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2086

Blog Posts / Re: Colony Management

« on: December 21, 2017, 09:48:03 PM »

- Can we put officers in storage to temporarily reduce salary costs, if we don't need them right now? (For that matter, how are crew in a Storage submarket handled?)

Can't put officers into storage. Crew will cost the 1% storage fee, same as cargo, no salary.

Can we get at least some form of going over Officer capacity (storage, or just unlimited number of *unassigned* officers). They are narrowly specialized and having to fire and re-train new officers when you want to change fleet composition (no carriers <-> carriers, high tech <->armor based, kiter <-> aggro) is wildly suboptimal.

2087

Suggestions / Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.

« on: December 14, 2017, 08:40:03 PM »

Oh, and that change to the way burst-damage was calculated meant that the Tachyon Lance gained enough bite to justify itself, sometimes.  I get that people think it's OK on a Paragon, but everything's good on a Paragon and usually the HIL's a better choice if you're not going Plasma Cannon.

So far, HIL is poor-man's damage half of Tachyon Lance.  HIL is what gets used if player has not found enough Tachyon Lance (and Tachyon Lance is very rare).

HIL can be quite ok, as long as you use it correctly. That is exploit the fact that enemies raise their shields from point that is exactly on line between center of their ship and your ships. So you can fire few seconds into their side, whenever they drop/re-raise shield. And AI tends to re-raise often even when not really threatened by flux levels (Paragon included).

Then again, TL can exploit same flaw in AI behavior.

2088

Suggestions / Re: Remove damage types to expand design space

« on: December 13, 2017, 06:25:52 PM »

There are already some modded weapons with effectively non-standard damage types.
Like Blackrock shard guns that do kinetic + chance of energy on armor/hull hit (but not shield).
Or Scy miniguns with combined frag + energy.

For cases like these, having tooltips present secondary/conditional damage in better way than just text description would be nice.

2089

Suggestions / Re: Safe'nSteady combat and player knowledge progression

« on: December 11, 2017, 11:58:16 PM »

Or just don't Ironman. I don't think Ironman works well for games with play-through longer than a few hours anyway. Just forces you to play boring/cautios instead of on the edge (which is ok to do with normal saves).

2090

Discussions / Re: I’m working on a game, finally.

« on: November 27, 2017, 06:39:26 PM »

As player I'd prefer either 3 or 4.
3 is more immersive, 4 is simple and functional.

1: Tank controls are clunky by definition, so you'll have to make rest the game slow and imprecise to match control scheme.
2: Whenever I see a diablo-like setup my first though is "If only I could properly WASD instead...". Second is "Hmm... I could probably find/make ahk script to convert controls to WASD". But of course such conversion is usually imperfect, and I end up simply passing on the game.

2091

General Discussion / Re: Fleet size disenagge limit

« on: November 24, 2017, 11:11:39 AM »

The information needs to be in the UI to prevent save-scumming.  (I normally experience two motives for save-scumming: powergaming, and working around UI defects [as understood by a wargaming grognard].  This is a UI defect: I'm pretty sure that in-game the fleet captain would know the disengagement capabilities of the fleet, so there is no valid rationale for hiding this from the player.])

But don't we actually have this info, just not as single easy to see value? Sum up your deploy costs and check if it is below 40% battlesize. More than that is risky.

2092

Discussions / Re: I’m working on a game, finally.

« on: November 20, 2017, 09:25:28 PM »

Ok, your choice. Having played Unexplored, I'd say it's dungeons do actually feel unlike typical random generation. So while it's approach may have it's share of problems, there are definite merits too.

2093

Discussions / Re: I’m working on a game, finally.

« on: November 19, 2017, 08:32:35 PM »

How about borrowing some ideas from Unexplored? It's Dev seems to have pretty solid ideas on dungeon generation.

Spoiler

[close]

(short intro video)
http://ctrl500.com/tech/handcrafted-feel-dungeon-generation-unexplored-explores-cyclic-dungeon-generation/ (more detailed article)

2094

Suggestions / Re: "Hold fire" button for fighters and bombers.

« on: November 19, 2017, 08:25:58 PM »

how about...regroup always acts as a "do not attack" and engage mode makes fighters deliberately attack/escort only when a target is selected and when not selected anything acts as "defend ship"? the "regroup" and "engage" could be renamed accordingly.

Fighters attacking opportunistically whatever is closest is also an important use case.
Like when single with Astral defends from multiple frigates. Picking any single would likely overkill it, but give opportunity to rest of attackers to close in - not good for Astral in question.
Or simply when you need to concentrate on defense/maneuvering (you can leave weapons on auto without target prioritization, why would you be unable to do it with fighters?)

