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Author Topic: Starsector 0.95.1a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 248859 times)

Wyvern

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #105 on: November 06, 2021, 08:33:03 PM »

Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.

You've designed yourself into a corner, there. Civilian ships simply don't have enough weapon slots to compete.
Number of weapon slots isn't even the issue... well, okay, excluding some outliers like the Buffalo, with its single energy mount, or the Colossus, whose small mounts simply don't have the firing arcs to be relevant, or the Phantom, or the... okay, number of weapon slots is sometimes the issue.

But the thing that puts the nails in the coffin of civilian ships in battle is the basic stats of the ships - speed, flux stats, ordnance points. And there's no way to trade off cargo/fuel capacity for any of those things. Imagine, for a moment, a Buffalo with the speed and flux capacity of a Medusa, a wing of broadswords in close escort, and a Rift Lance. That would be worth deploying! But you can't get even close to the sort of base stats it needs to have a place on the battlefield.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

FooF

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #106 on: November 06, 2021, 08:42:00 PM »

I feel similarly, I was surprised that people were worried about it being too good. My biggest issue with the current mauler was the low DPS and that got even worse. The AI also loves to fire HE into shields so I'm imagining a world where the AI just fires the mauler into shields constantly and the long cool down means it does even less armor/hull damage. I like the concept of making it more bursty, but the numbers seem pretty bad to me.

Modify the weapons file and try it (seriously). It's different: neither better nor worse. You do end up dumping bursts into shields but you were hitting shields before, too. If anything, now that the Mauler is more flux efficient, when you do hit shields, you've wasted slightly less. When you do have an opening, you do more damage to a localized area. I think the exchange is fair.

Overall DPS is always going to be low. You can't have near-perfect accuracy, 1000 range, and high damage/shot without a trade-off. Supposedly, the high OP cost is part of that but I just don't think high DPS is in the cards: it would make the Heavy Mauler too optimal across the board. Pre-Nerf Mauler was OP so I can't see us going back to that. That said, with the limited playtesting I've had with the Nu-Mauler, the 5 second reload felt too long and if that was shored up a little, DPS would a tad higher and it would feel a little less anemic.

@Megas

Flux on Nu-Mauler is overall 120 flux/sec with a 1.0 dps/flux value. It's 600 flux per burst (over .6 seconds). The flux cost really isn't that bad. Also, when I inserted it into my game, I presumed perfect accuracy. That may not be the case but it has to be really low to justify the cost. With perfect accuracy, I think it's a good-not-great weapon: I can't imagine what it would be like if there were recoil issues.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #107 on: November 06, 2021, 08:49:57 PM »

I tend to fire HE into shields because 1) AI will not try to flicker shields to counter kinetic-only volleys when HE is mixed in and 2) even HE can add up on shields (unless they have Impact Mitigation 2).

I suppose 600 flux might not be a big deal for one mauler, although multiple maulers could be mounted.
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Caymon Joestar

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #108 on: November 06, 2021, 09:39:38 PM »

Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.

You've designed yourself into a corner, there. Civilian ships simply don't have enough weapon slots to compete.
Number of weapon slots isn't even the issue... well, okay, excluding some outliers like the Buffalo, with its single energy mount, or the Colossus, whose small mounts simply don't have the firing arcs to be relevant, or the Phantom, or the... okay, number of weapon slots is sometimes the issue.

But the thing that puts the nails in the coffin of civilian ships in battle is the basic stats of the ships - speed, flux stats, ordnance points. And there's no way to trade off cargo/fuel capacity for any of those things. Imagine, for a moment, a Buffalo with the speed and flux capacity of a Medusa, a wing of broadswords in close escort, and a Rift Lance. That would be worth deploying! But you can't get even close to the sort of base stats it needs to have a place on the battlefield.

