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Author Topic: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 355091 times)

ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #300 on: February 27, 2016, 09:04:20 AM »


1) Sometimes friendly AIs will get stuck in a corner of the combat map, no order can debug them. You need to physically move near them and ask for escort.

How often/under what conditions are you seeing this? What exactly are they doing? Are enemy ships nearby? Are any "Avoid" orders in play?

2) The Onslaught has a new stock loadout that's quite "special" to say the least. It's called "Standard" like the other one, but it's most certainly not standard as it mounts missiles nearly everywhere, which of course isn't even possible. It works though.

Did you see it in the campaign? If so, where?

1) So far I've only seen it happen with Burn Drive ships. They just keep burn driving over and over into the border of the map. If you bring enemies to them they turn around and attack though, but if you try to tell them to move or escort when nobody is near them they just ignore you. No avoid orders were in play. Just a few escorts. Small ships escort medium ship, which escorts big ship.

2) The AI isn't using it, but it's available in the loadout menu. Elite, Outdated, Standard, and now, another Standard. I've never used mods so it's not a leftover or anything, it says (Stock), I can't delete it. Haven't tried on the XIV Onslaught since I don't have one, but it's there on the normal version. It mounts missile pods on various weapon slots like the medium ballistics and so on.
I can confirm that if you turn devmode on and look at the variants, there is an Onslaught loadout with Salamander MRM pods mounted in the large ballistic and medium missile slots, and Harpoon MRM pods mounted in every single other slot.

Slowly but surely, the Harpoons are taking over Starsector. Eventually there will be no weapon but the Harpoon.

The new Aurora is disappointing. The only energy weapon you can realistically put in the small synergy hardpoints is the AM blaster, but the new phase ships are much better AM blaster platforms because they'll almost always have the speed and positioning advantage as well as not having to worry about risking an overload from soft flux. So either you're piloting a burst-and-run Aurora which is very inferior to a burst-and-run Doom, or you're trying to use the Aurora as the hybrid energy/missile boat it used to be but now isn't because it doesn't have a large missile slot anymore.
For the Aurora, I use one Tactical Laser at the furthest tip to force AI to keep shields up at long range, and three Ion Cannons in the other three small synergy mounts.  Medium synergy gets Heavy Blaster.  Aurora can now out-Eagle the Eagle at triple blaster assault, and gives a reason to use Aurora over a Medusa or two.  Before, Aurora was a weird Medusa and Gryphon combo.

That said, I agree that the loss of heavy missile is a bit of a net nerf.  I would like to see an Aurora with a large synergy mount.  That way, it can use the fun heavy energy weapons, or heavy missile.  If not, then at least a medium universal so it can mount an HVD or Heavy Needler and can actually use beams effectively if it wants.
The reason to use an Aurora instead of a few Medusas was the large missile mount. Being a weird Medusa/Gryphon combo, i.e. a Gryphon that can actually defend itself on the front lines, was the point of the ship. Now it's two Medusas mashed together with no Phase Skimmer, inferior turret arcs, Synergy slots instead of Universal slots, and it costs as many supplies to deploy as three Medusas.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 09:42:02 AM by ANGRYABOUTELVES »
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #301 on: February 27, 2016, 09:54:33 AM »



Alex gonna get a visit from the Secret Service.

Well, at least it's not Bernard Dickerson.


bug: i've been holding a Tri-Tachyon commission for a few months, and they declared war on Sindrian Diktat shortly after, dropping my (previously neutral) standing with them down to hostile. but just now hostilities between the two factions ended, and instead of having my standing with SD increased back up again, my standing with TT went way up (from 73 to 100) and i'm still at -50 with SD.

Ohh, thank you. Fixed - it was (as you noted) bugged and would sometimes restore reputation for the wrong faction. So you got the right amount back, but applied to your TT rep and not SD.

1) So far I've only seen it happen with Burn Drive ships. They just keep burn driving over and over into the border of the map. If you bring enemies to them they turn around and attack though, but if you try to tell them to move or escort when nobody is near them they just ignore you. No avoid orders were in play. Just a few escorts. Small ships escort medium ship, which escorts big ship.

How strange. Haven't seen this myself, and been playtesting with a bunch of Enforcers in the last run. Well, will keep an eye out!


2) The AI isn't using it, but it's available in the loadout menu.

Ah, gotcha. Removed that variant altogether, really no reason for it to still be in the game.

