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16

General Discussion / Re: 0.7.1 Favourite Ships and Weapon Loadouts

« on: December 10, 2015, 06:41:43 AM »

I've been flying an Eagle. From front to back: three heavy needlers, two IR pulse lasers and an ion cannon, three phase lances, two Harpoon pods, two burst PD lasers. Augmented engines, stabilized shields, loads of caps and vents. I start a fight by driving up their flux with the needlers, then, when they drop the shields, pop off a pair of Harpoons, fire up the maneuvering jets, and charge in, trying to overload them as soon as they raise shields to stop the missiles. If I time everything right, I can insta-gib any destroyer, and even some cruisers (Falcon/Heron/Gryphon). Those phase lances do eye-popping burst damage (frigates, of course, just evaporate if I come close to them).

It's not effective against cap ships or Dominators, but those have been very rare in my campaign so far.

17

Suggestions / Re: Starter Loans

« on: December 10, 2015, 06:19:55 AM »

The point of this is: why would a person who couldn't do with the current starting conditions be expected to do well with a starter loan? If they need it, then they almost certainly wouldn't know how to spent it well, and you may as well just "loan" them a better ship or fleet.

They aren't necessarily expected to get any better with a loan.  What they DO get is a chance to experience more of the game than "Fight pirate fleet, die repeatedly because they don't have the skills to make real use of the Wolf and don't have the cash to buy an escort to make up for their inexperience, quit in frustration."

With a loan, they can try out different ships, experiment with more loadout options, see what it's like to roll with a small fleet, and generally possess more options than they would otherwise have.  The important thing here isn't that it helps them get better - the important thing is that they're provided MOTIVATION to get better instead of just slamming into a brick wall a few times and declaring "That's it, I'm out."

In general, more options is a very bad thing for new players. It's overwhelming, it's confusing, and it's very easy to make terrible choices. It would be better to optimize the starting experience to be as gentle and instructive as possible (personally, I think the Lasher is a better newbie ship than the Wolf).

18

Suggestions / Re: Id like to be able to see the per unit price of items Im selling beforehand

« on: December 10, 2015, 06:17:18 AM »

You can see this information if you mouse over the item you're selling. The only problem is that it doesn't update as you increase the quantity (until you actually make the sale), so especially in small markets, you can take a loss by accident if you're moving giant quantities. Displaying average price per unit over on the left would be very welcome.

19

Suggestions / Re: Id like to be able to see the system map from hyperspace

« on: December 10, 2015, 06:14:35 AM »

No need to save and reload—just jump in at the fringe, have a look around, jump out, and jump back in wherever's closest. It only costs you a couple fuel.

I don't know about a map (which would be nice), but I think Alex is adding a list to the jump dialog that tells you how close each station/moon/planet is to your jump point.

20

Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Re: The Lore Corner

« on: December 08, 2015, 07:58:43 AM »

Relevant bit from the recent New Yorker article about Nick Bostrom:

Will an A.I., if realized, use its vast capability in a way that is beyond human control? One way to think about the concern is to begin with the familiar. Bos­trom writes, “Artificial intelligence already outperforms human intelligence in many domains.” The examples range from chess to Scrabble. One program from 1981, called Eurisko, was designed to teach itself a naval role-playing game. After playing ten thousand matches, it arrived at a morally grotesque strategy: to field thousands of small, immobile ships, the vast majority of which were intended as cannon fodder. In a national tournament, Eurisko demolished its human opponents, who insisted that the game’s rules be changed. The following year, Eurisko won again—by forcing its damaged ships to sink themselves.

The program was by no means superintelligent. But Bostrom’s book essentially asks: What if it were? Assume that it has a broad ability to consider problems and that it has access to the Internet. It could read and acquire general knowledge and communicate with people seamlessly online. It could conduct experiments, either virtually or by tinkering with networked infrastructure. Given even the most benign objective—to win a game—such a system, Bostrom argues, might develop “instrumental goals”: gather resources, or invent technology, or take steps to insure that it cannot be turned off, in the process paying as much heed to human life as humans do to ants.

21

General Discussion / Re: What is your oponion on Independent going war against Hegemony?

« on: December 07, 2015, 12:32:17 PM »

Liking this influx of new players here.

Why not have Indies seperate per system? i.e. being hostile with Indies in Corvus would not make the Indies in Askonia be hostile to you.

This extends to the factions as well. The Diktats should only be hostile to the local Indies for *** them off, not to the entire Indies of the (currently) known sector. Becuase, ideally Indies are unaffiliated to the major factions and to each other. That's kind of why they're independents. At most, the loyalty they have is to their planet/station and only that.

Seconded!

22

General Discussion / Re: 0.7 feedback

« on: December 04, 2015, 03:47:03 PM »

Hm.  I'd take a mule over a hound, no question.  But I'd also take the current heavy blaster wolf you can get over a mule.

Yeah, I think players who are comfortable with frigates and want to dive into combat would definitely prefer a Wolf or a Lasher to a Mule.

But the Mule would be way too good as a trading/smuggling starter ship, and, at the same time, it's really not much fun to pilot in combat for somebody who wants to jump into destroyer gameplay. It's armed like a frigate, but flies like a battleship (slower than an Odyssey, Eagle, or Conquest).

23

General Discussion / Re: Independent infighting?

« on: December 04, 2015, 03:37:24 PM »

Makes sense lore-wise, right? The independents and pirates represent all kinds of minor factions—off the top of my head, there's ARC (pirates) and the Charterists (independent) in Askonia, to which the refugees at New Maxios (independent) and the crimelord Kanta (pirates) in Magec are totally unrelated.

