video: Asgard vs Xenon K .... well couldn't be called vs

[martinld2000]

Truth be told were two shoots one missed and the second hit.
The battleship I commanded was the Asgard and I didnt even used the 8 Large cannons nor the main gains. Just the Xl main battery.
Give it a like !

How to Destroya Xenon K with a single shot !!!
https://youtu.be/ETU2o_HPv50

[Midnitewolf]

I will be blunt and say that the thing I like least about the new DLC is that ridiculous gun. If anything I find that the time to kill in capital ships battles is already way too short without having that stupidity in the game. Personally I am hoping someone will mod it and nerf it down to about 20% or less the amount of damage it does.

[Raptor34]

You could destroy almost anything in a single shot with that, if you didn't fumble your shot that is. Like I did against that other Asgard.

[MHDriver]

Yep the Asgard is the only true battleship in the game atm and massively OP against vanilla opponents. I use mods to balance the galaxy giving the other factions BS class ships but even then there aren't main guns of the class of the Asgard's for the NPC factions to wield. Well, except for one enemy NPC faction and the Xenon so there is some work to do.

[Imperial Good]

Then you give the Asguard to NPCs and watch as the K easily destroys it. Or give myself a Rattlesnake and watch 40 minutes of me killing over a dozen Ks and multiple Is with it (there is a video of this!).

The main issue with the Asguard is that the player can cheese it easily by boarding. NPC versions of it really need X3 style boarding defences so that boarding it is only really viable late game. Outside that, it is the most difficult ship for the player to obtain as it has the highest cost and requirements.

[Lord Dakier]

Were it up to me all the capitals would have 4x the shielding they currently do. Weapons like these do ruin the game. It's the type of thing you'd see on Steam workshop where someone just doesn't give a damn about balance.

[GCU Grey Area]

The main issue with the Asguard is that the player can cheese it easily by boarding. NPC versions of it really need X3 style boarding defences so that boarding it is only really viable late game. Outside that, it is the most difficult ship for the player to obtain as it has the highest cost and requirements.

Agree with this. I'm fine with Asgard having a ludicrously powerful BFG. Apparently however it is also shockingly easy to steal & that I do consider to be a problem. Have not done this myself, though did scan one & it was practically empty of crew. Would go a long way to making such ships difficult to steal early in a new game if the marine complement of ships scaled according to ship size & role. For example an L freighter or miner might have a relatively small number of mostly recruit level marines, L warships might have significantly more & higher level marines, whereas XL warships such as Asgard could have several dozen elite level marines guarding them, along with maybe a couple of hundred lower ranked troops (plenty of room for them all inside an Asgard). Would take quite a while to assemble & train up a boarding team capable of successfully stealing such a target.

[martinld2000]

agree with the things about the marines.

btw, i did not steal it, i built it.

[SunGod1]

One shot one kill with the Asguard vs K.

[Imperial Good]

Would go a long way to making such ships difficult to steal early in a new game if the marine complement of ships scaled according to ship size & role. For example an L freighter or miner might have a relatively small number of mostly recruit level marines, L warships might have significantly more & higher level marines, whereas XL warships such as Asgard could have several dozen elite level marines guarding them, along with maybe a couple of hundred lower ranked troops (plenty of room for them all inside an Asgard).

It might not be that simple as it is a balancing act for service crew and marines since service crew contribute to ship performance while marines do not. Optimum ship performance requires that all crew be perfect service crew leaving no room for marines. This is an issue the AI have to deal with since the player's ships never get boarded so they can safely fill them with service crew only.

Possibly a general base solution would be to abolish "marine" as a job and instead use service crew as both service crew and marines. This would make boarding generally more difficult as AI ships would be better defended. Ships like the Asguard could then have almost full service crew with most having 3-4 stars in boarding making it extremely difficult. Additionally lost crew should be replaced when left alone so wearing it down is not possible.

[GCU Grey Area]

It might not be that simple as it is a balancing act for service crew and marines since service crew contribute to ship performance while marines do not. Optimum ship performance requires that all crew be perfect service crew leaving no room for marines. This is an issue the AI have to deal with since the player's ships never get boarded so they can safely fill them with service crew only.

They don't have that many service crew either, at least the one I scanned didn't:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w4zgaz4fxyb5p ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Plenty of room in that ship for a couple of hundred extra marines. In any case, even for smaller warships they could use more Elite ranked troops (instead of the usual cannon fodder) to make boarding more difficult in the early game, without needing to displace any service crew.

btw, i did not steal it, i built it.

Glad to hear it. Will be doing the same. Shipyard's nearly ready, though still need to buy the blueprints. Certainly did not mean to imply that you had stolen it.

[Fenris321]

It might not be that simple as it is a balancing act for service crew and marines since service crew contribute to ship performance while marines do not. Optimum ship performance requires that all crew be perfect service crew leaving no room for marines. This is an issue the AI have to deal with since the player's ships never get boarded so they can safely fill them with service crew only.

What do service crew contribute to other than repair on a combat ship?

[Bozz11]

boarding is OP period ! It's usually the only activity I do early game, right now with 1 katana and 2 Falx I have made 250 million credits only boarding SCA Behemoths all around the universe.

