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[Lawrence Master-blaster]

How can you argue that Conquest is better than 2 Eagles for example?

...oh, don't mind me. I just wanted to let this sentence hang in the air for a bit.

[Killer of Fate]

generally pitching Fury against Eagle has as much sense as pitching a Conquest against an Onslaught. Though admittedly Conquest is underpowered compared to the Onslaught.

Before the missile nerfs the fight between the three tech capitals was in general regardless of build Onslaught < Conquest < Odyssey < Onslaught. After it pretty much is Onslaught is better than the other two due to it shooting down any Squalls thrown at it. Squall without officer support got over nerfed in the HP department. Functionally half of the Conquests total firepower is in missiles and large missiles are in general fairly weak for their cost ATM when facing heavy PD. So, it's really not that the Onslaught is OP, it's that sim Onslaught hard counters large missile ships whereas it didn't use to.

Sim Eagle uses a terrible stalling build and absolutely should not be winning so decisively against a ship it can't escape from.

The logic is that Fury is meant to dilute the battlefield by roaming and choosing its engagements wisely. Utilising its extreme mobility of more than 130 units (possibly, which can be further easily augmented) to kill all the weaker support units of carriers, frigates, destroyers etc. To then leave the major core exposed to ridiculous damage.

...What? It has a top speed of 95. It also can't dilute the battlefield as it costs 20 DP. If you want to dilute the battlefield with cruisers that punch down, the only option is the Falcon.

Eagle on the other hand is an elite duellist. It's designed around bullying a singular target. You can put it against a Dominator and often neither will win in spite of Dominator also being powerful against a single big target. Eagle is just a master of kiting and retreating.

Unless the Eagle gets overloaded, which every Dominator build can do if it has adequate kinetic damage, and three Typhoons. Also, the Eagle has maneuvering thrusters, so it can handle decently large volumes of small ships assuming it has Phase Lance.

Fury ironically enough has really high durability of like 20k shields or way above that... And with a proper build it can win by attrition thanks to the utility of EMP.

It has a base shielding of 9,000 at 0.7 efficiency for an effective shielding of 12,857 and 1/7. Which is less than the Eagle's at 11,000 at .8 for 13,750. Did you accidently mod core files?

At max caps without bonus hullmods or skills (30 caps) you get an extra 6,000 shielding, meaning the Fury and Eagle have nearly the same shielding at 21,428 + 1/1.75 and 21,250. For reference the Apogee, a functional combat freighter at 60 speed, has a shielding of 25,714 + 1/3.5 if given max caps.

even before Squall nerf, Conquest generally didn't do that well in average sim experience against the Onslaught. Cause it has less durability, firepower and even range than the Onslaught. It's far less flexible, and op restricted. And has a shield that is purposefully designed to make an average NPC Conquest in the game unable to even properly pressure a Dominator. Sure, it will often kill it. But considering it costs 60% more DP, it seems to struggle at that. Though admittedly a Dominator is a anti-capital ship. So, maybe there is some logic to that.

Microburn creates an average speed increase of 50. Man Jets creates average speed increase of 25. Additionally due to the general close-quarter nature of Fury and its ability to duel by attrition of various opponents, it can be equipped with Unstable Injector. So, it's roaming speed goes up to, I think 180? If you also talk about Helsmanship being added on top. But I think most people won't mod Unstable Injector. Which is a huge loss... Cause again. Fury isn't a stat-checker. It's a roamer.

My typical Fury build ends up having 14k flux capacity, which when divided by 0.7 creates 20k durability. Refer to my previous-previous large post on the Fury and Shrike. This is without s-mods. So, the durability is even higher. It is also at 25 caps which is kinda high. Eagle stands at a generally similar amount. Having at 25 caps the same 20k shield durability.

did not notice you corrected that later on.

Also, calling an Apogee a functional combat ship is sort of comical to me. Apogee is honestly really bad at the moment. All it can do is spam beams, it has horrible mobility for being restricted to 700 range weapons, a huge hitbox. Horrible system. It relies on missiles which were significantly nerfed. And is OP-starved as hell. But at least it's not 22 DP, cause it could have been worse.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

even before Squall nerf, Conquest generally didn't do that well in average sim experience against the Onslaught. Cause it has less durability, firepower and even range than the Onslaught. It's far less flexible, and op restricted. And has a shield that is purposefully designed to make an average NPC Conquest in the game unable to even properly pressure a Dominator. Sure, it will often kill it. But considering it costs 60% more DP, it seems to struggle at that. Though admittedly a Dominator is a anti-capital ship. So, maybe there is some logic to that.

