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Raid a few Hegemony planets and steal their Onslaught (XIV) blueprint and all they put on my head is a pathetic 339k bounty.   It's kind of fun being targeted at least. E: Mod's good, Good Professor. Rynoto fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Aug 23, 2019 |
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Aug 23, 2019 23:36
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Lockback posted:Just bought this yesterday, it looks like it'll scratch a helluva itch! read the OP but looking for a bit more advice. I still stand by "Throw an extra ship or two into the fight" to clear the point between 'Know you can win' and 'Know you can win smoothly' until you get a handle on Efficient Combat. It was a big help back when I was starting out, and where I stopped essentially bleeding myself to death one "No direct shots taken to my hull-oh whoops, my combat readiness has dropped to random malfunctions" rookie idiot fight at a time  Then I soon found myself needing more ships just to carry all the loot I was otherwise leaving behind, instead of struggling to get by. It's still much better to be able to handle things cleanly with an efficient fleet, but I expect part of why this game holds up is the fact they actually allow cave man logic methods to work if needed.
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Aug 23, 2019 23:55
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if you're starting to panic and get out of position, hit U for autopilot. watch what the ship does. the AI is really good at piloting conservatively, but the player adds benefit by being able to cut safety margins
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Aug 24, 2019 00:04
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My way of learning was to play Forlorn Hope over and over and over until I could beat it without OP mod weapons. You will become fantastic at flux conservation and knowing when to dip into armor.
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Aug 24, 2019 09:53
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I never do combat myself and just let the AI handle it, i give commands to take out priority targets though. Edit: Do "aggressive" close combat ships ever work out? Even if i fully stock them and try to keep them flanking the enemy they just bumrush in the middle and get killed. FrickenMoron fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Aug 24, 2019 |
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Aug 24, 2019 10:02
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My first mod to the game:  I already posted about it in the actual modding forum, but does anyone know if there's a way to make additional flags as part of an actual mod? I had to gently caress with the core game files to do that.
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Aug 24, 2019 10:11
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Im using the ships/weapon mod pack btw, just trying to make a punisher work somehow. I kitted it with plasma flamers and the safety toggles off for double venting
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Aug 24, 2019 10:25
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Lockback posted:Just bought this yesterday, it looks like it'll scratch a helluva itch! read the OP but looking for a bit more advice. Flux is love, flux is live. Make sure you're using the right type of weapon for the job, kinetic damage is super important since not only does it mean you can actually do some lasting damage due to having them drop shields, it also means you'll get shot at less since their flux will be significantly higher, causing the enemy to fight more conservatively or risk overloading from a stray shot. Even once you transition to larger ships, keep some frigates/destroyers around. There's nothing worse than taking your fancy capital ship out for a spin and then dying to 5 enemy frigates because they can just outmanuever you constantly. If you want to store stuff, there's a couple abandoned facilities around which you can safely use instead of having to pay a storage fee or having to create a colony. Pay attention to your transponder status, it's pretty profitable to attack some mercantile fleets while your transponder's off and they have no idea who you are (lower rep loss from attacking them), and then trading back what you stole.
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Aug 24, 2019 10:26
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I really want to use a missile cruiser as a support craft for my fleet. Is there an all around best missile to use? I often see pirate cruisers spam dumb fire but fast missiles en masse, which ones are those?
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Aug 24, 2019 10:44
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Falcorum posted:Even once you transition to larger ships, keep some frigates/destroyers around. There's nothing worse than taking your fancy capital ship out for a spin and then dying to 5 enemy frigates because they can just outmanuever you constantly. Oh right, speaking of zippy annoyances. Do people have any particular long term every fleet favorites for ships that exist to spitefully make enemy Wolf, Shade, and assorted last minute save ships regret their life choices? All I remember there is always thinking "Medusas are cool  " So a refresher of my options in reminding my enemies I'm the only one who deserves to screw with space time would be nice for petty small time goals when I dust this off again soon.
