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[lithyf]

I feel like some of the nuance is being missed here. The narrative point of the special modifications is not that Andrada is a "cartoonishly evil" cretin who sabotaged his own elite fleets out of malice or gross incompetence.

Rather, the flavor text points to systemic incentives inherent to autocratic systems leading to incompetence (the chief engineer ordering questionable modifications solely to please Andrada) and cover-ups thereof (official reports hiding the negative consequences of medications,) because such systems encourage favoritism, boot-licking, and saving face in front of the great leader.

Andrada's sin is not in being an evil or incompetent technical advisor - rather, he is ultimately responsible for setting up and heading a political structure that is inherently prone to producing malicious and incompetent results, to the point of eventually becoming the victim of his own regime.

If you think this is implausible, I suggest paying more attention to the events that have been unfolding in Eastern Europe for over a year now. If anything the Sindrian Diktat is literally inspired by current real life events, and they have not even reached the level of mass-conscripting convicts into their armed forces.

As for the other factions -

Tri-Tachyon is an amoral corporatocracy with a literally inhuman leadership

The Hegemony is a military junta keeping its citizens under permanent martial law.

The Luddic Church is a terrorist-funding theocracy with plenty of hypocrisy in their dogma.

The Persean League is a Byzantine and opportunistic alliance of petty kingdoms and robber barons.

Of course, each of the factions has also their upsides - just as Sindria has a prosperous and strategically important position to which Andrada has much credit in achieving. But my point is that I think that Sindria or authoritarianism are hardly being singled out - and as more story quests are added to the game, it is only natural that we will be shown more merits and flaws in every faction.

Edit: lol, I see now that many people pointed out the same things on the page prior and in the same format - I apologize for the redundancy, I just wanted to jump in on the whole "this could never happen in real life" angle because it is a little silly given current events.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

I feel like some of the nuance is being missed here. The narrative point of the special modifications is not that Andrada is a "cartoonishly evil" cretin who sabotaged his own elite fleets out of malice or gross incompetence.

Rather, the flavor text points to systemic incentives inherent to autocratic systems leading to incompetence (the chief engineer ordering questionable modifications solely to please Andrada) and cover-ups thereof (official reports hiding the negative consequences of medications,) because such systems encourage favoritism, boot-licking, and saving face in front of the great leader.

Andrada's sin is not in being an evil or incompetent technical advisor - rather, he is ultimately responsible for setting up and heading a political structure that is inherently prone to producing malicious and incompetent results, to the point of eventually becoming the victim of his own regime.

If you think this is implausible, I suggest paying more attention to the events that have been unfolding in Eastern Europe for over a year now. If anything the Sindrian Diktat is literally inspired by current real life events, and they have not even reached the level of mass-conscripting convicts into their armed forces.

As for the other factions -

Tri-Tachyon is an amoral corporatocracy with a literally inhuman leadership

The Hegemony is a military junta keeping its citizens under permanent martial law.

The Luddic Church is a terrorist-funding theocracy with plenty of hypocrisy in their dogma.

The Persean League is a Byzantine and opportunistic alliance of petty kingdoms and robber barons.

Of course, each of the factions has also their upsides - just as Sindria has a prosperous and strategically important position to which Andrada has much credit in achieving. But my point is that I think that Sindria or authoritarianism are hardly being singled out - and as more story quests are added to the game, it is only natural that we will be shown more merits and flaws in every faction.

Edit: lol, I see now that many people pointed out the same things on the page prior and in the same format - I apologize for the redundancy, I just wanted to jump in on the whole "this could never happen in real life" angle because it is a little silly given current events.

Except Russia and the Sindrian Diktat aren't of the same political ideology. The same hold true if you're talking about Ukraine.

[xenoargh]

IRL, the Sindrians would be a client state of the Perseans, most likely. Too small to defend itself, but valuable enough to be protected.

The mystery is why there aren't Tritachyon AM production facilities directly competing to supply the Sector's gasoline; maybe they got blown up during the AI War?

[lithyf]

IRL, the Sindrians would be a client state of the Perseans, most likely. Too small to defend itself, but valuable enough to be protected.

The mystery is why there aren't Tritachyon AM production facilities directly competing to supply the Sector's gasoline; maybe they got blown up during the AI War?

I feel like the former point is sort of reflected with them having an alliance with PL, meaning they can't randomly declare wars with each other. Also, small states absolutely can have a powerful military and ability to defend itself, see: Israel. Sindria is similar in the sense that Askonia is possibly the most densely militarized system in the sector.

I guess its not explored in the current lore yet, but who knows what kind of fingers Tri-Tach have in the Sindrian pie, considering they helped out with their energy weapons program?

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

As for the other factions -

Tri-Tachyon is an amoral corporatocracy with a literally inhuman leadership

The Hegemony is a military junta keeping its citizens under permanent martial law.

