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16

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96.1a (In Development) Patch Notes

« on: January 01, 2024, 02:04:37 PM »

Although I think the squall nerf isn’t entirely unwarranted, I think its HP value might be being nerfed too much. This is because without any hullmods buffing its stats squalls aren’t too hard to deal with. Missile spec’s huge buffs made squalls basically invulnerable though.

I would feel more comfortable with a less severe HP nerf than 50%, but who knows maybe this will be better for everyone at the end of the day. Cool adjustments, thank you for the patch notes!

I'm super excited to see how the other factions new interactions with colony crisis goes. Oh, that brings up another idea.

Now that the Luddic church and hegemony claim two uninhabited systems in the core that have planets to colonize, maybe increasing the weight (if possible) of having a few additional nice traits for the planets in that system would be nice? Nothing spectacular, maybe just like a better chance for a farmable or organics planet in these systems? Food for thought.

c;

17

General Discussion / Re: New player here, love this game

« on: December 30, 2023, 01:02:56 PM »

About finding weapons, it helps if you hoard all weapons you scavenge and store them away. There are 3 abandoned stations you can store them in for free in the core worlds that are always in the same spot, or you could buy storage that charges you monthly for storage, or you can store in your colony for free.

About [REDACTED] they’re very fast and angry with (usually) more shield strength than armor strength. This means two things

1: bring some more anti-shield weaponry if you can. Low-flux/damage weapons (autopulse, ion pulser, antimatter blaster, pulse lasers, any kinetic weapons…)

2. If your fleet is all about kiting, redacted are good about chasing you until you die, so be careful about making a fleet all about kiting against the remnant. It can help to have some of your kiting ships use things that punish enemies that get close, like sabots.

Have fun!

18

General Discussion / Re: "Fearless" Automated ships

« on: December 30, 2023, 12:56:03 PM »

More command advice for fearless or reckless ships-

Giving an escort command (not a defend command) to a ship will ‘leash’ the escort to that ship, keeping it from rushing into battle quite as hard unless its escort does. Useful to include in your bag of tricks.

19

General Discussion / Re: Astral feels like a waste of dp.

« on: December 25, 2023, 06:12:18 AM »

By the way - Hyperions, Harbingers and Drovers are pretty good options if you want 240 DP soft cap filled with only the wolfpack ships.

I don’t think astral is worse than drovers or harbingers for a situation like this. Drover has no large missiles and doesn’t concentrate all bombers into 1 ship. Herons would be better but I feel like astral is a bit easier to babysit. Harbinger is better in AI hands than some people think but I wouldn’t use more than 3 ever in a wide fleet, having too many phase ships never seemed very good, which means you probably still have enough DP with support doctrine for 1 astral ( or 1 Pegasus). Or you could use Hyperions + harbingers. Which sounds good as an alternative to astral or Pegasus. It’s good to have options!

Hyperions are so busted op for wolfpack frigate spam if you cared about being as good as possible for wolfpack you should use nothing but Hyperions and then get mercenary officers to officer the rest of the fleet with more hyperions. But that gets boring if I do that all the time so I look for other options. Not so that I specifically avoid Hyperions, just so I don’t always only use Hyperions.

Thanks for the ideas.

20

General Discussion / Re: Astral feels like a waste of dp.

« on: December 24, 2023, 07:14:16 PM »

It sounds like PixiCode could probably achieve similar results with this ~190 DP skill-supported officered-up frigate rushdown fleet just leaving the extra 50 DP on the table. Or bringing any vaguely-decent assortment of larger ships to provide some cannon-fodder bulk. In any case it sounds like the Astral is just reasonably-effective filler there, which isn't a ringing endorsement.

It's certainly possible to build a fleet with Astrals that can win any typical battle that you get thrown into, of course. It's definitely not outright trash. However, I'm skeptical that it's a highly competitive (that is, optimal or close to it) choice outside of a few debatable edge cases. Adequate in many cases, but always a little underwhelming.

Kinda, yeah, I agree. But *something* needs to act as filler thanks to the 30 ship limit if you’re using support doctrine. Not even 30 8 DP shIps will reach 240 DP limit if you use any kind of DP discount skill. Thanks to the 30 ship limit you eventually need to use bigger ships. But now there’s so many frigates these bigger ships might never get many opportunities to shoot at the enemy since the AI is afraid of friendly fire. So a good choice of filler is missiles or carriers. Astral is both at once.

Pegasus is also an excellent choice for the same fleet with better direct battle options on top of strong indirect missiles. It’s a good thing it got nerfed tbh.

As far as Nettle’s point about Astral being a self fulfilling prophecy of low dps - it’s not that low dps. Longbows, daggers, flash and recall system in addition to whatever missiles you want is still great. The problem is it requires some micro or else the bombers do some stupid stuff. Pegasus can benefit from micro too, but it’s not as polarizing of an issue. I’ve had battles as long as 15 minutes back in 0.96 when I was testing builds against 1k+ DP ordo. Those aren’t normal battles, but it’s still a use case.