24

General Discussion / Re: 0.7 feedback

« on: December 04, 2015, 02:10:10 PM »

I can guarantee you it won't address the fact I loathe frigates.

Re: frigates - just wanted to say that I've read your feedback, it makes sense, and I'm thinking about it. It's especially relevant considering that frigates, while being a starting ship choice, have a relatively unique playstyle compared to the larger ships.

(I don't think adding a (D) Enforcer of Hammerhead would help much; they're just not good even in player hands. It'd be a bit of a trap.)

I think this is a great idea. Like you say, most destroyers play like small cruisers (or very small battleships), whereas most frigates are quite different. And whereas there are now seven flagship-worthy cruisers and at least ten frigates that are fun in the player's hands, there are really only four destroyers anybody wants to pilot (Enforcer, Hammerhead, Sunder, and Medusa—the latter being the one destroyer that's more super-frigate than mini-cruiser).

What about a new semi-civilian destroyer? Something faster than the Mule and sturdier than the Buffalo Mk. II, with more of a gun-based layout than either of those, but without as much OP or flux capacity/dissipation as the existing military destroyers. (Also, as long as I'm imagining making more work for David, why not TWO new semi-civilian destroyers—something like a destroyer-sized Cerberus would be cool too. And a phase destroyer! And one with some medium missile mounts! And a pony—no, two ponies! Three ponies!)

25

General Discussion / Re: Tips for outfitting Onslaught (and hullmods in general)?

« on: December 04, 2015, 11:25:54 AM »

Also, when I tried Needlers, LAGs, or other assault weapons in the small slots, I had flux cost problems when everything fired at once.  Vulcans serving as an efficient option helped solve my flux (and sometimes OP) problems.

I've found the same to be true. I usually go for a build with a ton of low-flux PD (either two dual flak and four regular flak around the bridge, or just six regular flak —they have longer range and use way less flux than dual flak—and six vulcans or dual MGs forward) and rely on the TPCs, three Mjolnirs, three heavy needlers, and torpedoes for ship-to-ship combat. I usually take Expanded Magazines (which is very cheap, OP-wise) to give the TPCs a little more oomph. Nothing can keep shields up for more than a few seconds against that firepower, so railguns/light needlers/autocannons are mostly just wasted flux.

Like everybody else, I pretty much always take ITU, Automated Repair Unit, and Augmented Engines—I would also highly recommend Resistant Flux Conduits. The accelerated venting alone is worth it, and resistance to EMP weapons is a nice bonus considering how rarely you raise shields.

26

General Discussion / Re: Your favorite faction

« on: November 30, 2015, 10:47:52 AM »

After reading the updated lore for missions, Persean League seems more like a mafia-like cabal, not the sympathetic Rebels from Star Wars against the (Hegemony) Empire.

Seems to me kind of like the Delian League (perhaps without a single member as dominant as Athens), with the Hegemony playing the role of the Persians, or maybe the Spartans, depending on your perspective. Also a little bit like the Hanseatic League, perhaps?

27

General Discussion / Re: Your favorite faction

« on: November 30, 2015, 09:57:12 AM »

The Diktat is definitely a dictatorship—I'm not arguing that. A scary dictatorship ruled by a megalomaniac! But all of the major factions (barring the Persean League, who aren't in the campaign yet) are dictatorships. The Hegemony has a sort of Potemkin system of civilian democracy, but it's subordinate to a military dictatorship using a perpetual state of emergency to maintain power. The Church is simply a theocratic dictatorship. Tri-Tachyon is effectively a corporate dictatorship.

Real-life dictators that get less publicity than more infamous ones simply means the public at large are less aware or do not know of any depravity the tyrants may be guilty of.  Broadcast news does not (and will not) cover everything you need to know, especially if they have an agenda.

This probably isn't the right thread for this conversation, but . . .

Spoiler

Again, there are a lot of different types of dictatorship. Jordan is a very stable dictatorship (nominally a constitutional monarchy, but the king has enormous power) with a very good human-rights record. North Korea is a completely totalitarian hellhole. Nazarbayev, the ruler of Kazakhstan, is merely a corrupt, greedy crook; al-Bashir, the leader of Sudan, is a genocidal maniac. We shouldn't lump them all in together. I also don't think it's reasonable to suggest that, in an age of social media and easy peer-to-peer communication, anybody is able to hide evidence of Nazi-style atrocities for long, with or without the complicity of the media.

(In fact, I think that what the Nazis did—in terms of its scale, its purposefulness, its thorough organization—has only one real counterpart in modern history, that being the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. What happened in Sudan, in Bosnia, in Rwanda, etc. is absolutely horrifying, but those atrocities are a lot less aberrant in the context of human history than we'd like to admit. But that's definitely a topic for a different thread.)

[close]

Oh and to actually go on-topic for a change: I definitely tilt towards the Hegemony. Looking forward to seeing the Persean League, though!

28

General Discussion / Re: Your favorite faction

« on: November 30, 2015, 07:47:17 AM »

Sure, but dictator ? Nazi. Dictators still run half the planet in the real world, and while most of them are bad, few (if any) of them are Nazi-bad.

29

General Discussion / Re: Your favorite faction

« on: November 30, 2015, 07:06:56 AM »

Not sure where people got the idea that the Diktat are space-Nazis. I think they're the only major faction that hasn't committed (or at least attempted) planet-wide genocide in recent history—at least according to what little lore we have. Maybe they just don't have enough planets to go around torching them willy-nilly.

30

General Discussion / Re: Biggest balls in the sector

« on: November 25, 2015, 08:17:06 AM »

He's gonna board your Paragon singlehandedly and kill everyone in there! Run while you can!

Ever sent 200 marines onto a Kite with one crew member surviving and had 68 of them die? It was this guy.