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

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add a pather/pirate mini faction whos ships are fast and durable but cant mount SO?

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Author Topic: [0.96a] Keruvim Shipyards (V:0.6.1) Fixed ships not spawning in indes hotfix  (Read 185357 times)

Amoebka

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Re: [0.95a] Keruvim Shipyards BETA (V:0.2) Here we go again.
« Reply #15 on: May 08, 2021, 05:35:28 AM »

Tfw it's another fighter bays on every single ship episode.  :-[ Still going to download, these are by far the best looking midline mod ships I've seen and just among the best looking ships in general. Great job.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: [0.95a] Keruvim Shipyards BETA (V:0.2) Here we go again.
« Reply #16 on: May 08, 2021, 07:16:30 PM »

Having played Anvil in the past, I wanted to say I'm glad to see some of the ship sprites alive and well here.  I always enjoyed their aesthetic.  I downloaded the mod and ran a Nexelerin run starting as Keruvim faction.

Overall the faction is fun to fly and the ships look great.  I am really enjoying the Angel Wings Booster ship ability.  A cross between plasma burn and burn drive.  It feels just short enough on many of the ships to go from long range to point blank.  Like burn drive, the AI isn't that great with using it in the middle of combat, but a player can make reasonable use of it when chasing appropriately.  Given the relatively low hull and armor on the Angel Wings Booster ships, the fact it lets you keep the shields up is essentially required.

As far as ships go, I like sprites on the sister ship designs, i.e. Chariot vs Chariot mk II, Zweihander vs Zweihander mk II and Axe and Axe mk II, as well as the concept of a faction re-purposing many of its designs.  Duchess and Empress also look nice.

As for campaign play, early to mid-game felt good before hitting DP deployment limits, late game the strength of the faction felt around that of my low-tech play through, which is not too bad a place for balance.  It gets the job done, although it can be a tough fight in the end game and I expect to see some destroyed allied ships on the recovery screen.  Easy to chase, but hard to retreat can cause issues with Remnants for example, kind of like with Dominators and Onslaughts.

They are also very forward focused and aggressive ships, like Dominators, but instead of high armor and hull, they have decent shields.  Speeds tend to be a tad slower than their mid-line counter parts, presumably to prevent too much kiting with oversized ballistic mounts or fighters.  I do wonder if the Chariot mk II is a bit too fragile for it's DP cost, when compared against a Champion or Eagle.

The Keruvim line up also has fair bit of reliance on vanilla logistic ships as many of the combat ships have fuel and cargo limits on the low side, as well as a good fraction having lower than average burn speeds.  On the other hand, the running costs aren't nearly as bad as low tech.

Thanks for putting it together and I look forward to the further evolution of the mod.
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connortron7

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Re: [0.95a] Keruvim Shipyards BETA (V:0.2) Here we go again.
« Reply #17 on: May 23, 2021, 02:23:22 PM »

Having played Anvil in the past, I wanted to say I'm glad to see some of the ship sprites alive and well here.  I always enjoyed their aesthetic.  I downloaded the mod and ran a Nexelerin run starting as Keruvim faction.

Overall the faction is fun to fly and the ships look great.  I am really enjoying the Angel Wings Booster ship ability.  A cross between plasma burn and burn drive.  It feels just short enough on many of the ships to go from long range to point blank.  Like burn drive, the AI isn't that great with using it in the middle of combat, but a player can make reasonable use of it when chasing appropriately.  Given the relatively low hull and armor on the Angel Wings Booster ships, the fact it lets you keep the shields up is essentially required.

As far as ships go, I like sprites on the sister ship designs, i.e. Chariot vs Chariot mk II, Zweihander vs Zweihander mk II and Axe and Axe mk II, as well as the concept of a faction re-purposing many of its designs.  Duchess and Empress also look nice.

As for campaign play, early to mid-game felt good before hitting DP deployment limits, late game the strength of the faction felt around that of my low-tech play through, which is not too bad a place for balance.  It gets the job done, although it can be a tough fight in the end game and I expect to see some destroyed allied ships on the recovery screen.  Easy to chase, but hard to retreat can cause issues with Remnants for example, kind of like with Dominators and Onslaughts.

