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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: GIF Roundup  (Read 19998 times)

FooF

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #30 on: April 12, 2020, 10:37:41 AM »

"Faction X" is going to be the name of these hypothetical uber-advanced monsters in my headcanon until I hear otherwise... :P

I understand the concern of Faction X being the only real challenge by the end, but let's face it, at the end of a current run now, do any of the major Factions really pose a threat? My stellar empire at the end of my last run was bringing in 1.5 million credits/month and had a monopoly on most commodities (and I didn't wipe out any factions!). We're simply moving away from the Factions playing us for fools: they were never intended to be our nemesis.

That said, part of the allure I've always had for SS has been the central conceit that the player character isn't "special." You're just tossed into the maw of an uncaring, corrupt system and you have to make due. If the game was more "realistic" I don't think a player could reasonably do anything except rise to a low-level cog in the machine but that would make for a bad game experience. That we can forge our own empires and whatnot (within a few cycles, no less!) obviously stretches disbelief but I wouldn't have it otherwise.

All this to say that having a "boss" faction doesn't lessen the mid-game experience nor does having access to a few of these weapons. The Factions still have their purpose and perhaps there's more planned for them, even with Faction X and Remnants running amok. (My headcanon also has the Remnants as being developed to fight Faction X because they could win a war of attrition where standard, crewed ships could never hope to. Tri-Tach was playing the long game...!) And, yes, the weapons themselves will never be as widely available as standard and though they might be better, that doesn't make a Tachyon Lance or Plasma Cannon any less devastating.



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Alex

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #31 on: April 12, 2020, 11:11:45 AM »

Sooo... Is there a time that we can expect the next release??? Really really excited for this!

When it's ready :)


Carriers will no longer be favored, normal ships now have [REDACTED] specials to use.

To some extent, yeah. Also not just energy mounts; not over-favoring one specific tech type by giving it exclusive access to new shinies was definitely a consideration.

So you like playing some Brigador then? I'm playing it heaps at the moment, really good stuff..

I like it a lot, yeah! David's probably spent a good bit more time with it, but it's a really good game.


Mixed feelings, to be honest. Some of these look really over the top and super distracting. I mean, those trails on torpedos are wider than most cruisers.

The thing about torpedoes is their visuals have to signal how dangerous they are :) I get what you're saying in general, though. If every fight in the game was full of these that probably wouldn't work real well, but that's not the context or intent for these.


Really love the ice-themed ones. That smaller one with the Hound, especially. Just the right amount of cosmetic effects for me.

It's probably the most "normal" one in the gifs. There's also a number of small weapons that aren't nearly as over-the-top. The gifs show the flashier stuff, though, so I think overall it paints a somewhat skewed picture.


And those purple wisp things, too. Look eery.

<makes spooky noises> (Which reminds me, they actually *do* make spooky noises in-game.)


most if not all of these weapons also made me feel like the enemy ships fielding them come from a separate pocket of space. AKA they live in subspace and are invading normal space.

all in all 11/10 excited for the future.

:D


It only raises difficulty when you first encounter them.  After you crush some of them and loot their toys, everything becomes easier.  This can be seen now with Sparks for carriers.  It is why I consider Templars a god mod, after player loots enough weapons.
Yes, after having played with Knights Templar for many versions, I can agree that pushing the power envelope only ever goes one way. If a weapon is a usable upgrade, even with high flux and OP requirements, that just means that every single Paragon from now on will boast an array of these weapons and other slots will be left empty. Don't forget that leaving alien weaponry strictly to NPCs is always an option as well.

Without getting into too many details, this won't be a concern for the next release, due to the very strictly limited access the player would have.

If there was more access, then there are options to handle it - either to constrain access (say, enemy ships don't drop these at all; a "Weapon Autodestruct" hullmod or some such), to balance them somehow ("interference", higher flux costs, higher OP costs, a hullmod that gives them more damage on enemy-faction ships and a corresponding damage nerf, etc). That's of course assuming the current balancing measures were insufficient.


