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Author Topic: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!  (Read 23232 times)

Linnis

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #60 on: October 09, 2021, 10:45:29 AM »

The fighter OP cost problem is a real mess right now. On things like astral the OP is really generous, but putting weapons on that large, expensive, fragile thing seems to be counter productive. But on ships like Heron a few fighters already takes up a majority of the OP and turns the heron into a dedicated carrier only ship which is a shame. The only ship that seems like it can carry and fight is the Legion due to being able to fight at extreme range with its fighters and guns. Cheaper fighters OP wise could really help with the current situation.
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Megas

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #61 on: October 09, 2021, 11:24:59 AM »

From 0.8 to 0.9.1, fighters were better missiles than missiles.  Now, Locusts and ECCM'ed MIRVs are (or act as) better fighters than fighters, and they are generally (but not always, in case of Gryphon and Atlas 2) carried by full-blown warships with enough OP and stats to use their guns.

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Cheaper fighters OP wise could really help with the current situation.
Only partly.  Expanded Deck Crew is another OP hog (kind of like Expanded Missile Racks for missile users), and a carrier that wants a viable weapons package also needs ITU (and wants Expanded Missile Racks too if mounting missiles).  Legion is lucky, it has the mounts and OP to do both viably.  Legion14 has the option for missiles instead of fighters.  The other dedicated carriers do not have the OP (or in Condor/Mora's case, lack of good mounts) to support guns after they spend all the OP they need for their fighters and deck.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2021, 11:47:37 AM by Megas »
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Thaago

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #62 on: October 09, 2021, 11:49:56 AM »

Treating fighters as missiles or vice versa sounds like a good way to not get good use out of either... they are entirely different weapon systems, with different strengths, weaknesses, and ability to be commanded from the tactical map.
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Megas

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #63 on: October 09, 2021, 12:03:51 PM »

Treating fighters as missiles or vice versa sounds like a good way to not get good use out of either... they are entirely different weapon systems, with different strengths, weaknesses, and ability to be commanded from the tactical map.
I treat them that way because of the way they preformed in battle, not the other way around.

With my skill selection (no Leadership, wants ECM and other skills instead of carrier buffs short of wraparound), there is no way I can buff carriers, beyond Expanded Deck Crew on all carriers.  I used fighters like in last release.  Before late-game, they were okay, not optimal but they were not totally useless.  Took too long to kill weak pirates.  Once I started fighting late-game enemies, fighters dropped like flies and carriers quickly became the weakest links.  I replaced the carriers with more warships and noticed better performance.  Then near the end when I started fighting Radiants semi-regularly, I went from more warships to more Dooms (since Ziggurat and Radiant are huge hangar queens, and I need backup ships to pilot after one fight).

P.S.  As for why carriers are weaker now than last release?  I think:
* Weaker Expanded Deck Crew.  (Only 40% of the stat boost from before.)
* Enemy fleets with superior officer power.  (More enemies with skills to resist damage, and player without specific skills and/or whack-a-mole mercs to even up officer power starts with 40% of DP pool instead of 50%-60%.)
« Last Edit: October 09, 2021, 12:44:03 PM by Megas »
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SafariJohn

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #64 on: October 09, 2021, 04:47:22 PM »

Fighters would be a lot more fun to command and less like missiles if they would just stay on the target/mission you gave them until recalled.

Want to dump missiles on a pesky frigate while your bombers are in the middle of a run? Can't do that. Targeting the frigate will *** your bombing run.
Want to have your fighters fly around harassing things while you attack a ship? Can't do that. Targeting the ship will bring all your fighters running.


Other thing that is really irritating is like Megas said: lose all your fighters and your carrier can't do anything for a long while. What kind of fun is that? It makes fighter carriers un-fun to fly because all it takes is your fighters meandering into the Talon/whatever escort swarm that AI fleets love to do and all your little botes are gone.

I wish fighters couldn't deathball - then they could get skill buffs and stuff without inevitably becoming the be-all end-all strat.
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JAL28

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #65 on: October 09, 2021, 07:52:53 PM »

(since Ziggurat and Radiant are huge hangar queens, and I need backup ships to pilot after one fight).

