oh so it is intended. was it like that in vanilla? didnt it have maneuvering thrusters? either way i remember it being WAY easier in vanilla, and besides that i agree it would be cool if there was some sort of way to know the intended difficulty of something upfront, especially considering the entry price for that mission is a measly 20k. perhaps it would be best to have a mechanic in place that checks your fleet deployment points or something and wont allow fleets below a certain level to accept the mission (i assume this is possible given there are other things that wont allow you to proceed unless you have the required resources/faction relation)
That could work, yeah. I'm not sure how easy it will be to do, but that is something I will look into once the story portion of the mod is being developed. Missions will definitely be a part of that.
The system is something I developed myself and wrote my own AI for, it's not in vanilla.
Is the Radiant's Flux Converter skill bug? The critical malfunction is permanent somehow and cannot be repaired during battle. At most, half of the large weapon slots will become unusable the moment combat start because you script it that way to immediately use the first charge.
There is a chance that the malfunction is permanent for the duration of the battle each system activate. From my tests, that doesn't prevent the Radiant from getting quite a few kills anyway (it usually still managed to take down several capitals before it was completely debilitated) so while annoying, it is actually fairly balanced this way. Not having a major downside isn't really an option considering how amazingly strong the system is, and the system is necessary to make REDACTED encounters as challenging as I want them to be.
One thing that will probably help will be the ability to personally control the Radiant using neural uplink in the next Starsector update - so you as the player can be more judicious with use of the system compared to the AI.
*EDIT* Oh reading more carefully so the start of the battle thing is part of the problem? I can probably script the AI to not use its first charge aggressively while in the player fleet. That would help prevent immediate malfunctions while keeping the intended behavior when fighting REDACTED ordos.
AC auto-solve is extremely weak compared to its capability in real combat. It can stream roll me along with a big mercenary patrol. Whereas if I let them be, it actually lost to the mercenary lol. Also, Hegemony auto-solve is too high due to the number of capital it fields in each fleet, but in reality, it is super easy to win. They will win 9 out of 10 vs any other faction fleet.
And the entire AO fell to the Trader Guild again.
Another annoying thing is the random skill choose by the captains. There seems to be a fixed trend here. Not sure how Alex did it but it's not random enough. I only found one person with a strike commander.
I don't really mess with the skill selection process on leveling up. It could be bad luck or there could be a vanilla bug going on, I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if it was weighted against carrier skills though - as carriers seem to be avoided more and more in vanilla after all those complaints of carrier spam being OP after 0.9 was released.
About auto solve, I noticed too, what AO often loss to other fleets, especially in fights with Tri-Tachyon, and especially in Hybrasil system, which also gives alot of free ships, especially without Nex, since it have both vulture scavengers who pickup derelicts and invasions so these isolated colonies can be captured by factions, but this exploit with free ships is very easily fixable - just make sure what perma-hostile factions doesn't have planets in same system, or make them neutral to each other, in vanilla game all factions initially neutral to each other, and just occasionally they got hostilities with each other which isn't permanent, so it won't give you endless supply of derelicts.
Also about ship subsystems, I liked old subsystems from 091 version of Tyrant phase battleship, and Doom, like Tyrant had Phase Skimmer, and regular Doom, not Adamantine one had also temporal shell as I recall. I feel like maneuvering jets and plasma burn doesn't fit phase ships. Tyrant isn't bad ship but I think it could be more interesitng, and Adamnatine Doom is definitely better than regular one. In general phase ships, especially in vanilla often tend to have subsystems which affects enemy ships or weapon subsystems like EMP bolts or Mines, so Doom and Tyrant doesn't fit that scheme.
About ideas, Phase Skimmer can be quite strong, but I think is good idea is teleportation ability like on Karkinos from Blackrock, its doesn't have charges, and uses abit of flux and time to charge, but on teleportation its also deal AOE damage where its teleports, fun subsystem, so it can be both mobility and attacking subsystem. Also I like sound of it too.
Doom and Tyrant will have the mine system (though nerfed from vanilla a bit) in the next update. The problem with teleports is that the AI is too timid most of the time and there is an annoying component to battles being drawn out from teleport retreating. So while it is fun for the player flying the ship, it causes too many headaches when fighting the ship under AI control.
You might miss the movement systems after the phase ship changes for 0.95.1a though.
Re: AutoresolveI don't really understand why this stuff would be happening other than random luck.
Spoiler
Trader Guilds
"officerQuality":5,
"shipQuality":3,
"numShips":2,
"shipSize":3,
Archean Order
"officerQuality":1,
"shipQuality":8,
"numShips":3,
"shipSize":4,
Adamantine Consortium
"officerQuality":1,
"shipQuality":8,
"numShips":1,
"shipSize":5,
- Both Archean Order and Adamantine Consortium have ships with a higher FP value per ship than Trader Guilds on average, so it just doesn't make sense.
I did increase the officer quality for AO and AC to 5, and the number of ships for AC to 3, and ship size for AO to 5. I also made it so that the Megalith will spawn a bit more frequently.
Other than that, I don't know what else to do. I also feel like after these changes I am going to start getting the opposite reports - AO or AC is steamrolling the sector, etc.
Re: DerelictsThis will be addressed later on after 0.95.1a which fixes the military market bug. After that, the only ways to get these ships will be either purchasing them on military markets, using contacts/personal blueprints to acquire them, or
possibly a story point to get the derelict - but even then I am hesitant to allow that.
Separating colonies in different systems doesn't really solve the problem when Nex is active, and you can still find plenty of derelicts in hyperspace even if its not.