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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 596026 times)

Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1995 on: June 03, 2021, 03:34:21 PM »

AI fleet commander doesn’t use command points at all iirc.

They do!
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Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1996 on: June 03, 2021, 03:51:27 PM »

AI fleet commander doesn’t use command points at all iirc.

They do!

Ah, Ludd forgive me, you beat me to replying that!

How many Command Points does the AI get by the way? Does he get any skills like we do that affect both the original Command Point Amount and at what rate they regenerate during battle?
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1997 on: June 03, 2021, 03:53:26 PM »

Same's the player IIRC? Been a while since I looked at that but I'm not sure why it'd be different.
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Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1998 on: June 03, 2021, 04:18:04 PM »

Same's the player IIRC? Been a while since I looked at that but I'm not sure why it'd be different.

Good to know, I'll make sure to look at my guy as soon as I start a new campaign (as soon as the next "mini-balance" update hits, whenever that'll be) and I will know how many commands the AI gets and how fast they regenerate as soon as I'll look at the tactical screen.

On a quick side-note: what's your current view on [Redacted] balance-wise?

1)AI core officer spam wrecking the Deployment Point Balance is an issue I definetly feel you already got on your sights
2)ECCM spam got somewhat adressed by nerfing the maximum nerf to -10% maximum energy/Ballistic weapon range only, but I don't think you see it as a complete "fix" just yet
3)Radiant is still 40DP despite being significantly stronger than a Paragon, I've got a solid feeling it would be much more in line with the rest of the [redacted] units at 60 Deployment Points even accounting for the fact it's significantly stronger than any other ship in that DP range. A quick look at both its Standard and Strike variants to make use of the rebalanced weapons/hullmods might not be a bad idea either, but the main issue with the ship is mostly revolving around Autofit really, really liking to install medium sized weapons into the large slots.
4)Some [Redacted] variants seem to be very outdated and could use some quick modifications. Both Strike and Support versions of the Scintilla for example don't even have Expanded Deck "Crew" and that's not the most questionable set of cases either.
5)Do you have plans for introducing some simple Overridden variants to [Redacted] ships which could most benefit from the hullmod? Namely the Glimmer, Fulgent and Brilliant?
Edit
6)This is a very minor but also very needed change: can [Redacted] Ship Variants get their missiles firing in LINKED mode instead of Alternating? Even the poor Strike Version of the Radiant has those 4 Sabot Pods firing on alternating...
« Last Edit: June 03, 2021, 05:14:38 PM by Arcagnello »
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #1999 on: June 04, 2021, 02:25:27 AM »

My Radiant has sabots and reapers on alternating and it isn't afraid of dumping them to destroy frigates (or even fighters...).

Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2000 on: June 04, 2021, 11:37:19 AM »

My Radiant has sabots and reapers on alternating and it isn't afraid of dumping them to destroy frigates (or even fighters...).

True, but to a fault. Radiant is probably the least effective ship I could mention to advocate for [Redacted] getting their missile groups to fire on "Linked":

1)Support Variant of the Fulgent has both the two Typoon Reaper Launchers and the Sabot SRMs on Linked. A ship as small as that that even has Expanded Missile racks would have a much better performance using Linked mode on the missile groups.
2)Strike Variant of the Scintilla has the two Sabot SRMs firing on alternating. It would be better for the carrier to have them linked to both defend itself better AND give it a better chance of overloading the enemy and shooting it with the singular Typoon Reaper launcher it gets.
3)Support Variant of the Scintilla has 2 Salamanders on alternating, which reduces their overall fire rate and chanches to go through enemy PD and strike true
4)Strike Variant of the Radiant has 4 Sabot Pods (without Expanded Missile racks) that would fire a lot more sabots quicker if they were all Linked. Potentially a waste against frigates? Yes. Definetly a gamechanger when trying to crack enemy capitals open with Sabots and then drill them with the Tachyon Lances? Definetly.
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Vanshilar

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2001 on: June 04, 2021, 08:43:30 PM »

Eh briefly...