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Aug 24, 2019 12:07
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Section Z posted:Oh right, speaking of zippy annoyances. Do people have any particular long term every fleet favorites for ships that exist to spitefully make enemy Wolf, Shade, and assorted last minute save ships regret their life choices? Missile boats. These ships are all weak to missiles because they rely in backing out of gun range and venting. Missiles keep them from doing that. Lowly pilums add up and they’re like ball & chain on the ankles of enemy frigates. Capital ships. If have capital ships, frigates just sublimate when they come in range of the big guns. If they stay out of the arcs, they’re not contributing anything to the fight. Beam ships have a similar effect with the optics hull mod. Big ships may shrug them off, but beams easily pose existential threats to frigates. Massed fighters are good at everything and beating frigates is no exception. Many of the cheapest fighters are made for this role.
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Aug 24, 2019 12:33
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Platystemon posted:Missile boats. These ships are all weak to missiles because they rely in backing out of gun range and venting. Missiles keep them from doing that. Lowly pilums add up and they’re like ball & chain on the ankles of enemy frigates.  buttons. That's some maximum catharsis right there.
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Aug 24, 2019 14:12
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FrickenMoron posted:Edit: Do "aggressive" close combat ships ever work out? Even if i fully stock them and try to keep them flanking the enemy they just bumrush in the middle and get killed. Safety overrides builds will absolutely shred poo poo all the way to the end game if properly tuned and used in sufficient numbers against the enemies you're tackling. My current favorite is a hammerhead with two assault chainguns and two railguns or light dual autocannons in the front, all other hardpoints left empty. Pick SO and hardened subsystems for your mods, and use your remaining points on capacitors and vents in about a 1:2 ratio. The trick is to tune the loadout to the AI's behavior. With just the four guns clustered up front and the range penalty from SO, they'll have very similar reach. This encourages the AI to float around its maximum engagement range until an opportunity opens up. Then it hits the accelerated ammo feeder, dives in to unload a bunch of bullshit on the enemy, and backs out to recover flux if/when it starts to get overwhelmed. The speed boost from SO and the Coordinated Maneuvers skill if you have it allows them to dictate the terms of engagement like this over and over again. I'll use up to 15 of these hammerheads supported by 5 herons with wasp or spark interceptors and roll straight over much heavier fleets in record time. Enemy frigates and destroyers get wiped out right away with astonishing quickness, and any heavier ships remaining get surrounded and overwhelmed. Section Z posted:Oh right, speaking of zippy annoyances. Do people have any particular long term every fleet favorites for ships that exist to spitefully make enemy Wolf, Shade, and assorted last minute save ships regret their life choices? Definitely massed fighters as has been mentioned. Spark interceptors are really great because their burst PD lasers pack a decent punch against frigates while also being best in class PD against missiles and other fighters. They're just harder to get since you have to farm them up by destroying larger fleets of redacted. SO frigates and destroyers with accelerated ammo feeder (i.e., lashers and hammerheads) can also sometimes surprise phase and phase skimmer frigates by unloading a ton of damage faster than the enemy AI can decide to run away.
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Aug 24, 2019 15:14
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FrickenMoron posted:I never do combat myself and just let the AI handle it, i give commands to take out priority targets though. Reckless officers in Afflictors with 2x Antimatter blaster, 2x Atropos are devastatingly powerful as long as you pump their speed up and they have defensive subsystems maxed. Especially if you have a pair of them that you assign together.
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Aug 24, 2019 15:27
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Platystemon posted:Beam ships have a similar effect with the optics hull mod. Big ships may shrug them off, but beams easily pose existential threats to frigates. Beams are also a pretty hard counter to phase ships, especially any HE beam. A Sunder fitted with a High Intensity Laser and two Graviton Beams makes AI ships freak out too and a Sunder can sustain it.
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Aug 24, 2019 15:32
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I actually prefer aggressive and reckless officers. I stick them in ships with close-range loadouts and plenty of burst damage, backed up by a fighter screen. The idea is to overwhelm the enemy fleet locally before their ships can retreat into allied cover.
