Overall... there are lots of good things to say about this release. I love the Bullet Time feature; I like the changes to Phase ships in general, even if a couple of them still kind of don't work well. I like the new "tough cargo hauler" Frigate. I like that there are a few new guns to mess with, even if they're underwhelming.
So all of the below is, well, details. But this game's details are where the Fun largely is atm, for those of us who've been playing forever.
The Mudskipper II is totally hilarious and I love it......but it really should be a little more reliable at first, imo, so that it's not just a joke ship.
Losing 40K in weapons and a ship almost immediately due to RNG engine malfunctions isn't terribly Fun. I had that happen when I was silly enough to buy a small, er, group of them, just to see how it worked (I only bought it for the articles, Yer Honor).
Thought on that: make Ill-Advised Modifications tie in with the amount of DPS the ship has attempted:
onFire()
{
if (ship.getHullMod("ill_advised_modifications") == true)
{
do a count on current DPS, then decrease CR or malfunction chance++}
}
The Ion Pulser is not totally useless. It just needs a bit more range (550-ish) and it'd be
quite useful as an alpha-strike gun.
The EMP means that the total load, in Hard and Soft Flux, is very considerable for the cost, and it's a really good finisher.
What makes it largely not work atm is that it's simply not a Level 0 gun due to the range; it's simply not worth using until you have a bunch of character points including the range bonuses. By then, other things are also becoming much more attractive (Pulse Laser), so unfortunately it gets bypassed. More range would put it into the running; right now, it's neither fish nor fowl; not efficient enough to be an assault weapon, and too short range to snipe. If not more range, it should cost 20-25% less Flux per shot, so that it has a useful niche.
That, and there are hardly any platforms where it'd be an improvement over other choices in Vanilla; in SS+, the Sunder (U) is able to make very good use of it with a SO configuration; knocking shields over the edge with it and a pair of Phase Lances while using its System, then a few splashes from the Pulser at the end leave your opponent at your mercy, low on firepower and armor thinning.
The Ion Beam is very interesting.In many ways, it's what the game needs as a Medium Laser, and for the cost, it's waaaay better than the HIL. Wait, what? Oh, EMP does Soft Flux, so it really does 450 for 200 Flux. A pair of them on a Sunder is nice. Was this intended?
Speaking of the HIL... ...I can't speak of the changes without wanting to Vent a bit. Changing the damage type was fine, except that it's now totally useless unless something else has cracked shields. It's not a useful long-range pressure weapon for the Flux.
Since it's Large Energy, why would we mount this at all?
I mean, really; the only ship in the game that can make use of the HIL in a support config that even vaguely makes sense is the Paragon, and, well, no. No, the Sunder can't; it just doesn't have the Dissipation to make it work well and most of the things we want to kill with a Sunder need alpha; 250 DPS vs. shields barely scrapes low-end Frigates, even with high-level bonuses and for the OPs, well.
So what's the fix?
The easiest fix is straightforward buff to DPS for Flux; either make it much more efficient, so that it has a genuine support role... or much more potent... or both. For what it costs, both in terms of a rare slot size and OPs, it'd better be pretty darn awesome, but it just isn't.
The Ion Beam, for example, is actually quite a bit better for the same role, at just -50 damage... but it's
twice as efficient and uses almost half the OPs and doesn't need a Large Energy slot. The HIL is literally one of the worst buys in the game atm. Well, if we don't consider what happened to the Tachyon Lance...
That Tachyon Lance, doe!The Tachyon Lance, once the mightiest of feared sniper-cannons, the weapon that made us raise shields when that Paragon was like, miles away... is, sadly, not even vaguely worth using atm. At Level 0, it looks kinda attractive, but when we're leveled, nope, nope, nope; the Plasma Cannon is way, way, way, way better. Why?
Hard Flux. Gets all of the range and speed bonuses, so it's roughly equivalent in the end, with shot fade. Huge alpha that actually kills stuff... rather than a situational mechanic that is so situational that it might as well not happen.
