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1

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 04, 2024, 11:40:41 PM »

Guardian - Overpowered at 40 DP, and it is not playable.  It needs to be updated like Radiant (which used to be 40 DP too).  Make it playable too.  Probably should be worth somewhere between 60 to 75 DP (assuming unlimited missiles gets removed).  Get rid of Missile Autoforge builtin if that is the only reason it is not playable.

To add onto this, when was the last time you heard a player say they lost or struggled against a Guardian due to it having Missile Autoforge? Never, as the Guardian always ends up getting killed long before it can run out of missiles because it's a Guardian. You don't want a battle of attrition with it, so you kill it ASAP. While its strong, it's not Star fortress levels of strong which would justify MA.

2

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 04, 2024, 01:02:58 PM »

okay, you convinced me that Eagle is overpowered. I will now nerf Eagle in my rebalancing mod.
Why does this ship have almost as high flux dissipation as Aurora? What the heck?
Fury has 600. Eagle has 700? Excuse me?

11k flux? What in the name of god? When was this?

It has nearly no missiles, that's why its dissipation is so high.

11 flux capacity is a holdover from .95.1a RC6 when the ship was 50 speed, 600 dissipation, and 22 DP. Reducing it back down to 10,000 would be fine.

Most of the energy weapons are fine on High-Tech assuming they have a system that can get them into range and out of enemy range. The Fury and the Shrike do not. So, they need something that HT doesn't have. The Shrike will already happily run converted hanger with Sarissa. The Fury can't as it's too expensive, so it either need a DP reduction, or some of its stats nerfed and be given a fighter wing.

3

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 04, 2024, 12:59:01 AM »

even before Squall nerf, Conquest generally didn't do that well in average sim experience against the Onslaught. Cause it has less durability, firepower and even range than the Onslaught. It's far less flexible, and op restricted. And has a shield that is purposefully designed to make an average NPC Conquest in the game unable to even properly pressure a Dominator. Sure, it will often kill it. But considering it costs 60% more DP, it seems to struggle at that. Though admittedly a Dominator is a anti-capital ship. So, maybe there is some logic to that.

It did fine as the Onslaught wouldn't engage burn drive to chase it thanks to MIRV + Squall, and it had nearly the same ballistic range as the Onslaught, which in AI vs AI allowed it to kite the Onslaught to death. The Odyssey would over-extend and take terrible damage vs the Onslaught with the exception of specific double Tachyon beam builds with Squall. Likewise, the Conquest couldn't kite the Odyssey, so the Odysseys superior shielding allowed most builds to work against the Conquest.

Microburn creates an average speed increase of 50. Man Jets creates average speed increase of 25. Additionally due to the general close-quarter nature of Fury and its ability to duel by attrition of various opponents, it can be equipped with Unstable Injector. So, it's roaming speed goes up to, I think 180? If you also talk about Helsmanship being added on top. But I think most people won't mod Unstable Injector. Which is a huge loss... Cause again. Fury isn't a stat-checker. It's a roamer.

Only in the forward direction, and assuming the ship is moving in that direction. Given even with eliminate orders, ships rarely point at their target and instead focus on nearby potential flankers, the average speed bonus from Micro Burn drops like a rock. Whereas Maneuvering Jets works in all directions. It's base speed, with Micro Burn factored in, probably doesn't exceed 110 over the course of a battle.

Also, calling an Apogee a functional combat ship is sort of comical to me. Apogee is honestly really bad at the moment. All it can do is spam beams, it has horrible mobility for being restricted to 700 range weapons, a huge hitbox. Horrible system. It relies on missiles which were significantly nerfed. And is OP-starved as hell. But at least it's not 22 DP, cause it could have been worse.

Functional combat freighter, whereas the standard Venture is a nonfunctional combat freighter. I only gave it as an example as it's the same DP and yet has stronger shields despite being a long-range support ship. Which puts the Fury and Eagle on the high end of average shields or the low end of strong shields for their DP.

4

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 03, 2024, 03:07:27 PM »

generally pitching Fury against Eagle has as much sense as pitching a Conquest against an Onslaught. Though admittedly Conquest is underpowered compared to the Onslaught.

