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46

Suggestions / Re: [wall of text] A proposal for ambush mechanics

« on: June 06, 2023, 09:41:13 AM »

I really like the concept of ambushes, and agree that there is a missing element on the campaign layer in that regard.

I feel like the details of the OP are a bit too complicated though, and possibly also abusable.

Assuming this would be a symmetric mechanic (the AI can also ambush the player), I think more thought needs to be put into making both sides of the fight interesting. That's my biggest issue with the retreat mechanics right now as well, they are just not fun. In particular, I don't like the idea of the ambusher getting to divide the enemy fleet. I think that is both complicated UI wise and potentially unbalanced. Having the AI divide up your fleet when you get ambushed sounds like recipe for frustration.

My suggestion would be to get rid of the 'dividing up the fleets portions'. I think you can achieve a similar result without doing that. Instead, just significantly reduced battle size and add restrictions to the defenders reinforcement ability in some way, for instance, a timer between reinforcements, limited reinforcement DP, or even completely prevent reinforcements and the defender is unable to retreat for a period of time etc.

The important part is that if the player is getting ambushed, it becomes 'try and survive in a not horribly unbalanced situation' (which sounds like it could be fun) rather than a 'the AI picks your weaker ships to ambush and you lose a bunch of ships', which sounds frustrating.

Maybe if the ambusher wins the initial battle, then there can be another phase where they can select a few targets to pursue or something (sounds like a nice way to hunt big bounties or soften up a fleet).

47

Suggestions / Re: Exploration needs to be a challenge again

« on: June 03, 2023, 10:37:22 AM »

The amount your fleet deviates due to slip streams depends pretty significantly on your burn level. If you have a high burn fleet, it's really not an issue. If you are on capital burn with no bonuses (and in deep hyperspace), it can be a lot more annoying.

I find for narrow streams outside of deep hyperspace, I can even just cancel sustained burn as I enter and my momentum carries me far enough that I can get through without using e-burn at all (and without excessive deviation, maybe a few fleet circles).

48

Suggestions / Re: Exploration needs to be a challenge again

« on: June 02, 2023, 06:10:37 PM »

And on the flip side: loot drops for the explorarium mothership really need to be touched up. Tracking one down and salvaging it is already one of the better bits of exploration content... but the rewards just aren't there anymore. I feel like I should be getting a t-shirt: "I salvaged an explorarium mothership and all I got was this lousy corrupted nanoforge!"

I've found that exploration loot in general feels kinda unexciting this patch tbh. It feels like stations are mostly dropping vendor trash too.

Spoiler

Sentinel

[close]

was nice but there's not enough of that stuff IMO. I was thinking about making a thread suggesting some more loot like temporary colony items, campaign consumables (one-time use device to making a bunch of fuel/supplies, or a free E-burn or stuff like that), or exploration only ships/weapons etc (or even omega/sindria weapon drops).

Just stuff to add variety and excitement without spamming more colony items and blueprints.

49

Suggestions / Re: [UI] It should be easier to tell when our ships are not combat ready

« on: June 02, 2023, 08:55:56 AM »

It looks like this specific situation would be resolved by simply not including civilian ships in the average CR. That seems somewhat reasonable to me.

50

General Discussion / Re: (SPOILERS) Any way to mainpulate Coronal Hypershunt drops?

« on: May 28, 2023, 06:54:34 PM »

I got more weapons with no salvaging bonus at all than I did with maximum salvaging bonus, so I am fairly confident that the bonus is not directly affecting the drop rate of of omega weapons. I am pretty sure it is just something to do with the RNG seeding using the salvage bonus somehow so that you get a different outcome each time, but the expected number of weapons seems to be the same, no matter the salvage bonus. Something like that anyway.

Weird. I've always seen a 100% drop rate on the large omega weapons; never had a case where there were two of the enemy ships but I only got one large weapon. (Lesser weapons are, indeed, somewhat annoyingly random.)

I did notice that both doritos had the same large weapon (it was the big red missile), so maybe that had something to do with it?