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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #302 on: February 27, 2016, 10:24:26 AM »

does the Entropy Amplifier increase damage to shields and/or from emp weapons?
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #303 on: February 27, 2016, 10:35:04 AM »

Shields, yes, EMP, no. The latter is an oversight, fixed.
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Sy

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #304 on: February 27, 2016, 10:52:38 AM »

oh, cool. thanks. :]

should maybe also add to the description that it builds a significant amount of flux when used.

edit: aaand i think the visual indication for it being active could use an improvement. sound helps, and the activation animation on your own ship is very noticeable, but the redish glow on the actual target can be pretty hard to see in the heat of battle, especially when the ship's armor has been smashed up recently (which usually happens). some kind of pulsing animation or a glow that radiates beyond the edges of the target ship's sprite could help.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 11:08:03 AM by Sy »
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #305 on: February 27, 2016, 11:03:33 AM »

oh, cool. thanks. :]

should maybe also add to the description that it builds a significant amount of flux when used.
And the same to the temporal shell. Overloaded myself the first time I used it
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #306 on: February 27, 2016, 11:18:19 AM »

I agree that missiles have power crept a bit too far. The AI is very liberal with the missiles when ships go above 80% flux; I would have had a great screenshot of the AI unloading what must have been 4 dozen Harpoons from 3 Enforcers, a Falcon, and a Vigilance in an attempt to kill my Doom, but this patch is giving me having trouble with screenshots. Starsector+ nerfs Missile Specialization, and that does make the missile situation feel quite a bit better, but it gives out Atropos racks to what seems like every pirate and Hegemony fleet in the game and that doesn't help much. The sheer quantity of guided strike weaponry the AI throws around is staggering. Not that I'm much better really, all of my destroyers and frigates get Harpoons if they can mount missiles.
Found my picture! I was wrong, it was only 3 dozen Harpoons. They still one-shot one of my Wolves.

Spoiler
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Grievous69

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #307 on: February 27, 2016, 11:43:39 AM »

I'm not really a fan of frigates but I must say these new ones are great, as others said the turret arcs are a bit weird but I already got used to them. With all these new ships, I want more and more a place where we can just test ships and fool around with all the skills and weapons. Yea, I could just use the Console Commands but that takes a lot of time :/.

Also the phase changes are really interesting, it made playing with/against phase ships more fun than before.

As always keep up with the phenomenal work Alex, the game keeps getting more and more awesome with each update. :)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #308 on: February 27, 2016, 12:08:04 PM »

The reason to use an Aurora instead of a few Medusas was the large missile mount. Being a weird Medusa/Gryphon combo, i.e. a Gryphon that can actually defend itself on the front lines, was the point of the ship. Now it's two Medusas mashed together with no Phase Skimmer, inferior turret arcs, Synergy slots instead of Universal slots, and it costs as many supplies to deploy as three Medusas.
Large missile was the only reason I used Aurora in the past.  If I did not want missiles, then all high-tech cruisers were a bust, with firepower no better than a Medusa, and Eagle would have been my pick for three medium energy weapons, but triple blaster Eagle is unforgiving to use.  Now, Aurora can blast things with three blasters and have better flux stats than Eagle and better firepower than Medusa.  Aurora is good at blaster spam.  Unfortunately, there is not much Aurora can do well now other than blaster spam.  Aurora's role has changed from missile boat to melee specialist... in a game where high speed and long-range are most effective.

There might have been a recent discussion to change Medusa's universal to synergy, which all that would do is reduce variety of endgame configurations (e.g., cannot use beams offensively without kinetics).
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #309 on: February 27, 2016, 12:24:24 PM »

I'm not really a fan of frigates but I must say these new ones are great, as others said the turret arcs are a bit weird but I already got used to them. With all these new ships, I want more and more a place where we can just test ships and fool around with all the skills and weapons. Yea, I could just use the Console Commands but that takes a lot of time :/.

Also the phase changes are really interesting, it made playing with/against phase ships more fun than before.

As always keep up with the phenomenal work Alex, the game keeps getting more and more awesome with each update. :)

Your best bet is dev mode > edit variants, because you can spawn any fleet you want vs any fleet you want using deploy allies/deploy enemies
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Gothars

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #310 on: February 27, 2016, 12:49:35 PM »

I'm just getting into the game, and I noticed something slightly odd:

Spoiler
[close]

The red areas roughly mark the screen space that is "off limits" for your fleet while panning the camera, i.e. you cant move your camera in a way that the fleet is in that area. But what is the point of the area in the upper right corner? It would make sense in the lower left, there it would stop you from covering your fleet with the Tripad widget.


Oh and btw, a "go back" option during character creation would be greatly appreciated.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #311 on: February 27, 2016, 12:54:48 PM »

I'm just getting into the game, and I noticed something slightly odd:

Spoiler
[close]

The red areas roughly mark the screen space that is "off limits" for your fleet while panning the camera, i.e. you cant move your camera in a way that the fleet is in that area. But what is the point of the area in the upper right corner? It would make sense in the lower left, there it would stop you from covering your fleet with the Tripad widget.

