Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alex]

- High Maintenance on Paragon would generate the gut feeling of being prohibitively expensive, unless the hullmod's maintenance cost increase was reduced from 100% to 50% (for 90 supplies/month). This would also help Hyperion, though not in the way(s) it particularly needs.

- Does Onslaught really need to be set at 750 skeleton crew? 600 would be just about right.

You know, I was mostly joking about High Maintenance, but this sounds pretty good.

(The Hyperion is in a tough spot, yeah... one of those things where it's hard to make it "good enough" without making it too good.)

Yeah this is a bit annoying. Low-tech ships have more PPT than high-tech ones, but once PPT runs out low-tech ships burn a hole in your pocket faster than high-tech ones (and worse, do it in a semi-hidden way).
Maybe post-PPT CR degradation should be a multiple of CR % spent per deployment? Although that risks having weird effects on a few ships (e.g. with Hyperion's 40% CR to deploy)...

To some extent, that's mitigated by them having higher PPT, but, yeah, once CR starts ticking down... hmm. The rate being constant is something where it is how it is for simplicity, to avoid having yet another stat to convey, and a not super important one at that. Ideally, it would probably be based on CR to deploy.

The cash output can't be mitigated by anything. Supplies can be mitigated to the point where you have effectively unlimited supplies from Skills/Salvaging rigs and you could be running around for 9 months never needing to buy anything. The problem isn't the Paragon being too cheap, it's the Capital/Cruiser tiers of Low Tech can't be offset by anything. The Onslaught in actual use costs more then the Paragon because Supplies can be free and salary never is.

So long as free supplies can offset the costs, Low tech will be more expensive to maintain in practice.

DP cost nothing if the supplies were free.

This doesn't make sense to me; supplies found during exploration are no more free than, say, the credits you get from completing a bounty. And several things mitigate ongoing credit costs - the stipend you start the game with, income from colonies, a commission.

I think a ship that cost no supplies to maintain but instead had a higher crew requirement, equivalent in credit costs, would I think be a better ship most of the time. You'd have more cargo space for loot and would come out ahead in credits earned. You *might* also be forced to return to port due to a lack of credits, but that seems like an edge-case scenario; maybe if you entirely stay away from colonies and have a fleet with multiple capitals, it could become a concern. Besides, you can just... run out of credits, and it's pretty much fine. It's not a reason to turn around, not the way running out of supplies is. Heck, if you stay out long enough, it might even be more profitable to run out!

[Midnight Kitsune]

Yeah this is a bit annoying. Low-tech ships have more PPT than high-tech ones, but once PPT runs out low-tech ships burn a hole in your pocket faster than high-tech ones (and worse, do it in a semi-hidden way).
Maybe post-PPT CR degradation should be a multiple of CR % spent per deployment? Although that risks having weird effects on a few ships (e.g. with Hyperion's 40% CR to deploy)...

To some extent, that's mitigated by them having higher PPT, but, yeah, once CR starts ticking down... hmm. The rate being constant is something where it is how it is for simplicity, to avoid having yet another stat to convey, and a not super important one at that. Ideally, it would probably be based on CR to deploy.

This seems like it would just be pushing the issue from one tech to another. And the other ALREADY pays more to deploy AND has shorter PPT. Adding faster/ harsher CR loss just seems like kicking them while they are down. I mean look how useless the Hyperion is these days!

[Alex]

Yeah, that's a good point, too.

[SCC]

Maybe post-PPT CR degradation should be a multiple of CR % spent per deployment? Although that risks having weird effects on a few ships (e.g. with Hyperion's 40% CR to deploy)...

But how? You get 48s of PPT for 12% CR, or is your PPT reset? If the latter was the case, PPT might as well be done away with and replaced with losing CR gradually. Lasher would lose 1% every 20 seconds and Onslaught would lose it every 60 seconds.
While I wouldn't mind it per se — it would do away with redeploying and AI being oblivious to running out of PPT would no longer be an issue — I doubt this is where Alex wants to go with it, mainly because it that all ships would last longer on the battlefield and Alex wants to scale them back down.

- Note re. SCC's table: Heron's skeleton crew is 150, not 90 (thank goodness)

Mk I eyeballs have their issues.

On scouting/missions farming for blueprints most of the time you are only returning to port for 2 reasons if you build your character and fleet correctly.

