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Author Topic: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic  (Read 17057 times)

Pratapon51

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #90 on: December 04, 2022, 03:07:28 AM »

(Watching the community try to powercreep a ship when the same criticised a couple of latest ones)

But seriously, can't we just wait and see how it's gonna go in the next version... There's a bunch of things being added and changed, yet people modified one (not even final) stat for a ship and concluded it's trash. Surely you all realise there's much more to ship strength than pure stat adjustments. Weapons, hullmods, skills, other ship changes, new content, new enemies, and so on.

Somewhat better flux and logistics stats don't fix the fundamental problems (well stated by other posters) of fielding an Eagle, which will continue to suffer in the midst of new content because stronger weapons and hullmods that make the Eagle viable will almost certainly make other cruisers that much stronger as well, still leaving poor bird cruiser in the dust.  8)
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SafariJohn

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #91 on: December 04, 2022, 03:13:55 AM »

(Watching the community try to powercreep a ship when the same criticised a couple of latest ones)

Hard to say it is powercreep when people have been pointing out the same problems with the Eagle for TEN YEARS

Spoiler
I'm going to throw my lot in with the Eagle as my least favorite ship.  It's got a good balance of energy and ballistic weapons, decent shields and isn't costly for it's class.  But the problems sit with the stock variants only changing the missile loadouts and the Flux problems that arise if you put on heavier hitting burst weaponry.  It's all using medium hardpoints so it requires a drawn out fight, breaking the shields and beating down on the armor, it's too heavily reliant on missiles and it's so slow that destroyers and fire support will pick apart your targets before you reach them.  It requires fleet actions as it can't deal with more nimble Strike Frigates and Destroyers, yet that same fleet renders it useless.
[close]
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Grievous69

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #92 on: December 04, 2022, 03:30:24 AM »

Man people are really so far into this to dig up ten year old forum posts, yikes. Yeah let's take it as fact since some random dude said so before. Who cares, we've had countless people claim Conquest is trash tier, Aurora is god tier. Giving a voice to every single person online is both the best and the worst thing that happened.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #93 on: December 04, 2022, 03:33:22 AM »

Man people are really so far into this to dig up ten year old forum posts, yikes.

Took me 5 minutes. The forum has a "oldest first" search for some reason ???
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Grievous69

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #94 on: December 04, 2022, 03:39:05 AM »

Took me 5 minutes. The forum has a "oldest first" search for some reason ???
Well that explains the amount of crazy necros we see often.
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Lortus

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #95 on: December 04, 2022, 04:01:49 AM »

I think Hiruma Kai said it better than anyone could say. Just buffing it's stats just isn't gonna cut it. For a ship to be a "generalist" and still be good it needs to be pretty good at most of those things.

I still think giving them the proj range increase hullmod is the way to go as well as a speed boost. Alternatively maybe turning the small energies into ballistics/hybrids.

(Watching the community try to powercreep a ship when the same criticised a couple of latest ones)

Hard to say it is powercreep when people have been pointing out the same problems with the Eagle for TEN YEARS

Spoiler
I'm going to throw my lot in with the Eagle as my least favorite ship.  It's got a good balance of energy and ballistic weapons, decent shields and isn't costly for it's class.  But the problems sit with the stock variants only changing the missile loadouts and the Flux problems that arise if you put on heavier hitting burst weaponry.  It's all using medium hardpoints so it requires a drawn out fight, breaking the shields and beating down on the armor, it's too heavily reliant on missiles and it's so slow that destroyers and fire support will pick apart your targets before you reach them.  It requires fleet actions as it can't deal with more nimble Strike Frigates and Destroyers, yet that same fleet renders it useless.
[close]

Heh that is hilarious. Really goes to show how far Eagle is behind the curve. Should also be noted that Eagle isn't just powercrept but also featurecrept. The later ships all can do more stuff such as having more missile focused layouts, being able to burst, being better at moving in a certain direction, being tankier but less damage etc. You could say a ship is as strong as it's strongest link and Eagle is made up completely of mediocre links.

+1 to Pratapon51. Seems like a very basic lack of understanding of game balance if that isn't abundantly clear. Would be a different story if the new weapons were specifically made to synergize extremely well with eagle's mixed loadout, but do badly in any other situation, like maybe an 800 range anti shield or armor, but even then you will still be a trashy Champion.

