Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

16

General Discussion / Re: [0.96] I'm back, Wohoo! Expanded/Overhauled [REDACTED] small talk

« on: June 16, 2023, 05:02:31 AM »

Nice Paragon. Let's see if you can make it work. If we're being objective about it you really probably shouldn't S-mod in AWM just for the Gigacannon because it won't be a good weapon anyway, but it is of course important for the memes. On a related note, have you considered trying a 5 Gigacannon Radiant?

I was considering built-in Armored Weapon Mounts since the ship is essentially Flux Neutralmost of the time and the built in bonus would raise DPS by 10% by way of a higher fire rate on anything but the 4 Swarmer SRMs

Also, uh, funny bit, the rest of my fleet is so blazigly fast that I have to spawn the Paragon FIRST, then spawn everything else and order all the other ships to station to the left, right and above the enemy Battlestation so that by the time Paragon gets into range my entire force can converge on it from all directions, hopefully not getting in the way of the Paragon much, pf which the Reckless officer on it should help it keep using all of its weapons!

Spoiler

[close]

P.S: Gosh, were Systems Expertise, Elite PD and Point Defence AI Omens always this disgusting? The bloody active ability has absurd range and damage!

Spoiler

[img]https://i.imgur.com/NsFAO2u.png/img]

[close]

17

General Discussion / Re: [0.96] I'm back, Wohoo! Expanded/Overhauled [REDACTED] small talk

« on: June 16, 2023, 04:36:40 AM »

One and only colony I've got. Colonized a very big system thinking I needed multiple military bases to defend it but nope, Expeditions have been nerfed to pathetic levels!

That is good if the goal is to let player spread his colonies around multiple systems.  If expeditions are too strong, then player is incentivized to colonize a single system simply to let colonies defend themselves.

However, what year is your game?  Expeditions started to ramp up for me around 221, and I am getting two fleets instead of one.  If they continue to ramp up, then they could get strong in extremely long games (and spreading colonies to get a better slipstream map would be a mistake).

I'm at about Cycle 225, and my Expeditions are utterly pathetic, to the pont I can personally deal with them in Hyperspace. ight have something to do with all of their planets and production facilities getting raided once, twice every cycle by myself tough.

Cycle 225

Spoiler

[close]

My (Non-)Threat Level:

Spoiler

[close]

Faction Relations:

Spoiler

[close]

Anemic Expedition:

Spoiler

[close]

I've also been experimenting with the Medusa, with the following fleet comp:

Spoiler

[close]

Medusa loadout (boosted CR up to 100% since that's gonna be the normal value):

Spoiler

[close]

Third S-mod is probably gonna be Extended shield for that 360° coverage, 6th Officer skill is defo going to be Energy Weapon Mastery. It handily beats the Gauss Dominator in the sim already. Elite SKills are probably gonna be Energy weapon Mastery,Elite Field Modulation, Elite Energy Weapon master and ELite Helsmanship to allow the ship to distance itself faster when it's backing up to vent its massive flux pool. The extra range on all "point defence" weapons is damn good.
Heavy Burst lasers actually dea quite a lot of damage to frigates and destroyers for some nifty kill times on frigates that tend to stick around for longer than I want.
The ship is especailly useful in any fleet lacking in PD aswell, altough I would not put it on Escort since it's a lot more useful hunting frigtes, destroyers and keeping carriers busy by itself.

Omen Loadout:

Spoiler

[close]

Final version is probably gonna sport the usual 2x AM Blaster and a set of S-mods I've still got to decide on!

Oh and this is the meme Paragon Build:

Spoiler

[close]

I'll actually have to get another Paragon since I've mistakenly S-modded Stabilized Shields instead of Armored Weapon Mounts. Officer is also still in training and it's proving a hassle to just grind one after the other, hoping I get the right skills. Combat Performance is uh...interesting, will have to get back once the design is properly realized!

18

General Discussion / Re: I love Pegasus

« on: June 16, 2023, 03:59:44 AM »

Very interesting stuff throughout the thread, I would not be surprised if Missiles themselves or their skills (more likely) got nerfed as a result, especially Missile Health and the ECCM speed bonus for some missiles, namely the Reapers

19

General Discussion / Re: Ship types you want to see added before 1.0? What niches are left?

« on: June 16, 2023, 03:29:59 AM »

-Phase [Redacted] of various ship classes, because the easiest way to currently beat them is with kinetic spam and highly armored phase nightmares would throw a wrench in that. It would also be absolutely evil and something an Omega Core would find funny. Especially a Phase Radiant with Damper Field as an active ability.
-35-60DP High Tech, decent mobility Battlecruisers. Would be nice if their total armament wasn't anything impressive but it featured some Universal mounts for them to be highly customizable

-one or two High Tech carriers because I'd rather not be stuck with the Astral until the end of time

20

General Discussion / Re: [0.96] I'm back, Wohoo! Expanded/Overhauled [REDACTED] small talk

« on: June 15, 2023, 05:29:57 AM »

Any of you guys got your own Special Place Plug Ship Glimmer setups to show off? I'm open to brainstorming!

