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[Sinigr]

I wouldn't nerf the Onslaught against your will, it's just that I wanted to do some more research before working on my mod. If you feel like Onslaught is balanced at the moment, then I guess it kinda is. It's complicated. There are ships that are too weak, and then there are ships that are strong. Onslaught I would say is the interesting benchmark other capitals should aspire too. But at the same time I will need to measure its performance using my mathematical model for my mod to check whether there isn't some sort of an over-expression. But at the same time, it's not like I have some sort of say in those things.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if Onslaught was nerfed eventually, or at least if there were more weapons or reworks added into the game that would make its life more hell. If it comes to Conquest being underpowered. Eh, probably. I know this kinda contradicts me saying "oh, it definitely is", but whatever... The general balancing decisions I aspire to make are not about necessarily making things stronger or weaker, but to make them more usable by NPCs, so that they don't behave like clowns on the battlefield, ruining my immersion. Conquest subtly fails, because of its lacking shield efficiency and maybe weapon design. But it could just be a variant issue, though I doubt it.

It is not necessary to balance or adjust ships, guns, or any other values, but in fact, first is needed to correct the AI, or completely rework it, since a lot of content is not used correctly at all, not for what it was invented for (Like TPC, okey I'll shoot fighters or frigates and miss, or shoot shield arc of big ship and same miss, instead of clearly pointing one at the center of a medium or larger ship and just then opening fire, all your attempts to balance are useless, it’s just a fact, not against you. By the way, that’s why I would only be glad if this weapon was taken away from the onslaught, and it would be much better for me, as AI ship of my fleet). So, just after that it is possible to get involved in editing certain values. Editing values in pursuit of the goal of achieving the ideal based on the behavior of the AI is the biggest mistake.

[Killer of Fate]

not really... The AI in Starsector is really good in my opinion, and there are tags that help define what behaviour weapons should have. TPC is shooting at fighters, cause it's good at killing all kinds of things. On the other hand, I don't think weapons marked with STRIKE tag will be used against fighters. And on top of that STRIKE needs USE_STRIKE_VS_FRIGATES or something to even attack frigates.

The issues I most often see come from the fact that most weapons are too specialist in nature. And if they are not specialist, their generalist nature really bullies them into obscurity. Which makes it very difficult for the NPC to utilise them. The kind of weapon and ship design we see in Starsector would be probably good in a multiplayer game, or at least solely for an intelligent human being to play around. But the reality is that weapons should be more straightforward in their function not for the player's sake, but for the NPC's sake.

You can't teach an NPC to use a freaking Reaper properly, cause Reaper is that needs to predict an enemy ship's movement, on top of taking the point defence into account, the kind of durability the enemy ship uses. And measure whether it should be kept for later or fired at a ship now. And the ship's positioning must be proper. And on top of that, the ship will use Reapers and say Pulse Lasers. And you have these factors coming in and breaking the behaviour of the ship. Because firing Pulse Lasers doesn't do anything, cause their job is just pressure, so firing it against armour means barely anything. And then you have the Heavy Blaster, which is the opposite of that. And the AI tries to fire it, but misses, cause the projectile is slow. Or it hits a missile. And the AI doesn't understand that Mjollnir fired at annihilators will cause it to waste flux... All these factors.

The goal would be to make weapons and ships have more... Fail-safes. If a Sunder gets pressured, it just dies. If a Hammerhead gets pressured, it just dies. If a Conquest gets pressured, it just dies. If you take Storm Needler and shoot it at an Apex... It just dies... Because your TPC will finish it off, and Apex is just a one-trick pony.

If I wanted to explain this in philosophical terms, you have to understand that the greatest enemy of humanity is a creature... A being... That has no intelligence. It's just a bunch of self-replicable mechanisms that operate on some sort of eldritch clockwork. Starsector ships should be like that. You will not improve them by making them smarter. Because intelligence isn't even a real thing. Sure, they might get more competent at using their weapons, but can you though??? Sometimes there is only so much you can do with Mjollnirs on a Conquest. And I feel like a Conquest that can do it is mostly cause of s-mods and officers. Which is the whole game... S-mods and officers improving ships so they are no longer garbage. So, I assume the balance would break if ships weren't garbage without s-mods and officers. Well, I guess I'll find out.

[Goumindong]

nd I feel like a Conquest that can do it is mostly cause of s-mods and officers. Which is the whole game... S-mods and officers improving ships so they are no longer garbage

But you don't feel like this for the Onslaught?

