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Author Topic: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.5b Storms are coming!  (Read 275730 times)

Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #465 on: June 17, 2022, 03:29:53 PM »

Nice. I see it's a Medium Hybrid. Did you make it that way on purpose so people wouldn't just use it as a substitute for a Large Ballistic or Large Energy?
You can in-fact put medium hybrid weapons on larger slots, I made this one medium because I don't mind that issue as it's just PD/support, the reason why it's hybrid is because I designed it to support a bigger Superweapon and some ships won't have 4 medium energy or ballistic slots to fully support that weapon, sometimes a mixture of both.
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Enforest

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #466 on: June 19, 2022, 01:52:39 AM »

Upcoming stuff looks great!

May I suggest a concept of a new weapon, basically a Cryo Cannon. A beefed-up version of a vanilla Cryoblaster, it's fragmentation damage shouldn't be as deadly against armor or shields, but it could come with some sort of a powerful debuff that massively reduces ship's speed, turn rate, turret turn rate and fire rate. Could come with decent flux stats and be useful as a support/finisher weapon.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 01:55:32 AM by Enforest »
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Kadatherion

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #467 on: June 19, 2022, 07:09:39 AM »

So, I managed to drop most of the weapons in my current long running campaign, and those I didn't, I cheated in to test. I'd like to give you a little feedback right after (apparently successfully without breaking the save) I uninstalled the mod.

First and foremost: the weapons are cool, some are even awesome and are real feats in how they work and/or look. So thanks for the great work. However, I ended up uninstalling the mod because... well, most of the weapons are virtually unusable in common scenarios.

You have tried to balance them being superweapons in three ways: they cost a lot of OPs, they consume incredible amounts of flux, and most of them have big friendly fire issues. First two things are obvious and work as intended, they make it so it's practically impossible to mount them on smaller ships that might happen to have a large mount: they wouldn't have enough flux and OPs to make it a viable build in most cases. The latter though, unfortunately makes those weapons just a novelty to try once, look at the cool effects, and then store and forget forever. The AI can't use them at all or if they can they'd make a horrible mess, and even when mounted on the playership, well, in most circumstances you'd hardly ever be able to use them without causing way too much friendly fire.

They could be used, of course, for solo tactics, but that's just not me, I have never even used the Ziggy that way as I don't find it fun to solo cheese entire fleets, so heh, even if I did use a couple of the "simplier" ones with less drawbacks with success and satisfaction, like the Phalanx or the Gauss cannons (those worked even *too* well, but then again, it's a superweapons mod, can't complain if the weapons are indeed super :P ), in the end I felt most of the mod was redundant for me and decided to uninstall.

It's a matter of tastes, mind me, so take it only as constructive criticism. I like your work, and I'd just suggest you to try and tone down the friendly fire ideas in favour of other kinds of drawbacks for new weapons you're gonna put in future versions. So that they can be used in normal gameplay (and by the AI as well) and not only in some extreme niche approach.
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #468 on: June 19, 2022, 12:36:06 PM »

-Thank you for the feedback.
I'd like to point that everything you mentioned is 100% intended, while half of Superweapons don't have friendly fire the rest do, but despite that many people avoid this mod because they think it's an instant win button, imagine what their reaction would be if i remove Superweapons biggest drawback "friendly fire".
-I believe that power should come at a price, strong customization options must have big downside to force you to "think" multiple times before using them, this is my aim with this mod.
-You are free not to use my mod, but i'd like to remind you that it's not just about weapons, there are also High Priority bounties which will present a challenge to you with their specialized loadouts with Superweapons (i will be adding more bounties and lore in the future).
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Kadatherion

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #469 on: June 19, 2022, 01:35:08 PM »

Yeah, obviously it's intended to try and balance the OPness of the weapons (and yep, I've seen some of the drama: that kind of people that wants to policy how other people enjoy their single player game won't ever be satisfied anyway so... *shrug*), but as I said I feel the friendly fire downside doesn't really balance them out: it practically makes them completely useless (unless, as stated, in some solo ship challenges). My point is indeed it doesn't balance an otherwise OP weapon, it virtually takes it out of the game entirely (well, at least those like the black hole, cluster torp, etc; a couple of the piercing ones are still realistically usable, albeit with some frustration, by the player, just not by the AI): up to the point you'd wonder what's the point of having them there at all.

They are not more "balanced", they are virtually less useful than a PD laser. Balance is about keeping choices open: a gameplay component, to be balanced, needs to be useful, but not so better than any alternative as to make those redundant, hence the point of it giving the player more choice. But, as stated, it needs to be useful, otherwise it's just bloat.
You yourself say that the aim of your mod is that the player is gonna have "to think multiple times before using (your weapons)": that's my point, the friendly fire drawback is such that there's nothing to think about, there's no choice whatsoever: they aren't usable, let's look at something else.

