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Author Topic: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread  (Read 21490 times)

intrinsic_parity

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #105 on: July 29, 2022, 12:49:26 PM »

Heavy Blasters, plural? I think you're underestimating the flux costs of heavy blasters, and over-estimating the base flux dissipation of an Eagle. Well, that, or assuming you'll be using SO.

What it would do, now that I experiment a bit, is put the Eagle into an interesting state where there are actually some decent non-SO builds that don't max out on flux vents.
I think you are underestimating how much 600 dissipation is lol. Eagle can already borderline run one heavy blaster (I kind of want to try something like 3x arbalest + HB now). Even more terrifying would be HB + cryo blaster behind 3x medium kinetics.

I was assuming good skills, which I think is fair on a cruiser.

3x Heavy Needlers is 600 flux/s (HAC or even arbalest are alternatives too), 2x HB is 1440 flux/s so 2040 total.

1200 base dissipation + 300 from vents, then add skills: ordinance expertise (138 from the listed weapons and probably like 30-40 more from PD and missiles) + flux regulation (50 more from vents, then everything x1.1) gets to 1903 dissipation which I think is probably fine to support that loadout. Maybe you want to squeeze in elite energy weapon mastery too, but it definitely seems like a loadout that would absolutely shred.

The cryoblaster loadout is even better. Wasting all that dissipation on 2/3 efficiency soft flux seems criminal to me.

Yeah not every Eagle build has to be a sniper, although that one is the safest.
The build from my current campaign which seems to do alright. Specifically didn't put Advanced Optics because I want it to commit more and not waste beams on side targets.
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I like that actually, although I think I would run 3x kinetics and maybe try to squeeze an ion pulser in somewhere.
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Kos135

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #106 on: July 29, 2022, 12:58:49 PM »

I like the idea of giving the Eagle that "Energy Bolt Coherer" hullmod, or whatever it's called. +200 range to non-beam energy weapons like the Pulse Laser and Heavy Blaster.

That would work better than the hangar slot, I think. Give the Eagle +10 top speed, built-in Energy Bolt Coherer, and +15 OP. All those buffs might even make it overpowered.
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Goumindong

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #107 on: July 29, 2022, 01:09:54 PM »

One thing that i like to put on my eagles is Armored Weapon Mounts.

This prevents the front guns from going off line when the ship takes damage and also reduces recoil by 25%. The recoil may not seem like a lot when youve got officers but it does tend to make Heavy AC fit within the shields of most destroyers at max range. And makes Heavy Mortar reasonably accurate enough
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Wyvern

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #108 on: July 29, 2022, 01:27:07 PM »

flux regulation (50 more from vents, then everything x1.1)
Just to clarify a mistake here: Flux Regulation is not 'everything' times 1.1. It is, instead, based solely on the ship's base flux dissipation - so it's an extra +60 for a normal eagle, or possibly up to +120 for my suggested improved Eagle, if the extra dissipation is built into the hull rather than added as an effect of the suggested hullmod.

You're right, though, that I was looking at an un-skilled Eagle, and comparing to other un-skilled ships, in large part because I was running combat tests against the simulator and putting a ship with full skills into the simulator does not give you particularly useful results. Why yes, an Eagle with a highly skilled officer can make an unskilled enemy Dominator melt. Is that useful information? No, no it is not.

So yes, with skills, you could then fit two heavy blasters on a non-SO Eagle, so +600 is probably too much, which in turn means that tripling the flux cost of beam weapons is also probably too much. 2.5x normal flux costs for 2x normal damage, maybe? Numbers can certainly be tinkered with, but I think the core idea is still a decent one: making beam weapons stronger-but-more-expensive, coupled with a dissipation boost to offset the 'but-more-expensive' part to both buff the normal use of the hull and make blaster or pulse laser builds more attractive.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #109 on: July 29, 2022, 01:46:54 PM »

An extra 600 dissipation is a lot. Like, a lot. I'm tempted to try it out just show how insane that is. With 30 vents and flux distributor you'd have enough to run heavy needler x3 + pulse laser x3 + ion cannon x3. No overrides needed. That's so much firepower it would curbstomp literally everything short of capital ships. It would probably still beat the sim conquest though.

