Possible third option: A tip "hidden" in lore/dialogue?
Like the contact saying: "Also it would be a shame, if some array would send out false readings during your approach."
Edit:
I get that it would be cool, if the player discovers this alone.
But in the current state of the game, does the player have any reason to interact with a sensor array of another faction and so stumble over this option?
It's a fair point, I'll keep it in mind! Not something I really want to mess with now, though.
The Escort Package seems (feels?) amazing. I always had the problem that the destroyers couldn't support my captial ships effectively as they hide behind them and not secure their flanks.
Even if this behaviour is still present with the extra range they should now be able to support them. Really looking forward to this change.
(In the process of testing this out in a "proper" game to see how it feels, though don't have much to say yet!)
Although I think the squall nerf isn’t entirely unwarranted, I think its HP value might be being nerfed too much. This is because without any hullmods buffing its stats squalls aren’t too hard to deal with. Missile spec’s huge buffs made squalls basically invulnerable though.
I would feel more comfortable with a less severe HP nerf than 50%, but who knows maybe this will be better for everyone at the end of the day. Cool adjustments, thank you for the patch notes!
Hmm - in my experience, they were too tough to take down even w/o Missile Spec, and so far they feel pretty good. I've got an Apogee using those + HIL + Ion Beam and it's solid as ever!
I'm super excited to see how the other factions new interactions with colony crisis goes. Oh, that brings up another idea.
Now that the Luddic church and hegemony claim two uninhabited systems in the core that have planets to colonize, maybe increasing the weight (if possible) of having a few additional nice traits for the planets in that system would be nice? Nothing spectacular, maybe just like a better chance for a farmable or organics planet in these systems? Food for thought.
Part of the reason for not having habitable planets there is thematic/feel, it doesn't feel right to have a bunch of planets like that in the core and not have them be inhabited.
This is certainly a nice quality of life improvement. Although now I really wonder what the themes of the preset skill selections are. Almost feels like an opportunity for back story on them.
It's a range of stuff for possible builds - phase ship, high tech, low tech, generalist. It's also made to be easy to add new templates, whether in vanilla or with mods.
Interesting tweak to the economics simulation. Am I correct in reading this as significantly reducing the maximum credits that can be extracted via black market trading out of worlds like Chalcedon and Epiphany in a given 30 day period, making it more like 120 days between going back to make a quick buck?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Feels like a good change so that when players follow the breadcrumbs from probes to survey to mothership, they get a reward for their persistence.
Yep! Came about as a result of doing just that and being disappointed.
Although, did you ever settle on changing elite Impact Mitigation, still a work in progress or staying as is?
It's keeping its original effect - it was already strong/good, the new stuff is hopefully more in line relative to it.
Although given the escort command itself tends to keep ships to the rear, its more likely just to keep flankers even farther back in that usage case.
Yeah, I might need to look at that behavior again. Though with a decent amount of cruisers+, destroyers should mostly get a nice bonus without requiring an escort order.
I vaguely remember it being a suggestion in discussion text during the main quest where you are forced to do the hacking of the comm relay. If it isn't, it definitely should be suggested by Gargoyle, being the hacker extraordinaire the player interacts with.
Oh yeah, that very much rings a bell!
Really great patch notes
Love the look of all of this. AI avoiding hazards like black holes, Alt for quick transfer, Reverse Polarity and all those skill swaps for hyperspace. MAN, absolutely packed with QoL changes. Really great stuff.
I'm also happy some of the older weapons are getting updates and love. I was wondering what your current thoughts were on missiles. Missile Autoloader seems like a really fun hullmod but simply costs too much unless you happen to land in the ideal bracket. It's really nice for AI so they ACTUALLY pace their missile use rather than busting all their missiles at the start of a fight. I personally love reloading missiles so I'm obviously biased but I feel like that hullmod could be so much more. Certain missiles like the Jackhammer that have insanely low ammo are really hampered by AI usage. With those precious two volleys often getting wasted. It's good to see that frigates won't be such magnets but AI missile / torpedo usage is always a tricky thing to get perfect. Just wondering what you were feeling design wise about the current state of missile / torpedo usage.
*thumbs up*
For Missile Autoloader, it being useful for ships in a specific bracket is 100% the design intent behind it. It's not meant to make missile-heavy ships (as defined by those brackets) stronger. It's meant to give missile-*light* ships a stronger missile option - an alternative where Expanded Missile Racks and Missile Specialization would be very inefficient.
Re: missile/torpedo usage, as you say, it's tricky. Even the player will miss sometimes. I think it's in a pretty good place overall; my feeling is that - at least, for me personally - it's a question of having the righr expectations. If I'm not counting on the AI landing every shot but have a bunch of torpedoes so there are plenty of chances, it feels good.
