1.7 Alpha 1 Ready!

New releases and announcements from George and the staff.
JohnBWatson
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Alright, tested a lot more stuff across one system. A few more things:

1. High flux mags are excellent - MAG launcher is useful now. Might be worth testing whether they're OP.

2. Katana Star Cannon is notably underpowered now. Hard to kill anything with it. It's worse than the omni Tev9 against gunships, and worse than anything with WMD against other targets. Definitely needs a damage buff or some means of dealing WMD damage. Preferably both.

The ion blaster feels somewhat lackluster too, though not on the same level as the KSC.

3. There are lots of issues with the minelayer mission, but overall the Fleet missions I've seen are much improved from the new weapon balance.

4. Tev9s could probably benefit from the ability to deal slight WMD damage. The Fleet uses them in huge numbers against capital ships, and the Rogue Fleet uses them quite a bit in missions against targets with internals that don't face any WMD weaponry(making those missions much too easy, or even impossible to fail).
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gunship256 wrote:Do you think the speed is excessive given the Wolfen's device slot limitations? A Sapphire with an enhanced Titan drive is faster than the Wolfen, and it can afford the slot to install that engine.
("you" was not meant for me, but I will answer...)

I do not think so. I get very annoyed with two non-weapon slot limit, and one of them is almost always taken by cargo hold upgrade. If Wolfen became slower, I would ignore it in favor of Sapphire (better versatility) or EI500 (better cargo and non-weapon capacity). Speed is the only thing going for the Wolfen.

Until 1.3, or before when rotationSpeed was decoupled from facings, Sapphire was flat out better than Wolfen (barring niche configurations) once it got megadrive or enhanced Titan.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
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JohnBWatson
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I think it might be best for balance if playership speed fell within a lower range, and for maneuverability/turn rate to fill that niche. Of course, that's probably a bigger discussion than is meant for this thread.

Now, onto another leg of my testing:

- Phobos weaponry is more balanced now, and glancing shots are less punishing. The explosion they make is beautiful, too!

- Brits kill each other too often, especially with their new weapon improvements. They could benefit from some AI changes. Being more careful with tracking munitions and keeping distance in a squadron would be major improvements.

- No idea if the APC's been nerfed, but it feels more balaned now. The new effect looks unique, though it could stand to be a bit more flashy(In my opinion).

- Ares lightning turret is still very OP. The damage modifier for cooldown weapons is too generous, which seems to be the problem - right now it'd be above the curve even as a fixed angle weapon.
gunship256
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JohnBWatson wrote:I think it might be best for balance if playership speed fell within a lower range, and for maneuverability/turn rate to fill that niche. Of course, that's probably a bigger discussion than is meant for this thread....

- No idea if the APC's been nerfed, but it feels more balaned now. The new effect looks unique, though it could stand to be a bit more flashy(In my opinion).
I'll start a new thread on the speed issue - thanks for bringing it up.

The energy weapons seem to have received enough WMD to make them worth using. On my alpha run, I was pretty happy with the way the ion blasters performed. The heavy ion blaster (level 9) can kill Omnithor ships and bust bases now, though not as quickly as the high-flux mag (level 8).

The Ares positron cannon also seems to have enough WMD to be worth using, and it has a large range (around 90 ls), though Ares turrets _still_ don't use the weapon at anything close to its full range.

It IS strange that these weapons seem to have WMD, but their descriptions in shops don't assign them any WMD. Is that because of the change in the way the game decides how much damage shots do?

