Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - Immahnoob

Pages: [1] 2 3 4
1
Suggestions / Re: No SO allowed on Monitor (or increase DP cost)
« on: August 12, 2023, 02:04:09 AM »
What came to mind when people mentioned the Monitor is supposed to be a anti-fighter, PD, escort frigate was that, why not make it interact in some way with the Escort command? When it's outside Escort though, it would be less effective (meaning it gets a nerf)
Like the Ravelin, Gargoyle, Merion of the Battlestation, make the Monitor gain some similar traits.
In 5 seconds flat, this is what I thought of when thinking of what the Monitor should be able to do while escorting:

- Gain range to its weapons, but lose the ability to shoot at anything but fighters and missiles
- Gain more speed but lose the ability to do anything but hover around the ship it is escorting (so like the Gargoyle, Merion and Ravelin).
- Be untargetable by allied guns while targeted by enemy guns (like a fighter would be)

What would this do? You'd gain extra flux and shields as the ship that is being escorted, you would gain extra PD and you would still have the ability to fight whatever's shooting at you and your escorting Monitor. All for the cost of more DP than Sarissas for example, since they kind of do the same thing.
This could easily be something like a hull-mod that makes the ship interact in some way or another with the Escort command, and this would be a hull-mod that is built-in into the Monitor.
Of course, this isn't balanced, since it's an idea that came to mind in those flat 5 seconds, but I think it's interesting and would fix Escort a little bit. I have yet to see anyone using "Escort" in any high-level play with good results.

2
General Discussion / Re: Distance between player colonies
« on: July 14, 2023, 03:14:37 AM »
Colonies get an Accessibility bonus/penalty depending on how close to/far away from the Core worlds they are, and Accessibility determines up to how many goods a colony can import/export both in-faction and to outside factions. Distance between player colonies isn't a factor, only distance to the core worlds.
Ok, so if a colony is 40 LY away from another colony and is mining organics, would the one that needs organics get the in-faction bonus?

3
General Discussion / Distance between player colonies
« on: July 14, 2023, 12:16:03 AM »
Do they matter for importing/exporting resources? Is there some kind of LY limit where colonies will not get the provided in-faction modifier?

4
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 14, 2023, 03:36:54 AM »
I'm coming back with a small update, I have to say that using small slots offensively has certainly made things better for me, although I do hate the fact that it's often the case that I can't reach neutral dissipation.

Cool! Want to share your new builds?

For a heavily armored ship like Dominator you don't really need to worry about flux since the ship can quite safely vent due to armor. If you went for the fighters you will even have PD up while venting. If you find you are venting too long, can add Resistant Flux Conduits to speed up venting even more which is a good hullmod for armor tanking ships anyway.
Spoiler


[close]
If you want to know, I always avoided things like Converted Hangar because they felt "cheap". I remember when fighter spam was pretty much the go-to to win against anything or the Phase Ship spam which was also easy to do.
In any case, I'll get rid of the Moras eventually when I get my hands on some of those low-tech wonders that the Luddics have, especially that square of metal they call a Capital ship and the other Cruiser with about 50 guns facing in one direction with Accelerated Ammo Feeder (Annihilator? Eradicator? Whatever it's name was). I think the Retribution might be good as well? No idea, I haven't tried any of the 3 ships, I wasn't lucky with finding one that didn't have every d-mod in existence.

It's unfortunate that there aren't that many medium ballistics that are relevant, I really didn't know what to put in there besides the mortars. I mean, I could go for Heavy Maulers or back to HVG, but I don't know, it feels wrong going back to that.
Oh and yes, I slapped BRF on everything.

5
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 14, 2023, 02:08:59 AM »
I'm coming back with a small update, I have to say that using small slots offensively has certainly made things better for me, although I do hate the fact that it's often the case that I can't reach neutral dissipation.

6
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 12, 2023, 04:08:09 AM »
You can try the Storm Needler but then you will no longer outrange the Remnants, and they will in fact outrange you with beam weapons which is bad because they are also more mobile than you. However there is another reason why Storm Needler is bad, namely that the HE Large Ballistics are really, really good and you do need to finish the enemy off, too. In fact Heph is good for finishing off Remnants, don't need the hit strength of Hellbore and do need hull DPS.

