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[Sordid]

So I've come back to Starsector after a three-year break to check out what's new, and I like it very much.

But...

I keep thinking back to the earlier versions, when it was possible to do things like stack speed and weapon range hull mods to create game-breaking ship builds that could solo entire fleets. I do miss that playstyle a bit, so I thought to myself, hey, why not do for combat what the Ox tug does for the overworld? Basically, introduce a range of ships that, simply by existing in a player's fleet, provide buffs to ships deployed into combat. Without needing to be deployed themselves! They'd need babysitting, and not having to babysit other ships is the whole point here. So, much like with the Ox, you could choose to sacrifice precious ship slots to gain stacking benefits to your other ships, allowing you to choose between building a large combat fleet, buffing the hell out of a single ship, or anything in between.

That'd be kinda neat, no?

[Megas]

If you need buff ships, you are not really soloing ships.  It is not much different than a fleet of Afflictors for the player to chain-flagship as.

In 0.8a, I used Paragon and buff ships with ECM Package hiding in the corner to enable Paragon to outrange a full-power Nexus and win a flawless victory against it.  That did not feel like soloing the encounter.  In that same version, Astral with six Sparks (that had two Burst PD instead of one) could truly solo the Nexus with six Sparks.

A ship that can solo others should be able to travel by itself.

Also, in some versions where levels were uncapped, it was possible to level up high enough that player could get all of the important skills and have both max combat power and fleet size.  Player could solo things with a super ship, but if he lost the ship or lost patience, he could deploy all and kill everyone.

[Sordid]

If you need buff ships, you are not really soloing ships.

I'm okay with you calling it that.

In 0.8a, I used Paragon and buff ships with ECM Package hiding in the corner to enable Paragon to outrange a full-power Nexus and win a flawless victory against it.  That did not feel like soloing the encounter.

That's why I want the buff ships to not need deploying into combat.

A ship that can solo others should be able to travel by itself.

This is a fleet-based game. I see very little difference between tankers carrying fuel for you, freighters carrying supplies for you, tugs carrying burn level for you, and my proposal of buff ships carrying combat speed and weapon range for you. It seems a natural extension of the system already in place.

Player could solo things with a super ship, but if he lost the ship or lost patience, he could deploy all and kill everyone.

Yes, and that makes the game very boring, because nothing's at stake. That's why I want the buffs to come from other ships in the fleet that are useless in combat, so that you can't do that.

[intrinsic_parity]

Being able to win big fights with only a few ships is much much cheaper supply wise, so it would be a clearly optimal strategy. It also can get very tedious to spend 15 minutes on every fight killing enemy ships 1 by 1. I've noticed this a lot recently since I tend to solo the domain probe fleets with SO ships, and it gets super tedious but it's saving me hundreds of supplies so I feel somewhat obligated to do it while money matters. Particularly when they get up to 20+ ships, it just takes a long time and is really boring. I really don't want all fights to end up like that. I don't think soloing should be viable. If you want OP ships, just use mods.

[Alex]

It's an interesting idea!

Balance would be tricky - those non-deployed support ships would have to require a lot of supplies/fuel, and how would one find a balance where it's good enough, but not too good? If it's too good - as intrinsic_parity says - it would heavily encourage soloing instead of fleet battles.

It'd also be difficult to balance the combat power - I think that increasing the combat power of a single ship can have some very non-linear effects. At some point, it'll get to "it can take down most enemy ships quickly and without taking damage", and that's likely to be qualitatively better than a fleet, since it can't be defeated in detail - and is player controlled, which is an additional bonus to its power.

Hmm. Honestly this sounds like it might be more promising as an idea for a mod to explore. I'm not sure it's something I could add as something of an afterthought - it'd require a lot of thought, focus, and playtesting, to - imo - have any chance of coming out right.

[Megas]

This is a fleet-based game. I see very little difference between tankers carrying fuel for you, freighters carrying supplies for you, tugs carrying burn level for you, and my proposal of buff ships carrying combat speed and weapon range for you. It seems a natural extension of the system already in place.