I am curious about Knights Templar, though - what was the power level of the weapons, just in terms of raw DPS? Something like a homing 800 range medium energy weapon is kind of overpowered by default, though - that range in that slot type combined with hard flux is pretty much impossible to balance out in player hands. Though one could have absurd OP costs, but that leads to a weird balance where, yeah, it might technically be balanced, but the ship has to be built around having that one weapon and a lot of empty slots, and it probably wouldn't be interesting to play. Range is kind of harder to counter-balance than pure damage.


I really hope that Starsector introduces late game crisis events that can shake up the entire playing field. Like Terraria's "hard mode".

I hope so too :)


I can already tell the real threat will be the ships having those weapons, not so much the weapons themselves.

That's a big part of it, yeah.

Also most of these weapons don't seem great vs fighters, so maybe a different strat from Paragon spam could prove to be more efficient.

There's a bunch that are very good vs fighters, too. And the "flamer", while not being strictly an anti-fighter weapon, can really erase them.
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TheDTYP

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #32 on: April 12, 2020, 11:23:30 AM »

When it's ready :)

I die a little every time I see this.

No in all seriousness, I'm liking the look of this update. Certainly seems way more content-based than the previous one, as opposed to mechanics and the like, which is 1,000% fine by me. Is it bad that the thing I got most hyped for in all this was the bit about new "hand-crafted missions"?

Can't wait to jump deeper into the story and lore of the game.

^ There's missing the point, and then there's this ^
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Schwartz

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #33 on: April 12, 2020, 11:35:19 AM »

Templar weapons were balanced around Templar hulls having twice the OP, as well as only accumulating half the flux. Mostly they dealt a lot of damage (off the top of my head, maybe twice that of what regular SS weapons could do), but also had hefty requirements. Like the Longinus Laser, which is an energy type with 800 range and 600 DPS / 900 flux for 20 OP. Or the Sentenia Cannon which is an energy homing projectile weapon with 800 range, 100 damage / shot and 135 flux / shot, shooting bursts of 10 and coming out at around 500 DPS if I remember right. 18 OP. The latter was just usable enough that it proved a powerful upgrade for ships with flux reserves and medium energy mounts.

I found that I didn't replace all my weapons with Templar weapons, but Sentenias and some Missiles were hard to beat. Templar fighters were a menace before they had an OP cost. I think the mod skirted around the power creep issue quite well, up to a point. Piloting a Paladin yourself was pretty much the end goal; an expensive ship that paid for itself in battlefield presence.

But then again, if you played with BRDY in your mod list, Templar ships were never the most powerful ships in the game... that honor goes to the Morpheus.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2020, 11:36:54 AM by Schwartz »
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Jackundor

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #34 on: April 12, 2020, 11:38:18 AM »

Here's a line from the description of the phase lance
Quote
and in laboratory settings the p-space components of a beam exceeding 6.66 giga-watts will sometimes flicker - as if blocked.
and here one from the Doom class
Quote
Certain unnerving psychological phenomena have been reported by sensitive crew members after enduring many rapid phase-shifts in combat conditions.
considering how otherworldly those gifs look those are pretty interesting, right?
« Last Edit: April 12, 2020, 12:06:37 PM by Jackundor »
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Schwartz

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #35 on: April 12, 2020, 11:45:02 AM »

Yeah, I got my money on ***-off cosmic horrors reaching out from p-space because those darn children keep playing hide and seek in their garden, popping in and out of their dimension. If that sounds anything like Orz, it's because Orz is awesome.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #36 on: April 12, 2020, 12:16:14 PM »

There are tons of ways to make the current factions keep up as the game progresses. Maybe new weapons are unlocked for them as the player progresses accomplishes different things, maybe more advanced blueprints are decoded, maybe factions start using AIs to get better pilots. Hell, maybe new factions start popping up. Point is that a progression is needed and these showcase weapons can be a great step in that direction. We all have a sense of what "vanilla balance" is for now but that really shouldn't be something that the game has to be limited to.
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Alex

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #37 on: April 12, 2020, 12:26:22 PM »

