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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - Stuffwriter

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16
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Diable Avionics 2.50 RC1 (2020/04/13)
« on: April 12, 2020, 11:52:47 PM »
This was probably my favorite mod before, and the work you've done here is awe inspiring.

Not just the new sprites, but the improved gameplay too. The ships feel way better to fly.

Great work!

17
I'm getting an access violation error whenever I try to load information from the ship data .csv

Any .csv, even the one from the base game

I've tried changing the paths to the correct values in the settings, but it isn't helping.

Any idea of anything else I could try?

18
I've found this tutorial to be extremely helpful, but I've run into an impasse!

The ship editor appears to be unable to load or access the excel file with all my ship data.

It keeps saying it's a windows exception and then the program crashes.

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

Any idea what might be causing that?

19
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.5.0 [10/24/19]
« on: October 25, 2019, 08:19:23 PM »
I've been thoroughly enjoying the update. The new sprites are fantastic!

- The faction-specific hull mods are great. They give the faction just what it needed.

- I really, really like the destroyers and frigates. They are excellent, versatile, reliable, and useful even late game. The victoria may be favorite ship.

- The cruisers are a bit of a mixed bag. The king seems awful, especially since its ship system only boosts energy damage. It lacks the flux capacity to really make use of its system. The lyons is a solid, versatile ship. The Maknamara is excellent.

- The battlecruiser is great. The web with 5 charges is much more fun to use.

I've been running a fleet of mostly destroyers/frigates and then a battlecruiser and the Champion class cruiser. It's been flattening fleets 3x its power value (with the starship legends mod).

20
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.4
« on: October 18, 2019, 10:56:25 AM »
I think specifically what makes the Hiigs overpowered in your version of the mod is their ridiculous shields and one of their missile types. I know you're going for a tanky faction that's low dps, but the amount of damage they can soak up is nearly ridiculous. The battlecruiser with the drone system can get to .33 shield efficiency with the shield skill and hardened shields hullmod. That's not far from a fortress shield at that point. Hiig poor flux stats aren't nearly as detrimental when their shields are brick walls.

The auto-replenishing missiles are just a tad too strong at the moment. The cor missiles are fast, maneuverable, hit almost as hard as harpoons (harpoons are 750, the cor is 600), replenish quickly, and have a huge ammo stock. I think one of these has to go. Personally, I think the missiles should hit for a lot less if they're going to be so spammable. If you're going for a faction that is low dps, their auto-forging missiles don't really hit that mark. Enemy frigates, destroyers, and even cruisers just get melted by swarms of endless missiles.


Overall, if you weaken their shields slightly and weaken their missiles slightly, I think the hiigs would be right between vanilla high-tech and midline.

I want to emphasize that you're very close here, and you've done fantastic work.

What I like:
- Hiig energy weapons. They are fun to use, impactful, and not overpowered. When mixed in with their efficient projectile weapons, they're great
- Long-range kinetic/explosive guns. Balanced and easy to customize ships with
- Weapon mount balance. Good coverage and easily customizeable for different roles. I think you did a great job here!
- Weak carriers (gives the faction a unique focus in a meta where hangars are super important)
- diverse roles for capitals and cruisers


21
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.4
« on: October 17, 2019, 01:21:00 PM »
I like a lot the work you've done with this mod, NoFood. I especially like how you've changed the weapon mounts on the ships themselves.

The ships are substantially more powerful than vanilla, however. Like flatten entire flotillas with a few ships powerful.

Which is fine if that's what you were going for, but if you wanted to get closer to vanilla balance, i'd increase the deployment costs across the board for basically everything.


22
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.3
« on: September 27, 2019, 07:05:54 PM »
It looks like he recolored the diable avionics maelstrom.

It looks quite good in blue!

23
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.4.2 [07/1/19]
« on: September 26, 2019, 08:01:42 PM »
You're right. It was a shadowyards ship.

24
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.4.2 [07/1/19]
« on: September 26, 2019, 06:27:03 PM »
I see. That makes sense now.

Any faction with high mobility and long range would have that quality. Usually you have to pick one or the other.

One of the cruisers has an ability that makes it move super slow and greatly extend its range. That seems to be right in line with the issue. It can just sit in the middle of the fleet and support all sides.

25
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.4.2 [07/1/19]
« on: September 26, 2019, 07:10:26 AM »
On paper, the LoA ships don't seem very good. If you're saying they were overpowered, it feels like you're aghast that I insist the sky is blue.

How did some of those fights play out? Did you test against vanilla ships, other mods, or both?

I did a lot of my testing and simulations in 1v1 scenarios. Maybe that was why?

26
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Legacy of Arkgneisis 1.4.2 [07/1/19]
« on: September 25, 2019, 10:23:37 PM »
It's probably a tad late, but I figure I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I personally feel that LoA, at least compared to other faction mods, suffer from a frustrating identity.

A few examples of mod factions to demonstrate my point:

- Interstellar Imperium ships are ridiculously customizable, slow, and well protected, but flux-starved.

- Diable Avionics have powerful ship systems, good fighter screens, and versatile weapons. Their capital ships are extremely mobile for their size as well

- Blackrock ships are super mobile, have impressive ship systems, and excel at burst damage. They don't do so great in sustained combat though

- Shadowyards have weak weapons, decent defenses, and decent flux stats, but their ships are all built for very specific roles so their fleets really shine in tandem

- SCY ships have crap armor and shields, are relatively slow, and have poor flux dissipation. What they excel at but have obscene burst damage and maximum flux.

- Legacy of Arkgeneisis ships have poor flux stats, poor armor, decent mobility, and weak ship systems. Their ships are extremely fragile and not particularly threatening.