A Broadsword wing and a rift lance even with the speed and flux capacity of a medusa isn't really enough for to actually kill anything bigger than frigate and even then, I'm not convinced. Weapon slots for some of the civilian ships really are THAT bad. If it had at least 2 more small energies for like 3 ir pulse lasers or if we are really sticking with the idea of 1 small energy, 2 Wings of broadswords instead of 1. Then MAYBE Someone would consider it in a pinch.
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BaBosa

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #109 on: November 07, 2021, 12:08:41 AM »

First, Alex this update looks amazing and almost a major update in it’s own right.
The skill rework looks *mwah* magnificent, the less variable weapons load out for all ships will be great if it works like it did for redacted.
The new low tech ship and rugged constructed hullmod is exactly what low tech frigates have been missing.
Max level officer retraining, cheaper cargo pod stabilisation, patrol distractions, defend assignments, thumper burst changes, HSA rework are all awesome and amazing and aren’t the only small but great changes so thank you.


I suppose 600 flux might not be a big deal for one mauler, although multiple maulers could be mounted.
Set them on alternating, that would even out the flux and damage over time.
And about the worries of the low DPS, the increased accuracy means actual DPS will probably be up as there will be less misses and the burst and accuracy means that you can shred armour much better. It won’t be too good at actually taking out hull but kinetic can do that reasonably enough anyway. So overall it fulfils the niche of taking out armour at long range better. You can put it on cheap frigates and destroyers and they might actually do something against low tech cruisers and capitals. It may need tweaking like 0.5 or 1 sec faster cycle but otherwise I think it’s in a good place. It’s not as good as a suppressor to prevent shield flicker but then it can be paired or replaced with HVD which does respectable armour and emp damage anyway and so whether the shield is up or down it’s effective.
I’m gonna try putting it on some hounds and have them just plink from long range.


With civilian ships, you can’t make full civilian ships like the buffalo good combat ships, not without buffing it to the wazoo and going crazy. That’s just not worth even trying.
Ships like the mule, gemini, kite, colossus mks and such though, especially with the increased burn bonus from skill means that militarised subsystems can actually be reserved for ships that will fight rather than using it for the burn bonus.
Spoiler
Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.

You've designed yourself into a corner, there. Civilian ships simply don't have enough weapon slots to compete. The only role I have figured without redoing all the sprites is to let civ ships become bricks: can't really deal damage, but able to soak lots of damage to take pressure off of the real combat ships.

I suggest replacing Assault Package with 2 hullmods: one super-buffs flux capacity, the other super-buffs hull. In exchange they neuter all of the ship's logistics stats and have a high enough OP cost that most civilian ships can't fit both.

(Escort Package should be rebranded as a normal hullmod bc it is cool. Militarized Subsystems should not make a civilian ship count as a combat ship for skill buffs.)
[close]
SafariJohn made a lot of good points that I won’t repeat, but to add, making combat civilian ships work as damage soaking bricks with just enough firepower to not be ignored would be a good niche that doesn’t really have other ships filling it (they either have damage, armour and or dissipation as well). Making the hullmod reduce cargo, fuel and crew carrying capacity to low side of standard combat ship amounts and then significantly increasing capacity or hull per unit reduced would automatically scale the benefit between those that don’t need it so much like venture and atlas mkII and those that do like gemini and even make the original colossus into an interesting meme. I can just imagine it like a truck parking in front of a paragon and rolling down their windows to swear at them for honking ;D
It would also let it have very low OP.


Question, why Scarab OP reduced?


With carriers, I actually think how they are is pretty good. They’re frankly, boring to use, they can be fun to watch but I don’t think personal skills are necessary for that. I suspect why some people really want them is because they used to be really strong and they have fundamental advantages over weapons with much longer ranges and don’t produce flux or have limited missiles.
Not really having any reason to add officers to them is a bit of a problem though. A possible idea is a officer only skill that gives the fleet wide skill effects onto just their ship and remove that ship’s fighter bays from the fleet wide skill count. That will also help if we just want 1 carrier or all carriers. Which could actually be fine if the reduce weapon variability means more consistent point defence. Then 4 other skills can then be filled by the likes of system expertise, helmsmanship and ballistic mastery.
Otherwise I think if someone wants to focus on fighters that may be better suited for mods.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2021, 12:30:37 AM by BaBosa »
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TaLaR

