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Author Topic: So what's the plan with the Fury?  (Read 8549 times)

Hiruma Kai

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #45 on: July 20, 2022, 07:22:19 AM »

Actually, that makes me wonder, instead of High Scatter Amplifier halving range and giving beams hard flux as a hullmod, what if Alex doubled down on the long range beam spam and made a hullmod such that all beams gained allied ship passthrough (like what the Paladin has).
I thought viable sustained long-range beams are a no-no because there is no counterplay to them. Wouldn't it end up in a situation like the Pilum spam?

It is a good question.  The fact that beams are included in the game means there should be some sensible playstyle that utilizes beams.  Right now, most builds I've seen proposed for Furies do not include things like Graviton beams or Tactical lasers.  I think I've seen disco support Aurora builds posted on the forums, but they tend to be rare and mostly a really safe AI build.  A player can't really leverage such a build to make important plays. 

I mean, I can't think of a time when I've put a Graviton beam as a primary weapon on a ship, as opposed to an after thought on an Eagle or Falcon.

On the other hand, I've seen effective builds relying on Xyphos, because of flux free Ion damage.  Although it's acting in a support capacity instead of directly killing something with DPS.

So people are saying it feels like there is only one way to properly build a Fury or Aurora.  My question is, how would we make a different style viable?  Currently, we have beams which people are reluctant to use, because they don't kill anything solo. You can mass them right now and if you micromanage the positioning, you can get them concentrate properly, but it's a lot of work and any losses will quickly eat away at your killing power.

What I'm suggesting isn't actually increasing their peak power, simply making them more AI friendly and opening up a new usage possibility.   The DPS is exactly the same.  Since they're long range, normally you can surround or line up such that the beams can concentrate anyways.  However, it does open up the possibility of more efficient escort ships, since those tend to hang behind the escorted ship. It helps the case where you've only put in 1 or 2 beam ships, or only partially use beams, like on an Eagle.  Certainly would help solidify Eagles as anti-fighters (and maybe even anti-missile with Heavy Burst Lasers (1190 range with Gunnery Implants, Advanced optics, ITU) .

Essentially, if you have a hullmod that adds passover to beams, and you throw in Advanced Optics, ITU, and Advanced Turret Gyros, and IPDAI, you've now invested a fair bit of OP into making for a giant PD Xyphos that does more than just keep ships off a capital's backside, but can also contribute to what's going on in front.

It gives them a different role in a fleet, instead of punch down frigate killer, now it becomes a reasonable escort to a capital or heavy cruiser.
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Megas

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #46 on: July 20, 2022, 07:35:05 AM »

I mean, I can't think of a time when I've put a Graviton beam as a primary weapon on a ship, as opposed to an after thought on an Eagle or Falcon.
Wolf because it does not have the flux stats to comfortably support pulse laser or any other medium-sized energy bolt weapon.

If I pilot Wolf, I want ePD+IPDAI and use two IR PLs as primary weapons and an Ion Pulser as a finisher.  IR PL is efficient but lacks range without ePD+IPDAI.


If beams are to be supported, then Energy Mastery should change.  The damage falloff is too severe for anything aside from bolt usage on small or SO ships.  There should not be any falloff, seeing that damage is all normal Energy Mastery gives, unlike Ballistic Mastery.  (I like the suggestion of merging both Ballistic and Energy Masteries into one like Shield and Phase skills were.)
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Draba

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #47 on: July 20, 2022, 08:32:59 AM »

What I'm suggesting isn't actually increasing their peak power, simply making them more AI friendly and opening up a new usage possibility.   The DPS is exactly the same.  Since they're long range, normally you can surround or line up such that the beams can concentrate anyways.  However, it does open up the possibility of more efficient escort ships, since those tend to hang behind the escorted ship. It helps the case where you've only put in 1 or 2 beam ships, or only partially use beams, like on an Eagle.  Certainly would help solidify Eagles as anti-fighters (and maybe even anti-missile with Heavy Burst Lasers (1190 range with Gunnery Implants, Advanced optics, ITU) .
Since the main limit on long range is usually ships getting in each other's way a big ball of tac lasers with advanced optics+IPDAI/PD would roll over anything IMO.
Tac laser is already kinda-sorta OK, if you have some other weapons on the target it steadily plinks away and usually does surprising amounts of hull damage for the cost.
Agreed that tacticals and especially gravitons aren't the stronger weapons in the game ofc, and need to be spammed or be used along squalls/ballistics to really work.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #48 on: July 20, 2022, 09:47:06 AM »

Since the main limit on long range is usually ships getting in each other's way a big ball of tac lasers with advanced optics+IPDAI/PD would roll over anything IMO.
Tac laser is already kinda-sorta OK, if you have some other weapons on the target it steadily plinks away and usually does surprising amounts of hull damage for the cost.
Agreed that tacticals and especially gravitons aren't the stronger weapons in the game ofc, and need to be spammed or be used along squalls/ballistics to really work.