Now if you put 5x LDAC like I did or 5x Railgun, then your kinetic output will go from 276/sec to for example 835 / sec using the Railguns and at a better flux efficiency than either HVD or Mark IX, and with 900 range with BRF.

You can still put PD on the ship if you want, and I'd highly recommend fighters for that purpose since 1) they are good at it, 2) your small slots are better used for kinetics and 3) they even work when you are overloaded or fluxed out. Sarissa and Xyphos are great but if you want to try something new and exotic you can even put in Longbow and the new hullmod Defensive Targeting array to get 1-2 burst PDs orbiting your ship while also firing Sabots occasionally.
How would you recommend building an Enforcer? I really don't like how they're working out right now. Or should I just get rid of them? I really wanted to make them work out but a pure low-tech doesn't seem to do it for me.  >:(

Also, besides Sarissa, Xyphos and Longbows, are there any other that could work? Say like Broadswords, Luxes, Sparks, Wasps? I've never delved too deep into fighters so I just spam Longbows.

7
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 12, 2023, 02:39:10 AM »
You can use 2x Hephaestus or whichever big gun you want just fine, Devastators just happen to be great. You really just need a lot more kinetics. A Brilliant can tank 20k shield damage too so 2x HVD won't cut it. Small kinetics with BRF are best. If you don't use the missiles to deal damage then it's a deliberate challenge run but will likely still be workable. Storm needler is bad due to its short range, though, but the big slots are best spent on HE anyway since small ballistics are better than Mark IX and the Dom has tons of slots.
This is the type of advice I'm looking for. It just didn't occur to me that small offensive ballistics could be useful on a bigger ship than a Destroyer even with the range increase from BRF (I just know that there was a time in Starsector where going without PD was a bad idea no matter what and that probably stuck in my mind), I walked away from Large kinetics and I put in Explosives because there was a gnawing sensation at the base of my 2 neurons that they're not doing much, so I went for more explosives and less kinetics, thinking that the overall damage will be ok.
As for the missiles, I was just testing them and I really thought from what I've seen that the Salamanders are doing quite well on the Dominators (Pilums? No idea, I mostly saw them not work, but didn't see them in battle too many times), I might just return to dealing damage again and that's it, I'm not trying any challenge run, that's for sure.

As for the Storm Needler, it should get about 1000~ range with the DTC right? I've seen Remnants don't really kite cruisers unless they're way faster with a lot more range, always staying in the range of 1000.
1) Are you asking about AI-Loadouts, or personal loadouts? Because nobody can teach you personal loadouts, its based on your play style.

2) i am currently taking out fleets of 5-8 frigates with a single frigate (tempest or scarab) and fleets of 1 cruiser or 3 destroyers and up to 5 frigates with just 1 cruiser and a frigate (heron and tempest). This is not because of some magical loadout that can beat anything, its because of battlefield control.

Use your commands!!!!

If ur outnumbered, set a waypoint near a corner so ur ships cant be separated and picked off when isolated (or order a control point to be defended).
If there is one VERY powerful opponent and a bunch of normal stuff, issue a harass order (or avoid order, depending on your setups) on the big boy while you take out the support.
Order fighter strikes on long ranged missile platforms, bomber carriers and phased ships (one at a time, in order of how badly they can murder your ships).
Don't be afraid to retreat ships when their PPT is finished.
Dont be afraid to retreat ALL of your ships and re-engage because ur PPT is finished.
If the enemy fleet has a lot of bombers, deploy a carrier with fighters, if the opposing fleet has lots of high powered missiles, deploy a carrier with interceptors, if the fleet has big slow ships and not a lot of support, deploy bombers (or avoid the big bad, take out the support and THEN deploy bombers)

3) A fleet is not just one loadout! make an agile long distance fighter, a close in nuker, a chaser, an anvil, a support. most fleets run around with 240 dp of combat units (since that is the skill penalty for most fleet skills) but u can ONLY deploy 50dp at a time!! That is *FIVE* SEPARATE armies!!

Deploy what has advantages against ur foe, because there is NOT some magic loadout that beats all. So have enough variation in your fleet to actually HAVE advantages in multiple situations.

