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[Megas]

Thumper at 6 OP seems okay.  At least now, the player gets what he pays for instead of overpaying for something that is usually worse than Heavy Mortar.

Heavy Needler at 750 range?  Now I might use Heavy Autocannon more just for maximum range (on loadouts where 800 and 900 range mix well, but not 900 and 700).  Would be nice if all needlers had the same range, or bigger is better.  It is weird that heavy needler is the only needler with greater than 700, better than light and storm needlers.

>Mark IX: reduced flux/shot to 200 (was: 230)

Now the mark 9 is the official default assault rifle of large ballistics.

Yes, as it should.  Currently, default large kinetic was Heavy Needler (medium-sized weapon) unless ship had Heavy Ballistics Integration or really, really needed 900 range.  Too bad Storm Needler has 700 range; I would use it more if its range was better.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think the idea behind the cargo mission change is that you would keep any new ships you bought to be able to handle larger contracts in the future. You don't consider buying warships to fight bigger bounties as a problem because you understand you are expanding your capability to fight larger bounties in the future as well as letting you complete the immediate mission, and similarly, it's not considered strange that the player is offered bounties that are too difficult for their current fleet. It seems like a reasonable change to me just for feel/fluff reasons. Cargo missions are too profitable anyway, so getting offered a few infeasible ones seems fine to me.

Freshly spawned patrols will wait a few seconds before engaging/intercepting the player

Does this mean that the player can dock and trade with transponder off for a moment after the patrol spawns? or just that the fleet will wait a moment before it chases the player (but docking will still give the 'you are being tracked by a patrol' message).

Also, I agree that the storm needler could really use 800 range, especially with this Mark IX buff. Its niche is getting really small.

[Alex]

>Tri-Tachyon: adjusted fleet composition to be more evenly split between warships/carriers/phase ships
Yes, yeees! I want more Medusas and Auroras! Though, myself, I'd probably make it so that it's biased towards phase ships still (to differentiate it to Persean League).

Honestly, you're probably more likely to get them from contacts/arms dealers, but it'll be more possible, at least.

>Maximum number of weapon groups increased to 7 (was: 5)
I don't know if I expressed my approval the first time you showed that, so I do so now. Nice!

*thumbs up*

>Heavy Needler: reduced range to 750 (was: 800)
Why though? It's already the most expensive medium ballistic. While it's good, I don't think it's overly good, even with its burst. Its main competitor is Heavy Autocannon, and they both were range tied.

Felt like it was a bit too good. Not a huge change either way, though; just want to give the Heavy AC a bit more room.

Changed Hyperion I might possibly use. It certainly looks more appealing to me, though whether I'll use it will still depend on the combination of power, PPT and maintenance.

I'm curious to see how it'll play out. I'm *hoping* that the combination of those things - plus its weaknesses - is such that it'll be a good flagship at times, but not something you want to have a bunch of.

Huh, interesting. Isn't Faulty Automated Systems just a sub-set of Increased Maintenance, though?

Sort of, yeah. It's more of a crew increase, though (+100%), so it's... probably still ok? But I get what you're saying, I honestly wasn't thinking about this.

>Degraded Drive Field:
>Can only be generated for non-combat ships
This is an incredible buff. Bad engines in certain circumstances auto-disqualified ships for me not because of decreased mobility (which I mostly forgot was even there), but because those ships would slow me down. At least all freighters and tankers do the same thing, so instead of missing out on filling some role in my fleet, it will just grow slower instead.

I'm curious about the reasoning behind the Degraded Engines vs Degraded Drive Field split; I can see some situations where it helps the player (Dominator with Degraded Engines being able to keep up with the fleet)... But with the way cargo ship scaling works (i.e. you generally want the largest cargo vessels that fit your fleet's burn level) I suspect that Degraded Drive Field is going to just become another 'nope not worth using' flag...

The original d-mod really was feeling like an outlier in terms of having so much combined negative impact. For civ ships, you could put on Augmented Drive Field / Militarized Subsystems to counter much of this. Also, if your burn speed is say limited by combat cruisers, you could absorb this d-mod on frigate-sized civ ships. Basically it feels like there's enough play het that it won't always be a "nope", not the way the combined effects of it currently are.

