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.

46

General Discussion / Re: Hegemony Standard

« on: March 14, 2012, 07:10:15 AM »

Apologies to Relic

What it all means:

Planet and moon - Terra and Luna, the homeworld of mankind and the seat of power for the Domain of Man. A reminder of the shared origin of mankind regardless of diaspora or belief.
Five stars - the five original core worlds of the Hegemony, with the biggest star representing Hasteus Prime, capital of the Hegemony
Wings - mankind's reach towards the stars, also Strike Force Pollux, the original military arm of the Hegemony. The wings flanking both Earth and the core worlds represent the protection offered by Hegemony to its citizens from the unbearable horrors that lurk amongst the stars.

47

General Discussion / Re: Eagle-Class Thoughts

« on: March 13, 2012, 05:45:14 PM »

Eagle is a great ship, people have a beef against it because it can't beat an Aurora head to head. But that's hardly a fair fight considering the difference in fp.
For my eagles I put 3 railguns, 8 tac lasers, pair of those homing torp launchers, pd ai, turret gyro, accelerated shield and rest vents. 3 railguns will kill shield in no time, then just let the 6 forward lasers bore the hull. Throw in torps if target is overloaded or venting

48

Suggestions / Re: What I think is needed: midrange carriers

« on: March 13, 2012, 03:31:18 AM »

I've always had this feeling that the Valkyrie-class troop transport would make a fantastic carrier conversion. It's somewhere between destroyer and cruiser size, extremely fast for a ship of that size (faster than even Aurora, only a hair slower than Hammerhead), lightly armed, and best of all pretty much already looks like a carrier. The ship is a trans-atmospheric amphibious assault ship and if you look closely at the center of the ship you can clearly see a runway down the middle with three elevators/catapults for troop shuttles.

Even the lore strongly support this as a potential target for carrier conversion. Valkyrie is a true Hegemony military ship that's also produced by private firms. Hegemony tried to ban sale of this ship because its ability to land two full companies of marines directly to a planet's surface is considered politically destabilizing. Word of the ban got out before the ban was actually in place causing a massive speculation of the ship's price and so a huge amount of the ship was produced before the ban, enough that if someone really wanted one he could buy one second hand without too much trouble even with the ban now in place.

I could easily see Hegemony buying up surplus Valkyries from the market and retrofitting them to be space carriers should then ever need a rapid boost in fleet carrier strength. The result will be something very much like the Independence class light aircraft carrier of WW2. Independence were small carriers converted from cruiser hulls, unlike the slow merchant ship converted escort carriers their cruiser origin means they are as fast as fleet carriers and are more robustly built, thus allowing them to work in carrier battle groups with their bigger fleet carrier cousins.

49

Suggestions / Overlapping weapon groups

« on: March 12, 2012, 04:33:02 AM »

The weapon grouping of Starfarer reminds me of mechwarrior, which is somewhat disappointing because mechwarriors allows weapon groups to overlap where as Starfarer is missing this feature.

Why would you want overlapping weapon groups you ask? Take for example my Conquest here. We all know the auto-fire AI doesn't lead the target which causes it to miss against ships if they are moving laterally to your broadside. To fix this I need to have a group for all my broadside guns so I can aim manually and lead the target.

At the same time, I would like to have my heavy autocannons in a group of their own. This is so that at the start of the fight I can have the Hephaestus AGs hold fire while the autocannons blast away to bring the enemy shield down. This conserves Hephaestus ammo (which runs out much faster than autocannon ammo) and keeps my ships flux down.

Currently there's no way to do both at the same time because it requires overlapping weapon groups like in the picture. I don't see any reason why this can't be implemented in Starfarer. For auto-fire, a weapon should fire if any of the group it belongs to is set to autofire, unless it also belongs to a group that's in manual override. So for example in the above picture if group 3 is auto-fire, when I select group 2 the autocannons stop auto-fire because I'm overriding in group 2. Conversely if group 2 is auto-fire, when I select group 3 then Hephaestus should continue to auto-fire while the autocannons are under my control.

50

Suggestions / Re: What I think is needed: midrange carriers

« on: March 12, 2012, 04:04:27 AM »

For mid-tech, both Gemini and Atlas have carrier decks. Gemini in particular is very fast for a carrier and is just about better than condor in every way despite being technically a civilian ship.

51

Suggestions / Re: More shields

« on: March 10, 2012, 04:44:48 AM »

Some ideas I have:

Form fitting shield:
Similar to a 360 degree forward shield, but instead of a bubble, form fitting shield is shaped as a second skin over the hull of the ship. The smaller hit box of the form fitting shield is balanced by much higher shield flux drain due to its complex shape.

Layered form fitting shield (hull mod):
Only for ships with forward or omni shield, adds a weak secondary form fitting shield underneath the primary shield. The secondary shield starts with set HP and cannot be lowered in battle and is non-regenerating.

52

Suggestions / Re: Add a projectile velocity field to weapon stats?

« on: March 07, 2012, 03:16:24 PM »

It's a complicated stat though, some projectiles, particularly missiles like sabot, MIRV and probably the planned 3 stage vlrm have different speed for different stages.

53

Suggestions / Re: Supercarriers able to Repair & Refit frigates

« on: March 07, 2012, 02:16:33 AM »

That bug really messes up Odyssey too. Unless your Odyssey is lance equipped it should be in the middle of things with all that firepower, which means it's going to be the closest carrier, which means you fighters are going to be parked around your Odyssey IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIRE FIGHT waiting for their turn to use that single deck.

