Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ranik]

0.8a feedback.

Gameplay: Overall starting out is a massive grind as combat/trade is even less profitable since you seem to want to nerf anything profitable into the ground. The lack of discovering / exploiting trade routes that don't involve a temporary event, the stingy salvage and even stingier selling of (d) mod hulls to shipyards has made the game if anything more unpleasant to me.

Skills:
Industry skills are nearly mandatory to start out / turn a profit. Single D hull mods are nearly non existent without skills and mostly non existent with skills.
Technology/Leadership/Combat all lack fleet wide punch and are mediocre compared to 0.72a skills.

Combat: Ordering fighters to engage will constantly trickle flux and prevent the carrier from gaining zero flux speed bonus.

TL;DR: It feels like you tipped the scales too much in favor of the new salvage / survey / skill revamp and basic gameplay has become an uphill climb.

[Dri]

Taking a commission with a major faction early on helps to make fighting random, non-bounty battles a bit more profitable. Of course, taking a commission also has its downsides...

As for Skills, I know the intent was definitely to nerf Combat—the player and lvl 20 officers were so good that non-officer'ed ships were practically irrelevant.

The fighters set to engage causing the zero flux boost to not work is probably intentional as well—it'd make it far too easy for carriers to kite while their fighters whittled down their target. Of course, the Helmsmanship skill can allow carriers to keep the ZFB, so maybe look into getting that for your carrier officers?

[Ranik]

Taking a commission with a major faction early on helps to make fighting random, non-bounty battles a bit more profitable. Of course, taking a commission also has its downsides...

As for Skills, I know the intent was definitely to nerf Combat—the player and lvl 20 officers were so good that non-officer'ed ships were practically irrelevant.

The fighters set to engage causing the zero flux boost to not work is probably intentional as well—it'd make it far too easy for carriers to kite while their fighters whittled down their target. Of course, the Helmsmanship skill can allow carriers to keep the ZFB, so maybe look into getting that for your carrier officers?

As others have said Combat in general has been punished in this patch with the combination of high deployment costs, lack of salvage, and terrible recovered ship resale value, attaching a band aid to the wound by taking a commission does not rectify that. 

I understand the issue with 0.72a skills and they largely deserved a nerf, my issue is the utter lack of fleet wide skills in the skill trees that affect combat rather than campaign they have gone from overpowered to almost non-existent.

I assumed the flux flicker was a bug.

[Gothars]

@Ranik: Welcome to the forum!

my issue is the utter lack of fleet wide skills in the skill trees that affect combat rather than campaign they have gone from overpowered to almost non-existent.

I'm not sure what you mean, there are plenty of those. Im counting 7 with 3 levels each, so 21 fleet wide combat skills.

[FooF]

As others have said Combat in general has been punished in this patch with the combination of high deployment costs, lack of salvage, and terrible recovered ship resale value, attaching a band aid to the wound by taking a commission does not rectify that. 

I understand the issue with 0.72a skills and they largely deserved a nerf, my issue is the utter lack of fleet wide skills in the skill trees that affect combat rather than campaign they have gone from overpowered to almost non-existent.

The Combat Tree is still viable, it just has much less overall impact in a fleet vs. fleet battle relative to the previous patch. Most of my combat officers have more skill bonuses than me but I'm ok with that. Even without the Combat Tree, between all the fleet-wide buffs and my vastly superior ability to position myself in a battle, my flagship is still the most important piece on the game board.

There are a few questionable decisions in the Combat Tree that I'd like to see resolved but going heavy Combat means you're ship is 3x harder to kill, hits way harder, and is a lot more maneuverable vs. base. You can turn a single ship into the equivalent of 2 or 3 but you're never going to turn it into a fleet-killing murder machine like before. I find the fleet-wide buffs to be just as, if not more important than what I do with my flagship. My flagship gets those buffs too so it's not like I'm "losing" anything, really. Only opportunity cost with other skills.