The problem here is that, for a giant pile of OPs, we get something that still does not do anything like enough alpha to push anything larger than a weak Frigate over the edge with a burst.
That's a major issue; since it no longer has "snipe at ranges the AI doesn't raise shields", it basically has nothing special going for it; it is slightly more Flux-efficient and the range is better than a Phase Lance, but a Phase Lance is basically a finisher, not a starter; the Tachyon Lance is not a starter, but its OP and the Large Energy slot mean that it's competing with the Plasma Cannon, which is both death-alpha and a great finisher, depending on which way you want to go. Or both, if you have the Flux Capacity.
Which leads me to Beams in general...Beams are still largely lame weapons (and more obviously so, now that we have direct apples-to-apples choices vs. Ballistics on a lot of ships). Moreover, the initial weakness of Beams in general are massively compounded by leveled-up characters;
nothing buffs Beams like the projectile guns get buffed.
They don't get the range bonus, they don't get nearly as much mileage out of the damage bonus (because Soft Flux), and they don't get any buffs that are equivalent to increased rates of fire, etc., unless they do because they have a cooldown / burst (which makes which Beams go downhill vs. pew-pew pretty complicated to even talk about, frankly).
How to fix?
I tested out some code to fix Beams in general, by making them do extra damage based on how close the target is, partially effected by what color of laser light is involved (i.e., emulating real-world physics, kind of). It worked surprisingly well, by allowing Soft Flux levels to rise to the point where Beams are useful assault weapons at belly-button ranges, but are mere support at long ranges:
Spoiler
//What this does: scales Beam damage w/ range, so that closer ranges mean more Beam damage.
//LazyLib got used for some trig stuff; the Vacuum utility lib call is basically just a copy of Alex's collision-detection schema and a damage applier that always impacts a shield / valid armor cell. I.E., that stuff's all in Vanilla already.
package data.scripts.weapons;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.BeamAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.WeaponAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.WeaponAPI.DerivedWeaponStatsAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.BeamEffectPlugin;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.CombatEngineAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.CombatEntityAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.DamageType;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.ShipAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.MissileAPI;
import org.lazywizard.lazylib.MathUtils;
import data.scripts.weapons.helperUtils.VacuumWeaponUtils;
public class BeamDamageScalar implements BeamEffectPlugin {
private float frameTime = 0f;
private CombatEntityAPI target;
@Override
public void advance(float amount, CombatEngineAPI engine, BeamAPI beam) {
if (engine.isPaused()) return;
if(beam.getBrightness() < 0.99f) return;
frameTime = engine.getElapsedInLastFrame();
//Get the beam's target
target = beam.getDamageTarget();
//If we have a target, target is a Ship or Missile.
if (target != null && target instanceof ShipAPI || target instanceof MissileAPI) {
//Now that we have the target, get the weapon ID and get the adjuested DPS and range
WeaponAPI weapon = beam.getWeapon();
float red = beam.getFringeColor().getRed();
float green = beam.getFringeColor().getGreen();
float blue = beam.getFringeColor().getBlue();
float colorMult = 1.0f;
//Red lasers are much more efficient up close
if(red > (blue + green)){
colorMult = 2.5f;
}
//Green lasers are more efficient than blue / purple
if(green > (blue + (red * 0.5f))){
colorMult = 1.75f;
}
DamageType damType = weapon.getDamageType();
DerivedWeaponStatsAPI stats = weapon.getDerivedStats();
float maxRange = weapon.getRange() * weapon.getShip().getMutableStats().getBeamWeaponRangeBonus().getBonusMult();
//The range is now used to give additional damage output, using how close we are to the target.
//Anything less than 1/3 range is at maximum damage, here at 3X damage (but easily adjusted).
float theRangeMult = Math.min(Math.max(maxRange / MathUtils.getDistance(beam.getTo(), beam.getFrom()),0f),3f) * colorMult;
float dam = (stats.getDps() * frameTime) / theRangeMult;
float emp = (stats.getEmpPerSecond()) * frameTime / theRangeMult;
//Do some additional damage now, based on the range
VacuumWeaponUtils.vacuumDamageThisEntity(beam.getTo(), target, dam, emp, damType, engine, beam.getSource(), false, false);
}
}
}
So there's a fix for Beams, that finally addresses all of their weird issues, leaves them with Soft Flux, etc.; it makes PD Beams actually useful without any new character buffs, etc. as well.
