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[megabot]

so I apologise for asking, but i do not understand what is going on. by the lore the colony got wiped out, yet there exists some faction using these ships?(i never used the mod yet, looking trough the mod index rn)

[Zudgemud]

so I apologise for asking, but i do not understand what is going on. by the lore the colony got wiped out, yet there exists some faction using these ships?(i never used the mod yet, looking trough the mod index rn)

The lore is that the main population center in the system was scuttled by Tri-Tachyon as a power move when the gates fell, the remaining P9 faction is from the survivors that were in the minor colonies or managed to evacuate in the limited timeframe. The lore is mostly just an excuse for why this minor high tech faction buddied up with Hegemony (which wields lots of kinetic weapons, which is extremely effective against P9) and hates Tri-Tachyon (who wields beams, which is mostly crap against P9).

[megabot]

ahhh i see, thank you for explaining

[pearagon]

Any plans to add commissioned crews support?

[Zudgemud]

Any plans to add commissioned crews support?

Yes, it is included in the coming update, which is basically just bugfixing, some balancing and that.

[KDR_11k]

The Samaa-DSI can, when paired with the elite shield skill, maintain its fortress shield indefinitely even under heavy fire as the hard flux dissipates faster than the system builds it up. Yes, it has that vulnerable gap in its shield at the engines (if you use the frontal conversion) but the AI can't exploit that, dunno if that's because it doesn't know or because in a regular fleet battle that area tends to be covered by other ships. I've parked the Samaa in the face of a boss Remnant from either HMI or Seeker ("false omega", not sure which mod did that), tying it up for minutes while my fleet dealt with the rest of its retinue and I only took damage from the boss's huge fighter swarms occasionally shooting that shield gap. Now, the Samaa-DSI is a wacky ship anyway with next to no weapons and that strange instant-overload beam (that doesn't seem to trigger consistently?) but still, infinite fortress shields seem  too abusable.

Also I think the P9 freighters are considered combat ships by the game and the AI will happily send them into battle. I believe they don't show up in the Civilian filter in the construction menu either. Plus the Silverfish is still classified as a Phase ship in that menu.

Gotta say the P9 aesthetic is far too unique to go with a "Tri-Tachyon splinter group" background, they look more like a completely different tech lineage than most of the rest of the sector and their unusual ship configurations also suggest a far more alien origin (or at least a high degree of separation from the rest of the sector).

[Zudgemud]

Thanks for the feedback!

The Samaa-DSI can, when paired with the elite shield skill, maintain its fortress shield indefinitely even under heavy fire as the hard flux dissipates faster than the system builds it up. Yes, it has that vulnerable gap in its shield at the engines (if you use the frontal conversion) but the AI can't exploit that, dunno if that's because it doesn't know or because in a regular fleet battle that area tends to be covered by other ships. I've parked the Samaa in the face of a boss Remnant from either HMI or Seeker ("false omega", not sure which mod did that), tying it up for minutes while my fleet dealt with the rest of its retinue and I only took damage from the boss's huge fighter swarms occasionally shooting that shield gap.

Yes, this is a problem that is even more pronounced in my current unreleased beta version as I added commissioned crews which add a further 5% hard flux dissipation and 5% shield resistance. I have thought about simply lowering the 15% passive hard flux vent for the faction ships too but the 15% bonus stacking with shield modulation is not really a problem as heavily investing in specific high tier skills is rewarding for the player even if they kinda break many ship setups. In my own trial run I have shield modulation, P9 commissioned crews, accelerated shields, stabilized shields and hardened shields on my Kaala flagship, and I admit it's kinda ridiculous at shield tanking.

Aside from the flux dissipation I also agree that one of the main problems is the shield coverage. Too large shield coverage on large ships with good shield tanking leads to invincible ships. So limiting shield coverage, in part by removing frontal conversion is one way to do it. Another one is to limit accelerated shields which is also really fantastic on good shield tankers with Omni shields.

I have also had plans on adding a weaker version of the fortress shields to the Samaa ships, one which also increase ammo regeneration. Maybe I should just try to actually implement that now...

the Samaa-DSI is a wacky ship anyway with next to no weapons and that strange instant-overload beam (that doesn't seem to trigger consistently?).

In my experience this is due to the target ship lowering shields right before the beam reaches full charge or the beam drifting over to hull while firing. Also, I think I have forgotten to increase the flux cost of actually firing the beam.

