Spoiler
Considering Fighters are less Valuable than the ships they are protecting, I can entirely justifying them suiciding.
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I've liked the mod so far, however, some issues/comments/suggestions
having trouble telling weapon sizes at a glance. Presumably the icon size scales the same as they do in the refit screen and game screen, but I currently have trouble distinguishing medium from small. I'll get used to it eventually. I also don't recognize half the icons, so yea...
There are only a few small strike weapons. Probably ought to be more. (Found burst lasers early on, quite impressive)
There don't seem to be any small support weapons. I thought the support weapons were the longer ranged, low damage ones. Quite a few, like railgun, were what I expected in this group.
The "Photon Cannon" probably was supposed to be a support weapon, given the tooltip and that it wasn't in vanilla, but costs no flux.
Ammunition limits with regeneration added back in are great. I immediately started using extended magazines again. 24 burst-laser shots are quite nasty. Do most strike weapons use ammo?
Regenerating missiles are also cool. Small clips of 1-3 missiles, holding 1-6 of them is interesting. Given the increase in point defense in general, missiles are a lot more common.
If they don't, ship systems like Flares should also regenerate (and maybe have a cap of 2 instead of 5)
Had fun with a few new weapon types. The shotgun missile is cool, not really sure if it gives anything over alternates.
Zero-flux assault weapons. Interesting approach. However, given that 90% of the weapons I have been able to use seem to be zero-flux, it means that flux is pretty much shield until you have medium weapons, or get lucky and find burst lasers, mortar, etc. Not sure if this is intended. Either way, at least it makes shields stronger in general.
Some frigates, like the hound and wolf seem to have lost their medium weapon slot, which is kind of disappointing. The idea here is to have more, smaller, weapon slots however, so that makes sense. The wolf has more slots in general, and the wolf has those crappy PD drones. Shame that I have trouble finding ships that can carry all the medium weapons around now though, and the lack of support/strike small weapons hurts that.
Found the mining laser. Its medium instead of small now (kinda sensible) and does way more damage. Thought it was a small weapon looking at it (because of the rescale)
Some of the tooltips are wrong as to where they weight their power, I think. Would have to open the game and minimize to get the correct stats, but a doublecheck might be warented.
I'll reread the front page, but I think some of the weapons are too powerful for their assault role.
Assault - Short-Mid range, no flux, low-med damage. (In their face, using all flux for shields)
Support - mid-long range, low flux, low-med damage. (Pressure from a distance, also long-range missiles)
Strike - Short-mid range, mid-high flux, high damage. (Break heavy armor/shielding, requires external power supply from ship)
PD - Short-mid range, no flux, low damage, high accuracy/speed (Deal with missiles/fighters)
As least that was what I got from it when I read it last time.
Shield flux alterations. Not sure I understand it. Do shields not allow dissipating any flux? I didn't observe that. How exactly did the flux stats change to make weapon flux a problem if you have shields up vs vanilla?
I see. Shield upkeep is, for every ship, exactly equal to it's base flux dissipation. So, flux vents provide shield dissipation. If you have none, you can't dissipate at all.
More importantly, Stabilized shields are now significantly more powerful, given they have way more to work with. Interesting.
If you are screwing with weapon range, make sure you check Safety overrides base range. It might need to be adjusted, depending.
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Overall, having fun thus far.
Spoiler
Guardian PD laser doesn't seem to be willing to fire unless you do it manually, which defeats the purpose. Not sure why.
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I think the changes to the Flux system were the most interesting out of everything, honestly.
It seriously alters how you run a ship, and build it, for that matter.
In vanilla, while you try and get as many powerful weapons as you can, you also try and keep enough OP left over to get as many vents as you can, such that you, hopefully, have a surplus of dissipation so you can run your shields and fire all weapons.
Capacity helps, but is insignificant compared to dissipation in almost all cases.
Not so here. I actually sometimes go for capacity over vents entirely.
The flux-heavy weapons tend to use a LARGE chunk of flux in a short period of time, and getting capacity lets you unleash a very large attack. This comes at the cost of your shields being weakened. This is normal for starsector, but here, flux is more of a shield meter than a weapons meter.
Flux is far more linked to powerful weapons and shields than vanilla.
Being able to just hold shields up without worrying about it cutting into your normal weapons changes things. On the other hand, the, effectively, massive upkeep for shields forces you to drop them a lot more often. Increased armor stats helps with that as well.
The effect is Exaggerated if you have a flux weapon. Shield goes up, you fire off a powerful attack, your shields will only recover very slowly unless you drop them. In vanilla it can generally recover if you stop firing, or slow down at least. Here, not so much. Forces you to backoff after throwing a powerful blow, moreso than vanilla.
Oh, and run away from the swarm of fighters that jumps on you for daring to attack their charge.
