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Author Topic: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?  (Read 12880 times)

Lucky33

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #60 on: December 19, 2021, 07:54:51 AM »

That will be nice.
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Thaago

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #61 on: December 19, 2021, 09:35:00 AM »

I don't think midline has to pick between BWM and EWM, mainly because it's just Falcon, Eagle and Champion that have to rely on energy weapons for offence in any capacity. Yet Champion doesn't feel weak for having to choose between the two.
...

I think it helps that Champions have high energy focus and a large energy. The larges got significant buffs a while back, and HEF is just a beast of a system. In terms of what is more valuable for a cruiser, 3 medium energies or 1 large energy, the large wins handily. (Can you imagine an Eagle with a HIL? Now that would be a nightmare to fight!)
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SweetMango

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #62 on: December 20, 2021, 02:29:29 AM »

I was just thinking I really have trouble justifying taking a falcon over an eradicator (p), and the standard eradicator, fury, and 25 DP cruisers

In case of Falcon, there is 1 exception. Falcon(P) is much more capable than its original version.
I do love that Missile cruiser with sabot and harpoon mrm. and it is only ship that makes my resonator MRM useful which is too expensive OP for other ships.
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Szasz

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #63 on: December 20, 2021, 03:00:01 AM »

Why does nobody cry about Falcons sitting at 20 DP now, its absolute madness.
Besides that the real problem is with medium energy weapons.
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Pratapon51

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #64 on: December 20, 2021, 03:51:02 AM »

Why does nobody cry about Falcons sitting at 20 DP now, its absolute madness.
Besides that the real problem is with medium energy weapons.

What? They're still 15 DP. Only the Falcon (P) has been (rightfully) bumped to 20 DP.
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Szasz

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #65 on: December 20, 2021, 04:13:44 AM »

What? They're still 15 DP. Only the Falcon (P) has been (rightfully) bumped to 20 DP.
Humph. Only seen pirate markets so far. So I still can get a bad ship for 15 DP or a good one for Gryphon price. Mkay. Aint the 20 too harsh? Rather pick an Apogee at this point.
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Thaago

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #66 on: December 20, 2021, 10:30:38 AM »

Falcon P's are really good ships even at 20. Gryphons carry more missiles so are better at long ranged support, but are slow, relatively vulnerable, and some of their mounts point sideways so its hard to use them as brawlers (I think Gryphons are good and have been good, but they aren't fast). Same with an Apogee: its got stats and large mounts, but its so slow that it can't be used for the same role.

Falcon P's are very fast (they have UI built in for free), have decent defenses, and they have 4 mediums that can all point forward, so you can basically just use them as sabot/torpedo assault boats. Since they have so little guns they don't need to increase their dissipation very much if at all, so they have lots of extra OP for things like converted hangar all while being annoyingly difficult to kill.
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Szasz

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #67 on: December 20, 2021, 08:07:07 PM »

Falcon P's are really good ships even at 20. Gryphons carry more missiles so are better at long ranged support, but are slow, relatively vulnerable, and some of their mounts point sideways so its hard to use them as brawlers (I think Gryphons are good and have been good, but they aren't fast). Same with an Apogee: its got stats and large mounts, but its so slow that it can't be used for the same role.

Falcon P's are very fast (they have UI built in for free), have decent defenses, and they have 4 mediums that can all point forward, so you can basically just use them as sabot/torpedo assault boats. Since they have so little guns they don't need to increase their dissipation very much if at all, so they have lots of extra OP for things like converted hangar all while being annoyingly difficult to kill.
Alright then. I've seen recently that there is a lot more to DP changes than just a few ship stats tweak.
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SCC

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #68 on: December 25, 2021, 01:03:22 PM »

Now that I have obtained an Eradicator, I see it has 70 speed (only 5 units less than Eagle's average speed of 75), a bit less maintenance and required crew, 1 more burn level, 3 more small missiles, small ballistics to use with Ballistic Rangefinder and finally AAF for a system! Why would you want an Eagle? Eradicator is slightly cheaper, almost as fast, better at shooting even at its worst because of the ship system. It has more missiles and better mounts.

Dri

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #69 on: December 25, 2021, 01:10:54 PM »

I never cared for the Eagle, it was always a very much MEH ship. Build it to do good damage and it'd have flux problems, build it to be flux efficient and it'd take ages to take anything down.

Upgrade the two small missile to medium missile and give it some more OP, then we can talk.
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Grievous69

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #70 on: December 25, 2021, 01:13:01 PM »

I mean you basically listed all of the strengths Eradicator has and ignored the negatives. It burns 4 fuel for being a light cruiser, it has vastly worse shields, meaning that an Eagle will be far more durable in a battle. And I'm not sure using average speed means anything because the system is used in bursts. Meaning if an Eagle wants to commit, it'll do that way faster, vice versa if it's being pressured, it can easily run away to cool off.

