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[FooF]

Personally, if SO was only a Pather thing, I'd be ok with it. It makes those ships unique and somewhat powerful in their own way while still maintaining their ramshackle charm.

However, I'm going to second the inevitable adjustment to make SO (or whatever a new version is called) some sort of "Press V" active ability. If active venting was disabled, and flux dissipation wasn't increased to match, I'm trying to decide what the commensurate buff would be. It would be more like an "Overcharge" ability, I suppose. Maybe a single press overcharges weapons (+25% damage for 5 seconds) and a double-press overcharges the shield (+25% efficiency for 5 seconds). 15 second cooldown. Opening salvos would be very strong and kiting ships can dash in and out with it but the moment they get to high flux they are in a lot of danger. Might actually pair with Shield Shunt fairly well... Could be put on Capitals?

[Selfcontrol]

SO disproportionately favors certain ships (always high-tech ships, by the way), completely trivializes the early game where PPT isn't important, disproportionately favors 3 weapons to the detriment of all others (ACG, Heavy Blaster and HMG) and it is also the only hullmod which is not available to capital ships on purpose because of how ridiculous it would be (the other one being DTC but it's because cruiser and capitals really need to have access to a range increase hullmod to work and ITU is available to all ships anyway).

I really dislike the current SO. I find it to be incredibly boring (making an SO build is imo, uninteresting), but I don't want it to be nerfed.

Because, in truth, SO is not overpowered. It's even kinda "meh" in late game (again, except for a few high tech ships and a single midline ship => the LP Brawler).

I don't think I've ever seen on this forum people saying that SO should be nerfed and that's it. I want it to be reworked because I very much like the idea of having access to a hullmod that turns a ship into a berserker. I just find that the current implementation of this hullmod leaves a lot to be desired.

[PixiCode]

1) SO is overpowered (without showing any evidence)

Literally fire up sim and test Aurora or Fury. Instant evidence.

People need to define what overpowered is. If someone only ever plays vanilla, SO wouldn’t seem overpowered since the only things that are difficult can either be very soundly defeated by raw numbers and min-max optimizations regardless of SO (Zig is all alone, Tesseracts can be massively outnumbered, bounties are just 1 fleet and to my knowledge aren’t similarly optimized) or an endurance test, which SO by design (intentional or unintentional) isnt suited to.

Until/if that ever changes, I feel like SO won’t be seen as overpowered by some people. Mods dont count. Case in point, while I was writing this the previous poster called SO ‘meh in lategame’.  And they aren’t exactly wrong if SO doesn’t have any challenge that it can actually shine against that makes it shine more than other strategies.

[Selfcontrol]

In my opinion, SO is only overpowered on certain high-tech ships for the simple reason that they are, by nature, the least affected by SO's weaknesses.

SO pushes a ship to fight at arms' length and high tech ships are already designed around that (high base speed, deep flux pool, tank shots through shields and not hull/armor, better shield coverage meaning PD is less important, energy weapons have less range, etc). SO doesn't change the intended role of a high tech ship. It only allows it to be even better at what it is already designed to do.

If I put SO on a Dominator, I turn a defensive long range cruiser into an aggressive short range cruiser with very distinct weaknesses. If I put SO on an Aurora, I just get a better Aurora.

[Farya]

I remember in Mayasuran Navy mod there is a capital ship with Safety Override on toggle by ship system. It was pretty interesting. Maybe something like that could be done with vanilla? By default your ship acts like normal (including normal PPT and weapon ranges) but with obviously poor stats compared to non-overdriven ship (because you don't have as much normal vents and caps, but maybe SO would count as several vents when disabled) V press would disengage the safeties and give your ship a burst of power - massive dissipation bonus, increased speed etc. However keeping overdriven for too long will run risk of malfunctions and eventually your ship overloading in explosive way. So you will have to plan carefuly when to attack and when to back off.

[Princess of Evil]

It would need to have some buffs, which might not quite make sense from a lore standpoint (SO is basically unstable injector + constant venting + being able to fire while venting).

Also a toggleable SO actually makes it a lot better on many ships that don't really care about the upsides all the time and want to conserve PPT.