EDIT: Answered my own question. WMD0 now does 10% WMD damage, and WMD1 does 25%. I haven't downloaded the TransData XML yet to see how much WMD was assigned to each of the energy weapons. https://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=29058
High flux mags are excellent - MAG launcher is useful now. Might be worth testing whether they're OP.
High-flux mags are level 8, so it might be overpowered to have them available at CW Fortresses. They seem okay to me once CSCs start showing up, since level 8 and 9 launchers start becoming available at around the same time.
NMS
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JohnBWatson wrote: - Ares lightning turret is still very OP. The damage modifier for cooldown weapons is too generous, which seems to be the problem - right now it'd be above the curve even as a fixed angle weapon.
Huh? It's got just over half the sustained DPS of the lightning cannon, which is weak for level 7. If anything, it's getting a substantial penalty in exchange for the high burst fire rate.
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Song
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gunship256 wrote: It IS strange that these weapons seem to have WMD, but their descriptions in shops don't assign them any WMD. Is that because of the change in the way the game decides how much damage shots do?
I think the game should display the WMD damage for all guns (not just those with ratings, since a WMD rating isn't required now) as a percentage value. I've made a ticket for this suggestion here.
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JohnBWatson
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NMS wrote:
JohnBWatson wrote: - Ares lightning turret is still very OP. The damage modifier for cooldown weapons is too generous, which seems to be the problem - right now it'd be above the curve even as a fixed angle weapon.
Huh? It's got just over half the sustained DPS of the lightning cannon, which is weak for level 7. If anything, it's getting a substantial penalty in exchange for the high burst fire rate.
'Sustained DPS' is the issue with your estimate - virtually every enemy it will be used against will not last more than one burst, and other weapons can be fired while it is recharging.
NMS
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I don't think being stronger than normal against small to medium groups of weak enemies (in the hands of the player) makes something particularly overpowered. And it's not very effective against tougher enemies. It won't even take down a single Tundra or Chasm before depleting the capacitor.
Yukine
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Decided to take a break from my run in 1.6.4 and give 1.7 a test run and I'm ready to share a couple of thoughts. I managed to clear my way all the way up to Lacaille with the Wolfen before I was arrested @ the merchant prince. First off holding the brakes lining up your shots and destroying stations from afar is still completely viable and very easy. Looting stations seems to produce much less usable weapons than before, the best weapon I was able to loot early on was a level 4 moskva 21 dual cannon, which even with a WMD rating of 4 turned out to be utter crud against most stations. My biggest complaint and where I really feel this version is taking a step back is in the sheer amount of missiles you can carry. In 1.6 even without a cargo hold the Wolfen could easily carry 150+ KM100's with enough room to spare for fuel, which for a ship design that's more of an dogfighting interceptor it's already more than plenty if not excessive. Personally I feel you shouldn't be able to turn every player ship in game into a missile boat, at the very least you shouldn't be forced to and it feels like early on that's exactly what seems to be happening when a weapon with a wmd rating of 4 can barely make a dent on an sole outlaw station :( On a positive note, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself under arrest. Trying to sell martian dope to the trusty two brothers at the merchant prince is no longer the sure thing it seemed to be in prior versions but that could have just been my luck running thin :lol: Acquiring a black market ID early on should carry an added level of danger considering the profit and rewards you can reap, so it makes sense if the chance of arrest was increased.
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Hotel always had a 5% chance of a sting with (corrupt) cops. If you get busted, you pay the fine or lose the game if you cannot. The worst part of the sting is not getting the Black Market ID from the hotel (because T31s do not always carry ID). If this happens early enough, I restart the game.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
JohnBWatson
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NMS wrote:I don't think being stronger than normal against small to medium groups of weak enemies (in the hands of the player) makes something particularly overpowered. And it's not very effective against tougher enemies. It won't even take down a single Tundra or Chasm before depleting the capacitor.
It kills the them faster(from my observations a few minutes ago - I don't think my aim is that awful, but you're welcome to try it for yourself) than an Iocrym Fracture Cannon: A weapon several levels higher, without omni, and with much lower range. There isn't a single hostile gunship in vanilla, to my recollection, that it can't kill or almost kill in 1 burst.

Calculating balance for capacitator weapons as if the player's just going to set and wait as they recharge results in them becoming overpowered - he'll either have won the fight in one burst or have switched to another weapon and continued to fire.

What I would do when calculating balance for these is to use their active DPS as their damage, and treat burst fire similar to low shot speed, as something that doesn't impair DPS but can make fighting less convenient.

Anyways, cleared a few more systems. Kytyrn cannon is a bit underpowered, though the new effect is looking beautiful. The Kiloton has two issues:

1. The projectile will sometimes turn invisible.

2. It is severely underpowered. By the time the Ranx show up, I've been fighting the Ventari for several systems, yet they're vastly less powerful. Their dreadnoughts can barely scratch an R5 deflector.

Also, my game crashed.

Edit: Got up to the third to last system. Tested out both archcannons.

Ares Plasma Archcannon: Perfectly balanced. Not too strong, not too weak, worth the effort to acquire, and isn't too powerful with the speedloader.

Lamplighter: A lot better than it was, and I'd say perfectly balanced. The projectiles still get shot down much too often to be useful against capital ships with turrets. Giving it a far higher amount of shot HP(or just making it an energy weapon) and increasing WMD significantly would balance this weapon perfectly. The new effect looks wonderful, by the way.

Noticed another issue, too: The Antarctica won't use its missile launcher past point blank range.
Last edited by JohnBWatson on Mon Feb 15, 2016 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sun1404
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Burst fire weapons have inherent advantage against shields. The ALT could bring down any shield except a few of the strongest (maybe only the Kaidun and R9, counting only those that are reasonably acquirable.) in one burst with juice to spare. Collapsed shields generally have long cooldown. You could face a whole lot of lightning cannons with a Nephren X1 and the shield won't collapse, but a burst from a pair of lightning turrets can bring it down.
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EditorRUS
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Haven't been here for a year or something. Now my body is ready to storm Commonwealth scum again.
JohnBWatson
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Finished testing. Lots of good changes there, looking forward to the next build. Hope my bug reports and balance info were helpful.
Yukine
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Has anyone else experienced an issue with 1.7 1a where they completely lost control over the keyboard? I was having such a good run with the osaka class transport and it came to a tear inducing end when I decided to take on a sung citadel. While feeding it a steady stream of strelkas, all of a sudden I found myself completely unable to do anything in game no pause, no esc, no invoke, nothing at all. I had to watch in horror as my run came to a horrific end :cry: I'm not sure if the citadels now have some sort of cyber attack that can do that or the two earth slavers surrounding me but it left such a bitter feeling I dont feel tempted to come back until a stable version is released. I haven't ruled out hardware failure on my machine although I really dont think that was it :?
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