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Author Topic: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury  (Read 14939 times)

Mondaymonkey

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #90 on: April 28, 2020, 09:55:13 AM »

Yeah thats fair :D. Dominators will also raise their shields against enemies behind them instead of keeping the 0 flux bonus to turn faster. Huh, maybe I should get a video/reproducible scenario for that one and report it, as its close to a bug.

Maybe, you shouldn't? It is really fun to abuse it.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #91 on: April 28, 2020, 09:59:10 AM »

Actually thinking about free SO with story points, SO might need to get nerfed. Or just restricted to not be made free with story points (or some other way of reducing the effectiveness of making free SO ships). Making an entire fleet of free-SO ships could be a borderline dominant strategy considering just how much free OP you get by doing that. I doubt you would be using this ship with SO when you could have free SO hammerheads/eagle/falcons. Heavy blaster is a good SO weapon but the assault chain gun is a better one. Loadout design is ~15-20 free OP on most cruisers and most people consider it to be one of, if not the best skill in the game, so having a strategy that gives 2-3 times the free OP (and you still get a second free hullmod) seems kinda nuts.
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SCC

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #92 on: April 28, 2020, 10:10:24 AM »

Tactical laser has 200 more range, than long range point defence laser.
Yeah thats fair :D. Dominators will also raise their shields against enemies behind them instead of keeping the 0 flux bonus to turn faster. Huh, maybe I should get a video/reproducible scenario for that one and report it, as its close to a bug.
I found this behaviour somewhat inconsistent, and that AI would do it when it was doomed anyway.
Actually thinking about free SO with story points, SO might need to get nerfed. Or just restricted to not be made free with story points (or some other way of reducing the effectiveness of making free SO ships). Making an entire fleet of free-SO ships could be a borderline dominant strategy considering just how much free OP you get by doing that. I doubt you would be using this ship with SO when you could have free SO hammerheads/eagle/falcons. Heavy blaster is a good SO weapon but the assault chain gun is a better one. Loadout design is ~15-20 free OP on most cruisers and most people consider it to be one of, if not the best skill in the game, so having a strategy that gives 2-3 times the free OP (and you still get a second free hullmod) seems kinda nuts.
This is my concern, too. You have to pick cheap hullmods to actually come out worse than with LD3. For most hullmods, this is fine, since you need to spend story points. However, SO is already the preferred playstyle for some players, and with it being build-in-able with a single story point (or at all), it would be too much of a boost. We're going to see if Alex prepared for this or not.

Thaago

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #93 on: April 28, 2020, 10:21:26 AM »

On the flip side, SO only lasts for so long and the AI doesn't use it that well unless they are reckless: an SO Hammerhead is a murderboat for the first 1/2 of the game but can't really keep up once the size and quality of enemy fleets increases too much. If we can't take these hullmods off, then that is a ship that is going to need to get retired.

On the other hand, needing to retire a destroyer is a fairly minor cost by the time SO is obsolete, and with the story points getting a regen bonus from being used as hullmods the cost isn't permanent.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #94 on: April 28, 2020, 10:38:14 AM »

That's ridiculous, free weapons don't make sense as you're not giving up on anything, absolutely no downsides.

Yes that's the point. I dare you to point out a vanilla ship that 0 OP mining lasers would make too good.
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Grievous69

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #95 on: April 28, 2020, 10:43:43 AM »

That's ridiculous, free weapons don't make sense as you're not giving up on anything, absolutely no downsides.

Yes that's the point. I dare you to point out a vanilla ship that 0 OP mining lasers would make too good.
I never said they'd be too good, simply that you would never leave mounts empty.
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Amoebka

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #96 on: April 28, 2020, 10:50:22 AM »

It's not SO that needs nerfing, it's both Hammerheads and Assault Chainguns. Besides, all good SO ships can have functional loadouts without free SO (or with it for LP) and without LD3. The extra OP can only really be spent on luxuries you don't need.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #97 on: April 28, 2020, 11:01:20 AM »

That if probably an offtopic, but am I the only one here, who dislike SO?

To be clear: I do not deny it's crude efficiency, just do not like to use.
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Igncom1

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #98 on: April 28, 2020, 11:02:28 AM »

Hammerheads, Safety Overrides, and Chainguns are all all right on their own. It's the synergy that gets them to become frigate/destroyer mulches.

