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Gobblecoque posted:Yeah but on the other hand:  any idea what this guys loadout is and where I could score a Gryphon?
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Nov 23, 2015 17:48
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Bold Robot posted:
Looks like Reapers in the front and Harpoons on the side, other than that I can't say for certain. You can buy Gryphons from the Hegemony and while I haven't done crazy stuff like in that .gif, I can attest that they are very fun indeed.
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Nov 23, 2015 17:54
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Is there any way to edit rep in the save file? The grind is pretty rough this patch and the new "one friend only" system is pretty annoying. I just want to score some sweet ships and get in cool fights.
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Nov 23, 2015 17:57
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Gobblecoque posted:Yeah but on the other hand: That's the new Gryphon. The problem is that even though it can do that trick, that ability costs something 1/3 or CR each time and after that initial volley, it starts to malfunction and cripple itself. Likewise, if it survives, it costs about 200 supplies to get it back up to full CR. It's a one-trick pony and Alex is looking at it. In the hands of the AI, it performs...poorly.
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Nov 23, 2015 18:19
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So is there any easy way to find bounties or am I just terrible at it? I always see the little notices but that doesn't seem to give any direction on where to go.
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Nov 23, 2015 18:22
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Bold Robot posted:Is there any way to edit rep in the save file? The grind is pretty rough this patch and the new "one friend only" system is pretty annoying. I just want to score some sweet ships and get in cool fights. Download the console commands mod if you haven't already. setrelationship player tritachyon (or sindrian_diktat, hegemony...) 100. Change it back after shopping to avoid unexpected investigations.
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Nov 23, 2015 18:39
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Which missle racks have regenerating ammo besides the Salamander?
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Nov 23, 2015 18:39
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FooF posted:That's the new Gryphon. The problem is that even though it can do that trick, that ability costs something 1/3 or CR each time and after that initial volley, it starts to malfunction and cripple itself. Likewise, if it survives, it costs about 200 supplies to get it back up to full CR. It's a one-trick pony and Alex is looking at it. In the hands of the AI, it performs...poorly. It's ability is a big issue, but calling the Gryphon a one-trick pony is incorrect. I've been using it as my flagship in large fleet battles and it's incredibly effective even without using its ability. I fit it with the Squall MLRS, harpoons, a hypervelocity driver and railgun up front, and vulcans in the other slots. Precede any harpoon volleys with the Squall and your ammo will go a long, long way without sacrificing your actual destructive capability. Destroyers get popped like pimples, cruisers go down in seconds, and capital ships don't last much longer. If the enemy has a multiple capital ships then you might use the reload ability once or twice (and in that case you're easily making your supplies back)
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Nov 23, 2015 18:42
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SovietPotatoe posted:I've been testing out a Dominator and it really doesn't do any of these things. It has about the same sustained firepower as a Sunder while offering more range. However, the lack of accuracy means against frigates and destroyers it still needs to close in at which point the abysmal speed means it will have a lot of trouble closing range or disengaging. And with the low maneuverability chances are once you get in close you'll just be outmaneuvered and swarmed. What's more is that it has more sustained firepower as opposed to burst, which is bad because it means enemy ships are able to disengage and vent and dance about at max range without you being able to do anything about it. It doesn't help that bounty fleets seem to scale with your level and/or fleet size, as all the fleets I've seen seem to suddenly have half a dozen destroyers and twice that number in frigates and fighters. Add in the massive drain on supplies and I'd go with two more Sunders over a cruiser. I'll admit I don't have that much personal experience with the Dominator, but I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The point I was making was that cruisers act as a shield for your smaller ships when they get flux-stressed - their firepower isn't so much about personally killing things as it is about forcing the enemy back when they try to chase battered ships. If you have a cruiser holding your line, your frigates and destroyers are a lot less vulnerable to getting hunted down and destroyed when they get in over their heads because the cruiser can lash out at anyone getting close. Hypothetically destroyers can perform a similar role, but they lack the sheer ability to tank damage that cruisers have and so can't perform it as well. Again - if you're trying to be a hero ship that does everything by itself, then no, cruisers aren't as useful as well-handled destroyers. You need to place them in the context of what the rest of the fleet is doing before they start to really demonstrate their value. Also, as someone else said bounty