The Luddic Church is a terrorist-funding theocracy with plenty of hypocrisy in their dogma.

The Persean League is a Byzantine and opportunistic alliance of petty kingdoms and robber barons.

None of that matters because it doesn't make their ships trash. Why don't Hegemony ships have a built-in d-mod reducing their maximum CR, to represent their crumbling logistics system shipping heavy armaments instead of the heavy machinery for ship repairs? Why doesn't TTach have a d-mod making weapon repairs take longer, representing the crew's difficulty with fixing highly complicated AI designed systems? Why don't League ships have increased OP costs for weapons, to represent the severe mismatch between the industrial production standards of all the different tiny governments? The problem has always been that in a sector of various *** terrible governments and oppressive political systems, the Sindrian Dictat's particular *** terrible oppressive government has been singled out to be not fun to align with because their unique ships are uniquely bad and you can't buy their cool toys.

[lithyf]

As for the other factions -

Tri-Tachyon is an amoral corporatocracy with a literally inhuman leadership

The Hegemony is a military junta keeping its citizens under permanent martial law.

The Luddic Church is a terrorist-funding theocracy with plenty of hypocrisy in their dogma.

The Persean League is a Byzantine and opportunistic alliance of petty kingdoms and robber barons.

None of that matters because it doesn't make their ships trash. Why don't Hegemony ships have a built-in d-mod reducing their maximum CR, to represent their crumbling logistics system shipping heavy armaments instead of the heavy machinery for ship repairs? Why doesn't TTach have a d-mod making weapon repairs take longer, representing the crew's difficulty with fixing highly complicated AI designed systems? Why don't League ships have increased OP costs for weapons, to represent the severe mismatch between the industrial production standards of all the different tiny governments? The problem has always been that in a sector of various *** terrible governments and oppressive political systems, the Sindrian Dictat's particular *** terrible oppressive government has been singled out to be not fun to align with because their unique ships are uniquely bad and you can't buy their cool toys.

Factions literally have fleet doctrines governing, among other things, ship quality. Pretty sure you find more d-mods on Luddic Church ships, nor advanced ballistics like gauss cannons and HVDs. And the LG's ships are not even that bad when properly outfitted - if you hate the low-tech playstyle you may consider the entirety of luddic church and much of hegemony's roster to be "trash."

I agree it was a bold choice because it is somewhat different to how the other factions are mechanically represented, but I think it goes a long way of making the SD stand out and is also both a plausible and darkly funny subversion of how the other factions work - the elite fleets being generally inferior to the regular forces, not due to massive mechanical debuffs, but due to doctrinal issues and overambitious loadouts.

Which, on the other hand, is not all that different from PL being limited to DEMs or tri-tach being limited to hi-tech hulls and equipment (technological innovation at the heavy cost of flexibility!)

I do agree that it is kind of *** if there is no benefit for the SD commission as I read in another threat, despite my strong negative feelings towards authoritarianism I think there should be some upside to pursuing that option.

[Lucky33]

Spoiler

The executor is mostly a copy and the kinetic blaster is based off the heavy blaster so they’re not doing much more than what pirates have done. The gigacannon is new but it’s not very good which is probably why it hadn’t already been developed by someone else.

"weapon system integrates elements of SUPER ALABASTER technology to harness previously unutilized anti-shield effect"

Can we, you know, utilize something else? Like converging Large mounts on the Onslaught? Like all of them? I mean we have a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians after all. So why not? And while we are at it I'd like to have a 500 per shot HE damage ballistic gun for a medium mount, please.

Given that the kinetic blaster has an efficiency of 1.4 when some ballistic kinetics have an efficiency of 0.8 shows how it might have been unutilized because it wasn't really attractive especially when the pulse laser, also a medium energy weapon, has an efficiency of 0.8 which is only slightly worse than the kinetic blaster against shields.
The kinetic blaster does just manage to have the best anti shield efficiency among energy weapons and has pretty good DPS as well, but it's not a huge difference so it is pretty easy to see why no one else really bothered.
We also already know modifications can be made because of the pirates and the pathers, they are worse but it can still be done. It just looks like most don't bother because the old stuff seems to be almost always better and at least almost as good compared to new things. They can't just magic up a 500 per shot HE gun and whatever prevented the original designers from converging large mounts on the Onslaught, probably completely stumps the current special engineers.

I think that you have missed the point entirely. "Previously unutilized" means that no domain era blueprints exists. However, Diktat is getting them in numbers. Meaning that it is possible to manufacture something new in large quantities without having domain era blueprints. Even if it is energy weapon.