If anything, I'd prefer option to 'Dock' fighters when you need to rebuild with maximum safety . Surely, you can't get fighters any more protected than that.

2095

Suggestions / Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:37:46 AM »

Missiles are good in AI vs AI or as anti-player weapon. Or when you are shooting far above your weight category, like Afflictor vs Paragon. They also have some usage as *threat*. Just having one Harpoon and never launching it changes AI behavior somewhat, making it more conservative.

Squalls are also kind of special case - it's easy to make AI waste them all and eventually destroy launching ship. But it remains pretty much unassailable for single Cruiser/Capital while Squalls last. No other weapon/hullmod/whatever can buy reliable survival time vs player like that.

But outside of specialized cases, missiles are not worth it. Not for player piloted ship that is expected to destroy many AI-piloted ships and thus it's ammunition (if at all limited) should last most of it's CR time. Neither they are too good for AI ships that are expected to distract(and survive) vs overwhelming amount of enemies for extended period of time (which is what I usually want from my fleet).

2096

Suggestions / Re: "Hold fire" button for fighters and bombers.

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:29:01 AM »

But firing from regroup can be quite useful. It's cheaper than firing from engage (in terms of recovery cost) and puts fighters under less risk (firing from max range and hiding behind carrier is ideal behavior for Longbows). Sabots can't be stopped by most PD anyway, so gradual firing does not matter as much.

As for Odysssey... As I already written on forums, it may work as brawler gunboat to some extent, but that's not what it excels at. It's TL sniper, pure and simple. And as such needs it's only way of doing kinetic damage - Longbows.
Enemy can't afford to drop shield due to Tachyon Lances targeting them and gradual buildup of hard flux eventually allows you to kill them with TL.

2097

Suggestions / Re: Yellow Alert (Ability)

« on: November 17, 2017, 05:46:54 AM »

As for using it myself, it would be no-brainer when doing so brings me from below malfunction threshold to above it AND I can't avoid combat. Rare situation indeed. Otherwise minor stat boost is not worth added supply cost and recovery time.

But more importantly, are you ready to have same ability spammed against you by every enemy fleet? Because AI doesn't care about supply costs.

2098

Suggestions / Re: Increase armor effectiveness

« on: November 12, 2017, 08:19:15 PM »

In endgame armour based ships are the way to go. Honestly, stuff like medusa and below randomly die while enforcer are solid fire-power addition.

AI is just not good at piloting finesse-based ships, especially with tricky systems like phase skimmer.
It's best to give most foolproof ships to AI, with classic example being Eagle (easy to use system, easy weapon layout (long range, forward facing) + solid stats). Enforcer is not quite there, because burn drive leaves opportunity for grievous mistakes, which AI will inevitable make at some point.

2099

Suggestions / Re: Alternative drawback for Unstable Injector

« on: November 08, 2017, 01:25:53 AM »

It's going a bit off-topic, but I'm starting to think this trouble with Unstable Injectors and the 0-Flux Speed Boost is just one indicator of a deep flaw with combat. List to yourself the 5 best/most fun ship systems; how many of them boost mobility?

Odds are: every single one.

You are mostly right, i rarely pilot ships without mobility system. But there is one exception: Phase frigates, especially Afflictor - it doesn't really need one, because phase cloak + high base speed handle mobility well enough already. And it strongly benefits from it's current system (nothing can kill a Paragon as fast as Afflictor with Reapers).

So, building off Linnis's post and my own previous thoughts, I think giving every ship some sort of mobility system, for a total of two ship systems, could be the solution. If it can be done right, it would reduce the dominance of the speed stat and all-around make combat less brutal. Escaping a losing battle is usually either perfectly safe or nigh impossible, and I think this "do or die" combat is one of the major turn-offs for the game.

This may work. Though this also increases requirements on AI.
Currently it's usage of most mobility systems boils down to 'activate as soon as available'. Which is why I prefer non-mobility system ships for AI (or ones that perform ok even with that simple approach, like maneuvering thrusters on Eagle).

2100

Suggestions / Re: Alternative drawback for Unstable Injector

« on: October 18, 2017, 08:39:31 AM »

Another radical suggestion that may or may not be tangentially related to topic:  Remove the Helmsmanship 3 perk (and replace with something else).  It is of minor use for gunships (without fighters), but for carriers - including gunships with Converted Hangar - it is a top-tier perk because it is +50 speed to a ship that kites while engaged fighters do all of the killing (or lure out cowardly frigates for gunships with Converted Hangar to shoot at and have enough time to run and hide in the corner before getting swarmed).

Agree on this one. The only type of gunship that can put Helmsmanship 3 to good use is a beam-boat with total weapon flux below regeneration or similarly anemic weapon loadout. Which makes it mostly a Carrier perk. And a bit too good at that.