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[Solinarius]

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.

What nerf? First I'm hearing about it.

[Thaago]

Re: Capacitors - I think people vastly underrate them. For kiting ships dissipation should be maxed because they should be constantly firing, but for assault ships I find that a balance between vents and caps is better. My general rule of thumb is 200 capacitance for each 10 dissipation (total, including base stats).

More capacitors equals more firing time before venting so ships can fire at full power for longer. For ships with more firepower than venting (assault ships), this means you can simply steamroll over an opponent. You can vent when they are dead . Even more importantly, more capacitors = more hitpoints versus alpha strikes. In a fleet battle where firepower can suddenly become concentrated, being able to survive longer can make a big difference.

The longer venting time is a bit of a concern, but the AI does an extremely good job of backing off behind allies. Just make sure to have allies. I am big on fleet rather than solo combat, so this works fine by me.


Re: Weapons
I enjoy that there are civilian grade weapons. Makes perfect sense to me *shrug*.

I do however use both Dual LMG's and Mortars on Lashers, though under different circumstances. The Mortars make for cheap early game HE vs other frigates and fighters - the LAG is expensive flux hungry overkill. However, in the late game when I have a ton of OPs, mounting DLMG's rather than the singles is a significant DPS increase for only 4 OP.

[Ranakastrasz]

Re: Capacitors - I think people vastly underrate them. For kiting ships dissipation should be maxed because they should be constantly firing, but for assault ships I find that a balance between vents and caps is better. My general rule of thumb is 200 capacitance for each 10 dissipation (total, including base stats).

More capacitors equals more firing time before venting so ships can fire at full power for longer. For ships with more firepower than venting (assault ships), this means you can simply steamroll over an opponent. You can vent when they are dead . Even more importantly, more capacitors = more hitpoints versus alpha strikes. In a fleet battle where firepower can suddenly become concentrated, being able to survive longer can make a big difference.

The longer venting time is a bit of a concern, but the AI does an extremely good job of backing off behind allies. Just make sure to have allies. I am big on fleet rather than solo combat, so this works fine by me.

There is a problem I find with capaciters vs Venting, which extends to any game with a similar mechanic, even if this one is inverted from normal energy consumption and generation. The problem is mainly that Generation is dramatically better than capacity in most cases. Generation is your sustained ability, which is what matters most of the time. Capacity generally matters in two cases. A, Alpha strikes, or situations where you need to have a lot of flux very fast, and the capacity lets you pretend you have a lot more venting than you really do, for a short time, or B, Oversized weapons, where you have a slow firing weapon with high flux cost, which produces so much flux you literally cannot fire it, or if you can, it uses up 90% or more of your capacity. Aside from that, Venting almost always wins.

Starsector however does have a few mechanics that alter the relationship. Hard flux for shields makes capacity more important, since you have to drop shields eventually, and more capacity can delay that. And Venting, which is like backing off to recharge, but unlike most games, you get a bonus, which means breaking off to recharge is significantly more effective. As a result, building up flux before backing off, having more capacity lets you push the attack longer than you might with just venting.

However, I still find it hard to justify going for capacity over venting in most cases. I don't find the capacity increase to be sufficiently large to justify it over venting in most cases. Venting gives more total uptime.

This might be a bias of some kind, since more capacity might allow for an extended alpha strike, which tends to be how many ships are killed, but the lack of endurance seems more important to me.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Well I figured that I should stop pestering some of my SS Skype friends with my complaints and post them here soooo here goes:

