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Author Topic: Genuine question about the phase changes  (Read 7081 times)

PreConceptor

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Genuine question about the phase changes
« on: December 22, 2021, 06:52:12 PM »

What was rationale behind the sweeping phase changes? It mostly seems to have gutted phase and the one ship where the consensus was that it really warranted a nerf (Doom) seems to have come out of it much as it was before, but even better in comparison to other phase options.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2021, 06:56:18 PM »

Fighting phase ships was not very interactive before. Is it better now? I dunno - I have only fought Gremlins in 0.95.1a.
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PreConceptor

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2021, 07:03:29 PM »

Harbinger seems mostly useless now, certainly not worth the DP. The general phase changes hurt but the Disruptor change broke its back.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2021, 07:52:46 PM by PreConceptor »
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tseikk1

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2021, 07:48:17 PM »

Many people complained that fighting phase ships was not fun. It did indeed sometimes feel a bit rough, especially a certain fight in a certain mission with a lot of phase ships. This is why phase was changed.

I think Alex has a tendency to overdo nerfs. Usually what happens to something that is powerful at a time is that it gets hit from multiple angles at once. Double, triple, even quadruple-nerfed, if you will. A good example of this is the Drover; Once upon a time it costed 12 DP, it's ship system was better, it had good synergy with the remnant spark-interceptor, and the player could pick skills that boosted carriers fleet-wide, with no such things as fighter bay soft caps like there is now. Naturally it was really really strong. Then came the nerfs. In one patch:

-Drover DP increased by 25% to a whopping 15, meaning it now had the worst fighter bay to DP ratio of all regular carriers save the Astral

-It's ship system got absolutely gutted; Cooldown increased by 200%, and now it also lowers it's own fighter replacement rate by 25%.

-The spark interceptor's main weapon got nerfed to a high delay version. (same burst, much lower dps. This was really really needed though, it was kind of insane) This was the fighter drover had most synergy with.

-Fleetwide carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.

-Officer carrier skills vanished with the skill rework.

-New extremely strong anti-fighter skill added to the game with the skill rework; AI cores always got this at elite level.

So yeah. Unsurprisingly, drover was not, and still isn't in a good place despite big changes to the skill system recently. I think the same thing has happened to phase ships, though not as severely. Phase ships, too, got hit from multiple angles, although most of them are still okay, some even good. But their role has been fundamentally changed. They no longer function by themselves (save for the mega-redacted ship), they will lose every duel against any ship of their own weight class. They have become supports, who excel at enabling other friendlies do more damage. Afflictor does this literally, shade disables engines, harbinger overloads causing shields to be dropped, doom forces awkward positioning of both ships and shields and also destroys fighters. (Doom might still be really good for player piloting too, don't know, haven't tried that yet)

All in all they have indeed become less annoying to fight, at the cost of being a lot more boring, weak and largely not worth it to pick up for anything but player piloting. Especially harbinger got hit really hard. Not only is it a destroyer, which means it's got neither the speed of frigates nor durability of cruisers to avoid inevitable damage due to the phase rework, it also got it's ship system gutted. Yeah, it was pretty bad when it could chain-overload, But a 30 second cooldown? Really? For one go? Might as well completely rework it and give it a new ability if you don't want players to use it's current one. I am really getting Drover vibes from this one.
Also not a big fan of 10DP afflictor. Don't get me wrong, It's still probably the best phase ship in terms of power to dp ratio due to it's insane ship system, but I just don't LIKE it. I'd much rather have actual battle-capable phase ships with slightly weaker ship systems than the current "ship system on a stick" ones.
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DaShiv

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2021, 07:57:19 PM »

It mostly seems to have gutted phase

A knee-jerk conclusion, due to many people having not yet learned how to build around Phase Anchor. With proper builds, phase ship DPS has much higher potential than before, which is well worth the new risk of overextension from speed reduction. My current fleet actually contains more phase ships than before due to the increased DP softcap on Phase Coil Tuning (from 30 to 40) and the cost-effectiveness of Afflictor (P).

