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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: Carriers post nerf?  (Read 7848 times)

KDR_11k

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #15 on: April 07, 2021, 02:44:42 PM »

I'm assuming that the fleet buff being scaled to 6 fighter bays is a hint that you're not supposed to use only carriers so it'd be fine if carrier-only fleets don't work but mixed fleets do.

The Astral (stock strike configuration) in my fleet certainly doesn't feel very impactful, those torpedo volleys seem kinda ineffective for how slow they are, feels like swapping the ship for a regular battleship would be more useful. I don't have the fleet skill for carriers since most of the skills I'd need in order to get there didn't seem to fit my fleet design as I was leveling up.
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #16 on: April 07, 2021, 04:02:28 PM »

Right now my fleet is centered around a Piranha based Astral with lots of Hurricanes, an Apogee to tank for it, 2-3 condors for fighter escort and phase ship hunting, a pile of Wolf frigates plus some spares for officers to use in smaller fights, an afflictor for backup, and my SO Hammerhead flagship.

It works pretty well and I've killed every bounty I've run into so far, including double/triple Paragon fleets with Dooms and Astrals, Astral/Heron/Drover based fleets with lots of phase ships, and the various easier ones. PPT can be an issue, but I recently added hardened subsystems to the destroyers/frigates so that should help out.

The fighters do seem weaker and slower than before. The Astral has to send more sorties against the Paragons before cracking them, and the frigates help a lot. Sparks die a lot and do less damage (they recharge 0.25 shots/second instead of 0.5 shots/second now.), and they noticeably degrade the Condors' replacement rate. So I like to mix in sparks with other fighters to spread out the need for replacements.
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WeiTuLo

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #17 on: April 07, 2021, 08:48:00 PM »

Just fought a series of Ordos and sub-Ordos with it. Some wolves died, captured 3 battleships and 10 other ships.
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FelixG

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #18 on: April 07, 2021, 11:00:52 PM »

Carriers were nerfed way too much, I am currently working to mod fighters to redeploy faster, and not drop deployment speed just to keep carriers actually working right and not being an active hinderance in a fight.
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Demetrious

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #19 on: April 07, 2021, 11:33:49 PM »

I think two major strengths of carriers as support units is their flexibility: they can be anti large craft, anti small craft, or somewhere in between depending on what the fleet needs. And that that they don't need officers to be effective. They get better with officers, but because they aren't engaging in straight flux duels like gunships, they don't need officers.

I used to drag around a pair of Condors with Thunders JUST for anti-frigate work. I've been doing that in .95 for a while and I've finally admitted that they're useless for that now. Replenishment rate when using bombers tanks so fast (due to them counting as destroyed when they launch and return) that they're hard to get any usage out of and with the skills that benefit strike craft being reduced to exactly one, they just don't do enough damage even when they're fresh.

With frigate killing off the list fighters are pretty much only good for extra PD. For now I'm giving up on them and using that DP for actual combat ships.
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Histidine

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #20 on: April 08, 2021, 12:45:47 AM »

It's sounding like 0.9.1 carriers were balanced around the two skills (Carrier Command, and its slightly weaker fleetwide version Fighter Doctrine) jacking up the fighter replacement rate (by 35%!) Also no more speed boosts for fighters or their missiles (taking Fighter Uplink over EW is a joke).

Thing that just occured to me: Do carriers know not to risk their fighters against superior opposition, like how ships' AI (is at least supposed to) not go barging in if it's likely to get itself killed by doing so?
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FelixG

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #21 on: April 08, 2021, 01:36:50 AM »

It's sounding like 0.9.1 carriers were balanced around the two skills (Carrier Command, and its slightly weaker fleetwide version Fighter Doctrine) jacking up the fighter replacement rate (by 35%!) Also no more speed boosts for fighters or their missiles (taking Fighter Uplink over EW is a joke).

Thing that just occured to me: Do carriers know not to risk their fighters against superior opposition, like how ships' AI (is at least supposed to) not go barging in if it's likely to get itself killed by doing so?

