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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: [0.95.1a] TC: Archean Order: Rebalanced Combat/Lore RPG - *hotfix* 4/14/22  (Read 722306 times)

Ranakastrasz

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Two things.

1: The Helmsmanship skill tooltip has duplicated level effects except for the third level, which has a "up to 1%" and "up to 25%" flux.
That said, it might be a result of another mod.

2: Did you find a solution to the PD weapons not showing up in shops enough?


Edit: more importantly, Ran a mission to deliver to an Archean order world, no reciever person again, and on talking to a merc officer I got 3 index out of range errors and an inescapable infinite loop
« Last Edit: April 28, 2019, 06:23:39 PM by Ranakastrasz »
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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^

1: Likely a replace array issue I haven't gotten to trouble shooting yet, I'll take a look for the next release.

2: Added a bunch of new pd weapons across all tiers and rarity, including 0 rarity tier 0 for small, medium and large weapons. Re-writing the market script is out of scope, though, at least until 0.9.1a of Starsector is released and I see what that fixes. I'm hoping that update is under playtesting so will be released soon.
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On the bugs, that sounds like issues from two release versions ago. Maybe I didn't solve all instances of it? What faction's market did you find the mercenary where this happened?

I would be absolutely sure you do a full delete of the mod directory and re-download the latest version just to be safe though. It might even fix it without a new game in those cases. I only say that because I haven't run into those while playtesting in a bit, but to be fair a lot of time has been spent in the combat simulator rather than the campaign lately.
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eidolad

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Second game in the current version, now just getting into the cruiser "era":

a) find it really hard to grind rep with Archean Order...is this intended?  Mostly I've been able to gain rep with other factions via the system bounties.

b) Fighter swarms are part of the landscape sure... 

c) ...however my ships are tending towards large missile loadouts.  I find that I worry the most (and do my killing the most with) missiles.  Venting flux gets REALLY interesting when my opposite number suddenly flings harpoons and trebuchets at me.  And a dual setup with heavy rapier batteries...oh my.  Got to know those in the simulator against the patrol Hammerhead...had to have me some.

c)  Never thought I'd want a bunch of laser machine guns so badly.  Front batteries of PD with the point defense ship mod have become top priority for missile defense first, and fighter defense second.  Energy PD hard to come by.  Ranged PD is really really desirable now to shut down the various missile threats.

d) The pirate battlecruisers are worthy opponents...great addition to their fleets.

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Ranakastrasz

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Turns out leaving an unzipped folder of the old version was probably responsible. Worked fine the second time.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Ranakastrasz

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Milterized Subsystems doesn't negate all penalties from Civilian grade hulls. The effect of having a second logistics hullmod, like expanded cargo bay isn't removed. Is this intended?
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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Fixed issue with the Helmsmanship skill stacking with the original version for the next release. (On windows)

-------------------------
Second game in the current version, now just getting into the cruiser "era":

a) find it really hard to grind rep with Archean Order...is this intended?  Mostly I've been able to gain rep with other factions via the system bounties.

Advice for now:
Are you not finding other missions by them, like salvaging derelicts or running cargo missions, etc? And by system bounties you mean where they offer a general payment of credits per ship, not bounties for deserters or pirate leaders?

The best place to look for that would be:

Spoiler
Hybrasil near Penumbros and the Eldritch Fortress. Tri-Tachyon battlegroups from the Culann Starforge occasionally cause a system bounty to be posted there. Similarly, the Obsidian Crucible in Askonia sometimes posts bounties from pirate or pather activity since it is essentially a waystation and very lightly garrisoned most of the time.

Not much gets through the defense of their home system though, so I wouldn't bother looking there unless you are lucky enough that Meiros patrols cause enough trouble at Xolydunne or something of that nature.
[close]

At a point where you feel confident, I would take the commission with them too and just hunt Tri-Tachyon patrols. That will certainly help.

Future plans on that:
- I am almost to the point where I will add a few faction-based quest lines that will increase rep and offer commissions as you complete them, etc. At that point, high tier factions will likely require the quest chain to be completed before they can get commissioned. Those quest chains will vary in difficulty by faction.

Quote
c) ...however my ships are tending towards large missile loadouts.  I find that I worry the most (and do my killing the most with) missiles.  Venting flux gets REALLY interesting when my opposite number suddenly flings harpoons and trebuchets at me.  And a dual setup with heavy rapier batteries...oh my.  Got to know those in the simulator against the patrol Hammerhead...had to have me some.

Nice to see the reduction in flux costs is having the intended effect :)

If you like the Rapier, you will also likely enjoy the heavy Shockstorm rockets in the next update that fixes their cost. Its similar, but you also get emp arcs on hits when they lower their shields.