1)AI core officer spam wrecking the Deployment Point Balance is an issue I definetly feel you already got on your sights

I'm not really sure why this is an issue; in 0.9.1a we started out at 40% of battlesize, vs 60% enemy battlesize, against large fleets as well. Just that in 0.95a we have an option to get ourselves up to 60% early on now, rather than grind it out at 40% of battlesize until the end.

3)Radiant is still 40DP despite being significantly stronger than a Paragon, I've got a solid feeling it would be much more in line with the rest of the [redacted] units at 60 Deployment Points even accounting for the fact it's significantly stronger than any other ship in that DP range. A quick look at both its Standard and Strike variants to make use of the rebalanced weapons/hullmods might not be a bad idea either, but the main issue with the ship is mostly revolving around Autofit really, really liking to install medium sized weapons into the large slots.

Rather than thinking about Radiant DP cost in terms of how it "should" be in terms of ship powerfulness relative to other ships, think of it instead in terms of how it affects gameplay.

If the Radiant is on the enemy side, then changing it to 60 DP means that 1) the initial enemy fleet spawning with the initial Radiant will be smaller and thus easier, and 2) fewer Radiants spawn together near the end of the fight. Endgame fleets capable of farming Ordos fleets can be as little as roughly 120-160 DP; assuming the player can get 2 objectives, getting to say 55% of battlesize, this means a battlesize of 220-290 or so, meaning the Ordos fleet might only be able to put out as little as 131-175 DP at a time. At 40 DP, this means there can be up to 3 Radiants on the map at a time, but at 60 DP, it would mean only 2 Radiants, which then makes the fight much, much easier. Undervaluing the DP is a way to preserve the challenge of the endgame fight.

If the Radiant is on the player side, then it's a matter of balancing if having an under-DP ship is too strong relative to the other fleet options (taking Special Mod instead, frigate spam, whatever), considering that the player had to take the Automated Ships skill to get it. IIRC if you're not using Derelict Contingent, then you basically get 1 Radiant at 60% CR or 2 Radiants at 30% CR each. The question is whether or not that's too powerful for the player to have relative to the other possible uses for 40 or 80 DP (and getting other skills instead of Automated Ships). Thus far (while it's fun to watch 2 Radiants running around) I haven't found it to be more powerful than other fleet setups. So I don't think it really needs to be weakened (i.e. by raising DP to 60).

4)Some [Redacted] variants seem to be very outdated and could use some quick modifications. Both Strike and Support versions of the Scintilla for example don't even have Expanded Deck "Crew" and that's not the most questionable set of cases either.

I'm not sure how the game creates enemy ships (it can be found in the game files though, look for something along the lines of "fleet factory" I think), but I don't think it strictly adheres to the variants given in \starsector-core\data\variants\remnant\. I count 5 unique variants for the 7 Brilliants in my test fleet, even though there is only 1 variant file in that folder. Of those 7, only 1 has a plasma cannon, despite it being the large weapon shown in the file. Basically so I don't think you should put too much weight in the variants as given in that folder as what enemy ships will actually spawn with.

5)Do you have plans for introducing some simple Overridden variants to [Redacted] ships which could most benefit from the hullmod? Namely the Glimmer, Fulgent and Brilliant?

Brilliants can already spawn with SO. Though in my case the SO Brilliant had a graviton, a heavy autocannon, a mining blaster, a PD laser, a pilum, 2 ion cannons, a spark wing, and ITU. So it clearly wasn't exactly optimized for SO...
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Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2002 on: June 05, 2021, 03:59:59 AM »

Quote
I'm not really sure why this is an issue; in 0.9.1a we started out at 40% of battlesize, vs 60% enemy battlesize, against large fleets as well. Just that in 0.95a we have an option to get ourselves up to 60% early on now, rather than grind it out at 40% of battlesize until the end.