fleets are largely (D) class ships. Your lighter ships can usually rely on a qualitative edge against the enemy to win the day through, but military-grade ships can match you flux for flux and if they outnumber and/or outmass you, disengaging without a strong blocking force means ceding map control and getting chased down by their own bastards as you try to recover flux. Not to say that cruisers are absolutely required for the blocking role, but it is what they're made for. Edit: Come to think of it, if you have issues with sustained fire instead of burst fire, isn't that an issue with your choice of weapon loadouts than the hull itself? Is the Dominator built in such a way that burst loadouts just don't work on it or something? BitterAvatar posted:So is there any easy way to find bounties or am I just terrible at it? I always see the little notices but that doesn't seem to give any direction on where to go. If you click on the named bounties in the Intel tab, they'll say exactly which system and what planet the bounty is at. For that matter, when bounty notices pop up on the map they do mention the star system to go to in parentheses. Tomn fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 19:02
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Dodoman posted:Which missle racks have regenerating ammo besides the Salamander? Javelis LRM and I believe there is a large mount one but I can't remember what it is. I would really like a 1 shot version of the javelis for a small mount honestly.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:02
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Dodoman posted:Which missle racks have regenerating ammo besides the Salamander? Pilums, I think.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:04
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Dodoman posted:Which missle racks have regenerating ammo besides the Salamander? Pilums. The medium mount has enough ammo and regen to fire for about 4 minutes straight before ammo becomes an issue.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:06
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Thanks guys 
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Nov 23, 2015 19:08
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The thing about factions is that they're all either in a state of open warfare with each-other, or they're in a hostile truce with lots of transponder-off privateering because they can't afford a war. They do not like each other. It makes sense that a faction won't trust you with its huge, colossally expensive top-shelf military equipment until you've proven you're on their side. And it also makes sense that once the Hegemony trusts you to drive its main battle tanks around, everybody else will assume you've got the Hegemony's interests, and not theirs, in mind. Hegemony/Diktat/Ludd are a bit like Russia/North Korea/ISIS, in how much they don't want to sell battlecruisers to each other, or to a guy who just sold seventy tons of antimatter and a few hundred harvested organs to their enemies. I like how Ludd is now dangerous, and still has lovely cheap spaceships. If you get caught by a ludd fleet, you can open comms and 'tithe' them to leave you alone. If a Hegemony patrol catches you with your transponder off, they'll want to scan you. If they don't find anything, they'll tell you they'd better not find you without your transponder off again. If the same patrol commander catches you pulling the same poo poo any time soon, they'll try to kill you and say you had your warning. McGiggins posted:It's just such a good cruiser. What you're describing is exactly overpowered.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:12
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Tomn posted:If you click on the named bounties in the Intel tab, they'll say exactly which system and what planet the bounty is at. For that matter, when bounty notices pop up on the map they do mention the star system to go to in parentheses. Okay great. I knew it listed the system, which isn't super helpful, but knowing the actual planet narrows it down a lot.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:37
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StringOfLetters posted:What you're describing is exactly overpowered. Well I can definitely look at it more, and I can't claim that everything is perfectly balanced. At this point the Charybdis' biggest weakness in direct combat is that it's shield can't be closed, meaning it's always somewhat vulnerable even with extended shields, and is made of paper. More specifically the class has the hitpoints of, and about average armor for, a front line combat destroyer (5000 hp, and 500 armor) while being a much, much bigger target; because of how armor cells work, it's armor is effectively very thin, probably weaker than most frigates, though I'd need to specifically calculate it out to know for sure. It's shields aren't particularly good either, mostly coasting by on virtue of the ship having a decent flux pool. That being said, if there's an area to hit, that would probably be a good one, and I may experiment at the very least with giving the Charybdis a shield which, like the Conquest, takes additional damage from incoming fire. E: misrememberd, it's shield can be closed. Derp derp derp MShadowy fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 19:38
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BitterAvatar posted:Okay great. I knew it listed the system, which isn't super helpful, but knowing the actual planet narrows it down a lot. You don't even need to worry about searching. Bounty fleets tend to be bigger than player fleets by a fair margin, so as long as you keep your transponder on and drive towards the target planet the bounty will usually rush out to meet you halfway. Very decent of them.
