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Author Topic: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it  (Read 8504 times)

Grievous69

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Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« on: November 14, 2021, 02:04:41 PM »

Well the title pretty much sums up how I feel about it, I'm still not sure if it actually needs some changes or not so this is why this is not in Suggestions. I want to hear the opinions of elders here heh.

Anyways I want to start by saying I absolutely love these drastic hull mods that completely change how a ship plays (new High scatter amplifier also comes to mind). These are truly great and bring a nice dose of fresh air when you already experimented a ton with the "base" ship. And in this specific case, I think SO is a super cool mod that made some ships more viable than they could've been otherwise. The playstyle it enables is also very fun and much different than the usual combat. Long story short I'd hate it if it ever got removed or something drastic happened to it.

BUT! Part of me thinks it's way too much currently. I kinda wish it gets Hardened shield treatment with reduced effects it gives, but also reduced OP costs. Yes, that steps on the toes of the very thing it achieves with some ships, but frankly I feel it's too extreme (binary may also be the word I'm looking for here). In a way that it transforms a crap ship into a scary piece of metal that can now cut through your fleet. Fighting a horde of SO ships is cancer, even more so than phase ships imo. The whole thing is supercharging ships to bring them multiple power levels up, at the expense of PPT. Which means in the end, it's just a win harder/faster hull mod. I don't mind that per se, but the fact that it makes some thing truly broken that many discussion about ship builds go like this:
- "Hey I'm struggling with X ship, don't know what's a good loadout for it."
- "Have you tried putting SO and the only weapons that actually have sense to go along with it?"

It makes some parts of the game bloody boring. Thank god low tech is getting some love again because all they were good for before were SO builds. But that also makes previous SO optimal builds even more good. Enforcer is a good example of a dumb ship that "begs" for SO. And I hate that it will never get any more flux dissipation that it desperately needs because the SO builds will be 3 times as annoying. The new Eradicator is a prime candidate for SO, ship with already good base speed and AAF system, sign me up Jimmy. SO is a plague that makes the best part of the game (personally), ship customisation, a bit too easy and lazy. There's really no thought behind SO builds, you immediately know which weapons and hull mods go along with it. High tech ships are also victims of "ez SO ship" cookie cutter builds.

There's probably a bit more rambling that I wanted to do but it's getting late so this will do.


Short version: Torn apart because the very best thing about SO is also the worst at the same time. Should it be tamer, yay or nay?
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Megas

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2021, 02:31:43 PM »

I dislike Safety Overrides more now because of Hyperion.  SO turns Hyperion back to classic Hyperion with way too low PPT unless player takes all of the PPT up skills (mostly in Leadership, but some in Combat and Industry too.)  Also, Hyperion needs SO to fire three good guns continuously.

Without SO, Hyperion is an awkward ship to use.

Hyperion aside, I generally do not use Safety Override that much.  The main reason are tropes involving Interface Screw and/or Muscle Memory.  I cannot drop shields by pressing V.  Most of my shield dropping on conventional ships is pressing V to drop shields and vent at the same time.  It costs me a fraction of a second to remember to right-click to drop shields after failing to drop shields by pressing V for no effect (and taking another fraction of a second to react to that), and by then, I wasted too much time on a twitch build that could have been used to dissipate flux.  The hard flux dissipation perk mitigates the pain of this.  Aside from that, SO guts shot range and PPT, and PPT is important against the cowardly AI that would love to win by kiting and stalling until heat death.

Other than Hyperion, I use SO for Lasher and Hammer Champion.

Lasher needs the speed to catch up to faster frigates and machinegun them to death.  Simple.

Champion is too sluggish to drive up to the frontline and spam Hammer Barrage without SO.  Gryphon is too fragile to brawl with dumb-fires, but Champion is too slow to catch up to ships and brawl with hammers at the frontline unless it has Safety Override, then it plays a bit like old pre-0.7.2 Aurora with the heavy missile mount.

