Ok so butthugging aside because I think we’re all on the same page now about it not working.
Mica I tried the circle strafing technique. Doing large S maneuvers works too. It’s nice in that it’s easy to avoid damage from melee only units.
Downsides,
[quote=Mica]Mmm, it’s more like i’m circling around it rather than trying to move past it. When the zee beast charges, It will miss and will pass by behind the ship, assuming the ship is fast enough. Imagine it like how something falling will miss someone that’s moving fast enough on the ground. Keep the enemy just inside the very edge of the deck gun’s range so you can attack with it then use the Blue scintillack to reload the forward gun if you have it.
edited by Mica on 3/1/2015[/quote]
Yeah, okay, that doesn’t work for me. I know what you mean now. The monster’s initial hit will sometimes put them out of my deck gun range, and will leave them touching my ship even if they are still in deck gun range. I now have the choice to sail forward (trying to run away) or try to turn to get them into deck gun range/keep them there…basically, once a monster touches me, he never stops touching me except for the brief moment where he isn’t touching me to start the charge.
In other words, once the monster touches my ship, the only way I can get him to not constantly be charging me (and hitting me) is to run, full speed to engines the entire time. If I do anything else, the monster will be touching my ship 85% of the time we spend in combat, with 1% of the time spent not touching me and 14% of the time spent not touching me and mid-charge. It’s constant charging, that always connects.
I feel like I am explaining this poorly. But honestly I am at a loss for words on how to explain it better.
I think I understand, and it still sounds like your game is messed up my friend. It shouldn’t be like that at all.
Well, with an impeller and memento on a dreadnought, the battles are quite good. The problem is that my sun menace was over 400 – just got it down to 396. I can lower it by a few each time I return to London and my ambition is the settlement.
I think that the advice above about clicking on your target before they’re in range is the key. Combat is working fine for me.
Wait. People AREN’T clicking on enemies before combat?
I still don’t see this crazy AI being talked about here.
I just fought Mt. Nomad for the first time too. In a Dreadnaught with the best Caminus Deck and Aft guns and with a doomed monster hunter to even things up at the start.
It was a totally decent (and fun) fight, and while The Mountain was tough, it wasn’t like, super crazy insane like others have claimed, and just required some smart maneuvering and timing.
Frankly it’s been the best battle I’ve had in SS for a while. Wish more monsters had that amount of threat and quick reaction. I’d probably LIKE experiencing the crazy aggressiveness DragonDai is describing.
Have you ever heard an old tale in London that when you withhold the information from the players of a certain great game it creates a breach in reality and somewhere out there as a result a zee captain dies. Think of the captains.
No really, this time you’ve gone and done it. I’m pretty sure that you HAVE killed at least one zee captain this time around.
Join the "patch notes to the masses movement"! Only YOU can save the captains!
Closer to the subject. I’ve yet to experience the full extent of these changes, but I already like the direction.
This is a crucial element if the game is to have any progression aside from the one happening inside the player’s head. It used to be that, like I said somewhere already, if you could deal with a jelly fish you could deal with the zee.
Next we need to complicate avoiding the zee beasts, and then maybe we can finally see some real progression.
If that’s the direction you’ll be heading in then, for what it’s worth, you have my support.
Closer to the thread than the subject - I don’t think a trade vessel should be comfortable when dealing with the zee beasts.
What use is a combat oriented vessel if a non-combat oriented vessel is more than enough?
Trade vessels are supposed to AVOID combat. At the very least, for them it should be undesirable.
They should probably be equipped to survive one or two encounters with a beast (since you aren’t supposed to be able to avoid all of them) but at the costs and odds so bad that they wouldn’t want to do that.
We do have a problem there though - the trade vessel barely offers anything to counter that kind of disadvantage, since the trade is poor (and there are good reasons for that). Not to mention the fact that the boredom itself should be countered. A ship that only runs away from monsters isn’t exactly fun to play. Achieving that without uplifting the trade is not going to be easy (lightly speaking), but trade should definitely not be uplifted.
But regardless of all those problems, the nature of a trade vessel is such. It should NOT be a combat vessel. At the very least not a combat vessel that leaves nothing more to be desired. Maybe that degrades the gamepley for captains of that vessel, maybe that’s a step back, maybe after this it may as well be better off being removed, I don’t know - the issue itself is more complicated than one long post can encompass, and more conflicting than one view can encompass. But regardless of all that…
An underzee where a mere trade vessel could handle any zee beast it comes across is an underzee no one could call dangerous without being a liar.
