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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: The Frigate Bias  (Read 27239 times)

rabbistern

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #15 on: March 27, 2021, 07:10:29 PM »

You finish fights way faster when you roll over everything. There are also tons of skills to boost PPT now alongside hardened subsytems. Frigates can get even more on top of that. My SO aurora has been lasting through 200-250k bounties without issue.
will have to play around with a max ppt build then i guess since im a sucker for 40 minute long station and multicapital fights. the aurora has more than 2 times the ppt of a tempest, keep that in mind. and sure, a 3 minute bounty is one thing, not arguing with that. but when youre picking fights with the hege-subhumans star fortresses and their huge fleets smashing onslaught after onslaught or fight colony defense against LC, pirate, and hegemony capital fleets in a row, youll simply get outlasted by the spam.
i had to have multiple sets of ships to switch out between battles so the cr was manageable, now seeing as having more ships limits your fleetwide skills i guess ill try forging hs into all my cruisers
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #16 on: March 27, 2021, 07:30:20 PM »

You finish fights way faster when you roll over everything. There are also tons of skills to boost PPT now alongside hardened subsytems. Frigates can get even more on top of that. My SO aurora has been lasting through 200-250k bounties without issue.
will have to play around with a max ppt build then i guess since im a sucker for 40 minute long station and multicapital fights. the aurora has more than 2 times the ppt of a tempest, keep that in mind. and sure, a 3 minute bounty is one thing, not arguing with that. but when youre picking fights with the hege-subhumans star fortresses and their huge fleets smashing onslaught after onslaught or fight colony defense against LC, pirate, and hegemony capital fleets in a row, youll simply get outlasted by the spam.
i had to have multiple sets of ships to switch out between battles so the cr was manageable, now seeing as having more ships limits your fleetwide skills i guess ill try forging hs into all my cruisers
Don't get me wrong, it will absolutely fall off in very late game, but for reference, I can take that aurora (had a few more vents and a few less caps when I tested) and walk up to the front of an (admittedly unskilled) onslaught and kill it from 100 to 0 without backing off. It's literally more dissipation than a paragon with full vents at 280 speed (while plasma jets are active) with heavy blaster level armor penetration. I think it's also related to the energy weapon buffs in conjunction with how strong built in hull mods are. To be fair, preventing SO from being built in would only hurt the build by like 15 OP, but I feel like it's still a step in the right direction.
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Demetrious

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #17 on: March 28, 2021, 12:32:24 AM »

(The Tempest is basically just too good. I suspect it'll meet a nerf bat in a dark alley some day, and what comes out just won't be the same as what went in.)

I've always felt they're primarily balanced by cost; both credits and deployment. It's a lot to pay for something that fragile. Expensive to field, they cut into your fielded force allotment pretty strongly and if you bump into a carrier heavy force they pop pretty quickly.
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Locklave

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #18 on: March 28, 2021, 11:20:51 AM »

(The Tempest is basically just too good. I suspect it'll meet a nerf bat in a dark alley some day, and what comes out just won't be the same as what went in.)

Might I suggest that the Onslaught might also needs some help? It gets used as a punching bag in these types of "X is OP, watch it beat up an Onslaught" tests.

No one is doing these tests against other capital ships for reasons. Onslaught is basically a meme ship at this point around here.

There are a lot of Low tech ships with the turning ability of a garbage truck for reasons that don't have a thing to do with balance.
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Grievous69

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #19 on: March 28, 2021, 11:22:42 AM »

Uhhh did you miss all the Onslaught buffs? It really got some big improvements, along with Enforcers, so I don't know what you guys are about low tech being bad.
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TaLaR

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #20 on: March 28, 2021, 11:50:59 AM »

It's not Onslaught is bad (though it isn't best either), but it has easily exploitable vulnerability that neither AI behavior nor standard Onslaught builds address.

I prefer ability to solo a sim Paragon without character skills as the ultimate standard test of ship's worthiness, only a few non-capitals can pass it.
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SCC

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #21 on: March 28, 2021, 12:05:10 PM »

Speaking of that, is 6-8 AMB shots to kill Paragon in an Afflictor a good or a bad score? I basically never used phase ships before, but I wanted to see how good do they get with all these buffs.