Wait, Radiant as Hangar Queen? No way man, Radiant is one of the most broken vanilla capitals to exist, and is literally the sole reason why anyone chooses Automated Ships skill(and evidently you chose it, because you cannot obtain Radiants or any automated ships otherwise). A Radiant with a good loadout can solo a lot of things, including:
Spoiler
- Onslaught
- Paragon
- Conquest
- Most, if not all cruisers
- Anything slow enough to be unable to avoid its frontal barrage(includes many destroyers too)
- Other Radiants(close battle though)
- Single Tesseract(can kill the main dorito and subsequent shards, but dies to aspect swarm generated)
[close]
It's a killing machine, an Onslaught that's capable of catching 50% of enemies in the game. Phase Skimmer and Omni shield means it can catch ships trying to flank it. It has insane hull stats and coupled with HA and HS, with its already busted flux/dam, it can literally take an entire warfleet's beating while it single-mindedly slaughters its target, while still being able to escape with minimal damage(Phase Skimmer). And even better, it costs nothing compared to other high-tech(40 sup/month? That's literally a steal for a remnant ship). Unless you're using one of the autoshit loadouts it often gets(severely reducing its combat prowess) it should definitely be a mainstay in any fleet going up against tough enemies. Really, the only thing it gets hardcountered by is phase ships, but most ships get hardcounted by those anyway.
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Megas

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #66 on: October 10, 2021, 07:07:39 AM »

Wait, Radiant as Hangar Queen? No way man, Radiant is one of the most broken vanilla capitals to exist, and is literally the sole reason why anyone chooses Automated Ships skill(and evidently you chose it, because you cannot obtain Radiants or any automated ships otherwise). A Radiant with a good loadout can solo a lot of things, including:
Radiant is a hangar queen because with only Reliability Engineering boosting its CR, Radiant with alpha core only has 45% max CR.  After one round of fighting, it is in yellow malfunction territory.  It takes few days to recover enough CR back out of malfunction levels, and I consider Efficiency Overhaul mandatory on Radiant just to get out of the yellow faster.  Same deal with Hyperion without bonus max CR.  Ziggurat takes hangar queening up to eleven (and it is not all that good for its cost without the same skills that make Doom overpowered).

In situations that involve multiple fights, it does not matter how overpowered a ship is if it is good only for one fight.  There is only one Ziggurat, and player can only support one Radiant (or two with skills I did not use).

The two reasons I chose Automated Ships:
* Special Modifications is permanent:  Unable to respec out of.
* Compulsive looting:  Gotta have all the ships, and Automated Ships is the only way to catch-em-all.

If Spec.Mods was not permanent, I probably would have respec'ed out of Automated Ships (after collecting all the ships) for Spec.Mods (because I want my flagship to be overpowered, and I cannot pilot Radiant).  Similarly, I avoided Leadership because I did not want to lock my skills into more officers.

Quote
Fighters would be a lot more fun to command and less like missiles if they would just stay on the target/mission you gave them until recalled.

Want to dump missiles on a pesky frigate while your bombers are in the middle of a run? Can't do that. Targeting the frigate will *** your bombing run.
Want to have your fighters fly around harassing things while you attack a ship? Can't do that. Targeting the ship will bring all your fighters running.
Also, fighters used to capture points on the map, and fighters could be commanded to explore the map covered by fog-of-war and look for hidden enemies.  They cannot do any of that ever since 0.8a.  Also, fighters have an annoying leash because they are effectively missiles now (they used to have unlimited range, and carrier need not be deployed if rebuilding in mid-battle was not necessary), and we cannot have long-range combat in a game designed for gundams beating each other over their heads with glowing metal sticks.

The main reasons why I say Locusts and ECCM'ed MIRVs are better fighters than fighters is because they kill ships and (with Expanded Missile Racks), take more time to run out of ammo than it does for unskilled fighters to die en masse until they reach 30% and stay there for the rest of the fight.  Fighters have more in common with small missiles or Pilums than the large homing missiles.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2021, 07:58:35 AM by Megas »
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Vanshilar

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #67 on: October 13, 2021, 05:27:50 PM »

Nah Hyperion doesn't come close to a cruiser like Fury. Using a fleet of Doom (myself) as flagship, 5 Furies with cryoblaster/sabot/xyphos, and 5 Hyperions with cryoblaster/heavy blaster/heavy machine gun (non-SO, but elite Helmsmanship and I had wolfpack tactics), against my 2-Ordos testing fleet (including 7 Radiants), the Furies did way more than the Hyperions. The results ended up being:

Doom (me) did 39% of the damage and received 2% damage taken
5 Furies did 40% of the damage and received 71% damage taken
5 Hyperions did 21% of the damage and received 26% damage taken

Not only did the Furies do almost twice as much damage as the Hyperions, they also tanked the bulk of the incoming damage -- their flux did double duty. The Hyperions basically sniped and harassed but couldn't really stand up to much damage, so they had to back off under any kind of fire. (Of course, I myself piloting the Doom flagship didn't take much damage, but as least I did more damage. Then again, I could pilot a Shrike and still deal the most damage in the fleet; the player is simply much better at gauging risk vs opportunity than the AI.)

