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31

General Discussion / Re: Anyone Play with Low Zoom Levels?

« on: February 23, 2013, 10:56:54 PM »

I zoom in while I'm having 1v1 frigate duels in the early game -- I find that the extra field of view doesn't help much when I'm not keeping track of multiple ships, and a greater zoom level helps me see small but important details (such as the number of Harpoons remaining in that Lasher's missile racks )

32

General Discussion / Re: Strategies to make small ships appear stronger.

« on: February 20, 2013, 11:04:32 PM »

1. Take a wolf and cram antimatter blasters into all four of the energy weapon slots.
2. Assign them all to a linked weapons group.  If we're going to make an antimatter shotgun wolf, we're going all out.
3. Fill the rest of your OP with 20 capacitors and the flux coil adjunct mod, do whatever you want with any remaining points.  Reapers are always a good choice.
4. Laugh maniacally as you one-shot destroyers.

33

General Discussion / Re: What if.....?

« on: February 15, 2013, 06:36:58 PM »

Some completely off-the-wall insane suggestions for your consideration:

-- What if Annihilator rocket launchers & rocket pods (small & medium unguided rocket launchers) instead fired Reaper or Atropos torpedoes?

-- What if the Omen's EMP discharger dealt as much damage as a reaper torpedo?

-- What if a really big ship like the Onslaught or Paragon had the Hyperion's phase teleporter?

-- What if weapons had 10x their normal range?  Or 50x?  Or 1000x?  At what range do weapons become useless because enemy ships have far too much time to react to your shots?  (this one is actually less insane than the previous ones, since projectile weapons fired in space would theoretically have no maximum range)

34

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.54.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: January 04, 2013, 11:46:39 AM »

Personally, I found the old HEF to be horrifyingly powerful -- try giving a Sunder two pulse lasers and an autopulse laser and you'll see what that system can do.  By the time the autopulse laser runs out of charges, any destroyer-sized or smaller target is either overloaded or has most weapon systems disabled.  With two light needlers in the front-facing small ballistic slots, most ships won't even have a chance to harm you.  The new version seems even better -- sorry Hammerhead, I have a new favorite destroyer!

I don't know if I like the Ion Cannon changes, I don't really like 'Chance' mechanics muddling the gameplay experience.

IMO the randomness is necessary to keep the weapon from becoming overpowered while still being interesting.  You'll usually get a couple shots in at once with an ion cannon, so I'd guess the chances of triggering widespread system shutdown will be quite high.

35

General Discussion / Re: What could exploration be like in Starfarer?

« on: December 10, 2012, 11:30:20 AM »

Firstly, welcome to the forums Skyrage! Enjoy your stay!

Regarding exploration in Starfarer, I'm in favor of keeping things fairly simple.  Exploration of planets could be instantaneous and give you a pop-up dialog with the results of your scanning, maybe with appropriate art to give the place some personality.  I've always liked that all actions in Starfarer feel very streamlined and efficient, letting you focus on the immediate task of piloting your ship or navigating through space without the need for fiddly menus.  I feel that introducing a separate mini-game would bog the game down unnecessarily -- besides, an admiral would be more concerned with large-scale fleet operations and would leave the scanning and drone-piloting to the engineers and miners.

I am very much in favor of Pirates!-like quests for "buried treasure," where you might pick up rumors of a long-lost cache of technology from some shady information broker while docked at a space station.  Perhaps you could find coordinates pointing to a hidden pirate arsenal from the onboard computers of a destroyed fleet, but the imprecise nature of those coordinates would require some exploration to locate them.  Furthermore, the arsenal could be guarded by some patrolling pirates, requiring either nimble maneuvering or combat to reach the loot.  Something like this could spice up the quest for hidden valuables while not detracting from the core gameplay.

36

Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.54a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: December 10, 2012, 11:09:15 AM »

Welcome to the forums, Dorn!  The Emperor protects... but not against Reaper torpedoes.  Flak is pretty good at that though. 

