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[Hiruma Kai]

I wonder how the Odyssey is going to fare with the proliferation of plasma burn and Orion drives late game, as well as further minor nerfs to large missiles (Hurricane dropping to 7 missiles from 9 [even before that, 11] with ECCM being provided built in on an Odyssey being even less of a relative advantage?, and Squall having some it's damage become shield only).  Going from the Radiant (which a skill player Odyssey can outrun) to to Radiants, Novas (which if it goes farther than Plasma burn may be able to catch, especially with systems experise), and plasma burn Brilliants may be rough.

The burn drive change already made low tech much better at pursuit, so much so I find certain officer combinations of duo'd Onslaughts impossible to finish up solo these days.  And we've got a fast low-tech battlecruiser coming in with Orion drive as well.

The point about most flux coming from other sources is also an interesting one.  Since it implies if 450 base line flux isn't much a disadvantage, that implies 1000 base line flux isn't much of an advantage either.  I hadn't really looked at a comparison across ships lately.  Given the Odyssey is down 70-90 OP compared to other direct combat capitals, means 140-180 less flux from Ordinance Expertise.

Onslaught XIV with 370 OP has baseline 630 flux, assuming 50 vents, Flux Distributor, and 80% of remaining OP in weapons (480 from OE), less 240 shield flux/second is 1520 flux/second available for 240 OP worth of guns.  At 17,850 flux capacity base and 1.0 shield efficiency, it's shield is baseline stronger than the Odyssey's 15,000 and 1.0 shield efficiency.

Odyssey with 280 OP has baseline 1000 flux, assuming 50 vents, Flux Distributor, and 80% of remaining OP in weapons (336 from OE), less 250 shield flux/second is 1736 for 168 OP worth of guns.

Huh, so the difference between the two is only 216-226 flux/second (depending on if you're counting shields or not), and the ratio of their total flux dissipation is roughly their DP ratio (i.e. 1520/1736 = 0.88, 40/45 = 0.88).  So it sounds like the high tech Odyssey really only has the proportional flux of a low tech Onslaught or Onslaught XIV, and a burn drive that can be cancelled is quite good at keeping an Odyssey in range.  Certainly, when I see an AI controlled Odyssey in the opposing fleet and I'm piloting an Onslaught, I tend to think "easy target" these days.  Only real advantage Odyssey has is 70 speed, which is admittedly a strong one, but I wonder if it's being diluted.

So I'd be curious to hear how AI controlled Odysseys are holding up with the new ships in the mix, along with the large missile changes.  Missile spam + interceptor Persean fleets might also be a pretty bad match up, as typically you need to run little in the way of PD is you want significant offensive power on an Odyssey.

[Megas]

I wonder how the Odyssey is going to fare with the proliferation of plasma burn and Orion drives late game, as well as further minor nerfs to large missiles (Hurricane dropping to 7 missiles from 9 [even before that, 11] with ECCM being provided built in on an Odyssey being even less of a relative advantage?, and Squall having some it's damage become shield only).

Seven missiles from MIRV?!  So it is going to be worse than what it was back during the 0.6x releases?  At least during those earlier releases, the MIRVs regenerated and they converged properly without any need for ECCM.  But now, it will be rolled back to the old damage, but not the old convergence and ammo regeneration?

[Hiruma Kai]

It should have better convergence as Alex says he's improved maneuverability so it shouldn't feel that ECCM is required.  Not sure how it'll compare to 0.6 convergence.  No regeneration though.

Ah - I seem to remember (not in connection with the Pegasus) reducing the warhead count on the Hurricane a bit back. It's at <checks> 7 now, but with considerably improvement maneuverability to compensate, so that ECCM no longer feels as "required" to make the Hurricane work. So the net effect of the change is to raise the floor and reduce the ceiling of its performance - which also has to fortunate effect of making it less of an issue on the Pegasus, I think.

[Megas]

It should have better convergence as Alex says he's improved maneuverability so it shouldn't feel that ECCM is required.  Not sure how it'll compare to 0.6 convergence.  No regeneration though.

