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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: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown  (Read 3179 times)

SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #15 on: May 04, 2021, 08:13:32 PM »

I would do a mini-mod to prove the flux-mult cooldown idea one way or the other, but apparently getPhaseCloakCooldownBonus() can't change the phase cooldown mid-combat.

Edit: forgot about getPhaseCloak(). Looks like that has what I need.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2021, 08:22:18 PM by SafariJohn »
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Alex

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #16 on: May 04, 2021, 08:37:01 PM »

For crazy shenanigans, make phase cloak decals a subsystem that can be disabled. Every downed drive will slow cooldown and increase cloak time. If all the cloaks are disabled (tiny ships only have 1), the ship can't cloak. EMP weapons would get a HUGE leg up against phase ships, creating a weapon type suitable for attacking them. Small phase ships would get much easier to destroy, while large phase ships have a bit more resilience against being helpless. It'd be very difficult to totally lock down a Doom's 4 drives, but smacking 2 or 3 will give extra time to deal a devastating torpedo strike.
Hmm, that's interesting! My gut feeling here, though, is that if you're able to land enough EMP hits on a phase ship for this to kick in, then that means the problem has probably already been solved to begin with.
I've suggested something like this in previous threads. Its not a hard counter by any means. EMP will not disable on every hit. It would be crazy for a fleet to bring EMP on the majority of their mounts. Phase-hunter type classes would be created, tried, discarded, ad infinitum. Support ships that are specialized always seem like a counter except they are obvious as transponders. Phase ship AI would simply rate those ships as 'very dangerous' and pick off anything else with their superior maneuverability.

Ah, I have a feeling my point wasn't clear. It's this: if phase ships can be hit with enough EMP weapons for these mechanics to come into play, this means they're already easy enough to hit and these mechanics aren't necessary for making them easier to hit.
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TaLaR

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #17 on: May 05, 2021, 12:19:13 AM »

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but - "assassin" builds kind of rely on phasing again to get away, no? And at times need to wait for the cooldown before firing the final shots to avoid the ship explosion. The window for what a viable attack angle is depends on how long it needs to be safe for, so it seems like increasing that would matter. Very much open to further thoughts/counter-arguments, though.

While being able to re-phase quickly helps a lot and is optimal (cloak to safety + vent is faster in world time), it isn't strictly necessary in simpler situations (no insta-hit weapons, no massive fighter swarm, no overlapping incoming fire angles).

And at times need to wait for the cooldown before firing the final shots to avoid the ship explosion.

I very rarely use the "fire, then cloak" approach to finishing. Easier to disrupt, takes more setup time and you still need precise timing - cloak too early and you waste AM shots, too late and you still explode. Might as well use the more optimal approach of "uncloak and shoot from safe angle, while already on escape trajectory" if both need be executed very precisely anyway.

"Skirmisher" builds need to be punishable, too, I think, btw... otherwise they're just in a "wait out their PPT" place, anyway. I should say, much of the focus here is on making phase ships better to fight *against*. If it reins them in a bit as player ships too, that's great, but if not, that's not the worst thing in the world.

"Skirmisher" builds depend on compressing their weapon cooldowns/flux via cloak to overwhelm the enemy. Long phase cooldown completely kills that.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 12:24:33 AM by TaLaR »
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SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #18 on: May 05, 2021, 06:22:17 AM »

Okay, got the mini-mod made. Seems to be bug-free. Turns out disabling active venting does effectively nothing, so I didn't do that. It does nothing to the phase skill or anything else, so those other things making phase too strong will still be there.

At any given time, phase cooldown = base * (2 ^ (fluxPercent * (log MAX_MULT / log 2))) where MAX_MULT is 10.

https://github.com/SafariJohn/Misc-Starsector-Mods/raw/main/High%20Flux%20Phase%20Cooldown%201.zip

Please give it a try - and focus on fighting against phase ships.
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Dread Pirate Robots

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #19 on: May 05, 2021, 08:53:45 AM »

It seems to make phase ships into pushovers against fast ships or anything with torpedoes. With unskilled ships piloted by the AI in the simulator, a fury trivially beats a doom and so does 2 medusas, (its performance against hammerheads is similar, with 3 hammerheads winning in either case and 2 having a better chance with the mod) without the mod the doom wins both fights easily. In a fleet setting it's harder to measure, but with a little playing around in fleets I suspect that the problem would be even more significant. If a phase ship unphases with any flux at all near other ships, it is simply to easy a target for missiles and torpedoes. For example, I just did a small 120 DP midline vs hightech fleet, and the doom was the very first ship that died because it got smoked by a couple wings of khopeshes and there was nothing it could do.

If I'm the one piloting, it feels way too easy, even without skills. I can kill a doom in an unskilled medusa, in a fury it's a joke. When there are multiple ships around, it's even more of a joke. It just can't do anything about you hitting it with torpedoes. If a phase ship gets to even ~30% flux, it's dead. I didn't try piloting the phase ships myself too much but I can't imagine it not feeling bad to be unable to let your flux get high at all. I did try an afflictor a little and it's terrible, you can't use antimatter blasters at all.