TaLaR

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #22 on: March 28, 2021, 12:14:41 PM »

Speaking of that, is 6-8 AMB shots to kill Paragon in an Afflictor a good or a bad score? I basically never used phase ships before, but I wanted to see how good do they get with all these buffs.

Seems more like 8-9, and that's with stacked character skills.
But Afflictor could do it skill-less in 0.91, and I don't see why it wouldn't be able in 0.95.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #23 on: March 28, 2021, 01:02:35 PM »

You finish fights way faster when you roll over everything. There are also tons of skills to boost PPT now alongside hardened subsytems. Frigates can get even more on top of that. My SO aurora has been lasting through 200-250k bounties without issue.
will have to play around with a max ppt build then i guess since im a sucker for 40 minute long station and multicapital fights. the aurora has more than 2 times the ppt of a tempest, keep that in mind. and sure, a 3 minute bounty is one thing, not arguing with that. but when youre picking fights with the hege-subhumans star fortresses and their huge fleets smashing onslaught after onslaught or fight colony defense against LC, pirate, and hegemony capital fleets in a row, youll simply get outlasted by the spam.
i had to have multiple sets of ships to switch out between battles so the cr was manageable, now seeing as having more ships limits your fleetwide skills i guess ill try forging hs into all my cruisers
Don't get me wrong, it will absolutely fall off in very late game, but for reference, I can take that aurora (had a few more vents and a few less caps when I tested) and walk up to the front of an (admittedly unskilled) onslaught and kill it from 100 to 0 without backing off. It's literally more dissipation than a paragon with full vents at 280 speed (while plasma jets are active) with heavy blaster level armor penetration. I think it's also related to the energy weapon buffs in conjunction with how strong built in hull mods are. To be fair, preventing SO from being built in would only hurt the build by like 15 OP, but I feel like it's still a step in the right direction.

late game is going to fall off pretty hard i think. Doing a 350k bounty with 7 legions and 10 mora its not going to be able to tank long enough before you get to armor.

Ironically i think if any one thing is OP right now its heavy armor. Heavy Armor (especially on certain ships) makes them absurdly tanky. And i put heavy armor on almost everything that is getting a story point. I have Heavy armor on my Aurora. I should put it on my Tempest. Its just huge.
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Daynen

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #24 on: March 28, 2021, 01:11:54 PM »

It might not be so bad that the balance of power has shifted up so much; now it means the game can shoulder more interesting challenges and we can keep up.
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xenoargh

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #25 on: March 28, 2021, 01:43:36 PM »

Quote
(The Tempest is basically just too good. I suspect it'll meet a nerf bat in a dark alley some day, and what comes out just won't be the same as what went in.)
Aww, leave it be; you know this kind of thing's different in the campaign vs. sim, doesn't apply to AIs, and represents maybe 5% of the playerbase; it's much more important to worry about the 30%-50% who probably quit somewhere in the first hour after the Tutorial (if you were on Steam, you'd have those stats, btw, via Achievement tracking).
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #26 on: March 28, 2021, 04:07:11 PM »


late game is going to fall off pretty hard i think. Doing a 350k bounty with 7 legions and 10 mora its not going to be able to tank long enough before you get to armor.

Ironically i think if any one thing is OP right now its heavy armor. Heavy Armor (especially on certain ships) makes them absurdly tanky. And i put heavy armor on almost everything that is getting a story point. I have Heavy armor on my Aurora. I should put it on my Tempest. Its just huge.
I've been testing it more, it can sit in front of a paragon and still win the flux battle. I do have the energy weapon damage boosting skill with 10% flux reduction which seems really good to me, and a bunch of combat skills, but the ship is still just so strong. The reason it falls off is just that it takes too long to kill super tanky stuff stuff with 2 heavy blasters, not that anything can stop it in a 1v1. I can even just fly up to tier 1/2 stations, and the jets can get me out, plus it 'vents' in like 1-2 seconds so I barely have any combat downtime. I've been killing fleets with a bunch of dominators and moras without too much trouble. Legions might have too much HP, although I think with a better supporting fleet (I'm running 4 combat cruiser (aurora included), 3 herons and 2 falcons plus some frigates rn), it still might be a good flagship. I might try a 3 blaster version later. I could still fit heavy armor if I cared to, but I never have to use the armor on it, so it seems like a waste.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2021, 04:30:23 PM by intrinsic_parity »
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Warnoise