It did fine as the Onslaught wouldn't engage burn drive to chase it thanks to MIRV + Squall, and it had nearly the same ballistic range as the Onslaught, which in AI vs AI allowed it to kite the Onslaught to death. The Odyssey would over-extend and take terrible damage vs the Onslaught with the exception of specific double Tachyon beam builds with Squall. Likewise, the Conquest couldn't kite the Odyssey, so the Odysseys superior shielding allowed most builds to work against the Conquest.

Microburn creates an average speed increase of 50. Man Jets creates average speed increase of 25. Additionally due to the general close-quarter nature of Fury and its ability to duel by attrition of various opponents, it can be equipped with Unstable Injector. So, it's roaming speed goes up to, I think 180? If you also talk about Helsmanship being added on top. But I think most people won't mod Unstable Injector. Which is a huge loss... Cause again. Fury isn't a stat-checker. It's a roamer.

Only in the forward direction, and assuming the ship is moving in that direction. Given even with eliminate orders, ships rarely point at their target and instead focus on nearby potential flankers, the average speed bonus from Micro Burn drops like a rock. Whereas Maneuvering Jets works in all directions. It's base speed, with Micro Burn factored in, probably doesn't exceed 110 over the course of a battle.

Also, calling an Apogee a functional combat ship is sort of comical to me. Apogee is honestly really bad at the moment. All it can do is spam beams, it has horrible mobility for being restricted to 700 range weapons, a huge hitbox. Horrible system. It relies on missiles which were significantly nerfed. And is OP-starved as hell. But at least it's not 22 DP, cause it could have been worse.

Functional combat freighter, whereas the standard Venture is a nonfunctional combat freighter. I only gave it as an example as it's the same DP and yet has stronger shields despite being a long-range support ship. Which puts the Fury and Eagle on the high end of average shields or the low end of strong shields for their DP.

[Mishrak]

generally pitching Fury against Eagle has as much sense as pitching a Conquest against an Onslaught. Though admittedly Conquest is underpowered compared to the Onslaught.

Before the missile nerfs the fight between the three tech capitals was in general regardless of build Onslaught < Conquest < Odyssey < Onslaught. After it pretty much is Onslaught is better than the other two due to it shooting down any Squalls thrown at it. Squall without officer support got over nerfed in the HP department. Functionally half of the Conquests total firepower is in missiles and large missiles are in general fairly weak for their cost ATM when facing heavy PD. So, it's really not that the Onslaught is OP, it's that sim Onslaught hard counters large missile ships whereas it didn't use to.

How can you argue that Conquest is better than 2 Eagles for example?

...oh, don't mind me. I just wanted to let this sentence hang in the air for a bit.

Even after the missile nerfs, Conquest is still significantly better than two Eagles.  It's not really close.

[Princess of Evil]

Even if you take half the Conquest, it's still better than two Eagles. At least it has large ballistics *and* some large missiles.

[Mishrak]

Double Gauss with Elite BM (for proj speed) is a significant amount of damage if you can get stuff to cover its flank while it kites around.  Hurricanes are still good finishers even if they get shot down a lot.

[Killer of Fate]

even before Squall nerf, Conquest generally didn't do that well in average sim experience against the Onslaught. Cause it has less durability, firepower and even range than the Onslaught. It's far less flexible, and op restricted. And has a shield that is purposefully designed to make an average NPC Conquest in the game unable to even properly pressure a Dominator. Sure, it will often kill it. But considering it costs 60% more DP, it seems to struggle at that. Though admittedly a Dominator is a anti-capital ship. So, maybe there is some logic to that.

