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[Goumindong]

>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...

It really does seem weird players prefer to use medium weapons when large slots are available. When on the other hand, you'd do anything to have a large energy mount instead of the medium one. I think the biggest problem are flux costs, where the majority of ships that can mount these weapons, really cannot use them decently. I'm not saying all of the large ballistics are bad, but half of them are either unusable or extremely niche where you could only fit them on one ship, and it's not even low tech.

I think this is a problem with players. Large Ballistics are amazing and should always be fit (even if you're only using two for a broadside). They're absolutely superior than medium as primary weapons per OP

re: Railguns/LN's

As i said in my first post. I already consider LN's one of the best small kinetic option despite their 9 OP cost. Like, if we remember our insights from the capacitor/dissipation tests LN's are the small kinetic that lets you dump the most damage out immediately. Sure they spend flux faster but that doesn't matter in the end because spending flux faster is often ideal. I do fear this kinda just makes them clearly the best

>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...

It really does seem weird players prefer to use medium weapons when large slots are available. When on the other hand, you'd do anything to have a large energy mount instead of the medium one. I think the biggest problem are flux costs, where the majority of ships that can mount these weapons, really cannot use them decently. I'm not saying all of the large ballistics are bad, but half of them are either unusable or extremely niche where you could only fit them on one ship, and it's not even low tech.

It's only rational. Onslaught's side slots have very limited coverage, so I see no point in investing much OP there. No flux to use that many large guns either, as you also noted.

Besides, Onslaught really needs flak in side large slots. The only 2 other options to cover these angles are front medium slots (but these reach forward enemies, if onyl barely so, thus can be used for offensive weapons) and central medium side slots (which easily reach front, so offensive weapons are also high priority).
Heavy Ballistics Integration would incentivize using large guns there, but... There is no good alternative to flaks in large slot (outside mods anyway). Devastator is horrible PD.

If you have IPDAI you do not need flack

As an example. My Broadside Onslaughts from the "why can't the onslaught be a real battleship" in which i showed an Onslaught being a real battleship did not have any flack and were still absolute stonkers.

[Alex]

As for the planet size, I think it's unfortunate that your colonies will never be as large as the core world ones. Probably doesn't matter for gameplay, but it feels bad.

That's quite subjective, so: fair enough! I just don't think it makes in-fiction sense.

There's one thing I've been meaning to bring up that slipped my mind - filter options. Will we get more of them? I'm specifically thinking of two cases. First is where I've surveyed all the planets in the sector and want to know where all the vast ruins are. Scrolling through the list and trying to spot them all is a pain.  Second is rather mod-oriented, but when I'm mounting weapons on my ships I'd like to be able to filter for weapons that match the tech category of the ship, and filter for tech category when mounting weapons in general.

Hmm, maybe - I've been meaning to have another look at the planet screen, but honestly that's been low-priority and I'm not sure when/if that'll happen. Weapons-wise, that seems less likely; the UI for that would be tricky and it's not really a "functional" category, just visual.

Added unique capital-class ship that can be acquired by the player. Good luck.

Reading this, I'm getting a bad omen that something big and scary is coming on top of the hinted end-game threat...

Hmmm.

Overall, I had no plans to update the game since my current campaign is going pretty well (I am the type of player that does one, extremely long playthrough. Not so fond of having to restart). But after reading the changelog... I'm starting to contemplate my decisions.

Well, it's not out yet - these are in-dev notes - so you don't quite have to worry about it

>Added a number of story-related missions and a hint of an endgame threat
I have a feeling that there's way more effort put into this, than this simple entry implies.

(Yeah, that's... very accurate.)

Just get rid of manoeuvrability penalty! It has no point, it just makes it hard to use on ships that benefit from it the most.

Ah - I think it's thematic, and can be countered in many ways. I'd rather the hullmod be strong enough to warrant it; I think that's more interesting. Hmm - maybe upping to 25% and reducing the hullmod cost might be a more interesting way to go, actually, since 10% is mostly thematic anyway. Will likely leave it as-is for now, though.

>Xyphos has no range now
Any particular reason for that change?

Yes, but - please bear with me - I forget exactly what it was.

>Onslaught: Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration
I've got a feeling that there's an issue not with Onslaught and Conquest, but with large ballistic weapons instead...