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #110 on: November 07, 2021, 12:27:38 AM »

New Heavy Mauler seems extremely weak, it's too easy to shield flicker against and AI already can exploit this weakness somewhat decently when at high flux (but doesn't try to apply this tactic to conserve flux for offense, the way a player would).
I suspect that an Eagle with it will just get cornered and slaughtered in AI vs AI sim fight by almost same build, but using Heavy Mortars instead.
I feel similarly, I was surprised that people were worried about it being too good. My biggest issue with the current mauler was the low DPS and that got even worse. The AI also loves to fire HE into shields so I'm imagining a world where the AI just fires the mauler into shields constantly and the long cool down means it does even less armor/hull damage. I like the concept of making it more bursty, but the numbers seem pretty bad to me.

Yeah another point is that new Mauler also requires different handling. It was a pressure weapon to fire constantly, now it is a manual fire burst weapon. Ideally timed to arrive split second after kinetic projectiles on enemy already at high flux. And AI treats everything as pressure weapons...
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SCC

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #111 on: November 07, 2021, 12:31:49 AM »

Maybe im off base here but i have strong opinions on this:
On the Hull Restoration skill and similar effects: To me, this just seems way too stacked in terms of usefulness, it basically nullifies ship losses, removes d mods on obtained ships and even gives you a significant CR boost. With how easy it is to also scoop up salvageable ships thanks to story points, overall i feel like its too easy and cheap to obtain and repair ships compared to 0.91 which was the polar opposite.
As far as I am concerned, this is easy: the cost of Hull Restoration is not getting the skills that actually improve your fleet's performance. In a choice between, say, Automated Ships and Hull Restoration, I will definitely go with Automated Ships.

Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.
You've designed yourself into a corner, there. Civilian ships simply don't have enough weapon slots to compete.
Number of weapon slots isn't even the issue... well, okay, excluding some outliers like the Buffalo, with its single energy mount, or the Colossus, whose small mounts simply don't have the firing arcs to be relevant, or the Phantom, or the... okay, number of weapon slots is sometimes the issue.
Sometimes? As far as I am concerned, all dedicated freighters have not enough mounts or mounts not good enough (or both), and so do all liners, and so do Dram and Phaeton. That leaves combat freighters (which, as the name suggests, are meant to do some combat anyway and sometimes get deployed for a good reason) and Prometheus. And even Prometheus's weaponry is destroyer-grade...
I think it would be more worthwhile to simply get rid of such a thing as a "dedicated logistic ship" and make all of them like current combat freighters. If all ships are meant to participate in combat, they have to be built for it.

It was budget choice for (P) themed fleets
Budget? Falcon (P) is basically an elite pirate ship and the best ship in their roster.

Yeah, I kinda find it odd that all the hybrid Omega weapons are basically "energy but fits in a ballistic slot". Including the ones that feel like they ought to be 'ballistic at heart', like Volatile Particle Driver (compare with Mjolnir Cannon).
It's very simple: high-tech ships are balanced by having crap weapons, so if it fits in an energy slot, it has to compete with energy weapons. Hybrid and synergy weapons can't outcompete energy weapons as much as ballistics do, so you don't get Cabal Auroras and Odysseys in vanilla. Even composite weapons can't be allowed to fully pick between two good weapon types, because if you made it sort of ballistic-like, high-tech ships with all their missile slots compatible with composite weapons are going to love it.
Ever since Alex said multi-type weapons means weapons that can be mounted in multiple mount types, not ones restricted to multi-type mounts, I knew it would be a pain in the neck to do anything fun with it. Good ballistic weapons have to be exclusively ballistic.
It's also goddamn criminal that in a game where one kind of ships has good weapons and bad ships, and the other has bad weapons and fun ships, it's the latter that gets all the fun weapons.