Personally speaking, it is an issue.
Not because it makes fighting [Redacted] harder per-say, but because it's artificially making it harder. Deployment Point balance now is modified the most by the amount of officers and their quality. While it was very much entirely possible to negate the initial [Redacted] Deployment Point advantage in battle during 0.91 and under by just having a lot of Deployment Points worth of combat ships, the simple nature of how Vanilla Starsector generates [Redacted] Ordos makes it impossible to do the same in 0.95a-RC15.


Picking both Officer Management and Officer Training skills (which implies spending 9 skills into leadership)can get you up to a total of 10 level 6 officers with 40 Normal Skills and 20 Elite Skills.

A really, really small ordo by comparison that, say, has 7 Alpha Cores, 3 Betas and 2 Gammas will have a total of 7 Level 8 Officers, 3 level 6 officers and 2 level 4 officers, with a total of 82 ELite Skills in total

Explain to me how that abomination of a mechanic is supposed to make the game more interesting, as opposed to (I don't know) having Vanilla Starsector stop spamming the moloch-cursed officers upon reaching a treshold (which would be difefrent depending on factions) and start applying INtegrated Hullmods on the bigger, badder ships instead?

Quote
Rather than thinking about Radiant DP cost in terms of how it "should" be in terms of ship powerfulness relative to other ships, think of it instead in terms of how it affects gameplay.

If the Radiant is on the enemy side, then changing it to 60 DP means that 1) the initial enemy fleet spawning with the initial Radiant will be smaller and thus easier, and 2) fewer Radiants spawn together near the end of the fight. Endgame fleets capable of farming Ordos fleets can be as little as roughly 120-160 DP; assuming the player can get 2 objectives, getting to say 55% of battlesize, this means a battlesize of 220-290 or so, meaning the Ordos fleet might only be able to put out as little as 131-175 DP at a time. At 40 DP, this means there can be up to 3 Radiants on the map at a time, but at 60 DP, it would mean only 2 Radiants, which then makes the fight much, much easier. Undervaluing the DP is a way to preserve the challenge of the endgame fight.

If the Radiant is on the player side, then it's a matter of balancing if having an under-DP ship is too strong relative to the other fleet options (taking Special Mod instead, frigate spam, whatever), considering that the player had to take the Automated Ships skill to get it. IIRC if you're not using Derelict Contingent, then you basically get 1 Radiant at 60% CR or 2 Radiants at 30% CR each. The question is whether or not that's too powerful for the player to have relative to the other possible uses for 40 or 80 DP (and getting other skills instead of Automated Ships). Thus far (while it's fun to watch 2 Radiants running around) I haven't found it to be more powerful than other fleet setups. So I don't think it really needs to be weakened (i.e. by raising DP to 60).

Alright, fair enough, let me explain how I think the Radiant used to and currently affects gameplay then: It's a bloody crutch that kept the [Redacted] competitive before 0.95 because the faction was terrible that is now being used as a blunt object for Remnants to hit the player experience over the head with it in 0.95.

Nothing more, nothing less. The faction needed an absolute balancing abomination to stand a chance before 0.95 but now that the [Redacted] are the only faction in vanilla that consistently gets more fleet wide buffs and twice the amount of officers with elite skills than the player the ship DP is overdue for an increase.

Would it nerf the faction as a whole? Ludd yes, but there are much better ways to buff it back to be a proper endgame threat, I'll tell you that much. Speaking of which:

Quote
I'm not sure how the game creates enemy ships (it can be found in the game files though, look for something along the lines of "fleet factory" I think), but I don't think it strictly adheres to the variants given in \starsector-core\data\variants\remnant\. I count 5 unique variants for the 7 Brilliants in my test fleet, even though there is only 1 variant file in that folder. Of those 7, only 1 has a plasma cannon, despite it being the large weapon shown in the file. Basically so I don't think you should put too much weight in the variants as given in that folder as what enemy ships will actually spawn with.

I wasn't sure about how that worked either until a few days ago with the help of a lot of people explaining stuff to me:
All [redacted] units have 1 or 2 Variants like "Standard", "Support", "Strike" and so on. Those are the targets the actual AI fleets try and aim at, you will sometimes see those exact same builds while playing starsector, but most of the time the game will "approximate" the variant with its own spin. It sometimes, very rarely works at the AI's advantage but, most of the time, it's a terrible "custom variant" that's even worse than the (decent at best, horrible at worse) "target" variants [Redacted] have.