Before the missile nerfs the fight between the three tech capitals was in general regardless of build Onslaught < Conquest < Odyssey < Onslaught. After it pretty much is Onslaught is better than the other two due to it shooting down any Squalls thrown at it. Squall without officer support got over nerfed in the HP department. Functionally half of the Conquests total firepower is in missiles and large missiles are in general fairly weak for their cost ATM when facing heavy PD. So, it's really not that the Onslaught is OP, it's that sim Onslaught hard counters large missile ships whereas it didn't use to.

Sim Eagle uses a terrible stalling build and absolutely should not be winning so decisively against a ship it can't escape from.

The logic is that Fury is meant to dilute the battlefield by roaming and choosing its engagements wisely. Utilising its extreme mobility of more than 130 units (possibly, which can be further easily augmented) to kill all the weaker support units of carriers, frigates, destroyers etc. To then leave the major core exposed to ridiculous damage.

...What? It has a top speed of 95. It also can't dilute the battlefield as it costs 20 DP. If you want to dilute the battlefield with cruisers that punch down, the only option is the Falcon.

Eagle on the other hand is an elite duellist. It's designed around bullying a singular target. You can put it against a Dominator and often neither will win in spite of Dominator also being powerful against a single big target. Eagle is just a master of kiting and retreating.

Unless the Eagle gets overloaded, which every Dominator build can do if it has adequate kinetic damage, and three Typhoons. Also, the Eagle has maneuvering thrusters, so it can handle decently large volumes of small ships assuming it has Phase Lance.

Fury ironically enough has really high durability of like 20k shields or way above that... And with a proper build it can win by attrition thanks to the utility of EMP.

It has a base shielding of 9,000 at 0.7 efficiency for an effective shielding of 12,857 and 1/7. Which is less than the Eagle's at 11,000 at .8 for 13,750. Did you accidently mod core files?

At max caps without bonus hullmods or skills (30 caps) you get an extra 6,000 shielding, meaning the Fury and Eagle have nearly the same shielding at 21,428 + 1/1.75 and 21,250. For reference the Apogee, a functional combat freighter at 60 speed, has a shielding of 25,714 + 1/3.5 if given max caps.

5

Suggestions / Re: Make Eliminate Actually Eliminate

« on: December 03, 2024, 01:12:58 PM »

It happens even when the ship is at zero flux. I don't know how the AI works that well, but it seems like it switches from "move toward target" when it's really far away to "maneuver around target" at around 2000-2500 su away from the target. At this time, sometimes it'll decide to flank the target instead of heading straight in, and sometimes it'll decide to back off.

Just a real quick response - I'm not seeing it in my patch notes, but I want to say that I fixed a similar issue a few months ago in-dev. At least, I remember seeing it and digging into it; I don't remember exactly what the cause was, though.

Using capture or waypoint orders causes ships to try to avoid and go around enemy ships that are along the way, which tends to be an issue when the enemy ship is on top of the point in question. Is it the case where eliminate is setting a temporary movement waypoint and the ship is trying to "go around" the enemy ship that is the waypoint in question?

6

Suggestions / Re: Let's fix shield shunt

« on: December 03, 2024, 12:54:16 PM »

Actually how OP would it be to turn Shield Shunt into a hullmod that basically replaces shields with makeshift damper field instead, with normally shieldless ships(but not phased ones) able to mount it at increased cost? It won't be as good as something present on ships that got one by default, but still something useful to reduce damage from torpedo or something else powerful.

Not at all, and really not worth it. If you want to see why, run a shield shunt Mora. The AI spams Damper Field over every tiny amount of incoming HE or EMP. It doesn't have the system when it needs it, and it doesn't need the flux dissipation that DF offers as it has no shield.

7

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 03, 2024, 12:22:38 PM »

true... Okay...

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

The way how Microburn works is ***.

We should double its range, but let Fury cancel it prematurely. Cause it's the main cause why it does so many weird things. Additionally there are some bugs if I remember correctly to its direct retreat behaviour. But usually you can use it to make it go back using Microburn.

And uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Okay, you're kinda right Fury does need a few utility buffs. Like PD Laser buff, LR PD... Whatever.

But stat-wise it is a strong ship. DP or cost reduction wouldn't make it good. It would just make it stupid.

A direct counter build to sim Eagle (20DP) is two Ion Pulsers, two Anti-Matter Blasters, and one Typhoon. It only works for player piloting. The player has to hold the micro burn charges until it's within the Eagles range. Also, the player has to hold fire on the Typhoon until it will overload the Eagle, which allows the Ion Pulsers to shut the Eagle down. The player also needs to dump all its Pulser and Blaster charges into the Eagles shield right from the start (something the AI won't do because it gets scared of the soft flux build up).
The AI can't use this build for fairly obvious reasons, and it would be very difficult to get it into a state where it could. Furthermore, this build has a chance to fail in player hands if the Eagle's Ion Beam flames out the Fury's engines, which happens comedically often.

The Eagle on the other hand can be built to beat every Fury loadout with the exception of SO. The sim build lacks good anti-armor and anti-hull. So, swapping the Mortar for a Thumper and giving it two Phase Lances should allow it to win without issue. If more flux is needed, the Needlers can be downgraded to Autocannons for 10 more OP to put into vents. Although it shouldn't be needed as a Thumper is cheaper than a Heavy Mortar, and two PLs are only 48 more flux for being 10 OP cheaper than two Gravs + IB.

While I understand the Fury's role is to "punch down" the fact that it loses so hard to ships of the same DP shows it's too expensive for what it does.
A DP reduction allows for the use of converted hangers along with a Sarissa wing or DTA and Longbows, which gives the Fury the longer range kinetic it needs, both to ensure it wins the flux war (as it should), as well as ensure the AI doesn't panic at 25% flux and start forever backpedaling due to not having dealt any hard flux to the enemy.

8

General Discussion / Re: Ships I don't like

« on: December 02, 2024, 07:12:39 PM »

I'll throw my hat in for the Fury.

It's so bad at the moment that if its OP was reverted to 120 from 130 and 90 speed from 95, you could justify giving it a fighter bay.

It's 2.5 times the cost of a Shrike, is less powerful than even two Shrikes. The Shrike is only useful in a supporting role late game either as a PD/anti-frigate escort for a capital or a beam missile boat with a cautious officer.

Alternatively, revert its stats back to what they were when first introduced, at which point converted hanger would be viable on it, and functionally required to make any use of it. 

The issue is the Fury does not fall into the two schemas of good HT ships. The first are fast ships with a good system to rapidly engage and disengage. The second is being just fast enough to backpedal with long range weaponry, typically in the form of a large missile mount with Squalls.
The third schema which isn't great and only the Shrike occupies is the Swiss army knife. It's fast and cheap, but lacks a good movement system or long-range firepower, so it falls into whatever support position you haven't already filled in your fleet.

9

General Discussion / Re: Lore Discovery Based on Developers

« on: December 02, 2024, 06:23:57 PM »

According to the genius that is Google AI, Fractal Softworks is based in the Persean sector, and they are developing the game 10 thousand years in the future!

(This is verbatim what Google spit up when asked where Fractal Softworks was based I kid you not)

"Fractal Softworks is an indie game company based in the Persean Sector, a cut-off pocket of divided worlds trying to recover from the great Collapse. The company is responsible for the 2D space combat game known as Starsector"

Could they be working with Scylla Coureuse and Elissa Zal to harness the gate's full capabilities and send the game back to us? Or are there far greater secret technologies of the domain at work?
However one thing is for certain, the google AI wishes it had 1/100000th of the power of a gamma core.

It's always good to have a PSA to not let the AI think for you.

10

General Discussion / Re: About Pulse Lasers

« on: December 01, 2024, 10:25:09 AM »

Pulse Lasers feel still quite generally hated. I feel like the number one reason behind is the fact that most of their damage gets absorbed by armour. And the fact that they are short-ranged tools that are just kinda... Well, very obnoxious to use.

