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[Kanil]

You can restore a D-mod ship, unless you're talking about something I'm not understanding. Hit the restore button under the refit screen.

Ship prices are intentionally low, as salvage isn't meant to be profitable, but rather for you to get a crapload of irrelevant cannon fodder easily. The player isn't supposed to want to haul the 4 D-mod Mudskipper back to the nearest port...

[BuriBuriZaemon]

You can restore a D-mod ship, unless you're talking about something I'm not understanding. Hit the restore button under the refit screen.

You can remove the mods indeed, but D-hulled ships still have missing components compared to the non-D version (e.g. extra hardpoints) that you will never be able to restore.

[Flying Dice]

You can restore a D-mod ship, unless you're talking about something I'm not understanding. Hit the restore button under the refit screen.

Ship prices are intentionally low, as salvage isn't meant to be profitable, but rather for you to get a crapload of irrelevant cannon fodder easily. The player isn't supposed to want to haul the 4 D-mod Mudskipper back to the nearest port...

Which makes zero sense both from a gameplay and lore perspective--it's almost always more profitable to blast a ship to scrap and sell the bits even discounting the cost of getting it back to a market, and the setting is supposed to be a post-breaking thing where every scrap of tech is used.

Obviously D-mod salvage isn't as valuable as pristine ships, but the price multiplier means that the supplies you get from blowing them apart are often worth more, despite the intact ship presumably having those supplies on board. That also has nothing to do with how the base price for a player buying a ship is 120%, while the base price for a player selling a (pristine) ship is 40%.

That and the inflated cost and consumption of supplies are blatant artificial barriers in place solely to drag out game time by forcing you to run a bunch of marginally profitable trade/salvage/exploration runs for months between every combat engagement.

These sorts of systems make sense in a game like Aurora where it's as much about managing all the support systems for fleet deployment as it is the tactical combat, but SS is literally M&B in space without the meat of the faction stuff. There's nothing to it beyond the combat, but the combat has been shut up behind half a dozen "pay this much monopoly money for fun" doors. In M&B there was basically nothing preventing you from running from fight to fight, only stopping over long enough to heal up between, because the support resources were generally inexpensive and easily acquired.

For the time being I'm playing with inflated bounties and improved ship sale prices, because I enjoyed the old combat-salvage-sell-combat cycle a hell of a lot more and the vanilla values don't even let you break even. :\

[Kanil]

Obviously D-mod salvage isn't as valuable as pristine ships, but the price multiplier means that the supplies you get from blowing them apart are often worth more...

This was the exact goal of the game design. The player should not want to have to haul back every last piece of crap ship that they recover from battle. The way to discourage this is to make piece of crap ships not sell for something, so you'd only keep them either to use them as cannon fodder, or because they're rare and you want to repair them... (or use them as-is because Paragon still stronk D-mod or not.)

Also, if you want combat to be profitable, go hunt the named bounties -- in 15 minutes you can raise enough money to buy an Onslaught, or a number of smaller vessels, or enough supplies to see you through non-bounty hunting combat for hours to come...

Edit: I just paid attention to my last fight, to see just how unprofitable it was. I deployed my entire force (2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 3 frigates) which was a bit excessive, but still turned a 3,000 credit profit after repairs and selling everything I scooped up afterwards. That's with no salvage skill, and using particularly expensive ships. That's not a remarkable sum of money, and it's easy to imagine how I could lose money as well... ... but considering a named bounty pays 60,000+, doing a single named bounty will offset the losses from a large number of whack the Hegemony patrol fights.

[Ehndras]

Err... Not really true, to be honest. Still running with the basic fleet, sitting on 200k+, just from running around salvaging, killing small fleets, tailing large patrols to ambush larger fleets, and profiting from it. Anyway, get a single class-V survey and that's 150k easy. (sell it at a pirate base cough cough)

I've restarted a good 5 times and had similar experiences all but one game, where I screwed up by getting rid of my initial ships to experiment and ended up getting murdered.

[Orb]

So, I'm basically at end game, maxed out relations with the "We don't like the Hedgemony but we look like the Hedgemony" faction, and a maxed out character. So basically now I'm looking for fights. Whacked the Hedgemony a few times (Note: Two Onslaught Battleships, even isolated, will still destroy your everything), then whacked the blue a few times, then went off into deep space.