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #27 on: March 28, 2021, 04:19:28 PM »

Killing onslaughts and dominators feels like a hunting squirrels and rats. Those ships are absolute memes...
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Demetrious

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #28 on: March 28, 2021, 11:27:38 PM »

No one is doing these tests against other capital ships for reasons. Onslaught is basically a meme ship at this point around here.

That's because no other capital ship is explicitly built, for meta and in-game lore reasons, to bring devastating firepower to bear facing forward while being vulnerable to the rear. So people can look all cool and awesome, "look at me, I outflanked the ship that is expressly designed and described as something not to be used solo, but in a fleet setting!"

The Onslaught is the F-35 of Starsector; the one ship everyone just loves to complain about. I remember a year ago trawling through the forums and marveling at all the people complaining about it. "Guys my Onslaught build is 10 flak cannons 30 Vulcans and 3 offensive guns, OMG this ship is terrible!" This thing is Sajuuk. You bring it to bear. It's not a complicated concept.

And speaking of bringing to bear, the Onslaught has pretty good firing arcs on the sides, or at least it did in 0.91. It doesn't take every gun in the broadside to make a frigate bug out; esp. when it's so fluxed from shield-tanking shots that it hasn't much left to shoot with. The only anti-Frigate tactic you needed in 0.91 is "fire as you bear." The gun arcs were nerfed a little but so was the maneuvering penalty of Heavy Armor, which more than makes up for it. To say nothing of all the other buffs it got. Ballistic Integration and more flux-efficient pulse cannons!?

If this keeps up I'm going to make an Onslaught bingo chart.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Frigate Bias
« Reply #29 on: March 29, 2021, 12:21:26 AM »


late game is going to fall off pretty hard i think. Doing a 350k bounty with 7 legions and 10 mora its not going to be able to tank long enough before you get to armor.

Ironically i think if any one thing is OP right now its heavy armor. Heavy Armor (especially on certain ships) makes them absurdly tanky. And i put heavy armor on almost everything that is getting a story point. I have Heavy armor on my Aurora. I should put it on my Tempest. Its just huge.
I've been testing it more, it can sit in front of a paragon and still win the flux battle. I do have the energy weapon damage boosting skill with 10% flux reduction which seems really good to me, and a bunch of combat skills, but the ship is still just so strong. The reason it falls off is just that it takes too long to kill super tanky stuff stuff with 2 heavy blasters, not that anything can stop it in a 1v1. I can even just fly up to tier 1/2 stations, and the jets can get me out, plus it 'vents' in like 1-2 seconds so I barely have any combat downtime. I've been killing fleets with a bunch of dominators and moras without too much trouble. Legions might have too much HP, although I think with a better supporting fleet (I'm running 4 combat cruiser (aurora included), 3 herons and 2 falcons plus some frigates rn), it still might be a good flagship. I might try a 3 blaster version later. I could still fit heavy armor if I cared to, but I never have to use the armor on it, so it seems like a waste.

I think this is kind of intended. Let’s say you have 8 officers in Aurora. That is 240 DP. A proper lategame fleet. You should be able to defeat sim paragons with one of your 8 super ships.

But you’re not going to solo (and I would wager you would have a hard time in general even with a backing fleet unless it was also quite strong) a 350k bounty. At least not the ones I have fought. Your huge shields won’t matter against 80 broadswords. And it will take a long time to kill targets, which is an issue when there are 7 battleships and 10 cruisers and running out of PPT is a legitimate issue.

I am not saying it’s bad I am just saying I don’t think it’s OP. Or at least as OP as you’re implying.

Like, I can get an onslaught to (I think) ~825 minimum armor. I think I am far more afraid of the 825 min armor onslaught than I am of the SO Aurora.
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