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[Alex]

Is adding content the fun part of game development? All the framework is built and now you get to fill it with stuff? I'm not a developer but I'd imagine this stage of game development is really fun.

It really depends! I *love* designing new ships (and weapons), so that's fun. Especially when I get to stretch the bounds of what's in vanilla. There are also some kinds of game systems and design type things that I love about working on the "framework", too. Conversely, some kinds of content and some kind of framework work can feel like a bit of a slog. I think ultimately it comes down to how mentally engaging something is; the distinction between content and framework is less important for the fun factor.

New ships really are in a sweet spot where it's mostly just the fun stuff

I wish carriers were listed more clearly on the fleet info - it's too hard to tell which fighter wing goes with which ship.

Hmm, that's a good point - not something I would've even thought about. Thank you for bringing this up, I'll ... keep it in mind.


(Please keep it civil, everyone. It's fine-ish so far but it looks like there's some movement towards things getting more heated than they need to be.)

[Soda Savvy]

In regards to the whole range vs tech level thing, everything in the combat field is an abstraction after all, and gameplay comes first when at all possible.

However, one could perhaps look at it from this angle: As everything is abstracted, and we know Starsector ships to be torchships, consider the following: Weapon range cutoff just represents the range at which targeting brackets and rounds are more likely to miss than hit. Some ballistic weapons go further simply because ballistic rounds keep on flying well after an energy weapon has diffused from distance.

Lowtech just puts out so many shots that one is more likely to hit sooner or later, compared to that tachyon lance or laser which might still hit the target, but at such a range it's a mere tickle.


Now, to Alex: We're getting a ton of amazing new military ships, but have you considered adding an extra civilian ship or two to round things out? It does seem odd at times there's a hundred plus military ships but only, like, 1 bus.

[Megas]

Hopefully, uniquifying means independents and the player faction get a few unique and distinct military ship blueprints to produce ships only they (and maybe generic arms dealers) can produce.  (Maybe Apogee is used only by Independents.)

Currently, the only ships that could be unique to the player faction are Legion XIV, Revenant, and Phantom (and maybe Pather ships since Pathers have no industry world).  Aside from those, it is obvious the player is like either a frankenstein monster or an all-your-powers-combined final (exam) boss faction.  Legion XIV is obviously a Hegemony ship (that they lost).  Kind of rubbing in Hegemony's faces that the player has one of their ships they no longer own.  Revenant and Phantom are nice, but they are stat stick logistics ships, not combat ships.  Would be nice if there was one or two combat ships that the player has a chance to own and set it apart from another faction.

Hopefully, the Pathers will get a heavy industry of their own.  Getting their blueprints is a luck-based event.

[Hiruma Kai]

Thanks for the sneak peak Alex.

I do think the capital variety will be quite welcome.  Certainly when I'm describing NPC fleets to others or on the forums, it is often in the form of what the capitals are.  A triple Radiant fleet, a quadruple Conquest, or a Onslaught XIV and Legion fleet.  At least when discussing late game fights.  The lower chaff generally isn't fight defining (except perhaps in the case of hand created storyline fights - of which I would love to have more themed and hand crafted NPC fleets since they tend to be more memorable).

So I look forward to having more types of end game fleets and describing them as a double Invictus fleet or that missile spamming double Pegasus and Conquest fleet in addition to all the current variations.

As far as the quad Gauss Invictus, since there's no flux cost reduction, you have a burst period, then hit max flux, at which point it becomes flux limited DPS which essentially ignores fire rate.

Based on the numbers in the post, it has 40,000 flux capacity, and 600 dissipation base.  Max dissipation with 50 vents would then be 1100.  Throw on 10% for flux regulation, +50 for 5 more vents, and assume Ordinance Expertise on 190 OP, that puts upper theoretical maximum around 1600 flux/second.  Gauss is 600 flux/second for 350 kinetic damage per second.  12x is 7200 flux/second.  So 7200-1600 = 5,600 flux per second build up.  So about 7 seconds of fire, before it drops down to 2.6 shots per second.  Which is about 29,400 kinetic damage (in 700 point chunk spread over those 7 seconds) during the burst phase, and about 910 kinetic damage per second afterwards.

That much burst kinetic is scary against battlecruisers like Conquests and Odysseys, but Onslaughts and Paragons can likely take that without too much issue.  Certainly an Onslaught is just going to burn straight in through the range band.  Dunno how well the active flak cannister will work against a point blank quad reaper strike, but I'll probably find out the hard way. 

