecks, or if they do they lose their velocity. I have never seen a Fury or Shrike being yeeted accross the Battlefield, while it was very frequent with Odysseus BC.

  About the Black Hole, i no longer need to imagine, i visited that sytem just when the AO planet were on the opposite side of the Black Hole, i visited both sides and there were quickly over 10 fleets stuck there. I don't know the lore you plan to introduce, could a binary system with a standart star - arround which the planets would be - + Black Hole on a lonely orbit be fine ?

  The orders i give are mostly to specific ship to eliminate an ennemy one faster, or to get out of a dangerous area, i usually order frigates to escort vulnerable ships such as carrier or weak DD in 1/1 ratio.  When the ennemy is likely to destroy a few of my frigates i order them to escort my line cruiser so that they don't get isolated and destroyed.
  I also use defend but since the AI will also defend the side there is no ennemy i only use it to keep some kind of formation until contact. When the ships are spread everywhere i will usually order a spare or damaged cruiser to escort my carrier to limit surprises.

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - Hotfix 3/6/22

« on: March 13, 2022, 05:58:10 AM »

  My opinions and feeling are based on my experience as a player in game : I play with 500 battle size, and i am often the underdog since my fleets usually consists of cruisers +1 capital carrier + 4-6 frigates not exceeding much over 200 since the slow down in storms and such is very irritating to me ( i just found ou about a x3 time multiplier, it might change my habits ).

  In my experience the ship do not often stack behind each other and support armed ships either end up temporarily in the frontline or remain far behind doing very little until they are engaged by ennemy frigate. Those frigates are not deterred by the low dps at all, especially since they can evade most of the slow firing fire. Indeed support weapons having relatively high alpha but very slow refiring make them very often miss their target ( when not beam based ), and lead to even lower than stated long term dps.

  My experience might be biaised since i often play frontline cruiser and very often ( have to ) force my other ship to push with me, the lack of aggressivity of ship with steady or without officier is slightly annoying to me, while Agressive Oficiers will suicide themself or abuse of the plasma burn ability and woink themself across the battlefield with disabled engines after hitting a big wreck.

  Cruiser level of shielding on a gunship suprised me, especially since its other stats are for now not that far from other gunships.

  I somehow missed the assault autocanon costing flux, the flux free version still looks very weak to me compared to a mass driver for exemple. They also suffer from long refiring time and often miss while the multiple 100 damages shots are not that effective against armor, so even when they finally hit it does not do much.
In my experience, a range difference of 100 do not matter, especially since they very rarely hit less than capital size at that range, and capital laught at such tiny damage.

  About Atropos, i also noticed both it and the Sabots, and Harpoons have single launcher version with much reduced OP cost, yet they behave very differently : the Sabot launcher no longer have multiple ammo in magazine, but reload time is barely increased, Harpoons's is increased, while the Atropos reload time is extremely increased. 

  As for Skills : i may not be a good exemple of the playerbase, but i dislike must-have extra abilities in games. Getting small advantage, or extras that matters in a few specifics case is great, getting abilities that completely change the mechanics of science based games is just irritating : either the game is balanced without them and you stomp everything once you get them, or it is and you struggle without them.
  Losing a few ships to End Games challenges in a desperate gamble looks fine to me, having to get and rely on abilities to survive againt them isn't, especially if getting them make standart fleets and challenges a walk in the park.

 The Plasma Burn ability make the ship "jump forward" a short distance at extremely high speed, the issue is that the AI will use it very often ( whenever it is available i guess ? ), and sometime it will use it and propel the ship against a big ennemy ship, a wreck or a battlestation, disabling the engines of the ship, and letting it go spinning accross the battlefield at 200-300 speed. By the time the engine get repaired and the ship's standart max speed is enforced, the ship crashed in the middle of the ennemy formation or is on the other side of the battle map. Odysseus Battlecruisers are extremely prone to this.
  Replacing those abilities that the AI use to suicide themself would be welcome. Yes it is a Vanilla thing, but since AO touches abilities...

edit You already did that ! I didn't touch the Odysseus recently...  don't know if other ship still have that terrible ability *

 edit 2 : Shrike hight tech destroyer do have that ability

  As for the Black hole, it is immersion breaking, and i can very easily see invasion or defensive fleets sometime getting stuck in there too ( i haven't yet, i don't go there often ). Would it be possible to add some kind of buoys with repellant effects arround it ( faking red giants... ) ?