- Because you have so much good cargo dumping it for more loot feels insane
- Because you are running out of money

The cash output can't be mitigated by anything. Supplies can be mitigated to the point where you have effectively unlimited supplies from Skills/Salvaging rigs and you could be running around for 9 months never needing to buy anything. The problem isn't the Paragon being too cheap, it's the Capital/Cruiser tiers of Low Tech can't be offset by anything. The Onslaught in actual use costs more then the Paragon because Supplies can be free and salary never is.

So long as free supplies can offset the costs, Low tech will be more expensive to maintain in practice.

DP cost nothing if the supplies were free.

This is how I roll usually. I never sell supplies, unless I find a mad dosh deal somewhere, because I will use them eventually. While exploring, it really isn't hard to come back with supply surplus (unless I get really unlucky) and when it comes to bounties, it depends more on if I manage to sweep the bounty nicely (and if I take salvaging skill). Not having to buy supplies at all beats even buying them on the cheap. My limitations more often come from credits and not from lacking supplies.
Though, my opinion might not be as important here, since balance should be aimed towards the average player, not a madman smacking ordos around with a single ship.

[Havoc]

maybe fighterspam should get additional damage if spammed like 20x2 drover wings(or other ships)

(same could work for pilum)

fighter collision could also help, but cost too much performance

[Histidine]

Maybe post-PPT CR degradation should be a multiple of CR % spent per deployment? Although that risks having weird effects on a few ships (e.g. with Hyperion's 40% CR to deploy)...

But how? You get 48s of PPT for 12% CR, or is your PPT reset? If the latter was the case, PPT might as well be done away with and replaced with losing CR gradually. Lasher would lose 1% every 20 seconds and Onslaught would lose it every 60 seconds.
While I wouldn't mind it per se — it would do away with redeploying and AI being oblivious to running out of PPT would no longer be an issue — I doubt this is where Alex wants to go with it, mainly because it that all ships would last longer on the battlefield and Alex wants to scale them back down.

The idea was: ship with 10% CR to deploy bleeds n% CR per minute past PPT, ship with 20% CR to deploy bleeds 2n% CR per minute (or 1.5n, or some other formula)

On your idea for abolishing PPT: A long time ago (when CR was first announced) I raised the idea before of a system where PPT is very low and deployment costs come primarily from time spent in combat.
The main upside is an incentive to finish fights quickly. But there are also other gameplay implications, and introducing it now would require redoing a couple of stats for every ship + changing the UI around CR loss notifications.

[Daynen]

As often is the case, I caution against balancing things by cost and upkeep numbers for a simple reason: if a player plays long enough, both concerns become moot.  With the right colony setups, money ceases to be an issue; with the right skills and a little management, supplies, fuel and even crew can be sustained in very nearly infinite quantities with barely a stop at the nearest port.  Once you have a few million in monthly income (AFTER you've bribed off any raids or whatnot) the ostensibly lower upkeep cost of a given ship becomes irrelevant, leaving them generally inferior choices--hence many drift away from the industry skill tree with experience.  Combined with the hard limit of 30 ships (which I understand may be changing) most of the choice-driven paths are stripped away, leaving us with a fleet full of things like paragons, prometheuses and Atlases (Or Atlas mk II's if you're a stubborn lunatic like me.)  One may consider this "endgame" and thus dismiss it, but let's get real: we all get there eventually.  I favor the idea of tradeoffs that actually affect how the ships play, rather than the background numbers just taking more or less time to become a problem.

One idea comes to mind that may be an incentive to run low-tech: malfunction resistance.  Simple, sturdy equipment is easy to repair and takes more abuse before it malfunctions.  What if low-tech ships were characterized by inherently more durable engines and weapons?  It wouldn't necessarily make them harder to kill; just harder to cripple in the interim.  Low-tech ships don't have to possess the incredible, fleet wiping power of a fully geared Paragon, but if they were just so resilient that they fought at full capacity right to the very end, it would cement their position as brawling ships, give them great reason to spec for brickiness and make them more reliable over the course of multiple engagements.  This could be as simple as baking in an armored weapon mount or insulated engine hullmod, though the reduced sensor profile is kind of an unintentional bonus for this purpose.