Nope, carrier fighters will yolo themselves into enemy fleets with no regard for survival. I have modified my game so that fighter replacements are 80% faster, and the fighter replenishment rate doesn't drop under 99%, they still eat up crew as they die, but carriers no longer suck when all of their fighters just insta die to superior forces due to bad AI.
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koprus

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #22 on: April 08, 2021, 02:22:30 AM »

I was looking forward to a skill tree that gave me end game carrier viability when i would choose the carrier path in it. Currently it doesnt. I love the carrier playstile. Drinking my cofee and watching the bombers/fighters clean house was turning me on. Now im deeply dissapointed.

It's sounding like 0.9.1 carriers were balanced around the two skills (Carrier Command, and its slightly weaker fleetwide version Fighter Doctrine) jacking up the fighter replacement rate (by 35%!) Also no more speed boosts for fighters or their missiles (taking Fighter Uplink over EW is a joke).

Thing that just occured to me: Do carriers know not to risk their fighters against superior opposition, like how ships' AI (is at least supposed to) not go barging in if it's likely to get itself killed by doing so?

Nope, carrier fighters will yolo themselves into enemy fleets with no regard for survival. I have modified my game so that fighter replacements are 80% faster, and the fighter replenishment rate doesn't drop under 99%, they still eat up crew as they die, but carriers no longer suck when all of their fighters just insta die to superior forces due to bad AI.

Is it easy to modify that by myself? im not a coder or programmer but i can edit a text file it if can be changed from one!
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sotanaht

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #23 on: April 08, 2021, 03:23:01 AM »

Seem pretty useless to me.  Fighters die too fast, don't do enough damage, and don't get replaced.  Astral in particular also got nerfed to complete uselessness, so much so I'd actually rather a Legion now.  Herons seem to be the only real usable carriers now, but again with the individual fighter and blanket replacement nerfs I don't see any point in using them.

Against AI fleets, carriers can still be somewhat dangerous, but only to players going Rambo on their own in the flagship.  Not a threat to the actual fleet, just enough to threaten a single ship if it wanders into massed fighters without any defenses.
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FelixG

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #24 on: April 08, 2021, 03:38:54 AM »

I was looking forward to a skill tree that gave me end game carrier viability when i would choose the carrier path in it. Currently it doesnt. I love the carrier playstile. Drinking my cofee and watching the bombers/fighters clean house was turning me on. Now im deeply dissapointed.

It's sounding like 0.9.1 carriers were balanced around the two skills (Carrier Command, and its slightly weaker fleetwide version Fighter Doctrine) jacking up the fighter replacement rate (by 35%!) Also no more speed boosts for fighters or their missiles (taking Fighter Uplink over EW is a joke).

Thing that just occured to me: Do carriers know not to risk their fighters against superior opposition, like how ships' AI (is at least supposed to) not go barging in if it's likely to get itself killed by doing so?

Nope, carrier fighters will yolo themselves into enemy fleets with no regard for survival. I have modified my game so that fighter replacements are 80% faster, and the fighter replenishment rate doesn't drop under 99%, they still eat up crew as they die, but carriers no longer suck when all of their fighters just insta die to superior forces due to bad AI.

Is it easy to modify that by myself? im not a coder or programmer but i can edit a text file it if can be changed from one!

Yep, you can open all the files in note pad, I used part of another mod (Diable Avionics) and modified their Wanzer Gantry to be a /4 rather than a /2 in the DiableAvionicsUniversalDecksUpgrade.java file

for the fighter replenishment rate you go to Whatever\Starsector\starsector-core and open starfarer.api.zip

com\fs\starfarer\api\impl\hullmods\ExpandedDeckCrew and change the 10f and 20f lines to 100f

if you want to apply it to all carriers you can also go into Whatever\Starsector\starsector-core\data\hullmods and change hull_mods.csv

and change the deck crew to read Expanded Deck Crew,expanded_deck_crew,1,,,"special, merc",Fighters,4000,,,,0,0,0,0,

then it will be completely free to apply to all carriers. Haven't quite figured out how to give the AI the same fixes, but it will work for the player at least!
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koprus

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #25 on: April 08, 2021, 04:13:56 AM »

FelixG sir you are a lifesaver! thank you!
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SapphireSage

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #26 on: April 08, 2021, 06:46:56 AM »

Fighters definitely got hit hard this patch. To the point that literally everything to do with fighters got nerfed pretty hard.