Also I think the P9 freighters are considered combat ships by the game and the AI will happily send them into battle. I believe they don't show up in the Civilian filter in the construction menu either. Plus the Silverfish is still classified as a Phase ship in that menu.

The freighter issue is fixed in my current unreleased version, I had forgotten to place the civilian hullmod on all civilian tagged ships, only tagged them as civilian in the ship file.

The silverfish is classed as a phase ship because the right click speed boost is based on the phase system. I have no idea how to modify that classification to something else without breaking the ship.

Gotta say the P9 aesthetic is far too unique to go with a "Tri-Tachyon splinter group" background, they look more like a completely different tech lineage than most of the rest of the sector and their unusual ship configurations also suggest a far more alien origin (or at least a high degree of separation from the rest of the sector).

I agree, the lore was not even a tertiary concern when I made the mod, and the faction lore and aesthetics does not really gel that well with the current game lore. I guess I could add things about most of the weird designs being made by AIs as a solution for making ships compatible with pink glowing reactors or something.

[KDR_11k]

In my experience this is due to the target ship lowering shields right before the beam reaches full charge or the beam drifting over to hull while firing. Also, I think I have forgotten to increase the flux cost of actually firing the beam.

I've noticed that the AI is pretty good at avoiding the damage pulse of the beam but I've had cases where there were no obstructions and no shield pulsing that still failed to cause the overload. The distortion effect on the shield hit (graphics lib?) is really big in that case but the target's flux level remains steady. Doesn't happen too often, I'd guess something like one out of four or five attacks.

Might also be useful to add some visual effect to the beam when it does its overload pulse? Since the AI seems pretty aware of that it would seem fair for a player to see it too.

I guess overall it's not TOO bad if the Samaa is good at shield tanking since it's otherwise really weak for its cost, even the instant overload beam isn't super useful in most battles with lots of smaller or lower tech opponents that you could just shield break with a main gun volley from any other battleship. An alternative might be to make its fortress shield always impenetrable but time limited and needing some time after that to regain its charges.

[Zudgemud]

I've noticed that the AI is pretty good at avoiding the damage pulse of the beam but I've had cases where there were no obstructions and no shield pulsing that still failed to cause the overload. The distortion effect on the shield hit (graphics lib?) is really big in that case but the target's flux level remains steady. Doesn't happen too often, I'd guess something like one out of four or five attacks.

Might also be useful to add some visual effect to the beam when it does its overload pulse? Since the AI seems pretty aware of that it would seem fair for a player to see it too.

I don't know why it wont overload the ships then, but I'll look into it.

Regarding the visual effects for reaching full charge, I have wanted to implement it for quite some time, but I have simply not been skilled enough to do so. However, I know some other mod had a similar thing implemented so I'll look around and see if I can copy something like that.

Also, regarding the lore and ship aesthetic I also started to rewrite some of it to make a bit more sense.

Spoiler

They are now a faction designed by and partly controlled by an AI collective of gamma cores left behind on Tolp IV after Tri Tachyon blew up Tolp II. The faction basically stays on Hegemony's good side by doing all AI requiring activities for them, that and the low grade AI cores not really having an understanding of ambition. The AIs likes the ample energy available within the P9 faction but cares less about the long term well being of humans, which is why the ships are all radiation hazards.

[close]

[default]

Not sure if anybody has pointed it out yet, but I have been having issues with one weapon on a specific ship. The DSI Tachyon Ray on the Samaa-DSI. Neat ship, but I can't seem to figure out how the ray "works". I noticed that the AI will collapse and immediately re-opens right before it "goes off" based on sound cue. Annoying, but oh well(other times it would decide to overload the ship even after the sound went off). Nothing to do with the weapon. What I don't get is sometimes it just doesn't do anything to shields(aside from maybe 100 soft flux). Other times I can swing it around and disable 2-3 enemy shields in one go after the sound cue goes off. Now... I really tried to figure it out. I tested if it was because missiles are in the way, or if it had to be 100% of the beam on the shield for it to work, but neither of these led to consistent results. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is irritating when you are banking on that particular ship being disabled for a bit, but then it fails on you. Ships die, less support. You die. Not very fun.

On a different note, but on the topic of the same weapon, there seems to be some odd interaction with high tech stations. I haven't tested it much(since I hate fighting high tech stations specifically), but whenever I would disable the shield segment, it would overload as normal, then overload again shortly after putting the shield back up. One segment did this continuously throughout the fight. I didn't have to shoot it each time, it just kind of happened on its own seemingly. Kind of confusing, honestly. It also didn't always do this.