Before 0.8, you did not need a fleet.  It was clearly sub-optimal (who's going to take the loot), but it could be done.

Today, fuel is a problem.  I guess player had better grab max Navigation and the efficiency and capacity hullmods, and build colonies at strategic points so that he would not need to bring tankers except to sat bomb core worlds, if he wants to attempt solo combat.

Being able to win big fights with only a few ships is much much cheaper supply wise, so it would be a clearly optimal strategy. It also can get very tedious to spend 15 minutes on every fight killing enemy ships 1 by 1.

I did this during most of the 0.6x and 0.7x releases.  During 0.6.x, most of my Logistics were taken by Atlas freighters to haul loot (whether excessive supplies dropped during 0.6.2 or food runs during 0.6.5.)

It was kind of tedious, but since enemies did not cower before 0.8a, that was not too much of a problem... except that one 0.7 release with enemy ships with Timid officers.

[Sordid]

If you want OP ships, just use mods.

As I said, the problem with that is that you can then have an OP ship and a fleet, which just feels like cheating and makes the game boring. The whole point here is to make you choose one or the other, and I don't know of any mod that does that.

It's an interesting idea!

Balance would be tricky - those non-deployed support ships would have to require a lot of supplies/fuel, and how would one find a balance where it's good enough, but not too good? If it's too good - as intrinsic_parity says - it would heavily encourage soloing instead of fleet battles.

It'd also be difficult to balance the combat power - I think that increasing the combat power of a single ship can have some very non-linear effects. At some point, it'll get to "it can take down most enemy ships quickly and without taking damage", and that's likely to be qualitatively better than a fleet, since it can't be defeated in detail - and is player controlled, which is an additional bonus to its power.

Hmm. Honestly this sounds like it might be more promising as an idea for a mod to explore. I'm not sure it's something I could add as something of an afterthought - it'd require a lot of thought, focus, and playtesting, to - imo - have any chance of coming out right.

All of that is true, which is exactly why I don't think a mod can do it. But I still think it should be done, and here's why:

The basic issue I'm trying to tackle is that early game battles are far more fun and exciting than late game ones. Blowing things up yourself is more fun than watching the AI do it, that's a given. The fewer ships you have, the more of the blowing up you're doing yourself, ergo the more fun you're having. Furthermore, early game ships are small and therefore fast, which makes maneuvering them a lot of fun. But as the game goes on, your fleet as well as your own ship grows, which means you become slower and less relevant. When you're in a Paragon, you're a lumbering behemoth moving at a snail's pace; sometimes I find myself wishing for the ability to accelerate time during battles like we can when traveling on the overworld map.

Now sure, I could just give the Paragon to an officer and zip around in an Aurora picking off small fry while the big boys do the heavy lifting. Buuuut... that would just make me the sidekick of the AI. Just like blowing up stuff yourself is more fun, so blowing up big stuff is more fun than blowing up small stuff. If I'm to blow up the enemy capitals, which are like the bosses of each encounter, then I need to be in a capital myself. If I give my capitals to officers, the boss fight will be between the boss and an NPC, a thoroughly unsatsifying and unfun conclusion to a battle.

Hence this suggestion, an attempt to bring the feel of early game battles into late game, with fewer, faster ships that are more fun and engaging to fly. Thank you for reading and considering it.

[Thaago]

It is true that the pace of combat slows down as the game progresses. With regards to Capitals though, the Paragon is tied with the Atral for being the slowest and least dynamic ones so I don't think it is that fair a comparison point. Onslaught, Legion, Conquest, and Odyssey all have mobility flavors that range from "activate maneuvering thrusters for broadside spin!" to "AHHHHHHH". I don't fly Paragons for exactly the reason you mentioned, but all the rest are very good fun.

[Megas]

I do not think great flagship but no fleet would work because campaign layer has become more important.  Player needs logistics ships to do any of the fun campaign stuff like building up colonies or bringing troops to raid worlds.