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Nov 23, 2015 19:51
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Hound (A) with safety overrides and augmented engines is such a ridiculous pursuit craft. 348 speed 
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Nov 23, 2015 20:12
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So with the latest patch, where is the best place to find pirate fodder in the early game to fight? I have two okay combat ships which can hold their own, but frequently pirates are in gigantic groups. Also im way too puny to fight a faction head on. The past hour I've been searching for groups of 2-4 pirates but they're incredibly rare?
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Nov 23, 2015 20:32
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Avocados posted:So with the latest patch, where is the best place to find pirate fodder in the early game to fight? I have two okay combat ships which can hold their own, but frequently pirates are in gigantic groups. Also im way too puny to fight a faction head on. The past hour I've been searching for groups of 2-4 pirates but they're incredibly rare? you either want to get in on the organ trade through smuggling contracts (askonia and arcadia) or you wanna join in on bigger fights between pirates and the faction of your choice. eventually you'll have enough money for a decent fleet
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Nov 23, 2015 20:36
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For what it's worth, all the actually big fleet fights I see tend to be in hyperspace close to (but often not quite visible from) the jump points to systems. So that's a good place to look for big fights to join instead of hanging around in-system and hoping. Bonus: in many systems one of the jump points will be nearish a station, so it's much quicker to limp back to a station with over-full cargo holds if needed (or if you start running out of supplies!) by jumping through a jump point than schlepping across a system.
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Nov 23, 2015 20:58
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Avocados posted:So with the latest patch, where is the best place to find pirate fodder in the early game to fight? I have two okay combat ships which can hold their own, but frequently pirates are in gigantic groups. Also im way too puny to fight a faction head on. The past hour I've been searching for groups of 2-4 pirates but they're incredibly rare? the meta is now spend fifteen minutes in the initial jangala bounty hunt and then immediately pool all your time and money into becoming the galaxy's #1 drugs/organs dealer. combat becomes this thing you do on the side for fun e: on that topic it's looking like cargo scans and being shaken down for taxes are either bugged or removed entirely, haven't had either happen with the new patch so there's basically no consequence to running around with a shitload of contraband unless a hegemony patrol sees you switch off your transponder yaay fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 21:04
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Still can't find an afflictor to save my life. Regular, military, black market, the game has apparently decided I'm not allowed to have one. Does the save file editing mod allow you to add ships to a fleet? Hell, I'll edit out the cash so I'm not really cheating the game, I just want the goddamn ship already. 
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Nov 23, 2015 21:14
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Bounties seem to scale with your fleet, all the 20K ones you can probably take with a starter wolf and it's easier from there. Also my tricked-out aurora just beat an astral. Stupid thing never vented once, but then again it never got lit up by the tachyon lances either so maybe the AI does know what it's doing. e: Rorac posted:Still can't find an afflictor to save my life. Regular, military, black market, the game has apparently decided I'm not allowed to have one. Does the save file editing mod allow you to add ships to a fleet? Hell, I'll edit out the cash so I'm not really cheating the game, I just want the goddamn ship already. Control + Backspace, addship afflictor 4 
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Nov 23, 2015 21:19
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Tanith posted:Bounties seem to scale with your fleet, all the 20K ones you can probably take with a starter wolf and it's easier from there. My fleet of the 86K Tachyon cruiser, two Medusa, and swarm of Mercury missile boats gets 140K bounties that are trivially easy to pull off.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:21
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yaay posted:the meta is now spend fifteen minutes in the initial jangala bounty hunt and then immediately pool all your time and money into becoming the galaxy's #1 drugs/organs dealer. combat becomes this thing you do on the side for fun Done basically nothing but combat and bounties, still floating 700k moneys with a nice, powerful fleet.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:22
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:Done basically nothing but combat and bounties, still floating 700k moneys with a nice, powerful fleet. Yeah, once I got off the ground I had far more trouble finding things worth buying than having money to buy them with.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:26