It did fine as the Onslaught wouldn't engage burn drive to chase it thanks to MIRV + Squall, and it had nearly the same ballistic range as the Onslaught, which in AI vs AI allowed it to kite the Onslaught to death. The Odyssey would over-extend and take terrible damage vs the Onslaught with the exception of specific double Tachyon beam builds with Squall. Likewise, the Conquest couldn't kite the Odyssey, so the Odysseys superior shielding allowed most builds to work against the Conquest.

Microburn creates an average speed increase of 50. Man Jets creates average speed increase of 25. Additionally due to the general close-quarter nature of Fury and its ability to duel by attrition of various opponents, it can be equipped with Unstable Injector. So, it's roaming speed goes up to, I think 180? If you also talk about Helsmanship being added on top. But I think most people won't mod Unstable Injector. Which is a huge loss... Cause again. Fury isn't a stat-checker. It's a roamer.

Only in the forward direction, and assuming the ship is moving in that direction. Given even with eliminate orders, ships rarely point at their target and instead focus on nearby potential flankers, the average speed bonus from Micro Burn drops like a rock. Whereas Maneuvering Jets works in all directions. It's base speed, with Micro Burn factored in, probably doesn't exceed 110 over the course of a battle.

Also, calling an Apogee a functional combat ship is sort of comical to me. Apogee is honestly really bad at the moment. All it can do is spam beams, it has horrible mobility for being restricted to 700 range weapons, a huge hitbox. Horrible system. It relies on missiles which were significantly nerfed. And is OP-starved as hell. But at least it's not 22 DP, cause it could have been worse.

Functional combat freighter, whereas the standard Venture is a nonfunctional combat freighter. I only gave it as an example as it's the same DP and yet has stronger shields despite being a long-range support ship. Which puts the Fury and Eagle on the high end of average shields or the low end of strong shields for their DP.

Spoiler

okay, you convinced me that Eagle is overpowered. I will now nerf Eagle in my rebalancing mod.
Why does this ship have almost as high flux dissipation as Aurora? What the heck?
Fury has 600. Eagle has 700? Excuse me?

11k flux? What in the name of god? When was this?

Edit:
Okay... Let me explain.

You are correct. Fury is underpowered. Fury sucks. I have found a viable build. Sure, but who cares. None of that matters.

But its weaknesses are not tied to its stats. Its weaknesses are tied to how weapons in Starsector are designed.

Pulse Lasers take nine years to kill anything. IR Pulse Laser is a joke weapon. Ion Cannon exists to annoy Hounds and Cerberus. It's usable, but why? Heavy Blaster with SO? Sure. But it's boring, and it has some lacking viability issues I heard about. I never used SO. Without SO? It works sort of. But you have finite damage, and then ships run out of steam and can't retreat.

You won't fix this by buffing ships stats. No. You won't. Ships that have stats buffed like that will just become bullet sponges. And sure, you can give them a hullmod that will make them better near capital ships like Destroyers got. But that is kinda boring too...

I propose, we buff weapons. Weapons are why destroyers, cruisers and etc. suck. There are a lot of long ranged options that just easily destroy anything, because you can never catch the users of them. But also there are very few short-ranged weapons that are actually worth using, cause their DPS is comparable to their long-ranged counterparts. And then there are just beams that don't do anything. Graviton Beam feels... Dumb? Tactical Laser feels... Useless. Phase Lance is fine, I guess... But it's just an efficiency weapon. High Tech ships have no stuff to spend their flux on. They are alpha strike ships with efficiency weapons. The only non-efficiency weapon is so inefficient that it overfluxes ships designed entirely around high flux.

What if we did this... We go back on the flux efficiency philosophy for lesser weapons. And make them spec into damage instead. This would be a major overhaul to the general weapon design philosophy.
We make Graviton Beam take 20 seconds to charge up. And it costs 300 flux to deal 250 kinetic damage per second. But give them like 800 range???
We give Pulse Lasers 1.0 efficiency, but they fire 200 damage projectiles every 0.66 seconds, instead of 100 every 0.33...
And...

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Nah, that won't work.
I don't know what to do.
Nerf everything.

[close]

tl;dr
I concede my argument. Sorry for wasting your time. Same goes for 2 Eagles being worth a Conquest.

[Mishrak]

Eagle is not overpowered.

Remember, it's severely hampered by (among other things) the placement of its mounts.