On the new combat ships:
Scarab: I LOVE this ship and the system that comes with it but I still have some points that I think could be fixed:
-The supplies per deployment is at EIGHT, the same as the afflictor, shade and almost an enforcer (9)! Hell the Tempest is only six. Would lower this to at least seven especially since it is a starter ship
-The fact that this ship only has small slots hurts it as we don't really have any GOOD small energy weapons for assault roles (see IR pulse laser discussion)
-side mounts are almost useless due to their narrow angle and facing
Centurion: The system makes this and the Brawler TANKS! I've seen them take fire that XIV enforcers can't! But this system really doesn't make up for its issues:
-Like others have said, can't focus fire worth squat and can't duel to save itself. This is bad as it is a starter ship and could easily be a noob trap.
-Speaking of starter ship problems, the supplies per deployment being SIX (same as tempest) once again hurts as someone just starting out...
Suggestion: remove this as a starter and respawn ship for non easy mode players. Would be a decent wingman though for Easy
Harbinger: Three Medium Synergy mounts makes this thing a BEAST for alpha strikes, especially combined with phase cloak and its system.
-Only issue with it is the deployment cost: twenty supplies is insane, especially since the Falcon costs fifteen to deploy and the Eagle twenty two! The closest destroyer is the Medusa at twelve supplies!

Phase changes:
I'll be frank, I'm not enjoying these changes at all as they make the phase ships even WORSE to fight than they were before IMHO as now they can use the phase "speed boost" to safely get away from almost any threat, allowing them vent and re-engage quickly. This problem grows even worse with officer skills boosting vent rates, slowly flux buildup in phase and maneuverability boosts making these things weave around so much that even beams can't hit them. This combined with the AI's ability to perfectly time phase cloaks, these buggers are nearly invincible.
Let's look at the supposed counters, shall we?
-Hyperion: Expensive to maintain and use, fragile, rare as a snowball in hell, very high CR to deploy (40%) along with supply usage (15, the same as a falcon), TWO mins. of Peak Performance Time (PPT)
-Afflictor: Expensive to use (8 supply per deployment), rare
-Waiting them out: Boring and allows them to do large amounts of damage, especially if they have an afflictor as they are capable of destroying even the largest and most defensive of ships (Afflictor versus SIM Paragon, Paragon loses)

As you can see, they really don't have any real good counters. My suggestions to help fix this: (One or more would help)
-Give AI less than perfect timing with the cloak, like with the shields
-Cut the time boost down to 2X
-Have vents reset/ pause their phase cool down
-(For the Afflictor) Make the system penalize MISSILES and not ENERGY weapons as missiles are flux free, cheap in OPs, MUCH more powerful. I'd either just swap the damage nerf to missiles or lock out missiles from being launched for around a half a second

Aurora changes:
Like the others I think the Aurora got screwed in this patch. Already it was in a kind of odd place but now with the loss of the large missile mount, the supply usage, which is the same for the Doom and the aurora is NOT worth as much as an Onslaught, Conquest or three Medusas when it comes to combat! What is worse is that the Apogee, the Aurora's "competitor" is better in almost every way and is TEN SUPPLIES cheaper to use! My suggestion would be to drop the supply usage down to 30 or even 28 along with buffing the IR pulse laser and or creating an assault class small energy mount weapon

New weapons:
Ion Pulsar: I agree with the others, this weapon doesn't feel worth the OP nor the flux cost
Ion Beam: Haven't played with it enough to get a feel for it

HIL Changes:
Unlike the others, I LIKE the changes as it makes this weapon more useful than before. Yes it is still pretty weak on the player side, but on the enemy side, I've had my exposed rear melted several times by this laser on a Sunder. One thing that I would like to see is both the ion and the HIL get their color changed. OR change the color of the Graviton beam as they are all the same color, with one being able to be tanked on the armor while the other two can't be

[TJJ]

How about having no dissipation while phased?

It'd be a huge nerf, so would need offsetting in some other way, but would solve the near endless attack/phase retreat cycle.
To solve the huge alpha strike capability that missiles give, just change the mounts from universal to hybrid.

[TaLaR]

@Midnight Kitsune
Don't agree with nerfing phase ships in general (except Afflictor's system).
They are already easy enough to kill using dedicated fast ships: Wolf, Scarab, Medusa... Ones that happen to work better as player ships anyway. Just keep turning shields  to them while they are trying to get behind you(Wolf might have to use a skimmer charge defensively due to forward shield) and use high speed + mobility system to catch them at high flux after.

