Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Save/Load UI, Autosave, Intel Map Markers, and More (04/10/24)
i like the idea i also kinda wish there was a flare launcher you could add.. like a small ballistic slot or something as for the ammo count.. i think ammo should be on a slider where more ammo costs more OP and perhaps a "ammo 3d printer" ship mod that let ammo slowly regenWell, there are mods for that. Limited ammo, and doesn't regen though. But at 1 OP, it's pretty handy.
I feel like this whole thread can be simplified into either (A) AI don't use armour to its advantage thus armour sucks. (B) Armor should stack better when going into extreme values, though only really applicable to onslaught or stations.You forgot (C) Heavy Armor is bad because it has a huge disadvantage and a temporary advantage for a big OP cost while Hardened Shields and Reinforced Bulkheads are both better, cheaper, and strictly positive.
No problem, I post and then edit frequently until I'm satisfied, so quotes rarely reflect the final state anyway. I'm happy as long as people read it. Your posts are worth reading, BTW.SpoilerIf the detriment were removed and Heavy Armor made cheaper, plus HA increasing residual armor fraction, I'd definitely take it sometimes. Except for the fact that Impact Mitigation 1 makes residual armor completely irrelevant for any ship with a captain. Armor is still slightly useful on ships without captains, but those are the ships you don't care about.[close]
Armor-related skills truly need a revamp as they either don't make sense or make the already iffy armor modspecs redundant. Not even my 35k HP 50FP flagship that's able to defeat a quad lance paragon without a shield uses heavy armor and that's saying something.
Also, I did a pretty sizeable edit to the post you quoted, it's a bad habit of mine to think up more stuff to say after I post a comment, sorry
Could be radical, but why even have armour be reduced when taking damage? Onslaughts might be invulnerable to all but the biggest HE weapons, but that could be cool. Like the "paragon" of armour tanking.I half-agree, and I think my "lossy armor" suggestion serves the spirit of that without the downside of armor boats becoming invincible. Currently high armor gives armor*6.66 HP in damage absorption, while low armor gives more like armor*1 HP. With lossy armor, all armor would be useful and extra armor for high-armor ships - which is currently mediocre - would actually become useful. And for low-armor ships, increasing armor would actually increase damage mitigation, which it currently does not do, effectively.
It's critical for armor to be reduced when hit, so eliminating that mechanic is a no-go. But the rest is negotiable.
That's actually a really good approach and it's got me thinking.
What if we raise the residual armor value to a stock 10% and expensive armor retrofits like Heavy armor actually increase both armor and residual armor percentage?
Could be radical, but why even have armour be reduced when taking damage? Onslaughts might be invulnerable to all but the biggest HE weapons, but that could be cool. Like the "paragon" of armour tanking.I half-agree, and I think my "lossy armor" suggestion serves the spirit of that without the downside of armor boats becoming invincible. Currently high armor gives armor*6.66 HP in damage absorption, while low armor gives more like armor*1 HP. With lossy armor, all armor would be useful and extra armor for high-armor ships - which is currently mediocre - would actually become useful. And for low-armor ships, increasing armor would actually increase damage mitigation. This currently does not happen effectively, since mitigation is inherently low and once armor is stripped, effectively zero on low-armor ships.
Flares are explicitly an emergency, defensive-only system and already quite weak. Letting them be used for the one situation where they could actually be okay - when the ship is overloaded - would be perfectly fine.OK, so where does it stop? Why not other special systems?
Personally, I think Onslaughts are OK. It's armor mechanics and heavy armor that I have problems with. Onslaught is a useful illustrative example, though, because it has extremely high armor and bad shields. And even for Onslaught, a single tier-1 skill will totally eclipse its stripped armor performance, making it worse than the stripped armor mitigation of a Kite with a level-1 Captain.(for example Onslaught armor up to 4k?)Ok 4k might be a little too much, but isn't that what the onslaught supposed to be?For example on an onslaught you need:
I'm beginning to see a bit of a pattern. Is this really about armor, or is this about the Onslaught's performance specifically?
To facilitate this, there's a new "Shield Shunt" hullmod - it has a low OP cost, removes shields, and grants bonus EMP resistance.This should have negative OP cost, because every dog in the galaxy has Reapers to share with your face (or with your back which is even worse for bots).
IIRC Goumindong did the math when presenting his broadside onslaught and reinforced hull actually adds significantly more hitpoints than heavy armor on it?Right - because of the 15% rule, +400 armor gives you +2666 HP and does not actually impact your damage reduction (aside from large-caliber HE which you should take on your shield). Whereas +40% hull would give a minimum of +8000 HP for only 30 OP, with no downside, and allow ship recovery if things go south. Of course Heavy Armor can act multiple times from different angles, so it's hard to calculate the exact bonus HP... but the +8000 to hull assumes no armor reduction at all, which won't be true due to the minimum of 75 (0.05*1500) residual after stripping, so in practice it will be substantially higher than +8000 HP. Against LMGs, it would be a minimum of +32000 HP equivalent, assuming no captain skills.
There is something else that people forgot to mention, in order to make the armor stat worth it, you have to invest about 90 OP worth of hullmods.No maneuvering jets?
For example on an onslaught you need:
Heavy Armor: 40 OP
Armored Weapons mounts: 15 OP
Integrated point defence AI: 20 OP
Resistant flux conduit: 15
Optional: Automated repair unit: 15
You add in solar shielding when facing energy weapons heavy fleet: 15
So that is 90 or up to 110 points worth of ordinances just to make high armor survive a little longer (which still melts to tachyon or long range large anti armor weapons in my experience). Here we are still not counting other important hull mods like flux dissipation, expanded missile racks and ITU.
Without those hullmods, the onslaught is simply at disadvantage when compared to mid-line capitals or high tech capitals.
I wouldn't say Starsector has fantastic graphics, unless you mean in comparison to those titles (I also have a bias against retro pixel style). GraphicsLib does make it look mighty nice, though, props to DR.Really? I think the graphics are great. Especially the stars. I can't think of a top-down 2D game that I think has better graphics. Although it is a little unfortunate (aesthetically) that when traveling your ships are represented by tiny dots.
Removing the 15% cap would make armor super OP. A pulse laser would do 5 damage to an onslaught.The 15% cap does not need to be removed, but it could be a graduated soft-cap. Right now, a pulse laser does 15 damage versus 1000 armor, and 15 damage versus 1300 armor. So heavy armor gives you a slight increase in effective HP and a permanent reduction in maneuverability, which is pretty crucial for heavy-armor ships with no backside defenses. When would I take heavy armor on an Onslaught? Never. But that goes for all other ships too (aside from perhaps phase ships, if they had sufficient OP).
I would also argue that a salvo of sabots does negate shields when it overloads you.Yes, absolutely. It does. Temporarily. Then, if the target can retreat behind the line of battle, it doesn't matter anymore. Not so with armor - if you get nailed with a torpedo, heavy armor or not, you are permanently disabled and can never recover, but you keep all of the downsides. If you can survive, you're still screwed as even Talons can kill you. If you survive an overflux, your hardened shields are still 100% useful and have no disadvantage.
They need a new weapon. Ultra-low velocity projectiles are just a horrible fit for strikecraft.Yep, they are brokenly bad due to the weapon and speed. They can't hit anything, even if they could catch anything, which they can't.
