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.

16

Suggestions / Re: split skills for fun (piloted ship) and the rest into separate categories / etc.

« on: August 15, 2022, 08:17:21 AM »

I already pick quite different skills for piloting Afflictor or Conquest. There is no small set of universal best personal skills.

There are also some semi-personal skills like Phase Corps or Wolfpack, that I take mostly for effect on piloted ship, if I take them.
Personal vs Fleet-wides that also affects my piloted ship - yep, I take these. But Fleet-wides that have no effect on piloted shop - never (carrier skills since I never pilot a carrier, phase corps if I don't pilot a phase ship, auto-ships if I don't link a Radiant, purely economic skills, etc).

17

Suggestions / Re: New Mod : Heavy Forward Plating

« on: August 05, 2022, 11:21:59 AM »

You are not supposed to just take hits for nothing. AI often does, but this AI problem more than anything else.

As a player on low tech ship you should aim to intentionally trade armor for flux advantage, and secure the kill (otherwise the flux advantage you paid for was wasted). And use shield flickering to be selective at it too, catching most HE/big energy shots, while letting kinetics and small energy hits through.

Ships like Onslaught/etc have already enough incentive to try and keep enemies in front, adding powerful front armor mod doesn't change anything except making them stronger.

18

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: August 03, 2022, 02:51:46 PM »

Pirate Eradicator can catch up to Eagle, BUT since it traded AAF for Burn Drive, it lacks firepower to threaten an Eagle (unless it has massive character skills advantage). So Eagle still wins easily against it.

19

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: August 02, 2022, 03:19:12 AM »

I'm a newer player, so take this with a grain of sand, but I the main thing I found insufficient about the eagle is its comically low speed. The manoeuvre is okay, but the in game description bills it as a the bigger brother to the falcon.

Eagle's average speed is slightly below 75 (you won't trigger the system with perfect timing), higher than 60 of Champion or 70 of Eradicator. This small speed advantage is enough due to Eagle also having more long range flux pressure (I wouldn't say exactly dps though, Gravitons have none).

I do agree that Eagle could use maybe 5 more speed. 50 vs 45 base speed of Conquest, both use same system, both have same burn 8, Conquest has far superior range and firepower. Conquest is a better Eagle in every way except AI being less efficient at broadside maneuvers.

20

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: August 01, 2022, 09:29:28 PM »

Imo, Eagle's main issue is AI. If Eagle is to win against Champion or Eradictor, it usually happens at near max range of Eagle's weapons (ignoring SO builds).

Cautious is just not an option - it doesn't maintain engagement, letting enemy retreat and vent easily.
Steady AI is incredibly flawed with long range combat, because it always starts to close range as it wins flux war. Which is completely unnecessary when you have at least equal range + speed advantage over the target. Eagle just needs to maintain range buffer (max range - 100 or so against Eradicator, even less against Champion, exact value depends on speed difference and target's mobility system, if any) so that enemies can't escape during Eagle's system cooldown. Getting any closer risks target flipping situation with weapon setup more efficient at closer range for no gain.
Aggressive+ is incapable of long range combat by definition.

In more general terms, I think ships need to be aware of their own and target's range bands so to say. Like 3 Grav + 2HNeedler+1HMauler + 3PD Lasers Eagle has 3: 1) Grav only 2) +Ballistics 3) +PD. 1st is really not a proper engagement, and it often should consider holding fire (for zero flux boost) in this range band when trying to catch up to a fleeing target. 2nd is it's bread and butter. 3rd exists mostly to bully slow frigates or non-combat ships, the only reason to go that close against a ship that can fight back is if target is faster than Eagle and would disengage quickly otherwise.

21

General Discussion / Re: AI is too good handling shield

« on: August 01, 2022, 06:17:34 AM »

No need to nerf anything, an experienced player can do much better job at shield flickering.

And you should never fire kinetics only, etc. Mix damage types to leave AI choosing between 2 bad options. Or keep a weapon that can near instantly punish shield drop ready, like heavy blaster, tachyon lance, etc.

22

Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf

« on: July 31, 2022, 10:15:59 AM »

Off-topic, but they do very much still work. You simply don't take the bait carrier skills and instead go for the real carrier skills - Support Doctrine and Derelict Ops. 3 decks and 2 medium missiles for 11 DP are pretty good apparently.

I see how that could potentially work better. Not a strong argument for the DP-limited bait carrier skills though.

23

Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf

« on: July 31, 2022, 12:43:20 AM »

So if it was bonus 10% replacement rate and the cap was 40 flight decks you'd be okay with it? Because that's exactly how it works now, you just get more out of it early.

In case of phase corps effect is rather discrete - either you are fast enough to be able to pull off proper phase tactics, or you are not and are fairly useless.

40 deck fleet is useless - mono-fighter fleets don't work anymore. You can go slightly above the cap, but that's about it.