[BigBrainEnergy]

Ships I don't like? None! They're all unique and special in their own way

Terminator drone is getting replacement time buff to fix the tempest. Hammerhead needs a buff of some kind, but for now it's at least a good early to midgame ship. The shade is in a similar boat as the hammerhead. Some ships don't pull their weight unless piloted by the player (which isn't ideal) but they are good in that role.

The list of complaints I have is pretty short. Almost every ship has a legitimate use.

[Toxcity]

Fury 100%. There are definitely other ships that are weak or lacking in some way, but I can atleast find odd builds that justify their use. Fury feels gimped outside of SO and is incredibly overcosted for what it brings to the table. Even without those problems, it's largely unexciting as a large shrike.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

okay, you convinced me that Eagle is overpowered. I will now nerf Eagle in my rebalancing mod.
Why does this ship have almost as high flux dissipation as Aurora? What the heck?
Fury has 600. Eagle has 700? Excuse me?

11k flux? What in the name of god? When was this?

It has nearly no missiles, that's why its dissipation is so high.

11 flux capacity is a holdover from .95.1a RC6 when the ship was 50 speed, 600 dissipation, and 22 DP. Reducing it back down to 10,000 would be fine.

Most of the energy weapons are fine on High-Tech assuming they have a system that can get them into range and out of enemy range. The Fury and the Shrike do not. So, they need something that HT doesn't have. The Shrike will already happily run converted hanger with Sarissa. The Fury can't as it's too expensive, so it either need a DP reduction, or some of its stats nerfed and be given a fighter wing.

[Megas]

Most of the energy weapons are fine on High-Tech assuming they have a system that can get them into range and out of enemy range. The Fury and the Shrike do not. So, they need something that HT doesn't have. The Shrike will already happily run converted hanger with Sarissa. The Fury can't as it's too expensive, so it either need a DP reduction, or some of its stats nerfed and be given a fighter wing.

Thinking about it some more, Fury could just get the fighter bay or two.  Maybe change the missile hardpoint into a landing pad for the fighters and leave it at that.  That way, Fury with a real bay can be the replacement for original Heron, kind of like how Gryphon and Champion replaced original Aurora.  If having fighters that roam around is too much for Fury, make Defensive Targeting Array built-in.  Fury with fighters would not need omnidirectional mobility as badly.  If Fury gets two bays, it can be that mythical small high-tech carrier.  Either way, Fury becomes mini-Odyssey.

Meanwhile, Heron can be redesigned into a proper midline ship instead of a being a high-tech ship that was given the wrong paintjob.  Make Heron a bit slower but change some of those energy mounts, kind of like what happened to Vigilance recently.

[Killer of Fate]

Most of the energy weapons are fine on High-Tech assuming they have a system that can get them into range and out of enemy range. The Fury and the Shrike do not. So, they need something that HT doesn't have. The Shrike will already happily run converted hanger with Sarissa. The Fury can't as it's too expensive, so it either need a DP reduction, or some of its stats nerfed and be given a fighter wing.

Thinking about it some more, Fury could just get the fighter bay or two.  Maybe change the missile hardpoint into a landing pad for the fighters and leave it at that.  That way, Fury with a real bay can be the replacement for original Heron, kind of like how Gryphon and Champion replaced original Aurora.  If having fighters that roam around is too much for Fury, make Defensive Targeting Array built-in.  Fury with fighters would not need omnidirectional mobility as badly.  If Fury gets two bays, it can be that mythical small high-tech carrier.  Either way, Fury becomes mini-Odyssey.

Meanwhile, Heron can be redesigned into a proper midline ship instead of a being a high-tech ship that was given the wrong paintjob.  Make Heron a bit slower but change some of those energy mounts, kind of like what happened to Vigilance recently.

just give IR Pulse Laser and Ion Cannon 600 range, and increase PD Laser and LR PD Laser damage. This will make Fury way more reliable, cause it will be able to do something with those small slots deeper in its hull.

Then increase range of Microburn even further, but give it the ability to cancel prematurely.

You could also try increasing the range of AMB to 450, and removing ammo restriction (I don't know why we need that, considering (edit: nearly) ever High Tech ship is restricted by pathetic durability and PPT).