Breach exists, that saves it. That honestly saves it so much. AMB exists, but it's super nerfed. Ion Cannon exists, but it's really... It's okay, I guess. Could be slightly better imo, but who am I to say that? Reapers are reaping. Harpoons are harpooning. Sabots be EMPing. And Furies are furring.

But let's go to an alternative dimension for a moment. And ask ourselves something...

What if instead of Pulse Lasers firing 3 bolts per second... They would fire 1.5... But have twice as high hit strength?

Think about it very deeply... Have this music to think about it even more deeply than you should...

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/wKq_3T-e_ZE

[close]

Imagine... IR Pulse Laser firing... And instead of doing 50 damage, and being only useful against Mudskipper... It does 100. Imagine if Pulse Laser did 200 damage... Instead of 100...

Imagine...

And now, imagine something even more evil.
What if IR Pulse Laser did... Have 600 range. And Ion Cannon... Had... 600 range too. And also instead of 30 damage... Get this... GET THIS... It did... 50.

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/zsFoeENih8s

[close]

And we also gave Astral 10k additional flux. *runs away and hides behind a bush*

ps edit: *comes back from behind the bush*. Actually, this might be somewhat of an unnecessary buff for Pulse Lasers. They are already kinda good. The only way to have this be added into the game, and be sane at the same time, is to restore Pulse and IR Pulse Lasers to 1.0 flux efficiency.

No range buff.

Pulse Laser is an anti-shield / anti-hull weapon, you pair it with a Mining Blaster so it can do its job well. It's better for anti-shield DPS, as while the Ion Pulser has burst potential, the AI tend to overflux themselves when firing it. The main issue is it's mount inefficient, with HT ships that want to use it being low in mounts. Still, it's what I mount on Tempests if I didn't give them twin Phase Lance.

IRPL fills the same role but for frigates and fighters. If you want it to work outside this role, it needs a redesign not a buff.

11

Suggestions / Re: PD laser buff

« on: December 01, 2024, 10:07:47 AM »

Ever since the buff to burst lasers, there's very little reason to use regular pd lasers or long-range pd lasers. It's fine for it to be generally preferred, given that it's the premium option, but the others are too far behind and deserve a bit of love.

The lrpd already had its cost reduced. It's fine at 4 op. I'd like to see it get an increase in beam speed. It's subtle, but that difference between burst lasers striking instantly and the lrpds taking half a second will add up over a battle. The problem becomes more pronounced the more you increase its range, which is ironic given it's explicitly the "long range" option.

Normally "instant" speed beams are saved for burst weapons like the tachyon or burst laser, but now we have the IRAL which is a sustained beam that also has this property. The LRPD doesn't have charges, sure, but for a "long range" option to lose a larger chunk of its dps when you increase the range doesn't feel right.

On the other hand, the basic pd laser can drop to 3 op. That is all.

The metric where the PD lasers should be considered good enough, is when one PD or LRPD laser can reliably destroy one salamander. LRPD works most of the time thanks to its range but could get a beam speed buff to be more consistent. PD fails as the salamander tends to stay out of its range until the very last moment. I would prefer if the PD laser got a buff to 500 range same as Bust PD which handles salamanders easily.

No...

Just use ITU. Buff its damage instead.

ITU on frigates is only 10%, and 20% on destroyers, so a range of 440 and 480, that's not enough. Frigates and destroyers that use PD lasers struggle the most with Salamanders and Sabots.

By the time you buff its damage enough, you'll start seeing concerns that it's too good vs ship hull, as it is an energy weapon not frag.

12

Suggestions / Re: PD laser buff

« on: November 30, 2024, 12:18:40 PM »

Ever since the buff to burst lasers, there's very little reason to use regular pd lasers or long-range pd lasers. It's fine for it to be generally preferred, given that it's the premium option, but the others are too far behind and deserve a bit of love.

The lrpd already had its cost reduced. It's fine at 4 op. I'd like to see it get an increase in beam speed. It's subtle, but that difference between burst lasers striking instantly and the lrpds taking half a second will add up over a battle. The problem becomes more pronounced the more you increase its range, which is ironic given it's explicitly the "long range" option.