And now we back to the basics of Starsector balance that is build upon the idea of carefully introduced flaws. Like inability to bring all the guns on a single target. Or using subpar shield generators. Most of the ships are flawed on purpose. And the sole explanation for this is that you can't just build whatever you want and have to deal with the blueprints and all the ideas of the domain era designers no matter how bad they look like from the modern military perspective.

But it just happened that you don't.

You call it magic? I'm ok with that. As long as I get my ships and my guns. Like certain dictator did.

[close]

There has always been some innovation. The pirates like I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring but also Tritak is doing some. It's just really expensive presumably and the factions that can do it already have good big ships. The Paragon doesn't need any improvement and the Onslaught was made pre-collapse so any issues with its weapon layouts can be presumed to have a reason that can't be overcome by current engineers like I just said.
They probably could improve the smaller ships but TT already has good frigates, Heg won't change and I suspect the league and independents don't want to spend the money.
As for the player, it would take decades to attract good enough engineers and set them to work to make a better ship than the current ones.
As for why not make a ship that is just a bunch of missiles or some other optimized build, at some point game balance has to override what makes sense otherwise you get everything becoming pretty similar and boring.

I think you have missed not only my point but the actual words.

I directly placed Pirates (and Pathers) on the tech's bleeding edge.

With that in mind can you please go back to Starsector game there certain dictator have build himself a fleet of certain custom military grade capitals with custom weapons because he wanted so?

So unless you want to say that making a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians to do what you want is a worse thing than saturate bombarding civilized planets with anti-matter I'm struggling to see any reasonable argument in your position. Have you missed recent Pegasus drama? Or do you really think that Paragon is better than Radiant? Sorry but I can't believe that.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Factions literally have fleet doctrines governing, among other things, ship quality. Pretty sure you find more d-mods on Luddic Church ships, nor advanced ballistics like gauss cannons and HVDs. And the LG's ships are not even that bad when properly outfitted - if you hate the low-tech playstyle you may consider the entirety of luddic church and much of hegemony's roster to be "trash."

This doesn't matter for the player, though. You can buy pristine LC ships from the Knights of Ludd market on Hesperus, and all the weapons the LC has access to are similarly available for purchase. Not so for the Sindrian Dictat; you can't buy Lions Guard ships pristine or otherwise, nor their weapons.

I agree it was a bold choice because it is somewhat different to how the other factions are mechanically represented, but I think it goes a long way of making the SD stand out and is also both a plausible and darkly funny subversion of how the other factions work - the elite fleets being generally inferior to the regular forces, not due to massive mechanical debuffs, but due to doctrinal issues and overambitious loadouts. Which, on the other hand, is not all that different from PL being limited to DEMs or tri-tach being limited to hi-tech hulls and equipment (technological innovation at the heavy cost of flexibility!)

This subversion doesn't make for good gameplay. These mechanical representations of other factions are the way they are for good reason; Lions Guard fleets being pushovers makes killing them to loot their weapons and ships a boring chore rather than an interesting challenge.

I do agree that it is kind of *** if there is no benefit for the SD commission as I read in another threat, despite my strong negative feelings towards authoritarianism I think there should be some upside to pursuing that option.

Correct. Even Pirates and Pathers have good unique ships that a player might want to buy and use, including refits of existing ships which add capability, different weapon slot layouts, or built-in hullmods at no OP cost, with no downsides that don't go away after a restoration. LG ships have base OP penalties which never go away, and their unique slot changes are generally useless aside from the Executor's.

[lithyf]

Factions literally have fleet doctrines governing, among other things, ship quality. Pretty sure you find more d-mods on Luddic Church ships, nor advanced ballistics like gauss cannons and HVDs. And the LG's ships are not even that bad when properly outfitted - if you hate the low-tech playstyle you may consider the entirety of luddic church and much of hegemony's roster to be "trash."

This doesn't matter for the player, though. You can buy pristine LC ships from the Knights of Ludd market on Hesperus, and all the weapons the LC has access to are similarly available for purchase. Not so for the Sindrian Dictat; you can't buy Lions Guard ships pristine or otherwise, nor their weapons.

I agree it was a bold choice because it is somewhat different to how the other factions are mechanically represented, but I think it goes a long way of making the SD stand out and is also both a plausible and darkly funny subversion of how the other factions work - the elite fleets being generally inferior to the regular forces, not due to massive mechanical debuffs, but due to doctrinal issues and overambitious loadouts. Which, on the other hand, is not all that different from PL being limited to DEMs or tri-tach being limited to hi-tech hulls and equipment (technological innovation at the heavy cost of flexibility!)

This subversion doesn't make for good gameplay. These mechanical representations of other factions are the way they are for good reason; Lions Guard fleets being pushovers makes killing them to loot their weapons and ships a boring chore rather than an interesting challenge.