But truth be told both of these ships fall off in late game. I'm fighting tough bounties now and neither of them hold up, Eagles don't do enough damage for cost, and Eradicators die too quickly. Time for Dominators and Champions I guess.
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Please don't take me too seriously.

Thaago

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #71 on: December 26, 2021, 12:22:48 AM »

Update on the Falcon: I've been doing an only mission bounty run (no contact bounties, no system bounties, no exploration unless the things are literally in the system with a bounty and right there) and the new Falcon is pulling its weight. Its anchoring a fast strike fleet that I've just started to take up against 200k bounties. Current fleet: Falcon with damaged weapon mounts D mod (recovered from a drifting wreck by story point), 3 shrikes of various D mod states one of which I'm piloting, a good hammerhead with a decent lvl 5 officer, 2 brawlers (one is a reckless SO killer because of officer and its fantastic), 2 tempests, 2 omens, 1 wolf, 2 kite A's (surprisingly good at distraction duty for so cheap). 3 other level 2 officers whom I haven't mentored yet. I've got coordinated maneuvers for +20% speed on everything and crew training for +15% CR, but otherwise just have 3 skills in combat (impact mitigation, target analysis, point defense).

Falcon Build: 2x Heavy Autocannon, 1x Ion Beam, 1x Phase Lance, 2x lrpd (front), 2x pd laser (back), 2x dual atropos, dedicated targeting core (no ITU yet), 30 vents, 14 caps. Steady officer who had damage control, then I got a lucky roll and added ordinance expertise for 132 extra flux.

The ship still lacks raw DPS - its not winning any contests for rolling up an easy fleet in fastest time. But what its bringing is a combination of range, speed, and defense thats letting it engage and lockdown bigger ships or hunt smaller ships. I don't know if the 5 speed and 50 flux is critical or not but it can't hurt: the ship is notably able to kite and also fire this weapon compliment with very good uptime. It successfully handled a level 6 Aurora by falling back under pressure while firing: it gave a bunch of ground, but then the Aurora was high on hard flux because of kinetics, and the ion beam then disabled some engines (and then I called in the frigate pack and bye bye aurora). For killing small ships, it has a steady officer so sometimes needs encouragement (eliminate orders) to really put itself forward, but when it does it has the speed to quickly close to phase lance range.

I don't know if this Falcon build/fleet role will last into endgame as very useful or not. At that point I'll have capital units with a lot longer range and heavy cruisers to act as anchors themselves, so I might want my lighter units to have higher damage like an artillery Hammerhead/Sunder. For midgame being the only cruiser in a destroyer fleet its being very valuable though.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2021, 12:26:12 AM by Thaago »
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Szasz

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #72 on: December 26, 2021, 01:07:04 PM »

Alright then. I've seen recently that there is a lot more to DP changes than just a few ship stats tweak.
Nope, I've given it a lot of testing and the new Pirate Falcon DP is not justified. It's also the same hull, hence should come roughly with same maintenance costs (if not less, because its pirate). I might understand increased recovery costs due to the supply hungry nature of rearming missile launchers, but DP? Certainly not. Trying to balance numbers around one specific old-fashioned use-case (ie. Sabot spam to complement your nimble armor/hull killers) is not the way to go.
Here's a non comprehensive explanation why. Many ships this update with medium energy slots got indirectly buffed by High Scatter Amplifier that changed their effective value. HSA is a good option for destroyers and fast cruisers, not to mention fun to play. Regular Falcons can benefit from this. Pirate can't, its power is unchanged but its cost is not.
Pirate is simply not worth occupying 20 points on the battlefield, if you meet these among enemy lines, they are target practice. Fury was not a good ship in my eyes to begin with.
 If Eradicator is at 15 DP, these certainly should not be at 20.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2021, 08:22:11 AM by Szasz »
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Thaago

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #73 on: December 26, 2021, 01:33:29 PM »

I haven't really found any truly good uses for HSB yet tbh - my falcons are just using regular beams. Pirate Falcons are really on a whole other level - they are nasty (and just got buffed, right?).
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Szasz

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Re: Have the falcon and eagle been left behind?
« Reply #74 on: December 28, 2021, 08:17:30 AM »

edited previous post for more clarity and less ranting
ps. Why accidental quote posts cannot be removed?
« Last Edit: December 28, 2021, 08:22:31 AM by Szasz »
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