It really does seem weird players prefer to use medium weapons when large slots are available. When on the other hand, you'd do anything to have a large energy mount instead of the medium one. I think the biggest problem are flux costs, where the majority of ships that can mount these weapons, really cannot use them decently. I'm not saying all of the large ballistics are bad, but half of them are either unusable or extremely niche where you could only fit them on one ship, and it's not even low tech.

To me it seems like a clear-cut case of "HBI goes on ships where the large mounts point every which way so you can actually justify putting large weapons in all of them".

Ruins in core systems now start out as explored

Will Tia, Duzahk, and Penelope's still have searchable ruins (should they generate any)?

I believe so, yeah.

Nanoforges: add Pollution when installed; becomes permanent after three months

Is this going to be permanent as in absolutely final, or will you be able to 'upgrade' to a better version of the same thing later?

Hmm, I don't quite understand the question. The Pollution condition will be permanent and nothing removes it, if that's what you're asking.

Hammerhead:
    Fixed slight alignment issue for left medium hardpoint, this is Very Important

Highest priority change. Consider highlighting in notes to reflect importance.

(Yeah, good call probably.)

It's not that I need to see colonies 100+ times more populous than Chico everywhere, I just don't want colonies to hit a complete brick wall when it comes to growth when there's not really any reason why it shouldn't be able to keep growing. Growing very slowly because of the 10^x curve, sure, but growing surely all the same.

I mean, they stop regardless of the system, the question is just when that happens.

A bigger concern with this change is that it'll have some kind of unexpected result that leads to me having to babysit my colonies even more than they currently need it. To name one thing, fleet size and ground defence strength are both tied to colony size, and I have no idea if a size six colony can defend itself against a -3/-50% pirate raid without me needing to drop everything and rush to it's aid every single time. Sure, Alpha Cores to boost stuff, but than I'd have the Hegemony and their extra buff ships knocking down my doors instead. And Alpha Cores aren't exactly burning holes in my stockpile anyway. Alternatively, Red Planet, but I'd like that to not be a requirement before I start putting down colonies that can defend themselves. And especially with all these profitability nerfs I probably won't have millions of credits burning holes in my pockets for a very long time either anyway...

Incidentally, with Pather cells now fixed is there any way to stop their constant attempts at sabotage beyond riding out to destroy their bases every...what was it, 230-365 days I think? Because that's another thing that might end up getting me caught in a cycle of babysitting, if Pathers keep blowing up my Orbital Works and whoops, -3/-50% pirate raid pops up before however long it takes to get fixed.

Fair! More of a reason to tweak those mechanics, though, than it is to allow stuff that makes no in-fiction sense. (Also, there's an item that boosts fleet sizes *a lot*, so I'm pretty sure it'll be doable anyway. But I need to have a look at the frequency of expeditions etc, regardless, so those things become an "interesting event" that you interact with and aren't so frequent that it's a chore.)

Also also:

• When recovering ships after combat:
  • In an officer was in command, they will be reassigned back to that ship

Typo .

Thank you, fixed!

not going to lie, i see that post and feel even more now that "SOON ^TM" cant come soon enough, I had just started a new game a few days ago after putting it down for a while, you know to not burn out. and now this tease drops. and i just want to get my hands on it just that much more now. I mean if you need us to beg I'm sure many of us will get on our knees and shamelessly cry and beg lol.

I am very curious to see all the changes realized, especially the character level progression and all the things that go with that.

Added Revenant-class phase hybrid freighter/tanker

Alex I'm having such a hard time imagining this thing and I love it.

Phase ships gotta do something weird, right? It's their motif!

I could go through the entire list and nitpick but overall I think all the changes and additions are great. Its gonna be fun to go in blind to good ol' vanilla and experience new stuff once again.

Cool! If something in particular does seem "off", I definitely don't mind hearing about it.

I remmeber reading somewhere that you said you would look into pirate fleets their composition and behavior in general as in at the moment they do not "feel" like pirates but more like a zombie faction - they have alot of ships, theyre bad and theyre suicidical to kill you, rather than being raiders trying to profit.

Hmm, I'm fairly sure I didn't say anything that specific. If I was talking about fleet composition, then it feels likely that this is covered by fleets being less top-heavy etc. As much as what you're saying makes sense, you also kind of just need some enemies to blow up, so... I mean, I'm not opposed to nods in that direction here and there, but just in general, going for a "real" pirate feel has downsides, I think.