I suppose, without fortress shield, a Paragon might be in trouble after taking that kind of volley on it's shields, although likely could take multiple barrages like that on it's armor.  But unlike the Paragon, the Invictus can't vent and get a fresh 41,000 or more damage buffer.  The Invictus has 40,000 hull once (or buffed by Reinforced Bulkheads and Blast doors to 64,000, but that comes at the cost of flux dissipation most likely).  High Intensity Lasers and Tachyons Lances will be really good against the Invictus since it's all armor or hull damage.  The soft-flux disadvantage doesn't come into play.

Also, those new beam torpedoes are going to have a field day against the Invictus since they'll likely shoot from beyond it's cannister flak range.  Pegasus equipped with those might just be a straight up hard counter.

In any case, with all these cool new ships and weapons, I'm going to have to play with them personally to get a feel for what works well and what doesn't.  Without that play test experience, I find it really hard to make good predictions.

That said, I do like how Church fleets are going to make you want to pack in the high explosives, while Persean fleets are going to be making me really consider upping my PD allotment.  Which is good since I like the idea that sometimes you want to switch up your weapons loadout to adapt to the enemy fleets you'll be fighting.  High Intensity Lasers strike me as a good choice against the Invictus, for example, where as investing in a pair of Paladins might be good when facing a Pegasus.

[FooF]

The other thing they doesn’t seem to be mentioned too much is that the Invictus’ main battery is limited to the maneuverability of the behemoth. Being able to hit Paragons is one thing but if that long range and fast fire rate can’t keep up with a slightly faster ship, what good is it? It’s the Cruisers I’m thinking of: Falcon P, Missile Boat Auroras, Doom, Burn Drive Dominators, maybe even Eagles and Champions that can outmaneuver the main battery and still out range the mere +25% range bonus or just duke it out with the one or two Large guns. I don’t expect Destroyers and Frigates to put much of a dent in a dreadnought but a Cruiser might.

Likewise, the Odyssey and Conquest should have an easy time outmaneuvering the teeth of the Invictus and pummeling it with heavy firepower. The Onslaught and Legion might have some trouble and the Atlas/Prometheus Mk. II will be sitting ducks. I see a lot of soft and hard counters to this kind of specialized ship, hence why it’s obsolete. However, in the one way that it is strong, it is really strong. If anything, it’s the best station-buster out there.

[intrinsic_parity]

The lack of shields seems like a major downside for fighting stations. Even such a large amount of armor, won't really compare to shields against star fortresses with HIL/Tac Lance/hellbore etc. It might be possible that the overwhelming damage output could be enough to simply knock the station out before it can do too much damage, but that just seems unlikely to me.

[Linnis]

The lack of shields seems like a major downside for fighting stations. Even such a large amount of armor, won't really compare to shields against star fortresses with HIL/Tac Lance/hellbore etc. It might be possible that the overwhelming damage output could be enough to simply knock the station out before it can do too much damage, but that just seems unlikely to me.

I would have thought so as well before doing a pirate only playthrough. If the player is willing to lose a couple hundred of supplies and crew, simply ordering all ships to aggressively engage a station works wonderfully well. Instead of trading efficiently, the player can simply overwhelms the station defenses with pure numbers.

Thematically this makes sense too.

[SafariJohn]

Send in meatshields like Eradicator and Venture to soak for the Invictus. Just like the real Church!

[Dri]

Lets get real here, everyone is going to put Armored Weapon Mounts, Blast Doors and Reinforced Bulkheads on the Invictus—with just those 3 hullmods you're looking at 64,000 hull and 11,000 armor.

This thing is NOT going to go down fast even if it gets surrounded and you'd have to be just plain foolish to not set escorts. I mean 64,000 damn hull on top of 11,000 armor! I know the armor only counts as 1,100 armor for dmg reduction but still!.

[Thaago]

Its going to take a lot of beating to take down! Radiants (and Paragons too though fortress shield is its own thing) have given a good reason to use excessive amount of kinetic damage, to the point of doing moderate refits when going hunting ordos. This one gives a good reason to have good anti armor and anti hull weapons, though the usual torpedo spam is also going to be very effective (as Hiruma said, we are certainly going to see how well right click flak canister deals with quad reapers).

[Hiruma Kai]

Invictus is not going to go down fast, as it is a 60 DP ship, but on the other hand, it's not like it's strikes me as it's as some extraordinarily tanky ship for it's cost.

