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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

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31
Suggestions / Re: Developer game mechanics that suck
« on: March 10, 2024, 11:20:33 AM »
While the OP is amusing, I sympathize with some of the points.

Orders are silly at times.  I recently learned that I need to use "Rally Civilian Craft" to force warships to actually stay at a spot I want them to guard.

Starsector is a slow game.  I need to multiply speed by at least x3 to get have gameplay speed similar to other games' normal speed.  x2 speed in combat is not quite fast enough, but it is the fastest it can run at without breaking fidelity.  I wish time shift would speed up the flagship instead of slowing the world, especially phase ships whose speed degrades as flux builds up.

32
Suggestions / Re: Carrier-Specific bonuses for elite skills
« on: March 10, 2024, 11:08:38 AM »
As a heron fan, I would prefer to keep my OP points as well
Me too, Heron (without s-mods) almost has too few OP for battlecarrier use.  I have to use cheap fighters, and my flux stats are never above halfway (caps below 10, vents at about 15).  Still, it has more dissipation than Mora, but Heron needs that flux to power energy weapons.  I cannot afford Warthogs on Heron like I can on some other carriers.

But Heron is not the only one, though it is the probably the most blatant.  Gemini is another.  Two long-range guns, pilums, ITU, and some fighter; that's about it.  Astral is another that feels like it has too few OP after it gets missiles.  Mora has more leeway, but it still does not have very much, and it almost needs max vents to support two or three good light guns.  At times, I am tempted to downgrade missiles from medium to small on Mora just to get more OP.  (Heron does not even have that option.)

This idea isn't targeted at battlecarriers in the first place, and if you don't want to spend your ordnance points you are not forced to! It's up to you if the cost is worth the bonus.
If player has a lot of combat skills to power this new hullmod, it may become more than worth the bonus like original Expanded Deck Crew that gave -25% decay/+50% rate gain (i.e., too powerful not to get).

33
Suggestions / Re: Carrier-Specific bonuses for elite skills
« on: March 10, 2024, 10:27:42 AM »
Maybe you could make it so there's a hullmod that grants fighter bonuses based on officer skills. More or less you could use the same bonuses as above, but you need a hullmod to activate them? That would help mitigate the fomo factor because it costs ordnance points to get the bonuses.
Carriers as battlecarriers are generally OP-starved.  Without s-mods, I have a tight OP budget that can afford few critical guns, barely enough flux stats, and ITU and maybe one more critical warship hullmod like Hardened Shields, Ballistic Rangefinder, or Neural Interface.  I do not use Expended Deck Crew (even after it got buffed back a little recently) because either I have to give up too much to be a viable battlecarrier or I use talons or pods for fighters and defeat the point of using the carrier instead of a warship.

34
General Discussion / Re: [Poll] Command Style
« on: March 10, 2024, 10:08:42 AM »
The less I need to order my ships around, the better.  I do give initial orders and retreat ships that are too badly damaged and/or losing CR.  Occasionally, I eliminate priority targets.  Rarely, I avoid targets that are either too dangerous or I want left alive.

35
Suggestions / Re: make more skills affect fighters and bombers
« on: March 10, 2024, 09:06:37 AM »
The main reason you would take the point defense skill at the moment is if you're planning to make it elite immediately, as the base effect is extremely underwhelming otherwise for both player and officers. I would ultimately suggest making the base effect 200 range boost to pd on flagship, and the elite bonus to be +50% damage to missiles and fighters for both fighters and flagship, and 200 range for fighter pd.
Point Defense used to give +100%, but that was too powerful.  Fighters evaporated and missiles could not get through.  Remnants all had it thanks to their cores.

I would usually get Point Defense for my flagship (and automated ships with cores) mainly for the +200 range, but not to use as PD, but to weaponize it and turn PD into assault weapons, although now that IPDAI needs to be s-modded for that effect, that would be used mainly for burst PD and HMGs.

Once or twice, I got Point Defense for stronger PD against fighter swarms, mine spam from Doom stacks, and shooting down Rift Torpedoes from Tesseracts (my flagship was Ziggurat, so no shields).

36
Suggestions / Re: Colony building that gives SP
« on: March 10, 2024, 08:51:15 AM »
Once a player reaches level 15, if they have a commission then they gain over 1 million credits every cycle just for sitting around. They could go out exploring for a while and come back rich even if they don't find anything.
That is about 100k a month.  If they have colonies, the hostilities cut into accessibility (and colony income and growth) some, though probably not enough to lose more than they gain from commission.  (I do not want to take time out to check numbers now.)