Old MIRVs did not spread much before converging.  With ECCM, they barely split at all because they were so maneuverable, probably more of a downside because easier to dodge or shoot down.  Back then, it was easy to dodge MIRVs with a fast ship.  Also, MIRVs were fragile and the whole swarm could be trivially shot down by flak.  On the other hand, regenerating MIRVs made them more like Pilums.  Just mount on the ship and forget about it like the AI does.

[Ruddygreat]

I wonder how the Odyssey is going to fare with the proliferation of plasma burn and Orion drives late game, as well as further minor nerfs to large missiles (Hurricane dropping to 7 missiles from 9 [even before that, 11] with ECCM being provided built in on an Odyssey being even less of a relative advantage?, and Squall having some it's damage become shield only).

Seven missiles from MIRV?!  So it is going to be worse than what it was back during the 0.6x releases?  At least during those earlier releases, the MIRVs regenerated and they converged properly without any need for ECCM.  But now, it will be rolled back to the old damage, but not the old convergence and ammo regeneration?

Pegasus: Despite 2 of the Large missiles facing backwards, I still feel like a 4 Hurricane loadout would be a bit imbalanced. I look forward to trying it out!

Ah - I seem to remember (not in connection with the Pegasus) reducing the warhead count on the Hurricane a bit back. It's at <checks> 7 now, but with considerably improvement maneuverability to compensate, so that ECCM no longer feels as "required" to make the Hurricane work. So the net effect of the change is to raise the floor and reduce the ceiling of its performance - which also has to fortunate effect of making it less of an issue on the Pegasus, I think.

(the quote from alex confirming this, they are getting better turning as well) (though they will be way more susceptible to flak now, yeah)

and re: automated ships - I feel that outright buffing the stats of the weaker ships is the wrong course of action here, it'd just make lategame remnant fleets even worse to fight & is frankly kinda just boring to me.
Giving them more varied systems, perhaps leaning into the "stuff that's too dangerous / out there to do on a crewed ship" idea could be one interesting way of doing it, another would be giving cores access to ai-only skills in a similar vein to hypercognition, though making & balancing those would be a whole extra thing.

But coming back to AI ships in player fleets - most of the ships are worth their dp (the scintilla is good but no remnant wings really fit it; the brilliant is also good but man it deserves something better than plasma burn), I still feel that the problem is firmly with the point distribution more than anything; you could run 24(!!!) gamma'd glimmers (and still have room for 8 hyperions, as seen in those screenshots!!!) to get the most out of wolfpack tactics, or you could run a more reasonable composition like 2 beta'd brilliants, 2 beta'd fulgents and a beta'd scintilla - the 24 glimmers alone could probably mow through everything but the hardest stuff in the game, but the other composition would probably struggle against most similarly reasonable fleets.

I know that this is kinda cherrypicking optimal conditions for wolfpack but I still feel that it gets across what I'm trying to convey, mainly that while the medium ships are fairly good currently, the current system also allows for stuff that's so much better & somewhat easier to pull off (needs worse cores & easier to kill ships) & that's what should be reigned in, instead of the worse stuff getting buffed.

[Megas]

I feel that outright buffing the stats of the weaker ships is the wrong course of action here

There is always lowering their DP cost.  Lumen feels like a 3 DP ship.  Fulgent probably should be 9 DP, if not buffed.  Brilliant probably should be 22 DP - it is no Dominator or Champion.  Radiant and Glimmer seem to be spot on.  The Derelict frigates can probably get away being 2 DP, and Berserker being 4 or 5 DP.  Rampart feels good at 15 DP.  Guardian in bounties really needs it DP boosted.

The only ships that seem worth their DP are Glimmer, Rampart, and Radiant.

[Thaago]

I'll note that Fulgents have the potential for 2 medium and 4 small missiles, and HEF backing up their energies. They are quite dangerous ships, potentially some of the best missile support/burst ones for their price, they just aren't blockbuster speed ships (though 85 is only slightly slow). They also have a .6 shield + decent flux stats, plus their armor is not too weak (450 is a little low, but not terribly). A gamma core gives all the skills they really need, so they are even pretty cheap in terms of the skill's budget of ships.