In short, you don't only have a faction that constantly likes gimping their own superior ship stats with subpar setups, but that even mutates them further from the intended "target" most of the time.

Wouldn't it be great if the "Superior Artificial Intelligence" that gave the entire Persean Sector so much trouble during two Ludd-forsaken AI WARS at least had decent Variants of its own ships and an autofit option that would not butcher them even further more than half the time? Food for thought.

Quote
Brilliants can already spawn with SO. Though in my case the SO Brilliant had a graviton, a heavy autocannon, a mining blaster, a PD laser, a pilum, 2 ion cannons, a spark wing, and ITU. So it clearly wasn't exactly optimized for SO...

That' a product of Autofit modifying the only Vanilla Variant of the Brilliant, which is the following brought to you by a shameless self-insert:
Brilliant-class Droneship Cruiser

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Brilliant's Stats (above) compared to a Dominator (Middle) and an Aurora's (below)
Spoiler
Please don't mind the "Low Maintenance" Hullmod on the Dominator reducing its maintenance, which is from a mod called "Low Maintenance" by Zym.
Or do mind it and install it from its official thread link over here, since it's really good!
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=21715.msg327897#msg327897
[close]
Overview
This asymmetric Cruiser a mixture of everything that's Remnant and is the only ship in the roster (so far) that can mount ballistic weapons, two medium hardpoints worth of them in fact, along with 1 medium missile, 1 large energy, 1 medium energy and 2 small energy. It's the second most potent Remnant ship in their roster at 25 Deployment Points and it's one of the only three ships that generally deal the most damage to your fleet along the Fulgent and the Radiant. There apparently is no Overridden variant in the Starsector Variant files, so it must be a rare occurrence for when the stars align and Autofit does something good for once.

Vanilla Variants
Standard       Personal Rating:  Annoying Shielded Gaming Mouse
Armament : 1x Plasma Cannon (alternating), 1x Sabot Pod (linked), 2x Hypervelocity Driver (linked), 1x Heavy Burst laser & 2 Burst PD lasers (linked)
Hangar Bay: 1x Spark Interceptor Wing
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit

Despite the rather terrible weapon range synergies, this variant somewhat works and poses a hassle when faced not because it does a lot of damage compared to other Remnant Ships, but because it's incredibly durable for the amount of DP it takes to deploy, especially when an AI officer with Elite Shield Modulation and possibly even Elite Impact Mitigation and Elite Damage Control is sotting at the helm.

I'm aware I've got to edit that thread a bit since the Brillian does not have a Medium Missile but a Medium Synergy Hardpoint on that top left side.



« Last Edit: June 05, 2021, 04:02:07 AM by Arcagnello »
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2003 on: June 05, 2021, 07:09:43 PM »

Nitpick:  Second AI war did not involve AI ships.  Just a... dispute between Hegemony and TriTach that involved the use of a planet killer on HP, in a system with the League plus pirates at Qaras.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2004 on: June 05, 2021, 07:40:54 PM »

... as opposed to (I don't know) having Vanilla Starsector stop spamming the moloch-cursed officers upon reaching a treshold (which would be difefrent depending on factions) and start applying INtegrated Hullmods on the bigger, badder ships instead?

The game does limit the number of officers for most factions, btw, with the actual limit depending on the faction. The Remnants just aren't one of them. Their officers aren't really "officers" and don't need to follow anything like the same rules. Expectations for them to do so are misplaced, and, frankly, they're supposed to be a challenge! This could also involve integrated hullmods (and does in places) but exactly which levers are used to make ships tougher... well, that's just a detail.

On a quick side-note: what's your current view on [Redacted] balance-wise?

1)AI core officer spam wrecking the Deployment Point Balance is an issue I definetly feel you already got on your sights

Probably not a surprise after reading the above, but: that's all working entirely as intended.