I found something I'm having trouble killing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, there are various AI systems scattered around the map. Some of the AI systems have a red (rather than a yellow) warning beacon, which means they're a home system or something. They have large, dangerous fleets, but not impossible to kill. If you have a solid fleet you can take them out. The problem is the space station.

It's huge and armed to the teeth. Some of its weapons have enough range to take out your escort frigates before you even get in range. I first assaulted it with my bottom heavy fleet I had been building up (50% frigates, 50% destroyers/carriers), but they barely made a dent. I came back later with a vengeance, emptied my bank account, and came in with top of the line stuff. Had a battlecruiser (some energy, broadside variant) and an escort of hammerheads and medusas, with carrier support. Barely got through the shield before I lost my battlecruiser.

So now I'm back to the drawing board. I'm thinking of ditching any fighter support. The station has crap tons of PD and honestly fighters don't do well against concentrated firepower. At the head of my fleet should be an onslaught. Its armor can hold for a while and it has those fixed energy cannons. I'm also thinking of ditching any energy based ships and running full kinetics type stuff. I need strong hitting weapons, not fast ones. Beyond that I have no clue. I might just fill out the rest with hammerheads. Suggestions?

[EnigmaticHat]

Longbows wings force PD to target their flares.

Bring an entire fleet of drovers armed with longbows x2 and reaper launchers x4.  There is absolutely nothing that could go wrong.

Anyway, does the AI seem a bit borked in this update for anyone?  Is as excellent as ever 80% of the time, but I've noticed two frustrating problems.  First, the AI seems to be god awful at retreating.  I have a Condor in my fleet and it always ceremonially turns towards the enemy at the start of every retreat, I guess so the captain can flip the enemy the bird.  Related, I have never successfully retreated as long as this thing is in my fleet.  I always end up reloading in anger because YOU HAVE A 50 SPEED CARRIER YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER WE'RE HOLDING POSITION SO YOU CAN RUN.  I've also noticed ships with cautious captains occasionally drifting way too far out of formation, or flying back into combat at 80% hard flux.  I think cautious captains may actually be LESS cautious than standard captain/no officer ships, they certainly aren't more.  At one point when 2 full pirannah wings attacked my destroyer a lasher with a cautious captain decided to leap into the middle of the bomb(er) cloud in order to fire her 2 light machine guns.  Good news is, she did stop most of the bombs...

[Taricus]

@Orb: Don't ditch the fighter support, you absolutely need it. But you need a large and powerful ship to effectively land blows on it as well. Don't bother with frigates or destroyers and ensure you're using the [REDACTED] interceptors if you can. Don't rely on anything smaller than a cruiser to survive unless you're using a lot of them and still have a capital ship as a tank/meatshield. And best ensure said capital is a paragon, the Onslaught's shields won't hold against those squalls and those damn things do EMP damage AFAIK.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Alex stated fighters are getting nerfed in 8.1, which I'm glad of, because carrier-heavy fleet has been OP, especially in player's hand.

Wondering what is everyone else's fleet composition.

I'm still new into the game, currently has:
Destroyer: Hammerhead (my flagship, loving its close range playstyle), Drover with 2 Talon wings (really OP)
Frigate: Wolf, Afflictor, Wayfarer, Shepperd (great starter ship)
Civilian: Dram tanker, Tarsus freighter

[Flying Dice]

I'm at mid-game on my current one.

Cap: 1x Odyssey (1x Dagger wing), 1x Heron (2x Gladius, 1x Longbow wing)
Destroyer: 2x Medusa; identical layouts w/ ATG, AWM, Stabilized shields, except one has pulse lasers and the other has phase lances. My officers are in these.
Frigate: 1x Scarab, 1x Tempest, 2x Hound (A), 1x Mudskipper Mk.II
Civilian: 2x Dram, 2x Buffalo, 1x Mudskipper, 1x Salvage Rig

Finally got enough rep to buy an Odyssey and found a TT station selling plasma cannons. Got the full broadside with two of those + 5 tac lasers. Since Tachyon is shit now, I took ITU instead. Obviously it's way too slow to use against any fleet not carrying at least cruisers (or massive swarms of smaller ships to kill), but the plasma cannons with the energy overcharge special ability are absolutely brutal when there's stuff you can catch. I really need to find/steal/buy a larger freighter though, I haven't been able to go far since I bought it.

