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[AcaMetis]

Patch notes says story points will be required for bribes (that I like to call extortion payments).  Urge to kill all of the core worlds rising!

Eh...hopefully once colonies are set up and matured they'll be able to take care of themselves, but if not that's definitely going to result in me hoarding story points at that point in the game. I can't rely on a steady stream of xp to refresh them if I'm out exploring and happen to hit a dry streak, so I either have them on hand or I risk getting called off to go defend the homestead. And with five factions able to send expeditions, two factions determined to burn every (player owned) Free Port down to the ground and one faction needlessly concerned about AI core use...that's a lot of potential trouble that can crop up when I could be flying around in the other side of the sector.

Not sure why bribing punitive expeditions should cost a storypoint anyway. Hegemony AI inspections, absolutely, the ability to just pay them off really flies in the face of an interstellar corporation being unable to avoid multiple wars over them. Punitive expeditions, to me, always seemed like a bunch of private interests within a faction getting uppity over their bottom line getting cut, so I don't see what would be so hard about paying them off. Especially when the last ten times they tried they just died horribly to my system defence fleets and Alpha Cored star fortress.

[Tempest]

Number of recoverable ships shown not limited by maximum number of ships in player fleet

Yay!

[pairedeciseaux]

(followup on the Mark IX discussion)

Now you listed all of the differences but forgot the most important one, losing efficiency

Thanks for reviewing and sharing your opinion. Below is a longish answer about "efficiency", under spoiler in an attempt to keep things tidy.

Spoiler

Well, you should probably first define "efficiency". Efficiency at damaging target's shield is meaningful, because flux used on the shooting end also builds flux on the receiving end. Efficiency at damaging armor/hull? Meaning comparing flux used to destroy X amount of armor/hull. Now this is getting quite abstract, though sure, you want the highest damage for the lowest flux cost. Right?

How you do achieve the highest damage at the lowest flux cost can not be extracted from a simple ratio built from (theoretical) damage and flux stats. That's why I highlighted some important stuff like turn rate, damage per volley, range, accuracy, volley time frame, and volley refire delay differences.

About (theoretical) damage and flux stats, let me show you, here:

Mark IX Autocannon has much higher per-projectile damage: 200 vs 100, so higher armor stripping power and longer shield overload duration.

Mark IX Autocannon has a 230 per-projectile flux cost, HAC has 100.

We have 200/230 for Mark IX vs 100/100 for HAC. Is it important? Yes. The most important? I don't think so. One should not ignore the other characteristics. Honestly I think this "theoretical weapon efficiency" is often overrated. And overall ship stats and actual battle situations will often (always?) make a bigger difference than single-weapon "theoretical efficiency".

(aren't large weapons supposed to be efficient anyways?).

Uhh. Is this written somewhere? I mean, sure, all 3 large HE guns are "efficient" (to various degrees, and one should be careful which definition of "efficient" he uses there). Should that apply to kinetic gun? I personally do not expect that. 

What I would expect: the energy cost of pumping out heavier and faster projectiles is higher than the cost for lighter and slower projectiles. And I would also expect volley / burst of projectiles to affect the energy cost one way or the other depending on design.

Again, it's not a bad weapon, but it shouldn't have 1.15 efficiency for its performance.

1.15? Ok, I see you use flux/damage. Let's use damage/flux,

Gauss has 0.58
HVD has 0.79
( Mjolnir has 0.8 )
Mark IX has 0.87
( Heavy Mauler has 0.89 )
HAC has 1
( Hellbore has 1 )
( Hephaestus has 1 )
( Railgun has 1.11 )
Storm Needler has 1.15
Arbalest has 1.25
( Light Needler has 1.25 )
Heavy Needler has 1.25
( Devastator has 2 )
HMG has 2.67

What does this magic number tells you about gun intended use and actual performance? Not much. In fact, if you are interested in theoretical efficiency at dealing with target's shield, you could use (damage*2)/flux for kinetic guns. But even then, it would be far from telling the whole story.