I've said it a couple of times before, but I think one of the best changes in the game in 0.9 was the buffing of the doom and the addition of the radiant. Having those two incredibly strong ships means I have to be careful in battles against them. With this change, I know for sure I'd no longer worry about dooms at all, just more cannon fodder to mindlessly blow up. IMO it's an awful change that makes the game less challenging and less fun.

Edit: I just went back to the game and I was wrong about the doom dying first; it actually died second, after the shade lol.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 08:58:19 AM by Dread Pirate Robots »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #20 on: May 05, 2021, 09:09:31 AM »

I'm assuming the mod does not update the AI. I would expect the AI would be incompetent with different mechanics since it is designed to around the old mechanics and all of its checks for safety and stuff would no longer be reasonable. You really need to pilot it yourself to test this I think.
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SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #21 on: May 05, 2021, 10:42:25 AM »

If a phase ship gets to even ~30% flux, it's dead.

So it made it easier to hit phase ships when they get their flux up, but it's too extreme. I will try reducing it.

Version 2: https://github.com/SafariJohn/Misc-Starsector-Mods/raw/main/High%20Flux%20Phase%20Cooldown%202.zip

Reduced base phase cooldown from 2 to 1.5
Reduced max mult from 10 to 4 (6 seconds)
Reduced base from 2 to 1.01 (reduces the mult more when flux is low)
Changed flux percent mult to only consider hard flux

Tried to make skirmishing less lethal. Didn't really test player-piloted assassination much, but it still seemed more risky than vanilla. Removed soft flux from the consideration because it seemed more of a screw job for players than anything else.


I would expect the AI would be incompetent with different mechanics since it is designed to around the old mechanics and all of its checks for safety and stuff would no longer be reasonable. You really need to pilot it yourself to test this I think.

Hard to tell on that. The phase AI with vanilla cooldown is already far from great. And only Alex knows how the AI actually considers phase cooldown, assuming it even does.
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Wyvern

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #22 on: May 05, 2021, 10:50:26 AM »

The issue I've got, here, is that we've already nerfed phase cooldown once, and the result wasn't a lot of fun; beforehand, you could actually brawl with a Doom without just getting murdered. After - well, afterwards Alex had to stick the mine system on the thing in order to bring it back up to a functional state (and perhaps a bit beyond, but that's mostly the mines + systems expertise interaction).

That said, it was also somewhat trickier to pin down phase ships back then; you basically needed constant pressure, ideally delivered via fighters; with fighters being significantly weaker in 9.95, that's less viable now.

However.

I do think high flux increasing the phase cooldown is the right direction to go; it just needs to not be a completely linear effect. A couple of seconds of vulnerability if you're above 90% flux? Yes, that scans - makes it easier to actually finish off a phase ship that's been pushed to its limits.  But on the flip side, phase cooldown when below, say, 50% flux? That needs to be faster than the default right now; the Ziggurat feels about right there.

And then you'd actually be able to brawl with a Doom again, so we could nerf its mine system without completely crippling the ship.
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SafariJohn

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #23 on: May 05, 2021, 10:53:53 AM »

Yeah, I thought about dropping the base phase cooldown to 1 for this iteration of the test mod, but I didn't feel like going so far yet. The mult I am doing is not linear, btw
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Ad Astra

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #24 on: May 05, 2021, 11:50:39 AM »

I do think high flux increasing the phase cooldown is the right direction to go; it just needs to not be a completely linear effect. A couple of seconds of vulnerability if you're above 90% flux? Yes, that scans - makes it easier to actually finish off a phase ship that's been pushed to its limits.  But on the flip side, phase cooldown when below, say, 50% flux? That needs to be faster than the default right now; the Ziggurat feels about right there.

And then you'd actually be able to brawl with a Doom again, so we could nerf its mine system without completely crippling the ship.

The ugly dragon without front legs is right!, pushing flux capacity with a total volley should be tremendously risky, while operating within safe parameters should stay as it is, not sure how that would work mathematically.
About the Doom, well, limiting the mines to a fixed amount per battle or having them recharge slowly would keep their opportunistic advantage while avoiding the ship to take after its name too much.
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Dread Pirate Robots

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #25 on: May 05, 2021, 12:33:43 PM »

I did a bunch of other tests with the first mod with me piloting and missed the follow-up posts, but they just further confirmed that the first change was too much.

Quote
Reduced base phase cooldown from 2 to 1.5
Reduced max mult from 10 to 4 (6 seconds)
Reduced base from 2 to 1.01 (reduces the mult more when flux is low)
Changed flux percent mult to only consider hard flux

This feels better to play without skills, I think making it depend on hard flux only is mandatory, otherwise energy weapons are practically unusable. Keeping the maximum time down to 6 seconds or so is much better as well, it gets rid of the awful feeling from the first version that the right mouse button was basically a "give yourself an overload" button. In the AI's hands the doom can now beat some cruisers 1v1 (it can beat a fury and an eagle, though it usually loses to a champion or an aurora), and it usually loses to an astral (Alex wanted it to be able to beat an astral as a matter of balance last version, though things have changed). It also no longer dies quickly in fleet battles. So currently it is probably not worth 35 DP in the AI's hands, but it's not useless. I tried it with skills and smods and it's still incredibly strong. The phase cooldown just isn't the reason that it's so strong this version, the issue is skills. I do think that a relatively minor change to phase cooldown as above is a neat idea, and I like the idea of the cooldown being very fast at very low flux, but I don't think it's the right lever to balance the doom.