Most other engagements I run in the Scarab, I've got it set with tac lasers, AM blasters, and four Hammer torpedoes, which is pretty much the sort of thing you want when you're running a small ship in a fleet: long-range delaying power and massive burst to break shields/shatter armor. Thankfully the Advanced Turret Gyros + Armored Weapon Mounts combo is still excellent.

The Mudskipper Mk.II I just happened across, I haven't fixed all the negative mods, but I already had a Hellbore ready to go for it. More of a show piece that I think is cool, I'm not sure how practical it is.

[EnigmaticHat]

Alex stated fighters are getting nerfed in 8.1, which I'm glad of, because carrier-heavy fleet has been OP, especially in player's hand.

Wondering what is everyone else's fleet composition.

I'm still new into the game, currently has:
Destroyer: Hammerhead (my flagship, loving its close range playstyle), Drover with 2 Talon wings (really OP)
Frigate: Wolf, Afflictor, Wayfarer, Shepperd (great starter ship)
Civilian: Dram tanker, Tarsus freighter

My fleet is currently expirementing to see what works.  So for now everything is unique.

Cruiser/flagship: Falcon (XIV)
Destroyers: Enforcer, Sunderer, Condor
Frigates: Brawler (TT), Brawler, Lasher, Vigilance
Civilian/Stored when not making large trips: Buffalo, dram x3, mudskipper

Currently the condor is impressing me but insufficiently escorted.  I use it for PD fighters to cover the rest of the fleet, and for long range missile spam.  I'm highly unimpressed by the vigilance.  I believe I'm going to get another condor and then switch the vigilance out for 4 bufallo MK 2s, on full time carrier escort.  They can form a slow moving backline fleet together.  That'll be 4 fighter slots and 6 pillium LRMs for 36 supply/month.

The brawlers are amazing at tying down large numbers of enemies for a long time but bad at killing those enemies.  The lasher is better at killing things but tends to die much faster.  I still haven't found a good frontline frigate that fills all my needs, in particular they all seem bad at PD (hopefully fighters can fix that).

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, the Condors are really damn good for how cheap they are (mostly because fighters are really damn good). Vigilances are the shit ones with a single medium energy turret and I think a small forward missile hull mount, right? Don't bother with that trash, even standard Hounds are more useful.


It seems like missiles got a serious nerf in their ammo capacity, but I'm not sure when, since I never use them except as filler on early-game ships and torpedoes (which have always been very tight on ammo). Totally pointless unless you, your officers, and your ships are fully specced for them.

[EnigmaticHat]

Vigilances get medium missile mounts.  The concept isn't awful, since a medium energy mount is basically enough to kill a pirate ship in short order, and medium missile mounts are massively useful (they can mount Pillium LRMs which are infinite ammo and long range, or high ammo reaper/sabot weapons).  The hull itself is really great if you ignore the mounts.  But its just like... 5 supply/month, really?  Two weapon mounts that fill totally different purposes, no PD, and you think that's worth more than a Lasher?

[Flying Dice]

That's pretty much it. They're vague fire support boats, but there are things that do that better that can also do other things. And one medium energy is only sufficient against unshielded/poorly armed trash, anything with a shield and decent weapons needs two to overwhelm reasonably well. If I had to run one, I'd probably give it a blaster or phase lance and pump it full of upgrades with maxed vents and capacity... but even then you could just get a Tempest and mount two.

Probably the one thing they could do well is mounting a medium-sized PD weapon and LRMs, set them to stick to a carrier or capital ship as a pure support escort.

[Ehndras]

No one else has reported this to my knowledge, but why the hell am I getting constant save corruption? Its driving me fucking NUTS, I had to scrap a level 20 with 300k and a good fleet because of it, and just lost my brand new save game too... Grr...