Also someway to permanently deal with pather cells (such as destroying the faction as a whole or maybe a dedicated industry required either per planet or system) rather than the periodically having to destroy their bases.

Being able to deal with them permanently doesn't seem like a good idea. Going to look at the frequency of these types of events (and, in fact, I think I might've made some tweaks already; not sure if it's in the patch notes or not.)

most importantly however... RELEASE WHEN?

When ready!

Cool, cool, cool Thanks for keeping spoilers to a minimum!

(I try! Have to spoil things sometimes, though, since it's kind of tough to not show off stuff that might get some attention... just in general, doing any sort of "marketing" (even in a broad sense) and "not spoiling things" are... not entirely at odds, but somewhat at odds.)

I like that there are now more unique industry items to find while exploring. The "unique stuff to find" was really not enough for all the "places to find stuff in". (I also wouldn't mind if there were some really unique stuff to find for the explorer who's currently not that interested in founding a colony, like hulls and weapons.)

Who's to say there isn't?

Arrrph, I am a Pillaging Phase Pirate now! 

Excellent, excellent!

Mhh, is there even enough difference left between "moving slowly" and "going dark" to warrant them being separate options? Seems like turning off your transponder and moving slowly archives almost the same thing as going dark. Minus the 50% detection range reduction, which could just be added to moving slowly.

I just had the though that it might be cool if only "go dark" would extend the phase field of phase ships around the entire fleet (and more effectively), but it would cost them CR at a slow rate. So without phase ships in your fleet there would be no "go dark" option and "move slowly" would take over that function.

"Go dark" is a bit easier to use for a longer period, just usability-wise, and it auto-toggles the transponder off, so that's more convenient, too. "Move slowly" is more of a thing you do intermittently. Still, I get what you're saying, hmm.

but... There is no good alternative to flaks in large slot (outside mods anyway). Devastator is horrible PD.

It did get buffed. And if it costs as much as regular flak, I'm not sure that I can agree that it's worse there. Regardless, it's certainly not worse *not*, it deletes fighter wings.

* What are the maximum colonies player can own, and maximum admins he can hire?

2 and 2, with +1 to each from a skill.

* With max player colony size at 6, do we get the cute size 7 images at size 6, or are they reserved for NPC colonies?

Ahh, good catch! Made those show up at 6 (and moved the small image to only show up at size 3, instead of 3 and 4).

Yeah as Histidine mentioned, the graph comparing the LN and Railgun came to mind. Just loading up the simulator with a ship with 2 LNs and then 2 Railguns will show you a drastic difference. Sure the Railgun is more versatile but who cares about that when you have a Sabot in gun form almost. Also every other Needler weapon is the most expensive on OP in their respective tier, so this would just look wrong. I agree with Foof, 8 OP for both would be perfect, 7 is too low for such elite weapons.

Also I kinda forgot about Mk IX, surprised there weren't any changes to it when most of the people agree it's very underwhelming. It really doesn't justify having 1.15 efficiency, sure the dmg/shot is respectable for a kinetic weapon but it's also wildly inaccurate. I'm glad Devastator got some love tho, one meh large ballistic less

Hmm, I will keep it in mind. Wasn't really thinking about the Mark IX - it kind of seems the default, cheap, and somewhat subpar option. I'll give it a look.

EDIT: Maybe I missed it, but you forgot to add that the High tech blueprint package now has Fury instead of Apogee.

Ah yeah, one of those things that didn't make the notes - there's lots of minor stuff like that.

You've outdone yourself again, Alex! It's difficult to pick my favorite aspect of these patch notes, but the story points system in particular seems like something the genre as a whole has been missing: a way for the player to directly say "this, here, is what's most meaningful to my playstyle."

Not such a fan of the changes to colonies, though. Putting a hard cap on colony size basically forces the player to play "wide" rather than "tall" (in the parlance of 4X games).

Thank you!

Re: colonies - I don't think that's actually true, and in fact I don't think changing the colony size limit has many *gameplay* ramifications at all! Not in the presence of items that boost production, and story-point based industry improvements. You can do basically the same things as before, some maybe a bit worse, some a bit better. It's literally just a "number got smaller for feel reasons" sort of thing, mostly. I mean, colony income *will* be less - but not because of the size change, but rather because of the removal of the stability bonus to income.