Now, if that applied to just a couple of them that'd be one thing ("oh, look, this is a quirky one trick pony, cool!"), but when basically half the weapons in the mod are novelties you can't normally use (not "at a sacrifice", not "forcing you to make choices": you basically just can't and that's it) the reaction can end being more in the tone of "oh, look, ANOTHER unusable proof of concept with pretty colors... great... remind me why did I have this mod installed again?". Which is basically what happened to me after several hours: I had half a dozen of your rare drops just stored, unused, on my main planet, and only 2 or 3 actually found any use in my fleet. After a while, the annoyance of having so much redundancy (not to mention the annoyance of going from the joy of getting a super rare drop to the disappointment of discovering it's a worthless one) won over the coolness of having a couple usable ones mounted on my Yamato (and man did the Phalanxes look fitting there). I could have kept the mod installed for those few weapons that I like but... heh, I try to to keep my modlist in check (and yeah, I've also finished the HVBs introduced by your mod, so no further content waiting for me anyway: it was cool to be on the receiving end of those Phalanxes though ;) ).

In any case my point isn't to go back and rework/remove what's already in here, mind me (wouldn't make sense anyway for things such as a black hole generator not to do friendly fire): it's just a suggestion to try and focus on other kinds of ideas and drawbacks for new weapons in the future. While on one side we have the usual OP/flux/ammo balance passes, on the other the additional limiting factor could come in the shape of other quirks like, I don't know, the interferences we see in a few other mods. Those still usually are just about flux to prevent you from stacking several special weapons on the same ship, so it wouldn't be enough; in this case they could, let's say as an example, halve your shields efficiency or even disable it completely for a few seconds while firing, so here we have the downside "choice" you are talking about, that "thinking" you expect to induce: should you bring that superweapon knowing that right when you fire it you risk that Gremlin throwing a reaper in your exhaust port? It'd be indeed risky, a legitimate drawback... but the choice would still be there as the weapon would indeed be useable, albeit with care. "Should I bring that superweapon knowing that if I fire it most likely I'm gonna kill my whole fleet as well and have to either savescum or ragequit" doesn't really sound like something I have to think much about.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 01:48:08 PM by Kadatherion »
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #470 on: June 19, 2022, 02:30:35 PM »

I want you to imagine a scenario where 99/100 Superweapons have no friendly fire and can be easily used by AI, and that their only downside is high flux and OP cost, what prevents the player from stacking capitals from different mods and slap as much Superweapons and flux capacitors on them as possible in-order to delete the enemy without even giving them a chance to look at you, kinda unrealistic.
Some Superweapons are supposed to lay in your storage until a specific use-case arise, here are some examples:
Cluster Torpedo:
-You are about to siege an enemy station guarded by 4-6 invasion fleets, you want to stop these fleets before they depart and invade one of your planets, but you can't because it's suicide, hence comes the Cluster Torpedo, you deploy your fastest ship at the front with the rest of your fleet behind, fire the torpedo and make an opening while the rest of your ships are getting close.
-Have it installed on one of your backup ships, once you feel like retreating deploy that ship and bomb the enemy fleet once most of your ships fell back to safety (this is how i personally use the weapon).
Supernova launcher:
-This is a strong Superweapon with limited ammo, you might think about giving it expanded magazine and fire it whenever possible, this is an easy way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, instead pay attention that the weapon has massive range and try to fire it as many times as possible before your fleet gets in range, having modifications that increases rate of fire "like loader overdrive" from VIC is great for dealing maximum area damage to the enemy before getting in range, i usually have 1 ship with many of these installed as it gets deployed first, deals as much damage then retreats, meanwhile my fleet is moving to engage.
I can list more examples for using every weapon with a downside but i'd rather let people find their ways with them ,simply giving a Superweapon with big downside to an AI and expecting "good" results is unintended, most of these are designed to be used by you, if you want to give your AI a superweapon then you have many choices that doesn't include friendly fire (Photon/Positron Lens, Plasma Storm, Reflective shield, Tartarus LRM launcher, Terror battery, Prism Driver... etc)
« Last Edit: June 19, 2022, 03:38:14 PM by Mira Lendin »
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Kadatherion

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #471 on: June 19, 2022, 05:04:19 PM »

I want you to imagine a scenario where 99/100 Superweapons have no friendly fire and can be easily used by AI, and that their only downside is high flux and OP cost, what prevents the player from stacking capitals from different mods and slap as much Superweapons and flux capacitors on them as possible in-order to delete the enemy without even giving them a chance to look at you, kinda unrealistic.

Man, I don't know how many times I have repeated that I believe for FUTURE additions you should have DIFFERENT downsides (that don't break your own content under 99% of common gameplay instances), and yet you keep replying as I'm asking to remove the ones that are already in and with no other downside as a substitute.