Normally "instant" speed beams are saved for burst weapons like the tachyon or burst laser, but now we have the IRAL which is a sustained beam that also has this property. The LRPD doesn't have charges, sure, but for a "long range" option to lose a larger chunk of its dps when you increase the range doesn't feel right.

On the other hand, the basic pd laser can drop to 3 op. That is all.

The metric where the PD lasers should be considered good enough, is when one PD or LRPD laser can reliably destroy one salamander. LRPD works most of the time thanks to its range but could get a beam speed buff to be more consistent. PD fails as the salamander tends to stay out of its range until the very last moment. I would prefer if the PD laser got a buff to 500 range same as Bust PD which handles salamanders easily.

13

General Discussion / Re: Onslaught is laughably bad

« on: November 25, 2024, 12:33:52 PM »

Adding more anecdotal "evidence" to the pile I guess.

The only reason I can see this working for him is if he was fighting almost purely short-range enemies. At which point HMG can work as elite PD + IPDAI provides 100% damage vs missiles. Throw in some Vulcans and you're completely covered PD and kinetic wise. However, you need the range if fighting anything that has a longer range, at which point you need to free up flux or the Dominator will flux itself out. You save 140 flux and 4 OP by switching to Flak Cannons from HMGs, which is required if you're going to run any of the small kinetics in the small front ballistic mounts. Despite being significantly lower in DPS, Flaks are also better PD as they hit more consistently and hit multiple targets.

So, it would be good against any fleet that lacks anti-shield weaponry that has a range over 940. So mainly certain Aurora builds, Falcon, Eagle, normal Eradicator built for range, and most of the capitals flat out counter his build due to having enough range and non-missile/fighter weaponry.

As long as it fights nearly 1v1 vs frigates and destroyers, it works, which is somewhat achievable as 9 Dominators can be deployed for 225 DP. Throw in 5 Brawlers for point capture can flank protection and target switching can be somewhat minimized.

It's not as good as he's trying to say it is, but it's also not terrible. Personally, I would use HMG plus front kinetics if I was using a Shield Shunt variation as dissipation largely isn't an issue. Still isn't as reliable as a couple Onslaughts with HAGs in all its large mounts, and a good volume of supporting kinetics with Ballistic Rangefinder.

14

Suggestions / Re: Let's fix shield shunt

« on: November 22, 2024, 02:58:12 PM »

For shield shunt itself. Beams being outright reduced against armor feels wrong. Maybe shield shunt gives better armor for armor calculation against beams, so that weaker beams are almost useless agaisnt it while it has armor, but the anti armor beams still do their job.

Alternatively, part of the damage from beam weapons is converted to EMP. You still have to focus down the incoming HIL and PL ships but you won't get all your armor stripped between now and when they die.

15

General Discussion / Re: Onslaught is laughably bad

« on: November 22, 2024, 02:46:14 PM »

Sound logic but doesn't translate to combat for some reason, HMGs did better for me they were the last option I went with there since they are pretty useless usually. Extra hull mods made all the difference.

Congrats btw on getting the Dom to beat simslaught I didn't see that earlier pretty good no? For much cheaper no less.

Thank you and no, it still takes terrible damage and sometimes dies when it explicitly counters the Sim Onslaught build and abuses some current AI bugs. Most of the baseline cruisers around the same DP can't beat sim Onslaught due to them being too slow and too reliant on missiles, PD is the one place sim Onslaught truly succeeds. However, SO Aurora can beat it without taking damage as it's fast enough to get behind the Onslaught.

It's an issue of the sim Onslaught build being too un-generalized. No HE outside of missiles means it struggles against heavy armor. No Auxiliary Thrusters means it can't fight faster opponents. Inefficient kinetic options means it would overflux itself to a High-Tech cruiser around 25 DP if one existed that didn't rely on missiles. While I haven't tested it, the Brilliant may be able to beat it with an extremely specific build.

A proper well balanced Onslaught build would not lose to any of the above.