Topic: OP+ corrections thread

[jdmckinney]

I believe you could easily get the PhGs selectable by first selecting all weapons, then deselecting the ones you don't want grouped with them (maybe even all other hardpoints), and then assigning them a hotkey.

On the Plasma, Fs are nearly useless in an X vs. X fight -- they're too fast to hit with Fs because of the limited range and drop-off in damage. Droners don't have that damage reduction, and their drones fly for much longer. Also, I wonder about plasma D BPVs according to SFB, since there they could be used offensively, right? Here they can't.

I also agree that PhG are a tricky issue, because they are so good offensively. I still like the Ph3 as an option, though it has plenty of flaws, too.

What I'd really like to hear is more opinions, especially from players with a lot of flight time. It's all academic until it plays out in a match.

[Rod O'neal]

Quote:
I believe you could easily get the PhGs selectable by first selecting all weapons, then deselecting the ones you don't want grouped with them (maybe even all other hardpoints), and then assigning them a hotkey.

Good point. I didn't think of that, because I've never tried it, I guess .  

[FireSoul]

Ph-Gs:
Good: defense versus tracking objects
Bad: AI using phGs can be outplayed.. the phGs would not be used for defense, but for offense.

This fix is for the AI, not the player. .. .. so that eliminates the phGs as useful.


Pl-Ds, PlaGs->PLaFs:
Good: defense..
Bad: costless defense for a while... no power needs to be expended on ships that would normally do that.
Bad: X-ships would out-run PLaFs fired at them easily.

Players could abuse this easily.



Well.. maybe I should just leave this alone for now.. I hope that Taldren will heed my request to make the phX defense-capable by default. That would solve everything here.

[TarMinyatur]

The AI would have decent drone defense with 6 tractor beams and 6 Ph2's. You'd likely have to remove a couple Ph-X. This is aesthetically better than adding AMD's to every X-ship. Of course this mucks up player-controlled ships...

I think SFC would have been vastly improved had the Ph-3/G chart simply been truncated at range 2 instead of inheriting SFB's woefully ineffective range 3 to 15 shots. I've never fired a Ph-3 from range 3+ in all my years of SFB/SFC. Yet the AI does it like it's going out of style.  

[FireSoul]

SFB: ph3 at range 15?
Yeah, I've done it.  The 2 ships were coming apart from each other and the down shield was facing me.
... I had to try.. and did sometihng like 2 internals.

Anyways.. yeah.. .. but that's an old argument..
.. fact remains that phGs are useless in such manner at this time.

[MadElf]

"Pl-Ds, PlaGs->PLaFs:
Good: defense..
Bad: costless defense for a while... no power needs to be expended on ships that would normally do that.
Bad: X-ships would out-run PLaFs fired at them easily"


True, but people are also forgetting about the fact that the X1 have R torps instead of M torps, and that's a significant increase in firepower already.   I think the G -> F plasma conversion with the makes them much more accurate in overall firepower compared to the origional SFB models.  Also, D plasma do run out soon enough, this is just a little bump to the rom/gorn X1, not a big edge.  Take note that, for example, the K-DXD had 6 amd 12, and the rom counterpart (same hull, 2 less power) has 0 drone/fighter defenses. A  DXD will go through fighter swarms and drone waves like they weren't even there.   Guys, try flying a rom or gorn X1 ship in an agent recovery mission vs mirak or klingon ai.  Then fly a klingon or mirak through the same mission.  You'll see what I mean.

Also true, X ships can out run plasma F.  But that doesn't make them useless by any means.  Rom/gorn X2 ships are loaded down with tons of F torps, and I always seem to manage to hit people with them anyway, and that's vs the much faster X2 ships, not just the X1.  

[FireSoul]

Me, I'm in favour of trying it out..
Other comments?

[jdmckinney]

It seems to me AI Lyrans will be hurting the most for drone/fighter defense once the plasma races are improved. Yes, there are LDR ships with PhGs, but what if people want to play "real" Lyrans? Even with INTs, the defense is not really improved, since 1-2 drones take an INT totally out of the fight. The non-droners will mostly have PlasD to kill PFs with, except for the Hydrans. Regardless, no INT can survive PhX fire. Then there's the whole issue of AI stupidity when flying fighters or PFs and using ESG for defense. The AI doesn't know how to manage the ESG capacitor effectively, and even if it does use ESG for defense, it suddenly has very little heavy weapon punch. Like PhGs, a player can tease out ESG and then hit during the cooldown/recharge, when the AI Lyran would have lower shield reinforcement. I'd be interested to see what Ph3s on a Lyran X1 would be like, just as defense, even with the AI long-range firing. It keeps PhGs off of non-Hydran and LDR ships, and doesn't require loaned tech from the Klingons. If the Ph3s are rear-only, there would be less chance of long-range offensive use.

I know this is a one-sided look at the Lyran issues. Granted, the others have their own peculiarities, but I think the Lyran situation is worthy of more discussion.

[FireSoul]

The best solution....
.. the very best solution is to see the phX fixed .. so that AI can use it defensively. (Please Taldren? GO TALDREN!!)
heh
 

[FireSoul]

Note to ALL:

I  have found some corrected SSDs available for download from the ADB SFB pages..
.. these are to be considered replacement SSDs. Should I use them?

 http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/sfin/Reprinted_SSDs.pdf


-- Luc

[jdmckinney]

I would. I'd gotten that .pdf a few weeks ago, but never studied it closely for the differences. I get the impression they fix errors already noted in the errata, but I could be wrong. Certainly it doesn't seem like any major redesign of those ships.