Also, Afflictor can kill sim Paragon only if player-piloted. Under AI control it's nowhere near as dangerous.

[Dwarfslayer]

If the Afflictor was to be nerfed, I think the appropriate scale of the nerf would be something like not being able to fire for the duration of the disruption. This lets it support and gain advantage with its system shutting down shields, but prevents it alpha-ing massive warships into dust in a small window where they have no defence at all.

I've found phase ships to be very powerful, but not outrageous generally speaking. What phase ships do at the moment is greatly discourage small fleet play, in particular solo flagship play. You have to really have your *** together to handle any fleet with a phase ship on your own. With a few frigates or destroyers dedicated to escorting your important ships you shouldn't have serious trouble with any phase vessel and can generally focus down the enemy bruisers before cleaning up their phase ships.

The ion pulser can be a monstrous weapon in certain scenarios I really like the situational usefulness of the weapon, generally poor on a flagship but extremely potent on a support ship that can get in range and behind shields. A Harbinger with 3 pulsers and expanded magazines can and will disable any ship without 360 shields and good shield efficiency, the entropy amplifier even makes the pulsers do damage, 90 concentrated hits while amped will do real damage in addition to the EMP.

HIL and grav Sunder was my bread and butter in the midgame pirate bounty section of the campaign, the new high energy focus is very good in combination, overwhelms weak emitters easily and once shields go down the hurt really gets going 500dps HE is no joke.

[xenoargh]

So you want every weapon and ship to have the same strenght/value ratio? Why would that be important in a singleplayer game? The only reason I can think of is to keep all the options open for minmaxers.

Mainly, my gripe is that, as a mildly-minmax player, I keep finding only one path that is sensible, even within a non-optimal strategic choice, like playing big-fleet rather than optimal, one-ship-vs-all stuff.

I feel like there's nothing wrong with Weapon A being better in every way than Weapon B, but that's what OPs are for; to make that cost something.  It's the only meaningful limiting factor, if Weapon A is superior enough.  I don't mind that some weapons are low-OP but are out-classed by high-OP things; at least there's rough parity there.  But the Arbalest and Heavy AC are examples of weapons that are flat-out weak vs. their competition in the Small Ballistic category; they could be fixed pretty easily by just leaving them alone in every way but Flux cost per shot and would become attractive again.

I'm playing for massive kills this time, with a largish fleet where I pretty much steamroll everything and try out options.  Things that have really struck me:

1.  HE's just not working for what you pay for it.  It's not that it "doesn't work"; it's just not cutting the mustard atm vs. Kinetic or Energy.  
Why?  Because knocking shields down / maxing out Flux is pretty much the whole fight atm, in part because of the Armor behaviors, in part because of the AI becoming so afraid of lowering its shield.  There is no moment where I'm like, "gee, that Onslaught is low on Flux; I'll bet he's about to lower shields and charge me"; there isn't tension that way right now.

2.  Missiles are a really mixed bag right now; I didn't talk much about them because that's almost a second long post, lol.  Mainly they're OK-ish but unattractive for OPs if they don't regen.

3.  I just don't find most of the stuff in Energy compelling, now that there are lots of ships where I get a choice.  

4.  The Hammerhead got brought up (I swear, for the last time) because it's the Mid Tech ship that doesn't work and it's one of those iconic designs in the game that I'd like to see be functional largely because it's iconic, like the Hound and Conquest (all ships that don't work well atm).  It just irks me that the first thing I feel like I've gotta do, if I want to fly one around, is buff it a little; it's not a "cheat", because the AI gets the stats too, but it's still one of those things.

The Sunder, which I've always considered more High than Mid, works, kind of (I think the Sunder (U) in SS+ is where it should be, though; that thing is just over certain cusps enough to be FUN).