I do agree that it is kind of *** if there is no benefit for the SD commission as I read in another threat, despite my strong negative feelings towards authoritarianism I think there should be some upside to pursuing that option.

Correct. Even Pirates and Pathers have good unique ships that a player might want to buy and use, including refits of existing ships which add capability, different weapon slot layouts, or built-in hullmods at no OP cost, with no downsides that don't go away after a restoration. LG ships have base OP penalties which never go away, and their unique slot changes are generally useless aside from the Executor's.

Fair points - while I do like the flavor, I think the current design does create some silly or unsatisfying incentives, for example getting an SD commission solely to have an easier time hunting LG patrols with minimal consequences.

[BaBosa]

Spoiler

The executor is mostly a copy and the kinetic blaster is based off the heavy blaster so they’re not doing much more than what pirates have done. The gigacannon is new but it’s not very good which is probably why it hadn’t already been developed by someone else.

"weapon system integrates elements of SUPER ALABASTER technology to harness previously unutilized anti-shield effect"

Can we, you know, utilize something else? Like converging Large mounts on the Onslaught? Like all of them? I mean we have a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians after all. So why not? And while we are at it I'd like to have a 500 per shot HE damage ballistic gun for a medium mount, please.

Given that the kinetic blaster has an efficiency of 1.4 when some ballistic kinetics have an efficiency of 0.8 shows how it might have been unutilized because it wasn't really attractive especially when the pulse laser, also a medium energy weapon, has an efficiency of 0.8 which is only slightly worse than the kinetic blaster against shields.
The kinetic blaster does just manage to have the best anti shield efficiency among energy weapons and has pretty good DPS as well, but it's not a huge difference so it is pretty easy to see why no one else really bothered.
We also already know modifications can be made because of the pirates and the pathers, they are worse but it can still be done. It just looks like most don't bother because the old stuff seems to be almost always better and at least almost as good compared to new things. They can't just magic up a 500 per shot HE gun and whatever prevented the original designers from converging large mounts on the Onslaught, probably completely stumps the current special engineers.

I think that you have missed the point entirely. "Previously unutilized" means that no domain era blueprints exists. However, Diktat is getting them in numbers. Meaning that it is possible to manufacture something new in large quantities without having domain era blueprints. Even if it is energy weapon.

And now we back to the basics of Starsector balance that is build upon the idea of carefully introduced flaws. Like inability to bring all the guns on a single target. Or using subpar shield generators. Most of the ships are flawed on purpose. And the sole explanation for this is that you can't just build whatever you want and have to deal with the blueprints and all the ideas of the domain era designers no matter how bad they look like from the modern military perspective.

But it just happened that you don't.

You call it magic? I'm ok with that. As long as I get my ships and my guns. Like certain dictator did.

[close]

There has always been some innovation. The pirates like I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring but also Tritak is doing some. It's just really expensive presumably and the factions that can do it already have good big ships. The Paragon doesn't need any improvement and the Onslaught was made pre-collapse so any issues with its weapon layouts can be presumed to have a reason that can't be overcome by current engineers like I just said.
They probably could improve the smaller ships but TT already has good frigates, Heg won't change and I suspect the league and independents don't want to spend the money.
As for the player, it would take decades to attract good enough engineers and set them to work to make a better ship than the current ones.
As for why not make a ship that is just a bunch of missiles or some other optimized build, at some point game balance has to override what makes sense otherwise you get everything becoming pretty similar and boring.

I think you have missed not only my point but the actual words.

I directly placed Pirates (and Pathers) on the tech's bleeding edge.

With that in mind can you please go back to Starsector game there certain dictator have build himself a fleet of certain custom military grade capitals with custom weapons because he wanted so?

So unless you want to say that making a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians to do what you want is a worse thing than saturate bombarding civilized planets with anti-matter I'm struggling to see any reasonable argument in your position. Have you missed recent Pegasus drama? Or do you really think that Paragon is better than Radiant? Sorry but I can't believe that.

Where did you mention pirates or panthers? I reread all the messages and can’t see you mentioning them.

The dictator could get custom weapons and ships yes, but the weapons are niche and the ships are just modifications which if you read the rest of the thread, are mostly worse or just okay.
Given that we can assume that there was a large cost to this, it was a waste of money so that’s almost certainly why other factions don’t do it.

I have no idea where you got saturation bombing from.

The Pegasus is not a new ship in universe, just new to the game and it’s retroactively added to the games history.

I also have no idea where you get me thinking that the Paragon is better than the Radiant.

Which part of my position is unreasonable? Why is it unreasonable that while modifications can be made, they’re not worth it for the established factions?

[Embolism]

I think death of the author kind of applies here. It doesn't matter very much what the author's original intent is, what matters more is what the majority of readers interpret it as. Yes if you think about it the lore behind special modifications does not imply the Andrada himself is incompetent per se, but that's how most readers interpret it.