They are also very forward focused and aggressive ships, like Dominators, but instead of high armor and hull, they have decent shields.  Speeds tend to be a tad slower than their mid-line counter parts, presumably to prevent too much kiting with oversized ballistic mounts or fighters.  I do wonder if the Chariot mk II is a bit too fragile for it's DP cost, when compared against a Champion or Eagle.

The Keruvim line up also has fair bit of reliance on vanilla logistic ships as many of the combat ships have fuel and cargo limits on the low side, as well as a good fraction having lower than average burn speeds.  On the other hand, the running costs aren't nearly as bad as low tech.

Thanks for putting it together and I look forward to the further evolution of the mod.


glad you like it! ive actually put effort into keeping up with a ship design/stat theme instead of the random grab bag of ships in anvil (which did fit its theme) and while there is a assortment of random ships in the mod they are not bloating the faction, making them feel like a proper faction.

the sister ship idea was originally just a way to fill the faction till i gave them a proper roster but eventually it grew on me and i decided to lean on it and so here we are lol


as for the chariot its to be getting a hull increase this update (which should be out by tonight!)


Tfw it's another fighter bays on every single ship episode.  :-[ Still going to download, these are by far the best looking midline mod ships I've seen and just among the best looking ships in general. Great job.

I like new mods with new footprints in new hull physiology to test my skills and how much I can stress my PC Thanks, congratulations on this mod.

thanks! heh yeah i know its not very original but i love combat ships that offer light fighter support and wanted to take my spin on it after ditching anvil industries, and sorry but no way are my ships the "best looking midline mod ships" my sprites are medicore, knight chases Mayasuran navy takes the cake for best midline faction sprites.

connortron7

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aaaand new update is out! lotsa stuff, lotsa balance changes (for the worst prob)
not the fully fleshed out one i wanted with the new pather/pirate faction but since im moving soon im not gonna have the time to do that, so i released this mostly done version to at least get balance input on the new things and fix any problems that may arise.

a new menace to civilized space
Spoiler
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change log
Spoiler
V: 0.3: save breaker
general changes:
changed the tech type of the outlaw, bandit, cudgel, talon (???) and cutlass to reavertech from lowtech
changed prefixes for all ships, weapons and hullmods from "anvil" to "keruvim" (now yall can shut up about the "dur dur its anvil" crap)
fixed carrion showing up blury in the loadout screen

new ships:
added the flail light frigate
added the morgenstern light cruiser
added the stallion combat freighter frigate
added the glaive (pride)
added the paragon (P) (god help you)
added the catapult heavy missile cruiser (will appear in keruvim, hegemony, church and inde fleets)
added the catapult (P)

sprite changes:
both culverins received some touch ups
outlaw got its reaver coloring (for better or worse)
duchess received some touch ups
tsar cannon got some touch ups


duchess:
removed 2 medium missile turrets
reduced max ordnance points from 330 to 300
reduced max hullpoints from 13000 to 11500


outlaw:
decreased max speed from 65 to 35
decreased max ordnance points from 315 to 270
replaced modular fighter slots with 2 talons (???)
removed 2 medium mounts

flamberge:
decreased peak performance time from 400 to 250
decreased max speed from 155 to 120
increased max hull from 1000 to 1200
increased shield efficiency from 1 to 0.9

antlion:
replaced ion cannon with ion cannon (high delay) which it was supposed to be from the start

flea:
increased OP cost from 3 to 4

m21 light blaster:
increased flux to fire cost from 250 to 300

cudgel:
decreased max flux from 11000 to 9700

zweihander regular:
decreased max flux from 4600 to 4200

zweihander MK.II/MK.III:
decreased max flux from 6000 to 5500

zweihander MK.II/regular:
decreased max speed from 85 to 65

chariot MK.II/regular:
increased max hull from 6000 to 7500

all zweihanders:
increased max hull from 4400 to 5500
decreased max armor from 460 to 500
halved acceleration, deceleration and turn acceleration
decreased max turn rate by 1/3
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« Last Edit: May 23, 2021, 03:16:40 PM by connortron7 »
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BigBeans

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Another nice update lad! Pirate Paragon looks appropriately cursed.
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Server_Corgi

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i've had my trans little ship for 5 minutes but if anything happens to it I will kill everyone in this sector and then myself
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Nick XR

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These ships look great, going to give them a go on my next playthrough!

Hiruma Kai

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Thought I'd leave some more comments on the latest Kervium. I was running a non-themed game with Underworld, ScalarTech, Kervium and Nexerelin.