Man people are really so far into this to dig up ten year old forum posts, yikes. Yeah let's take it as fact since some random dude said so before. Who cares, we've had countless people claim Conquest is trash tier, Aurora is god tier. Giving a voice to every single person online is both the best and the worst thing that happened.

Exactly why we should stop listening to your messages here
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Grievous69

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #96 on: December 04, 2022, 04:16:42 AM »

God forbid we have something unique, now everything needs a dozen of missile slots to be "usable". And I have zero clue why would anyone want to turn Eagle into a gimped Champion. There were some really interesting suggestions at the beginning of this thread, now it's just random "throw everything on it and call it a day" ideas which sound like a completely different ship. I'll repeat myself and say that people are overexaggerating things, it's not that bad. I still use them and they're fine, perhaps it's a hard ship for many to "click" with and they build it stupidly.

Do I mind it getting buffed? Absolutely not.

But there's too many whack opinions here I feel like I'm not on the official forums. It doesn't need large mounts, we have other ships for that.

It's not even in the top 10 worst ships in current patch...
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smithney

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #97 on: December 04, 2022, 05:33:07 AM »

I tried to avoid this thread because we've basically had this exact conversation like 3 times over the past year without the new patch dropping to actually see some change. I think this needs to be mentioned. Along with the fact that Alex is aware of the issue and even dropped a microspoiler to calm us down.

While I'm at it, my current two cents are that there is no reason why vanilla Eagle couldn't stay a mediocre generalist if there's a chance its variants could make up for it with their quirks. And as much as I disagree with Grievous69's attittude, I echo their sentiment that there is really no reason to drastically change Eagle if it does what Alex wants it to do. I still think that Eagle is an excellent design flavor-wise that deserves to have greater impact gameplay-wise, though, so hopefully it does turn out that way next patch, somehow.
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BCS

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #98 on: December 05, 2022, 02:52:57 AM »

I was skeptical about large mount Eagle but, just to spite Grievous69, I made a quick mock-up version of a Composite(because it's such a rare mount type and if any ship is going to be composite it's probably going to be a midline one) large centerline Eagle.

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Grievous69

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #99 on: December 05, 2022, 03:45:57 AM »

You get a large missile mount, you get a large missile mount, EVERYONE GETS A LARGE MISSILE MOUNT!!

I already talked about this before but I fear we're getting into the oversaturated missile meta. Look at the new ships that are coming, many have large missiles, and usually two of them. It's already annoying fighting multiples Atlas MkII. ships, now you could be under even more missile spam. Alex already nerfed some large missiles because of the deadly potential they have. A single large missile won't do much in a battle, but when most ships have them it becomes a circus. So we started from the period where large missile mounts were powerful additions to a fleet, with strong weapons, and now I fear most will be underwhelming unless you spam them.

And you want even more? Someone commented that pure stat adjustments won't achieve anything. And to that I ask what the hell will more missile mounts achieve?

Composite mounts are cool and all but from experience we all know in 90% of the time those mounts will be filled to the brim with missiles. Long range, flux free damage that only gets better the more you have of it, sign me up.

At least the hangar idea was something interesting, although Alex doesn't want to go that way, which is understandable. Just please, no more large missiles.
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gG_pilot

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #100 on: December 05, 2022, 04:34:50 AM »

Eagle is  somewhat slow  (slow  eagle is  oxymoron,   ) and  feeling of famous assault when Eagle bird drops  to an  rabbit on the ground with insane speed and deadly  grip  is not there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDcz_UWea8Q

Here are some ideas to add flavour  without (too much) power creep:
-  make it so the Ship's System Manoeuvring Jets charges can be  stored up to 2 (not just regular 1). e.i. the ship system can  be activated  twice in a  row without waiting for recharge. (3 times with skill Ship systems) Al thou  recharge comes in  standard  speed, so in a 5  minutes fight the  ship receive the same amount of charges, but they can be stored and used better.

- add  another Ship's System which is  activated at the same time. Add "Accelerated Ammo Feeder"
which means, when  ever the system ship  is activated both Speed  and Damage systems are activated at once >>> this way we get a feeling of a Eagle bird deadly  strike AND  manoeuvrability for short period of time.

