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16

General Discussion / Re: Frustrated with Quantum Disruptor for Harbinger

« on: December 14, 2021, 08:37:02 PM »

First, I tried the butt Reaper loadout, but it is awkward to use, and only two or three shots.

Try the reaper loadout but inverting your WASD controls. Makes flying backwards a lot simpler.

17

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: December 14, 2021, 08:30:21 PM »

Anyone else finding that arms dealers are still kind of meh; I've only gotten 5 in my playthrough so far and they've all offered rather subpar purchases. And by the time I was able to find one that actually contained a Medusa - I had already found and bought a medusa from the black market rendering the arms dealer purposeless.

Maybe a solution should be that arms dealers should be like any other type of contacts that you can develop and hold on to. This way, there's a more consistent way of accessing high-end gear without having to search the whole inner core for it.

18

General Discussion / Re: Shipping Disruption between two very close colonies

« on: December 14, 2021, 08:20:06 PM »

Happens from pirate activity in general - it used to require actual destruction of a merchant fleet... but since the game doesn't track fleets that aren't near the player that got 'fixed' back around .9.1 or so.

I think there was something in the patch notes about not disrupting in-faction supply from pirate activity that's not in your system...

As I understood it, shipping disruptions could come from even exports and imports: IE - a merchant fleet going outbound to another faction planet gets destroyed or a Hegemony merchant fleet heading in-bound to your own planet gets destroyed. Perhaps that's what is happening to the OP where an export fleet got blown up.

19

General Discussion / Re: Pirate playthrough tips?

« on: December 13, 2021, 07:33:17 PM »

Mission grinding is pretty much the only way to raise relations. Some of the bar missions are easier than others so pay attention to which ones you are taking from the pirates. Just make sure you are always flying around pirate worlds with a substantially large fleet so as to not attract the attention of pirate fleets looking to destroy you - combat always leads to relationship loss.

20

Announcements / Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (Released) Patch Notes

« on: December 13, 2021, 05:52:19 AM »

System extertise could use two more points:
- If the system has a limited use duration +x%duration
- If the system only as a passive upkeep while active (toggle able systems e.g. fortress shield) -x%upkeet

(Ah - I specifically didn't want to extend duration because that could be a bad thing for some systems, and I'd like the bonuses from Systems Expertise to be universally good.)

I understand why it might be a bad idea to extend duration for certain ship systems since that can just feel like always having the system on. That said, a nice middle ground could be buffing systems expertise to upgrade cooldown based skills to have charges instead; like charges-based maneuvering thrusters or charges based accelerated ammo feeder (eg. changes ship systems with cooldowns to have an additional +1 charge that can be activated instantly again; charges have the same cooldown recharge timer). This way, the player has charges at their discretion to have a system on for a really long time, but the cooldown to be able to do that is also twice as long.

21

General Discussion / Re: Premature 0.95.1a thoughts

« on: December 13, 2021, 05:33:29 AM »

Yeah, the busted part is shield shunt + polarized armor. 4500 armor Onslaughts with impact mitigation on top of that are just incredibly balanced. At this point I'm not even sure if my builds work, or I'm getting carried by new overpowered low-tech skills.

even disintegrators are finally useful

[close]

I'm not even sure that its because of the low-tech skills. I tested thumpers on Eradicators (regulars ones) and dominators this morning without any of the ballistics skills; thumpers were definitely better than medium kinetics.

I think the big reason why Thumpers are viable is because of the Breach SRMs which got a buff. Thumper is great against exposed hull and SRM is great at stripping armor - a single volley of Breach SRMs from 3+ pods will strip armor completely even from a dominator. Furthermore, both Eradicators and Dominators have plenty of options for kinetics to bring down shields for their SRMs. Fluxing up an enemy ship with kinetic weapons, then use breach SRMs, then offloading a ton of thumpers straight onto exposed hull leads to a dead enemy within seconds.

Also, if you really want to abuse the new thumpers, try using the regular Eradicators + expanded magazines. Accelerated ammo feeder + 90 rounds of thumper can be pretty amusing.