And AI treats everything as pressure weapons...
Alex, where is my perfect play AI?

JaronK

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #112 on: November 07, 2021, 12:42:51 AM »

I'll just say that this is something we've talked about internally - but, don't want to go into details in case nothing comes of it. But I also don't think that having a 3 skills total is *that* much more interesting, given that the skills are all fairly general-purpose boosts anyway.

They interesting thing would be to expand the list.  Have administrators with specific abilities, like boosted volatiles production specifically, or something that reduces specific penalties, or similar.  Basically, just more specific, so you're trying to find the right administrator for each of your worlds.
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BaBosa

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #113 on: November 07, 2021, 01:07:30 AM »

And AI treats everything as pressure weapons...
Alex, where is my perfect play AI?
Spoiler
In his secret basement lair. Plotting  :-X
[close]


I'll just say that this is something we've talked about internally - but, don't want to go into details in case nothing comes of it. But I also don't think that having a 3 skills total is *that* much more interesting, given that the skills are all fairly general-purpose boosts anyway.

They interesting thing would be to expand the list.  Have administrators with specific abilities, like boosted volatiles production specifically, or something that reduces specific penalties, or similar.  Basically, just more specific, so you're trying to find the right administrator for each of your worlds.

That’s basically just the colony items except you can only have one per colony which would make other people complain. Also they have a salary, a different picture and interface. That’s it.
The bigger issue I see is that with only one skill, there’s not really a reason to have administrators. It is almost (though not quite) worthwhile just removing them and increasing the number of colonies a player can manage.


A possible future direction to take them is to give them a more fundamental impact.
Like make it so that colonies you own are the baseline and that factions will attack them based on your relationship with them. So if you are hostile with everyone, then you defend against a lot of attacks.
But then if you hire an administrator, the relationship impact is reduced because you are seperate from the functioning of the colony.
And to compensate, the income you earn from the colony is reduced the more it is Lessening negative relationships.
Then you could also possibly hire faction affiliated administrators which further reduces income but instead increases relationship and maybe other bonuses.
And maybe administrated colonies could have a free market you interact with because it is separated from you plus they improve the colony automatically.

Basically colonies you manage are personal projects that you put a lot of effort in and earn a lot from (income would probably need like a x2 multipler to account for the greater amount of effort to defend from factions or make them happy.)
Then administrated colonies would be slower but more low effort income streams, maybe with some faction interplay.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2021, 01:32:04 AM by BaBosa »
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pairedeciseaux

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #114 on: November 07, 2021, 02:10:05 AM »

Seeing some people are worried about Scarab OP budget reduction, I was curious and just gave a quick look at variants: on paper, going from 60 to 55 means one less hullmod and maybe one less vent. Not a big deal in my opinion.

Spoiler
It's true some loadouts that were already hard to balance (*), like having more than one AMB and trying to use all weapon slots, will be even harder with 55 OP. But Scarab ought to remain a very good ship thanks to its good flux stats, good hull, good shield, and crazy ship system.

(*) I mean the balancing act of choosing a loadout viable for several situations, from a player perspective

Beside Hyperion at 65 OP, Scarab is an outlier at 60: most military frigates we would compare it to are at 50 or 55. Something to consider: hullmods are so cheap on frigates, having a high OP budget means it is possible abuse the system and get (too) many hullmods and turn this very good ship into a little monster as dangerous as a destroyer, even without the multiplying effect of skills and build-in hullmods (S-mods).

Of course, it would also be possible to go the other way around: leave stats as is, set deployment cost at 10 or something. In any case, something has to be done about Scarab, right?
[close]
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Amoebka

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #115 on: November 07, 2021, 04:11:07 AM »

Quote
Auxiliary Support: removed

Boooooooo.

Excited for the rest, though.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #116 on: November 07, 2021, 04:54:46 AM »

Set them on alternating, that would even out the flux and damage over time.
Not helpful on a big ship, like on Onslaught or Conquest, where I have one mauler pointed left and another pointed right.