(Edit: I wouldn't rule out possible tweaks to the mechanic itself, though, but I don't have anything specific in mind right now.)

2)ECCM spam got somewhat adressed by nerfing the maximum nerf to -10% maximum energy/Ballistic weapon range only, but I don't think you see it as a complete "fix" just yet

I don't have any specific plans but it's something I'll have another look at and give it a think. Was just thinking about it the other day, actually. I think the maximum value feels good, but is reached too quickly. So maybe something like reducing the various sources of it across the board, or something along those lines...

3)Radiant is still 40DP despite being significantly stronger than a Paragon, I've got a solid feeling it would be much more in line with the rest of the [redacted] units at 60 Deployment Points even accounting for the fact it's significantly stronger than any other ship in that DP range. A quick look at both its Standard and Strike variants to make use of the rebalanced weapons/hullmods might not be a bad idea either, but the main issue with the ship is mostly revolving around Autofit really, really liking to install medium sized weapons into the large slots.

I'll probably adjust it when I tweak the AS skill!

4)Some [Redacted] variants seem to be very outdated and could use some quick modifications. Both Strike and Support versions of the Scintilla for example don't even have Expanded Deck "Crew" and that's not the most questionable set of cases either.

I mean, "crew", so no, they wouldn't!


5)Do you have plans for introducing some simple Overridden variants to [Redacted] ships which could most benefit from the hullmod? Namely the Glimmer, Fulgent and Brilliant?

Not really! I mean, I'm not specifically against that, either, but it's not something I've really thought about one way or another.


Edit
6)This is a very minor but also very needed change: can [Redacted] Ship Variants get their missiles firing in LINKED mode instead of Alternating? Even the poor Strike Version of the Radiant has those 4 Sabot Pods firing on alternating...

Hmm, I'll need to have a look. I don't think I'll want to do that, though; if anything I'd want to adjust alternating group behavior to be more effective. But generally the idea is to have missiles last longer.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2021, 08:19:44 PM by Alex »
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Delta_of_Isaire

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2005 on: June 06, 2021, 04:57:06 AM »

Remnants aren't the only faction whose performance is crippled diminished by poor-quality goal variants and autofit randomization. All factions struggle with that really, except maybe the [super-redacted]. It's just more visible for Remnants because people expect them to be strong.

For what it's worth: I'm working on a mod that addresses this, among a few other things :)
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Arcagnello

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2006 on: June 06, 2021, 05:14:59 AM »

Nitpick:  Second AI war did not involve AI ships.  Just a... dispute between Hegemony and TriTach that involved the use of a planet killer on HP, in a system with the League plus pirates at Qaras.

Oh, you got me there. I need to read the sacred lore texts once again...

To @Alex: You can skip the stuff in the Spoiler Tabs, they're there just for context
Quote
The game does limit the number of officers for most factions, btw, with the actual limit depending on the faction. The Remnants just aren't one of them. Their officers aren't really "officers" and don't need to follow anything like the same rules. Expectations for them to do so are misplaced, and, frankly, they're supposed to be a challenge! This could also involve integrated hullmods (and does in places) but exactly which levers are used to make ships tougher... well, that's just a detail.
[insert Complaingnello comments here]
Probably not a surprise after reading the above, but: that's all working entirely as intended.

(Edit: I wouldn't rule out possible tweaks to the mechanic itself, though, but I don't have anything specific in mind right now.)

I won't foolishly disagree with the fact AI Cores used as officers do not follow the same "rules" as human officers (which they're not supposed to either), but what I mean to say is that the "Elite Skill Count" of Remnant fleets is so off the charts even serious officer tryharding plus the Automated Ships skill does not even come close to contesting the DP balance of, say, even a decently sized ordo like this one:
Spoiler
[close]
I know I've got mod ships in there but I'm 99% sure none of them modify the presence or absence of AI cores in any way. I'm counting 9 Alpha Cores, 2 Beta Cores and 2 Gamma Cores, which amount to that Remnant Ordo fielding 92 Elite Officer Skills in total.