[FireSoul]

I saw major differences in the R-FHF..
and some rear shield differences in the F-CVA..


.. and an error correction for the R-KDR's Emer IMP -> APR.

.. do you have a URL to SSD erratas in text?
-- Luc

[FireSoul]

Note to self:

.. crap.. I can't believe I have missed/ignore tihs all along.
Thre are *4* shuttlebay related fields

1- # of shuttlebay boxes
2- launchrate
3- # shuttles BASE. (for stock configuration)
4- # shuttles MAX.

.. in the Z-DD+ bug above, the # shuttles max is 1, instead of 2 despite the baysize of 2. In-game, that meant a single shuttle.


.. so it DOES work. That means I should review ALL fighter-carriers and add all the missing internal hits to the # of shuttlebays! .. that means 40 more for the IC+, for example!  That's 80 internals more.
..Crap.. crap crap crap. This is a MUST do.

-- Luc


EDIT: as long as there's 1 bay, all fighters may rearm. That's wrong.. crap.. the old arguments again.
PS. No, I'm not using standard hull. That screws up DAC. Best would be to leave alone unless good arguments come up.

Edit2: Argument via D2 server: .. no bays hits is appropriate balance for fighter regen.

[jdmckinney]

Errata is linked from the Star Fleet Games homepage.

I saw the Romulan examples you gave here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/errata/errata14.html.

The main page for the Errata (broken into subpages by rule numbers), is here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/errata/erratoc.html.

[jdmckinney]

If you want to really get confused about Xes, check out the X-errata, which essentially kills any chance OP has at approximating SFB Xes. Since OP depends upon the PhX, and SFB depends more on X-heavy rules like fast-loads (as far as weapons are concerned), we've essentially got the opposite of what SFB Xes should be. It's getting to the point where we might as well throw out all Xes and start from scratch -- meaning there can't be a good translation from SFB if using SFC limitations and SFB SSDs and BPVs.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/errata/X-shipCL23.pdf

[FireSoul]

Quote:
If you want to really get confused about Xes, check out the X-errata, which essentially kills any chance OP has at approximating SFB Xes. Since OP depends upon the PhX, and SFB depends more on X-heavy rules like fast-loads (as far as weapons are concerned), we've essentially got the opposite of what SFB Xes should be. It's getting to the point where we might as well throw out all Xes and start from scratch -- meaning there can't be a good translation from SFB if using SFC limitations and SFB SSDs and BPVs.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/errata/X-shipCL23.pdf  

Yeah.. I know.
... that's why I selectively decided to ignore the CL23 rule changes.. in favor of SFC.
That means also I didn't use the BPVs at the bottom of the errata, there.

[jdmckinney]

As I mentioned on Tech Wars, I really don't know if we can approximate BPVs accurately. It's not as if every box on an SSD has a value (that we could find published, anyway). However, I wonder if playtesting would be useful. Perhaps even putting an X against a normal ship (with a known BPV) in an AI vs. AI battle via skirmish/GSA would help. With enough testing (and this would take time), rough approximations of which BPVs the Xes get into draws against could help determine a BPV for the OP Plus Xes.

[jdmckinney]

Heh. I just pictured watching hours of AI vs. AI battles at speed 11 to collect final result data. No-doz could be crucial.

[Mog]

Firesoul, I'm still unconvinced that allowing phX to fire in PD mode will fix the ai's problems at drone defence for the Lyrans and Hydrans.  All a player needs to do is just hover around the 9-15.99 range , wait for the ai to fire its phasers then go in, anchor and drone it to death, Tractor range = 2.5, ai ESG range = 1.5, so the player ship wouldn't even get damaged by the ESGs. Whilst it is not SFB like, the only way to increase their drone defence meaningfully without code changes  is to go ahistorical and fit them with a couple of AMD racks.

Alternatively, with a code change, do as Tar Minyatur suggested (and something that I've posted about several times now), and restrict ph3/G fire to a max of range 2. That way, if a player wants to tease out point defence phasers, he has to go into their effective range and take some damage.. On top of this, I would also recommend that the pd option for phasers to fire on plasma torps be removed too, else the plasma users have an advantage over the other races in that they canlaunch a pseudo to waste pd fire then launch real ones.

Ideally, doing similar (ie range restrictions) to other weapons would improve the ai's fighting capability a lot. Restrict ph1s to range 8.99 max (15.99 if facing a downed shield), fusions to 2.99 etc. By restricting, I don't mean cut off the weapons' ranges, I mean put some sort of If/Then statement in to check range to target , and if the target is outside of those ranges,then to not fire those weapons.



 

[FireSoul]

With enough tractors, the hydrans can defend themselves moderately well enough once the gatlings have cycled. It is not something set in stone of course, but it does set a good example of what can be done. If the phX could be used for defense also, then the other races such as the lyrans, gorns, romulans and ISC will be able to defend themselves properly enough for a better challenge.
I know it's not perfect.. But it's just the AI anyways.


My current stand is: I want to wait and see if my request is going to be rejected or not. I don't want to get players used to having some fantastic gatlings on all the xships again if I'm just going to take them away.



anyways.. I would like to hold off on requesting the range changes in AI behaviour at this time. I have done enough requests lately to warrant shutting up for a while until DavidF is more comfortable to hearing about things like this.
Unless someone else wants to ask him, this time?



BTW,.. I agree fully about the AI. Know that.