I think that SO build is probably as good as it's going to get. Reckless AI in this patch is plain suicidal, nothing will save Glimmers other than making enemies die faster, so go all-in on that.

Out of curiosity, if you used Beta cores instead of Gamma cores, what other two skills would you pick? Ordinance Expertise? Target Analyses? Missile Spec?

I figured the first part of your comment would be true aswell, so I tried to maximize offensive capability and mobility to have the ship get in there as fast as possible while still having a chance.

As for fitting Glimmers with Beta Cores, I'm trying that aswell since I'm workshopping a different fleet composition: 1 Paragon, 10 Omens, 4 Alpha Core Brilliants and 4 Gamma Core Glimmers. I'm short on two officer with my Commander setup but getting a couple of Story Point Officers is not going to be a heavy toll to pay, considering I'm essentially raiding Tritach, Hegemony, Persean league and even the Indipendents non-stop now.
Fleet comp

Spoiler

[close]

Faction Relations

Spoiler

[close]

One and only colony I've got. Colonized a very big system thinking I needed multiple military bases to defend it but nope, Expeditions have been nerfed to pathetic levels!

Spoiler

[close]

That one is pretty good for survivability. The glimmers also don't block line of fire for larger ships as much, with a beam setup / advanced optics, and gravitons are a nice support addition.
(unfortunately, they still go for a face hug despite having >1k range, against fluxed enemies, and need to be pulled back all the same; but high caps and hardened shields give you more time to do that)

The downsides are that you need multiple glimmers to eliminate enemy frigates, and in general while they output a lot of soft flux dps, the rest of the fleet needs to be highly capable of bursting down ships. The actual kills per DP on these frigates goes down the drain.

It is pretty fun to control a large swarm of these with wolf pack and kill groups surrounding small, isolated groups of ships, but they can't really do it to larger groups. They kind of put up low effective DPS-per-occupied-space, unless the enemy is surrounded.

Yeah as long as AI corepersonality can't be modified to properly allow for different builds, any wannabe long range option is just subpar.

Spoiler

[close]

I found this build pretty effective this patch.

How do you even field a good amount of them without Combat Endurance? Picking Target Analysis over Systems Expertise also feels like a mistake, considering the ship already has an active ability having it deal 50% more damage.

21

General Discussion / Re: [0.96] I'm back, Wohoo! Expanded/Overhauled [REDACTED] small talk

« on: June 14, 2023, 01:36:23 PM »

I've fiddled with Glimmers now and I think this is the version I'm most happy with.

One single Ion Pulser with built-in Expanded Magazines hs both a lot of burst and sustained DPS, and the frigate can handle it without any additional vents when Overridden.

Spoiler

[close]

The need of lenghtening Peak Performance Time while also boosting survivability in the way of:
-having as much vents as possible
-extending the shield and preventing any Omni screw ups the AI likes to do
-having more EMP resistance so that Engies won't get disabled leading the the Frigate's demise
-going so fast it has considerable chances of surviving despite only really letting go of the enemy once it gets overloaded by way of dodging shots and outrunning missiles

Spoiler

[close]

Stripping it of those pointless mininglasers and trading two capacitors for the 4OP required to get Extended Shields and a full 360° coverage sound appealing, but I've noticed the AI seems to handle itself better with PD, often respecting enemy missiles more and succumbing to them a lot less, despite almost going at 300su with the full Coordinated Manouvers bonus active

I had also considered getting Hardened Shields, but adding in more Capacitors instead reduces the risk of the ship getting itself too high on flux due to vomiting out IOn Pulser ammo.

Any of you guys got your own Special Place Plug Ship Glimmer setups to show off? I'm open to brainstorming!

Edit: Uhhh, mke sure the enemy does not have any Gazer missiles on them, they really like to thread the needle and delete this rabid frigate unless you got 360° shield coverage on it

22

General Discussion / Re: Storm Needler vs Mark IX

« on: June 14, 2023, 03:53:03 AM »

English already is a simplistic, extremely situational language with little vocabulary and elementary grammar, why attempt to simplify it even more?

Out of context this sounds like a redditor who picked up spanish 2 days ago and decided to "dunk" on all the plebians who only speak English.

I mean it's true that English language is pretty poor, it's pretty much intended to be simple (apart from weird spelling and pronounciation exceptions). As someone from Balkan, I feel there's isn't even remotely enough ways to curse in English, it's mostly name calling with a few bad words here and there.