[prav]

It's drowning in OP, adding another couple of marginal mods isn't a big deal.

[Thaago]

I don't think ships are garbage without S mods. Pretty much the only ones I think are game changing are extended shields on some ships, because the extra 60 degrees from the S mod bonus is crucial, and expanded magazines for the 50% recharge boost. I even sometimes forget to use S mods and get too slow experience growth because of it...

Officers are mainly just stat sticks so I don't consider things without them garbage either - just weaker because they don't have stat boosts. The only skills that really changes builds or gameplay in a fundamental way are ordinance expertise allowing for more flux-hungry guns and elite field modulation on phase ships cutting their re-cloak time. Maybe System Expertise for phase skimmer? That's mainly just "more of a good thing" though rather than a transformation.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I feel like a Conquest that can do it is mostly cause of s-mods and officers. Which is the whole game... S-mods and officers improving ships so they are no longer garbage

That's a pretty weird argument. If a bad ship becomes good with s-mods and officers, then a good ship should become even better with s-mods and officers. The good ship would still be much better than the bad ship.

[Killer of Fate]

nd I feel like a Conquest that can do it is mostly cause of s-mods and officers. Which is the whole game... S-mods and officers improving ships so they are no longer garbage

But you don't feel like this for the Onslaught?

sry for long answer.

Spoiler

Oh, I do feel like this for the Onslaught. It definitely can't achieve that much without an officer, s-mods maybe too, eh whatever... But that statement was about the whole ship design in the game. Of them feeling less like complete experiences and more like incompetent designs to be improved by player interference. Which is why they struggle so much when in the hands of NPCs. Cause it's difficult for a dev and the system they set out to make a fleet of competent ships using pre-packaged randomised assets, considering everything in this game is often so *** specialist that adaptability simply does not exist.

Well, except when it does. For the Onslaught, Radiant and some other guys... Cause their roles are just "be a pineapple or whatever"... Whereas Vigilance, Conquest, Sunder, Shrike, Odyssey perform very specific roles on the battlefield that the player needs to understand and apply. Onslaught is just a pair of big guns with huge armour. What is Onslaught's role? Go in and kill as many things as you can. What is Conquest's role? Don't go in and don't die, roam about and pick your fights. Do you expect an NPC to be able to figure that out? Well, you can. But what the *** is supposed to happen when there is a Persean League with 3 Conquests? Are they all supposed to just roam about and hunt for targets? Then who the *** takes the frontline?

But then technically even rebalancing those stats wouldn't fix this issue. Wouldn't it? Cause you would retain these roles, and as they would be enforced on ships, they wouldn't be able to adapt and create competent fleets, instead being just a bunch of specialists that die one by one, because they don't know how to fulfil their role, like an orchestra filled with people who can only play trumpets (I mean, I guess that could sound cool). So, what the *** is the solution to this? Make specialists less specialist? But wouldn't that ruin the game? Or would it improve it, cause more ships would become viable and fun to play?

Like, okay... To keep rambling. Have you ever played Team Fortress 2? It's like a multiplayer game about teams trying to take control points, flags and shooting each other with rockets, guns, you know it, I'm sure. In that game there were like 4 core classes. Demoman, Soldier, Scout and Medic. And everyone else is just kinda "oh, I support the team". There were these so called generalists, and so called specialists... And generalists were like the Onslaught and Radiant. They were good at everything. They had no particular role, they were just generally strong. And specialists did something kinda better than everyone else, but then were kind of a failure. The difference was that these were played by people, so they weren't stupid enough to run forward as a glass cannon and die to a frontline class. Which is kinda what happens in Starsector. So, yeah... This is why balancing in that game was better than here. But we don't have that luxury. If we had, then maybe it would work. But because we don't... Maybe we should design specialists in such a way that they are no longer specialists, but simply unique takes on various concepts. Varied and complex enough that they don't get repetitive, but capable of performing well in a vast array of situations, rather than semi-particular ones we may be able to construct for them. Kinda like a fighting game, I guess...

But whatever... I guess, this doesn't answer your question. Uhhhhhhh, this is kinda convoluted and hard to explain, but I'm really trying, it's just... EEEEEEEEEEEEH... So impossible. Like... You haven't seen it. Just don't worry about it.

[close]

[BigBrainEnergy]

Oh, I do feel like this for the Onslaught. It definitely can't achieve that much without an officer, s-mods maybe too, eh whatever... But that statement was about the whole ship design in the game. Of them feeling less like complete experiences and more like incompetent designs to be improved by player interference. Which is why they struggle so much when in the hands of NPCs.