And putting side by side kinetic / HE /energy guns as I've done above is not a good idea because one can't compare the ratio from, say, a Mark IX and an Hephaestus. Doing so would be meaningless without a narrowed scope. Using a narrowed scope such as theoretical efficiency at dealing with target's shield, you may use (damage*2)/flux for Mark IX and damage/(flux*2) for Hephaestus. But... was the effort really necessary?

(don't get me started about comparing Hephaestus and Hellbore performance through such "efficiency" ratios)

[close]

Which brings me to this humble conclusion: generally speaking, theoretical weapon efficiency is not that interesting.

If there will be a new heavy kinetic, or Storm Needler upgraded to 800+ range (why is Heavy Needler the only needler with 800 range), then Mark IX being mildly inefficient may not be a problem.

I would argue having currently 800 range on Heavy Needler is a problem given the overall package. 700-range for 14 OP would be a better / more natural fit, IMO. Needlers bringing kinetic hell at 700 range is already quite effective, and requires the ship to be committed. It seems to be an adequate risk/reward compromise.

800 range on the medium version just looks like an oversight from the last update (when Light Needlers got down to 700 from 800). Otherwise IMO the per-projectile flux cost should be tweaked to balance the higher range if it stays at 800.

Spoiler

For example using 45 instead of 40, which would bring down "efficiency" to 1.11.

[close]

[Thaago]

I find damage/flux to be more natural, but flux/damage is how its listed in game so I've gotten used to it. Mk IX discussion:

Spoiler

For damaging shields, a HN gives 43.75% more damage for the same flux invested, assuming all Mk IX and all HN shots hit*. There is a DPS penalty (250 vs 350), but that can be overcome by using more mounts. In terms of lowering enemy shields while not driving up the firing ship's flux, its shockingly better.

The Mk IX's anti-hull performance once armor is down is pretty good and a real mark in its favor. In the current version unfortunately it does not work against skilled opponents because of the +150 base armor and -damage to armor from kinetics skill combo. If those skills are gone or toned down, the Mk IX gains a lot of utility in its secondary role!

*I want to collect some data on real world accuracy of Mk IX/HN/HAC etc from campaign, because the assumption of "all shots hit" is a really really bad one. I suspect that Mk IX's miss a lot of shots from my experience, but I don't want to include that in a numbers argument without taking data.

[close]

[Grievous69]

Yea I'm also not a fan of throwing stats like crazy when you calculate on the assumption that every shot hits on an inaccurate weapon. Sure if you're fighting stations 24/7. And I'd also be super interested to see what percentage of shots usually hits.

[Goumindong]

Now you listed all of the differences but forgot the most important one, losing efficiency

No I talked about efficiency. The mark IX isn’t an inefficient weapon. It isn’t as efficient as some other weapons. But it’s still efficient.

EG. Mark IX Vs Shield is 1.74 dmg/flux(.575 f/d). HN is 2.5(.4 f/d) Vs 50 armor (minimum armor for 1k armor ship) a mark IX is .58 dmg/flux(1.72 f/d) and a HN is .41 dmg/flux(2.43 f/d). Vs 200 armor it’s .29 dmg/flux (3.44 f/d) for the mark IX Vs .1875(5.4 f/d). Which makes the mark IX much more efficient Vs hull. Almost 60% more efficient Vs skilled hull!

If I have infinite slots and OP then the HN wins out because I don’t care about it’s hull/armor performance.  But if I do not have infinite slots and OP then the mark IX stops doing minimum armor dmg at 566 armor while the HN stops doing minimum armor damage at 141.

And the Mark IX still shoots earlier and still does more DPS/OP. And these things matter just as much, or more, than it’s shield efficiency numbers because the mark IX is still efficient enough where you want to trade all your flux as fast as you can into their shields. And once you do that the dmg/armor and dmg/hull matters a lot more.

 Think of it like a more efficient HVD rather than an HA. The HVD is a great medium kinetic but it only does 1.06 dmg/OP at .78 dmg/flux while the Mark IX is doing 19.3 DPS/OP at .85 dmg/flux.