- for more battle  awarness > remove  those two  engine backside oriented small enegry slots. but add one small energy slot on the cupula in the midle with 360 degree rotation.
 
« Last Edit: December 05, 2022, 04:48:57 AM by gG_pilot »
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llama

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #101 on: December 05, 2022, 08:32:02 AM »

Without a large speed buff the medium energy mounts on the Eagle will still be pushed towards a support role because the good, high-throughput energy weapons have to be balanced around very fast ships with huge flux pools (and the Eagle probably isn't getting Aurora-level mobility).

So what I'd like to see is an expansion in medium ballistic weapon options, especially in the 800 range bracket. Small and large ballistics have tons of options at 700 and 900 respectively, medium just has the one at 800. Some higher dps, more flux intensive 800 range weapons (eg: medium railgun and Mjolnir equivalents) would allow the Eagle to better leverage its flux stats.
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #102 on: December 05, 2022, 09:50:53 AM »

I was mostly trying to make a joke with the universal large mount suggestion, although that sometimes comes through poorly with just text and emoji.

I'm pretty sure Alex's vision doesn't include adding a large mount of any type to the Eagle.  To selectively quote Alex from a previous Eagle thread this year:

FWIW, the way I see its role as ... "fluidly holding an area" might be the best way to put it. Something that makes anything weaker back off, and can safely disengage from most stronger opponents after driving up their flux, but lacks finishing power.

In this thread's feedback, I was trying to get a feel for the organic growing of an Eagle focused fleet instead of just creating a fully formed fleet with "Here's my cruiser line, here's my DPS backing ships, here my distraction frigates".  That was a set of tests I had already done earlier this year for a different thread, with a missile back up line (Gryphons/Conquest), comparing some ships in the line blocking role.  Conclusions I walked away then were Falcons > Eagles in a shield tanking/blocking role, Dominators don't play quite the same role (they're line breakers than line holders for a mobile back line, also AI without orders gets Gryphons killed), weapon loadout effective range makes a big difference, and oddly enough Champions looked to be only smidgeon better at holding a line than the Eagle, although that might have been my setup choices.

And well, growing a fleet organically with a focus on Eagle(s) early is rough.  Likely because an Eagle in a map wide speed comparison is not much faster than an Onslaught, but a pair of them doesn't have nearly the same presence or kill power.  And early game fights often devolve into a frigate on one side of the map distracting 1/3 of the fleet, another on the other side distracting 1/3, and the Eagle slowly making its way from one side to the other.

I feel the problem is the Eagle in having its speed cut back to 50 compared to the current Falcon's 80, is it can't back off fast enough, while the Falcon can.  Certainly, putting DP equivalents of the ships up against each other in that role with the same backing fleet has the Falcons walking away with the win nearly every time.  And their ability to impact early game fights is better because of both their strategic and tactical speed.

What does 2 Eagles get compared to 3 Falcons is the fundamental question I'm constantly asking myself when I come to these threads.  If Falcons are at an OK balance level, and Eagles give up 30 speed (out of either 80 or 105 avg speed, so 37.5% or 28.5%, or 300 units in 10 seconds difference in terms of relative range bands) along with +1 burn speed, what precisely are the Eagles gaining to compensate to make them OK?  There is some hard to quantify fact that they are a single unit that can't be separated, but half the time, that's also a disadvantage since one Falcon can back off and vent while the other comes forward to soak damage on its shield.  You can save an officer, but if it takes something like 3 skill/s-mod equivalents to reach parity in speed between the ships, I'm not even sure that ends up being in the Eagle's favor.

Going through the list of possibilities, it's not flux (1000 flux times 2 versus 700 flux times 3 is in the Falcons favor assuming maxed vents).  It's not a significantly larger pile of OP, especially after taking into account s-mods.  It's not significantly tougher in the aggregate, as long as the Falcons can step in and out for each other. 1000 armor on 2 ships and 750 armor doesn't sound that significant, especially when you have to go through 750 three times to 1000 twice (i.e. fewer missiles are more effective here against the Eagles).  And it's only 33% more hull hit points per hull, but the Falcons bring a whole another ship, so 50% more.   Eagles do have a higher baseline flux capacity (22,000 vs 21,000), but even a 5 point investment in caps on each ship equalizes it (24,000 vs 24,000).  Shield focused builds with max capacitors favors the Falcons (34,000 vs 39,000).  It's not weapon loadout which favors the Falcons (6 medium ballistic vs 6 medium ballistic, 6 medium energy vs 6 medium energy, 6 small missiles vs 4 small missiles, 12 small energy vs 10 small energy).