Well, unless they're in a Hammerhead.
The Hammerhead Still Disappoints.This is, like, the last time I'll complain about it, but gosh-darnit, it's still
underwhelming because the base stats make it unable to to be even vaguely competitive in its size class.
The problem with the Hammerhead is that it's always going to be the combat Destroyer with the fewest guns that can focus forward.
If it's ever going to be competitive, it must be faster and more maneuverable at base than an Enforcer (which it is), so it can run away; but it should be fast enough to catch a Medusa that isn't warping away, so that it has a point as a chase vehicle in the Destroyer class.
There are other potential roles that might balance out its weak weapon loadout, like giving it aggro drones or something, but I think that it'd be happiest if it was the fastest raw speed in the group, so that a Hammerhead / Medusa fight would become all about timing- the Medusa would have more raw DPS if the Hammerhead wasn't using a System, but the Medusa would have to kill it early; that'd be roughly balanced. Vs. Enforcer, it'd still be fragile enough that, since it couldn't just warp out and vent-spam, it'd still have trouble, but might win on a decisive alpha. Again, roughly balanced.
To get there, it needs roughly 20 more base speed, 10 base turning speed, 25 more base OPs, 100 more base Dissipation and 1500 more Capacity and the front guns need to converge a bit better.
Right now, it can't out-gun an Enforcer even with its System running, because it hits Soft Flux cap too early... and it can't out-gun or pressure-kill a Medusa that's equipped correctly.
But it's not the worst of the baseline ships for its size class. No, that's reserved for the high-tech-that-ain't, the Aurora.
The Aurora is the most over-priced ship in the game.36 Supply cost, 36 DPs. Eats huge amounts of CR just to deploy.
On paper, other than that... it looks like a monster. Look at those Dissipation stats, yo! Except for the DPs. That matters quite a lot.
It costs 3X to deploy, in DP alone, as the Medusa. Is it 3 Medusas? Is it?
Not even close. It has less firepower, most locked forward. It has less Dissipation, Capacity, Armor, Hull, etc., etc.- I literally can't think of a stat where it's superior, other than Crew.
Most importantly, it's comparatively slow; it cannot engage and disengage. 3 Medusas can kill practically anything in the game with level-20 Captains; a single Aurora is barely capable of holding its own against a single other Cruiser, outfitted correctly. And of course it slows your whole fleet down, too, like any Cruiser.
Most importantly, it has a System that's only good on
one ship in the game (not this one). The Sunder can, with enough character buffs and so forth, occasionally use HEF to kill things without getting swarmed to death. This is true. Although the Sunder (U) in SS+ is actually balanced about right whereas the Vanilla Sunder is just below the cusp, frankly.
The Aurora? Well, no; an optimized Aurora at Level 0 just barely out-classes the Eagle, Vanilla stock (i.e., not optimized). Why?
Well, let's compare it with the Apogee, which is currently the best Vanilla Cruiser there is. The Apogee with a Plasma Cannon, all character buffs applied, is almost outrageously deadly and hard to kill and is just fast enough to get out of trouble. Free Ion Cannon spam, better range than any other Cruiser and that sensor bonus all add up.
The Aurora? To even get into the ballpark in a real fight outside the sim, it needs Forward Shield. Poof, OP advantage. Still doesn't have the 0.6 shield buff, though. But the big problem is the firepower difference, which is huge; the Apogee can fire the Plasma Cannon at 840 + ship bonus, the Aurora, with three Heavy Blasters, is 720. 2X the damage, not to mention the difference in Armor penetration, and the Apogee can tank, recover, alpha-strike over and over, and keep back-peddling. Or close up and kill; the Ion Cannons and a decent loadout can make the Apogee quite the DPS-dealer up close.