Edit: I tested a dominator with two devastators as well. Results were the same. Highly flux efficient hull strippers are all amazing now thanks to breach SRMs.

22

General Discussion / Re: Do you often use small missiles slots on OP starved ships

« on: December 06, 2021, 03:44:37 AM »

If you use missles correctly, they are worth the slots. Frigates have low CR time so i'ts even more useful to have missles on them, than on larger ships.

I have the exact same reasoning. Player-piloted frigates definitely need a reaper or a hammer if you want to be able to bring down an armoured cruiser within a reasonable frame of time. Spending 60 seconds of peak performance endlessly hitting a venture is just not worth it for me. Even on lashers with two assault guns, I find reapers to be basically mandatory as assault guns do not bring down ventures or dominators fast enough.

Utility ships (condors, wayfarers, mules) benefit even more in the sense that I want to get as much out of them as possible before they get blown up in short order. They are CR limited in the sense that they die rather quickly. Furthermore, I don't expect the AI to actually be able to do anything with these low-flux-stat ships other than soak damage; let's face it, a wayfarer or a condor is useless no matter how many vents you give the AI and a mule is just a useless brick in the hands of the AI.
Giving these utility ships some missiles at least allows them to actually do something rather than nothing at all.

23

General Discussion / Re: Your best themed playthrough ideas?

« on: June 22, 2021, 11:08:07 PM »

I want to try a mostly/all Atlas MK II fleet. I think they can do pretty well in two groups of ships escorting each other. The fuel is a killer though.

A fellow man of culture, I see!

And Prometheus MK II shall bring the Infernal Fire.

I've been thinking of trying a civilian hull playthrough just for fun. But then I thought about fighting redacted with nothing but prometheus and just decided against it.

24

General Discussion / Re: What do you usually target with Fighters/Interceptors?

« on: May 27, 2021, 02:01:35 AM »

This is amazing work and data! Thank you! Now I have know to spam warthogs for my fighter-based carriers.

I'm also kind of surprised by the 50+ second TTK across all builds. Seemed definitely on the long side. I'm curious to see how well this time scales with an increasing number of carriers. Perhaps there's a critical mass of fighters that really delivers the pain. I think this sort of testing is what I will do in my next playthrough.

25

General Discussion / Re: How to remove (s) mods / s-mods /smods

« on: May 02, 2021, 10:43:44 PM »

I don't know about removing the s-mods through save editing, but you can always use console commands to add another one of the ship you want and scuttle the s-modded one.

26

General Discussion / Re: Is there any point to Contacts?

« on: April 22, 2021, 10:31:01 PM »

If I do not bother with the above, contacts seem like a waste of time, or rather add time pressure I do not want to deal with when I can do other profitable things without the time pressure.

Mostly agree. The difficulty of the missions given really wasn't proportionate to the reward. That said, I've not tested the new changes in RC14.

There were a few useful things with contacts though; surplus goods and the stealing ship's missions tend to be really good. I usually just stacked contacts on a single planet so I could quickly go through all of them and only complete the few missions I'm interested in.

27

General Discussion / Re: Automated Ships skill sucks

« on: April 22, 2021, 04:53:04 PM »

I stand by my Subject title. This ability is for people that wanna RP or enjoy the cool factor, it is cool, but it still sucks and clearly sub optimal. This will forever be something I'd like to take but will never take again.

I think a big problem (as an earlier poster pointed out) is that the cost of the skill is not just 1 skill point; either 5 skill points are needed for a wraparound or the player does not get built-in systems. Either way, it's a huge price to pay for a single radiant.

I'm hesitant to say that just buffing the CR limit will be enough. I don't think it's a "good" skill choice even if the CR limit was increased. I mean I'll still wrap around and take it for the "cool" factor, but it's not worth 5 skill points even if I get to deploy two radiants.

I think the skill should just be moved up earlier in the skill tree or put into something like leadership so that it's less expensive to take or at least make the opportunity cost less punishing.

28

General Discussion / Re: watching my ships stupidity is just to much.