Example fleet:
2 tempests, 2 scarabs, 2 monitors,1 paragon or conquest (long range, slow, tanky), 1 odyssey or onslaught (mobile shorter ranged weapons with more power than the tanks), 3 furies (fast close range fighters), 3 dominators (long range slow tanky), 1 gryphon, 3 herons (1 with interceptors, 1 with fighters and 1 with bombers), 1 astral with bombers.

U dont just have ONE setup and complain when it doesnt work in one battle (after it successfully worked in 10 other battles) have DIFFERANT setups for the battles where u favourite doesnt work!!!!!
1. AI loadouts, I can run anything on myself.
2. Commands never really worked out for me, I do see people use them, but honestly, it's why I want some AI loadouts that just let me do my thing without me having to buy more ships (because they go boom). I've been here for several versions and the name of the commands never really told you anything and at some point I just forgot how the AI changed because of them and now I just forget about them unless it's about retreating my ships.
3. Of course I'll complain, there are clearly loadouts that work for every battle since I was just given one right above, anyway, I'd love to believe your advice works since that's what I wish Starsector could be, but I never had any results with diverse specializations, maybe this patch changed that? I am going to try a save file with having specific roles for my ships, but I don't really see how it would work in practice. It looks like a lot of work for what would seem as very subpar results.

8
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 12, 2023, 01:19:12 AM »
Low tech fleet without a main anchor is going to be harder to pull off than if you had an Onslaught or Legion. Dominators are okay but imo you have too many of them, they're specifically capital killers and I can see how Remnants are flying circles around you. Especially with built-in Heavy Armour since Dominators have all the firepower in hardpoints. And try putting more impactful missiles on you ships. Pilum won't do much in Ordo fights, same with Salamanders. Sabots, Harpoons, Breaches, Gorgons are all better options for these fights. Double HAG Dominator is probably the weakest ship you could make to fight Ordos, at least change one gun to kinetic, like MkIX Autocannon.

Eagle has very weird range mismatched setup. Try 3 Heavy Autocannons and 1000 range beams in energy mounts.

Your low tech ships should ideally have Impact Mitigation elite, but as I said, replacing 2 cruisers with a single Onslaught would help out a lot.

And if I'm seeing right, your Manticore has a single Gauss and no other ballistic guns, you're wasting the built-in Ballistic Rangefinder Hullmod. For Remnants you really want either Railguns or Light Needlers in small mounts. Both will easily outperform a Gauss Cannon.
I do have an Onslaught,
There's a reason why I didn't show every single ship, it's because I don't really need advice on those, for example, the Eagle's on SO, I wanted to test out SO for once in my Starsector career. I'm asking for a general rule because aiming for a single build is pretty boring like the Devastator example above.

None of my Dominators have in-built Heavy Armor exactly because of that, I made a huge mistake in building it in the Onslaught and I'm thinking of just dropping it for a new one, it's atrocious how hard it is now to maneuver with the new built-in garbage nerfs. In any case, I was testing more support rocket types because I'm trying to walk away from my previous builds which all involved tons of offensive rockets with even more rockets (built-in racks) and more rockets (Missile Specialization), it was fun for sure but I need some new stimulation.

The Manticore is built like that because I want to swap guns later on and I had nothing to put on it that was satisfying so I thought to give it the longest range gun I have available for now. I'm trying to test Storm Needlers with autocannons on the Manticore.
I'm talking general, big fleets, not any type of boss ship. Like I can beat anything in a Medium beacon easily, but I want to deal with High beacons.

Radiant *is* a boss ship. If you have two Remnant fleets, one with a single Radiant and one without, then the one without it is 2x easier and you shouldn't need anything special for it. The Radiants are fast, and tanky, and have a lot of firepower and need to be focused down, except there's no real way to do this(no, orders are not reliable) so the only way to deal with them is to bring such overwhelming firepower that you will beat all the other ships back, and when Radiant shows up your ships will automatically target it and flux it up.

This is also why, paradoxically, a fleet with several Radiants is easier than a fleet with just one, because there will be less enemy ships on the field so the chance that your fleet targets the Radiants is much higher.