Sorry this was very out of topic. But on the subject of math, I've said multiple times that simply calculating DPS and flux numbers isn't a legit way of proving your own argument. For what ship and build is that equation for? What is the enemy target, officers included in a fight? There's waaay too many variables in Starsector that a simple DPS calculation will rarely be correct. Sure it may get you in the right ballpark but why are we even putting exact numbers in the first place.

I concur with Grievous69 (nice) on both former and latter parts of his reply, you couldn't believe the variety of blasphemies you can shout in Italian, English just does not cut it That's the last issue of language bashing out of me in this thread heh

I find Storm needler to be more useful against low armor enemy fleets since they tend to NOT just lower their shield and tank the weapon on armor and hull, ensuring the Kinetic Damage is fully applied to their shields, but then again the added OP cost does not really justify the benefits. The weapon should at the very least get even more flux efficient or recieve an even more insane DPS to be worth using as the current meta stands.

The argument of the Prometheus Mk2 getting it along with Plasma to make up for the lack of Large mounts is solid, but I can't really see any other ship making use of it, besides a meme asymmetrical Conquest with 2x Storm Needlers, 2x heavy Mortars and a full Pilum missile loadout for the luls

23

General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship

« on: June 14, 2023, 03:39:19 AM »

I'm coming back with a small update, I have to say that using small slots offensively has certainly made things better for me, although I do hate the fact that it's often the case that I can't reach neutral dissipation.

Cool! Want to share your new builds?

For a heavily armored ship like Dominator you don't really need to worry about flux since the ship can quite safely vent due to armor. If you went for the fighters you will even have PD up while venting. If you find you are venting too long, can add Resistant Flux Conduits to speed up venting even more which is a good hullmod for armor tanking ships anyway.

Aye, besides that there's also a Skill that adds an additional venting speed when made ELite, which I forget the name of.

I'm also about 75% sure that Officer personality also affects the likelyhood of the ship venting, with Reckless/Fearless being the most brazen in venting while TImid almost never does it even when 99% safe to do so. Might want to ask someone that knows the actual AI code to confirm this or not tough.

24

General Discussion / Re: Storm Needler vs Mark IX

« on: June 13, 2023, 10:22:19 AM »

I haven't even gotten around to figure out what a PCL is 

As an Italian, seeing a significant portion of the English speaking folk abbreviate everything with Acronyms to the point at which anyone without specific knowledge fails to understand anything is just funny to me.

English already is a simplistic, extremely situational language with little vocabulary and elementary grammar, why attempt to simplify it even more?

*Insert "English (US)(Simplified)" slander meme here*

25

General Discussion / Re: Storm Needler vs Mark IX

« on: June 12, 2023, 10:26:47 AM »

I think it's a fantastic specialist anti-shield weapon. It does nothing but very efficient mid range shield damage. For me it shines on the central mount of an Onslaught while fighting Remnants. Doing 500 dps instead of 350 is a large increase for the same flux cost - that's like getting a light needler flux free and mount free for 10 OP instead of 8!

It is going to have significantly more range than a heavy machine gun (IIRC the +200 does not benefit from range increasing skills and ITU, IE an 85% range boost), but less range than a Mk IX or a BR light needler set. That said, BR is expensive enough that the light needlers are going to cost a bunch more OP overall... plus depending on hull its hard to actually get enough light needlers in arc to match the damage anyways. Returning to the Onslaught, to cover the same arc as the central front large requires filling all 6 small slots and adding ballistic rangedinder, but those 6 mounts only have zones where 4 converge off of each beam (and not forward). In those zones its 600 dps (in a burst, nice!) vs 500, and at 900 range, at the cost of worse efficiency (480 fps instead of 350 - storm needler has 14% better efficiency) and 73 OP (for 6 small needlers and ballistic rangefinder). For a ship with better small mount convergence and cheaper ballistic rangefinder - like the Dominator! - light needlers compare a lot better, but on an onslaught I'm not going to pay 45 more OP for that capability. I could be stacking heavy machine guns + a storm needler, with Vulcans in the smalls for PD, for a lot more DPS in wider arcs while preserving decent PD coverage (with elite PD the vulcans can handle a lot). Plus if I'm stacking HMGs, I need to get to close range anyways (and Remnants are going to charge right into the 700 range band for their hard flux weapons, even Radiants).

On a Dominator its 3 light needlers + 15 OP for rangefinder, giving 39 OP for  450 DPS, 360 FPS, +200 base range, and turret mounts instead of a very hard to use hardpoint. So in this case the light needlers cost 11 more OP, do 50 less DPS, and 10 more FPS, but are going to be firing a lot more often and have +200 range. Probably worth the trade here! Plus the 'side' mounts could be used for long ranged LAGs or something to swat fighters/frigates with rangefinder 'free' for them.

