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[furl]

Just to clarify - I finished the story, defeated the Doritos (twice) and cleared a couple of high danger remnant systems.

I run a high tech fleet with Paragons, Odysseys, Dooms and Tempests with an occasional Heron/Afflictor.

My biggest problem is with enemy officers - not only they reduce your DP to 160 but they also greatly improve survivability of smaller ships and with carriers not nearly as strong as in the previous patch you can't get rid of them quickly. That way my capitals are always distracted and can't focus on larger ships. Smaller ships then surround my larger ships and I'm dead.

I also tried to focus on Tempests / Medusas rather than capitals, but to win I had to capture and hold all the map points which proved to be very difficult with late game fleets as they just moved to comm relay in one big deathball, I couldn't stop them, lost the point, they deployed more ships and overwhelmed my fleet.

So the strategy I came up with is to deploy Paragon to tank, Odyssey to flank, Doom to finish off and as many Tempests/Herons to distract smaller ships. This requires a lot of micromanagement but usually it works. The problem is - with all that effort I started avoiding fighting some enemies like factions' expedition fleets. One hegemony fleet spawned with 4 capitals and 21 officers, so it took me 3 tries before I beat it with 2 Paragons and 2 Herons.

So IMO the difficulty in the late game should be lowered to bring back the joy of putting together a very powerful end game fleet, because now even 3 S-mods and spoiler weapons are not enough to do it.

[Dex]

I dunno man, is it just me?

This game isnt about success. Its about struggle. 'Winning everything' is game over, the destination, and im here for the journey, the process, the struggle.

YOu won though, right?

[furl]

All I'm saying is that it'd be nice to have a point in the game where the struggle finally ends, you're happy and then start a new game with a fleet composition you haven't tried before.

[Dex]

well it sounds like you did it, my man. You beat them right? The game isnt finished yet, i mean, unless you decivilize every core world then you are Sisyphus.

[intrinsic_parity]

IDK, I got some colonies online and make 1mil per month after I tricked them out with exploration goodies and they finish growing. It sure felt to me like the struggle was over, and the only thing left to do was look for hard fights. The basic faction fleets feel like pushovers to me, it's just the remnants and some of the crazy bounties that feel tough.

[Anvel]

I suggest you look closely at blue giants on your map, some of them have a surprise for you, there are some new toys that can tune down the game greatly.

[GenericGoose]

I dunno man, is it just me?

This game isnt about success. Its about struggle.

Struggle needs to end at some point and to be rewarding. Frigates (and all other ships) taking 10-20 times more damage to kill, while you have ridiculous penalties always stacked against you by the broken officer system isn't a fun or a rewarding or even interesting struggle. The ai isn't better or smarter. You're just fighting overinflated numbers and artificial limitations and the dumb friendly ai. And the reward is rarely worth it.
It's getting changed next patch I think, as officer and hopefully skill stuff will be tweaked.

[Dex]

*shocked face* is this a trap? I thoroughly approve and im a terrible person.

Dont bring any ships youre emotionally attached to

Goose, i dont understand, if its too hard then change your tactics. Those bounties are INTENTIONALLY ridiculous and your struggle is self inflicted.

YOure finding hard mode too hard?

[intrinsic_parity]

Ships don't take 10-20 times as much damage to kill, in fact, I feel like a lot of capitals go down much easier because of the changes to target analysis. The only way that crazy damage resistance can happen is for very specific derelict bounty fleets that can get the skill that gives armor for d-mods. No faction/pirate/remnant fleets have that skill afaik.

[Lucky33]

Well, let your target to lower the flux and you can easily get into "10-20 times more damage to kill" area.

[Ryan390]

The game's not too hard in my opinion, it probably would be without the SP feature, that's really saved this version in my opinion otherwise I'd entirely agree.

[Flying Birdy]

My biggest problem is with enemy officers - not only they reduce your DP to 160 but they also greatly improve survivability of smaller ships and with carriers not nearly as strong as in the previous patch you can't get rid of them quickly. That way my capitals are always distracted and can't focus on larger ships. Smaller ships then surround my larger ships and I'm dead.

I think there is a problem with having to deal with too many officers with the combination of both impact mitigation and the shield perk - the emergent "meta" is a significant nerf has been made to ballistic HE weapons. The combination of both skills really skews the need for high shield damage & high damage/shot weapons. It's a significant meta change in favor of heavy blasters due to its fast projectile speed and high dmg/shot and its ability to still damage shields. In contrast, ballistic HE weapons are less effective because you need to now deal more shields and, even when you get through to the hull, lower dmg/shot ballistics HE like mortars and chaingun, and assault gun are significantly less effective due to the armor boost from impact mitigation.

I also tried to focus on Tempests / Medusas rather than capitals, but to win I had to capture and hold all the map points which proved to be very difficult with late game fleets as they just moved to comm relay in one big deathball, I couldn't stop them, lost the point, they deployed more ships and overwhelmed my fleet.

I've not had trouble capturing the buoys, but I agree holding the buoys are more difficult given that a lot of early deployment are devoted to frigates in order to capture those buoys in the first place. The result of this "meta" is that the I needs to deploy frigates early, capture as many buoys as possible, and aggressively bring down the number of enemies before those buoys are lost and I can no longer reinforce.

I'm not sure if this is a change for better or for worse from a gameplay standpoint. On the one hand, it's been really fun playing against the clock every battle to try and win before I lose a war of attrition and lose my numbers advantage from holding no buoys. On the other hand, it is frustrating sometimes to always be on a timer in these fights and sometimes even losing a battle completely purely because the buoys are deployed closer to the center of the map.

[Ryan390]

Personally I've never bothered capturing the relay points and just take a defensive position nearer to the bottom. usually (at least they used to) rush you with the smaller ships which you can destroy before the bigger ships come down.

I'm noticing now that the A.I seems to stick together a lot more so its much more overwhelming and challenging.

A lot of people are taking about these capture points so I might actually have a go at trying to win them and stick some fast frigates in the fleet?

[Flying Birdy]

Personally I've never bothered capturing the relay points and just take a defensive position nearer to the bottom. usually (at least they used to) rush you with the smaller ships which you can destroy before the bigger ships come down.

I'm noticing now that the A.I seems to stick together a lot more so its much more overwhelming and challenging.

A lot of people are taking about these capture points so I might actually have a go at trying to win them and stick some fast frigates in the fleet?

Both strategies are valid. At the same time, both strategies have their own weaknesses in this new "meta" of AI officer spam. Capturing the buoys pretty much always mean that you have a temporary parity in deployment points if you overdeploy frigates, but that parity evaporates very quickly because its really hard to bring down any cruiser+ ships with just frigates and the AI death ball just retakes buoys.

[Megas]

What I dislike about the later game fights (that I am beginning to discover) is any frigates I deploy to capture points, I must retreat soon because they do not have enough PPT without Wolfpack Tactics (which I do not have), and I planned on skipping Leadership for the other three trees.  Also, I do not want to give up Radiant for three or four Lumens with cores just because I need frigates with enough PPT.

Later game fights are, deploy big ships and frigates.  Fight for about three to four minutes, retreat frigates because they ran out of PPT, finish fight with maybe no reinforcements.

I just want to relax and blow stuff up, not listen to alerts and micromanage fleet because frigates do not have enough PPT and I do not want or cannot maximize PPT for every frigate I need without giving up skills I want more.