As an example JK Rowling can insist her goblins aren't a Jewish stereotype, but a lot of readers do end up interpreting it that way (whether that's because of Rowling's bias, or the readers' bias, or both is not so relevant).

[Mortrag]

My two cents:

Sindria - It's a bit weird that something, that is considered a "Military Dictatorship" excels in production/logistics, with Sindria being the only world producing and exporting fuel AND supplies, while lacking in the military department. If the focus would be on the military, then even including the incompetenc-factor it should stand out for either trying (!) to achieve high-/over-quality (like late WW2-Germany) or going for pure mass (like North Korea). Neither of it seems to fit the current dictate and the quality factor is even more diminished from the player-perspective, in that you can't buy the "elite" LG-ships, and so you're forced to play against the dictate, if you want a dictate-theme-fleet.

Hegemony - I view them as too much of the good guys, like Ultramarines. Some more flaws would be necessary to make them likeable.

Luddic Church, Luddic Path, Pirates - Theme-wise they are really cool and hopefully they stay their way. It's just sad that I prefer energy- and dislike missile-weapons, while their ships are built with the opposite weapon-preference.

Tri-Tach and Persean League - They seem so far a bit bland to me. But it may very well be that's just because I hadn't much interaction with them so far. But the new League-music already gives them more flavor.

[Lucky33]

Spoiler

The executor is mostly a copy and the kinetic blaster is based off the heavy blaster so they’re not doing much more than what pirates have done. The gigacannon is new but it’s not very good which is probably why it hadn’t already been developed by someone else.

"weapon system integrates elements of SUPER ALABASTER technology to harness previously unutilized anti-shield effect"

Can we, you know, utilize something else? Like converging Large mounts on the Onslaught? Like all of them? I mean we have a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians after all. So why not? And while we are at it I'd like to have a 500 per shot HE damage ballistic gun for a medium mount, please.

Given that the kinetic blaster has an efficiency of 1.4 when some ballistic kinetics have an efficiency of 0.8 shows how it might have been unutilized because it wasn't really attractive especially when the pulse laser, also a medium energy weapon, has an efficiency of 0.8 which is only slightly worse than the kinetic blaster against shields.
The kinetic blaster does just manage to have the best anti shield efficiency among energy weapons and has pretty good DPS as well, but it's not a huge difference so it is pretty easy to see why no one else really bothered.
We also already know modifications can be made because of the pirates and the pathers, they are worse but it can still be done. It just looks like most don't bother because the old stuff seems to be almost always better and at least almost as good compared to new things. They can't just magic up a 500 per shot HE gun and whatever prevented the original designers from converging large mounts on the Onslaught, probably completely stumps the current special engineers.

I think that you have missed the point entirely. "Previously unutilized" means that no domain era blueprints exists. However, Diktat is getting them in numbers. Meaning that it is possible to manufacture something new in large quantities without having domain era blueprints. Even if it is energy weapon.

And now we back to the basics of Starsector balance that is build upon the idea of carefully introduced flaws. Like inability to bring all the guns on a single target. Or using subpar shield generators. Most of the ships are flawed on purpose. And the sole explanation for this is that you can't just build whatever you want and have to deal with the blueprints and all the ideas of the domain era designers no matter how bad they look like from the modern military perspective.

But it just happened that you don't.

You call it magic? I'm ok with that. As long as I get my ships and my guns. Like certain dictator did.

[close]

There has always been some innovation. The pirates like I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring but also Tritak is doing some. It's just really expensive presumably and the factions that can do it already have good big ships. The Paragon doesn't need any improvement and the Onslaught was made pre-collapse so any issues with its weapon layouts can be presumed to have a reason that can't be overcome by current engineers like I just said.
They probably could improve the smaller ships but TT already has good frigates, Heg won't change and I suspect the league and independents don't want to spend the money.
As for the player, it would take decades to attract good enough engineers and set them to work to make a better ship than the current ones.
As for why not make a ship that is just a bunch of missiles or some other optimized build, at some point game balance has to override what makes sense otherwise you get everything becoming pretty similar and boring.

I think you have missed not only my point but the actual words.

I directly placed Pirates (and Pathers) on the tech's bleeding edge.

With that in mind can you please go back to Starsector game there certain dictator have build himself a fleet of certain custom military grade capitals with custom weapons because he wanted so?

So unless you want to say that making a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians to do what you want is a worse thing than saturate bombarding civilized planets with anti-matter I'm struggling to see any reasonable argument in your position. Have you missed recent Pegasus drama? Or do you really think that Paragon is better than Radiant? Sorry but I can't believe that.

Where did you mention pirates or panthers? I reread all the messages and can’t see you mentioning them.