So yes, with skills, you could then fit two heavy blasters on a non-SO Eagle, so +600 is probably too much, which in turn means that tripling the flux cost of beam weapons is also probably too much. 2.5x normal flux costs for 2x normal damage, maybe? Numbers can certainly be tinkered with, but I think the core idea is still a decent one: making beam weapons stronger-but-more-expensive, coupled with a dissipation boost to offset the 'but-more-expensive' part to both buff the normal use of the hull and make blaster or pulse laser builds more attractive.
I get what you're going for, but beams already have a niche they fit into on the eagle. I'd like to see it actually be able to use projectile energy weapons outside of SO.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #110 on: July 29, 2022, 01:56:37 PM »

You're right, though, that I was looking at an un-skilled Eagle, and comparing to other un-skilled ships, in large part because I was running combat tests against the simulator and putting a ship with full skills into the simulator does not give you particularly useful results. Why yes, an Eagle with a highly skilled officer can make an unskilled enemy Dominator melt. Is that useful information? No, no it is not.

So yes, with skills, you could then fit two heavy blasters on a non-SO Eagle, so +600 is probably too much, which in turn means that tripling the flux cost of beam weapons is also probably too much. 2.5x normal flux costs for 2x normal damage, maybe? Numbers can certainly be tinkered with, but I think the core idea is still a decent one: making beam weapons stronger-but-more-expensive, coupled with a dissipation boost to offset the 'but-more-expensive' part to both buff the normal use of the hull and make blaster or pulse laser builds more attractive.

Testing skilled vs unskilled is not super useful, but ignoring skills in balance is also not super useful. Particularly for cruisers which will very likely have officers in them most of the time.

Also, I would rather just see beams buffed generally in some way and the eagle get a bit more base dissipation or something like that, than a one-off novelty hullmod. Maybe if high scatter amplifier was actually usable...

I like the idea of giving the Eagle that "Energy Bolt Coherer" hullmod, or whatever it's called. +200 range to non-beam energy weapons like the Pulse Laser and Heavy Blaster.

That would work better than the hangar slot, I think. Give the Eagle +10 top speed, built-in Energy Bolt Coherer, and +15 OP. All those buffs might even make it overpowered.

I'm kind of interested in energy bolt coherer on eagle. I think 10 speed and EBC would be a big enough buff personally. The only downside is that it creates wasted value if you try to run beams which is a bit weird.
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Grievous69

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #111 on: July 29, 2022, 02:00:07 PM »

The beam builds will still stay as the safe ones for AI and for support builds.
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #112 on: July 29, 2022, 03:35:29 PM »

I haven't used the eagle much because it never really appealed to me, but now that I've run some tests it honestly performs about as well as I'd expect from a 20 dp cruiser (which there's a fair shot it will actually be one soon enough). It has decent build variety as you can run 700 range ballistics with phase beams or you can do hvd/mauler + 1000 range beams. Autocannons are in weird spot at 800 range but they do benefit a lot from the recoil reduction you get from hardpoints. It'd be nice to see pulse lasers or heavy blasters outside of SO builds but otherwise it's pretty much what it says on the tin: a generalist. Something like a fighter bay would push it into overpowered territory, no question.
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Kos135

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #113 on: July 29, 2022, 03:40:50 PM »

The discussion about Energy Bolt Coherer leads me to ask, does the Pulse Laser need a buff? It's a 600 range medium energy weapon with 300 DPS and 300 flux/sec. I think the DPS/FPS ratio should be higher. I never use the Pulse Laser for that very reason, I'm trading 300 FPS for 300 DPS and it's not even being traded at a high range. It reminds of the Tactical Laser. 75 DPS/75 FPS, not a good weapon, but at least it has a range of 1000.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2022, 03:42:37 PM by Kos135 »
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Igncom1

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #114 on: July 29, 2022, 03:52:20 PM »

I think that Midline ships like the Eagle suffer under the 'Strike' energy weapons the most as they don't have Hightech's flux stats to compensate entirely. So they tend to do better in general purpose with the cheap and affordable energy beams like Gravitons and Tac Lasers.