And yes that Main weapon is way too OP and problem is that AI doesn't know how to use it, instead of delivering a full blow with the beam the AI only fires short bursts which deal very little damage, saw an asgard fire it on a station and was dealing almost no damage because it was not firing long enough.... and also AI can't get to target a mobile ship with it, I don't remember if I ever saw AI use that gun properly against anything

[SunGod1]

OP is ok with me...

[dtpsprt]

It might not be that simple as it is a balancing act for service crew and marines since service crew contribute to ship performance while marines do not. Optimum ship performance requires that all crew be perfect service crew leaving no room for marines. This is an issue the AI have to deal with since the player's ships never get boarded so they can safely fill them with service crew only.

Am I the only one that sees there is a huge problem there? I can "agree" that a civilian ship might be like that, but a warship? Another "one size fit all" half baked and not thought of implementation from Egosoft.

Possibly a general base solution would be to abolish "marine" as a job and instead use service crew as both service crew and marines. This would make boarding generally more difficult as AI ships would be better defended. Ships like the Asguard could then have almost full service crew with most having 3-4 stars in boarding making it extremely difficult. Additionally lost crew should be replaced when left alone so wearing it down is not possible.

Two points of argument in that:
a) The "spork" is neither a good spoon or a good fork. There is a reason for marines to be marines and crew to be crew...
b) How is the crew going to be automatically replaced? And, more importantly, shouldn't this also be for the player's own ship(s) negating the (not in my liking at all) spacewalking aimlessly on a station?

[Imperial Good]

What do service crew contribute to other than repair on a combat ship?

General ship skill. For example faster mining speed, faster response times e.t.c. Some large fraction of ship skill is from the captain, with the rest being from service crew. Full service crew skill requires filling the ship entirely with maximum skilled service crew. Marines count at empty slots as far as service crew skill goes, irrespective of the skills of the actual marine.

a) The "spork" is neither a good spoon or a good fork. There is a reason for marines to be marines and crew to be crew...

Nothing stops you having 5 star marines which are also 5 star service crew. Morale is used in both rolls and you can level up engineering and boarding by changing the role of the crew person. Such crew could also be 5 star managers and 5 star captains if they were levelled as such.

b) How is the crew going to be automatically replaced? And, more importantly, shouldn't this also be for the player's own ship(s) negating the (not in my liking at all) spacewalking aimlessly on a station?

Most realistic/sensible option would be that the ship gets an order to fly to an equipment dock and orders on more crew. The crew that gets placed is special and matches the roll profile of the ship job, similar to when the ship is built. This would mean that players need to repeatedly board the ship in the same location and not leave it alone for any length of time.

In addition to this the AI should respond to being boarded and send a large defence fleet to guard the ship. These ships should defend the boarded ship when near and become hostile to anything it is hostile with. The ships should then guard it until it can make its way to an equipment dock to replenish its crew. This large defence fleet should instantly hostile the ship if boarding was successful and attempt to destroy it for 30 to 60 minutes.

The player already has a lot of options to replenish crew and move crew around from the map view. No walking on platforms required, unless you want to find reasonably skilled crew.

[jlehtone]

What do service crew contribute to other than repair on a combat ship?

General ship skill. For example faster mining speed, faster response times e.t.c. Some large fraction of ship skill is from the captain, with the rest being from service crew. Full service crew skill requires filling the ship entirely with maximum skilled service crew. Marines count at empty slots as far as service crew skill goes, irrespective of the skills of the actual marine.

There is data for mining efficiency. Are there other measurements?

Player empire stats show sum of skill points. The ship UI shows "average crew skill". If the sum of skill is the determining factor, then why does UI bother with the average? An Asgard with only the Captain and Asgard that has Captain and 360 Service Crew can both have average skill 5.0 but huge difference in absolute skill points.

How many 1-star engineers have same skill as one 5-star?
Are there diminishing returns? Say 180, 240, or 300 engineers, how much performance is lost by dropping crew from 300 to 180? From 180 to 20?

If ship types A and B have identical loadouts, but A can take more crew than B, then does that mean that B matches A if they have same crew and is more efficient with full crew? (E.g. Phoenix Vanguard vs Sentinel.)


In real life there are only so many persons that one can cram into the seat of the tail-gunner. What you can have is a reserve person that steps in when the front line musketeer drops dead. It would make sense to have "active posts" that are a property of ship or equipment. Crew over the active posts would give no benefit. Some faction could have more automation, e.g. less posts per turret. Pirates would prefer those, if they were in the boarding business.

[aquatica]

I wouldn't mind having warships with two "stocks" of crew. Service crew 180 persons and Marines up to 200 for example, totaling at 380. Max capabilities would be with 180 service crew (5 star) and 200 marines (5 star).
Maybe even add prioritize on it, so if marines get wasted on boarding attempts, Service Crew would start to fill in the ranks to a point (let's say that as long as there are 100 service crew around, marines would always be topped up after boarding attempt). That would effectively make 200 marines to be 280 marines making boarding a quite a lot harder to do!

Oh, and add biological weapons. Low-skilled crew and marines would be more vulnerable than high-skilled crew, because more skilled crew would know how to protect against it. I think that would make boarding effectively difficult (as it really should be).