There's clearly a miscommunication issue here, I talk oranges and you talk apples, but whatever, really, I give just about the right amount of ef: enough to have come here to explain why I ended up uninstalling the mod and suggesting what direction I'd go if I were in your shoes to offset that, not enough to try to move brick walls. You are satisfied as it is? Great, more power to you, that's the whole point of modding, to each his own and I wish you luck.
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #472 on: June 19, 2022, 06:04:34 PM »

Man, I don't know how many times I have repeated that I believe for FUTURE additions you should have DIFFERENT downsides (that don't break your own content under 99% of common gameplay instances), and yet you keep replying as I'm asking to remove the ones that are already in and with no other downside as a substitute.
There are NO other possible downsides to add to Superweapons, friendly fire is the only one available aside from self damage (which i hate since it either does nothing or make the weapon unusable).
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speeder

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #473 on: June 20, 2022, 12:46:27 AM »

More suggestion:

While playing with missile-heavy ship I found out your superweapons are mostly not that useful (except the novaX), because they tend to kill your own fleet too easily.

Meanwhile I found no mod really had a superweapon I really wanted:

normal missiles... but in a ludicrous amount of them. Had this idea when I wanted to figure out how to defeat Z using missiles only, concluded the solution is just overwhelm it with constant firepower to destroy its own projectiles.


and another idea is a weapon like novaX but actually anti-ship, and what I mean "like novaX" I mean being fast, long range, and having that ridiculous tracking that can do several 180 turns in a row!

Yeah, I mounted novaX on a large mount facing BACKWARDS, because the tracking is so good it can hit forward!


and final idea:

a EMP missile... t hat is a missile, not energy weapon. lots of missile+energy weapons exist that deal EMP but "count as energy", meanwhile I had a missile centric build and couldn't use these.

The most powerful weapon of my flagship right  now is a medium missile! it is a ion torpedo (I dunno what mod it came from, don't remember), it looks like a reaper but is blue and has some tracking (it is not totally dumbfire like most torpedos), when it hits big ships it spawns lightning everywhere and looks super cool and deals a lot off damage. I find kinda sad that the medium missile is more powerful than my large missiles.
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #474 on: June 20, 2022, 10:00:36 AM »

More suggestion:

While playing with missile-heavy ship I found out your superweapons are mostly not that useful (except the novaX), because they tend to kill your own fleet too easily.
If with missile fleet you mean the Cluster Torpedo then this is no ordinary missile, it's a nuke, it has a special case scenario, the rest of missile weapons in this mod doesn't have friendly fire.
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speeder

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #475 on: June 20, 2022, 11:26:12 AM »

I actually mixed up one of the missiles I tried with another mod.

So, I tried cluster torpedo and indeed kills your own fleet.

Other thing I tried was "singularity torpedo", it is from another mod, but has similar OP costs, and will also similarly happily kill your own fleet.
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PeopleThief

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #476 on: June 20, 2022, 01:49:40 PM »

Man, I don't know how many times I have repeated that I believe for FUTURE additions you should have DIFFERENT downsides (that don't break your own content under 99% of common gameplay instances), and yet you keep replying as I'm asking to remove the ones that are already in and with no other downside as a substitute.
There are NO other possible downsides to add to Superweapons, friendly fire is the only one available aside from self damage (which i hate since it either does nothing or make the weapon unusable).
wdym NO other possible downsides? Just to list a few, on a weaker but still powerful superweapon you could have something that weakens all other weapons on the ship, extreme damage but incredibly short range (like 50) would be cool, on a medium slot superweapon you could have something that reduces ship stats for the rest of combat everytime it is fired, a weapon that only functions if you have multiple supporting weapons in other slots whose projectiles would combine into a projectile that actually does damage, etc...
And that is just a couple options, there are many other possibilities.
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #477 on: June 20, 2022, 02:18:53 PM »

Close range is not a good downside as it can be bypassed by having the weapon installed on a ship with SO, you get speed, damage and flux dissipation to do anything you want, and there are so many ships in the game that have a large slot and can afford to install SO.
As for weakening 'other' weapons, i like that downside, will surely consider it when i make future weapons, and for requiring support weapons to work, my next weapon already has that and it will scale up in efficiency the more of them you have.
All and all i still think that friendly fire is a reasonable downside for the broken weapons in the "legendary" category, and so i won't change them.
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speeder

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #478 on: June 20, 2022, 03:22:13 PM »

Arma Armature has some weapons that degrade flux dissipation if you install with other weapons with same property. It would play nice if you used that same property too in weapons oyu want to prevent people from spamming :) Also would prevent people from using ArmaA superweapons alongside yours. (unless they eat the flux).

See weapon "curvy laser" for what I am talking about.
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Mira Lendin

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Re: [0.95.1a] Superweapons Arsenal v2.4 The power of a thousand sun!
« Reply #479 on: June 21, 2022, 12:10:02 PM »

Arma Armature has some weapons that degrade flux dissipation if you install with other weapons with same property. It would play nice if you used that same property too in weapons oyu want to prevent people from spamming :) Also would prevent people from using ArmaA superweapons alongside yours. (unless they eat the flux).

See weapon "curvy laser" for what I am talking about.
Superweapons won't suffer much from that downside as only 1 on a ship is more than enough to do the job, the problem is spamming multiple Superweapons on a 'fleet' (As in every ship has 1 Superweapon), this is prevented by friendly fire on the best Superweapons like the Cluster torpedo.
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