heya, just made forum account so I can comment. Gonna be a lot so sorry in advance
So I more recently only got the game (am already chest deep in obsession for some weeks now lol..).
First play was vanilla just to test waters, then I went and checked all the mods, and set up some neat modlist and went back.
Playing exclusively with RC since it's great and feels as much of an upgrade as Combat Extended in Rimworld and changes the things that miffed me when i tried vanilla first time.
I am lucky with my timing since the mod is so young, and basically just before I started the game hehe.
Anywaysss, patch 1.19 was very good, things feel more functional now.
I also use another mod called Detailed Combat Results to get some data on stuff, so any damage mentions are referenced by that.
Looking at those charts i noticed that there is MASSIVE amounts of shield damage happening (probs because they absorb lots of dps but eventually fall),
very little armor damage happening (cause when the shields fall they don't last long?), and weirdly NO hull damage at all, except a very few exotic happenings.
Then theres also truckloads of EMP damage.
Found the Hull part very weird, any thoughts? Theres also sometimes enemy ships that i killed where it says they took only shield and EMP damage. no hull, no armor.
Whats going on there? To be kept in mind it could also just be that the DCR mod isnt working right. But I dont know!
Also I don't manually fly, I just let them autobattle and give commands cause I find it more fun to watch strats unfold. Just for perspective on my feedback.
Now heres what I think about current state:
Missiles are BADASS.
They felt very sad and slow, and always got shot down or fizzled out halfway to the target.
Now I just control the battlefield with saturation hehe. Having a dedicated Missile Carrier Flagship is so much fun.
They seem a bit overtuned now though, because if an enemy gets destroyed, they look for a new target, and go for it.
So after initial saturation volley is done, there is just so many active missiles flying around.
They just keep updating their target locks and swiftly readjusting pathing to the next target. They can just do a full 180 on the spot to change direction.
Maybe more of a resistance would be good. Like how when you fly with sustained burn in hyperspace theres some dampening to your mobility (but way weaker than that ofc).
It does feel nice overall though, a good alternative and I prefer it to the carrier lifestyle, so please keep them relevant
Also I don't use Pilum and Sabot cause they are too slow and easily get screened.
Looping salamanders are back tho, mostly on very small ships (but eventually they hit them somewhere in the side at either front or end of the ship).
Also fixed the question of how to breach that 2-3000 Armor Behemoth. Missiles!! Allows even smaller ships to take a shot at rocky.
Ballistic are overall ok. Flux cost feels reasonable to have, good its back. Could get an over the board flat % reduction tho, to give them an edge over energy.
PD guns do the most damage by magnitutde against shields, and also have lowest OP cost to mount.
They have more range, high repeat, and are outperforming on the anti shield role.
This might be a skewed statistic tho cause if they dont manage to get shields down, the number goes up up and away while they just keep up pressure.
Then again you can just add more of them since they are so cheap. Medium sized PD autogun outperforms all "AntiShield" weapons by far, while costing 7OP or so.
Anti Shield guns perform better than anti armors as anti armors cause they can do both.
They can get shields down, and then apply damage.
Anti Armor guns im not sure.
Kinda ok, but also not that impressive cause shields are a thing, and they are not good at getting them down,
so their damage potential is high against unshielded theoretically, but actual effectiveness seems very low.
Low repeaters feel overall less useful than fast fire dakka guns. Big guns could use a bit more omph, or range imo.
Energy is strong!
Blast type energy is the better Anti Armor guns. Hits hard, feels good. Not useless against shields either.
Beams are very good overall. Not much to say tbh. only drawback of energy is the flux hunger so thats ok i guess.
Not exclusive to energy, but EMP seems to be the killer of ships atm. Needs a straight nerf. maybe take 20% off flat and see? Its way too strong rn overall.
I do however have no idea if EMP does actual damage damage or is only hard cc, since im still a newb and its never made clear. Should probably read up on that.
Arc throwers are god tier universal weapons, but they are costly to implement so I dont think they need change specifically.
Fighters are kinda broken, cause they have unreasonable range and dps, many of them carrying guns of same type as you mount on ships.
you
can shoot them down, especially beams perform well, however still.
For example in testing data i had more often than not regular Shepards and Blitzers,
bottom of the line cheapest ships with integrated cheapo fighter bays still had the highest damage contribution in the whole fleet,
or at least top 3, simply via their 1x Fighter bays of the WEAKEST of drones. Thats ships 1/10ths the cost of the strongest in my fleet.
I can bring a Destroyer, or i can bring a bunch of Sheperds equal in cost to it, and the Sheperds will straight outclass. Even if i bring less than equal. Insane value.
Onto that, the fighters follow the same as what i said about the guns above. PD guns on fighters is 8-15k ranged free damage en masse. bombers are sad in comparison.
QoL:I could use with some more clarity on range. Maybe ingame some hud stuff to tell you how far something is? I still dont know how much range one square on combat map is.
The 1 pixel of my screen is one meter on the map in the field manual is super useless information.
Point Defense, Anti Armor, Anti Shield etc. classifications on guns seem largely useless and often missleading now on weapons, maybe removing those,
or making better fitting labels would be good? Also does the "200% against shields, 50% against armor" etc. hold any relevance still? If not, also removing would help with clarity.
Attacking Stations or Motherships, anything that spawns in center of map is meh rn.
You are immediately in combat range which makes the ship AIs go ham, and also you get hit before shields can go up.
I would humbly ask for maybe that the stations get offset by a fair bit towards the defenders side.
Or the map gets longer and less 1:1 for this type of combat. Or maybe just even bigger map?
Either works, just so your ships dont immediately enter into combat and you have some opportunity to sort things through and give commands.
Retreat combat similar. They spawn way within firing range and just get mowed down. Usually only the Kites etc. escape while the fire focus is on the bigger targets.
Might be fine though, cause its already annoying having to chase enemies down. On the other hand trying to escape yourself seems like a lost cause.
Lastly, Shields seem to be still fairly imbalanced (especially [REDACTED]), and Hullmods and Perks too.
The game is however still totally playable and I can definitely say I would enjoy Starsector a good amount less, if it weren't for RC!
So thank you for your work, awesome mod, amazing modder o7.