[Spyro]

It would need to have some buffs, which might not quite make sense from a lore standpoint (SO is basically unstable injector + constant venting + being able to fire while venting).

+ permanent zero flux speed boost (50 speed)

Very well written post by Selfcontrol. If you take something which is supposed to have many negatives, and use it on a thing where does negatives basically don't exist, you're getting all the good without the bad. And using SO on your flagship in early game is a no brainer if you're piloting one of the ships that want it.

[Megas]

+ permanent zero flux speed boost (50 speed)

This is what keeps AI Fury alive when it just mindlessly backpedals after flux gets high and does not drop shields until it is well beyond enemy's attack range.

Very well written post by Selfcontrol. If you take something which is supposed to have many negatives, and use it on a thing where does negatives basically don't exist, you're getting all the good without the bad.

Or sometimes, the negatives (poor range and low PPT) are already there without SO, and adding SO will not cripple the ship further, but it gives buffs a ship may need badly (like more speed for Fury).

[PixiCode]

I'm vaguely curious as to why people call safety overrides boring.  As a player, a lot more thought has to go into positioning and retreat timing on a safety override Medusa than, say, piloting a slow long range ship that is part of a battle line.  I would only imagine its boring if you're fighting sufficiently weaker opposition.  I can't think of any fights I typically do where I can AFK because I'm using a safety overrided player ship, for example.  You can AFK missile fleets and slow long range fleets when they sufficiently overpower the opposition as well.

To preface, I don’t think SO is boring, I think it can be boring depending on how you play it. I think there’s two things that make SO boring for some players. Again, I’m not saying I think SO is boring but I’ve been there done that, SO has aspects that can be boring just like any kind of fleet can be.

First is how almost every SO ship pilots the same way. The playstyle of SO Aurora’s going to feel similar to SO Eradicator, SO Champion, SO Enforcer, LP Brawler… the range limitation also makes SO builds a bit more constrained between SO ships. There’s less weapons to consider most of the time.

Second is how completely SO fleets with good builds can win almost any normal battle (say 600-700 DP of enemy or less? Idk) by clicking full assault and then going to make some tea. Like you say, missile spam is like that too, but that’s a similarly extreme example. players can use some SO in non-SO fleets just like how they can use some missiles in non-spam fleets.

A third though smaller point, SO tends to be tied with missile spam on the ‘this is overpowered’ scale when you spam it in modded challenge content, except SO can’t be countered by spamming point defense elite strategies. The difference in difficulty between using a SO fleet and non-SO fleet to beat some modded challenge can be massive. Doesn’t mean that has any bearing on vanilla, but it might be why some people think SO is boring. It’s connected to my second point, It’s very easy to command compared to most other fleet designs, possibly on the same par as missile/fighter spam.

[SCC]

Re: Fury:
It feels a lot like the bigger issue is that the ship either is not good enough for the AI it has, or the AI is not smart enough for the ship. I would like Alex to address it soon.

As far as I know, Alex is planning a rework but until it's ready he's just going to leave SO as is. The rework will probably involve changing SO to an ability that activates when you press V.

It would be interesting if it replaced venting. Regular ships can vent to dump flux quickly, but are vulnerable. SO ships would dump flux quickly while SOing without losing any capability, letting them use it more aggressively, but they would lose their PPT/CR quicker, and obviously wouldn't have access to venting anymore even if they would prefer it.

[eert5rty7u8i9i7u6yrewqdef]

My issue with SO is that it is so good and available, every faction should use it. All its drawbacks are purely tactical, there is no storytelling/ethical reason for a faction not to use it. So, they all just appear incompetent for not including it on their doctrine.

So, SO would either need a storytelling limit (e.g. it kills crew) or an availability limit (e.g. it needs a skill).

The PPT decrease is an issue with endurance-based fleets which is all of the Heg and Pers, and the majority of the other factions fleet layouts.
The others can use some ships with SO, but their entire fleet won't work with SO. Using SO on frigates and destroyers means they can't support Capitals for as long, and by extension means the capitals will have to fight without escorts for longer.
Simply put SO is all or nothing, and is largely incompatible with fleets featuring capital ships.

