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Messages - TaLaR

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2671
Suggestions / Re: Hyperion - teleport soft flux
« on: September 07, 2012, 08:44:09 AM »
AI clearly doesn't use Hyperion's teleport to full strength. And at least to me it also seems that removing 5 sec cooldown made AI even less proficient. Previously using it as soon as cooldown allowed was often the correct decision and AI has been doing exactly that. Now this judgment is substantially harder...

Still there are a few thing that could seriously improve Hyperion's AI:
1)Don't teleport in front of enemy guns(that often happens due to Hyperion misjudging distance and trying to jump on target from too far)
2)Don't wait for projectiles to hit it. If projectiles will do more hard flux than teleportation costs or are going to hit hull(from behind), AI needs to jump.
3)Actively use shield bypassing against large flux-efficient targets(Defending AI can't raise shield in previously unshielded direction quickly enough to block first shot after teleportation, though i suspect this has more to do with how AI handles shields, than being inherently impossible)
4)Chain teleport in several situations (at least: quick capping, getting enough distance to safely vent flux, simply covering long distances)
5)Fighting against another Hyperion(more broad: phase teleporter) is a very special case and can't be decently handled by AI unless specifically coded for. Skimmers also need a bit special handling.

Otherwise Hyperion is going to be player-only ship, because under current AI control it's simply not worth 15 FP...

2672
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads, version 3.0 (0.53.1a with campaign)
« on: September 07, 2012, 08:08:53 AM »
Drivers have a very long charge-up. That forces you to calculate your aim with greater precision. Against civs, pirates and ISA this driver is a neat weapon. Against RSF its useless most of the time. Its kinetic and it costs you 26 OPs (408mm siege with slightly less range costs 20 OP for comparison).

Ships in this mod are larger, slower and have much less acceleration than in vanilla. So even destroyers usually fail to dodge Shotgun driver. +Actual projectile speed is very fast, and it's not that much harder to use then slow projectile plasma cannons. I'd say it's quite useful against RSF as well - their shields might be bad, but still present. Combination of HE + Kinetics works better then pure HE, either it forces enemy to drop shields prematurely and eat HE or drains their flux reserves...

Terminator is alright. There is a problem with heavy rotary cannon. I misplaced its cooldown and burst fire rate. Should be 0.2 for cooldown and 0.05 for burst rate. I`ve noticed it while playing and already fixed it.

Well, yes Terminator lacks in total firing time and summary damage output. Still, using it only after you are mostly done with shields (via shotgun driver) can mostly compensate that problem. Though i guess if other HE weapons are getting an upgrade it might really be ok.

Energy weapons are more advanced for ISA and more accurate for RSF. Plasma and blasters i`ve adjusted while playing to 1:1 in damage/flux while lasers are 1:1.5 damage/flux.

Plasma weapons are usually harder to hit with and have lower dps than lasers so this might work. Need to playtest before i can comment further.

Look at ISA ships. They have almost no armor and can`t actually sustain shields for long enough when under heavy fire. Fortress shields are their saviours. Its not that difficult to defeat ISA Kansas cruiser and Michigan BB. Its might be a problem in 1 on 1 skirmishes, but with a wing or two of bombers or assault crafts and proper tactics its an easy task. For example - order your strikers to gather on the opposite side of the BB and then launch a simultaneous attack. It wont be able to cover two opposite sides even with its fortress shield.

Ok, i might be somewhat biased here - i strongly prefer sustainable builds. So speed + flux >> armor for me. +AI isn't actually good at pressing attack while at high flux (despite having enough armor to make it affordable), so RSF ships often give ISA easy opportunities to vent.

About gatling vs turbo lasers. Its up to you what to pick. They are designed for different roles. Gatling is better used against shields as its a rapid fire weapon and generates hard flux very fast. Turbo is great when enemy shields are down or when their flux is high enough and enemy AI chooses to take a hit and overload rather then take a direct hit to its armour.

You seem to imply that Gatling has better dps... Unless their stats have been already modified after 3.0 Turbo has better dps (625 vs 500), range (850 vs 750), turn rate (Slow vs Very Slow), per shot damage(750 vs 100, useful against armor damage reduction) and doesn't have charge-up, costing 25 OP vs 24 OP for Gatling => it's clear win no matter how you look at it.