Hyperion is good for certain things, but not really cruiser-level in terms of effectiveness (even though I still maintain that they're basically a light cruiser that's deliberately "downsized" to a frigate to keep the power of TP in check).

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RustyCabbage

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #68 on: October 13, 2021, 06:38:47 PM »

Honestly, no Sabots and no SO makes it seem like you're not exactly setting up your Hyperions for success. I don't think it's surprising that the ship with up to 200-350 extra dissipation and 1-2 Sabot Pods has higher DPS than that Hyperion build.

intrinsic_parity

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #69 on: October 13, 2021, 10:32:58 PM »

Yeah Hyperion is hamstrung without SO, it's like 60% weaker. Not to mention that fury is pretty clearly overpowered on this patch and not a fair representation of cruisers. It should be worth at least 22 DP IMO, on par with an eagle.
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Vanshilar

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #70 on: October 14, 2021, 02:11:56 AM »

Sure, go ahead and suggest your own SO Hyperion loadout then (including officer skills). I was just going by what I saw in the screenshot (I thought it was heavy blaster/HMG/cryoblaster, turns out it was cryoflamer not cryoblaster). Even using SO Hyperions (cryoblaster/cryoflamer/sabot), their damage percentage increases somewhat but still behind on the Furies:

Doom (me) did 36% of the damage and took 3% of the incoming damage
5 Furies did 37% of the damage and took 66% of the incoming damage
5 Hyperions did 25% of the damage and took 31% of the incoming damage

(One Hyperion died toward the end, while trying to teleport in the middle of a tachyon burst even though it was at low flux, but I didn't feel like re-running it; at that point it wouldn't have mattered that much anyway.)

The Furies still did a lot more than the Hyperions. From Alex's comments it seems like the Furies will be bumped up to 20 DP, so they can be counted as 33% more expensive than Hyperions (in fact I've already adjusted their DP to 20 in ships_data.csv to play that way), but they did about 50% more damage. They also tanked more than double of the damage. Plus, these Furies use Xyphos, so they are also providing PD and incapacitating enemy ships, whereas the Hyperions are pure damage. Since that's very expensive, I actually put 0 vents into the Furies, so the non-SO Hyperions actually had more vent (800 vs 720). Even so, the Furies still contributed more.

The Hyperions ended up with around 35% CR post-battle, meaning they ended the fight with around 75% CR. Although the fight would've taken much longer had I and the Furies not been there, i.e. if it were pure Hyperions. But even taking 35% CR post-battle, this means they would take around 8 days to repair, costing around 32.5 supplies each. Whereas the Furies would be back to full after 3 days, costing around 16.5 supplies each. So each Hyperion costs about double the supplies to use. Not to mention, on a pure damage basis you'd need 3 Hyperions for 2 Furies, so they're really about 3x the supplies. Then you have to consider the tanking and the fleet PD/incapacitation roles that the Furies are also providing, which are what enables the fleet to do its damage in the first place. So pretty soon the Hyperions aren't really worth it. They're good versus smaller, easier fleets, but not big ones. Or maybe have a couple to grab waypoints early and help harass the enemy fleet, but then that's about it.

There *are* a number of ships which can actually beat the Furies in contributing more damage on a per-DP basis (especially when the Fury is considered as 20 DP), though I don't use them as the backbone of the fleet for a variety of reasons. The Odyssey for example will do more damage and tank more damage, even when accounting for its 45 DP to the Fury's (future) 20 DP. (Surprisingly, I found that HIL/cryoblaster does better than plasma cannons, although the latter should mean more DPS.) But fielding multiple Odysseys means not enough ships means they get surrounded, so best to use 1 or 2. The Onslaught can also pull its weight. The Doom (when piloted by the AI) usually does enough damage to pull its weight, but its greatest asset is as a distraction to prevent the enemy fleet from getting too concentrated, similar to my role as the Doom flagship. The Apogee can also do surprisingly well in terms of damage (although again HIL does better than plasma cannon for whatever reason), but it's too slow to chase down frigates. And of course whichever ship the player is piloting, assuming an at least minimally competent player.

So it's not as if the Fury is uniquely overpowered. However, the Fury is useful (for me, anyway) as a yardstick to measure ship effectiveness in late-game i.e. vs Ordos fleets. And in this case the Hyperion doesn't hold up, even with SO.

