|
Post by brentaur on Dec 23, 2020 18:42:39 GMT -5
Playstore is now all the way up to date! Just in time for a happy holiday!
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Dec 21, 2020 19:04:05 GMT -5
It's not just Apple. The playstore still doesn't have it either.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Dec 8, 2020 16:28:20 GMT -5
Thank you foe the great new crew faces! Finally I have a Captain avatar that looks like me!
Plus, it's about damn time Prince joined the Star Traders universe!
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Nov 29, 2020 9:02:01 GMT -5
I really love the layout of #3. Alternate routes are my jam.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Oct 29, 2020 12:03:27 GMT -5
Yellow zones around asteroids allow your ships to refuel slowly. Good for staging areas or pickets to spot xeno movements. Or for scouts to refuel between explorations.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Sept 4, 2020 18:26:37 GMT -5
Why not do both with one context sensitive talent?
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Sept 3, 2020 18:12:31 GMT -5
...wait for it...
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 7, 2020 7:49:52 GMT -5
For what it's worth, I would also love to see a sequel at some point!
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 6, 2020 13:40:16 GMT -5
My heavy invasion ship for late game.
Heavy Transport/tech lvl. 10 Hvy. Reactor 15
Dur. 11 Shield 7 Evade 2 Sensor 8 Refuel 5
Pilot 4 Repair 4 Invasion 8
Angelic drop shuttle Reinforced Kallaxian Cladding (25 armor) hvy assault brigade Planetary invasion 3 and 1
$2218 / $326/turn maint. Hull 380 / fuel 220
Expensive and needs refueling more often, but doesn't take a ton of damage, so it can keep fighting for s long time (it can take down like 3 ir 4 xeno worlds before it needs to stop for repairs, depending on how you run your invasions).
It hits HARD, and WILL damage planetary quality with pretty much every successful invasion 3 attack. This can be great or bad depending on your play style, but you can take down xeno worlds very fast with 8 of these things.
For either design you can adjust values for things like durabilty and repair a little, but I strongly recommend following Cory's advice that Sensors, Invasion, Pilot, and Shielding are used in Invasion attacks, and Durability, Shielding, and Armor are used to defend against taking damage from the xeno colonies. I don't know the math or understand why it's that way, but my very unscientific testing seems to confirm that those values help a lot. Remember that values below 3 in ST4x incur penalties, so I wouldn't go lower than that on any of the values mentioned.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 6, 2020 13:16:39 GMT -5
This is my light/economical invasion ship for the late game.
Transport/lvl. 10 tech Reactor 17 Dur. 11 Shield 7 Evade 2 Sensor 7 Refuel 6 Guns/Torps 0
Guns 0 Pilot 4 Torp/stealth 0 Repair 4 Warrior 0 Invasion 8
Heavy drop pods Active deflectors 2 (16 armor) Hvy. Assault Brigade Planetary invasion 3 AND 1
Not super cheap but also not terrible at $1151 and $189/turn maintenance, and 319 hull and 256 fuel allow it to fight for a while (with a refuel or 2) before needing to break for repairs. Repair and invade could be higher, but you'd have to sacrifice piloting, which is important for invasion attacks. Also, at least on impossible difficulty, these only damage planet quality once in a while even when using the invasion 3 attack, if you like to colonize your conquests.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 6, 2020 12:52:00 GMT -5
Just my opinion, but I strongly prefer to repair my invasion ships and allow them to gain advatage from their increasing experience. Invasion ships aren't cheap to maintain (at least the way I build them), but I like to have at least 2 full squads (16 ships total) so that basically one squad can repair while the other moves on to the next xeno world. More ships is even better, if you can afford them and keep them safe. Higher repair on invasion ships obviously speeds things up a ton.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 5, 2020 15:12:07 GMT -5
Xeno population regenerates by 1 each turn, so as long as you are taking out at least 2 every turn you will take the planet eventually. Invasion fleets should include a minimum of 8 invasion ships for maximum efficiency per turn. More than 8 allows you to rotate more heavily damaged ships out and fresh ones in. Make sure you can refuel them as well to keep the pressure on the target worlds.
Total extermination is exceedingly tedious. The vast majority of games I end up giving up once ultimate victory becomes a foregone conclusion.
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Aug 2, 2020 9:01:17 GMT -5
Ha! Love the "horrified bystander" addition!
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Jul 26, 2020 9:28:37 GMT -5
Agreed. Skill saves (esp. Ship Ops) and the talents that prevent desertion are big. You can reduce the risk of sudden morale drops by avoiding sectors with high danger ratings (I believe you can check this in the atlas) and by using engines with higher safety ratings. I found that just slowing down my playstyle helped a bunch. Take the time to read things, look at numbers, and consider little decisions more (if this were my real ship and crew, I'd be a lot more cautious about, well, everything).
As for surviving xeno ship encounters, moar Command seems to be the way to go. Only the first 100% of dice pools are used in combat, the extra helps with the skill rolls when travelling, etc. Command is not limited by ship components, though, so the sky's the limit. More experienced players than I seem to favor using many MO crew to pump Command as high as possible. Nav components will help most with escaping and long range ship combat (as opposed to +pilot ones), but anything that boosts defense or range change are good also.
In crew combat high initiative is king. I would try a non-combat captain if you can get good stat cc crew. Your mix looks good, though I recommend an alternate to your XH for fights with humans. Removing enemy buffs and preventing/removing debuffs is very important against xeno. A really good melee fighter also does well against xeno. Check out the STF Discord channel for a ton of specific advice from the real experts. As a final bit of advice, I've learned a lot by playing on custom (non-permadeath) difficulty with the others settings set like they are for hard or above. The combat snd environmental challenges are just as hard, but you don't necessarily have to start all over every time you make a mistake/get unlucky. You can always go back to true Hard once you feel a bit more comfortable with it. Good hunting!
|
|
|
Post by brentaur on Jul 23, 2020 11:48:18 GMT -5
I still like the idea of a talent ("Kessell Run") that reduces HW travel time by a pretty big amount (like 40%?) but damages the HW drive like Skip. You could also do a component that reduces it by less (10% seems reasonable) but uses more fuel. For the talent, if it's available at the time, add it as an option button on the HW gate pop up screen.
|
|