Quote
Ships

You have D-mods, your total DP is apparently 111(out of 220/240), your ships are heavily skewed towards explosive damage(so the opposite of what you should be doing), you have AI-unfriendly ships, underleveled officers and destroyers. The fact that you managed to kill any Remnant at all is a miracle.
I think we're just talking beside each other here, I use [REDACTED] to talk generally about Remnants, I'm not talking about Radiants specifically and I don't want specific Radiant advice. I just want to be able to build my fleets so they don't incur that 1 (or worse, 2) losses once every 2 non-radiant ordos (I don't know where you guys find so many Radiants honestly), which generally means that the ship build is garbage (or in the case of the Enforcer, the ship itself is garbage). I'm not yet thinking of engaging with Radiants specifically. My damage is skewed towards explosive because I'm trying to test various things, as I was saying in the OP, I've gotten to the point where I'm asking for advice here because I just don't get ship loadouts for AI ships anymore. Also, my deployment is 207, I'm not sure where you've seen 111.  ???

Although, you did mention that my ships are not AI friendly. What are the general rule for an AI friendly ship?

9
General Discussion / Re: I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 12, 2023, 12:32:16 AM »
I'm trying to beat bigger REDACTED fleets especially, because everything else kind of automatically melts as long as you have ships loaded out at all.

Against REDACTED you really want to bring Squalls(I'd say 4 at least) and you need to have a plan on how to deal with Radiants.
 - Have a flagship that can simply kill or at least distract it
 - AI Monitor spam to distract it(or one Monitor flagship to do it yourself)
 - Have every ship in your fleet be either fast enough(100+) or tanky enough so that they don't die when a Radiant focuses them
I'm talking general, big fleets, not any type of boss ship. Like I can beat anything in a Medium beacon easily, but I want to deal with High beacons.
Generally it's good to match weapon ranges on a ship, so all your main guns shoot at similar ranges (PD can be whatever). But most things you can't really make well built by simply following such broad rules, they're simply repeated so someone doesn't make big mistakes. It's still possible to make a lot of tiny mistakes and end up with a ship that doesn't work as good as it should.

You'd have to post your ship builds here, along with your fleet and character skills, otherwise not sure what kind of advice you can get. And some of it may even hurt your fleet setup even more.
I tried out some builds on my Dominators for example, went over my initial rule to not go over neutral dissipation because of an initial failure with other stuff like Mark IX.
I was thinking of trying out Hellbores or Storm Needlers.

On my officers, I aim for Ordnance Expertise, Gunnery Implants, a Mastery and then whatever, usually Combat Endurance, Helmsmanship, stuff like that.
Spoiler






[close]
I wanted to try out Enforcers this patch, but it seems they're still as garbage as ever.

10
General Discussion / I still don't know how to loadout a ship
« on: June 11, 2023, 11:53:17 PM »
I've been playing for so long and I'm yet unsure of how the best equip my ships, well, that and the game has changed and whenever I restarted playing since 0.95, the same tactics I used before do not work anymore, I drop the game, then come back after like a few months, to fail again, ad infinitum. I also hated the skill changes but whatever, I've told myself to try them out more.

I'm just not patient enough to test the AI (beyond just putting it 1v1 against something) and see what loadout is best for it so I followed some rules like more Kinetic than Explosive for AI with neutral dissipation and always filling up the missile slots, usually with mixed (default, harpoons and sabots) types. But it's not really working out. I'm trying to beat bigger REDACTED fleets especially, because everything else kind of automatically melts as long as you have ships loaded out at all.

What are the rules for loadouts now? More explosive than kinetic? Same as? Does dissipation matter that much anymore? Holw about hull features? Range?  ??? I'm too clueless.