Quote
c)  Never thought I'd want a bunch of laser machine guns so badly.  Front batteries of PD with the point defense ship mod have become top priority for missile defense first, and fighter defense second.  Energy PD hard to come by.  Ranged PD is really really desirable now to shut down the various missile threats.

Weapons in markets are a bit of an issue right now from .9, but there will at least be a lot more of them (especially on the low end and therefore more common side of things) in the next update to potentially get drawn from the selection pool from market to market.

Quote
d) The pirate battlecruisers are worthy opponents...great addition to their fleets.

I'm really happy with how the Atlas MkII turned out. Though it will have to be called the Atlas MkIII after .9.1a lol Alex must have liked the idea because he has added his own version ;D I'm excited to see it and find a way to make both versions unique to pilot.
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Turns out leaving an unzipped folder of the old version was probably responsible. Worked fine the second time.

Nice good to hear!

Milterized Subsystems doesn't negate all penalties from Civilian grade hulls. The effect of having a second logistics hullmod, like expanded cargo bay isn't removed. Is this intended?

I took a look at the script for this and it looks like it just removes the penalties on sensor strength and sensor profile, does it also have more hidden effects in standard Starsector? If so, it isn't clear how that happens, at least at the moment.
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Ranakastrasz

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Milterized Subsystems doesn't negate all penalties from Civilian grade hulls. The effect of having a second logistics hullmod, like expanded cargo bay isn't removed. Is this intended?

I took a look at the script for this and it looks like it just removes the penalties on sensor strength and sensor profile, does it also have more hidden effects in standard Starsector? If so, it isn't clear how that happens, at least at the moment.

Hmm. I thought you added it. Its been a long time since I played after all. Although, are the other parts vanilla as well? if so, that is weird.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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^ I added an effect to the Civgrade hullmod to reduce fighter bay effectiveness because it was too obvious to turn them all into carriers, but the Militarized Subsystems hullmod is from .9 I think, and explicitly removes those penalties of civgrade. I could change it to also remove the penalty to fighter bay effectiveness, but would that make it too powerful?
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Ranakastrasz

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No idea. Honestly the plus1 burnspeed is enough. I just hate tooltip or logical inconsistancies.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Morrokain

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I gotcha. Changed the tooltip to be more specific in what it does. Will be in the next release.
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eidolad

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Snuck in some gaming during work today (ssssh):

1.  Known bug?  On my shiny new Revenant cruiser, I have built in "Advanced Targeting Core" that is supposed to disallow installation of an ITU...yet I was able to add an ITU.


More padawan-learner impressions:

1.  Archean flux war:

a.  a heavy missile loadout and a bit of excess flux budget worked great for general pirates swarms or working the edge of a mid-game sized battle line hunting and killing smaller ships.  However this ship setup does poorly when stuck into the middle of a battle line (the above Revenant cruiser) and having to "hold"...way too long delays between salvos.  Now moderating to solid beam with solid missile salvo...AND a fair amount of overhead to deal with the hard flux coming in from...let's see:   a billion fighters, missiles, debris, beams, lasers, and kitchen sinks. 

So back to the simulator...and:  Gauss cannon, artillery blasters, max flux capacity/distributors, and some burst pd means I can duel an Onslaught (slowly).  Sure great for duelist config...will have to see how it does in the "Archean mid-game threat environment"

b.  It was horrifying when I booted up the simulator against a Paragon and the thing blasted me from outside visual range.  And then proceeded to hound me off the field like a Man Mountain the Sumo wrestler.  However since I have just joined the Archean Order, I shall pay back these Tri-Tachyon Paragon on the field of battle...eventually.


2.  Along with X4 game, this mod has given me a (good) reason to upgrade my circa 2008 computer...joining an assault on a Pirate base brought my machine to its knees.


3.  Forgot to add:  Before I was even enlisted in the Archean Order...they were willing to sell me their Revenant design (I think I had 7% favor with their faction).  Thus far as I can tell, that is their #2 largest warship...they are willing to sell this beast to just anyone?

a.  Other little thing:  the Open Market is willing to hire out Marines to anyone it appears...yet the military market for Archean Order restricts soldiers to "cooperative" reputation AND a commission.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 06:10:00 PM by eidolad »
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Ranakastrasz

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Snuck in some gaming during work today (ssssh):

1.  Known bug?  On my shiny new Revenant cruiser, I have built in "Advanced Targeting Core" that is supposed to disallow installation of an ITU...yet I was able to add an ITU.


More padawan-learner impressions:

1.  Archean flux war:

a.  a heavy missile loadout and a bit of excess flux budget worked great for general pirates swarms or working the edge of a mid-game sized battle line hunting and killing smaller ships.  However this ship setup does poorly when stuck into the middle of a battle line (the above Revenant cruiser) and having to "hold"...way too long delays between salvos.  Now moderating to solid beam with solid missile salvo...AND a fair amount of overhead to deal with the hard flux coming in from...let's see:   a billion fighters, missiles, debris, beams, lasers, and kitchen sinks. 