2673
Suggestions / Re: phase sensors.
« on: September 07, 2012, 05:20:42 AM »
As far as i understand first and foremost reason for making phase ships visible was difficulty(more like unfeasibilty) of writing AI that could adequately counter them otherwise. Any variants of limited invisibility hit exactly the same problem...

2674
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads, version 3.0 (0.53.1a with campaign)
« on: September 07, 2012, 05:13:36 AM »
More on balance:

1)Shotgun Driver - isn't it too good? 6x flux efficiency, good range, and minor spread only improves it's ability to hit small targets. It doesn't have any serious drawbacks compared to alternatives. Considering how flux-starved all RSF ships are, this weapon becomes the only logical choice for large slot kinetics.

2)Terminator AC - unmatched efficiency *and* dps amongst HE guns. Another large HE weapon - Heavy Rotary Assault Gun is inferior to it in every single stat, and has additional fire-up delay to make it even more of a joke...

3)ISA energy weapons have 2x flux efficiency vs RSF's 1x. Of course RSF ones are generally easier to hit with and often have better dps, but that's nowhere near enough to compensate such huge efficiency gap.

4)Also on ship systems - considering how powerful correctly used Fortress Shield is, it seems a bit too common. Accelerated ammo feeders as system for top RSF ships on the other hand seems a bit too weak, *especially* against aforementioned fortress shields...

5)Turbo-Laser Cannon vs Gatling Laser Cannon => improvements in all stats and no charge-up period at cost of only single OP. Of considering its 1x efficiency even Turbo is of dubious usefulness for most builds, but using Gauss is simply out of question.

2675
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads, version 3.0 (0.53.1a with campaign)
« on: September 06, 2012, 04:45:28 AM »
I`ve made ballistics generate flux at a rate of 25% of their damage per shot. Made RSF extremely overpowered. Currently RSF guns generate flux at 50% of their damage. XLE weapons also have reduced flux, but all other factions have flux generation = damage.

Taking faction ships + faction weapons as balance basis seems to be quite likely to create some overpowered ship + other faction weapons combinations. Or at least make some weapons useless for player, because other faction has similar, but better option for slot in question...

Ideally no weapon should have alternative that completely overshadows it. Though i understand that each vs each balancing takes lots of time, and even vanilla game isn't quite there yet...

2676
Mods / Re: Project Ironclads, version 3.0 (0.53.1a with campaign)
« on: September 05, 2012, 10:28:13 PM »
Overall very good mod, *mostly* balanced and plays quite notably differently from vanilla.

Though weapon balance seems weird sometimes:
1)14mm Quad AC - ultimate kinetic ballistic weapon. 8x flux efficiency + decent range + low OP cost, what else to say? Especially weird compared to 14mm dual, which has only 2x efficiency...
2)Dual blaster - 4x flux eff, decent range, only 3 OP cost, hard flux => occupies every single small energy/universal slot on my ships
3)Auto blaster - less range and flux eff than Dual blaster at double OP cost - why would anyone ever equip this?
4)Microlaser - zero flux cost o_0...

+In general, ballistics vs energy balance is very skewed to energy side compared to vanilla due to 2 factors:
1)ballistics have much lower ammo capacity.
2)absence of flux efficiency advantage over energy. (with 14mm Quad as notable exception)

2677
General Discussion / Re: Phase ships
« on: August 22, 2012, 09:36:26 AM »
I just don't see how Doom could be viable even without considering it's ridiculous 20 FP price tag. The way cloak vs shield comparison works out, cloaks can only be useful for small and very fast ships, because:

- Cloak loses badly against smaller opponents since *anything* can threaten cloaking ship, while shielded one could handle minor threats for a much lower flux cost.
- Cloaking ship is dead as soon as it got anything faster than itself on tail. For 75 speed cruiser that includes all frigates, most destroyers and anything larger that has maneuvering jets or burn drive. List of ships that can't easily suppress Doom would have been shorter...

2678
General Discussion / Re: Bombers
« on: August 20, 2012, 11:23:57 AM »
Phase shield or phase skim? I reckon a phase skimming bomber wing would render pretty much everything else useless. Phase cloaked bombers would be almost as overpowered, since they could cloak past most PD, drop bombs and cloak out again.