So much of the doom's current feeling of invincibility comes from the incredible speed that come from phase mastery. Mine strike also regens too fast, especially with systems expertise, but these things are easily changed. I don't think anything more extreme needs to be done than something like:

- some small change to phase cooldown like above that punishes phase ships for having high hard flux
- remove phase mastery or significantly reduce the phase mastery bonuses, maybe something like flat +30 speed and -20% phase cooldown
- cut the mine strike regen rate by 50% and charges to 3 or 4
- remove the range bonus from systems expertise

I think those changes would go a long way towards making the doom feel less silly, while letting it still be one of the best ships in the game (which I think it should be).

I also want to point out I don't really like Alex's idea of making phase ships into armor tanks, armor tanking with them just makes them feel like low-tech ships and reduces the gameplay variety. Phase ships should feel very different to play imo, and when I was armor tanking with them it felt just like armor tanking with a dominator or onslaught except flicking the phase to avoid torpedoes instead of flicking the shields.
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Wyvern

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #26 on: May 05, 2021, 12:55:47 PM »

I strongly disagree with the proposed changes to phase mastery.

The speed boost is explicitly there to make the gameplay better. It doesn't need to be exactly the current +100% speed - I'd actually prefer if it was just 'gain the zero-flux boost while phased' - but it needs something so that activating phase cloak doesn't feel like it's slowing you down. Flying a phase ship without it is just annoying; there are reasons that so many 0.9.1-and-earlier modded phase ships include speed boosts while phased.

For mine strike & systems expertise: I think the skill's increase to charge regen rate is too much; it makes it very hard to balance any ship system that uses charges, since a rate that's reasonable without the skill can all too easily turn into way-too-much with the skill. I'd drop that from 50% to 25% as a starting point.  The other change I'd look at making is increasing the cooldown on mine strike - part of the issue with it now is that you can just drop all your charges basically at once.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #27 on: May 05, 2021, 01:21:41 PM »

You could do something like speed while phased is increased, but phase time slowdown is decreased so the the relative speed to other ships is not so insane but it still feels better from a player perspective. That would actually give PPT benefits too, so it might not even be that much of a nerf. 100% speed while cloaked is actually 300% speed increase relative to normal time (I it's 3x speed up, but exact numbers are not the point). A big issue is definitely just that the doom can never get punished with such insane speed, it can always run. Long cooldowns on high flux would just mean you have to back off on lower flux to be safe, you still never have to allow yourself to actually get punished. I would probably go with doom loadouts like 4x needlers poking at range and spamming mines to finish (I think that's already quite good and not really hurt too much by the proposed changes.

Another question I have is how would cooldown work with increasing flux? Is it determined by flux at the moment of unphasing? Because then if you unphase on low flux and fire big alpha, you could still re-cloak quickly, run away vent and repeat.
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Megas

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #28 on: May 05, 2021, 01:27:40 PM »

The speed boost is explicitly there to make the gameplay better. It doesn't need to be exactly the current +100% speed - I'd actually prefer if it was just 'gain the zero-flux boost while phased' - but it needs something so that activating phase cloak doesn't feel like it's slowing you down. Flying a phase ship without it is just annoying; there are reasons that so many 0.9.1-and-earlier modded phase ships include speed boosts while phased.
Agreed.  Player wants to phase while traveling (especially to capture points or to retreat), but it slows the game down, which is torture.  Actually, if phase will always slow down the player, it should give zero-flux boost for free, no skill (let alone elite skill) required just for QoL.  Personally, I rather have phase haste the player while world stays at normal speed (which is slow) so player can speed blitz.

Zero-flux boost instead of double speed helps slow ships like Ziggurat, while not speeding up faster ships (like Doom or Afflictor) to crazy speeds.  Also, it downplays Unstable Injector.  Double speed works very well with Unstable Injector.  Zero-flux boost instead of double speed will prevent multiplying with Unstable Injector.

As for Systems Expertise, I rather see that skill totally replaced by a completely new skill.  Either it is useless or too powerful, depending on ship.  I do not want to see Doom nerfed just because System Expertise made Mine Strike too powerful.  I do not want to see things weakened to the point where skills are required to make things competent.

I do like the range extension Harbinger receives from Systems Expertise.  It can combo Quantum Disruptor with weapons that have some range.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2021, 01:32:07 PM by Megas »
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SCC

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Re: High Flux Increases Phase Cooldown
« Reply #29 on: May 05, 2021, 01:39:44 PM »

I would rather have phase time dilation not apply to player perspective, than have phase ships be obscenely overpowered in player's hands.
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