It doesn't need the other guns in play; the Aurora does. But what's available in small Synergy? IR Pulse Lasers?
You're kidding, right? Worst pew-pew in the game because of the range band, which should be 600 or even 650 (so that it's somewhat comparable with the Light AC) but isn't?
Yes, the 20% Dissipation to Hard Flux almost catches the Aurora up to the Apogee for shield-tanking, but "almost" doesn't matter when you get 1.5 Apogees (or just under 1 Apogee and 1 Medusa) for the same DPs.
The Aurora used to have a point and it used to be OK'ish. Not my favorite ride, because the Eagle was more Fun and the Apogee was more interesting when its System was added.
Now? Not so much. It feels like a large, energy-dependent Hammerhead.
But all these observations gets worse, not better, in actual engagements. There, the other three combat (non-Phase) cruisers shine, with their three themes- brute firepower, shield tank and range, maneuverability- all on display.
The Aurora, however, is basically designed to kill one thing in a straight-ahead slugging match with short-ranged weapons right now; if surrounded by reasonably-aggressive opponents, it dies, and in an actual fight, it's very vulnerable to Frigate rushes.
A Dominator may get gradually wrecked or EMP'd; an Eagle may run out of Capacity; an Apogee might... well, I don't know what kills a level-20 piloted, well-optimized Apogee for equivalent DP cost, actually. But the Aurora's just dead; it can't reach a high-value target, it can't run away from things that can overwhelm it for cost; it doesn't have the range to kill those things on the way in, if it's equipped to kill big things.
So how to fix?
The easiest way would be to give it a teleporter. Seriously. Why not make it the Hyperion of Cruisers? Sure, it'd cost a lot and be kind of lame in a straight-up fight, but, well, it won't do straight-up fights; it'll get behind you and kill you, if you can't get it Flux-locked, quick.
The second easiest way would be to give it a Large Energy slot forward, rather than the Medium Synergy. Then it's like an Apogee but it has better base stats and less range. Kind of boring, though, but HEF would have a point there, with Plasma Cannon spam. There's nothing else in Large Energy worth using right now...
Maybe make it do a time-warp, now that that's a thing; it'd be an upgrade on HEF?
Maybe have something that fits a Light Energy slot that's actually worth using?
Maybe give it a missile-buff System and make it a dedicated missile boat? I think it's too slow for that role, but perhaps.
Other stuff:
1. Why are the Light Needlers and the Railgun both better than the Arbalest? Does the Arbalest have a clear use case? Does the Heavy Autocannon? I think both weapons are essentially
redundant in Medium Ballistics, largely due to to point 2:
2. Why do the heavier weapons consistently have more and more Flux inefficiency for DPS and less DPS per OP, rather than the opposite? This makes deciding which to use, on Level 20 Captains, an easy job; getting the full use of the -20% Hard Flux drain is way more useful than marginal DPS increases, in almost all cases. There are exceptions, where the sheer alpha is worth it, but they're outliers.
3. Why are the Light Autocannons a thing? They have zero advantages over the Railgun other than small OP costs, which just don't matter later. If they were more Flux-efficient, they might be worth considering.
4. The Light Mortar is a classic example of a weapon that is pretty much worthless at Level 0, but suddenly becomes attractive later. Do the math on it and you'll see what's going on; essentially, it's main problem (inaccurate, slow shots) is nullified, and it's suddenly better for low-cost HE spamming than the Light Assault. Is that intended? I can't see why it would be; all of a sudden, you have a weapon that goes from bad to great (for the OP cost) because of a single upgrade tree.
5. Does the Hephaestus do anything that nothing else does more efficiently? It's marginally more Flux-efficient than the Heavy Mauler, but 100 range matters and it's not firing fast enough to provide good alpha.
6. The Mjolnir is the most effective Energy gun. Why is that?
7. Why is Armor largely deprecated and why is HE deprecated? HE is now net-negative as a bonus, because it's 0.5 vs. Shields and is only 1.5 vs. Armor. This means when you do the DPS / Flux math, HE doesn't even come close to the effectiveness of Kinetic, especially considering the AI's sub-optimal response to high Flux levels (it really needs to learn to drop the shields and tank Armor better, for the ships where that's a theme... and Armor needs to be effective enough for that theme to be realistic).