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dis astranagant posted:Yeah, once I got off the ground I had far more trouble finding things worth buying than having money to buy them with. This is my issue as well and why I'm gonna take a break until all the mods start coming out with compatibility. Whee, I've got >100K creds, and the best ship I can find (that isn't a capital ship, not that anyone will sell me one yet anyway) is a Medusa that I can't find enough equipment to properly outfit.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:27
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Tomn posted:I'll admit I don't have that much personal experience with the Dominator, but I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The point I was making was that cruisers act as a shield for your smaller ships when they get flux-stressed - their firepower isn't so much about personally killing things as it is about forcing the enemy back when they try to chase battered ships. If you have a cruiser holding your line, your frigates and destroyers are a lot less vulnerable to getting hunted down and destroyed when they get in over their heads because the cruiser can lash out at anyone getting close. Hypothetically destroyers can perform a similar role, but they lack the sheer ability to tank damage that cruisers have and so can't perform it as well. Again - if you're trying to be a hero ship that does everything by itself, then no, cruisers aren't as useful as well-handled destroyers. You need to place them in the context of what the rest of the fleet is doing before they start to really demonstrate their value. I get what you mean, it's just I don't see how cruisers can keep anything at bay when they have no real killing power. A Dominator has two medium ballistic turret mounts and a bunch of PD, frigates will just run past you while a destroyer or cruiser might be kept at bay, provided there is only one. As soon as you're facing multiple enemies the lack of weapons and maneuverability makes you a sitting duck and they just run past and swarm you so if anything it is the cruiser relying on the fleet for backup in such situations, rather than the fleet relying on the cruiser. The best use I found for the Dominator in my line-up was to have it hold down the center, keeping mostly away from the fighting while sniping enemy destroyers and cruisers using the range advantage while destroyers with frigate escorts hold the flanks and do all the fly-swatting. The key here is to never really engage the enemy, because the tanking ability is really not as great as you make it out to be. If you move in you're bound to get outmaneuvered, swarmed and destroyed because you have no ability to disengage at all without heavy backup. In that context if the destroyers fail to hold the flanks and fall back behind the cruiser it would be fatal. I also tested an Eagle for a bit. I guess if you load it with graviton beams they'd be good at pressuring frigates, but that loadout has no killing power and if you go with something that has a little more punch you lose out on range and therefore cannot cover enough ground to actually keep anything at bay while turning it into basically a slower, shittier Sunder. Haven't tried the tritach cruiser so I don't know how that one holds up. I'd be interested to hear what kind of loadouts you're using to make your tactics work because I just don't see it happening. Looking back I'd say the biggest change going from a destroyer/frigate fleet to a cruiser is once you meet the enemy you're committed and have to hold the line because you can't maneuver, whereas a Sunder with maxed helmsmanship skill is more than fast enough to outmaneuver any enemy fleet. You can just load it with needlers and an autopulse laser, swoop in from the flank, overwhelm a destroyer within seconds and retreat to recover before his friends can react. Enemy frigates that are fast enough to pursue you are taken care of by a Wolf escort. I find those are much better to provide cover because speed and maneuverability does a hell of a lot more to keep you alive than armor ever will and because it allows them to disengage in turn once the destroyer has recovered. With a cruiser you're too slow to really do that so you have no choice but to hold the line, if the destroyers retreat the cruiser is dead. Map control isn't really an issue, since you generally meet around the center of the map which gives you more than enough room behind you to back off when needed. Avocados posted:So with the latest patch, where is the best place to find pirate fodder in the early game to fight? I have two okay combat ships which can hold their own, but frequently pirates are in gigantic groups. Also im way too puny to fight a faction head on. The past hour I've been searching for groups of 2-4 pirates but they're incredibly rare? Early on its good to look for patrols to join. If you see a patrol fighting pirates or you engage pirates while a patrol is nearby they will join you in battle so you can team up to defeat fleets that would be too large otherwise. StringOfLetters posted:Hegemony/Diktat/Ludd are a bit like Russia/North Korea/ISIS, in how much they don't want to sell battlecruisers to each other, or to a guy who just sold seventy tons of antimatter and a few hundred harvested organs to their enemies. And the Ukrainians tried selling arms to ISIS, yet I don't think North Korean border guards have orders to shoot Yatsenyuk on sight. I'd understand if it simply set your reputation to whatever the reputation between the factions is, so being allied with the Hegemony means the Diktat will sell basic goods but no restricted stuff while Tritach will shoot on sight but right now they all hate you no matter who you're aligned with and its dumb.