In the versions when you chose one or the other, I always chose great flagship at the expense of big fleet.  Back then, the only campaign stuff was having enough cargo space to haul whatever enemies dropped.  Nothing to explore, no colonies to build.

When you're in a Paragon, you're a lumbering behemoth moving at a snail's pace; sometimes I find myself wishing for the ability to accelerate time during battles like we can when traveling on the overworld map.

I double the combat speed permanently, and it is still too slow at times (and frames are not skipped if I do not use fighter spam).  Normal speed in Starsector is slower than normal speed of other games.

[Sordid]

I do not think great flagship but no fleet would work because campaign layer has become more important.  Player needs logistics ships to do any of the fun campaign stuff like building up colonies or bringing troops to raid worlds.

Yes, of course you're going to have freighters and tankers with you. That's a given. The point is, instead of having other combat ships in your fleet to support you against large enemy fleets, you'd be able to have buff ships so you wouldn't need support in combat.

Several people in this thread are acting as if I want to fly around with a lone Paragon on the overworld map. That is not the case, and I never implied that. Of course you're going to have a fleet of logistics and support ships with you to haul supplies, fuel, troops, loot, to help with salvage and surveying, etc. But you'll fly solo in combat.

[Alex]

All of that is true, which is exactly why I don't think a mod can do it. But I still think it should be done, and here's why:

The basic issue I'm trying to tackle is that early game battles are far more fun and exciting than late game ones. Blowing things up yourself is more fun than watching the AI do it, that's a given. The fewer ships you have, the more of the blowing up you're doing yourself, ergo the more fun you're having.

Furthermore, early game ships are small and therefore fast, which makes maneuvering them a lot of fun. But as the game goes on, your fleet as well as your own ship grows, which means you become slower and less relevant. When you're in a Paragon, you're a lumbering behemoth moving at a snail's pace; sometimes I find myself wishing for the ability to accelerate time during battles like we can when traveling on the overworld map.

Now sure, I could just give the Paragon to an officer and zip around in an Aurora picking off small fry while the big boys do the heavy lifting. Buuuut... that would just make me the sidekick of the AI. Just like blowing up stuff yourself is more fun, so blowing up big stuff is more fun than blowing up small stuff. If I'm to blow up the enemy capitals, which are like the bosses of each encounter, then I need to be in a capital myself. If I give my capitals to officers, the boss fight will be between the boss and an NPC, a thoroughly unsatsifying and unfun conclusion to a battle.

I get what you're driving at, but I think a lot of that is pretty subjective. If I this was strictly true, why should the game include other ships on the player's side at all? I think the game is actually at its best with at least some allied ships - incidentally, this is why you have two ships even at the very start. The interplay between the player and at least one allied ship is important - you're not watching the AI blow up ships, but rather, allied ships give you something to work off tactically. And when you get a really over-powered flagship, it's hard to deploy any other ships on the player side - they're not going to last long facing the sort of odds they're likely to.

Not to say that flying around in combat solo is necessarily bad - this is, after all, subjective. But it's hard to reconcile having both and having it work such that one of the approaches doesn't obsolete the other. Which is why I still think a mod would be the way to go here, since it doesn't *have* to try to reconcile the two approaches. Instead, a mod can just be about making a fun solo-combat-ship approach, and it can step on the multi-ship approach as needed in the process. And I think a lot of stepping would be required, or, at least, being able to do it would make the job a lot easier.

[Sordid]

I get what you're driving at, but I think a lot of that is pretty subjective. If I this was strictly true, why should the game include other ships on the player's side at all? I think the game is actually at its best with at least some allied ships - incidentally, this is why you have two ships even at the very start. The interplay between the player and at least one allied ship is important - you're not watching the AI blow up ships, but rather, allied ships give you something to work off tactically. And when you get a really over-powered flagship, it's hard to deploy any other ships on the player side - they're not going to last long facing the sort of odds they're likely to.

