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[Aklyon]

Hat, was that with beams or with normal laser fire? Beams don't make hard flux.

Also afaik the tutorial ships are not randomized. You always get a hammerhead (d), a condor (d), a wolf (d), and the cannon fodder kite.

[EnigmaticHat]

GOD DAMMIT WHERE IS THAT INFORMATION seriously tho I tried to look this up and couldn't find anything.  That makes a lot of sense from a balance perspective... guess I need to rethink my tactics.  Fortunately I didn't actually buy that ship ingame.

Spoiler: Story Time (click to show/hide)

Had a very tense and interesting mission.  Found three scan a ship quests that were in the same rough region of the space.  It was a long distance away, and I'm normally a bounty hunter rather than an explorer, but the grand total was 260,000 credit payout so I decided to take the missions on.  I wasted half of the mission time trying to get supplies for the journey at a cheap price, ended up getting ripped off by TT anyway.  Bought a dram for the extra fuel capacity, loaded myself up with 800 units of fuel and set out.

It all went pretty OK, except for two things.  The first is that I miscalculated how much fuel I needed, I should have bought and filled up two drams.  The second is that the "ring system" that the last derelict was located in turned out to be massive.  To cover the whole thing in time, without bringing down my sensors, I tried to spam emergency burn.  This was not a good idea, it didn't really help with the search and I ran out of supplies.  Sadly, the autopilot had driven us through some ion storms on the way here (the nebulas listed on the sector map seem wildly incorrect, I assume that's a glitch), so I ran out of supplies.  But I figured I was all good... until I ran out of fuel on the return trip.  And drifted towards a sun with a warning beacon, 30 LY from the nearest inhabited system.  Into the gravity well of a very large sun, which devastated my fleet before we could escape the corona.

Before we could even build up speed, a remnant fleet of 5 ships moved to intercept us.  I didn't have time to use sustained burn, I had to choose between emergency burn and fighting.  At 8% fleetwide combat readiness, I decided to turn and fight while I still had combat capable ships.  My entire fleet was disabled except a Condor light carrier, and my flagship, an Enforcer lovingly named the ISS Billiards.  Both at 20% CR.

The remnant ships were quick and methodical, all 5 rushing down the front but then moving back as they took fire.  I tried to match their movements but my slow speed and intermittent engine failure made it difficult.  Frequently my cannons would bring down the shields of a remnant only for it to retreat back into the mass.  I don't know how the Billiards survived; it got overloaded twice, had all of its armor stripped off and was reduced to 30% hull.  Still, I managed to take down 2 of the remnants with good old fashioned cannon fire; the condor got the rest with its LRMs and heavy bomber wings.

We were lucky and got a good haul of 30 supplies.  I mothballed the entire fleet except the two destroyers and a mudskipper and tried to find scrap.  The system had a ludicrous remnant presence, at one point I got jumped by literally 50 of them.  Long story short, I ran away a lot, slunk around going dark, and managed to mine enough fuel out of scattered debris fields to make it home.  Somehow, this whole series of events was the only major adventure I've ever gone on with no combat losses, not even fighter pilots.  In spite of that, 50 crew were still lost to various scavenging accidents and critical malfunctions.  I kinda wish I had to pay my crews for RP purposes, but if we assume they're getting a cut then they must be making bank.  Since we failed a 100,000 credit objective, I didn't end up that much richer at the end of all this.  But, along the way we found two class IV survey datas... last time I had one of those I sold it on the black market in Sindria for 92k credits.  So in the end it all works out.

I really love the kind of Han Solo/Boba Fett/Malcolm Reynolds simulator this is.  I don't doubt that there are better ways to make a fortune than the way I'm doing it, but I love being a working class space lady living off inconsistent income.  Fuck being a Jedi, we should have gotten a Star Wars game like this a long time ago.  I'm kind of tempted to run limited time "see how much money you can make in X months" characters, that sounds like it could be a fun little contest with myself.  Has anyone tried anything like that?

[Aklyon]

I dunno where exactly it is, but I heard it ages ago from either here or the starsector mod forums.

[Flying Dice]

Oh wow, when did the Tachyon Lance get nerfed to shit? Used to take one so that I could reach out and touch stuff that kept running from my cap ships, but now that it's barely longer ranged than an Autopulse but costs 25% more OP there's no point. It was only ever good because of the range and burst damage combination, doesn't matter how much it does if it has DPS weapon range with sniping cooldown time and the same slow-as-molasses traverse.