As it is, an end game player fleet should be able to handle multiple enemy Paragons and Radiants, and depending on how steady your pressure is, along with the tactical situation, those kinds of ships can tank more than 75,000 damage per fight on their shields.  A flux neutral Paragon is at a minimum 41,666 shield (i.e. 25000/0.6) + 18000 hull + 1500 armor = 61,166 total to destroy in the absolute best case.  That's without defensive hull mods and ignoring fortress shield. A flux neutral Radiant is 63,166 minimum, but will jump out and vent if you don't pin it down.  If either of those two ship get a two vent cycles, they likely have tanked just as much as an Invictus which had spent 70 out of it's 240 OP on defensive hull mods.

Given it's a 60 DP low tech shieldless ship, I kinda would expect the level of hull survivability Alex is presenting here, otherwise it'd go pop way too fast for it's deployment cost.

I fully expect, like a Radiant or Paragon, you deal with the supporting ships first, then surround it and beat down over the course of 10-60 seconds, depending on weapon and missile selection.  In a player fleet I could see it being a long range Gauss sniper + HE bomber + MIRV loadout with a bunch of actually shielded ships running interference.

[Gothars]

Thanks for the blogpost Alex. I love the nod to the Orion project! Uniquifying the faction is a worthwhile goal, looking forward to it. Will it only apply to combat, or are also changes outside combat planned? The dialogs with the various generic commanders and fleets of each faction seem like a relatively easy way to show more of each faction's flavor, for example. Some variation in fleet behavior might also be interesting, like the TTs sending out tech mining fleets, or the church missionaries to other faction's planets, or the league having occasional in-fighting.

[Dri]

We can't forget Invictus gets 100 OP refund from Heavy Ballistic Integration.

[TheLaughingDead]

We can't forget Invictus gets 100 OP refund from Heavy Ballistic Integration.

Ahh, assuming one would use every ballistic slot. However, since the AI seems to take into account the Lidar Array range of the main weapon battery when deciding the range it will stick to, along with the somewhat gimped range from only a +25% range buff instead of Cap-grade ITU 60% buff, it seems that those non-battery weapons will not be firing nearly as often. Probably for the best though, as its flux dissipation wouldn't be able to handle the main battery's volleys along with, hell, even a bunch of Hellbores or Devastators.
I imagine the Invictus (despite all its tanking ability) will likely be behind the battle line delivering bursts of artillery fire, only occasionally exchanging fire with the enemy directly. However, if it finds itself caught off-guard, it is likely that its (better than Onslaught) speed and EMP resistance will allow it to retreat behind friendlies, or the support has all perished in fiery explosions and the Invictus is going to be ground down to dust from every angle anyway.

Personally already thinking about the potential of this beast. Although Gauss cannons sound nice, I'm thinking more along the lines of... Storm Needlers paired with Hellbores. After all, think about the drawbacks of these weapons:
Hellbores have slow fire rate, slow shot speed, low DPS. The former two of those problems are dealt with while using Lidar Array (to some degree at least) and the latter is made up for with Storm Needlers.
Storm Needlers have poor range and poor hit strength. The former issue is (somewhat) solved with the Array, in that they will at least be able to trade fire with most other Capital Large Ballistics (at 900 range with ITU). Worst case scenario, the Invictus has to take some hits to trade, but it definitely has the armour and hull to do so. The poor hit strength is of course patched up with the Hellbore's disgusting hit strength.
Both Hellbores and Storm Needlers are flux-efficient, which is definitely important depending on the duration for the Lidar Array, and they compliment each other well. Issue I might see is that the Hellbore rounds don't travel fast enough to hit anything smaller than a capital, but in that case a Hellbore could feasibly be swapped for an HAG (also give feeling of more dakka and warm fuzzies in chest). And the Kinetic and hull DPS of two Storm Needlers at 3x Fire Rate makes me salivate just thinking about it.
Okay, maybe I just really want to make Storm Needlers work, m'kay? Rotating guns are cool!

[Jackundor]

i have some problems with basically every part of the update we have seen so far but i just want to say one thing:

don't make another midline cap to make the Diktat more Unique, just give them the Odyssey

with the exception of big bounties the Oddy is basically unused, it's too hard to aquire and the Lion's Guard have it as part of their doctrine in their .faction file already, they just don't know the BP

or alternatively make them go really hard on cruiser school