(Well, if you build like 50+ colonies with AI Cores etc for income, then that will have less income than before because there won't be enough booster items to go around. But that's kind of a degenerate case that I'm not concerned about, if that makes sense.)

One last question: with the introduction of megaprojects, is there a chance we'll eventually see some kind of terraforming option introduced into the base game?

Maybe! Nothing I'd call a plan, but if it looks necessary for story reasons, or there's something particualrly compelling about it that comes up. This isn't something I'm actively aiming for, though.

Not much to comment this time around, looking solid. Thank you for your hard work.

Good luck with the playtests Alex, I know they can be quite time consuming.

Thank you! (And, ah, need to get through a number of things before even getting to those...)

Can we tell production not to build these extra weapons (i.e., build empty hulls)?  Often, when I can build ships, I have more than enough weapons on hand, or I order the extra weapons I want too without relying on weapons provide by some random variant.

You can't, no. You can however sell them and weapon sell price is a lot better now. I'd also imagine weapon stockpiles will be a bit lower because selling looted weapons can be a significant portion of your income.

In current version, I've noticed that with -10% range (level 1 ECM skill) AI still performs decently, but with -20% (maxed ECM skill) AI just gives up and gets mulched into paste without too much of an issue - it becomes really skittish and can't fight back outside of capitals and fighters.

So here's the question - what is the max range debuff without any skills in next update?

Hmm, interesting, I'll need to keep an eye on it. The max debuff is 20%, but deployed ships grant a flat +2% each. Gunnery Implants also grants +6%/+3% when in frigate/destroyer. Given both of these, it'll be a lot easier to hit the limit if you have smaller ships on hand, which also means they have a shorter range, which may go some ways towards alleviating this.

On another note, High Scatter Amplifier. Is it still there? If it is, its 50% range decrease is pretty punishing for energy point defence weapons. Will you do anything about that?

It's still there. There's a tradeoff with using it; I'm not sure that's something that needs anything done about.

On that note, should producing fighters/weapons also generate supplies/fuel/crew like ship production does?

Since it does that, I'm going to go with "yes" IIRC that's "free" anyway, I don't think you pay for it.

Bombardments will cause other in-system colonies to stops trading with the player for some time, depending on their relationship with the bombarded colony

Does that mean if I sat bomb an annoying core world, that my own colonies within a system will stop trading with each other?

Hmm? No, it's just the usual "your recent hostile actions around <market> blah blah" and you can't buy/sell things there for a while.

Added a new, very rare and powerful enemy

What does "very rare" mean?  Limited spawns like Legion14s, or (re)spawns rarely like rare drops (e.g., high-end uniques) in a Diablo game?

I'll just say that it's not farmable.

This is feels like an early christmas present. Can't wait to test it all out and start a new vanilla run. Really like the look of the new officer mechanics and i'm excited for the new raiding and marines.

Thank you Really looking forward to getting it out there, actually - super excited about it!

Question re: "Revenant"

This is such an odd combination of attributes I'm trying to wrap my head around it. I imagine a phase logistic ship has higher maintenance and you pay a premium for both the reduced sensor profile and the ability for a phase ship to escape from battle.

It's also a tanker/freighter hybrid meaning it likely won't be as good as dedicated freighters or fuel tankers in those specific tasks but something like 2/3rds as good as either in both categories (i.e a Destroyer-sized ship would have 200 cargo and 400 fuel capacity). I suppose if you have a phase fleet, you'll just want to keep adding more and more of these ships.

The real questions I have is whether or not its combat worthy and/or if it's counted as "next size up" like other phase ships in terms of logistical profile. Will I want a Revenant in my fleet if I'm not going "all phase?" Does it offer anything that having both having a Buffalo and Phaeton wouldn't?

You're mostly on the right track here, yeah. It's not a combat ship *at all*, and what it offers over other freighters is "phase field".

Come to think of it, how big is the Phantom and Revenant?

Destroyer and cruiser, respectively.

