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Messages - Goumindong

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1666
Suggestions / Re: Discussion of skills
« on: July 17, 2018, 11:42:36 PM »
By the time you have slowly built up damage with rail guns I have killed half the enemy fleet. It may be slightly better* vs larger ships with the rails but that doesn’t matter when you are so fast at killing everything else

*in terms of CR per kill... but I doubt it.

1667
Suggestions / Re: Sensors and going dark
« on: July 17, 2018, 11:57:13 AM »
The "bouncing radar" you're seeing is their range against your ship.

OK so there are three circles on a fleet. The first one is the fleet radius. Its a hard circle. If you touch that you're interacting with the fleet(if they or you want to)

The second circle is the inner part of a set of radiating circles away from the fleet. This is the hard detection radius. If you're within this then you are are seen as a fleet but may not be identified (if your transponder is not on).

The third circle is the outer part of the radiating circles away from the fleet. This is the soft detection radius. If you're within this then you are seen as an "unknown sensor contact" and the fleet may or may not come to investigate.

If you cannot see a fleet you do not know its sensor radius. Many times when you're in sustained burn and other fleets are not you won't see a circle, your sensor profile is so big their radius is off your screen.

Sometimes you will see a big expanding radiating circle. This happens when a fleet performs a sensor burst. Their sensor radius gets really big for a bit and so their detection radius relative to you does as well. This isn't a result of ships "bouncing their radar off of you" this is their detection radius of you expanding because they performed a sensor burst.

1668
Suggestions / Re: Discussion of skills
« on: July 17, 2018, 11:46:00 AM »
The combat tree is perfectly fine for a SO heavy playstyle centered around Medusa and Aurora. And its not the "common" options of the combat tree that are usually taken for that.

Why would you ever SO a Medusa? It is fast enough that most enemy ships can't really threaten it, phase skim allows for easy venting pauses on demand, 2 Railguns are far below normal flux dissipation anyway... Basically, there isn't much to gain, but you lose ton of CR.

SO Aurora may be barely capable of solo defeating weaker Paragon variants (where non-SO can't at all), but it's kind of moot point with Afflictor doing so much better job for way less cost.

Because you cannot run heavy blasters consistently without SO. And Heavy blasters are that good. And i don't mean that in a sarcastic way. They're really that good. Their cap efficiency isn't that great vs shields but that doesn't matter that much when you have SO because you can stack so much hard cap so fast while you dissipate the difference. Their DPS vs armor is second only to HIL's and Plasma Cannons and tied with Hellbore Cannons*, and its DPS vs hull is second only to Plasma Cannons. Edit: And its more flux efficient than Plasma Cannons.

The additional 80 speed you get is just gravy. OK actually its pretty essential to easily slaughtering everything that gets in your way because it ensures that nothing can easily kite you and lets you move between targets super fast.

SO Medusa will easily and speedily solo most sub cruiser fleets until the enemy has very significant fighter coverage. The SO aurora will solo almost all pirate fleets and can get pretty close to soloing some of the mid-late game IBB fleets. Its not just about what you can solo but about how much chaff you can clear out and how fast. It is much faster, safer, and cheaper(in terms of ease of acquiring equipment) to rely on a player piloted SO Medusa than it is to try with an Afflictor.

*You need to get to armor values higher than what you will reasonably see in game in order for Hellbore to clearly win out. While HB is better against low armor targets they're pretty close in the heavy to medium relevant range where you particularly care about armor piercing. The variance tends to occur due to the long fire time on HB which means that, if you're close to a 1 or 2 hit armor kill it will be "clearly better" but if you're in the middle then HB's will be. Antimatter Cannons also can have the same advantage (basically the zero time advantage on first shot makes it penetrate some armor values faster)  but HB's still dominate them in killing targets.


1669
Suggestions / Re: Discussion of skills
« on: July 16, 2018, 08:36:33 PM »
Well the idea that there will always be "better" skills isn't wrong. Its hard to generate perfect parity while also producing meaningful difference

Buuut that does not mean that different skills cannot be better for different play styles. The combat tree is perfectly fine for a SO heavy playstyle centered around Medusa and Aurora. And its not the "common" options of the combat tree that are usually taken for that.

