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16

Suggestions / Re: Separate Personal (Combat) skills and Fleet skills

« on: April 13, 2024, 04:41:07 AM »

Overall pretty happy with the skill system after the last change. I might tweak a few things here and there but there is a variety of ways you can level up that change the game without being overpowered, the current "electronic warfare" skill being a great example, and cybernetic augmentation is a great reward for players who invest in combat skills (on top of the skills themselves being great if you are a good pilot).

17

Suggestions / Re: Hull Restoration is way too overpowered

« on: April 11, 2024, 08:58:03 AM »

Really depends on what stage of the game you're at. Early game it's the obvious best pick, but past a certain point you have a full fleet of pristine ships and a massive pile of spare credits you can use to patch up any d-mods you get, so you might as well respec out of it and go into a different tree. If you have a lot of experience you'll find it makes the early game too easy, but you always have the option of ignoring it.

Derelict operations is also a pretty good alternative, making d-mods actually a net positive.

18

General Discussion / Re: Your favorite frigate fits in 0.97?

« on: April 09, 2024, 01:07:30 AM »

Omens and afflictors are indeed, still great.

Monitors are still good even without SO, the difference is now they really need an officer for elite field modulation while SO builds could get by without one. They're also a lot slower without it. Now you're going to grab unstable injectors and helmsmanship to try and make up for that. They can no longer diver into the face of a radiant in the heart of the remnant fleet and just chill, but they still work as a fantastic support/distraction with the escort command and reckless personality.

19

General Discussion / Re: Why the pirate Falcon is a terrible ship

« on: April 01, 2024, 12:47:05 AM »

*Checks the date.
Well at least you tried, even though no one took the bait.

I mean, I kinda did, since I supplied a serious response in behind the spoiler tag. I never considered making an april fool's post myself, but maybe next year I should.

When the Kite comparison came up it became pretty obvious.

Yeah that definitely had me questioning things. I didn't put 2 + 2 together with the date, though. I forgor.

20

General Discussion / Re: Why the pirate Falcon is a terrible ship

« on: March 31, 2024, 11:22:02 PM »

Regardless of what OP is talking about, I never understood the love for Falcon P either. Seems like a flagship queen from five versions ago.

The love for it probably comes from pvp tournaments where falcon-p spam dominated the scene. That was when it was only 15 dp. Now that it's 20 dp it's basically a side-grade to the gryphon.

21

General Discussion / Re: Why the pirate Falcon is a terrible ship

« on: March 31, 2024, 11:10:53 PM »

Not sure if you're confused or trolling. Some of the things you say make it sound like you're talking about a different ship entirely. Are you sure you meant to say the falcon?

Spoiler

Firepower
It has fewer weapon options than even the base Falcon. And in terms of missiles, while it can carry more of them than say a Kite, it's still limited to the same missiles, so nothing that can pose a threat to larger ships.

It's not limited to the same missiles. The kite only has 2 small slots compared to the p-falcons 4 mediums + 2 smalls.

But my biggest gripe when it comes to weapons has to be that this design doesn't have any rear turrets which most ship in this class do, leaving you with no point defense against enemy missiles. Though to be fair, the standard Falcon doesn't have any either.

Actually, the standard falcon DOES have rear turrets (pictured above).

Speed
You would think to compensate for its lackluster firepower, this ship would boast excellent speed, but you would be wrong. While the Pirate Falcon is 10 units faster than the standard Falcon it's based on, it's still slower than all other ships in its weight class. It's so slow, it's barely any faster than most frigates in the game.

Depends on what you mean by weight class. Compared to other cruisers it's much faster than everything except the fury and aurora. Compared to ships of similar dp the only comparisons are the drover and hyperion, which are a carrier and a "super-frigate." Not exactly standard points of comparison. You mention that it's barely faster than most frigates, which is also not true because it's slower than virtually every frigate because it's a CRUISER.

This is perhaps not surprising however considering the faction it comes from, the Shrike for example is also far and away the slowest in its class.

Aesthetics
And finally the worst thing about this ship, why does it look so damn ugly? It's a single player game so I can forgive a lot if it at least looks cool, but it's like the designers ran out of time at work and had to leave after drawing up the bare fuselage. Granted, the pirate paint job is pretty dope, so it's at least better than the base Falcon on this front.

I like the base falcon. The paint job looks fine and it has a distinct silhouette.