Re: dominator. I usually leave the smalls for PD because IPDAI Vulcans are sufficient. But if I was making a non-SO dominator and had flack in the mediums I sure as heck would run mark IX in the larges.

[Alex]

Wait. Is this the pollution being being made permanent?
I read that as the nanoforge getting 'locked' in place and thus becoming permanent, and was slightly concerned that this might introduce 'gamey' behaviour regarding never using 'inferior' versions of things.

Yeah, it's pollution being permanent! Now this makes sense. And, yeah, totally agree re: incentivizing swapping etc being bad. (In particular, swapping a nanoforge out temporarily won't help avoid pollution, since it's based on the total time spent with one, not consecutive days.)

1)Improved AI behaviour. Having the AI handle itself better and better every patch would provide us with what I think is a much needed difficulty and quality of life bump at the same time. I am looking forward to my aggressive ships to boost into the enemy with even less abandon also 

I'm pretty excited about the AI improvements myself, if we're being honest I think it also finally puts a nail into some of the most annoying things it could do (re: having to wait out phase ships, and chasing down the last remnant frigate or two); that always makes me cringe when I see it happen on stream or in a video.

I've only got back to being active on the forum for a month but I could easily spot changes done out of suggestions and discussions we had. The thread about the Gladius resulting in buffing both Gladius and Warthog, the thread about armor resulting in the Heavy Armor modspec being buffed and I could go on! I am so glad you guys value direct feedback from a loving community as much as you do. I am probably buying Starsector to some of my friends this Christmas!

Thank you! I'm grateful for all the feedback and the thought and time that goes into it. (I mean, still gotta make my own judgment calls about what to act on and not, what there's time for, which things fit together well and so on, but the feedback is invaluable nonetheless.)

To name one particularly egregious example, in one save I've got...four or five size 10 colonies (good system Cryosleeper ) each with an Alpha Core admin, Alpha Core star fortress, Alpha Core military base (high command in one case), Alpha Core heavy batteries and Alpha Core Red Planet Device. You'd think the factions would learn that sending two fleets is not going to stop me from cutting into their ore export, and yet...

To look at it from another perspective, this is part of the problem with super large colonies etc - really, everything kind of breaks down when you get to that point, both in-fiction logic and mechanics-wise.

And yes, however the situation will end up actually playing out ingame it'll probably need and get tuned afterwards. Given the number of changes and especially completely new/overhauled features I'm fully expecting a few patches to fix the inevitable mistakes. And they'll be great fun to try out.

Indeed, I'd imagine so. And, thank you!


Re: Mark IX - right now, I'm thinking about making it 1.0 flux efficient. I don't think accuracy is a good thing to buff since with its relatively high per-shot damage, it'd be too punishing vs frigates.

Ah yeah makes sense. I think i've only done one playthrough where i played for 15 years or so, and probably colonized pretty late on that one, because there isn't enough "endgame" to keep things interesting/challenging once you start running multiple capitals (plus fully fleshed out support fleet/maxed officers/etc) imo. So might be that i've only dipped my toe in that "stable end state", or never even seen it yet.

Gotcha, yeah. And very much agree on not enough being there at that point; that entire state is a rough edge that will eventually connect to the proper endgame.

The lore junkie in me is positively losing his mind right now...

You've seen David's tweet about having written a novel's worth of text for this update, yeah? And, I have to say - with as much objectivity as I can muster - his writing is *so good*.

If it were me, colonies would also start smaller and slower - not with a spaceport and "population&infrastructure" but with landing pads and homesteads.

Hmm, you know, I rather like that concept. Needs a lot of details etc, bu just starting out as a "size 2" colony or something (maybe even size 1), and then needing to do... something, to make it grow beyond that - and then once at size 3, it takes off on its own. That could be quite cool.

Mining stations have a chance to drop a very large quantity of low-value commodities

Speaking of, are there any plans to make mining stations (or other non colony-bound stations) available to the player? There is no real reason I can see why they apparently were a common thing in the Sector before the fall and now fell completely out of use. (Giving some (hint of a ) reason in game would also be fine.)