54

General Discussion / Re: The fastest carrier

« on: March 07, 2012, 12:30:02 AM »

Even if condor has pilum because of a bug, it's still a weaker ship than Gemini. Flak cannon is by far the best PD in the game, even if you downgrade Gemini's twin flak to singles to fit augmented engines it should not lose to Talons. Something very abnormal must have happened in that encounter.

55

General Discussion / Re: The fastest carrier

« on: March 06, 2012, 09:41:47 PM »

Gemini is not weak, in fact it's got better shield, vent, flux cap and extremely deadly pd compaired to condor. With upgraded engine it's only a hair slower than a hammerhead. It's hard to run down as a destroyer and it can easily shrug off attack from lone frigate or fighter squad.

56

General Discussion / The fastest carrier

« on: March 06, 2012, 03:45:33 AM »

Is it just me, or is Gemini-class Freighter the fastest carrier in the game? It's base speed is higher than both Condor and Venture and upgraded it's significantly faster than Venture since engines work better on destroyers than on cruisers.

For the same 9 FP Gemini was way better PD (2 x single flak) than Condor (2 x single machine gun) and can mount a pilum legit. Standard Cordor has a pilum but it's bugged and mounted on a small missile mount. They have same hanger size, Gemini have better shield and vent while Condor has better hull, and of course Gemini holds more cargo and is more fuel efficient.

Could it be that the best carrier in this game is actually a freighter?

57

Suggestions / Re: Supercarriers able to Repair & Refit frigates

« on: March 05, 2012, 03:21:44 AM »

I don't think in battle repair would be that useful. If your destroyers and cruisers are falling back to a rear rally point to get repairs it means the guys left holding the line will be outnumbered and will fold soon as well. And it's not like Astral can run around the map and avoid fighting once the front line gets pushed back.

I feel that frigates with their speed and diminutive size is about the right size to be able to be repaired in battle. Destroyers are either too slow to be worthwhile coming back to the carrier for repairs or too broken if they can be repaired (read: Medusa).

58

Suggestions / Re: Supercarriers able to Repair & Refit frigates

« on: March 04, 2012, 03:10:09 PM »

I don't think blue water navy is a very good comparison. The difference in size between a carrier aircraft and a frigate is huge while the size difference between a carrier and a frigate is small (blue water carrier certainly can't fit a frigate inside of it). This is the opposite in starfarer where heavy fighters are half the size of a frigate while capital carriers are so much bigger than frigates that they can fit one and then some inside their hold.

59

Suggestions / Re: Supercarriers able to Repair & Refit frigates

« on: March 04, 2012, 01:05:47 AM »

It would be really cool, but I don't think the game is balanced for it. Giving a frigate the ability to rearm missiles and repair hull would just be so huge. Then again, if it takes a pretty long time and takes up 3 flight decks... thats also dedicating a lot of resources.

I don't think balance would be a problem. Art work already exist for frigate and destroyer sized munitions ships and I hear people have found artwork inside the game depicting repair drones, so I think it's safe to say the developers want to put mid-battle repair and rearm ability for ships into the game in some form in the future. Having supercarriers able to do it for frigates would be just an extension of that.


Plus when you think about it, frigates are not that useful in the big battles that involves capital ships. They're fantastic and great fun to fly in small games but in the biggest battles there's just too much firepower being thrown around for them to survive for long enough to make meaningful contributions. Giving them fighter AI would be a huge boost to their survivability.

At the end of the day, it's not like an Astral can save you from getting oneshotted from across the map by 4 Tachyon beam before you can put up your shield.

60

Suggestions / Supercarriers able to Repair & Refit frigates

« on: March 03, 2012, 08:54:14 PM »

There's been tons of suggestions asking for a dedicated cruiser sized carrier that fits the gap between Condor and Astral. Something fast with two flight decks and only marginal defense that will serve as a good carrier for a small fast fleet with a lot of fighters.

That got me thinking, suppose we get this cruiser carrier in the future, why would anyone then ever bother to actually use an Astral? If you need more hanger space just get more of that cruiser carrier. Yeah sure Astral got some pretty impressive defense, but if your Astral had to break out the guns to defend itself something's already gone wrong with that battle.

Odyssey and Venture got the weapons to differentiate themselves from pure carriers but we'll need something to make capital class carriers like Astral worth taking in the future. I suggest those supercarriers should gain the ability to "Repair & Refit" frigates. Looking at Astral's graphics that massive space in the middle with the catapult certainly seems big enough to hold a frigate. So I suggest frigates should gain the "Repair & Refit" ability as well as the fighter AI (return to carrier when hurt/empty on ammo) when a supercarrier with 3 or more flight decks is on the map.

Frigate repair & refit should take much longer than fighter and use up 3 decks at the same time, preventing Astral from servicing fighters while a frigate is docked. This then also opens up a new niche for a 4 deck supercarrier that could dock a frigate while still servicing fighters at reduced capacity.

This also opens up many new builds for frigates utilizing strike weapons like Sabot SRM and torpedoes. Hell we could even have new classes for frigates that are dedicated "torpedo boats" with low OP and something like 4 small missile mount and 1 wide arc small energy that are worthless alone but deadly carrying Sabot SRM and single torpedoes working with supercarrier support. We could even have new defensive strike weapons like anti-frigate torpedoes or single shot ABM missiles so that the carrier could alternatively use its fleet of frigates for fleet defense.