1670
Suggestions / Re: Sensors and going dark
« on: July 16, 2018, 08:33:50 PM »
Well two things in mind, the first is simpler:

1) I find it hard to figure out exactly how a large a sensor profile 82 units might be if I'm hiding in a ring system for example.  If you don't want to add clutter to the main screen, would you consider making these radius's visible via a toggle; eg click on "Sensor Range" to toggle seeing the actual radius of the sensors, click on "Detection Range" to toggle your current detection radius.


Detection radius isn't a fixed value so this isn't a good way to look at the situation. You literally cannot draw those radius.

Specifically detection radius = Sensor Profile(detected fleet) + Sensor Range(Detecting fleet)*

When you see other fleets on the map you will see a circle around you. The hard circle is the "floor detection radius" for that fleet when looking for your ship. If you are within it they will know that you are a fleet.  The soft circle is the "questionable detection radius of that fleet" if you are within it they will get an unknown sensor ping. Which they may check out or may not.



1671
Suggestions / Re: Skill idea to boost combat aptitude
« on: July 13, 2018, 08:13:04 PM »
The solution is not "make things equal" though i do like this specific skill proposed here

The solution is to more rigidly define the skill point structure so that players are choosing between which combat skills they want and which tech skills they want rather than whether or not they want tech or combat. The more iconic/powerful skills can be level gated as you attain the base skill (which you would get for free)

You can do this yourself by giving yourself 1 free point per 4 levels to put into base skills and then putting each level up point into the appropriate position. It works pretty well in building well rounded characters and also providing reasonable level up dilemmas

A while ago I suggested separate xp/skill point systems for campaign and combat skills http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=13076.0. This is a perhaps an extension of that idea. Separate xp/skill systems for each tree would mean points in each system are not competing with each other as you suggested. Not sure if that's what you were getting at, also not sure if the degree of added complexity would be too much.

I am familiar. I had beat you by over a year :p

And I don’t think I was the first.

1672
Suggestions / Re: Skill idea to boost combat aptitude
« on: July 13, 2018, 03:31:06 PM »
The solution is not "make things equal" though i do like this specific skill proposed here

The solution is to more rigidly define the skill point structure so that players are choosing between which combat skills they want and which tech skills they want rather than whether or not they want tech or combat. The more iconic/powerful skills can be level gated as you attain the base skill (which you would get for free)

You can do this yourself by giving yourself 1 free point per 4 levels to put into base skills and then putting each level up point into the appropriate position. It works pretty well in building well rounded characters and also providing reasonable level up dilemmas

1673
As an interim stopgap. If you hold ctrl(or shift?) while clicking you will only pick up as much as will fill your hold. Or going the other way as much as will empty you hold to maximization point.

If you click again you will overfill/remove all. So my routine is “loot all” -ctrl click metals/fuel

1674
Suggestions / Re: Reasons to (temporally) use a small fleet
« on: June 13, 2018, 12:49:19 AM »
If there were lucrative missions that required stealth like those you propose, then yes, stealth would be more useful.

Yes. The lack of missions/things to do which require small fleets is what makes small fleets an issue

1675
Suggestions / Re: Reasons to (temporally) use a small fleet
« on: June 12, 2018, 03:42:36 PM »
Also you cannot SB into a planet on this construction. You win if you aren’t seen. Not if you aren’t scanned.
That is the thing.  Even if I try to be stealthy (with a small fleet), it does not always work (and not reliable enough).  Sure, it is a bit easier to sneak with a smaller fleet, but not enough to be worth it (to give up my main fleet).  If I fail with a big fleet, I get a consolation prize of ships, weapons, and other junk left behind from the enemies I kill, and I move on to the next market to try again while things cool down.  If I fail with a stealth fleet, the jig is up, and it is time to reload (either because I get caught and ruined or I waste too much time evading fleets in vain).

Are you saying you cannot dock while SB is on in this latest release?  No matter, I guess that means turn it off before I reach the planet?  Would make things a bit harder, but maybe not enough to matter too much.

Under my construction it would be a “smuggling mission” that would hard fail if you get seen.