So back to the simulator...and:  Gauss cannon, artillery blasters, max flux capacity/distributors, and some burst pd means I can duel an Onslaught (slowly).  Sure great for duelist config...will have to see how it does in the "Archean mid-game threat environment"

b.  It was horrifying when I booted up the simulator against a Paragon and the thing blasted me from outside visual range.  And then proceeded to hound me off the field like a Man Mountain the Sumo wrestler.  However since I have just joined the Archean Order, I shall pay back these Tri-Tachyon Paragon on the field of battle...eventually.

Yea, missile boats and other long-range support designs are horrifically effective in their role, but can't handle a melee. Paragon doesn't really count, given the whole, normal design is really more an assault with several TACHYON LANCES. The Support paragon is, while not horrible, is absolutely a support ship which without guards cannot handle much on it's own.

I generally think of it in rough D&D-ish RPG terms. With Support as Wizard, Assault as Warrior, and Strike as Assassin, with some overlap and a few other traits.

Support vessels, naturally. Long range, and hence ability to pick and chose targets and push them over the edge. Missiles or long range support weapons. But in melee combat, the shield's upkeep makes it lose half it's damage output, and it loses the other half from the tradeoff that long range support weapons make, of flux cost and lower damage for range.

Assault Vessel. Fast, tough, and they get in your face and prevent you from doing anything clever. The Low-Flux speed boost makes them great at interceptions. Assault weapons have the best DPS, and use no flux, so while they get barely any alpha potential, they DO have the ability to just make a target's shields remain under strain, and keep them slow. The lack of flux cost means stronger shields, and higher speed, but the lack of alpha potential means no real finishing power unless you have several teaming up, or, more likely, from support vessles or having assasin traits.

Strike Vessel. Has a powerful alpha strike, but needs opportunities to take advantage of. They are fast and great at obliterating targets in the opening volly, but they have no staying power to speak of. Zero-flux helps them get into position, but since they tend to spend easily half or more of their flux in their strike, they obviously won't maintain it afterwards. Best used as hiding behind Assaults, until the target's shields are weakened enough for you to tear through them. And then backoff, vent, and wait for ammunition to reload.

Carriers are weird, and are more an afterthought, even in this mod. Mostly it just makes them worse quality, while supporting fighters, so they are more strategic target. I really have no idea how to think about them, aside from them being really important and high priority targets.

Hybrids exist, but it has serious costs. Adding a few strikes to the assault helps it break stalemates on it's own, but the loss of DPS and survivability hurts. Adding support helps it intercept or maintain contact, but again, costs DPS and survivability.

Point defense is pretty universal. That said, dedicated PD vessels can work, although I have no idea if the AI really handles the correctly.
-----

Been using an Archean Order Frigate as my flagship. After my entire starting force kinda died horribly though the incompetent commander.
Not sure what it was called, but it has 6 small missile slots, 2 charges of missile forge, and 2 small energy slots.

I think I have 6 trebuchet missile launchers, extended racks, unstable injector, and safety overrides (Plus hardened subsystems). And two sorta-pd/assault guns.

It is horrifyingly effective as a support vessel. I can unload 3 vollies of 18 missiles from the start, although the second reforge has a longer cooldown. I can generally obliterate 2 frigates in an opening volly, from way, way out of range. That said, between the long restocking time and the saftey overrides, I can generally manage around 3 more full vollies, barely, before CR decay sets up.

But, the shield is tough, its fast enough to sorta evade fighters (at least get to support before the shield collapses) and is a horrifically effective support/assassin hybrid.

I tried using short range missiles, like Swarmer, or torpedoes, or rocketpods, or w.e., but nothing can match the sheer potential I got from 18 longrange missiles. I can't even really get a good shield breaker missile to work. Its just that there aren't any similarly FAST missiles. I don't have to get close either.

That said, its not OP enough. It takes a lot to even pound down a frigate's shield, and even two vollies doesn't do much to a destroyer. Hence I have to wait for vulnerable targets.
Point defense on frigates generally isn't enough to save them, but it certainly makes me spend more ammunition. Larger ships can pretty much ignore the huge waves though.

Past that, when ammunition is depleted I have a 10 second delay before I get 6 missiles back, and I can only kinda kill fighters, and mildly poke frigates with the secondary guns.

Overall, highly effective, but not even close to being able to, say, solo an enemy fleet.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 07:21:07 PM by Ranakastrasz »
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

eidolad

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If i could guarantee that my AI pilots would buddy up into pairs, I'd love to create hammer/anvil sorts of setups with dedicated roles.  But too many times any ship on the field can end up soloing more than one opponent...and I need mine to stay alive doing so until something shifts the battle odds elsewhere.