The ships being worse in NPC hands is intentional. The game would be too frustrating for most players if NPCs had optimized loadouts and strategies. It's really satisfying when you figure out good ship outfits that let you take on larger fleets. Officers and s-mods do give you some raw power advantage, but so does leveling up. Most enemies don't have things like wolfpack tactics, crew training, flux regulation, etc.

Maybe you could argue in favor of their being a "hard mode" where enemy admirals have more skills and enemy fleets have more s-mods and their ships have better loadouts. But that would take a lot of work to get right and is not something the game really needs. That's more like modded content, or perhaps post version 1.0 content. And all of this doesn't really say anything about ship balance! Some ships are more specialized than others. Do you actually want every ship to be a generalist just so NPCs can use them better? That sounds like a bad way to approach ship design and balance. The worst of both worlds.

[Killer of Fate]

it sounds bad on paper, but having ships be generally stronger in various roles, rather than being very restricted to a singular significant one can be healthy for the game. It would honestly add depth rather than subtracting it. Cause currently it can often feel like "oh, Sunder... You put beams on that". Like, sure. You can do SO Ion Pulsers + Autopulse, good luck with those 1.2 shields.

Sure, hyper-optimised builds would ruin the game. And make it definitely frustrating. But that is mostly due to the fact that the game has big balancing issues. I did play Better Variants and I understand how the game would feel like if it was just super optimised builds. And to be honest... It was fun. It was very fun. Things actually meant something back then. You needed to have point defence. I mean look at those late game Onslaught builds. They have like 8 vulcans and stop caring. If you had that back in BV with pre-nerf Squalls, you'd be dead in a minute.

But I digress... Design ships around using unique approaches to the game. Rather than fulfilling concrete roles. I guess that is the thing that would be cool to have. The first goal I named was, this would make NPCs more flexible and more fun to fight. The other goal you should also notice is that this would possibly make playing the game and experimenting more fun. In fact, I feel like experimenting in Starsector could even feel somewhat frowned upon, cause ships just do roles. That's their job. And sure, I don't plan to make Conquest into a tank. But if it could stand up to more firepower a bit, and maybe have a bit more venting, it would be able to defend itself a little rather than being as someone mentioned... A DPS tool.

Plus, rewriting specialists into more flexible roles would also kinda... Serve... To buff frigates, destroyers and cruisers. These currently are very specialist in their design. Like the only ones that kinda aren't to me are like Champion, Mora, maybe Hyperion (just a murder tool) and strangely enough, Monitor... Cause Monitor's tankiness is so universally valuable that it is no longer a specialist tool. It's a core tool.

If you made frigates, destroyers and cruisers into more flexible ships, the player wouldn't have to micromanage them into perfection to make them achieve similar results to ships they could just leave alone and watch them beat the *** out of everything. If they were slightly more self-sustainable, slightly more difficult to hard-counter and overall stronger, because they would be more applicable. This would also be healthy for the game. Cause the general amount of strategies and dangers would rise, making it more difficult to develop a game breaking meta strategy rendering the entire game pointless.

Think about it... Frigates and Destroyers being more potent is what would kill the Onslaught and buff Conquest on its own. The reason why these two are so different in power levels is cause Onslaught's weakness is being flanked. Conquest's weakness is direct combat. But because frigates and destroyers are so garbo in NPC hands, this never happens. Onslaught is very difficult to flank once you have the basics covered. So, Conquest's ability to just shoot everything with its omni-directional slots and mobility no longer seems that valuable. But if we tried to make that appear... If we tried to kindle that flame... What would happen then?? Think about it. Think about how stupidly complex the game could be, if we just stopped thinking about things in rock, paper, scissor terms and embrace infinity. Especially considering the fact that some ships (Onslaught, Monitor, Hyperion, Radiant, probably Legion, etc.) already have. To me, the genie is already out of the bottle. Now the time has come to make everyone else keep up with whatever progress has been made on accident.

[Goumindong]

nd I feel like a Conquest that can do it is mostly cause of s-mods and officers. Which is the whole game... S-mods and officers improving ships so they are no longer garbage

But you don't feel like this for the Onslaught?

sry for long answer.