I agree completely, which is why I said at the beginning that ideally you'd have a choice of having a large fleet, an insanely buffed solo ship, or anything in between. It's the same idea as the Ox tug - the more of them you bring, the fewer combat ships you can have. I don't think going completely solo would be all that fun or all that viable; all the enemies would pile up on you. Giving up one buff ship for a second combat ship would only be a minor reduction in the buff magnitude, but that buff would now apply to twice as many ships and incoming damage would be halved due to enemies having two targets instead of one. So having some allied ships would still be vastly preferable. I've been employing that playstyle lately with a Paragon + Astral combo, which is effective but boring due to the Paragon basically just sitting in place and acting as a wall for the Astral to hide behind. Which is the exact same playstyle I employed in the early game, only I'm doing it with bigger and slower (= more boring) ships.

Not to say that flying around in combat solo is necessarily bad - this is, after all, subjective. But it's hard to reconcile having both and having it work such that one of the approaches doesn't obsolete the other. Which is why I still think a mod would be the way to go here, since it doesn't *have* to try to reconcile the two approaches. Instead, a mod can just be about making a fun solo-combat-ship approach, and it can step on the multi-ship approach as needed in the process. And I think a lot of stepping would be required, or, at least, being able to do it would make the job a lot easier.

Hm, I think we're focusing too much on the idea of a completely solo combat ship here. That's not necessarily the point, and perhaps I shouldn't have put so much emphasis on it in the first post. The point is making capitals more fun to fly, primarily by making them faster. You could make a solo-viable Paragon by buffing the hell out of its shield, flux, and guns, but that wouldn't make it any more fun to play than it is currently. The reason I brought up the solo playstyle of earlier versions was because it was enabled by the ability to make the player's ship much faster, which made it more fun to fly in addition to (not necessarily because of) making the player able to kite enemies pretty much endlessly.

If the player could have a bunch of "+10 max speed to all ships in combat" buff ships in their fleet, could they play solo Paragon and win any battle by kiting? Yes. Would they? Hell no, that would take forever and be boring as hell. I'd still bring the Astral and possibly other stuff as well. It wouldn't change my playstyle at all, it would just bring back more of that dynamic movement I enjoyed in the early game, before I was forced into using capitals.

[Alex]

Gotcha, this makes sense, especially re: not focusing on solo-ship, but with *some* support.

I think... the skill changes in the next version actually go some ways towards this, actually. Interestingly, a lot of the skills work in a way where they provide a bonus that, while not quite split between the ships, is higher when you have less of a certain type of ship in your fleet. For example there's a "better flux stats" skill that has a higher impact if you have fewer combat ships (by deployment cost).

More relevant in the speed department, though: the "elite" bonus from Helmsmanship gives you the zero-flux boost whenever the ship isn't generating flux, rather than when flux is zero. So that alone would I think go a long way towards making piloting a Paragon more, ah, exciting. And - while this goes against the idea of having a small deployment - with the Coordinated Maneuvers skill, you could get (IIRC) up to +20% top speed if you have some frigates/destroyers deployed as support.

That said - as Thaago pointed out - the Paragon is the slowest capital ship, really. Most of the other options have mobility systems, and are probably more suited to player use. Probably paired with the Paragon, to play anvil to your hammer. I guess my larger point here is that we shouldn't over-focus on the Paragon - it's a powerful ship, yes, but a lack of mobility is its main and pretty much only downside, so if anything could entirely counteract that, it would be pretty broken almost by definition. In fact, this is making me have some concerns about the elite Helmsmanship effect.

(The Doom is a personal favorite of mine, btw. It can be super powerful; I think you might find that if you pilot it alongside a Paragon, it could make for an equally effective combo as Astal + Paragon.)

[Thaago]

... the "elite" bonus from Helmsmanship gives you the zero-flux boost whenever the ship isn't generating flux, rather than when flux is zero. ...

Oh my. Does this count shield flux, or just weapons? Either way I forsee my hold fire key suddenly getting a lot more use!