Bumping the efficiency of Armor down to 0.15, bumping Beam damage vs. Armor down, bumping HE to 1.5... meh, it's a mess of contradictory impulses here, frankly. The 2:1 ratios in the olden days made perfect sense, so long as Armor tanks existed and the AI was rational about when to tank; these days, I stun-lock Onslaughts with massive burst DPS from Kinetics, and its firepower is a tenth of what it should be... and then Kinetics kill it, while it sits there, unable to fire or move, and if it Vents, it's just eating more DPS. The whole way that the AI handles these situations is pretty bad; if all I have to do to shut down AI ships is pressure them out of Flux and keep them locked, it's not much of a challenge, other than hitting that number and pulling the trigger.
The other factor here is the proliferation of EMP. I think that Armor should provide native scaled resistance to EMP, EMP should be resisted a bit the larger ships get and that variants that have high EMP resistance need to be a thing. EMP shouldn't be the universal counter to large armored things; it takes all of the terror out of the game when I Flux-lock a Dominator with a Medusa, the AI goes all silly because it wants the shields up to avoid EMP, and when it finally Vents, my Ion Cannons make its firepower a quarter of what it should be.
This gets compounded by what gets the most bang for buck out of leveled Captains. I literally cannot think of a Universal slot where I'm not going to put Kinetics on, unless it's a missile; I don't use HE and Energy only gets used if it's a ship that can't do anything but Energy, and then it's always going to be the Pulse Laser for killing things or a Beam with Advanced Optics for support or a Plasma Cannon or an Ion Cannon, which is still very very efficient because of no 8:
8. EMP as Soft Flux is really not a good idea. Maybe at a very steep discount, like 0.25 or so, but not at 1:1. It wasn't so egregious when the only weapon in the game where it could be actively abused was the Ion Cannon, but it's quite obviously not a great idea now.
Does that perhaps nerf the Ion Cannon out of play? Maybe, but raise the base DPS a little to compensate, done; it'd be OK at 65-70 or so.
9. Other than specialized alpha-strike ships, why would you ever spend on Capacity unless it was literally the only place to spend OPs? Really, I expect to hear lots of arguments, but after staring at a lot of AI-vs-AI battles, I'm not going to buy them, frankly.
I have an idea to fix that.
Offer a base Hard Flux drain that's proportional to Flux Capacity. Maybe 1% / 0.75% / 0.5% / 0.35% as a starting-place, so that the biggest Capacity wells aren't terrifying without the Level-20 bonus. This way, Hard Flux constant drain isn't just a Level-20 thing, it makes Hard Flux slightly more dynamic... and it'd make more Vents vs. more Capacity an intriguing case of offense vs. defense?
10. Please fix that merchant fleets going from A to B aren't carrying goods B actually wants. I want to be a pirate, hang out around Sindria, and scoop up loads of Volturnian Lobsters, plzkthxbye.
11. The Beam nerf vs. Armor shouldn't be a thing, especially now that Beams are in all the Damage Types, imo. It just makes it too confusing to talk about their utility coherently.
12. The Mining Laser is basically just a LRPD that's more Flux-efficient but doesn't actually kill PD targets because of turret speed. It'd be nice if it had a job that was more distinctive, like being a Small that could do assault like a Phase Lance or something else. It's way too far into, "me, too, but not well" territory atm.
13. Why is the Conquest effectively dead? It's one of the most iconic designs in SS and I used to like it over the Onslaught and Paragon but it's basically not worth it right now.
The main problem is that its shield doesn't work well; it should be way more efficient because it's a small defensive area and making it Forward Shield is never going to be attractive at its current base OPs. That, and the paper-thin Armor mean it's just not quite up to doing much other than kiting, and it's not up to that, either, because fast Frigates eat it for breakfast atm.