[quote=MisterGone]Also, I kind of wish ambient temperature affected your engines as well, so that traveling up north actually lowered your base temp, so throttling up there would be safer, and going to the south kept your engines hotter, so the chance of fires would increase throttling down there. But then, that might screw up the game balance, as everyone would go up north to jet around east or west, and would avoid the southern coast more.
Though that might actually just make the game more interesting . . . [/quote]
Underzee isn’t our ocean. It doesn’t depend on the angle of sunlight as our ocean does. Aestival should probably be the underzee’s equator, and the rest colder than the northern and the southern poles, at least as far as sunlight-based distribution is concerned. The rest of the reasons why it isn’t freezing over probably have even less in common with our geography and climate expectations. But keep in mind that I’m not an expert on this. I’m likely to be missing something from the picture.
That said, underzee isn’t known for following "our" laws.
But regardless of anything else - when a game tells me that my engine is freezing, when in fact it isn’t, laws or no laws, I call that a lie. ;P
I think with the newest patch I rather don’t want to hunt Mt. Nomad. It was dangerous and very expensive before, when I could just hug a monster and I almost died - from terror, fuel cost and food cost. With the recent changes? Maybe with the very biggest ship, with lots of supplies - but even then I hear maintaining such a ship is far from easy (without Sunlight Smuggle).
Generally I can confirm that hunting monsters now isn’t a good idea at all, and if that’s intended there should be improved escape methods.
I think the old early-access combat system (turn based) was somewhat more flexible and yielded better understandable results, while also offering more options. It was a bit more transparent on what happened and why. To me it appears as though the game would just have needed more versatility there. The same could be said about the current system. Zee beasts don’t really behave all that different compared to each other. Some charge more easily, some charge over a longer distance, but that’s about it. All of them just try to ram you, and they can almost all easily outmaneuver you. But different types of attacks also would mean different types of countermeasures, so, maybe that’s not the right thing to focus on. Fixing this sounds like a really big issue (with probably quite some more steps needed over a prolongued period of time).
I know, this isn’t the core component of this game, so maybe we are worrying too much about this, but if this isn’t so much of a core, then the whole idea of spending rather longish time traversing the Underzee doesn’t really pay off either.
I’m not overly worried in the end. Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s far from broken beyond fixing. It just feels quite unfinished right now, and instead of such things I’d rather be watching and hoping for more stories to find when visiting ports. Maybe it would be better if hunting Zee beasts could be dealt with such an approach rather than the tedious battles we are seeing right now? That way encountering them would turn into way more of an adventure and you could include way more variants without the need of a whole new subsystem to an already complex game.
edited by bpressler on 3/2/2015
[quote=DragonDai]Yeah, okay, that doesn’t work for me. I know what you mean now. The monster’s initial hit will sometimes put them out of my deck gun range, and will leave them touching my ship even if they are still in deck gun range. I now have the choice to sail forward (trying to run away) or try to turn to get them into deck gun range/keep them there…basically, once a monster touches me, he never stops touching me except for the brief moment where he isn’t touching me to start the charge.
In other words, once the monster touches my ship, the only way I can get him to not constantly be charging me (and hitting me) is to run, full speed to engines the entire time. If I do anything else, the monster will be touching my ship 85% of the time we spend in combat, with 1% of the time spent not touching me and 14% of the time spent not touching me and mid-charge. It’s constant charging, that always connects.
I feel like I am explaining this poorly. But honestly I am at a loss for words on how to explain it better.[/quote]
This really sounds like you have insufficient speed, not being able to run away from zee beasts without going full power makes it sound more likely the case. Avoiding charges will require engine power for speed, and the heavier and bigger your ship, the stronger engine is needed.
And yeah, if we resort to dodging attacks, the fights takes longer and eats more fuel and supplies. A frigate directly aiming at an enemy, tanking bulks of damage (lorn-flukes comes to mind) will end up with better profits than one moving around just to avoid repair costs.
There’s also the fact that some guns can stagger enemies. I read somewhere before that it’s possible to stagger-lock enemies. I haven’t really noticed this effect however. But with enemies getting better, this might be worth a try and might give aft guns more use.
I do admit it’s a little frustrating when a rat barge has a better turn radius than my corvette, but it’s always improving, to be sure.
[quote=MisterGone]I still don’t see this crazy AI being talked about here.
