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1

General Discussion / Re: EWM CA NL finally improved?

« on: January 28, 2023, 12:49:11 AM »

I assumed this was a bot spam post at first just reading the title...

Also just an observation but you seem to do this a lot Sonna, either posting a new thread about a random question or posting in a thread that Alex has posted in asking a question that has nothing to do with the thread topic. 

2

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 27, 2023, 11:58:02 AM »

Mining Blaster being hybrid makes me really happy, because it means the base Mule can mount Mining Blaster again; which is a flavour win.

3

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 26, 2023, 03:34:10 AM »

Hyperion in the past also wanted Mining Blasters, IIRC that was the optimal weapon then. Not sure how things like these ruin the flavour. Even in reality some machines or high tech parts might use some crude tools or old parts since they just work nice together. I really don't think we should redesign a redesigned weapon just so it's not great on phase ships. If you want another weird example look at new DEM missiles which can be used on a Buffalo MKII., or hell you can even slap some [REDACTED] weapons on it and it would make for a nice fit. There's loads of stuff like this.

And I didn't say the Mining Blaster obsoletes the Heavy Blaster, I said they become no longer comparable. They no longer try to fill the same role, the Mining Blaster becomes its own thing which no other energy weapon does

You actually described how things should ideally be implemented and balanced. I for one don't like when games have 5 types of machine guns and only one or two are worth using. Of course not to say there shouldn't be overlapping roles but this is a much better way of dealing with an useless weapon.

I was going to mention Mining Blaster Hyperion as one of my pet hates actually, though that wasn't too bad because it was very niche and objectively the Mining Blaster is just super worse than Heavy Blaster except for its alpha strike power. But if civilians and renegades figure out how to make a flux-efficient explosive energy weapon (which the Heavy Blaster is absolutely not: it's a completely different weapon with the new change) you can bet military engineers would develop their own, premium version.

Like I said, flavour.

And to clarify, the issue is not "this weapon should not be useable anywhere because better alternatives exist", like you and I pointed out Hammer vs Reaper is a pretty good example because the Reaper thematically is the "military" version of the outdated Hammer; and yet Hammers are sometimes preferred over Reapers. That's fine by me.

4

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 26, 2023, 03:08:21 AM »

I thought it would be clear that my grievance is primarily a flavour one. A Harbinger using Mining Blasters as its best weapon is just wrong. I honestly am not too fussed about phase ship balance, given I mod out the phase speed debuff in my own games.

And I didn't say the Mining Blaster obsoletes the Heavy Blaster, I said they become no longer comparable. They no longer try to fill the same role, the Mining Blaster becomes its own thing which no other energy weapon does (and in what it does - armor breaking - it absolutely beats the heavy blaster for many ships). That's my problem with it, if a makeshift weapon exists to fill a unique niche then a military version of it WOULD be made.

5

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 26, 2023, 02:39:18 AM »

be inferior (but cheaper OP wise)

This is not a functional balance option in Starsector. You can always fit smaller number of more efficient and more expensive weapons, instead of filling all the slots with garbage. A weapon MUST be "best in slot" somewhere to be worth including in the game.

A good comparison would be Hammers vs Reapers. Technically Hammers are inferior, but there are still situations when you want to use Hammers over Reapers for one reason or another. Light Mortar vs LAG is another one.

Mining Blaster vs Heavy Blaster though? With the change they no longer fill the same role exactly, and there's far too many situations where Mining Blaster (in the form shown in the tweet) is just straight up superior to the Heavy Blaster in most metrics (specifically when it comes to phase ships, which should be the last ships you expect makeshift weapons on).

By the by, Hammer torpedoes didn't always have the "ubiquitous because of uses found by miners" line, it got added because I complained that Daggers shouldn't be using Hammers (which was planned to replace Reapers on Daggers at the time, thankfully that never eventuated); so it got retconned into a military weapon that became popular with civilians for non-military purposes.

6

Suggestions / Re: Disabled Ship = Escape Pods, not Boom

« on: January 22, 2023, 06:22:47 PM »

I'm reminded of SPAZ 1 where destroyed ships shoot out all their crew in pods at high velocity, which you can then either pick up or shoot to watch the exposed crewmen flail and die in the vacuum of space...

Also fighters should do this too, and maybe if the carrier has recovery shuttles it will also send out tiny pods to retrieve pilots...

7

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 14, 2023, 09:31:14 PM »

I actually don't like the Mining Blaster being "useful", to be honest. It feels wrong to see Mining Blasters mounted on something like a Harbinger. IMO "mining weapons" should always be inferior (but cheaper OP wise) to dedicated military counterparts, e.g. hammer vs reaper, mining laser vs PD laser.