[Aklyon]

Oh wow, when did the Tachyon Lance get nerfed to shit? Used to take one so that I could reach out and touch stuff that kept running from my cap ships, but now that it's barely longer ranged than an Autopulse but costs 25% more OP there's no point. It was only ever good because of the range and burst damage combination, doesn't matter how much it does if it has DPS weapon range with sniping cooldown time and the same slow-as-molasses traverse.

Its for paragons, who come with a doubled-range energy weapons hull mod now.

[Flying Dice]

That's still at best a tiny fraction of what it used to be, though. Used to straight up be a second-tier High Intensity Laser with better range and damage profile. Now it's trash. You never took them because they were good main battery weapons, you took them because you could pick off fighters and frigates that played the constantly-run-away game and slip in fire when an enemy cap ship pulled back to vent.

[Taricus]

Just stick a couple of ion pulsers on the rear med mounts. They'll clean up those friggen frigates.

[Aklyon]

Just stick a couple of ion pulsers on the rear med mounts. They'll clean up those friggen frigates.

Or just bring enough talons. They borrowed the broadsword wing's swarmer missiles.

[Taricus]

'Borrowed'. The [REDACTED] Interceptors are even better; they're faster than talons, don't eat up crew, are tougher & chew through frigates and high-tech destroyers like nothing. Pair with daggers for maximum fun.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Now that we have a new, much more streamlined (and I personally think, better) character skill tree, have we got a list of builds?

I assume with level 40 being the cap and getting 4 skill points when reaching level 2, we'll have 42 skill points to play with (correct me if I'm wrong though).

For my scavenger build, I'm considering below set. I don't assign any points into fighter and carrier related skills as I'm not sure about using them yet.

Leadership Aptitude 3
Officer Management 3
Fleet Logistics 3
Coordinate Manouvers 3
Total: 12

Technology Aptitude 3
Electronic Warfare 3
Loadout Design 3
Sensors 3
Navigation 3
Total: 15

Industry Aptitude 3
Recovery Operations 3
Field Repairs 3
Salvaging 3
Total: 12

Total used so far: 39 out of 42. Any feedback?

[Taricus]

Slap the last three points into fighter doctrine to help buff the carriers you're travelling with and you're golden.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Slap the last three points into fighter doctrine to help buff the carriers you're travelling with and you're golden.

Thanks, that's what I thought too.

Now, with the tutorial ships, I now know that we always get the same set of:
Hammerhead D
Condor D
Wolf D
Kite D

I don't like the fact that you can't fully restore D-variant ships, but I do realise that at early game, having a Hammerhead and Condor in my fleet would be great. The Kite is rubbish. Any opinions on which ships to recover and which ones to salvage?

EDIT: I tried salvaging all four D-ships and with only the Wayfarer and the Drone Tender (forgot its name) have been unable to defeat the two fleets guarding the inactive jumpgate, as required to progress the game. So I think we have no choice but to at least recover the Hammerhead and Condor.

[Aklyon]

Level cap can be edited in setting.json, so you still can just eventually get all the things.

As far as ships go, if you just wanted the hammerhead and the condor, why not just skip the tutorial, hop over to Galatea, and see if those ships are still around that planet?

[Flying Dice]

I also really wish there was a way to remove D-mods. That, and better sale prices for ships (which seem to be universally in the gutter) and ways to decrease supply and fuel expenditures/a reduction in supply and fuel costs. I got Starfarer because I enjoyed the tactical combat, but these days you either have to grind for days to support anything above a handful of frigates or you cheat in resupply. I wouldn't mind as much if there was still a high enough skill ceiling to make running a frigate wolfpack practical for anything beyond fighting small groups of sub-capital ships, but everything has been so stabilized at a low level that it's pointless.

Obviously the old days with the surrender exploit where you could capture entire Hegemony fleets with a single frigate were crazy, but being able to outplay a superior force with a destroyer and a couple frigates should still be possible. You can't, though. I remember how I used to run a Medusa + three frigates and take out fleets with 2-3 cruisers and support staff through careful kiting and target selection. Impossible now.

It went from a tactical combat game to a logistics management game, which is dull as hell when there's no endgame beyond picking more pointless fights. It'd be one thing if Alex had already taken it full M&B with dozens of inhabited systems and the ability to found your own faction and hold territory, but he hasn't, so all of the logistical/industrial backend and anti-player pricing exists solely to make it more difficult to build and field a fleet by extending the grind.

[Parsely]

-snip-

Since you're using Alex's name, I'm assuming you've already given this feedback on the Starsector forums where he can see it? He's pretty good about responding to suggestions.