Personally whenever I  do actually use them I use one Heavy Machine Gun and one Chaingun so it slams through shields too.

But to be fair that is also a highly specialised hammerhead as anything that doesn't die at the sneeze of a HE weapon on the hull just MURDERS these Hammerheads with no mercy. It's the Sunder of medium ballistics.

Let me ask, how often are you all using chainguns on other ships? I'd imagine not often as otherwise heavy mortars are usually the better conservative choice. So if anything they are still not great.

A hammerhead with other builds is nice and decent, punching up into light or medium cruisers for sure, but is hardly an overpowered death dealer.

I'd personally put the cause on Safety Overrides, but I barely ever use it as I prefer longer battles over range rather then quick decisive clashes. But SO has always seemed like it takes the advantages of speed and flux dissipation for the costs of a hard to know range penalty (which doesn't always matter for short ranged weapons) and a CR timer debuff which while annoying in longer battles is non-existent f you just win before it applies.

Honestly I'd take a high tech light cruiser outlasting a HE stacked SO hammerhead, or at least punishing it when it burns it's flux too high to survive a missile barrage.

That if probably an offtopic, but am I the only one here, who dislike SO?

To be clear: I do not deny it's crude efficiency, just do not like to use.

I don't dislike it existing, I just don't use it as I don;t like my ships destroying their CR bar after a minute or two into a battle.
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Thaago

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #99 on: April 28, 2020, 11:13:58 AM »

I've used the assault chaingun on lots of SO ships because its built for SO (no range penalty) and is overtuned at present.

For non-SO I've used it on Onslaught and Legion for when I know I'm going to have to deal with small ships or just raw DPS (its a very good anti-fighter weapon if you have a medium turret to make anti-fighter and not missile). I would use it on a non-SO Shrike if low/mid tech had a fast skirmisher equivalent. When I was low on weapons I slapped it onto a Dominator turret and it performed pretty well: murdered cheeky frigates and fighters. Not my number 1 choice for the slot, but it did ok.

The best non-SO use I got out of it was on a recovered XIV Legion on the outer wing turrets for anti-pirate work (Legion was weakened due to augmented drive field getting me up to burn 9). Frigates/fighters trying to attack from the sides got mowed down, as did stations that I would burn up to. Not a build I would take for fighting high quality capitals but for mopping up lots of small ships it was extremely effective.
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FooF

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #100 on: April 28, 2020, 11:31:17 AM »

I use Assault Chainguns on one side of my Conquest setup. I have a long-range, generalist side (Mjolnir, HEF, Heavy Needler+HVD+Graviton) and then a short-range MURDER side: Storm Needler, Devastator, 2x Assault Chaingun+Phase Lance. It can fire from either side relatively efficiently but it gets really dicey when both are in use.

With ITU, the Assault Chaingun has mediocre range (rather than poor) but it does absolutely shred armor and hull.

I do wish there was a Heavy AC version of HE in the ballistic line-up. 800 range and ~1:1 flux efficiency. Arbalest has Heavy Mortar. Heavy MG has Assault CG. HVD has Heavy Mauler.

Oh, and as far as SO goes:

The brightest stars burn only a fraction as long. I find that SO is great in the early stages where your flagship is doing most of the heavy lifting and battles are over in a few minutes but by late game, SO becomes a liability. Even Cruisers with Hardened Subsystems are only on the field for about 3-4 minutes and large fleet actions aren't over by then.

SO Hammerhead is kind of an outlier. It combines the best aspects of the ship system with an arguably overpowered HE weapon. I, too, combine a Heavy MG with my Heavy CG because it just makes too much sense to me. But, as mentioned, if the Hammerhead can't kill something within a few seconds, it tends to get fried itself.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2020, 11:35:43 AM by FooF »
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Megas

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #101 on: April 28, 2020, 12:52:43 PM »

That if probably an offtopic, but am I the only one here, who dislike SO?

To be clear: I do not deny it's crude efficiency, just do not like to use.
I dislike SO because 1) the cut to PPT is too much, 2) AI is too cowardly to get in and fight with short-ranged loadouts if I do not use at least aggressive AI across the board and 3) I usually drop shields by venting, but I cannot do that after SO disables venting.  It takes too long for me to remember I cannot vent as a shortcut to drop shields, and I waste time remembering to drop shields the same way I raise them.  If I plan to use SO, Defensive Systems 3 for hard flux dissipation is a must for me.

