Systems Specialists

[Sing_In_Silence]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

2 components of shields? As in, (1) the increase in shielding, and (2) the regen rate they add? The regen stacks, it would be nice if additional shields just added to the shielding but didn't amp up the regen.
I tried boosting the regen rate and yeah, it gets pretty stupid ridiculous when it's too high.

Yes, yes and yup :s which is exactly why I split shields.

See tl;dr 1, below.

Of course, what I'd love is to simply redo ****ing everything.

See tl;dr 2, below.

But that requires figuring out how these stats compare to each other in terms of survivability (so I can balance them), which is rather more complicated math than I care to tackle.

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Dunno about repair though. If someone's bent on slotting 4 of them in a ship there's not much we can do to nerf it without screwing over players who are actually using them as intended (ditto stealth, etc). I suppose this goes back to regen rate stacking - in this case armor instead of shielding.

Exactly right.
But idk how to limit how many it uses.

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Not much to say about missile jamming; skill/numerical odds aside, slapping on the top tier ECM pretty much ensures you hardly get hit even if the pilot doesn't have any jamming modifiers. Doesn't seem like there's a problem here though unless you have experience otherwise?

Not at all.
But you'd think that a bomber pilot would have some ecm-pen perks to counteract ecm.
And since A) they don't and B) they don't have DM, both endgame enemy missiles and allied jamming-perks are useless.

See tl,dr 3, below.

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Was thinking of rebalancing some skills, like say adding a branch for wingmember skills (mostly for variety's sake). Having to adjust the UI for every single skill change is kind of a pain in the ass though.

Let 'us' know how that goes, and yeah, respectively.

-----

Tl;dr 1
(You need to choose between high sp (which is perk independant) but when it's gone it's gone or regen (which benefits from system perks) but any big shot will get through to your non-regenerating hp, or just fry you outright.
And you'll get get best results from mix-and-matching, which costs system slots, e.g. Less possible stacking.)

Which is also why I'm experimenting with modding ship hp/sp values to current/gen.
It's either that or shift sp to hp, and a 2k hp wyvern mk2 is just insane. We'll see.
It's pretty good imo, but ships are a bit too fragile. Requires tweaking, as per below.
That or just halving gear- and ship-cost, making losing a ship less of a calamity.
Then you can, and should, stockpile ships. The limiting factor / penalty for losing a ship becomes power-play (hockey term) for the computer until you happen to vacuum up your downed pilot's pod.
We'll see how that pans out later.


Tl;dr 2
Generally speaking:
Light fighters= low shield regen, high manuverability, with either average hp&sp or low hp high shield. Intended for pilots.
Heavy fighters=high hp&sp, low/no regen, low manu. Intended for gunners.
Support= low hp, mid manu, high sp&regen.

With support and missile oddments, e.g. Dogfighters, siege, pacifist, etc.)


Tl,dr 3
Wanted to split missile buffs between guru perks and DM to (buffed ecm-pen and x0.5/lvl dmg perk).
Couldn't since apparently perks require 2 different sized icons, which I lack for DM.

Will get a plugin for irfanview and try later.

[Hypertonic]

System Specialist is actually almost game-breakingly overpowered except when the MS is tracked. The rest of the time I just stack engine boosting + one Diamond or ECM and have ships flying 2000-4000 speed with MD-1. Anything without laser weapons can't even hit them. Anything with laser weapons can't do significant damage. At +2500 speed you don't even need ECM because missiles can't go that fast. Scripts that track the MS or require it to be exposed are the only flaw with this tactic.

[Bany]

So, what ship would be basicaly high end choise for experienced System Specialist?



Trident T Fifth Generation Special Purpose Fighter 750 700 900 270 4 3 0 1
Trident Fourth Generation Special Purpose Fighter 450 580 900 250 4 3 0 1
Cheetah Fourth Generation Special Purpose Fighter 450 550 1000 260 4 2 0 2

For me Cheetach is kindof better to play with, as using experienced specialis makes the durability not so crucial. And having at you disposal another missle bay to use (especialy against those small planty and nasty berserkers) makes this ship is much more versatile then Tridents. What do You think?

[Nanaki]

I cant really answer this question definitively, since I use my own customised skill tree, but I do find that my attempts to have combined arms combat/support ships have tended to end in failure, the support ships simply dont provide enough support to make up for the loss of a combat ship. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the hp/sec regen of a support ship does not match the dps/sec of an equivilant combat ship. Thus, your better off just going pure combat ships as, while your slightly less durable, your DPS will be much higher so you will likely be ending fights before durability becomes an issue.

Thus, the best trees would likely be Gunners or Pilots. Missiles have great burst damage, but once you blow through the munitions (and missile ships in star wolves have little ammunition capacity) your a sitting duck while a gunner can pretty much shoot until he is destroyed.

As for the best ships, in Star Wolves 3, the best ships are, by far, the Templar variants.