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16

Suggestions / Re: Interactive p-space: Idea for phase ships.

« on: June 17, 2013, 11:52:17 AM »

Since there's a general discussion of phase ships going on here, I'm just going to insert my thoughts on this, even though it's not entirely topical...

It seems like phase ships are most useful for quick-strike or flanking maneuvers, during which their invulnerability comes in handy. But, they are somewhat crippled by the flux buildup and "poor man's Fortress Shield" effect. To differentiate the two, why not give ships in "p-space" a speed boost (either percentage-based or constant value ie zero-flux speed boost)? That would help accentuate their role in proper positioning and delivering a burst damage to where enemy ships are most vulnerable. Lore-wise, this could easily be explained by properties of "p-space."

As for the exact value of the speed boost, I think playtesting would be in order. I'm not sure exactly what value would work best.

Thoughts?

17

Suggestions / Re: Impoving Armor

« on: June 12, 2013, 04:32:19 PM »

I very much like the first idea, although I think it will be a bit too powerful. As a sort of compromise, perhaps ship armor could contribute to weapon durability (independent of the armored turrets hullmod): ships with thick armor would have turrets that have a much lower probability of failing under sustained damage. EMP weapons would bypass this resistance.

I don't think in-battle armor repair is necessary, though. At that point, armor and shielding would be made too similar, and it also encourages extending combat time to sit back and just wait for armor to self-repair, which I don't think is a desired dynamic.

18

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Update

« on: June 12, 2013, 04:25:09 PM »

As a side note, with the massive increase in the usefulness of carriers with the next update, will the Astral in particular be made a bit squishier?

I hope not. It's pretty much next to useless (especially at its current OP cost) at the moment, and with its frontal (albeit 360 degree) shield, it's very vulnerable to attack.

19

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Update

« on: June 08, 2013, 11:34:53 PM »

I'm thinking there'll be a chance to lose crew for every fighter lost. The chance probably won't be too high, ejection systems and all that.

Hmm, guess that works. A constant for all fighters, or would it vary between, say, Talon fighters and top-of-the-line Xyphos fighters?

For simplicity's sake it could remain a constant value, as the inevitable loss of more Talons would result in increased crew losses anyway (motivating you to stock them with green pilots).

20

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Update

« on: June 08, 2013, 10:23:47 PM »

The max crew size for fighter wings should be increased to a "squadron size" say 20-50 pilots with the skeleton size still the bare minimum to field your 4 talons.  Then you just end up burning through 1 or 2 crew for each fighter killed... expensive, but hey, pilots are people too, you know.  And no-one ever liked Gold 4 anyway. 

Waiting for Alex's official answer on this, but my thoughts:

The system you mentioned above would get really expensive really quickly. Fighter-heavy fleets will probably be very supply-intensive under this system, so burning through even green crew would be crippling.

I was thinking that a hand-wavy explanation would be that fighter crew "eject" when their craft are destroyed, and so perhaps you don't generally lose pilots unless you actually lose the entire wing (if your fleet is carrier-less).

But I could see how this would then make putting elite pilots in fighters a no-brainer. A less-elegant solution to this would be making crew loss in fighter wings proportional to CR decreases below a certain point (50%?). So, if you're ending the battle with the CR on a particular wing at 20%, you might lose one or two unlucky pilots who didn't get a chance to eject.

Love the buff, though I am somewhat disappointed that you didn't mention anything about carriers actually carrying fighters into battle/in the campaign map. For a fleet I can't imagine having fighter flying around your formation having much point other than wasting fuel and training new pilots. Having to actually deploy your carrier (assuming you have one in-fleet) to deploy your fighters makes some sense, but I suppose they could be deployed off-combat and fly into the fray.

That's an interesting point. A nice (and easy?) solution could be spawning fighter wings from the largest friendly carrier if one is already on the field, or spawning normally if a carrier has not entered battle.

21

Blog Posts / Re: Fighter Update

« on: June 07, 2013, 08:37:58 PM »

I'm liking this system. Makes much more sense intuitively, and solves a bunch of gameplay problems all at once. I do have one question though: how will crew casualties work with this system? If fighter wings cannot really be destroyed while carriers are active, does that mean that you won't take any casualties for any crew assigned to fighter wings when your fleet contains carriers?

22

General Discussion / Re: I can't beat For The Greater Lud.

« on: June 05, 2013, 09:53:46 PM »

I was assuming that each mission was meant to be beatable with the default loadout.  It'd be a lot easier on newbies who just fired up the game and are wanting to try some "Easy" and "Medium" scenarios without having to mess around in the ship customization yet.