All that said, I wouldn’t be against astral getting some buffs, it definitively has room to be better. But I wouldn’t call it a waste of DP.

Pegasus arguably better despite that.

BTW that captain hector astral video is insane

21

General Discussion / Re: Astral feels like a waste of dp.

« on: December 24, 2023, 03:55:33 PM »

The good news is that enemies usually run out too...

While the Pegasus' FMR 4 LRG missile has much better alpha damage than 2 LRG 6 decks, the AI tends to massively overkill with Hurricanes on all those FMRs. That's completely irrelevant for 'normal' battles, like facing 240-600 total enemy DP. but what if you're fighting many enemy ships at once? Like say over +700 DP - especially Remnant ships?

That's why I brought up the Astral's longevity. Furthermore, in the example fleet concept I gave for the Astral, the rushdown frigates are killing most of the ships regardless of using the Astral or the Pegasus, the astral is a support craft in a fleet like this. The player wouldn't even officer the astral in my suggested fleet concept, they officer all the frigates to maximize wolfpack tactics and all that. Though officering astral for that fleet doesn't sound bad I guess. I haven't tried officering astrals for a wide fleet, I leave them unofficered.

To reiterate I'm not saying astral is better than pegasus overall, just that they both achieve the same end result of supporting the very wide fleet, and that there is at least 1 reason to pick astral over pegasus in such a fleet. Probably only that 1 reason though.

22

General Discussion / Re: Astral feels like a waste of dp.

« on: December 24, 2023, 03:16:14 PM »

The reason why Astral synergizes particularly well with a wide fleet rather than other capitals is that it has the most force projection per DP that ignores friendly hitboxes.

Pegasus.

Pegasus has 2 more large missiles but no flight decks. I think they overall 'break even' for specifically wide fleet play. And, on the plus side, Astral lasts much longer than Pegasus which eventually runs out of missiles, which comes into play for when you're fighting multiple fleets for whatever reason.

However Pegasus is better in more kinds of fleets, which is why I assume you brought it up. Pegasus feels better because it's less niche.

23

General Discussion / Re: Astral feels like a waste of dp.

« on: December 24, 2023, 02:22:54 PM »

The Astral is still a good (although very niche) carrier and it is not a waste of DP in those cases. There's interesting things like Captain Hector's video, and there's more normal-ish fleets. Astral's good in like one type of fleet.

Astral, in my opinion, is best used as part of a very wide rushdown fleet if used by the AI. In the player's hands you can use it in basically any fleet, like usual. Anyways, a very wide rushdon fleet would be Tons of LP Brawlers, Hyperions, Omens, Shades, Scarabs Tempests and so on. The position of the 2 large missile racks does not matter if you use Astral in its intended role since all of the long range missiles are tracking.

The Astral not only acts as great power projection to strike in impunity as all the frigates rush down, but it's capable of defending itself long enough for the highly mobile fleet to pounce an any threatening enemies, quickly wipe them out, then go back to the frontlines before the enemy reacts. You can even use the Astral as bait for enemy capitals if you set them to avoid, exposing the capitals to danger of being flanked as your frigates fight everything else, then collapse onto the capitals.

The reason why Astral synergizes particularly well with a wide fleet rather than other capitals is that it has the most force projection per DP that ignores friendly hitboxes. You could argue Herons/Moras have more thanks to better DP/Deck efficiency, but they do not have 2 large missiles and they are more difficult to micro. While a LegionXIV is close to Astral, the Astral still has more fighter bay per DP than Legion and a system dedicated to its flight decks.



Example fleet: Support Doctrine, tons of Omens/other frigates, 3-5 Hyperions, 8 Scarabs, 1-2 astrals

EDIT:

Hmm, in the "capable" hands of AI Odyssey shows even worse performance, is it a waste of dp too? It's a dedicated bomber carrier, it needs support to be effective.

Nah! It's a great capital ship in the AI's hands, but like the Astral its a very specialized ship in the AI hands. You need some sort of rushdown fleet to fight alongside the Odyssey and back up its ability to go in and go out. Also preferably (not required, i've seen builds that don't even give any speed/maneuvering bonuses...) give the odyssey Helmsmanship skill and Auxillary Thrusters. AI is better at backing away with as much maneuvering as you can give them, and despite the Odyssey's system putting it into danger it does have the speed to run away after going in if its flux capacitors get too big. You'd probably need to micro the odysseys more if you don't give them speed buffs.

Try using Defense Targetting Array hullmod 2x Longbow Odyssey with 2 Proximity Charge Launchers and 2 Autopulsers. It's a blast.

24

Modding / Re: [0.96a-RC10] Yoshgramm-wen Yards

« on: July 03, 2023, 08:24:58 PM »

This is very poggers! I must add it to my sector.

