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[Grievous69]

Squall got buffed, you sure? I'm pretty confident the idea was to keep the kinetic damage exactly the same while reducing hull damage, and remove the EMP component.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I remember people being skeptical of the squall nerf because the shield damage wasn't being toned down, but having tried them out now I think Alex nailed it. Without emp or any significant armour damage they can still fill their intended purpose but feel a lot more fair. People really underestimated just how much armour/hull damage they accrued over the course of a battle. That being said, they could stand to have just a little more ammo now, like 20 extra missiles.

[Amazigh]

The Squalls were actually buffed in their anti-shield role, the damage increasing from 250 kinetic to 100+200 kinetic.

I just checked the squall script, and actually it's 100+150.
Looks like alex just forgot to update the statcard when he changed from +200 to +150.

[Grievous69]

Ah so it was a double typo. I reminded him on the initial patch notes and he was surprised he wrote it himself. Probably a leftover from testing.

[Vind]

Speaking of balanced ships - how is the doom cruiser at 35 points even works now? Testing without any skills this ship loses to anyone badly. Mine strike aside it is useless without specific skills because chain and ball phase speed "fix" guts this ship speed in seconds. 35 points for mine spawner which cant even get into position without being destroyed? If ship is unusable without 3 specific skills it is a bad ship.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

35 points for mine spawner which cant even get into position without being destroyed?

You can use mines from phase space, you are literally indestructible while doing so.

[Grievous69]

Yesterday I fought a full phase bounty fleet, 5 Dooms, 4 Harbingers, Afflictor and Centurion. Granted all ships had lvl 7 officers and 2 s-mods. It was downright disgusting, the whole screen was just mines and additional missiles fired by Dooms. My Invictus went down from full 40k hp to 130... They murdered every smaller than capital ship that I had, and capitals were barely alive at the end.

Which is kinda the stupid thing with phase ships, without proper investment they're a joke, and with everything they need they become monsters. I'm not a fan of them generally, so I only tried a couple back when the skill system got reworked, and they're useless without the Technology phase skill, Doom is especially super slow. I feel like you either min max the benefits from the skill or don't bother with phase ships in your fleet. You could run a Gremlin for the lulz now that it has Rugged Construction.

[Vind]

     Im talking about base balance without skill stacking. Any ship will be much better with 3 s-mods and combat skills. Doom is totally wrecked in SIM battles by dominator at 25 DP points and dominator is the slowest ship with exposed rear armor.

[Grievous69]

And that's even more unrealistic since you'll never have a Doom without any skills soloing another cruiser.

[Megas]

Squalls would be nerfed further if AI remembered to drop shields like they did for the second version of Sabot with the slow wide spread years ago.  AI keeps shields up for Squalls even when there are no other immediate threats to harm the ship.  Squalls that do not hit shields are not very effective.

And that's even more unrealistic since you'll never have a Doom without any skills soloing another cruiser.

Unskilled vs. unskilled in the SIM is handy to check what NPC ships can do.  If Doom with a straightforward loadout cannot kill a cheaper cruiser (that is not overpowered) by itself the majority of the time, then it is too weak.

However, Gauss Dominator was strong in a head-to-head fight last release.  Out of all of the SIM cruisers, Gauss Dominator was the most obnoxious opponent for my cowardly AI controlled ships last release.  Did not help that behavior was locked at Steady previously (by not honoring doctrine settings).

[Foraven]

I noticed some issues with the ship's behavior:

- Sometimes they turn sideway while attempting to back-off from an engagement. They can do so when they still have shields and can even do so while they are still shooting (wasting their attack). Lost a few ships in fights they should have won but somehow they decided to expose their flank for no reason. It is much more apparent with maneuvrable ships but I seen capitals do so as well. Hammerheads are very prone to do this when backing off, but I also seen Wolfs do their same even when they were able to teleport away.

- Sometimes, as their try to get closer, ships forget to raise their shields when their are getting in range of their foes longest range beams or guns.

- IR autolance has funky behavior when left auto-firing; It fire at random interval and doesn't always spend all it's available charges when it does.

[Draba]

I just want to point out that while there are many good flagship capitals, when it comes to AI you're basically only looking at the Conquest 1st and Odyssey distant 2nd. For many different reasons Onsluaght, Legion, Retribution, Invictus and Astral are all poor(or at least "nowhere near as good as they should be") in AI hands.

Onslaught was already great under AI control, something is wrong with your setup.
Now it can also skip missile racks (4x14 reapers instead of 15) and build mags in for higher TPC recharge.
Ships with hardpoints also got some harder to quantify behavioural improvements.

Yeah, under AI control the Conquest was strongest capital last version according to Vanshilar

This is a pet peeve of mine, actual description would be "Strongest judged by a single, very narrow metric. Also not counting battles where something gets blown up ofc"
The entire test can be thrown out once you allow mixed fleets with frigate hunters to help out the slow capitals/cruisers, or if you care about not retrying the same battle 20 times.
Conquest is certainly good, but saying it's objectively the strongest AI capital is just silly IMO.

[CapnHector]

Yeah, I agree with you there and should have been more specific. The full statement is, according to him, the Conquest was included as the AI capital ship in the strongest fleets that could fight multiple Remnant Ordos without losing ships, under the assumption that the player pilots an Onslaught in a tanking role and directs the combat, and where strength is measured by killing speed in victorious combat.

For example if you want the AI to assume a tanking role and do nor care about dps, a Paragon is certainly stronger in that sense.

[Amoebka]

Since AI is "dumb", can't plan far ahead, and mostly makes decisions based on ship positions and relative flux levels, ships with high speed and fast flux dissipation will always be easier for it. Conquest excels at those, with the only problem being the horrible shield, which is another thing AI can't manage well.

In order to make a slow ship with low dissipation good in AI hands you would have to inflate its other baseline stats excessively, which is what modern Onslaught is, more or less.

[Draba]

the Conquest was included as the AI capital ship in the strongest fleets that could fight multiple Remnant Ordos without losing ships, under the assumption that the player pilots an Onslaught in a tanking role and directs the combat, and where strength is measured by killing speed in victorious combat.

Yeah, +once speed is not the only metric, or you don't have a player tank things also change a lot.
Best case speed to kill middle-high strength remnant stacks does show something, but without the full context it leads to "AI conquest best, Onslaught bad" posts like the one above you.