5.  I was pretty sure EMP still did Soft Flux.  Will confirm that.

6.  The Aurora has all sorts of ways it could be fixed, but yeah, something that gives it mobility is probably the one, so that it can continue to have great stats, sub-optimal guns, but still work.

7.  I think SO still works great; Phasing is cool and I don't think it's OP so much as AI fleets generally don't use enough Beams to counter.  Make Beams more attractive and more Variants mounting them and huh, that'd end quick.

8.  Beams get the basic bonus; but they don't get the fade-out distance, which becomes quite a lot longer when shot speeds go up, because that's a flat timer.  This effects early alpha timing and gives human pilots a great advantage, since we all make use of the fade-out timer.

9.  The HIL is not a good support weapon.  Yes, a Sunder can fire one with a Cautious pilot, but it's still just contributing 250 Soft Flux atm at 500 Soft Flux, and that "support" Sunder will die very easily in a big scrum because of the OPs you used up.  

Compare that with just spending the OPs on a pair of Pulse Lasers that do Hard Flux at 850-ish ranges with the level-20 bonuses and ITU; it's Hard Flux and it's at a 1.1 DPS / Flux tradeoff, roughly, vs. shields.  Sure, the range isn't that cool, but if you just want the AI to keep shields up, a single Tac Laser will do it.

But even if it worked well on the Sunder, I still wouldn't buy it for anything else.  A weapon that has one maybe-ish use case isn't good.

10.  Rarity is not a valid argument for things that are obviously OP / UP for <whatever game variables actually matter>.  In the case of weapons, it's OP; for ships, it's largely DP / CR costs, but we can have a sensible argument about over-world speeds and Fuel use, too.  Unless "rarity" becomes some Roguelike, "there is only X of Y in the entire game, ever" system, of course; then we'll all just save-scum every time we lost a ship carrying Y, though... so rarity isn't a thing.

11.  I don't find the Afflictor to be terrifically OP, except possibly in player hands.  Against it, I'm fine, using my current tactics.  I'd rather see other ships get better than continually see the nail that sticks up getting the hammer.

[SafariJohn]

5.  I was pretty sure EMP still did Soft Flux.  Will confirm that.

Tested: does not.

[xenoargh]

Tested: does not.

OK.  Must have just seen the total DPS of the Ion Pulsar with a leveled pilot and came to the conclusion that it still caused Soft Flux, but that was just the Beams doing extra damage to shields with the bonus there.  Oops. 

I still find it hard to justify going for capacity over venting in most cases. I don't find the capacity increase to be sufficiently large to justify it over venting in most cases. Venting gives more total uptime.

100% agreed with that.  I see Capacity as basically being worthwhile on alpha-strike ships, but I don't really feel the AI ever makes use of them terribly well, compared to how well the AI uses better Venting.

The other issue the AI has is that it simply doesn't recognize alpha-strike ships and get out of their way.  

Frigates up against my current player-ship should just run; they cannot take what it dishes out for more than a couple of seconds and will die, period; my ship should effectively have an Avoid order on it unless the rest of my fleet is dead.  Recognizing that is a little hard, but probably a rough guess can be made, in terms of per-volley DPS.  But no, they swarm me, I kill a couple of them every 10 seconds, and life is good.  Well, for me at least.

[Megas]

Shots that hit while fading out hit for soft flux now, so they are no better than beams for that.  Pulse lasers and blasters are really confined to short range fights now.  I take ballistics over energy most of the time.  I might use energy if I have only one slot available for attack (e.g., Heron, or Venture with two dual flak in ballistics).

But the Arbalest and Heavy AC are examples of weapons that are flat-out weak vs. their competition in the Small Ballistic category; they could be fixed pretty easily by just leaving them alone in every way but Flux cost per shot and would become attractive again.

Funny you should mention Heavy AC.  Heavy Needler is a Heavy AC that has a little more turn speed, accuracy, and cheaper flux use in exchange for 5 OP!  On hardpoints, Heavy AC is a no-brainer over Heavy Needler because the latter costs way too much for what you get (much like Hellbore vs. HAG).  I only get Heavy Needler because I sometimes get annoyed by the atrocious turret speed and accuracy on things like Enforcer.  Usually, I mount HVD instead unless I desperately need the DPS.