Hmm. Well, it seems a bit... I don't know. I guess both a bit redundant (there's plenty of planets!) and complicated (where can you put a good mining station? how does it roll Ore conditions? how do you know ahead of time what the conditions will be? where/how can you build them? Etc). But there's also a "this would be cool" aspect to it which might make it worthwhile regardless, but... there's just a lot that would have to happen to make it work.

[Grievous69]

Think of it like a more efficient HVD rather than an HA. The HVD is a great medium kinetic but it only does 1.06 dmg/OP at .78 dmg/flux while the Mark IX is doing 19.3 DPS/OP at .85 dmg/flux.

Right, both weapons are pinpoint accurate, right. Totally same comparison. Both weapons have average range for their size. Both weapons deal bonus EMP damage. I can go forever.

Anyways so far I haven't seen a single argument on why it's actually a good weapon, without the person ignoring one crucial thing about it.

[Arcagnello]

The last time I used an Onslaught it was outfitted with triple devastator cannons and heavy needlers (or Haves, can't remember), plus a reckless officer of course. Point blank firing Devastators in the face of the enemy felt really good and is bound to be even more rewarding in the coming patch. People often misuse that Heavy mount but fail to consider the fact that it has comparable DPS and higher damage per shot than a Hephaestus without even half of the shots nailing the target.

The Mk.9 autocannon is quite good too, I just like having a devastator at the front too really. What I just don't appreciate about the onslaught is how those 4 medium missile slots are rarely fully used given how short on flux the ship is and how much OP it requires to install everything.

Imagine, the Onslaught could even become decent enough to even warrant the XIV variant to cost a bit more FP to deploy. That is something I never understood about XIV variants, why they don't cost something like 10% more the standard variant.

Heavy Armament Integration is going to solve a lot of issues that plagued the Onslaught for my entire, year and a half knowledge about it.

[AcaMetis]

You've seen David's tweet about having written a novel's worth of text for this update, yeah? And, I have to say - with as much objectivity as I can muster - his writing is *so good*.

Just out of curiosity, any chance of getting a(n estimated) word count?

[Alex]

Well, "novel length" is indeed an estimated word count, so yes

[Goumindong]

Think of it like a more efficient HVD rather than an HA. The HVD is a great medium kinetic but it only does 1.06 dmg/OP at .78 dmg/flux while the Mark IX is doing 19.3 DPS/OP at .85 dmg/flux.

Right, both weapons are pinpoint accurate, right. Totally same comparison. Both weapons have average range for their size. Both weapons deal bonus EMP damage. I can go forever.

Anyways so far I haven't seen a single argument on why it's actually a good weapon, without the person ignoring one crucial thing about it.

I mean... Vs shields it’s accuracy doesn’t matter all that much. Maybe it could use some recoil reductions. Vs armor it does but eh. It’s so much more efficient Vs armor this isn’t a huge thing.

As an example let’s take two HNs Vs two Mark IX and see who breaks Shield first. The HNs do 1000 dmg to shield and use 400 flux/second. The mark IX do 1396 dmg to shield and use 800 flux/second. This puts the HN at 1796 flux incoming and the mark IX at 1800 flux incoming. We note that this is almost identical(the mark IX does use more OP but also has longer range and so starts shooting earlier). The weapon that is almost 44% “more efficient” vs shields only beats the less efficient weapon by .2% in net flux. 1800/1796 = 1.0022! (This does matter more when shooting at better shields but not ever shield approaches close to .5 flux/dmg.)

“But the HN is super more efficient!” You say. And that only matters if we’re shooting exactly at (or under but close to) our flux dissipation... which we don’t want to be doing, we want to be shooting over our flux dissipation with both of these guns. And we want to be shooting as much over as we can in general with both of those guns

And adding slots here doesn’t change the relationship. They’re both just about as good Vs shields as each other. Despite one being a hell of a lot less efficient, simply because it does more dmg.

Edit: I am not saying that accuracy doesn’t matter. What I am saying is that the mark IX is a lot better than you give it credit for and that it really is a good gun. What it loses in accuracy it makes up for in range and raw dmg slot/OP. It is not dominated by HN.