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Nov 23, 2015 21:56
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SovietPotatoe posted:I get what you mean, it's just I don't see how cruisers can keep anything at bay when they have no real killing power. A Dominator has two medium ballistic turret mounts and a bunch of PD, frigates will just run past you while a destroyer or cruiser might be kept at bay, provided there is only one. As soon as you're facing multiple enemies the lack of weapons and maneuverability makes you a sitting duck and they just run past and swarm you so if anything it is the cruiser relying on the fleet for backup in such situations, rather than the fleet relying on the cruiser. The best use I found for the Dominator in my line-up was to have it hold down the center, keeping mostly away from the fighting while sniping enemy destroyers and cruisers using the range advantage while destroyers with frigate escorts hold the flanks and do all the fly-swatting. The key here is to never really engage the enemy, because the tanking ability is really not as great as you make it out to be. If you move in you're bound to get outmaneuvered, swarmed and destroyed because you have no ability to disengage at all without heavy backup. In that context if the destroyers fail to hold the flanks and fall back behind the cruiser it would be fatal. Just because it's a small mount on a big ship doesn't mean you have to put PD in it. Small ballistics pack a hefty punch at decent ranges for low OP costs and nothing says "gently caress off" to small ships trying to get cute than a big wad of armor with rails and LAGs bristling in every direction. I will agree that I don't really like the Dominator in particular because of the janky weapon placement for its main guns, but cruisers with more practical hardpoints can kick rear end and stand up in situations where an Enforcer would just get plonked. Cruisers do generally rely very much on combined arms to function, but that's going to be true of pretty much any large ship that isn't buff enough to just killdoze the enemy fleet in one go. quote:And the Ukrainians tried selling arms to ISIS, yet I don't think North Korean border guards have orders to shoot Yatsenyuk on sight. Yeah, this is the weird part. An actual Hegemony fleet could fly into Sindria with its transponder on, cruise past the Lion's Guard, dock at their station, and stock up at the public market. I can understand if they wouldn't want to sell military hardware to someone they think is a Hegemony toady, but it makes no sense that they'd actually want to kill you over it. It also makes it harder to find stuff to do in the later game; 3/5 major factions won't pay you for bounties or trade with you or let you run their missions, but most of them aren't enemies with the people you work for so going over and shooting them won't do anything to impress your friends either. In the end you just sorta try to work around them while waiting for a bounty to get posted that you can actually get money for.
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Nov 23, 2015 22:17
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Just watch your rear end in those big battles. I accidentally drifted my wolf into some allied frigates like three times and got dinged for "significant friendly fire incidents" and took a rep hit despite helping blow up like a dozen ships. 
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Nov 23, 2015 22:17
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Voyager I posted:Yeah, this is the weird part. An actual Hegemony fleet could fly into Sindria with its transponder on, cruise past the Lion's Guard, dock at their station, and stock up at the public market. I can understand if they wouldn't want to sell military hardware to someone they think is a Hegemony toady, but it makes no sense that they'd actually want to kill you over it. It also makes it harder to find stuff to do in the later game; 3/5 major factions won't pay you for bounties or trade with you or let you run their missions, but most of them aren't enemies with the people you work for so going over and shooting them won't do anything to impress your friends either. In the end you just sorta try to work around them while waiting for a bounty to get posted that you can actually get money for. I ran into this last night, the only big ticket bounties near me were placed by the Hegemony against pirates so I went and killed one. I'm at Friendly with Tri-Tach and the Hegemony just recently had completed an investigation against me that left me in the -40s of rep with them, so when I killed the pirate, I didn't get the bounty but I got an entire 3 points of reputation with them. Um, what? Why aren't the bounties placed in escrow and just paid to whoever kills the target?
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Nov 23, 2015 22:24
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Voyager I posted:Just because it's a small mount on a big ship doesn't mean you have to put PD in it. Small ballistics pack a hefty punch at decent ranges for low OP costs and nothing says "gently caress off" to small ships trying to get cute than a big wad of armor with rails and LAGs bristling in every direction. I will agree that I don't really like the Dominator in particular because of the janky weapon placement for its main guns, but cruisers with more practical hardpoints can kick rear end and stand up in situations where an Enforcer would just get plonked. Good luck finding those guns though with the market being what it is. I think in this entire playthrough I saw all of one railgun for sale, it would literally be easier for me to get a 14th Domain Onslaught than outfit a cruiser with railguns.