The fact that AI phase fleets are much less annoying to finish off is a very nice QoL improvement as well.
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tseikk1

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2021, 08:04:12 PM »

It mostly seems to have gutted phase

A knee-jerk conclusion, due to many people having not yet learned how to build around Phase Anchor. With proper builds, phase ship DPS has much higher potential than before, which is well worth the new risk of overextension from speed reduction. My current fleet actually contains more phase ships than before due to the increased DP softcap on Phase Coil Tuning (from 30 to 40) and the cost-effectiveness of Afflictor (P).

The fact that AI phase fleets are much less annoying to finish off is a very nice QoL improvement as well.

Mind posting your fleet and phase ship builds? I'm using phase anchor on my two afflictors and shade, tried using it on harbinger with bad results. Sounds like I can learn something from you.
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PreConceptor

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2021, 08:11:19 PM »

It mostly seems to have gutted phase

A knee-jerk conclusion, due to many people having not yet learned how to build around Phase Anchor. With proper builds, phase ship DPS has much higher potential than before, which is well worth the new risk of overextension from speed reduction. My current fleet actually contains more phase ships than before due to the increased DP softcap on Phase Coil Tuning (from 30 to 40) and the cost-effectiveness of Afflictor (P).

The fact that AI phase fleets are much less annoying to finish off is a very nice QoL improvement as well.

So Phase Anchor is ITU but way more required and Afflictor P is somehow the most optimal phase ship. Ships really shouldn't need a single expensive hullmod and skills to be worth using.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2021, 08:18:37 PM by PreConceptor »
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Vanshilar

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2021, 08:33:04 PM »

Harbinger seems mostly useless now, certainly not worth the DP. The general phase changes hurt but the Disruptor change broke its back.

Hmm Disruptor now has a 30 second cooldown, which means 20 seconds with Systems Expertise. Phase time is 3x normal time so that means you can use it once every ~7 seconds in normal time. Is being able to briefly overload a ship once every 7 seconds that bad?
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PreConceptor

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2021, 09:39:59 PM »

Harbinger seems mostly useless now, certainly not worth the DP. The general phase changes hurt but the Disruptor change broke its back.

Hmm Disruptor now has a 30 second cooldown, which means 20 seconds with Systems Expertise. Phase time is 3x normal time so that means you can use it once every ~7 seconds in normal time. Is being able to briefly overload a ship once every 7 seconds that bad?

Kinda. Systems Expertise is a top tier skill. 300 seconds of peak time (100 if all that is phase time), theoretically about 10 uses. Potentially forcing 10 overloads sounds good, but it's just 1 second, and you are also dramatically more vulnerable all the while due to the speed nerf. It's hard for the player to make that work, let alone the AI. For 20 DP you could have much more reliable and safer options. Maybe that was the point, to make it less annoying to fight and have custom loadouts be the only way to make them really pull their weight. No chain overloading dials down the frustration as an opponent, but phase is certainly worse to pilot as a result of the various compounding nerfs. Except Doom. Doom will never die.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2021, 09:43:59 PM by PreConceptor »
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Thaago

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #9 on: December 22, 2021, 09:54:17 PM »

The new carrier skill situation is interesting (brought up earlier): while the officer skills are gone except for point defense, the mere presence of an officer boosts the fleetwide skills by 50%. For 8 decks or less that comes out to a 75% boost to replacement rate, which is a ton higher than was ever possible before! Fleets with many decks don't see that kind of bonus, but I think fighters are in a better spot than last patch. I haven't tried to do a full/mostly fighter fleet yet though (just had support fighters for a majority combat fleet) so take that with a grain of salt.
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SCC

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #10 on: December 22, 2021, 10:26:12 PM »

Doom cannot solo stuff as well anymore, because of loss of speed and AI being less distracted by mines. At least it can't deal with doritos.