Conclusion
So what is this ship good for? I certainly can't find any reason to use it. If you fight the pirates enough to recover like 30 of these I suppose you can use them to escort a Condor, but by the time you can afford a Condor you also have much better options.

Again, are you really sure you meant to say falcon?

[close]

22

Suggestions / Re: Quick hullmod suggestion to boost small energies

« on: March 28, 2024, 03:35:19 AM »

I don't find any problems with that, there isn't a single ship in the game where you're forced to only use IR Pulse Lasers, you always have other options. Medium energies have amazing armor punchers, and if you really need an extra bite, AMB is amazing.

Ships that have ONLY small energies (excluding missile slots) are Scarab and Omen unless I'm missing something. Scarab is great not matter what weapons you put on it, and AMB is a no brainer. Omen on the other hand is all about the ship system, it doesn't care for better small options.

This is something I thought about but didn't elaborate on, which is that the scarab is the only vanilla ship that actually relies entirely on small energy weapons for damage, and there the ir pulse does fine. In theory you could use the ir pulse on larger ships as a way to dissuade frigates from flanking, thanks to its high accuracy and low range, but I've never found that idea to actually work in practice.

A lot of the other small energy weapons have niches because they aren't directly competing with the mediums. A couple of ion cannons can supplement pulse lasers and heavy blasters nicely. Tactical lasers provide extra soft-flux pressure and some decent long-range hull damage. PD is obviously useful in a small slot. Compared to that I don't find much use for ir pulse because it only provides more dps, yet I can invest that op and flux into mediums to get a better result. It's hard to say if that's a problem because this could be the ideal spot for them, but I wouldn't mind testing them out at 0.6 efficiency to see how it affects the game.

Overall it's not a huge concern because even high-tech ships aren't built around small energy weapons, unlike low-tech ships which are sometimes designed to lean into small ballistics.

23

Suggestions / Re: Quick hullmod suggestion to boost small energies

« on: March 28, 2024, 02:37:09 AM »

A hullmod that boosts small energy range has the problem that it closes the design gap between ballistics and energies, so I doubt that would happen. The real issue with small energy weapons is there are only three types:

• Good weapons (am-blaster, burst pd, ion cannon)
• Bad weapons (ir pulse laser)
• Mid weapons (everything else)

I'm not too concerned with the "mid" weapons, as they still have their uses. It's also probably better for a long range weapon like the taclaser to be "mid" rather than meta defining.

The problem with the ir-pulse is the energy damage typing is a massive drawback on weapons with low hit strength. Compare it to the light dual AC: you get good efficiency and dps against shields for a low price, but not much else. Its usefulness is entirely off the back of that kinetic typing. The irpulse in comparison loses 100 range but is much more accurate (fair trade), and has the same flux efficiency + very similar dps. Nothing else about this comparison seems out of place other than the change in damage type, which makes it is far less useful then the LDAC because its shield dps is cut in half and all it gets in return is going from 25 hit strength to 50 hit strength. That's not enough for it to be an anti-armor weapon, so you're going to be adding those to your build anyways unless you only plan to fight frigates. Overall this makes the extra hit strength mostly useful against hull where it provides a small improvement in dps and flux efficiency. I'd rather have +100% damage versus shields.

The hit strength of energy weapons is crucial, because low hit strength weapons feel more like kinetic weapons (irpulse) while high hit strength weapons feel more like high explosive (heavy blaster). If the heavy blaster can have a ridiculous efficiency at 1.44 then maybe the irpulse can have a ridiculous efficiency like 0.6. I mean we tested that out on the LDAC which is already a fine weapon, so why not on the irpulse?

24

General Discussion / Re: High Scatter Amplifier, yay or nay?

« on: March 26, 2024, 04:37:15 PM »

Double tachyon on the odyssey with HSA sounds doable, even though I haven't tried it. The 600 base range is a little lower than its normal options, but in exchange you get tachyon lances that enable themselves to pierce shields.

HSA + AO for 500 range?

Can't even do that because they're incompatible!

25

General Discussion / Re: Question: High Energy Focus and Dragonfire DEMs

« on: March 25, 2024, 06:24:35 PM »

"This damage is affected by missile damage modifiers and not energy weapon ones."

I was just playing the game and thinking to myself how that text isn't really necessary, but I guess I was wrong.