The dictator could get custom weapons and ships yes, but the weapons are niche and the ships are just modifications which if you read the rest of the thread, are mostly worse or just okay.
Given that we can assume that there was a large cost to this, it was a waste of money so that’s almost certainly why other factions don’t do it.

I have no idea where you got saturation bombing from.

The Pegasus is not a new ship in universe, just new to the game and it’s retroactively added to the games history.

I also have no idea where you get me thinking that the Paragon is better than the Radiant.

Which part of my position is unreasonable? Why is it unreasonable that while modifications can be made, they’re not worth it for the established factions?

So I was right, you did missed my words...

Actually I'm more concerned of the continuity. Previously it was supposedly impossible to design and build new stuff at all. And now we have Gigacannon. Plus Executor but not as itself but as an example of:

"Modifying starship designs at the forge-level is a feat only available to major polities willing to invest heavily in employing what amounts to a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians"

So there is a "specialist class of engineer-technicians". And what prevented them from designing good stuff all those years? Implemented idea of the certain dictator was bad. OK. There are all the good ideas? I mean we are talking centuries here yet Paragon is of Domain origin as all the AI ships. From the looks of it the bleeding edge of technology is somehow localized in Pathers and Pirates.

Am I only one who have trouble with the suspension of disbelief?

Considering other things.

I just want niche Onslaught with all large mounts capable of converging on a single target. With niche high damage medium guns. So do we have a deal?

Pegasus showed just how almost sound, from the military perspective, ship, was gutted because it was too effective. Compare this reasoning to what happened with Executor.

If Paragon is not better than Radiant when where are all those inevitable modernizations what should bring it the needed edge? What was all those engineer-technicians were doing for a century or so? Training? Highly...

Because modernization is worth it. You are getting better ships as a result. They may not be as good as completely new ships designed from the scratch to fight in the reality of the Sector but still better than the old ones, purposely gimped to not be as effective as they could.

[BaBosa]

Spoiler

Spoiler

The executor is mostly a copy and the kinetic blaster is based off the heavy blaster so they’re not doing much more than what pirates have done. The gigacannon is new but it’s not very good which is probably why it hadn’t already been developed by someone else.

"weapon system integrates elements of SUPER ALABASTER technology to harness previously unutilized anti-shield effect"

Can we, you know, utilize something else? Like converging Large mounts on the Onslaught? Like all of them? I mean we have a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians after all. So why not? And while we are at it I'd like to have a 500 per shot HE damage ballistic gun for a medium mount, please.

Given that the kinetic blaster has an efficiency of 1.4 when some ballistic kinetics have an efficiency of 0.8 shows how it might have been unutilized because it wasn't really attractive especially when the pulse laser, also a medium energy weapon, has an efficiency of 0.8 which is only slightly worse than the kinetic blaster against shields.
The kinetic blaster does just manage to have the best anti shield efficiency among energy weapons and has pretty good DPS as well, but it's not a huge difference so it is pretty easy to see why no one else really bothered.
We also already know modifications can be made because of the pirates and the pathers, they are worse but it can still be done. It just looks like most don't bother because the old stuff seems to be almost always better and at least almost as good compared to new things. They can't just magic up a 500 per shot HE gun and whatever prevented the original designers from converging large mounts on the Onslaught, probably completely stumps the current special engineers.

I think that you have missed the point entirely. "Previously unutilized" means that no domain era blueprints exists. However, Diktat is getting them in numbers. Meaning that it is possible to manufacture something new in large quantities without having domain era blueprints. Even if it is energy weapon.

And now we back to the basics of Starsector balance that is build upon the idea of carefully introduced flaws. Like inability to bring all the guns on a single target. Or using subpar shield generators. Most of the ships are flawed on purpose. And the sole explanation for this is that you can't just build whatever you want and have to deal with the blueprints and all the ideas of the domain era designers no matter how bad they look like from the modern military perspective.

But it just happened that you don't.

You call it magic? I'm ok with that. As long as I get my ships and my guns. Like certain dictator did.

[close]

There has always been some innovation. The pirates like I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring but also Tritak is doing some. It's just really expensive presumably and the factions that can do it already have good big ships. The Paragon doesn't need any improvement and the Onslaught was made pre-collapse so any issues with its weapon layouts can be presumed to have a reason that can't be overcome by current engineers like I just said.
They probably could improve the smaller ships but TT already has good frigates, Heg won't change and I suspect the league and independents don't want to spend the money.
As for the player, it would take decades to attract good enough engineers and set them to work to make a better ship than the current ones.
As for why not make a ship that is just a bunch of missiles or some other optimized build, at some point game balance has to override what makes sense otherwise you get everything becoming pretty similar and boring.

I think you have missed not only my point but the actual words.

I directly placed Pirates (and Pathers) on the tech's bleeding edge.