Thaago

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #11 on: December 22, 2021, 10:52:54 PM »

Honestly thats a good thing, at least compared to the last Doom. Do you think its as good as a 40DP capital, or close to it? I haven't played with one yet but I've fought several, and they routinely get a kill or two on my frigates from mines and otherwise bully my destroyers. As an opponent they seem about as dangerous as standard enemy capital ships but in different ways.
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Vanshilar

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #12 on: December 22, 2021, 10:54:28 PM »

Kinda. Systems Expertise is a top tier skill. 300 seconds of peak time (100 if all that is phase time), theoretically about 10 uses. Potentially forcing 10 overloads sounds good, but it's just 1 second, and you are also dramatically more vulnerable all the while due to the speed nerf.

Well if you're piloting a Harbinger, or if the AI is piloting it, seems like Systems Expertise would be something to get, seeing as how you get 2 of the 4 possible bonuses (+50% range and -33% cooldown). No point looking at a bare-bones ship if that's not how it would be used.

There seems to be more bonuses for Peak Time this patch, especially with Phase Coil Tuning; a Harbinger could get:
+60 seconds from Combat Endurance
+30 seconds from Elite Systems Expertise
+25% or +75 seconds from Wolfpack Tactics
+180 seconds from Phase Coil Tuning
= +345 seconds from various skills

So 645 seconds of Peak Time, and that's before Hardened Subsystems which would give an additional +150 seconds. So all in all it could get up to 795 seconds of Peak Time if desired. Seems like there's plenty of opportunities to get more Peak Time if that's a limiting factor.

I do find that the speed is a lot slower, basically meant having to get Unstable Injector on a Doom. Then again in the previous version phase ships were simply too fast. Now there's a way to corner them. During the cooldown, I don't think you're supposed to be out in the open, it's better to move behind a friendly ship; after all, you get 20 seconds of phase time to move in between Disruptions.

Doom cannot solo stuff as well anymore, because of loss of speed and AI being less distracted by mines.

I haven't quite figured out the AI behavior toward mines, but it still seems to sort of work. But it's odd. If I lay mines behind an enemy ship, it'll still face its shields toward me. But as I unphase to launch my alpha strike, it'll lower its shields, maybe because of the mines or something, and still take my volley in the face a good portion of the time. It's just that now it won't lower the shields right away.

This is somewhat inconsistent, though, which just means I haven't quite figured out how it works yet.
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #13 on: December 22, 2021, 11:54:11 PM »

Honestly thats a good thing, at least compared to the last Doom. Do you think its as good as a 40DP capital, or close to it? I haven't played with one yet but I've fought several, and they routinely get a kill or two on my frigates from mines and otherwise bully my destroyers. As an opponent they seem about as dangerous as standard enemy capital ships but in different ways.

I think the bigger issue is that Doom's mine system just outputs crazy damage.  Honestly, a better fix for Doom would have just made it so that mines are less accurate the farther from Doom mines are dropped.  Only issue is that game AI maybe too stupid to figure when NOT to use this system (ie, which distance is best, are friendly ships too close, also might get lucky and sometimes cluster mines better).  But making long distance mine drops less accurate would make player far less likely to deploy mines anywhere near their own fleet...
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TaLaR

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Re: Genuine question about the phase changes
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2021, 12:19:59 AM »

AI piloted phase is pretty much useless now, especially considering that it's mutually exclusive with player piloted phase (phase corps skill has only 40DP limit, you don't want AI ships to eat into it).

Player piloting effectiveness wasn't affected as much, Afflictor still deletes anything it wants. BUT it doesn't do so with total impunity, you have to use allies as cover, Afflictor doesn't have enough speed to just ignore fighters/other fast threats anymore.

On a side note, Doom and Ziggy get entirely too much attention from community. Afflictor is much stronger ship, once you take DP limit into account (4 swappable Afflictors vs 1 Doom vs half of Ziggurat). Strategically 4 Afflictors can be used to fight multiple enemy fleets in quick succession without any issues, Doom much less so, Ziggurat becomes expensive flyweight in just 2 fights at most.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2021, 02:23:02 AM by TaLaR »
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