25

Suggestions / Idea for Integrated Point Defense AI S-MOD.

« on: June 13, 2023, 09:07:57 PM »

Spoiler

So the IPDAI S-Mod got changed in 0.96, this thread isn't meant to discuss those changes too much, though if anyone had anything to contribute that could be fun. I think they were good changes, IPDAI being cheaper to fit was a great chance, and the move of smalls becoming Point Defense to a s-mod was an interesting decision that makes more people willing to use IPDAI while still allowing the fun shenanigans IPDAI let people do in previous versions.

...

So uh, what if IPDAI S-mod also turned medium ballistic and energy weapons into point defense? After all, S-mods are a very limited resource... you really want to feel the power of a hullmod with the new s-mod system.

 

[close]

Actually this idea is too overpowered, ignore it.

26

Suggestions / Re: Squall Nerf

« on: May 31, 2023, 01:46:19 AM »

Actually, I feel like squalls have really felt the nerf this patch. They’re still exceptionally strong when buffed with ECCM and if you also buff them with missile spec it’s basically impossible to stop squalls in vanilla without gimping your entire build.

Really I don’t think the squall itself is the reason why it’s overpowered in 0.96, though in 0.95 it was extremely overtuned. I actually blame the skill missile spec, specifically the increased HP it provides as the biggest contributor to squall strength now, though ECCM also plays a big part.

After watching an AI capital ship vent when 2 squalls were firing at it, i definetively feel the nerfs on the squall, though.

27

Mods / Re: [0.96a] Ship/Weapon Pack 1.14.0

« on: May 26, 2023, 08:27:19 PM »

This is so extremely hype, thank you!!

28

General Discussion / Re: My Dominator is completely useless.

« on: May 16, 2023, 05:31:33 PM »

You keep using the HAG on your ships, that's the issue. Alex can preach all day long how it's not a bad weapon, but realistically why would you mount a 480 flux/second HE gun with meh hit strength. Even in this patch I haven't found a ship where it's not overshadowed by other choices.

As for the Dom build, you didn't even max the vents... That's too much PD for a build that's not Shield Shunted. My take on the Dominator is that you either go full tank mode with armour, or make a good big ship killer with strong weapons. It's possible to do both but not without s-mods.

Agree that Hephag is bad for the dominator, but I think Hephag is actually kinda decent now that it got such a huge recoil reduction buff. The ability to accurately hit frigates and pound the same spot on an enemy over and over is pretty useful. The key is the "pound same spot on a large ship over and over," this does give it a use case for punching through armor and cutting into hull faster than a Hellbore might. Not because a Hephag deals more armor damage, but because a hellbore isn't going to hit the same spot twice. Probably. I think Hephag has a use on BRF LDAC Retribution builds (though Mjolnir is probably better), Invictus builds and Conquest builds.

Dominator's not going to really be aiming at frigates so who cares, just use Hellbores or even a Mjolnir.

29

General Discussion / Re: Big changes in AI behavior?

« on: May 16, 2023, 05:27:16 PM »

Yeah the 'face hugging' behavior is not new, but I swear reckless ships retreated at high flux faster in 0.95 than in 0.96. And Aggressive officers seem to (Thankfully!) act more aggressively in 0.96. But, no proof yet...

30

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.96a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: May 15, 2023, 11:56:11 AM »

1) Back to 4 large missile slots
2) Remove the special ship flag that lets its missile slots turn (in retrospect, that's a no-brainer to rein in any Cyclone concerns, the ship *has a special flag* that makes these an issue in the first place)
3) Shield efficiency to 0.8, the midline standard (Not sure if the Executor should be affected here, too or not - my impression is that the Executor is in a good place right now)
4) Movement speed to 35 (the Executor keeps it 50 and gets larger engine glows)
5) Possibly DP to 60; not sure if that's needed or not

At least, that's what I'm thinking at the moment. Could very well change, I'm not settled on any of it.

Executor larger engine glows, I'm all for this oh yes.

I think the executor could be nerfed to 0.8 shield efficiency, but be given a higher flux capacity as a result. This way weapons like autopulse fit better on it, at the cost of capacitors being less effective use of OP on the executor. Overall I think it would be a nerf, and the executor seems good enough to be able to 'afford' a nice little nerf. I agree that the executor really should keep its current speed though, and that the executor is largely in a good place. It's probably imbalanced in that it has access to HEF on 2 large energies which the player can abuse like nuts, but that never stopped the Doom from staying in its current form despite being exceptionally powerful in player hands, right? Hehe.

As far as the Pegasus goes, on top of the nerfs it currently has planned to make room for the 4 large missiles, you could try also giving it a smaller shield arc, say 120 degrees. This would keep its battleship identity, but introduce a new weakness to help accomodate the power of the 4 missile slots + FMR.