« on: April 20, 2021, 08:39:22 AM »

Spoiler

[close]

i like this fit a lot. still not sure if i really want these missiles. i just dont know what else to put there. it does not need sabots, and it will just waste torpedos usually. 5 dp per missile is quite hefty, maybe it was better spend on solar shielding.

that one heavy machine gun alone is enough to handle enemy flux even on very large targets. i experimented with two of them, but if i do that the enemy will never even raise shields and i dont want that. i rather have them use their shields so i can saturate their flux.
i also experimented with a dual flak to tear down hulls faster, but time to kill seemed worse and the ship can handle the flux of dual assault guns.

all in all a it works quite well - UNITLL it decides it rather not get into weapon range. that happens a lot. even if the enemy does not seem to have the fire power to raise flux vs the passive vent from shield skill.

I mean 72 speed really isn't a lot to work with for a SO ship that needs to close to 400 range. For reference, even an enforcer has 60 base speed. There's no way the AI can close most gaps with that speed in a meaningful time. What you have there is purely a cruiser+ killer and it will fail to chase anything destroyer and smaller.

You also have to take into account the 0-flux boost. A ship that needs to close a gap have to do so with a -50 speed penalty at all times since it can't take advantage of zero flux boost due to having to keep shields up to block incoming fire. The enemy, in the meanwhile, will be shield down and moving faster

29

General Discussion / Re: Impressions about skills in 0.9.5

« on: April 20, 2021, 08:29:25 AM »

Which is a fair counter-point. How much are people "wrapping"? My assumption was that it would be a fairly rare thing. Incidentally - I'm now remembering - this is also why it felt reasonably alright to have Field Repairs and Derelict Contingent be contradictory, since the difference between I8 and I10 is basically just a "boring" colony skill.

In my three vanilla runs so far I've wrapped in every single one. Granted, I have not wrapped around directly each time. But in two out of three runs I've gone I4, T5, C5, reassign all Industry skills for either T10 or C10.

A huge part of the reason why I wrapped was that a lot of ships I want to fly and "need" to wrap. While I can see how some of the combat trees and technology trees are supposed to be "mutually exclusive" playstyles between phase and shields, I echo the sentiment that many others have made that C10 and T10 actually really complement each other. Doom doesn't feel the same without C8, Odyssey doesn't feel the same without C10, and T9 is incredibly useful for all phase ships.

I've also never in a single playthrough felt that I wanted to just play with phase ships or just play with normal ships; I've always wanted to use both or have the option to do so at any point. I mean it's certainly true that I could fly a doom without any of the phase skills, but it's just not "fun" to do so. There are not enough phase ships for me to justify a pure phase specialization build without wrapping, but I also still want to fly phase ships at a moment's notice. So the solution is to always wrap.

30

General Discussion / Re: Does everyone end up in an endless war with Hegemony?

« on: April 17, 2021, 07:18:25 AM »

You can ambush inspection fleets yourself in hyperspace for the usual -5 rep.

Much easier to just go to war though.

I mean it's just a matter of preference I suppose; you're paying for it either way.

Going to war costs income due to the accessibility penalties from being hostile to the largest faction. Ambushing inspection fleets costs time and relations both of which could be used productively for more money. It's just a matter of preference. I've done full pirate playthroughs where I'm hostile with everyone; it was liberating to not have to care but my colonies took a while to break even and getting ships was a pain. I've also done playthroughs where I maintained relations with everyone but that was equally time consuming; grinding system bounties for relation is boring.

Thus far in 0.95 I found it much more preferable to be just at peace. The frequencies are nowhere near as bad as it was in 0.91 and it's not too unreasonable to intercept an inspection fleet every now and then. This is especially true since gates are now available, I usually just gate back to my home system with just 2-3 days remaining and wait. It's not a particularly long wait.

There's also the option of just swapping the betas and alphas out for gammas and letting the Hegemony take the gammas (I think this exploit still works). Losing 2-3 gammas to avoid dealing with an inspection is a pretty reasonable cost.