Edit: and while I tend to fit HNs in “slot unlimited” situations it’s not because I would not prefer mark IX. It’s because I actually am slot limited because I cannot fit mark IX in the medium slots and I am using the large slots for HE.

Edit: alex if you move mark IX to 1.0 efficiency please do so by lowering flux use and not by increasing DPS. If you increase DPS the mark IX will be obscene. If you lower flux it will merely be exceptional

[zeno]

Onslaught:

• Reduced arc of side-facing large turrets
• Added built-in Heavy Ballistics Integration

• Shield Conversion - Omni: significantly reduced OP cost
• Added Breach SRM (small) and Breach SRM Pod (medium), a new anti-armor missile
• Medium version has high ammo, small version is extremely cheap
• Heavy Armor: reduced maneuver penalty to 10%, moderately increased armor bonus
• Fixed issue that would cause weapons turning towards a target to fire too early sometimes, missing the first volley

WHY CAN'T I HOLD ALL THESE ONSLAUGHT BUFFS

• Emergency Burn no longer makes the fleet ignore terrain penalties

Does this means there's now no way to protect the fleet against CR degradation caused by terrain?  Also how does this affect fleet maneuverability in terrains that pushes/pulls the fleet (namely pulsar and black holes)?  They're extremely difficult to navigate without E-Burn cancelling out the external forces, without that it might be close to impossible to escape an event horizon without losing basically all supplies.  And if that's the case, Research Stations within event horizons will likely never get salvaged.

[Megas]

If I want to compare a heavy kinetic with HVD, I would use Gauss Cannon, not Mark IX.  Mark IX is clearly an autocannon relative for the heavy mount.  I do not use HVDs on anything that is not a dedicated sniper because it lacks damage and efficiency, not to mention that HVD fires slowly enough for AI to shield flicker against it.

Nice that Alex is considering better efficiency for Mark IX.  Low accuracy is a bit annoying, but not a deal-breaker, especially if the ship has improved accuracy from Gunnery Implants.  If Heavy Ballistics Integration is on the ship (which Onslaught will get), it is hard to say no to Mark IX (instead of getting Heavy Needlers) because 8 OP is much cheaper than 15.

As for Devastator for Onslaught, I use it mainly for anti-frigate and anti-destroyer.  It also supplements flak cannons at times.  Dual flak in the deep middle mounts (next to missile mounts) seem to take care of most missile threats at the side (even if interception is uncomfortably close), which lets Onslaught have some anti-armor in the side heavy mounts against flankers.

I avoid HAG on Onslaught because it costs too much flux per second, and Onslaught has TPCs.  HAG/Mjolnir gets used on other ships like Conquest or Legion.

Edit: alex if you move mark IX to 1.0 efficiency please do so by lowering flux use and not by increasing DPS. If you increase DPS the mark IX will be obscene. If you lower flux it will merely be exceptional

I probably would prefer less flux over more damage because low-tech ships need it!  Their dissipation is terrible.  Too many mounts (possibly with less-than-ideal coverage), not enough dissipation.

Also, more damaging mark IX would buff Conquest (which is pretty good already) because it has the flux to support flux hogs.

[Xeno056]

Oh heck yes. Pumped for the story missions, new threats and mega-structures. Still share a bit of concern about the colonial size cap, I get the limit but I don't see why 10^7 or even 10^8 is a stretch given appropriate time, nurturing, funds, Domain-Era tech and maybe lots of story points.

I LOVE the fact that we get more output boosting items and story point augmentations for industry, cannot wait to see what we have on that front. Having us require different planets for optimizing different industries is also a great idea, but how is the Diktat going to lead the industry on fuel now? I think the commerce instability penalty is also steep, maybe have the Alpha AI cut it down a notch?

Orbital solar Arrays are great, but one question: Is that a tied to a planet randomly or something we can build? If it is a build able industry does it take up a slot? Is more fleshed out Terraforming coming down the line? I have so many questions. The Cryo-sleeper AoE is a great touch though.

Overall some great additions and changes across the board I feel. Can't wait to dive in to a new sector!