I feel like the faction is held back by a strong desire to not make them overpowered. What is the faction... good at? All the other factions have give and take, push and pull. Legacy ships have okay mobility, but paper armor, laughable shields, mediocre flux stats, specialized but not hugely effective weapons, not particularly powerful ship systems... It's like the stat sliders on the ships are messed up. If you lose armor, flux stats, and shields (all hugely important), then the payoff should be worth it. It doesn't feel like LoA provide that payoff, at least to me. It's very difficult to make a fleet that feels threatening.

I know you've expressed a desire to point out that LoA ships are not meant to fly without vanilla ships supporting them, but I wonder why you'd push for that. Every other mod faction does just well on it's own, and i usually try to stick with their unique fighters/weapons to get a feel for the faction as a whole. I really like the LoA frigates and destroyers a lot; they feel good to fly and are well designed. However, I feel that their line ships are super lackluster. It's very hard to get 10 pounds of LoA capital ship to fight like 10 pounds of basically anything else.

I love the sprite work you've done for this faction recently. The ships look fantastic. It seems like you care a lot about building a good mod, and I respect that a lot. I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh, but I'm trying to be honest.

I have a couple suggestions if you're willing to hear them:

- Give LoA powerful ship systems to compensate for their poor stats. The ships with the front-mounted long-distance explosive missiles are a good opportunity here. Give those missiles some serious punch. Right now, they're not particularly impressive.

- Give LoA ships a lot of in-combat mobility, like high top speed while over 5% flux. This way, their poor armor and shields would make sense. The faction would have a clear weakness: long distance engagements

- If LoA ships had very short combat operating times, it would create opportunities to increase their stats without feeling like you're making them overpowered.

- Give LoA ships an identity... perhaps as carrier-killers. The meta is big on carriers at the moment, so why not give the LoA ships some built-in hull mods that make them more effective at the task? Perhaps resistance to fighter damage, powerful PD, or ship systems that scramble them somehow.

- Alternatively, LoA could be built to be a short-range faction with advantages against long-range enemies. Perhaps all LoA have a built-in sensor scrambler that reduces enemy weapon range. Maybe any weapon longer than a certain range does greatly reduced damage to them. (admittedly hard to implement)

- If LoA are meant to be self-sufficient raiders, give them campaign stats more in line with this. Low maintenance, low fuel consumption, low sensor signature, powerful sensors, resistance to storms. Let an LoA player bring more tonnage for less money than other factions. If they are already nudged this direction, nudge them more.



27
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.3
« on: September 23, 2019, 04:05:24 PM »
Great work! I see a huge improvement over last time.

That said, none of your changes took effect until I modified the notepad file to say that it was version 2.0.3, over 2.0.2 that it said before.

Which is weird, since i fully replaced the old one.

28
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.2
« on: September 20, 2019, 07:56:38 PM »
Your work is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

29
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.2
« on: September 20, 2019, 05:30:56 PM »
I think part of the problem is the huge number of weapon mounts.

The game has trended towards flux requiring very careful management, so most ships don't have very many mounts. The large capitals in this mod have substantially more mounts, and they're set up with wide firing angles. Probably a bit too much firepower for a single vessel to wield.

Maybe Alex can provide some equations or methodology behind how the devs decide weapon/flux values.

30
Mods / Re: [0.9.1a] Hiigaran Descendants v2.0.1
« on: September 20, 2019, 03:05:02 PM »
Other specifics of problematic balance:

Weapons
- Pulsar beam is too powerful. It functions as PD and as strike. If massed, it negates the need for anything else. I recommend flagging it as PD and weakening it
- Hiigaran fighters are too powerful for their costs
- All hiigaran energy weapons are too efficient; they should have a flux cost increase. Note that most energy weapons are 1.2 or higher damage/flux ratio. The exception is continuous beam weapons that can do better than 1.0 in some cases.
- the short-range chain weapons (both explosive and kinetic) are too efficient

Ships
- Some of the ships have relatively low flux dissipation for their size, which can be frustrating to fly.
- The Vaahrok torpedo gunship's built-in torpedoes are ridiculously strong. A reaper torpedo does 4000 damage, the cho does 2500x2, and can fire 4 at once. The torpedo itself isn't really excessive damage, but the ammo count and the fact that the ship can mount 4 medium kinetic mounts with an attack speed increase makes this ship able to destroy a capital very quickly
- The sajuuk-kar laser on the dreadnought is oppressively powerful.
- The Kuun-lann missile cruiser has too many weapon mounts of too large a size for any ship. (I stated this already but putting it here for ease of access). 4 Medium, 6 small, and 2 large weapon mounts, even without the missiles, puts in the damage output of a battle cruiser. 6 heavy missiles makes it outgun small stations by itself.


Vanilla weapon balance:

Consider this low tech weapon. It doesn't do anything special, but as a consequence it's fairly efficient.

Arbalest Autocannon
700 range
150 damage per second
120 flux per second (.8 ratio, very efficient)
Poor accuracy, medium turn rate
8 Ordnance Points

Now consider this medium tech weapon:

Heavy Needler
800 range
250 damage per second
200 flux per second (.8 ratio)
Medium accuracy, medium turn rate
15 ordnance points

It's almost double the cost to mount it, it has the same efficiency, but it has substantially more damage output and a little more range. If you want a weapon to be efficient, it has to lose in other areas. Either in ordnance, overall damage output, range, accuracy, whatever.

This weapon is more specialized:

Hypervelocity Driver
1000 Range
138 Damage per second + 200 EMP damage per second
175 flux per second (1.27 ratio of non-emp damage)
Perfect accuracy, slow turn rate
13 ordnance points

This weapon trades damage per second for EMP, range, and accuracy.


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