I'd feel a lot better about the Mining Blaster if we get a military-grade upgrade for it (and really, the iteration of the Mining Blaster in the post is probably too strong and needs a nerf). I see Alex thinks the Heavy Blaster is the military-grade version which is true previously but this new iteration where it actually has a niche as a flux-efficient armor breaker? Not really.

As long as the Mining Blaster is best-in-slot for something (e.g. Harbinger) I won't feel good about it.

8

General Discussion / Re: I'm trying to play first tutorial- how do I get to galaxy map?

« on: January 13, 2023, 01:35:17 AM »

I mean, have you read any of the dialogue in the tutorial? It's all pretty self-explanatory and it tells you pretty quickly why you can't leave.

9

General Discussion / Re: I don't like the idea of build-in hull mods debuffs

« on: January 12, 2023, 08:18:43 PM »

I like it in terms of it adding more interesting effects to hullmods rather than it being a balancing mechanism. Which makes me sad that S-mod effects won't apply to normal built-in hullmods like HRS on the Apogee, it feels... wrong that the dedicated sensor ships are worse than the player's Protagonist(tm) jury-rigged ships at sensoring (and whatever else might be built-in and missing out on bonuses).

10

Suggestions / Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic

« on: January 12, 2023, 08:15:08 PM »

The medium energies don’t need to be better than ballistics, just good enough that they make the ship noticeable better. Say that because the mining blasters are good enough that they’re better than one chaingun which is good by itself but also means that you can have another HMG.
Or have them primarily use 3 autocannons and the mining blasters are more for punishing over extension or bursting through weak shields they’re cheap enough for that.
Having kinetic blasters might similarly mean that you can ditch HMGs and just have 3 chainguns or 1HMG, 2 GC, 2 KB and 1 MB.
The short range is not great but it’s not new. There’s ways of dealing with it.

Kinetic Blasters have an anti-shield DPS of 500 for 400 flux/second, at a range of 500 for the Eagle. That's not bad DPS wise but is pretty atrocious flux efficiency and range wise for any ship that can mount kinetics. It even says right in the blog post that Kinetic Blasters might be good on high tech ships but are pretty poor on the midline ships Andrada insists they be mounted on.

The updated Mining Blaster I agree could work with SO builds. However I also agree with whoever here said "just add SO is not a valid balance argument" because SO can be added to anything less than a Capital and by its very nature throws balance out of the window. Without SO there's no way a 400 range weapon on the Eagle could ever work.

11

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 12, 2023, 08:04:24 PM »

What’s wrong with that? An enforcer is just a worse dominator and yet it’s a good ship anyway.

Enforcer is a Destroyer and Dominator is a Cruiser. Enforcer costs a lot less DP than a Dominator to deploy - you can almost deploy three Enforcers for the cost of one Dominator.

Sunder and Hammerhead meanwhile have similar DP costs (and are both Destroyers) so are obviously meant to be on par power-wise, which is the case when the Hammerhead uses superior kinetics but definitely isn't when it's using energy weapons its flux grid can't support properly.

I do see that it would be similar to a Sunder, but the Hammerhead is a significantly tougher, cheaper ship that has more small mounts. It all hinges on that system!

Well, it has one extra small mount that points backwards. But yeah I expect the LG Hammerhead to have a mobility system (probably plasma jets) to make it different and competitive with the LG Sunder.

12

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 12, 2023, 09:44:53 AM »

That's to balance its flux stats so it doesn't have super shields AND super weapons. The Sunder has double the flux dissipation of the Hammerhead and nearly double the flux capacity.

13

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 12, 2023, 09:11:48 AM »

Doesn't change the fact that the Sunder has the same slots + a large energy, not to mention vastly superior flux stats?

14

Suggestions / Re: Buff the Medium Energy Slot

« on: January 12, 2023, 05:21:35 AM »

I see that LG Hammerhead with two medium energies...

... which if you think about it is a bit weird, since it's almost a worse Sunder that way which has the same mounts plus a large energy and HEF. Which means LG Hammerhead must have a non-HEF system otherwise it'd be almost certainly just a worse Sunder.

I wonder if the TT Brawler will get Coherer as well. I suppose it doesn't have to since it has Plasma Jets and 5 extra OP (plus the default TT builds use beams) but feels a bit weird if the actual high tech Brawler is lacking such a high tech hullmod.

15

Suggestions / Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic

« on: January 12, 2023, 05:08:12 AM »

Putting a 500 range weapon on the Eagle's butt-mounted energy weapons is the opposite of viable. Putting 600 range Kinetic Blasters on the Eagle's butt mounts when it can mount actual, nose-mounted kinetics is also the opposite of viable...