[Twilight Sentinel]

Bringing things back to PL fleet compositions, their fleet compositions do seem pretty slim.  Especially without the Drover and Heron, they don't have that much variety in what they deploy.  2 capitals (conquest and pegasus), 2 cruisers (champion and gryphon), and 2 destroyers (hammerhead and sunder).  That screenshot also only had them with three frigates (brawler, monitor, and vigilance), though I assume they still at least use the centurion?  There isn't that much variety there, especially in the destroyer slot.  Hammerheads and sunders are a great battle line combination, especially when backed up by monitors and vigilance.  However it is a fairly basic kind of fleet to fight, and you'll be fighting an awful lot of the same thing over and over again against PL fleets with that combination.  The monitors especially can be very frustrating to fight against and hammerheads are brutal killing machines during the early game.  If we look at the PL fleet screenshot in the blog, we see that over 1/3 of the entire fleet is just hammerheads and sunders, and that's a large fleet.  Smaller fleets are going to rely on that lineup even more, suggesting that the PL lineup could really use more variety in the destroyer and frigate range.  Especially considering they share most of their lower end core lineup with the Dictate.

By contrast, Hegemony fleets have a ton more variety since they tend to have a small number of elite ships backed up by a huge variety of auxiliary frigates.  Both their big ships and small ships have a lot of potential options to draw from, only ending up shy of options in the destroyer slot (now that they don't field hammerheads and sunders anymore).  TT fleets have the greatest variety of ships to face off against in the entire game.  Just looking at which factions show up more, the PL is your second most common force in the sector.  The church even has more variety between their enforcers, manticores, condors, mules, and buffalo mk2s.  While the church hardly appears in the sector at all.

Not to mention that the monitor and gryphon aren't that great of ships in the current game balance.  The monitor is so ridiculously tanky and fast that a single one can tie down capital ships for extended periods of time and not die.  Look at how many monitors that PL fleet has, 5 of them!  Since just one can completely warp the battlefield, are we going to see any reworking done of such a seemingly common ship for the PL?

On the other hand, the gryphon's ship system is just expanded missile rack in another form.  The ship certainly isn't bad, but the system is boring.  Someone hunting down PL fleets or getting a PL commission doesn't have that many choices as far as getting cruisers from these guys.  One of them essentially doesn't have a ship system, just 4x the normal loadout of missiles.  There's another ship that could really use some kind of rework.

[Voyager I]

I'll note that Fulgents have the potential for 2 medium and 4 small missiles, and HEF backing up their energies. They are quite dangerous ships, potentially some of the best missile support/burst ones for their price, they just aren't blockbuster speed ships (though 85 is only slightly slow). They also have a .6 shield + decent flux stats, plus their armor is not too weak (450 is a little low, but not terribly). A gamma core gives all the skills they really need, so they are even pretty cheap in terms of the skill's budget of ships.

Yeah, it's worth considering that Radiant ships have baseline 0.6 shield efficiency (one of the most important numbers on a ship) and +1 burn speed for their hull size across the board, which can make them significantly more useful than they look.The Fulgent doesn't do well built around HEF because it doesn't have the mobility to offset its short range, but it's still a handy little ship that can mount two sabot pods with an elite missile spec officer in midgame. Similarly, the Brilliant isn't as busted as the Radiant, but it's pretty close to a Champion that keeps up with Destroyer fleets.

[GoldPile]

With the addition of all these cool new capital ships I wonder if we can get a few new logistics hull mods that reduces fuel or crew requirements to help offset the heavy logistical burden and not have 1/4 of the fleet dedicated to logistical ships draining the entire sector of fuel. Maintenance is in a good spot as Derelict Operations slashes a 5 d-mod Paragon upkeep to basically destroyer levels when paired with Makeshift Equipment. D-mods themselves reduce recovery cost and field repairs reduces hull and CR needing repair if you choose to play with a junker fleet. Solar Shielding also negates CR reduction in storms so at a certain point supplies becomes a non issue. However junker fleets risk rolling increased maintenance and erratic fuel injector which compounds the crew and fuel issue. Low tech particularly suffers from increased crew requirements and fuel costs from their midline and high tech counterparts by design.