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Aug 24, 2019 15:34
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The best way to use aggressive officers is to tail them in a player controlled flagship and back up whatever they're trying to do Sometimes it's better to enable the AI than it is to trust them to follow along with what you're trying to do, and it can work just as well with aggressive officers since they naturally break the normal stalemate between steady-type AIs
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Aug 24, 2019 15:52
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The Good Professor posted:The best ships to play are ones with Accelerated Ammo Feeder because the game becomes less "be good at piloting" and more "if I press F and drop my shields will I kill this Eagle before it kills me, or vice versa?" If you can find the Bullseye variant of the PACK capital from the JP/ASP/PACK mod you can play this game of chicken but on a capital grade scale and with three forward large ballistics.  I also upped the max officer levels to 29 so sometimes I'll run into enemy officers as crazy pimped as my own character and it makes for amazing capital slugfests while my aggressive officers in Imperial Elite Dictators wreck the poo poo out of carriers in the background and fighters fly by dumping missiles into frigates. The game can be shockingly pretty during big fights.
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Aug 24, 2019 17:40
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:The best way to use aggressive officers is to tail them in a player controlled flagship and back up whatever they're trying to do This is how I've been playing, more like a shepherd than an admiral.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:04
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SHAOLIN FUCKFIEND posted:The best way to use aggressive officers is to tail them in a player controlled flagship and back up whatever they're trying to do This is usually a pretty good synergy as well if you've gotten decent at piloting, since you can start taking larger risks and be better able to extricate yourself, though obviously having a really good ship for aggressive manuevering really, really helps on that end.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:13
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Sticking to a strong frigate and supporting your larger ships is my preferred play style. Having the freedom to help push a flank or take some heat off a battered ship is very powerful.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:23
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FrickenMoron posted:I really want to use a missile cruiser as a support craft for my fleet. Is there an all around best missile to use? I often see pirate cruisers spam dumb fire but fast missiles en masse, which ones are those? If they're lots of small dumbfires they're Annihilators, if they're dumbfire torpedoes the yellow ones are Hammers and the red ones are Reapers.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:44
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Annihilators are shockingly effective and cheap as poo poo, especially if you can wiggle the room for expanded racks on the ship, yeah.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:47
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Small mount annihilators are pretty mediocre with their spray spread while medium ones are far more effective as it does a stream instead. With expanded missile racks it's 200 rockets per medium pod so spamming is encouraged.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:53
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I actually like the spread because in most cases there's one small missile mount there's 2-4 instead, so you just link them all and spray. At least a few'll hit most likely, which is nice against slippery buggers. I do wish there was a small mount straight fire version though.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:59
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Im a fan of expanded racks and harpoons on everything except frigates, who get salamanders. Kinetic guns, a shield breaks and 5-6 harpoons start coming in from across the fleet. You get some wastage, but the mix of range, damage and homing add up to a very deadly weapon more than just the damage numbers say. Atropos 1000 x2 1200 range. Harpoon 750 x3 2500 range.
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Aug 24, 2019 20:55
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The difference between 1000 damage and 750 is far more massive than it first appears as you're dealing with armour calculations though that really only matters against cruiser+ or heavy destroyers. Torpedos also tend to affect a much larger area to expose more hull. Harpoons are still fine at range and are good for beam/siege ships as finishers.
Rynoto fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Aug 24, 2019 |
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Aug 24, 2019 21:10
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Yeah single impacts are generally a lot more lethal than you would think because of armour resistance, especially on HE damage which doubles that number against armour. Which is why reapers are as dangerous as they are, they will do unparalleled damage to heavy ships while almost every other weapon will fall off in effectiveness.
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Aug 24, 2019 21:16
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I like the hornet racks from the SWP since you get a billion of the fuckers with expanded racks and their homing capability is pretty solid too.
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Aug 24, 2019 21:35
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OwlFancier posted:Yeah single impacts are generally a lot more lethal than you would think because of armour resistance, especially on HE damage which doubles that number against armour. There are few games that manage to trigger such a strong "OH gently caress" reaction as reapers being launched at my ship.