One quick question (slightly off topic, but still related to this release): is there a place I can find a list of the skills and associated perks?  My computer broke so I can't play SF for the time being, but I'd like to take a look at some possible character builds while I'm looking for a replacement.

37

Suggestions / Re: Deploy fighters from carriers (simple handling)

« on: December 09, 2012, 04:29:50 PM »

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ruthlessly poke holes in people's ideas.  I love the general concept of reinforcing your fleet with fighters launched directly from carriers, and I'd love to help refine this concept into something truly awesome.

Here's my idea:

- Increase FP cost of carriers in proportion to (but less than) their fighter capacity. (I'd suggest ~66%)
- Fighters assigned to carriers now cost 0 FP.

Personally, I don't feel that adjusting fleet point values in this way is a good idea.  The difference in combat effectiveness of a Talon wing (3 FP) and a Warthog wing (10 FP) is huge, and fighters are balanced around these fleet point costs.  Say I could assign three wings of fighters to my Gemini -- why would I deploy three Talon wings when I could send out three Warthog wings for the same cost?  IMO, this requires too much balancing work for too small a benefit.

I have a different suggestion: i think fighters deployed at the start of a battle should start outside of a carrier (or launch the moment the first carrier arrives on screen).  One of the best uses for fighters is as point-cappers, and this functionality is wasted if the pilots start each battle twiddling their thumbs in a Condor's hangar bay.  Plus, I love the image of a huge Conquest drifting through space while swarms of fighters streak by on their way to objectives.

If a player wanted to reinforce their fleet mid-battle, they could launch fighters directly from carriers instead of bringing them in from off-map.  Wings of fighters could be assigned to any carrier (i.e. ship with a flight deck) on the fleet organization screen, provided that each carrier did not exceed its hangar space limit.  During battle, fighters could be deployed from carriers as deployment points allow.  The catch is that each carrier has a significant "recharge time" for this deployment ability; each flight deck could have something like a 10 second cooldown, possibly adjusted up or down relative to the FP cost of the fighters.  This seems short enough to make this ability relevant while not allowing a single Condor to disgorge 30 FP of Thunders the instant it comes under attack.  It also allows ships with multiple flight decks to shine, giving the much-maligned Astral the ability to scramble three fighter wings at a time!  IMO, this level of power is acceptable for a capital ship but would be game-breaking when given to destroyer-sized ships.

38

General Discussion / Re: Mjolnir Cannon

« on: September 10, 2012, 02:50:18 PM »

@BillyRueben:

Spoiler

So, reading that, this question comes to mind: Will you be able to directly enhance your ships' flux venting or capacity (a skill or attribute that would increase it)? Or is it something that you increase indirectly (a skill decreases OP costs, giving you more OP to put in to capacity or venting)?

I want to see how it shapes up when having more OP on a ship is a possibility. I have a feeling that the intangibles of the Mjolnir are actually quite good - its accuracy is a significant counterpoint to its flux inefficiency. If it were to land 2x the hits a Hephaestus does as a result (and I think that's likely, especially at range), it would not be worse in terms of flux/damage, while still retaining more versatility.

[close]

Thanks for the response! It sounds like we will be able to directly increase available OP rather than reducing the costs of upgrades or directly increasing flux vent speed/capacity, although those could be possibilities. That would explain the presence of variants like the terrifyingly effective Strike Wolf, which uses 65 of the Wolf's 50 OP!

I may have to give the Mjolnir another try -- my current Conquest loadout mounts a storm needler, a heavy mauler, a Hephaestus assault gun and a flak cannon on each side, but the HAGs are really not designed to hit enemies at the edge of their ITU-buffed range I already loaded the ship with more than 25 each of vents and capacitors to keep its flux under control, so it should be relatively simple to remove the HAGs and bring the Mjolnirs for a field test. Results will be posted Soon^TM (sorry for the copyright infringement, Alex).

