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[JohnDoe]

Heh, looks like Negative Nancy got down with Debby Downer and had a child.
 Thou this game doesn't have the fastest development in the world it's still a 2D sprite based game that I doubt would take 5 more years to complete.

Wow, where's my apology?

[MShadowy]

... what the hell? I... friend, this is from fourfive years ago. Why are you bringing up something no one remembers in my thread?

[Thaago]

An odd example of a necro in a still active thread. This is technically not against the letter of the rules, but is against the spirit of no necroing/derailing, so lets avoid doing things like this in the future please.

I'll see about adding "In active threads, do not quote very old posts unless the post is very relevant to the current discussion.", or something similar, to the forum rules.

[FAX]

I get a brand new Delphi and ready to pilot it by myself, but I found the system - GAT seems not show it's all functions in the bottom left as it's description, is it normal 

[attachment deleted by admin]

[greycommotion]

Hi all; fan of the game and my first post here on the forum.

What exactly is the weakness of the SRA?

[FYI I'm not having a go - it's a great mod; plenty of time and commitment has gone into it I'm just genuinely interested in getting an answer on this - everything below is just my opinion, not gospel ]

In the very first posts concerning this mod (years back now), people seemed to think that the SRA were weak-ish or situational.

Fast-forward to 2019, and they seem extremely over-powered (again, my opinion).

They are a high tech faction with high speeds, high active venting speeds (with a special in-built hull mod that makes it even faster), high flux capacity, 0.6 to 0.8 shields, nasty energy weapons, often with omni shields or large front shields, usually high ordnance points, low deployment costs and often superior logistical stats compared to other high-tech classes.

They often seem to have more weapon slots compared to other faction ships (with the generators to both feed and cool them).

The SCY sacrifices flux dissipation speeds for strong generators and fast venting. The SRA has fast flux dissipation speeds, strong generators and fast venting.

The ships don't cost substantially more to build either? (I admit to only possessing partial blueprint fragments, however, not the complete set of ships to compare against.)

They're like "ultra-high tech". A boss faction.

Is that the point?

There is some mention of them having low-ish hull and armour strength...but it's usually only a fifty to hundred less (on the frigates anyway). I was expecting maybe, half the hull strength of the same class, high tech ships (maybe even a third) - making it a real sacrifice to pick them (one overload and you're doomed kinda thing); but that does not seem to be the case? They can take hits - assuming you can bring said shields down.

Flanking them is difficult; they are just too fast.

Overpowering their shields is tricky; they have the power banks to take hit after hit, before shooting away to vent.

Group tactics work fine against them (as with most ships - modded or not) - but what happens when you take on an SRA fleet with equal numbers?

They are like a stronger version of Blackrock (one of the "fast, but fragile" modded factions), being on average faster but with better shields. However, unlike Blackrock they start with more systems.

Case in point, I took a Flourish-class frigate (a good, high-tech frigate from one of the Content Expansion Mods; fast, flux capable, double shields, used by Tri-Tachyon) and faced it against a Enlil-class frigate.

The Enlil danced around it. Attacking, moving away, venting and then attacking again, with the poor Flourish getting every more battered each round. Maybe I'm bad at the game, who knows.

These guys took on the Askonia system (a veritable fortress system with fleets everywhere) and claimed it all over the course of a few years.
Millions of poor lobsters made homeless ;(

What am I missing on the weakness side? Are my tactics wrong? Or is this a case of power creep?

Thanks again


 

[MShadowy]

hmmm, I'm not entirely certainly how to respond? I haven't noticed anything that indicates the mod is particularly overpowered, and this is the only thing in recent memory reporting such.

Unless there's been some significant shifting of campaign costs for vanilla ships while I wasn't looking SRA ships are broadly in line with Vanilla ships in terms of Deployment and Maintenance costs and have been for quite a few versions now, with most of the remaining outliers dealt with in the latest release of the mod.

In terms of tactical combat, I'm not sure what to say. Again you're reporting stuff that isn't really consistent with my own experiences with the game, or with what's been reported to me previously. I'm not averse to applying nerfs where warranted, hell I applied a fair number of them for the recent release, but this isn't really specific enough to offer me much to go on.

Finally, it's not like it's totally without value to compare ships from other mods, but generally most modders aren't going to balance around what other modders are making, since that tends to create a weird sort of incremental modding arms race.