[SCC]

It's not a discussion at what point money stops being a problem, which is a separate issue. I prefer ongoing costs to match ships' general power levels and to avoid situations, where Onslaught is more expensive to run than a Paragon. I can play without skills on spacer and still make it, but it doesn't mean any ships I use should be nerfed and any I don't should be buffed, only that I'm a tryhard.
The idea about making low-tech ships more resistant to malfunctions sounds like something that should be universal, but tied to the ship's armour somehow. Making low-tech more resistant just because of a hullmod doesn't sit well with me, it's too "artificial", at least for a base game ship set. At least hypothetical "low maintenance" is there to make the player notice the exceptions from the rule, rather than to influence the ship's statistics directly.

On your idea for abolishing PPT: A long time ago (when CR was first announced) I raised the idea before of a system where PPT is very low and deployment costs come primarily from time spent in combat.
The main upside is an incentive to finish fights quickly. But there are also other gameplay implications, and introducing it now would require redoing a couple of stats for every ship + changing the UI around CR loss notifications.

It would require changing CR lost per second and adding this to the tooltip. And maybe also changing CR used for deployment to multiples of 10 or 15 to make player calculations easier and faster. Though if PPT remains, there still is an incentive to redeploy.

[Megas]

Another thing:  NPCs do not care about costs.  Adding High Maintenance on Paragon would not hurt the AI as it would the player.  AI would spam them just as much, and if they die, who cares? More where they came from.  Player does not have that kind of luxury.

Paragon already costs a lot to deploy at 60 DP.  Fights are practically tag-team duels instead of fleet battle due to how much DP they cost.

[Schwartz]

And running costs such as supply drain is at best invisible to a well-stocked fleet and at worst a total buzzkill for people who aren't as good at the game. Supply costs never pop up as a point of joy or excitement for the player. They pretty much disappear if you do things right and that's as good as it gets.

Please, please never balance ships around supply drain if you can balance them around flux / OP stats / mounts etc. Supply drain is enough of a nuisance as-is, and CR recovery limits the ability to chain deploy capitals beyond having to break even on supplies if you don't want to be stranded.

Making High Maintenance less bad at +50% sounds reasonable to me.

Capitals also have prohibitive fuel requirements. A cruiser costs 2-3 fuel / LY. Capitals cost 8-15!

The current meta needs fighters fixed and brought in line, not capitals. Paragon and Onslaught are powerful, but little has changed for these ships. I don't see the problem.

The idea of giving low-tech ships some blanket repair bonus to weapons / engines sounds interesting and lore-accurate to me.

[Megas]

It is not all fighters, just the high-powered ones like Sparks.  Also, player needs to spec his fleet for fighters.  What I dislike most about fighters, well... carriers, is player can min-max carriers for fighters at the cost of everything else, especially the carrier's guns, and be superior to the carriers that have ITU, a few guns, and pumped flux stats (plus any choice of fighters).

[Schwartz]

It's not just Sparks though. It's massing fighters / swarming / fighter AI in general that's overpowered in one way and quite limited in another. It's the whole defensive metagame that's now out-of-date and still assumes we're dealing with finite swarms. Flak Cannons are even better than they were; any kind of Burst PD is even weaker than it was. Accurate small-mount weapons like IR Pulse and Railgun are suddenly better because why worry with PD when you're better off killing fighters?

Carriers now offer quite tangible trap choices in buffing the ship too much vs. using Sparks or Daggers. It's like when you get a flux beast of a high-tech ship and put nothing on it but Plasma Cannon or Heavy Blaster plus shield buffs, leaving a lot of mounts empty. It doesn't feel like the intended purpose but it might work better that way. Drover has that new paradigm baked into the design, that's why they work so well. Heron doesn't and is short on OP in general compared to alternatives, that's why you can so easily mess it up now.

There are many considerations to fixing the fighter meta. Making them slower & respawn more slowly is one. Setting a limit on swarm # vs single targets is another - really hate that idea personally. Buffing PD is iffy because it impacts missile meta greatly. Working with separate OP pools for fighters / carriers is another. Better fighter controls may actually make them stronger again, but it's an improvement that is IMO needed now. None of these is the obvious right choice.

But let's assume that actual ship balancing is an old shoe and has, for the most part, happened already. Outliers exist. I don't think giving Enforcer more armor is a problem. But I wouldn't make sweeping changes to this system before having a look at the other.

[Locklave]

I won't be using Low tech ships in Cruiser/Capitol class anymore based on what I've learned in this thread. They cost nearly as much immediate cash and have arguably more maintenance then their counterparts while being inferior and less flexible in combat.