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Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - Hotfix 3/6/22

« on: March 12, 2022, 01:51:59 PM »

  Hi, i wrote a very long player feedback to highlight what i loved in this mod, and also a few issues i found, when the forum decided to **** me over login and deleted everything.

  So in short : Great mod which make the Vanilla combat looks bland. Love the many small weapons slots, the widespread fighter bays, the variety of weapons (in theory );

  A list of specific issues i found :

- The Nexerelin mod make the AO modified Tutorial ( which looks very promising and gives actual weight behind the AO ) playable, but it is unfinished and unfinishable as a player, so it is quite irritating.
You migh add that Nexerelin give access to a not working tutorial on the frontpage.

- An ultra heavy gunship ( Golliath ? ) have 20 000 shield, it looks a bit too much

- The small assault autocanon is much better than the small dual and regular autocanon ( 125 dps vs 80ish and 67 ), both of the latter could get a buff, but the former could also get a slight nerf.

- The dual pulse laser is a terrible PD weapon, barely better dps than the regular one while the magazine is full, half of that on the long term

- The extremely effective Rapier missiles and effective Atropos ones are flux-free despite having better/similar stats and dps as most flux hungry ones.

- the effective range of many missiles ( rapier, atropos, ion torpedoes, swarmers, harpoons... ) is much higher than stated, providing the player with an unfair advantage over the AI.


  Personal opinions :

- The balance of missile is a bit all over the place : ( plus Rapier and Atropos being flux-free while among the most effective missiles ).
Overall : the missile are quite bad, they are very flux hungry despite not being very effective since most ships have a high amount of PD weapons. Only missiles that are fast and/or can be swarmed are a chance to reach a isolated non overloaded target and the damages they deal when they sucessfully hit them is barely worth the flux cost.
Some missiles are extremely bad : the Trebuchets are useless, the Firestorms looks decentish but have a way too long reload time of 52s.

- The overall balance of Strike/Line/Support weapons is not great : flux producing weapons are not good enough vs flux-free ones
I find that most support weapons have way too low dps to matter in combat.

Strikes magazines weapons are very rarely worth it, not only they cost flux, but their magazine are often too small to make their "burst firing time" matters, then they are stuck with often terrible long term dps. The hull mod help a bit but isn't enough.

If Weapons cost flux, then they should have similar dps as "line free flux" weapons on top of having some advantage ( range, burst or alpha  ability ), instead of only having extremely narrow advantage while being much worse on the front line.

- Too many PD weapons use slow reloading magazines : the PD weapons often have a good enough range to engage regular ship, on which they empty their magazines which then leave them useless against missile and fighters. The Shattercells are an exemple of that.

- Skills shouldn't be OP : Some skills give way too good advantage and are game changers instead of small bonus :
The 0-flux advantage at any flux level, the 15% hard flux dissipation, the massive flat max speed bonuses, the 200-300% PD effectiveness bonus, the various +50%... completely change the way you can play or how annoying an Officer led AI ship can be.

- Aknowledgment of AI limitation : The AI is limited and will often do stupid things, such as getting stuck in Black Holes and Weeeeeeeeing accross the battlefield by Plasma Burning into wrecks.
Does it really matters that the AO system have a Black Holes ? Couldn't it be a Blue or Red Giants instead so that there wouldn't be AI fleets suiciding by gravity ?
Could you switch Plasma Burn like ship ability by softer Plasma Jet like ones ( increased max speed and maneuvrability instead of  ) ?