To compensate for this sudden increase in short-ranged energy weapons, I would increase ballistic melee weapons range a bit. Like Chaingun from 450 to 500. And HMG could be given a range reduction from 450 to 400. But be given a horrifying DPS increase... But that's a whole other topic. I'm just mentioning this part, cause I know this would become an issue.

Just on the topic of Chaingun. It's kinda unfair that this weapon has such short-range, considering it has really low hit-strength and poor accuracy. Also Low Tech ships are generally way too slow to use it...

[Megas]

Another ship that I sometimes like and sometimes do not: Invictus.  It seems okay in combat, balanced like a 60 DP, but the campaign stats are obnoxious, namely burn 6 and extremely high minimum crew.  Burn 6 means it gets Augmented Engines, and 4000 crew means it gets Efficiency Overhaul.  Since I have not taken it to Ordos, I can afford to use the hullmods when I want to beat up human fleets, but I know I will need to dump those campaign mods if I want it useful for Ordos.  Unless I have Ziggurat in the fleet as my flagship, I usually use Invictus as my flagship, and I want to use the system as often as possible and use it as a siege weapon.  Plus add converted hangar for support fighters.  While I have mentioned using Invictus as a colony ship, by the time I get Invictus, I already have my five colonies started, and do not need a massive colony ship to haul lots of crew when there are no more colonies.  (I have not attempted full colonization yet with alpha cores, which would have made Invictus useful for hauling crew to new colonies post-endgame.)


Now for more ships I dislike, all Derelicts aside from Rampart.

Picket and Sentry have far too low OP (only 15!) to afford the basic no-shield hullmods without wasting s-mods for them.  Picket is a tiny speed demon that can dodge a lot of stuff, and if it had more OP to afford more, it might be able to do something.  No matter, they just die.

Warden - It has more OP, but it needs it for armor and anti-EMP.  It seems like it can do something, but it just dies like the others.

Defender and Bastillon - No matter what I try, it just fails horribly.  What am I supposed to do with it? Fill it with a ton of Mining Lasers or LMGs?  Only 60 OP (for Bastillon).  Flares for a system, and not the unlimited active green kind, but the dumb limited orange ones used by civilians.

Berserker - Has only 60 OP.  Aside from being able to use Mauler/HVD, it is worse than Vanguard in every way.  Both cost 6 DP.

Guardian - Overpowered at 40 DP, and it is not playable.  It needs to be updated like Radiant (which used to be 40 DP too).  Make it playable too.  Probably should be worth somewhere between 60 to 75 DP (assuming unlimited missiles gets removed).  Get rid of Missile Autoforge builtin if that is the only reason it is not playable.

Derelicts need help to be useful for the player with Automated Ships.  I get that Derelicts are supposed to be inferior opponents, but that can be done by sending less DP worth of ships without any cores at the player instead of sending more DP full of ships not worth their DP.

[PixiCode]

Ships I don't like? None! They're all unique and special in their own way

Terminator drone is getting replacement time buff to fix the tempest. Hammerhead needs a buff of some kind, but for now it's at least a good early to midgame ship. The shade is in a similar boat as the hammerhead. Some ships don't pull their weight unless piloted by the player (which isn't ideal) but they are good in that role.

The list of complaints I have is pretty short. Almost every ship has a legitimate use.

I actually like the shade a lot and usually use 1-3 of them in my fleets! Not all the time, but I love giving them an officer for non-endurance battles. Mostly for things like modded battles where you can actually fight things a bit more challenging with fewer DP required. With target analysis elite and field modulation elite that shade can go pretty hard. I even like it a bit more than the afflictor for AI piloting uses. It’s more like the Afflictor P could use a nerf up to 8 DP or a system nerf, but even with afflictor p costing 6 DP the harsh inconsistency of ai decision making for afflictor’s system makes it not a straight decision for me when looking between shade and afflictor.

But hey, shade is one of my favorite frigates so I’ll take a buff ;p though I wonder how much of this is the anti-phase ai working for or against my favor.

I do think hammerhead could use a tiny buff though, to give it something unique over late game sunder and manticore. Maybe 10 more top speed? Overall I’m pretty happy with the hammerhead as a destroyer that is cheaper than sunder and manticore though.