By comparison, assuming you for some reason decide investing 9 skill points into leadership to be able to field 10 level 6 officers with 2 elite skills each (totaling up to 40 Skills and 20 Elite Skills) and then invest another 5 skill points to get Automated ships, then field 6 Gamma Core Glimmers (which amounts to 24 Elite Skills if you integrate each and every one of them into their respective ships) you're going to end up with a fleet able to field a total of 40 Officer Skills and 44 Elite Officer Skills in total

Assuming the game also values Elite Officer Skills more than normal Officer skills when calculating the Deployment Point Balance thru the algorithm, even going fully nonsensical with officer spam does not put a dent in the skewed balance.

Having Vanilla prioritize giving a core to every single Remnant ship and only then thart "upgrading" the core type on the bigger ships first (while not giving Destroyers or Frigates Alpha Cores at the same time) up to a still high (but more sensible) Elite Skill treshold would feel a lot more organic.

Also, introducing a mechanic that adds Integrated hullmods (on the bigger, badder Remnant Ships) instead once every ship gets an AI Core officer fitting the ship it's at the helm of would be a much preferred option to the current Remnant Patrol generation slapping Alpha Cores everywhere

Quote
[Regarding the ECM rating]I don't have any specific plans but it's something I'll have another look at and give it a think. Was just thinking about it the other day, actually. I think the maximum value feels good, but is reached too quickly. So maybe something like reducing the various sources of it across the board, or something along those lines...

I don't speak from experience since I've "only" been playing this game for a year and a half, but I remember being informed that ECM rating used to affect things other than maximum energy/ballistic range.

Having it both tick upwards slower and preventing not only the AI but also the player from abusing ECM rating spam with the help of Gamma Core Frigates augmented by both Wolfpack Tactics, Coordinated Manouvers and the Elite Gunnery Implants skill (you can realistically get more than 10% ECM rating for every gamma Core Frigate with all the Commander Skills, officer Skills and Integrated Nav Package stacking) but also provide different kinds of buffes/nerfs to in-combat stats would be very interesting.

Do you have some ideas on the matter? I'd personally focus on ECM affecting:
-chance of missile to ignore passive countermeasures/failure of missiles to track the target even in the absence of passive countermeasures
-weapon recoil
-peak performance time (maybe? it sounds more like a Nav Rating thing, should it also tick slower and start affecting more things)
-missile range/travel speed/handling/fuel
-damage to weapons and engines
-fighter/bomber LPC range
-autofire weapon accuracy across the board
and so on.

Quote
[Regarding the Radiant being 40DP]
I'll probably adjust it when I tweak the AS skill!

That's the best news so far today  :)
Just...uh...make sure to tweak its Vanilla Variants a bit to be more befitting of a 60DP capital ship.
Spoiler
Radiant-class Drone Battleship

Codex Entry
Spoiler
[close]
Radiant's Stats (above) compared to a Paragon's (below)
Spoiler
[close]
[..]
Vanilla Variants
1)Standard        Personal Rating: Wasted Large Weapon Mounts
Armament: 2 Autopulse Lasers (Linked), 2 Locusts (Alternating), 1 Paladin PD & 6 PD Lasers (linked), 4 Ion Beams (Linked), 4 IR Pulse Lasers (linked)
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit, Expanded Magazines, Heavy Armor
9 Capacitors, 50 Vents

Without going into potential modifications to the Vanilla autofit, this is a textbook example of how to NOT set up a Radiant and it's the setup you wish for when fighting an Ordo. Heavy Armor is a 40OP dead weight unless it's integrated, Locusts not only do pathetic damage to anything but weaksauce frigates but they also don't even have expanded missile racks, 4 Ion beams is overkill even for me and IR pulse lasers are as pointless as nipples on a breastplate.