Can existing pirate bases still randomly change targets to your colonies less than a week after putting them down, incidentally? IIRC the first scripted base will be changed to a T2 base (or at least what would be considered a T2 base in the current patch), but even so that would still make early colonies more viable (consistent?) for me.

IIRC yes, though you'd have to be near a pirate base and there was a bug where that wasn't working right in the current release.

Ah, okay, gotcha. Going to miss the steady stream of system bounties, though .

Ah, well! Can't have everything

Does this mean that the player can dock and trade with transponder off for a moment after the patrol spawns? or just that the fleet will wait a moment before it chases the player (but docking will still give the 'you are being tracked by a patrol' message).

The latter, so yeah it can still block you from trading, but at least you'll be able to get away easily.

Also, I agree that the storm needler could really use 800 range, especially with this Mark IX buff. Its niche is getting really small.

It's in a tricky spot; more range for such a consistently overwhelming amount of kinetic damage makes it incredibly powerful. "Storm Needler goes BRRRRRRRR" and solves all your problems. I do agree with what you're saying about its niche being small, btw. Just - that seems preferable to expanding the niche and, oops, that niche is now "it's the optimal choice on anything that can mount it".

[RustyCabbage]

Really liking all of these changes! The Heavy Needler nerf seems very reasonable, and I'll be much more careful in the future when deciding between it and the Heavy Autocannon. Though, it does sorta irk me that between the small/medium/large needler versions we go from 700 -> 750 -> 700 range, heh.

Targeting Feed system will be used by carriers that only have support fighters installed

To be clear, does this affect interceptors like Wasps and Talons as well as support fighters like Xyphos? I noticed that Targeting Feed wasn't used for pure interceptor lineups either.

[Goumindong]

Legion XIV derelicts will no longer be restricted to a single constellation

I really liked this touch since it fit with the lore of the XIV coming from a single direction. Having all the derelicts in a single constellation meant that you could "follow the path" as it were.

Do they still have a "path" as it were or are they entirely random now?

[AcaMetis]

I think the idea behind the cargo mission change is that you would keep any new ships you bought to be able to handle larger contracts in the future. You don't consider buying warships to fight bigger bounties as a problem because you understand you are expanding your capability to fight larger bounties in the future as well as letting you complete the immediate mission, and similarly, it's not considered strange that the player is offered bounties that are too difficult for their current fleet. It seems like a reasonable change to me just for feel/fluff reasons. Cargo missions are too profitable anyway, so getting offered a few infeasible ones seems fine to me.

The issue is that once you have your new ship you'll eventually run into missions that require even more cargo space, leading to either tedious refitting or buying yet another ship, after which you run into even bigger contracts requiring even more/re-refitted ships, and so on until you run into a contract you either just cannot do or cannot justify doing, in which case why have the contract be offered at all? I can understand it being there for fluff reasons, but it just seems like a waste of time.

With bounties it's not an issue because past a certain point bounties are just not worth doing no matter what the state of my fleet is, and "impossible" bounties do have a very functional gameplay role in that it makes exploring dangerous, gives me a reason to build/activate the hyperspace communication relays so that I can get updates on where surprise deathfleets are hiding, and so on.

I think the simplest solution would be to have a cap on how far the game is willing to go before it stops offering bigger delivery contracts than the player can handle, which frankly sounds like it'd be necessary for lore reasons anyway because otherwise I'm not sure how I'd be able to still find such oversized contracts even after getting a fleet of 30 expanded cargo space Atluses (Atlusses? Atlusse?). That'd be...78.000 cargo spare for the record .

It's not a bad mechanic in general I don't think, it just needs some lines to be drawn or I fear it might overstay it's welcome.

[Alex]

Though, it does sorta irk me that between the small/medium/large needler versions we go from 700 -> 750 -> 700 range, heh.

Honestly, same a little bit.

Targeting Feed system will be used by carriers that only have support fighters installed

To be clear, does this affect interceptors like Wasps and Talons as well as support fighters like Xyphos? I noticed that Targeting Feed wasn't used for pure interceptor lineups either.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that one - thank you for mentioning it. It was not fixed; just fixed this up as well.

I really liked this touch since it fit with the lore of the XIV coming from a single direction. Having all the derelicts in a single constellation meant that you could "follow the path" as it were.