Currently the only ways to reduce crew requirements and fuel consumption is Efficiency Overhaul and you sacrifice OP by doing so which I think is a fair trade. Containment procedures gets a max 25 fuel reduction which is nothing when you got +200 per light year. Makeshift Equipment’s 100 maintenance reduction is much more significant IMO. Personally when I get to a point to where I can run a large fleet I do not find it fun draining the entire sector of fuel just to go on an expedition and wasting 1/4 of my fleet for logistics (a few Atlas, 4 tugs for burn 20, however many Prometheus needed to get to and from a place). It’s more tedium at that point. Running a mostly low tech fleet is also a turn off by how much fuel they waste. I would prefer not to gravitate towards midline or high tech just because they’re cheaper to run. Thematically I also find it odd a preferred junker fleet is not low tech since it excels at supply cost reduction.

I wouldn’t mind an option to trade OP for a reduction in logistics profile (fuel in particular) and/or a buff to Containment Procedures. If you got erratic fuel injector a -50% fuel consumption is just offsetting the d-mod for OP in the end. Another adjustment could be allowing Derelict Operations to affect fuel and crew costs as well and Hull Restoration to reduce logistical upkeep by ~10% per s-mod. I would love to play around with all of these new capitals but I shudder at the thought of their upkeep, the Invictus especially.

[Üstad]

A few observations:
1. Since Diktact is now very personality cult centric, does the officers from the faction have a major importance now? Maybe having their fleets more high level officers to compensate the counterproductive designs, and having officers of the LG implanted with cybernetics (3 elite skills) to diferenciate. Also, it could be a good opportunity to have a new bar-quest to aquire better deserters from the faction.

2. Now that TT is more phase oriented, can the revenant and phantom being aquired from their shops or included in their base blueprints to access from the nanoforge opportunity quests?

I think neural link should be common feature for the diktat, you know the officer paranoia.

By the way when will this update get released?

[SafariJohn]

Every time someone calls Andrada a gas station attendant, every time someone cutifies/glorifies Volturnian Lobster, they are insulting the "Supreme Executor" and his guard's "emboldened spirit". And just like the Hitler "Downfall" parodies, it's *** hilarious.

So you want the Diktat to be a paper tiger? Sure! Literally nobody here is really against that. Give the Lion's Guard ***-tier officers (sycophants) and the best equipment money can buy.

Doing so would:
- incentivize players to attack Andrada
- paint him as an evil fool just like many real dictators
- and not undercut the threat he poses because he and his lackeys are smart and generally competent

[Morrokain]

Ok I finally read the blog and most of the comments and responses. I am super hyped about 90% of the changes - especially the league and REDACTED ones! The focus on beam missiles is a really neat way to differentiate the historically bland faction.

The capital ships are all interesting too. Some have expressed concerned over the Pegasus, but I actually like the idea of having a ship that immediately creates a tactical concern no matter what side of the battle it is on. You have to really work hard to not lose ships when fighting it and you have a pretty limited window of peak effectiveness when using it. Good stuff!

The Apex is a beautiful ship so major props to David on that one. I'm sorry to see the hangar bay go on the Brilliant but I get the reasoning. The Terminator ship is something I really want to try out to see how it feels. Imo that was one of the coolest recent additions to the game. I'm curious though, did you happen to fix the nullpointer issue with using the AI tags that SUPER REDACTED gunships use when combined with that system? Specifically: "attack_at_an_angle"? I know its not a vanilla use case or anything, but it would be cool if you could use both!

Anyway, I think the game is moving in a really good direction by making the factions more unique and a few more gated goodies to reach for. It's something I've wanted for years and I'm glad its finally being worked into the roadmap. (This should be the main take-away from my post I hope.)


And now on to the controversial changes. I want to first focus on the lore part of it as I feel the lore and design aspects of this issue are very much separate things.

So, lore-wise, the change to the LG makes perfect sense to me. While I can understand why those who had a different interpretation of the LG would be disappointed of course, when you look at how all of the lore comes together (haven't done all of the story yet I'm sad to say) and the timeline, etc, I think it all holds up just fine from what I know - and importantly it creates something a little different since the XIV ships are already kind of supposed to be the elite remnants of the Domain, etc. So for me everything looks good there. And hey, who doesn't want to push tyrants down a flight of stairs and get some cool toys in the process? 