2)Strike         Personal Rating: Deployment Point Imbalance Incarnate
Armament: 5 Tachyon Lances (linked), 4 Sabot Pods (Alternating), 10 PD Lasers (Linked)
Hullmods: Integrated Targeting Unit, Advanced Optics, Resistant Flux Conduits
0 Capacitors, 50 vents

This is the most infamous Remnant setup in the whole roster despite being horribly unoptimized. It's more or less a testament to how the Radiant Stats are so broken across the board for a 40DP ship they are able to pull the suboptimal setups up in performance by sheer brute force. Advanced Optics is not only useless since the ship never makes use of that extra range but it also makes T-lances and PD lasers even more unwieldy to swing around and hit their targets. Sabots are both firing in ALTERNATING MODE and without Expanded Missile Racks.
[close]
A Remnant Ship with a 0.6 shield and a litteral Fearless Personality that already has 1000 range weaponty with ITU and most likely also GUnnery Implants does not Need Advanced Optics, just to name one example out of many.

Addendum: I know what I'm about to write will sound both entitled and silly considering it's adressed to someone that's been nicely balancing this game for almost a decade (as in you) but I'll say it anyway: be very wary of buffing the amount of Automated Ship Points we get from the AS skill. We players can already abuse the skill to disgusting degrees by either blotting out the sun with Gamma Core Frigates and their 10%+ ECM rating each and also deploy two Alpha Core radiants still sitting above 42% Combat Readiness with the help of both Crew Training (and a fleet under 240DP of combat ships) plus 3-Dmods at minimum on each ship with Derelict Contingent.

Having the AS skill make AI cores consume more Automated Ship Points each the more of the same type that are present (and probably doing the same to multiple ships of the same type) as you raise the avaiable Automated Ship Points of the skill would not be a terrible idea.

Quote
[Referring to the possiblity of both Scintilla Drone Carrier Variants having Expanded Deck "crew"]
I mean, "crew", so no, they wouldn't!

Have you considered giving the Scintilla (and possibly also the Brilliant) a brand new Integrated Hullmod called "Combat- rated Drone Autoforges" witht he same effect of Expanded Deck Crew as a solution? The recent (and most welcome) carrier changes have somewhat butchered the Remnant carriers as a whole, especially combined with the very needed Spark nerf.

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[Referring to the possibility of introducing Overridden Variants of Glimmer, Fulgent and Brilliant]
Not really! I mean, I'm not specifically against that, either, but it's not something I've really thought about one way or another.

I would personally suggest having one Overridden Variant for each of those 3 Remnant Ships. The strength of a SS faction is not in a small way affected by the variety of the same Ship classes it can field. Having multiple decently effective variants of the same ship will go a long way into making the faction as a whole more competitive, especially if they cover eachother's weaknesses.

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[Referring to all Vanilla Remnant Ship Variants having their missile weapons on "Alternating" instead of "Linked"]
Hmm, I'll need to have a look. I don't think I'll want to do that, though; if anything I'd want to adjust alternating group behavior to be more effective. But generally the idea is to have missiles last longer.

I'm really looking forward to the changes to how the AI uses Alternating weapon groups  :)

As for the idea of putting Remnant missile weapon groups on alternating to have missiles last longer, I don't think that helps the faction peform better at all and makes it more dependant on the plehora of buffs vanilla SS gives them as a whole.

Most remnant ships are generally slower than their manned counterparts (aside from the Radiant), meaning they perform best with higher amounts of burst damage allowing them to quickly paralyze the enemy and prevent it from easily getting away without suffering serious or catastrophical damage first.

This also applies to ships like the Radiant which have the ability to suddenly get into the range of the enemy.
More strike damage on a ship that teleports right behind (or in front of you, does not really matter) and saying "Sorry Human, nothing personal" before blasting you with 8 Sabots at the same time to then melt your face off with 5 Tach Lances works a lot better than a slow pathetic drip of 2 Sabots at a time giving the enemy the chance to retaliate before the radiant can do its thing.

Remnants aren't the only faction whose performance is crippled diminished by poor-quality goal variants and autofit randomization. All factions struggle with that really, except maybe the [super-redacted]. It's just more visible for Remnants because people expect them to be strong.