Overall, Kervium as a faction currently feels like it's falling a bit further behind in faction effectiveness with the 0.3 patch, although with some notable exceptions.  Fighting against fleets with Kervium or Kervium export feels easier than fleets with standard vanilla faction ships (baring pirates that haven't gotten any good blueprints).  Now in some cases, what the ships are trying to do are unusual relative to the base game, which can be hard to balance.

For example, I'm not sure the Duchess is worth 55 DP in a DP limited fleet as it stands.  It's a good ship when it can bully smaller ships and when your fleet has the upper hand, and prior to hitting DP limits, feels OK, but any sort of hard to kill opposition or needing maxed DP fleets and it starts having serious problems. It essentially has low end cruiser armor with cruiser tier hull and goes down very quick for something that cost nearly as much as a Paragon in DP. It's extremely hard to justify in a late game fleet, since it needs escorting ships, but eats up such a large fraction of the DP budget so that it limits the number of escort ships you can have, especially if you are running 300 DP max deployment (180 DP per side in theory).  Putting one (or worse, two) into your fleet means you will be outnumbered and its weaknesses will show up.

The removal of 2 medium missile mounts, while reasonable, has moved it down to the missile punch of an Onslaught, which is close to average for a 40 DP capital. And while it has a lot of far forward firepower, the arcs on them are very narrow.  If it charges in, it doesn't take much for a smaller ship to side step.  Overall the actual number of guns wouldn't be out of place on a 40-45 DP ship.  Conquest has 2 large ballistic, 2 medium ballistic, 1 medium energy, 4 small energies that can all converge pretty well.  Assuming 1 Large (Storm Needler for example) is worth 2 mediums (2 heavy needlers say), it is basically only down a medium mount on the Duchess.  Admittedly, the Conquest's shield is terrible compared to that of a Duchess (1.4 vs 0.9 efficiency), but the AI Conquest has a ship system it will actually use to help back off and vent in a friendly line.  If the Duchess uses their system, they essentially reach point blank range and have to either win or die, because they won't be able to pull back to friendlies before their armor gives out.

I tried using it as a player flagship late game, but it just didn't pull it's weight.  Angel Wings was good against isolated ships, but the maneuverability and inability to do shorter charges meant I couldn't pull of things I do routinely in an Odyssey or Aurora.  I realize you're trying to balance a fast capital with ballistic range weapons, which is always tricky, but I'm thinking either it is currently too fragile to be a center piece of a fleet (which is what 55 DP kinda demands) or it needs to be cheaper in terms of deployment cost.  This may sound crazy, but I'd guess the ship is probably probably closer to being worth 45 DP (maybe even 40?) than 55 DP in it's current form.  Especially if you compare it to an Empress, which is also nominally 45 DP. I recommend getting a second opinion from others though.

For comparison, the Empress is arguably bringing to bear roughly a similar amount of fire power. 2 Large Composites, 2 medium composite is a fair bit of tracking missile potential.  Combined with 4 medium ballistics which can point front left (for example).  An asymmetric loadout of 4 heavy autocannons + mark IX + hurricanve MIRV + 2 Harpoons pods + 4 Cicada isn't crazy and not too much compared to its flux dissipation.  Combine it with ITU, expanded missile racks, ECCM, and Hardened shields, with the rest in vents and maybe some PD.  Such a loadout is capable of winning against the default simulator Duchess reliably in about 15 seconds under AI control.  Admittedly, 8+4 cicadas is kinda scary for an alpha strike.  But swapping to longbows produces similar results.

Speaking of the Empress it does feel like a different ship from the Kingdom, despite keeping the same sprite.  It's more carrier and less battle (as in front line).  The extra fighter bay pushes it in that direction, along with the change to composite large mounts from ballistic making a fighter + large tracking missile support option work well.  The advanced ground support and operations center feel thematic, more so than the old built in solar shielding.  It is slower than before, although surprisingly maneuverable, but I think that's probably for the best.  It still has a lot of OP for a carrier, but on the other hand, it has a lot of guns for carrier.    Overall it feels like a really solid package for 45 DP.  If reserve deployment has it's interaction with bombers fixed, you may want to consider a DP increase.