  • Carrier skills got nerfed where >35% from Carrier Command is only possible with 8 bays or less and no longer provides damage reduction for fighters. Fighter speed/crew losses may be worth taking if you cannot win ECM war anyway due to enemy officer spam, but will lose worth immediately once ECM becomes possible again.
  • The Fighter version of ITU, Expanded Deck Crew, got nerfed to only perform at 40% of its original capabilities (10% and 20% from 25% and 50% respectfully).
  • Dedicated carriers with fighter based systems got nerfed. Astral has a (well-deserved) cooldown on its recall device. The drover now costs as much to deploy as the light cruisers, its system CD was doubled to a minute, and most egregiously its ship system damages the carrier's most important stat, its Replacement Rate.
  • Some stronger performing fighters themselves got nerfed as well. Xyphos can no longer escort other ships, and Thunders now have high delay ions. Spark nerf to high delay burst was definitely needed though
  • The biggest nerf to fighters is the combination of the prevalence of officers, the enemy officer levels and the commonness of the Point Defense skill. Previously, the enemy not only had less officers (Even for officer focused factions like the Hegemony), their officers were at levels lower than the equivalent for level 5 now. This meant that is was very unlikely for enemy officers to have Adv Countermeasures 3 or Wing commander 3. Now however, both have been combined into Tier 2 point defense and everyone is running around with their ships fully staffed and at minimum of level 5. Since there are only 7 skills possible and PD is only tier 2, the chances for an officer having PD over Targeting analysis is close to 50% dealing double damage to fighters that no longer have a counter skill to reduce damage.

Combine the above to make more fragile and harder to replace fighters this patch with the damage boosts added for warships able to do upwards of 20% damage to capitals, bonus 20% to frigates attacking non-frigates, and whatever the average gain from ranged spec/energy weaps and fighters begin being a a much harder sell compared to what a similarly staffed warship can do. I have no doubt that if you go carrier skills that you can add them into your fleet and get decent use out of them, but I'm questioning how viable a non-cheese all carrier fleet would fare now. I'm still probably going to give it a dedicated attempt run, but I'm not expecting much results from it this time around.
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Flunky

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #27 on: April 08, 2021, 08:09:55 AM »

I've said it before elsewhere, but I think the sheer necessity of the ECM skill is part of the issue (combined with the pretty low bay count peak for Fighter Uplink). The extra fighter speed is pretty useful, but the ubiquitous importance of ECM and few other ways of getting it reliably make Fighter Uplink a trap.

Keeping a condor or two around or otherwise having 2-4 bays of interceptors can be pretty useful for defensive work, but otherwise fighter bays don't seem to have much practical use now.
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Thaago

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #28 on: April 08, 2021, 09:28:20 AM »

It's sounding like 0.9.1 carriers were balanced around the two skills (Carrier Command, and its slightly weaker fleetwide version Fighter Doctrine) jacking up the fighter replacement rate (by 35%!) Also no more speed boosts for fighters or their missiles (taking Fighter Uplink over EW is a joke).

Thing that just occured to me: Do carriers know not to risk their fighters against superior opposition, like how ships' AI (is at least supposed to) not go barging in if it's likely to get itself killed by doing so?

For a mixed fleet I completely agree with you, but does a dedicated carrier fleet care about ECM? Does ECM effect bomber release range? I have no idea, but if enemy PD is farther out (not suppressed by ECM) AND bombers need to get 20% closer, that would be really rough on bombers.
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FenMuir

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Re: Carriers post nerf?
« Reply #29 on: April 08, 2021, 09:32:26 AM »

The skills system in 9.5a is designed to dissuade you from making fleets that use one schtick. Each fleet-boosting skill has a soft cap on what it can do. So to get the most out of each fleet boost, you don't want to far-exceed what the skill boosts.

As for carriers, I use tempests. I could use a single Astral, but I'd have to captain it and the [SPOILERS] is far more fun to fly.

Annihilator Drones are terrifying.
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