[SCC]

I'm going to tell you something important: you are NOT supposed to recover and resell ships - you are supposed to recover ones you either want or you have to, but if you don't want, it's ok - you get its weapons and resources from scuttling it, which are actually worth more than the ship itself.
About early game hell: I don't really think I can help you since I can handle myself without buying any ships, only choosing my fights, recovering rare, not quite useless ships and making-do with what I have. If anything, look out for system bounties, they should help. Commissions have more pitfalls than it's worth early on.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Gameplay: Overall starting out is a massive grind as combat/trade is even less profitable since you seem to want to nerf anything profitable into the ground. The lack of discovering / exploiting trade routes that don't involve a temporary event, the stingy salvage and even stingier selling of (d) mod hulls to shipyards has made the game if anything more unpleasant to me.

This is where the missions come in. You can take missions to scan things in far-flung systems for 100,000 a pop, and doing them only requires a Dram and maybe your starting frigates if you want to fight the domain Probes. You do one of those and you've got enough to buy and outfit a pair of destroyers.

[Megas]

The fighters set to engage causing the zero flux boost to not work is probably intentional as well—it'd make it far too easy for carriers to kite while their fighters whittled down their target. Of course, the Helmsmanship skill can allow carriers to keep the ZFB, so maybe look into getting that for your carrier officers?

That is the only thing redeeming about Helmsmanship 3, the carrier will be at full speed even while fighters are engaged.  Without it, the perk is a complete joke.

Focusing on Combat skills only is a waste of time.  Combined with cowardly AI and gutted Unstable Injectors, your flagship has trouble punching above its weight quickly.  Player gets more bang for his buck focusing mostly in fleetwide and/or campaign skills.  A few Combat skills should be okay, but putting everything in pilot-only skills and ignoring fleet is very limiting.

There are a few questionable decisions in the Combat Tree that I'd like to see resolved but going heavy Combat means you're ship is 3x harder to kill, hits way harder, and is a lot more maneuverable vs. base. You can turn a single ship into the equivalent of 2 or 3 but you're never going to turn it into a fleet-killing murder machine like before.

That is the problem.  I sink everything into Combat and only come out mildly stronger.  I get better results investing into fleet skills in Leadership, Technology, and (if going for clunkers) maybe Industry; and probably only need to spend fewer points.  There are not very many good perks in Combat (but there are some).

[Igncom1]

I'm currently finding it frustrating to find enemy fleets.

I have often gone to TT systems to find that the local fleets aren't there, a problem that I think is down to perpetual pirate fleet chasing and so fly off from the system into empty space where they can't be found.

Even with pirate fleets spawning in hyperspace, for some reason, there is rarely any of their fleets around bar the starting system which has high and lot times of activity.

The only faction that consistently has fleets around is the Diktat, and they have dozen of fleets at the same time.

Can anybody else confirm this? It's very frustrating to go chase a new bounty in another system to find that the pirates the locals were complaining about never existed in the first place!

Which lead me to the problem that the whole game is in a perpetual death cycle. In time you WILL lose due to lack of supplies, it's only a matter of time and whatever you can do to delay that loss. There is no guaranteed money anywhere or from anything so it's complete chance whether you can make it past the early game. You go to fight pirate fleets and they don't spawn, you go to fight another faction and they have no ships, you follow a bounty in a system to find it empty. Specialize in surveying? You can only survey once and good luck using those skills once that's done. Salvage stations in ricky systems? You can do it once, hope you brought enough storage space and then that it, no need to return to that system ever again.

Even fighting the remnant battle stations essentially ends the whole system, so more fleets and no more money.

Even sitting still at a port or in orbit is as expensive as going full burn across a star system, time is money that you'll spend hunting for resources that you have no grantee to ever find. I have little experience going for bounty targets but because they do little to say what ill be facing once I've spent all that fuel to go out there I don't think it's worth the trip and risk.

I'm finding it extremely difficult to justify ever leaving the starting system with a hegmeony commission. There is no way I can grantee to ability to do anything other then waste fuel and resources on a trip to get more fuel and resources. Even the few trips I did make into the unexplored sector only drained those systems of what resources they could provide, so I can never go back due to resource waste.