[Thaago]

Re: Ballistics Integration on the Onslaught (and large ballistics in general on the Onslaught):

The reason this is needed in my opinion is for 2 reasons:

1) For frontal builds, side mounted guns detract from the ship's ability to deal with frontal targets by taking up OP. This is mitigated if there are options which are cheap but good at dealing with smaller threats that might get in close to flank the ship. A large ballistic mount that is cheap, can hit small targets, has relatively short range, and is reasonably flux efficient just doesn't exist. Something like a Mk IX (relatively low DPS, but cheap high impact kinetic) would be good if it wasn't for the poor efficiency and terrible accuracy. Devastator for anti small ship/fighters is ok, but flux hungry for that role. If the goal is for good frontal Onslaughts to actually use large mounts on the sides, a 20 OP rebate is pretty nice, because there aren't really any appropriate guns.

2) The only really good option for the center large mount in a frontal build that correctly balances with the TPCs for a frontal build is the hellbore, then piling on medium kinetics. Even this is slightly more than the rule of thumb 1/3 flux budget dedicated to anti-armor/hull, but thats ok. I have a whole spiel of flux and efficiency calculations, but it comes down to this: All large kinetics are worse than medium kinetics for flux limited, mount plentiful ships (Onslaught, Dominator), and a Haephastus/Mjolnir + the TPCs is too much of the flux budget dedicated to non-kinetic for a general purpose ship. Devastator is a possibility for frontal anti-fighter/small ship might work as well, but leaves the ship reliant on its missiles for armor breaking.

Broadside Onslaught doesn't really care about the TPC's for the combined main battery so ignores the above, but they are their own special kind of magic.

Large Ballistics are amazing and should always be fit (even if you're only using two for a broadside). They're absolutely superior than medium as primary weapons per OP. ...

2 comments:
1) Onslaughts have plenty of mounts and enough OP to take 50 vents and the flux boosting hullmod every time, so what they care about is flux efficiency in their kinetics. Large kinetics, for the Onslaught, are simply worse than medium kinetics. Mk IX: accuracy is bad, efficiency low, damage/OP medium (if it can hit). Storm needler: range bad and windup/flux cost extremely AI unfriendly. Efficiency good, but noticeably worse than Heavy Needler. Damage/OP great, but does not make up for downsides. Gauss: efficiency is terrible, despite great range and high penetration (great on Conquests because they have the flux). Low damage/OP.

Contrast to the Heavy needler and all lose. Even contrast to the the Heavy Autocannon and they lose. Theres just no good kinetic large for the Onslaught.

2) For HE weapons the Large Ballistics are pretty good. Hellbore is efficiency king and while low DPS will crack armor wide open, and the Hephaestus is pretty good HE and a great hull crusher (its comparison to the HIL is an entirely different matter...). BUT for non-broadsiders, the TPCs take up much of the available budget for this (see above).


IMO a lot of the large ballistic weapon problems would be solved if the Mk IX were a slightly more expensive, but better weapon. I'd pay 25 OP for the same gun at a tighter spread and 1.0 efficiency.

[Avanitia]

Hmm, interesting, I'll need to keep an eye on it. The max debuff is 20%, but deployed ships grant a flat +2% each. Gunnery Implants also grants +6%/+3% when in frigate/destroyer. Given both of these, it'll be a lot easier to hit the limit if you have smaller ships on hand, which also means they have a shorter range, which may go some ways towards alleviating this.

Try getting a cruiser and max ECM skills, ships of same size will try backing off because of being outranged even more than they normally do.

That change will make game way easier for competent players, which is a shame in my eyes - I personally enjoy battles where AI puts up decent challenge. I hope it will be something I could change in the config files at very least.

[Alex]

@Thaago: I appreciate the detailed analysis! Made a few notes re: the Mark IX.

Try getting a cruiser and max ECM skills, ships of same size will try backing off because of being outranged even more than they normally do.

Will do; thanks! (Actually, I'll probably just hack in 20 ECM for the player side for test purposes, but, right, thanks for pointing out a scenario to look at.)

Edit: giving it a quick try with some cruiser-vs-cruiser mirror matches, not seeing much functional difference between 10% and 20%; the side with the edge wins reliably, but it's kind of expected. I guess it may play differently in a not 1-1, though.

That change will make game way easier for competent players, which is a shame in my eyes - I personally enjoy battles where AI puts up decent challenge. I hope it will be something I could change in the config files at very least.

Hmm, how so? You're paying for getting 20% by needing overall weaker ships, so I'm not sure how this makes things easier - could you clarify? I mean, I could see how it might not eliminate the problem, but that's different.

