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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Messages - Megas

Pages: 1 ... 702 703 [704] 705 706 ... 808
10546
Suggestions / Re: Fighter as a Carrier's weapons
« on: October 09, 2015, 11:46:14 AM »
Mercury was smaller when it used to be called "Shuttle" and had only two weapon mounts.

@ Tartiflette: I do not see what you call exploits as such (no more than not deploying civilians).  If I must deploy a carrier on the field just to use fighters, then fighters become glorified missiles.  I might as well call the two MIRV launchers on my Conquest flight decks that launch unmanned suicide drones.  Part of the reason to use fighters is safe, renewable assets without necessarily putting a carrier at risk.  I would probably stick with dedicated combat ships that can win combats more efficiently than carrier-and-fighters.

10547
Suggestions / Re: Fighter as a Carrier's weapons
« on: October 09, 2015, 07:13:30 AM »
While the ideas have potential, there is one possible thing they can interfere with, if fighters need their carriers on the field - simply deploying fighters and not the carrier (and watch the battle on cam feed).  Back when I experimented with lone Odyssey plus lots of fighters (in post-0.6), I simply deployed only fighters in many fights because Odyssey was too expensive to deploy.  Also, the AI frequently deploys fighters without a carrier on the field.  Also, just deploying a wing of fighters to capture points while you pilot your big cruiser or battleship to destroy whatever you find, but leave the carrier off the field (because you only need it to make fighters immortal).

Flight deck is worth about six small slots.
Erm, what do you mean?  A figher wing is worth 6 small weapon slots, that kind of thing?
Yes.  Look at the weapon mounts a dedicated combat ship has compared to an equivalent-sized carrier.  The missing mounts are roughly six per flight deck.  Also think how many weapon mounts worth of weapons fighter wings have.

Fighters would need to be separate from OP or else players like me would select one wing of fighters and put the rest of the OP (i.e., leave additional decks empty) into making the carrier a stronger and/or more resilient combatant.

10548
Suggestions / Re: A Re-Design of Ship Destruction, Boarding, and Salvage
« on: October 08, 2015, 04:54:27 PM »
The main thing I dislike about boarding is unreliable chance of success.  I simply reload until I succeed, although unfavorable odds mean I might grind for more than an hour in a worst-case scenario.  Better to just make boarding reliable (if you have enough troops) but more expensive than buying the ship at a market.

10549
Suggestions / Re: Fighter as a Carrier's weapons
« on: October 08, 2015, 02:40:59 PM »
Flight deck is worth about six small slots.  Could have flight deck slots.

10550
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 08, 2015, 09:43:41 AM »
If it was easy to have allies turn against you during combat, it probably would not have been too hard to implement multi-sided free-for-all battles instead of two-sided battles.

Reputation hit and/or lack of XP/loot would be sufficient deterrence from deliberate killing of allies.  I would not waste time shooting allies if it does not pay.  I might pulverize an ally if I lost a ship due to friendly fire or if they stole my objective and I do not get the benefits.  That reminds me...

If an ally of the player captures a point, do the benefits apply to ally and player, or just ally only?

10551
General Discussion / Re: Recommend similar games?
« on: October 07, 2015, 06:13:52 AM »
I will admit that years ago, when deciding to buy SPAZ or Starfarer (now Starsector), SPAZ won out... or would have until I saw internet connect required to activate.  Starsector uses old-fashioned key like older games, meaning once I download the game, I can set it up offline to play like various classic games I enjoy.  (I play games offline.)  For that alone, Starsector beats SPAZ.

10552
Suggestions / Re: A Re-Design of Ship Destruction, Boarding, and Salvage
« on: October 07, 2015, 06:04:09 AM »
Right now, player almost needs near-infinite credits to clean out shipyards so that markets produce more ships next month, hopefully a shiny new Hyperion or other rare ship instead of yet another junk Hammerhead.

More expensive yet reliable boarding would ease the need to "gamble" (Diablo-style) for ships.

Even better would be the ability to acquire blueprints and autofactories so that I do not need to rely on another faction's market to get what I want.  (I really want to produce all of my stuff so I can destroy everyone, Nexerelin style.  No more playing paperboy at endgame!)

10553
Suggestions / Re: A Re-Design of Ship Destruction, Boarding, and Salvage
« on: October 06, 2015, 10:54:30 AM »
Possible suggestions to go along with the OP:

Currently, weapons and engines have a chance to shutdown permanently when CR is less than 20%.  Use CR instead of hull for hit points until CR hits 0%, then the ship quickly shuts down; or weapons and engines knocked-out are down permanently once CR is 0%.  Once all weapons and engines are permanently down, the ship is considered disabled.  If ship takes more damage after CR is 0%, the damage goes to hull.  When hull goes to zero, the ship explodes and is destroyed.  Problems I see with this:
* Level 10 damage control perk - I suppose hull regeneration can be changed to armor regeneration in this case.
* People who want fast kills and do not want to bother disabling the ship will simply destroy (many) ships instead.

About looting:  I take everything I can carry (but I will dump junk if I must), but I especially want things that are hard to buy in sufficient quantity from shops - rare enough that I search Black Markets, buy any found, and risk reputation.  Actually, medium needlers are somewhat common.  It is the light needlers that are obnoxiously rare, and railguns are not much more common.  No one (aside from your ships) uses storm needlers so those can only be bought (or looted from trade fleets at the prohibitive cost of reputation).