The only times I use SO is 1) mostly on early-game freighters so that nothing short of Hyperion or phase ship can catch them as they run away and 2) obviously overpowered loadouts involving chainguns, Hammerhead, and Dominator.  Even for combat, that is generally a very short window since AI likes to cower and play stall wars if allowed.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2020, 12:57:15 PM by Megas »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #102 on: April 28, 2020, 01:02:41 PM »

I don't love the SO play style. I didn't use it all for the longest time, even during the beginning of this past release, but I now feel like it is very strong in player hands to the point where it almost always makes sense for me to have an SO flag ship before I get capital ships. I find that SO ships fall off when you start fighting mostly ships of the next class up, which is about when normal ships fall off as well. I already find that SO ships are the best choice of flagship for 1/5-2/3s of the game. Sure you don't last as long, but skills and hullmods help compensate for the player, and you also are able to end fights a lot more quickly. Since fleet sizes are getting tuned back, and SO can also be made free, I could definitely see it as a quasi dominant strategy for the entire early-mid game and even into some of the late game. That just seems like too much for a default hull mod. Maybe even just making it a rare hull mod that you have to obtain through exploration or quests could be enough. Having a fun run with SO in early game once in a while could be fun as long every game isn't like that.

Not every ship is good with SO, but it is a lot more than just AC hammerheads. SO tempest is the best pursuit ship in the game and also quite good at soloing small fleets or domain probes. SO hammerhead kinda outclasses other destroyers right now but SO medusa would be good if assault chain guns were tuned back a bit. SO falcons and eagles are also much stronger than the normal variant IMO. I've actually started flying SO falcons over SO hammerhead sometimes because they have much better mobility, defense and PPT while the energy mounts can make up a lot of the missing DPS. SO aurora is also good if you ever find an aurora before a capital ship (lul).

I also strongly disagree that the extra OP from free SO will be spent on unnecessary luxuries. SO loadouts are almost always super tight on OP in my experience. They are usually just SO, hardened subsystems, the best weapons and then vents and sometimes one more hull mod of choice. Adding ~2-3 more good hullmods is nuts. The extra OP will be spent on defensive stuff like hardened shields or heavy armor and extra caps. All of those things will make the ship significantly stronger: it can now tank a ton more damage which is very important for ships that need to play aggressively and take lots of damage on approach to be effective. 

For any 0 OP weapon, you can always increase the flux cost until the decision is non-trivial. It probably wouldn't take much of a flux increase to make mining laser not worth using as 0 OP IMO (I think its'a already borderline). I also don't have any issue with empty mounts becoming a non-choice as long as the 0 OP weapons are balanced with other weapons. Then you're just replacing the choice 'use a good weapon or leave empty' with the choice 'use a good weapon or use weaker 0 OP weapon'. You're not actually reducing the number of choices, just changing them. TBH, I just don't think it's worth the balance headache to try and make it work right now.
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Goumindong

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #103 on: April 28, 2020, 04:01:31 PM »

Actually thinking about free SO with story points, SO might need to get nerfed. Or just restricted to not be made free with story points (or some other way of reducing the effectiveness of making free SO ships). Making an entire fleet of free-SO ships could be a borderline dominant strategy considering just how much free OP you get by doing that. I doubt you would be using this ship with SO when you could have free SO hammerheads/eagle/falcons. Heavy blaster is a good SO weapon but the assault chain gun is a better one. Loadout design is ~15-20 free OP on most cruisers and most people consider it to be one of, if not the best skill in the game, so having a strategy that gives 2-3 times the free OP (and you still get a second free hullmod) seems kinda nuts.
You can already do that

* Goumindong looks longingly at his LP blueprint package
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: The new high tech light cruiser - Fury
« Reply #104 on: April 28, 2020, 04:07:26 PM »

The only thing I'd worry about with free SO with story points is that it reduces the incentive to recover Luddic Path hulls and keep them around in your fleet for a while.

But I would imagine we might end up with tags to control whether a hullmod can be applied to a ship with story points, and SO might be an ideal candidate for that.
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