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intrinsic_parity

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #71 on: October 14, 2021, 09:26:51 AM »

I don't think raw damage dealt and damage taken statistics are really a good representation of effectiveness for a number of reasons:

If you kill things faster, you will sometimes deal less damage and take less damage than if you are part of an extended brawl involving multiple vent cycles (this happens to slow capital ships a lot). Some ships really build up damage number without actually killing things quickly. The end goal is to kill things, not to maximize damage dealt.

If you bypass/avoid shields in any way, you will deal less total damage. Hyperion TP can do this, smaller phase ships and some fast frigates can also do this to some extent.

If you are small and fast, the enemy will miss you a lot and you will take less damage, but you are still occupying all the damage output that is fired at you. On the flip side, if you have a massive shield (i.e. odyssey), you will eat a ton of damage that you don't actually want to. You would rather that damage miss you so that you have more flux capacity for damage output. Tanking damage on shields is actually undesirable, you would much rather occupy the damage potential by dodging, or even simply staying out of weapon arcs entirely, but it's difficult to represent that statistically.

If you cause an enemy to not shoot (say in order to turn around to face you, or to chase you away from he battle) you are also occupying their damage potential without tanking any damage or possibly not even dealing any more damage. That's still valuable, but it's not entirely clear how to measure that value. This is why small ships tend to outperform pure capitals, they can spread out and occupy enemy aggression.

Ion damage/knocking weapons offline will decrease the amount of damage you take, which is good. Another way to occupy damage potential without actually tanking damage.

Basically I think just saying 'this ships tanks and deals more damage' is not necessarily a helpful analysis of effectiveness.

I'm not even saying hyperion is better, just that the analysis isn't all that insightful. Fury and doom are almost certainly better on this patch, because they are unbalanced (as thoroughly discussed elsewhere on the forum).

Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.

My Hyperion loadout is usually cryoblaster/HB  + HB + ion pulser, with SO, hardened subsystems, hardened shields, extended shields and efficiency overhaul but hmg might be better for remnants. The officer would be agressive and have shield modulation, the CR skill, target analysis, systems expertise and energy weapon modulation (elite). I haven't spent any time optimizing it specifically for remnants because I don't care about that in particular, so I'm not claiming it's the best, but it does work for me.
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Thaago

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #72 on: October 14, 2021, 09:32:42 AM »

I agree that damage taken isn't a good metric for ship performance, and lower is usually better instead of the reverse.

For damage, I agree that for shield damage comparison is difficult, but hull damage dealt should be pretty reliable as it doesn't regenerate and isn't locational like armor (by which I mean that you can imagine an innefficient ship stripping a whole ship of armor and racking up big numbers while an efficient ship just punches through in 1 spot). Not to say that hull damage is end all be all - after all, something needs to get the enemy shield and armor down! - but it is an accurate measure of whats getting kills.
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Megas

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #73 on: October 14, 2021, 12:15:47 PM »

Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.
In 0.95, OwR (Ordos with Radiants) are a huge spike of difficulty over even 300k+ bounties or equivalent that anything that can handle OwR will totally destroy anything in the core worlds.  Even fleets that can steamroll human NPC fleets flawlessly and reliably can struggle against OwR.  Thus, if player wants to farm OwR, having a fleet that can crush them is useful.  With my fleet and skill selection (I had Combat, Tech, and Industry at 5/5/5), I could only do it by chaining Dooms.  (Without Spec. Mods., Doom flagship was not overpowered enough to murder OwR as cleanly and efficiently as SCC did.)
« Last Edit: October 14, 2021, 12:32:31 PM by Megas »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: A Noob's Insight on: Ships!
« Reply #74 on: October 14, 2021, 02:49:16 PM »

Also for what it's worth, I don't really care too much about optimizing against ordos, I get bored way before that point. The optimal strat is probably to solo everything in a doom or chain afflictors, but I find that tedious and uninteresting.
In 0.95, OwR (Ordos with Radiants) are a huge spike of difficulty over even 300k+ bounties or equivalent that anything that can handle OwR will totally destroy anything in the core worlds.  Even fleets that can steamroll human NPC fleets flawlessly and reliably can struggle against OwR.  Thus, if player wants to farm OwR, having a fleet that can crush them is useful.  With my fleet and skill selection (I had Combat, Tech, and Industry at 5/5/5), I could only do it by chaining Dooms.  (Without Spec. Mods., Doom flagship was not overpowered enough to murder OwR as cleanly and efficiently as SCC did.)
Sure, but there is a difference between hyper-optimizing against them to maximize story point gain vs. finding something that works well enough to farm some AI cores. I was able to beat them cleanly 1 or 2 at a time, and didn't feel the need to optimize any further. Hyperion was good enough to be in that fleet. That's all I'm saying.
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