Plus, the distinction between hard and soft flux is significantly reduced.
I would note that some ships have no shields, and since small weapons that use flux are currently very rare, it is quite possible to have a ship that doesn't use flux at all.
I've seen that in other mods, but here it is much more common.
Not really sure how to resolve that part, aside from adding more strike/support weapons, or converting existing ones.
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Missiles are a lot more fun, and feel like an active part of the game instead of trump cards. Being able to sustain missile fire, while it not being silly OP is quite fun.
Hunters are very nice support weapons, throwing missiles at massive flux cost. (Got a pair onto a Kite, which it can only just support)
A lot of missiles go for engines, which I suppose makes sense. Even non-EMP missiles.
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Magazines.
Strike, missile, support weapons seem to have magazines most of the time. If you have the flux to support them, grabbing the expanded ammo hull mods works great.
Missiles just being part of this category makes them less exotic, and being able to burst-fire followed by reloading changes the flow of combat.
I was surprised to learn that the Tachyon Lance now has a 60 second cooldown. Given it's power, I can't exactly disagree, given what firing 4 of them at an onslaught does (in the forlorn hope mission)
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Scaled weapons
I understand how this works better now.
In effect, you reclassified weapons. Small weapons either stayed small and got weaker/smaller, or were reclassified as medium. same as medium to large. And then you added in more extra-small weapons.
Now that I understand that it makes more sense.
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Intimidate
Not sure if intended, but trying to intimidate pirates tends to not work sometimes, because your reputation is bad. As in, hated. They refuse to help you. I'm not asking for help. I am threatening to kill them if they don't give up their cargo. A negative reputation should help there.
That's a ton of detailed feedback thank you for taking the time to write all of that!
To summarize a response:
- On combat, thank you for your descriptions and I'm really happy the system seems to be working as designed! I was definitely going for a tactical "Charge, strike, retreat, cover retreat, reload, strike again" feel. The strike weapons give emphasis to the "Eliminate" command too. Seeing multiple bomber wings, long range missiles and close-range strikes converge on single target is intended to have a visceral satisfaction attached to it. And with total fighter strength meaning more, the loss of a carrier or support ship providing long range pressure can immediately shift the balance of power during a battle.
- I would say you are absolutely right on the lack of small strike options. I feel that this is made worse by the fact that the one's that
do exist are mostly restricted to hi-tech missiles and energy weapons, so especially in the early game where ballistics are more accessible it is a lot more noticeable. I will design and add a few more to help close that gap! Thanks!
- I am planning on adding a new sound effect to the Tachyon Lance to audibly reflect its... capabilities.
- Guardian PD laser is flagged as "Missile Only" - I
think I put a blurb in the description about it, but not sure so sorry if I didn't. It should only fire at missiles. It would be way, way too strong if it targeted fighters and other ships automatically. It has higher DPS than most other weapons, for 0-flux, with pinpoint accuracy that, with hullmods, can be extended to 600-700 range. Now, that being said, if some hot-shot pilot decided to manually override the weapon's targeting protocols and unleash hell on some unsuspecting pirate foolish enough to try and attack their defense-oriented Venture... who am I to judge such an ad-hoc strategy?
- Intimidating factions that are "Vengeful" to you will often, or always, fail depending on the faction. This is intentional, both in an immersion sense (they hate you at this point, so even death isn't enough of a reason for them to willingly aid you in attacking their buddies in the future) and because otherwise you could go around harvesting weaker fleets of hostile factions AND any fleets you have higher rep with.
You would never spend a credit on supplies or fuel in markets that way. You can probably almost do this as it is, eventually, but the system was more meant to be a supplement to market based resupply, with the added risk of lowered reputation or irritating allies if you are too pesky with it- or oftentimes having to pay, with a mark-up for the goods with neutral, cautious, or stingy factions/commanders. Trading rep for supplies/fuel instead of credits, as it were. Demanding those goods, similarly, is for pirate/intimidation-minded players to have a way to better pursue that role- balanced by measured use of it. Don't force compliance too much/often or you will pass the threshold where it will be effective anymore. Or, if you take their goods then keep attacking their fleets anyway, eventually they will no longer be willing to comply.
**EDIT** An issue with this could be that the dialogue describing what is going on in this particular interaction is confusing. It doesn't really adequately tell you why you are being refused. I'll look into that, thanks!
- On:
I think the changes to the Flux system were the most interesting out of everything, honestly.
Aw, really, not evil, tribute-demanding vampire barons?!
I joke, I basically built this around combat to start. The factions honestly just kind of happened as a natural extension of it once the weapons were in place. The story and lore were last.
Again thank you for all the feedback!
Author
Topic: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - *hotfix* 4/14/22 (Read 768112 times)