51

Suggestions / Re: Squall Nerf

« on: May 28, 2023, 12:16:14 AM »

Squalls were nerfed in this patch, but it has proven pretty ineffective, because the nerf did nothing to reduce the fundamental strong aspect of the squall

Yes, the nerf did not make it useless in its role. Why would it?

Who said anything about making it useless? The problem is that it is too good at its 'intended role' and the nerf did not change anything about that, so the nerf didn't really have any significant effect. The weapon is more or less just as good as it was last patch as long as you have some anti armor/hull follow up, which any good build will have, so it is still too strong, just like last patch. It could do 0 hull/armor damage and I think it would still be pretty much the same.

The slow power creep of missile hullmods and skill buffs over the last several patches (particularly the increases in ammo, and the additional damage and ROF from elite missile spec)

RoF bonus from Missile Spec was introduced well over two years ago, and this patch it was partially countered by Expanded Missile Racks getting a +25% RoF penalty when S-modded. You are REALLY stretching the facts here.

The game is effectively getting one major patch per year at this point, so 2 years ago is like 2-3 patches prior to this one. Relatively recent in the history of this 10+ year old game. This is only the second major patch since the most recent skill rework that added missile spec. Here are the squall-relevant changes in the two patches prior to this one:

0.95.1a: squall got ammo increased from 100->160, missile spec elite effect got +10% damage
0.95a: squall got improved target tracking, skill rework: adding missile spec which gave +100% ammo and +50% ROF to all missiles

The squall tracking buff was a very major change, it was nearly useless against a lot of ships before that. The minor nerfs this patch are very small compared to all the buffs it got over the prior two patches that led to it needing a nerf.

IMO, the s-mod penalty for EMR is not actually a ROF penalty, it's an OP tax to maintain the same ROF, since you can just choose to not s-mod it and s-mod something else instead. Gryphon gets built in EMR without the s-mod penalty anyway.

52

Suggestions / Squall Nerf

« on: May 27, 2023, 09:24:51 PM »

Squalls were nerfed in this patch, but it has proven pretty ineffective, because the nerf did nothing to reduce the fundamental strong aspect of the squall: long range, 0-flux, kinetic damage. The slow power creep of missile hullmods and skill buffs over the last several patches (particularly the increases in ammo, and the additional damage and ROF from elite missile spec) have also steadily increased the power of all missiles.

But the secret strength of the squall is its HP. It has enough that it can't really be shot down effectively, and it also saturates the PD meaning other missiles will get through, and the target is effectively wasting even more flux firing it's PD weapons for no benefit.

IMO, the best nerf would be to reduce the missile HP so that squalls can actually be shot effectively down by good PD. Even then it will still saturate PD, but at least it won't get its full effect while doing that.

53

General Discussion / Re: (SPOILERS) Any way to mainpulate Coronal Hypershunt drops?

« on: May 27, 2023, 09:14:08 PM »

So I was testing the weapon drops and definitely got different weapon drops depending on my salvage bonus, but not any significant difference in total numbers.

I only tested against one omega fleet (2 Doritos).

With the salvaging skill and 8 salvage rigs I got:
1 large, 7 medium, 6 small

With just 8 salvage rigs I got:
1 large, 6 medium, 6 small

With 7 salvage rigs (one mothballed) I got:
1 large 7 medium 5 small

With the skill and no salvage rigs (all mothballed) I got:
1 large, 6 medium, 7 small

With no skill or rigs I got:
1 large, 7 medium, 7 small (the most out of any of my tests)

So it seems the salvage bonus value does not directly affect the number of weapons (there is not an increase in weapons with higher salvage bonus), but having a different salvage bonus does re-roll the outcome. I think the weapons were always different if I changed my salvage bonus, but the same if I re-did the battle with the same bonus, I would get the same outcome.

So I guess the best thing to do is to bring as many salvage rigs as you can fit, and then re-play the fight, with one more salvage rig mothballed each time to essentially re-roll the loot once for each additional salvage rig, then pick your favorite outcome.

I never got 2 large weapons in any of my tests, not sure if that is hard-coded by the seed or something.