And various high-tech ships that lack shot range and the dissipation to support main guns want it to support their weapons.
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Grievous69

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2021, 02:41:41 PM »

Hyperion aside, I generally do not use Safety Override that much.  The main reason are tropes involving Interface Screw and/or Muscle Memory.  I cannot drop shields by pressing V.  Most of my shield dropping on conventional ships is pressing V to drop shields and vent at the same time.
Yep yep pretty much same here. Although my number one reason is probably because it's boring, last playthrough I didn't have a single SO ship all run.
Lasher needs the speed to catch up to faster frigates and machinegun them to death.  Simple.
But then this is a ship problem, it shouldn't be "fixable" with SO. This is one of mine biggest gripes with it as a hull mod, it's an ITU but for specific ships that makes other versions seem inferior and not complete.
And various high-tech ships that lack shot range and the dissipation to support main guns want it to support their weapons.
Same comment as with Lasher. If the design of these ships + their weapons baits you to usually put such a game changing hull mod, then that's wacky design.
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Megas

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2021, 02:51:53 PM »

I generally do not use Safety Override on high-tech ships because even I notice a difference in range when I pilot it, and I need all the range I can get.  I would not want to use SO on something like Aurora because it is too expensive to slash all of its PPT away.  But, if it cannot use SO, then it needs Sabots, or build for extreme flux, but without SO for endurance in case player wants to fight a PPT war with the enemy.

But then this is a ship problem, it shouldn't be "fixable" with SO. This is one of mine biggest gripes with it as a hull mod, it's an ITU but for specific ships that makes other versions seem inferior and not complete.
0.95 Hyperion takes this to eleven.  That explains my disgust with Safety Override since the Hyperion redesign, and Hyperion is a real awkward ship without Safety Override (and likely various skills).  Enough that I would rather take Afflictor, Harbinger, Falcon, or Fury instead.

I also dislike ships that need skills to be viable, like Wolfpack Tactics for most frigates (except maybe Remnant frigates) in endgame fights when they do not have enough PPT to last without skills; or carrier skills for carriers because unskilled fighters die off en masse after about a minute of a typical late-game fight.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2021, 03:13:09 PM by Megas »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2021, 03:28:04 PM »

I think SO is at it's best on high tech ships, since they have lots of great maneuverability systems to compensate for range and high DPS/short range weapons. Omega weapons make SO even more preferable IMO. When considering SO viability, you can pretty much ignore weapon ranges since almost everything will have the same range, so it just becomes a question of getting the best maneuverability to get into range, and the highest DPS to kill things (since dissipation is also mostly irrelevant).

I've also stopped using it because it just starts to get boring.

I campaigned for a SO nerf back when it could be built in with story points and I think I had pretty much the same impression as the OP. It's too binary to the point where it trivializes some aspects of the game, and I would prefer both the upsides and downsides to be tuned back a bit like the hardened shields rebalance.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2021, 03:39:58 PM »

I'm not really opposed to SO in general, since much of the current issues arise out of attempting to balance its benefits with its detriments, but... I also never use it since it just seriously limits PPT for basically any ship it is attached to unless there is enough OP left for Hardened subsystems.  But my only real gripe is that it is excluded from being built it in as a hull mod; this was obviously (and hastily) implemented for balance reasons, but it has always struck me as an easily implemented (but inelegant) solution.

Which implies that this solution was chosen in lieu of any sort of more drastic action that would also require a lot of testing for balance, such as decreasing both the speed and flux dissipation bonus, but also the PPT penalty.  Allowing the use of the zero-flux speed boost at an flux level seems a pointlessly tacked on bonus to the hull mod, since its benefit seems primarily for the purposes of the Hyperion and nothing else (is there another ship system that requires zero flux to use?  Pretty sure no, but could be wrong).  Otherwise, it just increases speed even more... which isn't very useful unless ship is getting deployed late in battle when PPT use most efficient.