Originally, I think it was. But like Alex mentioned, the missions do very much need to be rebalanced. Some have become pretty much impossible with the standard loadout (given AI improvements, ship systems, etc).

23

General Discussion / Re: Current state of affairs?

« on: April 02, 2013, 09:34:56 PM »

I started out on the missions which helps immensely to get up that learning cliff. 

This. There's definitely a very steep cliff (particularly with the current campaign) that some of the veterans here often forget about.

Start with the more basic missions and practice from there.

24

Suggestions / Re: Fighters, Carriers, and Schematics

« on: April 02, 2013, 12:13:24 PM »

I like your idea, naufrago. Simple mechanic from an intuitive point-of-view, discourages tactless "Zerg-ing" of fighters to steamroll opponents, and in the case of closely matched fighter/carrier-based fleets, more advanced (and presumably more CR-robust and better-supplied) carriers have a good advantage.

25

General Discussion / Re: Newbie questions

« on: March 10, 2013, 03:06:22 PM »

Has combat readiness been implemented yet?

No, that will be in the next patch, coming soon^TM.

26

Modding / Re: (mod guys plase reply) is there a possibility to lead/pilot fighter wings ??

« on: January 31, 2013, 07:53:58 PM »

Nope, you can't pilot fighter wings. AFAIK, there's no mod for it either.

27

Suggestions / Re: Initial invisibility for phase ships

« on: January 22, 2013, 09:52:12 PM »

Well it should be fine tuned, I would start from 1000 from ship center. Point of this suggestion isn't to make antimatter peek-a-boo ship, it's about making flanking maneuver with group of ships without let enemy know, but still give enemy chance to defend himself.

Exactly, I agree 100%. So I like the idea; the exact numbers would need to be refined through playtesting.

28

General Discussion / Re: I give up

« on: January 22, 2013, 11:18:39 AM »

Personally, my recommendation would be to begin with the missions first. They provide much more action and "fun" from the start, and train you up for the campaign. You also get the opportunity to tweak ship loadouts to your heart's desire without being limited by credits or station stocks.

I dislike "twitch-fighting," so I usually stick with capital ships or cruisers, and start off with the Enforcer (I sell everything and buy it as soon as I can afford the hull + 5 medium weapons on it), which usually happens after a few battle victories.

29

Suggestions / Re: Initial invisibility for phase ships

« on: January 22, 2013, 11:06:22 AM »

Flux generation based on enemy proximity makes no sense lore-wise as ship is in different dimension and phase coils draw energy at constant rate. I think adding some bonus to speed while ship is phased is reasonable because ship cant attack while phased. If shield equipped ship gains max velocity and engages shield it retains max velocity until it moves - something like this also will be useful for phase ships.

Hence the lore explanation I came up with. But I think your idea is a good one, and much less complicated.

When in phase ship is undetectable until he approach certain distance to enemy ship. When he enter "critical" radius of enemy ship he is still in phase but he is visible as now. And to add little flavor maybe high tech ships would have better sensor so they would detect them form longer range...

Agree that this could be a good idea as well, as long as the critical radius is not too small, allowing a near-risk-free massive antimatter strike. I don't think the distinction between high and low tech ships is needed though; that would just add confusion.

I think both of those could work together nicely, actually. But since both make phasing so much more powerful, a slight boost to the amount of hard flux generated/sec might be needed for balance.

30

Suggestions / Re: Initial invisibility for phase ships

« on: January 21, 2013, 08:19:04 PM »

Interesting idea, Gothars. I fully agree with the campaign layer implementation; I think that would work very well.

I'm not sure that the battle layer implementation would work well, though.

First, there's the confusion of not being able to use phase ships as first strike crafts: any enemies that your phase ships can deal with effectively (ie, cruisers, cap ships, and the occasional slower destroyer) would not be at the middle of the map yet. You'd have to leave your phase ships for later, and in the event that you're losing (or enemies are escaping if the enemy is in "escape" mode), finally deploy them to ambush whatever's left.

Second, the "actual" range of this effect would be much less than two quadrants, if you want to reserve enough flux to actually do anything with the usually-flux-intensive strike weaponry on phase ships.

-------------

One idea I came up with (inspired by Zenos Ebeth's suggestion) is to have slow hard flux buildup over time when phased, but have that value increase depending on how close you are to enemy ships (and projectiles? Not sure about that...). The lore could be that it's more difficult to keep a ship phased when there are high-mass disruptions in space, ie another ship.

With that mechanic, it could also be possible to implement invisibility the way Gothars described, except the flux would take much longer to fill up, so long as the phased ship isn't close to enemy ships?

Not sure about this whole scheme; basically just typing out my thought process...