54

General Discussion / Re: Expectations for 1.0

« on: May 26, 2023, 08:19:21 PM »

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is more varied/unique exploration content.

The new

Spoiler

system with AI XIV ships

[close]

is *chefs kiss* amazing. I want to see more stuff like that where there is unique, interesting and challenging stuff to find out in the void. Currently exploration content can feel a bit cookie cutter, but I suppose that's also partly because I know all the things that can be out there.

I dream of the day when I pop into a system and ominous music starts playing along with a large unidentified contact approaching on radar .

55

Suggestions / Re: Raise the level cap to 20

« on: May 23, 2023, 11:17:56 AM »

I frequently take industry skills early game while exploring just to trivialize the logistics aspect (and sometimes I grab hull restoration to get free d-mod removal while money is not unlimited), and then once I hit max level and have a good colony running, I respec out of industry, although sometimes I keep ordinance expertise. Honestly, I feel like industry is fine that way, since the skills are useful, even if not in the end-game as much.

56

Suggestions / Re: Raise the level cap to 20

« on: May 22, 2023, 08:30:09 PM »

I think the magic number is 16, actually. Lets you grab 3 keystones + 1 most important skill from the other tree; 4 capstones if they are from only 2 aptitudes; or grab a 6'th skill in a tree without giving up an entire keystone for it.

I like 17 because ordinance expertise requires two extra points if I am doing nothing else in industry, but I agree with this logic in general, one or two extra skill points helps smooth over a decent number of issues.

57

Suggestions / Re: Raise the level cap to 20

« on: May 22, 2023, 04:38:01 PM »

Or alternatively make the level cap an adjustable difficulty setting. Raising it does make the game considerably easier which is not necessarily what everyone wants.

58

Suggestions / Re: Officer training

« on: May 22, 2023, 03:03:50 PM »

Yeah I had a mod that improved officer management, and I was really missing it when doing a vanilla play through.

I prefer the mods that let you leave officers somewhere rather than having them in your fleet as 'demoted' though, because AFAIK those demoted officers still count for bonus XP calculations. Or at least they did for one mod I tried previously.

59

Suggestions / Officer training

« on: May 22, 2023, 12:31:19 PM »

This suggestion was motivated by my observation that officers from pods are frequently bad because of the randomized skills, and it feels bad to fire them all immediately. However, IMO, a handpicked level 5 officer is better 95% of the time than a random level 5, and hand picked 6 with two elite skills is better most of the time than a random level 7 with 5 random elite skills. That means that unless you explore super early before you find officers (which I don't like to do since I don't have the cargo to haul loot or the ability to survey lots of planets right away), you are very rarely taking pod officers.

I have also found that changing fleet compositions substantially mid campaign is a PITA if you have to fire and retrain officers for the new composition.

I had a couple ideas:

A simple idea for the pod officer issue is to make some (or all) pod officers not pre-trained, but still let them some of them level up beyond a standard officer (or have more elite skills or whatever). Honestly, I think the progression of leveling up an officer is way more fun than getting and random free officer.

A bigger idea is to have a way of changing/retraining officer skills. IIRC there are some mods that do this by letting you construct an academy where you can leave officers and also train them to have different skills. That might be a little too easy so maybe changing skills could cost story points, while simple aggression changes could just take time/money. You could also allow officers to gain experience over time at the academy. Certainly if it took an industry slot, I don't think that would be unbalanced, and it might even be fine as a structure. Or you could just have a few established faction academies that you could use if you are on good terms with the faction.

Being able to leave good officers that don't fit in your current fleet at an academy would generally be a huge QOL improvement.

I also think that having a way to retrain skills would make mentoring an officer feel way less mandatory, since you could just retrain if you get a real bad set of skills on a level up.

60

General Discussion / Re: the 4 way choice in the skill points distribution is unfun

« on: May 22, 2023, 12:16:14 PM »

I've found two level 7s so far in my campaign, but I agree that they are frequently not worth using due to random skills. One of mine was very good and the other was kinda awkward (both energy and ballistic mastery, no gunnery implants), but it kinda works well for a champion officer rn. I might end up ditching it at some point.