Spoiler

Oh, I do feel like this for the Onslaught. It definitely can't achieve that much without an officer, s-mods maybe too, eh whatever... But that statement was about the whole ship design in the game. Of them feeling less like complete experiences and more like incompetent designs to be improved by player interference. Which is why they struggle so much when in the hands of NPCs. Cause it's difficult for a dev and the system they set out to make a fleet of competent ships using pre-packaged randomised assets, considering everything in this game is often so *** specialist that adaptability simply does not exist.

Well, except when it does. For the Onslaught, Radiant and some other guys... Cause their roles are just "be a pineapple or whatever"... Whereas Vigilance, Conquest, Sunder, Shrike, Odyssey perform very specific roles on the battlefield that the player needs to understand and apply. Onslaught is just a pair of big guns with huge armour. What is Onslaught's role? Go in and kill as many things as you can. What is Conquest's role? Don't go in and don't die, roam about and pick your fights. Do you expect an NPC to be able to figure that out? Well, you can. But what the *** is supposed to happen when there is a Persean League with 3 Conquests? Are they all supposed to just roam about and hunt for targets? Then who the *** takes the frontline?

But then technically even rebalancing those stats wouldn't fix this issue. Wouldn't it? Cause you would retain these roles, and as they would be enforced on ships, they wouldn't be able to adapt and create competent fleets, instead being just a bunch of specialists that die one by one, because they don't know how to fulfil their role, like an orchestra filled with people who can only play trumpets (I mean, I guess that could sound cool). So, what the *** is the solution to this? Make specialists less specialist? But wouldn't that ruin the game? Or would it improve it, cause more ships would become viable and fun to play?

Like, okay... To keep rambling. Have you ever played Team Fortress 2? It's like a multiplayer game about teams trying to take control points, flags and shooting each other with rockets, guns, you know it, I'm sure. In that game there were like 4 core classes. Demoman, Soldier, Scout and Medic. And everyone else is just kinda "oh, I support the team". There were these so called generalists, and so called specialists... And generalists were like the Onslaught and Radiant. They were good at everything. They had no particular role, they were just generally strong. And specialists did something kinda better than everyone else, but then were kind of a failure. The difference was that these were played by people, so they weren't stupid enough to run forward as a glass cannon and die to a frontline class. Which is kinda what happens in Starsector. So, yeah... This is why balancing in that game was better than here. But we don't have that luxury. If we had, then maybe it would work. But because we don't... Maybe we should design specialists in such a way that they are no longer specialists, but simply unique takes on various concepts. Varied and complex enough that they don't get repetitive, but capable of performing well in a vast array of situations, rather than semi-particular ones we may be able to construct for them. Kinda like a fighting game, I guess...

But whatever... I guess, this doesn't answer your question. Uhhhhhhh, this is kinda convoluted and hard to explain, but I'm really trying, it's just... EEEEEEEEEEEEH... So impossible. Like... You haven't seen it. Just don't worry about it.

[close]

No worries for the long answer.

My point was that if both ships aren’t that good without s-mods and officers that maybe they’re actually pretty balanced.

Re: niche

I understand the concerns about ships being niche. And niche ships being in inefficient positions can make AI fleets weak. But… there is always going to be a ship that is “the best brick” or “best basic line ship”. And everything else is always going to have to “find a niche”.  And right now the onslaught is kind of that “best brick” ship (kind of). Nerfing it may not necessarily fix the problems you think you are seeing but rather shift the problems to a different ship.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I love how people consider anchor capitals (ons, leg, para) overpowered and battlecruisers underpowered (the only unanimously OP battlecruiser is Radiant). Almost like that's how you should be using the slow, meaty ship class with low weapon counts per DP.

Onslaught has TPCs, a large ballistic, five medium ballistics, six small ballistics and four medium missiles.

Legion(XIV) has two large missiles, 5 medium ballistics, 8 small ballsitics and four fighter wings, which are worth about 3 small flux-free ballistics each.

The reason why Onslaught/Legion are considered overpowered isn't because of their tank, it's because of their DPS. To the extent their tank matters, it's so you can drop shields and use flux for even more DPS.

No one ever called Paragon overpowered outside of new players seeing it in action for the first time against Pirates, and that's too because of lack of DPS. "Only" four large energy mounts for 60 DP is a raw deal, and its ship system is only good for being a "fleet anchor", which as far as I can tell is a role completely made-up by the players that has no basis in reality. S-mod bonus to Extended Magazines made four Autopulse Paragon viable, and it actually synergizes with Fortress Shield somewhat, but if anything that only got it from B tier to A tier.