[Zudgemud]

Not sure if anybody has pointed it out yet, but I have been having issues with one weapon on a specific ship. The DSI Tachyon Ray on the Samaa-DSI. Neat ship, but I can't seem to figure out how the ray "works". I noticed that the AI will collapse and immediately re-opens right before it "goes off" based on sound cue. Annoying, but oh well(other times it would decide to overload the ship even after the sound went off). Nothing to do with the weapon. What I don't get is sometimes it just doesn't do anything to shields(aside from maybe 100 soft flux). Other times I can swing it around and disable 2-3 enemy shields in one go after the sound cue goes off. Now... I really tried to figure it out. I tested if it was because missiles are in the way, or if it had to be 100% of the beam on the shield for it to work, but neither of these led to consistent results. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is irritating when you are banking on that particular ship being disabled for a bit, but then it fails on you. Ships die, less support. You die. Not very fun.

On a different note, but on the topic of the same weapon, there seems to be some odd interaction with high tech stations. I haven't tested it much(since I hate fighting high tech stations specifically), but whenever I would disable the shield segment, it would overload as normal, then overload again shortly after putting the shield back up. One segment did this continuously throughout the fight. I didn't have to shoot it each time, it just kind of happened on its own seemingly. Kind of confusing, honestly. It also didn't always do this.

First of all, I don't know what is causing the issue. The lasers script should simply multiply the damage done by 10000 or so when the beam reaches full power. I think the beam also runs at full power for a second or less. It is really a very simple script which is why I managed to make it work. The sound cue and current gun animation/visual cue are completely unlinked to the weapon script. I just made a sound and gun animation that is somewhat synched with the fire rate of the laser. This means that if a skill or something increases the fire rate enough the laser will become unsynchronized with the sound and animation.

A thing that likely is one of the causes for the bad AI use is that the charge up time messes with the default AI. As to what is causing the inconsistent shield braking one guess could be that the beamtime at full power is too short and this messes with hit registration or something, or that the script only works if you click to fire but not if you simply fire continuously.

[Mr_8000]

I had something weird happen recently

Spoiler

[close]

I went to their system to see if it was a bounty-only issue, but it isn't. Turns out Tolp IV was taken by another faction and so P9 lost access to heavy industry. Within their faction file they have "hightech_bp" as a fallback when importing, but they don't actually know those blueprints. While I was fixing it on my end I noticed something else however, "pn_ship_bp" (the one seen in the faction file) isn't a tag used by their ship blueprints ("pn_bp" and "pn_adv_bp" are), so anything not explicitly listed in the "hulls" portion won't be known by the faction.
Afterwards I also checked a few other files and it looks like the raala rayblaster isn't part of their weapon blueprint package, though this might be intentional.

While I'm at it, a couple of the issues I reported earlier persist. Namely, phase ships with a custom phase system still lack the "PHASE" hint meaning they aren't sorted properly in the blueprint tab nor do they interact properly with certain phase skills. P9 also still uses the same image for both their crest and logo, making their intel in the feed on the bottom left appear wide and out of place.

Finally, I can also vouch for the unreliability of the DSI Tachyon Ray that was brought up. At first I thought it was just shield flickering that was causing it, but sometimes it just doesn't feel like working.

Edit: Almost forgot, as of 0.95a phase cloak can no longer overload your ship, it just turns off. You may want to make that change to your custom phase system variations.

[Zudgemud]

Thanks a lot for the very nice investigation and bug listing, I'll look into it all. The Raala rayblaster is a weapon for their heavy fighter and is thus not supposed to be aquired by the player (real reason why it is inaccessible for the player is that I made the animation too long for the AI to handle and very prone to be unsynched with the actual firing time). Pretty fun how the blueprint issue interacted with the bounty though.

[Unknown-J]

Hey there! I love the looks of the ships in this mod and I think it's a nice little faction that I enjoy spawning as, though there is one thing that I changed that bothered me and that might bother others too. The faction in the intel tab has no description so when you're clicking through the factions it felt kind of awkward to see a faction with, "No description yet..." among all the others I had that did have descriptions, so I added the lore you wrote as their description just so there's something there whenever I go into the intel tab.

[exuvo]

Fails to load on linux due to case sensitive file system: Error loading [graphics/pn/weapons/pndsilaser/v1/pn_dsi_turretbase59.png] resource. The actual file is named pn_dsi_turretbase59.PNG with uppercase file ending. I just renamed it with lowercase png and it loads but you might want to fix it for the next release.