At least that would be some decent use for cloak:). And considering that max time cloaked would be quite short and how cloaking ships are extremely vulnerable to pressure from faster ships i don't think they would be too overpowered...

Same for skimmer - 3 charges on 10 sec cooldown per charge are not enough to complete full attack sequence and retreat to safety without giving retaliation opportunity...

Though both certainly would perform much better than any bomber without skimmer/cloak...

2679
General Discussion / Re: Harpoon MRM overpowered?
« on: August 20, 2012, 11:08:45 AM »
Soft flux can be very powerful, but only if you provide truly overwhelming amounts of it - like Paragon maxed for soft flux (HILs, Gravitons, Tac lasers in all slots + max vents, etc). Basically anything short of other Paragon or flux maxed elite Odyssey faces following decision: either it keeps shield up allowing to slowly build up flux to overload without firing weapons OR drops shield and fires weapons at incredibly efficient Paragon shield(which it can't overload before it dies/runs out of flux) while eating tons of damage from beams. Both choices lead to unavoidable defeat. The only correct decision is to retreat:)

2680
General Discussion / Re: Mjolnir Cannon: Anyone Use It?
« on: August 20, 2012, 09:40:20 AM »
It has flux efficiency more typical for energy slot weapon, but doesn't get same flux boost. Absolutely no match for any alternatives usable in heavy ballistic slot...

2681
General Discussion / Re: Harpoon MRM overpowered?
« on: August 20, 2012, 09:09:37 AM »
Harpoons are easily evaded by player - only AI struggles against them. The missile have good tracking but turning rate is poor considering missile speed. In a destroyer-sized ship and up - its your duty to be on alert for missiles - no heavy ship is invulnerable. Even then overloaded in a destroyer you can rotate to spread incoming damage and save the ship.

Your info might be outdated. I also remember having easy time dodging them in 0.52.1a . But in 0.53 i rarely manage it on 150 speed frigate (Hyperion without flux boost, just ran simulations against harpoon-armed Venture). On same Hyperion 200 with flux boost is usually enough, but then you don't really need to dodge on zero flux (shield/teleport)...

While i agree that harpoons don't pose much threat to player, it's mostly due to shields/skimmer/teleport, not dodging...

2682
General Discussion / Re: Harpoon MRM overpowered?
« on: August 20, 2012, 06:26:20 AM »
Harpoons are mostly useful to quickly finish enemy whom you pretty much already defeated or are going to defeat soon enough (because you already managed to overflow his flux through other means to actually make harpoons viable). I find investing OP into these *other means* (vents/better long lasting weapons/hullmods) that help you to actually flux-overpower  enemy in the first place a better idea, than simply accelerating their death with harpoons after the most important part is already done...

2683
Announcements / Re: Starfarer 0.53.1a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: August 17, 2012, 12:23:27 PM »
Actually about these reapers on Conquest - is it intended as AI test under difficult conditions ?:) Design is obviously suboptimal (with reasonable outfit ship is able to provide sustained fire from single broadside, interrupting that damage stream to fire very risky reapers is usually not worth it) and very hard to use even for player...

2684
Suggestions / Re: Omni Weapons
« on: August 17, 2012, 12:11:53 PM »
I suspect it would be either too weak in ballistic slot or too op in energy (due to energy weapons generally having less range/flux efficiency than same sized ballistics). Also flux boost applies to slots, not damage types.

Might work for total conversion mods though...

2685
General Discussion / Re: New Onslaught is a Beast!
« on: August 17, 2012, 12:07:15 PM »
Only problem:  Now the Conquest is the weakest Capital Ship.

Not really, at 150 speed (50 +50 from jets + 50 flux boost) it totally dominates the battlefield.Yes, it doesn't pack same punch as Onslaught, but 150 speed is usually enough to have complete control of engagement against it. I'd say it pretty much makes destroyers/cruisers obsolete as classes. With much more firepower per FP and same speed as fast destroyer(50+50), the only reason not to build your fleet around Conquests is the fact that AI is quite bad at controlling broadsides and zero-flux boost...

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