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Author Topic: Balance is WAAAY off  (Read 5111 times)

ElPresidente

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Balance is WAAAY off
« on: June 07, 2021, 12:00:59 AM »

in 0.91 I had no real issues with high-level bounties or even REDACTED. I could win most battles without losses, and when I did have losses they were nothing major.

In 0.95 we now have up to 3 permantnet built-in hullmods, which should make your fleet objectively more powerful. Yet I find I'm losing far more ship than ever before. ESPECIALLY against REDACTED.

Mind you, I'm playing with some beefy ships adn weapons that are often better than vanilla. I'm playing with a 20 officer player limit and with 40 ships per fleet (player and AI). I should be steamrolling them. But I'm not.

And I can see it come down to two things:
1) The AI fleet points bonus - I am ALWAYYS outnumbered. The enemy can always deploy more ship than me, and REDACTED* make that advantage even more absurd. This is bad enough in itself, but it only makes the next problems worse!

2) holding obejctive points - my AI is terrible at this, always retreating. And given the AI gets more ship, it makes it far easier for the AI to grab control of points. It has ships to spare.


*I also swear they now have far better EMP ressitance. This should be their weakenss? Am I tripping? I am bombarding them with EMP weapons, but they shrug it off.
Could it be that the officer bonuses compeltley negate their one supposed weakness?
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SCC

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2021, 12:27:00 AM »

I think that with EMP weapons, you either use not enough or expect too much. Both Tachyon Lances and Ion Pulsers handily disabled entirety of smaller ships and the important parts of Brilliant and Radiant. In fact, Ion Pulser is one of the better weapons currently and all of my ships that can use them get one of them.

About being outnumbered: DPs are distributed according to quantity and quality of both sides' officers. You can get many officers, but AI cores are always better than human ones, in the number of skills and in number of elites. That said, I don't know how it works exactly, and in my experience some smaller ordos weren't strong enough to have DP advantage all the way.

Yunru

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2021, 12:31:35 AM »

2) holding obejctive points - my AI is terrible at this, always retreating. And given the AI gets more ship, it makes it far easier for the AI to grab control of points. It has ships to spare.
Well the other possibility (and the one I tend to struggle with) is that the AI is terrible at it, always advancing. Because apparently fighting > holding a location.

DownTheDrain

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2021, 01:14:22 AM »

Haven't had any issues with bounties so far. Some are either not worth it or beyond what my fleet can safely handle but then I only have myself to blame if I take them on anyway.
As for redacted, there's only one vanilla ship that gives me trouble and it mostly depends on the loadout.

Of course I'm not only using vanilla ships but neither does the OP, so that shouldn't be the issue.
Truth to be told this thread feels more like venting after you've just lost an important battle than a legitimate balance discussion but I could be wrong.
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ElPresidente

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2021, 01:27:59 AM »

I think that with EMP weapons, you either use not enough or expect too much.

I'm using quite a few, long-range, high-damage EMP weapons. One has 3000 emp damage PER SHOT.


Truth to be told this thread feels more like venting after you've just lost an important battle than a legitimate balance discussion but I could be wrong.

Losing a battle is a non-issue. I have a save to fall back to, and I have console commands to fix whatever I want.
This is my conclusion after a long play session and after fighting many battles.



Well the other possibility (and the one I tend to struggle with) is that the AI is terrible at it, always advancing. Because apparently fighting > holding a location.

It's actually retreating and letting the AI take points. And when it's a comm point, that means more enemy reinforcements.
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Vanshilar

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2021, 01:38:19 AM »

It's actually retreating and letting the AI take points. And when it's a comm point, that means more enemy reinforcements.

No. If the enemy starts with 60% already, then getting or losing the objectives won't mean more enemy reinforcements. They're already at the maximum.

So against Remnants, if you're starting off with 40% and they're starting off with 60%, then getting objectives is just so you the player gets to put more reinforcements on the field (and whatever bonuses the objectives give), and doesn't affect the enemy fleet.

Also, if you're playing with 20 officers, then you should be having the fleet bonus anyway, so you should be starting off with 60%, not the enemy. (Although in that case then it does mean you want to get objectives to prevent them from bringing in reinforcements). So not sure what you mean by you're being outnumbered.

EMP depends on the target's hard flux level if shields are up. So if you're hitting their shields when they don't have much hard flux, EMP won't do much.
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Yunru

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2021, 02:29:04 AM »

It's actually retreating and letting the AI take points. And when it's a comm point, that means more enemy reinforcements.
Maybe with something less than Aggressive AI. With Aggressive AI they'll hold the point... right up until they go chasing after some retreating ship. They'll then fight any nearby ship, rather than returning to the point, as well.