Unclear to me without testing.  You may very well be right, although soft flux is still a really strong weakness.  To actually kill, you need to get enough damage to beat dissipation since the AI will stop firing weapons at very high soft flux.  It takes 17 tactical lasers to just barely break even with a Fury with 30 vents.  That is a lot of lasers for a single 20 DP ship.  If SO is involved, you have to double that to 34, which is kinda crazy.

Although trying a quick test where I copy over the Paladin pierce set and collision class on Gravitons and Tactical lasers, and take fleet of 12 Furies with 2x Gravitons and 6x Tactical lasers (with Advanced Optics/ITU/Gunnery implants) against an Ordo, it performs worse than a bog standard Heavy Blaster + Ion Pulser + Sabot pod + burst PD build.  I couldn't take out a double Radiant ordo with the modified beams (i.e. fleet wipe), but was able to use that bog standard build to take out a triple Radiant ordo with 4 of the 12 Furies destroyed.

The beam build didn't have enough pressure to be able to keep the Furies together - they kept drifting apart as the remnants pushed in, at which point they had trouble killing even remnant destroyers, plus needed to constantly issue eliminate orders to get them to focus fire - they typically shoot at the closest.  Other ships might do better with it, but at first look it doesn't seem crazy.  Now tachyon lances might be too strong with it - AI typically tries to trip up opponents by getting foes in a line, and so it wouldn't be as valuable in this case against a certain subset of weapons - but that's already true of guided missiles and fighters.

Anyways, I'm probably diverging from the thread topic, so maybe I should make a suggestion thread on the idea.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #49 on: July 20, 2022, 10:05:10 AM »

At this point it sounds like we could make some standardized dp "classes" for cruisers if the numbers were cleaned up a bit - 20 and 25 are already the standard points for "normal" and "heavy" cruisers. If we look at the outliers, the eagle very likely is moving down to "standard" and we could pull the p-radicator and fury to 18 along with the apogee to make a sort of "budget-friendly" cruiser class. Then the only notable outliers are the falcon and venture at 14 but to be honest I'd like to see one or two more light cruisers at 14 to fill the gap between destroyers and standard cruisers. Then there would be four distinct cruiser categories: 14, 18, 20, and 25 which would make comparisons much easier. "Does this 20 dp cruiser match up to other 20 dp cruisers?" is much easier to evaluate than whether or not we should give it plus or minus a couple dp.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2022, 10:14:32 AM by BigBrainEnergy »
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Megas

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #50 on: July 20, 2022, 11:24:32 AM »

And elite cruiser at 30+, although Aurora under AI control does not feel very elite.
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Draba

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #51 on: July 20, 2022, 01:02:47 PM »

The beam build didn't have enough pressure to be able to keep the Furies together - they kept drifting apart as the remnants pushed in, at which point they had trouble killing even remnant destroyers, plus needed to constantly issue eliminate orders to get them to focus fire - they typically shoot at the closest.  Other ships might do better with it, but at first look it doesn't seem crazy.  Now tachyon lances might be too strong with it - AI typically tries to trip up opponents by getting foes in a line, and so it wouldn't be as valuable in this case against a certain subset of weapons - but that's already true of guided missiles and fighters.

Tried it myself and yep, pure beam firing over allies isn't nearly as silly as I'd have expected. Lots of time idling even with eliminate orders, and that really hurts beams.
Tac laser/HIL tucked behind some ballistic frontliners is pretty broken though.
Spoiler
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Thaago

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #52 on: July 20, 2022, 01:03:47 PM »

I do love me a disco paragon!
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SafariJohn

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #53 on: July 20, 2022, 01:06:26 PM »

Lock-step DP is lame.

I never use Fury or Aurora. The latter's mounts have always been too weird for me, even when it had a large hardpoint. The former was marketed as "Shrike, but bigger" and Shrike already seemed only so-so.


High tech has gone in weird directions as the game has progressed.

It started as the "quality over quantity" doctrine that was better at long fights (infinite ammo, shield focus, phase skimmer, Paragon, etc.).

With CR it got flipped into the "win fast or lose to CR decay" doctrine. Sabot became a mainstay.