As for Arbalest, it is a poor-man's railgun when player cannot get enough railguns (or light needlers) for all of his ships.  Arbalest has one advantage over railgun - no windup time.  Sometimes, I use Arbalests on Hammerhead because 800 range does not help when LAGs are 600, and I need the extra OP for capacitors (thanks to accelerated ammo feed system).  Hammerhead does need a bit more OP and better flux stats (at least capacitors).

Aurora is rubbish now.  It used to have a point when a playership Aurora could Reaper spam fleets to death with Cyclone Reaper.  Now, it is mediocre and overpriced.  Cannot kite-and-snipe as well as Eagle or Dominator.  It is only good for Heavy Blaster spam, which needs high Combat and Technology skills to do well, and mostly as a playership.  (Player has better options to pilot.)

[TaLaR]

The other issue the AI has is that it simply doesn't recognize alpha-strike ships and get out of their way.

Frigates up against my current player-ship should just run; they cannot take what it dishes out for more than a couple of seconds and will die, period; my ship should effectively have an Avoid order on it unless the rest of my fleet is dead.  Recognizing that is a little hard, but probably a rough guess can be made, in terms of per-volley DPS.  But no, they swarm me, I kill a couple of them every 10 seconds, and life is good.  Well, for me at least.

I'd say the problem is that AI doesn't properly plan ahead it's flux usage. It mostly(only?) reacts to being at high/low flux after it already happened. Which is too late against opponents with overwhelming combination of range/speed/firepower.

Though it's not about strike ships only. If enemy will clearly win flux war even at slow pace, AI should actively avoid 1 on 1 engagement.

[Dri]

Give the Hammerhead a special built-in spinal weapon with long range and damage but a very slow reload. (like 10 sec) Built-in weapons are awesome, unique and fun but VERY few vanilla ships have any! So add more!

Swap the Aurora's and Apogee's shield; why does a damn science vessel have a more powerful shield than a dedicated combat ship? The Aurora should be a shield tank knife fighter and you should build it around that.

Edit one of the Centurion's side mounts and sprite so that the turret arc can be expanded to fire forward and thus bumping the number of forward guns up to 3.

[Alex_P]

Swap the Aurora's and Apogee's shield; why does a damn science vessel have a more powerful shield than a dedicated combat ship? The Aurora should be a shield tank knife fighter and you should build it around that.

That science vessel is designed for self-sufficient operation in a variety of environments, or to function as a scaled-down command ship for small fleets. I think at least the ability to get a 360-arc shield makes sense in that context. Switching it to an omni so that you have to pay the Front Shield Emitter tax if you want full coverage, or reducing the arc so you have to buy Extended Shields to get 360, might encourage more tradeoffs in how you build an Apogee, though. I think the hull will suffer a lot if full 360 shielding isn't accessible somehow, though.

As far as high-tech ships go, I think it makes sense to position the Apogee as the "anvil" — it's already built for long range with a big central cannon and an offside missile mount that gives it a lot of firepower while limiting its ability to get in close with torpedoes — while the Aurora plays more of a "hammer" role. Maybe change the HEF to something like a limited-use flux-dumping special (similar to the Asura phase ship from Blackrock)? Something where you can use the flux-dump to support some truly energy-guzzling weapons, or to power through a big enemy barrage and still have the energy to shoot back.

[Megas]

Edit one of the Centurion's side mounts and sprite so that the turret arc can be expanded to fire forward and thus bumping the number of forward guns up to 3.

Wayfarer has better arcs than Centurion, and that alone makes Wayfarer a better combatant if you have enough skill powers to boost its stats to par.  Centurion needs firing arcs at least equal to Warfarer's.  Centurion is basically a Monitor knockoff or a glorified shuttle.