That leaves me the question of what you would deal flux efficient HE damage at range with, unless you think the two TPCs (possibly with built in Expanded Mags) would be able to cut it. I've yet to fiddle with the good old Capital sized Horseshoe Crab but I'd honestly go for 3xHellbore and either HMG spam or Hypervelocity Driver extravaganza on all the mediums, with the smalls having something inexpensive.

I'm curious to see your loadout tough, If you've got it on hand!

Edit: Wait, considering it's you retrofitting it I would not be surprised if you had 4x Harpoon MRMs, now that would be a good HE dealer 

26

General Discussion / Re: Storm Needler vs Mark IX

« on: June 12, 2023, 10:17:23 AM »

But Lawrence, the Manticore!

Manticore = Hellbore

>ship can fit 2 Typhoon Reapers or 2 PCLs
>it needs a Hellbore

Okay I'm just joshing you, I don't know much about Manticores. What do you put in the rest of the slots though that makes the Hellbore the choice for the main gun?

My guess would be ballistic rangefinder + any highly efficient kinetic that would get to the same range as the Hellbore

Plus the obiquitous Sabots of course. Haven't exactly fiddled with Eradicator but it could also fit Pilums to take advantage of anything that has had its armor stripped, or does it only have small missile slots?

27

General Discussion / Re: Problem with the Brilliant!!!

« on: June 12, 2023, 04:51:16 AM »

Renmant fighter buffs when?

They're gonna be buffed the moment they overhaul their stats to get buffs when installed on Remnant ships and increasing debuffs when placed on other kind of ships, to avert their abuse on big carriers, specifically Low tech and with Converted Fighter Bay use.

Having Remnant fighter/bomber/support wings(when they're gonna get added) get increasing debuffs directly proportional to how "low tech" the parent ship is would fit rather well, meaning that a High Tech Astral using Flash bombers would have less Bomber LPC debuffs than a Midline Drover, which in turn would get less debuffs when compared to a Low Tech Condor.

Optimal increasing debuff ladder would be:
Remnant (no debuffs) -> High tech (minor debuffs) -> Midline (noticeable debuffs) -> Low Tech (Significant debuffs) -> Pirate/Luddic Path (Big debuffs)

Converted Hangar Bays would lower the ship's "combatibility" by 1, meaning a High Tech Aurora with converted fighter bays using Sparks would get the same debuffs as a Midline ship.

28

General Discussion / Re: Storm Needler vs Mark IX

« on: June 12, 2023, 03:48:59 AM »

Any and all kinetics that don't have impressive range on their own have been massively overshadowed by any high DPS Kinetic Point Defence (Looking at you Heavy Machinegun), which not only get affected by all ballistic range skills (minus rangefinder) but that also benefit from the massive 200su range increase from Elite Point defence.

Why would you even consider a Storm Needler on say, the central large mount of your Onslaught when you could just slap a plethora of Light Needlers/Dual Autocannons with Elite Point Defence and built-in Integrated Point Defence AI?

Besides those weapons needing at the very least a significant enough DPS Buff to be worth all their drawbacks, the core issue is that point defence is way too good at things it's not supposed to be good at, like shield pressure.

Take the XIV Legion for example, all the recent(ish) skill reworks have made the version of it with 5 Heavy machineguns (with Elite PD and S-mod IPDAI) and 2 Typhoon Reaper Launchers miles above anything else when it comes to raw killing power.
I'm a High Tech enjoyer first and foremost, but I've played several Low Tech only ship, fighter and weapon runs and I'm fairly certain the new Commander tree, Officer skill tree and integrated hull mod effects have only made them even stronger than they were before, if not outright better than High tech and Midline rosters if we only consider AI control.

Nerf Kinetic Point defence to a point where it's within the realm of balance, then we can see which offensive, purpose-built kinetic weapons need buffs, Storm Needler being the first on the list!

29

General Discussion / Re: Alternative Discord Server - The Pilgrim's Path

« on: June 11, 2023, 12:30:47 PM »

This forum is bajillion times better than any discord that exists right now, and probably till the end of time.

Amen brother, praise onto Ludd

30

General Discussion / Re: Afflictor and Doom

« on: June 11, 2023, 05:41:30 AM »

From the limited amount of testing I've done with Phase Ships, the AI seems to really be unable to use them, unless it's a hyper fast frigate or a Doom with disgustingly ranged weapons, like built-in IPDAI + Elite Point Defence + Light Needlers, plus Ion Beams to paralyze the enemy and just spam mines when it's crippled and can't fight back.

I strongly feel that Phase Ships are being rebalanced to not be too strong in the player's hands (which I don't think is possible,Phase Ships are inherently very abusive in a Player's hands no matter how much they get nerfed) and they've just ended up being a much worse option in AI hands than ever before.

Doing some tweaks improving Phase ships to well, not sit in the dead front of an enemy capital ship instead of flanking or doing Ludd knows what else without needing extensive, direct command babysitting would be quite nice!