26

Suggestions / Small adjustement to tri-tachyon crisis

« on: March 24, 2024, 07:05:37 PM »

I had a little bit of a misunderstanding with the tri-tachyon crisis that could be cleared up really easily. When I talked to my good buddy Rayan about getting "attention" from tri-tach I assumed that his advice would only be relevant after triggering their crisis event. That's how every other crisis works, so I assumed it would be the same here. Of course, how it actually works is tri-tachyon has a separate crisis meter that you can start making progress on at any time.

The issue here is the progress meter for tri-tachyon only appears after you gain some points, which is why I didn't notice my mistaken assumption until after fighting the tactistar mercenaries. The solution here is simple: even if you have 0 points, the progress meter should show up in the intel tab when your contact gives you advice on how to deal with tri-tachyon.

27

Suggestions / Quest Planets being immune to satbombing

« on: March 24, 2024, 03:24:02 PM »

I had an idea for how to allow the player to satbomb quest important planets without any problems. One idea that sounded okay is to borrow from Morrowind and warn the player that "the threads of fate will be cut." The problem with this is the special treatment for quest related planets feels a little out of place... granted, it's not as out of place as the current immortality those colonies get, but still.

After looking at the luddic shrines scattered around the sector, I've been thinking that a better solution would be to give EVERY core world at least one quest chain it's a part of. Then instead of making all of them immune to being wiped out, you can just give the player a generic warning that reducing a planet to rubble will break ANY and ALL questlines associated with the planet that you haven't finished. You can now slap this warning on every planet because it's always true. Now if the player goes to satbomb somewhere like say, chicomoztoc, they can actually face consequences for their actions while being aware of what they're getting themselves into. For planets that are part of the main questline it's probably a good idea to retain immunity to de-civilizing from low stability, although maybe a toggle in the setting file for this would be good.

Now that I mention it, I think it's at least worth adding a toggle in the settings for the immunity, even if the rest of my idea isn't added. Casual players can have their guard rails in place and experienced players can go into the settings and take them off.

28

General Discussion / Re: Doom/Onslaught/Sunder/Medusa vs 6 Ordos, 2350 DP

« on: March 23, 2024, 11:13:30 AM »

However, from what I see on the forums, Storm Needler seems to be dominating the role of an anti-shield weapon against Remnants. And for a good reason. Its burst, DPS and synergy with Expanded Magazines is insane.

Maybe the solution would be to remove Storm Needler's flux efficiency???

It isn't. It's finally good now, but it's not dominating. Even in draba's fleet that uses a bunch of them, the sunders are there to provide the anti hull and armor damage the onslaughts sacrificed in order to run storm needlers. It's good synergy, but that doesn't qualify as "dominant."

29

General Discussion / Re: Legion/Sunder/Medusa vs 6 Ordos, 2380 DP

« on: March 22, 2024, 08:30:14 PM »

It's nice to see large kinetics get their chance in the sun, first with the storm needler and now the mark ix. It's interersting that you're getting so much usage out of heavy maulers, but I guess the low dps doesn't matter so much with those sunders on the field.

And I'd agree that the capitals are mostly balanced but with different strengths and weaknesses. The onslaught gets hyped up a lot because it's hard to mess up, but that doesn't mean it's better, that means it's more noob friendly.

30

General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?

« on: March 21, 2024, 04:18:43 PM »

Oh, I do feel like this for the Onslaught. It definitely can't achieve that much without an officer, s-mods maybe too, eh whatever... But that statement was about the whole ship design in the game. Of them feeling less like complete experiences and more like incompetent designs to be improved by player interference. Which is why they struggle so much when in the hands of NPCs.

The ships being worse in NPC hands is intentional. The game would be too frustrating for most players if NPCs had optimized loadouts and strategies. It's really satisfying when you figure out good ship outfits that let you take on larger fleets. Officers and s-mods do give you some raw power advantage, but so does leveling up. Most enemies don't have things like wolfpack tactics, crew training, flux regulation, etc.

Maybe you could argue in favor of their being a "hard mode" where enemy admirals have more skills and enemy fleets have more s-mods and their ships have better loadouts. But that would take a lot of work to get right and is not something the game really needs. That's more like modded content, or perhaps post version 1.0 content. And all of this doesn't really say anything about ship balance! Some ships are more specialized than others. Do you actually want every ship to be a generalist just so NPCs can use them better? That sounds like a bad way to approach ship design and balance. The worst of both worlds.