The AI is good at handling generalist configs, and especially good at opportunist shooting at downed shields/flux venting.  If I have the budget I like to give them unstable injector so that they are a bit faster than their class because they are also, unfortunately, good at getting themselves into trouble.

For carriers in vanilla SS:  I like unstable injector, salamander (two, perhaps to threaten a destroyer's engines and certainly shut down a frigate's), and at least one 600+ range weapon.  Stay alive, harass and potentially create opportunities.  However in Archean Order universe, I'm seeing more 360 degree shield coverage...and the range needs to be 800+ to keep the AI at bay.

Regarding a trebuchet setup:  I think it shows how powerful the super long range missiles/beams are in Archean Order.  That long range purple beam (ion cannot? name escapes me), Gauss cannon, etc. are so good that they sometimes seem a bit OP...other than massed Harpoon salvos...they have become my main concern.  It's also that the human player has the special magical power of finding and picking on individual enemy ships...range lets the human player have a massive local effect.

Um, well my goodness that [Redacted] capital that just elbowed its way through my battle line...perhaps that is more my main concern.  My two cruisers are no match.  Time to retreat and jump out.

However I have a new theory of generalist ship setup:  any given ship sized destroyer or above must, at zero flux, must have the ability to take down an unshielded frigate (cripple or destroy it) within, say, three alpha strikes.  Doesn't matter the weapon type, or range.  And have the flux budget to recharge and do this for an extended battle.  For Archean Order:  must also have three zero-flux PD weapons...at least two front half, one back.  The idea being:  the key to winning is simple: which side that starts killing frigates first...to start the snowball effect of sheer numbers.  Could be me...but it seems that the side that starts off killing first...usually wins.

Or at the very least:  keep the AI at bay since the AI tends to hang out of alpha strike range unless they have a large local superiority.  Then it is up to the human player to make things happen before that local superiority occurs.

« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 10:13:34 PM by eidolad »
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eidolad

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I've not spent much time with a Dominator, either in the game or in the simulator...so perhaps the below is a known "issue" with the class:

I got a shiny new Dominator cruiser gave it and total flux budget of 600 with @250 to spare.  I converted the ship to a strong, fixed frontal shield.

In the simulator:  four DE (two Hammerheads and the two DE to the right in the list) were easily able to overload the ship if I had shields up.  The hull mods I had active were front shield conversion, stabilized shields, extended shields.  In fact it was a single salvo from one of the Hammerheads that maxed the budget.  I didn't have an opportunity to swap in/out those hull mods as I just scrapped the ship in disgust.  I even tried zero-flux weapons (for a whopping 600 spare flux budget) as an alternative but same results.

On the other hand, an Apogee cruiser with a flux budget of only 200 surplus...never had that "easy to overload issue" described above.

If I salvage another Dominator I'll try to reproduce but I don't really have a place for this beast on a permanent basis.  Cruisers are a vital ship class for me.

The only thing I can think of is:  the Dominator's poor turn rate and limited fwd arcs for its heavy weapons made the AI go buck wild in attempting to flank...I did also try better thrusters (50% turn rate hull mod, cannot recall the exact name) but same result.

In fact...those two large fwd emplacements are so limited in arc that an attacker doesn't even have to flank...they can just come in from a forward quarter and perhaps face only one of the two big guns...

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JDCollie

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Just FYI eidolad, Low Tech ships like the Dominator are balanced toward armor tanking over shield tanking, while High Tech ships like the Apogee are designed for shield tanking (and just so you know, you couldn't have picked a worse comparison. The Apogee is one of the best shield tankers in the game)

The way this balance is accomplished is partially through flux capacity and passive flux values, but another major component is shield efficiency. That is, damage to shield ratio. The Apogee converts damage done to shields into flux at a 1:0.6 ratio, while the Dominator is 1:1. That alone makes the Apogee significantly better at shield tanking. Basically, you shouldn't shield tank the Dominator because even with the hullmods, it still won't have as good a shield as the Apogee does stock. On the other hand, the Dominator has 1500 base armor, while the Apogee has only 750. Try and stack strength on strength. ( I apologize if you already understand all this, I just didn't see it mentioned in your post.)

The limited arc on the forward emplacements is intentional. The Dominator has three medium missile mounts, two heavy kinetic mounts, and two medium kinetic mounts all capable of hitting the same target. That is an utterly massive amount of firepower. To balance this out, the Dominator is easily flankable. Lore wise, it's a ship of the line designed to fight with escorts, and that plays out in-game. A lone Dominator is a dead Dominator.

Also, what do you mean by "total flux budget 600 with @250 to spare"? (I don't know what values in the refit screen you're referring to.)
« Last Edit: May 01, 2019, 03:34:24 PM by JDCollie »
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