So the obvious solution regarding the zero-flux speed boost is just to make it instead a unique Hyperion-only hull mod that sometimes comes built into the Hyperion, and therefore can also be built in if necessary using SP once blue print is found.  Just maybe not possible, dunno how difficult it would be to add a ship-unique hull mod that can also be found a blueprint AND still not be usable on any other ship.

I campaigned for a SO nerf back when it could be built in with story points and I think I had pretty much the same impression as the OP. It's too binary to the point where it trivializes some aspects of the game, and I would prefer both the upsides and downsides to be tuned back a bit like the hardened shields rebalance.

I see someone has already had this idea, since this dropped as I was typing...
« Last Edit: November 14, 2021, 03:42:04 PM by slowpersun »
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Phenir

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2021, 04:37:35 PM »

Allowing the use of the zero-flux speed boost at an flux level seems a pointlessly tacked on bonus to the hull mod, since its benefit seems primarily for the purposes of the Hyperion and nothing else (is there another ship system that requires zero flux to use?  Pretty sure no, but could be wrong).  Otherwise, it just increases speed even more... which isn't very useful unless ship is getting deployed late in battle when PPT use most efficient.
I can't believe you just said speed isn't useful. Zero flux isn't just speed anyway, it's also maneuverability (turn speed, going from 0 to full speed faster) and if you have wolfpack, the bonus to speed is greater if you're piloting a destroyer. It also gives the engines their brightness helping signify to the player that the ship is using SO (alongside the color change). I wouldn't be surprised if SO ships lose their zero flux boost when they get overloaded just like regular ships using elite helmsmanship, which gives it another point for using 0 flux boost instead of just a flat speed increase.
Just treat ships with SO the same you would treat falcon P, it's falcon but different.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2021, 05:13:46 PM »

I can't believe you just said speed isn't useful.

Sorry, to clarify, speed in and of itself is quite useful, in fact it is arguably THE power stat of the game (part of the reason high tech ships seem to outdo low and mid tech ships, thus balancing and additions in the next patch).  But the additional speed added by the SO zero flux boost (on top of normal SO speed boost) always being available is essentially neutered balanced by a crushing loss in PPT.  So deploying an SO ship early in the battle is kinda pointless, as it will likely run out of PPT before generally being useful (put another way, seems like the only real reason to deploy a SO ship at the start of a battle is to try to quickly capture a strategic point and maybe bog down the enemy for a bit, but then you'll have to quickly retreat the SO ship or have it risk having CR go to 0% and the ship prolly die).

Hence why it seems adding the zero-flux speed at any time to SO was primarily intended for Hyperion and nothing else (although yes, other ships would still literally benefit from it, but only Hyperion can teleport across map to a retreatable position).

Edit: spelling, but also forgot to add this:

It also gives the engines their brightness helping signify to the player that the ship is using SO (alongside the color change).

Zero flux speed boost in general gives a different/longer drive plume, SO plume change just adds mostly more flavor/color (although also needed for a player to know if an enemy ship has SO hull mod during battle).
« Last Edit: November 14, 2021, 05:19:09 PM by slowpersun »
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Phenir

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2021, 05:57:24 PM »

I can't believe you just said speed isn't useful.

Sorry, to clarify, speed in and of itself is quite useful, in fact it is arguably THE power stat of the game (part of the reason high tech ships seem to outdo low and mid tech ships, thus balancing and additions in the next patch).  But the additional speed added by the SO zero flux boost (on top of normal SO speed boost) always being available is essentially neutered balanced by a crushing loss in PPT.  So deploying an SO ship early in the battle is kinda pointless, as it will likely run out of PPT before generally being useful (put another way, seems like the only real reason to deploy a SO ship at the start of a battle is to try to quickly capture a strategic point and maybe bog down the enemy for a bit, but then you'll have to quickly retreat the SO ship or have it risk having CR go to 0% and the ship prolly die).

Hence why it seems adding the zero-flux speed at any time to SO was primarily intended for Hyperion and nothing else (although yes, other ships would still literally benefit from it, but only Hyperion can teleport across map to a retreatable position).