You know what, it would be interesting for people to post their capital builds so we could actually compare their damage outputs. Because I'm beginning to think that the "glass cannon" battlecruisers, while a lot more fragile than battleships, aren't much more of a cannon. (I'll do the math for you don't worry)

[Goumindong]

No one ever called Paragon overpowered outside of new players seeing it in action for the first time against Pirates, and that's too because of lack of DPS. "Only" four large energy mounts for 60 DP is a raw deal, and its ship system is only good for being a "fleet anchor", which as far as I can tell is a role completely made-up by the players that has no basis in reality.

Please don’t take this in a harsh manner but this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how combat works in starsector. For the vast majority of ships the number of mounts they have do not matter. What matters is flux capacity, flux dissipation, and flux efficiency.

The Onslaught and Legion are good ships exactly because they can armor tank well. If they could not they would not be good capitals because their DPS is bad, actually, compared to other capitals. Because they don’t have a lot of flux dissipation or a huge capacity. Or particularly great weapon sets. What they have is the ability to keep firing while they take armor and hull damage and so can convert more of their lower dissipation into damage.

Similarly the Paragon has the best “large energy slots to DP ratio in the game”. It gets 1 per 15 DP. This is tied with the prometheus mark 2. The executor gets 1 per 25. The Odyssey gets 1 per 22.5. The champion gets 1 per 25. The reason the paragon isn’t super OP is because it only gets 1250/1750 flux dissipation for its 4 large energy and 60 DP. Whereas the Odyssey gets 1000/1500 for its 45. The Odyssey can fire two plasma cannon with this, using up 1650 flux alone. The Paragon can fit 4 plasma… but it doesn’t get much more damage out of them because of the aforementioned flux dissipation limits and the fact that 2 plasma use up all of that dissipation already

And “fleet anchor” is an important aspect of certain fleets. It’s just another term for anvil. This is not a made up role anymore than anything else is a made up role.

[TaLaR]

Paragon is it's own thing. It's slow and only has energy slots. Even with built-in range hullmod, any hard flux weapons on a Paragon will be outranged by any ballistic capital built for max range. But going full soft-flux sets you up for failure vs Radiants (plus AI can't corner shoot to bypass shields when opportunity is present, reducing this build's efficiency under AI by huge margin).

Then again, AI can't precisely maintain it's range-speed advantage to kite (unless it's really huge, which isn't the case), so it's not like a hard flux Paragon will get kited that badly. I'm just allergic to concept of getting kited.

[Killer of Fate]

Please don’t take this in a harsh manner but this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how combat works in starsector. For the vast majority of ships the number of mounts they have do not matter. What matters is flux capacity, flux dissipation, and flux efficiency.

Good thing 90% of Legion's firepower is locked behind missiles and flux efficient weapons. And Onslaught has access to probably the strongest weapon in the entire game, being 1k range, ten morbillion burst damage that synergizes with Expanded Mags and 0.6 flux efficiency.

Otherwise that low flux would actually mean something.

I mean, it still does. Onslaught's and Legion's weaknesses mostly come from the fact that they're slow. They're really bad at aiming at precise targets and find it difficult to pursue. Their strength comes from extreme defensive potential which negates Remnants hyperaggressive nature. Making it difficult for them to complete their burst cycle without taking significant damage. And with how strong armour is at late game with officers and s-mods, the enemy's ability deal to damage is greatly impaired.

I understand the concerns about ships being niche. And niche ships being in inefficient positions can make AI fleets weak. But… there is always going to be a ship that is “the best brick” or “best basic line ship”. And everything else is always going to have to “find a niche”.  And right now the onslaught is kind of that “best brick” ship (kind of). Nerfing it may not necessarily fix the problems you think you are seeing but rather shift the problems to a different ship.

You're obviously right. I think nerfing the Onslaught is pointless. Except minor changes to TPC. But that has to be experimented to see whether it won't ruin the ship. After all, why remove things that are fun for no reason?

The actual nerf should come in the buffing of smaller weapons, destroyers, cruisers and frigates. The more nimble threats exist, the stronger the Conquest will become. And the more difficult life will be for Onslaught and other low tech bricks. Currently the game fails to counter those, because far too many ships that should be able to exploit their lack of mobility, can't.

This will most likely shift over time and naturally make the Onslaught weaker. Unless such changes are never executed. In that case, we will live in the more boring timeline.

[Thaago]

I can't remember if I've posted this already or not, but I enjoy S mod auxilliary thrusters on pretty much every capital and moderately slow ship these days. Maneuverability is great and the +10 speed with 0 flux is even better for getting them into combat faster.