[Megas]

It's not just Sparks though. It's massing fighters / swarming / fighter AI in general that's overpowered in one way and quite limited in another. It's the whole defensive metagame that's now out-of-date and still assumes we're dealing with finite swarms. Flak Cannons are even better than they were; any kind of Burst PD is even weaker than it was. Accurate small-mount weapons like IR Pulse and Railgun are suddenly better because why worry with PD when you're better off killing fighters?

There are many considerations to fixing the fighter meta. Making them slower & respawn more slowly is one. Setting a limit on swarm # vs single targets is another - really hate that idea personally. Buffing PD is iffy because it impacts missile meta greatly. Working with separate OP pools for fighters / carriers is another. Better fighter controls may actually make them stronger again, but it's an improvement that is IMO needed now. None of these is the obvious right choice.

But let's assume that actual ship balancing is an old shoe and has, for the most part, happened already. Outliers exist. I don't think giving Enforcer more armor is a problem. But I wouldn't make sweeping changes to this system before having a look at the other.

For slowing fighter respawn, get rid of Expanded Deck Crew.  It is the ITU for carriers.  It also makes outfitting battlecarriers with guns hard because they want both ITU and Expanded Deck Crew.  Legion can barely manage both.

Re: Flux beast.  I am not fond of Odyssey because the best loadout for me is two plasma cannons, few burst PD, max flux stats, and little else, and it can brawl capitals and nearly everything else.  Highly unbalanced (namely that most mounts are empty, including the large synergy at the right).  AI cannot use it because it burns into the middle of a mob and gets picked off.  If I try to outfit Odyssey with a conventional loadout bristling with weapons (or even with no missiles), it gets clobbered because of lack of OP and flux stats.  If I want to give Odyssey to AI, I need to give it a conservative loadout I do not want to use for myself.

[Hiruma Kai]

This doesn't make sense to me; supplies found during exploration are no more free than, say, the credits you get from completing a bounty. And several things mitigate ongoing credit costs - the stipend you start the game with, income from colonies, a commission.

Midline/High Tech get a primary portion of their expenses paid for in the game play loop. So Low Tech and Midline/High tech get their supply costs covered by the gameplay loop of exploration and Low Tech gets to eat cash losses that Midline/High tech get to keep.

Using supplies faster isn't a disadvantage if the incoming flow is equal to usage, it just means the one using it faster got to pay bills with it instead of dumping it in space in favor of more valuable loot.

Who is keeping more of that colony/commission/bounty money? Not Low tech.

Exploration is like 80% of the game before you have effectively unlimited cash and none of this matters. Midline/High Tech become the early/mid game winners because of this, the time when Low Tech should shine. What this means is Low tech is almost never the best option.

edit:

I won't be using Low tech ships in Cruiser/Capitol class anymore based on what I've learned in this thread. They cost nearly as much immediate cash and have arguably more maintenance then their counterparts while being inferior and less flexible in combat.

A ship with nearly equal maintenance despite having 50% lower DP.

I give up. Can anyone recommend a mod that does something about this?

One quick option is make a backup of your ship_data.csv (in case you accidentally edit it wrong, and so you can revert back), and then hand edit yourself.  It lives in Starsector/starsector-core/data/hulls/. Its pretty self explanatory (left most column is ship names, and the columns to the right contain various statistics - changing the "min crew" and "fuel/ly" columns would probably address your concerns).  As for already existing mods, I offhand don't know of any that tweak the low-tech campaign stats.  For a small change like that, making your own mod wouldn't be that hard either.

Although I'll point out, you can totally go with a combat or trading gameplay loop instead of an exploration loop and get to end game, with the end game being defined as flying around in a fleet capable of taking down a <redacted> large fleet.  This can be done with pretty much any start (okay, spacer does force you do the trader/mission loop once or twice first, but after that, its enough to scavenge a ship and start fighting).  So exploration isn't necessarily 80% of the game. Can be and is certainly a relaxing way to play.

And even in the exploration loop, if I'm at the point of dumping supplies and I've got cruisers or bigger in my dedicated exploration fleet, then I'm heading back to the core systems to sell, as that means I've likely got enough loot to buy another combat cruiser. 2000 in supplies or better is a lot of credits (and roughly what 2 Colossus carry in loot), especially if you find a starving port with a supply deficit.  And such starving ports can be caused easily if you're so inclined.