I just fought Mt. Nomad for the first time too. In a Dreadnaught with the best Caminus Deck and Aft guns and with a doomed monster hunter to even things up at the start. [/quote]It’s only certain zee monster that are that aggressive. Mt. Nomad isn’t one of them. Ship speed is definitely a factor though. What happens is if the zee monster manages to hit you with a charge once due to your ship speed it tends to stay on you so you can end up taking a lot of hits because it can match speed and have better turn speed than you if you’re ship isn’t fast enough. The damage they do and the fuel and supplies they can cost even if it is only a fraction of 1 unit of each isn’t really worth it given that they can often end up giving you only 1 or 2 units of fuel or supplies
If you have a ship that is fast enough and blue scintillack and a deck and forward weapon you can destroy zee monsters fast enough so this isn’t a huge issue if you’re forward weapon has a stagger effect simply by maneuvering in reverse so both your guns can continuously get a firing solution on them.
Sinking Mt Nomad should be easy if you’re using the frigate with Black Icarus because you take out over half its health before it even begins to approach you. If you don’t mind netting a loss in costs you could actually probably have gotten away with sinking it in a matter of seconds with a second shot from the Black Icarus.
I did it with a Thrasher and Memento Mori and Ratsender using a Corsair. :)
Anecdotal new player experience:
I bought SS this week. My first three captains got killed by bat-swarms before they could get to the first Admiralty quest target. It was very discouraging.
[li]One thing I noticed not being mentioned here is skill level in Iron and Mirrors. These are two factors that will impact heavily on how easy it is to kill zee beasts. Your damage and firing solution speed will be substantially better as those two skills increase. Combined with better weapons like the Thrasher and Memento Mori and A Lump of Blue Scintillack, fights with zee beasts become much easier to handle provided you have good ship speed as well.
[li]Taking this into consideration. Hunting zee beasts for profit should be considered a quasi endgame activity. I’m currently still using a Corsair with Thrasher, Memento Mori and A Lump of Blue Scintillack with the Serpentine as my engine and can kill most zee beasts with little to no damage at all to my hull now that my Iron is at 100 and my Mirrors is at 75. I still don’t really hunt for zee beasts but if I see them I certainly don’t go out of my way to avoid them at this point other than to save fuel if they are the kind that can tend to have really marginal rewards like supplies only (unless I’m low on supplies).
[li]Until you get to where I am now, you’re better off avoiding all but the weakest of zee beasts (ones that tend to die in 1-3 hits).
[li][quote=Passionario]My first three captains got killed by bat-swarms before they could get to the first Admiralty quest target. It was very discouraging.[/quote]Bat swarms are quite low in health. If you choose to engage them (they should be easy to avoid on the steamer) turn off your light once they are in range and bring your engines to halt. Having the lights off will prevent them from spotting you until you fire your first shot. Fire up your engines to go in reverse. That should give you enough time to get a second shot off before they can hit you with their charge. Even with the starter deck gun that should be enough to kill them.[/li][li]
edited by Dagmar on 3/6/2015
The thing is, most people don’t read forums, or check there for advice. They fire up the game, start to play, and learn by playing. The difficulty curve for this game is set for veterans who have learned to take full advantage of the various combat options. A starting player isn’t going to think of reversing away from a flock of bats at full speed in a desperate attempt to save their ship. And they’re going to get sunk a few times, get frustrated, and stop playing.
It’s great for the veterans. Sucks for the newbies.
The thing is, most people don’t read forums, or check there for advice. They fire up the game, start to play, and learn by playing. The difficulty curve for this game is set for veterans who have learned to take full advantage of the various combat options. A starting player isn’t going to think of reversing away from a flock of bats at full speed in a desperate attempt to save their ship. And they’re going to get sunk a few times, get frustrated, and stop playing.
It’s great for the veterans. Sucks for the newbies.[/quote]
Or they did what most veterans did; test, experiment, persevere. Granted, I learned a lot of things from the forum but it was no replacement for trying stuff. Learning to turn off my lights and how that affects enemy perception was probably the biggest combat advantage I ever figured out for myself. My threshold for frustration isn’t super high, but I don’t think SS is nearly as frustrating as, say, Darkest Dungeon.
I know I’m late to the party here, but the big issue I see here is that, prior to this patch, it seemed as if we WEREN’T supposed to use the "back up and trade blows until the monster is dead" method. Looking back through the Diamond patch notes, we see
[li]Reversing speed has been reduced.