11
I think the main thing is that OP doesn't enjoy combat. The game is at its core a good combat sim. Everything else was added later. If you don't enjoy that part of the game, you're left with a much thinner experience. And even if you do enjoy the combat, the game has a definite arc where progress beyond some point carries less and less meaning.
I do enjoy combat, just not as much as exploration. When the game presents a strong enough argument for it, it's really good and fun (well, unless the AI screws you over). The game doesn't do it often enough for me, unfortunately. Most battles seem optional, like ghost vaults or teleporter rooms in DCSS, but those - which I generally pounce on, or at least consider very seriously - always come with a promise of Good Stuff should I meet the challenge. It's very easy to avoid fights - heck, apparently I've been dodging perma-hostile scavengers without realizing it all this time - and not a whole lot of in-game reasons not to. This is subjective, of course: what's one person's easy bounty money is another's "nope, I'm gonna die", and I'm closer to the "I'm gonna die" end of the spectrum. Improving myself would be a solution, but it requires motivation, and the game should ideally provide it. Touhou keeps me going by having a really short replay cycle, DCSS - by the virtue of RNG-caused failures happening mostly early on and the rest being my own fault and easy to analyze. I can't say for sure what would keep me going after harder fights in Starsector. Ruthless Sector is very close with its take on battle difficulty, it's quite fun to strike the balance between XP bonus and my skill level and it does nudge me often enough to deploy less ships and pilot better.

The only thing I would call a satisfactory extension to this without being predictable would be attempts to improve the emergent storytelling of the game; that is, a network of events and AI that produce a continuing shift in story politically, financially, militarily that involves the player. All other endgame additions are just staying the inevitable "Game Over". Crusader Kings accomplishes this by its The Sims: Medieval Bloodlines take on storytelling, for example. Or Dwarf Fortress which is by its nature a fantasy storytelling sim that goes into great detail. This is probably not the intended trajectory for SS though. As much as I would like to see dynamic power politics in the game.
This would be wonderful. The most memorable and fun fight I've had was like this: a Nex invasion fleet I absolutely had to defeat. A natural outcome of current state of the game world, with ample time to prepare, challenging with great rewards and big stakes. Nex's invasions make for great boss battles tbh. It doesn't have to be done the Nex/4X way, either - I have a feeling that contacts have a great potential for making the world more alive. They currently don't make any long intricate stories because they don't (to the best of my knowledge) interact with each other and exist just to be quest givers.
The problem is that Alex has clearly stated that he doesn't want Nex to be part of the base game, not even as AI battling each other for supremacy.
So yeah, "dynamic power politics" is gone down the drain.

I honestly think this is the biggest mistake Alex is making. Imagine if after our first one or two colony, we could have our faction just colonize themselves (and the current factions doing it themselves as well) and then because of territorial disputes and other issues, wars would arise without the player necessarily having a go at it, now I haven't played in a while so I don't know what Nex is capable of but from what I remember it was a pretty passive mod with the player having to start the mega wars.
We'd have to make resources like fuel, supplies, weapons, hulls, food, etc more meaningful and less planets would be viable for colonization just for that purpose (to limit resources that can be had overall) so you'd have to actually engage if you don't want to "lose".
I think in this case enacting a colony should just make it so that you enter a state of the game where if you lose your faction, you lose the game.
Obviously, the end game is supremacy, what else could it be? But even this can tie into something bigger since the factions themselves are remnants after the gates have closed off, so unifying the whole thing to then engage into different questlines explaining the situation in the "universe".
From there you can basically do anything storywise but at least gameplay is a whole lot more meaningful in terms of combat, immersion and the world being "alive", you know?
Since I'm not a guy that is into "exploration", I don't have any ideas for that, but I'm sure my "suggestion" (just Nex++ basically) is pretty open-ended and allows a lot of freedom.

12
Suggestions / Re: Trade is brokenly unbalanced
« on: April 14, 2021, 03:38:03 AM »
I also can't believe people are seriously arguing that trading needs to be MORE unprofitable.

Aside from drugs and guns, there are literally no commodities in the universe that regularly trade for profit that exceeds the 30% tariffs that you pay on buying AND selling, barring market-breaking shortages. Not a one. That is a scenario that is unprecedented in the entire history of humanity.

I don't think you have had the experience of exploiting the trading system. It is definitely far too profitable.

Supplies, fuel, heavy machinery, luxury goods are all frequently in shortage during the mid to late game. For instance, supplies are often traded at 200+ prices on pirate planets with shortage quantities of 500+ (somtimes 2k shortages even). That's a potential riskless profit of 50k at minimum. All that's needed is a run from Chicomoztec for the surplus black market supplies at ~83 price.