[CoverdInBees]

The Xyphos change to have 0 range might be so the AI won't send them off but is instead forced to keep them close where they act as a compliment to said ship's own weapons.

I remember that being discussed in the past at least, and it made a lot of sense to me since it happens to be the way in which i tend to use Xyphos myself.

[Alex]

... ah, yeah, that sounds very much right.

[Goumindong]

All large kinetics are worse than medium kinetics for flux limited, mount plentiful ships

So... i don't think this is true but it also doesn't have to be false in order to make large ballistic make sense.

There are two reasons its not true

1) Ships can be OP limited in addition to being flux limited and mount plentiful. A HN produces 250 DPS for 15 OP to 800(16.6 DPS/OP). A Mark IX produce 348 DPS for 18 OP to 900 range(19.3 DPS/OP). (The Mark IX at 100 armor damage also penetrates fairly well).

As we established in the cap/distributor thread we don't really care as much about flux limiting on DPS we care about cap and raw DPS. We want to trade our flux into theirs as fast as possible. This is especially valuable on a ship like the onslaught. So the HN (probably the best medium kinetic) does 16.6 DPS/OP. The Mark IX does 19.3 and it starts shooting earlier due to its higher range. There are better medium kinetics (HA is slightly better at 21.4) but we still have the range issue as if we're willing to drop down to a lower range the storm needler offers an absurd 26.78 DPS/OP

2) Because of the value of hull mods(and capacitor) it is functionally impossible to not be OP limited. In my Broadslaughts as an example i was still heavily OP limited (didn't get a chance to fit the Omni shield i wanted!) and i even would have empty slots. If i had fit medium slots in my large i would have had more OP sure, but i would have been better off using large slots and leaving the mediums empty because the large slots were just more OP efficient and that was my limiter.


-----

The reason that your supposition can be true while still making the overall conclusion false is because you don't need to fit kinetic into large slots on ships that have lots of slots. Kinetic damage does not have exponential scaling due to its lack of utility against armor. HE damage does. As a result, larger HE weapons just tend to be better OP for OP. You need about 3 Heavy Maulers to make a HAG.(or a bit over 2 mortars*) Which is 36 OP. the HAG takes up 20. The HM's do have better range and penetration (400 vs 240) but only 400 vs 480 DPS. Either way a Hellbore is 15.625 DPS/OP while a Mauler is 11.083(with much worse penetration) So if you're trying to be efficient you're probably fitting HE in your large ballistic anyway. Either HAG or Hellbore. It just makes sense given that you're not slot limited.

*which while great for OP does mean you're going to need a high efficient high DPS/OP 700 range kinetic weapon and that means you're fitting a storm needler.

edit: You might say "but ships back away was also a thing that mitigated it" and the answer is sure. But flux dumping with the most efficient combination of HE/Kinetic reduces the likelihood that ships get to back away. Once a ships shields are down you want to pour in as much HE as you can. And to do that you need efficient HE and as much OP as possible for extra caps.

[xenoargh]

1.  Holy changelogs.

2.  Uh, is JDK 8 supported yet?

[AcaMetis]

Fair! More of a reason to tweak those mechanics, though, than it is to allow stuff that makes no in-fiction sense. (Also, there's an item that boosts fleet sizes *a lot*, so I'm pretty sure it'll be doable anyway. But I need to have a look at the frequency of expeditions etc, regardless, so those things become an "interesting event" that you interact with and aren't so frequent that it's a chore.)

True, although are those items usable enough that I don't need to find a ridiculously specific system to put down my first colonies and/or have to compromise in some way to actually use them? For instance I wouldn't fancy using those items if it caused factions to send expeditions or ticked off the now fixed Pathers, since that would only replace one problem with another.

Speaking of expeditions, "interesting event that you interact with" just sounds like "annually mandatory babysitting session" to me, honestly. And like it'd limit playstyle because if I have to intervene with my own fleet I'd pretty much be on a timer to amass a final endgame doomfleet whenever I put my first colony down. That or try to keep my colonies small enough to avoid getting targeted by expeditions, but that either defeats the purpose of having colonies (industry to build your own ships, large enough stable income to support your fleet, (re-)supply points with sufficient items to keep the fleet going and/or grab stuff to fulfil the odd trade contract) or merely move the goalposts (small colonies can't defend themselves against -3/-50% pirate raids, so instead of dealing with expeditions I'd be routinely dealing with them).