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Nov 23, 2015 22:33
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Arrath posted:Just watch your rear end in those big battles. I accidentally drifted my wolf into some allied frigates like three times and got dinged for "significant friendly fire incidents" and took a rep hit despite helping blow up like a dozen ships. I received a major rep hit for getting hit by a friendly missile. SovietPotatoe posted:Good luck finding those guns though with the market being what it is. I think in this entire playthrough I saw all of one railgun for sale, it would literally be easier for me to get a 14th Domain Onslaught than outfit a cruiser with railguns. It takes a while but the Hegemony will eventually start stocking them in decent supply. Failing that, generic ACs make pretty good substitutes, though there really isn't a replacement for LAGs. Never sell guns, basically. The general principle of using small guns as combat weapons on larger ships still holds very true though.
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Nov 23, 2015 22:35
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I'm surprised that anybody is surprised that a heavily armed mercenary/pirate/privateer war fleet supplied by an enemy government in war-time would be treated with hostility. In the logic of this game, piracy is rampant, nobody can be sure what you've been getting up to in deep hyperspace around the time those hundreds of people were murdered and looted, and those fast-picket fleets are actively trying to secure their borders during an ongoing war, not space cops handing out tickets on their space-city-block where maybe some crime is happening. Like, if you bought a warship, you probably got it over the black market with funds from smuggling human organs (for which people were definitely murdered) or price-gouging food during a famine, or selling antimatter fuel to pirates. Decent, law-abiding people don't end up chummy with the Space Nazi Admiralty. Even if you take a long, slow route to prosperity and carefully avoid anything that could be construed as abetting the enemy or otherwise an atrocity, you're still a privateer and Space Korea isn't going to give you the benefit of the doubt when you roll up with a shitload of plasma cannons. Or, if you show up with goodies, they're going to just take your poo poo, because this is a decaying space frontier and they haven't held on to power in their four-world kingdom by being kind. They might agree to a mutually beneficial trade with the Hegemony, secured and backed by all their poo poo, but fragging your outfit is like a -2 reputation ding. Avocados posted:So with the latest patch, where is the best place to find pirate fodder in the early game to fight? I have two okay combat ships which can hold their own, but frequently pirates are in gigantic groups. Also im way too puny to fight a faction head on. The past hour I've been searching for groups of 2-4 pirates but they're incredibly rare? You can now join big fights between other guys. If you see a Hegemony patrol next to a pirate with some explosions, or if you hop into hyperwarp and see a big trade fleet getting snockered by pirates, you can join in and participate in a 10v10 npc ship battle. Also if you come into contact with pirates, and a hegemony patrol or picket or something is very nearby, they will join you. StringOfLetters fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 22:39
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StringOfLetters posted:I'm surprised that anybody is surprised that a heavily armed mercenary/pirate/privateer war fleet supplied by an enemy government in war-time would be treated with hostility. In the logic of this game, piracy is rampant, nobody can be sure what you've been getting up to in deep hyperspace around the time those hundreds of people were murdered and looted, and those fast-picket fleets are actively trying to secure their borders during an ongoing war, not space cops handing out tickets on their space-city-block where maybe some crime is happening. And these arguments would make sense if the factions normally exhibited any hostility towards a) each other or b) the well-equipped independent war fleets that are perpetually roving the sector. An actual Hegemony fleet can dock in Sindria unmolested. A private armada of Independent mercenaries can do so likewise. There is no precedent for either of those things to make you a person non-grata without ever committing an offense, and more importantly, the mechanic makes the game less fun because you end up with a sector full of people who will kill you on sight and you cannot run missions for, but for whom you will receive no reward for defeating because your own faction isn't actually engaged in any hostilities for them. It's okay for the first draft of an alpha mechanic to have issues, but please don't make transparent rationalizations pretending the way it works now is a good thing. Voyager I fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 22:43
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The correct answer is to kill everyone and loot their corpses for being gigantic space arseholes. Unforunately looting trade fleets doesn't feel very profitable since they hardly ever drop any good cargo (in my personal experience). Also warning: Patrols ignore other fleets with their transponder off, and only chase the player. To access a decent selection of weapons, you need to buddy with a faction - there's no other way. And if your buddy faction in any way investigates you for anything, even leaving your toenail clippings in their space hotel bathroom, you need to lavishly bribe the investigator. EDIT: Voyager I posted:And these arguments would make sense if the factions normally exhibited any hostility towards a) each other or b) the well-equipped independent war fleets that are perpetually roving the sector. An actual Hegemony fleet can dock in Sindria unmolested. A private armada of Independent mercenaries can do so likewise. There is no precedent for either of those things to make you a person non-grata without ever committing an offense, and more importantly, the mechanic makes the game less fun because you end up with a sector full of people who will kill you on sight and you cannot run missions for, but for whom you will receive no reward for defeating because your own faction isn't actually engaged in any hostilities for them. Really the bounties shouldn't give improved influence after the initial positive level (10 I think), and to acquire more influence a player would have to help that faction directly. I think all factions should find eradicating pirates in their best interests. This would allow a player to still make money from bounties from all other factions they are neutral to, while only being strictly aligned to a single faction. Jinx fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 23, 2015 |
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Nov 23, 2015 22:55
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The other factions becoming suspicious of you is fine. What isn't fine is that they eventually attack you on sight because you happened to be on good terms with a certain faction. Also, why would the Diktat for example attack a Hegemony allied mercenary when they don't even attack the Hegemony's own vessels.