That being said, though I'm unfamiliar with the Flourish I've checked out its stat block and it's overall pretty similar with an Enlil, with a very similar ship system. The biggest difference here is weapons layout and the secondary shield generator this thing has, which... frankly seems like it should be a massive advantage in the Flourishes favor; seems like it oughta be able to maul an Enlil at relatively low risk. If it was unable to close effectively I guess the Enlil could loiter outside of the Flourishes range thanks to it having a medium weapon slot, though.

Also Nex is basically far out there as far as campaign shenanigans go and kinda doesn't really mean much in terms of balance. And again also the not really balancing around mods thing.

[Vayra]

Re: weaknesses, IME Shadowyards tends to struggle against Low Tech and Midline, as it doesn't really have the range of traditional high-tech/energy weapons (beams!)/ballistics, and can't out-brawl Low Tech or the brawlier Midline ships (Hammerheads) due to their armor and kinetics advantage. Vanilla High Tech is one of its better matchups, since it's usually able to catch them and out-brawl them in close combat, as a brawling-focused high tech faction.

Which is to say, their weaknesses are a lack of range, lack of armor, and lack of kinetic damage.

[Starareo]

I agree, in my simulation testing with SRA capitals, they struggled against onslaughts and such, as they can get right in your face and tank everything you have while melting your armor. Ofc, take this with a grain of salt, I might have not had the most optimal builds.

[greycommotion]

Thanks for the replies!

Following everyone's advice, I've re-tuned my ship builds to focus more heavily on Kinetic damage (on the whole my ships have tended to be generalists - a little bit of every damage type for the sake of flexibility - leaning towards anti-armour, with a bit of ion thrown in); and have seen much better results against SRA ships as a result.

It's not an easy fight, but I think I've been so used to fighting Low Tech ships (Pirates and Pathers mostly; sometimes riddled with D-Mods) rather than tougher, quality, High Tech ships (Tri-Tachyon, Sylphon, and whatever scary stuff the Research Mandate have in their distant corner of the Sector), that shifting gears to primarily use anti-shield damage seemed odd Up until now, it's been High Tech (me) vs Low Tech almost all the way; rather than High Vs High - necessitating anti-amour.

My mistake!

(With a fresh set of eyes, the SRA ship stats do seem more in line with other ships in the High Tech category - sorry!)

P.S - Can I update the various faction mods (including SRA) + Nexerelin; or does that corrupt / crash the game? Currently using Iron mode.

[MShadowy]

Yeah, Pirates and other factions who field ships with quality issues can create a somewhat distorted impression of the games overall balance, since heavily D-Modded ships tend to blow over comparatively easily. A faction like the Hegemony or the League, who can output much more reliable craft tend to be considerably more dangerous.

[Starareo]

I've been getting crashes to desktop when in my colonized systems with this error:

4303457 [Thread-5] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 1
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 1
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.fleet.FleetMemberStatus.getStatus(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.A.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.A.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.A.B.new(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.D.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.OoO0.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Oo0o$Oo.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oO00.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Oo0o.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oO00.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oO00.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.ui.S.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oO00.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.oO00.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.impl.StandardTooltipV2.renderImpl(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.interface.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.C.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.renderInScreenCoords(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.render(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

I asked in the general tech support part of the forum, and it appears to maybe be an issue with things w/modules and when I mouse over them. As far as I can tell, none of my faction patrols have ships with modules in them but I do build Shadowyards stations on every colony I have. Honestly I don't know if that even is the real problem, but I might as well put the possibility out there. I'll probably rebuild all my stations as high-tech and see if the issue persists.

[MShadowy]

Hmmm... I have absolutely no idea what could be causing this. Modules for the SRA station are set up in the same way vanilla station modules are relative to the core segment. I'll look into it, but this isn't a lot to go on.

Probably shouldn't expect much.

[Starareo]

Fair enough, I figured that the Shadowyards station is pretty much the only constant in my colonies, might have to check my fleet doctrine again or something.

[Garafetdin]

Great mod overall, but music is exceptional. It's fire! It's kind of uncomfortable to play with since every time combat with SRA starts, I have to wait for like 2 minutes before the track starts looping.

[Spess Mahren]

I have been playing with Boggled's stations construction mod and found that I couldn't build the Shadowyards orbital station at the player built mining station's it adds so I asked the author if it was something in regards to his mod that was the cause and he got back to me and said that the Shadowyards mod forbids its special orbital station at any station market, either vanilla or the player built ones from his mod. I have looked at the code since it seems like a simple oversight to fix and I can't find what to look for.