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[Megas]

If I had to replace a skill to make room for a Ballistic Specialization, I would pick Phase Mastery or Strike Commander. Or maybe it could be in Industry somewhere.

I like Phase Mastery because it speeds those ships up.  I am sick of bullet time in phase ships.  I want phase cloak to make my flagship faster, not slower.  Phase Mastery makes phase ships at least as fast as uncloaked (except Ziggurat at times).

[IonDragonX]

There is energy spec and missile spec but no ballistic spec.
I smell a racial discrimination here.
t. Chaingun hobbyist

If I had to replace a skill to make room for a Ballistic Specialization, I would pick Phase Mastery or Strike Commander. Or maybe it could be in Industry somewhere.

Neat thing about modding in a skill is that it doesn't have to replace another, you can just stick #11 into any of the tiers.

[WeiTuLo]

I wanted to capture a Guardian ship (for science!), so I enabled its capture in the csv file by giving it the Radiant characteristics. So I wiped out a bounty, got the ship, dragged it back to my base of operations, and did my testing. Then I restored the original ship CSV file. The Guardian did not seem to have any presets available, so I created some in-game.

When I next visited a high threat Remnant system several real life days later, I saw that certain fleets had Alpha Core Guardians in them. Some of them even had loadouts eerily similar to the loadouts that I had created days ago. And when I got the 1.3m credit bounty to hunt down a fleet with a tesseract inside, again there was an Alpha Core Guardian. I had not even gotten the Alpha Site quest yet. It took 4 reapers to the back and kept on going (but not for long!). Good thing they were busy trying to chase down some very tanky ships.

I suspect the Remnants somehow learned how to make Guardians just from that temporary CSV change. I see it in their ship list.

[WeiTuLo]

Wow, hypershunt hurt less than the single tesseract bounty. Lost a monitor and a scarab, instead of a monitor and two scarabs.

[Sundog]

My feedback on 0.95a (with spoilers!)

Galatia Academy Questline:

• Generally it was great. Writing was a delight to read. Characters are full of character without being caricatures.
• Thanks for giving me the opportunity to drink Baird's wine, mock Daub's stature, and snub Sabastyan's wave (just kidding, I'm not a monster!) Humor can be risky in games with an otherwise serious tone, but I didn't find any that didn't seem fitting.
• I was rarely left without a response option I liked, and it was generally easy to tell when decisions were inconsequential, which I really appreciate.
• Instead of preventing actions that might decivilize story-vital markets, why not just prevent them from decivilizing until they are no longer vital?
• Thanks for calling out my bigotry against Pathers Luddics 
• I got a bit confused and stuck at two points where the important/quest/exclamation icon tripped me up. The first was while searching for Scylla. I talked to the knowledgeable gentleman at the Kapteyn bar who told me to get in touch with a "very important customer" of his. He was referring to someone in the comm directory at Kapteyn starworks, but the quest icon was at Laicaille habitat, so I searched there again until I reloaded to read what the guy said more carefully.
• I also had a hard time finding the probe that points to the Alpha site. Not so much because it was hard to find as that the demolished black site and TT mercs were false leads that didn't give me any indication that they weren't what I was looking for.
• The Ziggurat is great. Fun to find, fun to fight, fun to fly. I love how Luddics respond to it. I love being serenaded as my foes flail helplessly and crumble to dust.
• The only real plot points I took issue with had to do with characters generally being too trusting. Kanta wants me as an errand boy even though pirates are vengeful toward me? Baird has every reason to suspect that Scylla and her engineer friend will betray her at the end, but she asks them to deliver the Janus device anyway? Seemed out of character to me. I was honestly expecting her to confront me with a "them or me" style ultimatum. Maybe she trusts Scylla too much because she's her daughter? idk...
• Speaking of Baird, I love how her character toys with tropes, starting out as a quest giver who gradually becomes more of an adversarial authority figure as she cracks under stress. I was half expecting her to be revealed as an unambiguous antagonist, but was pleased when she turned out to be something much more realistic: a competent, driven politician who unapologetically uses and manipulates people for the sake of an inscrutable ratio of personal ambition (disguised as altruism) and true altruism. I think her ratio is more or less revealed by the end, which made if very satisfying to say "You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

Story Points:

• I've always loved the idea of XP granting a depletable resource, and SP is a good execution of that.
• Not sure how I feel about 100% bonus XP. It seems like the only reason not to spend SP with a full return is because you're extremely low on SP, which was never the case for me. At one point I started looking for excuses to get 100% bonus XP just to level up faster.
• SP to disengage is a great addition for iron mode. I was surprised it became cheaper in a patch, as the cost of one SP pales in comparison to the kind of losses I tend to take from unwanted fights. I suspect the change was to discourage save-scumming? I guess I basically considered it a feature that would only be used with iron mode anyway.
• The button for sMods should say "integrate" rather than "build-in" in order to differentiate them from built-in hullmods (not my idea, but a good one)
• I don't mind high-OP hullmods being better candidates for being sMods as much as I thought I would, but there's one exception. I integrated ADF as an sMod on most of my cruisers and caps, and it broke my heart every time because I knew I was permanently gimping the ship. I even put it on the Ziggurat... I think ADF should grant only 1 burn for half the OP for this and a few other reasons. Even in 0.9.1 I modified ADF this way in my personal tweaks mod. With 2 burn and such a high OP cost it stratifies fleet compositions and makes base burn levels strangely inconsequential.
• On a similar note, I get that SO was OP as an sMod, but there's gotta be a better solution than preventing it outright. As is, I rarely use it for anything other than boosting the speed of my logistical ships.

Misc:

• Raiding is fine as is, but I think it could be greatly improved without too much fuss. I'll probably start a suggestion thread about it.
• I really like the ability to rescue over-leveled officers. Normally I build the officer to fit the ship, but with these I have to build a ship that suits them.
• At one point I resorted to cheating to find an Pather "orbital habitat" that turned out to be in small asteroid field on the far fringes of the system. I vaguely recall seeing something on the forum that made me think this is a bug that's already been fixed.
• Mission givers are too trusting, some of whom give commodities for free even if their faction is vengeful toward you.
• Also, some bar missions fail to provide some important info, but I'm sure you already know that.
• The historian is my new favorite bar event. I was surprised and delighted to unlock the history intel.
• Cryorevival seems all but pointless with the population cap. Might be cool if cryorevival facilities increased the pop cap of their colony to 7, especially if only one facility could be built per cryosleeper. Could be problematic if cryosleepers can have overlapping radii though.
• I no longer have any qualms with the combat camera!
• The new ships and weapons are great! Love the Fury and Omega weapons 
• The hypershunt tesseracts were a fun and interesting challenge. Next time I'll try fighting them without a Doom and see how that goes
• Skills need some balancing, but that's been discussed ad nauseum. Only things I'll add are that I was very surprised to see flux regulation get a buff, and that I think a lot of the gripes people have could be alleviated by allowing skills from a branch to be chosen freely after investing 5 points into a it instead of wrapping around.
• Remote Survey is huge for QoL but not much else, so I don't think it should be locked behind a T3 skill. I think it would be more interesting if it had a cost to consider other than simply unlocking it, like consuming volatiles or supplies. Perhaps the skill could do away with such a requirement.
• Some of my old gripes still apply. Too much money for no-risk activities like holding commissions and doing fetch quests. Hyperspace travel is rarely interesting or eventful. I think simply adding more dangerous fleets to hyperspace could help a lot with both.
• The API gets better with each update and I love it.

That's all. <3 Fractal Softworks. Keep up the great work 

[close]

[Megas]

I don't mind high-OP hullmods being better candidates for being sMods as much as I thought I would, but there's one exception. I integrated ADF as an sMod on most of my cruisers and caps, and it broke my heart every time because I knew I was permanently gimping the ship. I even put it on the Ziggurat... I think ADF should grant only 1 burn for half the OP for this and a few other reasons. Even in 0.9.1 I modified ADF this way in my personal tweaks mod. With 2 burn and such a high OP cost it stratifies fleet compositions and makes base burn levels strangely inconsequential.

I want Augmented Drive Field to stay because I made full use of +2 burn at times.  Lone big ship in a frigate fleet, lone Apogee explorer (for burn 20), Burn 6 capitals without Militarized Subsystems.

What I would like is another hullmod that is cheaper and adds +1 burn.  All of my burn 7 capitals late in the game have ADF to keep up with my burn 8 fleet.

