Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Show Posts

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.

Messages - basileus

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 9
1
General Discussion / Re: Manual Piloting vs. Autopilot
« on: September 14, 2023, 11:23:26 AM »
The one suggestion that I have is you could consider moving to a smaller ship rather than trying to pilot your best ship.  That may steepen the learning curve to becoming an ace pilot, but it will also greatly decrease the costs in time and credits if your fleet isn't depending upon your personal heroics to win.  Moreover, once you do graduate and are ready to fly a capital ship, the game will sure seem a lot easier if you've cut your teeth on a lighter class.

It may not even be necessary.  I continue to fly a particular frigate for everything except a couple of end game encounters, and I can swing fights for just a few DP.  That means I don't carry around a penalty to my soft caps skills for when I don't want to fly manually (which is most of the time).  I only pull out my Omen when I'm disadvantaged or bored.

Yes, I can decisively swing fights flying an Omen, which means the player isn't exclusively relegated to the hard carry role.  You can also play high level support with control either by disabling key ships, like my Omen, or by kiting--or even using missile spam--to split up the enemy fleet in such a way that the rest of your fleet enjoys tactical superiority.  Most people use missile spam to kill the enemy, but as has been mentioned prior in this thread, the AI is pretty dumb when it comes to handling missiles, so you could also use them to potentially control a few dangerous ships by pinning them in their deployment zone, while your fleet cleans up everything else.

Of course, I suspect most people would prefer charging in and being super hero to cravenly kiting enemies around; however in the mod I play most often, the Redacted are significantly more deadly than vanilla and I'm not opposed to limited shenanigans in the early mid-game to field some of their ships and cut out a lot of the grind.

3
Bug Reports & Support / Re: Performance issue
« on: May 16, 2023, 08:14:42 AM »
Actually, it's not uncommon for a game to lag without remotely taxing out system resources.  This is common in games that are CPU limited.  GPUs are designed to be massively parallel, CPUs are not.  It's very possible for the main loop of the game to be fully taxing the thread / core it's running on, while most of the CPU is idle, even in a multi-threaded game.

See if you can turn on an advanced performance monitoring mode that breaks things down by individual threads / cores.

4
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: May 14, 2023, 08:55:19 AM »
Personally, I think you should return the Pegasus to the way it was, and buff the Point Defense skill and Integrated Point Defense hullmod.  At least double their effectiveness against missiles.  That way, there will be a modest percentage of ships out there that are actually very good at intercepting missiles, and missile spam won't always be the answer.

5
General Discussion / Re: Current notes on 0.96a
« on: May 10, 2023, 08:48:36 AM »
The advantage of ships that require s-modding to address a flaw is that they're then far more effective in the player's hands than with the AI.

Giving the Nova a major shield upgrade would probably benefit the Ordos more than the player, no?

6
General Discussion / Re: 0.96 Feedbacks from FOSSIC (Updating)
« on: May 10, 2023, 08:03:59 AM »
Pegasus/Executor without mobility skills is sluggish, sluggish enough that building a more close-range loadout with Cyclone Reapers (which is a build I wanted to try) or even Dragonfire bombs seems like a dumb idea when I can just spam Squalls and MIRVs from long range.  Also, guns are practically limited to 1k ballistics and beams because it is too slow to chase smaller ships that might outrange Pegasus/Executor if it used 700/800 range weapons.  Its non-missile firepower is mediocre, with mostly medium mounts that are easily knocked out.  Even with 50 vents, Pegasus with HVDs and beams is a bit beyond flux neutral.  Lowering the flux stats would make using the guns more annoying to use, which is not the problem.  It is classic long-range heavy missiles resilient against PD from at least two mounts plus FMR that is the problem.

Really?  Because mine have a speed of 89 (139 with flux bonus), and use range 700 weapons to shred cruisers without much difficulty.

You guys want to use torpedoes on the Pegasus?  Unstable Injector and Elite Helms.  Need even more speed?  Coordinated Maneuvers and frigates/destroyers.

Maybe the Onslaught just needs to be nerfed rather than everything else needing to be made better.

7
General Discussion / Re: 0.96 Feedbacks from FOSSIC (Updating)
« on: May 09, 2023, 07:41:53 AM »
What. Without the flux cap to use the system the ship would have nothing. Can we seriously take it easy with kneejerk balance until the hotfix drops?

That's what I've been saying all along.

It's interesting to see that the Chinese users share my enthusiasm for unstable injectors with the new capitals.

8
@Histidine

I have a request. Since it looks like the new event system is a nerf to the colonies and a very big nerf to 4x gameplay championed by Nex, would you please consider adjusting some numbers in the future?
Like nr of bonus admins or event-related things or maybe just the option to spawn protective patrols that give you an additional reduction in point accumulation.
I don't have a personal preference, just I feel that things got harder for players compared to NPCs, so maybe some solution is necessary.

Or tie the magnitude of the malus to the number of colonies these factions have, giving the player an incentive to eradicate them rather than printing infinite money via black market trading.

9
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: May 09, 2023, 07:24:02 AM »
That would be more helpful if missions had a default duration of over 180 days.  The way slipstreams work would be a lot less annoying if mission duration was doubled from 120 to 240 days, then we reasonably could plan accordingly.

10
General Discussion / Re: Do you like traveling in the hyperspace?
« on: May 08, 2023, 02:03:43 PM »
My only complaint is that there are way too many hyperspace storms. I don't want to turn the hyperspace into afk mode but currently it feels like god is throwing firecrackers all around.