Also, AI does not always maintain alternating perfectly (like if it wants to spam its missiles, it will fire them one-two-three and mostly override alternating).  I find alternating useful mostly for manual control of missiles.  Alternating is a pain to use on guns meant to fire automatically.

Maybe im off base here but i have strong opinions on this:
On the Hull Restoration skill and similar effects: To me, this just seems way too stacked in terms of usefulness, it basically nullifies ship losses, removes d mods on obtained ships and even gives you a significant CR boost. With how easy it is to also scoop up salvageable ships thanks to story points, overall i feel like its too easy and cheap to obtain and repair ships compared to 0.91 which was the polar opposite.
As far as I am concerned, this is easy: the cost of Hull Restoration is not getting the skills that actually improve your fleet's performance. In a choice between, say, Automated Ships and Hull Restoration, I will definitely go with Automated Ships.
Classic case of QoL vs. combat power, like taking Navigation or Sensors instead of another combat skill the player wants more and gives up QoL because he does not have enough points for both QoL and combat power.

In my case, I probably take Hull Restoration because it gets tiring reloading the game after a single mistake, and reloading is faster than grinding a few hours to recover money and progress lost to the rust monsters in a game with combat rewards balanced mostly on flawless victories.  And the AI is incompetent enough and/or player does not have enough control to prevent all casualties, except in fights where player can auto-resolve them away in a pursuit battle (which do not need combat ships to get free kills, just send in the barely armed civvies and clunkers to do it).

That said, getting Hull Restoration would interfere with getting Tech 8 and enough combat skills to dominate with Radiant flagship.

P.S.  With Hull Restoration, fixing Remnants, Ziggurat, and other ships acquired only by looting them (after battle) cheap is nice.  Fixing ships is bloody expensive, especially capitals.  Ziggurat is especially pricey with its restoration being close to two million credits, and the restoration skill removing the d-mods from it (and other capitals with repair bills close to a million a pop) is especially nice.  Endgame bounties only give about 300k per bounty, and the loot goes toward replacing what the player's fleet consumed on the trip.  This is why I write the game's rewards assume flawless victories, and the hull restoration skill extend that threshold from flawless victory to lose a few ships.  (Field Repairs was good only for one or two ships, including those looted from battle, which can send threshold back to flawless victory so player can fix the new former enemy ships in his lifetime.)
« Last Edit: November 07, 2021, 05:36:52 AM by Megas »
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Gothars

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #117 on: November 07, 2021, 07:59:40 AM »

Basically, the goal was to see some more true-civilian ships in battle, and that didn't work out at all.

Maybe the assault/escort package could be preserved to change their role to an emergency option by increasing deployment cost. For me civilian ships never really made sense as part of my regular combat force. But I have sometimes resorted to deploying them when I'm about to lose a fight, as distractions. That was actually fun, it felt like a "really giving it my all" sort of thing. Hullmods that support and expand that would be great. Maybe they increase deployment cost so much you can only deploy a civ ships once, in an emergency, but then in acts like an SO ship.

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SafariJohn

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #118 on: November 07, 2021, 08:23:03 AM »

If you are deploying civ ships with the expectation of losing some, you are already desperate - losing extra supplies after the battle seems irrelevant.


I think it would be more worthwhile to simply get rid of such a thing as a "dedicated logistic ship" and make all of them like current combat freighters. If all ships are meant to participate in combat, they have to be built for it.

I agree. The one place where pure logistics ships could be fun, blowing them up in pursuit battles, is much more quickly and satisfyingly autoresolved.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.95.1a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #119 on: November 07, 2021, 08:38:58 AM »

Radical idea:  Turn all the dedicated logistics ships into carriers and greatly expand cargo for current carriers that are expected to spend most OP on good fighters and deck crew.  Currently, most carriers feel like dedicated logistics/civilian ships that haul fighters instead of cargo.
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