Basically, I'm worried about colonies being overly nerfed in terms of them becoming a permanent ball and chain for the player, like I could be called to drop everything and rush over whenever the Luddites randomly decide that my Extreme Tectonic Activity Extreme Heat High Gravity volcanic mining colony is too much of a "free haven for various undesirables". PS: Any chance of getting a mechanic where you can capture rival faction people and condemn them to a prison colony? Just, you know, curious . Ignore the heavily guarded transport ship being prepared in the background...

[Avanitia]

giving it a quick try with some cruiser-vs-cruiser mirror matches, not seeing much functional difference between 10% and 20%; the side with the edge wins reliably, but it's kind of expected. I guess it may play differently in a not 1-1, though.

Yes, it's more noticeable in fleet combat where entire fleet might back off due to losing large chunk of range.

Hmm, how so? You're paying for getting 20% by needing overall weaker ships, so I'm not sure how this makes things easier - could you clarify? I mean, I could see how it might not eliminate the problem, but that's different.

With capital ships being less prevalent in next update (from what I understand at least?) player getting ECM cap can be frequent occurence in early- and mid-game.

Smaller ships doesn't mean weaker <.< I can deploy more (especially with soft cap in next update, efficiency be damned!)
Groups of frigates and destroyers don't care about losses as much and have more missiles to throw at enemy, heh. Officers help too.

If enemy cruiser loses 20% range, my ships will engage it more readily, which isn't exactly a bad thing, but issue is bigger when you compare 2 ships of same size and apply that across entire battlespace - my Lasher beats up enemy Lasher without issues due to range disparity and finishes it off with missiles and so on. It's the initial hard flux buildup that plays a big role - one ship builds up hard flux of another before it can even fire. I feel by incentivizing using smaller ships more often, it makes game easier in a way? I don't really know how to explain that.

[CoverdInBees]

...

Speaking of expeditions, "interesting event that you interact with" just sounds like "annually mandatory babysitting session" to me, honestly. And like it'd limit playstyle because if I have to intervene with my own fleet I'd pretty much be on a timer to amass a final endgame doomfleet whenever I put my first colony down.
...

I've read things like this a lot while lurking in these forums and i still don't understand it. In some of my playthroughs i've started colonizing as soon as half a year into the game and even then i've never found expeditions to be a problem. When fighting them myself i've usually found them to be underwhelming and by the time they might get bigger the colonies tend to be defended enough that they don't even need me.
Maybe they become a problem once they send multiple "very strong" fleets but in my experience they're not in any kind of a hurry to do that. Maybe they will eventually if you keep playing but by that time you'd have all the ships you want in your own fleet anyway.

Now the first pirate fleet, that appears to be scripted to be sent within a few months and tends to be a lot bigger than the ones that spawn from bases afterwards, *that* can be a challenge if you rushed for colonies.

[SafariJohn]

I think maybe ECM should apply straight to the enemy fleet instead of competing with their ECM. This would make ECM less of a battle-winner, but it would still shift how battles work by making long range builds relatively weaker than normal.


RE HBI on Onslaught: I don't think it addresses the ship's core issues with flux usage and armor vs. shields.

[Thaago]

I greatly enjoy the debate we are having on this topic! I think we both agree that large ballistic HE weapons are in a good place, with the Hellbore and Hephaestus occupying two different, but valuable, niches. I disagree on the kinetics however. (Spoilers so those not interested don't need to see all this...)

Spoiler

... As we established in the cap/distributor thread we don't really care as much about flux limiting on DPS we care about cap and raw DPS. We want to trade our flux into theirs as fast as possible. This is especially valuable on a ship like the onslaught.  ...

I don't agree with this interpretation. If its true than optimal ships should have max caps, filling vents with leftovers... and yet extensive playtesting has not settled on that as optimal outside of a few very special ships. I note that your own Broadside Onslaught has 60 vents and 6 caps.

I will agree that it is important to quickly damage enemy ships in order to mitigate incoming damage, and so Onslaughts should be overfluxed.

Even going with it as the goal though:

... So the HN (probably the best medium kinetic) does 16.6 DPS/OP. The Mark IX does 19.3 and it starts shooting earlier due to its higher range. There are better medium kinetics (HA is slightly better at 21.4) but we still have the range issue as if we're willing to drop down to a lower range the storm needler offers an absurd 26.78 DPS/OP.