With that in mind can you please go back to Starsector game there certain dictator have build himself a fleet of certain custom military grade capitals with custom weapons because he wanted so?

So unless you want to say that making a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians to do what you want is a worse thing than saturate bombarding civilized planets with anti-matter I'm struggling to see any reasonable argument in your position. Have you missed recent Pegasus drama? Or do you really think that Paragon is better than Radiant? Sorry but I can't believe that.

Where did you mention pirates or panthers? I reread all the messages and can’t see you mentioning them.

The dictator could get custom weapons and ships yes, but the weapons are niche and the ships are just modifications which if you read the rest of the thread, are mostly worse or just okay.
Given that we can assume that there was a large cost to this, it was a waste of money so that’s almost certainly why other factions don’t do it.

I have no idea where you got saturation bombing from.

The Pegasus is not a new ship in universe, just new to the game and it’s retroactively added to the games history.

I also have no idea where you get me thinking that the Paragon is better than the Radiant.

Which part of my position is unreasonable? Why is it unreasonable that while modifications can be made, they’re not worth it for the established factions?

So I was right, you did missed my words...

Actually I'm more concerned of the continuity. Previously it was supposedly impossible to design and build new stuff at all. And now we have Gigacannon. Plus Executor but not as itself but as an example of:

"Modifying starship designs at the forge-level is a feat only available to major polities willing to invest heavily in employing what amounts to a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians"

So there is a "specialist class of engineer-technicians". And what prevented them from designing good stuff all those years? Implemented idea of the certain dictator was bad. OK. There are all the good ideas? I mean we are talking centuries here yet Paragon is of Domain origin as all the AI ships. From the looks of it the bleeding edge of technology is somehow localized in Pathers and Pirates.

Am I only one who have trouble with the suspension of disbelief?

Considering other things.

I just want niche Onslaught with all large mounts capable of converging on a single target. With niche high damage medium guns. So do we have a deal?

Pegasus showed just how almost sound, from the military perspective, ship, was gutted because it was too effective. Compare this reasoning to what happened with Executor.

If Paragon is not better than Radiant when where are all those inevitable modernizations what should bring it the needed edge? What was all those engineer-technicians were doing for a century or so? Training? Highly...

Because modernization is worth it. You are getting better ships as a result. They may not be as good as completely new ships designed from the scratch to fight in the reality of the Sector but still better than the old ones, purposely gimped to not be as effective as they could.

[close]

Ahh, that's what I get for not quoting things.

If you really want it, mod it. I doubt Alex will change it.

Yea it had to be nerfed or it'd be the clear best. That's also why every mount isn't turned into a missile or universal huge arc turret. At some point, you have to introduce artificial limitations or you end up with very few optimal ships and a boring game.

Radiant was better because it didn't have to deal with crew which take up a lot of space, and resources and require pressurized sections.

Making new designs is not necessarily good if you can't optimize the design like they used to in the past (ignoring artificial limitations).

And why add artificial limitations when you could make it weaker in other more natural ways like removing or downgrading mounts or whatever. Because that is harder and might limit the fun designs that can be made and Alex is one guy.

[Lucky33]

Spoiler

Spoiler

The executor is mostly a copy and the kinetic blaster is based off the heavy blaster so they’re not doing much more than what pirates have done. The gigacannon is new but it’s not very good which is probably why it hadn’t already been developed by someone else.

"weapon system integrates elements of SUPER ALABASTER technology to harness previously unutilized anti-shield effect"

Can we, you know, utilize something else? Like converging Large mounts on the Onslaught? Like all of them? I mean we have a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians after all. So why not? And while we are at it I'd like to have a 500 per shot HE damage ballistic gun for a medium mount, please.

Given that the kinetic blaster has an efficiency of 1.4 when some ballistic kinetics have an efficiency of 0.8 shows how it might have been unutilized because it wasn't really attractive especially when the pulse laser, also a medium energy weapon, has an efficiency of 0.8 which is only slightly worse than the kinetic blaster against shields.
The kinetic blaster does just manage to have the best anti shield efficiency among energy weapons and has pretty good DPS as well, but it's not a huge difference so it is pretty easy to see why no one else really bothered.
We also already know modifications can be made because of the pirates and the pathers, they are worse but it can still be done. It just looks like most don't bother because the old stuff seems to be almost always better and at least almost as good compared to new things. They can't just magic up a 500 per shot HE gun and whatever prevented the original designers from converging large mounts on the Onslaught, probably completely stumps the current special engineers.

I think that you have missed the point entirely. "Previously unutilized" means that no domain era blueprints exists. However, Diktat is getting them in numbers. Meaning that it is possible to manufacture something new in large quantities without having domain era blueprints. Even if it is energy weapon.