Speaking of cool toys however....

Spoiler

In brief: that's exactly correct and the LG ships (aside from the Executor) are not intended to be appealing to the player. As someone pointed out earlier, the blog post kind of just goes from stuff that *is* appealing to the player into those without making that distinction super clear - to me it was just because, I mean, they're clearly worse, so what other conclusion might you draw from that? But it's definitely something I could've framed better in the post. In-game, I don't think it'll be like that; you'd have to see them in-campaign to even become aware of them (at which point you also clearly see they've got a d-mod!), it's not like they're presented as something good you want to get anywhere.

Basically, it's best to think of them as you might of a few extra d-modded pirate hulls - though in this case shinier than usual. But in the end it's just some added Diktat flavor that mainly comes into play when you blow them up.

Oof, to me that is a wasted opportunity. Especially since:

On the one hand: they really do, don't they? David really outdid himself there.

On the other hand: you can still use them and feel awesome, knowing that you're flying with style despite taking a (minor) penalty. That's true style, that is. There's an applicable saying that I think is really thought-provoking - at least, it was for me - that I first saw here - "fashion is pain".

I understand that this is half joking, but let me get this straight. You are adding something very visually appealing with all downsides and no upsides as a sort of "player challenge" and essentially making these ships pirates 2.0? Or is that a justification to all of the expressions of disappointment? Kind of a salve to the burn sort of thing. I just... I don't want to be too harsh here as like I said 90-95% of the changes are golden and spot on design, but this just feels wrong to me on every level from a design perspective.

I think it has been established that it is a patently bad idea to create player traps like that in any game. Now, I'm not the good idea factory or anything (very likely the opposite  ) so I'm not arguing that in any way, and I definitely get that its just supposed to mostly be fluff and the penalty is minor, but the issue here is the combination of the two quotes. "This looks really cool - but you will also feel bad for using it" is just not the way to go prreettty much ever. I'd even argue that doing that is a major pitfall that should be taught in design classes if it isn't already. Even for new players, I think those who notice this will likely say something. With all the min-max talk already present on the forums, adding fuel to that fire is a mistake imo.

Your point on "different rather than better/worse" should be the design goal for paintjob ships. LP and pirates get a pass for all of the reasons already stated in the thread and I won't touch on them here. But if you are making ships that look good, they had better at least be on par with the other ships. Pirates as a theme is so well established that you can get away with it there. You can't get away with it on a custom sub-faction unless you specifically make their ships look bad as a warning to the player that "you don't want these".

[close]

Please don't take any of this too harshly. As Grievous69 already pointed out its a very small thing when seen in juxtaposition against all of the other amazing stuff here. I just think its something to be avoided down the road and the attempted justification worries me a bit - even jokingly.

All in all well done!

[Dwarfslayer]

My suggestion for the Lion's Guard: Keep the base hulls as they are in the blog post. Then give them a high chance of having one-to-three s-mods, and allow those s-mods to stick around when the player captures them.

Hmm - interesting idea; I'll keep it in mind. I don't think it's really necessary or quite fits here, but I get what you're saying.

something not-quite the above, but along these lines would be great:
- a random s mod that may or may not be useful to you but comes with an increased severity version of special modifications
- or the penalty of 'special modifications' only comes into play (and scales upwards) when you put your own hull mods on the ships ["If my elite warships needed recovery shuttles they would have been BUILT with recovery shuttles."]
- or the effect of special modifications is positive(ish) but causes the cost of all other hull mods to increase, because it's incompatible with any flexible doctrine

[Sahqovum]

I guess the best way to sum up the Lion's Guard discussion is that they can be used by the player. I don't recall too much talk of the Remnant ships other than the Radiant (which was a bit ridiculous at 40 DP) until Automated Ships was released. Now we have talk on how the ships other than the Radiant and Glimmer are subpar in comparisons to the other options available for the player. For better and worse so long as the players could use them they'll inevitably be judged in comparison to everything else the players can use.