Another noticeable issue is when facing opposing Kervium fleets, they tend to be fairly easy to escape from or chase down given that half their frigate line up is burn 9 (Axe, Axe II), half their destroyer lineup is burn 8 (Zweihander, Zweihander II) and half their cruiser lineup is burn 7 (Chariot, Chariot II, Catapult).  Similarly, when picking ships for my own fleet, I find myself comparing those slower burn ships to the size tier above, often because they tend to be only a few DP for the next tier or more efficient for the same campaign speed.  Zweihanders (12 DP, burn 8 ) are really competing at a disadvantage against things like the Falcon (15 DP, burn 9), Fury (15 DP, burn 9), and  Morgenstern (14 DP, burn 9).  All 3 of those cruisers are faster (both tactically and on campaign map), and only 2-3 DP more.  The Chariots (25 DP, 7 burn) are competing against the Legion (40 DP, burn 7), Onslaught (40 DP, burn 7), and Empress (45 DP, burn 7).

Overall, I'm looking forward to what future patches bring to the faction and see how it evolves.
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connortron7

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Thought I'd leave some more comments on the latest Kervium. I was running a non-themed game with Underworld, ScalarTech, Kervium and Nexerelin.

Overall, Kervium as a faction currently feels like it's falling a bit further behind in faction effectiveness with the 0.3 patch, although with some notable exceptions.  Fighting against fleets with Kervium or Kervium export feels easier than fleets with standard vanilla faction ships (baring pirates that haven't gotten any good blueprints).  Now in some cases, what the ships are trying to do are unusual relative to the base game, which can be hard to balance.

For example, I'm not sure the Duchess is worth 55 DP in a DP limited fleet as it stands.  It's a good ship when it can bully smaller ships and when your fleet has the upper hand, and prior to hitting DP limits, feels OK, but any sort of hard to kill opposition or needing maxed DP fleets and it starts having serious problems. It essentially has low end cruiser armor with cruiser tier hull and goes down very quick for something that cost nearly as much as a Paragon in DP. It's extremely hard to justify in a late game fleet, since it needs escorting ships, but eats up such a large fraction of the DP budget so that it limits the number of escort ships you can have, especially if you are running 300 DP max deployment (180 DP per side in theory).  Putting one (or worse, two) into your fleet means you will be outnumbered and its weaknesses will show up.

The removal of 2 medium missile mounts, while reasonable, has moved it down to the missile punch of an Onslaught, which is close to average for a 40 DP capital. And while it has a lot of far forward firepower, the arcs on them are very narrow.  If it charges in, it doesn't take much for a smaller ship to side step.  Overall the actual number of guns wouldn't be out of place on a 40-45 DP ship.  Conquest has 2 large ballistic, 2 medium ballistic, 1 medium energy, 4 small energies that can all converge pretty well.  Assuming 1 Large (Storm Needler for example) is worth 2 mediums (2 heavy needlers say), it is basically only down a medium mount on the Duchess.  Admittedly, the Conquest's shield is terrible compared to that of a Duchess (1.4 vs 0.9 efficiency), but the AI Conquest has a ship system it will actually use to help back off and vent in a friendly line.  If the Duchess uses their system, they essentially reach point blank range and have to either win or die, because they won't be able to pull back to friendlies before their armor gives out.

I tried using it as a player flagship late game, but it just didn't pull it's weight.  Angel Wings was good against isolated ships, but the maneuverability and inability to do shorter charges meant I couldn't pull of things I do routinely in an Odyssey or Aurora.  I realize you're trying to balance a fast capital with ballistic range weapons, which is always tricky, but I'm thinking either it is currently too fragile to be a center piece of a fleet (which is what 55 DP kinda demands) or it needs to be cheaper in terms of deployment cost.  This may sound crazy, but I'd guess the ship is probably probably closer to being worth 45 DP (maybe even 40?) than 55 DP in it's current form.  Especially if you compare it to an Empress, which is also nominally 45 DP. I recommend getting a second opinion from others though.

For comparison, the Empress is arguably bringing to bear roughly a similar amount of fire power. 2 Large Composites, 2 medium composite is a fair bit of tracking missile potential.  Combined with 4 medium ballistics which can point front left (for example).  An asymmetric loadout of 4 heavy autocannons + mark IX + hurricanve MIRV + 2 Harpoons pods + 4 Cicada isn't crazy and not too much compared to its flux dissipation.  Combine it with ITU, expanded missile racks, ECCM, and Hardened shields, with the rest in vents and maybe some PD.  Such a loadout is capable of winning against the default simulator Duchess reliably in about 15 seconds under AI control.  Admittedly, 8+4 cicadas is kinda scary for an alpha strike.  But swapping to longbows produces similar results.