[TaLaR]

What I would like is another hullmod that is cheaper and adds +1 burn.  All of my burn 7 capitals late in the game have ADF to keep up with my burn 8 fleet.

Exactly. I can't use (efficiently) a base burn 7 capital in base 8 fleet or base 8 capital in speed 7/9 fleet.

[Megas]

The one ship that really hurts to burn-in ADF is Ziggurat because it is a one-of-a-kind quest reward that cannot be replaced.  Any other ship is replaceable, even Legion XIV thanks to the historian.

[Anvel]

Augmented Drive Field on combat ships or even build-in it... well, that's not the best idea, do you guys even know about Ox? IF you want the speed that much get perk or a couple of those frigates, ADF is good as is.

[SCC]

ADF is nice for early lucky caps, but if I have more than one combat ship of slower burn, I drop ADF and just go around slower. Bounties don't run away from me, so it isn't an issue. I guess another Radiant's advantage is base burn level 8.

[Satirical]

If I had to replace a skill to make room for a Ballistic Specialization, I would pick Phase Mastery or Strike Commander. Or maybe it could be in Industry somewhere.

I like Phase Mastery because it speeds those ships up.  I am sick of bullet time in phase ships.  I want phase cloak to make my flagship faster, not slower.  Phase Mastery makes phase ships at least as fast as uncloaked (except Ziggurat at times).

but ur ship travels normally and the other ships are in bullet time

Phasing ships experience time 3x faster than normal meaning the other ships are 3x slower

phase mastery just makes u even faster (+100% speed in phase mode)

[Megas]

Phasing ships experience time 3x faster than normal meaning the other ships are 3x slower

Yes, it makes the whole world outside of the flagship three times slower, which I do not like because gameplay is agonizingly slow.  I prefer my flagship sped up three times as fast, not the whole world slowed to a third.  Slow world makes traveling while phased painful.

[WeiTuLo]

I imagine a slider bar that determines how fast you experience time in phase, and then the real world would speed up/slow down in a way that makes phase time 3 times faster in comparison. So if you are going at 1.5x time in phase, the world would move at 0.x speed, if you go at 2x time in phase, the real world would move at 0.666x speed, and if you go at 3x time in phase, the real world would move at 1x speed. The default would be 1x time in phase, while the real world goes at 0.3333x speed.

[Megas]

Quick commentary about Legion XIV not worth its own topic.

After getting the blueprint from the historian, building one, and trying it out, Legion XIV can be used as a missileship instead of a carrier, at least as a flagship.  I tried one with two Hammer Barrage or Cyclone Reaper and a variety of needlers (and flak for pd) for weapons.  Fighters were all mining pods because they were free and I needed OP for weapons, missiles, and missile hullmods (ECCM and missile racks), plus many mining pods can serve as meat shields.  It performed... decently.  Would have been great last release.  Today, with the current balance, it is clearly not top-tier.

If player wants to use homing missiles, Conquest is probably a better ship, for whatever that is worth.  However, if player wants to aim and spam Hammers or Reapers, Legion XIV can do the job.

I am happy Legion XIV is available as a blueprint, even if player can only get it from the historian.

Normal Legion is a warship-and-carrier hybrid.  Legion XIV is primarily a missileship that can be used as a carrier, but it is probably best to stick with missiles.  I view Legion as a double Champion.

[ranie]

Playing almost full SO for the first time, all relevant officers reckless (have one steady on my single carrier).

My eagles, enforcers and hammerheads feels more timid than reckless, and seems to be far more afraid of lesser ships than they should be, including redacteds and drones.
An SO HSh eagle (all small energy PD) with a reckless officer should really not be afraid of 3 frigates, but scream LEROY JENKINS and charge, as it really also should do against 2 destroyers.

They behave better under "full assault", but... Is there anything else I can do?
In my former game in 0.95a, playing more normal, I also noticed the problem of ships huddling together, blocking and jostling each other etc, which I guess is my job to solve through better orders?

But can you do something about my frigates flying between my flagship and whatever I'm shooting at and thus getting vaporized? Wolfs are especially prone to this, and may also blink in front of a burn driving dominator.

No mods, but have reenabled inbuilt SO, and "hacked" my first officer from aggressive to reckless.

Otherwise, love the game