Waiting a year in-game in a Dram for a million is lame though.  I do not want to be away from keyboard waiting that long to get that much.

Again, one of them is starter currency so the player can always get going even after a wipe, while the other is gated behind actually doing something within the game. This is not that different from RPGs where you can buy some weapons/armor from the shoppies, but to get the best weapons/armors you have to go out and kill some difficult monster or boss or otherwise actively fulfill some mission. This is a pretty common approach in games and is not at all unique to Starsector. In fact in many such games, money becomes essentially worthless later on because it's so plentiful.
I do not like "Money for Nothing" in other games either.  No reason Starsector should make the same mistake other games do.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this many times before. Oh yes I did, here for example. Regardless of their name, the main source of gaining Story Points is via XP which is mostly from fighting, and their main use is upgrading your fleet (through smods and through elite skills). So they're basically just another way to level up or improve your fleet, but gives bonuses that you can't really get any other way. Thus, passive SP gain is a bad idea. They should be from actively doing something within the game.
As long as SP is used mostly as currency for upgrades, and Starsector has no problem with money for nothing, then passive SP is not necessarily a bad idea late in the game, after player exhausts non-combat sources of SP.  (Too early cheapens the non-combat sources of SP.)  Slow passive gain, after player obtains that power somehow, can alleviate the grinding for more SP if player is not interested in dedicating his game at farming for them.

37
General Discussion / Re: Is the Hephaestus at a good spot?
« on: March 10, 2024, 07:41:44 AM »
It is better than it used to be.  The accuracy on a turret was awful until relatively recently.

38
Suggestions / Re: make more skills affect fighters and bombers
« on: March 09, 2024, 06:06:06 PM »
Nah, I mean the current fighter bonus would be moved to the elite side for consistency.
Right now, Point Defense is the only combat skill that gives fighters the bonuses the flagship get.

It may be consistent with your idea, but the bonuses flagship and fighters would not be.  What would flagship get?  Flipped basic and elite where basic gets ranges and elite gets damage?

39
Suggestions / Re: make more skills affect fighters and bombers
« on: March 09, 2024, 05:51:32 PM »
  • Point defense (elite): +50% damage against fighters and missiles
So fighters would get 100% total while the flagship does not?

40
Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.97a (Released) Patch Notes
« on: March 09, 2024, 04:33:44 PM »
Hegemony is like "Do you have a flag? No flag no country.."
Yes, we do!  We select a flag the moment we build our first colony.

On the topic of those fleets, I do kind of wish they spawned at their home ports and headed over, rather than materializing near my colonies. They tend to pop back up quite a bit quicker than I'd expect, to the point where the player's options seem to be either avoiding his own colonies until the crises run out, or dealing with perpetual costs due to trade disruption. Counterintuitive - colonies do worse rather than better when the player is nearby.
Sometimes, it is blatantly obvious they magically spawn just off the screen like some RPG random encounter.

41
Suggestions / Re: make more skills affect fighters and bombers
« on: March 09, 2024, 04:18:08 PM »
I like to see Heron buffed to be the battlecarrier it used to be.

Whilst this issue can't be fixed easily. I believe it's partially tied to how officer skills work. Officer skills do not affect fighters
Point Defense is an exception, although that is not very much.

42
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 09, 2024, 03:28:50 PM »
If Onslaughts are commonly shown in endgame meta fleets, it probably is one of the stronger (power per DP) ships in the game.

Also, whenever the XIV version is available, it is always taken over the standard version, except maybe Legion because of the mounts.

43
As for RazielsShadow's question, you can start your colonies with your starting wolf if you feel like it. You just can't let them grow over level three unless you want to fight the other factions.
Only Pirates bother level three worlds, and Pirates are easy to deal with.
This is the biggest change compared to previous releases.  In previous versions, I could wait until a colony grew to size 5 (if I kept Free Port off, which I did) before I had to be prepared to deal with large fleets from major factions.  Also, if they came early, it was generally one large-ish fleet that could be defeated without too much difficulty.

Now, at least one of the non-Pirate factions wants my colonies the moment one of them grows to size 4, and my defenses aside from battlestation will be of little help against the huge forces they send.  I still build the military structures for stability and marine production (for raids).