Then SO came out and ballistic ships usurped the win fast niche with their MGs and Chainguns (and Sabot). Somewhere along the line XIV variants came out with quality AND quantity.

High tech ships have stayed good despite the various changes, but the doctrine seems muddled to me. You can deploy a Paragon and be locked into an anchored deployment. You can wolf pack but all the ships are basically interchangeable except Omen (EMP) and Wolf (meh). You can put up an Astral and... does anyone even use Astral anymore? Even the NPC factions? It's just good for spewing torpedo bombers, anyways...
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Grievous69

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #54 on: July 20, 2022, 01:15:27 PM »

And then came Omega weapons that are basically made for high tech, and they thankfully make things more interesting, but such weapons are very limited.

I honestly don't mind the "zoom in, do burst damage, try to get out" playstyle, or just looking for fluxed targets, but there's only so many high tech ships that can have the same "thing". It also doesn't help that such ships are pretty much just player-bait, since AI performs poorly with such ships. It's ironic, high tech ships can mount the coolest weapons, but the ships themselves are mostly samey, while other tech levels use more basic guns, but have more interesting designs and mounts.

EDIT: Wait why doesn't energy AAF equivalent exist? It's perfect for ships with crap mounts and already good speed. Not sure how that would work with beams but you wouldn't mount beams on such ships anyway.

EDIT 2: Also there was like 3 ships that lost damage amplifying ship systems and got mobility ones instead, WHILE we were getting brand new high tech ships, with yes, mobility systems.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2022, 01:20:06 PM by Grievous69 »
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #55 on: July 20, 2022, 01:46:04 PM »

Quote
Wait why doesn't energy AAF equivalent exist? It's perfect for ships with crap mounts and already good speed. Not sure how that would work with beams but you wouldn't mount beams on such ships anyway.
Isn't that HEF? It's just not as flashy as AAF because the amount of lead going down range remains the same. Actually, it'd be kinda cool if HEF caused the projectiles to change colour so it's more obvious when someone's using it.
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Grievous69

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #56 on: July 20, 2022, 01:58:15 PM »

Yeah I guess, but get a load of this. Not a single high tech ship has HEF, only midline ships still got it (I think at least). I believe the decision to remove HEF from so many ships was because it's just a "do more damage" button at the end of the day. Which is fair, but now we're just left with either defensive or mobility systems. Tempest is the only good example of a ship that lost HEF, got an interesting system and is still a useful ship.

So my thoughts led me to a dilemma, would it be better for a Fury or Aurora to have sonething not tied to mobility? We'd at least have more uniquification then (I know I'm using the word wrong).
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #57 on: July 20, 2022, 03:05:20 PM »

That is pretty funny, the only human ships with HEF now are the champion and sunder. At the end of the day pretty much every system is some flavour of damage/defense/mobility. Termination sequence is fundamentally just a damage system but it has a much more interesting cost - instead of a simple charge-based system you have to throw away a drone. You lose defensive value for a burst of damage.

It's not like AAF is any better than HEF in that regard, it's just a "do more damage" button, but I think people like it more because it feels more satisfying to use: you get to hear the revving sound just before you pump out a tonne of ordnance. Compared to that HEF has a humming sound you can barely even hear and... uh... purple? I'd like to see it on more ships but right now it feels kinda lame to use even if the damage is good. Imagine if on top of the damage boost it also increased projectile speed by 33% and changed their colour. It would give off the feeling of "supercharging your weapons" a lot better. Or it could add emp damage instead of regular damage, but then we're getting into the territory of a different system entirely.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2022, 03:19:14 PM by BigBrainEnergy »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #58 on: July 20, 2022, 03:28:48 PM »

Scarabs system (I think it's temporal shell) is basically AAF + plasma jets.
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Megas

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Re: So what's the plan with the Fury?
« Reply #59 on: July 20, 2022, 03:56:53 PM »

The high-tech ships that originally had HEF were Aurora and Odyssey.  I think they were changed because they had no mobility and were easily clobbered by anything with more range.  Aurora was okay when it had large missiles, but when they were downgraded to synergies in 0.7.2, it became awful because it could no longer torpedo everything in the whole fight (no double reapers and not enough ammo with only medium instead of large), while it remained slow.  Odyssey was too slow to act as a battlecruiser and all it could do well is focus lances from long range (when all three lances converged).

As for Tempest, its system was the Terminator Drone itself (and it was a single drone with a phase cloak) when fighters were ships.  Then when fighters became missiles weapons, Tempest got Active Flares, then High Energy Focus, and now Termination Sequence.
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