Templar weapons were balanced around Templar hulls having twice the OP, as well as only accumulating half the flux. Mostly they dealt a lot of damage (off the top of my head, maybe twice that of what regular SS weapons could do), but also had hefty requirements. Like the Longinus Laser, which is an energy type with 800 range and 600 DPS / 900 flux for 20 OP. Or the Sentenia Cannon which is an energy homing projectile weapon with 800 range, 100 damage / shot and 135 flux / shot, shooting bursts of 10 and coming out at around 500 DPS if I remember right. 18 OP. The latter was just usable enough that it proved a powerful upgrade for ships with flux reserves and medium energy mounts.

I found that I didn't replace all my weapons with Templar weapons, but Sentenias and some Missiles were hard to beat. Templar fighters were a menace before they had an OP cost. I think the mod skirted around the power creep issue quite well, up to a point. Piloting a Paladin yourself was pretty much the end goal; an expensive ship that paid for itself in battlefield presence.

Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it! It sounds like KT weapons have considerably more raw power.

These new weapons don't have the same kind of baseline performance, but in some cases can be very effective - but more situationally. For example, several of the long-range weapons heavily encourage use at short ranges. Definitely more balancing to be done, though; I've only done some fairly minimal playtesting with these on the player side.

Here's a line from the description of the phase lance
Quote
and in laboratory settings the p-space components of a beam exceeding 6.66 giga-watts will sometimes flicker - as if blocked.
and here one from the Doom class
Quote
Certain unnerving psychological phenomena have been reported by sensitive crew members after enduring many rapid phase-shifts in combat conditions.
considering how otherworldly those gifs look those are pretty interesting, right?

I was wondering if this would come up :)

If that sounds anything like Orz, it's because Orz is awesome.

My *fingers* reach through into *heavy space* and you *see* *Orz bubbles*
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Megas

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #38 on: April 12, 2020, 12:37:55 PM »

Re: Templar Weapons
Going by memory...

For ballistics, there were weapons that built up hard flux where they hit shields are not, and could overload.  Quite an unfair weapon, which I used on Eagles and Onslaughts.  Large mount had a huge railgun that was like a cross between Starsector's Gauss Cannon and Quake 2's railgun.  Huge windup, huge damage, perfect passthrough, might have built up flux on any hit.

For energy beams, Rhons and the like had huge DPS.  Almost like Guardian/Paladin PD in a small slot.  Great PD if the ship had the flux to support it.

For energy non-beams, medium had Sentennia which had 800 range and homing.  Large had two notable ones.  One I think called Jugar or something, functioned a bit like Quake 2's/Doom 3's BFG.  Slow orb that zaps nearby ships and missiles.  Huge direct damage.  It was a swiss army knife weapon, and was relatively cheap OP by Templar standards.  Basically Templar's Locust - a budget all-purpose weapon.  Helps make Paragon overpowered.  Another weapon was Joyese or something.  Weird, long-range shotgun-like weapon.  Paragon could outgun things from long-range like a Onslaught.

Missiles had Clarents and the ROLAND which was a Clarent MIRV.  Basically long-range and faster version of the 0.7.2 Atropos.  And the bigger Clarents could regenerate like Pilums.  Templars' best fighters spammed Clarents.

Re: Morpheus
That used to be a great ship before 0.8, but when I tried it after 0.8, it did not seem as overpowering as it did.
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Schwartz

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #39 on: April 12, 2020, 01:25:04 PM »

Clarents were also (rightfully) nerfed into the ground over the course of several versions. What we ended up with was similar to the Atropos we got now. What Clarents started out as, well, I shudder to recall... especially with regular Teuton respawns, back when they had Clarents.

It really goes to show you that overpowered guns can be handled, somehow, but overpowered, respawning, virtually flux-free missiles and fighters.. that's where things get hairy.

I don't consider Spark to be overpowered by the way. Best in class for the cost, definitely. But not a game-changer.
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FinetalPies

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #40 on: April 12, 2020, 04:35:42 PM »

I don't have any particular thoughts on balance I'm just excited for cool laser beams. (Get it? Cause ice themed weapons?)

