- Point Defense:
- Reduced bonus damage to fighters to +50% (was: 100%)
- Elite effect: increased PD range bonus to 200 (was: 100)
Hmm does this affect the base range of PD weapons (i.e. thus affected by ITU etc.)? Thinking this means Devastator would have a base range of 1100 and Heavy Machine Gun would have a base range of 650 (almost that of Heavy Needler), plus the light (dual) machine guns would have their base range increased to 500, which makes them almost useful as just regular weapons in their own right (albeit still short-ranged)...spicy.
- Hybrid (and other multi-type) weapons can now also be placed in a one-size-larger slot of their type like other weapons
- For example, a small hybrid weapon can be placed in a medium hybrid slot (but not in a medium energy slot)
Just wanted to note, small hybrids (like the minipulser) can already be placed into medium energy slots, and same with medium hybrids (like cryoblaster) into large energy slots. They can't be placed into ballistic slots of a larger size though. Not sure if that was intentional or not (though they say they count as energy in terms of stat modifiers).
- High Scatter Amplifier:
- Added 10% damage bonus
- Now reduces base beam range to 500/600/700 on frigates/destroyers/larger ships
- (Previously: reduced range by half)
Similar question here as the PD one: Does this also affect Advanced Optics? Since I *believe* the current HSA affects AO as well (so that AO only gives a bonus of 100 range instead of 200). Obviously the difference here is that if it does affect AO, then a cruiser using HSA would have its beam range reduced from 700*1.55 + 200 = 1285 to 700*1.55 = 1085.
Ship AI:
I read through this with interest because I think the biggest issue with the game right now is the AI. It gets many situations wrong, and in many cases, behaves counterintuitively. For me I would actually prefer improved AI over new features, although I know this varies by player (and "new and improved AI" doesn't really bring new players to the game, it's new features that do).
Generally what the player would like the AI to do (at least for front-line ships) is if it's at low flux, it should run in and fight, while if it's at high flux, it should back off and vent. But when a ship gets into trouble i.e. at high flux, I'll often see nearby ships at low flux continue to hang back. That's very much undesirable behavior. There seems to be something in the AI's "fight or flight" decision-making that says if it's close to an enemy ship, it'll rush in to get even closer (such as a Fury doing plasma burn to go nose-to-nose even though it's already in range of its shortest-ranged weapon), but if it's far enough away, it'll just hang back even at low flux -- even though other ships near it are rushing in. So I end up with ships basically nose-to-nose at high flux in the front, while ships in the back will be at low flux but make no move to head in and fight; the forward ships commit "too much" while the rearward ships commit "not enough".
I don't know if it's missiles or something else that cause this sort of behavior. It's basically unreproducible, but it happens fairly frequently -- I can give plenty of screenshots of it happening, but it's hard to tell when it's going to happen in advance to document it to diagnose what went wrong with the AI.
Something else that
is fairly reproducible though is that apparently, if an Odyssey has the plasma cannon equipped, it'll be
less likely to go in and fight, and prefer to just stay away. Again, this is opposite of desirable behavior (a ship with more weapons should be more willing to fight, not less). I'm not sure if it's a quirk with broadside behavior, or if it has something to do with the AI script you fixed up (about large ships not chasing after small ships). But this is pretty repeatable.
I posted a video of this behavior here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iImQCs4oLwoWhat you can see is that if the Odyssey has a plasma cannon, it'll stay away. But if I remove the plasma cannon, making no other changes (leaving the weapon slot empty and the 30 OP unused), it'll go in and fight. This is with reckless officers, under full assault, so they are supposed to be as aggressive as possible.
An example of the "closer ships rush in to fight, farther ships stay away" AI behavior can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QiaL46a4U8I can send you a save file if it'll help you see what's going on, although the videos show the complete fleet setup. Hope the AI can be improved to not have these sorts of issues.
(As an aside: If that large energy slot is filled with a HIL, this 3-Odyssey, 6-Hyperion fleet has a pretty good chance of killing the 2-Ordos, 7-Radiant fleet without taking any losses, all under complete AFK, AI control other than the very beginning stages of the battle where the player sets up the fleet as shown in the video. The Odysseys do the bulk of the work in mulching any ships that get close, while the Hyperions run around killing small ships and distracting the enemy fleet, preventing it from surrounding the Odysseys. So it's very close to an "automated" Ordos-farming setup, and against a 2-Ordos, 7-Radiant fleet at that for the +500% XP bonus.)
One command that might be nice in the command UI is some sort of "back off" command to a specific ship. Usually when a ship is under heavy fire, I want it to back off, but I want other ships to go in. But for example if I set an "avoid" command to get it to back off, all the nearby ships would move away instead. Nor do I necessarily want the nearby ships to rush in headlong at that "avoid" ship (by commanding them to attack that ship to override the "avoid" command for them). I simply want a particular ship to temporarily get away from nearby enemy ships, so that it doesn't stay in and die.
Also, for some reason, the AI seems to not like using the cryoblaster, even when it should. A Fury will use it just fine, but on an Onslaught for example, the ship seems to prioritize using other weapons instead, so the cryoblaster ends up being rarely used for some reason. Not sure how the AI picks whether or not to use a given weapon in different circumstances -- but it seems to not like the cryoblaster.
- Fixed issues with Hyperion's phase teleporter AI that:
- Could cause it to teleport to unsafe locations
- Could cause it to teleport away from danger too conservatively
This was sorely needed, since the Hyperion (or more generally: any ship which can teleport) should have the
highest flux threshold at which it decides to bug out, since it can at any time near-instantly move to near-guaranteed safety with teleport.
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Some analysis on the cryoblaster change:
Versus hull (assuming residual armor from 100 to 0, meaning target ship originally had from 2000 to 0 base armor), heavy blasters currently do 417-500 DPS (i.e. 417 vs 100 residual armor, 500 vs 0 residual armor) while cryoblasters do 1280-1600 DPS, accounting for hit strength. Against Damage Control (elite), cryoblasters would do 968-1160 DPS instead. With cryoblasters being changed to 1400, they will now do 1089-1400 DPS, and 853-1040 DPS against Damage Control (elite). So instead of being 3.1x heavy blaster, they'll be somewhere between 2.1x heavy blaster and 2.7x heavy blaster, depending on how much of their damage gets eaten up by Damage Control (elite). So it'll be around a 14-34% nerf for them versus hull. This is shown graphically in the attachment. (For the cryoblasters, the top line represents without Damage Control (elite), while the bottom line represents against Damage Control (elite), so the actual average damage will be somewhere in between those two lines.)
Had it been 1250, then it would've done 947-1250 DPS, or 768-950 DPS vs Damage Control (elite), for a 24-40% nerf.
Against armor, however, the cryoblaster's (effective) hit strength drops from 400 to 350, compared with heavy blaster's 500. Right now, a "stock" heavy blaster against a "stock" Radiant (i.e. 1500 armor without considering the effect of skills) would take 9 shots to break through armor, assuming it hit the same square all the time. (Hitting different armor squares would increase the number of shots needed.) A cryoblaster would currently take 13 shots. After the nerf (to 1400), it would take 16 shots. So the cryoblaster would take almost twice as long to get through armor before it gets to do its massive hull damage.
So it will be interesting to see whether or not the cryoblaster will still be useful as anti-armor, or if it ends up being better to have something else dedicated to anti-armor. Currently, it's fine to just get by with cryoblasters despite it not being as good as heavy blasters for anti-armor, because the massive anti-hull damage is worth it. That may or may not be the case after the update.
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