I agree with Linnis.  The problem with comm sniffers is the risk of reputation loss in exchange for more mostly useless cryptic information.  Also, the decision of salvage is usually a no-brainer.  If the player cannot fight remaining nearby hostiles, he will not waste time trying to salvage.  Otherwise, player will gladly salvage and crush anyone who tries to interfere (and have even more salvage).

Remember 0.62.  The choice to salvage was usually a no-brainer, despite the excess loot drops.  I disliked 0.62 because I felt shoehorned into an Atlas fleet led by lone Medusa flagship just to be able to loot a defense fleet only without exceeding double capacity.

10554
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 03, 2015, 11:44:37 AM »
Another silly question:  Are disabled ally ships eligible for boarding?  If so, that is another reason to kill allies.  Ally fleet has Hyperion?  Join as ally and kill it!

10555
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 03, 2015, 11:36:44 AM »
To expand on that a bit more: I've got a TODO item to have extreme friendly fire vs allies have repercussions, but it's pretty low priority because atm I don't see what incentive the player might have to do that.
Assuming that access to weapons remain the same (i.e., no blueprints or autofactories we can own), I seriously consider killing anything that can drop rare weapons such as Light Needlers.  Very powerful, very rare, can never find enough for all of my ships.

Or simply more loot to take if I am greedy, if I can haul it all.  I see allies as a source of loot to take from if killing them incurs no penalty.  In other words, the way to attack friendly fleets is to wait until they fight an enemy, join as an ally, then kill everyone.

10556
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 03, 2015, 09:55:38 AM »
Silly question:  What happens if you join as an ally, then kill your allies (or everyone)?  I smell exploit if I there are no consequences for deliberate friendly fire.  (Back when losing your ships gave experience, I shot my ships to convert them to XP.)

10557
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 03, 2015, 06:21:12 AM »
IMO leave it in, just don't have it on be default. Mention it at the end of the tutorial or at some convenient point, so that players are aware it exists. What I dislike is the idea of someone playing for a long time and not realizing they are playing with 50% damage.
That was me.  I only realized that, after much playing, when I figured out why a perfect mission score is only 50% instead of 100%.

10558
Blog Posts / Re: Expanded Battles
« on: October 02, 2015, 08:22:32 PM »
Seems like chain-battling can make a comeback, and I do not need to spend CR for every last fleet I want to fight, if enemies keep joining the first fight.

10559
General Discussion / Re: latest versions made game worse
« on: October 02, 2015, 12:21:34 PM »
You do want maximum market access if you want to purchase the most rare weapons and ships.  If you want to powerlevel, you also want to be able to visit markets to sell your merchandise.  You cannot participate in commodity runs if you are banned from markets, after all.

Fleet action is nice, and I deploy all in endgame when level is over 50.  Deploy all is good as it speeds up combat and enables more chain-battling by enabling 50% CR back on standing down.  More ships eat more supplies, and it is a good idea to have stockpiles everywhere.  For players who are struggling with having enough supplies, playing lean with small elite fleets may be the way to make do with poor access to supplies.

10560
General Discussion / Re: latest versions made game worse
« on: October 02, 2015, 10:56:50 AM »
Having more time to read and contemplate the OP, here goes:

Factions
So far, whether Alex likes it or not, factions are defined by the ships they use.  I agree that factions are too similar to each other, and it is glaringly obvious if I play Nexerelin and add a mod faction or two such as Blackrock.  Before 0.65, Hegemony and Pirates were low-tech, Tri-Tachyon was high-tech, and the rest were midline.  Now, all standard factions share most ships.  Tri-Tachyon use almost as much midline as high-tech, and they even use the low-tech Lasher.  Independents use everything.  Pirates use (D) ships and a few others.  The remaining factions share the same ships, which is a mix of low-tech and midline, plus the high-tech Wolf.

Reputation
So far, the problem is optimal play requires that you have unlimited access to all markets and merchandise.  For that, you need cooperative relations with all factions except Independents and Pirates.  Independents, due to lack of military market, only require minimum relations of Suspicious.  Pirates will trade as long as relations are not Vengeful.  The only way to get high relations with everyone who matters is to fight Pirates only.  Furthermore, you cannot pursue survivors when relations are below -70 because the -5 from pursuit will send relations to Vengeful, and that means permaban from that faction's market, and you have ruined, I repeat, RUINED your character.  Also, Valhalla is a trap.  Big system with puny markets, and doing anything useful there (except killing named Pirate bounties) will hurt your reputation with one of the factions.

Quest for supplies
The problem with this so far, combined with AI fleeing from large fleets, is it pushes the player into using small and elite fleets (and soloing battles with chain-flagships) for much of the game, if he wants to play optimally.  Combat will yield enough drops if you can solo fleets with a few frigates.  This is most easily achieved with an aggressive Combat and Technology focus.

Boarding is awful because it is too random and your best chance of success for boarding is under 50%.  Chance is low enough that even with save scumming, it is possible to have more than ten failures in a row before you succeed.  Such a worst-case scenario of fight-board-fail-reload will take more than hour.  So far, boarding is only useful for acquiring rare ships at the endgame.

Toll trolls are obnoxious.  For now, the most painless way to deal with them late in the game is to let them start a scan, then run away and take the -3 rep.

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