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Aug 24, 2019 21:52
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Here I decided to do a maths and ~prove~ this just because it's a fun exercise and also I was curious the exact way the game deals with damage. For this we'll be using the humble Eagle simply because it has a base armour rating of 1,000. According to the game a ship is broken up into cells with 1/15th the armour rating so: 66.6 armour per cell. When a weapon hits it takes the hit cell + 20 surrounding cells - the closest 9(incl hit cell) give full armour while the next 12 give half. On an undamaged ship this comes back to the original armour rating so: 1000 again The damage calculation: Damage multiplier = weapon damage/(armor + weapon damage) Harpoons and Atropos do HE so double armour damage So for a harpoon this comes out to: 1500/(1000+1500) = .6 damage multiplier Atropos: 2000/(1000+2000) = .66 damage multiplier. Leading to a true damage of 900 for a harpoon and 1,320 for an Atropos. The harpoon would not penetrate the armour but will nearly eliminate it while the atropos will completely destroy all armour hit and bleed through 320 damage. Hull armour is calculated at .05 * Armour Rating so: 50. This leads to the bleed through doing 320 * 320/(50+320) = 276 damage directly to the hull. Most of the work done with this comes directly from Alex and a fantastic guide Here. Hope you enjoyed this moment of gamemaths. E: I just had a curious thought that I can't really find an answer for: Does bleedthrough for HE have to be reduced back to 100% damage against hull instead of 200%? Because assuming it does a new calculation it would only do 160 * 160/(50+160) = 121 bleedthrough against our poor eagle. Something that needs testing. Rynoto fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 24, 2019 |
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Aug 24, 2019 21:52
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Larry Parrish posted:My first mod to the game: Slick. Adding flags is actually real simple, you just put the flag and crest in the graphics/factions folder and then add a player.faction file in data/world/factions (iirc) that references them. You can look at DME for an example, that adds 4 or so player flags I also made a dumb wh40k player faction flag minimod that's lurking somewhere in #mod_updates on the discord, that could be a more straightforward example if you grab it as it does nothing but add flags.
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Aug 24, 2019 21:56
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Carcer posted:There are few games that manage to trigger such a strong "OH gently caress" reaction as reapers being launched at my ship. They're wonderful things. Like it's literally a single shot completely dumbfire slow rear end missile, but the warhead is made of condensed hatred for all things spaceborne and if you boop an enemy with it, that enemy is just loving done. And you can strap three of those bastards onto the cheapest shuttle in the game!
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Aug 24, 2019 22:02
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It also really instills a sense of dread when an enemy ship manages to take a few (Or half a dozen) and keep on trucking like nothing hit it.
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Aug 24, 2019 22:05
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Beware the Kite bearing gifts of red
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Aug 24, 2019 22:06
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The Reaper is great not just because it ends ships when it connects with hull, but because it seriously taxes shields and point defence. Ludd help you if you if you don’t have enough of those when the Reaper comes for you.
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Aug 24, 2019 22:11
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Yeah you've not had a fun game till a expanded missile racks kite unloads 4 reapers into your onslaughts rear end because you didn't bother killing it becasue "it's just a kite, what's it gonna do".
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Aug 24, 2019 22:11
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Drone_Fragger posted:Yeah you've not had a fun game till a expanded missile racks kite unloads 4 reapers into your onslaughts rear end because you didn't bother killing it becasue "it's just a kite, what's it gonna do". I’ve used Burn Drive to escape that situation before. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
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Aug 24, 2019 22:13
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Carcer posted:There are few games that manage to trigger such a strong "OH gently caress" reaction as reapers being launched at my ship. The only two times I felt so stressed in a game was being overloaded in a capital ship and seeing 4 reapers get launched into my broadside, and staring down a cavalry charge in mount and blade. Both felt like my heart wasn't beating and sudden death was immediate. It's good poo poo yo
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Aug 24, 2019 22:15
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Drone_Fragger posted:Yeah you've not had a fun game till a expanded missile racks kite unloads 4 reapers into your onslaughts rear end because you didn't bother killing it becasue "it's just a kite, what's it gonna do". Expanded missile racks just for no sane reason making one shot missiles into two shot missiles is something that I love. "Look I can clearly see that's just a missile taped to a stick and mounted on your hull, why does it shoot twice?" "Because expanded missile racks, therefore it's actually two missiles, I know you can't see the other one but it's there, it just takes a few seconds to appear."
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Aug 24, 2019 23:55
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