But yeah these look super fun to use and super intimidating to go up against. Definitely worth the time spent
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Wyvern

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #41 on: April 12, 2020, 06:04:27 PM »

I do find it interesting how different my experiences with Templar weaponry were versus, uh, everyone else who's been posting?

That being that, in general, the templar weapons weren't worth using.  Sure, there were some exceptions - they performed well on ships like the Apogee that had strong flux stats and limited weapon slots - but even on most templar ships, you were usually better off mounting vanilla weapons.

For a more up-to-date example, the Blade Breaker weapons from DME are similar - high performance, yes, but also high OP cost and high flux cost, to the point where they're very rarely worth using.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alex

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #42 on: April 12, 2020, 06:09:27 PM »

@Megas, Schwartz, Wyvern: thank you! I appreciate the info.

I don't consider Spark to be overpowered by the way. Best in class for the cost, definitely. But not a game-changer.

Hmm - I'd say there's some room between "overpowered" and "game-breaking". While it's not the latter, I think there's a good argument that it's the former.

I don't have any particular thoughts on balance I'm just excited for cool laser beams. (Get it? Cause ice themed weapons?)

But yeah these look super fun to use and super intimidating to go up against. Definitely worth the time spent

Haha! And thank you :)

That being that, in general, the templar weapons weren't worth using.  Sure, there were some exceptions - they performed well on ships like the Apogee that had strong flux stats and limited weapon slots - but even on most templar ships, you were usually better off mounting vanilla weapons.

For a more up-to-date example, the Blade Breaker weapons from DME are similar - high performance, yes, but also high OP cost and high flux cost, to the point where they're very rarely worth using.

It's definitely good to know it can work out like that.
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Mordodrukow

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #43 on: April 12, 2020, 07:22:39 PM »

Really like this one!

New content is always good. Especially when we talk about new energy weapons.

I like the idea of armor-stripping weapon. If it will be small or medium, there will be a reason to use it on frigates (or destroyers). I maen: you say that AI will not react on this weapon, so, it will be useful, because you can, for example, build kinetic-based large ships and support em with armor-stripping frigates. You STILL need to play properly (harass enemy by big ships to prevent him just killing frigates, because they are still a target, no matter what weapon they use), but at the same time it makes frigates more useful, which is good.

I like the phase torpedo. It looks good and if it can hit phased ships... well. I ll take some :D

I really like the idea of limited accassability to these weapons, because it can make yellow skill branch more useful. I mean: my first playthrough was about yellow skills. I wanted to play as scavenger and i wanted to "build economy" as a big fan of strategic games. Then i realised, that i dont need those skills. We are getting tons of weapons even without yellow skills, and if we have em, we just getting more useless stuff which i, personally, keep in storage on my colonies, because selling price of loot (except for small number of things) not worth an ice-cream.

So, if there will be really rare weapons (with rarity compared to one of nanoforges) - then it will be another reason to max yellow.

And about the power level. May be you can make new weapons to create hard flux instead of soft one. But not all the time. Lets say, you have two "Black Ball Cannons" (hope, it will be named like that :D). While they have separate shooting cooldown (which basically defines their ate of fire), you can add global hard flux cooldown. When you shoot from BBC, game checks if your ship is on this global flux cd. If it is, the shot creates hard flux.

You still can shoot these weapons, "paying" hard flux, or you can shoot less often. Its all up to you. May be, it will even encourage players to build more flux capacity, if the effect of using new weapons as much as you can as fast as you can will worth it.
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Morrokain

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Re: GIF Roundup
« Reply #44 on: April 12, 2020, 10:54:41 PM »

I love the new graphical effects. These weapons distinguish themselves with a different aesthetic flavor of weaponry whilst also adding additional tactical options for combat builds which these weapons readily provide. Nicely done! This is looking to be an excellent extension of existing features. The lore of previous descriptions coming into fruition as gameplay elements in the campaign is something I especially appreciate as well. Very excited for this update!
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