The way that works is it's limited to 800 units of panning in each direction (configurable via settings.json, campaignMaxPan). The distance you can pan towards the bottom left is a bit less because it stops panning once you mouse over the UI elements that are there.

Oh and btw, a "go back" option during character creation would be greatly appreciated.

Noted!
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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #312 on: February 27, 2016, 01:30:59 PM »

Large missile was the only reason I used Aurora in the past.  If I did not want missiles, then all high-tech cruisers were a bust, with firepower no better than a Medusa, and Eagle would have been my pick for three medium energy weapons, but triple blaster Eagle is unforgiving to use.  Now, Aurora can blast things with three blasters and have better flux stats than Eagle and better firepower than Medusa.  Aurora is good at blaster spam.  Unfortunately, there is not much Aurora can do well now other than blaster spam.  Aurora's role has changed from missile boat to melee specialist... in a game where high speed and long-range are most effective.

There might have been a recent discussion to change Medusa's universal to synergy, which all that would do is reduce variety of endgame configurations (e.g., cannot use beams offensively without kinetics).
The Aurora could be used as a melee specialist before the change. 4 Annihilators and 1 Locust SRM backed up by a battery of Pulse Lasers and IR Pulse Lasers, with Expanded Missile Racks to make sure it never runs out of missiles. And I don't think I ever did run out of missiles, even with SSP's increased fleet sizes. It cut through everything smaller than an Onslaught like butter, using Annihilators on destroyers and cruisers, and the Locust on frigates and fighters. Now that build doesn't work; it's dependent on the Locust SRM for anti-fighter/frigate HE. Medium missile weaponry doesn't have the particular mix of burst and sustainability that the Locust does, there isn't even a medium anti-fighter missile in vanilla.

The Aurora was better as a melee ship before the change because its melee build didn't generate tons and tons of soft flux. Missiles don't use flux, and Pulse Lasers are much lighter on flux and much more flux efficient than Heavy Blasters. This means it could dedicate the majority of its flux capacity to soaking up damage with its shield, not to dealing damage with flux-inefficient weaponry, and it needs to soak up damage with its shield because its armor is crap.

What the Aurora is left now with is Heavy Blaster spam; flux-heavy and flux-inefficient which greatly reduces its survivability, and which uses relatively short-ranged weaponry, ensuring it'll be taking fire from anything it engages that's larger than a destroyer. Not a good combination. It can use an Antimatter-blaster burst build, which phase ships are inherently much better at. Or, it can mount a bunch of Harpoons and Atropos torpedoes and be a tankier Gryphon with crippled offensive capability.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 01:36:48 PM by ANGRYABOUTELVES »
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #313 on: February 27, 2016, 03:32:10 PM »

The problem with missiles is they are limited.  I will run out in a simulator-sized battle, even with Expanded Missile Racks.  I generally avoid missile boats, and build for endurance, which missiles aside from Salamanders or Pilums are poor at.  If you want a missile boat, that is good.  If you want a blaster ship bigger than Medusa, your only viable options (before 0.7.2) were Eagle or Paragon.

Quote
What the Aurora is left now with is Heavy Blaster spam; flux-heavy and flux-inefficient which greatly reduces its survivability, and which uses relatively short-ranged weaponry, ensuring it'll be taking fire from anything it engages that's larger than a destroyer. Not a good combination. It can use an Antimatter-blaster burst build, which phase ships are inherently much better at. Or, it can mount a bunch of Harpoons and Atropos torpedoes and be a tankier Gryphon with crippled offensive capability.
I do not disagree that Aurora was weakened overall, despite getting better with blasters.

This is why I consider Dominator best-in-class for cruisers.  Only Reaper Aurora could compete, but that is gone (not enough shots from Typhoon).  With tons of dual flak, even Onslaught may be better than Paragon for capitals.

Yes, blasters are flux hogs.  Aurora has the stats to do it well, or at least better than Eagle now.  Eagle could do it if built for it, but is unforgiving with mistakes in any case.

P.S. What I mean by melee specialist is the ship is optimized for fighting with short-ranged (energy) weapons.  Melee is not a good thing to do in Starsector, but if that is the best the ship you want can do, and you need to use it (due to lack of better options available), you build for it (e.g., Safety Override, use weapons with range of 500 or less) despite that weakness.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 03:38:19 PM by Megas »
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Embolism

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Re: Starsector 0.7.2a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #314 on: February 27, 2016, 03:41:27 PM »

What if the Aurora's Synergy slots are all changed to Universal?
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