For what it's worth: I'm working on a mod that addresses this, among a few other things :)

I am very pleased to hear that! Can I PM you about it?
I may just have extensively tryharded Vanilla Remnant ship setups enough to provide you with 3 to 6 very well performing variants of each ship in the roster, including additional variants making use of 1,2 or even 3 Integrated Hullmods!

Edit: I've sent you a PM @Delta_of_Isaire!

« Last Edit: June 06, 2021, 06:19:24 AM by Arcagnello »
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2007 on: June 06, 2021, 08:26:51 AM »

Quote
I don't speak from experience since I've "only" been playing this game for a year and a half, but I remember being informed that ECM rating used to affect things other than maximum energy/ballistic range.
Before ECM, it merely increased stats like Nav does for speed.  Originally, it extended shot range.  Then, for a few releases, it increased damage (like old Ordnance Expert).  Lately, it reduces the shot range of the enemy.

Starsector has an obsession of making shot range as painfully short as possible, turning guns into metal sticks to whack enemies with.  I like to see ECM increase shot range like it originally did.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2008 on: June 06, 2021, 08:29:58 AM »

... but what I mean to say is that the "Elite Skill Count" of Remnant fleets is so off the charts even serious officer tryharding plus the Automated Ships skill does not even come close to contesting the DP balance of, say, even a decently sized ordo like this one:

Yep, I understood what you meant!

Assuming the game also values Elite Officer Skills more than normal Officer skills when calculating the Deployment Point Balance...

It doesn't; the number of officers and the officer level are the main factors. Ships also factor in but only slightly.


I don't speak from experience since I've "only" been playing this game for a year and a half, but I remember being informed that ECM rating used to affect things other than maximum energy/ballistic range.

Ah - I think that was before ECM rating etc? At one point Sensor Arrays gave a bonus to weapon damage.

The thinking is that for ECM to be worthwhile, it has to affect a really primary gameplay stat, and that means either weapon range or ship speed. Hmm..


Variants:
I do need to look at the various variants at some point. Generally speaking they're, ah, more thematic than optimized; it's never quite felt like the right time to spen a bunch of time optimizing them.

Autofit in general operates under some constraints as far as what it makes available to install. That is, when the loadout algorithm goes to work, it doesn't have access to every single thing the faction has. This is meant to represent, well, not everything being available all the time! ... I think people tend to interpret it as autofit being terrible, at times :) So, e.g, when it's putting a Mining Blaster in a large slot, that's because it's all it has to work with. (Or, well, it rolled the "do fairly random stuff" option, the chance of which is configured per faction, via "autofitRandomizeProbability".)

Some encounters (such as the Red Planet defenses) make everything available, though.



Addendum: I know what I'm about to write will sound both entitled and silly considering it's adressed to someone that's been nicely balancing this game for almost a decade (as in you) but I'll say it anyway: be very wary of buffing the amount of Automated Ship Points we get from the AS skill. We players can already abuse the skill to disgusting degrees by either blotting out the sun with Gamma Core Frigates and their 10%+ ECM rating each and also deploy two Alpha Core radiants still sitting above 42% Combat Readiness with the help of both Crew Training (and a fleet under 240DP of combat ships) plus 3-Dmods at minimum on each ship with Derelict Contingent.

All good, I appreciate it. The 2x Radiants thing given DC kind of slipped through the cracks, to be honest - but DC overall is, let's put it mildly, not in a good place.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Starsector 0.95a (Released) Patch Notes
« Reply #2009 on: June 06, 2021, 01:33:01 PM »

I don't speak from experience since I've "only" been playing this game for a year and a half, but I remember being informed that ECM rating used to affect things other than maximum energy/ballistic range.

Ah - I think that was before ECM rating etc? At one point Sensor Arrays gave a bonus to weapon damage.

The thinking is that for ECM to be worthwhile, it has to affect a really primary gameplay stat, and that means either weapon range or ship speed. Hmm..

On the subject of affecting primary gameplay stats, shield efficiency and minimum armor percent are also big stats that could be interesting to boost with objectives, etc.
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