And the 30% tariff is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. You don't even need to take the patrol scan relationship penalty - just enter the market normally and e-burn immediately after selling the cargo.

As another comment pointed out, it's practically impossible to do stealth missions in Hegemony space without phase ships and all-insulated/militarized fleet.

It's entirely possible. The player just needs to bait the patrol away. Stealth mechanics are poorly understood, not underpowered.

To be more precise: buying drugs and weapons doesn't trigger stealth if you're getting it from Eochu Bres, but they only have a limited supply.

That's really not true. Eochu Bres has 1000+ drugs in stock when counting the open market. Sure you pay a 30% tariff to buy drugs at around ~220, but that's more or less not an issue when prices are 450+ on drugs. And this is not even counting the 500+ available on the other tri-tech planet in the same system.

OP is right that this is an amazing way to make money but it's not without risks and honestly I'd have stopped playing the current build if this didn't exist.

It really is riskless. And it doesn't even take skill to make a riskless smuggling fleet and exploit gameplay.

In the mid game, the pirates just don't bother chasing the player because the player is too strong (and the player reaches the mid-game after just 2-3 smuggling runs because the profits are so high).

In the early game, any fleet of hounds with Augmented drives, SO, injectors will never be caught and can disengage from any enemy with zero losses because the fleet will reach 13 burn with 255 in combat speed. Pirates don't even chase when you are that fast, all they do is harry your retreat.

That way Pirate fleets will actually be *** off if you avoid paying Pirate tariffs and chase you to collect "Kanta's cut". Also instead of random scans for contraband, it's random scans for hot loot they can extort from you... giving players the option to give up a slice of their cargo in exchange for staying alive and doing so gives you status that can eventually translate into being cleared for trade. Maybe being on a pirate trade mission makes them let you through regardless of your status.

This seems reasonable in theory but it still does not address the issue in practice; the AI needs to be buffed immensely to be able to prevent a player from just working around this nuisance. First of all, not all pirate shortage planets have patrols; many of them are wide open. Second, shortages are also frequent in core faction worlds. Third, shielded cargo holds are a thing and prevent scans. Four, fast fleets full of hounds aren't difficult to salvage or expensive to buy and they can get into any market without difficulty regardless of the mechanics in place.
This comment is literally "Why are you profiting when you've built your entire session for profit?"

13
Suggestions / Re: Trade is brokenly unbalanced
« on: April 13, 2021, 10:50:25 PM »
Every "suggestion" seems to be "Just throw more fleets at the player or make everything not worth it".
Yeah, if the patrol can't handle me, just make it so that the pirate base suddenly throws about 10x patrols at me, magically, out of nowhere.
I also can't believe people are seriously arguing that trading needs to be MORE unprofitable.

Aside from drugs and guns, there are literally no commodities in the universe that regularly trade for profit that exceeds the 30% tariffs that you pay on buying AND selling, barring market-breaking shortages. Not a one. That is a scenario that is unprecedented in the entire history of humanity.

I can understand making trading more DANGEROUS. That's legit. There should be risk and reward. But nerfing trade into the ground like that just makes me think... why even HAVE a trading system? What's the design philosophy - hell... what's the point - of a game that's impossible to win?

Privateer nailed this aesthetic perfectly. Bounty hunting and merc work are very lucrative, but extremely dangerous and require significant investment in hardware, while trading gives modest returns that can go straight into the red if you run into a fight your trading ship can't handle.

I want to be Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds. I want to buy low and sell high. I want to dodge pirates and corrupt cops. I want to barely make enough profit to afford fuel and definitely not to afford regular maintenance. I want to survive on the bitter edge of a human civilization descending into madness.

The current system isn't that. The current system is either smuggling or nothing, with no room for an ethically-flexible band of gray-market misfits doing a mix of legit and questionable jobs as they come up.
Yep, I agree with this, there's no in-between, and I honestly start to notice it more with the new skill-tree as well.

14
You don't allocate vram, that is fully automatic determined by your hardware and drivers.
That's good then.
So if now Starsector isn't limited by either RAM or VRAM and still dips, it's out of my hands, huh?

15
"Warping around skill categories..."

What?

Pages: [1] 2 3 4