39

General Discussion / Re: Huske System: AI vs AI battles (Roleplay PvP) 2.0

« on: September 10, 2012, 07:23:48 AM »

School is really hectic right now, unfortunately I'll have to drop out for the time being. Thanks for all the games guys, though I wish I could leave on more of a high note :/

40

General Discussion / Mjolnir Cannon

« on: September 10, 2012, 12:20:17 AM »

The Mjolnir Cannon has a very nice weapon sprite, and the weapon's description in the Codex makes the gun sound absolutely terrifying. It's also the only ballistic weapon that deals energy damage (thermal pulse cannon not included), so it gives low- and medium-tech ships all kinds of tactical considerations normally reserved for high tech ships.

Unfortunately, the Mjolnir consistently underperforms relative to other large ballistic weapons. Storm needlers and gauss cannons are much better for taking out shields, while hellebores and HAGs outclass it as an anti-armor weapon. Any ships with large ballistic mounts either have enough weapon slots to mount both kinetic and high-explosive weapons at once (Onslaught, Conquest) or can't satisfy the cannon's massive flux requirements (Dominator).

The end result is a very cool weapon that just begs to be used, but is so inefficient that mounting one on your ship just isn't worth it. Am I missing something, or does the Mjolnir need some significant buffing to make it combat-ready?

41

Announcements / Re: Blog Posts

« on: September 09, 2012, 11:59:29 PM »

Maybe the gates are just permanently destroyed. The technology to repair them might not even exist anymore, so humankind will never reclaim the full splendor of the Dominion. Instead, the sector is doomed to a slow descent into anarchy, each victory only serving to delay the oncoming darkness. There is no hope for progress or enlightenment, and all of humanity will eventually perish.

Warhammer 40K fans, eat your heart out

42

General Discussion / Re: Longbows and Tridents?

« on: September 09, 2012, 06:51:53 PM »

I do remember deploying them in combat once, but it was a VERY long time ago (possibly in the coral nebula mission). The Tridents blew up a ship, but as I was new to the game at that time I can't give any judgements on their relative effectiveness.

The Trident doesn't seem that unique since there are already two bomber wings in the game, but it does fill a nice niche as a "heavy bomber." When you think about it, it does seem strange that the bomber wings (which are designed to drop explosives on CAPITAL SHIPS) are more fragile than heavy fighters (Xyphos springs to mind). A strike craft that's beefier than a Piranha or Dagger but can still be resupplied mid-battle could be -very- dangerous.

Longbows are odd in a couple ways: they are the only "support" fighter wing currently in game, and they each carry a single Sabot missile. While they wouldn't do much on their own, firing a couple Sabots into an enemy's shield as bombers begin their attack run is undeniably effective.

In summary, both fighter wings were used in game at some point but were not implemented extensively (possibly because they both fill very specialized roles). Personally, I'd like the opportunity to add these to a fleet and see what they can do.

43

General Discussion / Re: Huske System: AI vs AI battles (Roleplay PvP) 2.0

« on: September 09, 2012, 04:37:47 PM »

Sorry I've been very busy lately (exam in 12hours FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU). I'll resolve the whole turn as soon as I come home tomorrow (I'm pulling an all-nighter with friends to study).

Fly Safe.

What a coincidence, I might pull an all-nighter as well! Gotta love calculus

Good luck!

44

General Discussion / Re: Bombs away! (your homework for tonight)

« on: September 09, 2012, 02:46:01 PM »

Fragmentation bombs are awful against armor and shields -- since they do frag damage, that kinda goes without saying. However, launch some into a hull breach where all armor has been stripped away and you will do absurd amounts of damage. Combine that with their anti-fighter and -missile utility and you have a weapon that becomes extremely potent on ships with anti-armor firepower, a couple spare ballistic hardpoints, and the mobility to deliver bombs to the vulnerable areas of enemy ships.

... Wait a minute. Heavy firepower, lots of ballistic hardpoints, and high mobility...?

Sounds like another job for your friendly neighborhood Lasher!

45

General Discussion / Re: Huske System: AI vs AI battles (Roleplay PvP) 2.0

« on: September 09, 2012, 11:18:52 AM »

A player will recieve the "Skip Defense/Attack" money if nothing happens to them or they do nothing.

Ah, that clears things up.  Thanks