Lore wise the reason is obvious, it eats PPT, by extension it eats CR, which again by extension it eats supplies. For us the player that isn't an issue. However, for an entire faction that suddenly means they have a severe logistics issue with their fleets eating supplies at an atypical and unpredictable rate. Losing 15% CR in combat on a ship that loses 15% on deployment doubles the total number of supplies needed to recover.

It also reduced the number of redeployments available. Meaning certain massive but bad fleets (pirates) could CR stall superior faction fleets that otherwise would have won.



With all that being said, factions not having dedicated specialty SO fleets is either a lore issue, or a factional incompetency issue. They would be rare, but they would exist.

[PixiCode]

Safety overrides don’t use up more supplies than non-SO builds unless you run out of ppt, which is something avoidable provided hardened subsystems is used and the battle is won quickly enough. SO cruisers can be used with longer battles as well. If ppt never ran out it also doesn’t affect redeployments.

[Bungee_man]

Just occurred to me, what if SO just decreased shield efficiency in addition to PPT and OP? SO missile builds aren't seen as OP, usually, and the Path would be balanced the same, but the juggernaut high tech builds that get by by being incredibly hard to kill would be a bit more limited, and encouraged to diversify their loadouts a bit with the additional flux pressure of enemy weapon fire.

[Killer of Fate]

guys... I have a question...

When thinking about SO, are you thinking about SO with s-mods or SO without s-mods?
Cause SO without s-mods is relatively balanced. Just thinking out loud.
Whereas with s-mods, ships that are good with SO can be good too...

ON THE OTHER HAND, I do not like Pathers having ships that have free SO, but are generally crappy in NPC hands cause of Ill-Advised Modifications.

How about instead of nerfing SO we start by making Ill-Advised Modifications not a d-mod, but keep the chance low? That is something I have said like... A few times before...

But focusing back on stuff.

Sure, you can give Fury s-mod along SO. But what if you choose to instead s-mod stuff like Hardened Shields, Unstable Injector, and then keep the additional 45 OP? Now with the incoming PD Laser buffs, that ship ain't half bad. Note that at that point Fury has like 125 speed if it has Helsmanship on top. It generally is then fast enough to retreat. (note 40% range increase is nothing to sneeze at, especially when thinking about SO shortening range to 450 or whatever that number was)

Again, I think you guys are missing the point. It's not the SO that is overpowered. SO is perfectly balanced. Same as Phase Anchor. It's just that we are playing the game from the perspective of infinite s-mod min-maxing fiesta. Which is kinda skewing our perspective.

Generally an Aurora with just SO is probably good or whatever... Just a standard Aurora with a competent build. Now we add 3 s-mods into the mix and a min-max build. Well, generally the thing that is keeping the normal Aurora from being better than SO Aurora is the PD...

THIS REMINDS ME...
I saw a post from the dev stating that PD Laser was planned to be buffed... Now, this is unconfirmed. But the initial statement I saw said that the idea was to give it 3 OP and 500 range. NOTE... Making PD Laser cheaper OP-wise instead of keeping it as OP costly as it is now, but making it more impactful will generally strengthen SO builds. And vice versa

ANOTHER BUFF that could weaken SO for energy-based ships like Aurora or Fury is a buff to Ion Pulser, Ion Cannon, IR Pulse Laser range. Ion Pulser is balanced atm, but we could increase its range for consistency's sake considering the fact that its high spread will cause it to miss a lot of its shots anyway. If we increase these weapon's range to 600... Then they will become more viable in long-ranged ITU High Tech playstyle. Well, mid-ranged. Which will again buff non-SO Fury and Aurora variants.

[Üstad]

I'd make it Safety overrides have different effects for every ship types, Low/Mid/High tech.

Default SO could work on Low Tech, High Tech should be mild speed and damage increase with being more suspectible to EMP and weaker weapon mounts, so it would fit the theme of tanky shields but fragile systems.

No idea about the Midline, since they are mostly specialists.