Speaking of the Empress it does feel like a different ship from the Kingdom, despite keeping the same sprite.  It's more carrier and less battle (as in front line).  The extra fighter bay pushes it in that direction, along with the change to composite large mounts from ballistic making a fighter + large tracking missile support option work well.  The advanced ground support and operations center feel thematic, more so than the old built in solar shielding.  It is slower than before, although surprisingly maneuverable, but I think that's probably for the best.  It still has a lot of OP for a carrier, but on the other hand, it has a lot of guns for carrier.    Overall it feels like a really solid package for 45 DP.  If reserve deployment has it's interaction with bombers fixed, you may want to consider a DP increase.

Another noticeable issue is when facing opposing Kervium fleets, they tend to be fairly easy to escape from or chase down given that half their frigate line up is burn 9 (Axe, Axe II), half their destroyer lineup is burn 8 (Zweihander, Zweihander II) and half their cruiser lineup is burn 7 (Chariot, Chariot II, Catapult).  Similarly, when picking ships for my own fleet, I find myself comparing those slower burn ships to the size tier above, often because they tend to be only a few DP for the next tier or more efficient for the same campaign speed.  Zweihanders (12 DP, burn 8 ) are really competing at a disadvantage against things like the Falcon (15 DP, burn 9), Fury (15 DP, burn 9), and  Morgenstern (14 DP, burn 9).  All 3 of those cruisers are faster (both tactically and on campaign map), and only 2-3 DP more.  The Chariots (25 DP, 7 burn) are competing against the Legion (40 DP, burn 7), Onslaught (40 DP, burn 7), and Empress (45 DP, burn 7).

Overall, I'm looking forward to what future patches bring to the faction and see how it evolves.

once again thanks for the input! ill be increasing the burn of the shipsat fault as after playing myself ive noticed the sluggishness aswell

as for the duchess ill put it to 45 and see how it goes, that thing has been the main topic of balance since keruvim released lol, the empress being so solidly balanced compared to it is thanks to a year of input from the kingdom, the duchess got no such luxury as im terrible at balancing new capitals.

and as do i, its gonna be awile before anything major as im moving soon and not gonna be able to use my computer for a good while, but down the line the Reavers will rise and shine and ill be adding a few more frgates and cruiser to the sector. (and adding a half joke/half serous review thing like junk pirates and varyas sector, as ive had some "colorful" comments about some of my ships lmao)


Another nice update lad! Pirate Paragon looks appropriately cursed.

These ships look great, going to give them a go on my next playthrough!

happy to hear it, always happy to know there are folks enjoying it.


i've had my trans little ship for 5 minutes but if anything happens to it I will kill everyone in this sector and then myself

hold it gentle like hamburger. also ill be adding more LGBT ships in the future after i move house and have the time to finish the duchess sprite and give it a lesbean flag skin, and give all the skins a unique hullmod!

UMA

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the ships looks really good! amazing job on it. i'll definitely use this on my next playthrough
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connortron7

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still not dead! wanted to give an update on progress, im about done with the new ships and changes to existing ones, still have to make a faction file and star system, do commissioned crew and nex support and make a custom hullmod for the Reavers (the new pirate/pather faction mentioned in the above poll) ships to give them some more flavor and prevent SO from being added


heres a peak at the new (RVB) (Reaver Blood Vessel) variants of vanilla ships (and the good old outlaw and bandit)
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Ramiel

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Neat! Glory to the mod maker!.....but not quite anime enough.....guess i'm still waiting for Yuri, Azalea and Aria.....
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connortron7

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Neat! Glory to the mod maker!.....but not quite anime enough.....guess i'm still waiting for Yuri, Azalea and Aria.....
What are you on about.....
« Last Edit: July 28, 2021, 04:30:37 PM by connortron7 »
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Nick XR

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Looking forward to the changes!  The ships look great.

Hiroyan495

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Re: [0.95a] Keruvim Shipyards (V:0.3) Love it or love it, it's here to stay!
« Reply #29 on: August 03, 2021, 05:05:21 AM »

These look fantastic and fresh. :)
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