It's a frankly infuriating "too cowardly"/"too aggressive" dichotomy, where securing the location seems to be the last consideration rather than the first.

Killian

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2021, 02:33:56 AM »

I think that with EMP weapons, you either use not enough or expect too much.

I'm using quite a few, long-range, high-damage EMP weapons. One has 3000 emp damage PER SHOT.

The heck are you using that's doing that much EM per shot? What are these supposedly 'beefy' ships you're using?

As Vanshilar points out, EMP damage is no use against shielded targets with low hardflux. Given the combo of high flux capacity + skills of [redacted] officers, that's probably what's tripping you up with them.
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ElPresidente

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2021, 03:33:11 AM »

Also, if you're playing with 20 officers, then you should be having the fleet bonus anyway, so you should be starting off with 60%, not the enemy.

That should be the case, but it seems it is not. Don't know why, but the enemy seems to always be able to field more FP than me.
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ElPresidente

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2021, 03:39:49 AM »

I think that with EMP weapons, you either use not enough or expect too much.

I'm using quite a few, long-range, high-damage EMP weapons. One has 3000 emp damage PER SHOT.

The heck are you using that's doing that much EM per shot? What are these supposedly 'beefy' ships you're using?

As Vanshilar points out, EMP damage is no use against shielded targets with low hardflux. Given the combo of high flux capacity + skills of [redacted] officers, that's probably what's tripping you up with them.

In this particualy case, I equipped my fleet for REDACTED hunting - resistant flux conduits, solar shielding, hardened shields, stabilized shield (where it pays off), ernegy absorbers (non-vanilla) ... and lots of kinetics and EMP.

The specific weapon in question is the Ion Nova Cannon .. does 1000 energy and 3000 emp in an AOE, (proxmity fuse, around 300 range?), looooong re-charge time. I also had other EMP weapons. Since AI has all elite skills, it means it also has insanely boosted EMP resistance. Whatever vulnerability the REDACTED are supposed to have, it feels like it's not there.
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SCC

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #10 on: June 07, 2021, 03:52:35 AM »

Hmm. I based my experience on a fleet with tons of ion pulsers. I will have to get some Eagles with Ion Beams and see how long do they take to disable Remnants.

Vanshilar

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #11 on: June 07, 2021, 04:14:01 AM »

That should be the case, but it seems it is not. Don't know why, but the enemy seems to always be able to field more FP than me.

Eh then try mousing over the "Deployed" bar on the deployment screen, it tells you exactly how much you and the enemy fleet are able to field at any given time, no need to rely on "seems".
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CanaldoVoid

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #12 on: June 07, 2021, 04:20:05 AM »

It's actually retreating and letting the AI take points. And when it's a comm point, that means more enemy reinforcements.
Maybe with something less than Aggressive AI. With Aggressive AI they'll hold the point... right up until they go chasing after some retreating ship. They'll then fight any nearby ship, rather than returning to the point, as well.

It's a frankly infuriating "too cowardly"/"too aggressive" dichotomy, where securing the location seems to be the last consideration rather than the first.
One solution would be the removal, or a way to buy officer slots instead so that every single ship gets an officer sooner or later.
And the officer personality/AI behavior does more than regulate their own engagement ranges, that way if you want a passive ship for a certain task you give the right kind of officer, and no more unmaned ship with no captains in your fleet.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #13 on: June 07, 2021, 04:27:36 AM »

In this particualy case, I equipped my fleet for REDACTED hunting - resistant flux conduits, solar shielding, hardened shields, stabilized shield (where it pays off), ernegy absorbers (non-vanilla) ... and lots of kinetics and EMP.

The specific weapon in question is the Ion Nova Cannon .. does 1000 energy and 3000 emp in an AOE, (proxmity fuse, around 300 range?), looooong re-charge time. I also had other EMP weapons. Since AI has all elite skills, it means it also has insanely boosted EMP resistance. Whatever vulnerability the REDACTED are supposed to have, it feels like it's not there.

So you're playing with mods, which makes any and all balance feedback utterly useless.
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Balance is WAAAY off
« Reply #14 on: June 07, 2021, 06:08:15 AM »

I'm not really having any trouble with remnants or anything, but I feel like AI core officers should not have every officer skill be an elite skill. I have a feeling that 1/2/3/(4?) for gamma/beta/alpha/ officers would make them a little more reasonable (plus it makes the Automated Ships Radiant a little more reasonable, which is a plus imo). That and probably a distribution of AI officers skewing towards gammas and betas rather than the inordinate number of alphas we seem to be facing at the moment.
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