And now we back to the basics of Starsector balance that is build upon the idea of carefully introduced flaws. Like inability to bring all the guns on a single target. Or using subpar shield generators. Most of the ships are flawed on purpose. And the sole explanation for this is that you can't just build whatever you want and have to deal with the blueprints and all the ideas of the domain era designers no matter how bad they look like from the modern military perspective.

But it just happened that you don't.

You call it magic? I'm ok with that. As long as I get my ships and my guns. Like certain dictator did.

[close]

There has always been some innovation. The pirates like I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring but also Tritak is doing some. It's just really expensive presumably and the factions that can do it already have good big ships. The Paragon doesn't need any improvement and the Onslaught was made pre-collapse so any issues with its weapon layouts can be presumed to have a reason that can't be overcome by current engineers like I just said.
They probably could improve the smaller ships but TT already has good frigates, Heg won't change and I suspect the league and independents don't want to spend the money.
As for the player, it would take decades to attract good enough engineers and set them to work to make a better ship than the current ones.
As for why not make a ship that is just a bunch of missiles or some other optimized build, at some point game balance has to override what makes sense otherwise you get everything becoming pretty similar and boring.

I think you have missed not only my point but the actual words.

I directly placed Pirates (and Pathers) on the tech's bleeding edge.

With that in mind can you please go back to Starsector game there certain dictator have build himself a fleet of certain custom military grade capitals with custom weapons because he wanted so?

So unless you want to say that making a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians to do what you want is a worse thing than saturate bombarding civilized planets with anti-matter I'm struggling to see any reasonable argument in your position. Have you missed recent Pegasus drama? Or do you really think that Paragon is better than Radiant? Sorry but I can't believe that.

Where did you mention pirates or panthers? I reread all the messages and can’t see you mentioning them.

The dictator could get custom weapons and ships yes, but the weapons are niche and the ships are just modifications which if you read the rest of the thread, are mostly worse or just okay.
Given that we can assume that there was a large cost to this, it was a waste of money so that’s almost certainly why other factions don’t do it.

I have no idea where you got saturation bombing from.

The Pegasus is not a new ship in universe, just new to the game and it’s retroactively added to the games history.

I also have no idea where you get me thinking that the Paragon is better than the Radiant.

Which part of my position is unreasonable? Why is it unreasonable that while modifications can be made, they’re not worth it for the established factions?

So I was right, you did missed my words...

Actually I'm more concerned of the continuity. Previously it was supposedly impossible to design and build new stuff at all. And now we have Gigacannon. Plus Executor but not as itself but as an example of:

"Modifying starship designs at the forge-level is a feat only available to major polities willing to invest heavily in employing what amounts to a highly trained specialist class of engineer-technicians"

So there is a "specialist class of engineer-technicians". And what prevented them from designing good stuff all those years? Implemented idea of the certain dictator was bad. OK. There are all the good ideas? I mean we are talking centuries here yet Paragon is of Domain origin as all the AI ships. From the looks of it the bleeding edge of technology is somehow localized in Pathers and Pirates.

Am I only one who have trouble with the suspension of disbelief?

Considering other things.

I just want niche Onslaught with all large mounts capable of converging on a single target. With niche high damage medium guns. So do we have a deal?

Pegasus showed just how almost sound, from the military perspective, ship, was gutted because it was too effective. Compare this reasoning to what happened with Executor.

If Paragon is not better than Radiant when where are all those inevitable modernizations what should bring it the needed edge? What was all those engineer-technicians were doing for a century or so? Training? Highly...

Because modernization is worth it. You are getting better ships as a result. They may not be as good as completely new ships designed from the scratch to fight in the reality of the Sector but still better than the old ones, purposely gimped to not be as effective as they could.

[close]

Ahh, that's what I get for not quoting things.

If you really want it, mod it. I doubt Alex will change it.

Yea it had to be nerfed or it'd be the clear best. That's also why every mount isn't turned into a missile or universal huge arc turret. At some point, you have to introduce artificial limitations or you end up with very few optimal ships and a boring game.

Radiant was better because it didn't have to deal with crew which take up a lot of space, and resources and require pressurized sections.

Making new designs is not necessarily good if you can't optimize the design like they used to in the past (ignoring artificial limitations).

And why add artificial limitations when you could make it weaker in other more natural ways like removing or downgrading mounts or whatever. Because that is harder and might limit the fun designs that can be made and Alex is one guy.

For not reading things. About quoting I couldn't care less.

Modding is external. We are talking about the core game.

And military tech is about "the best is barely good enough". So what makes more common sense: failed attempt to gain the edge or successful attempt to dull the blade?

See? You already made a sound proposition as to where modernization effort should go.

A-a-a-nd we are back to my actual point. Why would Alex destroy the backstory what glued this whole idea together?