I'll second this.  I would like to see the frequency toned down slightly.

11
General Discussion / Re: MesoTroniK Donation Drive
« on: May 08, 2023, 11:45:49 AM »
Meso, you have signed up for Medicaid, right?

12
General Discussion / Re: Current notes on 0.96a
« on: May 08, 2023, 09:19:33 AM »
Executor appears to be like a super-sized Dominator (with energy weapons), and a duelist.  Point it at something big and let it slug it out, and do not let it get swarmed.

That's one way to play it.  As usual, I went in a completely different direction.

My fleet was already setup for the Retribution, so I asked myself, "Can I turn this into a version of the Retribution that's easier to play / AI safe?"

Mostly.

S-Mods: Expanded Magazines, Extended Shields, Flux Distributor.  (Is the extended shields really needed? Probably not, but nothing else I use benefits from s-mod.)

Mods: ITU, Hardened Shields, Unstable Injector (yes, really), Aux Thrusters

Forward Armaments: 2x Heavy Needler HPs, 2x Flak turrets, 2x HBPD turrets, 2x Pulse Lasers turrets, 2x Autopulse HPs

Rear Armaments: 1x Squall, 2x BPD, 1x Flak

Left empty: 1x Medium Ballistic, 2x Small Energy, 1x Large Missile

Max Vents.  Rest Flux.

Skills: E Helm, E Field Mod, OE, TA, GI

Only level 5.  Combat Endurance will hopefully be level 6 skill.

Since it's the Retribution fleet, I'm running it with 3+ Omens and Coordinated Maneuvers.  It works well in conjunction with the Retribution, and they both absolutely shred REDACTED ships.  I was even able to get away with autopilot on the Retribution flagship.

I'd say hold off on calling for DP adjustments for a few weeks.  I'm sure either Van or Hector will come along with one of their encyclopedia threads before long.

EDIT: I think Alex did a great job with this update because I've been "forced" to use hull mods that I completely ignored before, and play ships in ways that I previously avoided like the plague.  I never ran ships "hot" before; however to get the most out of the Retribution and Executor, it felt mandatory; and so, I went out of my comfort zone from the get go.  They did not disappoint.  I think that's much better than just more of the same old, same old.

13
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: May 08, 2023, 06:04:12 AM »
Granted some of the parameters are for game balance reasons and shouldn't really be changed, but I think making the campaign speed advance more quickly to save the player some time doesn't qualify as changing the game balance.

Don't be so sure of that.  It would certainly help explain all of the complaining about the Industry tree.  One of its biggest advantages is saving time, but the inconveniences of repair times or having to return to the core are both greatly mitigated by greatly speeding up the campaign layer.

14
General Discussion / Re: Current notes on 0.96a
« on: May 07, 2023, 10:48:08 AM »
coming back to the retribution, I absolutely love the ship but it's almost funny how bad it is.
...
the tl:dr of them is that the retribution's stats are almost universally around 20-30% worse than the onslaughts, some of them being as bad as 50% worse.
on top of this, it has the pleasure of losing 4 medium missiles & 60% of it's range due to not being able to mount ITU, only putting more pressure on it's already paper-thin defences.

and for a more holistic comparison; I tended to have trouble cracking pirate eradicators after my small missiles ran out (and hell, even with them it was still a pain)- with various combinations of hellbores & mjolnirs- while my onslaught could chew through the entire enemy fleet like it was nothing.

imo the retribution at least deseves to be back down at 35 dp; it being the same cost as the onslaught is a good punchline and nothing more.
for a more drastic change, I honestly think that it'd still be balanced with the current defensive stats if it got back the potential to mount 6 medium missiles, it wouldn't be able to survive for long but it would be able to dump out damage while it was alive.

The loss of the range isn't a big deal because it can quickly close into range with the Orion Drive.  It would be unwise to try to use this ship like either a traditional low tech or high tech ship.

I took missiles off the Retribution entirely.  No pilot.  In the sim, it still easily crushed an Eradicator, while being piloted by the AI.

In the sim with no pilot and missiles put back, it could beat the Atlas 2 and Eradicator at the same time, but I had to pilot it manually.

That said, the sim without a pilot isn't the right way to evaluate this ship.  It's a finesse ship.  It needs a pilot and a complementary fleet for ideal performance.  It works best in conjunction with other ships, where it is able to take full advantage of its superior speed and maneuverability.  Combined Arms.

It isn't as strong of a brawler as an Onslaught.  What it can do is help you finish fights far more quickly, which can add up to a lot of time saved over the length of a campaign.

The Retribution works quite well with my preferred style of play, which is to spread the enemy out and pick them off.

This is quite different from the Squall spam approach, which involved bottling the enemy up into a dense formation near their spawn zone.  The Retribution likely wouldn't fare so well here.

Also, since it's a player flagship, you'll eventually field it with AM SRMs.  2-3 of those, and then it really is something special.

PS: 1 Vulcan upfront.  2 LMG in the back.  Devastator in the central large.  All other ballistics range 700.  You can tilt more for anti-shield or armor depending upon what you're fighting, if you want.  Suppression needs to come from other ships.

15
Suggestions / Re: Monitor nerf
« on: May 07, 2023, 06:45:38 AM »
I had considered replacing the default AI with a machine learning model, with officers getting smarter as they leveled up.  However, the API doesn't appear to support this.  The game is so complex that I'm skeptical anything other than machine learning will ever get it behaving intelligently.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 9