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Nov 23, 2015 23:09
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SovietPotatoe posted:A Dominator has two medium ballistic turret mounts and a bunch of PD, frigates will just run past you while a destroyer or cruiser might be kept at bay, provided there is only one. Dominators have two large mounts in addition to the mediums, and as Voyager says you can put heavier guns than PD in small mounts. That could explain your firepower issues right there if you've been badly undergunning your ships because you thought small mounts were for PD and nothing but PD and missed the big mounts - though again, I don't have much personal experience with Dominators so I couldn't say how the mount arcs work out exactly. As for the rest of it, the fact that the cruisers need to rely on the fleet is a feature, not a bug. They're complementary - if one's in trouble, the other can save their bacon, and vice versa. By working together, both last longer than they would have done alone. The "tanking" ability of cruisers doesn't refer to their ability to wade right into the middle of the enemy fleet and survive, it refers to their ability to hold off a push (usually a somewhat fluxed push at that) long enough for the rest of the fleet to rally and strike back, and standing off in the middle of the line as an omnipresent threat while taking potshots at anything that comes into range is exactly how they're best used. For that matter, what drives back the enemy isn't that you kill them once they get close, but rather that they get fluxed enough to back off. You can actually see this if you pay attention to what your AI ships are doing when they face enemy cruisers - if your frigates out-flux the enemy frigates, they retreat behind the cruiser which scares off your own frigates after a brief exchange of fire drives their flux up, and if the cruiser is getting pressured an influx of flux-free frigates and destroyers can force the enemy to back off before doing significant real damage, and the end result is that until you personally intervene both survive far longer than they really should. The fact that the AI behaves in this way is important, by the way. On paper, a destroyer/frigate swarm might have enough firepower to charge in and overwhelm both a cruiser and its escorts, but in practice even the steady AI tends to approach cruisers pretty gingerly while aggressive AIs are dangerous gambles for most ships, especially ships that rely on finesse and maneuver. The AI is just plain reluctant to drive home an attack on a cruiser backed by a significant escort unless they have massively overwhelming force, and even then individual ships tend to chicken out quickly which reduces the force of their push. Absent player intervention (which the enemy AI doesn't have), killing a cruiser fleet becomes a matter of picking off their escorts one by one over a long period of time until they're weakened enough for a drive on the cruiser. Again, if you're looking for a kill-everything uber-ship, then a fast and heavily armed destroyer piloted by the player is almost always going to beat out a cruiser, no argument there. And if you're up against relatively weak opposition then yes, cruisers tend to be overkill and not a very efficient use of supplies. But cruisers have their place in the fleet even so, and they perform that role well when you use them as such.
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Nov 23, 2015 23:19
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 13:25 |
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kikkelivelho posted:The other factions becoming suspicious of you is fine. What isn't fine is that they eventually attack you on sight because you happened to be on good terms with a certain faction. Also, why would the Diktat for example attack a Hegemony allied mercenary when they don't even attack the Hegemony's own vessels. If they arranged a mutually necessary trade and then attacked a Hegemony convoy, there would be big political implications, and they'd lose their supply of whatever. If they frag a probable organ-trafficking smuggler that the Hegemony likes, they get to loot his poo poo, they ding a Hegemony-affiliated asset but know the Hegemony won't risk their antimatter fuel trade partner over it, and they just get dinged -2 reputation. They aren't friends.
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Nov 23, 2015 23:26
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