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[SafariJohn]

Scarab with bullet time feels right, phase ships with bullet time doesn't really. I think some sort of split in the time mult for phasing would help with how they feel. Like if 3x speed mult was 2x for you, 2/3 for everything else - with any boosts applying to everything else instead of making your ship too fast to control. Maybe have a setting for the maximum mult the player ship can have.

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.

Yes, it is/would be at the moment of unphasing. If you are able to unphase at low flux and fire, you are probably in front of the enemy ship. If so, you are nearly certain to take significant damage while the enemy can probably absorb your shots on shields.

[intrinsic_parity]

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.

Yes, it is/would be at the moment of unphasing. If you are able to unphase at low flux and fire, you are probably in front of the enemy ship. If so, you are nearly certain to take significant damage while the enemy can probably absorb your shots on shields.

With doom, the OP thing is to drop mines behind a ship to distract shields and un phase + unload into the front, so I don't think this line of reasoning holds up.

[Ad Astra]

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

That'd be as hilarious as it is to watch enemy phase ships right now, I'm kinda down for it really, would certainly make them challenging to control and possibly more fun. Keep the slo-mo bullet time to the scarab ship system

Scarab with bullet time feels right, phase ships with bullet time doesn't really. I think some sort of split in the time mult for phasing would help with how they feel. Like if 3x speed mult was 2x for you, 2/3 for everything else - with any boosts applying to everything else instead of making your ship too fast to control. Maybe have a setting for the maximum mult the player ship can have.

Yes, it is/would be at the moment of unphasing. If you are able to unphase at low flux and fire, you are probably in front of the enemy ship. If so, you are nearly certain to take significant damage while the enemy can probably absorb your shots on shields.

.

Yep, if getting rid of the slowed down time turns out to be too wild to control, just toning it down until it works could do perfectly fine.

[TaLaR]

Phase frigates without time dilation would be impossible to control with any precision.

[bobucles]

It's generally a very bad idea to place game control mechanics on a curve. There's a reason that action game characters don't slow down at low health. Having your control set change is a horrible feeling and ruins the intuition of controlling your character.

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.

Subsystems can be shut down by more than just EMP, a good whack will shut them down as well. That moment of vulnerability is rare, but would  still drastically change phase play. Phase frigates would be forced to disengage, not a problem against cruisers but a struggle against other frigates. The DOOM has too many redundancies to get totally shut down, so it's not an instant death sentence for them.

I still think that phase subsystems is the right way to go. It's very dynamic and creates more exciting situations for phase ships. Subsystem mechanics mean that a phase ship taking constant chip damage is going to have a malfunction sooner or later, and then the hunter becomes the hunted. The challenge is simply finding the right sort of punishment for it. For example, what if the ship can still phase but it loses mobility under cloak? The phase ship is effectively trapped, burning flux but unable to truly escape. Should it stand its ground or try to escape in normal space? Does it have enough flux to do the repairs in cloak? That's a complex situation and I don't think players can really intuit how it will work unless they play it.

[SafariJohn]

You are correct that having the control behavior change without good feedback would suck - varying phase cooldown length should be telegraphed in multiple ways:
- the flux bar is one already
- a message on the left side indicating exactly how long the cooldown will be (and/or counting it down like for overloads)
- maybe make the edges of the phase ship glow in proportion

[KDR_11k]

As someone who mostly defends against phase ships my main issue with the short cooldown (especially with the skill) is that I can't train my weapons at the phase ship and shoot it when it surfaces, I have to keep shooting at it in case it surfaces because the travel time of most attacks is too slow to get there before the cooldown is up and the ship phases again (until it overcommits and ends up with too much flux to get out of weapon range). That makes phase vs shield ship fights mostly about whether the phase ship's pilot makes a mistake, not what the shield ship's pilot does.

Yeah, just giving a cooldown penalty based on flux or even just a flat penalty won't really make it more interactive, it'll just mean that you might get to save a bit of weapon flux by not having to shoot until you can actually hit the enemy or you get to do more damage when the phase ship makes a mistake. With shields you have a game between the attacker and defender of which weapons to use, when to drop or raise shields, which way to point them, etc but with phase ships you can just saturate the area with bullets and hope the phase ship screws up and eats some of them.

Maybe it should be possible to hit some tiny part of the phase ship while it's phased to build up extra flux on it? Would probably be difficult to balance but at least give the shield ships a way of forcing a phase ship out of cloak.

The alternative idea would always be phase depth charges, something to throw out as obstacles for approaching phase ships.

[bobucles]

You are correct that having the control behavior change without good feedback would suck - varying phase cooldown length should be telegraphed in multiple ways:
- the flux bar is one already
- a message on the left side indicating exactly how long the cooldown will be (and/or counting it down like for overloads)
- maybe make the edges of the phase ship glow in proportion

It's not just having the mechanics telegraphed, but the issue with having the mechanics dynamically changing every time. There's no way to get a feel for it, so the play is to stare at the visual indicator. It also doesn't help that those timings will change with capacitors and different ships. The timing is unnecessarily complex.

[Amoebka]

It's like saying there's no way to get a feel for venting because it also takes variable time. I don't think it's really an issue.

[SafariJohn]

Maybe it should be possible to hit some tiny part of the phase ship while it's phased to build up extra flux on it? Would probably be difficult to balance but at least give the shield ships a way of forcing a phase ship out of cloak.

Wouldn't be hard to balance, it would just be a less interactive implementation of shields.

[KDR_11k]

Maybe it should be possible to hit some tiny part of the phase ship while it's phased to build up extra flux on it? Would probably be difficult to balance but at least give the shield ships a way of forcing a phase ship out of cloak.

Wouldn't be hard to balance, it would just be a less interactive implementation of shields.

Not quite, it's a fast and small target unlike most shielded ships. That's why balancing would matter, it'd be much harder to land a hit on the "snorkel" of a phase ship than on a regular shield (plus of course the extreme maneuverability of a phase ship means it can dodge shots in mid-flight). Of course beams would just widen their already considerable advantage against phase ships even further and even with soft flux only you'd see lances be too effective when especially the tac lance should probably be weak against phase ships, being such a long range weapon.