44
Did not read everything yet.  Some quick comments.

V.7 - Removing D-Mods
Most ships you obtain will have D-Mods, modifications that have negative effects. Hull restoration has a huge chance to remove one D-Mod after you obtain the ship. After that you remove around one D-Mod per month from your fleet.
You can also remove D-Mods by repairing them in a dock, but the price is higher than buying the ship new and it goes up for every additional D-Mod. A Mule (P) costs 40.800 credits when you produce it yourself and restoring it with one D-Mod costs 48.960. Still, it might be worth restoring small frigates with many D-Mods, so your hull restoration fixes your expensive ships.
I like to store most of my broken ships in my colonies and only take a couple of high value ones to restore over time. When they are fully restored, I rotate them for other ships with D-mods, so my fleet becomes pristine over time.
Keep in mind Hull Restoration does not remove builtin d-mods like Ill-Advised Modifications on Pather ships or Special Modifications on Executor.  For those who want pristine version of those, Restore is the only way.

XIV - Raids
There are benefits to raiding the other factions. You can manipulate the market, so you earn even more money, you can obtain blueprints or colony items like a pristine nanoforges, and you can resolve some colony crisis by raiding or tactical bombing planets.
Small planets are easy to raid and you don’t need special preparation. A small fleet with 100-200 marines are enough to wait until there are no defending fleets or to destroy the defenses.
Planets like Kazeron and Chicomoztoc are a different beast. To successfully steal their pristine nanoforge or blueprints you need to destroy their Star Fortress and have 1500+ marines. It might work with less, but 1500 is on the safe side.
This requires enough capital ships and proper logistics. You need around 3-5 capital ships and maybe 3-5 cruisers. Additionally, you need 2000+ supplies and space for your marines. Valkyries and faction codes reduce the casualties of your marines, but aren’t mandatory. The supplies are needed to sustain your fleet while you wait for your chance and to repair your ships after the attack.
You want to either use a Gate or a less frequented Jump-Point to enter the system in “Go Dark” mode. Then, using asteroid belts and nebula you slowly move your fleet closer to your target and wait until the big fleets leave and work on other tasks. It’s best when you only monitor the radar and don’t go into visual range. You pounce when there are no defenders or only Pickets left. Destroy the defenses and raid the system directly afterwards. After you are done, you need to either instantly traverse jump or fly away to lose aggro before you leave the system.
Raids are difficult in mid game and become easy in late game.
You do not need to destroy battlestations of size 7 worlds if you can stack enough attack power.  9000+ attack power from 20 Phantoms, 4000 marines, and low marine xp was enough.  Did not have Tactical Drills to boost it.  Only Chicomoztoc (for the pristine nanoforge) could not be raided like this.  If I had all elite marines and/or taken Tactical Drills, I might be able to raid Chico.  Raiding big worlds will lose well over a thousand marines, but if you have lots of cash and several military bases, getting more marines will be almost trivial.

The advantage of stealth raiding big worlds without a fight is less rep loss and being able to keep Ziggurat in the fleet if fighting can be avoided at all.

I prefer to build a stealth fleet, with high-tech phase ships with Phase Field and use Insulated Engines to minimize profile further.  With profile at 100 or less when Dark, it is fairly easy to sneak into a world even if a patrol or two is orbiting it.  Obviously, Phantom is the ideal raider ship, but Valkyries with Insulated Engines will do in a pinch.

These items are nice to have with the exception of nanoforges. A nanoforge reduces the amount of D-mods on ships you produce and affects your fleets and convoys.
If you want Military Base/High Command self-sufficient (no cross-faction imports), you need Synchrotron and at least a Corrupted Nanoforge.

45
General Discussion / Re: should we just nerf the Onslaught?
« on: March 09, 2024, 06:23:26 AM »
I don't think Onslaught is a standout among capitals, Legion and Executor are both on a similar level for the DP.
Executor is 50 DP.  It should be good.  If it is similar to Onslaught and Legion in performance, that means player is paying 10 OP more with Executor than he would if he used Onslaught or Legion instead.

As for Radiant, since Cybernetics seems to have become the next BotB-tier meta skill (at least for those with some Combat skills), getting Automated Ships is a big opportunity cost.  You get Radiant, you lose out on Cybernetics unless you get Tech 8.

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