24

Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf

« on: July 30, 2022, 11:56:23 PM »

The carrier skill is also pretty harsh, only 6 flight decks in the whole fleet versus 40 DP of special phase ships you won't even have much of. The bonus is just to allow some niche strats without enabling you to use a boring monofleet and overpower everything.

Which is why I don't like the design choice with fleet-capped skills like carrier stuff and phase corps competing vs whole fleet skills and personals, because they always lose this competition unless player pilots DP-capped ships, making the skills semi-personal.
And maybe all of whole fleet/DP-capped/personals/non-combat should just use separate point pools, so that you don't have to weigh one category vs others.

25

Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf

« on: July 30, 2022, 08:26:17 AM »

I just find piloting phase ships painfully boring, near constant bullet time feels like I'm playing one fight forever. Once had a campaign where a Doom was my flagship, tried playing with Zigg a fair bit when it was released, and that's probably enough for me until maybe something else changes, or another phase ship comes.

Imo, this a problem completely solved by SpeedUp mod, to fast-forward the pre-combat approach phase. During actual combat there are enough things to micro, so time dilation is welcome.
Also, character-skilled Afflictor is faster during phase than most larger ships non-phased anyway.

26

Suggestions / Re: More fine-grained control over the crazy phase drive nerf

« on: July 30, 2022, 04:27:53 AM »

Ultimately the phase nerf didn't affect my Afflictor use much. Sure, it lost some OP to now-mandatory APC, is a lot more sluggish without character skills, and even with top skills I can't quite completely ignore enemy fighters the way I did and need to use friendly ships much more often to cover venting. But otherwise, a player Afflictor still deletes 200-300 worth of DP in pretty much any enemy ships.

And then I just switch to next Afflictor from reserve. While not super fast at killing enemies in terms of player subjective time, it's competitive with Capitals in global time passage, so my AI distractions last enough for several Afflictors if necessary.

It gets to the point that I don't see a reason to build player character for anything else than piloting Afflictors only (P variant is easily available early and decent enough), other than as a challenge run. I fail to understand why most of community doesn't see Afflictor in same light. Imo, Doom doesn't come anywhere close. You get only 1 within 40DP skill limit instead of 4 Afflictors, and I wouldn't say a player Doom always outperforms even just 1 player Afflictor. Can't compete in multi-fight endurance either.

...Yet Afflictor is also the fun kind OP with a lot of player skill expression, so I don't want it to be nerfed to oblivion either.

Letting AI pilot phase ships is a waste though. AI Afflictors are nothing like player's, use a normal frigate wolfpack (Scarabs and Tempests) instead. AI Harbinger is waste of DP. AI Doom is not worth taking Phase Corps on player character just to make one AI ship actually worth it's DP cost.

27

Suggestions / Re: Improve tactical bombardment bar mission

« on: July 28, 2022, 10:55:44 AM »

Maybe pollution from bombardment should be temporary for just a one to few cycles? Given that bombardment missions are given out by everyone as candy, I'd expect every world to experience it several times by game's start...

28

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 09:59:05 AM »

Maybe there should be a character skill and/or mid-tech hullmod (possibly built-in) that makes energy + ballistic combo more viable? Maybe specifically beams + ballistic. Because as skills and mods exist right now, you want a ship to specialize in either ballistics (any range) or short to medium range energy weapons.

29

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 03:20:59 AM »

The latter two. It needs a medium missile to punch up, and it needs a ballistic turret to deal with flankers. My suggestion is to change the middle ballistic hardpoint for a medium missile hardpoint, and then change the middle medium energy turret for a medium ballistic turret. This would actually turn the ship into a generalist - capable of doing everything, but not amazing at any of it. Also seems like a cool flavor thing - a midline cruiser that has a little bit of everything.

That's a nerf for how I use them. AI ship's main job in my fleet is distraction, stalling and picking off easy targets. I'll do all the heavy lifting myself.

Missile builds have terrible endurance for long battles against large fleets, so I don't use them.

30

General Discussion / Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread

« on: July 26, 2022, 02:08:16 AM »

3 Graviton + 2/1 HVD + 1/2 Mauler for long range or 3 Graviton + 2/1 HNeedler + 1/2 HMortar for medium range. Either way there is little point to using anything but Gravitons in med energy slots, since this would make an overfluxed and slow short-ranged ship that AI can't use competently.

Though since current skills and mods like ballistic rangefinder encourage mono-specialization in either energy or ballistics, it's definitely weaker than it was in older versions.

Rotation speed is rarely an issue for aiming with hardpoints vs AI - only against frigates at short range when system is on cooldown.

Imo, it's still the safest vanilla cruiser to entrust to AI, though better range management could improve ship's performance A LOT.

Though I didn't play with Eradicators or Champions much. They might obsolete the Eagle for safe AI pick.