You accept the mission to get 1 unit of “highly sensitive super macguffinite” onto a specific planet upon delivery you will be paid 200k credits. If you get seen while in the target system you fail the mission, get no credits, and get a reputation loss. Just as if the mission had timed out.

The mission payout would be higher for planets that had larger populations/more populated systems.

1676
Blog Posts / Re: Pirate Bases, Raids, and Objectives
« on: June 12, 2018, 03:37:11 PM »
I think he means that this looks like a large scale re-imagining of pirates. And so pirate planets don’t make much sense. So he was wondering if the planets themselves were long for he world

To me it would fit better thematically with this system if pirate markets “just showed up” on unstable planets. Like how you have to have a certain influence to open the faction market you have to have a below certain market stability to access the pirate market.

1677
Suggestions / Re: Reasons to (temporally) use a small fleet
« on: June 11, 2018, 02:28:15 PM »
Interdiction is hella useful for catching fleets if you sneak up on them. The addition of negating the ability of enemies to retreat would make it super valuable at getting to the stuff in cargo holds.

Sustained burn is a problem yes but it’s not the be all end all.

Also you cannot SB into a planet on this construction. You win if you aren’t seen. Not if you aren’t scanned.

1678
Suggestions / Re: Randomly buff hull mod on built ships?
« on: June 11, 2018, 02:18:15 PM »
No. Those things are input randomness. You get to choose whether or not to do those missions and whether or  not to loot those ships. If you don’t want to you can do other missions or no missions, you can explore or scavenge or survey or pirate. If you aren’t going to use the ships you can take a higher reward of scrap.

But that is now how D-mod randomness and O-mod randomness would work.  You would already have the ship and would get negative reward for not wanting to use the ship. It would be the result of a player process (i want to use these ships to I built them) instead of the input to a gameplay decision.



1679
Suggestions / Re: Reasons to (temporally) use a small fleet
« on: June 11, 2018, 01:57:35 AM »
The main problem with downsizing or being small in general is that there simply is less to do.

There are already skills that make fielding a smaller fleet (in absolute size rather than deployment point size) valuable. Skills that increase the power of your own ship and the power of additional ships (which fit in a small fleet better than large ships). Skills that synergize with a small fleets low sensor profile and make up for its lower sensor strength. So specific skills that apply only to small fleets seems fairly pointless to me.

Rather most everything in the game gets harder in ways which require scaling up fleet size. Bounties get bigger. Exploration gets more dangerous and requires more fuel. Etc etc.

What there aren’t are things that get harder as your fleet gets bigger. Part of this is because of “sustained burn” making every fleet as fast as any other. (So see my thread on fuel for a partial solution). But most of this isn’t.

Examples of things that could exist:

Interdiction could negate the ability to run away. Small fleets have an easier time interdicting because they can get closer without having targets run away.

Small fleet bounties: They always try to run instead of fighting unless you’ve interdicted then. They have good sensor profiles and avoid big fleets. They have fast ships so they’re going to get away if you do hit them without interdicting.

High value smuggling: requires you not be seen landing on a planet. OR customs scrutiny increases based on the size of the cargo hold. AND hard failure states for being seen rather than being able to retry getting to the planet without your transponder on.

Spy missions: get close to enemy fleet to identify ships/loadouts without being spotted by the faction. E.G. the Hegemony is going to send a fleet to kill some AI on the fringe worlds. You need to get close enough to ID the base location and base without being spotted. If you’re spotted the AI will reconfigure* and the Intel will be worthless

*it won’t, but that won’t matter for the mission failure state.






1680
Suggestions / Re: Randomly buff hull mod on built ships?
« on: June 10, 2018, 06:11:03 AM »
Looting decisions are part of the core gameplay and production is not. Similarly you do not go loot for standard production ships. You go loot for trophy or specialty ships.

I sincerely hope we are not getting random D-Mod on production as that would negate the majority of the value (which is that you can standardize replacement ships and so use more disposable ships rather than having to hunt for replacements when you lose minor ships)to the core gameplay.

Alex may have used a production line term but he has been pretty good on not simulating for simulations sake.

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