[Sordid]

I think... the skill changes in the next version actually go some ways towards this, actually. Interestingly, a lot of the skills work in a way where they provide a bonus that, while not quite split between the ships, is higher when you have less of a certain type of ship in your fleet. For example there's a "better flux stats" skill that has a higher impact if you have fewer combat ships (by deployment cost).

More relevant in the speed department, though: the "elite" bonus from Helmsmanship gives you the zero-flux boost whenever the ship isn't generating flux, rather than when flux is zero. So that alone would I think go a long way towards making piloting a Paragon more, ah, exciting.

That certainly sounds very encouraging, though even with the 0-flux boost and Unstable Injector, the blue murder donut is still too slow IMO. If I could swap out the Fortress Shield for Plasma Jets, I would in a heartbeat.

And - while this goes against the idea of having a small deployment - with the Coordinated Maneuvers skill, you could get (IIRC) up to +20% top speed if you have some frigates/destroyers deployed as support.

Yeah, but as you pointed out, those will just get blown up if they get deployed alongside a powerful ship against a large enemy fleet. Unless you hide them in a corner of the map, as Megas suggested, but then they might as well be buff ships that don't get deployed at all.

Also, bugger all plus 20% is still bugger all. If that skill gave a flat buff, equal to all ships, it would be a different story, it would bring the speeds of small and large ships closer together (as if they were, y'know, coordinated). But as it stands it does the opposite, it makes the fleet less coordinated by widening the speed gap even further, which in turn discourages deploying smaller ships, because it becomes even harder to keep up with them to protect them.

That said - as Thaago pointed out - the Paragon is the slowest capital ship, really. Most of the other options have mobility systems, and are probably more suited to player use. Probably paired with the Paragon, to play anvil to your hammer. I guess my larger point here is that we shouldn't over-focus on the Paragon - it's a powerful ship, yes, but a lack of mobility is its main and pretty much only downside, so if anything could entirely counteract that, it would be pretty broken almost by definition. In fact, this is making me have some concerns about the elite Helmsmanship effect.

I don't think having a broken combinaton or two would be such a bad thing. It's a PvE game with a restrictive level cap that prevents you from getting everything, thereby encouraging multiple playthroughs with different builds. Finding broken combinations is where half the fun comes from in games like this. Perfect balance is boring, because there's nothing exciting to discover. And yeah, playing with a broken build will get boring sooner or later. That's when you retire that character and play a different build next.

As for other capitals, I just find them... worse, really, mostly due to being made out of tissue paper, comparatively speaking. They're alright and fun to fly against equal or lesser ships, but if I want to take on a couple Paragons or Radiants without swarming them with a ton of my own ships, I pretty much have to bring a Paragon of my own, since maneuverability doesn't help against those as neither can be flanked (the Paragon will just turtle up while it slowly turns to face you, and the Radiant has a better mobility system than you). So the only option is to slug it out, and non-Paragon capitals have neither the staying power to trade blows, nor the firepower to win before they've taken too many. If only there was a way for the player to, y'know, buff 'em a bit.

That's kinda the whole point of this thread. If you want to feel like you matter on the battlefield and aren't mostly just watching AI ships kill other AI ships, you have to have a small deployment. If you want to handle difficult enemy fleets with a small deployment, you need to use the strongest ships. If you use the strongest ships, the game becomes boring because those ships are very dull to fly. Hence the idea of buff ships, to either make Paragons faster (= more fun) or to make the other, faster and more fun capitals stronger (= viable in a small deployment). I guess you could say my dissatisfaction is a case of a player optimizing the fun out of a game, but then I'd counter by saying the most optimal way of playing a game should also be the most fun.

(The Doom is a personal favorite of mine, btw. It can be super powerful; I think you might find that if you pilot it alongside a Paragon, it could make for an equally effective combo as Astal + Paragon.)

Eh... I have an irrational hatred of phase ships. Sorry.