Ah, now that's good idea! If you're piloting a Destroyer/Cruiser, does the Escort Package modifiers appear on the left side of the screen with other info?
It does, yep.
I just swapped the weapons data for PL and the Rift Lance and threw a pair of Phase Lances on a very generalist Eagle, no skills. My overall impression is that it gained significant anti-fighter capability (killing Brodswords in one shot) but it was only tickling even moderate armor. I know it does 1000 damage/sec but when it only hits for half a second (including travel time), it doesn't have a lot of time to inflict damage. It was particularly effective against Frigates.
Ahh! For some reason I was thinking the Rift Lance beam-DPS was lower, but it's actually the same. Right. That makes sense. Hmm. Still the "more similar to burst laser" issue, though - it's a fairly crowded field for that type of weapon/role.
Maybe an efficiency buff is fine. 
I guess we'll see
While I like the Hull Restoration CR change I'm also of the opinion that HR needs to be nerfed or otherwise changed to encourage skill build diversity. I'd wager about 80% of player builds involve immediately dumping 5 points in Industry. The free D-mod repairs are just too convenient, basically saving anyone who takes it tens of millions of credits no matter their situation.
Hmm, I don't actually see it that way. I mean, Industry is by nature a good early tree, especially so for a beginner player, so the top-tier skill having similar properties feels right. But it's by no means necessary and I don't think it saves "tens of millions of credits" or anything like it. You don't normally want to restore ships (it's way too expensive for general use) and it's easy enough to find ships in good shape on the black market. And if you don't take HR, you get more immediate fleet power which results in it being easier to avoid losses (and d-mods) in your core ship set in the first place.
The drop-off happens after 1000 SU, right? Because the range is pretty tight as-is, if the hullmod was only getting 50% value at 750 range or what-have-you, it would be pretty anemic.
Well, Alex did say you wouldn't be able to shoot a more distant target by moving closer to the capital and away from the target.
Longest base range weapon is a Gauss on a Manticore. 1200*0.4 = 480 range. So at worst, I think it has to phase out over 480 range, no? I.e. if I got 240 units closer (past the 1000 range mark), then I could lose at most 240 out of that 480 bonus range, meaning I could still barely hit the target. So you lose at most 50% of the bonus range at 240 units beyond 1000. Otherwise, you can hit a target farther out by moving away from it, which the AI probably won't know to do.
So I think it means at quickest, it falls off linearly from 1000 to 1480. (i.e. 25% fall off at 1120, 50% fall off at 1240, and 75% fall off at 1360).
It's not super precise because on the one hand, the check distance is usually less than 1000su, but on the other hand, it includes a fraction of the sum of the radii of the two ships, so it just depends. The range feels like quite a bit, though. And the linear drop-off happens over a range of an extra 500 su.
Also yes, the stacking thing was multiple capitals nearby. I was just curious, the possibilities if that were the case would be amazing!
A little too amazing, I think
Yaaay! Great news!
Any chance we can get another skill to boost marines? And since we're doing QOL changes, can you consider this suggestion: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=23297.msg348902#msg348902
Hmm, neither is something I'm looking at. For marines especially - I saw you asking for that in another thread, but I really just don't understand why that would be a good thing. "They need to have two skills buffing them" is not, I don't think, a sound reason
I've thought about that, yeah. I don't like that, though
As someone who previously used Phase Lances for some things, thank you very much for not doing that. They hit hard enough that they keep enemy ships from playing around at "just short of overload" levels even as soft flux, and their massive armor penetration and very high accuracy made them very punishing for anyone who couldn't keep their shields up - having them be disabled entirely versus targets who haven't overloaded yet would have sucked.
Yeah, exactly - all interesting interactions I wouldn't want to lose.
I still think ships with no PD in the rear are a bit too vulnerable. To fighters, too.
Hopefully, the new autorepair works a bit better at keeping the engines up.
I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a ship that does not have some PD options for the rear arc where it's not also an explicitly intended huge vulnerability (e.g. the Hyperion, to some extent the Nova, etc). And there's always Converted Hangar + DTA + interceptors (or Xyphos/Sarissa).
I'm looking forward to toying with escort package. It seems to do a lot of the same as several other very expensive mods, which is going to be fun. Even now, I'm doing a run where Buffalo MKIIs are constantly raining Harpoons from off screen. Now, I could probably use something else and actually expect it to both survive as an escort and provide good support!
I really want to see what good undergunned destroyers with fleet mods like Nav and Ecm can do.
That sounds like fun!
I will certainly try my best to make use of the return of the escort package, since it'll be seemingly useful for what I already try to do with ships in my fleet: Have smaller support-built ships escort larger ships. My most favorite type being laser pointer sunders, which will certainly be more intimidating with the escort package buffs.
Yeah, the Sunder seems like it might be particularly suited for this type of approach.