Edit: spelling, but also forgot to add this:

It also gives the engines their brightness helping signify to the player that the ship is using SO (alongside the color change).

Zero flux speed boost in general gives a different/longer drive plume, SO plume change just adds mostly more flavor/color (although also needed for a player to know if an enemy ship has SO hull mod during battle).
I think you're overestimating the cut in PPT. PPT doesn't tick down unless the ship has enemy ships in sight. The drain after PPT is over is still the same so effects that reduce that drain drastically increase the time the ship can stay in combat. Stacking hardened subsytems with reliability engineering nearly doubles that time just from the drain reduction. Reliability engineering gives 15% more CR, nearly doubling the time again until malfunctions. Then there is crew training for another 15%. Ships lose .25% cr per second after PPT is gone. With all that above, the SO ship can avoid malfunctions for 6 minutes AFTER PPT is over and you should be able to get a few minutes of PPT as well. Plenty of time for it to have a significant impact on the fight.
It will last even longer if you micro it a little. I like to put SO on already fast cruiser (aurora, fury, falcon, even eagle and champion will work) and then use it to bully enemy frigates trying to take points. Frigates don't trigger PPT drain for cruisers so the ship can do this forever. Once the enemy is out of frigates, they start sending destroyers and cruisers but the SO cruiser by design excels at 1v1. This all leads to the enemy's ship line becoming smaller and smaller as they trickle ships trying to take points.
SO ships need that speed boost not just to get to fights, they also need it to get in and out of enemy ranges so they can dissipate or to flank vulnerable enemies easily. Without it, they will get fluxed out before even getting in range of the enemy. It also gives them a bit of a weakness like I said before. If they get overloaded, they lose the 0 flux boost, preventing them from easily escaping.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2021, 06:29:36 PM »

I think you're overestimating the cut in PPT. PPT doesn't tick down unless the ship has enemy ships in sight.
Possibly, I'll admit I'm mostly basing my opinion on anecdotal evidence and not on statistics from testing.  And I thought PPT only starts ticking down once enemy ship in sight, not that it also stops ticking down when enemy is again out of sight (so neither side on the way to the fight is punished, plus simulates wear & tear to ship from damage, etc.).
Stacking hardened subsytems with reliability engineering nearly doubles that time just from the drain reduction. Reliability engineering gives 15% more CR, nearly doubling the time again until malfunctions. Then there is crew training for another 15%.
Oh great, so now I have to also waste skill points in order to min/max SO... although I generally get Crew training (and maybe reliability engineering) anyway, so that is less of an issue (even less of an issue now that player can respec).  This has some poor interaction with the wrap-around skill mechanic, but since that is going away soon, pointless to discuss further.  As for whether an officer has that one skill... total crapshoot, RNG unless player specifically chooses reliability engineering while leveling officer up.
Frigates don't trigger PPT drain for cruisers so the ship can do this forever.
Since when?  Maybe I missed that in the PPT tutorial (or it's new), but makes no sense otherwise.  What, capital ships and cruisers can't be damaged/degraded by a frigate...?  Which the Hyperion literally is.
SO ships need that speed boost not just to get to fights, they also need it to get in and out of enemy ranges so they can dissipate or to flank vulnerable enemies easily.
Actually, I had forgotten that SO also reduces weapons range as an additional nerf/balancing, but seems well balanced since ship needs to use its higher speed to get closer to an enemy ship anyways.  But for the life of me, I can't understand why it doesn't increase the likelihood of an engine flaming out as penalty instead... the hull mod is literally called "safety overrides!"  But I think someone already pointed this out/complained about it, and Alex said something about how he had tested it that way at some point and it led to issues that necessitated doing something else instead.