It's very frustrating and while I know that some people love the idea of this and love the risk, I can barely start a new game on easy mode while deliberately going into skills that reduce fuel and supply use.

Short of running around with just a medusa and soloing entire fleets all the time I have no idea how you are actually expected to do anything without eventually burning all sources of money out and then farming the Diktat fleets for the rest of the game.

[Giblodyte]

The fighters set to engage causing the zero flux boost to not work is probably intentional as well—it'd make it far too easy for carriers to kite while their fighters whittled down their target. Of course, the Helmsmanship skill can allow carriers to keep the ZFB, so maybe look into getting that for your carrier officers?

That is the only thing redeeming about Helmsmanship 3, the carrier will be at full speed even while fighters are engaged.  Without it, the perk is a complete joke.

Focusing on Combat skills only is a waste of time.  Combined with cowardly AI and gutted Unstable Injectors, your flagship has trouble punching above its weight quickly.  Player gets more bang for his buck focusing mostly in fleetwide and/or campaign skills.  A few Combat skills should be okay, but putting everything in pilot-only skills and ignoring fleet is very limiting.

There are a few questionable decisions in the Combat Tree that I'd like to see resolved but going heavy Combat means you're ship is 3x harder to kill, hits way harder, and is a lot more maneuverable vs. base. You can turn a single ship into the equivalent of 2 or 3 but you're never going to turn it into a fleet-killing murder machine like before.

That is the problem.  I sink everything into Combat and only come out mildly stronger.  I get better results investing into fleet skills in Leadership, Technology, and (if going for clunkers) maybe Industry; and probably only need to spend fewer points.  There are not very many good perks in Combat (but there are some).

Ehhhh I find the combat tree to be more potent than that, if you really want an indication then battling a ship with an officer vs one without is very noticeable, also try running a simulation on a ship with and without a high ranked pilot, it makes soloing with a decent ship a lot easier if done right and the benefits compound.

Skills:
Industry skills are nearly mandatory to start out / turn a profit. Single D hull mods are nearly non existent without skills and mostly non existent with skills.
Technology/Leadership/Combat all lack fleet wide punch and are mediocre compared to 0.72a skills.

Combat: Ordering fighters to engage will constantly trickle flux and prevent the carrier from gaining zero flux speed bonus.

TL;DR: It feels like you tipped the scales too much in favor of the new salvage / survey / skill revamp and basic gameplay has become an uphill climb.

After more playing I've actually found industry to be largely a waste. For three very important reasons:

1. There's no skill limitation on the size of your cargo hold
2. You don't need any skills to do analyse derelict missions
3. Having a powerful combat fleet is not mutually exclusive to trading and salvaging

So if you actually take a look at the skills and what they offer:

- Surveying planets costs supplies and is inconsistent and will be uneconomical until outposts. When you factor that the supply cost reduces the time you can spend in far flung corners and that there are finite planets nearby it's not worthwhile.
- Recovering ships, well it's very easy to just not, or to only salvage fuel/cargo ships as pack mules until you're loaded and want to keep good rare ships and can afford to fix them
- Salvaging, one point in this is essential since those domain era probes have decent amounts of loot. Survey ships, motherships and outposts above 25% rating are few and far between and you certainly couldn't rely on them to sustain a fleet.

The easiest, funnest, best way I've found is to jack up combat and those essential blue skills (longer weapon range, +5 to S-burn and transverse jump, lower fuel cost, increased flux capacity and dissipation, the godly 10% extra ordnance points) and build up a fleet with lots of fuel and cargo space to do both surveying derelict missions and bounties in the same general vicinity. It's not that much harder or more expensive than having a pure combat fleet as tankers and freighters are actually quite cheap. I mean you don't actually need any skills to do analyse derelict missions and they pay well so why would you limit yourself to having a weak combat fleet when the bounties are where the real money is? Furthermore it's actually much more profitable and efficient to crush fleets and steal their loot and trade that off alongside other trade missions than to avoid fighting.