So the answer may be nothing, and Eagles are just intended to be weaker than Falcons at their DP values.

To visually give a better idea of the differential speeds in a straight line, I did some simulation races via vanilla showcase mod.  So no enemies, no hullmods, no skills, just AI going from point A to point B (which means 0-flux boost was available as well).  The first was showing off that burn drive is actually quite good for repositioning, given the Dominator is leading the Eagle and the Onslaught isn't that far behind.  The second one was me grabbing all ships which use medium energy weapons as a primary armament, and what a real speed advantage looks like.  That, graphically, is why Heavy Blasters and Ion Pulsers don't really work on an Eagle.

It means a solo non-SO Eagle can't really back off fast enough against over half of the cruisers and a majority of capitals (Onlaught, Legion, Odyssey, Conquest, Radiant).  It literally needs half the map to get less than 1000 units of range ahead of the Onslaught (whose TPC reach out 1600 units with ITU).  So Eagles end up being line cruisers since they need a line to back up into to be able to vent and cycle back.  And since they don't have killing power, they need to backed by something that does that can shoot over them, hence missiles and fighters being the obvious choices.  Which I think is supposed to be the midline cruiser school of thought, specialized cruisers which are greater than the sum of their parts when used together.  Gryphons and Herons hiding behind a line of Eagles and Champions.

Although arguably Monitors and Falcons fill the tanking role better.  Although saying that now, another way you could differentiate the Eagle from the Falcon is change the ship system. I'm almost tempted to say just put Fortress shield on them instead of Maneuvering Jets, although Monitors are annoying enough already.  It would at least give Eagles some synergy with Heavy Needlers and Phase Lances though (long cooldown and high burst weapons are good for fortress shield ships), and cement them as a front line for the cruiser school, but at that point they're not particularly fluid, and base 50 speed and no speed system would literally make them the slowest military cruisers in the game (and likely drive me crazy trying to fly them. :) )

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smithney

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #103 on: December 05, 2022, 11:51:40 AM »

@Hiruma Kai
Thank you for the analysis! Good that you mentioned Monitor there. I'd say it's actually coming up more than it should imho. It's one thing to be surprisingly useful meme ship, another to be a spectacularly efficient specialist, and wholly another to be a toxic design outclassing others. At first glance, Monitor sounds like the first, but finds itself somewhere between the two latter. That said, Monitor getting nerfed probably won't solve the issues Eagle has.

I feel like I need to bring back up the point that Eagle is suffering from too much function overlap with "newer" cruisers. Perhaps it's a point that Alex wants to make. The thing is, from a player's perspective, why should we settle for a mediocre generalist, when we can have an actually effective specialist? I feel like Alex might be missing that Eagle is a design that many players do want to use in their fleets, but have a hard time justifying using. There's nothing wrong with Eagle being an 'elite mook', but I don't think it feels right in the role. But if isn't supposed to be, what makes "a respectably average baseline ship" good enough for the player to use?
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Alex

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Re: Eagle and (base) Falcon remain anemic
« Reply #104 on: December 05, 2022, 01:27:55 PM »

I really appreciate all the thoughtful discussion in this thread!

I think... hmm. The "fluidly holding an area" idea - I mean, that's how I've been seeing it, but I think what it gets you over 3 Falcons in that case is a really, really valid point. And it cuts both ways, if the Eagle gets enough speed to fill that role, then the Falcon gets stepped on.

I wonder if cutting the Eagle's cost more - to somewhere around 16-18 - isn't the way to go here, making it a mediocre-but-cheaper cruiser choice. It's still a fairly effective ship, after all - yeah, there are some mechanical factors working against it, but it's capable enough that I think a right deployment cost can be found for it. And its credit cost should be reduced then, too.

(The Apogee is going up to 20, btw; I think it's a bit strong for 18.)
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