Which I assumed was intended to put a stop to that particular method of fighting zee-beasts. It certainly made it much much less effective than butt-hugging at the time (side note, I love this name). With both methods nerfed into the ground, it seems like the only effective way to fight zee-beasts is to have a big ship with a big gun.
[/li]
[quote=Loiathal]I know I’m late to the party here, but the big issue I see here is that, prior to this patch, it seemed as if we WEREN’T supposed to use the "back up and trade blows until the monster is dead" method. Looking back through the Diamond patch notes, we see
[li]Reversing speed has been reduced.
Which I assumed was intended to put a stop to that particular method of fighting zee-beasts. It certainly made it much much less effective than butt-hugging at the time (side note, I love this name). With both methods nerfed into the ground, it seems like the only effective way to fight zee-beasts is to have a big ship with a big gun.
[/li][/quote]Maneuvering in reverse has not been nerfed into the ground. I’m still using the Corsair with a Serpentine engine and the technique works fine.
[li]
[quote=Dagmar][quote=Loiathal]I know I’m late to the party here, but the big issue I see here is that, prior to this patch, it seemed as if we WEREN’T supposed to use the "back up and trade blows until the monster is dead" method. Looking back through the Diamond patch notes, we see
[li]Reversing speed has been reduced.
Which I assumed was intended to put a stop to that particular method of fighting zee-beasts. It certainly made it much much less effective than butt-hugging at the time (side note, I love this name). With both methods nerfed into the ground, it seems like the only effective way to fight zee-beasts is to have a big ship with a big gun.
[/li][/quote]Maneuvering in reverse has not been nerfed into the ground. I’m still using the Corsair with a Serpentine engine and the technique works fine.
[/quote]
With the Impeller, reverse speed is faster than most zee-beasts’ forward speed. :P
[li]I do admit as it stands right now I have almost zero trouble with enemy ships and lots more trouble with Zee-Beasts. Currently, ships are too easy to "dogfight" with – that is, sail around behind them and stay in their blind spots while pummeling them. Even Dawn ships are easy to destroy this way. Meanwhile, zee-beasts are able to turn around instantly and outrun even a fast engine, which means I take little to no damage against ships, and always take more damage from even weaker zee-beasts…
[quote=Loiathal]I know I’m late to the party here, but the big issue I see here is that, prior to this patch, it seemed as if we WEREN’T supposed to use the "back up and trade blows until the monster is dead" method. Looking back through the Diamond patch notes, we see
[li]Reversing speed has been reduced.
Which I assumed was intended to put a stop to that particular method of fighting zee-beasts. It certainly made it much much less effective than butt-hugging at the time (side note, I love this name). With both methods nerfed into the ground, it seems like the only effective way to fight zee-beasts is to have a big ship with a big gun.
[/li][/quote]
I’m pretty sure the issue wasn’t that it was a bad tactic it’s that it shuoldn’t be an automatic ‘i win as long as there’s space to back up’ button. Except maybe when you have the Fulgent Impeller.
Like, much lower quality engines used to be able to unrun a monsters forward speed without full power.
You know, I’m patched to the latest, and I still often use the ‘hug the butt and shoot’ method. I back up and get as many shots as I can before it hits me (usually three), let it hit me once, then grab around to it’s behind and chase it. This is very hard to do without getting hit once, admittedly.
The problem now with this method is if the monster starts to go ‘off their territory’. I had a major problem with a Lornfluke in the Fathomking’s area who kept wanting to head north: after it got in to the next block, it would lose ‘me’, go neutral- then as soon as it walked back in to the Fathomking’s bounderies, it would do a full charge. Luckily, I was in the merchant ship by then, so I could take it.
More troubling was an elder crab over by either Savior’s Rocks or the Clem who decided he wanted to go east (I guess he had the newest ambition?). He would literally wander off the map, then suddenly reappear on it, charge me, then run off the map again. That crab I ended up having to run from.
As I said, I am in the merchant cruiser, but I’m simply using the best forward gun you can buy from the merchant and an engine bought in London. (I have an aft gun, but I rarely use it.) I do have blue scintillack, but that’s pretty easy to get if you’re willing to anger the rats/cavies (I actually got this one at the University, yay!).
So far, I’ve found myself able to kill all Zeemonsters with this strategy save for the bosses (Mt Nomad and Tree of Ages, who I haven’t even engaged). However, I still get killed by the Dawn Dreadnaughts and even the ‘Republican’ ones, so I can’t win em all.