[intrinsic_parity]

In my personal experience, surveying is immensely profitable, I throw surveying equipment on all non combat ships which reduces essentially every planet to 5 supplies. I easily make 500k on an expedition from surveying data alone, 3-4 class IV or V planets will get you that if you sell in Askonia. Whatever missions/AI cores I get on top of that usually nets my 1 mil on every expedition with minimal risk to my fleet. I do all of this with a full combat fleet. If I took a small efficient exploration fleet, I could probably make significantly more, but I have no need for more money at this point. I have multiple capitals in storage etc. I primarily get salvage skills to salvage research stations. They give you really high level weapons and hull mods. The only other way I've gotten that stuff is through tritach commission. Even then it's hard to find, I figure if I already have 3 points in surveying, might as well take the research stations as well. I think an argument can be made that salvaging skills are not entirely worth since recovering ships isn't profitable, but it Definitely can help fill out your fleet early game to give you numerical advantage. Salvaging skills to me fell like they are most helpful in early game and decrease in value as you progress. On the subject of surveying though, finding a single class V planet is more profitable than any surveying/probe mission. Most class IV and V are volcanic worlds as far as I can tell, or terran. Volcanic I believe require high skills. Regardless, surveying is definitely extremely profitable. I strongly agree that exploration and combat are not mutually exclusive though. I still take whatever bounties are on my path when I head out, but those only account for ~1/3 my income. Combat skills only affect my ship and don't make it god-tier, I put some points in there but they just don't feel valuable when I can already do a lot of work without them and I could be getting tech and industry skills that will benefit my whole fleet and increase my profitability.

[FooF]

After more playing I've actually found industry to be largely a waste. For three very important reasons:

1. There's no skill limitation on the size of your cargo hold
2. You don't need any skills to do analyse derelict missions
3. Having a powerful combat fleet is not mutually exclusive to trading and salvaging

So if you actually take a look at the skills and what they offer:

- Surveying planets costs supplies and is inconsistent and will be uneconomical until outposts. When you factor that the supply cost reduces the time you can spend in far flung corners and that there are finite planets nearby it's not worthwhile.
- Recovering ships, well it's very easy to just not, or to only salvage fuel/cargo ships as pack mules until you're loaded and want to keep good rare ships and can afford to fix them
- Salvaging, one point in this is essential since those domain era probes have decent amounts of loot. Survey ships, motherships and outposts above 25% rating are few and far between and you certainly couldn't rely on them to sustain a fleet.

The easiest, funnest, best way I've found is to jack up combat and those essential blue skills (longer weapon range, +5 to S-burn and transverse jump, lower fuel cost, increased flux capacity and dissipation, the godly 10% extra ordnance points) and build up a fleet with lots of fuel and cargo space to do both surveying derelict missions and bounties in the same general vicinity. It's not that much harder or more expensive than having a pure combat fleet as tankers and freighters are actually quite cheap. I mean you don't actually need any skills to do analyse derelict missions and they pay well so why would you limit yourself to having a weak combat fleet when the bounties are where the real money is? Furthermore it's actually much more profitable and efficient to crush fleets and steal their loot and trade that off alongside other trade missions than to avoid fighting.

I'm currently flying around with 20+ D-modded frigates, destroyers, tankers, and freighters, all ridiculously under-spec'd and outfitted with non-optimal weaponry and I'm having a blast. I don't have a single point in Combat. I salvage just about every junker I find and thanks to Industry skills, I just keep rolling with little CR hits or costs. All the bounties of <200k are running from me, even high-tech TT fleets. It's a completely different, but viable, playstyle and if if I wanted to survey/salvage with it, I'd easily be able to.

I say this to simply point out that there's a lot of ways to play that are subjectively "fun." Surveying is fun, too, as long as you equip yourself for it. I've done half a dozen playthroughs to 40, each with different specialization, and never once did I think "I can't fight." Even my survey playthrough had me fighting [Redacted] all the time or hostile salvage fleets. Even with my Combat-oriented run (with 10 officers all level 20), I never felt overpowered, really.