That said, while I might hesitate to use a Pulse Laser as it's quite so-so already, a trio of Phase Lances or even just the one Heavy Blaster can do miracles.
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Thaago

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #115 on: July 29, 2022, 04:23:53 PM »

The discussion about Energy Bolt Coherer leads me to ask, does the Pulse Laser need a buff? It's a 600 range medium energy weapon with 300 DPS and 300 flux/sec. I think the DPS/FPS ratio should be higher. I never use the Pulse Laser for that very reason, I'm trading 300 FPS for 300 DPS and it's not even being traded at a high range. It reminds of the Tactical Laser. 75 DPS/75 FPS, not a good weapon, but at least it has a range of 1000.

I'm ok with the Pulse laser for ships other than the Eagle where the 600 range is a problem: it does not do well vs heavy armor so its not a good choice vs cruiser and capitals, but vs anything smaller its accurate, does hard flux damage, has good DPS/OP, and its efficiency is even pretty reasonable. There's no "correct" way for small ships to defend against it either.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #116 on: July 29, 2022, 06:22:22 PM »

Give the Eagle +10 top speed, built-in Energy Bolt Coherer, and +15 OP.

I think this would be nice.

For posterity, I will repeat a suggestion I made in a previous thread: flip the center mediums so the hardpoint is an energy and the turret is a ballistic.
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FooF

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #117 on: July 29, 2022, 06:40:53 PM »

Even if you could use Medium Energy Assault weapons at greater range, the flux costs are pretty steep unless you severely downgrade the ballistics. I don’t see a Pulse Laser competing against Heavy AC for the same flux (i.e. the HAC wins hands-down). I’m of the opinion that the Eagle can’t support a single Heavy Blaster very well without SO. If the HB did have greater range, I still don’t know if I’d use it. The real winners would be Phase Lances and Ion Pulsers.

But, extra range for all of these still doesn’t solve the problem of the Eagle being too slow. It would need the built-in hullmod and still need extra speed, IMO.

Joke option: The Golden Eagle variant. Remove all Medium mounts and three Small Energies up front. 1 Large Ballistic in the hard point nose. 2 turreted Large Energies where lateral Mediums were. No speed increases or flux stat changes. Mk. IX + 2 HIL anyone (and completely vulnerable to frigates and strike craft)?
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BigBrainEnergy

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #118 on: July 29, 2022, 10:48:57 PM »

Obviously a maxed out Eagle XIV isn't exactly the standard here, but it did beat the sim onslaught head-on under AI control. A standard eagle would probably fail, but that's roughly what I'd expect from a 20 dp cruiser.


Edit
So this is kind of embarrassing, but I only just now noticed something. A while ago I had buffed the base speed/acceleration of the eagle to match the champion as an experiment, and I thought I changed it back afterwards but apparently I use the eagle so little I didn't notice that I actually nerfed the champion rather than the eagle. If there's a buff the eagle needs (beyond a dp change), it'd be 10 top speed/acceleration/deceleration to match the champion's base stats. Having changed them back the eagle wins this battle far less often.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2022, 12:02:56 AM by BigBrainEnergy »
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Nimiety

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Re: Clipped Wings - An Eagle Thread
« Reply #119 on: July 30, 2022, 03:46:12 AM »

SO, heavy machineguns in the front, empty smalls, two phase lance and one ion pulser in the back.

Burn in close, take down shields with the MGs, blast weapon hardpoints/engines with the pulser, laser to death with the lances or sic the frigate swarm on them while you pick a new target

Works on everything up to alpha core brilliants so far, Maybe not capital class ships, but thats what the frigate escorts with reapers and atropos are there to help with.
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