Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EnigmaticHat]

Trying to clear out a pather base is the most painful thing I've ever done in my life.

I killed what had to be over a hundred ships, and then died because all of my ships ran out of CR.  Over the course of like 5 battles.  What the hell.

Station battles in general seem kind of fucked.  I tried to help my faction fight off two simultaneous, allied incursions, but what I found is that I could only control one ship and it was impossible to do anything.  So I increased the battle size.  Maybe that's why I'm having trouble attacking the pathers.

The problem is that my current fleet relies heavily on squall missiles... which would be fine in any other situation, but its the only thing I have with enough punch to finish the station off.  The pathers fight so chickenshit when they have a station that they will just never be depleted enough to allow you to retreat.  I can't imagine that forcing them to trickle in one at a time instead of 10 at a time would make it better.  And of course there's at least 6 giant pather fleets in the system...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Note:

I also had a pather base next door with an associated... four or five max pather fleets either roaming MY systems or patrolling the station.

After asking around the Starsector Discord seems like most players recommend just upping the battle size in general, but specifically to be able to field enough cruisers and caps once you start making bank to actually break stations.

For reference, I've set mine to 500--some suggest 700 (which has to be changed in a setting file). It has changed my fleet compositions a lot, and made fighting large fleets doable. It's not a gimme either, I've lost a few million in tonnage at this point.

Also woot! $1.7M in revenue these days. Got my first size 8 worlds. In general, pretty on top of things--not sure whether to start beating up on some factions or [REDACTED] at this point.

[etgfrog]

That is why I tend to hide in an asteroid cluster until most of the enemy fleets have left then go after the base. On another note, I found you can go to intel, then planets to look for all the ludic path and pirate bases in the sector.

I guess I should also note that the Gryphon is very useful now, mainly because it can send missiles at enemies from behind your front line ships.

Ok, this is a bit silly, I knock over a ludic path base, another one gets built as soon as I leave system.

[Majestic7]

After trashing Pather planets I've come to the conclusion their economy has nothing to do with the bases and cells. That is a shame. I get it you can't destroy terrorism by military force (heh, Afganistan), but you should be able to limit their force projection capacities. Plus in the case of Pathers, they should be getting funding from mainstream Luddite population anyway as well.

[EnigmaticHat]

Unfortunately since there's nothing at all in the system, the pathers seem to have dedicated 2-3 fleets to defense at all times.  They're also threatening 4 systems... including all 3 of mine :/

I left, I'm probably going to come back with like 10 legions or something stupid like that.  Which BTW, the legion is a really awesome ship.  I wasn't impressed by its stat page but the fact that its so heavily armored means that it can stay really close to the front line and this gives its fighters (and hurricane MIRVs) a very low response time if something needs killing.

Or maybe I'll just throw all the random ships I've been making into a huge mass.

[Majestic7]

Pather ships are trash, surely you can beat them? Just lure the fleets into following you, then fight them separately from the station.

[EnigmaticHat]

I probably could, but with the particular fleet matchups it was getting frustrating to do it without losses.  Like I said, I killed almost every ship they had in a single series of grueling battles, it doing it again would have been like pulling teeth.  Pather variants are pretty decent, in particular the 3-4 modified colossus they bring to every fight.

[Majestic7]

They are good for the cost as improvised carriers, but very fragile. I can destroy one on my own in Apogee armed with just two tactical lasers and a tachyon beam in a moment of concentrated fire. Yeah but I get it, grinding trash gets annoying.

Regarding Pathers, I don't think it fits their fluff that they are zerg anyway. They should be having cunning ambushed, suicide attacks and stuff like that... not the crazy numbers they do now.

[Flying Dice]

I finally figured out what Starsector is starting to remind me of: that old flash game, Flash Trek: Broken Mirror 2. Except, y'know, as a real game and not a copyright takedown waiting to happen.

And that's most certainly praise. Broken Mirror 2 was a goddamn fantastic game, even by today's standards.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Pather ships are trash, surely you can beat them? Just lure the fleets into following you, then fight them separately from the station.

Problem is getting overwhelmed in battle, at the vanilla battle size it's pretty tough when you just can't field enough ships to spread their DPS/Alpha Damage and you just get defeated in detail.

[etgfrog]

The pirates have the colossus modified into a carrier, ludic path has the one that has a bunch of hammer torpedoes installed. Oddly it doesn't show up in the codex. The thing is they costs 25k to build, but cost doesn't seem to play a factor into it as much.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

A 40 ship fleet is a danger regardless of composition I think--then again, I am NOT great at combat.

[etgfrog]

The player is limited to 30 ships. Usually I like to have 1/3rd of the the fleet as logistical ships, cargo, fuel, salavge bonus.

Spoiler: My fleet (click to show/hide)

Can usualy handle 50 or so ludic path ships but having strong ecm and nav bonus helps significantly. Doing so without casualties is difficult.

[Majestic7]

I've had no trouble with Pathers, but my fleet is composed mostly of carriers with destroyer escorts and one missile cruiser, plus my Apogee. I suppose that is optimal against the waves of crap Pathers throw at you? Remnants on the other hand are much tougher nut to crack. My dude naturally has all the fleet-wide carrier skills maxed, plus the skill that gives extra CR to whole fleet.

But yeah, I think the new version of the game shows great promise for the future. Pirate and Pather spawning just needs to be toned down - maybe we should be able to do it ourselves with ground strikes to their planets etc. Colony management needs more depth. I think the game would benefit from fleet management options as well, so you could choose to pay your guys more and get morale bonus (CR recovery bonus?) or something.

I just think the game has nailed exploration, fighting and tuning starships now. What it needs to add is more into feeling like an admiral. Plus some travel, scavenging and exploration events in the same way as in the new Battletech would be nice.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

If you "take a shuttle down to the dockside bar" you can get interesting missions--I had one that ended up giving me a unique planetary industry. Also usually more convenient trade missions as well.