[Megas]

Ehhhh I find the combat tree to be more potent than that, if you really want an indication then battling a ship with an officer vs one without is very noticeable, also try running a simulation on a ship with and without a high ranked pilot, it makes soloing with a decent ship a lot easier if done right and the benefits compound.

I tried; not impressed with the results.  Ships still run away from you.  Multiple capitals will still wreck you (except maybe for Paragon flagship).  If I take Paragon to kill capitals, the other ships will kite and run down my CR (because there are many), and there is little I can do about that.  If I take a faster ship, it is not powerful enough to kill everything, if it can survive getting hammered by capital-grade firepower.

With Unstable Injector as it is, combined with smarter AI, player cannot kite-and-snipe to the extent he used to.

The biggest problem with soloing in the past was time taken to finish fights.  But soloing fleets was extremely efficient in supplies consumed, and until 0.72, AI did not kite much.  In 0.65, I used frigate hordes of about 40 ships at endgame because while they are a bit less efficient than soloing, they finished fights much faster.  In 0.7x, officers made ships without them useless, and the enemy had many more ships than you.  Soloing or chain-flagships was the only way to win without losing too many ships.

As for officers, better to get Leadership and then get ten officers and deploy all, at least with max battle map size.  With few skill points, it is more efficient for me to get fleet and campaign skills and delegate combat stuff to officers.  I want to hot rod in a big ship with combat skills, but I cannot afford that (more than Gunnery Implants and Helmsmanship).

I guess if I used normal battle map size, I cannot deploy more than a few ships.  Paragon, then 30 more DP left?  Forget that, crank battle map size to the max for 200 to 300 DP limit.  Even that is only enough to deploy about half of my clunker fleet (of capitals, cruisers, and carriers).

If soloing or chain-flagships will be barely more efficient overall than fleets, then just deploy fleets and get combat over with quickly.


@ FooF:  I am still steamrolling bounty fleets with few causalities with my completely unskilled character.  My clunkers tend to have three or four damage mods and are outfitted with stuff mostly from Open Market.

I am beginning to miss using pristine ships with elite weapons.  They are too rare to use without easy access to more military markets with a commission.  I use mostly clunkers out of necessity.

[Megas]

So I finally recovered an Odyssey, patched it up and gave it weapons, and... what is it good for, again?

Aurora had its fatal weakness rectified in 0.8.  Plasma Jets really help dictate engagements.  It still has crummy short-range weapons, but Plasma Jets make that mostly a non-issue.  (If something outguns Aurora, there is not much it can do, unlike ballistic snipers.)

Similarly, Paragon has Advanced Targeting Core.  No longer can Dominator and Eagle flagship trivially kite-and-snipe Paragon to death by a thousand cuts with long-range ballistics.

Odyssey does not have any of that.  It has short-ranged weapons (or beams blocked by shields).  It is relatively slow.  It has one fighter bay so whatever fighters it has will probably get munched fast.  Probably the best thing to put it in its lone fighter bay, if not relying on them for kinetics, is Xyphos to act as auxiliary ion beams at things within Odyssey's weapon range.  Odyssey is perhaps the weakest capital in the game.

Odyssey needs something to help it overcome its short-range.  Fighters could be it if Odyssey had more of them, or least something that always keeps replacement speed at 100% despite having only one fighter bay.

P.S.  Or... as alternative, Odyssey can go like Apogee and have its campaign stats boosted so that it is truly a hybrid ship akin to Gemini or Apogee instead of a warship with slightly better capacity stats.  Currently, Odyssey is a mediocre master-of-none.

[TaLaR]

Odyssey is perhaps the weakest capital in the game.

It has been exactly that for a long time already.

P.S.  Or... as alternative, Odyssey can go like Apogee and have its campaign stats boosted so that it is truly a hybrid ship akin to Gemini or Apogee instead of a warship with slightly better capacity stats.  Currently, Odyssey is a mediocre master-of-none.

I don't think that sort of hybrids are particularly useful right now. In almost every case 2 hybrid ships are better replaced by combat + non-combat ship pair, especially considering that officers are a limited resource.
Odyssey might get a niche as hybrid, but it would be a very narrow one.