I take issue with this, because DPS/OP without taking into account efficiency is an oversimplified stat to the point of being meaningless: it leaves out information which is critical to a complete evaluation. Consider for example the HN vs the HA: as you state, 21.4 DPS/OP is better than 16.6 DPS/OP... but the HN is a better weapon than the HA for a lot of reasons, including that it can output 25% more damage on the same flux pool. A HN can output 43% more damage to a target than a Mk IX on the same flux pool. Even Onslaughts have limited flux pools, and the efficiency with which they spend them is much more important than DPS/OP, because once they are maxed more OP cannot buy more flux stats.

If DPS/OP is what matters, then Storm Needler is the best weapon by a mile with its very high DPS (and decent efficiency even). But... its easy to test and AI Onslaught variants with it just don't perform that well because of its other downsides. The contradiction shows that a premise is false: DPS/OP is not the most important stat, and analysis based on DPS/OP is invalid without other data.

Then there is accuracy. Against a capital Mk IXs are going to land most shots. Against smaller targets, they are going to miss most shots: both their DPS and efficiency go down considerably. Its hard to exactly quantify this without data from combat analytics, which I don't have right now. It would be an interesting project to compile some real play accuracy data on these guns so we could put some numbers here!

[close]

[Alex]

2.  Uh, is JDK 8 supported yet?

You can edit settings to let the game run with it already, but you'd probably want to tweak GC behavior etc (via parameters) to get it to a good place.

Speaking of expeditions, "interesting event that you interact with" just sounds like "annually mandatory babysitting session" to me, honestly.

Eh, that really depends. I mean, I get where you're coming from, but e.g. (numbers totally made up) if an expedition comes once every ten cycles and is a huge problem you have to scramble to deal with, then that's going to feel differently than a drop-feed of weaker stuff every couple of months. So it's definitely a thing where how much of it there is and what it does/what kind of response it requires changes it qualitatively.

Basically, I'm worried about colonies being overly nerfed in terms of them becoming a permanent ball and chain for the player

Like I said, fair concern, but per my previous response, I think it'll be ok. And if not, it'll need tuning!

(I don't think the item restrictions are *that* punishing, that is, you should be able to find a planet that you can use any given item on without too much trouble. An optimal one is another question, but that's already the case...)

... I feel by incentivizing using smaller ships more often, it makes game easier in a way? I don't really know how to explain that.

Hmm, alright - I'm not sure that makes sense. Not saying it's wrong or anything, but, as you probably realize, that didn't quite clear it up

Consider that you're also much more likely to be facing some EW from the enemy fleet, too, from random frigates/destroyers that have an officer with Gunnery Implants - so it's not something that, say, requires the specific faction to have EW as a commander skill.

I've read things like this a lot while lurking in these forums and i still don't understand it. In some of my playthroughs i've started colonizing as soon as half a year into the game and even then i've never found expeditions to be a problem. When fighting them myself i've usually found them to be underwhelming and by the time they might get bigger the colonies tend to be defended enough that they don't even need me.
Maybe they become a problem once they send multiple "very strong" fleets but in my experience they're not in any kind of a hurry to do that. Maybe they will eventually if you keep playing but by that time you'd have all the ships you want in your own fleet anyway.

Now the first pirate fleet, that appears to be scripted to be sent within a few months and tends to be a lot bigger than the ones that spawn from bases afterwards, *that* can be a challenge if you rushed for colonies.

FWIW, what you're describing sounds exactly right to me. If I had to guess, I think there's a tendency to gloss over this interval - which probably makes up for most of the playthroughs for many players - because it's not a "stable end state", if that makes sense. Which, I mean, fair enough on that count, but also a grain of salt.

I think maybe ECM should apply straight to the enemy fleet instead of competing with their ECM. This would make ECM less of a battle-winner, but it would still shift how battles work by making long range builds relatively weaker than normal.

Hmm - that'd just effectively reduce range by 20% across the board for everything, no? At least in many, many cases.

RE HBI on Onslaught: I don't think it addresses the ship's core issues with flux usage and armor vs. shields.

Well, you're right about that - but those are ship features rather than ship issues! Which isn't to say that it's a perfectly balanced ship or whatever, but rather than anything that's done to balance it ought to work around these, imo.