Edit:  I stand corrected, for some reason the game I guess requires some minimum level of nearby enemy presence for PPT to degrade, but it is tiered, so a cruiser requires (or at least used to require) a minimum of like 4 frigates to trigger.  Very stupid and illogical gameplay choice, but from a code perspective, prolly significantly reduces and/or simplifies necessary calcs... but unless something has changed, frigates will trigger PPT loss in larger ships so long enough are present.  So yeah, cheese away I guess by wasting a Falcon(P) on chasing frigates, or at least rushing to deny enemy a strategic point in battle!  But I guess the PPT loss from SO is less of an issue for larger ships, since won't trigger PPT unless and until enough enemy ships nearby; which makes SO PPT loss even MORE of a penalty when used on frigates, though.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2021, 10:14:21 PM by slowpersun »
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IonDragonX

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2021, 06:38:00 PM »

Safety Overrides belongs with Ship Systems. You should be allowed to use it once per battle for a finite amount of time and that should be that. It makes no sense to have the safety off continuously as you fly around hyperspace.
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Xzaven

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2021, 10:19:17 AM »

For me I only ever use SO in the early game, once fleets get larger and battles take longer it shows its weakness. If I want a glass cannon that can be taken off the field fast, I can as well build a missile burst ship.
Most cruisers are still rather slow with SO and UI, so with their short weapon range they feel much less intimidating than a 200spd destroyer.

I felt it could be overpowered when you could still use SP to make it a S-Mod, but since that got denied I feel it is in an ok spot.
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Grievous69

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2021, 10:34:16 AM »

I'm not really arguing about how strong it is, it's a relatively balanced mod (in most cases). But my problem comes from the fact it makes the game boring. You just power up a ship so it almost becomes a ship size above, for the cost of having to remain a short time in combat. There's no in-game danger except less time. That's good enough for balance but there's no threat to that ship, if you pilot a SO ship and die in it, you're a fool. Of course it doesn't make the ship immortal, once again the balance is good enough for late game.

Ok ok this version of Unstable injector wasn't very balanced but when ships with it received 4x more damage to engines it made for an interesting design choice. You make a ship go faster, and here's a tasty weakness to go alongside with it. What's the risk of putting SO on a Hammerhead in early, early-mid game? Absolutely none.

For this reason and not to completely kill the playstyle it wouldn't be too dramatic if it gave extra 1.5x dissipation instead of 2x, and either get rid of zero flux speed bonus or just bonus base speed, I never understood why both of these things existed. Then it could receive a nice OP cost reduction, less PPT penalty and we could end up with less batshit ship builds.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2021, 10:54:17 AM »

SO belongs on ships that are already fast/have maneuvering systems IMO.

The solutions to PPT issues is to use enough SO ships and aggressive/reckless personalities that the enemy just die immediately. Mixing SO with steady officers/long range low DPS allies is where you can go wrong.

edit: Grevious69 already said a lot of this while I was typing but I'll say it again anyway.
I don't necessarily think SO is blatantly OP like built in SO was, I more think that it's not very interesting from a decision making perspective because it basically eliminates dissipation and range from consideration in loadouts. It makes a lot of loadout decisions and piloting decisions much simpler. You just put max DPS weapons on you ship and then hold w and mouse 1 (obviously being a bit facetious but I think the point is legitimate). I think it if the range, dissipation, OP and PPT modifiers/costs weren't so extreme, there might be more interesting decisions.
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Grievous69

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Re: Safety Overrides and my love/hate relationship with it
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2021, 11:04:03 AM »

It makes a lot of loadout decisions and piloting decisions much simpler. You just put max DPS weapons on you ship and then hold w and mouse 1 (obviously being a bit facetious but I think the point is legitimate). I think it if the range, dissipation, OP and PPT modifiers/costs weren't so extreme, there might be more interesting decisions.
Yes! Thank you, that was one of the points I forgot to put in the original post. The combat is so good in this game and a lot of thought goes behind every little decision that it's a shame there's a way to ignore pretty much everything except your flux bar and general position (and even that doesn't matter as much usually since you're faster than most).

And fair argument that SO brings most out of already fast ships, which imo can distort the view on balance. For example I don't think the regular Fury is worth the updated 20 DP, put SO on it and it's suddenly much scarier and definitely worth the DP investment.
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