Beams get stuck on fighters constantly.
This should be solved for the next update.
All non-pd beams will pierce fighters. However, some balance changes had to be made in order for that to not cripple fighters after the new replacement rate changes. As an aside, those feel pretty good so far. The AI sends fighter attack waves much more strategically in .9 and tends to be more present of its fighter losses and let its replacement rate recover. That way fighters don't suddenly disappear forever if they are destroyed in large numbers, but they still have a significant enough delay before respawning that taking out a whole wing feels more impactful to the defender. This may have to be looked at again after limited ammo is introduced in order to not render fighters obsolete since they will have to continuously rearm, but for now it should help reduce the feeling that eliminating fighters is pointless.
Fighters will now have 60% beam damage reduction included in their built-in hullmod (The one that adds 50% extra damage from their weapons to weapon and engine hardpoints. Other effects of that hullmod may be removed in the future when limited ammo is introduced to fighters).
Because of the crippling effect that reduced damage will have on pd beams, their damage has been increased considerably. However, because the Advanced Optics hullmod gives too large a range increase to beams for that kind of damage output to be sensible, it has been changed to only increase PD beams by 200su. OP cost remains the same.
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@Ranakastrasz
@Death_Silence_66
I'll respond to your two posts on missile flux costs a little later on when I have a more thought-out reply. I've been thinking about that a bit and have some opinions/details to share, but I agree that some changes are likely in order. More details to come!
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For now, I wanted to update the patch notes.
Still not downloadable as I want this next release to be bug free if I can help it. Content Additions
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-- New Ships:
- Malevolent (Capital-class Dreadcarrier)
-- New Strike Craft:
- Mauler (Heavy Interceptor)
- Mauler (Pirates)
- Barbarian (Base Gunship)
- Warrior (Lowtech Gunship)
- Talon (Hegemony)
- Talon (Luddic)
- Talon (Tri-Tachyon)
- Talon (Pirates)
- Vanguard (Hegemony)
- Vanguard (Luddic)
- Warthog (Hegemony)
- Warthog (Luddic)
- Broadsword (Pirates)
- Broadsword (Adamantine)
-- New Weapons:
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-- Campaign Changes/Additions:
- New/replaced stations for many major factions strongholds. Now there should be a lot more tactical diversity even among tech tiers.
- Adamantine Consortium has a capital-class carrier and a unique heavy fighter(skin) added to their fleets.
- Nightmare-class heavy fighter is now unique to the Archean Order's fleets.
- Pirates have unique fighter(skins) added to their fleets.
- Increased Adamantine Consortium aggression, reduced Archean Order and Trader Guilds aggression.
- If not already present in the last patch, added Adamantine Consortium strongholds to the list of player colony threats.
- Derelicts have increased in difficulty to match pirates. Pirates have had their fighter numbers considerably weakened.
- Increased the starting player fleets for any new game start to roughly match early pirate bounties in size.
- The two changes listed above should make either salvage or bounty hunting a good starting option for any new game.
- Added most of the new game starts available to the base game from .9 to the Normal Start option list.
- All new starts now contain a cargo freighter of some kind and a small supply of pd weapons.
- Pirates now have unique fighter craft. These are considerably weaker than standard fighter craft, but can be deployed more easily
-- Station Battles:
- Balanced most factions' station style to match their respective technological access and doctrine.
- Upgraded the tier of some stations, and added some where none existed. The purpose was better faction balance.
- Unique station looks and loadouts for:
- Hegemony
- Pirates
-- Blueprint System:
- Further separation of tech tiers with more base strike craft available at the start.
- Higher tier versions of some base strike craft bp available as single drops or in the various tech/faction bp packages.
Combat Balance/Content Changes
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- Increased OP cost of Talon to 2 from 0. Its combat effectiveness remains unchanged. Pirate version has 0 OP requirement.
- Hegemony now has slightly better fighter craft with a tactical focus on anti-ship weaponry. They no longer use bombers very often.
- Luddic Church and Luddic Path have new fighter craft skins with unique loadouts.
- Higher tier fighter craft has increased the Luddic factions' military potency by a noticeable degree. Not to the degree of the highest tier military powers, however.
- Slightly adjusted sprite for Perdition to match its role as a Luddic heavy bomber. Now has two side-turret Machine Guns to support against interceptors.
- Tri-Tachyon Corporation now has a heavy interceptor to support their advanced interceptor drones.
- Hercules-class Heavy Gunship has had its primary turreted weapon upgraded to a dual cannon, and has an updated sprite.
- Hydra-class Gunship has an updated sprite.
- Added shield modules to the sides of Trader Guilds' battlestations. They were slightly weaker -defensively- than intended.
- Changed rocket launch behavior. Only a minor adjustment in overall functionality, but a different start-up to full speed. (Reduced launch speed but greatly increased proj acceleration).
- Marauder, Warthog, and Gauntlet are now base bps.
- Vanguard is now a low_tech bp (tier 1).
- Rebalanced Luddic Church Condor variants.
- Increased Paragon's max flux by 8000, flux dissipation by 300, and armor by 300. It was slightly too weak compared to similar tiered vessels and sometimes couldn't make use of all its weapons when surrounded.
- Reduced fighter replacement rates across the board. I put an extra special emphasis on drones and interceptors that seemed to spawn continuously, and tended to only slightly increase bomber deployment rates.
- Increaed PD Beam damage by ~40%-70% accross the board. This won't interfere with missile effectiveness (other than make them better against torps which is their intended purpose).
- Changed Advanced Optics hullmod to only increase PD beam weapons by 200su (down from 500su) to balance the large damage increase for those weapons.
- Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Super Computer hullmod by 10%.
- Reduced the range bonus on PD weapons on ships equipping Advanced Targeting Core hullmod by 20%.
Bug Fixes
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- Hopefully corrected issues with rockets sending flamed-out ships launching away at large speeds.
- All assault and strike beams now pierce fighters. Fighters now take 60%
less damage(40% of total damage) from beams.
- Fixed Templar Strike variant's weapon groups.
- Corrected Hegemony ship size in fleet doctrine.
- Corrected Adamantine ship size in fleet doctrine.
- Forlorn Hope mission's flagship is now the Escort("Fleet" in-game) variant of the Paragon instead of the Raider variant.
- Corrected OP of Condor(A) variants.