Do they still have a "path" as it were or are they entirely random now?

Backstory-wise, the XIV ships you find aren't from their arrival in the Sector, but rather left after one of the AI Wars. So they still aim for systems where their "theme" makes sense (i.e. REDACTED), but there's no "path" since that doesn't apply here.

[Megas]

No expeditions at size 3 seems nice.  Now player can build Heavy Industry (or other non-Farming industry) without the core worlds trying to burn it to the ground.  Currently, I delay Heavy Industry until my colonies can repel max-strength expeditions near or at the end of the game.

[Morrokain]

Looking good!

Very excited to see how this update is going to change things.

Added AmmoTrackerAPI, retrieved via WeaponAPI.getAmmoTracker()
void setAmmoPerSecond(float ammoPerSecond);
float getReloadProgress();
void setAmmo(int ammo);
boolean usesAmmo();
void addOneAmmo();
boolean deductOneAmmo();
int getAmmo();
float getAmmoPerSecond();
int getMaxAmmo();
void resetAmmo();
void setMaxAmmo(int maxAmmo);

Nice!

Added "ship_unique_signature" ship *variant* tag
If any ship with this tag is present in player's fleet, opposing fleets always know who they're facing regardless of transponder status

I'm reeally curious as to what the use case for this was. 

[Thaago]

Punitive expeditions and Hegemony inspections will instantly fail if the target colony changes ownership

Well thats an interesting little tidbit too...

This looks exciting!

[tomatopaste]

All changes look great, I'm especially excited about some of the new combat api features.

I made a bug report that didn't sneak into these patch notes about converted hangar (and other fighter slot adding hullmods) not using launch bay weapon slots when provided at this thread, maybe worth taking a look at? It would be appreciated by a few people. Thanks

[FooF]

The D-mod changes are very welcome. Degraded Engines vs. Degraded Drive Field is a huge change and I like how you didn't cripple combat ships by slowing their burn down.

A lot of the other things are nice QoL changes and I like the Pirate/Expedition changes.

The Needler changes are so-so: I've always felt the Heavy Needler was a little too good but the fact that it was 15 OP was kind of the balancing factor. But 50 range isn't a huge deal.

Re: The Storm Needler, no offense, but maybe it just needs to be-worked. With its current range, I never use it but as was mentioned, if its range was buffed, it'd be universally useful. There's probably a via media in there somewhere. Dare I say give it ammunition? Buff the range to "Large Ballistic" ranges but limit its raw damage output via clips or regenerating ammo? Or, give it bursts like the other Needlers (perhaps a large 3-second-long burst that tends to overkill with an equally long cooldown). Storm Needler goes "BRR" is fine but only in bursts and it would be all over the place at extreme range.

[SonnaBanana]

Anything about grace periods for newly spawned patrol fleets?

[Megas]

Re: The Storm Needler, no offense, but maybe it just needs to be-worked. With its current range, I never use it but as was mentioned, if its range was buffed, it'd be universally useful.

Same here.  It is enough of a flux hog that I use other weapons instead because low-tech ships have trouble sustaining it (plus other weapons).  Conquest can sustain Storm Needler without much difficulty, but Conquest has enough extra mounts that I can mount a different combination of weapons (instead of Storm Needlers and Heavy Mortars) and have roughly equal sustained time-to-kill at 800-900 range (instead of 700).  The only reason to use Storm Needler is if I find one but have not yet found other heavy weapons.

Most heavy ballistics have 900 range.  I get those weapons mainly for that 900 range!  It is easy to pair complimentary 900 range heavy weapons (Hellbore, Mark IX, HAG, Mjolnir).  With Storm Needlers, I probably need to pair them with Heavy Mortars, which is a bit weak.

Maybe Storm Needler could cost a bit less OP, or maybe have less DPS and flux cost.  The cheaper heavy weapons tend to be more useful when the ships with heavy mounts have plenty to spare... and not enough dissipation to support anything bigger than a Mark IX.

[Thaago]

Re: Storm Needler, I find the AI has a bit of trouble with its windup combined with the high flux cost. In stressful situations it sometimes tries to flicker the weapon group, which doesn't really go that well.